I met Chris Baggott at the Inbound Marketing Summit, where I also saw Seth Godin speak in person for the first time. I twittered Seth's whole speech here. I have followed Chris's blog for a long time as he founded Exact Target, an email marketing software as a service company. 

I don't have as much of a man crush on him as he does on Seth, though. The video above is clever bordering on scary stalker dude. But, it has a great lesson about blogging. Anyone starting a blog should watch it. 

Two great blog posts.

Tony Cole shares the story of his son's heart attack and brain injury. 

Al Turrisi shares a story about a man that wrote a book by blinking the letters. 

Being sales experts, both of them drew the parallels between life's adversity and how we react to it and selling adversity and how we react to it. 

Craig Klein left a comment on my blog this morning. I checked out his blog and saw a great post that I had to point people to. Here's an excerpt from the full article:

 Bottom line: Recent experiences like this one show me that too many sales people still haven't gotten the message - sales is not about talking, telling or teaching. Its about listening.

Your goal is to continue to ask the prospect questions about their world. Understand what's working for them, what challenges they face, where they think they're heading and most importantly, what are the greatest risks they see in the current world or in the future. What are they afraid of.

Why? Because people buy for emotional reasons. Especially in business, people buy things because its a piece of a vision in their head or they buy because they're afraid of something. Either way, if you know what that is, then its easy to show them how your product or service can be a crucial part of the vision or protect them from failure, cost overruns, etc.

IF business owner = idiot WHERE business DOES NOT HAVE CRM
THEN 80% OF business owners MUST BE idiots.

Most small businesses do not employ a CRM. Many "have one" but don't use it. I'm not saying it's easy. But, it's necessary for any small business that wants to be bigger or more profitable someday.

Here's a great list of questions about CRM that you should ask yourself.

• Do you know who your most profitable customers are, and what they purchase?
• Are you aware of the current sales opportunities your sales team is working on?
• Do you know which opportunities are at the beginning, middle, or end of your sales process?
• Can you list the marketing campaigns that generated revenue and which ones failed?
• Do you know the reason for the successes? How about the failures?
• Employees only need to go to a single database for all business information, right?
• Employees never have to enter the same information in more than one database or spreadsheet, eh?
• Do you provide your sales people with current customer account status to avoid wasted time?
• Can you easily control information access for each employee?
• Do you have a trail of: Communications with your clients, problems reported, and solutions implemented?

Whether you use Sage CRM, Salesforce.com, Microsoft CRM, Landslide, Zoho, or Sugar CRM, it doesn't really matter. You need to start implementing.

Dharmesh and the HubSpot internet marketing software development team launched another free tool the other day.

As companions to the free SEO tool, Website Grader, and the press release SEO tool, Press Release Grader, Twitter Grader analyzes a Twitter users influence.

Unlike the other tools, Twitter grader has a leaderboard which shows the highest scoring users. Of course, it's only evaluating the users that have evaluated their Twitter profile via Twitter Grader. But, as of today, that's atleast 20,420 people, including Barack Obama, who comes in at #1 right now.

Dharmesh is hard at thought about how to help small businesses and marketing professionals leverage the social mediasphere to market their businesses more effectively.

There are some new features in the main HubSpot software which help businesses improve their blogging (Blog Analytics) and identify social bookmarking entries (HubFeed) that are related to their products and services (so they can participate in the conversation). I've started using these tools to generate greater returns on my time spent blogging and leveraging social media sites.

Twitter Grader is more of an experiment at this stage. And probably more of a "we think it'll be cool" application than anything. 

However, any thoughts about how Twitter Grader could help a company better leverage Twitter are welcome. HubSpot is listening.

When is LinkedIn Grader coming, Dharmesh?

It's absolutely ridiculous that the marketing departments of soooo many b2b companies are not developing online lead generation processes that produce sales ready leads; that they don't practice measurable marketing.

Historically, sales has always had a funnel. Marketing should have a funnel too. Brian Carroll has a great post about building a marketing funnel:

Most organizations don't have a marketing funnel; they have a sales funnel that looks more like a bucket with lots of holes in it where leads leak out. Marketing needs to create its own funnel to understand whether leads are sales ready or not.

The purpose of the marketing funnel is to bring leads into one spot and qualify them. By qualifying them, I mean that the leads are ready to talk to someone from a sales perspective. Then there is the hand-off process between marketing and sales. I find that connecting the marketing and sales funnel together is really a big challenge. You have to understand your sales process to know at what point the sales team views a lead as an opportunity and begins actively pursuing it.

Lead generation really is about building relationships. It's how can I help my sales team build relationships with the right people and the right companies. The marketing funnel creates sales-ready leads and nurtures the leads that aren't sales ready.

The bigger and better you make your marketing pipeline, ultimately the bigger and better you make your sales pipeline. In the end, this isn't about generating more leads; it's about generating actionable leads.

