Rnordman

 

Welcome to our “Sell More Books on Amazon” series! These useful tips will help you make the most of your book marketing! Our first tip will focus on Pitching Via Email. 

• Email is fast, quick and easy to pitch bloggers but there is a right and wrong way to do this. A bad pitch or a rambling email can send your email into the delete bin so here are some quick tips to get your pitch the attention it deserves.

• Always attach the image of the front cover or, even better include a link to Amazon or Goodreads? That way the bloggers can see information such as pub date, book cover, and any reviews garnered.

• Be straightforward when crafting a subject, or you’ll risk sounding like spam. Remember subject lines are super important and often the reason that reviewers either read or dismiss your pitch.

• Consider a tagline when crafting your email! Since so many of us read on our mobile devices, maybe consider using a tagline before you get to the actual pitch so the blogger will see that in their preview pane and be more enticed to open the email!

• Always let them know you’re happy to mail them a book or gift one via Amazon.

• And finally, always, always address the blogger by their first name. If you don’t have it then spend the time finding it. Sending a pitch that’s unpersonalized or just addressed to “Dear Blogger” won’t get you nearly as much attention!

How to Sell Books by the Truckload on Amazon.com – live webinar! Join Penny and Joel Friedlander for this powerhouse session on July 27th. Sign up here – space is limited!

VICTORIA — The B.C. Liberals released details Monday of their proposal to compensate liquefied natural gas developers on a-dollar-for-dollar basis if future changes in provincial taxes and regulations specifically target the LNG sector. “The rules of the game,” said Finance Minister Mike de Jong in releasing the text of an agreement the Liberals have already negotiated and signed with a Malaysian-led consortium that is farthest along in plans to develop LNG in B.C.

Amazon just added Cloud Drive apps for iOS to accompany the Android versions it released at the end of June. Users can now view files and folders from mobile devices, just like they can from the desktop, putting Amazon's service more in line with the likes of Dropbox and Google Drive. 

It's all part of an increasingly frenetic land grab to store consumers' data online—the big names are cutting prices and expanding services to get photos, music, video and more into their respective "clouds" and off people's devices. 

See also: The Cloud Wars Are Great For Consumers But A Headache For Developers

Simple concept, at least in theory. But its execution, and the various ways to carry it out, can be anything but. In Amazon's case, putting out a variety of half-baked apps don't help matters. 

A Tale Of Two Apps

For users, cloud storage options can reduce reliance on local storage space, freeing up the limited amount you can stash on a phone or tablet. They also offer automatic backups, making it much easier to access those files from anywhere, whether smartphone, tablet, desktop or browsers. 

That's how it generally works. In Amazon's case, however, the proposition veers into piecemeal territory. 

The company offers Amazon Photos apps as an uploader and back-up tool for images. If you want to see other files, you now have new mobile apps that let you open and see common file types, view photos and play music and video. They don't offer options of their own for mobile uploading, but even as companion apps, they seem incomplete. The new Cloud Drive apps don't let users edit documents or perform advanced actions, like rename or move. 

See also: How Google Photos (And Its Spooky-Good Features) Stacks Up

In other words, the new entries don't replace the Photos apps; they're intended to work alongside them, forcing people to use two different apps to use its single Cloud Drive service, with rather limited functionality. 

For that privilege, they pay $60 per year for unlimited online storage, though the photos-only option costs quite a bit less, at $12 per annum (or free for Prime members). The latter option includes 5GB of space for videos. 

Developers, on the other hand, may have a better experience with Cloud Drive. Last month, the company launched a Software Development Kit (SDK) for the service, letting third-party app makers use it as a back-end—that is, as a holding tank to store users' files and settings. 

At least they can nix the confusion for their own users, even as Amazon's own foray into consumer cloud storage seems to fragment itself. 

The Competition

Amazon's not alone. Dropbox, Google, Apple and Microsoft all offer a bewildering number of options—with photo backups the typical starting point—though making direct comparisons isn't exactly straightforward. 

Dropbox helped lead the way in terms of seamless syncing between devices and automatic cloud backups, and while its 2 GB free offering is fairly paltry, 1 TB for $9.99 a month is affordable enough for many. It also has a dedicated app for organizing mobile photos in the form of Carousel.

It's also busy pushing out features for business users and signing deals with Microsoft to let users edit documents from right within the Dropbox interface...a lot like Google Drive. 

Google's cloud storage has evolved in the other direction, beginning as an online office suite and later growing to become a bucket for all types of files. That move coincided with Drive's increasing focus on mobile devices as well as inside desktop browsers. 

Google offers a more generous 15 GB of free space (across all of its services), but matches Dropbox in price with 1 TB for $9.99 a month. The recently launched Google Photos offers unlimited storage for pictures and videos, if you don't mind some resizing. Google offers a variety of apps to tie into its online services, but they each have more distinct identities—and features—than Amazon's still not quite-fully-formed consumer cloud. 

For its part, Microsoft has yet another play: Under Satya Nadella, the company has been busy trying to push all of its apps on all of the platforms—OneDrive can now do everything Dropbox and Google Drive can, albeit less smoothly, and Office 365 subscribers get unlimited online storage. 

As for iCloud, the service for iOS and Mac users is typically Apple in the way it lags behind the competition. For one, cross-platform compatibility—or really, lack thereof—holds no joy for people who have any non-Apple devices in the mix.  Given that, iCloud is not really a viable option as an all-in-one cloud storage solution. It's more expensive too. While it offers 5 GB of storage for free, 1 TB will run you $20 per month. 

All of which makes Amazon's new apps both necessary, and yet, rather underwhelming. If it's serious about pulling consumers over from other services, the company needs apps like this. But they need to get a lot better very quickly. 

Lead photo courtesy of Amazon

My partners and I have noticed an interesting trend over the past few years: an increase in the number of entrepreneurs who prefer to pitch us without the use of a presentation deck. On one hand, this is totally understandable. Many believe that PowerPoint decks are emblematic of the type of bureaucracy disparaged in Dilbert cartoons. Others want to appear “casual” and “conversational” and view the presentation as overly formal. But, going deck-less can be a risky move, and here is why. Investors are not solely evaluating your company’s story. They are also evaluating your ability to convey that story. Efficiently communicating your strategy, business model, and competitive differentiation is required for many critical things you will do as a company.

Can you raise money without a standard slide presentation? Sure. Can you have a great investor meeting that is purely conversation? Absolutely. But it is important to separate the possible from the optimal. If you are the next Google and everyone knows that you are in the driver’s seat, you should certainly do as you please. But if you are one of the thousands and thousands of startups that merely want to have an optimal fund raising process, I highly recommend that you develop a killer presentation.

Here are six reasons why good presentation decks are impactful:

1. Importance of Narrative – Last year I was turned on to an amazing book by  Jonathan Gottschall titled The Storytelling Animal. Gottschall explains how storytelling plays a critical role in each and every human’s life. The purpose of a presentation deck is to enable entrepreneurs to effectively tell the story of their business. In many ways it’s like a structured scientific proof. You want to walk the listener through an argument as to why this is going to be an amazing business. The goal is to bring the investor to the VC equivalent of Q.E.D. A well-organized deck will gradually transport the listener to the desired conclusion – “this will be a great investment.” A rambling free-speech conversation is much less likely to achieve this goal.
2. Controlling the Cadence – When you have a single hour with investors, you want to use your time wisely and ensure that you deliver all your key points. The organized deck helps you control the tempo and guarantee that you make all your arguments, sequentially, in the time allotted. Once again, this is like a structured proof. You want your arguments to build towards a conclusion in a systematic way. For this same reason, you should also avoid jumping around in the deck (another common occurrence, especially from entrepreneurs with decks that are too large). It might seem to make sense to jump to another slide to give the investor an immediate answer, but this takes you off your game and out of the flow you intended. If the question is answered later in the deck, tell the listener you will discuss it later and postpone answering the question.
3. Numeracy – You will not find a single definition of “entrepreneur” that does not include the word “business.” Startups are businesses, and businesses run on numbers. Even if you are just starting your company it’s useful to have numeric analysis. It may simply be an expense analysis, or a detailed pricing model, or a TAM (total available market) analysis. If you are post launch, it might involve a viral coefficient discussion or a cohort analysis. If you are post-revenue, it should unquestionably include a financial statement and forward forecast. The one thing your presentation should not be is numberless. It’s nearly impossible to convey complex numerical arguments with only words. Charts, graphs, and tables are orders of magnitude more efficient at this task. The best entrepreneurs I have worked with are all intensely focused on the numbers.
4. Storytelling Never Ends – As CEO you are the company’s number one salesperson and storyteller. You will spend a large portion of your time recruiting. You will raise more money at later stages. You will do business development meetings. You will take meetings with large customers and prospects. You will need to motivate your employees, and you will (hopefully) be invited to speak at important industry conferences. It is highly unlikely you will do all those things without a structured presentation deck. One-off speeches will have less efficiency and impact. As your company’s “storyteller-in-chief,” it is important for you to be great at this technique. And it’s a skill where practice really impacts performance. So you should start practicing as soon as you possibly can. VCs believe that better storytellers make better entrepreneurs.
5. The Process Itself Is Useful – The process of crafting the story of your company for the first time can be a cathartic experience. As you and your co-founders start to lay out things like positioning, business model and pricing assumptions, market focus, and key recruiting priorities, you will likely find that not everyone is on the same page. Developing a presentation deck gives you a great forum to nail those things down and to ensure that everyone is working with a common purpose. You will also find that some people are more creative than others at cramming the key parts of a presentation into 20-25 slides (don’t do more than 25) and delivering a very persuasive structured story for your company. The first version will not be great. Show it to your internal team, show it to a few outsiders, get feedback, and iterate. It’s a process. If your team is  new to this, I recommend reading Presenting To Win: The Art of Telling Your Story by Jerry Weissman.
6. Be Like Steve – Take to YouTube and do some searches for the very best entrepreneurial CEOs. Search for ‘Jeff Bezos presentation,’ or ‘Marc Benioff presentation,’ or ‘Elon Musk presentation‘ or ‘Steve Jobs presentation,’ and you will see that they universally use some form of presentation deck to guide their delivery. I have also seen modern day entrepreneurial leaders like Brian Chesky and Travis Kalanick speak at investor conferences, confidently leveraging the power of a deck. If you choose to freestyle without a deck when so many of the greats make it a normal practice, you risk leaving the impression that either (a) you don’t have the skills to produce a killer presentation, or (b) you are simply indifferent to why it is important. Neither is a good impression to leave with investors.

There is one situation where meeting without a presentation deck is warranted. If you have never met the potential investor and are unsure you want to share your data with this individual, then you have a very valid reason not to go through a detailed presentation. In this case, I would suggest that you make it clear up front that you view this as a “get-to-know-you” meeting and that you will not be diving deep on the business at this time. This will avoid having mismatched expectations.
If you are lucky enough to grow your company from Series A to Series B to Series C, and on to hundreds of millions of dollars in revenue and a successful IPO, you will need to tell your company’s story in high-stakes situations over and over and over again. Because of this, venture capitalists place huge positive weight on how good you are at this skill. The great storytellers have an unfair competitive advantage. They are going to recruit better, they will be darlings in the press, they are going to raise money more easily and at higher prices, they are going to close amazing business developer partnerships, and they are going to have a strong and cohesive corporate culture. Perhaps more to the point, they are more likely to deliver a positive investment return.

One of the best songs in the musical Cabaret is Money performed by Joel Grey and Liza Minnelli. “Money makes the world go ’round.”

Bank De “Merkel” from CTV News

And so it does, or at least at affects how the world goes around these days in the midst of the Euro crisis in Greece.

It is worth taking a look at where the money is, and where it isn’t.

For this I will use the per capita income as a measure. Per capita income is derived by taking the gross national product of a country and dividing it by the number of resident producers -namely people who are working. Since not everyone reports actual income and many countries have “black” or hidden economies, many industries keep two sets of books, one has to be careful in taking the numbers we have completely at face value. But even with the possible points of distortion in mind, the numbers are most interesting and revealing.

The highest reported per capital income is Norway with a whopping $97,363 per working person. The closest to this is the tiny municipality of Macao, which derives its income from gambling and comes in at $96,443 per capita. From that lofty number we go to some of the other Scandinavian countries with Denmark at $60,634 and Sweden at $58,887. Next comes the United States at $54,629 followed by Iceland and the Netherlands still in the 50’s. Germany, Europe’s economic powerhouse is lower at $45,620 per capita and the UK, France and Italy are in the mid to high 30’s. So too is Japan at $36,194. In fact, Japan is outperformed in terms of per capita income by the UK at $38,160 and by Israel at $37,031.

Then comes the bad news. Greece is at $21,682; Portugal at $22,080 and Spain, better off at $30,262. Russia is only at $12,735 per capita and Ukraine is at a mere $3,082 (practically bankrupt). Without the Donetsk area, which Ukraine no longer controls, the real per capita is likely to be even lower.

Some questions arise from this analysis.

Question 1: why would Russia be fighting a semi-secret war in the Ukraine which, if it fell into Russian hands (which is happening) would drag down Russia’s standard of living significantly? From an economic as opposed to ideological point of view, unless Russia can achieve something more, occupying the Ukraine is a significantly bad deal for the Russian people.

Question 2: would Russia attack the Baltic states (Latvia, Estonia and Lithuania) for economic reasons? They might certainly because all these countries have strong per capita incomes above that of Russia (Estonia $19,719; Lithuania $16,037 and Latvia $16,037). While Poland is less rich (per capita at $14,422) the ancient enmity between Poland and Russia remains a factor, but all these are NATO countries today which complicates Mr. Putin’s ambitions. Perhaps he is hoping for a continually weakening Europe, and he may get his way.

