Your Best Sales Process: Balancing Standardization and Flexibility

When clients come to us for help improving their sales results, they’re usually feeling frustrated and lost. In most cases, they’ve got a low close rate — or they’re losing sleep, worrying that their entire sales process is all wrong.

And honestly, those things are usually tied together. A bad sales process will certainly tank your close rate. 

If you’re rushing people through your sales process, you’ll end up seeing prospects walk away because they’re being pushed to make a decision too quickly. Or, if your process is overly long and complex, prospects may become impatient with the unnecessary hoops they have to jump through. 

But length isn’t the only problem that can plague a sales process. Sometimes it can also be too rigid, pushing customers through a cookie-cutter process that’s not attuned to their needs.

As a sales coach, I teach my clients that the best sales processes are just the right balance between standardized and customized — They’re built with the buyers in mind. 

If you’re dealing with low close rates and a legion of stalled deals, it’s probably time to look closely at your sales process itself and ask yourself if it’s off balance. 

The biggest flaw of your sales process: it’s designed for you, not your buyer

When I start working with a new sales team, my first questions are always about their sales process — What kind of repeatable steps do they take their buyers through? — And I see the same thing over and over again: Sales processes that are built for the business, not the buyer. 

What does that mean?

A lot of sales processes are in place to keep pipelines organized as salespeople move their opps through, ending in closed/won or closed/lost. They are tools for organizing work, not solving for the needs of the buyer. 

If the process is not designed with the buyer in mind, you’re likely to turn off a lot of prospects, and you’ll end up putting way more into closed/lost than you should.

Here’s what this kind of sales process looks like to the buyer:

You rush the prospect along

When your process is built around keeping your team organized, you tend to divide it into calls or meetings. After the first call, you move into the second stage. After the second call you move into the third stage. And so on.

If the buyer’s not sure at some point, you either disqualify them or move them forward anyway. 

The problem is that this structure is often too rigid. They are unnatural divisions that don’t take into account the buyer’s actual decision process. Those prospects likely could become customers if they were allowed to move at their own pace. 

You pitch too hard

When the process is broken down by calls or meetings, the pitch is baked right in. A certain call is more likely to focus your features, your company, your excellence than what you actually do for your buyers. It’s about you, not them.

Statistics show that the most successful sales reps listen more than they talk. 

But most below-average sales reps talk way more than they listen, leaving the prospect feeling unheard. They’re pitching when they should be asking questions and learning about the buyer, and this approach is woven into the whole sales process.

You don’t take the time to make the prospect feel educated

Buyers don’t want a sales pitch, they want trustworthy information so they can make an informed decision. 

But most sales enablement materials are just a sales pitch dressed up as a PDF or buyer’s guide. You want to close more deals? Provide unbiased answers to your customers’ questions. 

Now, in contrast to this, imagine you’re the customer. What kind of buying experience do you want? 

One that focuses on your unique needs?

One that moves at your pace?

One where you feel educated and well-informed?

One that doesn’t involve upselling?

Exactly.

So why aren’t you giving your customers what you’d want if you were the one buying?

‘But Chris, we need to have some consistency!’

But Chris, you’re saying, it sounds like I should have no sales process at all! I can’t let every buyer’s experience be different. It’s just not feasible.

I agree. 

You do need a sales process. One that provides structure to the buying experience while still being fluid enough to adapt to your buyers.

Standardize your sales process — but allow room for deviation

In order to build your sales process around your buyer, you first need to understand what your buyer wants. 

How do you find that out?

You listen.

Both when you’re talking to prospects directly — and when you’re reviewing sales call recordings — pay attention to the questions, worries, and concerns you’re hearing. When you’re talking to customers who didn’t buy from you, get feedback on how the process went.

Then, you go back to the drawing board and build your process around the buyer’s needs.

For a more in-depth look at how to rebuild your sales process, check out these resources:

• Fix Your Sales Process by Asking: ‘What Decisions Does Someone Need to Make To Buy From Us?’
• How to Create a Sales Process that Closes More Deals

Make sure everyone understands the ‘why’

Your sales process exists for a reason. A standardized process is repeatable and easily learned by new hires. The marketing team can support it with sales enablement content. 

And if done right, it’s attuned to your buyers’ needs.

Make sure your sales reps understand why the process is the way it is. Make sure they know the decisions that made it the way it is.

…So you can allow for thoughtful deviation

You probably had a teacher at some point who told you this: “you have to learn the rules before you can break them.”