A company where the sales teams and marketing teams work together, should have a combined funnel. It should look something like this:

For those of you who do better with words, you should know exactly how many visitors to your website convert into leads; how many of these leads your salespeople convert into opportunities; how many of these opportunities your salespeople convert into clients. You should also be able see at a much more granular level... what marketing activities, campaigns and referring sources those customers originated from, as well as what marketing activities made them "sales ready". That's closed loop marketing.

If you're a b2b marketer and you're not trying to figure out closed loop marketing, I personally believe you should be fired. You should be fired today, if you're still asking for $ to build your brand while your sales team is primarily cold calling prospects. It's absolutely amazing that more CEOs don't demand a measurable ROI from their marketing teams. It's absolutely amazing to me that marketers don't demand that their organizations committ the time and resources to create compelling content and participate in the conversations happening in their marketplace on social networking sites.

Brand awareness should be a side effect of a great product, great marketing and great customer service.

However, your marketing activities should be measured based on leads generated, leads qualified and customers acquired. Not some fuzzy notion of brand awareness.

This is a guest article by Kelle Sparta of Sparta Success Systems.  

Last week I received an email containing a link to Frank Kern's video on The Rubberneck Effect in marketing online.  I watched the video and decided to try out the premise.  So I immediately sent out a letter to my mailing list with the same subject line ("bad news...") that he had suggested.  What I found was very interesting. 

I found that my open rate did increase rather dramatically, in fact almost twice as many people opened the email as normally do (27.9% vs. my normal 13%-15%).  And the percentage click through rate (the number of people who clicked on any given link) was about average for any mailing - which means about twice as many people as normal clicked through overall since twice as many opened it.  But my opt-outs (people who asked to be removed from the mailing list) were more than double (0.7% as opposed to my normal 0.3%). 

I also included access to a free 10-part audio training on my real estate training website (this was my real estate list that I sent this out to).  I got a 32.6% click through rate and 55.8% of those who clicked through actually signed up for the auto responder program with the training.  That's better than any other free item I've ever offered. 

In looking back at my open rates, I realized that only one email I've sent out has come close to these statistics.  Interestingly, it was the one I sent on Valentines Day this year with the subject line "You Are Loved".  I can't compare click-through rates for you since I did this email as a pure deposit in the emotional bank account of my readers and didn't ask for any sales or even offer any links on the page.  Interestingly, the opt-out rate was still only 0.3% which is average for a mailing for me.  Although none of the people who opted out reported me as spam whereas 4 people reported me on the "bad news..." mailing.

So it would seem that telling someone they are loved is just as attractive as indicating there is bad news.  But there's more to the story.  The text of the Valentines email was:

"I just wanted to drop you a quick note to let you know how much I love and appreciate you. 

Happy Valentine's Day.

Love always,
-Kelle Sparta"

Well, I got a large amount of emails back from this message.  About half were positive and expressed appreciation in return or gave thanks for the message.  The other half of the respondents were angry and/or skeptical asking how I could possibly claim to love someone I hadn't met.  It was a controversial subject and clearly divided respondents into two very disparate camps. 

In contrast, I received only three emails from the "bad news..." email.  One had also gotten the link to Frank Kern's video the same day and was impressed with the speed of implementation that I showed and amused to see it arrive in her mailbox.  Another emailed me to thank me for the article from the previous week and to tell me she had forwarded it to a friend who was in need of help in dealing with her fears.  And a third came from Peter Caputa, a friend and fellow internet marketer, who said that he had felt a little betrayed when he saw the inside vs. the subject line.  He felt I might end up with the "boy who cried wolf" syndrome if I wasn't careful about how often I used these messages.  (And I agree with him.)  But there were no angry messages from my actual customers. 

So, I think I can conclude from this two things about open rates:

1. Sensationalism certainly does increase open rates. The Rubberneck Effect as described by Frank Kern does work - after all, a 27.9% open rate with a 54.5% click through to watch the video certainly doesn't suck.
2. Positive, emotionally charged comments that are out of the box also work though. "You Are Loved" returned a 25.2% open rate - not quite as good as "bad news..." but certainly not shabby in the overall mix of things. Whether the click-throughs will be equivalent with the positive message to those in the negative one, I can't say yet. I'll test that next.

And, sadly, I think I can also conclude that we are more open to hearing that something has gone wrong than we are that someone loves and appreciates us. 

So, for now, I think I'll go back to my pattern of talking about the positives.  Perhaps I'll start looking at the emotional content of my subject lines a little more to keep my readers intrigued more often.  But, thankfully, I think I can leave the sensationalism behind in favor of a more positive approach.  (Which is really what I wanted to do anyway.)