Question 3: what about Greece? Greece is worse off than Portugal and Spain not counting its substantial debt. Unless Greece can find a receptive Europe willing to write off its debt, its per capita income next year will be even lower. Almost all of this augurs for Greece either completely exiting the Eurozone or creating a second currency to live alongside the Euro. This would make the most sense, but sense does not seem to be an agenda item either for Greece or for Europe.

Europe is frozen into an ideological corner from which extraction is rather difficult for ideological and economic reasons. It is clear that the rich-poor dichotomy in Europe is not sustainable in a world that is increasingly interconnected and aware and politically more mature than when the Eurozone was formed. The European dream was to have a “united” Europe dominated by Germany with the political support of France. Some doubt that France is as strong as it looks and that the French people are so happy with German domination. And all these countries have been flooded with immigrants who drag down their economy and create intractable social and political problems exacerbated by the unwillingness of the newcomers to become French, or German or Dutch and the unwillingness of many nationalists to accept them. Insofar as the euro is concerned, it is a “sovereign” currency realistically only in Germany because the Germans call the economic shots in Europe. All the other have surrendered their national sovereignty to this system.

It still remains to be seen if some accommodation will be made with Greece and whether it can work. Without a significant debt write off, surely it cannot. And short of that Greece cannot survive without a new currency.

Without customers, you won’t have much of a business.

The tricky part is, most companies make the mistake of focusing so much on customer acquisition that they don’t know what to do with them once they get them—something that hurts a company’s ability to their grow business, provide great customer service, and turn customers into repeat customers and brand ambassadors.

Customer acquisition is only part of doing good business. Keeping them with a strong retention marketing strategy is a more cost effective and efficient way to do business.

A high customer retention rate will bode well for your bottom line, however, it is one area where many companies can afford to place more focus.

It’s 6-7 times more costly to attract a new customer than it is to retain an existing customer.

That’s at least true according to the White House Office of Consumer Affairs. Jerry Jao from Forbes chimes in saying that, “In a recent Retention Science study, 70% of marketers said that their Retention Marketing is average at best, with room for significant improvement. More than anything, the fact that marketers are acknowledging the need for growth in customer retention is a sign of the changing times – and the rising importance of Retention Marketing.”

Not to mention, that according to the Gartner Group, 80% of your company’s revenue will come from just 20% of your existing customer base, and a simple 5% increase in customer retention can increase business profits between 25% and 125%.

This statistic alone communicates just how important your customer retention rate and retention marketing strategies are for your company’s future growth.

Adobe echoes the importance of retention marketing. They found that close to 80% of companies’ marketing budgets are spend on acquiring shoppers; however, for every 1% of shoppers who become repeat customers, a company’s revenue will increase by about 10%.

So the big guys say it’s a big deal, but before we get into retention marketing strategies you can implement, let’s dig a little more into the importance of working on customer retention.

Importance of Retention

Repeat customers spend 33% more than new customers.

The importance of customer retention can be summarized by the following statistics compiled by Alex McEachern from SweetTooth:

1. Repeat customers are more likely to buy from you: Repeat customers are more likely to shop with you again. Additionally, the more customers buy, the more likely they are to buy more in the future.
   
   
2. Repeat customers are an easier sell: The average conversion rate typically falls between 1% and 3%; however, a repeat customer significantly increases potential conversion rates. According to Marketing Metrics, repeat customers spike conversion rates to about 60%-70%.
   

Adobe had similar findings. They found that customers who have previously made 2 purchases in the past were 9 times more likely to convert when compared to a first time shopper.

3. Repeat customers spend more money: Repeat customers spend more money per purchase than new customers. If you have given them reason to return and they like your products, they will have more faith and confidence in your ability to serve their needs.

An RJMetrics study found that your loyal top 10% spend 3 times more per order than the lower 90%; and your top 1% of customers spend 5 times more than the lower 90%.

4. Repeat customers spend more during important times: Repeat customers are there when you need them. They are the customers who drive sales during the holidays and other important shopping seasons.

“According to Adobe, the average shopper spends 17% more per transaction during the holiday rush. This is great news, but your repeat customers spend even more. Your store’s repeat customers actually spend 25% more per transaction during the busy season. But that is not all. Repeat customers help you through the tough times as well!” says McEachern.

5. Repeat customers provide great word-of-mouth marketing: Turning your customers into brand advocates is one of the most effective marketing strategies, and focusing on retention marketing can help make this happen. Bain & Company found that “after 10 purchases, you refer 50% more people than a one-time purchaser to a store. This study by Bain shows that repeat customers can actually increase their profitability by attracting more clients,” McEachern summarizes.
   

Now that we have covered why you need to invest more time and resources into retention marketing, let’s look at some strategies that can help your business improve your customer retention rate, customer service, and drive revenue in the right direction.

Benefits of Retention Marketing Strategies

A 10% increase in customer retention levels results in a 30% increase in the value of the company. (Bain & Co)

Not convinced yet? Here is a summary of the benefits of putting more focus into retention marketing. Implementing retention marketing strategies provide the following benefits:

• Increased revenue
• Lower customer acquisition costs
• Increased referral rates and the creation of brand advocates
• Building of stronger relationships with existing customers
• Improved approach to customer service
• Identification of new business opportunities and ways to serve your customer base
• Gaining deeper insights into your customer’s needs

And Finally, 6 Retention Marketing Strategies

As we’ve just covered with a bunch of fancy stats, retention is one of the most important strategies for your business. Once you put the time and resources into getting customers in the door, retention can ease the burden of finding new customers.

So, how do you do it?

1. Start with a free trial

A free trial or simplified free version of a product is a great way to get customers in the door and keep them around, while also allowing them to explore what you can offer. When they discover the value of your product on their own, they will be more willing to become a customer. Dropbox offers a free version and free trial:

“The freemium model can help convert users into paying customers if your business offers a 30-day trial allowing customers to test the value of your product, a free version of your offerings limited to only certain features, or free incentives if a user invites friends to sign up via email or social media,” says Brian Honigman on Entrepreneur.com.

2. Get personal

No one knows your customer better than your customers. Therefore, it’s imperative that you talk with your customers, collect data and insights and learn as much as possible about their wants, needs, problems and how you can position your products and services as a solution. The more you can help, the more likely you will be able to retain them.

Here are ways to learn more about your customers:

• Surveys and customer feedback
• Talking to your front line employees
• Monitoring social analytics and collecting user profile data

The more you learn about your customers, the more you can shape your web content, promotional offers, landing pages and marketing messages to speak directly to your customers’ needs.

“You can start personalizing your experience from a user’s very first visit to your site based on the referring source. For instance, altering product pricing and promotional offers, images on landing and product pages, or the amount of text on a page to make an experience as relevant to a user as possible. The added relevance can intrigue visitors to stay on your site longer, but the big engagement increases come from altering your offerings based on each user’s behavior on your site,” states Honigman on Entrepreneur.com

3. Do more than sell

Offering a product or service is not enough anymore. With so much competition and with so many similar offerings, companies need to differentiate in other ways. If you want to build loyalty and keep your customers, you need to become their trust advisor. You can do this in a number of ways:

• Email marketing campaigns
• Blogging
• Being active on social media
• Free reports
• Creating an education centre on your website

Becoming an industry expert and providing additional information that is related to the products and services your customers seek will add more value to your relationship with them, making them more likely to buy from you over competitors.

4. Mon­i­tor social media sites and build relationships online

Your customers are online, and you need to be online too. The rise of social media has changed how companies attract and build relationships with customers. Through Facebook, Twitter, and many other social platforms, you now have the opportunity to connect with your customers 24 hours a day, and without them having to visit your store or website. It gives you the opportunity to create a one-on-one bond with your customers.

“Connecting with customers and building communities takes more effort and time than typical social media acquisition strategies,” says Debra Ellis from Social Media Today. Take advantage of social media to see what your customers are saying, learn more about them, and develop your relationship with them.

5. Reward repeat customers

Customers love to be rewarded for their loyalty, and they love feeling appreciated. Whether it’s through special offers or through a rewards card, your customers will be more willing to come back if you give them reason to.

Programs such as Air Miles, PETRO POINTS, SCENE Card, and Shoppers Optimum Card all drive repeat business because customers know they will receive something extra when they shop at these stores.

6. Build KPIs around customer service

One of the most effective ways to retain customers is to provide customer service that goes above and beyond. Give your customers the experience they are looking for. “68% leave because they are unhappy with the service they receive, and 14% are unhappy with the product or service,” says Ross Beard on Client Heartbeat.

Building key performance indicators around customer service will help you better understand if you are providing the level of service your customers expect. If you are not, it will provide you with some insights into where you need to improve to boost your customer retention rates.

What we’re trying to say is…

Retaining customers and doing business with your current customer base is more effective and affordable than prospecting for new business. Companies tend to focus on acquisition more than customer retention marketing, even though it can cost 7 times more to acquire new customers. Shifting the focus and putting more resources into retention marketing will ease the stress of trying to find new customers, lower acquisition costs, and help you increase revenue.

The most important thing to remember is at the end of the day you are going to the trade show to grow the business.

That fact can be overlooked frequently with all the chaos and hoopla that goes into attending, exhibiting or participating in a trade show but never lose site of the fact. (Be sure to review the questions to ask before attending a trade show to ensure it’s the right move for your company.)

Today we are going to address how to get qualified leads from a trade show. Here are the steps you need to take:

1) Plan in advance. Strategy can’t happen at the last minute.

2) Know your goals. You can’t aim and take the shot if you don’t know what you are trying to hit!

3) Offer incredible irresistible value. We aren’t selling, we’re helping.

4) Capture the right information. 

5) Do something with the leads immediately! 

1) PLAN IN ADVANCE: When strategizing on how to get leads from a trade show the more time you have the better.

It gives you a chance to craft a creative approach and it also allows you to stay focused on the task and not get distracted by last minute flare ups. Finding out the brochures have a typo the week before you leave for the show will naturally take precedence over the lead generating strategy but we all can recognize that it shouldn’t.

So time is a big asset here and the planning should begin from when you book and schedule the show. (See our Ultimate Trade Show Timeline for helpful time frames)

2) KNOW YOUR GOALS: Knowing what you want to accomplish at the show is critical because it’s not always the same or obvious for everyone. There are legitimate goals beyond “generating leads or driving new business” and even generating qualified leads needs to be drilled down and specified.

The more you can narrow down the exact elements that make up a qualified lead for your business or for this specific show the better. Detail the target prospect you are looking for, highlight the kinds of companies they will be coming from, what the average deal size you are looking for, etc…

Once there is clarity over what the goal of the show is more ammunition can be thrown at accomplishing it.

3) OFFER INCREDIBLE VALUE: Just because you are standing in a booth doesn’t mean you can forget the marketing methodology you believe in.

6Don’t turn into a used car salesman or a newspaper hawker even though that might be your first instinct (there is something about watching people walk by your booth that brings that out in everyone!) Remember to put out the honey to draw the bees in.

In this case the bees are the specific goal and lead prospect you are looking for and the honey is whatever will create incredible value for them. What can you offer that will be helpful, informative and ultimately answer the question that are on their head. Just like you they are coming to the show with a set of objectives on their mind.

You are looking to attract the show goers whose objective you and your company match. Then it’s a matter of identifying and solving their problem and using your marketing materials and booth set up to express that.

4) CAPTURE THE INFORMATION: Don’t overlook this seemingly simple step! Actually converting a show attendee into a booth visitor and then into a lead will require that you capture their information.

There will need to be a moment where they give permission for you to get to know them further and contact them after the show. This will be where you get their personal contact details. There are a few ways to do this and I caution you to give some thought to what contact details are the right ones.

Not all details are worth the same and asking for too much will leave you with a high bounce rate so to speak and asking for too little will be hampering your after show follow up efforts.

5) FOLLOW UP RIGHT AWAY: While you are focused on how to get leads from a trade show the real money shot is what you are going to do with those leads after the show. They don’t do anything for you (or your companies bottom line) if they are just sitting in a stack at the corner of your desk when you get back to the office.

There is so much to catch up on after being out of the office for a few days that some how the follow up gets pushed to the end of your task list. While in reality it should be the forefront because you really want to act while the iron is hot and you are still a glimmer of a memory in your prospects mind.

We love to advise that you set up an automated email to go out after a contact form has been submitted – the best bet is to have the prospect fill out their details on an iPad at the booth and then the rest is all automated.

The more strategy, thought and execution that can happen before the show the stronger your efforts will be and ROI from your time at the show will skyrocket. Focus on how to get leads from a trade show and how to get QUALIFIED leads from a trade show by following these straightforward steps that will deliver effective and efficient results.

One, two, cha-cha-cha!

Even if you’ve never danced the Cha Cha, it’s likely you’ve heard the familiar counting pattern before.

I’m no dancer. But I do understand one thing: if you’re dancing with a partner and you miss a step it’s likely someone falls flat on their face. Ouch.

And wouldn’t you know it? A content marketing strategy also requires a series of steps. If you miss or skip a step, your strategy also risks falling flat on its face.

Once again, ouch!

So how can you partner with customers on a dance that has them staying longer and spending more?

Let’s take a look at the cha-cha-cha of a content marketing, shall we?

The following represents the high-level fundamentals of a content marketing strategy. Know that each of these steps also has a series of steps within it, before it, and after it, but we’ll save those for another time.

For now, the goal is to make sure everyone moves on the same counts.

One, two, cha-cha-cha! Here’s a breakdown of the steps:

1. Audience
2. Agony
3. Cha – Attraction
4. Cha – Alignment
5. Cha – Action

Step 1. Audience

If you’re going to trip the light fantastic with your content marketing strategy, you’re going to need a clear picture of who you’re trying to reach. Any decisions you make for your strategy stem from having a deep understanding of this audience.

Consider this, your approach to reaching hip-hop dancers would be very different than if trying reach ballet dancers.

