by Elizabeth Hines | Sep 14, 2015 | Blog, Content Marketing, Marketing, Strategy
Selling certainly isn’t like it used to be. Take the requisite childhood lemonade stand, for example. Every summer thousands of entrepreneurial youths take to their neighborhood streets with pitchers of homemade lemonade to offer passers-by a cool drink for a small fee. For decades now these business startups and their transactions have generally been straight-forward. Recently, though, the owners and operators of these businesses, almost all children, have faced increasing complexity in their business environment. Local authorities have been cracking down on lemonade stands without proper city permits or food handling licenses. Potential customers have grown more mindful of product ingredients. These new idiosyncrasies have everyone wondering, “When did selling become so complex?”
Successful companies have adapted to these new selling pressures by placing emphasis on a strategic selling process. MHI Global suggests that these strategic selling processes “significantly improves the odds of [a business] winning complex sales opportunities by defining a process for pursuing sales opportunities and establishing common criteria for allocating resources.” Those companies are then able to determine when to walk away from resource-intensive deals with a low probability of success, giving salespeople the time and energy to focus on the opportunities most likely to become profitable, long-term customers.
There’s little doubt that the role of strategic selling is one of the toughest in any organization. It’s also one of the most expensive line items for most companies – so getting it right is important. There are a lot of great strategic sales teams out there, to be sure. But there’s an equal amount of selling teams that could use some advice.
Here are five ways to optimize your strategic sales teams and, in turn, increase their revenue-producing effectiveness.
Devise a Process
Strategic selling is a process. Like any process, discipline and milestones mark the way. Only through uniform use, iteration, and formal improvement will your organization, the sales team, and the salesperson become more effective. I don’t care what the process looks like…yet. Get a process that everyone can track inside your organization and stick to it. No loose cannons or end around players….they devalue the process.
Refine Your Process
Once you have an established process, take the time to refine it. The most successful strategic selling processes include some iteration of the following items:
- Assessing the selling opportunity
- Developing a competitive strategy
- Identifying the key decision makers and their motives/agendas
- An action plan
- Sales plan testing and improvement
- An organization implementation process
Create a Compelling Event
If your sales process relies solely on responding to RFPs, you are not strategically selling….you are responding to opportunities that every qualified organization will see and compete for. Create a compelling event inside your target customer. The easiest sale is the one that your competitors never knew about in the first place. Creating a sense of urgency and need inside a customer is hard work and takes time, but that’s what makes it valuable to your client and your organization. Knowing your customers’ needs and how your solution fits makes you more valuable than a traditional “RFP responder”. Be there first, be relevant, and be action oriented and your customers will rely on your solutions more often.
Make the Most of Your Resources
Time is money and both are scarce resources. Make the most of these precious resources and never fall in love with an opportunity unless it meets the following criteria. If it fits, engage fully and engage to win. No half efforts. Ask yourself these questions:
- Is there a true opportunity that has been clearly identified and agreed to within your customer’s organization? Said another way, is there a “compelling event” as mentioned above that everyone involved is aligned around?
- Can you compete to win? Does your solution or unique business differentiator align to produce customer benefit? Can it be aligned?
- Can you win? Are there any commercial obstacles that would stand in the way to your winning? These can be politically driven, relationship driven, or even solution driven.
- Is the opportunity worth winning? Does it have the desired ROI for the investment of selling resources? Does it contain enough profit to engage your organization? Is it too risky a fit (a force fit to your solution) or does the risk and reward balance? Can your customer pay for the service? Have they allocated funds?
Avoid ‘Work for Free’ Promotions
Stay away from “free trials” or “free pilot” engagements. In fact, run from them. If your customer is headed down that path, revisit number four above. It could be that they do not completely understand your solution and how it fits, or simply that they have no funds to undertake the engagement. In either case, time is money and it’s time to move on.
Make no mistake, the strategies listed above are not easy to instill in a sales organization. But by doing so, true opportunities will increase, they will have greater value, and your chances of success will soar. No hard work goes unrewarded.
by Elizabeth Hines | Sep 10, 2015 | Blog, Marketing, Social Media, Strategy, Supply Chain
Are you ready to harness some of the $1 trillion dollars social media can bring the value chain yearly?
