ON AIR: With Owen Episode 41 Featuring Kate Bradley Chernis – Co-Founder & CEO of LatelyAI

Introducing our 41st episode of ON AIR: With Owen – our latest interview video series with honest conversation about scaling revenue, hosted by our Founder & CEO, Owen Richards.

Our 41st guest is Kate Bradley Chernis, Co-Founder & CEO of LatelyAI. Owen and Kate discuss the Lately platform which claims to achieve a genuine sales conversion rate of 98% using Artificial Intelligence and how Sales & Marketing Alignment play a part in that.

They talk about:

  • How Lately uses A.I. to produce engaging content
  • How collaboration between teams can achieve higher sales conversion rates
  • Lead Generation from Sales & Marketing alignment
  • The types of social content that does and doesn’t work
  • Why MRR should not be considered a key metric for a successful business  
  • SaaS and why some salespeople believe it’s methods are ‘broken’ or outdated
  • How to turn Listeners into Fans/Customers
  • What sales organisations want to achieve from content marketing

LIVE Roundtable: Building A High Performance Outbound Sales Team Culture

We’re hosting our eighth live roundtable as part of our NEW annual content series, around setting up an outbound sales function.

Get ideas, inspiration and advice from our panel of experts, who will share and discuss their own experiences and open the floor to questions from the audience.

In April we announced that we will be going live every month for the next 12 months, chatting about all topics relating to outbound sales and the stages of building a team.

Topic:
Building A High Performance Outbound Sales Team Culture

Agenda:
We’ll be answering your questions around (but not limited to):
What exactly IS team culture and how do you improve it
Getting your team to bond – what we’ve seen work well and not work well
How to drive team performance
What motivates individuals and how that impacts results
Different ways to manage that bring out the best in your team
Inspiring ways to celebrate achievements

Host:
Owen Richards – Founder & CEO at Air Marketing

Speakers:
Sean Hayes – Director of Business Development EMEA at Aircall
Danielle Benavidas – Sales Development Manager at Tipalti
Neil Bhuiyan – Sales Development Manager, EMEA at Happeo
Joana Costa – Team Manager at Funding Circle UK

Who is it for?
Founders
Sales Leaders
Revenue Leaders

ON AIR: With Owen Episode 40 Featuring Wendy Harris – Head of EMEA at Gong

Introducing our 40th episode of ON AIR: With Owen – our latest interview video series with honest conversation about scaling revenue, hosted by our Founder & CEO, Owen Richards.

Our 40th guest is Wendy Harris, Head of EMEA at Gong. Owen and Wendy explore Revenue Intelligence and how ‘unlocking reality’ can help drive your business.

They dive deep into:

  • Revenue Intelligence – what does it mean and why should sales leaders care about it?
  • The Gong journey and what it can do for Sales Leaders around Europe 
  • Launching into EMEA; what you need to do and what you’re likely to get wrong
  • Busting sales myths – True or False ‘You should never mention price on the first call’?
  • Discovery call do’s and don’ts
  • Understanding the burdens of onboarding
  • Remote vs in-person working

Managing Team Culture In Your Outbound Sales Team

Managing and building a great team culture is essential for all parts of a business, but especially so for outbound sales.

Outbound sales is notorious for hiring quickly and low retention rates, both of which can have a negative impact on how team members work together.

A sales team with a poor team culture can quickly become toxic, resulting in low morale, low motivation and teammates that don’t trust each other.

In this blog, we will look at the top ways you can manage the team culture in your outbound sales department – all tried and tested by Team Air.

Why It’s Important to Get the Balance Right

When it comes to managing team culture, there is a fine line between getting results and looking after your team.

If your team is focused on nothing but getting results and putting sales above everything else, you run the risk of frustrating and alienating staff. Not only this, but if your team members feel they must make sales to keep their jobs, they will end up frustrating and alienating prospective customers too.

While looking after your team is essential, it’s important to ensure things don’t get too comfortable. If your sales staff don’t feel inclined to perform, then you end up not hitting targets. A bit of friendly competition amongst colleagues is perfectly fine.

It’s essential to get the balance right. Think about your team’s current culture and what side of the line you stand on.

Remote Working and the Effect on Team Culture

Managing team culture has faced significant challenges over the past year with the introduction of remote working.

It is easier to talk to other team members in an office, whether it is a quick chat as you walk past their desk or wait to get a coffee. However, when you work apart from one another, engaging with others gets a little more challenging.

The good news is outbound sales teams have adapted to this new way of working and have found new methods of managing team culture. Let’s look at some of them.

Eight Things You Can Do Today to Manage Your Team Culture

At Air Marketing, we have always placed a strong emphasis on creating a positive team culture. It’s not always been easy, especially as our business has grown, but we’re proud of how far our team has come over the years.

