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Brand Trust is More Important Than Ever for Consumers

Today’s consumers have more options than ever when it comes to choosing among a huge mix of hundreds of brands and thousands of products and services. In such a fiercely competitive environment, brand trust has become an important competitive differentiator.

What makes a brand trust-worthy to consumers? In research by Edelman, the top reasons included:

• Brand delivers quality products or services
• It receives good ratings and reviews
• Brand charges a fair price for its products and services
• It has always treated me and others well

Brands need to do a better job at winning a consumer’s trust, with only 34% of consumers stating they trust most of the brands they use. These numbers were fairly consistent across both global respondents and demographics such as age, gender and income.

The good news is that when brands are able to gain a customer’s trust, the benefits are huge. Consumers will turn to the brand first when making a purchase decision, are more loyal to the brand, will advocate and also defend the brand’s reputation when necessary.

While important to many facets of good business outcomes, trust has very clear ties to loyalty, with 62% of consumers stating they are loyal to brands they can trust. According to a report by Brand Keys, a loyalty increase of 7% can boost lifetime profits per customer by as much as 85%, and a loyalty increase of 3% can correlate to a 10% cost reduction, depending on the sector.

Corporate Responsibility

Corporate responsibility, in both this study and other research, can be a deciding factor or a deal-breaker as far as brand trust is concerned. Consumers evaluated items including the brand’s fair and responsible behavior when buying materials, products or services (79% global, 78% US), that it puts customer interests ahead of its own profits (78% global, 77% US) and that it is working to reduce its environmental impact (71% global, 69% US).

• 53% of consumers believe that every brand has a responsibility to get involved in at least one social issue that does not directly impact the business
• Only 21% of consumers stated that they know from personal experience that the brands they use to keep the best interests of society in mind.

In research by RetailMeNot, 66% of consumers 18+ believe that brands should take a pubic stand on important social values and 61% would recommend a brand to their friends that aligns with their social values.

Corporate responsibility is especially important among younger generations. A recent Nielsen study reports that 85% of Millennials say it is extremely or very important that companies implement programs to improve the environment, and 75% say they definitely or probably would change their purchase habits to reduce their impact on the environment.

The RetailMeNot study echoed these findings. Social sentiment is even more true for millennials—74% of respondents ages 22 to 37 said more brands should take public stands on important social values.

Customer Experience

The top reason consumers stated for trusting a brand is good quality products and services. However, good rating and reviews, being treated fairly, and quickly addressing customer service concerns ranked highly. These can all be attributed to delivering a good customer experience.

We all know the importance of delivery positive experiences. For example:

• A good customer experience means your customers spend more (Temkin Group):
  • 86% of buyers are willing to pay more for a great customer experience
  • 73% of buyers point to customer experience as an important factor in purchasing decisions
  • 65% of buyers find a positive experience with a brand to be more influential than great advertising
• Companies that are experience-led have 1.6x higher brand awareness, 1.5x higher employee satisfaction, and 1.9x higher average order value. Experience-led businesses also have 1.7x higher customer retention, 1.9x return on spend, and 1.6x higher customer satisfaction rates. (Forrester)
• Organizations classifying themselves as “very advanced” at customer experience are almost three times more likely than their peers to have exceeded their top 2018 business goals by a significant margin. (Adobe Digital Trends Report)
• Customer experience leaders are four-and-a-half times more likely than other companies to have a highly integrated, cloud-based technology stack (32% vs. 7%) to fuel their customer experience management strategies. And companies with a unified tech stack are 131% more likely to have significantly outperformed their top 2018 business goals (30% vs. 13%). (Adobe Digital Trends Report)

In a study by Eptica Digital Trust, 9 out of 10 consumers will change supplier if they lose trust in a company – nearly half of them immediately. The study found that the key to creating trust is to simply to do what customers expect of you. Make their experience of interacting with your business easy and seamless, respond to queries swiftly with accurate information, and do what you say you’re going to do.

According to the study findings:

• 59% of the consumers that were surveyed said satisfactory, consistent and fast answers are key to trust. However, brands still had a way to go – just a third of queries on email received a satisfactory response and under half (45%) of tweets were answered accurately.
• The overwhelming majority (92%) of consumers say brands aren’t listening all the time, with three-quarters (74%) saying they listen half the time or less. Nearly one in five (18%) think they don’t listen at all.
• Brands are still struggling with delivering a multichannel experience. Silos persist, with knowledge not effectively shared between channels, undermining the experience and damaging trust.

Brands must do better at treating customers as individuals – real people with names, families, interests and so on. We hear about the importance of delivering better customer experiences, getting to know your customers’ wants, needs and demographic information and delivering better personalization.

These are all major factors in building consumer trust. But true connections are created when customers are humanized, and brands can then deliver other highly relevant experiences that touch on the human factor. This may be developing social and community programs for the greater good or simply taking the extra time to go above and beyond and thoroughly solve a customer service inquiry.

Interested in learning more about additional marketing strategies and tactics to target today’s consumers? Download our new Omnichannel Marketing eBook.

Today, most sales organizations are still enabling salespeople with classroom onboarding, certifications, and assessments. These methods are outdated and don’t reflect the dynamic, responsive way that modern sellers engage with buyers. And they’re hurting your bottom line.

Salespeople are hungry for an immersive, interactive learning experience — one that delivers the right content and guidance at the right time through the channels where they live.

And reps have every reason to have this appetite. Technology has transformed the way we sell — so it’s time that technology changes the way we approach sales training, too.

Most Organizations Get Sales Training Wrong

Sales training is typically treated like a box that needs to be ticked: Certify reps and they have been “trained.” But the one-directional and static learning formats dominating our industry don’t support the breadth of scenarios that reps encounter in the field.

Quizzes, certifications, and classroom sessions can’t cover every unique selling situation, nor can they prove long-term knowledge retention.

A global survey by McKinsey & Company found that effective training:

1. Provides content that meets the learner’s needs,
2. Happens on a continuous basis, and
3. Adopts modern delivery channels and techniques, such as digital content libraries and gamification.

If these elements sound familiar, it’s because they mirror the methods used by leading consumer education platforms. Gamification has led to Duolingo’s success, while self-guided, just-in-time video courses and microcontent from Khan Academy, Coursera, Udacity, and Codeacademy have yielded numerous success stories. A close look at how these platforms drive comprehension and retention reveals a pattern: Interactive methods that meet learners where they are, with content in context, yield optimal results.

Effective Sales Training is Dynamic

Sellers are people, too — and the way they want to learn is no different.

But there is an additional layer to consider: Contemporary selling is more dynamic than ever, and sellers need ongoing training that helps them navigate their ever-changing sales environments. Effective training requires elements that mimic the different ways sellers and buyers interact. Harvard Business Review explains, “Most of the problems we encounter during our everyday working lives are ill-defined rather than well structured, so they do not have an objectively correct solution, requiring adaptive rather than technical learning.”

Training must, therefore, extend beyond the textbook — teaching reps to apply techniques and methodologies to real-world scenarios.

For instance, my team stages workshops where we critique buyer calls and then role-play, which reinforces knowledge by allowing reps to act out what they’ve learned. But training can’t stop there. Because no single workshop, session, or quiz can cover everything reps need to know, self-guided learning becomes essential. This is where technology plays a critical part.

Great Training Requires Great Technology

The right approach paired with the right technology is the key to unlocking sales training success.

Advanced platforms have the ability to provide insight and guidance next to content, enabling the self-guided experience that reps need to be flexible. On top of that, solutions that have invested in AI and machine learning can learn alongside reps — continuously curating and recommending content that allows sellers to stay relevant to their buyers.

Consider the following example: A rep is engaging a prospect in the healthcare industry. To prepare for her upcoming call, she must understand the way that healthcare sales operates and what her contact’s pain points are — and the certification she completed six months ago is inapplicable. She turns to her sales enablement platform to find relevant content paired with expert sales methodology, giving her the just-in-time training she needs to have an effective conversation.

Sales Training for Today’s Sales Reps

Immersive learning experiences unburden reps of monotonous and static approaches and empower them with actionable knowledge. The result: Businesses that invest in continuous training see an increase in quota attainment as well as increased retainment and higher win rates.

Salespeople can’t sell effectively unless they learn effectively. It’s time we set them up for success with the perfect combination of sales training and technology.

Imagine you’re a billionaire starting a new company. You’re happy to bet your entire fortune on it. As a result, capital is no constraint. How fast should you burn money?

You probably wouldn’t use the generic startup math of dividing your available capital by 18 months and burn $55.5 million a month — though it would be fun. So if capital is no longer the currency that determines how fast you go, what should?

It’s confidence, not capital, that should be the currency of acceleration at a startup — no matter if you have a million dollars or a billion dollars to burn.

Confidence is often misunderstood by those who feign it. It is not bluster or arrogance. It’s not “trusting your gut.” Competitors raising big rounds of funding shouldn’t change your level of confidence one way or the other unless they’re doing exactly what you are. Glowing press coverage helps team morale, but it shouldn’t color your assessment of readiness to scale up.

It’s also important to note that venture capital interest is a terrible proxy for founder confidence. VCs have different structural incentives than founders; in an easy money environment, placing a big bet in a hot category, backed by a good enough team, is a job well done for a VC. Remember that they have a portfolio of companies, you’ve just got the one.

So what should drive you to scale up spend? There’s no perfect answer, but if you consistently see strong customer response to your product, marketing delivering more qualified leads for less money, sales channels becoming better instrumented and more efficient, LTV expanding with product improvements and lower churn thanks to your customer success team, you’re probably in good position to accelerate investment.

Compounding successes at all levels of the business should provide data points that give you the determination to plan out a more ambitious trajectory. The requirement for confidence shouldn’t be mistaken for conservatism. Startups need to take risks in order to thrive, but they should be calculated, not capricious. There is a limited speed any company should go based on what they’ve learned to date about their market and offering.

If you have a high degree of confidence that you can turn $1 into $2, or $10, you should invest immediately. If you don’t have that confidence, you should spend time, but limited capital, to build it. Unfortunately, too many startups feel pressure to spend money based on hope, not confidence.

Authentic growth

Startups appreciate in value through growth. This isn’t just another VC mantra: even bootstrapped startups or public companies become more valuable when they grow faster. Two $10 million companies where one is growing at 80% and the other 20% will be valued very differently. Even if the slower-growth company is generating some limited cash flow and the high-growth company is burning within reason, the high-growth company will usually be worth much more.

So given that growth drives value, why shouldn’t every startup grow as quickly as it possibly can? With capital in hand, why not spend to generate more growth and therefore more value?

Capital without confidence shouldn’t dictate a startup’s acceleration.

Shattered confidence kills startups

Companies that misuse capital as the driver of acceleration cause irreparable harm to confidence. When a company over-accelerates and misses, it takes a painful amount of time to observe the mistake, admit the mistake, correct the mistake and rebuild confidence with the team and investors that you won’t repeat the mistake. Eventually, the company must undertake the inevitable process of taking a huge step back to try to rebuild that faith. This requires going much slower than a similar company that has never faltered.

If you spend a small amount of money on a pilot and it fails, you’ve helped home in on what your product should be, and you’ve not burnt any credibility with your team or investors. Spend 10 times that amount and you’ll have no more confidence in what to do next, far less credibility and a diminished balance sheet. Worst yet, the next time you want to lean in on a major initiative, the lack of confidence of key stakeholders will likely overwhelm what may well be the right decision.

Three startup currencies: Confidence, credibility and capital

Companies create value by compounding learning and therefore compounding confidence in their future. As confidence grows, companies will earn credibility inside the management team and with investors. Once you have both, it usually gets easier and easier to find the right amount of capital needed to fuel that confidence. Confidence is the most important currency, followed closely by credibility, and only then, cash. By way of contrast, driving up revenue artificially by burning capital with low return on investment is not sustainable and does not create long-term value. This will ultimately damage confidence and credibility.

You can buy confidence with capital, but it’s rate-limited and there’s no benefit to scale

Arguably, there should be little difference between the acceleration of two competitive companies that have the same amount of confidence but radically different capitalizations. If both are early-stage startups and one company has $10 million in cash and the other has $1 billion, they should spend their money with the same principle in mind: what does it cost to build confidence that our most important experiments are working?

For a company with a million dollars, this may mean hiring a single inside sales rep to test out a direct channel based on some early successes with a specific type of customer. A company with a billion dollars will likely make the mistake to open global offices to meet international demand, without first validating that they can make that single inside sales rep successful. In both cases, the confidence of the management team and their ability to execute should be driving the decision, not the available capital.

Credibility is earned, not purchased

If you spend like you’re headed to $20 million ARR and only hit $10 million ARR, your business is in a very difficult position. Not only because you sustained large losses, but also because you’ve damaged confidence in execution — team members and investors won’t believe in the company’s ability to achieve the target the next time it wants to hit the gas pedal hard.

Conversely, If you confidently hit $10 million in sales and have sight lines to $20 million, you will not struggle to raise more money to achieve your goals. The more the management team meets its goals, the more confidence grows and the pace of acceleration can be increased. Compound confidence and acceleration is boundless.

One of the biggest mistakes of the startup community, fueled by an overcapitalized venture market and an overhyped argument about winner takes all market dynamics, is the belief that capital is a weapon that will win the startup wars.

Authentic confidence is the only real winning weapon at a startup. Capital can fuel that weapon, but when used without confidence, it usually becomes a weapon of self-destruction.

We’ve all heard about the importance of sales and marketing alignment. It makes for a better business, it grows revenue, and overall it makes everyone happier.

But what does sales and marketing alignment have to do with a referral strategy? A lot, as it turns out.

It’s no secret that referral programs perform better when sales gets involved. Statistics show that, with sales involvement, leads convert to deals ten percent more often in partner referral channels and seventeen percent more often in customer referral channels. When it comes to seeing actual results from a referral channel, sales involvement is key.

But the impact of strong marketing on a referral channel can’t be ignored, either. You do, in fact, need both of these teams to be working at the top of their game in order to get results. And how do you get them working their best?

You get them working together.

Getting Sales Involved in Referrals

Engaging sales in a referral channel sounds easy on the surface. But there are actually a few ways that you can go about it, and figuring out what is the best for your channel will take some strategic thinking.

The first step is to figure out if you’re involving direct or indirect sales. This will help you get an idea of the general shape of your program.

Then, there are a few options. One is to take a direct to individuals approach, which is where an individual such as a customer, influencer, small agent, small business or employee would refer business directly to you. Another is a to-and-through strategic alliance, where you make an alliance with a company that enables their employees to refer business to you. There is also the to-and-through partner network, which is where managed partners can enable their employees to make referrals.

Whatever you choose, your sales team should be part of the equation. They will be the ones helping you recruit and keep customers, alliances, and partners referring.

But it isn’t enough to just tell your sales team about your channel. You need to get them excited about it, too. And a big part of doing that is promoting your referral program — marketing it, in other words. And this is where your marketing team comes in.

Getting Marketing Involved

When many people hear the words “referral” and “marketing” together, they don’t think of involving promotional teams. They think of referrals as a type of marketing, which is perfectly true! But many don’t understand just how entwined a referral channel and a marketing team is.

Referrals can fit into just about any partner channel marketers are actively using. That means, no matter what, your marketing team will be a part of your channel. Instead of having this deter sales from getting involved, you should use it to your advantage.

Promoting your referral program is an important part of a channel’s success, and it doesn’t end one or two or ten days after you start the program. It should, in fact, continue to go throughout the life of your channel.

And just as you’re promoting to partners and customers, you need to be promoting to sales, too. Remind them of why they’re doing what they’re doing, and make sure you’re promoting your successes to them, as well! The more they can see the positive effect that the referral channel is having, the more they’ll be able to be involved in it.

This will cause a positive feedback loop, where marketing will have more positive things to say, which will bolster sales even further. And that will make your referral channel more effective than ever.

An email drip campaign is a series of messages that are sent, or “dripped,” in a predefined order at a predefined interval.

So, for example, if someone joins your email list, they receive Email #1 upon signup, Email #2 three days later, Email #3 five days after they join, and so on.

You can automate drip email campaigns with autoresponder software (e.g. GetResponse, MailChimp, etc.).

Email drip campaigns can achieve many things:

• Build relationships with leads;
• Grow sales;
• Increase customer retention.

All are good things that any smart marketer wants (and you should, too). In a great drip campaign, each email stands on its own but also builds on the emails that came before it. All emails are strategically planned and sequenced to encourage a specific action by the recipient.

So how do you do it?

6 Steps to an effective email drip campaign

1. Figure out your goal.

First things first. If you don’t know what you want to accomplish, how can you possibly achieve it? Do you want to warm up email leads? Get them to buy your product? Something else?

Be specific when talking about the end-goal so that you are able to measure it—and make sure you can measure it. Many top-line email metrics are pretty superficial measurements of what actually matters (and one reason why email testing is so difficult).

At a minimum, make sure you tag links in your emails with UTM parameters so that data about in-email behavior passes through to Google Analytics.

UTM parameters help pass data between email campaigns and Google Analytics. (Image source)

If you want to learn more about setting up Goals and Events in Google Analytics, check out this article.

2. What’s in the emails matters most.

Just having an email drip campaign won’t do much. The content of those emails needs to be really good. If you send lousy emails, the result will be lousy.

If the emails don’t add any value, your drip campaign may backfire—people will consider it spam and convert less often than if you did nothing at all.

Most of your users aren’t “reading” your newsletter. They’re scanning through the information, so make your information scan-able with subheads, bold sections, etc.

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Great email is easily scanable and adds value. Note the succinct copy, numbered subheads, simple design, and focus on informational content.

3. Deliver the information that leads need to make a decision.

When you start working on content for the drip campaign, ask yourself: What do my prospects need to know to take the step I want?

For instance, if your goal is to get subscribers to use your SaaS product, you might want to create emails that explain its functionality and showcase case studies of how other people used it with great success.

If your goal is to sell something, aim to increase people’s trust in you—build up credibility. You can do this by teaching them something useful, addressing their hesitations (removing friction), and providing proof of how your stuff helps them achieve their goals.

4. Set the timing and frequency.

Once you know what you want to achieve and you’ve created the emails you want to send out, it’s time to set the frequency and timing of the emails. There is no one-size-fits-all rule.

Generally, you should start with higher frequency and slow down as time goes on. (Start with every day, then every few days, then once a week, then once a month, and so on).

Email drip campaigns are common components of SaaS onboarding flows.

As for the email sending times, check your newsletter statistics to see if any particular time of day produced higher open rates. (There is no universal “best” time to send an email, despite what plenty of blog posts claim.)

You can also send email drip campaigns to people who’ve already been on your list for a long time. These (daily, weekly, or monthly) campaigns can keep your brand top-of-mind for when subscribers are ready to take action.

