Mercedes-Benz announced the launch of its at-home battery option in 2015, and with plans to expand outside its current market of Germany, Tesla may need to watch its back. 

Tesla's Powerwall is perhaps the most notable home battery option in the US. The mountable device that comes in a several different colors holds 6.4 kWh of energy. It's also possible to stack nine Powerwalls together for almost 58 kWh worth of energy capacity. 

For reference, the average person in the US uses 30 kWh each day, making the Powerwall a solid option storage-wise. 

But where Mercedes could have a slight advantage over Tesla is with its design.

At under 66 pounds, the Mercedes battery is much smaller than Tesla's 200 pound Powerwall. That smaller size does mean the Mercedes battery can only store 2.5 kWh. But because it is modular, eight lightweight Mercedes' batteries can be combined for 20 kWh of storage.

From a pure energy storage standpoint, Tesla's Powerwall wins, hands down.

But one has to consider what homeowners really want: A smaller, less conspicuous battery option that still provides a good amount of energy storage may be more desirable than a 200-pound device that must be mounted.

"The modules themselves are rather lightweight at less than 30 kilograms, so you can carry it with one man compared to Tesla," Frank Spennemann, senior manager of business innovation at Mercedes' parent company Daimler, told Tech Insider. "You can put it on the ground, so you don’t have to wall mount it, and it has very easy wiring."

It's actually for that reason that battery start-up Orison thinks it has a shot of taking on Tesla in the US: a mountable Orison panel holds 2.2 kWh and weighs 40 pounds, with the option to combine five panels for 13.2 kWh of storage.

The Mercedes battery is currently being rolled out in other European markets outside Germany, including the Netherlands and Switzerland, Spennemann said. He added that he sees potential to role it out in other countries.

What would really settle the debate over what is the best battery option is price. Tesla's Powerwall cost $3,000, not including the price of installation and the separate inverter that must be purchased. 

Mercedes declined to provide the price of a unit, stating that pricing was handled by distributors. We've reached out to several distributors about pricing and will update this story when we hear back.

We do know that, like the Powerwall, you have to pay for the professional installation and separate inverter.

The Mercedes battery also differs slightly in function to the Tesla Powerall, but that's mostly a product of where they are sold. The Powerwall can store energy generated by solar panels and draw electricity from the utility grid when rates are low to store for later.

The Mercedes battery can't draw from the grid because net metering isn't an option that's allowed in Germany, Spennemann said. But the Mercedes at-home battery has been used to charge people's electric cars.

When it comes down to it, energy storage, size, and price are the three biggest influencers in deciding what battery option to install. Without knowing the price of a Mercedes' unit, it's hard to pick a clear winner. But there is something to be said about taking the modular approach.

Tesla did not respond to request for comment for this story. 

Join the conversation about this story »

NOW WATCH: This factory is the key to Tesla’s future

Salespeople receive plenty of training on how to give effective presentations, formulate compelling value propositions, and respond to buyer objections. What they don't receive nearly enough training on? How to become phenomenal listeners.

Great listening can often be even more impactful than the most eloquent of speeches when it comes to solving problems and influencing decisions. And the good news is becoming an extraordinary listener isn't all that difficult.

The following video from Ted Ed explains four things that great listeners do differently:

1. Egg the speaker on.
2. Urge clarification.
3. Steer clear of moralizing.
4. Separate disagreement from criticism.

To learn how to develop these skills and drastically improve your listening, take a few minutes out of your day and press play.

What’s the biggest barrier your managers and leaders have to coaching their people more often? Lack of skill? No. Lack of commitment? For some sure, but not for most. It’s lack of time. They are overwhelmed and overcommitted. They don’t Read More

Implementing a ‘pre-hire program’, being consistent, establishing a mentoring program, defining success, and creating a sales playbook reduces ramp time and sets new hires up for continued success.

No matter the size of an organization, hiring the right people and developing them so that they can achieve their true potential are arguably the most critical activities a business leader must undertake – after all you are only as good as the people you hire (thanks Ray Kroc). As a long time sales leader in Oracle, and now as a business owner, I have invested hundreds of hours in creating and executing recruiting strategies to attract and hire top talent. Unfortunately, I see new and experienced sales leaders alike make a common mistake when hiring. They neglect the need to implement and maintain a structured and rigorous onboarding program.

The true success of each new employee is largely determined by how well they are engaged and developed both in the short and long term, and an onboarding process provides the foundation in which this can be achieved. Unfortunately it is quite often the case that new sales professionals are not provided the platform or resources to be as successful as their potential suggests. Most often this is due to a lack of a structured engagement model and inconsistencies in commitment levels across the sales organization. However, with a defined training and onboarding strategy, including commitment from all lines of business, a great onboarding process can be implemented that decreases ramp time and enhances productivity.

The 2015 Inside Sales for SaaS report published by the Bridge Group, highlights that the average ramp time for new hires has increased over the last few years from 4.2 months to 5.3 months. When you consider that the research also notes the average tenure of individuals with 1-2 years prior experience is 26 months, 5 months ramp time is too long. The goal for sales leaders and front line managers is to enable and ramp new hires in the shortest period of time to ensure more consistent productivity and higher revenue generating activities.

To increase new rep productivity and decrease ramp up time, here are six key things that sales leaders need to know when developing their sales onboarding process.

1. Start the Onboarding Process Before Their First Day:

Once a candidate has passed through the interview and assessment process and has accepted your offer of employment, this can be the perfect time to start the onboarding process through a ‘pre-hire program’. A pre-hire program sets the stage for the rest of the onboarding regime by keeping the candidate engaged and motivated right up to ‘ day 1’ of their new career. Think customer experience for employees.

The pre-hire program is an opportunity to further highlight your company’s mission and value proposition for the new rep. This can be achieved through customer testimonials, pre-recorded earnings or all hands calls and office visits. The pre-hire phase can also be a great opportunity to introduce a new team member to a mentor, gamification platform or a private social group on LinkedIn to share ideas, ask questions, or get to know their new peers if there are multiple new hires starting at the same time. Since these are not full-time team members just yet, hiring managers have to respect the new team member’s time and not inundate them with too much information.

Here’s helpful a list of proven sales onboarding tools.

2. Be Consistent:

“Has this experience been consistent with my expectations?” is a question new employees ask themselves throughout the career journey: from interview, to offer acceptance, to the first weeks on the team. One of the most effective ways to meet a new employee’s expectations occurs when your onboarding process is structured and consistent.

Consistency can be achieved through several vehicles, but starts with the business units that will interact with the new employee, and having them agree upon the onboarding process and how success will be measured. Once this is achieved, welcoming the new hire and setting expectations is key. One of the most effective and easiest ways my teams have used include providing the new team member with a welcome package that includes branded gifts and a welcome letter outlining what to expect in the coming days/weeks/months. In addition to providing the new salesperson with welcome package, we paired them with a proven mentor who personally welcomed the new hire and introduced them to the rest of their new team and key stakeholders on the salesforce. These are just a few activities that need to be completed to ensure consistency and leave new hires feeling excited about closing their first deal.

3. Establish a Formal Mentoring Program:

Instituting a formal mentor/protégé program is a great way to accelerate a new hire’s growth within any new role that they assume. In addition to welcoming the new hire on day 1, the mentor has a critical role to play in accelerating a new hire’s professional development. World-class sales organizations integrate the mentor into the formal onboarding process and use their expertise to help determine specific objectives that the new hire is expected within the first 30, 60, and 90 days, in addition to having them explain why the objectives need to be achieved.

The mentor’s job is to review and verify the new hire’s understanding of their objectives, and should meet with the hire’s direct manager either weekly or bi-weekly to ensure the new hire is transitioning well into the role. It is best practice to have the most tenured or successful member of the team be the designated mentor, but it is important to note how long it has been since they have been exposed to the current hiring process. Results might be better if the mentor is a recent hire who has excelled and is fully aware of the onboarding process that the new hire is about to experience.

“World-class sales organizations integrate the mentor into the formal onboarding process and use their expertise to help determine specific objectives that the new hire is expected within the first 30, 60, and 90 days, in addition to having them explain why the objectives need to be achieved.”

4. Define Success:

Define success criteria and share it early with the new hire. This will provide them further clarity and understanding of their role within the team and the broader organization. If there are situations where a new team member is unsure if they are performing well or meeting expectations, this will only lead to disengagement or lack of focus on the most important business metrics. It is essential that sales leaders ensure new hires have a sound understanding of the full sales cycle, including how marketing and sales/business development score leads, and the criteria that is used to evaluate a qualified opportunity. One of the biggest aspects that sales managers overlook when defining what success looks like to a new hire is how customer success is defined for specific products or services. New reps and BDRs need a high-level and detailed explanation of what success looks like at each level of the sales cycle, and this comes in the form of a ‘sales playbook’.

“One of the biggest aspects that sales managers overlook when defining what success looks like to a new hire is how customer success is defined for specific products or services.”

5. Create a Sales Playbook:

A sales playbook defines the attributes of ideal prospects and existing customers and provides the new team member with specific product knowledge, selling approaches and key selling activities that the organization’s top salespeople use to win accounts and how the new hire can replicate that success within their own territory.

An effective sales playbook provides a detailed understanding of each customer persona along with specific talking points that are proven to engage prospects in meaningful conversations about pain points and product/service solutions. Combined, this information and knowledge will allow the new team member to qualify/disqualify opportunities more efficiently and prioritize prospects that are willing and able to take action on a business challenge. Furthermore, a consistent, repeatable, and scalable sales approach produces greater forecast accuracy and provides new hires the tools required to penetrate accounts as quickly and effectively as possible during the initial ramp time.

6. Resource Management:

As technically savvy Millennials and Generation Zers will soon make up the majority of today’s workforce, sales technology and productivity tools will be cornerstones in every salesperson’s sales toolbox (they already should be). And with hundreds of technological options available for salespeople to engage more efficiently with prospects, the desire by many sales managers is to stack their teams and new hires with all of the latest innovations. Sales leaders need to approach these new technologies with caution though, since more tools does not necessarily equate success. Effective sales managers assess and prioritize tools and technologies that have the most impact and narrow their team’s focus to these only. Three tools which need to be present in a sales force’s technology stack are: CRM, email automation, and business development.

Capitalize on your new employee’s energy and enthusiasm to make their number.

Every new hire that joins your organization brings an undeniable amount of energy, enthusiasm, and an appetite to learn. By implementing a consistent approach to sales onboarding that happens from the moment the offer is accepted, the ability to engage, develop, grow, and retain top performers is increased ten-fold.

The post The 6 Elements of an Effective Sales Onboarding Program appeared first on Peak Sales Recruiting.

“Actions speak louder than meetings.” — Lee Clow | Global Director, TBWA

Another day, another meeting. An hour later and it feels like the only thing successfully accomplished was wasting time.

Everyone talked in circles, no decisions were made, and the whole team leaves frustrated and exhausted. Except for the one guy still there, who fell asleep halfway through.

Sound familiar? Meetings get a pretty bad rep. According to one study, 47% of employees think meetings are the biggest waste of time in their business, and 39% admit to dozing off during them.

But here’s the thing: Meetings don’t have to be that way. If your meetings suck, it’s because you suck at running them. You can’t just set a time and date and expect value to create itself. Productive meetings are the result of intentional planning, not wishful thinking.

Take your meetings from meaningless to meaningful by asking these five questions.

Question #1: What’s the goal of this meeting?

Every effective meeting has one thing in common: A clearly-defined goal.

The goal of your meeting dictates its structure and flow, so you and everyone in attendance should know what it is. This will help you stay productive and on-topic.

Here are six common goals, and an effective meeting structure for each.

Goal #1: Make a decision

When you need input from other decision-makers to move forward, call a decision meeting. These meetings are most effective for major changes in the business, like hiring a candidate, reallocating funding, or launching a new marketing campaign.

Decision meetings are small, short, and hyper-focused. They should only be attended by the most relevant decision-makers, who can either influence or are directly affected by the decision.

Goal #2: Resolve conflict

Conflict within a startup needs to be resolved as quickly and completely as possible. The best way to do that is to hold an alignment meeting between the affected parties.

These meetings can take a number of different forms. It may be a one-on-one meeting between co-founders, or a team-on-team meeting between sales and engineering. It may be resolved in an hour, or a day. It doesn’t matter, as long as everyone is on the same page by the end.

The earlier you identify conflict, the quicker it can be resolved. Instead of waiting for tension to build, call alignment meetings the moment you notice any misalignment.

Goal #3: Brainstorming session

New and innovative ideas are what keep businesses alive. Hold a brainstorm meeting whenever you need new ideas about product development, market expansion, sales and marketing campaigns, or goal-setting.

For the best results, ask everyone to brainstorm before or at the beginning of the meeting. Otherwise, according to this Fastcompany article, brainstorming during the meeting will cause the first ideas to dominate, preventing better ideas from developing.

The brainstorm meeting itself can be a small group, or company-wide gathering. Just remember that this meeting is about ideas, not decisions.

Goal #4: Company-wide update

Company-wide update meetings are common in early-stage startups, where teams are small and the lines between departments are blurry.

These short meetings are focused on the health of the business as a whole and usually cover topics like fundraising, policy changes, pivots, and other major announcements.

As your business grows, transition to holding an in-person meeting with only the most relevant department heads and sending out an email update to everyone else.

Goal #5: Team update

A team is only as effective as their communication, and team meetings are a great way to keep everyone connected and productive.

Use these check-ins to set goals for the coming week and reflect on whether or not last week’s objectives were met.

Most teams meet once a week, but others choose to meet daily. If you take the daily approach, try and limit each meeting to fifteen minutes. You can help enforce this time limit by turning your daily meetings into standup meetings. After fifteen minutes, no one wants to be standing any longer.

Goal #6: Individual update

Individual feedback and advice can seem hostile in a group setting. For that reason, it’s smart for managers to hold occasional one-on-one meetings with each team member.

These meetings help managers understand how each member of their team operates and allows them to create fitting objectives for each person.

Limit these meetings to once a month to avoid unnecessary interruptions and to make sure that there’s enough data to review.

Question #2: How brief can I make this meeting?

That weekly hour-long meeting everyone dreads? You could probably get in done in 15 minutes if that’s all the time you allocated.

Set a strict deadline for your next meeting, shorter than you think you need, and enforce it with a timer. When the alarm goes off, the meeting is over. It might take some getting used to, so set a reminder or two before the final buzzer.

It may take a couple meetings to get the hang of a time limit, but your teams will be more productive because of it.

Question #3: Who needs to be at this meeting?

Most meetings are full of people who don’t need to be there.

The average meeting has 9 participants, and 33% of them consider the meeting a waste of time. That means one third of attendees are not providing or receiving any value.

To make your meetings efficient, keep them small. Only invite those who can influence (or who are influenced by) the meeting objective.

Worried the rest of your team will miss out on the meeting? Follow your meetings with a company-wide email that keeps everyone who wasn’t present up-to-date.

Question #4: How much will this meeting cost?

Most people don’t realize every meeting has a hidden price tag. Those hour-long, company-wide meetings could be killing your budget.

Imagine you hold weekly one-hour meetings with your ten-person team. If every attendee makes $80,000/year, then one meeting will cost $360. In a year, you’ll spend over $4,000 on meetings, and that’s assuming you only meet once a week.

Do you really think you generate $360 of value in each hour-long meeting? Probably not.

Once you know how long your meeting will be and who will be attending, calculate how much it’ll cost you. (Need help? Scroll to the bottom of this post and check out our free meeting calculator.)

Then ask yourself …

Question #5: Do we really need to meet?

Not all meetings are meaningless, but the majority are unnecessary.