We spoke to our team leaders to find out their top eight tips for managing their team’s culture and keeping everyone motivated.

  1. Recognise People’s Achievements

By recognising your team’s achievements, you’re not only keeping staff engaged and making them feel valued but encouraging them to go the extra mile. The great thing about this technique is that you can do it in the office as well as remotely.

We like taking ten minutes on a Friday to celebrate the week’s achievements, looking at different campaigns and showing the value that individual team members have brought.

  1. Introduce a Little Friendly Competition

As we mentioned earlier on, a little competition, either in teams or between teams, can be a good thing. This motivates the best performers and energises those who may be behind in the rankings.

Our team leaders do this three times a week, sharing their screen and showing their team how they are performing compared to all the other outbound sales teams.

  1. Make Your Team Feel Like Part of The Business

When team members don’t know the role they play in your organisation, they can quickly become uninterested in what they do. By making your team commercially aware, they can feel like a part of something bigger.

Take the time to talk about what is happening in the wider business, both positive and negative.

  1. Treat Your Team as Individuals

As an outbound sales team, your team members all share the same goal – winning as much new business as possible. However, individuals in your sales team will be motivated in vastly different ways.

For example, while some team members might be motivated by career advancement, some are motivated by providing for their loved ones.

When you manage a team, manage each person in a way that brings out the best in them. Speak to all the members of your sales team and see what gets them out of bed every morning.

That way when you provide feedback, you can be sure the message sinks in.

  1. Be Approachable

Being a manager or team leader is hard. You’re not only responsible for your team’s well-being, but if targets aren’t met, you’re the one that’s ultimately responsible. One thing you can do to make things better for both you and your team is to be as helpful as possible.

Being approachable in your management style can help foster a strong team culture. Encourage staff to come to you with their concerns and questions, as well as any training needs they have.

  1. Check in Regularly

Providing regular feedback and letting your team have their say can help you be proactive and resolve minor issues before they become major problems.

A short daily meeting is often the best way to do this. Go around your team and see what their plans are for the day ahead. That way, if anyone needs a little extra help or isn’t sure of something, the whole team can offer their support.

You can also talk through the targets and leads, letting the team collectively know if they are on track for the week or month.

  1. Have a Positive Attitude and Drive Performance

It can be hard to be confident when staff are off ill, prospects aren’t picking up the phone, and you’re not going to hit your weekly KPIs.

However, did you know positivity is catching? There is a phenomenon called ’emotional contagion’ where people close to you subconsciously mimic your emotions.

This means by staying positive; your team are more likely to think positively too.

  1. Have Fun!

Finally, it’s essential to unwind and bond with the rest of your team. This helps improve communication and collaboration and can be a fantastic way to destress at the end of the working day.

The other advantage is that friendly colleagues are more likely to spur each other on to hit their targets.

Whether you go out for a meal after work or take part in a Zoom pub quiz, take some time to get to know each other.

Want to Find Out More About Setting up an Outbound Sales Team?

If you need help with building an outbound sales team, read more about our service here or call our Sales Director, Marco Alfano-Rogers, on 0808 599 0354 to discuss your requirements.

If you’d like some further tips on how to manage your outbound sales team, our content series will provide you with all the information you need.

Visit our knowledge hub for blogs, webinars and podcasts that will help you create a positive  outbound sales team culture that will drive results.

Covering All Bases: How Air Marketing’s Approach Solves The Know-Like-Trust-Buy Funnel

The know-like-trust-buy funnel is a fairly common term in the world of sales and marketing—but what exactly is it? And why is it so important?

Essentially, the funnel details each vital stage that a potential consumer/business goes through before purchasing a product or service from your business. Within the concept are four fundamental touch points—each of which should be treated with equal and careful consideration to achieve the end goal of a successful customer journey and sale.

At the top of the funnel, we have ‘know’—the point at which a person discovers you, or your offering for the very first time. Whatever method this may be—social media, PPC, traditional advertising, etc—any experienced salesperson will vouch that these early impressions are critical in ultimately generating revenue further down the line.

The second stage is ‘like’. However you position yourself and whatever messaging you use needs to resonate with your target market, to the point they’re willing to delve further once their attention has been caught.

Next, we have ‘trust’. We live in an era where people have learned to be more and more sceptical about who and where they’re making a purchase from. This wariness has placed an even greater importance on the trust stage of the funnel, particularly for less established and emerging brands trying to break into a sector for the first time.

This is also the point where you really need to position yourself as an expert within your field. What can you provide this person with that gives you an edge over your competitors? If you don’t have that, or you aren’t clearly communicating it, odds are they’ll find someone who is.

Once you’ve ticked all of the above boxes, your customer should be ready to ‘buy’, or at least extremely close to it. We often see companies falling into the trap of thinking once a person reaches this stage, their business is secured—but that couldn’t be further from the truth.

