There are sales strategies from the email era that remain as effective today, and new selling insights that make email even more effective.

It’s hard to think of a single innovation as transformational as the Internet, and a technology that led big transformation in the early days is described with what’s now a single, often un-hyphenated word: email.

In fact, the quick rise in popularity of internet service providers and content sites, like AOL and Yahoo!, helped drive rapid adoption of email. Today, with messages constantly arriving from around the corner and around the world, delivered to our smartphones, tablets, and laptops , it’s hard to believe that it was barely 20 years ago that an indistinguishable voice announcing “You’ve got mail” became a pleasant, yet infrequent surprise.   Email was new, it was exciting and it was a game changer. As long as you had an email address, you could communicate with the world through your computer.

Not surprisingly, the dawn of email as a remote communication tool helped put a nail in the coffin of the door-to-door sales era. But as email took off, so did the volume of messages peppering in boxes. The once charming, “You’ve got mail” quickly grew annoying with repetition.

Still, there are sales strategies from the email era that remain as effective today, and new selling insights that make email even more effective.  Here are three simple tips to consider when implementing email into your sales process:

1. While it may seem obvious, make sure to capture a prospect’s email address through your web forms or when on the phone. Recent Leads360 research shows that nearly 20 percent of all lead records don’t include an email address. One way to encourage a prospect to share their email is through the promise of return value. As our recent infographic highlights, 67 percent of prospects’ are willing to give their email in exchange for information about discounts and promotions, according to a survey by Digital Strategy Consulting.
2. Once you’ve captured a prospects email, use it.  Our research shows that sales prospects who receive an email have a 16 percent greater chance of being contacted by phone than those that don’t. And surprisingly, our research has found that roughly 40 percent of prospects who offered up an email address never received communication from a sales rep via this channel.
   
3. Finally, be sure to maintain the charm of email by sending just the right number of emails and at the right intervals. A recent Leads360 research report, The Ultimate Contact Strategy, reveals that the optimal number of email messages to increase conversion prior to a rep making contact with a prospect is five. Sending more than five emails, especially during a relatively short time period, can actually have a negative impact on the likelihood of reaching and ultimately converting a prospect. Our research also found that the timing of your messages can have an impact on conversion.

For more information on the ultimate email strategy for your sales team, download our recent research here. And for more sales lessons from eras past, check out our latest infographic and return for deeper analysis and key learnings from each era during the coming weeks.

The post ‘You’ve got mail’ – 3 tips for more effective email in selling appeared first on Leads360 Blog.

Winchester discusses how progressive schools can succeed despite market conditions.

Competing more effectively has been a frequent discussion topic among our school clients in recent months. With college enrollment in decline, growing competition among schools – both proprietary and traditional – is inevitable as pressure to meet enrollment goals builds. We recently sat down with Steve Winchester, Datamark’s VP, Marketing & Solutions Management, to discuss ways schools are meeting these challenges.

Lind: Despite the market decline, are schools still finding ways to be successful?

Winchester: Absolutely – but it takes a different, and often aggressive, mindset.  If you look at the analyst coverage in the space, many believe that the schools that are seeing improved results are doing so because of the strategic decisions they are making.  While some might argue that the market recovery has helped, the inclination seems to be that the positive results can be directly tied to the fact that successful schools are changing the way they market and operate.

Lind: When you look at the schools that are more successful, what do they have in common?

Winchester: We believe there are a couple of things that are resonating across this group of institutions – both from a marketing and branding perspective, as well as a process perspective.  They are finding ways to better engage prospective students, ways to make their staffs more effective, and ways to make their dollars go further.

We think it comes down to the fact that they are more effectively managing their brand controlled assets, and they are more appropriately managing their operational costs and creating efficiencies.

Lind: What exactly are you seeing in terms of branding?

Winchester: Schools that are seeing growth in applicants and enrollments are doing a better job engaging prospective students with their brand, and they are doing this through a variety of ways.  First, they are making a conscious effort to improve their rankability scores for their websites, which is improving their overall search results – driving more website traffic, if you will.  Then, once prospective students land on their site, they are doing a better job making content and information relevant and easy to find, which keeps these prospects on their site.  We refer to this as making a website “stickier.” So the combination of getting more people to their site and keeping them there for a longer period of time is creating a good first and lasting impression with the school’s brand – one that encourages the prospect to pursue the enrollment process further.

