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Departmental silos or units have been an inevitable reality in business. But recent trends have suggested that silos slow down an organization’s information flow and coordination. Problems arise when trying to quickly transmit information from one silo to another, making it impossible to transmit information to all members of an organization in a timely manner. With the nature of operations becoming more dynamic, silos can cement failure into a business. Instead of successful completion of goals and objectives, work is duplicated, resources are wasted, and customers generally walk away.

The biggest problem with silos is that there is no single source of truth for enterprise information. Silos increase all of your costs: resource costs, legal costs, and your audit costs. It also increases the risks associated with regulatory compliance and increase the risk of potential failures in other initiatives.

Many benefits arise from eliminating departmental silos.

• The most critical part is that you are going to save money.
• You will also improve processes and add value to existing operations.
• Overall, you are going to create an environment of trusted data that is complete, consistent, correct and accessible to everyone in the organization.

Integrated software, like CRM, helps you grow your business in a smart way. Success in your business is solely dependent upon integrating multiple departments, ensuring flow of information, and adapting to workable solutions. Highly successful companies always pursue this strategy to grow faster. Most organizations often struggle to establish seamless communications within their departments due to its silo mentality. An effective cross department communication channel is very much necessary to improve efficiency.

Keeping these principles in mind integrated software has created problem-specific solution packages for each client. In spite of having several departments to execute specific tasks, large organizations have difficulties sorting mail, funds projects, and work orders in an effectively streamlined manner.

With technology like CRM, organizations can realize a variety of benefits, such as:

• Easily restructure their day-to-day business processes.
• Design a realistic plan that enhance their business processes.
• Reduce overtime.
• Save costs.
• Shorten reconciliation time.
• Minimize rework and eliminate duplication efforts.

(Image by Monread)

Organizations use integrated technology to break through traditional silo thinking and increase inter-departmental cooperation. CRM helps to set up virtual teams which reduce the number and duration of meetings. Virtual teams also reduce the number of emails while increasing the quality of and collaborations in discussions. With the introduction of virtual teams, meetings become more interactive, less boring and more interesting. It is easier to convey and modify agendas online and stimulate faster brainstorming for the team. Most importantly, the use of virtual teams enables organizations to have one central place for their files.

CRM encourages people to think outside their silos. By integrating technology, people will have more information at their fingertips, and with faster response time. Thus, people will be motivated to align their objectives more clearly, while encouraging innovation and pooling of ideas. Integrated technology like CRM is also encouraging line and functional people to align their objectives more effectively. Once CRM has been introduced into the organization, evaluation of performance by making individuals will take several factors into account.

So if you need to increase cooperation across your organization, CRM implementation will help by eliminating the need for departmental silos and easy restructuring of information flow, leading to a more positive customer experience. Whether you are big or small, private or public sector, CRM can work for you. If you want to save costs, reduce overtime, minimize rework, effectively track projects and mobilize work order activity including enhanced reporting and compliance, then try an integrated technology like CRM. Integrated technology is the answer to all your silo problems.

One widely accepted rule in B2B content marketing is that product-focused content belongs in the final stage of the buyer’s journey. Education first. Solutions second. Product third.

If only it were that simple…

The irony is that by saying unequivocally that buyers don’t want product information until they are ready to buy, we are imposing the same “we know best” assumptions about buyers that we had pre-content marketing. It’s true that research shows buyers want more educational and solutions-oriented content, but nothing says educational and solutions-oriented content must never include information on products. Sometimes by including product information, we actually help buyers.

This infographic is a good example. NanoLumens sells a specific type solution that is unique in the high-definition LED display market, a crowded place with providers that — to most people — all seem to do the same thing. As a top-of-the funnel, lead generation or nurture asset, this infographic provides immediate feedback to buyers on whether it’s worth their time to continue a conversation with NanoLumens.

Who wouldn’t appreciate that information considering how time-starved we all are? (By the way, this is good information for NanoLumens, too. The infographic does a ton of prequalifying work.)

More Mature Buyers

Another reason to make the “product rule” more of a “rule of thumb” is that a lot of newer entrants sending and receiving content are mature companies that don’t always need to be convinced that there’s a reason to buy. For instance, banks know they need to follow regulations, and manufacturers know that all of their equipment will eventually need to be replaced. Mature-buyer goals tend to be less about solving a problem and more about doing the same thing more efficiently, more effectively and/or with less cost.

It’s not uncommon for direct displacement of a competitor to be the goal of nurture campaigns for mature companies, and competitive differentiators more often directly hit top- or bottom-line performance. (As an aside, all differentiators should map back to financial performance, but in mature industries, solutions tend to have more immediate and direct impact.)

It makes sense, then, that educational content should focus specifically on differentiators and their impact, a conversation that often includes products.

The 24-Hour Content Buffet

Technology is enabling marketers to extend the value of their content outside of buyer-stage nurturing models and collect valuable back-end analytics on what each hub visitor is reviewing. Uberflip’s hub solution is a great example. Flipbook platforms are another example because they keep an asset stored in a secure location to be referenced again and again, with or without a gate.

I often hear salespeople say that every sale matters. If that’s the case, then individual buyers and their unique content preferences matter. Rules of thumb give us guidance on scope when we are planning content, and that’s a great thing. Just don’t forget that there are exceptions to every rule.

If you are a savvy business professional, you’re no doubt taking advantage of the internet to create awareness about your business and you as a professional in your field. Whether you’re connecting with people on the networking giant LinkedIn, or a niche site like Networking for Professionals, or an industry blog like Spin Sucks, the people you connect with are forming an opinion about you. The question for you is… “Should they take you seriously?”

In the crowded online networking space, it seems everyone is unleashing their creative side to grab your attention. But reckless creativity could be placing your reputation and your business at risk by hurting your credibility.

Optimize your profile title with keywords

Have you been told to do that?

I have, and I’ve advised clients to do just that.

It’s good advice. But the key to highlighting your expertise in your business profile title begins with using words that will paint a clear picture of the value you offer. Don’t turn to words that simply grab attention – it’s not the kind of attention you are seeking. Trendy titles don’t explain what you do, in fact, they make prospects question what you do.

Below are a few titles that tell your audience not to take you too seriously, and some ideas for what to use instead.

Guru

A guru is defined as a personal spiritual teacher. Is that you? More than likely, you want to express your expertise in a field, so instead try strategist, specialist, analyst, or master next to the name of your field.

Expert

Expert is a word as overused as the word awesome. The truth is very few people are truly experts at their craft. If you have the education or documented experience to back up the title expert and that is how others refer to you, then use that title. But if you want to prove you have extensive industry experience, try advisor, consultant, project manager, or authority.

Maven

There’s something mystical about the word maven. I actually had to look it up when I first saw it. That’s not what you want your prospective contacts to have to do. Maven is a synonym for expert, so instead try senior level or executive level.

Pioneer

The word pioneer makes you think about the early days on the frontier. Yes, it means the first to do something but are you really the first? You better be certain because people will call you out on it. If you’ve been in a field for a long time and have contributed to changes in the field, share about these accomplishments in your profile. For your title, try founder, developer or subject-matter expert.

Influencer

Influencer is a popular term today. To me, Richard Branson is an influencer and not because he says so, but because I say so. If others are influenced by you, then you are an influencer. The key here is that others have given you the title. If you are a significant player in your field, try mentor or [name of industry] specialist, or subject-matter expert.

Freelancer

I like freelancer. In fact, I used to use the title freelancer, but then I found freelancer sends a specific message: contract work, short-term, project based, temporary. There are many successful sites, like Upwork, that match freelancers with contract jobs. However, one of the biggest complaints I hear about these sites is contractors want rock bottom rates regardless of your expertise. Perhaps having the word free in the title is damaging. I turned away from freelancer because my business model calls for long-term clients and so I now use consultant, project manager, or business owner to express more high level, strategic experience.

Here are a few titles to delete immediately… whiz, ace, hotshot, maestro and pro. I don’t need to tell you why.

There’s a step two to this: Prove it!

Whatever title you use, build a robust professional profile that supports it. LinkedIn specifically provides many opportunities to showcase your expertise. Here are a few ideas.

Influence: Use the project field to show high-profile projects you’ve worked on and link to other leaders on the project. Publish thought-provoking articles on LinkedIn. Ask for recommendations from your contacts and grow a strong industry network.

Expert: Use the certifications field to show that you truly are an expert in your field and have the specialized training to prove it. Publish articles that share your strategies and success stories. Create downloads such as eBooks and guides.

Pioneer: Use the publications field to show all the white papers, case studies and other industry reports you’ve written or co-written to show you are one of the founders of your industry. Or try the patents field to show you’ve been a significant contributor to your industry.

Guru and Maven: Use the honors and awards field to showcase industry awards or awards you helped gain for clients. Use the projects field to share how you were a significant resource or lead for a project.

In closing, I get that there are different generations making up the workforce and society is constantly evolving. To some, the titles I recommended may seem ‘old school’. I get it. However, they communicate professionalism and expertise, and they are words that build trust with your audience. Isn’t that the goal?

Forrester reports that 99% of leads do not convert. LinkedIn reports that 87% of leads do not convert. So why are marketers so focused on lead goals and cost per lead when it comes to LinkedIn marketing and social selling?

I believe this is giving marketing a false sense of LinkedIn success or failure. Here are 3 examples to show you what I mean.

Wiley’s CMO Focuses on Their High Click-Through Rates Instead of Revenue Generated

As I mentioned in my recent article “CMOs Are Failing to Go Beyond Brand Awareness on LinkedIn”, Wiley’s CMO, Clay Stobaugh focuses on sponsored updates and sponsored Inmails. I must admit that they are getting amazing click-through rates. But he never discusses how many of those click-throughs are becoming leads and how many of those leads are turning into actual opportunities and actual clients.

Now, let’s assume that many of those click-throughs become leads – and he has a low cost-per-lead. If those leads do not move forward, then he has a high cost for business growth. And, their efforts on LinkedIn are nothing more than a cost center. It doesn’t matter how low the cost-per-lead is if leads are being stuck at the top-of-the-funnel. It’s still a cost and investment that isn’t leading to revenue! Do you see what I mean about a false sense of LinkedIn success by focusing on cost-per-lead?

Social Media Firm Focuses on Lead Goals Even Though the Leads They Delivered Went Nowhere!

I recently spoke to the President and CMO of a logistics company – and they were both so focused on how many leads we are able to deliver on a weekly and monthly basis. They proceeded to tell me how another social media lead generation firm was delivering 5 to 10 leads for sales calls per week.

However, those sales leads they were delivering sucked! 90% of the calls were with prospects who were not in the right stage of the buying process at this time – or they were with people who were not even a decision maker or influencer. The people who said “yes” to a call was just looking for free information, to network – and maybe refer the company.