There are over 3 billion internet users on Earth, or nearly half the world’s population. The growth of worldwide internet users from 2000- 2015 was 753%. In developing economies the percentages are much higher: Africa’s users grew by 6958.2%, the Middle East’s users grew by 3,358.6% and Latin America/Caribbean’s grew by 1684.4%. There are 1.5 billion social media users worldwide.
Many people use social media for personal purposes, but more and more people and companies are using social media for business purposes. Leveraging social media makes sense: customers, leads, competitors, partners, and employees are using it. Is your company? When browsing Facebook you’ve noticed that the power drill you were researching from Home Depot online is popping up on the edge of the page, or maybe it’s the latest version of a cell phone, or a pair of shoes. It feels like these items are following you. They are. These companies are following you. They’re using social media to entice you, to engage with you, to connect with you.
Facebook saw 1.49 billion active users in the second quarter of 2015. They highlight some of the success stories on their website, pointing to small, local companies and large, international companies. One such large company, Europe’s largest consumer electronics retailer and German behemoth, Media Markt, engaged in a cross-media campaign for nearly a month in 2013 in order to “boost brand resonance and anchor its message firmly in people’s minds.” They used Facebook’s newsfeed to promote and highlight a specific television ad, and they also purchased various kinds of Facebook ads. According to Facebook, “Media Markt reached nearly half of Germany’s online users with their ‘Germany’s craziest flat share’ campaign on Facebook, with the platform being 2.4 times more efficient than all other media used.”
Doing a campaign and buying ads on Facebook are not necessary for you to achieve marketing goals. Here are some ways in which supply chain managers should be using social media:
Communicate
Communication through the senses are what humans crave. Social media allows leaders to communicate using several of the senses to reach a broad community. Companies can use language, images, and sound. Even touch is involved. Click here, scroll over here. Advertise your blog posts, highlight your latest news, announce a new product launch, indicate arrivals and departures of shipments, share small or sweeping changes in service, supplies, practices, locations, etc. Are you concerned that weather may impact deliveries? Update customers to potential delays, interruptions or threats to service.
Social media creates a community. Comments and feedback allow for a certain sense of intimacy. Allowing for a two-way street can help employees, clients, and partners to feel engaged and invested. It might also end up being fun! UPS is a logistics company that has used social media by using both humor and human interest stories to accrue followers and gain loyalty. Its focus on employees heroes who go above and beyond encourages other employees and endears followers.
The best part of social media communication is that it’s live and active, it’s bright and visual. There’s room for humor and gravity, information and emotion, objectivity and subjectivity, facts and anecdotes. Social media reaches both males and females, with 73% of males engaging with social media, and 80% of females.
Educate
Education is one form of communication, and a very important one for your current or potential B2B and B2C clients, your employees, as well as others in your field. Do you have a lecture you want to share from an industry conference? Do you have a new product launch? Have you found a more efficient process that can benefit the industry or attract attention from potential clients? Social media is fantastic platform for education, and establishing your knowledge and credibility.
Monitor
Keeping an eye on your supply chain peers and competitors is a smart. Monitoring is its own form of self-education. What are your competitors’ areas of strength? What appear to be their challenges? Have they missed a pocket of social media that you can fill? Do they seem to be tailoring to a certain customer, or courting a potential business partner? Additionally, researching the reputations and electronic footprints of potential clients, suppliers, prospective employees and business partners could teach you a lot before signing a contract.
The supply chain makes the world go round. In order to be one of the leaders in the chain, it’s important to remember that internet users make up nearly half of the world’s population and that social media is on the rise. Don’t miss that boat.
