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Management psychologist Karissa Thacker has a book entitled The Art of Authenticity being released today by Wiley.

Mary Laschinger, Chairman and CEO of Veritiv, says of the book:

"Today’s employees value a strong company culture of honesty, transparency and collaboration more than ever, and the connection between leadership behaviors and a company’s culture is inextricable. Karissa’s book provides insight into the leadership qualities needed to create a great work environment and to build a strong culture of employee engagement that leads to success."

In the video below, she explains what authenticity in leadership looks like, and what you'll learn in (and what she learned in the process of writing) the book.

Karissa Thacker - The Art of Authenticity from Planet Ten on Vimeo.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Karissa Thacker is the founder and president of Strategic Performance Solutions, Inc., a management-consulting firm focused on creating innovative solutions in the space of human performance and satisfaction at work. She is a widely respected management psychologist who has served as a consultant for over 200 Fortune 500 companies including UPS, Best Buy, and AT&T. She also serves as adjunct faculty at the Lerner School of Business at the University of Delaware.

Advocates of the lean startup method for creating a business advise entrepreneurs, as well as corporate intrapreneurs, to document, test, and refine their assumptions about a new venture’s business model via customer conversations and experiments. My recent research on 250 teams that participated in an American cleantech accelerator program during the last 10 years found that while the lean approach can be effective, having a strong strategy is more important than conducting a tremendous number of market tests.

First, the good news: In general, the lean startup method works. We measured success by looking at how teams performed in a pitch competition in front of a panel of industry experts at the end of the accelerator program (a proxy, albeit an imperfect one, for long-term financial performance). Teams that elucidated and then tested hypotheses about their venture performed almost three times better in the pitch competition than teams that did not test any hypotheses.

Now, the bad news: There was no linear relationship between the number of validated hypotheses and a team’s subsequent success. In short, more validation is not better. I also found that teams that conducted both open-ended conversations and more formalized experiments with customers actually performed worse in the competition than teams that conducted either one or the other during the early stages of venture design.

Insight Center

One possible explanation for the diminishing and even negative return on customer interaction is an erosion of confidence: too much feedback from customers might cause the entrepreneurs to change the idea so frequently that they become disheartened. Another possibility is that the lean startup method, while efficient compared to the conventional approach of “build it and they will come,” still requires time, attention, and resources that are diverted from other projects. At some point, managers run out of patience for continued testing and pull the plug.

Certainly, some ideas deserve to die a quick and early death if they do not generate customer demand. However, the lean startup method might be producing “false negatives,” meaning good ideas are mistakenly rejected because the approach does not have a clear rule for when entrepreneurs and intrapreneurs should declare victory, stop testing, and begin scaling production.

David Collis, a professor at Harvard Business School, proposes a solution to this conundrum: the “lean strategy” process, which involves setting clear constraints for which markets and methods are to be considered while testing and refining the business model.

Let me extend his advice by advocating that entrepreneurs should also declare the threshold for making a go/no-go decision. For example, if 50% of customers in the target segment pay a fee for an early prototype, or if testing produces only minor alterations to an already granular and specific business model, managers could decree that some or all major aspects of the business model should be locked into place. (I am now conducting research on these “stopping rules” for entrepreneurs and intrapreneurs who employ lean startup methods.)

In addition, entrepreneurs should ask themselves which aspects of the business model they should consider first. Are all aspects of a business model equally important in the early design phase? In my research with cleantech entrepreneurs, I found that teams that focused their testing on the triumvirate of target customer segment, value proposition, and channel performed twice as well as teams that did not spend much attention on those three categories.

The popularity of the lean startup method is well deserved. But, as is true of any business process, the method must be tailored and employed with reflection and constraints, not blind allegiance. Just like the new ventures it creates, it will improve as researchers and practitioners propose, test, and incorporate refinements.

By understanding market value, you can determine two things: the addressable market and the available market. Learn to outline the difference of each for your startup.

What if every time your marketing team produced a piece of content, you knew its inherent value? If every one-sheet, white paper, presentation, and infographic was so measurable you knew if it worked or didn’t? Imagine the productivity improvements and bottom-line impact (not to mention employee satisfaction) that could result in such progress.

In a recent post on the SiriusDecisions blog, Sharon Little explains how using revenue as a North star for content production can transform an organization’s quality and performance of sales content. She argues that this approach saves time, minimizes production of unnecessary content, and creates more value for both customers and the sales team. To focus content production on the highest revenue driving pieces, Sharon suggests you:

• Understand financial projections for the year ahead for all offerings, as well as any mid-year changes to the plan, and map the selling motions for the highest revenue segments.
• Document the buyer’s journey for all selling motions that represent 10 percent or more of your revenue.
• Map content accordingly, filling any gaps. Sales enablement leaders can take this exercise a step further and map training initiatives as well as content. Review this documentation on a quarterly basis.
• Be aware of upcoming demand creation campaigns, along with any pricing or packaging changes. Both activities will have associated revenue models. Ensure the content strategy is in place to support major campaigns and mitigate shifts in pricing or packaging.

Once you’ve done these fundamental steps, here’s where the measurement comes in—and where you can make the revenue connection in actual dollars and cents!

Modern Sales Enablement platforms can measure content usage throughout the sales cycle, and therefore can analyze content’s effectiveness in moving customers through the buying process including its impact on revenue.

While not all marketers have revenue goals, all marketers can be revenue marketers with the help of sales enablement solutions. Sales enablement bridges the gap between marketing and sales to turn content into revenue. Importantly, this bridge can also help neutralize the finger pointing between the two that so often stalls progress and hinders sales success.

How so?

Sales Enablement’s closed loop analytics let you understand which pieces customers respond to with absolute certainly, enabling mapping of content back to revenue results and letting you optimize content over time. When marketers know what works, they know where to focus their energy, and can build a well-informed roadmap of content to create in the future and deliver better, faster, more impactful materials.

Recently, SiriusDecisions published a study that frames just how much organizations spend on content creation each year. It’s more than you might think, and in the associated study brief, you can read the results firsthand and understand some key insights to the implications of content creation costs for B2B organizations. Download the study with our compliments, here. If you want to this opportunity to hear research-backed suggestions directly from one of the leading voices in sales enablement and turn your organization’s content into bottom-line results, check out this SiriusDecisions webinar entitled, Connect Sales Content to Revenue, to learn more.

By getting a handle on your content creation costs and implementing a structured, measurable approach to content development and deployment, your organization can turn content into revenue time and again!

Although marketing has a very clear and precise set of goals which has not changed for ages, the methods through which these goals are achieved changed immensely from the time the people first started making comprehensive marketing strategies. Those changes were sometimes very interesting, rapid and influential. One of the latest trends in this line is the rise of the “marketing agility” which quickly became popular buzz word in the world of marketing. But, as we know, not all buzz words end up being really relevant, so let us see how “marketing agility” holds up in that regard.

Defining the Marketing Agility

Still, before we can determine does marketing agility has any real heft, we should first see what those two words mean and, in turn, understand what is marketing agility supposed to be.

Agility – According to Merriam-Webster dictionary, agility means nimbleness, or in other words, ability to move or act quickly. If we would consider, for example manufacturing, instead of marketing, we would say that agile manufacturing would be lowering the time of production, so production is able to keep up with current market demand and optimize its operations.

Marketing – Marketing is usually being described as the process of anticipating and identifying customers’ desires in order to eventually satisfy their needs.

It is very easy to see that, unlike manufacturing, marketing has no tangible product as a result. Therefore, agile marketing cannot be defined as the speed in which you are executing the marketing solutions, but instead, a speed in which you can adjust the marketing mix in order to deliver greater customer value. That can make marketing agility a very relevant, and indeed, tangible quality, and not only the buzzword stick CEO’s use to beat their marketing teams.

The Difference between Marketing Agility and Agile Marketing

As mentioned, marketing agility represents a concept, while agile marketing is the manifestation of that concept. Marketing agility is the ability to quickly assess market trends, make rapid business decisions and reduce the waste by removing uncertainty. Agile marketing is the formal approach through which these ideas are brought into existence. It should be clear then that marketing agility deals with structural changes, and one business’ core operations, which makes it interested not only in quick decisions, but also some long-term developments.

How to Achieve Marketing Agility

Now, we should look at some of the examples how marketing agility can be encouraged within some company.

Make your organization a learning organization.

The only way your business will be able to provide an answer to the marketing agility challenges, is if itself becomes equally as agile, and one of the most important things that need to be set in motion is the expertise of your employees and organization in general. Promote creative thinking, demonstrate the value of formal training and be sure to reward the expertise.

Introduce agile marketing assets.

Your marketing team will be able to come up with viable marketing solutions only if it has access to some of the flexible marketing assets such as a visa gift card, or a voucher, instead of using the alternatives which are related only to some specific scenarios.

Harness as much data as you can.

Big data makes the necessary prerequisite for making any kind of meaningful marketing decision. Agile marketing requires that you harness as much of that data as possible, and put your focus not only on your potential customers, but also the competition, industry trends and even in-house developments.

As we can see, investing your time and money in encouraging this concept throughout your business can make it able to provide very quick, efficient and precise marketing solutions. In this day and age, when entire industries rise and fall over the course of night, ability to make right decisions and swift moves might just save your business.

Sales organizations have been trying to ‘crack the sales code’ ever since selling became a profession. Every few years someone comes up with a new sales methodology that claims to hold the secret sauce that will significantly increase sales growth and catapult companies to new successes. Recently there has been an explosion of sales enablement technologies that have similar claims of accelerating performance. While most of these initiatives have value, their underlying premise that you will improve performance if you simply implement them is misleading at best. Sales organizations are pouring more money than ever into these types of initiatives, but more often than not, they do not produce the results that were anticipated.

The reality is that sales organizations are complex, interdependent, and usually require a review of all components to effectively ‘move the needle.’ Similar to the human body, no one component operates independently and outside of the system. For example, if a runner is trying to improve their time in a race, then they must fine tune all components towards getting faster. This could include cardio conditioning, muscle development, proper form, footwear, and even mental focus. Similarly, when sales organizations are looking to improve, they must consider all parts and functions of the sales department.

When companies don’t take a holistic approach, the results are costly. Studies show that up to 65% of sales initiatives fail, costing companies thousands – or millions – of dollars. Worse, most sales organizations will repeat this mistake over and over again.

So what’s causing companies to continue to try to solve complex sales problems with isolated solutions?

1. They treat what they see

It is common for sales leaders to address the symptoms of underperformance as these are the most visible pain points. For instance, if sales reps are not hitting their targets, then one could argue that hiring better talent might fix this. If there aren’t enough “A” or “B” players, then maybe better coaching will help. If sales teams are experiencing plateaued performance or unmotivated reps, then it might be time revise your compensation. Lastly, when conversion rates and win rates are down, organizations look to implement new sales methodologies.

All of these approaches are attempts to fix the symptoms of common sales pain points. Yet just like in medicine, treating symptoms won’t cure a disease.

When dealing with performance or sales issues, it’s important to take a step back and understand the root cause(s) and contributing factors. A good example of this is an energy company with some common sales issues – their cost of sale was too high and win rates were low. They initially thought that if they changed their sales methodology they could increase performance and reduce costs. This was definitely part of the equation, but when they dug deeper they found that the company really needed a new sales process and new sales roles to support it. Ultimately the initiative became a bigger effort than anticipated, but it paid off when the changes resulted in a 30% reduction of the cost of sale and 20% improvement in win rates.

2. They focus on the equipment

Athletes love to buy the new equipment featuring the latest technology. They see this as a critical way to gain an advantage. Similarly, sales leaders often look to the new sales tools to improve performance. These equipment (i.e. sales tool) changes are important and necessary, but the latest running shoe won’t make you suddenly be able to run the mile in half the time.

There is a right way to improve your performance in any sport and it can be fairly linear. First, you must have the determination and focus to put in the effort needed to get better. Then you must work on muscle development and proper form to condition the body towards the right set of motions. After that, you must work on being able to perform those motions at scale through cardio training.

Optimizing sales organizations is a linear process as well. For instance, you can’t define customer journeys until you’ve segmented your customers. You also can’t build sales processes until you’ve defined the customer buying process. Consequently, you can’t implement sales tools until you know the processes you’re trying to enable.

