The definition of grit is courage and resolve or strength of character. It can also mean an indomitable and irrepressible spirit that doesn’t back down in the face of failure or obstacles. Experts identify five characteristics of grit. If you have them, you’ll be better equipped to handle the challenges life throws at you. How do you stack up?
1. courage: strength in the face of pain, fear or grief
People often underestimate just how courageous and resilient they can be. Every aspect of life requires a little bit of courage. A child needs the courage to face the first day of school, and a student needs the courage to step out into the world after graduation.Similarly, entrepreneurs and business owners need the courage to take risks with their daily activities, to make investments and introduce new products and services. They have to overcome the fear of failure and find it in themselves to stand up if a failed venture knocks them off their feet.
2. conscientiousness: meticulous, detail-oriented and careful
Conscientiousness requires patience and commitment and is a significant characteristic of grit. People who are conscientious try their best to avoid mistakes and never jump hastily into commitments. While courage is the ability to make mistakes and face failure, conscientiousness is the capacity to work hard to avoid failures and errors in the first place.You’ll notice that people who possess true grit don’t shy away from hard work. Conscientious people are also quite principled and won’t take shortcuts if they have to compromise their values and ethics.
3. resilience: confident, committed and optimistic
It’s easy to dismiss resilient individuals as stubborn. They stay on their path and are determined to succeed despite all odds. They’re confident in their ability to make sacrifices, put in the effort and overcome failures to reach their goals.Entrepreneurs, business owners and professionals need to be resilient to survive in a cutthroat business environment. Resilience can help you withstand the pressure of competition and even enjoy the challenges it presents.
4. excellence: being outstanding or extremely good
People with grit will always strive to achieve excellence rather that focus on perfection. While perfection focuses on the result of your efforts, excellence is more concerned with how you get there. Excellence is a forgiving concept and only asks you to give your all to a particular task.If you fail despite your best efforts, you’ll learn from your mistakes and move on. If you succeed, you’ve achieved the best result possible. Think of excellence as progress vs. perfection. It’s better to start and learn with a bad product, then to have never started at all.
5. endurance: staying put in different situations to achieve long-term goals
You won’t succeed in life if you don’t remain on a path you’ve chosen, regardless of how difficult and challenging the road becomes. Most people find it difficult to keep up the hard work and want quick rewards. Long-term goals require time, patience, sacrifices and effort and you need to have the endurance to stay on the path.All of these characteristics of grit will help you succeed in your personal and professional life. If you don’t yet possess these characteristics, life will happen and you will either develop grit or live a life of helplessness. As John Ortberg explained: “Over time, grit is what separates fruitful lives from aimlessness.”
I recently sat in on a pipeline review with a sales rep, Clare, and her manager. After asking a couple questions about one particular deal, her manager asked how confident Clare was that it’d close.“They were really enthusiastic, so I’m almost certain,” she replied.
But when I checked in a week later, Clare told me that buyer had ended up going with a competitor. She’d gotten happy ears: The common sales trap of being overly optimistic about a deal because you haven’t qualified enough to discover true objections.Happy ears lead to inaccurate sales forecasts and missed quotas, and are usually the result of salespeople failing to ask tough questions and uncover objections. These five strategies will help reps maintain a healthy level of skepticism.
1. ask probing questions
Digging into the buyer’s positive statements helps salespeople identify if there’s a true intent to buy. It’s easy to interpret a statement such as, “It seems like a great fit,” as “We don’t have any reservations.”However, that statement could just as likely mean, “We like what the product does, but the integration process sounds time-consuming and the price is a little higher than we’d like.”The takeaway: If reps take everything buyers say at face value, they’ll miss serious reservations.To surface potential objections, salespeople can ask these probing questions:
“Glad to hear it, [prospect name]. Can you explain what you mean by X?”
“Would you mind going a bit more in-depth about [prospect’s comment]?”
“I think [feature] is great too. But is there anything you’re not as confident about?”
“When it comes to X, do you see any obstacles to successful implementation?”
If prospects don’t have any objections, they’ll simply elaborate on their earlier statement — which will subconsciously reaffirm their own positive opinions while confirming that reps haven’t missed anything.
2. seek out red flags
The prospect might sound ready to sign the proposal right then and there — but unless they actually do, reps should be still keep their eyes peeled for warning signs the deal won’t close.These include:
Lack of authority: When salespeople get happy ears, they often forget to verify that their contact is the actual decision maker.
