70 Buzzwords and Jargon Phrases Salespeople Should Avoid

Occasionally using buzzwords or jargon won’t hurt a salesperson’s credibility, but doing so frequently will.

Tired clichés and overused phrases make reps sound like walking product brochures, not trusted consultants.

Buyers want to do business with someone who is genuine and human – not someone who relies on empty words to make themselves sound smarter or more impressive.

Research also shows people are less likely to believe a statement using abstract language than one using concrete language.

In other words, reps who rely on buzzwords seem less trustworthy. If they want prospects to believe them, salespeople should be as straightforward as possible.

How to Cut Out Buzzwords and Jargon

Kicking the buzzword habit can be tough. When you hear a word or phrase over and over again, it tends to sneak into your own speech.

The first step is recognizing which words and phrases to eliminate. Next time you’re about to say or type one of the items on this list, ask yourself how you’d communicate the same idea to a young child who doesn’t know any idioms.

Here’s an email rewritten without jargon.

Before:

Answers to Your Questions

Hi Adam,

Great talking to you last week. You raised some questions I wanted to circle back on.

1. Can your team leverage our platform to interface with APAC customers? I’ve talked to our product team and they’re confident the tool will support that use case.
2. Do we have the bandwidth to dedicate a full-time account manager to your team? Although we’re currently firing on all cylinders, I’m happy to run this request up the flagpole to see if it’s feasible. Will touch base as soon as I have more info.

Let me know if you have any other questions. We can also sync up during the demo call on Tuesday.

Cheers,
Hank

After:

Answers to Your Questions

Hi Adam,

Great talking to you last week. Here are the answers to your questions:

1. Can your team use our platform for APAC customers? Our product team says that’s no issue.
2. Can we give you a full-time account manager? My manager is looking into this. I should have an answer by Friday.

If you have more questions, I’m happy to answer them over email or during the demo call on Tuesday.

Best,
Hank

If you’re still struggling to speak plainly, Intuit business writer Tim Parker has two tips.

First, think like an editor and cut every word that doesn’t add meaning to your explanation.

“If a word or phrase doesn’t deliver specific details, it’s probably not making much of an impact,” Parker explains. “Consider replacing or omitting it.”

Second, Parker recommends giving examples. Rather than saying your company “has a solid track record,” tell your prospect about the typical results your clients see.

When You Should Use Jargon

Salespeople shouldn’t cut out “corporate speak” entirely. Using industry- or vertical-specific terms will help them prove their expertise and experience to buyers.

For instance, I recently listened to a call between a rep and the CEO of an artisanal coffee company. The salesperson mentioned the coffee’s “roast profile,” which immediately changed the tone of the conversation. The CEO had seemed pretty distracted. After the rep demonstrated her knowledge of the coffee space, however, he was eager to talk.

There are two different approaches to learning a prospect’s language, depending on the rep’s selling situation.

• If they’re working solely with one industry, salespeople should subscribe to that industry’s publications, attend its events, network with its experts, and read relevant books.
• If they’re working with buyers in multiple verticals and need to quickly get up to speed, reps can visit their prospects’ websites, read their email newsletters, see what executives post on LinkedIn and Twitter, and look for the most popular industry websites and note which terms come up.

It can also be helpful to search “[industry] + jargon,” “[industry] + terminology,” and “[industry] + common phrases.”

Reps should be careful not to use any terminology they don’t fully understand. Prospects will quickly lose confidence in a salesperson who bungles a basic term.

The Ultimate List of Buzzwords and Jargon to Avoid

Actions

• Push the envelope
• Disrupt
• Innovate
• Leverage
• Get our ducks in a row
• Streamline
• Drill down
• Take it offline
• Interface
• Boil the ocean
• Align
• Synthesize
• Touch base
• Circle back
• Get down to brass tacks
• Give 110%
• Move the needle
• Architect
• Put it on the back burner
• Cast a wide net
• Lean in
• Raise the bar
• Move up the value chain
• Run it up the flagpole
• Put boots on the ground
• Spend calories doing X
• Flex your [design, creative, analytical, etc.] muscle
• Take a step back
• Circle the wagons
• Punt (an idea)
• Peel the onion
• Build it from the ground up

Nouns

• Deep dive
• Paradigm shift
• Synergy
• Core competency
• Game-changer
• Window of opportunity
• Wheelhouse
• Low-hanging fruit
• Bandwidth
• Learnings
• Big picture
• Many moving parts
• Hard stop
• 360 view

