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What are the Makings of a High-Quality Link?

What links are considered “high quality”? Find out from link building expert, Paddy Moogan, who talks you through link relevancy, link diversity, link authority, and the sustainability of your link building efforts.

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The Complete Guide to Starting a Consulting Business

Have you heard the phrase: “You owe me for the years, not for the minutes”? 

When you think of consultants, the first ideas that might come to mind are busy schedules, high-profile clients, and lucrative salaries. But why do these companies pay consultants so much money for advice or even seemingly small tasks that could’ve been done in just a few minutes?

That phrase is exactly why. Consultants have dedicated their careers to offering years of experience in a specific area to businesses and entrepreneurs who need their expertise.

If you’re passionate about helping others succeed by providing niche expertise that’s been honed by years of education, experience, and skill development, a career in consulting may be for you.

We’ve compiled this guide to dig deeper into the lucrative and fulfilling world of consulting — and how to start and market a consulting business of your own.

What is consulting?

Consulting is the process of providing expert advice, opinion, and/or strategies for a fee. Consultants — whether individual or firm-based — specialize in a niche industry or trade.

Let’s hone in on an important aspect of the above definition: expert. Consultants are experts in their field. They possess knowledge so valuable that someone else — an individual, department, or entire organization — is willing to pay for it.

Consulting is about much more than giving advice, though. Consulting can include a wide range of activities, including problem diagnosis, data collection, feedback, strategy-building, and implementation.

Consultants and consulting firms are highly sought after because they can bring a unique and fresh perspective to a pressing business problem or challenge. Sometimes, business owners and leaders need a new set of eyes when approaching an issue; as a consultant, you can provide that unbiased perspective.

Simply put, consultants work to make their clients more successful. This can require a lot of work, which is why the consulting business is so lucrative.

Consultant vs. Contractor

You may have heard the words consultant, contractor, and even freelancer used interchangeably.

If you were to open your own consulting business practice, where would you stand?

While all of these parties work with businesses (versus being employed by them), that’s about where their similarities end.

Contractors (including freelancers) are self-employed workers who are contracted out by companies to provide services.

Consultants, as we’ve defined above, primarily provide an assessment and expert advice. They can be self-employed or employed by a consulting firm.

However, if, as a consultant, you were asked to provide a service or deliverable, you could be hired into a contractor-type role.

For example, let’s say you were hired to assess a sales team’s performance. Upon initial assessment, you recommend a new sales strategy and training plan. If you were then asked to draw up and deliver this written strategy and training plan, you would be considered a contractor (in addition to a consultant).

Consultants exist in practically every field. Let’s discuss the different types of consulting in which you can specialize.

Consulting refers to a variety of specialists in virtually infinite industries.

In this section, we’ll unpack some of the most sought-after types of consulting practices, any relevant niche opportunities that fall under them, and what your career in these respective trades may look like.

1. Management Consulting

Management consulting is the most common type of consulting and includes many different niche consulting careers under its umbrella. Firms like McKinsey, Bain & Company, and Deloitte primarily work in management consulting. It’s a $250 billion industry — at least, where it stands as of 2021.

As a management consultant, you would work with business leaders to help their companies run smoothly. This typically involves assessing certain processes and providing advice on how to improve or implement new ones.

Not all management consultants are the same — some follow a generalist approach and assess each organization as a whole, and some specialize in more specific departments or fields.

2. Strategy Consulting

Strategy consulting is an important subset of management consulting. The purpose of strategy consulting is to review key business strategies and provide expert advice on how to improve or develop new ones. Strategy consultants are typically experts in a certain industry or field and advise on high-level, strategic business decisions, such as company vision, resources, and investments.

3. Operations Consulting

While strategy consultants primarily work with the “why”, operations consulting addresses the “how”. These consultants address operational processes including procurement, outsourcing, supply chain management, and more. Also, operations consultants often do more for businesses than give advice — sometimes they also offer implementation and deployment services to help clients put their new processes to work.

4. Financial Strategy Consulting

Financial consultants, or advisors, help businesses make informed, objective, and legal financial decisions to improve returns. This sector of management consulting works in corporate finance, financial restructuring, risk management, and even real estate. All financial consultants must meet certain requirements and obtain a license to offer financial advice.

5. Human Resources Consulting

The purpose of human resources (HR) consulting is to help companies hire and retain remarkable employees. These specialists address HR processes including training and development, conflict resolution, management philosophies, benefits and pensions, and employee satisfaction. HR consultants also ensure businesses are following legal and ethical personnel practices.

6. IT Consulting

Information technology (IT) consultants implement and manage new technologies, such as systems integration, software development and management, and enterprise architecture.

As an IT consultant, you might help businesses figure out what software to invest in and how to use it to meet goals, solve challenges, and implement important changes. This consulting division is a highly specialized and lucrative industry, worth almost double the management consulting industry — $460 billion.

7. Business Consulting

Business consulting is a broad term that refers to specialists who work with businesses on anything from financial advising to training to layoffs. (You’ll see that this category overlaps with others in this list.)

As a business consultant, you’d typically work with small to mid-size businesses (SMBs) — as opposed to management consulting, where you’d work with enterprise-level businesses — to objectively assess challenges and provide solutions.

8. Sales Consulting

Sales consultants work to improve the performance of sales teams, regardless of size or industry.

As a sales consultant, you’d typically work in sales training and development, but you could also be brought on for other purposes, such as choosing a CRM, improving the sales process, or boosting team morale. Because sales is considered one of the most important parts of a business, financially-speaking, quality sales consultants are highly-valued and sought-after.

9. Marketing Consulting

The purpose of marketing consulting is to evaluate a business’s marketing efforts and provide guidance on how to improve to meet goals and bring in revenue.

As a marketing consultant, you might specialize in a certain field of marketing, such as content marketing, PR, or social media marketing. Or, you might focus on a niche marketing process, such as defining target audiences, customer acquisition, or brand awareness.

10. Environmental Consulting

Are you passionate about environmental laws and regulations? Environmental consulting may be for you. As an environmental consultant, you may advise businesses on how their practices affect the environment around them and often work with industries like construction, waste management, real estate, and energy (but can be hired by any type of company).

Environmental consulting is particularly important as companies work to reduce their permanent impact on the environment.

11. Financial Consulting

Financial consulting overlaps somewhat with the financial strategy consulting we discussed above. The main difference, however, is that this category also includes independent financial consultants that work with individuals, families, and entrepreneurs.

As a financial consultant, you may help with everything from day-to-day expenses, investments, and taxes to cash-flow issues, insurance, and financial legalities.

12. Career Consulting

Individuals and businesses alike use career consulting to either equip themselves or their employees to grow in their jobs. As a career consultant, you may help clients with skill development, resume building, job applications, interviews, and understanding the job market as a whole. If you have a background in HR or recruiting, career consulting may be for you.

13. Healthcare Consulting

The purpose of healthcare consulting is to maximize the impact and output of healthcare organizations. Healthcare consultants are basically management consultants that work in the healthcare industry. They analyze the personnel, profits, and processes in an organization and provide advice on how to improve and solve pressing challenges.

14. Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Consulting

It’s not uncommon for companies of any size and industry to find themselves lacking the specific skillset that diversity and inclusion consultants bring. Hiring an HR consultant is simply not enough to overcome implicit and explicit bias in an organization and that’s what makes DEI consultants one of the most sought-after professionals in this market.

As a DEI consultant, you’ll bring an objective point of view to business’ equity problems — especially those that involve personnel and culture. If you have a background in HR, psychology, sociology, or nonprofit management, you may find that with specific training and education, DEI consulting could be your next career move.

15. Public Relations Consulting

While public relations might be a staple in enterprises, the function is more often coupled with marketing and communications in smaller companies. But public relations is a discipline all its own, and unfortunately, that fact is usually realized in the middle of a crisis.

As a PR consultant, you might work on a retainer to help plan for crises before one occurs or you may be brought in during the middle of a crisis to determine a company’s best course of action to work with the public and media. 

16. Brand Consulting

As a brand consultant, you’ll be responsible for assessing where a brand currently stands in the market. Competitor analyses, research, and design may fall under the scope of work, but if you prefer to specialize in one area, that’s certainly an option.

Brand consultants may work closely with marketing and sales consultants to bring products to market, adjust prices, and offer creative expertise to position a company a certain way in the minds of consumers.

Are you specialized in a certain field or niche industry and believe you could offer quality advice to others? You may consider opening your own consulting business.

Here are six steps to follow to start a consulting business that helps both you and your clients succeed.

1. Assess your skills and strengths to choose your niche.

Before anything else, brainstorm and define what skills and strengths you believe would make you a good consultant. Remember — consultants are experts in a certain niche. Their knowledge is valued so highly that they’re paid to share it.

More importantly, good consultants aren’t experts in everything.

What makes you an expert? What do you love to do and talk about? If you had to stand in front of a classroom and teach on any subject, what would that be? What do your friends, family, and coworkers ask your advice on?

These are just a few questions to ask yourself to start thinking about what skills and strengths would make you a consultant. Jot down your answer before moving forward.

If I were answering for myself, I’d say I’m an expert in writing and content marketing. I’ve worked in this field for my entire career and genuinely love creating content and helping others do the same.

2. Analyze your market needs and pain points.

Once you establish your consulting niche, you should have a better idea of what industry and market you’ll be targeting. Following my personal example from above, I would be targeting the marketing industry and specializing in content marketing and creation.

Narrowing your market as a consultant allows you to understand the needs, challenges, and pain points your potential clients face, which can help clarify how you can use your skills to provide solutions.

For example, let’s say my target audience as a content marketing consultant struggles with consistent content creation, SEO, and tracking published content.

Defining these factors allows me to know precisely how I can help my clients (e.g. with writing, SEO, and metrics) versus simply saying, “Hey, I can help you with words!”.

Just as you specialize in a certain skill set as a consultant, you should also specify what services you provide for your clients. This information can also help you better market to clients, which we’ll talk about below.

3. Develop your brand, website, and service offerings.

The next step in getting started as a consultant is creating the external-facing components of your business. This includes your website, branding, and service offerings. These resources can help clients identify you and can help your business stand out among competitors.

Whether you identify your business with your name (e.g. Allie Decker LLC) or with another name (e.g. Content Marketing Consulting LLC), you should give it an official name and website to boot.

The other important part of this step is outlining how you work with clients and how much your consulting costs.

Whether you organize your services into clear-cut packages and prices or simply list your services and request that clients call you for more information, you should at least give visitors an idea of what you specialize in and how you can help them (hence what we defined in steps 1 and 2).

4. Open your business.

You know what your skills are, how your skills can help others, and how potential clients can discover and learn more about you — it’s time to open your business. This step is a bit more complicated than flipping a proverbial sign from Closed to Open.

First, consider the legal structure of your business. Legitimizing your business gives it credibility and gives you direction when it comes to taxes, staffing, and other legal details.

Next, think about what tools you may need to conduct business and connect with clients. These might include tools to help find new clients and jobs — like a LinkedIn membership — and video conferencing software like Zoom or Skype.

At this stage, you should also open a business bank account, invest in an accountant (and eventually an assistant), and order business cards with your branding and information.

Download The Complete Consultant’s Success Kit to access 8 free templates for planning, researching, and client onboarding.

5. Market your business to attract new clients.

Now that you’ve opened your business, it’s time to grow.

A consulting business isn’t a business without clients. Selling your consulting services isn’t like selling a car, a house, or software. Sometimes, you may find yourself selling your services to people who aren’t even aware they need them.

Consulting marketing can adopt a variety of marketing methods:

• Blogging
• Webinars
• Podcasting
• Speaking and teaching
• Social media marketing
• Print or digital advertising
• Referrals
• Cold calling and emailing

Regardless of how you promote your consulting business, invest in consulting marketing methods that will get you in direct contact with your potential clients.

Methods like blogging, podcasting, and social media marketing don’t necessarily draw a direct line to new revenue, but they are powerful for growing awareness and establishing expertise.

A healthy mix of direct marketing and awareness marketing will help your consulting business succeed.

Once you get in front of potential clients, have an established elevator pitch and client proposal template ready to go. Half the consulting “battle” is providing advice; the other half is selling your advice in the first place.

As you grow your client base, use a CRM like the HubSpot’s all-in-one CRM platform (which comes in a free version for small-to-medium businesses or a paid version for enterprise businesses). It can help you keep track of client information as well as the context of your relationship with each client.

6. Stay organized and scale.

As you grow and master your consulting business, stay organized and consistent. High-quality results are the best way to incite referrals from previous clients — and referrals can be your best source of new sales.

In fact, as you build successful relationships with clients, don’t be afraid to ask for referrals for new leads.

Once a month or so, sit down and analyze your consulting business. Look at your client list, software tools, and other business practices; analyze what’s working and what’s not.

Understand where you can cut extra effort and resources to ultimately save money. Lastly, subscribe to industry trends so you can keep your business relevant to the challenges and trends your clients are facing.

Starting a consulting business is a remarkable feat, but that’s not where the work stops. These six activities will help you grow your consulting business, too.

1. Conduct a competitive analysis.

Examining your competition can be intimidating, but with the right mindset, you can learn a lot from them about how to grow and improve your consulting business. Moreover, you can identify gaps in the market and find new ways to improve upon their strategies.

If you haven’t done so already, conduct a competitive analysis of any other consultants or consulting firms in your niche and area. 

How do they market their business? What consulting services do they offer, and how do they describe and bundle them? What are their prices and fees?

When you study what’s working for your competitors, you learn more about your clients’ customer journeys and how you can improve your chances of being hired over your competition.

2. Start a blog.

Blogging is a uniquely effective way to market your business, establish authority in your niche, and help your business organically rank online. Many people — professionals, too — hesitate to start a blog because they don’t know how to manage a blog or what to write about. Well, we’ve compiled a helpful guide to help you past that roadblock.

Download our free guide to starting a successful blog and receive an 8-part planner to get your blog up and running.

Another source of great blog content is your client base. Pay attention to what issues or questions your clients face and gather feedback about what information would be helpful to write and share. In the same vein, blog content can also serve as sales enablement content — sharing a popular blog post or two with potential clients can help them understand why to hire you and what they may learn from working with you.

3. Share thought leadership content.

Similar to starting a blog, the process of publishing thought leadership content can help you establish your authority and attract new clientele. Consider platforms like Medium that already have an audience; publish your most authoritative, data-driven, opinion-based content on there to potentially boost your brand awareness. 

You can also use tools like HARO to connect with journalists and bloggers looking for expert quotes, anecdotes, and stories for their content. Respond to queries to get your voice featured as a thought leader in your consulting niche.

4. Explore new consulting verticals.

Take a peek at your competitive analysis (if you’ve run one): Did your findings yield any verticals or specializations that your competitors are offering and you aren’t? Consider adding new verticals to your services to further differentiate yourself and grow your business.

For example, if you’re a content marketing consultant, you could consider introducing consulting services for email marketing and social media marketing. If you expand, just be sure that you have relevant experience and expertise — don’t add new services for the sake of new business.

5. Network and make new connections.

Networking in person is pretty straightforward. But networking online … well, that’s a different story. Thankfully, with today’s technology, there are countless ways to network and make new connections.

Between social media, dedicated Slack channels, and online masterminds, the only thing standing in your way of making new connections and friends online is you. One of my favorite spots to network is on Twitter — it’s the easiest platform on which to engage with folks and start interesting conversations, and it’s been a good reminder of old connections that I can revive with a short Tweet or email.

Test a few platforms and programs and see which one helps you get connected, attract clients, and build a community.

Start Consulting Today

Consulting may be a fascinating, lucrative career, but it’s also a mindset. Successful consulting businesses begin with an individual or team of knowledgeable experts who are passionate about helping others.

Regardless of how big your firm becomes or how long your client list gets, keep your passion and expertise centered and you’ll always find success — for yourself and your clients.

Top consultants are great at planning, presenting, and marketing their services. Get started with your consulting business plan by downloading our free consulting templates below.

Editor’s note: This post was originally published in December 2019 and has been updated for comprehensiveness.

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The 5-Step Process for Finding Your Business's Ideal Niche Market
Have you ever thought of turning your passion into a business? Many businesses offer a wide range of products or services but struggle to become the market leader for each of their offerings. Instead of targeting a broad population, your idea could focus on a small portion of potential customers. Narrowing your scope provides the opportunity to be the best at what you do.

For example, you might combine your passion for knitting with your love of cats and start your own cat sweater business. More broadly, your customers are pet owners but they have a specialized interest (or need) — cat sweaters.

In this case, the consumers you’re targeting are members of a niche market.

Niche marketing is a byproduct of specialization. When a company offers a specific set of products and services rather than selling a wide variety of offerings, they benefit by saving money, becoming more productive, and providing a comparative advantage that can be marketed to a niche set of customers.

Companies benefit from putting a stake in the ground and one way to see that benefit in action is through sales and marketing. Selling to a niche market is a way to stand out from competitors, and it helps your brand establish positive recognition within the market. Your business can become an authority in your industry for that niche audience — ultimately attracting more customers to your product or service.

Benefits of a Niche Market

Whether you’re starting a new business or scaling an existing one, niche marketing is an effective way to establish your brand’s positioning. By focusing on a small audience, your business will be able to stretch its resources further and bring in customers who are closely aligned with your offerings. Those are the people who need your product most and are therefore most likely to convert and remain loyal customers.

Let’s say your business sells printers and scanners. A niche market approach would entail identifying and reaching out to your business’ target accounts — through market research, these are the people you’ve determined would benefit most from your product (and therefore, would be most likely to convert).

To further improve chances of conversion and customer loyalty, you may get even more granular and specifically reach out to the departments within those target businesses who would benefit most from your printers and scanners, such as marketing or admin.These are the people who understand the benefits of your product and the challenges it resolves.

Starting small is how you establish yourself in your market. Then, as your business scales, it’s natural for your niche market to grow. In fact, Harvard Business Review says large markets can evolve from niche ones. By aligning your products or services perfectly with a small group of current and potential customers, you encourage word of mouth and positive reviews which can carry your business into a larger, potentially more profitable market.

Now that we have a better idea of what a niche market is and the benefits of having one, let’s take a look at the steps to finding one.

1. Reflect on your passions and interests.

Is there a hobby or skill you’re particularly passionate about or good at? Take some time to reflect on those areas of interest as potential niche market ideas. Below are a few questions to spark your brainstorming:

• What skills come naturally to you?
• How do you enjoy spending your free time?
• Do friends, family, and colleagues ask for your advice on a specific topic?
• How do you approach problem-solving?
• What topics do you enjoy learning about?

Write down your answers to these questions and begin a list of ideas to consider for your business’s niche market.

2. Identify customers’ problems and needs.

Now that you have some business ideas, think of the problems faced by your target market and how your passion or interest can become a product or service that meets their needs. What’s their motive to buy?

Research your potential customers to determine their buying behaviors and the challenges they face. There are a variety of tools (including free ones) you can use as you explore your customer persona. This will give you a better idea of how your business can provide value to your niche market.

3. Research the competition.

Before devoting your time and energy to developing a brand new business, you’ll want to research your potential competitors. You might have a viable product idea, but how many other businesses will you be competing with?

Below are a few websites that can help you with your competitive research.

• Google Trends
• Google Keyword Planner
• ClickBank
• Amazon

Use these tools to explore the best-selling products consumers are researching and see if your new business can meet their needs.

4. Define your niche and its profitability.

If you’re dedicating your resources and time to a new business, it should have the ability to become profitable. Here are a few factors to consider when finalizing the niche you’ll be catering to:

• Customer demographics
• Customer values and interests
• Customer location
• Product quality
• Price

Your idea could be profitable if you research the market and discover similar products but not many companies selling them. Take a look at the price points of your competitors’ products so you can price your own competitively. Resources like Amazon (for products), G2 (for software), agency directories (for services), and PRICEFY.IO (for price monitoring) are helpful in the process of evaluating your competitors’ pricing, and determining prices for your own products and services.

5. Test your product or service.

Create a simple website or landing page for your business so customers can find you. Offer a trial period of the product or give out free samples to your target customers. This initial test period should not cost a large amount of money, but you can certainly use paid ads to drive traffic to your website.

See if people want to put money towards your product with crowdfunding sites. Not only can you gain funding but you’ll also get your product in front of potential customers.

If the test is not as successful as you hoped it would be, don’t scrap your idea entirely. Go back to the drawing board to find key areas where your product or marketing could be improved.

Still not sure what a niche business looks like in practice? Below are a few examples of businesses that cater to niche markets.

1.Georgetown Cupcake: A bakery that only bakes cupcakes.

After leaving their corporate jobs, sisters Katherine Kallinis Berman and Sophie Kallinis LaMontagne decided to pursue their passion for baking and opened up Georgetown Cupcake. Unlike other bakeries that create cakes and other sweets, their sole product is cupcakes and they were able to perfect their recipes by focusing on one product type.

2.The Container Store: A store that only sells containers.

Instead of offering a variety of home products such as furniture, textiles, and artwork The Container Store focuses on selling compartments — large and small enclosed storage containers for consumers to store their stuff. Sure, customers could go to a convenience store to buy containers, but there’s a good chance they won’t find the exact size and color that fits the space and aesthetic of their cupboard. The Container Store fills that void (literally) and the business has turned a healthy profit within this market.

Rather than catering to a large population of people in need of home cleaning, Dorm Mom’s niche market is college students. Its offerings include dorm cleaning and laundry services.

3. Drybar: A hair salon that offers blowouts, no cuts or color.

Instead of giving haircuts, Drybar’s services are limited to blow-drying and styling. To give customers some variety, the salon offers a few hair-styling options. What sets Drybar apart is this: “[We’re] based on the simple concept of focusing on one thing and being the best at it: Blowouts.”

4. SoulCycle: A workout studio that only offers indoor cycling classes.

SoulCycle is a 45-minute indoor cycling class that sets itself apart from competitors by only offering one specialized spin class. Other fitness studios don’t compare to the community of dedicated cyclers who spend hours working out and connecting with one another each week.

5. Ties.com: A clothing store that sells men’s accessories.

In the broader market of menswear, Ties.com stands out by only selling accessories like ties, socks, pocket squares, and wallets. Since their products make up a small portion of the menswear industry, they stand out from the competition by creating unique, high-quality accessories.

Find Your Lane in a Niche Market

By specializing your products and services in a narrow market, you’ll better utilize your resources, produce products faster, and develop a loyal customer base who can champion your brand to the mass market. Selling to a niche market can be a short or long-term strategy — the key is finding your audience and tailoring everything you do just for them.

Editor’s note: This post was originally published in October 2018 and has been updated for comprehensiveness.

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How to Use Low Search Volume Keywords to Optimize B2B Tech Content

For competitive niches, small addressable markets, or both, turn to this proven approach when trying to grow targeted organic traffic and brand awareness: targeting low search volume keywords.

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Everything You Need to Know About Value-Based Pricing

Imagine a sales conversation unfolding like this:

Salesperson: “So, you’re interested?”

Potential Buyer: “Yeah, I might buy this. How much will it cost me?”

Salesperson:“That depends — how much are you willing to pay for it?”

With prices readily available online and in-store, it’s likely transactions are moving this way. However, companies employing the value-based pricing model need to think about what the answer to that final question would be.

In this post, we’ll explain the value-based pricing model, outline its pros and cons, and highlight a few ways to incorporate this pricing strategy in your business.

With prices readily available online and in-store, it’s likely transactions are moving this way. However, companies employing the value-based pricing model need to think about what the answer to that final question would be, if they want to employ the strategy successfully.

In this post, we’ll explain the value-based pricing model, outline its pros and cons, and highlight a few ways to incorporate this pricing strategy in your business wisely.

Featured Resource: Value-Based Pricing Calculator

Download this Template for Free

Discover how much revenue you’ll get by employing a value-based pricing model in your business with our sales pricing strategy calculator, and compare revenue to nine other pricing models like cost-plus, competition-based, and prestige pricing.

Artwork, cars, amusement parks, and even social media influencers use value-based pricing to sell their products and services. All three of these industries take into account a few standard truths about value-based pricing:

1. The market influences how much a consumer will be willing to pay for a product.
2. The benefit that the product provides to the customer influences the value of that product.
3. Competitors’ pricing can influence how valuable consumers perceive a product to be.

Because value-based pricing thrives in the grey area of sales, one major factor that consumers must consider is negotiation. Consumers and sales reps should have a conversation to determine the benefits and value that a product has in order for the consumer to pay a price that reflects the value they’ve placed on the product and for the seller to make a reasonable profit on the deal.

Value-based pricing is commonly used in a few different scenarios. Below are some common value-based products and the economic principles that guide the pricing for them.

Housing

Inelastic demand happens when the need for the product is so high that a lower price would have little-to-no impact on unit sales. One example of this can be found in the housing market. As of Q2 2021, the real estate market is considered a “seller’s market” where buyers are paying thousands of dollars above the home’s asking price. Although the housing market might flip between a buyer’s and seller’s market several times, the truth remains that even as the demand for housing soars, a lower price would have little-to-no impact on the sale of most houses. Therefore, buyers must consider the perceived value of the house they plan to purchase. Is it worth a few extra thousand dollars? The answer might be no, but there’s another buyer who’s excited to say yes to the address.

Milk

Highly competitive and price-sensitive markets usually settle at the price consumers are willing to pay. Charging any more could turn away interested buyers looking for a good deal. If you walk into any grocery store, you’ll see that milk falls squarely into this category. While you might see different brands of milk in the cooler, they’re all priced within a few cents of each other. In this case, the value of the milk is based on the third truth that we covered earlier – competitors’ pricing can influence how valuable consumers perceive a product to be.

For lower-priced products, value-based pricing is similar to competition-based pricing, while for those higher-priced products, the model shares a lot in common with prestige pricing.

Hermès Birkin Bag

Brands promote prestige with higher-than-usual markups that denote the exclusivity and grandeur of the product. Hermès, the popular artisanal luxury handbag producer, shows us just how exclusive its products are. The bags resale for tens of thousands of dollars online, but buying one directly from the manufacturer is nearly impossible. Due to the rigorous training, the artisans go through to make a Birkin bag, the demand far outpaces the supply which results in buyers placing an extremely high value on the bags which consignment shops like BagHunter take into account with their pricing.