2. They are not considering the whole

Have you ever bought a new a new golf club that changed the way you needed to swing? Or had to change your shoes based on the type of running you are doing? It is common knowledge that when you change one thing in a system, you’ll have to make adjustments to connected components.

Yet sales leaders often fail to apply this concept when they are looking to implement new sales initiatives. Too many times we see new sales models being introduced without looking at organizational structure, or new sales processes being created without thinking through the sales roles.

When implementing a new change, sales leaders need to consider how that might affect other parts of the sales organization.

Next time you think about making changes to the sales organization, take a quick step back and ask yourself:

• Am I solving the root cause of the issue or just a symptom?
• What other factors might be playing a role in the issue?
• What impact will this change have on my people, processes, and tools?
• Is the current sales model compatible with the initiative?

For more related reading about sales optimization and improving sales performance, download Building a World-Class Sales Organization.

CSO Insights’ annual reports have always been a source of much inspiration, and this year is no exception. Their 2016 Sales Behaviours Study - involving over 1500 respondents - is the first one to be released as part of the MHI Group (you may recognise them as Miller Heiman), but the conclusions have lost none of their edge - or their power to shock.

Funnel Management is a classic example. At face value, the surveyed organisations appear to have a relatively high level of satisfaction with their Funnel management process - 71% reporting that it was “good enough”. But when you dig into the underlying data, it becomes clear that the surface finish of satisfaction conceals a great deal of complacency.

In fact, the latest study concluded that suggested that the survey respondents were actually wildly optimistic about their funnel management capabilities. Here’s why…

Surely, one of the primary purposes of sales funnel management ought to be to generate reliable revenue forecasts? And this is where “good enough” rapidly morphs into “significant room for improvement”.

You see, when the participants were asked how often opportunities closed in the time frame originally forecasted, more than 60% of them felt that this was an area where their existing processes failed to meet or exceed expectations.

The majority believed that this was an area that needed significant improvement or a radical redesign. So it’s clear that most current funnel management and pipeline review processes are simply not fit for purpose.

Given all the money that has been thrown at CRM systems over the years, this is a pretty damning indictment of the current state of the art. Less than 50% of forecasted sales opportunities close as expected - which makes current sales forecasting techniques statistically less reliable than tossing a coin.

Now, I’m not going to suggest that you should give up any attempt to forecast - but I do want to propose that you adopt a number of initiatives that have been proven to facilitate funnel management and improve forecast accuracy.

QUALIFY THE PAIN

I suggest you start by qualifying the prospect’s pain. If it is merely irritating or important, rather than genuinely business critical, chances are they won’t mind deferring their decision for a while - or kicking the whole project into the long grass. Never mind their Return on Investment - that’s a later stage consideration. What about their Cost of Inaction?

WHERE ARE THEY IN THEIR PROCESS?

The next thing you need to do is to understand what stage your prospect has reached in their decision process. If you are still basing your pipeline stages primarily on what your salesperson has done, then good luck to you, because you’ll struggle to predict anything with any accuracy. The only effective way of defining pipeline stages in complex sales environments is with reference to your prospect’s buying decision journey.

WHERE ARE YOU IN THEIR RANKING?

If you haven’t managed to differentiate your solution in the eyes of the prospect, then you had better be either the cheapest or the safest solution, because that’s what they will end up choosing. Claiming that you add value in ways that are not directly relevant to them simply makes you look more expensive than you ought to be. Don’t do it.

CAN YOU REALLY DO BUSINESS TOGETHER?

Prospects might buy tactically - to solve a particularly compelling pain. But they choose vendors strategically - because of a shared vision. If you’re selling solely on the basis of product capability, rather than because your vision aligns with that of your prospect, then your prospect will treat you like any other vendor, rather than as a long-term partner.

IS YOUR FUNNEL MANAGEMENT REALLY “GOOD ENOUGH”?

If you’ve got any reservations about whether you’re currently putting all of these considerations into practice or if (more likely) you suspect a few top performers are, but the rest of your sales organisation isn’t, it’s time to shake off any remaining complacency about your funnel management.

I’d suggest that it’s time to rethink your sales process - and to ensure that what emerges reflects both the winning habits of your current top performers and the best practices of today’s leading sales organisations. You see, in today’s competitive climate, “good enough” is rarely actually good enough.

Whether you identify as one or not, everyone is a writer. Between social networks, dating profiles, blogs, and the day-to-day tasks of most jobs, writing is an essential skill. In How to Write Short, author Roy Peter Clark illustrates the value of brief, short-form writing in our technology-driven world, and shows you how to do it right.

Read more...

We’ve discussed many inbound marketing tactics and strategies in previous posts, but we’ve noticed that marketers often overlook two of the more “salesy” aspects of the process: upselling and cross-selling.

These related tactics can have a powerful impact on the bottom line and dramatically boost per-customer revenue. When every dollar counts, it’s absolutely critical to encourage prospects and customers to renew their commitment to your business.

To help your sales team sell and earn more, follow these seven (7) online upselling tactics and cross-selling strategies.

1. Identify Your Existing Customers

Start by identifying your existing customers. This helps you determine how to focus your upselling and cross-selling firepower. Follow these sub-steps to complete the process:

• Find all contacts with the lifecycle designation of “customer”
• Manually set this designation for prospects that lack an existing designation
• Create a “smart list” to ensure that customers are automatically added to this group in the future
• Determine which items each customer has purchased previously and update each contact file as appropriate

2. Determine Whether Upselling or Cross-Selling Is Appropriate

Once you’ve gathered a bit of basic information about each customer, you need to determine whether it makes sense to upsell or cross-sell. Most companies define upselling and cross-selling as follows:

• Upselling involves selling the customer on an upgrade opportunity. For instance, a classic upsell finds a customer upgrading from the most basic service package to the next-highest service package tier. This typically entails a higher price point.
• Cross-selling involves selling the customer on products or services that directly or indirectly complement items they’ve already purchased. For instance, a classic cross-sell finds a customer purchasing a footrest to go along with an already-purchased armchair. Alternatively, cross-selling involves selling complementary items that add value to a purchased product or service such as antivirus protection on a newly purchased tablet or laptop.

3. Lay out a Comprehensive Plan of Attack

After you’ve assigned each customer to the upselling and/or cross-selling category, it’s time to lay out a comprehensive plan of attack that utilizes best-practice digital cross-selling tactics and upselling strategies. These strategies typically utilize a mix of email and phone touchpoints.

Before you begin the initiative, figure out the frequency with which you’ll use each touchpoint and the overall mix to which you expect your customers to respond. If you’ve already segmented your upselling and cross-selling prospects into buyer personas, consider setting out separate parameters for each persona. Finally, create a physical roadmap that outlines your engagement strategy for each upselling and cross-selling attempt.

4. Develop Your Upselling and Cross-selling Content

Depending on how involved your upselling and cross-selling attempts are, you’ll likely need supporting content to drive your message. Determine what you’ll need to make a compelling case and set about developing each relevant piece. Common pieces of supporting content include:

• White papers
• Case studies
• In-depth blog posts
• Special reports
• Multimedia content, including videos

Make sure you have a framework for tracking user engagement with each piece of content.

5. Compose Your Emails

To effectively deliver your content, you’ll need to create compelling marketing emails that encourage recipients to download or otherwise engage with what you’ve created. Compose your emails prior to beginning your upselling and cross-selling drive. Take care to include:

• Concise, compelling copy that explains your offer’s value
• A laser-like focus on relevant products and services
• An unmistakable call-to-action
• A direct appeal to the customer’s prior relationship with your company

6. Create and Test Your Phone Scripts

Follow the same process with your phone scripts. While it’s not an absolute requirement to sell off a script, giving your salespeople a clear template can help them convince wavering prospects.

7. Schedule and/or Automate Your Upselling and Cross-selling Efforts

Since upselling and cross-selling are involved, ongoing processes, it’s in your best interest to schedule and automate your efforts relatively far in advance. Use a calendar tool to schedule each contact with upselling and/or cross-selling targets.

Consider investing in an email marketing automation suite to reduce the amount of time you need to devote to manually sending emails. Remember to assess your schedule, automation protocols and general content at regular intervals and make any necessary adjustments.

Discover How to Upsell Effectively with Digital Marketing

Even if you’ve got a talented team supporting your efforts, you might feel overwhelmed, but don’t despair. We are glad to help you get started and will do whatever you need to help ramp up your online selling operation.

To turn your inbound marketing operation into a powerhouse that inspires jealousy among your competitors, download the free whitepaper “8 Critical Ingredients of a Digital Marketing Plan.”

Demand gen marketers are a lot like hunter-gatherers. A hunter gatherer’s basic job is to track and hunt for food.

Successful hunters were the ones who could understand the landscape, recognize the tracks of animals, and predict their location. Experienced hunters could observe evidence of movement and determine the type of animal that caused it, when it was there and where it is going.

Good hunters could adapt to the environment, as reflected in research on why humans and not Neanderthals were able to avoid extinction during dramatic changes to the environment such as the Ice Age.

Can demand generation marketers really learn from cavemen?

Do demand generation marketers have to adapt to changing environments, specifically changes in technology? Yes. Do they have to be able to interpret signals and signs correctly, specifically with lead data? Yes.

Demand generation isn’t much different from hunting and tracking. It’s called “tracking” leads for a reason.

Marketing data is simply a trail left by prospects. It’s the marketer’s job to read the signals and make an accurate guess as to what it means. And when marketers learn from their success in tracking leads, they refine their skills, becoming better hunters.

The Analytic and Observation Skills Needed To Survive

Luckily, marketers today don’t have to draw conclusions from the following observation:

They do, however, have to draw conclusions from this observation:

Today’s marketer can no longer simply focus on seeing what’s happening in front of them. They have to be able to use that information and identify the path that leads took to become opps and customers.

You may have a lot of customers. So to fine tune your targeting, you must identify the path of personas and accounts by grouping together customers. You can do so by channel, by campaign, or by target audience.

The skill of the generating more demand is based on being able identify these probabilities amongst campaigns and personas.

But not just any path of any customer, rather, the paths of personas and accounts. An important skill is being able to identify which path is the one your most important accounts/personas took to becoming a closed-won deal.

Understanding paths, and probabilities that engaging with certain content or channel mixes will result in opps/revenue, is one step closer to seeing into the future.

Customers leave a trail of data. Often these trails are noisy and complicated. But by focusing on the skills of path recognition from data, demand generation marketers become more effective at hunting the groups of leads that have the greatest return on investment.

Anticipation and Prediction

Hunters must know where herds are going. Clever hunters use the intelligence they gain from tracking to place themselves in the path of their targets. Whether it’s placing a trap or to lining up a shot, a good hunter is always one step ahead.

These specialized hunters understand the landscape and can use environmental information to help them make the best guess as to where their targets will be. They learn about the landscape by combining information about different regions.

This kind of vision is created by combining information from different locations. It’s created through observation and tracking. And with this kind of information hunters can place themselves in the right position for success. It’s all about knowing the landscape. For marketers, it’s all about knowing where to find the best leads.

Demand generation marketers can put their content in correct location as well. Imagine the map above represents the locations of different groups of leads or personas. You can estimate what you need (content) to attract them, and you know where to find them (channels).

How do we get here?

Adam Needles, author of Balancing the Demand Equation, says marketers must connect account level outcomes to contact level activities.

CRM platforms such as Salesforce.com are largely organized around account and opportunity objects. The problem is that most marketing automation platforms focus at the lead/contact level, collecting every action and every step taken by an individual buyer. Successful demand generation analytics must bridge the two.

Not being able to bridge the gap between different data platforms means marketers don’t see the market with much clarity.

And this is the kind of knowledge that separates excellent hunters from the rest.

Today’s skilled demand generation marketers can place high levels of detailed information to personas, leads, opps and customers. Whether its velocity, deal size, channels, or campaign information, the best marketers understand the attributes that define each group of leads.

It’s all about placing your content in the best place to be found by your leads. A complete view of the landscape via connecting data across marketing and CRM platforms is how to get there.

