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Here are some typical B2B myths that just aren’t true.

Branding is not important as it is for B2C

While this may seem true, branding for B2B business is actually more important than it is for B2C.
B2C purchases are motivated primarily by emotion and need. Someone might purchase something because it makes them feel a certain way. B2B purchases are almost entirely motivated by logic and reason. These decisions are based on facts and numbers. B2B purchases are hardly ever made at a moment’s notice and often times, companies shop around. It’s important that you leave a lasting impression and that you remain easily recognizable.

B2C purchases are motivated primarily by emotion and need. Someone might purchase something because it makes them feel a certain way. B2B purchases are almost entirely motivated by logic and reason. These decisions are based on facts and numbers. B2B purchases are hardly ever made at a moment’s notice and often times, companies shop around. It’s important that you leave a lasting impression and that you remain easily recognizable.
A strong brand provides a sense of trust, confidence, and security. If customers see that a brand is well established and thought out, they are more likely to trust that company. Reputation is important as it makes the purchase decision seem much safer and easier.

A strong brand provides a sense of trust, confidence, and security. If customers see that a brand is well established and thought out, they are more likely to trust that company. Reputation is important as it makes the purchase decision seem much safer and easier.

Social Media Is Useless for B2B Marketing, my customers aren’t there.

Trust me, your customers are on social media. Everyone is on social media these days for personal use but more and more businesses are using social media for their marketing and sales initiatives, even B2B businesses.

While B2C companies have the benefit of targeting their customers directly on social media, B2B customers are people too and they are without a doubt, on social media. Most people, including yourself, likely check up on their Facebook and Twitter feeds throughout the day. If you keep your social media updated with entertaining and helpful content, those who follow you are more likely to be exposed to your brand or product. For example, GoToMeeting’s Instagram account has almost no promotional material on their feed. It consists entirely of entertaining, informative, and easy to consume content that any person in the business world would like to consume. Not just someone who is specifically looking for virtual meeting software.

Check out this post on how to get the most out of your B2B social media strategy for some great tips.

Currently, the best and easiest platform to connect with B2B customers is on LinkedIn due to the nature of its intended use. It has over 500 million users so there is more than enough opportunity to connect.

There is no room for silly creativity in B2B marketing

There is also no room for bad attitudes toward silly creativity.

Marketing is quickly becoming more and more difficult due to the fast growth of the industry. Standing out among your competitors is much harder than it used to be.

Since B2B marketing is targeting business people in a business environment, many marketers feel that they have to present content in a formal, unexciting way. Typically, B2B marketing can be pretty boring. But In reality, it’s only as boring as the marketing team behind it.

The best way to stand out among the crowds is by getting creative and finding new and interesting ways to connect with people.

Creativity doesn’t necessarily have to include jumping out of a jet from the stratosphere. Maybe it would work, but it’s not really necessary for B2B needs. Try making a video, creating an infographic, or sharing a helpful social media post instead of brochures and long PowerPoint presentations. Do something out of the norm.

You can be entertaining while still providing valuable information; you’re actually more likely to keep them interested and engaged. Take a look at your competition and see how you can get more creative and draw (good) attention to your business.

B2B marketing is about reaching businesses, not people

While the acronym itself literally means business to business, it’s important to remember that there are actual people behind these businesses. These individuals are the ones that are seeking your products and services.

While you are often targeting businesses as a whole, there are key decision makers who are making the decision to buy your product or service. It is important to find out who these decision makers are and tailor your marketing content to these people as best as you can to get the best return on investment.

Conclusion

Don’t listen to the myths you hear about B2B Marketing. Use the tactics you believe will be the most effective in achieving your marketing goals. Knowing the best ways to reach your audience and the ways they are searching for your products is the best way to understand your marketing strategy. Remember to market to people, not businesses. The more you know about your potential customers, the better.

The post 4 Common B2B Marketing Misconceptions – Debunked! appeared first on Virtual Causeway.

Leads are important for any organization; they are what will eventually (hopefully) turn into a sale. Having a lead definition leads to the SLA (Service Level Agreement) on how soon Sales will follow up on MQL’s (Marketing Qualified Leads) provided to them by Marketing. If Sales doesn’t follow up on the lead soon enough, it grows stale. Subsequently, Sales will declare that the MQL that Marketing provided was NOT a lead, whereas Marketing will say it was. Having an SLA resolves this issue. Both sides need to speak the same language and have the same understanding of the criteria that define a lead.

When everyone agrees upon a similar goal it is easier to keep that goal aligned and increases overall success.

Get ready for some more acronyms.

Most sales and marketing professionals are familiar with using the BANT methodology to define and qualify a lead.