Step 2. Agony

What are the pain points for this audience? What is it that’s causing them the most pain in relation to your product or service offering? Most people are unclear what the solutions to their problems are, but they are very aware of the problems themselves. You must know the problems that cause your audience the most agony. This way you can understand how to best help them and gain their attention.

Step 3. Cha – Attraction

This is where your prospect becomes aware of you. You’re using content designed to speak to the wants and challenges of your well-defined audience. The goal for this step is simple: gain your prospect’s attention and drive them from wherever the interaction takes place (an email, a social channel, media buy, search, or referral) to a property that you own. This property is typically your website. Once they’re here, you can focus your energy on moving them to the next step.

Step 4. Cha – Alignment

Once you’ve attracted your audience it’s time to move things to the next level. What can you offer that’s valuable enough to your audience that they’re willing to subscribe in exchange? This can be an online subscription via email or an offline subscription such as a print magazine.

Once you have a subscriber that’s given you permission, you’re able to continue the conversation with this prospect audience. It’s here that you provide educational value to them while also sharing your beliefs and what your company stands for on an ongoing basis. This allows both you and your customer to make sure there’s proper alignment.

Alignment of what, you ask? An alignment in approach and values, which is important because it allows you to weed out those who aren’t the right fit for your business while capturing more of those who are the perfect fit.

You see, it’s likely a purchase of your product or service is a bit more intricate than buying a pack of gum. Ongoing education and value alignment helps you convert more customers who believe in what you do and who are predisposed to do stick around longer, promote you, and do more business with you.

Warning: Most people get the urge to skip this step.

Why? It’s simply due to impatience. People want to jump directly to the next Cha, or the Action step. Resist this urge. I’m going to spend a bit of time explaining why because it’s that important.

Although it seems like you’re prolonging what you’d ultimately like your prospect to do, this Alignment step actually pays off long term.

Here’s an example of why this Alignment step is so important:

TD Ameritrade offers a free quarterly trading magazine, thinkMoney. They describe it as, “full of fresh thinking, humor and trading how-to’s from equities to futures…”

What did they learn about their subscribers and readers? TD Ameritrade found that subscribers and readers traded five times more that non-subscribers.

FIVE. TIMES. MORE. Let that sink in for a minute.

Based on this information, TD Ameritrade focuses its efforts on getting as many people as possible to subscribe to thinkMoney. Long term, this is a smarter move as it provides more overall value to their business. If they skipped ahead to the next step they’d actually be losing money from a long-term perspective.

Let’s just say your results are similar to the thinkMoney example, that’s five times more than someone who skips the Alignment step.

Now, I’m no math wiz, but if you start adding up the benefits of waiting a bit longer in favor of a quick conversion, you end up with a more valuable asset.

Find out more about why a content marketing subscription goal is so important.

Step 5. Cha – Action

This is where your prospect takes that action you want them to take. Maybe you want them to start a trial and then become a customer, perhaps you want them to hire you again and again for the services you offer, or pay for the training you provide, whatever the case may be this step receives a powerful added flourish when you’ve successfully landed the previous steps.

Shall we dance?

Now that you know the fundamental steps and understand the rhythm of each, you’ll be on your way to creating a content marketing strategy that converts more people to customers that stay longer and spend more.

Stick to and regularly practice these steps so you can start inviting more people to dance without fear of falling flat on your face.

Ready to get started?

Review each of the five steps and answer the following questions:

• Who is your audience? What do you know about them?
• What challenges can you help this audience overcome?
• What content can you create that attracts the audience you’re trying to reach?
• How will you allow them to subscribe so you can talk to them on a regular basis?
• What actions do you ultimately want them to take?

Hope to see you on the dance floor. One, two, cha-cha-cha!

Converting your subscribers to open and read the email

There are 3 key steps to increasing email marketing conversions and it’s necessary to get each of them right as they can all impact (either positively or negatively) the success of your email marketing campaign. All too often when we talk about email marketing we simply consider the email, however, email marketing is much more than that. There is a 3 step process to achieving conversions within email marketing and all 3 steps are as impactful as each other – so be sure not to neglect any of them!

Step 1: Email Opens

Yes, this first step is an obvious but crucial one. If we fail at this point, the likelihood of Steps #2 and #3 being successful are dramatically reduced. We need to ensure that we give it the best chance possible to be actioned and here are some helpful tips:

Stay focused on the objective of the email

This will help you to ensure you’re attracting the right audience with your subject line. I also encourage you to write it down – which will help you to stay focused. All too often we get lured into thinking the objective of the email is to gain as many opens as possible but in most cases, this is not so….more likely than not it will be event registration, downloads, product purchase etc. So by keeping focused on the objective of the email (i.e. conversions) we’ll be more likely to craft subject lines that attract the audience that is most likely to convert, rather than simply attracting a larger audience who convert at a lower rate.

Here’s an example of a subject line test performed by Veet. We can see that the subject line that achieved the highest open rates actually had the lowest conversions (entries to the competition). However, the subject line with the highest conversions, achieved this with the lowest open rates. Therefore, if we were to have gone with the open rate as being the successful metric – which is the most popular metric to measure subject line success - we would have lost out on conversions, which is the objective of this campaign.

So by focusing on the objective and understanding which metric matters the most to the success of the email, you’re more likely to achieve greater success.

Think CURVE when crafting your subject line

Use at least two elements from the CURVE method – Curiosity, Urgency, Relevance, Value, Emotion.
The below example from ASOS uses Curiosity in the form of personification, Urgency and Emotion.
"Open me quick! I expire at 6pm, payday treat."

 

Create subject line immediately after writing your objective

The simple act of creating (or should I say ‘crafting’) your subject line first, will help you to stay focused on the objective of the email, and as such assist you to achieve better results. Over the years I’ve trained hundreds of email marketers and 90% of them admit that they save writing the subject line until a few minutes before we push ‘send’, which results in a hurried and potentially ineffective subject line.

By writing the subject before you do anything else you are not only allowing yourself the time to craft a persuasive and effective subject line, but you are also using the subject line to prepare the framework of a persuasive email designed to get the reader to take the next action.

Encourage action by frontloading verbs in your subject line

Using action words motivates us humans to perform an action. Because they’re often a direction or invoke action, our eyes are drawn to these exciting words, so be sure to frontload verbs in your subject line. Experiment with different verbs to discover what verbs resonate well with your audience. They perform a dual-service in that they can also direct the reader to perform an action "take," "download," "reserve," "ask," "buy," etc.
Keep in mind too, that many verbs perform a dual service and contain the benefit as well – these are powerful verbs. Some examples are; prevent, simplify, maximise, succeed, increase – don’t be shy about testing what works best for you.
I love iMedia Connection’s use of front-loading verbs in the below subject lines. “Meet”, “Win” and “Become”

Here’s a subject line test that involved frontloading verbs.

• Version A: Your Opinion Counts – Win a Fiji Hand Tote
• Version B: Take the 5 Minute Fiji Survey – Win $50.

Interestingly although Version B got fewer opens it gained higher click through’s and so was designated as the winner.
I believe though that this wasn’t the only reason why this subject line won over the other version. Factors such as specificity and pre-qualification also play their part in it being the winning version. It’s a great example of how the CURVE Method works in conjunction with verbs. In this case Value + Relevance + Frontloading verbs was the winning combination.

Craft your subject line for longitudinal wins as well as immediate wins

Subject lines have an extremely important job to do – not only for the immediate conversions but they also have an impact on longitudinal results.
The UK DMA’s Email Tracking Report 2014 shows that when a consumer receives an interesting email, they do more than just click. 45% save the email for later and 38% bear the information in mind for later. Your subject line plays an important role in whether they do either of these actions.

The key to achieving this is to use the CURVE Method and be very specific with your subject lines – you want to end up with a subject line that very clearly reveals the benefit and hooks them into reading the subject now – even though they may not action for weeks or months.

Leverage the strengths of email as a Push Channel

Email being a Push Channel means that we can benefit from being able to send messages at appropriate times in the consumer’s lifecycle – we don’t have to wait for them to come to us. One of the beneficial outcomes of this is that more often than not, email is one of the main drivers of traffic to your website.
Another benefit is the branding exposure we receive from sending emails. This is called the Nudge Effect. As we saw with the DMA report, success with an email doesn’t always end with a click. Email pushes the consumer to other channels directly and it often begins and ends with the subject line. If you’ve carefully crafted the subject line it may drive them directly to the website or even if they’ve deleted the email, more often than not, they’ve read the subject line before doing so and this will have an impact when in a couple of weeks, they remember your subject line and go to your website.
One of the main ingredients of a successful subject line is to package up the subject line so that it is customer-centric and not brand-centric and is therefore easily digested by the reader enabling them to easily determine the value the email conveys.

For example:

Brand-Centric: Our sale is on! We have hundreds of items discounted! Don’t miss out!
Customer-Centric: Here’s your chance to save $$$! For 24 hours only. Don’t miss out on bagging yourself a bargain.

As you can see the first version is very brand-centric and uses the words ‘our’ and ‘we’, whilst the second version uses ‘your’ and ‘yourself’.

With a tiny bit of thought you can turn this feature-led subject line into being a benefit-led subject line. Simply state the feature (Our sale is on!) and ask yourself “So What?” This leads you to answer it with the benefit (Here’s your chance to save $$$!).

Join me tomorrow to discover some tips on how best to convert your subscribers to click/action your emails. And feel free to check out my webinar all about how to create email subject lines that increase conversions.

If you are interested in optimising your welcome email campaign then download our new guide on welcome emails and onboarding below.

The post How to Price Your Product so Your Prospect Says Yes (Yes!) appeared first on Copyblogger.

Perhaps you heard recently about a new algorithm that can drive a car? Or invent a recipe? Or scan a picture and find your face in a crowd?  It seems as though every week companies are finding new uses for algorithms that adapt as they encounter new data. Last year Wired quoted an ex-Google employee as saying that “Everything in the company is really driven by machine learning.”

Machine learning has tremendous potential to transform companies, but in practice it’s mostly far more mundane than robot drivers and chefs. Think of it simply as a branch of statistics, designed for a world of big data. Executives who want to get the most out of their companies’ data should understand what it is, what it can do, and what to watch out for when using it.

Not just big data, but wide data

The enormous scale of data available to firms can pose several challenges. Of course, big data may require advanced software and hardware to handle and store it. But machine learning is about how the analysis of the data also has to adapt to the size of the dataset. This is because big data is not just long, but wide as well. For example, consider an online retailer’s database of customers in a spreadsheet. Each customer gets a row, and if there are lots of customers then the dataset will be long. However, every variable in the data gets its own column, too, and we can now collect so much data on every customer – purchase history, browser history, mouseclicks, text from reviews – that the data are usually wide as well, to the point where there are even more columns than rows. Most of the tools in machine learning are designed to make better use of wide data.

Predictions, not causality

The most common application of machine learning tools is to make predictions. Here are a few examples of prediction problems in a business:

• Making personalized recommendations for customers
• Forecasting long-term customer loyalty
• Anticipating the future performance of employees
• Rating the credit risk of loan applicants

These settings share some common features. For one, they are all complex environments, where the right decision might depend on a lot of variables (which means they require “wide” data). They also have some outcome to validate the results of a prediction – like whether someone clicks on a recommended item, or whether a customer buys again. Finally, there is an important business decision to be made that requires an accurate prediction.

One important difference from traditional statistics is that you’re not focused on causality in machine learning. That is, you might not need to know what happens when you change the environment. Instead you are focusing on prediction, which means you might only need a model of the environment to make the right decision. This is just like deciding whether to leave the house with an umbrella: we have to predict the weather before we decide whether to bring one. The weather forecast is very helpful but it is limited; the forecast might not tell you how clouds work, or how the umbrella works, and it won’t tell you how to change the weather. The same goes for machine learning: personalized recommendations are forecasts of people’s preferences, and they are helpful, even if they won’t tell you why people like the things they do, or how to change what they like. If you keep these limitations in mind, the value of machine learning will be a lot more obvious.

Separating the signal from the noise

So far we’ve talked about when machine learning can be useful. But how is it used, in practice? It would be impossible to cover it all in one article, but roughly speaking there are three broad concepts that capture most of what goes on under the hood of a machine learning algorithm: feature extraction, which determines what data to use in the model; regularization, which determines how the data are weighted within the model; and cross-validation, which tests the accuracy of the model. Each of these factors helps us identify and separate “signal” (valuable, consistent relationships that we want to learn) from “noise” (random correlations that won’t occur again in the future, that we want to avoid). Every dataset has a mix of signal and noise, and these concepts will help you sort through that mix to make better predictions.

Feature extraction

Think of “feature extraction” as the process of figuring out what variables the model will use. Sometimes this can simply mean dumping all the raw data straight in, but many machine learning techniques can build new variables — called “features” — which can aggregate important signals that are spread out over many variables in the raw data. In this case the signal would be too diluted to have an effect without feature extraction. One example of feature extraction is in face recognition, where the “features” are actual facial features — nose length, eye color, skin tone, etc. — that are calculated with information from many different pixels in an image. In a music store, you could have features for different genres. For instance, you could combine all the rock sales into a single feature, all the classical sales into another feature, and so on.

There are many different ways to extract features, and the most useful ones are often automated. That means that rather than hand-picking the genre for each album, you can find “clusters” of albums that tend to be bought by all the same people, and learn the “genres” from the data (and you might even discover new genres you didn’t know existed). This is also very common with text data, where you can extract underlying “topics” of discussion based on which words and phrases tend to appear together in the same documents. However, domain experts can still be helpful in suggesting features, and in making sense of the clusters that the machine finds.

(Clustering is a complex problem, and sometimes these tools are used just to organize data, rather than make a prediction. This type of machine learning is called “unsupervised learning”, because there is no measured outcome that is being used as a target for prediction.)

