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Which strategy works the best—a narrow, specialized positioning where a product focuses on one feature or an all-in-one solution where products offer a range of features? Turns out that bundling more features into a product does not automatically increase perceived value and often less is, in fact, more.

Alexander Chernev of the Kellogg School of Management has researched this area.

He tested various consumer products including toothpaste. His results show that consumers expect whitening-only toothpaste to whiten teeth better than toothpaste that both whitens and prevents cavities. This happens because consumers rely on a “zero-sum heuristic” which devalues the perceived performance of features if they are bundled together compared to a product with just one feature.

In other research, he found that bundling products sometimes even has a subtraction effect, meaning that consumers value the combined package as less than the value of the single-feature product. He was able to demonstrate this effect when he paired expensive items with inexpensive ones (a $2,000 computer with a $100 printer). Consumers valued the computer less when it was paired with the cheap printer than when it was sold by itself. He attributes this to the fact that people think in terms of categories, not numbers. In this case, they mentally downgraded the value of the computer from being expensive to moderately expensive when paired with a cheap printer and then didn’t think it was as valuable.

Here are five implications of this research:

1. Product development: Tempting as it may be to load up on features to a single-feature product to make it appealing to a wider range of consumers, this study suggests that this approach may fail. More is not always more and, if the competition sticks with single-featured products, consumers are likely to discount each new feature you add for no net gain in benefit.

2. Throw-ins: Beware of throw-ins—adding that cheap printer to entice people to buy an expensive computer or a fitness CD to increase sales of a home gym may be counter-productive.

3. Pricing: Chernev shows that pricing plays a critical role. If an all-in-one product is priced higher than a single-feature product, consumers don’t devalue its multiple features. So pricing all-in-one products at the same price as specialized products is counterproductive from both a margin and revenue standpoint.

4. Line extensions: The problem with pricing an all-in-one product higher than a single feature product is that it’s difficult to manage a product line with multiple price points—it’s simpler to have one price across the range so that all the products can be promoted together. One solution—everything is some kind of bundled offering—e.g. all different combinations of toothpaste and no single feature offering.

5. Branded features: The research doesn’t speak to the role of branding but I think it does change the dynamic. P&G’s addition of branded, extra features (Tide with a Touch of Downy or Crest plus Scope), for example, may break the zero-sum heuristic because each component of the bundle has already an established value. In these cases consumers will be more inclined to recognize that the bundle is providing additional value vs. a single feature produce even if it’s line-priced.

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You’ve worked the deal like a maestro, stage-managing every step of the opportunity, and your reward is, finally, “Yes, I’d like to move forward. Please send over a contract.” This is not the moment when your internal Department of Sales Prevention should prevent you from making your number…but here it is, happening again.

The scenario above is, unfortunately, all too common an occurrence in modern B2B selling. The ever-growing reach of legal and procurement departments, particularly in the litigation-happy United States, means that sealing a complex business deal with a handshake or one-size-fits-all document is a quaint historical memory. Today, creating a net-new business client account, or even renewing an existing B2B customer relationship, more often than not requires sellers to lose momentum, pace, and perhaps even customer goodwill, when they are forced to retreat from bond-building, and spend their time ferrying red-lined contracts back and forth between their employer and buyer.

The Definition of Insanity: Doing the Same Thing Repeatedly, and Expecting Different Results

Despite this common scenario, however, many companies neglect to address an identifiable sales workflow problem. Perhaps the Sales Operations team reports up to Legal. Maybe everyone is afraid of Legal. Or, the friction can occur on the buyer’s side: we’ve all experienced, at one time or another, selling into a company with a hyperactive procurement department that wields a veritable Black Hole of Sales Contracts. Regardless of the source of delay, there must be a way to fight back, to take back some control of the B2B sales cadence. Our new Research Report addresses the use of sales contract management technology enablers, which the most successful businesses deploy to shorten their sales cycle and maintain ownership of the customer acquisition process.

In Figure 1, we take a look at the self-reported efficiencies of Aberdeen’s survey respondents, around one of the key elements of B2B sales activity: getting a contract right the first time, so that the transfer of goods and services can begin immediately. The left-to-right data in Figure 1 paints a clear picture: Best-in-Class companies are significantly more adept than under-performing firms when it comes to minimizing contracting friction in the sales process.

Figure I: Measure Twice, Contract Once: Best-in-Class Companies Streamline their Sales Delivery

These top performers are 34% more likely than All Others (43% vs. 32%) to report that a “nearly perfect” typical, outgoing contract is generally accepted as-is by their buyer, motivating all parties to start deriving mutual business value from the relationship right away. Under-achieving survey respondents, however, are far more likely to re-invent the wheel – and delay sales implementations – through the deployment of imperfect processes that yield repeated rounds of contractual disagreements, changes, and iterations. Indeed, Aberdeen research published in Configure / Price / Quote: Better, Faster Sales Deals Enabled, reveals how this same Best-in-Class cohort develops 10% fewer versions of the typical outbound sales proposal, involves 18% fewer people in its development and approval, and requires reps to look in 18% fewer content repositories for the contracting assets they need. These efficiencies are directly related to the advantages that accrue to sales contract management users, which we will discuss shortly.

How Do the Best-in-Class Pull So Far Ahead?

These data points are impressive, but they do not take shape in a vacuum. Rather, the most successful sales operations teams deploy a series of core competencies (Figure 2) more frequently than other firms, which lay the groundwork for speedier, more accurate sales contracting:

Figure 2: Top Business Capabilities Support Best-in-Class Sales Contracting

• One of the most striking deltas between high- and low-performing companies is around pre-approved quotes, non-disclosure agreements, proposals and contracts. While more than two-thirds of Best-in-Class companies report this as an existing competency, far fewer under-performers have succeeded in avoiding useless repetition in their sales contracting activities. Anyone who carries a quota has, at some point, experienced the frustration of “it’s still in Legal” and, in plenty of instances, lost a deal or at least the chance to achieve a quota threshold as a result. Common sense dictates that pre-determining what contractual language, pricing, and terms are acceptable to the selling organization, represents a wise path toward lower levels of sales cycle leakage.
• Not only do the legalities and eventual product margins deserve standardization; the sales proposal and contracting process itself is worth studying, improving, and automating so that the flow of approvals, negotiations, and discounting is developed into a “guided selling” model that reps – and external channel partners – can rely on to provide optimal support for deal-closing. See Aberdeen’s Sales Acceleration for Winners: Best-in-Class Practices for Sales Contracting and Quoting for additional details on how the Best-in-Class minimize process friction, and as a result, win more deals.
• Content management is another vital element of a modern sales operations leader’s toolkit. The majority of all companies report that a centralized sales content repository is in place, but the strongest performers adopt this knowledge management capability the most aggressively. Once again, the best sales results accrue to those firms prioritizing the selling time – and minimizing the administrative responsibilities – of their front-line sellers, by providing clear, unified access to contract templates, terms-and-conditions variables, and proposal standards.
• Many businesses transact with one another on a regular basis, such as annual subscriptions for software or services that come up for regular renewals. Why rely on manual processes or someone’s memory to re-sell these relationships, if automated reminders of expirations and renewals are available to guide our focus? If “the early bird gets the worm,” a value-adding account rep will use these signals to motivate better customer service in anticipation of renewal cycles – hopefully before the 11.5 month mark – creating a win-win for all parties involved.
• Finally, while only 28% of surveyed companies indicate a fully digital audit trail of all documentation in the marketing-sales-service customer lifecycle, the early adoption of this best practice is favored by the Best-in-Class 58% more often than All Others (38% vs. 24%). This means that every interaction between buyer and seller – a prospect’s behavior captured by the marketing automation platform, all details of the deal as the opportunity progresses through the CRM system, and customer service items registered in the contact center or help desk applications – is securely and accurately captured electronically. The value of this audit trail means that anyone within the selling company – current and future sellers, services, and even attorneys and procurement negotiators – will be able to accurately and swiftly understand all elements of the customer relationship lifecycle. Given the commonly understood current awareness of how “the sales cycle has become the buying cycle,” Aberdeen’s Customer Engagement Has Evolved. Can Your Sales Team Keep Up? drives home the importance of this audit trail to our vital customers, as well.

Click here for the full report.

I’m the proud “parent” of two cats, Sammy and Harley. As with most cats, they are fiercely independent, tending to do what they want to do, rather than what my wife and I may want them to do. (To long time followers, you’ll recognize them, I’ve written about them before.)

While I haven’t done a rigorous analysis, I suspect we are successful getting them to do “sort of” what we wanted them to do around 40% of the time. Usually, it involves some sort of bribe with food or a treat, but even then, one (usually Harley) will sniff the food, turn his nose up at it, and go off to sleep in one of his hiding places. He may eat the food later, but certainly not when we are around.

Any cat owner will attest to the difficulty in getting cats to do what you want them to do, when you want them to do it.

Helping customers navigate their buying process is increasingly like herding cats.

If it’s only one person making the decision, then we can be pretty successful navigating them through to a purchase decisions–perhaps not for us, but at least they are likely to make a decision. They may wander a little, decision-making seldom seems to be the shortest route from “A” to “B.” Along the way, they’ll get diverted by other things, change directions, shift priorities, start and stop a few times, but more often than not, we can help them navigate through to making a decision. One might imagine that decision-making or buying journey to look something like the figure A, below. It’s never straight, it wanders, covers the same ground a number of times until a decision is reached.

CEB Research (See The Challenger Customer) tells us that complex B2B buying decisions are seldom driven by one person. Their data shows 5.4 people are usually involved in complex B2B decisions. (Frankly, I think that’s understated when you start looking at influencers, recommenders, and the always unpredictable veto’ers.) Historically, the best advice has been “cover all the decision-makers.” In doing this, we work with each person, identifying their goals, priorities, needs, agenda’s, metrics, and attitudes, working separately with each person. Ideally, we get each individually bought into our solution.

Working diligently with each individual, is something like figure A, but 5.4 times. We might diagram it as I have in figure B, below. (I haven’t figured out how to draw 0.4 customers, so that weird orange thing is supposed to be 0.4 customers )I suspect now you can start seeing the challenge of herding 5.4 customers through separate buying journeys. It’s a lot of work, but the real problem is, that we get them to the end of their individual buying journeys (Points B in the picture). What we need them to do, is converge on a single decision, Point C, at the same time. You can see working with customers separately, it’s virtually impossible to get them to a decision, Point C, at exactly the same time.

It turns out customers can’t make a buying journey as individuals–at least if they want to solve a problem and make a decision. They have to do it as a team. They have to align their goals, priorities, needs, agenda’s, metrics, and attitudes, at least enough to reach consensus on their definition of the problem, their goals, and the path to solving the problem.

Looking at it differently, they start their buying journey with differing points of view, with different ideas, different “maturity levels,” and so forth. We might picture it as in Figure C. As long as their points of view are separated, they will never reach a decision.We can see the challenges we have with our traditional approaches to helping customers make a buying decision. Working with each, individually, winning their support is good–but it doesn’t get a decision made because there is no commonality in their points of view or interests. Until we converge their interests, getting some overlap, as depicted in Figure D, we don’t have a chance of getting a decision made. Ultimately, the buying group’s success is based on the common ground, or convergence in interests and issues they face in the buying decision. (In this picture, it’s the area in black.) If the customer is to be successful, we have to help them find the areas of agreement, the common interests, goals, priorities, and so forth. We have to get them aligned around those issues and these issues have to be the driving factors in their decision making process. This area of alignment has to be sufficiently large to justify the investment they are making. If their common ground is not sufficiently large, while they are interested, they won’t be able to defend and justify the decision being made.

As sales people, we have to find the way to draw them closer together, increasing the overlap in interests, making the area in black sufficiently large. Stated in terms of value–it’s this area of value creation that makes a difference and has an impact on our customers” abilities to reach a decision. Value creation outside this area is value that’s not important to the customer (consequently represents cost or wasted effort). While it may be important to individuals in the decision-making process, it’s irrelevant to their decision.

At this point, you may be thinking it’s hopeless or too much work trying to find common ground in 5.4 customers. (You may even be thinking a career in cat herding may be easier). In reality, it’s not that hard. Think about it a moment. In any large organization, the only way things get done is through the convergence of common interests and goals. Without this, the organization would be completely dysfunctional and would fail. Our customers already have the experience of working together, of collaborating to find common ground, a convergence of interests, a way that they can make things happen.

We need to leverage this, helping them focus, collaborate, and align on the critical issues involved in their buying decision. Working with them, as a buying team, moving them closer together, rather than farther apart will maximize that common ground and the ability for them to make and justify a decision. I’ll be sharing ideas on how we can facilitate this process, both directly and indirectly, in future posts.

Everyone has their favourite social network. For some entrepreneurs, they might favour Facebook as a way of reaching out to their target market, or even LinkedIn or Instagram. As much as I enjoy using Facebook and Instagram from a personal perspective, my “superstar” social network has to be Twitter.

I have been using Twitter actively since 2009 and have never looked back. It’s my favourite social network because of how it allows me to engage in a two-way conversation with my community.

From a recent study I conducted with my audience, I found that 55.6% of the business owners in my community found Twitter the most difficult social network. This is something that needs to change as Twitter is one of the most opportunistic social networks.

I have recently been given the title of 15th most influential marketer in the UK from Brand Republic as well as the 4th most powerful online user out of 100 influential leaders and experts by The Digital Marketing Show. Both of these were measured based on my Klout score and how active I am on Twitter.

Do you want to be a Twitter Superstar? Here is how you can do it in 6 simple steps.

1. CONSISTENT ONLINE PRESENCE

The profile you create online must be brand consistent. This means that your website, Twitter, Facebook, Instagram and any other social network you use, needs to be sharing the same message through written content and images. One tool which I use to help me with image consistency is Canva.

2. DO YOUR RESEARCH

I talk about due diligence a lot in my weekly blog posts but it is something that is often overlooked by business owners. Without knowing your target audience through researching them, you won’t know what information will get the most interaction. A great tool I use for this is called Social Mention.

3. FOLLOW AND ENGAGE WITH INDUSTRY EXPERTS

One of the best ways to position yourself as a thought leader in your industry is to follow and engage with other experts. Find common ground, connect with them online and find ways in which you can work together. For my monthly webinars, I bring in a though leader, with expertise in a specific area of growing a business so that my audience consistently receives value.

4. BUILD YOUR LISTS

A list is a group of Twitter users, which you or another user has created. Viewing a list will show you a stream of tweets from only the users on that list. These can be public or private. Different types of lists include hashtag lists, client lists, competitor lists, news lists and industry leader lists. To read more on how to create lists, see here.

5. USE HASHTAGS

Hashtags are extremely important for Twitter and Instagram. Using the # before a word or phrase (with no spaces) makes it into a searchable keyword. The tweets with a Hashtag are two times more likely to get engagement because people know how to listen into what they are interested in. Use this to your advantage on Twitter. If you want more help with using hashtags on social networks, see my latest webinar here.

6. USING HOOTSUITE TO SCHEDULE TWEETS

Social media doesn’t have to take you hours a day, nor should it. Using tools like Hootsuite to schedule information will ensure that you are sticking to your social media plan, without losing too much of your valuable time. I would suggest a minimum of 5 Tweets a day so that you can connect with your audience at 9 in the morning, all the way through to 6 in the evening.

