In this article, we’ll show you how to initiate a sales approach with a bottom-up method and why it’s crucial to your sales success.

If you are tired of feeling that you are forcing your product or service onto potential customers and want to build legit and genuine connections, this article is for you.

Why is a Bottom-Up Method the Way to Go?

The top-down approach focuses on selling from the organization’s top, starting with decision-makers. However, this can lead to a lack of connection with the rest of the organization and misunderstandings about their needs and priorities. Conversely, the bottom-up approach involves building relationships from the ground up, starting with lower-level employees and stakeholders.

Collaborating for Success: Building Relationships with Clients

The bottom-up approach builds trust and allows you to collaborate with clients to find the best solution for their business. The bottom-up method also helps you gain a deeper understanding of the client’s organization and operations. This further leads to more effective problem-solving and better business outcomes.

Furthermore, a bottom-up approach enables clients to have a voice and be involved in decision-making. When clients feel valued and heard, they are more likely to return for future business and refer others to your services. This can lead to increased buy-in and satisfaction with the final solution.

You can develop more effective solutions and build stronger client relationships by working collaboratively. Moreover, by working collaboratively with clients, you can better understand their businesses and industry. This approach fosters creativity and innovation, as different perspectives and expertise can be considered.

Generating leads via Cold Email Software to initiate Sales Approach with Bottom Up Method

One of the most significant pain points for businesses is needing more leads to work with. You may have a great product or service, but your business growth can only stall with a steady stream of leads. Cold email marketing software can help you reach out to potential clients in a more personalized and effective way, allowing you to start building relationships with decision-makers from the bottom up.

By identifying the client’s needs and priorities, you can craft a unique value proposition. Thus, tailoring your pitch to meet specific requirements. With cold email software, you can automate sending personalized emails, making connecting with the right people and overcoming objections easier.

Tailoring Your Pitch to Meet Client Needs

Tailoring your pitch to meet client needs is crucial for building a successful business relationship. A bottom-up approach means starting with the client’s needs and making your pitch around them. Here are some steps to follow:

• Research the client: Before meeting the client, research their business and industry. Identify their pain points, goals, and challenges.
• Listen actively: When you meet clients, listen carefully to their needs and concerns. Ask open-ended questions to understand their priorities and goals.
• Identify the benefits: Based on your research and understanding of the client’s needs, identify the benefits that your product or service can provide. Focus on how your solution can help clients solve their problems or achieve their goals.
• Customize your pitch: Use the information you’ve gathered to customize your pitch. Highlight the most relevant benefits to the client and demonstrate how your solution can help them achieve their goals.
• Provide real-world examples of how your solution has helped other clients in similar situations. This helps to build credibility and trust with the client.
• Follow up: After the pitch, follow up with the client to answer any additional questions and address any concerns they may have. This shows that you’re committed to their success and builds trust.

Crafting a Unique Value Proposition

Crafting a Unique Value Proposition (UVP) using a bottom-up approach involves starting with the customer’s needs. Here are the steps to follow:

• Identify your target audience: Begin by understanding your target audience and their specific needs and wants. 
• Analyze the competition: Conduct a competitive analysis to understand what other companies offer and how they position themselves. This will help you identify gaps in the market and areas where you can differentiate yourself.
• List out the benefits: Based on your research, list your product or service’s benefits. Be specific and focus on how your offering uniquely meets your customers’ needs.
• Prioritize the benefits: Prioritize the benefits based on their importance to your target audience. Focus on the benefits that are most important to your customers.
• Create a statement: Using the prioritized benefits, create a statement that summarizes your unique value proposition. This statement communicates the help of your product or service and what sets it apart from the competition.
• Test and refine: Once you have created your UVP, test it with your target audience to see if it resonates with them. Use their feedback to refine and improve your UVP until it accurately reflects your offering and resonates with your customers.

Key Takeaways

Using a bottom-up approach, you can collaborate with clients, build trust, and establish long-term partnerships. By implementing a successful bottom-up approach, you can generate leads, build relationships, and close deals that align with your clients’ needs.

So, if you are looking to create a successful sales approach, consider starting from the bottom up and putting your customers at the center of your strategy.

The post How to Initiate a Sales Approach with a Bottom-Up Method? appeared first on Modern Marketing Partners.

If you’ve ever attended a networking event, you know that sometimes the most interesting and engaging people aren’t always those who are giving presentations. But what if every time someone at the event was presenting, they were as captivating as those who weren’t? Wouldn’t that be an amazing experience for everyone? This article will show you how to make sure your pitch decks live up to this high standard.

1. Know Your Audience

The first thing you need to do is make sure everyone who attends your presentation feels like they truly belong there. One way to accomplish this goal is to know exactly what type of person you’re talking to. When it comes to pitching, knowing the right words that will resonate with each individual can be the difference between a new investor and a missed connection.

2. Know Your Message

Make sure you know why you’re presenting, what you want everyone to get out of it, and how you’re going to deliver that message. If your presentation is strong enough and makes the right connections with the audience, they’ll be more than happy to listen.

3. Keep it Short and Sweet

Is your presentation more than 3 minutes? Start by cutting out all the filler words. Are you using too many slides? Consider eliminating some of them. Slides are great to quickly convey an idea, but if each slide is loaded with text or detailed information, you’re not making the time people spend listening to your presentation worthwhile.

4. Get to the Point

Make sure you get to the main idea of your presentation quickly and focus on only one concept at a time. Make your communication clear, concise, and positive by using language that is familiar and approachable for your audience members.

5. Inspire Your Audience

The best way to keep people engaged is to inspire them with your presentation, so give them lots of positive reasons to take action after hearing it. Pitching requires the right combination of enthusiasm and leadership, so make sure you are an engaging speaker who can clearly convey your message in a concise manner. If anyone leaves your presentation not feeling inspired, then it’s time to start over.

6. Be Yourself

Don’t try to act like someone else. People want you to be yourself, so don’t change who you are just because of a presentation. If you need help being more persuasive and engaging during your presentations, there are professionals out there who can help you get that important message across.

Bonus Tip:

When making the best pitch decks, use Venngage — an online checklist maker and infographic maker that offers a wide range of pitch deck designs for everyone. To give you an idea, here are some pitch deck examples from their website!

The post How to Structure Your Pitch Deck for Maximum Impact appeared first on Modern Marketing Partners.

Anyone who has had the pleasure of delivering a big sales pitch will know how nerve-wracking and rewarding it can be at the same time. There’s a buildup to that big moment where everyone in the room sways toward the idea. The look on the other party’s faces is priceless—those are the moments a salesperson strives for when giving a pitch.

Nowadays, it may be slightly more challenging for some as most meetings take place by digital means. Most sales reps will attest that they’d thrive on human interaction and now have to get used to the impersonal video calling.