You can set up drip campaigns for:

• Whitepaper delivery;
• Quarterly release updates;
• Holiday campaigns;
• Monthly invoices;
• Annual subscription notices;
• Anything else that keeps subscribers informed and interested.

SaaS products use drip campaigns for lead nurturing and to encourage product adoption and retention (i.e. always running).

5. Segment your campaigns.

Segmentation will increase the effectiveness of your campaigns. It’s a big topic, and you can learn all about it from these two articles:

• The Beginner’s Guide to Email Segmentation & Personalization;
• 8 Email Segmentation Examples That Can Boost Conversions.

Briefly, though, these are keys. Create several parallel campaigns—most of the content can remain the same—but tailor each as much as possible to the specific segments, addressing their concerns, needs, and wants.

For instance, you can create tailored landing pages for different campaigns to acquire leads (i.e. emails). You can then create unique drip email campaigns depending on which page a user was on when they signed up.

6. Measure stuff.

Besides the obvious (open rates and clicks), measure:

• The impact on your bottom line;
• The total clicks on your landing pages.

If you want to drive traffic to your sign-up page, measure the total traffic you get from the drip campaigns to the desired page and then look at the conversions.

Conclusion

Once you’ve mastered the basics of email drip campaigns, you can move on to more advanced tactics

As with other optimization efforts, avoid advice that “guarantees” the best open rates, click-through rates, or anything else. Test your way to higher-converting campaigns.

Prospects are dodging sales communications at greater and greater rates. 

Armed with better filters on their email inboxes and cell phones, they can block just about any sales message. Which means email open rates and call connect rates are dropping.

This should make every sales leader nervous. It makes me nervous, too. 

The question is, What should we do about it?

I believe that answer can be found by looking at what’s driving the incremental declines in “top line” conversation rates across the Sales Development profession: automation and saturation. 

You see, it’s easier than ever to automate email blasts and spoof local area codes with your power-dialer software. 

The problem is, buyers know that, and they’ve upped their game in response. We need to up ours as well. 

Robots can now do what used to need to be done only by people. Now we need to ask, What can’t automation do yet?

This is the next frontier of the human-powered Sales Development team — sales skills that go beyond automation, sales tactics that engage on a human level.

In this article, we’re going to dive into why this is so important, and how social selling and storytelling in sales can help you make that human touch.

You’ll also learn how I see this playing out — the future of Sales Development, if you will. And along the way, I’ll share some actionable tips for making sure you stay ahead of this trend.

Here’s what we’re going to cover:

• Social selling & brand
• The perspective shift: storytelling in sales
• How do we get there?
• How can we move to story-led sales development?
• How do we implement this on your sales team?

Social Selling & Brand

The answer to the difficulties we’re experiencing is: brand. 

What do I mean by “brand”? I mean content. Perspective. Interpretation. Education. Social Selling. 

Whatever you want to call it, it’s all pointing toward the same thing — and that’s to build a powerful, trustworthy brand.

Let’s get one thing straight: interruption-based prospecting still works just fine. 

I’ve been running teams for years now that set 1000+ appointments per year for AE teams. It works. Cold calling is NOT dead. Nor is cold email. Nothing is “dead.” I’m just talking about improvements and net-new strategies.

This is a way to add 15-30% to your monthly numbers, and hedge your skillset against future defenses put up by prospects, who are trying their best to prevent you from getting into their inbox or phone.

You can programmatically display ads offering a white paper, but you can’t automate the interpretation of that white paper’s advice, put it in the context of one particular buyer’s role at their company, help them understand when the right time is to read it, or help them have confidence in who it is on their team that should be spearheading that effort.

That requires a human touch.

The Perspective Shift

It means that SDRs should think of themselves as the “last-mile branding team.”

Instead of an appointment-setter, a high-power SDR is, among other things, a skilled marketer who happens to have a quota of SQLs instead of MQLs.

To take a page out of the Challenger Sale playbook: it’s the SDR’s job to take the Commercial Teaching proposition of the company — NOT the features list! — and make that relevant to their individual prospects in a way that simply can’t be done at scale by automation or by a centralized marketing team.

One way to think of it is this… 

SDRs should be: 

• Defining their personal brand
• Understanding the company brand
• Integrating the two
• And building their sales process based on that combination

If you’re a sophisticated sales leader, you’re probably already doing this and thinking, “So far, this guy hasn’t said anything new!” 

First, congrats, because 95% of sales teams aren’t doing this. You’re on the right track. 

Second, keep reading, because we could all use help in amplifying the core value proposition of the brand-led SDR across their organization.

How Do We Get There?

To start, we need to rebuild the bridge that we’ve been burning with Marketing all these years.

Case in point: I worked with one sales team whose relationship with Marketing was so poor, they advised me to disguise a marketing services proposal as an outsourced sales proposal, so that they could get it approved without going through Marketing.

Yikes. We should all be working TOGETHER, not fighting like this.

I see SDRs of the future being trained by marketing as well as by sales, regardless of who they report to. 

And hey, let’s face it, marketers (bless them) are usually pretty poor at sales work, just as salespeople make terrible marketers. But they have a lot to offer to the SDR role — because Sales Development combines elements of what marketing and sales are both good at.

Next, SDRs need new to start developing two new skills that are very familiar to creative, brand, and marketing folks: storytelling and copywriting.

Let me put this in perspective. I’m not talking about being able to write film scripts (though that wouldn’t hurt!). 

I’m talking about replacing features-based cold call language (“Our product does X Y and Z”) with stories that start with, “One customer I helped this past Summer….”

I’m talking about telling stories on social media, especially LinkedIn. 

I’m talking about innovating on the email templates you were given by your manager, to make them your own so they sound authentic.

How Can We Move to Story-led Sales Development?

Humans are wired for stories, not spreadsheets. And that hurts me to say because I personally LOVE spreadsheets. But I love stories more: it’s biology.

Educating prospects like this helps them picture themselves as the hero of their own journey. THEY are the hero, NOT you and your product. 

Storytelling for sales is an enormously helpful skill to build, and while I can’t capture it all here and whole books have been written about it, here are some basic rules to live by, based on the work of today’s top storytellers. 

7 Rules for Storytelling in Sales

These rules are pulled from Pixar’s 22 Rules of Storytelling. As you read them, think about the Pixar movies you’ve seen, and make the connection to what you do every day as a salesperson.

1. You admire a character for TRYING more than for their SUCCESS

Real talk: when you only talk about how your case study customers breezed to a 2000% ROI when they adopted your product, you’re not convincing anybody. You’re causing the prospect to be skeptical, and you’re making their eyes glaze over while you’re at it. 

Don’t gloss over the struggle your customers experienced. Make your product a supporting character in that story — not the protagonist.

2. What’s FUN to write might differ from what’s INTERESTING to your AUDIENCE

Please stop spitting out the same templated promotional content without thinking about it. Stop talking about how much of a quota-crusher you are, and how you’re a top AE who always makes it to the president’s club. 

That may be fun for you, but unless your audience is “other salespeople,” they won’t identify with it, and they certainly don’t care or find it interesting.

3. What is your character GOOD at and comfortable with? Throw them the opposite!

Here are some examples of taking a “character” (your prospect) out of their comfort zone in a positive way:

Example #1: You sell martech allowing VPs of Marketing & Social Media Directors to attribute Google Maps search data to in-store purchases. 

They haven’t done this before, so you use stories to talk about how specific marketers have improved their skillsets as professionals, and didn’t just “wing it,” and succeeded immediately. 

In this example, you don’t act like everyone is falling over themselves to adopt your product. That’s likely not true, and prospects won’t believe you.

Example #2: You sell retail packaging IoT SaaS to enterprise CPG Marketing & Supply Chain executives. 

How did the supply chain leaders start to see themselves as marketers? How did the marketers start thinking more deeply about personalization, transparency, and corporate sustainability than before? Why did that benefit both them and their whole company?

Tell these stories. Help your market understand how others like them have grown out of their comfort zone, and why they should too. And by the way, how you can help them do that.

4. Look at the stories you love. Pull them apart. Figure out why you like them.

Look at the call scripts and templates you’ve been working with. Do you secretly hate them? Great, start looking elsewhere. 

What ads, brands, salespeople do you absolutely love? Write down why you love them. I’ll bet they’re following a lot of these rules, and not just going around spitting out features and talking about themselves.

5. Give your characters OPINIONS. Passive and malleable is boring. Polarize!

This is HUGE, in my opinion. If you’re just a corporate shill, I can probably use clever technology and low-paid admin folks to automate your job. If you’re a thoughtful salesperson with business acumen, and you have opinions that polarize others — if you take a STAND, and you’re bold — then you’re worth your weight in gold.

It’s not just okay to foster disagreement, it’s encouraged. 

Don’t be a clickbaiter, but I hereby give you permission to get your prospects’ tempers up a notch. They should feel something!

6. What are the STAKES? Give the audience a reason to ROOT FOR the character.

This is a classic Challenger Sale technique. Your product solves a big problem, and people don’t often realize how big of a problem that is. 

Hopefully, when you started reading this article, I made you a little more nervous than you’ve been up to now about your long-term job success as a leader or an individual contributor. I did that by reminding you of Gmail filtering and iOS cell phone call auto-blocking technology. That was my way of deepening your perspective on how big of a problem this is.

Do the same for your prospects. Use your stories to communicate how important the problem is.

Talk about other customers who were up against serious challenges — losing budget, losing their job, their company declining, whatever it is — yet ended up looking like an absolute BADASS, a HERO, because of the journey you helped them go through. 

In this story, your product is merely the sword in the stone — not King Arthur.

7. If you were this character, how would YOU FEEL? Honesty brings credibility.

This one is simple but difficult. If you hate your sales outreach cadence, prospects hate it even more. If you genuinely don’t understand what you’re selling, the impact of it, or the ways you’ve truly changed lives and helped people as a result — if you don’t FEEL it — then you can’t really communicate that feeling to others. 

Make your prospects feel what it will be like for them to go through the struggles (as well as the successes) when they adopt your solution. 

If you guess at these parts of the story instead of getting them authentically right, then your story won’t be believable and your prospects won’t trust you.

How Do We Implement This On My Sales Team, Right Away?

Here are some tangible techniques you can run with right away:

1. Integrate storytelling into your call scripts.

Collaborate with marketing to go deeper into your customer stories than you did before, digging out the emotional data: 

• What did the struggles feel like? 
• How did the nervousness during onboarding make way for relief? 
• What was the joyful impact of their success as a customer of yours? 

The next time you get an objection during your demo or your cold call, instead of talking about percentage-increases in particular KPIs, tell 20- to 30-second stories in the format I gave you above. You’ll create real emotional impact.

2. Post valuable content on LinkedIn.

This is one of RevenueZen’s most powerful secret weapons. If you get a whole team — AEs, SDRs, Marketers, VPs of Sales & Marketing — aligned with this brand-led social selling strategy based on storytelling, and you’re all speaking your authentic, knowledgeable truth within the circles that your prospects live and work, then you’ll create: 

• Buzz
• Additional inbound lead flow
• Increased opportunity win rates

And you’ll have more fun, too.

If you don’t believe me, look at what Drift has done with LinkedIn content, or send me an email and I’ll show you examples of leaders and salespeople that are excelling with this strategy with our help (shout-out to people like Justin and Kevin at PatientPop, Amy Volas who runs Avenue Talent Partners, and Dale Dupree “The Copier Warrior,” who all excel at this!). 

Think about what thousands of additional connections, hundreds of thousands of engagements and post views, and all those new leads, could do for your quota.

3. Whatever you do, make sure you stand out.

As an individual salesperson, your North Star throughout all of this should be to be different. 

If you’re just one of the crowd and your messaging and techniques look very similar to peers in other industries (or even your competitors), you’re more in danger than ever of an innovative tech company disrupting your job or allowing it to be offshored. 

And in the short term, you’re not going to be as successful with quota as you otherwise could be.

If you’re a sales or marketing leader, you should be thinking about how to empower your team members to stand out too. Since you can’t really do it for them, you can just lead by example.

If you’re a founder or executive, you already know how beneficial it is to stand out: You competed aggressively for your investment funding and initial customers, and you understand the power of having a brand (or the struggle of not having a strong brand!).

Closing Thoughts

Now you have another strategy in your toolbox, and hopefully, you’ll go back to your sales playbook with fresh eyes, trying to integrate these principles of social selling and storytelling into your process. 

Keep your focus squarely on communicating authentic, rich stories to your prospects about what they should consider, and what they can accomplish, and you’ll do well.

The post The Power of Social Selling (+ 7 Rules for Storytelling in Sales) appeared first on Sales Hacker.

The excuse many of us make for not doing what we know we should be doing is, “I don’t have time.” The truth is just the opposite. Time is the only thing you have. Whether you have enough of it is mostly a matter of what you do with it. If you wish you had more time, here is how you make more time.

Determine Your Priorities

The very best way to ensure you have enough time for what’s most important is to determine your priorities (or discover them). If you don’t make values-based decisions, deciding why one project is more valuable than another, you will struggle to make smart decisions about what you do with your time.

To determine your priorities, you need a list of your goals. People who don’t know what they want often end up getting caught up in “the drift,” allowing external forces to move them in some direction. “The drift” will take you in the wrong direction and faster than you might recognize. (You really should read this post about “The Drift. You should also read this post about Intentionality and Massive Action. Both are worth your time.)

Priorities are what prevent you from being pulled in directions that don’t serve you. If you want to be productive, determining your priorities is the best place to start. Your priorities are like anchors that hold you in place.

Plan Your Work

If you are like most people, you roll out of bed, open your email, and decide what you are going to do with your day. Opening your email first thing in the morning is to put other people’s priorities above your own. What’s worse is waiting to start your day to decide what to do with it.

If you want to find more time, you will find it in abundance on a blank calendar. Your calendar tells the truth about your priorities. Because you have determined your priorities, you know what’s most important. Putting what’s most important on that calendar before the week starts ensures you have time for the things that matter. Will your plan always work as written? It’s unlikely. Will you feel as if you have more time, more control, and get more done? Yes, you will. Can you get back on the horse when you get thrown? You must.

Your intentionality here makes an enormous difference in how you feel about how much time you have.

Eliminate Distractions

One of the most pernicious threats to having enough time is the overwhelming number of distractions. Let’s put these distractions into two categories. The first categories are the distractions caused by the “always on-always available” world in which we now find ourselves. The second area is the distractions we choose ourselves.

The communication tools we use are always on, and they are always available. Despite the enormous value they bring our lives, they are not without their downside. Anyone can send you an email at any time, about any matter (urgent or mundane), and make any request they can conjure up, at any time, day or night. The same is true of text messaging, except for the text you receive is often accompanied by a little chime to let you know it demands your attention. You are also likely to have some sort of message service open in your browser, with your status set to available, advertising your willingness to be distracted by the rest of your organization (a sure sign of a lack of priorities).

Most of us work in an environment that some might describes as having an “open-door policy,” where people can walk into your office (if you still have one) and interrupt your work. The policy might better be expressed as an “open to all distractions policy.”

The second category, the distractions you choose, can be even more challenging for many. The internet and social apps are omnipresent, and because we are social animals, we are engineered to want to know what other humans are doing. We were addicted to gossip long before the social apps, but those apps have been engineered to feed the addiction, with the primary metric of success how long the platform can you to spend on a platform (Like a rat that pushes a button for a small bit of food). Unless your priority is “waste more time,” the social apps and the internet shouldn’t dominate your time.

If you want to find more time, removing these distractions by blocking time and training the people around you to respect those blocks, will provide you with many more hours in your day. Also, a good amount of self-discipline, or what we might call “Me Management” will give you back your wasted time.

Increase the Speed at Which You Work

I would never suggest that you don’t do good work. You should try to do exceptional work (I have ended every newsletter for the last five years with the directive to “do good work,” because it matters). The quality of your work is the quality of your outcomes. The quality of your results is the quality of your life. But that doesn’t mean you should dilly dally and take more time than necessary in producing those outcomes.

In ninety uninterrupted minutes, you can make massive progress on a project, task, or outcome. If you work with focus and a sense of urgency, you can do what others do in ninety minutes in sixty. In doing so, you will have just found yourself a half hour. If you focus and act with urgency during three blocks of ninety minutes, peeling back a half hour from each, you gain an hour and a half each day. Over a week, you get back seven and a half hours.

You have more time than you imagine if you focus it on what is vital for periods long enough to make progress.

Don’t Create Rework

I wasn’t always enamored with ideas like LEAN. And while I still don’t believe you can shrink or cut your way to greatness, the elimination of waste is a game-changer. Wasted motion is wasted time, especially if it means doing work over again and touching anything more than once.

If you are going to do something, giving it your full attention and focus improves the outcome. If you want to waste time, do something over because you didn’t do right the first time. It pays to be outcome-oriented and put forth the effort to achieve it without expending additional time and energy later.

Improve Your Energy and Your Capacity for Work

Improving your energy and your capacity for work could have been the first point here. You are, after all, the primary resource you have through which to produce the results you want. Taking care of that asset is job one because it is a huge variable when it comes to working.

If you are reading this, you are likely a knowledge worker (it is doubtful you work in a coal mine, and your hands are more likely to have carpal tunnel than callouses). Your brain lives in your body. Both of them need rest and exercise. They also need nutrition, sleep, hydration, and stress management. The better you take care of your physical self, the better your mental self. When you have more energy, you have a greater capacity for work.

There is more time available to you, if you determine your priorities, plan your work, eliminate distractions, work with a sense of urgency, eliminate wasted effort, and improve your energy.

The post Productivity: How to Make More Time appeared first on The Sales Blog.

How effective are your emails? You want to think that the email you just wrote is perfect and sending it out to 100 prospects will result in at least 90 meetings. If this is you, there’s no need for you to read any further; however, I suspect this is not your case, so let me share my techniques for using email to prospect.

Watch my video to learn how to use email to prospect:

 

 

Use email as simply one of your contacting tools. Email works best when it’s used alongside the telephone and other methods of communication. Just because email is easy to use and you can send out a lot of emails quickly does not mean it is the only method you should rely on. Remember that email must be of value to the prospect; it’s not all about you! Your prospect did not wake up this morning thinking about how much they want to hear from you. No, they have their own problems to worry about; your objective is to help them.

Write the email so it reads best from a smartphone. Most prospecting emails are written on a laptop or desktop, yet they’re read on a smartphone. When in doubt, send the email to yourself and see how it looks on your smartphone. Your email must have a call to action; this is something many salespeople miss. Let’s not kid ourselves, the percentage of prospects that don’t respond will be few, but that’s not a reason to leave out a call to action.

