Inbound2Grow

Back in the day, in the 90’s, selling used to be boots on the ground, go out, and educate clients and prospects face to face. You would take them lunch or snacks and hope they wanted to sit down with you. Marketing wasn’t involved with demand generation or awareness; their role was more about supporting sales people. And there were lots of sales people, typically men, and very few marketing people, typically women, because salespeople were seen as a way to drive revenue (more field salespeople = more sales) while marketing was an expense. Fast forward to today, and the landscape looks nothing like this.

Buyers have more control than ever before. With the internet at their fingertips, buyers self-educate and qualify companies long before they ever want to talk to a salesperson. And buyers have access to you and all of your competition with equal ease. Which is why in today’s market, you can add salespeople, take out an ad, etc. but the biggest impact on growth happens when you focus on the customer journey, and that’s where marketing lives.

Marketing creates the content prospects find, the education material they are digesting long before they call you, and marketing shapes the buyer journey from the first touch onward. Marketing should be the part of your organization that understands the customer and the buyer journey better than anyone else.

In the old days, leads came from sales prospecting. Now, cold calling and traditional prospecting is the least effective way to find leads. Marketing should be doing the initial qualification through the buyer journey so that salespeople are talking to prospects who have already done their research, know what they want, and what you can do to help them. Now, sales prospecting should look like networking, working connections with existing customers, and working within your ecosystem.

Marketing aligns the company with what they buyer wants; they’re the voice of the customer. There isn’t anything more important than that!

Sales spamming is terrible! If you reach out on LinkedIn and immediately pitch the person you’re connecting with, you are spam. Worse, you have now ruined all of your credibility, and the chances of that contact ever doing business with you just went into the garbage. This tactic is just plain stupid and counterproductive.

“Customer experience is the new marketing.” Brian Solis

Marketing needs to have a seat at the table.

1. Where is marketing in your hierarchy? Is marketing an investment or a cost?
2. Ask senior leadership if marketing is driving your strategic direction
3. Develop a plan to understand your buyer persona and journey

• Inbound Organization Assessment (https://www.inboundorganization.com/inbound-organization-assessment)
• Adele Revella - Buyer Personas (https://www.amazon.com/dp/1118961501)
• Inbound Organization Audiobook (https://www.audible.com/pd/Inbound-Organization-Audiobook/1469098903)

We’re extending the MSPOT contest! You can download the MSPOT template, submit it for review, and anyone who submits an MSPOT will be entered into the contest. The first-place winner will win an hour to review their MSPOT with Todd and Dan!

Download and Submit Your MSPOT (https://www.inboundorganization.com/mspot-review) 

Are you enjoying the podcast? Did you read Inbound Organization? Taking a quick moment to rate and review Inbound2Grow and Inbound Organization on whatever service you use is the best way to let us know how we’re doing. Your ratings and reviews make a big difference, and we appreciate you taking the time to provide your feedback.  

Thanks to Rebecca Miller our podcast editor, social media coordinator, and blogger and to Zachary Jameson for producing the audio for the podcast. Check out Zachary on Upwork if you need podcast audio services.

For all of the companies out there dedicated to being inbound organizations and helping their customers succeed, there are ten more who aren’t. It is not uncommon for inbound to enter an organization through the marketing or sales department first. This means that often the first hurdle to becoming an inbound organization is getting leadership buy-in.

Education is often the first step on the road to becoming an inbound organization. The sales or marketing department (or even just one of two people internally) are faced with the task of educating leadership and selling inbound internally. Understanding what inbound means and the changes that precipitated it are key steps to securing leadership buy-in.

One of these changes includes increased competition, a fact that most leadership is keenly aware of. Most companies today have more competition than they did in years past, and buyers find that competition faster than ever before.

With the internet at their fingertips, buyers are empowered to educate themselves and discover options like they never were in the past. This has fundamentally changed the buyers and the buying process itself, which is something many leaders don’t believe. Or, rather, they don’t believe it of their buyers, although they might admit it’s true of buyers in other industries.

