Running ads doesn’t promise you customers, it only promises to spend your money.

To be successful at paid advertising, your ads must fit within your overall digital marketing strategy. Too many businesses try “one off” campaigns that are rarely successful. The result is that businesses give up on profitable channels because they didn’t bring instant results.

In this article I want to give you tips on how to better coordinate your digital ads within a broader marketing strategy. By paying attention to these areas you can use paid ads to get more customers, readers, attendees, leads, and ultimately sales.

Advertise Something Valuable

This sounds like a no-brainer, but you’d be surprised by how often paid ads fail  because the audience didn’t care. Your ads need to create a valuable goal for the audience to achieve. But how do you know if that goal is valuable enough?

My favorite explanation comes from the book ,”Hell Yeah Or No,” by Derek Silvers. In it, he says, “A bad goal makes you say, “I want to do that some day.” A great goal makes you take action immediately.”

You need a great goal for your target audience.

“Download: Best Practices For Emailing Prospects” is a bad goal.

“This Email Template Booked 15 Meetings In 2 Days – Steal Your Copy Here!” is a great goal.

Set Your KPIs

Paid ads can be used anywhere in the buyers journey. The key performance indicators that you use to judge the effectiveness of your ads needs to reflect how you are using ads in your strategy.

Let’s say you are running social media ads to get prospects to sign up for a webinar. Your top-level KPI will be how many sign ups were driven by your social media ads. The number of sign ups divided by your budget will give you the cost per sign up. Once you have that number, you can judge if that is an acceptable price to pay.

Create the KPI that matches the larger goal. KPIs don’t have to be “big actions”, your goal could be to build a re-marketing list in which case your KPI would be cost per landing page view. It could also be reading an article, responding to the post, liking the post, following the company’s social media page, just to name a few.

Intent Channel vs Non-Intent Channel

Generally speaking, there are really only two ways to use paid ads, in intent channels like search, and in non-intent channels like social, sponsorships, YouTube ads, display… basically everything besides search.

If you conduct keyword research and find that there is sizable search volume for the intent that your valuable asset can satisfy, using search ads can be an effective way of getting quality traffic to your asset.

However, its very likely that your prospects aren’t Googling their deepest desires (that’s what DuckDuckGo is for). So you’ll have to reach them through non-intent channels like social, YouTube pre-roll ads and others.

There are two main issues with advertising in non-intent channels. Targeting can be hit or miss. Certain people use certain platforms and each platforms has its own limitations. For example, LinkedIn has better job data than Facebook, so if a person’s profession is key to your targeting then you should use LinkedIn.

The other issue is attribution and tracking your spend. At each level, as targeting becomes less precise, so does attribution. With LinkedIn ads you can report on clicks and you can track visitor behavior through your site analytics. But what about tracking visitors from a podcast sponsorship?

The farther away you are from direct marketing practices with strict attribution the harder it is to quantify your spend. Rigorous UTM tagging can only partially capture the traffic you can gain through various niche social platforms, dark funnels, chat rooms, discords, slack channels, and message boards.

Its All About A Unique Offer

“Hey, you already mentioned that it should be valuable!” you say.

Yes. And I want to repeat it. Because, if you’re like me, you probably see dozens of audits, templates, spreadsheets, playbooks, scripts, white papers in your social timelines.

Your prospects see the same thing. It’s crowded.

You have to stand out.

That doesn’t mean giving more – though that can work. It can mean making it…

• Easier to consume (think infographics and slides)
• Faster to output results (think website speed graders/analyzers)
• Use automation for complex tasks (think advanced spreadsheets for analysis)
• Make the asset re-brandable  (think pitch decks and proposals)
• Available in multiple formats (think audio book)

The faster and easier your value is, the stronger your offer.

The What And The Why

This is maybe the hardest section to talk about because every business is so different. So far, we talked about creating something valuable, creating something unique, advertising on different channels, and creating KPIs.

But there’s something fundamental underneath all of that.

You can do everything I just mentioned and do it well, but it won’t work if it does not help your customer along the buying journey.

“The What” is the asset. “The Why” is what that asset achieves for the customer and your business. If the asset does not drive more awareness or consideration, if it doesn’t agitate a problem, if it doesn’t move someone closer to a purchase, then your ad is destined to fail.

There’s a multitude of sales enabling content you can create. But which is right for your prospect? It’s up to businesses to invest in customer research to find the insights that will make your target market perk up their ears and pay attention to.

Wrapping Up – Make The Ads Work Less

Paid ads can be very profitable for your business, but only if you think about them in the right way. If you want your ad to succeed, you need to understand what ads do well: getting in front of an audience and getting their attention.

Everything beyond that like where the traffic goes, what that traffic experiences, and ultimately the value of what your advertising must come from your digital marketing strategy.

By focusing on your larger marketing strategy you will avoid wasteful “one off” campaigns, useless “boosting”, and flat revenue numbers.

The post How to Run Ads That Align with your Digital Marketing Strategy appeared first on RevGenius.

In our previous articles, (Part I & Part II), we covered how to prepare your organization for the technology and how to prepare that tech for the organization. Now we’ll cover how to build a framework to teach your team to use these tools.

We’ve done a ton of these implementations at Central Metric and training is consistently where the plot is lost. All of that investment and time means nothing if your team can’t use the new tech. Miscommunication and misaligned expectations at this stage can lead to confusion and inefficiencies. Training minimizes misalignments.

It is understandable that busy professionals don’t want to sacrifice an entire day for CRM training and that Executives prefer to work only with the high-level information on a dashboard. However, spending time reviewing how this software will work for each function will prevent future headaches. Not everyone has to be a Salesforce Superstar with a robust Trailhead Account. But everyone will interact with the CRM in their own way. Teach them how to do so effectively.

The organizational stakeholders we are going to address here are: Executives/Managers, Administrators, and Representatives. These are broad functional groups that can be fulfilled by whole teams in large enterprises or one person in a growing startup. Read on, and decide how you fit in.

Executives/Managers  

Executives and Managers are too busy for the minutiae of your CRM. They have many functions to oversee, and at the end of the day, they just want their reports. This makes sense. They’re trying to keep the lights on! That being said, at some point, these leaders always have trouble understanding how to manipulate those same reports to measure company health and performance. Many assume they do not need training after the CRM has been implemented, but then try (and fail) to customize the parts of the system most relevant to them. Every CRM consultant has had an Executive client or two who skipped the training, and then began reaching out almost hourly for small changes. Choose to empower your Executives from the start with the knowledge they need to manage their reports.

Leaders can absolutely have a limited account if they want to. They don’t need a system admin account or any of the complexities that come with it. They won’t be updating fields, layouts, user permissions, or automations. Limited accounts can usually fulfill their needs, and training someone to use a limited account makes your job that much easier! At the very least, teach them what issues they can solve on their own, and which ones will require help from your administrator. Senior management will be more than happy with limited accounts if they have easy access to the reports they need and the ability to manipulate that data to answer more questions.

Middle management will also need further training compared to Executives with regard to keeping daily tabs on their team of representatives. They need transparency into the data entry process by their reps to ensure accuracy is achieved, as well as reporting on activities and outcomes at the individual level. Training your Management and Executives on the CRM will take time, but pays off in saved time (and stress) over the long run.

Administrators

In this context, consider administrators as your CRM experts. That may be difficult considering the many functions they work with, and all of the other systems they are likely owning. So, you will have to invest in your admins and give them ownership of the tech stack. I’ll say it one more time in case you skipped that part: Invest. In. Your. Admins.

What does that investment look like in real life? It can take many forms. From sponsoring your Sales Ops Manager’s Salesforce Certification, to sending your Marketing Manager to a HubSpot conference, to paying for a consultant to serve as that admin. Your mission is to find or build an internal or external resource that has a high level of expertise within the platforms you’re using. That expertise will pay off in increased rep productivity, data transparency, educated decision-making, and a long-term vision for your RevOps org. You won’t get much of that from someone who’s just cobbling together their first sales funnel. So, please. Invest in that expertise. Your team (and board) will thank you. If you don’t want to pay for training and wait for an internal resource to level up, then consider outsourcing this to qualified consultants.