If you need some guidance and a few pointers on how to pull off an effective virtual sales pitch, here are some tips to put your best foot forward:

1. Dress Sense And Manners Still Matter

Even though the people on the other end aren’t next to you to look you up and down, first impressions still matter. Dress in your best clothes, smile at everyone, and greet them with your best manners.

Opening your video call like this will make you feel more confident, and the listeners on the other side of the screen will believe it too. Don’t give the audience any reason to shut down before the meeting has even officially started.

2. Make A Friendly Conversation

After the first few awkward hellos, the audience may still need more encouragement to relax on the pitch. Think of incorporating a few fun virtual events for work to break the tension and get all the participants involved.

The more people interact with the pitch and pay attention, the more leverage it could give later on regarding decision time. Making everyone comfortable will ensure that they remain open enough to ask questions, and the salesperson gains more buy-in from everyone attending.

3. Pay Attention To Verbal And Non-Verbal Cues

Salespeople become in tune with the subtle nuances that another person would have in their body language and spoken language. They can quickly pick up when they’ve lost interest in the person they speak to by looking at these two conversation characteristics.

When doing a virtual pitch, a sales rep may have to pay closer attention as the video call doesn’t always reveal the cues they’d typically look for when pitching in person. Also, pay attention to the tone of your voice, word choice, and body language as others may be more adept at noticing this on a virtual platform.

4. Keep It Sweet And Short

Although online or virtual meetings are more convenient, digital fatigue is a genuine concern. Sometimes, the person you’re meeting with has numerous meetings during the day and knows that they need to listen to yet another pitch, and they may lose attention quicker.

Create and give a short pitch, to the point, and wouldn’t give the listener any chance to become disengaged. Don’t stray from the topic too much unless it is to answer a question from the panel.

5. Engage The Whole Audience

A huge misconception among the sales community is that they should only speak to the primary decision-maker. The salesperson would then forget how vital the leverage they could gain from the other members sitting at the meeting. Add content to the PowerPoint presentation that’d appeal to all members, not just the person expected to make the final decision.

If more than one person is in attendance, make sure to deliver the virtual sales pitch to all of them and involve them to gain that much-needed sway in the idea of what’s on the table.

6. Send A Personalized ‘Thank You’

This last step of the virtual sales pitch is the most important. Regardless of the outcome, extend a thank you to each participant. Their time is precious, so they need to hear the gratitude for them listening to what you’re presenting.

After the meeting, perhaps the following day, send an email or message them again to extend your thanks. Doing this will leave the door open for future communications, and it builds trust between the salesperson and their potential client.

Pitching The Main Ideas

Sales meetings could be challenging at their best, but having to do them virtually brings about a whole new set of points to ponder. The main elements of a sales pitch remain the same like dressing for the occasion, remembering manners, and engaging the audience.

Doing these virtually may need more noticing than an in-person meeting, but keeping the message short and to the point is appreciated by all participants. So, put your best foot forward—at the start, during, and after by ending things on a friendly note.

The post How To Pull Off An Effective Virtual Sales Pitch appeared first on Modern Marketing Partners.

Businesses at one point in their cycle will turn their focus on customer experience. Buyers form an important part of a business cycle, and while the production process might be great, it’s the clients that will be the final determinant of how fast your products sell. The benefits that customers offer to any business have led to better firm-client relations and connections. 

A significant way that businesses have turned to for a better customer care experience is journey mapping. These companies are focusing on how to create a map that will give them better insights into their customers’ experiences. The customer journey map helps understand what their customers want, their strengths and weaknesses, and how to bridge the customers’ relations gap. 

Benefits of Experience Mapping

A business that chooses to map the experiences of its customers, stands to benefit in several ways. This is because a map will illustrate how clients perceive your products or your team, and you can improve on these areas and meet their expectations.

Here is a look at how your organization can benefit from customer journey mapping: 

1) Understand Your Customers

Customer experience mapping can help you create buyer personas from the data collected from individual customers. The buyer personas will help you understand your clients and predict possible feelings at every purchase cycle or touchpoint. 

A business that understands the emotions of its customers is more likely to succeed. The journey maps can help you incorporate emotions in your customer services. You can connect with clients in their low moments and take advantage of the delight moments to make your sales. 

2) Take Teams Out of Silos

Different departments in an organization can work in isolation without a common goal and processes. This fragmentation in the organization can lead to fragmentations in the customer experience as some departments will outperform others. This will harm the business in cases where most departments lack the correct information about customer profiles.

However, having a customer map can act as a guiding principle for different departments to work with. All departments will be tasked with ensuring that customer experience is enhanced. They’ll share information and tips on achieving this and even building better customer personas through mixed engagements. 

3) Customer Acquisition and Retention

Customers always expect a smooth experience in whatever channel they use to interact with your business. Customer mapping will help you identify and correct where you may be failing in customer interaction. When you understand how customers feel and see the business through their lens, you may build a long-lasting relationship.

A customer journey map can also help you optimize user experience by reducing friction areas on your website. You can also do predictive analysis on how to appeal to a broader audience using customer feedback.

4) Help Drive Sales

Customer journey maps can help take advantage of predicted customer feelings to enhance the experience during sales cycles. A business that prioritizes customer experience is more likely to retain the customers. The customers can also refer to their friends as people are more likely to follow word of mouth than commercial ads when shopping. 

The maps can also help firms personalize their market strategies such as emails and messages to connect to individuals. A well-researched strategy based on the client’s data is likely to appeal to the particular customer, unlike a generalized message which, in worst-case scenarios, could be offensive. 

5) Improve User Experience

The mapping customer journey can significantly help to improve the user experience in your business. Mapping takes advantage of customer feelings at a particular stage of the business and correcting them upfront. 

Businesses can understand how customers navigate the touchpoints and the difficulties they encounter. They can then solve these problems to ensure clients have an easy time navigating the site. Customers will be more loyal to a business that addresses their issues.

6) Identify Key Issues

Mapping helps your business to identify and solve critical issues affecting your system. When creating user profiles, you can identify low response time, longer loading time on websites, and regular breakups when calling. 

Solving these issues isn’t just beneficial to customers but to the business, too. The business can then update its system to the latest technology. This will improve the effectiveness of your sites and, in turn, customer experience. 

Conclusion

Every business should have strategies to improve customer experience. By adopting the customer experience mapping, a company is placed in a more advantaged position to survive a competitive market. Customer value is likely to beat factors such as pricing in a business cycle as you’ll understand what to do and when to do it. 

Any business that seeks to improve its sales, make and retain customers should look no further than journey mapping. If you’re part of your customer’s journey, they’ll repay it with loyalty, and be part of yours. 

The post 6 Benefits Of Customer Journey Mapping appeared first on Modern Marketing Partners.

And since it’s five times more expensive to acquire new clients than to retain existing ones, sales reps should be ready to meet the needs of their prospects and effectively engage buyers.

What is a sales enablement tool?

Sales enablement tools help automate and measure sales enablement programs. They also make it easier for your company to distribute, access, and leverage customer-facing content. 