Lack of consensus: One of the stakeholders might be be eager to buy, yet their enthusiasm won’t matter if their colleagues are skeptical. To get a deal over the finish line, reps must identify everyone involved in the buying decision and show each person why the purchase helps with their individual goals.
Lack of urgency: Salespeople are always worried about the competition, but they should be focusing on the status quo. Doing nothing is always the easier option for prospects, even if inaction is harmful in the long run. Reps need to determine if their prospect is truly motivated to act and why. (Not sure how? Try assigning homework.)
Lack of budget: Sellers can only help buyers find creative solutions to budget problems if they know buyers are having budget problems in the first place. Don’t assume there’s money for your product: Ask how your prospect plans on funding the purchase.
Everything might look good at first glance. However, if these red flags are present, reassess your strategy rather than preemptively celebrating.
3. get an outside opinion
Reps can get a reality check by asking their manager or a team member to review the deal. An outsider can hone in on key details the salesperson might’ve overlooked. For instance, they might ask, “Why are they looking to switch solutions now? With the end of the year coming up, it’s an inconvenient time to replace all of their processes with new ones.”The rep could have forgotten to confirm his prospect’s timeline. Thanks to his coworker’s suggestion, he can explore this crucial detail on their next call.
4. avoid “this one is different” syndrome
Ideal co-founder and COO Shaun Ricci recommends salespeople think twice when they find themselves saying, “This one is different.”Reps may use this line to justify why a deal will close more quickly than normal or a buyer will spend more than the average customer, Ricci explains.“There are exceptions to every rule, but if you find yourself uttering those words when your boss asks why a prospect will buy in two weeks when your average sales cycle is 90 days, that should trigger you to go back and review why you believe this prospect is truly different,” he says.
5. prepare for the worst-case scenario
A positive mindset often transforms a salesperson’s ability to convince her prospects of her product’s value. On the flip side, being too positive blinds the rep to the obstacles in her path.How can salespeople strike the perfect balance between pessimism and optimism? Try New York University psychology professor Gabriele Oettingen’s W.O.O.P. strategy:
W: Think about your Wish.
O: Think about your ideal Outcome.
O: Think about the Obstacles in your way.
P: Plan for those obstacles.
W.O.O.P helps you envision the best possible future while also requiring you to prepare for roadblocks. If you have happy ears, this exercise will help you come back down to earth.Getting happy ears can wreck reps’ chances of closing. These five tactics will help them maintain a balance of confidence and realism.
When I started my sales career I was brought up in the old school way of sales — cold call like crazy, prospect until you dropped, hunt them, kill them, and collect your money. One and done.
Account management? What the hell is that?
My job was to get prospects into my funnel and close them. After that, I had no idea what to do because nobody taught me what to do. In my outside sales career I just closed and moved on to the next sale.
If the prospect churned the next month I didn’t care because I was too busy hunting new business — I didn’t have a client list because the only time I was in the office was to turn in a contract or show my manager the business cards I collected (unless it was a blow-off day and I went fish bowl prospecting — which happened a lot)
Getting those cards was gold. It was my raison d’être, because without a contract or business cards, there was no proof that I was doing what I was supposed to be doing — it was old-school accountability.
So when I came back with a signed contract — proving closed business — I turned it in with much fanfare and put it up on the board, the measuring stick of sales success and worthiness. (And if I ever had two sales in one day I would only turn one in and sandbag it for the next day so I could go play hoops or golf — hey, I was 22 years old!)
Once that contract was in, I had no idea what happened to my client. I never reached out to them or did any account management or customer service. When they were done, they were dead to me. I didn’t check in with clients to see how their families were (even if I’d referenced the family picture on their desk as a way to gain trust, build rapport, and eventually close the deal). I didn’t care whether the product had actually helped them. I only cared about me, mine, and my next sale.
In my last blog, I wrote about why and how you should upsell. But following up with your clients post-sale isn’t about making more money. It’s about staying in touch with the real gold, the client, and seeing how they are.
Have you ever told your client you loved them? I have. Of course, it has to be said with the right touch of humour and playfulness, and be a declaration of real love. I have a client who I tell that if he keeps doing business with me I’ll visit him and we’ll do cartwheels on the beach and our families will high-five and sing songs.