Tracking Content Engagement Results For Stealthy Demand Generation

Prospects need and want different kinds of information depending on what stage they are in.The skilled demand generation marketer can use the knowledge they’be gained through content tracking to produce content that prospects want, before prospects even ask for it or are aware they want it.

Always one step ahead, marketers who measure content engagement across the funnel can map buyers’ information needs. Content becomes more effective because marketers can eliminate the content that doesn’t work, or narrow down the correct time to offer it.

It’s stealthy. And it creates the kind of magic that makes prospects feel like you understand them. There are stealthy hunters in this picture. Can you spot them?

Conclusion

We’ve talked about three skills you can use to become a more effective demand generation marketer. Those are:

• Recognizing the right signals amid the KPI’s
• Connecting data across platforms to understand the landscape
• Mapping content to fine-tune the content marketing machine

These are just a few skills that today’s marketers must master. When they do, they can succeed at attracting the best leads and enjoy the ultimate outcome of marketing: revenue.

One of the things that consistently amazes me about writing is that it can be a little like magic. The right combination of words on a page (or screen) can accomplish incredible things; it can change lives, create a legacy that lasts generations, even topple nations. Exactly how we arrive at this magical combination of words is a mysterious, almost alchemical process, which further adds to its allure.

Calls to action can be thought of in a similar way. In marketing, the call to action (or CTA) is the part of your ad or landing page that asks the visitor to take the next step. It’s usually just a few words, often appearing on a button. The right CTA can make people do things in a way that even the most persuasive long-form copy cannot. A strong CTA is far more than a combination of words that hopefully compels people to click on a button – it’s a powerful statement of intent, a rallying cry to our tribe, the crescendo of a rousing speech that leaves the audience exhilarated, clenched fists raised triumphantly to the sky.

Well, that’s the idea, anyway.

Like writing copy, crafting a compelling call to action is part art, part science. In today’s post, we’ll be concerning ourselves with the science part by examining seven ideas for creating more compelling CTAs based on the results of real A/B tests.

1. Change ‘Your’ to ‘My’

The word “Your” is a popular choice for many CTAs. For one, it explicitly implies that whatever you’re asking users to do or sign up for is theirs. This can be highly effective in certain situations, such as webinar registrations. Asking visitors to “Secure your seat” can be highly motivational, and create a sense of exclusivity. However, it doesn’t always work, as Oli Gardner of Unbounce discovered.

Oli created a CTA for a client that was at the very end of the conversion process, meaning that every click had a financial impact for the client. Oli was confident that the possessive determiner “Your” would prove to be more effective than “My” in the button’s copy. As such, Oli set up an A/B test to see which of the two buttons would result in more conversions for his client.

To his surprise, the treatment button (that used “Your” instead of “My”) performed poorly compared to the control – almost 25% worse:

Oli was undeterred by his experiment. Although the test had proved that his hypothesis was wrong, Oli saw this as an opportunity for further tests – could using “My” instead of “Your” have that big an impact? Turns out it could.

Oli changed the phrasing of several CTAs to reflect the results of his earlier experiment, and found that the inclusion of the determiner “My” had a positive impact on conversion rates in several similar tests. With that in mind, Unbounce changed the phrasing of a CTA on a PPC landing page, which resulted in a 90% increase in click-through rate.

If your CTAs feature “Your,” try switching it up and using “My” instead.

2. Include CTA Buttons on Banners

Many marketers will give a great deal of thought to the placement of CTA buttons on perennial pages such as Product or Pricing pages, but completely ignore their potential impact on time-sensitive or seasonal campaigns. This is a huge wasted opportunity.

Visual Website Optimizer client Susty Party, a vendor of sustainable party goods based in Brooklyn, was running a campaign to promote a time-sensitive range of environmentally friendly tableware to coincide with the St. Patrick’s Day celebrations. The company placed a large, visually appealing banner at the top of their homepage to promote this range of products, but was disappointed by the low click-through rate of the banner.

Using VWO, Susty Party ran an A/B test to determine the impact that the inclusion of a CTA button on the banner would have on their conversion rates. Here’s an image of the page before and after the addition of the button (the variation is on the left, and the control is on the right):

The result? Adding the CTA button to the banner increased conversion rates from the homepage by 250%! Obviously, other changes were made to the homepage in the variant, but the bold CTA button featured on the banner had an immense impact on conversion rates, highlighting the value of including CTAs in temporary campaigns as well as your evergreen pages.

Are you running time-sensitive campaigns to promote seasonal goods? Try adding further CTAs to these site materials to see if you can move the needle as much as Susty Party did.

3. Test Your Trust Signals

Ordinarily, the inclusion of trust signals such as security emblems, privacy assurances, and other measures designed to alleviate anxiety about using a product or service is a good idea. After all, data security and privacy have never been more relevant than they are today, which makes the inclusion of relevant trust signals an apparent slam-dunk for marketers.

However, trust signals like this might actually be hurting your conversion rates.

In another surprising test by Unbounce, Oli Gardner discovered that the addition of a privacy policy to a CTA actually had a negative impact. Working for an online betting site, Oli tested the inclusion of an assurance that the client would never spam users – a common sight on landing pages and forms across the Web:

As with his earlier test, Oli firmly believed that the inclusion of this promise to respect users’ contact information would result in an uptick in sign-ups. Once again, the data told Oli a different story.

The inclusion of this trust signal actually resulted in a decrease in conversions of almost 19%. In this case, a measure intended to reduce hesitation and alleviate privacy concerns had actually had the completely opposite effect.

If your forms or landing pages have similar language or symbols, consider testing whether excluding this information will have a positive impact on your conversion rates. Oftentimes, users won’t even consider the security or privacy of their data unless their attention is specifically drawn to the issue. This aspect is also easy to overlook in favor of more commonly tested elements, such as CTA button copy or color.

4. Offer Information, Not ‘Quotes’

Ever shopped online for something like car insurance? Then you’re almost undoubtedly familiar with what a huge pain in the ass the process can be – and how the word “quote” can inspire apprehension and dread in even the most fearless bargain hunter.

People visiting your website may indeed be looking for a quote, but that doesn’t mean that using the word “Quote” in your CTAs is a good idea. In fact, the word “quote” can have negative connotations, and conjure images of lengthy web forms, convoluted processes, and significantly more hassle in general. Remember – people don’t want a quote, they want to know what they’ll be expected to pay for your services, and they want to get their hands on this information as quickly and painlessly as possible.

A prime example of this principle in action is this A/B test from Veeam Software, a virtualization software company. The only element Veeam changed in this example is the phrasing of a CTA, which it changed from “Request a Quote” to “Request Pricing,” as we can see in the images below:

A CTA link featuring the word “Quote”…

And the same link with phrasing changed from “Quote” to “Pricing”

This simple change resulted in an increase in CTR of almost 162%, indicating that visitors responded much more positively to a CTA for pricing information that they did for a quote.

Now, I’d argue that there are some more urgent problems with regard to this example. Firstly, this link-style CTA isn’t particularly effective. It’s not immediately obvious what the visitor should do if they decide they want more information, nor does it make it apparent why they should request pricing information over either downloading whatever it is they can download, or why they should “Buy now and save.” It’s confusing, and relies a great deal upon the diligence and determination of the prospect. Secondly, if Veeam were more transparent with their pricing, they could arguably generate more qualified leads by asking for information from prospective buyers who’ve already decided that the product pricing aligns with their budget.

However, this example does prove that the phrasing of your CTAs – whether buttons or links – can have a huge impact, and that “quotes” aren’t particularly appealing to many users. If you’re offering quotes to prospective customers, consider testing alternate phrasing to see if you can make your offer more tempting.

If you absolutely have to use the word “quote,” make it abundantly clear that there’s no pressure or time commitment. Logistics company Open Mile accomplished this to great effect by using the following CTA button on one of its landing pages:

Sure, the CTA button copy reads “Get a Quote”, but also explains that it’s free and takes just five seconds, preemptively overcoming two of the most common objections to the quote process, namely financial burden and time commitment. This variant outperformed the original (below) by 232%, proving how dramatic an impact this can have on conversion rates:

5. Use Language That Appeals to Your Ideal Customer

We’ve already established that language and choice of phrasing are vitally important to conversion rates, but phrasing your CTAs in language that appeals to your ideal customer is one of the most effective tools at your disposal for making your CTAs irresistible.

Take the example below from men’s grooming products company Manpacks, a service that allows customers to create individualized care packages containing a wide range of hygiene and grooming products:

This example is superb, and demonstrates perfectly how your choice of language can impact conversion rates. Not only does the inclusion of the word “build” – a very active verb – appeal to Manpacks’ target audience, it also creates excitement and a sense of engagement. Think of how different the intent and allure of this CTA would be if Manpacks had used words such as “Get” or “Order.”

This principle can be leveraged to great effect in other ways, too. The example below, from bookkeeping software company Less Accounting, uses inclusive language to convey a sense of teamwork, solidarity, and collaboration to make its accounting software more appealing:

Unless you’re that rare breed of person who enjoys bookkeeping, the chances are pretty good that you’re in need of a little help if you’re looking at a software package like Less Accounting. That’s what makes this CTA so effective – this phrasing makes bookkeeping less intimidating, and creates excitement about a typically dry topic such as accounting through the inclusion of an exclamation mark.

Think about what your prospects really want from you – help, advice, excitement – and tailor the phrasing of your CTAs to appeal to these needs.

6. Focus on the Benefits

In an attempt to preemptively overcome one of the most common and powerful objections to converting – price – many marketers focus exclusively on the free or no-obligation elements of their offers. While this can be effective in some situations, if you’re trying to increase your conversion rates, try focusing on the benefits, rather than risk-aversion tactics.

This example, from wedding website building service Wedbuddy, shows its old sign-up page. As you can see, the copy and CTA focus exclusively on the risk-free elements of the service, namely the 14-day free trial and the fact that users don’t need a credit card to sign up for the service:

However, when Wedbuddy tested benefits-driven copy, they increased their conversion rates dramatically. In the example below, Wedbuddy reworked its copy to focus on the benefits of the service, and used more exciting, animated language (and an exclamation mark) to generate more enthusiasm with its CTA button:

The site also shortened the length of the page considerably, removing a long list of features that was suspected to be overwhelming visitors with information.

As a result, Wedbuddy increased the number of sign-up first-action clicks by 139% and the number of completed free trial sign-ups by 73%.

Attempting to combat risk-aversion is usually a good idea, but sometimes, letting your product or service speak for itself can be more effective. If your landing pages or site feature this kind of language, consider testing whether it would be more effective to focus on the benefits of your offering rather than how little prospects have to lose by trying it out.

7. Apply the ‘I Want To…’ Principle

The second example from Wedbuddy above actually includes the phrase “I want to…” in its CTA copy, but you can achieve a similarly compelling result without explicitly using these words in your copy by applying the “I want to…” principle to your CTA buttons.

Simply put, this technique involves writing CTA copy that could be prefaced with the words “I want to…” For example, the two CTAs below (from website optimization service CrazyEgg) both make use of this principle, even if they do actually include the “I want to…” copy itself:

These CTAs would arguably be just as compelling if they didn’t include “I want to…” above them. This is what they’d look like without the supporting copy:

Both are still very compelling, feature active verbs (“Grow” and “Coach”), and are clearly differentiated based on audience/user intent, separating one service into two separate tiers depending on the user’s needs.

This principle can be applied to virtually any type of CTA, from a sign-up prompt to a free download offer. If your conversion rates are stagnating, try applying this technique to your CTA copy to see if it makes your offer more compelling.

A Brief Note on CTA ‘Best Practices’

One thing that may have occurred to you in all of the above examples is that these strategies will not work for every business in every scenario. In fact, while putting together this post, I found contradictory evidence and test results that proved that the opposite of every scenario was true. This highlights one of the immutable truths of A/B testing, which is that no case study can substitute a real test under real conditions for your business.

Hopefully these examples have given you some ideas on how you can improve the conversion rates of your CTAs, but they should not – under any circumstances – be taken as irrefutable proof that a change or adjustment will work for your site. Only data gleaned from a rigorous, statistically significant A/B test based on the behavior of your customers should inform your decisions. If in doubt, test – then test again.