For older, larger companies it is not uncommon for leadership to persist in this belief that their buyers are the exception to this change. Often, they are still enjoying success and growth, so why should they believe that their buyers have changed? Unfortunately, the more time goes by the harder and harder it is to maintain previous levels of growth and success.

So, how do you convince leadership that their buyers have changed, they face more competition, and the answer is to adapt and adopt inbound?

The first step, as we said above, is education. Get your leadership team the resources they need to learn about inbound. There are plenty of books out there (you can find links to some of our favorite in the Links section of this post), but a quick google search for inbound + your industry should return any number of industry-specific articles and resources.

Once you’ve secured some tentative buy-in, you can begin exploring other avenues like reaching out to an advisor or consultant. We also recommend taking the Inbound Organization Assessment on our website to see where your weaknesses are and where you can improve.

Ultimately the goal is to get buy-in from all departments, not just leadership, and begin creating MSPOTs, Culture Codes, Inbound Operating Systems, and becoming an inbound organization. Leadership's support makes that much easier, however.

Inbound is a pivot point. Yes, this is how your customers think, and yes, you do need to change. Every week you don’t become inbound your competition is, and they are getting farther ahead and reaping the rewards.

“Inbound is about the size of your brain not the width of your wallet.” Brian Halligan in Inbound Organization

It’s not necessarily about how much you spend; it’s about how strategic you are.

Here are three steps you can take to begin the process of convincing your leadership to buy into inbound.

1. Tell a story – Show specific results and tell the story of where you are and where you could be. Bonus points if you can hold up a competitor as practicing inbound.
2. Get sales buy-in – If you can get sales to buy in, it helps convince the leadership of the potential of inbound.
3. Run tests – Test a campaign or piece of content and use the results to prove the efficacy of inbound internally.

• Take the Inbound Organization Assessment (https://www.inboundorganization.com/inbound-organization-assessment)
• Bonus chapter – IMPACT Branding Case Study (https://www.inboundorganization.com/impact-case-study)
• Inbound Marketing – Brian Halligan and Dharmesh Shah (https://www.amazon.com/Inbound-Marketing-Found-Google-Social/dp/0470499311)
• Inbound Selling – Brian Signorelli (https://www.amazon.com/Inbound-Selling-Change-Match-People/dp/1119473411/)
• Inbound PR – Iliyana Stareva (https://www.amazon.com/Inbound-PR-Agencys-Transforming-Business/dp/1119462215/)
• Inbound Content – Justin Champion ( https://www.amazon.com/Inbound-Content-Step-Step-Marketing/dp/1119488958/)

We’re extending the MSPOT contest! You can download the MSPOT template, submit it for review, and anyone who submits an MSPOT will be entered into the contest. The first-place winner will win an hour to review their MSPOT with Todd and Dan!

Download and Submit Your MSPOT (https://www.inboundorganization.com/mspot-review) 

Are you enjoying the podcast? Did you read Inbound Organization? Taking a quick moment to rate and review Inbound2Grow and Inbound Organization on whatever service you use is the best way to let us know how we’re doing. Your ratings and reviews make a big difference, and we appreciate you taking the time to provide your feedback.  

Thanks to Rebecca Miller our podcast editor, social media coordinator, and blogger and to Zachary Jameson for producing the audio for the podcast. Check out Zachary on Upwork if you need podcast audio services.

At the beginning of every organization's journey to becoming an inbound organization, there are inevitable potholes in the road. The good news is that these potholes are completely normal and can be overcome. Potholes to becoming an inbound organization can look like strategy mistakes, content pitfalls, sales stumbles, or mission blunders. Whatever potholes your organization finds in its road, the most important thing to remember is that they represent opportunities to become a better inbound organization and there is no need to fear them.

Every organization will inevitably run into some form of pothole. Not every organization will run into every single pothole, or even most of them, but over the years there have been some common potholes we’ve seen.

One of the first potholes organizations can run into is skipping their mission. We’ve talked a lot about the importance of mission, but for some companies taking the time to create a mission can seem like a waste. Or, worse, they’re an older company, and they think that just because they wrote a mission fifty years ago, it’s still relevant today.