Same thing here.

If your salespeople know why the sales process is the way it is, they can understand when and how to break it.

After all, there are times when non-traditional prospects want to buy from you. There are times when a buyer wants to move quicker than the standard process allows. 

Simply put, there are times when it serves the company to deviate from the standard sales process. And that’s okay, as long as you know why the rules are there in the first place. 

Fix your process, fix your close rate

I know most sales teams don’t want to hear this, but I’m going to say it anyway: If someone books time to meet with you, they’re a pretty serious prospect. 

I know, I know. 

Some of the opps are garbage. I hear you — just as I have heard the same thing from hundreds of other sales reps over the years. 

But here’s the thing.

Time is the most valuable commodity there is. If someone has given up time to meet with you, they’re pretty serious about your company and your solution. 

They’ve given up their time to meet with you — so make it worth it for everyone involved. 

But of every 10 people who give up their time to meet with us, how many do we sell to? Two? Three? We’re failing to sell to 80% of the people who are serious enough that they gave you their time.

So, how do you sell to more than 20% 

Three ways:

• First, by reimagining your sales process so it’s aligned with buyer decisions.
• Second, by adapting that process as needed for the individual buyer in front of you.
• Third, by taking time to educate every buyer to allow her to make an informed decision, not a rushed one. 

Author: cduprey@impactbnd.com (Chris Duprey)

* This article was originally published here

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LinkedIn Launches New ‘Find Your In’ Ad Campaign

The campaign aims to highlight how you can use the platform to find your ideal career path.

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Twitter Withdraws from EU Disinformation Code, Which Could Set it on a Collision Course with Regulators

Elon Musk's free speech stance could become a key point of contention.

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Google Expands its Digital Marketing Coaching Program for SMBs

The program aims to help diverse businesses maximize their online marketing efforts.

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Twitter Provides Additional API Access Tier to Address Pricing Concerns

Twitter's API access price hikes have put many projects on-hold.

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Google Expands the Test Pool for its New Generative AI Elements in Search

Google's looking to integrate its generative AI elements into traditional Search. 

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Surgeon General: More safeguards needed to protect youth from social media misuse

While there's growing evidence that social media use among teens is harmful, a public health advisory also said there are benefits to the connections.

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The Best Way for Marketers to Learn AI? Get Into the Sandbox and Start Playing

A couple of decades ago, when the internet was just taking shape, businesses of all kinds started getting anxious about the future. It was an interesting time. Some saw potential, some saw threat, some thought it would all just blow over like other tech fads of the past.

But not even those excited few could grasp the monumental shift the internet would bring to our everyday lives: the way we shop and do business, the way we connect with each other, and the way we learn about the world around us. 

So, many businesses did nothing. They waited for as long as they could, fearful of a misstep, watching as others sprinted past them into the new world. 

The second turning

We are on the cusp of another seismic shift. Artificial Intelligence (AI) will impact many things over the next few years, and the global market value of AI tools is expected to reach $267 billion by 2027.

The pace of change so far has been extraordinary, and everything we’re seeing suggests that this will only speed up. 

In the midst of all this change lies another statistic: A majority of consumers don’t believe they understand AI — and even some of the top engineers and data scientists can’t explain exactly how it works. 

But that’s no reason to sit this one out. (You likely don’t know how microwave ovens or LCD monitors work, either.)

The point is this: don’t feel like you need to understand it or wait for more polished versions to roll out. Instead, start experimenting. 

No matter what your professional role, you should avoid doing nothing. Now is the time to get familiar with the slew of new tools and tech coming on the market.

You don’t need to become an expert. You just need to play around. 

But if you don’t play today, you won’t be able to use the tools tomorrow when you actually need to.

So, let’s dip our toes in together. 

The AI landscape is nowhere near settled

Pause for a minute and consider this, a visual survey of the most visited websites over the past 30 years. 

Pretty striking, right? It’s amazing how fast things change.

TL,DW: In the video you see the rise and fall of sites like AOL, Geocities, and MySpace. You see the emergence of Google and Facebook, which overstepped competitors that once seemed insurmountable. 

Which all makes you wonder, Google seems unconquerable right now — but so did Yahoo at one point. So did Lycos and Ask. Considering how much the landscape has changed, how can we anticipate what’s coming?

Just like in the early days of the internet, we are facing a deluge of new sites, platforms, tools, and APIs. On top of that, there's the ongoing issue of regulation. For people not enmeshed in the tech world — which is most of us — this can be overwhelming and intimidating. How can we possibly keep up?

