Sell, Sell, Sell!

How Can Your Company Can Start Producing Useful Content?

Gerald Weber — Mon, 22 Aug 2011 14:00:33 +0000

In my last post, I mentioned your email marketing efforts will almost always be more successful when you offer value to your recipients.

In the comments, Chris Help backed up this point. He said “On the other hand, if someone sends out emails with USEFUL CONTENT, and eventually tries to sell me a related product, I’m much more likely to click through.”

Since there’s no denying the importance of useful content, the question many businesses have is “how do we produce useful content?”

While coming up with great content for your users can seem intimidating, the good news is you actually have plenty of options:

Share What Your Competitors Aren’t

In Rework, 37Signals tells businesses to “emulate chefs.” They ask readers “what can you tell the world about how you operate that’s informative, educational and promotional?”

This is exactly the type of content your audience wants to read. However, most businesses don’t serve it up to their audiences. Whether it’s because they’re afraid of sharing or simply too lazy to put this information in writing, the lack of this type of quality content is a prime opportunity for your business.

Go Step-by-Step

People love tutorials. Companies like Envato have flourished thanks to their focus on creating high quality tutorials.

When you already know how to do something, creating a tutorial isn’t as difficult as you might expect. You’re basically just using screenshots or a screencast to record what you normally do so you can share it with an eager audience.

Be Comprehensive

If you want your content to be helpful, make sure you cover all the bases.

This is just as true for emails as it is for product copy. As long as you’re delivering value to an interested audience, people will read a lot.

Being comprehensive isn’t just about length. It’s also about your sources. Over the last few years, more businesses have grown wary of linking out to other blogs and sites.

However, not only is there no reason to worry about linking out, but doing so is how you can establish yourself as an authority. One of the reasons Wikipedia has continued to flourish is because editors make sure the articles are rich with external sources.

Once you make a conscious decision to focus on quality content, you’ll find that good ideas will start flowing!

How to Increase Profits With Smart Email Marketing

Gerald Weber — Wed, 17 Aug 2011 14:10:28 +0000

Is targeted email marketing profitable?

Yes.

How profitable?

Recent research shows “B2C marketers report an average 256% ROI” from email marketing.

No, that’s not a typo. It does say a two hundred and fifty-six percent ROI.

How can your business achiieve this level of success?

Simple; all you need to do is GOLF.

Grab Their Interest

Whether you’re collecting email leads through your website or in a one-on-one sales setting, you need to grab customers’ interest so they want to give you their email address.

If you’re using your website to collect leads, you can accomplish this by offering a free report or guide for them to download.

If it’s a one-on-one sales setting, your hook can be a contest or giving them an “exclusive” status.

Offer Value

Once you have a list of email addresses, it’s tempting to bombard them with offers. However, you’ll almost always see better results if you start by building a relationship.

Building a relationship means each email a customer receives from you provides them with value. Offering value to your email leads can come in many different forms.

Common ways businesses offer value include tips, newsletters and webinars. Regardless of what you ultimately offer, the key is ensuring it actually delivers value to the recipients.

Lay Out a Deal

After you’ve established a relationship and trust, it’s time to entice your email recipients to take action. The best way to do this is by offering a deal they won’t want to miss.

Keep in mind that one of the simplest ways to increase the effectiveness of any deal is to put a time limit on it. When someone only has 48 hours to snag a deal, they’re much more motivated to act because they don’t want to miss out.

Follow Your Results

Too many businesses make the mistake of not properly tracking their results. You need to know how many recipients are opening your emails and clicking your offer links.

To maximize your email marketing performance, you need this information delivered to you in real-time.

5 Ways to Sell More by Getting Organized

craigklein — Tue, 16 Aug 2011 22:53:36 +0000

This article has been selected for DeFinis Communications’ “Sales Coaching: Top Tips for Increased Productivity” Blog Carnival. You can enjoy even more posts from other exceptional bloggers at their website.

The most valuable asset a sales person has is time. Seasoned sales pros are adept at focusing their time on the right opportunities at the right time. This can mean thoroughly qualifying new prospects early in the sales process but, it can also mean tuning up the day to day time management techniques used by individual sales people.

Following are 5 simple time management techniques any sales person can implement today without spending much or any money to significantly increase their sales results. To be clear, while contact management or CRM software is one way to get organized and better manage time, these techniques can work without ANY technology so, don’t let the lack of the latest cloud based CRM stop you!

1) Keep everything in one place

New business cards, phone messages, emails, rumors, ideas – new sales opportunities can come from anywhere. Make it a point to be diligent in corralling all the sales intelligence you’re gathering every day in one place. If you’re not organizing, you’re drifting toward disorganization and that costs time and money. Use a day planner, rolodex, your iPhone, or your company’s CRM solution.