What good were those leads if there were no relationships being created and leveraged to create revenue opportunities? Again, the cost-per-lead may be low but the cost for business growth is high.

Sales Consulting Firm Focuses on Cost-Per-Lead Rather Than the Return on Relationships That Will Lead to Greater Revenue

The President of a sales consulting firm almost did not renew the firm’s contract with Get LinkedIn Help because she wasn’t getting a return-on-leads that she wanted. She was so focused on her cost-per-lead rather than the return-on-relationships she was getting.

Through our efforts, the firm was building relationships with VPs of Sales and Sales Enablement Directors at Fortune 500 companies like Oracle, First Data and TD Bank. She didn’t think about the value those relationships will have once they close deals. She didn’t think about how we’re shortening the sales cycle and giving the firm a return-on-time.

By focusing just on leads instead of relationships that will turn into revenue, the President was getting a false sense failure (when she was indeed getting something way more valuable than leads that tend to go nowhere!)

If Your Intention Is to Grow Your Business, Shouldn’t Your Focus Be on Generating Customers & Revenue

For our own LinkedIn marketing efforts at Get LinkedIn Help, our team does not carry a lead goal. In fact, we don’t even carry an opportunity goal. We only measure marketing success by closed revenue and make decisions based on this metric. Even if we generate a lower amount of leads or opportunities, it doesn’t matter. Our revenue that is coming from our LinkedIn marketing efforts is all that matters.

The way to focus on customers and revenue is to focus on the complete funnel – not just the top of the funnel and the volume of leads that are going into the funnel. Marketers need to take a pipeline marketing approach, make decisions based on revenue generation instead of leads and optimize all aspects of the LinkedIn marketing program to widen every stage of the funnel. The only way marketers will be able to generate more MQL’s, more SQL’s, more sales opportunities, and more deals is to use the entire pipeline.

So, what are your thoughts? Should marketers be focusing on the lead volume or should they be focused on the relationships that are being created – and how they are driving revenues. Should they be focused on cost-per-lead or the cost for business growth and results?

You can watch my webinar with LinkedIn’s tech industry expert where we’re showing how tech companies (and others) should be “earning” leads and moving them toward revenue here.

Bottom of the funnel marketing is aimed at converting a potential customer into an actual customer. It helps persuade that potential customer past their remaining objections so he or she can finally follow through and take action.

But you just can’t deploy standard content and hope it sticks for leads who are this far down the sales funnel. You need creative, high-value marketing materials that give the prospective customer a reason to act.

In this post, we’ll not only look at who’s using bottom of the funnel marketing, but also at some creative examples that you can pull ideas from, too.

Who’s Using Bottom of the Funnel Marketing?

Most of the time, it’s the sales team that’s working with bottom of the funnel leads, using channels like the company website, social media, a CRM, or online communities to continue the conversation. But as time goes on, B2B teams are seeing more team members get involved with this process.

Working together, team members are focused on making sure the sales proposition looks like the best possible option for the customer, speeding up the process, and helping leads overcome any remaining obstacles to conversion.

But in order to do this, they need creative bottom of the funnel marketing assets. Not sure what those look like? Let’s look at a few fantastic examples.

Creative Examples of Bottom of the Funnel Marketing

Leads low in the funnel need something beyond the standard pricing info and a few testimonials. They need highly specific, actionable content that nudges them closer to action. Here are seven creative examples of engaging marketing for bottom of the funnel leads.

1. Case Studies for Various Industries

Hyland, creator of OnBase, an enterprise information platform, works with many different types of customers. To help bottom of the funnel leads better understand how they can use their platform, they’ve created a page loaded with case study resources. Browsing by industry, potential customers can see how other companies produced real, tangible results using their tools.

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2. Help Desk Articles and How-to Blog Posts

Help desk articles and how-to blog posts help speak to the concerns of bottom of the funnel leads, address their questions, and deal with clear, specific issues (rather than being more broad, open-ended pieces of educational content.) They are also great for SEO efforts, as they address highly specific keywords with lower competition rates.

Campaign Monitor, for example, uses an in-depth help desk article to show users how to set up automatic welcome emails, as seen below.

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3. Interactive Infographics

For bottom of the funnel leads, an easily understandable infographic combines a lot of important data into a single, well designed space. Make it interactive, and you just found one more way to follow up with a very interested potential customer.

Sales and proposal software company Qvidian leverages an interactive infographic to showcase value and the need for a solution.

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4. Free Trials, Discounts, and Demos

For leads who are on the edge of conversion, offering a free trial, a discount, or a free demo can sometimes be the tipping point. They know about your product, they’re interested, but they need that last final nudge in order to convert. Use the information you’ve gathered about your potential customers and what content they’ve interacted with to determine which option is best for the unique individual.

Invision uses a limited free trial for its enterprise level price tier, and then follows up with these leads to work toward converting them into customers.

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5. Drip Email Campaigns

Staying in close communication with customers can be a daunting task without the help of automation. That’s why marketers use drip email campaigns to stay in touch with bottom of the funnel leads on an on-going basis. Over the course of 3-10 emails, you can help inch leads a little bit closer to conversion.

Take this example from Copyblogger. This was one email in a series promoting a discounted offer to purchase a product, and it was loaded with reasons to convert.

6. Interactive White Papers

Interactive white papers are highly effective as a bottom of the funnel marketing resource, because they remind your leads exactly why they need your service or product. Bonus: Making them interactive lets the user become more engaged with this experience, rather than just feeling like he or she is being sold to.

Look at this example from Element. Their interactive white paper works to drive conversions for leads low in the funnel by walking them through the advantages to their specific product.

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7. Interactive Calculators

Decision makers usually defer to the numbers when choosing to move forward with a purchase or investment, so it makes sense to employ an interactive calculator that provides some of the hard numbers that go into that decision-making process.

Fonality uses an interactive calculator to show leads whether or not they have the appropriate bandwidth to proceed with VoIP. In their business, this is a major hurdle the customer has to be able to overcome before conversion, so this resource helps them get a grasp of what is needed before moving forward.

Closed-loop marketing, closed-loop analytics, closed-loop reporting and any term that discusses “closing the loop” has gained recognition among sales and marketing teams because of what it can accomplish. Ultimately, closing the loop means that the entire customer lifecycle is tracked and this can help to build a predictable, accelerated and more efficient customer funnel. Digital campaigns and analytic’s tools have helped to take marketing and sales one step closer to closing the loop, but we’ve still got some work to do.

With the new year upon us, however, many of these obstacles are likely to be overcome plus many new opportunities will be presented that will ultimately take marketing and sales teams even closer to closing the loop.

Customer data drives decisions in all funnels

A recent Forbes article has dubbed 2016” the year of the customer”, and for good reason, with one of the first pieces of support being that customers are smarter than ever. Customers know they have options and aren’t afraid to put in a little research either through Google search or the guidance of friends to ensure they get the best value at a fair price. Happy customers are great, but they are often pretty silent. However, this doesn’t mean you should ignore them. Your existing customers provide you so much untapped value to close the gap including:

• Referrals: Your customers provide you with referrals, and customer referrals are the most trusted channel of advertising out there.
• Market research: Developing great content and a successful marketing strategy requires you to continually conduct market research, and where else to gain this than your customers.
• Innovation: Whether you provide a product or service, your customers are the only source you have to measure how well you are delivering on what you’ve promised.
• Brand protection: Your customers, other than providing referrals through word of mouth, also are your brand’s advocates and evangelist. If you don’t create a truly valuable and incredible brand experience, your customers have no message to carry. This is also true when your brand doesn’t deliver. Customers can become worst enemy by using social platforms to voice their opinion.

Other than the fact that your customers pay you, they are valuable in so many ways, and as shown in the last point, can also be dangerous when not taken care of. In 2016, marketing and sales will get a lot better at closing the loop by focusing on customers.

SLAs no longer ignored

Marketing and sales teams know the importance of service-level agreements (SLA), but making a priority of it and updates as the business changes are another story. An SLA created six, even two years ago without a revisit will not be sufficient in today’s fast growing business. Evidence that SLAs are a dead fish comes from this year’s 2015 State of Inbound. Survey results showed a staggering 83 percent of UNSUCCESSFUL sales teams say they don’t have enough lead information/ it isn’t applicable to them. Not surprisingly, only 17 percent of SUCCESSFUL teams gave the same answer. If those 83 percent of respondants would have a proper SLA, the lead information they need would be available, and they’d also find that lead data is applicable to them.

As a marketer, all of this information haunts me because I know that marketers either have this lead data or could obtain it. The unfortunate truth, however, is that many marketers aren’t on the same page as their sales team, so marketing doesn’t know what data to provide and sales doesn’t know it exists or see the value in it..

The State of Inbound re emphasizes that marketing and sales aren’t on the same page. According to the results, the existence of a service-level agreement (SLA) between sales and marketing was most predictive of higher ROI than the previous year.

More focus on the same data and metrics

Data is critical to closing the gap between marketing sales. But, while analytics have enabled many companies to collect data throughout the customer lifecycle, marketing and sales teams have yet to work together to synthesize this data, as demonstrated in the previous section. But, this spans across multiple areas of the business. As said by, Daniel Waisberg, an Analytics Advocate at Google, in Data & Analytics In 2016: Superstar Industry Experts Weigh In, “don’t let your data organization become a Tower of Babel!”. Removing the silos that isolate data and working to decode the metrics and measurement of this data across departments means that marketing and sales will finally be able to to build campaigns that benefit all areas of business. We’ll see giant strides towards this in 2016.

Better protection of customer data

At the end of the loop and throughout your customer’s journey occurs something that inbound marketers have likely taken for granted, until now. Along conversion paths, in your CRM, accounting system, and other business systems rests your customer’s data. Up until recently, prospects and customers haven’t thought too much about the exchange of their data. If the value is worth the exchange of information, why not give your email or credit card information? But, thanks to a heightened awareness of cybersecurity from events like breaches of Ashley Madison or CVS, more and more people are apprehensive when giving allowing you to collect and store their data. This doesn’t mean, just yet, that marketers can say goodbye to cookie tracking or seeing form submissions, but it does mean that they should take extra measures in 2016 to show their customers that their data is secure and safe through measures like having a secure website.

Let’s see if we can make giant leaps towards closing the loop through a bigger focus on customers, their data, and putting it all together.

Innovate. “Make changes in something established, especially by introducing new methods, ideas, or products.”

Just a buzzword?

To many people, it might seem as though the business world has become over-saturated with innovation. This buzzword is now thrown around in conjunction with all manner of postulations and stratagems, with authors often straying away from its actual meaning in favour of seeking the attention of an increasingly elusive target audience.

