Taken from the Inside Sales Experts Blog, we have the most important attributes for a successful inside sales rep.

Top Competencies for an Inside Sales Rep

Top performers are:

1. Passionate about what they do
2. Coachable…they embrace learning new skills and ideas
3. Not afraid of change
4. Relationship builders both internally and externally
5. Able to build a plan and know how to execute
6. Able and willing to mentor others
7. Interested in trying new techniques
8. Not interested in negativity
9. Able to communicate as well with the written word as with the spoken
10. Healthy in both mind and body

I would love to hear what you think so please post!

The key to increasing CTRs and delivering higher overall CPMs is generating compelling, interesting, and targeted advertising for the user.

Location plays a huge role in delivering relevant advertising, so how does it all work and how can publishers take advantage of it?

Why Knowing Where …Is Half The Battle

Tthe implicit assumption of most marketers is that more is always better, particularly when more means more data points about who’s browsing a Web site, what they’re doing there, and have done previously online. Sometimes, however, it can be more relevant to focus not on what consumers are doing — but on where they’re doing it from.

How Does Location-Based Targeting Work?

Basically providers go and map the infrastructure of Web servers set up all over the world and map where IP Addresses have been allocated. We’re talking about over two million addresses in the database. The data is constantly changing, because IP addresses are subject to enormous flux. Up to 10% of them can change every month and even more if a telecom company is acquired.

So, as an example, say a customer is searching for shoes. By using IP geo-location data to situate exactly where they are, a shoe retailer can localize its landing page for each incoming visitor. Another customer example is a newspaper which uses reader location to customize their news and ad content. If you log in from Massachusetts, you’ll get the Red Sox score first — not the Yankees score. And news, weather, and the store locations of advertisers can be localized based on where a particular person is logged in from.

This particular publisher has 60 DMAs they serve, from Boston to San Francisco. Not only can they geo-localize targeted content, but they are able to sell local advertising to national advertisers granularized by metro market.

We have an agency using geo-data to do promotional campaigns for a Lasik Eye Center that has multiple locations. Whenever someone comes to their Web site, they’ll get information relevant to their location. They’ll be referred to the centers nearest them for contact and also only see advertising that complies with the state laws applicable in their geographic location.

What’s In The Future For Location-Based?

Looking forward, another important area of application will be mapping Wi-Fi IP location by routing Wi-Fi hotspots and cell towers to triangulate precise location. This type of marketing would of course be permission-based. But as you can imagine, the potentials for customizing content based on the Starbucks location someone is connecting from can be enormously valuable not only to marketers but to consumers who get truly relevant information.

Taken from an interview on Mediapost with Kerry Kangstaff.

Selling online advertising is all about relationships. Well that’s great if you already have relationships with people, but for entrepreneurs, that doesn’t help much — we need to make these connections, and foster the relationships from there.

So what are the correct means for finding quality leads at ad agencies?

Lead Accountability Best Practices

Lead quality is a core evaluation standard for advertisers, agencies and publishers. For advertisers, lead quality has a direct impact on return on investment for marketing and on operational efficiency for sales. Buying large volumes of low quality leads means that advertisers are spending a significant portion of their advertising budget on leads that have little chance of converting into customers. Moreover, the time and effort the advertiser’s sales force spends on trying to convert these low quality leads is time and effort taken away from focusing on the high quality leads, meaning that some leads with a high probability to convert are not receiving the prompt attention required to convert them into customers right away.

Brokering

• Unless permitted in the contract by the advertiser or its authorized agency, a publisher should not broker a lead generation campaign to any other publisher, network or agency.

Many advertisers who use online lead generation are diligent about tracking the conversion rate of all leads to sales. They track leads by source so that they can optimize their media spend toward lead sources that convert at the highest rate or at an acceptable rate. If a publisher brokers a lead campaign to third parties without the advertiser’s knowledge, optimization decisions may become flawed. In addition, many advertisers require Quality Assurance (QA) processes to be completed for each placement. If campaigns are brokered without the advertiser’s knowledge, the QA processes would not be able to be performed.