The subject line must be compelling and of interest to the prospect. It’s not about you. Don’t think for a moment that you can use a “bait and switch” subject line. After the subject line, the first 75 characters is what I like to call, “golden real estate.” When viewing an email on a smartphone, the prospect will only see the first few words of your email, so don’t waste those words introducing yourself. Use the first few words to build on what you wrote in the subject line.

Limit the entire email length to less than 6- 8 sentences / 3 paragraphs total. Long emails get deleted, especially when they’re viewed on a smartphone. The shorter it is, the more probability the prospect will read it. Introduce yourself in the second paragraph. It’s adequate to state your name and company, but going so far to say how long you’ve been in business and how great you are will turn the prospect off.

Prospecting emails are not “capability presentations.” That’s why including attachments, brochures, etc. are always a bad move. The objective of the prospecting email is to gain just enough interest to generate a next step. Don’t think for a moment that you can keep sending the same prospect an email each day or even each week until they succumb to the pressure and respond to you. If you send more than 3 or 4 emails to a person in a short period of time and they don’t respond, the chances are their spam / junk filter is going to pick you up. Yes, everyone’s email system is different, but the fact remains that spam filters are designed to do their job. A spam filter’s job is not for you but for your prospect.

Download my new ebook, 50 Prospecting Truths that’s full of ideas and strategies to help you prospect more effectively.

Copyright 2019, Mark Hunter “The Sales Hunter.” Sales Motivation Blog. Mark Hunter is the author of High-Profit Prospecting: Powerful Strategies to Find the Best Leads and Drive Breakthrough Sales Result

Every customer experience is unique. But there are common psychological hacks that can help companies move buyers from one stage to the next. By leveraging subconscious motivators to turn casual browsers into customers, the top retail companies have dominated the commerce game.

Sales psychology tactics like social proof, scarcity, and authority are commonly used by Elon Musk. And on Twitter, of all places.

Musk, the founder and product architect of revolutionary companies like Tesla, Inc. and SpaceX, has earned himself a (slightly notorious) reputation on Twitter. His tweets have inspired new customers to get in line for the latest Tesla creation (despite missed deadlines), affected the entire tech market, and all kinds of things in between.

His messages have a reputation for going a bit off the rails. Musk even admits that his tweets are often “complete nonsense,” and some sources have speculated that his bizarre tweeting habits suggest a mental imbalance.

But one thing that’s not up for debate is that Twitter has contributed to Musk becoming one of the century’s most successful salesmen, both of products and ideas. The man’s posting frequency has only increased since 2015, and he doesn’t seem to be limited to time of day or day of the week.

(Source)

An analysis of the nearly 5,000 tweets of Musk’s account shows him covering everything from media critiques to current news to new product offerings. Clear, successful tactics emerged, each of which can make any sales team more effective and memorable.

Here are our top four sales psychology takeaways from Musk’s voracious Twitter habit.

Sales Psychology Lesson 1: FOMO sells pretty much anything

Customers have an inherent fear of missing out (FOMO) on the next best thing, especially when they are bombarded with images and reviews of idols and friends using it, while buyers sit on the sidelines. Any brand can easily harness FOMO. But Elon Musk’s method of creating it puts him in a league of his own.

Sales teams looking to leverage FOMO to increase their conversion rates can tear these pages from Musk’s Unofficial FOMO Handbook:

1. Share your product’s and service’s accolades and growth opportunities. Doing so suggests that respected people and organizations do value what you’re creating as much as you do.
2. Emphasize your limited-time promotions and products. This creates a sense of scarcity that makes people act fast to get on board. They’re aware that if they don’t commit now, they’ll miss out on something of value.
3. Celebrate the success and satisfaction of your top customers. Create an ideal for your buyers to aspire to. Show them how other customers have attained something enviable that makes them happier, more successful, and more fulfilled because they bought what you’re selling.

Musk regularly shares the awards and retweets praise of Tesla and SpaceX technology. He’s genuine in his excitement when the fruits of his labor are recognized. This shows people he’s proud of his product, his team, and their efforts, while also solidifying that there’s nothing on the market like what they’re making. This creates a sense of high value and scarcity off the bat.

He also makes sure to advertise the limited-time offers, discounts, and supply of products and features like the Tesla full self-driving option. In particular, Tesla and Musk regularly advertise price discounts with expiration dates to get people to act fast.

When his customers sign up for these limited-time offers, he makes sure to retweet their Tweets about it, elevating and celebrating those that are buying in. But this strategy alone doesn’t build rock-solid customer relationship foundations, and without some care, that trust and respect can be broken.

Sales Psychology Lesson 2: It’s easy to break the trust of fans

When it comes to learning from the social strategies of others, second-hand gold is just as good as the real thing.

Every year, a handful of well-meaning, but terribly executed, marketing campaigns completely undermine the positive relationship-building companies have done up until that point. No one saw this better than Musk after his April Fool’s tweet caused the company’s stock to plunge more than 7% overall.

This lesson emphasizes some key things about managing your internet relationships with customers. All of it boils down to this: tone often doesn’t translate online. Anyone who has tried to have a serious conversation via Messenger or text should know this.

Of course, if your brand is consistently sarcastic or joking , you can probably get away with sarcasm more often than Musk does. However, if 90% of your feed is serious and genuine, then people will take your attempts at humor at face value, often to your detriment. A good rule of thumb is to consider how something would come across to people who have no context or prior experience with your company.

Musk obviously did not take this advice to heart, and Tesla’s stock price dropped 5% on top of a 2.7% drop in the NASDAQ composite index. Thankfully, the company’s announcement the following day of increased Model 3 production atoned for the misjudgment.

However, as we’ll discuss in the next lesson, that doesn’t mean you should always avoid content that’s controversial and stirs the pot.

Sales Psychology Lesson 3: It pays to be controversial

This one is a bit counterintuitive. Most brands strike out to be liked by as many people as possible on social media. But the reality is that getting attention for making enemies can also prove productive. After all, any press is good press (within reason).

Musk is no stranger to being off-the-wall and controversial on Twitter. When he demonstrates great customer service or promotes good press, people predictably applaud him. But even when he insults other CEOs, industries, or himself, the attention and press it gets typically pays off.

If your organization stands for something, whether politically, socially, or in terms of trends in your industry, stick to it. Even if it doesn’t earn you fans every time, it pays dividends and loyalty to take a stance.

Additionally, today’s customer base is increasingly focused on ethical business. This is a great opportunity to use your platform to call out abuses in the industry and world to use your clout for good. While some buyers may say they don’t want companies to take a stand on controversial issues, more will respond positively to your company demonstrating ethics through clear-cut stances.

Musk has become known for speaking his mind in an industry that is increasingly filled with empty ideas and products just looking for a quick trick for success and profits. His genuine and transparent personality cuts through the marketing noise of the tech industry. This fosters respect among his fans and peers, even if they don’t always agree with him.

Additionally, these controversial stances—like actively going after the news media for their bias or throwing shade at other tech giants for failing to understand the future of artificial intelligence—add to the entertainment value of his feed, keeping people coming back.

Musk also dedicates part of his feed to breaking the illusion around what tech success looks like. Often, tech CEOs—and successful company leaders in general—work to paint an idyllic version of their lives to better highlight the stature of their brands. However, Musk’s choice to openly talk about his struggles and day-to-day reality fosters his identity as a trustworthy, transparent public figure. Customers know that if something sucks, whether it’s a product or his personal life, he’ll tell you about it.

Finally, Musk sticks to his guns when he’s controversial. For example, after making 420 jokes in reference to weed culture and his having smoked marijuana on a radio show, Musk doubled down when people started asking if the joke was worth it to him.

Obviously, if a company really messes up and supports or advertises a problematic stance, they should apologize to the public. However, when backlash happens in response to something your leadership believes in, standing up for your stance can earn your company respect among fans.

As is the case in the final lesson, customers like to see that the companies they support hear them and share their views, even if it’s controversial at times.

Sales Psychology Lesson 4: Customers want to be the heroes

One of the best ways to build loyalty among your customer base is to make them feel included and invested in your product and service. This can be done by regularly including their feedback about your company into your vision.

Musk has mastered this technique by not only taking the reviews of his customers seriously, but preemptively seeking out their advice before new product launches. By doing so, he increases their opinion of him, their opinion of the brand, and the likelihood that they’ll purchase the new product—in this case the Tesla pickup truck—when available.

Sales teams can learn from his methods of promotion.

• Seek the guidance of customers early in the process — People who feel like their voices and concerns have been heard are more likely to buy your newest product and stay loyal down the line. Plus, seeking feedback early on gives you valuable insight into what your customers value most, helping you create a more competitive product or service.
• Ask for their feedback again after the new product goes live — While you’re at it, highlight how you incorporated their initial ideas into the product design, function, promotion, etc. They’ll be even more likely to give additional feedback (and remain committed customers).

Musk does both frequently when exploring new products and features for Tesla and his other companies. He recognizes that his customer base is intelligent and invested in the products.

This doesn’t just give his products team valuable information, but helps them build a cult-like following by fostering creative and emotional buy-in from customers.

Learn from the best to conquer the social game with sales psychology

Using the right tone, cadence, and timing to resonate with customers on social platforms is an art few can master. But by leaning into the strategies of heavy hitters like Elon Musk, your sales team can learn from the best to build lasting relationships with customers using sales psychology.

If you’re looking to elevate your customer relationship game even further, these tactics, combined with a world-class CRM system, can foster business for years to come.

Recently, I was at a meeting hosted by my friends at Gartner. Scott Gillum made a provocative suggestion, “Do we need outbound sales any longer?” He followed that with a post.

As I reflected on the question, I think we can only discover the answer by changing the question, “Why do customers need sales people any more?”

Increasingly, the answer appears to be “They don’t!” We see all sorts of evidence supporting this. Customers are relying, increasingly, on other sources of information. They have solution provider web sites, influencers, referral sources, and other sorts of channels to learn about new solutions and how different supplier solutions might fit.

We also see customers voting with their time, they are becoming increasingly difficult to reach, they guard their time. Gartner data shows buying groups allocate roughly 17%* of their time to meeting with sales people (that’s not each person, that’s total).

We have all sorts of data showing how unhappy customers are with sales people: “They only talk about what they want to talk about,” “They don’t understand me and my business,” “They don’t understand their products,” or, “They waste my time.”

Sales leaders/managers are also doing things that seem to reduce the need for sales people–or perhaps SDRs. As they adopt strategies that, increasingly, try to make the buying process more transactional, one wonders, can there be a more effective way, further reducing the need for sales people, or at least SDRs. I wrote “What do Uber drivers and SDRs have in common,” as speculation about the future with fewer or no SDRs.

All of this seems to indicate the future of sales roles/jobs is pretty bleak. And it probably is unless sales people (driven by sales leaders/managers) change how we sell.

Stated differently, what the majority of sales people currently do creates little value to the customer. Unless we change significantly, customers will find other alternatives to help them buy.

After this very bleak set up, I’m extremely optimistic about the future of sales and selling! I think the demand for high value creating sales people will sky rocket, as a result the number of jobs for people that can fulfill this role will increase dramatically.

So the future is bright — but only for those sales people/leaders that can adapt to doing those things that create the greatest value for customers!

Here are some of my arguments:

1. We’ve long known that customers struggle to buy. Gartner data shows 53% of buying decisions end in no decision made. These are customers that have an established problem and a need to buy, and funding. But they fail to navigate their buying group to a decision. The underlying reasons have little to do with selecting a soluton, but more to do in aligning the priorities, agendas, needs of the buying group and getting support up the management food chain. Great sales people, facilitating the customer buying process can help more of these people successfully complete their buying journey. Think of it, we (collectively) have the opportunity to nearly double our revenues, not by finding more deals but by helping customers successfully navigate their buying journey.
2. With the introduction of Challenger, Insight Selling, Provocative Selling, we’ve learned the greatest opportunity is, perhaps, customers that need to change, but don’t yet recognize there may be better ways of achieving their goals. Sales people can play a tremendous role in driving new opportunity development by inciting prospect to change. But the skills, capabilities, and expertise to do this is very different than that which we seem to be developing. Not long ago, I suggested we change how we think of SDRs, in my post “My $500K SDRs.
3. More recent Gartner data shows customers struggling to make sense of information they look at in the buying process. The good news is the volume of high quality information about alternative solutions is abundant. Marketing has done a fantastic job (I can’t believe I’m writing those words) in developing high quality, relevant content. The bad news, is customers are even more confused, even slightly skeptical with the information they are receiving. They struggle to make sense of this information overwhelm, sorting through those things that are most important, relevant to them. The emerging opportunity for sales people in creating value with customers is to serve as “sensemakers,” helping customers sort through the information, understanding what’s most relevant to them. Gartner will be providing much more information on the sales person as sensemaking, but Nick Toman, provides a great starting point with his post: How Challenger Sales Organizations Should Make Sense Of Sense Making.
4. Along a parallel path with the folks at Gartner, I’ve been looking at the sales person as sensemaker, as well. As I look at the increasing complexity, rapid pace of change, overload, overwhelm, risk, and so forth, customers struggle with understanding and figuring out how best to achieve their goals. The sales person as sensemaker helps the customer better understand an cope with the complexity our buyers face. I’ve written about this a number of times, but the best starting points are: Turbulence and Fear of Buying, and Salesperson as Sensemaker.

The bottom line, is, our customers are struggling. They need help in understanding what they face in doing their jobs, identifying opportunities to grow and succeed, identifying threats they need to address, identifying things that enable them to improve and drive performance, or to just cope.

Those people who help customers do those things, those people who can create value with the customer in finding answers, those people who help customers make sense of what they face will be in high demand and highly valued by customers.

Customers urgently need sales people who can help!

The opportunity for both customers and sellers is phenomenal–it’s just different from what too many do now. Those sales people and organizations that make this transition will be those customers most value.

Embracing account-based marketing means focusing less on the traditional marketer’s favorite key metric—leads. While lead gen has a place in ABM, your goal is to shift away from stuffing the top of the funnel to focusing only on those accounts that have a high chance of converting.

As such, your top priorities will no longer be metrics like clickthrough rates, cost per lead, and cost per impression. Rather than trying to force lead gen metrics to fit your ABM strategy, reevaluate your approach to measurement so that it fits your new goals.

Alongside metrics like pipeline, closed-won deals, and revenue, there are five key categories that you should cover with your approach to ABM measurement—coverage, awareness, engagement, reach, and influence.

1. Coverage of ABM Data

After creating your target account list, the first metric you’ll want to track is how well your data covers the contacts within those buying teams. This isn’t about volume of data in your CRM. Rather, it’s all about maximizing data quality and relevance to ensure that every stage of the ABM process will be geared toward the right people at the right accounts.

In addition to basic contact information, you’ll want your coverage metric to include reviews of additional insights. This could include intent scoring, engagement history, or general overviews of the gaps in your database.

2. Awareness in Target Accounts

It’s the goal of every company to become known, liked, and trusted among its target audience. Even if you have the greatest products and services, you still face an uphill battle when trying to generate awareness among your high-priority accounts.

Traditionally, brand awareness has been difficult for marketers to measure quantitatively. This doesn’t necessarily change just because you shift your focus to account-based marketing.

However, all hope is not lost when trying to track awareness in target accounts. Two ways to measure awareness is through target account interactions and specific insights into traffic. Tracking how often contacts at your target accounts interact with your marketing and sales teams indicate the level of awareness your brand has among active buyers. And with certain analytics tools and third-party intent data, you can gain a better understanding of contact behavior both on your website and those of your competitors.

3. Engagement with Buying Teams

Tracking interactions to gauge brand awareness is one thing. The engagement category of ABM metrics takes things a step further to provide insight into when leads are qualified. There are different ways you can track engagement, but it essentially comes down to time. How much time are target contacts spending engaging with your content and sales team?

You could literally assign values to individual activities to track time spent engaging with your brand. Or, you could focus on more general activity tracking and score behavior the same way you’ve always scored leads. This data could come from your website activity, automated marketing metrics, product usage, social media engagement, or interactions with sales teams.

Taking engagement scores a step further with intent data will help create a more complete picture of target accounts so you can understand who to prioritize and when to reach out to them.

4. Reach Across Your Target Account List

There are different ways you can approach account-based marketing. There’s the narrow approach where you focus on a small number of high-value accounts. There’s a more mid-level approach where you target a higher volume of accounts with the expectation that conversion rates decrease. And then there’s the approach that’s most like lead gen, where you cast the widest net your team can support in an effort to reach as much of the active market as possible.

Tracking reach is about finding the waste in your ABM strategy (regardless of which approach you take). For example, personalized content is a hallmark of ABM. But are you finding more success with personalized eBooks as opposed to a webinar-based approach? Evaluating each aspect of your marketing campaigns will, over time, help you determine the most efficient ways to reach your target accounts.

5. Influence of Sales Outcomes

Are your ABM activities really influencing sales outcomes? That’s the million-dollar question for so many marketers as they try to optimize an ABM strategy.

In this category, you want to correlate marketing activities with metrics like deal velocity, win rates, retention, and overall customer satisfaction. As you continue to experiment with ABM tactics, you’ll generate insights into what exactly generates the best results for your business. And as you optimize the strategy according to these insights, you’ll close the gap between sales and marketing.

Supporting ABM with the Right Data

These ABM metric categories shouldn’t be viewed in siloes. Each one feeds into the next to support the overall success of your ABM strategy.

This is why it’s so important to create a strong foundation of data before diving head first into ABM execution. Having the right data will set you on the right path to track coverage, which in turn will help you maximize the performance of other KPIs as well.

Investing in third-party intent data can help you fill critical gaps in your databases that would otherwise hurt the performance of each ABM metric.

If you want to learn more about working with intent data, download our free report, Demystifying B2B Purchase Intent Data.

Many business leaders look at the marketing department as a “nice to have” or even consider it simply a “necessary cost center.”

At our B2B marketing agency, we believe that the marketing department plays a critical role in lead generation, nurturing prospects, and even closing deals.

In this blog post, we provide guidance on how to evaluate the value of your marketing department.

What is a revenue center?

A revenue center is a department that increases profitability or helps to grow the client base for an organization.

Traditionally, the sales department is seen as the only revenue generator in a company. However, when you consider that the marketing department oversees inbound marketing, content marketing and key messaging that drives leads and conversions directly on the website, the marketing team is often generating revenue as well.

How does a marketing team generate revenue?

There are a number of ways that a B2B marketing team generates revenue, including:

• Driving Leads
• Nurturing Leads
• Converting Prospects to Clients
• Retaining Clients
• Upselling Clients

Often, these activities are associated with sales, but today, these activities are often shared by sales and marketing and/or done in tandem. A marketing department has a variety of different channels available to perform these activities, including outbound marketing (direct mailings, radio ads, and print ads), inbound marketing (search engine optimization of a B2B website, blogging, and paid search ads), and event marketing (tradeshows, conferences, networking events, and client events).

