This blog post is about three things:

1. The #4 ZMOT Selling strategy
2. How to get a 65% win ratio
3. The best sales 2.0 tools and how to use them

In my last three blog posts I shared ZMOT Selling Strategies:

• #7 – How to create content that resonates with the best prospects
• #6 – The best way to follow-up with someone who expressed interest
• #5 – What offers compel a decision maker to start the process of becoming your customer

This blog post is about the importance of timing along with tools, tactics, tips and even a webinar on how to reach executives so they are most likely to buy from you.

When reaching out to executives (aka decision makers) it’s important to understand which buying mode a decision maker is in – the image above shows the three different buying modes. The best timing is reaching a decision maker while they are in the Window of Dissatisfaction™.

The two key components to the Window of Dissatisfaction are that decision makers are dissatisfied with their current solution (or supplier) BUT they have not started doing anything about it yet.

It’s critical to reach these recently motivated decision makers as soon as possible  because while they are not actively Searching for Alternatives their selective perception has been turned on.

What this means is that all of a sudden they start noticing all the relevant marketing, banner ads, emails, and webinar invitations from you AND your competition!

McKinsey’s Customer Decision Journey shown on the left  shows this is the time prospects make a decision around how they are going to address their emerging need.

Don’t wait until for prospects to call you! Research by the Corporate Executive Board shows that by the time you get called almost 60% of the decision has already been made.

The Corporate Executive Board’s research also shows that top performers hunt down “emerging” needs in the market place.

Some people still believe that a prospect should be BANT (Budget, Authority, Need, Timeline) qualified before you spend any time with them. While I believe BANT has a place in sales I don’t believe that you should wait until the prospect is BANT qualified because you will miss the opportunity to set yourself up as the preferred supplier/solution.

Check out the recording from a recent webinar I did with Dan McDade that explains which leads are five times better than BANT.

For me sales IS NOT ABOUT trying to getting the attention of a lot of executives and telling them what you want to say IT IS ABOUT getting the attention of the right executives and telling them what they want to hear.

That’s one reason I think Top Sales World got it right when they selected Oren Klaff’s  book Pitch Anything as the Gold Medal Winner of the Sales Book of the Year.

So you can learn more about getting the attention of the right people and telling them what they want to hear, below is information on a free webinar and Sales 2.0 tools you can use to reach executives, and successfully pitch them.

Read the rest of this blog post if you want to start winning on value instead of losing on price.

Join Forrester Research, OneSource, and myself as we share how your sales team can win 2/3 of the deals they chase.

• Do you want your sales reps to increase their win rate?
• Do you want your sales team to call higher in an organization?
• Do you want your sales team to win on value instead of lose on price?

If you answer yes to any, or all, of the questions above then this webinar is for you and your team.

Register even if you can’t make the live event because the event will be recorded and registrants will receive access to the recording and receive the handout from the event.

See below for speaker bios

http://bit.ly/65PercentWinRate

Speakers Bios

Norbert Kriebel is a Principal Analyst serving Sales Enablement professionals. He has advised and coached Forrester’s vendor strategy clients on their messaging strategies for over a decade and in over 20 countries. His mission is to transform product-centric go-to-market content into customer-centric outcome driven conversations.

His practical experience in product and marketing strategy makes him very familiar with the challenges, frustrations and triumphs that content creators experience as they endeavor to communicate the business value of increasingly complex and configurable solutions to equally complex networks of buyer audiences.

Norbert’s perspective has driven him to investigate deeper into addressing the (sometimes uncomfortable) patterns that systematically divide buyers and providers; the patterns that manifest themselves into increasing cost-of-sales and dysfunctional revenue cycles.

Roger Ciliberto is the Director of North American,New Business with OneSource Information Services.  He has been selling the concept of “Trigger Based” selling since 2000 when he was in a similar role with TrueAdvantage, a Westborough MA company that was one of the pioneers in the trigger based, SaaS space.

He has built several sales teams within organizations from ADT, to TrueAdvantage, to Reed Business Information to his current role at OneSource Information Services.  He has a keen understanding of how to leverage triggers across multiple industries and how to best set up a sales call in the right place, for the right reasons and at the appropriate time.

Craig Elias is the creator of Trigger Event Selling™ and author of the award-winning sales book “SHiFT! Harness The Trigger Events That Turn Prospects Into Customers”. For almost 20 years Craig used Trigger Event strategies to be a top sales performer at every company he worked for - including WorldCom where he was named the #1 salesperson within six months of joining the company.

Craig’s knowledge of Trigger Events has also resulted in winning a $1,000,000 prize in a global billion dollar idea competition, coverage on NBC news, in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Nikkei Marketing Journal, and having his last company chosen by Dow Jones as one of the 50 most promising companies in North America.

It’s been a while since I compiled my original list of top 7 sales 2.0 tools and a lot has changed since then so here is my revised list of top 7 sales 2.0 tools.

Part of the Challenger Sales’ perspective is that to be successful at selling in today’s world you need to sell to mobilizers – those most likely to initiate change in an organization.

My perspective is that executives who are new in their role are often the best mobilizers because they seek to make change happen, make it happen fast, and they have no or few ties to the current solution or provider.

If you don’t believe me check out Jill Konrath’s recent blog post on how to Get the Jump on New Sales Opportunities.

So here is my list of top Sales 2.0 tools to reach and communicate with executives who are new in their roles.

This is not a theoretical list of Sales 2.0 tools – It’s the list of the tools I use, in the sequence of which I normally use them, and how I use them.

I’ve set these tools up to maximize the likelihood that I learn of key executive changes and then follow-up on the 3 opportunities that executive changes create.

1. Outlook Social Connector
The Social Connector for Outlook allows me to integrate my LinkedIn account into Outlook.

From there I can send a LinkedIn connection request simply by clicking on the arrow next the plus sign below their LinkedIn profile picture.

It also allows me to see the most recent emails so I can see what last transpired before I call them.

2. ToutApp
When people accept my LinkedIn connection request I use an email template to send them the preview chapters of my book and provide a link to request a no-charge copy of my book.

ToutApp then lets me track which emails are opened, can be set up to automatically send follow-up emails and simplifies setting up meeting times.

