Rnordman

This is a guest post by Krista Caldwell, Account Strategist at Predictable Revenue and SalesHacker Vancouver Host.

Objection Handling: the Pain

Having battled in the trenches of SDR-dom, I know firsthand that responding to prospects’ dismissive or negative emails feels futile. It requires the most research, thinking, and time but seems to generate the least results!

Read more on Objection Deflection: Prospecting Enemy #1…

The post Objection Deflection: Prospecting Enemy #1 appeared first on Predictable Revenue.

Perspective and Tips from Matt Heinz with Release of New Book

Matt Heinz of Heinz Marketing, one of the real-world thought leaders in our B2B marketing community, just released a new book. I thought it was insightful, timely and covered a healthy bit of strategies and tactics required to become a kick-ass revenue marketer.

So I sat down with Matt to get his take on the state of B2B marketing and see what progress we’re making on this whole “revenue” thing. You can also get a copy of the book here.

Scott: Ok, wait a minute. Your book title uses Full “Funnel.” Isn’t the funnel dead and it’s all about the “Customer Journey” (blah, blah, blah…) in B2B marketing?

Matt: You know, every time I hear someone say something is “dead,” it usually means they’re trying to sell me the alternative!

Perhaps the idea that all prospects follow a straight, linear process through your funnel is dead (if it was ever alive). But I still love the funnel as a metaphor and organizing agent to help sales and marketing teams design a repeatable, scalable process for managing their efforts. I also don’t see nearly enough B2B marketers thinking in terms of the entire funnel vs just the top half. Maybe I’m drawn to “full funnel” for the alliteration, but if we can convince more marketers to focus on revenue instead of clicks, retweets and MQLs alone, we’ve done our job.

What was the true inspiration for the book?

I want to see all B2B marketers responsible for revenue, not activity. I want marketers to treat their organization like a profit center. I want sales and marketing aligned around the same objectives, the same definitions, the same focus areas to maximize sales and revenue yield for their organizations.

I also know that most marketers are crazy busy and sometimes want to get right to the heart of a particular challenge or opportunity. So this book covers the broader opportunity for marketers to embrace revenue responsibility, but also makes it fast and easy to find precisely the content or best practices you need in the moment to succeed.

If you had to make your best case in one sentence for why a marketer should read and spend time with your book – make it.

You can’t buy a beer with MQLs, but you can buy them with closed deals. This book helps marketers focus more on the latter. So whether you want to buy beer or simply make your next mortgage payment (i.e., keep your job), this book will help you move in the right direction.

One of your main themes is that “Full Funnel” marketers work side-by-side with sales. This belief has existed for a while now with the promise of marketing automation to make us all revenue marketers. What’s changed or is different now?

Marketing automation is just a category of tools that, if implemented poorly, simply makes sending more emails faster and easier. There are a lot of marketers who may consider themselves revenue marketers, but don’t put their money where their mouth is. While the sales team is grinding at the end of the quarter, the marketing team is at the local bar celebrating the fact that they hit their retweet goal. That may be a little unfair or facetious, but it’s the perception of not only many sales organizations but many c-suites when it comes to what marketing does and whether it’s valuable.

Awareness is important. Retweets have value. MQLs are making progress. But the marketers having the biggest impact for their business manage the entire funnel, not just portions of the top half.

CEOs and boards seem to be seeking CMOs and marketing leaders who can drive growth. Has the role of marketing fully shifted from brand to demand? Does the “big idea” matter today?

Brand is still vitally important. Great brands make sales and marketing easier, faster, more efficient. Marketers who focus purely on demand and not on long-term brand value will pay a premium for their short-term thinking, and will likely lose long-term deals to competitors who value brand perception, great content marketing and more.

The big idea still matters, but it’s not sufficient on its own. Too often historically, the big idea doesn’t tie to a core customer need, doesn’t align with a target customer’s buying journey, and doesn’t have a specific next step to move the prospect forward. Connect those dots and you’re onto something. Yes, this makes the CMO’s job much more difficult than it has been historically. But that’s the reality we live in, and many CMOs are thriving in that environment by leaning into their revenue responsibility on a daily basis.

Another thing that you espouse in the book is for marketers to help customers “challenge their status quo.” Why is this important today? And how can marketers make this happen?

Nobody is going to change unless they see benefit in doing so. Most of us are lazy, we don’t want to do or learn something new, we want to just be able to keep doing what we’ve always done or are comfortable doing. But if we discover something – an idea, a fact, a trend – that demonstrates change is easier or better than staying the same, that change will generate the outcome we ultimately care the most about, that’s where we start actively evaluating solutions to achieve that desired outcome.

Marketers have an active responsibility to know enough about their target customer to actively drive that status quo challenge. Sometimes it’s by introducing new information. Sometimes it requires reframing a problem or situation. But great marketing and great content can do that with highly efficient scale.

In the “Marketing Technology” chapter you talk about “eating your vegetables.” You live the farm life and like all that organic stuff. Are there some parallels here for B2B marketers?

Not all marketing is sexy. Many marketers shy away from technology because it isn’t as fun as the creative or the “big idea” or the content. But I’ve found that the “fundamentals” of marketing, the processes and such, are what make marketing ultimately work – better, faster, more efficiently.

You close with a deep chapter on productivity for marketers, covering things like how to use/not use meetings, conferences. These are useful “hacks.” What are your top 2 or 3 hacks for today’s modern marketer?

Be intentional about how you use your time. Protect and prioritize it religiously.

Capture all of your ideas, all of the time. Use AquaNotes, Dial2Do, a Moleskine with you at all times, whatever it takes. Triage them later, but capture everything now.

Read more often. Take the time to make yourself smarter every day, on a wide variety of topics.

Is it really worth your time and money to attend that summit or workshop? No. It’s not… unless you know why you’re there in the first place.

When I first started writing, I heard people talk about conferences. They said go to this one or that one. It was a good way to “connect.” But what was I, a shy guy, going to do at a conference?

I’d also heard the case against conferences. The crowds. The unnecessary expenses. The inspirational but ultimately un-actionable content you tend to get. I just wasn’t sure the investment was going to be worth the cost, for me.

But then, on a whim, I forked up the cash for a conference and was blown away at the content and the experience. That was the place where I first started calling myself a writer. I was hooked.

I also recorded a special podcast to expand on my thoughts. You can listen to by clicking the player below.

And so it began…

Shortly after that, I found a way to volunteer my services as a writer to attend another conference. I didn’t expect much from the conference but wanted to get to know the event planner better.

After four life-changing days, I began to drop some of my skepticism about conferences. And over the course of about six months, I began building a network, organically and somewhat accidentally, of writers and bloggers and people whom I would soon call “friend.”

Within a year, I had formed some of the most important relationships in writing career — many of which came from conferences, meetups, and other kinds of events. In fact, it was at a conference in Chicago, eating panini sandwiches, that I met an editor who published my first two books.

In the world of writing, an important step to success is forming the right relationships. In fact, I think this is true in many different industries, but it seems to be especially true for creative ones. Who you know matters. And a great way to meet more people is to attend conferences.

You can’t do this alone

This journey towards becoming a writer is not a solitary one. You will need help. You will need guides and mentors and peers to help you find your way.

This is the secret to success that few people like to admit: no successful person ever succeeds alone. Just as Hemingway went to Paris in the 1920s to be around some of the most interesting literary minds of the century, you, too, will have to find a tribe you can learn from.

But if you’re not careful, you can totally waste your time and money going to the wrong conferences. You can just go from inspiration to inspiration without any practical application. So it’s important that you know how to make the most of your investment, if you decide to register for a conference.

Here are a few goals you need to have when attending a conference if you don’t want the experience to be a waste. These are lessons I learned from attending conferences and from hosting one myself, and I hope they help you.

Goal #1: Learn

You need to go to a conference that has the kind of speakers you respect and want to learn from.

I can’t learn from someone who hasn’t done what I want to do. It’s a personal preference but an important one. I must be learning from people who have done the thing that I want to do. Otherwise, I feel like it’s a waste.

Also, a secondary but significant goal for me at a conference is to meet one of the speakers. This is easier than it sounds, actually. It doesn’t have to be some A-list presenter, but the point of an event is connection with people, and you’d be surprised at how accessible some “celebrities” are.

I first learned this when I attended World Domination Summit and asked, out of the blue, if Chris Brogan would be willing to meet me in person. He replied to my email, saying he’d love to. We played it by ear and ended up skipping a session, chatting in the lobby.

By the end of our conversation, there was a small crowd surrounding Chris, peppering him with questions. I didn’t mind. Here was a blogger whom I respected and had only interacted with online, and we had just spent an hour together, chatting. We’ve been friends ever since. I don’t remember the session that I missed, but I know I was able to watch it online later.

How to do this:

1. Reach out to the person ahead of time to book a meeting at the conference. Once the event starts, everyone will want to meet these people. So just email them a week in advance, asking for 15 minutes of their time.
2. Offer to buy them a meal or coffee. Something. Demonstrate that you’re not a taker, but a giver.
3. Do this whenever it is convenient for them. Early in the morning, late at night whatever. When Chris emailed me back and asked if I could meet him in the lobby in five minutes, I immediately grabbed my stuff and left the auditorium.

Goal #2: Connect

Second, you need to go to conference that has the kind of attendees you want to be around.

Who, exactly, is that?

Well, it should be people like you. When I hosted the Tribe Conference last year, I was amazed at how many people said that was their first conference ever. What made them want to attend it? They didn’t know there was a place where they could go and people others just like them.

I’ve had this same experience as an attendee at several events. There’s something powerful when you end up some place and instantly feel like you belong.

For me, I don’t want to go some place where I can’t tolerate the people attending the event, no matter how good the content is. This is why I don’t attend many business and marketing events. I just don’t love being around that crowd.

Perhaps the most memorable part of an event is the conversations you’ll have in the hotel lobby or outside the bathroom in between sessions. It’s the late-night hangouts or random lunches with strangers that will stick with you. So you want to get some place where people “get” you.

What does this matter? Because if you go to enough conferences with jerks and swindlers and people who represent values you don’t want, well, some of that just might rub off on you. You are the company you keep, so choose to hang with the kind of people who will make you better.

My first conference, I sheepishly attended a meetup for bloggers and was too nervous to introduce myself to anyone. Nonetheless, another blogger named Kyle whom I knew from Twitter came up to me and said hi. We stayed in touch and became close friends after that (we just had lunch the other day).

Later, he told me that he could tell I was nervous and that’s why he approached me in the first place. This is what you want — people who get you, who will make you feel comfortable, even when you are unsure of yourself.

What I learned from Kyle is that we can all do this. So the very next conference I attended, I found someone who looked nervous and was clinging to the wall, and introduced myself. Worked like a charm.

How to do this:

1. Go to the event (this is important but something we shy people tend to overlook — yes, you actually have to show up).
2. Find someone less confident than you — because when you’re shy and unsure of yourself it’s hard to approach someone who is larger than life. So just find someone who is looking around the room, lost.
3. Say hi to this person and ask them this question: “What are you hoping to get out of this conference?”

If you need more help with this, check out this old interview I did to on how even as a shy guy I am able to meet new people at conferences.

Goal #3: Apply

Third, you need to go to a conference with the intention of not just learning but of applying what you will learn. This means that the conference must have the kind of information that will make you better.

In other words, the content has to be more than just basic stuff you can Google. It needs to include exclusive teaching or access to the speaker or a brand-new application of it.

When I started attending a few conferences a year, I realized that what I wanted was not just a good experience but a transformation. To take home with me the things that I had learned and be able to apply to my own context.

So I started making a habit of putting into practice the things I learned at the conference before I even left the event. Forget notebooks filled with information you’ll never look at again; this is the best way to get your money’s worth out of a conference. Just do it before you leave.

I learned this from my friend Danny Iny when I saw him pull out his computer in the middle of a speaking session at a conference and send an email to his assistant.

“What are you doing?” I asked.

“I’m telling my team to start doing this right now.”

He then proceeded to tell me his rule for attending conferences: find three actionable nuggets and put them into practice before the event is over. Once you’ve done that, you can enjoy the rest of the event, guilt-free.

I saw him do this several times throughout the conference and decided to make that same practice a habit.

How to do this:

1. Decide ahead of time what you want to get out of the experience.
2. When you hear something that resonates with you, step aside to put the thing into practice. That could mean taking a break or simply emailing yourself a to-do item.
3. Set a quota (e.g. “I’m going to immediately apply three things I learn at this conference”) and give yourself permission to stop once you’re done.

Why I created my own conference

There are a lot of conferences and events out there. A lot of paid mastermind groups and summits and experiences to keep you busy for a long, long time. Honestly, it’s easy to pick the wrong thing. It’s easy to get swept up by where everyone else is going and what everyone else is doing.

But that shouldn’t concern you. You need to go where you know you can learn from people you trust, connect with people you respect, and apply information you need.

After attending conferences for the past four years, one thing struck me as a writer. There aren’t many options available for writers and creatives who want to thrive in the modern age. There aren’t many places that help you understand where to begin, who to connect with, and what plan to follow after you leave the event.

In fact, I knew that the kind of conference I needed when I first started writing did not even exist. So I tried to cobble together some disparate experiences by attending a number of different events, but that became harder and harder to do year after year.

So I decided to create my own.

When people come together, life change happens. One person told me, it was “the best conference” they’d ever attended. Another told me it was the only one they’d ever attended.

But the truth is for a conference to make a difference, it has to have the right people, with the right message, delivered in the right way. Otherwise, you will waste your money.

That’s what the Tribe Conference is all about. It’s a place where writers, creatives, and artists can gather to share their messages and grow in their craft. It’s an event that gives you the practical known-how and inspiration to take the next step in finding the audience your message deserves.

What happens at a good conference

One attendee of the Tribe Conference, David Villalva, had this to say after leaving the event:

Every presenter and attendee I spoke with changed, challenged, or charged me. I arrived at this conference thinking I needed to somehow survive it. Instead, I discovered what it meant to be part of a tribe, and left feeling like I thrived in one.

I’ll be the first to admit that the reaction to our little event surprised me. But this was my goal: to create a place of belonging and transformation. And this is what I look for as an attendee of other events — to belong and to be changed.

Nearly half of last year’s attendees are coming back to the Tribe Conference because they’re making progress on the plans they started last year. Whether that means launching a blog or finishing a book, they’re taking action. And they want learning, connecting, and applying. It’s an honor to be a part of this growing community.

This year is going to be even bigger and better, with expert speakers, brand-new technology and tools we will be featuring, and more fun surprises.

If you’ve ever dreamed of being a professional writer, then Tribe Conference is for you.

If you have struggled to figure out how to use digital technology to get your message heard, then Tribe Conference is for you.

If you dream of one day writing a book or speaking for a living or simply getting the attention your message deserves, then Tribe Conference is for you.

To check out the schedule, learn more about ticket pricing, and sign up before we sell out, go here.

Join us October 26–28 in Franklin, TN at the Tribe Conference. It’s going to be great!

What has been your best conference experience? Share in the comments.

Sharing large files like videos or graphic-intensive documents used to be painful. Depending on the size of the file, email was impractical if not downright impossible. FTP sites were the most common alternative, but these were often cumbersome to access and use.

Fortunately, a number of file sharing tools and services have been rolled out over the past few years which speed and simplify the process. These tools make it easy and (relatively) secure to share large files with another individual, co-workers, outside vendors, or any ad hoc group for collaboration.

File sharing tools are invaluable not only for content marketing professionals and consultants (e.g., collaborating on a video or ebook), but across the organization: in product design, finance, supply chain management, application development, and other functional areas.

Most of these services operate similarly in that you can upload files and automatically notify team members by email, and optionally download files for local storage. Different tools do vary though in terms of additional features, pricing, and storage capacity.

Here are seven of the best file sharing tools according to expert reviewers. As with all posts in this series, tools are shown with the number of results returned by Google on a search for reviews of that tool (not necessarily the actual number of reviews) and example showcase reviews.

1) Dropbox
Google Review Count: 699,000

With its downloadable app, any files you save to Dropbox are synced across all your devices. Files can be shared with anyone, even if they don’t have Droxbox accounts. For collaboration purposes, any file edited in a Dropbox folder is automatically updated for everyone it’s been shared with.

