This guest post is written by Andy Paul, a leading authority on sales for small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs) and the Founder of Zero-Time Selling. Andy is also the author of the award-winning book, Zero-Time Selling: 10 Essential Steps to Accelerate Every Company’s Sales.  Zero-Time Selling was selected as one of the Top 3 Sales & Marketing books of 2011. Andy is our featured guest in a webinar on Thursday February 9 @1PM EST. You can view a preview and register here. Take it away, Andy…

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.

The National Retail Federation annual convention is underway at the Javits Convention Center in NYC. This is the show where retailers from all walks of life come to learn about the latest and greatest in the world of retailing. I decided to take in the show to learn from the innovative, new ways retailers can engage customers. The conference theme this year is Engaging with Shoppers in a World of Fragmentation and Change.

So imagine my surprise (or maybe not) when I arrived at the Javits Center and was greeted by massive lines (multiple) for check-in. No problem, I thought. My colleague and I had our bar codes handy on our smart phones. We would just whiz through express check-in while all these other poor folks wait for a human to slowly process their registration.

After making our way past the long lines that were almost 1000 people deep, we found a representative from the National Retail Federation who told us these were the lines for express check-in (those with the bar code for scanning).

Why the long lines? She wasn’t quite sure, as the conference opened yesterday. Perhaps it was because President Clinton was speaking today? Don’t worry, she said. The lines move fast.

Not really. It took an hour for us to get to the check-in counter. Once there a check-in person, who was courteous, manually scanned our barcode, which automatically printed our badge. We were finally on our way—more than an hour since we stepped in the line.

Inside the exhibit hall, almost all of the companies offered technological solutions to help retailers do a better job engaging clients—driving more sales and maximizing profits.

So why the disconnect between the host of the event and purveyors of technology?

1. Change is hard. Here was the National Retail Federation, an organization dedicated to helping retailers grow their businesses, operating in an old model. Not much thought had been given to their “customer experience”. The innovation of bar codes wasn’t fully embraced. Why not use self check-in? So many vendors on the floor were selling Kiosk check-in solutions! And, why not use customer registration data for streamlining check-ins? Simply knowing how many registrations were processed on Day 1 could improve check-in logistics on Day 2.
2. Change requires vision. The goal of leaders is to set a vision and enable the organization to carry it out. Here was a perfect opportunity for leaders of the National Retail Federation to partner with vendors to showcase how all the technology inside the exhibition hall could be applied outside to improve the attendee experience. However, my hunch is the conference was run much as it had been the year before.

Never underestimate how hard change is for all parties. Even so, embrace change for the good of your customers, pretty please. Put yourself in your customers’ world and do whatever you can to make it better. Anytime you need reminding—just think of me in that 1000 person queue.

What “long lines” in your customers’ experiences can you eliminate by embracing change?

188 billion email messages sent each day?! That’s a boatload of email!

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

Embed this image on your site:
<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>

I recently realized we’ve taken for granted a powerful shortcut for creating Outlook message templates that’s been in our company toolkit for a while. I was talking to a prospect recently about email workflows and described our process for sending multiple personalized emails containing a similar core message. He was amazed at this shortcut, even though it seems pretty obvious to me. I’m documenting it here to share more widely. Hopefully you already take advantage of using Outlook’s standard signature setup; this just kicks it up a notch for creating multiple personalized emails containing similar message text.

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?

If we’ve learned anything from Steve Jobs, we’ve learned technology is constantly evolving around the use case.

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?

So ironic!  I am a psychologist writing a blog about the danger of overwhelming sales prospects by information overload, via the web or constant emails.  And I am now feeling very personally overwhelmed, trying to take in ALL the research “relevant” to this blog.  So I am going to stop researching and start writing.  Let’s see how it goes.

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.

Is “prospect” a dirty word in our changing culture of commerce? I propose that salespeople will be much more successful if they work to create “prospect communities”- the goal being for prospects to feel excited, involved, informed, engaged in discussions and interacting in the eco-system surrounding their companies.  This community approach will dramatically increase the motivation of the prospect to make the transition to customer.  Why? Because being part of a community increases trust, sense of value, reduces resistance, identifies needs, reduces fear, and makes people feel really good.

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.

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?

I encourage you to take a look at the New York Times  psychology study on “The Psychology of Sharing:  Why Do People Share Online?”, described as “A first-of-a-kind inquiry into the motivations behind why we share”.  The audience for this study appears to be marketers-    “Understanding the motivational forces behind the act of sharing will help marketers get their content shared.”  Identifying “distinct personalities with different motivations” is a highlight of their study.

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.

Sales is my client

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.