This best practice is particularly important when lead generation campaigns are not hosted by the advertiser and are hosted by the publisher.

• If the advertiser does permit a campaign to be brokered, the campaign’s terms and conditions offered by the brokering party to the third party should be absolutely consistent with the contractual terms and conditions stipulated by the advertiser, unless the advertiser provides written approval for any changes to those terms and conditions.

It is important that all publishers involved in a campaign have the same contractual obligations and requirements, including acceptable lead generation methods, disclosures, etc., throughout the brokered ecosystem. The advertiser should be confident that the campaign is running according to its terms, regardless of whether or not the advertiser has a direct relationship with a lead generation source.

Incentivization / Pre-selection

• Unless permitted in writing by the advertiser or its authorized agency, a publisher should not offer any incentives to consumers in return for submitting a lead, regardless of whether the campaign is hosted by the publisher or the advertiser.

Examples of incentives include cash, prizes, reward points, services, entertainment, or content. Requiring a consumer to choose one of multiple advertiser offers in order to receive an incentive is considered incentivization and should be done with written permission from the advertiser or its authorized agency.

• If the advertiser does permit the publisher to offer incentives in return for leads being submitted to the advertiser, it is the publisher’s full responsibility to:

1. Completely and plainly disclose the terms and conditions of the incentive opportunity,
2. Fulfill the incentive if earned, and
3. Promptly and professionally handle any customer service issue relating to the terms or fulfillment of such incentive.

• Publishers should not pre-select lead generation offers without written approval by the advertiser or its authorized agency.

Pre-selection is acceptable for custom offers; however, consumers should be shown a clear and conspicuous link to enable them to skip the offer instead of submit their information to the advertiser.

Lead / Data Ownership

• Publishers should assume that additional data gathered as part of an advertiser’s lead generation campaign – beyond any data collected in the publisher’s registration process – is owned solely by that advertiser.

If the publisher considers such data to be co-owned by the advertiser and publisher and if that data may be used for optimization and targeting during the registration process, the publisher should notify the advertiser in writing that this is the publisher’s intention (i.e., targeting and optimization of subsequent offers). Such disclosure should be included in the publisher’s terms and conditions in addition to their privacy policy.

• If the publisher intends to sell a lead it generates to multiple advertisers in the same industry vertical, the publisher should notify the advertiser(s) in writing, in the publisher contract, in advance of any such sale.
• The publisher hosting a lead generation offer should not duplicate or otherwise use any information contained within the lead data for its own purpose or interest, or for the purpose or interest of any third party or itself, except as specifically authorized or agreed to by the advertiser.
• In order to maintain the integrity of the data, publisher should authorize the advertiser to seed the leads.

Seeding is the practice of submitting a unique set of data as part of a lead intentionally for the purpose of tracking the use of that data.

• In order to validate any lead filtering conducted by the advertiser as part of accepting leads from the publisher, the publisher should seed the leads.

Advertisers sometimes require the ability to filter all leads submitted by a publisher and only use and pay for leads that meet a pre-defined set of criteria. For example, an advertiser may stipulate that it will reject leads that are duplicated within the advertiser’s existing file of leads for the past quarter. In this example, if matching incoming leads against an existing file of leads can only be done by the advertiser, the publisher would seed the leads they submit to the advertiser in order to detect the advertiser’s potential use of any data from leads it rejected.

Source Coding

Source coding is the process by which advertiser- or agency-supplied identification codes are appended to leads for the purpose of tracking a publisher’s placement of offers and tracking a lead throughout the advertiser’s lead conversion process. Source coding facilitates transparency within the advertiser/publisher relationship and serves as a means for advertisers and their agencies to track the publisher placement of offers and the quality of leads from all publishers involved in the campaign.

