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sales training Technology Workshop Youtube

The Importance of Reskilling Senior Sales Professionals

Maintaining competitive agility is becoming an essential corporate demand as new-age technologies dominate the business environment across industries. Traditional corporate operations are being disrupted, and new growth strategies and organizational processes are being implemented due to the ‘digital age.’

For both B2C and B2B markets, more businesses are changing how they sell and recognizing changing consumption trends. Artificial intelligence, natural language processing, machine learning, virtual reality, and chatbots, among other emerging technologies, are increasingly finding uses in sales.

Finding industry-ready people is getting more difficult as sales processes undergo this technological update, with a large gap between available and desired skill sets. Any investment in new-age sales tools will be a waste if teams cannot successfully use or interpret them.

The annual cost of lost production owing to a lack of essential attention to training and other learning activities is estimated to be almost $7 trillion. As a result, businesses must upskill their senior sellers for effective sales enablement, and they may ensure that their sales team remains relevant by implementing regular training efforts. This will ensure that they are prepared to respond to market shifts and technological advances.

opportunities for current and future sellers

Providing opportunities for current and future sellers

Sellers play a critical role in propelling the global economy forward. In today’s digital world, when tech-powered sales enablement tactics reinvent the seller’s journey, staying relevant necessitates knowledge with the most up-to-date tools. With practically every market player using cutting-edge tools, sellers must be kept up to date on the latest developments at each stage of the trip, or they will be left behind.

Sellers utilize AI-powered intelligent database systems to find new clients and expand their market penetration. Advanced data analytics and predictive modeling are becoming increasingly important tools for identifying potential buyers.

Similarly, firms turn to intelligent CRM technologies and marketing process automation for faster prospect outreach and better-qualified leads. Contrary to popular belief, data-driven, automated processes result in quicker sales, allowing sellers to manage their time better and prioritize their tasks. As a result, familiarizing your senior sellers with digital technologies and providing them with the necessary training is essential for a company’s sales divisions to become future-ready.

proper training strategy

Incorporating the proper training strategy

While training is essential for future-ready sellers, selecting the correct training concept and the program is equally important. You may start with an overview examination of the business functions to be trained and the identification of skill gaps and other factors, including location, medium, duration, and accessibility. The data gathered can be used to create an appropriate training structure aligned with essential business goals.

You may then streamline tasks following the training delivery plan. Finally, you must conduct a full assessment of the training program to determine top learning and make necessary modifications.

This training process can be considered a cycle aimed at sustaining sales team development in the face of technological disruption, diversification of the company’s operations, or even labor churn.

Aside from a well-thought-out approach, it’s critical to remember that the primary goal of training should not simply be to conduct an employee upskilling session. Instead, the focus should be on developing a long-term practice that adapts to shifting needs and market trends.

Furthermore, these programs should hone the analytical abilities of the sellers to use data-driven reports and draw meaningful insights, in addition to providing them with the know-how of the latest sales technologies.

In today’s technology-driven world, training programs must recognize the importance of the human voice and teach sellers how to improve their soft skills and have more personal client conversations. While most sellers acknowledge that quality training programs positively impact their engagements, businesses may reach 73 percent quota attainment with constant coaching methods. These efforts can aid companies in developing multitasking, dynamism, and culture of staying current in their sales force.

Coordinated actions to achieve actual reforms

Coordinated actions to achieve actual reforms

The training or learning strategy will need to be changed to account for the different skill requirements and forthcoming trends to tackle the problem of extraordinary market developments. It will also be critical to develop future-ready sellers by establishing a flexible and innovative curriculum in academic institutes and combining it with vocational courses and R&D centers to prepare the workforce to be industry-ready.

It is feasible to find and outline solutions for the most prominent learning demands of sellers by bringing together government functionaries, industry experts, and leading academics worldwide, thereby adjusting future sales teams to technologies that will likely arise.

Such coordinated efforts will not only build teams capable of delivering results in a fast-paced, continuously changing sales environment but will also instill a growth attitude in salespeople, allowing them to upskill and re-skill to stay ahead of the competition constantly.

As a result, educating the sales force and providing them with the abilities they will need to succeed in the future is critical to establishing long-term success.

To guarantee that learning experiences are engaging, enjoyable, and challenging, businesses must prioritize the need to upskill and reskill their sellers, especially the senior ones, and promote learning.

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sales training Webinar Workshop

Why Sales Professionals Should Make Time for Education

The current sales role necessitates constant learning, which demands enablement beyond onboarding. The sales market is more cutthroat than ever, requiring sellers to do more than just present the features and advantages of the solutions or services they’re offering. To attract buyers, sellers must build relationships, learn about their specific environment and difficulties, and demonstrate that their product is the best.

To prepare your sales team to achieve and surpass their requirements, you must provide them with continuing training and mentoring. As a leader, it is your responsibility to guarantee that your team is prepared for success by building a learning and coaching culture.

Sales training onboarding is an excellent approach to presenting your company’s history, solutions, culture, sales processes, etc. However, as your company, industry, and buyers evolve, your sellers must keep up to stay viable in the eyes of your prospective clients.

Beyond onboarding, continuous education — with the periodic review process, skills certifications, learning courses, and so on — provides a boatload of benefits for both your company and potential buyers. 