The overuse of this term has had a polarising effect, while many people have been converted to ‘innovation’ through this incessant rhetoric, many more see it as meaningless business jargon which should be avoided like the plague. So which one is it? Is innovation a superfluous fad that just won’t go away, or is it an imperative doctrine which all companies should aspire to instill?

This blog will analyse two well-known examples which should help to provide a definitive answer to this burning question

Yahoo

A messenger is born

Before email and instant messaging, the only way of communicating with someone in real-time was through a phone line, which was far from convenient. All this changed however, with the popularisation of the internet, and since then there have been hundreds of different companies which have sought to profit by facilitating communication using this network.

One of the first companies to offer their own chat service was Yahoo, who launched Yahoo Pager in 1998. With the number of users on this platform reaching 100 million in 2009, this venture could be seen as a success, however in comparison to what it could have achieved, it should be considered an abject failure.

A messenger ascends

The platform which eventually capitalised on our need for instant communication, was Whatsapp. Launched in 2009, this app was designed to fulfil the purpose of SMS messaging on mobile phones and it quickly became very popular. In 2014 Facebook purchased WhatsApp for $19 billion, and it is now on target to hit one billion active users by the end of 2015.

Whatsapp is no different to the original instant messenger designed by ICQ in 1996, or to any of its other competitors such as AIM, MSN, BBM, or KIK. The only difference is that WhatsApp was first to capitalise on the innovative capabilities that were being offered by mobile devices, despite possessing categorically inferior technology and resources.

A messenger fails

So why should Yahoo feel most perturbed by Whatsapp’s sudden ascendancy? Well, not only did they possess the technological assets to make this innovation, but also the human ones in the form of two employees named Brian Acton and Jan Koum. These two yahoo software engineers would go on to become the founders of Whatsapp.

This is a prime example of how crucial it is for companies to utilise the knowledge of their employees. This invaluable resource contains countless ideas which have the potential to generate dramatically valuable business results, yet at many organisations it remains untapped. Who knows, If Yahoo had nourished a truly innovative business culture back in 2007, they might have received an idea from Koum or Acton, which would have completely transformed their business.

Kodak

Picture perfect?

The case of this American technology company is one of the most well-known, not least of all because it is also one of the most shocking. For over a century Kodak dominated the photography industry through a plethora of innovations, from the revolutionary “Brownie camera” in 1900, to the easy-load Instamatic which launched in 1963. However Kodak’s success would not last forever, and in 2003, one hundred and twenty-two years after its formation, the company had to sell most of its assets in order to avoid bankruptcy.

Kodak’s downfall can be attributed entirely to their failure to adapt to digital technology. They actually made the first recorded effort to construct a digital camera back in 1975, thirteen years before the first commercial equivalent was launched by arch-rivals Fujifilm. But they decided not to push through this innovative development, because it would compete directly with their existing analogue empire.

Framing innovation

Kodak enjoyed a short period of relative success in the late nineties when they finally made a concerted effort to enter the digital camera market, however they were not prepared for the fierce competition that mobile phones would provide and this is what lead to their bankruptcy fears in 2013.

Since the turn of the century, Kodak’s focus has slowly shifted towards digital printing, and it is thanks to this venture that the company has managed to stay afloat. However rather than choosing this specialisation, their hand was forced due to their failure in other more lucrative operations. This can all be traced back to their period of market domination in the sixties, when at some point the company stopped pushing forward and began to rest in its laurels. However they are not the only company to have fallen into this trap, with Microsoft, Yahoo!, and Sony all guilty of the same mistake, albeit to a lesser degree.

Conclusion

The most valuable resource

Both of these examples shows how crucial an idea management platform can be in the pursuit of success. There will always be a better way of delivering your value proposition, or a more efficient way to produce your product, and so it is essential to maximise these efforts. However committing your company to a constant search for new innovation ventures might not always be the most cost-effective and efficient course of action.

In the contemporary business world, companies spend billions externally on new technologies, new idea and new products, through ever growing mergers and acquisitions programs. However many of these companies would have saved much of their hard earned capital, had they realised the value of the resources already at their disposal. If they had searched internally they could have leveraged the extensive experience, amazing knowledge base, and boundless creativity of their people, allowing everyone to contribute to the success of the organisation.

Harvesting that resource

The solution to this issue is firstly to make an end-to-end corporate decision to not only adopt and invest in Innovation, but also to turn the process of company innovation from something spontaneous and sporadic, into a structured and repeatable process that is ingrained within the culture of the organisation. So, it is crucial to have a strategy for cultivating and maintaining this initiative, but also it is important to truly support this framework with a platform which is designed to fit the exact unique requirements of the company.

We at Qmarkets allow organisations to unleash their inner corporate collective wisdom, helping to transform innovative ideas into measurable results, and ensuring that the unfortunate stories above are not repeated over and over again when there is such an effective alternative on offer.

Contact us to discover how we can help your company to unleash the potential of your employees, and ensure that your billion dollar opportunities don’t slip away!

We’re all familiar with the marketing potential of Facebook and Twitter. With a vast market at your fingertips and targeted advertising, results can be impressive. Although it can be tempting to allocate the full social budget on posting and tweeting, try to avoid this pitfall. Other platforms can be just as rewarding, if not more.

Take for example, LinkedIn which boasts over 400 million users. This invaluable networking tool shouldn’t be overlooked. As a place to meet likeminded professionals and those within your industry, it can be a great place to drum up new business. For those struggling to crack this social networking nut, take a look at this guide on how to get the most out of LinkedIn.

Find the prospects

Spend some time seeking out those groups that are most related to your business. This would include groups with members who are either prospective clients or professionals with influential roles in your sector. You can now target these individuals by posting a variety of content to the group. In depth blog posts, industry-specific guides and how-to’s are all a great way to promote your brand as an industry leader. It can also create brand awareness without the need for flashy sale gimmicks.

Start your own group

Why not take it one step further and create your own community? This can work well for larger companies who can leverage their knowledge to quickly acquire new members. It’s also beneficial for those with several target markets where you can establish a group for each one. This approach allows you to tailor content for each audience and only post to the users that add the most value.

Less is more

Don’t make the mistake of joining too many groups. It can seem like the best approach to gain maximum contacts, but you’ll be spreading yourself too thin. Instead, choose one or two groups in each category and place all your attention on this small selection. You can now dedicate more time to contributing and becoming as active as possible. In the long term, this should provide far more contacts than posting infrequently across a huge range of groups.

Answer questions

According to LinkedIn, those who comment on group posts and answer questions receive four times as many profile views. Not only can you help the community, your expertise will portray a sense of reliability and knowledge to other members. Answer as many questions as possible, providing links to other resources that may be of help. It’s a quick and easy way to earn new connection requests and possible leads.

Get staff involved

Extend the reach of your networking by allowing employees to post and discuss on groups on behalf of the company. Aside from increasing your presence and brand awareness, it can encourage staff to become more knowledgeable within their role. Be sure to provide adequate training on how to use the platform as well as guidelines on representing the company.

LinkedIn can be a great tool for those with a little patience. It often takes time to establish credibility, but follow these simple tips and you’ll be surprised at the results.

I’m always looking for good business books, but finding a great sales book can be overwhelming. Just type sales management into amazon books and you will get over 64,000 results! With so many books on sales it’s hard to pick the right book, and if you’re like me you don’t have time to waste with self-promoting fluff-filled business books. Fortunately, I’ve done the hard work for you and selected six of the best books for sales leaders, I’ve read lately.

Whether you are a business owner with a small sales team or a sales rep who was recently promoted to a managerial role, these sales management books will sharpen your sales success toolbox!

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1. Sales Management. Simplified: The Straight Truth About Getting Exceptional Results from Your Sales Team

Author: Mike Weinberg

Weinberg holds up a giant mirror for senior executives and sales leaders as he makes the blunt case (along with stories to prove it) that the “sales” problem at most companies is actually a problem with how the sales team is being led. Already a #1 Amazon Bestseller, Sales Management. Simplified has been called “arguably the greatest book ever written on sales management” and “an unequaled blueprint for leading salespeople and building high-performance sales teams.” Part One pulls back the covers to reveal the common leadership reasons sales teams underperform, and Part Two offers a very simple framework any sales leader or company can implement to dramatically improve their sales culture and performance. [Buy Now]

My Tweet Sized Two Cents:

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16 #SalesManagement flaws from real companies & how to cure them. Filled with actionable advice!
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2. Whale Hunting With Global Accounts: Four Critical Sales Strategies to Win Global Customers

Author: Dr. Barbara Weaver Smith

In Whale Hunting with Global Accounts, Barbara Weaver Smith takes business owners and executives, national and global sales leaders, and large account sales reps on a deep dive into the four critical sales strategies that will make you the winners in the competition for global accounts.

The voices of fourteen global sales experts — current practitioners and sales leaders — contribute seamlessly to the narrative for a powerfully multinational perspective. Weaver Smith will teach you how to become a smarter, more insightful, global account team who will win unlimited long-term business. [Buy Now]

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Don’t let your competitor have this business, be prepared to go after global accounts! #WhaleHunting
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3. Hire Right, Higher Profits – The Executive’s Guide to Building a World-Class Sales Force

Author: Lee B. Salz

Executives spend countless hours coming up with new sales strategies, yet few invest the time to find the right people to execute them. In “Hire Right, Higher Profits,” Lee Salz presents an easy-to-implement program that helps you select the right salespeople and create the plan needed to get them up to speed fast. [Buy Now]

 

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A practical step-by-step guide on how to #Hire and onboard the right salespeople by investing in…
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4. The Hybrid Sales Channel: How to Ignite Growth by Bridging the Gap Between Direct and Indirect Sales

Author: Rich Blakeman, Managing Director, MHI Global

Today’s customers have more buying options than ever before. They don’t care if it’s direct or indirect. They don’t mind if it’s not your preferred sales model. And they don’t like it when you try to tell them how to buy from you. If you want your customers to keep buying–and your company to keep growing–you need to rethink and retool the way you’re selling. The Hybrid Sales Channel shows you how to integrate, invigorate, and maximize the direct and indirect sales channels you already have–so you’ll be able to sell more, sell more effectively, and sell in ways that customers want to buy. [Buy Now]

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An approachable guide to managing a hybrid sales channel that will help you sell more!
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5. The Sales Development Playbook: Build Repeatable Pipeline and Accelerate Growth

Author: Trish Bertuzzi

Trish was compelled to write this book for one simple reason. There is a fundamental misunderstanding of how to do sales development. In this book she identifies six elements for scaled development success; Strategy, Specialization, Recruiting, Retention, Execution and Leadership. These six elements are critical and came to her by years of trial and error working with hundreds of her clients. She has used this proven system with her clients to double their growth. If you are doing sales development at your company, this is a must read. [Buy Now]

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Actionable strategies & tactics on scaled #SalesDevleopment through six critical elements!
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6. The OneTEAM Method: How Sales & Marketing Collaboration Can Boost Big Business.

