Archive for February, 2017
Bring Structure to Your Sales Coaching Calls
Posted by Rick Pranitis in SALES LEADERSHIP on February 27, 2017
Despite their best intentions, time pressed sales leaders are pulled in so many directions that talent development gets put on the back burner. Bringing structure to dedicated coaching interactions is a proven way to build positive outcomes in people and results. Without structure and planning, sales leaders often mail it in, missing real opportunities to move their people to the next level of success. Avoid this common pitfall by structuring sales coaching calls and each interaction around a guiding plan to bring consistency to the conversation, and ultimately results.
My approach is to organize coaching content into “buckets” that are consistent for everyone. When thinking through what I want to accomplish with a salesperson I am coaching, I typically build my planned dialogues in 3 buckets:
- Navigating within the sales organization: This encompasses mastery of the sales organization, from products and services to the resources available to support the sales effort. How agile are they inside our organization? Can they build customer teams on behalf of their client? Do they build internal relationships? Do they lead and quarterback sales pursuits with appropriate resources? How well do they understand our products and the value they bring? Can they translate that value to the customer’s situation?
- Customer and selling skills: This involves the critical behaviors I am looking for when observing or participating in client interactions with my people. How well do they establish rapport, set agendas, transition to business, ask good questions, listen, confirm needs, positon solutions, follow up and confirm next steps?
- Knowledge of the prospect or customer: This is my favorite – talking with my salespeople about their prospect or customers. Exploring the customer’s landscape and asking simple but powerful questions: Why this, Why Now? What’s prompting them to talk to us? What is occurring in their sector or industry that’s causing the pain? What will success look like for them? How will we know? Who wins in their organization? Who owns the pain?
The above are the consistent givens in my approach. I like to use the phrase “vary the treatment” when thinking about my people. In other words, I have common goals for everyone but the path for how I get them there has its own DNA and blueprint. The above buckets remain the same but the dialogues are different and special to each person. That takes planning and structure but the time invested yields dividends that build over time.
When thinking about the long development journey with sales people, I have come to one exciting realization: It’s a great time to be a sales coach. Technology today has enabled us to move the needle even further. Here at Richardson we are utilizing exciting mobile technologies that provide an ability to capture real sales behaviors with our people over the long haul. Using tablets with a user friendly platform, I am able to capture my observations of client interactions that lead me to richer coaching dialogues with my people. The result is a salesperson reaching for new levels of success with my encouragement and long term support, and their buy in and commitment to change.
Cadence and consistency are essential. One rich coaching dialogue will not get the job done. Make real commitments to coach over the long haul, setting up a cadence of coaching dialogues that set expectations, establish trust and build mutual goals. The complexities of the organization will constantly test the best sales leaders when it comes to delivering coaching. Don’t let your people down. Often I have met salespeople who haven’t had a conversation with their direct leader for the better part of a month. Setting and honoring a protected time for quality dialogues must be the hallmark of the coaching relationship. Don’t discount the time together. Salespeople walk away stronger when working with a caring and dedicated coach.
It’s all about them. The best sales leaders are in it for the pure joy of seeing others achieve success. Honor their time, and yours, by structuring the dialogue and setting the right expectations. Your people and organization will thank you for it.
This article was originally posted to the Richardson Sales Blog by James Barnett on April 26, 2016.
Five Tips to Increase Engagement on B2B Social Media Sites
Posted by Rick Pranitis in Social Media on February 21, 2017
Even if your B2B company has been posting to social media sites for some time, it is always a good idea to review your activities to make sure you are getting maximum engagement from your followers. Below are five considerations that can help everyone from the beginner to the seasoned veteran.
- Post at the right time
Make sure you are posting to your social media profiles at a time when your customers and prospects frequent those sites. In most cases you might find that B2B buyers will show up on weekdays from ten in the morning to four in the afternoon, thus making this an optimal time for posting messages. Still, every B2B company has its own target time frame, so make sure you pay attention to when your audience is posting in response to your messages and when traffic increases.
- Add calls to action
You can add calls to action to your individual social media posts to encourage prospects to learn more about what you have to offer. Your posts should give B2B buyers the opportunity to raise their hands and express interest in your products or services. The best way to do that is to make a compelling offer that will drive them to a landing page on your website. Usually they will need to exchange their contact information for the offer. These offers can be a mix of things that generate awareness at the top of the funnel and things that help drive consideration. Sometimes it can also entail telling a prospect why a particular offer is more appealing than something else. In other cases it might involve telling a B2B buyer why the product or service in your offer is so important. Anything that can be used as a call to action will be worthwhile for your marketing plans.
