A Unique Way to Drive More Sales

Disaster struck. After spending hours updating your work. It disappeared after you hit save. In most cases you would jump and reach out quickly to the nearest person you feel might be able to help you and more often than not, the person would reply, "Mmm. That's interesting".

The way your solution expert responds is actually fairly interesting. Most people in similar situations would react with curiosity when something went wrong.

The Secret Power of Getting Interested

When we're selling, we often react. Instead, you should stop to consider how we might have created that problem instead. And more often than not, the reaction is actually what would make the problem worse.

Think about the last time a sales conversation went bad. How often do you actually stop and say, "Mmm. That's interesting?".

Now think about what could happen if you were actually constantly curious about why your prospects actually reacted the way they did.

Let's analyse this

If a prospect was rude and just "didn't understand you". Rather than react simply stop and think, "Mmm. That's interesting..."

• Could it be because of how you explained the value of your service?
• Did you not ask enough questions?
• Were you pushing the prospect to make a decision he wasn't ready to make?
• Perhaps he wasn't the right person?

There's a trend here

Whether you're an experienced pro or new to selling, you get better faster by continually questioning and evaluating your results.

You should always maintain your curiosity and you will improve. Pay attention to the times when the conversation was challenging for you. Why you might have lost to a specific competitor?

Make note of things when they both go according to plan or does not. And if it turned out better than you expected, it's important to recognise what's working well too.

Conclusion

Observing your own sales interactions and experimenting with new approaches is the fastest route to driving more sales.

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How to Make Your Value Proposition Stronger?

How do you know if your value proposition is weak? An easy telltale sign is that virtually no one responds to your emails or gets back to you on the phone.

One other key indicator is that prospects quickly brush you away with statements such as:

• We've already got that handled
• We're working with someone else already that's handled this for X years

It's already hard to sell after getting through the door, but it's even harder to sell if you can't even get through the door. The top salespeople always quote, "you can inspire buyers to take action unless you focus on what's important to them".

Without the right approach, sales would be downright impossible.

Is there such a thing as a strong value proposition?

Here's a case study. A large corporation is introducing a new system into the printing market. The place was buzzing because of the extraordinary capabilities it had that far exceeded anything else out there.

They were thinking that with these which printer company wouldn't jump in to order it? But as life would have it, nothing comes easy. Sales stalled after the early adopters have converted over to this new feature.

Here's what some research found:

• One printer had metrics on every aspect of their business, and it was able to:
• Cut the prepress staff by 33% while still handling the same amount of workload.
• It helped to cut overtime costs
• Reduce turnaround by 2 to 3 days
• Balance their workflow and enabled them to delay the purchase of an expensive new press machine.

These were the true value propositions. And these were really strong, as it related and focused on what was important to the customers.

The secret to your value proposition is with your customers

The case study above has shown that one of the best ways to discover the value proposition of your product or service is to actually ask your customers.

When you're struggling with sales, working with a new industry, or talking to different buyers this will be your golden ticket to finding out what value you actually offer.

Beware because this does not apply to all customers. The worst customers to interview are your long-term customers. Because they can't remember the issues and challenges they faced before they switched over to your company.

Choose more recent customers. Because they would know about the difference you've made and share with you exactly how it has impacted their business results.

When you go into these conversations always remember that you are there just to ask questions and to learn. Do not sell under any circumstance, because this would result in future opportunities being lost.

Conclusion

Knowing your value is essential to your sales success. Don't underplay it.

Remember no one wants to buy whatever product or service you offer. They're only interested in what problems they are facing and if you have anything that you can do for them.

The more clearly you can articulate your value proposition, the easier it will be to set up meetings, create momentum and close more deals.

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How to Write Catchy Headlines Customers Can't Resist [6 Secrets]

Writing great content is a good starting point, but getting it to be read is another. This is where a good title comes in. 

Titles are what helps to sell the content that you spend hours painstakingly creating. Titles are represented in search engines, email, and social media. It comes as no surprise that searching for ways to write and craft titles is on everyone's list as their number 1 concern.