Author: Peter Strohkorb

The art of Sales and Marketing has undergone tremendous change over the last few years, and many organizations are struggling to cope with the new and still evolving Buyers Journey paradigm. There has never been a time when Sales and Marketing have needed to collaborate as closely, or as effectively, as they do today. This book examines the worldwide innovation phenomenon of Sales + Marketing Collaboration and outlines an expert method that shows organizations how to forge a vastly more productive partnership between their Sales and Marketing teams. Today’s most forward-thinking organizations are using the OneTEAM Method™ to deliver breakthrough business success. [Buy Now]

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Practical advice on how to align Sales & Marketing through collaboration.
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What I appreciate about all six of these books is their actionable methods and processes that are outlined clearly throughout their pages. Sales leaders can read 1 or 6 of these books and walk away with new tools and perspectives that will help them increase sales!

What books about sales or sales management are on your shelf or kindle? Leave a comment below with a few of your favorites!

The post 6 Sales Management Books for Savvy Sales Leaders appeared first on Alice Heiman, LLC.

If you develop online content with freelance writers or an in-house editorial team, it can be difficult to put together consistently high-quality blog for your company blog.

As an inbound marketing agency, we manage online content initiatives for several clients at a time, and we often field questions about how to produce quality content on so many different topics. The secret, of course, is a passion to get it “right,” careful organization, and talent. But there are also practical steps that any company could deploy to increase the quality of their online content output. These hold true if you’re doing it in-house or even using freelance writers.

Here are our best recommendations for working with writers and editors to improve the quality of your online content.

Start With a Manifesto

When we work with a client, the first thing we do is create a buyer persona and identify the most appropriate voice and messaging for the brand. This profile informs all of the other choices we make about the blog, including the style, voice, and tone of each article.

When you’re getting started with online content, use your buyer personas to map out a clear guide for the style of the posts you plan to write. Dig into the details of what your clients want and outline how your blog will meet those needs. You’ll be able to use this manifesto to inform every content project you take on and every writer you work with. You’ll write content as if you’re talking to that buyer persona.

Give Clear Instructions

One of the challenges of working with freelance writers is that there are many different approaches to writing. While some brands prefer a more journalistic style with less structure, others prefer more authoritative and educational style that is more factual and to the point. The odds of finding a writer who approaches a project exactly how you’d like them to is very low. That’s why the second most important thing to do when you develop online content is to carefully outline your expectations for each blog post.

Clearly define the purpose and vision of every blog article. What should be in each section? How should the writer approach the introduction, the tone, and the audience for the post? With each assignment, outline the key points that must be mentioned in the blog post as well as any style or formatting details you prefer such as the post structure, subheadings, quotes, and lists.

Simplify

When it comes to the quality of the writing, creating content for the Internet is all about simplicity. When sentences are short and the subheaders and formatting are clear, it’s easier for your customer to understand what you are trying to say.

While writing, make sure that your sentences are concise. Avoid using compound sentences or sentences joined by semicolons. Paragraphs should be no longer than three sentences, and each sentence should have a transitional element so that the piece flows as a whole.

In fact, the shorter and more concise the sentence, the better. All writing for the Internet should aim for a 7th- or 8th-grade reading level, even for highly specialized niches. You should show authority through the information you present and the words you use, not through the complexity of the writing.

Take a Break and Use Tools

When you write a post in one sitting, you can accidentally write in an informal stream-of-consciousness style. While this works for some brands, it’s not typically a good thing. Instead, write your content and then allow time for it to sit for a day or two before you give it a final edit.

When you’ve edited your blog article, run it through a free online editing tool like Grammarly or HemingwayApp. These tools will allow you to catch grammatical and structural errors that applications like Microsoft Word and Google Docs often miss.

If you’re going to create online content for your customers, make it great. Use these tips to improve the quality of your blog posts, white papers, and website content, which will in turn improve the quality of your inbound marketing strategy.

When you have a team of dedicated, experienced sales professionals, it is often easy just to let them do their thing. However, a well-defined sales process offers you, your company and your team several important advantages.

Improves Sales and Management Efficiency

Efficiency is one of the main benefits of creating a process for any consistently performed set of activities. You take out the uncertainty, guesswork and wasted indecision for team members when the next step in the selling process is always spelled out for them.

As a manager, you can also lead and develop more efficiently with a defined sales process. Set evaluative criteria at each stage of the selling cycle, beginning with lead generation. Reinforce positive achievements at certain stages when conducting opportunities reviews, and point to specific stages where shortfalls exist. Your development is more objective, efficient and on-point.

Quality Improvement

When a person performs any task repetitively, his or her tendency is to get better at it. By having your team members execute the same selling steps each time, they gain experience performing those steps. In addition to your coaching to specific stages, reps learn from the trial and error of completing tasks over and over again.

In lead generation, for instance, you and your reps may realise that particular methods of contacting prospects more efficiently contribute to landing appointments.

Identify Problems Spots

With an undefined process, it is difficult to identify the bottlenecks or problem spots for your team. With a consistently applied process, you are more likely to find these phases that give your team trouble. If one or more team members struggle to address buyer concerns and convert sales efficiently, you can focus training on these areas.

It is also easier to hold reps accountable for particular tasks with a defined process. Some reps might not like inputting data into your CRM software, for instance. We all know that the CRM system is only as good as the data within it.

With a defined process, it is easier to recognise an issue like this, ensure everyone understands the reasons for having good data, and if necessary, hold reps accountable for contributing as expected.

Better Financial Performance

If effectively applied and managed, a defined selling process drives better financial performance as well. As team members improve at each phase of the selling cycle, their effectiveness and waste-reduction leads to higher revenue and greater margins.

Additionally, consistency allows you to fine-tune forecasting for improved accuracy. Accurate forecasts enable you to set better individual and team quotas and objectives. Also, expense budgets are normally tied to sales forecasts. With improved accuracy, you guard against spending too much or too little on activities and materials that support the sales effort.

Time saved from having to think about each selling step is among the primary drivers of reduced costs and increased financial performance.

Conclusion

The value of a defined sales process to all internal stakeholders, and customers, is clear. Team members get better and more efficient based on repetition and practice. You gain greater insight on areas requiring improvement. And perhaps the greatest value is in the enhanced revenue and minimised waste that results from consistency.

Lack of time is the biggest reason for lack of content, yet there’s more and more emphasis on the importance of scaling copy to reach more customers. If everyone is so short on time, how can marketers manage the growing demands of content? I have noticed critical steps that many businesses skip to save time, but these save time and money in the long run:

Develop a Content Marketing Strategy

The initial step to success is devising a solid strategy aligned with your business goals. This ensures all departments are on the same page and prevents last minute projects halting daily production. Beginning work without an approved plan is the best way to limit creativity and increase staff burnout. Every strategy should align consumer needs with commercial goals and production standards. Your content marketing tactics should align advertising efforts with product launches, major company events, and holidays. Consider your busy season, too.

A sound plan should also close any gaps in content information by considering buyer personalities, stages in consumer lifecycles, and content keywords. This comprehensive approach should have the flexibility to grow and change to address new updates.

Create a Content Marketing Plan

Once you’ve created a solid strategy and key stockholders are invested, develop your content marketing plan. This is where you can establish specific projects to work cohesively and strengthen the same policy. There may be an idea for each stage of the customer lifecycle or projects that address different buyer personalities.

Develop a Production Process

Now that a strategy and content plan has been shared with your company, you’ll benefit from a clear production process. This will ensure you can maintain your projects through development, delivery, and metric tracking. A solid process will have boundaries rather than roadblocks to keep teams on track without stifling creativity.

This step should clarify who’s responsible for a task and who’s overseeing its completion according to enterprise standards and plan goals. If there are any expertise gaps, additional consultants can be brought on board, or parts of the project can be outsourced.

A content calendar should also be a part of the production process. This lists when and where material is shared to meet your target audience’s content frequency demands. Rather than designate one person in charge of a production process, consider using project management software that allows team members to access and update the calendar. This will save time and combine various notes into one central database.

Expand Writer Specialization

Having writers who are experts on their source materials will lead to improved quality and efficiency. Assign similar content to the same writer to develop his or her knowledge on a specific topic. When time allows, ask writers to create additional material on a relevant subject of interest. This will expand the copy your company shares but will also grow your writers’ understanding of a specific issue and increase staff motivation.

Businesses with small writing teams can invest in education training and other resources to increase their knowledge base. Hiring an agency or freelance writer to create additional content outside the team’s comfort zone is another option. Outsourcing can be an effective method for many enterprises due to the seasonal nature of most industries. A busy time demands additional writers to meet growing content needs, but staff writers will usually have unproductive periods during slow seasons. Thus, many small operations outsource only during peak moments.

Schedule Regular Editorial Reviews

Hold a meeting with the organization’s production managers to keep work silos from forming and add different perspectives to production challenges. This allows your thought experts to brainstorm new solutions for existing workflow bottlenecks. A meeting like this is a fantastic way to uncover missed opportunities and easily add them into the next set of content marketing plans or fit into the existing calendar.

Members of each team can discuss new trends in the field to strengthen weak content. Similarly, this is the place to evaluate the latest statistics to target the most successful material. Keep the meeting focused by passing each idea through a filter that rates value, considers alternative ideas, and prioritizes them based on business goals. Most importantly, align every new topic with the company’s original strategies.

Telemarketing activities are commonly used to contact leads and land appointments. Unfortunately, inside sales teams are often too overwhelmed to optimise productivity, which impedes sales efficiency. In such cases, outside support from specialists is a possible solution.

Here are four signs your inside sales team needs support in reaching its telemarketing goals.

Bookings Efficiency Wanes

One of the most transparent signals that your inside sellers need support is when they fail to reach quotas. A lack of quality leads, which is usually a marketing responsibility, is one potential reason for missed targets on appointment setting.

It is of greater concern if your marketing system is producing a high volume of prospects, but your inside sales team is failing to efficiently make calls and set appointments. A common metric for measuring efficiency is average sales cycle. If your team’s average cycle exceeds industry norms or increases, you have cause for concern.

Rewards Don’t Motivate

Call centres routinely instill goal and rewards programs to maintain telemarketing motivation. As you track performance, inefficiency, gaps in productivity, and of course, missed numbers, all signal a lack of motivation.

Some gamification systems and rewards programs simply don’t incentivise inside sellers in a way that works. It is challenging to set up an effective and long-lasting motivation program in an environment where people make a lot of routine calls hour after hour, day after day.