Here’s a quick breakdown of BANT

Budget: Does your prospect have the budget to buy?

The first thing you need to find out about your prospect is if they have the budget to buy your product. It doesn’t matter how much your customer might need or like what you’ve got, if they don’t have the budget for it, they’re not going to be able to buy your product. 

Authority: Does your prospect have the authority to make decisions?

Your prospect might be an assistant or department manager, in this case, it’s important to determine if they have the authority to make decisions. If not, have them direct you to someone who typically has the authority to make decisions for the company or department.

Protip: Use account based marketing to target key decision makers in the company.

Need: Does your prospect need it?

If your prospect doesn’t really need your product, why bother chasing them down? The higher the need, the more motivated your prospect will be to buy. It’s up to you to find out how much they need a product like yours. Asking questions like: “What is your current solution?” And “Why is it not currently working for you?” will help you get a better understanding of their pain points and give you an opportunity to address them.

Timeline: How long will the cycle take?

Lastly, find out how long this sales cycle is going to take. This is important information to gather as they may not truly be in the market to make a purchase until next year. By learning this information early, you can see what you can do to move their timeline up or take note of when they are actually interested in moving forward and contact them at a later date.

The BANT method, which is still used by many organizations to gauge lead qualification, has a few flaws and is quickly becoming out-dated. The problem with BANT is that the steps are not in the right order. Typically, you would start by identifying the customer’s needs and then finding out who the decision makers are and so on.

Some other methods and acronyms of determining if a lead is worth perusing include:

ChAMP- Challenges, Authority, Money, and Prioritization.

Champ is often referred to as “the new BANT” since it is basically an updated version of BANT. While ChAMP is in the correct order, it’s still not quite going to cut it.

ANNUM – Authority, Need, Urgency, Money

ANNUM goes right to the source by identifying key decision makers first. They all work for different strategies but in reality, they’re all the same, just in a different order.

Here’s a list of the many popular acronyms that are often used to qualify a lead.

Finding qualified leads has become more complex over time and as a result, requires a more in-depth process. Acronyms just aren’t going to cut it for much longer.

Enter the Demand Unit Waterfall

The method that we use and encourage our clients to follow comes from Sirius Decisions. They have created a process, which has become the gold standard in defining key stages in the lead management process.

Target: The first stage in the waterfall is about determining the size of your target market and identifying your ideal customer or, creating a Persona. Find out what types of customers will find the most value in your solution.

Active Demand: The number of prospects that have an identifiable need for your product.

Engaged demand: Prospects that have responded to your marketing efforts.

Prioritized demand: The level of engagement has reached a level that justifies additional interactions from tele or sales resources.

Qualified Demand: Based on interactions with the prospect, the fit, and urgency of prospects needs are determined and either considered a qualified lead or as a non-qualified lead.

Pipeline: For prospects who have shown significant interest, it’s time to convert them. Prospects will be entered into the pipeline.

Close: This stage signifies that the sales team has successfully closed the opportunity.

The demand waterfall is a great process to qualify leads, but who should you target in the first place? Someone who signed up for an e-book? Or Someone who emailed to ask for a demo? It could be either one.

Create a custom Definition.

As you can gather from the two methods above, whichever one you choose, you need to start somewhere. It’s a good idea for marketing and sales to come together and create a shared definition of exactly who the marketing team should throw into the waterfall. After all, some people might not be interested in getting wet.

Start with a buyer persona

A buyer persona is a semi-fictional representation of your ideal customer based on research and real data such as demographics/psychographics.

Expand on demographics

The data that most marketers already have is demographics; detail such as a lead’s location, name, job title, etc. Information on the company they work for should include the companies’ current tech stack and annual revenue. In order to choose the most important factors, take a look at some of your best customers. What demographics do they fall under? Psychographic data such as their interests, pain points, and organizational goals will help to identify the needs of the company.

Conclusion

It’s important to recognize that the definition of a lead is different for each company. It is vital that your organization agree upon a custom definition of what qualifies someone as a lead. This will ensure all departments stay in sync and are working efficiently and toward the same goal.

If you haven’t had enough, here’s a great list of some commonly used marketing and business acronyms. TLDR.

The post How Do You Define a Lead? appeared first on Virtual Causeway.

We thought we would provide our own take on Paul’s 13 Sentences on Start-ups.

Pick good co-founders

There are so many challenges that come along with starting a business. Many entrepreneurs find that they don’t have everything that is required to build their start-up by themselves. Having someone to help you along the way can be quite helpful. Some of the greatest companies we know today started with two. Jobs and Woznick, Hewlett and Packard, Ben and Jerry, and Batman and Robin. It’s important to find a co-founder who can complement your skills and fill the gaps. This will ultimately help you focus on what you’re really good at and offload some of the work onto someone else. Additionally, having someone else around will make it easier when it comes time to make decisions for the company and will allow you to take a break every now and then.

