3 Scary Fears You Need to Overcome To Experience Amazing Inbound Results

When my marketing agency The Whole Brain Group talks to prospective clients, we spend a lot of time educating them about the cultural shift that will need to take place inside their leadership team and organization as a whole to make an investment in inbound marketing successful.

We know from our own experience, and from talking to a lot of other agency teams, that companies that embrace this cultural evolution consistently experience results more quickly and more powerfully than those who can’t seem to get past these fears.

Here are three fears we frequently run into when working with growing companies who are trying to figure out how to be successful with inbound marketing.

1) Fear of Producing Educational Content

Many companies resist producing a lot of educational content for fear of giving away their “secret sauce” to their competitors - or that they will educate their customers so well that they will just “do it themselves”.

89% of buyers research online before spending money on anything, so companies need to shift their thinking to adjust to this new buyer behavior. Would you rather have your potential customers educate themselves on your website - or your competitors’?

Attitude Shift #1: Get Comfortable with Educating

It’s important to understand that educating your customers does not necessarily mean publishing the engineering blueprints for your product or letting people download the operations manual your team uses to deliver service. Educating your customers means positioning yourself as a thought leader and guide that can help them make a smart purchasing decision.

1. Understand and define your buyer personas so you can clarify your messaging and content to meet their needs.
2. Define your buyer’s journey and produce content that will help remove any misconceptions or objections your customers may have about deciding to buy from you.
3. Brainstorm topics for content offers by talking to your sales team to find out what questions they are tired of answering, what common misconceptions people have about your product or service, and what they wish people knew when comparing your company to a competitor.

2) Fear of Changing Your Sales Process

Buyer behaviors have changed dramatically in the last few years, but most sales teams are still selling the same old way - and are frustrated that their results aren’t as good as they used to be. Because buyers are doing more research online, they’re typically far more savvy and educated than ever before - and they’ll spot a sales person using “sales tactics” or “faking it” right away.

If you’re doing a good job with inbound marketing, your prospects should have had most of their basic questions answered before they even talk to a sales person - which means your sales team needs to up their game.

Attitude Shift #2: Get Comfortable with Lead Intelligence and Consultative Selling

The beauty of using marketing automation software like HubSpot is that you’re collecting TONS of lead intelligence that could really help salespeople close more deals - if they look at it!

1. Map your current sales process and look for places to integrate technology to automate, optimize your team’s efficiency, and collect valuable data to help you improve. Tools like Sidekick can help your team be more proactive and responsive, and spend less time on admin tasks so they can focus on building relationships and closing deals.
2. Get your marketing and sales teams together regularly to examine your lead intelligence data and understand how your buyer behavior is changing. Then go back to the sales process you mapped and make adjustments to optimize for better results.
3. Encourage your sales team to think of themselves as guides - their primary purpose is to listen, educate, answer questions, and steer your customers toward the right solution for their needs.

3) Fear of Sharing Data and Results

It’s impossible to achieve results or know how to adjust inbound marketing strategies and tactics when you’re not sure if what you’re doing is actually impacting sales or revenue. Many company executives are reluctant to share this kind of information with their marketing team, but still want the teams to mysteriously demonstrate ROI.

At the same time, many marketing teams are scared to share their results with executives because they’re unclear on how success is being measured, or what the expected time frame is for demonstrating results.

Tracking metrics like traffic, leads, and conversion rates is important - but tying those numbers to an impact on sales is even more powerful.

Attitude Shift #3: Be Comfortable with Transparency

Understanding the link between marketing activities and sales results will help your marketing team make smart decisions and focus on things that will help impact the bottom line.

Consider adopting a Smarketing Scorecard that you update and review each week so your team can start making connections between activities and results. Include numbers like traffic, leads, consults, 90-day pipeline, average deal size, closed opportunities, etc. After reviewing the data for a few weeks, you’ll be able to identify trends and issues before they become problems, and take action that will help you proactively make progress toward your goals.

Invest in a Customer Relationship Management System (CRM) that integrates with your marketing software to give everyone access to the same information. When your salespeople can see how a prospect has interacted with your marketing, they’ll be able to have more intelligent and effective conversations. And when your marketing team can see which campaigns are generating qualified leads, they can focus on duplicating that success in future campaigns.