The truth is, you can’t.

In the coming months and years, there will be a lot of cannibalization and consolidation of AI tools as companies battle for market share. 

Then, there will be further chaos as platforms explore different ways to monetize what they’re offering. As an analogy, think about when Facebook first launched. It was cool and popular, fighting to overtake Friendster and MySpace and other platforms. There were no ads on Facebook. Just features.

The goal was to become popular first, then monetize second.

The monetization of AI

Right now, we’re seeing a marketplace flooded with new free AI tools. So, how will these tools start making money?

Most will follow the SaaS business model: They’ll offer a free trial and then charge subscriptions based on various payment tiers. There may be a limited free version, then higher tiers offer more features the more you pay per month.

Other generative AI tools will sell ad space. Microsoft, for example, has started telling investors how it plans to put ads into what comes out of its chatbot. At the same time, OpenAI, which launched ChatGPT, is currently burning incredible amounts of cash as it tries to figure out how to make money from its tools.

Right now, the marketplace is in the early-Facebook stage. New tools are coming out with free versions, hoping to build a fanbase and attract investors. Then they’ll follow by launching a better, paid version soon after.

In the coming months we will continue to see amazing new technology get rolled out, some of which will resonate and some of which will not, drowned out by the dozens of other competing tools that offer better features or a more pleasing interface.

There will be thousands of companies vying for your attention.

Many will not make it.

Don’t wait for the dust to settle

In such a chaotic landscape, it’s tempting to just wait and see what happens. Don’t do that.

While tools will compete and conglomerate, the use cases will only grow. So, try a few video editing tools, a few writing tools, a few project management tools a few design tools — just remember that the first ones out of the gate might not be the ones who win the entire race. 

Use AI to become a more well-rounded professional

It’s often been said you won’t lose your job to AI — you’ll lose it to someone who is better at using AI than you are. 

As such, it’s important that we choose to see AI as an opportunity, not a threat. AI can make you better at anything. We just have to get over ourselves to allow it to.

According to Wharton professor Ethan Mollick, “There’s a desire to not be replaced that gets in our way of using [AI] well.” he says.

“We’re kind of happy when it doesn’t work," he says. But that mindset is blinding us to possibility:

• AI can make you better at what you’re good at.
• AI can make you way better at what you’re bad at.

The key is bringing the same excitement and open-mindedness to both opportunities. Don’t shut out some AI because its expertise overlaps with your own.

The best way to learn: Start playing

If you want to learn anything, you’ve got to put in the time — and the best way to do this is with low-stakes play.

Think about it. You learned to cook by playing around in the kitchen, trying different things out. Same goes for learning a musical instrument or speaking a language. Sure, formal instruction is important, but you learn the most when you’re experimenting in a low-pressure situation.

Are you feeling simultaneously curious and overwhelmed by what AI offers? 

Here’s what I recommend you do: Block off one hour each week for AI research, experimentation, and play. 

Here’s how I would spend that hour:

• Listen to a podcast. I like The Marketing AI Show with Paul Roetzer.
• Practice prompting tools like ChatGPT, MidJourney, and Gamma to see how different inputs yield different outputs. 
• Play around with new AI features in the apps you use every day. Canva, ClickUp, HubSpot, Gmail, and more. 
• Watch tutorials that explain use cases and tips.
• Read Write with AI by Nicholas Cole and Dickie Bush
• Browse LinkedIn for the best AI content, searching for thought leaders you like.
• Compare Google search results to chatbot results to see what kind of information gets prioritized in each.
• Check GPTE.ai to learn about the latest tools coming out.
• Enroll in our Content Marketing and AI workshop

And be sure to branch out into adjacent fields. The beauty of play is the freedom it brings, so don’t confine yourself. Just because you don’t know anything about video production doesn’t mean you can’t play around with AI video tools.

Spend some time getting lost, finding your way, and seeing what makes sense to you. Be patient and curious and see what you find.

Keep the goal in mind: Marketing is about buyer education

At the end of the day, a tool is something to help you do your job better. Don’t get distracted from what your job actually is. 

Marketing at its best is about educating an audience. It’s about providing people with the information they need to become buyers. 

AI can help you do this.