It works with Outlook, Gmail, and integrates with  13 of the top sales tools

3. LinkedIn
LinkedIn has a really cool saved search feature that tells me when those I’m connected to change jobs. Remember someone new in their job is up to 10 times more likely to switch suppliers.

So every week I get an email telling me who in my network has changed jobs. Another cool thing about LinkedIn is that most people use a personal email address and this allows you to contact them even when their work email address bounces.

4. PostWire
I’ve learned that many executives search their inbox before searching Google. But one of the challenges of emailing executives is that IT often limits their inbox storage size which deletes any emails that are more than a few weeks or a few months old.

Postwire allows me to create personal pages for individuals or groups so that the information I send them will always be available. That way when the time is right they can find all the resources I’ve sent them. And if they can’t find it I can easily send them to a page where all the resources I previously sent them are available.

5. OneSource
I admit that sometimes (ok often) I get so caught up in chasing new opportunities that I lose sight of opportunities that are in my pipeline but have stalled.

On top of making me aware of new opportunities, OneSource also notifies me when additional events – afford and justify events  - move a prospect further down the funnel.

E.g. Product launches, fiscal year-end, etc.

6. BriteVerify

BriteVerify allows me to take my list of 500 top prospects and for only 1¢ per contact allows me to see if their email address has bounced.

When I recently checked my list, I learned that 46 of the most senior VP’s of sales for the largest outside sales forces in North America had changed jobs in the last quarter.

Now that I’m using BriteVerify I’ll be checking my list of 500 target accounts on a monthly basis, so I can be on top of those key executives that change jobs.

7. Beep!
One of the hardest things to do is stay in touch with a large number of prospects.

Beep allows me to leave a voice mail for executives and ask if anything has changed recently that makes what I sell more important, more relevant, or more affordable.

After each campaign I receive a report which tells me which executives received my voice mail message and which ones did not. This allows me to tailor the email I send the day after.
7.5 HootSuite

The reason HootSuite is not in my top 7 is that I have not had the time to fully learn it and integrate it into my sales system. I’m hoping to learn more about HootSuite on my March webinar with LinkedIn, HootSuite, OneSource, Selling Power, and Sales For Life.

Notice I did not say process. For a me process is a series of steps and very often when you reach executives who recently experienced a Trigger Event they either want to do things in an order  that is different from your sales process or they want to skip entire steps all together.

3 Actions You Can Take

1. Register for the February 12th webinar with Forrester
2. Check out each of the Sales 2.0 tools above
3. Call me (+1.403.874.2998 or 866.744.7904) to schedule a 10-15 minute brainstorming session on how you can set up the tools above so they work for your specific situation.

Have an eventful week!

Craig

This blog post is about three things:

1. The #5 ZMOT Selling strategy
2. Where the Decision Makers are
3. How to facilitate a decision makers purchase

When I started this blog I promised myself I would not be one of those people who blogged several times a week just to create content that would ‘hopefully drive traffic’ to a website.

As Guy Kawasaki often says “Hope is not a strategy”.

I believe that quality trumps quantity every time. So while it’s taken me longer than planned to write this blog post I trust the quality of this blog post makes up for the extra time it took to bring all its components together.

P.S. There is a name for the disease that drives people to blog several times a week – It’s called Content Creation Madness and Lisa Nirell has cure for it here.

In my last blog post I shared the #6 ZMOT Selling Strategy – How to have  best follow-up with those who recently experienced a Zero Moment Of Truth and are thinking of changing suppliers.

Having the best follow-up allows you to engage with decision makes when they are most likely to see value in spending time with you.

Now you need the #5 ZMOT Selling Strategy – Having the Best Offers – to convert more of these decision makers into customers.

Having the best offers starts a prospect down the path of becoming your customer and minimizes the likelihood they will call your competition. See the video below that talks about recent research by Scott Santucci of Forrester that proves this.

What you want to do is create multiple offerings so you convert the greatest percentage of potential customers.

I’m a big fan of the good, better, best model to do this. The idea is to create three different versions of your offering so:

1. 25% of prospects to purchase the good version of your good offering
2. 50% or prospects to purchase the better version of your offering
3. 25% of prospects to purchase the best version of your product

Basically it comes down to does a decision maker have the time and the money needed to become your customer. See the Afford Matrix as the top of this blog post.

For a couple of years now I have talked about the Afford Matrix™ (aka Affordability Matrix) that will be featured in my next sales book “SHOVE! How to Create the Events That PUSH ASIDE YOUR COMPETITION”. This is the first time I am blogging about the Afford Matrix or my next book.

In the image at the top of this blog post you see three different sales strategies. Each one relevant to a different set of prospects based up on the availability of time and money.

1. Friend Making: The intent is to use the good product to convert prospects who have time but not a lot of money.
2. Fund Making: The intent is to use the better product to either convert into customers those who have time and money, or convert those prospects who originally purchased your good product and now have more money into users of your better product
3. Hay Making: These are the best offerings to convert those prospects who have the most money but the least amount of time or those prospects that originally purchased your better product and now have more money and less time

The idea is to start prospects down the path of becoming your customer knowing that once they have invested time (and maybe money) in learning how to do things your way you are highly likely to win future business. This is because decision makers are very busy and when they are satisfied by your offerings they see limited value in giving your competition the same amount of time or attention they gave you.

David Skok of the Venture Capital (VC) firm Matrix Partners covers this in an excellent blog post titled “Understanding the Customer Buying Cycle & Triggers”.

David points out four big things:

1) You need to understand where decision makers are in their buying cycle because using the wrong sales approach leads to frustrated buyers and lost sales.

David Skok’s Buying Cycle

2) You need to have different offers based upon where the decision maker is in the buying cycle

3) Different lead sources deliver prospects that are in different stages of the buying cycle. He says:

• People that are later in the buying cycle are most likely to be using tools like Google, and review sites to search for vendors and products to solve a problem.
• Many other lead sources (e.g. social referrals, Twitter, Facebook ads, banner ads, pr stories, educational presentations at conferences, etc.) produce buyers that are earlier in their cycle…

4) You need to reach decision makers sooner

“…the ideal situation is to make sure you get to know customers earlier in the process and become the player that helps shape and define their shopping list (RFP). “

Research by Forrester’s Scott Santucci proves David’s point.