Regularization

How do you know if the features you’ve extracted actually reflect signal rather than noise? Intuitively, you want to tell your model to play it safe, not to jump to any conclusions. This idea is called “regularization.” (The same idea is reflected in terms like “pruning”, or “shrinkage”, or “variable selection.”) To illustrate, imagine the most conservative model possible: it would make the same prediction for everyone. In a music store, for example, this means recommending the most popular album to every person, no matter what else they liked. This approach deliberately ignores both signal and noise. At the other end of the spectrum, we could build a complex, flexible model that tries to accommodate every little quirk in a customer’s data. This model would learn from both signal and noise. The problem is, if there’s too much noise in your data, the flexible model could be even worse than the conservative baseline. This is called “over-fitting”: the model is learning patterns that won’t hold up in future cases.

Regularization is a way to split the difference between a flexible model and a conservative model, and this is usually calculated by adding a “penalty for complexity” which forces the model to stay simple. There are two kinds of effects that this penalty can have on a model. One effect, “selection”, is when the algorithm focuses on only a few features that contain the best signal, and discards the others. Another effect, “shrinkage”, is when the algorithm reduces each feature’s influence, so that the predictions aren’t overly reliant on any one feature in case it turns out to be noisy. There are many flavors of regularization, but the most popular one, called “LASSO”, is a simple way to combine both selection and shrinkage, and it’s probably a good default for most applications.

Cross-validation

Once you have built a model, how can you be sure it is making good predictions? The most important test is whether the model is accurate “out of sample”, which is when the model is making predictions for data it has never seen before. This is important because eventually you will want to use the model to make new decisions, and you need to know it can do that reliably. However, it can be costly to run tests in the field, and you can be a lot more efficient by using the data you already have to simulate an “out of sample” test of prediction accuracy. This is most commonly done in machine learning with a process called “cross-validation”.

Imagine we are building a prediction model using data on 10,000 past customers and we want to know how accurate the predictions will be for future customers. A simple way to estimate that accuracy is to randomly split the sample into two parts: a “training set” of 9,000 to build the model and a “test set” of 1,000, that is initially put aside. Once we’ve finished building a model with the training set, we can see how well the model predicts the outcomes in the test set, as a dry run. The most important thing is that model never sees the test set outcomes until after the model is built. This ensures that the test set is truly “held-out” data. If you don’t keep a clear partition between these two, you will overestimate how good your model actually is, and this can be a very costly mistake to make.

Mistakes to avoid when using machine learning

One of the easiest traps in machine learning is to confuse a prediction model with a causal model. Humans are hard-wired to think about how to change the environment to cause an effect. In prediction problems, however, causality isn’t a priority: instead we’re trying to optimize a decision that depends on a stable environment. In fact, the more stable an environment, the more useful a prediction model will be.

It’s important to draw a distinction between “out-of-sample” and “out-of-context”. Measuring out-of-sample accuracy means that if we collect new data from the exact same environment, the model will be able to predict the outcomes well. However, there is no guarantee the model will be as useful if we move to a new environment. For example, an online store might use a database of online purchases to build a helpful model for new customers. But the exact same model may not be helpful for customers in a brick-and-mortar store – even if the product line is identical.

It’s tempting to think that the sheer size of data available can get around the issue. That’s not the case. Remember, these algorithms draw their power from being able to compare new cases to a large database of similar cases from the past. When you try to apply a model in a different context, the cases in the database may not be so similar any more, and what was a strength in the original context is now a liability. There’s no easy answer to this problem. An out-of-context model can still be an improvement over no model at all, as long as its limitations are taken into consideration.

Even though some parts of model-building can seem automatic, it still takes a healthy dose of human judgment to figure out where a model will be useful. Furthermore, there’s a lot of critical thinking that goes into making sure the built-in safeguards of regularization and cross-validation are being used the right way.

But it’s also good to keep in mind that the alternative — purely human judgment — comes with its own set of biases and errors. With the right mix of technical skill and human judgment, machine learning can be a useful new tool for decision-makers trying to make sense of the inherent problems of wide data. Hopefully without creating new problems along the way.

Innovation tourism: it’s a thing. The tourists are entrepreneurs looking for the right economic microclimate to start a business; corporate scouts looking to expand their company’s reach or improve their supply chain; policy makers trying to figure out the right balance of rules and infrastructure to create a thriving economy; investors searching for the next crop of opportunities. These well-intentioned professionals travel the world in pursuit of the secret sauce of innovation. Typically, tourism involves guided tours, pitch events, conferences with lots of panels, and well-planned visits to companies, universities, and government agencies tasked with increasing entrepreneurship and innovation.

The problem is, all of these good people are often guided to see a distorted reality. Not that more formalized presentations and assessments are necessarily Potemkin villages, but they often miss what’s really going on. It’s just that these actors naturally tend toward self-promotion. (If you ask the director of a government innovation agency how influential or effective they are, what answer do you expect, other than “extremely?” Have you ever encountered a university tech transfer office director who says, “Sorry, we are a drain on the university’s cash?”)

But an innovation tour can be valuable, as long as you know what to look for and think about. Entrepreneurship and innovation ecosystems aren’t simple, easily graspable objects; they are a construct we use to make sense of an exceedingly complex reality. And they are indeed important to be able to see and understand. To get at their essence, you need to think and act like the anthropologist doing field research by observing, questioning, and listening to many different parts of the land you are visiting. Here are some tips for a useful innovation tour:

Tip 1: Look for the “software,” not the “hardware.” Many people, including business experts, misconceive entrepreneurship and innovation ecosystems as consisting of the activities and structures which are easily visible – what I call the entrepreneurship ecosystem “hardware”: startup incubators, angel investor meetings, tech transfer offices, innovation centers, entrepreneurship courses, business plan competitions. Yet the most important drivers of entrepreneurship are often the more subtle “software”: the networks of trust going back to high school or military service, the belief systems or values at the root of people’s resilience in the face of setbacks, or the social norms which encourage thinking out of the box.

So try to find networking events, engage in conversations, or participate in the programs that shape that software. In 2009, I took 42 Harvard Business School students to Israel for a week of entrepreneurship exploration. I first had them meet with an Israeli army signal corps general (who was in the midst of overseeing a military operation); then we headed to a beach to engage in team building and camouflage exercises with young Israelis preparing for elite military combat units. Since military service is mandatory in Israel, this provided useful insights into the culture and mindsets of Israelis.

In addition, we also went to the discos to experience the culture’s youthful exuberance. And we spent time at Kibbutz Ein Shemer’s field house for ecological initiatives and experimentation. This helped underline the idea that cultural and social “software” is every bit as important as business and economic “hardware” in assessing a region’s business ecosystem.

Tip 2: Talk to all the actors, not just entrepreneurs. Don’t ignore the bankers, business families, corporate executives, private equity investors, researchers, service professionals, and educators. My ecosystem map is a good way to make sure you are touching all the bases.

 

I took an HBS student group to India in 2008 and met with CEOs of public companies, heads of family business groups, and visited Keggfarms, an innovative chicken breeder trying to make a dent in poverty. Thinking that entrepreneurs alone reflect the entrepreneurship and innovation ecosystem is a common mistake by even esteemed experts. It’s a bit like saying that a baseball game is exclusively about the pitcher. Without the lonely right fielder, baseball wouldn’t work either. Don’t just make a beeline to the entrepreneurs and venture capitalists; get a broad multi-disciplinary cross section.

Tip 3: Talk to people in mixed groups rather than in isolation. In over a dozen locations, including Istanbul, Edmonton, Copenhagen, and Puerto Rico, I have facilitated roundtable group conversations among researchers, investors, government officials, entrepreneurs, and non-profits. Not only does it become clear that they can have radically different views, but these group conversations will teach you important lessons about people’s naturally heterogeneous motivations for wanting more entrepreneurship. The university administrators want to attract students and donors with entrepreneurship activities. City officials want to create jobs. Non-profits want to accomplish a social mission while being self-sustaining financially. Entrepreneurs want to grow their ventures for wealth, challenge, and impact. These different objectives are natural and need to be understood in order to understand the entire ecosystem.

By listening to and observing these actors in groups, you can usually see if the different domains of the ecosystem are disconnected or aligned, polite or candid, collaborative or conflicting. Further, you can see parts of the entrepreneurship culture enacted in front of your eyes: Are people independent thinkers? Do they encourage different viewpoints, experimentation, and risk-taking? Have they even met before?

Tip 4: Pay more attention to scale-up and growth, than to startup. Seek out entrepreneurs who are trying to grow their companies from $1-$10 million rather than startup entrepreneurs (who are often first-timers) pitching ideas that aren’t yet on the market. This is harder than it seems: Around the city of Milwaukee there are 14,000 companies in this size range. In fact, Wisconsin is number two in the U.S. in the proportional size of its mid-market business sector. But most of them are hunkered down running their businesses and talking to customers, rather than going to hyped-up pitch fests or taking part in accelerators or conferences. It is surprisingly rare for entrepreneurship observers to put growth at the center of the dialogue. But you get a very different view of the ecosystem by looking at growth.

At Colombia’s Manizales Más, we conducted a study with the Chamber of Commerce of the local factors inhibiting or facilitating the growth of 100 companies. The responses put an emphasis on the challenge of attracting and retaining talent rather than on raising risk-capital. Again, the focus lands on scaling up and growing your business, not just getting it off the ground.

Focusing on scale-ups also matters when you talk to bankers. You will lose the bankers if your guidepoint is startups rather than growth; it is not banks’ business to invest in startups with few assets to secure as guarantees. But bankers are paying keen attention to those ventures who break away into rapid growth.

Tip 5: Study the financing food chain starting from the end, not the beginning. It goes without saying that finance is an essential element in entrepreneurial innovation, but don’t start with the angel investors or VCs. Start with the investment bankers whose livelihood it is to advise on acquisitions, talk to stock exchange officials, and meet with the late stage PE fund managers. Don’t ignore the companies who are leasing equipment to growth firms. In Colombia, as part of Manizales Más, we are developing financial instruments for rapidly growing businesses. By starting at the end of the financing food chain, it became clear that the exit possibilities in Colombia are so limited that VCs and angel investors will have great difficulty seeing a return for decades to come. As a result, we are developing hybrid financial instruments to give investors faster (if smaller) and more secure returns.

Tip 6. Look beyond what people tell you. When you talk to entrepreneurs (or any other actors for that matter) take what they say with a big grain of salt. Most people are not trained at observing or explaining their own behavior, let alone that of others, and entrepreneurs are no exception. I have talked to entrepreneurs in over 40 countries, and the story is always the same: “It is difficult to get access to early stage capital, hard to find talent, aggravating to fight with regulation and bureaucracy.” Sound familiar? Furthermore, innovation agency officials, or the national SBA, will gladly talk about how influential they are in all the successes. Talk to venture capitalists and they, too, will tell you how essential they are in leading the charge. Leaders of startup communities will passionately explain how startups are so important.

So you need to dig beneath the surface of what you hear. For example, one senior government official I know visited Israel and learned about Yozma, the gold standard of government efforts to stimulate venture capital, which was a $100 million fund of funds in the 1990s. Hearing about the positive impact of Yozma (a view more widely held by government officials than by Israel’s first generation of investors), his takeaway was to promote a similar VC fund in his country. Yet when I debriefed him, no one had told him that perhaps the critical element in Yozma’s success was the option the investors in each fund had to buy out the government’s interest at a pre-defined price. It’s essential to ask good questions and avoid taking success stories at face value.

Tip 7: Beware of macro-economic statistics applied to specific regions. Since innovative entrepreneurship is by definition rare and entrepreneurship ecosystems are by definition hyper-local, even metro area statistics often mask the realities of entrepreneurship in a region. Recently Scale Up Milwaukee hosted a visitor from a prominent entrepreneurship institute who came with well-prepared data showing Milwaukee’s population was in decline, researchers per capita were low, and the startup rate was abysmal. But after three days of seeing pockets of vibrant growth, the community engagement of the many large local corporations, and talking with investors who are actually investing, he changed his view of Milwaukee as a “challenged city” on par with Detroit (and Detroit may be rapidly changing as well) to one of strong potential.

Tip 8: Try to identify and meet the hidden heroes. Two years ago I had lunch with MIT entrepreneurship Professor Ed Roberts who had been one of my early entrepreneurship mentors in the 1980s. Since the 1960s, Roberts has been at the nexus of the Boston entrepreneurship ecosystem. Decades before the Cambridge Innovation Center was established, Roberts had researched Boston entrepreneurs, created the first seed capital fund (Zero Stage Capital), co-founded Meditech, and sat on boards of many technology companies. We were interrupted five times by entrepreneurs stopping in the MIT Sloan School cafeteria to thank Ed for investing, or for making a key introduction, or for giving good advice. Clearly Roberts was a key feature of the ecosystem of entrepreneurship in Cambridge. Finding these hidden heroes should be part of your research gathering.

In sum, innovation tourism is not really tourism. At root, it’s an important endeavor in attempting to understand how a complex economic and cultural reality actually works. To do this successfully, you need to become an anthropological investigator, ask tough questions, and get beyond appearances.

In the shift from an industrial economy to a digital economy, businesses and countries alike are targeting the Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) as a means to power faster business growth and deeper expansion. According to a recent Accenture study, nearly two-thirds of executives agreed that the IIoT would enable emerging markets to leapfrog developed economies. And joining the chorus of business leaders are political leaders and policy makers, placing their bets on the IIoT to uplift their country into a new era of competitiveness.

Why? Because $14.2 trillion is expected to be up for grabs by 2030 – all thanks to the IIoT.

However, the impact of the IIoT (or even the IoT, for that matter) is not solely about economics and GDP. It also delivers greater productivity, new market opportunities, better quality of life, and accelerated innovation cycles.