Launch Fast

One of the biggest mistakes inexperienced entrepreneurs make is moving too slowly. By launching early and launching fast you are getting your business into motion. This will help you gain momentum and get things moving. You must be quick, efficient, decisive, and ready to learn and adapt.

Let Your Idea Evolve and embrace mistakes

As you grow and gain more traction, more ideas will flow in. Let your idea evolve and change. In fact, Flickr actually began as a feature in an online role-playing game from gaming startup Ludicorp. Photo sharing was the last component of the game. The game itself was never successful however photo sharing was on the rise and what we now know as Flickr became a huge hit. You will make many mistakes, and regret a few decisions, along the way. Many people believe that a mistake means failure. Making mistakes will provide great opportunities to learn from so embrace them and use them to your advantage.

Understand your Users and Make at least a few of them really love you

By taking the time to get to know and understand your users, you have a better idea of what it is they are looking for. Find out what their pain points are and try to address them. Create buyer or user personas so you have a better idea of who it is you want to target. You may find that your product doesn’t suit the particular group of people you initially had in mind. If this happens, you will be able to modify your product to better suit the needs of your customers or change up your strategy to target those who will be interested.

You will have to choose between partially satisfying everyone or making a few people really happy. Choose the latter. These people will act as brand ambassadors. Get them to really like you and they will spread the word. These people can act as guinea pigs; have them try your product and ask them to provide feedback. It’s easier to gain more customers over time than it is to try and increase satisfaction among everybody.

Give surprisingly good customer service

Customer service is a major part of being successful in business. Customers aren’t always easy to please and now, more than ever, they look for instant gratification. When customers are happy with the service you provide, there is a higher likelihood that they will stick to your business instead of shifting to competitors. Customers like to share stories about their experiences with their friends, family, and colleagues and social media make this easier than ever. When you provide customers with a memorable experience, they will be more likely to tell others about the great service they received. Receiving good feedback and knowing you did a good job can result in increased morale and a boost in confidence within the company and among employees. Having happy customers makes for happy employees, making it a better place to work overall. This also results in less turnover, increased profit and on and on. The benefits are endless.

You make what you measure

When you measure something, you get a good idea on how to improve it. Spend some time learning what people like, and what people dislike, about your product. Do some investigating and even put some free or inexpensive analytic tools to use to get a grasp on what is going great and what’s doing poorly. This way you will have tangible evidence of how things are doing. When it comes time to approach investors, you’ll have plenty of data to make your case.

If you don’t measure your success, how will you ever know if you’re doing well?

Spend little

Contrary to belief, you don’t need a fancy office or a beer keg in the lunchroom to become successful. After all, Apple started off in a garage as did HP. You’ll get there. The most common reason businesses fail is because they run out of money.

Check out this list of freebies to use while you’re getting started.

Get ramen profitable

While keeping expenses low, make just enough money to survive off of as opposed to trying to make millions from the get-go. This will make you more attractive to possible investors.

If you’re already making a profit, this proves to investors that you have peaked interest in the market and can get someone to pay for your product, that you are interested in taking the time to building a quality product, and that you maintain discipline by keeping expenses low. If you don’t need to raise more money for the next best thing (which you probably don’t really need), you won’t have to take time away from building your product to do it. When investors see that you aren’t going to blow their money on random stuff they will be more inclined to cut you a deal as they will see that their investment is going to be put to good use.

Avoid distractions

As if starting a business isn’t difficult enough, there will always be distractions on the sidelines ready to pull you away from whatever you’re focusing on. Often times start-ups get distracted and bogged down by things that are almost completely irrelevant to the success of their business; things like your day job, side projects and even little things like having your phone beside you in your workspace.

Dr. Gloria Mark has studied the effects of being interrupted and found that we typically become distracted and switch tasks every three minutes. Two other tasks usually intervene before we eventually get back to our initial task and it takes about 23 minutes to get back into your groove.

That means there’s a good chance you even stopped reading this post for a while in order to work on something else before coming back to it. Rude… (Full disclosure, I actually became distracted many times while writing this).

These distractions are coupled with physical changes to our environment such as new windows and applications open on your desktop, new files downloaded, and some new items in your workspace. These physical changes actually add to the time it takes to get back to what you were originally doing, thus, wasting even more time.

You can read more on Dr. Gloria Mark’s study HERE

Try to eliminate these distractions by planning distraction-free time in a distraction-free space. If even for just a few hours, go to a quiet place, play some music if you need to, turn off any notifications and keep your phone away from you and plan to work on one single task for a set amount of time.