As 37signal’s Jason Fried and David Hansson said in their bestselling book Rework, “Every minute you avoid spending in a meeting is a minute you can get real work done.”

Instead of interrupting everyone’s workflow with a meeting, send an email with your question or concern. In many cases, you can get the answers you need in half the time and half the effort.

If an email, IM, or phone call doesn’t cut it, it’s probably time to schedule a meeting.

Make your meetings meaningful

“Meetings get a bad rep, and deservedly so - most are disorganized and distracted. But they can be a critical tool for getting your team on the same page.” — Justin Rosenstein | Co-founder, Asana

As a general rule, in-person meetings should be a last resort.

They’re great for big decisions or conflict resolution but, otherwise, just send an email. Make a phone call. Write a letter if you have to. But don’t interrupt everyone’s day unless you’ve tried everything else.

When you do hold meetings, keep them focused and productive. Optimize each meeting for time, efficiency, and productivity.

The sooner you get to the point, the sooner your team can get back to crushing it.

Calculate the cost of each meeting with this free meeting calculator.

Recommended reading:

The unbottleneck hack
Ever feel like you've become a bottleneck for others in the team who rely on your input? Here's a simple hack to unleash team productivity.

MVP your team to excellence
Don’t think of MVP as just a product development methodology. MVP is also a way to create a more effective & collaborative startup team—here's how.

13 scheduling tools for salespeople
One of the biggest time-wasters in sales is scheduling appointments. Here's 13 tools that help simplify scheduling calls and meetings.

By Tibor Shanto – tibor.shanto@sellbetter.ca 

One of the great things in what I do is the opportunity to meet a range of thinkers and doers involved in sales and helping others sell better.  So when one of these people, in this case, David A. Brock writes a book on a critical subject like sales management, it is an opportunity to learn and share with others in my circle.  But when the subject is one you can relate because you have lived it, it is a bonus.

Sales Manager Survival Guide: Lessons From Sales’ Front Lines, is a book I wish I had way back when I was promoted from being territory rep to sales manager.  At the time I floundered to make the transition, and worked hard to understand the difference between selling and leading a sales team, a process and transition that would have considerably easier and more productive had I had the Sales Manager Survival Guide.

The book is laid out to help you succeed in the role.  Notice I said the role, not just if you are new to sales management, this book will help you whether you are new sales manager, or have the benefit of experience. In fact, the more years you’ve been doing it, the more you are likely to get out of this book, on first read, and beyond.

Starting with the key definitions and elements of the role.  A point that is often glossed over is not just that managing is different than selling, and that while your past experience and successes will help you, it is no longer about you doing it, it is about getting “things done through your people”.   As Dave highlights this is not about doing for them, or telling them, it is about getting things done through your team.  This clearly leads to a focus on coaching.

The book looks at this from the ground up, Dave avoids the trap of using “coaching” as a catch phrase for some many things talked about a lot, rarely done right.  Right up front he lets the reader know that “coaching is the highest leverage activity a manager can take to drive the performance of his people”.  From there he goes into great detail about the difference between managing and coaching.  Dave introduces introduce stats to help frame things, helps you to see the difference between coaching and the fact that coaching is ongoing not periodic.  I love the line “Coaching is a contact sport!  You can’t fake it.”  Too many do try and fake, or want to make it a genteel feel good exercise.  It is not it is about driving performance, and that requires contact, not a hit, but contact/connection between the coach and the rep whose performance you need to affect.

The book follows through looking at recruiting and onboarding, managing performance.  I love Part Six, the exploration of the Tactical side of success.  Sales is all about execution, and in this part Dave breaks it down in a way you can put in to practice right away; you will be able to apply this to your world, rather than having to apply your world to suit the methodology.

As a bonus, Dave concludes with a discussion of what manager need to understand about success in the role beyond impacting the performance of their team, and to improve manage and develop themselves, again, an ongoing process.

You can make the transition from front line sales to front line management, you can become a leader who develops great sellers, but that will not happen by osmosis, which seemed to be the plan when I was promoted.  Lucky for you, you won’t have to, you can succeed by embracing the steps, tools and practices presented by David Brock in Sales Manager Survival Guide.

Learn more and download sample chapters here.

Become one of the thousands of sales professionals receiving my latest updates on sales execution, tools, tips and more.

Join Now!

The post Sales Manager Survival Guide – Book Review appeared first on Renbor Sales Solutions Inc..

If there was ever a time in sales when you could use a wingman, it’s now.

Changed B2B buyers, the growth of inside sales, and an explosion of unbridled data, can make sales leaders feel that they’re flying by themselves in a dense fog with hidden obstacles all around them.

Yet, just when navigation seems futile, the whirring hum of your wingman’s propeller directs you to the right course. In a transformed selling landscape, analytics have become this digital wingman for sales leaders.

Here are three ways that sales analytics act like a wingman for modern sales leaders – empowering you to make the best decisions to lead your team to success.

1. Analytics provide situational awareness

A good wingman continuously monitors his personal situation, as well as those of his fellow airmen – and understands how different scenarios can potentially impact the squadron.

Similarly, to manage their team effectively, sales leaders need to know what’s happening across their organization and at all stages in their sales funnel. Analytics deliver these insights with visibility into individual rep and team behaviors.

Analytics can show leaders how reps engage with prospects at-a-glance and let them quickly compare, for example, connect rates across the team. If one rep’s connect rate falls below the average, analytics show leaders what behaviors are missing that could be causing the gap. That knowledge gives leaders the ability to coach the team to the right activities and activity levels.

2. Analytics increase the strength of the team

Having a wingman increases your firepower.

Consider the power of adding analytics to your team’s prospecting efforts. Time saved chasing down poor leads can be directed toward the right opportunities. By helping your team get to a ‘no’ faster, analytics accelerate the sales cycle and lets you focus the team efforts on areas where they can have the biggest impact.

Consider the power of analytics to understand what processes are most effective for your organization. By repeating the processes that work the best, you can increase your team’s productivity with repeatable and proven practices and onboard new reps faster to build a stronger team.

3. Analytics facilitate dynamic processes

A wingman enables more dynamic tactics and maneuvers. By keeping an eye out for movement and potential problems, they can quickly react to changes in their surroundings and intervene in situations as needed.

According to CSO Insights, companies that use dynamic processes outperform others in terms of reps making quota and plan attainment. These companies are constantly looking to see what’s changed and anticipating what comes next, so they can adjust their processes.

Emerging analytics make it easier for sales leaders to apply a dynamic approach to the sales process. They help sales leaders course correct in real-time, rather than waiting until the end of the quarter to assess what went wrong – when it’s too late. By seeing that a rep’s activity level is too low, leaders can step in and make adjustments in real-time. By seeing that prospect engagement for a particular deal has gone silent, you can recalibrate your sales forecast or drive team efforts in a new direction.

At the end of the day, sales leaders are responsible for the success or failure of their team. They are the ones that need to be sure that their team is set up for success.

However, to do this, they first need to set themselves up for success. In B2B sales today, this requires insight – into rep, team, and buyer behaviors – and the ability to apply data in new ways to gain a business advantage. Serving as a digital wingman, analytics can provide you with both.

Make your sales organization and get the most out of your Sales Cloud investment. Download the free e-book.

 

Keep leads from being ignored is the fifth of 7 Truths about Sales and Marketing that CEOs need to know. This post is part of a series about the CEO’s role in eliminating wasted marketing spend and increasing sales results.

In the last blog we discussed the importance of cost per: Lead, Sales Accepted Lead, Sales Qualified Lead and Closed Deal. Today we will discuss how to keep leads from being ignored and going into a black hole by using something I call the Judicial Branch.

No matter how desperate you are for leads, before investing in lead generation ask yourself these questions:

• How have the leads generated during the past quarter or year performed?
• How many were generated?
• How many were accepted by sales?
• How many were proactively rejected by sales (vs. simply ignored or otherwise passed over)?
• How many made it to the forecast?
• How many are progressing?
• How much did you spend for the leads?
• If you had to come up with a reasonable estimate, how much business will close as a result of marketing’s efforts?

If you can answer any of the questions above you are doing better than most. In many, if not most, companies, raw, unfiltered so-called “leads” are dumped on sales and fall into a black hole. The most common reason for this? There is no agreement between marketing and sales on the definition of a qualified lead. If you don’t start by fixing that problem, you won’t see any improvement next quarter or the one after that. This is a problem marketing and sales cannot solve alone. If they could, they would have by now.

One of the reasons leads don’t get followed up effectively is, according to Mike Weinberg, author of New Sales Simplified and Sales Management Simplified is because there is a lack of persistence and quality in the follow-up. (Note that the seventh “truth” in this blog series will deal with best practices in sales follow-up on leads.)

Mike states: “The harsh reality is that almost no one returns a first message or email from a salesperson. Truly, almost no one. Even “warm” leads typically require multiple attempts to earn a reply or call back. So it’s foolish to pretend people aren’t interested or that you’re doing something wrong when your first, or even second, contact attempt doesn’t produce a response. And it’s also a waste of energy to whine and complain about repeatedly getting someone’s voicemail. Instead of whining, try preparing. Instead of dreading your repeated follow-up attempts, look forward to them. Be ready with a series of touches, each one a bit unique. The keys to earning the call back or reply are creativity and perseverance. Drip little value nuggets with pieces of your 'sales story' as you go. Be creative; be interesting. And most importantly, be persistent.”

To address this tendency to ignore leads, senior management intervention AND the establishment of what I call a judicial branch is needed. The judicial branch, a concept borrowed by our country’s forefathers, intermediates between marketing and sales to make sure that no lead is left behind. The judicial branch reviews every lead that is proactively returned by sales to marketing (which doesn’t happen very often as most leads are simply ignored). They also review leads that have not progressed to the status of “sales accepted,” but for whatever reason haven’t been returned to marketing (the ones that are ignored).

While the process is tedious, there will be no improvement if both of these steps, lead definition and the judicial branch, are neglected.

Here is my recommendation:

1. Marketing, sales and C-level executives agree on the definition of a lead—at every level, including Sales Accepted Lead and Sales Qualified Lead.
2. Leads rejected by sales are evaluated by the most appropriate, highest level executive(s) (I call this the judicial branch)—not just marketing and sales. The objective is to determine if the rejected lead was not in fact a lead, or if the sales follow-up was insufficient. The judicial branch makes the call and sales and marketing act accordingly.
3. Fix both problems and make sure that bad leads are NOT being sent to sales and that good leads are NOT being wasted by sales. In other words, encourage both marketing and sales to do their jobs for the good of the organization as a whole.

Does your team cherish or ignore leads? Do they cultivate or neglect leads? Do they nourish or starve leads? It’s worth your time and attention to find out—and fix it!

In the next blog we will cover the how nurturing can triple your lead rate and revenue from marketing programs.

 

Implementing a ‘pre-hire program’, being consistent, establishing a mentoring program, defining success, and creating a sales playbook reduces ramp time and sets new hires up for continued success.

No matter the size of an organization, hiring the right people and developing them so that they can achieve their true potential are arguably the most critical activities a business leader must undertake – after all you are only as good as the people you hire (thanks Ray Kroc). As a long time sales leader in Oracle, and now as a business owner, I have invested hundreds of hours in creating and executing recruiting strategies to attract and hire top talent. Unfortunately, I see new and experienced sales leaders alike make a common mistake when hiring. They neglect the need to implement and maintain a structured and rigorous onboarding program.

The true success of each new employee is largely determined by how well they are engaged and developed both in the short and long term, and an onboarding process provides the foundation in which this can be achieved. Unfortunately it is quite often the case that new sales professionals are not provided the platform or resources to be as successful as their potential suggests. Most often this is due to a lack of a structured engagement model and inconsistencies in commitment levels across the sales organization. However, with a defined training and onboarding strategy, including commitment from all lines of business, a great onboarding process can be implemented that decreases ramp time and enhances productivity.

The 2015 Inside Sales for SaaS report published by the Bridge Group, highlights that the average ramp time for new hires has increased over the last few years from 4.2 months to 5.3 months. When you consider that the research also notes the average tenure of individuals with 1-2 years prior experience is 26 months, 5 months ramp time is too long. The goal for sales leaders and front line managers is to enable and ramp new hires in the shortest period of time to ensure more consistent productivity and higher revenue generating activities.

To increase new rep productivity and decrease ramp up time, here are six key things that sales leaders need to know when developing their sales onboarding process.

1. Start the Onboarding Process Before Their First Day:

Once a candidate has passed through the interview and assessment process and has accepted your offer of employment, this can be the perfect time to start the onboarding process through a ‘pre-hire program’. A pre-hire program sets the stage for the rest of the onboarding regime by keeping the candidate engaged and motivated right up to ‘ day 1’ of their new career. Think customer experience for employees.

The pre-hire program is an opportunity to further highlight your company’s mission and value proposition for the new rep. This can be achieved through customer testimonials, pre-recorded earnings or all hands calls and office visits. The pre-hire phase can also be a great opportunity to introduce a new team member to a mentor, gamification platform or a private social group on LinkedIn to share ideas, ask questions, or get to know their new peers if there are multiple new hires starting at the same time. Since these are not full-time team members just yet, hiring managers have to respect the new team member’s time and not inundate them with too much information.

Here’s helpful a list of proven sales onboarding tools.

2. Be Consistent:

“Has this experience been consistent with my expectations?” is a question new employees ask themselves throughout the career journey: from interview, to offer acceptance, to the first weeks on the team. One of the most effective ways to meet a new employee’s expectations occurs when your onboarding process is structured and consistent.

Consistency can be achieved through several vehicles, but starts with the business units that will interact with the new employee, and having them agree upon the onboarding process and how success will be measured. Once this is achieved, welcoming the new hire and setting expectations is key. One of the most effective and easiest ways my teams have used include providing the new team member with a welcome package that includes branded gifts and a welcome letter outlining what to expect in the coming days/weeks/months. In addition to providing the new salesperson with welcome package, we paired them with a proven mentor who personally welcomed the new hire and introduced them to the rest of their new team and key stakeholders on the salesforce. These are just a few activities that need to be completed to ensure consistency and leave new hires feeling excited about closing their first deal.

3. Establish a Formal Mentoring Program:

Instituting a formal mentor/protégé program is a great way to accelerate a new hire’s growth within any new role that they assume. In addition to welcoming the new hire on day 1, the mentor has a critical role to play in accelerating a new hire’s professional development. World-class sales organizations integrate the mentor into the formal onboarding process and use their expertise to help determine specific objectives that the new hire is expected within the first 30, 60, and 90 days, in addition to having them explain why the objectives need to be achieved.

The mentor’s job is to review and verify the new hire’s understanding of their objectives, and should meet with the hire’s direct manager either weekly or bi-weekly to ensure the new hire is transitioning well into the role. It is best practice to have the most tenured or successful member of the team be the designated mentor, but it is important to note how long it has been since they have been exposed to the current hiring process. Results might be better if the mentor is a recent hire who has excelled and is fully aware of the onboarding process that the new hire is about to experience.

“World-class sales organizations integrate the mentor into the formal onboarding process and use their expertise to help determine specific objectives that the new hire is expected within the first 30, 60, and 90 days, in addition to having them explain why the objectives need to be achieved.”

4. Define Success:

Define success criteria and share it early with the new hire. This will provide them further clarity and understanding of their role within the team and the broader organization. If there are situations where a new team member is unsure if they are performing well or meeting expectations, this will only lead to disengagement or lack of focus on the most important business metrics. It is essential that sales leaders ensure new hires have a sound understanding of the full sales cycle, including how marketing and sales/business development score leads, and the criteria that is used to evaluate a qualified opportunity. One of the biggest aspects that sales managers overlook when defining what success looks like to a new hire is how customer success is defined for specific products or services. New reps and BDRs need a high-level and detailed explanation of what success looks like at each level of the sales cycle, and this comes in the form of a ‘sales playbook’.

