We concur with the Infographic’s conclusion—email is here to stay. However, email is not always the most effective way to transmit your message. New(er) technologies—like Facebook and Twitter—introduce additional ways for humans to communicate. Think about what you’re trying to accomplish and select the best media available to you.

Email gets a deserved bad rap from marketing campaigns and spammers pushing unwanted messages that ignore communication fundamentals—such as this basic truth: the receiver must want to receive the message sent!

When your emails are written to be personal, with timely, relevant information the receiver really wants, they can help you build relationships one-to-one. Make your emails better and create relationships using VisibleGains.

Click to download .PDF version

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<a href=”http://www.visiblegains.com/is-email-dead” target=”_blank”><img src=”http://www.visiblegains.com/Portals/54582/Infographics/visiblegains-emaildead.png” alt=”Is Email Dead? [Infographic]” width=”550″ border=”0″></a><BR><div> courtesy of <a href=”http://www.visiblegains.com/”>Visible Gains</a></div>

5 Steps to use Outlook’s signature function for creating email message templates

Step One: Click New E-mail

Step Two: Click Insert, then click Signature

Step Three: From drop-down menu, click “Signatures…”

Step Four: Click “New”. Enter a name, as well as text, for a complete email message. (Remember to also include an email signature in this “Signature” template entry!)

Step Five: Select the appropriate standardized message by “Signature” name each time you want to send similar text in a new email. Don’t forget to add a subject line and the first name of the person to whom you’re sending the message in the message body. Also, modify the templated text appropriately to ensure it’s relevant to the individual receiving it.

This shortcut saves me time when I want to repetitively send only slightly different emails over and over again–such as a follow-up to a hands-on product demo I’ve just given. Let me know how this shortcut works for you.

Got any Outlook tips to share with us?

We’ve referenced before Gutenberg’s printing press and the sea change its introduction created. The ability to print in quantity created a new channel for communicating information to the general public. And, as the printing press became commoditized, it wasn’t just the rich producing content. Streamlined processes and lower production costs increased the diversity of subject matter communicated. For the first time, regular folks could share their ideas to persuade the masses. Leveraging the new technology, “crazy” ideas could easily spread and plant seeds for other “crazy” ideas–aka innovations. The same thing happened with the introduction of TV and subsequently the Internet.

Sometimes everything just comes (or is coming) together…

It’s not like the tablet just got invented yesterday. Steve Jobs was superb at making it work very simply for the user in the form of the iPad. I’m pretty sure Amazon’s Kindle Fire (suspiciously familiar to the Blackberry Playbook) wouldn’t exist today if Mr. Jobs hadn’t been as successful at widespread adoption as he was. That’s not the interesting part. What’s next is the INTERESTING PART.

Click below to hear David Meerman Scott talk about why he wrote his newly launched eBook Newsjacking, specifically for the Kindle Fire.

Text no longer exists statically in black and white on paper–it’s colorful, blinks and moves–opening us up to a whole new way of thinking about how we consume and interact with information. The iPad truly started us down the tablet path and Amazon’s Kindle Fire takes us a step further.  The Kindle Fire will be more accessible at its significantly cheaper price point and it will allow me to self-publish my thoughts beyond the blogoshpere. Amazon provides you the opportunity to elevate your credibility and bring interactive content to the masses; the iPad doesn’t seem to be going this way.

Can you imagine if all 48 pages of Common Sense written by Thomas Paine had an interactive community around it citing sources? Could King George have jumped in and had a counter argument disputing each point from its original anonymous “Written by an Englishman” author? Would support for the American Revolution been secured faster? What similar e-documents were used to aid Egypt in their efforts for independence? Did mobile texting networks, the blogosphere or Twitterverse speed up the democratization process? I’d argue it did.

Compelling content exists today in unfathomable quantities and we hungrily consume and produce more of it every day. Whether paid or not, people take the time to post 900,000 blogs per day. There are roughly 70 million videos on YouTube and 2 Billion searches conducted via Google.

