Matt’s App of the Week: Newsle

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newsle-logoThis is the latest in a series of weekend posts highlighting a wide variety of applications we think are pretty cool. Most have to do with sales, marketing and productivity. Check out past featured apps here.

Staying in touch with those in your network (prospects, partners and more) doesn’t have to always be deal and work-related. Most of the time, you just need an excuse, or a trigger, to follow-up and create a positive impression.

Newsle makes that incredibly easy with their LinkedIn integration. Simply give Newsle access to your first connections, and they’ll send you a daily email highlighting anybody in your network that was in the news, quoted in a story, featured in a press release, etc.

You can even specify certain contacts for “breaking news”, meaning Newsle will email you immediately once coverage about them is published.

Great way to congratulate those in your network about press coverage, and generally look “on the ball” when your partners, prospects or general network is featured somewhere.

Three days in 30 minutes: A recap of the AA-ISP Leadership Summit

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Earlier this week a handful of Seattle-area inside sales leaders got together to hear Paul Leto from F5 Networks and Mark Ippolito from Lenati share their summary and takeaways from last month’s American Association of Inside Sales Professionals (AA-ISP) Leadership Summit in Chicago.

As usual, this annual event was three days of amazing content, networking and best practice sharing among inside sales peers. Paul and Mark did a great job condensing three days of great presentations into a fast-paced summary. Here are their slides, which largely are taken from presentations from a wide variety of inside sales leaders and vendors (you can see a list of those companies on slide 51).

Whether you manage inside sales or work with teams that do, this deck is worth a quick flip through.

It’s not a lead, it’s a relationship (there’s a big difference)

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building-strong-relationships-with-clients-is-important-and-calls-for-th_977_415805_0_14014027_500Sales has had this right all along. They may start with leads, but over time they are focused on turning those “contacts” into trusted relationships.

Historically, marketers have been focused primarily on generating leads. In a world where marketing automation and marketing-driven lead management didn’t exist, marketing’s job was largely done once the contact or lead was established and passed along to sales.

Unfortunately, many marketers still have that mentality. But as the opportunity for marketing to manage longer-term, early-stage customer relationships accelerates, so does marketing’s role in treating and managing prospects not as leads, but as budding relationships.

Your spreadsheet isn’t always going to help with this. Your monthly dashboards and board slides that focus on numbers alone might actually diminish your focus on the “human” side of pipeline development.

Because between the spreadsheet cells live the differentiating opportunities where leading companies treat prospects like people. We remember what they did before, take into account and personalize future interactions, and generally separate ourselves not just as sellers but relationship-builders.

If marketing stopped talking about leads, and started focusing on relationships, how would that change their execution? How might it affect the importance they place on managing and nurturing existing leads vs. constantly generating new clicks and entry points?

Something to think about.

Hey marketing, can you sleep at night?

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It’s one thing to have shared goals between sales & marketing. A common definition of a qualified lead. A coordinated effort for lead generation and follow-up.

It’s quite another thing for marketing to share responsibility for sales. To share the anxiety. Share the terror.

The point here is fairly simple. Until marketing has the same end-of-month and end-of-quarter anxiety as sales, it’s hard to believe there’s true alignment and shared revenue responsibility.

That may be a high bar of sales and marketing alignment, but isn’t a bad idea either.

The commodity sale is dead (and this is why)

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50lb_sandbox_sandIt literally doesn’t exist anymore. Just like with cold calling, if you think you’re still in a commodity sale situation, you’re doing it wrong.

Let’s say you sell sand. Sand is sand. Everybody has the same sand.

Or do they? Let’s say I want sand for my kid’s sandbox. Is that different than sand you’d sell to someone filling beach volleyball courts?

How much sand do you need? For what purpose? Recreational or industrial? Will you put something on top of the sand, and does that change what kind of sand you need, or whether sand is the right material to begin with?

I can buy lumber at dozens of places around town. Wood is wood.

But I go consistently to the same, family-owned lumberyard near my house for project materials. Why? I always have tons of questions. Dumb questions. And they not only answer them politely, they also nicely correct and adjust elements of my order to make it more efficient and save me money.