Sample review: “Dropbox is first of all a file sharing tool. You can use it in your browser, mobile app or computer application. You can share folders with other users. But this is just the basic function. What makes Dropbox great is the choice of apps which allow additional functions for your Dropbox. You can have photos, your website, your database or email automatically saved to your Dropbox.” — Anders Orsander

Pricing: free to $12.50 per user per month; enterprise pricing available by quote

Showcase reviews: Anders Orsander, PR Daily (7 PR Tools), Johnny Lists, SmartBug Media, StoreYa Blog

2) Google Drive
Google Review Count: 574,000

Store files, sync across devices, share files with anyone (even if they don’t use Google Drive), and integrate with Google Apps for Word (Docs, Calendar, Sheets, etc.).

Sample review: “Google Drive is a great place to keep your editorial calendars for easy sharing and collaboration during the content planning process.” — Online Marketing Institute

Pricing: free or $10/user per month

Showcase reviews: Online Marketing Institute, PR Daily (23 Tools for PR Pros), Marketing Insider Group, Blogging Wizzard, SmartBug Media, StoreYa Blog, Hunter & Bard, Robbie Richards

3) WeTransfer
Google Review Count: 137,000

The free version allows you to transfer files up to 2GB. The paid version enables you send up to 20GB, customize your background, personalize your file sharing URL, and store files indefinitely.

Sample review: “An easy way to send big files.” — Johnny Lists

Pricing: free or $12 per month / $120 per year

Showcase reviews: Siasat, Johnny Lists

4) Ge.tt
Google Review Count: 41,500

Transfer up to 2GB of files free, or upgrade to 50GB of storage (1GB individual file size) or a plan with 1 terabyte of storage and up to 200GB per file.

Sample review: “Quickly send a file to someone, they can even preview it before downloading.” — Siasat

Pricing: free to $4 per month

Showcase reviews: Siasat

5) Otixo
Google Review Count: 25,100

Otixo is a cloud manager that lets you organize, share, and encrypt files across a range of services including Dropbox, Google Drive, Amazon, FTP sites, Evernote, and other services. Access all of your files with a single login, search across services and transfer files between them, and preview documents and images.

Pricing: free to $10 per month

Showcase reviews: Siasat

6) Raindrop
Google Review Count: 2,900

Clip articles, photos, videos and pages from web and apps; group and organize these into collections; and share your collections or work collaboratively with any group.

Sample review: “Raindrop, which functions as an archive and collection system, is a cloud–based web, desktop and mobile app that syncs across all of your devices. Use it as a collecting, organizing, sharing and collaborating tool.” — Social Media Examiner

Pricing: free or $2 per month

Showcase reviews: Social Media Examiner

7) PlusTransfer
Google Review Count: 265

Send files up to 5GB for free.

Pricing: free

Showcase reviews: Siasat

Do you use Twitter for business?

Interested in ways to get more exposure, influence, and credibility?

Getting noticed and building relationships with influencers on Twitter will help you increase your online influence within your industry. With influence comes leverage, which is the foundation to growing the business.

I share the five actionable Twitter strategies I have used to get noticed and have my content shared by a variety of key influencers to help me become No. 12 on the list of Most Influential Digital Marketers on Twitter in 2016.

1. Feature influencers in a blog post and reach out on Twitter

I tried a whole host of things to get relevant influencers to notice me and share my marketing-industry-related content to their large online audiences. In January, I had a lightbulb moment. I decided to use BuzzSumo to find and curate the most viral marketing content created by the influencers in 2015. I put together a round-up post, 15 Most Viral Marketing Posts From The Pros in 2015.

I then reached out to those influencers on Twitter, letting them know that they had made it into the “most viral marketing posts of 2015” post. I got an awesome response. Three of the influencers I featured shared the post to their audiences of 683,000-plus on Twitter and Facebook. One influencer even wrote about my post.

15 most viral Marketing posts from the Pros in 2015 – KPS Digital Marketing https://t.co/OQNc6nnSD0 via @Dknowlton1

— Jeff Bullas (@jeffbullas) 6 January 2016

Bookmark this! @dknowlton1 shares top marketing posts from @moz @marketingprofs and more. https://t.co/P9dYkb8WDc pic.twitter.com/igdih2UG6F

— Content Marketing (@CMIContent) January 9, 2016

Would you like to curate a similar piece of content to get noticed by relevant influencers in your industry on Twitter? Follow these simple steps.

• Select targeted influencers to feature. If you know your industry well then you should be able to reel off key influencers. If you need help, you can use a tool called Followerwonk from Moz.

On its site, click the “Search Bios” tab, enter a keyword related to the type of influencer you seek, and click “Do it.”

With those results, click the “Social Authority” tab to review a descending list of the most influential Twitter users around your keyword(s).

• Source the influencers’ most viral content. Now, copy and paste your influencers’ blog URLs into BuzzSumo and click “Search.” Filter the results based on a date range (on the left). You can see their most viral content from the past 24 hours, week, month, six months, or past year.

• Create the viral round-up post. This is simple enough. Put together a list-style post, including a link to the most viral piece of content from each influencer, an image, and a short description (see an example from my round-up post below).

• Reach out to your featured influencers on Twitter. Let the featured influencers know the post has been published. Sending them a personalized tweet with a link to the post is a great way to grab their attention.

@Rogercparker Hey Roger, your serialization post on @CMIContent made it to number 10 of the list – great work https://t.co/76iviZ7orw

— Daniel Knowlton (@dknowlton1) January 5, 2016

2. Send influencers a direct video tweet

Influencers receive a ton of “likes,” retweets, and tweets on Twitter every day — some human, some from bots. To get noticed you really need to think outside the box.

To get noticed by influencers on #Twitter, you need to think outside the box says @dknowlton1 #contentmarketing
Click To Tweet

I recently executed an outside-the-box engagement strategy with an influencer on Twitter and it worked well. I read an article that I thought was well-written on Social Media Examiner by Aaron Orendorff.

I tweeted Aaron a personalized video letting him know how much I loved his article.

@iconiContent Loved your latest @SMExaminer post pic.twitter.com/mFCoJoPkcX

— Daniel Knowlton (@dknowlton1) July 6, 2016

I made Aaron’s day.

@dknowlton1 @SMExaminer Wow … Thx so much! And what a clever way to get noticed. Made my day.

— Aaron Orendorff (@iconiContent) July 6, 2016

I also went one step further and noticed it was Aaron’s birthday a few days later so I sent him a personalized tweet wishing him a happy birthday.

@iconiContent Happy birthday Aaron pic.twitter.com/BHyhZXkCLb

— Daniel Knowlton (@dknowlton1) July 12, 2016

It’s going these extra miles that will help you get noticed by influencers on Twitter. To execute this strategy yourself, follow these simple steps:

• Download the Feedly App, use the search bar to add relevant influencers’ RSS feeds, and check it daily.

• Pick between one and three articles to read every morning.

• Choose the most interesting article and use Twitter search to find the author’s Twitter account.

• Send a selfie-style video sharing meaningful comments about the piece of content and thank them for creating it.

• Share the piece of content on Twitter and tag the creator.

3. Send influencers a boomerang

Similar to the second example, sending influencers a personalized boomerang on Twitter is a great way to engage and get noticed.

As TechCrunch explains in the video below, Boomerang is a funky free app made by Instagram that lets you shoot a burst of photos then turns them into a four-second, looping, animated GIF.

I recently sent Kristi Hines a boomerang and somehow managed to make her day too.

@kikolani pic.twitter.com/jk1qtH9fia

— Daniel Knowlton (@dknowlton1) January 7, 2016

If you’d like to use Boomerang to create some cool GIFs to engage with influencers online then follow these steps.

• Download the Boomerang.

• Create a Twitter list of influencers (I show you how to do this in the next example).

• View your influencer Twitter list every day and find interesting tweets/content they have shared.

• Go to the Boomerang app, create a boomerang (e.g., you putting your thumb up, waving, high-fiving, smiling, etc.), and save it.

• Go back to the Twitter list and send the chosen influencers a direct tweet with the boomerang image and add a meaningful comment.

4. Create and engage with an influencer Twitter list

The noisy nature of Twitter makes it difficult to consistently keep up and engage with the right people. One highly effective way to get noticed by influencers on Twitter is to consistently engage with their content (every day is ideal).

Engage w/an influencer’s #content every day on #Twitter to stand out from the crowd says @dknowlton1
Click To Tweet

However, this can be time consuming, which is why you will love Twitter lists. They make it super easy and efficient to find and engage in a particular group of Twitter users’ content. Think of it as a customized Twitter feed that removes the noise.

I spend around 10 minutes a day engaging with influencers in my lists and it has helped me build long-lasting relationships with some big influencers.

Follow these steps to set up and engage with your influencer list in Twitter:

• Create your list in Twitter. Go to your profile icon (top right), click and pick “lists” from drop-down menu.

Create a list name and description, and decide if you want the list to be public or private. I’d stick to private, as this means people you add to the list will not know you’ve added them. Click “save list.”

Note: Make sure the list name is not too long, as this can stop the list from saving.

• Find relevant influencers to add to your list. Use the influencers from your round-up post. If you don’t write a round-up post, follow the same process in Followerwonk to identify target influencers.

• Add the influencer to a Twitter list. In Twitter, click the profile of the influencer. Click the settings icon at the top right, click “add or remove from lists,” and add the influencer to the appropriate list.

• Engage with your lists. Now this is the easy bit. Every day go to your lists and “like,” retweet, quote retweet, and reply to the content the influencers post. Make sure you add meaningful comments and ask questions — this will help you get noticed.

5. Share influencers’ content and tag them

Tagging influencers on Twitter when you share their content may sound simple, yet so many Twitter users still don’t do it. Tagging an influencer involves using their @ handle within a tweet when you share their content:

This strategy helps you get noticed because every time you tag an influencer on Twitter they receive a notification. If an influencer consistently sees someone supporting their content, the influencer is likely to remember that follower and have a positive opinion of the person.

Conclusion

The main thing to remember when trying to get noticed by influencers on Twitter is to be different and add value consistently. The strategies outlined in this tutorial will give you a head start on achieving this. I’d love to hear any effective strategies you have used to get noticed on Twitter in the comments.

Please note: All tools included in our blog posts are suggested by authors, not the CMI editorial team. No one post can provide all relevant tools in the space. Feel free to include additional tools in the comments (from your company or ones that you have used).

Want to meet and learn from the influencers in content marketing? Register today for Content Marketing World Sept. 6-9.

Cover image by Joseph Kalinowski/Content Marketing Institute

The post 5 Ways to Get Noticed by Influencers on Twitter appeared first on Content Marketing Institute.

Listen Before You Speak

Do you know who you are writing for? Do you have realistic expectations for the time it takes to build an audience? Are you able to focus your energies into one platform at a time? Are you really writing for your audience?

Joe Pulizzi is a content mastermind. He’s an author, speaker, and the founder of Content Marketing Institute, which publishes the Chief Content Officer magazine and produces the premier international event for content marketing: Content Marketing World.

Joe talks to us about the how to tune into and write for your audience instead of yourself, the time is takes to develop your brand, and the art of staying simple. He is always looking for that greater connection, saying, “what I want is something that’s really going to make an impact, that’s truly compelling.”

In This Episode

• Why it’s better to build your brand one channel at the time
• How to understand the point of view of your audience and create for them
• Why it’s important to surround yourself with a great team
• How to recognize what your brand does best and grow step by step
• Why it takes time to find and build up your audience
• How to let go of strategies that are not helpful to your brand

Quotes From This Episode

“We’re trying to create better customers. We’re trying to create value outside of the products and services we offer, which is so difficult.” —@JoePulizzi

“You can’t necessarily write for yourself and your own passion. You have to focus on the needs of your audience and who that is. It’s easy for marketers to forget that.” —@JoePulizzi

“Anything that you’re trying to do, and you’re trying to build a loyal audience, it’s going to take time.” —@JoePulizzi

“Sometimes less is more, and that’s what we’ve really learned.” —@JoePulizzi (highlight to tweet)

“I think that first of all, people don’t give themselves enough credit. We’re all probably pretty decent storytellers in our own way when we have something compelling to talk about that we also have a passion for. I mean, how many people do you and I know that, they always have some story to tell and their eyes light up? And then, of course, we want to engage in that story. So, I think that it’s really finding the right things to talk about, to tell stories about.” —@JoePulizzi

“Content gets you to the audience and builds that relationship with the audience.” —@JoePulizzi (highlight to tweet)

“It’s the same thing with your storytelling. If you want somebody to be a part of that story, you just have to plan for it, ask for it, and then create some value exchange. It’s not rocket science, but we just always put those no’s in front of us before we even try to ask.” —@JoePulizzi

Resources

• Joe Pulizzi
• Joe Pulizzi on Twitter, @JoePulizzi
• Content Marketing Institute
• “Content Inc” by Joe Pulizzi
• “All Things Must Pass” Documentary
• “The Story of Content: Rise of the New Marketing” Documentary
• Mark Hamill
• Getting Goosebumps Podcast by Ph. Creative
• “The Hero’s Journey,” by Joseph Campbell
• “Your DIY Guide to Crafting and Telling Compelling Brand Stories that Sell,” by Park Howell
• BusinessofStory.com
• Park@BusinessOfStory.com

       

Hillary Clinton concluded the speeches of the 2016 Democratic National Convention with a brilliant masterclass in public speaking in just under an hour.

This is what we can take for her luminous speech:

1. What’s so important?

Your message is the lifeblood of your speech or presentation, it’s the number one thing you want your audience to remember and act on.

The clarity of your message will enable you to ensure that everything you plan to say is relevant, rich and rewarding for your audience.

In a campaign where many think that Donald Trump is dividing a nation and The Economist says “Donald Trump’s nomination in Cleveland will put a thriving country at risk of a great, self-inflicted wound”, Hilary Clinton’s message couldn’t be any clearer:

“Stronger Together”

Masterclass lesson

Before you do anything else make certain that you have a message which is short, potent and of significant value to your audience. It has to answer a very simple question, ‘What’s so important?’

2. Connect early

Earlier this week her husband gave a very emotional speech in the form of an alluring story designed to help the nation see the ‘real’ Hillary. It was the epitome of storytelling which I wrote about a few days ago, “I met a girl”: The Power of Storytelling in Public Speaking – Bill Clinton

Acknowledging the accolades her husband’s speech received, Hillary opened hers by making the perfect reference to it:

“And Bill, that conversation we started in the law library 45 years ago is still going strong.”

The millions of people who had listened to her husband’s speech would have made an instant connection with that one sentence, I know I did.

Masterclass lesson

Your job is to connect with your audience swiftly and smartly and if you can link that to something they already know it’s even more powerful.

3. Use history to reinforce your message

Referring to a momentous historic event which has relevance and value to your message can pay great dividends when the stakes are high in a public speech.

“My friends, we’ve come to Philadelphia – the birthplace of our nation – because what happened in this city 240 years ago still has something to teach us today.

Masterclass lesson

Creating a parallel between what is happening today and what we have learned from history can add great strength and credibility to your message.

4. Quote a hero

When your opposition’s campaign centres largely on fear and division and yours revolves around unity and hope it pays to quote one of your country’s favourite heroes: “The only thing we have to fear is fear itself.” Franklin D. Roosevelt

Masterclass lesson

If you can align your message to the words of someone your audience has enormous respect and admiration for they are likely to pay attention.

5. Contrast is good

Hillary Clinton knows that one of the many controversial features of her opponent’s campaign is that he wants to ‘build a wall’.

The idea seems to resonate with many people but she offers a completely different solution whilst retaining the concept of building.

“We will not build a wall. Instead, we will build an economy where everyone who wants a good paying job can get one.”

Masterclass lesson

Contrast can add another dimension to your speech especially when you take two completely opposite viewpoints yet bring them closer together.

7. Challenge falsehoods

When someone says that “our country is weak” and “I alone can fix it” and some people believe those words, that’s a challenge. You have to have the courage to confront the lunacy of the idea that one man alone is the solution.

“Those were actually Donald Trump’s words in Cleveland. And they should set off alarm bells for all of us.

Masterclass lesson

Don’t let people get away with saying senseless things that will inevitably do more harm than good. Address it simply, quickly and head on.

7. Give them an example

Your message may be perfectly clear to you and make a great deal of sense in your own mind but it doesn’t necessarily follow that it will be the same for your audience. The solution is to give them a clear example of what you mean.

The message is, “Stronger Together.”

Hillary Clinton’s example of that is:

“Look at what happened in Dallas after the assassinations of five brave police officers. Chief David Brown asked the community to support his force, maybe even join them.

And you know how the community responded? Nearly 500 people applied in just 12 days. That’s how Americans answer when the call for help goes out.”

