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Performance Management for Sales and Marketing

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3 Ways to SPRING Your Business Forward

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[Monthly Team Meeting Slide Deck Download Included]

Time to start that spring cleaning at the office.

Although spring technically started about a month ago, many parts of the country haven’t been feeling that flowery, spring weather quite yet.

But just like April showers bring May flowers, consistent effort at work will bring great, beautiful payoffs later!

It’s time to spring into action in these 3 ways to help move your business into a success. Although it recently started, the second quarter will be over before you know it and that means we’re also halfway through the year!

So how can you ensure that you not only stay on track with but get ahead of your 2018 objectives?

Set & Follow Through with Goals

If you’ve been following the blog, you are no stranger to the importance of goal-setting. Being goal-oriented is a great thing. Without goals, you may be busy day in and day out, but what are you really working towards? Are you truly improving or just getting by?

So, easy first step: SET GOALS! If you are unsure how to set specific, measurable goals, we’ve got you covered here and here.

Now that you have set goals – are you truly following through with them? To follow through, you must sure you are properly communicating your goals, and checking up on progress!

If you aren’t sure if your goals are working well enough, take our quiz!

Need help communicating your goals on a regular basis with employees? Download our team meeting slide deck.

“A dream written down with a date becomes a goal. A goal broken down into steps becomes a plan. A plan backed by action makes your dreams come true.” -Greg Reid

 

Track Your Success

To accurately communicate your progress towards goals with employees, you must be tracking how well you are doing!

This is why tools like call tracking, digital attribution programs, and aggregate online review platforms are necessary for your business to really improve.

If you don’t know how you are doing, how can you improve? Thinking and knowing are two different things. You must track your goals to truly know if what you’re doing is propelling you towards your goals or if you are falling behind.
 

Repeat What’s Working, Work on What Isn’t

Once you are tracking your efforts and can clearly see if you are on track with, surpassing, or falling behind your goals, you can now take a step back and adjust.

Are there certain marketing pieces that are performing better than others? Re-allocate marketing dollars from under-performing ad sources that aren’t giving you great ROI to advertisements that are bringing in more leads. Don’t spend extra money – use your tracking reports to make better data-driven decisions.

Which call handlers have higher appointment conversion rates than others? See what they are doing well and use that to help train and coach call handlers that aren’t doing as well.

The point is – take a look at the data along the way to see how you’ve been progressing towards your goals, track your efforts, and do more of what’s working well. It’s really not innovative news, but sometimes we all need reminding.

Need help in your efforts? Download our free team meeting slide deck now!

How to Properly Establish Business Goals with Call Tracking: Pt. 2

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You can’t reach greatness without established goals to reach.

If you don’t know by now, CallSource really believes in the power of goal setting and achieving.

To be the best of the best, it is important to set goals. You must always have something to strive for.

We already went through the first 3 steps of goal-setting; now we are at part 2 to finish up how you can properly set goals with employees to help your business progress positively.

Here are the 6 steps again:

  1. Determine goals based on business objectives
  2. Set specific goals
  3. Develop a timeline for accomplishing each goal
  4. Communicate goals to each team member
  5. Create accountability through regular monitoring and employee feedback
  6. Practice continuous improvement

Now let’s finish it up!

“Creating a consultative sales culture and a culture of accountability has helped many CallSource clients reach their performance goals.”

 

Culture Shift

Recreating your business culture may be necessary to achieve your goals. Your exact circumstances may require significant alteration to how you manage your team or no change at all. Only you as the business’ leader can decide. But conducting a careful analysis of what will be needed to reach your goals is a good place to start. Here are some questions to ask:

  • Are my team members invested in the success of the business?
  • Are my team members motivated to stretch and achieve new levels of success?
  • Do my call handlers know their role in the sales cycle is to set appointments?
  • Can my team members correctly answer what their goals are?
  • Can my team members correctly answer what the company goals are?
  • If a team member falls short of their goals, are there specific steps that will be taken?

If “No” is often the answer to these questions, meeting your goals may require a shift in culture. Cultural shifts do not need to be frightening or painful for your team. Nor does it require you to shed what makes your business a fun and rewarding place to work. Understanding the nature of the change, setting clear goals and expectations, and communicating effectively with your team will create a smooth process.