Sales Reps

One of the most common issues we see with CRM implementations among sales reps is low user adoption. You can have the best race car in the world, but if your drivers don’t know or don’t care to use that vehicle properly, you’ll still finish in last place. At this point, we’ve come to accept that the industry norm is to NOT hold comprehensive training for reps. Most companies take a ‘learn by doing’ approach, which we do not advise. Or, they will put a senior rep in charge of helping troubleshoot issues for other reps. Also, not advised. Your reps should be empowered to sell, and a clear process with the right training, documentation, and follow up is the best way to make that happen.

Take a day to train your reps on everything they need to know about their sales stack. Take more than a day, if you need, and have your Admins follow up with open office hours to keep everyone on track. The reps are the base of your pyramid. If they don’t follow process, Admins can’t build accurate reports, and Execs can’t make data-driven decisions. You need a high level of process adoption to succeed.

When training, listen to rep feedback. If a part of your process sounds good on paper, but encounters friction from your reps, explore that step of the process and try to find a resolution. If you think of your sales process as a software product, your sales reps are your customers. Keep them happy and your revenue will go up.

To that end, it is incredibly important for your Managers & Admins to document a Standard Operating Procedure for the reps. Why? So that a replicable process of activity and clean data entry is achieved. So that reps are prepared for their weekly pipeline review with managers. Don’t be afraid to tie monetary incentives to data cleanliness or entry. It is quite common for data errors to occur during the middle of hectic days. Salespeople are driven by money.

Training & Culture

We couldn’t close out this article without touching on cultural adoption. It is intangible yet critically important for a successful CRM rollout. If the perception at the top is that the CRM is a nuisance or not that important, the message will be sent down whether intended or not. Same with influential members on a sales or admin team.

If the culture of the company values the CRM and pledges to leverage it as an important tool, it will become part of the culture. If the CRM was just forced in by a decision maker but the rest of the team does not value it, it could become a waste of time and money for the company. Remember the Vodafone example from Part II? Well, that report singled out Employee Training as one of the areas that Vodafone could’ve handled differently. Here’s a direct quote:

“The best CRM system in the world will have no value if your employees are not willing and empowered to help your customers.”

The report then mentions that Vodafone went on to increase their investment in training by £30m and 190,000 hours. That investment led to “a 50% reduction in complaint volumes and a significant improvement in its net promoter score.”

In closing, comprehensive training, cultural acceptance, and a sound change management strategy lead to a noticeable difference in efficacy and return on investment for any CRM implementation. You paid for state of the art tech, now invest in using it properly.

If you’re interested in learning more about successful CRM implementations, sharing a horror story of a failed implementation, or just learning how to avoid costly CRM mistakes, feel free to reach out to me. I can talk about this all day! Good luck out there.

The post The Proven Method for Successfully Implementing a New CRM: Part 3: (Prepare for Launch) appeared first on RevGenius.

For all of you who’ve been living under a rock, Clubhouse is the new Andreesen Horowitz backed audio only social network that is looking to raise at $1 billion dollars only 8 months after launch.

Entrepreneur Mag said it best with “Imagine a room full of millionaires, and you get to ask them anything. That is Clubhouse.”

We went to ask fellow RevGenius members their thoughts on the network to understand how our community felt about the network and got some incredible responses:

“Clubhouse is the interaction that LinkedIn has been missing for years. I’m using it, in less than a week, the same amount of hours I’m on LinkedIn. Love both but really enjoying the back and forth”

— Jake Dunlap, CEO at Skaled Consulting

“Clubhouse = The new virtual event. Every marketer should be taking advantage of this because this is the new roundtable format to get your prospects and customers talking and accelerating deals.”

— Nick Bennett, Director of Field Marketing at Logz.io

“Clubhouse is a 24/7 virtual conference where you can find rooms discussing anything and everything. It’s like Twitter in the early days, where there isn’t as much of a barrier between the rich and powerful and normal users. You’re all voices in a room, having a conversation. That means powerful networking opportunities.”

— James Gerber, Vice President of Account Services at Crackle PR

“The platform gives people the intentional option of being active (on stage and talking) or passive (enjoying the content from the audience). I’ve gained so much from it by being active in smaller rooms where I feel comfortable and confident to share my knowledge. From my brief experience on it thus far, I have started to use it to push people to engage with me on the platforms that I’m intentionally building my personal brand on – LinkedIn and Twitter.”
— Joel Primack, Marketing Specialist at Messina Group Consulting Solutions

“I love it! It’s like joining a zoom meeting, but easier and you can join any zoom meeting at any time and connect with people you don’t know, and reconnect with those you do.”

— Katie Ray, Community Engagement Manager at Sales Hacker

“Clubhouse is a cross between 90’s party lines and real-time podcasts. They’re all-topic community dialogue that democratizes thought leadership across peers and prodigies, all day, every day.”

— Isabelle Kent, Founder at Gigsaw

“I still get a ‘loudest person in the room wins’ vibe from it, which can be challenging for an ambivert/introvert, but now’s not the time to lurk and get a feel. It’s the only place online right now that you can build a huge audience in a day. Things will change when it’s open to the public.”

— Maeva Cifuentes, CEO at Flying Cat Marketing

“It’s like a live podcast where you can participate with the host.”

— Andre Smith, Director of Sales at CloudMasonry

“Clubhouse has proven to be an invaluable way to continue to meet new people and gain new perspectives in a time when we can’t meet in person.”

— Nathaniel Dean, Sr. Sales Manager at adjust.com

“Clubhouse offers organic conversation discovery. More importantly, its unique style of communication combines the safety of texting with the directness of voice calls.”

— Ding Zheng, Head of Marketing and Business Development, Royal Music Community

“My first reaction to Clubhouse was dismissal: ‘novelty for novelty’s sake.’ But looking closer, how well timed the novelty is! With our familiar gatherings postponed indefinitely, Clubhouse rooms feel like they’re replacing traditional event panels, college seminars, group workshops, etc. and improving upon them by sourcing ‘teachers’ and talent from a wider and deeper pool.”

— Jon Hall, Founder at Switchbird

“Clubhouse is a natural fit for more extraverted and highly dominant people. You can talk, command the ‘stage,’ and share your views with a captive audience.”

— Erin Balsa, Head of Content Marketing at Predictive Index

Simply put, Clubhouse is a unique social network that scales ‘realness’. It’s culture mixed with access in an audio only medium allowing people to spend more time in meetings without having to get dressed up or prepared, being able to just waltz into a room with famous entrepreneurs or celebrities holding court and actually be able to ask a question or just listen in.

I’m extremely bullish on Clubhouse. It’s incredible what they’ve created and been able to scale. As a founder, I can appreciate a founding team that found the secret sauce to harnessing the culture. And have they ever.  It’s truly a beautiful thing.

Join the #clubhouse channel in RevGenius to connect with other members (and type) while in meeting rooms and stay tuned for our programming (daily at 6pm EST and Revenue Jobs on Wednesdays at 6pm).

The post Why Clubhouse is the Most Important Social Media Network Right Now appeared first on RevGenius.

Aaron “AIR” Ross burst onto the scene in 2011 documenting how he helped scale Salesforce from 0-100MM in the Oughts in the book “Predictable Revenue” applying the Henry Ford model to break the supply chain into Openers and Closers. Shout out to MaryLou Tyler on the case study.  This became the “Bible of Silicon Valley Scaling.” In 2012 Phil Fernandez, the founder of Marketo, released “Revenue Disruption.” It was the first book to really popularize what would become Account Based Marketing addressing the full funnel. In 2015, Max Altschuler of “Sales Hacker” fame released the book “Hacking Sales.” It was an amazing distillation of every solo tool he’d leveraged to hack revenue growth at Udemy.

That same year Mark Roberge, CRO of HubSpot, released the book, “The Sales Acceleration Formula.” Max is unique because he hacked his tech stacks by himself at a startup putting it on the map and documenting it the deepest at the time. Mark is unique because he was an engineer by trade who approached Business Development, Demand Gen, and Sales Development work through a rigorous data driven lens, breaking down previous methods and models and constructing new systems. In 2015/2016 the luminous Jeremy Donovan and Marylou Tyler released “Predictable Prospecting” to bring further “process focus” to scaling outbound sales.

