SHiFT! - TURN PROSPECTS INTO CUSTOMERS by Harnessing Trigger Events » Webinars

Smarketing Strategy #3 & Content That Sells

Craig — Tue, 23 Aug 2011 14:01:23 +0000

This blog post is about three things:

Smarketing Strategy #3

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:

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.

Content That Captures The Best Prospects

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.

How to SELL WITHOUT DISCOUNTING

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 â€“ 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.

The 4 Best Sales Resources & 2 Webinar Links

Craig — Tue, 29 Mar 2011 17:35:05 +0000

This blog post is about three things:

The 4 best sales resources: Fillers, Movers, Shakers & Starters
Two Webinar Links: Ivana Taylor & Keith Ferrazzi
Trigger Buzz #11: Tonight: Sales and marketing alignment

The 4 Best Sales Resources

In my last blog post I asked the question what are the best resources to put behind a form so sales can connect with decision makers at the right times.

Here are my answers to that question. The four best sales resources to put behind a form are:

Content decision makers want access to once they experience a ‘want’ Trigger Event and start thinking about changing suppliers
Content that shows decision makers they can afford to change
Content that shows decision makers how they can justify their purchase
Content that starts them down the path of becoming your customer

One of the companies that gets this more than anyone else I know is Eloqua. They call the first three types of content funnel fillers, funnel movers, and funnel shakers. They even go so far as to classify members of their marketing team the same way – That’s one of the reason’s I chose them as my #2 Sales 2.0 tool.

The first type of content is the most important because once a decision maker experiences a want Trigger Event they start defining the problem and start seeing products and services that then are used to design the solution. Miss this step and you can be locked out of the rest of the funnel

The first type of content answers questions decision makers have when they have a bad experience with their current supplier or take on a new job (or responsibility) and are curious about what they could be doing.

The second type of content shows decision makers the different ways they can afford to make the purchase

The third type of content helps decision makers justify their decision to their superiors, subordinates, and potentially shareholders.

The last type of content is designed to have the decision maker start going down the path of becoming your customer as soon as possible in the funnel above. Some people think free trials are one way to do this. What I don’t like about free trials is that the decision maker does not get that attached to the solution because they know they will lose all the time and effort the invested once the trial is over.

My preference is any form of a freemium model – Offer something free or at low cost and started them down the path of becoming your customer knowing that when the decision maker experiences an afford Trigger Event they have already invested in learning to do things your way and you are now highly likely to be the supplier of choice – because decision makers are very busy and see limited value in spending the same time learning about your competition.

I hear all the time “this only works for small purchases and in the B2C world”. When I hear this I only have one thing to say – BULLS*&#! If I have learned one thing in my time as a top performing sales professional and working with a number of customers – First in wins more times than anyone else. So the game is how do you get in first to define the problem, design the solution, and position yourself as the logical choice.

Different types of content that can be use are templates, white papers, case studies, webinars, videos – two of my favorite video solutions are Brain Shark (here is how I use it) and Visible Gains. I recently learned about Visible Gains so I have not completed my first video with them yet. 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 information is tracked and allows you to follow up more effectively.

I could write all day about this but I’m a better talker than I am a writer so I am doing a one hour webinar on this topic with Ivana Taylor of Do It Yourself Marketing which is being hosted by my favorite survey tool Survey Analytics.

How to GENERATE THE HIGHEST QUALITY LEADS by Aligning Sales and Marketing

Join Ivana Taylor from DIYMarketers and Craig Elias – the creator of Trigger Event Selling™ and Trigger Event Marketing™ – as they join forces to give you a fresh perspective on sales and marketing alignment and show you:

Which digital assets attract the most profitable prospects
Where to place content so it drives the best prospects to your website
When are the three best times to pass a web-based lead to your sales team
How to get sales to give you the data you need so they get the leads they want
How to create a simple seven step system that aligns your sales and marketing efforts
Which sales and marketing research results in the greatest payoff for you and your sales team

You don’t want to miss this FREE Online Event at 9:00 AM – 10:00 AM PDT on Tuesday, April 12, 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 below to sign up now!

http://bit.ly/Smarketing

For those of you who can’t wait until the webinar you can participate in tonight’s TriggerBuzz – see below for more details.