A mission has to be focused on how you are going to serve your customers. Typically, a mission will serve you for three to five years, but a 100-year-old mission is unlikely to reflect modern buyers, their needs, or the best way to help them.

Your mission needs to be more than a statement on the wall.

Another pothole is neglecting strategy or valuing tactics over strategy. You should be using an inbound operating system to keep everyone on track and focused on your mission. Your MSPOT should be clearly communicating the plays you will be making to achieve your overall strategy, and your inbound culture should be creating an environment in which everyone in your organization is working toward the same goals. If any of these pieces is missing, there are going to be problems. If that’s the case, don’t worry. Take a step back, figure out which piece is missing or failing you, and work on it. You need to take the time to establish these building blocks of inbound before you rush out and act.

Another major area for potholes is content. There are three types of content potholes we’ve seen:

Content Strangulation – The inability to put out content. Often the content creation process is a bureaucracy-heavy process that creeps along at a crawl. This long, drawn-out process doesn’t add anything to the content.

Content should be a part of your everyday life. Do make sure it is well written and polished, but don’t get so bogged down you never put anything out there.

Content Asphyxiation – This happens when you have taken the fun out of content and are taking it too seriously. You don’t have to be the next great American novelist to create content. Your content should be useful and relevant to your prospects. The goal is to help, not win writing awards.

Content Discombobulation – This is when your content is all over the map or focused too heavily on one kind of content, all top of the funnel for instance. Content should be matched to every stage of the buyer journey, and you should have plenty for each stage.

Sales is another area of common potholes. It used to be that the goal of sales was to close deals, and we’re still seeing sales people pick up the phone and qualify. An inbound organization strives to start relationships, and you should know who you’re talking to before you pick up the phone.

Not having your customers best interests in mind is another sales pothole. Not every prospect would make a good customer, and you should have their best interests in mind and let them go. Similarly, not letting the customer move at their own pace through the sales funnel is a common sales pothole. If your prospect is in the education phase of their journey, don’t try and close them.

Don’t fear the potholes! Everyone experiences them, but they aren’t the end of the world. Take the assessment and submit your MSPOT and you’ll be able to progress through the pot holes.

Start at the beginning, follow all the steps, and don’t skip any steps along the way. You can’t skip mission, culture, strategy, or anything else because everything builds on each other.

We’re extending the MSPOT contest! You can download the MSPOT template, submit it for review, and anyone who submits an MSPOT will be entered into the contest. The first-place winner will win an hour to review their MSPOT with Todd and Dan! 

• Download and Submit Your MSPOT (https://www.inboundorganization.com/mspot-review)
• Take the Inbound Organization Assessment (https://www.inboundorganization.com/inbound-organization-assessment)

Thanks to Rebecca Miller our podcast editor, social media coordinator, and blogger and to Zachary Jameson for producing the audio for the podcast. Check out Zachary on Upwork if you need podcast audio services.

An inbound content strategy is so much more than just churning out feature or product-based copy and sticking it on your website. An inbound content strategy understands and accommodates your personas and every stage of the buyer journey. Great content speaks directly to your prospects, answering their questions and helping them make decisions.

B2B, B2C, doesn’t matter, everyone uses the internet to help them make decisions, find information, solve problems, and make purchases both big and small. Your content is often the first interaction a prospect has with your brand. In many ways, your content is your brand. The content that you create builds your brand, establishes your credibility, and creates awareness.

Your inbound content strategy then is how you will create relevant, helpful content for every step of the buyer journey that answers your prospects questions, solves their problems, and helps them make decisions.

There is no one kind of content that is best or right. The idea that content is a specific thing (an e-book for example) is a reliance on tactics rather than strategy. Part of your strategy is figuring out the types of content your prospects want and need. That could mean creating videos, FAQs, infographics, presentations, webinars, blog articles, or any format that fits and works for your prospects because your content is your expertise communicated in a way that your prospects want to consume.

If you struggle with creating content, then you need to do a better job of understanding your persona. Who are you trying to talk to? What are their questions? What problems are they trying to solve? Great content ideas can come from your existing customers, your salespeople, and your customer service people. Do sales and customer service get the same ten questions? Take those questions and turn them into content.