Communication Falls Short

An effective, efficient sales cycle requires a seamless process and communication among different people. Marketing often sources leads, inside sellers make appointment setting calls, and then field reps go in for the sale.

When your inside sales team is overwhelmed, it is easy to get so caught up in making calls that communication takes a back seat. Reps might not enter important data into CRM profiles, which makes it difficult for field salespeople to prepare well for the first call. More involved face-to-face meetings to discuss problems are also overlooked.

Inside sales reps are part of a large selling process that requires internal communication for optimisation.

Results are Inconsistent

Telemarketers require a clear structure and organised environment to achieve consistent levels of productivity. If your team’s productivity is very volatile, it can signal an undefined structure and erratic calling behaviours.

On some days, reps may feel higher levels of motivation and mental energy, which results in more calls and higher efficiency. On off days, very few successful calls occur. A top-performing sales organisation cannot afford such wild swings, as it impedes high return on investment.

Conclusion

The most obvious sign that your inside sales team isn’t cutting it is when you don’t achieve goals. Beyond that, look at how well motivation programs drive consistent performance. Communication systems and office structure are also key pieces to a highly efficient telemarketing function.

Contact us to discuss whether a specialised appointment setting operation that only charges for bookings is a better option for your company.

Customer service isn’t what it used to be.

It’s not at all like what your parents or grandparents were probably used to receiving; it’s not even what I experienced growing up as a millennial.

Modern customer service isn’t something only provided when you call or go into a business. Now, customer service needs to be internet-wide.

In addition to being expected to be present on an ever-growing number of social media networks simply so that you can be found when someone does go looking for you, you also have to expect that they won’t go looking for you online.

Instead, they’ll complain to no one, not tagging your company or tagging it incorrectly, and then proceed to get even angrier when you don’t respond to the complaint you didn’t know they had.

No matter how silly the complaint may seem, or minor, or how petty, you need to address and resolve the issues your customers feel that they have. While they may not seem like much to you, the customer feels that these are a Big Deal, and you should respect that part of the interaction online or on social media.

The one interaction that trips up the most companies — even the big guys — is the one that no customer service training really covers quite thoroughly enough.

What Do You Do When the Customer Is Very Clearly Wrong?

When you’re not big enough to simply give away everything to make customers happy, you get stuck in a tricky situation.

Or, perhaps there’s another reason — if you keep giving customers free replacements, perhaps there’s a risk to either the customer or to their products if they’re messing something up.

Either way, you can’t afford to simply let the customer think they’re right. You have to, somehow, get the customer to admit that they’re wrong — and then help them fix the situation.

This is, as you can imagine, monumentally difficult.

I learned about this while working for LLLReptile & Supply Co, Inc, one of the biggest reptile companies in the US.

You Think You Got Customer Service Problems?

Try telling someone the reason that expensive new animal they got died because they didn’t listen to you. Or that the baby lizard or tortoise they’ve been raising for months is “shaped funny” because it’s severely deficient in calcium.

At least when you troubleshoot a computer, the worst thing that happens if you don’t ask the right question is that you have to repeat the troubleshooting process. With live animals, if you don’t ask the right question, something dies.

Naturally, this is a thing we want to avoid.

So with that in mind, let me explain the number one way to have every social media or customer service interaction end with the customer happy that you’re telling them how much they screwed up.

It’s amazing, it really is.

The “secret”?

Never Be the One to Say It’s Their Fault When It Very Clearly Is

This doesn’t mean you just bend over for every complaint.

What it does mean is rather than saying “Sir, your pet died because you screwed up every possible aspect of its care,” you ask questions. Lots of little, leading questions.

Normally, this works best when your publicly viewable questions are phrased in a way that doesn’t blast the customer as being an idiot. They need to subtly lead the customer to realizing they’ve admitted that they’re at fault.

What you’ll want to do is ask small, no-fault questions that lead to a situation you can resolve.

For example — “The snake/lizard/animal you sold me died after just one week! I want a refund!”

What this person absolutely does not want to hear is that the live animal guarantee is only for 3 days because that’s typically about how long it takes for their poor care to cause problems.

What they also absolutely do not want to hear (or tell you) is the long list of things that they did wrong that led to their new pet dying.

So how do you handle the customer who is convinced all of their problems are a result of something your company did — intentionally, or unintentionally?

Start from the beginning. That’s good customer service, for one, and two, it lets you learn as much as possible.

Maybe the Customer Didn’t Screw up — You Won’t Know Unless You Start at the Beginning

Ask where they learned about caring for the animal. Or, for your business, something about how they learned to use, set up, or otherwise interact with whatever it is you sell. Usually, they either didn’t look up anything, or they looked up information that was outdated, incomplete, or entirely incorrect.

Your brother’s best friend’s ex wife is not usually a great resource on exotic pet care. She’s also probably not nearly as experienced as you or your employees are with your own products. This is a good point to make, but you want to be subtle about it.

You do this by mentioning that your website has all the information they needed. Care sheet, complete with links to the necessary products, and look at that — you’re even an active member on the biggest forum about that exact topic. It’s almost like they could have come to you at any time to ask for help!

Don’t actually say that.

What works well is suggesting your information (care sheet, blog post, etc) and then providing a link, casually dropping in that if they follow this information, they won’t have the problem they’re currently experiencing again.

Ask how the animal (product) looked once they got it out of the box. It arrived in great shape, and was well packaged? Oh good, we sent it out to you as healthy and beautiful as could be.

Did it poop? If it pooped, obviously it was eating.

Find similar types of questions that show that whatever your company sent out was working or in good shape before the customer touched it. Again, don’t explicitly say “we sent it out just fine”, but drop things in casually.

“Oh, it pooped all over you when you took it out of the shipping container? Sorry, we obviously were feeding it well when it was with us!”

What This Does Is Help Set up the Baseline: What You Sent Out, or Created, or Sold, Was Perfect the Last Time You Touched It

So where did everything go wrong?

At this point, what often happens is that others pile on to the conversation, especially if it’s over social media or on a forum. This is where you shine — hold the customer’s hand through figuring out where exactly they screwed up, without ever explicitly saying “gee, maybe you should have called us before getting to that point.”

Depending on your business’ situation, others in the niche with more experience may pile on to the conversation, either with negativity or positive help.

You’ll want to remain a positive, helpful beacon among any mudslinging, or remain a positive member of the community if the additional comments are positive. Usually, by the time others pile on, the customer is more than happy to take the conversation to a less publicly viewable place — email, phone, or direct messages.

And that’s your goal! Your business looks great, they look like a regular person who made a mistake, everyone’s happy.

No accusing, no anger, they save face and you get lots of positive brand recognition from the exchange.

And, Once You Get Good at This, the Customer Is Usually Happy to Learn How to Prevent Something Like That from Happening Again

Even if you’re lousy — usually, people are happy to learn how to not screw things up. As long as you don’t make them feel attacked or stupid, your customers will be very grateful to learn what they should be doing.

The goal for your interactions should always be to have the customer leave happy about having talked to your company.

This might be the mantra your customer service team is supposed to chant, but often, this part gets lost when dealing with a customer in the wrong. The goal becomes simply to minimize damage.

The focus of this “secret” shouldn’t be on pointing the finger back at the customer, letting them feel lousy for screwing up.

The Goal at the End of the Interaction Should Be That the Customer Has Recognized They Screwed up — but Also That You Were There to Help Them.

To be fair, this doesn’t work exactly this way in every single case, but it works often enough for enough different businesses that it’s worth reviewing for your own.

Don’t tell the customer it’s their fault. Show them.

And when you can manage to have the interaction end with them smiling, you’ll gain far more referrals and brand recognition than by simply deleting or ignoring negative comments and complaints.

This report analyzes how software companies take on the challenge of Inbound Marketing. It explores how they engage their audience, what content is working for them and how well they convert.

It consists of 33 software companies, tracking 325 thousand unique monthly visitors, and more than 1.5 million content interactions.

All data in this research was created with BrightInfo’s algorithm. In essence, it automatically and continuously analyzes your content, understanding it almost at a human level. It also simultaneously analyzes audience interests, individual behavior and crowd behavior. By matching the two in real-time, it serves accurate, personalized and relevant content recommendations and then listens to form on-landing pages as they are being filled to track conversions and conversion rate. This leads to content scoring based upon performance – from popularity to actual conversions.

We sorted the software companies’ activities by conversion rates, then compared leaders, followers and laggers.

Engaging Audience with Content

Here is the problem: getting eyes on your content is becoming increasingly difficult. A recent report found that as much as 70% of the marketing content created by brands goes completely unused as marketers struggle to find quality online real estate in which to display their content. In addition, the proliferation of channels and information, an increasing variance in audiences, and fragmented data are all contributing to this major problem for content marketers.

Top performing companies engage more of their audience with their content. While this appears to be a must in order to increase the absolute number of conversions, it is not in itself enough to boost conversion rates.

What to do? Stop hiding your content in that Resources section no one visits, and start actively engaging your audience with content recommendations. Why is it effective? Because the science behind personalization and choice enables content recommendations to counteract three psychological phenomena, all related to the “paradox of choice.”

• It reduces “analysis paralysis” – over-thinking that leads to inaction
• It cuts the rate of horrible decisions – making a random decision due to the vast amount of information
• It prevents user disorientation

Take it one step further and serve personalized content to gain some pretty cool perks. Data accumulated in this research suggests that:

• Personalized content offerings, combining contextual and behavioral hints, increase conversions by up to 300%
• Personalization helps marketers better understand the buyer journey: for example, our customers learned that up to 40% of conversions take place on pages without any forms
• Personalization helps marketers generate online leads at a much lower cost – $3 to $6.

Mastering the Science of Gated Content

Gated Content is content that is held behind a form, whereas ungated content is publicly available on your site. Software companies use gated content to generate leads, and they invest a lot in it, as it needs to have a higher value for readers who are required to leave contact information in order to get it.

Top performing companies use much more gated content to engage their site visitors. Companies that gate 60% or more of their content convert 132% better than companies that gate 40% of their content and 650% better than companies that gate 10% or less of their content. Here is what it looks like visually:

So, should you gate all of your content? Not necessarily. Here’s why:

• The effect seems to peak at around 75% gated content: companies that gate more than that do not convert better than companies that gate 60%-70% of their content.
• Open content had a lot of value – starting with generating traffic to your website and assisting your audience in making up their minds before they actually convert.
• Businesses that sell complex value proposition products such as software solutions or marketing strategy services need to engage with the online prospect throughout a phased buyer journey, making a mix of locked and free content more effective. Read more about it here.

What to do? Either produce more gated content – which is effective yet expensive – or be very selective on what content you engage your audience with. Using your latest item – such as a blog post and a video – is a very common practice, but data suggests it may not be very effective.

