by Bill Poole | Jul 14, 2023 | Sales
On the surface, investing in contact data looks expensive. Before you reject the idea, here are three reasons to consider investing in a product like ZoomInfo, and then we will look at a few considerations to help you evaluate whether or not it might be worth it for your business.
Add Value To Your CRM
Investing in contact data can help keep your CRM (Customer Relationship Management) system up to date by providing accurate and current information about businesses and professionals. Here are a couple of ways contact data can assist in keeping your CRM up to date:
- Data Enrichment: Enrich your existing CRM data by appending and updating company and contact details. Any effective sales and marketing strategy can benefit from accurate information such as company names, addresses, phone numbers, industry classification, employee count, revenue estimates, and executive contacts.
- Contact and Account Scoring: Scoring capabilities to assess the quality and relevance of leads, prospects, and clients within your CRM also adds value. Analyzing various data points, such as job titles, industry, company size, and technology usage, can help prioritize and segment your CRM data, ensuring you focus on the most valuable prospects and customers.
Know When Your Prospects Are Seeking Your Help
Intent data refers to information about a prospect’s online activities and behaviors, indicating their interest or intent to purchase. You can configure your application to tell you when contacts that meet your Ideal Client Profile are Googling for things you can help them with.
Target The Right Contacts
Nothing is more frustrating than investing your energy in pursuing a prospect that has moved on from their position. Even worse, having incorrect contact data for customers and clients affects retention, client satisfaction, and the productivity of sales, marketing, and operations.
Time To Reconsider?
Your people, technology, and processes are significant assets to your organization. Here are a few things to consider before you put the kibosh on investment in contact data:
- How much have you invested in your CRM and other technologies with contact data?
- How much more effective would your team be if you took away all of the time they spend on activities aimed at the wrong contacts?
- What is the lifetime value of an Ideal Client to your business?
If you weigh these considerations, investing in a product liKe ZoomInfo seems like a slam dunk!
by Bill Poole | Jun 5, 2023 | Sales
B2B services organizations typically have goals to grow their business. The interesting thing is that they often miss the biggest opportunity to grow that is right under their nose. It is pretty hard to argue that it is a lot easier ot sell to current clients than to new ones. Most quoted statistics reference that it is 10x more expensive to sell to a new client than en existing one.
Five benefits to focusing on cross-selling to your clients.
- Increased revenue: Cross-selling allows B2B organizations to generate additional revenue streams by selling complementary or related services to existing customers. By offering a broader range of services, organizations can tap into new revenue opportunities without incurring significant customer acquisition costs.
- Deepening customer relationships: Cross-selling services is an effective strategy for strengthening relationships with existing customers. By expanding the range of services provided to a customer, B2B organizations deepen their engagement and become more embedded in the customer’s operations. This increases customer loyalty and reduces the likelihood of them seeking alternatives from competitors.
- Competitive advantage: Cross-selling can provide a competitive advantage by differentiating the B2B organization from its competitors. Offering a comprehensive suite of services that addresses a customer’s diverse needs can make the organization more appealing and valuable to customers. It positions the organization as a one-stop solution provider, giving them an edge over competitors who may offer a more limited range of services.
- Cost savings: Cross-selling to existing customers is generally more cost-effective than acquiring new customers. The B2B organization already has an established relationship with the customer, reducing the need for extensive marketing efforts and associated costs. Additionally, existing customers are more likely to be receptive to cross-selling efforts as they already trust the organization and value the existing services provided.
- Market expansion: Cross-selling services can open doors to new markets or customer segments. By identifying additional services that cater to different industries or sectors, B2B organizations can enter new markets with existing customers. This diversification reduces dependence on a single market segment and helps mitigate risks associated with market fluctuations.
Maximize Your Efforts
To maximize the effectiveness of cross-selling services, B2B organizations should focus on understanding their customer’s needs, developing a comprehensive service portfolio, training sales teams to identify cross-selling opportunities, and maintaining strong customer relationships through ongoing communication and support.
Download Your Cross-Selling Potential Questionnaire
by Bill Poole | Apr 28, 2023 | Sales
Customer Relationship Management (CRM) software is now crucial for businesses looking to increase their revenue. It allows companies to manage customer interactions by capturing data, tracking interactions, and automating business processes.
To scale your sales and grow revenue aligning your technology with your Proven Process/Ideal Client Journey and associated sales and marketing processes is crucial. The first and most important decision regarding your sales and marketing technology stack is selecting the right CRM.
When choosing a CRM, defining the ideal state for your sales and marketing tech stack is critical. This includes visibility, contact data, automation, and reporting. You should also consider the need-to-have and nice-to-have options, your long-term business vision and goals, the rest of your tech stack, execution, and the vendor.
Let’s Talk About Why You Need a CRM
We know you know you need a CRM, but understanding the specific advantages can help you in your decision-making process to select the right one.
