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Funding drives our entire ecosystem. Like cheap Saudi oil sending shockwaves across global markets, so too the ebb and flow of venture/Investment capital determines the pace by which ideas have a chance to become profitable realities. We’ve written and read a great deal about the 4x increase in VC investments over the last four years. But that investment cycle seems to be winding down. Venky Ganesan, Managing Director at Menlo Partners, was recently quoted saying early stage VC has “… almost evaporated” and that many early stage adtech companies are struggling just to get meetings with venture capitalists. And according to Chris Douvos, a managing director at Venture Investment Associates, “VCs could feel a crunch in 2016 and entrepreneurs may find themselves short of cash.” He says that startups will be forced to refocus on monetization and profitability.

While there are a number of factors that trigger each successive stage of funding, the way a company scales its sales team is more impactful than many founders initially realize. Understanding the type of sales people to hire should be considered relative to where a company falls along its funding spectrum. These considerations are quite nuanced, and adtech companies that get this right can position themselves as a much more appealing investment than the competition.

All too often we’ve heard startup founders who have just received seed funding tell us the first person they need to hire is a “connected sales executive” or a “sales leader with brand equity,” a “rain-maker.” They point to senior sales executives from Google, AOL, or any number of media and adtech behemoths because founders believe that this profile or type of sales background will instantly bring established connections, guarantee growth, connote respectability and trigger future rounds of funding.

This hiring strategy rarely works, as carries with it a slew of potential problems. Unless founders and CEOs have first asked themselves exactly what they need from their initial sales team or what they want “rev1 sales” to accomplish, it’s all too easy to hire a sales leader whose personal career objectives are not fully aligned with the immediate sales execution objectives. This is when we like to introduce the “let’s be honest” conversation with the prospecting entrepreneur/founder, which goes something like this: “I know you want a well-established CRO who is currently overseeing $100 million in revenue at a competitive platform but, let’s be honest, why would that person join your company given its current stage?”

Let’s assume you’re a seed funded company, there is a lot to be worked out in product suite vision, distribution strategy, pricing model, and other things you may not have even considered. Does it really make sense to hire an SVP Sales or CRO to build a sales team when it’s not yet clear exactly what the platform is going to look like in six months? At this stage, it is all about driving initial revenue, not about impressive titles or building a complicated sales team structure.

In terms of sales strategy, seed/Series-A funded platforms need two things above all: meetings and test budgets. To best accomplish that, it makes far more sense to bring on a smart director-level sales person. Look more for candidates who can set up meetings, get the technology in front of the right people, secure test budgets, and ideally grow into the role of VP over time. This person needs a few qualities: rudimentary “block and tackle” sales skills, a natural curiosity about the platform or space, an evangelizing sales style, entrepreneurial flair, and experience having sold a product that has never before been introduced to the marketplace.

Bringing on an executive level sales person with SVP or CRO title, when all you really need right now is to trigger attention, traction, and some initial revenue can backfire with costly repercussions. However once initial meetings and test budgets have proved positive and are evolving into secured sales agreements, the next round of funding won’t be too far away, and it will be time to start investing in organizational evolution and strategy. We recently worked with a well-known, highly disruptive private marketplace platform with sights set on a Series A. After the seed money came in and about five months before Series A funding was to be secured, word came down from the executive team to activate the search for a CRO. As this company wooed well-known sales leaders in the industry with the promise of an imminent large round, investors began putting their term sheets together and the two factors worked simultaneously to help close one another. A month later the company was able to make a huge splash, announcing Series A funding and the new hire at the same time. Yet, it all began with seed money and a junior sales guy calling for meetings.

In a market climate where it is increasingly difficult for adtech startups to move past seed round funding, it’s critical that CEOs approach hiring as strategically and thoughtfully as they would product development. Making the right hire at the right time is critical to not only receiving funding, but also for long-term sustainability in an increasingly consolidating space.

Dan Goldsmith is managing director at Three Pillars Recruiting. He has 15 years experience in technology and media sales, 10 of which have been spent focused on executive recruiting across the digital media landscape. He started his technology sales career selling enterprise level solutions at The Mathworks. He then built the New York digital media sales recruiting practice at AC Lion, where he recruited for DoubleClick, Google, OpenX, Pontiflex, and many more.

The start of 2016 witnessed a markets bloodbath.

Four days into trading this year, and already the price of oil is tanking, China's stock market "circuit breaker" has been triggered twice, and assets all over the world are on a downward spiral.

But how bad are things really? Well, the answer is very, according to Bank of America Merrill Lynch.

In a massive research note seen by Business Insider, the bank included a table of its asset class winners and losers, and right now, the losers outnumber the winners by more than five to one.

Of the 58 different equity and bonds markets BAML included, so far in 2016 only eight are in positive territory, and of those eight only two have gained more than 0.2%. 

Japanese government, and corporate debt have both gained at least 1%. 

At the bottom end of the scale, it's no surprise that equities are taking the brunt of the damage, but it's not China suffering the worst, it's actually Europe's most maligned economy, Greece, where stocks have lost 5.6% of their value in just four days.

You can check out the full table — which includes data for the last month, three months, and year as well — below.

Join the conversation about this story »

NOW WATCH: Jim Cramer's inspiring words on how to come back from a beatdown

Although the importance of great user experience has been bandied around for years, and there has been plenty of talk about it, very few have really gone through the trouble of creating it. But, ever since Google and Facebook changed the way they analyze content and shifted their focus to prioritizing high-quality content over that containing poor marketing practices and cheap click-bait titles, the importance of user experience has skyrocketed, and everybody has been making an additional effort.

This also means that those providing a certain product, service, or content need to look at everything they put out through the eyes of their users, which sounds incredibly simple in theory. However, in reality, we cannot directly influence the way content consumers and customers will react. On the other hand, there are plenty of things we can do to make sure that the chances of them having a pleasant user experience are as high as possible. It can be anything from the way your website or app is laid out, to providing outstanding customer support.

This is both liberating and somewhat terrifying, because everything we do can be a double-edged sword, which is why we have selected 20 tips straight from the mouths of industry pros to help you create a great user experience for your audience.

1. User Experience Applies to Everything

Although the first thing that springs to anyone’s mind when user experience is mentioned is that it’s something web developers are responsible for, it’s actually a lot bigger than that. User experience can take on many different shapes and can appear across multiple disciplines, such as design, or marketing. It can be anything from having a well-thought out online presence, or providing clear instructions for one’s product, to providing timely technical support.

Roberto Blake robertoblake.com

User experience encompasses everything from how easy it is to find an item in a store, to how clear the instructions are for assembling your new office desk.

Roberto Blake, designer, YouTuber, marketer and educator.

2. Create Something of Value for the End User

The ultimate goal every content marketer or service should have in mind is to provide something of value for the user, which usually means giving the right information, or a solution to their problem. All of the technical aspect of good user experience are there to support this, and as such, are secondary. It’s all about giving them something they can use or apply in real life.

Cenydd Bowles cennydd.com

The most important principle for me is to create value for the end-user. Do that and everything else – including your precious business metrics – should follow.

Cenydd Bowles, digital product designer

3. Grab Their Attention

The whole idea behind every design concept, or article, is to grab the user’s attention and get them to look at the content. Writers use numerous techniques to pull the reader in, such as crafting click-worthy headlines, breaking up large chunks of text into smaller sections and paragraphs, either through use of subheadings, numbered lists, or bullet points, using bold and italic letters, as well as visual content, like images, video, and infographics.

Mark John Hiemstra Full Stack Copy

As a writer, the most important aspect of design is attention. It is my job to hold a reader’s attention through the words I write, obviously.

Mark John Hiemstra, Content Strategist and Writer at Full Stack Copy

4. Receive Direct Input from Users on Your Design and/or Content

Despite the fact that there are many rules and guidelines that explain how to create a stunning user experience, sometimes the best way to test it out is to get your product in front of your users, and listen to their input and ideas, and the way they would go about solving some of the issues you already have.

Vinay Raghu viii.in

Try and get a prototype in front of actual users as quickly as possible. Then iterate.

Vinay Raghu, User Experience Consultant

5. Design Principles Should be Unique for Every Project

As we’ve mentioned before, there are guidelines you can follow which lead to a great user experience, and that also apply to design principles. However, while a certain principle may do wonders for some projects, it may also be the complete opposite of what is needed for another. This means that design principles should be project-specific. If your goal is to inspire, you will follow a specific set of design principles that are related to that goal.

Marcin Treder uxpin.com

Design principles are useful if they can guide a designer throughout the entire process and lead to an excellent result connected to applied principles. That makes design principles that I use – project specific.

Marcin Treder, CEO of UX Design Platform UXPin

6. Speak the Same Language as Your Users

This one applies strictly to the content you offer to your audience. Aside from adopting a tone that is conversational, yet informative, you should also aim to let them know how your product or a service will benefit them, not just go on about how great it is. This doesn’t mean you should not include a call-to-action, but it does require you to be more subtle about it. Leave them with the option to add your product to their wish list, or allow a free trial.

Michiel Heijmans

One of the most important UX design principles might be content related instead of design related: speak the language of your audience.

Michiel Heijmans (@michielheijmans), partner at Yoast

7. Empathy is the Key

While there are many different factors which create a great UX, such as great content, consistency, or design, perhaps the most important one of them all is your ability to empathize with the end-user, which reflects itself in you being able to establish a firm understanding of what it is that users want to receive.

Richard Banfield Fresh Tilled Soil

In general, empathy is far more important than any other principle in UX.

Richard Banfield, CEO of Fresh Tilled Soil

8. Less Is More

When setting out to design a perfect user experience, most people make the mistake of creating something huge and complex, instead of keeping it as simple as possible. You should be able to boil down your UX design concept to only a few basic principles and services which you will offer to your audience. Avoid throwing in everything but the kitchen sink. Keep it simple.

Shane Barker shanebarker.com

When it comes to UX Design, there is one word that comes to mind, “Simplicity”. It is essential that companies create a user experience that is simplistic in nature.

Shane Barker, Social Media Strategist, SEO specialist, writer

9. Create Clear Solutions Instead of Offering a Bunch of Features

This bit of advice could be viewed as an extension of the one above, only this one applied to the solutions you provide for the end-user. While being able to customize everything through different features is nice, it is a lot nicer to have just a few options that are capable of solving pretty much everything, isn’t it?

Jon Bolt Brightpearl

The best products don’t focus on features, they focus on clarity. Problems should be fixed through simple solutions, something you don’t have to configure, maintain, control. The perfect solution needs to be so simple and transparent you forget it’s even there.

Jon Bolt, blogger and UX designer for Brightpearl

10. Be Consistent

Proving a user experience which is continuously outstanding is one of the best things you can do, because it breeds loyalty and separates your company, product, or a service from your competition. Consistency also indicates that you honestly care about offering the best UX, time and time again.

Mark Eberman markeberman.com

A Consistent Experience Is a Better Experience.

Mark Eberman, interaction designer/UX architect

11. Design UX with People in Mind

When creating a product or an app for different platforms, such as Windows, Mac OS X, or any Linux distribution, instead of focusing on how to make it as compatible as possible with each of those, you should always make the end-user a priority, and the experience using the product through the aforementioned operating systems.

Joey Flynn joeyflynn.com

You’re designing a product for people, and it doesn’t matter if it’s on Android or iPhone or Windows Phone.

Joey Flynn, Designer

12. Put Your Users First

While every company must be profitable in order to keep going, they need to build their business model around the user, instead of their financial expectations. After all, it is those very users that purchase their products and services, which in turn brings profit, so it seems perfect sense to make user experience their primary objective.

Tim Cook Apple

Most business models have focused on self-interest instead of user experience.

Tim Cook, CEO at Apple.

13. Don’t Neglect Mobile Users

It’s safe to say that smartphones have become an extension of our minds and hands, especially in the last couple of years, which means more and more people are turning to mobile platforms. This also requires you to create a great UX for mobile users, as well. Gone are the days of you focusing solely on desktop users.

Jonathan Stark

If your business isn’t mobile friendly, your business is dead.

Jonathan Stark, best-selling mobile technology author.

14. Don’t Require Users to Change Their Habits without a Good Reason

The most challenging route you can take towards creating a pleasant user experience is to require your users to change their existing models of behavior. Even when such a change is for the better, you will have your work cut out, as they may turn to other services which will flatter their current knowledge and skills, but you should by all means go for it.

Khoi Vin Wildcard

Asking users to adopt new behaviors or even modify their existing behaviors is very, very hard.

Khoi Vin, VP of UX at Wildcard.

15. Originality Does Not Warrant Success

Obviously, if your product is both original and superior to that of your competitors, it’s a winning combo, but when choosing between original and better-functioning, you should always opt for the latter. Sometimes, there is no need to reinvent the wheel, only make it better in order to have edge over your competition and provide your user with the ultimate UX.

Aaron Levie Box

“Does it better” will always beat “did it first”.

Aaron Levie, CEO at Box.

16. Make Your Product Easy to Understand

Regardless of your niche, it is a given that you will be facing some stiff competition, and that the margins which can provide you with that much-needed advantage are extremely narrow. One of the key elements which can separate you from your competitors is to make your product easy to review and use.

Barry Schwartz Swarthmore

People choose not on the basis of what’s most important, but on what’s easiest to evaluate.

Barry Schwartz, author and professor of psychology at Swarthmore.

17. More Content Does Not Equal Better UX

This applies both to having too much content, and to content which is overly long and hard to digest. A 500-word article can contain a lot more useful information than the equivalent 1000-word article, and it has the edge of being a quicker read, which is something that is more important nowadays than ever.

Blaise Pascal

The letter I have written today is longer than usual because I lacked the time to make it shorter.

Blaise Pascal, mathematician, physicist, inventor, writer, and philosopher.

18. Make Sure Your UX Idea Is Flawless from the Get-Go

While you may be tempted to run with it without having sorted out all of the potential kinks, and tinker with it later in the process, it’s one of the biggest mistakes you can make. It’s like building a house on poor foundations. No matter how hard you try, there is no way to fix it, and it will eventually crumble.

Frank Lloyd Wright

You can use an eraser on the drafting table or a sledge hammer on the construction site.

Frank Lloyd Wright, architect, interior designer, writer, and educator.

19. Remember that People Are Complex

In order to design the best possible UX, you also need to know people. Never underestimate their potential for being irrational and illogical. You need to be able to think outside the box here, because users are always a lot more complex than you think.

Paul Boag Boagworld

Users are not always logical, at least not on the surface. To be a great designer you need to look a little deeper into how people think and act.

Paul Boag, user experience consultant, speaker, and creator of Boagworld.

20. Form Should Always Follow Function

Making something visually enticing, while making it less functional, will never result in a great user experience. Form should always be created to follow function. Creating form for the sake of creating form is a waste of time.

Steve Jobs Apple

Design is not just what it looks like and feels like. Design is how it works.

Steve Jobs, technology entrepreneur, visionary, inventor, and co-founder of Apple.

Conclusion

If we sum all the tips into one sentence, we can say that User Experience is all about the user, and putting yourself in their shoes is the best strategy to follow. Remember, good UX can reduce your website bounce rate and keep website visitors on your site. Simply put, quality User Experience can increase the bottom line of your product or service.

There’s a myth that sales is for the young, the energetic, the beautiful and the relentless. Although these characteristics can certainly be valuable traits in any profession, or I suppose life in general, the sales profession has no age limits.

Here’s why…

1. Sales experience can be polarizing

You would probably agree that the more experience a Doctor has the better they are at well, being a Doctor. In sales youth has an advantage, such as being malleable or coachable. Many sales organizations like to hire reps right out of College so that they can mold them into “Superstars”. Other sales organizations would prefer to hire reps that are more experienced and require very little management.

It’s not the rep that makes the organization it’s the organization that makes the rep.

At age 73, during his re-election campaign, Ronald Reagan was the oldest presidential candidate in history. When asked by his opponent if he thought he had the energy at his age to serve as President. Reagan responded with, “I want you to know that I will not make age an issue of this campaign. I am not going to exploit, for political purposes, my opponent’s youth and inexperience.”

Presidential candidates make good with their ages and typically use it to their advantage. Basically age is an issue only if you make it.

2. Business relationships have nothing to do with age

Show me a successful sales rep who is 22 and I will show you one that is 50. Regardless of how young or attractive a sales rep may be, when it comes to buying a product or service, customers will always choose what’s in their best interest. This holds true for any industry, vertical or company.

Building trust and rapport with prospects is a learned skill that comes easier to some. In the end, business relationships are built by adding value for the customer.

3. Results are what matter

I have worked with some sales reps that don’t know how to use Twitter. It’s not that they don’t know what Twitter is. It’s that learning to Tweet is a difficult skill for them. To no fault of their own, they did not grow up in an era of Devices. Therefore, spreadsheets, CRM’s and social media, are skills that they may do but don’t utilize to their full capacity in their position.

Reps that have inefficiencies in these areas usually make it up in others. Such as product demos or cold calls, they may be a natural closer. It’s not often that you find a sales rep that excels in all aspects of the sales transaction.

At the end of the day knowing your strengths and using those strengths to your advantage are what makes for a great sales rep. Success in sales has no age.

As a senior sales manager at TSL Marketing, I used to think “social selling” was a fancy buzzword invented by marketers that didn’t actually have tangible results. It was an overhyped promise.

Then I realized I was wrong.

Because after experimenting with social selling for a few months back in 2008, I sold a $70,000 deal … all because I joined a LinkedIn Group.  