Adjectives

• Outside-the-box
• Next generation
• Intentional
• Progressive
• In agreeance
• Mission critical
• Revolutionary
• Leading
• Cutting-edge
• High-tech
• Forward-thinking
• Dynamic
• Proactive
• Bleeding-edge
• Impactful
• Actionable
• Granular
• Viral
• Scaleable
• Robust
• Cut and dry
• Transformative
• Integrated
• Holistic

Your prospects don’t have the desire to translate a buzzword-laden explanation or email into plain English. Not only do clichés and jargon harm your credibility, they also sap your prospects’ patience and make your message less effective. Unless you’re using industry-specific jargon (correctly), try to eliminate this language.

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19 Things All Millionaires Did Before They Got Rich [Infographic]

Everyone wants to be rich. Google “how to become wealthy” and you’ll get 7.3 million search results. “Get rich quick” has 9.6 million results.

But as almost any self-made millionaire will tell you, wealth isn’t an accident. They had to develop a mindset and attitudes that shaped their approach to work and life – setting them on the path to success. And they did so when they hadn’t made it yet, building a foundation of habits that led to their eventual wealth.

For example, millionaires ban excuses from their lives. If you’re unwilling to accept accountability for your mistakes and try to shift blame onto others or external factors, you’ll never end up with the results you need.

Hedge fund manager James Altucher compiles 18 more habits of eventual millionaires in the infographic below.

(Click the infographic for a larger version.)

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Google's War on Data and the Clickstream Revolution

Posted by rjonesx.

Existential threats to SEO

Rand called “Not Provided” the First Existential Threat to SEO in 2013. While 100% Not Provided was certainly one of the largest and most egregious data grabs by Google, it was part of a long and continued history of Google pulling data sources which benefit search engine optimizers.

A brief history

1. Nov 2010 - Deprecate search API
2. Oct 2011 - Google begins Not Provided
3. Feb 2012 - Sampled data in Google Analytics
4. Aug 2013 - Google Keyword Tool closed
5. Sep 2013 - Not Provided ramped up
6. Feb 2015 - Link Operator degraded
7. Jan 2016 - Search API killed
8. Mar 2016 - Google ends Toolbar PageRank
9. Aug 2016 - Keyword Planner restricted to paid

I don’t intend to say that Google made any of these decisions specifically to harm SEOs, but that the decisions did harm SEO is inarguable. In our industry, like many others, data is power. Without access to SERP, keyword, and analytics data, our and our industry’s collective judgement is clouded. A recent survey of SEOs showed that data is more important to them than ever, despite these data retractions.

So how do we proceed in a world in which we need data more and more but our access is steadily restricted by the powers that be? Perhaps we have an answer — clickstream data.

What is clickstream data?

First, let’s give a quick definition of clickstream data to those who are not yet familiar. The most straightforward definition I’ve seen is:

“The process of collecting, analyzing, and reporting aggregate data about which pages users visit in what order.”
– (TechTarget: What is Clickstream Analysis)

If you’ve spent any time analyzing your funnel or looking at how users move through your site, you have utilized clickstream data in performing clickstream analysis. However, traditionally, clickstream data is restricted to sites you own. But what if we could see how users behave across the web — not just our own sites? What keywords they search, what pages they visit, and how they navigate the web? With that data, we could begin to fill in the data gaps previously lost to Google.

I think it’s worthwhile to point out the concerns presented by clickstream data. As a webmaster, you must be thoughtful about what you do with user data. You have access to the referrers which brought visitors to your site, you know what they click on, you might even have usernames, emails, and passwords. In the same manner, being vigilant about anonymizing data and excluding personally identifiable information (PII) has to be the first priority in using clickstream data. Moz and our partners remain vigilant, including our latest partner Jumpshot, whose algorithms for removing PII are industry-leading.

What can we do?

So let’s have some fun, shall we? Let’s start to talk about all the great things we can do with clickstream data. Below, I’ll outline a half dozen or so insights we’ve gleaned from clickstream data that are relevant to search marketers and Internet users in general. First, let me give credit where credit is due — the data for these insights have come from 2 excellent partners: Clickstre.am and Jumpshot.