“One of the biggest aspects that sales managers overlook when defining what success looks like to a new hire is how customer success is defined for specific products or services.”

5. Create a Sales Playbook:

A sales playbook defines the attributes of ideal prospects and existing customers and provides the new team member with specific product knowledge, selling approaches and key selling activities that the organization’s top salespeople use to win accounts and how the new hire can replicate that success within their own territory.

An effective sales playbook provides a detailed understanding of each customer persona along with specific talking points that are proven to engage prospects in meaningful conversations about pain points and product/service solutions. Combined, this information and knowledge will allow the new team member to qualify/disqualify opportunities more efficiently and prioritize prospects that are willing and able to take action on a business challenge. Furthermore, a consistent, repeatable, and scalable sales approach produces greater forecast accuracy and provides new hires the tools required to penetrate accounts as quickly and effectively as possible during the initial ramp time.

6. Resource Management:

As technically savvy Millennials and Generation Zers will soon make up the majority of today’s workforce, sales technology and productivity tools will be cornerstones in every salesperson’s sales toolbox (they already should be). And with hundreds of technological options available for salespeople to engage more efficiently with prospects, the desire by many sales managers is to stack their teams and new hires with all of the latest innovations. Sales leaders need to approach these new technologies with caution though, since more tools does not necessarily equate success. Effective sales managers assess and prioritize tools and technologies that have the most impact and narrow their team’s focus to these only. Three tools which need to be present in a sales force’s technology stack are: CRM, email automation, and business development.

Capitalize on your new employee’s energy and enthusiasm to make their number.

Every new hire that joins your organization brings an undeniable amount of energy, enthusiasm, and an appetite to learn. By implementing a consistent approach to sales onboarding that happens from the moment the offer is accepted, the ability to engage, develop, grow, and retain top performers is increased ten-fold.

The post The 6 Elements of an Effective Sales Onboarding Program appeared first on Peak Sales Recruiting.

The right sales deck can ensure that you get an order instead of just a reply from your prospects. If you thought this was a myth, chances are that your own deck has not been as successful in converting clients as you always though. Do not worry, though, as here are five tips which will help you create a stellar sales pitch presentation deck.

Tell a Story

Who doesn’t like a good story? Rather than stuffing your sales deck with loads of information, present an engaging storyline with an obstacle and resolution. Your audience will thank you by retaining your points and will be more likely to engage with your product. Start by answering the following three basic questions.

1. What issues is the client facing?
2. What information will persuade them to buy your product?
3. What should be shown on the slides?

Use Stunning Images

A picture is worth a thousand words. Most salespeople often ignore this little gem, failing to get the results they want. Your sales pitch has to look stunning and professional, so use images that evoke emotion to leave a lasting impression. Compelling images also capture the audience’s attention, keeping them engaged. When presenting data, remember to keep in simple. Use easy-to-understand graphs and images. Clumsy choice of colors, fonts and graphics will turn your deck into an eyesore.

Customize to Close

Customize each sales pitch according to the needs of your client. Do not just grab the last one you did for a similar client and send it through. Your prospect will be able to tell if your slide content is too generalized. So, include some client-specific or industry-specific examples to show that you have done your research.

Update Your Follow Up

Do you email the same sales deck you use for your face-to-face meetings? Big mistake. When delivering a sales pitch directly, you have the advantage of explaining things. This, however, is almost impossible via email. So, make a more detailed sales deck that is readable and include more information.

Remember Your Goal

Clearly define the goal of your sales pitch and build your sales deck with it in mind. This makes the presentation easy to follow and clearly leads the audience to their next steps. It also allows the presenter to include only information relevant to the presentation.

Keep these tips in mind and you will get an order every time you send your brand new sales deck.

Sales call messaging that resonates with your customers is the best way to connect with more people, with more sincerity. To do this, you need to be catering your sales messaging in a way that shows your true empathy for buyers’ specific needs — and your understanding of their pain points — which will, in turn, allow you to give a value prop that shows how your solution solves those pains.

Your sales call messaging should always be matched to your buyers, and sincere sellers should know the right questions to ask to fully understand those personas priorities. Implement a process to that allows you to dive deeper with each conversation, and ultimately increase your momentum to get over the finish line.

Today on SDR TV, we have SalesLoft SDR Team Lead Jordan Arogeti here to talk you through her three sales call messaging strategies that will help you become a sincere and successful Outbound Sales Development Rep. Check out the video below to learn more:

Video Transcription on Sales Call Messaging Strategies:

Hey, everyone. This is Jordan Arogeti over here at SalesLoft and I’m a Team Lead.

Today we’re going to talk about three tips to be a successful SDR. Other than the obvious of setting a lot of meetings and demos, there’s a lot of things that are actually in your control that you can focus on day to day.

The first tip is your attitude. When you look across the span of industries, whether it’s sales development or something else, your top performers tend to be the most positive. They’re the ones that have that great attitude. No matter where they are in terms of metrics, whether they’ve had a good day or a good week, they see the silver lining.

I’m a big believer that our prospects can really pick up on that sort of energy and that positivity, and really that confidence. The second tip is empathy. We talk a lot about empathy here at SalesLoft, both internally and externally. Externally, it’s so important that when you’re calling these prospects, they’re not expecting your call.

Let’s admit it, no one really likes a cold call. So the more that you can empathize with the position that these people are in, understanding what it is they’re trying to accomplish and what their road blocks are, the more trust you’re going to be able to build and ultimately the better the opportunity.

Really kind of focus on that empathy when you’re on that call. Try to really think about what I can do to really connect with this person. Then, the final tip is consistency. I look at our team over at SalesLoft, and I think to myself that the most the top performers are really the ones that are the most consistent with their day, and structured with their day. That’s primarily because we all know that there’s going to be days or weeks when it doesn’t go as well as we kind of hope.

If you can have consistent behavior, that means keeping up your call volume and email volume, you’re going to set yourself up for success. It allows you to kind of hone your skill and prepare for those rainy days where we know things may not come as easy as possible.

That’s it. I hope these tips are helpful for you and your SDR team, and something to keep in mind day to day. As always, we here at SalesLoft are here to help. Thanks so much for spending some time with me today.

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For a more sales call messaging tips and execution strategies, download the second section of our newest playbook trilogy, The Sales Development Playbook: Executing.

In this section, we share the ins and outs of efficiently using SalesLoft to call and email prospects. Download our free white paper and optimize your sales efforts to start crushing your sales development goals today.

The post Customizing Your Sales Call Messaging is the Key to Customer Connectivity appeared first on SalesLoft.

Recently, I had a conversation with the CRO of an exciting SaaS startup. He had just built a sales development team and was frustrated with the results to date. Prior to his current role, he was Director of Sales for a well-established, big name company. Now at a startup, he faced no name recognition and next-to-no inbound marketing support.

I asked him about the specifics of his SDR strategy and he replied, “I replicated what we had in place at BigCo. It worked extremely well there, so why not here?”

And therein lies the problem.

Sales development is not one size fits all. That conversation is far from unique—I have them all too frequently. So much so, that I created a framework to help companies think through their implementations. Let me set the stage a bit.

In 1925, Edward Strong, PhD, a professor of applied psychology at Stanford University, made the concept of AIDA famous. The four steps in AIDA stand for attention, interest, desire, and action. AIDA is a simple framework for thinking about the stages buyers pass through when making a business-to-business (B2B) purchase.

But nothing about B2B selling is simple anymore.

To be successful today, you must align with the way your prospects think and work (often called the buyer’s journey). I’ve taken a spin on AIDA and built a five-step framework for thinking about the modern B2B buying process. I call it The Five Whys.

	PROSPECT BEFORE	PROSPECT AFTER	CORRESPONDING SALES STAGE
Why listen?	Crazy busy	Curious	Introductory meeting
Why care?	Curious	Interested	Discovery call
Why change?	Interested	Active	Pipeline opportunity
Why you?	Active	Committed to you	Forecast opportunity
Why now?	Committed to you	Committed to now	A win

As we walk through The Five Whys, put yourself in your prospect's shoes.

Column two (Prospect Before) is where prospects start when you begin communicating with them. Column three (Prospect After) is where they hopefully end up if all goes according to plan. The final column is how the Prospect After stage aligns to a traditional sales process.

Looking at the sales process this way, we can appreciate just how much effort it takes to move a company from prospect to customer. We can also appreciate what a journey prospects have to make from “unexpected sales call” to “this is something I want to pursue” and finally to “replacing the status quo.”

There’s one piece I want you to pay special attention to. Notice just how distinct the first two whys (Listen and Care) are from the last three (Change, You, and Now).

	PROSPECT BEFORE	PROSPECT AFTER
Why listen?	Crazy busy	Curious
Why care?	Curious	Interested
Why change?	Interested	Active
Why you?	Active	Committed to you
Why now?	Committed to you	Committed to now

The final three whys (Change, You, and Now) are about gaining commitment and closing a sale. They are the domain of account executives. But take another look at the first two whys (Listen and Care). These two are about opening doors and sparking interest.

At first glance, they might seem similar, but there’s quite a bit of distance between the two.

Building pipeline is tough work.

Reps have to reach often unsuspecting (a.k.a. cold) prospects and get them to stop what they are doing and listen. That’s miles easier said than done. Think of all the people competing for your attention on a daily basis: your family, your employees, your peers, your boss, and countless sales reps trying to get “just twenty minutes on your calendar to discuss your strategy for thus and so.” Regardless of what you’re shooting for—an introductory meeting, technology demo, or fully qualified opportunity—your reps’ first hurdle is to arouse curiosity and get prospects to listen.

The essence of your sales development strategy is deciding how far down The Five Whys your reps can and should take prospects. If you’re an established company then you can certainly consider having SDRs handle the first two whys.

But, if you are a startup and/or your sales organization desperately needs at-bats, you may just want to focus on why listen. Where to draw the line is a decision that you’ll have to make and likely revisit as your team grows.

I briefly shared The Five Whys with the CRO I mentioned earlier. He got where I was going immediately and committed to revising his model to reflect the realities of his new market. I suspect his SDRs will be much more successful and his account executives will be happier campers with much fuller calendars.

All it took was embracing the fact that “doing” sales development is much less about copying and pasting bits and pieces from other companies – and much more about choosing the right goals, plans, and actions for your unique market dynamics.

Every organization on the planet knows what they do. Some of them understand how they do it—their USP. Very few are able to articulate why they do it—their raison d’ȇtre. Yet, people don’t purchase because of what you do—they purchase because of your why.

In one of the best TED talks of all time, Simon Sinek challenges companies to live out of their “why”—their cause, their driving belief. It’s also one of the fundamental elements we emphasize with our clients. To be successful in inbound marketing, you absolutely must have agreement about your “why” as an organization—and you’ve got to live out of it.

Why Your Why Is Critical to Successful Marketing

Why is your “why” important for successfully doing inbound marketing? After all, inbound is all about targeting personas with the right content to generate more leads, right? That’s true, but knowing your personas is only one piece of the puzzle. You also need to know yourself—specifically, why you do what you do.

Making a purchase, specifically large-ticket items or B2B services, requires a stronger emotional attachment by the buyer. Relationships are key. Clarifying your “why” communicates who you are and what you stand for. No one buys from Apple simply for their product—they buy from Apple because Apple believes in thinking differently, and that “why” drives everything Apple does in designing their products.

Inbound marketing is based on attracting the right buyers. If your entire purpose is just to make money, that’s what you’ll communicate to potential buyers. Gaining more traffic, leads, and sales are just results—they’re byproducts of an amazing experience that resonates with your buyer personas.

To create that resonance, you need to understand why your company does what it does, and then align that with your ideal customers and personas. This is vital in B2B and professional services, because most companies have little to differentiate them from competitors.

What’s Your Why?

As you begin to implement inbound marketing, spend time on your company to help clarify what your “why” is and why your “why” matters to your personas. Gaining alignment internally will enable your marketing and sales teams to deliver a cohesive message that truly resonates with your core buyers.

As Simon Sinek puts it, the goal isn’t to do business with everybody who needs what you have. The goal is to do business with people who believe what you believe.

What do sales and dating have in common?

More than you’d think.

Imagine you’re walking down the street when you see a guy (or girl) who seems like someone you’d like to date. You would never (I hope) stop them and say, “You seem awesome. Let’s move in together.”

Whoa. It’s common sense that this approach is way too much way too soon, and probably won’t result in anything good. Either that person could have been a good fit for you but you’ve scared them off with your aggression, or they’re not a good fit but you never had a chance to find out because you dived right in.

So why do so many salespeople take this pell-mell approach to selling? Taking the time to research your buyers and understand what they’re looking for -- and whether it matches what you offer -- is crucial to a successful sale, just like it’s key to a healthy romantic relationship.

Instead, slow down and target a specific market, personalize prospecting to different segments within that market, and reach out in a way that’s optimized for your buyer. Check out the infographic below from Zoominfo for a step-by-step guide on how to engage prospects the right way.

Think about this: 89 percent of workers admit to wasting time at work, and well over 50 percent say they waste more than one hour per day on non-work related tasks. While I know that not every single moment can be spent on tasks, this is a significant amount of time lost.

When it comes to the sales team, wasted time equals wasted chances to grow the company. Add in the fact that each sales rep at any given company is not going to convert every lead, and a lot of opportunities are undoubtedly missed. There is a simple solution to improve outbound sales: Ensure that every rep inside your sales team is as focused and as productive as possible.

To do that, I suggest not only making sure sales employees have the proper mindset but also that they’re implementing an efficient process and utilizing the right tactics and tools.

The Right Mindset and Process

Attempting to be more productive at outbound sales simply won’t work if a team isn’t motivated, understanding of the customer base and working within a positive atmosphere. Address these things first.

Keep the Mind Fresh

Focus is a problem for any employee. It shocked me to discover that a little distraction, such as checking email, going on Twitter or taking a personal phone call, disrupts work for an average of over 23 minutes. While research has shown that breaks can improve productivity and creativity, the data on work interruptions is showing that too much time is spent on these breaks and that some are simply avoiding work.

So where’s the balance?

First of all, if you’re not time-blocking, you’re losing hours of productivity. Sales guru Mike Weinberg advocates for time-blocking if you want to take back ownership of your calendar. Sales sage Jeb Blount proclaims that “Time blocking is transformational for salespeople.”

Next, implement activities that refresh the mind and keep sales employees engaged. Hold workout sessions at work, as exercise sharpens the mind and increases focus. At PersistIQ, we constantly take 10-minute breaks to stroll around the block. We also have a pull-up bar mounted in the mainspace. Aside from a physical workout, a mental workout can be just as refreshing. Run brainstorming sessions where all salespeople are encouraged to share ideas — without judgment and in a laid-back environment.

Understand What Buyers Want

Thanks to the good old Internet, buyers are more informed than ever. To reach them, you have to ask better, smarter questions.

Of course, this is easier said than done. PersistIQ’s CEO and Cofounder, Pouyan Salehi, was recently interviewed for the Accelerate! Podcast hosted by Andy Paul. In it, Andy asks Pouyan what is one book that he recommend all salespeople read, and his answer was Question Based Selling. This made me revisit that book, and one of my favorite chapters was on curiosity.

The author, Thomas Freese, posits that one of your goals in conversations with prospects should be to ask questions that earn you the right to probe further. Begin conversations with questions that are easy for you to ask and for your prospect to answer. Once you have earned the right to probe further, escalate the focus of your questions to increase the value of your sales conversations. Freese calls this “ Escalate the Value of Your Questions.”