Only 35% of the time does the decision maker send the opportunity out for quote to other vendors.

See the 27:00 minute mark of the video below where Tim Riesterer – CMO Of Corporate Visions  - talks about the research.

The bottom of David Skok’s blog post mentions some work on Triggers by BJ Fogg.

After reading David’s blog post I checked out the work by BJ Fogg – who runs the Persuasive Technology Lab @ Stanford.

I was then fortunate enough to spend 20 minutes with BJ on the phone.

His focus is not on how you motivate someone to buy but rather how to help facilitate their purchase.

Here are the three BJ Fogg resources I think are most relevant to facilitating a decision maker to choose you over your competition.

The FBM model
BJ’s 2009 Paper on the FBM model which says behavior is the product of three factors: motivation, ability, and triggers. Be sure to check out the image that is on the top ½ of page 5.

How To Make It Easier To Become Your Customer
BJ’s video on simplicity talks about the Ability to pay and having Time and Money which funnily enough lines up very well with my Afford Matrix.

The video below shares six things that can get in the way of a decision maker becoming your customer.

By the time you finish watching BJ’s video I think you will have come up with several ways you can make it easier to become your customer.

I’m taking BJ’s simplicity to heart by embedding videos in this blog post instead of just providing a link to them on YouTube, Vimeo, etc.

Motivation Waves
BJ’s video on Motivation Waves should give you some ideas on what you can do to make it more likely that someone takes the small action that starts them down the path of becoming your customer.

Get someone as a customer now and when they have more time or more money in the future they move to the next level.

As I have mentioned before the faster you respond the more likely you are to win the business.

3 Actions You Can Take

BJ’s content has been a trigger for me personally. After reading his paper and watching his videos on motivation waves and the power of simplicity I have decided to add this a section to the end of this and future blog posts.

Based on the content above I strongly suggest you do the following three things:
1. Download my Won Sales Analysis template and a video that explains how to use it
2. Watch the recording of my latest webinar “Win the Race to the Ideal Customer” that talks about content that attracts the attention of those who recently experienced a want event and are now thinking of changing suppliers
3. Call my cell phone (+1.403.874.2998) or Skype me (Craig.Elias) to schedule a 10 – 15 minute, no-charge, call about how you can apply all the above to your own demand/lead generation and sales efforts.

Have an eventful month!

Craig

1. The #6 ZMOT Selling strategy
2. How Cold Calling TRIGGERS THE BIGGEST SALES
3. FatStax - Show, Send, Sell

In my last blog post I shared the #7 ZMOT Selling Strategy – How to create content that is found by and resonates with those who recently experienced a Zero Moment Of Truth.

The #6 ZMOT Selling Strategy is having the best follow up.

When you follow up with someone who completes a form on your web site to access a resource, you first need to figure out which buying mode they are in (Status Quo, Window of Dissatisfaction, or Searching for Alternatives).

If you learn they recently experienced a ‘Want’ Trigger Event and are in the Window of Dissatisfaction™ you ask questions so you can understand what problem they are trying to solve (or what outcome they are trying to accomplish) and then pursue the sale. Following up correctly while someone is in the Window Of Dissatisfaction (aka Window of Discontent) results in you helping decision makers define the problem, develop the solution and you start developing a trusted adviser type relationship before the competition even knows there is an opportunity.

If you learn they recently experienced an “Afford” Trigger Event and are Searching For Alternatives  you ask  questions so you can understand who they are already talking to and how you can position myself as the least risky alternative.

If you learn they have not recently experienced a Trigger Event and are in the buying mode of Status Quo and believe they have money, authority, and influence you want to start fostering a relationship while raising their expectations.

What questions should you ask when you follow up?

In today’s world of what Jill Konrath calls ‘crazy busy buyers’ I think it’s important to respect a potential customer’s time while also coming across as succinct and professional. For that reason I think you get to ask a maximum of three maybe four questions. Here are the three questions I like to ask.

In today’s world of a million and one different spam filters you can never be sure that the email your systems automatically send out get into the recipients inbox. So, my first question is “Did you receive the email with the link to download the resource?”

I’m always curious what they saw or heard that made them willing to provide their email address and phone number in return for access to what is being offered. So, my second question is “What about it caught your attention and made you say hey I should check this out?

My last and perhaps most important questions is to learn which buying mode the person is in so I can learn if there is a pursuable sales opportunity.

I firmly believe that the statistics of those who fill in forms are similar to those who register for webinars. Patrick Cahill writes in his article “How to Pinpoint Real Sales Opportunities with Your Webinars“:

People who register for events fall into four categories: immediate opportunities (5%) and short-term leads (20%), long-term leads (50%), and perfectly nice people who will never buy related services (25%).

So my last question is “What happened recently that made it more relevant or more important?”

Depending on the answers to three questions above I often ask for permission to ask one last question.

The question I often get when I share this strategy is “Aren’t people offended by your following up right after they fill in a form?”

The answer is NO!  Its’ exactly the opposite.

Almost everyone I call is amazed that I followed up so fast and because I’m not trying to sell anything they share information and I get to start the relationship building process which I take one step farther by immediately sending them a LinkedIn connection request.

Think cold calling is dead?

Think again.

Two years of research from the Corporate Executives Board shows that top performers hunt down “emerging” demand in the market place.

Other research shows that cold calling on decision makers who are in a Window of Dissatisfaction can result in a 60% – 90% close ratio.

Join us for a one hour webinar Watch the recording as Dan McDade and Craig Elias share:

1. How to double your sales from the lead lists you buy
2. Which leads are 5x better than BANT (Budget, Authority, Need, Timeline)
3. Which prospects are most likely to buy from you and which ones are a waste of your time
4. How to develop the competence and confidence to cold call the most important decision makers

Register even if you can’t make the live event because all registrants receive links to the recording and handout from the event.

Click the button below to sign up now!

http://bit.ly/ColdCallingTriggers

When you are on a sales call the best time to follow up on a request for information is while you are in front of them – right then and right there.