If you don’t think your marketing department generates revenue, imagine trying to make sales with the following:

• No website or a poorly designed website with unclear messaging
• No email or direct mail campaigns
• No collateral or presentations that outline your value proposition for your sales team

How can marketing revenue generation be tracked?

The key to determining the value of your marketing efforts is to track all marketing activities. Regardless of whether a lead comes in through your website, a direct mail campaign, print ad, search engine ad, blog post, or networking event, it’s crucial to determine where that lead came from. Tracking lead generation from each channel varies, but there is often a way to trace it back to a particular campaign or activity.

Attribution to a lead source is beneficial in determining where leads come from but also the quality of leads that come from that source. For example, many inbound B2B website leads are typically farther along the sales process than those in a cold-calling campaign. Ideally, you will sit down once a month to review the leads generated for the previous months and the status of that lead. For many B2B companies, leads often take months to close, however, there may be status changes or progress toward a closing (such as demos, proposals, proposals to the C-suite, trials, negotiations, etc.).

What is the value of marketing to other internal teams?

As you consider the real value of your B2B marketing efforts, it’s important to consider not only the revenue generated by the marketing team but how the team impacts other departments in the organization. Here are a few other questions to consider:

• Does your marketing team drive inbound leads that boost revenue for the sales team?
• Is marketing streamlining lead nurturing processes through automation that enable the sales team to be more efficient?
• Does the sales team handoff MQL’s that are ready to talk to a salesperson (aka making that salesperson’s job easier?)
• Are the marketing efforts producing content pieces, like informative blogs, guides, and case studies, that educate prospects and move them along in the sales cycle?
• Does the marketing department vet inbound leads and disqualify leads that aren’t the right fit?

When the marketing team is enabled to work in tandem with the sales team, they not only help generate more revenue, they help save time on wasted activities, improve closing rates, and help to retain current clients or upsell existing customers.

When evaluating the value of your marketing team, it’s essential to not just consider the cost or the spend of marketing activities but to consider the incremental and additional revenue generated. In many cases, the marketing team is generating far more revenue than the allocated marketing budget.

Generating new leads is a big priority for B2B salespeople. In fact, many companies exist for the sole purpose of sourcing leads — and not just any leads but qualified leads actively in the market for your product or service.

Here, I’ll share how sourcing leads from existing reply emails can grow your list of best-fit leads. I’ll also share how automating this prospecting process gives you an even bigger competitive edge.

Lead Sourcing 101: A Crash Course

If you’re unfamiliar with the term “lead sourcing” or "email mining" you’re probably at least familiar with the concept. In the context of this article, lead sourcing is the process of reviewing replies (both human and automated) to your email campaigns and looking for new and updated lead or account data.

These replies often contain new, alternate, or replacement contacts, titles, phone numbers, and other valuable data you didn't previously have. The most common type of auto-responses includes:

• Out-Of-Office
• Left-the-Company
• Change of name/email address

Let's see lead sourcing in action with a typical “Out-Of-Office” reply, which accounts for 87% of all auto-responses:

By mining this single reply, we uncover:

• Mark’s title
• Mark’s cell phone number
• New contact: Stephanie’s title, email & phone number
• New contact: Bruce’s title, email & phone number
• Mark’s return to office date

That’s loads of good information, plus two net new contacts from just one reply. And this situation is far from an anomaly; on average, more than half of all “Out-Of-Office” replies contain an alternate contact.

What does that mean for your list building efforts? Consistently mining the replies to your email campaigns can yield 20% or more net new contacts annually.

7 Reasons to Mine Auto-Replies For List Building

It’s not just the sheer number of contacts added each year that matters, when list building. It’s also important to consider the quality of the new leads and information — and this is where using auto-responses to your existing email campaigns really gives you an edge. Here's how:

1. Discover best-fit leads in target accounts

One of the strongest reasons to build your database from campaign replies is that new leads you discover are "best-fit" leads. They are generated directly from within your target accounts — from the exact companies you're already engaging with and trying to expand into.

When you discover best-fit leads from email replies, they could be the very key influencers, gatekeepers, and the decision makers you want to get in front of.

2. Prevent database decay

In sales, one of the most frustrating things you’ll encounter is when you attempt to contact a lead only to find the information in your database is bad. Unfortunately, this is pretty common when you take into account that today's B2B databases decay at an incredible 70% annually.

Consider that when you pay for a lead list, that list is nothing but a flash report from … you guessed it … a database. By its nature, the second you get a list of leads, you’re already dealing with old data.

In contrast, information from campaign replies is as fresh as it gets. When a “Left-the-Company” reply hits your inbox, you know your old lead should be deleted and the replacement lead added.

When you find a new phone number in an “Out-Of-Office,” you know it's the best number for your lead as they just put it in their OOO a few days ago.

3. Increase connect rates

“Out-Of-Office” replies nearly always contain a return date. This information is an excellent way to set an appropriate time to contact the lead regarding your campaign. Set a date for a follow-up call or email one or two days after your lead.

At this point, they should have seen your initial campaign emails and be ready to discuss your offer. If the auto-response contained information about their whereabouts (vacation, seminar, etc.), you can use it as a topic to open the conversation if appropriate. For example, “Welcome back from Bali! What an incredible place. I can only imagine that’s making it 10X more difficult to get back to work. My name is …”.

4. Automate email mining to save time and amplify results

It’s pretty clear that in terms of the quality of leads and accuracy of data, email sourcing is a superior way to build your email list. However, the manual review of every single campaign reply and data entry into your CRM can be tedious, time consuming, and laden with human error. The solution is an automated reply email sourcing service that can help you realize all of these benefits without losing time to manual review.

5. Give more time back to your reps

I recently spoke with a prospect that told me her company gathers all of the sales development representatives at 3:00 PM every day to review auto-replies. Each team member manually reviews their auto-replies, identifies the valuable information, and enters it into their CRM. This company devotes 25% of the sales team’s time to leveraging the powerful data in replies.

The more efficient solution is an automated reply email sourcing service that runs seamlessly in the background without interrupting your regular course of business. It analyzes campaign replies to identify new contacts, clients who have left the company, and any data changes within the client record (titles, phone numbers, etc.).

Best of all, the data is automatically and instantly entered into your CRM. This effectively frees up to three hours of your salesperson's day so they can spend more time on what matters most: selling.

6. Instantly route human replies and cleanup your inbox

If you have a lot of contacts in your database, replies to your email campaigns can quickly create a disorganized mess in your shared inbox.

Aside from the challenge of the sheer number of replies, there’s nothing to differentiate a standard “Out-Of-Office” reply from a human reply from a decision maker. This is where automation comes in.

An automated reply email sourcing service will automatically identify, sort, and file each reply by type into nice, tidy folders in your shared inbox. In addition, human replies are automatically routed directly to the lead owner's inbox for immediate attention.

By eliminating the manual review and forwarding process, your sales reps can respond to human replies instantly and gain a timing advantage over competitors.

7. Identify valuable sales trigger events

In sales, we know that certain types of replies merit immediate action. Highest priority replies include human replies (described above) as well as “Left-the-Company” (LTC) replies. LTC replies should trigger a conversation with the new contact, as well as research where your former contact landed.

Because an automated email sourcing service sorts replies by type, all of the LTC emails will be in one folder, so you can easily prioritize your actions. Again, by immediately identifying and acting on an LTC, you can be the first one in front of the new contact, gaining a significant edge over your competition.

The Automated Bird Gets The Worm

Now you’ve seen how automated reply email mining can grow your lead list, improve your database health, clean up your inbox, and instantly prioritize human replies for you. But hopefully you've noticed another trend that automation provides — timing against your competitors.

Ultimately, when you cut out the time needed for manual reply review, the manual data entry into your CRM, and the dependence on a middle man to manually forward human replies, what you get is a system that sets you up to reach new or interested leads first, before your competitors.

We all want the opportunity to get more traffic and sales to our business website. There are several tactics out there that can improve your conversion rate and profitability short-term, but what about long-term solutions?

The best long-term solution to increase your sales involves boosting consumer engagement. People are far more likely to visit your website and make a purchase if they are engaged with your brand and values. You must establish your engagement channels early for maximum effectiveness. However, businesses that have been around for many years have found success by creating an engagement campaign that targets their existing audience.

We are going to look at multiple ways you can improve your consumer engagement for increased sales.

Start a Blog

Creating a blog is one of the first things you should do if you want more eyes on your website. Blogging causes a domino effect that typically ends in obtaining more customers and improving engagement.

When creating content for your website, make sure you focus on your niche and the keywords associated with your products and services. For example, someone interested in starting a gardening website would likely want to target the keyword “How to grow a garden.” Creating relevant content for your website improves your SEO ranking, which causes your website to appear higher on search engine results for your keywords.

Consumers searching your keywords are then more likely to find your website and related content. Once they discover your content, they will likely want to read what else you have to say about topics in this field. As they read, share, and comment on your posts, they are spreading awareness and engaging with your business.

Engage Using Social Media

Social media is designed for engaging with others. Businesses use their accounts to reach out to their target audience using various methods, including Facebook ads, contests, and participating in the comments section. It’s not uncommon for companies to actively communicate with their leads and customers in the comment section of their posts. When you talk to potential customers, they see your brand as “human-like,” which helps build a connection and loyalty. When you are frequently communicating with your audience, more people are likely to see this engagement, which could prompt them to go to your website. If they like what you’re offering, they could buy your product or service.

Giveaway campaigns are another excellent way to boost engagement and increase your sales. If you follow brands online, you’ve likely received an email letting you know about their competition. Depending on the brand and prize offered, you may have decided to enter the contest. Interactions like this are the cornerstones for successful engagement.

Source

Creating a contest translates to you, offering a prize to people who actively promote your brand. Most contest stipulations include liking and following their page on social media and tagging a few friends. This tactic helps spread awareness and could expose your brand to a broader audience. If you want to build an effective giveaway campaign, make sure to track your engagement with Google Analytics. Your analytics data will help you make informed decisions about engaging with your audience with future campaigns and content.

Implement Chatbot Technology

Chatbots have multiple functions, including customer support. However, did you know that you can use AI bots to improve your engagement? If you add chatbot technology to your website and social media page, you can prompt consumers to ask questions as soon as they land on your page or profile.

Potential customers that are still on the fence may decide to buy after getting information from your bot. You can direct consumers to your FAQ, pricing page, blog posts, and much more.

Source

Every time a consumer takes an extra step to talk to your bot, they are showing interest in your brand. You have to program your bot to give crisp, clear answers that help guild leads through your sales funnel. In the process, they are also building engagement and trust with your brand, which typically leads to more sales. Studies show that consumers expect answers to their questions in five minutes or less, and having a chatbot can ensure that they are getting their concerns addressed immediately.

Conclusion

There are countless ways to engage with your audience through your website, email, and social media. These tips are designed to help you forge a stronger connection with your audience in the hopes that they will become loyal customers.

As you build rapport and understand the needs of your audience, you’ll be able to make adjustments to your business model and engagement methods. The result is a passionate fan base that is invested in your business as well as increased sales and conversion rates.

There’s an old saying that you can’t teach an old dog new tricks. In other words, if someone has been doing something a certain way for years, they’ll never abandon those methods, no matter how outdated they become.

The truth is this:

That’s a bunch of nonsense.

Learning a new trick may be challenging and take a little more work, but that old dog can most certainly do it if you’re willing to put in the time. Nevertheless, this saying has become widely used in the world of sales to defend the old-school art of outside sales.

As technology has evolved, the way sales teams operate has evolved as well. Old outside sales practices like knocking on doors and attending events are becoming obsolete thanks to the power of digital communications and inside sales CRM solutions.

Even still, there’s a common belief that it’s impossible to transition your sales team from outside sales to inside sales. After all, once an outside sales rep, always an outside sales rep, right?

Not quite.

Just like you can teach your 12-year-old golden retriever to roll over (with some time and effort), you can teach your outside sales reps to become great inside sales reps. All of the experience they’ve gained through the years can carry over into the inside sales world with a little bit of training.

The big question you’re probably asking now is this:

How can I convince my outside sales team to embrace inside sales?

And we want to help you answer that question. This post is designed to be a how-to guide you can use to train your outside sales reps to become great inside sales reps. Start with these four things:

1) How to prospect online

“But Steli, if I’m not going to all of these events and knocking on doors, how on earth am I supposed to find qualified prospects?”

Here’s the truth: You’re probably going to get a question that looks real similar to this one when you first start to transition your outside sales reps into inside sales reps. How are you supposed to answer it, you ask?

Introduce them to the beautiful new world of online prospecting.

Gone are the days of exclusively offline prospecting, where the more events you showed your face at and the number of doors you knocked on equaled more prospects.

Online prospecting tools like LeadFuze, VoilaNorbert and Close will quickly become your new inside sales reps’ best friends. We even put together a list highlighting 15 free new online sales tools for prospecting that you should definitely check out to get the ball rolling.

To make sure your inside sales reps are putting their time to good use, create detailed processes that outline how to search for prospects online and what to do when they find good leads. These processes will guide your outside sales reps as they build their online prospecting skills during the transition to inside sales.

2) How to build rapport through a call or email

For your sales reps, the key to closing a deal is building a relationship with their prospect. The greater the rapport between them, the easier the sales process will be.

In the past, outside sales reps relied on golf outings and fancy dinners to build this rapport.

While a round of golf and a round of cocktails could still be effective, the best inside sales reps understand that the same relationship can be built online or over the phone. Instead of spending a full day pampering a prospect, your sales reps can achieve the same result in a fraction of the time for a fraction of the cost.

Here’s the best part about all of this for you:

Your outside sales reps are likely already great at relationship building.

The only thing you’ll need to teach them is how to move this process from the golf course to the email inbox or a phone call. Once they master the art of building rapport remotely, they’ll be able to connect with 10x the prospects they could before.

3) How to be more productive with calls

If your best outside sales reps can master the art of inside sales, they could bring in 10x the results while putting in the same number of hours each week as before. Think about it...

What used to take a full day or more can now be done in an hour or less.

Using the old methods, if you wanted to connect with a hot lead to talk about a deal, you would probably fly out to meet them and devote an entire day—or more—to wining and dining them.

That entire process can now take place online or over the phone. That means your sales rep won’t have to spend hours traveling, freeing them up to talk to more prospects every day.

Of course, those newly freed-up hours mean nothing if your sales reps aren’t using them effectively. The best way to maximize efficiency and productivity is—you guessed it—to create detailed sales processes that your reps can follow with every prospect. And have the tools in place that enable them to focus on the right activities: communicating with prospects.

Our inside sales CRM has a built-in Power Dialer that will enable your sales reps to call more of your leaders in a shorter amount of time than ever before, and the predictive dialer will take things even farther.

After moving our team to Close's built-in Power Dialer, we saw a 60% increase in outbound call volume and a 28% increase in outbound call duration." - Sarah Haselkorn, Sales Ops at MakeSpace

If they’re spending less time knocking on doors and more time on the phone, you want to make sure those hours are being put to good use.

4) How to master the online demo

One of the biggest worries that outside sales reps have about transitioning to inside sales is that their presentations won’t be as effective in an online demo. What about all those subtle gestures they used to influence prospects and help close the deal?

How are your reps supposed to sell anything if they can’t rely on all the presentation tactics they’ve used successfully in the past?

The truth is, your sales reps simply need to learn to leverage those same tactics in an online meeting. We shared a post not too long ago on how to deliver an online product demo that actually sells, and it breaks down what you need to focus on when building a successful product demo.

In that post, you’ll learn:

• How to structure and open your demo
• The rules of effective demo engagement
• How to deliver a compelling presentation
• How to deal with the various scenarios you might encounter when demoing to a prospect
• And finally, how to close the demo

Once again, the best way to ensure your new inside sales reps are maximizing their productivity is to create detailed processes and provide frameworks they can build on. Instead of asking them to put together an online product demo or presentation from scratch, use that product demo guidelines post to develop a proven template they can use as a starting point.

Want more advice on giving winning product demonstrations? Get a free copy of Product Demos That Sell!

Now over to you

It may not always be easy to transition your outside sales reps to inside sales, but it’s definitely not impossible. The benefits of having a high-functioning inside sales team are hard to ignore. The amount of time and money your sales team will save on travel alone should make it an easy decision.

Focus first on the four key points we talked about here, and the transition will be much easier to navigate.

If you want to make sure your new inside sales reps are mastering the art of the digital demo, download a free copy of our book Product Demos That Sell today and build a winning demo framework of your own!

DOWNLOAD PRODUCT DEMOS THAT SELL

Email marketing is one of the first things business owners think about when creating a website. It’s not hard to imagine why they feel this way. Marketers use email every single day to reach out to their audience to build trust, educate, and convert. Some would argue that it’s much more difficult to navigate customers through a sales funnel without email communication.

We want to take a look at some key aspects to consider if you’re looking for a way to grow your business using this marketing style. Our tips range between making sure your messages get delivered, to collecting feedback and segmenting leads.

Let’s dive in!

Check Deliverability Options

The first thing you should check is your backend email settings. None of the other steps matter if your emails are not reaching their targeted audiences. You’re going to want to make sure you’re using a reliable protocol that ensures email deliverability.

Platforms like WordPress default their users to send emails with PHP. The problem with this protocol is it can cause a conflict in the communication between the email sender (you) and the server. Before emails make it to their destination, they pass through a server to ensure that the IP addresses match up and that the IP isn’t blacklisted. A conflict on the server could cause your email to end up in the recipient’s spam folder, or worse, it might not get delivered at all.

SMTP (Simple Mail Transfer Protocol) is a more efficient way to send out emails to your leads and customers. SMTP helps transmit your email to the server without causing a conflict. Fewer conflicts mean you’ll be able to reach more consumers, which translates to a more effective email marketing campaign.

Segment Lead Lists

Once you see an increased subscriber count, start thinking about segmenting your lead lists. Segmenting leads allows you to target customers based on their personal preferences and personalities. This technique will allow you to market products personalized for the consumer.

For example, if you operate an eCommerce storefront that sells clothing, you can ask subscribers to choose the items they are more interested in hearing about. In this case, you’ll find that you can create a segmented list for tops, pants, skirts, shoes, accessories, and much more. Depending on what the user selects, they could appear on multiple campaigns at once.

Personalizing your marketing campaigns helps ensure that customers see content that’s relevant to their interests and lives. Building a secure connection with your audience through lead nurturing is an essential step in the marketing process. Think about the products and services you sell and create additional customer personas based on those interests.

