There is a lot of talk about content in marketing and sales these days. A company no longer has just brochures, datasheets or a company website; it has a pool of content about the products and services it markets. The company makes strategic and tactical decisions about how to most effectively communicate that content to potential customers, whether by blog, tweet, email, brochure, slide deck, webinar, datasheet, phone call or other means.

What does “content” mean for your customer?

When asked to define “content”, salespeople tend to have a very parochial point of view, believing that content is solely the information developed by their company, about their own products and services, that they can supply to their prospects.

Unfortunately that narrow perspective creates a mismatch with the information needs of their prospects. The problem for a sales person is that their potential customers have a much broader definition of and requirement for content. To the prospect and customer “content” is the sum total of the data and information they need to make a fully informed purchase decision in the least time possible.

In their buying cycle, prospects are looking to gather not only the specifics about particular products and services but also information and data that will help create the overall context for the decision they have to make. For instance, an informed buyer may need to know where technology is evolving in your product segment, not only for you but also your competition. They may need to know what their competitors have done or are doing with similar products. They may need to have an understanding of what products will be coming to market in the near future that could impact their competitive position if adopted by a competitor first.

Think Globally, Act Locally

In the early days of the environmental movement, grassroots activists encouraged their followers to ‘Think Globally, Act Locally.’ In other words, you needed to consider the implications for the global welfare of the earth in the actions you took locally in your day-to-day life.

Similarly, salespeople need to think more globally about the content they provide to prospects and the positive impact it can have on their local decision-making. It is no longer enough for your sales team to be a conduit for proprietary content only.

A salesperson can create real value for the customer by taking a broader view of the customer’s need for information and identifying and providing the 3rd party content that assists the customer to make a more informed purchase decision in less time.

3 Easy Steps to Becoming an Effective Content Provider

1. The salesperson needs to thoroughly map out the entire set of information the customer will need to A) make an informed purchase decision and B) make the decision to purchase your product. A and B are not the same data. Unless a salesperson is new to the company they should have the customer and product knowledge to complete this on their own.
2. The salesperson defines a list of the 3^rd party content they could provide that would create value for the customer. The goal is to make the customer smarter, in a global sense, about their problem, their requirements and the value of the solution that you can provide. Yes, the customers could go online and find this information for themself. But, envision the credibility and trust you will build with the customer if you proactively provide it.
3. The salesperson goes online and finds the information they need. Here are a few quick ideas about finding relevant content that would be valued by your prospect:
• Set up Google Alerts for keywords associated with the prospect’s industry as well as for your products/services. Check these daily for content that will provide value to the prospect.
• Subscribe to key blogs in the prospect’s market space. Provide links to postings from bloggers in their industry that discuss the problems solved and benefits received from solutions like yours.
• Find 3^rd party industry or academic research on your product category. Even if all you can find online is the abstract from a research report, you can usually learn enough information from that to understand what its conclusions are. If you were working on a big enough deal then perhaps it would be worth buying the report for the customer.
• Search YouTube (www.youtube.com ) for videos that address the installation or implementation concerns the prospect might have for a solution like yours.
• Check resources like SlideShare (www.slideshare.com ) for presentations that address areas of interest to the prospect.
• Search online for industry conferences in their space and look for interesting presentations that are relevant to the prospect’s buying cycle. Find a link to the conference proceedings. If not, email the presenters and ask for a copy of his or her slides.
• Use a tool like VisibleGains for Sales to provide the 3^rd party content to the customer in Zero-Time. Track which content the prospect looked at so that you can focus your follow-ups on the topics that matter most to the prospect.

Being an effective content provider requires an investment of time and thought on the part of the salesperson. This investment is usually the difference between a successful salesperson and one who is always playing catch-up with his or her quota.

Please be sure to join me on Feb 9 at 1pm EST for a webinar presented by VisibleGains: The First Seller with the Answers Wins! 4 Essential Elements of Effective Sales Lead Follow-up. I’ll be speaking about the steps every company should take to maximize their returns on the sales leads they generate. Click here to register for the webinar. Everyone who registers for the webinar and completes a free online assessment on my website will receive a free copy of my award-winning book, Zero-Time Selling.

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>

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?

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).

What is content curation, you ask? Simply put: content curation is the process of sifting through the boatload of information “out there”—blog posts, tweets & news feeds—and passing on the golden nuggets others in your network find valuable.

After sitting in this curation conference and being bombarded with the “T” word, I was struck by the incredible potential content curation has for salespeople to virtually build trusting relationships as the foundation for generating sales and referrals.

I found this trust theme particularly interesting having just read a blog by Steven Woods, CTO at Eloqua, on “Trust, Reputation, and Inside-Sales”.