Yes, a lot has changed since 2008 with social selling. But the fundamentals still apply, which I’ve used over and over, resulting in a lot of repeatable success since then.

How did I do it? Let me explain.

Step 1: Join LinkedIn Groups in your industry.

First, you’ll want to join a plethora of LinkedIn Groups in your industry.

One of our industries served at TSL Marketing is IT. So my first step was joining as many groups that focused on Sales and Marketing within the IT Industry as I could find.

As you’ll join them, you’ll realize some are active, but others are not. You simply need to find where your buyer personas congregate. Also, it also doesn’t hurt to ask your current customers what groups they find most valuable. Eventually, you’ll stumble upon an active group that sticks out.

In my specific example, this LinkedIn group was Sales Playbook!.

Step 2: Add valuable answers to people’s questions.

After I joined Sales Playbook!, someone posed a question similar to this:

“Generically speaking, how can I increase marketing results with [insert such and such a tactic]?”

Now plenty of pushy salespeople who browse LinkedIn Groups would answer this question by commenting on the thread “My number is 555-555-5555. Give me a call and I’ll help you out!”

Newsflash: That is NOT helpful.

Instead, here’s how I answered the question:

Check out this benchmark marketing data [insert link] so you can size up your results against industry benchmarks. Then use that to see if your current results match up against those who are executing [marketing tactic] at a high level.

As a result, I got a valuable response:

Wow, thanks for the information! We benchmarked our data sets against industry standards and found some interesting results. Thanks again for all of your help!  

We went back and forth a few times on that thread, as I continuously added more value by suggesting tips and tricks they could implement. If I wanted to eventually connect with this person, I had to prove my worth as a valuable contributor to the conversation.

This is the #1 secret of social selling: You have to earn the right to continue the conversation.

Unless you’re going above and beyond to help someone, you’ll appear as a lazy, pushy salesperson pitching your product/service in a channel that is meant to be helpful. The key is building trust. It takes ages to get, but only a second to lose.

Step 3: Send a LinkedIn request to continue the conversation.

After I provided value through the LinkedIn Group thread, I sent a customized LinkedIn request:

Hi (name)! Just wondering how you’re coming along with your analysis of your marketing techniques versus industry benchmarks? Happy to be a sounding board for any future questions.

This works for two reasons:

1. You can connect with anyone in a similar LinkedIn Group.
2. Data shows a customized LinkedIn request is more likely to be accepted.

Did it work? You bet it did. He accepted my LinkedIn request and we continued the conversation.

Four months later, we signed a contract worth over $70,000. 

... All because I joined a LinkedIn Group.

So next time someone tells you social selling doesn’t work, show them this. It’s not hype. It’s reality. The proof is in the pudding.  Since 2008 that same tactic has served me well, time and time again.  

Article by Ernan Roman Featured on CMO.com

The term “closing a sale” is unfortunate. It reflects marketers’ thinking that with the acquisition of a sale they can move on to something else.

• CMOs must match specific customer activities with tailored marketing actions to deepen engagement and enhance customer relationships.
• CMOs must use the customer life cycle to reorient measurement and analytics approaches—from measuring specific touch points and transactional activities to measuring the value of the full customer relationship.

• BCBGMaxAzria identified four key “triggers” and developed associated triggered email messages deployed according to a customer’s actions or inactions.
• Additionally, notification messaging based on shopping behaviors were sent, which not only referenced a clothing item viewed or a new arrival, but associated wardrobe items that might be of interest.

This is a guest contribution from Jawad Khan.

Did you know that eBook sales in the US, the biggest market for digital products, is expected to reach $7.6 billion by the end of 2016?

Surprised?

In the U.S alone, eBook sales have grown almost 3000% over the last 10 years. A study by eMarketer suggests that eBook sales will outgrow the sale of mobile games in the US by the end of 2015.

The rise in eBook sales, and even free eBook downloads, is a direct result of the increase in smartphone, tablet and e-reader users.

According to Pew Research, more than 50% of American adults own either a tablet, smartphone or an e-reader device, with the majority using tablets for reading eBooks.

As a blogger, you should be excited reading this – really excited!

Because this not only offers you a huge money making opportunity, that is exponentially growing, but also open up several ways you can use eBooks to build a long term and viable blogging business.

However, to take advantage, you need to take action.

Why? Because research indicates that almost 81% Americans believe they should write a book, but only 1% actually do it.

That’s why it’s important that you take action.

Here are a few ways, with practical examples and relevant tools, you can use eBooks to boost sales, build your audience, and grow your business.

Use eBooks as Lead Magnets to Grow Your List

You’re a blogger and you know how important email subscribers are. There’s almost no long term and viable online business that can be built without an engaged and thriving email list.

But if you’re trying to build an email list by offering “Free Blog Updates” to your visitors, you won’t find much success (unless you’re Seth Godin of course).

To convince your readers and convert them into subscribers, you need to offer them something valuable that pulls them to your list.

In other words, you need a lead magnet.

And what type of lead magnet converts the best?

You guessed it right, eBooks!

People just love reading eBooks, and it somehow feels more valuable than other forms of lead magnets.

But don’t just take my word for it. Have a look at some of the most successful blogs, and see what their primary lead magnet is.

Bryan Harris, the owner of VideoFruit, took his blog from 0 to 10,000+ subscribers in just a few months. He has become an authority on list building.

And what does Bryan offer as his lead magnet? An eBook!

Ramsay grew BlogTyrant to 150,000+ subscriber. His primary offer is also a free eBook:

And what does Glenn from ViperChill use to attract email subscribers? You guessed it! 

Here’s the bottom line.

Your readers and blog visitors are MUCH more likely to subscribe to your email list if you offer them a relevant and high quality eBook.

Create the Perfect eBook for Your Audience and Make Guaranteed Money

One of the best things about blogging is that, over time, you can build a loyal community of readers around your blog.

These readers not only provide you inspiration and ideas for new content, but most of them actually start looking up to you as an authority. They are already convinced about the usefulness of your content and take your words seriously.

By identifying their biggest needs, you can create highly targeted eBooks that not only solve their problems but also fill your pockets.

Blogger and bestselling author Jeff Goins is a great example.

He started blogging just for the love of writing, and amassed an email list of more than 10,000 subscribers.

But he was making zero money from his list because he wasn’t selling them anything.

Until he decided to sell eBooks directly to his audience.

Jeff started by running a survey on his subscribers, and was surprised to know that the vast majority of them was willing to pay if Jeff offered them an eBook.

Fast forward two year, and Jeff has a thriving 6-figure eBook income that comes directly from his subscribers.

You can follow the same model even if you have 500-1000 email subscribers. Identify their need, and give them what they want – guaranteed sales.

There are a number of ways you can find content ideas for your eBook. You can run surveys on your blog, look at your most popular blog content, follow discussions on Quora and LinkedIn groups, and study competitor blogs.

You could also search for your main industry keywords on Ahrefs Content Explorer, and find out the posts that have attracted the highest social media shares and backlinks.

This will give you a good idea of the popular topics in your niche.

Once you have an idea, setting up your eBook for sale is also quite simple.

You don’t need technical expertise. There are tools and resources on the web that’ll do everything for you.

If you need to design your book cover, you can invite design proposals from freelancing portals like 99Designs. Or you can do the job of a graphic designer yourself, and create eye-catching book cover designs, using Canva.

When it comes to selling, you can simply use third party digital selling apps like Selz, which make selling eBooks a breeze.

Selz integrates directly with your email list and allows you to accept payments using all the mainstream payment gateways. You can place your eBook in the sidebar of your blog or create a separate product widget with a Buy Now button.

In short, if you already have an email list you should seriously consider selling eBooks directly to your subscribers. It also gives you an opportunity to charge higher rates for your product, since your subscribers are loyal fans who’re willing to spend money in exchange for the value you’re offering.

Don’t Have a Huge List? Sell eBooks to the World

You want to write an eBook, but you can’t sell it to your blog readers and email subscribers because you don’t have a list.

No problem!

Why not sell it on the world’s biggest ecommerce portal, Amazon. Your eBook will be instantly exposed to millions of potential buyers.

Of course, the competition on Amazon is significantly higher as compared to selling directly to your blog audience but, with the right strategy and research, finding success isn’t impossible.

Need inspiration? Just look at Chandler Bolt.

This 21 year old high school dropout has become an Amazon self-publishing success story and has been featured on Huffington Post, Business Insider and several other leading websites.

Chandler’s accidental stardom started when he published an eBook on Amazon. Within a few weeks, his eBook had gathered dozens of sales. He’s never looked back.

In fact, this success inspired him to start his business venture Self-Publishing School that is on track to making 7 figures by the end of this year.

All because of one eBook on Amazon.

For bloggers, this is an even greater opportunity.

If you already have a blog and a thriving list, you can use your subscribers to build authority on Amazon by making sales, getting reviews and generating word of mouth.

The possibilities are endless.

Use eBooks to Build Authority, Grow Your Network and Find New Clients

Beyond lead generation and direct sales, publishing an eBook can be a catalyst for your long term business prospects.

The reason is simple, when you publish a book, people start seeing you as an authority on that subject. You start getting mentioned and quoted in your industry, you start getting authority backlinks and your brand value grows. You get opportunities to connect with the right people in your industry and expand your network.

Some of the most successful entrepreneurs got their first break when they published a book (Tim Ferris, Tony Robinson, and many others)

As a blogger, brand recognition and authority are priceless assets to have.

Just look at Seth Godin’s blog.

He hardly writes 100-300 word blog posts. They are short notes with absolutely no regard for SEO, formatting, or any of the conventional blogging advice you see.

But every post on his blog gets thousands of shares and millions of views.

Why? Because he’s an authority in his niche, and people know him by name.

While you might not be able to go straight to the level of Seth Godin, publishing an eBook would still do a lot of good for your reputation, your blog and your business.

In fact, it can change everything for your blog.

Wrapping Up

Publishing eBooks can have several long lasting effects on your blogging career and your business. With such a rapidly growing market, an ever increasing demand and so many user friendly eBook designing and selling tools, publishing an eBook is a potentially life changing opportunity that is waiting for you to take action.

As I said at the start, almost 80% people who believe they should write an eBook, never do it.

Make sure you’re not one of them.

Jawad Khan is a content marketing consultant and a freelance blogger for hire. Follow him on his blogWriting My Destiny, Twitter, and Google+.

The post The Demand for eBooks is Rapidly Growing – Here’s How You Can Take Advantage appeared first on ProBlogger.

Whether you are an air compressor company, like Acecompressors.com, supplying silent dental compressors to dentists throughout your area, or you are a stationer supplying office materials to offices nationwide; refusing to acknowledge the importance of your B2B trade will reduce your potential clientele, and your income. B2B is now the life blood to most businesses, and here are a few things you should be doing to make sure you are making the most of your B2B commerce

Have a Clear Website

An article on The Future of Commerce’s website points out that 49% of B2B buyers now make their purchases through a commercial website. With this in mind, it is obvious that your website needs to make it easy for these buyers to find what they want easily, find the price quickly, and order the goods with no problems. Make sure your website is not turning customers off and losing you business. Site navigation is a major issue here, so make sure yours is designed well and accessible to anybody. By employing a skilled website designer, you will find that potential customers will stay on your site longer and make more purchases.

Widen Your Customer Base

In a recent piece in The Guardian, it was pointed out that there is double the opportunity to increase your sales through B2B ecommerce as there is through business-to-consumer trade; and there is no reason that you can’t be part of the global revolution. By refining your supply and delivery network you can take your products to the world, and grow your business. You will need an overall strategy, and research will be necessary, but there is no reason that you should not be a player on the big stage

Live Up to Your Claims

Your reputation is important no matter how you are trying to build a business, so make sure you give the service you advertise. If your website says goods will be delivered by a certain date, make sure they are. If you have a returns policy, make sure that it is crystal clear and that it is as painless a process as possible for your customer. These are the things that will bring you referrals, and good service is one of the best marketing strategies you can have.

Use Trade Fairs

This tried and trusted marketing opportunity is still the bedrock of many companies, and came out top in a survey of business marketers about which method they found gave the greatest return on investment (36% compared to 33% for online marketing) It is believed that trade fairs are the best way to introduce new products to customers, and is a vital way to build a business relationship with them. Embracing technology and social media to promote your company is vital, but it is just as vital to use older methods too.

You may be happy with your business as it is, and have no designs to increase your customer base and profits. However, if you want to take your B2B trade to another level, using these simple but effective ideas will give you a helping hand as you develop a broader strategy.

Are you looking for more ways to increase your traffic and generate leads and sales this year?

Or —

Are you thinking of incorporating content marketing into your business this year?

Whether your answer is Yes or No, you’ve got to read this Content Marketing Case study. It will inspire and encourage you.

Many businesses are already using Content marketing to get traffic, leads and sales. In a report released by Content Marketing Institute and Marketingprofs, it was revealed that 88% of B2B business are already using content marketing.

A good percentage of this number said that it is an effective marketing method.

This is why B2B companies plan to create more content.

Below is a Content Marketing Case study featuring Fisher Tank. The company achieved incredible results. Read on…

Introduction

Fisher Tank, founded in 1948, is one of the leading full-service welded tank fabricators and constructors in the United States.

The company’s services include:

1. Pre-construction of tanks
2. Engineering & Design of tanks
3. Fabrication of tanks
4. Blasting & Coatings of tanks
5. Field Construction of tanks
6. Repairs & Modifications of tanks

They serve industries like ethanol/bio diesel, industrial, municipal, refining, pulp & paper, water & waste treatment, etc.

The problem

Fisher Tank produces highly specialized products that are very expensive. Their sales cycle is long – from 12 months to several years and the projects run into millions of dollars. They get projects by cold calling, word of mouth referrals and repeat customers. They needed a way to grow their business.

The solution

Most specialty manufacturers object to using content marketing because they think “our prospects don’t use the internet to buy this type of product” and “our prospects are not on social media” But not Fisher Tank. An inbound marketing company proposed to help the company attract more qualified leads to their website, convert them to leads with content and nurture them with more related content. The company agreed.

The process

The first step that was taken to help Fisher Tank was to change the website design. The old website looked like this:

1. There were no social media links
2. No calls to action (to download free resources of interest and value to prospects)
3. No blog with social sharing abilities
4. Little or No keyword optimization etc.

Below is the redesigned website:

What was done:

1. The navigation is simplified

2. The website is optimized for search

3. Social media links (Twitter, Facebook, Linkedin, Youtube) were created for the business

4. A blog was included in the website.

Contents (expert advice/tips/industry news) are written and posted regularly on the website. They are educative and interesting contents using long tail keywords with rich pictures to get Fisher Tank found on the search engine.

5. Free resources that links to a lead generation page

Lead generation page

By creating this type of resources for their visitors, they are creating awareness, letting people know what they do.

6. They created a post round up for their blog at the end of the month;

Creating a blog round up:

1. Help new visitors find important posts that has been written in the past.
2. Gives regular visitors a recap and they can comment on old blog posts.
3. Helps the website’s SEO.
4. Increases page views

The results

From the solution provided Fisher tanks achieved the following results:

Credit: Weidert Group

Takeaway

Just like Fisher Tank, you can :

1. Improve your website’s navigation
2. Add social media channels
3. Create a blog with educational content that will inform your audience
4. Create free resources (guides/reports/e-books) to generate leads and sales
5. Include a blog round up on weekly or monthly basis.

Ideas to spice up your blog roundup

1. You can do blog roundup at the end of the week if you post often or monthly
2. You can do blog round up if you wrote a series on your blog. You can use the roundup post style to give your existing and new users a recap
3. You can share other industry articles from around the internet to further give your audience a rich taste of different articles etc.

What you can achieve using Content Marketing

Below is a chart showing what you can use Content marketing to achieve in your Company/business/Organization.

Conclusion

The above Content Marketing case study shows that content marketing really work. If Fisher tank can do it, then you can. Get in touch with a Content marketer today and boost your website traffic, leads and sales.

There is no doubt that in 2016, the most successful brands will be omnichannel in nature. This means that they will be selling anywhere the customer is potentially looking, i.e. online marketplaces, their owned and operated website, physical stores, social media and even TV. Yet, as brands look to expand to additional distribution channels to increase product discoverability, it is becoming clear that not all channels produce the same ROI for varying industries.

Consumer buyer journeys differ across channels, as do their expectations. Some channels will be a competition for the lowest price. Others will be more about innovation, design and customer loyalty.

Channel specificity is key to ecommerce sales, and – as the selection of channels highlighted below demonstrates – it’s important to implement a strategy that utilizes the nuances of each.

Channel One: Online Marketplaces (e.g. Amazon, eBay)

• Active Audience: Shoppers here are looking for low prices on traditional products
• Tips: Most often, consumers use channels like Amazon to compare prices across multiple brands to find the best deal. Recently, many shoppers have also started using the channel to more conveniently purchase common household items. This is the area in which, for instance, Jet.com and Amazon compete.

In order to capitalize on this audience, brands should distribute their most popular products to channels like Amazon, specifically those they can offer at a competitive price. Amazon is a smart place to promote less expensive, everyday offers, as shoppers often look to bundle purchases on Amazon in order to reach a free shipping threshold.

Note that to make the most out of Amazon, it is smart to utilize FBA, which helps you to win the buy box and the Prime audience if you are selling items already offered on the marketplace. FBA helps, too, with Amazon’s strict shipping and customer experience policies. You send the items to an Amazon warehouse and they handle the fulfillment. You don’t have to worry, then, about lag times in your own warehouses which could get you kicked out of Amazon’s marketplace.

