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These 5 trends are derived from a very, very interesting Inside Sales Trends Report: 12 in 2012 Inside Sales Trends by Josiane Feigon. Folks, you need to read the whole report and frame it to your desk throughout the year. Josiane is right on the money when it comes to what to expect in this year’s inside sales trends.
I would like to take the opportunity to show you five of these trends with some additional comments of my own.
1. #WINNING - Everyone is looking for some big wins this year in 2012. Whether you didn’t quite reach your marks in 2011 or looking to blow 2012 out of the water, you need to be following those innovators and problem-solvers who are reshaping today’s sales. They know the business and how to effectively use their sales tools. A great list to take a look at is InsideView’s 25 Influential Leaders in Sales - these are the people you should be following when it comes to inside sales.
2. Avoid the Slack Blitzer Backlash - As a buyer, how many times have you heard automated responses or pitches read straight from the script? It’s time to think about creating calculated campaigns that are personalized - you need to start selling to People, not Contacts. [Check out People Insights from InsideView to learn how to start selling to people]
3. Seize the Hidden Sales Cycle - The new normal now is our self-sufficient customers who are engaging later and alter in the sales cycle, and coming in much more informed than ever before. They still want a relationship with someone who understands their pain and meets their needs. You need to look for the right people, with the right message, at the right time – your buyers will know all about you, make sure you know everything about them and can provide for their needs. Be that person for them in 2012.
4. Mix the New Substantial Communication Cocktail - The phone and email can no longer do it alone – they need their peeps! People throughout the world are more connected to each other than ever before. No longer do you need the traveling salesman knocking on office doors hoping for an answer. Start bringing other process into the sales system to get in touch with your prospects.
The new cocktail has five ingredients: phone + texting + video + emails + social
5. Re-engineering Randomness - Say good-bye to safe and predictable linear thinking, and say hello to the weird and the wonderful. Some may be wary to admit it, but we are living in a modern industrial age as businesses getting ahead of the curve these days are the ones who think outside of the box and go beyond normal business.
Get creative and innovative for 2012.
To view the free, FULL report of Josiane Feigon’s 12 in 2012 Inside Sales Trends click HERE.
Finding people that you can bring into the sales funnel is easier when you can tap into their social media streams. Prospects are online everyday asking questions and looking for solutions to solve their business issues. The problem facing most sales teams is a lack of understanding on the impact social selling can have on their efforts.
Social Selling University is continuing to build a foundation of content for sales people and sales executives to explain the results that can be achieved by incorporating basic social selling strategies. The first set of webinars focus on the use of social media and how sales teams can leverage social networks to increase lead generation.
Social Selling Webinars
Your Customer Has Moved. Do You Know Where? <~~ WebEx Link
Sales and marketing approaches have been flipped upside down with the explosion of social media. What worked 3 years ago, doesn’t work now. Social media has brought with it a profound global shift in communications that favors relationships over contacts, eliminates cold calling, and puts the buyer in control of the sales process. Capitalize on some simple, but practical “how to” ideas for engaging buyers and customers in a digital economy. During this session we will discuss:
• Why bother? A look at the numbers
• Evolution of sales and how social media applies
• Benefits of social selling
• Creating value in advance of the sales opportunity
• What executives want you to know
• Building loyalty and retention
• How to use social media for lead generation
• Lead generation from current networks
Social Selling with LinkedIn and Twitter <~~ WebEx Link
When sales organizations try to leverage social media into their sales processes, they are often overwhelmed by too much information and underwhelmed by its impact on productivity.
• A quick primer on social media
• Why you need to use social media for your B2B sales organization
• How you can get started
• Tools and Techniques that you need to know
Selling to Crazy Busy People <~~ WebEx Link
Having a tough time capturing and keeping the attention of today’s stressed-out decision makers? In this webinar, you’ll learn:
•How being crazy-busy impacts your prospects’ thinking, decision making and expectations.
•Three critical mistakes that will kill your chances of setting up a meeting with a potential customer.
•The four key factors your prospects use to determine if they’ll continue the conversation with you — or not.
•Why leveraging social media is absolutely critical to your sales success today.
For a complete list of Social Selling University Webinars go here.