Swiffer

Selling companions and add-ons to other products can enhance the functionality of products. In some cases, they’re simply a necessity for the original product to be usable. Swiffer sweeper mops are a prime example of value-based pricing simply based on the benefit that the products provide to the consumer.

The first time you purchase a Swiffer Sweeper, it comes with a handle and a few sweeper pads. But once you run out of sweeper pads, you’ll need to buy more. The value-based pricing comes into play when you arrive at the store and realize that other brands of sweeper pads don’t fit your Swiffer Sweeper. You then place a higher value on the add-on pads that keep your sweeper working. After all, you already committed to the Swiffer brand when you bought the handle.

Three Ways to Set Your Value-Based Price

Value-based pricing requires a few extra steps to set a final selling price. While some pricing strategies, like cost-plus, are relatively straightforward, there are considerations to take into account when arriving at your ultimate price tag.

1. Analyze your customers

Because your price point will be exclusively based on what your customers are willing to pay, you’ll need to confidently know what that price point is.

One step towards reaching this number is to contact existing customers familiar with your products and services to learn what they would spend on your product now that they see its value. Remember — this pricing approach should be based almost entirely on the perceived value of your customers.

Featured Resource: Customer Survey Templates

Use these to reach out to customers to gauge the price they would value your product at.

2. Analyze your total addressable market

While customer data is crucial to setting a price point, it’s a biased sample, because existing customers have proven they’re already willing to purchase your product.

To reach an accurate price point for acquiring new customers, conduct market research in your total addressable market to understand how everyone you’re attempting to sell to values your product, and what they would be willing to pay for it.

Featured Resource: Market Research Kit and Templates

Use this kit to better understand your competition and market positioning to uncover your ideal selling price.

3. Conduct a competitive analysis

If your product is new to the market and you don’t have the resources for professional market research, look to your competition to see what they charge and how similar your product is to what they’re selling.

Setting your product a similar price point to competition is a good gauge of how much your target market values the product. If sales are lower than projected, perhaps your competitors have stronger brand loyalty associated with their products, which may force you to adopt a competition-based pricing model.

Featured Resource: Competitive Analysis Templates

Use this guide to uncover crucial learnings from your competitors without breaking the budget.

The Pros of Value-Based Pricing

1. It could be easy to penetrate the market.

If your target market is not brand loyal, or if you’re relatively unchallenged in your market, you’ll have an easier time acquiring market share compared to a diluted or brand-loyal market.

This is especially true if your product or service is differentiated in a notable way. For example, luxury items tend to see strong sales when they come across as “new” or “limited” and are priced at a value-based amount.

2. Higher markups are possible.

The value-based pricing model works in the seller’s favor when an item is seen as prestigious or culturally important. For these situations, the buyers don’t care how much it cost you to produce a product — only how much value they see in it.

Consider art, high fashion, or luxury cars; the markups on these items are incredibly high because there is added value to owning something in this category. Consumers will pay more for the privilege of a famous painter’s work or a rare sports car because of the intangible benefits that come with the product itself.

In other words, given enough perceived value, your markups can be massive.

3. Your perceived value can increase.

While value is ultimately a concept that lies in your customers’ eyes, you can work to shift your perceived value in a more profitable direction. Running branding and advertising campaigns that position your product as prestigious or elite can justify a higher price point in the eyes of your customers.

If adding intangible benefits doesn’t work, you can also highlight more of the actual value created by the product. For example, a hammer is just metal and wood, yet, without it, carpenters and handymen would have a tough time doing their jobs, making the value created by this simple tool immeasurable.

The Cons of Value-Based Pricing

1. Your markups may not be high.

Businesses selling commodities will face a tough time implementing a high markup with a value-based pricing model. This is because industries like these tend to have an abundance of options for the buyer. Unless there’s something special about your product compared to others, it’s tough to justify added value in the eyes of the customer.

This means markups can be lower than needed to scale and grow your business to the desired level — so it’s best not to rely on value-based pricing in these situations.

2. It’s not always stable.

For better or worse, perceived value changes due to cultural, economic, and technological factors that are often out of your control.

Relying on value-based pricing to boost your contribution margins might backfire if the market becomes accustomed to your product and starts to see less value in it, or if a competitor comes in with a better offering with higher perceived value than your product. At that point, value-based pricing dictates you must lower your prices, which can severely hinder revenue.

3. Your price is harder to set.

As we’ve touched upon, there’s less of an exact science when it comes to reaching your value-based price point. As opposed to a set markup you may find in cost-plus pricing, it’s hard to know for certain which price point works for every customer and how a product’s value is perceived across an entire market.

While market research, customer feedback, and competitor analysis can help you achieve some confidence in your price point, you won’t know the perceived value of your product until you put it on shelves and compare your sales forecasts to your actual revenue.

Is Value-Based Pricing Right for Your Business?

Value-based pricing depends on several factors, three of which are critical to getting the strategy just right: analyzing how the market affects perceived value, determining how much value your consumers place on the products you sell, and understanding how your competitors play a role in your value-based pricing strategy. This type of pricing won’t work for every business, but it can be a smart way to penetrate a new market, increase profits, and develop better brand perception.

Another way to decide if value-based pricing is right for your business is to run your sales forecasts based on various price points for projected revenue totals. You can use HubSpot’s Free Sales Pricing Calculator to see how much revenue you can expect to see when utilizing this and other pricing strategies.

Editor’s note: This post was originally published in November 2019 and has been updated for comprehensiveness.

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The Beginner's Guide to Balance Sheets

Whether you’re doing your own accounting with accounting software, or you hired an accountant to prepare your financial statements, you’ve likely seen the balance sheet. The balance sheet, along with the income statement and statement of cash flows, provides an overview of a business’ financial standing.

If you run your own business or are just getting into accounting, creating a balance sheet could seem difficult. No worries. In this post, we’ll demystify the balance sheet and look at some templates you can use to create your own.

What is a balance sheet?

A balance sheet is one of the key financial statements used for accounting and it’s divided into two sides. On one side, the company’s assets are reported. The other side shows the business’ liabilities and shareholders’ equity.

The line items for each side are listed in order of liquidity, with the more liquid items (e.g., cash and inventory) listed before accounts that are more illiquid (e.g., plant, property, and equipment).

Why is the balance sheet important?

The balance sheet is important because it tells business owners and investors what the company owns and what it owes. While its primary use is to track earnings and spending, it can also be an excellent tool to show the profitability of a business to those who are interested in buying a share.

The balance sheet provides a snapshot of the business’ financial standing at a specific point in time. For example, an accounting period is typically 12 months long. The line items or accounts on the balance sheet would reflect the number of assets and liabilities at the final moment of the accounting period.

Here’s an example of what that looks like.

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Balance Sheet Equation

The balance sheet equation is used to show what a company owns (assets), how much it owes (liabilities), and how much stake or share the owners have in the business (shareholders’ equity). It’s calculated with the following accounting formula:

Assets = Liabilities + Shareholders’ Equity

Let’s take a look at each one of these in more detail.

Three Components of a Balance Sheet

A balance sheet consists of three components: assets, liabilities, and shareholders’ equity. Let’s go over these one-by-one.

1. Assets

Investopedia defines an asset as, “Anything of value that can be converted into cash.” In other words, an asset provides economic value to businesses and organizations. Assets include both current assets and fixed assets.

• Current assets: cash and cash equivalents (e.g., short-term government bonds, treasury bills, and money market funds), accounts receivable, and inventory.
• Fixed assets: property, plant, equipment, long-term investments, and intangible assets (e.g., patents and licenses).

2. Liabilities

A liability is the opposite of an asset. It’s anything that will incur an expense or cost in the future — for example, a debt or amount owed is a liability. Both current and non-current liabilities are included in the liabilities section of the balance sheet.

• Current liabilities: accounts payable, notes payable due within the year, and current maturities of long-term debt.
• Non-current liabilities: long-term notes payable, deferred tax liabilities, bonds payable, and long-term debt.

3. Shareholders’ Equity

Shareholders’ equity, also known as stockholders’ equity, is the amount of money the owners have invested in the business. It includes:

• Share capital: the amount of money a company receives from its shareholders for business purposes.
• Retained earnings: the amount of a company’s profits that aren’t distributed to shareholders as dividends — the funds are reinvested in the business instead.

With this information in mind, let’s go over the process of creating a balance sheet step-by-step.

1. Determine the time period you’re reporting on.

Since a balance sheet’s primary role is for reporting, you’ll be compiling these on an ongoing basis — most likely on a per quarter frequency.

Choose the date that you’ll be compiling the report. This will be your reporting date.

On the reporting date, you’ll be looking back at the numbers for a previous time period, one that has already been resolved. This time period is called your reporting period.

For example, if your reporting period is Q1 (January 1 - March 31), your reporting date may be April 1 of the same year or another date depending on your needs.

2. Identify your assets as of your reporting date.

Organize your assets into two categories — current and fixed — and represent each asset as a line item within the appropriate category.

Then, you’ll subtotal your categories and total them together.

3. Identify your liabilities as of your reporting date.

These will also be represented as individual line items within Current and Noncurrent categories.

Then, you’ll subtotal and total these the same way you did with your assets.

4. Calculate shareholders’ equity.

You’ll then want to incorporate the share capital you receive from investors as well as retained earnings. You may need to consider if the following must be factored in depending on your situation:

• Common stock
• Preferred stock
• Treasury stock

5. Compare total assets against liability and equity.

On the balance sheet, assets equal liabilities plus shareholders’ equity. You’ll want your balance sheet to include this calculation to provide insights into your financials.

Balance Sheet Example

On the balance sheet, you can see how assets, liabilities, and shareholders’ equity are reported.

Here’s an example that shows the layout of a balance sheet:

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Still feeling overwhelmed? Not sure how to go about creating a balance sheet? Check out the following templates to get you started.

Balance Sheet Template

Below are a few balance sheet templates you can use to create your own. Make sure you have Excel installed on your computer.

1. Toggl Balance Sheet Template

This template from Toggl offers an overview of your balance in a handy one-tab format — there’s no need to click from tab to tab to fill it out. It also has pre-set items for current assets, fixed assets, current liabilities, and long-term liabilities. You also won’t have to fill in the types of assets and liabilities you’d like to take into account.

2. QuickBooks Balance Sheet Template

QuickBooks’ balance sheet template comes with a completely blank version for utmost customization. We recommend starting with the example, duplicating the tab, and editing it to tailor it to your business. It also comes with a handy “Notes on Preparation” box that gives you a step-by-step tutorial on working with this template specifically. When you hover over the column items, it also gives you more instructions for filling it out.

3. Corporate Finance Institute Balance Sheet Template

This downloadable template from the Corporate Finance Institute comes with preset items to fill out for your business. Like in Toggl’s template, you won’t need to fill out each asset or liability you’d like to list. It comes pre-loaded with an example balance sheet, which you can then duplicate before customizing it for your business.

4. Microsoft Office 365 Balance Sheet Template

Microsoft Office 365’s balance sheet divides your sheet into three tabs: summary, assets, and liabilities. That way, you can keep calculations separate, and quickly scan the summary tab for the final balance. It also includes a “Categories” tab where you can get a refresher on the categories for each balance item.

5. Score.org Balance Sheet

Score.org is a resource organization for small businesses and new entrepreneurs. They offer a balance sheet that, like the Corporate Finance Institute’s, includes notes on preparation for easy set up and calculations. It also includes an additional category named “Other Assets,” where you can take into account your business’s intangible assets and deposits.

Now that you’ve created your balance sheet, how do you go about analyzing it? Let’s take a look.

Balance Sheet Analysis

The balance sheet is key to determine a business’ liquidity, leverage, and rates of return. When current assets are greater than current liabilities, this means the business can cover its short-term financial obligations and is likely in a good financial position.

First, perform a comparative analysis by looking at the balance sheets from two or more accounting periods. For example, if there’s a significant percent decrease in the company’s cash, it could be experiencing financial problems, and it might not be wise to invest in the business.

You should also look at:

• Leverage ratio: A leverage ratio is how much of company’s capital comes from debt. How does the balance sheet impact a business’ leverage? One of the leverage ratios, the debt to equity ratio, divides liabilities from shareholder’s equity to show the value of a business compared to its debt.
• Return on equity: Return on equity tells you the percentage of returns from equity investments. To get an ROE percentage, you’d divide net income by the total shareholders’ equity.
• Return on assets: Return on assets shows you the value or profitability of a business in relation to its assets. To get a ROA percentage, you’d divide net income by average assets.

These formulas tell investors whether or not they will get a return on the money they invest in the company.

A Balance Sheet Will Help Your Business Grow

The balance sheet provides an overview of your business’ financial standing. If your business is doing well, investors can look at your balance sheet and see if you have a profitable business they’d like to invest in. It can also help you diagnose problems, pinpoint financial strengths, and keep track of your business’ financial performance over time.

Editor’s note: This post was originally published in January 2019 and has been updated for comprehensiveness.

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The Straightforward Guide to Value Chain Analysis [+ Templates]

What’s your business’ competitive edge? A value proposition helps businesses identify what sets it apart from competitors. But how can you tell if your business activities are creating the most value for your customers and resulting in a great profit margin?

What is a Value Chain?

A value chain is used to describe all the business activities it takes to create a product from start to finish (e.g., design, production, distribution, and so on). A value chain analysis gives businesses a visual model of these activities, allowing them to determine where they can reduce costs.

With this analysis, you can take steps to create a competitive advantage, improve efficiency, and increase profit margins. Let’s take a deeper look into value chain analysis and learn how you can analyze your business activities.

We’ll cover:

• Value Chain Analysis Definition
• Primary and Support Activities
• Value Chain Analysis Steps
• Value Chain Analysis Example
• Value Chain Analysis Templates

What is Value Chain Analysis?

Value chain analysis is a way for businesses to analyze the activities they perform to create a product. Once the activities are analyzed, a business can use the results to evaluate ways to improve its competitive advantage.

While one of the goals of value chain analysis is to improve operational efficiency, its final and most important goal is to establish an advantage over competitors.

As you complete your value chain analysis, you’ll identify the edge you’re trying to gain over the competition. Firms choose between two types of competitive advantage: cost advantage and differentiation advantage. Let’s go over these below.

Competitive Advantage

Competitive advantage is what sets your business apart from competitors. To develop an advantage, you’ll need a clear idea of your target market. If you’re an entrepreneur who’s interested in clearly defining your business’ target audience and market, be sure to find the ideal niche market for launching or selling your products.

You’ll also need to know the benefit your product provides to the target market and a solid understanding of your competitors and their offerings.

When creating a value chain analysis, a business seeks to gain a competitive advantage in one of two areas.

Cost Advantage

The goal of a cost advantage strategy is to become the lowest-cost provider in your industry or market. Companies who excel with a low-cost strategy have extreme operational efficiency and use low-cost materials and resources to reduce the overall price of their product or service. Examples include McDonald’s and Walmart.

Differentiation Advantage

Using a differentiation strategy, you offer a unique or highly specialized product or service to gain a competitive advantage. The business needs to dedicate time and resources to innovation, research, and development. A successful differentiation strategy allows the business to set a premium price for its product or service. Examples include Starbucks and Apple.

It’s best to pick a single competitive advantage to focus your efforts on. Depending on which competitive strategy you choose, the goal of your value chain analysis will be to either reduce costs or differentiate to improve margins. Then you’ll have a clear idea of your business’ goals and how you plan to provide value. It also narrows the scope of changes that might need to be made to improve efficiency.

But how would you choose which competitive advantage to go for? Using Porter’s value chain model, you can take a look at your business activities, pinpoint a unique value proposition, and decide your best bet for establishing dominance over your competition.

Porter’s Value Chain Analysis

Michael Porter, a Harvard Business School professor, introduced a simple value chain model in his book, “Competitive Advantage.” He developed the steps to perform a value chain analysis and split business activities into two categories: primary and support.

Identifying the primary and support activities is a critical step in creating a value chain analysis. You’ll know where you spend the most resources, where your business may improve, and where your competitors may have an edge over you.

Let’s take a look at these activities below.

Primary Activities

There are five primary activities, and they include all the actions that go into the creation of a business’ offering.

• Inbound Logistics: This is how materials and resources are gained from suppliers before the final product or service can be developed. In your analysis, take a look at the locations of your suppliers and shipping costs from their facility to yours.
• Operations: Operations are how the materials and resources are produced, resulting in a final product or service. Here, you may look at the cost of running your warehouse, machinery, and assembly lines.
• Outbound Logistics: Once a product or service is finished, it needs to be distributed. Outbound logistics describes this delivery process. Take into account your shipping costs to consumers, your warehousing fees, your distributor relations (do they charge a fee per sale, for example?), and order processing operations.
• Marketing and Sales: This is how your product or service is presented and sold to your ideal target market. In your analysis, take into account advertising costs, promotional costs, reach, and cost-per-acquisition.
• Services: This is the support a business provides for the customer which can include support and training for the product, warranties, and guarantees. You’ll look at repair costs, product training costs, product adjustment frequency, and more.

Support Activities

Support activities help the primary activities in creating an advantage over competitors. They include:

• Firm Infrastructure: This entails all the management, financial, and legal systems a business has in place to make business decisions and effectively manage resources.
• Human Resource Management: Human resource management encompasses all the processes and systems involved in managing employees and hiring new staff. This is especially important for companies that provide in-person service, and excellent employees can be a competitive advantage.
• Technology Development: Technology development helps a business innovate. And technology can be used in various steps of the value chain to gain an advantage over competitors by increasing efficiency or decreasing production costs.
• Procurement: This is how the resources and materials for a product are sourced and suppliers are found. The goal is to find quality supplies that fit the business’ budget.

It’s now time to bring it all together in a unified process. Below, we’ll go over the common value chain analysis steps.

Value chain analyses require research and can take time to develop. Below are the general steps it takes to create a value chain analysis.

1. Determine the business’ primary and support activities.

Together, the primary and support activities make up the value chain. They include each action required in the development of a product or service, from raw material to final product.

2. Analyze the value and cost of the activities.

The team tasked with creating the value chain analysis should brainstorm ways each activity provides value to customers and the business as a whole. Compare the activity to the competitive advantage you’re trying to achieve (cost leadership or differentiation) and see if it supports the goal.

After the value analysis is complete, take a look at the cost of the activities. Is the activity labor intensive? How much does X raw material cost? Asking questions similar to these will help identify which activities are cost-effective and which are not. This is where areas for improvement can be identified.

3. Identify opportunities to gain a competitive advantage.

Once the value chain analysis is complete, the primary stakeholders in the business can see an overview of where the business is excelling and where improvements can be made operationally.

Begin with the improvements that take minor changes and provide high-impact results. After the easy wins are identified and actioned, you and your team can tackle the bigger challenges that might be hindering efficiency.

The value chain analysis gives businesses a clear idea of how to adjust their actions and processes to provide the most value to their target market and increase profit margins for the company.

Still not sure how it all works? Let’s take a close look at an example.

Below is an example of a value chain analysis for McDonald’s and its cost leadership strategy.

Click here to enlarge the image.

Primary Activities

• Inbound Logistics: McDonald’s has pre-selected, low-cost suppliers for the raw materials for their food and beverage items. It sources suppliers for items like vegetables, meat, and coffee.
• Operations: The business is a franchise and each McDonald’s location is owned by a franchisee. There are more than 39,000 McDonald’s locations worldwide.
• Outbound Logistics: Instead of formal, sit-down restaurants, McDonald’s has restaurants that focus on counter-service, self-service, and drive-through service.
• Marketing and Sales: Its marketing strategies focus on media and print advertising, including social media posts, magazine advertisements, billboards, and more.
• Services: McDonald’s strives to achieve high-quality customer service. It provides its thousands of employees with in-depth training and benefits so they can best assist their customers.

Support Activities

• Firm Infrastructure: The McDonald’s corporation has both C-suite executives and Zone Presidents who oversee the firm’s operations in various regions, with a general counsel overseeing legal matters.
• Human Resource Management: It maintains a career page where job seekers can apply to both corporate and restaurant roles. It pays both hourly and salaried rates and promotes its tuition assistance program to attract talent.
• Technology Development: The restaurant has invested in touch kiosks to facilitate ordering and increase operational efficiency.
• Procurement: The firm uses Jaggaer, a digital procurement firm, to establish relationships with key suppliers across various regions of the world.

Value Chain Analysis Templates

Here are a few value chain analysis templates to help you develop your own.

1. HubSpot’s Value Chain Analysis Template

Available via Google Sheets and Google Slides, this interactive version of Porter’s Value Chain Analysis can be customized to outline your company’s value chain. Click here to get your free copy.

2. Porter’s Value Chain Analysis Model

This Porter’s value chain analysis template provides a general overview of business activities.

3. Template for Cost Profit Margin

If you’re analyzing the cost versus expected profit margin from your primary and support activities, this template’s for you.

4. Template for Educational Institutions

Rather than analyzing the activities that go into creating a product or service, this model looks at the value chain involved in developing academic research.

5. Template for Products

Use this template to analyze the activities it takes to create a product from raw material to finished product.

6. Template for Financial Acquisitions

Did you recently acquire or merge with another business? If so, use this template to analyze the steps in the transition.

Grow Your Business with Value Chain Analysis

Your value chain analysis will help you identify areas for improvement and the activities that provide the most value to your customers and your business as a whole. Eliminating inefficient business activities speeds up production, improves your competitive advantage, and increases profit margins.

Editor’s note: This post was originally published in November 2018 and has been updated for comprehensiveness.

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17 LinkedIn Sales Navigator Secrets All the Best Prospectors Know

Want to become a prospecting superstar? LinkedIn Sales Navigator is a fantastic resource. It simplifies the process of finding, contacting, and staying up-to-date with prospects, referrals, and customers.

Rather than spending hours manually tracking prospect activity on the platform, you can get instant insights and drop contact information directly into your CRM. That means you’ll spend more time on high-value activities like giving demos.

LinkedIn Sales Navigator has three tiers: Professional, Team, and Enterprise. Each one comes with different features at a specific cost, and in this article, we’ve organized all the need-to-know info so you can decide which tier might work best for you and your team.

Whether you’re new to Sales Navigator or a veteran of the tool, these tips will help you take your social selling game to the next level.

Tips for Sales Navigator Professional

Sales Navigator Professional
Cost	$79.99/month or $64.99/month for an annual plan
Leads	Save up to 1,500 and keep track of company updates for each one.
Visibility	Get a larger profile
InMail	Get 20 InMail messages each month for those hand-raisers who show interest in your products.
Integrations	Get the Outlook Web integration to quickly schedule meetings.

1. Message prospects without using your InMail quota.

Professional, Team, and Enterprise Sales Navigator users can send up to 20, 30, and 50 InMail messages per month, respectively. If you want to send more than that, target users with “Open Profiles,” who won’t count toward your InMail quota.

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As a bonus, “Open Profile” users are generally pretty receptive to being contacted.

2. Download the mobile app

Salespeople who spend lots of time away from their desk will appreciate the Sales Navigator app (available for iOS and Android.)

The app delivers real-time updates about saved accounts and leads, so reps can quickly reach out after a prospect has written a new post, showed up in the press, or shared company news. Users can also see their daily account and lead recommendations and browse buyer profiles.

The ability to save leads and accounts is also handy. With this feature, field sales reps can instantly save the connections they’ve made after a meeting or call rather than waiting till they’re in front of a computer.

Lastly, the Sales Navigator app lets reps send InMail and messages on the go. Contacting a prospect quickly after a compelling event can mean the difference between winning and losing a deal, so this is a powerful feature.

3.Upgrade your profile.

It’s easier to stand out with a Sales Navigator Team or Enterprise account, since these come with a larger profile picture and background photo.

In addition, these users are displayed more prominently in search results. If a prospect searches for someone matching a rep’s description, that rep has a greater chance of catching her eye.

Tips for Sales Navigator Team

Sales Navigator team
Cost	$134.99/month or $103.33/month for an annual plan
Leads	Save up to 5,000 leads and keep track of company updates for each one.
Support	Work with your dedicated relationship manager to get the most benefit from LinkedIn Sales Navigator.
InMail	Get 30 InMail messages each month for potential leads who show interest in your products.
Integrations	Get integrations with all the top CRM platforms, including HubSpot’s.

1. Integrate sales navigator with your HubSpot CRM.

LinkedIn has partnered with several CRM providers — HubSpot, Microsoft Dynamics, Salesforce, Zoho, and Infor — to bring profile details and shared connections from Sales Navigator experience into your CRM.

That means as you’re doing your day-to-day in the CRM, you won’t have to open a new tab (or three) to track down the lead or account in Sales Navigator. With a team account you can:

• Send InMail directly from a contact record
• View shared connections
• Ask mutual connections for introductions
• Add leads at the same company and add them to your Sales Navigator leads list
• Connect with people at an organization who have shared connections or interests
• Find out who you’re already connected to in the organization

Here’s a sample of what that integration might look like, in the context of HubSpot CRM:

Already using one of the CRMs that integrates with Sales Navigator? Set up the sync now. Using another CRM, or not using one at all? Fear not: LinkedIn will be expanding the universe of CRM integrations so stay tuned.

Note: To use HubSpot’s integration with LinkedIn Sales Navigator, you must have a LinkedIn Sales Navigator Team or Enterprise account.

2. Apply the TeamLink filter.

According to LinkedIn, you’re more likely to leave a favorable impression with buyers if you were introduced to them by a mutual connection. With the TeamLink Connections filter, you can easily find the prospects who meet your search criteria and share an acquaintance with you, whether it’s a first or second-degree connection.

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This filter taps the networks of the other members of your sales team and your first-degree connections.

Note: You must have a Team or Enterprise accounts to use TeamLink.

3. Save a TeamLink search.

Just because you don’t have a mutual connection with a prospect now doesn’t mean you never will. Your contacts form new connections every week. But it’s inefficient to manually run the same searches again and again in the hopes something has changed.

Fortunately, the “save search” feature lets you automate this step. Once you’ve defined your search parameters and applied the TeamLink filter, check the “Save Search” box.

