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5 Tips to Help Make Your Next Customer Event a Success

January 3, 2020 CRM News and Info

2. Take Advantage of Having Your Customers in the Room and Emphasize the Power of Networking

Customer events provide a rare opportunity for your current customers to connect with peers who are using similar solutions. For people who are part of a small team (or, many times, the only user of your solution), it can be very exciting to network with other customers and share best practices.

But how does encouraging your customers to network help you at the end of the day? While it might not seem obvious at first, creating opportunities for your customers to connect with their peers to share tips and ideas opens the door for them to be more active users of your product or service. That’s because as your customers talk to each other, they’ll discover new and exciting ways to leverage what you provide.

For example, you might have a customer who is experiencing a pain point that they might not know your solution can solve. However, a new friend they just met at the event has the perfect use case for your product or service that will help them resolve their problem. While this customer might have otherwise been inclined to search for a new vendor, this new discovery will remind them how great it is to be your customer.

3. Leverage Your Social Channels to Create Buzz Before, During, and After the Event

Customer events are a great opportunity to create community, but you don’t have to wait to get all your people in a room to get them talking and raving about your brand. Leveraging social media is a great way to get your attendees excited before the event, invite them to share special moments once they’re there, and keep the momentum going long after the big day is over.

To encourage customers to look forward to your event, you should develop a social media campaign sharing the event location, date, and any highlights you think will motivate your target audience to sign up. In these posts, include a link to a dedicated landing page where your customers can go to discover more details and register for the event.

Although it’s easy to create one or two posts to promote your event, seeing the same message over and over again can tire out your audience. To avoid getting unfollowed or blocked by your social media followers, diversify the content of your posts promoting the event and spread them out over time.

Creating a dedicated hashtag for your event is an excellent way to motivate attendees to share moments from throughout the day. You can further incentivize them to share content on their social media profiles by hosting a photo contest or automatically entering them into a raffle every time they post.

Finally, it’s just as important to follow up through social media as it is through email. After your event, make sure to write a post thanking customers who attended your event and tag them and/or their companies if possible. Not only will this allow you to increase engagement on your post, but it’s also a great way to keep the conversation going. You’ll also find that many customers will want to share what they enjoyed about your event. Having their feedback front and center is a great way to motivate those who didn’t attend to register for one of your events in the future.

You might be thinking that managing all the activities I just mentioned is more than you can handle. However, the right social media management tool, such as Act-On’s Advanced Social Media Module, can help you automate most of these activities so you can stay on top of your social media game without having to spend all day in front of your computer.

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Tips For Protecting Your Data From Cyberattacks

December 12, 2019 BI News and Info

Cyberattacks are becoming increasingly common. Organizations and individuals are understandably concerned about their digital security. Research estimates that hackers try to break into a computer every few seconds. That is why it’s vital to protect your personal or business information online.

Cybersecurity should be among the top priorities in your business. Installing firewalls, hiring cybersecurity experts, and installing antivirus software are measures you can take to identify bugs in your computer and network systems. But you also ought to bring your A-game to enhance cybersecurity.

There is no bulletproof method for preventing cyberattacks, but there is so much you can do to reduce the risk. Here are a few suggestions for securing your business and personal data.

Recognize that you are a target

The first tip towards protecting yourself from cyberattacks is to understand that you are a target. People often don’t see themselves or their businesses as targets, which explains why they let their guard down. You need to remain vigilant to protect your data, regardless of the industry you operate in or the size of your business. Individuals are also a target of cyberattacks, even if they don’t deal with enormous amounts of data.

Firewall and antivirus protection

The use of antivirus protection is among the most prevalent solutions for fighting malicious attacks. The software blocks malicious viruses and malware from accessing your computer, laptop, or any other device and compromising your data. But make sure you install antivirus software from a trusted vendor and avoid running more than one antivirus tool on your devices. Using a firewall is also essential in protecting your data from cyberattackers. You need to invest in a next-generation firewall to screen out viruses, hackers, and other malicious activities that take place over the Internet. You also need to use a firewall in your router to prevent network attacks.

Back up your data

You can back up your data by copying it to other, separate locations to protect yourself from cyberattacks. Chances are you will not be in a position to access your phone, computer, or laptop when you are under a cyberattack. That can paralyze your business activities and potentially lose customers or business deals. However, you can continue your usual business operations if you have backed up your data. And you will not lose your data, regardless of what happens to your devices. Make sure you back up your data regularly.

Avoid public WiFi

If you have to use public Wi-Fi, make sure that you use a virtual private network (VPN). A VPN encrypts the traffic between the VPN server and your device. Or use your cellphone network if you don’t have a VPN, so a cybercriminal cannot quickly obtain the data on your device.

Encrypt your data

All digital systems handle sensitive data. It could be your bank information, customer data, business plans, or employee records. That is why you should incorporate cybersecurity measures to protect your sensitive data. You should seek help from cybersecurity professionals to encrypt your data. You can also look for full encryption tools available in your operating systems. You can also use blockchain for your internal networks to encrypt every business transaction that takes place within the digital ledger blocks.