2) Separate sales contacts based on status

When things get crazy, you need to be able to put your fingers on the sales contacts you hope to close this month and focus on them. It takes too much time thumb through all your contacts to find the hot ones. Use a card file or a color coding system to make obvious the status of each contact, including existing customers. This is also helpful when it’s time to beat the bushes for new opportunities. If you’re able to quickly grab the list of old prospects that did not buy last year, you’ll be able to jump start your pipeline with a quick email blast or calling campaign.

3) Track follow up action items

Every time you talk to a lead or prospect, you agree to do something, “I’ll call you next Tuesday to see what you’ve decided.” Your follow through on these commitments, no matter how small, builds trust with your customers. Plus, spending time trying to remember who to call today can gobble up lots of time. Use Outlook or a day planner to write down follow up actions while you’re committing to them so you’ll always know what to do and for whom.

4) Keep a daily call list

Staying in touch with prospects can be a big competitive edge. It strengthens the relationship and keeps you in the driver’s seat. Making follow up calls and cold calls to new leads is an area sales people tend to procrastinate. Don’t let it happen to you. Plan a window of time in each day to make your follow up and prospecting calls. Make it early in the day, get focused and smile and dial!

5) Create a lead qualification and status sheet

When you connect with a lead or prospect, it’s easy to let the customer take charge. However, this can lead to the sales person spending too much time with the wrong prospects. Sales people can stay in charge of the process by focusing on qualifying each prospect by asking the right questions early on. Create a “Lead Qualification and Status Sheet” that lists the questions you need to ask each prospect and provides the typical answers in multiple choice form so it’s easy to circle the right ones. Create a place where you can note the size of the opportunity, product specifics, etc. that are helpful in your industry.

Following these simple suggestions can easily save hours per day for a typical sales person and increase sales results significantly by focusing time on the most productive activities. Of course, technology solutions like online CRM and email marketing systems take sales organization up to the level of sales automation. However, no sales person should be guilty of waiting for the perfect technology to be provided by their management. Get organized now the old fashioned way if you have to and you’ll be ready to leverage online CRM solutions to take things to the next level.

Ensure Your Company’s Success by Empowering Your Sales Team

Gerald Weber — Tue, 16 Aug 2011 13:37:01 +0000

Many companies make a big mistake when it comes to the way they handle sales. Although they take the time and energy necessary to hire top notch sales talent, they cripple these people’s ability to do well by not giving them the right tools.

What’s good for a company’s sales team is good for the overall company. When the sales staff is able to bring in an ongoing stream of customers, the rest of the company can continue to grow.

So, what exactly does your sales team need to flourish? To ensure your salespeople are able to perform at their best, you need to make it a priority to provide them with:

Automation

Your team should spend their time building relationships and closing sales, not sending out brochures. Software should be used to take these necessary but repetitive tasks off the shoulders of your sales team.

Instant Access to Contact Information

When it comes to succeeding at sales, information is truly power. This is why your sales team should have access to contact information whenever they need it.

Additionally, your team shouldn’t have to struggle to stay organized. Instead, your CRM software should make it dead simple for them to add notes or other reminders to their workflow.

A Collaborative Culture

Gone are the days of successful salespeople performing like one-man bands. While you want each member of your team to shine, you don’t want them to cut each other’s throats in the process. Instead, you want your salespeople to truly act and feel like a team.

When you give your sales staff the tools they need to work with each other instead of against each other, you’re going to create a much more positive work environment for them. Just as importantly, encouraging this type of collaboration means your clients are going to get the best level of service possible.

If you’re able to provide your sales team with these key elements, you can count on them to deliver results for your company

SalesNexus CRM Competes in CRM Idol Competition!

craigklein — Wed, 10 Aug 2011 17:12:50 +0000

Have you heard about the CRM Idol Competition?

It’s a take off on the American Idol theme but, for CRM companies. Paul Greenberg and a team of CRM industry insiders have launched the competition for 40 “small” CRM companies in the US. Small means the competitors have to be under $12m in annual revenue to participate. There’s also a similar group of 20 or so CRM companies in the Europe and Asia.

SalesNexus Online CRM and Email Marketing solution is one of the competitors. You can check out our profile on the CRM Idol site here.

Paul and his team have done a great job of getting the Buzz started about the competition. There’s the web site of course but, there’s also been a lot of talk on Twitter (use the #crmidol has tag) and there’s even a LinkedIn Group.

The competition begins in earnest on August 15th, 2011. Each contestant will present to a group of judges over the course of the next couple of weeks. Then 7 finalists will be chosen to submit videos and go through a more rigorous selection process.