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Now, if one of your coworkers connects with one of your leads, you’ll be instantly notified.

Note: You must have a Team or Enterprise account to use TeamLink.

4. Check out the TeamLink section.

You can also check out the TeamLink section of an accounts page, which helps you build strategic relationships at an organization you’re targeting.

Let’s say you want to work with Blue Leaf. When you check out the TeamLink section of the Blue Leaf account page, TeamLink will display the current employees who are connected to members of your network. You can now ask those mutual connections for introductions.

Note: You must have a Team or Enterprise accounts to use TeamLink.

5. Access the network of every person at your company.

TeamLink lets you tap into the connections of every Sales Navigator seatholder at your company. But that mostly limits you to salespeople, recruiters, and maybe your executives — after all, the average marketer, customer support rep, or finance associate isn’t going to need an account.

With TeamLink Extend, these people can now opt-in to the Sales Navigator network. That means your pool of available contacts becomes much bigger.

The first 1,000 seats of TeamLink Extend come bundled free with every Enterprise Edition contract.

6. Create custom lists of your prospects to keep track of their status.

According to new research from Weidert Group, up to six different people are now involved in every B2B purchasing decision.

To effectively work an account, you need to keep track of who’s involved in the buying process, form connections with them, and identify their unique objectives and priorities. It’s no small feat.

Sales Navigator helps streamline this information by allowing you to create lists and filter leads based on the criteria you set. Once you’ve identified a relevant contact, you use keywords to show you only contacts who fit those criteria.

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7. Use the “Interested In” filter to find ways of providing value.

Finding ways to add value to your prospects’ lives isn’t always easy. Thanks to the “Interested In” filter, you can instantly figure out which buyers need your help — which’ll give you a major advantage when reaching out.

For example, you can run a search for “mid-level marketing managers” and further narrow down the pool with the “Interested In: Industry experts” filter. Every prospect the search returns has self-indicated they’d like to meet industry experts. You can volunteer your own expertise, offer to connect them with a specialist inside your company or introduce them to an external contact.

8. Use advanced filters to identify your ideal customers.

Thanks to Sales Navigator’s advanced filters, salespeople can hone in on specific prospect types. These include:

• Exclude saved, viewed, or contacted leads
• Company type: Public, private, or nonprofit (Also available in LinkedIn Premium)
• Groups (Also available in LinkedIn Premium)
• Years in current position
• Years at current company
• Years of experience (Also available in LinkedIn Premium)
• Member since (Also available in LinkedIn Premium)
• Headquarter
• Seniority level (Also available in LinkedIn Premium)
• Posted content keywords

If you’re not quite sold on this feature yet, LinkedIn provides full list of the advanced search filters.

9. Target high-value accounts.

Sales and Marketing, good news: Working together on LinkedIn campaigns is easier than ever before, thanks to an integration between Sales Navigator and Campaign Manager.

Like before, marketers are responsible for ad creative, budget, and timeline. Yet now, they can target the leads and accounts their sales reps are pursuing — meaning your messaging and value prop will be top-of-mind when you’re engaging with potential customers.

Marketing can even take advantage of lookalike modeling, so they can find and market to users similar to existing prospects and customers.

Salespeople can see exactly how their prospects are engaging with marketing content and will even get alerts when a saved account has read, liked, or shared their company’s sponsored content.

Tips for Sales Navigator Enterprise

Sales Navigator team
Cost	Contact LinkedIn for pricing
Leads	Save up to 10,000 leads and keep track of company updates for each one.
Team Features	Get enterprise-grade license management with single-sign-on for large sales teams.
InMail	Get 50 InMail messages each month for potential leads who show interest in your products.
Advanced Features	Get exclusive access to LinkedIn Elevate alerts and position yourself as a trusted point of contact for leads and clients.

1. Build rapport With “Shared Experiences and Commonalities”.

Sales Navigator already allows users to save leads, but the “Share experiences with you” filter makes it easier to surface opportunities within that database. The filter gives you a strong foundation for building rapport by pulling together all the prospects who have at least one thing in common with you: Maybe you both lived in Manhattan at one point, worked for the same company, volunteered with the same nonprofit, or have another point of commonality.

Mentioning this point of similarity when you reach out (either in your email subject line, the message body, or in your voicemail) will boost your chances of getting a response.

2. Unlock out-of-network user profiles.

The unlock feature, which is available with Sales Navigator Team, lets reps view the full profile of a user outside of their network. Once they’ve unlocked a profile, everyone on their Sales Navigator team can see it.

Every team member can unlock up to 25 profiles per month. To do so, click the blue “Unlock member profile” button in the top section of a member’s profile.

3. Refine your lead and account recommendations.

Sales Navigator can help reps keep their pipeline full with automatic lead and account recommendations. To make sure their recommendations align as closely as possible with their buyer personas, salespeople should take advantage of the tool’s Sales Preferences. These criteria include region, industry, function, and seniority level.

To add or modify these settings, click your profile picture in the top right corner and choose “Settings.”

Then scroll down to the Sales Preferences section, type your choices, and click “Done.”

Sales Preferences only apply to lead and account recommendations, meaning regular searches include results that fall outside of a user’s saved choices. For instance, a rep might ask for recommendations for executive assistants in California, but simply searching “executive assistant” could generate prospects that live elsewhere.

4. Validate your CRM data.

“Clean data” might not be the most glamorous two-word string in the English language, but it’s critical to a high-functioning sales org. Without up-to-date, accurate information on leads, prospects, and customers, it’s much harder for a rep to build rapport, earn credibility, add value, and eventually win the business.

That’s why LinkedIn’s Data Validation feature is so great. It automatically updates contact data in your CRM in real time. Maybe you’re in the early stages of your sales process when your main contact leaves the company. Because he updates his title, the record in your CRM changes too.

5. Upload your book of business to Sales Navigator.

If you’re just starting out with LinkedIn Sales Navigator, you may already have a list of contacts that you’re working with. Now, LinkedIn lets you upload that CSV list into Sales Navigator so you can seamlessly connect with your leads all in one place.

If you’ve had trouble closing a deal or if there are more stakeholders in the approval process, you can uncover insights that will help you prioritize those contacts and plan your next steps to engage with them. You’ll also get alerts regarding updates at the company so you never miss a beat.

Prospect Better With LinkedIn Sales Navigator

LinkedIn is a B2B sales and marketing powerhouse and Sales Navigator gives your team critical insights to make the most of it. Whether you’re a team of one or part of an established enterprise, this tool has features to help you close deals with a human-centered perspective. There’s no more guessing or sending cold emails to the wrong decision-maker, LinkedIn Sales navigator unlocks the secrets to closing deals that the best prospectors and sales professionals swear by.

Editor’s note: This post was originally published in June 2019 and has been updated for comprehensiveness.

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The 12 Best Contact Management Software Tools in 2021

In a letter he wrote to Jean-Baptiste Le Roy in 1789, Benjamin Franklin famously wrote, “In this world, nothing can be said to be certain, except death and taxes… and a shared repository for customer contact information being helpful for sales teams of all sizes, industries, and structures.”

Alright, I admit I might have taken some creative liberty with the last part of that quote — but it doesn’t make it any less true.

Being able to readily access and analyze customer and prospect contact information can make your sales efforts considerably easier and more effective. That’s why contact management software is always an option worth exploring.

“Contact management software” is a catch-all term that encompasses any kind of software that allows you to track prospect, customer, and vendor contact information and communication. This can include information like addresses, individual employees, associated companies, open quotes, orders, and sales history. It’s a resource that can improve your sales efforts by simplifying and streamlining processes like outreach and lead qualification.

Best Contact Management Software

Here are some of the contact management software for small businesses followed by the best free and paid options available for any business.

1. HubSpot Free CRM

Price: Free forever. 

HubSpot’s free CRM is a contact management tool plus so much more. You’ll never have to manually add or update contact records — HubSpot will take care of that for you after every interaction you have with a contact. Plus, contact records are enriched automatically with data from over 20 million businesses.

The CRM and contact management system is easy to get started with, use, and navigate. In addition to contact management, other notable features include pipeline management, reporting dashboards, company insights, deal tracking, email tracking and notifications, prospect tracking, meeting scheduling, and live chat.

The CRM is entirely free forever but you can upgrade at any time to a paid plan for more features as your business scales.

GetHubSpot’s free-forever CRM platform that’s easy to start, will scale with your business, and allow you to grow better.

2. ActiveCampaign

Price: Plans starting at $15 per user/ mo. 

ActiveCampaign is a customer experience automation platform with a number of contact management features and capabilities.

ActiveCampaign pairs it’s contact management capabilities with your customer lifecycle — the process begins with reaching and engaging your audience, then nurturing and educating them, followed by converting and closing them, and lastly, supporting their growth. In order to begin the process of contact management, the tool will have you create a contact list.

From there, simply add existing email contacts and then organize your contacts by list, tag, or custom field. ActiveCampaign will prompt you to build segments for your customers to allow you to target and personalize content for them. This contact management solution will help you segment based on communications like emails and forms, too — then, it’ll identify and pull out behavioral actions that will teach you more about customers within those segments.

ActiveCampaign also provides case studies so you can learn about the ways that other companies similar to your own are using the software’s contact management tools and how they segment their customers.

3. Freshworks

Price: Plans starting at $35 per user/ mo. 

Freshworks is a CRM and contact management system that helps you manage and nurture your contacts in order to create strong and lasting relationships with them. It automates contact data entry for you and provides 360-degree views of individual customers.

Freshworks tracks sales activities, manages sales tasks and appointments, and allows you to place calls or send emails without having to leave the tool. You can integrate with Google Workspace to access Gmail, Google Docs, Google Drive, and more all from Freshworks.

4. Keap

Price: Plans starting at $79 per user/ mo. 

Keap is a CRM and sales and marketing platform with a client management solution for small businesses. Client activity and communications are centrally located and the tool automates follow-ups, contact record creation. and contact record updates for you. Your communications with contacts (such as forms, emails, and sales follow-ups) can all be personalized quickly as well using the contact data that’s stored in Keap.

Integrate Keap with Gmail or Outlook so all of your email interactions are automatically updated within the associated contact’s record. There are also a wide variety of other business tools and software you can integrate with Keap so all of your data is up-to-date and accessible from a single location.

Next, let’s dive into the best free and paid contact management software for all businesses — from small to mid-size to enterprise.

1. HubSpot CRM Platform

Price: Free and paid plans starting at $45 for two users/ mo. 

The HubSpot CRM platform’s contact management tools are designed to remove friction from your sales processes, streamlining your sales efforts and giving your reps more time and flexibility to close deals.

Similar to the free version of the CRM, the platform automatically enriches your contact records with data from over 20 million businesses. It also notifies you when prospects open your sales emails or visit your website. HubSpot includes other contact management staples like prospecting tracking tools, meeting scheduling, and live chat (which both your sales and service teams can benefit from).

We chatted above about the free-forever version of HubSpot — if you’re a startup or small business, you may start with that version of the software and then scale into a paid version of the sales CRM. This allows for seamless growth with your contact management system as your business scales (along with a host of other features and tools that are ideal for your sales, marketing, and service teams).

2. Zoho ContactManager

Price: Free and paid plans starting at $15 for 15 users/ mo. 

The value of Zoho ContactManager is in its simplicity — it’s easy to operate without sacrificing power or functionality. It allows you to maintain your contacts in a centralized address book and provides a comprehensive view of any communication you have with those people.

Emails, tasks, and notes specific to your individual contacts are all accounted for and easy to access. It also features tools that help you apply the information gathered during those communications to your sales efforts.

The most basic version of the platform is free to use and can accommodate 500 contacts for an individual user. That plan is ideal for small businesses, startups, and freelancers. Meanwhile, Zoho’s paid subscriptions offer more flexibility and features.

3. Bitrix24

Bitrix24’s contact management software’s suite of features extends beyond what you may typically expect from this kind of platform. It contains standard contact management resources, including a centralized database for collecting and tracking prospect and customer contact information.

The tool also automatically logs and records all phone calls reps place or receive. The same goes for email communications — if you sync your email address with the platform, your entire history of email exchanges will be stored in your Bitrix24 contact manager.

If you’re interested in a free solution with functionality that generally isn’t available with a standard contact management software, Bitrix24 may be worth considering. As your business grows and you want more out of your contact manager, Bitrix24’s paid options can accommodate your needs at reasonable price points.

4. Streak

Price: Free and paid plans starting at $15 per user/ mo. 

Streak’s contact management tools can be integrated within your Gmail inbox, working alongside all other Google Workspace applications. The software also allows you to both maintain and share a timeline of customer contacts and communications. This can include information about email records, call logs, files, notes, and tasks.

Streak offers custom views of your sales pipeline. You can search, filter, group, and sort your contact data in any configuration as well as save those results in custom views and share that data with your team.

Streak is an accessible software, designed to easily integrate with your Google applications. It’s free for personal use but there are professional and enterprise-level options for a charge.

5. Pipedrive

Price: Plans starting from $12.50 per user/ mo.

Pipedrive CRM is decidedly sales-oriented, and its contact management resources reflect that. The contact management features are meant to enable hard sales with data and automation. They add a new degree of insight and intelligence to a company’s sales efforts by gathering smart contact data and automatically pre-qualifying leads.

The platform includes tools that can retrieve web-data about your contacts from online sources like LinkedIn. Using this information, the platform can give you insight into the viability of pursuing the leads you gather.

6. Nimble

Price: Plans starting at $25 per user/ mo.

Nimble CRM’s contact management features allow you to access all your contacts — across any mobile, cloud-based, or desktop records — in a single relationship manager.

Nimble’s prospecting tool automatically displays all contact information and company details for prospects and customers, including all emails, social interactions, messages, notes, and calendar events you may have exchanged with them.

The platform works seamlessly with Google Workspace and Office365 and features over 100 app integrations. It’s a powerful, versatile tool for keeping tabs on your contacts, how you reach them, and how they might fit into your overall sales efforts.

7. Nextiva Customer Relationship Suite

Price: Plans starting from $24.95 per user/ mo.

The Nextiva sales CRM’s robust suite of features includes contact management resources that are available across all of their plans. Even their most basic subscription includes tools for maintaining email history, notes, and call logs.

Together, these resources can help you track your customers’ contact information and communication history while taking the stress out of processes like follow-up and outreach. With Nextiva, you’ll have access to a wide array of features including follow-up automation, surveys, live chat, and analytics.

8. Nutshell

Price: Plans starting at $22 per user/ mo.

Nutshell acts a central repository for all your company’s customer knowledge and data. It’s a single location for you and your team to store and reference contact details, call notes, and email conversations with customers. The tool’s contact management infrastructure — paired with its powerful sales automation tools — can help you streamline your sales process and easily qualify leads.

Nutshell also integrates seamlessly with applications like Slack and Google Workspace and is designed to suit the needs of businesses of every size. 

Choose Your Contact Management System

No matter how big your business is, what you sell, or how your sales team is structured, you’re bound to have contacts you need to track and manage. If you haven’t already invested in contact management software for your business, you should strongly consider some of the options listed above.

And remember, nothing in life can be said to be certain, except for death, taxes, and high-quality contact management software making life easier for salespeople.

Editor’s note: This post was originally published in February 2020 and has been updated for comprehensiveness.

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How to Add Live Chat to Your Website (Quick Guide)

There are potential customers on your site as we speak — those people are bound to have questions about your product, its features, use cases, and more (if they don’t already). Is your sales team powered to answer those efficiently? 

By utilizing live chat, you can do just that — it can help you increase the effectiveness and efficiency of all communication with prospects and customers. Live chat enables your sales reps to address the right questions at the right time, ultimately increasing your sales and your ability to offer a delightful customer experience. 

Before we dive into the steps for adding live chat to your website, you may be wondering what the difference between live chat and chatbots is. Let’s cover the answer to that question first. 

Difference Between Live Chat and a Chatbot

So what’s the difference between live chat and a chatbot?

A chatbot is an automated bot that can talk to visitors on your website using planned or AI-powered conversations. On the other hand, live chat takes place between the customer and a human representative from your company.

Both live chat and chatbots have their place in your strategy, and it’s best to find a software that can do both. These strategies often work in tandem. You can have a chatbot gather information from visitors and send those leads to a live chat agent who can answer your visitor’s questions.

Live chat is a great sales strategy to put in place so you can generate new leads for your sales reps. Sales reps can answer questions quickly, while also having more time to talk to deals that are further along in the pipeline.

Now let’s look at the steps involved in adding live chat to your website. 

1. Research and choose your live chat software.

There are plenty of tools that allow you to chat with potential customers online in realtime via live chat. Here’s a list of the best live chat tools available today. 

To identify your ideal tool, start by determining which live chat features matter most to you. Look for tools that have the features that matter most to you (and are at the price point you’re looking for). For example, here’s a list of  the features that come with HubSpot’s Free Live Chat Software.

• Get your live chat up and running quickly and without the need for any code thanks to the integrated and easy-to-use chat builder.
• Customize the live chat widget so it’s on-brand and complements the rest of your site.
• Create and add targeted welcome messages to your web pages (e.g. when specific audience segments open your web pages), so you can connect with visitors when they’re already engaged on your website — this will increase chances of a conversion.
• Auto-save all live chat conversations with your contacts in the tool’s Conversations Inbox — as well as on the timeline of the contact you’re speaking to — for easy record-keeping and sharing.
• Carry out different types of interactions with prospects and customers — specifically, you can respond to chats, schedule meetings, place calls, send emails, and plan follow-up messages all from the Conversations Inbox.
• Select to receive notifications about incoming chats via Slack, and respond to those messages via Slack, with HubSpot’s Slack integration. 
• Add chatbots to your web pages to save reps time — chatbots can qualify leads, answer FAQs, book meetings, and more for you. (Chatbots can be personalized since they’re able to pull in or reference contact information from your CRM’s Contact Database). 
• Share your team’s online hours in the chat if you don’t have reps who work 24/7 so visitors know when to come back to your site for support. 
• Integrate with your CRM to keep all customer interactions and records organized in a single location. 

2. Install live chat on your site and strategically place it on your web page(s).

Once you’ve selected your software, setup should be a breeze. Typically, the live chat software you’ve chosen will give you a piece of code to copy and paste to the backend of your website. Most live chat software will have step-by-step instructions you can consult as well.

Then, strategically place your live chat widget on your web page or pages. Do you want live chat on your blog and your pricing page? Do you want it to pop up when someone has been on a page right away or after a certain amount of time? Or do you want your live chat to exist on all of your web pages with different greetings? Remember, your site visitors are in different stages of the buyer’s journey and require different things depending on which web page they’re on. For instance, the live chat greeting on your Pricing page should be different than the greeting on your Contact Us page.

By tailoring your live chat strategy to the buyer’s journey, you’ll improve the chat’s ability to effectively support the needs of the visitors on that specific page. 

3. Customize your live chat widget.

After installation of your software, customize the look and feel of the chat widget so it matches your website and is visually appealing.

Here are some aspects of your live chat widget you can customize.

• The widget’s appearance. 
• The widget’s welcome message. 
• The widget’s language options. 

4. Integrate live chat with your CRM (and other business tools).

When you’re researching live chat software, look for options that integrate with your other tools including your CRM or sales software.

This will make all interactions more efficient (no hopping between tools and screens). Then the resulting communication records, transcripts, and recordings are auto-saved (and therefore easy to access, organize, and share). 

For instance HubSpot’s live chat integrates directly with the CRM so your reps will know exactly who they’re chatting with (prospect, long-time customer, or a new contact) and be able to see any past interactions or purchases.

5. Add sales reps to your live chat.

An important part of your process should be adding sales reps to your live chat. Once the live chat is set up, it will automatically assign chats to sales reps. Once sales reps are incorporated, it’s time to teach them how to use the software and how leads will be routed through live chat.

Depending on your live chat tool, you may be able to manually triage these incoming live chat messages, or they’ll be automatically assigned to your team members.

For instance, HubSpot’s live chat tool defaults so that all incoming conversations are unassigned in your inbox for your team to triage. If your team assigns reps to paid seats (on either Sales Hub or Service Hub), you can route incoming conversations to specific team members. 

6. Plan your sales conversation flows.

Once your live chat software is integrated with your CRM, plan the conversation flows your sales reps will have. You can use a chatbot at the beginning of the live chat to gather information about the prospect that lightly qualifies them for a specific territory or rep designation.

Pro Tip: If you use the HubSpot Free Live Chat Software, you can create a Conversations Inbox to manage, carry out, share, and assign all conversations with your visitors and customers via live chat, chatbot, and more from a single location. 

Armed with this information, your sales reps will be able to ask the necessary questions to solve for the customer.

7. Gather and analyze live chat customer feedback.

After your prospects speak with you via live chat and get the answers they need, send a follow-up survey to ask about their experience.

Did they enjoy using live chat? Did it help them in their decision-making process? Did they have a delightful experience chatting with one of your reps? Implementing a survey at this point in time allows you to understand the live chat customer experience and improve upon your live chat strategy as needed.

With HubSpot, you can quickly send a satisfaction and feedback survey (with the help of Customer Feedback Software) to your customers — customize and automate the survey so your contacts can quickly tell you about their experience. You can then compile all other survey-based live chat feedback to identify actionable insights on a larger scale. 

Want to learn more about using live chat in sales? Check out our ultimate guide.

Editor’s note: This post was originally published in September, 2019 and has been updated for comprehensiveness.

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How to Increase Sales: Tips from HubSpot Experts

Are your sales numbers flat this year? Are you struggling to hit your sales quotas? Do you need something extra to motivate the team to meet aggressive goals?

If so, you’re not alone. Let’s face it: Selling a product is hard. The process is filled with stumbling blocks from the beginning — you might have reached a prospect at the right time, only to have their priorities, budget, or internal decision-making process prevent you from advancing a deal. Or you could have come at the wrong time, keeping you from starting a fruitful conversation in the first place.

This is true even for inbound sales. Even after a lead willingly reaches out to your sales team, there’s no guarantee they’ll connect with you or choose you over the competition.

So, naturally, it’s difficult to hit quotas. But with some expert advice, you’ll be well on your way to crushing your sales goals.

To help you get there, I asked a few sales experts about their favorite techniques for increasing sales — and threw in a few tips of my own.

How to Increase Sales

1. Remember that your mission is to help.

“Define a mission, and get everyone motivated to help more people.” - Dan Tyre, Sales Director, HubSpot

Let’s face it — sales is repetitive. It’s easy to fall into a rut and simply go through the motions of pitching a product. Sometimes, you need an extra push to keep you engaged and on your toes. It can help to regularly remind yourself and your team of the company mission, who you serve, and why your customers benefit from your product or service.

It’s also smart to speak about the consequences for your reps and the business if they don’t move deals forward. This can give your team some extra motivation and urgency to meet or exceed their quota.

People don’t always need a promotion or discount. What they need is a reminder of the value of making a decision — the pain you will alleviate and the benefits they’ll see.

Coming up with three bullet points that redefine your business’ value — from the customer’s perspective — can put people back into the right mindset of helping, not selling.

2. Align sales with marketing.

“Practice smarketing — it’ll make all the difference.” - Jen Spencer, Chief Revenue Officer, Smartbug Media

Spencer recommends marketers track their traffic and corresponding conversions. This allows them to see where they might be experiencing a dip in their inbound volume.

She explains, “If sales leadership has this data, they can expand upon it with deal-related data. Looking at the numbers like this, it should be clear where marketing and sales need to increase their activity volume to ensure goals are met.”

Spencer believes it’s both marketing and sales leadership’s job to help ensure reps have more opportunities to pursue during quieter months.

3. Set up clients for success now.

“Remember that ‘time of purchase’ doesn’t mean ‘time of impact.’” - Michelle Benfer, Vice President of Sales, HubSpot

How long does it take for your customers to extract value from your product? One day? One month? One quarter? Michelle Benfer, HubSpot’s Vice President of Sales, recommends reps use the summer months to sell to “time of impact” rather than “time of purchase.”

Benfer explains, “Loads of businesses have their busy season at back-to-school time, fall, or pre-holiday season. Set them up for success now to ensure they get the most from your partnership when they need that impact or value.”

4. Practice, practice, practice.

“Use summer to get more exposure to customers and practice your pitch.” - Michelle Benfer, Vice President of Sales, HubSpot

Benfer advises, “Salespeople should constantly hone, improve, and iterate on their craft. And summer is a great time to simply practice getting better.”

Could you start your meetings with a tighter agenda? Do you sync calendars for next steps on the end of each call? Are you following up with your prospects with value-add content that matters to them?

Could you get better email open and response rates by sending a more bespoke, personalized message? Get more practice, test out different strategies, and improve your craft. You might learn and improve something.

5. Keep track of KPIs.

“Know your stats.” - Michelle Benfer, Vice President of Sales, HubSpot

This one’s pretty straightforward. You need to know your stats and keep track of KPIs. Analyze your personal performance and commit to improving one KPI over eight weeks.

Could you improve your deal size? Number of deals closed? Depth of touches on your leads? How about shortening your sales cycle length? Benfer says, “Know your stats, own 'em, love 'em, improve 'em.”

6. Be empathetic.

“Practice empathy — it’ll help you sell the product better.“ - Michelle Benfer, Vice President of Sales, HubSpot

For some people, sales can be Groundhog Day. For others, every deal is a fresh opportunity to help a business or person solve a challenging problem.

Benfer recommends, “Practice empathy. Practice being in your buyers’ shoes. Improve your business acumen and better assist your clients in achieving their goals. And don’t forget to smile. Your prospects can feel it.”

7. Try team selling.

“Team selling will help you increase your closing percentage.” - Dan Tyre, Sales Director, HubSpot

When our team gets in a rut, we shake things up by trying something innovative, like pairing people up.

There are many great variations to this technique. Have two reps work together on one deal, or connect a senior person with a junior person. You can even split the team into pairs for a contest. Or have someone listen to another rep’s calls to give effective feedback.

Team selling makes sales fun, instructional, and different. Plus, customers typically like the extra attention.

8. Promote the onboarding process.

“Run a solid promotion that gives great value to the onboarding process.” - Dan Tyre, Sales Director, HubSpot

Instead of offering a discount on your product, offer more value from the purchase. Customers like additional attention, help, and support after they’ve made the purchasing commitment.

