In the words of hockey legend Wayne Gretzky, “You miss 100 percent of the shots you don’t take.” This advice wasn’t just for himself. He was constantly seeking to encourage his teammates to give it their all — no matter what.
There are many ways to get the same point across. No risk, no reward.
Carpe diem. Nothing ventured, nothing gained.
In business, the most simple one might be the best of all: Scared money doesn’t make money. For people in sales, the takeaway should be that you have to put yourself out there, and you can’t grow complacent.
These days, there is so much data and intelligence available in the form of advanced, easy-to-use platforms. Let’s take a look at how the right tools can increase buy-in from your sales team.
Getting Your Sales Reps on Board
So how do you follow Gretzky’s lead and inspire your sales reps to get with the program?
Some of it comes down to having the right people. As any manager can tell you, it is often more important to have people with the right attitude than an exact set of skills. It is hard to teach motivation and instil a willingness to grow, so hiring will always play a big part in this.
That said, you go to war with the army you have. Maybe you can make some new hires down the road, but that isn’t going to help you this week, this month, or maybe even this quarter. So you need to acknowledge that different people are inspired by different things.
Set clear goals and do not micromanage your team. A little bit of freedom might be all they need to start getting better results. On the other hand, if your culture already does give people the space they need, recognize that certain team members might need a little more oversight. It might not even take much; just offer the right amount of encouragement and incentives to get everyone on board.
Getting Your Sales Reps the Best Tools
You can also get better results by giving your reps the right tools. Communication is maybe the most important. Many companies are finding success by adopting mobile-first options like Slack channels or digital conferencing solutions like Zoom. Especially for reps who aren’t checking in every day, this can create much better results rather than relying on e-mail alone.
When it comes to dealing with customers and leads, you also need to be using top-tier customer relationship management (CRM) system. It needs to offer the right blend of qualities and capabilities. It has to be powerful, but easy to use. It should have mobile capabilities, and it has to present all the right data and info at the click of a button.
While there are many CRM platforms out there, few tick off all the right boxes like Infor CRM offered by Infor customer partner CustomerFX. Among the many benefits, Infor CRM will help you generate predictable sales revenue and provide constant visibility into team performance. This empowers your sales reps to spend their time working to sign deals.
The tracking features only compound these benefits; as a manager, you can always see what type of results each rep is getting. With granular metrics, it’s easy to find problem areas and correct them. This way, you won’t have to micromanage anyone and potentially cause frustration. You only need to intervene when things get off track.
Getting the Employee Buy-In You Need
When it comes to sales, you either land the deal or you don’t. So make it your mission to get the best sales reps you can, empower them to seize the day, and be sure to equip them with the tools they need and want to use.
We’re hiring! – Digital Marketing Assistant
/3 Comments/in Marketing /by Creative Agency Secrets TeamCreative Agency Secrets provides digital marketing services for brands and businesses. We are a leading agency innovating with new marketing techniques like SEO, community building, direct response and advanced blogging.
When working with us, you will learn how to run and manage digital platforms such as a website, e-commerce shop, blog as well as learn the ins and outs of email marketing, database management, and social media marketing.
If you want to get a career in marketing but haven’t found yourself a job – this will get you your first position on your CV and some solid experience.
Being a digital native on the internet is essential, so a Marketing, Communications or Business Studies degree would be considered favourably. No prior knowledge of websites, blogs or online marketing is needed – full training is provided.
Send your CV and Cover Letter to Conrado along with one page describing an event you ran (party, event, gig, etc), outlining what you did to market and promote it, the tools and techniques you used, what worked and what didn’t work and the outcomes.
This job is a 4-week unpaid internship. The start dates and hours are negotiable, and can be suited around your studies. If there is work available for the best candidate after 4 weeks, you may be offered part-time work at $20 per hour.
Applicants for this position should have NZ residency or a valid NZ work visa.
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We Review a Service Business Website
/0 Comments/in Marketing, SEO /by Rebecca CaroeWe pitched a client – we didn’t win. And so I decided to show you all how we assessed their website in scoping out the work that is needed to improve the search engine optimisation for this company.