The IIoT is more than just robots and automation

When most people think of any form of the IoT, consumer applications typically come to mind. Who can blame them? Nest. Fitbit. Apple Watch. Google driverless car. The list goes on and on.

Nevertheless, no matter how automated processes become or how many robots assume repetitive and often hazardous tasks, there will always be work for humankind. In fact, Accenture discovered that 87% of executive foresee long-term job growth in this new environment. The only difference is how we approach our job responsibilities.

With all of this technology, people have more information than ever before. As a result, collective knowledge brings the power to be more outcome-centric. The emergence of this new focus is redefining industry boundaries and relationships. All the while, it is creating a new wave of winners and losers in the marketplace. To deliver on the promise of connected ecosystems and platforms, businesses need data that is easily aggregated and used to create new value-add services.

Consider your healthcare provider, for example. Sensors can now be implanted in pharmaceuticals to detect whether patients are taking their medicated as directed. At the same time, doctors can track whether the medication is achieving the intended effects needed to improve the patient’s health. In the end, the expected outcome of the customer (the patient) and the vendor offering (the medication) are monitored. This is the real value of the IoT – outcomes-centric focus on both the role of the customer and vendor.

5 opportunities that bring value to your business and customers with the IIoT

What does this all mean for your business? The opportunity to create new, service-based streams of revenue. However, if you are like most executives (73% to be exact), a transformation has yet to happen to support this new strategy.

In a recent Americas’ SAP Users Group Webcast, “IoT: Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT): From Vision to Value,” Anil Parekh, Consulting – Resources Industries for Accenture, and Wallid Negm, Global Lead IIoT R&D for Accenture Technology Labs, offered five ideas on how businesses can take advantage of the IIoT today.

1. Reimagine industry models. If every product is connected and enables a new service, Reinvent industry practices and business models to connect every product and enable new services that add value to the customer experience.

2. Generate a chain reaction across industries. Create new ecosystems that cut across all traditional industry boundaries and bring value through change. Look for the opportunity to develop hybrid offerings that deliver compatible, seamless, value-add combinations of products and services.

3. Capitalize on the value of data. Don’t just generate insightful data from physical objects. Share it between among every part of the supply chain and the cross-industry community.

4. Prepare for the future of work. Embrace change, especially in the skill and job mix required in the workforce of the future. Understand how increasing reliance on smart products, sensors, and robotics transforms job roles, work responsibilities, and operations.

5. Shorten the investment lag. Turn your IIoT ideas and strategy into reality. Encourage experimental, pilot, and demonstration projects that show how the IIoT can best complement your offerings, business strategy, workforce, and customer experience.

Start making the Internet of Things a reality for your business

Watch the entire Webcast series “Internet of Things (IoT) Community Webcast Series” presented by ASUG and SAP.

Recently, I put two articles on my blog that have caused a lot of comments about how to sell to B2B prospects and clients, and promises by readers about using the action steps I pointed out in the articles.

The articles are about showing your prospects and clients their COI – Cost of Inaction – what it is costing them by not buying, and fully utilizing, your products and/or services.

But there is one other group that also needs to be aware of their COI, or cost of inaction. And for you, this is the most important group.

And that group is you and your company!

What is your internal COI – Your Own Cost of Inaction?

What do I mean by this?

First of all some stats.

CSO Insights, a B2B sales research firm, surveys thousands of companies every year on the results they are achieving in their B2B sales and marketing efforts.

In 2014 only 46.4% of forecast deals were actually won. This means that 53.7% were lost. I believe Vegas odds are better than that.

So what is causing this lack of accuracy in forecast deals? What barriers need to come down?

As you can see, there are many barriers to getting an accurate forecast. Are these actual reasons, or just excuses?

I believe they are real reasons, because B2B sales and marketing people are not getting enough of the right training, and especially follow-on coaching to be as successful as they can be.

Again, from the chart below, you can see that only 10.1% of B2B sales and marketing people really understand their customer’s buying process.

Sales’ ability to understand the customer’s buying process

And only 9.2% of B2B sales and marketing people actually exceed expectations for how to build the right business case. I believe the “meets expectations” number is more of a guess because those companies don’t want to be shown as inadequate in their forecasts.

Sales’ ability to build a solid business case and/or ROI.

So how can these results not only be improved, but significantly improved, so that B2B sales people and marketers are really driving your revenues and profits?

This can all be done with the right training and coaching!

See the stats below.

What measurable sales improvements are results of your sales training investments?

So what then is your internal COI – your Cost of Inaction?

By not giving all of your revenue generating teams the training they not only need, but deserve, you are not achieving your full potential of revenues.

As the chart above demonstrates, what if your company could achieve a 26.4% increase in revenue year over year? A growth of over 25% year after year, without hiring more sales and marketing people. (See the third reason in chart above)

What would that mean to you, not only for the growth of your business, but the profits you could achieve, and with the same number of people?

How excited would you be over that, knowing that the shareholder value of your company is growing without any expenditures for more people?

In fact, there is a good possibility you could do it with less people.

So, even before you look at talking to your clients about their COI, you need to look at your internal COI.

You need to look at getting the right training, and especially follow-on coaching, for your sales and marketing team.

Have you and your sales and marketing team been given the right training and coaching.

If not, STOP YOUR INACTION NOW. Think of the COI!

I have found, in my 40+ years of business life, including as a B2B salesman, business owner, and coach/trainer, that training and coaching usually costs less than 10% of the increases in revenue you will achieve. And in many cases, it costs less than 1% of the increase in revenues.

What are you waiting for?

Call today to see how you can increase your shareholder value by driving your revenue growth to new heights ASAP, and start enjoying financial freedom sooner.

Email remarketing is arguably the single most powerful tool in an online marketer’s toolbox when it comes to reigniting abandoned leads. When done right, email remarketing is a very complex process, but broken down into its fundamental pieces, there are just three, basic steps:

1. Acquiring contact information,
2. Identifying user intent,
3. Dispatching the appropriate message.

With the proper planning and creative thinking, all three of these steps are achievable at the beginning, middle, and end of the conversion funnel. Today, we’re going to break down email remarketing strategy by position in the funnel and discuss the essential ingredients to a successful lead-recovery campaign.

Email Remarketing to Early-Funnel Abandons

As visitors begin their session and view products, they’re considered early-funnel visitors. It’s at this stage that consumers are making their first considerations and evaluating your product. Here, visitors have little commitment to your store, meaning the email remarketer has to take a more forward approach.

1. Acquiring Contact Information

Arguably the most difficult part of remarketing during the early phases of the conversion funnel is acquiring user contact details. As visitors enter and leave your site from landing and product pages, they’ve yet to come across any reason to offer up an email address. In this circumstance, it’s up to you to engage consumers.

Using an on-abandonment engagement solution allows you to intervene at the moment of abandonment and initiate a dialogue. Here, you can offer an incentive in exchange for the shopper’s email address. However, instead of engaging every single consumer that motions to leave your site, you’ll first want to identify shopper intent.

2. Identifying Intent

Through the careful analysis of behavioral clues and browsing patterns, you can get a better idea of which visitors are most likely to convert. Consider time spent on-site and the number of pages viewed. If one user moves through multiple product pages, spending a good amount of time on each, then they’re more likely to buy than the visitor who merely brushed the surface of your website before leaving. Look at the browsing patterns and only engage customers that demonstrate intent to convert.

3. Message Strategy

Once you’ve identified the prospective buyers, it’s time to develop a messaging strategy. Although you want messages to be interesting and engaging, it’s generally wise to keep emails general as opposed to product-specific. Highlight your latest and greatest deals, showcase a few best-sellers, or show off a few new arrivals.

Email Remarketing to Mid-Funnel Abandons

As soon shoppers add a product to their cart, they transition into the mid-funnel. Here, visitors have demonstrated greater intent to purchase and interest in individual products.

1. Acquiring Contact Information

Again, acquiring contact information here can be a bit tricky. While users are adding items to their shopping cart, they still have little reason to volunteer contact details. Thankfully, there are a few techniques to consider.

1. Session Matching – Use active cart data to see if the IP address of the visitor matches up with any previous purchaser. If a match exists, there’s a chance that the email address on file is valid for the current visitor. If the user later abandons, it’s worthwhile to reach out.
2. Proactive Support – Engage users with active carts using an automated chat solution and offer customer support to any hesitant or idle visitors. Should the conversation develop, request user contact details in exchange for small purchasing incentives.

2. Identifying Intent

It’s a general rule: As users move further down the conversion funnel, their intent to purchase increases. That being said, it’s not safe to assume that each visitor who selects a product is committing to a purchase. This is where you need to get creative.

While there’s no foolproof indicator of intent, look at time spent on the shopping cart page. If a user has wantonly added products to their cart without ever viewing their order summary, they may just be dog-earing products for later . Analyze your average purchaser’s behaviors and pull out some common patterns.

3. Message Strategy

As you start to get an idea of an order’s contents, your messaging strategies can become much more sophisticated. Bring in product imagery dynamically to establish immediate relevance and, if available, leverage user reviews of that product to build purchase confidence.

Additionally, look for little hints at the motivations behind abandonment. For example, if you have a shipping fee calculator, determine whether the shopper used this before abandoning. If so, offer free shipping in lieu of a percentage discount.

Email Remarketing to Late-Funnel Abandons

As users move past the cart and begin checkout, they’ve entered the late funnel. At this point, checkout is most uncommon and most frustrating for vendors, as the conversion is mere clicks away. Fortunately, email remarketing is most effective among late-funnel abandons.

1. Acquiring Contact Information

Once a shopper has reached checkout, making contact becomes a little simpler. Although logging in to checkout is quickly becoming a thing of the past, many ecommerce sites will still request an email address before guest checkout even begins. This isn’t an accident; by collecting email addresses as early as possible, you can easily open up a channel of communication with abandoning shoppers.

If you don’t have an email gate before checkout, it’s a best practice to request an email address first among your form fields.

2. Identifying Intent

At checkout, average abandonment rates drop to 56.3%, which is significantly lower than the 70.1% average of the shopping cart. It’s safe to assume that shoppers who reach this point are looking to buy. If you have the contact information for a shopper, initiate remarketing efforts.

3. Message Strategy

The advantage to remarketing an order left at checkout is that you have a very clear understanding of exactly what it is the shopper intends to buy. Populate your email dynamically with images of the products left.

Purchase intent is typically very high by the time users reach checkout, so it may be wise to temper the use of discounts. Initiate a series of emails that culminate in a small purchasing incentive to tip the scale in favor of conversion.

 

Email remarketing is an exceptionally dynamic solution that, when tweaked, can fit nearly any conversion funnel. As with any ecommerce strategy, the best advice we can give is to continually test, refine, and optimize until you find your stride!

Benefits of marketing automation cannot be overstated. One simply cannot ignore the positive impact on business process, lead management, marketing ROI, staff efficiency, CRM performance, and sales have been endorsed by studies and surveys. 78% marketers believe marketing automation systems were key contributor to their revenue growth. 63% companies that have outgrown their competition credit it to data-driven marketing with an automated process.

Having said that, we also find studies indicating that not every marketing automation exercise went that successful. There are cases when companies invested in automation systems but ended up in a loss. The following 5 tips are meant to provide you some ideas about how to improve your marketing automation and obtain better results.

1. Proper Planning:

The first step in any effective marketing automation project is recognizing your goals for connecting with your clients. Whether through email, social media, websites or a mix of vehicles, thoroughly consider what you need to communicate, on what platforms, how frequently and, eventually, what you need the outcome or action to be.

Begin by understanding the business case for marketing automation inside your organization. A successful marketing automation plan will bring about plenty of noteworthy information that can change the way your organization works together and communicates with clients later on. Before gathering the information, know what you are gathering, why you are gathering it and how you are going to direct your insight into action. In addition, jot down the best practices for marketing automation in your industry as they’ll help you learn more and be more successful.

2. Collecting Data to Target Your Audience:

Consider all the information that can be gathered about your target market. In addition, think about how much information can be gathered over a period of time. Pulling together that sort of data is well worth your time and energy.

To have the ability to see the habits of your audience, to pre-determine their choices depending on historical data is invaluable. Marketing automation enables you to collect this information and analyze it, applying this vital data to your future marketing campaigns.

3. Process:

Building an initial marketing automation plan for implementation can seem overwhelming initially, yet if you approach it as a thoughtful process, one step at a time, it will seem much simpler. The planning process for marketing automation usage also gives organizations a valid reason to look at existing practices within the marketing department and over your complete organization, including the sales team.

Remember, be deliberate and conscious in implementing your marketing automation. Build up a CRM follow-through process that maps how you will deliver consistent, automated quality leads to your sales team once the marketing automation is in full swing. With Makesbridge’s marketing automation platform, you can manage your entire marketing campaigns from single dashboard. Check out our video tutorial on how to track your all online campaigns from a single dashboard.

4. Develop an Information Map for Audience:

You can make it simple for your prospects to discover the information they require by having a clear call to action and the ability to follow through. Landing pages, customized URLs–when your call to action is linked with an offer, your prospects are incited to move, making a beeline for the automated reactions that you have set into place. What’s more, as your sales team gets those automatic responses, they will be more than ready to work the hot leads.

5. Ability to Score Your Leads:

Not every lead is equal. There are some people who are ready to purchase. Some need extra time and information. Some are just looky-loos. You don’t have sufficient time or resources to waste on the leads that aren’t prepared. A real advantage to using automated marketing software with its lead scoring capacity, is that your sales team will be informed about which lead is cold and which is hot.

If you have a list of contacts, congratulations! You have the basis for a robust lead generation campaign. Yet, the fact remains that four out of five B2B leads never actually turn into sales. Why exactly is that? Email marketing can be a great way to bring in new leads, but to make it work for you, your company must go beyond simply sending out generic emails and hoping for the best. The fact remains that in B2B marketing, you must target your leads based on their interests and nurture those leads to convert them into paying customers.