Offering a 90-day check-in or providing labor to run a campaign that saves the client time and effort can really move the dial. And don’t forget to mention it during the initial conversations, too, when a prospect may be considering a competitor’s products.

If you reassure the prospect that they won’t be left to figure out the product on their own, they may choose to go with you for that very reason.

9. Ask for referrals.

“This is so important but so easy to skip over. Call current customers and ask for referrals.” - Dan Tyre, Sales Director, HubSpot

When was the last time you got a call from a vendor who thanked you for your business? Never? Exactly. Wouldn’t you be impressed if you got a call? Here’s what that might look like:

Ms. Prater, this is Dan from HubSpot. I am calling you to thank you for being a great customer. Over the last few months, you’ve seen some solid growth. I’m calling to thank you for your business, give you my cell phone number, and let you know that if you ever have a question, you can call me directly. We hope to be a great partner for years to come. By the way, do you know anyone else who might be a good fit for our product or services?

10. Sell yourself, not just your product.

“You’re a product in the same way the item you sell is a product. So sell it, and sell it well.” - Michelle Benfer, Vice President of Sales, HubSpot

Customers are looking for a connection — someone with their best interest in mind. If you do your job right, that’s how they’ll see you. But they won’t know you care like that until you position yourself that way.

Benfer says, “To the prospect, you’re a product. The question is, are you a product that solves a problem? Or a product that takes more than it gives or breaks down just so they need to upgrade?”

Don’t entertain a customer without enthusiasm or upsell for no other reason than to meet your quota. Create a deep connection, seek to help them, and prove that you’re an ally who’ll be there for anything they need.

Sell More by Doing Less

Don’t let stale selling techniques sour your quarter or year. Infuse new life into your sales process by regularly trying out new techniques like the ones above. In doing so, you’ll grow in your role, nurture a strong sales team, improve close rates, and foster lasting connections with customers who’ll keep coming back to you.

Editor’s note: This post was originally published in October 2016 and has been updated for comprehensiveness.

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The Ultimate Guide to Price Optimization

The right pricing can make or break a business. Copying your competitors might mean starting a price war, but making a guess could leave you balking at abysmal sales numbers.

Successful price optimization is a matter of finding the sweet spot between valuable and lucrative — a balance that can have a major impact on your sales, customer satisfaction, profits, and achievable growth goals.

That said, price optimization isn’t simple. It requires research to understand both your customers and your business. And while it’s not always straightforward, figuring out the best price for your product or service is far from impossible — especially when you have the right tools and a strong understanding of basic pricing concepts.

This guide is here to help. Each section breaks down basic price optimization concepts so you can create and apply a solid pricing strategy. Both new and established businesses can benefit from these tips, so choose a place to start and bookmark this guide for reference.

Optimizing your price requires this information:

• Customer survey and behavior data
• Demographic and psychographic data
• Geographical market specifics
• Historic sales data
• Operating costs
• Inventories
• Demand fluctuations
• Competitive advantages and concerns
• Lifetime value and churn data

To find the optimal price, you also have to understand how consumers will react to price changes. That means stepping back to economics 101 for a refresh on a basic pricing concept.

Price Elasticity of Demand

Price elasticity measures how a change in consumption of a commodity relates to a change in price. Formulaically, it’s expressed as:

Price Elasticity of Demand = % Change in Quantity Demanded / % Change in Price

That equation is used to understand how a price change is reflected in a product or service’s supply and demand — if demand stays the same when its price changes, the commodity is inelastic.

If demand decreases when the price fluctuates, it’s considered elastic. For example, if the price of gas rises, car owners will typically still fill up their tanks — making gas an inelastic commodity.

Simply put, an inelastic product or service is less sensitive to price changes, while an elastic product or service can see considerable changes in demand when prices shift. This information can be key to successful price optimization — it helps to know how customers will react to price increases or decreases.

Now that we’ve covered the basics, let’s walk through the steps to find your optimal price point.

How to Optimize Pricing

Figuring out the right price for a product or service starts with understanding your customers. You need to go deep to learn as much as possible. What features do they need? What are their values? And why did they choose you over your competitors?

You also need to understand your market and industry trends. For instance, pricing for B2B is much different than B2C. And retail plays by different pricing rules than travel or food.

Feeling overwhelmed by the amount of data needed? Just take your time working through each of these steps.

1. Dig into data.

Price optimization isn’t a guessing game — you need hard data to do it right. This includes both qualitative and quantitative data to figure out how much customers will pay for your product or service.

Quantitative data includes information on demographics, psychographics, inventory, supply and demand, historical market specifics, sales metrics, churn rate, product features, and price sensitivity.

Qualitative data is also crucial. Customer surveys are a good starting point to collect information, but it’s important to speak to existing and potential customers as well. Ask questions to find out your competitive advantage, perceived value, sales tactics, loyalty programs, promotions, discounts, or any thoughts on current pricing.

Check out these free customer satisfaction survey templates for ideas and inspiration.

2. Define goals and constraints.

Most companies looking to optimize pricing have profit-focused goals — but more profit is just one of many objectives that can be achieved by finding the perfect price. Improving customer loyalty, upselling, or attracting new customers are all possible goals.

Define your goals and constraints to get clear on your objective. Maybe, you want to increase the perceived value of your product. Maybe, you can’t drop below a set price point. Or maybe, you want to hit a certain sales quota.

Whatever the aim, write it down. You need to know where you’re going in order to get there.

3. Know your value metric.

The way you charge customers needs to align with the value people get from your product or service. Seems simple, right? It is — provided you have the right value metric. Your value metric is what and how you charge for your product or service.

If you sell software, you might charge for specific features, customer contacts, or hours of hosting. If you sell a physical product, you likely charge per unit.

Figuring out the right value metric is important for price optimization because it showcases how customers value your product and what you can charge for the value you offer. Start by learning what customers value in your product or service and experiment with ways to charge for that value. This article by Price Intelligently breaks down the steps to find your value metric in detail.

4. Create pricing tiers.

Once you have your customer data and value metric in hand, it’s time to develop pricing tiers for your product or service. Each tier should correspond to a particular customer segment that you found in your research and should align with your value metric.

For example, HubSpot charges per marketing contact and offers additional features for each tier. They offer different pricing for marketing, sales and CRM, and customer service tools, with recommended bundles for various customer segments.

Image source: HubSpot

Adobe offers different pricing tiers for each app — with options to license a single app, multiple apps, or all apps in their product offering. They even segment their users into four categories (individuals, business, students and teachers, and schools and universities) to cater pricing and bundles to each group.

Image Source: Adobe

If pricing tiers don’t make sense for your product or service, you might be able to offer bundles or a sales section to reach different customer segments. A good example of this is Patagonia — customers can buy full-price items or shop less expensive used gear through the “Worn Wear” collection.

Image source: Patagonia

Price optimization isn’t something you figure out once and forget about for the next decade. It’s constantly changing and continually optimized. As you update features, branch out into new markets, and gain customers, it’s smart to revisit your pricing every one to two years to see if it’s still at the optimal point.

5. Continuously monitor pricing.

Set up a way to collect data to make sure the value you’re offering aligns with customers’ needs and pricing expectations. If the data shows it’s time to change, don’t be afraid to reevaluate your pricing strategy. Just don’t change prices too quickly or too often because fluctuations can frustrate existing customers or turn off potential customers.

Price Optimization Models

If you dig into pricing research, you find two schools of thought when it comes to price optimization models. One deals with finding the right pricing strategy for your business, and the other is catered to math whizzes who get their kicks from crunching numbers. Here’s a breakdown of each.

Pricing Strategy Models

Before getting into the various pricing strategies, it’s important to distinguish the difference between a pricing strategy and price optimization.

A pricing strategy is a method used to set the best price for a product or service. Each strategy has its pros, cons, and best-use cases — depending on the industry or business. If you’re ready to compare how one strategy compares to another, try the Sales Pricing Strategy Calculator to plan and calculate your revenue.

Once you choose a strategy, then comes the optimization part. Setting an optimal price is a part of any pricing strategy and ensures you’re pricing products or services in a way that meets your goals. Here are a handful of common pricing strategy models.

• Captive product pricing
• Cost-plus pricing
• Loss leader pricing
• Competition pricing
• Dynamic pricing
• Freemium pricing
• Hourly pricing
• Demand pricing
• Price skimming
• Bundle pricing
• Psychological pricing
• Even-odd pricing
• Penetration pricing

Take time to analyze your current pricing strategy — it might make sense to switch to a better model! Ideally, you can do this while you’re updating a product, launching a new one, changing your marketing strategy, or setting new pricing goals.

Pricing Optimization Models

The second type of optimization model is for everyone who raced to math class. As someone who chose chores over calculus homework, this explanation relies on people way smarter than me.

Optimization models are math-based programs that use data on demand, price level, costs, inventory, customer behavior, and more to recommend prices that maximize profits.

These solutions have been evolving for decades, with recent advancements in artificial intelligence and machine learning technology changing how to determine the best price. The tools can help you set the initial price, the discount price, or the promotional price of your product or service without asking analysts to labor over a spreadsheet.

Here are the steps to effectively use a model:

• Select a modeling tool — considering the features, data analysis, and outcomes. Certain solutions can tell you which product features people prefer and help create buyer personas for customer segmentation.
• Round up data — like past pricing and promotions, competitors’ prices, inventory, seasonal and geographical considerations, fixed and variable costs, and customer demographics.
• Confirm your pricing goals, and set rules to guide the modeling process to align with those goals.
• Input the data, run the model, and revise as needed.
• Gather the results and go over them with your pricing team. Make sure every agrees on the next steps to implement the pricing strategy.
• Track results and collect updated data to continuously run the model and optimize pricing. Tools should be able to monitor your pricing versus competitors to ensure you stay competitive while also achieving your goals.

Price Optimization Software

Today’s pricing software makes it simpler to plug in data and determine if your current prices hit the mark. Different companies need different software, especially when it comes to B2B versus B2C — as each type has unique considerations.

B2B companies usually sell a lower volume of products or services, making it more difficult to source data on customer behaviors, price sensitivity, and customer segments. When optimizing prices for a B2B business, it’s best to look for a tool with elasticity-based pricing.

This allows you to select an optimal price range, rather than a single price point, for more sophisticated quotes. You can also combine price optimization tools with your CPQ and CRM tools for a seamless sales process.

B2C companies often struggle with gauging customers’ reactions to price fluctuations and determining the equilibrium market price (where quantity supplied meets quantity demanded) of a product or service.

That’s why B2C companies benefit from a price optimization tool that helps figure out how sensitive customers are to price. Look for features that gather historical customer data, segment customers, create behavior profiles, and consider price sensitivity.

With those considerations in mind, here are several price optimization software options that may be a good fit for your business. Just remember to consider integrations, so the software works with your current systems.

1.Pricefx

Image Source: Pricefx

Pricefx is a cloud-based dynamic pricing solution that uses artificial intelligence to manage prices in real-time. With clients in spaces from automotive to chemicals to manufacturing, Pricefx has extensive B2B and B2C experience. The software comes in three different packages (plan, price, profit) for you to choose from based on your pricing goals.

2.Prisync

Image Source: Prisync

Prisync is a competitor price tracking and monitoring software with solutions for price checking, MAP monitoring, price management, dynamic pricing, price matching, and price scraping. It offers three pricing tiers ($59, $129, and $229) and integrates with Shopify and Magneto — as well as through an API.

3. Price2Spy

Image Source: Price2Spy

Price2Spy is a price monitoring tool offering price comparison, price change alerts, reporting, analytics, and spidering. With three pricing tiers ($49.95, $249.95, and an enterprise option) and integrations with Shopify, Magneto, Google Shopping, and more, it works well for companies looking to keep an eye on competitors’ pricing.

4. Omnia Dynamic Pricing

Image Source: Omnia

A dynamic pricing solution primarily for retail companies, Omnia allows users to set pricing rules and takes price elasticity into account for automatically optimal pricing. Two products, one for monitoring competitor pricing and another for dynamic pricing, lets you choose which features are best for your business.

5. Competera

Image Source: Competera

Competera is a primarily B2C artificial intelligence-powered pricing platform that helps retailers enhance strategy and increase revenue. It has products for gathering competitive data, pricing automation, and price optimization. The solutions are organized by industry, and you can request pricing based on the product that’s best for your business.

6. Vendavo

Image Source: Vendavo

Specifically for B2B business, Vendavo aims to optimize commercial, pricing, and sales outcomes through artificial intelligence tools. It has multiple products for pricing, including a dynamic pricing tool, deal-specific pricing, a profit analyzer, and a margin analyzer. A contact form is required to find out a pricing for each solution.

7.Zilliant

Image Source: Zilliant

Zilliant addresses B2B pricing and sales issues for distribution, manufacturing, and services industries. It uses artificial intelligence to align prices with the market and offers a handful of solutions for specific pricing needs.

8. NetRivals

Image Source: NetRivals

NetRivals is a competitive product and pricing analysis tool for retailers and brands. It caters to a number of industries, including fashion, music, toys, beauty, and sports.

With products for gauging competitor pricing on Amazon and Google Shopping — along with online product analysis and value analysis from ratings and reviews — it’s a robust solution for ecommerce companies.

Perfect your price optimization.

Collecting all of the data and crunching numbers to find the optimal price for your product or service can seem like an impossible task. But if you start by collecting historical data and setting pricing goals, you can get the hard work out of the way. From there, it’s about finding the right tool to help analyze the data and monitor pricing trends, competitors, and goals.

As you work through this process, remember that price optimization requires iteration. You can’t set it and forget it. But by making a plan and setting realistic goals, you can start evaluating if a price is working for you — or if it needs to change. In time, you can find the price that will meet your goals and make your customers happy to do business with you.

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7 Questions to Ask When Hiring a Content Marketing Agency

Deciding on an agency for content marketing is often tough thanks to the sheer volume of agencies out there, and because you want to ensure that the one you pick delivers ROI. To make things easier, here are seven key questions to ask when you’re trying to find the right agency for your content needs.

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How to Find Leads Online

Entrepreneurs, scaling startups, and enterprise companies are all in business to do one main thing: generate revenue.

Over the last 10 years, inbound marketing has proven to be a great way to do this. But it’s important to understand that people don’t go from completely unaware of your business to being a brand-loyal customer in one fell swoop.

There are levels to this kind of thing.

Potential customers need to go through a few different stages before they’re ready to entertain a conversation about what you sell: Awareness, interest, consideration, intent, evaluation, and finally purchase.

The second stage is where you get leads.

Getting people interested in what you have to sell doesn’t have to be difficult thanks to Inbound marketing. This practice is a holistic, data-driven approach where a business leverages content on its website to attract interested buyers and convert them into leads — typically after they’ve become aware of the products and services online.

It mirrors the way people buy in today’s digital environment and works in both B2B and B2C situations.

But what if you don’t have a marketing department or your marketing team doesn’t practice inbound? What if you have to generate your own sales leads?

Here, we’ll review the online channels that’ll help you generate leads and tactics you apply to fill your pipeline today.

Many sales professionals don’t have the marketing support to rely on a steady flow of inbound leads, but still have to hit their quotas. Luckily, the inbound sales methodology provides many ways to fill that need.

Inbound sales is a way to identify and connect with prospects by leveraging the inbound mindset of building relationships way before someone is ready to buy.

Most successful salespeople already practice some version of solution selling. They know sales is about consulting around the prospect’s problems, not closing the deal.

It’s about letting the prospect define the pace of the process and offering education and advice as a way to build confidence and trust. This makes it easy and safe for a client to buy. Here are a few ways you can make it scalable and efficient on your own.

You might be wondering “What makes a lead ready to speak with sales?” And that can depend on several factors set by your sales team. Perhaps the type of lead generation tactic that brought them into the pipeline determines who becomes a prospect. Or maybe, an SDR reaches out to the lead to qualify them manually by asking a set of layered questions.

Lead qualification should be based on your revenue goals with input from both the marketing and sales teams. But before you set criteria to qualify leads, you need to generate them first.

Let’s take a look at some of the top lead channels that won’t cost you a penny.

1.Use third-party listings.

Websites like Fiverr and Upwork can be a great source of leads for your sales team. If your business sells a service that is in demand on these sites, you can list your services to gain more leads. The best part about using third-party listings to get free leads is that they have the potential to close quickly. When there’s a match between your business and the client, they’ll likely want to get to work right away which is invaluable to your time-to-close KPI and bottom-line revenue.

2. Create content.

We’ll talk about different ways you can do this in the section below, but creating content online helps you get free leads in both the short-term and the long-term. When you use social media to promote your content, you can see a quick spike in traffic to your website and a spike in leads could follow. In the long-term, your content will live on your site and gain authority in the search engines as more people search for queries that your content answers for them. All of this is completely free and only requires time, skill, and consistency.

3. Network online.

Whether you’re on social media sites like Facebook and Twitter or using forums like Reddit and Quora, networking online with people in your market can bring your business free leads. This method of acquiring new customers can be time-consuming, but you’ll develop a better understanding of what your customers are looking for and why they buy your products or services. In turn, you’ll develop a sense of empathy and customer knowledge that money can’t buy.

1. Optimize your social media profiles.

When was the last time you actually updated your LinkedIn or Twitter profile? Keeping your social media profiles fresh and up-to-date is a great way to bring in more leads.

LinkedIn is hands-down the most beneficial social media platform for salespeople. Make your profile stand out (and potentially show up in search queries) by drafting a stellar LinkedIn headline and descriptive summary that tells those who visit your profile exactly what you do and who you serve.

Twitter is another social media platform that salespeople can use to connect with leads and generate interest in their business.

To get the most out of your Twitter profile make sure you have a professional-looking profile photo, tag your company’s account, include a link to your LinkedIn profile, and try including a few hashtags that are relevant to your buyers.

Making these simple changes to your social media profiles puts you in a better position to show up in the search results of potential buyers, making it even easier to connect.

2. Find prospects you can help on relevant social media networks.

Most salespeople are on LinkedIn, but may not be using it effectively for generating top-of-the-funnel activity. It is a salesperson’s dream to be able to connect in a high-value, low-effort way to find interested prospects, and social media is a great way to do so.

A few quick recommendations to leverage your social media presence for lead generation:

1. Try to connect with as many people as you can. The more connections you have, the wider your reach will be. You don’t have to be best friends with the people you connect to. Tangential connections can be amongst the best for potential prospects.
2. Post in the “Share an Update” section you’re currently looking to identify and help a specific type of prospect with a specific type of problem by a specific date. For example, “We are looking to work with three new commercial landscaping companies by September 1 that are interested in building their business in the greater Phoenix, Arizona area”.
3. Get three recommendations from current clients demonstrating high-quality work that can vouch for your value, professionalism, and effectiveness.

(Extra credit if you can broaden your professional brand to Facebook for Business, Twitter, and Snapchat, although this does increase the amount of work involved.)

3. Post a blog article on LinkedIn with an offer for a 15-minute consultation.

I speak on behalf of HubSpot 50 times a year, and often when I mention “blogging” to my audience, people’s eyes glaze over. They think of blogging as a structured and difficult way of writing a college essay — and writing is up there with public speaking on the list of things that people hate and fear.

But blogging is really just a conversation, and a blog topic can be as simple as answering the standard questions about your product that you do every day, such as “The Beginner’s Guide to [Common Business Challenge]” and “X Things You Need to Know About [Business Area].”

4. Ask your current customers for referrals.

Over the course of my work helping digital agencies fill their sales funnel, I frequently ask my clients the last time they pinged their current clients, thanked them for their business, and asked for help in generating more business.

Everyone agrees that a referral collection strategy is effective, but for some reason, it’s hard to implement one effectively. You can follow the seven steps below to get started:

1. Check with your account manager to make sure the customer is happy (and if they’re not, set up a call anyway to see how you can make things better).
2. Ping the client with a phone and an email and ask for a 10-minute conversation.
3. Thank the client for the business, explain that you value your relationship and you’re always interested in making it more valuable to your client.
4. Ask if there are any other contacts or companies she can think of that would be interested in the same level of service.
5. Get the name, phone number, and email of the contact, and why your client thinks it is a good fit.
6. Ask if they can tee you up with a quick introduction email.
7. Extra credit: If you can, send them a handwritten note or small item like a T-shirt thanking them for the referral. Little touches go a long way.

5. Work with your personal network to identify potential leads.

Working your personal network is another sometimes-overlooked option that is fairly easy to get started with because you have built-in trust. There are certain people you’ll meet in a personal context that you wouldn’t think of as a lead generation machine but can be incredibly valuable.

In today’s busy world, you have yoga friends, work friends, neighbors, and more — but they exist in these separate buckets that don’t necessarily intersect. The key is remarkably simple — if you’re at the point in your relationship where you can talk business, let potentially useful acquaintances know.

Identify the type of company you’re looking for (size, employee number, revenue amount, location, etc.) and send an email they can forward to make the connection.

Of course, mixing the personal and professional like this needs to be effective and respectful — but it is a great way of broadening your reach.

6. Actively engage with new leads at networking events.

When possible, attending these events (in person and online) should be part of your routine because they’re a great way to grow your reach and potentially drum up business.

Below are four basics I remind people of before they dive into networking (whether in-person or at a virtual networking event):

1. It’s about mingling and being human and having fun. Don’t take things too seriously!
2. Explaining your “always be helping” philosophy face-to-face is usually a pretty big differentiator.
3. Bring business cards to hand to your new acquaintances.
4. Offer to connect on LinkedIn from your phone while you’re standing next to someone. I usually respectfully ask — would you like to connect on LinkedIn? If they say “yes,” I just hand them my phone and say, “Can you find yourself and connect?”, which makes things a lot easier.

7. Revisit closed/lost opportunities.

These are businesses that already know what your company does. They might have seen a product demo or made it through a discovery call and it just wasn’t the right time to buy.

Touch base with these prospects every six months. Ask how their priorities have changed, if their business and team goals have shifted, and what their challenges are.

Invest in marketing to these prospects, because they’re already more qualified than new, warm leads. Enroll them in appropriate marketing email drips, send them relevant blog posts, and keep communication personalized.

It might not be the right moment the first or third time you follow up, but it could work in your favor the fifth.

And you never know when a prospect will change jobs and finally have the budget or business case to implement your solution. By staying top of mind, you’ll be the first vendor they call.

8. Send automated email newsletters.

At SaaStr Annual 2018, Sam Blond, CRO of Rainforest QA recommended, “Define your strategy for outreach. Then get creative with the email copy — be clever.”

Blond explained that one of Rainforest’s most successful email sequences is addressed from their CTO. Rainforest’s SDRs send the email to the CTO of a prospect’s company, framing the message as if their CTO asked them to reach out.

“It’s creative, it grabs attention, and it allows us to cast a wide net over each prospect’s company,” Blond said.

To send a successful email sequence, have a clear purpose for each one. For example:

• Email 1: Address pain points
• Email 2: Explain a value message
• Email 3: Name drop a big client
• Email 4: Qualify your message
• Email 5: Include a product message
• Email 6: Reach out one last time

Implement a comprehensive, purposeful email sequence and see it work for you.

9. Guest post to other websites and blogs.

Are you writing blogs yet? You should be. Start by writing about what you’re an expert in.

It could be sales process optimization, referral marketing, or your product/service — but whatever you do, start writing, and share it on your company’s blog, your personal social media channels, and your customers.

It’s important for you to be a visible expert in your field. Not only will it display your expertise, but you’ll educate your prospects as well. Need some help on your first post? Reach out to your resident marketer or blog editor for a quick lesson. They might even offer to help you write a post or two.

10. Embed a meeting scheduler on your website.

If you’re a rep in charge of bringing in your own leads, you don’t have the resources to send three back-and-forth emails coordinating schedules with a prospect. It’s a waste of your time and a waste of theirs.

Instead, embed an appointment scheduler on your website and your email signature. HubSpot’s free Meeting Scheduling Tool syncs with Google and Office 365 calendars, so your prospects always see your updated availability.

Plus, if there’s no designated sales rep, you can set a round-robin meeting link, so prospects are able to schedule meetings with the rep who’s availability best aligns with their own.

Make it easy for leads to get in touch with you and schedule time to learn more.

11. Use live chat to engage with users on your website.

Another way to vet leads is through an easy-to-use chatbot builder. There are a lot on the market today, but HubSpot Conversations gives you the tools and context you need to have unlimited, personalized conversations at scale.

Customize your widget so that it matches the look and feel of your brand and pops up on your prospect’s screen with a welcome message that’s actionable and matches their intent. Use your chatbot to qualify leads, book meetings, answer FAQs, and more.

You can respond to chats through the Conversations inbox, Slack, on even on the go with HubSpot’s mobile app. Because it’s part of your HubSpot CRM, every conversation is saved.

12. Lead an online workshop or webinar.

While sharing articles and blog posts are a great way to share your knowledge, nothing tops getting the opportunity to actually teach. Hosting a webinar or online workshop sharing your expertise on a relevant topic is a great way to generate leads online.

For example, if you sell social media scheduling software for small businesses, you could host an online workshop for entrepreneurs showing them how to build engagement on social media. By sharing your knowledge on a relevant topic in an intimate format such as video, you are building trust with leads quickly.

13. Create blog content to gain visibility in the search engines.

Guest posting to other blogs and websites is a smart way to build brand awareness with new audiences, but by blogging on your own domain, you’ll benefit from long-term SEO gains.

A blog content strategy won’t bring you a ton of leads overnight, but overtime, you’ll find a sweet spot of keywords and off-page promotion strategies that will help you build a loyal following of readers who may eventually become leads.

14. Have a giveaway for a free product or service in exchange for a lead form.

Who doesn’t like free stuff? Drum up interest in a new product offering or service with a giveaway. In exchange for a lead form, you can offer your audience a chance to win a free consultation, product, or service from your business. With the consent of the people who entered the giveaway, you can add them to your email nurture campaigns where they can learn more about your business and become customers in the future.

15. Partner with other businesses online to cross-promote your offerings.

Partnerships are mutually beneficial to both you and the other business. Not only will you both gain exposure in two different audiences, you’ll be more likely to make a good impression on the other audience if your brand aligns with their needs.