We’ve had the opportunity to introduce our vision of Social Selling to customers, sales professionals and our visitors at Dreamforce. InsideView has been defining the use of social media for sales people for years and now we want to raise the bar. InsideView has created a Social Selling University to educate sales people on the benefits of social media and the best practices to using social networking sites like LinkedIn, Twitter and blogs. Customer 2.0 is not just a buzzword, people are no longer going directly to the companies asking questions. Customers are looking in their social networks like LinkedIn and Twitter asking questions and getting advice from other customers and friends on what to buy. If sales people are not engaged with these conversations they are missing out on an excellent opportunity to connect with people in the earliest stages of the buying cycle.
As InsideView continues to develop real strategies around social media for sales people, we will enable entire sales teams to listen, connect and engage with people that will develop new opportunities and create better relationships with current customers.
There were many requests to have this presentation available for people to watch and save as a reference. We have added the introduction to Social Selling on our YouTube page for people to watch. There is more content being edited for this YouTube channel so make sure you click the subscribe button on the page.
Connecting with today’s new socially-enabled buyer, or “Customer 2.0”, has become especially challenging for B2B sales organizations. And along with the web increasingly becoming the preferred channel for customers to do their research and shopping, having a functional website has become not just an option, but a necessity. Yet, B2B websites still have basic inbound marketing and SEO problems that are unwavering in holding back their success.
So without further ado, he are 5 key website optimization issues most commonly made by B2B websites:
- Duplicate Content – Search engines love unique content. Search engines do not like duplicate content that has been indexed elsewhere on your site or on external sites. The last two statements are basic SEO 101, yet B2B websites across the board have this issue. Do you consistently use a piece of text such as a product description, company description or boilerplate across your site on almost every page? These are just a few examples of duplicate content, a major problem that can get your site or pages of your site filtered out of search engines’ indexes – meaning your page will not show up in search results.
- Duplicate Title Tags – The title tag is an HTML title element critical to both SEO and user experience that is used to briefly and accurately describes the topic and theme of an online document (more details here). It is one of the most important on-page SEO factors and one of, if not, the easiest to update. Yet, browsing through most B2B websites, you can find a section where the title tag is repeated through dozens or hundreds of pages. Those pages could drive traffic and earn links if they were optimized and ranking on search engines.
- Optimizing for Industry Jargon – This is a typical B2B website mistake. Businesses try and rank for the keywords they think their customers are using to search for them. The key point is businesses use what they think visitors search for, when in reality using the terms they call their products. Instead of optimizing for the generic, basic searches that have exceedingly high search volume (for example: laser cutting or metal fabrication), businesses are ranking for terms that have minimal search volume because only people in the industry use the specific keywords (for example: precision bending, oxy-burning, robotic welding). Tip: find keyword search volumes here.
- Lack of Conversion Optimization – Try this test. Start at your company website and browse through 3-4 pages as if you were a new visitor. Think about each page you visited. Did they each have a call to action to act on something (application form, phone number, download, etc)? Did you understand the purpose of the page (drive visitors to download, educational content with product promoted in relevant content, etc)? Was there anything compelling that made you want to convert into a lead? Chances are most websites won’t go 3-3. Each page should have a purpose with a target audience and the content and conversion points of the page should be optimized.
- Lack of Social Media Interaction – Most companies are warming up to the fact that social media has taken over the web and is a necessary component of every business nowadays. The problem is, after a business has created a Twitter and Facebook page the social media interaction seems to stop or severely slow down. Tweet a few times a week, add fans on Facebook and add social sharing widgets to your site and promote sharing! The more shares your site and content receives, the more brand awareness your raise, and your content could end up landing in the hands of your future customer.
http://www.insideview.com/customer-20.html
The title tag is an HTML title element critical to both SEO and user experience that is used to briefly and accurately describes the topic and theme of an online document.
The title tag is displayed in two key places:
- Internet Browser – Title Tags display in the top bar of internet browsers.
- Search Result Pages – Search engines display title tags in their results along with another less important on-page factor, the meta description tag.