I’ll ask clients if anyone has told them they love them today, and if not I tell them that I do. It’s very disarming, makes them laugh, and helps build a bond. I know my competitors aren’t doing that — I know this because they haven’t built the kind of relationships I have with my clients and so they can’t say these kinds of things.
Do you have a real bond with your clients? If not, they can be easily stolen away. If you value your clients, you should continually let them know you care about them and are interested in helping them be successful by continually showing them value. In our highly commoditied world, clients have many options so when they buy from you, it’s proof that you have shown them value and made a connection. Why would you ever ignore them and risk losing that?
I made these mistakes as a young salesman who only looked for the sale, and as I matured in the sales business and lost a lot of clients because of this ignorance, I vowed I wouldn’t lose a client due to inattentiveness again.
Here are 15 ways to show you care about and value your clients:
Send handwritten notes and thank-you cards
Call them on their birthday
Monitor the LinkedIn feed that notifies you when your contact is mentioned in the news
Call them and tell them you are grateful for their business
Refer a prospective client to them
Send them news about their Alma Mater
Send them articles you see that are published about them
Tell them you love them (when appropriate and the right amount of humour)
Send them a funny video
Take them to lunch or dinner
Call and ask them what they wish your company could do different for them
Ask for their advice
Share the content they produce on all of your social media channels
Buy and send them a book they would be interested in.
Send them 10 ideas that may help them improve their business or process
Existing customers are your best source of additional business and referrals. They literally help feed your family, so treat them like the gold they are. Be interested in their success, provide maximum value and build a solid relationship with them.
FREE Limerick Event: How to get More Cash in Your BusinessWhere: The Savoy Hotel, LimerickWhen: 6.30 – 8.30pm, October 20th 2016
One-hundred and forty characters. What was your first association with that phrase? I bet you’re thinking: Twitter.
At least that was (and still is) the character limit for the network. However, on September 19, the platform relaxed the rule: Now, photos, videos, GIFs, polls and Quote Tweets no longer count toward the limit.
This new update will make Twitter conversations so much easier, even richer. How many times have you struggled to cut the last two characters needed to fit the limit? Have you ever felt more like a robot and less like a human when tweeting all sorts of awkward sentences full of abbreviations? What about efforts to have meaningful conversations when the tweet you were replying to or quoting was stealing valuable character count?! Well, you’re not alone and Twitter has finally heard you!
While this change is a huge step for the network, it is also a logical one. When Twitter launched a decade ago (yes, it’s hard to believe, but it’s been exactly 10 years already!), it was operating in a much different space from today’s. Nowadays, there is an unmistakable shift toward multimedia content. Images, short videos and GIFs have practically taken over the social space.
Since Twitter was hit with a lot of criticism and showed no potential for-impressive growth, these changes were long overdue. A plausible reason for Twitter losing its appeal is because the space just became too noisy. Partly because of the character limit (and also because of the desire to automate everything), most marketers tweet out the name of an article, sprinkle in a few hashtags, slap on a shortened URL and voilà, the Franken-tweet is ready to be published. How can they expect to get any meaningful engagement from that?
The other instance is to upload an image with tons of text on it, include a call to action in the body of the tweet and slap in the shortened URL once again. That’s a bit better on providing some context, but is still not very human. Plus, not only is it not the prettiest workaround, it has technical implications for businesses.
Not so long ago, Twitter partnered with Google to make sure tweets appeared in search results. But, when you post a screenshot with lots of text on it, the text is not searchable. Meaning: Twitter’s biggest media partner cannot read your updates, and thus cannot count them as relevant to search queries.
Hopefully, the new update will modernise the network and its etiquette, encouraging more meaningful conversations, more colourful visuals and fun, short video snippets. After all, we are so used to these things on Facebook, Instagram and Snapchat, right?
Despite these plans, @mentions have not been affected by the recent change, but they likely will be soon. The company already announced this. We are really ready for the rule to be lifted from usernames as well, because if you’re trying to engage in a chat with two or three handles at the same time, half of your tweet will be wasted just for @mentions! It is especially important to encourage real conversations instead of spamming one other with links.
Because Twitter has started losing its major space in the social media game, the network really needs to start considering the breadth and the depth of conversations taking place online every second if it wants to stay at the top. This flexibility in character limits is the first step in the right direction. Your message can still stay brief and to the point, but the media you use should enhance that message instead of cutting it short.
