8 Marketing Automation Stats That Will Help You Get Company Buy-In Posted on October 22, 2018 by Allie Wolff You know that marketing automation works. You know it makes your life easier, it increases sales and productivity, and it’s obviously the way of the future. But does your boss? In bigger corporate settings (and even some frustrating small ones, when they’re run by micro-managers), it can be difficult – if not frustratingly impossible – to get company buy-in from management for major systems overhauls. Marketing automation is one of those categories. It’s a major shift that requires commitment and investment from various teams, including customer service, marketing, sales and whichever managers run those departments. Consensus may seem like a pipe dream. But ask any business expert, and they’ll tell you: the way to achieve change is by proving your point. Arguing that “this will work because I think it will” is not nearly as effective as laying down data-proven statistics that work in your favor and saying, “This will work – and here’s how.” That’s where we come in. Take these stats and print them out – or turn them into a PowerPoint – or back them up with extra research – or transform them into models for a hypothetically triumphant version of your future company. At the very least, let them inspire you to raise the issue with your higher-ups, in the name of all that is good marketing. Companies that grow using marketing automation increase their sales by 32 percent. Let’s face it: your boss is going to want to hear about the ROI first. Marketo, a company focused on account-based marketing, performed a benchmark study on revenue performance in 2012 that found companies not fully automating their marketing efforts – which comprised 61 percent of respondents – earned an average of 32 percent less revenue. The four levels of marketing automation (and number of companies) against percentage of revenue plan attainment. Credit: Marketo If you need another push: 78 percent of successful marketers cite marketing automation as the leading reason for their improving revenue, according to a report on lead generation by the Lenskold Group, a global marketing consultancy. It beat out lead scoring, testing and long-term strategic planning. By avoiding marketing automation, you’re staying out of a growing trend. According to a 2016 survey of marketing automation trends by Ascend2, 71 percent of companies are using automating their marketing efforts to some degree. Many that said they weren’t added they had plans to start in the future – meaning that number is almost certainly higher by now. If your company isn’t convinced of the value for money, tell them that 57 percent of companies told VentureBeat in a survey that they believed marketing automation was worth the cost, or simply not very expensive to begin with. Why is it worth the cost? Because sales teams that use marketing automation software increase their productivity by 14.5 percent, according to a Nucleus Research study from 2012. That same report found that marketing overhead actually dropped by more than 12 percent, too, indicating that the cost of implementing the infrastructure didn’t weigh down the teams in any measurable way. Implementing marketing automation won’t be hard, either. Based on a survey co-authored by B2BMarketing.net and Circle Research, 78 percent of marketers asserted they were confident about keeping up to date with the latest tech breakthroughs in the marketing automation industry. Of course, that leaves 21 percent believing they couldn’t, but an encouraging office environment and the right team atmosphere can help fix that. Image credit: B2BMarketing.net and Circle Research The results will be worth it. Lenskold’s 2013 survey found that 63 percent of companies were outpacing their competitors with marketing automation. Given that many respondents to these sorts of surveys also admit setting up marketing automation in the first place is difficult, it seems clear that companies seeing the project through reap the rewards. These companies might be outpacing their competitors because they’re saving so much time. Adestra, an email-marketing company, surveyed 200 senior-level British marketers in 2015 and found that 74% of them believed time-saving to be the biggest benefit of marketing automation. A majority of respondents also believed timely communication, better customer engagement and increased sales opportunities followed suit. Image credit: Adestra There’s no doubt that your company can benefit from marketing automation if you haven’t yet integrated it. And if you’ve read all this and still aren’t convinced yourself, get a run-down of what exactly a good marketing automation software is. If you’ve got any questions about implementing it into your current company’s infrastructure, feel free to ask us.