Lind: What are you seeing from an operational standpoint?

Winchester: Realizing that quality doesn’t have to suffer in the wake of reduced budgets and resources is critical. Schools can actually improve their operations in a way that actually costs them less – less time, less drain on resources, and less money. We are certainly seeing some schools excel in this area and here’s how.

First, they are rethinking ways to use their house file of inactive inquiries.  They are not just producing periodic outreach, but rather implementing a disciplined approach that includes modeling and testing. They know what kinds of communications are more likely to drive action from specific types of prospective students, and they know how frequently they should communicate.  In some cases, we have seen schools that make good use of their house files achieve a 26% increase in contribution to enrollment because of this.

Second, they are dissecting their business communication rules and eliminating irrelevant or untimely communications that may have been going out and they didn’t even know it.  This cleansing of their processes means that they can keep better tabs on outreach while eliminating waste.

Lastly, they are looking at where they can be more efficient.  One example is through small run print jobs, which can achieve the same economies of scale as large runs.  In talking to schools, it can take a lot of time for an individual to create invitations, post cards and more for each event or milestone. Rather, using an online print store allows people to simply provide a mailing list and creative template and variable any type of information such as event dates, times and other details on a template, hit print, and send.  It is far more efficient and cost effective.

Lind: Thanks Steve – anything else you would like to add?

Winchester: I guess I’ll just close on the fact that, despite market conditions, schools that take the reins and proactively determine their own plan of attack by focusing on branding, communications, processes, and efficiencies, will likely join in the company of these “successful schools.”

At Leads360 we are seeing similar success from progressive non-traditional schools that have a strong process in place for enrollment – responding to prospective students with both speed and a quality experience. To read more on our thoughts about enrollment management differences in traditional and non-traditional schools, read my recent Q&A with Steve Winchester on Datamark’s blog here. To learn more about Leads360’s enrollment management solutions visit www.leads360.com/HigherEd.

About Steve Winchester: Winchester is VP of Marketing and Solutions Management at Datamark. He has been an advertising account executive for more than 20 years. Winchester received his BS from the University of Utah.

The post Q&A: Ways Schools Can be Successful, Independent of Market Conditions appeared first on Leads360 Blog.

Leads360’s new calculator provides a lead assignment recommendation per sales rep, per day in order to boost revenue and profits.

Though inside sales is undeniably becoming more and more complex, at the end of the day, it is really a numbers game. If you have the right formula to maximize outcomes for each sales rep, you are well on your way to fully capitalizing on your organization’s sales potential.

A recent Leads360 study, “Guide to: Optimizing Your Leads-to-Rep Ratio,” provides guidance on maximizing outcomes by determining the optimal number of leads to assign to each sales rep to put them in their peak performance zone. As a companion to this research, we have created an easily personalized calculator to help sales organizations find the right balance of leads to sales representatives.

Leads360’s calculator provides a customized lead assignment recommendation per rep, per day based on a sales organization’s unique operational and financial metrics. With this tool, sales managers can find the right leads-to-rep ratio based on their unique set of variables, which include:

1. Lifetime Value
2. Cost per Lead
3. Direct Cost of Rep/Day
4. Commission/Sale
5. Overhead Sales Costs

By providing these inputs, the calculator will output your optimal leads-to-rep ratio. Organizations interested in learning how top sales organizations optimize their sales team performance can download the full Leads360 report, Guide to Optimizing Your Leads-to-Rep Ratio.

The post The inside sales calculator you can’t live without appeared first on Leads360 Blog.

“Within one bench, you have all different levels of strengths and experiences. A good coach doesn’t treat each player the same,” said Lori Richardson, ScoreMoreSales.com.