Don’t get demoralized and Don’t give up

These were originally two separate points, they really go hand in hand.

Times are going to get hard. It happens with every company eventually. Starting a business is a huge burden since you probably have a lot riding on the successful outcome of the product and the business. It is incredibly stressful so it’s important to prioritize mental wellness and to not give up when times get tough.

While there is a lot of work to be done, it’s critical that you don’t work yourself into burnout. There will be times that you will have work very long hours. It is important to remember to maintain a social life and spend time with friends and family. These positive interactions will help your mind take a break from the stress at work.

Don’t die

Pretty self-explanatory.

Conclusion

Building a start-up Is like raising a child. Parents: need I say more? Start-ups can be very fun and become quite successful and eventually go on to change the world. There are many, many more topics we could add into this post however It would simply go on forever.

If you have a great idea, don’t be afraid to peruse it. It might just become the next big thing.

The post How to Succeed in a Startup in 11 Steps appeared first on Virtual Causeway.

For those of you who might already have it, here’s a guide from LinkedIn on how to access the feature.

What does this mean for B2B marketers?

In a previous post, we talked about how video will dominate the marketing landscape in 2017, and it seems to be holding true. Besides contributing to higher retention rates, higher engagement, better SEO, and increased conversions, video content currently makes up about 74% of all internet traffic and Cisco, the worldwide leader in IT and Networking, projects that video will make up about 80% of internet traffic by 2019. As we know, LinkedIn is the largest network of professionals in a single location. This makes it easy to connect with others and build relationships in order to provide valuable information and support.

The introduction of video will help make this a much easier and entertaining experience. Users will be able to snap video on their phone while on the go, at trade shows, in meetings, etc. and post in an instant.

These videos can last up to 10 minutes, though LinkedIn recommends a shorter length ranging between 30 seconds and five minutes. As with LinkedIn’s pre-existing in-feed videos, user-uploaded clips will play automatically with sound off. Like Facebook and Twitter, LinkedIn counts a video view after three seconds of play time. This will help to weed out those who aren’t as interested and give you a better idea of your demographic and whether you’re reaching the audience you are targeting. This will also help to understand if your videos are resonating with those who are watching. If the majority of your viewers stop watching within the first 3 seconds, you may have to reevaluate your strategy, whether it be the quality of your video or content, or if you are targeting the wrong audience.

Users will have access to the typical analytic information provided by social platforms plus the addition of some extra perks that B2B marketers could have only dreamed of before. For a selection of top viewers, you will be provided with where they work, their job title and the top markets where the video was viewed. Not bad, eh? No other social media platform currently provides this degree of information. This makes it easier to align your goals and gather information.

Having these unique analytics available will be a huge benefit to networking opportunities and generating sales leads. You could post a video highlighting a new product or a demo video and information will be collected without much effort on the viewers part. No popups, landing pages, or gated content interrupting them to fill out information. This data can then be used to build up a list of prospects.

When paired with video, LinkedIn will be a B2B marketers delight.

To see how you can prepare and get the most out of this great new feature by LinkedIn, check out:

Why you should invest in video and 5 tips on producing quality videos

6 steps to creating contagious content.

Conclusion

With video on the rise, LinkedIn’s better-late-than-never strategy is poised to be a hit within the B2B community. This new feature will provide businesses with the opportunity to take advantage of the rising demand for video content, on the ideal platform for B2B companies, to assist in telling their story and building credibility among followers.

The post LinkedIn Has Started Offering Video and You Should Be Very Excited! appeared first on Virtual Causeway.

When reading about social media, much of the information and success is geared toward B2C strategies. While these may be great and show promising results, they’re just not going to cut it when trying to reach your B2B audience.

You can likely land a sale after only one quick introduction when selling to the average customer, however, with B2B the cycle is much longer and the product is likely much bigger and more expensive. It’s like splurging on a new pair of headphones for yourself versus a business department spending a large chunk of their annual operating budget on a piece of software. It will also require a lengthy integration process along with many hours of training to train their employees how to use it. You didn’t make quite as big of a decision as the startup did. In this case, it’s going to require significantly more effort to convince the business to purchase the software than it is to convince you to treat yourself to some shiny new headphones.

That means the objective of social selling is different for B2B than it is for B2C.

For B2B it’s about presenting yourself as a credible expert and addressing pain points, while B2C is more about establishing a connection with your customer and speaking to experiences.

Here are some of the key practices to adhere to in your social media strategies:

Identify your target audience:

Depending on your product, you will want to identify whom you are trying to market to. You can attempt to simply cast a wide net and attempt to get your message across to as many people as possible, but you will be wasting your time and your money. It is important to cast a very narrow net and be selective with the leads you capture. It’s about quality, not quantity.

