Success in sales is a combination of the quantity of calls you make, and the effectiveness of each call. The reason we hire more reps is because we want to get a higher quantity of calls. The reason we train with coaches is because we want to get better quality of calls.
Surprisingly, although sales people have more time now to do more calls, the quantity of calls has gone down. This is likely due to “call avoidance.” Sales reps are reluctant to make those calls for a number of reasons – they have to shift from actually dropping in and seeing people, to interacting with people over the phone; they also now have a greater amount of customer frustration to face when making the call, which can be hard to deal with.
Being a sales leader means having to make difficult decisions and managing sales force changes.
Proactively Managing Performance: Points to ponder
Have you consciously held back on managing performance in the first 6 months of COVID?
Are your sales reps exceeding their Key Performance Indicators? How do you know?
Steven’s 5-point approach to Proactively Managing Performance:
It is important to review results and activities.
ACTIVITY drives RESULT.
That’s why management is critical in making sure the right activities are being done. Then, looking forward, set some time to look at your Key Performance Indicators and sales results to see if your reps are on track, and how you can help them.
Performance management is the act of inspecting what you expect. And if you don’t do that, then people don’t respect it.
Even with the progress of a possible vaccine on the horizon, we need to face the reality that this may be the new normal for a while. With that, we need to plan for a full year of COVID in 2021. Instead of setting your budgets based on 2019, base it on 2020, assuming that Covid is going to be around for the rest of next year.
With that in mind, here are some tips:
Set realistic objectives
Align your strategies and tactics with selling virtually
Be clear on which activities your team needs to execute and how you are going to measure them
Have a look at your resources
Consider putting a change management plan in place to help your team evolve if they continue to struggle
What will the post COVID world look like?
Even after this pandemic passes, it’s clear that we are not going back to 2019.
Here are the things that Steven predicts will change in the following year:
You will be challenged on your sales structure and the size of your sales force. Be prepared to answer questions on what your sales reps are doing.
Adapting to a blended approach to selling. This means there will be a lesser amount of face-to-face interaction and more virtual selling. This involves using email systems like SalesNexus, conducting virtual calls, attending online events, making phone calls, and looking at our interactions with customers as a series of events – not just one-offs.
Digital marketing will become a more important part of our communication and engagement of customers because it is more challenging to engage online.
The Sales Leadership Blueprint
Focus: Nurturing a Winning Mindset
“Whether you think you can or you can’t, you’re right” – Henry Ford The mind is a very powerful force. In sales, the majority of the battle comes down to mindset. Research shows that our brains are wired to hate uncertainty. This year in itself has been filled with uncertainty, and we’re going into the next year with those same uncertainties. Our brain also overestimates the threat, and underestimates our ability to solve the problem or to do it.
leadership
So what we need to do is REBOOT.
As a leader, you need to make sure you have a winning mindset. You also have to help your team develop their own winning mindset.
The Power of Mindset: The Tale of Two Reps
As a leader, your role is to have that winning mindset and make sure that your team has it too. In this changed world filled with uncertainty, those who carry a winning mindset are making more effective calls, are more capable of helping their customers, and are ultimately finding ways to succeed in a new selling environment.
Transforming your sales reps’ mindset from an Eeyore mindset to a Tigger Mindset will lead to success.
Get into the Tigger mindset with small practices that reinforce positivity. Examples of this are smiling when you dial, raising your arms up in victory, celebrating your wins (no matter how small), resetting or recharging when necessary, and putting your wins on your board. These are all implementable things you can teach to your reps, you want your team engaged and thinking: “I can do this!”
As a leader, your role is to have that winning mindset and make sure that your team has it too. In this changed world filled with uncertainty, those who carry a winning mindset are making more effective calls, are more capable of helping their customers, and are ultimately finding ways to succeed in a new selling environment.
The last step to completing your campaign is scheduling it to go out. Once that is finalized, you can sit back as our system automatically sends the emails out for you. All you have to do is wait to see the results and make any necessary adjustments before sending out your next one.
Follow these easy steps to get this done quickly. You can also download the Email Campaign Creation Guide for free for more information.
Scheduling the campaign is where you set the day and time for your email campaign to begin. It also determines which contacts the campaign will be applied to.
You can first perform a lookup by going to Contacts > Create Lookup. Once you have the list you want, click the Make this My Lookup button on the search results page.
Now go to Campaigns > Add to Campaign. Then, follow these steps:
Select the campaign by typing its name in the search bar at top.
Select the Start Date. This starts 0 days after the start date will be scheduled. All other steps will be scheduled as Start Date + # of days after the start date.
