Archive for September, 2014
Three Steps to Better Customer Onboarding
Posted by Rick Pranitis in CUSTOMER SERVICE on September 30, 2014
When customers are asked: what’s the most memorable part of their experience with a company, many note the welcoming process as either exceptional or regrettable. And while most companies are working to improve their employee onboarding process, a similar process for customers is often left to chance.
Effective onboarding sets the tone for the new relationship and carries it forward for the duration of the customer lifecycle. Best-in-class B2B companies recognize the value of customer onboarding and invest accordingly. Here are some ways to jumpstart your customer onboarding efforts:
- Define ownership. One of the main reasons customer onboarding goes awry has to do with the lack of a clear owner within the organization. It can be tricky to identify where the proper handoffs need to occur – sales has played point during the buyer’s journey and will likely take a back seat going forward. Formalize the key handoff points and leave nothing to chance. Assign clear responsibility for specific parts of the onboarding process so customers don’t fall through the cracks.
- Welcome customers appropriately. Onboarding is the perfect time to gain additional insights from new customers about their preferences, including how and when they’d like to be contacted, their preferred mode of interaction with your company and their key areas of interest. Upload these preferences in sales and marketing systems to make sure that customer wishes are respected.
- Become engaged. Once the sales process concludes, engaging the new customer is critical to long-term success. Marketers can play a lead role in ensuring that new customers are introduced to the various channels available for customer participation, including user groups, product councils, online customer communities and other social media outlets. This is also a good time to share other customers’ early-stage success stories to help the new customer get up to speed more quickly. By effectively managing the customer engagement process, you can also set the stage for customer advocacy opportunities down the line, once the customer has realized value from your product or solution.
Customer onboarding plays a critical role in the first stage of the customer lifecycle. As they say, you never get a second chance to make a first impression. Challenge your organization to exceed, not simply meet, customer expectations by striving to implement a best-in-class approach to welcoming your new customers.
This article was originally posted to the Sirius Decisions Blog by Bob Peterson on April 4, 2014.
Few Consumers Actually Heed Social Media
Posted by Rick Pranitis in MARKETING on September 24, 2014
Ever since Facebook first introduced brand pages in 2007, companies have been flocking to social media. Many business leaders believe that the more they post and share about their products and services, the greater their chances of attracting customers and generating revenue.
But just-released research from Gallup’s State of the American Consumer report suggests that much of these efforts have been misguided.
Social media are not the powerful and persuasive marketing force many companies assumed they would be. Gallup finds that a full 62% of U.S. adults who use social media say that these sites have absolutely no influence on their purchasing decisions. Another 30% say these sites have some influence, and just 5% say they have a great deal of influence.
And although companies may think that people who “like” or follow them on social media are an attentive audience, our research suggests otherwise. Of consumers who report liking or following a company, 34% still say that social media have no influence on their purchasing behavior, while 53% say they have only some influence.
When compared with more traditional forms of social networking, social media initiatives may actually be the least effective method for influencing consumers’ buying decisions. Gallup research has shown that consumers are much more likely to turn to friends, family members, and experts when seeking advice about companies, brands, products, or services. Social media sites have almost no sway.
These findings raise a question: is there an inherent flaw in the idea of using social media to drive purchasing, or have companies just been using social media poorly? The fact that some portion of buyers credit social media with having real influence suggests the latter may be true. Consumers are drawn to social media because they want to take part in the conversation and make connections. But many companies continue to treat social media as a one-way communication vehicle and are largely focused on how they can use these sites to push their marketing agendas.
To positively influence purchasing through social media, marketers should learn to use it to listen and interact. Consumers are more likely to engage when the brand-related posts they encounter are:
- Social media sites are highly personal and conversational. And, as Gallup finds, consumers who use these sites don’t want to hear a sales pitch. They’re more likely to listen and respond to companies that seem genuine and personable. Companies should back away from the hard sell and focus on creating more of an open dialogue with consumers.
- The social media world is 24/7, and consumers expect timely responses – even on nights and weekends. Companies must be available to answer questions and reply to complaints and criticisms; ignoring negative feedback can do considerable damage to a brand’s reputation. Instead, companies must actively listen to what their customers are saying and respond accordingly. If they made mistakes, they must own up to them and take responsibility.
- Content is everywhere, and consumers have the ability to pick and choose what they like. Companies must create compelling, interesting content that appeals to busy, picky social media users. This content should be original to the company and not related to sales or marketing. Consumers need a reason to visit and interact with a company’s social media site and to keep coming back.
When companies focus their social media efforts on pushing product and not cultivating communities, they overlook the real potential of these channels. Gallup research has consistently shown that customers base purchasing decisions on their emotional connections with a brand. Social media are great for making those connections — but only when a brand shifts its focus from communication to conversation.
This article was originally posted to the HBR Blog Network by Ed O’Boyle on June 23, 2014.
How To Get Higher CRM Adoption Rates
Posted by Rick Pranitis in SALES LEADERSHIP on September 16, 2014
We’ve all heard the staggering statistics behind this-and-that CRM product. “Will cut lead gen time in half in 90 days!” or better yet, “Gain 85% more customers per year!” Right.
The unfortunate thing is many really terrific CRM products actually can have a monumental impact on your sales process. That is, if anyone would use them.
The trick to finding a CRM product that actually benefits your business is figuring out how to get people to actually adopt and use the process, and not just some people. Everyone. Over 66% of companies say they have a hard time raising adoption rates over about 50%. That’s a discouraging number.
Here are a few ways to get higher CRM adoption rates without losing your whole sales team to Groupon or Apple or whatever the foosball-in-the-breakroom-company of the month is.