I don’t have to tell you who Andrew Chen is.

Sean Ellis might have coined the term growth hacking, but Andrew Chen is the reason you know it.

He wrote all about it in a post you’ve probably read – Growth Hacker is the New VP of Marketing– and years later, people still can’t stop talking about it.

But at the time, growth hacking wasn’t mainstream. It was an exciting new trend – taking Silicon Valley by storm, from AirBnB to Craigslist – but it wasn’t the established way to do things.

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It wasn’t your grandfather’s marketing. It wasn’t even your father’s marketing.

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Hell, we were doing things differently ourselves just 10 years ago.

So, what changed?

Ultimately, it was data. We got more of it, the quality was higher, and we could act on that data in ways we never could before.

And so the line between marketer and engineer started to blur.

Because fundamentally, the growth hacker is somebody who uses engineering – technical details like page load times, email deliverability, and social log-ins – to fast-track business growth.

Page-load times, email deliverability, and Facebook sign-in integration are his marketing programs. He builds them into the products themselves, so they’re optimized for growth from the bottom up.

Think high-growth products marketed with high-growth strategies on “superplatforms” – like Facebook and Apple – that give immediate access to tens of millions of buyers.

Unsurprisingly, it works.

But, of course, there’s more to growth marketing than short-term success.

We’ve all seen more than a few Silicon Valley darlings go public and crash. Hundreds of millions in valuation lost.

And why?

Those companies were so caught up in user acquisition they forgot about user retention. And user retention is king.

Believe me, it’s not a mistake you want to make.

Which is why at the Growth Marketing Conference last year, Jamie Quint talked about how to avoid making it. It’s a presentation you really can’t miss.

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Because, let’s be clear – growth hacking isn’t just hacking. It isn’t just a bag of tricks – little workarounds, cheats, and shortcuts. Growth hacking is a system.

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Really, a better term for it is growth marketing. And growth marketing – well, it’s going places.

It’s the future.

And at the Growth Marketing Conference [Advanced] May 5-6 in San Francisco, Andrew Chen is going to tell you just what that future is.

He’s giving our opening keynote – a big, hard-hitting presentation – about the real way to get rapid growth and sky-high retention. And, he’s going to reveal what’s on the horizon for growth marketing in the next few years – and beyond.

Our industry just doesn’t stand still.

So, stop by the show this May and make sure you’re up to speed.

Sales is a language game. Salespeople use words to demonstrate value, identify business pain, create a sense of urgency, and close deals.

Unfortunately, many salespeople also use words to ruin their chances of winning a deal.

Too much of sales depends on chance. Don’t lose a deal because you weren’t careful with your words -- using any of the below phrases in emails is a major mistake.

19 Bad Sales Phrases That Kill Deals

1. “Sorry to bother you.”

There are two fatal mistakes here: an apology and the insinuation that you’re being interruptive.

If you’re reaching out for a good reason, you have no reason to apologize. Saying “sorry” creates the impression you’re weak, when you should be projecting confidence and authority. And if your prospect didn’t think you were bothering them before, they certainly do now.

If you’re truly being interruptive because you have nothing to offer or didn’t do your due diligence, don’t reach out at all.

2. “I’d like to connect.”

Why? Are you going to offer free advice (something you should do), or are you going to start hard selling the minute your prospect picks up (something you shouldn’t)?

Explain exactly what your prospect should expect to get out of the call to turn this bad phrase good.

3. “I thought you might be the right person to connect with.”

There’s no excuse for not knowing who the correct point of contact should be. Even a simple LinkedIn skim should tell you what a prospect’s responsibilities are.

4. “Could you direct me to the right point of contact?”

This request is usually the follow-up to #3. It’s bad etiquette to ask your prospect for a favor because you haven’t done your job. If you’ve scoured LinkedIn and actually couldn’t find anyone who fits your buyer persona, at least let your prospect know and make a specific ask. For example:

I couldn’t identify based on a LinkedIn search who would be the correct person to reach out to about [your product's capabilities]. Could you put me in touch with the person who’s responsible for [areas relating to your product]?

5. “Is it a good time to connect?”

Well, is it? That depends.

If you’re calling to advise your prospect on a problem they’re having and you’ve demonstrated that you are a source of valuable information, it’s a great time to connect. If you haven’t established value, it’s a waste of your prospect’s time. Instead, lead with what you hope to offer your prospect.

6. “Can I tell you about … ?”

Nope, you can’t. Don’t ask permission to list features of your product. Instead, be so helpful that your prospect naturally wants to know more. If you have to ask whether it’s okay to talk about your product, you haven’t provided enough value.

7. “Just checking in … ”

Any communication you have with your prospects should have an objective, and “just checking in” isn’t good enough. At minimum, you should provide a reason for checking in.

For example, if your prospect said they’d get back to you by Monday, and it’s now Thursday, it’s fine to send in a check-in email.

But don’t employ this phrase as a crutch when you don’t have anything to talk about -- it’s a waste of your prospect’s time.

8. “I’d like to have an informational chat.”

What you (hopefully) meant: “I want to learn more about your business pain, so I can provide advice and a potential solution.”

What your prospect heard: “I want to give you an elevator pitch.”

Don’t give your prospect the opportunity to assume the worst. Let them know that your intent is to gather information from them, not shove it down their throats.

9. “Touching base”

Like “just checking in,” “touching base” isn’t necessarily bad if deployed in the right context. But if you aren’t providing new information or following up with new information, there’s really nothing for you to “touch base” about.

10. “I wanted to / I’d love to / I’d like to / I need …”

Any sales phrase that starts with what you want is a no-no. Sales isn’t about you, it’s about what you can do for your buyers. So take the focus off yourself and make sure that you’re ending any sentence that starts with one of the above phrases with how you can help your prospect.

"Whenever I hear a salesperson on my team say this one, I usually ask them 'Who gives a sh*t what you want?'," Databox CEO and former HubSpot sales VP Pete Caputa writes. "Your prospects don't care about you. They care about themselves, their needs, and their own agenda."

While many reps use this phrase as a way to get prospect buy-in, Caputa suggests including prospects in the agenda-setting. Here’s his strategy for rephrasing an “I’d like to” ask:

My suggestion is that we discuss how HubSpot has helped other high-growth SaaS software companies who were struggling to get past product/market fit. Given you mentioned that as your main struggle the other day, I’m wondering if that sounds like a good agenda from your perspective?

11. “Are you the decision maker?”

This phrase is flat-out insulting to prospects, says HubSpot sales director Dan Tyre.

“If your prospect isn’t the sole decision maker, you’re going to make them uncomfortable -- not to mention you’re suggesting they’re not worth talking to unless they are a decision maker, which is both shortsighted and rude,” Tyre writes.

12. “To be honest …”

This phrase sets off alarm bells for savvy buyers. Were you lying before? You’ve presumably been honest this entire time -- why call it out now? Cut out this filler phrase from your vocabulary if you want to retain credibility with prospects.

13. “Trust me.”

“Trust me” is almost as insidious as “To be honest.” Your prospects will trust you if you’ve proven yourself over time, not if you passive-aggressively tell them to. If you say this in response to a prospect question, it can also come off as condescending and evasive. Stay away!

14. “Do you have budget for this?”

While the budget question is certainly important, bringing it up too early can unnecessarily hamstring reps.

“Asking a company whether they have a budget for your offering early in the process, before you've differentiated yourself, is silly,” Caputa writes. “If they want to keep talking to you, they'll say they do. If they don't want to keep talking to you, you just gave them an easy out by letting them say 'No.' You’ve also opened the door for premature negotiation -- ‘You're way too expensive compared to competitor X.’”

15. “It’s really easy to understand.”

You might be trying to reassure your prospect, but what you’ve really done is set yourself up to condescend to them. While you might think a concept or feature might be simple, a prospect who doesn’t grasp it immediately and has been told it’s ‘really easy’ is going to feel stupid. Never assume a level of proficiency or make similar statements that have implicit judgment attached.

16. “That’s not what I meant.”

Don’t ever be defensive.

Many prospect objections are simply requests for information. The onus is on you, the salesperson, to persuade the buyer of something. If they don’t understand what you’ve told them, you haven’t done your job. Saying, “That’s not what I meant” doesn’t further your prospect’s understanding of … anything. It’s just argumentative.

17. “[Jargon]”

“The ROI of our product is an average 25% increase in LTV and over 100% retention while decreasing CAC by 30-40%.”

Huh?

I know these acronyms because I work in an industry where they’re commonplace. And you no doubt are up-to-date with all the lingo, acronyms, and jargon that your industry uses. But don’t ever assume your prospect knows what you’re talking about.

Secondly, relying on jargon and acronyms makes you sound … well, not human. Avoid buzzwords in sales and use real words to explain what you mean.

18. “I’d like to tell you about our product.”

Your prospect’s knee-jerk response to this statement is, “Oh, you do? Too bad.”

Their annoyance is justified. You’re not even asking if you can discuss what you’re selling -- you’re telling them.

In addition, the buyer has no reason to believe they’ll get value out of this conversation. It’s clearly meant to benefit you, not them.

19. “What if I said … ”

Want to avoid sounding like the stereotypical, sleazy salesperson? Don’t say this. It’s clearly manipulative, since you’re never going to use it to introduce a fact that’s not true.

Instead of being rhetorical, come straight out with whatever you want your prospect to know.

Before: “What if I said you could double your referral rate in six months?”

After: “87% of our clients double their referral rates in six months.”

Before: “What if I said your online reviews are costing you upward of $5,000 in business every week?”

After: “Based on our data, your online reviews are costing you upward of $5,000 in business every week.”

20. "So you're not interested in [insert benefit of your product/service]?"

This is a classic sales line. Your prospect says, "We're just not interested," or "We don't have a use case for it," and you reply, "So, you're not interested in tripling your revenue potential and reducing customer churn by 15%?"

Of course they're interested in those things. All you're doing now is being patronizing and a little spiteful.

If you've made your case and they're still not interested, one of two things have happened. First, your prospect might really not be interested in or have a use for what you're selling. Second, you might not have done a great job of selling them on it, which means you should dive deep into call reviews and brush up your skills for next time, instead of trying to guilt your prospect.

21. "You should know X about [competitor] ..."

Never bad-mouth a competitor. It's tempting, especially when a prospect shares information they received from a competitor you know is untrue.

Instead of raging, "They lied to you, actually XYZ is true," take a gentler approach. Say, "Hmm, that's interesting, I can see why that would be a concern, but actually [insert truthful information]." This removes the focus from your competitor and puts it on the truth. Once you've clarified your prospect understands and has no further questions or concerns on the subject, you can move forward productively.

22. "Actually, that's not true."

Similarly, when prospects develop their own wrong ideas about your product/service, that can be tough to swallow. If they make an incorrect claim in a meeting, avoid jumping in with, "Actually, that's not true ...."

Instead, allow your prospect to finish, pause, and say, "So, what I'm hearing is, [repeat back what they said], is that correct?" If they say, "Yes," follow up with, "Hopefully I can shed some light on this," and continue with your explanation of how the product/service actually works.

Don't be part of the reason salespeople get a bad reputation. Remove these expressions from your vocabulary and see how your relationships with prospects deepen.

In sales, your bottom of the funnel metrics are directly influenced by top of the funnel quality. To keep your bottom funnel metrics high, you need to fill the top of your funnel with high quality leads.

What might seem like an obvious concept to some is still foreign to others – funnel health is pretty much the most important piece of your sales function. Fill the top of your funnel with high quality leads, and more qualified opportunities will come out at the bottom. You can call it “Trickle Down Funnel-Nomics” (or not, I would understand). The idea makes sense – higher quality leads flow through the funnel at a faster pace. The question then becomes: How do I increase my lead quality?

Take a look at the funnel pictured below. Each “L” that goes in is a “lead” – the thing we need to increase the quality of. These leads have a variety of different sources, and for these purposes we can weight each source with an arbitrary value:

• Leads with a value of 1: These are the leads that come from a massive purchase list. Prior to reaching out, your SDRs have no information about the quality of these accounts. You don’t know if they’re the right people to contact, if they can make the decision on technology evaluations or if they have a need for your product or service. They tend to take a lot more work to push through the funnel.

