Blog Archives

Whiteboard Workshop: Using Ideation to Understand Your Client Better

11/27/2018

Ever wonder what your prospect’s real challenges are, or what they are really looking to solve? What’s on the surface is not always the full story. By creating a 360-degree view of their challenges you can be more competitive and solution sell even more effectively. In this Whiteboard Video we share a framework we teach our clients to get to the real challenges quickly and brainstorm effective solutions as a team.

Want more tools to support your own ideation process? Download the Ideation Worksheet and use it to implement the process with your team.

Need to Fix Your Sales Funnel? Repair the Foundation

11/14/2018

A sales team works together to build a strong foundation for their sales funnel.

Many sales leaders looking for ways to reach their revenue goals faster will say something like:

We need a team that closes more sales.
We need more leads in our sales funnel.
We need to convert more leads into customers.
We need to run better ads.

This way of thinking is a trap.

It’s an easy one to fall into. You look at your team, your funnel, or your outreach and see that they aren’t working the way you’d like. You immediately want to fix them.

But, as long as you’re working to solve your sales organization’s systemic problems by focusing on symptoms instead of the underlying problem, your company will remain stuck.

Imagine you’re building a house. Your screwdrivers and nails keep rolling off your work table. You discover your floor is uneven. You have several options to fix this issue. 1) You can put your tools in a container that stays put on the table; 2) You can prop up your table legs with a book to counterbalance a slant; or 3) Instead of creating a makeshift solution, repair the very foundation of your house, so that the floor is level.

Similarly, to fix your sales funnel, you need to repair your foundation. Here are some questions to ask yourself and your team to begin this inspection.

What value does your company create? The answer to this question is the foundation of your foundation. You need a clear definition of the value that you provide your customers. You may think that this is a no-brainer, but unless you take a thoughtful, in-depth look at how you define and state your value, strategy and messaging, your team may not be as aligned as you thought.
Who is your team’s target audience? Once you have a clear statement on your offerings, next you need to define who you’re offering it to. Without a clear understanding of who you’re selling to, you and your team may be wasting time, energy and money selling to the wrong folks.
Is your messaging aligned with your value, audience and offerings? Without strong messaging that clearly communicates your value, you’re keeping your company’s purpose a secret from your audience. It can be tough work to create succinct, attractive messaging that articulates the value of your offerings. But without that effort, you’re hiding your light under a bush and preventing leads from entering your sales funnel.
Does your marketing tell your company’s story? Once you’ve got your messaging down, you need to make sure your marketing conveys that message to your audience. If you don’t, you’re still not accurately and effectively getting your word out there.
Does your sales team fit your company’s needs? Imagine each member of your sales team sitting next to your ideal client. Do you feel confident in their ability to engage your ideal client? If not, you need to look more deeply into your team members, your team structure, your team’s sales resources and your training processes. Are your sales reps stifling the sales funnel entrance?
Do you have a clearly defined sales process? Once you have all of those fundamentals worked out, then, and only then, should you turn to looking directly at how your sales funnel operates. Now, you can get to some of the questions you originally asked – how do we bring in more leads? How do we nurture our leads more effectively? With a firm foundation, the answer to these questions will be more meaningful and the changes you make to your sales process more enduring. You will also be on your way to creating a more scalable, stable and predictable sales engine within your company.
Is your sales organization guided by clearly defined and measurable goals? To know if all of your efforts are working, your goals need to be tied to data you can measure. If you don’t monitor your leads, traffic and close rate as they relate to your sales and outreach efforts, you will never get a clear picture of what’s working for your organization — and what isn’t.

If you put the time and energy into thoughtfully answering these seven questions, you won’t just temporarily repair your sales funnel — you’ll create an adaptable sales organization that will engage your audience, build crucial relationships and boost your revenue.

Ready to get started on creating a high-performing sales engine that drives scalable, stable and predictable revenue growth? Check out our article on defining your value, or take the sales engine diagnostic.

3 SIgns You Might be Targeting the Wrong Audience - And How to fix it

11/1/2018

Red person represents the challenge of finding your target audience in a sea of people.

Your sales team seems to be doing everything right. You know what you offer, what value you provide and how those attributes align. But you just aren’t seeing the lead velocity you want.

Are you running paid search campaigns and finding the leads are a poor fit for your business, or that your sponsored ads are showing up in the wrong locations? Are your sales teams having meetings with the right people? Maybe they bring you along to the meetings and when you get there you realize the lead will never buy your service. Do you get the feeling when you’re interacting with leads that something isn’t quite right?

These breakdowns may indicate that you haven’t found the perfect product-market fit. Here are some signs you might not be targeting the right audience — and what to do about it.

Your Target Audience is Anyone Who Walks in the Door.
You’re passionate about your offerings. You have no doubt that they could benefit a wide variety of people. Are you harder pressed to think of who you don’t want to contact than who you do? If that’s the case, your target audience might not be targeted enough.