Creating a consultative sales culture and a culture of accountability has helped many CallSource clients reach their performance goals.

Creating a consultative sales culture simply means that call handlers understand that their role is to set appointments for qualified prospects. This means, making an effort to understand the caller’s needs, building value and asking for the appointment.

A culture of accountability is not designed for the sole purpose of punishing poor performers. Strong performers will benefit, as their efforts will shine through and be recognized. Each team member will understand his or her role and how that role impacts the success of the organization. Standards and goals will be defined, and each person will work to achieve those goals. Those who are falling short will accept the need for additional coaching and training and make an effort to learn.

Implement Ongoing Check-ins

To make sure you are achieving your goals, plan on holding regular “check-ins” with staff. These might be daily, weekly, or monthly.

Choose what best suits your business, and communicate the schedule of the check-ins with your employees as well.

Check-ins can be included in your action plan and given to call handlers ahead of time. This will hold them accountable so that they will be continuously working towards improvement.

By checking in, whether these might be held as a team meeting, individual meetings, or looking at reports weekly, or a mix of all of these, make sure there is a system in place to keep your goals in check and on track.

Keep Aiming Towards New Goals

Once you have hit your goals, make sure to keep aiming to be better or stay the best. Your goal may be a continued improvement or maintain consistency. No matter the case, always have a goal in mind and make sure to relay these to your employees. Post them somewhere, hold ongoing meetings, and stay on top of the progress. Once you have achieved your major goals, you are on the path to stay at the top.

Never become complacent. By continuously setting goals you will become as successful as possible.
How do you set goals and track your progress? Drop us a comment below!

How to Properly Establish Business Goals with Call Tracking: Pt. 1

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Maybe you have goals, maybe you don’t – either way, check out these steps to make sure you’re establishing useful and specific goals.

In order to achieve higher results, whether in business, personal life, or elsewhere, it is important to set goals. How can one expect improvement without knowing what to aim for?

Whether big or small, short term or long term, there should always be goals to achieve. Successful leaders work with their team to set goals and ensure continued progress by establishing accountability.

“A goal properly set is halfway reached.” —Zig Ziglar

When setting your goals, there are important steps to follow:

  1. Determine goals based on business objectives
  2. Set specific goals
  3. Develop a timeline for accomplishing each goal
  4. Communicate goals to each team member
  5. Create accountability through regular monitoring and employee feedback
  6. Practice continuous improvement

Customer Service Representatives are a vital part of the business and help you achieve your goals as a whole. They are the first person new customers will speak to and leave a lasting impression on your business.

Determining Your Goals

The first step in setting goals is to analyze your current standings; once you have an understanding of where you are you can then begin thinking of where you want to go. Utilizing the tools CallSource provides helps identify your current standings in the following categories:

  • Marketing
    • Number of prospect calls
    • Cost per prospect call
  • Sales
    • Conversion rate
    • Number of appointments set
    • Cost per Appointment
  • Customer Experience
    • Call handling consistency for all prospects
    • Branding is maintained
  • Online Reputation
    • Total online reviews

After you establish your current standing baseline, you need to determine your desired goals. Your office’s areas for improvement may be evident, or some assistance may be needed. When analyzing reports within CallSource or whatever call tracking software you use, your areas for improvement or “red flags” should become apparent.

Focus on specific areas, rather than all areas simultaneously. Within certain areas, you may choose to focus on improving only specific metrics. Focusing on improving the conversion rate, not the number of appointments set, is one example.

The number of areas – and specific goals – chosen should be manageable for your business given the exact circumstances, staffing, and market variables. You may find some areas require immediate action or there is a logical progressive order. Over time you can refocus your attention to other goals. Creating goals is an essential step to improved performance and business outcomes.

The goals you set should reflect the overall business objectives. When creating your goals consider the following questions:

  • What do I want to accomplish?
  • Why is this important?
  • Who is involved?
  • How will this be accomplished?
  • What obstacles are there to achieving my goal?