I share all these resources in the front of the book because how can we truly bring them to life? How can we apply them? We are living in a unique moment where very soon we can scale and automate them all. Soon to sprout are the many derivations of the seeds planted therein.

It’s wild thinking how primitive our sales tech was even 5 years ago. With the accelerating, blistering pace of technology, within half that time we should be 3-5X further. It’s time to get a lot smarter about leveraging advanced technologies to market, sell, and measure revenue so we don’t lose our jobs to AI or someone that got ahead of us on the learning curve.

Hence why I’ve dedicated considerable time, research, and years developing a concept of TQ and teaching people how to build it up. Technology Quotient is the measurement of how much you fuse with machines, UI, UX and tech platforms. Believe it or not, we all have a TQ score. It can be improved scientifically just like EQ and IQ have been proven. IQ informs EQ, and EQ informs TQ. The first biggest quantum leap is adopting a growth mindset vs. fixed mindset popularized by author Carol Dweck in her book, “Mindset.” Stop believing you are born with some inherent aptitude for your tech. No one is born coding in Python. They learned, they just were a bit more open. Sure, they may have aced calculus, but plenty got an A on sheer determination alone. I can barely handle business accounting, but I aced Trigonometry by dint of work ethic and sheer force of will.

Maybe being “bad at math” or “it didn’t come easy” – Geometry did – and still getting competent at it is why I excelled at tech stacks. I remember how hard it was setting up custom fields in a Sequencer the first time I did it. But it got so much easier with every repetition.

The reason being, Marketing Automation and “Inbound” Marketing were getting all the love in the realm of product roadmap innovation from the major acquisitive players: Salesforce, Adobe, Oracle, Microsoft.

And for good reason… systems that could drip messages to prospects, score the interaction and keep them warm on the back burner were a genius idea to create a foundation for full-funnel marketing. Inbound Marketers also broke major ground on permission-based (opt-in) marketing systems and personalization at scale with the advent of HubSpot and Marketo’s dominance. Salesforce entered the fray with Pardot. Marketing automation was all the rage with splashy acquisitions for social listening tech like Radian6, Buddy Media, and Vitrue.

We thought we had it made relying on Inbound plus bulk email for outbound. And wow was it predictable. You could send 700 emails and get 12 meetings predictably. This was the era of MMWYS and cold email mastery templates.  The phone was still alive and well too with 7 contacts 10. Now you’re lucky to connect with 5 humans on 100 tries unless you utilize a parallel assisted dialer.

In the Roaring 2020s, it is time to go from Marketing with ABM (account-based marketing) to ABSD: account-based sales development, a phrase that Lars Nilsson coined at Cloudera running sales development.

But something happened to follow up the successful Predictable Revenue model(s) of the SDR-AE Industrial Complex; so much tech got funded and scaled so fast by 2021 that sales teams started to get overwhelmed by stack overflow.

Frankenstack n. A disjointed system that doesn’t necessarily talk to each other out-of-the-box emerged. Isn’t that what you see in your own company? Here’s what happens when you combine a siloed revenue machine – the combination of sales, operations, and marketing – with a Frankenstack: systems operate independently and since they’re incentivized without interoperability in mind, each silo adopts a shopkeeper mentality and sales development turns into a cost center. Marketing thinks everything is fine since they delivered on leads, Operations thinks everything is fine since the reports are clean and sales has a pool of leads and contacts to draw from. Then the sales director gets fired after three bad quarters since the poor soul hired 10 SDRs to clean out the Salesforce instance and make phantom dials.

To sell is to affect behavioral change. So, there were first attempts to change the system (one that I participated in at OutboundWorks with Ben Sardella!) to work within it but seek to replace XDRs with AI/ML. The sheer pace of technology change and funding is in counterpoint to the speed that firms are cutting/consolidating tooling in the crisis. Revenue and Operations leaders are seeking cost efficiency in the pandemic and cutting back on tools. So now we have a limited Frankenstack. Paradoxically it’s never been more important to invest in tech stacks to get them right, to build the glue.

We are also in an era where fundamental automation technologies are nearly free.

There are two ways to fix the problems of solutions not talking to each other. Either think like Tony Stark re-engineered a more insanely automagical JARVIS or be like MacGyver and hyper-optimize the scrappy stack you’ve got with the eye and mind of a classic entrepreneur. From less, even more! Let’s explore the two paths.

MacGyver:

Use what you’ve got. Best way to do this – Tray, Zapier, Workato, and Syncari.  Build zaps as the API glue so the systems talk. Use a grappling hook and a hairpin to diffuse a nuclear submarine.

Tony Stark:

Converged systems – look for solutions like RingDNA that blend a Dialer, ConversationalAI, and Sequencing

Bonus path – Iron Man:

Go best-of-breed and hold a bakeoff across the following layers in the outbound tech stack: Marketing Automation, Sales Automation, Business Intelligence, Revenue Intelligence, Trigger Events, Intent Data, Forecasting, etc.

Jared Robin has a unique talk on these issues as the co-founder of RevGenius. He’s also an experienced XDR and suggests thinking of stacks as three paths.

• The first is the affordable stack where you might spike the ball with a couple of point solutions. You optimize what you have especially if you’re a one-human show.
• The second path is getting a sequencer in place for early automation.
• The third path is a free-for-all where you combine and AB tests many combinations until you crack your funnel.

‍The most important thing for building tech stacks is getting similar vendors to bake off inside your instance. You need the chance to try before you buy.

It’s also critical to whiteboard out your process before you start to automate and scale it. Otherwise, you’re just amplifying junk! GIGO – Garbage in, garbage out.

Revenue Operations or RevOps is the hottest new category of technical operations inside fast-moving SaaS tech companies. This is the confluence of Sales Operations and Marketing Operations. These folks do so much more than pulling pretty reports in Salesforce. They provide the full marketing attribution waterfall to justify the investments in all the tools. They are building the API glue and integrations, so systems talk to each other.

What does it take as a mindset to be less technology avoidant? Many sellers I talk to say, “Look, I’m not technical. I’m a people person. That’s why I got into sales.” It’s a myth. The purpose of my work is to show you how easy it really is to become stronger with tech stacks, Revenue Operations (RevOps), and automation. Start today by dusting off your tech stack.

And we all have a tech stack… Do you use Google Apps aka GSuite? How about Microsoft Excel, Salesforce, HubSpot or Slack? I bet you didn’t think that was a tech stack. But think about how much technology you have for free in 2020 as compared to even 2015? One of the best analogies for the need to increase one’s TQ is Excel. We all only use about 5%. Imagine just 5% more and learning basic macros and pivotal tables?

I’ve sold technology, especially SaaS for 13 years. I’ve learned that everyone is in some dynamic state along a spectrum from crawl, to walk, to run. All that matters is we take the Japanese philosophy of Kaizen or “continuous improvement.” 1% improvement every day creates orders of magnitude gains later.

I anonymously asked an RG member about successful stacks. First comment was amazing. He said he’d never seen one optimized and actually successful. Another friend wrote:

“Everything from product marketing to marketing to marketing ops to sales ops to biz dev to sales — have 0 breakdowns in that pathway is the problem I want to solve. I wouldn’t say our tech stack is perfect, you have a bunch of leaders who come in and screw everything up and change things because they are innovating or trying to look good or somewhere in between – plus when you have multiple admins and certain ones LOVE governance. You have a lot of messes to clean up! Therefore, I can tell you ideally what a perfect sales tech stack looks like in a vacuum utopia! But when there’s all the other factors—it’s like what was mentioned. Expect some level of mess between who uses the data and how it’s getting populated and work your best to automate and make money.”

Modern tech stacks are intuitively built, and many have WYSIWYG interfaces. That means what you see is what you get. Learning them is quite like basic piano or riding a bicycle. The more you utilize these every day the more second nature. You gain an unconscious competence similar to how you felt driving for the first time vs. now when you can rock out to tunes and flawlessly navigate the 405 freeway in LA.

