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 They just grab a couple of pieces, often out of date and continue to use it over and over again.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.

Way back in 2009, 4mb of data were strapped on a carrier pigeon’s leg in Johannesburg, South Africa to raise awareness of growing public frustration with the region’s slow data delivery at that time. 
Al Jazeera’s coverage of the creative publicity stunt (as seen in this Youtube video) showcases “Winston” the carrier pigeon’s race against time. Winston actually delivered the data in less time than it took for the same data to be downloaded via the telecom company. But, I digress. I reference this event simply because it crystallized for me:

While efficient delivery of information is essential to effective online communications, how the information is experienced upon receipt matters even more.

Thankfully, for much of the world broadband data delivery issues are largely solved. We’ve all become accustomed to visually rich ways to interact and exchange information on our web sites, Facebook pages, Youtube channels and blogs. Yet when we engage directly with our customers, we still give little regard for their experience as a receiver of our resources. We attach documents and insert links and hit send. How different is that than strapping data to the leg of a carrier pigeon? Our information is typically delivered, but is our message? Over time, the info gets lost in the receiver’s Inbox and the thread of conversation becomes disjointed across multiple transient emails. Worse yet—we never know when or even if the receiver ever looked at our content.

We created Postwire to improve the experience of sharing information privately with one or a few people. Many of our Postwire users are the rainmakers in small businesses or personal service providers who care—a lot—about how their information is packaged for the receiver. As creators and collectors of valuable multi-media content, they invest dearly to educate prospective and existing clients. The varied ways they communicate their expertise publicly helps them establish credibility and differentiate their products and services. So it’s no surprise Postwire users also give careful thought to how they personalize communications and share information privately, one-to-one. Why? Because they care more about building relationships than delivering data a’la “Winston”.

How do you share your valuable resources (documents, videos, images and web links) with prospective and existing clients? Sign up for a free Postwire account to experience firsthand how Postwire helps you attractively package your expertise, creating a private place to interact and build each client relationship over time.

Image Credit: www.gurustump.com and ZDnet article: In South Africa, carrier pigeon faster than broadband

Enabling informed purchase decisions…

Owen Blevins is VP Sales & Marketing for Mid Atlantic Concrete Equipment, which sells and services concrete plants and equipment to concrete producers throughout the Mid Atlantic and Northeast U.S.

Mid Atlantic Concrete Equipment attracts customers (affectionately dubbed “Crete-heads”) by leveraging its web site with over 500 pages of information and entertaining Youtube channel, Concrete Answers TV.

By educating prospective and existing customers on all-things-concrete, Owen’s sales team provides customers a rock-solid, one-stop shop for researching solutions to customers’ needs.

Before Postwire…

Owen and his four sales reps invested 15-45 minutes following up each sales call with an email containing links to relevant educational videos, product sheets and ROI calculators.

Using Postwire…

Owen’s sales team can now:

• in just a few minutes–immediately get the specific info the customer needs to them on a private page that they can easily find and reference.
• be ultra-responsive to a customer’s needs by knowing when he or she views or comments on the content shared, thanks to Postwire’s notifications.
• help the customer make decisions by adding more information and resources to the same page throughout the life of the customer relationship. (No more hunting through email threads to find web links or file attachments!)

The results?

• More sales in less time.
• Postwire shaves an hour off client follow-ups for each sales rep each day.
• One place for organizing personalized, relevant information and building each customer relationship over time.

Hear more from Owen…

So how will YOU use Postwire?

We’re eager to learn! Get a free account at www.postwire.com.

We were all vaguely aware that Craig stayed up late April Fool’s night to submit an application for Postwire to compete at TechCrunch’s Disrupt NY 2012. In fact, he whispered the narration of the requisite product demo in the wee hours from home, careful not to wake his wife and young children.

Meanwhile, startup life marched on. In the next few weeks, feedback from early beta users contributed to a decision to make a major shift (dare I say “pivot”?) in the Postwire user experience. Turns out the ease with which users could beautifully present and share content was, well, too “automagical”, and consequently, confusing. We realized we needed to fundamentally change the experience of sharing content in Postwire.

So the dev team had just begun coding to the new vision when Craig got the email from Conference Program Chair Susan Hobbs on April 26^th: “Congratulations! You are a Battlefield finalist!” One of 30 finalists out of a 1000 applicants!

We had 3.5 weeks to finish building out the new UX/UI and create messaging to publicly launch Postwire on stage May 22 at TechCrunch Disrupt NYC. Gulp. “Are you in?” All eight of us agreed we were.

Already well versed in lean product development and agile project management, Craig became more disciplined than ever in prioritizing design decisions. What do we absolutely need for a viable product? Does this feature add complexity to the user experience? Will not having it prevent use? Craig’s leadership and the talents of each of the developers gave birth to Postwire.