• Leads with a value of 4: These are the MQL’s your marketing team generates. Some of them might drop into the 1 designation, but a good portion of them have taken some action on your website or interacted with your content that’s elevated them to this status. You have a bit more information on what it is they’re looking for or who would make the decision. That makes them a bit easier to push along, but it comes with needing to wade through the bad ones to find the quality leads.

• Leads with a value of 7: These are the leads that come from your smart target list. If your team executes an Account-Based strategy then you’ll have a list of target accounts and contacts generated through the combined efforts of your marketing and product teams. These are accounts that would benefit from your product / service and have a more compelling reason to take a call. These are easier to push along the funnel because you can easily see the justification for them to take next steps.

• Leads with a value of 10: These are the leads that get hand-picked by your SDR team. After doing their own research and finding trigger events they’ve compiled a list of the absolute best accounts to reach out to. These are the easiest to push along because more often than not, these accounts have an active project and need for your product / service.

The leads with a heavier weight move through the funnel a higher pace – which make sense. It’s a lot easier to create a business case for your hand-picked leads and target accounts versus purchased leads or MQL’s, mainly because you have more information. The key to matriculating a Lead through your funnel is the level of information you have. In this sense Information = Quality, and the more information you have the higher quality (or weight) the Lead will have.

So the question remains, how do I increase my Lead quality? Essentially that translates to “how do I get more information about the leads I’m handing to my SDR team?” The answer is different for each organization, but in general shifting your outbound strategy to an Account-Based one tends to be the answer. With the Account-Based approach you’ll see more of the 7’s and 10’s come in from your SDR team. Sure you’ll have a mix of 1’s and 4’s in there as well, but when the 7’s and 10’s outnumber them the bottom of the funnel will reflect that.

Every once in awhile you’ll find a diamond in the rough; a lead that starts out with a 1 or 4 classification, but flies through the funnel. You have to remember that information isn’t everything, but it is the deciding factor in how fast Lead pass through the funnel. As always, no strategy or philosophy is a fit for every organization. Asses the current health of your sales funnel to see if it needs some retooling, you could always use some faster moving opportunities! Remember, a healthy funnel is a happy funnel – and a happy funnel means a happy sales team.

The post A Healthy Funnel is a Happy Funnel: Building a Productive Sales Funnel to Increase Lead Quality appeared first on OpenView Labs.

Has anyone online figured out that a sales funnel to do the follow-up, will never beat a live person on the phone calling people back, the old-fashioned way? Most marketers online average 5% open rate with their emails and a dismal 1%-2% click through rate, why?

That tells me that 95% don’t really connect with what your offering, don’t care, not interested OR simply because they want to talk to somebody FIRST then make the purchase? The answer is YES.

When you connect with a cold customer on the phone they relationship changes from digital to talking to a live person, and the TRUST factor is immediately established. And if the trust factor is far better, your sales will be a reflection of that.

Let’s see what else can benefit your conversion ratio…

Imagine your trying to sell a $1000 product to someone over the internet, who has never met you, or doesn’t know you from Adam. Odds are 5% percent chance of making the sale right?

There are a few reasons for that.Which leaves me to believe there is a better way to build a business using a live person answering all of your potential customer’s questions with confidence.

Let’s what else you can do to increase conversions…through quality paid traffic sources.

Now not everyone will use the same traffic sources as I do, but they work really well. Once you have a steady supply of quality traffic, then you can move onto the next important part to your sales pipeline – the follow-up.

The Followup

There had to be a way to identify people who were interested in business opportunities or products I sell, there is. There had to be a way to bring them up to the point where they understood, got excited about the potential, and could be more easily closed. Well, there is a very simple way to increase conversions, follow up, and get more sales, right?

Well, there is, but what happens instead of sending people to your typical sales funnel as shown below, you redirect them to a form to fill out a survey based on your product, service or business opportunity.

Why?

Because sending countless people to your 5% converting VSL sales page, with a poor click through rate, is almost a waste of time and money.

A typical sales funnel is shown here:

You can click on any ad besides Facebook, go to an opt-in page to enter your email, then to the sales page, then the order page, then they get your emails, only gets 5% conversion, maybe 20% if your Neil Patel.

Once you have their information you employ a call center team to call them and close the sale OR you call them, to close the sale. The relationship changes dramatically on the phone vs a dead sales page.

That also brings them closer to being a HOT prospect than a COLD customer, and that is the idea in sales and marketing. Create customer interest, offer a product to the customer, close the sale.

Solution?

Following up with email either by an email broadcast to your list or by each one still should be done, as people learn more about you through your marketing emails, product launches and where your traveling.

How often should you email your list? I would honestly email your list every 2nd or 3rd day to avoid list burnout. 3 times a week is plenty, although my mentor Shaqir Hussyin would disagree, he emails his list of 160K subscribers every day.

Writing your email copy:

Direct response copywriting—particularly in books written by Dan Kennedy and others who were successful marketers even before the Internet. Direct response is a technique for capturing and developing a person’s interest to the degree that they will buy.

Every year, companies spend billions of dollars on advertising and lead generation. They spend on pay per click ads, social media ads, content marketing, email marketing, traditional print ads, public relations, and more – all in the hope of generating new sales leads. Sales teams are always ravenous for more sales leads and better sales leads – it’s one of the classic complaints of the sales person, that there aren’t enough good leads.

So why is it that so many companies spend all of this money and time on generating new sales leads, only to make a huge mistake when the leads finally start to arrive?

The biggest sales mistake that many companies make is this: once they get sales leads, even after all the effort that it takes to generate sales leads – they don’t put ANY effort into actually working with the sales leads to prequalify the leads and figure out which leads are really the best sales opportunities.

As a result, many new sales leads fall through the cracks. This sounds like such a simple problem, but it is surprisingly widespread. According to stats cited by HubSpot, 61% of B2B marketers send all of their new sales leads directly to the sales team, without any prequalifying; however, only 27% of those leads, on average, are actually “qualified” leads that are a good fit and ready to buy.

So what does this mean for your company? If you are one of the many companies that is just passing on all of your new sales leads to the sales people, without any prequalifying process, you are missing out on big opportunities. By bombarding your sales people with too many unqualified leads, you are causing them to waste time and miss out on good sales opportunities. This is how sales leads fall through the cracks.

Instead of missing out on good sales leads by treating all new leads the same, here is what you should do instead to correct this big mistake:

1. Create a consistent intake process for sales leads.

What happens when a new prospective customer calls or emails or signs up for an online form for the first time? Do you have a consistent process in place to handle all of these inbound inquiries, or are they going to multiple places with different rules for how to respond? Take a look at your overall process for identifying and sorting new sales inquiries or inbound sales leads – and make sure it’s consistent from one place to another.

2. Ask prequalifying questions.

New sales leads are not all the same – some of them are going to be highly qualified buyers who are already well informed about your product and are ready to move forward with the sales process; others are low-information prospects who are still doing their research; others might not even be a good fit for what you sell. It’s important to ask questions upfront to prequalify your sales leads and figure out which leads are which. For example, you could ask:

Why did you decide to contact us?

How soon do you hope to make a purchase?

What do you know about our product?

What business challenges are you currently facing that you think our product can help with?

This is a way of pre-sorting your sales leads by finding out what they know and how ready and eager they are to make a purchase.

3. Sort your leads.

Once you’ve asked some questions, it’s time to sort and rank your sales leads in order of priority. Even a simple system like “A, B and C” rankings can help you focus on the best sales leads first, while saving the others for long-term lead nurturing and follow-up. Ranking sales leads is not always a precise process, but by asking questions upfront you will have some insights into your customers’ needs, pain points and overall business goals.

Sales leads are too valuable to waste! Don’t let your leads fall through the cracks by making this all-too-common sales mistake. Instead, create a systematic process for doing intake and prequalifying of new sales leads. Ask open-ended questions and sort your leads based on which ones are ready to buy and which ones require more relationship building and question-answering. Then, assign your sales leads accordingly and let your team go to work! Hopefully with a consistent lead qualifying process, you’ll soon start to see happier, more productive sales people and better sales results.

Salespeople are competitive. They hate to lose. Giving up or walking away from a potential deal is not in the salesperson’s DNA. However, part of being a great salesperson is knowing when to walk away from a potential opportunity.

It may seem counterintuitive, but knowing when to walk away from a sale is just as important to your sales strategy as executing the prime opportunities.

Time is Money

A sales process is an investment of time, with an intended return in the form of revenue and relationships. Time is also limited. If a rep dedicates way too much time on a low-potential prospect, he/she will miss opportunities to get in front of better prospects. Your salespeople need to understand the value of walking away from a deal that won’t happen. How do you get your reps to do that? With effective qualification.

That point may seem obvious, but too many sales organizations fail to develop a qualficiation process that gives their reps the tools to know when to walk away. A better qualification process helps reps in a number of ways, including:

• More qualified opportunities
• Higher win rates
• Shorter sales cycles
• Improved use of resources
• Better implementation and transition to delivery teams

Putting definition around customer verifiable outcomes and stages around the entire sales process drives scalable growth. Applying consistent qualification criteria is also vital to time management and sales efficiency.

Customized and defined planning tools should focus your reps on quantifying the prospect’s pain, uncovering a compelling event, defining the business impact and determining the key players that are invested in the decision. Without those key elements, it will be difficult to distinguish the opportunities that will move forward from those that will fall flat.

The first step towards improving your sales process and how your reps qualify is to assess where you are now. Here‘s a list of questions to ask about your organization:

1. How hard or easy are we to buy from?
2. What do customers say about this and how we sell?
3. How does our sales process support their selling effectiveness?
4. How do our best performers sell? What are the best practices?

Be sure to also assess how your sales process empowers your salespeople.

1. How does it help them align with their customer’s buying process?
2. Does it help them articulate value and differentiation throughout that buying journey?
3. How does it facilitate an accurate forecasting process?
4. How does it ensure that our salespeople are able to maximize their time spent selling?

If you really want to drive change with an improved sales process, you need to focus on the execution of it with your sales team. Qualifying and advancing leads requires your processes to be well-defined and consistently reinforced. Giving your reps the tools to help them walk away from a sale is just as critical.

There are three international markets that should concern Canadian executives and policy makers most: the United States, China and India. The reasons the first two are on the list are obvious. And why put India ahead of Europe? It’s the one place on the planet that may replicate what Beijing did with its economy over the 1990s and 2000’s. That’s why India was the only other country besides China that was mentioned by name in Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s mandate letter to Trade Minister Chrystia Freeland.

India is a problematic choice as saviour. At its core, the country shares the same democratic values as countries such as Canada. That makes it familiar. But India is nearly impossible to govern. States are the size of medium-sized countries and they aren’t always keen to cooperate with the federal government. Voters are tribal, grouping themselves according to language, caste and religion, creating “vote banks” that a panoply of political entities are ever-ready to exploit. Little of substance happened in parliament last year because Prime Minister Narendra Modi lacks support in the upper house. The main opposition party refuses to work with him, for spurious reasons. Outsiders who talked about Modi as an Indian version of Margaret Thatcher or Ronald Reagan have learned that even an absolute majority in the lower house of parliament isn’t enough to bring about fundamental change in India. The place isn’t made for it.

Modi, through his unsmiling finance minister, Arun Jaitley, presented his third budget on Feb. 29. As in Canada and other former British colonies, it was a big event. There also was the usual amount of anticipation that India might finally unveil some “big bang” reforms. “It’s now or never; this might be his last opportunity to introduce bold reforms and sow the seeds of future growth,” wrote Rajrishi Singhal, a senior fellow at Gateway House, a think tank. Singhal reckoned local elections in 2017 would throw up too many reasons to avoid changes that would inevitably anger one or more of those vote banks. And by the following year, the leaders of Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party will have full control of the policy agenda as they do whatever they think is necessary to get their man re-elected prime minister in 2019. Singhal also made the case of a bit of fiscal stimulus. With the economy growing at an annual rate in excess of 7%, India has surpassed China as the world’s fastest-growing big economy. Yet not so long ago, India’s government was talking openly about the possibility of double-digit growth. Singhal and others argued that Modi should use the treasury to speed things up.