Benefits of Continuing Sales Education

Benefits of Continuing Sales Education

Improved sales preparation 

Sales preparedness, or how ready your sales team is to connect with clients throughout their journey, is improved by providing continuing development to your team. Sales reps are prepared and equipped to handle any buyer engagement when they master essential skills like communicating, product and industry expertise, managing objections, and building pipelines.

Higher winning rates

Your sales staff will perform better due to being more prepared for buyer discussions and having the abilities they need to personalize messaging. Increasing your success rates should be one of your sales training goals because it is a leading sign of your company’s market competitiveness.

Better employee retention

When sales professionals meet their objectives, they are more likely to stay with your organization. They will experience an increase in performance and, as a result, will be more willing to wait for the long haul if they receive the ongoing support they require from leadership. Over half of sellers who regarded their learning as successful were also very happy with their jobs.

How to Get the Most Out of Sales Training

How to Get the Most Out of Sales Training

Change your habits, and your life will change.

It doesn’t count toward your quota if you watch YouTube videos instead of studying the latest sales techniques. Browsing the news and watching the latest videos is a popular distraction, so ensure you and your team understand what constitutes effective sales practices, such as scheduling sales training at specified times.

Tailor your sales training to your business. 

While sales methods can be applied across businesses, special skills are frequently necessary for different industries. Selling vehicles, for example, necessitates another skill set than selling software to oil and gas businesses. Make sure the training you provide your sellers is specific to your industry.

Even if the training courses you look at don’t have much information about your sector, you and your team can best brainstorm how to utilize them for your target audience. Building a repository of industry-specific examples, anecdotes, case studies, activities, and resources is a vital first step in enhancing sales training that works.

Find out what your team expects from training and coaching.

Inquiring about your team’s preferred sales training materials and methods can go a long way toward gaining greater buy-in. If a team member enjoys webinars but prefers in-person or YouTube training, they may not be getting what they require. Try out webinar training to observe how your staff reacts.

Getting even one person enthused that you listened to their suggestions can encourage them to push the ball ahead and motivate others.

Appoint a notes and materials keeper.

It’s possible that going through notes gathered during training is just as crucial as the instruction itself. Ensure you have a system set up that allows teams to interact and access the content. Few things are more frustrating than investing in learning and having ideas fall by the wayside after a long weekend that pushes training to the back of your mind.

Conclusion

Confidence breeds success, and knowledge breeds confidence. You can help your sellers feel confident in what they’re doing, hold even the most demanding client contacts, and turn the most challenging situations into possibilities by providing competent and well-organized training.

Your sellers will become authentic representations of your company’s brand, vision, and values if adequately trained. Use these suggestions to help you structure your training program for optimal advantage and create a highly-skilled sales force where every new member is given the chance, knowledge, and support to succeed.

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sales training Workshop

How to Measure the Success of Sales Training

You have a fantastic product and a sales team eager to sell it. Maybe you are getting a regular stream of leads, and everything seems to be going well. However, it is natural to wonder if things can be better even when things are already going well as a business owner.

It can be difficult to assess your sales team’s efforts and effectiveness. You want to make sure they’re constantly doing everything they can to generate new sales for your company through lead generation and prospecting. However, you are aware that the modern B2B selling process takes time and, at times, luck.

So, how can you get rid of some of the ill-defined measures that have traditionally been used to measure sales effectiveness and replace them with valid, accurate key performance indicators? What metrics do you need to keep track of to get a clear picture of your sales team’s progress?

Elements to Consider When Monitoring Performance Post-Training

Elements to Consider When Monitoring Performance Post-Training

To acquire a comprehensive view of their sales team’s performance, every sales manager should track these essential elements.

Activity

Simply said, activity is a metric that tracks the daily actions that your sellers engage in to produce more leads and boost conversions. The manner you track activity will be determined by how your sales team typically tackles lead creation, but your KPIs might look like this:

  • Quantity of potential accounts in the seller’s pipeline
  • Daily outgoing or cold calls made
  • Emails sent out as part of an outreach campaign
  • Amount of scheduled demos
  • Number of booked meetings

Because all of these measures are simply quantifiable, sales managers can see what each seller’s daily output of effort looks like.

Sellers have little control over how many people respond to their email communications or how many cold calls are returned, but they have complete control over how many they make. As a result, assessing output is a better approach to gauge effort than using a response rate.

Quality

The quality of a sales team’s pipeline is the following KPI to consider when evaluating their performance. This will give you a good picture of how well your seller is prospecting and how well they understand your ideal consumer.

Quality can be quantified using KPIs such as:

  • Rates for return calls
  • Open rates for emails
  • Setting up a warm sales appointment
  • Trial demos given vis-a-vis sign-ups
  • How far leads get into a seller’s funnel

These KPIs are also simple to track, and they should be able to inform you which of your sellers have nailed their prospecting and outreach strategies and which need some improvement.

Tracking these KPIs is also an excellent opportunity for your sellers to share best practices with the rest of the team. Let’s imagine you see that every email sent out by one seller receives a 60% or higher open rate. Maybe they can discuss the kind of subject lines they’re using with the entire team and the methods they’re using to expand their email list.