I engage (and expect to engage) with online content much differently than I do when I read a printed book. I choose to explore related resources when they are conveniently presented to me, only a click away. Dispute a fact. Research a related thought. Ague a point. Post a comment. Buy a product right now. Have a concern about a company– ask your friends about it right now. Granted, I have a bias towards action (in fact, my twitter handle is biasforaction), but I don’t think I’m unique.

Maybe I’m giving them more credit than they’re due, but I’d like to think that Amazon with its Kindle Fire is deliberately breaking new ground. Amazon could become a broker of communities formed around common interests and original content. I realize may be way off-base as I don’t even have a Kindle Fire yet. Still, I’m excited at the possibilities and the technology revolving around “me” right now.

What do you think? Is Amazon up to the task of advancing our level of engagement with new ideas (and each other) through interactive content? Is Kindle Fire the platform to change the way the masses communicate and consume information?

In a webinar we presented for the second time today, Trish Bertuzzi and Cliff Pollan offer tips for helping B2B salespeople win at the game of “Prospect Hide & Seek”. They talk about keeping prospects engaged in all steps of the selling process to avoid the salesperson’s nightmare of “being left out alone in the dark”.

While Bertuzzi and Pollan share many things you can do, they also emphatically stress one thing not to do: “Do not create resistant donkeys!” (Listen to Cliff Pollan’s words of caution.)

How many of you have defaulted to using the weak sales tactics described below (my mnemonic: WEAC) when trying to “convince” a prospect to break from the status quo and purchase your product?

• Warning of consequences for not changing
• Explaining how change should occur
• Arguing for the benefits of your solution
• Convincing someone they need to make a change

STOP!

Psychological research tells us WEAC sales tactics may very well halt whatever momentum in the sales process you’ve established by causing your prospect to behave like a donkey digging in its heels.

Why? The reason has to do with a natural tendency we all have to be apprehensive about change. Prospects, for example, often worry about selecting the very best solution or how a change might impact employee relationships, increase costs or demand more of their time. Pushed externally, a prospect may feel even more off balance. The more out of control a prospect feels, the more likely he or she is to gravitate back to a place of security—the status quo.

Remember, resistance is natural in the sales process. The mere existence of it does not suggest something wrong. The takeaway here is that the relational stance the salesperson takes can either strengthen or reduce this natural tendency.

Q: So what can you as salesperson do to minimize natural resistance and keep your prospect actively engaged in the “daylight” of your sales nurturing?

A: Put the prospect in charge of the change process. Use STRONG sales tactics (another mnemonic coined by me!) to facilitate keeping the prospect actively engaged:

• Support the change process by asking questions, listening and reflecting
• Trust the prospect’s perspective on the pros/cons of change, and the risks/benefits of the solutions available
• Respect how difficult the change process can be
• Offer encouragement for change if the prospect decides to take action
• No judgment—allow all issues to be on the table
• Guide, but do not drive the process—motivation for change needs to come from within your prospect

What sales tactics have you tried to prevent your prospect from becoming a resistant donkey?

Peggy Kriss, Ph.D. is a clinical psychologist in Newton, Massachusetts and a consultant to VisibleGains. Stay tuned for more psychology informed blogs by Dr. Kriss.

Photo Credit: pmarkham flickr

Really? No, really?!

At the time, DISH Network was actively recruiting subscribers and I was truly confused by the service rep’s indifferent response. Guess what I did? I switched to Verizon for FIOS TV, of course.

We’ve all seen statistics on customer retention versus acquisition. Lots of really smart Ph.D’s have explained the concept of Customers Lifetime Value (CLV). In the simplest of terms, it’s a lot cheaper to keep a customer than to get a new one—common sense without the fancy TLA (Three Letter Acronym). Within the past few years, I’ve noticed CLV has been modified to CCLV (Connected Customers Lifetime Value) and CEV (Customer Engagement Value).

Basically, anyone selling anything should expand their thinking beyond their existing customers to their customers’ network and sphere of influence.