My first foray into tech stacks was YesWare and ToutApp. These simple applications allowed me to schedule my emails, create templates, and track opens. I later matured to Groove.co (which just raised 12M) and then into power using Outreach, SalesLoft, and Reply.io. I think we all have a story of technology adoption that we inherit from a company we work at. On the marketing front I was trained at Salesforce on Pardot which is a competitor to Marketo.

Over the years, I spent a lot of time inside LinkedIn Groups looking for tips and tricks on stacks. I struck up relationships with our Sales Operations leaders who helped my teams craft reports and were frequently testing new technologies. The CMOs and heads of Demand Gen helped me to get these stacks funded, including purchasing data from just about every provider you can imagine: SalesIntel.io, Seamless.ai, DiscoverOrg (now part of) ZoomInfo, and LeadIQ.

My advice for tech stacks is to start out by pulling fully away from the tech and mapping out a “sound” process on a whiteboard or in LucidChart. Map out your full revenue cycle. How do you market – acquire, engage, retain, and grow your clients. What are all the touchpoints? Then map the current systems over the top of this schematic. Then ask yourself and your team as you collaborate, where are the blockages? Where are the poor customer experience points? What is strong that we can magnify?

As you look across the funnel, there’s not a single layer of analog process that has not been subject to Automation, AI and ML attempts. I say this because many vendors make wild, “magic bullet” claims. Sometimes the AI piece is just rule-based automation or “if this, then that” decision trees masquerading as artificial intelligence. Make sure to check G2 Crowd or Capterra reviews to ensure you’re getting a strong understanding of strengths, weaknesses, and integration.

And now the fun begins. Inbound? Outbound? SDRs? AEs? Managers? Coaching? Reporting? Forecasting? There’s a tech stack and many vendors for each one! There is no paint by number. I assure you, all companies believe that they are a unique snowflake and that a bespoke solution must be built, configured, and optimized. Its’ not always the case – over time solutions that plug and play out of the box for startups will get bought up and consolidated for the enterprise. Just imagine for a moment if Salesforce swooped in and got Outreach (Sequencer), ZoomInfo (data: dials & emails), Bombora (Intent Signals) and Gong.io and unified that into the Salesforce Sales Cloud to bolster HVS – High Velocity Sales, their current Sales Engagement Platform.

This is where we get into the anatomy of true “growth hacking.” You’re trying to optimize for quantity and quality of lead acquisition, pipeline and revenue. Ultimately, profit margin. Oh yeah, profit – remember that! The ultimate growth hack? Crushing your tech stack for absolute free: sweat equity, your effort, and ingenuity. You can find 75 free systems for every paid. There are collectives of Hackers that will help you. Ask about Wizard of Ops and SalesStack.io specific communities similar to RevGenius, many RevGenius members are in both.

Step one, optimize the stack you have however humble it is. As you learn about all the new marketing automation, artificial intelligence, and machine learning derived solutions, go on G2 crowd and seek out alternatives. Post in the RevGenius slack channel for Technology Stack. A group of RG members recently dropped into an impromptu RevOps sessions where we coached a fellow member on a specific stack. We loved it so much we wanted to make it into a show! 5-10 people pop into a Zoom take on a stack and brainstorm ways to optimize it. Maybe that’s Sales Navigator, Outreach.io and ZoomInfo. Maybe that’s MixMax, Seamless.ai, and TryLavender.com.

Ryan Hiscox writes, “Building a sales machine today is an extreme challenge. Buyers only want to be contacted when they are 80% of the way to making a decision. Sellers need to be able to predict the precise moment and reach out with an insightful message to teach a professional buyer things they haven’t heard in their own industry. Basically, sales teams need to perform a magic trick just to do a decent job, while providing a satisfactory customer experience that aligns with the corporate brand. We don’t have magic but the closest thing to it is a strong tech stack.” – Ryan Hiscox

Conclusion – Tech stacks are changing at a breakneck speed. How are you optimizing what you have or consolidating it? How are you making these systems talk? What are you evaluating to become better, more efficient, human meets machine – superhuman?

The post Hacking Tech Stacks appeared first on RevGenius.

You’re here, so you understand the importance of a CRM. You need a central database to track your sales, marketing, and customer data. But what is the importance of setting things up the right way? What are the implications of getting it wrong? Deciding you need a CRM is a great first step, but an unsuccessful roll out could slow down your sales team and throw your data into chaos.

Take a look at Vodafone’s bungled implementation of Siebel CRM which began with promise in late 2012 and ended with approximately £59 Million in losses over the following four years! A quick google search for “CRM Fails” yields hundreds of case studies and even more anecdotal stories from frustrated CIOs. Depending on how you set things up, your CRM could end up being one of your greatest assets or liabilities.

So it makes sense that in 2017, CIO Magazine reported that one third of all CRM projects fail. A year later, the author of an HBR article quoted that study and estimated that the failure rate was closer to 90% in their client network. The reasons for these failures vary across companies and industries, but the common threads include poor planning, misaligned expectations, and internal miscommunication.

So let’s explore the steps we recommend to avoid being like Vodafone.

Procure CRM

At this point, you’ve set goals for your CRM, scoped out where it fits within your existing processes, and identified who will be managing what parts of the implementation. Awesome. Refer back to Part I if any of that sounds new. So now its time to purchase a CRM! Right?

Wait! Before you fill out that “Get Demo” form… Talk to an expert. It is absolutely vital for you to connect with someone that has experience dealing with either that specific CRM, or the company that sells it (and preferably both).

This can be a company advisor, someone from your network, a team member with recent experience, or even an outside consultant. You’re about to enter a negotiation with a vendor; the more info you can get, the better. Remember, your potential CRM vendor has a sales team too. Because of the nature of this relationship, you do have some leverage. Here are some tips for dealing with CRM sales teams:

• Make sure your IT and internal implementation team hops on one of the later stage calls. Fines around data security were a decent chunk of Vodafone’s losses. Your team will need to examine the security of the system you want to select.
• Unpack any “Implementation” charges you see on proposals. If you don’t need as much initial support, you can talk this number down or out of the bill.
• Speak aspirationally about the growth of your team. More team members means a potentially larger deal down the line for the vendor. We’ve seen rare cases where vendors with minimum seat requirements waive those requirements for fast growing teams.
• Hold your purchase to the end of the month / quarter to get those last minute discounts. Your team does it too!

The vendor should do most of the driving for this deal. Once you’ve agreed on reasonable pricing and a contract rate, sign on the dotted line, and set a launch date! It’s time to start implementation.

Customize & Integrate

If you paid attention in Part I, you’ve already defined your vision of how this CRM fits into your company. You’ve also identified a technical admin to translate that defined vision into a working CRM. Let them and the Project Manager take over to set up fields, objects, products, automation rules, validations, reports…everything that you already mapped out as necessary to your processes in Part I. You should be able to trace a test lead through your funnel within your CRM when they’re through.

Be patient, here. Allow for changes once you’ve seen things go live in the CRM. These things can and should encourage an interactive approach. You’re setting up a new “system of truth” to live at the intersection of multiple teams, data sources, and technologies. It’s going to get complicated.

Next up is setting up the integrations. You likely selected this CRM based on the integrations possible with your existing tech stack. That is the strength of great CRM: the ability to synchronize data across multiple systems. Your sales team’s calls, marketing emails, and customer support tickets all living in one place.

Always leverage a native integration over a custom one. For example, Salesforce integrates with SalesLoft. They have articles showing how to set this up and support to help out when it doesn’t work correctly. You’ll also have an active community of people using the same systems that you can turn to.

Where native integrations don’t exist, you may have to set up a custom integration using a tool like Automate.io, Zapier, or Piesync. They are less ideal, but can still deliver great results. In both cases, you will need someone (preferably a manager or admin) to own the integration and update it as your processes evolve.

Document & Report

This last bit of Part II has been developing since the very first section of Part I. You’ve already documented your process in order to bring a CRM into them. As you install your CRM, update this documentation so the two always support each other. You will also need Standard Operating Procedures (SOP) & Service Level Agreements (SLA) to dictate how teams will use these systems and interact with each other within those systems.

