Permission-based email marketing is a well-known marketing tool, but how to differentiate it from other marketing tools? In this Expert Insight interview hosted by John Golden, Tom Kulzer talks about how email marketing can help grow your business.

This interview discusses:

• Fundamentals of Email Marketing
• Marketing Automation

Fundamentals of Email Marketing

The most important thing to look for when sending the email to the customers is to make sure that they asked for it. Online privacy and security are very important to people, thus sending an email without permission raises a lot of questions regarding how the sender even got the email address. The next important thing is to make sure that the email adds value. Email marketing is about creating personal relationships with the customers; therefore, the email needs to create a connection with the reader. Generic emails that target mass populations usually end up in the spam folder based on customers’ disinterest in them. With Gmail for example, if many receivers show signs that they do not want to receive emails anymore by deleting them, transferring them to spam or unsubscribing from them, Gmail itself will start sending the emails directly to the spam folder. The frequency of emails plays an important role as well since the key is not to overwhelm and bore the receiver with too many emails in a short time period. The relevance of an email impacts the receiver’s level of interest. In a time of economic crisis, people are interested in things they were not interested in as much before. Simply adding value to the email by making the receiver identify with the sender creates mutual satisfaction and long-term relationship.

Marketing automation

Marketing automation is a tool that produces more efficiency in email campaigns. In this case, it follows the quality over quantity rule. Instead of sending many “one size fits all” types of email, marketing automation enables the segmentation of contacts under different groups. A one thousand contacts list could be separated under ten groups of hundred contacts if needed for the benefit of the campaign. For example, a pet adoption agency offers different animals to adopt such as cats, dogs, bunnies, etc. Rather than sending updates or pictures about all animal species to its subscribers, the agency can target each group for specific animals of interest. To clarify, the agency still sends one email to everyone, but the content that each group sees is different. Dog lovers see only dogs for adoption, while cat lovers see only cats for adoption. This way, the agency creates more engagement and relevant messages for its customers.

Our Host

John is the Amazon bestselling author of Winning the Battle for Sales: Lessons on Closing Every Deal from the World’s Greatest Military Victories and Social Upheaval: How to Win at Social Selling. A globally acknowledged Sales & Marketing thought leader, speaker, and strategist, he has conducted over 1500 video interviews of thought leaders for Sales POP! online sales magazine & YouTube Channel and for audio podcast channels where Sales POP! is rated in the top 2% of most popular shows out of 3,320,580 podcasts globally, ranked by Listen Score. He is CSMO at Pipeliner CRM. In his spare time, John is an avid Martial Artist.

In the world of information technology where everything is about codes and programs, there has to be some space for human interaction and more importantly, collaboration. In this Expert Insight interview hosted by John Golden, Don Crawley talks about how to successfully lead IT, teams.

This interview will discuss:

• Communication, Compassion, and Empathy
• Collaboration

Communication, Compassion, and Empathy

In general, IT people focus more on solving technology problems instead of creating relationships with customers and coworkers. Just like for Dr. Sheldon Cooper in “Big Bang Theory”, logic dominates over emotions in IT. Thus, an IT manager must make certain to respect the intellect and skepticism of IT people, while tempering their cynicism, helping them to work with different types of personalities, and making sure they treat everybody with dignity. Communication and compassion towards the end-users are of great importance for good customer service. Customers are not IT experts; they do not follow the same IT logic and they usually find themselves lost in the whole process. But that is alright because as the Functioning Theory of Sociology suggests, everybody needs to be an expert in different fields so that we all can lift each other and make our society function. Tech support is not about technology, it is about helping the end-users to do their jobs more creatively, productively, and efficiently. Furthermore, empathy is another crucial trait in customer service. During the Covid19 pandemic businesses increasingly promote showing empathy, but this is an everlasting trait. Leadership needs to show empathy towards its customers but also towards its employees. During this pandemic crisis, people who already worked in the virtual office might not get as affected as people who had to suddenly change their work style completely. Since we will never know the circumstances in someone else’s life entirely, empathy is the key to customer service as well as to internal leadership within the company.

Collaboration

Nowadays, the industries have become so complex that there are so many different specialties within the same industry. Managers have the challenge to manage people from different areas of expertise, to earn their respect, and to make them collaborate with one another. Managers who come to the IT field from different backgrounds turn out to be more successful simply because they ask more questions rather than just making statements.

Our Host

John is the Amazon bestselling author of Winning the Battle for Sales: Lessons on Closing Every Deal from the World’s Greatest Military Victories and Social Upheaval: How to Win at Social Selling. A globally acknowledged Sales & Marketing thought leader, speaker, and strategist, he has conducted over 1500 video interviews of thought leaders for Sales POP! online sales magazine & YouTube Channel and for audio podcast channels where Sales POP! is rated in the top 2% of most popular shows out of 3,320,580 podcasts globally, ranked by Listen Score. He is CSMO at Pipeliner CRM. In his spare time, John is an avid Martial Artist.