- Keep from being overly personal
While you might have lots of friends that follow your B2B company on your social media profiles, you should treat your page as a business-first spot. You need to avoid posting too much personal information. Focus on posts that are relevant to what your business is doing right now and what it has to offer your customers.
- Take risks
Sometimes you’ve got to take a few risks in order to go places. You might want to take some small risks that will cause your B2B company to look more appealing. Don’t be afraid to post funny videos that are relevant to your customers and prospects. This could be your chance to break out of the “boring B2B” mold. The odds are people will see the human side of your business.
- Get special guests
Consider adopting the idea of the celebrity takeover on your social media profiles. Identify influencers from your industry, or even subject matter experts from within your B2B company. Customers and prospects are more likely to engage with these industry stars during the takeover. There is really no limit to who you can tap for this purpose, and it can even become a regular feature of your social media profiles.
If you follow these reminders for how to post and interact on your social media channels, you will create more engagement with your B2B prospects and customers, especially if you can drive them to your landing pages or website.
This Article was originally posted to the Social Media B2B Blog by Sameer Bhatia on May 12, 2015.
How to Find Agreement When You Come from Opposite Sides
Posted by Rick Pranitis in GENERAL DISCUSSION on February 13, 2017
I’m very lucky to experience much less disagreement or outright conflict on the job than most people. Although my clients’ views may differ from mine in many ways, it’s implicit in our relationship that we’re mutually committed to figuring things out together and coming to the strongest possible joint solutions.
But some of the folks I work with have dozens of crucial disagreements every week as if they are explicitly job responsibilities! In fact, I often coach or counsel people who’ve been having the same long-running disagreement or underlying conflict for — I hate to say it — years.
I’ve observed and analyzed numerous disagreements as part of my consulting role, and have helped people work through many of them, and it’s quite clear that logic isn’t enough to ensure collaboration. Two equally logical people can hold such completely different beliefs or represent such different positions that it feels like they’ll never come to any kind of useful agreement.
Making the First Move
So how can you make a start when you truly need to accomplish something together but don’t see eye to eye? Sometimes it helps to work on the relationship itself, along with the issue.
There’s no way to force people to be comfortable as collaborators, and directing them to like each other is absolutely ineffective. But there is a useful technique that can open a pathway to dialog. It comes out of couples and relationship counseling, so it’s not usually identified as a workplace tool.
It won’t overcome structural barriers, lack of competence, or bad intent. But it has workplace application when both sides are operating in good faith, yet can’t seem to broach the wall that exists between them.
Creating a Connection
“Making a bid for connection” is how Dr. John Gottman, a psychologist renowned for analyzing the behaviors and expectations that make marriages and other intimate relationships successful, describes the process.
One of the parties initiates connection — tentatively — with a tiny action or communication to try to establish a small but affirmative interaction.
The other side may “turn away” by ignoring the bid, “turn against” in an attack, or deliver the desired outcome by “turning toward” and reciprocating with another genuine, positive communication or action. Whenever one person turns toward the other’s bid for connection, both people are on stronger footing without necessarily having expressed anything about the content of the conflict at all.
It’s usually best to start with the smallest bid and the lowest risk you can. Make the hurdle so low that it’s almost impossible not to at least accidentally clear it. “Can you believe the game last night?” is a very small bid; “Want to get a cup of coffee and discuss this?” is a larger one.
Raising the Ante
Once you’ve established tacit agreement that both sides are going to try to engage constructively, you can be more direct, and at the first airing of a potential disagreement, make a stronger bid by asking kindly, “May I share a different perspective?” That gives notice that you do, in fact, disagree, but that you’re willing to do it in the most respectful way possible, letting your opponent create the conditions for sharing. Doesn’t that sound less threatening and more agreeable than “I disagree!” or “That’s not the way it is!”?
If you’re getting a negative reaction to your input, you can make a slightly different bid: “Would you like to share a different perspective?” That makes clear your respect for the other party as a human being, as well as your desire to hear what they have to say.
It takes patience to take these very small steps. But the more frequent and the larger the bids, the more likely it is that, over time, the relationship will develop, permitting other techniques for conflict resolution to begin taking hold.
This article was originally posted to the Workplace Wisdom Blog by Liz Kislik on January 25, 2017.