SOPs are essentially the manuals to your systems. The same way a sales rep might have a script dictating what they say on the phone, they’ll have an SOP to dictate what to do in their systems prior to, during, and following a call. You create these processes to encourage uniform activity for clean reporting. Those reports will be a necessary part of taking your team to the next level and identifying what they need to do to remain successful.

SLAs set ground rules within and between teams. Your SLA for your sales team might mention how long reps have to wait before reaching out to an inactive lead. The SLA between sales and marketing might say who gets credit for a lead that came in through a certain source.

As always, feedback is crucial for these two types of documents to work. And an iterative process with all relevant stakeholders involved is required. The goal of these documents is process adoption, and you need buy-in from your team in order to make sure this result comes through.

Your reports will be where you look to see if the process is being adopted. Overdue steps in Outreach? You can report on it. A certain marketing list has a high bounce rate? Of course. Which client has the most support tickets? Easy. Your PM and Technical Admin are the resources dedicated to getting your reports up and running.

Look Out for Part III

Now pat yourself on the back. You’ve come so far from where you started. Your systems are installed. They’ve been customized. They’ve been tested. The processes have been documented, and your team is ready to roll. Part II is complete.

Part III will focus on how to train different levels of team members on leveraging your CRM for success. To simplify things, we will focus on Executives, Managers, Reps, and Admins.

The post The Proven Method for Successfully Implementing a New CRM: Part 2 (The Set-Up) appeared first on RevGenius.

Most companies today view a Customer Relationship Management (CRM) Platform as a much needed resource for scaling their business. Without a proper database to manage revenue-producing relationships in 2020, you’ll have trouble attracting, converting, and retaining customers consistently. More importantly, without a CRM, your team will struggle to be productive as they work against the friction and lack of organization within the process of building and managing a pipeline of business.

According to CRM Magazine, 91% of businesses with ten or more employees have a CRM in place. Even more interesting, 3.6% of those companies did not recognize the intended ROI on their implementation. What happened with that 3.6%?! Some possibilities:

• the CRM was not tailored to the business’s processes
• users were not properly trained to adopt the tool
• there were no internal champions for the project
• there was no dedicated personnel for daily administration of the CRM
• the company did not have an outsourced technical partner with industry experience to guide them down the right path.

Regardless of the reason, CRM implementations can be complex, expensive and a major detractor in productivity if it is not implemented correctly. Nevertheless, as SoftwareAdvice reports, a great CRM implementation can lead to a 74% improvement in building customer relationships simply by improving access to customer data when it is needed most. The best business decisions are informed by data. Your CRM makes sales data accessible and visible. For companies that take the leap to implement a CRM, they can see an average payback of $8 for every dollar spent on a CRM.

Once you are ready to implement a CRM, here are the initial steps you need to take to ensure its successful:

• Setting SMART implementation goals
• Defining your vision for the implementation
• Identifying your implementation team for a successful project

Start preparing your team for the implementation process by setting goals. Set an ideal state that the platform will help your team achieve. Define how your CRM fits into your business funnel. Identify your implementation team. These three steps will lay the foundation for a solid process.

Setting Goals

It is critical you take the time to align with your team on WHY you’re bringing in a CRM, and how it will fit into your existing tech stack and revenue organization.

Identify which teams will be using the platform; is this being set up for sales, marketing, success, or a combination of the three? Once you have identified what business units will be using the platform, you’ll need to brainstorm some of your use cases. Ask your team for feedback during this portion, since they’ll be the ones using it. Some examples of use cases could be:

• Standardizing and documenting your customer funnel (sales, marketing, or success) and the associated processes and touchpoints
• Setting up reporting to track activities, results, and process adoption
• Implementing and automating marketing campaigns and lead scoring for proper lead attribution
• Automatically generating support tickets, based on form submissions, chatbots, or emails; and then automating the routing process for those tickets

Defining Your Vision

Once you’ve gotten the WHY & the WHO figured out. The next step is defining how the CRM fits into your business model / funnel. To do this, you will need to fully map out this business funnel from net new lead to retained or upsold client. To help in this process, my team at The Central Metric takes clients through our Buyer Journey & Data Model. (If you want to get a taste of what that looks like, reach out to me via LinkedIn or email and I can share an example and/or take you through a paired down version of this exercise.)

As you move through the stages of your funnel, you’ll be prompted to identify how your prospect and customer data flows through your techstack, what actions your reps take at each stage, and what reports are relevant in tracking the effectiveness of each step. A great modern sales team is a lot like an assembly line. You can improve one part to increase efficiency throughout. The end result of this exercise is the opportunity to identify how your new CRM will process and route incoming and outgoing data.

Some things to keep in mind as you move through the model include:

• You’ll want to identify any custom fields that will need to be created
• Use this as an opportunity to also map out the integrations between your new  CRM and the rest of your techstack; do they integrate natively or will you need a third-party app? (Ex: Zapier, Automate.io, PieSync, etc.)
• Identify metrics that can be used to build reports and dashboards
• What actions are you asking from your prospects and customers?
• What actions are you asking of your internal team?
• How will the tech augment and support them both?

Mapping out this entire process will take some time, so for a short-term win, try doing a basic walkthrough of your current lead flow and call out any quick changes that can be achieved through short term updates to your techstack and processes. A little introspection on the customer journey goes a long way.

Identifying Your Implementation Team

As you move through your version of the Buyer Journey and Data Model, take the time to identify who on your team will own each stage of the process. At a basic level, we recommend that your implementation team should include:

1. Executive: Let’s be real. This is who the CRM is really for. The visibility that a CRM offers allows your business leaders to make informed decisions, scale their business, and report everything back to the board. Their input is invaluable even if they won’t necessarily use the system day-to-day.
2. Project Manager: This person should be the leader of the CRM planning team. They are typically a Head of Operations or Manager of one of your Revenue functions.
3. Technical Admin: Responsible for data migration and cleansing. Many teams outsource this piece or turn to an internal data scientist.
4. Application developer: This person could also be in an ops role – they are in charge of the system customization. Some CRMs have dedicated implementation specialists to fill this role.
5. QA test engineer (Ex: Rep. or Coordinator): Don’t be scared by the title, here. This CRM user will be in charge of testing things out and providing user-level feedback. This could be a senior rep within your sales, marketing, or CS teams.

Take the time to define the roles and responsibilities for each team member, as well as setting action items and deadlines to hold them accountable through each part of the process. Do this BEFORE your CRM purchase, please.

Remember that your reps are the users for the product you are developing. At some point, you will need to include all of these users in the training and testing portion of the implementation. Be prepared to gather feedback and make any updates/changes to your system based on feedback during training and testing.

Look Out for Part 2!

Once you have taken the time to go through these steps and plan out your process, create an action plan with the next steps and deadlines, so that everyone is on the same page.  When this is complete, you’ll be ready for Phase 2: Purchasing and setting up your CRM.

The post The Proven Method for Successfully Implementing a New CRM: Part 1 appeared first on RevGenius.

1. Background
2. Lighting
3. Camera position
4. Standing Desk
5. Microphone

Background

Let’s start with the background. I’ve written about this a fair amount, but backgrounds are incredibly important for video calls. The ideal background is one that showcases a bit of your personality but isn’t busy or distracting. That way, it makes call intros far more enjoyable. Instead of “how’s the weather,” a good background is a conversation starter. Here’s mine:

I’ve pretty much stuck to the music theme, but it has led to all kinds of conversations. Other bass/guitar players will either recognize the instruments or ask about them (the bass is a Jaguar, which is a relatively well known Fender/Squier design, but the guitar is made by a relatively small manufacturer called Schecter– one person recognized it, and we talked about guitars for about 10 minutes before getting to work). Or, sometimes people ask about the records behind me, and what they are, why I chose them. Each record has a story – for example, I’ve met a few of the bands (Dawes and Lake Street Dive), and when my son was born, “When Doves Cry” happened to be the song from the push mix that was playing, so Purple Rain had to be on the wall.

You could go the virtual background route, but I’m not a big fan as there are lots of situations in which they end up being quite distracting:

• If you talk with your hands like I do, the background may not be able to keep up.
• If you don’t have enough contrast with your background, either the background will “take over,” or parts of it will end up appearing.
• If you have a headset, sometimes Zoom/Teams/whatever can think that the headset is your head, so the “real” background is visible between your head and the headset.