Waiting until the end of the day to send the customer the information they are looking for makes it almost impossible to build on the sales momentum you generated during your visit and often leads to the challenge of getting the prospect to reshuffle their priorities and schedule to make time to meet you again.

What started out as a great  enthusiasm by the prospect fizzles away to the point where they won’t return your calls or reply to your requests for a follow on meeting and you have to explain to your sales manager why the customer decided to stick with the Status Quo.

The best way for me to describe FatStax is to say it’s a sales app for the iPad that  provides instant access to all current marketing materials. This way you can continue the conversation (and the momentum) while you are in front of the customer which means they give you more face time on the spot and as a result you get shorter sales cycles and higher close ratios.

According to Rusty Bishop (Co-Founder and VP Sales) sales people tell them the two features are most important to them in the field:

1. Offline Search, which basically means they can find any product or service they offer with no internet needed, and,
2. Instant Follow-Up, which means they don’t have to wait until they get back to the office to send product information and ordering details to customers.

Speaking of face time with customer one of the other benefits is because you do the majority of the follow up in real time (while you are in front of the prospect/customer) you don’t have to sacrifice selling time doing follow up and you can spend more time with your wife and kids.

In the last two years their app has helped thousands of sales reps, in over 45 countries:

• Get more face time with customers
• Instantly answer product questions from prospects
• Always have the most recent marketing materials on hand

Some of the key features of our iPad application are that it:

• Works offline: No Wi-Fi, no 3G or 4G? No problem
• Integrates with Salesforce.com: Simplifies data entry
• Is completely brandable: It can look and feel like a custom built application
• Can be ready in 4 weeks or less: Send them your information and they look after the rest

Sales professionals love their tool and that’s why they help companies field test their iPad application without having to buy iPads.

In Q1 2012, their analytics showed 124,564 offline searches were performed by sales people who use their application, and 42% of users reported a confirmed sale within 2 business days of sending product information via FatStax on their iPads.

That goes to show you the power of immediate follow up. The impact of fast follow up can also be seen in MIT’s lead follow up research - which demonstrates that you are 100 times more likely to reach the person who filled in a form when you follow up in 5 minutes versus 30 minutes.

If you want to learn best practices of following up you can access the recording and handout from How to WIN THE SALE on Your First Call - a  webinar I recently did with Andy Paul the Author of Zero Time Selling.

Just don’t be surprised when I follow up quickly after you complete the form to access the recording and handout.

Have an eventful month!

1. The #7 ZMOT Selling strategy
2. How to WIN THE SALE ON YOUR 1^st CALL
3. Nimble 2.0 – Putting ‘Relationships’ back in to CRM

My apologies for not writing a blog post for almost 5 months. Besides being busy, and suffering from a case of writers block, it took longer than anticipated to map out a series of seven blog posts about applying Google’s ZMOT to Business-To-Business (B2B) selling.

In my last blog post I shared information on Google’s Zero Moment of Truth (ZMOT) and since I could not find anything on the Internet about applying it to B2B selling I decided to write a series of blog posts on how to do that.

This is my first in a series of seven blog posts on what I think are the top seven ZMOT Selling Strategies – David Letterman style: Starting with #7 and working my way to #1.

The #7 ZMOT Selling strategy is  all about having content that is found by and resonates with those who recently experienced a Zero Moment Of Truth.

When creating content keep in mind that content resonates with people based upon events in their lives that trigger Selective Perception. Eg. When you buy a new car you begin to notice that exact car all over the place.

If you don’t have time to read a previous blog post on the power of selective perception (link above) you can watch a short (1:39) video that explains how to harness the power of Selective Perception.

Having the right content is only 1/2 the battle the second 1/2 is where to put your content so it get’s found by those who recently experienced a ZMOT. For me that’s the real value of Social Media. By having profiles on social media sites you go from being just one of the top two of the top 10 results to being all or most of the top 10 results. Do a search for Craig Elias or Trigger Event Selling and you’ll see that I’m the majority of the top 50 results.

Remember that YouTube is the 2^nd most used search engine so it’s important to include video to your content strategy.

Another good reason to include video in your ZMOT Selling strategy is that at the recent Sales 2.0 conference Matt Childs reported that “Email click-thru rates increased by 50% when video was included” and on slide 26 of a recent webinar I watched Jeffrey LePlante said that email open rates increased by 200% by providing a link to a video.

Visible Gains is my favorite tool for creating and publishing video content. Here is an excellent example of the power of Visible Gains – notice how the viewer is empowered to choose the direction they want to go next. This allows the viewer to control which content they want to see which will vary by the events that triggered their interest.

How to WIN THE SALE ON YOUR FIRST CALL

After a successful webinar series with Citrix that had almost 7,000 registrants in April I continued my no charge webinars with Andy Paul the author of Zero Time Selling.

You can access the recording and handout at http://ShiftSelling.com/Webinars

In today’s selling environment, competition is fierce and an extended selling cycle opens the door to the competition.

In this fast paced webinar we show you strategies that will help you WIN BUSINESS ON THE FIRST CALL.

In this one hour webinar Andy Paul and Craig Elias, show you:

1. The importance of responsiveness
2. How to identify to a lead before the competition
3. The four essential steps of a sales lead follow-up
4. How to sell with maximum impact in the least amount of time

Nimble 2.0

I’m user 3,956 of over 160 million LinkedIn users and I use it on almost a daily basis because I am a relationship oriented sales professional and Nimble is the first CRM tool I have found that focuses on the relationship.

As an added bonus it integrates with my email ( Google Apps for Business), and my social media accounts on Twitter, Linked and Facebook so it can be used as a social consolidation tool that combines the multiple email addresses and profiles that my many relationships have  in all the disparate social medial tools and it layers on the ability to listen and engage.

One of the cool features is that Nimble alerts you to  people’s job changes by suggesting you call and congratulate them on their new job. For those of you familiar with my bounced email lead generation strategy you know this creates a number of sales opportunities.

I could go and on about why I love Nimble but instead I suggest you read a recent blog post by Nancy Nardin of Smart Selling Tools titled “The 8 Buying Considerations CRM Vendors Don’t Want You to Know About”

Have an Eventful week!