To drive sales on a site like eBay, you’ll want to distribute products you can afford to price competitively low or completely unique items. Shoppers on eBay are looking for either price-effectiveness or one-of-a-kind items. Keep in mind that eBay has a very active international audience. For brands looking to expand internationally in 2016, eBay may very well be a good place to test the waters.

For all marketplace, complement a browser’s research process with customer testimonials, detailed product information and quality photos. Shoppers benefit from learning more about an item’s specificities and appreciate hearing what other customers find most attractive about the purchase. This can be particularly useful when promoting complicated products with multiple features. This also helps you stand out among the other competition on the highly competitive marketplaces.

Channel Two: Social Media (e.g. Facebook, Twitter, Instagram)

• Active Audience: Shoppers inclined toward impulse purchases
• Tips: Due to the fast pace of social media channels like Twitter and Facebook, shoppers are looking for quick deals that capture their attention. The industry has termed this “impulse shopping” and the goal is to use product photos to create a must-have experience that leads to conversion.

Here, retailers should focus on highlighting products or offers with urgency. To win the sale, brands can stress the limited stock of an item, or leverage the highly-connected nature of social media. For example, if a user sees that two of her Facebook friends bought a product, she will be more likely to engage with and purchase from that brand herself. Ads should feature links that direct consumers straight to the shopping cart to ease the purchase process.

Photos are particularly important for social channels as well. Use either beautiful product photography or lifestyle photos. Browse the Instagram accounts of brands like Loren Hope and Josie Maran for inspiration.

Channel Three: Brick-and-Mortar Storefronts

• Active Audience: Shoppers looking for an in-person experience
• Tips: When heading to an actual storefront, shoppers are looking for an intimate in-person sales experience. Consumers may want to try on a product before purchase, or directly ask sales representative questions. Keep in mind, too, that 75% of shoppers use their mobile phones while in-store.

To meet these needs, a brand’s brick-and-mortar needs to accommodate for online-influenced shopping habits. New Google tools can help to push local foot traffic into your store, and price comparisons or an Instagram-worthy design can help to close the sale and increase brand awareness from an in-store purchase.

An added benefit to a brick-and-mortar location is a salesperson’s ability to introduce a first-time shopper to your ecommerce site. For instance, if an item is not available in store, a sales associate can help a shopper place an order online, pay for cost of shipping and send the order to the store. This way, the shopper leaves satisfied, returns to the store at a later date, and experiences the ease of your online channel firsthand. Home Depot executes a strategy like this extremely well, allowing for in-store pickup to keep prices low without having to lose margins on a free shipping offer.

Channel Four: Television (e.g. Home Shopping Network [HSN], Apple TV, Shark Tank)

• Active Audience: Shoppers interested in a story or those who are early tech adopters
• Tips: Unlike other digital channels, television networks like HSN have to provide consumers with a high degree of entertainment. Not only are consumers hoping to find a deal, but they also anticipate a viewing experience on par with prime-time programming.

When deciding which products to carry on channels like HSN, brands should pick those that most naturally align with a compelling narrative. If a product line was inspired by a CEO’s personal story or developed using interesting ingredients, these features can be woven into the product presentation. In the same way that every great show features a protagonist, brands can center their television spots on a product that tells a compelling story.

If you have multiple compelling stories to share around products or your brand, test them out with blog posts. See which drives the highest traffic and shares.

Also keep watch on Apple’s moves with their new Apple TV integrating commerce into the experience. Shark Tank can also be a high sales driver for your brand, and a potential consideration for those stores with unique products ready for massive growth.

Conclusion

Outside of the five channels listed above, more avenues exist for retailers to connect with shoppers as we head into 2016. With a little effort, industry knowledge and attention to consumer behaviors, any brand can develop a specific sales approach for every channel.

Ecommerce is a growing industry, but as online retailers increasingly expand to multiple channels, it’s important they understand the unique relationship every channel has with the customer.

Planning exercises don’t change much year over year. Every year, sales leaders look at quotas, hiring plans, compensation plans, and management coverage and determine what needs to be adjusted.

But what other questions should sales leaders be asking themselves to improve results? In addition to the above, every good sales leader picks a few other priorities.

So I reached out to some experts to ask them: “What should sales leaders and salespeople be doing in 2016 to improve their sales productivity?” What I received back was a surprisingly diverse set of responses. Advice for sales leaders as well as salespeople. Advice on sales technologies and sales philosophies. Some new stuff and some tried-and-true stuff. A long list of things to add to your plate, and some stuff that you should take off of it.  

In order to make this volume of advice and predictions useful, I categorized them into groups. Here’s to a successful year of selling for you and yours in 2016.

Salespeople Will Embrace Inbound Selling Because Buyers Are Demanding It

More than a few experts are predicting what seems to be the inevitable march of inbound from solely Marketing over to Sales and Service as well. As informed, savvy buyers start to demand better from customer-facing individuals, adopting an inbound approach is becoming an obvious move for organizations and salespeople alike.

"In 2016, many more salespeople will finally realize they need to stop selling and start guiding. As we proclaimed in our 2012 book, Fire Your Sales Team Today!, it’s time to fire your salespeople and then hire Sales Guides with a new mission -- to help your prospects make a strong, educated, and safe purchase decision. People only buy when they feel safe. Salespeople need to help prospects feel safe by coaching them, advising them, and counseling them through their buyer journey. That's why inbound marketing and inbound sales work so well together -- you're not interrupting or convincing, but educating instead."

- Mike Lieberman, CEO of Square 2 Marketing and Co-Author of The Inbound Sales Effect

"2016 will be the year that salespeople realize there is a better way to sell -- better for the buyer and better for the seller. Some will figure out how to leverage the internet and technology to efficiently reach the right prospects at the right time. When they reach them, they’ll use that same technology to have the conversations that are most relevant to that specific prospect. These salespeople will excel. The rest will begin to fail because they’ll struggle to add value for their more informed, more empowered buyers."

- Brian Halligan, CEO, HubSpot

"Forrester suggests that buyers rate only one in 10 meetings with salespeople as worthwhile. Buyers have no interest in being pitched on standard product features and benefits. They can get all of that information online. 2016 will be the year that sales organizations embrace visual storytelling and transition from presenting to customers to having conversations to improve sales call effectiveness. In order to master conversational storytelling, sales training needs to change. Statically delivered PowerPoint product training needs to be pushed aside in favor of interactive whiteboard training to accelerate message ownership. Salespeople must learn to tell the right visual and verbal stories to the right prospects at the right time, and they need to learn how to deliver information through asking insightful questions in a way that captures attention, disrupts status quo thinking, and delivers insight. The companies that figure this out in 2016 will significantly reduce ramp time for new salespeople and improve the sales effectiveness of their whole team. And help a lot of prospects make smart buying decisions!"

- Mark Gibson, Owner, Admarco 

Salespeople Will Develop Their Own Thought Leadership Online

The perhaps inevitable shift to inbound selling doesn’t stop there.  A bunch of experts predict that more salespeople will build their own thought leadership online so that they -- not just their companies -- are found by prospects.

Having started my first blog in 2004, I’ve seen how publishing can pave the way for amazing sales conversations. Plus, writing something that will be read by hundreds or thousands of people seems so much smarter than cold calling thousands only to connect with a few. Writing this post as evidence, I’m clearly on board with this trend.

"2016 will be the year that salespeople recognize the importance of personal branding and use content to build their 'public authoritative voice,' or PAV. Today’s buyer is digitally savvy and does their research -- they Google companies and their salespeople, look them up on LinkedIn, etc. What they find can have a significant impact on their buying decision. Until now, most salespeople have relied solely on content (blogs, webinars, sell sheets, email campaigns) created by their employer to gain visibility in the marketplace. In the coming year, successful salespeople will move beyond the shouts for 'social selling' and will contribute their personal expertise, experience, and stories to the creation of corporate content that resonates more strongly with buyers. In doing so, they will establish a PAV that is uniquely their own which will position them to connect with prospects earlier in the buyer’s journey and ultimately, close more deals."

- John Booth, Director Sales, Inbound Sales Academy

"2016 will be the year of the case study. Smart salespeople will stop waiting for their marketing teams to create case studies for them. They’ll take things into their own hands. Salespeople will more consistently ask up front for the right to create a case study when they deliver the value promised to their client. Then they'll interview and help craft the case study story, making it about the value delivered to their client in the client's own words. The reason salespeople will take charge of case study creation is because they'll then be able to use these customer stories as they sell to new clients. Using marketing and sales software, they'll monitor who is reading these case studies. They'll send the case studies out to their clients and track who reads them. They'll tell the customer stories during their sales calls and see which ones resonate the best. Finally, because of the value of these case studies to the salesperson, salespeople will really focus on bringing on the best customers and ensuring their success -- so they can create another case study. In 2016, salespeople will wake up to the idea that they can tell the customer story best through customer stories."

- Todd Hockenberry, Owner, Top Line Results 

"In 2016, Sales should embrace its inner marketer. Is it becoming tougher to connect? Sales reps should expand their online profile and reach. Is it becoming more important to stay in touch with warm leads who aren't ready to buy? Sales reps should start using automated (and personalized) email sequences to nurture prospects. Is it becoming critical to know when prospects are heating up? Sales reps should take advantage of rule-driven alerts and notifications. Marketers have been using these tactics -- producing content, expanding reach, and defining workflows -- for years. In 2016, sales departments should start building marketing muscles of their own or work with marketers (or marketing agencies) that can help them."

- David Weinhaus, Agency Partner Enablement Manager, HubSpot

"Salespeople are taught to do research on their clients before picking up the phone. I suggest that in 2016, salespeople should realize that their prospects will do research on them too.  It's been said that buyers do 60+% of their buying process online before they talk with a salesperson. But, their online research doesn't stop when the salesperson calls. As soon as a salesperson identifies himself, their prospect probably Googles them and their company and finds them on LinkedIn, Facebook, and other social platforms. What will prospects see? Will they see a self-professed 'expert' that talks about how wonderful they are? Will they see a sales hot shot that wins President’s Club awards and is the perennial top salesperson in the company? Or will they find an expert who has published articles that resonate in their world? Will they find mutual connections and recommendations from people that they respect? In 2016, salespeople should make their best stuff easy to find and make sure that what the prospect finds aligns with the conversation."

- Rick Roberge, Unbound Growth

"In 2016, your personal brand as a subject matter expert (SME) matters. Customers have an amazing amount of data available to them and are very comfortable researching not only companies they are interested in working with, but also the sales reps themselves. Be sure your social media footprint is up to date and demonstrates your SME status effectively."

- Jeff Hoffman, Sales Executive and Educator and Author of the award-winning "Why You? Why You Now™?" and "Your SalesMBA™" sales programs.

Inbound Marketing Will Keep Making Salespeople Look Like Heroes

If your company isn’t leveraging inbound marketing to generate sales qualified leads, you should probably start looking for a new gig in 2016. Companies that are still figuring out how to use inbound marketing to help their sales team are probably playing catch up.

"2016 will be the year that sales and marketing alignment impacts the daily routines of frontline salespeople. As more companies publish content to attract and influence today’s empowered buyer, the demands for salespeople to live up to their value creator roles will intensify. Sales and Marketing must work together to create value at every stage of the marketing and sales process. The good news is that technology is now available to organize and present the right content and insights to the right prospect at the right time. Salespeople who learn how to leverage this in their sales pursuits will enjoy greater success than ever. Those that don’t will struggle."

- Doug Davidoff, Founder & CEO, Imagine Business Development 

"2016 will be the year of integrated sales and marketing alignment. 'Integrated' because technology makes integration easy, seamless, and affordable for any business with the desire to have their sales and marketing processes and strategies integrated. And 'aligned' because businesses are waking up to the need to get their sales and marketing teams perfectly aligned philosophically, strategically, and operationally. Technology makes it possible, and commitment will make meaningful alignment happen more than ever in 2016."

- Greg Linnemanstons, Founder, Weidert Group

"In 2016, sales and marketing managers will map sales and marketing processes to how prospects actually buy -- from awareness to close. While CEB states that almost two-thirds of the buying decision is already made before a prospect ever makes contact with a sales team, prospects do not stop their research at that moment. Client acquisition used to be a relay race. Marketing captured the lead and then nurtured the lead part of the way. Then, Sales ran the rest of the race by themselves. The two did not need to communicate to win, they just needed to hand off the baton properly. But today, it’s a three-legged race with Sales and Marketing’s legs tied together. In the three-legged race, the prospect receives stimuli from both Marketing and Sales throughout the buying process. In order to win, a firm must have two partners with clear shared goals, a defined process, and open continuous communication."

- Chris Handy, Founder & CEO, Thinkhandy

"2016 will be the year that Sales Development Representatives (SDRs) stop processing leads and start qualifying opportunities. SDRs will stop mindlessly putting individual contacts through the binary in-or-out qualification, meat-grinder cadence of voicemail, email, and social touches. Finally, we’ve begun to realize that the contact is not the opportunity, but rather the account is the opportunity. It took the rise of a yet another new buzzwordy strategy called 'Account-Based Marketing' (that is actually not new at all) before sales and marketing teams could come together and develop personalized campaigns that look holistically at all the buying opportunities in an account, and then execute a thoughtful and unified multi-contact approach. Long live the return of good account-based selling! R.I.P. mindless prospecting!"

- Trish Bertuzzi, President and Chief Strategist, The Bridge Group 

Salespeople Will Do What’s Right For the Customer -- Because That’s What’s Right For the Salesperson

Perhaps the biggest change that the inbound movement has brought to the sales profession is that there are no more secrets. There’s no more hiding, concealing, cajoling, or controlling. Prospects and customers can not only find out virtually all the information they need to make a decision online, but they can also share information and complaints with the world -- and bad news travels fast.

Whether salespeople are doing the right thing because it’s the right thing to do or because they fear the consequences of an upset customer, a handful of experts agreed that 2016 will be the year that salespeople finally do the right thing for their customers -- or else. 

"In 2016, salespeople will realize that they can achieve the success they want -- and do good for lots of people as they do. Too many salespeople are hindered by their own preconceived notions about what they think a great salesperson is. It's not about personality, not about the jokes they tell, it's not what they're born with, it's not a con man who can talk you out of anything. In 2016, great salespeople will emerge because they planned for their own success and prioritized the success of their clients above all else -- and the rest will go do something else."

- Warren Greshes, Hall of Fame Speaker and Best-Selling Author of The Best Damn Sales Book Ever

"Oscar Wilde once said ‘be yourself; everyone else is already taken.’ My hope for sales leaders looking to improve productivity in 2016 is that they begin to instill the concept of radical transparency with their sales teams. Salespeople who understand the importance of being honest will have far greater success than those who are simply trying to hit a target at all costs. Radical transparency means not only being open with your prospects and educating them on the right way to solve their problems, but also requires that you be true to yourself regarding your team’s core abilities. Using a consultative selling methodology will help establish trust early on in the relationship, and it will only deepen when the delivery matches what was sold. This will mean passing on opportunities that aren’t a perfect match, which will be hard for many. But it also means that those who value your specific capabilities and expertise will be more willing to work with you. If you’re honest about who you really are, you can’t help but sell solutions that are true to your strengths. After all, there’s no point trying to be someone you’re not."

- Jeff White, Principal, Kula Partners 

"2016 will be the year that salespeople who deliver ideas and solutions will distance themselves from those only interested in making a quick sale or processing the transaction. For so many years salespeople have been able to get by on the “spray and pray” method of selling. It was a numbers game and if you were able to put enough pitches out there and work on your closing skills you would hit your number. But those days are coming to an end as technology allows the buyers to have more control and in some circumstances even make the purchase without a salesperson. Think about how you buy an airline ticket -- you don’t need a travel agent. However, superstar salespeople will actually benefit from this. Those who commit to being helpful -- always looking for needs and providing the right solutions -- will not just succeed but will thrive in this new environment. Successful salespeople will realize that it is not about 'why' their product or service is great but rather 'how' their products or services can be used to solve their clients’ problems. Now, more than ever, and even increasingly in the future, the best salespeople will do the right thing for their customers."

- Matt Sunshine, Managing Partner, The Center for Sales Strategy and LeadG2

"In 2016, more and more sales pros will have to come to a singular realization: Buyers don’t care. They don’t care if you like technology. They don’t care if you like social media. They don’t care if you’re comfortable on video or not. They don’t care if you have the best or the latest and greatest. They don’t care if your management team or organization leaders are behind the times. The list goes on and on, but you get the point. Consumers care about themselves. They care about how *they* want to learn, buy, shop, and communicate. The sales pros that embrace this reality the quickest will have tremendous success going forward. Those that don’t … won’t."

- Marcus Sheridan, The Sales Lion

"2016 is going to be the year of salespeople proactively and intelligently surrounding their prospects with 'customer love.' Sales leaders will recognize that salespeople need to be incentivized to not only close deals but create customer advocates. Why? Because a salesperson will never be as trusted as another customer will be. The best way to convince someone to consider your product or service is to get a customer advocate to do the selling for you."

- Emmanuelle Skala, VP Sales, Influitive

Sales Technology Will Improve Sales Efficiency, Add Time for Selling

It feels like sales technology is about a decade behind marketing technology. But it’s catching up quick as companies (like yours truly) invest heavily in building software that makes salespeople’s lives easier and more productive.

"In 2016, sales leaders will stop nagging their salespeople about updating the CRM. Why? Because the CRM will automatically be updated as salespeople do their job. Now that sales software automatically Integrates with email clients, calendars, phone systems, and a company’s marketing software, salespeople don’t have to log emails, calls, or even set reminders. It’s all done for them. Sales managers will then be able to drastically improve productivity as they can now figure out what’s working and what’s not -- which salespeople are struggling where, what messages are resonating with what prospects, and what parts of their sales processes need improvement."