Remember do not expect amazing results to happen overnight as this is not how social media works. You need to spend the time engaging in a two-way conversation, as well as consistently sharing valuable information and connecting with thought leaders in your industry.

Welcome to the world of business blogging, where competition is hot, rules are plenty, and content is currency. As a marketer myself, ROI is what helps drive our business and blogging can be a solution that helps drive revenue, but how to turn your blog into an inbound marketing machine? For my money, blogging just might be the cornerstone of your content marketing.

Here are some statistics for you to consider:

• 70% of consumers learn about a company through articles vs. ads
• 67% of B2B markets using blogs generate 67% more leads
• Websites with blogs have 434% more indexed pages than those without
• 61% of U.S. consumers have made a purchase via blog posts

(source: http://bit.ly/1Ly2ZcO)

The 6 Step Game Plan

1. Build the framework

Before you start writing, lay the foundation with these essential building blocks—they’ll go a long way in optimizing your blog in terms of content, search value and conversions.

• Identify and make a list of your buyer personas—targeted content is twice as effective versus non-targeted
• Create a list of problems each persona faces for an arsenal of relevant content and stories
• Segment your blog into a few main silos that categorize these problems and stories.
• Develop a keyword list to optimize your blog posts with relevant terms your audience will use in search
• Create a big a** subscription button and some well-timed/well-placed pop-ups to optimize your blog
• Build simple landing pages with capture forms. Deliver value on your blog, sell on your landing pages

2. Storytelling

Perhaps the least talked about blogging practice is storytelling. Telling a story, rather than delivering a report or diatribe is essential; we as people are predisposed to relating and remembering them. There is an art, however, and I’m going to pay a piece of sage advice forward, once bestowed upon me. Every story starts with a problem and ends with a resolution—fill in the middle with how you get there. Might seem basic (and it is), but make no mistake, readers will always inherently follow this structure, and if you don’t have it, there will be no happy ending.

3. Content Creation

This one’s a biggie. Is there a person on earth who’s not talking about content right now? Content is your most important inbound marketing tool. It’s what separates you from competitors and other blogs, and ultimately drives your audience to engage with you.

• Use data. It’s fluff, until it’s substantiated. Leveraging data not only ups the value of your content, it also makes it credible
• Provide visuals. Break up the copy with relevant graphics. They add context and aesthetic flare. Try things like graphs, pics, infographs and screenshots
• Focus on delivering value. Sell your ideas, not your stuff. People are sick of being sold to. They want to learn from you, they want your help, not your pitch. Focus your content on that, and the product side will come full circle

These bullets above will go along way in making your content shareworthy, which is critical to broadening your reach and strengthening your influence.

4. Scaling content

There’s nothing worse than looking at a blog where the most recent post was six months ago. Running a successful blog means diligence and frequent publishing, but sourcing good content and putting pen to paper eats a ton of time up. You have to find ways to scale.

• Slice and dice data. Dive into your analytics and parse it up, there are many different ways to spin single data point. Segment your buyer personas: a CFO and a CMO are going to see two different things. Find an angle and run with it
• Guest Bloggers. Enlisting guest bloggers is a great way to relieve writing duties and get some fresh perspective on your page (but remember, they can’t sell)
• Build a content calendar. Planning your blog is huge—get as many contributors from your organization as possible, assign them deliverables, and get the content wheel humming

5. Amplify

Rand Fishkin, SEO Guru from Moz, said it best: “I hit publish for the first time, and everyone just showed up – said no blogger ever.” Writing quality content is just half the battle, the offer half is getting it out there and getting it discovered.

Use multiple channels to build your blog audience. Start by building killer ad copy of what the blog is about, attach the blog link, and push it across your social channels and email lists. And don’t forget to leverage your guest bloggers’ networks too.

6. Call to Action

If you take anything from this article, make sure it’s this: always offer your readers something to engage with at the end of the post. A piece of content, a link to your products, a promotion or someone to contact from your business. It’s a surefire way to track engagement, measure your posts and gather leads.

Here’s one last piece of advice: have fun with it. If you’re having fun, chances are, your audience will too. Good luck out there!

About the Author

As the co-founder and VP of marketing at Vendasta Technologies, Jeff Tomlin is a visionary in the quickly changing world of digital. Jeff sees the landscape evolving and identifies creative and proactive solutions through product development and market research and has overseen relationship development for some of the world’s largest media companies, including Google, Yahoo, The New York Times and Classified Ventures. Today, he continues to work with over 250 media organizations across all verticals, serving over 100,000 local businesses through these connections.

Want to learn how you can measure your content marketing? Download the free Salesforce e-book.

“Whatever is begun in anger ends in shame.” — Benjamin Franklin

As much as we hate to admit it, we’ve all been there. Anyone who has ever worked in customer service to any capacity has had an angry customer bark them down at one point or another.

You know better than to fight back because that could be very embarrassing for you and your company. But did you ever truly learn how to convert those angry complainers into happy, loyal customers?

If you stop to think about it, you’ve probably also been on the other end of the situation–waiting hours for customer support to finally get you off hold, or dealing with a product or service that just didn’t meet your expectations. Why wouldn’t you want to turn that around for someone else?

Stay calm

The first and most important step is to remain calm. Remember that you don’t just represent yourself when you talk to an angry customer, but also your whole company. Staying cool under pressure will reflect positively on your company and coworkers, so it’s always best to take the high road.

If a customer starts hurling insults at you, take a moment to remind yourself that it’s not personal. Handle the situation with grace, and you may be surprised by how effective this can be in calming an angry customer down.

Ignore rude comments and focus on how you can rectify the situation–the sooner you assist them and solve their problem, the less time they have to stew in their own anger.

Have a script ready

“Canned” responses have a bad reputation for being too generic and impersonal, but as we’ve discussed before, they can be vital to streamlining productivity. No angry customer wants to be waiting on the other end as your team member tries to think up the right thing to say.

Ask your online chat support team to report on which phrases they have found most effective when dealing with unhappy customers. This will prove invaluable to future hires and less experienced team members, who will need these field-tested scripts to guide their conversations.

Personalize your response

Even if canned responses are helpful for you or your team, no angry customer wants to feel like they are receiving a generic response. Use scripts as guidelines for how you should approach a subject, but don’t forget to include personal touches, like using the customer’s name.

There is scientific evidence that shows that hearing your own name activates a unique part of the brain, so there may be reason to assume that seeing one’s own name in a chat produces a similar effect.

If there’s one thing to remember, it’s that a script is not an excuse for lazy customer service.

Empathize with your customer

Krista Tippett, the host of the popular podcast, On Being, puts it best: “You can disagree with another person’s opinion. You can disagree with their doctrines. You can’t disagree with their experience.”

The angry customer isn’t just overreacting to an inconvenience. They are dealing with a number of things in their life which exacerbate the issue at hand, so try to understand what they may be going through emotionally. They may be late to an important meeting that could dictate the fate of their career. Or maybe they had a large fight with their spouse, and dealing with this issue is the last thing they want to be doing.

You’ve probably been in their shoes with a service or product that didn’t meet your expectations in certain ways. Always wait to let them completely explain themselves before responding–don’t ever cut an angry customer off! They are venting their frustrations and deserve to be heard.

The next step is to make the customer feel heard. Simply saying, “I understand” can make a huge difference–at the end of the day, we all just want to be understood.

Don’t deflect responsibility

It will only anger customers further if you tell them you weren’t responsible for their problem, even though that may be the case.

The customer knows that you yourself are not responsible for all the issues they are having, but they do entrust you with the responsibility to fix it. So don’t try to pinpoint where the blame actually belongs. Though you shouldn’t take their anger personally, you should take this responsibility seriously.

It’s your chance to not only turn things around for your company, but also to make a difference in that person’s day.

Keep the language positive and offer solutions

Once you’ve heard the customer through his or her complaint, be prepared to offer solutions with positive sentence structures. It may seem insignificant, but rewording your phrases gives them different meanings.

Instead of “I don’t know.”, say, “Let me find out for you.”

Don’t say, “I can’t help you.” Instead try, “Let me forward you to the appropriate specialist.”

A positive spin on your sentences can mean you’re an aid to their solution instead of just another hurdle to jump.

Offer additional value

Once you have resolved their main issue, ask if there is any other way you can help. You may be surprised how often customers have additional pain points or questions that need to be addressed. When you can service them additionally, they will truly feel that your company cares and goes that extra mile for their satisfaction.

Now relax and give yourself a pat on the back. You survived the most difficult part of your job and represented your company well! Give yourself a few moments and take some deep breaths before getting back to work.

Dealing with angry customers can be incredibly challenging. Just remind yourself when things get tough, this is your opportunity to turn things around and make an unsatisfied individual a loyal customer–all as a result of your excellent support skills.

WASHINGTON – Hillary Rodham Clinton is sketching out some proposals Tuesday to curb the amount of money in politics. A look at her plan:

—Push for legislation to close “loopholes” that enable people to secretly spend millions on politics. The legislation would require outside groups that engage in significant political spending to disclose major donors and would prevent groups from moving money around to hide its original source, according to a policy outline from the campaign. Congressional approval, particularly if Republicans maintain control of both chambers, would probably be a tough sell.

—Require federal government contractors to disclose all political spending. Much of that information is already disclosed to regulators but the administration could go farther by including a disclosure requirement for spending on advocacy that is not otherwise public, such as to groups like the Sierra Club and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. She says she would make this move “if Congress fails to act on common sense campaign finance reform.”

—Urge the Securities and Exchange Commission to require publicly traded companies to disclose all political spending to their shareholders. Some companies have already begun doing this.

— If Supreme Court vacancies arise, nominate justices who “value the right to vote over the right of billionaires to buy elections.” Clinton is seeking to tether the influence the wealthy have in politics to what Democrats see as an erosion of voting rights, condemning both the Citizens United decision on campaign finance and the Supreme Court’s 2013 ruling that Shelby County, Ala., no longer needs federal approval before changing voting rights laws, upending the 1965 Voting Rights Act.

—Support a constitutional amendment to overturn Citizens United. This is a largely symbolic move because constitutional amendments are so rare. If elected, Clinton would become the second president to endorse amending the Constitution to roll back Citizens United. President Barack Obama said he would “love” to see that. Some Republican presidential hopefuls, including South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham, also have backed revisiting Citizens United through a constitutional process.

—Use taxpayer dollars to match money raised by presidential and congressional candidates. To access that public financing, candidates would have to agree to a “substantially” lower limit on how much money they can receive from any one donor. The current limit is $2,700 per donor per election, effectively $5,400 if a candidate competes in both a primary and a general election. Candidates also would have to demonstrate “sufficient public support for a viable campaign” to get the public money.

The post A look at Clinton’s plan to curb the power of big money in politics appeared first on Canadian Business - Your Source For Business News.

LinkedIn is launching a new publication series designed to showcase the potential of its social network to enhance the economic graph. Called LinkedIn Lists, the intent is to highlight select members and companies on the professional social network LinkedIn says are “doing extraordinary work and transforming their fields.”

The first part (dubbed the “Next Wave”) of this quarterly series includes 150 professionals across 15 industries — all of whom have been named to the top of their field and are under 35 years of age. In a way, you could think of this as a variation of Forbes’ 30 under 30 lists or something like that.

“Our goal is to make the world’s professionally relevant news and knowledge accessible through LinkedIn,” said the company’s executive editor, Dan Roth. “One of the ways we do that is by finding the people and companies who are making news and spreading knowledge. The Next Wavers are setting trends, creating innovative ways to tackle problems, and establishing themselves as the leaders others want to follow.”

Just who are these so-called Next Wavers? LinkedIn includes names like Amazon’s senior product manager Laura Ridlehoover — she helped create the Dash button; photographer Gray Malin; Tinder cofounder and creator of dating app Bumble Whitney Wolfe; Zappos Holacracy implementation lead John Bunch; and Politico’s vice president of operations Katherine Lehr.

This inaugural list will include professionals across not only the enterprise and consumer technology space, but also entertainment, health care, energy, finance, retail and fashion, and more.

While LinkedIn hopes that its Lists series will prove valuable to people (“Hey, we have some great influencers and Subject Matter Experts”), it could also be viewed as an effort to just simply promote LinkedIn and show that if you keep your profile updated, you too could be on one of these lists. It could also be an enticement in the hopes that you’ll see value in publishing content on LinkedIn’s platform, which already more than 1 million members are using.

The names on these lists are not selected entirely by hand. The company says that it used data, insights, and nominations from its editors and influencers. Other factors that were weighed include which public profiles were viewed the most by their peers, social engagement performance, how often that person was in the news, and also data pulled from Newsle, acquired by LinkedIn in 2014.

LinkedIn’s “ultimate dream” (at least under chief executive Jeff Weiner) is to develop the economic graph, a digital map of the global economy. The intent is to understand the relationship between people, jobs, skills, companies, and professional knowledge — all in real time. Since LinkedIn has this data at hand, the company’s going to be able to leverage it to help demonstrate that the professional social network has value to people.

This content series is another step by LinkedIn to evolve its platform. It follows the addition of clipping to LinkedIn SlideShare last month and will likely appeal to users to follow these list-makers in order to find out what content they’re publishing on the site.

The total number of parts to this series remains unknown, but LinkedIn said the next one will focus on the best new voices on the social network — the ones who write and share content and have done a good job of developing their brands.

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With the explosion of online retail giants like Amazon.com, the new digital economy has turned traditional consumer buying behavior upside down, making your everyday salesperson seemingly obsolete. In fact, according to Invesp, more than 62 percent of U.S. consumers with Internet access shop online at least once a month and 78 percent of those shoppers don’t check out a product in-store before buying online.

Increasing from $231 billion in 2012, online retail sales are projected to grow steadily to $370 billion in 2017, leaving little doubt that traditional sales teams must do something to adapt. But just what can today’s salesperson do to survive in a thriving digital economy?

Survival Tip #1: Learn to Sell to the Informed Consumer

Consider this: according to CMO.com, 72 percent of Millennials research and shop their options online before going to a store or the mall. When approached by a salesperson, the majority of in-store shoppers already have a general idea of what they want to purchase, their anticipated spending, and where else they can purchase the same item.

This behavior, known as webrooming, influences the entire sales process. Salespeople can no longer get by with empty promises, or hypothetical examples of how a product worked for someone else. Today’s informed customer values proof.

But on-the-spot proof can come tough. So, today’s salespeople need to be equipped with data that tells a story. (Numbers never lie.) A frantic sales pitch will cause more harm than good, but supporting numbers and facts build credibility and trust between salesperson and the customer.

Survival Tip #2: Never Pitch Again

When it comes to dealing with informed customers, an overeager sales pitch can turn them off. Instead, salespeople should consider eliminating the traditional pitch to focus entirely on educating the customer.

Instead of approaching customers at the door, salespeople should give them a little space and let them linger, engaging only after a few minutes have passed. Considering the informed customer already has a purchase objective in mind, some time to look around and locate the item keeps things comfortable. Once engaged, salespeople should avoid overbearing statements about random products or great features and, rather, aim to serve as a resource to assist the buying decision.