One of the most significant advantages of using a CRM is centralizing customer data in one place. By doing so, businesses can access all the information they need to manage customer relationships more effectively. This can include contact information, purchase history, and communication preferences. This information allows businesses to create targeted marketing campaigns that speak directly to customers’ needs and interests.
CRM software also enables businesses to automate their sales and marketing processes. This includes lead scoring, lead nurturing, and email marketing. By automating these tasks, companies can free up their sales and marketing teams to focus on higher-value activities, such as building relationships with prospects and customers.
Another advantage of using a CRM is the ability to track interactions with customers across multiple channels. This can include phone calls, emails, social media interactions, and website visits. By following these interactions, businesses can better understand how their customers engage with their brand. This information can be used to tailor marketing campaigns and sales strategies to meet customer needs better.
How Do You Choose a CRM for Your Business?
There are two types of CRMs: vertical and horizontal.
Vertical CRMs are designed to meet specific industries’ unique needs and challenges. They provide more targeted solutions to businesses operating in those sectors, with features and functionalities tailored to their particular requirements. Examples of vertical CRMs include healthcare CRMs, real estate CRMs, and legal CRMs. These CRMs may also provide industry-specific integrations that streamline workflows and improve productivity. However, integrating and optimizing for your business may require more effort.
On the other hand, horizontal CRMs are designed to work across different industries, providing more functional and flexible solutions. They offer a more comprehensive range of features and functionalities that can be customized to suit your business needs. Examples of horizontal CRMs include Salesforce, HubSpot, and Zoho. While horizontal CRMs may take more effort to customize out-of-the-box, they are typically easier to set up. Additionally, they may provide more visibility across your sales and marketing processes.
When choosing between vertical and horizontal CRMs, consider your industry’s specific needs, the size and complexity of your business, and the level of customization you require. You should also evaluate the CRM’s compatibility with your existing tech stack and long-term business goals.
Consider cost, ease of use, and scalability when comparing your CRM options. Some CRM systems can be expensive, so choosing a system that fits your budget is essential. It should also be a system that is easy to use, so your team can start using it immediately without much training. Next, choose a system that can scale with your business as it grows.
Finally, you want to select a CRM that integrates well with your other sales and marketing tools. This can include marketing automation software, social media management tools, and customer service software. Combining these tools with your CRM creates a seamless sales and marketing tech stack that streamlines your workflows and maximizes productivity.
Wrapping it Up
Having a single source of truth for all client-facing team members, accurate contact data, automated sales and marketing processes, and tracking data across your Ideal Client Journey and sales and marketing processes are essential for your sales and marketing tech stack’s ideal state.
You can identify trends and patterns by analyzing data to make better business decisions. Choosing the right sales and marketing technology can increase your team’s productivity and your business’s value, leading to greater efficiencies and revenue growth.
As an entrepreneur, we want to help you learn more about scaling sales and growing revenue. Download our helpful e-book today!
by Bill Poole | Apr 17, 2023 | Marketing, Sales
As an entrepreneur, growing revenue and scaling sales is crucial to the success of your business. However, it can be challenging to achieve these goals if you don’t have a documented Ideal Client Profile. This detailed description of your target customer will enable you to identify who your Ideal Prospects are and also serve as a filter to determine if a potential client will be a good fit. Knowing who your ideal clients are helps you pinpoint exactly where to focus your marketing efforts. When your marketing is pointed at those most likely to purchase what you’re offering, you have the most potential for sales growth.
Identifying Your Ideal Client Profile
Your ideal client profile (ICP) is not a one-size-fits-all solution. Ideal Clients are an intersection of the clients that:
- You are operationally optimized to serve
- Are the most valuable to your business
- Align with your team and values.
The high-level components of an ICP are:
- Description: One or two sentences that describe the characteristics of the companies who are a perfect fit for your solution.
- Data Points: This includes demographic data such as size of the company, including number of employees and revenue, location, and other specific company traits.
- Primary Personas: A primary persona is a fictional representation of your ideal clients based on market research and real data about your existing clients. At the very least, it should include: motivations, role goals, pain points, and preferred communication channels. The more specific and detailed your buyer persona is, the better you’ll be able to understand your target audience and tailor your marketing and sales approach to meet their needs.
Documenting your Ideal Client Profile (ICP) should enable you to pull “The List,” which is the actual businesses that meet the criteria in the ICP. This should be an addressable market for your sales and marketing efforts. If The List is too broad, reel in the data points on the ICP. Then, you can operationalize your ICP to realize the following benefits:
The Role of an Ideal Client Profile in Scaling Sales and Growing Revenue
Once you’ve put the proper plan into action to develop your ICP, what results should you expect? What benefits come from identifying your ideal client?