One of the most common mistakes that many companies make is using the blast method of bombarding prospects with their latest promotion. This method is rarely successful because it is too generic in nature and does not address the true needs of the buyer. In the process of generating B2B leads using email marketing, you must focus on developing a campaign that is designed to nurture those leads as they move through the various stages of the buyers’ cycle.

Targeting Leads Based On Where They Are in the Sales Cycle

Always remember that all your leads aren’t going to be at the same point in the buying cycle. A new lead will not be interested in reading the same material as a lead that is ready to take the next step and make a purchase. If all you are sending out are emails focused on products and special offers, you will likely only capture those leads that are sales-ready. This means that you will lose a significant number of prospects, and your competitors will likely scoop them up. The final result is reduced profits. If you do not have a well-thought-out email campaign as part of your sales strategy, you are likely losing business.

According to a study conducted by Gleanster Research, 50 percent of leads are actually qualified but are not yet ready to make a purchase. Furthermore, Forrester Research found that companies that do well at nurturing their leads tend to generate 50 percent more sales-ready leads than other companies. Just how important is email marketing in that process? Lead nurturing emails receive up to 10 times the response rate as generic email blasts. Yet, according to MarketingSherpa, more than 60 percent of B2B marketers send all of their leads straight to sales, even though only a small percentage of those leads are qualified.

Clearly, based on those statistics, the case can be made for the importance of not just email marketing to reach your B2B leads, but also taking the time to develop a comprehensive email marketing campaign that will nurture your leads where they are in the buying cycle. Separating your leads into categories and then targeting those leads based on where they are in the sales funnel can help your firm to make better use of your resources while increasing both your response rate and your closure rate.

No matter what business you try to set up on the web, you’re going to need leads, and lots. This is something that is universally recognized across all major industries or niches, as a problem to tackle.

If you do not have this at all, you will not get moving forward with any business venture. Lots of people end up losing sight of this as they start to create leads for their business. Working on getting the right leads can take time, but it can definitely be done through the process of looking through a variety of different traffic channels.

Lead generation today has gone to the online world. You can achieve this through a variety of means, each one meant to get you targeted leads to look at what you’re offering. Whether you have an ecommerce site or you have a squeeze page that sells affiliate marketing products, you are going to want to create substantial focus on several traffic generating idea’s, pick the best one and run with it.

So how do you generate high quality leads for your business?

How? Here are my top 11 strategies to get the leads coming in by the truckload…

Compare the following forms of traffic and see why most people choose one over the other. It’s either Free or Paid, then targeted and paid (I made that one up on the fly). One or the other has an advantage creating leads for your business.

Targeted Traffic – The first thing that people look for is targeting options. This doesn’t always have a huge pull in huge leads, in terms of numbers. You could get 1,000 leads from using targeted traffic to your offer, and your conversion rate may only be around 10%, and that’s generous. Even though this is a tedious task, it’s something that is going to trump the other type of traffic that you could use. Always target your audience or your really wasting your time. Best sources are PPC, Solo Ads and Facebook

Free Traffic – This is a matter of numbers. Millions of sites pay for traffic through a variety of different websites and they see their ego boosted alongside the hits. You could get, 10,000 hits for as little as $5 with this strategy, but you are not going to get the kind of leads that are going to convert and create sales. Even if you were to get 100,000 hits to your page, your conversion ratio may be less than 1% and in some cases less than that. This is a generous speculation, as few people see anything from this type of push. It’s a shortcut that you should avoid. This is a waste of time in my opinion.

Paid and Targeted Traffic – This is the way to go. It requires investment but you’re wasting time here and your dollars are put to work getting you high quality leads and less time farting around trying to get free traffic that doesn’t work. Optin’s are better, sales showup, and you waste
LESS TIME!

The best way to pursue targeted traffic solutions, is through the use of tools that are within the confines of SEO. Search engine optimization is something that is going to absolutely help you get moving forward. It’s something that will take time to build, and will definitely give you a leg up on the competition. However, you’re going to have to work with various elements to get it to help you. Google Adwords is the best, but also the most expensive, but the traffic is better and produces sales. I would stick to either Bing or Google Adwords and have atleast 2-5K in funds to start out.

Solo Ads…

One popular lead generation strategy right now is using “Solo Ads”. This lead generation works well for getting the optin’s to your sales funnel, problem is finding a good vendor that has a good responsive list, as well as a good reputation. Well, I have that. Here’s my list of good solo ad vendors that deliver high quality traffic and leads.

• Frank Dang
• Shaqir Hussyin
• Fotis Beks
• Juan Morles

SEO…

The best long term lead generation solution, is using SEO, and is something that requires several different balancing points. You cannot get anywhere, if you just try to work with this in a short time span, it takes months. You need, or should, hire someone or look into the best strategies of implementation, if you’re going to end up with traffic and a good google ranking overall. In order to get moving in the right direction, you’ll have to work with content marketing, social media marketing, link generation, basically experts and a marketing company, that knows what they are doing.

Without working on all these pieces together, you’re not going to see high quality leads coming through. Lead generation takes a whole new meaning when you’re working with the slow moving process of targeted optimization of SEO.

“It’s not something that happens overnight, which is why many people become disillusioned with how online marketing works. Don’t assume that just jumping into this seo framework will give you a good push forward, as you need to cultivate several elements to move in the right direction. Following up on the leads that you get is a good thing, and should be done through email marketing.”

Ok, now here’s my recommendation use “The Hoth”. This is a paid, seo, targeted strategy that really works boosting your sites Google visibility, rankings for keywords, and helps your blog or website traffic. I listed this resource on my “resource page”, as i used it and can recommend it to anyone in confidence. SEO should be really outsourced when your starting out or when you don’t have the time.

Here’s my top 11 Lead Generation Strategies besides what i talked about above

You have actually printed leaflets, you have actually sent mailers, you have actually blasted your social-media followers, however you’re still not getting the lead circulation you have to grow your business into the next billion-dollar brand. Well, there are numerous methods to create leads, so do not hang your head.

1. E-Books
These are excellent to produce for lead generation, as there are various E-book distribution networks to promote your book. Such as Amazon, Barnes and Noble for example. You could easily google “E-book distribution” and have a list of companies that will distribute your e-book.

You’ll wish to make sure that you have a landing page setup so that it needs visitors to input their phone, name and e-mail number for an opportunity to download the eBook. Pages like this can be constructed quickly with tools like Unbounce or leadpages.

2. Build a List
Do you have a list? If not, you’re losing out on among the most basic strategy to produce more leads. Ensure you put a optin form in every possible location that makes good sense on your blog or website. The money is in the list!

With a newsletter, you have a captive audience (individuals need to opt-in to your newsletter) however e-mail lists are a fantastic strategy to keeping in contact with your subscribers. Once more, do not make it everything about you. Instead, share with your subscribers your concerns, new marketing idea’s, new product launches, and ways to generate leads for their business.

3. A Blog
Having a blog is one of the best lead generation tools you can have, a place to post your content, to connect with readers, post reviews, post video’s and build a list, as well as, building your brand.

4. Twitter
Twitter is a dream for creating leads, if you do it right. And i’m not doing too shabby for having more than 100K of followers. Secret? post good tweets, share and favorite other people’s tweets, write and post good blog content, share, share, share…that’s it!

5. Networking Opportunities
Even events that didn’t relate to my particular business, have actually supplied me with some of the best contacts and leads, so far. Make sure to bring plenty of business cards, and do not be scared to ask for one in return, or ask questions when at these events. Mastermind events and business summits are great for meeting people and connecting with some important business people.

6. Create Video’s
Invest some time on producing a high quality, informative 2-3 minute video. As soon as you’ve published the video, you can get the video to go viral by utilizing services like StumbleUpon, Twitter, and Facebook to drive traffic to your video or blog. Create a long description for search purposes, and comment and like other people’s youtube channels.

7. Infographics
Yes, infographics might have been excessive and used heavily a couple of years back, however people (Neil Patel) still produce and share them and still stop and read them whenever they can.They’re fairly low-cost to produce. Just create a unique idea(once again, do not make it about you), discover a quality (however inexpensive) graphic designer, then share it socially and ask your network to pass it along. You can likewise send your infographics to publications that cover your market. Great for getting your point across.

Constantly put your logo design and web site URL on the bottom of the infographic. By doing this, readers will certainly see your blog there.

8. Webinars
Webinars are an affordable method to get your message to thousands of prospective clients, all on one webinar. Come up with a fantastic concept that assists your clients and promote it utilizing social media, your network and your newsletter.

At the end of the webinar, don’t hesitate to ask the guests to download an eBook, register for your newsletter, or see your website. This will certainly bring the leads flowing in.

9. Media
Using the media is kinda like doing a press release. Your headline news is being distributed to thousands, and will go up considerably if you do the reach out yourself (as long as your pitch is on point). A couple of key pointers before reaching out to reporters: Do not mass e-mail them, do not open with “to whom it might issue” and do not bother them (one follow up e-mail is enough).

By getting your name out in the media, you start to establish a audience, enhance your personal brand and come off as a expert in your domain– all that can assist you to get more leads.

10. Strong branding
Clients want the best professionals and the business that is the best in their market. Focus on interacting that through your brand, and your conversion rates will go up, resulting in more leads, and sales. People buy from people, and having that strong brand in people’s minds really helps the sales.

11. CPA Networks
What most people don’t realize, CPA networks have thousands of affiliates that had to apply to get into their network. I did a post on the 10 best CPA networks to use, and it’s posted on my blog for you read.

Read more at: http://www.troyhollenbeck.com/how-to-generate-high-quality-leads-in-no-time/

Hope all these ideas help you get into the sales groove online, and get you more focused in on what works out there and what is a waste of time. Time is the most valuable asset any entrepreneur can have, not money, or leads. So saving time, branding yourself, getting more leads and having more sales in the end, is what online marketing is about, or almost about.

Imagine that you're shopping at a clothing store, and you have a question about a pair of jeans. You approach the employee on the sales floor and explain your query. She smiles, thinks about your request for a moment, and then replies, "I'll get back to you in a day or two about that. How does that sound?"

I'm willing to bet you're not buying those jeans. You'll probably buy a pair from another store -- one where the salesperson answers your question immediately.

This is an extreme example, but it underscores how important responsiveness is to customers. Salespeople in both B2B and B2C industries would be wise to keep this in mind, according to sales author Andy Paul.

Paul's latest book, Amp Up Your Sales, provides salespeople with an abundance of actionable tips to improve their results. At the cornerstone of Paul's strategy is responsiveness -- the combination of speed and information.

Whether you're a quota crusher or you feel like quota is crushing you, there's always room for improvement in sales. These 30 bite-sized insights from Paul's book can help you kick your results up a notch. Tweet them out and share the wisdom.

30 Sales Tips to Crank Up Your Results

1) "Sustainable, repeatable sales success is less about what you sell and more about how you sell." Tweet This Quote

2) "The most important question all salespeople should be asking themselves is 'What am I doing right now that is helping my customer to make a purchase decision?'" Tweet This Quote

3) "Sales is a craft that rewards great creativity." Tweet This Quote

4) "Some sales managers will attempt to discourage independent thinking on your part. You need to actively resist this." Tweet This Quote

5) "Responsiveness in sales is the combination of content and speed." Tweet This Quote

6) "Receive a sales lead, follow up now. Get a question, answer it now. 100% of the time." Tweet This Quote

7) "The only way to sell is as though all your prospects are going to make up their minds about you on your very first call." Tweet This Quote

8) "In the absence of information, speed is not a virtue in sales." Tweet This Quote

9) "Responsiveness becomes one of the primary tools you can use to demonstrate to your customer that the experience of working with you and your company is different from the others, and, in the process, develop a level of credibility and trust that will result in winning orders." Tweet This Quote

10) "Value doesn't happen by accident. It is the result of deliberate planning and preparation." Tweet This Quote

11) "It doesn't matter whether it is an in-person meeting, phone call, video chat, email, text, or tweet. Every sales interaction needs a value plan." Tweet This Quote

12) "If you don't have a plan to maximize the value of a customer interaction, just don't do it." Tweet This Quote

13) "If customers have questions after the order, you need to be as responsive as if you were still working to earn their business." Tweet This Quote

14) "The difference between winning and losing any sales deal you are working on is 1%." Tweet This Quote

15) "There is no simpler or faster strategy to grow your sales than to effectively follow up your sales leads." Tweet This Quote

16) "Follow up all leads in less than 60 minutes." Tweet This Quote

17) "The first seller to respond to an inbound sales lead with the complete answer in zero time will build trust and credibility, dramatically increasing the chances of winning the order." Tweet This Quote

18) "Prospecting [is not] just a numbers game. You could make a million cold calls, but if you don't give your prospects a reason to invest their time in you, then you are never going to earn their business." Tweet This Quote

19) "Statements of disinterest from customers are usually statements of fact, not objections." Tweet This Quote

20) "Qualifying a sales opportunity is a binary event. A customer is either qualified or not." Tweet This Quote

21) "Top sellers don't waste their limited selling time on potential sales opportunities with customers who are not absolutely qualified to buy what they are selling." Tweet This Quote

22) "You can't demonstrate the value of your product without talking about your price. And you shouldn't try." Tweet This Quote

23) "Price qualification's rightful place is early in the sales process, no later than during the discovery phase." Tweet This Quote

24) "An objection is simply a question." Tweet This Quote

25) "You can't take your prospects' interest for granted. Their interest in you and your solution is like an organic entity -- they are subject to change. Just because they were once qualified doesn't mean they still are." Tweet This Quote

26) "There is no simpler way to convey a value proposition than with a sales story." Tweet This Quote

27) "Each of your sales stories should take no more than one minute to present." Tweet This Quote

28) "Every call to support should be considered a sales call for the customer's next order." Tweet This Quote

29) "The most important sales call you make during the course of a sales is the first call after you receive their order and before the product is shipped or the service delivered." Tweet This Quote

30) "If you were a customer of your own company, what would you expect the customer experience to be? That should be the minimum standard of care you provide to your own prospects and customers." Tweet This Quote

It’s the age of the Always Be Helping salesperson. Sales is an increasingly consultative profession, which means reps should be providing prospects with helpful and specific resources, not stuffing irrelevant information down their throats.