- Mark Roberge, CRO Sales Division, HubSpot

"In 1996 Bill Gates wrote an article titled 'Content Is King' in which he wrote 'content is where I expect much of the real money will be made on the internet.' It took 20 years for content to change the way we do marketing. In the next 10 years content is going to change the way we do sales. Standardizing and improving the content that sales reps send to customers is the first way sales teams will start leveraging content more effectively to improve productivity in 2016. Sales teams will build reusable, customizable email templates for all of their prospect and customer interactions. More salespeople will send customized sales proposals that are tailored to the customer instead of standard contracts. Marketing teams will organize case studies, client testimonials, and other content so salespeople can easily access and send to customers. As more and more companies get hip to content marketing and content selling, it will be even noisier in 2016. Your content and messaging will need to stand out. Make sure it does."

- Mikita Mikado, CEO, PandaDoc

"2016 will be the year that Sales Development Reps (SDRs) will think differently about communicating with prospects. Sophisticated SDRs will 1) think in terms of highly personalized sales email templates, giving us economies of scale while being relevant enough to engage each prospect; 2) deliver integrated, cross-channel communication cadences rather than relying almost exclusively on email; 3) connect deeply with many potential buyers at an account rather than 'carpet bombing' a couple of prospects at each company in an attempt to get a response. By approaching customers in an intentional and sincere way, 2016 will be the year that sales teams have more meaningful engagements with potential customers."

- Derek Grant, VP of Sales, SalesLoft 

"Improving sales productivity in 2016 is now easier and cheaper than ever. And you don’t need help from your marketing team to do it. It’s all about arming yourself, as a salesperson, with the right set of tools. Tools that assist in making more appointments per sales hour spent. Tools that make your appointments more productive. First, start by downloading the free Sidekick t ool.Among other things, Sidekick will alert you when someone is reading your email. After all, you’re much more likely to book that appointment if you call your prospect when he/she is reading your email. Try calling too early or too late and your chance of getting their attention drops drastically. Second, take it to the next level and install LeadIn and HubSpot’s free CRM. These tools will show you what pages of your website your prospect has looked at, what they have downloaded, how many times they have visited, and when. This lets you know how interested a prospect is and helps you prioritize who to call first. Added bonus: when you call, you have a good idea of what they already know about your products/services. These tools are free and easy to set up and start using. No excuses. You’ll get instant value. Do it."

- Rick Kranz, President, OverGo Studio

"Let’s face it, one of the reasons we haven’t seen the promised productivity of predictive analytics is because it lacks a prescriptive element. But this is the year we’ll crack the code. With predictive and prescriptive technology, sales development reps will be able to prioritize hundreds of leads and have a prescribed cadence to help follow that prioritization schema. This also means sales reps will look at long lists of existing customers, be able to quickly prioritize opportunities, and know which actions will move them down the pipeline."

- Gabe Larsen, Director of Sales Acceleration Services, InsideSales.com 

"In 2016, top-performing salespeople will differentiate themselves by using technology that helps them serve each individual prospect with what they need, when they need it. Based on prospect tracking technology, smart salespeople will be able to provide customized, helpful advice, guide their prospects through an efficient buying process, help solve difficult problems, and add value based on efficient, always-on discovery. Top salespeople will use technology to increase their productivity by building repeatable, albeit customizable, processes that enlighten and delight their prospects. Top salespeople will work with their technology-enabled marketing teams to build their online reputation and credibility before they even pick up the phone. 2016 will be a huge transition year, where salespeople either embrace the evolution of selling being caused by technology -- or be left in the dust."

- Dan Tyre, Sales Executive, HubSpot

Sales Managers Will Finally Learn How to Hire and Reward A-Players

Fortunately for all of us, all of the technology in the world can’t replace great salespeople. With this in mind, I’m not surprised to see a handful of experts talk about the continued importance of hiring A-players in 2016, even though it seems elusive for many.

This past year, I published some of what I learned from interviewing and hiring hundreds of salespeople, as well as helping our agency partners hire salespeople. But the majority of sales leaders still treat hiring like an art. Even the ones who apply some science are making it up as they go -- usually with expensive consequences. However, it seems like this trend might be about to get reversed: A few experts think that 2016 is the year where companies get great at using data to hire the right talent for their roles, then reward A-players with advancement opportunities.

"Sales managers are responsible for developing, coaching, and training in addition to hiring the right salespeople and putting the best possible team into the marketplace. They cannot, nor should they be allowed to transfer this responsibility to a recruiting team or HR. Though people in those roles have an important role in recruiting, they really don’t have a stake in the game if someone doesn’t work out. They just go about finding more of the same. According to Brad Smart of Topgrading, 75% of the people hired to replace someone have the same or worse skill set and potential as the person they are replacing. No doubt about it, hiring people who do not perform as expected costs money, not to mention its impact on morale, opportunities, time and resources. Top focus for 2016 for all sales leaders is to improve systems and processes for hiring better salespeople. When they do that, their entire sales team performance will improve."

- Tony Cole, President & CEO, Anthony Cole Training Group

"In the coming year, sales leaders must focus their efforts on finding sales talent naturally wired to excel in the positions they’re hired for. It seems obvious, but if you can determine the characteristics a role requires for maximum performance first, finding that perfect match later is that much easier. Reducing turnover should be top of mind for sales leaders looking to optimize the sales productivity of their team, and hiring the right candidate is more efficient than spending time and resources coaching the wrong one. Sales leaders should determine and prioritize the key accountabilities a new hire will need to engage in on a daily, weekly, and monthly basis so they have a clear understanding of the skills they’re seeking. Once these accountabilities are in place, they must be used in the hiring, onboarding, training, and coaching processes. Putting the right people in the right places should be the first priority in any sales effectiveness strategy, especially for leaders looking to drive productivity in the new year."

- Will Brooks, EVP, The Brooks Group

"If last year was the year of hiring and ramping our BDR, SDR, and ISR Teams, then 2016 is the year to increase productivity by building out career paths that incentivize the right behaviors and establish benchmarks for success. We spend so much time focused on the customer journey and hitting our numbers that sometimes we forget to think about the journey of our internal talent. And with a competitive hiring market and millennial hires wondering 'what’s next,' it’s in everyone’s best interest to determine the necessary benchmarks, traits, and skillsets to move up the proverbial career ladder. Sales leaders who focus on that in 2016 can expect to get a lift in productivity from their top players, and will set themselves up for future success. Bonus points for all managers, directors, and leaders who introduce the career path and expectations as early as the interview process."

- CeCe Bazar, OpenView Venture Partners

"In 2016, sales organizations will figure out how to better motivate and develop a sales force increasingly made up of millennials. As has been written about ad nauseum, millennials expect constant feedback on their performance, demand the latest technology, and want to collaborate and learn from peers -- as much as they want to compete with them. Unfortunately, our sales management approaches have not adapted to millennial sellers’ needs. The modern sales manager is evolving to be a metrics-based coach, an enabler of a collaborative environment where everyone learns and improves as a team, and believes that the only way you get revenue output is by managing the behaviors and activities that lead to sales."

- Bob Marsh, CEO, LevelEleven

Sales Managers Will Get Back on the Front Line to Focus on What Matters

Even the elusive team of A-players that sales managers strive to build won’t perform well without support, motivation, and coaching from their managers. In 2016, many experts expressed the need for sales managers to get back to the front line where they can make the biggest difference for their team, company performance, customers, and maybe even the world. Having been in an organization where sales managers went from the biggest liability to our biggest asset, I agree that this change is critical in 2016.

"In 2016, the sales managers that win will do so by taking back control of their calendars to refocus time on high-value sales leadership activities. Particularly in small and midsize organizations, sales managers have been sucked into all kinds of non-sales leadership, non-revenue driving crap that is inhibiting their ability to lead and killing sales performance. Sales teams need their managers. Period. And the sales leaders who learn to say 'no' to the time-sucking corporate meetings and picking up the fire hose to fight their company’s every fire will be handsomely rewarded for their intentionality. Sales managers who meet one on one regularly with every rep, who lead productive sales team meetings that align, equip, and energize the team, and who get in the field or the inside sales office instead of thinking they can manage via email will be the ones driving big results. This is as much an exhortation as a prediction. Call it what you want -- sales team health and sales results depend on it!"

- Mike Weinberg, New Sales Coach and Author of the #1 Amazon Bestseller Sales Management, Simplified: The Straight Truth About Getting Exceptional Results from Your Sales Team 


"For a company to be successful, the sales management function must perform. Sales managers are the link between the company and the sales team’s interaction with the customer. But they’re pulled in so many different directions, it can be hard to focus on effective sales performance management. It doesn’t have to be that way.
 The sales management problem is not a deficit of data, but a deficit of insight. You can only get the right answer if you know the right questions. In 2016, sales managers will ask the right sales performance management questions that will help them understand the risks and vulnerabilities that can knock them off course. They’ll then prevent these problems from happening through the right preventative action."

- Donal Daly, CEO of The TAS Group and Author of Account Planning in Salesforce and Winning Sales Performance Management

"Can you imagine an NFL player who didn’t watch game film? Totally absurd. Yet it happens every day in sales organizations that swear by role playing and practice, but don’t look at the actual footage of the game. In the words of Allen Iverson, 'We’re talking about practice. Not the game. Practice.' 2016 is the year that sales reps start listening to and watching their own ‘game film’ to get better. It’s time that sales leaders, managers, and reps wake up and realize that there are ways to legally capture recordings of interactions with their customers and prospects and use those recordings to sell better. Conversations happening in your sales force every day are the most under-utilized asset you have. Smart companies will stop wasting this opportunity in 2016."

- Steve Richard, CRO, ExecVision

"2016 will be the year we finally invest in the development of our first line sales manager. We’ve spent years and billions investing in frontline salespeople, sales technology, sales enablement, and other supporting surround sound, but little in developing sales managers. We will never achieve the full value of all the training, programs, systems, processes, and tools we are throwing at our sales teams unless we have sales managers working side by side with their people, coaching and developing them. As empowered buyers and technology change selling forever, managers are the first line in helping their people think and execute differently. It’s the frontline manager who will help salespeople figure out how to engage the modern buyer with greater impact, and who will help salespeople overcome obstacles, develop better habits and skills, and win more business. With this in mind, I predict that this year is the year companies will realize they need to get their sales managers out from behind the desk so they can reflect and master their roles as coaches and team builders. Given active, engaged sales managers, focused on helping each person on their team achieve the highest levels of performance, teams and organizations will excel."

- Dave Brock, Partners In Excellence

Continuous Improvement Will Be the New Norm For Salespeople Who Survive the Empowered Buyer

With salespeople back on the front line and sales technology making it easier to sell and measure performance, it’ll be hard for sales teams not to improve continuously. But it doesn’t happen without intention. At HubSpot, we believe in continuous improvement so much, we look for “continuous learners” as we interview and hire. If you’re looking for a handbook or a kick in the pants on this, Jill Konrath’s book Agile Selling is a great guide on continuous improvement for sales teams.

"The key to leading a quota-busting sales team in 2016 is to create a culture of continuous learning. Get your salespeople experimenting with new approaches. Challenge them to improve their personal KPIs. Turn failures into valuable learning experiences. Implement peer-to-peer coaching. And have fun in the process. Up-skilling your entire team is the only way to win in an ever-changing, highly competitive business environment."

- Jill Konrath, Speaker and Author of Agile Selling, SNAP Selling, and Selling to Big Companies

"In 2016 most sales organizations will look exactly the same as they did in 2015 because change is hard. Really hard. However, sales leaders who believe in continuous improvement and who are not afraid to fail and learn and fail again will find new ways to win. Google has famously allocated 20% of their employee time to work on side projects and this pillar of innovation brought us things like Gmail and AdSense. But engineers are not the only people who can benefit from 'hackathons' and creative time. Great sales teams always find ways to win but great sales leaders need to allocate time, headspace, and margin for trying new (crazy?) ideas. Even if 20% is too high, let your sales team experiment with totally new approaches to winning business. Blow up your discovery deck (or try no deck). Try a shorter demo. Try no demo at all. Work with Marketing to produce interactive sales tools. Break out of your tried-and-true playbook shackles and run sales experiments to find better outcomes. Coming in over plan is great, but I will happily give up a little upside this month if it means we can shift the whole curve higher next month."

- Seth Lieberman, CEO, SnapApp

"I would like to be optimistic about the changes coming to sales teams and sales professionals in 2016, but my 2015 findings cause me to temper my enthusiasm. The companies that take professional selling seriously -- a clear minority -- will continue to see major improvements in their 1) ability to differentiate, 2) sell value ,and 3) take a consultative approach to generating new revenue. Those three competencies are essential for any company that wants to put some distance between themselves and their competition. For the rest, and that’s a big population, this could be the year that their lack of attention and commitment to improving all facets of the sales organization could have a devastating effect. As prospects, customers, and buyers find less time and less need to schedule calls and meetings with salespeople who fail to provide value, those salespeople will simply become obsolete."

- Dave Kurlan, Founder & CEO of Objective Management Group and Author of Baseline Selling (book) and Understanding the Sales Force (blog)

Salespeople Will Obsess Over Inputs to Create Positive Outcomes  

Healthy, growing sales organizations focus on the inputs that create the right outcomes. The first is having the right people on the bus, so to speak, and then aligning their personal goals with the mission of their team and the company. Next, they put the right sales process in place, measure performance based on that process, set input or activity guidelines for salespeople, and finally rally the team around the right milestones (not just the right outcomes).

If this is news to you, I’d recommend reading Mark Roberge’s Sales Acceleration Formula. If you’re short on time or need a bit more inspiration, dive into the advice below from these experts.

"An Olympian does not obsess over winning a gold medal, they focus on doing the things they need to do to win the gold medal. If they execute according to their plan the result will be gold. Performance is defined as 'doing the things you need to do to get the results you want.' Quota-carrying professionals are driven hard and obsess over hitting their number -- the result. Focusing on the end goal can cause bad behaviors. In 2016 my hope is that we can get our sales colleagues focused on performance rather than results. Our job as sales leaders is to help define the key performance measures, hold the team accountable to executing, measure the outcomes, and assess the efficacy. Ultimately you cannot improve what you cannot measure! If we focus on performance, results will take care of themselves."

- Steve McKenzie, Head of Sales, InsightSquared 

"In 2016, more salespeople will figure out how to take leaps and bounds by using Forcing Functions rather than 'goals.'  For example, the classic Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic, and Time-bound (SMART) goals don't work for me or many people. What helps me personally create traction -- to help me cut through the busyness and noise of both work and of parenting 12 kids -- is to create “Forcing Functions” by showing my ASS: Announcing to others that I’ll create a Specific outcome by a Specific date. Rather than setting a goal of beating quota by 10%, smart salespeople will announce (to the team or a friend) that they are going to publish a blog, host an event, or book X number of calls -- all activities that are leading indicators to results. The best part about showing your ASS is that it’s also totally within your control and you can’t hide from it because you’ve announced it."

- Aaron Ross, Author of Predictable Revenue and From Impossible To Inevitable and CRO of Carb.io

"2016 is the year company leaders will get smarter about using metrics and objective tools to help create better sales teams. I’m not saying there is no place for 'art' and intangibles when sellers are working with buyers, but too many companies have too few metrics measuring how salespeople and sales teams are performing. If you are a leader and don’t know what inputs and process steps drive your sales results, 2016 is your year to figure this out. Putting formal sales process steps in place is a great first step. Next, measure conversion rates so you can improve your salespeople’s success. Finally, find great people who not only are able to sell, but motivated to learn and improve your processes over time."

- Lori Richardson, CEO, Score More Sales

"2016 will give birth to the entrepreneurial salesperson. The best sales producers have entrepreneurial mindsets that drive their actions -- they want to build their business inside a business. Too much of a salesperson’s time is spent on ineffective internally-delivered product and process training. Too much time is spent attending internal meetings. Too much time is spent logging activities and reporting numbers up the food chain. And what do salespeople get in return? Their sales managers don’t even prioritize coaching time. As a first step, entrepreneurial salespeople are taking back their schedule. They’re ignoring irrelevant requests from management. They’re scoffing at their 'man-made' quotas. Instead, entrepreneurial salespeople set their own personal goals, develop their own business via their own thought leadership, invest in skill development, and hire coaches that help them overcome their weaknesses. Entrepreneurial salespeople will do whatever it takes to succeed -- even if it means rebelling against their company’s wishes as much as they can get away with."

- Carole Mahoney, Unbound Growth

Forecasting Is Poised to Be Automated (Even More Time For Selling!)

Experts are predicting that there will be one process sales teams obsess over a bit less: forecasting. I have to admit I’m a bit leery that sales leaders will give up this accountability mechanism. But we all know this would be welcome news on the floor as forecasting is a usually a dirty word amongst salespeople. It’s time-consuming, rarely accurate, and generally not informative to the salesperson. Most importantly, it certainly doesn’t help the customer, especially when salespeople feel the pressure to close, close, close in order to meet their forecast.

"My hope is that in 2016, sales leaders will realize that obsessing over sales forecasts does nothing for buyers. Many companies spend a huge amount of resources micro-managing each salesperson’s pipeline so they can come up with forecasts of how many deals might close in a given month or quarter. The data generated gets filtered up to top management who then nitpick or ask questions that then get pushed back down the line to the individual reps. It’s an unproductive and never-ending cycle because buyers control the buying process, not you. Instead, focus on the buyers and their problems and let salespeople do their jobs without interfering and forcing them to enter ridiculous amounts of data into your systems."