We’ve blogged recently about the importance of leveraging the skills of your inside sales team and playing to each reps strengths like a good coach.  Performance-based and/or skill-based routing taps right into this trend, and done right, can help sales leaders fully leverage and develop the strengths of their team, improve customer experience and ultimately drive higher conversion rates. In fact, our research shows that after implementing a skill-based routing program, skilled sales reps more than double their conversion.

But the science is only part of the equation. This past week, we had the opportunity to speak with Lori Richardson, inside sales trainer, coach, consultant and blogger at ScoreMoreSales.com about a recent “Inside Sales Power Tip” she published on the topic of competition.

Given the synergies with our recent research, we asked Richardson to provide insights to sales managers about how they can run their inside sales teams like a good coach and better leverage and develop the strengths of their team.

Tip #1 – Understand what motivates each individual rep

While Richardson acknowledges that gamification, sales contests, and leader board rankings are bigger than ever, she notes that it has to be well thought out and implemented so that it is motivational. It’s also important for sales managers to work with each individual sales rep.

Understanding what motivates them, and what their strengths and areas of development are, rather than only focusing on how well they are doing compared to their peers is paramount. Richardson noted that a good sports coach motivates and inspires their athletes by leveraging and developing the individual strengths of each player.

Tip #2 – Allow time for training and development

Richardson firmly believes in allowing for dedicated time for rep professional development. “Like a professional athlete practicing before the actual competition, sellers need to invest hours and hours in ongoing training and development,” she said.

Richardson suggests sales managers allow time for new reps to train and then encourage them to spend a regular block of time monthly or quarterly during “non-selling” hours on learning and development. Additionally, ongoing coaching, listening in on a reps sales call and providing in-the-moment constructive feedback to reinforce learning.

Tip #3 – Some training should be optional for top performers

A common mistake Richardson observes is a sales manager making all training mandatory. Managers often make it a requirement for all reps to participate in the training, yet putting your top performers into a basic skill-based training if they have already mastered the skill is de-motivating. If you can create a culture where the top reps do attend and get recognized for sharing their successes and best practices in sessions like these, they will typically want to participate.

“If the rep is hitting their numbers, let some training be optional for them,” Richardson advised.

Tip #4 – Challenge top performers

Even if a rep is at the top of the leaderboard week after week, it’s important to keep them challenged. Richardson recommends working with top performers on a more customized basis, learning what motivates them, encouraging them to stretch their limits, set new personal goals and work to exceed them. She cautions, however, that there are some people that get to a certain level and they’re content.

“As a sales coach, I want to make sure there is interest to stretch,” said Richardson. “Once I know the sales rep is motivated, I listen and learn so I can challenge them to reach their new personal best.

For more motivational tips to drive sales performance, send your reps to this free webinar – Be More Interesting; Get More Sales – with four top B2B sales consultants.

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While doing a vacuum cleaner demo in someone’s living room might seem quaint, a lot of the wisdom from those days endures.

While the Mad Men Era lives on through Hollywood depictions and fashion trends brought back from the past, the era has ultimately come to an end and a new chapter in the history book of sales has begun. Door-to-door sales existed before the 1970′s, but the era became known for the in-house vacuum cleaner pitch. The strategy was fairly simple: understand the capabilities of the product or service being sold and be confident in its ability to do the job at hand.

If the strategy was simple, the technique was almost artistically so. Sales professionals would make their sales pitch at the front door. If they were successful, they’d be invited in. Once they were in, they’d throw dirt on the carpet and then use the vacuum cleaner they were trying to sell to clean up the mess before the eyes of the prospect.

A lot has changed since then. But when it comes to effective selling, a lot has withstood the test of time:

• You still need a sales pitch that will get you through the door.
• It’s important to ask questions about the problem your prospect wants to solve. And it’s even more important to listen to the answers.
• Throwing dirt on the carpet still works, as long as you’re confident that you can clean it up more quickly and completely than your competitor.

Over the past 40 years, most of the transformations that have taken place in the three areas listed above have been driven by technology. As a sales professional, you still need to make a case for yourself and what you’re selling at the front door – even if that front door is a phone conversation, an e-mail exchange, or an interaction that takes place over any number of social media platforms. You need to be succinct, persuasive, and confident that what you’re bringing to the table is what the other party needs.

