Thursday, 4 February 2016

Sales Prospecting Tips from The Bitter Business – The Bitter Business

Original article: Sales Prospecting Tips from The Bitter Business – The Bitter Business

Sales prospecting can be a reluctant or even feared selling activity, especially when the term “cold calling” is mentioned. However prospecting is a vital sales activity and well trained sales people should view as a necessary aspect of being successful in sales. The positive news is using tools like social media and social selling to engage prospects, the actual event of contacting a prospect should be called “warm calling. Warm calling is about a sales process where reps use social data to research their prospects prior to making a call, understand where they can add value and can demonstrate concern about a buyer challenges. Regardless of the sales cycle, reps whose first goal is to offer the buyer help (white papers or industry research as examples) and guidance (seminars, vendor profiles etc) are far more successful and satisfied than people merely engaged with cold calling.

Here are some tips to win at prospecting using warm calling:

Set aside day every day for sales prospecting. Work with your sales coach or manager to help manage what you are doing or being asked to do. Set targets for prospects researched, profiled and engaged – daily.

If a sales person is blindly approaching prospects with emails and calls without reason other than a profile view then they will fall flat and fast.

If reps are not taking a value first approach then it is not worth even making the call or sending the email

Sales people who are trained to look outward, use social media tools, focus in on the world of the buyer and what they value will perform better in their roles.

‘Dear Buyer, The reason for my call today is…’ If a rep cannot complete this sentence then they should not be making the phone call as they lack sales process and value wedge knowledge.

When engaged with prospects, it is important that the context is there the relevancy of the approach has to be valid.

Use social selling tools, social insights, data and lead generation software! The days of having multiple browsers open to find prospect information are long over. It is amazing how many sales managers do not know this yet

Warm calling to activate sales leads is about making the customer the hero, make them glad to have connected with you, bring value and understanding before any sales pitch.

Confidence comes from being in control. So practise the sales conversation, write scripts, the genuine reason for the call and connect this back to a challenge, know your value wedge, understand your industry plus study the buyer’s journey.

Mistakes are learning tools. Every call is a learning opportunity to enrich any sales person’s skill. So do not fret on mistakes and embrace the learning.

Know when to hold and when to fold. When a prospect is not a good fit or you can’t add value move on. When your product or service is not sparking a buyer’s interest then do not add to the pipeline, rather think of it as a step closer to find a matching prospect.

Focus on the Outcome. Prospecting is not about selling, it has a different goal. It is about exploring the possibility that you might be able to create value for the buyer and maybe do something together down the line. Selling, at this point really is cold calling.

Have fun. Enjoy the fruits of your research and the social insights you have gathered. You bring value and are worth listening to. Buyer to Supplier relationships has to start somewhere and opening these relationships is what prospecting is all about.

Filed Under: Business Tips, Social Selling Tagged With: lead generation, prospecting tips, sales, sales prospecting, sales prospecting tips, selling, social prospecting, Social Selling

Friday, 29 January 2016

Sales Funnel Improvement Tips – The Bitter Business

Originally published at: Sales Funnel Improvement Tips – The Bitter Business

How many people in sales really understand the sales funnel, the sales pipeline and the objections that can clog up the process? Success for many companies and start-ups depends on if they can shorten the sales cycle and speed up the sales process. It may come as a surprise to many sales managers that it is not product knowledge or productivity that separates out the good from the average in the race to revenue. The biggest key to unlocking revenue in sales is to understand the buyer’s perception of time.

The ability to move customers (cost of customer acquisition) through the sales funnel fast enough to bring in revenue can be the difference between success and failure no matter how good a business believes its product to be.

Even the sales and marketing gurus at HubSpot stated “buyer’s lack of urgency is the number one objection we face in the sales process.” So for sales teams to be successful, especially start-ups, they have to create a sense of urgency to move prospects faster through the pipeline.

The reality is that in today’s fast paced business environment, time is a scarce commodity. The seller’s time is scarce (need revenue) and the buyer’s time is scarce (need value now). Unlocking this time scarcity and getting the buyer to focus in on it is the key to a repeatable sales process and the means to a healthy sales pipeline.