Product marketing sometimes casts customer retention in terms of switching costs. Think about what a pain it is to switch cell phone carriers. The Cell Carrier Lobbyists fought tooth and nail against LNP (Local Number Portability) until they could figure out ways to lock up customers. There’s really no reason to have specific phones for specific carriers. Europe doesn’t. Instead of focusing on change penalties, how about improving the value of the services delivered by understanding my needs and what makes me choose to be a loyal customer and refer my friends?

Airlines attracted and successfully retained loyal customers for a while with frequent flyer programs. I know—I booked most of my flights on United even though there weren’t always direct flights to where I was going. But then United and other airlines blew it by instituting too many restrictions.

Most businesses truly do strive to please their customers. Most business people appreciate the power of referral marketing and naturally hope through careful management of customer relationships, we’ll gain new customers via referrals.

I invite you to pause now and honestly ask yourself: when was the last time you reached out to your customers individually? I don’t mean sending a newsletter or some marketing automated message, but making a direct one-to-one connection. And, not when there’s a problem, but when there isn’t—simply as a way to listen, learn and share information.

Connecting genuinely on a more personal level—one-to-one—is a powerful way to cultivate happy customers, and, hopefully, referrals. Here are several tips to help you get started:

• Tweet a congratulatory note or comments to new customers who use Twitter accounts.
• Actively participate in LinkedIn groups around conversations you care about.
• Reward your customers with information that helps them stay on top of their game—even if the data you share has nothing to do with what you’re selling.
• Offer favors, connections and networking opportunities to advance your customers’ careers.
• Find out what makes each customer tick—what they’re passionate about. Do this to find common interests you share and can connect through.

Having said all that, my hope is to personally connect with more of our customers. Please DM me @biasforaction or give me an old-fashioned phone call to chat. My direct phone number is 781-350-3416, extension 113. My email is bcarney at VisibleGains dot com (so the SPAM bots won’t pick me up).

He got thoughtful and asked if I wanted to know what actually happens in the brain when someone is presented with too much information—like when a buyer has to shop in a “superstore” versus a “bodega”. I eagerly said yes and this is what I learned.

First of all, he explained, we humans are motivated to solve problems. Problems create uncomfortable feelings and we are programmed to make those uncomfortable feelings go away. In fact, the feelings (FB) part of the brain (science speak: limbic system) has many lines of communication that are directly connected to the problem solving (PSB) part of the brain (science speak: prefrontal lobe). So when we experience discomfort about something not working right, that feeling gets sent directly to the PSB, pleading:

“Do something about this problem!”

Feeling some pain or discomfort is actually a good thing because it energizes us to gather information in order to find a solution. For example, a prospect may search websites, read blogs, or perhaps ask a trusted colleague for some solutions to his or her problem. The shopping process begins…BUT when a prospect is presented with massive amounts of information, the PSB, craving order, has to work “overtime” to categorize information in order to be able to make a decision.

The FB picks up the strain in the PSB and sends frantic messages to it:

“I’m overwhelmed! I don’t have enough time to figure out the best solution. What if I make a mistake?”

With all these distress signals going to the PSB, guess what happens? The PSB gets exhausted and gives up trying to solve the problem and instead shifts into survival mode. Your overwhelmed prospect is no longer shopping for a solution. He or she is using all of her energy to feel better.

“How can I get out of here? My problem is not so bad. I don’t really need to change anything. Good bye!”

ALAS, PARALYSIS!

So what can a salesperson do to avoid this from happening to a prospect? 

• First and foremost, keep your sales communications clear, concise and well organized.
• Use categories (sales speak-qualifiers) the thinking brain “craves” by spelling out the obvious so the prospect does not have to work so hard.
• Gain a simple understanding of your prospect’s most important problems, identify the key ways you can help him or her and align those two tightly. (If you cannot describe how your solution solves the problem in a few sentences, then you’ve missed the mark!)

Helping buyers categorize information leaves them with more energy to make an informed purchase decision more quickly. Think about going into a superstore to buy a television. When you arrive in the TV area, you’re faced with a dizzying array of choices. Left on your own, you may get overwhelmed and bolt. An experienced salesperson, though, can prevent you from fleeing and promote thoughtful decision making by asking you a few “category promoting” questions such as:“What are you going to watch? How big is your room? Does it have a lot of sunlight? Will you be gaming on it?” This line of questioning enables you to narrow your selection and hone in on a few options to choose between.

