Rnordman

LinkedIn is a super powerful and important tool for professionals. When used correctly LinkedIn can help you build your network, find and get introduced to your ideal prospects, and show your value and worth to the world.

In this episode, my guest is Mike Shelah. Mike is a LinkedIn expert and consultant. He helps businesses to understand and get more out of their efforts on LinkedIn.

Here’s a sneak peek at what Mike and I talked about in this episode:

• How and why to optimize your LinkedIn profile so you stand out from the crowd
• I challenge Mike to prove me wrong about things I HATE about LinkedIn
• Attracting the right people to your profile
• LinkedIn SEO
• Is it worth it to pay for their premium services?
• An action plan for prospecting on LinkedIn

Learn more about Mike Shelah here. And don’t forget to leave your thoughts, questions and feedback in the comments below.

A question for you

The next episode of this podcast is a big milestone. It will be the 100th episode.

So I have a favor to ask. I’d like to know what you get out of this show. What do you like, don’t like, want more of, etc. I’d like to include all of you who listen each week in this special episode.

So leave a comment below and let me know what you like most about this show. Or, you can be a live guest by going here to record an audio.

The sales feedback managers give is paramount to both team and individual success. Here’s a look at the seven deadly sins to avoid when giving feedback to your team.

Last week, I took part in not one, but two impassioned conversations about sales feedback with featured guests on the Sales Influencer Series, Redhawk Consulting CEO Matt Hottle and Next Generation Catalyst CEO Ryan Jenkins.

In the midst of these conversations, both Hottle and Jenkins emphatically brought up the same point: “Look at General Electric! They just changed the performance review strategy they’ve had for 30 years to something radically different!”

The 7 Deadly Sins Of Sales Feedback

There’s a major evolution taking place in how we give sales feedback to our team. To that effect, here are the 7 deadly sins of sales feedback to avoid with your team.

Sin #1. Delay feedback for days, weeks, or months.

You should be giving sales feedback as soon as you possibly can. Two cases in point.

In a Blab roundtable I just did with Dionne Mischler and IT Savvy VP of Sales Vince Gatti, Vince noted that he provides sales feedback every single day.

In my interview with Ryan Jenkins, Ryan cited a great example of a sales leader he spoke with who sat in his car each day after work and texted his sales reps a piece of either positive feedback or constructive criticism on that day’s performance.

That’s the type of sales feedback that proves most effective in 2015, and it’s why General Electric saw fit to change its 30-year-old performance review structure.

Sin #2. Evaluate with your gut instead of data.

In my post on “The Best Way to Evaluate Sales Rep Performance,” I cited two important articles from Marcus Buckingham and Mike Kunkle illustrating the importance of giving sales feedback that’s based on data, rather than gut.

Quality sales feedback is data-driven. As the Buckingham article points out, most gut-based feedback managers provide reps is wrong, and ultimately reflects more on the manager than the rep itself.

The tools are out there to provide data-driven feedback, and mangers should deploy those to ensure the feedback they’re offering is successful and, most importantly, accurate. Use Mike Kunkle’s template to start evaluating sales reps based on data.

Sin #3. Fail to incorporate recognition and coaching.

Sales feedback that does not include recognition of success and coaching lessons is a waste of time and destined to build poor culture.

Anyone can point at your numbers and tell you, “Okay, you hit quota!” or “You missed quota this month!” Where you can add a lot of value to feedback is by digging deeper into why you’re succeeding or where you can become more effective.

People love hearing why what they’re doing is working — and if phrased correctly, they’ll embrace explanations of how they can do better. Look to incorporate a little of both each time you provide sales feedback and you’ll get a lot more out of your conversations.

Sin #4. Admonish in public and celebrate in private.

Huge sin right here. Make it a point to admonish in private and celebrate in public.

If someone needs to be chastised for failing to hustle or follow the proper process, have that conversation in private and make it a constructive one. You’re not going to be able to do so in public.

Likewise, you should be celebrating success in public — doing so sets the tone with the rest of your team, increases likelihood of loyalty and helps others know who to go to for help.

Sin #5. Don’t apply to tangible, set expectations.

If your sales feedback is completely removed from the tangible expectations you’ve set for your team — say, you chastise someone for not making enough phone calls when that’s never been a codified point of emphasis in your process, then it’s missing the point.

The whole point of sales feedback is to further cement, reaffirm, and align codified expectations. Think of it as an extension or continuation of your initial sales onboarding and training.

The sales feedback you give should always relate back to that initial onboarding and training. And if it deviates from it — perhaps due to a change in company process or some other reason — be sure to clarify that and explain why.

Sin #6. Deliver as a monologue, not a dialogue.

People love to engage in conversations about their performance — they don’t like being talked at.

If your sales feedback tends to be a soliloquy rather than a mutual dialogue where you both learn from one another, then you’re making a huge mistake with how you give feedback.

You should look at sales feedback as an opportunity to learn from your reps and get their feedback as well.

The more you learn about them, the obstacles and challenges they face, what motivates them and so forth, the better equipped you’ll be to offer directly applicable feedback tailored to their needs.

Sin #7. Offer no path to future success.

Last but not least, sales feedback that does not include a roadmap to future success — even if it’s just, “keep doing what you’re doing,” is defanged from it’s full capabilities.

Harness the moment and help your reps visualize their path to future success. Make the whole point of the conversation, “here’s how you can succeed moving forward,” not, “here’s what you did wrong.”

As counter-intuitive as it may seem, sales feedback is about having a forward-facing conversation. Look towards the future in your conversation and in the feedback you give, and it will resonate much more with your reps.

Making Sales Feedback More Effective

The sales feedback you provide your team will have an impact, one way or another, on its performance.

Avoid these 7 deadly sins to assure maximum effectiveness and get the most of your conversations.

And if you missed my Blab with AA-ISP all-stars Dionne Mischler and Vince Gatti today, be sure to check it out here.

Guest author Ramgopal Vidyanand (Anand) is vice president of corporate marketing and business development at Celltick. 

Partnership deals are never really closed—even if your initial deals don’t cover additional opportunities.

Entrepreneurs often start small, on an experimental basis, with the expectation of growing the reach of their products from city to city, state to state, country to country, or from one device to multiple devices. Within that approach, there are always growth opportunities. 

See also: How To Target The Right Customers

Even after you’ve expanded your partnership as much as possible, there are relationships to nurture, case studies to create and intros to make. The weight cannot be just on the sales teams, it’s a company-wide effort to ensure your trial turns into a bigger partnership.

When we secured a partnership with a top cellular carrier in one country, our team was ecstatic. We knew that if we played our cards right, the partner would bring our app into cellphones across Europe. We’ve done this in the past, and we knew that it would take a concerted effort, so we prepared for it. Today, we are partnered with over 50 OEMs and mobile carriers. Now, we continuously focus on expanding our partnerships. Here’s how we do it.

Set And Reset The Right KPIs

Bear in mind that “show me the money” may not always be a company's mantra. Of course revenue is always an important factor, but OEMs (original equipment manufacturers) and service providers also focus on customer satisfaction, business intelligence and engagement. It’s not always about just turning a profit from your app.

Each country and company will have their own unique objectives and goals, which will keep changing at different times based on market conditions. Listen to their needs, understand the KPIs (key performance indicators) that would be key to their success and tailor services to help them achieve their goals.

Here’s an example from my own experience: In one region of a very large European operator that we worked with, our KPI was only revenue for about a year. Then a management change brought a new head who was much more concerned with the volume of complaints received every month. That became the main KPI over the next 6 months.

We spent weeks trying to understand the problem, working with the head of customer service, and revamping customer service training. Then we noticed that tech support calls asking for help on using the app were logged as complaints. Other communications were also errantly categorized.

Six months after we implemented the customer service changes and met those KPIs, revenue returned as the focal point again. As times change, so do the needs and the definition of success for the partners. Target metrics can and will change numerous times, and you need to be prepared to cater to these changes. Create multidisciplinary teams in which everyone knows the common goals and can work toward achieving your goals.

Always Be Testing—And Teaching

It’s important to remember that we are doing business in a market that’s always changing its trends and needs. In a constantly shifting industry, we aren't always going to make all of our clients happy. Understanding what went wrong could be a valuable lesson for future partnerships.

If you find that an experiment goes wrong in a particular market, share that with other teams in the company, so the same mistake doesn’t get repeated.

When we found that selling ring-back tones on our app worked very well in Russia, we implemented the same feature into our app in Southeast Asia. We did a very small trial, and although the project looked promising, we found that it did not work very well. We wound up abandoning it.

What works in one market may not work in another, and what fails could become your surprise hit somewhere else. Either way, you don’t want you or your partners to wind up with burnt fingers. So continuously research the markets that you are involved in, so you can find out what’s not working early.

Truth Builds Trust

Stuff always happens, and even if you’ve done all the research, sometimes you just don’t hit the mark anyway. If something went awry, let partners know that something failed and explain why it happened—before they ask you about it. Present it with a plan for next steps and a solid strategy, and it might not be as bad you think.

Handling those relationships with honesty may be easier said than done, but it’s crucial. If you don't make those foundations strong, your deals will amount to Jenga towers that could fall at anytime.

That can be easier to manage in smaller trials, which is one reason limited runs have become rather standard among even the biggest OEMs and carriers. Many came to this conclusion, after having learned valuable lessons from the past.

In 2013, Facebook launched Home on HTC First. Known to many as “the Facebook phone,” the device landed on AT&T and rolled out nationwide with much fanfare. It was a disaster. Within a month, the company dropped the price within one month from $99 to $0.99 cents. Turns out, the problem wasn't the pricing, but the flawed value proposition of the interface. Customers flocked to return the phone, and AT&T quickly dropped the First altogether. Many at HTC blamed Facebook’s Home for the flop.

Many operators and OEMs carry out smaller trials with just one device, one geography or only a limited number of installations. These trials can take anywhere from 6 to 18 months.

If something misfires or goes wrong during that time, don’t be afraid to disclose it. Partners want to hear about successes, obviously. But in a true relationship, it is not just about the wins; it’s also about how you handle the failures and work through them that can strengthen your bonds.

In 2006, we signed on with a widespread South American mobile carrier, working with them through shifting KPIs and numerous problems. Its confidence in us was at a different scale when we developed a new product line years later.

Relationship Building Is The Foundation For Growth

Sounds simple, but don’t forget to keep in touch. Before you know it, you might realize that you have gone more than two weeks without contact with your partner. If your expansion plans succeed, you may even have find yourself stretched across a number of them, and you need to check in with them all.

Setting up regular progress calls with clear data discussions ensures that you are following up on the KPIs and results. Weekly or biweekly meetings are also critical to building lasting relationships. You want to let your partners know they are a top priority.

With one of our long-time clients, we slowly let the account move from a complete mapping of our relationship to a matter of maintenance by an account manager. It happened slowly, and no one on the team picked up on it. We had lost focus on the account from a management perspective. Then one day, the CEO of the operator visited our booth at a trade show and asked if he could meet with us. We realized that our attention on this partner had slipped.