• The advertiser should provide each publisher with a source code that is unique to the campaign.
• The advertiser should provide the publisher with clear information regarding the specific source(s) that are approved for the campaign.
• Publishers should append source code information to each lead, when requested by the advertiser.
• A source code should only be appended to those leads that originate from the advertiser-approved sources for a given campaign (See “Brokering” section above for more detail.)
• Ad Networks should provide a unique source code to each affiliate and track placements at the affiliate level throughout the network, if requested by the advertiser.

This constant battle causes huge headaches for publishers trying to sell out their inventory and for advertisers trying to avoid being over charged.

So after experimenting for a little more than 6 months with different metrics tools, I wanted to share with you what we’re using at Grooveshark.

Quantcast Traffic Reporting

So after wondering why our Compete rankings don’t look anything like our Google Analytics and internal awStats numbers, we finally stumbled upon Quantcast.

The best indication that Quantcast is providing us with quality tracking can be seen in the graphs below:

Google Analytics

Quantcast

In web trending, you don’t often see graphs that actually resemble one another.

Quantcast Uses a Plugin

So with Compete, they don’t use any sort of plugins or site monitoring on the actual publisher site, so their results can vary dramatically.

However, with Quanctast, you install the plugin on your site, giving Quantcast the best metrics available for any web reporting site.

Real Numbers for Advertisers

So for publishers, thanks to Quantcast, the numbers you quote advertisers can be backed up by their infrastructure, and the huge clients that use them including MTV, NBC, Fox Entertainment, BusinessWeek, Time, etc.

Best of all, Quantcast is free, so make sure to sign up and get your site Quantified.

Now I’m not going to talk about shoring up your weakest links, but a good way to help shield yourself from deficiencies is to have some star players.

Tom Brady is the best quarterback to ever play the game. He was able to win three Super Bowls with not exactly first-round ballot hall of famers.

The most recent quarterback to put together 3 Super Bowls was Troy Aikman, and he ha Emmitt Smith running behind him and he was throwing the ball to Michael Irvin (both hall of famers).

Hug Your Stars, and Let Them Know They’re Important

So what did the Patriots do? They signed Tom Brady to a longterm contract, made him feel secure, happy, and part of the team.

Determining who your key players are in the organization and make them happy. Let them know they’re important to the long-term success of the organization. Doing this when times are good is even better, but since we’re in bad times, it’s even more dire.

When times are hard, you’re going to be pushing harder on your employees you know can handle the stress and workload, and hope they can help the company pull itself out of this trench.

If you haven’t invested the time and effort in making them happy, and secure, they may get happy feet and start dancing around.

Don’t Mistake a Blackhole for a Star

Just like in football, if you give a huge contract to a show-boater or a big talker, who you think brings a lot of value to the team, like perhaps a Chad Johnson, Terrell Owens, etc. you may be shooting yourself in the foot.

Nothing kills a team faster than a player who thinks they’re better than the team.

You could spend all of your cap money on this big-name player, only to see them fizzle out. When you could have “spread the wealth” to 5 role-players who more than fill up this superstars shoes.

A Startup is a Team

To ensure your company works to its maximum potential, you need everyone playing for the same team.

Divisions are easy to come by in companies, whether it be between marketing and sales, sales and development, management and everyone else. These barriers cause companies to not work to their full-potential.

Find ways to identify these barriers, eliminate them, and you’ll find your startup working as a team more, and reaching better and better heights.

You Need a Sense of Urgency

Urgency is imperative in sales. If your client doesn’t feel a sense of urgency, they won’t act. If you tell them you will get back to them ‘whenever’ then they’ll return the favor and get back to you ‘whenever’.

However, if you tell them you will contact them in 2 days, and will need a decision in 5 days, suddenly there’s urgency, prompting them to make a decision. If they say no, and you feel like you rushed them, too bad. It’s better you hear a “no” now than have to wait 2 weeks to hear that no.