“There is a significant shift underway in how we establish and build trust… [having] numerous profound implications for society in general, but more specifically, it is causing significant shifts in the way that people buy… the evolution of trust is opening up new opportunities for inside sales teams.”

“As the emphasis on face-to-face interaction as a way to build trust decreases in lieu of other ways of building trust, the need to be “in the field” also decreases. It is unlikely that field sales as a discipline will disappear any time soon, the economic bar at which a face-to-face interaction is “necessary” is in the middle of a dramatic shift.”

Marketers are all over the power of content curation for building trusted reputations of brands and products. According to Hivefire’s B2Marketing trends 2011 survey, 82% of B2B marketers now use content marketing as a strategy in their marketing programs. Forrester Research cites the use of online content curation to build thought leadership and authority relationships as one of four critical emerging technologies for B2B sales and marketing.

Posting a Youtube video occasionally on Facebook to share with friends or sharing links to articles of interest with your network are forms of content curation. Chances are you already do this to some extent. Now think about someone you know professionally you consider as a go-to person or expert. My guess is that they regularly share information on a particular topic you find valuable. By doing so consistently, they’ve established themselves as a trusted source.

Bottom line: every communication you send—and online interaction you have—is an opportunity to build trust capital you can leverage strategically to boost sales. Continuously earn deposits in your prospects’ trust banks by routinely sharing valuable, golden nuggets of information. Here are a few content curation tips to help you get started:

1. Add real value by selecting content of specific interest to an individual prospect or customer. Make sure it’s information your reader truly cares about; do not be guided by what you find interesting or stimuating.
2. Less is more—don’t overload your prospect with too much information.  Remember, too much information and they will shut down (read more in my previous blog).
3. Don’t be afraid to share information about your competition; it is a critical way to show that you are trustworthy.  Nobody wants to do business with an “information censor”.

Stay tuned for future posts with additional practical tips to help you create a simple, disciplined routine for continuously discovering and sharing valuable information with prospects and clients.

How are you building trust virtually? Is content curation one of the trust-building tools you use?

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.

First thought: 

Calm down and remember how I got started with this blog idea.

My goal has been to write  about how to help sales people  best communicate one to one  with their prospects in an attempt to nurture them through a successful sales process.  Lots of tips about choosing relevant content and using personal pages or landing pages as a way of delivering a more targeted and relevant message.

How I got the idea:

I watched Barry Schwartz’ TedTalk on “Paradox of Choice”.

What’s the point:

This is perfect -I thought!  This talk dramatizes what happens when mortals are exposed to too many choices, too much information: they get confused , they have a less satisfying experience,  and instead of being nurtured, they become paralyzed!

How does this relate to the sales process?

Schwartz explains a critical psychological fact that every salesperson should understand.  People will derive much less satisfaction from any given product (or specific feature) when they are given too many choices.  And paralysis- this is not what the sales manager had hoped for!

“Everybody needs a fishbowl,” says Schwartz.  “In the absence…a recipe for misery, and I suspect, disaster.”    Converting to sales speak, prospects need tailor fit content presented to them over time, organized in a simple easy to comprehend fashion , a bodega as opposed to an overwhelming one stop mega superstore (think Walmart) website.

Here are five takeaway tips:

Note:   These tips helped me to avoid “paralysis” during this research and writing journey. -so I would have energy left to share something with you:

1.  Present  your message and your product  in simple, uncluttered ways.  Learn a lesson from Steve Jobs: “I’m as proud of what we don’t do as I am of what we do.”
2. Don’t do a “data dump”.  An example of information overload for me was watching this lengthy video on using LinkedIn to generate sales.   Great ideas but way too much information all at once.  I got a headache, and more concerning, I have not even looked at my LinkedIn page for days…paralysis???  Suggestion -  Tell me that I should do these over a 60 day period and indicate what to do every third day.
3. Help your prospect to be oriented:  A fascinating psychological study of how people absorb information on the web found that people spend so much of their energy just getting oriented on the web that they have little cognitive steam left to learn and make decisions from the information.   Make  your communications visually easy to follow so that your prospect can best use their attention and energy to learn from your thought leadership and product value.
4.  Given that attention is such a scarce commodity in this age of information overload, be creative and do something unexpected.  A great example was at the  Inbound Marketing Summit  when Hubspot employees dressed up in orange suits to make a splash!
5.  Make sure your content  and social media conversations are relevant and add value.  Pam Moore does a nice job summarizing this tip in her “social-media-a-little-less-talk-a-lot-more-action-please” blog.

