We’ve been cranking out new features and improvements that we hope you love. Here are a few favorites:

• Add your company logo - You can now add your logo to the Postwire pages you share. We also brand the emails sent by you as well.
• Shared libraries - Are you the content maven in your company? Use shared libraries in Postwire to make sure your colleagues get the latest and greatest content from you (with virtually no more work from you).

Postwire is used by all kinds of people who want to create a remarkable experience for their clients, including sales & marketing teams, small businesses, sports trainers, agencies and many more. If you use content to educate your clients–and care about how you organize and present information to help each client succeed–then Postwire is the communicaton tool for you. It saves you time, notifies you when the information is viewed and makes you look great too.

Click here to log in and check it out!

Postwire to the Rescue!

What would you do if your champion from your most valued account unexpectantly left the company? David Marinac from StandupPouches.net recently experienced just this. In a matter of minutes, David invited his other client contacts to a Postwire page, reassuring them he had their backs. They were impressed with his responsiveness and deep knowledge. Presenting information so that it was easy to get everyone up to speed quickly went a long way towards establishing trust.

Got a Postwire story? We’d love to hear it.

Postwire Tip:

Did you know Postwire sends email notifications whenever anyone comments on a page? Touch your client by adding new content to her page along with your perspectives in a comment.

Keep her engaged and informed!

We’ve been giving a lot of thought recently to what it takes to create a remarkable client experience. There’s certainly no shortage of research and expertise on this topic. Sometimes, though, it’s the simplest of all concepts that strike you the hardest. Like this one I stumbled upon this week surfing the Web:

Delighting your customers doesn’t build loyalty. Reducing effort does.

The body of research behind this statement comes from the Corporate Executive Board and popped onto my radar screen this week from reading this post. What’s my takeaway from my cursory reading about the Customer Effort Score? Using its four dimensions—reducing thinking effort, emotional effort, physical effort and time—is a helpful framework for improving how you work with clients…and, if you’re a salesperson, how you sell. After all, according to other research by the Customer Executive Board, client loyalty is more a function of how you sell than what you sell.

I remember when you pulled into a station to fill up your car. You would wait for an attendant to come from running from inside or finish with another car. Almost all stations are self service now. Why? Because while it required a bit more physical effort from me, it reduced time as I could jump out, fill up my car and dash off.  Also, now the credit card reader is right at the pump—you no longer have to wait for the attendant to run inside. What a concept! Oh, and have you seen some of the new restaurant check out systems where the server can take payment right at the table?

What are you doing to reduce your client’s efforts?

This image gas_station_2 is courtesy of Atle Brunvoll on Flickr and made available under an Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 2.0 license.

For my 30+ years of selling, everyone that I sold was either a prospective client or a client. They were not customers. So many people use customer and client as interchangeable words. They are not.

All salespeople should stop thinking customer and think client. Not just think client, but ACT client.

Is spending time thinking about how you label the people who purchase your products and services simply a frivolous exercise in semantics? I don’t think so. Labels have the potential to motivate behavioral changes leading to more remarkable client experiences and thereby your success.

Traditionally, people who were paid for their advice – lawyers, accountants, advisors, agents, coaches and other professional experts use the label “client’. Quite simply they were paid to share their expertise.

Let’s look at the definition of a customer (dictionary.com):
Customer – A person who purchases goods or services from another.

Your contact is looking for someone who can spot their opportunity or issue and help them succeed. They are looking for you to be an expert. You must think of yourself as an expert, not as someone who people by from (remember the definition of a customer). In today’s world, your contact’s time is too valuable to think he needs someone to buy from. Be an expert and start by thinking what you would need to do to have your clients pay you for your advice.

Successful salespeople offer real value through the way they educate and even challenge clients’ thinking.

What do you do to help your client as an expert?

P.S. I highly recommend reading this four-part series of articles in Harvard Business Review: 1: Selling Is Not About Relationships; 2: The Worst Question a Salesperson Can Ask; 3: Why Your Salespeople are Pushovers; 4: How the Rift Between Sales & Marketing Undermines Reps.)

With that statement, “The Sales Lion”, Marcus Sheridan, roared his way into my life for the first time this week.

Anyone who superimposes his photo alongside a magnificent lion on his web site is already someone I want to meet. Marcus is a pool sales guy turned hands-on content marketing guru who obviously has mastered the art of attracting revenue by sharing his expertise.

At last look, the blog post that initially caught my eye had 55 comments! I encourage you to take the time to read Marcus’ entire post: The Incredible Relationship Between Content Marketing and Sales. The thought-provoking question posed by Marcus:

“Why do so many companies fail to integrate content marketing into their sales processes?”

My response:

1. Why do so many companies fail to integrate content marketing into their sales process? I think that the word “content marketing” has left many people feeling that content is for marketing – getting people to the website and “top of funnel” and it is not as important when the sales person gets involved. The sales person sells on building trust and does not need content to create that bond. What a missed opportunity.This is compounded by the fact that marketing and sales management is not driving how to get the content that marketing is using into the hands of sales people. I am amazed at how many companies have rich content libraries but when you ask the sales people do they use the content they say not much and they do not know how to get at it. They just grab a couple of pieces, often out of date and continue to use it over and over again. Not strategically, just so they have something to send.
2. Who is doing it well? I admire:

• Owen Blevins at Mid-Atlantic Concrete – http://maconcrete.com
• David Marinac at Standuppouches – http://standuppouches.net
• Andrew Sealy at MINDBODY – http://mindbodyonline.com

The stars are aligning right now such that content can serve as a bridge to bring sales and marketing together. In the world of content marketing, getting content into the hands of salespeople and helping them effectively use it is an easy, powerful win that will drive more sales. In our work with clients using Postwire, we see firsthand that sharing good content to educate prospects saves precious time for both buyers and sellers by shortening sales cycles–whether selling pools, concrete production equipment, food packaging pouches or expertise like “The Sale Lion”.

Expert salespeople have figured out that great content is the secret sauce for making sales. Share your expertise using Postwire. Sign up for free account at www.postwire.com.

Photo Credit: Tambako the Jaguar on Flickr

By sharing access to great thinking, we all get smarter. That’s what prompts me to share this graphical summary of how to write the perfect blog post created by Derek Halpern of Social Triggers. Thank you, Derek!

More great blog posts written = more great content items you can share with your clients using Postwire!

Like this? Get more marketing tips from Social Triggers.