Meanwhile, as Craig led the back room through design iterations, Cliff led the charge in the front on messaging. Do users build a Postwire “page” or “web page”? “Personal page” or “private page”? Or, is it a “resource page, “guidebook”, “portfolio” or “touchstone”?! Tick, tock, tick, tock…with time running out, we circled back to where we began—“private web page” it is!

Deadlines and disciplined prioritization during the push to TechCrunch brought clarity to fuzziness. We knew Postwire doesn’t yet have all the desired features and “private web page” is far from perfect. Our messaging especially needs lots more work. But could we tell a compelling-enough story at TechCrunch? We decided yes and the very act of making that decision was empowering. Cliff & Craig ultimately committed to the words we settled upon and nailed the 6-minute pitch on the TechCrunch stage.

During the 3.5 week TechCrunch prep period, our team re-formed, stormed and began to norm.  It wasn’t always pretty. Not surprisingly, we were all stressed-out as we heads-down sprinted to the finish line. One of the developers called out the widening gulf between back and front room activities. We all knew it to be true and flagging it was just the shock to the system we needed. Brewing team communication issues were immediately brought out in the open.

What I realize now as I reflect upon our TechCrunch experience is that we gained so much more than good press (TechCrunch.com, Forbes.com, BostInno.com, MassHighTech.com, nibletz.com …) and validation of Postwire as a disruptive innovation. Being a Battlefield Finalist, also gave us the gifts of:

• A hard—and unanimously motivating—deadline to rally around;
• Confidence to make good-enough decisions;
• Discipline to continuously test our assumptions;
• Words to tell our story;
• Respect for the unique contributions of each team member; and
• The foundation for a new team culture.

For all that and more, the VisibleGains team thanks you, TechCrunch.

P.S. Check out the fruit of our labors by signing up for a FREE Postwire account. We’d love your feedback here!

Just back from TechCrunch Disrupt with Battlefield Finalist Team Postwire. Sitting in my porch on Memorial Day Weekend, I finally have some time to process the experience.

What has most stayed with me this week is the challenge and power of messaging. Distilling our message to the five or six most descriptive words–as few notes as possible so that the listener can name that tune–has been extremely challenging. As I visited other Battlefield and Start-up Alley teams, I noticed huge differences in how quickly I was able to “get” the what, why, how and how-easy of the hot new products. (I was, after all, probably the #oldestwomanatDisrupt.)

I was particularly obsessed with this because our own team has torn out our respective hairs trying to get the message down. When co-founders Cliff Pollan and Craig Daniel practiced their talks with theTechCrunch staff at the AOL office (thanks to  John Biggs, Eric Eldon, Heather Harde, Susan Hobbs and Alexia Tsotsis), even their focus was on trying to help us “nail down” the  essence of Postwire.

So, it was really eye-opening to see and hear how others talked about our product. Postwire’s TechCrunch “coming out” story from writer Matt Burns explained that Postwire “Aims To Be The Flipboard For Client Communication”.

Bostinno’s Walter Frick reported that Postwire is “as easy as Dropbox & as visual as Pinterest… marry[ing} personalization and privacy with the visual pop of services like Pinterest and Springpad”.

So these two writers went for the “anchor to familiarity” tactic.

One gentleman my colleague spoke to on the Battlefield said that we had the messaging all wrong: he adamantly asked why we were not just focusing on the hallmark video sharing capability of the product and strongly suggested we should be talking about “boards” not pages. Everyone is searching for the just right noun: Frick tried by referencing us as a “compelling receptacle”.

Our team all enjoyed TechCrunch winner Uberconference’s creative ability to tap the “Why” of their product. The low-tech homespun “everyman-or-woman” style of this video resonated with everyone’s struggles with teleconferencing and helped our team realize we had more work to do with our “Why” message.

We call this the “OMG I have had that problem” tactic.

Our team’s favorite  gadget was found on display at Bedphones: “Headphones so flat so you can sleep on them.” They all returned to our booth giddy with delight at their newest find.

Let’s call this the “this is so cool” tactic.

My favorite find was TechCrunch finalist  SnipSnap the coupon app which allows you to “scan, save, and redeem printed coupons on your mobile phone.”

A video played in their live Disrupt stage presentation caught my attention–people were saving a lot of money! “Prepare to save some serious moolah.” Indeed!

I’d call this the “save money easily” tactic.

But one message won me over hands down. I was following our Postwire Twitter feed on the last day of Disrupt and saw this tweet by Walter Frick from Bostinno:

@wfrick: If Don Draper were real and alive today he’d use this Boston product #tcdisrupt http://t.co/Xhy55bvS @postwire

That was it! Why hadn’t we thought of that?

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

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 was our featured guest in a webinar on Thursday February 9 @1PM EST. You can view a recording of the webinar 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 Postwire 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.

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

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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>

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?