There are times a virtual background is unavoidable. If there’s no way to make your actual background less distracting (i.e., if you don’t have a dedicated office and are working in a kitchen or basement), I’d highly recommend getting something to create lots of contrast between you and the background. You don’t need a green screen – I used to use a green sheet that I hung over a folding/room dividing screen, and that worked pretty well.

Lighting

Lighting is one of the easiest ways to look better (or worse). When it comes to light, the key is that you don’t want any directly behind you as it ends up washing you out – especially if you are pale and bald like I am.

The ideal way to make lighting better is to have natural light to the front or side – a window is great if that’s an option. If not, or if you want to supplement, you can put lamps on the floor behind you or to the side.

Regardless of what the room light is, everyone should get a ring light. This is pretty much what it sounds like – a ring that lights up (usually it’s an LED). And everyone looks better with a ring light – it evens the light that’s on you, reduces any blemishes you may have (no judgment – we all have them), and illuminates your eyes. You can get one at Walmart or Amazon for about $20, and they’re worth every penny.

Also, like most stuff in this category, I think it’s all made by the same manufacturer, so whichever one has good ratings and is in your price range should be fine. I have one that has a second arm for a webcam, and that has different shades of light (warm/cool/etc.), both things I find to be very helpful.

Camera position

If you only take one thing away from this article, let it be this: external webcams are your friend. Most internal laptop cameras aren’t very good (yes, that includes MacBooks), and they also limit the angle your camera can be. External webcams are of higher quality and give you placement over where they are. You don’t have to get an expensive one (I use a couple, but my primary is a Logitech that cost $30-$50), and you definitely don’t need to get a 4K one.

When placing your camera, you want it to be eye level (so it looks like you’re looking at the audience in the eye). If you can’t use an external webcam for whatever reason, then put your laptop on a riser of some sort. This doesn’t have to be a fancy laptop stand – those old textbooks from college that you meant to throw out, recycle/sell but didn’t will work just fine.

And if you’re using an old Dell XPS that has the webcam in the keyboard? Sorry to say, but you need to get a webcam or a new laptop. No one wants to look up your nose.

Standing desk

I’ve had a back problem since I was 18 (thanks, football), and sitting for extended periods of time is a no-go for me. I recently got a standing desk adapter (one that goes on top of a desk, not a whole new desk), and it’s been life-changing.

A standing desk isn’t good just for health (since apparently sitting all day is killing us), but it will also make you a better presenter. I almost always stand in-person, even if I’m only presenting to one or two other people. It just feels better – it’s easier to find my demo voice, I can move around a bit (not pace, and this is a very important distinction), and when I “talk with my hands,” it is more natural. By standing when I present virtually, I have many of the same benefits. I don’t walk around the room, but I can be more animated. Plus, standing keeps me more present and engaged, which also makes me a better presenter.

Try your next call standing up (if you don’t have a way to do this on camera, wait until you have a non-video call), and I guarantee that you’ll see the difference.

Microphone

That built-in microphone that’s on your computer? It’s garbage. No matter how much the manufacturer claims, it’s “optimized for video calls,” don’t trust them. An external audio device is crucial to sounding good on your calls.

Unfortunately, sounding good isn’t cheap. I like the Blue Yeti microphone, which isn’t the best microphone out there, but it’s a good balance of price and functionality. I have the microphone on a boom arm with a shock mount and a pop filter. If you don’t know what those things are, that’s OK – here’s a picture:

The boom arm is to move the microphone in and out of position, the shock mount (that thing sitting directly below the mic) is to limit how much it’s moving (mics pick that up), and the pop filters plosives, which is an awesome sounding word for “p” “t” or “k” sounds (among others) that the mic picks up.

You don’t need all of that in your microphone set up, but you do need to avoid putting a microphone directly on your desk. Sound is vibrations, and a microphone sitting on a desk picks up every vibration of the keyboard. So, unless you want your audio to sound like an old-timey typewriter, make sure there’s no physical connection between the keyboard and the microphone.

If an external microphone doesn’t work for you, then you want a good headset. When looking for a headset, I recommend one with a microphone arm to not only pick up your voice but to give you some control if your mouth is too close to it and/or you’re too loud, which causes distortion (which never sounds good, unless you’re an electric guitar). You also want to use a dedicated connection to the microphone – either a wire or a bluetooth dongle. Yes, your computer has a bluetooth radio, but besides being a fun word to say, a dongle will give more bandwidth to your audio signal than the radio in your laptop that’s connected to a bunch of other stuff. And don’t put said dongle in a USB hub, but have it in its own port; that way, you limit any other data that can interfere with your audio signal.

By the way, those AirPods that your significant other got you for the holidays (sorry to ruin the surprise) can work, but the audio quality won’t come close to a headset from a manufacturer like Jabra or Poly (formerly Plantronics).

There you have it, some simple and mostly inexpensive things you can do to make sure you have the best setup possible for virtual calls.

The post The Ultimate Setup for Virtual Meetings & Presentations appeared first on RevGenius.

Whether you are running your own business, working in a corporation or working with clients, SaaS is likely going to be critical to any digital marketing, operational or strategic initiatives.  But what are some of the key current trends to know, and how can you take advantage of them to support what your business does?  That’s what we will cover here today.

As a quick disclaimer, I’m going to try to stick to more of a general view rather than delving into what impacts the pandemic has had.  While there is no debating the pandemic has had a major impact on the SaaS industry, it’s tough to say whether some of the trends it has borne will have staying power.  Given that, this article will deal with more general trends rather than ones  specific to the pandemic.  To get started, let’s look at a potential change with the SaaS model:

Saas Is Becoming More Vertical

Traditionally, SaaS has been more of a horizontal model – one solution or a series of solutions that can be replicated across different industries.  As time has gone on though, customer needs have become more complex. As a result, customers are calling for more customized solutions.  This is where vertical SaaS comes into play – specific solutions for specific industries.  This also makes having industry specific KPIs possible, something that helps customers better understand how they are performing and where the gaps might be.

What industries are taking advantage of this?  According to a report from Business Insider:

The fact that the financial industry leads the way in spending on vertical SaaS isn’t really a surprise. However, some of the other sources of spend, namely retail and healthcare (industries that some would think might rely on their own systems rather than outsource spend) might catch a few by surprise.  Here’s one possible explanation: vertical solutions help companies better gather industry specific customer intelligence.  These are valuable pieces of information that help companies understand their customers, market products to them, and know potential opportunities within the industry they operate in.

Customer demand also exists for multiple solutions, something made easier when taking a vertical, rather than horizontal, approach to solutions.  According to Business Insider, SaaS providers retain 30% of customers over a two year period when they offer a single solution.  When they offer two solutions, that retention rate jumps to 48%.  Offer four or more solutions?  78% retention rate.  Offering those solutions is easier when companies aren’t shackled and can adapt, something vertical SaaS offers.

Pricing Is Shifting Towards Usage Based Pricing

Generally speaking, SaaS has historically been priced either as a flat rate, such as a monthly or yearly rate, or a tiered based approach, where companies have choices between different features or levels of service depending on their price point.  Now SaaS is trending more towards a usage based pricing model.  This is a consequence of the need for more customization in SaaS that we hit on previously – industries, and the companies that operate within them, are different, and a ‘one size fits all’ pricing model is becoming outdated.

The blog Chargify provides some good examples of companies that are doing this successfully.  Some interesting themes that stand out are:

• Billing per hour of active use (as measured by volume of data and the amount of time your virtual machines are active each month)
• Billing based on how frequently a company needs to access data
• A “pay as you take an action” model – the email solutions company Mailgun is a good example of this, charging based on volume of emails sent after passing a threshold determined by the customers’ plan
• Metered billing, depending on how much of each particular feature is used

The key takeaway: find creative ways to price your SaaS services, as the industry is adopting more pricing models than the traditional static, monthly pricing.