They offer a local service and have two principal products.
First impressions of the website
Free appraisal offer for your website
Summary areas for improvement
Improve website messaging
Why would you change?
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How Can Increased Time on Page Boost Conversions?
/0 Comments/in Marketing /by Creative Agency Secrets TeamAttracting traffic to a website can be a big challenge, even for the most experienced professionals.
However, more than just herding the masses to your digital spot in the world, it is essential to understand what they’re doing when they’re there. And what they’re NOT doing as well.
One of the most important indicators in your Google Analytics report is the Average Session Duration. If your visitors are abandoning your website without spending a decent amount of time checking it out, chances are something is not working as it should.
This could be happening for one or more reasons. Investigating the causes through experiments is critical to understanding your public. There is no absolute truth in marketing, and everything can be tweaked to perform even better.
Keeping user experience in mind is essential in times of task overload
The enormous amount of information that’s being thrown at us online is forcing us to learn faster what’s important and what’s not. Pop-ups, banners, native advertising: look around and you’ll see that you are completely surrounded. Thankfully, like the sight of your own nose, your brain just filters them out and disregards the majority of those.
We developed the habit of going straight to the answer to our questions by “scanning” text or searching for terms with a “ctrl+F” command. The number of shares, the size of the fonts, a user-friendly layout; there are many key elements that will determine if you are hanging around or running away from a website.
Unconsciously, we are always measuring the effort required to consume content
Remember that time you looked for a dinner recipe on YouTube and decided to watch a video that’s 5 minutes instead of another one that was 12-minutes long? Why did you do that?
Video and audio have a fundamental decision factor displaying right in your face: the time it takes to watch/listen. In the end, because we’re always busy, we do everything possible to avoid wasting time.
Overcome your visitor’s objections
As you probably know, there’s a massive amount of written content online. According to WordPress, around 80 million posts are published every month using their platform. Take the Creative Agency Secrets’ website as an example: organic search is responsible for 80% of our traffic and the overwhelming majority lands first on one of our blog posts. But we are not the only ones. More companies are using this as a strategy to bring traffic every day.
With so many options out there, your audience has to feel assured that the time invested in reading your content is worth it. One of the visual tricks we use is subtle but powerful: we tell people how long it’ll take them to read our posts. Moreover, a little coloured bar on the top of the screen shows the progress of your reading while you scroll down the page.
Showing the estimated time needed to read an article might calm down the reader’s anxiety. It increases the likelihood of the visitors to finish reading the text because, in their minds, they’ve already allocated that precise amount of minutes for that.
More time spent on your website, more chances of conversion
Worst than not attracting visitors is wasting what you already have. Traffic by itself is useless if your website does not have a clear objective. It might be getting new leads, selling products on your e-commerce, giving you a call, etc. When you increase the time on page, the visitor is spending more minutes experiencing your brand and one step closer to fulfilling your objective.
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Creative and Search Agency Collaboration
/0 Comments/in Marketing /by Rebecca CaroeHow should creative agencies and search agencies collaborate when relaunching a website?
The key part of any site build and launch is continuity for the search engines. Few brands are creating websites for the first time nowadays (although SMEs are). For me, the key parts of this agency collaboration are based around making sure the visitor experience for the new site is an improvement on the old one.
You must not lose any of the strong key word traffic which the old site had. And so a careful keyword tactical plan ensuring similar phrases are used on the major website pages, meta descriptions and alt tags is needed.
Secondly, check whether the URL structure is going to change or not. Frequently ecommerce stores use different structures and so this risks breaking all the historic data for the site. Set up a 301 redirect so that traffic gets to the right page.
As a marketing agency, I always recommend running an inbound campaign to drive traffic to the new site as soon after it launches as possible. This starts the process of “re-educating” the search engines about the new site structure as quickly as possible. And above all, test and measure EVERYTHING.