We immediately started to revamp the relationship and nurture it back to health. The partner has been continuously growing in revenue ever since. The company has now grown five times in revenue, becoming one of our largest customers.

Make Sure They Look Sexy

Your partners can become your very own sales force—a very effective one. Make sure they look good, and they could become your staunchest supporters. That’s very valuable, particularly in front of other prospects.

One partner wanted to better understand how we can generate higher ARPUs (average revenue per user). After much discussion, we decided to test different ways of natively generating revenue. We realized that we could increase the revenue generated from 5 cents per active user per month to $1.10 per active user within 4 months.

The operator was thrilled that we were able to increase its profits for no extra cost, and it not only decided to rapidly expand our reach, but it become our evangelists in the market. 

Photo by Derek Σωκράτης Finch 

Nobody likes a disorganised inbox. I don’t even like it when my spam folder has numbers next to the link. When it really starts to get out of control and you have triple or quadruple figures in your unread messages pile, it can cause feelings of hopelessness, particularly before that first coffee of the day.

Here are some ways to get back to inbox zero.

1. Work on it when you can – Got a spare minute? Don’t check Facebook while in a queue at the supermarket, start getting through the backlog. Start with the ones you know are pointless from the subject line.
2. Answer emails at a set time – Make sure that you take the time to reply to emails as they come in. Set some specific time aside to check them over. The 15 minutes straight after lunch could be a good one.
3. Delete when you can – If an email comes in that is obviously not worth your time, delete it straightaway.
4. Shorter and sweeter – If it’s just a quick response required, do it now and not later. No need for an essay when a haiku will do.
5. Newsletters? – Do you really need to be subscribed to all those newsletters? Probably not, so go through and unsubscribe from the ones you don’t read/value. Try unroll.me to get rid of them more easily.
6. On holiday? Off emails – When you set up your out of office reply, give yourself an extra day to get through the emails you’ve received while you were off. Make sure that you don’t check them when you’re on holiday! Take the week off!
7. Be decisive – Don’t send open-ended emails unless you have to. Try face-to-face or a phone call where you can to save on pointless back and forth.
8. Sack it all off – Can’t cope? Just archive them all. If it was important, they’ll email you back anyway.

President Harry S. Truman once famously quipped, “Give me a one-handed economist! All my economists say, ‘on one hand … on the other.”

Photo Credit: White House

While I can completely relate to President Truman’s frustration, his economists were doing exactly what they should have been doing — adding context and perspective to a fluid and complex topic.

Yet, “two-handed” experts are increasingly more rare. All too often short form advice supplants deeper counsel. We live in a world increasingly awash in bold pronouncements from the disconnected.

The manager gives them to the front lines.

The CEO gives them to management.

The consultants give them to the executives.

This general, disconnected advice can be useful as a form of motivation, but it is often useless or — worse — misleading when applied to any deeper purpose.

The Internet Effect

Online, the problem is even more rampant. Short form media designed for our ever-shrinking attention spans makes sound byte wisdom the dominant form of advice.

And there is nothing wrong with short form advice, as long as it is not passed off as something more substantive or more concrete.

I was recently asked to contribute to a panel post and to answer the question the following question in less thank 100 words:

“What’s the #1 way for any company to improve their customer service?”

It was interesting to see the different perspectives that different experts took when answering the question, and the short form answers were not without value.

They could potentially have started you thinking about new ways to approach the topic or inspired you to refocus on basic principles — but a solution to your customer experience challenges they were not.

The same goes for advice on Twitter. I (and millions of others) often share quotes and quick thoughts via Twitter. Nothing wrong with that, but the medium is not a place to go for depth of analysis.

The Short Form Skew

The catch with short form advice is that it must be universal and thus often runs towards dogmatism. You cannot discuss the perspective of the “other hand.”

Here is a recent example I stumbled across (not citing, since my goal is not to call anyone out):

“All communication and data should be compiled and shared through digital communications. If desired, the customer can always print the data in a PDF format, but communicating with word documents, PDF files, etc. is both outdated and expensive.”

Well, that is quite the bold pronouncement. One person having an experience in one industry has proclaimed that email attachments are bad customer experience.

Perhaps in his case they were, but you know what else is bad customer experience?

• Emails that are unreadable because they render inconsistently in different email clients
• Digital documents that have become ugly franken-documents because they were forwarded multiple times
• Cut off, incomplete documents discovered years later because they did not print correctly from email

The commandment issued by the writer above is short form advice at its worst: decontextualized and dogmatic.

When Short Form Works

Short form advice is best when it accomplishes three things:

• It is inspirational or motivational (remember the customer in the boardroom)
• It reminds you of basic principles (smile when you greet a customer, even on the phone)
• It stimulates you to think about the specifics (evaluate policies regularly to make sure the costs are worth the benefits)

Bad short form advice is specific, absolute, and doesn’t allow for the complexity of context.

Every organization should be using social media for customer service.

Maybe. Maybe not.

True experts in any discipline are always two-handed economists. They know that context is king, and wisdom comes from applying the right principles at the right time, not the catchiest wisdom at every time.

As to whether you should pay attention to short form advice, on the one hand, I’d say go for it; on the other hand…

I originally drafted this list of “excuses” for not engaging in social networks back in 2010. That was back when Twitter was barely five years old, Facebook only had half a billion users (1.5 billion and counting by 2015) and Google+ was merely a glimmer in Vic Gundotra‘s eye.

Back then, business professionals might have been excused for not paying attention to the 90 million worldwide users on LinkedIn. But these excuses are harder and harder to accept as 115 million American and 11 million Canadian business people now use LinkedIn to prospect, sell, recruit and generally manage their business relationships.

Nevertheless, I still hear the same excuses. Here’s how I respond to each one:

1. “I don’t have time for it.”

Really? I have yet to meet a business professional who doesn’t acknowledge that their business network is one of, if not THE, most important tools they have in business. It’s who you know, not what you know, as the old saying goes. Online social networks are one of the most time-efficient ways of listening to your network and staying informed, while reaching out and adding value to key people. Successful business professionals make time for priority activities, like building their networks – even when it seems like there is no time.

2. “It’s not where my clients are.”

Well, at least this excuse recognizes that social networks are precisely for engaging existing clients and not just prospecting for new ones. If you’ve actually surveyed your clients and know that most of them do not use social networks – in other words, if you are not projecting your own disinterest with social networks onto your clients – then you need to decide whether you can afford to neglect the portion (5% or 50%?) that do use social networks. You can be sure that if you’re not engaging these clients online and nurturing your relationship with them, someone else is going to be trying to.

3. “My firm’s compliance department forbids it.”

For many regulated financial professionals, this so much less true today than ever. Yes, there are compliance restrictions in many settings, but the regulatory environment is nothing like it was in 2010. Social networks are emerging as places where people talk with each other, grow their networks and follow industry news. Even if you are operating in a more restrictive compliance setting, nothing is stopping you from personally using social networks and honing your own digital communications skills and awareness.

4. “I can’t see a clear return on investment.”

It wasn’t long ago that every conversation about social media was about return on investment (ROI). Then people started to realize that social media wasn’t all about marketing and selling, as it had appeared in the form of consumer brand social media. Business-to-business (B2B) sellers and providers of professional services need to focus on using online social networks for educating, engaging and adding value – for NETWORKING, not marketing and selling. When we realize that the best social networking strategy is not short-term lead generation, then our need for quantifiable short-term ROI diminishes.

Some excuses are better than others

Not all excuses are all bad. Some betray a truth that must be addressed.

5. “I don’t know what to say.”

In many ways, this is one of the most honest excuses. Digital non-natives (those of us that didn’t grow up with iPhones) can feel challenged and a bit disoriented by the hyper-sharing information landscape we now inhabit. What to blog about, what to share and why to do it is not obvious. What I say is this: People trust your knowledge and expertise, so share it with them. They want to know what you read and what you think about it – so share that kind of stuff. At the end of the day, people do business with people they know, like and trust. You need to be sharing things that reflect your unique perspective on the world, things that people can relate to.

6. “I don’t have anything unique to contribute.”

This is the most baffling excuse I hear: Successful business professionals with years of education and training and practical experience telling me they don’t have anything unique to say? And they genuinely think that. The best way to overcome this feeling is to realize that everything you know and do is unique to you because it is framed through the lens of your experience and personality. Your clients have chosen to work with you because of this uniqueness and the connection they feel to you. Your unique contribution is your perspective on the world. As Simon Sinek says, “People don’t buy what you do, they buy why you do it.” Show people WHY you do what you do.

7. “I don’t understand social media.”

I wish I heard this one more, but most people use the other excuses in order to avoid this admission. Social networking is evolving rapidly and, in turn, changing how and where we interact with each other. Acknowledging what we don’t understand is the first step to learning. We all need to become students of social technologies because they are fundamentally about how we communicate.

Social networks are not for everyone

There are many people for whom social networks are just not a good fit. I come across these people all the time. And there’s nothing wrong with it.

I wanted to summarize a few of the best reasons that I’ve heard for people not getting involved in online social networking:

8. “I don’t plan on being in business for much longer.”

Social networking and related digital technologies are evolving rapidly. Looking back on how much has changed in the past 5-10 years, it’s hard to imagine how much more will change in the coming 5-10 years. What I tell people is this: If you have a 3-5 year time horizon before you exit an active business role, go ahead and ignore social networking innovations.

9. “My business caters to people who do not want a digital experience.”

As digital technology envelops us and transforms our interactions with each other, niche businesses will develop based on serving people in more traditional, non-technological ways. And the demographic bubble of the Boomer generation will ensure that there is demand for some of these traditional approaches for some time to come.

10. “I’m just not comfortable communicating online.”

If you were born in the late 19th or early 20th century, you could be excused for preferring travel by train or ship to commercial airplanes. Just as, if you came of age hand-writing your communications and perfecting the art of the face-to-face meeting, you could be excused for not embracing digital, asynchronous communications technologies.

It’s all right to be uncomfortable or unfamiliar with digital communications. But let’s agree to stop making excuses.

In his book, The Signal and the Noise, statistician and writer Nate Silver said we live in an age where the volume of data available to us has vastly outpaced our knowledge of what to do with it. In no industry is this more evident than web publishing.

Between pageviews, reader engagement, clicks, shares, and numerous other metrics, publishers today have a lot of data to choose from when measuring success. However, measuring value based on individual metrics does not provide a holistic overview of the success of your business — because data rarely tells the whole story.

Prior to my current gig, I taught high-school math and economics in Brownsville, Brooklyn. The NYC Department of Education had just implemented the NYC Progress Report, which used mathematical models to assign a grade to each school in the city.

The program came loaded with controversy, partly because opponents thought the metrics the model used were too focused on test scores. The issue rages on today. The Common Core program has sparked fierce debates, and again, it focuses on what? Measurement.