When partnering with another business, you’ll want to keep a few things in mind before agreeing to collaborate:

1. Do a quick audience analysis. Is the majority of their audience in that market for what you sell? If not, it may not be a productive use of your time.
2. What type of collaboration will you be partnering on? Social media collaborations are popular — will you do video, a series of posts, a social media takeover?
3. What is your goal for the collaboration? How many new leads do you plan to acquire? How will you follow up with them

16. Join networking communities to chat with professionals in your industry.

The Revenue Collective and Women in Revenue are just a few examples of networking communities that you can join to connect with like-minded professionals.

While soliciting services might be prohibited in these groups, you’re bound to find people who are looking for help with a problem that you can solve. You can also leverage your connections in these groups to help you find leads online.

17. Set up a Google My Business account and solicit reviews from existing or past clients.

Google brings in more than 5 billion searches per day. That’s “billion” with a “B”. Because of the sheer amount of traffic to the search engine, it’s a good idea to enhance your presence there. Google My Business is a free option for any business to use. So long as you have a valid physical address where your company does business, you can see an increase in traffic to your website once your account is activated.

With a Google My Business account, searchers have a better chance of seeing your business appear in the search engine results page (SERP) on a carousel, featured snippet, or in a knowledge graph.

Create a Robust Sales Pipeline with Online Lead Sourcing

No matter how small or large your business is, you can generate quality leads online to increase revenue. Whether you’re more of a writer, networker, or public speaker, the opportunity to connect with people and generate leads online is definitely worth your while. Try these online tactics to close more deals this quarter.

Editor’s note: This post was originally published in August, 2016 and has been updated for comprehensiveness.

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The Importance of a CRM: Why Your Company Needs a CRM to Grow Better

Did you know that the customer relationship management (CRM) market is expected to grow in size to $43.5 billion globally in 2024?

CRMs are powerful tools that can help you expedite business growth while eliminating friction, collaborate cross-team, manage your contact records, sync data, automate daily tasks, and more. 

Keep reading to learn more about why CRMs are important and beneficial for businesses like yours.

Let’s take a look at seven reasons why your company needs a CRM to grow better.

Importance of a CRM

We’ve used HubSpot as an example throughout each of the following sections to offer insight into different use cases for this type of system. 

Get HubSpot’s all-in-one CRM platform for SMBs and enterprise businesses for free. 

1. Center business growth around your customers.  

When your business enters the phase of rapid growth, it can be easy for valuable leads to fall through the cracks — after all, friction is a natural result of business growth.

But an all-in-one CRM platform like HubSpot can eliminate that friction because it’s built with your customers and the customer experience in mind — in fact, it centers everything you do around your customers. 

HubSpot allows you to architect your business as it appears to your customer and audience. The CRM aligns all of the work your sales, marketing, and service teams do with a variety of natively built tools and integrations — this makes it easy for you all to collectively center business goals and daily work around your customers.

2. Align your sales, marketing, and service teams.

Cross-team alignment is integral to the success of your business. This alignment — specifically, the alignment between sales and marketing — helps your team streamline all stages of the buyer’s journey.

In doing so, internal teams will be able to share critical data and customer information so they can work as a cohesive unit. As a result, customers will have a seamless and consistent end-to-end customer experience that makes them want to remain loyal to your brand. 

HubSpot makes this alignment simple because the platform comes with natively built tools and features — including Sales Hub, Marketing Hub, Service Hub, and CMS Hub — plus a library of integrations. 

3. Sync and share data with ease. 

CRMs like HubSpot streamline time-consuming tasks like data syncing and sharing — manually updating your contact records is a thing of the past. No matter who speaks with a contact (e.g. a sales rep, and service rep, or a marketer), contact records and data are immediately synced and updated in the system for you.

By syncing all of your data and every interaction between your team and a customer, your team will have access to accurate records that can easily be shared from within the platform. This makes your CRM a single source-of-truth when it comes to your data — and as a result, your team can create personalized customer experiences with ease.

So, what other tasks can a CRM platform like HubSpot automate?

4. Automate daily tasks.

CRMs automate other day-to-day tasks, speeding up your time-consuming but necessary work. CRM automation may include data entry and contact record updates after every interaction, as mentioned above, as well as: 

• Follow-up communication
• Email sequences
• Sales workflows (e.g. unenrollment trigger workflows, deal workflows, quote workflows)
• Chatbot conversations
• Lead-to-rep assignment
• Lead nurturing campaign
• Campaign analytics

Check out HubSpot’s Sales Automation and Marketing Automation tools. 

5. Create workflows. 

We just mentioned workflows but let’s talk more about them — the best CRM systems offer workflows. Workflows complete and organize sales, marketing, and service processes to save you time.

Set criteria that automatically enroll records and takes actions of your choice (e.g. related to your contact records, deals, companies, quotes, or tickets).

With HubSpot (depending on which CRM plan you have) you can create workflows for: 

• Contacts
• Companies
• Deals 
• Quotes
• Tickets
• Custom objects

Take this free course on understanding workflows in HubSpot. 

5. Simplify customer interactions. 

Today, there are many opportunities to reach and engage leads and customers online such as live chat, email, video call, and social media.

CRM solutions like HubSpot have evolved to meet the challenges of customer-facing teams and reps — they integrate with a wide variety of other services and channels through which your leads and customers engage with your business.

For instance, HubSpot has: 

• Call tracking to prioritize, place, and record calls from the CRM and then log those calls with the associated contact record.  
• Live chat and a chatbot builder to handle queries and FAQs. 
• Email tracking to tell you when leads open emails,  automate email marketing campaigns, and send well-timed sales follow-up messages. 
• Social media management tools to monitor brand mentions, comments, and questions on social media and then respond directly from within HubSpot. 
• Video integrations, like Vidayrd, to send memorable and personalized sales and marketing videos and track engagement. 

7. Build custom dashboards and report on the metrics that matter to your business.

CRMs make reporting on and analyzing your processes and pipeline simple. The reporting features within a CRM can be customized — such as your dashboards — to help you analyze the metrics that matter most to you. This allows you to identify areas of opportunity and growth to create better customer experiences.

With a CRM like HubSpot, create custom dashboards and reports or select from one of the pre-made templates to save you time. Preview those reports in real-time, visualize your CRM data any way you’d like, and share reports with ease by sending individual reports to your team members’ email addresses, or automate your reporting emails so they’re sent daily, weekly, or monthly. 

Create up to 300 custom dashboards for your team based on any metric with HubSpot’s Dashboard and Reporting Software. 

Grow Better With a CRM

A CRM has the power to supercharge your flywheel — now that you understand the importance of a CRM, choose the right system for your team to start growing better. 

Editor’s note: This post was originally published in January, 2020 and has been updated for comprehensiveness.

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How to Implement Consistent Messaging on Your Team, According to Sales Managers

As a sales manager, ensuring that your team’s communication with prospects is tight and effective is in your best interest. You want to put out cohesive messages, in keeping with your organization’s values and goals. That process — making sure your team’s communications aren’t erratic — is most commonly referred to as implementing consistent sales messaging.

It’s an essential task that isn’t always intuitive, so to help you navigate that challenge, we reached out to some experts for their takes on how to nail it.

Let’s jump in.

It’s worth noting that sales messaging and marketing messaging aren’t the same. Marketing messaging is broader — it covers the more general features and benefits a product or service has to offer. It might sound like, “Our product can cut the length of your systems development lifecycle in half without sacrificing quality.”

Sales messaging essentially takes marketing messaging, refines it, and primes it to suit individual prospects. For instance, it could be something to the effect of, “[A well-known business of similar scale with similar needs] saw an average 54% decrease in the length of every stage of its system’s development lifecycle without sacrificing the quality of deployment.”

In short, marketing messaging should set a solid backdrop for a company’s communication efforts, and sales messaging should add a degree of precision to it without sacrificing consistency.

Elements of Successfully Implementing Consistent Sales Messaging

Maintaining a level of synchronicity in messaging across a sales team is essential to conducting effective sales efforts. Let’s take a look at some pro-tips on how to make sure your sales reps can do just that.

1. Keep it customer-centric and accessible.

According to HubSpot Sales Director Dan Tyre, successful sales messaging is customer-centered. It needs to be accessible — any prospect listening has to be able to catch on quickly and reliably.

That’s why Tyre recommends ditching technical talk in favor of easy-to-digest “sound bites” — which he describes as “concise ways of saying something, using common terms and language as opposed to jargon.”

According to him, salespeople have a tendency to become “ingrained in their space” to the point that they assume prospects already know certain acronyms and definitions, specific to their industry — terms that can wind up reading as intimidating or confusing.

Ultimately, Tyre advises sales teams to make their messaging simple, straightforward, and approachable — or as he puts it, “explained in a way a nine-year-old would understand.”

2. Make sure it aligns with marketing — to an extent

Jen Spencer, Chief Revenue Officer at SmartBug Media, stresses the importance of companies having sales messaging that’s consistent with — albeit not identical to — their businesses’ marketing messaging.

According to her, “Every marketing campaign needs a sales messaging layer. When our marketing team is preparing to launch a new campaign, they also arm our sales team with templates or snippets in HubSpot Sales that align with the campaign messaging.”

She emphasizes the value of that kind of alignment and suggests that companies “use that kind of content in parallel with marketing content and messaging.”

That said, she also advises against overly aligning sales and marketing messaging. By her account, “[her business] aims to harmonize those messages — as opposed to just copying and pasting from marketing to sales.”

3. Managers have to be closely involved.

According to Datasocial Founder Ana Aldea “The salesperson is almost always the gateway to meeting new customers and is responsible for giving a good image.”

That’s why it’s vital that sales teams have the right information when it comes to messaging, but that doesn’t always happen — and she cites two primary reasons as to why: insufficient training and a lack of communication between salespeople and their managers.

Implementing consistent sales messaging takes guidance — it’s relatively non-intuitive for salespeople. So it falls on management to be active and involved while facilitating the process.

Aldea offers two strategies her organization leverages — using live messaging with reps to help them adapt to new messaging in real-time and conducting weekly meetings to promote consistency and alignment with marketing.

4. It can be guided by example.

We also reached out to HubSpot Sales Manager Mike Noonan for this article, and he offered us this story about an exemplary manager who helped implement consistent messaging on his team:

“Morgan Jacobson — Director of HubSpot’s Sales, Productivity, and Enablement team — was known internally as providing some of the best demos of HubSpot. The combination of his business acumen, product knowledge, and overall friendly-natured calls helped solidify this title.

His department — SP&E — helps reps sell better. As part of those efforts, Morgan runs a popular ongoing training series called ‘Demo like a Pro’ in which he covers new HubSpot features, products, or strategies.

He explains the use case behind what we built and why it helps businesses. Then, he demos the product himself. It’s a super helpful way for both new and tenured reps to learn how to demo all of HubSpot, and the series’ popularity helps keep messaging consistent across the sales org.

For some reps, they copy 90% of what Morgan says. Others who are more comfortable coming up with their own stories take snippets from Morgan. But overall this is a foundation or baseline for a lot of reps across all tenures.”

5. Leverage practical, relevant tech.

A couple of the experts we reached out to mention the value of technology in the context of implementing consistent sales messaging. One tool that came up was HubSpot’s Playbooks — a resource for creating and storing sales enablement content, including materials like call scripts for reps to reference.

Another type of tool that came up was conversational intelligence platforms, like Gong, to be used as a means of tracking specific topics and helping inform more effective one-on-one coaching between reps and managers.

Implementing consistent sales messaging on your team is a process that can be every bit as frustrating as it is necessary. But with the proper guidance, enthusiasm, alignment with marketing, and technology behind you, it’s far from impossible.

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How Enterprise Sales Differs from SMB and Mid-market Sales

When it comes to sales, some might think the only difference between sales roles is the product you’re selling. However, enterprise sales strategy differs vastly from self-service, SMB (small-medium business), or mid-market sales.

The method for engaging customers and moving through the sales cycle will depend on what type of sales process your company is running. If you don’t take care to adjust your sales process based on the types of customers you have, you may lose their trust.

Research suggests only 3% of buyers trust sales reps — the only people they trust less are car sales personnel (technically still within the sales field) and politicians. Cultivating a healthy relationship from the start of the sales cycle is incredibly important for the ongoing health of your business.

To build trust, your sales team needs to custom-fit their processes for each customer. That often means designing a strategy around specific price points, buyer personas, or product tiers. Someone interested in paying you $100k annually likely won’t follow the same sales process as a prospect interested in a $50 monthly plan.

Below, we’ll detail the specifics around sales processes and how enterprise sales differs from SMB and mid-market sales.

As your clients start to get more complex and their contracts become more valuable, you may notice your sales cycles lengthening and becoming more complicated in service of procuring larger, more valuable deals. The larger the sale, the more complex the process will likely be. Of all the types of sales, enterprise sales are the most lengthy and complicated. It requires more touch points, much more strategy, and a longer-term plan than mid-market or SMB sales.

That said, just because you have valuable contracts at stake doesn’t mean that introducing enterprise sales is necessary. Without a mature product to sell or mature companies to sell to, creating an advanced, elaborate enterprise sales process may not be worth it.

Suppose you are developing an intense, in-depth technical product to save companies tons of money on their manufacturing costs. In that case, that will necessitate an upgrade to your sales process more than if you were a retail company selling a low-priced product such as water bottles.

How Enterprise Sales Differs from SMB and Mid-market Sales

SMB’s are typically defined by the number of employees within a company and the business’ revenue. They distinguish small businesses as having fewer than 100 employees or less than $50 million in revenue, and midsize companies as being between 100-999 employees and between $50 million and $1 billion in revenue.

If you are selling to companies with more revenue or employees, you may need an enterprise sales strategy. That said, here are a few other types of sales that may be useful for you to introduce into your mix, depending on the spread of demographics across your buyers.

Self-service Sales

Self-service sales is one of the best ways to sell a product and keep a low customer acquisition cost (CAC).

Many companies like Dropbox, Facebook, and some retail spaces utilize self-service sales. It incorporates strategies like in-context documentation, easy-to-use pricing pages, and chatbots integrated into the website. Self-service is a high-volume sales strategy as customers can move through the process quickly.

With self-service, your potential customers go through decision-making, testing, and paying for the product at their own pace. It is excellent for low-cost products that don’t require a lot of technical set-up or knowledge to use. It’s also a great addition to your sales mix on top of a mid-market or enterprise sales strategy, as it doesn’t require any additional salespeople to run after setup.

SMB and Mid-market Transactional Sales

Somewhere on the continuum between self-service sales and enterprise sales, SMB and mid-market transactional sales make it easy for your sales team to meet the needs of a range of buyer personas. You can customize the number of contacts and what steps of the process to include based on your contract’s value or the type of product you are selling.

Typically, these types of transactional sales strategies will come at a higher price point than those going through your self-service process and will also be a longer sales cycle. As part of this strategy, your marketing team drives qualified leads to your sales team, who then engages with them and closes the deal.

8 Critical Differences Between SMB Sales, Mid-market Sales, and Enterprise Sales

There are several key differences between SMB, mid-market, and enterprise sales strategies.

1. Length of Time

The length of time spent on the sales process is usually longer the more valuable the deal is. The customer dictates self-service sales cycle lengths, transactional sales are slightly longer and more complex, and enterprise sales cycles can be many months to a year in the making.

2. Ease of Purchase

While the customer can likely purchase by themselves for both self-service and SMB/mid-market sales, a purchase order is typically required for enterprise-level deals.

3. Number of Decision Makers

The larger the deal, the more decision makers will come into play as it gets closer to close.

4. Level of Impulsivity

At the more negligible levels, purchasing decisions can be impulsive and quick as the price point is usually lower. At enterprise levels, there is more deliberation.

5. Pain Points

At self-service, SMB, and mid-market sales levels, the customer’s pain is around the business’s immediate needs or an individual’s. At the enterprise level, much of the pain is around the company’s potential needs in the years to come.

6. Finding Leads

Finding leads is more of a farming process than a hunting process at the enterprise level. Sales reps find a strategic, ideal account and spend lots of time grooming them for purchase. The strategy is different in lower-tier sales cycles, where salespeople discover prospects rather than developing them.

7. Buyer Type

Enterprise salespeople need to know their market deeply. They need to understand the competition and their placement against them, know the account’s needs, and align with competitor offerings. SMB and mid-market sales reps have less pressure to understand big-picture implications and just need to focus on the stage of their prospects.

8. CAC to LTV Ratio

At the enterprise level, your customers’ lifetime value (LTV) justifies a more resource-intensive process with a higher customer acquisition cost (CAC). With SMBs or mid-market sales, more automation or a less-intensive sales process is important considering the average customer’s lower LTV.

Let Your Buyers Drive

The type of prospects you have should ultimately be the most significant driver in which types of sales strategies you consider. With higher-ticket deals and more complex customer groups, an enterprise sales strategy will drive more incoming revenue.

If your product is small, easy to use, or offers a monthly low-cost pricing option, having self-service or a lower-touch transactional sales model may be a better option.

Design your sales process around the types of customers that you hope to engage. Understand your buyer’s needs and fears, and cater to them with a process that makes it easy to see your product as the right choice forward. Your sales strategy mix doesn’t need to be all-or-nothing—you can include self-service sales alongside enterprise strategies, as long as you understand the demographics you’re trying to meet.

Educate your sales team on the differences between customer types to differentiate your strategy effectively and make sure that everyone feels like the process is custom-fit just for them.

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The Sky Garden Method: Discover Evergreen Link Building Opportunities Using Search Data

Adding on to Brian Dean’s Skyscraper Technique, this is the “Sky Garden Method”. It’s a similar approach that requires no outreach time to build links, and can generate links well into the future.

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6 Ways to Get Fired Up for Your Next Sales Call

As a natural introvert, I had some trouble setting my sales career in motion. During my first month or so as a BDR, I rolled zeroes for quota every week. It took a lot out of me, but as much as I struggled to find my bearings on my calls, I didn’t let my nerves get the best of me.

I did my research, came to understand my business, practiced, listened to my managers, tried, failed, and tried some more until I finally found my footing. And once I hit that groove, I started meeting or exceeding quota consistently and never looked back.

Along the way, I learned certain strategies to help me gain my composure and nail my sales calls — and now, as the Head of Sales Development at Skillz, I try to pass those techniques along to the org I manage. But the value of those tactics isn’t specific to my team.

There are certain tips and tricks that any rep can employ to get the most out of their sales calls, and in this article, I’ll share a few with you.

How to Get Fired Up for Your Sales Call

1. Do your research.

Have you ever felt so prepared going into a meeting or call that you know you’re going to crush it? That confidence and excitement come from prior planning — the bread and butter of successful salespeople.

Before going into a call, set time aside to learn more about your prospect. Form a plan outlining exactly how your offering is a solution to their problems, and be the trustworthy expert who can help make their lives easier.

As you research, look for reasons to get excited about your upcoming call. Do you have shared interests? Are you speaking to a company in an exciting and groundbreaking industry? Seek to understand who you’re speaking with — you never know what you might find!

2. Be an expert.

In addition to knowing your prospect, know what your offering does inside and out. It (literally) pays to know every small nuance about what makes your product or service the best choice for the person you’re speaking with and how it differentiates from solutions like it.

I used to dread hopping on the phone in the first few days of starting a sales role. But as I learned more about my industry, product, and the value we could bring, I became that much more confident. Calls became exciting when I finally knew I was fully equipped to address concerns and answer even the most technical of questions.

3. Make yourself laugh and smile.

Didn’t get enough sleep last night? Do you know the prospect on this call is going to be tough and abrasive? Have a calendar of back-to-back meetings? Prepare by putting yourself in a positive, high-energy mood.

Do the things that make you happy or fire you up. Nothing is off the table! Listen to pump-up music. Stare in the mirror and make stupid faces at yourself, or even eat your favorite dessert! Just do whatever puts you in that mood to be positive, helpful, and focused.

4. Stand Up, walk around, and use your non-verbals.

Regardless of whether you’re speaking to someone on a video or phone call, stand up, walk around, and use positive body language. For one, standing gets your blood flowing, relative to sitting — helping you think clearly and focus on the conversation. Second, more than 70% of communication stems from our non-verbals, and neglecting this fact on a call can be disastrous.

It doesn’t matter whether a prospect sees you or not. There will always be a subconscious alert going off in their heads, telling them something is off when we don’t act as we speak. Use your hands to convey meaning, and always talk to someone as if they were sitting in front of you.

5. Stare at plants right before you connect with someone.

Okay, I know this one sounds a little out there, but hear me out! Sometimes, we wind up getting too fired up for a call — to the point where we start feeling tense and anxious.

We all want to do a great job, move our prospects to the next step, close deals, and so on and so forth. But sometimes we get carried away and wind up putting ourselves in this hole of overthinking the situation.

Enter plants — nature’s medicine. Nature and greenery have been shown to reduce stress and anxiety, as well as boost mood and creativity. Does that sound like something that would help you crush a sales call? If you’re a believer, stare out the window at some trees or the plant on your desk right before getting on that call. I, personally, am a huge fan of getting succulents for my team.

6. Breathe.

Calls can be nerve-wracking, especially with larger clients or when there’s a massive deal on the line. In situations like that, you need to clear your mind and breathe. When our breathing is off or shallow — sometimes subconsciously — we cut off the resource that allows our brain to function at peak performance.

What I’m saying here is a quick 30-second meditation can be key to hopping into that call with your game face on. So close your eyes, take deep and thoughtful breaths, then get on that call with a clear mind.

LeBron James put it best — when he was on the sidelines at halftime during the NBA finals, he wasn’t thinking about the game he loved and knew like the back of his hand. Instead, he meditated to get his mind right before getting back on the floor.

Now, this list of tips is far from exhaustive — and you might have a routine of your own to get yourself in the zone before a call. Still, I can vouch for the techniques detailed in this article. They’ve worked for me, and if you give them a shot, I bet they’ll work for you.

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Debunking Link Building Myths in 2021

On this week’s episode of Whiteboard Friday, guest host and MozCon speaker Shannon McGuirk walks through five link building myths prevalent in 2021, and why you shouldn’t believe them.

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How to Distribute Equity for Your Startup

Your startup is gaining traction, and you’re bringing on an all-star team and board of advisors to help you build your company and want to offer them equity in exchange for their talents and services.

But let’s be honest, distributing equity in a startup isn’t an intuitive process. However, the beauty of being a business owner is the constant learning you must do to grow and scale your company. You’ve learned countless new processes and skills to get your business up and running.

Today’s lesson in business ownership: startup equity.

As a founder, you want to make sure sharing ownership of your business is done with intention and care. The easiest way to understand startup equity is to think of it as a pie.

There is a finite amount of the pie that can be divided and shared. However, the worth of each piece of pie can increase as your business becomes more successful.

If you, as a founder, own 100% of your business, you own the entire pie. While it can be appealing to keep the value of your company to yourself, it’s important to understand that when it comes to ownership, you only earn as much as your company is worth. And 100% ownership isn’t always the best way to go if you want to see your business truly grow.

For example, if you are the sole owner of a $500,000 business but do not have the bandwidth to grow the company on your own, you will likely stay at the $500,000 mark (assuming all factors remain constant in your business).

However, if you have a co-founder or team of employees who have a variety of skills that can help you grow your business valuation to the $10 million mark and you own 50% of that, your stake is then worth $5 million. Not too shabby.

How does equity work in a startup?

Startup equity, as a concept, rests on the idea that a company’s stakeholders deserve exactly what that title entails — a stake in the company. That generally means offering early contributors like employees and investors a certain percentage of ownership.

That percentage is dictated by factors like timing, degree of contribution, level of commitment, and the company’s valuation at the time of equity distribution. Founders generally — and unsurprisingly — receive the most initial equity.

The company’s earliest investors also tend to receive more equity than those who get on board later, as their investments are proportionately larger relative to the company’s early valuation. And employees who help get things off the ground also often see larger proportions of ownership than those who come later.

Equity distribution is also closely linked to funding stages. As your financial circumstances shift with each new round of funding, how you distribute equity shifts as well. Here’s an example of what that progression looks like with most startups.

Image Source: Gust

Who should be awarded equity in your startup will depend on how your business is structured. Typically, equity is divided among founders (and co-founders), employees, outside investors, and company advisors. Let’s break down who these parties are, and how their equity awards should be portioned.

1. Founders and co-founders

If you are the sole founder of your company, determining your own stake can be fairly straightforward. However, if you have a co-founder or co-founders, determining how equity should be distributed among all founders is an important decision that should not be taken lightly.

If you want your startup to succeed in the long run, having open, honest conversations with your co-founders early and often are important. As you work with your co-founders to determine how to split equity, you’ll want to consider the following factors:

• Risk — Are all co-founders facing the same amount of risk by pursuing this venture? If one founder is taking on more risk than another, such as quitting their full-time job or investing more capital initially, that should be considered when dividing equity.
• Level of commitment — In the initial stages, many co-founders work to build their companies for little to no pay. However, if one co-founder has taken on more demanding roles and responsibilities — or has demonstrated a greater commitment to helping the business succeed — that could be a factor when determining equity.
• Innovation — If the company revolves around a co-founder’s idea or unique research while their partners perform other duties, ownership of the original idea can be considered when sharing equity. However, if the company was founded from a joint idea, splitting equally can also be an option.

Common equity allocation methods among co-founders include equal splits (such as 50-50, or 33-33-33), or a senior controlling partnership, where one founder has a larger stake (such as 60-40). Here is a co-founder equity calculator that can help you through the process.

2. Employees

As you build your startup, you will eventually start hiring talented team members who can bring your business to the next level. Like many founders, you may encounter tight budgets at the beginning that may impact your ability to offer robust employee salaries. However, if your initial employee salaries come shy of the market rate, you can offer equity to employees as part of their compensation package.

Many professionals are incentivized by partial ownership in the companies they work for, understanding that the success of the company can result in financial gain on a personal level.