Does crisis time reveal who is the real leader?

Crisis time can represent the real test for the leadership teams. Some leaders excel in crisis, while some leaders get lost in their ways. Mark Stuart talks about leadership in a crisis in this Expert Insight interview, hosted by John Golden.

This interview discusses:

• Fundamentals of Leadership
• Post-crisis Organizational structure

Fundamentals of Leadership

Many newer companies such as High-Tech companies never encountered a crisis like this one. Often, the leaders we thought were doing a great job suddenly go down. On the other hand, the leader’s nobody expected to shine in the time of crisis, they find this time to flourish. The basic things a great leader needs in this time are information, decisiveness, and agility. The best source of information is communication. Overcommunication and honesty within the team is the key to good leadership. When it comes to decision making, many leaders decide to follow already tested strategies from others. But a great leader takes the initiative and becomes a first mover. For example, when pandemic started some countries took the initiative and decided to introduce lockdown and other measures, while other countries followed the same measures. Countries that decided to lead are in better positions now. Sometimes the formula is simply to follow the intuition. Furthermore, many companies were reluctant to redesign their traditional structures and decided to wait for the crisis to finish. But companies that were agile enough to adapt their policies and procedures to the new reality are excelling now.

Post-Crisis Organizational Structure

This crisis is a great opportunity for companies to look at their organizational structures and see if some changes can be made. Why do people have to live close to their offices, to commute, or to live in a high-cost area only because of work if the job allows for the virtual office? In some cases, having a virtual office is more effective. Many companies will go back to the on-site office environment when the crisis is over simply because the nature of the job requires personal contact with the customers. However, the leadership teams should really ask themselves what is the future? If the nature of the job allows for it, a virtual office would lower real estate costs. In addition, it would allow for hiring a more diverse employee population from anywhere around the world, thus it would offer different employee strengths. In conclusion, the future might be the hybrid method of virtual and home office combination. That way the companies would benefit from the advantages of both work environments, digital and office-based.

Our Host

John is the Amazon bestselling author of Winning the Battle for Sales: Lessons on Closing Every Deal from the World’s Greatest Military Victories and Social Upheaval: How to Win at Social Selling. A globally acknowledged Sales & Marketing thought leader, speaker, and strategist, he has conducted over 1500 video interviews of thought leaders for Sales POP! online sales magazine & YouTube Channel and for audio podcast channels where Sales POP! is rated in the top 2% of most popular shows out of 3,320,580 podcasts globally, ranked by Listen Score. He is CSMO at Pipeliner CRM. In his spare time, John is an avid Martial Artist.

It is a general assumption that investing in the stock market is a good way to take care of the finances. However, frankly speaking, most people do not know anything about the stock market. In this Expert Insight Interview hosted by John Golden, Damion Lupo discusses how people can maximize their personal finances while looking forward.

This interview explores:

• How to take the charge
• How to clarify the goals

Take the Charge

When a financial crisis like this one happens, people become aware of the lack of control they have over their finances. The system is the one with all the control. Thus, this pandemic is a great opportunity for people to take a break and think about what is really important. We tend to force many things such as career, investment, relationship, etc. Get to know yourself, embrace the change, design your own life, and take a charge of it. People are afraid of mistakes, but that is the only path to actual growth. The rational way is to look a little further and find a vision of the life you want to live. Find the goals you want to achieve, and let the money be the offset. Nowadays, people have become obsessed with becoming “money bees” instead of “honeybees”. It is not about collecting as much money as you can, it is about finding the purpose – something that really matters. That purpose does not have to impact million people, there is great fulfillment in simple things like being a great parent or significant other.

Clarify the Goals

What martial arts teach us is that we are eternal students. No matter how powerful we are, there is always a grandmaster who is a couple of degrees higher regarding mental wisdom, thus we are always in a position of humility and learn. People are never too old to learn new things. In financial terms, the main essence of financial freedom is to make sure to know what is exactly that you want before you fund it. Take the Ferrari example. Owning a Ferrari would boost your ego but renting a Ferrari would satisfy your wish for the Ferrari experience. So, are twenty years of saving for the Ferrari really worth it, if you can simply rent a Ferrari in five minutes? People usually just want the experience, but instead, they spend decades thinking about owning and controlling things. Things become much simpler when we clarify what is the actual goal. Furthermore, think about the trajectory you want to be on in the next ten to twenty years. Your trajectory really depends on the people that influence you. So, make sure to have people around you who bring the desire for change and growth in your life.