There are a few types of questions, each serving a different purpose and should be used at different times. First, Freese makes the distinction between Status Questions vs. Issue Questions. A status question probes for specific pieces of information that will help reveal the current “status” of a prospect or lead and are low in value. Issue questions begin to uncover potential issues that are in need of viable solutions. Examples of Issue Questions include:

• “What’s the most significant business issue you currently face?”
• “What would you like to accomplish with this type of product?”
• “To what extent is growth a factor in your business?”
• “What other challenges do you foresee?”

“To What Extent” is relatively straightforward yet highly valuable to you, “To what extent is {{relevant issue}} important?” is a technique that uncovers needs. By asking this, you will have successfully escalated the focus of your questions.

Moving on to the next stage, Implication Questions get prospects to think about the impact of an issue, further into the prospect’s thoughts, feelings, and opinions. Here, get the prospect to explore what might happen if an issue isn’t addressed.

Here are some examples of Implication Questions.

• “What would happen if your computer system went down and was unavailable for an entire day?”
• “Have you ever calculated how much money every hour of unscheduled downtime is costing your company?”
• “How does system downtime affect your customers?”
• “What would happen if your data was lost completely?”

The more implications you uncover, the easier it is for prospects to justify a favorable purchase decision.

Lastly, Solution Questions help you lock in the next step in the sales process. Focus this discussion on the benefits that will come from having your solution. Solution Questions motivate the prospects to move forward by focusing their attention on solving the problem.

“Mr. Jenkins, if I could show you how to solve each of the issues we just discussed, would you be willing to take the next step?”

Whatever the next step in your sales process is, Solution Questions are excellent closing tools that use the potential value of your offering to secure the prospect’s commitment to engage further.

Take these questions, or questions from another framework, such as SPIN Selling, then adapt and adopt them to make it your own. Personally, I advise against hard selling and relying on scripts. Instead, I suggest that a sales rep try to offer a solution to the customer’s problem. This can go a long way in bringing back customers, as 82 percent of clients state that quick issue resolution is a major reason for their loyalty to a company.

Build a Productive Culture

Building culture is hard, but there’s one thing that I know: teams will evolve to emulate the personalities of the leaders. I have learned that any sales team needs leadership much more than someone micro-managing their tasks. Create a comfortable environment where ideas can be readily exchanged. Hire talented sales reps that can work well with one another. Be clear about what is expected of the team, and meet regularly to analyze key performance indicators, handle issues and brainstorm. Coach in the moment and cite the success of high performing sales reps to motivate other workers.

And when the time comes, reward your team and celebrate success milestones. The happier and more engaged your sales team is, the more your company will succeed. This stat proves it: In 2014, average revenue for the Fortune 100 “Best Companies to Work For” jumped a whopping 22.2 percent.

The Right Tactics and Tools

Being successful at inside and outbound sales also involves understanding the buying process, keeping in touch with current clients and making use of technological tools. Doing these things, along with those mentioned above, can lead to crushing your quota.

Capitalize on Referrals

If you have a common acquaintance with a contact, see if you can get a referral. Referrals offer an “in” that just doesn’t exist when you cold call or cold email a potential client. With research showing that 84% of B2B decision makers start their buying processes with referrals. That’s how influential a common connection can be. I absolutely believe that using such contacts will increase sales.

There are a few quick rules for referrals. First, timing is very important. A client or customer is most likely to refer your business when they’re on an emotional high, which would be right after you’ve implemented your product/service for them or after they’ve had their first “win” with your product/service. In regard to timing, this is pretty obvious, but what most people miss is the timing with respect to the person that your client is referring you to. Here’s what I mean. Most referrals are to people who are either already evaluating and on trial with other solutions, which means your chances are slim to none, or happy with their solution, which give you very similar chances. The goal is to get a referral to the decision maker immediately after they’ve experienced a trigger event that put them into the window of dissatisfaction.

In their book SHiFT, Craig Elias and Tibor Shanto tell us that in order to get the right referrals, we need to find “people in the know.” These people are typically complementors, competition or connections. Complementors selling similar product or services, but aren’t direct competitors. Often, the purchase of one product/service oftens leads to a situation that connects directly to your service.

Next is your competition. This may sound crazy, but hear me out. This isn’t your direct competition, but rather a product/service that provides a similar solution to a problem that you solve. Think of it this way — not everyone is a perfect fit for your product, so rather than leaving the buyer high and dry, why not refer to a “competitor” who may be a better solution in this instance? Now, find a competitor who will reciprocate.

The last of the “people in the know” who will refer us to decision makers at the right time are connections. This in anyone who has regular access to and sell to the people that you want to turn into customers. This isn’t just the typical individual who goes to all the networking events, but rather someone who sells products/services that decision makers who experience a trigger event have bought or are going to buy. For example, a real estate agent closes a home with a pregnant couple. Guess who will be in the market for life insurance soon? To find these people ask yourself, “What else do decision makers who are dissatisfied with their current solution need?” and “Who else has customers I want?”

It’s about utilizing your existing network to drive growth from outbound sales. Buyers will be more likely to engage with you if they know someone that knows you. It’s an age-old truth.

Keep Connected With Existing Customers

Building loyalty with the right customers is key. Acquiring a new client can be anywhere from five to 25 times more expensive than maintaining an existing relationship. Furthermore, word of mouth is powerful, and if your current buyers are satisfied, they’ll naturally spread the word to family, friends and colleagues. We make sure our sales and customer success teams regularly supports current customers via various methods, including:

• Hosting in-person events
• Online webinars and trainings
• Product updates
• Exclusive access beta programs/products
• Just saying thank you

Make Use of Technology

Your sales team should be using the latest apps to improve outbound sales productivity. PersistIQ, for instance, is a robust top-of-funnel platform, as it works to help you turn cold leads into qualified opportunities. Calendly is convenient for mid sales stage support, as the tool makes scheduling meetings, demos and appointments with customers seamless. And SteelBrick provides excellent software for the late sales stage by making quote creation simple and quick.

In addition to these, there are lots of other software programs and apps that can be utilized to make you more effective and close more deals. Explore some of these and more in a post we wrote titled How to Build the Perfect Sales Stack for Your Company.I don’t advise you overload your sales reps with programs to learn, but do provide them with appropriate tools to take their sales game to the next level.

For marketers, the conversion funnel is one of the best tools for understanding consumer behavior and building long-term relationships. It serves as a concise map of the customer journey and informs what kind of content your team should produce across your social channels. You can use each stage – awareness, consideration, conversion, loyalty, and advocacy – to think through the kinds of content best suited to the needs of that particular mile marker in the buyers’ journey. The goal is to continually adjust your strategy at each stage to stack the deck in favor of an eventual sale and longterm customer relationship.

The top of the funnel is wide, representing early-stage contact with a large audience. As the funnel narrows, each band represents a point of contact that’s one step closer to your goal. Prospects reach the end of the funnel when they make a purchase.

In order to initiate the customer journey, content managers and creatives must first identify the type of content that readers will find most valuable and engaging at each step in the funnel. The best place to start is with your customer personas. Think through each persona’s journey and identify their needs. What information are they looking for? What do they find entertaining? What problems do they face on a regular basis? How can you solve them?

Below we walk you through the essentials of the conversion funnel so you can map out your own organization’s framework, and tie the most effective content to each stage of the funnel. We’ll also show you why the content at each stage is dependent on the type of business using two hypothetical cases – an enterprise software company (B2B) and a fashion eCommerce brand (B2C).

Step 1: Awareness

Think back to your first date. How did you dress? Where did you eat? What did you say? Chances are you carefully thought through every detail of the night. The same approach is fitting for the first step of the customer journey because it’s your one chance to grab the reader’s attention and make a positive impression.

You don’t close on the first date. At this stage, your content is focused on providing your audience with valuable information or entertaining content, not a sales pitch. Use short and catchy micro-content on social media, blog content, and evergreen material with long-tail keywords that will earn shares and help your audience solve their problems.

Experiment with content until you find the right balance for your audience. How are your customers hearing about you? Which social channels are they active on? What type of content are they looking for?

Unilever and Red Bull both excel at creating top-funnel content that raises awareness around their brands. Unilever launched the YouTube channel All Things Hair, an online space where “women could get relevant answers to their hair-care queries through high-quality video content.” The channel features popular YouTube beauty bloggers who contribute tutorials, styling tips, hair care advice, and inspiration. The channel became the most subscribed-to-hair channel in the UK and Canada, and videos receive over 1 million views. The company doesn’t use it to advertise their products, but to provide their audience with valuable information.

Similarly, Red Bull is pushing the boundaries of extreme sports, sponsoring events and showcasing the world’s most innovative athletes. Their documentary snowboarding film,The Art of Flight, explored new locations, featured new tricks, showcased the best athletes, and redefined the sport. Red Bull doesn’t get the athletes to talk about how much they love the energy drink. Instead, it gives their audience what they want – action sports cinema.

To be clear, awareness isn’t limited to upper-funnel content. Depending on the industry and customer base, content that drives awareness might be found throughout the funnel. As Harvard Business Review has noted, marketing has evolved from mere promotion to encompass multi-dimensional social influence, non-linear purchase paths, non-customer advocates, and ongoing relationships.

Using two hypothetical companies, we’ve illustrated how you might come up with an upper-funnel plan for both B2B and B2C brands:

B2B Enterprise Software:

A B2B company might want to write blog content that solves a common problem for your readers or outlines best practices. The blog is a great space to feature both in-house writers and guest posts from industry experts. Promote your blog content across Twitter and LinkedIn, and ask guest authors to promote their guest post on their social channels so you can access new networks. Remember, images are a great way to grab attention so try to incorporate images, video content, or infographics. Q&As are also a great way to leverage the power of influencers and raise awareness around your brand.

B2C Fashion eCommerce

A fashion-focused B2C company should target social media sites like Pinterest, Instagram, and Facebook. Use blog posts to spotlight the latest trends that can help buyers make smarter decisions when they go shopping. Evergreen content might include interviews with designers, tips for seasonal style, or guides to dressing for specific occasions (like prom, outdoor adventures, or a European vacation).

Step 2: Consideration

Though consideration is arguably one of the most important parts of the conversion funnel, this critical stage is often overlooked in favor of the awareness and purchase stages. However, mid-funnel content bridges the gap between the first contact and the final purchase. This is the time when prospects are sizing you up and evaluating whether they will buy your product.

This is where you need to step up and create great content that meets their needs and acts as a catalyst to conversion. it’s also a great time to introduce gated content so that you can collect data about your audience and provide personalized experiences.

Ideally, at this stage your audience is aware of your brand and are more willing to invest time in longer-form content. Consider using videos, webinars, guides, articles, quizzes, and interactive content to inform your readers while simultaneously learning more about your audience. Once you have an email address you can target them with personalized information that is more likely to pull them down the funnel.

Here at ScribbleLive, we like to offer webinars and gated ebooks to help our customers learn how to do content marketing effectively while also learning more about them and what kind of content they’re looking for so we can better cater to their needs. Our ebooks often use our own data science tech and link to our blog posts but the focus remains on providing valuable information, not selling.

B2B Enterprise Software:

If you were a B2B Enterprise Software company, you might consider hosting a webinar series about the five critical technology opportunities businesses can capitalize on this year. You could build interest and attendance by promoting the webinars via e-newsletters and social media. you could also set up a gated registration page to collect information, connect with prospects, and send follow-up reminders to maximize attendance.

B2C Fashion eCommerce:

A fashion brand might publish a summer fashion ebook showcasing the season’s trends, establishing your company as a thought leader. Make the content accessible only through a registration site that collects email and other demographic information that can be used for future follow-up and a more personalized experience.

Step 3: Conversion

At this stage of the conversion funnel it’s time to showcase the power of your product. You might not like to brag, but you need to show your audience why you’re the right choice. Highlight the value of your brand through content like case studies, live chats, and product guides. Ideally, you should incorporate quotes or endorsements from well-known brands and figures, and positive reviews from customers to build trust.

TOMS shoes does a great job of pulling customers down the funnel because their product helps their customers feel good about making a purchase. For every pair of TOMS shoes purchased, the company donates a pair of shoes to a person in need. Their program has expanded to include medical services, eyeglasses, water, safe birth kits, and anti-bullying programs. Their blog is a collection of stories that highlights the personal stories of people from around the world who have benefited from TOMS shoes. They also use social media to showcase the people and programs that the company has created. This helps the customer feel good about purchasing the product. Their blog doesn’t overtly sell shoes, but it does help the reader understand why they might be the right choice.

B2B Enterprise Software:

Conduct interviews with some of your best customers and turn them into a case study that showcases the pain points customers faced before doing business with you. Highlight how they have succeeded as a result of the relationship with your company. The guide should outline the problem, how your product solved it, and any unique case studies for that particular customer.

B2C Fashion eCommerce:

Create an infographic that outlines how your brand solves a problem. Do you have better prices? Do you use organic materials? Are you sweatshop-free? Are proceeds going to a particular cause? How can you help your audience feel good about purchasing your clothing over another brand? Get personal and put a face to the clothing. Expand your “About Us” page to include photos and biographies of each designer and link to the e-commerce page where shoppers can purchase their creations.

Step 4: Loyalty

Congratulations! Now that you’ve made a sale you have the opportunity to create a brand advocate! This means you’ve got to keep the wow factor coming by providing a solid product, great customer service, and awesome content that keeps your business top of mind.

Keep in touch with your customers after the purchase through social media and email newsletters. use these mediums to show your followers some love by sharing their content on your feed or asking for their input. This can help you create advocates, one of the most powerful ways to find future customers and strengthen relationships with people lingering in the “consideration” phase.

Building a community, creating valuable content, and encouraging engagement will take you farther than any gimmick strictly intending to squeeze one more sale out of your audience.

B2B Enterprise Software:

Follow up after a purchase with a personal thank you via email. This message should contain all of your pertinent social media channels with a call to action asking them to stay connected. You can also send out a weekly e-newsletter that gives them exclusive access to mid-funnel content, notifications about new products, details about upcoming events, or relevant blog posts. You might also consider creating a forum where customers can give feedback. Make sure that you answer comments and use the feedback to improve and optimize your product and buyer’s journey.

B2C Fashion eCommerce:

Send a thank you coupon with a discount on the next purchase as part of their email receipt, and encourage them to follow you on social media. Use social media to showcase the content created by your followers on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Vine, or Snapchat. Retweet content from your followers and organize a contest that asks for UGC, allowing your fans to upload photos of themselves wearing clothing for a chance to win a free product. You can also use this space to collect feedback from your advocates and get input on future products. What color palette do you prefer? What styles are you looking for? What’s important to your customer base?

At the end of the day, you have to show that it’s about more than just the bottom line. The goal here is to be genuine and sincere while positioning your brand as a clear leader based not on your word (or great content), but on the strength of the products, services and customer service you provide. This will build trust and empower your loyal customers to become spokespeople for your brand and its mission.

A customer’s journey is never clear cut, but the conversion funnel serves as a basic content framework that can help you meet their needs and build a strong relationship along the way.

The road to advanced SEO is long and exciting. There are significant milestones during the journey to becoming a master SEO blackbelt. From barely knowing what SEO stands for to orchestrating custom experiments, a lot of growth happens!

What’s your SEO belt level? Are you ready to move up to the next one? Here’s what you can expect to experience on your journey through the seven belts of becoming an SEO ninja.

White Belt: Your First Introduction to Search Engine Optimization

You want to make a serious website but either haven’t started yet, or you’ve started and failed. Through failure or intimidation you realize that you don’t know what you don’t know. You look up “how to rank in search”… then immediately look up what “SEO” means. The amount of information seems endless and intimidating at this point.