Jaitley mostly ignored such advice. He opted to stick with his plan of narrowing the budget deficit to 3.5% of gross domestic product, recognizing that India’s reputation with international bond traders isn’t solid enough to assume that any deviation wouldn’t be punished by higher interest rates. The focus of the budget was on farmers, as Jaitley announced a series of measures that he said would double farm incomes within five years. Otherwise, the budget contained a lot of small beer, showing again that just because Modi fills stadiums abroad, doesn’t mean he will bring the thunder at home. He is a cautious politician who intends to make his mark over at least two terms, not one.

India’s budget was met with the usual dollops of disappointment that critics have in ready supply when it comes to India. Jaitley’s “barnyard budget” was little more than an attempt to buy the farm vote, one such critic sniffed from behind the Globe and Mail’s paywall. Traders too were negative, at first. India’s main stock index dropped on Budget Day. Then investors had a rethink. The Bombay Stock Exchange’s Sensex surged more than 6% over the remainder of the week, posting its biggest weekly gain since the end of 2011. Jaitley’s decision to stand firm on his fiscal target was significant. India’s status as the fastest-growing big economy did nothing to keep it from getting caught in the exodus of international capital out of emerging markets last year. Jaitley need to reinforce the relatively impressive growth numbers with a sign of stability. The deficit pledge did that.

There also is merit in Modi’s decision to turn his attention to farmers. About 60% of the country’s population makes a living from agriculture. To be sure, this number is too high. India’s development is impeded by the number of people who have no better option but to try to scratch out livings on small parcels of land. But this isn’t the moment to try to force them to take jobs in the cities. India has suffered consecutive droughts. Rural demand has shriveled, which is one of the reasons Modi and Jaitley have stopped talking about growth rates of 10%. There also has been a spike in the number of farmer suicides and other indicators of human misery. No politician could ignore these circumstances. “A rural and agriculture focus is both politically and ethically correct,” wrote Mihir Sharma, a columnist at the Business Standard newspaper and the author of Restart: The Last Chance for the Indian Economy. “If this budget was not packaged and sold as a budget for the poor and for farmers, Narendra Modi would have lost the next election.”

Sharma praised the budget, notable because he ranks among the government’s most lucid and unforgiving critics. It may be time to apply a different standard to Modi’s management of the Indian economy. Sharma liked Jaitley’s financial plan because he saw evidence the government was serious about overhauling India’s financial industry, which is dominated by state-owned banks that are weighed down by bad debt. No, Modi isn’t going to try to solve that problem tomorrow. But he stands a better chance of doing it than any leader India has had in a long time. Therefore, any misstep that weakens him politically also would be a setback for India’s economy. Baby steps beat backtracking.

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MORE ABOUT INDIA & INTERNATIONAL TRADE:

• Canadian exporters are finally waking up to opportunity in Asia
• How investing in emerging markets is getting more complicated
• BDC CEO Michael Denham on helping Canadian firms go global
• Five ways global trade will change for Canada in 2016
• Services matter—but making stuff is the core of any strong economy
• Why the future of global trade deals could be small businesses
• The age of global trade requires training a new kind of salesperson
• India’s oil giants plan for growth as government control recedes

The post What Canadians need to know about doing business in India now appeared first on Canadian Business - Your Source For Business News.

The battle between battery- and fuel cell-powered vehicles may come down to a simple case of efficiency versus convenience.

Organizations from around the world have looked to Logitech to create a low cost, robust solution that will turn any room into a conference room without the need for a desktop or laptop computer present.

The Logitech ConferenceCam Kit with Intel NUC is being touted as a reliable and affordable solution for businesses all around the world. The cool thing about the Logitech ConferenceCam is that it uses Intel NUC and Intel Unite, which quickly allows you to join any cloud based meeting service without the presence of a desktop computer.

The new teleconferencing solution gives Logitech users the ability to scale beyond a single boardroom, should they choose to add more of these devices into the mix.

Video conferencing services such as WebEx, GoToMeeting and others are directly accessible by simply plugging in and configuring the Logitech ConferenceCam Kit. The hardware included with Logitech's new teleconferencing bundle gives your organization the ability to broadcast in true 1080p video. Rather than having an experience to where you can only see people in the room, Logitech's 1080p video camera provides a rich experience, allowing people to see non-verbal queues, facial expressions and more.

The Intel NUC is a small form factor device that reliably transports and receives HD video. The Intel NUC has support for multiple HD displays, including 4k displays as well. The Intel Unite app is available on this device, giving both meeting hosts the ability to begin wireless content sharing on either a MAC or a PC.

“We have found that a significant number of Logitech ConferenceCams are attached to dedicated computers in meeting rooms, ” mentions Scott Wharton, General Manager of the Logitech's video collaboration group.

“Logitech and Intel have taken the guesswork out of the equation. We researched, developed and tested the Logitech ConferenceCam Kit so it’s easy to set up, easy to use and delivers the most affordable enterprise-quality video conferencing experience available today,” adds Wharton.

Pricing starts at $1,599.

Logitech will have its new ConferenceCam Kit on display at the Enterprise Connect trade show on March 7^th through the 9^th. The event will be taking place at the Gaylord Palms Resort & Convention Center near Kissimmee, FL.

Logitech is setup at booth #629 should you want to stop by and see the new product in action.

The post Logitech’s New ConferenceCam Kit Connects to Any Cloud Meeting Service appeared first on CloudWedge.

The Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) economies have achieved a remarkable transformation over the past 30 years. Saudi Arabia and its smaller neighbouring countries Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, and the United Arab Emirates were once at the economic periphery of the world’s trading system. The discovery and systematic production of oil since the 1960s has changed this narrative fundamentally, as petrodollars have enabled the GCC to advance into one of the world’s wealthiest regions, stylized by the ultramodern skylines of cities such as Dubai, Riyadh, and Doha.

The price of this fast-track, oil-fueled development has been the region’s high dependence on oil export revenues (and in the case of Qatar, also of liquified natural gas, of which it is currently the largest producer in the world). Saudi Arabia in particular is not only a major player on oil markets and within OPEC, but also the region’s largest economy that shares its vulnerability to sliding global oil prices with its smaller GCC neighbours.

Unsurprisingly, the collapse in oil prices since the summer of 2014 has raised concerns over the long-term stability of the GCC economies, even more so in view of what may yet be a prolonged period of low oil prices.

Observers are right to be concerned. The 2000s saw expanding state budgets and welfare payments, in part linked to a decade of rising global oil prices that peaked at a stable range of around $100–110 per barrel between 2011 and mid 2014. The spending bonanza of the late 2000s and early 2010s in many parts of the region followed ever-expanding government revenue surpluses; but it also reflected regional governments’ conscious choice of channeling their oil windfalls to their populations in the aftermath of the outbreak of political uprisings in many parts of the Arab world (the “Arab Spring”). Oil and gas export revenues are the principal source of export income in the GCC, accounting for over 90% of total export revenues in countries such as Qatar and Kuwait, and well above 85% in Saudi Arabia. With no income or corporate tax in these countries, oil and gas export revenue supply well over 90% of total government revenues.

The recent sharp decline in the oil price has undoubtedly altered the economic outlook for the GCC economies as a whole. After a period of sustained real GDP growth, which averaged around 5.8% during 2000–2011, the IMF projects growth rates to slowdown to 3.4% in 2015 and 3.2% in 2016. Also, after achieving large fiscal surpluses that averaged 12.4% of GDP during 2000–2011, the GCC countries are projected to run fiscal deficits of 7.9% and 3.6% of GDP in 2015 and 2016.

After an initial “wait and see” strategy, GCC oil producers have by now come to realise that the current oil price decline is no short-term phenomenon, and that causal factors including continued oil market oversupply and weaker than expected demand growth imply that oil producers will need to deal with a lower oil price band for yet some more time.

And yet this shift could become a key chance for the region’s economies. The massive inflow of export revenues during the last few years thanks to the large increase in the value of crude and natural gas exports during the late 2000s and early 2010s reduced the pressure for structural reform in the GCC economies. But that pressure has returned; by January 2016, several GCC countries announced far-reaching economic reforms that used to be unthinkable merely a few years ago. One of them is the reform of domestic energy pricing and subsidies in a region that used to be known for charging among the world’s lowest rates for fuel, gas, and electricity. From a political standpoint, the region’s subsidy reforms of 2015 and 2016 are a success not only for the GCC but for the wider Middle East region, as they demonstrate that painful economic reform is possible without triggering the for-decades-feared specter of large-scale protest.

The other big component of this opportunity is the acceleration of overdue reform in other market segments: education and labor markets, investment terms, and the role played by private investment into the region’s infrastructure and service sector. Regional policymaking will also need to pay much closer attention to a relatively new but increasingly popular concept in the region: sustainable growth well beyond the 2030s, based on high-skill jobs and diversified national economies. Within the GCC, sustainable growth will be determined by what current and future policies hold, and by whether their oil-rich economies can diversify enough to do a lot more business with a lot less oil.

I met with a small business owner a couple months ago to talk about her company and her plans for growth. She shared some challenges that they’ve been working on—especially a sales cycle that takes too long, and the constant pressure to reduce price and terms to close deals. Pretty common stuff for any company trying to gain more business.

As we talked a little more, though, the problem changed. We found that the sales cycle did take too long, and they were getting beat up on price—but that wasn’t the real issue. The issue was that she had no control over forecasting the company pipeline. Because she was unable to do that, she couldn’t make capital investments to grow the operation. So she was stressed to the point of exhaustion, and concerned that the company she once had control of, now had control of her.

Her problem was a long sales cycle—but her pain was a feeling of helplessness and chaos.

Don’t Solve the Problems Prospects Complain About

You see, the problem that your prospect brings you is rarely the real problem. It’s only a symptom of the real issue. A true partner in business is a sales professional who solves the real pains, not the surface problems.

Most salespeople, however, hear a problem and jump right to the solution. They do this for a number of reasons. Here are some common roadblocks to discovering the real pain:

• Problems are easy to talk about, pain can be an uncomfortable conversation
• Sales people love to help, and as soon as they hear a problem they’ve solved before, the natural reaction is to go into solution mode
• We’re built with something called “need for approval,” and we mistakenly look to get it from prospects in a selling environment
• Sometimes salespeople really do want to uncover pain, but they just don’t know HOW to do it

Prospects today have all the information they need to make buying decisions. They can look at websites, they can search for testimonials, they can almost always find competitive pricing to compare quotes. Almost every product or service today is a commodity—and as a result, salespeople today are a commodity too.

Sounds bleak huh? It should.

Solve the Pain, Not the Problem

If this is all true, then how do you differentiate yourself in the sales arena to solve problems like sales cycles taking too long, and getting beat up on price? It starts with solving pains, not problems.

The business owner I mentioned earlier is an expert in her field—but her prospects aren’t. They were telling her the problems they had, as they saw them, and she was trying to solve those issues.

When she was trying to solve their felt problems, she was up against every competitor in her industry. What she’s learning now is how to solve a problem that her competition isn’t even looking for. She was getting commoditized in conversations about problems, but she provides a unique solution to real pains in her industry.

Now, instead of trying to solve the problem her prospects bring her, she and her team are digging deeper to find the true pain. Today their only competition is their own ability to dig deep and get to the true pain.

It isn’t easy to get there, but it’s so simple once you do. Happy selling.

Next Steps

• Want powerful sales results? Get hands-on with us during a 2-day Sales + Marketing = Smarketing workshop
• Discover more great sales & marketing content

Most salespeople can calculate ROI and explain it to their prospects but many of them find it equally difficult to articulate that same ROI after they have been presented with a price objection.  They become defensive, review features and benefits, and make the situation worse for themselves instead of better.  We are going to review the case history of a salesperson who had an $85,000 solution that would increase company revenue from $10 million to $20 million.  Despite promising a $10 million gain, he was unable to overcome what he heard from his prospect:  "That's too much money!"  In this article, we willl discuss how it's done.