Set Specific Goals

It is important that the goals you set are specific. For example, to increase your conversion rate, it is not enough to say your goal is to “increase conversion;” set a specific conversion goal such as increase the conversion from 45% to 60%. If you do not set specific goals (SMART GOALS- Specific, Measurables, Assignable, Realistic, Time-Related), you create ambiguity and leave the result open to interpretation. Creating a culture of accountability is not possible in an ambiguous climate.

Well-defined goals establish clear expectations. Anyone on your team, including new employees, will have a clear understanding of what is expected of them.

Once you determine your goals, it is crucial to communicate these goals to each member of your team. Consistently sharing the team’s actual numbers compared to their goals reinforces the importance of meeting the goal. It also allows you and the team to monitor individual and team progress and identify what steps need to be taken to reach the goal.

Establish an Improvement Timeline

It is essential to assign a reasonable deadline for meeting your goals once they have been determined. Without an end date, it is difficult to enforce that the goal will be met. This also creates ambiguity for your team.

For example, if your office is currently converting 60% of prospects to appointments, but you would like to improve the conversion rate to 85%, this cannot be achieved in a one month period. Both short term and long term goals need to be implemented in this example. Increase the conversion in small increments each month. Perhaps try improving by 5% monthly, until you reach your goal of an 85% conversion rate within five months.

While it is important to share the long-term goal(s) with your call handlers, it is vital to then break down the plan of attack to reach this overall goal by using short-term goals. By asking your team to concentrate on short-term goals while advancing to the end goal, it makes the effort seem achievable. Each step should be celebrated.

Asking your team to improve their conversion rates by 25% and not offer additional information, may make the goal feel unobtainable and therefore lower the morale. This will result in a counter effect.
Improvement steps with a specified completion date create accountability and ensure goals remain the focus of your team – not get lost in the day-to-day shuffle.

Set Steps to Achieve Goals

Once your improvement timeline is complete, set the steps of how your team will achieve each of these goals. These steps might include having call takers take certain webinar courses, reviewing their recorded calls and conversion rates, and internal training.

The steps you create should correspond to a specific action plan and be given to call handlers to keep handy. This way, they will know what steps to achieve according to your schedule. There will be no surprises when the deadlines approach and they will know with clarity what steps need to be taken.

With every mini goal, there should be some training and feedback for the call handlers to go along with meeting these goals. Whoever supervises the Customer Service Representatives should ultimately be responsible for ensuring their success.

Stay tuned for part 2 of how to properly establish goals – subscribe to our blog now to be notified as soon as the next post goes up!

Does Your Team Need an Incentive Plan?

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If you are having trouble accomplishing some or most of your goals for the year, it may be time to implement some team incentives.

To be successful, you have to set goals and follow through with them – this probably isn’t news to you.

You set goals, communicate them to your employees, and do your best to reach them.

But what do you do when you check in on progress to see that it’s slowed down, paused, or even worse – gone backward?

Sure, it’s easy to get pumped up about a new future goal and imagine all the success of reaching that goal. But success isn’t linear – sometimes we all fall off the wagon a little bit.

You depend on your employees to aid your business to reach a monumental goal, how can you ensure that they stay on track and truly care and feel as invested in it as you do? After all, if this goal doesn’t personally affect them, it may prove to be a bit more difficult for them to buy in quite as much as you do (even if it is part of their job duties).

Maybe it is time that you start implementing an incentive plan for your employees. Not sure if this will work for you? Well, let’s find out. Check off any that are true in your office.

Custom Checkboxes















If you checked off 5 or more of these boxes…you could benefit from an incentive plan for your business.

Heck, even if you checked off one of these, you will probably still benefit from implementing an incentive plan for your business!

But now what?

Don’t worry; I wouldn’t leave you hanging like that!

Download our free Incentive Plan Checklist here and create your very own incentive plan specific to your goals and your employees!

13 Facts About Direct Mail That’ll Make You Want to Launch a New Campaign Right Now

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Do you think direct mail still has a place in your marketing efforts?

Direct mail has been around for a while – it’s one of the oldest forms of marketing (waaayyy before digital; actually right after the Gutenberg printing press arrived on the scene in 1440).