An aggressive focus on metrics, and particularly on one “golden metric,” creates the illusion that solving for the metric solves for the problem. But, that’s not always the case.

The problem in education is how to help students.

The problem in journalism and media is how to build a sustainable business online. And in publishing, an industry where the value of individual metrics has dropped in recent years, the challenge to measure success in a meaningful way — beyond pageviews or visitors — is what will drive us toward sustainability.

In short, there is no golden metric that tells the whole story of how users are interacting with your website and content. So what metrics actually matter? What role do they play for audience managers as we move into 2016? How should we approach all the charts and graphs presented by our myriad analytics platforms?

I propose a simple solution: Take a more holistic approach to answering the specific questions you have about your content. Use all of the metrics you have available and combine them in a way that will provide you with insight into specific questions that your site is looking to answer.

This is the type of analysis that site managers who aren’t necessarily data-savvy can perform. Start by making a list of questions you have about your content or website. Then look at your analytics platform to see which available metrics can serve as variables to answer your question.

This analysis will do more to answer the key questions about your business, and you’ll move away from the short-sighted practice of focusing on one “golden metric” to answer everything.

This post originally appeared in Parse.ly’s blog.

(Illustration by Matt Murphy)

Culinary school can be a study in absolutes. Students can go through rigorous classes where they must work on a dish for hours, only to have instructors reject it, Iron Chef–style, for being too dry, or not flavourful enough.

The problem isn’t that the instructors are cruel, but that they don’t know what the students did during the process—they have only the end product to judge. Large classes mean they can’t always be looking over each student’s shoulder to see if they’re following instructions or whether something might be missing.

Variations on this problem are endemic in nearly every school, whether vocational or academic. Test scores are often all that matter; whether students actually learn anything in the run-up to that final grade is largely secondary. Those students who figure out how to game the system by supplying only the desired answers or product can get by without absorbing much of the information being taught.

Sesame, a startup based in Kitchener, Ont., is looking to change that. The company’s Sesame Snap app allows students to track and document the progress of a project or class with their iOS or Android device. They can share photos, videos and checklists of each step with their teacher, who can see where mistakes might have been made.

“We want to change the output of the school system so that it’s not just transcripts and test scores,” says company co-founder Ian Tao. “That’s the part that’s missing the most.”

The education sector is proving to be an attractive one to Canadian startups like Sesame. Canadian schools of all levels generally rank well internationally, thanks largely to their willingness to be innovative with how students are taught. Whereas other civic institutions, such as governments and hospitals, have been slow to adopt new technologies because of inertia or bureaucracy, many schools are actively looking for ways to improve the experience for both students and teachers.

Spending has been rising as a result. A Statistics Canada report last year showed that school board budgets have grown by 53% over the past decade. In 2011, Canadian schools spent $53 billion on a student population of about six million—about $9,000 per student.

Though teacher salaries make up the bulk of that spending, technology investment has been a significant part too. Ontario, for example, last year announced a $150-million plan to get more technology into classrooms. The District School Board of Ontario North East, for one, is considering a plan to install Wi-Fi on school buses. Education startups are increasingly finding that schools and entire districts are eager customers with substantial budgets to spend.

“The schools we’ve dealt with generally have a more positive outlook on technology,” Tao says. Sesame now counts the Toronto and Waterloo school boards as customers, along with private school Trinity College in Port Hope, Ont. and the Canadian Food and Wine Institute at Niagara College—no more Iron Chef–style showdowns.

Ooka Island is seeing similar growth to Sesame. The Charlottetown-based startup makes interactive e-books for kids aged three to seven that are more like video games. Kids get their own personal avatar, who must help the elves of the fantastical Ooka Island learn to read. Their choices branch the story in nearly 7,000 possible directions, with the kids winning badges and items for their avatar along the way. The story presents new activities based on the program’s assessment of the reader’s comprehension level, which individualizes the experience for everyone who tries it.

“We wanted to make it so that it didn’t feel like homework, so that they want to play it,” says CEO Kelly Shaw.

Shaw came on board as CEO last year from educational publisher Pearson, where she was in charge of finding learning products that could adapt to students’ different needs.

“I had seen a lot of educational technologies and this really caught my attention,” she says. “Every child has a different learning need so the more you can customize to that need, the more success you get.”

More often than not, it’s individual teachers who are motivating schools to get involved with educational technology startups. With the rise of smartphones and tablets, many teachers are now more comfortable with technology and are purposely seeking new tools that can help them find new efficiencies or capabilities.

Joseph Romano was a teacher for seven years and now works with the Toronto District School Board to help identify such opportunities. Teachers are open to new ideas, he says: “There isn’t really a resistance because it’s not the way of the future—it’s the way the world is operating today.”

Romano is currently working on getting iPads rolled out to first- and second-grade students in 13 Toronto-area schools. He’s also assessing various startups, apps and technologies to see which can add value.

He’s been impressed with Chalk, a Kitchener, Ont. startup that makes a sort of Microsoft Office suite of online software for teachers. The company’s eponymous software, which is aimed at K–12 teachers, encompasses lesson and unit planning, assessments and attendance tracking.

“It really mobilizes the technology and allows data to be shared with parents,” Romano says.

Chalk co-founder and chief executive William Zhou got the idea for his product after talking to his own teachers at the University of Waterloo. He initially thought their jobs were easy, but quickly changed his mind after coming to understand how much time teachers had to spend working away from class. The existing software that was available to them wasn’t helping much in that regard.

Teachers were either using several different programs for each part of their job, or they had all-encompassing software suites that were too monolithic. Zhou saw an opportunity to create something better.

“They weren’t just my mentors, they were also my friends. I wanted to help them out,” he says. “A teacher doesn’t want to go and find 20 different things. At the same time, they don’t want one giant thing that is really hard to use.”

After a slow start selling directly to individual teachers, Chalk shifted to a freemium model—making a basic version of the software available for free to teachers, and a more feature-rich version available to schools for bulk licensing.

The company is growing quickly now, with 12 employees, and customers including the Niagara School Board in Ontario and Charter Schools USA, which manages 70 schools across the southern United States.

Zhou believes Chalk contributes to the trend of individualized education because it allows teachers to easily create separate lesson plans for students based on their learning requirements and levels. That, in a nutshell, is the future of education.

“Maybe we can’t get to one-to-one instruction, but we can get to a class of 30 and start dividing that up into five different groups. It’s getting closer to that.”

MORE ABOUT INNOVATION & EDUCATION:

• How the “Netflix of education” is using big data in the classroom
• How EyeRead is using eye-tracking tech to help kids learn to read
• How Axonify CEO Carol Leaman is turning workplace training into a game
• How Teach Away leveraged the financial crisis to double its business
• Voters love full-day kindergarten, but it’s lousy policy

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It’s time for Step 2 of our Sample Marketing Plan!

As a reminder, we’ve introduced you to our fictional client, Safety Inc. and their maintenance safety products. Then we got to know their target customer through extensive research, to really put ourselves in the mind of the consumer and better understand who we’re speaking to.

And now that we’ve gathered that information, it’s time to actually speak to them…

Step 2: Create content that answers customers’ questions.

Now that we have our buyer personas, and understand who this person is, we need to start compiling the questions they are asking in their lives. We usually start with questions they’re asking themselves about a given problem, a product, the category the product fits into, the industry, etc.

We focus on the challenges they’re encountering, and not how the product is solving them.

This isn’t about how we talk about Safety Inc. This is about how we talk to our buyer persona—let’s call him Fred the Facility Manager. We want to know what Fred is thinking throughout the day, what questions is he asking himself. The questions then dictate the content we’ll be creating, which is rather obvious–we need to be solving his problems and answering his questions through that content. So to do that, we get to know what he’s asking. As we start to think about what’s going on in Fred the Facility Manager’s head, we start to get a feel for how we can help, and what kind of content we can create for him.

So Step 2 is all about creating content, and having our strategy be influenced and directed by getting to know Fred and knowing what questions he’s asking himself, or the questions his bosses are asking him.

Consumer behavior is changing. Whether you’re in the B2B or B2C space, Google has trained us to go online to ask our questions. So the power of understanding what Fred is asking is that it allows us to create content that answers his questions directly. What better title for a piece of content than using the exact phrase of the question that Fred is asking himself. He’s wondering what his facility maintenance budget should be for 2016? We’ll write a blog post entitled: How to build your facility maintenance budget in 2016, and catch him directly in his thought process.

When creating content, we like to play around with format. Long or short blog posts, ebooks, checklists, podcasts, videos, 1 page PDF downloads—there are endless formats to experiment with. Part of which format we choose is informed by the buyer persona. Can Fred watch videos at work? Does Fred have a commute to reach his facility located out of town, and thus listening to audio is the best format for him?

We’ll try a few formats to figure out what’s best, just as long as the content continues to address the relevant questions the persona is asking.

Creating content should be thought of as building up a library of resources. We’re building up Safety Inc.’s website until it’s not just a site that talks about Safety Inc., what Safety Inc. sells, and how you can buy these products, but rather a place where Fred can come to educate himself, to find answers to his questions, and where he can spend time in a way that will ultimately reflect well on his job. Our goal is to create an evergreen resource that will live on for Fred and all the hundreds of thousands of prospects out there like him.

That goal of building up a library of content further emphasizes the importance of thinking outside the box of just your specific product. You need to expand your stock to include the circle of influence around the topic matter of your product.

For example, let’s say that Safety Inc.’s best-selling item is a high-quality pair of safety gloves, made from a patented material that is incredibly durable, and resistant to the elements. If we just write articles about the importance of having the right pair of safety gloves, we’re going to run out of content ideas pretty quickly, and the content we do produce is only going to convey a sense of self-promotion, not value for the customer.

Instead, we can write an article about the effect that the elements can have on work clothes and accessories. Or maybe a post entitled “10 Tools That Every Facility Maintenance Worker Needs,” in which work gloves is one of the 10, but Safety Inc is not mentioned outright in the post.

And we can go broader than that even–we’ll explore any of the dozens, likely hundreds, of safety issues that facility managers and maintenance workers face on the job. Then maybe we veer away from safety, and start discussing the costs of certain facility maintenance issues. And so on and so forth, as we build up Safety Inc.’s thought leadership on facility maintenance and management, and demonstrate to our audience that we are on top of any and all of the issues they face on a daily basis.

After all, many people might not know that such high-quality work gloves exist! Or facility managers might think that they’re covered in the work gloves department, and thus don’t feel the need to search for it because they don’t know that something out there is better. So why would we write content just for that, and run the risk of losing prospects that might be interested in the space, and just not know that that we live in it?

When we create content around the larger topic, the larger space in which Safety Inc.’s product lives, we are creating the moment of discovery for a stranger to encounter something that they didn’t know they were looking for.