Services Will Be Unbundled and Integrated

Let’s take a detour to a different industry for just a moment.  We all remember the days where cable companies would bundle services together, making customers buy items they neither wanted nor had a use for.  My personal favorite was when I was forced to add on a landline to my cable plan in 2012 – I used said landline a total of zero times.  Streaming companies such as Netflix and Hulu exploited this inefficiency and thrived off of it.

It’s a similar story in the SaaS industry.  As I talked about earlier, there isn’t a single solution that is universally replicable across different industries.  Solutions, and the services that go with them, are going to have to be agile and adaptable.

What are some reasons for this?  The blog Koombea identified a few gaps in the SaaS market, including:

• Companies find that in-house solutions don’t adequately fit their needs
• Businesses don’t want to build a tool from scratch in-house
• Companies need solutions that can change with the changing business environment

In addition, services need to be ‘integration friendly’ with more and more platforms.  Oftentimes companies will use resources in conjunction with each other, and SaaS solutions need to be compatible with what is used.  For example, a cloud-based solution may need to be compatible with SalesForce so it can integrate with the existing CRM software.  A static solution may not have this ability.

One thing to keep in mind as this trend takes hold: is this scalable?  It’s easy for one company to make one solution for one client – but it gets much harder to make multiple solutions for multiple clients.  While it is true that learnings can be replicated to different initiatives even when the specific products can’t, actually building and maintaining multiple solutions for different clients can be a challenge.  Profitability should also be considered here – while the demand is expected to be there, willingness to pay is unclear.  Bigger clients will certainly step up to the plate, but there will be significant competition to service them.  Is servicing the smaller clients, who have similar needs but may not be able to pay as much, worth it for developers?  Time will tell.

To wrap it up, the SaaS industry, like all industries, is shifting in response to customer needs.  As the industry gets more mature, the solutions companies need are evolving with it.  This is all driven by customer needs. As those needs become more diverse, so too must the solutions, which are trending towards more customized than standardized.  Accordingly, the pricing is also shifting towards more metered based pricing.  While the traditional pricing still exists, pricing based on usage will be a trend to watch moving forward.

The post 2021 SaaS Trends: Where Things Are Heading and Why You Should Care appeared first on RevGenius.

No matter how good you or your company are, at the end of the day, it’s about initiating a conversation between two strangers.

Earlier in my career, I believed skills as negotiating, handling objections, and closing are the only factors that determine my success. Oftentimes, I clearly underestimated the starting point of every sales journey — my first email, LinkedIn message, or call.

Talking to more than 20 proactive sales professionals (both executives and individual contributors), I was seeking the answer to a pretty simple question.

“What’s the hardest part of writing a good cold email?”

I got a bunch of good answers, but here are a few ones that stood out to me:

• do thorough research —> understand your prospect’s world to make sure you’re adding enough value
• keep it clear and concise —> make your message personalized and relevant without being too long and salesy
• write the way you talk —> turn the complexity of your solution into a simple language to sound more conversational

Considering all the above-mentioned points and the rapid growth of the sales tech industry, here we come to the most interesting part…

How can we better equip ourselves with the right tech to sharpen our outreach?

Luckily, there are some really smart tools on the market that help sales professionals go above and beyond the regular approach to prospecting.

I’ve put together a brief list of what I’m using at the moment. Hope you find them handy too:

1. Crystal Knows

Doing research is fun. Diving deeper into your prospects’ profiles, their industry, solutions. Gaining some understanding of their personal and professional interests, motivators, and challenges.

But what’s even more fun is to get a picture of your prospect’s personality in a few clicks. That’s what I love to do using Crystal Knows.

It doesn’t replace the need to do my research, but it greatly helps adjust my message based on a particular type of personality. As an example, here is my personality assessment:

To make sure that Crystal Knows positively influences my prospecting process, I like to:

• focus on things that really matter for my prospect and avoid stressors
• pay extra attention to energizers — things that motivate my prospect
• tweak my writing style and wording, so my tone will match their personality

Example#1:

According to Crystal Knows prediction, it comes naturally for Jonathan, one of my prospects, to getting bored easily.

This got me thinking about the idea to replace my common message structure Trigger +Value Offering + CTA with this one:

Trigger +Engaging question + Value offering + CTA

Example#2

I had another prospect Julie, who seemed to be most motivated by fun, excitement, and storytelling. Keeping that in mind, I used a more easy-going email flow than usual:

2. Grammarly

Grammar is a huge pain. Being a non-native speaker, I found it challenging to write perfect emails for a long period of time.

The first messages I sent were really clunky, which I believe made me look a bit unprofessional. Ops, I’m sorry my dear prospects. I was too young and inexperienced at that point.

Since 2015, Grammarly has become an essential part of my toolset. I use it every single day to:

• cross-check my emails or any other piece of text for grammar, spelling and punctuation mistakes
• score my emails based on word count indicators, readability level and vocabulary usage which illustrates the overall quality of my writing
• control the correctness, clarity, engagement, and delivery assessment of my emails‍

‍3. Hemingway‍

At my first job, I was working with CTOs and Directors of Engineering from tech giants.

I was a rookie with a basic understanding of how prospecting works and what an ideal email looks like. Absorbing the writing style of my colleagues and making the first attempts to personalize messages on my own. That was the best I could do.

But I was sure that if I was selling a super sophisticated solution, I had to sound tech-savvy.

“End-to-end IoT solution, bidirectional communication, hardware- and transport-agnostic”…

And a whole bunch of similar phrases as part of my boring pitch combined with a formal writing style (just to make me look cool).

“The longer and more formal my message, the more likely I’ll get a response.” —  my biggest false assumption.

Fortunately, times have changed. These days I rely on the Hemingway app to:

• avoid sentences that are hard to read
• use better alternatives to some of my phrases
• ensure that my email is easy to understand

When I end up writing at the 10th or 11th-grade level, I follow all the recommendations throughout the text to simplify my email. My goal is to get to the 9th-grade or even lower as this interval is considered good and easy to understand based on Hemingway’s classification.

4. IBM Tone Analyzer

In the past, I have always dealt with the fear of sending messages that might be misinterpreted. Even our best intentions can be read in a completely different way because of some personal, professional, or cultural characteristics.

Let’s say in Eastern Europe people are more direct and formal. In the US, there many more people who appreciate emails written in conversational language.

A few months ago, I heard about IBM Tone Analyzer which quickly became an invaluable addition to my current toolkit.

Behind a pretty raw and fancy-free design, it has extremely powerful functionality. What I find most helpful is their scoring of my text at both document and sentence levels.

If I need to quickly double-check that my message is written in a positive manner, I can use the scoring at a document level. It will show me all the tones that are recognized throughout the email and if I see “Joy” among them – Woohoo, success!

When I need to analyze text on a sentence level, the tool highlights sentences that indicate a particular tone present. This gives me a better understanding of how I can formulate my thoughts in the future if I need to emphasize a specific tone.

IBM Tone Analyzer prevents me from appearing as angry, sad, or scared because I unconsciously used the wrong wording. As a result, I have a good idea of how my message will sound to my prospect.

To sum up:

Writing skills don’t always come naturally. Even though “write the way you talk” sounds like a reasonable encouragement, it usually follows by a range of uncertainties. Is my email engaging enough? Do I need to add more context? What if my message will be considered too direct? The list goes on and on…

A powerful set of tools will never eliminate the need to apply your unique skills and bring authenticity. It will rather point you in the right direction, motivating you to connect with your prospect on a deeper level.

Another gold nugget is that by continuously using any of these tools, you practice your skills over and over again, get feedback, and improve.

A few things I encourage you to habituate:

• make a personality assessment the integral stage of your research and prospecting
• make sure both clarity and engagement levels are good before pressing a “send” button
• always learn to write simpler (my #1 challenge)
• pay extra attention to the tone of your email to provoke only positive emotions and feelings

Next time you start writing your cold email, make sure you warm it up a bit using all the available data and tools!

The post Sales Tech For Better Cold Emails Conversion in 2021-2022 appeared first on RevGenius.

I’m sure you said “YES”! After talking to thousands of reps, the common theme I hear is that sending direct messages on LinkedIn “does not work!”

But, the truth is most are sending DM’s to potential prospects that look like this:‍

“Hi Marcus,

My name is (name) with (Company Name).