Understanding how the brain reacts to information overload is critical to helping your prospect stay focused to make a decision. Stay tuned for Part 2 of this blog for more tips to help your prospect thrive in our “superstore” culture.

How do you simplify decision making for your prospect?

Peggy Kriss, Ph.D. is a clinical psychologist in Newton, Massachusetts and a consultant to VisibleGains. Stay tuned for more psychology informed blogs by Dr. Kriss.

Chris Brogan said in his recent blog “I am not a customer. I am not a user. I might be a client. I might be a member. I may even be a loyalist. But don’t call me a customer. ‘Customer’ is a dirty word.”

Twitter expert, Laura  “@pistachio” Fitton  expresses this sentiment in her “4 enchanting ways to improve your inbound marketing” blog post where  she talks about the importance of building an “enchantment ecosystem” so your customer has lots of ways to feel valued, be part of a community, actively giving and receiving and overall having lots of opportunities to interact and feel positively about the  company.

Let’s extrapolate from what we are learning about the changing customer and apply it to the prospect.  Look at LinkedIn Groups or a Tribe as Seth Godin puts it.  Using groups creates multiple opportunities to engage prospects and customers alike.  If they are active participants in a group or tribe you can rest assured that they are passionate about a specific topic and have come together because they care. A post from triplepundit explains it this way: “think of success as the strength of the relationships your stakeholders will walk away with”.

What’s the worst thing you can do as a member of these groups?  Sell Stuff.  You run the risk of alienating the group and groups tend to stand up and force selfish people out. You will undermine trust, reduce your perceived value, increase resistance, distract them from the important task of focusing on their own needs and fears, and foster unhappy feelings.

Here are 7 tips for creating a “prospect community”:

1. Make your first contact remarkable:  clear message, value focused and delivered to match the stage and readiness level of the prospect.
2. Be thoughtful about what content is shared. Don’t overwhelm people with content.  Send information that will be valuable and relevant to the needs of each receiver.
3. Create an organized system for your content (both self-created and curated) that makes it easy for your sales team to send out tailor-fit content, as a way of building trust, and facilitating an on-going dialogue.  Consider a landing page that is less cluttered than what is found on your website.
4. Use multiple channels to interact with your prospects:  Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, newsletters, phone calls, surveys, or perhaps your local Starbucks.  Share your exceptional content, compelling testimonials, and constant visceral and tangible reminders of the value that comes from interacting with your company.  Ask them for feedback on their needs, dreams and their experiences as a prospect with your company.  Don’t wait; be proactive and curious.
5. Create an outstanding customer referral system. Check out my recent blog for four tips for fueling your “referral engine”
6. Create events both on the phone and live in your office, thought leadership or product oriented. Mix it up and have some events for both prospects and clients:  conference calls, an invited speaker event, birds of a feather or round-table discussions.
7. Create regular community building opportunities for your own employees:  How about holding weekly Friday bag lunch discussions to ask questions, celebrate successes, and learn from each other’s interactions with the outside world.

Are you just selling stuff or are you passionate about it and willing to contribute to the community?

Peggy Kriss, Ph.D. is a clinical psychologist in Newton Massachusetts and a consultant to VisibleGains.  Stay tuned for more psychology informed blogs by Dr. Kriss.

I am talking about the study a lot these days and its results permeate many of my conversations.  “Do your endorphins surge when you share a cherished product with a friend?”  Great ice breaker.

At a women’s entrepreneurial networking meeting sponsored by the Wellesley Pod for BIG, I asked our speaker, the very successful career and life  coach and radio personality Mel Robbins to remind her audience not to be afraid to ask your network for help with growing your business-because, I explained,  “research shows that people share because it feels good, it gets their endorphins going.”

“Yes,” Mel replied, “BUT you must be very specific in what you want them to do for you.  If the request is too general, they will forget about it and not respond.”