Provide Value

Far too many marketers don’t provide their leads with value within their email marketing campaign. There are countless opportunities to reward and engage your audience for being subscribers. If you have a blog with tons of great content, why not consider sending your leads a list of the Editor’s Pick for the week? If you’re segmenting your leads, you can create various content lists for the audience you want to target.

You could also send out monthly coupons to your subscribers. Not only will they feel good knowing that they are being rewarded for signing up, but it will encourage them to use their coupon — which translates to a sale. This situation is ideal for conducting a contest. Giveaways are known for improving engagement and increasing sales. A monthly raffle will keep your audience interested in what you’re offering and help you build a presence on social media.

Ask for Feedback

Finally, if you want to master email marketing and your business strategy, ask your audience. The people who follow you on social media, buy your products, and subscribe to your email list have a bond with your brand. If you ask them about their experience through email, you can improve your campaigns and your UX design on-site.

Make sure to ask specific questions to gather accurate information. You may want to ask questions like:

• How can we improve our product?
• What information would you like to see in our email newsletters?
• Are there any topics you’d like to see us cover in our blog in the future?

These questions give you an idea of what customers expect from your brand. You can use this data to create new products and marketing campaigns and improve the quality of your website.

Conclusion

Email marketing is a complex strategy that takes time to master. These four tips will help you start your campaign on a strong foundation. As your business grows, you’ll begin to get a feel for the type of content your subscribers want to see.

The most important thing to remember when trying to master email marketing is there is no one right. There are plenty of great techniques available, but you have to learn and adjust over time. Now you have the groundwork you need to get out there and create a killer email marketing campaign.

Sell It Like Serhant. How to sell more, earn more and become the ultimate sales machine.Ryan Serhant. 2018.  ISBN 9780316449571.  The author is completely unknown to me but evidently he is very famous in New York real estate.  Fairly typical rags to selling start story.   IMHO he could be the Zig Ziglar for the Millenial crowd.  His work ethic is to be admired and emulated. His success is due to single mindedness and very hard work. Simple concise text that is a good get out there and go kind of read.

Have you ever wondered how other salespeople are tackling their roles? Structuring their days? Overcoming their challenges?

In this series, we’re going behind the scenes with top salespeople to get the inside scoop. (You’re welcome!)

Today, we’re pulling back the curtain on a VP Sales in an early-stage, high-growth company, and for that, we talked to Collin Cadmus of Aircall.

About Collin Cadmus

Company Name: Aircall

Title: VP Sales

City/Country: New York, NY

What You Sell/Quick Pitch: Aircall is a cloud-based phone system for teams that integrates into your existing tools.

Sales Cycle Timeline: < 30 days

Number of people reporting to you: 35

A Day in the Life of an Early-Stage, High-Growth VP Sales

Pre-Work Routine 

Contrary to popular advice, the first thing I do in the morning is look at my phone and check in on social, mainly Linkedin and Twitter. 

This gets my brain going, helps me wake up, and gets me thinking about sales without diving straight into work. 

From there I open up Slack and respond to any urgent messages from folks in our Paris office who are already 6 hours into the day. Then I get ready to head out to the office. 

During-Work Routine

I kick off every Monday morning with our weekly Revenue Rally, a stand-up meeting with Sales, CS, and Demand Gen. This is my favorite part of the week because it’s my one opportunity to address everyone all together. It’s a quick meeting, less than 15 minutes, and I use the time to recognize great performance from the previous week, highlight where we stand on key metrics, share important updates, and set expectations for the week. 

I wish I could say my days and weeks are structured rigidly, but it’s nearly impossible given how fast we move and the number of curveballs thrown at me each day. 

My number one priority is supporting my team, so if they need me, there are very few instances where I won’t stop what I’m doing to help them in the moment. I’m not hiding in a corner office and I don’t give people a hard time for interrupting me. 

While this practice kills my ability to follow a rigid schedule, it’s the only way to be a great VP Sales at an early-stage, high-growth company. 

While the structure of each day can change based on the needs of my team and the business, I do have many routines: 

• 1on1’s with my direct reports
• SDR and AE weekly meetings
• Blocked-off time to focus on future planning, brainstorming strategy, analyzing metrics, etc. 

I also make sure to take time each day to walk the floor, check in with reps, and stay close to what’s happening on the front lines. 

We also take lunchtime very seriously at Aircall. With our French roots, it’s frowned upon to eat at your desk. This was a change for me and, at times, I feel guilty lounging and enjoying lunch with the team while the workload is massive, but we make a point to sit together and enjoy lunch every day. 

Post-Work Routine

I love what I do, so work doesn’t typically have an end time for me, but I do make a point to get out of the office at a decent hour, take time to decompress, and have time to think. 

Spending 9–10 hours a day in an office with zero quiet time leaves no opportunity for thinking, so I need to do this after-hours. 

My nights are usually spent thinking about the big decisions I need to make and reviewing my schedule for the upcoming days to make sure I’m allocating my time appropriately. 

Finally, 1–2 hours before bed, I completely disconnect from work. I try to spend this time reading, at the gym, catching up with family, friends, etc., or getting some value from my Netflix account. 

Unique Details About Your Routine

I hear a lot of sales leaders talk about how structured their days are, but honestly, I don’t buy it. Perhaps if you’re running a later stage sales org that has years of structure and process in place it’s possible, but the life of an early-stage VP Sales is chaotic, and I’m perfectly fine with that. In fact, it’s what I really love about the work. 

Inside My Head

What’s the one app you can’t live without and why? Aircall, of course. 

Name one unsung hero to your day-to-day and why: Our Office Management Team, Whitney Minor and Emily Ide. Of the 235 people at Aircall, there’s no question that I’m by far the most annoying when it comes to all things office space. 

In an effort to serve my team, I am relentless about making sure they have everything they need from equipment to snacks, to organic energy drinks, to the perfect temperature in each room. 

For me, those details are tremendously important for enabling a high-performance sales team and I couldn’t do it without Whitney and Emily. 

What is the one thing you can’t do your day without? Guru Lite organic energy drink. I even hauled a stash all the way to Morocco for our annual offsite. 

What’s the one piece of advice you wish you had when you were 22? I’m fortunate enough to have amazing parents who have given me every solid piece of advice a person could ask for, but I definitely wasn’t wise enough to listen to it all. 

If I could rewind time, I’d make sure to acknowledge that life isn’t fair, not for anyone, and I can’t ever expect it to be. Managing those expectations could have better prepared me for the tough times, of which I’ve had many. 

You have one communication channel to sell through that you can use for the rest of your life, and nothing else. What do you pick? The phone. More specifically, Aircall. 

 

The post A Day in the Life of an Early-Stage, High-Growth VP Sales appeared first on Sales Hacker.

Research shows that a face-to-face request is 34 times more effective than one made via email. Field sales representatives understand the value of in-person interactions, as they spend most of their workdays on the road meeting with clients and prospects.

These outside sales reps have honed a different skill set than their inside sales counterparts, playing a more consultative role in the buying process and performing hands-on tasks to drive deals forward.

Field sales managers are responsible for keeping their reps’ productivity and morale as high as possible. Here we’ll discuss three strategies for making field sales teams successful and helping reps reach their fullest potential.

Empower reps with data

Sales managers can think of data as ammunition in their battle to win a deal. Field sales reps need several data points that they can access on the fly to help them do their jobs more effectively.

In order to best prepare for a meeting, reps need to know how a prospect has already engaged with their company to assess where they are in the buying process. Though the types of data field sales reps utilize are generally prospect-centric, it also pays to have data points about the company and its products readily available.

The following are examples of useful data points for field sales teams to take advantage of throughout the sales cycle:

• • Pieces of marketing content the prospect has interacted with
  • The average number of touchpoints required and average length of the sales cycle for closing deals
  • The prospect’s product usage during the trial period (if applicable)
  • Information about the latest company and product updates
  • Data on product usage as reported by other customers
  • Buyer personas and other marketing collateral
  • History of interactions thus far with the prospect

Even if they’re privy to all the best data sources, reps can’t harness their benefits if they’re not easily accessible.

Use mobile-first tools

You wouldn’t bring a baseball bat to a tennis match. Similarly, field sales reps wouldn’t use tools designed for people who work in an office full-time as part of their daily workflow. Instead, mobile-optimized tools enable reps to work more efficiently by having a responsive user interface and streamlined data management schema that makes accessing key information painless.

Almost all salespeople use a CRM, but field sales teams, in particular, should be using one that’s designed with mobility in mind. A rep should be able to instantly pull up key client details and documents from their smartphone without the hassle of needing to use their laptop. They should also be able to record new information received during a meeting into their CRM while they’re on the go, cutting down on their time spent doing administrative data entry tasks at the end of their day.

Moreover, field sales teams should choose tools with offline capabilities so that spotty wifi doesn’t prevent reps from getting work done. Finally, the importance of GPS for outside sales cannot be overstated. It’s essential for helping reps with route planning, identifying opportunities in the nearby area, and devising better sales territories.

Mobile tools are also great for bringing an otherwise dispersed team together.

Foster collaboration

Though the nature of outside sales is very social, field sales reps still run the risk of becoming isolated from their peers. This can be discouraging for salespeople who are inherently competitive or who want to feel like they are part of a team.

Besides feelings of loneliness, a lack of collaboration can hurt performance in field sales teams as well. Research shows that 53% of salespeople rely on their peers for tips on how to improve at their job. Hence it’s critical for managers to create channels of communication for their reps.

Instant messaging is a simple way to keep field sales reps connected, as it’s less clunky than email. Managers can also use it as a means of coaching reps who get less facetime with their supervisors than inside sales reps might.

Managers can implement sales competitions to keep reps working towards a common goal and give them the opportunity to earn bragging rights amongst the team. If the budget allows, these competitions can also include a compensation incentive. In addition, leaderboards (ideally in a digital format) are a great way to support healthy competition and connectedness.

It’s also up to managers to schedule regular check-ins with reps to address any issues they might be experiencing in the field. In the same vain, managers can organize team-building events to foster a sense of community within the outside sales force.

Recap

Outside sales teams have the luxury of meeting prospects in-person and better understanding the complexities of a deal. However, the nature of their work poses some unique challenges, namely dissociation from HQ and from their team members.

Empowering reps with data in the field enables them to make the most out of every meeting. Using tools that are mobile-friendly make their workflows more efficient and allow them to spend more time selling and building relationships. Creating a community within a field sales force encourages peer-to-peer coaching and competition.

If managers are cognizant of the hurdles and opportunities their field sales force faces, they’ll be well-positioned to drive the team towards success.

The post Pro Tips for Making Field Sales Teams Successful appeared first on OpenView.

The story of inappropriate social contact is as old as social media itself. With the ubiquity of social media-connected smartphones and voice-activated robot assistants, opportunities to fumble a connection are plentiful. This problem is compounded when your day-to-day involves attempting to convince people to give you their time… and hopefully a sale.

True, social media and its bottomless pits of data are a treasure trove for the salesperson. However, there is no quicker way to turn a potential customer off from ever interacting with your business than to show up in their social media feeds uninvited. Especially if you’re adding nothing but noise to the conversation.

In their Rainmaker 2019 roundtable discussion, Barbara Giamanco, CEO of Social Centered Selling; Kat Moore, Regional Sales Manager at Akamai Technologies; Samantha McKenna, Head of Enterprise Sales at LinkedIn; and Morgan Ingram, Director of Sales Execution and Evolution at J. Barrows Sales training discussed some ways to you can add value on social.

How Do You Define Social Selling?

Almost no one is excited when a salesperson shows up at their door uninvited. As a general rule, people don’t like to be bothered in their private spaces. The good thing about social selling is that the public nature of social media gives you a reason to enter the conversations. Potential customers are already openly giving you the information you need to make sure that you are adding value to their lives. All you need to do is listen.

Morgan sees social listening as a crucial step in sales. Speaking at #Rainmaker19, he said: “…I’m trying to understand what my buyers are talking about, what my industry is talking about, and what other peers in my industry are talking about.”

Social selling is about picking up cues as to what your customers’ needs are. By taking the time to listen, you can understand what their pain is, what they’re excited for, and what they’re passionate about. Done correctly, you can begin to build better, deeper connections, or at the very least speed up the rate at which those relationships get built.

Kat cautions that social selling isn’t meant to replace phone or email in your sales cadence, but rather to enhance it. If you take the time to understand the conversation, you add a valuable touchpoint to your relationship with your prospect.

Gaining Insight

“Look at social selling as a lever. It’s one of the many tools in your toolkit, it’s not an all in one thing,” says Samantha. “If you look at the most successful reps, the ones that I’ve managed are always aggressive social sellers… [LinkedIn] is a social listening tool, so you’re leveraging data intelligence insights.”

While you’re not just going to slide into someone’s DMs and earn a meeting, LinkedIn can be a valuable step in a sales cadence. The professional nature of the network means that it’s not unexpected for someone to reach out to a customer through the platform. Kat finds a three-prong approach (voicemail, email, and LinkedIn connection) is most effective to maximize coverage and make sure the customer sees you’re reaching out.

“Social media helps you look at the different contacts that you’re going after and learn their story and understand about them. “It helps you understand more about them, which can help you break down barriers.” – Kat Moore, Regional Sales Manager @ Akamai Technologies

The opportunity to network in specific groups via LinkedIn can be an enormous asset as well. Pay attention to the groups your potential customers are joining, and join them too. Those discussions are value sources on information about specific industries and roles you’re targeting and can be an asset in your process.

When you do reach out, use the information you’ve been able to gather. Address the problems they’ve outlined specifically. By focusing on specific pains a potential customer is experiencing, you show that you’re listening and invested. The last thing you want is to be perceived as a stereotypical ‘spray and pray’ salesperson.

LinkedIn for Lead Gen

The panel discussed four practical ways salespeople can use LinkedIn in the lead generation process:

1. If you have LinkedIn Premium, you can leverage Insights to understand how fast teams within a company are growing and hiring and recent additions at the executive level. Another way to gauge hiring is to find a company’s posts in the Jobs tab. If you’re targeting HR leaders, for example, look at how fast the human resources team is hiring. If they’re growing rapidly, leadership probably doesn’t have enough time in their day. Use that to inform your approach. Focus on how you can help them save time.

2. One way to stand out on Linkedin is by using the new voice messages feature. Morgan conducted a case study where he left 100 Linkedin voice messages. He got 41 responses and 18 meetings! The reason he believes it was so successful is that it’s unique. “You can get in, grab someone’s attention, and explain the value you offer,” Morgan explained. Full disclosure: you can only do this with first degree connections.

3. When you make the move to send an invitation to connect on LinkedIn, personalize your message. Most business leaders get between a ton of invitations each day. If you don’t give some context, you’re just some random person to them. Why would they accept? Don’t just throw in a “Hey – I’d love to connect!” Show some effort and interest in the person by including a personalized note that mentions something about their business or industry, maybe a challenge or observation you’ve made.

4. When you share content, make sure you do two important things. First, look at the comments and respond to them. It shows that you’re genuine in wanting to share knowledge and start a discussion. Second, go back and click on the views (right under the like button) and see which companies the people who looked at your post are from. If they viewed your post, that might be a sign that you should be prospecting them.

Be Mindful

Social media is a wasteland of poor grammar and ill-advised diatribes. Don’t give in to the immediacy of social posting – take your time. It’s important to put your best foot forward (always, but specifically for social selling). For Samantha McKenna, that means making sure her team is paying more attention to grammar, and crafting engaging subject lines and opening sentences that convey the weight of the ideas contained within the message. Here’s her advice:

“Your subject line should always have some element of what I love to call ‘show me you know me.’”

When it comes time to make the ask, you can begin to tie it all together. Morgan Ingram has a formula that goes from intention to CTA. It shows that not only is he invested in the project but that he’s also tuned in to the client’s needs.

He outlined his method as follows:

“I normally say I was researching, I saw identified, I analyze, I browse, I looked. That means that I have some intention, then I talk about what I found, and from there I tie it in with: “We’ve talked to a lot of VPs of Sales, VPs of Marketing, Chief Security Officer, IT, etc.” Whatever your persona is, I relate it back to a use case-specific example from that actual industry and then to how our training applies or your solution applies. Then I go to the call to action.”

Social selling can be a tricky situation, but you can avoid blazing the wrong trail if you are committed to listening closely and always acting with intention. Here are a few more resources to help you maximize social in your sales process:

• How to Optimize Your LinkedIn Profile for Social Selling
• 5 Social Selling Tips and Tricks
• Using LinkedIn to Dominate Any Sale {Video}
• Step Right Up with LinkedIn Sales Navigator

 

The definition of the word “hustle” (as I know it) includes the idea of working with a sense of urgency. The word hustle has lost something. Now it is used to describe entrepreneurial behavior or endeavors. Many of these endeavors die from the very lack of hustle necessary to acquire enough clients or customers fast enough to survive. There is little sense of urgency, and much of our actions now show up in mediums like email instead of more powerful—and more useful–mediums. There is currently an urgent need for greater urgency.

Results Now Are Better Than Results Later

Let’s assume you play the lottery called “Powerball.” (I know you don’t really play the Powerball and the only bet you make is on yourself, but this is a hypothetical). By some great fortune, you win a great fortune. The office where you need to fill out the forms and collect your new-found wealth opens at 8:00 AM. What time do you show up to receive your winnings?

I imagine you are sitting in the parking lot hours before the first employee shows up to open the lottery office. You would rather have the money sooner rather than later. You would want to pull that result forward in time. If you agree with these statements, then you should work to obtain that same outcome in every other area of your life.

If it takes twelve months to nurture and win your dream client, starting today is better than starting tomorrow. The sooner you begin the process, the sooner you produce the result. Waiting to take action move the result further into the future when you should want to pull it forward in time. You pay the penalty when you are lazy, distracted, or procrastinate. You pay an even more massive penalty when you don’t know what you want, don’t have goals, and fail to build a plan to achieve them.

Speed Acquisition of Results and Opportunities

You have no doubt heard of a vicious cycle, that downward spiral you find yourself in where one bad event leads to the next. You may not know, however, that a vicious cycle has an opposite called a virtuous cycle. In a virtuous cycle, one good event leads to another and another. It’s an upward spiral of higher results and rewards.

The sooner you create the first positive result, the sooner you produce the second one. You can’t start the process of creating a virtuous cycle if you don’t start. The speed at which you generate the results is the speed of your spiral. If you don’t work with urgency, the space between successes means your upward spiral will crawl up instead of racing in that direction. Urgency allows you to narrow the space between results, and as they get closer together, you create a flywheel.

As you produce results and create success, you are provided with more opportunities. Those opportunities accelerate your success even more. Urgency comes with immense advantages. Sloth, apathy, cynicism, and self-doubt come at a price that no one should have to bear. Many bear it while incorrectly believing urgency would require more of them.