The advent of inbound marketing and buyers own journey of discovery has seen seller time scarcity work well as a tactic. This tactic works well as the inbound customer is likely to be in the “consideration” or “Intent to buy” phases of the sales funnel, and moving closer to making a purchase. This is where seller scarcity nudges the buyer down the funnel. There are many types of seller scarcity from the instant discount for decision now; daily offer only, limited number of units available at the price, free express shipping or the free trials offering etc.

Buyer urgency presents a greater challenge. How many times have you heard the phrase “Can you get back to me in a month” While sometimes genuine (if qualified), most won’t remember your name by the time you call back a month later

The key to triggering a sense of urgency during an outbound sales call is to get some information about a business goal that needs attention. A sales person time is scare, if a business goal cannot be identified then move on. A question such as when is the latest you need to solve/resolve/have in place X?, is designed to probe as to find an urgent need within the business that justifies the prospect spending time engaging with a sales person.

From experience and monitoring sales processes, I believe a sense of urgency is best addressed after the goal priority phase of the discovery conversation. Once a goal that the seller offering can fulfil has been identified, then explore why it is prudent for the prospect to address the pain now. All sales people should be versed in communicating the negative consequences of inaction and the positive implications of addressing things now. A 3 step approach is to

Probe for negative consequences

Probe into the negative consequences at overall company level

Probe for positive implications

The sales skill and ability to bring a prospect through this dialogue is really important. The skill is for both the seller and buyer to understand the buyer’s priorities and how the sales person can help now.

Without a sense of urgency in sales, buyer desire loses its value

If I was selling data, I would probe how urgently the buyer needs to increase leads in the sales funnel or how urgently the data team needs to provide information to product managers, sales, marketing and finance. Another tactic is to sell risk reduction (use us as a backup vendor) to protect a business against the current supplier not delivering or if they are stretched. Computer and technology companies (we used this at Dell as a beachhead strategy) to invoke urgency as a way to sell products even if only small amount initially.

As part of sales training or as part of the sales interview all sales people should be able to ask and understand these same three questions:

Why does the prospect need to take action today?
What are the negative implications if they don’t?
What are the positive implications if they do?

Ask any venture capitalist or business leader and they will tell you that faster sales cycles are a competitive advantage. Because faster sales cycles enable companies not just to acquire customer faster but to refine their sales techniques quicker, measure sales people faster, and test marketing and lead sources instantly.

But much more important, moving sales faster through the sales funnel means speedier growth, which impacts any fundraising requirements and scaling headcount. For SaaS based start up companies, we know that product-to-market fit is vital, and developing urgency to prospects in the sales processes is equally vital.

Any sales strategy that unlocks time scarcity and motivates the buyer to act now forms the basis of a great sales unit that can stand the test of time.

Tuesday, 12 January 2016

How to Find New Customers on Social Media – The Bitter Business

Every business needs to find new customers and social media has become the go to channel for reaching new buyers using content as the main hook. Since the arrival of social selling and big data tools, social networks are now the main channels on which to identify and engage with new customers. While social platforms are superb publishing channels they are also great channels in which to promote products or services.

The foundations to using social media platforms to find new customers are built upon 3 pillars. The first is having all your social media profiles set up, the second is having your website populated with some customer centric content and the third is you have put in place a lead nurturing process for potential customers engaged with through the social networks.

So assuming all the social profiles are set up and you have the resources to lead nurture, take a look at these simple ways you can use social media to find new customers.

Here are some ways to use social media to find new customers

Getting leads via friend invite

A great way to increase social media exposure is to enable a friend’s invite scheme. Encourage your existing user base to invite their friends to connect with you or the business and maybe reward if they do will allow you to tap into a market segment that is likely to be interested in you. Also as you are using friend invites to increase social media exposure, why not use those friend invites to find new customers. The audience who already purchase your products or engage with your website are more likely to introduce higher quality leads, which allows you to find leads that are more likely to convert into paying customers.

LinkedIn group discussions

LinkedIn has become the main channel for B2B social selling, providing businesses and sales people the opportunity to network and engage with shared interest professionals. Done correctly the LinkedIn groups can provide a gateway to share, listen and engage with potential new customers.

A simple way to start is to do a search for the type of customer you are looking for; this will give you a list of groups to help you identify new customers. Just type in the search bar the profile of person you want to find and then on the left side click on Groups.