Craig

1. Smarketing Strategy #7
2. Applying the ZMOT to B2B Sales
3. How to Make Webinars Your #1 LEAD SOURCE

In my last blog post I shared Smarketing Strategy #6 : How to nurture prospects, score opportunities, and notify sales at EXACTLY the right time.  If you did not have time to read it, below is a short video (3:00) that explains it.

Smarketing Strategy #7 – using the Situation, Target, Plan (STP) framework - is to analyze your best wins so you can improve your content, where you place it and your scoring system. Your best wins are the ones where three or more of the following happened:

1. The sales cycle was shorter than normal
2. The sale was relatively easy to make
3. There was little or no price objection
4. The customer is willing to be a reference or to give you a testimonial

Odds are these best wins happened because the decision maker was in the Window of Dissatisfaction™ when you got to them and these are the wins you want to find a lot more of. You can learn more about identifying these wins by downloading the Window of Dissatisfaction™ worksheet and instructions on how to use it.

Recently Google has described the activities that prospects engage in while in the Window of Dissatisfaction™ as the Zero Moment of Truth (ZMOT).

When 73% of CEOs think Marketers lack business credibility it’s great to see the Chief Marketing Officers (CMOs) of organizations like General Electric, Johnson & Johnson,  and General Foods embracing ZMOT.

Listen to Beth Comstock the Chief Marketing Officer (CMO) of General Electric (GE) and VPs at FedEx & Grainger talk about how ZMOT applies to both Business-To-Business (B2B) & Business-To-Consumer (B2C) selling.

This video includes a segment where Beth shares how they apply ZMOT to sell IT solutions to hospitals.

In all of their models Google talks about a stimulus that comes before the ZMOT.

From a Trigger Event Selling™ perspective this stimulus is the first Trigger Event – The one makes a decision maker want to change - Shifts them out of Status Quo and into the Window of Dissatisfaction™.

Once you know the events that trigger the ZMOT you can implement a strategy to turn prospects that are in the ZMOT into customers.

Here is an example of how you can apply a ZMOT strategy to B2B Selling.

What are the best strategies to apply the ZMOT to B2B selling?

Since learning about Google’s Zero Moment of Truth I have searched for strategies and tactics that B2B sales and marketing teams can use but so far I have found almost nothing.

So rather than wait for this kind of content to be delivered I decided to put together a team of Tier 1 thought leaders that could create and deliver unique, compelling and relevant content on how to benefit from the ZMOT.

So far the following people are part of this team:

• Christine Crandell: The creator of the Buyers Journey
• Patrick Cahill: An expert resource on how to make webinars pay
• Tony Zambito:  The originator of the Buyer Persona methodology
• Carlos Hidalgo: The Executive Director of the Marketing Automation Institute
• Doug Kessler: Runs a brilliant B2B Marketing company in the UK called Velocity

I’m currently looking for a Tier 1 thought leader on B2B Social Media and Search Engine Optimization to be part of the team. Please call/text me (+1.403.874.2998) if you know someone you think should be considered for the group.

In the new year I’ll be working with this team to deliver a 7-part series on the 7 Best Ways to Apply ZMOT to B2B Selling.

How to Make Webinars Your #1 LEAD GENERATION METHOD

In the world of B2B Selling, webinars are one of the best ways to attract the attention of those who are in the ZMOT.

To help B2B sales organizations harness the Zero Moment of Truth I am also working with Citrix’s Goto Meeting and GoTo Webinar teams to put together an insightful 3-part series on that will show you the end to end process (Webinar planning to closing the sale) of how to make webinars your #1 LEAD GENERATION METHOD.

The first one is on Tuesday, January 10, 9 AM (PST) / 12 PM (EST).

When done right, webinars can be the best way to generate a large number of interested prospects for your sales team.

Using the right mindset, strategies, and tools you’ll be amazed at what a webinar can deliver.

Hear Craig Elias and Patrick Cahill share important steps to improve the quality AND quantity of webinar generated leads.

Join this live webinar to learn:

• Which content gets the highest number of registrations
• Which activities drive a higher than average attendance rate
• What gets the best prospects to identify themselves during the webinar
• How to re-purpose webinars to generate an ongoing flow of sales-ready leads

Register even if you can’t make the live event because all registrants receive links to the recording and handout from the event.

Click the button below to sign up now!

http://bit.ly/BestLeadGenMethod

Learn more about the speakers below!

Patrick Cahill is an expert resource for organizations like SalesForce.com, Hoovers, RainToday, and The Sales Lead Management Association. He helps them understand how to host compelling webinars that attract motivated prospects, develop valuable content that establishes credibility, implement flawless events that engage and impress attendees, and implement follow-up programs that uncover qualified opportunities.

 
Craig Elias is the creator of Trigger Event Selling™ and author of the Bronze Medal winner of the Top Sales Books of 2010 “SHiFT!“ His knowledge of Trigger Events has resulted in a 20 year track record as a top sales performer, winning a $1,000,000 prize in a global billion dollar idea competition and coverage on NBC, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal.

Have an eventful Christmas!

Craig

1. 5 Ways To WIN AT SOCIAL SELLING
2. Smarketing Strategy #6
3. Lead Nurturing Resources

Did you know it’s easier to sell today than it was 10 years ago?

Sales professionals who harness real-time data available via social media have an unfair advantage over those that don’t.

Learn the best mindset, strategies and tools to reach motivated decision makers before your competition.

Join experts David Meerman Scott and Craig Elias on Tuesday November 22^nd and learn:

• The best tools to use
• How to leverage real-time information
• How to make your solution more relevant right now
• How to create content that attracts the best prospects
• How to share content that gets decision makers to call you

This webinar will be moderated by Cliff Pollan the CEO of VisibleGains - His tool VisibleGains for sales is one of my favourite Social Selling tools.

Register even if you can’t make the live event because all registrants receive links to the recording and handout from the event.

Click the button below to sign up now!

http://bit.ly/WinAtSocialSelling

Learn more about the speakers below!
David Meerman Scott’s book The New Rules of Marketing & PR opened people’s eyes to the new realities of marketing and public relations on the Web.

David’s popular Web Ink Now blog and hundreds of speaking engagements around the world give him a singular perspective on how businesses are implementing new strategies to reach buyers.