7 Tips For More Effective Website Chatbots Posted on October 19, 2018October 19, 2018 by Jonathan Herrick Website chatbots are consistently touted by many – including us – as one of the hottest marketing technologies to watch in 2018. They efficiently combine elements of customer service, marketing and branding in a way that is uniquely important and, better still, automated. A well-designed chatbot will interact with leads and customers alike in your brand’s voice, helping convert curious folks and engage pre-existing fans. Since your marketing and customer-service teams should already be aligned, it’s a no-brainer. That’s why it’s so unfortunate that not all chatbots are well-executed. A poorly thought-out chatbot can deter leads, frustrate customers and damage your brand. Here’s how to make sure your website chatbot is primed to help, rather than hurt, your company. Craft an exact goal What do you want to accomplish with your chatbot? Some tech companies want to focus entirely on customer service, relieving some pressure from their call centers. But that’s not for everyone: restaurants might include one to offer insight into their dietary substitution options and unique reservation requests. Start by picturing your target audience, maybe your brand’s buyer persona. Consider what they would be looking for. This goal (or a precise series of goals) will be the benchmark for the rest of your plan. Outline the user’s options Unless you’re crafting some creepy human-voiced machine-learning algorithm, odds are you’re going to keep your chatbot simple. One way to streamline that is by giving your users specific options, and clarifying their limitations. A standard message – “If you need anything else, I can help connect you to a human who can answer your questions” – is a clean way out for anyone who needs more help. Be proactive, not reactive This requires a good marketer’s touch. After crafting your goals and options, remember that a good chatbot – nay, a good customer experience – engages users before they even think of a question. But creating the environment isn’t as easy as bombarding newcomers with questions they haven’t asked; rather, it’s about predicting user behavior and addressing it proactively. You can create a website chatbot that generates unique content for them that you’re fairly sure will interest them, even before they ask for it. What that exact content is depends entirely on your business and industry. The important thing is to take an active approach, rather than sitting back and waiting for people to come to you. Find examples of what you want to emulate The last step before you actually start creating your chatbot is to find examples of what to emulate. This is especially important if your chatbot is more complex and being handled by freelance developers who may not understand your brand or goals. Having a template is always a safe approach. That said – and this should go without saying – don’t try and emulate their product completely. Do your research, then create your own environment. Give it the right personality This is where branding development comes to life. Personality is everything, especially in text, where you control the figurative voice and tenor of your product every step of the way. Formality is always good, but it can also alienate people. Likewise for a casual vibe. The guiding principle should once again be your first step on this journey: your goal. Turn to your buyer persona and consider what you want them to get out of this experience. Then match that with your brand’s style. Maybe you want to expand this into a full-blown character, with an avatar and animation? Go for it. Maybe it’s bringing to life to pre-existing mascot? Awesome. Maybe it’s just a script that chats the way your audience speaks? Killer. In this age of media personalities and influencers, personality is everything. Don’t underestimate it. Clarify your metrics for success You may have your goals lined up, but how will you know if they’re being met? If your website bot’s primary goal is to reduce customer-service wait times, you’d best know how many minutes you want to shave off. If the goal is to bring leads to certain pages, have a percentage increase in mind. If it’s to alleviate calls made to your customer-service centre, track those calls carefully. While tracking these metrics is important, the only way to know for sure whether your chatbot had any influence is by asking your customers. Add questions about your chatbot into your a customer-service feedback survey you might put out every year or so. And you can even have your bot itself ask folks if they found it helpful at the end of an interaction. Spell out the options and include a variety of accepting, humble responses regardless of whether people find it useful or not. Keep it short Lastly, remember to not overindulge. Website chatbots are still relatively new tech, but they’re not so new that you need to show off all the cool options and phrases you have in mind. You’re not writing a choose-your-own-adventure novel. This is particularly worth remembering if the goal is to improve your customer-service experience. When people are angry, they don’t want to play games with your fun new toy. They want answers. You can flip that experience into an engaging one, by using your chatbot to start the convo and then turn it over to a live human to zero in and solve the customers problem.