For more training:

• Curb some intimidation with this simple guide.
• Learn to start doing SEO with this post from TrendBlog.

Yellow Belt: Knowing What You Don’t Know

SEO is a prominent part of your current vocabulary. The Google Keyword Planner Tool rocks—what a head start! You copy keywords into a spreadsheet, along with search volume. You don’t fully understand what “Keyword Competition” is, but you know for sure that you want low competition and high search volume.

Another thing you aren’t clear on is why you can’t use a lot of keywords. You know that it’s a black hat technique but that’s about it.

You like the Yoast SEO Plugin because it helps you remember everything you need to optimize on a page. There’s a lot that goes into on-page SEO, so this tool is a big help.

For more training:

• Visit the Yoast blog for information about different SEO topics like Content SEO and General SEO.

Orange Belt: Starting to Understand Why

Matt Cutts is a freaking genius!

Keyword stuffing is bad because it cheapens your content quality. In fact, putting keywords in the footer is bad—so is buying links, duplicate content, and having low word count. You’ve mastered these and about a dozen other SEO ranking factors.

You basically understand black hat and white hat SEO, but you don’t have a strong strategy to ensure top performance SEO practices.

What are canonical tags? When would someone set up nofollow/noindex tags?

Structured data is starting to make sense, or at least you feel like it is. You work with designers and developers to make sure there’s quality content above the fold and that page titles keep keywords towards the beginning. You understand the importance of using alternative text in images for users who need a screen reader, but mainly focus on the benefit of it within image search.

You’ve heard that meta descriptions don’t really impact SEO directly, but they kind of do somehow? Also, subdomains can be a good way to separate site data, but it can also hurt SEO… you think (still figuring this one out).

For more training:

• Get a better grasp of structured data. The Schema.org Structured Data resource from Moz has tons of great information, tools, and external resources to help you own structured data markup.

Green Belt: Seeing a Hint of Advanced SEO Through Observing Trends

At this point you have a pretty firm understanding of using schema.org structured data to put semantic context around your content. Your goal is to have a fully customized knowledge graph so that when you rank you seriously own the page. You add code for events, products, reviews, apps, and more like a guru of knowledge graph manipulation.

Maybe putting keywords at the beginning of titles isn’t as important as you originally thought.

Crawling websites with various tools to find ideas for newer, stronger keywords can give you powerful data-driven insights to keyword research by identifying how your competitors are ranking for a given keyword and where it appears on their site.

You use Search Console and Raven to compare keywords that people are actually using to find your website. You compare impressions and clicks for each keyword while being able to weigh these metrics against local and global keyword search volume. Maybe search volume isn’t the more important driving factor of traffic to your site.

You feel like your strategy is stronger than ever, your intention is clarified, and you WILL find the best keywords no matter what!

For more training:

• Start looking into semantic based keyword research to begin peeking into the meaning behind the keywords. Here’s an awesome slideshare by Catalyst Digital to help you get into the headspace.

Blue Belt: Taking SEO to the Next Level

Rand Fishkin is a freaking genius! You can’t wait for Whiteboard Fridays—it’s an important part of your Saturday morning ritual.

Keyword strategy and strategic markup are second nature now, and you own backlinking strategy:

• You pick apart your backlinks and the backlinks of your competitors using at least three backlink tools because you know that diversifying your research gives you better results.
• You contact people who misspell your company name in anchor text and ask them to use your company name spelled correctly—or better yet, with KEYWORDS!
• You compare your backlinks to your competitors to find opportunities for growth.
• You help fix broken links on certain sites in hopes of gaining a backlink.

Your posts are syndicated and you’re seeing an increase in traffic.

You self-canonical tag everything unless there’s a strategic reason not to, and in those cases you set a canonical and non-canonical page.

While keyword-optimized meta descriptions don’t impact SEO directly, they influence other factors that do. The concept of website behavior is becoming very important to you and your efforts.

UX is way more important than you could have ever imagined and you start looking at tools like xSort or OptimalSort. Good Information Architecture complements a good UX and you see how that’s more important than a mechanically SEO’d website.

A well structured website augments your SEO efforts. You leverage internal linking to enhance crawlability from bots like the Google Bot.

By this point, you’re working with developers and content creators frequently.

You see some reasons to use subdomains, but for the most part you try to avoid them.

For more training:

• Take a look at Rand Fishkin’s blog on the Moz website.

Brown Belt: Becoming Nimble with Technical SEO and Complex Data Analysis

All of your sites are intentionally optimized while not being over-optimized. You’ve mastered the balance of well crafted organic and optimized content. Your SEO isn’t robotic anymore.

You let people use whatever anchor text they want without asking them to fix it because you know that Google observes your repertoire of backlinks and having spelling errors or irrelevant keywords actually makes you look like a part of the internet community.

The Yoast plug-in is a guide, not doctrine.

You begin to wonder why Rand Fishkin is such a genius. You don’t entirely trust Matt Cutts.

Page depth per session is a focus of yours. SEO is only the beginning. You understand its purpose is to rank in search and to drive traffic. But then what? You’re focused on CRO and you deeply care what people are doing on your site.

You pay attention to demographics and track the behavior of your most qualified visitors. You’ve moved past increasing visitors—in fact, if anything, you think you might have too many unqualified visitors.

You do keyword research less frequently, and when you do you’re focusing on searcher intent. Your efforts are all about the visitors now.

You pick apart visitor flows, goal funnel visualization helps identify the meaning behind visitors’ actions, and heat maps are a way of life.

Time on page, pages per session, entrance pages, exit page, and the multi-dimensional analysis of them are effortless.

You rely on data, UX tools, and website psychology to drive conversions to the stratosphere by heavily focusing your strategic efforts on ingenious CTA placement and design.

As a brown belt, you respect the importance of keyword research, but it’s a grain of sand on a beach.

For more training:

• Create a website and start growing through self-guided research. It’s time to perform some experiments of your own.

Black Belt: Creating a Universe of SEO Mastery Through Experimentation

Backlinking is more like PR. You collaborate, and encourage your clients to do the same, with like-minded organizations to perform studies to create knowledge that you can share together to build authority while gaining brand awareness. You incorporate quality work of professionals that you respect—even the parts that weren’t officially published.

Matt Cutts is alright. You comprehend the complexity of SEO and understand that the answers he supplies are as true as they could possibly be. Having one source with all the answers is irrational, especially since Google admits to not fully understanding how some of their ranking functions work.

You’re comfortable saying “I don’t know” if a client asks you a specific question that you don’t know the answer to.

You run SEO experiments on your website to test SEO concepts that you’ve read about—partly because you can’t rely solely on expert insights anymore. Using fancy tools in stand-alone research is insufficient without having context that’s relevant to your exact purpose.

At this point you spend your time experimenting and creating the insights that will drive decisions that are in your company’s best interests.

Where are you in your journey to SEO Ninja mastery? What’s the next step for you? You probably found yourself in a couple of belts—that’s okay. Use this guide to fill in the gaps and move up in mastery.

There’s nothing worse than seeing a familiar face and having no idea what their name is. No, wait -- there’s nothing worse than seeing a familiar face, having no idea what their name is, and then hearing them call you by name.

But good news: Being horrible with names isn’t an incurable condition. On the contrary, there are several steps you can take to transform yourself into a master of recall -- so you’ll avoid those awkward “Hey … um … you!” moments and make everyone you meet feel memorable. Here’s how.

Strategy #1: Create Visual Hooks

This easy yet insanely effective technique comes from Nelson Dellis, four-time winner of the USA Memory Championship. It works by creating a visual reminder of someone’s name.

First, the next time you meet someone new, pick out the most memorable part of their face. That could be anything from an unusual eye color to a large mole, so long as the feature is noticeable and permanent (i.e., not someone’s dark lipstick or scruffy beard).

Next, turn the person’s name into an image. For instance, let’s say you meet a man named Harrison; you might picture Harrison Ford, or a “hairy son.”

Finally, take that image and mentally “attach” it to the person’s face, using the prominent feature as an anchor. If Harrison has a mole on his nose, for instance, you could imagine Harrison Ford on top of the mole. Visual hook created.

The next time you run into each other, you’ll see the mole, think of Harrison Ford, and bam -- Harrison’s name is on the tip of your tongue.

And for maximum impact, don’t be afraid to get weird with your images. From personal experience, it’s much easier to remember Britney Spears dancing on top of someone’s nose than a smiley face on someone’s cheek.

Strategy #2: Use an App

Unlike humans, computers have perfect memories. So if you’re always forgetting people, download Remember, an app that’ll store all those connections for you.

Every time you meet a new person, enter their name in the app, their contact info if you have it, and a note (maybe about something you two discussed, or a cool detail they shared). The app will automatically search Facebook to find a picture of your new acquaintance, so you’ll also have a visual to reference.

Remember keeps a log of the people you meet each week; to stay up-to-date, just swipe through the list while you’re waiting in line or hanging out on the couch. Plus, it automatically keeps track of where you met each person and will send you notifications when you go back -- for example, “Last time you were at the Copley Convention Center, you met Frank Underwood and Garrett Walker.”

Need to remember a specific set of people? Check out Name Shark. This app lets you create virtual flashcards for your contacts so you can test yourself on their names. While you probably don’t need a flashcard for every single person you meet, Name Shark comes in handy when you’re preparing for an event or prepping for a demo. Automatically upload contacts from Facebook or your phone, or enter them manually.

Strategy #3: Sneakily Get Them to Say Their Name

Even the best of us occasionally blank on a name, but that doesn’t mean you need to give up and ask for it. (Or worse, try to struggle through the conversation without it.)

Whenever I can’t remember a name, I look for an opportunity to introduce the person to someone else. The key is introduce the person you know to the person you don’t, rather than the other way around. If you follow this order, the unknown person will naturally introduce herself.

For example:

Me: This is my coworker, Aaron. He’s also obsessed with Man vs. Wild.

Person Whose Name I’ve Forgotten: Another Bear Grylls fan? I like you already. I’m Abby.

Of course, there are plenty of situations where this strategy won’t work. Maybe you just casually bumped into someone while shopping or running errands, or there’s no one around to introduce.

In these situations, ask, “Hey, how do you spell your name?”

They’ll usually respond by spelling it -- which obviously reminds you of their name -- then ask, “Why?”

Casually reply, “Oh, for some reason I thought you spelled it [alternate spelling]. My friend with the same name spells it that way, and he is always curious to meet other people who do, too.” Awkward moment averted.

As Dale Carnegie said, “Remember that a person's name is to that person the sweetest and most important sound in any language.” Walk around with these three tricks up your sleeve, and everyone you will meet will automatically like you a little more.

Want to spread your news to a journalist? For some reason, these people respond to tweets -- which they'd never do with email.

As Instagram advertising was introduced by its parent company, Facebook, about half a year ago, many companies jumped onto the bandwagon of Instagram marketing. However, to be good in Instagram marketing, you have to play a totally different ball game from Facebook marketing.

Here are some tips to succeed in your brand’s Instagram marketing campaign!

#1 What’s The Theme of Your Brand?

Especially if you are pretty new in Instagram with less amount of followers, it is important to decide on what are the theme you want for your brand. That is how you want others to recognise your brand for? Nowadays, attention level on social media is getting little and little by day as we have too much information and too many nice pictures to look at. Therefore, it is important to let consumers know what your brand represents in a snap.

Do not aim to be a jack of all trades where you show all kinds of photos whether they are related or not related to your targeted consumers. Show only the photos to your targeted consumers such that they will respond and buy your products and services eventually.

#2 Good Picture Matters

In the age of the Instagrammers, your business will only survive if you have nice looking pictures! Invest in quality cameras or engage the professionals to take nice photos of your products and services. Such investment will definitely pays off in the long run. For small business and startups without high budget to engage professionals to do the work, invest in yourself and learn to take nice photos whether it is portrait, landscape, selfies or wefies!

#3 Hashtag It!

You must know these two types of hashtags. First is the brand derived hashtag. This may not have many people search for it but it is highly relevant to your brand. This is because the brand derived hashtag gives your brand an identity in the infinite hashtag space on Instagram. The other hashtag you need to know will be the popular search tags that your targeted consumers as well as your competitors will be using on a constant basis. By following the top two tips above (having a brand theme and post good pictures), the probability of your pictures to get on the Top (popular) post section of the popular tags will be very high. Thereby, driving more potential consumers attention to your pictures and your Instagram account.

#4 Advertise on Instagram

Instagram advertising is a totally different ballgame from Facebook advertising. Your sponsored ad will appear in the Instagram home feed of the accounts (demographics) that you targeted. Unlike Facebook, you can’t advertise for people to become your Instagram followers. Therefore, to make full use of your Instagram ads, you have to have a strong call to action in your content. What you want them to do? To follow you or sign up in your website? Indicate clearly in your ad content. The other thing is make use of brand derived hashtags in your ads. This will help consumers to understand more about your brand by looking at more pictures from your brand derived hashtags. Personally, I prefer the Instagram advertising model to Facebook advertising model though they belonged to the same company. This is because, it will prevent the current problem face which is the saturation of advertisers sharing the same pie of consumers in the longer run.

#5 Grow Quality Followers

The key success factor on Instagram is definitely the total number of followers your brand have. However, the important factor of all, is the quality of the followers. Ask yourself are they targeted consumers? Do the followers consistently liked your photos? Quality followers will lead to high sales conversion on Instagram. It will explain why two similar brands with the same amount of followers, have different variation in the engagement rate. For example Brand A and Brand B have 5000 followers on Instagram. However, whenever Brand A post a picture on Instagram, only less than 100 followers will like the picture. But when Brand B post a picture, there is more than 200 likes for that. This clearly shows that Brand A does not have quality followers or targeted consumers compared to Brand B. Therefore Brand A needs to revise its Instagram marketing strategy.

#6 Locate It!

Make good use of the location tags. Be everywhere you want to be or where your targeted consumers are. This easy tip goes well for FMCG products for example a mineral water brand. Place your product in different parts of the world and “instagram locate” it! (I guessed that’s the term for it. Haha!) Or you can also encourage your fans to post a picture of them with your product and tag their location wherever they are. This will somehow plant many “mini location flags” of your brand on the Instagrammy world. Conquer the world!

#7 Like Your Fan’s Updates

Randomly check out the latest updates of your Instagram followers. We are talking about social media where people and people interact or brand to people interact. Therefore, a brand has to be personified. Your instagram followers may be celebrating their birthdays, having a new born in the family, a new haircut, getting married or reach a milestone in their lives. Celebrate with them. Double click to like the updates if you find them meaningful. For that simple like, your fans will definitely appreciate it and love your brand for life.

And there you have, the 7 tips of Instagram Marketing! Happy Instagramming!

At every step of the sales process, your sales team is sending emails. There are email introductions, emails to schedule phone calls and demos, and emails to answer product questions.

With sales reps handling hundreds of accounts per day, it’s no surprise the average worker spends 30 hours a week checking email. That’s a huge chunk of time to be dedicated to your inbox, which means an open opportunity to seriously level up your sales team’s productivity.

At SalesforceIQ, we’re all about automation and productivity. And as the driving force of predictive analytics for Salesforce, our team is constantly searching for unique solutions to the common problems facing the modern salesperson. So, in this post I thought, what better problem to tackle than email?

To really amp up email productivity, we need to break down the problem first:

What are all the components of email? Where are all the places we can save time?

• Writing: Composing Email Messages
• Scheduling: Schedule Phone Calls and Meetings by Email
• Email Prioritization: Manage Your Inbox and Get Organized

Let’s tackle each piece one by one, and get your team to Inbox Zero.

Email Writing: Become an Email Wizard with Shortcuts

At the bare bones level, emails are long text-based messages. There are tons of posts written by business leaders on their favorite email tips, but I’d like to get back to the basics first before we pull out the fancy stuff: plain and simple email text.