Of course, the sales rep-prospect relationship cuts both ways -- as your prospects are qualifying you, you need to be qualifying them. As your prospect moves through the three stages of the buyer’s journey, you can use the questions below to make sure you’re still on the right track.

Awareness and Education Stage

At the awareness stage, prospects are beginning to understand they have a problem but haven’t defined what it is or how to solve it. Usually, Marketing handles top-of-the-funnel leads, so if I decide to engage a prospect at this stage, I use a very light touch.

1) What were you looking for help with?

If your company’s CRM is worth its salt, you’ll already know what piece of content your prospect downloaded. Probe a little deeper and you’ll hear your prospect begin to talk about their business pain and how the content they converted on relates to it.

(By the way -- don’t have a CRM? Start using HubSpot’s CRM today for free.)

2) Is there anything else I can do to help you out right now?

I purposely keep this question vague. I stay in educational mode during the awareness stage, emphasizing that I’m always here to help out and that prospects can ping me whenever they have questions, but I avoid being pushy.

Consideration and Evaluation Stage

When prospects reach the consideration stage, they have a better understanding of what their business pain is. If I had the opportunity to connect during the awareness and education stage, I've already started to educate them on the best way to solve their problem. During this stage, they’ll be internally setting budgets and priorities, and it's the best time to get your foot in the door.

3) Where are you in the budget-setting process? / Are you looking for proposed solutions now? / Is there a timeframe for finding a solution to your problem?

These are some of the classic BANT questions. A prospect could be an amazing fit on paper, but if there’s no budget or if the company leadership doesn’t intend to think about vendors for a year, you shouldn’t be spending hours per day on them at this point. You could also sour your relationship by pushing a prospect to act far sooner than they want to. Always ask these questions first so you don’t waste anyone’s time.

4) When do you need to achieve X goals by? When do you need to implement the solution by?

Prospects will frequently say, “Yesterday.” Your follow up is what’s important here. Ask about their specific process. When do they need to choose a vendor to accomplish their goals within a given timeframe?

Framing the sale this way gets the prospect thinking about their purchase decision in terms of its benefits, not what it will cost. Remember, your product becomes valuable to a customer the day they start seeing benefits, not the day they purchase it. Focus on the solution, not the purchase, and your product will begin to seem a lot more attractive.

5) How can I make this process easy for you?

This question provides insight into your prospect’s decision making process. More often than not, you’ll have to get buy-in from multiple stakeholders to close a deal. Vetting this process as early as possible is crucial so you can understand how to get everyone on the same page and what a good outcome looks like to the decision making team as a whole.

Decision and Purchase Stage

By this point, you’ll know whether your product is a good fit for your prospect and understand what needs to happen for a deal to close. 

6) How are you doing?

Wait a second. How are you doing? How can such a generic question be helpful this late in the game?

I use this question to read my prospect’s trust in me. Buying a new product isn’t traumatic, but there’s risk involved. So my prospect’s answer tells me where I stand. 

If they say, “We’re behind,” I ask if there’s anything I can do to speed up the process.

If they say, “We’re on track, I brought it up to my boss and we’re meeting about it on Friday,” I know things are going well.

If they say, “Well … ” or “I don’t know … ” we have a problem. If they don’t want to tell me, it’s a sign that things aren’t going well and they don’t have trust in me. If they can’t tell me, it’s usually because they don’t know -- and that means that I’m speaking with the wrong person.

7) Have you gone through a similar purchasing process before?

If they have, great. You won't have to do as much hand-holding and educating.

If they haven’t, the help you offer your prospect can make or break the sale. I always offer to walk my prospects through a first-time decision making process -- after all, I’ve done this a million times, and I understand how to help get executive-level buy-in. 

I will also occasionally offer up a “Godfather” -- a senior executive at the company who will check in with a customer once or twice a year to make sure things are going well. I’ve made this offer hundreds of times, and only a few customers have actually taken advantage of their “Godfather.” The offer itself is often more valuable than the actual resource -- prospects feel their risk is reduced if they know help is just a phone call away.

These questions have served me well throughout my career in sales, and I frequently use them to glean important information from my conversations.

What are your favorite questions to ask prospects? Let us know in the comments below.

In a recent chat with the CMO of a software services company, I asked him about the progress of their latest demand generation campaign. He was excited; they were trying out a new marketing automation system that he believed was going to bring the kind of results they had not seen before. It was good to see his enthusiasm and positive expectations. My curiosity, of course, urged me to probe further. Then I almost fell off my chair. He said, “We are aiming to be among the 2.8% of marketers who believe their demand generation campaigns are effective.”

First of all, I was disappointed to hear such a weak and ambiguous goal. Secondly, I was shocked to hear that statistic—a 2.8% success rate for demand generation program effectiveness! Is that even worth mentioning? How is that acceptable by any standards in any industry? He shared with me this Infographic: the B2B Enterprise Demand Generation Benchmarking Study from Annuitas. More than 50% of the marketers surveyed in this study admit that their primary goals are not being met with demand generation campaigns and programs. A mere 2.8% say their campaigns are effective and close to 40% are in the “somewhat effective” category. With the amount of money, time and effort we see being poured into demand generation activities, systems and campaigns, these figures are dismal!

So what are these “primary goals” that marketers are aiming to achieve? According to this study, they are:

1. Quality of leads—and I couldn’t agree more. But then you see that 58% of marketers do not involve their sales team in developing or approving buyer personas; so who are these campaigns targeting?
2. Volume of leads—with the growing emphasis and need for personalization, I don’t see why this should be among the main goals. That’s the reason why enterprise marketers are running over 15+ campaigns a year—but where is the strategy? Simply having a mixed bag, even a big bag of tactics will not deliver the right results. You have to find what works; and there is never just one tactic—every buyer persona you are targeting will require a different tactic.
3. Brand awareness—I have seen marketers get carried away with this one, turning campaigns into heavy branding exercises rather than aiming to establish trust, boost credibility and demonstrate thought leadership.
4. Customer cross-sell/upsell—of course, you want your campaigns to help you sell more. However, here is another startling figure in the Infographic—more than 50% of marketers are not really helping their buyers. Their content is not aligned to their buyer’s pain points. Their campaigns are then, obviously, shooting in the dark!
5. Customer retention—only 32.1% of the surveyed marketers consider this a primary goal. In my opinion, this is a much neglected and poorly pursued goal by a majority of marketers.

When you see that more than half of these marketers in the study believing their marketing teams are lacking the right skills to execute their demand generation strategy, that 2.8% figure is actually not so shocking.

Do you have questions about how to drive better performance for your B2B lead generation campaigns? Join this exclusive, B2B LinkedIn Group to exchange notes with thought leaders in the industry.

Image courtesy of Shutterstock.

Today’s technologies allow digital businesses (as well as a growing roster of traditional companies) to change prices frequently, even minute-by-minute in real time if they want to. It is not unusual for prices to change on sites like Amazon, Expedia, and Priceline several times a day. But managers are struggling to understand these tactics. How often should companies really change their prices?

For any enterprise, the biggest constraint in changing prices is the “menu cost.” Historically, price changes were expensive and time-consuming. Price lists had to be recalculated, typed up, and mailed to distributors and customers; new catalogs, labels, and signs had to be printed and press releases drafted. This forced companies to maintain prices. Throughout the 2000s, even as the internet continued to grow, prices remained the same for months at a time.

Over the past few years, however, technology has drastically shifted the economics of price changes. Pricing optimization software helps companies link cost, customer, and sales-performance data and dynamic pricing methods allow firms to take account of market factors, competitor actions, and customer responses.

Insight Center

Menu costs have fallen dramatically. In industry after industry, this puts pressure on managers to change prices frequently. The popularity of short-lived price promotions, flash sales, and daily deals has further destabilized prices. But the trend is most pronounced among digital businesses, where price-change costs are virtually zero.

Many marketers see frequent price changes as a way of keeping customers on the hook and luring them back to their store or sites. Constant price shifts seem to be a good way to offer discounts selectively and protect margins.

But for a lot of consumers, fluctuating prices are merely confusing, frustrating, and annoying. Changes stop customers in their tracks.

Price changes often make the buying decision infinitely more complex. Customers no longer have clear reference prices, so they don’t know when to pull the trigger. Research shows that when decisions become complex, many people delay making decisions or back out of them altogether. For example, when a price moves around on an hourly basis, the best option for many consumers is to simply tune out and postpone the purchase.

Another insidious consequence is that constant price changes shift the customer’s attention away from the product’s features to its price. Humans are hardwired to pay attention to stimuli that change and ignore those that remain stable. So when prices fluctuate constantly (and other features don’t), customers naturally turn their attention away from hedonic and experiential aspects of the product — the very factors that make a strong brand and allow the company to enjoy a price premium — and focus on price. Even products that used to be differentiated are seen as commodities. Nowhere is this phenomenon more evident than in furniture, where incessant sales have commoditized an entire category.

Frequent price changes are also perhaps the single biggest instigator of price wars. Most price changes, especially those that are publicized by companies, tend to be decreases. And when competitors see that a price is cut, they feel compelled to respond. Many airlines and supermarkets have fallen into this trap, ending up in bruising price wars as they match each others’ cuts and get caught in fast-moving downward price spirals.

There are legitimate reasons to change prices, of course. A company may want to get rid of its remaining inventory and introduce new versions of its products. Companies like Apple, Sony, Dell, and LG have to do this. And in nondigital businesses, many products are seasonal: It makes sense to mark down sweaters in April and linen suits in October, for example. Other valid reasons for changing prices include rising raw material or labor costs, encouraging customers to try something new, and rewarding loyal customers.

But customer reactions to cavalier pricing actions may make quick fluctuations unproductive at best, and inflict lasting damage to a company’s bottom-line at worst. Prices should be changed only as often as the enterprise’s tactical objectives and overarching goals dictate.

The post 5 Ways a Penalty Can Dramatically Improve Your Call To Action appeared first on Copyblogger.

With nearly 60 percent of decisions complete before a customer even interacts with a sales rep, it’s of little wonder why selling is in a state of flux. Some even attest that the days of the sales role as we know it today are numbered, soon to be replaced by some form of robotic selling. But what’s really happening in the industry that’s causing this shift? Our innate nature hasn’t changed – we are, and have always been, individuals looking to make the best possible purchase decision to service our unique and evolving needs.

By the same token, we’re undeniably influenced by our circle of peers (be it our family, friends, coworkers, and/or those we view as leaders), which is also – and perhaps subconsciously – determining the way we buy. In other words, making a truly wise buying decision is a process that will ideally involve the right sphere of influence and effective guidance. But the question at hand continues to linger: Are buyers capable of guiding themselves in the direction of the most fruitful purchasing decision? Maybe to a degree…

The catch at the center of this discussion finds its way back to our ancestors; a communicative bunch, they relied on a culture of collaboration for our most basic purpose of survival, using various forms of communication to build civilization as we know it today. And it’s clearly possible to make great decisions on one’s own – in fact, our culture values independence – doing so fails to utilize our most natural desire to connect and communicate. When Googling and relying on a number of company websites to make your buying decision, the amount of information the buyer comes across is quite literally endless, but it’s also static. And unlike your thought process, each piece of information stands alone – it doesn’t bend according to each spark of thought, and it’s far from agile.

So when it comes to the argument of whether or not sales people are needed, Joanna Black, America’s top referral sales expert, says it best on her post in The Selling Power Blog:

“Word-class salespeople know and care about their clients. We understand their most pressing business issues and greatest challenges. We know about developments in their industry and competitive landscape. We know what works and what doesn’t.

Buyers don’t need just information. They need help uncovering the best solutions to strengthen their business, and this is help comes, not from a “Click Here” link, but from an experienced salesperson who knows how to ask the right questions.

The more technology-driven this world gets, the more we appreciate the personal touch: real recognition, in-person communication, and actually getting to work with people.

Since returning from vacation, it’s been a whirlwind… kicking off a handful of new consulting clients, wrapping up a longer-term engagement, and leading New Sales. Simplified. workshops in several cities across North America.

In my last post I promised to share the real-world sales issues I’m seeing and tackling in various companies. While these clients literally range in size from $10 million to several billion in annual revenue, the issues are not only similar from company to company, they’re also incredibly basic. The first five deal with sales process and the final two are sales management issues.

1. Poor Target Account Lists / Lack of Focus: In more than half the sales teams I’ve been with in the past month, this is a major issue. The salespeople either don’t have finite, workable lists of target clients and prospects that they’re committed to pursuing, or not enough thinking went into creating their lists. You cannot execute a successful new business development attack without a great list. That’s why selecting targets is the very first step in my New Sales Driver framework.

2. Defaulting to Servicing Existing Customers & Account Management: Need I say more? This is an issue in every organization that doesn’t have dedicated sales hunters and even in some companies that do! Over-serving existing accounts is a wonderful excuse not to proactively pursue new business. No one defaults to prospecting and new business development mode, and two of the sales teams I’ve encountered this past month are masters at finding “work” to do for their favorite customers.