Select the time. Mornings are generally best for B2B.
Choose which contacts will be added to this campaign.\
Lookup (#) – if you’ve performed a lookup previously, this will select that list to add to the campaign.
Current Contact – this will add only the contact you were viewing prior to selecting Add to Campaign.
Group – you can choose a previously created group of contacts.
Double check everything! You can click the VIEW button next to the email template names to check that template to be sure it’s perfect.
Click Add to Campaign.
Click Yes – the system gives you a confirmation notice and one last chance to abort the process.
That’s it! Your campaign is scheduled and the emails will be sent automatically on the schedule date(s).
Any calls or todo’s will appear on the task list of the appropriate user.
Measure and Optimize
Set goals for your campaign so you have a measuring stick to compare to.
First, be sure your expectations are realistic. Here are the general Email Marketing benchmarks to expect:
Open Rate: 10 to 20% of the original list sent to.
Conversions: (meaning form submissions on your site) 5 to 20% of the clicks.
How Many Conversations?
“Connection” rates will be similar to those you see in your general calling efforts to your audience or customers. If you’re calling clickers AND you’re calling them quickly, you should expect connection rates to improve by 25 to 50%.
Make sure you’ve planned out exactly how your team will designate that a call was made and what the results were.
How Many Qualified Opportunities?
Of course, this will depend entirely on your audience and your offer but, for starters assume you’ll achieve a similar rate to your other most common marketing tactics.
Be sure you’ve planned out HOW you’ll identify the qualified leads or opportunities that came from your email campaign.
Measuring in SalesNexus
It’s easy to measure Opens and Clicks in SalesNexus by going to View Campaigns.
Once you’ve drilled into the analytics for a specific campaign, you can then easily view lists of recipients that Opened or Clicked or Opted-Out and then take those lists and perform additional analysis.
So, a simple way to track all of the metrics above is to designate one field in SalesNexus where your team will designate the disposition of the lead once they’ve talked to them. That way you can easily grab the list of clickers and then sort it by the disposition field, sales rep, etc.
If you’re goal is to get readers to fill out a form on your site, connect the form to SalesNexus using the Lead Capture feature and when the form is submitted, SalesNexus will update the existing contact already in SalesNexus (matching by email address) and you’ll be able to track clicks, form submissions and disposition.
Optimizing
If you’re measuring the process as above, making adjustments to improve results is simple.
Open Rate – Benchmark is 10 to 20%. If it’s lower, then try a different subject line. Click Rate – Benchmark is 1 to 2% (of the entire list sent to, or 10% of the opens) – if it’s lower, then your email did not resonate with the audience.
Some things to consider: If your open rate was low, then the click rate can be statistically insignificant
Don’t get too worried about the email itself yet.
Most often, a low click rate means you failed to get the message across to the audience quickly enough.
In the 2 or 3 seconds they took to glance at your email, they couldn’t see a reason to click. Try to make it shorter and emphasize how the reader will benefit from the content.
Your subject line may be attracting people for reasons that don’t align with the message in your email. In other words, when they open the email, they don’t see what the subject line led them to expect. It’s hard to know how readers will interpret your subject line so, sometimes it’s best to just rephrase things using different words.
Read additional tips on Writing Good Email Subject Lines here. The problem may be with your list, not the emails. Depending on how you built your list, they just may not be in your sweet spot. If you’re able to subdivide your list into very specific groups based on industry, title, application of the product, etc. you can create campaigns that are more specific to each specific audience.
Download our Email Campaign Creation Guide for more details and examples on creating and sending out successful email campaigns.
Once you’ve got your emails sorted, sending them out into the world is easy! First, create the campaign in our system and then schedule when each email should go out. Then, sit back and let our automated sales system send them out for you. Additionally, you can use our system to manage other tasks like forwarding text messages, making calls, setting up to-dos, and more!
Learn how you can succeed in creating successful email campaigns by downloading our FREE Email Campaign Creation Guide:
The lookup (the list of contacts you’ll send the campaign to)
These are all independent in SalesNexus so that you can use the same email template in multiple campaigns and you can add several different lookups (groups or lists of contacts) to a campaign over time.
Create your campaign with these simple steps:
To get started, go to Campaigns > Create Campaign.
Enter a name for your campaign. This is how you’ll find the analytics in the future.
Add steps to your campaign. Under ADD leave EMAIL as the selection unless you want to add a call or todo. Then click ADD.
Choose the From Address:
Any User – Indicates that all emails will come from the email address in that user’s My Record.
Current User – Uses the email in the My Record of the user that schedules the campaign, when adding a lookup to the campaign.