Remember, buyers are seeking proof in the purchasing process, making salespeople who are only focused on closing a sale irrelevant. Spouting off a boatload of information up front doesn’t educate a buyer; it overwhelms them.

Survival Tip #3: Embrace Digital Communication

Today’s buyers crave instant gratification. They expect questions, problems, and desires to be addressed immediately. Even those who prefer not to be addressed with sales pitches at the door, likely want in-store resources readily available and at their fingertips. Since one salesperson (or an entire team) can’t be available 24/7/365, it’s important to provide multiple communication channels for customers.

In addition to on-site sales support, retailers should provide multiple means of contact through their website, social channels, or via mobile. With a range of communication options, customers are empowered to start conversations whenever and however they want.

Aside from sales support, these various communication channels can also be used as a way to reach target consumers. 84 percent of online shoppers refer to at least one social media platform for recommendations before shopping online, a chance for salespeople to capitalize on digital. (If ya can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em, right?)

By putting control in the hands of the customer, the digital economy has spurred a renewed demand for transparency. But that doesn’t necessarily displace the knowledge and expertise a salesperson can provide. By implementing a few fresh tactics, today’s salespeople can survive the changing world of retail, positioning themselves as a trusted resource for the modern consumer.

Working out what makes your customer tick when it comes to your website can be a minefield, and it’s no surprise really because no two users are identical. The headache comes with what to show them and how to stand out from other companies in your industry.

First time visitors coming to your site want to feel wanted and accustomed too, so it is important that you welcome them with open arms. It is easy to fall into the trap of showing the customer everything you stand for or as many products as possible but often less is more. In fact, this should apply to every page on your website because having good SEO means that people will be hitting your site from all angles so some may not even reach your homepage.

Often high bounce rates are caused by a mismatch in what a visitor expects and what they see. Within a short time period, you need to show only the most relevant information. Bring them into your ‘world’ and make life easy for them from the word ‘go’.

Jim Reeves – Welcome To My World

As mentioned, it is important to keep the distractions to a minimum and try to funnel their journey into a clear, concise path. This means if they land on a page about ‘bath taps’ only show them taps for their bathroom, not their kitchen and definitely not any other bathroom accessory. If the usability of the website is as it should be, they will find anything else they need quickly and easily afterwards.

Pop ups with offers have proven to work, but perhaps only show these for second-time visitors as they already know what you’re about. For first time visitors, keep everything in black and white and let them do what they’ve got to do by clearly mapping the important information so they do not need to go searching for it.

Queen – Don’t Stop Me Now

It is also important that you try and showcase what makes you different, whether that be your value proposition, an offer that no other competitors have or your best selling products. It can be extremely difficult to tell customers what it is about your company that is so different from all of the others, especially in such a short time frame. According to the Telegraph, humans have a smaller attention span than Goldfish – just 8 seconds. So, try to show them your best bits and keep them interested.

Foo Fighters – Best Of You

When they make it to your checkout area but for some reason decide they have somewhere else to be, try to make sure you persuade them why they shouldn’t have left. Cart Abandonments are generally quite high for online shoppers (67% – Average) and this is largely due to them trying to find promotional codes or when doing some comparison shopping. For business to business companies, if your customers have visited your contact page and stayed on their for a while but drop off, they have clearly showed an interest in contacting you but have been side-tracked so it would be worth trying to get back in touch with them again. Google AdWords Remarketing is a great tool for this.

According to Jupiter Research, Relevant emails drive 18 times more revenue than broadcast emails. Therefore, drop a tailored email into that customer’s inbox once they drop-off your website as this is one way to keep in touch, and ultimately a way to drive revenue. This also goes back to the point earlier about making them feel like you care and you want to build a relationship with them.

Tinie Tempah – Not Letting Go

The customer or new prospect may have previously had a bad experience from another company, so this is your chance to grab their trust by giving them the user experience they have been looking for. It might turn out that the person browsing has visited your website before and had not had a great experience, but it is crucial to keep testing with your landing pages. In fact, for retail and E-commerce websites, treat your website like the front window of a brick and mortar shop – it shouldn’t stand still.

Constant testing can lead to a long term relationship with your customer, whereby they are encouraged to return and see what’s new. These changes can improve the experience and usability for the customer, in turn transforming them from a previous browser into a new buyer, and hopefully, a returning buyer.

Chris Brown – Right Here

So, you did it, the customer came to a conclusion on whether to trust your business or not, they’ve bought into you and they bought your product or service – it’s a done deal! Although that customer has converted into a buyer, the retention of an existing customer is much easier than creating a new one so bear that in mind for your future relationship with them.

But for now, happy customer = happy business … queue the music (and minions!).

Pharrell Williams – Happy (Despicable 2 – Lyric Version)

Successful business negotiations require a specific skill set. However, these skills have more to do with diplomacy and understanding than many business leaders might think. Here are five professional skills that can help you close business deals profitably, quickly, and amicably.

When you strip everything “extra” away, business boils down to negotiation. Business depends upon the willingness of two or more people to reach a mutually-beneficial agreement. Cooperation is the decisive organizing principle of enterprise. Unfortunately, this fact contradicts what many business leaders have been taught regarding the competitive modern marketplace. Consider the often-referenced ‘invisible hand of economics,’ for example.

This theory suggests that in order for an economic system to function best, it must be built by those concerned with their own self-interests. But while there’s certainly something to be said for Adam Smith’s laissez-faire economics, modern business could prosper from focusing less on competition, and more on cooperation—especially when it comes to negotiating business deals.

A Matter of Trust

Studies have shown that negotiators who focus on establishing relationships of trust and collaboration, and who refuse to view other negotiators as opponents, gain on average 42% more value per negotiation. The strong-arm tactics many negotiators depend upon are simply not effective over the long-term; instead, they result in resentful clients eager to find more accommodating business partners. The end result of selfish negotiations is a constant turnover of clients and an increasingly negative reputation for your business.

Business negotiation doesn’t generally require combative behavior, but it does require certain professional skills. These skills will help you get what you want without having to sacrifice your business relationships or organization’s reputation to do so. We’ve identified five of these professional skills that are most important to conducting business deals, which we’ll discuss here:

1. Organization: Over 50% of business leaders admit to losing approximately nine hours per week as a result of disorganization. Disorganized employees who earn approximately $50,000 a year can cost companies an estimated $11,000 a year in lost hours. These stats show the threat of disorganization to any business. That threat isn’t confined to the office—business negotiators who fail to keep their information organized are likely to demonstrate that fact to the other party, damaging their own credibility. At the very least, disorganization causes delays in the negotiation process, and business leaders value few things more than their time. Approach the table with your facts and data firmly in mind, and have ready access to any information you don’t already know by heart, so that you can quickly answer questions and support arguments. In fact, be ready to provide as much data as possible: According to Columbia Business School professor Gita Johar, a surplus of information can help listeners “resolve that discord and solidify their opinions.” Organization is essential to helping clients and partners recognize the benefits of doing business with you, so it’s the first step towards mastering business negotiation.

2. Clarity: Whether for external or internal communication, clarity is something every organization should strive for. In a survey by HR magazine, 46% of the employees surveyed claimed they regularly received confusing or unclear directions from management, and 36% claimed it happened as often as three times per day. As a result, these employees estimated they wasted roughly 40 minutes every day trying to decode unclear instructions.

In a negotiation setting, lack of clarity can be more than just a nuisance; it can be a very real danger. 95% of buyers already think that salespeople talk too much and you’re already swimming upstream before you even shake hands. Unclear agreements may lead to misunderstood roles or even legal disputes further down the line. Combat ambiguity by thoroughly documenting any agreement that is reached. This may seem tedious, but by drafting detailed and legally binding contracts—rather than relying on verbal agreements—you ensure that both sides completely understand what is expected of them. You may also wish to record the meeting for future reference—just be sure that you have both parties’ consent before doing so.

3. Reasonability: According to Professor Karen Walsh of the Thunderbird School of Global Management, 40% of people believe they are cooperative and trusting. Yet, when asked about their counterpart, people “tend to believe that the other party is just looking to win.” As a result of this suspicion, many business negotiators will choose to go on the offensive, hoping to cow the other party into submission before they can act themselves. However, a negotiator who is unable to trust is also unable to collaborate effectively. Negotiation is built on compromise. As such, it is an often-overlooked talent that can help establish successful, long-term partnerships. The old-adage, you catch more flies with honey than with vinegar certainly applies.

Try to place yourself in the shoes of your counterpart. What do they want? What are they willing to give? Remember that he or she is also interested in closing this deal, so there’s no reason why the two of you should be working against each other. Be reasonable and make concessions where possible, and you’ll most likely see the other negotiator is willing to do the same. On the other hand, reasonability doesn’t mean exploitability; if the other negotiator refuses to make concessions, you may have to accept that this partnership isn’t going to work. If so, cut your losses and move on.

4. Dependability: It’s certainly not something to be proud of, but human beings are generally comfortable with lying. According to a study by the University of Massachusetts, 60% of adults will lie at least once during a 10-minute conversation, and 40% of job applicants lie on their work applications. That said, when it comes to business deals, honesty should be the only policy. Any agreements you make or contracts you sign are only as good as your willingness and ability to carry them out. So, before you make any promises, be sure you can deliver. It’s always better to have a deal fall through than to renege on a contract after it’s been finalized. Be as dependable as you expect the other negotiator to be, and you’ll be able to develop a reputation that positively affects any future business deals.

5. Charm What makes business negotiations so difficult is that they often rely on person-to-person communication. And while this may make it easier to share and understand information than over the telephone or through emails, it also lends itself to other problems. 55% of communication comes from facial expressions, while only 7% is carried in actual words, which means the danger of unintentionally sharing information, opinions, or feelings is significantly higher when meeting face-to-face. Couple that with the fact that 65% of senior level executives say subjective factors that can’t be quantified make a significant difference in evaluating business proposals, and you’ll see that emotion plays a large part in how well your proposals will be received.

In essence, if the other party decides he or she likes you, you’ll be much more likely to close a deal advantageous to everyone. So, work on your smile, look your best, and above all be friendly, because a little bit of charm might just mean the difference between successful negotiations and complete failures.

Negotiation is a Skill

Business negotiation relies on the willingness of two parties to come together for their mutual benefit. However, more often than not, those involved fail to recognize the person sitting across the table as a potential ally. Instead, they focus all of their energy into confronting and defeating this ‘opponent,’ when they should be nurturing a relationship of trust. It’s good to remember that even your tone of voice is as important as the content coming out of your mouth.

To successfully negotiate requires more than willingness; it requires specific professional skills. Luckily, these skills can be learned. By concentrating on developing the organizational and soft skills necessary to promote constructive negotiation, you’ll give your company an advantage that will continue to have a positive impact for years to come.

For 7 ways to get from click to close faster, download the free Salesforce e-book.

Online tools such as email were once considered the best prospecting tools. That is no longer the case. The phone has reclaimed the title as the number one prospecting tool for sales teams. Listen as inside sales expert Trish Bertuzzi explains why the phone is the top tool and what to say during conversations to get buyers to want to learn more.

The inside sales market is growing at a mind-blowing rate of over 42,400 net new jobs per year, which is 300% faster than traditional outside sales, according to the 2013 Inside Sales Market Size Study.

In a brand new ebook, 7 Essential Strategies for Leading a Stellar Inside Sales Team, I had the chance to interview six record-breaking, inside sales leaders. In my conversations, I wanted to find out what made them stellar, and the commonalities, as well as the unique perspectives. That’s what you’ll find in the complete ebook, but here are some highlights and takeaways from my findings.

1. Optimize for Productivity

Optimization is the underlying strength of top performing inside sales teams. Optimization is about focusing in the right places where you’ll get the maximum return.

DoubleDutch has optimized for productivity by outsourcing much of their lead research and data collection to the Philippines, where workers use web and screen scrapers to build massive comprehensive lists of leads for his sales teams to call. All of this is done at a fraction of the cost and time it would have taken his own sales staff.

“I believe in theory of constraints. A big part of my job…was to break work into tasks, look for any constraints that may impede maximum sales velocity and throughput — and eliminate them,” shared Russ Hearl, Vice President of Mid- Market Sales at DoubleDutch. (Meet me and Russ at Dreamforce in this session.)

 2. Focus on Metrics

For inside sales, movement is what matters. To understand this, it’s crucial to leverage metrics for performance improvement. However, with so many metrics to choose, it’s important to find a focus. What really matters? Jill says to focus on leading indicators, not closed deals.

“The only metric that matters is this: Did I have a great conversation with my buyer that established credibility and moved the ball forward? All other metrics should fall into the category of ‘touch points.’ I don’t want to be touched. I want to be moved,” shared Trish Bertuzzi, CEO of The Bridge Group, Inc. (Meet me and Trish at Dreamforce in this session.)

LogMeIn focuses on inbound lead metrics such as on-time lead follow up, the number of dials, the amount of talk time, total number of meetings set up, etc. In addition, they review individual reps’ performance to identify and stop problems.

“We don’t use all of these metrics in isolation. What’s important is effectiveness — the quality of the conversation. We’re constantly focused on improving the skill levels of our inside sales team,” said Ellen Matsell, Vice President of Sales Operations at LogMeIn.

3. Create the Right Culture

Culture is essential to hiring and retaining top talent. Work to create a set of shared beliefs and camaraderie throughout the organization. ADP provides games like ping-pong and foosball. Intuit Demandforce sponsors Waffle Wednesdays and delivers ice cream and tacos at the end of the month. However, most important of all is servant leadership.

“My people know that I care intensely about their personal and professional success. My managers do this, too. We take pride and joy in celebrating the success of others. We want our people to be credit givers, not credit takers,” shared Shep Maher, SVP of Sales at GuideSpark.

With today’s intense competition for top talent, the emphasis on culture is paying off. Employees who enjoy their coworkers, feel valued, have fun, and see advancement opportunities, will work harder and sell more. Bonus: With great culture, employees tend to invite their top-performing friends to interview.

“To us, happy employees lead to happy customers, which leads to more profits. That’s why we make our work environment fun — a place where friends work and you can make friends at work,” shared Vaughn Aust, EVP of Integrated Solutions at MarketStar.

4. Zealously Train and Develop the Team

Focusing on training and people development is what creates a stellar inside sales organization. Successful teams rigorously train and regularly coach their employees.

At Intuit Demandforce, different onboarding programs are created for each of the positions. Their training program seeks to improve a salesperson’s skill level relevant to key metrics such as contact-to-demo conversions or the demo-to-closed deal ratio. The training kicks off with a week of classroom work filled with shadowing, beginning sales skills, and vertical industry. Over the next few months, sales reps are trained three days a week in 30-minute increments, and move from basic to more advanced skills such as recognizing buying signals, handling objections, probing, and more.

“We do the training to develop confidence. In this job, it’s easy for LDRs and AEs to get a quota mentality, chasing outcomes. We need to keep them ‘present,’ focused on the process, because that’s how they’ll get the results,” shared Mike Bohnett, Director of Sales at Intuit Demandforce.

5. Motivate and Inspire

Stellar inside sales leaders focus on motivating their teams to achieve a high level of performance. In addition to offering a compelling compensation plan with spiffs and contests, keeping reps focused on a day-to-day basis is viewed as more important. It’s how the end results are achieved.