Kelle Sparta is The Business Shaman and Consciousness Consultant to corporations and small businesses. Kelle is the founder of Sparta Success Systems, a consulting and coaching company that provides tools, products, and training to empower business owners, managers and employees to create lives and businesses they can love. For more information, visit her website at http://www.kellesparta.com

LinkedIn is about to make a power move.

I've been using Facebook a lot more lately. It has some powerful features that enable me to initiate conversations with people. LinkedIn, by comparison is very sterile. However, LinkedIn is where business happens. I think too much play still happens on Facebook. Business happens on Facebook. But, I don't think 40+ serious business professionals (outside of the marketing world) will ever really adopt Facebook as a business networking tool, atleast until the kids just graduating college are 40+.

So, what's LinkedIn's power move? For a few years now, people have been building groups on LinkedIn about all kinds of topic. There was very little benefit to the members of the groups. Owners of the groups, could of course, send emails to the members. (Not many marketers caught on and I expect to see the controls tightened on the ability to download email addresses.) 

I also expected for a long time that LinkedIn would launch functionality to enable the groups to interact via the site. The first thing they're launching is forums, which is an obvious idea, albeit nothing that new. What'll be revolutionary about it, I presume, is that when users post to different forums, their contacts will probably be notified via their feeds. LinkedIn Answers already does this, making it possible for people to tap the collective wisdom of their network and the wider linkedin network very quickly. (Answering questions is also a good promotional tool.) I bet their forums will be used more frequently and will draw in all kinds of conversations. 

Here's the official announcement from LinkedIn (from an email):

First, thank you for managing your group on LinkedIn. We sincerely appreciate the time and effort you devote to your members, and we know they value it. Together you have made Groups one of the top features on LinkedIn.

This Friday, we will be adding several much-requested features to your group:

• Discussion forums: Simple discussion spaces for you and your members. (You can turn discussions off in your management control panel if you like.)
• Enhanced roster: Searchable list of group members.
• Digest emails: Daily or weekly digests of new discussion topics which your members may choose to receive. (We will be turning digests on for all current group members soon, and prompting them to set to their own preference.)
• Group home page: A private space for your members on LinkedIn.

We're confident that these new features will spur communication, promote collaboration, and make your group more valuable to you and your members. We hope you can come by LinkedIn on Friday morning to check out the new functionality and get a group discussion going by posting a welcome message.

What do you think of the new move? About time? Implications?

This a guest article written by Shannon Golladay of Paragon Wealth Management.  

It is race day and you are about to run your first marathon. You have two choices... you can run the race and do something you've never done or you can back out and cheer on the sidelines.

If you decide to run, it will be difficult, and it will take time to get to the finish line, but your reward will be great.

If you decide to stay on the side lines and watch, you might have fun, but you'll be doing the same thing you've always done: just watching people get further ahead.

This situation is similar to ours at Paragon Wealth Management as it relates to marketing. For over 20 years we stayed on the sidelines. Our business grew gradually by referrals and it was successful, but it never really took off... until now.

We decided to do something different. Our services are unique compared to the typical money manager so we decided to do something completely unheard of in the investment industry: online marketing.

Most businesses in our industry build their businesses solely by referrals. They may do an ad in a magazine or newspaper here and there, but most grow by referrals. This method does work, but it isn't the best method.

I started working at Paragon last November 2007. I was hired to do public relations and to help us "run a marathon" to grow our business.

My background is in public relations. In school I learned the traditional ways to pitch the media with story ideas. I had used these methods for several years. They worked, but nothing like the new way of doing public relations.

The first thing my boss, Dave Young, did when I started my job was give me a book to read called, "The New Rules of Marketing and PR" by David Meerman Scott. It is - by far - the best book I've ever read about public relations and marketing. It opened my eyes to a whole new way of marketing Paragon.

In the book I read about David Meerman Scott's blog and then I learned about Hubspot, an internet marketing company, which is outstanding.

We signed up for Hubspot and started implementing the ideas in David Meerman Scott's book. We started two blogs, Money Managers Live and a blog on our website. We also redesigned our website to make it easier for people to learn about us. We submitted press releases online with links in them. The list goes on and on.

The moral of the story is that we had great Personal Wealth Management Services, but not many people knew about them. We were sitting on the sidelines just watching the marketing marathon - doing the same thing each day.

We decided to start training for the marathon by making some changes and getting help from great resources. Now we are running the race as fast as we can.

So what's your story? What are you doing for marketing or public relations? Are you on the sidelines watching or are you running the race?

Shannon Golladay is the Public Relations/Marketing Director for Paragon Wealth Management, a registered investment advisor. Paragon takes a dynamic and proactive approach to investing and has over 20 years experience working with both good and bad markets that can be difficult and constantly changing. They are client centered and have a fiduciary responsibility. Shannon also writes and edits articles for Paragon's blogs Money Manager's Live and Paragon's company blog.