- David Meerman Scott, Sales and Marketing Strategist and best-selling Author of 10 books including The New Rules of Sales and Service

"2016 is the year when the drudgery of sales forecasting is dramatically eliminated while at the same time sales performance is significantly improved. In this hyper-competitive market, sales leaders will have richer conversations in their forecast calls when they rely on machine learning and data science to cut the noise out and drive significant performance improvements across the entire organization -- by rep, manager, VP. Those who rely on gut and emotion to roll up a forecast will be left behind."

- K. V. Rao, Co-Founder and CEO of Aviso

"Several times per quarter, sales managers spin their wheels trying to roll up accurate sales forecasts. Nearly every manager does an 'eyeball adjustment' for every sales rep; that is, they adjust the number up or down depending on whether the rep is overly optimistic or pessimistic. In 2016, sales leaders will stop chasing their tails trying to make these adjustments. They will stop begging their reps to remove their own biases when entering CRM data or submit a 'commit forecast.' Instead, sales leadership will accept that rep data quality will always be far from perfect. Leadership will begin relying on the math and science of advanced analytics to decipher relevant information and build more credible insights from the less-than-perfect data. This will allow sales leadership to get more accurate forecasts and better productivity insights which will enable sales reps and their managers to close more deals."

- Jim Dries, CEO, piLYTIX

2016 Will Be the Return of Good Selling

It’s one thing to predict change. But in reality, change doesn’t happen quickly. Sales, as a profession, has been around for centuries. I recently purchased The Knack of Selling handbooks first published in 1917, and as I was reading them, it felt similar to many sales books I’ve read that were published within the last few years.

Regardless of whether you ascribe to the sales methodologies and techniques from Sandler Selling, SPIN Selling, Solution Selling, Customer Centric Selling, Miller Heiman, Dale Carnegie, Challenger Sale, or something else, good selling is good selling. Perhaps it’s time we all embrace it in our every interaction.

"In 2016, we will see a return to solution selling (or value selling, whatever fundamental selling process you prefer). Many SaaS companies have been able to get from point A to point B (or even C) without much actual fundamental selling. Marketing produces lots of leads, sales reps go right to the demo, drop a quote, and get deals. The volume is such that they don't care when deals fall in the garbage. They were able to get where they are without the basics of B2B selling -- using discovery to uncover pain and selling to that pain. For many veterans, this is an obvious practice but many companies could ignore it and still get to $50MM or even more. Now their market is more competitive or they have a more defined, targeted set of accounts to sell to. Increasing win rates requires a real selling methodology and the training and hands-on coaching of that methodology. You can call 2016 'back to the future.'"

- Craig Rosenberg, Co-Founder and Chief Analyst of TOPO Inc. and Editor of Funnelholic

"As companies race to develop new technology, better products, and the latest, greatest features, the ones that will succeed are those that recognize it’s not about them -- it’s about the customer. The days of relying on your product for competitive differentiation are over. Even if you come out with some groundbreaking feature, you have to realize your competitors have access to all of the same information on the internet that your prospects have. They will figure out how to either replicate the functionality or how to sell around it in very short order. The path to success in 2016 will be creating a superior buying experience for your prospects by focusing on helping them achieve their goals, solve their problems, and satisfy their needs. 2016 will be the year of using 'how' you sell as the true competitive differentiator."

- Frank Visgatis, Customer Centric Selling

"As we look ahead to 2016, we must recognize that buyers have evolved and so must we. Two key changes have occurred in the last few years that few salespeople have adapted to: prospects are getting much more comfortable with doing business over the phone, and buying decisions have been delegated to more people in the firm. So, in 2016, salespeople must get assertive over the phone and widen their networks within their target companies. Customers will have a greater appetite for larger purchases over the phone -- so your ability to negotiate and close deals over the phone will be critical. Also, many companies have flattened their organizational structure, so you’ll likely find fewer Directors and VPs and many more influencers and folks with purchasing power at the managerial level. This makes it more important than ever to have multi-threaded touchpoints across the organization. And, while these are some keys for the new year they are no substitute for the classics -- hard work, preparedness, and product knowledge."

- Jeff Hoffman, Sales Executive and Educator and Author of the award-winning "Why You? Why You Now™?" and "Your SalesMBA™" sales programs

"Companies need to make every prospective client feel like they already know their industry and their business. This starts when a company first markets their firm … and needs to carry all the way to close. Buyers tell us in our surveys that what they get from salespeople when they first meet with them is a lot of talk about the seller’s company -- and little knowledge of the buyer’s business. Salespeople are too quick to present instead of ask questions. They don’t explore ideas during first meetings; they just share past work. And they pitch versus listening. Even when they do uncover challenges, they don’t share examples of how they have dealt with similar challenges they’ve helped other clients overcome. Companies need to start thinking in client-centric terms by first developing content with their buyer in mind -- so they can begin to present an understanding of the prospective client’s business. And as salespeople move down the line towards close, they need to maintain this approach -- when responding with a proposal, answering an RFP, or pitching in person. Speak to prospect needs … don’t talk about yourself. This way, you’ll look different, sound different, and be different than the other firms who are still trying to 'pound down your client’s door.'"

- Mark Sneider, Owner/President, RSW/US | RSW/AgencySearch

Successful Salespeople Will Learn to Say No in 2016

And last, but certainly not least, a few experts suggested that we take some things off our list. Making meaningful changes is almost impossible if we don’t take a few things off our plates. So, as you plan out your strategic improvement areas for the year, make sure you take some things off your plate.

"It's Time to Say 'No' in Sales. When it comes to sales, most of us have been taught that we need to focus on doing particular activities such as identifying particular prospects or making certain types of sales in order to be successful -- AKA what we say 'Yes' to doing. However, there is an entirely different approach to sales. This approach is much more about what we say “No” to, rather than what we say “Yes” to. There are three types of activities you should say “no” to in the coming year: 1) Say “No” to non-paying tasks; 2) Say “No” to unqualified prospects (in a kind way) and move on; 3) Say “No” to tiny sales. I find that most under-performing salespeople waste their time on very small opportunities, whereas highly successful salespeople spend 100% of their focus on large sales opportunities. By saying “No” in sales, you will ultimately become more successful."

- Marc Wayshak, Self-Proclaimed Naysayer and Best-Selling Author of Game Plan Selling

"A better question is what are you no longer going to do in 2016? There's no room for new growth without vigorous pruning, so what bad habit, false metric, ineffective technique or ridiculous convention are you going to purge in 2016?"

- Blair Enns, Founder of Win Without Pitching and Author of The Win Without Pitching Manifesto 

"2016 will mark the beginning of the end of cold calling and cold emailing. My sales team does not prospect. Our marketing and product teams work together to acquire free users of our product who then raise their hand and literally book time in my sales rep’s calendars. As HubSpot has been reporting for years, the cost effectiveness of cold outreach pales in comparison to inbound generated leads. In 2016, more companies will team up their product, marketing, and sales teams to lower customer acquisition costs and accelerate growth."

- Mike Pici, Sales Manager, HubSpot Sales Division

Are You Ready to Sell in 2016?

As we kick off 2016, change is certainly afoot in the sales profession. Technology and the internet are enabling buyers to take more and more control over the sales process, making it hard for salespeople to not only differentiate and add value -- but even connect in the first place. Salespeople who don’t adapt will struggle to make quota, let alone help grow or sustain their companies.

But for the salespeople who learn and apply good selling, always do the right thing for the customer, strive to understand each buyer’s unique needs and interests, and use technology to be efficient, the future is bright. For sales organizations that use smarter sales technology to clear the way for salespeople to sell and sales managers to coach, that build better teams through improved hiring, leverage inbound marketing to attract prospects, and embrace the new entrepreneurial, thought leader salesperson, the future looks even brighter.  

To Good Selling in 2016
- Pete Caputa IV, VP Sales, HubSpot (@pc4media)

Influencer Marketing programs for B2B companies tend to focus on a handful of marketing objectives. The thing is, like many marketing focused investments, influencer marketing can yield many more benefits than the simple act of a famous person in your industry saying nice things about your product or brand.

When B2B companies focus on influencer marketing solely from a campaign perspective, they miss out on the need to maintain relationships. There’s a lot of competition for well known influencers and relationships can keep the connection strong in your brand’s favor.

The future of influencer marketing is bright and with business to business marketers, it’s even more important to include influencers in ongoing marketing because buyers are so self directed in the sales process and they trust experts more than brands (Nielsen).

Justifying resources to manage influencer relationships starts by fully understanding the value. Beyond advocacy, an influencer’s expertise, network reach and talent for creating content can be very valuable to marketing outside of campaigns.

To help you expand your view of what B2B influencers can bring to your brand, here are a few ways working with influencers can increase effectiveness and even reduce costs.

5 Influencer Marketing Tips for B2B Marketers

1. Marketing – From content co-creation used in online marketing programs to outright advocacy, the focus for most B2B influencer marketing is, logically, on marketing and customer acquisition. Rather than viewing influencers for stand alone campaigns, organize content in a modular way where one piece of the puzzle is “influencer”. Always consider with every content project whether it’s a blog post, a white paper or an event, where you can best incorporate relevant influencers from your industry. Just like you optimize content for keywords and consider which social and/or advertising channels it should be promoted on, you should also think about influencer activation.

Optimized, socialized, publicized and influencer activated – all should be on your content checklist.

Influencers can facilitate greater reach of your content, improve quality and some say influencer content can inspire more buyer engagement to leads and booked deals. Ongoing influencer involvement can also lead to organic advocacy of your brand, products and services.

Other marketing centric influencer engagement options include:

• Maintain an ongoing content partnership as contributors to your content hub (think outside the campaign)
• Survey influencers for opinions, ideas and insights
• Get feedback to optimize your influencer marketing efforts
• Nurture influencers into expanded roles as partners, employees or advisory board members

2. Public Relations – In between campaigns, maintaining relationships with influencers is essential. Including influencers as subject matter experts in contributed articles to industry publications is a great way to bring authority to your earned content and shine a light of exposure back to your influencer partners. Improving the credibility of content your brand publishes with industry websites, magazines and other publications can help achieve brand goals as well as improve the effectiveness of overall PR. Whether the value is from increased PR effectiveness or reduced PR agency costs is up to how you implement.

3. Recruiting – Competition for talent is greater than ever, so it’s important that companies create useful content for prospective employees who are self directing their journey to new opportunities by doing research. Influencer and success are pretty much synonymous, so connecting your talent acquisition efforts with influencer partners to share career advice as content is an “everybody wins” situation. Influencers get to share unique insights of high value for great exposure, candidates get useful advice and career inspiration and it all happens in the context of your brand’s content. Will you reduce recruiting costs because of influencer career advice content? It’s worth a try.

4. Customer Service – Smart marketers collect the questions customers often ask your support teams to gain insight into what’s important, trends and even product enhancements. Answering customer questions in an online knowledge base or FAQ can create some very search friendly content and take some of the load off email or phone support staff. Find some of the customer questions that would make sense for influencer subject matter experts to answer. Their contributions to content used in customer service can add credibility and a fresh (outside) perspective. This can be particularly useful when repurposed for marketing content.

5. Corporate Social Responsibility – Companies are increasingly taking social responsibility seriously and implementing programs. Ask your influencer community to participate in your CSR efforts where there are common interests either as an ambassador or in content co-creation. As with marketing, PR, recruiting and customer service, including influencers in these content efforts can add credibility and reach – hopefully increasing the effectiveness of your contributions and efforts.

As you can see, there are many ways that influencer relationships provide access to resources that a business can use to support a variety of objectives. Whether your company is just testing the waters with influencer marketing and isn’t sure where to start or your focus has been solely on campaigns, the 5 benefits above should provide you with multiple ways to engage in an influencer program. Keep in mind, your influencer program doesn’t have to be all about marketing – but inevitably, it can grow in to that when there is content co-creation involved.

Increasing effectiveness and in some cases, lowering costs, are all part of the realm of possibilities when working with influencers. The key is to maintain those relationships in a way that justifies your brand’s effort and creates value for participating influencers equally and satisfactorily.

If you have engaged influencers outside of marketing campaigns or in ongoing ways not mentioned above, please share in the comments.

Top image: Shutterstock

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In today’s wholesale environment, manufacturers and distributors are witnessing an innovation boom. With the advent of eCommerce, mobile sales applications, and other B2B technologies, retailers are beginning to expect a much more seamless ordering experience than that of years past.

Many sales reps in wholesale distribution are still writing orders using paper order forms and other old-school order entry systems like fillable PDFs and Excel Spreadsheets. Reliance on these manual order writing methods is becoming increasingly problematic in today’s digital, on-demand environment.

These traditional order entry systems invariably run the risk of human-error. Typos, illegibility, and misplaced order forms are just some of the risks inherent to manual order entry. Moreover, these order entry methods cost an enormous amount of time and money. When sales reps are in the field or at a trade show, handwriting orders on a form can be a tedious and time-consuming task; printing paper product catalogs is expensive, and they often quickly become outdated. These shortcomings preclude sales reps from providing superior customer service, which is a key differentiator for B2B companies.

Luckily, manufacturers and distributors now have access to a suite of new order entry systems for this new era of wholesale sales.

Mobile order writing software empowers sales reps in the field to enter type orders on smartphones and tablets, eliminating the need for manual order entry and re-entry. An ideal order entry system for today’s sales rep can not only enable sales reps to write orders faster, but also have those orders synced directly with back office systems once they’re written…

The syncing of information is not just an outbound action. Data from the back office––like product or pricing updates, new customer details, and inventory levels can by synced to sales reps’ mobile devices in the field. Mobile order writing software ensure sales reps have all the relevant information they need to go into a sales meeting.

These new order entry systems transcend traditional order writing methods through digital product catalogs that beautifully display products in high res images. Without a modern order entry system, sales reps usually have to rely on dull paper catalogs and a suitcase filled with samples to showcase their products. Now, sales reps in wholesale distribution can present their products as effectively as the retailers themselves. Leading order entry systems help deliver a branded experience that is consistent with other marketing channels, and custom branding features can allow sales reps to show off their brand’s logos and colors.

The adoption of mobile order writing software tells customers and competition alike that your brand is relevant and modern. Sales reps using new mobile sales order entry systems can take orders faster and more efficiently, while also reducing order processing costs. For manufacturers and distributors looking to maximize business on the road or at a trade show, new order entry systems can completely revolutionize the way they sell to customers.

China started 2016 with two mini stock market crashes and a 0.5% currency devaluation.

So it should come as no surprise that Charlene Chu, an analyst known the world over for making sense of China's complex shadow-banking system, has a grim outlook for the year.

Her reports are considered one of Wall Street's most valuable commodities. The latest is ominously titled "Something's Gotta Give."

From Chu's perspective, the something that must give in 2016 is going to have to be the Chinese yuan.  

With the country's economy slowing faster than they expected, and debt mounting rapidly, policymakers are running out of levers to pull to stimulate the economy. 

And that means the yuan is now in play.

"Where the CNY [Chinese yuan] will be by end-2016 is top of mind," Chu wrote in the January 4 note. "What we can say is that given China’s long list of economic challenges, it is hard to see how the CNY doesn’t become a more integral part of the playbook and weaken further from here."

A couple of things to unpack here. Why is the yuan in play? What plays might the government run? And of course, what could playing with the yuan do to China and the world at large?

Stand by.

Why the yuan?

Right now, China is wrestling with the difficulty of moving from an investment-based economy to one driven by consumer consumption. That means old drivers of its economy known as the secondary economy — like property and manufacturing — are slowing rapidly. They still make up 45% of the country's economy. 

They're growing at 1.2%.

Other sectors of the economy are not making up for this loss yet, so the government has to keep the secondary economy moving until they do. That's why, in August, the government devalued the yuan by 2% after a plummet in exports and scary signs from the labor market. 

The yuan then stayed stable for a period until the currency was accepted into an exclusive World Bank club of global reserve currencies at the end of November. Government figures showed that yuan-holders were keeping their currency despite the devaluation.

Then things went south, fast. 

As soon as the yuan got into the club it started to trend down. During the month of December the Chinese government spent $3.5 billion a day to stop it from falling even faster.

The yuan has continued its descent in 2016. The spread between the value of the onshore yuan, which is controlled by the government, and offshore yuan, which reflects the market's view of the currency, widened precipitously. 

Selling China

From London to New York City to Tokyo, the world kicked off 2016 by selling China.

That brings us to this week, when the Chinese government devalued the yuan and sent its stock market back into death-drop mode, triggering the country's now infamous circuit breaker and sending markets around the globe into a spin.

Thursday's plunge started after the government devalued the yuan by 0.5%. It was a sign to the world that, in order to keep its economy going, Chinese policymakers are willing to enter dangerous territory.

"In our view, a much larger move [in the yuan] than 2015’s 4.6% is likely over 2016-17, the size and timing of which will be driven by the degree of capital outflows and extent of deceleration in GDP growth," Chu wrote.

In other words, it seems clear now that the yuan must decline in value. The question now is how fast and by how much. There are two strategies, and neither of them is particularly comfortable.

First play

China can guide the currency down slowly, as it has been doing. That means the People's Bank of China must use its foreign exchange to buy yuan as yuan-holders find ways to get around some of the tightest capital controls in the world and sell.

There is some debate over how much of the central bank's foreign-exchange reserves can be spent on defending the currency.