Use two-factor authentication

Two-factor authentication is another effective way of protecting your online accounts from cyberattacks. You can opt for codes to be generated or sent on your phone or any other device. The generated codes are used to authenticate who you are every time you log into an online account. That way, even if hackers access your password, they can’t get into your accounts because they don’t have your phone to receive the codes.

Commercial and personal cybersecurity boils down to proactive measures to protect your data. These tips are suggestions to keep your information secure and prepare you for future security threats. Since the web is evolving, cyberattackers are also changing their techniques. Therefore, make sure you take cybersecurity seriously.

Learn Why Even The Most Secure Platform Can’t Keep All Your Data Safe.

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6 Tips for Data Teams to Improve Collaboration

December 11, 2019 Sisense

Everyone wants to get more out of their data, but how exactly to do that can leave you scratching your head. Our BI Best Practices demystify the analytics world and empower you with actionable how-to guidance.

In the right hands, data is the ultimate means to answer important business questions. The problem is that when data is used incorrectly, it still provides answers (just bad ones). The best way to avoid decisions made based on that bad information is to improve the relationships between the employees analyzing data and the employees acting on that information.

Today, data questions often involve someone from a line-of-business team and someone from a data team. Both people bring their own individual expertise to the collaboration, but these projects can easily fall into the trap of unclear expectations and insufficient communication.

Before building a dashboard to answer questions, data experts need to sit down with their line-of-business counterparts and have a discussion about the purpose of that dashboard. Here are a few tips for data experts to get the most out of that meeting:

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Go into every dashboard with an open mind

It’s crucial to start every new data inquiry with a fresh mind. Every assumption the data experts make is an opportunity for the overall insight to lose value. On the other side, provided assumptions and business context can accelerate the data work for a faster time to value. The goal of every dashboard creator in a data request meeting should be to fully understand the data consumer’s needs and workflow. That means listening to their individual context and letting the investigation go where the data leads. If you drive the conversation or ask leading questions, you’ll end up at the resolution that you want, not necessarily the one that’s most valuable.

Get to know the individual requesting the data

Like most collaborative projects, empathy is critical to success. I like to start data request meetings by asking the data customer to walk me through their typical day. In some cases, it even helps me to shadow them for a while. What I’m looking for is a complete picture of the way that individual uses data. There might be pain points or missed opportunities for data to be used that I can help integrate. Asking someone about their typical day is also an easy way to get them communicating openly. It disarms them and puts the focus on the personal connection rather than a business problem.

Understand the business value behind a data request

An easy way for a data inquiry to get off track is for the dashboard creator to receive a request and cut straight to building a dashboard. Sometimes a request for a specific metric might miss the bigger question that data can solve. For example, a CS person might say “give me churn” but what they mean is “we need to find a way to minimize churn.” If you were to build a chart that simply listed churn over time, you’d miss all the other data points that correlate with churn. It’s often the data team’s job to connect data from different teams and maximize business value. Narrowing in on one team’s KPIs is an easy way to take your eye off the real goal. If you understand what is at the heart of the data request, it’ll be easier to work backward and find the right questions for the data to answer.

Work in pairs if possible

It’s true that two heads are generally better than one, but this concept is less about brainpower than it is about having one set of hands dedicated to note-taking. While a second data expert can definitely help understand the bigger questions in a meeting about data, it is invaluable to the flow of the conversation to have someone designated as a note-taker. Since the conversation moves at the speed of the slowest participant, it is extremely disruptive to have one person focusing on both moving the conversation forward and also documenting the important information for later. If a paired approach isn’t possible, it’s always an option to record the conversation, but I also recommend sketching out potential charts during these sessions, and that doesn’t translate well through audio.

Start general, then get specific

It’s likely that the initial dashboard request will be for a very pointed metric. This isn’t a bad way to start, but it’s the data expert’s job to guide the bring the focus to a bigger general question that this data can solve and uncover complementary data that can be included in that dashboard. Consider the example of churn from earlier. Presumably, the company’s goal is to maximize revenue and the inquiry into churn is being done to that end. It’s probably valuable to first create a variety of charts that illustrate the effect of churn on revenue. From there, it might also be useful to consider churn for individual cohorts, find factors that correlate in some way with churn or locate levers that will improve churn. Organizing the questions you ask from general to specific will also help you organize the charts on your dashboard when it’s time to create that asset.

Build an unsorted list of questions to answer with data

At the end of the meeting, the best thing to come away with is a list of questions that can be translated into data queries. An easy way to build this list is to open a document and just list the big questions that come up as you have exploratory conversations and try to understand the bigger business issue. If you can work as a pair, your note taker can do this part too. When the meeting is over (or maybe afterward if you recorded the conversation and want some time to go back and review notes), you can submit the list of questions to the dashboard requester and make sure that you have everything covered. Once that list is approved, you can start mapping each of the questions into a chart that will be organized and placed on your final dashboard.