How many times have you had this exchange with prospects?
You say, “Hey there, how are you?” They respond, “I’m good, thanks. And you?” You say, “I’m good too, thanks for asking.”
Zzzzzzz.
There’s nothing wrong with kicking off a conversation by asking how someone is doing, but it definitely won’t lead to any memorable dialogue.When you’ve only got a couple minutes to build rapport with someone, you don’t want to waste time on conversational fluff. Instead of falling into the “Good, how are you?” trap, drive the conversation forward with a unique follow-up — like one of these nine ideas.
1. “what projects are you working on?”
Open-ended questions like this one typically lead to more interesting responses. They also require your prospect’s full attention to answer — which means they’ll be focusing on the interaction from the get-go.In addition, asking about your prospect’s current workload gives you the chance to learn more about them. What are their biggest priorities at the moment? Can you help them with any? And how could your product fit into their workday?
2. “how did the [event, project, meeting] go?”
Use this question to show that you’ve actually been listening throughout your relationship. It’s a great way to immediately personalise your conversation and make your prospect more engaged.If they didn’t previously mention an event or you’re speaking with them for the first time, use a detail you found on social media. For instance, you might say, “I saw on Twitter that you just attended the Midwest EdTech conference. How did it go?”
3. “how is your [day of the week] going?”
Use this question to replace “How are you?” It’s not too far off from “How are you?”, but simply using different words make it feel fresh. Rather than giving a knee-jerk response, your prospect will pause and think, “Hmm, how is my Wednesday going?”Most people will also feel compelled to add an explanation, such as, “My team has a big deadline coming up, so I’ve been busier than normal.” You’ll get the opportunity to ask a follow-up question (and learn more about their goals and challenges while you’re at it).
4. “what’s new in your world?”
Another alternative to “How are you?”, this opener is fairly casual, so you should save it for prospects with whom you’ve built a strong rapport. It shows that you’re interested in their life and what’s happened since you spoke to them last.If they seem like they’d be turned off by this level of informality, try “What’s new in [prospect’s industry]?” instead.
5. “i read that [company trigger event]. how us that going for [you, your team]?”
To simultaneously prove you’ve done your homework and encourage your prospect to open up, tie your question to a recent company announcement.For example, you might say, “I read that Bread and Butter recently expanded to Utah. Congrats! How has that been for your team?”
6. “i saw that [company announcement]. [what’s that been like, how did that go]?”
Your prospect’s company doesn’t have to make any major moves for you to ask an organisation-related question. Any announcement is fair game — maybe they just launched an employee volunteer program with a local nonprofit, redesigned their website, or moved to a new office. In any case, your due diligence will usually impress the buyer.
7. “have you gotten a chance to do any [prospect’s hobby] recently?”
If you’ve already talked about an activity your prospect enjoys, asking this question is a great way to build on your existing rapport.You can also use social media to learn about their hobbies. For instance, if you read in their company bio that they love travelling, you might ask, “I read on your company’s ‘Team’ page that you’re a big traveller. Have you gotten the chance to go anywhere new lately?”People typically light up when discussing their passions, so this question immediately puts prospects at ease.
8. “so tell me how your week is going”
Asking, “How’s your week so far?” will get you fairly standard responses. However, telling someone to talk about themselves carries far more weight. You’ll seem more interested in their response simply by flipping the script.As a bonus, this statement conveys confidence and authority — making you seem more credible from the very beginning of the conversation.
9. “I’m curious to hear how x went”
Want to genuinely flatter your prospect? Use this line. Everyone likes hearing someone else is eager to learn about them. Not to mention that showing you’re curious about their life (not just their budget) makes the interaction feel more human and friendly.This one works well for events, projects, and other office-related topics, but you can also use it for everyday things. Maybe your prospect mentioned they were reading a great book. Say, “I’m curious to hear how you liked Smartcuts.” Or if they’d tweeted about a movie they were looking forward to, say, “I saw your tweet about ‘Spiderman.’ I’m curious to know what you thought.”With these nine unique questions up your sleeve, you’ll never need to stop at “How are you?” again. Your conversations will be more interesting from the moment they begin.
