Author: Grant Duncan

Categories
b2bmarketing demandgeneration revops

Effective SLAs to Boost Follow-up Success After Demo Requests: A Comprehensive Guide

Do you have clear expectations about follow-ups after someone requests a demo or trial?

Here are some examples of SLAs you can track:

▶ All new leads are followed up within “20” hours (excluding weekends and holidays)

▶ All open leads that haven’t emailed you back must have some kind of activity at least every “3” days (email, LinkedIn, phone, etc.)

▶ All open leads must have a LinkedIn outreach or phone call before getting disqualified

▶ All open leads that have responded to you must have some kind of activity at least every “2” weeks (email, LinkedIn, phone, etc.). Even if it’s just sending a helpful article as a way to stay in touch and top of mind.

▶ All open opportunities must have some kind of activity at least every “3” weeks (email, LinkedIn, phone, etc.). Even if it’s just sending a helpful article as a way to stay in touch and top of mind.

What kinds of expectations do you have in place? Or what have you seen work well in the past?

Categories
b2bmarketing demandgeneration facebookads linkedinads

Unlocking Success with 2 Unique Paid Social Strategies: How to Stand Out and Target Effectively

2 paid social plays I don’t see others doing much (that we’re having success with):

1. Run ads that don’t look like ads.
Our minds are better at filtering out & scrolling past ads.
Stand out in the feed or blend in with user posts; just don’t look like an ad.

2. Talk about your integrations and target companies that use that other company you integrate with.
Now you have a more targeted message to a more targeted audience.

Categories
feedback leadership

Boosting Team Performance: A Simple and Structured Approach to Quarterly Employee Check-ins

Are you & your direct reports on the same page with their performance? Do you know how satisfied they are with their job? When is the last time you got a bunch of feedback from them?

Here’s a structured way to get feedback and intentionally check in with your team that Keiko and Christina created that works well. 

I’ve used similar structures in the past, but I like the simplicity of this one. Hope you do too!

>>>Part 1 of the doc: Employee assessment<<< 1. How would you evaluate your performance in Q3?  [ ] Exceeding expectations [ ] Consistently meeting expectations [ ] Inconsistently meeting expectations [ ] Not meeting expectations [ ] Not sure what is expected of me, so it’s hard to answer 2. Overall, are you satisfied with your job? [ ] Extremely satisfied [ ] Frequently satisfied  [ ] Not always satisfied [ ] Not at all satisfied 3. Which 1-2 value(s) did you most exhibit in Q3?

4. Please provide a short explanation (up to 300 words) or bullet points for your answers above. We will discuss more during our check-in.

5. What will you strive to achieve this quarter and how can I help you? (up to 150 words)

6. What feedback or suggestions do you have for me to be a better manager for you? (up to 150 words)

>>>Part 2 of the doc: Manager assessment<<< 1. How would you evaluate your employee’s performance in Q3? [ ] Exceeding expectations [ ] Consistently meeting expectations [ ] Inconsistently meeting expectations [ ] Not meeting expectations 2. Which 1-2 value(s) did your employee most exhibit in Q3?

3. Please provide a short explanation (up to 300 words) or bullet points for your answers above. We will discuss more during our check-in. 

4. What feedback or advice do you have for your employee to continue growing? (up to 150 words) 

————-

Useful? Do you have a structure you like more for quarterly check-ins?

Categories
ChatGPT generativeAI

Mastering ChatGPT: The Essential Guide to Writing Effective Prompts for Enhanced AI Communication

Knowing how to write great prompts in ChatGPT (and others) is a new skill you NEED to learn. 

For instance:

“Translate this text:”

And 

“Rewrite this text in X language in a natural manner”

Give DIFFERENT results. 

This is the new way ✊

Categories
b2bmarketing gtmstrategy productmarketing

How to Define your ICP with “ICP Rings”: A New Framework for Finding Your Best Customers

I’ve developed a new framework for defining ICPs & your GTM focus called the “ICP Rings”.

Most companies COULD serve many types of customers, but there’s a smaller subset of them that is your SWEET SPOT.

Using concentric circles, you can align everyone on the different levels & definitions of your ICP.

Each ring is a tighter, better fit ICP for your company. Add the characteristics that are most important for each level. I gave examples of them in the image.

Size your market so that you know the potential TAM of each ICP ring.