Masterclass lesson

Don’t rely on your audience ‘getting’ your message just because you do. Give them examples, use similes, analogies or metaphors. Help them to see your message and not just hear it.

8. A little humility goes a long way

We all want strong, resilient and visionary leadership whether for it’s our country or workplace but we also like to see a sense of humility too.

“My grandfather worked in the same Scranton lace mill for 50 years. Because he believed that if he gave everything he had, his children would have a better life than he did.”

Masterclass lesson

When it comes to public speaking there is nothing worse than arrogance.

Whether you are the President of the USA or the Prime Minister of the UK, no one is ‘better’ than their fellow human beings and people respect and value that awareness.

9. Credibility counts

When an audience is listening to a speaker for an hour they have a right to know what qualifies that person to take up their valuable time and why they should listen to them.

“Now, sometimes the people at this podium are new to the national stage.

As you know, I’m not one of those people. I’ve been your First Lady. Served 8 years as a Senator from the great State of New York.

Then I represented all of you as Secretary of State.

But my job titles only tell you what I’ve done. They don’t tell you why.”

Masterclass lesson

Let your audience know and understand why you are an authority on the subject you are speaking on, but do so gracefully and without bragging.

10. Tell them about you

You could be the most knowledgeable, credible and experienced speaker in the world on any topic and whilst that’s important there is something far more important. Your audience want to see the real you.

“My mother, Dorothy, was abandoned by her parents as a young girl. She ended up on her own at 14, working as a house maid. She was saved by the kindness of others.

Her first grade teacher saw she had nothing to eat at lunch, and brought extra food to share. The lesson she passed on to me years later stuck with me: No one gets through life alone. ”

Masterclass lesson

Being prepared to be a little vulnerable and giving your audience a glimpse of who you really are and what makes you ‘tick’ is an extremely endearing quality.

11. Tell them stories

That’s how you build rapport.

It’s how you connect with people and that is how they make sense of things.

Hillary Clinton’s acceptance speech was full of relevant stories from start to finish. Here is one of my favourites:

“I remember meeting a young girl in a wheelchair on the small back porch of her house. She told me how badly she wanted to go to school – it just didn’t seem possible. And I couldn’t stop thinking of my mother and what she went through as a child.”

Masterclass lesson

It doesn’t matter how interesting the information you have to share is, the human brain simply wasn’t built to be bombarded with facts and data. We connect through stories and if you don’t tell them you will lose your audience and they will lose your message.

12. Repetition has power

Notice how Hillary built up the intensity, rhythm and pace of her speech so often by the mindful use of repetition:

“If you believe that companies should share profits, not pad executive bonuses, join us. If you believe the minimum wage should be a living wage… and no one working full time should have to raise their children in poverty… join us.

If you believe that every man, woman, and child in America has the right to affordable health care…join us. If you believe that we should say “no” to unfair trade deals… that we should stand up to China… that we should support our steelworkers and autoworkers and homegrown manufacturers…join us.

Masterclass lesson

Using repetition in this way allows each point to build on the one before strengthening the message and increasing the speaker’s passion.

13. Make a promise

What better way is there of getting and keeping your audience’s attention than by making them a promise which is important to them.

“In my first 100 days, we will work with both parties to pass the biggest investment in new, good-paying jobs since World War II.”

Masterclass lesson

Whilst she may not have used the word ‘promise’ I believe that’s what people would have heard and an audience welcomes a clear and firm commitment from a speaker.

14. Make your position clear

If you believe that there is any scope whatsoever for doubt, confusion or misunderstanding on anything you say then you have to bring clarity.

“I’m not here to repeal the 2nd Amendment. I’m not here to take away your guns. I just don’t want you to be shot by someone who shouldn’t have a gun in the first place.”

Masterclass lesson

If you leave your audience in any doubt whatsoever about what your real intentions are you will lose them. Make sure you spell it out if you have to.

15. Trust the rhetorical question

Rhetorical questions add variety, impact and interest to a speech. Even though they don’t require your audience to answer it encourages them to think.

“Will we stay true to that motto?

Does Donald Trump have the temperament to be Commander-in-Chief?

How can we just stand by and do nothing?”

Masterclass lesson

Rhetorical questions are extremely powerful and can be hugely helpful in encouraging your audience to agree with you and stimulate them emotionally as well as intellectually.

16. Make them laugh

Politics is serious business I know especially when it comes to deciding on the leadership of one of the largest and most powerful nations on earth. That said, if people are going to invest an hour of their personal time listening to you I believe you owe it to them to make them smile and even laugh occasionally.

“Now, you didn’t hear any of this from Donald Trump at his convention. He spoke for 70-odd minutes – and I do mean odd.”

Masterclass lesson

Never underestimate the therapeutic effects laughter will have on your audience. It’s hard enough listening to someone speak on any topic for 20 minutes let alone an hour so it’s the very least we can do for them.

17. Speak with passion

Personally, I can’t imagine anything worse than a speaker trying to convince me to act, change or think differently if they aren’t totally passionate about their message themselves. We could choose any single quote from Hillary Clinton’s hour long speech and the one thing you can be certain of is that it is said with total passion and conviction.

Masterclass lesson

Passion is the jewel in every speaker’s crown, no exceptions. I don’t believe that anything good ever happens without it.

18. Close with your message

Every element of Hillary Clinton’s speech revolved around her key message of “Stronger Together”. She explained it, animated it and gave us the reason and facts to support it. She even closed with it:

“Yes, the world is watching what we do. Yes, America’s destiny is ours to choose. So let’s be stronger together, my fellow Americans. Let’s look to the future with courage and confidence. Let’s build a better tomorrow for our beloved children and our beloved country. And when we do, America will be greater than ever.

Masterclass lesson

As well as creating a first impression when you are speaking in public or presenting your audience will also remember the last impression you leave them with. Make sure it is completely congruent with you, your message and what you want them to remember.

These 18 lessons represent extremely valuable insights into high impact public speaking that we can take away from Hillary Clinton’s speech.

Is there more to learn?

Having been speaking publicly for decades I’m certain that she and her husband Bill will tell you there is plenty more to learn. In fact, it’s a never ending journey.

There is however a tremendous amount we can take from these 60 minutes alone and they leave us with a great place to start.

Watch the full speech here:

Image: Courtesy of www.flickr.com

These are some of the books we have our eyes on in August, in order of their release date.

Wicked Strategies: How Companies Conquer Complexity and Confound Competitors by John C. Camillus, Rotman-UTP Publishing

Wicked Strategies offers a comprehensive framework for identifying, responding to and profiting from wicked problems.

In business, some problems are so complex, intractable and threatening to organizations—or entire industries—that they are best described as “wicked.” These problems appear to be unsolvable and they render traditional analytical tools of strategy virtually impotent.

John C. Camillus, drawing on detailed, real-life examples from companies across the globe, has skillfully woven together the analytical techniques, processes and organizational designs that will enable managers to navigate a disruptive marketplace. His feed-forward framework for fashioning wicked strategies empowers firms to presciently transform their business models before they are made obsolete by the competition. Wicked Strategies is a practical and evocative guide that demonstrates how business leaders can profitably capitalize on unknowable futures.

The First Two Rules of Leadership: Don't be Stupid, Don't be a Jerk by David Cottrell, Wiley

How to achieve extraordinary results with class.

How can you improve your leadership results beginning right now? The First Two Rules of Leadership: Don't be Stupid, Don't be a Jerk provides a clear path to increased results and higher job satisfaction for the leader and the people he is leading. Written for the leader who wants to do great things, but is overwhelmed with the complexities of leading, it is a book with a very simple message: think your decisions through and take care of your team.

Written by bestselling author David Cottrell, The First Two Rules of Leadership: Don't be Stupid, Don't be a Jerk offers tried-and-true leadership strategies that stand the test of time—all of which you can put into practice today to positive results. The principles discussed apply to businesses in every industry, as well as schools, hospitals, churches, and even homes. By following the two rules outlined in the book's title, you'll improve morale, decrease turnover, increase your own job satisfaction, and have a whole lot more fun leading.

• Lead with confidence and class
• Make better decisions and develop synchronization on your team
• Coach smart, deal with poor performers, and focus on what's really important
• Listen to your team, encourage positive performance, and attack complacency

You can lead your team to achieve extraordinary results! The First Two Rules of Leadership: Don't be Stupid, Don't be a Jerk gives you the expert tips and tricks you need to treat your team with dignity and respect—so you can all enjoy the benefits of winning with class.

Unmistakable: Why Only Is Better Than Best by Srinivas Rao, Portfolio

Seth Godin taught us to be “remarkable” in Purple Cow, and Guy Kawasaki stressed “enchanting” in Enchantment. Now Srinivas Rao explains the power of “unmistakable”—creating work that no one can replicate, thereby eliminating your competition.

After getting rejected from many business schools and fired from several sales jobs, Srinivas Rao decided to stop doing what he thought he was supposed to do and start working in a way that felt honest. He launched the Unmistakable Creative Podcast to interview some of the greatest minds in business—including Seth Godin, Simon Sinek, Pam Slim, Elle Luna, and Ryan Holiday—finding a surprisingly big audience. This book distills the lessons, anecdotes, and insights of the 500+ people he has interviewed.

Unmistakable art needs no signature. As soon as it’s in front of you, you know exactly who created it, like Banksy’s street art or Tim Burton’s films. Whether you’re a business owner, artist, or anything in between, when your work is unmistakable, your competition becomes irrelevant. They can’t copy you.

The key to being unmistakable is to stop trying to be the best—because that would mean you’re sticking to plans and rules that have already been set for you, choosing what’s safe and reliable. Rao argues that your most meaningful, impactful, and joyful work exists outside the “being the best” mindset, if you can strip away the expectations and pressure that you’ve internalized—to lead you to be the only.

Parachuting Cats into Borneo: And Other Lessons from the Change Café by Axel Klimek, Alan AtKisson, Chelsea Green Publishing

A toolkit of proven strategies and practices for building capacity and creating transformation

Recent years have seen a proliferation of information on how to make change—in business, in social and environmental movements, and on a more personal scale. But, even with all this attention, two out of three change efforts fail to achieve their desired result. How can you make your own effort buck this trend?

In Parachuting Cats into Borneo, change-management experts Axel Klimek and Alan AtKisson offer crisp, concise, and targeted advice for success. They expose the most significant impediments—helping readers recognize their habitual patterns of thinking and perceiving a situation, critique their own beliefs regarding change, and then move beyond these unhelpful patterns using improved systems thinking.

Named after a classic tale of unintended consequences, Parachuting Cats into Borneo delivers tools that help leaders and others keep their change initiatives on track. The advice imparted will help you move away from agonizing over immediate problems toward stoking action, identifying collaborators, focusing at the right level for your cause, and aiding others in pursuing their change.

Klimek and AtKisson draw from their decades of helping corporations, networks, governments, and NGOs reach their change goals to demonstrate how to use system-based change tools to their maximum advantage. A closing section is devoted to change making in the realm of sustainability, where complexity abounds but the right tools, used well, can help us tackle some of the most significant challenges of our time.

Recounting his three years in Korea, the highest-ranking non-Korean executive at Hyundai sheds light on a business culture very few Western journalists ever experience in this revealing, moving, and hilarious memoir

Seoul Man: A Memoir of Cars, Culture, Crisis, and Unexpected Hilarity Inside a Korean Corporate Titan by Frank Ahrens, HarperBusiness

Recounting his three years in Korea, the highest-ranking non-Korean executive at Hyundai sheds light on a business culture very few Western journalists ever experience in this revealing, moving, and hilarious memoir.

When Frank Ahrens, a middle-aged bachelor and eighteen-year veteran at the Washington Post, fell in love with a diplomat, his life changed dramatically. Following his new bride to her first appointment in Seoul, South Korea, Frank traded the newsroom for a corporate suite, becoming director of global communications at Hyundai Motors. In a land whose population is ninety-seven percent Korean, he was one of fewer than ten non-Koreans in a company of 5,000 employees.

For the next three years, Frank traveled to auto shows and press conferences around the world, pitching Hyundai to former colleagues while trying to navigate cultural differences at home and at work. While his appreciation for absurdity enabled him to laugh his way through many awkward encounters, his job began to take a toll on his marriage and family. Eventually, he became a vice president—the highest-ranking non-Korean in the history of Hyundai—but at an untenable price.

Filled with unique insights and told in his engaging, humorous voice, Seoul Man sheds light on a culture few Westerns know, and is a delightfully funny and heartwarming adventure for anyone who has ever felt like a fish out of water—all of us.

Stop Spending, Start Managing: Strategies to Transform Wasteful Habits by Tanya Menon & Leigh Thompson, Harvard Business Review Press

Stop Wasting Precious Time and Money.

You have a complex problem at work, and you know the standard solutions: hire a consultant, enlist a superstar employee, have more meetings about it. In short, spend money and hours to dig your way out. But you’ve been down this road before—the so-called solution consumes your time, dollars, and resources, and yet the problem still reappears.

There is a way out of this cycle. Organizational researchers Tanya Menon and Leigh Thompson, experts in collaboration and creativity, identify five spending traps that lead to this wasteful “action without traction”:

• The Expertise Trap: recycling old solutions on current problems
• The Winner’s Trap: investing additional resources into failing projects
• The Agreement Trap: avoiding conflict to feel like a team player
• The Communication Trap: communicating too frequently over too many channels
• The Macromanagement Trap: assuming your employees don’t need your direction

Menon and Thompson combine their own research with other findings in psychology to provide strategies to break these unproductive habits and refine your skills as a manager. From shaping problems in new ways and learning from failure through experimentation, to stimulating productive conflict and structuring coordinated conversations, you can escape these traps and discover the value hidden in your organization—without spending a dime.

Scrappy: A Little Book About Choosing to Play Big by Terri L. Sjodin, Portfolio

For those times when hard work and persistence just aren’t enough, Terri Sjodin offers an inspiring guide to getting scrappy and beating the odds.

Terri Sjodin loves scrappy people—those who beat the odds with a blend of cleverness and fighting spirit. People who see big problems and come up with big solutions. People like the clever Girl Scout who sold 117 boxes of cookies in two hours outside a medical marijuana dispensary, or the entrepreneur who turned his home into an indoor jungle to sell investors on the Rainforest Café Restaurant chain.

It can seem like these successes are just one-off acts of ingenuity or isolated flashes of brilliance. But today it takes more than just creativity, more than just persistence, more than just a dream to reach big goals—it takes a mindset and a strategy.

Sjodin explains the common elements behind every successful scrappy effort. Drawing on research, interviews, and her own personal experience, she identifies the practices that will help you develop the right mindset. She shares stories of scrappy tactics that have worked, and those that have crashed and burned, to help readers pursue their own vision.

Whether you’re a sales rep looking to close that big deal, a job-seeker trying to land your dream job, or a CEO who wants to reach the next level of success, the fastest way to get what you want is to get scrappy.

The Cyber Effect: A Pioneering Cyberpsychologist Explains How Human Behavior Changes Online by Mary Aiken, Spiegel & Grau

A groundbreaking exploration of the impact of technology on human behavior.

Mary Aiken is the world’s foremost expert in cyberpsychology—a discipline that combines psychology, criminology, and technology and investigates the intersection where technology and human behavior meet. In The Cyber Effect, the first book of its kind, Aiken explains how the simple act of going online changes our behavior in fundamental ways, from a lack of inhibition to amplifying the effects of certain choices, and how this plays out in both dramatic and subtle ways in the changing mores and values of our culture. Drawing on her research and extensive experience with law enforcement, Aiken covers a wide range of subjects from the impact of screens on babies to the explosion of teen sexting, and the acceleration of compulsive and addictive behaviors. She examines the escalation in cyberchondria (self-diagnosis online), cyberstalking, and organized cybercrime in the Deep Web. Aiken provides surprising statistics and incredible-but-true case studies of hidden trends that are shaping our culture and raising troubling questions about where the digital revolution is taking us.

Peace Through Entrepreneurship: Investing in a Startup Culture for Security and Development by Steven R. Koltai with Matthew Muspratt, Brookings Institution Press

Joblessness is the root cause of the global unrest threatening American security. Fostering entrepreneurship is the remedy.

The combined weight of American diplomacy and military power cannot end unrest and extremism in the Middle East and other troubled regions of the world, Steven Koltai argues. Koltai says an alternative approach would work: investing in entrepreneurship and reaping the benefits of the jobs created through entrepreneurial startups.