What’s Included in an All-in-One CRM? Posted on October 18, 2018October 18, 2018 by Jessica Lunk There’s nothing as valuable to your company as your customer relationships. You do everything you can to nurture those, including sending out regular newsletters, birthday cards and maybe even a little something for the holidays. Each year it gets a little harder, though. Your spreadsheets have grown to unmanageable sizes, and you’re pretty sure you left your notebook with your client details on the bus this morning. Your personal customer relationship management plan isn’t really working all that well now that your company has grown. Translating those notes on paper to something useable for the entire team just takes up too much time. How About An All-In-One CRM? If you’re reading this article, you’ve hit a wall or you see one coming and you’re hoping that a CRM will save you from the crash to come. CRMs, short for customer relationship management, can be powerful solutions for all kinds of businesses, when the right features are properly implemented. Their primary goal is to keep you and your customers in touch, as well as inform your entire team what’s been done where with said clients. All-in-one CRMs take the idea of a basic CRM one step further and integrate everything you need to not just organize your contacts, but keep in touch with them and move their relationship through the sales journey. It’s an intelligent way to organize and update your sales contacts, automate sales activities, send out newsletters on the regular, analyze data, help with your marketing efforts and integrate with lots of other programs you use every day. Some companies call their all-in-one CRMs “marketing CRMs” because they focus a little more on the marketing side. Either way, an all-in-one CRM can be the perfect solution to your disorganized office and headspace. They range in price from around $10 per user per month to thousands of dollars monthly. The trick is to choose a CRM that’s not only within your budget, but that can scale as your business grows. Choosing the Right CRM The biggest complaint about CRMs, even all-in-one CRMs, is that they’re difficult to configure initially and then they simply don’t get used because of a lack of intuitive functions. This is absolutely a problem with some systems, which is why the best way to choose your CRM is to take the programs that are in your price range on a test drive. Watch out for these red flags: Extra fees. Many CRMs offer a free trial or at least a discounted trial offer, but keep an eye out for setup fees. These can vary dramatically between providers, with some offering a free setup and others charging hundreds or thousands of dollars to get your team hooked up. Ease of use. When you open a new software platform the first time, it can be legitimately confusing and still be a good product in the end. The same is true of an all-in-one CRM. But if you populate it with some data and you’re still finding it clunky or cumbersome after a few tries, toss it out and keep shopping. Problem-solving. CRMs were meant to solve problems, all-in-ones more so. Before you even start looking at systems, make sure you understand what problem it is that you’re trying to solve. Because different CRMs focus on different competencies, it’s a good idea to be on the right page with the product offerings. For example, if you’re trying to find a way to track e-commerce purchases, but the CRM you’re looking at is built for B2B relationships, it might not be a good fit. Integration. There are so many productivity tools in the SaaS space these days that there’s a very low chance that you aren’t using some of them already. But that’s ok if you choose a smart CRM that’s able to flex with your needs. Using Zapier to send customer data to a designated spreadsheet? Choose a CRM that can accept that input. Not every CRM will work with every cloud-based app, take your time when examining the different packages. Getting the Most Out of Your All-In-One CRM Choosing a CRM is only the beginning of the story — you have to really use it in order for it to be worth all the effort you put into selecting it. It can take time to transition fully to your CRM, especially if you’re using marketing automation. This is absolutely not a reason to abandon your CRM hopes, just something to keep in mind. After all, any new system will take a little investment to produce good results. Balancing functionality with price, while keeping the central questions you need it to solve in mind, will help you pick the all-in-one CRM that will work best for your unique use case.
