Content Might Be King but revenue rules. Nurture your sales pipeline.
"Be heard—from one end of the sales funnel to the other." - Daniel DiGriz
Sales Emails
You're either the sender or the spender.
Problem
Most firms send a newsletter. Company news, obvious tips, industry blather, latest blogs . . . there’s constant tension between consistency & saying aught of concern to recipients.
Hurdle
Prospects get far too many newsletters even as they are highly motivated (at work) to clear the inbox. Many of those messages fill the bulk mail folder and are never seen.
Solution
MadPipe will extract the key insights you need to flesh out for potential customers, so emails help you close, & craft better than average messages that drive home a single idea.
Mandate
What you want is: existing clients to buy more (and give referrals), prospects to get a deeper understanding of the product & brand (which supports the sale), and leads to include you in RFPs.
Face it: most sales emails are boring.
Even to the person writing them. Let's do better.
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We need stronger content.
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We need better subject lines.
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We need sales collateral worth reading.
The numbers are the numbers.
So which sales team do you want to be?
Red Team
On-the-nose subject lines
No custom eyebrow text
One-off emails
Standard CTAs ("visit site" or "contact us")
Partial list-segmentation
List has high bounce rate
Email Stats
Open Rate: 19%
CTA Rate: 1.2%
List Health: 69%
Domain Health: OK
Gold Team
Creative subject lines
Deliberate eyebrow text
Campaign strategy
Enticing CTAs
List segmentation
List cleanup
Email Stats
Open Rate: 29%
CTA Rate: 4.5%
List Health: 92%
Domain Health: OK
End-of-year Deal Increase: 200%
Personal and witty
beats formal and pretty.
Salespeople can't afford two things—time and hope. By 5:00, you have to close.
Marketing Automation
When you need to do more, automate the chore
Problem
Your CRM shows which emails you've sent, but by the time you get good at nurturing every stage of the funnel, you're also dropping balls on sending at the right moment.
Hurdle
You've got a marketing automation tool like Mailchimp or HubSpot, but planning the campaign: who gets what, when, with what trigger and what exceptions, is tedious.
Solution
MadPipe is going to map the lifecycle of your customer, from ideation about the problem you solve to negotiation over your proposal to retention as a referrer.
Mandate
Leads get softer and sales easier to close, while the salesperson is more free to go after new leads. Automation is an efficiency driver that keeps the sales team tight.
Marketing Automation Map
Very Simple Example
Example from a Recent Marketing Automation Plan
Sometimes a closer
needs a bulldozer.
"Automate or die" means you think like an owner. You can't do it all.
Presentations & Talks
A talk from an exec is more than the deck.
Problem
A talk needs to be planned out, with key ideas, a means of audience interaction, and presentation created—with publicity on the ground before, during, & after.
Hurdle
You’ve given presentations—you can totally go it alone. But you’ve also got sales to close & projects to complete. You need to go prepared & be switched "on"—not distracted.
Solution
MadPipe will help build out your topic, so you can deliver the talk powerfully, offer ways to make it interactive, and (if you want) inject humor & fun to break the ice.
Mandate
The gold standard is this: both the tangible and intangible value of speaking will have been greater than the cost and the effort. You'll garner more 1:1 conversations while sharpening your game.
Creating a Talk Is Like Making a Record
It's actually fun.
Nail the event.
Bring 100%.
An audience is the most merciless and most forgiving organism. What you get depends on you.
Podcasts
The point of an ear is to hear.
Problem
You’ve got an idea for a podcast, but a show needs a consistent format and/or a comfortable host besides a plan for distribution. An experienced voice could help.
Hurdle
You can learn the ropes alone, but you don't yet know what challenges you’ll face and, once an episode is out there, you don’t have much leeway to have gotten it wrong.
Solution
Let's settle on a format based on your opportunities for content, a first few episodes aligned with your overall brand story, and a distribution strategy that fits your goals.
Mandate
You want a solid show with a sustainable lineup—one that doesn't veer quickly offtrack. Your clients, partners, and vendors look on with respect and admiration.
An actual host
can help the most.
Nothing is permanent. Unless it's on Twitter. Then it's permanent.
Blogs
A blog exists to lead and get leads.
Problem
Most blogs aren’t consistent enough to matter; the content isn’t aligned with the sales conversations that are getting prospects to say yes, and you run out of topics quickly.
Hurdle
Maybe you post a few press releases, article mentions, or the news of the day, but that won’t cut it for long. You aren’t sure what type of content has the greatest impact and how often to deploy it.
Mandate
A blog exists not for its own sake but as the primary owned-media source of the company. It can deliver multiple formats, from case studies to company news to solutions for prospects' problems.
THERE'S A RECIPE FOR CREATING YOUR CONTENT STRATEGY
Let your brand story guide creation of thematic campaigns. Advocate for a specific audience—misalignment there just wastes the effort. Have a conscious plan for distribution.
Blither withers,
but insight delights.
Some More Thoughts
Since you're still lurking—instead of working?
Success Is Seeing the Needle Move!
And everything else is codswallop.
You can only improve
what you can prove.