DoubleDutch adheres to the “sibling rivalry theory,” in which competition between siblings (such as tennis stars Venus and Serena Williams) and the external environment, drive higher levels of performance. Each month, they pair reps up with someone new, and tie their compensation to it.

ADP uses TVs to broadcast performance activities and recognize achievements. “Everyone likes it. Salespeople by nature are competitive, and it creates a fun environment. During our pilot, we measured certain KPIs and we saw good lift from it,” shared Liz Gelb-O’Connor, VP of Inside Sales Strategy and Innovation at ADP.

In addition to optimization, metrics, and culture, effective inside sales leaders love what they do every day.

Learn more strategies and insights for a successful inside sales team with the free ebook, 7 Essential Strategies for Leading a Stellar Inside Sales Team.

Have you noticed how so many B2B companies seem to be running their own proprietary conferences these days? I can’t turn around without another customer event popping up on the radar. AppNexus has its Summit, going on three years now. Quad/Graphics relaunched its Camp Quad last year. MeritDirect celebrated its 16th Co-op this year. This got me wondering. Producing an event is expensive and risky. What’s the benefit? Should you launch a client conference of your own? In conversations with several marketers, I have identified six reasons to consider it.

Customer events are especially popular in the tech world. Kathleen Schaub, vice president of IDG’s CMO Advisory Service, reports that customer events are twice as common (at 48%) as participation in trade shows (27%) among tech marketers. But the trend appears in financial services, manufacturing, and business services as well. Here’s why B2B companies are jumping into proprietary events.

1. Uninterrupted face time. What a great way to get your customer’s full attention, especially compared with a trade show, where you have to compete with zillions of others. SiriusDecisions, the marketing consulting firm, views its popular Summit as a place to deliver fresh research to its clients, as part of its paid advisory service. The Summit brought a capacity crowd of 2,300 attendees to Nashville’s Opryland complex for three and a half days, with 150 sessions. No distractions, just 100% client attention.
2. Efficient prospecting. Although primarily for clients, many of these conferences are designed to include prospects as well. Who better to sell for you than happy current customers? NewsCred deliberately added an extra day to its #ThinkContent Summit that would be open to non-customers, by invitation. “We worked with the sales team to identify target accounts, and we invited marketing leaders from those companies to bring their teams,” said Jasmine Cortez, event marketing manager. These attendees were treated like leads, with post-event nurturing communications and sales follow-up.
3. Customer retention. Events that are perceived as valuable translate into customer good will and loyalty. For NewsCred, the primary objective is to deepen customer relationships, says Melissa Blazejewski, B2B events manager. Client conferences also serve to deepen the host company’s understanding of its customer needs and stimulate account penetration. Brad Gillespie, head of global marketing at SiriusDecisions, says: “Sifting through data about Summit attendees makes us smarter as marketers. But the primary benefit is in cross-buying. Attending the Summit is clearly associated with clients’ subscribing to new service lines.”
4. Brand value expansion. Quad/Graphics cleverly positioned its Camp Quad event to serve senior marketing people, although the typical day-to-day customer for the large printing company is a production specialist. The Camp Quad event was located near its network of Wisconsin printing plants, which showcases for their newer technologies and service offerings. So the attendees not only picked up new marketing ideas, they broadened their understanding of Quad’s capabilities. Maura Packham, marketing and communications VP, said: “the post-event feedback shows that people feel differently about Quad’s value proposition. This was our goal.”
5. Content production. Conference programming serves as a valuable source of new content for various uses throughout the year. “We advise our clients that the best B2B campaigns are centrally themed and extend over time. We practice what we preach, by using the Summit as the launch event for a year’s communications,” says Gillespie. For Quad/Graphics, the client event becomes a useful reason to call for the sales team, who follow up with non-attendees saying “here’s what you missed.”
6. Make money. Many client events, like Camp Quad, are hosted entirely by the organizer, with attendees paying only travel expenses. But some, like SiriusDecisions, are run like a profit center, with sponsors and exhibitors paying the freight. “Our value proposition is convenient access to useful information,” says Gillespie. “Our sponsors deliver over 100 case studies, which are highly valued by attendees. We run the event as a business, but its main purpose is to educate and enrich our customers’ experience.”

Convinced? It’s a challenge to organize your own event, but the payoff can be huge.

Whether or not you are actively selling a product, it is more than likely that at some point in your career you will be selling something. There is a lot more to sales than the straight sell. You need to have a strategy, a backup plan, and do plenty of homework on the person you are addressing. To make the most of your selling experience, no matter what it is you’re selling, there are a few things you should keep in mind. Ensuring your clients perceive you as competent, genuine, and helpful can go a long way, remember these five sales strategies to boost your sales techniques and reputation.

1.) Know your business

Go after the leads that you actually need to succeed. Sales is more than than simply addressing anyone with the ability to buy; you want to sell to people that can give you a long-term and prosperous relationship. There is probably a demographic to which your business specifically caters . Go after those leads, and make sure you’re acquiring the kinds of sales your company needs. To assess how well you are achieving your sales goals, Jeffrey Hayzlett suggests performing a SWOT analysis. This stands for strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats. You and your sales team should keep a log of all interactions with customers, whether in a field CRM tool or field activity management software. This will allow you to analyze what has been working, and what hasn’t been so you can adjust accordingly. Additionally, if there is an opportunity for a sale, or if you are potentially going to lose a client, a SWOT analysis will deliver early awareness allowing you to take preemptive measures.

2.) Have clear goals and know how to reach them

Set out a weekly or monthly target for calls or meetings to keep yourself organized and efficient. Having a clear set of expectations for yourself ahead of time makes you more likely to follow through and maximize on your time for the week. More than just mapping out your goals, come up with a plan for the best way to reach them. Do your homework not only on the goals of the product you’re pitching, but also who you’re talking to. Figure out the best, most likely way to reach them, be it phone, email, or through social media channels. Also, identify if that person is the decision maker in their organization. Even if  you are not presenting to the decision maker,  deliver your pitch as if it was. Your message will likely be relayed back to them, so make sure they find it relevant.

3.) Foster trust

You and your clients are on the same team, and you want them to know that. Be genuine and offer great customer service to reinforce that you want their goals to succeed with your help. Micheline Nijmeh’s article Why Trust is the New Buzz Word for Sales  puts particular emphasis on the necessity of being able to respond to customers in real-time, and on having company insights which give more accurate depictions of what the client needs to achieve their goals. Be sure to implement systems that will give you these insights, and allow for immediate communication.

4.) Let prospective customers discover you

Discovery based selling, as advocated by Gay Gaddis’s sales article, is the strategy of letting customers who need what you do find and reach out to you, rather than you going to them with your company’s accolades. To do this, make sure you are present in the forums your clients use, be it web, social,  print, etc. If they find you and are excited by your product, they will be more receptive to what you have to say and bring them.

5.) Be prepared for any problems along the way

Think of issues that may arise for your clients ahead of time, and come up with a plan to fix these issues. Your buyers will be sure to ask “what if” and if you can answer them on the spot, with clear answers, you will remove any doubt they have about your product before it sets in.  Tom Searcy’s guide calls this a “landmine map,”  this preparation may save your relationship with a client.

There are many variables to consider when buying or selling something. As a salesman, you need to consider these variables from a client’s perspective, and think of what you would expect were you in that position. However, you also need to know what your business needs from you to deliver on that front. These tips address both of these perspectives with some universal sales techniques. Try implementing these strategies on your next sales call to attain the maximum benefit for both parties.

Do you want to know what software, tools and resources that I use to run a profitable business on the internet?

These tools are ridiculously easy to implement and use in your business, and some of the best tools that I’ve put together for my subscribers and readers to get up and running, and profiting.

Running, starting and growing a business takes time, money and resources.

It’s also no secret that having the right tools along with investment can build yourself a million dollar empire.

Just “ONE” of these resources can take your business to the next level without a question.

Which ones are you using in your business?

OK, let’s get started…

Now i purposely did not add the hyperlinks for several good reasons, I want you to take action and go check out these tools and see how each one of these can have a huge impact on your business and managing your number one asset, your time!

Just copy and paste the name of the tool into Google and you’ll find it quite easily.

#1 Trello – The complimentary task management software application that lets you arrange your ideas, your everyday actions. Right here’s an example of a task board that I have that my group.You can develop lists, boards, due dates, lists, connect accessories, and a lot more. Best thing?– it’s absolutely enjoyable & totally free to make use of.

#2 LeadPages – My # 1 option for developing landing pages and the whole nine yards.

This is the utmost “Conversion Optimisation Software”, it’s a simple to utilize software application for developing capture pages, sales video pages, webinar pages, launch pages, and generally any page you have to construct a marketing funnel without the capability to code, is LeadPages.net.

It has everything you have to develop a 7-figure company, from lead capture, to split-testing, to sales pages. I personally utilize this service every day, and instrumental in creating 6,7 figure per year incomes. LeadPages has actually been a game changer for my company and customers.

#3 ClickFunnels – is an option to LeadPages– I utilize this to produce efficient, basic & high transforming sales pages and whole sales funnels, I believe it’s a bit more expensive and in my viewpoint it’s still important to obtain to keep in your collection, the developer Russel Brunson.

#4 AWeber – The most vital piece of software application you’ll ever be utilizing to develop your list of customers, your consumers and constructing your lifetime possession. Email marketing is the whole structure of my online company, and without it I’d be losing $$$$$ every day.

This is the device that even if I lost everything, equipped with my list of customers and customers, I might quickly construct a 7-figure company in less than 12 months.

That’s “Ultimate Asset, Security, Power & Influence“. >> > No ego thing, simply the context.

#5 AWProTools – fantastic little device that a few of the most significant online marketers make use of to section their leads, bear in mind the huge money from e-mail marketing originates from these 3 words: Relationship, Segmentation & Cultivation. You much better compose those 3 words down on a sticky and publish it on your laptop computer or on the mirror to check out per day.

#6 ClickMagick – This is the fastest, simplest method to divide test your solo advertisements, your Facebook advertisements, your traffic links. Produce numerous connect to check your traffic, visitors and optimize for optimum conversions.

#7 GetResponse – I utilize this to include my finest customers on their segmented so I can interact with them in a different way than I do from my major newsletter. You do not need to do this; I do this making sure.

#8 Wufoo – is a basic little website where I established studies, discussion starter projects where individuals who are serious about dealing with myself can offer me more info about themselves and I can assist them move on and prosper.

#9 Bluemic – is where you can discover the “Yeti” microphone I utilize to tape-record my audio. Clear, succinct noise originates from this, if you utilize your voice this little thing is a need to have on your desk. You can select them up at from Amazon too.

#10 Toggle — Time everything you are doing online, so you aren’t mindlessly on Facebook and losing time on social networks. What gets determined gets enhanced, so as an online marketer and a company individual you have to ensure you are handling your time.

#11 GoToWebinar — Sign up for a totally free 30-day trial and host your very first webinar. Get excellent at doing webinars and you will certainly be able to produce an incredible control of how you are able to manifest heaps of sales online.

#12 DropBox – I simply began utilizing this a few days ago, lol. This truly is among the most remarkable devices you will certainly ever make use of in your internet marketing collection. Shop your computer system hard disk on the cloud.

#13 Klipfolio — this is advanced and I’m getting made use of to utilizing this myself personally, this is more costly, I believe I needed to pay around $2,000 and around $200 a month simply for this, do not fret my next resource is complimentary and you can utilize it to personally track your statistics, commissions and analytics.

#14 Putler — this is a much easier, less costly (complimentary) alternative that will certainly assist you handle your information collection and processing work.

#15 Evernote — Forget that you will certainly be forgetting things, simply note this in your online note pad, everybody has to have this on their computer system, it truly is the utmost note pad, I make use of a lists and my every day to do. Register for the premium variation for ₤ 5 a month or something dirt-cheap. Arrange your ideas, your tasks, and your day-to-day to do jobs.

Hope you enjoyed the 15 tools to build your business to new heights and possibly with investment, a converting sales funnel, lots of traffic, that you can build a million dollar empire. All the best! Comment below and I will answer all your questions.

Have you ever got so busy that you completely ignore email and voicemail for a week? Maybe you were on vacation. Or you were out sick. Or maybe you just had your head down wrapping up a big project on a tight deadline and had no time for external distractions.

Prospects are no different. During any given week, there’s a real chance someone who you’re trying to reach might be interested in your product but is just too busy or distracted to respond.

For whatever reason, it’s just not the right time to have the conversation you want to have. One day, this person might make a great customer. But definitely not today, probably not this week and maybe not even this quarter.

If all your campaigns are set to hit prospects five or six times within a single week, you’re leaving sales on the table. Worse, you’re probably annoying someone who could be interested in your product with too many messages too close together.

To get around this, I borrow an idea from the long-tail marketing playbook and set up what I call an outbound nurture campaign.

The Outbound Nurture Campaign

There are no hard and fast rules for this type of outbound campaign. But in general I start with a couple of touches during week one, on back-to-back days.

Then I wait. And wait and wait and wait.

Sometimes I wait as much much as 90 days between my third and fourth emails. Sometimes just 45. I mix it up. The point is to let a real length of time go by to give prospects time to deal with whatever it was that might have been distracting them and hopefully catch them at a better time. Then I send the next couple of touches in a burst on back-to-back days again.

Touch 3 sounds something like this:

“Hi {first name},

I wrote you a note a few months ago and never heard back. I know you’re still in {role} at {company} and I want to talk to you about {value proposition} for {my product}. Are you free tomorrow at 1 p.m. for a call?”

The next touch isn’t much different but might highlight a customer success story from a company in a similar space or share a piece of interesting content.

If I see these prospects are still opening my emails, not opting out of my campaign but not responding, that’s great. I take it as a sign of some level of interest in the product. They stay in the campaign and after another 45 to 90 days, they’ll get another quick burst of emails.

Even if the only result after 6 months or a year is these people visit my website and learn more about my product, I consider that success. Especially in the world of SaaS sales, any education my prospective customers get about my product is going to be helpful in the long run.

In previous roles, I’ve closed deals with this method. Big deals. Deals where I didn’t get a response from a prospect for more than year. Then, all of a sudden a prospect becomes a customer.

Follow-up is a live conversation with the customer. An automatically generated email in response to an inquiry is not follow-up. Unfortunately many companies think that it is. Their attitude is, “Okay, we can check off the follow-up box. We responded to the lead, and now let’s make the customer reach out to us once more to show that he’s really serious.”

That attitude needs to change. Your sales procedures shouldn’t be designed to force customers to work hard to get you to answer their questions. That will only drive them into the arms of your competitors.

Here are the building block traits of the necessary attitude for effective follow-up:

1) An Open Mind

Sales leads are neither all bad nor all good. Not every good lead turns into a qualified sales opportunity for you. But you can’t make that judgment before you engage with the prospect. So make the call first before you decide whether it is a good lead.

2) The Desire

Why did you become a salesperson in the first place? It wasn’t just for the money. You are always hungry for new business. If you’re in sales, part of the attraction is the excitement of the process itself. If you’re a salesperson and you lose that desire to follow up a sales lead and discover whether it has the potential to be your next big order, then perhaps it is time for a career change. On the other hand, if you’re too successful and too busy with customers to take on new leads and you can’t be bothered to follow up, give the leads those who will.