• Need a quick first draft of a blog article, social post, or website copy? AI will spin up dozens of options for you to pick from and develop.
• Want to turn that podcast into short-form video content? AI will give you rough-cut edits you can polish.
• Need background music to enhance your 80% video? AI can spit out a half-dozen options you can then tweak to perfect the mood.

AI can make you a super marketer — T-shaped and lightning-fast. But the tools don’t change the objective. You goal should always be the same: Help your customer. Be honest. Build trust. 

As you add to your tool box, don’t lose sight of what you’re building.

Author: jbecker@impactbnd.com (John Becker)

* This article was originally published here

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LinkedIn Adds Verifications in Job Listings to Provide More Assurance for Users

Another ID confirmation element from LinkedIn.

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5 AI Marketing Tools That Stand Above the Rest

When ChatGPT launched in late 2022, it opened up the AI floodgates to masses of professionals. Literally thousands of new AI tools have since been released, and established brands have added AI capabilities to the platforms we already use every day.

Source: @heyBarsee

But the thing is, AI has been with us for years. We’re all comfortable seeing predictive text in our email, asking questions to Alexa, or using digital filters in our photos and audio files.

Still, there’s no doubt that the pace of innovation has increased from a trickle to a waterfall, and that’s led to a lot of noise and chaos in the marketplace.

People are overwhelmed — and things show no sign of slowing down.

AI tools for the modern marketer

At IMPACT, we work with businesses of all shapes and sizes — which means we see dozens of industries, team structures, and verticals. And within those organizations, we’re coaching marketing teams, training salespeople, and advising senior leadership.

In short, we see a wide swath of the professional landscape.

Below are some tools we advise clients to try out to increase their efficiency and improve their output. 

For each tool, I’ll explain what it does, what it costs, the pros and cons, and my impressions — and this should give you a leg up as you’re sifting through the crowded AI landscape.

Here we go.

1. Video editing tool: Descript

Descript is an AI-powered video editor that will transcribe your footage automatically so you can edit it just like a Word document.

How you can use it

Descript uses speech detection AI to transcribe any audio or video file you feed it. The accuracy they offer is some of the highest I’ve seen. If there are errors, industry terms, or specific names you want to ensure Descript remembers moving forward, you can add them to your own glossary to be even quicker in the future, which is cool. 

Another feature I found was that you can add new scenes with one click. Simply adding a slash “/” within your script will allow you to add a new scene. Descript has thousands of clips, gifs, and images to choose from to add to your video, or you can simply create your own. Little tips and tricks like this can be found in their resource center, so users can continue to learn from one another.

The user experience is very smooth and Descript allows you to apply text-based editing to save you time and ease overall. I only see Descript getting better from here and I’d expect its competitors will follow suit in terms of text-based editing for their users. 

Advantages

• The dashboard operates like a drive system, allowing for collaboration with teammates
• There's voice cloning 
• Magic Menu (in the Pro tier) identifies filler works and lets you decide what to remove
• Precision editing  
• There are regularly held “Descript 101” webinars that get recorded and stored in a learning hub.

Disadvantages

• Transcription is about 90% accurate (This is some of the highest I’ve seen, but there is still room for improvement.)
• The voice clone can sound pixeled and robotic 
• The voice clone in editing has some speech synthesis issues during long sentences
• The timeline in the video editor doesn’t let you drag/drop/slide as seamlessly as other editing tools
• You can't go into detail with keyframing and color grading, creating on-screen graphics, and/or text that you can in tools like Adobe Premier Pro

What it costs

There’s a free version, with Creator ($12/month), Pro ($24/month), and Enterprise tiers. Full details on their pricing page.

2. Long-form blog post tool: Content at Scale

Content at Scale is a top-tier AI copywriting software that uses a complex mix of three AI engines, natural language processing, and semantic analysis algorithms. It is able to crawl Google and all the top-ranking sites to put together full blog posts.

How you can use it

If I were a content writer, this would be one of the first tools I would opt to pay for. I saw the load time (explained below) as a huge disadvantage at first, but if you can plan ahead, Content at Scale will still increase your efficiency overall.

It is synced with WordPress and soon will be with HubSpot, which saves a lot of time in the publishing process.

This seems to be the one tool that has the most additional features baked within it, while still having accurate output.

A human is still needed to edit the blog post before it is actually published, but this tool seems to require the least amount of editing compared to other tools.