Further, by demonstrating Safety Inc.’s expertise in the facility maintenance and management space, we are promoting their level of authority and trustworthiness in the field, which will ultimately encourage prospects to pay attention to the site and what they have to say.

The importance of creating dynamic content that answers all questions your prospects might have about the space you live in cannot be overstated. The library you build through your content development will serve your customers for a long time to come, and the authority you will build in content creation will raise your profile to the right people.

The content library you build will attract visitors to your site, which puts into motion Step 3…

In today’s marketplace, decision makers aren’t interested in hearing a sales pitch. They are, however, interested in speaking with someone who understands their challenges and can offer valuable solutions.

To deliver higher margin, value-added solutions and avoid being viewed as a transactional vendor, you need to have the right conversations with the right people. You’ll need to get past gatekeepers and speak with people capable of making strategic decisions. 

But how do you do that? Here are four methods you can use to get yourself on a decision maker’s calendar.

1) Do exhaustive research on your target account.

If you want to be seen as a strategic partner, you have to establish your credibility. Thoroughly research your prospect, their company, and their challenges so you’re prepared to propose the most appropriate solution when the time is right.

Keep up with relevant company news and announcements, and find out your ideal point of contact. This ideal person will vary greatly depending on your target account’s size, but generally you should target the highest-level person who will directly benefit from your product.

Tip: When reaching out for the first time, lead with a specific reason why you can help this particular decision maker. For example: “Congratulations on earning a slot on the Inc. 5000 list. Forty-two of our clients are also on the list, and they’ve all said their explosive growth put pressure on their printing capability. We relieved this strain with our process … ”

2) Scour your network for connections to the decision maker.

LinkedIn is a great place to start when searching for connections. You can use Advanced Search to filter your network by relationship level and pinpoint target contacts you want to get close to. Then, request an introduction from someone in your existing network.

Also try reaching out to current clients who can make an introduction for you. If you can’t get immediate access to the decision maker, use these techniques to connect with a gatekeeper or other employees. Any established relationships with the organization can help you get closer to the decision maker. Even if other points of contact can’t provide an introduction, they can at least provide background information on the individual you’re targeting.

Tip: Provide language for common connections to share with your target prospects to make your request as easy to fulfill as possible. For example: “Hi Bob. I’ve been working with Sarah for a few years. She’s helped me reduce our research and development costs by 35%. I thought you two might get a lot out of connecting.”

3) Gather information with every call you make.

Even if you don’t reach a decision maker on your first attempt, use every call you make to gather information that might be helpful down the road. Information that can help you get through on the next try can include:

• The decision maker’s schedule
• The best time to call
• What else is happening in the department
• How to pronounce your target’s name (fundamental information that’s often overlooked)

Tip: Identify exactly what information you’d like to learn and script out how you’ll go about gathering it. For example, you might want to pre-write a series of questions: “What does your budget cycle look like? When do you set the budget for this type of decision? Who besides yourself is involved in making decisions like this?”

4) Establish an online relationship before you pick up the phone.

You have a much better chance of being put through to a decision maker if you can reference a previous interaction you’ve had. It’s also a good way to build rapport and establish yourself as a credible source of information rather than jumping to a call.

Tip: If you’re able to get through to decision makers on social media, use that conversation as a reason for your call. For example, “Robert and I were discussing on [social media platform] how the new federal regulations might affect the marketplace, and I thought it would be more efficient to give him a call to continue the conversation.”

What other tips do you have to get through to decision makers? Share in the comments.

I love buying tech. There’s so much cool stuff out there for sales teams. It’s amazing to see what companies are doing and all the new tools that are available to help improve my sales team’s performance.

I wasn’t always that way, though. When I was just getting started in a sales ops role, I hated the buying process.

I didn’t know how to evaluate vendors, guide the buying process, bring up price, or sell the value of the tool internally— basically, I had no idea what I was doing. I’ve come a long way since then.

The good news is buying tech shouldn’t be daunting. It should be an exciting opportunity to learn new ways to improve your business. I’m here to share a few tips from my experience, and provide guidance on how you can make effective tech purchases for your sales team.

If you work in Sales Operations for a B2B focused company, you’re going to have to evaluate and purchase sales tech at some point — B2B sales processes are simply too complex and the tech out there is too good to avoid it. Here’s my advice for making the buying process informative and productive.

Start by working from the bottom up

Before you start evaluating tech, there’s an important distinction you have to make. Are you solving a top-down problem, or a bottom-up problem?

Top-down problems are directives that come from management, and are generally more exploratory. The CEO may have heard about a tool from a friend, or learned about a new way of doing things at a seminar, and wants you to investigate it.

You have more flexibility and discretion with these types of problems, because they typically stem more from curiosity and a desire to make incremental improvements than a real, critical business pain.

The problems that are more pressing are the bottom-up ones. These are the problems that have a tangible impact on your company’s ability to source and win deals. I’ll riff on a common sales term to distinguish between the two a little more clearly: bottom-up problems are the “need-to-fix” issues, whereas top-down problems are the “nice-to-fix” ones.

Don’t even think about buying tech until you’ve identified and prioritized your bottom-up problems. Don’t waste time tinkering with top-down requests if they’re not aligned with the more pressing bottom-up problems. Be the voice of reason — identify the fundamental problems that hamper your go-to-market team, and focus on building or buying tech that will solve those problems first.

Worry about the top-down stuff later, even if you get pressure from above. They’ll thank you in the long run.

Build for one-off problems, buy for systemic issues

If you’ve done a good job identifying the problem you need to solve, the next step is to make a quick assessment of whether you’re better off building your own solution or turning to an external vendor.

The rule of thumb I follow is build for one-off problems, and buy for more systemic issues — but realistically it always comes down to a cost-benefit analysis.

My logic is this: if you’re facing a systemic issue, chances are other businesses in your space are facing the same problem — which means there’s a market for any company that can solve that problem.

In the world of SaaS, if there’s a market for something, you can bet your bottom dollar someone has created an app dedicated to solving it. Their solution will be better than anything you can cook up on your own in the short-term.

At the end of the day, you just have to do your homework — see what solutions are already out there, figure out how much time and money you’d have to invest to come up with your own, and make the call on which one will give you more bang for your buck in the long run.

Tips for Buying Tech

Once you’ve identified a problem and recognized that you’re better off buying from an external vendor than building a solution internally, it’s time to dive into the buying process. Here are the key steps I recommend you follow to make sure you end up with the best solution:

• Do your homework — I mentioned this before, but it’s worth bringing up again. There are a lot of tools out there, so gather as much info as you can before you contact any vendors. Ask for references from your peers, check out review sites (G2Crowd is a great one for SaaS companies), and read up on forums and blogs. The more informed you are ahead of time, the easier it will be to make decisions.
• Use your sandbox and leverage trials — The exciting thing about tech is that good apps present cost-effective, elegant ways to solve major business problems. The terrifying thing is bad apps can really screw your system up. Do as much testing as you can with trials and your sandbox ahead of time to make sure you: 1) have the best solution for your needs, and 2) aren’t going to break your current workflow by adding another layer of tech.
• Don’t Succumb to Pressure — The reality of the buying tech is everyone wants you to pull the trigger as quickly as possible. The vendor’s sales reps will try to get you to make a decision quickly, and you’ll be pushed by your superiors and others in your company to solve problems as quickly as possible. Don’t let it get to you — do your due diligence, and don’t let the buying process move forward until you check all the boxes. Speaking of which…
• Check the Right Boxes – Have criteria going into the purchasing process that you want to see from a vendor, and check off each of those criteria as you progress through the purchasing process. A few examples of what I look for are:
  • Will the solution fit our security parameters?
  • Does the vendor have good customer support?
  • Is the onboarding process simple?
  • Is this solution the most effective for the problem we’re facing?
• Don’t fear the budget – Don’t misinterpret this last point as the classic salesy “if the pain is bad enough, there’s room in the budget” type advice — the budget exists for a reason, and you have to live within it. The thing is, if you find a piece of tech and you truly believe it’s an important value-add for your company, there are ways to at least get it on the map.

Prove out its value as much as you can with a free trial and make sure all the pertinent decision-makers get exposed to it. If you can’t get money to purchase the solution for your whole team, try to get a pilot program in place that you can expand once the smaller segment sees value from it. Thinking creatively can go a long way.

If you follow these tips, you’ll avoid the pitfalls involved in buying sales and marketing tools, and get the most from every investment you make.

It’s the fall Selling Season and we all running hard. My encouragement is to keep sprinting and finish Selling Season strong! We’re only a few weeks from Thanksgiving in the US and you can rest then.

Recently I’ve had conversations with various sales leaders who asked what I’m working on with my eclectic group of clients. I love talking sales and sales leadership and am always happy to share. As I’ve been rattling off the list of issues we’re tackling, it seemed appropriate to post them here on the blog with the belief you’d get value, too. I keep my client’s identities confidential, but in no particular order, here’s a short list of what (along with promoting the new book) is keeping me very busy:

• As part of a larger sales management consulting engagement, helping a sales manager with 15 direct reports radically restructure her calendar and regular 1:1 meetings with each salesperson to increase accountability, target account focus, and to better identify specific areas where her people need coaching.
• Forcing an executive team to put a strategic stake in the ground for the purpose of providing the sales team crystal clear direction which specific markets to attack – and then forcing sales management to help each salesperson nail down a finite, focused, written list of strategic target accounts to pursue. This target list is divided into two sections:  growable existing customers and ideal profile prospects.
• Coaching a rockstar individual client on probing more effectively and becoming more selfishly productive. We’re also working on how ask his company for more support so he can  spend more time selling to deliver even more new business. (With top-producers, the theme is always “more”)
• Customizing individual business plan templates for 2016 with several companies; helping sales leaders tweak aspects of the template/plan  (specific revenue categories and new business development goals, strategies, actions and key activity metrics) to better fit their unique businesses. (For more on the power of business plans and why written annual business plans are a gift to both the salespeople who write them and their managers, see Ch. 14 of New Sales. Simplified., Ch. 26 of Sales Management. Simplified., or this blog post)
• Helping a relatively new sales manager extricate himself from serving as the “Shell Answer Man” for his entire sales team, and coaching him on retaking control of his calendar so he can spend more time in proactive mode working on his highest-value sales leadership activities – not just responding to everyone’s requests and needs.
• Preparing the next round of sales management coaching content for a large client project. The next phase involves train the trainer sessions where we’ll equip these managers to help their own teams become more consultative (sharpening their “sales story” and improving sales call structure). We are also tackling everything surrounding sales team meetings including frequency, agenda topics and how to make sales meetings more productive and energizing for both the manager and the sales team.

I hope one of the topics above spark a thought or cause you to relook at something important with your sales team.