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by Elizabeth Hines | Sep 9, 2015 | Blog, Content Marketing, Data/Analytics, Marketing
In the age of big data, everything in marketing is measureable – and that’s not necessarily a good thing. As Dimitri Maex of Ogilvy Consulting puts it, “marketers are drowning in numbers because they are focused on what they can measure rather on what they should measure.” Unfocused efforts to evaluate the success of your marketing activities can lead to a host of problems. Central to these problems, though, is the failure to measure and report activities in a way that clearly demonstrates the link between marketing and your company’s bottom line. Check out our infographic that details four marketing metrics guaranteed to resonate with your CEO (and our guide to the 6 marketing metics your boss really cares about).
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When it comes to marketing we work with our clients to create and execute strategies that drive success and elevate their brand position within the industry. Unlike other firms, we align marketing programs with business objectives and, through a data driven approach, are able to deliver results with a targeted ROI. Our team is comprised of strategists, marketing professionals, writers, designers, and experts in social media. Together we leverage our experience to increase brand awareness, position our clients as thought leaders, drive meaningful engagement with prospects and customers, and help businesses grow.
by Elizabeth Hines | Sep 8, 2015 | Blog, Data/Analytics, Marketing
The profile of marketing has definitely been raised lately. With a full 63% of businesses planning to increase their marketing budgets this year, its clear business leaders are looking directly to their marketing departments to drive growth. Along with expanding budgets and more pressure to produce results, marketing metrics are being more heavily scrutinized by executives; marketing departments are being asked to prove the worth of the increased investment in their marketing efforts. And with an enormous amount of potential data to track, marketing can seem more like big data. The good news is it doesn’t have to. Successfully presenting the value of your marketing efforts means showing your boss the metrics that will resonate and prove that you’re moving the needle where it really counts.
Do you know which metrics actually matter to your boss? Rather than talking about per-post Facebook engagement and other “soft” metrics, can you tell your boss, for example, if your company is spending more money this year to acquire new customers than it did last year? Let’s take a look at how you can calculate your company’s Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC) and why your boss actually does care about it.
Reporting on measurements that link your marketing efforts to the company’s bottom line, such as Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC), will put your marketing team in a much better position to make the case for executive support of current and future budgets and strategies. For more metrics that matter, download our guide to The Six Marketing Metrics That Your Boss Actually Cares About. Our 10-page guide lays out the six marketing metrics that will prove the value of your marketing efforts, along with formulas and examples to help you calculate your own metrics and explanations of why your boss finds these metrics so important.
by Elizabeth Hines | Sep 2, 2015 | Blog, Marketing, Social Media, Strategy, Talent
92% of businesses use social media as a recruitment tool – and 75% of hiring managers say they check out candidate’s social media profiles. With hiring managers and recruiters using social media to post jobs and identify great talent, it is obvious that you need to use social media in your job hunt. What isn’t as obvious is how to do so without your current employer finding out.
Here are 4 tips for conducting a successful and stealthy job hunt:
1. Check/change your settings
Before you do anything check and change the settings on your social networks.
By default, social networks are set up to notify your connections of: changes made, connections made, and groups you join. Change this. Go into your settings on each of the social networks you are on and change your settings so that you can fly under the radar.
2. “Dress” professionally
You only have one chance to make a first impression. Your social media profile may be the first impression hiring managers and recruiters have of you. Your profile is also part of your professional brand. It’s therefore important to:
- Use a professional picture (no pets, no cropped arms)
- Remove party pictures and anything else that is not professional
- Be consistent with your personal branding across your profiles.
3. Optimize your social media profile(s)
Optimize your social media profiles to match the job you want. I’m not saying you should make up experience or skills, rather I am saying that you need identify the skills hiring managers and recruiters will be looking for, and highlight your applicable skills and experience. You want to optimize your profile so that your profile will not only showcase your qualifications, but will also ensure that your profile will show up when hiring managers and recruiters are searching for the ideal candidate for your dream job.
How do you do this? Start by defining your target industry and position. As you research companies and job descriptions that match your target make note of keywords (not buzzwords), skills, and qualifications that are recurring. Optimize your social media profile(s) to include these keywords and to highlight your relevant skills and experience.
4. Research, research, network
Research with the objectives of: identifying target companies and networking.