The largest time sync is usually in the writing process — the time you spend composing and replying to emails. Just like with handwritten text, you can use shortcuts to speed up the pace of your writing (that don’t require you to be a 200 WPM typing god).

Hack #1: Type Faster Than You Thought Was Possible

Introducing a secret weapon showed to me by a coworker: aText

aText is an app that accelerates your typing by replacing abbreviations with frequently used phrases, consider it the digital version of shorthand. You start by collecting phrases and messages commonly used in your email repertoire, and create relevant text shortcuts that will be a breeze to memorize.

For example, let’s say you’re a sales rep who’s following up with leads from your website and you notice you’ve been writing, “I’d like to offer you a free demo” in nearly every email. You can designate a shortcut with a textual hint such as “;demo,” using a colon, “;” so as not to confuse the phrase with regular text. Quick shortcuts for other repetitive phrases could be “;ty” for “Thank you for your time” and “;chat” for “Let’s chat over coffee.”

Your sales team probably sends hundreds of emails a week, or even per day, so this simple trick can instantly increase their writing speed and shave hours off their workweek.

Hack #2: Auto-Populate Your Emails with Standard Templates

Another way to cut down on email text are email templates, a full-length email that can be quickly inserted into your email composition box. Anywhere you see repetition in your email communication is an opportunity to save time and automate.

Rather than copy and paste back and forth between an email template in GoogleDocs or Word, use a browser extension or plug-in that stores your sales email templates so you can quickly populate an email message in a matter of seconds.

Standard email templates are commonplace for many sales teams, but copy and pasting back and forth between docs and your inbox is an unnecessary pain.

Consider adding an chrome extension or email plug-in that stores your email templates and lets you easily click and drop into your email message.

Take it one step further with email templates for smartphone inbox. These days, salespeople are fast moving and need to be mobile when visiting clients, traveling to different sites, and managing communication wherever and whenever.

Having email templates readily available straight from your smartphone is a godsend.

Schedule Through Email in Seconds

Hack #3: Email Scheduling Without the Hassle

I’d like to dedicate this section solely to the long email threads in my inbox that go something like this:

1. Person A: “Could we get on the phone to discuss?”
2. Person B: “Sure, when are you available?”
3. Person A: “I can speak next week, Tuesday or Thursday.”
4. Person B: “Next week I’ll be out of office. Could we do the following Tuesday at 10?”
5. Person A: “That would work. Could we move to 10:30am? Is that Pacific Time?”

This took 5 emails, and the meeting date is still not finalized. Salespeople and customer success reps have to schedule sales calls and product demos on a daily basis, that adds up to a huge number of email communication.

Can we all agree that these email threads need to go?

Get an email plug-in that syncs with your calendar, ready for people outside your network to plug in their schedule. There are a ton on the market, including Vcita, a professional scheduling software.

Email Prioritization: Getting to Inbox Zero

So we’ve covered shortcuts for writing emails and reducing the headache of scheduling meetings, but how do you make an effort to reduce the number of emails being sent?

Hack #4: Make Your Inbox a Haven for Sales and Customer Emails

This is a popular tip, but I couldn’t emphasize it enough. Get Slack for your sales team. I used to be a non-believer thinking that GChat was enough to satisfy all your messaging needs but after the second inspection, Slack is a winner.

And why? Because over time, Slack clears your inbox of all internal team and company communications; all the short messages, company updates, quick questions, one-on-one conversations, and funny GIFs from your teammates are moved out of your inbox to an intuitive messaging interface, I’d liken to a cross between WhatsApp and Reddit.

Your sales team can use their inbox for its primary purpose: sales and customer emails.

Hack #5 Email Prioritization: What Emails Can I Snooze for Later?

Once you’ve shifted a lot of conversation to Slack, or your messenger of choice, we can get into prioritizing what’s left over. Bucketing your emails by will allow you to tackle conversations with customers that immediately need your attention and go back to issues and conversations with your team that can be addressed at a later time.

There are a couple ways you can do this.

Email filters are a great choice and offer the most customizability. Filter out company updates, notifications, newsletters, and other messages that don’t require your immediate attention. If you have a few key accounts for your business, you may want to create a filter that immediately stars messages received from those customers.

Another great option is an email software that helps you manage your inbox. I’d recommend Sanebox, their “snoozing” feature is exactly what I’d hope from a smart inbox.

Hack #6 Email Keyboard Shortcuts

Most of us are familiar with keyboard shortcuts in Microsoft Word and Excel, we know the keyboard shortcuts for copying and pasting formulas and insert lines where we need them. But what about your inbox?

This is the secret trick you’ve been missing out on: Email shortcuts.

Check out the build-in shortcuts for Gmail and Outlook, or simply search in the helpdesk for whichever email provider you use. My personal favorites for Gmail are “#” to move an email to trash, “y” to remove an email from your current view or archive an email, and “shift + u” to mark an email as unread.

Having these shortcuts in place to quickly categorize your emails will cut through your inbox like butter. All of the trimmings will be cut in an instant.

Ontario Premier Kathleen Wynne and Prince Edward Island Premier Wade MacLauchlan ended their joint trade mission to India earlier this year in style. They held a reception for several hundred people on a terrace at the five-star Taj Mahal Hotel that offered an excellent view of the Gateway of India, Mumbai’s most famous landmark. The Canadians were clearly determined to make an impression.

Too bad the only thing they got right was the setting. The party itself was forgettable. I had hoped to see something splashy and distinctively Canadian—like Anne of Green Gables serving Ontario wine. But if not for the flags arrayed behind the podium, I wouldn’t have known who to blame for the mediocre buffet. Wynne and MacLauchlan spoke, but their remarks were lost in the din.

For me, it was another example of how Canada’s leaders take global commerce for granted. The country’s share of merchandise exports to emerging Asian countries is shrinking. Our inability to keep pace in the world’s fastest-growing markets is one of the reasons our trade deficit widened to a record $3.4 billion in March. Whatever we’re doing, it isn’t working. And people are starting to notice.

It should give pause to everyone at the newly renamed Global Affairs Canada that Jim Balsillie, one of the greatest global traders in Canadian history, is on a crusade to foil their most recent achievement, the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP). (Full disclosure: I am a senior fellow at the Centre for International Governance Innovation, the Waterloo, Ont., think-tank of which Balsillie is chairman of the board of directors.) The TPP would lower trade barriers between the United States and 11 other Pacific Rim countries, including Canada. Balsillie, the former co-chief of BlackBerry creator Research In Motion, believes the TPP is rigged in favour of its biggest members, the U.S. and Japan. His objection is that the agreement would enhance patent lawyers’ ability to harass upstarts whose ideas threaten dominant technology companies—which currently tend to be either American or Japanese.

Balsillie could be wrong—or not as right as he thinks he is. A beef farmer in Alberta would benefit immediately from greater access to Asian markets, and some of the new generation of technology companies prefer simply to stay ahead of the patent lawyers rather than engage them in combat. There also could be an opportunity cost to letting countries such as Australia, Mexico and the U.S. get a head start in fast-growing emerging markets such as Vietnam. But Balsillie’s campaign raises a larger question: Why is a man who became a billionaire thanks to earlier free-trade agreements so passionately opposed to the most significant international commitment to open markets in years?

I will submit that Canada isn’t so different from the United States, where the likely presidential nominees of  both parties say they oppose the TPP. The post-crisis era has created a public skeptical of its governments’ ability to ensure that wealth spreads broadly. The TPP was negotiated almost entirely behind closed doors. The secrecy may have made life simpler for negotiators, but that decision could now end up killing the effort. Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump are reflecting the will of voters disinclined to support a trade deal they had no role in forming.

The immediate priority of pro-trade politicians must be restoring the public’s faith in the benefits of free trade. If that means shelving the TPP, so be it; a study commissioned by the C.D. Howe Institute says the gains for Canada from the agreement would be negligible in any case. There are other ways to gain market access. Kevin Lynch, the former clerk of the Privy Council who is now vice-chairman of Bank of Montreal, and Tiff Macklem, the dean of the Rotman School of Management and previously the No. 2 at the Bank of Canada, in March called for a revival of the Team Canada trade missions of the 1990s. The “Canada” brand will open more doors than any province can on its own. When Prime Minister Justin Trudeau next goes to India, he should take the premiers and executives with him. And he should definitely host a proper party.

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MORE ABOUT INTERNATIONAL TRADE & THE TPP:

• In China, Canadian businesses need to think longer term
• Why the TPP won’t cost 20,000 manufacturing jobs in Canada
• Five ways global trade will change for Canada in 2016
• Canadian exporters are finally waking up to opportunity in Asia
• Services matter—but making stuff is the core of any strong economy
• Canada’s effect on the U.S. economy might be bigger than you think
• Why the future of global trade deals could be small businesses
• How the Trans-Pacific Partnership will grow Canada’s service exports

The post Why are Canadians turning their backs on free trade? appeared first on Canadian Business - Your Source For Business News.

What? What kind of sales professional doesn't answer questions?

I'll tell you: The successful kind.

Yep, I said it. Here's an example conversation to back it up:

Prospect: "Is this the only color it comes in?"

Seller: "Yes. Absolutely."

[Dead air.]

And therein lies the problem with the type of salesperson I like to call the "Answer Man (or Woman)".

In one simple exchange, we see how uncomfortable this type of seller can make prospect conversations. Once the salesperson has given a close-ended answer, the asker (usually the prospect) feels like they have to come up with another question because the silence is unbearable. The seller has just missed a huge opportunity to turn the conversation in a direction that's advantageous to them -- instead, they're just waiting for another dead-end question like a catcher for another pitch.

Let's remember the Golden Rule of communicating: Whoever is asking the questions is in charge of the interaction, 100% of the time.

Simply giving information in the form of an answer adds no value to a sale. If you learn anything today, remember this: Learning some facts or data does nothing to move someone closer to a sale.

What does move someone closer to a purchase? It's what the information or data will do for them.

Simply answering questions, one after another, can make you feel like you're being pelted with dodgeballs. It keeps you in a weak position and doesn't give you a chance to develop a sales strategy based on what's most important to them, since they're not telling you their primary objectives (and by not asking, you haven't given them an opportunity to). They're in charge, and you're at the mercy of whatever their next question is.

So, what do I do when a prospect asks me something? (See? That's a question.)

When asked a question, keep in mind that it is your job to find out if this is a real concern or just a red herring. Why is the prospect asking the question? What are they trying to find out by asking the question?

You are the gatherer of information, not the giver. Does the buyer in the example above really care about the color or are they just trying to fill the void caused by an inexperienced seller?

As a salesperson, you need to find out why prospects are asking what they're asking. That is the only way that you can position your response in a way that shows what your product or service does to solve their need.

Let's take a look at how that could play out:

Prospect: "Is this the only color it comes in?"

Seller: "I'll check to see...is there a color you'd prefer?"

Prospect: "I think that I'd like it better if it were pink. Pink is my wife's favorite color and since this would be a gift for our anniversary, I'd like it if I could get it in pink."

Eureka -- we just struck oil! We got so much personal, emotional and detailed information by simply turning around the question and probing a little deeper. 

Did that seem unprofessional, uncomfortable, or "salesy"? No! It unleashed a torrent of emotion-based motives that we will use as closing tools ... from just one question.

Now you're in the driver's seat. Feel the energy change? We just took back the position of strength and authority and became the consultant instead of the tour guide.

Now can you begin to develop a sale. Would you have ever known about the buyer's anniversary, his wife's favorite color, or the emotion embedded in their question about color if you hadn't asked for more detail? No.

You must dig these things out. This strategy is what will earn you sales, clients for life, and top producer status. Just imagine if you could do that all the way through your presentation.

Hint: You can, superstar! Just remember never to take questions at face value and always get to the heart of your prospect's concerns.

It’s never fun to give up on a sale. After all, a deal you take out of your pipeline represents a loss of what could have been -- an additional customer, extra money in your paycheck, and moving closer to meeting quota.

But as much as it sucks to closed-lost a deal, it’s even worse to let one languish in your pipeline indefinitely. Because leaving a deal that will realistically never close in your forecast artificially raises your projections and makes them less accurate.

If you have multiple dead deals in your pipeline, the negative effects balloon into something more -- missing quota because you’re counting on them to come in, getting discouraged when month after month, those deals continue sitting in your forecast, and losing credibility with your sales team and manager when you continue to miss your own projections.

So yeah … keeping deals in your pipeline that shouldn’t be there causes a lot of problems. And yet it’s also true that sometimes prospects just go dark. Should you closed-lost a deal even if the prospect was a great fit and seemed interested, but disappeared without warning?

Enter the breakup email: An email you should send when a prospect hasn’t responded to your follow-up emails to determine whether the deal you discussed is really dead or your point of contact just went on vacation without telling you.

A good breakup email accomplishes three things: It’s short and easy to respond to, it confirms the prospect’s continued interest (or lack thereof), and it wraps the relationship professionally. And most importantly, it gets dead and fake deals out of your pipeline.

Of course, breakup emails are subject to the same rules as regular emails. Namely, they won’t get read unless your subject line is eye-catching enough to get the recipient to open the message. Here are 17 subject lines you can use for your breakup emails when the end of a prospect relationship seems inevitable.

17 Subject Lines You Can Use In Your Next Breakup Email

1) Permission to close your file?

This is Breakthrough Email founder Bryan Kreuzberger’s favorite breakup email subject line, which sees a 76% response rate. Check out the full “closing your file” template here.

2) Before I go … a few free resources

End the relationship on a helpful note by providing one last bit of advice or free resource. That way, you’ll solidify your reputation as someone who genuinely wants to help even if the fit isn’t right at the moment.

3) Should I stop reaching out?

Sometimes you just have to ask. Accompany this totally straightforward subject line with a simple ask: Reply “A” for “I’m still interested,” or “B” for “Stop reaching out,” or something similar.

4) Looks like our timing is off

Give your prospect an off-ramp so they don’t feel guilty about ending the relationship.

5) It’s time to say goodbye

By positioning yourself as the relationship-ender, you trigger a sense of urgency in your prospect -- either they care enough to keep the deal alive, or they don’t.

6) This is my final email

Working off the same principle as #5, this subject line lets your prospect know this is the last time you’ll hear from from them.

7) Let’s revisit this at a better time

Your prospects are busy people -- acknowledging it will go a long way.

8) Is <company name> off the table?

Sometimes prospects go dark because they went with a competitor, and simply didn’t want to tell you. It doesn’t hurt to ask -- let them know you understand and are always here to help.

9) Closing the loop

The “closing the loop” email comes from Blair Enns of Win Without Pitching and operates off the same principle as Kreuzberger’s template above (#1).

10) My last try

Along the same lines as #5 and #6, be very upfront that this is the end -- unless your prospect wants to do something about it.

11) Yes or no?

A slightly different tack, this subject line asks for a final response from your prospect. Make it clear you’re happy to accept either, and that you’re just looking for some closure.

12) <Prospect name>, am I off base?

Recap (briefly, please) what you’ve surmised from previous conversations with your prospect, then ask if these are still their goals and plans. It might be time to realign, or maybe their initiatives have shifted entirely.

13) Last <company name> follow-up

This is another variation on #5, #6, and #10, but has the added benefit of mentioning your company name, triggering your prospect’s (hopefully positive) memories of you.

14) Should I stay or should I go?

If you can afford to be a little more playful, it doesn’t hurt to insert a little levity into breakup emails to avoid even a whiff of hard feelings.

15) It’s not you. It’s me.