Yet, direct mail isn’t dead.

Why?

Video killed the radio star, so why didn’t the internet kill direct mail?

Don’t believe that direct mail is still a viable marketing campaign for your business? Maybe these 23 facts will make you think differently.

According to data, direct mail has higher response rates than other types of marketing campaigns, especially when personalized.

  1. Direct mail household response rate is 5.1% (compared to .6% email, .6% paid search, .2% online display, .4% social media). This is the highest response rate the DMA has ever reported, since coming out with the Response Rate Report in 2003.1
  2. Adding a person’s name and full color in the direct mail can increase response by 135%.1
  3. Targeting customers on a 1:1 level increases response rates up to 50% or more.1
  4. 40% of consumers try new businesses after receiving direct mail.2

In fact, most people seem to find direct mail a more personal way of marketing than other types.

  1. 59% of U.S. respondents and 65% of Canadian respondents agreed with the following statement, “I enjoy getting postal mail from brands about new products.”2
  2. 56% of customers find print marketing to be the most trustworthy type of marketing.2
  3. 70% of Americans say mail is more personal than the internet.2
  4. Personalized print media has a more powerful presence than a personalized email, because the audience can recognize that it takes more effort to customize print media than digital.2

Even Millennials respond to direct mail.

  1. Among 18 to 24-year-olds, 69% say they prefer print and paper communications to reading off a screen.4
  2. When asked, “Which is more effective at getting you to take action?” 30% of millennials said direct mail, 24% said email.3
  3. The response rate for direct mail among people aged 18-21 years old is 12.4%.1

Direct mail can work hand-in-hand with the internet.

  1. The top response rate tracking methods are online tracking such as PURLs (61%), call center or telephone (53%), and code or coupon (42%).1
  2. 90% visit the website first before calling.5

If you still doubt the relevancy of direct mail in today’s market, you should try it out. When you are tracking the success of your marketing campaign with tracking numbers and landing pages you’ll be able to base those assumptions off of actual data.

How to Produce Better Engaged Marketing Qualified Leads with Funnel-Based Qualifying

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Determining potential customers’ buyer intensity is easier when figuring out your marketing qualified leads through the marketing funnel

What is a “marketing qualified” lead?

A marketing qualified lead (MQL) is a lead who has most likely been pushed through your marketing sales funnel and, through your funnel’s intelligence, is determined as an ideal lead for your sales team to turn into a customer.

Let’s identify this process for your business by looking at the consumer journey, what steps exist in your funnel, and finally with looking at measures of buyer intensity.

1. The Consumer Journey

The Consumer Journey is your customer’s decision-making process that leads to a sale

ConsumerJourney

Do you know if what you are communicating to your potential customers in your marketing campaigns actually aligns with the messaging you want them to receive?

If your answer is not a definitive “yes,” then you may want to re-think the current touches your consumers are receiving. If your company has a clear mission, vision, and purpose, it will benefit you to re-emerge yourself and your marketing team into those to better understand what you are communicating to your consumers during their journey, and make sure it aligns with the business’ goals. Regardless of how long the buying cycle is for your consumers, you should be confident with your messaging you’re communicating to them.

By the end of this basic exercise, you should be able to clearly explain (at a moment’s notice) the following questions (as pictured):

WhoDoWeSayWeAre

  • Who do we say we are? As a company? As a department?
  • What do we say we do? What do you tell your team?
  • Who do we do it for? Whose needs are being satisfied by you and your company?

Finally, you want to reach your value proposition. This is possibly the most important “why” behind the top three answers (as pictured):

WhatAreTheExclusiveBenefits

  • What are the exclusive benefits that we can offer right now?

OK, you may be thinking, but how do these help me produce better qualified leads through my marketing funnel?

Look at your marketing messages as if you are the consumer.

You must be able to clearly and concisely communicate the value that you offer to your customers and do it in a way that not only makes you stand out from your competition but also is congruent with what your company represents. If you aren’t familiar with your company’s mission, vision, or purpose, how can you be sure that your communication is on brand?

