Listen to Stand Out and Be Heard

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In recent Say It For You posts, I had been discussing the importance of understanding your target audience, by being alert to their preferences and opinions as expressed on social media. I invited friend and networking colleague Joe Rutenberg, owner of CCC Solutions, to comment on “listening” to connect with a target audience….

Buyers are flooded with inbound messaging so how can you stand out and be heard? Listen to the right sources to get started. Writing content and delivering it consistently is hard. How can you deliver effective content regularly? Answer 2 questions:

  • What excites your audience?
  • What do you want them to do once they are excited?

You want to move your audience using content delivered at key stages of their decision process to achieve your goal.

The Right Goals

Do you want to: Close a sale; Entice a prospect; or Inform a customer about product benefits. Where in your Sales Funnel is each prospect? Content is based on your audience and where in the sales funnel they are. Regardless of audience type, resonating content, delivered consistently, is the goal.

Prospects and Clients

Prospects and clients have overlapping and different attributes and needs.

  • Prospects need to trust you and believe you reduce their risk.
  • Clients need to see recurring value and best pricing.

Effective content focuses on what your audience believes is important.

Resonating Content is Important

When you listen, others listen, and you build trust. When your content shows empathy and speaks to poignant topics, it becomes “sticky.” Content that “sticks” is about your audience, not you. Being “sticky” makes you top of mind and the “Go To” person in your technical area. Sticky content is remarkable because it is specific to an industry, function, market, product, or geography and is what your audience cares about.

Listen to Hear Topical Content

Listen to the marketplace to find content. In addition to AI sources, sources include:

  • Your clients – Ask clients 4-5 questions about their business, industry, and why they chose you. It is a great way to touch base.
  • Client and prospect websites – What are they talking about?
  • Industry and trade association newsletters and websites.
  • Community and Civic groups – When your audience is geographic.
  • Social media channels – Choose channels based on what you sell (B2B or B2C).

Listen to the common questions and concerns and build your “Topic Library.”

Consistent Delivery to Multiple Audiences

How can you deliver consistent content to different audiences all at once? The solutions are the right content writer and the right CRM. Depending on company size, you may have:

  • In house or outsourced content writing. Both work as it is all about talent.
  • No CRM or an enterprise CRM. A CRM is a must for marketing and sales.

A talented writer and robust CRM are a winning combination.

How to Stand Out

Use your CRM to reach your audience before they make decisions. Review your sales cycle and trigger content driven outreach prior to milestones in your sales cycle. Use content that is relevant at each stage of your sales funnel. Make your content “Sticky” and you will be remarkable!

 

Want To Stand Out In Every Crowd?

Visit www.cccsolutions.com and Close More Sales 

Explore CCC’s Marketing And Sales Strategies

 

 

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Ask “Have You Read?” and “Have You Tried?”

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“Have You Read?” (a two-page section of Bookmarks Magazine), I couldn’t help thinking, is a great way to offer options without being commanding or “pushy”.  A parallel tactic is described in a Learn Laugh Speak post on polite ways to offer alternatives. When customer service hospitality workers need to offer alternatives better suited for a customer, they need to do this without coming off as pushy or rude. It’s a good idea, the trainers explained, to offer have-you-tried choices, allowing the customer to feel more in control of the decision-making process.

  • What if you…?
  • How about trying…?
  • Have you considered….?

When it comes to converting readers into customers, our job as content writers is to present choice, we stress at Say It For You. Given enough “space” to absorb the relevant and truthful information we present over time, consumers are perfectly able to – and far more likely to – decide to take action. Defining a problem, even when offering statistics about that problem, isn’t enough to galvanize prospects into action. Even showing you not only understand the root causes of a problem, but have experience in providing solutions to very that problem can help drive the marketing process forward.

Offering options using a “Have you tried…?” approach may prove the way to avoid a “hard sell”. At the same time, you don’t want to force a visitor to spend a long time just figuring out the 57 wonderful services your company has to offer!. What you can do is offer different kinds of information in different blog posts.

What we content writers can take away, I believe, from both the Bookmarks article  and the Learn Laugh Speak guidance for hospitality workers is the importance of allowing customers to feel in control of the decision-making process.

 

 

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Are Your Marketing and Sales Teams on the Same Page?

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Whether you are the owner, marketing manager, or sales manager, marketing and sales need to be on the same page. If not, too much time will be wasted by all. What can you do to make sure both functions work together?

Focus on the Prospect
Prospects move through  one to four phases of your sales cycle: Awareness, Interest, Decision, and Action (or Conversion), based on whether they convert to clients or drop out during your sales cycle. When do they drop out? Why did they drop out?

Your sales cycle is the timeframe that buyers (prospects and customers) take to make a purchase. Review your prospect’s journey using the 4 phases below:

  • Awareness – People become aware through multiple channels.
  • Interest – People want to know that you solve their problem and engage using your call to action (CTA).
  • Decision – People recognize you meet their need and ask about pricing.
  • Action (or Conversion) – People make the decision to buy from you.
  • Upon review, you will find answers to when and why prospects drop out of your sales funnel.

When and Why Prospects Drop Out
When prospects drop out often tells you why prospects drop out. For example:

  • Awareness – Marketing is driving the wrong people.
  • Interest – Your CTA (Call to Action)is not enticing.
  • Decision – What prevents them from buying?
  • Action – Why did they buy from a competitor?

Use your funnel to see what is going on.

Track Prospects with a Sales Funnel
Depending on business size, there are many ways to track prospects. A robust CRM (Customer Relationship Management) will:

  • Track prospects and report by sales funnel stage, sales agent, and value.
  • Trigger texts and emails to prospects (with CTAs) and reminders to sales reps to follow up.
  • Analyze which prospects are stuck at each stage.

A robust CRM helps you close more sales with less follow-up fatigue!

What If I Don’t Have a CRM?
If you have marketing and sales teams, you need a CRM. Robust CRMs deliver:

  •  Automation to engage with clients and prospects and to communicate internally.
  • Email and quote templates that replace repetitive manual work and use current branding, logo and format.
  • Segmented contact lists based on your criteria to send key messaging.
  • Lead scoring so that reps spend more time on their best prospects
  • Reports to show which prospects were not contacted in the last 30 days.
  • Leaderboards that report on your agreed upon metrics and milestones.

A robust CRM frees you up for your highest priorities.

Keeping Marketing and Sales on One Page
Think about the twelve “touches” needed to close most sales and spread them across the four phases. As you measure your results, you will find the answers to when and why prospects drop out of your sales funnel.\

Make sure your marketing and sales teams are on the same page!

 

This guest post was contributed by Jon Rutenberg, owner of CCCSolutions.com. Jon helps his clients close more sales with less followup fatigue and helps them manage their prospects, clients, outreach, and mail lists. He automates marketing and sales processes, organizes client sales funnels, and segments client contacts to deliver unique messaging, installing and supporting Customer Relationship Management systems.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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