3) The Competitiveness

You hate losing. Not only do you want to follow up a sales lead, but you absolutely, positively have to be the first seller to talk to the customer. You understand what is at stake.

You have the opportunity to create a positive perception and begin shaping the customer’s buying vision if you get in first. You operate under the assumption that if you don’t immediately follow up, your biggest competitor will.

4) The Service Orientation

I use the term “equivalence” to describe how salespeople should treat the follow-up. Ask yourself this question: If the tables were turned, how would you want a seller to follow up on your inquiry? If you were interested in a company’s products and you submitted an inquiry, what would be your expectations for following up? You must have some expectations. After all, if you didn’t expect someone from the company to get back to you, you wouldn’t have taken the time to reach out to it. Now you can apply an equivalent expectation to your own follow up efforts. Someone took the time to contact you. Reciprocate with equivalent interest.

In short, you have to care.

I remember searching online for pricing information on software that I wanted to use for my business. The vendor offered only two service options on its website: Professional (Individual) and Enterprise. Frustratingly, the company’s website contained no pricing information on either option and no way to purchase the product. I filled in a web form requesting pricing information. Two weeks later, I received an email response from a sales manager stating that if I wanted price information I would have to set up a phone call with her to go over my requirements.

Two weeks. In the meantime, I had purchased an alternative solution.

Clearly they didn’t care. To succeed in sales, you have to care about the customer. You have to care how your actions (or inaction) impact the customer’s perception of you and your company. The first opportunity you get to demonstrate how you care is in how you follow up.

Editor's note: This is an excerpt from the book Amp Up Your Sales. It is published here with permission. Purchase the book on Amazon.

AMP UP YOUR SALES: Powerful Strategies that Move Customers to Make Fast, Favorable Decisions by Andy Paul. © 2015 Andy Paul. All rights reserved.

Published by AMACOM Books www.amacombooks.org. Division of American Management Association 1601 Broadway, New York, NY 10019.

Sales acceleration platform InsideSales is today reinventing itself.

The company, which has provided a platform to help salespeople find leads and the best ways to close deals, is announcing that it is opening up its crown jewels as The Predictive Cloud. This is the first time its predictive analytics engine, fueled by its massive collection of sales-related data, is available to outside application developers.

I asked CEO and founder Dave Elkington whether offering his company’s key engine and massive data to any takers was essentially helping its competitors.

“I would be delighted if my competitors use this,” he told me. Even if someone else duplicates what InsideSales is doing, he said, “I make money.”

The company describes the new service as the “world’s first predictive cloud for sales,” because any app builder can now add InsideSales-driven strategy to its product via an API.

But, as Elkington acknowledged, this new offering extends outside InsideSales’ bread and butter of recommending which companies or individuals might become customers or how best to land the deal.

“When I started this company,” he said, “the concept I wanted to build [was] a ubiquitous learning machine,” with sales as its initial implementation.

This new service, he noted, “goes beyond what InsideSales has been doing,” with the goal of providing “a universal, ubiquitous prediction platform.”

‘Amazon-style recommendation engine for business’

He compared this new phase of his company to when Amazon went from being an online retailer to becoming a provider of cloud and ecommerce services to other companies.

“Is Amazon competing with other web stores?” he asked.

Powering this concept is the company’s Neuralytics predictive engine, which uses machine learning to turn data about a hundred billion sales interactions into recommendations for next steps — for sales, certainly, but also for applications in government, healthcare, and retail.

Or, in the company’s words, “an Amazon-style recommendation engine for business.”

To date, half a dozen companies have employed the wisdom generated from InsideSales’ anonymized customer and deal data, their own data, and external sources.

Meeting productivity provider EventBoard, for instance, is using the Predictive Cloud to suggest the best combos of conference rooms, invitees, meeting topics and times, and social sharing to create the most productive meetings.

E-commerce platform CloudCraze is employing it to suggest the best ways its users can sell their products, and Cloudbilt, maker of sales territory management app MapAnything, is adding InsideSales-powered NeuralScores to assess whether a lead is likely to generate a sale.

B2B marketer Demandbase is hoping to improve online advertising effectiveness in reaching customers, while employee advocacy platform Dynamic Signal wants to better identify when and how social sharing will have the biggest impact.

And LogMeIn, which offers the popular join.me online meeting service, wants to use it for identifying which of its customers are most likely to buy the premium version.

The Predictive Cloud’s differentiators

Elkington said that the accuracy of the new service is high, although difficult to quantify over such a large variety of use cases.

For sales, he said, the platform’s average uplift is about 30 percent for closing deals or generating more revenue.

In addition to the ambition of becoming the business prediction-equivalent of Amazon Web Services or Amazon’s hosting of other sellers, Elkington sees his company’s massive and unique data as a key differentiator from other predictive platforms for sales like Fliptop (recently purchased by LinkedIn) or Lattice Engines.

“Not all data is created equal,” he pointed out.

He described InsideSales as having “a massive crowdsourcing of data,” with anonymized data points for about 100 billion or so sales transactions from the last decade, assembled from about 60,000 client companies.

This includes successful and unsuccessful sales calls, email campaigns, web visits, and proposals, as well as about 120 million profiles of B2B and B2C buyers and about 35 million companies that have been sold to, and contextual information, like whether there’s a “halo effect” in the Phoenix area because the Suns basketball team won last night.

The platform is not providing the data itself, he pointed out, but the profiling of the data. No two situations are identical, he said, “but the conditions are.”

Predicting InsideSales

It’s this tendency for similar people to react in similar ways to similar conditions that forms the basis of predictive services. It was also, Elkington told me, central to his senior thesis on the classification of human knowledge, when he was a philosophy major at Brigham Young University.

“Humans learn in a systematic, pattern-bound way,” so that enough data can help predict whether a phone call would be the best way to make a sale in this situation, or whether it should be email.

“If we know enough about everyone,” he said, “we can determine how they’ll behave next.”

One wonders if this prediction platform would have enough data and power to predict what InsideSales will do next, now that it has set Amazon as its role model and the future of anything in business as its territory.

This new launch tops a boffo year for the company, which included the hiring of ex-Salesforce executive Jim Steele as new chief customer officer, a new office in London, a $60 million investment round led by Salesforce and with Microsoft’s participation, and the purchase in May of sales pipeline forecaster C9 Inc.

The Predictive Cloud service, which has been in beta for the last six months, is now in tech previews, and will be launched next year.

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Word to the wise – it may be time to start revamping your LinkedIn recruitment marketing strategy. You’ve probably heard that the company this week updated its famously clunky private messaging service into a new ‘LinkedIn messenger’ / chat feature, à la Facebook or WhatsApp. The news is welcome for the social network where it’s OK for your boss to see your photos, and spells a new dawn for a service which above all needs its users to start getting a bit more involved.

LinkedIn is playing a long game

The messaging service opens new doors for the way LinkedIn’s users approach recruitment marketing, internal communications and employee engagement. In essence, it’s a case of “take off the ties and let’s rap”.

A long game

There’s been a measured reaction to the news – LinkedIn is playing a long game. Given the amount of time it’s taken for LinkedIn to bring in this much needed, competitive update, you could say it’s been a very long game. Indeed, following the news on Tuesday, LinkedIn stock closed nearly 3% down on Monday trading (though it seemed to recover somewhat yesterday) suggesting investors are still reserving judgment.

LinkedIn was trading at an all-time-high in February after beating analyst expectations with its fourth quarter results and providing a grand full-year outlook and visions of future growth from CEO Jeff Weiner. However, the share price has continued to decline over the course of the year, reaching a year-low in mid-August.

Why is the stock underperforming? Why is the market still hesitant to put its confidence in LinkedIn? Financial commentator The Motley Fool suggests that the fundamental problem LinkedIn faces is one of engagement. The analyst says LinkedIn’s recent foray into China has been a catalyst in its rapidly increasing user base, yet investor reaction is still muted, as yet unsure about how engaged this new audience will prove to be. Basically people use the social network to connect on a superficial level, yet do little to actively engage with one another. LinkedIn’s interface seems likely to be at least a contributing factor to that.

People use the social network to connect on a superficial level, yet do little to actively engage

Twitter wins the conversation

That’s a fact reflected in B2B Marketing’s 2015 Social Media Benchmarking Report, which this week revealed that B2B professionals regard LinkedIn as the most effective social media platform, yet Twitter is their most used. So it’s LinkedIn’s features and potential that appeal most to the professional networker, but it’s Twitter’s ability to simply have a chat that wins out in the functionality stakes.

Now, however, LinkedIn has opened up the conversation, and this could mean that the top talent you seek aren’t just there in spirit anymore.

It could be that LinkedIn starts to turn into the HR system we always dreamed of

Total engagement

LinkedIn is going for total connectivity, modernity and engagement across the board – it’s almost a complete content strategy, hence the long game. We’re only seeing the green shoots right now. In addition to updating its chat function, not too long ago LinkedIn updated its Pulse blog to accept valuable user-generated content from people from all walks of life, connecting creative writers, creating thought leaders and boosting its original content quota immeasurably. It also recently launched Lookup, an interactive app to replace dull and tired company directories

Alongside those changes, LinkedIn has been on an acquisition spree. Recent additions to the family include online training course provider and mentorship platform Lynda.com – directly addressing that Millennial need for more professional learning – and data-driven jobs site Bright. The latter has increased jobs listings 10-fold since 2014. LinkedIn is trying to squeeze out more than just your presence on its books.

What’s more, LinkedIn uses open source technology known as Kafka to process messages and user updates. LinkedIn said this week that Kafka, developed by its own engineers, processes a whopping one trillion messages a day. Kafka is reportedly set to be a fundamental processor behind the ‘internet of things’. Now, that doesn’t necessarily mean that your connected toothbrush will let you know when your blog on Pulse has received a new ‘like’, but it’s likely to mean that Kafka will be inherent to many a corporate infrastructure moving forward. LinkedIn could literally be woven into the fabric of the business of the future.

The platform is changing into one big interactive beast. What will be particularly interesting is how the other social networks respond

The chat-style messenger is of course a sign of the times. It reflects the mobile revolution, as job seekers spend more time on their phones. It means that informal, more engaging conversation can take place between recruiters and potential recruits. It also opens up new recruitment possibilities by introducing the option to attach voice messages, videos, gifs and introduce emojis.

Of course with the new chat feature and the addition of Lookup, internal communications on LinkedIn could get a bit of a boost too. Employer-to-employee, and employee-to-employee chats are all possible, and with a few new add-ons it could be that LinkedIn starts to turn into the HR system we always dreamed of.

I’ll admit these are all grand claims that have yet to bear fruit, hence the uneasy share activity. But financial analysts reckon there’s long-term growth here. As I mentioned, LinkedIn’s stock has seen some recovery from the initial slump, following the announcement of its revamped messenger feature. At the time of writing the stock is trading at $179.62 and analyst consensus sets a confident price target of $257.42. Things are on the up.

Twitter might yet be the more usable social network for professionals, but the tides they are a-turning. The interface has evolved and indeed the face of the platform is changing into one big interactive beast. What will be particularly interesting is how the other social networks respond in kind, but in the meantime keep your ears pricked to what LinkedIn’s doing. The chat might have just got a lot lighter, but the talk got big.

Play has long infused the language of business: we talk of players, moves, end games, play books and so on. And now we hear often about the “gamification” of work—using elements of competition, feedback and point scoring to better engage employees and even track performance. Even so, actual games are still taboo in most organizations—the stereotype of the work-avoiding employee cracking new high scores in Minesweeper has given gaming a bad name. And the corporate executive playing games to improve his or her strategy-making skills is still rare. This is unfortunate. We think that games have an important place in cultivating good strategists, and that now more than ever games can give executives an edge over their competition.

First, there has never been a greater need for companies to learn new ways of doing things in response to a complex and dynamic business environment. And second, the sophistication and effectiveness of strategy games at our disposal has risen tremendously. In the past two decades, strategy games have evolved from dull monochrome dialogs to well-designed AI-based apps.

We think that the next generation strategy apps will finally be able to prove a real business case. Just consider some the advantages games have over more traditional approaches in strategy education. Books are great to foster intellectual understanding but are not interactive and do not reflect the reality of busy schedules and declining attention spans. Live pilots are highly realistic but costly, time consuming and risky. And coaching or mentoring approaches have great merits for personal development, but are hard to scale.

Games on the other hand can create an experiential, interactive and tailored understanding of strategy at low cost and in a scalable manner. They allow managers to suspend normal rules in an acceptable way and they provide an effective audiovisual medium for absorbing ideas.

In our work with executives and strategy games, we see five distinct benefits of using games for enhancing strategy formulation and execution skills:

1. Games provide inexpensive, real-time feedback. With instant feedback, explicitly expressed in scores or implicitly via a competitor’s behavior, executives can learn much more quickly than in the real world.

In addition, unlike in reality, failing in games has no costly downside. Games are testing grounds for strategies. They’re “sandboxes” where erroneous behaviors can be undone and different decision paths tried out. Execute a flawed strategy in the real world and your organization might falter; applying it in the gaming realm, and a lesson is learned at the cost of only a little frustration.

Well-produced strategy games can model environments tailored to a company’s circumstances and targeted skills. Based on the user’s actions, a game can quickly adapt to the learner’s individual skill level and learning curve — clear advantages vis-à-vis books, articles, or seminars. A smart game keeps the manager in what psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi calls the “flow” zone, an optimal corridor between challenge and skill, by building a series of rounds of increasing difficulty. The learning curve of a game can thus be tailored to the individual player, without overwhelming them as reality often does.

People Express, for example, is a business simulator that provides players with a rich inside perspective on starting and managing an airline. In each simulated time period, the player makes strategic decisions and receives feedback from past decisions—on how fast to grow, how to set prices, or how aggressively to advertise. Hiring policies influence morale, productivity and turnover, marketing efforts shape demand growth, and competitors fight back. Strategists learn to manage and steer complex systems—without the costly risk of bankruptcy. “Deep actionable knowledge and decision-making skills develop when people have the chance to apply classroom theory in the real world, with its messy complexity, time pressures, and irreversible consequences,” notes John Sterman, a professor at MIT who uses this game to educate business students and executives (we spoke with him recently about how games enhance strategy).

2. Games allow managers to deeply engage with ideas by incorporating interactivity. Games require managers to analyze the environment, make judgment calls, execute decisions, and reflect on the consequences. Stimulating aural and visual senses, games provide a much more immersive experience than written text or spoken words. Games will further reinforce this edge over books or seminars once VR (virtual reality) becomes fully market-ready.

Playing with and/or against others helps train a range of game-theoretic skills: wisely choosing one’s actions based on anticipated competitive reactions over a multiple-period time horizon. From cooperation to competition, a game with multiplayer features taps into the rich culture of board games humans have been playing for centuries.