When determining how to offer equity to your employees, here are important factors to consider:

• Percentage of ownership — You’ll need to determine how much ownership you plan to award to employees. This typically begins by designating an employee equity pool, or specifying how much of your equity pie will be awarded to employees. As you determine how much equity to award employees, you may want to take into account how many team members you plan to hire, your employee’s level of experience, and your company’s financing timeline.
• Vesting schedule — Next you need to determine when your employees can access their earnings. The most common timeline is a four-year vesting schedule with a one-year cliff. This means an employee can begin vesting their equity after a year of being at the company. After their first year, they will own a quarter of their equity grant, with the remainder vested on a monthly or quarterly basis. Though this is common, you can implement the vesting schedule that works best for your business.
• Type of shares awarded — How do you plan to distribute equity to employees? Many startups choose to grant stock options to their employees. This means employees have the option to purchase stock at a predetermined strike price. Some companies opt to give their employees restricted stock, which consists of shares granted to recipients when the value is very low. This option can have more upfront tax implications for employees, which is important to consider.
• Education — Lastly, if your company offers equity to employees, you want to make sure your employees understand how it works. Providing education and space for employees to ask questions and understand their options is critical for any company that offers employee equity.

Ideally, employee equity should incentivize employees to stay with your company and contribute to business growth and success.

3. Investors

Those who invest in your company — whether they are angel investors, venture capitalists, or friends and family, should also receive a slice of your business’s equity pie. When an investor puts money into a startup, they are essentially taking on financial risk in hopes of receiving a financial return.

How much equity an investor receives will vary depending on the valuation of your company when they invest, and the size of their investment. If you go the fundraising route and receive money from outside investors to build your company, conversations about equity should take place when you are pitching for and negotiating investments.

This simple calculator can help you determine how much equity to award in exchange for funding.

4. Advisors

In early-stage startups, there is typically an advisory board of experienced founders and experts in your industry who provide strategic direction for the company. It is common for this role to be performed in exchange for equity.

There are no specific guidelines around how to award equity to advisors who offer their time and expertise to help you grow your startup. However, many companies offer 0.2% to 1% equity to their advisors.

As you form advising partnerships, you’ll want to clearly set expectations with advisors early on so they know how big of a commitment their role as an advisor will be in exchange for the amount of equity you choose to offer.

Ultimately, how much equity you award and to whom will depend on what’s best for the growth and success of your company. Looking for more advice on running your startup? Check out The Ultimate Guide to Startups.

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The 23 Best Group Scheduling Tools in 2021

Finding time in a packed schedule can be challenging, especially when you’re trying to find free time both in your own schedule and those of ten other people.

The best way to minimize extraneous time spent on simple tasks is to outsource that work to a third party — in this case, a group scheduler. A group scheduler will enable you to mitigate unnecessary back-and-forth emails and ultimately reduce friction in your workflow.

Here, we’ll go over the features that make an ideal scheduling app and explore the best group scheduling tools you can use to create a more effective scheduling process.

What to Look for in a Group Scheduling Tool

Before you begin comparing, it helps to know what makes a good group scheduling tool — simply having integration with your calendar apps isn’t enough.

Let’s take a look at the most important features in a scheduling app.

App Integrations for Sales

Nowadays, a good scheduler offers powerful app integrations that allow you to engage with and sell to prospects. Your tool should integrate with:

• Calendar apps (e.g. iCloud Calendar, Outlook, Google Calendar)
• Sales automation tools (e.g. lead generation, growth, email, etc.)
• Customer relationship management software (CRM)
• Email providers (e.g. Gmail, Outlook)

These integrations remove points of friction from your workflow and streamline the sales process. Your scheduling app would ideally also integrate with video call software, automatically providing the option to include a link in the invite.

Private Scheduling Page or Meeting Link

The tool you leverage should let you create private scheduling pages or links to sign up for already-scheduled meetings. Most first-rate schedulers also feature some customizable elements for those pages, including color themes, the ability to select available time slots, and the flexibility to create custom meeting lengths.

Additionally, these pages allow you to cater to invitees in different time zones by automatically shifting your availability to fall in line with their work hours.

Optimized for Mobile

Your prospects likely check their email, browse the web, and accept invites by phone. So naturally, the best scheduling tools are optimized for mobile, allowing prospects to easily book time on your calendar or RSVP for existing events without access to a desktop browser.

Privacy & Transparency

Your scheduling app will probably require a lot of information both from you and your invitees, especially if it needs access to their calendars and contacts. You don’t want to risk exposing that information — or worse, make your prospects feel like they’re vulnerable to cybersecurity threats if they share their information with you.

A group scheduling tool should offer robust privacy settings and options. On the HubSpot Meetings tool, for example, you can turn on a GDPR consent checkbox on your scheduling page. This gives you formal consent from your invitees to store their information.

Intuitive Set-Up

As a salesperson, you’re busy, so you can’t afford to spend too much time signing up on a platform and learning how to navigate it.

A top group scheduling app will be intuitive to set up and use. You should have a private scheduling page or unique RSVP link within minutes of signing up. No hassle, no fuss.

Now that we’ve covered the fundamentals of what to look for in a scheduling tool, let’s check out some of the best ones on the market.

1. HubSpot Meetings

HubSpot Meetings simplifies and automates what used to be a very arduous and often manual process.

Fully integrated with our free CRM, the Meetings function allows you to:

• Cut out back-and-forth scheduling emails
• Provide transparency and flexibility for your team or prospects to schedule with you when they see you’re free
• Smooth out the lead-capture process by asking key client questions before the meeting even happens

The tool can be embedded in your site and set to reflect your branding for both client and in-team communications. Once a client inputs their information to create a new meeting, their data is collected into a database, which you can use for future contact with them and to grow your clientele as you get more connections.

HubSpot Meetings also offers the option for group meeting links. You can alter the settings so that you receive notifications once new meetings are created and include critical meeting information within the link such as meeting length and subject matter.

Pricing: Free

2. Calendar

Calendar is one of the most intuitive scheduler tools available. Compatible with PCs and Macs as well as iOS and Android devices, Calendar leverages machine learning to deliver smart scheduling capability.

Calendar lets you tag as many invitees as you would like when scheduling a meeting and shows you a time when everyone is available. If you need to reschedule, one-click reveals what times work for everyone on your team.

The free plan offers unlimited scheduling, calendar connectivity (with Gmail, Office 365, Outlook, and iCloud), and email and SMS notifications about scheduling and scheduling changes. Other plans include additional team member access, team analytics, CRM integration, and more.

Pricing: Free; $6/user/month (Standard); $8/user/month (Pro)

3. Zoom.ai

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Zoom.ai makes scheduling meetings easier by giving you the ability to create pre-configured meeting types, include a video conferencing link in the invite, and use shared availability features for group gatherings.

You can connect any calendar of your choice, including Google Calendar, Microsoft Office 365, and iCloud. Gmail, Outlook, and Slack integrations are also available, letting you book meetings both within and outside your organization.

With Zoom.ai, you can create a personal scheduling link and embed a scheduling widget on your website. Another useful feature is the ability to access your Google Drive, OneDrive, or Dropbox files so that you can efficiently send prospects critical information without leaving the platform.

The free version of Zoom.ai integrates with HubSpot, allowing you to use the scheduling tool with Sales Hub.

Pricing: Free; $8/month (Professional); $12/user/month (Team)

4. Doodle

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Doodle is arguably the best scheduler available for smartphones on the market. Currently compatible with iOS and Android, Doodle relies heavily on the polling function to crowd-source available meeting dates.

Doodle first lets you set up a MeetMe page, where you can display your free times and choose your designated branding. You can set up a poll of your available dates and times and let people vote on time slots that are convenient for them by sending them a link via email or directing them to a URL.

It offers several response options — not just the yes or no binary — and allows choosers to rank or explain responses. You can see who has responded and who hasn’t and keep responses to a limited number if needed. It’s also compatible with most calendars.

Pricing: Free; $6.95/month (Pro, 1 user); $44.75/month (Team, 5 users)

5. Boomerang Scheduling

Boomerang Scheduling is a browser extension that connects with your Firefox or Chrome browser. Once it’s installed, it plugs into your Gmail and Outlook accounts.

The app takes into account different time zones and is integrated with Gmail, Chrome, and Google Calendar. While you’re emailing, you can easily pull up your calendar to let clients pick the best time to have a call. They only see the times that you’re available, not your other appointments and activities.

As you’re typing up an email, you can also embed your schedule into the text body. There are a few other methods too, but its main selling points are that it’s centralized and operates entirely within your email page. An event is created once an invitee selects a time, and that time is automatically recorded in your calendar.

However, the plug-in is a bit of a contradiction — it’s privacy-oriented in that it protects the details of your schedule from being shown, but in order to use the service, you have to grant it access to some of your private information, including your calendar, contacts, and email.

Pricing: Boomerang Scheduling offers two pricing structures depending on your email provider.

• Gmail: Free; $4.99/month (Personal); $14.99/month (Pro); $49.99/month (Premium)
• Outlook: Free; $4.99/month (Personal); $14.99/month (Pro); Custom (Teams and Enterprise)

6. Mixmax

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Mixmax is a scheduler built into your email. Specifically compatible with Gmail, this platform is particularly useful for salespeople. Some of the sales features it includes are:

• LinkedIn Sales Navigator integrations
• Sales dialer
• Sales email templates

Mixmax makes email scheduling easy. You can use customizable templates to send emails, track opens and clicks, send notifications, and use slash commands to get your clients scheduled.

Not only does this facilitate the conversion in outbound outreach campaigns, but it also cuts excess friction in all communication points that leads to a meeting.

Additionally, since prospects don’t have to click-through to see available times, it increases the likelihood of them actually choosing a time. Plus, you can even embed links and other media within the email.

Pricing: Free; $9/user/month (Starter); $24/user/month (SMB); $49/user/month (Growth)

7. WhenIsGood

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While WhenIsGood is one of the more simplistic schedulers on this list, it’s still incredibly effective for group scheduling. Though other choices might be better for those who need a feature-intensive service, this is a good option for your basic needs.

First, you create an account and set up a calendar covering the days you’re available. You can choose time slots based off of your meeting length requirements and select an open time window. Once you’ve chosen your preferred time frame, you can add your information and create the event.

Creating the event generates three links. Each link has a purpose:

• One is to make changes to your calendar
• One is to send out meeting invites
• One is to handle poll outcomes

When you send out the link for people to choose from your availability, they select the times that work for them, and it syncs with your poll outcomes link. From there, you can decide the ideal meeting times for everyone involved. Though it might not have the most integrations, it definitely does the trick.

8. Arrangr

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Arrangr is a scheduling platform that connects with your Outlook, Google, iCloud, and Office 365 calendars. Like the other tools in this list, Arrangr allows you to create a booking link that prospects can use to choose the best time that works for them. And since the tool is integrated with your email, it will automatically show the times that you’re available.

You can also send a list of times and dates for prospects to choose from. Additionally, Arrangr lets you auto-generate video conferencing links and include them in the invite. No need to go to the website of your preferred video conferencing provider.

To schedule a group meeting, you can send a poll to up to fifteen recipients on the free version, twenty recipients on the Pro version, and fifty recipients on the Pro+ version. You can then connect the poll with your chosen conferencing app, give the option for “maybe” availability, and view the results in a user-friendly dashboard.

Use Arrangr with Sales Hub to simplify meeting scheduling, or sign up on the website to use it as a standalone tool.

Pricing: Free; temporarily $0/year (Pro); $29.99/year (Pro+); Custom (Enterprise)

9. YouCanBook.Me

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YouCanBook.Me is another popular group scheduling tool for teams. It’s a simple but powerful tool. The system integrates with Google Calendar, Outlook.com, and Office 365. Additionally, the tool is good for large organizations because you can use the calendar to book multiple people, services, or locations.

It’s optimized for mobile and customizable — you can tailor your colors and notifications to fit your needs. Its customer booking system allows your clients to choose their specified times in the correct time zone. You can add buffers between appointments and adjust appointment length. You also can block off times on your schedule.

Overall, it’s a great tool for teams and groups looking to shave off a few hours per week in back-and-forth emails.

Pricingg: Free; $10/calendar/month

10. 24Sessions

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24Sessions is a feature-rich group scheduling tool. It offers dial-in features, meeting recordings, the ability to host multiple participants, and a lot of other features that will allow you to use it for everything from scheduling demos to supporting your most complex clients. It also includes video and screen sharing, which makes it a great tool to serve most sales meeting needs.

Clients can book their meetings based on your availability. The calendar accounts for time-zone differences and allows for data tracking. It syncs with Google Calendar and Office 365.

24Sessions also allows you to integrate a calendar on your website or a standalone landing page for your prospects and clients to schedule meetings. It also automatically creates calendar appointments and reminders for everyone and sends out links to the video chat meeting room.

If you’re looking for a feature-heavy one-stop-shop for sales teams and group scheduling, this is a good solution for you.

Pricing: Pricing available on request

11. TimeTrade

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TimeTrade is a group scheduling tool that’s mobile-optimized, and you can match clients to employees and services. Additionally, the tool allows you to enable video calling for appointments, and you can connect TimeTrade to your CRM to facilitate easy process flow.

With most mobile device users claiming to never leave home without their phone, you can safely say that one of the best ways to automate group scheduling would be through their favorite device.

Notifications are easily enabled for both you and your customers. You can set your own rules for meeting design and availability, and even check out your analytics using this tool.

Pricing: Pricing available on request

12. Cogsworth

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Cogsworth is a scheduling service with a focus on smooth customer experience that integrates with Office 365 and Google Calendar. It’s customizable based on location, availability, and services provided.

Through a step-by-step question process, you can schedule your appointments. You’ll have to input:

• What type of meeting you want (and how long)
• With whom you want to meet
• A time zone, date, and time
• Your name
• Your phone number
• Your email
• Confirm your meeting

You can orchestrate appointment buffers and time zones into your calendar, send out notifications, translate text, and make sure your calendar embeds into your website.

Pricing: $9/month (Solo); $29/month (Upstart); $69/month (Power)

13. Skedify

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Skedify is a solid option if you have a large organization with vast, complicated scheduling needs. It’s pretty good for teams or franchises because you can add a certain teams’ available time and sync individual calendars within the master calendar.

It allows you to choose:

• The location of your meeting
• The time
• The people who should attend

Skedify offers plenty of integrations — it allows you to assign tasks and track customer experience, while adhering to necessary security measures.

It’s also a good choice for working in complex situations. For example, if one client has more than 100 franchises, you can schedule a meeting with any of them directly from the website. Another great perk is that you can build a custom sync with HubSpot that works super smoothly.

Pricing: Pricing available upon request

14. Bookeo

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Bookeo is a booking system and scheduling app that allows you to schedule appointments and meetings. While it’s designed to function as a reservation platform for small businesses, the tool allows you to provide a self-scheduling link to prospects and customers using their advanced scheduling feature.

The app syncs with Google Calendar, iCloud, Outlook, and Office 365. It also gives you the ability to create recurring bookings. If you and your client would like to speak every week, this would be the app for you. It also allows you to embed an user-friendly appointment scheduler on your website, with support to include multiple sales reps and staff members.

You can sync your Bookeo appointments to Sales Hub using PieSync. This makes it easy to turn your appointments into deals you can nurture.

Pricing: $14.95/month (Solo); $29.95 (Small, 3 users); $39.95 (Standard, 20 users); $79.95 (Large, 40 users)

15. Front Scheduling

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Front Scheduling is included in the Front suite of sales productivity tools. While Front doesn’t have a web page dedicated to the tool, it’s written a useful blog post that guides you through the process of using the app’s built-in meeting scheduler.

Front Scheduling offers plenty of the same operational abilities as many other apps in this list — displaying your calendar to respondents, creating events and notifications, providing meeting templates, and offering poll generation.

This tool also integrates with Google Workspace (formerly G Suite) and Zoom.

Pricing: $19/user/month (Starter); $49/user/month (Prime); $99/user/month (Enterprise)

16. Calendly

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Calendly is a well-known scheduling app. It has a very simple and aesthetically pleasing interface. It’s user-friendly and offers cross-software compatibility, making it a popular choice for external clients. It connects with Outlook, Microsoft Office 365, iOS Calendar, and Google Calendar.

To use the tool, you simply enter your availability into Calendly, which then provides you a link to your calendar. When communicating with people you need to set up a meeting with, just send them your link, and it will show them times you are available.

They can then choose a meeting name, time, length, and location. This will generate a meeting on your calendar, and a notification will be sent to remind you and your invitees before the meeting begins.

Pricing: Free; $8/user/month (Premium); $12/user/month (Pro)

17. OnceHub ScheduleOnce

Built by OnceHub, ScheduleOnce is a tool that sales teams can use to schedule meetings. It prioritizes creating an easy connection between your companies’ prospects and sales team, so that those prospects feed directly into the flywheel.

It’s easily embedded into your website, marketing, and email marketing campaigns — so rather than merely allowing for lead capture, your prospect can immediately schedule from their first point of contact.

It then automatically distributes the meeting information to the appropriate team members. These events will be synchronized across all of the participants’ calendars.

Pricing: Free; $9/user/month (Teams, minimum 3 users); Custom (Enterprise)

18. Acuity Scheduling

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The functionality of Acuity Scheduling is wide-ranging, but the more you pay, the more you get out of the service.

All paid plans are compatible with Google Workspace, Office 365, Exchange, and Outlook. Video conferencing is emphasized as well, so Zoom, GoToMeeting, and Join.me are integrated.

The tool isn’t simply for embedding a scheduler into your site, although it does allow you to do that. It also enables you to control invoicing, accounting, payments, and mass emailing. Your clients can see your schedule and book their own time to see you. The easy access makes it simpler to reschedule and pay you online.

Pricing: $14/month (Emerging); $23/month (Growing); $45/month (Powerhouse)

19. Rallly (Web)

Rallly is one of the best options for those who worry about their private information being exposed.

It does have drawbacks, however — such as a lack of widespread email integration, the inability to choose times, and a general lack of deep customization capabilities.

Like many of the other apps and plugins on this list, Rallly is poll-based. But unlike the others, Rallly allows its poll respondents to retain their anonymity — even if they decide to engage in the discussion portion. After you create your poll, you can invite people by sharing the link or emailing them.

Pricing: Free

20. FreeBusy

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FreeBusy is often a favorite option for B2B companies, specifically because it integrates with so many different services. It operates as a Chrome extension or plugin for Outlook email.

Here are the calendars it supports:

• Outlook
• Oracle
• Microsoft Exchange
• Office 365
• OwnCloud
• Salesforce
• Facebook
• Google
• IBM Verse
• iCloud
• Yahoo
• Zimbra

When you sign up, you get a unique URL that hosts your calendar. You can send that link to people who want to schedule with you, and they can sign up on your page — or you can add participants to a meeting you create and offer one of your available times.

If that doesn’t work, they can reference your URL. You can also include buffer times around your meetings, so you’re not rushed. Additionally, you’re able to restrict certain individuals from requesting meeting times.

Pricing: Free; $4/user/month (Professional); $12/user/month (Business); $20/user/month (Enterprise)

21. Vyte.in

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Vyte.in is a scheduler that works best with iOS. It’s a poll-based system that lets users vote on suggested meeting times and dates once they receive an email from you with the information.

Vyte.in remembers respondent’s availability and then suggests meeting times to you. It records your meeting time in your calendar once everyone agrees on the details. Of course, respondents can also just look at your calendar with the custom URL Vyte.in generates.

The Pro plan is where it really shines — Pro allows you to build in buffers (much like FreeBusy) between meetings and prevents you from overbooking yourself by enabling you to write down dates even if they’re tentative.

Pricing: Free; $8/user/month (Pro); Custom (Enterprise)

22. Meetin.gs

Meetin.gs is a personal scheduler that is compatible with Google Workspace and Office 365. It works best via mobile devices that operate on Android and iOS. Like many other applications, it allows you to make your own page — with a unique URL you can send out — devoted to your calendar. You can customize the length, location, and style of meeting you want, then send out invitations.

This app allows the user to see all of their meetings on a timeline and takes agenda or meeting notes within the application for everyone to access. The crowd-sourcing and sharing feature make it easy to pass notes or agendas to your employers or employees.

Pricing: $12/user/month (Pro Monthly); $129/user/month (Pro Yearly)

23. X.ai

X.ai is debatably one of the most unique apps in this list, as it’s run entirely by artificial intelligence. Once again, if privacy is your concern, this may not be the service for you, but if you prefer efficiency, this is a good option.

It’s compatible with Google apps, Okta, and Outlook. When you register your account, you allow access to all of your pertinent information — calendar, contacts, email, and more.

When you set up an event, email the invitee and CC your bot’s email address, which will be given to you as you set up. In the email, you write down the bot’s name and then the event instructions. If further clarification is needed, the bot can email the invitee with your schedule availability and can hash out the details from there. Once a meeting is agreed upon, an invite will be sent to all involved parties.

Pricing: Free; $8/month (Individual); $12/user/month (Team)

Use a Group Scheduling Tool to Grow Better

Ultimately, the options are endless for group scheduling tools. The choice is up to you which one fits your personal workflow. Whether you value privacy, efficiency, or transparency, any one of these services would be worth investigating for your business. With the tools listed above, you can create a scheduling workflow that improves your sales process, allowing you to exceed quotas and delight your customers.

Editor’s note: This post was originally published in June 2020 and has been updated for comprehensiveness.

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Earn Press Coverage for Your Brand in 5 Steps [Case Study]

In this post, Domenica shows you how her team at Fractl earned top-tier press coverage and backlinks for a client in five simple steps, and how you can apply these same steps to your own brand’s content.

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The 24 Best Live Chat Software & Services of the Year

These days, companies can offer customer service via a multitude of channels. But which channels are most likely to help you increase customer satisfaction?

Well, the customer satisfaction rate for live chat is 85%, making it a pretty compelling place to start

That’s because live chat allows you to interact with website visitors and customers in real-time when they’re already engaged. Meaning, customers get the answers and support they want and need on their time. And as a result, you can increase customer satisfaction which directly contributes to customer loyalty and retention (a.k.a. revenue). 

Not to mention, live chat tools integrate with CRM platforms, like HubSpot, and sales software, such as Sales Hub. These native integrations keep all contact records, conversations, transcripts, and data in a central location so your sales org has a single source of truth when it comes to your customers. 

To help you select the right tool for your team, website, and customers, here are 24 of the best live chat software and services.

1. HubSpot Live Chat

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Key features: Collaborative, customizable, automated, flexible, and easy-to-use.

Pro Tip: Install free live chat software on your website to start communicating with your visitors in real-time in just minutes.  

Connect with your website visitors in real-time quickly with HubSpot’s customizable live chat and chatbot builder that requires no code. Create welcome messages that appear on your web pages to target your business’s unique visitors when they’re already engaged on your site — this will help you increase the chances of a conversion.  

Live chat conversations with visitors are saved to the Conversations Inbox and the visitor’s Contact Timeline for easy record-keeping.  Streamline live chat conversations by responding to your visitors from the Conversations Inbox — you can also schedule meetings, place calls, send emails, or plan follow-up messages via this Inbox.

Customize the look of your live chat widget so it matches your branding and website. Receive notifications about incoming chats via Slack, and respond to those messages over Slack (by using HubSpot’s Slack integration). 

Lastly, use this tool to add a chatbot that can qualify leads, answer FAQs, and book meetings for you to save you time. These chatbots can conduct personalized conversations with visitors by pulling contact information from your HubSpot Contact Database. 

2. Intercom

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Key features: Smart routing and lead qualification.

Intercom’s chat software is specifically for sales teams. You can route leads to specific reps, continue messaging via email, and target contacts by browsing behavior. Plus, it integrates with other business tools such as Slack, Zoom, and HubSpot.

As a conversational relationship platform that offers both live chat and chatbots, Intercom focuses on lead generation, customer engagement, and customer support. The tool has smart routing and lead qualification and it uses chatbots to automatically qualify leads 24/7, route them to sales reps, and book demos when your team isn’t online.

Additionally, personalize content, introduce products, segment customers, and trigger outbound emails based on the web page the visitor is on and what they’re doing.

Intercom also has smart automation and self-service. If a customer is looking for support, they can click on the chat and search for articles in the “Help Center” located directly in the chat. Not only does this improve user experience, but it also helps your agents spend more time with customers who need in-depth assistance.

3. LiveChat

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Key features: Message sneak-peeks and multi-website chat.

LiveChat turns your website visitors into qualified leads. Key features of LiveChat include chat transcripts and archives, multilingual chat, software integrations (including HubSpot), and report creation.

Manage your team with ease by keeping track of your sales or customer service team performance. The extended report features include “chat tags” which give you well-rounded data so you can make informed decisions.

A few more unique characteristics of LiveChat include message sneak-peeks, ticket forms, and the ability to chat on multiple websites.

Message sneak-peeks allow sales reps to see what customers are typing before they send the message. This gives them more time to develop a response or research an answer for prospects.

Ticket forms exist when employees are offline, so you don’t lose those prospects on your site. Additionally, each live chat begins with a custom, pre-chat survey asking customers for their email, order ID, and any other crucial information so reps have it from the get-go.

4. Pure Chat

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Key features: Comprehensive free plan and multi-website chat.

With PureChat, you can get started for free with unlimited chats and historical chat transcripts. It can be customized to fit your brand and allows canned responses so you can quickly reply to visitors.

PureChat is a great option because the free chat plan is comprehensive. It offers unlimited chats and transcripts, advanced customization, integrations with your CRM, chat alerts, canned responses, visitor information, and chat notifications.

However, the tool’s free plans don’t include tracking or analytics. For advanced teams, the Growth or Pro plans offer real-time analytics, visitor tracking, and comprehensive account statistics and reports.

Additionally, with paid plans you get more operators and it can integrate with multiple websites. Plus, PureChat integrates with software like HubSpot, Infusionsoft, and Axosoft.

5. LiveHelpNow

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Key features: Social integration and smart automation.

LiveHelpNow offers a full live chat suite and help desk system to enable customer service agents. It’s easy to set up, and there are advanced customization features so you can tailor your workspace to your needs.

Another great feature is that this software supports multiple brands at no extra cost or hassle, making it ideal for call centers and partner relationships. In addition, save an unlimited number of canned messages for common issues, allowing your reps to respond to customers quickly and cohesively.