Check out our last post revealing the 7 tips to earning higher quality leads to getting the highest return on your marketing efforts.

In order to achieve the highest possible quality leads, you’ll want to focus on the problem your product or service can solve, and identify those who need it most. If the product or service is new, take a look at your competitors to get insights on who they are targeting and who is following and interacting with them.

Some of these people might include:

-Current clients

-Potential clients

-Associates of current/potential clients

-Thought leaders

-Bloggers/Journalists

-Affiliate businesses

Choose the channels that work best for you:

Once you have identified your target audience, you can appropriately choose the channels that will reach them most effectively. Read on for a breakdown of our top 5 social media channels for B2B businesses.

• Twitter

Twitter is a wonderful way to build credibility and influence. It should be used throughout the day to share a steady stream of information. Content should be entertaining and easy to consume. Most importantly, posted content should provide value to the reader. You will get better engagement by liking and retweeting posts by customers, influencers, and employees. Search for mentions of your company or key industry terms and when someone has a question or problem, respond to provide support and build relationships.

Services such as Tweet Full and Meet Edgar make Twitter easy by automatically sharing posts and engaging with customers without you having to lift a finger.

• LinkedIn

LinkedIn is the largest network of professionals in a single location. This makes it easy to connect with others and build relationships in order to provide valuable information and support. Use it to promote educational content relating to your service and any announcements you might have. Join industry groups to take part in discussions and meet like-minded people, influencers, and potential customers. Provide solutions to those who express pain points.

• Facebook

What was once created for college students to meet their classmates soon turned into a networking site to keep in touch with friends and family and now, has turned into a multifaceted marketing mania with over 2 billion users. 81% of B2B businesses are currently using Facebook to distribute content. Facebook has many ways to segment and target specific information to ensure you’re reaching the right customer profile. It’s important to avoid selling things on Facebook and trying to convert leads immediately. People on Facebook like to share and engage in content. Provide entertaining and informative content that your followers will want to share with others.

• Instagram

While Instagram shouldn’t be your focus, it is an up and coming channel with B2B, especially startups, and can be used sparingly. It’s a great way to bring followers behind the scenes and show off your company’s culture and values. For example: Sharing fun pictures of the annual holiday party, featuring employees on their birthday, or a sneak peek of your latest project.

• Snapchat

Snapchat can be useful in a similar way to Instagram, especially if you market to a younger audience. You can partner with influencers, offer exclusive content, and provide entertainment value. This will help customers develop a connection with the brand and help you build a solid foundation of trust by reminding them that there are real people behind all of those blog posts, advertisements, and sales calls.

Learn more about how to use Snapchat by reading our recent blog “Do you even Snap?”

Develop and maintain a consistent voice:

In order to develop and maintain a consistent voice, it is important to create a brand persona; not a buyer persona — a brand persona. This will serve as the voice of your company across all your social media channels. Not only does it help to humanize your social media presence but will ensure it maintains a consistent tone throughout, especially if you have multiple people posting.

Build a following:

Once you have identified your target audience, choose your channels, and created your brand voice, its time to build up a following. This step and the next step will have to be executed multiple times before you notice big results. They should remain in constant motion to make the most of your efforts. Once you learn what content your current followers enjoy, use the metrics you will receive in the next step to target your future content based on things that did well in the past. By focusing your efforts and providing great content, more people will want to follow you and current followers will invite like-minded people who they think might be interested in your content.

Tools like Quuu can help source curated content to share, Buffer to schedule it and upload to your channels as you find great content, and SocialQuant to grow your follows quickly in an automated fashion.

Measure and monitor your results

When you properly measure your social media marketing efforts, you are able to gain profound insights on which piece of content and messaging is resonating with your audience and impacting your sales funnel, or which piece was a flop. You can then use this information to better target your content and gain greater customer engagement. You can do this by making use of the analytical tools provided by the various channels or you can opt to use of one of the many, many services such available as Buffer, Google Analytics, Hootsuite, or Sprout Social.

Conclusion

As B2B marketers are increasingly adopting the use of social media, it’s easy to become overwhelmed by all of the different networks. It’s important to know that you don’t have to be on every social media network to be successful and to see results. Choose a few that you believe will provide the biggest return for your business and become an expert in those instead of wasting your energy and resources trying to keep up with them all. No one single strategy will work for every B2B company. It’s important to tailor your social strategy to the needs of your company and the expectations of your customers. Happy Tweeting, er Linking, er posting!