Importance for SEO:
Historically, the title tag has consistently been one of the single most important on-page SEO factors. Before search engine algorithms increased their complexity, the title tag was an easy way to try and determine the topic and relevancy of a page. As search engines evolved, their algorithms started to include additional factors such as link data, social media interaction and traffic/performance metrics. The title tag, however, still holds great value for on-page search engine optimization.
According to SEOmoz’s annual Search Ranking Factors survey of 37 influential thought leaders in the SEO industry, 35 of the 37 participants said that keyword usage in the title tag was the most important place to use keywords to achieve high rankings.
Creating Optimized Title Tags
Title tags are one of the best return on investment SEO techniques because they are a low effort and high return task. Most blogging platforms like WordPress and Drupal either provide built in solutions or downloadable add-ons to provide access to create and edit title tags.
Optimization Tips:
- Be Accurate – Try not to wonder off topic with your title tags as they are used as a relevancy factor to describe a page in search engine algorithms. Stray too far off the path and you may look like you’re spamming, keyword stuffing or other manipulative techniques.
- Don’t Target Too Many Terms on One Page – A good rule of thumb is to try not to target more than a couple keywords per page. If you could create a standalone article on the topic, it should be its own page. This method allows search engines to more easily determine the topic and relevancy of your page.
- Optimize Your Length for Results Pages – Search engines standardize their results pages by limiting the amount of characters they show per element of a listing. Title tags are allowed a maximum of 70 characters is the maximum amount of characters before they display an ellipsis – “…” to signify that a title tag has been cut off. Your title tag may not make sense to a user if it gets cut off before the point is made, so be sure to check title tag length. Additionally, don’t go overboard with keywords and use common sense to know what looks too long.
- Keyword Placement and Order Matters – According to SEOmoz’s survey, the earlier the keyword is used in the placement of the title tag, the more helpful it is for ranking factors. Additionally, because it is near the beginning and likely not cut off at the 70 character limit, the more likely a user will see it and click on your search result listing.
- Try to Be Enticing – Your title tag is a searcher’s first impression with your page and sometimes brand. Leverage the title tag to not only optimize for SEO but also for user experience. Studies have shown that the message you convey in your title tag can get your more traffic than the search result listing ranked above you. Think of the following example – which one would you click on?:
Option A: Digital Cameras – Company Name
Option B: Buy Digital Cameras and Accessories – Limited 20% off – Company Name
Search Engine Result Pages
One last thing to note is that any keywords in title tags, meta descriptions and display URLs that match the performed search query will be bolded on the search results page. With searchers using title tags to determine which listing they click on, an optimized and enticing title tag can increase click-through rates and greater brand awareness.
Engaging with today’s new breed of socially-enabled buyer, or Customer 2.0, has become increasingly difficult for B2B sales and marketing organizations. Traditional marketing tactics have become increasingly ineffective. Inbound marketing, which is focused on generating relevant content that results in “getting found” by customers vs. the other way around, has brought new life for marketing. Similarly, B2B sales organizations are adopting inbound selling (a.k.a. social selling) to drive prospect engagement in the latter stages of the buying process.
Getting found requires not only relevant content but also good visibility on search engines (which is where most customers begin their research.) Making your content visible to Google and other search engines requires SEO (search engine optimization.) SEO is often confused with online marketing and inbound selling, but is in fact a very distinct discipline. As we’ve explained in a previous post, the equation for getting found looks something like this:
SEO + Inbound Marketing = Getting Found (by search engines AND customers)
So without further ado, he are 20 key SEO terms that inbound marketing professionals must understand:
301 Redirect – A redirect is a technique for forwarding one URL to another URL. It’s a useful and dangerous tool to seamlessly forward visitors and search engine spiders to a new URL for one of several reasons including if a website needed to change its domain or a time sensitive page like a contest has expired and is no longer relevant. 301 redirects, unlike 302 redirects, also transfer PageRank and SEO value to the new URL.
Breadcrumb – A breadcrumb is a navigational trail used on web pages to display where the page sits in the hierarchy of the website. Each level of the breadcrumb is usually a link back to the referenced page. An example breadcrumb looks like this: “Home > Category > Product Page”
Canonical – Similar to the 301 redirect, URL canonicalization is an HTML tag to help eliminate duplicate copies of the same page on a website. Unlike redirects, canonical URL tags are only used for search engine spiders to signal that the duplicate pages have a single source.
