What does it take to be a successful leader in digital sales? The marketing power that is available today due to digital growth and expansion doesn’t mean that the traits of successful salespeople are redundant. It’s a matter of translating traditional skills into an approach that is effective on a digital platform.
In both the online and offline worlds, sales leaders drive performance. The greatest success here lies in combining digital tools with traditional methods. This means using all available tools to get the most from digital capabilities, while not doing away with methods that have worked in the past.
Becoming a successful digital sales leader requires a sincere interest in growing and changing as the digital world continues to evolve. Here are some of the most important traits of a successful digital sales leader.
- Know the Audience
Success in any form of sales, online or offline, starts with knowing exactly who you are talking to and who you are actually marketing to. Do you have a clear picture of your target audience? Basic information includes income level, gender, age group and education level, but the even more important information is what drives your audience and keeps them up at night.
There are some advantages to talking to people in person when you market in the offline world. When you have conversations face-to-face, you have a very clear picture of who they are, and you can get a better idea of what type of people are showing interest in what you have to offer, as well as what reactions people have if you offer something new.
In the digital world, it is still possible to have a good idea of who the audience is. At times it may seem like it can be a little more challenging to know for sure who you are talking to online, but it falls to digital sales leaders to get in touch with what type of people make up the majority of their target audience. This is possible through many channels including social media interactions, surveys and other online conversations.
Getting to know the audience means understanding what customers are thinking, and working tirelessly to meet their expectations. Know your audience, know their biggest problems and come up with solutions that can relieve their pain points.
- Know Who is Expressing Interest
The persona of the target audience isn’t engraved in concrete and may shift and change from time to time. While you may think you are marketing to a particular group of people, a different group of people may actually be trying to educate themselves with your content and may ultimately be interested in your products too.
Success in digital sales requires noticing who is expressing interest in what you have to offer. What type of people are downloading your white papers or signing up for your email list? Who is commenting on your blog posts, posting on social media or writing online reviews? Are they the same people that you were trying to attract to your brand? Are they in the group of people you thought you were marketing to?
It’s possible that your original target audience is still interested and engaged, but that you have also attracted a different group of people. A successful digital sales leader notices and encourages new prospects while not overlooking the original group of customers. New interested prospects may require the creation of new and different products and strategies.
- Pay Attention to Concerns
In the digital world, it’s possible to communicate with a wide variety of people. This includes both existing customers and people who have not yet developed any kind of loyalty to your brand.
Successful digital leadership requires paying attention to the conversations that are always going on. What are people saying on social media, either directly to your organization or to competitors? Are they expressing something that they haven’t been able to find? Are they expressing disappointment in the quality of what they’ve found so far?
What are they saying specifically about your company? Listen to the concerns of customers, particularly any who may be dissatisfied with your company, the service they’ve received or your line of products. Then try to figure out how you can turn a dissatisfied customer into a satisfied one.
It starts with paying attention to their concerns and being open to trying to address and correct them. Pay attention to the aspects where people are saying you might be falling short, and consider how you can improve and address their concerns. Also, notice when your competitors are being criticized and make sure you are doing a better job in the area that triggered the complaints.
- Build Relationships With Your Audience
People can generally see when a business is only interested in sales as opposed to genuinely wanting to offer top service and information. The average salesperson may be most concerned with the bottom line, meaning customers basically only represent income potential.
A top digital sales leader is interested in building relationships, not just making sales. The leader is aware that prospects and customers want to be treated like people, not numbers. Customers want to know that company representatives care about their wants and needs, and showing them genuine interest and concern is not difficult.
Encourage customers to become more engaged with your content marketing, product offerings and social media output. Participate in conversations and allow your audience to see you as a person rather than a company.
Personalized contact can be a natural way to build brand loyalty and encourage customers to keep coming back. When you show that you care, they usually respond. True leaders have genuine interest in personal relationships with the audience.
- Assist With Digital Navigation
Prospects can get easily distracted and lost online. In a world where marketers are constantly competing for a prospect’s attention, consumers are struggling with information overload.
Too much information is very confusing and often contradictory. A successful digital sales leader guides a prospect to paying attention to what’s important while navigating a confusing and sometimes overwhelming digital world.
Prospects may need guidance to ignore misinformation and find quality content that offers real value. Valuable content doesn’t always have to come from your own organization. The point is that successful sales leaders are committed to helping prospects find the information they need, which is part of relationship-building.
Top Digital Marketing Tools & Why We Love Them
The digital marketing industry is constantly changing, and if you feel like you’re being challenged to do more with less, you’re not alone.
Marketers need tools more than ever to automate repetitive tasks, augment our skills, collaborate more effectively, and scale what we’re doing right.
And when it comes to digital marketing tools, you have tens or even hundreds of thousands of options to choose from – certainly hundreds of options for each channel or task type.
Here are some of the most popular digital marketing tools on the market right now (in no particular order) and why they’re indispensable to many.