Contacts Record Manager – Ensures that each recipient gets the email From the Record Manager (usually the sales person) for that contact.
Choose the # of days after the start date. Usually 0 for a single email campaign. If your campaign will have multiple steps, this is how you define when each step happens in the overall sequence.
Turn on notifications – SalesNexus will track opens and clicks even if these options are turned off. Open Notifications and Click Notifications will place a Click Notification task on the Task List of the user who the email was sent From, for any contact that has either an open or click on this email. Email Click Notifications will send that user an email notification of the click for each contact that clicks on that email.
Enter your subject line. Make sure it will get your audience’s attention.
Choose the template. Simply type the template name in the search box and choose among your created email templates
Click Save.
Repeat this process for as many different steps as you need in the campaign.
For more detailed examples on how to create and send out successful email campaigns, download the Email Campaign Creation Guide for FREE!
Now that you have your emails ready, all you have to do is sequence and schedule them in your email campaign. Here are a few things to consider in planning the sequence of your emails and following up on them.
For more on how you can succeed in creating successful email campaigns, download our FREE Email Campaign Creation Guide:
Especially when targeting an audience that’s unfamiliar with you, each email they see in their inbox is a branding impression. Therefore, it can increase the chances of a response to the next one.
It’s simple math. If you have 1,000 on your list and send them one email to get 20 or 30 responses, then sending 2 emails should get you 40 or 60.
How often should you send out emails?
Space out the sequence depending on your relationship.
If they don’t know you, once a week is a good place to start. If they have already purchased something or just requested info, then a few times a week is fine.
Plan Out the Follow Up Steps
How will you handle the positive responses? Do you call the people that watch your video or send them another email asking for an appointment?
If you’re expecting readers to fill out a form on your site, how will you ensure they all get the response you want? Create a separate campaign to ensure consistent and automated outreach to these responses to your first campaign.
Sending readers to a landing page to complete a form.
Redirecting readers to your site to read a blog
Hoping readers will eventually call you
Expecting readers to fill out your “contact us” form. Be ready for a very low overall “response” rate.
1 to 2% of recipients will click on the link in the email to go to your site. Only 5 or 10% of those visitors will actually fill out your form or contact you.
So, unless you have a really big list, you’ll only have a couple of leads to follow up on.
That’s why calling “clickers” can be a very effective strategy.
In other words, you call everyone that clicks on the link in the email, regardless of whether they take further action on your website.
This strategy can transform the drudgery of cold calling hundreds of contacts into a far more productive “warm calling” program. This is because you already know what’s on their mind. They read your email, responded to the pain, and took the further action of clicking to engage with your content. Especially for a business audience, this is a very strong indication of need or interest.
So, when you call, you don’t have to bother with the normal cold calling script that we’ve all heard too many times. You just get to the point…
“Sally, this is Bob with YourCo, I noticed you took a look at our article on”
This approach works consistently but, only if you call QUICKLY.
Consider the email reading environment that you’re competing in. Your readers are processing through hundreds of emails a day. If you wait even a day or two to call, they may not even remember your email.
However, if you call that same day, they almost always will remember and respond with some feedback. If you call within an hour or two, it will be an extremely “warm” call.
They may still be on your website! They’re certainly still processing what they’ve read or learned. With SalesNexus, you can make it very easy for salespeople to know instantly when a reader clicks, so they can call them quickly!
Download the Email Campaign Creation Guide for FREE for more information on how to create effective email campaigns!
Now it’s time to write the emails for your campaigns, but where do you start? We’ve got the formula and some useful tips to keep in mind before hitting that send button. Read more about it here, and download our Email Campaign Creation Guide for free for more details and examples.
Avoid trying to create the perfect email on your first attempt.
The idea is to get your first email sent so the results can tell you what to do next. The biggest killer of email marketing success is spending days and weeks creating a beautiful email that everyone on your team just loves but, no customers respond to when you finally send it out.
Consider your reading process when checking your email. When there’s inbox full of messages to compete with, you’ve got to get their attention and get to the point.
The formula is essentially:
Are you looking for answers to this problem/challenge?
If so, we thought you’d find this interesting! (offer some helpful content)
Sign off and provide your contact information
You may offer up some other solutions and links to your website or social media. However, this has to be secondary in terms of the organization and design of the message.
Here’s a template to use for your emails
Salutation – (use a mail merge field here to personalize it) Pain Question: – Do you have this pain? – Are you struggling with this pain? – Is this pain keeping you up at night? (Replace “this pain” with the specific pain your content piece addresses for your customers) Offered Content: – You might enjoy this article. – Download our step by step guide. – Watch this short video. – See how (company) fixed the pain (here you link to your website, video, pdf or other content) Post Sell – add a sentence or two (no more!) that describes how the reader will benefit from your content. Signature – mail merge in your name, phone and other contact details.