Marketing that does not match the actual expectation of the customer is a sure-fire way to displace your customers’ trust— this disconnect in your messaging and the customers’ expectation gives them a perfect reason to move on. The difference between closing a sale often comes down to a “gut feeling,” a simple impression, or feedback from others, which can either result in a very large boost or fall in sales.

How about a shortcut? Write this down in the perspective of your customers, and answer it!

If only I could just _____________ then I would be able to ______________.

(Ex: If only I could just find the car I deserve then I would be able to be more confident driving to work.)

Assuming your business is a car dealership and the example is a real concern of your customers this shows you that you need messaging communicating that your company is hands down the best at identifying a product (cars in this example) made for people who deserve the best because they are the best.

Now that you know the type of customer you are after, you can take this scenario and use this type of messaging in your emails, advertisements, and mailers. Even when people walk in, you can enhance the in-person experience with a personalized process of asking the important questions that are needed to identify the car they deserve.

This is one example of why knowing your consumers, the journey they are on and where they want to go can help you to create better messaging and a more unified experience—giving you a better chance of getting them into your marketing funnel.

2. The Marketing Funnel

The funnel is where it gets personal.

TheFunnel

Maybe you are already converting and selling at a good pace—but how to do you improve so much that it’s not only “good,” but legendary how well you are doing? Do you want to be known as the most successful among your competitors, known as the king of what you do? Then you need to get better at personalizing your opportunity stages along your funnel.

Every funnel, no matter its context, has three parts:

  • Beginning, or top, of funnel (TOFU)
  • Middle of funnel (MOFU)
  • End, or bottom, of funnel (BOFU)

Just like characters in a story (where there is a beginning, middle, and end) change throughout their journey through this funnel, the needs of your consumers change at every stage as well. See my wonderful artwork of this funnel below:

TOFU

Every stage of the funnel has a mutually exclusive goal that is unique to its position in the journey, unique to the required personalization for your consumers, and unique to all the marketing activities that occur.

The beginning, or Top of the Funnel (TOFU), has a goal of bringing awareness to the consumers who are at the beginning of their journey into the funnel. They are here because they have a problem and you have the solution. Unless you make them aware that there is a problem and that you can provide a solution, they will have little to no interest in you.

How do I make them aware of me?

To make consumers aware, reflect back on the previous questions asked above—your answers should tell you what you need to resolve to communicate your company’s solutions in a way that speaks to them. Wherever you talk to your customers, you should be communicating your value proposition.

Take it to the next level, with personalization.

The key to becoming legendary is having more precise personalization. If you can (which may be difficult unless you have deep pockets), try to speak to the smallest amount of consumers as possible so you can be direct and personal with your messaging. Marketers dream of calling their consumers by name and guiding them through to the sale by holding their hand…if only!

Personalization that is realistic is based on segmentation.

Now this is breaching into the Middle of the Funnel (MOFU). By taking what you know, you can start making content specifically for them. Produce content that your identified consumers are interested in based on the unique solutions that you can provide them right away. Here are some ideas for using that content in a “right away” fashion:

  • Blog articles (like this one but do it in your refined style, give them value now)
  • Lead magnets (offers that give them something useful now they can implement themselves with you)
  • Entry offers (also called tripwire offers, that allow them to try something now or incentivize them to commit a little with low-cost entry)
  • Advertisements (targeted media to get the best types of leads to make aware right now)

I can’t tell you exactly because every company’s situation is unique. Joking aside, if I knew you on a more personal level, I would definitively have a list of ideas for you. Hence the beauty of personalized content, which is content that makes you take notice.

You notice content that makes you want to interact with it. You will consume that content, you will click ads, you will watch videos, you will listen to their pitch, and you might even buy. Quality content does this regardless of how well you deliver it (even though delivery matters). Now, you probably won’t make your best content right away, which is why you want to segment people. By segmenting your content, you can use your results to guide your future learning process and adapting until you can finally “match.”

Matching is pairing the right content to the right consumers at the right time.

(TIP: The best content is always value first, sales pitch last)

When you can successfully match your consumers to great content they relate to, you have a better chance of getting them to the Bottom of the Funnel (BOFU), and into a great marketing qualified lead (MQL).