Thinking long instead of short

Building a dashboard isn’t a straight line: there’s a lot of back and forth, questioning, editing, and iterating between the initial request and the finished product. These tips will help you build a strong foundation for this process and leave you in the best position for creating a dashboard that can really help your users make smarter decisions. Try embracing a collaborative process; you’ll be glad you took the time, asked the hard questions.

Christine Quan is a seasoned data and analytics veteran, focused on data visualization theory and building tools to empower data teams. She’s an expert at constructing SQL queries and building visualizations in R, Python, or Javascript.

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Top Reputation Management Tips For Your Business

December 6, 2019 BI News and Info

Reputation has always been one of the primary assets for any business – if the word gets out that you cannot be trusted, individuals and other companies will be wary of dealing with you. If you are accused of shady activities, you are bound to lose partners, if only because being associated with you could negatively affect their reputation.

However, in these days of instant communication and always-online connectivity, reputation is particularly important. Social media, instant messaging, and broadband Internet ensure that any bad news about your company will spread like wildfire. A bad review can go a long way: 89% of US customers use online reviews to decide whether or not to deal with a business.

This article covers some ways you can manage your company’s online reputation better.

1. Check your digital imprint

The first thing a potential new client does before making a transaction is to Google your business. What do people see when they enter your company’s name into the search box? According to a recent study, companies on average lose about 22% of business if there is a single negative article on the first search results page. This share jumps to almost 60% if there are three such articles.

What is even worse, negative articles are not the only thing that can harm your image. Rarely updated websites, inactive social media accounts, inconsistent messages across different channels – all these can serve as potential red flags. You may look for them manually or try using special software developed for that purpose.

2. Use the right communication channels

Your business’ reputation depends, to a significant degree, on how effective you are at communicating your messages to clients and other businesses and at responding to communications in a timely and relevant manner. If your company becomes known for having a hard-to-reach customer support team or not responding to queries, you will experience problems. Choosing the right channel plays a significant role in establishing a positive, long-standing image for your business. Texting is one option that has been trending; if you want to know why texting should be used as a communications tool, consider this: 98% of text messages are opened, compared to only 22% of emails. When clients make calls to a business, most are placed on hold for about a minute, and only 14% of calls are not placed on hold. Text messaging may look impersonal and cold, but it certainly beats having a client try to contact you and hanging up in frustration.

3. Manage online reviews

A huge part of reputation management consists of tracking and managing online reviews, because they are the first thing that come into the spotlight when somebody tries searching for your business online. Start with identifying the primary platforms your clients use to evaluate your business, and try to figure out which have the most influence. Create your own accounts for each of them, study the platforms’ policies, and start going through existing reviews. Some of them will be spam, so you should flag them. Thank clients who left positive reviews. If a review raises an issue, respond to it and offer to resolve it – clients tend to value a resolution more than than a non-issue. After that, schedule regular (at least weekly) monitoring of all new feedback.

4. Get more reviews

You cannot just get a certain number of reviews and be done. Sixty-nine percent of customers consider reviews older than three months to be irrelevant. This means that you need a constant incoming flow of positive reviews if you want clients to see your business as thriving and functional. There are many ways to encourage customers to publish reviews: send them an email after they make a purchase, request a review via SMS, design a landing page around receiving reviews. The possibilities are endless.

5. Publish valuable content

The content you publish should be what your clients find valuable, not what you think is valuable to them. You have probably heard “content is king” for years, but here is a stat to give you some perspective: 75% of customers claim that a company’s content makes a significant impact on their buying decisions. If you do not care enough to offer your customers valuable content, they see you as being in business only for the money.

Reputation management is a vital part of any business strategy – especially today when everything you do or say immediately becomes known to everybody.

Don’t miss the chance to learn about the integration between SAP SuccessFactors and Qualtrics Solutions firsthand from the product expert on December 12th.

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Write on! Tips to improve RFP responses in Dynamics

October 29, 2019 Microsoft Dynamics CRM

If you’re sending sales proposals and contracts out of Dynamics (whether or not you’re using IQX, our contract management solution integrated with Dynamics CRM), there are some composition tips and tricks that can help make every proposal more presentable and every contract more compelling.

And we’ve detailed most of them in this free whitepaper, “RFP responses made easy.”

Dynamics is the engine, not the fuel

In the same way the integrity of the account, contact, and prospect data in your CRM depends heavily on how it’s entered and by whom, the sales proposals you send out of Dynamics are often only as good as the content you put into them.

I.e., software can only take us so far in closing a sale: it’s our soft-skills that often carry us across the (dotted) finish line.

Which is why the composition of your proposal — the language, the look and feel, the confidence all that and more instills in a prospect — carries as much weight as its products and pricing.

And while Dynamics can help you build a basic sales proposal and basically track it, it can’t populate it with the details and “personality” that will help it stand apart from the dozens of others under consideration. That job will always and forever fall to the person creating the proposal.