Advantages

• Integrated with WordPress and Shopfy, with HubSpot coming soon.
• Provides an SEO optimization score and an on-page SEO checklist
• Built-in AI and plagiarism detector 
• Write long-form copy from an existing blog, a YouTube Video, a podcast, or a custom audio file 
• Regular  how-to webinars for beginners and a quick-start tutorial page

Disadvantages

• Waitlist to have full access
• Significant load time. (They state that it takes 4-7 minutes on average for each long-form blog post to be created, but my wait time was a little over 16 minutes to create a 3600-word article.)
• The tone of voice options are limited
• SEO checker isn’t as accurate as it could be (SurferSEO or Jasper’s SEO checker are more accurate.)
• You have the option to add images, visuals, and media, but the output is sub-par

What it costs

Tiers include Solo ($250/month), Starter ($500/month), Scaling ($1,000/month), and Agency ($1,500/month)

3. Content team collaboration tool: Writer

Writer is AI content generation for your business that promises to generate on-brand writing every time. Writer claims to put your privacy first, offering the benefits of AI with no data risk.

How you can use it

Initially, I didn’t see Writer as any different than Grammarly. However, the more I’ve played around with it the more I see this as a very good fit for a Senior Content Manager or somebody who leads a content team. 

Having the ability to project manage all the deep details of writing within one platform for a full team is great for organizations that have strict guidelines to adhere to. For companies with specific tone and style guidelines, this would be my go-to tool. 

Advantages

• The CoWrite tool acts as the writing team’s personal assistant
• A chatbot function allows you to utilize your prompt skills to train your AI (This gives you the ability to ensure your final output is relevant, updated, and accurate.)
• Writing and plagiarism checker
• You can customize your content’s tone and style to ensure your final output is on-brand
• Writer doesn’t store data its users type into the software

Disadvantages

• The user interface isn’t as easy to navigate as it could be.
• Setting up your team’s custom writing rules will take extra time at the beginning of your process.

What it costs

There’s a 14-day free trial, after which a team of 1-5 people will spend $18/month. Enterprise pricing is available if you contact the Writer team.

4. Search Engine Optimization tool: SurferSEO

Surfer SEO is a cloud-based on-page optimization tool that allows you to analyze and compare your own pages against what currently ranks in SERPs.

How you can use it

Through my experience with a variety of writers across a variety of industries, SEO seems to be the one thing they all overthink.

I recommend this tool quite often to my clients as they try to rank in Google. I don’t see this as a tool someone would need forever, but a great tool to utilize if you are new to SEO and don’t have the bandwidth to learn everything all at once.

I specifically love the actionable feedback it lists out for you in the SEO checker on the dashboard. This information is very direct and doesn’t leave you feeling unsure as to what you need to do to improve your content.

Advantages

• Surfer Academy offers a library learning resources
• Integrates with Google Docs and WordPress
• Edit and write right within the tool to receive your SEO score
• Analyze and compare your own pages to what ranks well already, with 500+ ranking factors
• The Content Planner tool will find related keywords and arrange them in cluster format so that you can easily create content and do internal linking

Disadvantages

• No free trial option, only a 7-day money-back guarantee
• The Domain Planner tool only supports the top 100 pages (not all pages on your site)
• The WordPress integration doesn’t work with accuracy 100% of the time
• Keyword research isn’t as intensive or descriptive as it could be 
• The SERP Analyzer tool includes a lot of unnecessary data points, which can be overwhelming to make sense of

What it costs

Tiers include Basic ($49/month), Pro ($99/month), Business ($199/month), and Enterprise.

5. Time management tool: Reclaim

Reclaim is a smart scheduling app for Google Calendar that uses artificial intelligence to automatically build the perfect schedule for your priorities every week.

How you can use it

I trialed this tool for a few weeks and found it extremely helpful. With that said, I am an overly organized, color-coded planner type of individual, so I may not be the best use case for Reclaim. However, I now recommend this to my clients all the time. 

It doesn’t matter what industry or what department you work in — a lot can go wrong if your calendar is chaotic. Having everything organized in one spot gives you the freedom to maximize your availability without clogging up your calendar. 

The coolest part, I think, is when a meeting is canceled or something shifts in your calendar, Reclaim will auto-reschedule it for you at an opportune time.

And lastly, Reclaim will adjust your events from “Free” to “Busy” as you get busier — so you stay flexible, but not overly available. 