If you’re partnered with a marketing agency, you’ll need to maintain a similar level of transparency and meet regularly to share information so they can function more effectively as an extension of your company. Many owners are worried that an agency will use revenue or sales data against them to increase prices or upsell unnecessary services, but a true agency partner will never abuse their privilege that way.

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Promote Your Passion

This is a big one friends.

I am in the thick of promoting the School of Greatness book and loving it.

It’s where the rubber meets the road so to speak.

If I wasn’t 100% passionate about this book, its message, and what I see possible when people read it, I wouldn’t be promoting it so much.

But I am.

And that’s what makes the difference when you create work that matters and is successful.

You have to ask people to support your work, to buy your product, to share your message.

It doesn’t happen without you asking.

Here are my thoughts from promoting the book this week in Episode 247.

Subscribe on iTunes, Stitcher Radio or TuneIn

The School of Greatness Podcast

“If you don’t ask someone to support you, they may never do it.”

Continue Seeking Greatness:

• GET YOUR COPY OF THE SCHOOL OF GREATNESS BOOK AND SUPPORT THE LAUNCH! HTTP://GREATNESSBOOK.COM

• Music Credit: Trance ID 2015 by Ason ID

Did you enjoy the podcast?

If you’ve bought your copy of the book, would you write a review on Amazon? Thank you!!

The post Promote Your Passion appeared first on Lewis Howes.

21 Essential Strategies for Growing Your Business With Inbound Marketing [Infographic]

From content creation, SEO, and social media to lead generation, lead management, and analytics, marketers who follow the inbound methodology have a lot of different channels and tactics to manage and master.

But the great thing about inbound marketing is that it pays off over time. It sets businesses up to get found by their target buyers more easily, and then helps them through every single stage of the buying process -- from stranger to brand advocates.

Which of these channels and tactics are involved in which stage of the buying process? What do inbound marketers need to do -- and when -- to attract, convert, close, and delight?

Check out the infographic below from ELIV8 to learn about 21 inbound marketing strategies that can help move future customers down the funnel and accelerate the growth of your business. (And click here for an interactive guide to inbound marketing.)

How have these inbound marketing strategies helped you grow your business? Share with us in the comments.

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Commit to Your Vision

The School of Greatness book is out!

I am overwhelmed with gratitude and excitement.

Last night was the book launch party in NYC and it was insane.

I couldn’t believe how many people showed up and stood in line for hours to meet me.

One question I kept getting asked was how I knew this book dream would happen.

My answer: I committed to my vision of it happening.

Sharing those thoughts in Episode 246 of Greatness Week!

Subscribe on iTunes, Stitcher Radio or TuneIn

The School of Greatness Podcast

“The only thing worse than being blind is having sight but no vision.” – Helen Keller

Continue Seeking Greatness:

• ORDER YOUR COPY OF THE SCHOOL OF GREATNESS BOOK HERE HTTP://GREATNESSBOOK.COM!!

• Leave a review on Amazon! It makes a big difference

• Music Credit: Trance ID 2015 by Ason ID

Did you enjoy the podcast?

What is your vision?? I want to know.

The post Commit to Your Vision appeared first on Lewis Howes.

A 4-Step Process for Selling Your Sales Team on Your Product

When sales are slow and the team worries you're charging too much, it's time for them fall in love with the product all over again.

How to Create an Effective Sales and Marketing SLA

The alignment of an organization’s sales and marketing efforts is a crucial strategic imperative for companies that desire sustainable growth. Despite the evidence of improved business performance, it’s still a rarity to find an organization that has and maintains full alignment. The good news is that the issue is getting far more attention than ever before, and more organizations are making progress.

A major cause for the overall lack of progress is that while the issue of alignment is getting more strategic attention from executives, it’s still getting very little focus in terms of tactical and structural changes that need to be made within an organization to sustain the goal.

While talk and will power can improve results in the short run, structural change is required to sustain the effort and to gain the benefits of such a pursuit. It is for this reason that the development of a documented service level agreement (SLA) between sales and marketing is so important.