3. Decreased Prospecting Activity Due to Strong Business: Two of the companies are struggling to refill their corporate sales pipeline because of their recent success. They’ve closed a ton of business and their sales hunters have become both complacent and distracted. Prospecting activity is way off because  a) they’re not as hungry as they were, and b) they’re getting caught-up in on-boarding new clients and managing projects. Even though management and the sales team are keenly aware that they’re jeopardizing future sales success by not working the top of the sales funnel, they have yet to return to prospecting at necessary levels.

4. Sellers Are Leading with Their Product/Solution and Getting Commoditized: Three of these sales teams are so passionate about their products/solutions that they can’t stop talking about them. While I admire their passion, their self-focused approach is dooming them to vendor/commodity status in the eyes of their customers! Leading with our product/solution instead of the customer’s issues and desired outcomes makes a loud statement to customers that we care more about what we sell than their issues/business/needs/desires. Adjust your “sales story” and your approach so buyers see you as a consultant/expert/trusted advisor, not just a vendor/product-pitcher.

5. Conducting Premature Presentations before Doing Adequate Discovery Work: Four of the seven sales teams I’ve been with the past month struggle with premature presentation syndrome. They’re way too willing and way too quick to present (or demo). When we present before doing adequate discovery work bad things happen. It’s like taking a wild-ass guess at what’s important or relevant to the prospect. Just because you love your solution or because your potential customer requests a presentation, that doesn’t mean it’s the right time for it. If you can’t articulate the prospect’s current situation/pains/needs/desired outcomes and tie them to your solution, then you shouldn’t be presenting anything – yet.

6. Lack of Specific New Business Development Goals: As hard as this may be to believe, most of these seven sales organizations didn’t have specific goals in place for new business development. And in two of the companies, there were no formalized sales goals to speak of. For real. When you don’t declare specific new business acquisition goals, and don’t track progress against those goals, it should not come as a surprise when you don’t pick up new business.

7. Flat Compensation Plans that Aren’t Driving the Desired Behaviors & Results: I’ve seen some truly goofy sales comp plans lately. Some plans are just too flat. There is not enough delta between what the top and bottom performers earn, and therefore not much hunger or incentive to produce. A few of these companies I’ve been in this month have complacent salespeople because the comp plans are not driving the behaviors that would create new business. And some of the other plans reward all sales with the same commission percentage. Sellers “earn” the same commission for babysitting accounts sold years earlier as they do for acquiring a new account. You don’t need to be a compensation expert to predict the consequences of those silly plans. Why do the hard work to hunt for new business when it’s easier and just as profitable to milk the commission annuity from your existing accounts?

These seven real-world sales issues are what I’m seeing and addressing in companies this month. What issues do you see getting in the way of developing more new business? You can share this post and your thoughts on your favorite social platforms using the buttons below.

The harsh reality is that most B2B sales reps are not reaching quota.

In fact, according to SiriusDecisions, 54% of sales reps won’t meet quota this year.

While I could go on as to why this is the case — insufficient training, lack of a sales development platform, poor management, negative market forces, not enough marketing leads — in my experience with the 400 sales teams we’ve worked with over the past 13 years, the most common reason that B2B sales teams don’t hit quota is simple:

They don’t do the work it takes to succeed.

Being successful in sales takes hard work, and a lot of it. It requires B2B sales reps to endure rejection on a daily basis, to constantly focus on bringing value to their prospects and the market as a whole, to commit wholeheartedly to the goal in front of them.

Those who are willing to do what most won’t will most certainly achieve what most can’t.

The fact is that very few salespeople are willing to make the sacrifices necessary and put the hard work in to ensure success.

But not all B2B sales people can be saved, because often, sales isn’t the right job for them. However, a large percentage of B2B sales reps just need the right coaching to reach quota, and a smaller percentage are on track and need minimal help.

Let’s talk about how to help the 54% of sales reps that aren’t meeting quota this year. Below are a few areas that are critical to the success of any B2B sales team.

1) Invest in the professional development of your B2B sales reps.

Much like in professional sports, it takes constant practice to maintain and improve performance. This goes for the superstar as well as the middle-of-the-road player. B2B sales managers should act as coaches, offering real-time advice as well as more formal training. Reading a good book as a team each quarter is a great idea.

What are your favorite sales books? Comment below and we’ll feature them in a post!

2) Create a sales playbook.

The best teams have a well thought-out process and keep that process documented in a sales playbook. That way, there is no room for interpretation, and the B2B sales rep can know the process cold and adhere to it every time.

A sales tool that can help you build sales playbooks is Qvidian, a top rated sales tool in the sales enablement category by Smart Selling Tools. Companies who have deployed Qvidian Sales Playbooks achieve 2.5x increase in average deal size and 10% shorter sales cycles. Learn more about how you can use their platform to create better sales playbooks today!

3) Hold your B2B sales reps accountable to certain metrics.

What gets measured gets done. Work with the team to build a fair and attainable plan and hold them accountable for the activities necessary to meet those goals.

For example, an important sales metric that will help B2B sales reps meet and exceed quota is quality of sales conversations. Even an average rep can succeed if they have enough sales conversations. It does not matter how a rep gets in front of a prospect — it could be networking, cold calling, following up on marketing leads or a combination of all of these — just make sure your team is speaking to enough prospects every and gaining valuable sales context every day.

4) Active management and active coaching is key.

There’s a difference between micro-managing and active managing. The truth is, sales is tough. All teams need management, support and constant coaching. Just look at any successful sports team. They are made up of the best of the best, but it takes great coaching and management to reach championship levels.

While succeeding B2B sales is difficult, it’s not rocket science. Start with a well thought-out plan, and execute with relentless focus. If your B2B sales reps have access to all of the above, they just need to be reminded to do the work.

How much time do you spend thinking about following up with your sales prospects? Do you take the time to create thoughtful and unique responses to reach back out to your prospects, or do you just mindlessly send them canned garbage? Most follow up emails are awful, and belong in the trash.

When talking to prospective clients and giving sales advice, I’ve noticed that salespeople often start off strong with their first email, but quickly flatline after the first or second email. However, our own cold email campaigns at Salesfolk actually tend to see almost as many responses in touch points five to eight as the first four emails of our sequence.

So what’s the difference between most follow up email sequences and mine? Why are mine getting 2-3 times more responses than theirs? I have a theory about what’s happening.

All salespeople have heard the classic “lesson of persistence”, and will usually send follow up emails, which is a great start. However, most sales guys/girls focus all of their efforts on their first touch email, but treat the rest of the touches in their sequence as an afterthought, with no new ideas or angles.

Too many follow up emails look like clones of each other. And I don’t just mean that salespeople are all using the same crummy follow up templates. The emails in their own sequences are so repetitive that each of their touches actually look the same. That’s because everyone is copy and pasting the same crappy canned templates that someone wrote decades ago, before we had so many countless sales tools at our fingertips.

Persistence is important, but hammering your prospects over the head with the same obnoxious, “Hey, I’m following up” message won’t win you any deals, and becomes really annoying pretty fast. Your last touch point is as important as the first cold email you send, so if you’re going to send multiple cold emails, put some thought into every email you send out.

Please don’t be the guy/girl who sends incessant and repetitive cold emails that add zero value and no ideas, or you will probably become the victim of my next cold email critique.

Speaking of cold email critiques, here is a look at this week’s cold email critique.

Cold Email Mistake #1: Sending The Wrong Message To The Wrong Person

My marketer, Haley, got this email:

Subject: Wednesday Lunch
Hi Haley,
Have any plans for lunch on Wednesday?
If not I’d love to show you a live demo of XXX – the fastest to implement and most user-friendly BI tool on the market. You’ll have a chance to discuss your sales process with one of our Salesforce.com experts and see how XXX addresses the limitations of native SF reporting.
If lunch doesn’t suit happy to arrange another time. It would be great to get your feedback on the tool and your thoughts on how XXX might help your team.
Let me know a time that works and I’ll fire over an invite.
Enjoy the rest of your weekend and hopefully we’ll chat during the week.
Best,

The first problem with this cold email is that Haley is not managing a sales team, so she’s not the ideal buyer persona for this product. Since she has no use for this product, they will probably never get a response from her, no matter how well their emails are written (although better writing might at least get them a friendly response).

When it comes to cold email campaigns, you need to think about quality over quantity.

Successful cold email campaigns target the right people with the right message.

Too many companies are tempted by the convenience of buying a cheap list of hundreds or even thousands of names, but sending emails to a list of random names is like trying to pin the tail on the donkey while blindfolded. Sure, you might get lucky and hit the target, but chances are you’ll just waste your turn swinging your arms about in the air.

Cold Email Sequence Pro Tip #1: Before you hit the send button, take the time to build a solid list of qualified leads.

Think about the people you’re targeting. Who’s your ideal buyer persona? Who can benefit the most from your product? What industry do these folks work in? What types of priorities do they have? What problems do they face on a daily basis and how can your product help solve those problems? The more you know about your ideal buyer persona, the more effective your cold email messages will be.

Cold Email Mistake #2: Asking for Too Much Too Soon

Cold emails are meant to be the start of a conversation with your prospect. Don’t feel the pressure to go for the big ask right off the bat. Asking for a demo before you’ve explained anything about your product is a huge turn off, like taking your pants off at the restaurant during your first date.

Remember, your prospects don’t know you, and probably haven’t even heard of your company before, so don’t get too greedy too fast. Take the time to develop a relationship before you ask them to invest their time and money with you. Giving your prospects the impression that you’re only in it for the quick sale will make your prospects run for the door to hit delete faster than those naked baby photos your mom is always posting online.

Once you’ve lost your prospects, it’s nearly impossible to win them back, so make sure you get it right the first time.

Cold Email Sequence Pro Tip #2: Engage your prospect

Your prospect want to feel like you understand them and their business. Instead of pushing for a demo or a sale in the first email, try engaging your prospects with a thought-provoking question that show you’re interested in their daily work.

Example: “How are you predicting {!Company}’s sales numbers for Q3?” or “I’m curious, do you feel {!Company}’s business intelligence tools are user friendly, or are they clunky and overwhelming?”

These types of questions are more human and less salesy. Your prospects are more likely to respond when they can tell you’re taking a more genuine interest in their business.

Cold Email Mistake #3: No Clear Benefit Or Focus

Good Evening,
Haven’t heard back so wanted to see if we’re still on for tomorrow?
No worries if not – I usually try to escape for lunch myself! – but again happy to schedule another time that suits to connect. I’m conscious you may not be looking to evaluate tools at the moment but really just hoping to introduce XXX and see if there is role we could play for your team down the road.
Let me know what suits.
Thanks,

The problem with this follow up email is that it’s completely void of any useful information.

I have no idea who’s reaching out to me, what the company he represents does, or what product he’s pitching me. I don’t have time to scroll through previous messages in order to piece together his message.

Don’t assume that your prospect will automatically know who you are, or make the effort to find out. Even if it’s the last email in your sequence, it might be the first time your prospects are paying attention to your message. Each email in your campaign needs to give your prospects a clear idea of who you are and how your business can help them. Your prospects aren’t going to respond unless they can see a clear benefit.

Just because it’s a follow up email, doesn’t mean that you don’t need to offer some type of value. Don’t rely on the lame and outdated ” maybe you didn’t get my last email” approach. Instead, treat each email as it’s own unique message, adding new and interesting information.

Cold Email Sequence Pro Tip #3: Instead of listing out all your product’s features in bullet points, choose one benefit per email.

Example: “I have a time-saving hack that could dramatically reduce the time you’re spending each week on {!Company}’s Salesforce reports used by companies like [Client A] or [Client B].”

If your value proposition is strong enough, there’s no need for long-winded lists of features or distracting graphics. All you need is a simple sentence that tells your prospects exactly how you can help improve their businesses.

Cold Email Mistake #4: Leaving Your Prospects With A Weak Impression

Haley,
Haven’t heard back so I imagine it’s best to hold off getting in touch for now – perhaps lunch was a bit forward !
Anyway enjoy your weekend and best of luck closing out the month/quarter.
Please reach out if you have any questions or would like to revisit this in July.
Best,

Your call to action is the last impression you will leave on your prospects.. If your CTA is weak or non existent, your prospects won’t see a reason they should respond.

This CTA is ineffective because it doesn’t give me a reason to respond. How can I have questions when you haven’t told me anything about your product?

Simply asking for a demo or a phone call without giving anything in return doesn’t excite me. Your prospects will respond only when incentivize them to do so.

Cold Email Campaign Pro Tip #4: Have a strong CTA.

Strong CTAs move prospects to act by enticing them with something they desire or scaring them with something they fear. Make it worth it for them by clearly spelling out what they can gain in exchange by investing their time with you.

Example: {!First}, when do you have 10 minutes to talk? In exchange for your time, I’ll show you an easy way that you can pull pipeline revenue forecasts from {!Company}’s Salesforce.”

How to Send A Follow Up Cold Email That Doesn’t Suck

So now that you know what NOT to do in your follow ups, you’re probably wondering, ” How do I write a cold email that rocks?”

I don’t have a magic answer to this because this really depends on your previous emails, which buyer personas you’re targeting, and what your value propositions are. However, I will say that your follow up email should have a similar style and structure to your first email.

• Add value
• Focus on one idea/benefit
• Keep it short
• Write like a non-spammy human
• Be interesting

If you’re stuck trying to think of what to write, go back to the drawing board and make a list of all your benefits, and what matters to your prospects. Each of your benefits or their pain points can be the roots of an idea for another cold email.

Here’s an example of one of our follow up emails we wrote for Ambition:

SUBJECT: how competitive is {!Company}’s sales team?
Hi {!First},
What are you doing to ensure {!Company}’s sales team maintains its competitive edge quarter over quarter?
We’ve helped companies like [Client A] and [Client B] increase and maintain their sales team’s numbers by implementing incentives across their sales funnel, and I believe the same concept could work for {!Company}.
When do you have time for me to share this quick idea with you?
Thanks,

Happy emailing!

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