“This subject line makes it clear that you've tried reaching out and that you've engaged in a relationship -- it's just not going anywhere," writes Anum Hussain. "This can help your prospect realize the value you brought to their work and want to reach back out.”

16) Am I starting to annoy you?

A little self-awareness goes a long way. Acknowledge that you’ve been reaching out consistently,

17) Persistence or harassment?

Your prospect’s tolerance for persistence may be low, even if you’ve added value with each touchpoint.

What subject lines do you use in your breakup emails? Let us know in the comments below.

The most valued skillset that your account executives possess is their ability to advance a potential customer through the buying cycle to close.

In order to capitalize on this skillset, many companies separate prospecting from closing, allowing their sales teams to divide and conquer by focusing on what they do best. The prospecting group is often called “sales development reps” (SDRs), and the closers are usually “account executives” or “sales reps.” This specialization helps both groups stay productive and motivated.

But sometimes your sales reps will have to prospect. You know this time has come when you look around the office, and your salespeople are just bored. They aren’t bored because they’re closing all their prospects at an incredible pace. They’re bored because they don’t have anyone to talk with.

Their pipeline has essentially dried up. And yeah, it may not be their job to develop pipeline. But if they don’t, it’s clear that they won’t hit their number. And if you’re a fast-growing company, the last thing you can afford to do is to slow down your growth and momentum.

Your only option here is all hands on deck. And that means your account executives need to start building their own pipeline. They are going to need your help; what are you going to do?

You go after low-hanging fruit.

Here’s the 5-step process to capture your low-hanging pipeline fruit.

1. Determine Your Sales Pipeline Goals

How much time do your sales reps need to invest in order to develop enough pipeline? There’s no way of knowing the answer to that question unless you first determine what “enough pipeline” is. How much pipeline do they need to develop?

Starting down the prospecting path without knowing your goal will lead to greater inefficiency and risk of failure. Not to mention if there’s no goal to reach, there is no way to win.

If your sales reps invest too much time in pipeline development, they’ll underinvest in engaging and closing the active opportunities that they have in front of them.

If your sales reps invest too little time in pipeline development, they’ll fall short of the amount of business that they need to develop on their own.

Try this:

In order to determine the quantity of opportunities that your sales reps need, do this:

• First, draw your funnel out on paper or whiteboard, including the conversion rates. How many qualification meetings convert to discovery meetings? How many discovery meetings turn into demos? How many demos convert to paying customers? How much revenue does each customer bring in? This doesn’t need to be fancy.

• Then: work backwards. If your sales reps need to develop enough pipeline to close an additional $50,000 of revenue this year, then you should know exactly how many qualification appointments they need.

2. Attend Conferences

Your goal should be to help your sales reps develop the biggest amount of potential deals in the shortest amount of time. Their time is a scarce resource that needs to be managed effectively.

You want to create opportunities that allow for the biggest amount of quality interactions in the shortest amount of time.

One way to help your sales reps engage with a large amount of potential customers in a very short amount of time is at conferences. Where else will you find hundreds, if not thousands, of potential customers in one area?

Companies do go horribly wrong with conferences when they don’t conduct the appropriate amount of homework to find the right conference with the right people. Most conference organizers will (of course) tell you that you need to attend their conference (and give them lots of sponsorship money).

A better approach to researching events is to call your existing customers (and potential customers) and ask them what conferences they attend. They’ll not only tell you what they attend, but they’ll tell you which conferences are the best. A pattern will eventually emerge after you’ve talked to five customers. Send your sales reps to the number one conference that your customers recommend.

If you can work far enough ahead, have a booth presence. You don’t need the largest space available; get a space that is appropriate for the size of your company, or a little aspirational.

If this really is a last-minute strategy, you could get a sweet deal for unsold booth space. If you were planning on this conference anyway and suddenly you’re facing a lead shortfall, send more reps, or get better totschkes.

Try this:

Many conference organizers will give sponsors a list of attendees and their email addresses before the conference for the right price. Pony up for the sponsorship level that gives you contact information for all attendees.

• Reach out to those attendees with some type of offer for attending the event. It could be “come by our booth for a cupcake” or “schedule time to talk with our CEO at our booth about best practices for solving (X) problem.” Give them a reason to look you up, and make sure they know exactly where to find you at the conference.
• Draw people to your booth with great graphics or the smell of baking cookies, or… Whatever it is, it’s best if there is some logical connection to your company.
• Prep your sales reps so they are totally ready to have conversations with those prospects.
• Also, have a marketing or sales development person at the conference to take over conversations if a booth attendee is clearly not qualified. That will free your sales reps up to have great conversations.

If you picked the right conference, your sales reps will find the time investment to be worth it.

3. Fly to Targeted Accounts

What conferences deliver is a human, personal, one-to-one, face-to-face experience. You can recreate a bit of that with a targeted travel strategy.

One of our customers, Rolepoint, does this very well with their inside account executives. They map out where their targeted accounts are located and then they fly their sales reps to that city to meet with as many of those potential customers as possible.

Not surprisingly, many standoffish potential customers become willing to meet. In fact, many will invite your account executives directly to their office to have an introductory conversation.

To keep this efficient, you’ll have to first map out where your targeted accounts are located, and then run a campaign to promote your visit to those prospects. Try email first, and follow up with personal phone calls.

Try this:

• Once you have your list of potential customers that you want to meet, shoot them an email that reads:

Follow that email with two more emails following up (and reminding them about) the first email.

• Expect a 20 percent success rate. If you reach out to 30 people, you’ll likely get six meetings.

• Also, share the same time with each prospect (such as 9:30am on Thursday morning) instead of asking each prospect to meet at a different time.

When a prospect responds to say they are willing to meet, let them know if that time doesn’t work any longer, but you can be flexible with their schedule.

4. Enable Referrals

This is really my favorite tactic, because it can work very quickly, and it makes everyone happy.

Your customers have peers. And those peers are probably experiencing the same issues that your current customers experience. So when friends in the same industry swap tales of things that went wrong, you want your happy customer to have the pleasure of telling their friend about how things went right with you.

Joanne Black, the owner of No More Cold Calling, says that the sales people she talks to tell her that referral selling has a minimum of a 50 percent conversion rate; many report up to 70 to 90 percent conversion.

According to McKinsey, word of mouth is the primary driver behind 20 to 50% of purchases. And, according to October 2014 research by Implisit, 3.63% of leads generated from customer and employee referrals resulted in a sale, the highest conversion rate of all.

Why? Because friction at each stage in the sales cycle is removed. Your customer and their referral have developed trust in their relationship. That trust gets transferred to you when your customer refers you to their contact.

Referrals go beyond the prospect density ratio. This is deal density!

Sales referrals should be a no-brainer for building pipeline. Just make sure that you have built trust in your relationship with the customer before you ask.

You won’t get high-quality sales referrals if you either rely on pressure tactics to get referrals from your prospects, or if you have someone else ask for referrals who doesn’t have an existing relationship with your customer (such as a sales development rep).

Try this:

• Empower your account executives to achieve trusted advisor status with their customers. Inside sales executives do this best by sharing content that adds value to the customer’s day-to-day.
• Establish criteria for the type of referrals you want your customers to provide. I include the following: 1) the problem statement, and 2) buyer persona attributes. For example, I may ask for an intro to product marketers in tech who create content for their sales reps, but can’t measure what content gets shared by sales.
• Give your referrer a paragraph blurb to send their prospect. Mine looks like this:

<<name>>,

Do you create content for sales to use?

If so, may I intro you to Alex Lopes at Sharebird? His software shows product marketing teams which content will help your sales reps close deals.

We have been really happy with them at <<customer’s company name>>.

<<customer>>

Pro Tip:

If you want to accelerate referrals with technology, consider Outro and Influitive. (Disclaimer: I haven’t used either, but I’ve heard great things about both companies from people that use them.)

For a relatively small investment, they’ll return a larger number of customer referrals than you could generate on your own. And remember, referrals convert to customers at a very high rate and tend to be bigger, better deals.

5. Build the Relationship Through Content

One of the greatest benefits of meeting people face-to-face is that the interaction accelerates the prospect through the sales funnel.

However, field sales (face-to-face) is at least 10x more expensive than inside sales. For many companies, their deal size doesn’t allow for field sales.

So how do your inside account executives build relationships and trust with their prospects when they can’t interact regularly with them in person? Through content.

Top performing sales reps share relevant and helpful content to strengthen the relationship.

I haven’t met a top performing sales rep that didn’t have their own Evernote or Google Doc filled with content that they share with prospects. Don’t believe me? Ask your top sales reps if they have their own document with weblinks that they share with prospects.

Prospects who receive helpful content feel like your sales reps want them to be successful. That’s a great way to warm up a potential customer. The rep can take them from someone who doesn’t want to engage to someone whose interest has been caught, to someone who is willing to have an in-depth discovery conversation.

If you want to help your inside account executives build pipeline, help them share content.

Try this:

In order to get the right content into your sales reps’ hands, try the following.

• Make it easy for your sales reps to find content. Many companies organize content in Google Drive, Box, or Dropbox. You probably already know this is not an easy way for your sales reps to find content (or for your content team to organize).

What to do instead? Invest in a sales enablement content portal that helps your reps find the right content to share in Gmail. Just avoid these pitfalls when looking for a portal.

• Measure how that content performs. Inside of your CRM, you’re going to want to track three metrics:

1. Which content do your salespeople share?
2. Which content gets viewed by prospects?
3. Which content helps advance prospects through the sales funnel?

A good sales enablement content portal will track these metrics for you.

Share these metrics with your sales reps; it will help them see precisely what’s working, and you’ll see an uptick in the amount of content that they share in the sales cycle … and very likely in their conversion rates.

• And the final step is to create more of the content that helps your sales reps build pipeline and close deals.

Conclusion:

Marketing has a more active, more direct role to play in sales enablement than ever before. By going after the low-hanging fruit in your pipeline, you can prevent a bad quarter and lower the risk of your sales reps not hitting their number.

These steps will help you maximize the volume of potential customers you move into the funnel, while allowing sales to focus on what they do best: turning those prospects into customers.

Traditionally, sales and marketing haven’t always seen eye-to-eye. Our 2015 Sales and Marketing Alignment Survey clearly shows that in order to exceed revenue goals, outdated traditions need to change. Check out Act-On’s eBook, Alignment, Technology, and Revenue Impact and we will show you the direct relationship between alignment and revenue performance and how the use of the right technologies will support business success.

As mobile users, we likely all have a push message horror story or two. Like the time that news app sent you updates on the president of Zimbabwe’s election campaign at 4am, or the mCommerce app that seemed to be promoting their “final day flash sale” every day for two weeks.

Yes, it seems that many app marketers are still learning when it comes to perfecting the art of the push.

But what does a perfect push notification look like? We’re detailing the anatomy of the perfect push message in a new Slideshare presentation! Check it out:

The Anatomy of a Perfect Push Message from Localytics

A perfect push message:

1. Doesn’t make push mandatory.

Truly great push notifications are upfront and honest with users, telling users right off the bat (usually as part of the app onboarding process) what types of messages they will be sending, how frequently push notifications will be sent, and letting users opt out if they’d prefer.

Transparency with app users helps to increase push message opt-in rates and boosts engagement.

2. Sends relevant, personalized push messages to segmented audiences.

Broadcast messages are so 2010. Today, app users want personalized messages that are relevant to their specific interests and preferences. Segment your app users and send them push notifications that speak to them as individuals.

3. Uses enticing CTAs with value-driving offers.

Promote special discounts and sales via push messages to excite users, and couple them with winning CTAs to drive home conversions.

4. Pays close attention to seasonality and timing.

Great push messages pay attention to the seasons. Consider sending push notifications oriented around certain holidays or cultural events (such as Black Friday or 4th of July).

Push messages should also never forget the importance of timing – Sending a user a notification about the weather at 8pm rather than in the morning when it’s relevant to planning their day is poor timing.

5. Uses rich features at its disposal.

Android devices allow you to incorporate images and even embed in-app actions within push notifications. Don’t ignore these features simply because they don’t work for iOS.

Additionally, even iOS devices should consider incorporating emojis into push messages, as they’ve been shown to dramatically improve push CTRs.

6. Is tested like crazy.

When it comes to making your push noification the best it can be, A/B testing is an absolute must.

Test everything – from copy length and content to CTAs and punctuation. Be sure to test one thing at a time though, so you know what’s making an impact.

7. Makes use of marketing automation.

Save yourself some serious manpower and harness app marketing automation to bucket new users into specific segments. Then craft tailored push notifications and nurture campaigns that speak to those groups of users for some killer app marketing.

8. Measures the metrics that really matter.

Just like your Twitter follower count, app downloads are largely a vanity metric. Instead, look at the metrics that make the most sense for your biz.

For an app like YouTube, that might mean number of videos watched, and for Pandora, it might mean number of songs listened to. The best metrics to measure are those that matter to your app and its value.

9. Finds the right frequency.

Even good, valuable push notifications can come off as spammy when they are sent too often. Unfortunately, there’s no magical push frequency, as the appropriate number of push notifications vary between apps.

For example, users may want push notifications from a social app every time a friend posts new content or shares an update. However, an mCommerce app could easily come off as spammy sending notifications with that same frequency. Test, evaluate, and see what push frequency works best for your app.

Understand more about the anatomy of a perfect push message in our Slideshare presentation, plus real-life examples and actionable tips.

What elements do you think makes up a perfect push message? Share your opinions in the comments!

Content marketing is a hot field to be in right now. Millions of startups and businesses across the globe are hungry for content that will ultimately generate leads, increase sales and refer their target audience to a specific location.

Content marketing, however, is becoming more difficult as audiences are drowning in a “content overload.” Content marketers today are pushing out blog posts, articles, white papers and everything in between at a rate faster than what is humanly possible to digest. As a result, tons of content is being ignored, leading to lower ROI rates and wasted time for marketers.

It’s important to keep in mind that content marketing is not just about numbers. Rather than focusing on the amount of content that can be generated, smart marketers need to understand how to create quality content. After all, it’s been noted that there are 700,000 Google searches performed every 60 seconds and 5.3 trillion ads shown each year. The last thing we need is bad content to add to the sea of pointless messages we are confronted with daily.

A Solution Through Storytelling

Once upon a time there was a confused content marketer – we will call him Bob – working for a B2B startup. Bob was a good writer, yet he felt pressured to generate content all the time. He was told to create at least 2 blog posts per week, along with thought-leadership articles, user case studies and clever social media posts. In his free time, Bob could work on infographics and video scripts.

While Bob was able to meet all his weekly deadlines, he noticed that his writing wasn’t as exceptional as usual. He felt pressured to produce so much content in a short amount of time, most of which was being ignored according to the analytics. However, Bob’s CMO was insistent upon having loads of content to fill their sales pipeline in order to increase leads and generate sales…

Personally, I feel bad for Bob. As a writer, I know that engaging content takes time to produce. I also know that quality content has nothing to do with the amount of content in your sales pipeline.

Before I let you all in on a secret that could change your entire marketing strategy, notice that Bob’s story made me feel bad. As a content marketing consultant, I can relate to Bob. I find his story interesting because it appeals to my emotions.

So, what’s the key ingredient required for generating engaging content? Storytelling.

Think about it – rather than throwing dry, uninteresting content at your audience, marketers should make every effort possible to engage readers with a story that sparks their interest (as I happened to demonstrate above with Bob).

Applying Storytelling to Content

Now that you are all aware of the secret sauce behind creating quality content, it’s time to understand how marketers can apply storytelling to content. First, let’s consider the common types of marketing materials being produced:

• Blog posts and thought-leadership articles
• User case studies and company one-pagers
• Infographics and video scripts
• White papers and e-books

Many markets might be asking themselves, “Well, how can I turn a boring old white paper into a compelling story?” Good question. Getting started with telling a story is the hardest part.