The second webinar that I mention above is the one I did with Keith Ferrazzi and T.A. McCann that has almost 2,000 people register for it. The recording can be viewed at – http://blog.gist.com/2011/03/17/video-recording-the-power-of-connecting-webinar/

Trigger Buzz #11 – Sales and Marketing Alignment

Tonight’s Trigger Buzz (Tuesday March 29^sh @ 6:00PM PST | 9:00PM EST) is on how can you align your sales and marketing efforts to attract and close the best customers?

Details on TriggerBuzz and how it works can be found at http://ShiftSelling.com/TriggerBuzz.

Have an eventful week!

Craig

#4 Sales 2.0 Tool

Craig — Tue, 04 Jan 2011 22:16:52 +0000

This blog post is about three things:

The #4 Sales 2.0 Tool – Lattice Engines
The next two webinars – First one on January 25^th
Trigger Buzz #6 â€“ Tonight: Customer retention

In myÂ last blog post I gave what I think are theÂ top 3 questions to ask a prospect when they complete a web form. E.g. aÂ self-serve pricing form powered by my #5 Sales 2.0 toolÂ EchoQuote.

That blog post was a personal learning ‘event’ – I now know that I should provide my answers to the questions asked each month not just solicit answers from the almost 6,500 readers of this blog.

So from this point forward, my blog post on the last Tuesday of the month will include my perspective on theÂ question of the month.

The #4 Sales 2.0 Tool

My pick for the #4 Sales 2.0 tool is Lattice Engines.

Lattice Engines is a predictive sales intelligence tool that analyzes past purchases by your customers to predict which ones are most likely to buy next.

Lattice Engines helpsÂ organizationsÂ not lose sight of those existing customers, who are highly likely to buy in the near future, while allowing organizations to focus more resources on new customer acquisition.

It’s best suited for organizations that sell:

Numerous products or services,
Where sales people sell to many accounts,
In the SMB market.

Win $1,500 worth ofÂ Trigger Event services by suggesting the situations where Lattice Engines can be of most value to an organization. To win the $1,500 prize you mustÂ get the most votes forÂ your answer.

Answers are submitted byÂ commenting on this blog post. Answers are voted on by clicking on theÂ button that appears at the end of each answer/comment.

Winners are announced the last Tuesday of the month â€“Â JanuaryÂ 25^th â€“ so voting ends at Midnight (MST) on Monday January 24^th.

Answers/comments need to be approved â€“ to avoid spam â€“ which typically takes just a few minutes. Contact me by phone (+1.403.874.2998), Skype (Craig.Elias), orÂ this contact form, if you donâ€™t see your comment approved within a few minutes of posting it.

Use the “Share” button below to Tweet , Stumble!, Digg, and email your friends so you get the most votes, because the voting system I use does not allow you to vote for your own answers.

Next Two Webinars

January 25^th (9:00AM PST | 12:00PM EST)Â is the next in a series of webinars with OneSource â€“ the providers of iSell: The gold medal winner of the top Sales 2.0 tools of 2010. iSell by OneSource is my favourite supplier of Trigger Event alerts. One of the reasons itâ€™s my favourite is that itsâ€™ more than an aggregator of news and social media information. Â It also proactively monitors over 300,000 company web sites to see what has recently been added or removed. The second speaker will be finalized later this week.

February 8^th (9:00AM PST | 12:00PM EST) Lattice Engines will host a webinar with a special guest from the CRM industryÂ and myself. This webinar will share insights on how toÂ effectively sell into the SMB Market.

Iâ€™m currently working on getting all future webinars listed at http://TriggerEventWebinars.com â€“ which should be completed by this weekend.

Trigger Buzz #6 â€“ Customer Retention

As a result of numerous requests, tonight’s Trigger Buzz will be focused on how to KEEP YOUR BEST CUSTOMERS.

What are the Trigger Events that cause customers to leave and what can organizations do to prevent or mitigate these Trigger Events in order to grow faster.

Follow TriggerBuzz on Twitter and once I follow you back you can submit your questions by sending a direct message to @TriggerBuzz

Details on TriggerBuzz and how it works can be found atÂ http://ShiftSelling.com/TriggerBuzz.

