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Simplify Selling With Technology and AI

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According to multiple studies, sales reps spend less than one-third of their time actually  “selling”.

Meanwhile, selling itself has become more complex than ever before, with more administrative work required for each sale. With the virtual world allowing more buyers to be more involved in every conversation, sellers are simply overwhelmed and unable to stay on top of the multitude of tasks and touchpoints.

You might be asking yourself, how could AI solve this problem?  Doesn’t more technology lead to more complexity?

And the answer is yes, it can — if not implemented properly.

The #1 reason for using AI in sales, according to a recent Harvard Business Review article, is to make a sales rep’s life easier, not harder. If used properly, Artificial Intelligence can be a powerful tool and act as a teammate for a salesperson.

AI can handle the non-selling activities – preparing for meetings, researching industries, updating the CRM, and handling all manner of repetitive tasks, allowing the salesperson to increase the amount of time they spend building relationships, finding opportunities, and ultimately — closing deals.

These benefits don’t apply to only enterprise level companies.  Entrepreneurs, solopreneurs, and small businesses have just as much to gain from this time-saving technology.

Gartner Magic Quadrant for Access Management predicts that if implemented properly, AI could be used to save 27% of a sales rep’s time.  Since, as noted above, those sales reps are now spending only one third of their time selling, might technology at least double their effectiveness?

Artificial Intelligence is still advancing, and, every day, we are learning more about how to make the most efficient use of it.

 It’s still early in the game. For salespeople, the key is staying informed enough to not be left behind.

Today’s guest post was contributed by Jordan Ledwein,”the AI Sales Guy”. A Certified Sandler Trainer and a Partner in Sales Lift, a HubSpot Agency, is a frequent guest on Sandler podcasts and webinars, sharing strategies to help sales professionals combine methodology and technology and “sell smarter”. For more information, check out https://www.sandler.com/training-centers/i10-solutions-llc/ and https://saleslift.com/  .

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Content Creators Need to Think Like Wolves

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After re-visiting Michael Breus’ book The Power of When, I’ve concluded that, in order to create marketing content for a business or practice over the long-term, we need to think like wolves….

The book, based on circadian biology, explains that there is a best time for each of us to eat lunch, ask for a raise, write a novel, and take our meds, depending on our individual “chronotype”. 50% of people are Bears (who prefer a solar based schedule and have a high sleep drive). Dolphins are light sleepers, while Lions are morning-oriented. The author describes wolves as “night-oriented creative extroverts” with a medium sleep drive.

From a content-marketing point of view, a key clue may be found on Page 77 of Breus’ book, where the author notes that “wolves see every situation from multiple vantage points”.  The big thing about content marketing, I’ve often explained to business owners and professional practitioners, is learning how to keep on keeping on. No doubt about it, sustaining content writing over long periods of time without losing reader (or writer!) excitement is the real challenge, one that “wolves” are best equipped to handle using their ability to approach the topic from “multiple vantage points”.

  • In order to add variety, I teach content writers to experiment with different formats, including how-to posts, list posts, opinion pieces, and interviews.
  • Different articles can present the same business from different vantage points, “featuring” different employees and different departments within the company.
  • Individual posts – or series of posts – can be tailored to different segments of the customer base.
  • Different pieces of content can offer valuable information and advice relating to different aspects of the business’ or the practice’s product or service offerings.

While “wolves are creative and completely open to trying new things,” the author cautions, “they do run into some trouble sticking with it”. Breus’ advice? “Be spontaneous about the direction you choose, so long as you take walks and eat meals on your correct bio time.”

My own advice, meanwhile, is that sustaining an engaging business blog  over the course of years is very do-able – so long as you stay engaged.  Keep learning by “reading around” – books, blogs, articles, magazines, almanacs – you name it, all to stay aware of developments, cultural changes, even controversies.

Whatever your circadian biology, in content writing, it helps to think like a wolf!

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It’s the Chef, Stupid, Not the Food or the Decor

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The latest Forbes Special Issue devotes an entire page to restaurant reviews:

  • “Lively French bistro with Austrian overtones in menu and decor, epitomized by its sensational schnitzel Viennoise.”
  • “Magnificent Middle Eastern meals, especially the breads and spreads.”
  • “Blonde wood room effectively fuses two of the world’s greatest cuisines: Japanese and Peruvian.”

As a person who appreciates both good food and good content, I couldn’t help thinking that, of the 25 different descriptions of sumptuous eateries, all highly complimentary, there was only one that stood out above the rest:

“Iconic chef Marcus Samuelson’s new restaurant reflects the fusion of his birthplace Ethiopia and his adoptive home of Sweden, where he was raised. The blending of the two influences is astonishingly successful in one delectable dish after another.”