Imagine you’re shopping for a gift for a teenager. Try and picture what you’d get that teenager. Tricky, isn’t it? Without knowing anything about the person except their age — not their gender, their location, their interests, their needs — it’s really difficult to buy an appropriate gift for them.

You might be thinking, "Ok, but what about a car?" Any teenager wants a car! And since our offerings are so awesome, anyone will want them.

Not so fast. Even if your products or services could benefit anyone, not everyone will really resonate with the value you’re providing or be drawn in enough to listen to your message.

Consider a small electric car and a full-size pickup truck. Neither is better than the other. They are just each aligned to audiences with completely different experiences and lifestyles. So their target audiences are completely different, too: an eco-conscious single mother with a tiny car budget for her teen daughter vs. a father whose teen son will use the truck to help with their family landscaping business.

Plus, if you’re casting too wide of a net, you and your team are wasting a lot of energy sorting through the flotsam and jetsam that you pull in. You may catch a fish or two, but not before discarding the tin can, the lost shoe, the spare bicycle wheel. And, if you do catch that big fish, you won’t know if it was because you were fishing in the right area or if you just got lucky.

On the other hand, if you research where a particular type of fish hangs out, go there and bait specifically for that fish, you can tie your success to your intentional efforts and repeat it in the future.

Raise the bar from “anyone with a bank account” to some really specific criteria that will guide you and your sales team to client gold. Examine these three criteria to identify your target audience.

Industry – What industry is the best fit for your offerings? Imagine you sell high-tech gloves that automatically adjust to external temperatures. All of Chicago may want your product in the winter. But, for a reliable source of clientele, dig deeper -think professional skiers, construction workers, ice skating instructors.
Demographics – What is the age, gender, location and other basic identifying information of the audience that will most benefit from your offerings?
Psychographics – What are your target audience’s habits, interests and values? These run a little deeper than dry demographics.

You aren’t Finding Leads in the Places you Thought They’d Be.
You’ve got your industry, demographics and psychographics down, and you’re hot on your target audience’s trail. You’ve talked to your sales team, and you’ve heard that the group you’re looking for lives on LinkedIn. So, you do some targeted outreach, even join some professional groups on the platform, and nothing manifests. Sure, you have some good conversations, but deals-wise, you’re still coming up empty.

If your target audience isn’t showing up where you expected, it’s time to do a bit more research. Here's how.

Talk to your existing customers and ask them where their favorite industry watering holes are. Where do they go for information?
Hold informational interviews with a few people who would be ideal clients for you. Even if these meetings don’t turn into new business, you can get valuable information on the best places to turn to find your next big sale.
Hit the trade shows, especially the smaller, more targeted ones. Chat with attendees and really dig into their interests and needs.
Research the social accounts your competitors follow. Pay attention to who they retweet, repost and respond to.
Read up on industry blogs and journals to get inside information and to understand how to maximize your outreach efforts.

Your Target Audience Isn’t Engaged.
But, maybe you’ve done all of that. You’ve found the right people in the right places, and you’ve brought them to your door. And maybe they take a peek in, explore your website, read an email or two, and then wander away.

If you’ve found your ideal clients and they’re nibbling but swimming away, what you’re offering might not be attractive enough to hook them. In this case, you may want to take a look at your messaging. Ask these three questions.

Does your message speak to your target audience’s challenges, needs and wants? If you draw a lead in with a solid email or ad, and then they bounce away from your website within a few seconds, it’s likely you aren’t answering the need that drove them to click. An ad with the headline “Does your construction team have the winter blues?” might draw your potential clients into your glove company’s website. But if the page they visit only discusses how fantastic your company is, they’ll bounce away because their expectations weren’t met.
Does it reach them at the right time in the buyer’s journey? If your targeted outreach gets nothing but crickets in response, your message might not match up to the timing of their needs or where they are in their decision process. If you send a few informative blog posts to a list of ski instructors raising their awareness about the effects of cold temperature on reaction times, you may be preaching to the choir. They are well aware that their team needs high-tech gloves and other winter gear to prevent sluggish runs. They will be looking for more solutions-focused messaging.
Does it tell their story? If your leads don’t find themselves in your messaging, you may be losing them. You may have identified the who, what, where and how of your target audience, but you need to dig deeper into the why. What motivates them? Beyond industry, demographics and psychographics, what story will help them see themselves using your offerings? To know your audience on this level, try building out a persona.

So, there you have it — 3 key ways to tell if you don’t quite have a handle on your target audience. Looking for more on finding that perfect product-market fit? Check out our video on target audience and this target audience worksheet you can discuss with your team.

Whiteboard Workshop: Using Ideation to Understand Your Client Better

Need to Fix Your Sales Funnel? Repair the Foundation

3 SIgns You Might be Targeting the Wrong Audience - And How to fix it

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