Popping the filter bubble

It isn’t very often that the interests of search engine marketers and social scientists intersect, so this is a rare opportunity for me to blend my career with my formal education. Search engines like Google personalize results in a number of ways. We regularly see personalization of search results in the form of geolocation, previous sites visited, or even SERP features tailored to things Google knows about us as users. One question posed by social scientists is whether this personalization creates a filter bubble, where users only see information relative to their interests. Of particular concern is whether this filter bubble could influence important informational queries like those related to political candidates. Does Google show uniform results for political candidate queries, or do they show you the results you want to see based on their personalization models?

Well, with clickstream data we can answer this question quite clearly by looking at the number of unique URLs which users click on from a SERP. Personalized keywords should result in a higher number of unique URLs clicked, as users see different URLs from one another. We randomly selected 50 search-click pairs (a searched keyword and the URL the user clicked on) for the following keywords to get an idea of how personalized the SERPs were.

1. Dropbox - 10
2. Google - 12
3. Donald Trump - 14
4. Hillary Clinton - 14
5. Facebook - 15
6. Note 7 - 16
7. Heart Disease - 16
8. Banks Near Me - 107
9. Landscaping Company - 260

As you can see, a highly personalized keyword like “banks near me” or “landscaping company” — which are dependent upon location —receive a large number of unique URLs clicked. This is to be expected and validates the model to a degree. However, candidate names like “Hillary Clinton” and “Donald Trump” are personalized no more than major brands like Dropbox, Google, or Facebook and products like the Samsung Note 7. It appears that the hypothetical filter bubble has burst — most users see the exact same results as one another.

Biased search behavior

But is that all we need to ask? Can we learn more about the political behavior of users online? It turns out we can. One of the truly interesting features of clickstream data is the ability to do “also-searched” analysis. We can look at clickstream data and determine whether or not a person or group of people are more likely to search for one phrase or another after first searching for a particular phrase. We dove into the clickstream data to see if there were any material differences between subsequent searches of individuals who looked for “donald trump” and “hillary clinton,” respectively. While the majority of the searches were quite the same, as you would expect, searching for things like “youtube” or “facebook,” there were some very interesting differences.

For example, individuals who searched for “donald trump” were 2x as likely to then go on to search for “Omar Mateen” than individuals who previously searched for “hillary clinton.” Omar Mateen was the Orlando shooter. Individuals who searched for “Hillary Clinton” were about 60% more likely to search for “Philando Castile,” the victim of a police shooting and, in particular, one of the more egregious examples. So it seems — at least from this early evidence —that people carry their biases to the search engines, rather than search engines pushing bias back upon them.

Getting a real click-through rate model

Search marketers have been looking at click-through rate (CTR) models since the beginning of our craft, trying to predict traffic and earnings under a set of assumptions that have all but disappeared since the days of 10 blue links. With the advent of SERP features like answer boxes, the knowledge graph, and Twitter feeds in the search results, it has been hard to garner exactly what level of traffic we would derive from any given position.

With clickstream data, we have a path to uncovering those mysteries. For starters, the click-through rate curve is dead. Sorry folks, but it has been for quite some time and any allegiance to it should be categorized as willful neglect.

We have to begin building somewhere, so at Moz we start with opportunity metrics (like the one introduced by Dr. Pete, which can be found in Keyword Explorer) which depreciate the potential search traffic available from a keyword based on the presence of SERP features. We can use clickstream data to learn the non-linear relationship between SERP features and CTR, which is often counter-intuitive.

Let’s take a quick quiz.

Which SERP has the highest organic click-through rate?

• A SERP with just news
• A SERP with just top ads
• A SERP with sitelinks, knowledge panel, tweets, and ads at the top

Strangely enough, it’s the last that has the highest click-through rate to organic. Why? It turns out that the only queries that get that bizarre combination of SERP features are for important brands, like Louis Vuitton or BMW. Subsequently, nearly 100% of the click traffic goes to the #1 sitelink, which is the brand website.

Perhaps even more strangely, pages with top ads deliver more organic clicks than those with just news. News tends to entice users more than advertisements.

It would be nearly impossible to come to these revelations without clickstream data, but now we can use the data to find the unique relationships between SERP features and click-through rates.

In production: Better volume data

Perhaps Moz’s most well-known usage of clickstream data is our volume metric in Keyword Explorer. There has been a long history of search marketers using Google’s keyword volume as a metric to predict traffic and prioritize keywords. While (not provided) hit SEOs the hardest, it seems like the recent Google Keyword Planner ranges are taking a toll as well.