4 Actionable Strategies to Spark Up Cold Leads Posted on October 17, 2018October 17, 2018 by Tegan Arnold There’s nothing more frustrating than a lead you thought was a sure thing suddenly going cold. Unfortunately, it’s something that happens to even the most effective salespeople. But just because a hot lead cools off doesn’t mean it’s a lost cause. In fact, with the right strategy, it’s entirely possible to flip the switch and breathe new life into those prospects. If you’re looking for a way to reignite your existing leads but aren’t sure quite how, here are a few simple tricks to try. Gently remind them of their prior interest. The first strategy is pretty straightforward: simply reach out, reconnect and attempt to re-engage with the lead. But instead of just saying hello and touching base, use this as an opportunity to provide context to your interaction. It’s not just about staying top-of-mind. It’s about keeping them reminded about why they wanted to connect with you in the first place. If your product or service could provide a solution to a specific problem your lead has, continue to position it as such in your ongoing communications. Gently reminding them that you can make their lives easier can be very effective in finally getting them to take action. Personalize your interactions and offers. One of the most powerful tools a salesperson has is personalization. When a lead feels as though you are addressing them personally and treating them like a human rather than just another number, it’ll help set the stage for relationship building. Studies have shown that the more personal the customer experience, the more likely that individual will be to make a purchase. Salespeople should make an effort to personalize the experience in every way possible. Beyond addressing each lead with warmth and genuine engagement, the sales team should also strive to provide personalized offers that are tailored to each lead they’re nurturing. By focusing on fulfilling the specific needs or desires of your leads and less on making the big sale, everything will fall into place. Use more than one channel. The more ways you can connect with a cold lead, the more likely they’ll be to choose you when they’re ready to buy. There are plenty of different channels you can use to stay in contact with cold leads, from emails and phone calls to social media, retargeting ads and more. Just be careful not to overdo it on this step. If your leads feel as though they are being bombarded with messages from you, it’s probably going to just turn them off completely. Be respectful in your communications. Keep emails short and concise and don’t send them too frequently. Use social media to be helpful and provide a resource. Over time, your patience and persistence will likely pay off. Always include a CTA. Every interaction you have with your leads should conclude with some type of call to action – whether it be scheduling a follow-up, getting them to opt-in to your mailing list or, of course, finally making that purchase. This is especially important with cold leads. If they’re already on the fence, the easier you make it to come over to your side, the better. In the meantime, provide them with all the information they need to make a decision. This will not only remind them that you exist, but it will also help re-engage them in the sales process, which is the ultimate goal. Just because a lead goes cold doesn’t mean it’s a complete waste of time. While it’s certainly true that you should focus most of your efforts on hot leads that are more likely to convert, there’s still plenty of opportunity with the leads that have cooled for whatever reason. Make an effort to reconnect with cold leads at least once every six months or so. And remember to use the tools available to you, like a CRM, to make this process quick, easy and efficient. The conversions you’ll get as a result will be well worth it.
Are You Making These 5 Blogging Mistakes? Posted on October 15, 2018 by Allie Wolff Did you know that websites with blogs tend to have 434% more indexed pages? Additionally, 47% of consumers will view 3-5 pieces of content from a brand before they begin the sales process. In other words, blogging can do incredible things, both for your search engine ranking as well as your lead nurturing strategy. But only if you do it right. In fact, if you’re making any of the common mistakes below, you could be hindering your blog’s performance. Let’s take a look. Not having a plan. Are you blogging with a purpose or are you just writing for the sake of getting something published? If it’s the latter, you’re missing the mark. To be effective, every blog you write should have a purpose – an end goal, whether it’s to educate your readers, increase engagement, generate brand awareness or capture more leads. After all, you can’t measure your results if you don’t know what you’re striving for in the first place. Before taking to your keyboard, figure out what your overarching objectives are and then create a list of topic ideas that will support and help you work toward those goals. Forgetting who you’re writing to. Your readers aren’t robots. Yet, a surprising number of marketers forget this when writing blog posts. The result? Stiff, rigid and boring content that doesn’t hold the attention of the reader (and therefore won’t help you achieve your goals). To avoid this, try and write as though you’re speaking verbally to your audience. Be conversational. Let the human element shine through. This will engage your readers and help you better connect with and nurture your leads. Making it about you. A lot of beginner bloggers (and even some seasoned ones) make the critical error of thinking that readers are coming to their blogs solely to learn about their brand, product or service. But if you take a step back and think about why you personally read a blog post, you’ll discover this is rarely the case. The truth is, people want to read content that addresses their needs, answers their questions and adds value to their lives in some way. They aren’t interested in a constant stream of promotional posts. To address this, always approach blog writing from the perspective of your audience, not yourself. Being too broad or general. In most cases, people take to the web with relatively specific questions. For instance, a business owner looking to improve online advertising would be more likely to type: “how to get better results from Facebook ads” into the search bar rather than “how to do online marketing.” The more specific you are with your topics, titles and keywords, the more likely you’ll be to attract traffic and also convert those visitors into customers. If you’re not sure where to start, try making a list of frequently asked questions that you receive from your customers and then write a blog post about each. Not being consistent. Simply put, the more frequently you blog, the more traffic you’ll attract and the more leads you’ll generate. But as important as it is to post regularly, it’s equally important that you do so consistently. You want your audience to come to know, expect and trust that you’ll continually provide them with quality content that adds value. To help achieve a good level of consistency, try using an editorial calendar. By getting into the habit of planning your blog posts in advance and scheduling out their publishing dates, you’ll be better able to stay on top of your content production and give your readers what they want. Without question, blogging is one of the most important marketing activities a business owner can do. By knowing which mistakes to avoid and how to approach blog writing properly, you’ll achieve consistent results, both in terms of traffic and leads.