Craig Elias is the creator of Trigger Event Selling™ and author of the Bronze Medal winner of the Top Sales Books of 2010 “SHiFT!“ His knowledge of Trigger Events has resulted in a 20 year track record as a top sales performer, winning a $1,000,000 prize in a global billion dollar idea competition and coverage on NBC, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal.

In my last blog post I shared Smarketing Strategy #5 : How to convert visitors to prospects.  If you did not have time to read it, below is a short video (1:50) that explains the three best questions ask when following up with those who access your digital marketing content.

Smarketing Strategy #6 – using the Situation, Target, Plan (STP) framework - is to nurture, score, notify sales at EXACTLY the right time.

Carlos Hidalgo – The Executive Director of the Marketing Automation Institute – has a Lead Management Framework that explains some of the benefits of effective lead nurturing are:

• Deals closed on nurtured leads have a 47% higher order value
• Nurture email have a 200% higher open rate
• Win rates are improved by up to 20%

My contribution to the lead nurturing conversation is understanding there are three key times you want to notify sales about a prospect’s activity:

1) They Reach a Scoring Threshold

In order to minimize prospect frustration and maximize sales productivity, sales 2.0 savvy organizations are implementing lead scoring systems that are an indicator of a decision makers likelihood of making a buying decision soon.

If you want to create a lead scoring system that includes key elements of Trigger Event Selling™ here is the link to download the Trigger Event Scoring™ worksheet.

When you complete the form you will receive an email with links to the Trigger Event Scoring™ (aka Trigger Event Qualifying™) worksheet, instructions on how to use it, and a sample of the completed worksheet.

2) Their Email Address Bounces

As you may have heard from me before a single bounce email is a Trigger Event that creates at least three different sales opportunities for a savvy sales professional to phone and follow-up on:

1. The person who left – where did they go?
2. The person who left – who took their place?
3. The person who took their place – where did they come from?

3) They Access Justification Resources

When the access justification resources it is highly they have experienced both the want event and the afford event now they need to justify their decision to their superiors, subordinates, or stakeholders.

Now is one of the key moments in making sure the purchase happens and you are the supplier who wins the deal.

Tom Pisello – the ‘ROI Guy’ – has an excellent infograph that talks about the need to help decision makers justify their decision based by providing:

• ROI calculators
• Third party validation of your claims
• Business cases on other customers who have benefited from your solution

One of the things that Tom’s company -Alinean - does is help organizations build ROI calculators. See their Social Media ROI calculator as an example of what they do.

Eloqua – My choice as the #2 Sales 2.0 Sales Tool - has some great resource on the process of lead nurturing:

1. A Best Practice Tool Kit on Nurturing
2. Blog posts and webinars on Nurturing
3. An infograph on which content is best used when

Have an eventful month!

Craig

P.S. Carlos Hidalgo is one of the speakers in my three part webinar series – How to Turn Webinars Into Your #1 LEAD GENERATION METHOD - with Citrix (GoToWebinar & GoToMeeting) that runs the 2^nd Tuesday of January, February, & March. Stay tuned for registration details.

1. Smarketing Strategy #5
2. Resistance Free Selling
3. Sales 2.0 and Social Media

In my last blog post I shared Smarketing Strategy #4 : How to put your content where the best prospects go. If you did not have time to read it, below is a short video (0:25) that explains this ‘Here vs. There’ problem and here is a visual that also explains it.

Smarketing Strategy #5 – using the Situation, Target, Plan (STP) framework - is to convert visitors to prospects and then connect with them.

I’m a big fan of using forms on a web site to convert visitors to prospect and I am a big believer of MIT’s lead follow up research - which demonstrates that you are 100X 100 times more likely to reach the person who filled in a form when you follow up in 5 minutes versus 30 minutes.

The report has some other enlightening information and can be downloaded from InsideSales.com. So if you are going to follow up on web leads do so as fast as possible.

I firmly believe that the statistics of those who fill in forms are similar to those who register for webinars. Patrick Cahill writes in an article “How to Pinpoint Real Sales Opportunities with Your Webinars”

People who register for events fall into four categories: immediate opportunities (5%) and short-term leads (20%), long-term leads (50%), and perfectly nice people who will never buy related services (25%).

The challenge is to ask questions that help you figure which group is which without pissing any of them off by being too aggressive.

So when I phone those who complete a form on my web site I always introduce myself (to make sure they know who I am) and the ask for permission to ask three quick questions   …  ”I’m Craig Elias, the Trigger Event Selling™ guy whose information you just filled in a form to download. Can I ask for two minutes of your time to ask three quick questions?”

What are the three best questions to ask?

The best way to answer that question is to start first by asking – What are the most important things to learn?

For me the three most important things I want to learn about those who fill in a form on my web site are:

1. Did they get the email, with the link to the resource the requested?
2. What made them fill in the form?
3. Is there a sales opportunity?

In today’s world of a million and one different spam filters you can never be sure that the email your systems automatically send out gets into the recipient’s inbox.

So, my first question is “Did you receive the email with the link to download the resource?”

Question #2
I am always curious what was it that they saw or heard that captured their attention and made them willing to provide their email address and phone number for in return for access to what is being offered.

So, my second question is “What resonated and made you say it was worth taking the time to complete the form ?”

Question #3
My last and perhaps most important questions is to learn which buying mode the person is in so I can learn if there is a pursuable sales opportunity. Knowing which buying mode someone is in is a key component to Trigger Event Qualifying™.

So my last questions is “What happened recently that made it more relevant or more important?”

If I learn they recently experienced a ‘Want’ Trigger Event and are in the Window of Dissatisfaction™ I ask permission to ask a few more questions so I can understand what problem they are trying to solve or what outcome they are trying to accomplish and then pursue the sale.

If I learn they recently experienced an ‘Afford’ Trigger Event and are already Searching For Alternatives  I ask permission to ask a few more questions so I can understand who they are already talking to and how I can position myself as the least risky alternative.

If I learn they have not recently experienced a Trigger Event and are in the buying mode of Status Quo  - and believe they have money, authority, and influence I start fostering a relationship while raising their expectations.