As an example, a large utility company created a number of different teams role playing competitors and regulators. Each team’s task was both to decide on pricing, investment, M&A and integration priorities and to experiment with new business models while anticipating and reacting to the actions of competitors and regulators. The game play included collaborative interactions like agreeing on M&A/JV efforts. Exogenous shocks (new technologies, economic-political events) were incorporated as well to train players to stay agile and flexible. This interactive element helped the company not only to lay out strategic responses to possible contingencies, but also to get into the competitor’s or regulator’s shoes and see the world from their perspective.

3. Games allow structured analysis of an executive’s behavior. By unveiling what-ifs and routes-not-taken, well-developed games help managers reflect on their actions (and omissions). This way, even implicit choices and intermediate steps in executing a strategy become apparent and this helps in understanding the causalities that led to victory or defeat. A replay function can help retrace a player’s actions or view the game play from a competitor’s perspective. And score-keeping allows performance comparison with others.

The Your Strategy Needs A Strategy game was created by BCG and Neofonie, a Berlin-based mobile computing company, to allow users to develop a hands on appreciation of the importance of choosing the right approach to strategy and execution in each business environment. It was released at the same time as a book with the same name. It features short rounds of game play in different environments and provides a running commentary on how the player is performing. A leader board allows comparison across players and identifies “best-in-class” strategists. Post action replay allows players to understand the consequences of their action (see the screenshot below). And contextualized links to relevant content allows players to deepen their understanding of what happened and why.

This process of analysis and reflection can give answers to such questions as: Was the choice of strategy incorrect, or execution flawed? To improve outcomes, does the player need to work on better observation, deeper consideration of options, greater agility, more flexibility and so on.

4. Games allow different scenarios to be tested. Strategy games can “enhance” reality by simulating different scenarios that require particular strategic responses. For example, exogenous shocks that haven’t (yet) occurred in real-life, but could plausibly materialize, can easily be modeled. How would a pharmaceutical company react, for example, when a new innovation disrupts the industry’s cost structure? Or what are the consequences of a conspicuous privacy scandal for a social networking company?

Strategy games anticipate and amplify reality by acting like vaccinations. By reacting to subcritical doses of a harmful diseases, a host develops immunity by “learning” to react for the worst case—a full scale infection.

Reid Hoffman, the founder of LinkedIn, plays The Settlers of Catan, an old-school board game, and says that tech entrepreneurs are drawn to the game because it “most closely approximates entrepreneurial strategy”. It requires players to collaborate and exchange resources to amass points, while the random rolls of the dice change the environment and require players to constantly adjust their strategies.

5. Games can be rolled out easily to many managers. Whereas conferences, seminars and coaching practically limit the number of participants, digital games display almost unlimited scalability.

Many strategy games and simulations we use today have their origin in the military sphere. The defense sector uses strategy games and simulations to train hundreds of thousands of their troops. Scalability is critical. Games only need to be programmed once, but can be rolled out to a large target audience at minimal incremental cost. Adjustments in scenarios can often be implemented comparatively easily and cheaply, by retuning a few parameters or by creating a new visual “skin” for the game.

Used appropriately, games can help corporations build strategic skills in a timely, cost effective and focused manner—a critical capability in today’s dynamic business environments. It’s time to break the taboo—and get serious about play.

In Latin America, falling commodity prices and uncertainty in some of the world’s most important economies appear to have hit the region’s two biggest economies hard.

These economic struggles, when coupled with political instability, indicate that the region will likely limp to the finish line of 2015 as its powerhouse economies face an uncertain future.

Brazil's fraught politics and deteriorating outlook

The largest economy in Latin America is a husk of its former self. Economic activity is estimated to be shrinking at 5% per year, with a 2.06% contraction is expected this year.

If that estimate holds true, it will be seven straight years of zero or negative growth for the region’s dominant economy.

At the beginning of August, the real was trading against the dollar at the lowest level in years, and inflation has been predicted to hit 9%, which prompted a half-percentage-point hike in interest rates at the end of July — the largest rate hike in nine years.

Activity in the services sector was at its lowest point since the financial crisis, and the unemployment rate grew to 8.3% in the second quarter of 2015, as 8.4 million of the country’s 204 million people became jobless.

Consumer confidence has fallen to its lowest level since 2005 — when measurements began — and Moody’s downgraded the country’s bond rating to Baa3 with a negative outlook.

"The combined output of the manufacturing and service sectors suffered the largest fall since early-2009,” according to analysis from Markit Economics. “Weak demand, high interest rates, fiscal tightening, strong inflation and rising unemployment are expected to continue to hamper activity."

This downturn would on its own likely be enough to imperil any politician’s prospects.

But there's also a wide-ranging corruption scandal involving the state-owned oil company Petrobras has ensnared many leading politicians, including President Dilma Rousseff, and has led to a wave of resignations and indictments.

Rousseff, who was head of Petrobras when the alleged kickback scheme arose, has said she never saw any signs of corruption, even though the scandal has sparked investigations of at least 70 politicians and executives.

Amid the ongoing controversy, Rousseff’s popularity has shrunk to single digits, while almost three-quarters of the country viewed her administration negatively. 

A vocal movement has been calling for her resignation. According to polls released in early August, almost 70% of Brazilians believed she should have been impeached, and many legislators were leaning toward a call for the same.

Nevertheless, there may be reason for optimist amid the crisis. Federal anticorruption investigators have not shied from pursuing powerful figures. And opposition legislators have pushed back against members of their own parties who called for impeachment without evidence of wrongdoing.

“So far it doesn’t seem that Rousseff has committed an impeachable offense. … It could undermine their future leaders and parties, as well as the president’s, if impeachment became too politicized,” Shannon O’Neil, the senor fellow for Latin American Studies at the Council on Foreign Relations, told Business Insider.

The resiliency of Brazil’s democratic institutions signals that the country may muddle through, and perhaps eventually emerge from this contentious political atmosphere in better shape.

“The independence of the judiciary and continued investigations suggest that in the end it may strengthen the quality of Brazil’s democracy, forcing it to open up and become more accountable,” O’Neil told Business Insider.

As for the economy, we'll have to wait and see.

Mexico's ailing economy and withering crime problem

Latin America’s second-largest economy faces its own broad set of challenges.

Mexico opened 2015 with a GDP growth forecast that reached as high as 4.2%.

Since then, growth estimates have shed percentage points, with the most recent number predicting just 1.75% to 2.5% growth.

The downgraded growth forecast, according to O’Neil, indicates “some overall slowing, but more likely the continued bifurcation of the Mexican economy.”

Some Mexican states, ones with trade links to the US, have continued to grow, while others — ones with energy-focused economies, in particular — have slowed faster than expected.

Other national trends have stoked concern. The Mexico peso reached a value of 17 to the dollar in late August, a new historical low signaling a 15% depreciation so far this year.

Many Mexicans blamed the government for the tumble, and a majority, when polled, doubted it would recover.

Some observers have suggested a cheaper peso could boost exports, but depreciation in other national currencies appears to have stalled that increase, according to Carlos Petersen, a Latin America associate at the Eurasia Group.

“The Central Bank (Banxico) has argued that given the orderly depreciation of the peso, prices have not been affected, but this cannot be discarded from happening in the future,” cautioned Petersen, though he doubted that trade and access to goods would see a major disruption.

Others have cautioned, however, that a weakening peso at a time of stagnant or negligible economic growth could trigger a debt crisis as “the dollar-denominated debt held by Mexican corporations with peso-denominated operating income becomes increasingly difficult to service.”

The oil privatization reforms of President Enrique Peña Nieto, one of his major achievements, have also garnered lackluster results. In July, the first round of auctions for exploration rights saw only two of 15 available blocks receive successful bids. At the end of that month, state oil company Pemex posted its 11th straight quarterly loss.

The Peña Nieto administration has since worked hard to make the offerings more appealing. In early August, the government sought to add flexibility to the bidding process to attract major oil companies.

“It can be expected that the government will adjust whatever is necessary in the tender terms to avoid another failed bid round,” Petersen told Business Insider in an email.

“The success of the energy reform is key for the administration and they will act in correspondence.”

Amid these broader economic doldrums, Mexican workers have experienced growing poverty and a striking wealth gap.

At the end of 2012, more than half of all Mexicans were living in poverty; 2 million more joined them by 2014. More than half the country reportedly fell short of the monthly minimum income level that is set by the government.

Mexicans also saw their purchasing power decline, and, between 1994 and 2012, wages grew just 2.3% when adjusted for inflation. In terms of real GDP growth, Mexico is 18th of 20 countries in the region.

Meanwhile, 2,540 Mexicans — about two-thousandths of a percent of the population — hold 43% of the country’s total individual wealth.

Many Mexicans have also had to endure widespread violence in addition to economic hardship. In the last year, scores have been killed in suspected attacks by police, hundreds of migrants have been kidnapped or killed, journalists have been slain, and politicians have been assassinated with impunity.

Moreover, the world’s most powerful drug lord, Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzmán, brazenly escaped a high-security prison in central Mexico in July; an escape Peña Nieto said “would be unpardonable” in early 2014, when the kingpin was apprehended.

El Chapo’s escape notwithstanding, Mexico’s crime problem has taken on a local dimension, with the fragmentation of cartels leading to a proliferation of local criminal groups. To confront them requires, in part, more hearty state and local institutions.

“Some cities and states have shown successful efforts on this regard,” Petersen told Business Insider, “but places like Guerrero, Michoacan, or Tamaulipas face more challenges given the weakness of their local institutions.

Mexico also faces a mixed economic outlook. Both O’Neil and Petersen noted that the weakening currency had not yet led to inflation or higher prices, but neither has it caused a major boost to exports.

Moreover, growth remains a concern, as the government has few "tools to meaningfully boost growth,” the Eurasia Group said in a note on August 31.

SEE ALSO: Weak economies and rising violence are driving away some of Latin America's most capable workers

Join the conversation about this story »

NOW WATCH: 13 Surprising Facts About Brazil

Business problems today are too big for any one person to solve. Agile teams are much more effective at solving problems than are lone geniuses. So why do we still reward the smartest people in the room more so than those who excel at working with others? You know who I’m talking about: the people who brazenly take over meetings by showing off how much they know or how witty they can be at the expense of any other voice in the room—and who often end up getting all of the boss’s attention.

Perhaps it used to make sense to defer to “the smartest person in the room” because, in conventional organizational hierarchies, they are the ones who became the leaders charged with issuing the orders. But in today’s more open world, where the best work is done by teams and communities, we need to rethink which skills have become the most valuable.

I’m not arguing that intelligence isn’t a crucial skill. Rather, when we overvalue an individual’s abilities to the detriment of the team, we’re likely putting our organization at a disadvantage. It’s not an individual’s IQ that separates our best people from the rest; it’s their ability to work well as part of a team, that we should be celebrating.

At Red Hat, we’ve found that there are a set of skills you can prioritize, train, and even reward as a way to build the kind of smart teamwork that’s going to give you a competitive edge.

1. Active listening. How often have you found yourself in a conversation with someone, only to find yourself having to repeat the same information to that same person all over again? Great teams, however, are made up of great listeners.

This is a lesson I learned from Delta Air Lines’ former CEO, Jerry Grinstein. I remember a time when we were meeting with a group of financial advisers and Jerry, as usual, was taking copious notes. I didn’t think anything about it, because he often took lots of notes. But after the meeting, one of the senior advisers described how rare it was for a senior executive to “admit they don’t know everything” by taking notes. It made a clear impression on the adviser.

That’s why now, at just about every meeting I attend, I bring a notebook along and take notes to send that same message to who might be talking. Plus, I’ve found that when you take notes, you can more easily follow up with the person letting them know what you heard and what follow up questions you might have. When team members start actively listening to each other, everyone becomes smarter.

2. Giving and receiving honest feedback. Teamwork requires communication—a lot of it. It needs to be frequent and constant. It’s not enough to wait until the end of the year, for example, to share feedback on someone’s performance. There needs to be a continuous flow of information between the members of a team—and most of it needs to be positive. Your associates should be encouraged to say “Great job!” and “Thank you!” to each other far more than they should share criticism.

At the same time, individuals need to be willing to confront the hard truths about their own performance without becoming defensive. Team members need to embrace the concept of “you aren’t your code,” which means you must be willing to accept a critique of your work without thinking someone is criticizing you personally. The idea is that you want to build a sense of accountability among a team’s members where people watch each other’s backs—not look to stick a knife in them.

3. Valuing team contributions, not ego stroking. We all want to be seen as smart and capable, especially in the workplace. But it’s by making contributions to the team or community that actually earns you influence and trust—not your ability to show off how smart you are. Great team members have a willingness to admit they don’t have all the answers. Rather, they seek to talk through problems and think on their feet in order to reach the best conclusions with the help of their team rather than shoulder the burden of coming up with all of the answers on their own. Rather than seek personal awards and achievements above all else, great team members value their contributions to the group’s accomplishments instead. And by doing so, open themselves up to opportunities.

I’ve seen it first hand at Red Hat. The individuals that are team players are often called to participate on more cross-functional team projects, allowing them to enjoy broader opportunities and experiences across the organization.

When you can recruit, train, and retain team members that display skills like these, you’ll wind up with better decisions, better engagement, better execution, and ultimately better results. How smart is that?

By Tibor Shanto – tibor.shanto@sellbetter.ca 

Tuesday we enter the “final half” of the sales year, the unofficial intermission that is summer comes to a figurative end, and harvest season is upon us. Now if you did a good job of ploughing, seeding and nurturing (even fertilizing), in the spring, you are truly in a position to harvest. On the other hand, if you did not tend to your pipeline before the summer, you’re left hoping for rapid growth season before winter descends on your income; too bad they don’t make Miracle-Gro® for pipelines.

Based on which of the above groups you are in, you will need to attack September – December in different ways. If you are in the first group, and invested the time and effort early in the year, and set yourself up for a bumper crop, you have two areas of focus, first to fully harvest and maximize your opportunities; second to set yourself up for success in 2016.

To fully maximize opportunities, start early, segment your pipeline in to two general groups, those that are truly just in need of harvesting, and those that still need some work to complete. In this latter group I would take a close look at those opportunities that based on past experience have the attributes of a deal likely to close this year, and those that, on sober consideration, are not likely to close this year, but will/may likely slip into next year. To be clear this is not to say that you toss or forget or sandbag, in fact the opposite, work them, because they will contribute to next year’s quota, but be practical and think about how you spend your time proportionally. Time is not recyclable, leads (and opportunities) are, invest your time in a way that yields maximum results, now and in the future; divide your time to skew towards those opportunities that are ripe and ready to happen now.

With the opportunities that will close, it is all about coverage, and focus. Start with a recommitment to having a plan and executing that plan. The challenge as always, is having a plan aligned to the buyer’s objective and demonstrating your ability to impact and drive those objectives. Part of that plan is understanding what needs to happen at each stage in order to continue to move the opportunity forward based on previous deals. Map it out so you can identify critical points along the buy/sell trip, and critical actions required to successfully complete those critical points. The map is your planning tool for your meetings and encounters with buyers, helping both you and them agree on next steps and move towards desired and identified outcomes. This will help you accelerate deals, and free up bandwidth to prospect and set yourself up for next year.

Now if you are in the other group, in a panic to make something of the year, tune in next Monday for Part II of Ready – Set – Go.