3 Reasons Your Emails Are Being Filtered to the Junk Folder Posted on October 12, 2018November 30, 2018 by Jessica Lunk There is nothing worse than seeing your hard work end up in the trash. And that’s exactly what happens when your polished email campaign that took you a week to perfect gets filtered to the junk folder. You know that getting the right message in front of the right audience can make or break you. And when you see your emails getting sorted into junk after you’ve followed all the usual rules and built a fully credible email list, you might be wondering what else you’re supposed to do? The truth is, landing in the junk folder isn’t always your fault. Especially when popular email providers are constantly updating their terms with secretive new ways to protect, flag, and eliminate legitimate spammers (even if that means a few honest senders get caught in the crosshairs). Luckily for you there are some nontraditional ways take back control and empower yourself when it comes to deliverability. It all starts with knowing a bit more about why you might be encountering this problem. Here are three lesser-known reasons why your emails are being filtered to the junk folder – and some ideas for what you can do about it. Your inbox usage is inconsistent. Just like how your credit usage plays a large role in your financial credibility over time, so does your inbox usage. Even if you’ve cleared your message of spammy verbiage, blacklisted domain links, and large image files, your email might be filtered into the junk folder simply for being one of a few dozen more than what you usually send. For this reason, it’s important that you consider how many emails you typically send per day, per week, and per month from your account. If it’s unusual for you to send 100 emails in a day, try segmenting your list by priority and sending messages in small batches spread out over time. And if you tend to email your list weekly or monthly, try to keep that date as consistent as possible too. Any actions involving your email that are statistically out of the ordinary could be working against you. Your email list has some duds. So you’ve already created a two-step opt-in process for subscribers who have interacted with your business before and have confirmed on multiple occasions that yes, they want to hear from you again in the form of an email. So what gives? Chalk it up to human error. The most common instances of perfectly compliant emails getting filtered into the junk folder often involve a list that needs a little extra elbow grease. Unbeknownst to you, some recipients may have ditched their old emails, gotten a new job, or even updated their address to reflect a recent name change. Keeping them on your list leads to lower engagement percentages, a big red flag to email providers who would rather your audience be more enthusiastic about your messages. Go through your analytics to see who hasn’t interacted with your emails recently. Send a follow-up email to ask if they’d still like to hear from you. If you don’t hear back, wipe them from the list. You can also use a variety of email verification programs to double check the legitimacy of your contacts and get rid of those pesky bot addresses that will also decrease engagement over time. Sales and marketing platforms can make this a super easy chore. For instance, Hatchbuck monitors engagement and lead score – so you can scrub unengaged contacts from your list without any guesswork. Your email signature is getting flagged. Believe it or not, your logo might be what’s kicking your emails to the curb. If you include an image file in your email signature, regardless of its size, ruthless junk filters might see it as spam. One way to test this out is by temporarily removing your logo from the signature and comparing your open rates before and after. Another way is to use an email signature app like WiseStamp that can customize and add a professional signature for you. It will work with your email provider rather than against it. Simply install the add-on and use it directly inside your inbox. It’s also common knowledge that including your physical address in an email message can help prevent it from being filtered into the junk folder. If you haven’t tried it already, add it to your signature and monitor any changes in future campaigns. Most email marketing tools – including Hatchbuck – include your address in the footer of all of your email templates, making it super simple to check this box. There are many ways to prevent emails from being filtered to junk. When it comes to ensuring your email campaigns land in the right places, there are lots of things to keep in mind. The benefits of knowing exactly how and why your emails ended up in the junk folder are fairly obvious, but the choice to execute these changes is up to you. Optimizing your email doesn’t have to be a mysterious or confusing process. As a business owner or marketer, it’s mission critical for your marketing and sales efforts to have a reliable method of contacting your potential customers through email. Since most of these solutions are low or no cost methods, gaining virtual trust and credibility is as easy as updating your settings. Even knowing one of these reasons why your email is being filtered to the junk folder can save you some costly headaches in the long run. As you continue to improve your email marketing skills, an all-in-one CRM and marketing tool can add the extra leverage you need to increase engagement with customers and better your business.