Use the keywords you identified in defining your target industry and position and search social networks for these keywords. (Don’t forget to search groups. LinkedIn groups, for example, are essential in your social media job hunt.) When your search turns up a company that looks to be a good match, look through your connections to learn if there is someone who can introduce you to an employee at the company (just remember not to use your employer or colleagues to make the connection). A connection is an opportunity to learn more about the company – the culture, opportunities, and challenges.
Employing these 4 techniques will help you use social media to find a job – without getting fired.
One thing to remember – a social media job hunt will prove much more successful if you have a strong network. Creating and building a network when you start your job search will leave you at a disadvantage. Networking is an action item necessary for your professional and personal growth. If you view networking as more than just a job search must, you will gain a competitive edge and will be in a much better place when it is time to start your search. So, get out there and “network your face off.”
by Elizabeth Hines | Aug 27, 2015 | Blog, Content Marketing, Marketing, Social Media, Strategy
Content marketing has become a key marketing strategy for many businesses. Statistics show that content marketing generates three times more leads than traditional marketing methods – and those leads cost an average of 62% less. At Fronetics, we’ve built our content marketing services around one goal – helping our clients grow. We’re harnessing the power of content to help our clients connect and engage with leads and prospects in meaningful ways. And our clients are enjoying faster growth and higher profits because of it.
How do we use content to support our clients in their business growth?
We create quality content that helps our clients connect with leads and customers in a number of ways. First, we appeal to and engage potential customers by creating relevant content that’s aligned with the needs of our client’s target audience. Then, we nurture those leads into customers by proving the value of our clients’ products and services. Even after they become customers, we work to create positive customer experiences that make it easy for them to recommend our clients to others.
Services offerings
Here’s a quick breakdown of some the service offerings included in our comprehensive approach to content marketing:
Content strategy
Research has shown that B2B and B2C companies with a documented content strategy in place are more effective than those without one.
At Fronetics, we work with our clients to create a content strategy individualized for their specific situation and needs. We learn about our client’s business, target customers, industry, and competition. We also conduct an audit of current content and digital assets. All of this information is used to create an effective content strategy.
Content creation
There is a lot of content out there. If you want your content to stand out and drive profitable customer action you need quality content. At Fronetics, we create quality content that is keyword-optimized. Also, unlike other firms, we don’t outsource content creation. By keeping all content creation in-house we are able to ensure a quality product.
Lead generation
Once we’ve helped our clients draw visitors to their website, we work to identify potential customers and manage their leads. We create and couple high-value content like white papers and eBooks, with strategic calls-to-action that direct visitors to landing pages expertly designed to convert website visitors into leads.
Lead nurturing and customer acquisition
We work closely with our clients to develop a lead nurturing strategy to convert leads into paying customers using email and marketing automation. By segmenting leads and sending them targeted content designed to catalyze engagement, we help our clients build relationships – and importantly, trust.
Social media
Social media is an incredible tool; however, for it to be effective it must be driven by strategy, be consistent, and must have someone managing the execution. At Fronetics, our social media strategists distribute content, curate content, engage your target audience, and monitor your social networks. We develop a social media strategy that aligns with your company’s goals. We analyze your competition, classify your target audience & cultural attributes, identify the influencers in your industry, recommend platforms, detail best engagement practices, create social media schedules, and identify specific tactics that deliver results. Through the proper execution of social media, your brand is given a voice and personality, and becomes more accessible to your target audience.
Analytics and reporting
At Fronetics we take a comprehensive data driven approach to marketing. Metrics measure success, drive strategy, and demonstrate ROI. We provide our clients with monthly marketing reports.
In short, our content marketing strategies drive success for our clients. The Fronetics team is comprised of strategists, marketing professionals, writers, designers, and experts in social media. Together we leverage our experience to increase brand awareness, position our clients as thought leaders, and drive meaningful engagement with prospects and customers – all with the goal of helping our clients grow.
Get in touch with us today for a free consultation to find out if our retainer services, full or half day workshops, or a personalized service offering is right for your business. See how Fronetics can help your business grow.