In another Forbes article, one published more than ten years ago, “5 Keys to Successful Small Business Marketing”, Ty Kiisel wrote, “Because business is personal, sharing a little of yourself makes you more accessible. People like doing business with other people. Over the years,” Kiisel revealed, “my readers have gotten to know me because I share with them some of the details of my life.”

The Forbes restaurant reviewer, by sharing information about the chef,  not only about the food, made me feel that I was meeting a person, not merely being presented with a product.

In content marketing, we teach at Say It For You,  stories that “humanize” the owners and workers, even stories about past mistakes and struggles, tend to generate feelings of admiration for –  and trust in – the entrepreneurs or professional practitioners who overcame both outside obstacles and the  effects of their own early mis-steps.

It comes down to storytelling – Why did those owners choose to do what they do? Where did they come from? What are they most passionate about? What are they trying to add to – or change – about their industry?

It’s the chef, (stupid), not the food or the decor.

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In Marketing, Punctuation Matters — a Lot!

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The best punctuation goes entirely unnoticed, even if it means breaking some rules, Sigl Creative reminds writers of marketing copy. The site offers a birds-eye view:

  • Periods, exclamation points, and question marks symbols mark the end of a complete thought. Periods are used the most, and readers will barely notice them.
  • Questions are great, drawing in the readers, posing a problem the reader wants solved.
  • Exclamation points, not used in formal writing, are appropriate for copywriting. You’re excited about your business, and you want the reader to be, too. (Don’t use too many, and never two in a row.)
  • Fragments (“Just. Like. This.”) break up the flow of words.
  • Em dashes (which interrupt a sentence with an idea) can be visually exciting.
  • Ellipses (a series of three periods) add informality, mimicking human speech.

But do these details matter?  Oh, yes! “You don’t want to distract your readers from the message you’re trying to send,” Jessica Perkins of Agility PR Solutions writes. Without proper punctuation, you can produce run-on sentences, dangling modifiers, or sentence fragments.

It’s not hard to find websites listing funny examples of how punctuation can lead to total misunderstanding, as I pointed out five years ago in this Say It For You blog:

  • A woman without her man is nothing.
    A woman: without her, man is nothing.
  • Let’s eat Grandma.
    Let’s eat, Grandma!
  • I have only twenty-five dollar bills.
    I have only twenty five-dollar bills.
  • I’m sorry I love you.
    I’m sorry; I love you.
  • The author finds inspiration in cooking her family and her dog.
    The author finds inspiration in cooking, her family, and her dog.

Anything that puzzles readers interferes with their interest and engagement, defeating the purpose of the content. In today’s competitive business world, content writing is a tool for “getting personal” and earning trust. As writers, we need to help our business owners express who and what they are, so that they come across as “real”. Being real, though, doesn’t mean being sloppy.

In marketing, punctuation matters – a lot!

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Grounding Yourself in Purpose

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“Some ideas just stick,” Laura Spence-Ash tells writers in Poets & Writers magazine. It’s important for writers to pay attention and find patterns and concepts that they themselves find pleasing, using those patterns to “find a way forward” in expressing ideas to their readers, the author explains.

“Sticky” ideas are important in content marketing, because they help the different elements – social media posts, blog posts, web pages and newsletters – “fit together” as components in an ongoing strategy. At Say It For You, we use the musical term leitmotifs. “The leitmotif is heard whenever the composer (of, say, an opera) wants the idea of a certain character, place, or concept to come across,” Chloe Rhodes explains in A Certain “Je Ne Sais Quoi.

In planning content marketing strategy for your business or professional practice, one important step, we explain to our clients, is to select four or five themes that are important to your point of view. As their marketing consultants, we will then make sure those themes appear and reappear in all their marketing communications.

Not to be confused with “keyword phrases”, themes express desirable outcomes resulting from successful use of a product, a service, or a methodology. For example, a residential air conditioning firm might use keywords such as “air conditioning”, “HVAC”, and “air conditioning repair”. The recurring themes, in contrast, might be “comfort” and “a healthy home environment”.

When owners express doubt about their ability to keep generating new content, I often remind them of late CEO of Apple Computer, Steve Jobs. Biographer Walter Isaccson noted that Jobs owned more than a hundred black turtlenecks.  Not only was this convenient, but it conveyed Jobs’ signature style. For much the same reason, defining “sticky” concepts about your industry, your products, and your services, helps, not only in keeping content focused and targeted,  but keeping it going! 

“Grounding yourself in purpose” means focusing on the ideas and the phrases that you find “stick in your mind”, on principles so valuable to you that you feel compelled to share them with your audience.  Use those “sticky” word patterns and concepts to “find the way forward”, feeling compelled to share those ideas with readers.

 

 

 

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