7 Books to Read Before You Build Your Next Business Posted on October 11, 2018September 2, 2022 by Jonathan Herrick Looking to push the “quick start” button at your next business? There’s no substitute for picking up a book that’s chock full of valuable lessons you might otherwise have to learn through months of experimentation. That’s true whether you’re a veteran entrepreneur or brand new to business ownership. And it’s likely why leading entrepreneurs such as Bill Gates, Elon Musk and Mark Cuban are famous for being avid readers. Not sure what book you should read next? Here are some entrepreneurship books that will help you get your next business off to a strong start. The 4-Hour Workweek by Tim Ferriss Ten years after it was first published, this blockbuster remains a must-read for those looking to cut down their hours and increase their income. Most people can’t pare down to a workweek that is literally four hours long but any entrepreneur will come away from The 4-Hour Workweek with great ideas for working more efficiently and freeing time for fun. The $100 Startup by Chris Guillebeau Looking for a business to start that won’t put a big drain on your cash flow? Chris Guillebeau will get you fired up with ideas on how he, and 50 other entrepreneurs, started their business with minimal capital. Learn the details of how he managed to travel the world and give back by converting his ideas into a profit-making business. Work Less Make More by James Schramko For many entrepreneurs who’ve left the corporate world to start a business, creating a great lifestyle is paramount. But overwork has a way of creeping up on us as deadlines loom, and many business owners find themselves working even more than they did at their last job. If you’re looking to regain the balance in your life, Work Less Make More by James Schramko offers unique business strategies he used to scale his business to fit the life he always wanted within three years. Choose Yourself by James Altucher With the digital revolution transforming our economy, many of us need to reinvent our thinking. Choose Yourself will give you ideas on how to realize the opportunities in this new environment. In his signature, irreverent style, Altucher will force you to question the assumptions you have about business and work and remind you of why—despite all of the challenges you already know about as an entrepreneur—taking control of your own destiny offers a smart path forward. Profit First by Mike Michalowicz Many entrepreneurs focus on revenue so much that they neglect to pay attention to another critical key performance indicator in a business: profit. Profit First offers a system that, when implemented correctly, will keep you focused on the bottom line, and free you from the cash-flow nightmares that plague many entrepreneurs. Once you’re achieving high profits, scaling up your business will become lot more fun. Start with Why by Simon Sinek Looking at why some organizations are more innovative, influential and profitable than others, Sinek realized something important that great leaders around the world realize: People won’t buy into a product unless they get the “why” behind it. If you’re looking to raise your game as a leader as you start your next business, this book will be invaluable. (Sinek’s TED Talk based on Start with Why has been watched by more than 28 million people.) The Miracle Morning by Hal Elrod Starting your day early to exercise, mediate, read and otherwise invest in your own personal development is a great way to ensure that your next business will be successful. Simply getting up one hour earlier can make all of the difference, as Elrod points out. If you find you keep hitting the snooze when your chosen wakeup time rolls around, try Elrod’s battle-tested tips. In business, if you snooze, you lose—but fortunately, there are some easy solutions.