From 9/11 and the Arab Spring to the self-proclaimed Islamic caliphate, instability and terror breed where young people cannot find jobs. Koltai marshals evidence to show that joblessness—not religious or cultural conflict—is the root cause of the unrest that vexes American foreign policy and threatens international security.

Drawing on Koltai’s stint as senior adviser for Entrepreneurship in Secretary Hillary Clinton’s State Department, and his thirty-year career as a successful entrepreneur and business executive, Peace Through Entrepreneurship argues for the significant elevation of entrepreneurship in the service of foreign policy; not rural microfinance or mercantile trading but the scalable stuff of Silicon Valley and Sam Walton, generating the vast majority of new jobs in economies large and small.

Peace Through Entrepreneurship offers a nonmilitary, long-term solution at a time of disillusionment with Washington’s “big development” approach to unstable and underdeveloped parts of the world—and when the new normal is fear of terrorist attacks against Western targets, beheadings in Syria, and jihad. Extremism will not be resolved by a war on terror. The answer, Koltai shows, is stimulating entrepreneurial economic opportunities for the virtually limitless supply of desperate, unemployed young men and women leading lives of endless economic frustration.

The American Retail Value Proposition: Crafting Unique Experiences at Compelling Prices by Kyle Murray, Rotman-UTP Publishing

Whether you are an aspiring merchant or an industry veteran, this book's strategic framework will help you build a solid foundation for your business in today's ever-evolving retail marketplace.

The American economy is profoundly dependent on the success of its retailers and the strength of its consumer spending. Yet, how do leading retailers create value for their customers?

To a large extent this has been accomplished by streamlining operations and a decades-long focus on cost cutting and price competitiveness. Today, retailers realize that they need to discover new ways to differentiate themselves and attract consumer spending. The American Retail Value Proposition provides the framework for building that differentiation and establishing a competitive advantage that goes beyond price discounting. This framework is based on more than a decade of research, including hundreds of hours of interviews with executives from the world’s leading retailers, including Starbucks, Walmart, Apple, Amazon, and Lowe’s. Whether you are an aspiring merchant or an industry veteran, this book's strategic framework will help you build a solid foundation for your business in today's ever-evolving retail marketplace.

Amazon passed Exxon Mobile in market cap on Monday, making it the fourth most valuable public company.

The switch came after Amazon posted its fifth straight quarter of profits last week as the oil giant's profits tumbled 59 percent during the same rough period. 

Now, tech companies are in spots 1-4 at top of the market value rankings. Facebook comes in at no. 6, and if Exxon keeps dropping — it's down over 2% in early trading — all five could be tech companies by the end of the day. 

Here are the market cap rankings as of this writing, according to Yahoo Finance: 

1. Apple ($appl): $566 billion
2. Alphabet ($goog): $562B
3. Microsoft ($msft): $433B
4. Amazon ($amzn): $365B
5. Exxon Mobile ($xom): $356B
6. Facebook ($fb): $353B

SEE ALSO: There's a bull case for Apple — but the company won't tell you about it

Join the conversation about this story »

NOW WATCH: Elon Musk just unveiled Tesla's 'top secret' master plan — here are the details

Is it blasphemy to call out the most powerful social media channel ever built as a colossal waste of money? Perhaps, but hear me out and see if you disagree with me. I’ve been running Facebook campaigns since 2008 and in that time Facebook has changed just about every rule and term of service that you could possibly imagine.

As a marketer, Facebook has pulled the rug out from everyone. Sure, they are raking in the profits and their stock price has never been more outstanding, but their gain is your loss. Let’s break this down and if you disagree with me, I welcome your comments and feedback. The industry could use a healthy debate about this topic.

Cardinal Sin #1: Thou Shalt Pay To Build Thy Audience, And Then Pay Even More to Reach Them

Please forgive me if I sound like a crotchety old man complaining about this one, but after 22 years of pioneering in the digital marketing industry (I’m 43 and started my career in 1994), nothing frustrates me more than an algorithm change whose beneficiary is the owner of the platform. Facebook encouraged everyone to invest heavily in building their pages. If you’re old enough to remember “Like Gates”, we marketers invested heavily in getting our best customers and prospects to “Like” our page.

The first algorithm change forced us to go back and re-up our audience from “Like” to “Follower”. And just when you thought that was safe, Facebook changed their algorithm again to force you to pay dearly to reach anyone who liked or followed your page. God help you if you didn’t get some organic engagements before boosting your posts, as you were doomed to pay through the nose just to reach the very people who already gave you permission to market to them via Facebook.

Cardinal Sin #2: Thou Shalt Not Use Tried and True Promotional Tactics to Promote Thy Page

Outside the Facebook universe, it’s perfectly acceptable to give your audience something of value in exchange for them taking an action you’d like them to take. Hell, Marketo and Hubspot each built their respective Billion and Multi-Billion dollar businesses doing just that. What this awesome eBook? It’s free, just fill out this form. Care for a sweepstakes entry? Give us your data. But God forbid you reward one of your ideal customer prospects with a sweepstakes entry just for liking, commenting, or sharing your content. You’re out of bounds and risk the Facebook police shutting you down. Why is that? Because you’re siphoning off Facebook’s revenue stream. Don’t give our audience anything of value until you pay our increasingly expensive toll first. Want more likes, comments, and shares? Facebook’s solution is to sock your money into boosting your posts, not rewarding consumers for their behavior.

“Facebook continues to raise the tolls to reach your audience and just when you think you’ve figured it out, the rules are summarily changed…”

Cardinal Sin #3: Instagram is Our Platform, Ergo Our APIs Won’t Work with Twitter

Before Facebook bought Instagram, you could take awesome photos and share them on BOTH Facebook and Twitter. Remember those days? Now, if you share your Instagram pictures on Twitter, you look like you’re a total newbie. That’s because Facebook intentionally removed the APIs that allows your pictures to display properly and instead only shares a link that forces you back onto the Instagram platform. The message clearly being that Twitter is not part of the Facebook family and so if you want to see Instagram pictures you must be on Instagram or Facebook.

Are Three Reasons Enough or Shall I Continue?

Other possible gripes would include:

(4) Access to opt-in customer data
(5) Facebook Apps Restrictions
(6) Exorbitant Cost of Video Ads

and a host of other changes that make marketing to your customers outside of Facebook’s ad network increasingly prohibitive. The bottom line here is that Facebook continues to raise the tolls to reach your audience and just when you think you’ve figured it out, the rules are summarily changed with little to no warning.

So, What’s the Alternative?

I know what you’re thinking: “So what are you going to do? Facebook is the 800 lb gorilla and has a monopoly on social media reach, don’t they?” Yes .. and no. You see, the tighter Facebook pulls in the reigns, the more enticing the alternatives look. Ultimately, your best bet is driving customers back to your website where you control your engagements with them. In the meantime, Twitter keeps missing its growth projections and is hungry as anything to get your marketing dollars. Snapchat has grown up from the sophomoric drunk idiot at the party taking dick pics to a respectable platform that has captured the hearts and minds of Millennials and growing into many other generations at a rapid clip.

The point is that you are not beholden to Facebook despite how massive their numbers are. Even if you run several Facebook campaigns, you’d be wise to find ways to drive the audience back to your site where you can entice your audience to exchange their information for items of real value. The more you blindly invest in Facebook, the riskier your long-term propositions are for cost effectively reaching your audience. So before you throw your hard earned cash into the Facebook black hole, take a minute to consider your options. When you do, you’ll find that there are at least 3 exponentially better alternatives to banner advertising.

The post Is Facebook a Colossal Waste of Money? appeared first on Social Media Explorer.

        

Comments

• Bill, great article. I get that FB has to 'make a profit' but I ... by Louise Bradley
• It's probably all due to one thing – being a publicly listed ... by Tim Nicholas
• As Robin says above, “Yes. End of story.” My feeling on ... by Bill Carmody
• Yes. End of story. by Robin S
• So Bill, is it time for brands to consider building their own ... by Drew Neisser
• Plus 7 more...

Related Stories

• Watch out Snapchat, A Monster is Lurking
• What Happens When Your Audience Isn’t Your Target
• My Changing View for Facebook Advertising

 

Everything in life evolves. Everything.

Originally N.E.A.T. Selling was created as an alternative to older and stale sales methodologies like BANT, ANUM, and AN. It was designed to function specifically in a non-linear process because no sales process is exactly linear.

After teaching, training, and implementing N.E.A.T. Selling, we want to share what we have learned.

N.E.A.T. Selling Defined

N.E.A.T. Selling is a conversational foundation for getting prospects to “fall in trust” with us. Not simply like us. It is a way to #EarnTheRight to ask questions and decide which questions to ask when.

Furthermore, it is a cross-layered approach combining a philosophy, mindset, methodology, and process to drive all revenue-generating conversations. It can be used for net-new business, cross-selling and upselling conversations.

N.E.A.T. Selling – A Brief Breakdown

Need

People do not care what you do. They only care about the pains you solve and if you can solve their pains specifically.

When determining your customer’s “Needs”, your goal is to get them to paint a picture of pain. People buy pictures, not words. It’s our job to help them determine if their pains are simply headaches or actual migraines

Economic Impact

Drive to the economic impact of solving their pains and problems with their actual numbers. We ask questions about the current way they are handling things and determine the costs of their own process. Then we have them tell us if our solution is better than their current way. And if so, how much better is it? They must give us their own numbers.

With this we can then ask deeper questions based on the improvements, what will the economic impact to them or their organization allow them to do once implemented.

• Oh, and stop saying ROI. Nobody believes you. As a colleague once told me,” they never believe the R, they only see the I”. Part of the reason is that it’s your (the vendor’s) ROI calculation – inherently biased in your favor. Naturally, your prospect does not believe you fully understand their challenges.

Access To Authority

Even if you know the economic buyer, they do not make the decision in a vacuum. There are always other people involved. Our job is twofold

• Determine if our contact actually has the juice to get to the other influencers.
• As quickly as possible determine who the most skeptical person will be in making the selection. That’s who you have to win over.

Timeline

When does the prospect want to have things implemented?

What happens to them if they don’t meet that timeline?

Word of Warning: Do NOT Rip and Replace

Big shock here. Even though we created N.E.A.T. Selling. We do not believe you should rip and replace your current sales process or methodology.

In fact, one of the biggest mistakes we see new sales leaders do is rip and replace. Oftentimes they do this because they want to show they have done something.

We are not saying you cannot rip and replace, we just don’t feel it’s always necessary.

Frankly, if the old system sales process or sales methodology wasn’t working it probably has more to do with the lack of sales leadership development and solid sales coaching and training plan around it.

Is it Philosophy, Methodology, or Process?

The short answer is “yes”. You can apply N.E.A.T. Selling in your organization at whatever altitude works best for your requirements.

Here’s how.

Sales Philosophy

A sales philosophy is your commitment to a higher calling. It is your pathway to better sales opportunity enlightenment. It is built on top of your values and culture.

A sales philosophy is used to illustrate how you treat people. That can mean your sales teams, your prospects, your customers. So if you see N.E.A.T. Selling simply as your philosophy, we define that, “Teaching your reps how to earn the right to ask questions, which questions to ask and when to do it.” Or just call it, #EarningTheRight

As a philosophy, this can always be “bolted-on” to your current sales methodology or process.

Here are some other sales philosophies.

• The Customer is Always Right
• Coffee is for Closers
• Smile and Dial

Sales Methodology

A sales methodology is a specific set of guidelines and strategies used to carry out the sales philosophy and talk with the prospect. It helps gives balance to the process and reduce noise in a meaningful way that encourages the opportunity to proceed to close. Examples of sales methodologies include:

• N.E.A.T. Selling
• Spin Selling
• Sandler Sales
• MEDDIC

Sales Process

Which now leads us to the nitty-gritty.

The sales process is created based not only on your sales philosophy and sales methodology but also on your Buyers’ Experience. Let me repeat that, it is about the Buyers’ Experience, not the Buyers’ Journey. People make purchasing decisions based on the experience of the journey, not the journey itself.

A sales process must include the different emotional experiences of the buyer, and more specifically the needed exit criteria of the experience the buyer must agree to as it aligns with the purchase of your products or services.

A sales process is NOT an actual activity.

Meaning “Demo” is not a stage in the sales process. “Proposal” is not a stage in the sales process, “Economic Buyer” is not a stage in a sales process, “Champion” is not a stage in a sales process.

These are all activities that occur within the sales process, in some cases, they are the actual exit criteria.

So, the N.E.A.T. Selling process is simple, QDSNC.

• Qualifying
• Discovering
• Selecting
• Negotiating
• Closing

You can also expand it to:

• Suspects
• Prospects
• Qualifying
• Selecting
• Negotiating
• Closing

Remember the key to any successful sales process is being sure to define the specific exit criteria needed to leave one stage and enter the next.

What’s The Next Phase of Evolution?

As we stated in the beginning, everything evolves in life, and yes in sales too. When we create something, we must be willing to question our own hypotheses. After several years of teaching and implementing N.E.A.T. Selling, we are glad to see it is still working and that it can and will continue to evolve.

Remember, we do not dictate what you should do. We simply want to guide you, give you the options and ideas, and of course help you decide what is right for you and your organization. So the next phase of evolution for N.E.A.T. Selling could very well start with your organization.

Got questions? You can reach out to us: www.theharrisconsultinggroup.com.

© The Harris Consulting Group, LLC 2022

The post The Evolution of Sales: Welcome to N.E.A.T Selling™ appeared first on Sales Hacker.

Image taken from Pixabay

It is easy to tell if a business is en route to failure. Sales are getting scarce, bills are getting harder to pay, and you get this sinking feeling when you realize that another month is about to end in a loss.

The cold hard fact is that over 90% of all businesses fail. 50% may survive for up to five years, but most of them are just delaying their eventual demise.

Remember that business is a war and success is a constant struggle. You need to face challenges with resolve and make the hard—but right—decisions. You may start developing plans on how to increase your income, but those take much time. For now, you need to learn your options to keep your struggling business afloat by cutting costs and reestablishing a solid cushion for your business.

Revert to Free Apps

In the digital age, many businesses resort to automation for growth. Automation makes perfect sense for established companies with traction since it helps them capitalize momentum. For startups and SMEs, however, it can be a gamble. After all, automation tools for marketing, analytics, and other business processes cost money.

It is true that some paid tools are essential, and your business may not operate without them. However, there are also tools that are merely for the convenience of your employees or yourself as a business leader. Remember that, in times like this; sometimes you cannot afford convenience. You need to combat hardships with hard work and face the grind. That said, consider eliminating the tools that are inessential in your business processes.

Also take a look at the essential tools and opt for cheaper or free alternatives. Sometimes, a platform’s price is bloated by functionality that you do not actually need. That is why you need to look for tools that are scalable and can fit what you need.

Start Selling Idle Assets

Now is not the time for attaching sentimental value to your old stuff. The next strategy you need to consider to gain immediate cash on hand is to sell your business’s idle assets. These are inessential equipment, furniture, and other items that can be sold for cash.

In one day, make it your objective to identify which company assets are only sitting idly by and collecting dust. Make sure to consider everything; even coffee makers, copy machines, microwave ovens, and so on. A simple way to find buyers for these items is to post online listings on eBay and Craigslist.

Move Out of the Building

Let’s face it, the cost of office space can be crippling to startups and small businesses. That is why many startups are considering a home office setup while some entrepreneurs look for co-working spaces. Small teams of four or five may also consider renting a self-storage unit as their primary place of business instead. Just look for self-storage facilities that have the essential amenities you need to run your business such as electrical outlets, Wi-Fi, temperature control, security, and so on. You can learn more about self-storage units for business from this post.

Look for P2P Lenders

Today, some startups and established businesses alike are being funded by P2P lenders. Unlike crowdfunding, lenders are promised an interest for their investments rather than equity. Without losing part of your company’s ownership, P2P lending usually involves fewer risks for business owners.

You can look for P2P lenders in websites like Upstart, Funding Circle, and Peerform. However, this option is more suitable for businesses that are simply low on funds rather than those that have been losing money consistently for a long time. You must already have a solid plan on how to use the resources to make a compelling case to lenders.