Our Host

John is the Amazon bestselling author of Winning the Battle for Sales: Lessons on Closing Every Deal from the World’s Greatest Military Victories and Social Upheaval: How to Win at Social Selling. A globally acknowledged Sales & Marketing thought leader, speaker, and strategist, he has conducted over 1500 video interviews of thought leaders for Sales POP! online sales magazine & YouTube Channel and for audio podcast channels where Sales POP! is rated in the top 2% of most popular shows out of 3,320,580 podcasts globally, ranked by Listen Score. He is CSMO at Pipeliner CRM. In his spare time, John is an avid Martial Artist.

The social media world is constantly evolving and changing, so even very experienced advertisers can struggle with social media marketing. In today’s interview, host John Golden with guest Naira Perez, the founder of Spring Hill Digital. She will share her advice on how to use paid media in social media to generate more sales, attract new customers, and ultimately grow your business.

In this video, you can learn more about:

• Where to begin
• Finding your audience
• The best way to approach the paid media

Where To Begin

When you are approaching the channels that you are not familiar with, it is best to do it via organic posts. That way, you have a chance to get a better picture of how everything is working, instead of risking your money. Once you figure out how to interact with your audience and what kind of content they like, it is time for paid media. A common mistake that you should avoid is using the same strategies on every social network. Different media should be approached and observed in different ways.

Audience Targeting

Successfully determining who your audience is could be a crucial part of this process. Demographics across platforms are different, but they also shift very quickly from one platform to another. Even though a particular social network is very popular at the moment, it may not mean that your audience is there, in which case you should direct your resources elsewhere. Analyze how your audience evolves and behaves online, so you would know where to follow them.
When you create an online community, you provide yourself with constant feedback on how to make your business and products better.

The Best Way To Approach The Paid Media

The best option always is to plan in advance. Once you realize who your audience is, Facebook and Instagram tools can help you to analyze their habits and details about them and then target people who could be interested in buying your product. After you define and find your customers, determine what you want them to do. The ultimate goal is the sale, but the ad could be just the first step towards it. Finally, define the path to bring your audience from where they are now to where you want them to be.

Our Host

John is the Amazon bestselling author of Winning the Battle for Sales: Lessons on Closing Every Deal from the World’s Greatest Military Victories and Social Upheaval: How to Win at Social Selling. A globally acknowledged Sales & Marketing thought leader, speaker, and strategist, he has conducted over 1500 video interviews of thought leaders for Sales POP! online sales magazine & YouTube Channel and for audio podcast channels where Sales POP! is rated in the top 2% of most popular shows out of 3,320,580 podcasts globally, ranked by Listen Score. He is CSMO at Pipeliner CRM. In his spare time, John is an avid Martial Artist.

For every business, existing customers are now more important than ever, because due to the current events and situation, new ones may be hard to find. In today’s interview, B2B relationship expert Jermaine Edwards, advises you about managing relationships with your customers and securing growth.

This expert sales interview explores:

• Tactics For Maintaining Customers
• Coordinated Engagement Team
• Buyer Behavior Evolvement

Tactics For Maintaining Customers And Ensuring Growth

The relationships with your customers may not necessarily be the same as they were before the crisis, because they are now thinking differently about the partners with whom they work. They are looking for active leadership-based responses from their partners and confidence that will reassure them, not empathy. The focus should be on executing the key things that they need and getting the results.

Ask yourself how to create something that will give your customer an advantage later on. Making the business virtualized is not enough, because almost every organization is doing it. It is about finding different ways of achieving the results, investing in technology, and introducing new roles into the businesses that will increase the capability. Determine what their natural next step should be and then persuade them to take it.

Coordinated Engagement Team

It is time for collaboration, time to bring in more perspectives, and reach out for help within your organization. So, if you don’t already have one, start thinking about creating the coordinated engagement team with the people from different departments. They should share their perspectives and direct their coordinated effort to the conversations with your top customers. The goal is becoming more efficient because when times are good, you overlook a lot of inefficiencies. Because of it, many organizations realize that they are not flexible enough to adapt quickly to new customers’ demands.

Buyer Behavior Evolvement

The crises made a significant shift from wants to needs. Nowadays, everything has to be adapted to the new needs and to what is critical right now. Go back and ask yourself why your product exists in the first place, what kinds of problems it solves, and determine whether you are doing need-based selling.

Our Host

John is the Amazon bestselling author of Winning the Battle for Sales: Lessons on Closing Every Deal from the World’s Greatest Military Victories and Social Upheaval: How to Win at Social Selling. A globally acknowledged Sales & Marketing thought leader, speaker, and strategist, he has conducted over 1500 video interviews of thought leaders for Sales POP! online sales magazine & YouTube Channel and for audio podcast channels where Sales POP! is rated in the top 2% of most popular shows out of 3,320,580 podcasts globally, ranked by Listen Score. He is CSMO at Pipeliner CRM. In his spare time, John is an avid Martial Artist.