Advantages

• Reclaim 101 offers live educational webinars 
• Integrates with Google Calendar, Slack, Click Up, and more
• Sync unlimited calendars (and availability) to prevent conflicts
• Auto-block time for tasks and routines and find the best time for 1:1 meetings
• Add breaks and travel time around meetings
• Reprioritize your entire calendar easily when things change

Disadvantages

• Does not integrate with Outlook
• There is a learning curve when you first start using the tool
• You cannot access all of the functions from your own calendar — you will have to have the app open in another tab to have full access
• Notifications can become overwhelming quickly, though they can be adjusted

My thoughts

I trialed this tool for a few weeks and found it extremely helpful. With that said, I am an overly organized, color-coded planner type of individual, so I may not be the best use case for Reclaim. However, I now recommend this to my clients all the time. 

It doesn’t matter what industry or what department you work in — a lot can go wrong if your calendar is chaotic. Having everything organized in one spot gives you the freedom to maximize your availability without clogging up your calendar. 

The coolest part, I think, is when a meeting is canceled or something shifts in your calendar, Reclaim will auto-reschedule it for you at an opportune time. And lastly, Reclaim will adjust your events from “Free” to “Busy” as you get busier — so you stay flexible, but not overly available. 

What it costs

Lite (free for life), Starter ($8/month per user), Business ($12/month per user), Enterprise ($18/month per user).

The tool is only as good as the person who uses it

While these tools open up amazing possibilities, remember that they, themselves, are not a strategy. They are not insight or creativity, either.

Let these tools enhance and speed up the work you do, but don’t expect them to do the job for you. 

And remember, the AI landscape is shifting by the day. These tools will improve, others will emerge, and category kings will eventually come to dominate. 

Keep experimenting and learning. 

* This article was originally published here

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Twitter Takes on Microsoft Over Alleged Misuse of Twitter Data

Elon Musk has a personal gripe against Microsoft - but will that impact more Twitter partners?

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4 Tips for Business Messaging Success [Infographic]

Some guidance on how to make best use of DMs in your social media marketing and customer service process.

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Twitter Blue Subscribers Can Now Upload 2-Hour Videos in the App

Longer videos for paying users. Is Musk looking to make video content a bigger focus? 

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I Just Hired a Content Manager: How Can I Tell They're Doing The Right Things?

The process of hiring a content manager presents a unique challenge to many business leaders. It’s not a role they hire for often, and candidates come in with vastly different professional backgrounds. 

Because a content manager is an essential part of your inbound marketing efforts, getting this hire right is crucial.

We’ve written extensively about how to find, hire, and onboard the best content manager for your business, so if you need help landing the right person for your company, check out these resources to help you move forward.

• Content manager job description for all industries (ready to use)
• How to evaluate the interviewing skills of a content manager candidate
• How long does it take to hire and onboard a content manager? 

But successful management doesn’t end once the employee is onboarded. Actually, it’s just beginning.

So, if you now have a content manager who’s on board but you're not sure how to offer the right support, here's what comes next.

The next challenge: managing the manager

What happens once that content manager is seated in the role and onboarded to the company? How do you — whether you’re CEO, VP of revenue, CMO, or in another role — know that the content manager is doing the right things each day? What are realistic expectations? What are the ideal touchpoints that let your content manager feel supported but not micromanaged?

Justine Timoteo Thomas is the senior director of operations at IMPACT. She manages all of our content trainers, who work directly with the content managers at our client companies.

Justine has years of experience in content marketing — but as a manager she also works with direct reports whose area of expertise is outside of her first-hand knowledge, like video trainers and HubSpot trainers. 

The key to good management, according to Justine, is the right mindset: “You can still be a great manager without needing the in-depth knowledge of what it is that those individuals need to do every single day,” she says. “After all, that’s why you hired them.”

If you’ve hired well and fully established the particulars of the role, your management should be about encouraging growth and removing roadblocks, which will allow your content manager to do their job well.

Managing a marketer when that’s not your background

Managing a content manager, according to Justine, is all about touchpoints and trust.

Yes, you will have metrics that can help you evaluate their performance (more on that later), but you’ve hired them to be the voice of your brand. You must trust them to do the work.

For touchpoints, Justine recommends a one-hour one-on-one meeting every two weeks. This is crucial connection time the two of you can use to take stock, align, and plan.

These meetings are not for sharing an itemized list of everything the content manager has done in the past two weeks.

Rather, make these meetings more narrow in their scope:

“Within that hour, run through what’s holding them back from doing the things you’ve outlined in their scorecard or performance review document. See what’s standing in their way.”

This way, bi-weekly meetings can be about wins, lessons learned, and removing impediments. 