Be Wiser and More Flexible With Money

If you want your company to be more stable financially, then you need to learn smarter money management—plain and simple. Many business owners do not realize that they can save a ton of money from simple practices like reducing discretionary expenses to leveraging ink cartridge refills from a local store. Here are some other money management practices you need to consider:

• Lease equipment for short-term projects rather than purchase
• Start accepting credit card payments to enlarge your customer base
• Consult your accountant to find the most favorable money decisions tax-wise
• Don’t forget interest-bearing checking accounts
• Renegotiate terms with your suppliers—look for bulk purchase discounts/premium rates

Conclusion

At the end of the day, money problems root from the mismanagement of business funds. Remember that there are always opportunities to be more efficient with the way you handle money. It may require you to work a lot harder, but if it is about the survival of your business, then it is definitely a worthy tradeoff.

…you created an atmosphere where no one can be successful or appreciated.

The boss is never wrong. His/her decisions are right and for all the obvious reasons; he knows better, he has the experience and he was put in charge because he’s the best qualified person the company has. Come on now, you know that’s B.S.!

More great employees were “forced” to quit because of the failure of leadership than for any other reason.

What I mean by “forced to quit” is that they were put in a position where their efforts were in vain. Their belief was that quitting is better than staying at a job/company where they have no future. At least not if they wish to be an integral part of the business.

Sure, if they wanted to stay in their entry level position where little is expected of them, they may ultimately retire from the firm. But since they have ambition and strive to be better, they joined the ranks of management. They hope and expect their service and knowledge will help grow the company.

Boy, were they wrong.

Micromanage

You did many things well years ago. You hired the best and provided the training for them to be a positive force within the company. Soon they mastered their job and became be the leader you asked them to be. Then you squashed their initiative by micromanaging them.

How can you hire smart people then refuse to allow them to run their own departments? You can’t helicopter-in every few weeks and then dictate how procedures are done.

Do you know the challenges they face daily and why they do as they do? Oh, you don’t? Guess you didn’t want to micromanage that part, did you?

Steal the Spotlight

Believe it or not, the business is not you. The business is your employees and how successfully they interact with and provide service to your customers. Your customers are your business. Without them all your bright ideas are meaningless.

When an employee has a great idea, run with it. Oh, you don’t? Why, because it didn’t come from you? Are you so vain that you are unwilling to identify the employee who has come up with a new and improved procedure or process? What a shame…

You Don’t Provide the Tools

Tools to do their job consists of more than just office supplies. Why are you consistently understaffed in many areas? Why do you not reinvest your capital funds in equipment needed for your employees to perform better and more efficiently?

Your customers should shop in an environment as clean and hazard-free as possible. But that doesn’t happen. How can you expect your business to be long-lasting and successful without this?

Show Favoritism

The days of the “teacher’s pet” are long gone; today’s Human Resources Departments have usually taken care of that. But you still don’t manage equally.

New projects get funded while the bread and butter operations still suffer with faulty equipment or lack of staff. Because they are willing to take a chance and try something different you hand down punishment to those eager to go above and beyond.

But the constant poor performers and under achievers go unnoticed. They are treated as nothing more than a departmental cog and little is expected of them.

Too Many Meetings

You can’t hold people accountable when they spend most of their time in meetings and taken away from their primary responsibility of managing their departments.

Meeting after meeting comes and goes and still there is no difference. What do you even talk about at these meetings? How can you, the boss, allow your employees to sit in a room for 30-60 minutes every few days without an expectation that hard and fast changes or improvements will be acted upon based on what was just discussed?

Wonder why people always come late to your meetings?

Culture of Mediocrity

“Good enough” has never been good enough. But you seem to be alright with that. Yet, you state your intentions, no, your expectations, that everything must be perfect at all times but do little to make that happen.

Products or departments that have carried your business for years go unnoticed. Standards are loosely kept while you chase the latest fad. Employee concerns fall on deaf ears time and time again but you promote your pet projects above all else.

Little oversight and supervision leads to complacency. Complacency leads to apathy. Apathy leads to chaos. Is this what the founders intended, or expected of you? I assume not.

Why should your employees care when it seems you don’t?

Morale

So much is written about creating great employee morale. We read about it in most business journals and on countless websites. New startups build their businesses around effective employee morale and work environment. Can they all be wrong?

You don’t hire the best. You manage through intimidation. You don’t provide an adequate work/life balance. Your communication skills are poor and you fail to see the failures.

Why should someone work for you?

A business must understand that a “business” is more than just the physical plant/building or the product it produces. It’s the people that make a business. But apparently you don’t realize this.

You’d rather treat your company like the neighborhood playground where you rule supreme. You get to go on the swing first, you pick the teams, you cast out those not part of the clique. And you wonder why business is bad or your employees quit. You created an atmosphere where no one can be successful or appreciated.

Look at the customer service leaders of today; Zappos, Amazon, Southwest Airlines, Ritz Carlton, et al.

Their products are not much different than the scores of others they are in competition with. But something IS different.

They value their employees and provide them with the tools needed to be successful. Employees are treated equally and allowed to work without the heavy hand of senior management. They rejoice in employee achievements and create a culture of caring.

Can you compete with those who operate like that? I doubt it.

So why do you force your employees to quit?

➤Leave a comment below and add to the discussion, thanks.

Image courtesy of http://www.bestsampleresume.com/advice/how-to-spot-a-bad-boss-in-an-interview/

Salespeople commonly come up against the competitor objection when talking to new prospects. As soon as the buyer realizes the nature or function of your product, she says something along the lines of, "We already work with Competitor X," or "We already have a supplier for that."

To overcome the competitor objection, you must:

1. Figure out if your prospect truly has an existing vendor relationship or is simply blowing you off
2. Keep them engaged in the conversation long enough to show them the value of working with you (even if they've already purchased an competing solution)
3. Uncover weaknesses in their current offering or contract

Accomplishing all three can be tricky -- especially when you're on the phone and losing your prospect's attention by the millisecond.

For more tips on handling objections, check out The GSD Sales Show -- tips for salespeople, by salespeople.

The following 12 responses will help you effectively overcome the competition objection so you can move forward with the sale.

12 Ways to Overcome the Competitor Objection

1) “That’s good to hear -- [competitor] is a great company. In fact, we share a lot of mutual customers. Companies that use both of our offerings often find that our product makes accomplishing [X goal] much easier, since it has [unique benefit #1] and [unique benefit #2].”

This response lets you differentiate your product from the competition without slinging mud. 

Plus, it opens the door for another conversation down the line. Once you’ve won the prospect’s trust, you can start talking about a switch if that’s in the buyer’s best interest.

2) “At this point, I’m not asking you to rip anything out. I’d just like the opportunity to show you how we’re different and how we’ve provided additional value to our customers. I can present some use cases of other companies like yours who work with us and with Competitor X. When is a good time to schedule a follow up call?"

According to Bryan Gonzalez, business development manager at Procore, this response will give you the opportunity to prove what your product does differently -- and ultimately, show the prospect why they need it.

3) “Got it. Can I ask what type of evaluation process you go through to be sure you're getting the best service available?”

As president of Business By Phone Art Sobczak explains, you need to plant doubt in the prospect’s mind before they’ll ever consider changing vendors. They probably haven’t thought about their decision to use the competition since they signed the contract -- this question will have them wondering whether it’s still the right choice.

4) “Have they ever let you down?”

Founder of Trigger Event Selling Craig Elias recommends using this question to challenge the prospect’s status quo. If the prospect says yes, follow up with, “How did that impact your business?”

Finally, ask what the vendor did (if anything) to make up for the issue and prevent it from happening again.

“Once you know more about the letdown, you can ask if they would like to work with a more reliable vendor they can have confidence in,” Elias writes.

5) “That’s great. What do you like best about working with [competition]?"

Asking the prospect to think about all the reasons they love the competition probably seems like a bad idea. But sales strategist Dan Fisher says this question actually prompts his prospects to explain what they didn’t like about their vendors. The trick? You have to be patient.

“No matter what they say in response, wait seven to 10 seconds,” Fisher says. “The silence will become uncomfortable -- and that’s when the prospect will often offer up a negative comment or concern.”

6) “I’m glad you’re [dealing with X challenge, recognize the importance of doing Y]. How’s it going?”

The first part of this answer validates the prospect, while the second gets them to open up. Once they’re talking about their situation, you can figure out how happy they are with their current vendor. What’s working well? What’s not? Pay special attention to complaints that could be solved with your product.

Alternatively, try: “Oh, I’m familiar with [competition] -- we actually used them at my old job. Right now, I’m not trying to convince you to go with us instead. I think it makes sense to explore your situation first and see if [product] is even a good fit.”

Mentioning you’re a former user gives you instant credibility. In addition, many prospects respond well to this calm, friendly approach. Again, the goal is to simply get them talking about their situation.

7) “That’s great. I’m wondering, however, if you’re still struggling to overcome [X challenge]. I ask because I saw you [posted something along those lines on LinkedIn, tweeted about it, downloaded one of our ebooks on that, etc.] I actually have a couple suggestions for you related to that challenge -- would it make sense to schedule a call to discuss them?”

Of course, not every buyer will be so kind as to advertise displeasure with their current provider through a negative review or critical social media post. But if you take the time to research before reaching out and analyze the prospect’s online behavior, you might get wise to a not-so-perfect fit.

For instance, are they seeking help in a specific area that your competitor should cover? If they’re looking for help online, their current vendor clearly isn’t solving all of their needs. Help the prospect first, and they’ll be more receptive to to hearing about your product later.

8) “Of course -- many of our current customers have used different suppliers in the past. But I’m reaching out to discuss ways you could [tackle business pain, increase results, maximize this investment]. Would you be interested in scheduling another call to talk about that?”

In modern sales, “Always Be Closing” has been replaced with “Always Be Helping.” After you’ve helped the prospect with a challenge, they’ll be more receptive to hearing about what your company has to offer. Even better, it’s probably been a long time since anyone from their current provider called them up solely to offer some free advice -- so you’ll start to look more attractive than the competition.

9) “I see. Do you have a contract with them?”

If the prospect is locked into a contract and you truly believe switching is in their best interest, you have a couple options. Help them off-set the costs of breaking it early by giving them a discount or showing them the ROI of the switch. Alternatively, find out when their agreement expires, and let them know that you’ll reach out again a month or two before that date.

10) “Good to hear. I’m curious, what do you think makes the relationship work so well?”

Mike Schultz, president of RAIN Group, says this question is a non-threatening way to make the prospect open up. After they respond, you can probe further into the relationship by asking a series of “I’m curious to know” questions.

For example: “I’m curious to know -- what’s their average response time when the network goes down?” or “I’m curious to know -- does your account manager call just to check in?”

When the prospect answers “no” to a question, Schultz recommends digging deeper to find ways you may be able to improve on their current service.

11) “I see. What results are you getting?”

There's always room for improvement. Once the buyer tells you the return they're currently seeing, you'll know what you're up against.

Imagine your prospect says the recruiting service she's using reduces average cost-per-hire by 30%. You might respond, “Clients who have switched to our firm from your current one typically drive down their average CPH by a further 10%. Would that have a significant impact on your hiring budget?”

If she says no, she's probably not the best fit anyway.

Alternatively, you can offer your help in improving their existing strategy -- no strings attached. Say, “That's great. I have a few tips that have helped my customers get their CPH even lower. Would you be interested in setting up another call to hear them?”

Once you've earned her trust and gratitude by helping her, she'll be far more receptive to your pitch.

12) “How long have you been working with that vendor?”

This question allows you to learn more about your prospect's relationship with the competition without sounding too aggressive or intense. 

It's simple enough for him to answer, but you'll be able to intuit a good deal of information. For instance, if he says, “We've used them since our company was founded in 1996,” that tells you he's probably experiencing some of the pains of a legacy system or an offering that hasn't scaled with their business.

On the other hand, if the buyer says, “The person who previously held my role set up the contract two years ago,” you'll know he wasn't personally involved in the decision. There may be an opportunity to present your product as a more sophisticated, useful, or well-designed alternative that'll help him drive better results than the current one.

There’s a silver lining to hearing the “we already use Competitor X” objection: It means that half your work is already done. After all, you don’t have to educate your prospect on their problem -- you just need to show them why your product is the best fit.

When you paint pictures with your words, your sales pitches are more interesting and more compelling. Your buyers can relate to you, your product, and your solution when you use metaphors.

Anne Miller, author of The Tall Lady with the Iceberg, shared techniques for creating a mental kaleidoscope and building your metaphor muscle. She says that if you paint pictures with your words, you’ll make more sales. It’s a fascinating interview and a different approach for many sellers. Tune in to this archived broadcast with your show host and on-air coach Deb Calvert.

An excerpt from Deb’s interview with Anne about how you can paint pictures with your words when selling

Deb:  “So help us out, tell us how metaphors help us to connect with our buyers. ”

Anne:  “Okay. We are all image junkies. All of us are attracted to images. We live in the world of the visual. That’s why people are into Facebook walls and YouTube videos. The brain doesn’t think without a picture. So, you want to leverage that in your sales and communication all the time. A study said that brains process visual 60,000 times faster than it does text. So why you’re explaining things to people or showing things to people on a presentation, the really great presenters understand that if you really want to connect with people and get them to instantly understand what you’re talking about, you have to balance out what you’re telling them by showing them something. Now you can do that on a visual or you can do it verbally. Just think about it, Deb… You walk down the street and run into someone you haven’t seen a long time. What goes through your mind as you begin to say, “Oh! I know you… I know you…” Is it words, numbers, or images? It’s always images, right? ‘Oh yeah, I know you, we were in second grade together.’ So your buyers are visual people, and if you are not tapping into that, you’re missing a huge opportunity to connect with them. Well, it’s not with more words, it’s not with more explanations, it’s with one really good dynamite visual, and that’s a metaphor and analogy. “

How’s that for a story! You can do the same and paint pictures with your words, too!

Be sure and listen to the rest of this high-energy interview with Anne Miller to get detailed information on why you should use metaphors and how you can paint pictures with your words. There’s no better way to maximize your windshield time than by listening to CONNECT! Online Radio for Sales Professionals™. Check out more interviews in the archives to cut out continuances, put an end to pending and stop stalling out in sales.

The post Why You Should Paint Pictures with Your Words When Selling appeared first on People First.

Many of your dream clients or prospects don’t really want to change. They want better results, but sometimes they don’t want to do what is necessary to produce those results—even when they recognize that they have a compelling reason to change, a problem worth solving.

Selling is about engaging in the process of change, and sometimes we have to change things that aren’t easily altered.

Changing the Investment

If your dream client could produce the results they needed with their current investment, they would already be achieving those results. Much of the time, your prospective clients are underperforming because they are underinvesting in the results they need.

Your prospect may be underinvesting without knowing it, and they may be exploring their options in hopes of finding someone who can help them produce the results they want while investing even less.

Without changing the investment, they will not generate new results.

Changing the Operations

If your prospective client could achieve the results by doing what they are doing now, they would be producing the results they want.

Many of your prospects will want to produce new and better results without having to change anything. They may not want to change their internal processes. They may also want a solution that looks very much like what they are doing now, with the only real change being the partner that have chosen to work with.

Without changing how they operate, they will continue to underperform.

Changing Beliefs and Assumptions

If your dream client’s beliefs were the correct beliefs, they wouldn’t need to change anything.

Sometimes you find you prospective clients with beliefs that don’t serve them. They don’t recognize that the assumptions they made years ago are no longer true, that things have changed. Their business model may be built on things that are no longer true. Or they don’t recognize just how far ahead of them their competitors are now when it comes to capabilities, choosing instead to believe that they are cutting edge, or close to it. Sometimes, they believe that their existing vendor is at fault and that they are blameless.

Selling well requires that you help your dream client make the changes necessary to produce the results they need. This isn’t easy when you have to change the investment they’re making, change how they operate, and especially when you have to change what they believe.

The post Selling Is Change appeared first on The Sales Blog.

“We need our people to be recognized as trusted advisers building trust in professional services rather than as product peddlers.”

Is this something you have heard (or even said) in your business? I heard it again recently from a client whose business has changed dramatically in recent years. Its past reputation came from selling products; today most revenue comes from high-value services. In order to grow in the future, they need clients to trust their recommendations and ability to execute.

I find that many professionals have made “trust in professional services a key business goal, and they generally know plenty about their area of expertise. Yet many stumble due to wrong assumptions about both what trust in professional services really means to buyers as well as the most efficient path to build trustworthiness. The result is a slow descent into commoditization or simply looking and sounding like everyone else. Commoditization is the polar opposite of distinctiveness and the enemy of growth.

So how can professional service providers actually become trusted to a degree that helps them rise above the crowd? From my experience on the front lines plus research into consumer psychology, I have found that prospective clients have to answer two questions for themselves before granting you their trust: “Do you know what you’re doing?” and “Will you work in my best interest?”