Here is an excerpt from the Chu note (emphasis ours):

The questions for 2016 are whether the Chinese authorities have a level of foreign reserves that they don’t wish to breach; and, if so, what that level is, and what change in currency policy will take place if/when it is reached. We have seen only one figure publicly circulated, and that was USD3trn from a mainland academic. If that indeed is China’s line in the sand, there is a strong possibility this will be reached in 2016, with FX reserves at USD3.4trn at end-Nov and outflows averaging USD37bn/month in Oct-Nov.

This during a time when China really could use some cash on hand to deal with floundering industries drowning in debt. 

Second play

There is an alternative to hemorrhaging money to defend the yuan, and it's even been floated by PBOC advisers.

According to Reuters, those advisers are telling Chinese officials to allow a big one-off devaluation. Analysts at Bank of America Merrill Lynch think that after that, yuan-holders won't really have an incentive to sell, as the government will have set a bottom for the currency. 

Unfortunately that isn't appetizing for a number of reasons. Firstly, it's unclear where that bottom really is. What if the government devalues and the market doesn't agree? This is an inherent tension with China's quasi-free-market economy, and in this case it's a huge risk.

It's a risk not just economically, but also politically. Part of the reason investors put money in China, in fact, part of the reason China's society works, is because there's faith that the government can manage things — that it knows what it's doing.

From July to December 2015, the proportion of investors that have "low confidence" or "very low confidence" in the government's ability to handle the economy increased from 36.2% to 42.3%, according to an Autonomous poll included in Chu's report.

A big currency devaluation, followed by more yuan depreciation, would make people even more skeptical of the Chinese government's skill under pressure.

Hold fast

The way Chu sees it, this yuan depreciation isn't going anywhere fast. China's corporate-debt problem is being dramatically exacerbated by the fact that companies have too many goods and not enough demand for them domestically. A cheaper yuan can help sell those goods overseas.

For China that means a slow, careful, incredibly expensive march downward for the yuan. 

For the rest of the world this means one thing: volatility.

On Thursday we witnessed how an intentional currency devaluation — even a small one — can shake stock markets around the world. 

What could really start to rock the markets is what a depreciating yuan could do to China's neighbors and trading partners. In order to stay competitive, currencies close to China, like the Korean won and the Aussie dollar, could see the value in devaluing as well. 

It's a new year, this is new territory, and it's a new world.

Join the conversation about this story »

NOW WATCH: Why Chinese executives keep disappearing

This article originally appeared on Leopard.com 

Regardless of their industry, many clients come to Leopard because they’re struggling to get their Sales and Marketing teams on the same page. Or, in some cases, seemingly even on the same planet. While there may be numerous reasons why this gap exists, one thing is crystal clear—organizations that figure out how to bridge the gap hold a significant advantage in today’s hypercompetitive marketplace.

Sales and Marketing teams have different ways of reaching and interacting with existing customers and prospects. As they set about nurturing the rich relationships so pivotal in landing the customer’s business, they go through different channels, use different tools and means. As it should be.

The trouble starts when Sales and Marketing engage—usually unwittingly, occasionally not—in a virtual tug-of-war over the hearts and minds of customers. The messages and interactions customers receive can quickly become disjointed, inconsistent and even outright contradictory.

Thing is, your customers probably don’t know and certainly don’t care if they’re engaging with Sales or Marketing. They’re simply engaging with your brand. What they do care about is whether their interactions with your organization are relevant and satisfying… and that you deliver the kind of experiences that help them do their jobs and achieve their goals.

That’s why every interaction and every message they have with your brand—regardless of its origin—must remain utterly consistent and true to your brand’s promise and value. The simple fact is, to achieve the goals they both seek, Marketing and Sales need each other.

Take a quick example. Say you’re a B2B Marketing pro. You’re likely to be increasingly responsible for proving the ROI for your campaigns and other marketing activities. If your organization has a complex sales cycle and narrative that customers need to navigate before they’re ready to purchase, you’ll need Sales’ perspective on the results of your efforts: What did customers respond to most positively? Did they close the deal? How long did it take? After all, you can’t help fix what you don’t know is broken.

Conversely, as a Sales pro, you need Marketing’s insight on where your portfolio most likely converges with your customer’s needs. Then, put it to the test. When it seems off, don’t just say “That’ll never work.” Try it. And then communicate with Marketing to help them tune their efforts by identifying gaps and sharing where the insights and messages missed the target. By doing so, you can shorten the sales cycle and lower the cost of each deal.

So, how do you begin getting Marketing and Sales to get their shirt together? Here’s a few tips:

1. Meet regularly: Seems obvious, yet for many organizations, it rarely happens. And that’s a real missed opportunity to share results, exchange ideas…and to simply get to know each other, which is often the quickest way to build trust and accountability.
2. Integrate technology: A common challenge for siloed business units, using the same platform can make it far easier to hand off qualified prospects in a seamless manner. This is a boon for customers as well, who expect a single experience when dealing with your brand.
3. Ensure messaging consistency: Regardless of who is delivering it, your brand message must be the same. For Marketers, that means being flexible and open to feedback. For Sales, that means an end to creating your own materials—instead, tell Marketing what you really need and work with them create it.

The sooner you start, the sooner you’ll begin to see real results. And remember—Sales and Marketing are in this shirt together.

GerRee Anderson is a creative director at Leopard in Denver, Colorado.

Time and time again, you’ve been asked to prove the effectiveness and ROI of your organization’s marketing efforts–especially when it comes to email marketing. And email marketing is the king of the marketing kingdom with a 3800% ROI and $38 for every $1 spent.

But email marketing’s reach goes way beyond ROI, which is why we’ve assembled a massive list of 70 email marketing statistics every marketer needs to know.

Here, you’ll find data-backed email marketing stats on everything from email automation, mobile emails, to email personalization and more.

Email automation

1) Transactional emails have 8x more opens and clicks than any other type of email, and can generate 6x more revenue. – Experian

2) Revenue for B2B marketing automation systems increased 60% to $1.2 million in 2014, compared to a 50% increase in 2013. – VentureBeat

3) Email marketing technology is used by 82% of B2B and B2C companies. – Ascend2

4) 95% of companies using marketing automation are taking advantage of email marketing. – Regalix

5) 56% of companies currently use an email marketing provider and are 75% or more likely to be purchasers of marketing automation software over the next year. –VentureBeat

6) There were nearly 11x more B2B organizations using marketing automation in 2014 than in 2011. – SiriusDecisions

7) B2C marketers who leverage automation have seen conversion rates as high as 50%. – eMarketer

8) Automated email messages average 70.5% higher open rates and 152% higher click-through rates than “business as usual” marketing messages. – Epsilon Email Institute

9) In 2014, 70% of businesses were currently using a marketing automation platform or were implementing one. – Aberdeen

10) Over 75% of email revenue is generated by triggered campaigns, rather than one-size-fits-all campaigns. Automated email campaigns account for 21% of email marketing revenue. – DMA

11) As of 2013, 25% of Fortune 500 B2B companies had adopted email marketing automation. – ClickZ

12) Companies who send automated emails are 133% more likely to send relevant messages that correspond with a customer’s purchase cycle. – Lenskold and Pedowitz Groups

Mobile emails

13) About 53% of emails are opened on mobile devices. – Campaign Monitor

14) 23% of readers who open an email on a mobile device open it again later. –Campaign Monitor

15) 75% of Gmail’s 900M users access their accounts via mobile devices. –TechCrunch

16) Data for over 1.8 billion opens from campaigns sent in 2013 shows that mobile is the most popular environment for a subscriber’s first interaction with an email. –Campaign Monitor

17) From 2011 to 2013, email opens on mobile phones devices increased by 30%. –Campaign Monitor

18) The iPhone is the most common mobile device subscribers use to open their email for the first time. – Campaign Monitor

19) Though the number of new Internet users is growing at less than 10% per year, the number of new smartphone subscribers is growing at a 20%+ rate. –TechCrunch

20) Between the iPad, iPhone and iPod Touch, nearly 90% of all mobile opens occurred on an Apple device. *Note: Data is likely skewed by the fact that Apple devices display images by default (whereas many Android email clients don’t.) – Campaign Monitor

21) One out of every three clicks within an email occurs on a mobile device. – Campaign Monitor

22) It is more common for a reader’s second open to be on a mobile device than it is on a different device: 70% will stick with their mobile device, and 30% will go elsewhere. – Campaign Monitor

23) Mobile readers who open an email a second time from a computer are 65% more likely to click through. – Campaign Monitor

Email personalization

24) Personalized email messages improve click-through rates by an average of 14% and conversions by 10%. – Aberdeen

25) 74% of marketers say targeted personalization increases customer engagement. – eConsultancy

26) Only 39% of online retailers send personalized product recommendations via email. – Certona

27) Emails with personalized subject lines are 26% more likely to be opened. – Campaign Monitor

28) Personalized emails deliver 6x higher transaction rates. – Experian

29) 53% of marketers say ongoing, personalized communication with existing customers results in moderate to significant revenue impact. – DemandGen

30) Segmented and targeted emails generate 58% of all revenue. – DMA

31) 75% of enterprises will be investing in personalized messaging in 2015. –VentureBeat

32) Marketers have noted a 760% increase in revenue from segmented campaigns. – Campaign Monitor

33) Marketers see an average increase of 20% in sales when using personalized web experiences. – Monetate

34) 50% of companies feel they can increase interaction within email by increasing personalization. – Experian

35) Personalized promotional emails had 29% higher unique open rates and 41% more unique click-through rates in 2013. – Experian

Email engagement

36) You are 6x more likely to get a click-through from an email campaign than you are from a tweet.- Campaign Monitor

37) Email is 40 times more effective at acquiring new customers than Facebook or Twitter. – McKinsey

38) 81% of online shoppers who receive emails based on previous shopping habits were at least somewhat likely to make a purchase as a result of targeted email. -eMarketer

39) When it comes to purchases made as a result of receiving a marketing message, email has the highest conversion rate (66%), when compared to social, direct mail and more. – DMA

40) Email subscribers are 3 times more likely to share your content via social media than visitors from other sources. – QuickSprout

41) 72% people prefer to receive promotional content through email, compared to 17% who prefer social media. – MarketingSherpa

42) Including a call to action button instead of a text link can increase conversion rates by as much as 28%. – Campaign Monitor

43) Email marketing drives more conversions than any other marketing channel, including search and social. – Monetate

44) A message is 5x more likely to be seen in email than via Facebook. – Radicati

45) 4.24% of visitors from email marketing buy something as compared to 2.49% of visitors from search engines and 0.59% from social media. – Monetate

46) You are 6x more likely to get a click-through from email than via Twitter. – Campaign Monitor

Email ROI

47) Email marketing has an ROI of 3800%. – DMA

48) The average order value of an email is at least three times higher than that of social media. – McKinsey

49) 60% of marketers use conversion rates to evaluate an email’s effectiveness. – DMA

50) Nearly 1 in 5 companies (18%) reported an ROI of more than $76 in 2014, which is 3x more than 2013 figures (5%). – DMA

51) 246% of mid-sized companies using email marketing reported ROI across all respondents. – VentureBeat

52) Revenue per email was $0.11 in Q1 2014 compared to $0.10 in Q4 2013. –Experian

53) 29% of marketers look at ROI metrics to evaluate email effectiveness. – DMA

54) For every $1 spent, email marketing generates $38 in ROI. – Campaign Monitor

55) Emails triggered by behavior were responsible for 30% of revenue in 2014, up from 17% in 2013. – DMA

56) 77% of ROI comes from segmented, targeted, and triggered campaigns. – DMA

57) 50% of marketers anticipate their company’s spend on email to increase during 2015. – DMA

General email statistics

58) The total number of worldwide email accounts is expected to increase to over 4.3 billion accounts by year-end 2016. – Radicati Group

59) Employees spend 13 of their working hours each week in their email inbox (on average). – McKinsey & Company

60) 92% of online adults use email, with 61% using it on an average day. Those who were most likely to use email on a daily basis were those with a college degree or an income of

Every day you see literally thousands of different headings and titles. These include email subject lines, search engine results listings, blog titles and newspaper headlines, amongst many others. Almost all of the titles that you see, you ignore. Can you remember any titles you saw yesterday, out of the thousands that you read? Most of the titles we read are bland, boring and basic, to say the least.

However, the title of your blog post, or the subject line of your email, or the headline of your web page are amongst the first things people see. They are the handful of words that need to grab attention in a world of information overload. The titles you use are the most important aspect of your digital content. So, the question is, do you give them the amount of time, care and attention they deserve?

Learn from expert headline writers

Tabloid newspapers understand the importance of headlines. About a quarter of sales of newspapers are from “promiscuous readers” – these are people who swap and change newspapers depending on the headlines on the front page. They are attracted to buy a newspaper simply because of the front page headlines. As a result, getting the right headline has a considerable financial impact for the newspaper. You’ll find that a typical newspaper has one person who spent a couple of hours writing the front page story, but there was a team of people who spent more time on the headline than was invested in the article beneath it. Some tabloid newspapers employ individuals whose sole job is to spend the entire day coming up with the three or four words that will be the “splash” headline on the front. The newspaper owners know that investing significant resources in headline writing is money and time well-spent, as it pays off in attracting those “promiscuous readers”.

Online, though, we are all “promiscuous readers”. We search for something and click on any of the headings that attract us. Similarly, we scroll down our email inbox and pick out the things that entice us the most. Also, we flit from blog to blog, depending on the headings that we see.

Rather like newspaper headline writers, website owners and bloggers really ought to invest more time and trouble in writing the headings of their content, than on producing the material itself in the first place. Research shows that readers spend more time on the headlines than they do on the articles beneath them, so it makes sense to devote more of your efforts to writing titles than to the text beneath them. When you fire off an email, do you pay attention to the subject line as much as you should? After all, it is the only thing that people see in their inbox. Similarly, when you produce a new web page do you spend a long time crafting the right heading? That is what people will see in the search results listing, and if they are not attracted by those words, they will not click on them. Indeed, as the data integration company Bedrock Data recently demonstrated, you can even get people to focus on data by using the right report titles. Similarly, in a world when we are constantly bombarded with messages, we need to think about the wording we use in text messages, as shown in the article “Tips to make your texts more appealing than your customers.”

Three steps to great titles

The first thing to do in writing headlines or email subject lines is to devote the time you need. The more time you can spend on your titles, the better. Indeed, if you spend more time on the heading than on the content beneath it, you’ll get real benefits. You are not wasting time in doing this. So the first step is about attitude – realising that the heading or title of your content is more important than the content itself.

The second step is to consider all the words you might use. You will need your keywords, of course, but also those emotional words and the unusual words that are not common in everyday language. They stand out and make your heading more visible in an information-rich world. Emotional wording is also important – you need to trigger emotions in order to get engagement. Take a look at newspaper headlines and they will make you angry, happy, sad, titillated or fearful, for example; newspaper headline writers know instinctively how to trigger your emotions using the right words.

The third thing to do is to evaluate your headline. In newspaper offices, you will find the sub-editors constantly chatting to each other about their headline ideas, testing them out with each other. Talking to people around you can help, but there are also tools you can use to test out your titles to make sure they work well. One is the Emotional Marketing Value Headline Analyzer from the Advanced Marketing Institute. The other is the Headline Analyzer from CoSchedule. These tools give you a percentage score showing how effective your headline or subject line is going to be. (If you are interested, the heading on this article scores 37.5% as “emotional value”, which makes it the same kind of level as a top advertising copywriter. The title also scores 77% on overall analysis – putting it into the A+ category for web-based headings.)

You should not skimp on title creation and headline writing. It is probably now the most important aspect of digital marketing and content marketing because people spend most of their time skimming headlines. You need to stop them in their tracks and get them to engage with your content. That’s why you need to put at least as much time and effort into writing the titles as you do to producing the content.

2016 is here, we are now entering a new (content-filled) year! So what are you going to do to create better content? What steps will you take to succeed in writing?

The current question that is stumping marketers is “How do we actually produce more engaging content?”. In fact, a whopping 72% of B2B content creators will be tackling this problem for 2016!

Crafting high quality content should always go hand-in-hand with optimization techniques for your blog, but we encounter many whom still find it difficult to balance the two. You want your audience to love the tone, style, and value that your writing provides, but you also want to create far-reaching content that is optimized for SEO.

In just 3 steps, let’s find out how you can create content that is both engaging and optimized for search:

1. Find out what’s being discussed amongst your audience right now

When you’re trying to find out what really resonates with people, look at blog post comments and trending social media discussions. In forums, look for what your communities are discussing on sites like Reddit, Quora, and Triberr.

Analyze:

• The writer’s and commenter’s tone of writing
• The questions they’re asking
• How the author or community responds to these questions
• Articles embedded in that blog post

By learning what topics are being discussed and the tone of your audience, you will be able to grasp how you can approach topics for your blog. Relate first, and branch out when you’ve gotten the hang of what your audience likes to communicate with each other.

2. Research where and how you should be optimizing your post

It’s always a good reminder that you should never overload your blog post with keywords. Google sees this as spam. Instead, use one or two keywords, long-tail if possible, to establish yourself as a legitimate source of information for your audience.

Where keywords should be found:

• Near the beginning of your blog post’s meta description
• Near the beginning of your blog post title
• Appropriately throughout your body of content
• When naming your visuals that will be embedded in your article especially in the alt descriptions
• In the tags and category you blog post is classified under

When you’re promoting your blog post on social media, make sure to do research ahead of time. Search for that keyword’s popularity in text and hashtag formats. Simply typing it into tools like Twitter’s search bar; Buzzsumo, and Social Mention will show you the context in which your keyword is being used for on social media.