The All Important SUBJECT Line
If your subject line doesn’t get the recipient’s attention, your email is deleted before it’s even seen. When you consider that we’re only expecting 1 or 2% of recipients to click on the email, if you don’t get the subject line right, what’s in the email itself doesn’t matter at all. Don’t make this an afterthought and plan to test a few variations.
Keep it short – on a mobile device, you’ve got about 25 characters to work with. Less is more.
Don’t waste space with your company name or product name.
Make sure the subject line appeals to the customer’s pain.
Avoid words like Free, Discount, Special, Offer, etc.
Use words like Help, Fix, Stop, Upgrade, etc.
Think about this – How will the reader’s life improve by opening your email?
Mail merge – mail merge the recipient’s first name or company name into the subject. This makes sure it stands out.
Learn more about Writing Good Email Subject Lines here!
Avoid these Mistakes
Talking about yourself.
Talking about your company
Talking about your product.
Too much text.
Not mobile friendly. 50% of your emails will be read on a mobile phone. You have even less room for being verbose.
Keep it SUPER short and to the point. Make sure graphics don’t push the actual message off the screen.
Download the Email Campaign Creation Guide for FREE for more information on how to create effective email campaigns!
Boost your email campaign with valuable original content, and useful related content. To help you with the daunting task of content creation we have come up with the Email Campaign Creation Guide, which you can get here – for FREE!
At SalesNexus, we’ve helped thousands of businesses succeed with email marketing. Over the past 16 years we’ve learned a lot about what works and what doesn’t. Here are some of the tips and tricks to crafting effective email campaigns
Identify Related Content
Remember, this is NOT your product or service.
This is something your audience will benefit from even if they don’t do business with you or sign up for your event.
The most effective options depend on where you are in the relationship with your customer.
If the customer has never heard of you, use resources from recognized experts that HAVE heard of.
If it’s a long time customer that has already purchased a product from you, then a free instruction manual could work.
Keep in mind that in general, video gets 2x the response that written material gets.
This step is where new email marketers often get stuck because it can seem so overwhelming. You’ve identified some compelling “pains” and you have LOTS of great advice about how to address those pains. However, you may not have great looking videos or PDFs or web pages that communicate those solutions.
And you’re probably not a copywriter or graphic designer.
Warning
Slowing or stopping the process in order to create some beautiful content that you’re going to love for the next 3 years is completely counterproductive.
Sure, it would be great to have that beautiful content, but what you THINK customers want and what they ACTUALLY want are usually two different things.
Remember that our initial goal is to send our first email or two and let the results tell us where to invest our time and resources.
Easy Content Ideas
Make a chart of Customer Pains, Solutions to each Pain, Content Related to the Solution.
Start with content you already have. Don’t worry about whether it’s perfect. Just inventory what you’ve got available. Include pages on your website, blog posts, PDFs, videos, surveys, reports, statistics, case studies, customer stories, etc.
Now do some research to find high quality content available from other sources. Youtube is a great place to look. Industry associations, technical journals, major media websites, even recommended books can all be great.
You can use other people’s content in your email marketing!
More on finding content for your email campaigns here.
Don’t Let “Perfect” be the Enemy of “Good”
Our goal is to offer helpful content to your audience and build trust and to start testing and measuring ASAP. Creating awesome content takes a lot of time and money. Plus, often connecting yourself with industry experts only adds to the credibility of your brand and your messages.
Remember, you’re not violating any copyrights, etc.
Your email is going to point to this material wherever it is already published. Just try to avoid content offered by your competitors.
Don’t worry that your emails are not directing readers to your website. Just getting the reader to click on the email identifies them in SalesNexus so that you can follow up with calls or additional emails.
Download the Email Campaign Creation Guide for FREE for more information on how to create effective email campaigns!
As you create your email campaign, make sure you are focused on your customer and how your product/services can benefit them. To help you with the daunting task of content creation we have come up with the Email Campaign Creation Guide, which you can get here – for FREE!
At SalesNexus, we’ve helped thousands of businesses succeed with email marketing. Over the past 16 years we’ve learned a lot about what works and what doesn’t. Here are some of the tips and tricks to crafting effective email campaigns.
Identify the Customer Pains
Your email has to get the attention of your audience and stand out in the crowd instantly.