Start viewing the groups that have populated in your search, but before clicking on join, be sure to look through the list of members to make sure that the people in the group are the type of people you want to engage with.

Once you have been approved into the group, plan out how you will go about sharing interesting content (not always your own!), creating discussions and contributing to existing topics around the group topics. Doing this activity in a thoughtful way will build your “social selling index” and add credibility to your brand. Over time this activity will give you insight to what your potential new customer are interested in. This is the preamble before you should reach out to connect with them.

Tap into hashtags on Twitter

Hashtags and social conversations are a superb way to find new customers. Twitter has over 600 million users and the real-time chatter provides any business with ample amounts of data to find customers.

For example, if your company is selling the latest marketing tool and your target audience are marketing professionals, search the hashtags #marketing on Twitter and a list of conversations and profiles with marketing will be accessible. Just like LinkedIn you can then start following and engaging with these professionals so you can start building relationships that can potentially turn into new customers.

Promote your customers on social media

Promoting real and valid customer stories is a great way to find new customers through word of mouth referrals. Select some customers who are benefiting from using your product or better still ones, who engage with your product on the social media platforms, then promote them on your company’s social channels. This type of activity will gain those customers’s loyalty, and the exposure you receive when they also share the “promotional url/article” on their own social profiles; increasing your brand awareness through your brand promoters.

Funnel social media traffic to landing pages

The creation and use of landing pages on inbound marketing and social media campaigns are a great way to find new customers. When running a campaign to promote a product, a white paper or maybe a webinar on social media, funnel your traffic to a landing page that relates back to the tweet or social post. Companies like Hubspot and Marketo are experts at this. It works as follows.

When someone clicks on the link in the tweet/post it takes them to a dedicated landing page to download the content or information after submitting their name and email address. This kick starts the lead nurturing process for potential new customers that were acquired through social platform traffic.

Use and optimise Social Video

Video channels such as YouTube, Vimeo and Vine are powerful social networks to generate social media traffic for your business. In fact, according to Shareaholic, Google owned YouTube drives the most qualified referrals to websites.

If not already doing so, consider using video content in your marketing strategy. Ensure to always include a call to action at the end of the video or in the description box. The call to action should funnel people to a landing page (see previous tip).

Target and measure Social Sharing

Social sharing is not only a powerful method to generate online referral traffic but also to boost SEO which in turn drives more traffic. Every day there are over 22 billion social shares on the web. This echo system can provide a large amount of product exposure that requires very little work.

Always include social share buttons on every blog article and make sure they are positioned to make it is easy and encouraging for users to share your content. Depending on the quality of the content will increase traffic to your content or website.

Become active on Google+

Google+ has over 2.5 billion users. (Social Media Facts and Trends) and in the world of social networks, Google+ can be overlooked. However, Google+ has a useful feature in its Google+ Communities. Just like LinkedIn groups, these communities have members which could a source of new customers. Do a search on a topic relevant to your business, and you will see the communities that could be a good channel to engage with potential customers.

Do a search for “web designers”. The search will pull up the Google+ communities that were made for web designers. Start by joining the communities that have the highest number of members, highest number of posts, and the most relevant profiles. Again the tactic is to engage within the community to build authority, then share relevant content that funnels people towards your website or landing page.

Final Thoughts

All the social media channels provide any business with the opportunity to find new customers and as a customer acquisition channel. The about suggestions are just some of the ways social platforms can be used to find customers. Remember that every tactic must be customised to your types of business and customer, vanilla flavour doesn’t work! So ensure to understand which social networks your target audience are on before committing resources into social media to find new customers. Understanding your ideal “target prospect” and where/what (type of content) this audience engages on the social networks will help you in being efficient in acquiring customers. Do not get caught up in the quantity over quality of leads debate, this is a matter of targets. To be successful in customer acquisition via social media is as simple as ABC, (a) use the right social networks, (b) have great content to share (c) have the right social selling tactics. Follow this mantra and finding new customers on social platforms will become a whole lot easier than you imagined.

Monday, 11 January 2016

Business Consultant and Mentor – The Bitter Business

Business Consultant and Mentor – The Bitter Business

The Bitter Business provides an affordable and results driven business consultant and business mentor service in Ireland. We can bring over 30 years senior level sales, marketing and management expertise and knowledge to help a company improve performance metrics or key performance indicators through the thorough analysis of existing business problems. Working as a partner, we can develop plans for sales and business improvement alongside the management team.