[Insert 3 paragraph pitch about the company/product and a Calendly link]

Looking forward to hearing from you,

(Name)”‍

Even worse: some are using automation software to connect and send these types of messages. However, these types of messages only result in the receiver shaking their head and deleting that message. So, multiply that by dozens of similar messages your prospect is receiving so you can see why these messages rarely work. .

Because cold outreach via LinkedIn DM is commonly focused ENTIRELY on the salesperson and not on the actual prospect.

To compound this, add in how a salesperson feels sending dozens of templated messages to strangers essentially begging them for time and money every day…it doesn’t feel good…

It feels sleazy.

But, does that mean sending DMs on LinkedIn doesn’t work?

No. In fact, it works incredibly well if you know how to do it properly. I’ll teach you step-by-step exactly how to use LinkedIn DMs to build a thriving business off of LinkedIn DM’s, generate more revenue and even secure dream jobs.

So, let’s dive in!

1. Send a Blank Connection Request

So, you’ve already uncovered the target prospect but you are not connected yet. The first thing you do is send a BLANK connection request.‍

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Why blank?‍

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Simply put: you’re likely to see a faster and higher acceptance rate. When a prospect receives a blank request, the first thing they ask themselves is:‍

“How do I know this person?”‍

As they have no idea, they are more than likely going to be like:‍

“Oh well, I’ll just accept it” and move on.

Here’s the EXCEPTION: If there is context and you can hyper-personalize it, then you should provide context. Here’s an example:‍

“Hey Marcus, I loved your post today about cold calling objections! I used that technique today and it worked! Thanks for sharing that. I’m looking forward to learning more from you. Would you like to close more deals via LinkedIn DM’s?‍

I’m sure you said “YES”! After talking to thousands of reps, the common theme I hear is that sending direct messages on LinkedIn “does not work!”

But, the truth is most are sending DM’s to potential prospects that look like this:‍

“Hi Marcus,

My name is (name) with (Company Name).

[Insert 3 paragraph pitch about the company/product and a Calendly link]

Looking forward to hearing from you,

(Name)”‍

‍our awesome posts!”‍

This example clearly demonstrates that you’ve read the prospect’s content and enjoyed it. The salesperson is also being complimentary which helps the prospect feel good. Subsequently, a prospect is likely to gauge this message to be a low-SPAM connection so are likely to accept it as a result.

You can apply this same concept to any hyper-personalization request. The goal is to come off friendly, personal, and non-threatening. However, if in doubt, send a blank connection request instead.‍

2. Record a Personalized Video‍

After they accept your request, you’ll want to use the LinkedIn application to record natively on your Android or iOS phone to record a short 30-45 second video. The reason video is so powerful is that it humanizes the outreach experience.

This allows for a faster ‘bridge of trust’ between you and the prospect because you are showing them that you are a real person. The prospect also knows that you intentionally reached out and didn’t just spam message thousands of prospects.

Also, as most people are not comfortable being on camera,  they are unwilling to send video DM’s. That tells you that video is an opportunity to stand out amongst all salespeople and your competition.‍

Side note: From my experience, close to 70% of prospects will respond back to the video as well! Every single day I get DM’s back from prospects thanking me for the outreach and comment that they’ve NEVER received a video DM before. ‍

Let’s cover a few key points to ensure your video has an impact:

• Make sure to look right into the camera lens when recording. This creates an experience for the receiver as if you are looking them right in the eye. This helps build trust quickly.

• Smile! This may seem obvious but SMILE – flash those pearly whites at them and be happy! People like positive people!

• Show your personality! Be YOU – humans buy from humans! Don’t be a robot – be yourself!

• Show energy! A sale is a transfer of enthusiasm. If you are not enthusiastic, why would they want to ever meet with you or have a conversation? Be positive and upbeat.

• Make sure you have good lighting. Check your angles and lighting wherever you are recording the video. Don’t hide in the shadows and be creepy.

• Make sure whatever is in the camera view presents the image you want. For example: if you are working from home and you can see piles of dirty laundry behind you and a stack of dirty dishes, is that the image you want to portray?

Although it may seem like a lot of small details, everything adds to the overall impact of your videos. Imagine as if each video you are going to send is like a video resume for your dream job! How do you want to be portrayed?

Next, let’s dive into what to say and do on camera!

3. Use the G.D.P. Strategy for the Video

Here is where the magic really happens! – We are going to implement a simple framework called “The GDP Strategy” which is a structural and thematic framework for a 30-45 second video. GDP breaks down into “Gratitude, Deposit, and Personal.” As we dive into each section, remember to keep the tips above to ensure your video has impact.

Gratitude

The reality is that most people who reach out via LinkedIn DM come off as entitled. So, starting off with clear gratitude for your prospect connecting with you on LinkedIn. Be authentic and real. This piece is no more than 10 seconds long and then you will transition into why you reached out. So, here’s an example:

“Hi Jamie, Marcus Chan here – thank YOU SO MUCH for accepting my request! It means a lot to me! I hope your day has been great so far!”

Deposit

Next, offer something of high value to the prospect for free. Think of this as making a ‘deposit in the bank’. Most salespeople ask for a ‘withdrawal’ through requesting a meeting when they first send a DM, so do the opposite and stand out!

The deposit also must be something that they can consume for free and will be helpful for them. Ideally, what you want to achieve here is to help solve a common problem they have and position you as someone helpful and of value!

Bonus points if it is somewhat related to what you have to offer. Keep in mind that your offer should NOT be a sales pitch. So, don’t plan on offering a cheat sheet which focuses on your services because you will lose trust. Give first.

Here are some examples of free deposits:

• Recorded training
• Webinars
• Cheat sheets on relevant topics
• Guides
• Blog articles
• Recorded keynote speeches
• Etc.

Think of it this way: If you were in the prospect’s shoes, would you get a lot of value from this deposit? Here’s an example of what you could say on the video:‍

“The reason I reached out is that I love providing tons of value for successful gym owners like you! I’ve put together a completely free cheat sheet on “7 Ways to Trim Expenses For Gym Owners Without Impacting the Member Experience” that I think you’d get value from. Feel free to check it out below!”

Personal

Lastly, end the video like a personal friend. Be casual and friendly. That means no hard close or ask for a meeting. Leave them with a casual “see ya later” vibe. Here’s an example:

“Anyway, thanks again for connecting. I hope this helps you out – have an awesome day!”‍

Boom – that’s it. Hit send!

And just in case they are in a place that they can’t hear your video’s audio, type of a quick short message that summarizes your message. This should be short and easy to read on your mobile device.

Here’s an example:‍

“Hey Jamie, like I mentioned in my video above, thanks for connecting!

My goal is to provide tons of value for gym owners!‍

‍Below is the free cheat sheet I mentioned in my video. I hope it helps you!

Have a great day!

Marcus

www.trimfatandexpenses.com”‍

So let’s recap: Why is this so effective?

Let’s think this through from the prospect’s perspective:

1. They are expecting a pitch but you aren’t pitching

1. You gave them something valuable

1. It’s casual, helpful, and not a direct call-to-action

1. This warms them up to like and trust you and see you as someone of value!

What’s great about the GDP Method is it now opens the door for an organic conversation with the prospect, which could then lead to a phone or Zoom call.

What to Do Next

So, tips are cool but executing on them  is where you can start seeing results! Here’s what you do next after reading this:

1. Work with your sales and marketing department to figure out what type of deposit you can use. If you don’t have resources, get creative and make something on Canva following the parameters from above. (Or, consider outsourcing on Fiverr or another creative platform)

1. Put the steps above into action. Just get started!

1. Set a goal for a certain number of videos per day to start. Eg: 10 videos/day.

1. Track your progress and refine your video with practice.

1. Consider A/B testing your “deposit” to see what gets the best response rates and feedback.

That’s it! Start taking action immediately and you’ll see results from this process. If you also have an optimized LinkedIn profile, a strong content strategy, and a good follow up process, you’ll see response rates achieve even greater success.

So get comfortable being on camera as it’s the best way to build trust and relationships with your clients. Through applying the G.D.P Strategy,  you will ultimately create the opportunity to lock in more appointments and future partnerships.

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