While technology can give sales professionals an advantage that didn’t exist 40 years ago, in other ways, selling today is more challenging than it was in the 1970′s. It is easier to hang up on or delete an email from a sales rep than it is to shut the door on someone. Compounding the challenge, the average human attention span is shrinking. Recent studies show short-term response to a stimulus that attracts attention is 8 seconds. This means that if you are pitching a prospect over the phone, you have just 8 seconds to capture their attention. All this adds up to even less time to deliver the initial sales pitch, which increases the pressure to make it really, really good.

Once you’ve successfully acquired the prospect’s interest, it’s important to engage the prospect in a conversation; ask questions and get them talking. By showing a genuine interest in the challenges or problems facing your potential client and putting what you do into the context of their world, you’ll have more success when you get to the big reveal – the dirt on the carpet.

While we may not literally throw dirt on the carpet anymore, the concept is still an essential component of sales success. Before you throw the dirt, however, you need to have confidence that your product or service has what it takes to clean it up in a way that is superior to what your prospect is using today at the very least, and in a competitively superior way at best.

For more sales lessons from eras past, check out our newest infographic and return for deeper analysis and key learning’s from each era during the coming weeks.

The post 3 Timeless Tips from the Door-to-Door Sales Era appeared first on Leads360 Blog.

Our research on Skill-Based Routing is proof that there are considerable benefits to be gained from implementing a performance or skill-based distribution method.  The chart below shows that reps that are given more leads similar to those they have been found to be “skilled” at converting can more than double their lead conversion rates year-over-year.  These results were obtained without a negative impact on “unskilled” reps, who also experienced a slight increase in conversion (+14%), for an overall conversion gain of 53%.

This chart shows the increase in conversion rates following implementation of Performance-Based Distribution.

The post Why getting the right leads to the right reps matters appeared first on Leads360 Blog.

How the sales profession has evolved from the Mad Men era, the tools change but the basics endure.

When Don Draper pitches a concept to his clients, he does it in person, at a big polished table in a big polished room. He sounds good, and he looks even better. And when he brings his “A game”, he doesn’t speak at his prospects – he speaks to them. This is not just because he’s arrogant but because he understands them.

Even though a lot has changed in the 50 years since Don Draper and his contemporaries revolutionized the way pitches were made, many of the core sales techniques we see at work on the show each week still apply today. These techniques include:

1. Strong understanding of your customer. The shenanigans that were par for the course in the Don Draper era would be considered, at the very least,  scandalous today. Deals were closed over cocktails and cigarettes where Don and his prospective clients let down their guard and got to know each other outside of the board room. Wining and dining is much less frequent in today’s sales environment with more deals done remotely; however, sales reps have an advantage that didn’t exist 50 years ago — the worldwide web. Sales reps can now harness the power of data across social networks and the endless array of online destinations to learn about what matters to their potential client before the first conversation. This data can also be used to find key triggers and indicators of a prospect’s readiness to buy relative to other leads in the pipeline. Sophisticated sales technologies make this data meaningful through the use of features like lead scoring and prioritization.
2. Understanding your customer’s customer: When people sit at the conference table presided over by Don Draper, the ultimate audience–the customer of Don’s customer–is never in the room. Regardless of what your company sells, if you’re selling to a business that sells to other businesses or consumers, it is crucial to know the customers or markets that drive your customer’s business.  By understanding the intersection between the markets your prospect serves, the business line being sold to and the role of the key decision maker (CIO, CFO, etc.), your sales efforts should speak directly to the issues that are top-of-mind. Through ongoing monitoring of what the target market is talking about, you can tweak product or service positioning to speak to the timeliest challenges of each prospect.
3. The pitch as your shot at success: What do pitches done in sleek boardrooms have in common with those done over the phone or via web conference? If they’re stale they fail.  Putting aside the generic sales pitch and knowing your customers unique needs and goals, is of paramount importance to improving relationships with prospects, gaining their trust and winning their business. The pitch is your one shot to take what you know about your prospective client (thanks to your diligent online research) and craft it into a compelling narrative, starring the person to whom you’re speaking. The desire most of us have, to be seen as an individual and not just another voice on the telephone, remains as salient today as it was in the 1960s. So even if it’s a screen and a headset, remember, we’re all human, and are influenced by a pitch that starts with our unique interests.