- Canva
Steve Jobs once said, “Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication.”
Canva makes creating design elements simple with a sophisticated platform.
If you can not draw a stick figure, don’t worry. The Canva repository of designs allows you to choose and edit a design without specific skills to create a stunning pixel-perfect design.
Additionally, Canva provides graphic animation, infographics, and videos.
Canva offers a free plan, but if you want to upgrade to a paid plan, it is well worth the investment.
- HubSpot
HubSpot provides a powerhouse of tools to help marketers, but the Hubspot CRM is particularly popular due to its powerful features.
The HubSpot CRM provides email tracking & notifications, prospect tracking, meeting scheduling, and a live chat option.
Furthermore, HubSpot’s ease of use makes the platform stand out from competitors.
The best part about the HubSpot CRM tool is the price point, which is free.
Unfortunately, the drawback of the free plan is that it only allows two users to access the CRM.
However, the paid plan has unlimited users, and you can add up to one million contacts.
- VWO
Conversion rate optimization (CRO) can be somewhat esoteric, but it doesn’t have to be with VWO (Visual Web Optimizer).
VWO measures clicks on-site, page scrolling from users, time spent on site, and exit intent.
The power of VWO is the ability to test different angles for your site to increase your conversion rates.
Testing button colors, headlines, landing page layouts, and several other variables is straightforward with VWO
You don’t have to be technically inclined to set up tests.
Non-technically inclined individuals without coding skills can set up tests just as easily as a developer.
- Semrush
To drive traffic to your site, you will need competitive intelligence.
Semrush provides 50+ tools to help you compete against your competitors.
Semrush is widely regarded as an SEO tool, but that may be selling it a bit short as the software offers several other digital marketing features.
For instance, Semrush offers features for social media competitive analysis, CRO, PPC spying, and PR monitoring.
If you’re looking for a suite of tools to compete against the onslaught of competitors looking to drive you out of business, Semrush provides a good line of defense.
- Slack
Once upon a time, carrier pigeons, smoke signals, and letters were the norm for communication.
Now, millions of people use Slack as the primary way of communicating.
Slack is the next evolution of communication. Messages are instantaneous, and you can share several file formats through the platform.
Additionally, Slack connects you to video conference calls and allows you to create channels for a select group of contacts for group chatting to increase productivity.
It also integrates well with various other tools and productivity suites.
- Asana
The path of least resistance is not always a linear progression.
Asana realized this when they built this fantastic project management software.
Asana provides project managers, product managers, and executives visibility and accountability of team members.
You can break tasks down into subtasks and assign them to team members.
Additionally, you can set up milestones, and the entire organization can view the progression of projects through tagging tasks.
Through API integrations, Asana also integrates with CRM systems and several other third-party apps.
Furthermore, you can start to use Asana for free.
- OptinMonster
OptinMonster, bought to you by veteran WordPress aficionado Syed Balkhi, is sure to delight.
Whether you are a startup, small business, or even an enterprise-level organization with a WordPress site or blog, OptinMonster monster delivers advanced functionality hidden in simplicity to end-users.
OptinMonster provides a highly customizable lightbox popup for collecting emails, countdown timers, inline forms, content locks, and targeted campaigns based on Google Analytics data that seamlessly integrates with the platform.
- ConvertKit
ConvertKit provides advanced multi-step email journeys called sequences to increase your email open rates.
In addition, audience segmentation called rules within the platform offers complex automation for your email sequences which take minutes, not hours, to build with ConvertKit.
Furthermore, all links inserted within your email sequences are tracked and reported within a user-friendly dashboard.
ConvertKit also enables you to copy and paste code within your articles to create beautiful email opt-in forms that can easily integrate with the CRM platform of your choice.
If you are looking for a cost-effective, user-friendly email marketing software that provides advanced automation and segmentation with a plethora of API integrations, try ConvertKit.
- Unbounce
Landing pages can make or break the number of transactions you can drive to your organization.
For instance, if you are running PPC campaigns, Google ads assign a landing page quality score that could either help or hurt your efforts to drive sales.
Unbounce provides a cost-effective way to build responsive landing pages optimized for mobile and desktop traffic that happen to be aesthetically pleasing and functional.
No coding is necessary to create landing pages.
The drag and drop editor provides you with everything you need to make the experience you would like to create for your target audience.
If you would like to add advanced functionality, you have the option of adding custom HTML and Javascript.
Unbounce offers over 120 integrations with third-party applications.
AI technology called smart traffic can dynamically shift your traffic to the highest converting landing page variant, drastically increasing your conversion rates.
- Buzzsumo
Buzzsumo is a social media tool that has taken the marketing world by storm since its inception by James Blackwell and Henley Wing.
When you need a tool to get to the heart of social media analytics, look no further.
Identifying social media influencers, building trending journalist profiles, and viewing the most shared content are a few features that Buzzsumo offers that will give you a competitive advantage against your competitors.