First, it’s important that you understand your company’s voice. Before creating content, you must be aware of the message you want to convey and how that message will appeal to your target audience.

Second, it’s important to understand that the main benefit of storytelling is that it sparks emotion. If applied correctly, storytelling can increase the persuasive power of any marketing campaign because it demonstrates pathos, the emotional side of persuasion.

Third, you have to make sure your story always aligns to your business goals. In other words, you aren’t producing content simply to tell a story. Your main goals are to generate leads, increase sales and draw your audience to a specific location. Don’t forget this!

Finally, it’s time to put all the pieces of the content puzzle together. For example, let’s say you’ve been assigned to write a white paper on the value of DevOps. Rather than just listing the basic benefits of DevOps– teams moving faster, better culture, etc. – think about ways to appeal to your audiences’ emotions.

In this case, you want to show rather than tell. Apply these claims to the real world. Put yourself in your audiences’ shoes. Actually think about why an IT professional should care about adopting a DevOps culture.

For instance, maybe mention that a result of DevOps is detecting service failures earlier, allowing more time to focus on other pending issues or more time to spend being at home with the family. Tell a story by creating a real world scenario. This is sure to spark interest, appeal to emotions and capture your reader’s attention.

The More, The Better?

It’s best not to think in terms of numbers when it comes to creating quality content meant to educate a specific audience. Sure, your website might look great if it’s filled with blog posts, articles and downloadable resources. But is that content actually meeting your business goals? If not, it might be time to reconsider your content strategy by focusing more on storytelling and less on a “content overload.”

Price objections are common in sales -- primarily because most prospects have learned pushing back on cost will get them a discount.

That makes it difficult to respond to a pricing objection if you don’t want to immediately lower your price. While discounting has its place in the sales process, being too discount-happy will destroy your margins and lower your product’s perceived value.

This four-step process will help you overcome price objections:

Step One: After the prospect has finished speaking, pause for three to five seconds.
(Hit the “Mute” button if you need to.)

Step Two: Explore the pricing objection. According to sales trainer and consultant Colleen Francis, you can ask up to three questions before responding to the objection.

Step Three: Summarize their price objection in a few sentences.

Step Four: Circle back to your product’s value.

Here’s an example (using response #23 from this list):

Prospect: “We really like the product, but it costs too much.”

Rep: *Silence.*

Prospect: “The other options we’re exploring are 10-15% cheaper. Is there any way you can come down a bit?”

Rep: “I understand. In fact, I had two other customers just like you who were uneasy about the price at first. But what they found was … ”

The following 28 responses to pricing objections allow you to acknowledge your prospect’s concern without immediately slashing your price or causing them to walk away.

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28 Responses to Price Objections

1) "Too expensive compared to what?"

"Expensive" is a relative term. If you can find out what the prospect is comparing your product or service to, you can more precisely differentiate value.

2) "Really? How are you coming to the conclusion [product] is too expensive?"

This prompts the prospect to break down their reasoning. Once a salesperson better understands the specific concerns behind the sticker shock, they can more easily address them.

3) "Are there some boxes we left unchecked?"

Circle back and make sure the sales process unfolded to both parties' expectations.

4) "I hear you. The best products are often more expensive."

According to sales expert Geoffrey James, "a price objection isn't 'real' until the customer has brought it up twice." Using this response the first time you hear "it's too expensive" can help you separate the prospects who truly don't have the budget from those who are merely kicking the tires.

5) "How much will it cost you to do nothing?"

Get them to think about the bigger picture. Reveal the hidden costs in the status quo.

6) "Is it a cash flow issue, or a budget issue?"

This question gets to the heart of whether they are asking for a discount (budget) or payment terms (cash flow). Once the rep categorizes the objection, they can negotiate more effectively.

7) “Let’s explore some creative strategies for fitting this into your budget.”

If your prospect doesn’t have enough allocated funding, try to find a workaround. Suppose their department has a set budget for software and a separate one dedicated to maintenance. Instead of charging them one flat price, you might send one contract for your product and another for your service fees. Now that you’ve unbundled or unpackaged your solution, your prospect can fit it into the budget.

You can also bill the buyer in stages. Let’s say your product would max out their quarterly budget -- and they need to save money for other purchases. Charge them half now, and half next quarter.

Not only will the buyer appreciate your flexibility, but you’ll rescue the deal without compromising on price.

8) "Let's say money was no object. Would our product/service help solve your problem?"

A fast track back to value.

9) "What's too expensive?"

Asking this (gently) prompts the prospect to explain their conception of your product/service. Hearing a response along the lines of "Well, it's a lot for just X, Y, and Z" reveals their low value perception.

10) "Too expensive? That's concerning."

Concerning because this product/service is so valuable for the cost. Nudge the prospect back to value.

11) "Is price the only thing that's keeping you from signing?"

If the prospect has any other objections the salesperson needs to address, this question will surface them.

12) "Okay. So which part don't you want?"

What you're telling the buyer is that price is inextricably linked to value. So if a buyer doesn't want to pay full price, they won't be able to get the full value. This question might prompt them to reconsider.

13) "Will price keep you from getting what you really want?"

You're not calling them cheap outright, but you are raising the question in their minds. And no one likes to be cheap, especially when their business is on the line. Alternatively, this will reveal if your product or service isn't the ideal solution for their problem.

14) "Does this mean we will never have the chance to work together?"

Francis argues that the word "never" is the kicker.>

"When it comes to handling sales objections, 'never' is the most powerful word in the English language," Francis writes. "Most people hate it. As a result, the vast majority of prospects will respond by saying, 'well, no … not never!'"

The salesperson can then probe into the conditions required in order to strike a deal and adapt terms or walk away accordingly.

15) "Setting price aside, do we have the product/service you want to buy?"

If they say yes, you can follow up with #12. If they say no, determine if it makes sense to go back to value or abandon the deal.

16) "What's the ROI you're looking to see?"

This steers them away from thinking in terms of "expensive" or "cheap," and towards the long-term value for their business.

17) "It might seem expensive for one day, but let's break it down by month/quarter."

A lump sum can seem scary to anyone. Have figures on how the cost distributes over years, months, or days at the ready.

17) "Is what you're saying that our prices are high in comparison to our competitors'?"

If your price is indeed higher than the competition's, this question opens the door for the salesperson to differentiate on value.

19) "Have you ever bought a similar product or service before?"

Another possibility is that the prospect has an inaccurate idea of what this type of product or service costs -- perhaps because they've never purchased it before. With this question, you can clear up their misconception.

20) “Price is an important consideration. So I have some context: How much research have you done on what a typical investment is for a product/service like this?”

According to Andrew Quinn, VP of Learning & Development at HubSpot, the question behind this one is, “Do you already know what something like this should cost?”

Thanks to your prospect’s inexperience, they might be placing your product in the wrong category.

For instance, maybe your solution has both a data storage and an analytics component. If they compare it to other data storage options, it’ll look significantly more expensive. But if they benchmark it with analytics software, your price is right in line with the competition.

21) "You think it costs too much?"

Feeding their line back to them forces the prospect to explain their position, and might make them reconsider in the process.

22) "When's the last time you bought something based on price alone?"

Again, no one likes to feel cheap.

23) "I understand. In fact, I had two other customers just like you who were uneasy about the price at first. But what they found was ... "

Empathize with the prospect, and then address their concerns with a strong case study that proves value.

24) "In your own business, is your product/service always the least expensive option available?"

If you're a B2B salesperson, this is a great line to have in your back pocket. The buyer's organization has to win deals too, and they probably do it on value and not just price. If delivered correctly, this line might elicit a chuckle -- and a signed contract.

25) "Do you really need to say 'no' to our price right now?"

Seems a little harsh, right? Not so according to Tom Reilly, the sales expert behind this approach.

"When the buyer says, 'I don’t know. The price is higher than I want to go,' try two or three ways to deal with it. If nothing works, offer this response and watch the expression on the buyer’s face," Reilly wrote in a blog post. "I guarantee they will raise their eyebrows."

If the buyer replies that they don't have to say no right now, the salesperson can then suggest the prospect take a few days to mull over the price -- and realize that by saying no the price, they're saying no to the product and its associated value.

26) "[Silence]"

Sometimes the best response is no response. When a salesperson simply falls silent after an objection, the prospect often begins to explain their rationale. The rep can then address specific concerns from there -- no prompting needed.

27) “Compared to a candy bar, it’s a significant purchase. But when we look at [weekly, monthly, yearly] ROI, you’ll actually save money.”

This light-hearted response helps you put your product in context.

28) “[Prospect’s name], I would rather apologize for the price today than for the lack of quality and your unhappiness forever. Now, let’s not let a few dollars keep us from doing business together.”

This reply comes from famous salesperson and trainer Zig Ziglar courtesy of Butch Bellah. It reminds your prospect skimping on price will hurt them in the long run.

Editor's note: This post was originally published in November 2014, and has been updated for comprehensiveness.

It’s nice to hear “You’re the best” from a friend or loved one.

But when you’re considering doing business with a company, you don’t want to hear them say “We’re the best.”

Sure, some companies tell you what they’re the best at doing. We have the fastest network, voted the safest car, etc. But simply saying “We’re the best [your industry] company in [your region]” isn’t enough. Your potential customers need to know how what you make or what you do can help them.

This brings us to the concept of the value proposition, or the reasons people should take notice of you and buy your product or service.

Too many companies talk about the features of their products and services when customers really want to know how they will benefit.

Be specific. Let’s say you sell protective cases for mobile phones. If your website made the claim that you had “the largest store online” it would sound like vague marketing talk. But when you say something like “We offer over 10,000 varieties of cases,” it makes more of an impact.

You can also let current, satisfied customers speak for you. Testimonials from customers – or experts in your field—can go a long way toward building trust.

And to show potential customers the benefits of patronizing your business, you first need to understand their needs and pain points. You need to know who your customers are, and you find that out by doing persona research.

The Basics Of Persona Research

Start by interviewing some existing clients. Here are some of the questions to ask:

• What is your role at your company? What is your job title?
• What does your company do or make?
• Who do you report to? Does anyone report to you?
• How do supervisors gauge your performance?
• Walk us through a typical day at work.
• Tell us some of the skills or tools you need for your job?
• What are you responsible for, and what does it mean to be successful in your role?
• What are some of your biggest challenges?
• What are some of the blogs or other publications you read to get information about your industry?
• What associations are you a member of? What social networks do you use?
• Describe your career path. How did you get to where you are today?
• Describe your personal background (marital status, family, etc).
• Where did you go to school? What subjects did you study, and where did you study them?
• How do you prefer to interact with vendors (in person, via e-mail, over the phone)?
• Do you use internet research to find out more about vendors or products? If you’ve said yes, how do you search for information?
• Tell us about a recent purchase. How did you decide to buy what you bought?

Be sure to ask follow-up questions that begin with “why,” as in “Why do you read the blogs you read?” The answers they supply will often yield more crucial information than your original question, and will further help you understand their needs and pain points.

When you’ve wrapped up the interviews, take the information you’ve learned and use it to create buyer personas. These are fictional versions of your ideal customers. When you’ve created them, you’ll have a better idea of the type of content you need to create to meet their needs and address their pain points.

Plug in basic information like age, income, education and location. Add their goals and challenges, as well as what they want to gain by working with your company, and why they might be reluctant. You should also craft a quick elevator pitch that would help the persona.

ABM is a buzzword. Admit it. But are real companies thinking about ABM as much as the thought leaders and vendors who are making all the noise? Well, the results are quite telling.

Account-based marketing provides a strategy for B2B companies that want to grow revenue by focusing on the best-fit prospects and customers. The key metric is revenue. For too long, the B2B marketing industry has considered lead generation the primary metric. B2B marketing teams worked hard to pour leads into the top of the funnel for sales.

Now that you want to start with account-based marketing, you have to sell the executives at your company on the idea that you aren’t focusing on leads. Enticing the stakeholders in your company to agree to focus on accounts, not leads, can be a very daunting task.

The C-level executives have always used leads to determine whether the B2B marketing team is successful. The job of the marketing team is to create opportunities for sales; this was accomplished by generating leads. But the most important metric for your company is revenue. By focusing on accounts, not leads, your company can both grow revenue from new sales and generate additional revenue from existing customers.

Understanding Why B2B Companies Need Account-Based Marketing

Proving how account-based marketing is transformational to your organization can be done using data. Good data enhances your credibility for making the case for account-based marketing; numbers support your words. Bad data can be detrimental to your marketing efforts. Having the right data to support your company’s revenue goals is essential for account-based marketing.

You can use data from your current lead generation efforts. Using this data from your leads, you can show the amount of money your team spent on marketing and a potential return on investment (ROI). Data demonstrating why your team needs account-based marketing should include the following items.

• Leads generated year-to-date (YTD): The number of leads that marketing generated over the past year; it can be presented as the number of leads generated monthly or quarterly.
• Revenue from leads generated by marketing: If your company had $1 million in new revenue this year, how much of it came from new leads that marketing brought in? If you have a marketing automation system, a report can show the lead source tied to revenue.
• Revenue from existing customers: While reviewing your revenue, you can determine how much came from either your current client base or from new leads generated by marketing. You’ll compare year-to-date new revenue against your current annual recurring revenue (ARR).

Remember: the goal is to demonstrate that lead-based marketing is extremely inefficient. The data should show that marketing isn’t focused on the right business metric: growing revenue for your company. If your marketing team is focused on creating new leads for sales, and those leads don’t turn into revenue, then it’s a waste of resources that could have been allocated to other activities.

In a recent survey I conducted with my marketing team, we received responses from more than 200 B2B marketing professionals about their goals for account-based marketing. Almost 50 percent of respondents cited pipeline acceleration and revenue generation as their main goal for implementing ABM. Even more interesting is that this includes marketers from organizations that range from SMB to enterprise. That’s an awesome business case for marketers to acquire the right tools and create the right programs to build revenue generating programs.

10 Statistics in Favor of Account-Based Marketing

When you compare how much it costs for a lead to become closed revenue for your organization, you can make a compelling case for why your company should switch from traditional lead generation to account-based marketing:

1. Only 0.75 percent of leads generated become closed revenue (Forrester).
2. Generating high-quality leads is the number-one challenge for B2B marketers (IDG Enterprises).
3. More than 90 percent of B2B marketers acknowledge account-based marketing as either important or very important (SiriusDecisions).
4. B2B companies have begun utilizing targeted account strategies, as 86 percent of marketing and sales professionals stated (LeanData).
5. More than 60 percent of B2B marketers surveyed said they plan to implement an ABM program within the next year (Terminus).
6. ABM had higher ROI than other marketing activities, according to 97 percent of marketers in a survey (Alterra Group).
7. Almost 85 percent of marketers who measure ROI describe ABM as delivering higher returns than any other marketing approach; half of those marketers cite significantly higher returns (ITSMA).
8. On average, the number of people involved in a large technology purchase has increased from five to seven (IDC).
9. For more than 90 percent of B2B buyers, the amount of their product research depends on the price of a purchase; as the price increases, the amount of research increases (Salesforce).
10. Nearly 85 percent of marketers said ABM provided significant benefits to retain and expand existing client relationships (Marketo).

Final Thoughts:

Account-based marketing is a rapidly changing field and technology is allowing B2B marketers to scale their efforts like never before. This opens the door great opportunities like #FlipMyFunnel for marketers to come together and support each other by sharing best practices and stories. It also means that it is prime time for vendors to innovate to meet the new and ever-changing demands of B2B marketers. Let’s market smarter and win together.

Want to know more about the latest trends and insights from marketing leaders? Download our 2016 State of Marketing research report.