For any relationship, whether it’s an emotional or a business one, knowing each other’s personality styles is very important and beneficial. New Expert Insight Interview brings a conversation with Paul Casey, a professional speaker, and coach, who will introduce you to four kinds of animal style personalities.

This interview explores:

• The types of animal style personalities
• Interpersonal relations
• The future evolution of styles

The types Of Animal Style Personalities

There are four of them – lions, otters, golden retrievers, and beavers. As natural-born leaders, dominant, bold, and goal-oriented, lions are something that every organization needs. Otters are typical salespeople, extroverted, enthusiastic, and influential. Golden retrievers are calm and patient listeners that hate change, and beavers are very organized, analytical, and over-critical perfectionists.

Interpersonal Relations

Pairing different types that complement each other, as well as avoiding combinations of styles that are opposite, could be a good strategy in the work environment. While lion and beaver are quite intense, but the most productive combination of styles, lion and golden retrievers don’t work very well together because they irritate each other with their differences. The same goes for messy, unfocused otter and fully structured beaver. The otter – golden retriever combination is the best for sales professionals as it is very people-oriented.

The Future Evolution Of The Styles

As the world evolves emerging from the current situation, a lot of the things will remain permanently changed, and all of the styles will have to find a way to get used to those changes. Since we are all in this together, having to adapt to new circumstances, it may result in developing more tolerance for each other. It is why it’s important to get to know these personality types because then we can appreciate and celebrate our differences. It can teach us how to approach different people and get along better, which is beneficial in all aspects of life. It all comes down to understanding each other, but it is particularly important in times like this. People deal with problems and challenges in different ways, so a better understanding of each other’s coping mechanisms and reactions to everything that is happening can help eliminate a lot of frustrations, stress, and confrontations.

Our Host

John is the Amazon bestselling author of Winning the Battle for Sales: Lessons on Closing Every Deal from the World’s Greatest Military Victories and Social Upheaval: How to Win at Social Selling. A globally acknowledged Sales & Marketing thought leader, speaker, and strategist, he has conducted over 1500 video interviews of thought leaders for Sales POP! online sales magazine & YouTube Channel and for audio podcast channels where Sales POP! is rated in the top 2% of most popular shows out of 3,320,580 podcasts globally, ranked by Listen Score. He is CSMO at Pipeliner CRM. In his spare time, John is an avid Martial Artist.

In today’s Expert Insight Interview, John Golden is joined by Joachim Bosch, the founder of the ”Land Profit Generator” method and the same-named website focused on earning profit by flipping and investing in land property.

You can learn more about:

• The Advantages Of Land Investments
• The Types Of Properties For Investing
• Possible Pitfalls

The Advantages Of Investing In Land Properties

The first upside of this business is that it works in any market, and can survive very tempting and troubling times. It is location independent, so it gives you the freedom to choose the lifestyle that suits you best. Investing in land is simplified because you are liberated from worrying about things such as tenants, houses, repair estimating, toilets, roofs, molds. You don’t even need to meet with anyone because everything is done through e-mails. However, profits are the same or even better.

Now maybe the perfect moment for entering this business. There is a significant number of people who are looking to sell their assets, but also a growing demand for rural properties.

The Types Of Properties Most Profitable For Investing

There are three types of properties particularly interesting for flipping. First of all, lots in the cities, so-called ”infill lots”, empty pieces of land among houses, ready to be filled in. It prices up the whole neighborhood. The second type is ”the path of growth”. These properties are on the outskirts of towns, anywhere from 2 to 40 miles outside of it. There is a constant demand for lots in these locations because it is an excellent option for anyone who wants more space and closeness to the city, but with more affordable prices. It is also attractive for people who want to wait for the value to go up as the area develops, and then make more profit. Lastly, there is recreational acreage, such as mini-farms or mini-ranches, which people can use as weekend getaways from the city.

It works in every state, but the lots need to be in the growing cities and areas, where something attractive is going on.

Things To Look Out For

There is not much you need to know about the land if there is nothing on it. There are only a few things that you should check before buying, such as environmentalist issues and, of course, if the property is buildable.

Our Host

John is the Amazon bestselling author of Winning the Battle for Sales: Lessons on Closing Every Deal from the World’s Greatest Military Victories and Social Upheaval: How to Win at Social Selling. A globally acknowledged Sales & Marketing thought leader, speaker, and strategist, he has conducted over 1500 video interviews of thought leaders for Sales POP! online sales magazine & YouTube Channel and for audio podcast channels where Sales POP! is rated in the top 2% of most popular shows out of 3,320,580 podcasts globally, ranked by Listen Score. He is CSMO at Pipeliner CRM. In his spare time, John is an avid Martial Artist.