These tools provide insight into how the market responds to your marketing efforts. They may comprise information and knowledge that will empower sales teams to sell more of your products efficiently to your clients.  

Top 9 sales enablement tools to empower your sales dep 

Implementing the best solutions offers more benefits than walking in without preparation. In fact, organizations that use sales enablement tools achieve a 35% increase in sales than companies that don’t.

Considering that there’s no tool perfect for all requirements, organizations need to opt for the most appropriate option that will meet their specific goals and demands. Below are some of the best sales enablement tools that will help improve your sales team’s performance.

These tools are categorized into:

• Sales engagement tools
• Sales readiness tools
• Sales asset management tools

Sales engagement tools

To close deals effectively, you need to establish a rapport with your prospects and turn your relationship into a long-lasting one. Luckily, with today’s technological advancement, you don’t need to do it manually, such as sending individual cold emails. Instead, sales engagement tools can automate this process for you: 

Snov.io

Snov.io is an excellent sales prospecting and cold outreach automation toolset. It’s a multipurpose solution that can be used to generate leads and streamline your outreach campaigns. 

It offers multiple email search features, 7-step email verification, email drip campaigns, email tracker, text personalization, and integration with other third-party platforms for instant email export. Some other features include:

• Powerful Chrome extension
• Real-time notifications when your emails are read
• A forever-free plan that gives access to all tools

Guru

Guru is a knowledge management platform that offers a reliable source for sales teams to access on-demand knowledge that will improve their skill set. It allows organizations to empower their sales reps with valuable information, making the sales process easier and reducing the sales cycle’s lifespan.

This platform also makes it easy for companies to create a personalized database that will perfectly fit their needs and improve their performance to meet their bottom line.

Some features it offers:

• Integration with Stack, which helps avoid data loss
• Browser extension

Outreach

Outreach is an email and phone call sequencing tool. It enables sales reps to discover and keep track of their cold email campaigns. It also allows them to add variables to email templates for appropriate personalization before sending them. 

This platform has integration with third-party tools like Salesforce, used by many companies to monitor and organize leads, clients, and contacts. Such integration ensures a more smooth import and export of contacts across both platforms for prospect management to help improve how sales reps work with sales tasks.

Some other features include:

• Chrome extension
• AI-powered machine learning

Sales readiness tools

Sales readiness is the process of making sure your sales representatives have the required skillset and expertise needed for efficient communication. Some of the sales readiness tools that will empower reps to attract leads and improve sales are provided below:

Allbound

This is a SaaS partner relationship management platform that allows companies to have real-time access to marketing and sales enablement resources and tools. It also enables sales reps to develop partner programs that will work throughout the sales funnel, starting from onboarding. 

Allbound features the required functionality for organizing partner relationships on both large, medium, and small scale. It can be easily integrated into HubSpot, which makes it easy to set up new contacts and partner companies.

BrainShark

BrainShark enables organizations to update sales reps on new developments and provide them with the required on-demand training that will improve the onboarding of new customers. It also helps verify readiness and make sure sales teams have access to rich, dynamic content. 

This platform provides innovative insights into sales effectiveness and allows organizations to educate their sales team with updated resources needed to take advantage of any selling condition. The tool is used by thousands of customers, e.g., more than half of Fortune 100, to increase sales performance and obtain better results from every sales campaign.

Sales asset management tools 

These tools help make your sales-specific content more visually appealing. Such assets can include images and presentations. 

CustomShow

This sales and marketing tool combines asset management, slide and presentation creation, and presentation delivery, all integrated into a single cloud app. Organizations widely use it to engage their prospective customers and close more deals. 

CustomShow’s cloud presentation platform helps connect the marketing and sales teams and create an effective marketing channel through its modern sales presentation design. Some of its other features include:

• Analytics
• Web meetings
• Presentation import into the software

Highspot

Highspot is a sales enablement tool that helps organizations empower their sales reps with the right knowledge that will improve customer relationships and drive strategic growth. 

It features an insightful platform that allows you to combine cutting edge content management, customer engagement, training, and useful analytics. Highspot is used by marketing teams to deliver a smooth buying experience that improves customer engagement, retention, and revenue generation.

LevelEleven

LevelEleven is a top performance management system for customer-oriented teams. It’s used for engagement, training, and motivation, which helps improve key behaviors that would generate significant results.

This platform is useful for sales reps to understand company goals and routine, help managers provide training using actionable data, and allow executives to gain insights into their campaigns’ effectiveness. It’s easy to use and features a user-friendly interface. It also makes tracking easy and is an amazing tool for motivating employees.

Wrapping it up

Considering that 71% of sales reps indicate that they don’t have the necessary knowledge and expertise to improve sales or close deals, it begs the need for top sales enablement tools that can improve the effectiveness of the sales department, drive revenue, and improve production workflows. 

Sales enablement tools can help speed up your entire sales process, from organizing documents to monitoring performance metrics and coaching new sales representatives.

The post 8 Sales Enablement Tools To Empower Your Sales Department appeared first on Modern Marketing Partners.

As reported by Crayon in Guide to Competitive Battlecards.

What are Battlecards?

A battlecard is a piece of enablement collateral aimed at helping salespeople overcome competitive threats at any point in the sales process. They are typically created by the team responsible for gathering and analyzing Competitive Intelligence, or by a sales enablement team in conjunction with CI or product marketing team. Here is an example of a battlecard from HubSpot.

What Battlecards Are Not

Most product marketing, competitive intelligence, and sales enablement teams are familiar with competitor profiles, industry/competitive matrices, and other competitive materials. It is important to understand that anything other than a battlecard is typically too in-depth for consumption by sales team.

Why Create Battlecards?

Battlecards can boost competitive win rates by 50-60% (and sometimes more). If that number seems exaggerate, that is because most companies do not take the right approach when they create battlecards. Most sales teams fail to properly adopt battlecards because they are stale, difficult to consume, don’t contain the right intel, or are unhelpful. The best battlecards are not easy to create and maintain, but the results they produce are much more significant.

Steps to Get Started

Identify with competitors to focus on for your first few battlecards

It is important to understand who you are creating battlecards for before beginning creation. You can extend your battlecards to the other teams after you have created a foundation. Then, break down your competitive landscape into tiers of competitors. Start by focusing on one to three of your direct competitors.

Ensure you have the proper mechanisms in place to allow you to measure the impact of your new battlecards once they are in place

Before creating battlecards, make sure you have the proper mechanisms in place to measure their impact. The first step is adding opportunity fields in your CRM that allow sales reps to identify which competitor is present in a deal. Then, add a “loss reason” field as well to ensure you can zero in on deals that were lost to a competitor. Once you have established a competitive win rate benchmark, you will be ready to roll out your battlecards and what your win rate (hopefully) increase.