If you’ve been asked to be a presenter for an upcoming webinar – congrats! Webinar presenters are most often chosen because they are articulate, engaging, and an expert in their field, so kudos to you. It’s an honor, but it can be a lot of work, and even a bit stressful, especially if you are new to the webinar presenter game. But having a clear plan-of-action and executing on that plan can make presenting a webinar pretty darn rewarding and dare I say…fun!

In order to help you knock your presentation out of the park, we’ve compiled a list of six must-do-tasks to make your webinar go as smoothly as possible.

1. Stick to a strict schedule

This timetable is an agreement between presenters and organizers, and is the lifeline of a successful webinar. Starting eight weeks prior to the event, there should be a mutually agreed upon set of deliverables that support the promotion and execution of the webinar. Here’s a quick example of a solid timeline:

2. Work closely with organizers to create webinar content

Webinars are a wonderful collaboration platform for different organizations to deliver great content. Even if an organization has asked you to present on a subject matter that you’re an expert on, the content development should not fall entirely on your shoulders. You may be the expert, but the webinar organizer knows their audience the best. In an ideal situation, the organizer will be able to provide great insight into what resonates most with their audience, and you can craft your content to best align with that. Work closely with the organizer from the outset to develop the webinar content. This can save time, ensure quality, and help to avoid conflicts further down the road.

Although marketers agree that webinars are a great platform for generating leads, the ultimate goal should be to create engaging, educational content for your shared audiences. By offering genuine value, you’ll strengthen your brand awareness and increase subject authority. The ultimate goal is that both parties mutually benefit from the webinar presentation.

3. Finalize all content two weeks before the event

This is included in our example schedule above, but we want to emphasize how important this step is. Having a strict deadline for all finalized content two weeks prior to the live webinar date cuts down on the stress of the presentation, and ensures that all parties are on the same page as you get closer to the event deadline. Once your PowerPoint deck and talk tracks are approved by the organizer, make printouts of all of the content so you can do several practice run-throughs. This will help you to learn the script quickly and present in a more confident, natural way. Depending on your expertise with the subject matter, it might even be better to not work directly from a script, but rather an outline. Honestly, nothing is worse than the obvious cadence of someone who is reading. A more conversational tone and flow will be much more engaging to your audience.

4. Learn everything you can about the webinar platform technology

Modern webinar platforms offer an incredible range of bells and whistles, but with functionality comes complexity. Many webinar platforms have limitations; some work best on specific browsers or computers, require downloads to present, or have nuances that need attention. It’s important that you take the time to learn the technology so there are no surprises on the day of the presentation. Watch tutorial videos, ask the organizer to walk you through the platform, or read a user guide. Taking these steps a few weeks before the event will allow you to easily flow through your content without getting caught up in technology hitches. You might also discover features that can complement your presentation such as downloads, interactive functionality, or a social media component.

5. Conduct rehearsals and hold a pre-event meeting with all parties

At the very least you should hold a dry run one week prior to the presentation. In an ideal world, you’d be able to have two or more practice sessions involving the organizer and all presenters. These rehearsals are crucial for working out all of the kinks of the technology, the content, and the transitions. During this dry run, you’ll want to make sure the content matches the allotted timeframe and that there’s plenty of time for Q&A. If there are any adjustments that need to be made, you’ve left plenty of time between the rehearsal and the live presentation to smooth things out.

Note: It’s very important to schedule a final meeting before the webinar. This can be in conjunction with the dry run, but there should be schedule time to discuss final details such as:

• Timing of presentation and transition points
• How to communicate among presenters during the event
• Planning for Q&A – who will moderate, who will answer, when will this take place
• Creating “planted” questions (and even answers to those questions) in the event that you do not have organic questions or the webinar is pre-recorded for a ‘live’ event later
• Presenter best practices including muting yourself when you’re not presenting, turning your cellphone on silent, etc.

6. Know that there will probably be hiccups

No amount of planning can make up for the unexpected. As they say – sh…stuff happens, right? And it probably will. Likely during the presentation something will arise that you had not expected or planned for. But that’s ok. Remember that this is a live presentation, and your audience is just as human as you are. If you make a mistake, need to cough, clear your throat, get flustered, have technical difficulties, or find yourself stumped on a question – don’t worry. Expecting the unexpected can help you to relax and enjoy the presentation even when things go awry. Remember that you’re there to guide your audience through educational and engaging content. Perfection is never a requirement.

We hope this checklist is helpful. Happy presenting!

Events are a critical part of any B2B marketing plan. But no matter what types of events you’re planning, the right approach to data management and marketing automation can eliminate potential issues while maximizing your event ROI. Download Act-On’s free eBook, “8 Ways to Maximize the Value of Online and In-Person Events,” to learn eight important tips for taking an automated, data-driven approach to your events.

The biggest difference between rich people and the rest of the crowd may be their mindset.

In fact, contrary to popular belief, "everyone has the same opportunity to acquire wealth," says self-made millionaire Steve Siebold, who studied more than 1,200 of the world's wealthiest people over the past 30 years.

Your journey to acquiring wealth could start with three little words: I deserve it.

While average people believe they aren't worthy of a great fortune, wealthy people believe they deserve to be rich — if they solve problems and create massive value, they believe they have the right to be rich, Siebold writes in his book, "How Rich People Think."

"The world class asks, why not me?" he writes. "I'm as good as anyone else and I deserve to be rich. If I serve others by solving problems, why shouldn't I be rewarded with a fortune?

"And since they have this belief, their behavior moves them toward the manifestation of their dreams. Whether they actually deserve to be rich or not is irrelevant. Like all beliefs, they don't have to be true to be acted on."

Meanwhile, the masses are convinced that being rich is a privilege, reserved for a select few. They ask entirely different questions, Siebold explains: "Who am I, they ask themselves, to become a millionaire? Who am I to get what I really want? Who am I to live a lifestyle fit for a king?"

This mindset is incredibly limiting.

"Being rich is so far out of the average person's belief system, it never even crosses their minds," Siebold writes. "The fact is it's possible for anyone living in a society that rewards problem solving."

Before you march around declaring, "I deserve it," keep in mind that these three words should be used deliberately and sparingly. You don't necessarily deserve a $5 latte every morning or a three course meal at a snazzy restaurant every evening when you're trying to save the money to start your first business — but you have just as much right as the next person to problem solve, generate ideas, and create value, which could ultimately build your wealth.

"Being rich is a right," Siebold emphasizes. "If you create massive value for others, you have the right to be as rich as you want."

SEE ALSO: A self-made millionaire who studied 1,200 wealthy people found they all have one — free — pastime in common

Join the conversation about this story »

NOW WATCH: This couple ditched their 9 to 5 jobs to make a living traveling the world

Prospecting is hard for most salespeople. In fact, getting a response from prospects was identified as the hardest part of the sales process in the 2018 State of Inbound Sales Report.

But, it doesn’t have to be. These 45 tips from three remarkably insightful sales experts should make it much easier for you.I've shared the virtual stage with 50+ sales experts, including longtime sales heavy hitters like Jeffrey Gitomer (author of the Little Red Book of Selling which has been translated into 14 languages and eight other books), Tom Hopkins (author of How to Master the Art of Selling and 17 other sales books), and Mike Bosworth (author of the seminal sales books Solution Selling and CustomerCentric Selling).

While I only “know of" these three gentlemen, I've had the privilege to get to know three other modern sales luminaries on a deeper level during my time at HubSpot: Trish Bertuzzi (author of the newly released book The Sales Development Playbook and president of inside sales consulting firm The Bridge Group), Lori Richardson (owner of Score More Sales and recognized as a top sales influencer by InsideView.com, OpenView Partners, and Forbes) and Jill Konrath (author of must-read books: Selling to Big Companies, SNAP Selling, and Agile Selling).

They are also top-notch experts at prospecting. Jill, Trish, and Lori had amazing sales careers before starting their own businesses. Their prospecting tips are not only based on experience growing their own companies, but also the time they’ve spent helping hundreds of organizations in a variety of industries.

So, without further ado, here are 45 tips on prospecting from three of my favorite sales experts.

Set Yourself Up for Sales Prospecting Success

You can’t wing success in sales, especially when it comes to prospecting. In order to exceed your sales targets (if you’re in a closing role) or your opportunity creation targets (if you’re in a sales development role), you must plan your approach, create your messages, identify and research contacts, and more. Our first 13 tips focus on the many different activities you must master before you even pick up the phone.

1. Plan your prospecting approach

Lori Richardson (LR): Define the who, when, why, what, where, and how. Know "who" your buyer is. Plan "when" you'll reach out and "how" often.  Know "why" you're reaching out and "what" your message will be. Know "where" you can you find them and reach them. Know "how" you are reaching out.

2. Invest in data

Trish Bertuzzi (TB): Don't spend prime selling time figuring out who to call and how to call them. Use data. Consider creating a specialized "data analyst" role to ensure your salespeople have the right contact information for the right contacts.

3. Focus on business value in your messaging

Jill Konrath (JK): Know the primary business reasons why your customers purchase your offerings, and know how you "move" these business drivers. Do you help with lowering cost of goods sold, increasing uptime of machinery, ensuring compliance, maximizing lead-to-customer conversion rates, lowering operating costs, or increasing market share? If so, make this clear in your message.

4. Don’t talk about your product

JK: Don’t talk about your product. Instead, create value proposition statements that demonstrate your knowledge of your prospect's business drivers.

5. Use numbers wherever possible

JK: Prospects will respond to you at higher rates if they think you can deliver quantifiable business value. For example, "One of our ecommerce clients in your space doubled their conversion rates and increased their average order size by 50%," or "We help tech companies reduce the usual lag from product launch to break even revenue by up to 38%.” (Need help? Download Jill's Value Proposition Kit.)

6. Talk to your existing customers

JK: The best way to learn what to say to prospects is to use the words your customers use. Talk to your customers to figure out what problems they were having before investing in your product or service, the cost of those problems, and how you helped them. Know what the status quo was and how you changed it so you can grasp the business case for your offerings.

If you really want to nail your buyer-focused messaging, create a buyer's matrix by listing out important factors about your buyers, including typical business objectives, external challenges, strategic initiatives, and internal issues.

7. Research every contact

JK: The more time you spend here, the better off you'll be when you connect with a buyer.

TB: Create a pre-call plan for every contact. Gather six to 12 pieces of data about your prospect that you can use in your outreach messages to start a relevant conversation.

For each contact, go to the places you need to go in order to gather that information such as their website and their LinkedIn profile, and enter it into your CRM. The next time you need to call this prospect or when you connect with them, simply reference your research.

8. Plan to contact a lot of prospects

TB: In a study of 35+ technology companies, for every 1,000 accounts prospected, the average SDR sourced 33 opportunities. You need to call a lot of people to get to your goal.  

9. Use every communication channel

LR: Deploy a multi-faceted approach in order to connect with more prospects. Use every method available to attempt to connect: email, voicemail, phone, social media, events, newsletters, and blog posts, as well as referrals. There is no magic formula. You have to do it all. Prospects are everywhere. So, be where they are.

10. Use your prospect’s preferred communication methods

LR: Don't spend too much time on social. Stop hiding behind email. Even though it's faster and more efficient for you, it's not nearly as effective as a call or a meeting. Different buyers prefer different communication methods. Adapt to each individual buyer's preference. Do not impose your preference. It's about their convenience, not yours.

11. Use trigger events

JK: Bring up your prospect's recent events in order to highlight the need for your offering. Cite events such as earnings reports, new products they've launched, personnel changes, jobs posted, acquisitions, layoffs, or macro economic changes like market conditions.

12. Put more effort into getting referrals

LR: Not only are referrals easier to close, the lifetime value of a referred customer is significantly greater than one who finds you through your marketing efforts. Create a list of people in your network who aren't competitive with you, but who frequently come into contact with your buyers.

Get to know them, send them referrals when it makes sense, and earn a steady stream of referrals in return. For more tips on how to do this, read the ebook "Winning Teammates: How to Build a Hugely Successful Network of Business Relationships, Referred Partners and Respected Peers." 

13. Stay focused on your prospect’s goals

TB: Sales is about helping people achieve their goals. Don't let anything distract you from that. 