When confident the answers are yes, those prospective clients’ belief system elevates to something like: “They are experts and good people. I believe that they will carefully consider my needs and keep up with needs as they change. They won’t treat me like part of a herd and won’t give me the same advice they’d give anybody else. They are not going to pass my work off to a junior person or outsource it to someone who doesn’t understand what I need. They wouldn’t sell me a product that wasn’t appropriate for me just because it’s profitable for them.”

Avoiding the “Trust in Professional Services” Trap

That is certainly what we want clients and prospects to believe. To get there, professional service providers must work in sequence through three levels of competency—and avoid two traps in the sequence.

The first and most basic level involves Building Credibility. This is the realm of credentials, certification, and experience—attributes that show up on résumés and are searchable online when potential clients do their homework on you. Credentials are an area where many professional service firms focus their marketing. Yet these days your credentials are considered “table stakes,” or minimum requirements, by most prospects. The first Trustworthiness Trap I have seen is the belief that credibility alone is enough to earn trust in professional services and grow the business.

The second level involves Developing Relationships. Has your firm made a commitment to strategically cultivate and prioritize business relationships? I see high-performing firms that have committed to some form of customer relationship management (CRM) system. They have also developed an Ideal Client Profile that defines priorities for their business development and sponsorship activities.

On the other hand, I also hear from professionals who are frustrated with their prospect lists. One recently said about a longtime friend who pledged her business to a competing firm, “She likes us but is not going to invest with us.” You can have healthy personal relationships that never develop into business or referrals. The second Trustworthiness Trap is the belief that having relationships, even seemingly strong ones, will necessarily drive growth. In order to leap over that trap, you need to activate those relationships—for yourself and across the firm.

The third and highest level involves Mastery of Client Conversations. At that level, everyone close to your business (e.g., employees, current clients, those who can provide referrals) knows how to talk about the business. Everyone is equipped with brief, conversational language (not mission statements!) and stories to share—whether the opportunity is at a business conference, networking event, regular client meeting, or a social conversation in the stands at a game.

These three levels represent a progression for business growth with each new level building upon the previous one. Ultimately you and your colleagues can become credible, competent experts plus relationship builders plus skilled leaders of the client conversation.

You might think of this trust in professional services model as “Ready, Set, Go” for the business. The “Ready” part includes your credentials and relationships. With those at hand, getting “Set” means equipping everyone with the knowledge and tools for good client conversations. And “Go” means not only launching the initiative across the organization but also keeping it a priority over time.

Get it right, and you’ll be on the path toward more new clients, more services sold to existing clients, and greater client loyalty.

Messaging is the critical link between what you know about your buyers and how you apply that knowledge to content creation. Moreover, successful messaging reflects the wants, needs and challenges of your buyers, as well as where they are in their researching and consideration journeys.

As marketers, we want to guide our buyers along this journey seamlessly by offering unique insights, perspectives and best practices that can and should apply. Whether you’re pointing them to a new, disruptive trend in their industry, the features/capabilities of a best-in-class solution to help them keep pace with this solution, or how your organization has helped other companies succeed, you need to ensure their information needs are at the center of each story and narrative element.

Before you start to build your messaging, make sure you have an adequate profile of your target buyer and that you have identified your demand type. Once you address these areas, you can build your buyer-focused messaging by following three steps:

IDENTIFY relevant insights from the buyer profile/persona.

At first, this is a more scientific exercise, because you’re looking for patterns in your target buyer’s behaviors, business needs and preferences. But then the process gets a bit more fun, because as you identify patterns, you try to find ways that these points can fuel or support each other. Together, these insights can help you build a foundation for your marketing storyline. Some potential areas to focus on include your solution’s benefits and differentiators, as well as your buyer’s objections and emotions.

REFINE these insides into a broad, “keystone” messaging element.

After you connect the dots between buyer insights and the traits that define your solution or campaign, you’re ready to establish your messaging elements. You can either have one main keystone message or, if you’re developing a comprehensive, multi-touch nurture program, you can develop a keystone message and several supporting messaging elements. Start by cooking down your buyer insights into a single, concise statement. Write it in the first person so you’re actually in your buyer’s shoes. Use their tone of voice and the language they’d use to describe their own challenges or goals if they were at lunch with a colleague or in their mid-year review. This helps you stay in your buyer’s frame of mind during the entire content planning and creation process.

APPLY your messaging to each step in a buyer’s path to purchase.

We’ve gone through this process before, but from a high level, identify where you want to focus your campaign or asset: the top, middle or bottom of the funnel. Identify the questions your buyers have at this particular stage so you can further tailor your messaging.

Your buyer-focused messaging doesn’t have to be confined to a single content application. In fact, it can be used for onboarding, nurturing and competitor displacement campaigns; informing and empowering your employees, partners and sales reps; and even to fuel your thought leadership efforts via blogging, contributed articles and other commentary channels. Regardless of your goals and campaign plans, buyer-focused messaging can help you improve overall marketing effectiveness and ensure you’re addressing what’s truly important for your target audience.

Download our buyer-focused messaging guide to learn more about developing buyer-focused messaging.

A lead is always an opportunity to make a sale and win a new customer. Follow these tips to manage your marketing more efficiently.

1. Set Goals

Outlining what you want to achieve is a good driving factor for accomplishing your goals. Before you set a target, look at how many leads are successful right now and aim to improve this number over time. Seeing established aims in black and white will spur on your sales and marketing teams as they try to reach or even surpass targets.

2. Examine Missed Opportunities

Ascertaining why a prospect didn’t choose your company’s products or services is an excellent way to improve how you do business. When the reasons are identified, you can make positive changes to make the firm more appealing.

3. Liaise With Your Marketing Team

Sales and marketing are very much intertwined, and to get the best from both, there needs to be collaboration and discussions about what methods are turning leads into customers. Better communication between departments allows the teams to further develop their persuasive abilities.

4. Stay in Contact With Prospects

Remember, just because someone didn’t want to make a purchase at a moment in time doesn’t mean he will never be a customer. By keeping in contact with prospects, you increase the chance of selling to them in the future. It might be a good idea to email them every so often with details of carefully selected products or services.

5. Help Them to Buy

When interacting with potential customers, it’s imperative that you guide them into purchasing rather than pressuring them into buying a particular product. If you show that you understand their needs and make suitable suggestions, you are more likely to close a deal.

6. Anticipate Objections

Selling can be hard work at times, but with more preparation, success rates can be improved. During a sales call, a prospective customer may object to buying for different reasons, but if all the possible reasons are noted beforehand, your team can provide an apt solution at every hurdle.

7. Use the Right Tools

Software solutions are available that can increase customer acquisition through a number of tailored strategies. Customer relationship management (CRM) software is a tool that helps businesses gain a better understanding of their needs and preferences. Salesforce has a variety of solutions that can streamline your business processes, enabling you to get better results.

Better communication is always the starting point for progression, so formulate a good strategy, then run with it.

We’ve all been there. You’re searching for a software product to enhance your marketing organization, and the first thing you investigate is whether the solution integrates with key components of your existing technology stack.

This makes sense. No one wants to deal with the consequences of implementing a product that is disconnected from other critical systems — duplicate data, manual work, and incomplete insights.

But there is also an important fact that many B2B buyers forget when evaluating software solutions:

Not all integrations are created equal.

The term “integration” itself is actually meaningless without context about the effort involved in setup, the use cases that the integration enables, and the workflows that the integration supports. Buying a software product for its integrations without having those details is like buying a used car without knowing the mileage: You know how it looks on the surface, but you don’t know how far it will take you.

So rather than looking for the software product whose website includes the most logos from your technology stack, here are three key points to consider when evaluating whether a software product’s integrations will help it fit into your marketing operation:

1) How much setup does the integration require?

Setting up an integration can be a very different experience depending on how exactly it was built. Consider a best case scenario:

Slack has a number of great integrations that only require a user’s authentication for initial setup.

If you’re integrating more complicated products, however, you’ll likely need to perform additional work to get the systems talking to one another. If this is the case, make sure the product you’re integrating has an interface that streamlines the process and eliminates the need for custom coding. For example, if you need to map values from one system to another in order to sync data then it is much easier to select the equivalent values from a pair of drop-down menus instead of writing a statement in SQL or some other programming language.

Dataloader.io has an interface that allows users to select the CSV column headers that correspond to fields in Salesforce so they can easily add data to their CRM.

2) How many use cases will the integration address?

An integration is only as valuable as the use cases that it addresses, so you should also be sure to ask vendors for specifics about what their integrations allow you to do.

Consider an example from the world of online survey software. Many providers of online survey software tout integrations with Salesforce that enable the creation of new records such as Leads and Contacts upon form submission, which is useful for ensuring that Salesforce includes a record of anyone who has responded to a survey or lead gen form.

However, some integrations from online survey software providers go beyond this basic functionality. For example, the Salesforce integration from FormAssembly enables other features such as creating and updating records based on conditional statements and pre-filling form fields with data from Salesforce. These features address additional use cases that are relevant for marketers. Conditionally creating records helps marketers minimize duplicate Leads and Contacts by creating new records only when they don’t already exist; pre-filling form fields helps marketers improve response rates by reducing the number of survey fields that recipients need to complete manually.

The Salesforce Connector in FormAssembly allows users to build surveys or other forms that create or update records in Salesforce based on conditional statements.

The important lesson here is that some integrations might actually make your life more difficult if they don’t address key use cases such as the minimization of duplicate Leads and Contacts. It’s necessary to dig into the details of any integrations to understand exactly how they’ll improve your marketing operation and why they’ll make the two products work better together than they would apart.

3) Does the integration require you to change existing processes?

Finally, it’s important to consider whether the features enabled by an integration will require you to change any existing processes or master new workflows.

For example, imagine implementing a new analytics tool that is meant to help your sales team access data about their key accounts. There are numerous analytics tools that connect directly to Salesforce to visualize data from within that system, but some of these tools require a user to access reports and dashboards within the analytics tool itself. For a salesperson accustomed to finding information within Salesforce, leaving that system and tracking down the right report in another software application can create friction.

That’s why many of these tools have built APIs that enable dashboards to be embedded directly within Salesforce objects to visualize data right where salespeople already spend their time.

Tableau is an example of business intelligence software that integrates with Salesforce to embed reports in objects such as Accounts and Opportunities.

If you’re trying to drive adoption of a new software program and it doesn’t integrate in a way that fits with your team’s existing processes, implementation is likely to fail regardless of the actual functionality of the programs you’re integrating.

Integrations are not checkboxes

Ultimately, it’s not enough just to verify that a software product integrates with your technology stack — integrating is not about checking a box.

Rather, as a tech-savvy marketer you need to assess whether an integration is intuitive to set up, enables features that address your use cases, and fits within your team’s existing workflows. Any of the countless software integrations that don’t satisfy those criteria might actually be more trouble than they’re worth.

Leads: the goal most B2B marketers optimize towards relentlessly. Hitting lead generation targets is key to increased budget, more headcount, and greater freedom to run more experimental campaigns. If marketers success and supply their sales team with enough leads, they’ve proved the value of the campaigns they’ve chosen to run.

But if you’re a B2B marketer and you’re only optimizing for lead quantity, you’re missing half the picture. Read on to learn which conversion metrics you need to monitor, which lead attribute you may be overlooking, and techniques to address the gaps.

The Optimization Opportunity for B2B Marketers

Optimization is the strategy that amplifies B2B marketing campaigns across all channels. By testing, personalizing, and integrating the digital touchpoints of the buyer’s journey, marketers can not only generate more leads, they can ensure that they’re delivering a best-in-class experience to their prospects and customers.

Tactically, website optimization is a critical strategy for ensuring that demand gen marketers are able to deliver more and more leads white maximizing the investment in customer acquisition.

In the context of a B2B marketing strategy, optimization might include techniques like:

• Landing page optimization
• Iterating on homepage messaging
• Testing the placement of social proof

You might even be experimenting with presentation of pricing on your website, or optimizing the free trial offer that you use to introduce prospective buyers to your product.

Each of these website optimization techniques might drive incrementally more leads, bringing you closer to hitting your monthly lead goal. Marketing has done its work, the Sales team is happy, more deals close, and the business grows.

Right?

The Metrics that Matter Besides Lead Volume

If you’re maniacally focused on hitting lead goals, you’re missing half the picture. Demand generation in B2B is about more than just filling a funnel with leads at the top. Lead volume doesn’t mean anything if your conversion rates down the funnel don’t rise as well.

What other conversion rates should you be concerned about? A website visitor becoming a lead is the first step. But once a visitor becomes a known lead in your marketing automation and CRM systems, make sure you’re tracking the following conversion rates as well:

• Lead to MQL (marketing qualified lead) conversion rate
• MQL to SQL (sales qualified lead) conversion rate
• SQL to Opportunity conversion rate
• Opportunity to Closed Deal conversion rate

A lead at the top of the marketing-sales funnel does not equal closed business—there are many more conversions and hurdles to jump before a lead becomes a new customer. For this reason, striving to hit growing lead targets may not actually be the best thing for your business.

As a conversion-oriented marketer, you need to focus on experiences that will not only bring prospects into your marketing-sales funnel, but on optimizations that will drive them through it.

For instance, here’s a series of conversion rates for a typical B2B software product:

If the website conversion rate were to increase from 7% to 8%, would the lead qualification rate hold at 36%, or dip below that? In that case, your new leads aren’t making it through to opportunities, which means you’re supplying your Sales team with lower-quality leads.

Conversely, if you were to tighten the requirements on leads you collect from your website, maybe your conversion rate dips to 6% or even 5%. But if your qualification rate rises, or better yet, your close rate increases, you’ll be in a much better situation of being able to hand over highly sought-after sales leads, even if the quantity is lower.

When making decisions about how to increase conversions and generate leads, you must consider the customer lifecycle holistically. A win at the first step of this process might cause problems later on. Ask yourself questions like:

• If asking for less information on forms increases my conversion rate, will my Sales Ops team be able to enrich the lead with data from other sources, or score the lead so my sales team have enough information to effectively follow up with the new leads?
• If visitors convert to leads as soon as they visit my website, are they ready to evaluate my solution and become a customer? If not, what is the best way to continue engaging and nurturing them over time?
• Am I showing visitors content which is relevant to them, or am I deliberately making information more difficult to find so they’ll engage with a salesperson?

At each stage of the funnel, consider how you’ll be able to translate leads into successful customers. While generating more leads may be the initial goal, think about the tradeoffs you may make in lead quality, or other characteristics of customer fit that determine how successful they’ll be once they are a paying customer. These are all considerations that can be navigated through testing, and informed decisions can be made based on data that you collect from your own visitors, leads, and customers.

Of course, there are few strategies that can help optimize both lead quality and volume. To uncover these win-win tactics, you’ll need to download the Complete Guide to Optimizing Demand Generation to learn more.

Are you on the path to smarketing maturity?

Everyone understands that sales and marketing alignment (or smarketing) is a good thing. But the reality is that most organizations are a ways off from the VPs of Marketing and Sales being besties. I believe if organizations truly understand the value and have a clear path to get there, it will happen. Enter the 3 C’s of Smarketing: Communication, Coordination and Collaboration.

Communication: Start creating purposeful dialogue between sales and marketing

Marketing and sales have to communicate to get their jobs done. But to start to create optimal efficiency, more detailed communication needs to happen. Organizations need to have clear definitions of what sales is looking for in a lead so that marketing can create campaigns accordingly, which is an awesome first step toward solid alignment. If you don’t yet have this, invite your counterpart to lunch and start the discussion. Bring data to review why some leads were followed up on and others weren’t. Look at new customers that went through the pipeline the fastest and keep an eye out for commonalities.

Once you have a common understanding, get it all down in writing so you have agreed upon definitions. Then make sure you can track to these stages and measure conversions from lead to sales accepted (or Sales Qualified Lead – SQL). Ideally, you’ll also have a stage in between for Marketing Qualified Leads (MQL) so that marketing can scrub out anything that clearly doesn’t meet the qualifications of what sales wants before you send the leads over the wall.

Coordination: Continually optimize the outcome of sales and marketing efforts

Once you’ve got clear lead definitions, it’s time to create a feedback loop for continuous improvement. This means getting sales and marketing leadership together on a regular basis to review results and make changes in lead definitions or even campaign spend according to the feedback. Many organizations do this on a quarterly basis as “QBRs” or “Interlocks”.