Urgency Creates a Competitive Advantage

There is a famous saying that goes something like, “Slow and steady wins the race.” Apparently, the person who said this has never actually run a race. Or perhaps they had just read Aesop’s fables. The point of the saying is that slow and steady beats fast and sporadic, a position no one would deny. The truth, however, is that fast and steady wins the race.

Urgency creates a competitive advantage. Moving sooner and faster than your competition gives you an advantage. In markets, we call this first-mover advantage, where a company makes the market and captures share before any of their competitors (or would-be competitors) has a chance to respond. In sales, the first person to gain a meeting and shape their dream client’s view of their challenges or opportunities tends to win. There is research I have seen cited (without ever seeing the data myself) that suggests that the first person that returns a call also tends to win. Their call causes their prospect to stop calling other companies to look for help (a steep penalty to pay for moving too slow).

If you want success sooner, you must produce results sooner. If you want to produce results sooner, you need to act with a sense of urgency.

The post Success: The Urgent Case for Greater Urgency appeared first on The Sales Blog.

Emails live and die by their calls to action (CTAs). A good email marketing call to action is critical to success; it’s the catalyst that spurs sales. CTAs have evolved over the years, and keeping abreast of current trends is a great way to ensure your email marketing is effective. To that end, here are contemporary tips for crafting powerful email CTAs plus examples you can use to yield better results.

Begin at the end

The call to action should be the first thing you write when you draft a new email campaign. That’s because the entire goal of your email is to get readers to click your CTA and take the next step in the purchasing process.

When you write your CTA first, it’s easy to design the rest of your email to draw readers’ eyes to your call to action and motivate response.

Think of your email as a journey. Your subject line entices readers to open your email. Your body copy and images work to create desire and excite potential customers. Your email call to action is the natural next step and, when everything is in sync, readers will be looking for it because they’re ready to act. That action doesn’t necessarily need to be a sale, though that is likely your end goal.

A series of emails might work to foster trust and therefore include different types of CTAs in each installment. For example, the first email might invite subscribers to learn more about your company’s mission, so your CTA could be a “learn more” button. The second email might lend social proof, so your CTA might lead to your website’s press page. The third email, then, might promote a special discount offer with a CTA to “shop now.”

In the first of our email call to action examples, you can see how Grow.com (below) uses a CTA that invites readers to download a free cheat sheet. They’re not asking customers to buy now, but their end goal is still a sale: They want you to read the cheat sheet and be motivated to try their service.

The below example from Airbnb illustrates how CTAs can be used to introduce readers to your community. It invites engagement and direct interaction without being overly promotional. Of course, the end goal is to land a sale and convert lifelong customers. Note how the email incorporates multiple CTAs.

Single vs. multiple email call to actions

Some marketers feel a single call to action is the best strategy. The logic is that a single CTA allows you to focus your email content on achieving a singular goal, while multiple CTAs can be distracting. With too many options, subscribers aren’t sure what to do next and they ultimately delete your email without clicking anything.

In this example, Dropbox uses a single CTA to drive clickthroughs:

The single-CTA strategy is sound, but there are times when multiple CTAs can be incredibly effective. In fact, multiple CTAs can add personalization to your email and increase your clickthrough rate.

Let’s say you operate an online clothing store. You want to send an email that promotes a special time-limited discount. Your customer demographics include men, women and parents of young children. If you have multiple email lists segmented by those demographics, a single CTA in each email might be a good idea. However, it’s unlikely your lists are segmented like that, so instead you can offer three CTA buttons: “shop men,” “shop women” and “shop kids.” That way your subscribers identify with the CTA that best fits them and can quickly click to see the products they’re most interested in.

Here, Express uses multiple CTAs for men and women:

Another example? Let’s say you have many different types of products: shoes, jackets, shorts, etc. One option is to assign each its own CTA. In this email, Ruche uses multiple CTAs to appeal to shoppers interested in different product types:

This strategy can apply to many different types of businesses. Run an online pet supply store? Add different CTAs for dog lovers and cat lovers. Sell automotive accessories? Add different CTAs by accessory type or vehicle make.

You have options as you build your CTAs. The best way to know which work best is to test them, which leads us to our next point.

A/B test email marketing calls to action with a CTA-test matrix

Data-driven marketing is the best way to fine-tune your emails and consistently improve results. You can run split tests, or A/B tests, to see which email variants perform best. It’s easy to do with a CTA-test matrix.

With a CTA test, you identify a goal and test different versions of your email to see which yields better results. For example, you might wonder whether an email with a single CTA or multiple CTAs will perform better. In most cases, though, you’ll be testing a single element: which color button gets the most clicks, which button text works best and which button placement performs better.

Map the results in a table to make design decisions that improve your email click rate:

In the above example, you can see that on 8/1/17 we ran a test to see which button color increased click rates. Blue was the control (A), which means it was the color that was already being used. Red was the test (B). The results? The control won, so we’ll continue to use a blue button in that email.

In the second test, on 8/7/17, we tested the text “Read More” versus the control “Learn More.” In this case, the test beat the control. Since “Read More” won, it will become the control and we can test other variations against it to see if we can find one that performs even better.

Develop email CTAs from the reader’s point of view

Many email marketing CTAs use the second person point of view. For example:

• Subscribe Now
• Claim Your Prize
• Shop Now
• Learn More
• Reserve Your Table

However, studies show that the first-person voice yields a 90 percent better clickthrough rate than second-person voice. First-person lends the impression that the reader is in control and adds a level of personalization to your call to action. For example:

• Sign Me Up
• Claim My Prize
• Find My Perfect Style
• I Want To Know More
• Reserve My Table

See the difference? It’s easy to shift your calls to action to first person perspective: simply replace “you” and “your” with “I,” “me” and “my.”

Give it a try. Chances are you’ll realize a significant boost in clickthrough rate.

Here’s an example abandoned cart email from DoggyLoot that uses first person perspective to encourage subscribers to check out:

This tactic is used again in this opt-in/opt-out email by Redbubble:

Use power words (and have some fun with it)

Your CTA verbiage should reflect the message of your email body copy. Remember, a good CTA is a natural and expected next step in the email journey. Use your body copy to create desire, stir emotion and lend personalized meaning to your message; then, use your CTA to spur readers into action.

Use your test matrix to see which CTAs perform best. Not sure where to start? Try any of these proven CTA power words:

• Shop
• Contact
• Save
• Reserve
• Find
• Discover
• Free
• Buy
• Join
• Upgrade
• Now
• Get
• Claim
• Book
• Create
• Give
• Explore
• Add
• Try
• Sign Up
• View

Another contemporary email marketing CTA trend is to have some fun with your button copy. Instead of using a common CTA like “shop now,” this call to action by Rent The Runway reads “get the party started.”

Here’s another fun example by Public Desire: “Get it or regret it.”

And another one by Banana Republic: “get fresh.”

Your email call to action plays a major role in the success of your marketing strategy. Use these tips to craft modern email CTAs that increase clicks, generate leads and boost sales.

Missing quota because your pipeline is thin? And you can’t find a quick remedy to source new leads. You aren’t alone. Of salespeople, 40% view B2B sales lead generation as the most difficult part of their jobs.

In turn, the remaining 60% are able to populate their pipelines with quality leads and crack the end of the month.

How do they do it?

Read on a roundup of tips and tactics from sales pros and real-world examples to bring in new leads.

Table of Contents

• What are B2B sales leads?
• B2B Sales Lead Statistics
• 7 B2B Sales Lead Strategies to Start From
• 9 B2B Lead Generation Tips from Experts

Sourcing B2B leads requires you to understand a company’s goals as well as the individual’s. Not only are you conducting outreach to individuals, but you must also find organizations that are a good fit for your solution.

In many ways, this makes prospecting easier — but the budgets, stakeholders, and gatekeepers you encounter throughout the sales cycle can make finding the right B2B leads that much more important.

Before we move further, benchmark yourself against these three B2B sales landscape stats. Maybe you’re doing quite right, and there’s no need to stress over it.

B2B Sales Lead Statistics

According to recent HubSpot data, sales companies are facing both budget crunches and becoming more risk averse — 70% of sales professionals say that their budgets are being scrutinized more, and 62% say their company is taking fewer risks.

Interestingly, while just 15% of marketers say they’re facing challenges with traffic and lead generation, one of the top challenges cited by marketing teams is making the best use of these leads. In other words, getting great leads is just the start of reciprocal B2B relationships.

It’s also worth noting that B2B leads are expanding their research repositories. While they value data provided by potential partners, research firm Gartner reports that B2B buyers find third-party interactions — sources of data not owned by B2B companies — 1.4x more valuable than information from companies themselves.

As a result, lead generation has become an omnichannel effort that combines both first- and third-party data for best results.

7 B2B Sales Lead Strategies to Start From

If you’re not sure where to begin with B2B sales lead generation, these seven strategies are a great way to get started.

If you’re interested in reading more about how to grow your pipeline, check out our ultimate guide.

1. Set up a lead bot.

Strategic Account Director Jack Matsen saw a 38% increase in demos booked within six months of implementing a lead bot.

Matsen says, “Our bots collect information that gives us time to come prepared with potential solutions before we walk into meetings with new prospects. Having this information ultimately leads to better, more beneficial conversations.”

It’s important to identify which pages you’ll install lead bots on, what you’ll say, and how you’ll route those leads. If you have a lot of organic traffic coming to your pricing page, or you notice this page is a high converter for you, drop a lead bot there to engage with a higher number of leads.

Make sure the language you’re using with your lead bot is friendly and conversational. In other words, don’t start a conversation with, “Hello, how can I help you today?” Instead, try, “Hello, thanks for stopping by our pricing page! Can I answer any questions about our three pricing tiers?”

Think of HubSpot's example. The lead bot greets you with a straightforward message designed to convert and bring in new leads with less friction. HubSpot’s team also uses smart CTA buttons to guide the lead down the pipeline.

And, once a prospect answers a “qualifying question,” such as “Chat with sales,” have your bot route the lead to the correct rep so a live conversation can take place.

2. Join or contribute to X chats.

X chats are when a group of people meet on X (formerly Twitter) to discuss a certain topic, trend, or interest area using an agreed-upon hashtag. For example, if you sell a PPC tool, you might join the weekly #PPCChat, in which chat runners or guest hosts share a discussion topic ahead of time, and industry folks share their thoughts and questions.

Source

The format of X chats is for the host to share a series of ordered questions (e.g., “Q1: What’s your biggest pain point with your current PPC tool?”), and participants reply in kind (e.g., “A1: My biggest pain point is competitive spend.”).

If you want to reply to someone’s answer or question — like the one above — start by replying directly to the question asker’s question. From there, here’s what NOT to do in an X chat:

• X chat lead: “A1: My biggest pain point is competitive spend.”
• Sales rep: “A1: I sell a PPC tool that can help combat competitive spend. Want to hear more?”

Don’t be that rep. It’s a good way to get a group of people to turn on you and possibly block you from future chats.

Instead, offer value only when you have non-salesy value to contribute, share knowledge, link to helpful articles, and share hacks other clients have used successfully. Here’s what your response should look like:

• X chat lead: “A1: My biggest pain point is competitive spend.”
• Sales rep: “A1: I’ve worked with a lot of people who’ve expressed similar frustrations. Check out this great blog post on auction insights a client of mine recently wrote.”

Show up to these chats regularly and know when to contribute and when to listen. You’ll make connections with people each week, and you can ask if it’s alright to follow up with a few of them offline after you’ve built foundational rapport.

3. Answer Quora and Reddit questions.

You can take a similar approach to Quora or Reddit as you’d take on X chats: Always Be Providing Value (ABVP).

Quora is a knowledge-sharing platform on which users can ask questions and receive answers from industry experts around the world. Good answers are upvoted and appear at the top of the page.

Create a free account, make sure to fill out your profile, and choose your interests. Get a feel for the platform by answering questions. Again, never be overtly salesy. Answer questions you have a background in, and consider rewording blog posts from your company’s website to provide organized and well-researched responses.

Source

When appropriate, link to a few different articles that might answer your prospect’s next few questions on the matter.

View Quora as a rapport-building tool, and only offer your solution or ask for more of their time if there’s an opening or you’ve connected on another platform like LinkedIn.

4. Optimize your email signature.

The most valuable real estate in any email you send is arguably the email signature. You can sell without selling.

Start by adding a professional headshot, your appropriate contact information, and, if possible, your company logo (hyperlinked back to your website). As a bonus, add recent awards or industry accolades your company has received, links to popular blog posts, a snappy customer review, product announcements, or a calendar link to book time with you.

Expert tip: “Use email signature optimization combined with setting a lead bot. Over 200 leads per quarter were generated just by adding a CTA in email signatures. Adding an AI chatbot to the website also increased the number of qualified leads received after business hours by 40%.” — Jose Gallegos, Growth Marketer & Founder of Jose Angelo Studios.

Pack your email signature with as much value as the body of the email itself and optimize regularly. Need some help getting started? Try this email signature generator.

5. Solicit customer reviews.

Before making a purchase, 95% of consumers read online reviews. So, isn’t it time you make sure your reviews are everywhere? Ask your Customer Support team for a list of happy customers, or pull your top NPS scores and reach out to those customers.

You can even run campaigns asking these happy clients to leave reviews on customer review sites like G2 and Capterra. Having a strong presence on these sites can be a huge lead driver for your business.

Paying for a vendor account on a peer review site comes with added benefits, including customized landing pages, access to industry-specific reports and data, and premium placement in their software directories.

6. Work with marketing.

Whether the stereotype of mortal enemies, sales and marketing, is true for your organization or not, it’s important for reps to understand the importance — and the lucrative nature — of having a strong working relationship with their marketing team.

Here are a few areas to partner with them on:

• SEO. Share trends you’re seeing and hearing from your prospects. For example, let’s say you’re a recruiting service. If you notice a trend in “outsourced recruiting,” you could recommend that your marketing team target that keyword in their content, paid ads, and other SEO strategies to bring in more qualified leads.
• Paid Ads. Share keywords or pain points you hear come up a lot in your calls with prospects. If a common pain point you hear prospects cite is their difficulty giving recruiting the time necessary to do it well, you might share that with Marketing and recommend they run paid ads that speak to this pain point.
• Content. Similarly, routinely meet with Marketing and share common objections or concerns your prospects are bringing to you. Ask them to create blog posts, white papers, and case studies that speak to those objections and educate your prospects before those objections arise.

HubSpot CRM connects your marketing, sales, and customer service on one platform. Sales teams can track activity, manage pipelines, and close more deals with tools like meeting schedulers, email templates, and AI writers.

7. Participate in LinkedIn Groups.

Like X and Quora, the goal of joining LinkedIn Groups is not to spam everyone in the group with your offer. Search for industry groups where you know some target accounts and ideal customers hang out. Become a contributor to the group and build relationships with members by offering value and listening.

Leslie Omaña Begert, Co-founder and Creator of FabuLingua, a learning app for Spanish, shared what has worked best for her business:

"Drawing from our experience cultivating language learning communities, LinkedIn groups emerged as our most powerful B2B connection point. The traditional sales playbook falls short when you're trying to reach educators and learning institutions genuinely interested in innovative teaching methods.”

Our breakthrough came when we shifted from promotional posts to sharing real stories of language learning transformation in educational LinkedIn groups. During one discussion about engaging young learners, I shared how a Texas elementary school implemented our storytelling approach. Their Spanish program saw unprecedented engagement, with students spontaneously using the language outside class. This authentic success story sparked dozens of meaningful conversations with other educators.”

Their main tactic? Shifting from selling to solving real problems. When a group member asked about keeping students motivated, they shared insights from their story-driven method.

Begert wraps it up: “These contributions positioned us as trusted education partners rather than vendors. School administrators started reaching out proactively, already convinced of our expertise through our consistent value-adding presence.”

9 B2B Lead Generation Tips from Experts

Strategies are one thing, but there’s no substitute for real-world experience. Here are nine expert tips to help supercharge your lead generation.

1. Consider the end goal.

It might seem counterintuitive, but your end goal isn’t making sales — it’s making customers. Sales in isolation drive temporary revenue increases, but if every lead buys one product or service and never comes back, your potential pool of purchasers quickly dries up.

Customers, meanwhile, represent a steady revenue stream, as they regularly return to make additional purchases or upgrades.

This is especially critical for B2B lead generation. B2B sales processes typically take longer than their B2C counterparts, have higher purchase prices, and may include multi-year contracts.

2. See opportunities, not failures.

What happens when you don’t make the sale? It’s an inevitable part of the B2B experience: Negotiations that are going well may suddenly stall, or business needs may change in response to market demand, leading to sales that almost cross the finish line but come up just short.

While it’s tempting to see these unclosed deals as failures, they’re actually opportunities. Here’s why: If sales teams can forge relationships with B2B prospects, they can set the stage for opportunities down the line.

Consider a B2B lead that abruptly pivots due to changes in business strategy. Rather than simply walking away, sales teams can recommend tech- or service-agnostic products that could help leads solve their current challenges. The result? When it comes time to make new B2B purchases, your company is top-of-mind.

3. Be smart about social media.

Great content helps capture lead interest and kickstart conversations. Social media can help amplify the impact of content — for good and for ill.

For example, if you’ve got in-depth content that’s performing well in SEO and generating leads, posting it on social media can help drive more interest and create more opportunities. If, however, your content isn’t getting the response you anticipate, social media will make the problem worse. The only difference? More people will see it happen in real time.

Put simply, social media is like a loudspeaker. Don’t announce anything you don’t want heard.

4. Test, test, test.

It’s not new. It’s not flashy. But it is absolutely necessary for your B2B campaigns to succeed: Test, test, test. And when you’re done, test some more.

Here’s why: What you don’t know can hurt your bottom line. Consider a new marketing campaign with a new logo and tagline for your value proposition. On paper, it looks like a great idea. C-suites love it, marketing teams are excited, and sales teams are ready to start fielding calls. And then … nothing happens.

As it turns out, your new campaign didn’t resonate with your target audience. Now, you’re left with two choices: Sink more money into a failing effort or scrap the project and start over, costing even more time and money.

Thankfully, there’s an alternative: Test. Use A/B testing to try out campaign ideas and see which one sticks. Use surveys, emails, and even phone calls to discover what prospects like about your website, your content, and your campaigns. Make changes in line with their responses, and then — you guessed it — test.

5. Leverage long-tail keywords.

Wondering how to generate b2b leads through SEO efforts? You need to look in the right place. Sure, you could spend time and money creating general campaigns that might capture some target audience interest but will mostly go unnoticed. Or, you can make sure that you find your audience — and your audience can find you.