John Jantsch gives similar advice in “The Referral Engine”.  “We rate and refer as a form of survival,” he explains.  But, here is his “BUT” in terms of getting customers to refer to you:

“You simply need to stay top of mind and make it easy for them to do.  Hint: Ask and remind!”

Here are four tips for fueling your “referral engine”:

1. Write for them –  Send  an email to your referral agent that they can quickly and easily forward with a short note to the person they are connecting you with.  Don’t leave the work on writing and assembling materials to them.
2. Use share buttons –  On your website and blog, include share buttons that allow them to grab information that they can share to make the introduction.
3. In person event/networking –  hold an event with the right agenda where your referral agent can invite connections you want to include in your network.
4. Identify people –  Use LinkedIn to identify specific people and groups you may have in common you want to meet through your referrer – the more connections the better.  Don’t exclusively leave it to them to identify people.

For any business, customers are its single most important asset.   Customers represent the lifeblood of the company, a source of revenue, new growth and ideas for future opportunities.  But we often forget that it is also the best source to find new clients.

Here is a customer case example that I stumbled upon in the Q&A section of a webinar that CSO Insights held:

An example was a software firm we benchmarked. They showed us a report from their LMS system that showed quantity of leads per various lead sources. Top on their list was tradeshows, which accounted for 42% of their total lead flow. Last on the list was a source titled, DebbieC which was responsible for .05% of the leads for the previous twelve months.

…. DebbieC turned out to be the name of a customer who regularly sent referrals to the company. On an annual basis she sent 56 referrals. When they started tracking leads through their sales cycle in their CRM system, they found that 46 of those leads turned into opportunities that closed!

That insight prompted them to reallocate some of their lead generation funds to start a formal referral management program, which while generating small numbers of leads, is way out performing any other program for deals that close.

It is interesting that many B2B companies do not have programs to help them get referrals.  I think that is because marketing focuses on getting new names through other vehicles and account managers most often are responsible for current client relationships and see their role as having these clients succeed.

Account managers do not see or are not incented for the broader goal of getting referrals to help generate new revenue from new accounts.

John Jantsch has done a great job of evangelizing this opportunity.  His book “The Referral Engine” is worth reading, as it provides a blueprint for a holistic approach.

What are you doing to drive referrals?

It is visually very engaging.  But, what excites me the most is we have all been reading, writing and living the realities of social media marketing-but rarely have we gotten some real live data on why this tsunami has taken such a hold on our shared universe.

I am currently reading “The Referral Engine” by John Jantsch. His focus is to leverage knowledge about the  sharing phenomenon to positively impact the sales process. Understanding sharing is the central thesis of his work; people who refer are driven to share.  As I read it (every time I see the word “refer”, I think “share”), I say to myself, yes this makes sense, this so applies to my business.  Some key quotes from Jantsch that have stayed with me are:

There is a tiny part of the brain, the hypothalamus, that-among other things-helps regulate sexual urges, thirst and hunger, maternal behavior, aggression, pleasure, and, to some degree, your propensity to refer. …

“We rate and refer as a form of survival.”

So, when I saw the data in the Times study, I thought:  yes John Jantsch is correct.  People actually reported in the study that they were motivated to connect.  This may sound so obvious now, but it is so critical for us to not get so carried away in the tsunami that we do not stop and take note of what is going on and why, and what sales can do with it.  This is particularly important because our efforts going forward are SO intertwined with the power of this earth changing movement.  We need data to confirm our hypotheses so that we can better harness this fast moving phenomenon.  We have an opportunity right now to use the power of social media to fuel our economy (read sales) and our sense of well-being (read survival) if we make sure we truly understand what is going on with your potential clients.  If we just make assumptions about why we think the social media movement is upon us, and do not use the scientific method to go deeper, we are missing a huge opportunity…

What are some of your assumptions about this sharing revolution?  What questions would you like to see tested?

Dr. Peggy Kriss, Ph.D. is a clinical psychologist in Newton Massachusetts and a consultant to VisibleGains.  Stay tuned for more psychology informed blogs by Dr. Kriss.