Are your sales prospects suffering from information overload? Are you selling to them from a “Bodega” or a “Superstore”?

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?

There is a Dakota Sioux Native American saying that goes something like …”when riding a dead horse, dismount”.  I’ve always thought the saying to be funny as it’s a little bit more than obvious.  Sometimes things can be blurred in the sales process and it’s not often clear if you should “dismount”.

Most successful sales reps depend upon a variety of components which they may or may not use during an engagement with a prospect.   These reps can only control the things which are under their power at any given moment and they mitigate factors which are out of their control that can disrupt the flow.  One common flow disruption is falling into the “dead zone”.  Sometimes sales reps will “dismount” without checking to see if the horse is dead.  Though the horse may not be responding – it might still be alive.

To dismount or not to dismount

Imagine that you’ve just met an ideal customer that fits your high probability profile.  You’ve had the first discussion or meeting and closed it out with several follow-up items you need to get done.  In order to make a good impression you scramble to make your commitments complete and send a note off with your deliverables.  Then nothing, no answered calls, no responded emails, no pulse.  Your manager keeps asking you for a status update and you’ve got nothing to give.  The meeting was great – what happened?

We’ll assume it truly was a great meeting and that you didn’t just hear what you wanted.  I guarantee you shouldn’t take it personal (if you do – you shouldn’t be in sales).  Jill Konrath calls these “crazy-busy prospects” and provides some tips for getting and keeping their attention. There are many statistics floating around which indicate it’s now harder than ever to get engaged with a prospect.  You may have a routine that has worked for you with your prospects in the past but you may also have come across a “dead zone” once and a while. While it’s ok to stick with content that addresses similar concerns of a prospect you should strive to keep it from feeling routine – they are different.

A few quick ways to check your horse

• Check to see how many touches you’ve made – are you being impatient?
• Start a process of re-discovery to determine if there is a fit
• Check your content – are sending and communicating the right message?
• Change up your materials – send them current content that fits your previous discussions.
• Make sure your communicating directly – one to one with specific and relevant materials.
• Call their direct telephone at 10 minutes before the hour (they’ll be getting ready for their next meeting)
• Call late/early and pay attention to time zones
• Send an image or personalized video link inside the email – they get a higher click through rate
• Send a note on Saturday (Hubspot  New Data: Emails Sent on Saturdays Have Higher CTRs and Lower Unsub Rates)
• Check to see what materials (if any) they have opened and read in your CRM or on the website
• Check Linked in to see if there have been any changes.
• Send an industry article with a thought you might be interested note

As a Marketing guy and at the end of every day – Sales is my client. Since the data in Salesforce.com can sometimes be a bit off, I’ve created little tricks that my clients seem to love as it makes their life easier. This one came about from watching an inside rep I was working with.  This also makes complete sense as Salesforce.com should be configured to only include people that have scored a certain number of points and or raised their hands for specific content/inclusion.

The rep had two screens open while they were making calls. They were cutting the name out of Salesforce and pasting it into Linked in as the data inside Linked in appeared to be current and they could see groups, comments, and other people within the company for circle of influence selling and finding a referral within their network. It seemed like a lot of work and was slowing their productivity proven by their daily activity log (Even though the data in Linked in helped them achieve their quota every month).

Create a Linked In Button

I created a very simple Salesforce.com button mash-up which when clicked will open a Linked in page and deposit Lead, Contact or Account Data into the appropriate fields and look for that person who is currently employed at the company. This simple button helped the rep exceed their quota the very next month.

To get it done you’ve got to be an Administrator and follow the below steps:

1. GOTO > Your Name > Setup > Customize > Leads > Buttons and Links > Custom Buttons and Links > New
2. For a Label call it “Linkedin Search” or whatever else you want
3. For a Display Type click the radio button > Detail Page Button
4. For Behavior Select > Display in New Window from the drop down list
5. For Content Source Select > URL from the drop down list
6. In the large box cut and paste the below text:

http://www.linkedin.com/search/fpsearch?fname=

{!Lead.FirstName}&
lname={!Lead.LastName}&company={!Lead.Company}&
currentCompany=C&searchLocationType=I&
countryCode=us&keepFacets=keepFacets&page_num=1&ppl
SearchOrigin=ADVS&viewCriteria=2&sortCriteria=R&redir=redir

Remember the button will not be shown unless you GOTO > Your Name > Setup > Customize > Leads > Page Layout > Edit

Then Click “Buttons” and drag and drop “Linked in Search” into the custom buttons box at the top of the Lead Sample. Saving your work afterwards.

That’s it…Most Sales reps will call you a hero for doing it. Give us a call if you have any difficulty.