It happens every day. People come to me and tell my agency that they want to go viral online. This used to drive me insane. Getting content to “go viral” online is complicated, sometimes expensive, and can be largely based on luck.
But, I get it.
The assumption is that you can post something online and within minutes you’ll quadruple the eyeballs on your startup.
In 2015 63% of global internet traffic consisted of video. By 2020 that number will climb all the way to 79%.
Brands get this. They know that they need to create video content for online consumption. The issue is that they’ve been creating video content (commercials) for television. With television taking it’s last gasps, there can be a steep learning curve as brands enter the digital landscape.
Here’s how you do it (at least on Facebook and Instagram).
1. keep it short
According to L2 Intelligence Report Video 2016 June 2016, videos that were less than 15 seconds on Facebook generate 50% more engagement than those videos longer than a minute.
You may ask yourself if you should consider posting your brand videos on Instagram, and YouTube.
Well, consider this first, Instagram videos have increased 109% year over year. Facebook videos have increased 46% year over year, and YouTube videos uploads have remained flat.
The average duration of a brands YouTube video has decreased by more than 60 seconds since April, 2015.
2. turn off the sound
2/3 of Beauty brand videos and 5/6 of luxury videos don’t have audio at all. They may have some background music, but other than that — nothing.
Our agency is drawn to video that place with time lapse, and slow motion. Leveraging powerful tools that can create visually compelling content like Flixel works well too.
Flixel is a magical tool for visual storytelling. They’re compelling, different and you can use them as ad units on Facebook also.
Wrapping it up. Focus on beautiful, short videos that will tell your brand story. Here’s the only issue. Simple is hard. Look for partners that can help extricate your brand’s zeitgeist, transfer that to video, and share with the world via Facebook or Instagram.
Keep the videos under 15 seconds, and stay off YouTube.
Many small business owners in the B2B sales space are constantly trying to sell their product or service based on the idea of what makes their solution better than the competition. While it’s good to know your solution’s unique value proposition and be up to speed on your product’s features and benefits, the truth is, many B2B sales are driven not by “positive” features of your solution, but by certain “negative” aspects of your competitor’s solution. Many B2B buyers are motivated primarily not by optimism, but by pain.
What do I mean by “pain?” Think about the last time your organization made a new purchase. Was it because you read about some exciting new product to make your life better, or was it because you had a more mundane problem that your existing system or solution was not adequately solving? Many B2B buyers get motivated to buy from you because they’re not happy — they’re in pain in some way — because their existing setup is not working for them.
By understanding these common “pain points,” you can better understand your buyers and make bigger sales.
big pain points of B2B sales
1. The Buyer’s Current Vendor has Bad Service
Many B2B buyers are already doing business with an incumbent vendor. That means in order to get new business, you need to displace a competitor that already has that client’s account. One of the common causes of an incumbent vendor losing a client is when the vendor’s service is inadequate. Maybe the vendor isn’t paying enough attention to the client. Maybe they failed to solve a problem. One of the most important questions to ask when talking to a prospective client is, “How are things going with your current vendor?” Sometimes you can uncover some problems and pain points that can give your company a chance to move in and win that account.
2. The Buyer’s Current System is Patched Together
Other B2B buyers — especially if you sell IT systems or software — might be receptive to hearing from you if you can deliver a solution that is more comprehensive and elegant than what they might already have. A surprisingly large percentage of businesses are still using manual methods like spreadsheets to keep track of key business data. If you can show them why your solution, software or system is a better way to do business, you can win their attention and earn their trust.
3. The Buyer is Managing Too Many Different Vendors or Solutions
Sometimes B2B buyers get overwhelmed by having a piecemeal process of working with too many vendors or solutions at one time, each of which is responsible for supporting a small part of their overall operations or business processes. They might need to work with one vendor that can deliver everything that they need, or that can help them simplify their jumble of existing products and services. If your company can serve as a helpful consultant to show the buyer how to simplify their processes and create clarity, you will help them overcome this common pain point.
B2B sales is not just about price or data, it’s about human emotions. People buy B2B solutions because they have a problem that needs to be solved, they have an ongoing business situation that is causing them pain and distress, and they want someone to help relieve their stress. Pay attention to the mindset of your prospect — not just the positive aspects of your solution, but also the negative circumstances that motivate your prospect to consider buying from you in the first place.