Be better than basic

Note that we said Dynamics can help you build a basic proposal. Technically, unless you’re using a CPQ (configure, price, quote) solution like IQX — also known as a contract management solution, or sales proposal automation — you’ll be using Word or Excel to build your proposal, and then send it through Dynamics.

But with CPQ integrated in Dynamics CRM, you can leave “basic” behind you, and start sending proposals that build your brand, reduce errors, optimize products and pricing, and speed the overall process. Every CPQ system has (or should have) sales enablement tools and tech built-in that 1) improves the quality of every quote and 2) reduces opportunity for error. A win-win!

A quote can (should?) be a contract

Whether or not you’re using sales proposal automation software — and with professionally designed proposal templates, drag and drop product and pricing configurations, tracking and monitoring of every step in the signing process, and more, you absolutely should be — create every proposal as if it’s a contract. Because sometimes it is.

While the accepting of a quote and its moving pieces is not as legally binding as a signed contract (not in the US, anyway), it does include the “raw ingredients” that will comprise your contract. In many cases, the contract is the quote + legalese.

Yes, in far larger deals with more, shall we say, “old school” organizations, a sales quote may not be enough to get started on the business relationship. But for smaller deals in the SMB space (or for SMB type departmental budgets) what’s in the quote can often be enough to get the show on the road. So create every quote accordingly.

The right words = the right stuff

If there’s one takeaway we’re hoping this post delivers it’s this: What you say and how you say it matters. Sometimes, you write a quote to impress, other times you write to connect, and other times what you write in your quote lays the foundations for a business relationship that may even outlast you.

And while every system on the market — CRM, ERP, etc. — will always do an ever-better job of delivering, tracking, and reporting on your sales quotes and other business documents, they’ll never be able to create the communication that actually helps close new business. That will always be up to you.

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5 Tips to Optimize Your Website to Drive More Conversions

October 4, 2019 CRM News and Info

Your company’s website is probably your most powerful marketing and sales tool, yet many businesses neglect to create an enjoyable digital experience that drives conversions. Factors such as content, loading speed, design, and structure all play an important role in encouraging prospects and existing customers to continue navigating your site. Failing to account for these important factors will lead to lost opportunities and a negative brand reputation.

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We live in a digital age where our customers know that the solutions to their pain points are a quick search away and have become accustomed to receiving fast and reliable service from their chosen vendors. That means that companies have to be willing and ready to deliver relevant content, information, and solutions at a moment’s notice to capture their target customer’s attention and generate conversions.

However, when your website is not optimized to match your users’ needs, providing customers with the type of experience they have come to expect becomes much more difficult. If customers have to wait too long to get what they want and need or can’t find what they’re looking for, they’ll likely look for solutions elsewhere. But failing to optimize your website to match customer preferences doesn’t just affect bounce rates; it also impacts order size, customer satisfaction, SEO rankings, and your ability to gain conversions.

In other words, if you’re not seeing the results you want, it might not necessarily mean that it’s time to overhaul your marketing strategy. The solution to your demand and lead generation goals could be as simple as taking the steps necessary to make your website faster and create a more enjoyable browsing experience for your customers.

Today, we’re going to walk you through 5 things you should focus on to do just that.

1) Measure the Speed of Your Website and Optimize Accordingly

Your site can have the best content, SEO, and design, but all it takes to make your bounce rates skyrocket is a slow page loading time. Your target customers want quick answers to their most pressing questions, and having to wait around — even if it’s only for a second or two — can motivate them to look for a solution elsewhere.

The good news is that even if your page load time is very slow, there are tools that can help you measure performance and determine the best course of action. To start, you should check out Think with Google’s Test My Site tool. This handy tool will help you evaluate your website and give you pointers on what you can do to optimize it for speed. You can even generate a report so your team can review recommendations and collaborate to develop an appropriate plan of action.

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Improve Webinar Success With These 5 Tips

September 28, 2019 CRM News and Info

by Kyle McCarthy

Last updated September 24, 2019

You probably know that marketing webinars are one of the best ways to educate your audience and promote your organization, but do you know how to get more registrants? What about creating the best possible user experience for all your attendees? Follow-up and lead nurturing after the webinar? These are all essential steps to producing the best possible webinar for your organization and your attendees, but many marketers aren’t aware of their value or don’t know how to address these critical webinar components.

If you’re dedicated to producing more online events but want to improve your webinar success moving forward, please keep reading to learn five great tips for proven webinar results.

Improve Webinar Success With These 5 Tips

1) Create Demand Gen Campaigns to Secure Webinar Registrants

This probably goes without saying, but there’s no point in hosting a webinar if nobody bothers to show. So you need to create effective and efficient demand generation campaigns to get more people to reserve their seats.

Before launching these campaigns, however, you need to create a dedicated landing page for your online event with an easy-to-complete form and clear and concise copy listing the following:

The primary topic and your main talking points
The date and time of your marketing webinar
Who will be participating and their expertise

Your form on the page should include less than five fields (and ideally no more than three) and a prominent “Submit” or “RSVP” button.