So how do we address this with clickstream data? Unfortunately, it isn’t as cut-and-dry as simply replacing Google’s data with Jumpshot or a 3rd party provider. There are several steps involved — here are just a few.

1. Data ingestion and clean-up
2. Bias removal
3. Modeling against Google Volume
4. Disambiguation corrections

I can’t stress how much attention to detail needs to go into these steps in order to make sure you’re adding value with clickstream data rather than simply muddling things further. But I can say with confidence that our complex solutions have had a profoundly positive impact on the data we provide. Let me give you some disambiguation examples that were recently uncovered by our model.

Keyword	Google Value	Disambiguated
cars part	135000	2900
chopsuey	74000	4400
treatment for mononucleosis	4400	720
lorton va	9900	8100
definition of customer service	2400	1300
marion county detention center	5400	4400
smoke again lyrics	1900	880
should i get a phd	480	320
oakley crosshair 2.0	1000	480
barter 6 download	4400	590
how to build a shoe rack	880	720

Look at the huge discrepancies here for the keyword “cars part.” Most people search for “car parts” or “car part,” but Google groups together the keyword “cars part,” giving it a ridiculously high search value. We were able to use clickstream data to dramatically lower that number.

The same is true for “chopsuey.” Most people search for it, correctly, as two separate words: “chop suey.”

These corrections to Google search volume data are essential to make accurate, informed decisions about what content to create and how to properly optimize it. Without clickstream data on our side, we would be grossly misled, especially in aggregate data.

How much does this actually impact Google search volume? Roughly 25% of all keywords we process from Google data are corrected by clickstream data. This means tens of millions of keywords monthly.

Moving forward

The big question for marketers is now not only how do we respond to losses in data, but how do we prepare for future losses? A quick survey of SEOs revealed some of their future concerns…

Luckily, a blended model of crawled and clickstream data allows Moz to uniquely manage these types of losses. SERP and suggest data are all available through clickstream sources, piggybacking on real results rather than performing automated ones. Link data is already available through third-party indexes like MozScape, but can be improved even further with clickstream data that reveals the true popularity of individual links. All that being said, the future looks bright for this new blended data model, and we look forward to delivering upon its promises in the months and years to come.

And finally, a question for you…

As Moz continues to improve upon Keyword Explorer, we want to make that data more easily accessible to you. We hope to soon offer you an API, which will bring this data directly to you and your apps so that you can do more research than ever before. But we need your help in tailoring this API to your needs. If you have a moment, please answer this survey so we can piece together something that provides just what you need.

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7 Reasons Your Appliance Repairman Is a Better Salesperson Than You

Recently, our washing machine stopped working. A month ago, our refrigerator broke. A month before that, our garage door was having problems. And a month before that, our dishwasher door went out of commission too.

Needless to say, more than a few appliance people have walked through my doors lately.

And only this last time did it click … all these repairmen are better salespeople than I am.

Here’s are seven reasons why – and lessons we can all learn.

1) They get prospects to work on their schedule.

The washing machine won’t drain. The dishwasher door stops latching properly.

Things breaks, and you do what any rational person does: You procrastinate as long as possible. (Or until your significant other gives you the look.)

If, like me, you’re only handy with a credit card, you call some repair shops.

Our washing machine stopped working a day or two before a three-day weekend. The appliance company I reached out to was slammed and wouldn’t be able to get to it until next week sometime. If you’ve ever had something break before a long weekend, you’ve probably heard the same thing.

Already, you’re being managed. Before you’ve even agreed to work with the appliance shop, they’re managing your expectations and forcing you, the customer, to implicitly agree to their available window of time.

Takeaway: Manage Expectations From the Get-Go

Managing expectations is an ongoing battle. But winning the first battle is critical to making sure your prospect goes along with your processes and procedures – which will cut down on future hassles and speed up your ability to deliver a good finished product.

And it all starts with those tiny interactions, those first encounters, like scheduling. Get the prospect in the mindset of working with your process by using a tool like the Meetings app in HubSpot Sales to get your prospect to book time on your calendar.

2) They charge an upfront deposit.

Pay attention, creatives: This point is for you.

Creative services, as a whole, suck at sales. If you’re in the field, you probably do free work with the expectation that “ongoing work” or “referrals” will come your way (it almost never does).