Almost every business conceivable has a digital presence today, from the cheap noodle shop next door to the massive upscale supermarket an hour’s drive away. But simply having a website isn’t going to cut it anymore.
Companies today increasingly use information technology to improve their productivity in a number of key sectors. Consider going digital in the following areas to improve your business’s overall efficiency and boost your bottom line.
make human relations great again
Ah, the HR department. From sifting through piles of resumes to reminding employees about casual Fridays, HR has never been particularly glamorous — but that doesn’t mean it isn’t critical. After all, obtaining and retaining the best people is probably the most important thing a business can do to ensure its long-term viability. And fortunately, big data is coming to the rescue.
There’s an increasing number of cloud-based software services, such as Talentsoft, that provide easy solutions for businesses to find and interview the best candidates for a position. These services crunch vast amounts of data that would take ages for humans to complete. That’s much easier than letting resumes pile up and hoping for the best.
There’s also a host of performance appraisal software available that can help employees provide constructive feedback, which means less time and money spent on HR and better suited candidates for a position.
make sales simple
Sales is an excellent place to start implementing digital solutions to improve productivity. If you’re not conducting at least part of your sales online at this point, you need to reconsider.
Tweak your business’s website, so customers can obtain exclusive deals by signing up for newsletters and the like. You can also add a custom ordering section, so your clients can order products without visiting the store only to discover what they want just went out of stock.
A price estimator on your websites can save your employees time and effort, and you can adjust your website to offer more customised products as well. Such services are simple additions that could provide significant benefits.
harness social media in your marketing efforts
Everyone’s talking about social media, and there’s a reason for that: Social media is an easy and almost completely cost-free way to boost productivity. If your business can creatively engage customers online, you will experience raised product awareness, which can mean more sales.
How does social media make your business more productive? It’s free, but it’s also efficient as a way to reach existing and potential clients. If you own a small business, you can manage your own social media relatively easily.
If you’re a medium-sized business, consider hiring a “growth hacker” to create authentic engagement that will translate into added visibility and sales. Hiring a growth hacker usually comes with a onetime fee, and it can be a good solution if you don’t want to spend too much effort trying to build an audience on social media — a process that can be hit or miss.
revolutionise your internal communications
Remember your employee’s face at the latest meeting when it was clear she hadn’t read the company-wide memo? Let’s make sure that doesn’t happen again. Research shows that poor internal communication in a business leads to obvious losses of productivity. When your employees aren’t up to date, or managers are not giving clear orders or opportunities for feedback, your business will suffer.
Fortunately, easy digital solutions can improve the productivity of your workers through better communications. User-friendly services, such as Slack, make sure employees can quickly and efficiently communicate with each other or within different groups. Slack makes it easy to form teams that communicate directly with each other, making it efficient to share files and search archives — a much less painful task than trawling through your email to find an old PowerPoint presentation.
going digital makes sense for everyone
It doesn’t matter if your business is large or small. Digitising basic processes by going paperless makes financial sense. For small businesses in particular, the rewards can be even greater. Employees often waste time looking for documents — some firms waste as much as 6 hours per employee per week. It’s no secret that going paperless helps the environment and saves supply costs. Besides making your employees more productive, digitisation will make your business more efficient and help your bottom line.The Time Is Now
Running a tight ship in our current “knowledge economy” means going digital. Beneficial digital solutions are currently in vogue for a good reason: They cut costs and allow you to focus on your core business, which, as any good boss knows, consists largely of keeping your employees and clients happy. Once you accomplish that, the rest will come easily.
There is a country song with these lyrics, “Everyone wants to go to Heaven, no one wants to die.”
We want things, but we don’t do what is necessary to have those things. This truth is easier to recognise in others than ourselves. If you have clients, you know they want better results without having to change.
goals and outcomes
Your dream client explains to you that they need a new outcome. What they’re doing isn’t working. Not being able to achieve this new or better outcome is starting to have serious consequences to their results, and they’re certain that things will only get worse in the future.
Your prospect has a problem worth solving. This is how new opportunities are created, and it is also how you remove your competitor and displace them. If only it were this easy.
constraints, real and imagined
The reason your dream client isn’t getting the results they need now is because they have constraints that they have been unwilling to address. You have likely experienced this with a prospective client who sees the value in what you sell and believes that you are the right person to help their company improve their results. You have their full support. Until you discuss the investment necessary to produce the results they need.