8 Tips for Being More Productive When You Work From Home Posted on October 9, 2018October 21, 2021 by Tricia O'Donnell Ah, to work from home! For anyone who’s spent years hunched over a cubicle desk — or begrudgingly stuffing earbuds in their lobes to drown out noisy open-concept neighbors — it seems like the ultimate dream. Lounging around in pajamas, napping after lunch, blasting music, choosing your own hours… What’s not to love? But as anyone who’s worked from home full-time can tell you, it’s not always such a thrill. Most entrepreneurs will understand the self-destructive impulses of lethargy, despondency, procrastination and distraction. It takes emotional strength to work from home, as well as diligent self-control and the ability to hold yourself accountable. Struggling with a few of these issues? Hey, we’ve all been there. Here are a few tips to help get your home office functioning as efficiently as a dreary gray cubicle. Start early. Sleeping in may sound like a good idea. It’s not. Early mornings will help motivate you to kickstart your day right, partly because it’s scientifically proven to improve your day. Studies have shown that early risers enjoy better mental health, are more proactive, wake up after a better night’s sleep and have more self-discipline than people who tend to sleep in. If you need a motivator, consider implementing fitness and wellness into your morning routine. Running, yoga and a healthy breakfast are great ways to start the day, especially when you can afford an extra 10 minutes to enjoy them. Get dressed. This might sound silly to anyone who hasn’t worked from home before, but seriously, staying in your pajamas will keep your brain in a state of laziness. It helps to get dressed as if you’re going to work, even though you’re not going anywhere. Mentally, getting dressed helps create boundaries and puts your brain in “work mode.” Writing in Fast Company, Stephanie Vozza, who claims to usually work in yoga pants, experimented with the idea and found it kept her more focused, even though she was skeptical going in. She changed back into casual wear at 5 p.m. and felt like it created a real distinction in her day. “This felt like an improvement to work-life balance because I tend to feel like I’m always working,” she wrote. Put away the phone. We tend to procrastinate on our phones — the constant finger-flipping alone is a hypnotic design meant to suck users into an endless scroll, drawn in as we are by pinging notifications that jostle up a fleeting euphoric chemistry in our brains. Unless you use your phone for business calls (and even then, why not use GoToMeeting, Skype or Google Hangouts?), or you’re designing a website and need to test its mobile version, try putting away your phone as a default work environment. It’s one less screen to distract you. You don’t need notifications from Facebook and Instagram coming in while you’re trying to get work done. Check social media every so often and ignore it the rest of the time. Find a dedicated workspace. This one’s similar to the power of getting dressed, even when you don’t need to. The idea is to convince yourself that you’re “at work,” even when you’re at home. Working from the bed or sofa will start conflating home and work in your mind — you won’t enjoy watching a movie on your sofa at night if you’ve been working on it all day, and you won’t feel like you’re at work if you’re still in bed. Invest in a work desk and comfortable chair if you’re planning on spending a lot of time working from home. It may cost a few hundred dollars, but it will be worth the money in efficiency and peace of mind. Stay in contact with your coworkers. Accountability is key. If you want to get something done, it helps to keep in touch with your employees or coworkers to create a feeling of being in an office. Let’s face it: anyone who works in a cubicle probably virtually chats with their coworkers more than they speak to them face-to-face anyway, so sending an email or a Slack from home shouldn’t feel too different. Make a to-do list every day Sometimes, especially for entrepreneurs, the list of things you need to get done can be overwhelming. In times like these, the old mantra holds true: just take it one step at a time. Create a to-do list for the day, and make it manageable. Promise yourself you’ll get everything done in that day no matter what. To help, you can start by underestimating how busy you’ll be — give yourself a fairly easy list. That way, by the time you’ve crossed everything off, you’ll feel a sense of accomplishment that can carry you forward as your daily lists grow longer. Go outside. Sometimes, the best way to work from home is by leaving home. Go to a cafe or library for a change of scenery. Cafes can be tricky, depending on how loud they are or what kind of music they play. But if you can find a suitable one, a change of venue can often shake up your daily routine and force you to feel like you can’t slack off, because other people can see you. If it helps, give yourself one hour-long assignment to get done, and commit to doing it while you’re out. No distractions, no digressions. Just get there, get the work done and head back home for lunch. Disconnect from the Internet. Sometimes you need the Internet — but not always. To prevent yourself from leaning back, opening up a new tab and typing in “reddit” when you feel you’ve hit a roadblock, simply turn off your WiFi connection or unplug your ethernet cable. When distracting yourself with funny memes and YouTube black holes literally isn’t an option, it’s a lot easier to hunker down and focus on the work at hand.