Once your landing page is complete, you can begin leveraging it to secure webinar registrants. Here are a few different ways to get your target audience to commit to your webinar.

Link to your invite landing page in your marketing newsletter.
Create Google Ads and paid social campaigns using highly targeted keywords aimed at specific demographics.
Enlist all team members to promote the webinar in their email signatures and via the appropriate social media channels.
Depending on your audience, write a blog on the same topic as your webinar and create a call-to-action that links to your invite landing page.
Link to the webinar on your form submission “Thank You” pages.
Create an organic social media campaign.

Encourage your target audience to join your webinar any way you can, as long as your efforts align with your brand guidelines and don’t break the bank.

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2) Increase Webinar Attendance With Lead Nurturing

Before you launch your demand generation efforts, you should create a lead nurturing campaign to ensure that your registrants actually attend the webinar. This should consist of a series of 3-4 emails reminding registrants of the upcoming event and also include a link to different content assets that are related to the webinar topic.

Copy should be brief and reiterate the topic, presenters, and date and time of the webinar and say something to the effect of:

“We’re excited for you to join us at our webinar next month on {date and time}. If you’d like to learn more about {Topic X} before the webinar, please click this link to read an eBook we recently wrote on the subject!”

Short, informative, and to the point.

Different content assets you can use include:

Blogs
eBooks
Infographics
Success stories
Videos
Podcasts
And even previous related webinars

At this point, you already have your registrants’ contact information, so the links to these content assets should be ungated whenever possible. You want to balance your lead generation efforts with the user experience, and the best way to do that is to collect information slowly over time and provide valuable content that keeps your users engaged. And don’t send too many nurturing emails; you don’t want to alienate your audience and motivate them to unsubscribe before they even have the chance to attend your webinar!

Creating a Content Strategy Banner CTA Improve Webinar Success With These 5 Tips

3) Use Webinar Polls During Your Event to Improve Engagement

Most marketers are used to sending follow-up surveys after a webinar, but you should also be posing questions throughout your event to keep attendees engaged and collect valuable information along the way. Additionally, many of your attendees might be reluctant to participate during the Q&A portion of your webinar, so polling them throughout the event is a great way to field questions and learn more about your audience in real-time.

Here are a few best practices to keep in mind when creating your webinar polls:

Only ask one question at a time to avoid confusion.
Use plain language and simple questions to get the most accurate answers.
Write questions that benefit your attendees as much as they do you.
Don’t ask too many questions on top of one another (one question every 7 minutes seems to be the sweet spot).
Introduce your questions before asking them, and show your attendees where and how to respond.
Keep your audience invested by showing them the results.

The right webinar polling questions will increase user interactions and provide valuable data that you can use to improve your products and services, develop new content, and even perfect the way that you speak to your target audiences.

4) Create and Distribute an On-Demand Webinar

Just because you already filmed your webinar live doesn’t mean you shouldn’t continue to reap the benefits of your hard work. By creating an on-demand version of your webinar and then distributing that content to multiple channels, you can get more out of these online events over the long haul. Maybe your attendance for your webinar was in the 30% range, which is isn’t bad, but could definitely be improved. By posting a recorded version of the event, you can actually exceed your registrant totals and market to an entirely new audience!

Some innovative ways you can use on-demand webinars include:

Create a “Webinars” section of your website and host your recordings there within days of recording.
Add your on-demand webinars to existing automated nurture programs with similar topics.
Develop organic social media campaigns to highlight your on-demand webinar series.
Write blogs on related topics and then embed your webinar as a prominent call-to-action on the page.
Send it to all registrants as part of your “Thanks for Attending” email, along with social links to encourage advocacy sharing.
When it’s time to present your next webinar, you can include a link to this on-demand webinar as an extra incentive to join and as proof of the value of your webinars.

On-demand webinars should be gated, as these are premium content assets and are likely being viewed by users who did not sign up for the original event recording. The best practice here is to allow your audience to watch about 5% of the webinar and then present a brief form they must complete before they can continue watching.

5) Create Automated Programs to Follow-Up With Attendees

Now that you have established a real relationship with everyone who viewed the live and recorded versions of your webinar, you should create automated email campaigns that allow you to email your webinar leads.

Similar to the lead nurturing campaigns you launched prior to the webinar, your post-webinar automated programs should consist of about 4-5 emails that continue to showcase your organization as a thought leader in your space. This time, however, you should include messaging and content that begins to explain how your products and services can help solve your email recipients’ primary pain points.