Begin the process of aggregating any existing intel you already have before embarking on the onerous process of digging up new intel

If your organization has already produced competitor analyses/comparisons/matrices, you are in good shape. If you are not so fortunate, then sales opportunities in your CRM is a good place to start accumulating some competitive intel. Check notes for qualitative information and any checkbox/dropdown fields with present win/loss codes or any similar data. Interviewing a handful of salespeople is also a good way to build a foundation of competitor information.

Creating Battlecards

Battlecards do not need to look flashy as they are an internally-facing piece of collateral.

Sourcing New Intel

There are endless sources from which you can pull valuable competitive insights.

Your competitors’ websites are a great source of information and are valuable sources to track over time. Make sure to read through the content on their website, especially any case studies.

Review sites are another excellent source of information. Positive and negative reviews offer insight into competitors’’ strengths and weaknesses.

Online forms can offer communities focused on topics related to your industry. Search for any mentions of your competition on these sites, as customers tend to be more candid here than other sources of information.

Topics to Include

1. General competitor information (location, employees, etc.)
2. Kill points: list of short statements that will help disqualify competitors early on in deals
3. Landmines: Questions that customers might ask that put your company at a competitive disadvantage
4. Success stories

Now that your battlecard is created, it is time to put it in use. Throughout the process, maintenance, extension across the funnel, and measurement of battlecards ensure continued success. Remember, to keep your battlecard up to date.

The post Battlecards – Key Tool for Improved Win Rates appeared first on Modern Marketing Partners.

Continue reading or consider checking out our lead generation or sales enablement services to grow your pipeline and get a marketing assessment to analyze your current workflows.

1. Page View

What are some of the key pages on your website and what do they tell you about your visitors? You can brainstorm “topic areas” you have on your website and send visitors unique, triggered emails based on their specific interests. Some topic area examples include:

• Industry (ex: manufacturing, distribution, etc.)
• Product content (ex: a specific software you offer, or a certain functionality)
• Prospect validation (ex: viewing your case studies, testimonials, etc.)

After you define some of your key topic areas, you can create a series of emails targeted to those visitors and establish a workflow to send them those emails. Targeted/segmented emails such as below have, on average, a 14.32% higher open rate and a 100.95% higher click rate than non-segment campaigns (WordStream).

In the example below, we are enrolling visitors to our ‘Distribution industry’ page in a workflow that contains a series of 4 emails:

• Email 1 – Do you have any questions? A simple, text-based email asking the visitor if they have any questions on our distribution offering and offering some additional resources.
• Email 2 – A link to a read a distribution blog on our site.
• Email 3 – A link to download a distribution whitepaper on our site.
• Email 4 – A link to a distribution case study on the website with a invitation to request a demo or consultation.

Bonus: you can update contact properties (ex: industry) based on page views too!

2. Downloads or Form Submissions

This workflow uses similar logic to the ‘Page View’ one above. If a visitor downloads something on your website like a guide or whitepaper, demo, attends a webcast, etc., you can establish a series of highly-targeted emails that continues to nurture them with additional content or promotion for future events.

In the example below, the visitor has downloaded our “Guide to Financial Management for CFOs”. From this download, we can make two assumptions about the prospect: 1) they are a CFO or in a finance position, and 2) they are interested in financial management topics/improving their existing finance processes.

• Email 1 – Thank you email. A simple, text-based email asking the visitor if they have any questions on the download, a link to access the download at any time, and offering some additional resources
• Email 2 – An email with a link to an article: 10 Tips For Automating Your Financial Management Processes
• Email 3 – A link to another whitepaper on the site: 2020 Trends all CFOs Need to Know
• Email 4 – A link to a financial management case study on the website with a brief product overview and invitation to request a demo or consultation.

We send the thank you email on a very slight delay, and then delay emails 2-4 for at least 7 days each.

You can take the example above and apply it to nearly any industry, application, or topic. The key is to make the content extremely relevant to the original download!

Now, HubSpot does allow you to setup or schedule follow-up emails directly within the form editor. Within the forms tool, you can schedule up to three follow-up emails (with delays) for a specific form. However, these will all be simple, text-based emails without the full functionality available within the HubSpot drag and drop editor. A couple of other downsides to establishing follow-ups via the form is you won’t have the option to set goals, and therefore, conversions, and add any final automated steps to the end of the email series like updating contact properties.

3. Form Abandonment

Don’t let a form stop your prospects from downloading or consuming your content. After all, you already have their contact information!

If one of your contacts views a page with a form, but does not submit it – you can setup a workflow to email them the content “un-gated”. Be sure to monitor the prospects activity to see if they DO consume the content after being sent the un-gated version.

In the example below, the prospect has viewed our on-demand demo video page but did not fill out the form. We would love for them to watch the demo to move them further down the funnel and don’t want the “intimidating” form to discourage them. Therefore, we sent them an email that contains a link to watch it directly. Even better, you can use an ‘If/Then’ branch to send a followup email based on the action they take (ex: watching/engaging with the content vs. not).

• Email 1 – A simple, text-based email with content similar to: I saw you had interest in a demo.. You can watch it directly at this link: ___.
• Email 2 – A thank you message/followup email sent to those that watch the demo: “Thanks for watching the demo.. if you have any questions, or would like to setup a custom demo..” with a link to some additional resources.

Bonus: enroll a contact in one of your nurture workflows, or update their lifecycle stage based on an action taken in this workflow!

4. Assigning Leads to Your Sales Team for New Contacts

This workflow will vary depending on the size of your sales staff, your qualification process, sales team segmentation, and other factors. The good news is that this workflow is very flexible and can accommodate nearly any sales process. Check out some of the different use cases below to update the contact’s owner automatically.

If you have a 1-person sale team, you can simply assign the lead to that person. Alternatively, we have come across clients where 1 person on the team does the qualification and assignment of new leads. In that scenario, you can also simply assign the lead to that contact, who can then reassign it after they go through their qualification process:

If you have a larger sales team, you may want to rotate the leads between your team members. This workflow will allow you to evenly distribute assignments amongst a team or specific owners. In the example below, we are rotating the leads evenly between our US-based team:

Please note, this functionality will require you to have a Sales Hub Professional or Enterprise or Service Hub Professional or Enterprise account.

And finally, you may want to use some of the information about the prospect to assign to your proper sales team member. For example, if the prospect is located in Illinois, you would want to assign to your sales rep that covers that geographic area. Or, if they are interested in a specific product, you would want to assign it to the sales rep for that product. And so on. Be sure to add a small delay after enrollment to make sure that HubSpot has updated the appropriate field before the if/then branches start working.

5. Setting Lead Status

When someone fills out a form on your website, their lead status is left blank by default. However, the lead status can be such a useful field for segmentation down the line that we would recommend leveraging it. If used correctly, you can ensure your team is contacting new leads or following up on leads that are in progress.

Here is how to set the lead status to “New”:

Now, you can update that lead status to “In Progress” after your sales team has engaged with the lead. This workflow will update the lead status after any activity (email, call, meeting, or note) has occurred on the contact record.