Lack of money is a constraint. The lack of time and resources is a constraint. An unwillingness to allow leadership and other stakeholders who would be required to agree to any change into the conversation is a constraint.
Everyone wants to go to heaven, but no one wants to die. We want better results, but we don’t want to do what is necessary to produce those results. This isn’t only true for your clients; it is equally true for you. If you think about something that you want for yourself but haven’t achieved, it’s certain that you know what you would need to do to have it and that you have some constraint, real or imagined, that prevents you from getting what you want.
But this isn’t where this problem ends. The biggest challenge we have in business is helping people change. That is a psychology problem.
The presenting problem, the constraints or behaviors that prevent someone from getting what they want, is not the root cause of why those constraints or behaviors persist.
behind the constraint
Constraints are not permanent. Most people don’t lack resources; they lack resourcefulness. If you are going to help someone breakthrough and transform their results, you have to get to the real constraint, which is always fear.
Why doesn’t your dream client have the money they need to make the investment necessary for the results they need? Here are some ideas:
Maybe your contact has asked for money in the past and failed, and he is afraid of failing again and risking his position in the company. Maybe your dream client’s company is spending for money in another area and won’t be able to free up the budget for 6 months. Maybe your contact has a rocky relationship with her leader and doesn’t believe she can pull off a request for a budget increase. Or maybe, the real fear is the fear of failure, and it has nothing to do with money.
Until you help your client deal with what’s really behind the constraint, they are not going to get the results they need, even though you could easily produce them. What is behind the constraint is almost always some deep human need.
What does this mean we need to do as change agents?
First, we have to be willing and able to help the people we serve to identify their constraint. This is usually easy because your contacts are more committed to their constraints than they are to their desired outcome, or goals. If it were otherwise, they’d be producing the results already.
Second, we have to be willing to help identify the fear behind the constraint.This is what consultative salespeople do. They “go there.” If your client had to deal with this constraint, what would have to happen, and what is preventing that from happening?
Finally, we have to generate options that allow us to address the fear (which, by the way, is very real) and deal with the constraint. We have to help our prospects fear the right danger and deal with their assumptions that no action can be taken that doesn’t hurt them. Most often, they get hurt when they don’t make the changes they need to make.
Whether you’re a seasoned SEO or someone who runs your own business, you know there are fluctuations in your organic traffic, but you may struggle to pinpoint the root cause.
Organic search, unlike its paid counterpart, comes with a unique set of challenges in diagnosing a decline in traffic and conversions. There are some obvious places you can mine for insights (Google Analytics, Google Search Console), but other factors at play can be harder to quantify.
From basic issues to advanced issues to factors that are largely out of your control, following is a list of things to check for when diagnosing major fluctuations in organic traffic or search engine rankings. By examining both internal and external factors, you can start to piece together the puzzle.
basic issues
1. your pages aren’t indexed
Conduct a quick Google search using “site:yourwebsite.com” to make sure your pages are actually indexed. If you’re noticing that critical pages aren’t appearing in the SERPs, you’ve likely found the culprit. Check your robots.txt file to make sure you haven’t blocked important pages or directories. If that looks good, check individual pages for a noindex tag.
2. bot filters
Are you currently excluding all known bots and spiders in Google Analytics? If not, you may be experiencing inflated traffic metrics and not even know it. Typically, bots enter through the home page and cascade down throughout your site navigation, mimicking real user behaviour. One telltale sign of bot traffic is a highly trafficked page with a high bounce rate, low conversions and a low average time on page.
While it’s best to create a custom dimension for filtering out bots, applying the generic bot filter is a good place to start. It’s important to note that filters cannot be applied retroactively, so if you’ve recently turned on this feature, you should be receiving less traffic. Additionally, double-check that you are filtering out your own traffic and IP address.
3. recent site updates
If you’ve recently modified your on-page copy, undergone a site overhaul (removing pages, reordering the navigation) or migrated your site sans redirects, it’s reasonable to expect a decline in traffic. After reworking your site content, Google must re-crawl and then re-index these pages. It’s not uncommon to experience unstable rankings for up to a few weeks afterwards.
If you’ve changed your URL structure or removed pages from your site, it’s important to have a 301-redirect strategy in place to preserve link equity and avoid a loss of rankings/traffic.