For instance, our automated programs usually follow a format that begins with content usually found very early on in the customer funnel and then slowly narrows to more middle-of-the-funnel content before delivering a hand-raiser CTA:

Blog closely related to the webinar topic — perhaps with the on-demand version of the webinar embedded on the page to jog the reader’s memory and give them another chance to share to their social media channels.
Infographic that presents detailed statistics in a visually engaging way. You don’t want to overwhelm your audience, but you do want to make them aware of the issues you’re discussing as well as how their peers are discovering solutions to their main problems.
eBook that delves deeper into the same topic you’ve begun to address with your blog and infographic. The eBook should be focused on how to tackle the issue it’s addressing, but there should also be an entire section near the end that is solely focused on how your organization helps your customers to overcome the challenge.
Success story that illustrates how your customers are getting the most out of your offerings to solve their issues and generate better ROI. This offers real proof of your company’s worth to your new prospects.
The final email should be a tidy summary of everything you’ve sent so far (with links to each content asset) and a friendly invitation to book a product demo, take a virtual tour, or contact a sales rep — whichever hand-raiser CTA is most applicable to your business model.

If these leads aren’t yet ready to speak to a salesperson once they have completed the entire automated program, you can place them in related programs based on their interests, demographics, company size, etc. This way, you always remain top of mind without having to hassle them with too many promotional emails or sales calls.

Act-On Can Help You Deliver Better Webinars

Now that you know the proper strategy to host, execute, and leverage your marketing webinars, you should look into Act-On’s webinar management functionality. Act-On simply and seamlessly integrates with both Cisco WebEx Event Center and Citrix Online GoToWebinar so you can spend less time organizing your webinar and more time building great registration and attendance lists.

With Act-On, you can:

Easily manage the process from start to finish using the Act-On Dashboard
Create a timeline of activities prior to and after your webinar
Develop all emails, landing pages, and registration forms related to your webinar
Track, analyze, and report your webinar data and results

For more information on how to deliver the best possible webinar, please download our eBook, “How to Use Online Events to Build Lasting Relationships.” Or, if you’d like to learn how Act-On can help you improve your online event management, please book a demo with one of our marketing automation experts today!

Webinar and Chill CTA Improve Webinar Success With These 5 Tips

Digital Marketing Tips for Manufacturers

September 27, 2019 CRM News and Info

In today’s complex selling environment, manufacturers have to be more strategic and targeted when it comes to attracting, engaging, and converting their customers. While most manufacturers have been keeping pace with the latest supply chain technology and other industry advancements, their marketing departments are lagging behind in terms of innovation. This puts manufacturing marketers at a great disadvantage when it comes to fueling business growth.

At first glance, it might make sense to prioritize product development over marketing. After all, the value is in the product, and you don’t need to invest thousands of dollars to convey that, right? The problem with that approach, however, is that not even the best and highest-quality products on the market will sell unless you can find a way to convey that value to your target customers.

In other words, long gone are the days of customers settling on the first solution that comes their way. Today’s buyers do their research and expect vendors to meet them halfway by providing content and recommendations that will help them find a solution that best fits their needs. Because of this new dynamic, manufacturers not only have to make customers know that they are the best option, they also have to find ways to engage and nurture their customers and stand out from competitors during what is now a much lengthier customer journey.

While the products produced by manufacturers are unique, the challenges faced by their marketing departments are similar across all industries. This means that manufacturing marketers can learn a thing or two by replicating strategies that have proven effective in other industries.

Keep reading to learn more about key marketing challenges plaguing the manufacturing industry, as well as digital marketing essentials that will help you make your business stand out, attract and nurture the most qualified leads, and drive ROI like never before.

The Top 3 Marketing Challenges Impacting the Manufacturing Industry

If you’ve been marketing to a manufacturing audience for some time, you’ve probably noticed that some of the tactics that worked for you in the past are no longer packing the same punch. While each organization will face its own unique set of obstacles, these are some of the most common marketing challenges preventing manufacturers from attracting and converting more leads into customers.

1) Lack of Insight Into Buyer Preferences

Today’s buyers aren’t settling for navigating the customer journey at your pace or by your rules. Buyers have taken much of the sales cycle into their own hands and become accustomed to conducting online research, reading peer reviews, and weighing their purchasing options long before they’re willing to speak to any salespeople.

Marketers in manufacturing (like many other industries) have struggled to shift their sales and marketing efforts to accommodate these buyer preferences and needs. The result? Too often their marketing efforts completely miss the mark as manufacturing marketers aren’t offering customers the content and information they want and need at the right time. This leads to a huge disconnect and usually motivates the customer to veer toward a vendor that is willing to adapt to their preferences.

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5 Tips for Making the Secret Sauce of a Sales Rockstar

September 15, 2019 CRM News and Info

Too often, sales teams and successful reps are shrouded in an air of mystery. Many can’t tell you exactly how they do what they do. Nowadays, they do it behind a screen, which limits the potential for apprenticeship, immersive learning and modeling. It offers little data beyond outcomes for managers attempting to dissect what’s really working.

So, what is the secret sauce of a sales rockstar? While there isn’t a single end-all-be-all ingredient, I’ve unlocked some tricks of the trade for reps looking to rise to the next level, tips for sales enablement and for trainers to grow their teams, and more.