Conversion

The result of all of the above processes is measured by conversion. Usually, conversion is determined by factors such as:

  • Conversion value on average
  • Ratios of a quote to close
  • Methods of contact sales
  • Customer retention
  • Time to close

While most sales managers use the list above to track their sales teams’ progress, you can’t just rely on conversion KPIs to determine success. You won’t get a complete picture of performance unless you combine conversions with the other two types of KPIs mentioned above.

One of your sellers, for example, may have a low conversion value. However, based on these KPIs, you can see that they are closing more sales than the rest of the team. This could signal that they are particularly adept in lower-tier, speedier sales.

Alternatively, say one of your sellers isn’t completing many transactions, but you observe that most of their leads are moving quite deep down the funnel. Perhaps their low close rate is due to terrible timing, poor luck, pricing, or other factors beyond their control.

Conclusion

The indicators mentioned above will disclose whether or not your training initiatives are producing the desired effect on the business. Understanding your data will assist you in optimizing your sales and marketing budget and generate excellent outcomes, regardless of the size of your company.

We propose that you evaluate these indicators regularly to observe how they’ve changed over time. This will assist you in determining what is most important to work on.

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Sales Technology

Embracing Sales Technology Trends

B2B selling has evolved in recent years, although at a glacial rate, as the digital world has provided expanded access to data and enhanced insights. While the COVID-19 pandemic continues to cause issues for many businesses, and the gap between surviving and shutting down hangs on a knife’s edge, the online sales movement has gone from zero to sixty in a matter of days.

To deal with this new reality, sellers are expanding their emotional intelligence to attract new consumers and ease the worries of existing ones, using new selling approaches, bolstering their customer service skills, and using new sales technology. 

It has been said that the future of sales is the irreversible shift of organizations’ sales and marketing tactics, procedures, and allocation of resources to a buyer-centric model, as well as the shift from analog selling process to highly automated, virtual client engagements.

There is now a growing emphasis on sellers’ roles and the tools and technology that may assist them in doing what they do best. That’s the basis on which we’re forecasting sales patterns and trends in the years to come. 

Trends in B2B sales

Trends in B2B sales

Growth Driven by Products

If you operate in the software sector, you’ve undoubtedly heard the phrase product-led expansion a few times. Companies, as you may know, can have a variety of growth and revenue strategies. Some companies rely on sales-driven growth, while others rely on marketing-driven growth. Product-led growth is the newest buzzword. It’s a marketing strategy in which sales and customer retention are all predominantly driven by the product.

Firmographics 2.0 

Firmographic data sets, such as size, location, and industry, are without a doubt the most often utilized prospecting and ideal customer profile criteria. These factors guide the judgments of millions of sellers throughout the world on who to approach and not. 

When it comes to firmographics, we’ve depended on very static and limited data sets for decades. The primary address is used as a location indication, while standard industry designations are used as industry information.

Sales tech developments are seen to improve firmographics data gathering. When machine learning methods can profile organizations with much greater accuracy, outdated and generally 10-15-year-old sector codes can be discarded.

Today, revenue teams may now choose from a variety of areas, including 3D technology, data visualization, network security, and green technology.

The same may be said for data on location and business size. Target groups may now be built based on the headquarters site and sub-locations.

Moreover, rather than focusing just on revenue and employee numbers, perhaps a focus on growing momentum is a preferable selection criterion as well. What is the rate of growth in online traffic, and how are searching and hiring volumes behaving? Sales and marketing personnel will become more precise in the years to come, which we refer to as firmographics 2.0 in targeting.

Digital sales 

Modern selling will become highly automated. Sales teams will devote more time to larger possibilities that need a consultative approach, discovery sessions, and customized bids. More individuals will become involved, both as buyers and sellers.

Client-facing digital portals and microsites will grow in popularity as a result of these broader sales processes. Parties can share important documents, communicate with one another, and create customized bids for potential leads.

In reducing any buyer friction before the contract is signed, the purpose is to deepen the connection. These portals also allow vendors to evaluate the material their clients watch and engage with, which is essential for determining which content has the most impact.

Versatile sellers

The COVID-19 pandemic has solidified omnichannel interactions as the preferred sales channel for B2B companies. When given the option of in-person, distant, or e-commerce channels, buyers have demonstrated that they desire all of them. Sales models will become hybrid as purchasing becomes multichannel.

A versatile salesman communicates with consumers via phone, emails, online chat, video, applications, and in-person appointments on occasion. This will almost certainly result in channel disputes, as well as a significant need to rethink the onboarding process for new sellers.

As the sales and revenue operations team transitions from a multichannel to an omnichannel approach, attribution becomes even more critical. However, it may result in channel conflicts, such as when two agents approach and engage with the same consumer at the same time, disrupting the buyer experience.

Most sales executives, who began their careers using a more linear sales style, will need to return to school to improve their abilities in all of these new tools and apps. Proposals may be participatory and trackable, and the first point of contact doesn’t have to be a well-written email or a well-rehearsed cold-call script, but rather something altogether different, such as a customized video message sent right to recipients’ social network inboxes.

Conclusion

This year, innovation, expertise, and transparency will continue to merge in B2B sales to answer the concerns of corporate buyers. The trend is turning toward account-based selling and digital transformation, driven by client behavior and sales technology.

It’s time to do an honest self-evaluation and figure out what will help your sales organization rise with the tide and what will sink it.

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Sales Play Social Selling

How Social Selling Fits into Your Sales Plays

Social selling is more valuable than ever before, with over half of the world’s population using social media. Sales leaders who like to stay ahead of trends rather than pursuing them should start integrating the process in their businesses.