Make Your CRM Software Unavoidable
Doesn’t that sound…annoying? At first, yes. There’s really no getting around the inevitable discomfort that comes with implementing a new CRM, akin to getting a new phone with a whole bunch of foreign-seeming buttons to learn. Before you launch companywide, it’s crucial to put safeguards in place that consistently remind your team to use the CRM, trust the CRM, love the CRM. Also, make it difficult (and awkward) to avoid the CRM-driven data at meetings and in status reports and you’ll see adoption rates rise.
Put Your CRM in the “Cloud”
Cloud computing doesn’t just make things more convenient for everyone, it’s going to make your employees more mobile. That’s a great value-add! If you can find a way to reward employees who are consistent with their CRM use with flexibility (say, work from home Fridays or longer lunches) you’re going to see more people taking advantage. In general, your staff is going to care most about the things that make their life easier too, not just yours.
Choose a CRM that can be Customized
There are literally hundreds upon hundreds of CRM products out there, some great and some best left to go the route of Pets.com. Of course, juggernauts like Salesforce have a lot to offer businesses but it may make more sense to find a product that’s specifically designed for your industry and for the type of sales team you employ. The more simple customization your CRM product offers at a user-level, the higher your usage rates are going to be.
Analyze the Data Often and Openly
Think fast: what’s the point of CRM software? If you said, “to keep my lazy employees on track,” then you are a terrible, terrible boss. The real reason CRM is valuable is cold, hard data. Whoever “owns” CRM in your office should regularly offer insights based on the data it provides and also make that data available to the sales team. Not only will this give everyone a little more ownership, it will prove the point that your fancy new CRM setup isn’t going anywhere.
You can’t force employees to use your CRM, but you can give them a lot of incentives. The more attractive you make a CRM-driven workplace the higher your adoption rates are going to be. Every. Single. Time.
This article was originally posted to the Mindmulch blog by Ryan Currie (guest blogger) on November 18, 2013.
Ryan Currie is a product manager at BizShark.com, with 5 years experience in online marketing and product development. In addition to web related businesses, he also enjoys the latest news and information on emerging technologies and open source projects.
Six Keys to Startup And Small Business Sales Success
Posted by Rick Pranitis in SALES LEADERSHIP on September 4, 2014
One of my favorite all-time sales executives always had a quote at the top of the enormous whiteboard in his office: “Start-ups don’t starve, they drown.”
That’s true across a variety of departments and disciplines, but perhaps nowhere more acutely than in sales. When you’re in start-up mode, you’re often trying to sell something to people who don’t know about it and don’t believe they need it. By definition, you’re creating a category and using a machete to cut through a virgin jungle.
Unfortunately, that’s often used as an excuse to “throw a lot of spaghetti against the wall” to see what sticks, and otherwise throw what should still be a disciplined sales strategy into chaos. Chaos leads to drowning, and drowning leads to death. Any start-up veteran knows that when sales dies, the company isn’t far behind. Here are six places most start-ups (particularly of the B2B variety) should focus to improve their precision, strategy and success.
Sell the hole, not the drill
Nobody cares about your product or service, unless it helps them do something or achieve something or mitigate something they care about. Few people go to the hardware store to buy a drill. What they really want are holes. It’s your job to figure out what that means for your customers. Then, everything in your sales process (and marketing) should align behind it.
Develop a deep(er) understanding of our target customer and their ecosystem
How much do you really know about your target customer? What they care about? What are their objectives and what are the primary obstacles keeping them from achieving them? Who are the key people inside (and outside) of their organization helping them achieve those results, and/or keeping them from getting there? The better you understand the underlying ecosystem and environment in which your customers exist, the better you can align your message and value proposition to things they already value and care about. This is especially important for start-ups selling in a category where the value proposition isn’t yet clear.
Teach everyone in your organization how to listen for buying signals
Buying signals aren’t often explicit. More often than now, a “buying signal” will actually be in the form of someone complaining about something, or otherwise exhibiting the signs and symptoms of a problem you can solve. Those are the buying signals your competitors either aren’t listening for or just plain ignore. Teach everyone in your organization, but especially those with customer-facing roles, to understand your deep customer profile/personas and know when they’re seeing those early-stage buying signals online and elsewhere.
Map your sales process to how your customers buy
Anything less than this will introduce unnecessary friction between seller and buyer. You aren’t going to change when the buyer is ready to buy. But you can help them understand and quantify their needs faster than they would have done so naturally. Just make sure the process you manage with your sales team aligns with that natural buyer process, and the result often will be increased velocity, loyalty and conversion from your pipeline.
Calculate the sales activity and pipeline required to hit your sales number
How many leads do you expect will become qualified opportunities? How many qualified opportunities do you expect will close? If you haven’t done the math, most likely your pipeline is still too small to reliably achieve your monthly or quarterly sales goals. Doing “the math” up front helps create more realistic expectations and also ensures that sales & marketing are aligned around exactly what kind of results at each stage of the process are required to consistently hit the number.
Clearly define success metrics and lead/opportunity stages
Does everyone on your team agree on the definition of a “qualified” lead? If I asked each member of your sales team what criteria are required for a qualified opportunity, would I hear the same answer? If you don’t have this level of consistency, it’s too easy to have sales pipelines that are unreliable, unrealistic and simply inaccurate. Common definitions ensure transparency and accuracy, and allow you to more tightly define specific next steps and focus areas for improving strength of pipeline at any given time.
This article originally posted to the Customer Think Blog by Matt Hienz on July 29, 2014.
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