Your content strategy should be creating customer-centric content that is mapped to every stage of the buyer journey and formatted in whatever way works best for your persona.

Lean into quality. Be smart and strategic in providing what your customers want and need.

Leaders leave content to marketers at their own peril. Everyone has a stake in your organizations content and should contribute. Don't forget goals! Leaders should ensure that every piece of content has goals that can be measured.

1. Audit your content. Is it focused on your buyers or your products?
2. Map your content to the buyer journey and set goals for each stage and asset.
3. Ask your customers questions and create content around the answers.

We’re extending the MSPOT contest! You can download the MSPOT template, submit it for review, and anyone who submits an MSPOT will be entered into the contest. The first-place winner will win an hour to review their MSPOT with Todd and Dan! 

• Download and Submit Your MSPOT (https://www.inboundorganization.com/mspot-review)
• Justin Champion Inbound Content
• Donald Miller Building a StoryBrand
• Take the Inbound Organization Assessment (https://www.inboundorganization.com/inbound-organization-assessment)

Curious where Todd and Dan got their statistics for this show? Here are some of the stats and their sources. Links not working? View our blog post here https://www.inboundorganization.com/inbound2grow/what-is-an-inbound-content-strategy.

• Mobile video usage has increased by nearly 10 million daily viewing minutes in the last two years – Kleiner Perkins Internet Trends Report 2018
• 70% of YouTube viewers watch videos for "help with a problem" they're having in their hobby, studies, or job – Why You Should Lean Into How-to-Content in 2018 2and2/Google, “The Values of YouTube” Study, Oct. 2017 (n of 1,006 consumers between the ages of 18-54, with 918 monthly YouTube users).
• 43% of B2C marketers say pre-produced video is the most successful type of content for marketing purposes – B2C Content Marketing 2018 Benchmarks, Budgets, and Trends – North America

Thanks to Rebecca Miller our podcast editor, social media coordinator, and blogger and to Zachary Jameson for producing the audio for the podcast. Check out Zachary on Upwork if you need podcast audio services.y.

This episode of Inbound2Grow was recorded last week at INBOUND 2018! Recorded live in-front of INBOUND 2018 attendees, we interviewed two leaders of the inbound revolution, Eric Keiles and Jill Konrath!

These two leaders have been practicing inbound as a methodology and a mindset since before it had a name. During the show we picked their brains about the good old days of inbound, inbound certified back office staff, the clients they won’t take, and the future of the inbound revolution.

Eric Keiles Entrepreneur-in-Residence at Square 2 Marketing

ou can find Eric on:

LinkedIn (https://www.linkedin.com/in/erickeiles/)

Twitter (https://twitter.com/erickeiles?lang=en)

Square2marketing.com (https://www.square2marketing.com/)

Pre-Order Smash the Funnel (https://www.smashthefunnel.com/)

Jill Konrath Keynote Speaker and Author of 4 Bestselling Sales Books

You can find Jill on:

LinkedIn (https://www.linkedin.com/in/jillkonrath/)

Twitter (https://twitter.com/jillkonrath)

Jillkonrath.com (https://www.jillkonrath.com/)

Latest book More Sales Less Time (https://www.amazon.com/More-Sales-Less-Time-Surprisingly/dp/1591847265)

We’re extending the MSPOT contest! You can download the MSPOT template, submit it for review, and anyone who submits an MSPOT will be entered into the contest. The first-place winner will win an hour to review their MSPOT with Todd and Dan! 

• Download and Submit Your MSPOT (https://www.inboundorganization.com/mspot-review)
• Take the Inbound Organization Assessment (https://www.inboundorganization.com/inbound-organization-assessment)

Thanks to Rebecca Miller our podcast editor, social media coordinator, and blogger and to Zachary Jameson for producing the audio for the podcast. Check out Zachary on Upwork if you need podcast audio services.

Inspired by Mark Schaefer’s assertion that inbound costs increase over time, in this episode we unpack that idea and discuss the need for adaptation and adoption of inbound as a mindset rather than a methodology.