Same lumber as I’d buy from Home Depot, and often a little more expensive. But worth it.

Produce is a commodity, right? Apples, bananas, salad fixings. But you know as well as I that some markets get a reputation for better produce than others. Freshness, selection, custom order possibilities, etc. Price is a factor, sure. But it’s one of many.

If you play the commodity game, it’s just a race to the bottom purely on price. If you fail to differentiate, then you really are just like everyone else.

But even if you offer the exact same thing as dozens of competitors, you can still drive preference, differentiation and separation from everyone else.

How to land the summer internship you’re dying to have

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internshipBy Rebecca Smith, summer intern for Heinz Marketing

In the last couple of years of schooling, landing a summer internship is extremely important for your future. Not only does it add to your resume, it also gives you the necessary experience to then land that job that you’re dying to get.

I know that an internship is most likely the first real experience that you’ll have relating to your degree, but no need to get THAT nervous about the searching and the interviewing. A little secret? Being nervous is generally a good thing! Here are a few tips to make this just a little less stressful for you.

1. Start early. Most of your friends will say “Internships? Already? No, I have plenty of time to think about that.” But, they’re wrong. There are only so many internships, while there are hundreds of people like you who want them. Get ahead of the game and let these companies know you want to intern for them. The more you reach out to them, the better it is for you. These companies will realize just how badly you want their company name to be in your e-mail signature.

2. Network, network, network. Use your resources. You have two parents who have held jobs and have friends who previously or currently have jobs. Most of the time, they can be the best resources. Utilize them and branch out.

3. Spice up your resume. Make sure you have a current resume that you AND someone else has looked over. There is nothing more embarrassing than having someone point out to you your own typo on something as simple as that. Give them something that you’re proud of!

4. Hold a mock interview. Use your school’s resources or have a friend help you prepare. There are a lot of questions that you could be asked that you’ve never even thought of before. My personal favorite was “If you were a hamburger, what part of the hamburger would you be?” At least now you’ll have one answer down perfectly!

5. Shower, brush your teeth, dress for success.

Now you’re ready! Go kill it in your interview and make your impression because that internship will be yours.

Nichole’s App of the Week: Relax

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Relax-with-Andrew-Johnson-Lite-big-icon_1142By Nichole McIntyre, marketing coordinator and relaxation guru at Heinz Marketing

This is the latest in a series of weekend posts highlighting a wide variety of applications we think are pretty cool. Most have to do with sales, marketing and productivity. Check out past featured apps here.

If you are anything like me, you are constantly on the go—always somewhere to be, something to do—and never get a chance to slow down. Even when you go to bed, you are mentally planning tomorrow’s outfit, or your to-do list, or remembering you forgot to reply to that one email! You never actually quiet your mind, and just relax.

Now, I’ll be the first to say that the thought of meditating seemed strange to me; I didn’t know how to do it and perhaps didn’t fully understand it. But meditating is like yoga for your mind! Taking a few moments to literally not think is powerful.

That is why I suggest the app Relax + with Andrew Johnson Lite. It is a guided meditation and relaxation app, walking you through the process of relaxing your body and mind. You can adjust the duration, the voice, and the background music to fit your mood. Best of all, you can save your settings for next time. The “Lite” version is free.

I recommend this app for anyone who needs to unwind, de-stress, relax, take a break – which is, well, everyone.

Seven quick takeaways from the 2013 SiriusDecisions Summit (#sdsummit)

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ronburgandyAnother fantastic SiriusDecisions Summit wrapped up this morning, following three days of great content and connections.

A true recap of the event would require more than a blog post, and there are several themes, trends and B2B frameworks I’ll write about more specifically in the coming weeks.

For now, here are a few things I’m thinking about before heading to the airport.

You often need to put your self in harm’s way to succeed
General Stanley McChrystal spoke Wednesday about leadership, and gave numerous inspiring examples of how great leaders know that proactively engaging in conflict often is the path to success. You can’t succeed or innovate by taking the safe route. That’s rarely where opportunity lies.