Ensure that your shared article is associated to relevant social media posts from your industry. You want your brand to be highlighted in the right way amongst the right people.

Pro Tip:

Curate a list of hashtags, calendar hashtag events/holidays, and buzzwords for every social platform you’re active on as a quick reference. Pull this material out when you’re making your social media posts.

3. Practice what you seek

Ask yourself why are you writing about this topic and where do you hope it gets read.

We’re all vying for more engagement from our readers. We all wish that we could get audience engagement down to a true science in hopes to create more effective content strategies.

This step requires you to now be the example for those just starting at step 1. With a published high-quality blog post floating amongst the social media world and possibly a few inboxes, you should now share your experiences and interact with others in your online groups. Seek feedback and contribute to conversations or even start your own.

Your audience cares about seeing the person behind the content. They want to know if you’ve really read their work and are able to provide an honest opinion about it.

It’s always good practice to give back if you’ve found value in other people’s work.

Final Thoughts

The art of crafting content both high in quality and optimized for SEO continues to shift as Google and people continue to change the way we interact with content online. As these algorithms become more intelligent, this separation diminishes, but the search for content that we genuinely connect to will always stay the same.

What are some trends you’re seeing amongst the content marketing world? Leave your thoughts in the comments and share!

The latest round of tensions between Iran and Saudi Arabia is unsettling what little is left of the Middle East's regional order.

Saudi Arabia's execution of the country's most prominent Shi'ite cleric on January 2nd triggered the apparently state-sanctioned burning of Saudi diplomatic facilities in Tehran and Mershad, a breach of international order that in turn resulted in Saudi Arabia cutting ties with their Persian Gulf neighbor.

Luckily, in the past Saudi Arabia and Iran have demonstrated at least a limited ability to keep their animosity in check.

The countries didn't go to war when an Iranian plot to assassinate the Saudi ambassador to the US at an upscale Washington, DC restaurant was revealed in 2011. It's unclear what if any long-term impact the latest series of incidents will have.

But they're likely to have one lasting effect, a political development that could tangibly shift hte terms of the Middle East's sectarian divide. 

On January 4th, Sudan announced that it was also severing diplomatic ties with Iran. This move denied Iran of its sole Sunni Arab ally, undercutting the Tehran regime's argument that Iran's Islamic revolution is capable of transcending sectarianism and uniting the world's Muslims.

More practically, the freeze in relations also closes off the Red Sea port of Port Sudan to Iranian warships and weapons shipments, takes away a staging area for Iran's regional arms pipeline, ends a partnership with a fellow revolutionary Islamist regime, and flummoxes whatever remained of Iran's efforts to win over potential supporters in the Sunni world.

 The relationship between Iran and Sudan stems from the National Islamic Front's elevating to power after the 1989 military coup in Khartoum, an event that marked the first instance of a revolutionary Islamist movement taking power in an Arab country.

Over the next decade, Sudan's government sheltered Osama bin Laden, attempted to assassinate the anti-Muslim Brotherhood Egyptian dictator Hosni Mubarak, and tried to impose Islamic law throughout what was then the territorial ly largest country in the African continent.

Even if these measures turned Sudan into an internationally sanctioned rogue state, they created an opportunity for a partnership with a fellow revolutionary regime in Tehran, which had been the world's only revolutionary Islamist government between 1979 and 1989.

The relationship paid off: Iran provided Sudan with weaponry and expertise that allowed the country to set up a fairly extensive domestic arms industry, giving it the capability of building its own automatic weapons, rocket launchers, and even tanks.

The Sudanese regime lost many of it its Islamist trappings. The Islamic Movement changed its name to the National Congress Party (NCP) in the late 1990s and began evolving into a somewhat more conventional dictatorship in hopes of improving the country's economy and relations with the west. 

But Sudan maintained close ties with Iran. International isolation over the government's conduct in wars in Darfur and South Sudan gave Sudan the added incentive to deepen ties with a fellow sanctioned regime. Iran and Sudan completed a military cooperation agreement in 2008, while the Sudanese military has deployed Iranian-built drones in both Darfur and the south of the country. The two governments were allies through 2014.

That began to change as the NCP began to faced steep financial crisis — and as Saudi Arabia began mobilizing the Sunni Arab states against Tehran.

The NCP, which is still under international sanctions related to the Sudanese government's human rights abuses in Darfur, had faced a prolonged economic drought after the southern third of the country became the independent state of South Sudan in 2011. Khartoum and South Sudan failed to reach a durable compromise over the post-independence split of South Sudanese oil revenues (the oil's export is dependent on an oil transit infrastructure in the north of Sudan). Oil from the south had previously constituted nearly the entirety of Sudanese government revenue. 

At the same time, the Middle East ignited. The escalating conflict in Syria sharpened the region's sectarian divisions, and events like the Yemeni civil war and the thaw in Iran-US relations heightened the competition between Riyadh and Tehran.

These tensions raised made a potentially swing state like Sudan even more important.

As Alberto Fernandez, current Vice President at the Middle East Media Research Institute and the Charge d'Affaires at the US embassy in Khartoum from 2007 to 2009 explained to Business Insider, amid both domestic and regional turmoil the increasingly pragmatic regime in Khartoum began to realize that its survival depended more on Saudi largess than on its relationship with Iran.

 "These guys have been in power now for 26 years," Fernandez says of the NCP. "They're no longer the revolutionaries that they were. They're now a regime that wants to hold onto power. And in that sense they were fruit ripe for the plucking by the Saudis."

The thaw culminated in Sudan's March 2015 decision to join the Saudi-led anti-Houthi rebel coalition in Yemen, which is fighting to restore Yemen's internationally recognized government after an Iranian-supported Shi'ite militant movement deposed it in early 2015.

By that point, the NCP had determined that the Saudis had the unrivaled resources and willingness to secure the regime's long-term survival. "The Saudis can still outbid the Iranians," says Fernandez. "The Iranians have technical expertise and other things they can offer, but they're not swimming in cold hard cash the way the Saudis are." 

The move has strategic implications for Iran. Sudan's partnership was more than just a symbolic victory for Iran, 0r a sign that the the Islamic Republic's state ideology was capable of resonating with Sunni Arab Islamists too. It also gave Iran a strategic way-point for weapons trafficking into both the Gaza Strip and Central and East Africa. 

Sudan was a frequent staging area for Iranian weapons shipments heading north, to Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad in Gaza. Sudan gave the Iranian arms industry, and the Iranian regime, access to regions of strategic and possibly commercial concern. Suspected Israeli attacks targeted Hamas weapons shipments or facilities in Sudan in 2009, 2011, and 2014. And as a 2012 study by Conflict Armaments Research detailed, Iranian munitions have been found throughout Africa, in places spanning from South Sudan to Cote D'Ivoire. 

Iran also helped seed a Sudanese domestic weapons industry purported to be the third-largest in Africa, behind only Egypt and South Africa. According to a 2014 Small Arms Survey report, Iran owns a 35% stake in the Yarmouk industrial facility in Khartoum, which is believed to produce artillery, rocket launchers, and military-grade firearms.

Iran's Yamrouk investment hasn't been cost-free for the Sudanese regime: in October of 2012, the Israeli air force attacked the site, likely in order to destroy Iranian-supplied long-range rockets bound for Hamas in the Gaza Strip.  Yarmouk was also cited in a 2006 US diplomatic cable published by WikiLeaks for its alleged connection to activities "that have the potential to contribute materially to WMD, missile, or certain other weapons programs in Iran or Syria."

As the Small Arms Survey recounts, Sudanese weapons factories produce a range of armaments, including light weaponry and small rocket launchers of Iranian design. Sudan has flown military drones of Iranian origin, and Patrick Megahan, a research associate for military affairs at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, noted in an email to Business Insider that Sudan's state weapons enterprises had exhibited "a copy of an Iranian remote weapons station" at an international defense exhibition in Abu Dhabi in early 2015.

Emile Lebrun, the editor of the Small Arms Survey's Human Security Baseline Assessment for Sudan and South Sudan, speculates that Iranian assistance "was already very limited before the Yemen campaign was underway."

But it's still "unclear," he wrote to Business Insider in an email, "whether the Iranian technicians working in the Sudanese arms factories (some hundreds of workers, according to reports) can be replaced with local specialists."

Sudan's value as a strategic asset to Iran, and Iran's role in helping Sudan establish a domestic arms production capability, suggest that the relationship between the two countries may continue in some more muted, sub-official form. There might be some enduring (if informal) cooperation between officials from the two countries regarding weapons trafficking or continued Iranian involvement in the arms sector.

"My sense is that we're going to see Sudan inch away from Iran but Iran will maintain lingering assets in the country whether Sudan likes it or not," says Jonathan Schanzer, vice president of research at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies.

But on the geopolitical level, Saudi Arabia was able to ply away Iran's only Sunni Arab ally — a country that enjoyed longstanding military and strategic ties with Tehran. 

"It looks like the Saudis have outmaneuvered the Iranians," Schanzer told Business Insider. "They pulled a proxy out from under Iran's wing." 

SEE ALSO: We just got the latest sign Saudi Arabia is worried about the future

Join the conversation about this story »

NOW WATCH: These are the biggest risks facing the world in 2016

Sometimes you have to be clever to get the conversions that you are looking for. Not only are you competing with those who sell similar products as yours, you are also being forced to compete with products that are entirely different. For this reason, developing some clever conversion optimization tactics is necessary.

But, with all the wonderful ideas that are already out there, how do you start fresh? This is where you have to really get creative. Luckily, you have us to do some of the hard work for you. Check out these tactics that are sure to get you a few more conversions.

Go through the Process yourself

Have you actually ever sat down and looked at what your customers go through when they are making a purchase from you? The chances are high that you haven’t. There is actually some pretty significant value in this process, however.

For starters, you will get first-hand knowledge on what your customers are seeing. Pay close attention to the shopping and checkout processes. Customers should be able to quickly move from one screen to the next, find products that normally go together and breeze through the checkout process. If you end up having to go through too many steps, you probably need to rethink the process. Keep in mind that your customers are more likely to abandon their cart if they have to go through too many steps.

Make your Actions Stand Out

What are you trying to get your customers to do? The answer to this question could vary from one company to the next. For some, it’s signing up for a newsletter. For others, it’s downloading an EBook. Whatever the action you are looking for them to take, you need a way for them to take it.

This means you must have a button to get them to do what you want them to do. One of the best ways to increase the amount of conversions revolves around this button. Surprisingly, just by changing the color of the button, you are able to increase the number of conversions that you see from this single button.

That’s actually an extremely simple way to get some more conversions. The best color for your button depends on the color scheme of your page. The important thing to remember is that it should contrast with the main color scheme. This will help it to stand out and cause more people to click on it.

Play on their Emotions

Psychology definitely plays a huge role in how we react to the world around us. It is also something that can greatly affect our purchasing decisions. Studying up on psychology is something you can do to learn more about your target market.

The idea is to get inside the heads of your shoppers. Learn what makes them tick; where their emotions lie. Having access to this information is similar to dangling a carrot in front of a rabbit. It will get them moving!

Some of the world’s best advertisers are able to maximize profits simply by playing to people’s emotions. Why is this a successful venture? Because people are able to relate to the brands and products you are offering. They feel as though your products share their same priorities, morals and values and are more likely to trust in you than a competitor because of this.

Use First Person Language

First person language is more personal than any other type of language. It shows that you are an actual person rather than a machine. In the end, your customers will feel more comfortable shopping with a person instead of a machine, even though they are shopping online.

Using first person is something you should do throughout your website. You’re likely to find that these results are pretty amazing. Others who have tried this out have found that they are able to raise their conversion rates between 30 and 90 percent. These numbers are pretty significant considering all you’ve done is change the wording a little.

Research shows that this type of language helps to stimulate mental interaction with your customers. This causes the person to have a better opinion of the thing you are trying to get them to do. They are also able to envision themselves actually completing the action, which helps encourage them even more. With this type of wording, your customers will be able to see the value that your call to action offers them and will be more likely to take action.

Don’t Leave!

Naturally, you aren’t going to be able to capture everyone’s attention. Instead, you are going to have those who visit your page for a few minutes and leave without taking any action at all. There’s still something you can do to stop these people.

When a person attempts to leave your page, prompt them again. Instead of simply allowing the page to close, add a pop-up that will remind them what they are missing out on. For example, if you have a free newsletter, give them the option to receive it easily from your pop-up. For the most part, you should have a simple statement regarding what you are offering along with an easy way to sign up for the offer.

These are just a few of the cleverest ways other companies have found to be helpful at increasing conversion.

The Aberdeen Group recently released a report on Why Sales Enablement is a Must Have. Aberdeen’s research discovered that 60% of best-in-class organizations have a formal competency to ensure that marketing has extensive visibility into the sales team’s utilization of content. Sales Enablement is no longer a trend. Organizations have dedicated roles for ensuring that sellers have the right content, tools and resources at each stage of the buyers’ journey while improving the customer experience and optimizing seller efficiency for closing deals and driving revenue.

Why you need to act now on sales enablement:

1. Buyers no longer respond to one size fit all content and approach – Align content to key stages of the buyer journey, creating a personalized experience that will increase win rates.

2. Sellers can’t win without marketing – Marketing makes it easier for sellers to access, personalize and deliver content at the right time, with the right message, improving customer engagement.

3. Productivity of sellers is decreasing – Sales cycles have increased 24%. Sellers are spending too much time on non-selling related activities. Implement a sales enablement tool to increase efficiencies and maximize the time sellers spend selling.

4. Marketing is taking on a sales quota – Historically, 65% of marketing content goes unused. Marketers will need to align with sales to optimize their content investments, focusing on creating content that gets in front of customers and effectively drives revenue.

5. Everything must be measured – Sales enablement technology provides an ability to measure and analyze actual results to inform future deals, increasing customer retention rates by 14%.

Companies investing in sales enablement are experiencing shorter sales cycles, increased win rates and the ability to continuously monitor results to understand the impact.  How will you sustain growth in 2016 without a sales enablement strategy?

For a deeper dive on sales enablement and improving sales effectiveness, download Building a World-Class Sales Team.

Originally published on Lenati.com

2016 has been a nightmare for stocks. 

In the first five trading days of the year the benchmark S&P 500 fell about 6%, its worst-ever 5-day start to a year.

This was also the index's worst since 2011. 

And while we're now more than three weeks removed from the Federal Reserve's decision to raise interest rates for the first time since 2006, it's this decision that is at the heart of this stock market decline. 

The rate hike itself— that is, the mechanics of actually raising interest rates via increased repo and deposit rates — is not what's bothering markets.

The stock market, we need to keep in mind, is a forward-looking place. Investors buying stocks are buying pieces of businesses at a certain price in exchange for a future claim on that company's profit. And any uncertainty about that future is likely to make investors pause before putting more money at risk. Since the Fed raised rates on December 16 the S&P 500 is down 7.3%. 

The first question following the Fed's December rate hike was: "When's the next one?" The second question: "Will the Fed be forced to cut rates before raising them next?"

And this uncertainty — and perceived risk that the Fed may have gotten this whole thing wrong — is what currently has markets spooked. 

The big story this week was the stock market chaos we saw in China.

Twice this week the country's benchmark CSI 300 index was halted for the day after a 7% drop. These trading halts and instability came as China continued to fix the yuan — which is pegged to the US dollar — lower. 

Also weighing on stocks was the continued decline in oil prices, which fell to a 14-year low on Thursday as West Texas Intermediate crude, the US benchmark, fell as low as $32.10 a barrel. 

But these two issues can both be traced back to the financial stress that is either being caused or anticipated by a regime change from the Federal Reserve. 

In a note to clients earlier this week, Michael Hartnett at Bank of America Merrill Lynch wrote that a tightening of financial conditions from the Fed often causes market "events."

Hartnett wrote (emphasis ours):

The FOMC is raising rates, credit spreads are rising, and the US dollar is appreciating. The US economy is experiencing a considerable tightening of monetary conditions. Should strong US consumer spending allay fears of Quantitative Failure, all will be well — hence the importance of Friday's payroll. If not, look for both equity and credit markets to reset lower until such time as the Fed says (even if temporarily) "pause." Fed tightening is almost always associated with "events," and markets have a habit of forcing policy reversals (e.g. Fed 1937, BoJ 1995, BoJ 2000).

Now, there's a bit of a chicken-or-egg discussion to be had with respect to how Hartnett phrases the Fed's relationship to markets. 

The idea that the Fed is the cause for financial events rather than a follower developments in markets which prompt a certain policy response, i.e. raising rates, is up for debate. But that the Fed's changes in policy occur at "ground zero," as it were, of distinct moments in financial markets is not a question: big Fed changes happen near things that shake markets. 

The question markets are trying to but of course can't answer right now — because you can't know the future — is whether is one of those "events."

On Friday, the December jobs report showed the US labor market continues to improve as the unemployment rate remains at a post-crisis low and wage growth is at a multi-year high. The US economy, on the whole, appears to be still be on solid footing. 

But financial markets are very obviously not assured. 

In a Friday afternoon email, Dave Lutz at JonesTrading passed along the laundry list of things traders were discussing late Friday as markets nose-dived into the close. 

There was vague talk of perhaps a surprise policy change from the People's Bank of China over the weekend, concerns about earnings reports from big US banks which will start rolling in next week, and a complete absence of buyers for almost anything related to oil. 