HubSpot’s 2015 State of Inbound Marketing report highlighted three compelling advantages for companies that maintain their SLA:

• Companies with an active SLA are 34% more likely to experience greater year-over-year ROI than those companies that aren’t.
• They’re 21% more likely to get greater budget allocations.
• They’re 31% more likely to be hiring additional salespeople to meet demand.

Why SLAs Are So Important

Having been involved in creating many SLAs (for both my company and with clients) I can attest to the fact that while creating them can be difficult (they require a lot of thinking and working through details), the impact is significant. It is said that great communication is communicating not so that you can be understood, but so that you cannot be misunderstood. SLAs make that possible.

It is also said that Wwhat gets measured gets done, and what gets measured and monitored gets done faster. An SLA formalizes the measurement and monitoring processes that ensure progress and results.

Creating An Effective Sales & Marketing SLA

The process starts by bringing together the leaders of all disciplines into the same room to discuss roles, responsibilities, process, targets and accountability. At a minimum, a marketing and a sales leader need to be involved. As the sales development role continues to mature and grow, the leader of that group should be involved as well.

1) Defining Your Buyer Personas/Ideal Client Profile

As with everything else in your demand generation process, your service level agreement starts by clearly defining and communicating the criteria for who you are trying to attract. The more specific and clear the definition is, the better.

When you shortcut this step (and many organizations do) you leave far too much open to the interpretation of individuals. Let’s face it, salespeople and marketers are naturally opportunistic. Without formalizing, your profile definitions will drift and your demand generation process will get bogged down.

2) Standardize Lead Definitions

I regularly assess sales development and sales processes. One of the first questions I ask is to define what a lead is, and, further, to define each stage of an organization’s funnel. The answers almost always start with, “Well, uhm, well that’s a, uhm, good question. You see it kind of depends…”

At a minimum you must clearly define what qualified, marketing qualified and sales qualified leads are. This will force the participants to get into the minutia, but it’s critical to make your process scalable and sustainable.

3) Set Clear Goals

When setting goals, you should consider the maturity/ramp up of your team members and functional areas, past results and lead generation drivers. This is not the time to pull numbers out of the air and to make them motivating. Your goals must be based on real life situations.

The marketing team (and, if you have one, the sales development team) should be assigned goals around how many leads should be sourced, targets for each phase of the funnel and how many sales qualified leads (SQLs) should be turned over to the sales team.

All teams that are party to the SLA should meet every month to review results and update goals.

4) Define How The Handoff Occurs

Increasing lead velocity is truly a team effort. The handoff is a place where otherwise excellent demand generation processes blow up. You must determine if and how your SDRs will specialize, what determines when a lead is moved to that team and how leads are then handed off to the new sales team.

This is why you must have clear lead definitions. Without them your team will be dealing with too much ambiguity to sustain alignment and growth.

5) Establish Protocols For Managing Leads

The biggest, most common complaint I hear from salespeople and marketers is that the other group doesn’t know how to manage leads. This is the section of the SLA that eliminates that concern.

Clearly lay out how a lead should be treated – when, how often and how many times they should be “touched.” Closing the loop is also important. How should a sales accepted lead be reported as well as a sales rejected lead. Closed loop reporting is crucial to improving your processes.

6) Track, Measure & Assess Performance Metrics

Your SLA should clearly define the key performance indicators everybody will use to assess the progress and effectiveness of your demand generation processes. Tracking should be used to highlight performance issues/opportunities with individual contributors and to highlight and accelerate learning so that everyone is always improving.

7) Standardize the SLA Review Process

Determine the period of time that you will conduct a comprehensive review of the assumptions, processes and targets laid out in your SLA. For most companies a review of the SLA every six months is sufficient. For high-growth companies, we recommend reviewing quarterly.

Creating an SLA is a challenging task but one that is well worth the effort. Clearly defining and communicating the expectations of your sales and marketing teams will go a long way in helping to meet or exceed the revenue goals you have established.

6 Steps to Planning a Free Startup Event and Making a Splash

It's time to get real: Promote your company offline, using real-life, real-time events.