6. Changing Lifecycle Stage

We work with many clients who handle moving contacts through lifecycle stages in HubSpot manually based on their unique sales process. For example, they will move a prospect from ‘Qualify’ to ‘Develop’ after a phone or email conversation takes place. 

However, sometimes larger clients with a larger volume of leads need to handle this automatically in order to ensure their sales team is focusing on the most important leads. In order to achieve this you can use Lead Scoring. In short, lead scoring is when you automatically assign values (scores) to leads based on the actions they take on your website like the amount of times they’ve visited your website, form submissions, number of page views, engagement with emails, and so much more. Stay tuned for our blog post on more tips for setting up lead scoring in HubSpot. 

You can see how some of the actions described previously can indicate how “interested” or “warm” a lead is. Therefore, it is a great metric for moving prospects to a new lifecycle stage or even assigning to a different team.

In the example below, we have switched the lifecycle stage from a marketing qualified lead (MQL) to a sales qualified lead (SQL) after they reach a lead score of 20. Also, we switched the contact owner from a member of the ‘Marketing’ team to the ‘Sales’ team.

7. Nurturing Prospects

In between “lead generation” and closing the sale lies the critical middle ground – where lead nurturing is required to move prospects through the funnel:

• 66% of buyers indicate that “consistent and relevant communication provided by both sales and marketing organizations” is a key influence in choosing a solution provider (Genuis.com)
• 80% of new leads never translate into sales and companies that excel at lead nurturing generate 50% more sales ready leads at a 33% lower cost (Invesp)

And depending on your category (ex: enterprise software, government, etc.) the sales cycle may be longer and require even more touches, making nurturing your leads even more critical. HubSpot can help your team automate this in many ways – check out just two ideas below.

Lifecycle Stage

As part of your nurture strategy, it is important to tailor your content and communications to where prospects are at in your funnel (or their lifecycle stage in HubSpot). Your mission should be to use your content to guide your prospects toward eventual conversion. Intuitively, you can infer what some of those content buckets might look life:

• Top of the funnel (subscriber, lead, marketing qualified lead): educational content like blogs, webinars, guides, videos, etc.
• Middle of the funnel (sales qualified lead): educational content + validation content like case studies, demo videos, product descriptions or data sheets
• Bottom of the funnel (opportunity): educational content + validation content + value proposition content like product-specific information, testimonials, reviews, etc.

In the example below, we are leveraging a HubSpot workflow to automatically enroll contacts in an email series when they move from a MQL to a SQL. There are 10 emails in total, that deliver every 3 weeks. This will ensure they receive a consistent stream of content relevant to their position in the funnel with the aim of moving them to the next stage.

Be sure to update your Unenrollment and suppression settings if you use this type of workflow. In the example above, I would want to remove them from my previous stage workflow (MQL) to ensure they don’t receive emails in that workflow any longer.

Vertical Workflows

Using the same idea or logic as above, you can offer even MORE tailored content to your prospects to move them through your funnel. One great example of this is industry. If you sell a product/software that has multiple industry applications – send them content relevant to their industry!

Like above, we are leveraging a HubSpot workflow to automatically enroll contacts in an email series when they move from a MQL to a SQL. However, we are adding another enrollment criteria – their industry. Again, we created here 10 emails in total, that deliver every 3 weeks. Now, the emails we are sending are not only specific to their position in the funnel but their industry as well. So when we email them about a blog – the topic of the blog is specific to the distribution industry, the case study we send them is specific to the distribution industry, etc.

Make sure to set a goal for these (and all) workflows! In this specific example, my goal would be for the contact property ‘Lifecycle Stage’ to move from SQL to the next stage.

Some other ideas for further segmenting prospects beyond lifecycle stage or industry include:

• Company size
• Job title
• Product line they are interested in

8. Engage Neglected Prospects

Don’t let prospects fall through the cracks! You can create a workflow to remind your sales team to reach out to a contact if it has been a certain amount of time since they’ve last been contacted.

In the example below, we have created a task for a sales team member for them to check in with a prospect if it has been more than 12 weeks since they’ve last been contacted. To ensure the sales team is focusing on “higher priority” leads, we’ve also added additional criteria to ensure the prospects meet our qualification minimums.

Similarly, you could attempt to re-engage inactive contacts with an email about an exclusive offer or discount you are offering. For this, you could use a variety of enrollment criteria such as:

• The length of time since their last website visit (ex: more than 6 months)
• The length of time since their last email click/open
• Etc.

9. Important Internal Notifications/Tasks

Is your sales team using the HubSpot activity feed? If so, they may be already getting a wealth of information like when their prospects perform specific activities like opening/clicking an email, visiting your website, filling out a form, etc. With this (potential) overload of information, it may be possible to miss something.

You can use workflows to setup a notification or create a task when a prospect visits a key page or takes a key action. This can ensure your sales team follows up immediately and doesn’t miss anything.

• Create a task for a HubSpot user
• Send an internal SMS to a HubSpot user
• Send notification (in-app alert or mobile push) to teams or users
• Send internal email

In the example below, we have set up an email notification when a prospect views the demo page:

Be sure that the internal notification email template contains as much important information about the lead as possible to make it even easier for the sales team to follow up – at minimum their first name, last name, company name, phone number, last conversion, and a link to the full contact record.

10. New Customer

When someone moves from a lead to an official customer there are a ton of processes that will now need to start. You can use workflows to handle some of that busy work. Here are some common ones we use:

Add them to your customer list – We like doing this for a couple of reasons. First, data hygiene is critical and it is important to have an updated list of your customers. We use this specific customer list to send important company updates like closures, product updates, and more. Second, we suppress the customer list on a lot of our marketing communications. This is a quick and simple way to ensure customers don’t receive the wrong message.

Update Lead Status – Once a contact becomes a customer you can update their lead status to ‘Closed’ to ensure no other sales people try to follow up.

Update Contact Owner – Now that the sales process is complete you may want to move the owner of the account from the sales person to a member of your customer service team. You can do that using a workflow like below:

Send emails – When a contact becomes a customer a number of processes now need to take place. Depending on your product/service, you may want to send a contract, onboarding email, a series of training emails, or even try to upsell a customer at a later point. All of these scenarios are a possibility with HubSpot workflows – you can send an email (or a series of emails) when a contact becomes a customer.

In the example below, a customer success teams sends an email 6 months after the contact becomes a customer soliciting a testimonial and to provide a satisfaction survey. Then, at the 1 year mark, they send an “anniversary” email thanking them for being a customer, etc.

There you have it! These are just 10 workflows that can set your sales team up for success, while saving time. To measure the success of your workflows, make sure you set a goal for every single one! A workflow goal is the ultimate objective of your contact-based workflow. When an enrolled contact meets the workflow goal criteria, they are automatically unenrolled from the workflow.

Looking for More Leads?