LiveHelpNow is also a great choice for managers due to its vast amount of monitoring and coaching features. Routing and round-robin assignment features save time by eliminating admin work or escalation. In addition, you can monitor and score agents in real-time.

LiveHelpNow’s patented Whisper Technology even allows you to send coaching suggestions during a chat without the customer being any wiser. The logistics and training of service reps don’t get much easier than that.

Not only does this platform offer live chat, but customer service reps can take advantage of SMS messaging, support tickets, self-service features such as internal and external knowledge bases, and call management software.

You’ll be able to integrate with other software such as HubSpot and Salesforce as well as connect to video conferencing software for remote assistance.

6. Acquire.io

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Key features: Screen share and smart suggestions.

Acquire is a multi-channel messaging platform featuring co-browse and live chat. Bots help onboard new customers and answer common questions quickly, live chat makes it easy to deliver fast, personalized support, and profile management allows you to escalate certain customer conversations.

Acquire differs from other live chat software with its screen share options on desktop and mobile. With “Co-Browsing,” sales teams can improve prospect conversations and reduce friction in the sales process.

Additionally, you can use an automated or canned message to answer common questions. With smart suggestions, Acquire’s artificial intelligence recognizes specific words and auto-suggests responses. This will send auto-replies to common customer questions without involving your team.

Two unique elements of Acquire are the note and multilingual features. With the chat notes, your team can privately leave critical information about conversations for teammates to expedite resolution time. Lastly, Acquire will automatically detect and translate your customer’s language, so you can converse in their preferred language.

7. Drift

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Key features: VIP targeting and meetings.

Drift is a chat software that allows you to automate portions of the chat process. Use the LeadBot to qualify leads, help book meetings, and convert prospects faster.

Uniquely, you can use highly-personalized messages targeted to specific accounts or individuals, increasing engagement and responses.

For instance, your sales reps should be informed when a VIP account visits your website. When VIP target accounts arrive, they’re greeted with an automated, personalized message from their account owner or sales rep. Then, your sales rep will get a notification that one of their accounts is currently on your website.

How will Drift know when your target accounts are on your website? Well, by integrating with HubSpot, Salesforce, or Marketo, your list of accounts and contacts will be automatically tracked.

When a VIP account arrives on your site, either your sales reps can book meetings or the automated LeadBot can. It uses Drift Playbooks and routing to find the ideal sales rep or account owner for your customer.

8. SnapEngage

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Key features: Omni-channel chat solution and HIPAA compliance.

SnapEngage integrates with a variety of CRM databases and chats can be managed from many channels (e.g., Facebook Messenger, WeChat, and Tweet-to-Chat via Hootsuite). A unique feature of SnapEngage is that the tool is HIPAA compliant, so it’s secure for medical businesses that handle patient information.

As an omni-channel solution, your sales reps can engage with prospects right where they are. The chat integrates with your CRM and offers custom workflow mapping, creating an efficient, high-quality experience for your sales workflow.

Distinctly, SnapEngage has implementation specialists who guide you through the setup process and ensure your chat is up and running quickly. Specialists will help with account setup, integration, and admin trainings, and optimize your chat sales initiatives. Additionally, the chatbot can answer common questions and take visitor information to ensure you don’t miss out on a sale.

9. Olark

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Key features: Customizable forms and powerful add-ons.

Olark helps you customize chat messages by looking at which page an individual has viewed and by pulling up any past conversations (assuming they chatted before).

Add the chat tool to specific pages and it can automatically send a targeted chat message based on the page the visitor is viewing. Plus, it integrates with popular business software and platforms including HubSpot, Google Analytics, and Salesforce.

Additionally, Olark collects information from visitors before a chat begins providing your sales reps with the context needed to have a productive conversation. Customize the information gathered during pre-chat as well with unique details such as name, email, team size, product preferences, or problem.

If you’re managing a larger team, Olark can distribute chats, monitor team performance, and create shortcuts for a shared database of canned responses.

Although Olark is affordable, they also offer a la carte items that you can add to your plan with flexible subscriptions. These can quickly add up and inflate the overall cost. Named “Power Ups,” these add-ons include visitor screen-sharing, live chat translation, and visitor insights.

With visitor insights, you can score leads, prioritize chats, and personalize your sales approach with information gathered from public social media pages and company websites.

10. Bold360

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Key features: AI-powered and self-service options.

Bold360 is another provider that integrates AI with the chat process. Plus, you can increase customer acquisition with personalized engagement.

This software focuses on tightly integrating artificial intelligence and live-agent software for a simple, customer engagement solution. The goal is to provide employees all the information they need to help customers get immediate and personalized results.

Bold360 offers several live chat solutions including conversational AI, live chat, proactive AI, and omni-channel engagement. Additionally, Bold360 identifies opportunities to improve customer outcomes.

11. LivePerson

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Key features: Multichannel messaging and AI-powered conversations.

This chat software helps you reach prospects through channels like SMS, WhatsApp, and Facebook Messenger. It also offers a tool called BotStudio that simplifies bot creation with pre-built templates. With AI-powered conversations, consumers can easily buy products and get answers to questions in their preferred messaging channel.

According to LivePerson, nearly 70% of consumer inquiries can be automated. With this live chat tool, you can build, manage, and optimize chatbots that are scalable for your business. LivePerson also offers industry-specific chatbot templates that are easy to implement and customize. Then, when a prospect uses your chat, they’ll trigger the bot responses for a seamless conversation.

Additionally, your sales reps can answer questions, give advice, and help prospects understand their options before making a purchase. Live chat can expedite the process and get prospects through the sales cycle faster.

12. Zendesk Chat

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Key features: Robust chat analytics and shortcuts.

Zendesk Chat is a customizable chat tool that integrates directly with Zendesk and other popular software. It offers robust chat analytics to help sales teams identify issues and evaluate agent performance.

Zendesk has features including automated triggers, pre-chat and offline forms, chatbots, chat routing, tags, shortcuts, and analytics.

With automated triggers, you can send targeted and behavior-based messages to prospects. For example, if someone is on your pricing page, they’re further along in the buyer’s journey.

An automated chat can then appear and help them in their decision-making process. During offline hours you can use pre-chat and offline forms to ensure these customers can still contact you while you’re away.

Reps can use Zendesk as a one-stop-shop for conversations, since you can link multiple profiles from Facebook, Twitter, and LINE (a communication app), funneling all conversations into one location.

Additionally, with analytics, you can track your chat volume, monitor rep productivity, and analyze metrics to anticipate customer needs. Plus, you can measure how often your customers convert using metrics like “making a purchase” or “leaving feedback.”

Lastly, Zendesk can integrate with many CMS tools including HubSpot’s CMS Hub, WordPress, Drupal, Wix, and Squarespace.

13. ClickDesk

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Key features: Video and voice chat software.

A unique feature of ClickDesk is that it includes voice and video chat. Visitors can even initiate a chat from interactive maps. Additionally, pre-chat surveys help you gather valuable contact information.

With video and voice chat, sales reps can close deals faster by quickly jumping on exploratory calls and by conducting product demos. Reps can be on simultaneous chats, and even collaborate on a three-way conference with reps and visitors.

ClickDesk is a great option for sales teams because you can transfer chats to other agents. For example, if a visitor is speaking to a sales rep that specializes in partner relationships as opposed to individual customers, they can transfer the conversation if needed.

Additionally, ClickDesk offers daily and weekly chat statistics, so you can track how many chats were missed while offline, how much coverage your live chat is offering, and the average duration and length of chats in a given time period. Analyzing your chat statistics will give you insight into improved performance.

ClickDesk also offers personalized greetings, unlimited websites, and a translation feature in over 90 languages.

14. Userlike

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Key features: Operator routing and scalability.

Userlike helps salespeople create personalized conversations and allows contacts to provide feedback on service and features. When a person provides their email address, the chat tool turns this anonymous data into a contact with a smart profile.

Additionally, website visitors can choose which department they want to talk to (sales or service) and which skills they need a representative to have. For example, if you own a music store, someone could choose a sales rep who has experience teaching guitar.

If a visitor has been to your site before and has chatted with someone they like, Userlike will favor that sales rep and assign the chat to them. These personalized options allow visitors to get connected to the best representative for their needs quickly.

No matter how smart the chat routing is, a conversation may still need to be manually forwarded. Userlike does offer that option too — with transcripts included — so prospects won’t have to repeat their problems.

Userlike also offers screen share and the ability to chat with multiple prospects at once. Plus, it integrates with CRMs and other tools including HubSpot, Slack, Salesforce, Squarespace, and Mailchimp.

15. Smartsupp

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Key feature: Video recording.

A unique feature of Smartsupp is its live chat with video recording. It integrates with platforms like WordPress and Shopify and you can track the impact of your chat conversations with Google Analytics.

With the live video recording, sales reps can see the movement of each visitor on your website, giving them a better understanding of customer behavior and friction points in the sales process.

Although there’s a free plan, the paid plans provide more robust features including unlimited shortcuts, greater customization, automated messages, chat transfer, and detailed analytics.

With automated messages, you can engage with visitors at the right moment and create personalized messages that are specific to your business.

16. Zoho Desk

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Key features: Customizable and automated responses.

Zoho Desk is a live chat software that helps automate the easier parts of customer conversation. Although Zoho Desk is typically used for customer service, the live chat software can make your sales reps’ lives easier.

For example, you can set assignment rules for each channel, so reps work more efficiently and customer interactions are seamless. Plus, it automates the slower parts of the process, including gathering contact information and responding to common questions with canned responses.

Additionally, Zoho Desk offers feedback forms within the chat widget, allowing prospects to let you know if they’ve found the responses helpful or not. Gaining this insight can help you improve the sales process and remove friction from all points of contact.

17. Chaport

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Key features: Multichannel and group chats.

Chaport can help your sales team generate leads, reduce cart abandonment, and build brand loyalty. Collect visitor emails and connect with customers whenever. And if you aren’t the right person to talk to, forward the message to a colleague or start a group chat. You won’t miss a sales opportunity.

Plus, you can send personalized greetings and auto-invitations based on specific rules. For example, if a customer is on the checkout page, you can send an automated message to help them make the purchase.

Additionally, your sales reps can answer questions from all communication channels in one place. You can connect with customers on Facebook, live chat, or Telegram in the Chaport dashboard.

Chaport can integrate with your CRM or any app, including Facebook, HubSpot, Slack, Salesforce, Mailchimp, and Google Suite.

18. Freshchat

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Key features: Multichannel and priority inbox.

Freshchat is a live chat software by Freshworks that provides conversational, proactive, and automated one-on-one messaging to improve your sales performance.

Freshchat is largely focused on conversions and reaching the right prospects at the right time. It offers triggered messages which encourage completing a purchase, email campaigns that drive action after they’ve engaged with your brand, and chatbots that qualify leads.

Additionally, reps can gain insight into prospects including their navigation path, behavior on your site, and the language they speak. This will create more natural conversations that will resonate with your target audience.

Two great features are the omni-channel and priority inbox capabilities. With omni-channel chat, you can talk to your prospects from any channel in one place. Plus, you can filter messages based on the response time and priority inboxing will help your reps manage their workflow.

19. Nextiva

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Key feature: Collaborative and internal chat.

Nextiva is a cloud-based communication company that offers telephone and technology services including live chat.

Its key features include shortcuts, availability (setting business hours and an offline form for after hours), and unlimited chat history to reference conversations and improve user experience.

Additionally, Nextiva offers an internal chat. Sales reps can collaborate on certain cases, increasing efficiency and close rates. Your team can send broadcast messages to their groups or teams regarding a prospect. Lastly, Nextiva offers detailed reports so managers can review chat transcripts, monitor rep performance, and track website visitors.

20. Chatra

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Key features: Group chat and automated messages.

Chatra offers live chat software so your reps can answer questions, alleviate concerns, and build relationships with prospects. During a chat, sales reps can cross-sell, upsell, and increase the number of deals closed.

Features include group chats, read receipts, automated messages, and multilingual chat options. With the group chat feature, sales reps can speak with multiple decision-makers and include other representatives or managers in conversations if necessary. This avoids the delay of emailing people individually and setting up separate meetings.

Plus, with automated messages, you can target customers on the checkout page to avoid abandoned carts. This helps sales reps reduce friction at every touch point.

21. Tawk.to

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Key features: Video and voice chat and screen sharing.

Tawk.to is a completely free live chat software. It offers common features including automated messaging, widget customizations, reporting, multilingual chat, shortcuts, and integrations (with sites like WordPress, Joomla, and Magento).

With the group chat feature, sales reps can speak with all decision-makers and other reps if needed without ever leaving the tool. Plus, they can jump on a quick video chat and share their screen, moving the sales process further along more efficiently.

Additionally, Tawk.to comes with detailed reporting including engagement tracking and sentiment analysis which designates live chat interactions into positive or negative categories. Also, with an unlimited history of chats and chat tags, you can filter chats to see chat volume and response time.

22. Help Crunch

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Key features: Chat transcripts and rating.

Help Crunch is a live chat software that will help sales reps pre-qualify leads by automatically collecting contact information and messages. The software is gathering leads for your reps 24/7, so they can spend more time having productive conversations.

Help Crunch can track user behavior, save responses, gather live visitor profiles (including behavioral data), and keep chat transcripts. These chat transcripts provide data on the best ways to communicate with prospects via chat — in other words, your sales can learn from transcripts in a similar way to how they’d learn from call recordings.

Once reps and managers analyze what works and what doesn’t, you can create saved responses — or canned responses — which are designed to save your reps time while responding to FAQs. Additionally, automatically send a chat rating to visitors after closing a conversation for insight into your live chat experience.

23. iAdvize

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Key features: On-demand experts, tailor-made support.

iAdvize helps companies set up a profitable and scalable conversational strategy. It offers a 25,000 on-demand expert community and 24/7, paid-to-deliver, and authentic advice. The intelligent features (targeting engine, chatbot builder) automate engagement campaigns and qualify conversations.

The unified messaging interface allows agents and experts to handle customer queries via chat, call, video in one single conversation thread, whether the conversation started on your website, your app, or social media.

The tool’s mirroring feature, as well as the available integrations with market-leading CRMs and APIs, provide your agents with a rich context for a personalized one-to-one customer experience.

Additionally, iAdvize has advanced reporting capabilities to help you track more than 150 KPIs and closely monitor your conversion and satisfaction rates, sales, and more. A dedicated Customer Success Manager supports you to build your conversational strategy, ensure its success, and provide you with valuable insights, too. 

24. Tidio

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Key features: Chatbots and automation.

Tidio Live Chat is an all-in-one live chat tool designed for ecommerce businesses looking to interact with their website visitors, generate leads, and increase sales.

One of its most notable features is its chatbots that help companies uncover the needs and wants of their customers and deliver them solutions in real-time. And, all customer responses arrive in a single, organized inbox to help support agents address these issues collaboratively.

Tidio also offers several automation features. For example, you can set up automatic responses that are triggered by certain conditions or events, like when a customer visits a page on your website twice. This personalizes the website experience and removes friction from the customer journey.

Tidio can be integrated with a wide range of tools and platforms as well. You can use it with tools like Shopify and WordPress for a seamless backend experience for your team.

Grow Better With Live Chat

Live chat software allows salespeople to engage with website visitors in real-time, answer their questions, and hopefully move them to the next stage of the sales process. 

Editor’s note: This post was originally published in February 2019 and has been updated for comprehensiveness.

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The Sales Manager's Guide to Performance Reviews [Free Template]

In this rapidly changing sales environment, there is often a stark disconnect between what management sees or does and what reps want and need.

While sales productivity is a key revenue driver, higher activity volume doesn’t always mean that key metrics like close rate or average selling price go up.

Without regularly reviewing productivity, time management, and communication skills, there’s no tangible way for a manager to monitor and improve sales success.

In this article, you can expect:

• A breakdown of sales performance review ratings
• Performance review phrases for those ratings
• A performance evaluation template
• What to look for in a rep’s self-assessment

Sales Performance Review Ratings

Performance reviews are personal experiences, and the feedback you give should accurately reflect the performance of each rep you’re reviewing. If you have a large team, it can be easy to slip into providing similar feedback to each person.

Here are a few phrases you can use as a starting point when forming your feedback. They’re broken down by the following performance review ratings:

1. Does not meet expectations
2. Needs improvement
3. Meets expectations
4. Occasionally exceeds expectations
5. Consistently exceeds expectations

Performance Review Phrases

These phrases help managers support a numerical score with explanations of what the rep is doing well and what they can improve.

1. Does Not Meet Expectations

Does the rep struggle to fill their pipeline and make sales? Do they make excuses for their poor performance?

If the rep isn’t meeting the expectations of their role, use these phrases to communicate why they’re receiving a rating of “Does not meet expectations.”

• Doesn’t understand the core product offerings of [X company]
• Conducts little to no research on a prospect before a call
• Provides limited data/information in the CRM
• Unwilling to improve their presentation skills

2. Needs Improvement

A rep might be close to meeting expectations but still has some aspects of their job that they need to work on. Maybe they’re a new rep who’s close to hitting their quota but is just shy each month. Or they’re a more tenured rep who’s struggling to apply a new sales approach to their workflow.

Clearly identifying these areas for improvement in the performance review will provide points to work on during any coaching or training after the performance review.

• Struggles to overcome objections
• Lacks confidence when negotiating
• Relies too heavily on discounts, resulting in lower margins
• Prospecting and presentation skills are improving, but they rarely hit their monthly quota

3. Meets Expectations

This employee checks all the boxes and they consistently perform at or above the expected performance level. They consistently hit their quota each month.

Here are some positive phrases you can use to let them know they’re doing an excellent job.

• Sets reasonable goals and hits those goals each month
• Takes extra care to fully understand the prospect’s challenges and priorities, and provides them with a holistic solution
• Consistently meets their quota
• Enters prospect and deal information into the CRM in a timely manner, and includes thorough notes so the deal’s status is clear to the team and management

4. Occasionally Exceeds Expectations

A rep might be exceeding quota more and more often but falls short of your top performers and does not yet have confidence to be a leader on the team. This individual has a lot of potential and needs some coaching to perform even better:

• Was X% above the target [X period, quarter]
• Exceeded quota X out of X sales [X%]
• Demonstrates initiative and is eager to learn and apply new sales techniques

5. Consistently Exceeds Expectations

Reps who exceed expectations are those that go above and beyond the requirements of their day-to-day role. They might take on additional projects, train other reps, or tackle their team’s reporting.

If your rep is consistently exceeding expectations, provide clear feedback so they know they’re doing outstanding work.

• Introduced a new approach for pipeline management that was X% more effective than the previous process
• Goes above and beyond to handle objections and provide value each call
• Is a leader on the team and helps fellow sales reps with call shadowing and feedback sessions
• Consistently exceeds their quota, and was X% above the target in [X period, quarter]

Performance Evaluation Template

HubSpot and InsideSales.com have created this quarterly sales rep review and coaching template to help managers measure and coach their inside sales reps to consistently improve performance each quarter.

The template includes:

• A template for manager review and rep self-review
• The key activities/skills of top sales reps
• A template to monitor areas of focus for the next review

Grab your copy of this template and start coaching your reps towards higher output and revenue for your business today.

Self-Assessment Example for a Salesperson

You should also consider having each sales rep write up a self-assessment. Doing so allows the rep to reflect on their performance in their own words, giving you insight into how they think about their role, their place on the team, and their accomplishments/challenges. You might also look to see how aligned your perspectives are with those of the rep, which could clue you in to your alignment in a broader sense.

A good self-assessment includes:

• Specific examples of accomplishments and contributions to the team
• Performance outlined in concrete numbers
• An explanation of the “why” they performed the way they did
• Details on how they see themselves growing

These items will indicate how conscientious the rep is of their performance and whether their approach is working. It will also give you context around how to coach them toward success.

Here are some sample answers from a self-assessment that might indicate when a salesperson is “occasionally exceeding expectations”:

This employee measured themselves against team-wide benchmarks and the duties described in their job description.

As a new BDR on the team, my role is to generate qualified leads for our pipeline with a goal of 5-7 SQLs per month. In my first quarter on the team, I’ve met and exceeded this threshold with an average of 9 SQLs per month at a 25% lower number of touches per prospect than the team-wide average. I am pleased with this performance, especially in the context of the closing ratio that these SQLs maintained. This indicates to me that I am prospecting effectively, targeting the right opportunities, and managing my time well throughout the process. I’m interested in increasing my performance in line with company expectations into the coming year.

This employee used the STAR method to describe some of their accomplishments on the way to achieving a certain result.

During my performance review last quarter, we identified a lackadaisical approach to the CRM being one of my biggest limiting habits. I heard that feedback loud and clear and re-operationalized my use of our CRM, which is one of the reasons why I was able to meet and exceed my personal revenue targets by 11% with a closing rate higher than the team-wide average. With thorough organization and note-taking, I was able to shorten my time to close, a big contributor to my higher performance since last quarter. In addition, I was able to disseminate some of my new processes to other SDRs, increasing better CRM adoption across the wider team. With that said, I am still not among our highest performers, and I could improve my attention to detail and response times.

Conducting Specific, Actionable Performance Reviews for Your team

Performance reviews are a personal process and should be conducted as such. Use this guide and template to customize your performance review process and ensure your reps have everything they need to succeed (and help you succeed, too).

One of the best ways to ensure you’re providing fair, actionable advice that’s even across all of your team members is by operationalizing the process, using a template, and understanding what their next steps are.

Editor’s note: This post was originally published in October 2016 and has been updated for comprehensiveness.

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The 3 Layers of Sales Questions and How to Use Them

Lasagna. It’s a family favorite that’s full of flavors. With each layer of pasta, sauce, and cheese you uncover more deliciousness than the layer before.

But what’s all that got to do with selling to people? I’m glad you asked.

See, your prospects are a lot like lasagna. They too have layers that you as the salesperson must understand to best solve their problems.

To do this, we use a concept called layered questions. There are three distinct layers of questions that correspond with the needs your prospect has:

• First Layer Questions
• Second Layer Questions
• Third Layer Questions

In this post, inspired by the book The Science of Selling, we’ll talk about what makes each layer distinct from the next, the types of questions within each layer, and how to use these questions in conjunction with each other. And just like lasagna, I’ll keep the cheesiness at an all-time high. Let’s get started.

First-Layer Sales Questions

First-layer questions are preliminary questions that initiate a conversation by revealing thoughts, facts, behaviors, and situations. They are the foundation (like lasagna noodles) used to gain a basic understanding of a subject, so they’re the best questions to use when beginning conversations with buyers.

First-layer questions often answer the questions “what?” “who?” and “when?” In general terms. You won’t get many specifics here like names, firm dates, or complete strategies. Instead you might hear about departments involved and quarterly goals or deadlines.

I’ve found that the majority of salespeople I meet focus on asking first-layer questions, but that’s a missed opportunity.

First-layer questions only expose rudimentary information — they don’t provide a thorough understanding of the buyer. This limits the salesperson’s ability to customize the experience for those buyers.

You probably have several first-layer questions that you already use. But if you need more, check out the list below.

Examples of First-Layer Sales Questions

• What percentage of market share do you currently have?
• What are the requirements you have established for this project?
• What is your process for deciding which vendor you will choose?
• What is your budget for this project?
• How many other providers are you considering?
• What are your current assembly capabilities?
• When your organization considers an investment like this, who is involved in the decision process?
• When will your team migrate to the new product?

Second-Layer Sales Questions

After asking your first-layer questions, you should have a wealth of high-level information about your prospect’s situation. Now, it’s time to understand these big ideas in a bit more detail. It’s time to add the sauce.

I have discovered that these questions are what top salespeople ask more than any other. In fact, they are the key to asking meaningful follow-up questions.

Second-layer questions ask “why.” They encourage buyers to explain first-layer responses in more detail. These types of questions are vital because they prompt prospective customers to think through a thought, fact, behavior, or situation.

Since second-layer questions help us synthesize information, you’ll likely ask these questions without thinking much about it. Many second-layer questions simply ask customers to either assess or explain a first-level response.

Examples of Second-Level Sales Questions

• Why did the board decide to go in that direction?
• Would you ever consider investing in a product that did not include this feature?
• May I ask why you chose that vendor?
• Is aggregating your data in this manner what you would like to do moving forward?
• That sounds like it is very important to you. May I ask why?
• If you could change one thing about the training your end users receive, what would it be?
• Based on what we have discussed, does it make sense why so many companies are choosing to use our consultants?
• Why is it important to solve this concern right away?
• Do you believe that this issue is causing the lack of productivity you described?

Third-Level Sales Questions

As insightful as second-layer questions are, there is still one more level that goes even deeper. It is the most critical of all the levels of questions because it addresses buyers on an emotional and tactical level. When you leverage third-level questions, you’ll uncover information that will transform the entire sale.

Third-layer questions ask “how” and guide potential customers to their dominant buying motive – the emotional reasons why they would purchase your product or service. Two popular buying motives are the hope for gain and the fear of loss.

Regardless of the type of sale, buyers often become willing to purchase a product or service when they believe that doing so will move them closer to what they desire or further from what they fear losing. This is why third-level questions are so powerful: They help you understand how potential customers will benefit from investing in your product or service.

As buyers engage with your third-level questions, you’ll build rapport with them and they’ll begin to trust you — and for good reason. Third-level questions show that you’re empathetic, considerate, and helpful. These are the best questions to ask, just as cheese is the best part of lasagna.

Examples of Third-Level Sales Questions

• If we could reduce your costs as we have discussed, how would that positively affect your company’s profitability?
• If the problem you have described is not resolved, how will it impact your organization’s sales?
• This seems like a very important issue to you personally. May I ask what it would mean for you and those on your team if this issue is not resolved?
• If your end users were thoroughly trained and using this platform effectively, how could that increase company productivity?

The 3 Levels of Sales Questions Script

Here’s an example that demonstrates how first-, second-, and third-level questions work together in the context of a real sales scenario:

Salesperson: How efficient is your current equipment? [First-level question]

Buyer: It’s older equipment and not very efficient. In fact, I’ve been tasked with improving that, so any new equipment would need to make a difference in that area.