Let me also make you aware of a few fun, valuable learning opportunities – all in different formats:

Live webinar (tomorrow/Thursday) with one of my true sales heroes, Art Sobczak. I’ve been a fan of Art’s for over 15 years and am probably responsible for buying and giving away more copies of his phenomenal book, Smart Calling, than anyone on the planet. Art is hosting this webinar so we can discuss the big sales leadership issues affecting sales team performance and also talk about one of my favorite sales weapons – the telephone! Art doesn’t know this, but I intend on wrestling control of the webinar to make him answer questions about everything from telephone prospecting to voicemail best practices. Join us on Thursday at 3:00 EST, Noon Pacific, 2:00pm here in the midwest where the true sales pros live!  Click here to register.

Live, full-day event, open to the public, in Washington, DC (McLean, Virginia) on November 13th. Five of my favorite sales gurus (Hunter, Austin, Iannarino, Spence and Blount) and I are delivering six short keynote talks, six one-hour  breakout sessions, and an open panel discussion – all with one goal: helping you acquire more new customers! This is the one public event we are doing this year and there are a just a handful of tickets still available. We are all promoting it, so don’t delay. For more details, FAQ, or to register for the Customer Acquisition Symposium, click here.

Video (recorded live online via Blab) of my appearance on BizLockerRadio talking Sales Management. Simplified. with the incomparable Kelly Riggs. Enjoy this video capture of our blunt discussion covering the leadership reasons sales teams underperform and what to do about it. Click here to watch/listen at your convenience. Kelly asks great questions and offers fantastic insights. This may be my favorite interview about the new book thus far.

Forbes article from Jim Keenan that truly captures the tone, essence, mission (and even my exasperation) of  Sales Management. Simplified.. Take two minutes to read Keenan’s in your face take on the state of sales leadership and why the book struck a chord with him.

And finally, let me just offer one giant THANK YOU to everyone for all the support, promotion and reviews for Sales Management. Simplified. The book hit #1 in Sales & Selling Management again last week and we couldn’t be more thrilled with the response. Thank you for your part in getting this important message out and for making the book a success!

Here’s to great sales leadership, many new sales, and a strong finish to Selling Season.

What do you know about inbound versus outbound marketing? Unless you live and breathe marketing strategy, chances are that you don’t contemplate either one very much.

You don’t have to make your living in the business of marketing to benefit from a comprehensive, well-executed inbound marketing strategy. And you don’t have to be a sales professional to understand the necessity to have an effective sales strategy. But, you do need to have a basic grasp of the differences between inbound and outbound marketing in order to help increase your sales and revenue.

Let’s take a look at the most important distinction between these two halves of the marketing whole and reach some conclusions about when each is appropriate.

What Is Outbound Marketing?

As the name suggests, outbound marketing involves reaching out to prospects and pitching your products or services to them. Outbound tends to occur through high-volume channels, such as television and outdoor advertising space.

Outbound marketing also tends to demand labor-intensive planning, production, and execution. For instance, producing television commercials or staffing an outbound call center can require dozens of employees and cost tens of thousands of dollars per week. Many small and midsize businesses simply can’t afford that kind of marketing investment.

Key Characteristics and Examples

General outbound marketing characteristics include:

• Relatively high fixed costs
• Little to no control over who sees ads or receives outreach attempts
• Forceful messaging and traditional sales tactics
• Very low conversion rates

Examples of outbound marketing include:

• Television and radio commercials
• Newspaper and magazine advertisements
• Outdoor advertising, including billboards
• Direct mail and spam email
• Sales calls

It’s worth noting that many marketing experts believe outbound marketing is becoming less effective every year. This is likely the result of several complementary factors, including the dramatic expansion in the number of media channels available to the average consumer and the increasingly sophisticated lens through which consumers view overt selling attempts. Broadly speaking, traditional sales tactics simply aren’t as effective as they used to be.

What Is Inbound Marketing?

On the other hand, inbound marketing appears to be on the opposite trajectory. It’s becoming even more effective as time goes on.

Unlike outbound marketing, which involves lots of time- and dollar-intensive outreach, inbound marketing draws your prospects in. Instead of going out into the world and accosting prospects wherever you find them, you quietly plant an attractive flag and wait for prospects to come to you.

Key Characteristics and Examples

Some of inbound marketing’s most important characteristics include:

• Quality content and effective messaging, not overtly salesy tactics
• Budget-friendly campaigns that don’t require expensive ad buys
• Opportunities for prospective buyers to make decisions on their own time
• A flexible lead-nurturing operation that includes periodic emails, targeted ads, human contact and other forms of outreach
• The practice of using of user data and performance metrics, not lead lists or other “scattershot” strategies

Examples of inbound marketing include:

• Website and blog content optimized for search engines
• Social media ads and posts
• Display and pay-per-click ads targeted to users in your core buyer personas
• Earned media, such as coverage in a blog or publication focused on your niche
• In-person networking and presentations at niche-oriented public events like conferences and trade shows

Most forms of inbound marketing are designed to inform and persuade without being pushy or alienating. Moreover, the overarching goal of inbound marketing is to target prospects as narrowly as possible, reducing the number of impressions “wasted” on people with no interest in what’s being marketed.

Many inbound marketing tactics have impressively high return on investment (ROI) values. In other words, they’re extremely cost-effective relative to most outbound marketing tactics, which tend to have lower ROI values and higher overall costs due to their time and labor-intensive nature.

Can Outbound and Inbound Coexist?

Given the occasionally sharp contrasts between inbound and outbound marketing, it’s perfectly reasonable to ask whether the two can coexist in a comprehensive marketing campaign.

Fortunately, the answer is “yes.” When done properly, a hybrid inbound and outbound marketing campaign may actually complement one another to produce a “magnifier” effect that’s greater than the sum of its collective parts.

For instance, a company that wants to expand into a new geographical market may run television and direct mail campaigns there – classic outbound tactics – for weeks or months prior to its official launch. Once they’re officially operating in the market, they might deploy a new, locally-targeted website that’s optimized for local searchers – a classic inbound tactic.

Subsequently, the company might mix outbound, such as billboard ads, and inbound, such as social media deals, to reach and convert prospects in the new market.

It’s important to remember that outbound marketing can be expensive and may only be effective in certain situations. If you’re sticking to a tight marketing budget or simply don’t have the resources to support a full-throttle outbound operation, there’s no shame in sticking to inbound until circumstances change.

Who knows? Your inbound campaign might prove so successful that you find no need to invest in outbound.

Learn More About the Differences Between Inbound and Outbound Marketing

While this comprehensive overview should start you on your way toward informed decision-making at each step of the marketing process, we’ve really only scratched the surface of effective outreach.

The success of a brand or business comes down to three key elements: perceived value, customer relationships, and digital content optimization. Each one is a key element for creating a successful buyer’s journey, and provides the traction to keep a sales funnel filled and running.

The success of a brand comes down to three key elements: perceived value, customer relationships, and digital content optimization.

Yet, the exact mix of elements that lead to success are different for each company and each person in the purchase decision process.

This is what makes crafting digital content breadcrumbs to the sales pipeline a bit of an art AND a science

Blending metrics into marketing materials to reach digital content optimization goals and target buyer personas while also keeping pace with the needs and preferences of customers throughout the buyer’s journey is a true craft. Are you mixing the right ingredients to create something of value?

Pick the Right Ingredients for Truly Optimized Content that Converts

B2B firms in North America spend over $5.2 billion a year on content creation efforts alone—that’s 55% of overall marketing budgets. The stakes are high to demonstrate how content connects with revenue, and with so much money on the line, companies need numbers to back up marketing decisions. The challenge is page views, social media followers, and clicks on blog links aren’t going to cut it.

Companies need to show how data is tied directly to sales numbers or an increased interest in products and services.

Companies need to show how data is tied directly to sales numbers or an increased interest in products and services

While tracking and measuring the impact of your brand online is important, what a company decides to track is essential.

Monitoring certain aspects of the buyer’s journey, or the results of a few marketing campaigns, is like wandering around to collect confetti after New Year’s Day. There’s no real point. You only end up with a bunch of random pieces that make it impossible to determine the true health of your sales pipeline, and gain no clear insight on how to make it more efficient or profitable.

B2B marketers need to track the performance of content at every stage of content development and the buyer life cycle to:

• Measure which digital assets drive the right type of engagement
• Understand how to convert buyers at every stage of the funnel
• Find specific ways to support internal teams in order to close new business more quickly

This “trifecta” brings the marketing team much closer to creating digital content that’s relevant and optimized to convert.

What You Measure Makes the Company Stronger

Digital marketers that measure and track insights and impressions from the entire sales funnel get a big picture view—and proof—of what’s working. Relevant metrics, in turn, empower teams to create campaigns and digital marketing content that address buyer pain points with accuracy instead of lucky guesses.

Then, B2B organizations can make strategic decisions across the entire content life cycle that help them edge towards true digital content optimization.

To craft creative and engaging content that builds on the strength of your company’s metrics, focus on the must have’s:

• A quality metrics dashboard that tracks performance monthly, quarterly, annually
• Simple, consistent way to benchmark success of content
• Tools to communicate and share quantifiable results within the marketing team and throughout the organization
• A strategy to incorporate findings into future planning and content creation to hit pain points, client needs, and work marketing success hot spots

When tracking the right metrics for your type business, buyer personas, and products and services, B2B companies can make strategic decisions across the content life cycle to create a seamless loop of powerful content for the entire buyer’s journey.

With relevant, measurable, trackable data, you are able to paint the exact picture you want the customer to see and buy. It’s this mixture of art and science that makes digital content optimization a beautiful blend of facts and creative marketing.

It’s time to celebrate page views and blog clicks as the “nice-to-have” treats along the path to the real deal —digital content optimization through relevant metrics that show how content ties to sales dollars.

Closing is the make-or-break step in a sales process. It can be finicky, high-stakes, frustrating, and every bit as essential as it is delicate: a moment that can trip up virtually any rep, especially one who's just getting their legs in the field.

That's why we here at The HubSpot Sales Blog — the shining beacon of truth, integrity, and boundless knowledge that sales professionals look to in these trying times — tapped some sales leaders for their takes on seven crucial errors you can make while closing.

See what they had to say!

7 Sales Closing Mistakes You Need to Avoid

1. Continuing to Sell After a Verbal Agreement

Matt Harrison, VP of Global Operations & Marketing at Authority Builders, says, "The biggest mistake anyone can make when closing a deal is to keep pushing features of a product or benefits of a service, even after a prospect has verbally agreed to make the purchase.

"When a prospect has indicated they‘re ready to sign on the dotted line, it’s important to speed things up and seal the deal instead of bombarding them with unnecessary information.

"Continuing to sell at this stage can appear overly anxious or even damaging to your prospect's confidence in their decision. It could cause them to question their commitment, converting an easy win into a long process or, worse, a lost deal.

"Instead of doing that, you want to be straightforward and confident in closing the deal. For instance, when a prospect responds, ‘This looks great. I’m ready to move forward,' your response should be simple and action-based like, ‘Glad to hear! I’ll send you the contract today for your review and signature.'