The post A B2C Social strategy isn’t going to cut it for your B2B audience appeared first on Virtual Causeway.

What is a high-quality Lead?

A good, high-quality lead is one that aligns well with your buyer persona and one that has a clear intent to make a purchase. This is where your marketing and sales team should come together and create a shared definition of what a high-quality lead looks like. This way, the marketing team can feed the sales team leads that align well with both departments to get the highest conversion of leads to sales opportunities.

How can you attract high-quality leads?

Are you putting out the right traps? Consult and revise your buyer persona and ensure you are attracting those who not only align well with it, but are in your target market, and most importantly, those who are most likely to be interested in what you have to offer.

Finally, once you start getting good leads, nurture them like a newborn baby! After all, Nurtured leads make 47% larger purchases than non-nurtured leads (The Annuitas Group).

Here are some tips on getting higher quality leads:

Try Account Based Marketing (ABM)

Account based marketing takes a bit more effort but works well because you essentially go out and find those leads yourself. Let’s say someone from a company shows an interest in your product. You would use the valuable information from that lead to find and target decision makers in the company. By using this method, you can tailor specific messaging to those in that ‘account’ and increase the chances of turning over a sale. While it takes more time and effort it has a bigger payoff as you essentially get to choose who is a lead, and who isn’t.

Check out this post we wrote on the benefits of account-based marketing, and how it can help you earn better leads.

Gated Content

Offer free content for some information in return. By giving away something like a free e-book, whitepaper, or a webinar you can ask for information such as their title, email, company size, industry, etc. You can use this information to build up a profile and qualify them. Once you have their email address you are free to contact/harass them or even send them promotional materials in order to peak their interest and provide solutions.

Tap into Q&A and review websites and social media

This won’t provide any quick wins, but will help you achieve your overall goal of sending high quality leads to your website. Participate in Q&A’s and forums such as Quora, and social media discussions such as LinkedIn Groups. You will not only be providing people with valuable information and building your credibility, but you will be able to approach those who need help and offer your services. These people qualify as a high-quality lead because they have expressed interest, at this point its time to take this lead to the next step and nurture it.

Additionally, consider listing your product on a website such as Capterra. If people are actively seeking guidance on which products are best, and what customers say about those products, then they are clearly seeking a solution to a pain and that makes them a very qualified lead.

Optimize your pages for lead generation

Offer visitors something that might be useful to them. The average person will spend 30 seconds on your webpage before deciding to stay or leave. If, after 30 seconds they decide they are interested and choose to stay, seize the opportunity to convert them into a lead. Make use of an automated service such as Instapage, Unbounce, LeadPages, Thrive Leads, etc. to offer them something free such as an e-book or whitepaper. With some services, you can also set this to pop up after a set amount of time so you can target only those who stick around. This will help filter the not-so-great-but-still-good leads from the high-quality leads. You can also do the opposite, target users when they decide to leave, maybe you can change their minds and convince them to stay.

Generate leads from existing customers

Chances are, existing customers have like-minded colleagues, peers, and friends who might be interested in what you have to offer. Consider setting up a referral program to encourage your existing customers to go out and get you more customers.

By providing some sort of incentive, customers will refer friends, family, and colleagues who are interested in order to get rewards. While this may involve a small investment, it pays off. Consider Dropbox. For each person you refer, you receive an extra 500MB of storage for free. While this is costing Dropbox 500MB of storage for each new person, the payoff is that they are getting new customers for a fraction of the price they would have spent on advertising. Mr. Referral is happy because he now has 16GB of cloud storage for free and Dropbox now has 32 new customers, some of which may have purchased a premium plan. Mr. Referral does all of the hard work for the price of 16GB, which costs Dropbox next to nothing. This will result in higher quality leads, as each new customer who signs up is essentially pre-qualified. Those who pass on the opportunity are obviously not the lead you are looking for.

Ask your customers what they want

Sometimes the best thing to do is to just ask your customers what they want from you. Ask existing customers to complete a quick survey and offer an e-book as an incentive to gain some insight on what it is your next potential leads might come looking for. You can use the data collected to better target your efforts and identify leads that have a higher chance of conversion.

Contact info and live chat

By providing a quick and easy way for potential leads to contact you, you can easily filter out the people who are genuinely interested from those who are “just browsing”. Provide very clear options on how to contact your company for more information. Include a contact form, a phone number for those who prefer to speak to a live person, and even an instant message box on your website for a quick response. Those who take the time to contact you and ask specific questions are likely very interested and most likely qualify as a high-quality lead.

Check out these 10 myths about lead quality.