No matter what fancy name you give to these meetings, make sure both departments understand the purpose and what they need to bring to the meeting. These meetings become worthless after 1-2 sessions if it is just marketing showing data and asking for feedback from sales. BOTH sides need to come with data and be prepared to explain what the data is saying.

Here’s how. Create some dashboard reports that both teams can access for the following data:

• Highest and lowest performing campaigns for the quarter in terms of SQLs, Opps and Closed Won (6 different reports)
• Highest and lowest performing inside sales reps (or telemarketers) for the quarter in terms of conversions to SQLs, Opps and Closed Won (6 different reports)

Both parties should analyze this data before the coordination meeting and come prepared with feedback from their teams on why they think those were the results. Having the analysis and team input take place before the meeting (from both sides) will make these meetings more successful. As you mature in this process, you may be able to set goals for conversion rates and use that as a bar to analyze what campaigns over or under performed.

Collaboration: Get significant revenue growth by working toward the same goal

So now that you have great communication and you are meeting regularly to obtain coordination, what more could you possibly achieve? The answer is collaboration. In this stage, the lines between marketing and sales start to intentionally get fuzzy. Marketing starts doing things that fall in the sales realm and sales starts getting involved in marketing programs, otherwise known as smarketing. With smarketing, the offices of the VPs of Sales and Marketing are next door to each other and they might even report to a centralized executive like a Chief Revenue Officer responsible for both marketing and sales.

While this may sound like a scary alternative dimension, when you start smarketing, it’s totally awesome! This stage means the end to the blaming as sales and marketing are truly working together to achieve the mutual goal of growing the company. Marketing bonus plans are on revenue, not leads. There is mutual respect, because these groups are in tight alignment.

So how can a company achieve this nirvana? It’s actually a lot easier than you might think. At the heart of smarketing collaboration is sales and marketing working together on a common program. This means designing the program together, promoting it together and tracking results together. This is the essence of smarketing.

The most effective program to achieve smarketing collaborative alignment is a referral marketing program. While sales already gets that referrals are their highest quality lead, most sales folks don’t ask often enough or have a “give-get” to offer. With help from marketing through a referral marketing program, sales can not only get more referrals, but turn referrals into their most productive lead source. In fact, data from the referral marketing programs running on the Amplifinity referral platform shows an average conversion from lead to purchase of 35%.

This conversion rate is possible through referral software that enables collaboration between sales and marketing by integrating into the sales CRM to allow marketing to create the brand message for the program and sales to help execute on it. This enables marketing to extend its lead generation team to customers or partners who can connect your message to target buyers in their networks.

Bottom line – This scalable personalized lead generation works so well because it is backed by both marketing AND sales.

If you’d like to learn more about achieving smarketing, I recommend this paper from Marketing Profs: How to Climb to Smarketing Success: A maturity model for sales and marketing alignment.

As sales managers, it’s not only our job to coach reps to sell smarter, faster, and better (perhaps with an app like Spiro), but also to help recognize those team members who want nothing more than to get out of sales. ASAP.

No matter the reason a rep may be wrong for sales, you have to sometimes accelerate their exit strategy to both their own and the team's benefit.

Here are some sure signs that a salesperson doesn’t belong in sales.

1) They take everything personally.

Sales is a competitive, emotionally challenging profession. If someone on your team is easily offended, they should resign immediately. Not only will they not be able to handle the prospects who hang up on or otherwise dismiss them, but they probably won’t be able to take your constructive criticism either.

2) Rejection slows them down.

Salespeople hear “no” more often than they hear “yes.” It’s just part of the job.

Your reps need to be able to get over not only the fear of rejection, but also be able to throw themselves the world’s shortest pity party when things don't out they way they'd hoped and move on to the next opportunity.

I like to remind my sales team that sometimes the actual sale doesn’t even begin until the prospect says “no.” Objections are the sign of a buyer seriously considering your offering, after all. 

3) They are always job searching.

It’s a smart idea to always have your resume updated, especially in the sales world where you could be great one quarter and gone the next. But if you catch a rep on your team perusing open jobs often, then sales may not be for them.

Sales takes commitment -- to follow up, to close deals, and to make their clients successful -- so salespeople need to be committed to the profession and company as well. Someone with one foot out the door clearly isn't committed. 

4) They don’t make the ask.

I’m not sure why certain reps simply can't bring themselves to ask their buyers if they have a deal (maybe it's something psychological?). But what I am sure of: That type of fear doesn’t fly in sales.

If you have a rep on your team that just won’t make the final ask for whatever reason, it’s a sign they aren’t in the right job.

5) There is no sense of urgency.

It doesn’t have to be (and really shouldn't be) an urgency emergency filled with frantic closings. However, your salespeople should have a level of drive to get that deal done -- and the next one after that, and the next one after that.

If your rep isn’t on a call or in a meeting with a prospect, then they should be researching the next buyer, or sorting through their inbound leads. Surfing the web and hanging out at the water cooler is not for salespeople. 

6) They hate other salespeople.

As a sales manager, you are trying to build a team. And if the "players" on your team don’t like each other? Your life gets a lot more difficult.

If one of your reps is always bad-mouthing their fellow reps or the sales profession in general, then they should take a long look in the mirror. Not only should reps have an appreciation for the sales culture that will bring them success, but they should like their coworkers. 

7) Money isn’t important to them.

Money may be considered the root of all evil by some, but it’s also the root of all sales. If generating revenue for the company and making money on a personal level doesn’t motivate your team members, you are going to have a hard time finding ways to keep them going.

At the end of the day, the role of a salesperson is to make their company money, so you need a sales team that wants to execute on this goal -- and make money for themselves along the way.

8) They are pessimistic.

Do your sales reps take mistakes and learn from them, or wallow in the defeat?

If you are trying to build a sales dream team, you need positive players on the court. Success in sales requires irrational optimism. If you have pessimists on your team, they are never going to be able to deal with the daily rejection and stress of sales. Only optimists can be true salespeople.

What other warning signs tip you off that a salesperson isn't cut out for the job? Share your thoughts in the comments.

Marketing, as an industry, sometimes does what Kevin Bobowski, Act-On’s CMO, calls “putting old wine in new bottles.” Exhibit A might be content marketing, which has become a very popular term since about 2011.

Content marketing as a practice, however goes back a long way. Marketing agency nDash wrote a funny blog post noting how Benjamin Franklin used content to grow his personal and business brands:

“Benjamin Franklin could be seen as one of the founding fathers of content marketing. His monthly magazine, annual Poor Richard’s Almanac and various other printings all served to establish him as an authority and help grow his printing press business. One Franklin quote that all content marketers should know is: ‘Either write something worth reading or do something worth writing.’”

In 1895, John Deere launched The Furrow, an agricultural journal for farmers. It’s probably the longest-running example of content marketing we have. It was educational, with the goal of helping farmers be more successful … the quintessential definition of content marketing. Even today The Furrow retains its original editorial mission. It’s also expanded to 14 languages for a global audience, and has a very sophisticated online presence, including video.

Regardless of the century, marketers are faced with the same question from CEOs – “What type of return are we getting from this marketing activity?”

The old adage says that “To measure is to know.” When communicating the value of content marketing, if we are armed with valuable metrics, then it’s easier to tell the story of success.

But what are the marketing metrics your CEO wishes he or she had that would truly show an impact?

Start with the business goal

Two-thirds of marketers create content without a documented strategy, according to the Content Marketing Institute. So first of all, ensure there’s a strategy in place, and that the strategy is closely aligned with the business goals. Results will be easier to measure and have more impact if they’re tied closely to the goals important to your CEO.

The exact metrics that you use, however, will vary based on your unique business goals. So let’s examine what this may look like for your company.

1. Business Focus: BRAND

Perhaps the business goal is to grow brand awareness or more positive brand sentiment. Here are a few examples of how real brands are succeeding and measuring their success.

Airbnb: Creating Awareness

What they did: Airbnb created a campaign to showcase the types of experiences you can have using their service. They used #treehouseTuesday on Instagram, where they posted photos of actual listings where you can spend the night in a real treehouse.

Since its inception, the campaign has been very successful. The post below generated over 800 likes and helped to build more brand awareness.

Key takeaway: If you’re measuring “likes” and “comments,” make sure that your strategy is focused on engagement and building brand awareness. Otherwise it’s more of a quantity metric instead of a quality metric.

LivePerson: Thought Leadership

What they did: LivePerson, an online voice and chat solution provider, wrote the eBook “The Future of Digital Engagement: 10 Thought Leaders Share Predictions for 2014.” The goal of this effort was to create thought leadership in their industry by compiling the voices of influencers to create a predictions piece (a highly popular type of content).

The company set out to create thought leadership, and they generated enough exposure to win the “Killer Content Award” for Best Influencer Campaign from Demand Gen Report.

Key takeaway: Partner with influencers to expand your reach and results. Then present metrics that are appropriate for influencer campaigns, such as number of shares, mentions and engagement – and in this case, awards, to strengthen your results.

Toshiba: Measuring Engagement

What they did: Toshiba created its “Smart Community” to leverage social content to promote awareness about its renewable energy solutions. They optimized the platform with specialized keywords to boost SEO performance and increase rankings.

The company generated over 347,000 global followers on LinkedIn through this campaign.

Key takeaway: Create content portals focused on issues and pain points that resonate with your target audience, and then measure the change in engagement across all platforms.

Measurement Tips: 4 Brand Metrics to Watch

The above examples give you a few ideas of how to measure and present results, but here are four more to consider when working on brand awareness.

1. Message pull through. How often a particular term, phrase, or reference is made (perhaps tied to a specific campaign/launch); used to measure effectiveness of positioning statement.
2. Share of Voice. Measure how the market talks about your industry. How much of the conversation is about you, and how much is about your competitors?
3. Sentiment Tracking. Measure how customers feel about the brand through looking (via analytics tools) at the various social media channels and what customers are saying in the comments section to monitor sentiment about your brand.
4. Thought Leadership Engagement. Measure influencer mentions, total attention time, and total social actions.

2. Business Focus: DEMAND

Another common business goal for B2B marketers is to create content that will generate leads, and ultimately impact the bottom line. Here are a few examples of companies that used content to generate leads.

ADP: Capturing Leads through White Papers

What they did: ADP decided to leverage their expertise in human capital management to create white papers featuring high-value content. They measured results by the amount of revenue produced by each lead.

As a result of this white paper campaign, they generated $1 million worth of new sales opportunities for ADP within the first month alone.

Key takeaway: Carefully track the number of leads generated by gated assets, conversions to sales, and the associated dollar amount of revenue. Note which channels produce leads and which produce revenue; they may not be the same.

Cisco: Measuring Product Launch

What they did: Cisco developed a new router and decided to use it as a case study to measure and understand the ROI of their marketing efforts. Unlike previous campaigns, they launched it using only social media to understand its potential impact.

After measuring the results, they found the company shaved six figures off its launch expenses, setting a precedent for future launches.

Key takeaway: When possible, remove all factors from the equation (except those you’re measuring) for more compelling results.

DemandBase: Coordinate Your Channels

What they did: DemandBase is a marketing technology provider serving B2B brands. The company used white papers, infographics, and SlideShare along with links to webinars to source new leads.

The company measured the results of this content and found that these combined efforts generated 1,700 leads and were responsible for connecting with 125 webinar viewers. As a result, it generated $1 million in new revenue through content marketing efforts.

Key takeaway: Deploy integrated campaigns that maximize your results through a variety of assets. DemandBase combined the power of white papers, infographics and SlideShare across multiple channels to amplify their results.

Measurement Tips: 4 Demand Metrics to Watch

1. Marketing-generated leads. Of all the leads that you attract to the top of the funnel, how many convert to the next stage, giving you permission to market to them? Or to ask a further question: how many of these does marketing deem worthy of working with (marketing accepted leads).
2. Sales-qualified leads (SQL). Once marketing has accepted and nurtured leads, and deemed them ready for sales, how many does sales accept and deem “opportunities”?
3. Win rate. Of all the leads from all the activities that become closed sales and generate revenue, what percentage close?
4. Win rate sourced from marketing. And what percentage are sourced from marketing?

Extra credit: Cost per lead, and customer acquisition cost.

3. Business Focus: EXPAND

The “expand” concept covers retention, expansion, upsell and cross-sell, advocacy and retention. While it’s the most lucrative area of business, by some measures, it’s often the least attended to.

Retention is a live issue before the digital ink is dry on the contract. According to a survey conducted by SaaS metrics company Preact, 23 percent of customers churn due to poor onboarding. This is especially true when you have a fairly complex service, so it’s important to frontload the delivery of educational content. In addition, understanding how new signups are interacting with content is critical. Here’s an example of a company that used content and metrics to significantly decrease churn and expand their growth.

Groove: Uncovering Why Customers Leave

What they did. Groove (SaaS startup sales acceleration solution) had a 4.5 percent churn rate and wanted to decrease this metric by understanding, “Why did this particular customer quit?”

They decided to research customer behavior and understand the specific factors that were responsible for churn. They called these factors “red flag metrics.” They found that:

• Customers who discontinued using the company’s products typically stayed in their first session for only 35 seconds.
• Customers churning were spending much longer to complete tasks than the average customer.

The company used these two pieces of information to identify high-risk users. They took action by sending emails to high risk users, which offered additional help with processes that might be difficult. The results of these emails was very high, with a 26 percent response rate. Of those customers that responded, 40 percent stayed with the company after 30 days.

Pro tip. If you’re launching a new email customer campaign, exclude 10 percent of recipients as a control group so you can say with confidence that the customer’s actions were a result of the campaign, and they wouldn’t have taken the same actions even if they hadn’t received the emails.

Measurement Tips: 5 Expand Metrics to Watch

1. Greater retention, less churn. Are your customers satisfied enough to keep you as their vendor?
2. Increased customer lifetime value. Customers who stay longer add exponential value.
3. Increased up-sells to an existing customer base. Are your customers successful enough to use more of your product? Are they sold on your company enough to look to you first when they buy a new product?
4. Do your customers like you enough to say nice things about you in public – without being paid to do that?
5. Do you customers like you enough to refer their friends and cohort to you? Referrals are easier to close and worth more, so the investment you make to cultivate referrers is well worth it.

Bonus: Which of your customer persona are the most profitable?

Sharing Your Story through Marketing Metrics

Use content marketing metrics to tell a story and illustrate the before-and-after statistics for greater impact. For example, the website bounce rate may have been high in the past, but this rate may have sharply declined since you launched your new blog.

Providing concrete metrics that tell a story and directly tie to results will help you move past the generalities such as “likes” and “shares” and illustrate how these metrics relate to your company’s business goals.

What metrics do you use to demonstrate success of your content marketing efforts? Please share.

Top-performing marketing leaders understand the need to allocate their time and resources across the entire spectrum of marketing, acknowledging that an effective marketing strategy goes well beyond just driving demand for sales. Download Act-On’s eBook, Rethink Marketing [Automation], to learn how you can leverage marketing automation to help build your brand equity, drive demand and expand your customer relationships.

With more companies investing cash into creating content, it’s easy to clog up your content management solution with just a few months of content creation. For some marketers, that might not seem like a particularly big issue. After all, you made it, you know what the purpose is, and you know where to easily find it.

For salespeople, it’s not so easy. They don’t have a map in their heads of what’s new and what’s stale, and if they have to navigate through clutter, that’s time taken away from actual selling. Auditing sucks, but it’s a necessary evil. To make it a little easier, follow this step-by-step guide for conducting an audit of your sales content.

1. Take Inventory

Like in a website audit, you can’t know what you need or don’t need before knowing what you have. Whether it’s a spreadsheet you’ve created (or feel free to use the template we created) or a CSV generated from your sales content management tool, lay everything out. Yes, everything: Videos, pictures, PowerPoint slides, case studies, white papers, interactive content—if a salesperson has access to it, put it in the spreadsheet.

2. Pull the Metadata

Before you get to usage, you’ll want to know everything about each piece of content to put usage in context. Use these data points to know more about your content:

• Whether it’s keywords content is tagged with or those in the title, listing these out may help you determine whether content is harder to find in your content management system than it should be.
• Content depth and folder name. If you’re using a folder structure (instead of a guided selling model that takes you to content), record how far content is within that structure. If it’s on the top level, record “0,” one folder deep, record “1,” etc. Record the folder name where it’s located in case it’s not intuitive.
• Type of content. Record whether it’s a video, PowerPoint slide, case study or whatever else.
• Date last updated. If your sales content management tool flags content that’s been updated, this may be telling. You could also find that content beyond a certain date is too out of date for your sales teams.
• Intended audience. How granular you get is up to you (and the size of your audience). Feel free to split this up into target persona, what part of the funnel content is intended for (e.g., top-of-the-funnel early stage leads, or bottom-of-the-funnel).
  • Consider also splitting collateral up into content that’s intended for sales meetings or follow-up content.