As an experienced business consultant and business mentor, companies engage us to get an external view on the business, validate strategic options, to receive objective advice and impartial recommendations. The Bitter Business can act as a temporary resource to help clients with aspects of the business where hiring a permanent employee is not needed.

Some of the areas we assist client as a business consultant:

Review current sales and marketing processes.

Evaluate Go To Market strategies including target selection.

Analyse the business strategy against competitors and within the market.

To recommend strategies and tactics to increase business opportunities.

Work on creating action plans and identify gaps in the business model.

Templates to identify and implement business actions.

Market research and information gathering.

Identify business requirements, resources, partners, channels, and routes to market.

Deliver sales and marketing analyses and report findings.

Drive process improvements and efficiencies in sales, business development or marketing.

Create sales, marketing and business KPI’s.

Social selling training and implementation.

Implement plans while evaluating the business prospects, goals and objectives for growth.

Business Mentor.

Business mentoring is a resource to help entrepreneurs succeed

The business mentor service on offer brings our proven entrepreneurial business experience which can be relied on as trusted sounding board, independent thinker and a decision checker who is willing to build a relationship, mostly free of charge (coffee is always appreciated). The goal is that acting as a business mentor to a company or individual will help to fill a gap in knowledge or experience without incurring major expense.

We view business mentoring as a business helper, a resource whose motivation is to take an active interest in helping the entrepreneur, business owner or start up succeed.

The Bitter Business business consultant and business mentor service is allot more than some business consultant looking for a day rate. We promise not to dispense generic management jargon with little relevance to the business challenges. What we will do as a business mentor is listen and nurture,because as someone personally with the battle scars (of success and failure) in business I know the hard work it takes in ensuring business success.

To read my view on the role of a business consultant and being a business mentor, please read these articles – What does a Business Consultant Do and Business mentoring

Feel free to contact me for a no obligation and confidential chat.

Regards

Brian

Thursday, 31 December 2015

Social Media Marketing Agency

he Bitter Business acts as a social media marketing agency where we can assist any company to maximise their social media strategy for Ireland or even globally. Our social media and content marketing services are all focused on ensuring that a companies social media marketing campaigns contribute to the brand’s goals, sales and business objectives.

Social media is now one of the most powerful tools for lead generation, web traffic and inbound marketing. When it is used correctly, a business can create a strong personal connection with existing and potential customers. For any business to benefit from social media, the strategy including content strategy needs to take into account what the business/brand is trying to achieve, who is the target market and what your competition is doing.

Here are some articles on social media

Social Media Facts and Trends

The social media networks are a whole universe of conversations, tweets, like, followers, profiles, content, data and interests. Social data tells us they are no longer just used by the young and the nerds. Social media interaction is a truly global activity, embraced daily by people of all ages and in every corner of the web.

BENEFITS OF SOCIAL MEDIA IN BUSINESS AND SALES

Social Media Business Tips

Social Media Marketing Agency in Dublin,Ireland – The Bitter Business

Thursday, 17 December 2015

Social Media Facts and Trends

Social media facts and trends for marketing supported by user statistics are now influencing marketing strategies and tactics. Companies have already started to bypass the more traditional mass media products of radio campaigns, TV ads and press promotions in favour of driving awareness on the social networks.

Listed below are some social media facts, trends and social media statistics to help inform how or where a business might focus their social media strategy.

Remember that today, social media is allot more than just likes, followers or branding. It is a complete publishing and sales channel with the ability to tap into large volumes of data together with a reach that stretches into the millions of buyers.

Build a social network channel now

This is not a trend, this is a must do. Any business who is resourcing and building their social media channels (populating them with audiences) are creating an online publishing platform with built in marketing channels and a content marketing distribution network that works 24/7. Company leadership should view these social media networks as valuable digital assets that will grow each year. Done correctly, social media networks will give any business huge leverage in winning over customers and a connected marketing channel which works nonstop.

So without further ado, let us take a look at statistics for the major social media networks.