The idea behind Schaefer’s post is that in the beginning, as companies invest in content creation and other inbound tactics, the investment is relatively low and easy to reach leads will find you because your niche is unsaturated. Over time, however, as more content is created and the niche becomes saturated companies have to invest more in content creation to keep up. Companies spend more to increase the volume of content, the number of emails, advertising, etc. so inbound becomes more and more expensive.

On the one hand, yes to do inbound requires an investment. Inbound isn’t free, and it isn’t magic. But the reality is that traditional outbound marketing is less effective than it has ever been. Your prospects will not tolerate canned cold calls, one-size-fits-all sales tactics, or pushy advertising. Prospects want individual, personalized experiences. They want to do their research before talking to a salesperson. They want the companies they work with to help them solve their problems, not just peddle a product. They want, in short, inbound.

Of course, if you begin to create content in an unsaturated niche leads will be easy to find. Of course, as time goes on, there are fewer easy leads. Yes, inbound requires continuous investment in creating amazing, high-quality, helpful content. However, inbound is still more effective than traditional tactics, and it should be less overhead.

As for spending more to create greater quantities of content, that idea really misses the heart of what inbound is. If your emails, blog, whatever tactic isn’t working well then, the answer isn’t to produce more mediocre content and hope that if two emails a week weren’t working four will.

You should know your persona, their struggles, their goals, their preferences, and that knowledge should inform the types of content you are creating. You should be creating content for your niche that they will love. You should be spending your money better! If your persona isn’t into long format blog posts, ditch them. If your persona wants a short format podcast (something we know a little something about), then you should be spending your money and time creating short format podcast episodes not 1000+ word blog posts.

Inbound isn’t a bucket of tactics (emails, blogs, etc.) that you are bound to follow slavishly, throwing money hand over fist at the tactics and hoping they work. Inbound is a mindset that should permeate your entire organization. Inbound is about all levels of your company helping your prospects solve their problems.

Helping requires an investment, sure, but being helpful is more effective and, ultimately, less costly than traditional marketing methods. If the inbound tactics you are using aren’t working and are eating up more and more of your budget, then it’s time to take a step back and figure out how your prospects want to be helped, where they want to be helped, and when they want to be helped and then go give it to them!

Inbound is a mindset, not just tactics or a methodology.

1. Is your content strategically focused on the changing needs of your buyers or is it focused on your product?
2. Review your results with inbound
3. Do your inbound organization assessment

• Download and Submit Your MSPOT (https://www.inboundorganization.com/mspot-review)
• Inbound Organization Assessment (https://www.inboundorganization.com/inbound-organization-assessment)
• Why Inbound Marketing Costs Increase Over Time – Mark Schaefer (https://www.businessesgrow.com/2018/07/30/inbound-marketing-costs/)

Thanks to Rebecca Miller our podcast editor, social media coordinator, and blogger and to Zachary Jameson for producing the audio for the podcast. Check out Zachary on Upwork if you need podcast audio services.

A large part of being inbound is creating and maintaining engagement with your prospects and customers. From first contact with a prospect all the way through the buyer journey, engagement is how you stay connected to your prospects and deliver the information and, most importantly, the help they need to reach their goals. To effectively engage with prospects and customers every step of their buyer journey, across all levels of your organization, requires a solid inbound engagement strategy.

At its heart, engagement is about connecting people with the resources they need to achieve their goals. An inbound engagement strategy maps out how your organization will create engagement opportunities throughout the buyer journey and accomplish your goal of helping your prospects and customers.

Content, and content creation are a large part of any inbound engagement strategy because content is going to be a primary driver of engagement. It is necessary to understand your buyer persona and your buyer journey so that you know what content your prospects need and when they need it.

At the top of the funnel, for instance, the types of content that tend to be most useful are things like checklists and guides. Top of the funnel, or the awareness stage, content is about the problem your prospect is trying to solve, not about you. Middle of the funnel content, or the consideration stage, is where the prospect recognizes that they have a problem and begins to seek out solutions. At this point product demos, walkthroughs, and product comparisons (to name a few) give prospects more information about specific solutions and the specific ways you can help them solve their problem. At the bottom of the funnel prospects are ready to make a purchase and content that compares features or pricing is appropriate.