Additionally, Lutz noted that investors pulled money from financial assets at the fastest pace since September last week. Those previous withdrawals followed the late-August stock market chaos that forced the Fed to hold off raising interest rates in September. As Lutz wrote: "With all these pundits calling for the end of the world, the retail investor has only withdrawn." 

But underneath all this is the fact that the norms investors grew accustomed to — namely, hand-holding from central banks — are changing. 

This is a new world for markets. 

And no change is bigger, matters more, or is more uncertain than what the Fed does next. 

SEE ALSO: Stocks have worst week since 2011

Join the conversation about this story »

NOW WATCH: Why Chinese executives keep disappearing

Why Your Marketing Department Needs a New Marketing Plan and Marketing Budget — and Some Templates to Get You Started

Managing a marketing department often means having to prove that your marketing budget is money well spent. Since the ROI of marketing isn’t always obvious, it can be easy to get caught up in the never-ending cycle of reacting to analytics and reports. Chasing visitors, followers, subscribers, leads and sales can become a game of chasing fleeting metrics instead of thoughtfully executing a plan to accomplish the big-picture goals of your marketing department.

Download Expert Member resource – Marketing budget spreadsheet template

This Smart Insights budgeting spreadsheet template has been created to provide a comprehensive checklist of modern marketing activities you need to budget for including managing digital experiences (mobile and web), content marketing-led campaigns and traditional offline channels.

Access the Marketing budget spreadsheet template

This is a problem that can be solved with two vital documents: a structured marketing plan and a marketing budget. In this post, I'll outline the approach we recommend for creating a budget, but first to prompt action here's the answer to that question at the top of article - how does your sales and marketing spend compare to these businesses?

How Much of Your Overall Budget Should You Spend On Marketing?

If you’re wondering how much of your company’s overall budget you should be aiming to allocate to Sales and Marketing, you might want to see how the biggest publicly-traded companies invest according to their annual reports:

Source: Infographic - percent of annual budget invested in marketing sales

The Marketing Plan: Establish Goals, Assess Your Brand, Get Top-Down Buy-In

Let’s now look at your marketing plan. Your marketing plan should be revisited every year — seriously revisited, not just a cursory update of dates to fit the present year. This marketing plan, informed by and aligned with your company’s overall goals, lays the foundation for your budget. A strong marketing plan translates to an effective marketing budget that ensures that those goals are being well served.

These two documents should be what drives your marketing team’s daily tasks, not reaction to momentary up-ticks and down-ticks in various metrics.

Writing your marketing plan involves establishing goals for the coming year, doing competitor research and deciding which tactics you’ll be focusing on to grow your company that year.

Take a look at how your brand is portrayed across all iterations — is it consistent? If there are inconsistencies in branding, that might be where you need to allocate some of your budget going into the next year. What about your email marketing — when was the last time you audited your email lists? These are the types of questions you’ll face when you go through a thorough review of your marketing plan. Need a head start? Here’s a full guide to writing your marketing plan.

An important element in finalizing your marketing plan is getting company leadership on board, from the top down, and including input from other departments. In a Kissmetrics article on building an effective marketing department, Chloe Gray stated, “For most companies, a truly good marketing strategy is one that integrates marketing into other key departments like sales, product development and human resources.” You’ll have a better chance of getting buy-in from everyone if you incorporate input and feedback into your plan from the beginning.

Marketing Budget: Get a Template, Customize Your Categories, Track Your Progress

Once your marketing plan is established and you have buy-in from key company stakeholders, you’ll be ready to get into specifics of your budget. Using your marketing plan as a guide, allocate your budget for each area of your marketing department and then break it out by month.

Depending on the size of your marketing department and how your company structures budgets, your marketing budget may or may not include personnel costs such as salaries for your marketing team. Regardless, you’ll want to take into account not only obvious things such as website redesigns, new business cards and advertisements, but also digital marketing tools, event promotion and public relations.

The question of how your team should spend its time should be a direct reflection of your marketing budget breakdown. Break down your monthly totals into weekly hours and daily game plans. Keeping track of your hours in this way will ensure that your time is being spent in service of company goals and departmental goals — which you’ve already ensured your company leadership has agreed upon. Nice job.

Following this goals-first, strategic approach to your marketing budget, your marketing department will be well-positioned for a successful year.

Source: Vital Design

Crystal Paradis focuses on content strategy and inbound marketing at Vital Design. In addition to managing all Vital communications, she consults with Vital’s clients on website content strategy, copywriting, call-to-action and conversion strategy, blogging best practices, inbound marketing best practices and brand voice. For more content strategy and marketing advice, follow @Vital_Design.

With a recent survey indicating that 77% of companies increased their digital marketing budgets – up from 71% on the previous year – and trends indicating further rapid growth in 2016, competition for B2B visibility is increasing significantly.

And what this means in terms of gaining competitive high ground in crowded B2B markets is the application of stand-out techniques in both new and existing B2B marketing channels. So what do these stand-outs look like in developing market share in 2016?

01. More sophisticated content marketing strategies

In B2B marketing content is key. That is because B2B audiences do detailed online research, and have a good grasp of their chosen subject at the outset of that research, so are very demanding and discerning recipients when served relevant content.

This means that your 2016 content strategy must offer a clearly defined storyline over the entire year with detailed, accurate technical information that is directly aligned with the commercial reasons for considering and purchasing your products and services.

02. Driving content marketing with marketing automation

More sophisticated and engaging content marketing will deliver significantly greater prospect and customer engagement if it is communicated to recipients through an organised marketing communications system that offers this as part of the prospect or customer sales journey.

This means that the content now has a dynamic, and is therefore explicitly designed to lead the prospect or customer to a sale – and as prospects are categorised according to their level of interest, so the served content may be segmented and streamed to reflect interests and aspirations.

03. Lead conversion optimisation

Simply put, lead generation – driving prospects and customers to content on your website – is an important part of market development and revenue generation but converting leads to sales, and then retaining those leads as loyal customers is a whole different story.

Client-side marketers with clear strategic vision will aim to build on lead conversion performance and take it to the next level through creating content that continues to deliver prospect and customer engagement and nurtures leads, creating solid prospect relationships.

04. Personalisation and interactive communications

The use of a more sophisticated content marketing strategy, introducing a marketing automation platform, and optimising lead conversions – if appropriately implemented by your digital vendors – will generate a considerable amount to prospect and customer personal data.

This valuable data will tell you a lot about your prospects and customers and allow you to build highly accurate buyer personas, meaning you will know enough about them to communicate in a more personal way, meeting their needs for information and guidance on the sales journey.

05. Social media and search optimisation

LinkedIn has grown massively in recent years as a B2B networking tool, and if you are a B2B services business, your prospects are likely using LinkedIn to research and identify potential consultants and vendors.

But even if your prospects and customers are not significant social media users, Google uses social signals in algorithms for calculating search engine rankings and therefore social media will be used to boost rankings and therefore search visibility.

Reaching out and driving B2B prospect interactions

This five point strategy will allow you to develop, nurture, engage and convert prospects and customers in the year ahead. But first you’re going to need to find them. Will online advertising do that?

Well no, because ad-blocking is still a major obstacle here and as an issue, blocking is likely to become more of a significant barrier in the year ahead.

The best options for attracting leads in 2016 will be – in order of effectiveness – native advertising; LinkedIn, and Facebook Click to Website ads with call-to-action buttons; Google Customer Match which allows you to upload a list of contacts and target them through search. This feature is also available on Facebook and Twitter, and is effectively making search and social work more like email marketing.

Key to survival for 2016

But what is really going to matter in the year ahead is quality. Starting with the quality of your marketing strategy; through the quality of your marketing content, to the quality of your prospect engagement and customer retention and loyalty performance.

This post was originally published on the Novacom blog.

Even in the years before the term had been officially coined, the tactics of inbound marketing were being used largely by businesses attempting to connect with potential customers. It was, in other words—and has been for some time since—largely a B2C (business to consumer) marketing strategy. It involved educating potential customers about the benefits of your product or service by delivering useful, high-quality educational content.

The goal, of course, was—and still is—to drive engaged customers deeper into a company’s sales funnel, and to develop a relationship in which products or services with substantially high price points would be delivered on a regular basis.

Especially for B2C companies, the inbound marketing technique is one that has proven especially successful in today’s always-online world—one in which consumers are increasingly heading to the Internet and conducting their own independent research before making a purchase.

No wonder the popularity of inbound has exploded so ferociously over the past few years. Regardless of whether your company sells living room furniture, lawn mowers, or nearly any other sort of considered purchase, providing free, educationally useful information to the very people who are looking for the products or services you sell is essentially a can’t miss.

But let’s say you operate or own a B2B (business to business) company. Is inbound marketing still a viable option for you? In a word: absolutely. Frankly, it doesn’t much matter if your company sells directly to consumers or to businesses—the inbound marketing process works the same way. If it’s done right, it also tends to have very similar results, regardless of whether you’re operating in the B2C or B2B space. Here’s why:

• Today, a businessperson in search of a particular solution is really no different than a consumer in search of a particular solution. Both will almost certainly begin looking for their respective solution online, by using search engines like Google and Bing, and by taking advantage of the opinions and suggestions of their peers and colleagues on social media sites like LinkedIn and Facebook. Only after the information they’ve gleaned through search engines and social media sites have led them to settle on, say, two or three potential solutions, will they search out an actual salesperson to speak with.

• According to a CEB study in which over 1,400 B2B customers were polled, 57% of a purchase decision is made before a customer even considers speaking with an actual human supplier. And according to recent research conducted by Inside.com, 50% of all sales go to the vendor who responds to a potential customer’s pain points first.

What does that mean for your B2B organization? Simply put, it means that if a customer discovers your content online and consumes it before he discovers the content created by your competitors, you have a one in two chance of eventually winning that person’s business. Those sounds like pretty good odds to us.

If you handle marketing operations of any sort for a B2B concern, we’re guessing that all of this will lead you to ask a rather specific question: How exactly should a B2B company create an inbound strategy that attracts qualified leads and actually results in real, ongoing sales? The following is a slightly condensed outline of the process we at IQnection use when developing inbound campaigns for our own B2B clients:

1. Produce useful, high-quality content that will answer whichever questions your prospects are most likely to have. Publish that content online—generally in the form of a blog post—and then promote those posts and articles heavily through whichever social media sites your prospects are most likely to frequent.

2. Google is particularly fond of websites that are updated frequently with fresh content, as long as that content is of a certain level of quality. So continue publishing as many quality blog posts and informational articles as possible. Over time, your site will rise in the search engine rankings, which will give your content a much better chance of being spotted first by customers in search of a solution to their problems.

3. Once you’ve managed to attract the attention of qualified customers, you’ll want to keep those relationships going. How? By creating premium content that addresses customers’ concerns in specific, in-depth detail. “Premium content,” by the way, refers to products like whitepapers, guides, and e-books.

4. At this stage, you’ll want to secure your premium content behind forms that require, at a minimum, a name and email address. That way, you’ll be able to follow up with even more premium content offers. You can assume that those customers who continue to download the majority of your premium content are more interested in buying than those customers who’ve only shown interest once or twice.

5. Once they do decide to make a purchase, there’s a good chance (a 50% chance, according to the previously mention research conducted by Inside.com) that they’ll turn to the provider who first supplied them with the information they needed to become educated, and to make a buying decision. If you’ve executed your inbound strategy properly, that provider, of course, will be you.

There’s a lot more that goes into a professional-level inbound marketing strategy than the techniques we’ve outlined for you here. Regardless, we hope this article has at least given you a few valuable ideas with which to get started.

Best-in-class sales organizations have a defined sales process that’s aligned with how its customers buy. As a result, their salespeople are able to judge where they are within the sales cycle by what the customer is saying or doing, not by “gut feel” or anecdotal evidence.

If you want to grow your sales organization, you need a sales process that provides the tools to manage, reinforce, and inspect.

Whether you want to increase your average sales price, improve the reliability of your forecast or increase your cross-sell opportunities – your sales process needs to align with your buyer, be consumable for your sales team and drive results. Having a defined sales process drives efficiency throughout the company and provides value for the customer. Here’s why:

What benefits does the CUSTOMER receive by the company having a defined sales process?

• It creates a level playing field for other vendors.
• They can make an objective and informed decision on their best-fit solution.
• They ensure your organization is solving the right problems.

What benefits do SALESPEOPLE receive by having a defined sales process?

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

What benefits does SALES MANAGEMENT receive by having a defined sales process?

• Pipeline visibility
• Qualification standards
• Common language/definitions
• Quicker time-to-productivity
• Predictable operating rhythm

What benefits does EXECUTIVE MANAGEMENT receive by having a defined sales process? 

• Insight to revenue
• Margin preservation
• Long-term analytics
• More efficient use of resources
• Predictable operating rhythm

The first step towards improving your sales process is to assess where you are now. Here‘s a list of questions to ask about your organization. Work back from what’s most important to your customer and you’ll improve deal velocity, qualify your deals with more predictability and most importantly, develop a system your sellers will use effectively.

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.

Do you have content for your sales pipeline?

Yes, content should fuel marketing but it should also fuel sales.

Whether you’re creating snackable content for easy consumption or “heavy” content for persuading peeps to buy from you, your content marketing goals should align with sales.

In 2016, make it a goal to have your content grow from snackable social bites to a full meal — and get those prospects through the funnel!

Here are three types of content that will help you do that.

Your Sales Pipeline

Whether you’re a solopreneur or you have a sales team, the sales pipeline gives a step-by-step look at how your potential customers are converted into actual customers.

For example, a new opportunity may fall into your lap, so you try and figure out what they’re looking for and if they’re qualified.

If they are a good candidate for your product or service, you’d begin nurturing them, or teaching them about the benefits of your services, and how you can solve their pain points.

From there, you’d give a demo or a proposal, and after the proposal review and consideration, you’d either win or lose the sale.

Infusionsoft has a unique and powerful way of describing the sales pipeline; they call it the Customer Lifecycle.

Here’s how they see things unfolding in the buying process:

[Image source: Infusionsoft]

According to the Customer Lifecycle, the sales pipeline has seven steps:

1. Attract Traffic
2. Capture Leads
3. Nurture Prospects
4. Convert Sales
5. Deliver & Satisfy
6. Upsell Customers
7. Get Referrals

How do you creating content for your sales pipeline based on these seven steps?

Easy. You break it down into the actionable stages each step fits into.

Create This Content For Your Sales Pipeline

The way I see it, content coincides with the sales pipeline or Customer Lifecycle in three phases or stages.

So as a potential customer moves through the funnel, there are three stages — or areas — for content to be created.

1. [Stage 1] Awareness Content

When the customer doesn’t know your company/brand, your job here is to get your content seen by new and potential customers.

Here are 6 places you can attract customers with content..

1. Website
2. Social media sites
3. Blog (posts can be a “snack” or a “meal”)
4. Presentations
5. Events
6. Visual cues (think: infographics, videos, interviews, etc.)

Perhaps you’ve captured the interested party’s information (step #2 above), and they’re now on your marketing list.

You’re ready to gently tell them why they should choose you.

2. [Stage 2] Consideration Content

Once a person has gotten to know you, connected to your brand messaging, and decided they trust you, they are in the consideration phase.

Perhaps they’ve already given you their contact info as a way to get more information — liked subscribed to a newsletter, or downloaded an ebook.

Now is the time to nurture them (step #3).

Nurturing a prospect or consumer is a way to educate them on why/how your product or service is best suited to solve their problem.

Early consideration and awareness content can be similar, but after you capture their information, you should really focus on going deeper with your education pieces.

Try moving from snackable bites to a full meal with:

• Case studies
• White papers or reports
• Customer testimonials
• Different forms of social proof

Your main goal during this stage is to show your knowledge, your work, your happy customers, and ways in which you’re a thought leader, or authority, in your industry.

Once a prospect has let you know they’re thinking about buying, you move to the next stage …

3. [Stage 3] Decision Content

I like to think there are two types of Decision Content:

1. Pre-close content
2. Post-close content

Pre-Close Content falls under decision content because it is critical to making the sale.

Here’s what makes up Pre-Close Content:

• Sales presentation/collateral
• List of products & services with pricing
• Demo
• Proposal

Post-Close Content happens AFTER the sale and targets your current customers.

Many people miss this step because they close the deal and think the relationship is over.

Do you know what happens when people get married and think the relationship doesn’t need any more work? They get DIVORCED.

Business owners and salespeople alike should squeeze every last drop out of what they already have — the low-hanging fruit — before they go foraging for new leads.

Post-Close Content allows you to do this with steps 5, 6, & 7 of the Sales Pipeline:

1. Deliver & Satisfy: What content do you have to welcome new clients? How are you using content to ensure your new customers are 100% satisfied with their purchase? When/How/Where have you said THANK YOU?
2. Upsell Customers: Once you know your client is happy, how are you using content to upsell them on other features, benefits, or packages?
3. Referrals: Are you mining your current, happy customers for new blood? You should be!

Does Content Fuel Your Sales Pipeline?

Hopefully, you can see that content is and should be the helping hand guiding your would-be and current customers — even when you’re not.

Use these three types of content for your sales pipeline, and if you’re still not sure where to start…?

Add power your content marketing pipeline with these six actions.

1. Taking a closer look at your pipeline or perform a content audit
2. Assessing where you have content in place and where there are content “holes”
3. Creating a plan to fill content holes
4. Measuring which content is working and what’s falling flat
5. Updating content regularly to remain relevant
6. Recycling and reusing successful content

Are you currently creating content for your for sales pipeline? I’d love to hear how you’re doing this — just give me a shout in the comments section below!