1. Unearth the Voice of the Customer

Stop resisting and let artificial intelligence fix an age-old problem: the lack of input into a CRM. Your teams need to better understand the voice of the customer and actually apply learnings from prospect-facing calls.

Currently, the only way to do that is through an updated CRM. Teams use it as the proxy to evaluate the health of an opportunity. However, when
fewer than 5 percent of calls make it into that database, how do you know what’s happening between reps and prospects? Where a rep is missing the mark or failing to grasp what customers actually want from you?

Reps are putting in a really loose set of notes to satisfy the requirement of inputting data and not truly representing their conversation or opportunity. That means you don’t have the full story, and if you’re not getting the full picture, you’re guessing.

I don’t care what you use to record your calls — just do it. Once those calls are recorded, make sure you have AI in place to take key moments from conversations and automatically log the info into your preferred CRM. You’ll free up reps’ time to research, train and conduct more prospect-facing conversations. Additionally, you’ll have a true understanding of the deal.

2. Measure It to Improve It, Track It to Disseminate It

Sales teams already deploy monitoring tools like one-to-ones for training, strict requirements for logging info in CRMs (which may fall on deaf ears as we’ve discussed), and taking notes from calls, usually through recording.

Where sales will find real success is in taking the next step: finding a way to capture what’s working during those business conversations, and disseminating that tribal knowledge to the rest of the group.

The best and fastest-growing companies in the world are the ones that identify what top salespeople are doing and share that information across the company. Doing so gives underperformers, laggards and new hires an opportunity to learn best practices.

It’s not about creating a drone or clone. It’s about delivering the knowledge veterans have obtained.

3. Create a Culture of Sharing

Let me tell you a story: In the early days of my previous job, we focused on staffing and getting product to market, but didn’t really focus on the buyer. We had a roundtable in the war room so we could uncover that vital information, which included our head of sales, CEO, VP of product, business development representatives and a few sales reps.

Embarrassing but true, at one point, one of our BDRs said, “We do really well with companies that have two names. Like, the name is two words stitched together.”

Honestly, I lost it because I thought it was silly, but what we soon realized was, he meant we performed well with Software as a Service companies, which at the time often had two names mashed together.

Our ideal customer profile (ICP) bull’s-eye was SaaS, specifically venture-backed SaaS. This guy, six months out of college, identified who we were — and should be — selling to, because he was collecting information and making sense of it.

Why does this matter? It’s indicative of team members having aha moments and real revelations but only sharing the info when a roundtable was called. Likely, this meant that he knew about this for a while and the person sitting next to him had no idea and couldn’t benefit from the knowledge his peer obtained.
Establishing a culture of sharing will raise everyone to the next level.

4. Cultivate a Genuine Desire to Help Your Customers

Remember the guy in my example above? He had a real desire to understand our customers. His genuine, earnest curiosity helped us narrow down on our ICP. I’m not talking about just their pain points, but a whole range of things that made life hard for them.

If you have that genuine desire to help — not to win — you earn the right to sell. A quick way to do this is replacing seller steps with buyer stages. Think Bezos and Amazon leading the charge with customer obsession.

Speak this mantra: If I remove my needs and my company, and the only thing I care about is helping this customer succeed, then I’m behaving in a customer-centric way.

Consider how often you listen for the customer’s pain point and launch into an assault about how you can fix it. Usually, any time sales reps ask a question, it’s to hunt for a customer’s weakness that can be exploited later in a conversation.

Everything a customer reveals, reps write down in order to win a deal later. That is not the right way to approach the conversation. Reps need to develop a genuine desire to make the customer more successful.

Help your customers accomplish their missions, and you inevitably will make more money and win more deals. If you aren’t finding success with this method, then it probably means you have not subscribed to being customer-obsessed.

5. Manage Rookies Leading Rookies

I have another real-life anecdote I want to share: In a previous role, I found myself in a classic venture-backed, hyper-growth scenario that resulted in
rookies managing and leading rookies. You know, when first-time reps come out of college and do BDR for a few months, then they become an account exec and within a year want to move up to midmarket? That’s the situation I’m talking about.

If the top layer of reps become managers, that means about 50 percent of the sales team has one year of experience or less. That’s great for their own growth, but how do they continue to learn or train the new class of reps just hired?

To fight this issue, I decided to implement a platform that recorded calls, automatically input data into our CRM, allowed me to curate playlists of top-performing reps, create personalized training, and learn the voice of the customer by pulling out key moments in conversations. The results?

I shaved a quarter of ramp time. It used to take seven months to get new hires or poor performers to the average productivity of a veteran. I shaved three months of ramp time of 15 people, which equates to 45 months of quota attainment for the company. That’s a 25 percent lift.
The 15 people I promoted (that would normally take seven months to ramp), were ready in four. That means there were three extra months of productivity. Instead of the normal five months of productivity, we got eight months from each person. What’s more, we didn’t have to pay extra or get pipeline for them.