To do that, you have to speak to the needs and desires of your target audience. Remember, people make decisions emotionally and use data and facts to justify their decisions.
Therefore, success depends on appealing to their emotions.
Here are some questions to ask yourself:
What are the challenges your target audience faces that you can help with?
What problems does the chosen product/ service/ opportunity solve for your target audience?
Why do they need what you’re offering?
Even if you’re selling a B2B product or service, the pain is better if it’s skipping another vacation or saving for college even if the “benefit” you offer is saving their business money or time.
“Customer Pain” doesn’t have to be a negative. It can also be an opportunity.
But, keep in mind that you want to appeal to the change the customer wants to see in their personal life. So, identify what is not ideal about their world today that you can help them improve.
To stand out, stay away from appealing to saving money and time. Everyone else is doing that. It’s worn out and frankly misses the point most of the time.
Ask yourself:
OR
Do you care about having more money, or having a quality product that you feel good about, regardless of the cost?
For example:
Learn more about how to uncover your customer’s pain here.
Identify Solutions to the Pain
If your best friend told you they suffered from the challenge you identified in the previous step, what would you do for them?
Be sure to identify all the possible solutions that your audience will be aware of. This includes do it yourself approaches, competing solutions, etc.
Regardless of the specific objective of your campaign, we want to build a lasting relationship of trust with the audience so that you’ll be able to reach out to them with other campaigns successfully.
Give to Get
The more you can offer free advice, helpful tips and other useful information, the more they learn to trust you as an expert in your field. Then they are less likely to start ignoring your emails or unsubscribe.
The ideal email campaign offers 2 or 3 helpful and informative items for every 1 “ask”.
Detailing out a broad list of helpful things you can do for a friend gives you a lot of helpful offers to work with.
Keep it Simple!
Don’t try to get too sophisticated.
You’re an expert in your field and you have a LOT to share with your audience which could make your campaign very complex. Remember that our objective is to get our first email or two out into the wild so we can measure the response.
Make your list of solutions and rank them by what percentage of your target audience would find them most helpful.
Then start with the one on the top of the list.
Download the Email Campaign Creation Guide for more information on how to create effective email campaigns!
Creating a successful email campaign can be an overwhelming challenge. Especially when you’re learning a new tool or targeting new audiences. That’s why we created the Email Template Creation guide to help you with the process.
At SalesNexus, we’ve helped thousands of businesses succeed with email marketing. Over the past 16 years we’ve learned a lot about what works and what doesn’t. Here are some of the tips and tricks to crafting effective email campaigns.
It’s easy to get overwhelmed by all of the great ideas you’ll have along this journey. Thus, it’s vital to start with the end in mind.
Write down your objective and use it to keep your efforts focused.
Identify the target audience
Who are you sending the campaign to?
Who will we be making this offer to? Even if you’re not able to narrow your list down too much, getting focused and specific is the secret to success here as well.
Try to imagine your ideal customer or participant
What are their common traits?
Be specific about demographic categories like: age, family status, income, number of employees, revenue, industry, location… etc.
But, also consider less typical criteria:
What do they watch on TV?
Where did they go to college?
What hobbies do they have?This helps create messages and content that speak to your ideal customer.
This helps create messages and content that speak to your ideal customer.
Are these existing or previous customers or folks that have never heard of you before?
Draw a picture or “persona” of your audience. This helps to think about common traits that you can use to connect with the audience. These may not be strictly related to your products and services.
The most essential element of marketing success is deciding what you’re trying to accomplish with your campaign.
Is it a purchase? A donation? Attending an event? An appointment?
Regardless of the answer, the success of your campaign will depend on how well you can clarify your objective and your “call to action”.
Be Specific – don’t sell all your products, pick one as narrowly as you can.
Pair very specific customer personas with very specific calls to action. This will lead to the greatest success.
If your target audience is very familiar with you and has engaged with you many times before then you can be pretty direct and aggressive in your call to action.
If I’ve purchased 5 one pound bags of coffee from you in the past year, then sending me an email offering 20% off on my next order is completely appropriate.
However, if you have no or limited prior relationship with the audience, then it’s you may want to try and be a bit more subtle. So, if you’re emailing a list of coffee enthusiasts that don’t know your brand, you’ll get a lower response rate to a discount offer. But, if you first send them something introducing your brand and it’s strengths, and a follow up offer of the discount, that can be far more effective.
This is known as “content marketing.” Essentially, it’s about earning the audience’s trust by offering them things that they see value in, without asking for anything in return.
Then once you’ve earned their trust, you ask for the sale.
Download the Email Campaign Creation Guide for more information on how to create effective email campaigns!