Statistics on Social Media Demographics

Social media trends and statistics

# 72% of all internet users are now active on social media

# 89% of 18-29 year age group use social media

# 30-49 age groups has now over 72% usage

# Over 60 percent of 50 to 60 year olds are active on social media

# Even in the 65 plus age bracket, 43% are using social media

# 84% of C-level/vice president executives use social media to support purchase decisions

# Nearly one in three consumers are influenced by social media in their purchases

# 87% of consumers are influenced by reviews read on social media

# 71% of users access social media from a mobile device

# Twitter has over half a billion users

# Facebook has over 1 billion users

# LinkedIn has nearly a quarter of a billion users

# Google+ has more than 2.5 billion users but only 10% are active

The myth that social media is the playground of the young has been debunked. Buyers, consumers, shoppers, sellers, seekers, businesses and organisations are all to be found in the social media universe. The age barrier is no longer relevant except for demographic targeting

“Facebook is still the biggest social media network. But Google+ and Twitter are serious contenders for audiences”.

Marketing and Business Love Social Media

93% of marketing departments use social media for branding/business

70% of brands have a presence on Google+

Facebook, Twitter and Google+ are the top 3 sites used by marketing

Here are some other social media statistics and infographics to mull over.

Every business that wants to engage deeper with target audiences should be increasingly aware of the global march towards a near total digital age, one which rewrites the rules on how brands engage with buyers.

These social media statistics with researched data makes it even more evident that the only way forward to engaging consumers and buyers is through social media communications.
Understanding the global social media landscape is not just some useful information; it provides valuable insights and data that must be central to any business strategy.

Social Media Trends – Forecast

#Social media is “in-the-moment” updates will grow rapidly. Real time sharing of video and content is going to get faster and better

#Buy Buttons. Major social media brands will feature some kind of buy button as an element of their online advertising campaigns

#In-app features will spread giving marketers ever more opportunities to engage with their audiences

#New content marketing or publication channels will evolve on existing social networks

#User privacy and the use of social data concerns will grow

#Internet Users now totals 3.175 Billion, that’s nearly half of the world’s population (7.357 Billion).

#Mobile is the future. Nearly 2 Billion users utilise their mobiles for Social Media

#Social media searches within social platforms will become more powerful

#Video will grow. Videos average 62% more engagement than photos. Live video streaming is set to explode

#Smart advertising is on the up. Big data will allow brands to target specific buyer intent or triggers

#Content specific to each social media channel and audience will evolve

#The rise of influencer marketing spend within user generated content will become more visible.

So there you have some social media trends and statistics. How relevant they will be in 6 or 12 months (or by the time you have read this article) is anyone’s guess. The important thing is to keep on top on what is happening on the social networks and don’t chase every social media fad that comes along.

Reproduced from original article: Social Media Facts and Trends – The Bitter Business

Monday, 7 December 2015

Content marketing is powering social selling

Content marketing is powering social selling – The Bitter Business

The creation and use of content marketing is key to getting social selling activities right. In fact content marketing is now powering most selling and sales activity as it is the smoothest route to build up a relationship with prospects or buyers. It also gently reinforces a brand without over ally interrupting people with sales messages. In today’s digital aware environment, brochure selling is a big turn-off and no longer cuts it with buyers.

The sales professional today knows that selling is now about genuine, beneficial interaction with existing and potential customers which builds trust over time. Content sharing also has the dual effect of building brand awareness, a business may never actually sell anything directly over social media but they will generate awareness.

What content is shared will impact the results.

To really make social selling work, the target audience has to be interested in what the sales person has to say and, ultimately, the customer believe in what they are saying.

“Creating content your potential prospects will find useful or enjoyable is key to success”.

Quality, insightful and useful content brings a brand to life, giving the business a personality and allowing it (if they work hard enough) to eventually become an industry thought leader. Content can also help a business differentiate them from the competition. .

As content marketing plays such a central role in enabling social selling activity, here are some tips to help make a business brand stand out from the crowd:

What does a business need to consider when developing a content marketing plan?

There is no “magic wand or instant success formula” to creating effective and impactful content as each buyer grouping and seller is unique, each with its own buyers journey and value proposition. While it is helpful to review other content marketing strategies and competitor approaches by doing some internet searches, ultimately any company’s content marketing plan needs to be tailored to its customers and market needs. However any content plan should include the sales team sharing information that is of interest to their target audience (of which a portion should be nothing to do with their brand). Information worth sharing might include market insights, industry news, analyst reports or independent market research.