Tibor Shanto    

I was recently in the market for a new car and while I was fairly certain I knew the car I wanted, I was intent on doing my research. Like most people in today’s digital age, I went to Google^TM and typed in “best all wheel drive vehicles” and scanned through the results. Several more searches on key terms led me to a manufacturers website as well as some good consumer blogs. As a result, I had narrowed my search to three cars specifically and it was a pretty quick and efficient way to research.

A few days later, I went to Edmunds.com to further my research, as I wanted an independent review. In addition to my online research, I talked to a few friends (some in person, others online) who had the makes and models of the cars that were on my short list to ask about their experiences. During this process, I also received a direct mail piece from one of the manufacturers that aided in my decision making process.

The later stage of research (speaking to friends and scanning the web) was done over the course of several weeks. In addition, I emailed various dealers in town with questions and specifications of what I was looking for and simultaneously researched my best financing options.

All in all, I used multiple channels during my purchase process (web, social medial, word-of-mouth/peer referral and email) and it took about two months. I used four channels just to end up buying a car, but this is the digital age and as the buyer,I have access to all of these channels easily via my phone. Why not use it to my advantage as the thought of walking onto a car lot and dealing with a car salesman was not an option.

I am no different than other consumers in this scenario. We conduct our own research, we ask questions directly, we collect information, and we read independent reviews. This applies to buying a car or picking a place to eat…we use multiple channels to consume information that may or may not lead to a purchase. If this is how we operate in our personal lives, why is it that B2B vendors lose this concept when marketing to their buyers?

According to recent articles and blogs the best approach to a B2B demand generation program is mono-channel. Advice like how to have “The Best Email Campaign”, “Tips to Accelerate Your Social Media Strategy,” “How to Implement a Webinar Program” and the list goes on focus on mono-channel solutions. However, today’s buying process is more multi-channel than ever with buyers consuming content across an array of mediums and sharing across the buying committee. If this is true, then the idea of a one-channel program or a strategy designed for one specific content channel is a waste of time, effort and money.

There are a few key changes that B2B organizations can make to address this issue and better align with their buyers and their purchase process:

1. Break down the Departmental Silos: Many of the B2B marketing departments I encounter are designed by channel or function. Email teams, web teams, social teams, content teams, event teams, etc. Each has their own focus and measurement and in reality, they each only ever own a fractional part of the buyers journey. They work in silos and have no vision into the full approach their buyers take to buying. This needs to change. Companies need to begin looking at holistic demand generation that encompasses the full buyers journey and design their organizations accordingly. Without this holistic approach, content will not properly align to the buyer and organizations run the risk of poor communication in general, not to mention wasting valuable resources on ineffective content, leaving buyers less than impressed.

2. Theme First, Channel Second: I speak to many marketers who begin planning their approach to demand generation with the content asset in mind – white paper, eBook, webinar, video, etc. However, this should come secondary. The first thought needs to be the topic or theme of the content piece. What needs to be said to the buyer at this stage in their purchase process? Once that is determined, then the channels and asset type can be determined and most likely the theme will be used across multiple channels.

3. Gain an Understanding of Your Buyers Content Consumption Patterns: The best way to understand the channels your buyers use during their purchase process is to ask them. Simply asking your customers and buyers how do you like to consume content, where do you consume content and what type of content serves you best during the purchase process will help drive the content strategy. Without this buyer-centric understanding, everything else is a guess.

The multi-channel approach we take in our consumer lives is not all that different than how we participate in buying in our B2B lives. Organizations need to adapt to this approach and understand it is a multi-channel (and not always digital) world.

In sales, it’s more about the questions you ask than about the answers you give. Questions enable you to practice the most powerful skill in any sales conversation: listening.

Questions enable you to control the direction of the conversation and engage your prospect in a more relevant and powerful way.

Here are 13 questions that will help you to turn prospects into buyers.

1. How did you hear about us?

Why did you pick up the phone? Why didn’t you hang up already? I’m sure you’ve hung up on many other people who cold called you, so why are you still on the line with me? Why did you open my email or respond to it? What exactly about my email sparked your interest?

Why is this a killer question? Because it

1. allows you to understand what makes them interested in your solution,
2. reminds them why they are interested in this and why they are spending time with you.

Ask this question early in the conversation. The answer will guide your approach to the conversation, tell you which angle to use when conveying benefits of your product, and which questions to ask to keep them engaged. It’s a shortcut to gaining real insights into their wants and needs, so you have a more targeted conversation.

2. What are your must-haves, should-haves, and could-haves?

What’s a dealbreaker? What’s a nice-to-have? What’s an absolute requirement, and what would be a nice addition?

Early on in the sales process you qualify your prospect to understand their wants and needs, the challenges they face, the objectives they want to achieve.

The next step is to help your prospect prioritize. Otherwise, you’ll end up with a huge random wishlist, without knowing which of the items on the list are of crucial importance.

Separating the must-haves from the could-haves protects you against wasting a lot of time on deals that won't ever materialize. You might feel you're on track because you hit 24 out of the 27 wants and needs you elicited. But all of your 24 hits are nice-to-haves. You missed a must-have - all the effort you invested into the opportunity is lost.

3. What's your decision-making process like?

How are you making buying decisions in your organization? How are you going to evaluate whether we are the right solution or not?

This question helps you understand how they arrive at a decision. If you understand the process, you can influence it, move it forward, control and manage it.

4. Who are all the stakeholders involved in this deal?

Not just from now until the buying decision, but also after the purchase. Who are all the stakeholders involved and affected by this deal from now to the time of closing and five years beyond, when you’re already a customer?

You want to know all the stakeholders, because if you don’t know who the players are, you can’t play the game.

It’s not just about closing the deal; it’s also about turning every closed deal into a success story.

Is the prospect’s IT department is involved in the process? If so, make sure they can implement your software smoothly and quickly. Your customers should experience the value they signed up for as quickly as possible.

5. Who else are you’re comparing us with?

What is the current solution you’re using to address this challenge or achieve this objective? Why are you considering a change? What sparked your interest in us? Who else are you evaluating? What are all the available solutions you’re considering?

Every prospect has alternatives to choose from if they don’t buy your solution. And it’s not just competing vendors.

Often the alternative they’re choosing is either developing an in-house solution or deciding not to change anything at all.

If you know the options your prospect is considering, you can understand the playing field and know how to position yourself most favorably. You can set the frame for the deal so that you emerge as the most viable option.

This knowledge becomes even more powerful if you have the answers to question #2 (which is about understanding their must-haves, should-haves, and could-haves).

6. What's the timeline to making a decision?

When do you plan to make the purchase? Is it in a couple of days, weeks, months or years?

This sales question will help you understand the investment required to make the deal happen, as well as recognize if there is urgency and if a prospect needs more immediate attention.

You’ll be able to forecast revenues and opportunities more accurately, which in turn helps you allocated your resources and time more effectively.

7. What's your budget?

What’s the investment you’re looking to make in this area?

Many times a prospect won’t give you a concrete number; don’t get hung up on it. The purpose of this question, apart from knowing their budget, is to start negotiating the price. But remember: talk value before price.

If they're going to get $10, $100 or $1000 for every dollar they invest into your solution… are they going to make the purchase? Or are they operating under financial constraints that would make a purchase prohibitive above a certain price point - even if they could clearly see that it offers them a 10X or higher return on investment?

Are they in it to get the best or the cheapest solution?

8. When was the last time you made a purchasing decision for a solution like ours?

When was the last time your organization bought something similar to our solution? What was the decision-making process back then? Why did you decide to buy that specific solution? Was it a success or failure?

This question helps you to use the past to close a deal in the present.

If they’ve recently bought something - great! It indicated that they’re an active buyer.

If the last time they bought something was 20 years ago - not so good. That’s a red flag. It might be very hard to get these people to a buying decision.

If the last time they bought a solution was a success; great, associate yourself with that.

If the last purchase was a disaster, understand why and disassociate yourself from that, explain how you’re different.

9. What will it take to win your business?

What is it going to take for your company to become a customer of ours? What do I have to do to win your business? We’ve now had our first conversation about working together, let me ask you: how are we doing? After everything you’ve learned during this conversation, how do you feel about us? How interested are you?

This question will help you gauge their interest and give you the opportunity to ask follow up questions.

If they're positive, ask what they're most excited about. If they're cool, ask what their main concerns are so you have a chance to address it.

10. How do you see your business grow, and your needs changing over the next one or two years?

Let’s assume you’re making a buying decision now and become our customer. For the next one or two years, how do you see our business grow, how do you see our needs change?

This question allows you to anticipate what it’s going to take to grow this relationship.

Selling doesn’t end when a prospect turns into a customer. Closing the deal is just the beginning of the next stage in the sales process.

Ask yourself: how can I double, triple or quadruple the business with this customer within the next 12 months? You want to know if there are huge opportunities around the corner with this prospect so you can make sure to work with them on making it happen.

11. What are other products/solutions you’re currently using that our software has to integrate with?

Which other software solutions will our software have to play together with? Will our product need to integrate with other things you’re using today?

You want to understand their stack and the environment in which your solution will have to operate.

All to often sales reps invest weeks or months into a deal, only to discover there’s an impossible to fulfill must-have integration. All the time and effort invested into this deal are lost; this is why it’s crucial to ask this question early on in the sales process.

Even at Close.io, this occasionally happened. Fortunately, we've now got plenty of ready-made integrations to make Close.io play nice with most cloud platforms our customers want, and there's always the Close.io API for custom solutions.

12. What kind of support/service/help do you need to become insanely successful?

Do you want us to train every person on your team? Do you want us to show up at your office? Do you want us to create a step-by-step guide especially for your users? Do you want us to create a specific customization for your company? What kind of relationship would you want to have with us after you become a customer?

Some prospects want to just use the software and be left alone. Some prospects will want a lot more involved and collaborative relationship.

Both of these are fine; just know their expectations so that you can ensure they get the experience they want.

13. Is there anything that could stop this deal from happening?

Is there anything that could threaten our partnership or get in the way of this contract being signed? Anything you can think of that would prevent us from moving forward in the next few days?

When a prospect has stated that they’ll soon go ahead and buy, your first instinct may be to jump up and high-five everyone on your team. But if you’ve been in sales for long enough, you know that a deal isn’t closed until the purchase is made. Asking this question can help you navigate roadblocks and close the deal sooner.

Make this 13 B2B sales questions part of your repertoire and practice working them into your conversations. They’ll help you to move prospects through the buying stages faster, manage your sales pipeline more effectively and ultimately close more deals. And if you haven't done so yet - join our free sales course!

What other sales questions do you often use to move deals forward? I'd love to read your success stories in the comments!

Marketers often find themselves at the forefront of a company’s global expansion. The marketing team is usually responsible for carrying out the market research that will determine where a company should expand, and it’s usually charged with creating a plan for attracting customers.

As a former business consultant to marketing executives at companies trying to expand globally, I’ve noticed some common marketing roadblocks that can stand in the way of international success:

1. Not specifying countries. Executives tend to think about overseas markets in vague regional terms (e.g., “We’re shifting our focus to Asia,” or “We’d like to double our growth in Europe”), but this oversimplification is problematic. Ask people what they mean by “Europe” and you’ll get widely varying answers—Western Europe, the European Union, the euro zone, and so on. Customers identify at the national level, and marketers need to remember that every country has its own local laws, cultural norms, forms of currency and payment, and unique business practices.

It’s essential to break up broader geographic “markets” into individual countries with distinct revenue and lead generation goals—and to conduct adequate local market research. Being more specific from the beginning helps tremendously with prioritizing one market over another, creating a staffing plan, and budget allocation—all of which are necessary for helping a company achieve its desired global goals. Research into local markets has to be aimed at understanding the market size, the challenges customers face, the solutions they currently have, and where your product can fit in. Many companies fail to think about these basics of product positioning at the country level and overlook things like strong local competitors.

2. Not paying enough attention to internal data. Developing a global market entry strategy requires more complex and specialized market research. In the vast universe of data that can help you figure out which markets are best for you, the most important data points are: 1) how much estimated opportunity is available in that market, 2) how easy it will be for your company to do business in that market, and 3) how much success you’ve already had with that market.

Many companies rely heavily on external data sources to guide this decision-making. However, analyzing your own data will help you answer the latter two questions and determine whether you have a strong product-market fit. Are you seeing a surge in leads from a particular market, in spite of not investing heavily there? Do you see a shorter sales cycle or a higher win rate in some countries? Is the average purchase price higher in a given market? Third-party data sources don’t know your customer or understand your brand – only you can answer these types of questions. Marketers can do a better job of utilizing their own data to prioritize their global marketing decisions.

3. Not adapting their sales and marketing channels. Many companies (especially Western ones) believe they can enter new markets by following the same playbook that brought them domestic success. While brand consistency is important, different markets favor different sales and marketing approaches. For example, in countries where relationships have a higher cultural value, such as Japan, selling products and services through local partners, such as resellers or channel partners, achieve faster success than direct sales models. Conversely, SaaS, online, and “touchless” sales models are often popular in markets where the cost of living is higher and automation is prized, such as the Nordic market.

Similarly, marketers need to change up their own channels according to the behaviors of each market, and this can vary across countries within the same region. For example, in Brazil, a marketing campaign might find more success with promoted messages on Facebook due to the popularity of this social network there, while in other Latin American countries, Twitter might attract a larger audience more quickly, and thus be a more effective marketing tool. While some channels work across a large number of markets, you want to explore what delivers the best result in each market by conducting detailed market research that relies heavily on local, in-country experts in advance.

4. Not adapting the product offering. Companies achieve “product-market fit” one country at a time. Yet all too often, companies try to launch identical products in different markets, ignoring the fact that they’re dealing with very different customers. For example, a software company won’t succeed abroad if it sells the same product that it sells at home if users in the new market aren’t as familiar with certain advanced features. Instead, they should start with a more basic version of the product to get people accustomed to it. Likewise, a more advanced market might require more features than a product currently has available.

Pricing is a similar issue. Because the value proposition varies from one market to the next, pricing will vary. While it’s not always essential for companies to change their pricing structure for international markets, many companies find that they are able to grow much more quickly by making adjustments at the local level. Forms of payment vary widely from one country to another. Marketers need to consider different pricing strategies for markets that are predominantly cash-based versus credit card-oriented, for example.

5. Not letting local teams lead the way. One of the most disappointing mistakes that I’ve seen companies make is that they hire highly competent, intelligent local people to serve their overseas markets, but then fail to consider their input when making strategic decisions.

In my global consulting engagements, marketing executives would often ask me, “What do you think our best way forward is in France? Why aren’t we succeeding there? What should we do differently?” My answer was often, “Ask your local teams.” They would frequently admit that they hadn’t tapped resources like the salespeople who sold there, and their local partners, vendors, consultants, and customers.

This is extremely important, because these individuals not only know the country in question, they know your business. The biggest challenge companies face with incorporating local insight tends to be communication. The marketing team must therefore put a system in place to help ensure that local views are captured and disseminated frequently enough. Don’t bring your company into a country the hard way. Leverage your existing relationships, and make sure to give their feedback extra weight. They are by far your most credible advisors.