Do Email Prospecting the Right Way

Whether it’s the most effective method or not, email has become the go-to channel for most modern sales hunters. Leveraging email correctly has become critical to sales success. No surprise that the majority of my favorite experts’ tips on email prospecting is about how not to screw it up.

14. Use email templates

LR: Salespeople can't write every email from scratch. Not only is it hard to write a crisp, buyer-focused email, it’s time-consuming -- a great email can take 30 minutes or more to write. That's just too much time.

There are so many new services that allow salespeople to store, customize, schedule, and reuse email templates. Redirect that effort into writing great reusable messages and leverage technology to customize and deploy them quickly.

(Pete: Of course, I would be remiss if I didn’t say that HubSpot’s sales software enables this.)

15. Scrap self-serving messages

JK: When you write your nicely bulleted list of unique, state-of-the art approaches to awesomeness, you turn your prospects off. Get rid of the self-promotion altogether. Check your messages for blatant horn-tooting here.

16. Don't act desperate

JK: Don't tell them you'd be grateful for “just 15 minutes” of their time. Write like a peer or a colleague would, not like a salesperson begging for a bit of their attention.

17. Optimize your messages for mobile

LR: Prospects are reading email on mobile more and more. If your subject line isn't effective, they'll quickly delete it as they scroll through their emails each morning or evening. Keep the message short and make it easy for them to respond to you.

18. If you have a referral, mention it right away

JK: Write "[Referral] suggested we talk" in the very first line of your message. Mentioning the name of a respected colleague early will earn you enough respect to keep them reading.

Don’t Forget Voicemail

While many reps seem to be skipping the important step of leaving voicemails these days, all three sales experts think that’s short-sighted. Even though buyers rarely call you back, most still check their voicemail. Follow these seven guidelines to maximize your chances of being remembered.

19. Make voicemail a key part of your prospecting program

LR: Have realistic expectations about your chances of getting a return call, but leave voicemails anyways. You're not necessarily trying to get a call back. Instead of a return call, make it your goal to simply pique their interest.

TB: Don't call and hang up as your caller ID footprint will just make you look like a stalker. Deliver a little piece of your value proposition in each and every touch. Hopefully, this generates awareness even if voicemails rarely get you a call back.

20. Keep your messages short  

JK: You have a maximum of 30 seconds to leave a positive impression. Don't ramble. Make sure every word matters. Write out a script or at least an outline and practice it before you record.

21. Get right to business

JK: Don't try and be friendly on a voicemail. Instead, be professional and concise. For example, “Mary. Jill Konrath calling. (123) 456-7890.” There's no need to mention your position or your company. 

22. Make the message about them, not you

LR: Stop leaving horrible voicemail messages that are all about you. Make it targeted to them and their situation by providing a relevant insight. Adding an insight demonstrates you have ideas that could help them with their job, their team, or their company.

23. Practice 

LR: On voicemail, you must concisely say what you do, which is harder than it sounds. Write a script. Leave yourself a message. Record your voice. Play it back. Have others critique it. Rewrite it. Then, practice it until you can deliver it flawlessly. Join Toastmasters if you need help.

24. Use voicemail to show your follow through

LR: How? When leaving a voicemail, tell the prospect that you'll send them an email so they can respond there. Or tell them that you'll try them at a specific time later. Then do it. They'll respect your follow through.

25. Leave a different message each time you call

LR: Remember to switch up your messaging with each touch. Your first email and voicemail might leverage a trigger event or reference how you've helped people like them with the same title or in the same industry. Message #2 could call out a common connection. In message #3, include an insight that's relevant to the buyer.  

Make Every Connect Call Count

All of those prospecting voicemails and emails are completely wasted effort if you don’t make every connect call count. Of course, not every call will or should turn into an opportunity, but preparing and executing this step well is key to maximizing the number of opportunities in your funnel.

When you finally do connect with prospects on the phone, follow these 12 tips to increase your chances of success.

26. Block off time to make calls, and only to make calls

TB: Just because you have your headset on all day doesn’t mean you’ve maximized your phone time. Block off time on your calendar just to make phone calls.

27. Block out all of the distractions

TB: When calling, turn off internal chat, email, messaging apps with friends, notifications, and anything else that will distract you. Log out of everything and stay focused on making calls.

28. Start your day off with calls

TB: Don't get sucked into email in the morning. Make 10 calls by 10 AM.

29. Use video chat whenever possible

LR: If the buyer is ready to schedule a phone call, give them the option of doing an online meeting with video instead. This way, you can read their expressions and body language in real time. They can see you too, which will help keep them focused, and enable them to understand and remember you better.

30. Devise and follow a call cadence

LR: Develop a rhythm and sequence for attempting to reach your prospects, in which you alternate email and voicemails.

By having a cadence, you can plan your approach, and track which touches you've already made so you know exactly which message is next. In addition, you can easily schedule time blocks for different steps in the sequence for a batch of prospects. 

31. Group similar activities together

TB: Make it easy for yourself by lumping similar activities and types of messages together. Don't call a prospect for the first time, and then call a different prospect for the fourth time right after. Group all of your first calls together, and do the same with all of your second, third, fourth, and nth calls.

32. Use the 4x4 rule

TB:  If you're calling into mid-sized and larger firms, target four titles for every account you're working. Call each four times. Easy to remember: 4 x 4.  

33. Qualify the company -- not the contact

TB: Don't give up when one person at a company says "no." Call someone else at the company. All it takes is one "yes" to negate all of the other "no's."

34. Call high

TB: When you receive a lead that's lower level, call the likely decision maker and say, "We received a message from someone within your company that indicates [topic] might be a priority. Would it make sense to discuss?"

35. Don't force a conversation

LR: Be respectful. If it's a bad time for an in-depth call, try and schedule time for later.

36. Show them you did your homework

JK: Do research and make sure your prospects realize you did by asking targeted questions or giving them specific compliments. For instance, “I noticed the new X module on your website -- looks great,” or “What drove the decision to add X module to your website?”

37. Mention relevant experience

JK: If you've worked with companies like theirs in the past, tell them so. For example, you could say, "I was talking to one of my law firm clients (like you) who was struggling with Y, and we worked together on solving it using tactic X.”

38. Share a fresh perspective 

JK: Information is everywhere. But relevant insights are hard to find. Tempt your prospects with ideas, insights, or information that can help them eliminate challenges or realize their goals.  

For example, “I have an idea that can speed up your sales cycle” or “We recently completed some research about how CTOs make purchase decisions.” Fresh perspectives pique curiosity and get you one step closer to booking a longer conversation about their needs.  

(For more help with connect calls in particular, download The Bridge Group' s Inside Sales Productivity Kit.)

Market Yourself to Prospects

The vast majority of buyers have stopped trusting salespeople. They call us pushy, self-centered, and biased. As a result, it’s difficult to break through that built-in mistrust to get through to them.

In the last few years, inbound and social sellers have figured out ways to not just break down those barriers, but to actually attract buyers to them. Here are seven tips that will get buyers to call you -- or at least be more likely to take your call.

39. Optimize your LinkedIn profile for selling, not career building

TB: Don't use your job title as your headline. Instead, write something that describes your expertise. Use your summary and career experience sections to highlight how you help your buyers, not to brag to recruiters.

40. Build and strengthen your connections on LinkedIn

TB: Block off time on your calendar to grow your network. Connect with customers and other people you know. Join Groups and actively engage. Interact with prospects and request connections after they've engaged with you.  

41. Become an influencer in your industry

LR: Twitter is a great tool to establish yourself as an expert in your industry. Start by setting up a profile and listening to the conversation. Engage in conversations with others in your space. Share content -- both yours and others.

42. Send group updates

LR: Create email campaigns that focus on different industries. Include news articles that are pertinent.

43. Blog

LR: Publish blog posts that are helpful and non-promotional. Monitor who pays attention and use that insight to reach out and engage prospects and customers.

44. Don’t get distracted

LR: Social is great, but don’t let it distract you from picking up the phone. There is such a thing as a salesperson who is too focused on social selling. At some point, you need to get off social and actually talk to people.

45. Embrace snail mail

LR: Physical mail volume has gone down significantly in the last decade. With this in mind, if you take the time to send a letter or note via snail mail, you have a greater chance of getting your message open and read. If you have a good conversation with a high value prospect on the phone or an exchange via LinkedIn, but the timing just isn't right, send them a quick note on stationery with your logo on it.

Include your business card and sign it. This gets your business card on their desk. Many prospects call back when the timing is right.

4 Steps to Sales Prospecting Prowess

In some ways, prospecting has become harder as buyers do more of their research on the internet and wait to talk to salespeople. But, with the right tips from the right experts, prospecting can get a whole lot easier:

1. Prepare
2. Create a savvy buyer-focused email and voicemail strategy
3. Master the initial call
4. Make a commitment to marketing yourself

Hopefully these tips will be as helpful for you as they’ve been for us here at HubSpot.

Sometimes you hear something and think, “I heard that five years ago. Ten years ago. How is that still a problem?” Now, I’m not talking about global warming or peace in the Middle East. No, I’m in marketing world here, and specifically, talking about the old saw “sell solutions, not products.”

Marketers have been told to focus on solutions countless times. So why are marketers are still focusing on product. We marketers are human, after all, and the problem with adages like this is that people tune out when they hear them. But the adage is still true. How do we change?

Let’s take a different tack on the maxim, and substitute problems for solutions. Rewriting the maxim, it becomes “write about problems, not products.” Here’s how you put it into practice.

For those who are building websites or writing blogs, I want you to think about how you can make your copy problem-oriented, rather than product-oriented. Online, buyers are searching for ways to solve their problems, and your content should answer their search. Save the product content for further down the funnel, after you have hooked them.

The need for problem-oriented content struck me in a recent sales training session, where the trainer was teaching sales reps to dig down below what he called “level one pain.” Level one pain is a buyer’s technical, or literal, problem. The WiFi router is not showing up on my iPad, for example. Level two pain – going a level deeper, he explained – is the buyer’s business problem. If I can’t connect my iPad to the WiFi, I can’t check my email. The third level of pain is personal pain. What happens if the buyer doesn’t solve that business problem? If I can’t read my email, I can’t respond to my boss, and he will think I’m not doing my job.

Think about your buyers and their personal pain. Do they never see their family because they are always working? Do they get fired for not doing their job? Do they not get a promotion? Understanding their ultimate personal problems will allow you to create poignant content, as opposed to bland stuff about your product. Running a marketing team, I find substituting problems for solutions makes for a more clear-eyed discussion on content strategy.

Bought in and ready to adopt the problem-first mindset? Here’s how.

Step one: Take a look at your website. Maybe you’re already writing problem-oriented content, in which you case you can stop reading this blog and go do something more productive. I have no problem I can solve for you. If, however, you notice that your website is all about your products, then read on.

Step two: Figure out what the problems are that your buyers are trying to solve. What is their pain? Don’t stop at level one; go all the way to personal pain. There are many ways to do this. You can, knowing your buyers, conduct buyer persona interviews and ask your buyers directly, “What are your most pressing problems?” You can ask your salespeople, “What are the business problems that our customers are trying to solve? What was at risk for them if they didn’t solve their business problem?”

Step three: With the list that you’ve ever gleaned from customers or salespeople, write out some problem statements. What’s to be gained from solving these problems? Then take a look around. Do your own manual searches. Use SEO tools to look at search volumes or search patterns or trends around phrases associated with these problems. Then, with that thorough understanding, boil it down to two, three, four, no more than five problems that you solve. It’s unwieldy for a team if you have more. Take a look at your home page and figure out a new design or just new copy that address the top problems. Then look at your blog and constant calendar and next to your content is aimed at solving those problems.

Step four: Conduct some A/B testing. Use a product like Optimizely on your homepage, and if you’re not sure which of those problems is the biggest try them all out. See which one causes your conversion rates to increase. I would say if none of them do, then perhaps you haven’t really figured out the problem that you solve for your buyers.

Getting inside the mind of your buyers, figuring out their problems, and figuring out how to address those problems with problem-solving content on your website should all you to have a more productive website and, ultimately, sales force. If you continue putting product in front of problem in your marketing, you might experience some level three pain yourself.

How about you? Is your content problem-oriented?