For more sales lessons from eras past, check out our newest infographic and return for deeper analysis and key learning’s from each era during the coming weeks.

The post Mad Men Era: 3 Timeless Sales Techniques appeared first on Leads360 Blog.

Without a doubt, sales leaders that embrace the evolving buyer dynamic and look to build on the timeless sales techniques of yesteryear have the potential to thrive in today’s sales economy.                                              

For lessons from eras past, check out our newest infographic below and return for deeper analysis and key learnings from each era during the coming weeks.

The post Infographic: How sales has evolved since the Mad Men era appeared first on Leads360 Blog.

Just like a judge on Dancing with the Stars, sales reps all interpret lead quality differently. Take control with Lead Scoring from Leads360. Photo credit – Celebuzz.

A few months back, we released a study about lead scoring in response to the growing number of customers who voiced interest in leveraging lead scoring to boost performance. One theme that emerged in these discussions was that having an actionable score is important and even critical for scoring to work.

These customers understand what sales guru Craig Rosenberg puts so aptly, “If you aren’t leveraging process and technology to make your sales team more efficient and effective, you will be left behind.”

This week, we are launching Lead Scoring to further our initiative to deliver intelligent sales software for high-velocity sales teams. Leads360 takes lead scoring to a new level, with the ability to define and fully integrate a lead score into an organization’s lead distribution and prioritization process. We’re very excited to move our product forward in this way. Our lead scoring feature is specifically designed to calculate a relative quality score to help sales decide how to prioritize and optimally move a lead through the sales funnel. The feature eliminates any guesswork needed by the sales rep decide which lead is the “hottest” in their pipeline.  A few use cases could include:

• Using the score to route leads to the most appropriate teams/reps
• Using the lead score to drive improved activity/prioritization for sales reps
• Returning poor scoring purchased leads to lead provider

To find out how your organization can put lead scoring to work for immediate benefit, click here or drop by our booth #411 at LeadsCon. If you’re new to scoring, we recommend reading Lead Scoring 101: Leveraging Lead Quality Attributes to Improve Conversion, a Leads360 report designed to give sales and marketing professionals a jump-start on their lead scoring efforts.

The post Putting lead scoring to work for sales appeared first on Leads360 Blog.

Great coaches can coax peak performance out of their athletes and so can sales managers when they use Leads360’s sales Performance-Based Distribution feature.

Any college basketball team that has made it to the March Madness tournament knows one thing for sure – every play and every game counts. And with the stakes so high, the coaches need to play to the strengths of each of their players, optimizing for peak performance.

Like an NCAA team in the Final Four, inside sales organizations are under constant pressure to maximize each sales opportunity. High performing sales teams know that if they don’t make the most of an opportunity, their competition will win the sale. But inside sales leaders often have limited insight into how successful their reps are with particular types of leads or if their reps have greater capacity, and thus are unable to maximize their reps skill set and revenue potential.

Leads360’s powerful Performance-Based Distribution breaks new ground in helping a sales organization play to the strengths of each individual sales team member to drive sales effectiveness. Performance-Based Distribution is an industry-first sales automation feature that continuously learns and self-tunes based on real-time sales rep performance results to drive optimal lead assignment.

By putting Leads360’s powerful Performance-Based Distribution capabilities to work, a sales manager immediately gains insights by tapping into historical performance data.  Once the programs are up and running, Performance-Based Distribution dynamically assigns more leads to sales reps skilled at converting particular lead types or who show greater capacity based on their historical performance.

Make sure your sales team is making the most of every opportunity. Just like in the March Madness tournament, anything can happen and any team can take home the grand prize. If you’re interested in seeing Performance-Based Distribution in action, stop by the Leads360 booth (#411) at LeadsCon, March 19-20, or sign up for a demo here.

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