For companies, social selling is leveraging social media to create leads and fuel your sales funnel.

This does not imply copying and pasting cold templates into LinkedIn and sending them to your connections. This is similar to spammy selling, where your odds of closing are nil.

It varies from standard sales strategies in that it places less emphasis on a quick response. Individual sales reps, on the other hand, focus on the “long game” and cultivating relationships over time.

To increase “organic” sales, sellers use social media to develop long-term connections, communicate authority and trustworthiness, and surface on decision-makers’ radars.

Data reveals that those that stay in the game for the long haul get rewarded. Top-performing sales agents, for example, consider social networking sites “extremely vital” to their performance, closing transactions 51% faster than their counterparts. Leaders in social selling also generate 45% more possibilities.

What does this look like in a business setting? Some companies have reduced their average selling process time by 20 days and increased the percentage of leads converting to prospects by 25% after implementing social selling tactics with LinkedIn’s Sales Navigator.

Social selling also makes it simpler for sales professionals to receive referrals from their LinkedIn networks, which is important because referrals account for 65 percent of new business for most businesses.

social selling is a must.

In the digital age, social selling is a must.

The development of digital technology has skewed the scales in favor of purchasers in business transactions. They’ve regained control of goods sources. Social selling is a prospecting method that returns power to the seller while maintaining a personal touch. Thanks to an active and non-intrusive presence, the seller has been able to return to the beginning of the purchasing cycle.

Social selling, like telephone or email marketing, is not a closing tactic. It’s the blend of the points of contact that allows you to reach out to new prospects in the places where they’re most comfortable. Social selling is a logical progression of sales professionals’ prospecting strategies.

Even if the two techniques are complementary, social media marketing must be separated from social selling:

  • The goal of social media marketing is to cultivate and maintain a relationship between a business and its audience through content to raise brand recognition.
  • To boost quality leads, social selling enables sellers to engage with their prospects and be acknowledged as experts in their professions.

Because there are fewer “personal” networks on Twitter and Linkedin, this strategy is easier to implement, and consumers are more comfortable and receptive to the concept of engaging in a dialogue with a vendor.

How can social selling help your company

How can social selling help your company?

You already know how to perform social selling if you’ve spent time on social media conversing with friends, sharing images, publishing status updates, and so on. You may be already aware of it.

So here are a few pointers to help you improve your social selling skills and start connecting with prospects:

Make a listening station.

You may “listen” for hashtags because individuals love to use them in their social media posts. Create a column in Twitter’s Tweetdeck program, for example. Create columns for phrases pertinent to your industry. Help out whenever someone shares anything you can help with, whether it’s a query or an article they created. Respond to their queries and promote their articles with your social media accounts. This establishes a rapport with that individual, and you become a valuable resource.

You may also look for hashtags on LinkedIn and follow them on Instagram. Pay attention to them as well, and engage in similar dialogues with others.

Make your material.

You already have industry knowledge and skills, so share it! Don’t merely wait for opportunities to sell. Write blog posts that assist individuals in resolving a specific issue. Take pictures of your solution in action and share them with us. Hold webinars to educate people about a specific topic. Bring potential clients on as guests to your podcast and invite them to share their knowledge.

If you provide enough material, you’ll ultimately get the credibility and a reputation, which will aid you in your sales calls.

Social selling allows you to develop your knowledge so that you don’t have to prove it every time you meet with a new prospect. The evidence element of the sales process is complete if they contacted you because of your social media post. They are aware of your abilities and have self-qualified to join your sales funnel.

Conclusion

Because it is based on true sales concepts such as creating connections and trust, social selling works in sales. However, it’s a time-consuming and intricate procedure. Rather than a race to the finish line, social selling is a relationship-driven marathon.

You may open the floodgates to bigger transactions, quicker sales cycles, and recurring referrals and sales once you’ve created crucial contacts and earned confidence.

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Sales Play

Working with Other Departments to Build Winning Sales Plays

It’s no secret that departments, such as sales and marketing, may struggle to communicate and collaborate successfully. To resolve this, the connection between these departments must shift from competitors to routine partners for a business to work successfully and productively.

How to Improve Communication Among Departments

There are several methods and tactics that a business may employ to improve communication between its departments. Here are some tips to think about.

Working in silos isn’t a good idea

The first issue to consider is the significance of functioning as a cohesive unit, which is especially vital when departments are working remotely, as many do these days.

The fact that animosity can often arise between the PR, marketing, and sales departments is a difficulty. This frequently occurs when one party believes their contribution is undervalued or when the other department fails to keep half of the contract.

In some cases, sales and marketing departments can actively work against one another. Therefore, systems used by all departments must be integrated to ensure a harmonious sales process. Marketing and PR departments must believe that the marketing qualified leads (MQL) they pass on are being followed up on, and sales must believe that marketing is assisting in the development of the appropriate sales funnel.

This is why you’ll see more and more mid-sized enterprise companies combining sales, public relations, and marketing operations under the leadership of a chief revenue officer or chief growth officer. The CRO is in charge of all revenue-generating activities. They are responsible for teams such as marketing/public relations, sales, channel sales, and customer success.