Sales & marketing should share not just goals, but anxiety as well
It’s one thing to have a joint set of metrics, and common definitions of qualified leads and such. It’s quite another thing to ride the rollercoaster together. If marketing can’t sleep at the end of the month and quarter, then they’re starting to “share the terror” of the sales process as well. It’s not always fun, but it’s a great way to ensure all parties are aligned around and focused on what it takes to win.

Sales is a partner, not a customer, of marketing
Too often marketing is seen as a service bureau for the sales organization. And while it’s true that successful B2B marketing organizations are supporting the sales effort, they should be doing that as an equal partner, not a subservient customer. That’s a big difference in both approach and execution, and can be key to driving the kind of collaboration required to succeed in more crowded & complex marketplaces.

Social still has a loooong way to go
Social selling was addressed this week, but lightly. It was clear that most companies are still struggling to figure out how to define, execute and scale a true social selling strategy that isn’t run by the PR team, isn’t just focused on followers & likes, and isn’t treated as a disparate, disconnected part of the demand generation plan.

Audience-centric content was the underlying theme in most sessions
Almost every session explicitly or implicitly talked about the vital role content has in fueling success of B2B demand engines for companies of all shapes and sizes. Too often we create content for ourselves, and not for the intended audience. All content needs to be audience-centric, no matter which part of the demand funnel it’s serving.

Stories and case studies are critical to bring this stuff to life
The best presentations, even with the most complex frameworks, worked well because they were coupled with examples, stories, use cases and even theoretical scenarios that helped us take theory and understand how it might look in practice. this is a critical skill for sales & marketing professionals in all contexts. Stories get your audience to engage, help them understand, and make it easier to take action.

Even enterprises need to dumb it down sometimes
I loved that Dell uses spreadsheets to help manage their campaigns and determine next steps. Why? Because sometimes the best solution isn’t the right solution. There are far better ROI and measurement tools than Excel, but sometimes the ideal scenario can take far too long to choose and implement. Sometimes the fastest, easiest tool is the best tool.

The impact of data management on marketing efficiency and results

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Dirty data is the silent killer of B2B marketing efforts. Earlier this week at the SiriusDecisions Summit, NetProspex CEO Michael Bird and I presented a series of best practices, case studies and both strategic & tactical recommendations for how B2B organizations can significantly improve their sales & marketing effectiveness simply with a little more focus on their databases.

A copy of our deck from the presentation is below, which even without the talk track highlights some very interesting research on database health across B2B organizations, some before-after results of database clean-up, and some specific recommendations on what to do next.

Zig Ziglar’s parting thoughts: 12 action tips from the sales master

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zig-ziglarSelling Power Magazine recently ran excerpts from an earlier, four-part series highlighting a conversation between the late sales trainer & legend Zig Ziglar and Selling Power publisher Gerhard Gschwandtner.

In the end, 12 of Zig’s “action tips” for sales professionals are highlighted. Here’s a short list of those tips.

Note how timeless and relevant these still are, and how they reflect and in some cases predict new methodologies such as The Challenger Sale.

Plan your sales presentation in such a way that you communicate to your customer your assumption that he or she is going to purchase from you.

Use several trial closes throughout your sales presentation.

A planned presentation is superior to an improvised presentation. With a plan, you will have a mental road to travel. This will free your mind to observe the prospect’s nonverbal responses.

No attempt to close a sale should be made until you have established value in the prospect’s mind.

If you want to improve your persistence, begin believing in your product, your company and yourself.

If you are using fewer than six closes on a call, you are not giving your prospect a square deal.

Visualize your customer’s taking ownership of your product.

Never underestimate the power of a sincere service attitude. Help other people get what they want. Serve and you will succeed.

A prospect’s nonverbal expressions are often more powerful than words. Fifty-five percent of the prospect’s feelings and attitude are communicated via body language.

When a prospect’s nonverbal signals contradict his or her spoken words, trust the nonverbal signal.

If a prospect goes back to a point covered earlier, help him or her back up the buying decision.

Use the CHEF method for reading closing signals: Chin or Cheek, Hands, Eyes, Friendly.