6. Not thinking through the global logistics. Marketers use software that enables them to publish content on their website, send out email communications, publish social media updates, and carry out other key marketing tasks. But the same tools don’t support every market. For example, perhaps the software you use to conduct webinars only supports five languages, while your marketing automation software allows you to market in dozens of languages. Maybe your payment solutions only work for a few countries, but yet your CRM is filled with contacts from more than 100 countries.

Marketers need to ensure that they can actually market to people in the countries they’re looking to enter, which means considering details like how to display local currency, being able to email customers in their time zone, and supporting the languages customers speak.

As business continues to become more global, companies can gain competitive advantage by focusing their marketing efforts on targeting the right international markets and adapting their products and strategies to appeal to local customers. They’d be wise to avoid these pitfalls.

This post originally appeared on HubSpot's Marketing blog. For more content like this, subscribe to Marketing.

Mac and cheese. Taco Tuesdays. Tango and Cash. Our world is overflowing with amazing twosomes. But not all couples are functioning like a belt and suspenders.

If your inbound sales and marketing team needs more wine with its cheese, less Ben and more Jerry, come along as we explore how you can align your sales and marketing just like the greatest duos.  

1) The Case of Inbound Marketing Togetherness

Easily one of the most famous and enduring duos is Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson. The cold, deductive reasoning of Holmes and the humanness of the gentleman Watson continue to capture audiences 128 years after they first appeared in print.

Aside from the differences that make these two pair like fish and chips, it’s their extreme closeness that binds. You don’t get much closer than living together. In the original stories, the two shared a flat at 221B Baker St.

If Holmes has only one friend in the world it’s Watson. And where would Watson be without the master logician throwing him into another seemingly unsolvable case. And so it is with inbound marketing. We need each other. And the closer we are, the more successful we will be.

Sales and Marketing should be collaborating on a monthly basis about content creation topics for blog posts, white papers, ebooks, webinars, and even what conferences to attend.

Marketing can’t always just refer to the data for what will resonate with audiences. They need to ask the field, listen to their stories, and hear the truth, painful as it may be sometimes.

If you’re in sales, are you writing content? If not, start now, even if it’s just a blog post every other month. You’re marketing team will love you and shower you with digital affection. And you’ll get to talk about topics that matter in your frontline battles.

2) Great Expectations

The 49ers QB-receiver duo of Joe Montana and Jerry Rice were oozing with talent. But talent on a team does not always translate to playing well when it counts most. The record books are full of all-star teams that choked when it mattered.

It’s also about setting expectations.

Montana said this about his star receiver: “He has two of the greatest abilities I think there is. His ability to get by a defender. And his ability after the catch to make people miss and turn a small play into a big gain.”

Rice on Montana: “Once you broke inside, Joe would put the ball there. Then it’s up to you just to become a football player.”

They had expectations with each relying on the other to perform at the right time. If Montana was your marketer firing qualified leads your way,

• Do you have a documented sales process to follow?
• Do you follow up quickly with leads?
• Can you prove your solution’s value over your competitors?

Similarly, if you are Rice, do you have confidence in your marketing team to

• Create the content that will get found in search and be compelling enough for them to take action?
• Create blog content consistently?
• Create regular, targeted lead gen opportunities?

3) Be Playful, and Yada, Yada, Yada

The beauty of Jerry Seinfeld and George Costanza was the banter between the self-described “short, stocky, slow-witted bald man,” and the cereal-loving comedian. George teed up shot after shot for Jerry to whack.

George: She’s got a little Marissa Tomei thing goin’ on.

Jerry: Ah, too bad you’ve got a little George Costanza thing goin’ on.

Conversations and content can be humorous and playful and when done right and can amplify your message, whether you’re in marketing or sales (preferably you’re not taking yourselves too serious, anyway). If you don’t feel comfortable with humor, you can always be self-deprecating or just playful.

Here’s a playful sales email sent to our marketing manager:

I found your Twitter profile in the "Who to follow" section and have been loving your running "broknot" references. I had been calling them "manbuns," but now that I've heard your term I'm totally gonna adopt it (the term, not the hairstyle!) I also noticed you're doing fantastic stuff in my industry with SPROUT Content.

4) The Sometimes Elusive Truth is Out There: Sharing Metrics

Paranormal phenomena aside, Dana Scully’s skepticism to Fox Mulder’s “I Want to Believe” dogmatism is what made The X-Files compelling TV every week. Scully’s job was to debunk Mulder’s theories using science … or sometimes just observation.

Scully: You believe it all, don't you?

Mulder: Why wouldn't I?

Scully: Mulder, did you see their eyes? If I were that stoned --

Mulder: Oooh ... if you were that stoned, what?

Scully: Mulder, you could have shown that kid a picture of a flying hamburger and he would have told you that's exactly what he saw.

In inbound marketing, science (i.e. metrics) can often reveal the truth in a neat little package. Sometimes, though, it’s not that easy. Last year, our agency’s traffic went off the cliff like Thelma and Louise. As a result, so did our inbound leads.

We looked for all the usual suspects. Nothing.

Then what was found digging deeper into our metrics was surprising: thousands of spammy backlinks pointing to one page on our site. To us, this was an X-File -- as far down the explanations list as any weird light in the sky being attributable to aliens.

The spamming didn’t appear to be intentional. In fact, the offender was just one company who mistakenly published the same article 3,000 times too many. They quickly fixed the glitch.

Sales and Marketing should be aligned on metrics but often aren’t. In a study of 420 B2B marketers and sales training teams, only 31% said they were metrics-coordinated.

If your sales team doesn’t have access to your metrics, share them regularly and often. Better yet, give them access. Explain them. Go deep. You might be surprised at the observations and questions you get from Sales that will enhance what you’re doing.

Sales, share your metrics with Marketing: number of deals in the pipeline, closing rates, revenue per sale, sales by product/service, sales cycles, etc. Explaining these will make sales seem less magical. And Marketing will gain other insights such as potential new personas, which content is effective, and how many steps are involved in the process.

5) Out of Touch But Not Out of Time: Share Those Needs

Whenever you hear a Hall and Oates song one thing is certain: you’ve heard these guys before. Their songs just seem to always be there. Since the Philly “rock and soul” duo first met in 1967, they’ve cranked out 28 Top 40 hits and sold 13 million albums.

They’ve outlasted most S&P 500 businesses, and are still touring, sharing the stage with rockers like My Morning Jacket and even earning respect from hipsters. Though Daryl Hall is the voice, the multi-instrumentalist and formerly mustachioed John Oates plays an equally important role with his back-up singing and songwriting.

In an interview on their success, Oates said that they fulfill a need in each other’s personalities. Whereas Daryl has a “certain aggressiveness and a certain drive,” he describes himself as more grounded and practical.

You may not be filling personality needs, but you are filling job-related needs because Sales and Marketing are so intertwined. When was the last time you talked about your needs?

I need better quality leads. I need to know if our pricing is a sticking point. I need to know what prospects think of the new collateral. I need a new case study to share with prospects.

The purpose is not to become needy, only to find out what’s working and what’s not. Talking about needs should open the door to deeper conversations with a lot of questioning. Are we pricier overall or just in some areas? How much higher are we? How often is price a deal breaker?

6) Feedin’ Off Each Other

The first year Magic Johnson and Kareem Abdul-Jabbar played together, they won the NBA championship. They went on to win four more, plus nine MVPs, 19 all-star teams and racking up 56,094 points between them.

These two stars had completely different personalities: Magic, the likeable, flashy point guard and Kareem the aloof, introverted center. Though they formed an instant bond on the court, it took them five years to form a relationship off the court.

Aside from being immensely talented, they shared something else: they were able to feed off each other on the court. This intangible whether from their competitiveness or their dichotomous personalities created success.

A sales and marketing duo can also benefit from periodic grazing.

At our agency, we have a “News” section in our Teamwork app where we post successes, insights, stories, and whatever else will help nourish us. Here are a few examples:

Shared by Marketing: Someone downloaded one of his [client] ebooks a few weeks ago and he followed up and now how his first contract thanks to inbound marketing! This is a success story that I will use when talking with prospects.

Shared by Sales: “I was drawn to your company by your tagline, frankly. I need ‘conversations’ with leads generated.” This reinforced our marketing team’s decision to keep our tagline ("The Business of Conversation"), which they happened to be discussing at the time.

Shared from an employee: “I’m inbound certified!” A little kick in the pants for everyone to get re-certified.

7) Got to Get You Into My Life

The genius of the Beatles is that their genius couldn’t be attributed to just one exceptionally creative member. With apologies to Ringo and George, John Lennon and Paul McCartney made the Beatles. The Lennon-McCartney duo composed and sang most of the band’s songs.

And like all great duos, each brought different qualities to the table. Whereas John’s song writing could be sad and bluesy, Paul’s songs were usually optimistic and sunny. In their early years, most of their songs were written with input from one another. It was a true partnership.

Want to strengthen your partnership? Get them into your life.

Here’s how you both can benefit with one meeting.

Marketers, offer to jump on a call or go on a visit whenever a salesperson has a particularly tough or important opportunity. Your product/service expertise will help strengthen the company’s value to the prospect.

And you’ll benefit by seeing first-hand what questions sellers get, hear the objections, and discover how prospects perceive your solution. It’s also just nice to have a teammate to support. Do this and you’ll fortify your relationship instantly.

8) The Street Brawler and the Artist: Now More than Ever

Russell Wilson (“the artist”) and Marshawn Lynch (“the street brawler”) "probably wouldn’t be very good without the other one,” said the Seattle Seahawks offensive line coach, Tom Cable, describing his Super Bowl-winning duo. “Neither one of them is bigger or greater than the other.” 

Back in the day, a salesperson pounding the phones all day could make a pretty good case that he was primarily responsible for his own destiny. Inbound marketing has changed that. Now Sales and Marketing need each other more than ever.

If you get one message from any of these duos it’s that with inbound marketing, neither Sales nor Marketing is bigger or greater than the other. Each has a role to play and often those roles merge and tangle and blur. But as long as they pair like milk and cookies, everything will be just fine.

For more information on improving by measuring what your sales and marketing teams are doing, download SPROUT Content's free ebook What Gets Measured, Gets Improved.

“Data on its own is meaningless. Remember the value of data is not the data itself – it’s what you do with the data. For data to be useful you first need to know what data you need, otherwise you just get tempted to know everything and that’s not a strategy, it’s an act of desperation that is doomed to end in failure.” – Bernard Marr

This made us wonder, are B2B marketing and sales teams thinking about the right things when they consider implementing predictive intelligence? We believe there are 3 key questions that teams should answer before they embark on big data and predictive intelligence implementation:

1. What are my strategic goals, and how do I measure sucess?

If you’re looking at predictive intelligence as a way to get in front of your competition, how do you know when you’ve met that goal? You might ask:

• “Are we reaching prospects early enough in the buying cycle?”
• “How much bigger could our deals be if we are the first ones to respond to the RFP?”

Set goals based on where you are now and where you want to go. Measure the before and after. To use this technology to your advantage, have a clear grasp of what you want to accomplish first.

2. How do I use data to drive immediate results?

Predictive intelligence can dramatically improve your success rates by providing insights that allow you to make data-driven marketing decisions from what to say in your next email blast to writing a compelling pitch for your inside sales team.

Let’s say your goal is to deliver net-new leads to your sales qualification team. Predictive intelligence will shed light on the activity that led to these new accounts’ high scores. What products are they considering? Indicators like these will define the best approach for targeting these brand new prospects and how best to engage. Without data, you’ll find that you (and your sales team) will be spending a lot of time on efforts that lead to zero top-line impact.

3. What else can I do with the data?

Getting information about your prospects’ and their buying stage, on an ongoing basis, is the key to deploying predictive intelligence throughout your marketing efforts and sales interactions. For example, advertising dollars can be more precisely targeted and can generate a higher ROI when inputs from previous efforts come back into the predictive intelligence platform. Companies can create powerful segmentation and nurture campaigns in their marketing automation systems. They can personalize their web pages according to the predicted buying stage of that visitor.

What’s next?

“Successful companies today are making decisions based on facts and data-driven insights. Whether you have access to tons of data or not, if you start with strategy and identify the questions you need answers to in order to deliver your outcomes then you will be on track to improve performance and harness the primary power of data.” – Bernard Marr

Companies that learn how to use data to drive their strategies and execution have a tremendous advantage over companies who don’t.

Is It Time For A New Business Plan?

When I first started my business, I spent some time putting together a business plan. I laid out targets for growth and timescales to hit those targets. Within a couple of months that plan was unrecognisable with reality so it was time to revaluate and replan.

Sometimes it’s obvious when you need to re-think your business plan, brand new businesses for example often change so quickly that you know you need to update your goals in order to have a better handle on how your business is performing.

So what clues should you be looking out for and what can you do about it?

Are Your Sales Dropping?

If you find that sales of previously popular products and services are falling, it could be a sign that there is a disconnection between what you are providing and what your audience wants.

There could be several reasons this has happened.

Firstly, you might be marketing to the wrong people. Back when you first came up with your business plan you might have had a clear idea of who your ideal audience was and how you were going to reach them. Sometimes after an initial rush of success you can lose track of what you need to do and that’s where the disconnection happens. The message you’re putting out might not be reaching your target audience any more. Study your analytics and see what is happening now that wasn’t happening before – it could be the first step to you getting back on track.

Another reason could be because you’re product isn’t quite what your ideal audience needs it to be. On the surface, it might seem like you have the perfect solution to a problem, but once customers start using that solution it might not be exactly right. To identify if this is the problem, make sure you get feedback from everyone who buys from you. Find out what they like or didn’t like, if they would recommend you and if not, why not? You can then use all this information to improve your product to make sure it does meet all the requirements that your customers need.

Are Sales Staying Flat?

Just because you’re not losing numbers you can’t feel complacent. A business that stays flat is not in good shape either, so you need to come up with a new business plan to help you start to grow again.

Things to consider might be to add a new product line to entice more people in. You may also want to think about raising your prices to increase margins, widen your focus to an additional niche, or conversely do you want to narrow your services and brand yourself as an expert?

If you’re sales are staying flat, you know that there’s nothing fundamentally wrong with what you offer, but you might need to up your marketing activity in order to get more people to notice you. Work out how many leads it takes you to make a sale, and from there you’ll know if it’s worth you buying leads, hiring another sales person or coming up with something to make your offer a little sweeter in order to convert people at a better rate.

Are You Doing Far Better Than You’d Planned?

This is the dream for many business owners, so congratulations! However growing a business very quickly can bring with it its own share of problems. You may need to reassess your business model to make sure that you can cope with the additional fulfilment, customer service and administration that extra customers bring with them. Likewise, you need to ensure that you don’t get so bogged down with closing orders that you forget to carry on building up your future pipeline.

Is your business model easy to replicate? If so, could you consider setting up a franchise model that you can sell on to other entrepreneurs.
If that is a step too far, then what about hiring staff? Do you go for administrative staff, sales people or a business partner? Can your existing premises support extra staff and extra customers, or will you need to relocate? Do you need to invest in further marketing, or perhaps if you feel overwhelmed you could sell leads on to a similar business.

What ever stage you are at in business you can never get too complacent and rest on your laurels. There is always something else to consider, always something to plan for and always another way to reach out to more customers!

So what are you waiting for? Dig out your business plan now and see if it’s still leading you on the right course.