Even if you are unable to reorganize, basic efforts such as agreeing on what constitutes a sales qualified lead (SQL) upfront and working collaboratively to set lead and income objectives may make a significant difference. It’s a fantastic approach to bring departments together so they all benefit from their efforts.

And, let’s face it, this is a great opportunity for everyone to rethink how we collaborate. For certain companies, team structures and established ways of doing business may alter. Make regular (video) calls to ensure that everyone is on the same page and moving in the same direction.

Communicate in the same language

Communicate in the same language

Define your funnel as the first step in getting departments to speak the same language. Make sure to explicitly define each team’s function in the funnel with important department stakeholders.

It’s now important to define the phases, determine what qualifies customers for each level of the funnel, and make sure your departments are aware of this information.

This is how the final product should appear. Everyone in your company should be aware of the distinctions between a prospect/visitor, lead, SQL, MQL, prospect, and client. All subsequent phases in getting the departments to collaborate and unify their processes at your company are built on this foundation.

Set consistent objectives

Misalignment among departments can cause gaps in the conversion of leads to clients and block sales funnels. This imbalance may be exacerbated by segregating your department goals. If both divisions work toward a common set of objectives, you’ll have a better chance of meeting your revenue targets.

Prospecting is one of the most difficult phases of the sales process for sellers, according to HubSpot’s State of Inbound 2018 study, but the problems may be lessened when sales and marketing departments communicate. When the two teams can work together toward the same objective, the goal is more likely to be achieved.

Define your sales funnel stages clearly

Define your sales funnel stages clearly

A company’s funnel stages must be precisely defined so that marketing and sales departments speak the same language when it comes to prospective clients.

An imbalance might result in lost opportunities, preventing businesses from converting leads to consumers. Qualified leads can fall through the cracks if a company doesn’t comprehend how leads are defined at each point of the pipeline and how the handoff procedure goes.

Create a Service-Level Agreement

In the Hubspot study, turning leads into customers is one of the top marketing goals for the next 12 months for 69% of respondents. This conversion is supported by a full service-level agreement.

SLAs may be a useful tool for establishing clear and direct communication routes between marketing and sales departments. There is less possibility for error or misinterpretation when a roadmap or blueprint is presented. SLAs frequently contain details such as the ideal customer profile, lead definitions, objectives, and how to manage and assess success.

SLAs are also an excellent tool for ensuring a smooth transition from marketing to sales. Processes are in place, for example, to calculate an expected follow-up timetable for MQLs that have been forwarded to sales.

Closed-loop reporting can also benefit from an SLA. While marketers have data on how prospects have reacted to marketing messages, such as opening an email, completing a form, or visiting the website frequently, sellers have the chance to learn even more about prospects through one-on-one discussions.

Sales can be tasked with gathering crucial campaign details and informing marketers as to what worked in terms of client acquisition through these more customized interactions or even provide little pieces of information that the marketer may be unaware of, such as a blog article being referenced in a webinar on a different webpage. This new information is valuable since it will assist marketing in fine-tuning initiatives to improve their chances of success.

From 'competition' to 'collaboration'

From ‘competition’ to ‘collaboration’

It takes a lot of teamwork to guide a prospect through the purchase process. It would be irresponsible to argue that one department is more vital than another because they all must work together to achieve total organizational success.

For example, it is not only the responsibility of marketers to attract the desired prospects, but it is also the responsibility of sales to assist marketers in better understanding their clientele and which leads have successfully converted into clients in previous encounters.

Marketers pique clients’ attention, while sellers keep them engaged. Working together, departments do not erase the inherent disparities in their roles; rather, they create a more efficient and cohesive task force within the company.

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Content Marketing marketing marketing tips

Using Conversational Video Storyboards to Boost Your Marketing Strategy

According to Hubspot, 85% of enterprises utilize video as a marketing strategy, which is unsurprising given that mobile video consumption grows by 100% every year. While blogging and long-form content are important components of any marketing plan, they aren’t enough if you want to grab your target market’s attention. But how can you make good use of B2B video marketing? Here are a few tips. 

Create a strategy.

Create a strategy.

The adage “failing to prepare is preparing to fail” couldn’t be more accurate in B2B marketing. The most important aspect of your success with it is your plan. In this sense, ensuring that your marketing plan interacts seamlessly with all of your other marketing platforms, such as blogs or social media, is critical. 

Simply said, video isn’t a stand-alone marketing strategy; it needs to work in tandem with the rest of your efforts.

Begin with the funnel. 

A great place to begin is to search for ways to include it in your current marketing funnel. And, because the video is better at establishing a personal connection with clients over other types of content, it will be more successful to make them for clients early in the buyer’s journey. This is a fantastic way to assist or educate your prospects on significant industry and business challenges while also establishing your firm as a thought leader. 

Whatever stage of video marketing you’re in, it is essential to a good video strategy to make sure that the visual content you develop corresponds to precise moments in the client experience. Your material must fulfill their needs and include a call to action that encourages them to take action.

Create personalities for your target audience.

Create personalities for your target audience.

Understanding who you’re talking to is the foundation of every successful marketing approach. And video is no exception. Before you can develop video content that your target consumers will engage with, you need a clear image of them and their position.

Begin any video marketing campaign by building customer personas. This will assist you to tailor the content you generate for certain groups of your target audience (which will make it more effective), as well as confirming what kind of material you’ll need to develop in the first place.