Clients, who have about as much skill and experience in design as my pug Rudy, critique your pitch as if they’re Impressionist masters.

Now let’s contrast that initial sales process with an appliance repairman’s.

“We’d love to come out on this date and this time,” they tell you. Then, they inform you of an upfront deposit – just to get them to come out to your house.

And this deposit only covers a diagnosis. If they find and fix the problem, you can apply the full amount to your total payment due at the end.

But still, they won’t even lift a finger until you pay a deposit. Don’t like it? No soup for you!

Takeaway: Say “No” to Spec Work

No other industry does free spec work on the promise of a future, ongoing relationship.

While RFPs are (sometimes, but rarely) tolerable to a certain degree, going overboard on free mockups, wireframes, or ‘test’ campaigns only devalues your future services and further erodes pricing margins in the long run.

3) They always start with a diagnostic.

Asking for someone’s budget is a double-edged sword.

On the one hand, it helps you come up with different possible solutions to their problem.

On the other, the number you’re told is usually completely arbitrary. A department’s share of profit, or what the competition has quoted them, is not a good indicator of value.

Case in point: Development.

A client’s application has bugs. They want to get rid of them. They say they have a budget of $XXX.

Sounds great – so you invoice and get started. And it is great, until your developers get into the code of the website and recoil in horror.

The back end is a mess. Nothing works the way it’s supposed to. And your new client doesn’t understand why it’s taking twice as long (or going to cost twice as much) to fix these issues as you originally predicted.

The only real way to prevent getting yourself and your client into a similar scenario is to diagnose these problems upfront.

But if you don’t charge for this diagnostic work, it’s almost always rushed, haphazard, or skipped in order to hit that arbitrary deadline you’ve been given.

Contrast that behavior with the appliance repairman, who makes no. The only thing they’ll be able to do when they come to your home for that first visit is diagnose the problem. That’s it.

Takeaway: Always Diagnose Before Prescribing

Only after understanding the full extent of the problem can you begin to prescribe the solution.

“How long will this application take to fix?”

The answer’s not “Three weeks.” The answer is, “That depends on what we discover.” Discover, then go from there.

4) They sell convenience.

Only after I adhered to their schedule, paid an upfront deposit, and went through a diagnostic was the appliance repairman ready to make an official ruling.

The motor was worn out. He also just so happened to have said part on hand and could fix it immediately.

“You mean it can be fixed in a few minutes, before my wife gets home, and I’ll look like a hero?“ I asked. "Where do I sign?”

Value-based pricing sounds nice in theory. But what holds people back from effectively selling value is a lack of understanding what you’re selling.

Takeaway: Sell Value, Not Commoditized Widgets

How do you go from charging $2,000 for a website (or any other product) to $50,000 or even $100,000?

You sell a solution. Not a feature, a design, or a few lines of code.

You listen intently to what your prospect is struggling with – using website design as an example, usually something related to business objectives like increasing revenue or cutting costs – and you deliver a solution that makes or saves the company a lot more than it costs. And this lesson applies whether you’re selling a project, a service, or a product.

In the example analysis below, the salesperson has clearly broken out three different scenarios and calculated the monthly revenue increase the customer can expect to see as a result of each.

Source: Brad Smith

5) They are transparent about pricing.

Chances are, your clients have no idea what you’re doing for them.

They kind of get it from a high-level perspective.

But they don’t understand it from an in-the-weeds point of view. Even if they think they know all about SEO for example, they have no idea how challenging and time-consuming it is to tackle canonicalization problems on a large site with international visitors.

During the initial sales process then, you’re selling the invisible. A bunch of intangibles that are hard to grasp and understand.

Google “SEO services” and you’re bound to find someone who’ll guarantee a #1 ranking in one month for only $500.

There’s no way a client call tell the difference between that lunatic and you?

One thing jumps out … the price you’re both charging. Which makes it a race to the bottom.

Takeaway: Clearly Show How Price Relates to Value

That several-thousand-dollar proposal you emailed over will sound like it was pulled out of thin air to a client. An appliance repairman gives you a detailed pricing breakdown, with the upfront price (Read: Cash, not NET60) easy to see and understand – even for a layperson like me.

Source: Brad Smith

6) They build profits into their price.

Tell me if this sounds familiar.