3. Flag Immediate Issues and Next Steps

When you have everything in one place, you could uncover content that you’ve forgotten or see flaws upon taking a closer look and immediately know what you need to do. Make a column for issues. Examples that you could flag by just classifying content could be:

• Nested too deep in folder structure
• Targeted to an unclear audience
• Updated three years ago (outdated styling and branding)

Make another column for “Next Steps.” For many items in your inventory, you’ll have to leave these blank until you get a better sense of how sales teams are using content (and how prospects are responding). For other collateral, you can already start to figure out your next steps, which could include:

• Cutting the content entirely (at least from your sales library)
• Adding keywords to make collateral easier to find (or incorporating it within a guided selling environment)
• Updating the look, feel, and/or tone to match more your popular content
• Creating less generic versions of content suited for specific products, personas, or verticals

4. Collect Global Usage Data

Since you’re narrowing in on sales content, you’re going to want to know what content salespeople are engaging with, setting aside your other channels (Singlegrain offers a good guide for your website).

How easy this is will really depend on how you’re managing your sales content. If you’re using enterprise content management (like Box or SharePoint), you could pull general access numbers, though those might not capture content that’s been downloaded for a meeting without a connection or emailed content.

With a sales content management and presentation solution, you can pull views for content quickly for all sales content. Here’s an example from Mediafly’s sales content management system (CMS)—if you generate a list of all your content, global views will be a column in your exported CSV.

What segment of time do you want to look at? Well, if this is your first time conducting a sales content audit, you might want to go back 6 months or even a year. If you make this a regular occurrence, go back through usage since your last audit (e.g., a month or a quarter back). Remember that views aren’t everything. Someone could “view” a video, but only 5 seconds of it. Include:

• Average number of pages viewed/total number of pages (in multipage documents)
• Average duration of view (for videos)

Don’t just focus on your top content!

In an ideal world, low views will be correlated with content that you’ve already determined you need to fix or get rid of. Realistically, you’re going to find content with low views that you thought looked great or content with high views that you thought wouldn’t make the cut.

This is where you start investigating and building a case for why content might not be performing as expected.

5. Find Out How Users Navigate

In a website audit, you’re interested in what keyword searches are leading people to different pages on your site. To protect user privacy, Google lumps a lot of these into “Unknown.” We use our sales CMS to list out what searches people have performed in a set period of time. In a tab, create columns for:

• Search Terms
• Number of searches for that term
• If you get what you expected when you conduct that search

Some searches may pull an overwhelming number of results (e.g., “presentation,” while others may get unexpected results or no results at all.

You can use this data, as well as how many times specific folders have been accessed, to determine if you need to:

• Move content that’s in unaccessed folders
• Add or remove content keywords
• Create new folders or move existing ones up the folder hierarchy, etc.

6. Collect Segmented Usage Data

Even if you know what’s going on across the entire sales organization, you might still be stuck on what the “issues” or next steps are for a piece of content. By breaking down how different groups (or even individuals) use collateral, you can get closer to your answer. How you segment is up to you, but tabulate views from a group you’re interested in. For example:

• Last quarter’s top salespeople
• Salespeople focusing on the manufacturing industry
• Sales reps with a specific territory

Filtering view in Mediafly’s CMS

Overall low views can be explained by content only being relevant to a narrow group (which could mean that only they’re the only ones that access it, but also they’re the only group that have access to that content). You could try to get content used by your A-players to everyone else, whether through better keywords or making content more accessible.

7. Contextualize with Prospects and Deals

At the end of the day, what matters isn’t what your salespeople think, but what their customers think and what closes deals. Segmenting usage by top performers gets at that, but not as directly as seeing what prospects engage with.

Create another tab in your inventory that treats customers as another “group.” If you’re sharing and tracking content with your sales enablement tool, you should be able to know who opens content (and duration, # of page views). You’ll see what content prospects are interested (and not just what the salespeople shows them), even approximating a click-through rate based on # of shares divided by # of opens. If content has a large view rate by salespeople, but a large open rate with prospects, you might have a disconnect that you need to deal with.

You can also use data from your CRM to see not just what content has been used, but specific accounts it’s been used with. You can create another tab using CRM data, including filtering by:

• Closed deals only
• Content shown at the “opportunity” stage
• “Typical” accounts

Again, overall trends are useful, but they don’t tell the whole story. Does popularity matter if that popular content isn’t getting used in your key accounts?

8. Talk to Your Users

For some companies who aren’t as “smarketing” aligned as others, this might be a challenge. Cadence will be up to your marketing team, but you’ll want to, at some point, reach out to the sales team to get their thoughts and make sure that you’re not off base with your analysis, so you don’t rush off to create content they won’t use, and so you don’t destroy content they do.

If it’s a possibility, consider also getting input from your current customers. Formulate questions to ask in a brief interview (whether one on one, or a longer user group conference) to inform your sales content strategy:

• Are their pain points the ones you’re addressing?
• Are you emphasizing the value they see in your product?
• Are you downplaying the weaknesses they hit upon?

9. Optimize (and Go Beyond Usage Metrics)

This is going to probably be the lengthiest part of the process, but it’s time for some tough love.

Once you’ve looked at usage and confirmed your theories with your user groups, you should’ve narrowed content down to what you want to keep, what you want to create, and general ways to optimize—now you need to make sure that your message is clear and precise (no matter how new or popular content is).

Some issues you would’ve found way back in step 3, but Forrester Research created a set of questions¹ on message effectiveness that you need to answer before a piece of content is ready to go out or stay out in the world.

• Is there a unique vision in the content?
• Is the message implicitly but clearly positioned?
• Is one target audience (e.g., persona, industry) clearly being addressed?
• Does the content address the buyer’s impact proposition clearly?
• Can the content be used in more than one buyer journey stage?
  1. If not, is it matched to the appropriate stage
• Is there a call to action to move the buyer along the journey?
• Does the message align to other pieces of content?
• If referencing products, is it justified?

You’ll find that just because something is written well and is laid out nicely doesn’t make it “effective” to move your buyers along their journey.

Now that you’ve established your “core” pieces of content, and have positioned them so it’s as easy as possible for salespeople to use in their sales conversation, optimize them so that the message is as easy for buyers to find as the collateral is for the sellers.

10. Compare to Your Last Audit

Pretty much the only way to know if your audit has been successful…is to do another audit. For each of the tabs when you get around to doing your next audit, add in the views in the latest month or quarter to confirm that your “next steps” were the right ones:

• Did “deal-assisting” content end up in the hands of more salespeople?
• Did optimizing content get it used more?
• Did narrowing access to content get it used more appropriately?

Your collection of sales content will never be “perfect.” Some salespeople will end up creating their own, sometimes what you thought was optimizing had no effect, and sometimes you’ll create content that’s just a plain dud. But, by using data and feedback from the field, and taking a hard look at your content, you’ll get closer to an ideal experience for your salespeople and your customers, and grow revenue in the process.

Want to see what ideal sales presentations can look like? Download a Demo of SalesKit or reach out for a walkthrough tailored for your sales organization.

¹“Valuable Message Development for B2B Marketing in the Context of Sales Enablement.” Forrester Report, June 6, 2014

There’s a fascinating article from Jason Lemkin on SaaStr about what the CEOs of early-stage companies need to look for from the key players in their first management team.

But I believe that the principles also apply to organisations at all stages of development. In fact, I think they are particularly relevant to post start-up expansion phase companies - and that the CEOs of these businesses would do well to take them into account when recruiting and assessing any new functional heads.

The “expansion phase” is a critical stage in the development of any post-startup organisation. They have already demonstrated that they have managed to attract an initial cohort of early adopters. They have probably attracted expansion funding from investors who believe they can see the potential in their business.

But now they have to execute. They have to turn that early potential into a predictable and repeatable set of business processes. They need to create a scalable sales and marketing machine.

When it comes to sales and marketing, the last thing they now need are mavericks - even though those sort of personalities might have been successful in getting them out of the start-up jungle and on to the growth-phase dirt road.

What they need now are functional leaders with an engineering mentality - people that can establish repeatable processes that will confidently deliver the predictable results they are looking for and that their investors are expecting.

This is no longer a time for heroics: this is a time for thoughtful, effective execution. And that’s why their assessment of both their existing and potential new sales and marketing leaders needs to be based on a simple question: are they capable of tilting the revenue curve?

According to Lemkin, when it comes to sales leaders, this comes down to a single critical consideration: are they capable of increasing revenue growth within one sales cycle or less?

It’s an interesting test, and one in which the results can be evaluated quickly: is the new head of sales capable of extracting more value from the current set of leads than their predecessor (which in the early-stage companies Lemkin is focused on might well have been the CEO themselves)?

In fact, the more I think about it, this ability to make a tangible short-term impact from the existing assets and resources seems like an important goal for any new sales leader. It demonstrates an ability to quickly analyse the current situation and to take decisive, effective action.

Of course, simply making the best of the current situation isn’t the only test by which the long-term impact of a sales leader must be evaluated. Their contribution also critically depends on the intelligence with which they make investment decisions, the clarity of their go to market strategy, the accuracy with which they assess the potential strengths and weaknesses of individual team members, their ability to recruit the right new players and their skill in building a cohesive team.

But the ability to “tilt the revenue curve” - even modestly - early on is a pretty powerful leading indicator, isn’t it? You can read Lemkin’s full article here.

Bob Apollo is the Managing Director of UK-Based Inflexion-Point Strategy Partners. He writes and speaks regularly on the critical importance of thoughtful selling strategies in driving B2B sales success.

Related articles:

• The Jungle, The Winding Road and The Highway...
• McKinsey on Applying Analytics to Make the Most of your Sales Resources...

• Why sales leaders need to focus on outcomes, not activities...

An earlier version of this article appeared on LinkedIn.

Content Marketing is a crucial tool for every business, especially the automotive industry. It not only spreads awareness of your dealership, but it can also help you establish trust with your potential customers by providing them with educational content that answers questions they may have about your vehicles. Using content marketing wisely will help you sell more cars so you can keep up with, and eventually surpass, the competition.

According to HubSpot, “Content marketing generates 3 times as many leads as traditional outbound marketing, but costs 62% less.”

The important thing to realize is that the times have changed. Old sales tactics aren’t as effective as they used to be because of the internet. Thanks to the internet, buyers are becoming smarter and more adept on knowing exactly what they’re buying, especially when it’s a major purchase like a new car. People today do a lot of research before they even think about stepping foot onto a dealership’s lot.

The best way to approach this new style of buying is by identifying their problem and showing them that you have the solution. You can do this through the use of content marketing. But in order to do this properly; you must establish trust. People will trust you if you are supplying them with valuable information that can help make their journey easier. That’s why you have to market educational content. Don’t be salesy, be helpful.

One of the most effective pieces of educational content are eBooks. These free digital guides will supply your website visitor with valuable information about your products. The best way to start with writing these eBooks is by talking to your sales team. Ask them about the most common questions or concerns your customers have when they come to your dealership. Address those issues with an informative guide, and offer these guides on your website for free.

The most effective tactics with offering these eBooks is with a landing page. If your visitor is interested, they’ll download this helpful guide, and all it costs is their name, phone number, and email address. When they download the eBook, you’ll gain a lead.

Content Marketing allows you to expand your reach, become a thought leader, and save money on your marketing strategy. It can help drive more traffic to your site, and in turn, drive more traffic to your dealership. By marketing your educational content wisely, you’ll generate numerous leads all looking to buy a car. That’s where you come in. The sales pitch doesn’t need to be long, because they already know what they’re getting, thanks to you and your educational eBook.

Stream’s Kick-Start Step:

Experiment with placing a buyer’s guide eBook on your most popular vehicle on your website with some money saving coupons. Once you generate leads, add them to an emailing list that lets them know of upcoming deals or automotive releases exclusive to your dealership.

Learn how Content Marketing has helped other dealerships like yours, check out this case study to see how Scion San Diego increased their organic website traffic by 168%!

Salespeople typically understand that a “sales pipeline” is the progression of contacts through the various stages of a selling cycle. However, few probably take the time to reflect on the actual meaning of the word “pipeline”.

Think about the role pipes play in ushering water, oil and other liquids from one point to another. If you get dirt, grime and other undesirable contents in the pipe, it becomes clogged, backed up and eventually stalled.

Consider the same impact poor, unqualified leads can have on the pipeline through which your contacts travel.

Identifying a Clog

Ideally, you execute effective qualifying processes and lead nurturing activities such that you never face a pipeline bottleneck. However, the sales funnel view in a typical CRM program is often a good place to start to identify potential clogs.

If your funnel is overflowing at the prospecting stage, for instance, you have challenges with making initial contacts and qualifying your leads.

Creating a Steady Flow

Qualifying prospects is at the heart of a healthy lead generation system.

First, you need to paint a clear picture of the types of prospects that fit with each of your solutions. Doing so establishes the types of buyers that could flow through your pipeline in the most efficient way.

When you know who to target, you qualify by asking questions that allow you to detect whether a buyer fits well into your pipeline.

Imagine trying to stuff steak, hamburger or bones down your waste disposal. These items would quickly clog up your plumbing pipes.

In the same way, you need high-quality leads that fit seamlessly into the opening of your pipeline.

Continue with Lead Nurturing

After you create a clean start for your sales pipeline with qualified leads, you shift to lead nurturing. This process of garnering further interest in your solutions from qualified buyers helps maintain a steady pipeline flow.

During lead nurturing, you may encounter buyers that aren’t prepared or able to buy. (Read this post about what to do when your prospect says “I’m not interested”). Ushering these contacts off to the side (perhaps through a branch in your pipeline) ensures efficient progression with high-quality prospects.

With the remaining prospects, the use of content marketing and initial sales communication are paramount in continuing their path toward the conversion stages of your pipeline.

A healthier sales pipeline that runs more efficiently is a boost to the psyche of a talented sales professional.

Conclusion

Converting qualified leads receives much of the attention in the salesperson’s role. However, getting appointments with high-quality prospects is critical to a healthy lead generation system and sales pipeline. Clogging your pipeline from the start creates even greater messages and inefficiencies down the road.

One way to avoid clogs is to partner with a company that specialises in appointment setting with your target market.

Internal Results manages the appointment setting phase of your lead generation so your team can focus on the rest of the pipeline.

When you head to a restaurant, you might have your heart — or stomach — set on a particular dish.

Or, you might be a little more open to suggestion.

That's the opportunity menu engineers and consultants are looking for. Behind the scenes, before you're even thinking of dinner, they put careful thought into the way you choose what foods you eat.

Here are 11 of the sneakiest psychological tricks restaurants use to make you spend more money:

SEE ALSO: 9 tips to save money on food, from the woman who wrote the book on eating for $4 a day

1. They don't use dollar signs

A dollar sign is one of the top things restaurants should avoid including on a menu, because it immediately reminds the customers that they're spending money.

According to research from the Cornell University School of Hotel Administration, guests given a menu without dollar signs spent significantly more than those who received a menu with them. Guests spent less even when the prices were written out with words instead of numbers, such as "ten dollars," which still triggered the negative feelings associated with paying.

2. They are tricky with their numbers

Menu designers recognize that prices that end in 9, such as $9.99, tend to signify value but not quality. In addition, prices that end in .95 instead of .99 are more effective because they feel "friendlier" to customers. Most restaurants just leave the price without any cents at all because it makes their menu cleaner, simpler, and to the point.

3. They use extremely descriptive language

Research from Cornell University revealed that items described in a more beautiful way are more appealing to and popular with customers. According to further research from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, descriptive menu labels raised sales by 27%, compared with food items without descriptors.

On an NBC "Today" show interview, menu engineer Gregg Rapp poses an example of Maryland-style crab cakes. They are described as "made by hand, with sweet jumbo crab meat, a touch of mayonnaise, our secret blend of seasonings, and golden cracker crumbs for a rich, tender crab cake." This brings the ultimate sensory experience to the reader, and the descriptive labeling will make customers more likely to be satisfied at the end of the meal.

Interestingly, brand names in menu descriptions also help sales, which is why chain restaurants such as T.G.I. Friday's use Jack Daniel's sauce or Minute Maid orange juice on their menus. The more adjectives, the better.