Boost Productivity with These 5 Sales AI Tools Posted on October 8, 2018October 7, 2022 by Guest Author Productivity is a marathon, not a sprint. However, many sales teams don’t operate this way. Reps often casually jog through the first two months of the quarter and are forced to chaotically race toward their goal during the last few weeks. It’s up to sales management and operations to set the pace by building a sales process and tech stack that helps them manage their time efficiently and steadily. By adding smart sales AI tools to your organization, you can set a swift and steady tempo that increases the productivity of each sales rep year round. What exactly is sales AI? It’s any tool that utilizes artificial intelligence to improve the sales process. There are a ton of applications for sales AI; the two main functions though are automation and augmentation of the sales process. Automation is when a tool performs a piece of the sales process (static roles like data entry, tracking and research tasks) with little-to-no human interference. Augmented intelligence helps sales reps work smarter, like identifying cross-and-upsell opportunities. Let’s dive into the different ways you can implement both automated and augmented sales AI solutions in your organization. We’ve also pulled out our favorite tools to help kickstart your implementation process. 1. Automation A sales automation platform can perform a sales process or part of a sales process through static roles. What that means is that it does a task with little-to-no manual effort from the sales rep. Since reps spend 64% of their time on activities other than selling, there are many automation opportunities that could save them time and help them generate more revenue. One example is converting leads to the next stage in the CRM based on triggers. Say you send a POC document to a prospect via email. An automation tool could detect that and convert that lead into the evaluation stage in the CRM. Another example is saving reps time on CRM data entry and updates. Did you know that sales reps perform 300 CRM updates each week? A CRM automation tool could log and update those records automatically, saving hours of productivity each week. SalesHero is a sales automation platform that automates CRM updates, prospecting, contact and account research and scheduling. While it removes much of the cognitive load for sales reps, it doesn’t take humans out of the loop. 2. Next-step recommendations There are also AI tools that augment sales rep behavior and give recommendations on the next steps they should take with a prospect, helping sales reps make better (smarter) choices to increase their efficiency and improve win rates. These kinds of intelligence tools have several applications, like building a follow-up cadence or giving engagement recommendations. Most sales (80%) require five follow-ups after initial contact, but most reps only follow up once. A tool like Outreach can augment follow-up cadences to prevent deals from falling through the cracks. Other tools, like Highspot, suggest marketing content to send to prospects so the message is highly-targeted and more likely to convert. 3. Lead scoring and prospecting Sales reps have identified prospecting as the most challenging part of the sales process. It can be difficult to determine when a customer is ready to buy and to know which deals to pursue first if there are lots of leads in the pipeline. Intelligent sales and marketing AI tools can make this process much easier for sales reps by offering up hot accounts based on previous data and prioritizing leads with scoring algorithms. These tools help sales reps focus their attention on leads and accounts that are more likely to convert so their time is used much more efficiently than it would be blindly going after cold accounts. Hatchbuck helps sales and marketing teams do just that by alerting them when leads exhibit buying behavior, such as reading a certain piece of content on your site, visiting certain webpages or downloading a resource. It gives each of these hot prospects a score to let reps know which ones to invest time into first. 4. Process analytics Then there are tools that analyze the sales funnel as a whole and monitor rep activities and behaviors to optimize the process. These tools help managers and operations teams see where certain reps may need more training and which processes and behaviors are more likely to convert customers. There are traditional reporting tools that are slowly integrating with intelligent capabilities, like Insightsquared that break down sales stages and show rep conversion rate, speed and lead drop-off rates. Then there are tools like Gong that monitor a sales rep’s interactions with prospects to optimize sales conversations. These can help with increasing conversion rates, but proceed with caution as you need to inform customers that calls are being recorded. 5. Chatbots Finally, a chatbot is a software designed to replicate human conversations. Most inbound leads are looking for a response within five minutes after filling out a contact form, yet many companies don’t reply until five days later. Chatbots can be the first line of defense to prevent deals from falling through the cracks so that inbound leads get immediate attention. Conversational marketing platforms, like Drift, can help sales and marketing teams by increasing their response speed to inbound leads, capture lead information and, in some cases, can help pre-qualify leads. Author Bio Jessica Munday is a content marketing specialist at SalesHero, a San Francisco-based startup that’s building a sales AI assistant to automate CRM and administrative tasks to give sales reps back their selling time.