Despite all of the hard work that has gone in prior, it only takes a split-second for a person to be turned off by a bad sales experience, which is why it’s crucial to have an expert team on-hand to get things over the line at this final stage.

Streamlining the funnel with Air Marketing and Marketing Services 

Naturally, making the funnel as smooth a journey as possible for the consumer is not only going to benefit in terms of this one sale, but a pleasant and memorable buying experience is exactly what is required to build a base of loyal, repeat customers in the long-term.

To successfully achieve this, both the marketing and sales elements of the experience need to work perfectly in tandem, complimenting each other throughout each stage and designed in a way that from that very first moment, the journey is pushing towards that last hurdle of a successful sale.

One of the most common problems we see with businesses is a struggle to combine both the marketing and sales elements of the funnel. They may be able to capture the person’s attention and their story is well-received, however, when it comes to trying to convert that interest into the all-important ‘buy’ stage, things begin to unravel.

Our Marketing services team, specialise in marketing with a sales attitude—producing high-impact lead-generation campaigns and creative marketing strategies, to seamlessly and successfully deliver this entire buying process to brands.

Outsourcing all elements of the consumer journey to one supplier doesn’t just save you time and resources in terms of communication and coordination between separate parties, it ensures each touchpoint is better aligned due to it all being built and handled by a single entity.

This massively reduces the chances of mistakes or drop-offs due to misunderstandings and incoherent messaging, and allows a strategy to be altered and optimised in a far more efficient manner than if you were having to arrange with two or three different contacts.

From a sales perspective, being able to share our input immediately in the initial stages provides a massive benefit, as it allows us to truly ensure that by the time the consumer/business reaches the final part of the funnel, they’re actually ready to buy as all messaging before has been tailored specifically towards this moment.

By operating this way, we are able to constantly knowledge share from both a sales and marketing perspective, while possessing the, often vital, ability to act with agility and deliver genuine ROI for our clients.

The results

A recent campaign with one of our clients who operate within the SaaS industry saw us take this two-pronged approach with Air and Air Marketing services.

The client, who helps UK businesses apply for Series A funding and prepare for periods of growth through an expertly-led training programme, found that while their offering was indeed incredibly strong, it was difficult to market and they weren’t getting the conversions they had hoped.

In our collaborative approach, our Marketing services team crafted a full marketing strategy that combined email marketing, social media marketing and user journey consultancy. As the prospective customers shared details of becoming marketing qualified leads (MQLs), all the vital information was fed back to the Air Marketing SDR team, who were then instantly able to pursue and convert the most qualified leads.

Over a three month period, this process meant we were able to deliver all the required benchmarks that allowed our client to run their next cohort. The campaign’s results included:

  • 40% average email open rate
  • +14 marketing qualified leads
  • 58,000 reach on Twitter
  • 300% increase in website traffic from email
  • 20% increase in direct website traffic
  • 95% increase in website traffic from social
  • 5% minutes on average spent watching video content on Twitter

Want to learn more about how we work as a full-stack marketing agency to optimise the customer journey? We’d love to chat. Give us a call on 0345 241 3038 or email contact@air-marketing.co.uk.

ON AIR: With Owen Episode 39 Featuring Susie Mathieson, Founder of The Small Stuff

Introducing our 39th episode of ON AIR: With Owen – our latest interview video series with honest conversation about scaling revenue, hosted by our Founder & CEO, Owen Richards.

Our 39th guest is Susie Mathieson, Founder of The Small Stuff. Owen and Susie discuss the Psychology around Communication and the role that plays in the sales process.

With a particular focus on:

  • Communication within telephone based sales
  • Why communication is important
  • How well Sales Leaders understand the psychology element of the conversations they’re having
  • Early stage conversations and pipeline building
  • Relationship building later in the sales process

Sales Confidence TOP 50 Sales Leaders Awards 2021 | Full In Person Event | Co-Hosted By Owen Richards

Watch as the Top 50 2021 winners are announced at this year’s Sales Leaders Awards powered by Sales Confidence at the De Vere Grand Connaught Rooms.

Our Founder & CEO, Owen Richards, co-hosted the event alongside James Ski, Founder of Sales Confidence.

Who is it for?
• Sales Leaders (CROs, Sales VPs, Sales Managers)
• Revenue Leaders (Marketing, Sales Ops and Enablement)
• SaaS Founders and Investors

Why watch? 
You will hear a line-up of inspirational industry speakers and gain the knowledge and insight required to confidently and competently drive your organisation forward.

ON AIR: With Owen Episode 38 Featuring Helen Boothby – Director at Sales Express

Introducing our 38th episode of ON AIR: With Owen – our latest interview video series with honest conversation about scaling revenue, hosted by our Founder & CEO, Owen Richards.

