Author: Franz Malten Buemann

Last Updated on December 3, 2020 by Rakesh GuptaBig Idea or Enduring Question: How do you automatically remove records from the Chatter Groups? Salesforce allows you to add a record to Chatter Groups, which means you can now collaborate and … Continue reading →

Web push notifications are a unique, fast and convenient way to stay in touch with your customers. See how to use them in GetResponse.

Unprecedented times. The new normal. We all have our own least favorite catch phrases to describe what it’s like to live through a pandemic, just as we all have our own stories about how COVID-19 has impacted our day-to-day and professional lives. Eleven months into the year, I don’t think it’s necessary to spell out how work life has shifted, in-person engagements have dropped to all-time lows, and how so many people found new work spaces sitting somewhere in front of a Peloton.
What hasn’t changed in the midst of this pandemic and our global shift to working from home is what it takes for sales people to succeed — the ability to adapt. Adapting to fewer (if any) in-person visits, to meeting your customers where they are, to a world of yet-unknowns that will continue to crop up over time. And for those who learn to do this well, there’s a huge opportunity to not just succeed but excel.
Throughout my tech career I’ve worked with dozens of sales representatives. Over the past year, I’ve watched top performers struggle to close a single deal all month. I’ve seen sales people with traditionally challenging territories knock it out of the park. I’ve also had a lot of conversations with my sales reps. Here’s what I’m hearing:
What is the rest of the team doing to succeed? Why is it working for them but not me? Why is it that what used to work for me no longer works?
There’s no one-size-fits-all answer. That’s why adaptability is key. But it leaves an uncomfortable gray area when it comes to how we should change. What it comes down to is this:
How are you adapting to your customers’ needs? How are you adapting your sales process to our new digital-first world? Are you willing to make the changes necessary to succeed? 
As you ponder these questions, here are three ways that technology and insights can help you reach the right answers for you and your team.
1. Collaboration
The best sales reps are not lone wolves. For some, this isn’t a surprise. For others, it may be difficult to let go of being in control, trust others to get the job done, or admit that they aren’t always (and don’t have to be) the smartest person in the room.
There’s value in having multiple roles supporting the sales process. Realizing that you don’t have to go it alone can help you close bigger deals faster and smarter.

Understand the roles and functions that surround sales at your company. With this basic level of knowledge, you can’t collaborate effectively.

Take stock of where you get the most value. This may not be linear — think about what you need depending on the situation you’re in, or the stage of the sales process.

Provide feedback on what’s working well or what could work better. And be open to receiving and acting on feedback as well.

2. Insights & Intelligence
Once you’ve identified your key internal stakeholders and what they bring to the table, it’s important to put that information to work. One of my favorite synergies is when marketing and sales are truly aligned and build a holistic view of the customer journey together. By understanding where your customer has been and where they are now, you can help them get to where they’re going more effectively.

Familiarize yourself with your prospects’ activities before they land in your lead queue. When you understand the content that prospects are engaging with on your website and  through their inboxes, you can start identifying their interests before you ever talk to them.

Find your account champion. When you’re selling to a company, the purchasing decision typically sits with more than one person. Finding the right contact to facilitate introductions and help sell your product or services internally can make all the difference. If you have visibility into who’s engaging with your content, how much they’re engaging, and how they’re engaging, this knowledge can help you pinpoint how to start the conversation.

Invest in artificial intelligence (AI) to remove human bias from the equation and glean insights you may not have known to look for. AI can help uncover a subsegment of prospects that responds more positively to certain messages or identify leads that are most likely to convert into contacts. Using unbiased insights helps focus your efforts where they’ll have the most impact.

3. Organization
Juggling all of your accounts at different stages and with different business needs is hard enough. But when this information is stored in your mind or simply written down, it’s difficult to find, access, and share. Putting effort into the following can go a long way:

Use the tools at your disposal. Having a CRM doesn’t help you if you’re not actually using it. When you add and update key information, it helps everyone you’re collaborating with to stay on the same page, and empowers you to draw comparisons across accounts. When processes like lead funnel stages and opportunity statuses are standardized, you can easily look across all of your accounts and prospects to see where the needle is moving and where you’ve hit a roadblock.

Make the most of repeatable processes. Each account may need something slightly different, but that doesn’t mean you can’t learn from what’s worked in the past and make the necessary tweaks to get it to resonate. Once you know which campaigns helped to push opportunities across the finish line, you can use that knowledge to your advantage. For example, you can maintain a library of email templates that get the best responses. Learn, organize, and optimize.

Prioritize your time and effort. There are only so many hours in the day. If you’re ready to start your day with a call blitz, how will you ensure that you’re calling on the hottest prospects first? Using tools like lead scoring and organizing your CRM leads by top lead score first ensures that you’re reaching out in an order that makes sense for your business and is most likely to lead to success.

I’ll ask again: How are you adapting to your customers’ needs? How are you adapting your sales process to our digital-first world? Are you willing to make the changes necessary to succeed? 
Change is inevitable. So think about that last question. I’ve just laid out the key trends I’ve observed in my most resilient sales reps. It’s time for a bit of self-reflection to understand if you’re ready, willing, and able to adapt.
Register for our Dec. 15 Pardot-Like-a-Pro webinar to learn how to sell smarter with Pardot in 2021.