To accomplish this goal, start by defining your target B2B customer. What industry(s) are they in? What does their budget look like? What are their pain points? Once you’ve found your audience, find where they are online. Look at their websites, their social media pages, and their recent press releases.

This gives you a sense of what these leads have, what they want, and what they’re looking for. Equipped with this information, conduct a keyword volume search. What you’re looking for are long-tail keywords — keywords that are three or more words long.

These keywords have lower search volume than their shorter counterparts but target a specific audience. Prospects searching these keywords know what they want and are far more likely to convert. By finding your audience and identifying their ideal keywords, you can capture more of your target market.

6. Implement a lead scoring system.

Not all leads are created equal. Lead scoring helps prioritize the most qualified leads based on factors such as industry, budget, engagement with your content, and interactions with your sales team.

Assign a score to each lead, so you can focus your efforts on those who are most likely to convert.

Having the right lead scoring system in place made all the difference for Expo-Genie’s sales team. Before using SalesWings, they had no way to track lead interest beyond email opens.

The team was flying blind when it came to understanding who was truly engaged. With predictive lead scoring in Salesforce, the sales team could track website visits and identify when leads became warm or hot, even weeks after the initial contact.

This helped them target leads at the perfect moment, leading to a 30% increase in opportunities, a 25% boost in closed deals, and an extra $20K in revenue over the past few months.

Source

7. Use webinars.

Webinars are an effective way to generate B2B leads by sharing valuable content and engaging with your audience live. Promoting relevant topics attracts leads, while a Q&A session builds trust and showcases your expertise.

One of my favorite books is Diary of A First-Time CMO Vol 1 by Cognism's CMO, Alice de Courcy, in which she talks about how, in the early days at Cognism, she turned webinars into a winning tactic.

Courcy changed her “make that sale” mindset and instead of chasing sign-ups, she focused on creating content that fueled more engaging, high-impact webinars. Plus, she rewarded attendees to boost participation.

Alice hosts live cold-calling sessions where participants can try out their scripts and make calls, while a subject matter expert provides real-time coaching to help them improve.

If attendees miss the live session, they lose out on the chance for personalized, one-on-one feedback.

8. Implement referral programs.

Get your current clients to spread the word. Offer irresistible incentives like discounts, exclusive content, or special rewards for every referral. Since people trust recommendations from colleagues or partners, tapping into your existing network can bring in highly qualified leads who already know and love your business.

I’ve recently read a great case study by Referral Factory that highlights how a B2B financial services business grew significantly through a referral program. This company faced challenges — low conversion rates from PPC ads and difficulty reaching the right audience.

To overcome these struggles, they launched a double-sided referral program where both the referrer and the new customer received rewards. For every successful referral, the referrer earned an Amazon voucher, and the new customer received a £25 discount. They promoted the program through email marketing and added referral links across their website and transactional emails.

The results were nice:

• 5,691 leads generated
• 3,758 new customers acquired
• 66% conversion rate.

Source

What stood out was the viral effect: 21% of referred customers went on to refer others, creating a strong loop of growth.

9. Start with free to make more sales.

“The way you position yourself at the beginning of a relationship has a profound impact on where you end up,” notes Ron Karr, author of Lead, Sell, or Get Out of the Way.

The old saying holds true: You never get a second chance to make a first impression. And what better way to make a great first impression than by offering leads for free? Maybe it’s a demo of your product, a free eBook, or in-depth market research.

As long as it’s something that your target audience wants, it’s a great way to get the relationship off to a great start and demonstrate that you understand the market.

The Winning Formula: Mix and Match

If I had to choose just one strategy from these seven or one tip from these 9, I couldn‘t. I can’t even say that one works better than the others.

The combination of several is what actually brings the desired results. Recognizing what will work and what your audience will love is “the key to the success” you're looking for.

Try out multiple tips and strategies to see what combination works best for your product, market, and B2B sales lead generation goals.

Your sales team isn't meeting its potential. It's a hard truth. And I'm sorry to break it to you, but for most companies out there, it's true.

A sales operations team can change that.

If you want to make sure your sales team is firing on all cylinders and making as much money for your company as possible, you need sales ops.

Don't fall into the trap of thinking that sales operations is a new field; it's not. It's gotten a lot of press lately, but the principles that guide sales ops have been around almost as long as sales. It's nothing new. It's just a way of doing it better.

Here's what we'll go over in this guide:

• What is sales operations?
• Sales operations team structure: Roles & responsibilities
• 7 KPIs & metrics to track for sales ops
• Sales operations strategy: Process, framework, & steps to follow
• Sales operations best practices: Tips for success
• 5 best software and tools for sales ops

Let's start with the basics and define sales operations.

What is sales operations?

Sales operations is the team that handles the non-selling processes and tasks inherent in the sales process. This includes generating leads, outlining sales territories, setting up incentive programs, managing sales analytics, and more. Sales ops helps sales teams close more deals faster.

When you look at a sales process, you see that selling is only one part of a complicated system. For example, here's a sales process we recommend for companies looking to scale:

1. Prospecting
2. Researching
3. Connecting
4. Presenting
5. Addressing objections
6. Closing
7. Delivering
8. Following up (asking for referrals)

Only points 4–6 actually focus on selling. The other four steps can be handled by a non-salesperson. And when your salespeople don't have to worry about those steps, they can focus on what they do best: closing deals.

But sales ops goes beyond the sales process. This team can do things like creating sales territories, structuring pay plans, monitoring analytics, developing sales strategies, and a whole lot more. In short, sales ops analyzes sales data and uses it to improve sales results.

Why is sales operations important?

Because there's so much more involved in a successful sales program than just selling. Here are just a few reasons why you need more support for your sales team:

• Strategy and processes are crucial for success. Your sales team is great at selling. That doesn't mean they can establish new sales strategies or put processes in place. A good sales strategy can be the difference between success and failure.
• Using salespeople for non-sales activities isn't efficient. Generating leads, managing your CRM, and running reports isn't a good use of your sales team's time, so get someone else to do it.
• The modern sales organization creates a huge amount of data. Sales ops teams include people who can turn that data into action. Not only do salespeople not have time for that, but they often don't have the skills, either.
• Sales technology changes quickly. The entire sales tech stack changes all the time. Someone needs to keep track of new technologies and make sure sales reps know how to use them.
• Many groups and departments are required for a successful sales program. Sales ops is well-positioned to share useful sales data that influences other teams' decisions.
• Pricing has an immediate effect on your sales team's performance. Lots of different teams think they should be in charge of your pricing. But it's fundamentally a sales issue. And sales ops can help you figure out the pricing structure that maximizes close rate and lifetime value.

Sales operations vs sales enablement: What’s the difference?

Lots of people define sales enablement differently, but Highspot does a good job of summing it up: "Sales enablement is the strategic, ongoing process of equipping sales teams with the content, guidance, and training they need to effectively engage buyers."

When sales teams have high-quality content (often created by the marketing team), they can share it with prospects to create a more powerful pitch. Guidance often comes in the form of mentorship and frequent feedback loops. And training, of course, develops and hones skills.

Sales ops handles the big picture, while sales enablement helps reps complete day-to-day activities. The difference between the two is often minimal, though, and some people argue that sales enablement is part of the sales operations process.

Sales enablement as a field is still growing and finding its place. In some companies, it takes a higher-level role, while in others, it focuses on sharing information between marketing and sales teams.

In many cases, you can get sales enablement content without bringing on a sales enablement team. So I recommend getting your sales ops up and running first.

Sales operations team structure: Roles & responsibilities

When you first start running sales ops, you'll probably do a lot of this yourself. But as your company grows, you'll need more help. Here are the sales operations roles you'll want to bring on.

Keep in mind that you won't hire them all at the same time. In the beginning, you'll probably have one or two people doing all of these tasks. Once they've gotten set up, you can expand your team.

Roles of the sales ops team members

Sales ops roles often have widely varying responsibilities, especially when you're getting started. But here's what they usually do:

Role	Job Description
Sales Ops Manager	Oversees reps and analysts to ensure sales team is getting the resources they need. Needs a deep understanding of sales processes.
Sales Ops Analyst	Synthesizes data from CRM and other sources to make recommendations that improve sales performance. Needs strong data and Excel skills.
Sales Ops Rep	Does day-to-day things to support sales strategy and teams. May conduct prospecting, appointment setting, and contract followup.

Some companies may include other sales operations roles, like "coordinator" or "business development/sales and operations specialist." Most of these roles align with those listed above or form a combination of them.

When you're starting your own sales ops team, start with a sales operations manager. They'll help you build out the rest of the team.

Want my best advice on hiring the right people and building a sales team? Get a free copy of my book The Sales Hiring Playbook today!

How to structure a sales team

So where does your sales ops team fit in with your sales and marketing structure? There's no right answer. Companies have different needs and existing sales team structures. But here's one way you might structure your team:

In this structure, everyone related to sales is under your sales VP. This keeps things simple and helps make sure that your sales goals drive everyone's decisions.

Below the VP are three groups: sales operations, sales, and account management.

Sales operations consists of a sales ops manager who oversees reps and analysts. If you're in a big company, you could have multiple managers and several groups of reps and analysts. But it could just be three people (and in the beginning, it'll probably only be your manager).

The sales group contains your sales development and sales teams. That could include a wide variety of people; you might have a sales development manager, a sales manager, team leaders, different types of sales reps, and so on. But all of these people belong in a single silo because they do one thing: move sales forward.

Finally, we have the account management group. In this group you'll find both account managers and customer success reps. In short, this group works with customers to make sure they're getting the results they need.

Why is account management under sales, you ask? Because in the end, it's all about increasing lifetime value. Your account managers and customer success reps make sure your customers stay customers. And, if at all possible, that they upgrade to a higher subscription level or more expensive product or service.

Sales operations team responsibilities

So what does a sales ops team actually do? Whatever they need to do to help your sales team succeed. That often includes the following:

• Data management and analysis. This supports almost everything that your sales ops team does. Want to make sure your reps are making the most of your time? That your customers are delivering maximum lifetime value? That you're reducing turnover? The data will tell you how to do it.
• Technology updating and training. Setting up a sales CRM is an ongoing process. Even Close, which we designed to be as simple as possible, can be customized and improved over time. Sales ops helps teams make the most of their tools.
• Sales forecasting. Figuring out how much you're likely to sell is a complicated process. But because sales ops has access to so much data, it's a great team to task with predicting your revenue.
• Lead generation and appointment setting. You need to find leads and get them on the phone make sales. Unfortunately, many salespeople don’t excel at this. Sales operations can take over the task to make it more efficient.
• Sales strategy and communication. Because your ops team has a high-level view of the sales process and its results, they can develop strategies that work. And, just as importantly, they can communicate those strategies to the people who need to know them.
• Interdepartmental relations. Everyone in your company is invested in sales, so they want input to the strategy process, reports on how things are going, and more. Your salespeople don't have time for that — that's a job for ops.
• High-level and detailed presentations. Whether your executive team wants to know this quarter's numbers or the board needs information on the direction of the sales strategy, ops is prepared. They create both high-level and very detailed presentations and reports to get people the information they need.

Of course, your sales ops team can do a lot more. But these are some of the most common things they'll be doing.

7 KPIs & metrics to track for sales ops

Once you start your sales operations program, you need to keep track of key performance indicators (KPIs) to make sure it's working. Here are the seven most important sales operations analytics to monitor to get a handle on how your sales operations model is working.

1. Close rate

The number of sales you make divided by the number of people you pitch. (This is an important part of the AQC framework.) In short, it's how effective your sales team is at closing.

Your sales operations crew has a big effect on this metric. For example, when our own Head of Growth started at Close, he noticed that we had an abysmal 47% close rate. After changing our lead generation and qualifying strategies, we brought it up to 90%.

That change wasn't brought about by improving our selling techniques, and that's why sales ops is invested in close rate. They can help adjust lead generation, qualifying, sales process, sales strategy, pricing, and a wide range of other factors that affect close rate.

Almost every other sales ops metric comes back to this. If you're closing more deals, you're making more money. That's what your operations team is for.

2. Customer acquisition cost (CAC)

The amount of money you spend on marketing and sales divided by the number of new customers you get over a given time period. 

The less you pay to get a customer, the more they're worth to you in the long term. If you lower your CAC, you get more money from each customer without having to sell them more product or retain them longer. (Our friends at ProfitWell have written a great guide on calculating and optimizing CAC).

All of the things sales ops does to increase the close rate can also drop your customer acquisition cost. Shortening the sales cycle with better qualified prospects means you're spending fewer salesperson-hours on each sale, for example.

As your company grows, CAC becomes more important. Even a small decrease in the amount you spend can make a big change over dozens or hundreds of customers. Which is why it's one of the most important sales metrics to track.

3. Customer lifetime value (LTV)

Average revenue per user divided by customer churn. (For a more detailed explanation of how to calculate this, check out Profitwell's great breakdown of LTV for SaaS.)

How much money do you make from each customer? If you can increase that number, your total revenue will increase—without needing to bring in more clients. It makes every salesperson more efficient.

How might ops increase lifetime value? Pricing is a good place to start. Figuring out the price that offers the best value for customers while maximizing revenue is one of the central tasks of sales operations.

Effective lead generation helps get the right customers into the pipeline, too, which increases the likelihood that they'll spend money with your company. If it sounds like sales ops does a lot of work on lead generation, it's because they do. It's a super important task that's worth having a team of specialists handle.

And reducing churn makes a big difference. The longer your customers continue buying from you, the more money you'll make from them. Without more effort from sales.

4. Sales pipeline metrics

A variety of measurements that show sales teams how many leads and prospects are moving through the sales funnel and where they are.

How many leads do you have in the pipeline? How likely are you to close on the clients? What's their potential value?

All of these questions can be answered with data pulled from your sales pipeline. With a sales-focused CRM, getting the data is easy. In the Close CRM, for example, it's all displayed right where you can find it.

But you'll need someone with the skills and experience to analyze that data and turn it into actionable ideas. That's where sales operations analysts and managers come in. They can track—and improve—those metrics.

5. Sales forecasting

Predictions, based on various models, of how much revenue a sales team will bring in over a specific amount of time.

Sales operations teams are experts in getting data from CRMs. And when you combine that with statistical and Excel skills, you get predictive power. Sales ops analysts can take data and make valuable predictions.

You might use that for resource planning, hiring, presenting to the board, or for getting more investors. There are all sorts of uses for accurate sales forecasts, but you need the people on staff who can make those forecasts.

If your forecasts are improving (i.e. you're bringing in more revenue over time and you're getting better at predicting it), your sales ops team is doing its job.

Not sure how to start forecasting your sales? Check out our list of 23+ sales forecast templates to get started. It has everything you need to find the right forecast template and learn how to use it.

6. Sales cycle length

Average amount of time between first contact with a prospect and closing a deal.

How long does it take to move a deal from first contact to close? If your sales ops team is doing its job, that number should be going down. With better leads, more efficient processes, and more time available for selling, salespeople should be posting faster results.

It might take a while to see a change in this KPI, so be patient. You might see movement in other factors before this changes, and that's fine. Everything's connected, and you'll start bringing in faster sales soon.

7. Time spent selling

The amount of time that reps spend on the phone or in a meeting room, as opposed to doing administrative tasks.

You may not be tracking this metric yet, but it's a good one to keep an eye on. How much time do your reps spend selling? There are a few ways to track this. 

The simplest way is to ask your salespeople; they know how much administrative work they're doing. And when they start to feel like they're doing less, sales ops is working.

You might also track it by the number of calls or emails your team sends out. The more calls, the more time your reps are spending selling. (One way to drastically increase the number of calls your sales reps make while also reducing the amount of time they spend manually dialing numbers, logging calls and waiting for a prospect to answer the phone is to use a predictive dialer.) And that's good. If you really want accurate data, though, you'll need to find a way to measure exactly how much time your reps spend selling vs. how much time they spend doing everything else.

Sales operations strategy: Process, framework, & steps to follow

Want to start your own sales operations team and get more out of your sales reps? Here are the things your sales operations manager (and any other team members you have) should work on. Follow this step-by-step process to develop a framework of support for your selling:

Step 1: Set up analytics

Sales ops needs a lot of data, and they know which data better than anyone else. So you’ll want to put them in charge of setting up sales analytics. That data will inform everything else they do, which is why it's important to get analytics set up right away.

This process also includes coming up with questions that your ops team wants to answer. This can take a while, so don't rush it; your investment in sales operations is a long-game play.

Once they've collected a bunch of data and started to see where your sales program needs improvement, they'll start taking action, so be patient until then. That's when it gets exciting.

Step 2: Nail down compensation

Your sales ops team will help you get the right salespeople on your team. But before you do that, you need to figure out what you're going to pay them. Your sales operations team will look at data from your industry, within your company, and in your part of the country to figure out the best system of compensation.

Don't underestimate this point. The right salary and sales commission structure can make a huge difference in the performance of your sales team. That structure has to reward making the right kind of sales, not just any sale. And sales ops knows which sales you need to make.

Putting that system in place before you move on to the next steps of the framework will save you a lot of time down the road.

Step 3: Make a plan for hiring and onboarding

Once you have your compensation figured out, sales ops can start getting involved in hiring.

Sales ops actually has a surprising amount in common with human resources. Your ops team understands the compensation structure better than anyone else at your company, including where your team is strong and where it's lacking. They're also in communication with most of the other groups in your company.

In short, they're well positioned to have a say in sales hiring decisions. And once you hire, they can continue to guide the process through onboarding. Their knowledge of tools, processes, and training means they know what your salespeople need to know.

If you want some advice on how to onboard sales reps effectively, check out our free sales onboarding template.

Even if you're not hiring more salespeople yet, laying the groundwork for future hires is worth doing right away.

Step 4: Assign territories (or whatever method you use for assigning leads)

In the past, sales reps had geographic territories. They still might today, but it's more likely that your sales technology lets them sell to anyone, anywhere, at any time. But that doesn't mean they all sell to the same kinds of people.

Your sales ops team can look at data to make sure each rep is getting in touch with the prospects they're most likely to sell to. Some salespeople might have trouble selling to enterprises, for example, so ops will assign them small business leads.

If you do use territories, your ops team will make sure your reps are spread out to best make use of their time.

Making the adjustment to new assignments takes time and can be a pain in the ass. But get your ops team on this right away. You might be surprised how much of a difference it makes.

Step 5: Optimize your sales CRM

Are you getting the maximum benefit from your CRM? Probably not. CRMs are complicated, and when you first bought yours, you probably set it up as quickly as possible so you could start using it right away.

Even Close, which is very simple to use, can make your team much more productive. But your salespeople don't have the time to figure all of that out.

That's what ops is for. They'll help get your CRM set up so your sales group gets the most use out of it. They might also make sure that your data is of high quality, clean your database, and maintain the CRM to make it works properly. Some ops teams might take care of this while they're setting up analytics, but if they didn't, now's a good time to do it.