This was a submitted answer for Northcutt’s Experts, Gurus and other Mythical Entities article series.
northcutt.com
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Benefits of Investing in CRM for your Business
/0 Comments/in Marketing /by Rebecca CaroeThe major reason why you need to invest in a Customer Relationship Management (CRM) system is to improve the relationship with your current customers, engage with potential customers, and win back former customers. You can implement this system in your business by using a software that enables you to collect, organize, and manage customer information. An upgraded CRM system is good for both small scale and large-scale business enterprises. Here are some of the benefits of investing in a CRM system for your business.
CRM Image Credit: ITAlley.co.nz
Enhanced communication
The prime reason why CRM is good for your business is enhancing communication. A CRM system will provide every employee in your business access to the same customer information (single customer view), and thus enable them to provide the same important level of service across the board. In some cases, a customer may have a single point of contact in a business and it can be very hard for another employee to handle such a customer without access to the customer’s data. However, with an upgraded CRM system that collects, organizes, and manages customer information, every customer can be handled efficiently and satisfactorily by any of your employees. In other words, it doesn’t really matter who is working currently with a client because all employees have access to the same information. Furthermore, since CRM is cloud-based, it can be accessed from any location at any time provided an employee has a stable internet connection.
Improved customer relationships
A good email marketing CRM system that meets the current market dynamics can improve the relationship between your business and its customers incredibly fast. Good customer relationships translate into customer satisfaction and good Returns on Investment (ROI). The CRM system will make all dealings with the marketing and selling of products or services to your customers to be organized and systematic / process-led. Being able to provide services to customers through understanding their issues will help improve customer loyalty and ease of purchase. Your customers will be more inclined to recommend your products or services to their friends and close family members if they’re satisfied with your business.
Customized marketing strategies
A CRM makes it easier to increase your company’s revenue with customized marketing strategies. With the collected customer information, you can analyze data using other tools such as Big Data analytics to understand the behavioral patterns and shopping trends of your customers. With this data, you can customize marketing strategies that target different types of customers more effectively.
Maximize upselling and cross-selling
The CRM system will enable you to offer your customers premium products that fall in their preferred shopping categories. It can also help you to give customers complementary products based on what they purchased earlier. This can be achieved through the improved customer relationship which gives you room to interact with customers in a user-friendly manner.
A CRM system will help you understand your customers’ needs and be able to personalize your products or services in such a manner that it suits their specific needs or desires. The collected information from a CRM system is stored in a central database that is accessible to all employees, and thus it will promote internal communication.
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Youth Entrepreneur Organisations in New Zealand
/1 Comment/in Strategy /by Rebecca CaroeYouth Entrepreneur Organisations in New Zealand
I put a question out to my network on behalf of an Australian organisation who are running a similar programme and want to partner.
Here’s the results list thus far.
Check out these as a starting point for your own individual needs. And please use the comments to add others to the list.
International opportunities
As I notice others, I will add them on the list below
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My Internship Experience at Creative Agency Secrets — Antoinette Nguyen
/1 Comment/in Marketing /by Creative Agency Secrets TeamHello, my name is Antoinette Nguyen and I am the latest intern for Creative Agency Secrets. After spending two months here in New Zealand, I’ll be heading back to California to finish my final year of university. I’m grateful for all the learning opportunities I’ve been afforded from working at a marketing agency, and have had the joy of meeting some brilliant people. It will be an interesting transition back to the classroom after having had a taste of the working world.
Looking Back: What I’ve Learned
While at Creative Agency Secrets, I had the chance to work with a diverse clientele and employ a wide range of tools. I’ve progressed from shadowing Rebecca, Conrado, and Tabhitha as they manage their clients, to being responsible for a few projects of my own. I have also learned how to ensure new development pitches lead to securing new clients, while avoiding soliciting free work—one of many lessons in how to successfully run a marketing consulting business.
Email marketing is an integral aspect of many businesses, as I learned first-hand how newsletters that feature regularly updated content can ensure ongoing relationships with existing consumers while simultaneously attracting new customers. Using Feedblitz and other CRM platforms, I designed newsletters and managed email lists to drive greater brand awareness and potential sales.