We’re proud to be participating in the competition amongst some really strong contestants and teams. Its a great opportunity. We’re working hard on our presentation now. If you have any suggestions for us, we’d love to hear from you!

Return on Investment (ROI) for Sales People

craigklein — Sun, 31 Jul 2011 00:06:30 +0000

I’m a big fan of the concept of sales people qualifying prospect thoroughly early in the sales process so that they can conserve their most precious resource, their time.

The sales person invests his time in prospects hoping the return will be a sale and the resulting commission. The art of qualifying prospects gives the sales person the ability to choose intelligently where they make their investments. It’s one of the first fundamental skills I look for in sales people, whether hiring or training them in my own company or helping users of our online CRM and email marketing solution close more sales.

The trouble is that qualifying prospects can be tough. It really is more art than science. Sure, in a highly regimented selling team, the “escalation” of an early stage prospect to the more time intensive steps like presentations, demonstrations, proposals, etc. can be completely contingent on thorough technical qualification. Approved credit applications or other very specific criteria must be met first.

Of course, this takes the decision making out of the hands of the sales person completely. Most sales people make the judgment of a prospect’s worthiness based mostly on instinct. After all, in typical B2B sales, there are many factors that are completely subjective.

Sales people commonly see a stronger opportunity with prospects with which they have a strong relationship, even though the prospect’s company just announced layoffs. It just costs less time to work with that prospect so, the risk is smaller.

In my experience, there is only one method of qualifying a prospect that is virtually guaranteed to be accurate, time after time. Just as the sales person is making their own assessment of the return on their investment, of course, the prospect is doing the same.

Will the investment of their funds yield an acceptable return? Cool features, a strong brand and other sexy aspects don’t always add to the bottom line. Will the purchase save production time, reduce maintenance costs, improve quality, etc. in ways that will increase the bottom line more than the investment? Further, will the prospects investment of time in researching your solution yield a return for them?

As seasoned sales pros know, customers will often spend time with sales people with no intention of ever buying anything. Often, it’s not a malicious effort to extract free lunches, just an aimless search for answers to challenges and problems.

As a sales person, if you can’t identify how the prospect will realize return on their investment, then you can bet that the prospect has not identified it either and will not be making a purchase any time soon.

Yet, most sales people still pontificate on the features and benefits of their solution without ever doing the ROI math for themselves or the prospect.

For every sales person working harder than ever to find qualified prospects and bring home the bacon, it’s a two step dance to success:

1) Can you clearly articulate in simple terms how your product or service yields a quantifiable return on investment to your customers in general?

2) For the prospects you’re working with today and the ones you’ll meet tomorrow, focus your questions and dialog on identifying the ROI equation for each specific prospect. If it cannot be identified, then move on down the road.

Who’s Leads Are They Anyway?

craigklein — Tue, 26 Jul 2011 00:40:23 +0000

If you’re a sales and marketing professional and you’re not following the discussions in sales and marketing related groups on LinkedIn, you should be.

There are thousands of seasoned pro there to chime in and lend their experience to whatever is keeping you up at night.

I recently spoke with a client that was having a dispute with a former sales rep that had taken a list of customers with them to a new job.

So, I went on LinkedIn and started a discussion. Wow, crazy the wild variance of opinion you find!

The discussion on LinkedIn illustrates clearly that businesses assume they own leads, prospect lists, customer relationship information but, have no formal written agreement with their sales people on the matter. Meanwhile, sales people feel they’ve developed the information and relationships and therefore, it’s theirs.

And never the twain shall meet. Of course, my theory has always been that using an Online CRM gives the business an element of control over this issue that many don’t enjoy.

But, of course, there is more to it than just storing the information in customer database. I published an article on Technorati on the subject. Click here to read the article.

Are Sales People Email Marketers?

craigklein — Mon, 18 Jul 2011 21:40:47 +0000

A simple question with a seemingly simple answer… Email Marketing is for the Marketing Department, not the Sales Team!

Well yes, except for a couple of details…

1) In many small businesses, there is no Marketing Department

2) In the course of communicating with leads, prospects and customers, sales people probably send out the vast majority of the emails sent by their company.

So, like it or not, your sales people are the primary purveyors of email messages to your customers.

It seems to me that this is one area where sales automation and CRM systems miss the boat. If you really want to make sales people more efficient and effective then automate the repetitive tasks and make it easy for them to document the status of a given lead or opportunity.

All day every day, sales people send the same sorts of emails to multiple prospects and customers:

1) Lead follow up – Thank you for your interest, please click here for more info, etc.

2) Post presentation follow up – Summarize client needs, your businesses value proposition and next steps

3) Customer follow up – How are things? Feedback on the product/service? Future needs?