Have an eventful week!

Craig

The 3 Best Questions To Ask A Prospect

Craig — Thu, 30 Dec 2010 16:49:12 +0000

This blog post contains 3 items:

Form fill follow-up strategies – The three best questions to ask
2011 webinar schedule – One every month of 2011
Trigger Buzz #6 – Tuesday January 4th Â @ 6:00PM Pacific

Form Fill Follow-up Strategies

Since no one won the $1,500 prize by providing suggestions on how to follow up on leads generated when someone completes a web form to access Â information or a resource – E.g. an EchoQuote self-serve pricing form, a webinar recording, a white paper, or preview chapters of a book – here is my perspective on the three best questions to ask when following up on web leads.

MIT’s lead follow up research shows how you are 100X more likely to reach the person who filled in the form when you follow up in 5 minutes versus 30 minutes â€“ The report has some other enlightening information and can be downloaded from InsideSales.com.Â So if you are going to follow up on web leads do so as fast as possible.

What questions should you ask when you follow up?

I answered that question by first asking – What are the most important things to learn?

For me the three mostÂ importantÂ things I want to learn are:

Did they get the resource they requested?
What made them fill in the form?
Is there a sales opportunity?

In todayâ€™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 recipientâ€™s inbox. So, my first question is â€œDid you receive the email with the link to download the resource?â€

Iâ€™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 â€œWhat made you say it was worth taking the time to complete the form to access the resource?â€ This question is still a littleÂ lengthyÂ and cumbersome so if I’d love to hear if you have a shorter or better version of this question.

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 theÂ statisticsÂ of those who fill in forms are similar to those who register for webinars. Patrick Cahill Â - who is the a speaker in the June webinar “How to best use webinars as a lead generation tool” – 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%).

So my last question is â€œWhat happened recently that made it more relevant or more important?â€

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 Searching For Alternatives Â I ask permission to ask a few more questions so I can understand who they are already talking to and how I canÂ positionÂ 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 what I think are the three most important questions when I get them on the phone.

2011 Webinar Schedule

I received so much positive feedback from the webinars I did in the last half of 2010 that I am putting together a series of webinars for every month in 2011 (except July and August). The first webinar is scheduled for January 25th @ 9:00AM PST | 12:00PM EST. All other webinarsÂ will be scheduled for the 2nd Tuesday of the month at 9:00AM Pacific | 12:00PM Eastern.

Each webinar will feature a second presenter and a technology solution you can use to implement the insights shared by myself and the second speaker.

You can see the current schedule for January to June atÂ http://TriggerEventWebinars.com

So far I have speakers and technologies for the January to June webinars. Please contact me by phone (+1.403.874.2998) , Skype (Craig.Elias) email (Craig.Elias@ShiftSelling.com) or thisÂ contact form if you have a speaker or a serice you would like to see included in the September – December webinars.

TriggerBuzz #6

Tuesday January 4th â€“ from 9:00PM-9:30PM Eastern (6:00PM-6:30PM Pacific) is the sixth edition of TriggerBuzz.

Get your prospecting questions answered by following @TriggerBuzz on Twitter. To submit your questions, once I follow you back, you need to send a direct message to @TriggerBuzz.

Details and instructions can be found atÂ ShiftSelling.com/TriggerBuzz

Have an eventful New Years Eve!

Craig

Buzz, Biz & Best

Craig — Tue, 28 Sep 2010 13:01:52 +0000

This blog post has three items:

The coolest use of social media I have ever experienced
The recording of the webinar 5 Ways to Close Deals Faster
My countdown of the top seven Sales 2.0 tools

Buzz: The Coolest use of Social Media

Back in July I had the chance to participate in the coolest use of social media I have ever experienced: Small Business Buzz.

Months ago I subscribed to their tweets SBBUZZ and I have watched their weekly events via my iPhone but I never participated in a conversation until July – when the topic was sales. Then I found myself contributing to the conversation and that got me thinking…

How can I do something similar so that so practitioners of Trigger Event Selling^â„¢ can have their questions answered by anyone who wants to participate and provide answers. It’s called TriggerBuzz. It will be held the first and last Tuesday of every month so you can learn new things to get a healthy start and have a strong close your month. So starting next Tuesday October 5th – fromÂ 9:00-9:30 Eastern – each month you have two opportunities to have your questions about Trigger Event Sellingâ„¢ answered.