If you need help developing content to support these robust workflows, or optimizing your HubSpot for lead generation or sales, contact us. Or register for a free marketing assessment. Your custom consultation includes a complete marketing assessment, in-depth Website/SEO analysis, and marketing plan recommendations that will help you dramatically increase website traffic quality and quantity, leverage a systematic process for identifying marketing qualified leads (MQLs) and converting to sales qualified leads (SQLs), and more.

The post 10 HubSpot Workflows Every Sales Team Needs appeared first on Modern Marketing Partners.

Fast forward to 2020, more than 100,000 software publishers exist with 1 million projected by 2027 (source:  Forrester). With channel partners often competing with the publishers they represent. To say business software is a competitive market is an understatement. 

With that set-up, sit back and take in some perspective on such thought-provoking questions as:  Why VARs are relevant? How can VARs be more successful? This last question answers the title: Secrets to VAR Sales Success with the Top 10 Marketing Tactics to Improve Lead Generation, followed by several, relevant resources. You can thank us after you take it all in. 

Why VARs are Relevant? 

Our perspective from working in multiple software ecosystems is that while business software is more competitive than ever, VARs are not only relevant, but critical to the success of most business software publishers. No question, publishers can go market directly, through channel partners, or via a hybrid direct/partner sales model. Publishers choose to use channel partners to scale rapidly and gain market share while focusing on technology, development, finance, and corporate marketing. Publishers rely on channel partners for sales, implementation and local marketing. VARS might offer proprietary expertise in a vertical market, or complimentary (software) point solutions that can be integrated with open APIs. Yes, VARs are relevant.

How can VARs be more Successful?

Software ecosystems with channel partners have top resellers and implementation consultants that are killing it. Subscription software is the gift that keeps giving, ala annual renewal profits, which makes for a lot of successful channel partners. Which is also why the number of channel partners continues to grow. But due to increased competition, VAR success is not automatic. In 2020, the ultra-competitive business software market requires more effort. Or more effective efforts. Many previously successful legacy VARs that never did (effective) marketing are no longer successful. And many VAR startups struggle without (effective) marketing.

Telemarketing doesn’t work (decision makers screen with voicemail). Advertising doesn’t work (decision makers consume media electronically). Networking doesn’t work like it used to (more competitors doing the same networking). Sales doesn’t work like it used to (decision makers are deluged with sales calls and communications, no time for entertainment). Safe to say, only a small percentage of VARs are wildly successful.

Modern Marketing Partners (MMP) has the unique perspective of working in multiple software ecosystems. Working with software publishers on corporate marketing, developing channel marketing programs, launching VAR startups that become leading VARs, and providing marketing to large, established VARs and IT service providers of all types. MMP also supports several small, established VARS.

Back to the title of this advisory, Secrets to VAR Sales Success. As you may suspect from a marketing consultant, the secret to VAR sales success is effective marketing. That said, the bridge from marketing to sales success is Lead Generation. So how can VARS improve Lead Generation? No simple answers. Effective Lead Generation requires a combination of marketing tactics, all working together. As mentioned, many traditional marketing and sales tactics no longer work like they used to. So how can VARs do effective marketing to improve lead generation, and ultimately sales?

MMP has all kinds of advice on effective marketing that drives lead generation including content marketing, SEO, event marketing, Micro-Vertical marketing, Paid Search, Account-Based marketing, In-Bound marketing, Digital Marketing Transformation, Thought Leadership Marketing, and more. Get some coffee and see recommended reading below. 

To get to the point, following are the Top 10 Marketing Tactics to Improve Lead Generation that apply to VARs, or any information technology or professional services provider.

Top 10 Marketing Tactics to Improve Lead Generation

1. Website Optimization
2. Content
3. Micro-vertical marketing
4. Prospect R&D
5. Email
6. Awareness Building
7. Paid Search 
8. Social Media
9. Event Marketing
10. Sales Tools

Website Optimization is the foundation to all success! To be competitive in 2020, every website must be mobile, secure (SSL/HTTPS), with both on-page and off-page search engine optimization (SEO). Local SEO is now critical including GMB, citations, and local markup code. SEO is getting more complex, so likely you will require expert assistance. Of course your website should be aesthetically pleasing, with a good user experience (UX), and have great content, the next subject. 

To be successful in 2020, you must publish or perish. That is, Content Marketing is critical. In software, technology and professional services, content should be educational, and have good frequency. Content types include website landing pages, blogs, case studies, white papers, video, infographics, and more. Don’t forget to use Calls-to-Action (CTAs), and put registration forms in-front of really great content (this to elicit a sales lead).

Micro-Vertical Marketing is all the rage in software circles, and works best when the channel partner has developed proprietary processes or Intellectual Property (IP) for a market niche to become the subject matter expert (SME). Check out MMP’s Micro-Vertical Marketing Guide to learn how to execute Micro-Vertical Marketing.

To get leads in 2020, every marketer and salesperson should be constantly researching and identifying prospective customers. Prospect R&D for short. Today there are many sources for doing just that including LinkedIn Sales Navigator, online databases, associations, and trade magazines.

Prospect identification supports our next tactic, email. As websites are foundational to marketing, email lists are critical to effective email. Lists must be accurate and verified to ensure high deliverability. Tools like Hunter and Email Verifier are recommended. Ideally lists are segmented with relevant codes, and support personalization. As email open and click-thru rates (CTRs) decline over time (due to end user fatigue and spam blocking), lists must be larger to achieve results. Email service providers (ESPs), CRM and marketing automation software have good features and reporting that help marketers nurture prospects or marketing qualified leads (MQLs) through the sales cycle, and identify sales qualified leads (SQLs) based on actions. Email Tip: post-campaign click-thru reports are Lead-Gen Gold! 

In 2020, the aforementioned digital marketing can achieve lead generation, but software is an expensive purchase, so prospects will be risk-averse with channel partners that they have never heard of. Building brand awareness is important. Most large firms enjoy brand awareness. Other firms have to work on it using publicity, advertising, sponsorships, and speaking engagements, and more. Supporting and participating with a local, regional or national cause can bring awareness to your firm.

Achieving organic (free or natural) search authority is complex and takes time. New and small websites are at a disadvantage compared to mature (domain age is a search ranking factor), and large websites. Paid search is a way to rank in top positions of a search engine results page (SERP), before you can rank organically. Such positions are typically pay-per-click (PPC), but other paid search options include remarketing and display advertising. That said, software and IT services are very competitive, often competing with the publisher for both paid and organic rankings. Cost-per-Click (CPC) will likely be expensive, so often paid search is used only until organic (ranking for keywords) can be achieved. On the positive, PPC provides robust reporting, so campaigns can be optimized, and sales conversions measured.