Data analytics is another cornerstone of effective online marketing, and I worked with tools like Google Analytics to evaluate and suggest actionable steps to improve clients’ online presence. I created reports for clients that appraised their website SEO strength and rankings, on top of tracking incoming traffic. SEO optimization weighs heavily on content, but I learned how much website design and functionality matter as well.
Through operating several client blogs and websites, my copywriting skills and knowledge of web development have grown considerably. I also drove engagement through several social media accounts, with the help of applications like Buffer and Hootsuite. One of my larger projects was overseeing a Facebook ad campaign from start to finish—including editing multiple versions of ad copy, overseeing the A/B testing results, and reporting back to the client. And to top it all off, I also gained experience in organizing a promotional giveaway on an international scale.
A Heartfelt Thank You
My internship wouldn’t have been nearly as fulfilling without the guidance of the whole team at Creative Agency Secrets. Thank you Rebecca, Conrado, and Tabhitha for taking me under your wing and being wonderful mentors in my professional development—I’ve learned so much in this short time! You all have my best wishes for the future.
Best of luck,
Antoinette
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How to Increase Buy-In From Your Sales Reps
/0 Comments/in Marketing /by Sudip MuttIn the words of hockey legend Wayne Gretzky, “You miss 100 percent of the shots you don’t take.” This advice wasn’t just for himself. He was constantly seeking to encourage his teammates to give it their all — no matter what.
There are many ways to get the same point across. No risk, no reward.
Carpe diem. Nothing ventured, nothing gained.
In business, the most simple one might be the best of all: Scared money doesn’t make money. For people in sales, the takeaway should be that you have to put yourself out there, and you can’t grow complacent.
These days, there is so much data and intelligence available in the form of advanced, easy-to-use platforms. Let’s take a look at how the right tools can increase buy-in from your sales team.
Getting Your Sales Reps on Board
So how do you follow Gretzky’s lead and inspire your sales reps to get with the program?
Some of it comes down to having the right people. As any manager can tell you, it is often more important to have people with the right attitude than an exact set of skills. It is hard to teach motivation and instil a willingness to grow, so hiring will always play a big part in this.
That said, you go to war with the army you have. Maybe you can make some new hires down the road, but that isn’t going to help you this week, this month, or maybe even this quarter. So you need to acknowledge that different people are inspired by different things.
Set clear goals and do not micromanage your team. A little bit of freedom might be all they need to start getting better results. On the other hand, if your culture already does give people the space they need, recognize that certain team members might need a little more oversight. It might not even take much; just offer the right amount of encouragement and incentives to get everyone on board.
Getting Your Sales Reps the Best Tools
You can also get better results by giving your reps the right tools. Communication is maybe the most important. Many companies are finding success by adopting mobile-first options like Slack channels or digital conferencing solutions like Zoom. Especially for reps who aren’t checking in every day, this can create much better results rather than relying on e-mail alone.
When it comes to dealing with customers and leads, you also need to be using top-tier customer relationship management (CRM) system. It needs to offer the right blend of qualities and capabilities. It has to be powerful, but easy to use. It should have mobile capabilities, and it has to present all the right data and info at the click of a button.
While there are many CRM platforms out there, few tick off all the right boxes like Infor CRM offered by Infor customer partner CustomerFX. Among the many benefits, Infor CRM will help you generate predictable sales revenue and provide constant visibility into team performance. This empowers your sales reps to spend their time working to sign deals.
The tracking features only compound these benefits; as a manager, you can always see what type of results each rep is getting. With granular metrics, it’s easy to find problem areas and correct them. This way, you won’t have to micromanage anyone and potentially cause frustration. You only need to intervene when things get off track.
Getting the Employee Buy-In You Need
When it comes to sales, you either land the deal or you don’t. So make it your mission to get the best sales reps you can, empower them to seize the day, and be sure to equip them with the tools they need and want to use.
No related posts.