Sure, the details of each may be personalized but, most of them are exactly the same.

Then there are the coordination emails… “I’d like to schedule a meeting/phone call…”

And most importantly there are the emails that include an attached proposal or contract.

In all these cases, does it really make sense to leave it up to the sales person to write each one from scratch? Of course not. Sales people are not necessarily great at writing and certainly can be prone to grammar errors, etc.

But, more to the point, there are certain messages that you know your prospects and customers need to hear about your company. There’s also the age old marketing principal that a prospect must see/hear a message several times before they remember it.

Of course, the point here is that sales people ARE really a big part of your email marketing strategy. Even if your company is already doing a great job of email marketing, then those emails are seen by customers side by side with what is sent out by your sales team.

Does it make sense to use your CRM solution to give your sales team email templates they can quickly grab, edit a sentence or two and send out to a given prospect? You bet! This will save your sales team time and ensure their emails are professional and include the messages the business wants to emphasize.

Does it make sense to create on-going campaigns for leads, prospects and customers that send a series of timed emails out in a pre-planned sequence? Yes. However, this is where things typically get complicated. Most online CRM systems, such as Salesforce.com, can’t do this and that means marketing would need to extract leads and prospects from the CRM, move them into the Email Marketing solution of choice and execute the campaign.

Should CRM and Email Marketing vendors find ways to put this capability directly in the hands of sales people?

In any size business, putting the power to broadcast messages out to hundreds of customers in the hands of sales people could be scary. In a small business, lack of marketing staff makes the decision either make it easy for sales people to do it or don’t do it at all.

In 2011, can you afford to leave it to sales people to define your marketing messages for you?

Still Using ACT software?, You’re Not Alone

craigklein — Thu, 23 Jun 2011 13:17:50 +0000

SalesNexus just released new, automatic ACT software database migration that’s a real game changer. You can read all about it here.

As a part of our announcement of this new capability, I started a few discussions on LinkedIn to see what people thought.

The question I asked was “Why are sales teams still using ACT software?”.

The point of the question was to get at the core reasons businesses and sales people resist jumping on the SaaS or Cloud bandwagon.

Here are a few quotes from the responses -

“It is still arguably the easiest to use software for sales people, who tend towards strong interpersonal skills and weak technical skills. I’ve got to say that ACT software, for core functionality, is still the simplest of them all.”

“We use ACT software to track opportunities. I love being able to attach documents to a customers file so they are right there when I need it. We rely on it to schedule follow up and as a manager I can see who my reps are calling.”

So essentially businesses have very basic needs. In my experience, businesses that rely on ACT software want to do the types of things that any sales organization would want to do – stay on top of follow ups, record notes, track the sales pipeline and archive communications like emails, proposals, etc.

I’ve spoken to many sales leaders and business owners that have depended on ACT software for years and due to changes in their business, they’re looking to move ACT online. But, they can’t find a solution that won’t be too complicated and expensive.

Just the migration to another system is surprisingly challenging and costly. If you tell Salesforce.com that you’d like to move your ACT database online with them, and you’re smart enough to get very specific and ask about your valuable notes, sales pipeline, etc., they’ll tell you its going to involve buying some software, learning to use it yourself and migrating tables from ACT software into Salesforce.com one at a time. Or, they can connect you with a consultant to do it for you but, there’s plenty of problems with that approach too.

Not to mention the change for the users. If your sales team has been using ACT software for years, they’re going to need to learn a new system and that’s probably the most costly part of the transition.

So, you’ve got to have VERY compelling reasons to move your ACT database to the cloud to make it worth all that. Of course, there are HUGE benefits of moving to the cloud. Ultimately, it should be worth it. Now your team is always in sync and up to date with real time information. Less time spent trying to get the latest information and more time spent using it to find and close opportunities.

Of course, there is one web based CRM vendor that focuses on making the transition from ACT software to the cloud very easy for management and the sales team.

Cloud Computing – What are the Costs After the Subscription?

craigklein — Fri, 17 Jun 2011 19:43:01 +0000

Just wanted to share some exciting news! I just had my first article published on Technorati!

The subject is near and dear to my heart…. Cloud Computing solutions are often very competitive in terms of subscription costs and features but, often the “hidden costs” are greater than the subscription.

What are the costs of customizing it? Training? Support? Consulting? Of course, we see the confusion around these questions every day when talking with businesses searching for online CRM and Email Marketing solutions.

Read the article here.

Of course its an honor and a great opportunity to be published on such a popular and authoritative site as Technorati!

I’d really appreciate it if you’d Like it and Tweet it and comment on it so they’ll be glad I’m an author! Thanks!