Social Media is a critical element of both marketing and sales initiatives. Lets start with social media marketing. Your brand will require LinkedIn, YouTube, Facebook, and Twitter. LinkedIn includes company page, optimized personal page, possibly LinkedIn Groups, and SlideShare which integrates with personal profiles. YouTube is owned by Google and has been called the second biggest search engine. YouTube video descriptions is meta code that ranks high in search results. Tip: Have a YouTube video(s) for every, important keyword. Use YouTube videos on website landing pages, emails and more via embed codes. Facebook Business pages are a must have, and Twitter can reach audiences the other social networks cannot. Heard of Social Selling? Sales and all customer-facing staff can augment and piggyback off corporate social media, and use LinkedIn to target individual decision makers for the aforementioned Prospect R&D, along with direct outreach.

Event Marketing can be effective in driving lead generation if done effectively. Whether live events or webcasts, events can be successful if the topic is interesting, and real customers or peers are used (not just the vendor). Event marketing can include sponsoring an association or trade show event with speaking or networking opportunities. Live events can include entertainment aspects, but should still include a presentation. Regardless of event type, each require time to execute multi-channel promotion and recruitment. For more details, check out the MMP Event Marketing Checklist.

All this high-powered marketing will generate sales leads that will result in sales presentations, proposals, and ideally contracts. Sales Tools are required to manage this process including CRM software, Marketing Automation, lead management, presentation decks, and more. Channel partners must manage contact and registration form submissions quickly, ideally being the first to talk to a prospect that has a software requirement. Other sources of leads include email click-thru reports, IP tracking, LiveChat, and more.

Beyond the Top 10 Lead Generation Tactics, please consider other “advanced marketing wizardry” that includes more strategic marketing that can differentiate channel partners from competitors.  Thought Leadership Marketing is another approach that can involve copious amounts of content, ideally branded as a educational entity that is sponsored by the brand. SAP sponsors the Digitalist Magazine, while New York VAR MIBAR.net sponsors the Business Software Education Center. (See Thought Leadership Marketing Guide in Recommended Reading below). Finally, Account-Based Marketing (ABM) is a hot topic for marketing and selling to large enterprises. (See ABM Marketing in Recommended Reading below)

More Secrets and Some Nuances to VAR Sales Success

Extreme competition has changed the landscape for Value-Added Resellers (VARs) and channel partners. Prospect identification is critical, and often a race to “register the lead” with software publishers before a competitor registers.

A discussion about software sales would be incomplete without considering  Marketing Qualified Leads (MQLs), Sales Qualified Leads (SQLs), and conversion rates that can be predicted within each software ecosystem based on average sales price, competitive and economic environment, and other factors. Check out Lead Conversion Rates for Software for more information. Finally, average sales cycle (length) should be considered. Generally, the higher the price tag, the longer the sales cycle with 100+ days common.

The future is bright for VARs and channel partners to achieve extraordinary sales success, but only if marketing becomes a top priority, and effective, ongoing marketing implementation is accomplished. A shake-out awaits channel partners that do not invest adequately in marketing excellence.

Learn more about our software marketing services, or request a free marketing assessment at the link below.

Recommended Reading:

25 Lead Generation Tips and Types (MMP)

Software Marketing Guide (MMP)

Thought Leadership Marketing Guide (MMP)

Top Account-Based Marketing Marketing Tools and Tactics (MMP)

The post Secrets to VAR Sales Success appeared first on Modern Marketing Partners.

So what is lead generation, and how can you improve or maximize lead generation?

Great questions! To answer, Modern Marketing Partners (MMP) will share a Definition of Lead Generation, along with some insight into the differences between Marketing Qualified Leads (MQLs), and Sales Qualified Leads (SQLs). Then, per the title, MMP will provide a list of 25 Lead Generation Types, along with corresponding tips that you can apply to achieve maximum lead generation effectiveness.

Lead Generation Definition

Fundamentally, Lead Generation is defined as the action or process of identifying and cultivating prospective customers (prospects) for a business’s products or services. There are some related terms including Demand Generation and Customer Acquisition that may have some differences, but for now lets drill deeper into two key Lead Generation sub-categories:  Marketing Qualified Leads (MQLs), and Sales Qualified Leads (SQLs).   

Marketing Qualified Leads or MQLs are defined as individual contacts that can be identified, and that fit a profile or persona of the ideal prospect. For B2B scenarios, MQLs might be industry, company size (revenue or employees), title or department, and geographic location. For B2C scenarios, MQLs might be demographic or psychographic profiles or personas (age, gender, interests, geographic, etc.) 

In contrast, Sales Qualified Leads or SQLs or Opportunities begin as MQLs and are converted to SQLs with some type or level of qualification. A popular sales qualification is BANT, an acronym for Budget, Authority, Need, and Timing. Intuitively, BANT qualification requires a conversation, interview, or meetings with the “MQL” (prospect) to determine SQL status.

SQLs of course are closer to becoming customers, and are more valuable than MQLs. Typically, marketers identify and measure conversion rates of MQLs to SQLs, and ultimately, SQL conversions to sales or closed deals. For more information on conversion rate, check our our Lead Conversion Rates blog here. Marketing Automation tools or software measure conversion rates and/or “score” leads based on actions or qualifications, which “trigger” different communications, e.g. nurture email campaigns. 

So without further ado, following are 25 Lead Generation Types and Tips! (listed from most basic to advanced)