Each stage needs to be considered and planned for in an inbound engagement strategy.

An inbound engagement strategy also defines who you will help and how you will help them. It also details how each level of your organization will be involved in engagement.

The code funnel, which is an extension of freemium, is something Dan feels strongly about. In fact, HubSpot offers a ton of free stuff that helps people help people. In a future episode, Dan and Todd will dive deep into the code funnel, the pit falls of giving things away, and more!

Don’t get focused on any particular technology to reach prospects. Inbound organizations should remain human and personal. H2H is what people want! You build engagement through being human and personal, not through any specific technology.

• Make sure your mission and your why are customer success and helping oriented
• Map how your team engages with prospects along the entire buyer journey
• Think about the code funnel (how you create freemium or try before you buy offers)

There is still time to enter the MSPOT contest! From now until Monday, September 3, you can download the MSPOT template, submit it for review, and be entered into the contest. The first place winner will win an hour to review their MSPOT with Todd and Dan! 

• Take the Inbound Organization Assessment (https://www.inboundorganization.com/inbound-organization-assessment)
• Download and Submit Your MSPOT (https://www.inboundorganization.com/mspot-review)

Thanks to Rebecca Miller our podcast editor, social media coordinator, and blogger and to Zachary Jameson for producing the audio for the podcast. Check out Zachary on Upwork if you need podcast audio services.

Personas are one of the fundamentals of inbound, shaping not only your marketing and sales efforts but all levels of your company. So, what is a persona? Personas are semi-fictional representations of your ideal customer based on actual data and some speculation about things like demographics, behavior patterns, and goals. Personas represent a person, not a company or market!

It is important to understand that personas are created through research and data. By interviewing current customers and prospects, reviewing user data, and speculating (based on your research and data) about behaviors and goals you create a complete view of your ideal customer. You might know some things about the type of organization they work for, but your persona work creates a picture of the actual person who is your customer, not their organization.

Personas are a vital part of an inbound organization because they give focus and meaning to the work you are doing. Rather than marketing or selling a product to a particular type of company you know happens to buy that product, personas allow you to understand and help solve the problems of the specific person who has a problem. Put another way; personas allow you to think persona to person (H2H) and create content and speak directly to your buyer, not your buyer's company.

Personas put your work into context and allow you to understand your buyer on an emotional level, grounding your company in market reality. It used to be that the focus was on what customers bought not why they bought. In today’s market, however, no one wants a generalist. If you want to stand out and have a competitive advantage, you need to know why people are buying and meet them where they are. You need to find your niche and personas are how you do that.

Buyer personas are critically important. Dan wants you to go to HubSpot’s persona tool (Make My Persona) to learn more about personas and make your own. And, if you send us your persona, Dan and Todd will review it!

Your buyer persona is a representation of the person that your organization helps the most!

1. Identify your target persona by interviewing customers and prospects
2. Document your insights and share them with your team
3. Audit your marketing and sales teams to ensure they are focused on your persona

From now until the end of August we are holding an MSPOT contest! You can download the MSPOT template, submit it for review, and from now until the end of August anyone who submits an MSPOT will be entered into the contest. The first place winner will win an hour to review their MSPOT with Todd and Dan! 

• Take the Inbound Organization Assessment (https://www.inboundorganization.com/inbound-organization-assessment
• Download and Submit Your MSPOT https://www.inboundorganization.com/mspot-review
• Buyer Personas by Adele Revella (https://www.buyerpersona.com/buyer-personas-book)
• https://www.hubspot.com/make-my-persona)Make My Persona )

Thanks to Rebecca Miller our podcast editor, social media coordinator, and blogger and to Zachary Jameson for producing the audio for the podcast. Check out Zachary on Upwork if you need podcast audio services.

Strategies are high-level plans for achieving specific objectives. Strategies guide your efforts, and inbound strategies are no different from any other strategy in this regard. Where an inbound strategy differs from other strategies is that inbound strategies are more than just a guide, they are a mindset and an attitude, and they touch every level of an organization.