I use to ask the question where did you hear about this resource but I added that to my forms so I can focus on the what I think are the three most important questions when I get them on the phone.

Two weeks ago I had the pleasure of being one of the speakers on a webinar titled “4 Steps to RESISTANCE FREE SELLING” that was put on by iSellUK. Complete the form on the page to access the recording and download the handout.

One of the steps of Resistance Free Selling is selling to those who can afford your services so I went looking for list of companies that who were most likely to afford new services.

During  my search I learned that Silvia Quintanilla of Industry Gems had almost 80 lists of top companies who are highly likely to afford your services. The collection of lists includes:

• Top Banks
• Top Insurers
• Top Hospitals
• Top Manufacturers
• Top Private Companies
• Top Public Companies
• And many more….

Click here to get your copy of The Companies Most Likely to Afford Your Services.

The next Sales 2.0 Conference is about how to leverage Social Media in your sales and marketing efforts.

It will be held in Santa Monica and features great thought leaders like Anneke Seley, Carlos Hidalgo, and Matt Heinz as well as sales and marketing executives from companies like IBM, Salesforce.com, RIM, and Frost & Sullivan.

I’ve had the luxury of attending and presenting at Sales 2.0 conferences in Boston and San Francisco and have always come away with new ways to make sales and marketing more effective and new relationships that help me stay informed of the latest sales and marketing ideas, resources, and success stories.

I would go but I’m travelling to London England to work with one of the world’s largest financial institutions.

Please let me know if you attend so I can call you the week after the event to talk about what you learned.

1. Smarketing Strategy #4
2. How to SELL WITHOUT DISCOUNTING
3. The Best iPhone App EVER!

In my last blog post I shared Smarketing Strategy #3 : Creating content that jumps out at those who are most likely to become your customer.

If you did not have time to read my last blog post below is a short video (1:39) that explains how to create content that jumps out and here is link to some resources by Doug Kessler and his team over at Velocity Partners that also talk about it.

Smarketing Strategy #4 – using the Situation, Target, Plan (STP) framework – is to take your content where your best prospects go.

One of the major challenges of marketing is to solve the ‘Here vs. There problem’ – Here is where your content is, There is where the prospect is.

So you need to figure out where online your target audience goes, what they read, who they listen to and then find a way to get your content there or get links to your content posted there.

One of my favorite strategies is to comment on blogs and leave behind a cookie crumb – that leads people to a resource on your website.

If you want to use that strategy, here is a web site that ranks all the tops blogs by category.

Using a Here vs. There strategy:

• One comment resulted in over 500 people filling in a form to access my Won Sales Analysis™ template
• My Won Sales Analysis™ landing page has been viewed almost 15,000 times in the last 12 months.

The next stage of this strategy is to make my comments a status update on LinkedIn and let it be automatically tweeted.

Join us on September 13^th as thought leaders Mark Hunter, Craig Elias, and Steve Connolly share 3 Ways to Eliminate the Price Objection. (See the bios below.)

You don’t want to miss this FREE Online Event at 11:00 AM – 12:00 PM PDT | 2:00PM -3 :00PM EDT on Tuesday, September 13, 2011.

Register even if you can’t make the live event because all registrants will receive links to the recording and handout from the event.

Click the button or below to sign up now!

http://bit.ly/NoMoreDiscounting

Learn more about the 3 speakers below!

Mark Hunter, “The Sales Hunter,” helps B2B sales professionals close more high profit sales by identifying better prospects, building profitable long-term customer relationships, and negotiating mutually beneficial strategic partnerships.

Mark has conducted thousands of training programs to organizations like BP, Novartis, Northrop-Grumman, American Express, and Kawasaki. His book High Profit Selling is due out in December of this year

Steven Connolly is a 15 year veteran of B2B product management and is currently the Senior Product Manager responsible for the revolutionary new sales tool iSell.

Steven is a frequent presenter on sales topics such as using social media for increasing sales as well as best practices for prospecting and lead generation.

Craig Elias is the creator of Trigger Event Selling™ and author of the Bronze Medal winner of the Top Sales Books of 2010 “SHiFT!“

His knowledge of Trigger Events has resulted in a 20-year track record as a top sales performer, winning a $1,000,000 prize in a global billion dollar idea competition, having his last company chosen by Dow Jones as one of the 50 most promising companies in North America, and coverage on NBC, The New York Times, and The Wall Street Journal.

I’ve been an iPhone lover ever since I found one on eBay that was hacked so I could insert my SIM card from a Canadian cell phone provider and have the phone work in Canada.

Since then I have played with every sales / marketing / business development app I could find. At last count I have downloaded 217 apps.

My 10 favorites are:

1. CardMunch
2. Gist
3. LinkedIn
4. Salesforce.com
5. Google Apps
6. Twitter
7. SplashID – Keeps track of all my online and offline passwords
8. Skype 
9. GoToMeeting
10. Weather Eye

Nine of them allow me to do on my iPhone what I can also do on my laptop.

CardMunch on the other hand allows me to do what I have always wanted to do on my laptop but have never been able to:

• Enter all the business cards of the people I meet into my address book
• Send these people a LinkedIn connection request
• Send all of them follow-up email with my contact information.

CardMunch on the other had does all the above quickly, easily, AND IT’S FREE!

Here is how it works:

• Open the CardMunch and take a picture of a business card. This picture is then sent to a team of people who manually enter the data – If for some reason the data is not entered correctly simply push a button and it gets sent back to be re-entered.
• Once the data comes back to the application – which typically takes less than 10 minutes – all you have to do is touch a button on the screen to send a LinkedIn request and send a post meeting email
• I have mine configured so it automatically sends a custom LinkedIn message once the date comes back and adds that person to my list of contacts. All I have to do is then touch the button that sends my standard meeting follow-up email that includes my contact (.vcf) file.

1. Smarketing strategy #3
2. Content that captures the best prospects
3. How to SELL WITHOUT DISCOUNTING

In my last blog post I shared Smarketing Strategy #2 : Using a Won Sales Analysis™ – to identify what made you win your best customers so you can replicate your biggest successes.

If you did not read my last blog post below is a short video (4:49) that explains the Won Sales Analysis™.