Then as a leadership team decide what level you want your GTM motions to focus on.

ICP template slide here.

Why is this valuable?

  • It bridges the gap between everyone you could serve and who you should really focus on acquiring
  • By getting explicit alignment on which ring(s) you want to go after, you’ll reduce friction and misalignment between departments and teams.

Think you could use this in your org?

Categories
b2bmarketing marketingstrategy

3 Proven Strategies to Skyrocket Your Revenue Growth: A Deep Dive into Zingtree’s Unique Marketing Thesis

Here’s our Marketing thesis at Zingtree:

3 things will drive pipeline and revenue growth for us:

1. Create & refine a compelling, differentiated story – carve out our unique PoV

2. Grow our awareness – If we grow the awareness of our PoV, we’ll grow pipeline

3. Convert interested & in-market ICPs – move them through the funnel quickly in a personalized way

What’s your summarized Marketing thesis?
What do you think of mine?

Categories
b2bmarketing productmarketing sentimentanalysis

Unlocking Free Sentiment Analysis & Text Summarization with ChatGPT: Revolutionize Your Business Feedback Analysis

Sentiment analysis & summarizing large amounts of text is now FREE. How? ChatGPT.  
Use this on surveys, customer interviews, product feedback, sales calls, etc.

Here are some examples we’ve recently done:

– I took a bunch of feedback from our target customers gathered through Wynter and created summaries of the responses to each question.

– I also did sentiment analysis on every response.

– Brandon Anderson summarized Zingtree’s recent G2 reviews into a paragraph and shared it internally.

Sentiment analysis and summarization like this was never possible without paying lots of money or having data science skills. 
Now that’s changed.

What types of text might you summarize with ChatGPT?

Categories
b2bmarketing creative demandgeneration

Revolutionize Your B2B Social Ads with Midjourney AI: A Step-by-Step Guide to Unleashing Creativity

“One of the coolest ads I’ve ever seen in b2b out of thousands I’ve seen lol” – a quote from our demand gen agency

To stand out in the feed, get creative! And use Midjourney AI to help.

Here’s one of Zingtree’s new paid social ads that Omar I. Hamoda created with the help of Midjourney (an AI text to image generator).

How to do it yourself:
1. Enter a prompt into Midjourney.
2. Choose your favorite output.
3. Make edits to it in an image editing tool (if needed).
You’re done! And you saved hours of design time.

Categories
b2bmarketing design rebrand

Unveiling Zingtree’s Vibrant New Brand Identity: A Blend of Human Connection and Visual Appeal

BIG UPDATE for Zingtree

We rebranded to a new visual identity! 🎉

It highlights the real human connection our product creates, looks more visually appealing, and was based on many ICP meetings & research performed by Marketing & Product Design. 

Big shoutout to Omar I. Hamoda for leading the effort internally. You’re a rockstar, Omar!

Categories
competitiveintelligence demandgeneration productmarketing

Maximizing Competitive Research: 2 Powerful Strategies to Boost Sales and Demand Generation

People talk about how to do competitive research but there’s not enough about what to DO with it. 

Here are 2 simple ways to 1) Equip your Sales team with it & 2) Use it for Demand Gen

1) Equip your Sales team with it
Give Sales the exact talking points for what to say. Literally script it out, but keep it short.

“Hooli is great for x, but there are 3 key areas that Zingtree is better. 
”

B/c it’s so short, Sales can memorize this or have it pulled up & read verbatim. If a prospect really wants to go deep, then you can pull in a Sales Engineer, PM, or CI Marketer.

2)) Use it for Demand Gen
Turn your insights into a competitive comparison web page. If your web team is really backed up, do it as a blog post first. 

Then add it to your top-level website navigation or footer so you can educate your web visitors who may be evaluating both of you.

Also, test paid search for “Hooli alternative” type keywords. 
If you have enough budget, you can test “Hooli”, “Hooli pricing”, “Hooli support”, etc. 

Then try paid social if you have even more budget.
You can try to take competitor customers by running paid social ads to accounts that use competitors. Your ad messaging will be highly targeted & relevant. Just keep in mind this is a long play if their customers are locked in annual contracts.

As you may have guessed, we’re near the end of this process for 3 competitors. Externally facing pages coming soon!

What competitive plays do you like to ship fast?