Think about the sorts of videos you want to make.

There are various types of video content you may develop to fulfill the demands of your clients at each level of your funnel, just as there are several customers for whom you should consider generating video content. It’s worth remembering that the more diverse your material is, the more your market will see you as a thought leader in your field. So shake it up a little. Just make sure it is still in line with the rest of your approach.

Make a storyboard for your video

It’s crucial to plan out your video material ahead of time if you want the completed result to strike home, just like it’s important to have a sound approach when it comes to video marketing.

A decent narrative and storyboard are essential for success. The screenplay is what the presenter (or the narrator in the video) will say, whereas the storyboard is a visual blueprint of your video from beginning to conclusion. What you need to film should be based on your narrative and storyboard.

Make use of video to supplement your textual material

When making a video, we generally suggest starting with the script – after all, it’s the foundation for whatever may happen in it.

The good news is that if you currently have a written content marketing plan in place, you’ve already completed the majority of the effort required to write a screenplay that will provide genuine results. A majority of executives prefer to watch a video rather than read text, so making videos to accompany the information you’ve previously produced will allow leads to consuming it in their desired format.

This method also greatly reduces the amount of labor necessary to generate a video. For example, the script may be based on the textual material from a top blog post (which should already be written communicatively), and the storyboard can be based on the visuals from the article. 

Make sure you're using the correct platforms to distribute your work.

Make sure you’re using the correct platforms to distribute your work.

Promotion, like every other type of B2B marketing content, takes effort. So, once you’ve finished making your video, the next step is to show it to your audience.

For B2B, social networking, particularly LinkedIn, is always a good place to start. On LinkedIn, a majority of executives say they exchange videos with coworkers on a weekly basis. As a result, placing it there enhances the likelihood that your target audience—and the genuine decision-makers within it—will notice it.

Subtitles are also important in this situation… Because most people scan through their social media feeds without turning on their speakers, adding subtitles enhances the likelihood that they’ll stop and view it. 

Adding your films to your Youtube account (or another video hosting platform) also makes it simple to embed them in other places, such as your website and blog. This makes integrating their dissemination into your entire content strategy much easier.

Conclusion

If there’s one thing you should remember from this post, it’s to make sure that each video you make has a defined function inside your funnel.

It’s not enough to make marketing videos just to “do video” – they have to serve your clients and complement what you’ve been doing on other marketing channels if they’re going to help you generate leads.

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LinkedIn

12 Ways to Get the Most Out of Your LinkedIn Profile

LinkedIn is the finest social media network for B2B marketing out of the many social media platforms today. According to one survey, LinkedIn creates more than 80% of B2B leads generated through social media. Businesses are clearly discovering leads on this large social network, but are you sure you’re optimizing its features?

Whether you’re just getting started on LinkedIn or want to step up your LinkedIn lead-generating game, there are a few important steps you should make to get the most out of your LinkedIn B2B marketing.

The best ways for optimizing your LinkedIn profile

B2B decision-makers, like everyone else, conduct research online. And they frequently find up on LinkedIn while looking for information about possible clients, sellers, and a service or product they may acquire for their business. It’s also a reliable referral source. As a result, these changes to your LinkedIn profile might have a tremendous impact.

Fine-tune your settings. 

If you want your account to help you produce leads, you need to make sure that those leads can discover you. Begin by making your LinkedIn profile public and creating a unique URL for yourself.  Go to your account and click “View profile as”, then “Manage public profile settings” to make sure your profile is public.

You may also create a custom URL on this page. It’s preferable to include your entire name here so that others can discover your profile quickly. 

Showcase your profile

Target leads with your language. 

If you want to optimize the lead production potential of your LinkedIn profile, you should make each modification with a specific demographic in mind. Consider the buyer personas of the most valuable leads for your company and ensure you’re speaking their language.

Summarize what you do. 

You must provide a precise and straightforward summary of your profile right away. The easiest place to do this is in your profile’s title and summary. Use terms that are immediately related to the prospects you wish to attract. 

Optimize your photo. 

While you may not believe that your LinkedIn photo has an impact on lead creation, it most certainly does. According to one eye-tracking research, LinkedIn profile visitors spend over 20% of their time on a profile looking at the photo, so make sure you look your best.

There are several tips and Do’s and Don’ts for LinkedIn profile images available, but suffice it to say that it should be as crisp and presentable as possible. You are considerably more likely to be desirable as a seller or partner if you present a professional image.

content is key

If you don’t publish, you’ll perish.

One of the greatest methods to attract high-quality leads to your account is to create excellent unique content. The same holds for your LinkedIn profile. The site’s publishing tool, LinkedIn Pulse, was just recently made available to the entire public. Your LinkedIn friends will be alerted when you post on LinkedIn Pulse, and it will appear on your profile.

Achieve a higher participation grade. 

You will not produce as many leads as you might if you do not properly participate in the LinkedIn network, no matter how good your profile seems. Every possible business and specialization has a plethora of organizations and groups to choose from. The organizations and groups you join will be visible on your profile, allowing prospective leads to learning more about your experience and interests.

participate, lead, showcase

Ask for recommendations. 

This is a fantastic approach to display your skills and reputation to your coworkers, clients, and other connections. A recommendation should be as detailed as possible.