Salesperson: If you were to invest in the new equipment we’ve discussed, how would that impact efficiency levels? [Second-level question]

Buyer: Based on our conversation today, I would estimate that it should improve efficiency by around 6%.

Salesperson: How would that positively affect the business if efficiency improved by 6 percent? [Third-level question]

Buyer: Well … it would be a big deal. It would increase our profitability and help us fund our new growth initiatives.

Ask Layered Questions to Close the Deal

Organizing the questions you ask a prospect is a lot like making lasagna. You need to layer your questions just right so that your sales positioning aligns perfectly with their needs. When you ask meaningful questions in the right order you can influence your prospect’s buying decision. By embracing the model of first-, second-, and third-level questions, you’ll better understand your potential customers and close better deals.

Editor’s note: This post was originally published in November 2016 and has been updated for comprehensiveness.

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3 Vital Click-Based Signals for SEO: First, Long, & Last

This post shows you how to optimize for click signals to improve your SEO, regardless of how Google might use them as a ranking signal.

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The Key to Customer Centric Selling (& 12 Other Sales Methodologies), According to Sales Leaders

In life, there tends to be a “sweet spot” for just about anything — the perfect recipe for getting the most mileage out of any activity, engagement, or effort.

In sales, finding that “sweet spot” is a matter of identifying the sales methodology that best suits your business at a specific point in the sales lifecycle.

Figuring it out can be the difference between closing and losing a deal — so the burning question becomes, “Which one should I choose?” Well, this article should give you some clarity.

Let’s explore some popular sales methodologies and see some expert advice to help you implement the right one.

Unlike a sales process, a sales methodology usually doesn’t apply to the entire sales cycle. It tends to be relevant to one specific part — qualification, discovery, demo, and so on.

Another key difference between sales processes and sales methodologies has to do with specificity and individual business needs. Every organization should develop its own unique sales process based on its market, vertical, products, and industry position.

Since no two businesses are the same, a process that hits for one company could flop for another.

That’s not the case with sales methodologies. Different sales orgs can implement the same sales methodology and see similar success — no matter what their companies sell or how they function.

Take “The Challenger Sale” methodology — the third one listed below. Regardless of whether your business offers ERP implementation services to large enterprises or cooking supplies to local restaurants, your sales team could still see success from employing the methodology’s principles — like offering surprising insights and helping prospects navigate the buying process.

If you’re confused about which (or how many) methodologies you should use to help shape your sales efforts, don’t worry.

We’ve summarized twelve popular methodologies here. Let’s take a look

1. SPIN Selling

Neil Rackham popularized the SPIN sell in his book, SPIN Selling.

SPIN is an acronym for the four elements sale reps’s questions for prospects should revolve around: Situation, Problem, Implication, and Need-Payoff. These subjects often reveal buyer pain points and challenges and help sellers build rapport with their buyers.

• Situation questions aim to understand a prospect’s current situation — although reps should still do research before a call or meeting.
• Problem questions get to the heart of the prospect’s issue.
• Implication questions probe the prospect to think about the consequences of not solving the problem.
• Need-payoff questions prompt the prospect to consider how the situation would change if their problem was solved.

Here’s an example of the SPIN sell in the context of an executive recruitment services firm.

• “How does your current hiring process work?”
• “Do you find that you have trouble filling your senior leadership positions with quality candidates?”
• “If a leadership position goes unfilled, how does that affect the organization?”
• “If you were able to get a list of quality executive candidates, how would that help the HR department and the entire organization?”

Rather than explicitly telling prospects about a product or service’s value or potential impact, the goal of SPIN selling is to guide prospects to these realizations on their own.

2. N.E.A.T Selling

This qualification framework, developed by The Harris Consulting Group and Sales Hacker, was designed to replace standbys like BANT (Budget, Authority, Need, and Timeline) and ANUM (Authority, Need, Urgency, and Money).

The ‘N’ in N.E.A.T. stands for core needs. Rather than focusing on surface-level pain, this methodology’s creators urge salespeople to delve deeply into their prospect’s challenges. How will this product matter to them both as an individual and within the context of the organization?

‘E’ represents economic impact. Don’t simply present your solution’s ROI — help the buyer understand the economic impact they’re currently on track to realize versus the impact they’ll see if they make a change.

‘A’ is access to authority. You probably won’t get to speak with the CFO, but can your champion speak to the CFO on your behalf? And more importantly, will they?

’T’, or Timeline, refers to the compelling event forcing your prospect to make a decision. If there aren’t negative consequences to missing this date, it’s not a true deadline.

3. Conceptual Selling

Conceptual selling is founded on the idea that customers don’t buy a product or a service — they buy their concept of a solution the offering represents. With that in mind, founders Robert Miller and Stephen Heiman urge salespeople not to lead with a pitch — instead, they encourage sales reps to uncover the prospect’s concept of their product and understand their decision process.

The authors encourage salespeople to ask questions that fall into five categories:

• Confirmation questions reaffirm information.
• New information questions clarify the prospect’s concept of the product or service and explore what they’d like to achieve.
• Attitude questions seek to understand a prospect on a personal level, and discover their connection to the project.
• Commitment questions inquire after a prospect’s investment in the project.
• Basic issue questions raise potential problems.

This sales methodology places a heavy emphasis on listening, and divides the sales process into three stages: getting information, giving information, and getting commitment.

All transactions should be win-win for both the prospect and the salesperson. If the salesperson feels this is not the case, they should walk away from the deal.

4. SNAP Selling

SNAP selling is a sales methodology that aims to bring salespeople to the prospect’s level.

SNAP is an acronym that encompasses four directives for sellers:

• Keep it Simple.
• Be I(N)valuable.
• Always Align.
• Raise Priorities.

With these principles in mind, salespeople can more effectively reach busy prospects with valuable knowledge, connect what they’re selling with what’s most important to the potential client, and make it easy for them to buy.

And while most salespeople only think there’s one decision involved in a deal — whether the prospect buys or not — author Jill Konrath actually identifies three critical decisions.

The first is allowing access. The second is the choice to move away from the status quo, and the third is changing resources. With these mini decision milestones in mind, salespeople can more effectively keep deals on track.

5. Challenger Sale

Co-authors Matthew Dixon and Brent Adamson started “The Challenger Sale” by asserting that practically every B2B salesperson fits into one of five personas: relationship builders, hard workers, lone wolves, reactive problem solvers, and challengers.

According to Dixon and Adamson’s research, salespeople are almost evenly distributed among these profiles. However, the most successful were the challengers — by a wide margin. This one group represented 40% of the top-performing reps in the authors’ study.

So what makes challengers so effective at selling? They follow a teach-tailor-take control process.

First, they teach their prospects — not about the product or service in question, but about larger business problems, new ideas, and astute observations.

Next, they tailor their communications to their prospect.

Finally, they take control of the sale by not being afraid to push back on their customer, focusing more on the end goal rather than being liked. The Challenger sales methodology strives to impart the wisdom of the challenger to the other four types.

6. The Sandler System

The Sandler Selling System flips the script of the traditional sales process — to a certain extent. While sales has historically revolved around the idea that potential buyers should be pursued and convinced by sellers, the Sandler methodology states that both parties should be equally invested.

It prioritizes building mutual trust between both sides. Instead of acting as a typical salesperson, the rep acts as an advisor and asks questions to identify challenges in the qualification process.

Objections such as time or budget restraints often derail deals after a considerable amount of work has already been invested by both prospect and salesperson. But Sandler-trained reps strive to raise and assess the majority of obstacles in the qualification process.

If the rep discovers that their solution won’t truly address the potential client’s concerns, they won’t waste time convincing them that it actually does — they’ll simply abandon the process. Rather than the seller convincing the buyer to buy, the buyer is almost convincing the seller to sell.

7. MEDDIC

MEDDIC is a qualification process for complex and enterprise sales. The acronym stands for Metrics, Economic buyer, Decision criteria, Decision process, Identify pain, Champion.

To find the answers, ask yourself and your prospect:

• Metrics: What’s the economic impact of the situation?
• Economic buyer: Who controls the appropriate budget?
• Decision criteria: What are the formal evaluation criteria the organization is using to pick a vendor?
• Decision process: How will the organization pick a vendor? What are the specific stages?
• Identify pain: What is the trigger event and financial consequence of the problem?
• Champion: Who is selling on your behalf?

8. Solution Selling

Rather than selling specific products, salespeople leveraging solution selling lead with the benefits a custom solution can provide for the prospect. For example, a sales rep for a printing and design company could create a custom package of design services, signage, and business cards to fit the buyer’s needs.

This approach acknowledges buyers today are more informed and allows reps to meet prospects where they are. After all, it’s likely prospects have already researched your products and have a solid understanding of the offerings that suit them best.

With solution selling, sales reps identify prospect pain points and offer a customized mix of products to meet their needs.

9. Inbound Selling

Marketing and sales goals have become increasingly intertwined. Potential buyers interact with content the marketing team creates. They often research products on their own before interacting with sales.

The inbound sales methodology allows sales professionals to meet prospects where they are — whether that’s on Twitter or their company’s product pricing page.

Inbound sales analyzes page views, conversions, and social media interactions to personalize the buying process. By following an inbound approach, sales reps can focus on selling using a flywheel model instead of a traditional sales funnel.

As prospects make their way through the awareness, consideration, and decision stages of the buyer’s journey, there are four actions that are taken by inbound sales reps:

• Identify — Inbound sales reps prioritize active buyers, rather than passive ones. Active buyers have visited the company site, started a live chat, filled out a form, or reached out on Twitter.
• Connect — Inbound reps connect by reaching out to prospects with a personalized message through their blog, social media accounts, or in-person events. This personalization is based on the buyer’s role, interests, industry, or connections you have in common.
• Explore — In the exploratory phase, reps focus on rapport building and recap previous prospect conversations. This is when reps dive deeper into prospect’s challenges and goals, introduce products or services that might fit these goals, and create plans that fit buyer timelines and budgets.
• Advise — Finally, reps create and deliver a personalized sales presentation covering what they’ve learned about the prospect’s needs and the value and assistance your product or service can provide.

10. Target Account Selling

Target account selling rests on the idea that the process of picking the right prospects to engage with is the most crucial aspect of a sales process — that means paying careful attention to and conducting more extensive research during lead qualification and creating buyer personas.

This particular methodology can lean heavily on sales automation — resources that can help your sales organization identify traits that characterize prospects who will be most receptive to your solution and broader sales process.

The key point with this methodology is to significantly prioritize quality over quantity when it comes to pursuing leads and targeting accounts. It involves putting in extra legwork at the beginning of a sales process in the hope that it will lend itself to higher close rates and more efficient sales efforts down the line.

11. Command of the Sale

The Command of the Sale methodology involves selling with urgency, some degree of bravado, extensive product knowledge, and exceptional situational awareness — all aspects of sales that could be described as “commanding” in their own right.

The success of the methodology rests on a salesperson’s understanding of what a prospect hopes to achieve, the ways a prospect wants to create value for their business, how the rep’s solution — specifically — can make good on those elements, how the prospect measures success, and why the rep’s business stands out from its competition. 

With those bases covered, a salesperson operating within this methodology needs to be able to explicitly define how their solution suits their prospects problems, needs, and interests in a way their competition can’t — and that pitch has to be enough to warrant charging a premium for their company’s product or service.

12. Gap Selling

Gap Selling is a methodology rooted in highlighting the gap between where a prospect’s business currently stands and where they would like it to be. Its underlying premise rests on addressing problems as opposed to touting products.

With Gap Selling, reps put prospects first. They develop a deep, fundamental understanding of a potential customer’s business, issues, and — perhaps most importantly — goals. Then, they determine the best possible way to position their product or service as the most effective means of “filling those gaps.”

Developing that understanding means digging deep — pinning down the root causes for any trouble a prospect might be having. As you can assume, that kind of intense examination can be time-consuming, so this methodology best suits sales teams that have the time and flexibility to really take a holistic, thorough look at a prospect’s situation.

CustomerCentric Selling

In addition to the methodologies above, CustomerCentric selling can be a beneficial approach to implement.

CustomerCentric behavior hinges on eight tenets:

1. Converse situationally instead of making presentations.

Customer Centric selling rests on prioritizing empathy for the customer above all else. That means understanding where they’re coming from and the specific situations they might be dealing with. One-size-fits-all presentations aren’t personal enough. With this methodology, you need to be able to adapt and converse based on the customer’s individual needs and experiences.

2. Ask relevant questions instead of offering opinions.

Again, empathy is the operative concept with CustomerCentric selling. You want customers to know you’re listening, feel like you’re genuinely concerned with their best interest, and understand you’re thinking about solutions specific to their individual needs. If you’re dominating the conversation with opinions and not considering their perspective, you’re not engaging in CustomerCentric selling.

3. Focus on the solution instead of the relationship.

The key to CustomerCentric selling is to understand that your priority isn’t selling — it’s solving. The point of the whole process is to understand a specific situation for an individual customer and offer a fitting solution. If you can do that, a solid relationship should follow. But, simply building that relationship can’t be your main priority.

4. Target decision-makers instead of users.

Customer Centric selling is focused on how a product is used and what specific problems it can consistently solve. It’s less about the product’s features and more about what day-to-day use of it looks like. That kind of selling is tailored towards the people that can make vendor selections and free up unbudgeted funds for a full company as opposed to individual users who might be more interested in fancy bells and whistles.

5. Promote product usage to garner interest instead of the product alone.

This point ties into the one above. CustomerCentric selling revolves around showing how using the product you’re selling will make life easier for your prospect. Instead of discussing a product’s features and assuming your potential customer will figure out how to apply them on their own, show what the product can do and demonstrate how it can solve their specific problems.

6. Strive to be the best seller rather than the busiest.

Quality over quantity — that’s the name of the game when it comes to CustomerCentric selling. According to this methodology, it’s better to apply your effort toward finding solutions for fewer individual customers than to spread yourself thin and halfway-commit to several.

7. Close on the buyer’s timeline rather than the seller’s.

The whole concept of CustomerCentric selling is selling based on your customers best interests and specific dilemmas. Getting there isn’t always going to be easy, quick, or straightforward. Don’t press your customers to stick to your schedule. Ideally, you’ll be able to help your customer come to a resolution on a schedule that works for both of you. But ultimately, it’s their solution. It’s their business. So, it’s going to have to happen on their timeline.

8. Empower buyers to buy instead of convincing them.

The fundamental reason for every instance of CustomerCentric selling is simple — the customer has a problem. Your job, as a salesperson, is to empower them in their effort to solve it.

You’re not selling a product so much as you’re selling a solution. Your priority should be to show how your product fits that solution — not how awesome your product happens to be in general. You’re selling to them for them. Be sure to keep that in mind.

How to Implement a New Sales Methodology

To help you get a better idea of how to put one of these methodologies into motion, we reached out to some HubSpot sales experts.

Rachael Plummer — HubSpot Global Manager, Solutions Provider Program

“Salespeople today are inundated with content. So while I think it’s the best time to be a sales rep, it’s also the hardest! There are a million different ways to have a connect call, send an email, or find new leads — and sales reps have to constantly parse through that content to pin down what they deem to be important enough to implement in their day-to-day.

“So as a sales leader, it’s critical that if you are going to present a team with a new sales methodology and disrupt their existing flow, you need to keep the capacity of new information the team is going to choose to retain in mind. Once I’ve determined that a new sales methodology is worth adopting, there are a few things I like to focus on to make it easier.

"First, it’s imperative that as a leader you believe in the methodology yourself. For the team to prioritize this particular methodology they have to know you believe in it too and that you’re capable of implementing it. A reverse role play works really well here, where you, as the sales leader, play the rep and your team plays the customer.

"Next, I like to emphasize how this new approach will help both the team and our customers. As a team, we have to believe in the mission — we have to see a North Star. Why would someone who continually achieves their goals stop doing what they’re doing if they don’t see the greater value?

"This can be achieved by demonstrating an anticipated increase in leads, meetings, sales, or customer retention. If there isn’t meaning behind the approach or a clear path to success, it will not receive the calories it deserves.

"And finally, I like to ensure that the steps in a new sales methodology are outlined as simply as they can possibly be. Can it be digested and adopted within a matter of minutes? If we’re going to ask a salesperson to take a step back in their day away from immediate revenue-generating activities, then that has to be the goal.”

David Torres — HubSpot Principal Sales Manager

“Whenever a methodology is introduced and change is needed, the first thing I try to do — before presenting it to my team — is to understand what will stay the same. There are bound to be changes, but there’s probably going to be a starting place of transition that looks similar to what we’re already doing.

"Oftentimes, we index on the changes, but change can be incredibly uncomfortable. I want to champion change as evolution and as a continuity of the things we’re already doing well.

"The change itself essentially becomes evolution as a natural consequence of improvement. Why would I choose not to do things better when we’ve evolved to the point that we can actually do things better?

"In a team meeting, I present the change and the 'why’s,’ but I start to draw the parallels of what’s going to continue or the iterations that need to be made. Here’s where you give your team a minute to reflect — a place where you can highlight how what you were doing today is going to evolve.

"For instance, let’s say we used to prospect via email and now we need to pick up the phone. There’s a parallel between what you wrote in your email and the 'script’ you’ll use when you call. It’s not 'new,’ it’s an evolution.

"Another example could be telling your team, ’Now, we’re going to use GPCT to qualify rather than just BANT alone. BANT worked because of XYZ — you should look at GPCT as a continuation of BANT through context.’

"Change, in my experience, is best absorbed through small chunks. I don’t need to migrate all of it by myself 100% on day one. But, if I set a target of where I want to be a month out, I can strive for progress rather than perfection. The same goes for the team.”

Dan Tyre — HubSpot Sales Director

“Methodology changes can be easy or hard based on the degree of change required. Slight changes — like adding or refining individual steps or updating the questions used during a stage of a process — are largely tactical and easy to implement.

"The sales team should recognize the change, understand the update, and implement it over a matter of weeks to get the desired outcome. But if you are completely rewiring a sales process — like upgrading to an inbound sales or consultative sales approach — you need to leverage a more comprehensive and flexible strategy.

"Start with the goal and work backward. For instance, say, 'We want to close more deals’ — something most sales teams will be on board with.

"Next, you need to move to the data.

"You might be implementing a methodology change because what you’re seeing as individuals or a team is that you’re not moving from stage one to stage two, in keeping with expectations of your industry or organization. That means you have to try something different — in this context, that’s adopting a new sales methodology.

"That’s going to require some change management. Some reps get it quickly while others will take some more time. After all, your methodology has probably been ingrained in your sales process for years, and that’s okay!

"As long as you and your team are making progress, and your reps understand that they’re going to have to work through these changes within a set window of time, you’ll be in a good place.

"It also helps to institute a film night — a designated time where you listen to calls with the team to show new methodology’s steps and best practices, allowing your team to more effectively model the process.

"After a reasonable amount of time, your most nimble reps should be up and running, but some 'slow percolators’ might need some extra help. In those cases, you review the overall goals and benefits of the methodology, zero in on the difficult segments, and take baby steps to address and improve the delivery.”

In sales, the prospect is the priority. Their success should be the focal point of any deal you make. Every sales transaction should enable a buyer to achieve a goal, solve a problem, or satisfy a need.

Finding the sales methodology that allows you to consistently fulfill those ends is central to creating meaningful sales efforts that will build productive, mutually beneficial relationships with loyal customers.

Editor’s note: This post was originally published in February 17, 2020 and has been updated for comprehensiveness.

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The Best 9 Sales Quote Software in 2021

You’ve finally done it. You’re entering the final stages of the deal you’ve been trying to close for weeks. The time has come to create a quote for your customer.

But how do you go about doing that?

The answer is sales quote software.

Quote Software

Sales quote software makes it easier to create a quote and send a proposal to your potential customer. These tools may also have reporting functionality, proposal engagement notifications, and integrations so you can sync with your other tools, such as your CRM.

Ready to see which sales quote software options are the best? Let’s take a look at 9 options.

1. HubSpot Quotes Software

With HubSpot Sales Quotes, you can streamline the quote-to-cash process with integrated electronic signatures and payment. Close deals quickly by creating polished, on-brand, and customized quotes in seconds.

HubSpot offers built-in payment options and electronic signatures to eliminate back-and-forth between reps and customers. Reps can also use the Stripe integration to get paid right from their quote. This tool is part of HubSpot’s Sales CRM, called Sales Hub, which includes other useful tools such as email templates and tracking, sales automation, meetings, calling, predictive lead scoring, and reporting.

Use HubSpot’s Quote Software to create and send sales quotes as well as collect electronic signatures and payments from the same place you manage your deals and contacts.

Pricing

Free plan or paid plans ranging in price from $40/ mo/ two users to $1,200/ mo/ 10 users.

2. Proposify

Proposify is an interactive quoting tool that automates the sales proposal process. To save time, create templates for your proposals and quotes so they’re on-hand in the future and ready to be customized. You’ll be notified the moment a recipient opens, reads, signs, and interacts with a proposal so you can time your follow-ups accordingly.

Use the tool’s live chat to respond to any questions a prospect or customer has while reviewing your proposal in real-time. There are also interactive pricing and eSignature features so customers can select their desired plan without having to go through you.

Create and send proposals without ever leaving your CRM thanks to Proposify’s many integrations with systems like HubSpot and Salesforce. The system also integrates with accounting tools, like Quickbooks, so you can seamlessly track, organize, and save payment invoices and more.

Pricing

Plans ranging in price from $19/ mo/ user to $49/ mo/ user.

3. RFPIO

RFPIO makes the process of creating and collaborating on quotes, proposals, and questionnaires simple. The tool has a recommendation engine that uses AI to auto-suggest content for your proposals and quotes.

The tool has task automation features to speed up the process of designing your sales documents as well as engagement notifications so you know when someone is interacting with your documents. RFPIO also offers a number of integrations with CRMs (including HubSpot) and other tools to make response management across your entire team easy.

Pricing

Pricing is available upon request.

4. ClientPoint

ClientPoint allows you to generate proposals and track them with ease. A content library and a document-generation engine exist to save you time while designing documents. Then, receive real-time notifications about recipient engagement on your quotes when they’re opened, read, signed, and returned to you.

Integrate with your sales software and CRM, including HubSpot, to access your quotes and related data via your CRM. ClientPoint also allows you to include videos, testimonials, custom messages, images, and other content in your quotes to increase the chances of conversion.

Price

Pricing is available upon request.

5. Loopio

Loopio helps you create and manage sales proposals, RFPs (requests for proposals), questionnaires, and other sales documents that are cloud-based, personalized, and on-brand. To save you time, create templates out of the documents that you create so you’re able to repurpose them in the future.

The tool’s easy-to-use interface allows sales reps to design and brand their own documents without the help of a marketer or designer. Loopio auto-populates sales proposals, quotes, and other documents with only your team’s most-recent and approved content and information to ensure accuracy.

Pricing

Pricing is available upon request.

6. Qwilr

Qwilr helps you create interactive, responsive, and beautiful quotes, proposals, and client updates for your prospects and customers. You can improve the UX of all of your documents by making them more engaging by embedding content such as videos, Google Maps, and calendars. This is easy with Qwilr’s pre-built templates as well as its modular document builder.

There’s interactive pricing so your recipients can choose the plan that works best for them — they just open the document on any device via the link you send them, select an option, sign, pay, and then return the document to you.

Qwilr also has reporting and analytics so you know who’s interacting with your documents, when they’re doing so, and which aspects of the documents they’re interacting with the most. Lastly, integrate with your CRM (such as HubSpot) so you can create, share, and accept sales quotes and other documents without leaving your CRM.

Price

Plans ranging in price from $75/ mo/ three users to $490/ mo/ 10 users.

7. GetAccept

GetAccept is an all-in-one sales enablement and contract management software that allows you to create and share personalized contracts and proposals and obtain eSignatures. GetAccept integrates with CRMs (including HubSpot) and other business tools so you can personalize, create, share, and view contracts, quotes, and proposals without ever leaving the applications you use most.

Create custom recipient workflows to automate actions and follow-ups to increase customer engagement (and ultimately, chances of a deal). The tool also allows you to send personalized videos along with proposals and quotes as well as add live chat, reviews, images, and demos to help you nurture prospects.

Pricing

Plans ranging in price from $25/ mo / user to $60/ mo / user.

8. Better Proposals

With Better Proposals, you can create high-quality sales proposals and quotes in minutes — the tool’s automatic designer and over 160 pre-built templates make this process quick and easy. Once your proposal is complete, send it directly to your recipient via a secure link — the recipient can then sign it, pay your fee, and send it back to you.

Smart follow-ups notify you whenever a recipient opens your proposals so a rep can nurture them in a timely manner. And speaking of nurturing, Better Proposals also has reporting and tracking so you can keep an eye on where each proposal is in the sale process. This makes it easier to track what needs to be sent out, which prospects and customers should be receiving communication, and more.

Pricing

Plans ranging in price from $19/ mo/ user to $49/ mo/ user.

9. PandaDoc

PandaDoc’s Quoting Software automates the process of creating and personalizing quotes by using contact data directly from your CRM (PandaDoc integrates with a number of CRMs including HubSpot, Salesforce, and Pipedrive). The tool has an interactive pricing table so recipients can select from multiple pricing/ product options, update quantities to meet their needs, and speak directly to you if needed. Quote recipients can access, sign, and send back the quote via any device.

Additionally, PandaDoc provides engagement and usage reports so you know the moment a recipient opens, reads, and signs a quote. This way, you can ensure your follow-ups come at the appropriate time.

Pricing

Free or paid plans ranging in price from $25/ mo/ user to $59/ mo/ user (or contact for enterprise quote).

Grow Better With Sales Quote Software

Sales quote software not only speeds up the process of creating branded and beautiful proposals, but it also helps you increase conversions, saves you time, increases time-wide efficiency, and improves the customer experience. So, find the right tool for you and get started using sales quote software.

Editor’s note: This post was originally published in May 2019 and has been updated for comprehensiveness.

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6 Common Google SERP Feature Misconceptions in SEO

Brodie Clark teamed up with Izzi Smith to create a new SEO quiz series, testing marketers’ knowledge of Google SERP features. In this post, read through the six most common misconceptions found in quiz answers, dealing with structured data, Featured Snippets, and more!

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