If you have questions you would like to have answered you simply need toÂ follow TriggerBuzz and send a direct message to TriggerBuzz. I have SocialOoomph – the #5 way to sell more by using social media – set up to auto-follow those who follow TriggerBuzz so you should be able to send me a direct message as soon as you follow TriggerBuzz.

If you have any questions or suggestions for TriggerBuzz you can contact me by phone (North America: 866.744.7904 | International: +1.403.313.0412) text (+1403.874.2998) Skype (Craig.Elias), email (Craig.Elias@ShiftSelling.com) or this contact form.

Biz: Recording of 5 Ways to Close Deals Faster

The recording of the recent webinar “5 Ways To Close Deals Faster by Using Industry and Market Triggers” is now available. In this webinar Tibor Shanto and I share information on the industry and market triggers that shorten sales cycles and five ways you can harness them to close deals faster.

Best: Countdown of the top 7 Sales 2.0 tools

Next Tuesday I will continue my series of Top 7 countdowns – Top 7 Sales Mistakes & Top 7 Social Media Tools – and list what I think are the top 7 Sales 2.0 tools. This is done David Letterman style – starting with number seven and working my way up to number 1.

The first Tuesday of every month I will share the next tool in the list and offer a $1,500 prize to the person who submits a creative way to use the tool and gets the most votes for their answer.

Contact me if you know of a tool you think should be considered.

Have an eventful week!

Craig

$1,500 Winner and Free Trigger Event Webinar

Craig — Fri, 06 Mar 2009 03:50:04 +0000

Congratulations to the winner of $1,500 worth of Trigger Event services – Ken @ IProLive in Australia. Ken won when his answer to the question about the #3 Mistake Sales People Make received the most votes.

Stay tuned next week as I make available $1,500 worth of Trigger Event services to the person with the most votes for their answer a question that is related to ‘The #2 Mistake Sales People’ make.

Till then, here is the link to join the over 400 people that have already registered for the FREE Trigger Event Webinar being sponsored by Dow Jones – the the providers of SalesWorks and G2 – that had to be rescheduled to Tuesday, March 17^th due to speaker availability.

The webinar features Frank Filippo the Executive Director of Product Management at Dow Jones and Craig Elias the creator of Trigger Event Sellingâ„¢, and is being hosted by the President of Trinity Marketing, Tuck Mixon.

Registrants have the chance to win over $3,000 in prizes and are eligible for a free trial of Dow Jones’ SalesWorks.

The recording of the webinar and the handout for the webinar will also be made available to those who register for this no-charge webinar.

Contact me by phone (+1.403.874.2998), Skype (Craig.Elias) or by using the contact form on this site if you have ANY questions about the upcoming webinar.

Have an EVENTFUL week!

Craig

Free ‘trigger event’ sales training

Craig — Fri, 07 Dec 2007 06:16:55 +0000

After finally getting the SHiFT blog back up and running last week I had a number of phone calls and emails about two things:

When is your next free teleseminar on Trigger Events
Why does the email I get have links to past events.

1) The next free trigger event sales seminar “Six Ways to Outsell Your Competition” is Monday December 10th @ 10:00AM Pacific, 11:00AM Mountain, 1:00 Eastern. The registration link for this seminar can be found at http://sixways.eventbrite.com.

2) When the Feedblitz service send out notification of updates it automatically included links to previous posts under the heading of “Most Recent Articles”. Any reference to teleseminars in this section of the notices send out via Feedblitz will be from events that have probably already happened because they were posted several weeks ago.

Trigger Event Resources to Consider

Each week I scour the Internet searching for ideas, resources, articles, and success stories about leveraging Trigger Events to outsell the competition. This week the best resource I found is the article Identify The Compelling Event, By Gene Meskill

Please contact me when you have ideas, resources, or success stories about leveraging â€˜Trigger Eventsâ€˜ – aka selling triggers – that you want to share.

Have an eventful week!

Craig