How does IFundWomen empower and support women entrepreneurs? Their strength is in their community. IFundWomen, the go-to funding marketplace for women-owned businesses, aims to empower and support women entrepreneurs as they navigate building their businesses. They’ve identified a powerful marketing channel to help these women bring their visions to life: digital community.
Read on for a behind-the-scenes look at how IFundWomen integrates their marketing and community building to foster inclusive digital spaces. You’ll hear directly from Shakivla Todd, Marketing Associate at IFundWomen, and you’ll learn:

Community tactics to build closer, longer-lasting relationships with your customers
How to learn from your community to inform your marketing strategy
Where Shakivla finds inspiration for creating social media content for a small business audience⠀
How to avoid tone-deaf marketing in uncertain times

This post is part of the #BufferBrandSpotlight, a Buffer social media series that shines a spotlight on the people that are helping build remarkable brands through social media, community building, content creation, and brand storytelling.
This series was born on Instagram stories, which means you can watch the original interview in our Highlights found on our @buffer Instagram profile.

Who are you?
My name is Shakivla Todd and I am the Marketing Associate for IFundWomen. More importantly, I’m a stellar older sister, a dope friend, and a budding plant mom. IFundWomen is the go-to funding marketplace for women-owned businesses and the people who want to support them with capital, coaching, and connections. We offer immediate access to capital through a premium online fundraising experience, access to small business grants from corporate partners, expert business coaching on all the topics entrepreneurs need to know about, and a network of women business owners that sparks confidence, accelerates knowledge, and ignites action.
I manage our digital communities through social media strategy, Slack engagement, and e-mail marketing. I also am a startup coach and I get to coach women entrepreneurs on how to level up their social media game—this is one of my favorite parts of my role!
Where do you find inspiration for IFundWomen’s social media content?
I spend a lot of time scrolling through Instagram to get inspo for social content. I am always stalking Ellevest, R29 Unbothered, Freelancing Females, Girlboss, the list goes on. Additionally, our community is #TeamMemes so pop culture inspires a good amount of my content. I am also looking for the next thing to be memeified! For example, millennials collectively are re-watching the early 2000s sitcom Girlfriends on Netflix. Everyone is talking about it, so I made a meme from a picture of the cast to promote one of our grant programs.
Lastly, I would be lying if I didn’t say that we get inspired by checking out our competitors. It’s a great tactic!
How does managing IFundWomen’s social media account and community look like on a day-to-day basis?
First thing I do in the morning is check all DMs across platforms. I can do this from laying in my bed, so it’s a good slow start to the day and I don’t have to worry about it during the workday. I like to respond to any messages and comments within 24 hours, but if it’s a launch day or something important I check in with Instagram much more frequently.
On an amazing day, I have already scheduled my posts into Buffer. So, I’ll go check on them to make sure everything is still good to go. After that, my day is clear to be creative and strategize for future content. I collaborate with our sales, coaching, and creative teams to ensure that we are consistently marketing our products, services, events, and partnership. I have to make sure everything is reflected in our marketing content calendar.
What advice do you have for brands that are trying to foster a supportive, inclusive online community?
Don’t be tone-deaf. A lot of STUFF is going on in this land of 2020. You can’t ignore it. You have to find some way to address it that aligns with your brand’s mission, values, and voice. That being said, don’t just say something to say something. Be authentic and make it work for you. For example, during the aftermath of George Floyd’s death instead of going silent or posting a black square, our response was amplifying and supporting Black women-owned businesses recognizing that one of the most important actions to combat racial injustice is to redistribute money to Black-owned businesses. ⁠

Don’t be tone-deaf. A lot of STUFF is going on in this land of 2020. You can’t ignore it. You have to find some way to address it that aligns with your brand’s mission, values, and voice.
How do you learn from your community to help guide your marketing strategy?
Our community is loud and clear about what they need, want, and love. I like to try out different tactics and just watch to see where our community takes it. If something goes “viral” I continue to create content similar to that. Our followers are also often in our DMs asking for help to get their businesses funded. Their specific questions fuel my marketing strategy.
Our followers are also often in our DMs asking for help to get their businesses funded. Their specific questions fuel my marketing strategy.
For example, IFundWomen partners with companies to build grant programs for businesses. Over the summer, during the application window for one of our grants people were consistently sliding in our DMs asking very specific questions about their grant application. We decided to host a workshop specifically on grant writing. To promote this free workshop I seriously just took a screenshot of the first slide of the presentation that was going to be used for the workshop. The post blew up with nearly 1000 likes and over 400 people registered for the workshop. I think it succeeded because the Instagram post was very simple, straight to the point, and directly addressed a concern our community was having.
What’s your number one tip for engaging with IFundWomen’s community?
Perform like everyone’s best friend on the gram. What does that mean? That means most comments and DMs get very personalized responses. I interact with our followers not only on our posts but on their posts as well if it comes across our feed. I often engage as if our business account is a personal account. It’s a great tactic to beat the algorithm, but also to build community and brand trust.
Perform like everyone’s best friend on the gram.
How do you stay up to date on social media/marketing trends?
I love reading Buffer’s, Later’s, Hootsuite’s blogs, and Social Media Today. A good scroll through TikTok and Twitter is also good for the brain. I think most trends start in those two apps. Shameless plug, I take what I learn all over the internet and put it into a roundup of “trends to keep up with” in my newsletter, Trending with Shak.
What’s your favorite IFundWomen partnership to date and why?
The Funding Journey is an IGTV series where we interview successful founders on the long, sometimes complicated, journey to getting their businesses funded. It’s my favorite because:

I get to put on my true producer hat and build something out start to finish.
Most of the founders we interview are from HUGE brands. It means amazing reach for us as a brand plus our community LOVES hearing from brands they love like Black Girl Sunscreen, Lively, and The Helm.

Link to Instagram post found here.Link to Instagram post found here.
We hope this interview with Shakivla helps you get started with or double down on your social media efforts. You can follow her journey on Instagram here!
Have any questions for Shakivla? Feel free to reply with your questions to the Twitter post below and Shakivla or someone from the Buffer team will get to them as soon as possible.