They say people buy from people, and in the social network world people follow people who share things that enlighten them or educate them. Also a business should consider social selling training so sales people develop their own style and not be a channel to spew out branded sales updates.

A good starting point is maybe blogging about observations or customer opinions about the industry in which a business operates which can also be a handy means of kick-starting some social conversations. “Maybe research shows some validated trends that all companies or customers are embracing. Then create a nice content piece about it and to add in your observations maybe with some independent quotes.

There is always LinkedIn group discussions, Twitter conversations or any other forums in which the target audience can be found to share insights. But don’t be a bull in a china shop, marketing and sales people need to listen and understand what is going on in the social world for their customers in order to get to grips with the relevant topics to engage on.

The marketing department should ensure that everyone involved in social selling has access to pertinent content as and when they need it or as part of a schedule, this content can be developed internally, aggregated from social media or taken from approved third party sources.

The content marketing strategy needs planning, production schedule, promotion plan and a means to measure the effectiveness of the activity

A business needs to define and set content marketing aims plus ensure they support business objectives.
To identify the target audience and gather as much information about them to understand their characteristics and interests via social media.
Clearly define what kind of content will help achieve the business goals.
Develop a content marketing execution plan. Including a weekly or monthly content calendar so that the sales teams understand what content and marketing campaigns are in the pipeline.

Content marketing is about sales and marketing combining in order to share with customers the right content at the right time.”

Final suggestion on this tip is for sales and marketing teams to hold a content meeting each month to decide which segments or messaging they will focus on and then agree what content is necessary to create or source.

How businesses can ensures it exploits its content plan effectively

The first step is social media training for all in sales to ensure they maximize the content that will be made available to them. This social selling training should cover how to/not to use the various social media platforms, what the company’s social guidelines are to training on tone of voice and language on social media.

Business needs to make it easy for sales people to interact with marketing in order to understand what content topics are working and which are not, then repeat the things that do deliver results (make sure results is defined to all) and stop any content production to those topics not delivering. In this regard monitor and report on the analytics whether it is leads generated, white paper downloads or social followers etc. Monitoring the analytics from social activity in detail, and drawing up a reporting pack will help the business stakeholders what content drives what activity plus what the target audience has read.

Other basic marketing activities such as monitoring click on URLs, content/blog page views can provide a business with useful data to shape the content marketing plan accordingly and tweak where necessary.

A crucial element in content success is ensuring that the business (sales and marketing) have a daily plan to actively engage in social conversations. This means taking the time to impart value-add comments, liking or re-sharing content with less emphasis on broadcasting sales messages.

“Buyers want to see that sales people are knowledgeable in their own right, not just conduits for branded marketing campaigns.”

Strike a balance so the target audience do not get bombarded with too much content or feel like they are being stalked. Mix up different types of content, whether is it informational, infographics, video, white papers, case studies or images to make the social interactions more meaningful.

The aim is to share quality content that people enjoy reading, also in social selling sales people need to come across as being unbiased so providing impartial advice works really well.”

Social selling is NOT plastering half-price offers on social media. A business needs to be engaging and give audience food for thought.

What are the key challenges a business is likely to experience?

Delivering real business results using content marketing combined with social selling can be tricky and which some companies struggles with date due to a number of factors.

Content Quality! It can be challenging to create really engaging content that cuts through the huge amount of social chatter. The volume of content and information sharing on the social network is huge so it requires any content marketing campaign to be “targeted and relevant” to a clearly defined audience.

Don’t force it. Too many companies try to push the sales teams and people to become a brand advocates with little choice. Start by educating and tapping into the people are really interested in social media where their passion can lead to other team members getting involved. Forcing people to update their LinkedIn profile or Twitter account every hour can lead to social fatigue. Think Smarketing. Where sales and marketing work together to plan and put in place goals that everyone will contribute to. Both teams and departments working in unison can the difference between success and failure in running content marketing campaigns. “If either sales or marketing try to push out this activity alone, it probably will not work. Avoid headless activity where people detach themselves from the brand values and focus on their own goals which can be wasteful. Clearly defined goals, objectives and constant feedback is what makes content marketing powering social selling successful.