Inbound strategies aim to create the best employee, partner, and buyer experience. Inbound strategies are based on helping, not just product strategy, or marketing strategy, or specific tactics. However, it is not uncommon for people to look at inbound tactics like blogging or email marketing and assume that implementing these tactics is synonymous with an inbound strategy. But an inbound strategy asks, and answers, some key questions like:

• Who are you helping?
• What problems are you solving?
• Where do they want to be helped?
• What form does that help take?
• How is everyone in the organization contributing to providing that help?

You begin to arrive at an inbound strategy by answering these questions. Tactics are the tools you use to help your customer how they want to be helped and where they want to be helped.

Inbound strategy is how you execute your mission and details how you will delight and help your customers across all levels of the organization and throughout the entirety of the buyer journey. You want strategies that blow your customers away.

Selling is helping. You need a coordinated strategy so you know how your buyers are moving through the buyer journey.

[17:11] Todd's Truth

The opportunity to grow and succeed will come more and more from creating amazing customer experiences rather than innovating products or features. People increasingly expect that products will be performant, differentiation is created through inbound strategy.  

[17:38] 3 Takeaways

1. Document how you help customers
2. Determine the obstacles between where you are now and becoming inbound. Begin the process of overcoming those obstacles
3. Ask customers how helpful you actually are

From now until the end of August we are holding an MSPOT contest! You can download the MSPOT template, submit it for review, and from now until the end of August anyone who submits an MSPOT will be entered into the contest. The first place winner will win an hour to review their MSPOT with Todd and Dan! 

• Download and Submit Your MSPOT https://www.inboundorganization.com/mspot-review
• Take the Inbound Organization Assessment (https://www.inboundorganization.com/inbound-organization-assessment)

Thanks to Rebecca Miller our podcast editor, social media coordinator, and blogger and to Zachary Jameson for producing the audio for the podcast. Check out Zachary on Upwork if you need podcast audio services.

Everyone thinks they have great customer service, but can you prove it? A ten-minute-long customer survey might suggest that the survey takers are satisfied, but who is most likely to actually give you ten minutes of their time to fill out a survey? If you’re only talking to and hearing from good fit customers, then your results are going to be skewed. And unreliable results mean you don’t have accurate, measurable, actionable data. Net Promotor Score (NPS) is the solution.

NPS is a proxy for overall customer satisfaction and brand loyalty. NPS measures the willingness of customers (or employees) to recommend your product/service/presentation to a friend or colleague. You can also use NPS to measure how effective an event or campaign was. NSP can also be applied internally to determine your ENPS (Employee Net Promotor Score).

NPS is a scored on a scale of 1-10. Respondents are asked how likely they are to recommend on a scale of 1-10 with 0-6 being detractors, 7-8 is passive, and 9-10 are promotors. When calculating you determine the number of total respondents and the number of respondents in each category. You then determine the percentage of each category. Next, you subtract the percentage of detractors from the percentage of promotors.

For example, you survey 10 people and 7 were promotors, and 3 were detractors. So, 70% were promotors, and 30% were detractors.

NPS = 70% - 30% = 40

There is a lot of power in knowing your NPS. In our connected world, the experiences of other people have a huge amount of influence on where we shop, what we buy, and how we spend our money. With so many choices at our finger tips user reviews, recommendations, and word of mouth make a big impact on our decision-making process. NPS helps you understand how many of your customers are out in the real-world advocating for you. Your customers should be your best sales people.

Measurable trust! NPS allows you to measure trust and prove that your customers trust you. “Meh” doesn’t work anymore!

1. Start using NPS with your customers
2. Then use NPS internally for high-level management, leadership, strategy
3. Move to using NPS to measure presentations, campaigns, and initiatives

From now until the end of August we are holding an MSPOT contest! You can already download the MSPOT template and submit it for review, but from now until the end of August anyone who submits an MSPOT will be entered into our contest. The first place winner will win an hour to review their MSPOT with Todd and Dan! 

• Submit Your MSPOT https://www.inboundorganization.com/mspot-review
• Take the Inbound Organization Assessment (https://www.inboundorganization.com/inbound-organization-assessment)