“This method conveys confidence in the product and respect for the choice they made. Resist the urge to 'sell past the close' — it's not the moment to add more features or benefits. Rather, just give the next steps with intention and a little bit of urgency so they feel like it's a smooth and professional process.”

2. Trying to "Overcome Objections" as opposed to

“Addressing Concerning”

Tara Geraghty, Founder of Hey Girl You Can, says, "The biggest mistake I see people make when approaching the close is thinking their job is to ‘overcome objections.’ This term is commonly taught and used in sales. It has an aggressive energy that can turn people off. Instead, I teach my team to ‘address concerns.’

"An objection is nothing more than a valid concern. The concern could be cost, value, time, etc. A good salesperson knows their job is to listen carefully, make sure they understand the true concern to purchasing, and then address the concern appropriately.

“Ask questions instead of giving answers. You want your buyers to feel in control and that this purchase is one they are excited to make because of the results it will deliver. When you master addressing concerns...you will master sales.”

3. Talking too Much

Phillip Mandel, CEO of Mandel Marketing, says, "I've been in sales and sales development for over two decades. One common mistake I see sales professionals make when closing is talking too much and, conversely, not listening enough.

“Too often, they dominate the conversation, trying to pitch or 'sell' their solution without fully understanding the prospect's pain points. This creates a one-sided dialogue and can erode trust — especially when prospects feel unheard. Sales isn't about filling the air with words; it's about asking the right questions and letting the prospect do the talking.”

4. Not Trusting the Process

Mandel also says, "Sales professionals sometimes try to rush to the close, afraid they‘ll lose the deal if they don’t push hard enough. This approach often backfires, making the prospect feel pressured rather than guided.

Trusting the process means being patient, building rapport, and recognizing that the best closes happen when the prospect feels ready — not forced."

5. Rushing

Chante Van Wyk, Head of North American Outsourced Solutions at Nutun, says "One of the most common mistakes I see sales professionals make when closing is rushing the process. Closing a deal isn‘t just about asking for the sale — it’s about making sure the prospect feels confident and ready.

“If you haven't fully addressed their concerns or shown how your solution fits their needs, they'll hesitate. Take the time to listen and ensure everything aligns before you ask for the commitment.”

6. Being Too Desperate

Dandan Zhu, Founder and CEO of DG Recruit, "Clients don't enjoy dealing with salespeople that reek of desperation to close the deal to earn commission. Clients want to find passionate salespeople who are subject matter experts with a consultative approach instead of selfish ones.

Salespeople should focus on customer needs instead of rushing to close. Clients won't trust vendors the minute they feel this dynamic shifting — so beware of this delicate dance. "

7. Overloading Your Prospect With Unnecessary Information

Edward White, Head of Growth at beehiiv, says, "A mistake I often see in sales is overloading the customer with too much unnecessary information during the closing stage. For example, instead of focusing on how a product will solve the customer‘s problem, they might start listing every single feature, including ones that aren’t relevant to the customer's needs.

"This can leave the customer confused and make the decision feel overwhelming. We can avoid this! Focus on the key benefits that directly address the customer's specific goals or pain points. Keep the message simple and clear, emphasizing how your solution meets their needs.

“A clear, focused message makes the close smoother and builds confidence in the decision. It also shows that you understand their situation and are offering a solution tailored to their unique circumstances. This personal touch goes a long way in building trust and making them feel valued.”

Every other step of a sales process is for naught if you can‘t close — and what feels like a smooth closing effort can be derailed by any of the missteps listed here. Hopefully, these experts’ perspectives will help you round out sales engagements more productively and seal as many deals as possible, going forward.

Despite its popularity in academic settings, functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) machines are rarely used as a marketing tool in the corporate world. When we surveyed 64 individuals from neuromarketing firms, only 31% reported ever using fMRI machines — and, of course, only a minority of companies engage such firms in the first place. This stands in stark contrast to results from a survey of 59 consumer neuroscience researchers in business schools; 71% reported using, or having used, the neuroimaging technique.

Why the gap? Academic researchers are often attracted to fMRI for its comprehensive ability to investigate a range of neural activity across the entire brain. But for a CMO weighing costs against immediate benefits, the cost of an fMRI-based study might seem prohibitive. fMRI studies depend on access to specialized equipment most commonly found in medical or university settings, and the scanners require significant training to operate. Analyzing the resulting data also takes expertise and time. What’s more, despite being at least three times more expensive than traditional methods, there has been scant evidence that fMRI reveals anything beyond what could be learned by just asking people for their opinions, making the technique hard to justify in a commercial setting.

We believe that may be about to change.

A number of recent studies suggest that neural data recorded from relatively small groups of people (<30) can not only predict market-level behavior, but can predict it better than traditional marketing tools. Data from fMRI scans has been shown to outperform behavioral data in predicting market-level music sales, charity donations, and even the relative persuasiveness of anti-smoking ad campaigns.

A critical demonstration of this ability arose from a massive collaboration between the Advertising Research Foundation (ARF), the Center for Neural Decision-Making at Temple University, and several members of the marketing department at NYU-Stern. In the multi-stage study, consumers of various ages watched 37 real television ads from six different companies, spanning 15 brands in the lab. The researchers compared commonly used behavioral marketing research methods with a raft of neuromarketing techniques including eye-tracking, which reveals what captures people’s attention, facial emotion coding, which measures people’s ongoing emotional responses in real-time, biometrics such as heart rate, and neural measurements using electroencephalography (EEG) and fMRI. The goal was to see which source of data could most accurately predict the effect of advertising on sales, specifically the percentage change in sales due to a 1% change in advertising effort.

Insight Center

Perhaps not surprisingly, traditional measures were an excellent predictor of how effective an ad would be. The novelty in this work was the ability to benchmark whether other methods could make a significant contribution beyond what the traditional measures could accomplish. And indeed, their analyses demonstrated that fMRI data was a uniquely valuable additional predictor of real world outcomes; it outperformed all the other methods.

What should make such results particularly exciting to marketers is the suggestion that only a very small number of people might be needed to predict how a large customer base will respond. If you knew that the brain patterns of only 30 people could predict the spending decisions of hundreds of thousands or even millions, than even an expensive study could well pay for itself many times over, especially in situations where large budgets are at stake.

The marketing study reinforced an already robust academic literature of novel fMRI-generated consumer insights. Indeed, one of the most well-known consumer neuroscience studies used fMRI to demonstrate how price can create a “marketing placebo effect.” In that research, neural data revealed that showing a higher price tag while people were tasting identical wines did actually make the wine taste better – by changing the actual neural signature of the taste.

In another academic study, fMRI revealed that the timing of when consumers see a price may entirely change the way they buy. When price came first, the neural data suggested that the decision question shifted from “do I like this?” to “is this worth it?” This allowed the investigators to predict specific types of purchases that would benefit from seeing prices early on.

All this exciting new research points to an important role for fMRI in marketing practice. It seems plausible that in the product design phase, fMRI may help identify which of several options has the strongest customer appeal. Similarly, in planning promotional campaigns, such as movie trailers or various forms of advertising, fMRI data may help identify the most effective messages. More broadly, as illustrated by the pricing findings, it can be used to better understand how marketing actions change people’s preferences and experiences, consciously or subconsciously. Companies should consider using fMRI in situations in which consumers are unlikely to say what they think, because they can’t or they won’t.

We don’t think that buying an fMRI scanner should be a serious option for most companies. But a company looking to adopt the technology can develop in-house expertise by hiring people who can conduct neuroimaging studies themselves, identify opportunities for the use of fMRI, and interpret the resulting data. In addition, several neuromarketing firms offer fMRI services, though some are more rigorous than others. We suggest that marketers only partner with firms that employ research scientists with significant training in the methodology, or have publicly named board members who carry scientific credentials. The firm should offer specific benchmarks and outcome metrics, be willing to discuss not only the benefits but also the limitations of the prospective findings, and be able to justify the use of fMRI over other, less-expensive neuromarketing techniques. (Editors’ note: This paragraph has been updated from its original version.)

In short, we believe that fMRI should be considered as part of a larger marketing portfolio that includes targeted use of traditional measures, physiological methods, and big data analytics. Forward-thinking CMOs who embrace this technology will find a competitive advantage in their enhanced ability to make more accurate predictions about customer behavior.

The post How to Write a Heroically Effective Email Autoresponder Series appeared first on Copyblogger.

Entrepreneurship has exploded in the U.S. market in recent years. According a recent Global Entrepreneurship Monitor (GEM) report, there are now over twenty four million entrepreneurs in the U.S., making up 14% of the total population.

There may be a number of contributing factors to this trend. Entrepreneurs are often cited as modern day adventurers and explorers. They are willing to takes risks and push innovation. And for many, they exemplify the American Dream. That is, everyone has the opportunity to be successful, no matter how you started or where you might be from.

Unfortunately, glamorizing entrepreneurs—while flattering—doesn’t tell the whole story of what founding and growing a sustainable company entails.

Despite the number of entrepreneurs in the U.S., the country now ranks 12^th among developed nations in terms of business startup activity. American business deaths now outnumber business births, according to Gallup and the U.S. Census Bureau.

source: Gallup

As a leader of a growing startup, there are some brutal realities to face. These can include challenges obtaining capital to drive growth, an inability to attract the right talent, or the constant struggle of trying to manage an organization that looks fundamentally different every six months.

In order to grow a successful organization, knowing where to spend your limited resources is critical to success. Startups—especially in Silicon Valley—are often lauded for their culture. And unfortunately, “culture” in this case is many times defined by a set of borderline unbelievable perks.

You Are Not Your Perks.

With so much on the line for your growing business, you cannot put your perks above what you value. Perks seem great at the start, but they tend to lose their luster over time, leaving you with little of substance to sustain engagement, excitement and purpose.

With competitors grappling to offer some wild new perk in an attempt to attract talent, companies are getting sucked into a doom loop. Everyone will end up losing as they try to keep up with the Jones. The perks that were once on the cutting edge become the standard expectation, which only serves to put startups in an even worse position to compete for talent and sustain growth.

Additionally, many startups lack the capital to offer these types of perks, let alone sustain them over time. This puts them at a disadvantage compared to their larger, more established competitors.

Finally, perks and incentives are, by their nature, a manifestation of the core values of an organization. By offering endless perks, startups can send messages about what is valued that may have unintended consequences in the long-term. This can be a real problem if those messages are in conflict with your core beliefs or if those perks are being used as a replacement for core values.

By defining your values and culture based on the perks you offer, you’re sending the message that your company values following the latest trends rather than a being intentional about the deeper beliefs of your company culture. Employees may be left without any clear direction for how business should be done, how customers should be served and what it means to be a member of the team.

This is not to say that all perks are bad. Quite the contrary. Perks can help reinforce meaningful values and help drive the behaviors that are required to yield success in the next chapter of your startup’s journey. When used thoughtfully, in conjunction and in direct reinforcement of your organization’s core values, these perks can prove to be both sustainable and truly meaningful.