Engaging Your Audience at the Right Stage

The overwhelming majority of your audience is not going to convert from a single touch-point. In fact, Mckinsey recently found that the decision journey consists of at least six touch points. To make this is even more interesting, they happen on different channels. The results will not surprise online marketers: 65% of buyers are frustrated by inconsistent experiences.

What do you do with this on your owned media – your website? While producing different content assets is costly, it does pay off. This is easily measurable for gated content – webinars, eBooks and whitepapers – but is also true for the more elusive assisting content, meaning content that was consumed before the user navigated to downloading gated content.

Top converting companies “prepare” the conversion with Middle or Bottom of the Funnel content, such as infographics, data sheets and case studies. Least converting companies have blog posts, meaning Top of Funnel content, as their most assisting content.

What to do? Your content should reflect your funnel – and offer different content for different stages of the decision journey. Open content such as infographics, data sheets and case studies may not convert directly, but they play a key role in the decision journey, especially for lower-in-the-funnel conversions, which are typically of higher value. Learn how to produce this kind of content effectively – and how to measure its indirect impact.

Summary

Content production is costly, and most Inbound Marketers make the mistake of burying it on their content hub.

By using content recommendations and engaging more of your audience with your content you can increase the total amount of conversions.

Add Content Personalization to the mix, and you can serve your most relevant content to each individual. This 1-to-1 marketing is extremely effective in surfacing relevant gated content, helping companies to scale content conversions.

Google Analytics is replacing the Search Engine Optimization report with the Search Console report and adds behavior and conversion metrics into the mix. The post Google Search Console metrics now deeply integrated into Google Analytics appeared first on Search Engine Land.

Please visit Search Engine Land for the full article.

NEW YORK, N.Y. – Wal-Mart is sharpening its attack on Amazon.com.

The world’s largest retailer is trimming its free-shipping pilot program to two days from a three, and it’s cutting a dollar off the membership price. Membership is now be $49 per year.

The Bentonville, Arkansas, company began testing the new service last year in answer to Amazon Prime’s two-day shipping, a big part of its domination of the retail sector.

Amazon membership costs $99 a year, which comes with a bewildering array of perks, including household product subscriptions, one and two hour Prime Now delivery, streaming music and video, photo storage and more.

“Prime has become an all-you-can-eat, physical-digital hybrid,” Amazon founder and CEO Jeff Bezos wrote in his annual shareholder letter in April. He wants the service to be such a good deal that you’d be “irresponsible” not to sign up, he wrote.

And Amazon has thrived because of it. Analysts say that Amazon Prime members buy more frequently and spend more money.

Wal-Mart’s program, called ShippingPass, allows users to purchase more than one million items, including the most commonly purchased goods at Walmart.com.

“We can offer faster and more affordable shipping because we have a unique fulfilment network that includes new large fulfilmentcentres, stores, distribution centres and our transportation network,” Wal-Mart said in a company release.

ShippingPass is only a pilot program and Wal-Mart will not say when it plans to extend the service to all customers.

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Our first post on the risks of insight selling focused on the importance of not ignoring your traditional sales pursuit process and only focusing on insight development and delivery. In our second post, we review the potential traps you may fall into when you do have the opportunity to provide insights.

Action based on assumptions

Any time you prepare an idea or insight to bring to a customer, you are making assumptions. It doesn’t matter whether your insight is thoroughly researched and its validity fully tested — you are still preparing for the interaction with your customer by making assumptions about how relevant that insight might be to that customer at that time, whether they already thought of the issue themselves, whether that particular business issue is of greater importance than something else going on in their business and, ultimately, how they might react to what you share. Does that mean you shouldn’t do it?  Of course not!  Rather, you need to be highly skilled in when and how you position an insight, including validating your assumptions first to ensure relevance and engaging the customer in a collaborative discussion that fosters openness to new thinking.

Inability to maintain objectivity to deeply understand needs

Leveraging an insight to generate a need certainly doesn’t replace the critical steps of deeply understanding the customer’s unique situation and current perception of their needs and testing your own assumptions before jumping to pitch your insight and ideas. Solving real business issues requires critical thinking, and critical thinking requires the ability to challenge assumptions — both the customer’s and your own. Sellers who stay focused on their own current beliefs, without openness to altering their own perceptions based on clearer understanding of the customer’s unique situation, miss the opportunity to create value for the customer by accurately diagnosing the issues and creatively problem solving for them. The trap is very real for sellers to get so excited about their insight and the belief that it will truly help their customer that they can inadvertently get tunnel vision and forget to listen and ask great questions related to their insight and other needs. Imagine leaving other opportunities on the table because you were too focused on the one that you wanted to pitch.

Insight dumping — the new “feature dumping”

Do you remember the days of feature dumping?  Sellers focused on pitching features and “telling” customers all about their spiffy products without much regard for the customer’s perspective. Can you see where we are going here with insight selling? History tends to repeat itself, and sellers must be careful not to “dump” their insight on customers. Instead, they must constantly be listening, gauging feedback, asking great questions, and navigating the interaction with a focus on the customer and on maintaining momentum. Keep in mind that we help customers to gain new insights through both the questions that we ask and the information, experiences, and ideas that we share. Our questions need to be informed and insightful. We need to maintain a give and take dialogue.

Emotional tone that undermines trust

A key risk in leveraging an insight selling approach is that the seller can easily come across as arrogant, manipulating, or self-serving if they aren’t aware of and skilled in the way that they communicate. A key challenge in expanding a customer’s thinking is that the customer may be closed-minded and not very open to thinking differently. The seller’s ability to establish and maintain an environment of openness, collaboration, and mutual respect is central to navigating the dialogue effectively. The seller has to continually build credibility and earn the right to the customer’s time and attention in the dialogue. So, how do they do that?

It is a combination of things that we do — and frankly, things that we don’t do — that help us to manage the emotional tone of the meeting. The ability to manage the emotional tone begins first and foremost with self-awareness. We have to have self-awareness around the impact of our action on the customer — how we phrase a question or statement can elicit a more positive or negative emotional response from the customer.

We have to be able to anticipate, look for, and accurately read the customer’s reactions so that we can be sensitive to the potential emotional response in preparing for the dialogue and in navigating the dialogue in the moment.

We also must remember that while we are reading the customer’s reactions, they are also reading us and making assumptions about our intent. Any behavior that evokes a feeling within the customer that we are being self-serving and trying to control, manipulate, or push our viewpoint will immediately trigger a negative emotional reaction. Sometimes, they let this visibly show, and other times, they try to mask their true feelings. We’re at a disadvantage because our role is to “sell,” and the customer knows it. From a self-awareness standpoint, we have to be ultra-sensitive to this dynamic. Customers are very savvy about being “sold to” and have little tolerance for it today. Our behaviors have to clearly show our openness and collaboration, without necessarily agreeing with the customer.

The post A Quick Look at the Traps of Insight Selling appeared first on Richardson Sales Training and Enablement Blog.

Coping with the demand variation of a global economy requires the right lean warehouse management solutions. With the growth of the global supply chain, extended lead times have become a challenge as warehouses try to meet the pace of customer demand.

Lean warehouse management plays a critical role in not only controlling inventory management, but also reducing lead-time and working capital. It serves as an integral role to a company’s financial performance, and with the right systems in place, it becomes a vital link in a lean supply chain.

The scope and core of the responsibilities to maintaining a lean warehouse range from swift shipping and receiving, to accurate and flexible pick & pack, and state-of-the-art storage solutions. The first step to developing a proper strategy is to understand the challenges faced, waste produced, and areas that need improvement.

Lean Warehouse Management: The Challenges

The main challenge for warehouse management is having the right visibility on the value-adding activities carried out, and how they positively contribute to an integrated supply chain. This includes concepts like: increasing customer satisfaction while reducing costs, optimized productivity, and improved accuracy. The following are some areas to focus on when developing a lean warehouse management strategy:

• Stock Control: Improving stock control to avoid disruptions of service, decrease the loss of sales opportunities, and prevent unnecessary purchasing.

• Timing: Delivering service on time with accuracy and quality, while reducing costs.

• Information: Connecting all of the cogs in the supply chain through visible data, and a streamlined flow of information and traceability.

• Adaptability: Understanding the increasing complexity of the market and the flexibility to meet fluctuating customer demands.

Areas of Waste

In order to reduce waste, you must first identify the problem areas. Lean warehouse management and reengineering play a big role in this process. Some areas to investigate include:

• Space:This includes any area not being used to it’s utmost efficiency. Anything with low or excessive fill rates needs to be examined for redistribution.

• Inventory: There is no quicker way to freeze assets than any activity that results in excess and/or lack of products. This includes overproduction and over-processing of goods. Poor visibility and inaccurate information will greatly affect the preparation of orders and the fulfillment of P.O.’s.

• Transportation/Movement: In a recent study, AMR Research found that “Companies report their transportation costs are 5% – 7%, as a percentage of their revenue, and rising… ” This includes any internal transport or movement that is unnecessary and can be better designed. For example: storing fast moving inventory in the back of a warehouse. This type of poor planning can lead to lower productivity and added cost.

• Waiting: Any system, people, or material delays due to wasteful processes cost both time and money. Waiting for shipping approvals, or picking-line replenishments, are just some of the wasteful pitfalls people encounter. Picking activities in most warehouses generate more than 55% of the costs, so this is a big area to pay attention to.

• Defects: Activities that cause wasteful actions such as: rework, returns, or adjustments, should be considered in a lean warehouse management plan. This also includes any materials that are missing, defective, or mislabeled, causing expensive and time-consuming errors.

Solutions and Strategies

It’s important to understand all of the challenges and areas of waste, prior to designing and implementing a plan. The type of strategy you choose will have a great impact on the total supply chain output. Consider some of the following ideas to reduce lead times:

• Standardization: This can include many warehouse processes. Isolating and eliminating the cost of SKU complexity is one intelligent way to approach standardization. A more hands-on approach, would be the use of reusable dunnage and material, such as pallets and returnable containers. Some modern pallets feature nestable and collapsible designs to save you space as well. Optimizing the warehouse layout greatly reduces storing and picking times.

• Personnel: With the changing market conditions and increased customer specifications, having a flexible workforce is important. A balanced personnel ratio target will allow you to meet the fluctuation of production demands at anytime. Team members should be trained through formal programs and receive ongoing training throughout employment. Daily stand up meetings are imperative to the productivity and flow on a shift, and are an easy process to implement.