Creating a culture of sharing, becoming customer-obsessed and combating hyper-growth scenarios where rookies are left to lead other rookies to the promised land are just the tip of the iceberg. If you apply the tips above, you’ll see some serious positive impact to your bottom line.

Joe%20Caprio 5 Tips for Making the Secret Sauce of a Sales Rockstar
Joe Caprio is VP of sales at
Chorus.ai.

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Tips on creating a microsoft crm business case

August 1, 2019 Microsoft Dynamics CRM

Every microsoft crm system has to have a compelling business case. Why are you undertaking a microsoft crm project? What do you want to achieve? How will you measure ROI? Here we provide some useful tips on creating a strong business case for your project.

Tip #1 – Keep it brief

Keep your microsoft crm business case as concise as possible. Stick to the main points and show value and return.

Highlight no more than 3 – 5 top line objectives you want to achieve from your CRM initiative. Communicate your top 5 initiatives to your sponsor and business regularly to ensure buy-in and clarity. Keep the focus to a maximum of 5 so you don’t dilute your message and retain the focus.

Tip #2 – Answer key questions

Ensure your microsoft crm business case answers the following questions:

How will a CRM solution support your business?
How will a CRM solution support the teams?
Will shareholders see value?
What will the senior management team gain?

Proving that CRM technology will add value is a key criteria, however calculating return on investment can be difficult if there is no baseline data to work from. So, look at what data you can use. Is there anything already in place that you can measure against time, cost and quality?

The benefits of using Microsoft Dynamics CRM are vast, and they need to be considered for your business case to be compelling.

There are a number of benefit groups that CRM technology provides:

Increased Revenue
Increased Efficiency
Differentiating yourself in a crowded marketplace
Decreasing Costs
Increases margins
Maximises revenue from existing customers

Increase efficiency

Upsell and cross sell opportunities
Reduces administration time
Provides a cohesive sales and marketing effort
Automates proposals and quotes
Provides a unified set of data that is usable by non-technical people
Provides Board visibility of your sales pipeline
Ease to create valuable reports
Ease to track KPIs and SLAs

Differentiators

Gain new customers
Increase customer retention and profitability
Improve response time to customer requests for information
Ability to propel new offerings
Excel at customer service / customer experience – delighting them every time

Decrease costs

Process improvements and automation saving wasted time
Streamlining the customer journey and touch points empowers lead nurture
Less wastage of time and effort
Less time spent fixing incorrect orders and dissatisfied customers

Your business case will need to provide an outline of the costs involved in developing and implementing your microsoft crm solution. Broadly speaking, costs will cover:

Initial solution implementation costs
Analysis and detailed design time and cost
Potential hardware needs
Customisation costs
User training
Number of people / licenses
Number of business locations requiring CRM
Departments involved
Process alignment
Integration of systems ie. accounting platform, ERP, other data management sources
Project management resource from your business

What to do next

To discuss building your business case, or for more information on any aspect of Dynamics 365 or CRM in general, please get in touch with our CRM specialists at Caltech CRM.

Tag Archives: Tips

2. Take Advantage of Having Your Customers in the Room and Emphasize the Power of Networking

3. Leverage Your Social Channels to Create Buzz Before, During, and After the Event

Recognize that you are a target

Firewall and antivirus protection

Back up your data

Avoid public WiFi

Encrypt your data

Use two-factor authentication

Go into every dashboard with an open mind

Get to know the individual requesting the data

Understand the business value behind a data request

Work in pairs if possible

Start general, then get specific

Build an unsorted list of questions to answer with data

Thinking long instead of short

1. Check your digital imprint

2. Use the right communication channels

3. Manage online reviews

4. Get more reviews

5. Publish valuable content

Dynamics is the engine, not the fuel

Be better than basic

A quote can (should?) be a contract

The right words = the right stuff

1) Measure the Speed of Your Website and Optimize Accordingly

1) Create Demand Gen Campaigns to Secure Webinar Registrants

2) Increase Webinar Attendance With Lead Nurturing

3) Use Webinar Polls During Your Event to Improve Engagement

4) Create and Distribute an On-Demand Webinar

5) Create Automated Programs to Follow-Up With Attendees

Act-On Can Help You Deliver Better Webinars

Related Blog Posts

The Top 3 Marketing Challenges Impacting the Manufacturing Industry

1) Lack of Insight Into Buyer Preferences

1. Unearth the Voice of the Customer

2. Measure It to Improve It, Track It to Disseminate It

3. Create a Culture of Sharing

4. Cultivate a Genuine Desire to Help Your Customers

5. Manage Rookies Leading Rookies

Every microsoft crm system has to have a compelling business case. Why are you undertaking a microsoft crm project? What do you want to achieve? How will you measure ROI? Here we provide some useful tips on creating a strong business case for your project.

Tip #1 – Keep it brief

Tip #2 – Answer key questions

Increase efficiency

Differentiators

Decrease costs

What to do next

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