Focuses your Sales and Marketing Energy and Spend
Spending time and money without focusing on an ideal Client is wasteful. Once you have an addressable market, 100% of your sales and marketing spend and energy can be focused on ideal prospects and clients instead of diluting the spend on the wrong prospects for your business.
Improves Your Message
Your ICP includes your target personas and their desired outcomes. Having a more narrow ICP enables you to craft a message more likely to resonate with your ideal clients and prospects. So, when your prospects see your message, they are more likely to engage.
Enhances Your Client Satisfaction
Depending on your business, when your sales and marketing efforts bring on the wrong clients, operational challenges can be created. Your team should be operationally optimized to serve ideal clients in an efficient and effective manner. So naturally, bringing on ideal clients improves client satisfaction.
Increases Your Revenue
Focusing your sales and marketing energy, improving your message, and enhancing client satisfaction will of course lead to revenue growth. Moreover, satisfied customers are more likely to refer others to your business, leading to a steady stream of new customers and revenue.
By identifying your ideal clients, you can better target your sales and marketing efforts and generate more revenue for your business.
Developing an ideal client profile is essential for any business looking to scale its sales and grow its revenue. It helps you focus on serving businesses that align with your values and expertise, ultimately providing the best possible outcomes for your clients. Following these tips, you can describe your ideal client and develop targeted marketing and sales strategies to reach them effectively. The next step to scaling your sales and growing your revenue is focusing on your messaging, which we will explore in the next blog.
To learn more, download our ebook, “5 Steps for Scaling Sales and Growing Revenue”, today!
by Bill Poole | Oct 8, 2022 | Sales
The importance of content is often overlooked in small businesses. The truth is, content enables revenue generation, and cost reduction:
- Revenue Generation: Great content enables prospects and clients to navigate their experience with your business quicker, with a higher success rate
- Costs: The largest check that most businesses write is payroll. Compelling content that answers prospects’ and clients’ questions helps Sales and Client Success teams be more efficient. Effective content enables your Sales and Client success teams to get more done with fewer team members.
If you are curious if your content plan is working, here is some insight on some symptoms you might be seeing if you are not using content as an enabler in your business. For clarity, there are 3 different categories of content that we discuss:
- Net-New (Top Funnel) Content: to compel prospects to engage with your team
- Net-New (Mid Funnel) Content: to support your prospect as they navigate their buying process
- Cross-Sell Content: to support the ongoing delivery of services and cross-selling for things like onboarding, delivering services, quarterly reviews, and renewals.
Net-New (Top Funnel)
Net-new (top funnel) revenue-related symptoms of not having content
Not getting enough web leads
Low conversion rates
Net-new (top funnel) cost-related symptom of not having content
Paying for leads is expensive (PPC, outbound)
Net New (Mid Funnel)
Net-new (mid funnel) revenue-related symptoms of not having content
Prospect experience is slow and affects the time to close and begin revenue generation
Success/Close rate is lower than it should be
Sales reps’ message is not supported by company-created content, this affects trust credibility, and results
Net-new (mid funnel) cost-related symptoms of not having content
Sales reps spend too much time creating ad-hoc content that is likely not as effective if it was centrally controlled and created.
Sales reps take more time to accomplish their tasks
Sales team is frustrated with the lack of support, and this results in rep attrition
Cross-Sell
Cross-sell revenue-related symptoms of not having content
Clients are not aware of everything that you do, so the opportunity to increase rev/ic is affected
Client meetings are not as effective as they should be because clients are not prepared for meetings
NPS/Client sat is lower than it should be
Clients are not compelled to invest additionally with your company
Cross-sell cost-related symptom of not having content
Client success teams need to work harder teaching and supporting clients
If you are experiencing some of these things in your business, executing on a content plan targeted at your Ideal Clients may be the answer.
Businesses that commit to leveraging content realize these benefits:
- More revenue with improved win rates
- Quicker time to revenue because of removing the friction that prospects and clients have as they experience your business
- Increase the value of the business by positively impacting the brand and generating more trust with prospects and clients
- Reduced payroll costs for sales and client success teams.
How do you use content to help your prospects, clients, and team members?
by Bill Poole | Mar 28, 2022 | Marketing, Sales
Series: How To Make Revenue Growth Predictable In Uncertain Times
Part 1
Part 2
When entering a time of economic uncertainty, consistent revenue is critical. While one might be happy with keeping revenue flat and “hold our own” during tough economic times, the reality is that a business is either growing or dying. Thus, in a challenging market it is critical to continue to focus on the mindset, strategies, and activities that drive predictable revenue growth.
So far we have explored two strategies to make revenue growth predictable: focusing your message on ideal clients and aligning marketing, sales, and operations around the client experience. Today we turn our focus to process.
A process is a series of steps to create a predictable outcome.