Five Mistakes Every B2B Company is Making on Facebook
Posted by Rick Pranitis in Social Media on February 9, 2017
While LinkedIn is often the preferred platform for B2B social media, Facebook can be the difference in the success of your marketing, if done right.
When it comes to B2B marketing, it’s crucial to find how your goals overlap with the functionality of the platform being used. In the case of Facebook, there are a range of opportunities to flip the traditionally B2C platform in your favor.
Keep reading to find out how to get B2B marketing right on Facebook.
- Not using the Custom Audience feature
You already have a list of contacts built up in your database. Why not put those email addresses to good use and try to find more followers and potential buyers through Facebook? Many B2B businesses miss out on advertising opportunities because they haven’t narrowed down their audience successfully. The Custom Audience feature will help you do this.
The Custom Audiences feature lets you upload your database directly to Facebook. Using Facebook Ads Manager, you can create targeted ads and then send them to your email contacts. Facebook will then match your emailing list against the user accounts currently open. Because so many people use their personal email addresses for social media accounts and shopping accounts, there’s a good chance that your contacts use the same address for Facebook.
You can also reach out to new customers by creating a similar audience to your already existing Custom Audience. This is a great way to find new customers who are demographically similar to your current customers. Remember, not everyone wants to be your customer, so do your best to avoid marketing to those who have no interest in your company.
- Letting posts get too sales-y
Getting people to like your page is one thing; getting them to stick around and interact with your posts is another. Some B2B marketers believe that posting on Facebook isn’t as important or necessary so long as you have those fans, but in reality, your posts say a lot about you as a company.
Your posts need to be engaging while providing industry-related information to your customers. This is how you show them that your company isn’t just about selling products and services. You care about your customers and you care about educating them. By showing them that you know your industry and will provide them with up-to-date information, you’re illustrating your company’s professionalism as well as its superior customer relations.
That’s not to say that you can never post any self-promotional material on Facebook, but remember the 80/20 rule. Eighty percent of your content should be useful blogs, articles, infographics, videos and other useful pages from third parties. The remaining 20 percent can be about your own promotions.
Remember this rule when your posting, and your customers will be more likely to interact with your posts. They’ll also appreciate not being bombarded with sales pitches.
- Forgetting to tag or mention people
When you post from your own Facebook account, do you tag people in your posts or mention places that you’ve recently visited? If so, then why aren’t you doing this with your B2B Facebook posts?
Social media is all about creating dialogues and connecting with customers. Tagging well-known industry experts brings them into the conversation and offers readers new perspectives. Tagging your own followers is a great way to interact with customers and make them feel appreciated by your brand. Doing so gives readers more of an incentive to comment on your posts if they think you might answer them back.
Facebook’s tag and mention options allow you to pull people into your conversation and make them feel included. This is a great way to involve your customers and get them talking with you.
For example, a higher education institution might tag a student who was recently nominated for an award in his or her field and offer a hearty congratulation. This gets followers talking and shares the good news with other who might not be aware.
- Focusing on selling rather than generating leads
One of the biggest misconceptions about Facebook marketing is that it’s all about selling, selling, selling. If you’re not generating sales from your Facebook marketing endeavors, then you’re doing something wrong.
The truth is Facebook just isn’t a good marketplace for selling your products and services. Facebook and other social media platforms are about building solid customer relationships and improving your brand. People come to Facebook to talk, not to shop, so if you’re focusing on getting people to buy your products on Facebook, then you may be wasting your time.
Facebook can be one of the most useful tools for generating great leads and nurturing them. By capturing email addresses, you build your database and expand your reach to new customers. Once you have them, you can begin marketing directly to them through Facebook.
As your leads become more invested, you can pass them on to your sales team and turn them from a lead to a valuable customer.
- Ignoring metrics data
Recently, Facebook updated its Ads Manager, giving it a whole new look that was a little overwhelming for some. The main page now gives you a plethora of data telling you how successful your ads are. If you’re ignoring this data, then your campaigns probably won’t improve, and you won’t know what works and what doesn’t.
To help you better manage your budget, Facebook now lists your total spent over the course of the week at the top of the Ads Manager page. Now you can keep better tallies on your expenses and make sure you don’t go over your budget.
There are a number of ways to break down your campaigns, ad sets and ads so you can better see their successes and weak points. Don’t be afraid to click around and pull up new reports. It may be hard to track your ROI through Facebook marketing, but looking at your metrics is a good place to start.
This article was originally posted to the SocialMedia B2B Blog by Michael Bird on December 1, 2015
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