Conclusion

While this may take some time, it is a worthwhile investment. By Revising your goals and changing up your strategy a little bit at a time, you can start to analyze each method and which ones work best for your company and attract the most high-quality leads. Once learning which methods work best, you can then focus your efforts on those strategies and perfect them to get the best possible results.

The post 7 Tips to Earn Higher Quality Leads. appeared first on Virtual Causeway.

Introducing you to CASL

Canada’s Anti-Spam Legislation (CASL) came into effect on July 14, 2014, to protect Canadian’s while ensuring that businesses can continue to compete in the marketplace. This means that if you are a business in Canada, or send information to Canadian residents, you are required to comply with CASL. The law covers a range of activities that are considered spam but for the purposes of this post, we’ll focus on the email kind.

That’s a great law but what counts a spam?

There are two types of spam, the first one is the use of electronic messaging to send unsolicited, undesired or illegal messages to others without their consent and may be used to send other electronic threats such as spyware and viruses.

According to the Government of Canada’s website Fightspam.gc.ca (which contains no spam), electronic spam includes:

• Electronic messages you did not ask for, including email, social media, text messages;
• Messages from anonymous senders or senders you don’t know;
• The installation of apps or program without the express consent of the owner of the system;
• Promoting fake or misleading products or services;
• And the collection and or use of personal information without permission.

The other kind of SPAM is processed pork meat, which electronic spam is actually named after. We’ll focus on the electronic kind for now.

What is not considered spam?

• Newsletters and updates you did sign up for (but may find annoying) and provided implied consent;
• Email messages from a person you know (who you may also find annoying), or someone who is trying to contact you personally.
• A terrible chain email from the early 2000’s sent by a friend you know telling you to forward to 10 people or else you’ll have bad luck forever. (sadly, not spam either)
• Generic Luncheon Meat. It’s essentially the same product, but it’s not authentic SPAM.

How can I remain compliant with CASL?

The goal is to be the king, or queen, of CASL and remain compliant with these regulations set out to protect citizens. If you choose to not take part you may be faced with a serious fine of up to $10 million for businesses. Don’t believe me? See here how just last year, Kellogg’s was fined $60,000, just for sending messages to recipients without their consent. They’re not kidding around with this.

FunFact: In Italy, you can actually be imprisoned for sending spam. It is important It be informed of these rules as some services such as Mailchimp have rules that are actually more stringent than some local laws.

To be compliant with these laws the government of Canada has set out some tips to keep you in the clear. These include:

• Ensure you have implied or express consent to contact someone. Never collect email addresses that were not provided to you by their owner. This is where CASL differs from the US CAN-SPAM law. In the US, you can send someone an unsolicited email but you must provide an opt-out. In Canada, you must first obtain permission to contact a person, or they must ”opt-In” before you can send them commercial electronic messages.
• Always provide a way out. Include an obvious opt-out or unsubscribe option in your email messages.
• Make sure you and the viewer can easily identify your organization. Otherwise, your credibility is questioned and you might be considered spam.
• Be truthful. Lay everything out on the table. No surprises, no nonsense.
• Don’t harass people. If someone isn’t interested in what you have to offer and they ask you to stop, stop. There’s a good chance they’re not interested in what you’re trying to sell.

Here’s the full text of the law, if you’re into that or here’s 4 Tips for Contacting Clients Electronically and 3 Things to Think About When Sending Messages. It’s always better to be safe than sorry.

Conclusion

It’s important to note that I am not a lawyer and this article should not be taken as legal advice. This article is intended to be a helpful tool to inform and to begin your own research on the law or to refresh your knowledge for those who are already familiar with it so you can remain in the clear and be the King of CASL.

The post How to Be the King of CASL appeared first on Virtual Causeway.

Based on our experience, here is a list of practices that are important to become a better salesperson.

Know your goals

You can’t achieve goals if you don’t set any. They provide long term vision and short term motivation.

By setting out Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Relevant, and Time-bound (SMART) goals you can motivate and challenge yourself to reach and even surpass those goals. Not only will this help you be a better salesperson but you can take pride in the achievement of your goals. Even if they are small, they’ll help you see the forward progress you’ve made.

Keep organized

Staying organized will help you be more productive and save time. Use a CRM tool to keep track of leads as well as customer data and interactions so it’s on hand for when you need it (Check out this post on why you need one). Make use of a scheduling assistant such as Plann3r when scheduling meetings and calls to find the perfect time-slot for everyone.

Believe in what you are selling

It’s important to be well informed about the company you work for, but most importantly, really believing in the product or service you are offering can make a world of difference. If you are passionate about what you are selling, it becomes that much easier to convince others that it’s something they need, especially if it’s something that’s going to make their job easier. If you want your customers to engage with you, it’s important that they feel your passion for the product. You’ll find that your excitement is contagious and that’s a great way to have them champion the investment.