4. URL confusion
Do you have a content strategy in place, or are your efforts more “off the cuff?” Not having a clearly defined keyword map can spell trouble — especially if two or more pages are optimised for the same keyword. In practice, this will cause pages to compete against each other in the SERPs, potentially reducing the rankings of these pages. Here is an example of what this might look like:
Fortunately, if you have access to a keyword tracking tool, you should be able to see a day-by-day breakdown of which URLs Google chooses to rank for that particular keyword. With a little time and effort, you should be able to remedy the situation.
advanced issues
5. structured data markup
Implementing structured data markup (such as that from schema.org) might seem like a one-time project, but that “set it and forget it” mentality can land you in hot water. You should be monitoring the appearance of your rich snippets on a regular basis to ensure they are pulling in the correct information. As you change the content on your website, this can alter the markup without warning.
Likewise, depending on your back-end merchandising setup, products could be triggered to show “out of stock” schema if one color variation goes out of stock. As you can imagine, this can wreak havoc on your click-through rates and lead users to purchase from your resellers — or worse, your competitors!
6. promotional cadence & the “sale hangover effect”
Did you run a big promotion last year, such as a sample or flash sale? Did it coincide with the same week this year? If not, your year-on-year comparison will be skewed.
If so, were your past promotions equally enticing? Did your brand launch a new product line or offer limited-time products? These factors alone are difficult to measure, and we’re not even accounting for PR efforts, which will also impact your organic metrics.
There is also significant evidence to suggest that the “Sale Hangover Effect” is not just a phenomenon. It deals with two factors: share of mind and share of wallet.
Tim Kilroy, co-founder of AdChemix, explains this anomaly:
Consumers only have so much attention and so much money — and for each, they set a “budget” for how much they want to spend with the brands that are important to them. Consumers invest their attention and money into big promotions. Typically, big promos have big results for the retailer, but the flip side is that the promo has emptied the consumers’ budget for attention and money. If the promo is big enough, it even entices some consumers to overspend a little bit (or a lot). When consumers have expended or exceeded their budget, they tend to engage with your brand less. They become immune to marketing messages and spend fewer dollars.
7. price point & product depth
As a savvy digital marketer, you’ve inevitably nailed the four Ps: price, product, promotion and place. However, a well-planned strategy means nothing without the fifth P: people.
Here is a common narrative that many e-tailers can relate to: You identified your “sweet spot” in the marketplace and know that charging above this threshold leads to price sensitivity. Your core products drive volume — which allows you to achieve amazing growth. Then, one day, your focus shifted. Maybe you stopped churning out iterations of your best sellers, or maybe you tried to focus on your higher-revenue products — all the while alienating the people who liked your previous offerings.
This quickly turns into a “chicken-and-egg” situation. Are fewer people coming to your site due to poor visibility in the SERPs? Or have you shifted your product focus, and is that why consumers are no longer interested in your brand? For a quick check, look at Google Search Console data, and pull positions and clicks by page. If position is staying relatively stagnant, this means your brand is not losing visibility in the SERPs, and there may be a bigger issue at play.
uncontrollable factors
8. being outranked by re-sellers & affiliates
For maximum exposure, you may have launched an affiliate program or have several re-sellers under your belt. This is typically a non-issue — until, of course, your re-sellers start to outrank you for branded keywords. While this might not derail your revenue goals, it’s a sure bet you’re losing traffic to these sites.
9. new google ad placement
With Google killing off right-hand rail ads, many brands may be seeing more of their direct traffic being cannibalised by paid search ads. It will be some time before we’re able to quantify the full effect, but you should be mindful of this.
10. industry trends & waning brand interest
With the exception of crude oil and Picasso’s, very few industries are “recession-proof” and experience an inelastic product demand. Look at how your competitors are faring, and see if they’re experiencing the same problems. While you should take Google Trends data with a grain of salt, looking at the bigger picture may help provide some clarity. I’d suggest taking this a step further by conducting trends research and reading industry reports.
Brands hold a wealth of customer information that may often not seem applicable to SEO — and many times, it’s not. However, if you’re working with an SEO agency, sometimes sharing this knowledge can provide the missing piece to the puzzle. Knowing something as simple as “Consumer preferences are shifting around the colour black” could help explain why your traffic is down if your products are often paired with black shoes. Sometimes it’s as easy as connecting the dots.