Give Them an Ultimatum

What if you talked to a client, but they haven’t returned any of your calls? You feel like you’re powerless, as they have the power to call you back.

Turn the situation around on them, and in your final message, tell them “this is the last time I will be contacting you regarding this offer,” please call me back if you’re interested.

You’re creating that urgency and making yourself feel better at the same time. If they don’t call you back, who cares, you’ve already written them off, and if they do, great!

Share Your Callback Tips

Have any good callback tips to get prospects to call you back? Do you leave long messages or short messages?

What’s working for you guys?

These sales & marketing resources will help you craft your pitch, and develop winning strategies to help you drive advertising as well as purchase-revenue. It’s important to understand sales as a piece of the larger marketing pie, and you shouldn’t be focusing strictly on the smaller sales goal without taking into consideration the entire marketing objective of your startup. I’d suggest reading these blogs on a weekly basis or subscribing to them to keep them ready in your RSS reader.

Top 10 Sales & Marketing Blogs to Help You Sell Better

B2B Lead Generation Blog
Brian Carroll, CEO of InTouch, Inc. part of the MECLABS Group that owns MarketingExperiments and MarketingSherpa and author of Lead Generation for the Complex Sale (McGraw-Hill 2006) and the B2B Lead Generation Blog with expertise related to B2B marketing, lead generation and complex sales.

Duct Tape Marketing
John Jantsch is a marketing and digital technology coach, award winning social media publisher and author of “Duct Tape Marketing – The World’s Most Practical Small Business Marketing Guide” published by Thomas Nelson, with foreword by Michael Gerber, author of The E-Myth and afterword by Guy Kawasaki.

bBlog: The sales, marketing and business weblog
The bBlog, is a frequently updated weblog that links to leadership, sales, marketing and business intelligence compiled by XPLANE. The bBlog helps executives, managers and employees frame the events of the day within the context of the larger business landscape. We link to sales and marketing resources, thought leaders, new ideas, new ways of doing business and lessons learned. bBlog has been published continually since 2000.

Marketing Opus: Sales Channel
Chances are you know Frank Rumbauskas as the New York Times bestselling author of Never Cold Call Again, but there’s so much more you may not know. Frank is also a highly successful internet marketer, Web 2.0 pioneer, Google-certified AdWords Professional, and a serial entrepreneur including businesses you’d never know were owned or started by him. According to Frank, he’s able to be successful in any business because he simply duplicates the same business & marketing system that has already proven effective over and over again.

Chrisg – The Business of Blogging & New Media
Chris Garrett is a professional blogger, Internet Marketing Consultant, new media industry commentator, writer, coach, speaker, trainer and web geek. He was also a founding member of Performancing. You might know him from his past writing for such sites as ASPToday, ASPAlliance, Threadwatch, or more recently, ProBlogger, The Blog Herald, FreelanceSwitch, Cogniview, AdSavvy and CopyBlogger.

HubSpot Inbound Marketing Blog
HubSpot’s vision is to provide a (killer) marketing application and provide great advice to small businesses enabling them to leverage these disruptive effects of the internet to “get found” by more prospects shopping in their niche and to convert a higher percentage of prospects into customers.

SalesMotivation.net – Jet Fuel for the Sales Professional
I have been a top producing Sales Professional for over 17 years. I have sold for large corporations and small start up companies. I believe that Sales is one of the most challenging yet rewarding fields an individual can choose. You have the ability to create your own destiny and determine your level of success. I take my profession very seriously, but have a great deal of fun achieving my goals. My wish is for you to do the same.

Heavy Hitters Sales Blog
Everywhere I go it seems like I meet someone who is writing (or wants to write) a book. Since today is the official release date of Heavy Hitter Sales Wisdom: Proven Sales Warfare Strategies, Secrets of Persuasion, and Common-Sense Tips for Success, I thought I would take a moment to tell you how the book came about.