Again, this makes your sales team more efficient and lets them bring in more revenue. Seeing a pattern here?

Step 6: Plan product, sales, and CRM training

There are three types of training that your sales team needs: product, sales, and CRM. How do you know what kind of training your team needs? Just ask sales ops. Based on the data they've collected, they'll see where your team is weak and recommend the best course for correcting that weakness.

They may or may not run the trainings depending on the topic and who's on your ops team. They might recommend an external training instead. Whatever the case, they'll have a good reason for it.

Once everything else is set up, it's worth looking into development. In fact, it's pretty much always worth looking into development. And your sales ops crew will help make sure you're making the most of it.

Step 7: Optimize the sales process

Your sales process is at the core of your sales team's success. But your process, frankly, probably sucks. If you don't spend time making sure that it's awesome, it's going to fall apart. And that happens. Maybe you didn't spend enough time setting it up in the first place. Or maybe it just got out of control as your company grew.

No matter how it got to where it is, sales ops now has the information they need to get it running at full speed again. They can see inefficiencies and identify ways to improve them.

This is where you get to set your ops team loose and let them do what they do best. If you don't have specific requests for what they should be improving, give them the authority to seek out and destroy inefficiencies in your processes. That's what you hired them for in the first place.

Sales operations best practices: Tips for success

Okay, so we've seen how to structure your team, what they should do, and when they should do it. Once your ops team is up and running, it's time to make sure they're getting what they need and delivering the results that will help grow your business.

Here are a few things to keep in mind to make sure that happens.

Keep sight of the goal

Sales operations should ultimately do one thing: help salespeople close more deals faster. If your ops team is working on anything else, you're not getting the most of their time and effort.

Data-savvy problem solvers are bound to identify many problems and suggest great solutions. That's awesome. But if those problems and solutions aren't focused on improving your sales process, they're just distractions.

How to do it: To help keep that focus, make sales operations metrics a big part of your sales ops program.

Focus on the right metrics

Remember that sales ops isn't just about selling to more people. It's about bringing in more revenue. That might mean you need to decrease churn to keep more customers paying you, increase LTV to get more out of each sale, or shorten the sales cycle. All of the sales metrics we talked about above are good measures of how your ops team is pushing sales.

How to do it: Review your metrics regularly and make sure your sales ops team knows that's how you'll measure their success.

Spend time on pricing

How much time have you spent making sure that your pricing structure is the best in your industry? Probably not nearly enough. You're not selling on price—you're selling on value—but you need to have the price structure that brings in the most revenue.

How to do it: Your sales ops team has the data and the smarts to make sure your pricing structure kicks ass. Make sure they know it's a priority.

Start with leads

Sales operations works with your reps throughout the entire sales process, from lead generation to follow-up. Make sure they start with leads.

Your entire sales funnel is built on the quality of your leads. If they suck, your reps will waste a lot of time and have little to show for it. If they're awesome, your reps will get great results. It's that simple.

Your sales ops team can increase the quality of your leads a few different ways. They can take over the entire lead generation process themselves, or they can use data to advise your salespeople on how to find better leads if they keep control of the process.

There are lots of other places to make improvements, too, but all of those places are built on a foundation of good leads. Starting here means your sales and ops teams can get the best results from future improvements.

How to do it: When your ops team starts to work on improving sales and operations, be sure to tell them that they should prioritize lead generation and improving lead quality. Once they've done that, they can move on to other tasks.

Work with marketing and sales enablement

Sales operations is a cross-functional team. They work with just about everyone, from sales to human resources. They can also be a huge help to both marketing and sales enablement teams.

Because sales ops and sales enablement are closely related, it makes sense for them to work together. If nothing else, to make sure that they don't overlap too much in what they're doing.

How to do it: Your marketing team is invested in leads, managing a lot of data, and analytics, and so is your sales ops group. Get them working together to make sure they're both getting what they need to support your sales process.

Don't neglect development

I mentioned how sales ops can identify training opportunities for your sales team. It's easy to skip over that—it costs money, you just brought on a few ops people, and your salespeople are already super busy.

But don't overlook it. Your sales team, your sales ops group, your marketing crew—hell, even you—need to continually improve your skills and knowledge. Let your sales ops team drive that process.

How to do it: When outlining your goals for the quarter or year, include professional development. Set a goal for the number of training hours your team will complete or some new skills they'll learn.

5 best software and tools for sales ops

1. Spotio

If your sales reps work in the field, Spotio will help them make more sales in less time. It combines sales intelligence with territory management, route mapping, canvassing features, and a whole lot more.

2. InsightSquared

With a focus on providing all-encompassing sales data to teams, InsightSquared is a great tool for sales ops. It provides an absolutely monumental amount of data that helps you improve the accuracy of your data and forecasting.

You can get insight into your pipeline, your sales team's results, forecasts, and a whole lot more. This is a seriously powerful tool. 

3. Close

When we built Close, we focused on helping salespeople be more productive and close more deals. But we also knew that sales ops teams would be using it, too. So we rolled some sales ops functions into our CRM.

For one thing, we made sure that analytics are presented in an actionable way. Our reporting keeps everything simple so you don't need an advanced degree in statistics to understand it. These simple reports make it easy to identify a single metric and work toward improving it—exactly the process we discuss in our founder's guide to sales operations.

And because these sales ops features are built directly into the CRM, you don't need to figure out how to implement Salesforce (or hire someone else to do it) to make use of them. It's everything you need for sales and sales ops in an affordable, easy-to-use package.

4. fullcast.io

With three different modules that focus on three sales operations lifestages, fullcast.io is a great resource for any team interested in boosting their sales ops game.

The first module includes things like territory design, quota setting, and forecasting. The second packs funnel metrics, data visualization, and reporting. The final module is focused on enforcing your sales policies, including lead routing and privacy.

5. Grow.com

You have data from a lot of sources. Grow.com helps you integrate all of those sources into a single source of information for your business. That's exactly what your sales ops team needs.

It also has built-in features for sharing your analytics and visualizations, which is super helpful when you're trying to align your entire team around what's happening.

Grow your company with sales ops

Your sales team is responsible for bringing revenue into your company. Your sales operations team helps them do it faster, better, and with a lot less hassle. It's a crucial part of your sales organization.

From lead generation to CRM training to reporting and analytics, your sales ops team can take your company's sales to the next level. If your company is dependent on sales (and who isn't?), you want to get on top of your sales ops. Whether that’s by simply having one person spend some part of their time on this, or building out an entire department—someone should think about how to support your sales team in generating more revenue.

You really don't need to go build an entire sales operations team on day one. Bring in one person to help support your team. Have them maximize the value you're getting out of your CRM and your sales process. Get them working with a simple, effective tool like Close that allows your team to scale as you grow.

Then start building from there. In no time at all, you'll have an absolutely indispensable team that's giving you a huge advantage over your competitors who haven't yet realized the value of sales ops.

Ready to help your team grow even further? Download our Sales Library for effective templates, checklists, books, scripts, and more.

GET FREE ACCESS TO THE SALES LIBRARY NOW

The handoff of a client between SDR and AE is like a baton in a relay race — but all too often, this handoff goes poorly. While several issues come into play, they tend to center around 3 things: blame, process, and compensation. 

Before we dive into how to solve these problems, create a smooth solution to your current process, and list best practices, let’s break those 3 things down a bit more. 

Core issues

Underlying the 3 major problems that cause rough handoffs is one larger problem: finger-pointing. This is especially poignant in a pod system where SDRs are paired with specific AEs — but it can happen in any team, regardless of the system:

• SDRs complain that AEs aren’t handling the demos as well as other AEs.
• AEs complain that SDRs are sending them unqualified demos, which knocks them off track to achieve their quotas. 

But what’s really going on here? It essentially stems in 3 places: the pipeline structure, how AEs qualify prospects, and the “dead zone.” 

The pipeline

In many outbound setups, a data provider is used to get accounts for the SDR. The SDR spends hours each week sorting through these accounts, researching contacts, and creating sequences. Spending all this time on these steps means SDRs have little time to execute these sequences. 

Then, they’re trying to secure meetings that need to be performed/held. And this is the point where SDRs actually hand the account off to the AE. Once that happens, the AE has to qualify the meeting as a valid one, then move it to their pipeline. If that meeting doesn’t move to the pipeline, the SDR doesn’t get paid. 

AE qualifying

The “real” handoff, on paper, doesn’t happen until the meeting between the AE and the prospect starts — but the responsibility doesn’t change until the AE decides the prospect is “qualified.” 

So the SDR has done all the work up to this point, but the AE gets to decide whether to qualify the meeting. This is a serious power imbalance. 

The “dead zone”

That leads us to the “dead zone.” The SDR can’t do anything to move the opportunity forward and the AE has no incentive to do so. Both teams now blame each other. 

Best practices for creating a smooth SDR AE handoff

So if that’s how things commonly go wrong, how do you fix it? 

1. Before all else — Create and complete your SLA

Before you do anything else to make the SDR -> AE transition smoother, create a Service Level Agreement. The SLA clearly defines the responsibilities of the SDR and AE within the sales cycle. The first point of it is to hold both parties accountable for providing and accepting the information that pushes a sale to the next step. 

The SLA should have specific terms set for handoff, including the exact info needed and how much of it is needed for the lead to be considered qualified. The criteria for a qualified lead should be specific and objective, like 

• They use Salesforce
• ≥ 500 employees
• They’re a B2B SaaS company
• The meeting will be with a Director or higher

By making the criteria black and white, you remove the subjective guesswork and power imbalance. Either the meeting is qualified, or it isn’t. This alone should solve many problems. The rest of the items on this list are just details to keep things going smoothly. 

2. SDR — Send that calendar invite fast

SDRs, you want to stay top-of-mind. Many things can happen between your call with a lead and them receiving the calendar invite. It’s great to set up your demos, but if the prospect doesn’t show up — then it’s all for naught. 

When you’re getting a demo over the phone, there’s a great and simple way to ensure that they get the calendar invite: send it while you’re still on the phone. After sending it, just confirm that they got it before hanging up. That way, it doesn’t get lost in the inbox flood. Plus, when the AE listens to the call recording, they’ll know the lead got the invite and will show up. 

3. SDR — Introduce the AE + provide notes

Here’s how the handoff typically works: the SDR sets the calendar appointment between the prospect and the AE, and in many cases that’s it — and the SDR moves on. What usually happens is that the prospect and AE make the call; or, the prospect misses the call and is a lost opportunity. 

Here’s what to do instead, regardless of whether the handoff occurs by email or at the first meeting: put together an introductory email. In that email, thank the prospect for their time and ask them to review the notes you’ll include ensuring accuracy. Then, turn to 4 W’s: who, what, when, and why? For some examples: 

• Who’s going to be on the call? Who’s going to be the main point of the contact: the SDR or the AE? 
• What/Why: Is this lead a rep vetting options for a decision-maker, or a decision-maker themselves? What are their pain points? What are the next steps, potential solutions to those pain points, resources, or other interesting notes? 
• When is the date and time for the meeting? 

Again, thank them for their time. For everyone involved, including direct numbers in case the conference line has a problem. 

4. AE — Study the opportunity notes

Now it’s the AE’s turn. Thanks to your SDR, every new opportunity will come with notes that qualify them according to the guidelines of your SLA. Take a good look at those, and dig into any additional notes your SLA may have left you and any other resources related to the prospect. Some examples include: 

• Call recordings — get to actually hear the person speak about pain points and goals;
• Any previously logged contact (like you may find with sales engagement platforms) — Can find out how often communication occurred, if they’re fast with replies, if they have a lot of questions, etc;
• Any other opportunity notes. 

By listening to call recordings, digging through previous contacts, and any other notes your SDR made, you can gain crucial details that were mentioned in earlier correspondence that can help you lay real building blocks to make the sale. 

5. SDR + AE — Have the SDR attend the meeting

In many cases, the lead has spoken to the SDR multiple times. They’ve forged a basic, early-stage relationship. Switching suddenly to the AE — even with an email introduction — can be jarring. The solution: start the call with the SDR present. 

The SDR doesn’t have to stay for the whole call; and in many cases, that may be impractical or impossible. Rather, simply have them handle the front-end of the call: confirming the time, introducing everyone present (the AE), the purpose of the call, its agenda, and possible outcomes. 

Once this is all done and agreed upon, the SDR can politely confirm that the AE will be taking over. If possible, let the SDR sit in and listen — but again, that’s not always possible. Taking care of the frontend of the call should only occupy 5-10 minutes of the SDR’s time, then they can return to their work having smoothed the handoff to the AE. 

Conclusion

The handoff of an SQL from SDR to AE can be rough and cause a lot of friction between the reps occupying the two roles. But by understanding how and why this friction occurs, you can better implement a smoother process. 

After that, the foundation for smoothing the handoff is in creating a clear, quantifiable Service Level Agreement. When the SDR knows what specific information constitutes an SQL, and the AE has the information in hand that says the prospect checks every required box, the handoff can be completed, the issues resolved, and the meeting made. 

Click here to download “25+ Tactics for Scaling Modern Sales Teams”

The post How to Implement a Smooth SDR to AE Handoff appeared first on CloserIQ Blog.

Meet Kylie Montgomery from Milwaukee, Wisconsin:

Kylie is 25 years old, single, and has an older dog she rescued from the humane society while in college. She runs her own new home interior design company, mostly out of her home office and the coffee shop on her street. Although, she occasionally rents flexible professional meeting spaces for appointments with clients.

Her main concern is how to grow her company and get new leads from social media, word of mouth, content marketing, and other channels, as well as get more well-versed in email marketing.

Kylie also posts the before-and-after pictures of her interior design work on her professional Instagram page, which has recently started to take off and get her noticed by more and more new clients in her city.

Kylie also loves running half marathons, visiting local breweries, and exploring new-to-her national parks whenever she can. She hates online dating and refuses to sign up for it.

But Kylie Montgomery isn’t a real person (unless your name is Kylie Montgomery too, in which case, you’re totally real). In this case, Kylie is a buyer persona. She is a fictitious, specific, narrative of who your ideal customer is.

And Kylie is vital to your business’s growth.

We all crave personalized service: Personalized products, personalized content, personalized responses. It’s why promotional emails with personalized subject lines using our own names get opened 29% more frequently and have a 41% higher click-through rate. We love personalization.

The best way to provide this individualized attention? By creating characters like Kylie who represent a specific group of people who you want to do business with; by creating a buyer persona.

So What Exactly is a Buyer Persona?

When you are examining who is your exact, ideal customer, a buyer persona is like a semi-fictionalized version of who that person is. This isn’t just based on a whim or a general thought about who you would like your buyer persona to be, it is based on real market data and actual research about your company.

Creating a thorough, detailed buyer persona for your company will provide your company with clarity, focus, and structure for how you should market your business, where you spend most of your time and resources, and how you develop your products. This can also help you improve overall customer experience, so not only are your customers spending more, they are happier and more loyal to your company too!

• Positive Buyer Persona: Your positive buyer persona is your ideal customer. This is the person for whom you create products and services.

• Negative Buyer Persona: Conversely, a negative buyer persona can be helpful just like knowing your positive buyer persona. Knowing your negative buyer persona is helpful because this is a representation of the people whose needs do not align with your business. You most likely won’t do business with them – not because you don’t like them, but because they do not need your products or services.

Dividing your customer base into at least two groups like this helps narrow down who your target audience is (or isn’t) so that you can focus your marketing on the kind of customers you are seeking. This allows you to focus your attention, your resources, and your marketing budget in the most effective way possible, while still getting the best possible results.

How Do You Get Customer Data to Create a Buyer Persona?

In order to create a buyer persona, you need to collect information about your customers, but you also want to do this without bothering them or seeming nosy. It shouldn’t feel like an intrusion or an annoyance to your customers to provide this data, but you should also do your best to collect whatever information you can.

Just how valuable is this data? It’s everything. According to several Gallup polls, the companies that collect this data and use it to tailor their marketing and their products to their customers outperform their peers in sales growth AND 25% in gross margin sales.

So how can you obtain this customer data?

• From Orders: You can get information from your customers whenever they make a purchase or interact with your company. If you get their names when they work with your company, you can start to track your customer data, follow their transaction history, and start to learn more about their buying habits. This is a great way to start to build your buyer persona.

  Additionally, you can ask for more information from customers, such as their birth date (to learn median age range, etc), and if they create an online profile, you can even ask them to answer a few questions so you can tailor your website to their specific needs and interests.

  Here’s an extra tip: Make these questions mutually beneficial for you and your customers. If you ask them when their birthday is, let them know it’s to provide them with a birthday deal, or if you ask when their anniversary is, let them know that you are doing so to provide them with a special date-night treat. Or if you ask what kind of pets they have at home, make sure they know they will receive a special snack or toy for their furry friend! If you make it fun for the customer, they will be thrilled to provide you with the customer data you are seeking!

• Surveys: You can ask your customers to fill out brief online surveys to obtain new customer data. It’s easier than ever with sites like SurveyMonkey, Typeform, Feedier, and Survey Gizmo available at your fingertips for free.

  Again: Make sure there’s some kind of incentive for your customers to give you this information. Perhaps they are entered to win a gift card, or they receive a promotional code or coupon after completing the survey? If they have a reason to fill out the survey, you’ll get more useful responses.

• Customer Feedback and Interviews: Without realizing it, you collect some of this information every time you have a conversation with your clients. You can target some of these questions and collect data while still maintaining a genuine conversation, focusing on your clients’ needs, and staying present in the discussion.

• Google Analytics: Google Analytics is designed to partner with your existing Google marketing, like Google Ads and Data Studio, to learn more about who your customers are and what information they are seeking. It helps you understand your site users so you can evaluate and target your main audience.

• Social Media Data: Are you encouraging your clients and customers to follow you on social media? Take advantage of this amazing tool to learn about your customers on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Reddit, and local online forums. You’d be surprised how much you can learn about your customers by hanging out on your social media pages!

  Analyze shares, retweets, likes, mentions, and hashtags to learn more about what excites your customers, and you start to figure out what makes them tick, and why they love your company. Then you can tailor your content and marketing to them.

• Your Competitors: There’s nothing wrong with using information from your main competitors to learn more about what your customers want!

If you’re looking for the best way to reach your customers? Ask them.

What kind of marketing campaign should you launch next? Ask your customers.

Running out of blog topics or fresh content ideas? Ask your customers.

Doubting the effectiveness of your homepage, and whether or not it draws visitors in? Ask your customers.

It should always go back to what the customer wants. And if you provide your customers with what they want? That’s how your business will grow and expand. And creating a buyer persona makes that process so much easier!