Some people opt to make recommendations for others in the hopes that others would reciprocate. Simply asking nicely for a recommendation is the best way to obtain them.

Take the lead.

Being a regular participant in famous LinkedIn groups can help you generate leads faster, but launching your group can be much more successful. That’s because, as the administrator of a group, you may utilize LinkedIn announcements to send emails to your members. Use this feature to start conversations about important industry subjects, develop thought leadership, and cultivate leads.

Make your slides available. 

SlideShare was bought by LinkedIn in 2012, making it simpler than ever to distribute your B2B presentations as LinkedIn content. You can quickly urge visitors of your presentations to provide you with their contact details and opt into your marketing activities, thanks to its built-in lead-generating function.

Put together a portfolio. 

The LinkedIn portfolio feature is perfect for exhibiting your efforts, such as presentations and larger-scale projects on which you have worked. This establishes your authority and might entice potential clients to visit your website and eventually become leads.

Build your company profile.

A company LinkedIn page is a must-have for B2B lead creation. Your company page serves as a storehouse for relevant content about your business and may serve as an extension of your homepage, demonstrating to potential clients your brand and what you care about.

A business page may also be used to provide inbound marketing content, such as whitepapers and ebooks, as well as webinar invitations. The LinkedIn Showcase page functionality allows you to establish several LinkedIn pages for different brands and companies under your umbrella brand, making it easy to split your lead generation strategies even further.

Don’t brag about your rivals.

You’ll see a section labeled “People Also Viewed” on the right side of your LinkedIn profile page if you go to it. The pages or accounts mentioned there are visitors of your page who have also looked at their profiles. You’ll note that the majority of them work in the same business or industry as you or have the same job title. Instead of clicking away to one of those persons, you want those who are looking at your account to learn more about your expertise. So turning off this feature is advised. 

Conclusion

If you know how to utilize LinkedIn for B2B lead creation, it may be a very powerful tool. You may get a lot more out of your LinkedIn profile by investing a bit more time in it. Start with these suggestions and see how they influence your lead generation game.

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LinkedIn

How to Use LinkedIn to Attract the Best Sales Talent

The era of the Great Resignation has arrived. In April of 2021, 2.7 million people resigned from their employment, a record-breaking number for more than twenty years. By July, it was reported that there were 10.9 million job openings, with employers scurrying to fill them.

Recently, however, the job floodgates have opened as a result of more people being inoculated against COVID-19 and the relaxation of pandemic restrictions. Now, employees are feeling more in control than they have in years.

To attract these talents employers have been offering flexible work hours, competitive compensation, and other perks and benefits regardless. However, job seekers are increasingly searching for more. They want to work in environments that share their values and provide them meaning.

In a talent-driven employment market, top candidates will accept offers from companies that share their goals, purpose, and vision. This makes the ongoing talent exodus an issue that affects not just recruiters and human resource specialists, but sales leaders as well.

Things to consider when attracting the best B2B sellers

As a sales leader in a company competing for top talent, there are several factors that you have to consider: your corporate brand, the quality of the work you provide, and the purpose or meaning the position will deliver.

Measuring success begins with determining where a candidate’s journey starts and which touchpoints drive them to you as a potential employer. When it comes to developing relationships with potential prospects, every touchpoint is crucial.

Using LinkedIn to find and recruit the finest people

Your sellers play a crucial role in your B2B company’s expansion and development. They work to build and keep your company’s client base and improve revenue by recognizing and chasing new leads, spotting upsell possibilities, and offering a great customer experience. Sellers must have outstanding communication skills and a thorough understanding of a company’s offers to successfully steer prospects toward the solutions they seek.

This means that when hiring the best talents out there, you will need all the help you can get to be successful. Here are some LinkedIn tools and resources to assist you in hiring the best people available:

Career Pages

Career Pages is a branding tool for employers that highlights your company’s culture and vacant positions.

Recruiter

The Recruiter platform assists you in locating, connecting with, and managing the individuals you want on your team.

Talent Insights

Employment Insights is a workforce planning tool that uses real-time data to help you make intelligent talent decisions.

Using LinkedIn as a hiring platform may assist your company whether you invest in recruitment tools or simply comply with best practices. It is also a good way to nurture your corporate image, make the most of your network of connections, and locate the top active and passive applicants than any other job board.

As a B2B business, attracting talent isn’t always simple, but leveraging LinkedIn’s capabilities may help you battle for top talent on an equal footing with your competition. 

Keeping your sellers on board

Keeping your sellers on board

More than hiring them, keeping sellers continues to be a major difficulty for businesses across all industries. The COVID-19 epidemic has created several obstacles, but it has undoubtedly reached a tipping point for many sellers, prompting employers to reconsider their whole employment model and the importance of keeping their best staff. 

To overcome this, your company should devise ways to aid the Great Retention, allowing it to recruit and retain your sellers.

While the top sellers and other business professionals these days desire better compensation to remain in a company, they also want more flexible work schedules and conditions, a better corporate culture, and more incentives to be interested in their job and inspired to come to work every day. If you don’t want to comply with these expectations, you may soon find yourself in the same situation as many other businesses: a slew of resignations.

Top sellers now seek more from their companies because they want to be fulfilled. It’s critical to build retention programs like these to guarantee that you’re satisfying your talent’s present (and likely future) demands.