Smarketing Strategy #3 – using the Situation, Target, Plan (STP) framework - is to tailor your content so it’s highly likely to be noticed by those who recently experienced the Trigger Events you identified during your Won Sales Analysis™.

Have you ever noticed that as soon as you buy a new car you see it all over the road or that when you or your wife get pregnant, you suddenly start seeing pregnant women everywhere?

This is called selective perception. The Trigger Events we experience change what we see. Every time we experience a Trigger Event a new version of selective perception is created. We begin to notice things that were always there. We just did not ‘see’ them.

Why is this important? By focusing your marketing on getting the attention of those who recently experienced a Trigger Event not only will your marketing be more likely to be ‘seen’, its more likely to resonate with the decision maker and cause them to act.

You get their attention by using words, visuals, or scenarios, that will make your marketing jump off of the page and get noticed by those readers who recently experience a Trigger Event and are most likely to become your customers.

The next time you craft a message, harness the power of Trigger Event Marketing™ to focus on the audience that recently experienced a Trigger Event. Remember to use a call to action so that when they see it, they will take that most important step to becoming your customer – phoning you.

Here are  few examples:

• Getting pregnant
• Getting a raise
• Getting engaged
• Getting a new job

If you are asking yourself why am I not using B2B examples, It’s because I have not been able to find any. If you know of any please comment on this blog post and provide a link to your example.

For me it’s always fun to find people who just ‘get it’.

The Trigger Event of me starting this blog post on using Trigger Events in marketing had me seeing blogs that talked about – you guessed it – using Trigger Events in marketing.

One article by Doug Kessler the Creative Director of a B2B Marketing Agency which says “Trigger Marketing … can be the most powerful Huskie in your B2B marketing dogsled” stood out from the rest.

Doug’s article provides some excellent insights and ideas on how to implement Trigger Event Marketing™.

Here is a link to his article B2B content marketing around Buying Triggers

While on the Velocity Partner’s website be sure to checked out their B2B Marketing Manifesto that talks about:

• 3 new realities of B2B Marketing
• The REAL B2B marketing challenge
• 5 B2B imperatives
• 6 B2B staples

P.S. They also have a B2B Content Marketing Workbook that I like.

Join us on September 13^th as thought leaders Mark Hunter, Craig Elias, and Steve Connolly share 3 Ways to Eliminate the Price Objection. (See the bios below.)

You don’t want to miss this FREE Online Event at 11:00 AM – 12:00 PM PDT | 2:00PM -3 :00PM EDT on Tuesday, September 13, 2011.

Register even if you can’t make the live event because all registrants will receive links to the recording and handout from the event.

Click the button or below to sign up now!

http://bit.ly/NoMoreDiscounting

Learn more about the 3 speakers below!

Mark Hunter, “The Sales Hunter,” helps B2B sales professionals close more high profit sales by identifying better prospects, building profitable long-term customer relationships, and negotiating mutually beneficial strategic partnerships.

Mark has conducted thousands of training programs to organizations like BP, Novartis, Northrop-Grumman, American Express, and Kawasaki. His book High Profit Selling is due out in December of this year

Steven Connolly is a 15 year veteran of B2B product management and is currently the Senior Product Manager responsible for the revolutionary new sales tool iSell.

Steven is a frequent presenter on sales topics such as using social media for increasing sales as well as best practices for prospecting and lead generation.

Craig Elias is the creator of Trigger Event Selling™ and author of the Bronze Medal winner of the Top Sales Books of 2010 “SHiFT!“ 

His knowledge of Trigger Events has resulted in a 20-year track record as a top sales performer, winning a $1,000,000 prize in a global billion dollar idea competition, having his last company chosen by Dow Jones as one of the 50 most promising companies in North America, and coverage on NBC, The New York Times, and The Wall Street Journal.

1. Smarketing strategy #2
2. How decision makers buy
3. How to shorten your sales cycle

The second step in my seven step Smarketing (Sales & Marketing Alignment) strategy is to understand what makes you win.

In my last blog post I shared Smarketing Strategy #1 – A simple method to identify who are your best prospects. If you did not have time to read this part of my last blog post below is a short video (1:43) that explains it.

Smarketing Strategy #2 – using the Situation, Target, Plan (STP) framework to align your sales and marketing efforts – is to analyze sales to your best customers so you understand what makes you win.

It’s what I call a Won Sales Analysis ™- aka Trigger Event Analysis™. Every time you make a sale to a new customer where you get a customer with 3 or more check marks next to them, from Smarketing Strategy #1, you want to ask decision makers the following four questions:

1. What event or events led up to this purchase?
2. When did they happen?
3. What made you choose us?
4. How can we make it easier to become our customer?

Answers to these questions will tell you:

• The events that let them afford to buy from you (which starts them Searching for Alternatives) and the events that helped them to justify their purchase (which allowed them to make the purchase).
• The events that made them want to change (which initially put them into the Window of Dissatisfaction™
• What made them choose you over your competition (which tells you the real value they get out of being your customer)
• What you can do to make it easier to become your customer (which tells you how to make it easier for prospects to find you, learn the value of being your customer, and make the purchase)

You can use this information to target and reach the best prospects and help them define the problem, design the solution, and start developing a relationship before your competition even knows there is an opportunity.

Here is a link to download the Won Sales Analysis™ template and instructions.

I recently came across a report “Mapping the Technology Buyer’s Journey”.

For me some of the most interesting things from the report are:

• How decision makers become aware of new solutions
• How decision makers are most active in seeking out new solutions
• How traditional marketing methods are by far the most effective way to reach decision makers

While the research focuses on those who purchase technology I think the results are indicative of what happens in every industry.

Here is a link where you can access the webinar, survey responses, and analysis by Kevin Kerner of Mason Zimlber – a Harte-Hanks company

I am a big fan of selling to executives (Those with money, the authority to spend it, and influence – have friends just like them: also have money, authority, and influence).

I recently read – and commented on a blog post by Andrew Hunt on The Customer Collective that I think does an excellent job of explaining why selling to executives shortens your sales cycle.

Feel free to contact me if you have questions about ANY of the content above.

Have an eventful week!

Craig