25 Lead Generation Types and Tips

1. Inbound telephone calls: make your telephone number prominent in website header and footer; use a toll-free number with memorable word references (e.g. 800-Law-Easy)
2. Outbound Telemarketing: no question telemarketing might be less effective than before; but opportunities are plentiful including calling lost or dormant customers, identifying and calling other customer locations, identifying and calling multiple decision-makers at a particular company (dialing for dollars)
3. LinkedIn Connections: connecting with relevant contacts on LinkedIn is an easy way to start a conversation; once connected you can obtain the contacts email address from their profile’s Contact Info
4. LinkedIn Sales Navigator: for a modest monthly fee, upgrade your free LinkedIn profile to Sales Navigator, a tool that allows more robust searches, list exports, and other lead generation features
5. LinkedIn Groups: join/start/manage a specialized LinkedIn Group to access group member contact info; participate in Group discussions with offers and links
6. Website Contact Information: make Contact information (telephone, email, Contact page) prominent including website header and footer
7. Website Registration Forms: use website forms liberally, balance required information fields and optional information fields to minimize form abandonment, use email privacy statements and Captcha, integrate with CRM systems when applicable
8. Website Gated Content: offer valuable, educational resources with the aforementioned registration forms in front of including guides, white papers, how-to-manuals, e-books, podcasts, etc. 
9. Website Resources Page: offer Resources in primary navigation with videos, guides, white papers, training tools with the aforementioned registration forms
10. Use Calls-To-Action (CTAs): use multiple offers or calls-to-action throughout your website, emails, blogs, and related assets; CTA examples include email registrations, educational content, event registrations, and promotional offers
11. Publish Case Studies: case studies are a magnet for prospects, so apply liberally; we recommend not gating case studies, with other calls-to-action to capture MQLs
12. Publish a Study: conduct a survey or study, and create a professional report that can be gated and added to the aforementioned Resources page, offered as a download, and promoted across channels; data-mine survey respondents for our next tactic
13. Email Lists:  in the USA email is still a great lead generation tactic, so internally build email lists via inbound calls, website registrations, the aforementioned LinkedIn options, along with ongoing research and data-mining; externally use databases like Hoovers and D&B, identify list brokers, member associations, trade show lists; use www.emailverifier.com to verify email addresses
14. Email Campaign Best Practices: most brands target multiple profiles or personas, likewise emails should target specific profiles (one-size-does-not-fit-all); next personalize emails with the recipient’s and/or company name; optimize subject lines via short, provocative “hooks”, with a strong sense of urgency, e.g. Register Today; (experiment with a free tool:  www.subjectline.com); email design should include 1-3 topics with brief summaries and “Read More” links or buttons, along with specific CTAs with buttons that go to your website for tracking purposes; resend emails to non-opens with a slightly different subject line
15. Email Follow-Up:  all email service providers (ESPs), Marketing Automation or CRM systems have great email campaign metrics including Opens and Click-Thru reports; MMP recommends telephoning email recipients that had multiple opens or click-thrus as a fast way to identifying SQLs
16. Webcasts: produce a webcast on an interesting subject; get a high-profile customer to be a panelist to attract other customers; promote via PR, blog, social, even PPC; record the webcast to use as on-demand video; data-mine webcast registrants to add to email lists or telemarketing
17. Trade Show Contest: when attending or exhibiting at a live event or trade show, use contests to gather sales leads; something as simple as a fishbowl business card drop to receive a premium or “Tchotchke”; or games (putting contest, roulette wheel, etc.) to participate in a daily drawing for something valuable (drones are big now)
18. Referral program: establish a referral program with new or top customers, business partners, even employees; offer incentives for referrals including gift cards or commissions, if applicable
19. Website Optimization (WO): make sure your website is mobile/responsive, secure (SSL/HTTPS), with “trust” features including Privacy Policy, Terms and Conditions, Cookies Policy, ad GDPR and trust certifications, if applicable
20. Search Engine Optimization (SEO): lead generation is a fraction of website traffic, and traffic is influenced by SEO (and many other tactics); so perfect SEO with available and mostly free tools including the MMP SEO Guide, Google My Business and other Local Citations 
21. Chatbots or Live Chat: we highly recommend adding to all websites, assign staff to follow-up questions quickly, or employ AI answers; check out Live Chat comparisons
22. IP tracking: there are several solutions that can identify the high percentage of anonymous visitors to your website via thru identification of company IP addresses, and corresponding contact information for key titles or roles; check out Resources below for more information on IP Tracking
23. Offer a Free Tool: depending on your business, offer a Free Assessment, a Cost Calculator, or a report to qualified prospects in exchange for registration information; for example, check out our tool: MMP Free Website Audit
24. Paid Advertising: digital advertising or paid search includes pay-per-click (PPC) including Google AdWords, Remarketing, and display advertising; Social Media Advertising includes Facebook ads, LinkedIn ads, and more
25. Syndicated Content: many industries have content syndicators that will publish your guide, ebook, blog, etc., for a fee or even free; payers then receive corresponding registrations or sales leads; see Relevant Resources below for a list of content syndication platforms

Lead Generation Should be a Primary Objective of All Marketing Efforts

No question these 25 Lead Generation Types are just the tip of the iceberg. Check out the Resources below for more. If you have Lead Generation Type or Tip, please share via the Comment tool below.

In the end, Lead Generation is the primary objective of marketing, and ultimately supports sales, contracts, and new customer acquisition. Lead Generation is also the bridge between marketing and sales. And is often accompanied by other tools like Customer Relationship management (CRM) software, Marketing Automation software, or Lead Management software. 

You are likely implementing many of these Lead Generation tactics. Consider adding some other tactics, and don’t forget to measure and report MQLs, SQLs, and the golden ring, sales conversions.  

Relevant Lead Generation Resources 

61 B2B Lead Generation Strategies and Tactics for 2019

Lead Conversion Rates for Software

16 Content Syndication Networks and Platforms That You Need to Know in 2018

Align Marketing and Sales Initiatives to Drive Success

Lead Generation Through Landing Page Development

IP Lead Tracking – Just the Facts

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A successful sell sheet speaks directly to the end-user and moves beyond just citing the purpose and features of your product or service to positioning it in the eyes of the consumer. It showcases your idea in a cost-effective manner and acts like a billboard for something new and exciting. If thought through and designed properly, a sell sheet will walk a potential licensee through the most important points they need to know, optimizing the impact of your product’s benefits by presenting them in the right order. It’s all about great copy and great structure.

Here are 7 Sell Sheet tactics that you can rely on to increase awareness and get your product noticed:

1. Keep it to 8 ½ X 11. Design your sell sheet on a crisp 8 ½ X11 four-color, stock sheet and keep it flat, not folded.
2. Create a compelling tagline or benefit statement. This needs to highlight the main benefit of your offering to the consumer. It should be short in length such as 12-15 words. In a very succinct way it must convey to customers why they would want to purchase your product or service.
3. Include a top-notch photo or virtual photo. Put the image you’ve created right at the top of the sheet with your benefit statement. A color photo or virtual photo should be used as it is often the focal point of your sell sheet. If you have a prototype consider having a 3D digital rendering done to really make your product or service come to life.
4. Develop a brief product/service overview. In two or three paragraphs at the most, explain further what problem(s) your product or service solves and how customers will benefit from using it. You have to clearly communicate the intentions of your new offering because your sheet offers limited real estate. Remember, you are trying to show what pain points your product resolves for someone. The best benefits can be included as bullet points in this section.
5. Offer testimonials. You’re looking for a few good quotes from people who have used your product or prototype and that relay its best qualities. Use their real names and cities. Testimonials are powerful because they are viewed as more authentic than “company copy.” They are a highly effective form of social proof. If your product is in the very early stages, even a quote from a potential customer stating they can’t wait to begin using it will work.
6. Link to your product/service video. Video content is really appealing to consumers today. If you have created a video showcasing the benefits of your product, include the link on your sell sheet. The video needs to be in a short format due to people’s short attention spans, but can be highly effective as an additional marketing tactic to help gain further exposure for your product or service.
7. Include your logo and a call to action (CTA). Starting out, you don’t have huge name recognition like some brands. So don’t splash your logo across the whole top of your sell sheet, but remember to display it at an appropriate size along with your contact information. Also, remember to create an effective CTA that generates urgency and allows people to call or go to a landing page. Lastly, if you have filed a provisional or non-provisional patent application, include the wording “patent pending” at the bottom of the sheet.

Your sell sheet requires thought and hard work because you need it to work hard for you. Contact us for help designing your next sell sheet. Modern Marketing Partners will help you develop a convincing sell sheet that generates interest and opens new doors for you. Get ready for great success.

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