Rallying your team around a meaningful purpose and supporting that with appropriate perks is not only a more sustainable way to drive growth. It ensures that the people you attract are people who are joining you for the right reasons.

Values can have deep and lasting meaning for people, giving them a higher purpose. This is something that perks alone can never do.

Clued-in business owners and marketing managers aren’t just using social media to boost brand awareness — they’re also leveraging these platforms in order to generate leads.

By stirring up interest and encouraging users with a call-to-action, sites like LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter can all be used as powerful marketing funnels to capture potential customers’ email addresses.

Here are five simple yet highly effective ways you can gain leads through the use of social media.

1. Listen to Social Needs

So much emphasis is put on promotions and sharing content, you can forget about the most important aspect of social media: listening to your audience. What are the hopes, needs, fears, and dreams of your target market? Listening to your ideal customers and clients enable you to serve them better, craft more compelling content, and ultimately improve your opt-in rates.

Pro tip: Where should you listen to your customer targets and eventually interact, joining in the conversation? Check out LinkedIn Groups.

2. Create a “Pink Spoon”

The “pink spoon” refers to a freebie, such as an e-book, audio file, webinar or digital course, which can be viewed or downloaded when someone enters their email address in an opt-in form. We also call these “lead generation offers.” Ensure your “pink spoon” offers great value and helps to solve an issue for your target market. Promote your “pink spoon” on your social media networks, and link back to your website to capture new leads.

Pro tip: It’s not enough to promote your freebie once or twice. Schedule several different social media “teasers” multiple times over the course of several months to get the most from your offer.

3. Host a Webinar

Online seminars not only provide a way to build on your brand’s expertise, they also hook in customers and capture hot leads. Use a combination of paid LinkedIn advertising, LinkedIn updates, paid Facebook ads, Facebook posts and promoted tweets to market your webinar and build your list.

Pro tip: It can take 40 hours or more to plan, write, rehearse and conduct your first webinar. If you decide to go this route, then you can also use the content from your webinar as blog posts, helping further fuel your social media efforts.

4. Integrate All Platforms

Every single one of your social media accounts should link back to your website. If a visitor wants to connect with your business but they can’t find where to go, you will have lost yourself a lead. For continuity and professionalism, use the same usernames across all of your social media platforms.

Pro tip: You may want to consider linking to your LinkedIn profile from your personal social media accounts. Because you can see who views your LinkedIn profile when you visit LinkedIn, you can see who might be interested in doing business with you.

5. Monitor Your Success

Use Google Analytics to measure the stream of visitors coming from social media sites, the number of opt-ins, and the effectiveness of your paid social media campaigns. Split testing allows you to control and tweak landing pages for the best conversion rates, continuously improving your tactics in order to get the best results.

Pro tip: We use HubSpot to publish and monitor social media because of the analytics we receive from the software. Scheduling social media in HubSpot saves us several hours each week, and we can get interaction statistics to find our most popular messages, too.

Do you have any questions about using social media for your lead generation efforts? Leave them in the comments below.

Fitbit reported quarterly results on Monday afternoon that were better than analysts had forecast.

The maker of fitness trackers reported revenues of $409.3 million, up 168% year-on-year, and topping the consensus forecast for $359 million according to Bloomberg.

Diluted earnings per share were $0.19, higher than the consensus estimate for $0.10.

The stock fell by as much as 7% in morning trading on Tuesday. A separate regulatory filing Monday showed that Fitbit proposed to sell 7 million shares, while certain shareholders proposed to sell 14 million. 

The company said "The proceeds of the primary portion of the proposed offering will be used to provide additional working capital for Fitbit and for other general corporate purposes, including research and development and sales and marketing activities, general and administrative matters, and capital expenditures."

Fitbit also announced that it was releasing lockup restrictions for employees and consultants as of October 31 on Thursday. This amounted to about 2.3 million shares, or 10% of the common stock. 

Putting more shares on the market tends to send stock prices lower, as the value of existing shares diminishes. 

Fitbit said it sold 4.8 million devices during Q3. There were allegations about two weeks ago that Fitbit devices could be hacked in 10 seconds, via Bluetooth, granting the intruder access to infect any PCs connected to them. 

The company said there was no data indicating it was possible to infect users' devices with malware.

It provided guidance for full-year revenues in the range of $1.77 to $1.80 billion.

CEO James Park said in the earnings statement, "Fitbit’s third quarter results demonstrated the continued rapid growth of the Fitbit platform and our team’s ability to execute on the tremendous opportunity we see globally, as we help people reach their health and fitness goals."

SEE ALSO: Fitbit health trackers can be hacked in just 10 seconds

Join the conversation about this story »

NOW WATCH: Fitbit Is Going Into Nike Territory With This Inspiring Ad

(Ryan Remiorz/CP)

Valeant Pharmaceuticals has suffered a crisis of trust over the last few weeks. More specifically, the trust that investors had in the company was substantially diminished in the wake of revelations that Valeant had an unclear but apparently too-cozy relationship with specialty pharmacy called Philidor. The loss in trust in this case was quite concrete, measured by a substantial drop in the company’s share price.

The source of this loss of trust was, as is generally the case, a question about the company’s ethics.

How bad management leads to bad ethics

Doing business in the long run absolutely requires ethics. At the ery least, doing business requires a degree of mutual respect, embodied in our commitment to getting things from others by offering them what we think they want in return. It also requires a commitment to basic honesty, and a commitment to honour our contracts. These ethical basics are essential because they are the foundation of trust. And if you don’t trust someone—at some level—you’re just not going to do business with them.

If trust enables business, then trust has a real value, in real dollars and cents. So what, then, is the dollar value of trust? I estimate the dollar value of trust, within the global economy, at roughly $102 trillion—in other words, the entire nominal Gross World Product for 2014. Without trust, all commerce on the planet would literally grind to a halt.

The fact that trust is crucial in markets is evidenced by the fact that businesses have come up with such a dizzying array of mechanisms designed to generate trust—everything from brands (which carry reputations) through to warranties, return policies, endorsements and third-party guarantors.

But what exactly is trust? What does it mean to trust someone? Functionally, it’s an expectation that someone will behave in certain ways. Trust is also an attitude—part calculation, part emotion—that involves an expectation of goodwill, or at least good behaviour. It is an expectation that the other party to a transaction will not do us harm. As my friend and fellow philosopher Daryl Koehn once put it, trust is a mean between paranoia and foolish faith.

But what happens when trust is broken? How can a company like Valeant (or Volkswagen, for that matter) regain the trust of consumers and the investing public? There are many ways to rebuild trust, and none of them is quick.

A company that has lost the trust of the investing public is likely going to need to show a consistent pattern of trustworthy behaviour over a substantial period of time. And the focus, here, is on the showing. CEO Michael Pearson has said how important ethics is to the company. And—present appearances aside—that may well be true. But in the light of the current wave of mistrust, the company is going to need to do more. It is going to need to engage in substantial disclosures, far beyond detailing the nature of its relationship with Philidor. In the face of a failure of disclosure, the company may well find that that it needs to engage in more disclosure than any company—even one with nothing to hide—would be fully comfortable with.

MORE ABOUT BUSINESS ETHICS & SOCIAL LICENCE:

• Companies’ social licence is built slowly—but vanishes in a flash
• How bad management leads to bad ethics
• If you think you can’t be ethically compromised at work, you’re wrong
• Volkswagen was undone by Wall Street–style arrogance
• How a crisis of morality is slowly killing marketing
• How to tell when a company is lying to its shareholders

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The post Trust is the most valuable asset any company has appeared first on Canadian Business - Your Source For Business News.

Five Quick Sales Tips to Sell More Effectively

In Part I  of this series, I talked about the changing sales environment and how more buyers are buying than being sold. In Part II , my focus turned to the need for salespeople to dig deep into buying motives to establish credibility and provide new ideas and insights to buyers. Now, it’s time to turn to some sales tips and techniques for selling in today’s environment.

I don’t want to say that cold calling is dead, but it certainly has changed dramatically. Salespeople used to be able to call a prospect who had never before expressed an interest and get a few minutes of their time. Sometimes, they could just show up at their office and gain entrance. That rarely happens today.

Since the advent of Caller ID, it’s never been easier to ignore incoming phone calls. Salespeople are then left with the question: Do I leave a message or just hang up? Even leaving a voice mail is little guarantee of a call back, so many don’t even bother. I used to get 50 voice mails a day; now I don’t even get 50 a month.

The secret to getting in the door is to find a hook that resonates with the prospect. Here are some more sales tips and techniques that may help.

Cultivate your network. Salespeople need to have an ecosystem in place to build and leverage their connections. I have made great use of the business partner network within my ecosystem to gain access to people. Resellers in the IT space would always be in their customers’ data centers and had strong relationships because they sold so much equipment to them over the years. I knew those resellers and could say something like, “I have a cloud application or some managed services that would work well in this industry and type of environment. Is there a chance that you could get me an introduction to the CIO at XYZ Company? Could you at least send an e-mail to tell him/her that I will be calling and that I would appreciate it if he/she would take the call?

Get to the right person. In addition to business partner relationships, LinkedIn provides a pathway to the people that you want to meet. I would check my first- and second-level connections to see who knows whom and how I might get introduced. I would also look for news of the company that I was targeting, on LinkedIn and more broadly on the Web, to see who might be mentioned in articles. Then, I would contact that person and ask for help in determining the right person to call.

Scale your effort to prospect size. If prospects are SMBs — small and medium businesses — it can be easier to find and get in touch with the economic buyer: the primary and ultimate decision maker. Some entrepreneurs can be reached by picking up the phone. With others, salespeople can sometimes walk over to the office, knock on the door, and get a few minutes of their time. These tactics can work in the SMB world, but with billion-dollar organizations, multiple levels of people often stand in the way. One option is starting with people in the middle and working your way up; the other is starting at the top and getting, in essence, a free pass to talk with the people below. Getting access to the top takes great preparation and research, along with a reputation as a thought leader or industry expert. Even if you do get a first meeting, statistics from Forrester Research show only 17% of salespeople get a second meeting with an executive, often because they didn’t prove their value in the first meeting. So, again, I emphasize the importance of preparation.

Be prepared to overcome objections. Buyer’s sales objections are to be anticipated, addressed, and overcome. It helps to know ahead of time if the buyer is resistant to change, whether there are available funds to purchase the product or service and whether that purchase would be in the current or following fiscal year. If you haven’t thought this through beforehand, the buyer could easily stop your conversations short with objections.

Fulfill your objectives. In first meetings with prospects, I typically have these objectives: 1) establish rapport, 2) secure a second meeting with someone who can describe how the company does business and how their customers do business, and 3) determine if there’s a budget for improving the business that could include my product or service set. Too many salespeople waste time selling to people who can’t make buying decisions or, if they can, don’t have the budget.