• Pull and One-Piece Flow: Enabling FIFO at a batch level is a great strategy for your pull replenishment method. This is especially prevalent in the food, fashion, and technology industries, as the products have limited shelf life. Other examples of improving on your pull and flow include:

• Increased visibility of bottlenecks
• Data sharing
• Avoiding overproduction
• Transparency of the real process lead time
• Increased quality
• Reduction of inventory levels throughout the process

• Takt Time: Using takt data to determine necessary resources is an intelligent way to plan for lean warehousing. The purpose of takt time is to precisely match production with demand; it is essentially the heartbeat of any production or warehouse system. Knowing how much personnel, product, and equipment needed per order is a science that any warehouse manager should perfect. With a strategy that considers real-time takt data, you’ll be able to greater plan for resource capacity and improve your forecasting on future orders.

• Zero Defect: Isolating key failure models and areas of defect is important for lean warehouse management. Preventative processes for error proofing are also encouraged to avoid future loses due to defects. Enabling an open culture of problem solving, rather than finger pointing, is an approach that is essential to any successful warehouse.

Lean warehouse management involves investigating and implementing best practice warehouse operations that enable companies to meet strategic delivery needs. The warehouse is responsible for facilitating the coordination of the entire supply chain, and is at the heart of any successful product. The more observation and skillful planning involved, the more successful your lean warehouse management strategy will be!

I’m amazed by the number of calls I for advice on compensation and commission planning. It’s not the usual thing about how to put a compensation system in place. Instead it’s managers who want to address performance issues by adjusting the compensation plan.

The conversation usually goes something like:

“I can’t get my sales people to sell this product line, I want to adjust their compensation plan to get them to sell more of that product line,” or

“I can’t get them to spend their time doing these things…… I was thinking if I put a bonus on it, I could get them to do those things,” or

“We’re really have a problem here, if I put an incentive bonus on it, I could get some improvement.”

The universal thing in all these conversations is the only tool these managers are considering to manage performance is through compensation.

My experience is, too often, sales managers end up paying for what would have been achieved anyway, or end up losing control of spending.

The compensation plan is only one tool managers can leverage to manage performance. It’s not the exclusive tool. It’s probably the last lever managers should use–if they use it at all.

There are so many other things that impact performance, including clearly defined performance expectations, clearly defined priorities, strong strategies that are clearly communicated to the organization.

Maybe people aren’t selling the new product because they don’t understand, they don’t know who the target customer, they don’t know the problems the product solves, they don’t understand the value proposition. Yeah, I know they’ve gone through product training–but product training is about the product, not the customer. No amount of bonus or commission will change sales behaviors if they don’t know how to be successful in selling the product.

What will happen, is sales people may spend time trying to sell, but won’t be successful. You lose the productivity for the time they’ve invested unsuccessfully. Plus, they are now wary about investing any time in selling the product, so they won’t try anymore.

Virtually every performance problem has little to do with compensation. Yet too many managers don’t take the time to understand the issues and fixing them. Instead they throw money at it, with a simplistic view, “If we pay them to do it, it will produce the result.”

The compensation system has to be aligned with the goals and priorities of the organization. It has to reinforce the behaviors and attitudes management expects.

Most of the time, however, it’s not the place to start in addressing performance issues.

Invest the time to understand what the issues are. Leverage every method possible to address the issues–performance plans, clear expectations, skills, knowledge, coaching.

Do the work!

Stop throwing away money that doesn’t produce results as effectively as other methods! It drives huge problems with the cost of selling, seldom produces results, and is irresponsible/lazy sales management.

Now that you know what your customer referral program needs are and the kind of technology your company is ready to commit to—it’s time to start thinking about your budget.

Knowing how to calculate the value of your referral program will help you:

• Justify your purchase to your executive team
• Measure the ROI of your program
• Determine if you need more (or less) resources

When evaluating referral solutions, there are three cost elements to consider:

1. Cost of software

Referral software solutions can cost hundreds or thousands of dollars a month depending on the size of your organization, so don’t rush the buying process. Take time to carefully evaluate all the features and make a precise plan on how you’ll use the software within your department (the higher ups will appreciate this). A pro tip, read product reviews on several websites—like Getapp—to see how happy (or unhappy) other users are.

2. Cost of rewards

As a general benchmark, offer customers a reward valued at 10% of your average deal size. Multiply this amount by the number of referrals you hope to receive, and their average conversion rate. (A 2014 B2B sales benchmark study by Implisit found customer referrals convert at an average rate of 3.63%.)

3. Cost of administration

If you’re investing in software, you’ll see immediate gains in efficiency (compared to spreadsheets and tracking sales people down). As a rule of thumb, on-going administration of your program should take 30% (or less) of a full-time employee’s time.

Your program ROI should also take into account your average sale price (ASP) and current cost per lead (CPL). One well placed referral could cover the entire cost of your program, depending on your average selling price. Plus, increasing the referrals you receive should also reduce your average cost per lead.

Find Your Referral Technology Match

In our free eBook, we break down everything your company needs to consider before buying referral software, including the features you should be looking for and strategies that will help you consistently generate quality referrals.

Build Your Dream Referral Program

Calculating the ROI of your customer referral program

The formula for calculating your referral program return on investment is:

New revenue (Referrals @ ASP x Average conversion rate)

— Investment (Software + employee + rewards — CPL reduction)

= Referral program ROI

Here’s an example: AcmeCo has invested $24k in software over 12 months, and they plan to use 10% of a $70k employee to run the program. Their ASP is $50,000 per year. They have 500 customers and expect 10% to provide one referral a year (50 referrals). They predict their referrals convert at a rate of 3.5% and will result in a CPL reduction of $25,000. For each referral submitted, they will reward the referrer $500, and another $5,000 if the deal closes.

So that’s…

$87,500 in new revenue

(50 referrals @ $50K ASP x 3.5%)

— $48,500 investment

($24K software + $7K employee cost + $42.5K rewards* – $25K reduction in CPL)

= $39,000

$39,000 ÷ $48,500 investment = 80.4% ROI

*Cost of Reward Calculated as 1% of ASP per lead generated and 10% of ASP per referral converted

Learn how Influitive can help you mobilize your top advocates and transform your customer referral program.

Let’s get in touch

The deal is a lifeline for Mitsubishi Motors, which is mired in its third scandal in two decades and has had $3 billion wiped off its market value

On any given workday, you probably have tons of conversations in which you say tons of important things.

But the truth is that most of those things are completely forgotten. Gone. Vanished. It's like you never said them.

It's not because your coworkers are a bunch of twits, either — we simply can't remember everything we hear, or we'd go absolutely nuts.

Fortunately, you can up the chances of people remembering at least one smart thing you said by posing a simple question at the end of every interaction: "What was most useful for you?"

That's according to Michael Bungay Stanier, founder of leadership consultancy Box of Crayons and author of several books, including most recently, "The Coaching Habit."

Business Insider spoke to Stanier at the 99U Conference in New York City and he told us that asking questions of your employees, coworkers, and clients is generally a better M.O. than spouting out advice. That's because you empower people to think for themselves and act more like a "coach" than a traditional manager.

One of the most meaningful questions is what Stanier calls the "Learning Question," and involves asking the employee or the client what they found most useful or valuable about the conversation.

What you're doing, he said, is essentially "interrupting, making people reflect and extract the value and extract the learning."

Suddenly, all the information that was on its way out of their brain is pulled back and scrutinized.

And it's not just for their benefit — it can help you, too.

"The bonus, of course," Stanier said, "is when you ask the question, you also get feedback. So that next time you get to do more of the stuff that works and less of the other stuff."

You can tweak the question to fit your specific situation, Stanier said. Variations include:

• "What do you know now that you didn't know before?"
• "What was the 'aha!' moment for you?
• "What should we do differently next time?"

However you say it, the goal is to "disrupt and cause a moment of reflection to get a new 'aha!' to put into the working memory," Stainer said.

That way, all your brilliant insights won't be lost, and your coworkers and clients won't need to call you up 10 minutes later asking you a question you already addressed.

SEE ALSO: 7 essential questions all great managers ask their employees

Join the conversation about this story »

NOW WATCH: Katie Couric learned to be a leader by following this humble advice from her mom

The term Social Selling has made its way into sales lingo and even the sales process for some pioneering companies over the past year. You may have heard that 78 percent of salespeople using social media outperform those who don’t. Possibly the best part about that number is that most of those salespeople have no training in using social media to propel sales. With just a few social selling hacks, you could be one of those outperforming sales reps, meeting and exceeding all of your sales KPIs.

But what is social selling? Its name can be slightly misleading. The idea isn’t to sell to people on social channels, like LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook and so on. Social selling is the process of developing and nurturing relationships as part of the sales process.

Before we dive into some social selling tactics and hacks, it’s important to get the mindset right. Rather than approaching it by asking “how can I effectively sell using social channels?” the correct question sales reps should be asking is “How can I create more value for other using social channels?”

Social channels are NOT a selling platforms themselves, and if you approach them like that, you’ll quickly be banned from groups and people won’t accept your connection requests. They have algorithms in place to make sure that spammy content doesn’t get shown to many users and valuable, quality content gets shown to more user.

However, these are great platforms to supplement your selling efforts (like cold calling or cold emailing). Staying within the context is one of the most important things to keep in mind, and it’s where you need to start.

With that out of the way, I want to share some specific social hacks and tactics that you can use to help you generate more leads, book more demos and close more deals.

1. Warming Up Cold Emails

Cold contacts, whether via phone, email, letter, fax or another line of communication, all fight an uphill battle. Most buyers—96 percent—have a negative reaction to cold contacts. If they don’t know you and haven’t asked about your product, they don’t want to talk.

Finding the right person to act as an icebreaker can help break you into an account. Using add-ons like Connect6 helps you find that key person. After you install this Chrome extension, you can hover over a profile pic to see not only contact information, but also a graph showing all of your shared contacts. One of my favorite aspects of Connect6 is it collects all of a prospect’s social profiles on once place, making it efficient and effective to do the necessary research before reaching out.

Once you collect names and emails of your prospects, it’s important to verify the accuracy of the data. One of my favorite tools for this are Briteverify. This allows you to validate and verify individual emails or a bulk list of emails at once. Its API, which is probably the coolest part, lets you connect your CRM, POS software or other selling solution and automatically verify emails that are being imported or added to your selling platform.

With an introduction in hand, you can then power up Refresh to get a look at a prospect’s recent social media activity. You’ll see any news articles, recent blog posts or newsfeed updates, all in one place about one person. CharlieApp is another great tool that enables you to accomplish a similar goal.

2. Timing is Everything

When you work in outbound sales, you know that the first person to make the pitch—at the right time—closes the sale up to 50 percent of the time. Social media is the best way to track timing.

Communicating with prospects at the right time within their buyer’s journey is largely what social selling is about, and Twitter is one of my favorite platforms for delivering high-value content. This is where Twitter lists come in, which allow you to create tweets targeting different groups, allowing you to nurture them along in the buyer’s journey. However, there are two other segments that are overlooked and just as important: customers and influencers. While there’s no directly measurable ROI on brand awareness, connecting with influencers in your market is can give you more clout. Engaging with current customers extremely valuable for not only up-selling but also reducing churn, which is paramount to the success of SaaS businesses.