Here are some ideas for keeping your greatest sellers:

  • Recognize that recruitment methods are the foundation for long-term retention.
  • Offer a pay and benefits package that is competitive (naturally).
  • Create flexible job possibilities.
  • Provide opportunities for professional growth.
  • Create clear routes to success.
  • Insist on — and cultivate – a pleasant work environment.
  • Keep your employees motivated by engaging them.
  • Ascertain that they have the resources and tools they need to thrive in their jobs.
  • Be a mentor, not a watchdog!

Today’s sellers are involved in their lives as much as their jobs. They don’t want to work for organizations that they see as ‘dead ends’ on several levels. As we have seen again and again throughout the pandemic, time is important and life is all too fleeting. Your company may contribute to Great Retention by devising ways to recruit talents who share your purpose and encourage them to commit their time and skill to your company for the long haul.

Conclusion

Businesses and companies will have to compete for the top talent as the large talent movement is expected to continue over the next year or more. Good thing LinkedIn offers several solutions that can assist your company at every stage of the process of attracting and retaining top talent, from prospect to applicant to a new hire.

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LinkedIn

The 10 Most Popular LinkedIn Features for Sales Professionals

The sales environment has been changed by social selling, which has made it simpler than ever to engage with prospects and uncover leads organically. LinkedIn has long been a popular and successful platform to identify and nurture sales prospects since it is the common social media site for networking opportunities and partnerships.

Many LinkedIn features are aimed at helping you save time, build your network, and achieve your business objectives. Here are several LinkedIn features you may not be aware of that might help you increase your business revenue.

What are the hottest LinkedIn features I should use as a sales professional?

Sales Navigator

LinkedIn Sales Navigator

LinkedIn Sales Navigator gives sales teams, even more, control over how they find prospects and manage their pipelines. It’s a sales management tool that aims to make it easier for sellers to connect to LinkedIn’s vast network and, as a result, secure more (and better) transactions.

Members can get access to monthly InMail messages, stored leads, sophisticated lead and company searches, and custom lists. Alerts for leads and accounts, as well as notes and tags, may also be utilized.

These make it simpler to manage sales pipelines and guarantee nothing goes through the cracks.

Shared Experiences and Commonalities

Users can already store leads in Sales Navigator, but the “Share experiences with you” feature makes it simpler to find possibilities inside that database. By bringing together all the potential clients who have at least one thing in common with you, the feature gives you a great base for building trust and rapport.

When you contact out, highlighting this point of commonality will increase your odds of getting a reply.

Account and lead suggestions

With automated lead and account suggestions, LinkedIn can help sales teams maintain their pipeline filled.  Sellers should use the LinkedIn Sales Navigator’s Sales Preferences feature to ensure that their suggestions are as near to their buyer profiles as possible. Location, industry, role, and seniority level may be among these factors.

Showcase pages

Showcase pages on LinkedIn are an excellent approach to categorizing your incoming LinkedIn visitors. Developing a Showcase page can greatly assist you in creating a business unit that is closely connected to a specific audience

As a company, you can use this feature to target distinct buyer personas by creating single pages dedicated to certain items, product offerings, and services.

Users may also follow individual Showcase pages without needing to follow the company’s primary page or any of its other Showcase pages on LinkedIn. You may also alter the page based on the actions and interests of that specific audience.

These were created specifically for B2B businesses to help them generate more leads.

Save the results of your searches

Do you spend much time on LinkedIn looking for prospects, articles, or courses? You should save your results in case you want to come back to them later.

You may keep their searches, articles, and learning programs on LinkedIn. The stored things are listed under “My items” on your profile.

You can also use this LinkedIn function to get weekly or monthly email alerts whenever a new user of the network or a job meets your stored search criteria.

Advanced Search Option

LinkedIn Advanced Search Option

The Advanced Search Option gives you a more efficient search experience. It’s the most effective technique to locate and contact someone as part of a focused search.

You could wish to discover if you’re related to someone who works at a certain business, for example. You may also refine your search by region, industry, prior employer, school, profile language, and interest in nonprofits.

LinkedIn Education

LinkedIn provides several excellent courses that may assist anyone in developing important skills. Individually, you may utilize LinkedIn Learning to develop your business or selling abilities, or you can purchase courses for your revenue team.

Live on LinkedIn

Livestreaming has exploded in popularity across a variety of social media platforms. Even though LinkedIn has this feature, few businesses use it as part of their content promotional campaign.

LinkedIn Polls

LinkedIn now has a tool that allows you to build polls that your audience may participate in. This is a fantastic approach to increase immediate interaction while also learning more about your contacts. You may utilize LinkedIn polls to pose lighthearted, hypothetical questions to engage your audience.

Before this new option, if you wanted to share a sequence of photos in a post organically, you had to publish them as a gallery, which was difficult to manage. You may now share a multi-page PDF document and have it displayed as a scrollable carousel on the platform. This approach makes telling a clear, compelling tale or collection of suggestions a lot simpler.

Conclusion

LinkedIn, like any other network, is always experimenting and developing new features. While these LinkedIn features aren’t as well-known, they may be game-changers if used correctly.

These LinkedIn features are the ultimate hack to LinkedIn success, whether it’s driving more traffic, increasing exposure, or even generating viral branding. LinkedIn analytics tools may also be used to boost social media metrics such as engagement, impressions, and followers.