Here are some of the frequent questions that are asked. How long should my headline be? What words should I use? What words should I avoid? Should I optimize it for search or for social or both?

Here's where this article comes in. We've come up with a quick formula that makes this method easily repeatable. This is a valuable resource for our team and it will be a valuable resource for anyone who's just starting out.

The secret to writing catchy headlines your customers can't resist.

1) Start with a working title.

Start with an idea / a rough draft. This is your working title. This is a stepping stone for you to come up with your perfect title.

Don't confuse a working title with a topic. Topics are general ideas, and how a writer chooses to tackle the direction of the topic can affect the outcome.

A working title on the other hand is very specific. It serves the purpose of guiding the creation of a single blog post. 

Here's an example

A topic covering:

1. Sales. 

You can come up with the following working titles:

1. How the Right Tools Can Help You to Sell More
2. The Ultimate Guide to Sales Tools
3. 5 Crazy Tips to Help You Close Sales Quickly

You would have noticed by now that each of these working titles are different, it also shows that none of those titles is perfect. But it does serve as a specific enough guide for your upcoming content.

2) Stay accurate

Accuracy is extremely critical. Don't downplay this. It sets the expectations of what a reader expects to see. Don't do this. Don't overkill and overwrite a claim in your title. Unless, of course, you have evidence for it in your content.

For example, 10 Crazy Solutions That Give you Instant Sales, All Other Sales Methods Fail to Compare. Unless, of course, you really have the suggested 10 crazy solutions, if not you're likely to create more distrust in your brand and organisation than what was initially intended.

One way to be accurate is to add a bracket with the following few words [New Report], [Latest for 2021]. This sets a clear expectation and readers know exactly what they are getting themselves into. 

3) Make it sexy

Being accurate does not mean you can't find ways to make your title pop. There's an art to language and you should not be afraid to use it.

• Have some fun with alliteration
• Use strong language
• Make values clear
• Make it visual
• Focus on the "who" not the "why"

4) Keep it short

There isn't a one-size-fits-all solution to how long or short your title should be. All we can suggest is it depends on what your goals are. Knowing your goals will guide how and where your headline would appear.

There are many suggestions as to how title length will have an impact on email / social / search / etc. So it really depends on what your objectives are. A great way to learn what works is to run a few tests to see what works best for the particular audience you are targetting.

5) Try to optimize for both search and social at the same time

It's very hard to optimize one asset for everything. But there's nothing stopping you from being able to deliver for both.

The secret? Focus on keywords you know your audience is already searching for and find what works across different channels.

One great tip is to make sure that your headlines are tweetable. Try keeping it within the 120-130 character range if possible because this leaves so much space for people to include a short comment if they choose to manually retweet and cite you.

6) Brainstorm with someone with a fresh outlook on your title

Sometimes looking at things too long can lock you into a perspective that is sometimes difficult to break out of. The goal is to get another person to mutually agree on a title for that content that you are publishing. This doesn't need to belong. All you need to make sure is that you have a few ideas on a list for you to discuss things together.

Conclusion

Titles are integral to sales. It leads the person's interest in content to allow for information to be communicated.

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The 8 Best B2B Marketing Content That Will Help You Generate More Leads

There's something magical when we get to take new product features for a test run. It's the ability to transform something that's imagining into something more. We squeal with excitement typically reserved for new Netflix series, or iPhone launches for new product features instead.

This is something we're really excited to share with you and with other marketers as well. I'm sure you've probably come across some form of content at least once in your internet life. The point is marketing content can be uninteresting if you tackle it from one angle but if done right, your B2B content marketing can certainly match -- or even rival -- the creativity and appeal of some of the best B2C campaigns.

Here's a list of some of our favourite. Examples below:

1. CB Insights Newsletter

2. Mattermark: Raise the Bar

3. MYOB Tax Time

4. Deloitte Insights

5. First round magazines

6. NextView Ventures: Better Everyday

7. Zendesk Engineering

8. Hexagon: Annual Report

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