The Shameless Sales Blog
Shamus Brown has written more than 300 articles on selling and is the creator of the Persuasive Selling Skills Audio Program, a self-study skill building program for sales and business professionals. Shamus Brown is a professional sales coach who helps both businesses and private individuals increase their sales. He has over 20 years of in the trenches sales experience and practices what he preaches in selling the services of Industrial EGO Sales, the sales training company he founded in 1999. Shamus has sold large-ticket computer technology software and services for companies such as IBM, Dunn & Bradstreet, and PeopleSoft, in addition to three successful software startups.

Ad Sales Blog
Josh Gordon is president of Smarter Media Sales.com where he works with publishers to maximize their online and print revenue through training, consulting, and representation. Gordon is the author of four books on the subject of selling and persuasion and is an internationally recognized expert on the subject. He has been covered on CNN, CNBC, National Public Radio (on PRI’s “Marketplace”), The Fortune Business Report, Wall Street Journal TV, and WCBS Radio. His books have been translated for publication in Germany, China, Korea, and Taiwan.

Plan to Get Revenue in Your First Month

Regardless if it comes in the form of Google Adsense or by giving a huge discount just to get your initial customer on board, regardless, you want to be accustomed to bringing revenue into the company early and often. Building the foundation of the business around driving revenue will force you to think in a different mentality when planning the business. Decisions will revolve around your ability to monetize the actions and products and features will be able to more easily handle monetization.

Let us know where your first customer/revenue came from in the comments below

Regardless of your effectiveness, your pitch can always get better, and from Jill Konrath at Selling to Big Companies, she has a great exercise:

Using a 1-10 (tops) scale, evaluate the following pitches:

• We offer one-stop shopping for all your (fill in the blank) needs.
• We’re the industry leader in (fill in the blank) and have been recognized for our exceptional (fill in the blank).
• We specialize in ( fill in the blank) and work with well-known clients such as Microsoft, Best Buy and Kraft.

thinking…

1

2

3

4

5

done.

How Good Of A Salesman Are You?

Got your results? How’d you do? Are these 5s? 7s? 10s?

When Jill conduced her experiment, she found that most participants rated the propositions on a scale from 4 to 6 because “they were nice benefit statements about the company but not quite as punchy.” The fact of the matter is:

All the above value propositions really deserve a score of one. Not four. Not six. Just a measly score of one.

While those commonly used value propositions listed above might be important at some point in the decision process, they’re totally and utterly worthless when prospecting.

When it comes to capturing a decision maker’s attention, here’s what you need to think about:

* Strong value propositions pique curiosity and entice. When prospects hear them, they want to learn more.

* Strong value propositions create a stark contrast from the status quo. When prospects hear them, they’re willing to consider making a change.

How Would You Respond To This Pitch?

Say a salesman calls you up and says the following:

“Eric. Jill Konrath calling from Selling to Big Companies. We offer one-stop shopping for all your sales training needs – everything from lead generation to closing. We use state-of-the-art methodologies to ensure our training sticks.”

Would this cause you to get up in your chair and throw handfuls (yes, handfuls) of money at the man? Would it cause you to even flinch as you tell him, kindly, that you aren’t interested? Me too.

The key driver in getting people motivated and interested is providing value to your clients. The reason the above “pitches” didn’t work is because they’re not pitches, they’re simply statements about your company.

3 Steps To Getting Effective

To put together a new sales pitch, Jill has 3 steps:

Talk results.
Decision makers don’t care about your products or services. They only care about the results they’ll see. Stress that and you’ll catch their attention. Omit those results and you’ve lost them.

Get real.
Refer to actual client successes and include measures or statistics. Success stories from other companies in their industry are especially compelling. By giving specific examples, you really pique their curiosity.

Test your message.
After you’ve planned what to say, ask, “If I were the decision maker, would this message entice me? Would it make me want to spend an hour of my valuable time with this person?”

Anyone care to test their pitch in the comments below?