Listen more than you speak / Start a conversation, not a pitch

Reading off a script or running a sales pitch certainly saves a lot of time and is much easier than carrying on a conversation. By starting a conversation, you are taking the pressure off the customer and lowering the likelihood of them feeling annoyed, intimidated, or overloaded with information. By listening more than you speak you will get a better idea of what it is the customer is looking for, as a result, you will be able to find a solution that better fits their needs rather than offering them something they might not want. This will help to provide a more positive experience for the customer and increase the likelihood of making a sale. Remember, you were given two ears and one mouth, so be sure to listen twice as much as you talk.

Constantly build and maintain relationships

Customers are a company’s greatest asset. Without them, there is nobody to buy your product. The relationships you build with current and potential customers is priceless. Remain honest, authentic and show genuine concern for their needs. Once the customer is engaged with you and you’re moving through the sales process, you should work on maintaining that relationship. If they are satisfied with the service you provided they will look forward to continuing to do business with you or returning to do business in the future.

View the customer’s success as your own

Happy customer = happy manager = happy salesperson. When you sell a product or service, you should see this success not only as the customer’s, but also as your own too. This is a chance to see what you did right, or did wrong, in your sales journey. This is also a great opportunity to seek feedback from the customer for your benefit, and for the benefit of the company.

Conclusion

These tips might not be for everyone, and following them won’t necessarily make you a better sales person but adding some of these to your routine and changing things up a little may prove to be beneficial to your overall strategy.

What are some of your tips to up your game and become a more effective salesperson?

The post 6 Tips to Become a More Effective Salesperson appeared first on Virtual Causeway.

Chances are you don’t consider Customer Relationship Management (CRM) software to be such a big deal. The reality is, along with 75% of other companies, you’re a fool to think so and you’re missing out.

*Here’s the actual title of this article:

Why you most certainly DO need a CRM

What is it exactly?

If you don’t know already, a CRM is software designed to help keep track of all of your prospects, customers, and accounts. It allows you to manage your sales process and track your sales activity across the entire sales funnel. You can manage all of your tasks, sales opportunities, forecasts and reports so that you have complete visibility into your revenue generation activities. It allows you to monitor and track all activity, thereby ensuring all staff are working efficiently and effectively towards milestone-based and recurring goals and metrics. It gives management a dashboard into the organization’s well-being and long-term viability of the company.

Here’s why you need one:

Customer relationship Management is crucial when running a business and especially when you are a salesperson. While not every company needs one, CRM software has been proven to increase sales by 29% in small businesses, and 75% of sales managers say that using a CRM helps to drive and increase sales. If you don’t have one already, it might be worth it to consider a free trial. – I recommend Salesforce or Hubspot or Pipedrive.

Basically, if you sell stuff and you’re not using a CRM, you’re missing out.

The Canadian Professional Sales Association says that Long-term relationship building and a dedication to customer service are among the top 5 skills to succeed in sales.

CRM tools make it much easier to manage relationships and keep track of crucial information about your clients and customers. And as a bonus, nobody has to carry around a Rolodex of business cards with notes on the back.

Sometimes I wonder to myself how many CRM’s my name shows up in. Probably many.

Here are some benefits of how a CRM can help replace that Rolodex, and some of the benefits you’re missing out on:

1. Greater staff satisfaction and efficiency 

When information is shared and easy to find, everyone works more efficiently. According to a McKinsey report, employees spend 1.8 hours every day—9.3 hours per week, on average—searching and gathering information. A CRM makes it easy to find information without having to data mine through emails and call history for information on a client. Happy employees mean happy customers.

2. Better client relationships

The more you know about your clients the more your clients know you care about them. This helps nurture a much stronger relationship with clients and helps build a foundation of trust. According to an Edelman study, trust in business is declining rapidly. It’s important to maintain customers trust in order to earn their business.

3. Better Internal Communication

Having an up-to-date CRM helps everybody. Sharing customer data between departments will help everybody to work as a team. This will increase profitability and will help to provide high quality service to customers

Some programs are free and some are more expensive depending on which features you are interested in and how many people will be using it. Check out this article by Hubspot on how to choose the right CRM for your businesses individual needs.

Conclusion

Having a CRM on its own isn’t going to do much. A Customer database is only good if everyone works together to populate it and keep it updated. One MIT student completed a study using Hubspot’s CRM software and found that 79% of customers saw an increase in sales revenue within one year. While you shouldn’t expect to see quick results right away, it won’t be long before you have a really great, effective database solution to help reach your sales and management goals.

The post Why You Don’t Need a CRM* appeared first on Virtual Causeway.