Smart businesses run on processes. There are processes for hiring, invoicing, production, shipping, and support. Without processes a business would operate inefficiently, unpredictably, and unsustainably.
Now, let’s consider sales and marketing. What processes are in place for these teams?
For many businesses sales and marketing are the wild west. There is no process.
Salespeople are hired based on their experience or their book of business. The goal is to look for experienced salespeople rather than taking a risk on a new salesperson because these tenured reps “know what they are doing.” These gunslingers get sent out to the territory, each doing their own thing. Out of desperation, many cobble together their own sales tools to help support the talk tracks they have developed. It’s no wonder that Blender research that revealed 82% of B2B decision-makers think sales reps are unprepared.
Marketing doesn’t get a pass on this either. Jennifer Zick sums it up when she says that most companies do “random acts of marketing.” This spray-and-pray approach leads to sporadic activities and inconsistent results.
What’s missing here?
Sales and marketing need to take a cue from other parts of the business: processes create predictability.
Processes need to become usable Client Experience Playbooks that can be used by everyone on the marketing and sales team to drive consistent actions and create predictable revenue.
What Are Client Experience Playbooks?
Client Experience Playbooks present step-by-step processes that integrate sales, marketing, and operations, creating a consistent client experience that drives predictable revenue growth.
Client Experience Playbooks are anchored around the stages of the client experience, keeping the focus on the prospect and client.
Client Experience Playbooks integrate sales, marketing, and operations. This helps reduce the silo effect of these teams doing their own thing. Instead, the playbooks help these functions work together to drive net-new and cross-sell revenue.
Client Experience Playbooks go beyond process. They describe what great looks like. They give context for where the buyer is in their journey. They provide insight into what multiple decision makers and influencers might be thinking. They provide tools and content to support the client experience. They can even include small bites of training.
The goal is to get everyone working together in a consistent way to drive revenue at every stage of the client experience.
How Do Client Experience Playbooks Help Make Revenue Predictable?
There are many ways Client Experience Playbooks can make revenue more predictable in uncertain times. Here are five.
1. Consistent Execution
Client Experience Playbooks provide a baseline for consistent execution across every stage of the client experience. From a prospect’s first engagement with your company through the buying cycle to their ongoing enjoyment of your services, Client Experience Playbooks create consistent execution. At a most basic level, they create activity. On its own, activity helps spur sales. However, it goes far beyond activity to create consistent execution across your marketing, sales, and operations teams.
2. Increased Cross-Sell
Let’s be honest, most companies struggle with consistently cross-selling or up-selling additional products and services to their clients. This continually frustrates owners and executives who believe that they should be able to sell related products and services to their customer base. The challenge is that most companies do not have a process for cross-selling. Marketing creates leads, sales land deals, and then things get handed off to operations or customer success. At that point, the selling ceases. Client Experience Playbooks solve this problem by creating integrated processes to ensure that there is an ongoing progression of value provided to current customers that motivates them to buy more things from your company.
3. More Effective Rep Coaching
Data presented by Spotio showed firms where salespeople use the company’s methodology and get consistent coaching see 73% quota attainment. Every high performance athlete has a coach. High performance sales professionals need coaching as well. However, without a process in place, coaching becomes subjective. With Client Experience Playbooks in place, leaders can coach sales reps in the execution of the plays. Much like a sports team coach would help players learn and execute the plays, sales leaders can help reps do the same.
4. Streamlined Onboarding
In today’s highly competitive job market with increased rates of turnover it is more important than ever to create an effective onboarding process. Sure, you can show new employees where the coffee pot is, how to sign up for benefits, and where to find the employee handbook. You can take them on a tour of your office to meet everyone. Can you show a new employee how the company serves prospects and employees? Client Experience Playbooks give an end-to-end picture of the company’s client experience. The new employee gets a full picture of how things work. Whether they are in marketing, sales, operations, or finance, they can see the way that everyone interacts with prospects and clients giving the new employee context for their role.
5. Continual Improvement
In Traction, Gino Wickman makes a powerful point that you can improve a process that is not documented. With “wild-west” sales and marketing, nothing is documented making improvement impossible. With Client Experience Playbooks in place for each stage of your client experience you have a baseline. You can then test new processes, tools, and content to see if there could be a better way. This leads to continual improvement. Small, incremental improvements in key ratios like lead-to-appointment or proposal-to-close can create massive revenue increases. These incremental improvements become possible when you have playbooks in place.
Creating predictable revenue growth in unpredictable times requires you to manage things you can control. You cannot control the economy. You cannot control your prospects or clients. You can control your message, ensuring it is focused on the current outcomes your prospects and clients want. You can control your client experience. And, you can control your execution by creating Client Experience Playbooks. Together, these initiatives help ensure your revenue stays as predictable as possible when everything around you seems uncertain.