This structure establishes trust between you and the content manager and makes them aware of your desire to help them do their job better.

Performance review and growth measurement 

But at the end of the day, you need to know that your content manager is doing the right things, even if that’s not what you cover in your meetings. 

The key here, Justine says, is focusing on two key areas: metrics and culture. Both are necessary for your company’s content marketing efforts to succeed.

Before you hired this person, you should have established a job scorecard or a growth plan. If not, use the position outline from the original job posting to build a structure of basic responsibilities and outcomes. This document can be the basis of performance review and growth planning. 

The numbers to watch for

Each company’s success with content marketing might look different depending on size, industry, and goals. 

Broadly stated, the end goal of any marketing is to bring in revenue. Inbound marketing seeks to do this by way of attracting traffic, generating demand, and capturing leads. However, having content rank high enough in Google to drive that traffic could take months. 

The best way to guarantee that your content manager is moving in the right direction is holding them accountable for producing and publishing a steady stream of high-quality content. We recommend content managers publish three new pieces of search-engine-optimized content each week.

In the short term, this content should be specifically tailored to the needs of the sales team. Writing thorough answers to customer questions is always a good first step. We also advocate for covering what we call The Big 5:  topics that are sure to help close sales — while also driving traffic. 

We find that if content is published regularly, if buyer questions are addressed honestly, and if on-page SEO best practices are observed, traffic numbers and keyword growth tend to take care of themselves.

If you have specific numbers you’re looking to hit, check in with your content manager each quarter to record progress and adjust goals if necessary. 

🔎 Related: We’ve never done “Big 5’ content before — where do we start?

A culture of content

But numbers don’t tell the whole story. In fact, Justine says that too often she sees companies rely only on the metrics. 

The other half of the equation is culture.  

Content marketing requires input from team members beyond just the content manager themselves. The content manager will need to meet with the sales team to get first-hand questions that come from prospects. They will need to interview subject matter experts to ensure their informational content is accurate. They might also coordinate with other marketers, company leaders, demand gen directors, and more.

In order to do their job well, content managers need to make the rest of the company enjoy their roles in the content process. SMEs should welcome interview requests. Sales should be actively engaged in the content brainstorming — and then be excited to use the content in the sales process.

And so on. 

Or, to put it another way, content management is relationship management. 

So, how do you know if your content manager is winning the hearts and minds of colleagues?

This can be evaluated with anecdotal evidence from the content manager and from others. At your one-on-ones, ask about relationships. Ask how the content manager has grown over the past two weeks, and which meetings or projects were most rewarding or frustrating. By doing so, you not only get a sense of what’s happening, but you emphasize the importance of relationships to your content manager. 

At the same time, there are other team members also responsible for maintaining a culture of content.

Although your content manager runs and oversees your content marketing initiative, they can’t completely control everything. If SMEs dodge interviews, if sales doesn’t help brainstorm topics, if content is not celebrated — the content manager will be hamstrung and unable to work effectively.

If you don’t position your content manager as a person of authority in your organization, you will set them up to fail.

As a company leader, you must work to guarantee that the rest of the company is onboarded to the idea of content marketing so that they do their part to help the cause. 

Setting your content manager up for success

While managing a content manager can bring with it some new challenges, it really has much more in common with other managerial duties than you might think.

As always, a huge part of successful management is good recruitment and sound onboarding. If you’ve hired well, articulated the role clearly, and brought your new hire up to speed in a reasonable and efficient way, you’ve already started off on the right foot.

From there, apply the same rules as you would for any other direct report:

• Offer constructive feedback
• Care about the human behind the title
• Encourage their growth
• Help remove obstacles that are impeding their progress

Embarking on a content marketing initiative is exciting, but remember that the big flashy numbers (like huge traffic growth) are not going to happen overnight. Your content manager can help you reach these goals, but only if managed in the right way — and a big part of that means making sure the rest of the company is bought in as well. 

Author: jbecker@impactbnd.com (John Becker)

* This article was originally published here

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Staffing Up After a Recession: Who to Hire When

When the economy shrinks and demand dries up, companies often feel obligated to trim their staff. While it’s painful, it’s a natural part of the economic cycle of any organization. 

There were more than 15 million layoffs in the U.S. last year. As a business leader, I’ve seen first-hand the decisions that happen before an organization decides to cut staff. 

While layoffs are more commonplace (and more accepted) in some industries than others during these times, the process is never a pleasant one. But sometimes layoffs are a must to stay profitable — or even stay afloat.