Our 38th guest is Helen Boothby, Director at Sales Express. Owen and Helen discuss High Performance Coaching – what kind of coaching is most effective in sales; what are the misconceptions and where are the ‘quick wins’?

Including:

  • The 3 types of coaching: career, development and live sales
  • What type of coaching is most effective in sales
  • The misconceptions around coaching
  • Pipeline and opportunity management
  • Where the ‘quick wins’ are with coaching

Outsourced Marketing And Sales: How Air Marketing Succeed In The Know-Like-Trust-Buy Funnel

In the simplest possible terms, the know-like-trust-buy funnel is a reference to each stage involved in a person’s journey towards buying a product or service. Each segment represents a fundamental factor that ultimately combines and leads to a successful sale.

The first step, know, is all about discovery and brand awareness—someone getting to know your business for the first time. No matter which industry you operate within, initial impressions are often make-or-break, so developing a strong and memorable marketing strategy is an absolute must.

For people to begin progressing through the funnel, your impact must be both instant and meaningful—without this, you run the risk of simply fading into the noise.

Next is like. You’ve caught the eye of a potential customer, now you need to give them a reason to stick around. This is where having a clearly-defined story and ethos for your brand proves invaluable.

Why should this person choose you over one of your competitors? The consumer needs to hold some kind of affinity towards not just your product, but to your organisation and what you stand for.

The third stage is trust—it’s here you need to form a meaningful connection with the person which means authenticity becomes key. It’s also at this point you must be able to clearly convey that you’re an expert within your field, and that your knowledge or offering is superior to those around you.

Finally, we reach the stage of the funnel where the consumer is ready to buy—even at this last stage, there is still much to be done. Given the work that’s already gone in by this point, it can be easy to overlook and see this final hurdle as a given.

The buying process should be as straightforward as possible—you’ve brought them this far and the last thing you want is for a complicated checkout or signing-off process to throw a spanner in the works at the very last minute.

How Air Marketing streamline the customer journey

Right throughout the journey we see essential touchpoints contribute to the process from both a marketing and sales perspective. When both of these elements are properly aligned, the customer journey becomes significantly smoother, which in-turn will naturally benefit your business in terms of both resource and ultimately, revenue.

Ensuring both elements are optimised to truly complement each other is something we have found a lot of businesses struggle with. Whether it be due to a lack of resource or knowhow, many organisations we’ve encountered have had notable gaps where their sales strategy should intertwine with their marketing strategy.

That is why, since 2018, Air Marketing, who are experts in outsourced sales, we’re able to create high-value campaigns that harmoniously blend both marketing and sales.

The benefits of outsourcing your whole sales funnel to one supplier

When it comes to the know-like-trust-buy funnel, our Marketing services department specialises and flourishes in the initial know and like stages. Our approach to marketing hones in on creating genuine ROI, meaning we begin building the foundations for eventual sales right from the very beginning.

We craft creative campaigns that help grow brand awareness, reputation and demand, meaning by the time the consumer reaches the latter stages of the funnel—trust and buy—a huge chunk of the work has already been done, and we can easily hand things over to the Sales department team, who are able to use their in-depth knowledge of sales generation to consistently convert and deliver genuine results.

That ‘handing over’ portion of the funnel is so often where customers are lost. Even if you have the best marketing strategy in the world, that work can be undone in an instant if a separate sales team isn’t on exactly the same page—or vice versa.

A slight miscommunication or misunderstanding as the consumer enters the final stages of the journey can be detrimental. Unsurprisingly, those errors occur far more frequently if different parts of the funnel sit with different suppliers who have minimal knowledge of one another’s operation.

The results we’ve seen

This collaborative approach was something we utilised in a recent campaign for one of our clients within the SaaS industry. Specialising in helping UK businesses apply for Series A funding and prepare for periods of growth through intense, expertly-led training programmes, they had found it difficult to market and sell their services.

Within the Air Marketing Group, we formulated and implemented a full marketing and sales strategy, which combined SDR outreach, email marketing, social media marketing and CRM user journey consultancy.

We ensured all messaging was consistent across social and digital channels, generating high-value leads through an education-focused email campaign, targeted content marketing and HubSpot integration. The results of these efforts were then immediately fed back to the Air Marketing team, whose specialist expertise in sales meant we were able to capitalise and convert the necessary numbers that meant our client could run their next cohort.

These results included:

  • 40% average email open rate
  • +14 marketing qualified leads
  • 58,000 reach on Twitter
  • 300% increase in website traffic from email
  • 20% increase in direct website traffic
  • 95% increase in website traffic from social
  • 5% minutes on average spent watching video content on Twitter

Want to learn more about how Air Marketing Group work as a full-stack marketing agency to optimise the customer journey? We’d love to chat. Give us a call on 0345 241 3038.