Once you set up and begin to leverage Twitter lists, you’ll also want to dig deeper into your Twitter analytics. With tools like Followerwonk, you can sort any Twitter profile and gather data about their followers. When a competitor gains a new follower, you can be right there at the right time.

3. Leverage LinkedIn

Many sales reps view LinkedIn as an objective source of truth when it comes to up-to-date professional information on prospects. Though Linkedin doesn’t play well with others and keeps its cards close to it’s chest, it does offer a good way to interface with potential prospects. It’s hard to rely on tools that are built on LinkedIn because Linkedin has a history of going over those tools, but it’s still a powerful channel to supplement your sales efforts. You just have to learn to use it in ways that they want you to. This means investing time in learning what those ways are. One particularly useful tactic you can use to skip a lot of the work developing prospects is by looking at your closest competitors.

Depending on their security settings, you can see when they add people to their network and get a look at their existing customers (don’t forget to fix your own settings to avoid losing clients). You’ll need to add them as a connection first, but most people don’t spend a lot of time vetting social media connections. Once you’re part of their network, just visit their profile, click on the number of followers and start prospecting. You can even sort the list based on new connections and only target those added in the past 24-hours. Once you have a list of prospects, you can mine other social media sources for a way to connect. This is just the proverbial tip of the iceberg. If you want to learn more about using the powerful platform, check out 6 Advanced LinkedIn Prospecting Tactics for the Outbound Sales Rep.

Combine Social with Metrics

Once you have the relevant information from social media, you can create highly personalized sales campaigns, and do it at scale. You can even use the PersistIQ Cold Email Generator, which is a curated list of over 50 proven templates, to steal and implement cold email copy works. Better segmentation on your email lists results in substantial improvement on your sales metrics. Even just one or two hour per week spent mining social media might give you dozens of prospects that match your idea profiles and accounts. If you’ve engage them with the proper social selling etiquette, you’ll likely end up with prospects who trust you, have a problem and know you have a solution.

The only piece left of the puzzle is launching your outbound campaign. And our favorite platform for that is PersistIQ, but we may be a little biased.

Selling technology presents unique challenges relative to selling other types of solutions. Tech solutions are often expensive, require in-depth research for buyers, and provide value that can be difficult to quantify.

For all of these reasons, it takes special skill and preparation to succeed in this industry. Here are a few examples of best practices to help turn sales leads into customers in a technology industry.

Clearly Emphasise Long-Term Benefits

A lot of the value provided by high-tech solutions takes place behind the scenes. It is also difficult at times to compute return on investment with direct revenue or cost-savings metrics. The best place to start is with a deep understanding of the customer business, as well as the critical business issues the buyer faces.

You have to clearly articulate the long-term benefits to the business and its customers. For instance, you might sell a software solution that simplifies a critical process for a company department. Don’t focus on the technical nature of the solution, focus on the time-savings, reduced stress for users and enhanced customer experience.

It is imperative that you identify the different roles people play and really emphasise the benefits that appeal most to those roles.

Map out each of the people in the buying process and make sure you have a strategy in place that allows you to communicate your business benefits to each of the stakeholders. As an example these might include:

• The CEO
• The Finance Director
• The Sales Director and his sales team
• The IT Director and his support staff
• The Operations Director and his team who may have to roll out User Acceptance Testing
• HR & Facilities who may be involved in Training

Show Your “Support”

It isn’t just the impressive capabilities of your solution that a B2B buyer cares about. Change resistance is one of the primary roadblocks to selling technology. Therefore, a buyer wants to know that you will be there after the sale to support the technology transition.

Focus on your role as a “partner” in ensuring users will get up to speed quickly so the organisation can quickly realise the benefits promised. A commitment to post-sale installation and setup, technical support and training are often necessary to seal a technology deal. Particularly when there are a number of different parties whose needs require addressing.

A number of years ago whilst working for a large telco, I was trying to close a deal with a very large mobile operator. The CIO was on board and budgets had been approved. However my big stumbling block was the engineering team itself. The guys who do the day-to-day support. They had concerns around our delivery capability & expertise.

If I was to push this deal through, I needed the buy-in of the customers engineering team. And they weren’t playing ball with me. I had to come up with a plan to get their trust and respect.

I set up a meeting with the CIO and his Head of Engineering and asked them to bring their engineering support team. All of them. They didn’t look overly happy at being dragged into a “sales” pitch.

I had brought along our Engineering Support Manager and 8 of his direct staff who would be dealing with any support issues the client may have in the future. I had also taken the time to put together a detailed breakdown of the qualifications and experience of each person on our engineering team to share with the client.

I recognised that even though I had developed a good relationship with the decision makers, their engineering team needed confirmation that they would receive the same or better support than they were currently receiving from the incumbent. And to date they knew little or nothing about the people they would be relying on for support, apart from an overview in a proposal document.

They had a justifiable concern and needed proof we could deliver what I was saying we could deliver. I knew that the best way to deliver that proof was to have them meet the people who would be working with them.

I introduced every one around the table. I talked them through an example scenario. I explained that when James (from the client’s team) logged a call for support regarding a Firewall issue, he would be dealing with Ian. If it needed to be escalated, it would be Dan from our team whom they would be dealing with. And I passed across Ian & Dan’s credentials.

I did this for everyone around the table, ensuring each and every person knew who they would be working with across both organisations, the process, and what to expect. The mood changed considerably for the better.

Needless to say, that meeting secured the deal for me.

Meet Concerns Head On

Apart from that example, there are many other concerns a prospect can have. User frustration, lack of compatibility, unexpected costs and constant errors are among the common experiences that give technology buyers nightmares. It is likely a reluctant B2B buyer has faced more than one of these. These fears are why many B2B buyers spend a lot of time researching options online before ever making contact with a provider.

You must remember that there are personal as well as professional concerns for each person in the process. You need to be able to address them on a professional, personal and intellectual level.

Make a concerted effort to draw out the primary concerns of your buyer. Be prepared to offset each of the common concerns buyers have about your solution with clear value, and if you can, offer product demonstrations to allay some solution-related fears. It is also worth noting that, although your solutions has all the bells and whistles, integration with current systems that are already in place may need to be addressed.

Current customers are always a sure-fire way to help sway any concerns, particularly when it comes to talking about support and service quality. Share testimonials and satisfied user references to negate concerns about the quality of the user experience. Would you refer someone you didn’t trust?

Don’t run from buyer worries or fears. Instead, show genuine empathy and a desire to reduce their frustrations and provide a happier user experience.

Pre-Sell With Content

The job of a salesperson is made much easier when your company delivers useful, relevant content to B2B tech buyers early in their investigation. Offer informative, educational content off-site and in your company blogs.

The buying process is a journey that can take place over many months, sometimes years, so connect with prospects on social media platforms like LinkedIn to start the conversation informally.

Demonstrate your value over time by building up influence and trust in your respective communities.

Your clients situation and needs may change over time so keep up-to-date through proactive communication. Don’t wait for your clients to update you. Keep them informed in a positive manner with ideas or content that may be relevant to their situation. It shows you have a good understanding of their business requirements.

Conclusion

As with other types of solutions, you need to understand common expectations and concerns of tech buyers to sell effectively. Emphasise long-term benefits to various stakeholders, focus on your post-sale support and actively draw out buyer fears.

When selling technology, know your solution, know your prospect, know your limitations, be a problem solver, and act like a consultant.

As the head of sales, you are responsible for bringing in revenue.

To do so you need to build a strong sales organization.

As you look at how you are going to achieve your quota this year, you need to figure out what tweaks you need to make.

I have been there. As a former VP of sales I looked at my discretionary budget, excluding salaries, travel, entertainment and meetings to figure out what initiative(s) would have the greatest impact on driving more sales.

Hence, I have developed the VP of Sales Playbook. Here are 5 areas you can look at to improve the performance of your team.

5 Key Initiatives to Drive Sales Performance

1. Add More Sales Reps

Certainly adding more sales people will help grow your sales. Most organizations will expect you to take on more sales quota to justify the increase in head count.

The key when hiring sales reps is to identify top performers so it is critical that you have a solid hiring process. One of the things I learned early on is that high-performing sales managers hire 8’s and 9’s and lower performing sales managers hire 5’s and 6’s. So the challenge here is to do a great job hiring and onboarding top sales reps.

2. Improve Execution

The best sales plans if not executed well yield poor results. Some industry experts strongly agree that execution is critical and everything else is just talk. As a sales leader, it is important that all sales reps are clear in what they need to do to effectively execute the plan.

The key to effective execution is clarity of communication and sales manager follow up in the field to ensure all sales people understand and know how to execute the plan.

3. Adopt Sales Technology

Studies have shown that CRM can have a positive impact on the customer experience especially when you are in a complex sales environment. From personal experience, adopting new technology tends to be disruptive to a sales organization in the short term.

With great solutions such as Salesforce, which allows you to connect with your customers in a whole new way, you can reap the benefits of adopting technology into the sales process.

The caveat here is that 50% of new CRM implementations fail. The question then becomes is it the technology or the people? Successful implementation requires strong IT presence and senior sales leadership championing the project coupled with frontline sales management to ensure compliance.

4. Improve Lead Generation

New business is the lifeblood for growth. Getting marketing to improve quality and quantity of leads provides the organization with opportunities. When sales and marketing are working well together we can achieve far better sales results.

The challenge here is that sales management needs to be onboard. Leads need to be better qualified, followed up on and the sales process followed to move from lead to business. One of the key success factors with this initiative is sales manager coaching to help sales people effectively follow up and close leads.

5. Selling Skills Training

Improve the selling skills of your sales team will certainly improve sales performance. Companies who follow a sales process always outperform those who don’t. Having a formal selling process that all your sales people know and use is a great step forward.

If you follow a selling process, ongoing refreshers will have a positive impact. Like any skills training, the key is to reinforce the skills post training to ensure the learning’s turn into behaviours and competencies.

The best way to turn those learnings into on the job performance is sales manager coaching. Your sales managers need to be out in the field and coaching sales reps to utilise and improve their selling skills.

Of course, there are a number of additional initiatives you can employ to drive more sales. All of which will have a positive impact on sales.

The Foundation of Driving Sales Performance

There is a common thread to performance. Developing a team of STAR sales managers who can effectively coach, hire and manage performance will make any of these sales initiatives more impactful.

I suggest you need to ask yourself the following questions:

1. How can you improve the competencies of your sales management team?
2. What are we doing to support the development of our sales managers?
3. How do I engage these people so that they can engage the entire sales team?
4. Do I have the right people in sales management positions?

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