The opposite is also true, however. When the economy is hot and demand is high, teams are going to staff up. 

For business leaders, staffing up after a recession comes with its own challenges. 

If you’re in this boat — planning to hire back after layoffs — you want to be sure you get this right. Below, I’ll explain how I recommend you proceed. 

When it’s time to hire for your future

For many businesses coming out of a recession or downturn, they fall into one of two camps:

The first wants to scale back up to their previous strength, so they jump at the chance of filling the positions they lost.

The others take the opposite approach — sort of a once-bitten, twice-shy mindset. 

After the experience of having to cut staff once, they’re hesitant to hire, fearing that they might have to go through the whole thing again if they add headcount too quickly.

For me, hiring decisions are always a balance of data and intuition. So my advice to you is this: Hire smart. Your goal is not to add headcount, it’s to find great candidates.

Bill Gates famously said that a great writer of software code is worth 10,000 times the price of an average software writer.

For whatever role you’re hiring for, the great candidate will deliver way more value than the average candidate. 

If you’re looking to hire and can’t find someone great, don’t fill the role until you find the right person. Or, if you’ve got a pipeline full of exceptional applicants, maybe hire more than one if your budget and forecast allow it. 

With any new hire, you’ve got a chance to raise the overall ability of your team, but if you bring on the wrong person because you jumped the gun, you could be kicking yourself for years. 

Post-recession hiring is your chance to find that all-star.

Don’t hire for what you lost; hire for the future 

According to research from Accenture, 88% of executives believe that their customers are changing faster than their businesses can adapt. 

This reflects the crisis that companies of all kinds are facing: Not effectively adapting to a changing marketplace. 

Judging by the statistic above, your company might be in need of change. Although layoffs are never easy, there can be a silver lining. Maybe the staff you employed a few years ago doesn’t really fit your needs today — let alone your needs a few years from now. 

For example, it’s easy to just want to hire back to fill the roles you lost: You had to cut three sales rep jobs? Now it’s time to hire three new sales reps. 

However, I urge you to avoid that kind of knee-jerk reaction.

This is an opportunity to hire for your company’s future, not its past.

First, figure out how you’re bringing in revenue 

A few weeks ago, I compiled a big spreadsheet of every deal IMPACT had closed in the last six months. I listed each customer, what they bought, how they heard of us, how long they took to close, and about a half-dozen other pieces of information.

Ahead of our quarterly planning session, I asked all our company leaders and managers to study the spreadsheet. Then, at the planning session, I split them into groups and asked them what we needed to do to close more business. Imagine a Stop/Start/Keep brainstorming session.

By focusing only on the past six months, we eliminated historical bias and outdated approaches. We came up with a list of marketing and sales priorities based on the way our most recent customers were buying from us.

You should do the same.

Before you jump back in and hire the exact roles you lost, look closely at your numbers. If you’re ready to add headcount, do it in the places that make the most sense for you based on data, not nostalgia.

Hire for your future, not for your past.

While you’re at it, audit your hiring process

One more thing: before you go on a hiring spree, take some time to look at your hiring process with a critical eye. 

In a famous study done in 2018, Jobvite found that one-third of all new employees quit within 90 days of starting their new job. And that was before the pandemic, the great resignation, and quiet quitting.

Part of the fault for this lies with workers, sure, but I believe a bigger share of the blame rests with employers.

Is your hiring process designed around the candidate’s needs? Are you using techniques like the 80% video to cover as many of the applicant’s questions ahead of time so you can weed out those who might be a bad fit? Are you committed to transparency and honesty?

If not, fix your process before you start putting more people through it. 

This is the opportunity you’ve been waiting for

In the past few years we’ve seen drastic economic swings. 

First, there was the shock of the pandemic. The bottom fell out of the stock market and unemployment spiked. Then, the government flooded the economy with stimulus money and businesses were flush with cash. Since then, there have been supply chain issues, high energy costs, and political instability. 

It’s been a wild ride. 

And while these last few years have been especially volatile, the economy is always going to go up and down. As a business owner, you know there will be fat years and lean years, good times and bad times. 

This is the natural cycle of business.

The key is to see every up and down as an opportunity. If you’re ready to hire after a recession, use it as the opportunity to build a staff for the business you’re becoming, not the business you were. 

Author: rruffolo@impactbnd.com (Bob Ruffolo)

* This article was originally published here

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