As I said in the first two parts of this series, salespeople need to spend the time to learn about their prospects and the industry they operate in. They have to understand the buying process and show that they can contribute and add value. This is more important than ever before because the reality is more buyers are buying than are being sold.

Learn more about Richardson’s Consultative Selling Sales Training Solutions.

The post Sales Tips and Techniques: Getting in the Door to Sell in Today’s Environment appeared first on Richardson Sales Enablement Blog.

Every second, on average, around 6,000 tweets are sent on Twitter, which translates to over 500 million tweets per day!

Did you know you could search every single one of them? (Plus the multi-million profiles attached to them!)

Twitter has an amazing, yet somewhat little-known Advanced Search tool to help you find exactly what we’re looking for.

Looking to find your next customers? Advanced Search can help.

Want to measure the happiness of your current customers? Yep, Advanced Search is what you need.

Advanced Search is a goldmine for marketers and small business owners. In this post I’m super excited to share some top tips and tricks to help your business win with Twitter Advanced Search.

Let’s get into it.

First things first … how to get there!

There are a few different ways you can search on Twitter:

The Twitter website’s toolbar search field.

The web search page.

The mobile app search (on Twitter’s iOS or Android apps).

All of these options are great if you’re looking to quickly dive into a certain topic or hashtag.

If you want to get the most value out of Twitter search though, Advanced Search is an amazing and powerful resource. Advanced Search is available when using Twitter’s web app — you can access it directly by heading to twitter.com/search-advanced.

Also, you can get there from a standard search results page by clicking on the More Options menu and choosing Advanced Search from the bottom of the list.

And once you’re there, you’ll find over a dozen different ways to search, segment, and filter Twitter’s huge data of tweets and profiles.

1. Contains all of these words
2. Contains this exact phrase
3. Contains any of these words
4. Contains none of these words
5. Contains these hashtags
6. Written in this language
7. From these accounts
8. To these accounts
9. Mentioning these accounts
10. Near this place
11. From this date
12. Positive tone :)
13. Negative tone :)
14. Question ?
15. Include retweets

(Much more on each of these different filters at the end of the article.)

In addition to the Advanced Search page itself, there’re a couple other great resources for helping to further refine your results. On Twitter’s search results page, you’ll have menu options for filtering results by media type, profiles, and more. And you can also do quite a number of advanced search tricks from any Twitter search box, using a combination of Twitter search operators.

Now let’s see some neat ways to put this all together!

23 Sneaky Cool Ways You Use Twitter Advanced for Marketing and Sales

Advanced search hacks to help your marketing

1. Create a saved search

Twitter allows you to save up to 25 searches per account. To save a search, click More options at the top of your results page and then click Save this search.

Saved searches can be great to keep an eye on people sharing your content, keywords relevant to your brand and your own mentions.

2. Find your interactions with another Twitter account

It can be hard to recall all of your interactions with another person on Twitter. As a way to refresh your mind, you can use the ‘From these accounts’ and ‘To these accounts’ filters.

Here are all of my interactions with the Buffer Twitter account:

3. Find the most popular Tweets about a topic

I stumbled upon this one a little while back and it has since become one of my favorite Twitter search hacks.

As an alternative to the “Top Tweets” that Twitter displays for each search term, this search trick will allow you to define your own metrics for what makes a popular post. As Amit Agarwal explains on his blog:

Go to the Twitter search box, type any search term and append the operator min_retweets:[number] or min_faves:[number] to filter your search results. For instance, here’s a sample search that will only shows tweets pointing to the labnol.org domain that have been favorited or retweeted at least 5 times.

For example, to find Tweets about Buffer with over 30 Retweets, I could search “buffer.com min_retweets:30.”

4. Find your most popular tweets

Using the same technique as above you can also find the most popular tweets from your own Twitter account. To do this simply head to the Twitter search page (or use the toolbar search field) and search for: “from:[your account] min_retweets:30”.

For example: “from:buffer min_retweets:30” will bring back results for tweets sent from the @buffer account with move than 30 retweets.

If you have a Buffer account, you can also see your most popular posts using Buffer Analytics.

5. Find ideas for blog posts

Twitter is a great source of inspiration for blog posts. When researching a post, Advanced Search is a great way to see what people are talking about relating to subject.

Here’s a search I used to research this very post on Twitter Advanced Search!

6. Find great blog posts

If you’re looking to find some great blog posts or content on a certain subject, Twitter Advanced Search can be a great way to unearth some real gems.

In the search fields you can add your chosen topic to the ‘All of these words’ field and then add ‘http’ to ‘This Exact phrase’.

Here’s an example of a search I use to keep an eye on any content marketing blog posts:

7. Find content shared by selected accounts

For example, if you would like to see how all of your favorite tweeters are reacting to some news, search for a keyword and their names.

Here’s how TheNextWeb reacted to Twitter moments:

8. Embed a search in your website or blog post

Embedding a search within your website or blog post can be a great way to bring content to life.

You can find more information about embedding Twitter search timelines here.

Tweets about dogs from:buzzfeed

9. Filter Tweets by location

If you’re looking to find people who are talking about your brand in a certain location, head down to the Places section of Advanced Search and look up the areas you’d like to focus on.

This feature can be extra useful if you pair the search with a couple of keywords. For example: ‘@Buffer buffer.com near:”London, England” within:15mi’

Advanced searches to monitor your brand reputation

10. Monitor mentions of your company

Using Twitter’s Advanced Search to monitor your brand can be extremely effective. As well as monitoring mentions of your brand name, Advanced Search allows you to keep an eye on mentions of your Twitter handle and even any Tweets that include your URL.

Here’s a search we use for all things Buffer:

11. Filter out competitor Tweets

If you want to filter out any results mentioning competitors of yours, you can do so by adding their username and URL in the “None of these words” Advanced Search field.

12. Find news about your company

After running your Advanced Search and landing on the results page, select ‘News’ from the More options dropdown to show all results that contain a link to a news site.

Below is a search I ran on Buffer to see who was talking about us when Pablo launched:

13. Find happy and un-happy customers

Twitter search is a great way to quickly see a snapshot of how happy (or un-happy) your customers are.

These types of searches will help you stumble upon some great feedback and ideas too. For example, a Tweet where a customer expresses frustration could spark discussion around how you could improve your product or service.

To include sentiment filters in your search, tick the relevant box over on the Advanced Search page or simply add a happy or un-happy emoticon to the end of your search term, e.g. “buffer :(” or “buffer :)”.

Advanced searches to analyze the competition

14. Monitor sentiment about competitors

Similarly to how you can monitor sentiment about your own brand, Twitter Advanced Search gives you the power to keep tabs on how customers are talking about your competitors too.

In order to check out what people are saying about competitors, add their company name and URL to the ‘All of these words’ bar.

15. Search your competitor’s tweets

This is a great tip I picked up from Tim Baran. Using Advanced Search you can filter through tweets from any account and for selected keywords. To do this, simply use the ‘All of these words’ and ‘From these accounts’ fields.

Here’s an example that will show all of the times our Buffer Twitter account has mentioned ‘transparency’.

As a shortcut, you could search: from:buffer “transparency” in the toolbar search.

Fine-Tuning your search

16. See Results for Only the People You Follow

The Twitter world moves fast and sometimes it can be easy to miss great content from the people you follow.

Thankfully, Twitter search allows you to filter Tweets from only people you follow. This, coupled with is a great way to make sure you don’t miss anything from your favorite tweeters on the subjects you care about.

Here’s an example search I used to see who from the people I follow had been talking about content marketing:

17. Find video related to a topic

Video is such an awesome way to bring content to life and if you’re in search of a video on a specific topic, Twitter search provides a great alternative to YouTube Search. To filter videos search using either Advanced search or toolbar search the and then select Videos from the results page filters.

18. Find photos related to a subject

Much the same as video above, to filter photos search using either Advanced search or toolbar search the and then select Photos from the results page filters.

19. View questions only

If you tick the ‘Question ?’ box on the Advanced Search page you will only be shown results that are questions. This is a real neat trick if you do a lot of your customer support over Twitter.

20. Find interesting people to follow

If you’re looking to find new people to connect with in your niche, you can run a search on a keyword or phrase and then filter ‘Accounts’ that match those keywords.

Here’s a search I ran for ‘content marketing’:

21. Find accounts by keyword AND location

Combining keywords with a location is incredibly powerful if you’re looking to locate accounts or businesses within a certain area.

22. Don’t search terms, search things you think people will say

Twitter search is a little different from Google Search. When you’re thinking of which keywords and phrases to query, think about how people talk to each other. Tweets tend to be a lot more conversational that Google search terms.

A simple tactic to find new sales leads

23. Look for buying signals

Listening is extremely important in social media and by keeping an eye on what people are saying, you can find some exciting opportunities.

Searching for terms like ‘anyone recommend’ or ‘any advice on’ are really great ways to identify people with on the lookout for some help and advice.

Also keep an eye out for any buying signals shown on Twitter (for example, dissatisfaction with a competitor or showing a need your product can fulfil) and engage to get the sales cycle in motion. Try not to be too “salesy” and more conversational at this stage. Or, if you can spot someone who is looking to make a purchase imminently, jump in and get on their radar.

Navigating Advanced Search

At a first glance, the Advanced Search page may appear a little overwhelming. There are quite a few fields to consider and its a little daunting figuring out where to start.

Below we’ve put together a quick guide to help you get started.

Getting started with Advanced Search

Words

• All of these words: Enter two or more words in this field and you’ll see tweets that contain those terms (in no particular order). You can search for one or more phrase by using quotations to separate each, for example “social media” and “social marketing”.
• This exact phrase: It’s best to search for just one phrase in here. This field is particularly useful if you want to search for names or quotes.
• Any of these words: This field is great to search for multiple words. For example, if I was searching for all things Buffer related I could use ‘Buffer’, ‘@Buffer’ and ‘#Buffer’.
• None of these words: Whatever you put in here will be remove tweets from your search results that contain the words or phrases you included.
• These hashtags: This one helps you to hone in on hashtags, I tend to use it to check-in on #bufferchat conversation.
• Written in: Using this option will allow you to find tweets in any of Twitter’s 50 supported languages.

People

• From these accounts: This one will show you tweets only from the account’s you add in this field.
• To these accounts: Enter the username of one or more accounts and you’ll be able to see tweets sent to them.
• Mentioning these accounts: Pretty similar to the last two, enter an account name (or more) in this field and you can see any tweets mentioning your chosen usernames.

Places

• Near this place: You can see tweets sent while a person was in a particular area.

Dates

• From this date to this date: This is an incredibly easy way to search for tweets between two dates.

Over to you

How do you use Twitter search? Any tips and tricks that have really helped your sales or marketing?

I’d absolutely love to hear your thoughts in the comments.

Image sources: IconFinder, Unsplash