Co-citation – Co-citations are links used to establish similarity between two web pages. If sites A and B are either linked to or cited by site C, then they may be related to each other even though they may not directly link to each other. For an example, say your blog about banking is linked to from 1,000 other websites that also link to WellsFargo.com. Search engines will use the existence of 1,000 co-citations to establish relevance between your blog and Wells Fargo.
CSS – CSS, or Cascading Style Sheets, is part of HTML code that outline the layout of different elements of your site such as your header, content area, widgets, etc.
Image Alt Text – Alt tags are used in the HTML code to describe images on a web page. Since search engines cannot see images, the use alt text along with other factors to determine what the image is and how relevant it is. An example of alt text: <img src="image24094.gif" alt=”Latest picture of BP oil spill“>
Inbound Link – An inbound link is a link from an external site to your site. An example would be if Site A adds a link to Site B on its homepage. Site B would have an inbound link from Site A. To see how many inbound links your site or page has, use the Yahoo! Site Explorer tool.
Indexed Pages – Indexed pages refers to the number of pages of your site that search engines have found, crawled and stored in their index. A page cannot rank for a search term unless it is in the search engine index.
Internal Links – Unlike inbound links, internal links is a link from one page on your site to another page on your site. An example would be if Site A added a link to the About Us page from the homepage of Site A. Internal links are valuable for SEO, although not considered to carry the same weight as an inbound link from an external source.
Long Tail – Long tail refers to uncommon search queries, generally phrases that are 3+ keywords in length. Popularized by Chris Anderson, long tail refers to the statistical probability distribution that there is a larger share of traffic to be gained by targeting the large number of uncommonly searched queries as opposed to the few, but wildly competitive and highly trafficked head terms.
NoFollow – A link element used in the HTML code of a link to tell search engines to not pass any SEO value or PageRank through the link. It was created to prevent spam in blog comments that the blog author could not control. An example of the nofollow code: <a href=”http://www.example.com/” rel=”nofollow”>discount drugs</a>
NoIndex – Noindex is a HTML tag that tells search engine spiders to prevent storing the page in a search engine index. It can be used for private information that you would not want anyone to find through a search engine. Found in the <head> section of the web page, an example code looks like: <meta content=”noindex” />
Outbound Link – An outbound link is a link from your site to an external site. An example would be if Site A adds a link to Site B on its homepage. Site A would have an outbound link to Site B.
PageRank – Is a link analysis algorithm, assigning a numerical weighting for the total value and trust accumulated by your entire site (all pages) based on the quantity and quality of the links pointed at your site. Links are used by the search engines as the main factor determining trust, relevancy and the importance of a page and domain based on the quantity and quality of the links that point to it. Every link on the web is treated as a “vote” and that the more votes a page has, the more value its vote’s pass.
Robots.txt – Robots.txt is a protocol that determines the accessibility of specific pages on a domain to search engine spiders. The robots.txt file tells search engine spiders which pages to disallow any crawling or indexing before the spider even reaches the page. Try typing in any domain followed by /robotx.txt and see one for yourself: http://www.google.com/robots.txt
Spider – A search engine spider is an automated program, known as a robot or crawler, that navigates through the web, crawling and indexing content from sites into a search engine index.
Subdomain – A subdomain is a domain that is part of a larger domain. An example would be Money.CNN.com is a subdomain of www.CNN.com. Subdomains are treated as separate sites from the larger domain it’s a part of and do not carry over the SEO value from its parent domain.
Subfolder – A subfolder is a folder or path contained within a domain. An example would be www.google.com/adsense is a subfolder to www.google.com. Subfolders are treated as the same site as the parent domain and carry over all SEO value.
Title Tag – Title tags are HTML tags in the code of a web page that define the title of the page. Title tags are displayed in the menu bar of internet browsers and on search engine results pages with a short meta description snippet. They are one of the most important on-page factors for SEO.
WHOIS – WHOIS is a query protocol to determine who the owner of a website is. Many resources are available to search WHOIS records such as Network Solutions. Private registrations can be used to hide contact information for WHOIS records.