3. Buyer Intensity

Buyer intensity is the measurable interactions of your consumers’ engagement along the journey

BuyerIntensity

Now you know how to move your consumers through the marketing funnel—but let’s delve a little deeper. With improvement, you are on the cusp of being unstoppable – but what are you missing? You need to be able to improve constantly.

Markets shift, trends happen, employees leave, tools change, and you are left trying to pick up the pieces. You’ve got things that are working, but I want to help you ensure that they continue to perform and are reliable amongst those unpredictable circumstances.

Knowing your consumers’ Buyer Intensity means knowing which consumers are ready to buy, which are close but need more of their questions answered and which are simply not interested. These groups (and many more groupings) are based on segmenting consumers depending on what interests them. You know what interests your consumers if you have tracking and measurements on the content that you produce.

One of my favorite sayings is, “If you don’t measure it, you don’t know what to improve.” That rings true here because you need to be able to measure engagement. I’ve talked about the top and the middle of the funnel, and the importance for personalized messaging throughout. While continuing to the bottom of the funnel, you still need to be measuring what is working.

Here are some tips on what engagements to measure. And yes—you can and should be measuring all of them if you are not already (as pictured):

TimeOnPage

  • Time on Page
  • Product Details Page Views
  • Chats
  • Form Fills
  • Phone calls
  • Social sharing
  • Retargeting Audiences
  • Comments
  • Downloads of content
  • Printing
  • Deep-Link CTR
  • Email opens/clicks
  • Return Visits
  • Video Views

Deciding how you want to measure each of these consumer engagements is up to you—attribution is fickle (read my last post on some different attribution methods here) in regards to how much credit you give each measurement in a weighted, average way. The most important part is that you do try to measure it, in whatever capacity you can. You may not be ready to start using the data you get yet, but have a plan in mind at the beginning of how you will use the information you receive to make your process better every time.

Each of the example measures above also contribute to a best practice in marketing. One of the first steps taught by a past professor of consulting was to “identify the problem, find a solution, and build KPI’s (Key Performance Indicators) for the future.” You can do this by measuring what you do and focusing on what’s most important for your consumers and your success.

Qualifying

Making your marketing funnel more refined is qualifying

This brings us to the close, the end of our story. Let’s summarize the steps into a usable guide for creating better marketing qualified leads through your marketing funnel.

Qualifying

You should now be able to answer…

  • For messaging based on the consumer journey: The company’s exclusive benefits for a targeted customer group.
  • For personalization based on your unique funnel: The company’s commitment to bringing consumers the value they need, when they need it.
  • For measurable interactions: The company’s process for measuring engagement and the plan you have to improve every single piece of content and messaging.

By qualifying what content is valuable, which steps of the funnel are best, and what content is giving the most value at every step in a personalized way, you are on your way to becoming unstoppable.

At its heart, qualifying is all about using engagement to personalize the consumer journey. You may be thinking, “Why am I using engagement to personalize, and not personalization to engage?” Well, in order to properly personalize the consumer journey, you must study your consumers’ engagement to better qualify them. You cannot do that without proper messaging that is designed to deliver value. You won’t be able to uncover what is working or why without measuring it, and ultimately you won’t know where you need to make new content unless you can identify those stages in the funnel that are constraints for your consumers.

Every consumer is on a decision-making process in regards to your business whether they acknowledge it or not. At some point, they will enter the final stages, and you need to work smart to be in their decision pool. The important criteria that every consumer needs are unknown to you – so you need to build a qualifying process around discovering what those needs are to move them through your marketing funnel. If you knew their needs, you would make content to lure them in, or you’d call them up and give them the 60-second pitch that would change their life.

Work with what you have and take the steps seriously:

  1. The Consumer Journey

    Get on message and learn about your consumers and their journey to get to you.

  2. The Marketing Funnel

    Move your consumers through the marketing funnel by personalizing your messaging.

  3. Buyer Intensity

    Measure your consumers’ buyer intensity based on their engagement.

Follow these 3 steps to start getting better-qualified leads. Questions or comments? Let us know below!

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