You’re trying to lock up a new project, so you send a message to a member of your team to give you an hourly estimate for this work so you can apply your rate and send over a quote to the client by end of day.

He tells you, 200 hours. So you multiply that by your project rate of $100/hour, hit "Enter,” and throw it on a proposal.

Here’s the problem. This number doesn’t take into account project management, time to meet with the client, implementation time, and so forth. It’s also not taking into account all of the tools and software it takes to complete a successful implementation.

Takeaway: Charge What You’re Really Worth

Remember that overhead, labor, and profit are supposed to be accounted for in your hourly rate or product price. So don’t immediately fold on a discount or reduce your hourly rate just to win the business.

My appliance repairman charged $200 for less than one hour worth of work.

Remember that the next time a client tells you $100 an hour “sounds too high.”

7) They seed their next appointment.

The only thing you can count on with appliances is that they’ll break. Probably sooner rather than later. So what happens the next time?

You start Googling local keyphrases. You read blog posts about the problem. You go to Yelp.

This, my friends, is the purchasing occasion. It’s the moment that motivates someone enough to pick up the phone.

Reverse-engineer the steps people take to find you to determine where you should start promoting, marketing, and prospecting for more customers. Then coordinate your own sales efforts to match up with those activities.

Take appliances as an example. Those companies place a sticker in the upper right-hand corner of your appliance that reminds you who to call each and every time you use the thing.

Source: Brad Smith

Takeaway: Perform Simple Actions to Generate Repeat Purchases

A timely notification or update like the one below is an example of an in-product reminder that prospects should upgrade or buy something new.

Source: Brad Smith

Keep yourself top-of-mind with reminders, check-ins, and continuing pieces of information that add value to your prospect’s life.

Smart people tend to over-intellectualize things. We memorize all the closing techniques. We study all the tips, tactics, tools, and hacks we can find.

But at the end of the day, some of the best sales lessons are sitting right in front of us in plain sight.

They’re being practiced and delivered by professionals: People who have been in the game and around the block more times than we can count.

When you watch what they’re doing, notice that it’s not overly complex or sophisticated. It’s basic. The simpler, the better. They’re executing a well-worn process with confidence.

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How to Craft a LinkedIn InMail That Gets Results

I’ll admit it – I love LinkedIn. It’s one of the few places online where I feel mostly shielded from unwanted interactions.

Ironically, most of us are on LinkedIn to make connections that will help us to advance the goals of our companies, and of course, to improve our own careers.

So here’s the catch: How can you achieve your own, admittedly self-interested objectives, without sending people communications they don’t want to receive? Welcome to InMails, the internal messages you can send to people on LinkedIn who are not directly connected to you (not yet anyway).

Why LinkedIn InMails Work

At first glance, an InMail might seem like any other message you can send to someone on social media, but here are four reasons it’s actually quite different.

1. The sender gets context about the recipient. The more you know about your audience, the better you can target your communication for their needs. Using the information in a person’s profile enables you to craft a highly relevant and targeted InMail that will have a better chance of appealing to them.
2. The sender gives the recipient context, too. When you contact someone, no matter how you do so, it’s important to convey credibility. When you reach out using InMail, you’re enabling your recipient to easily access more details about who you are by simply clicking on your LinkedIn profile. This puts them in control and enables them to get more information and decide if you’re worthy of a response.
3. The sender is reaching out in a business context. When people are checking their InMail, they are usually wearing their business hat. This fact alone makes it a better environment to use for business-related messages than most social media channels. The person receiving your InMail already has an expectation that your message to them will be business-related in nature.
4. InMails are scarce by design. Even with a paid LinkedIn account, users cannot send InMails willy-nilly – each user gets a specific number of InMails to use per month. This limited quantity has two benefits. First, the recipient takes the message more seriously because they know they were likely hand-selected instead of mass-mailed. Second, the sender will be more deliberate about who they send messages to, which will inherently boost message quality.

Notice a theme here? LinkedIn InMails are great because of the built-in advantages of context and scarcity, which improves and enhances communication in general, and certainly in business settings.

Can a Simple Little InMail Really Help Me?

Yes, it can. I’ve used InMails for various purposes, and can attest that they deliver powerful results when used the right way. Here are three types of InMails you should know about, and use.

1) The “Come Work With Us” InMail

Working with recruiters can be frustrating for many businesses. Not only does your company have to fork out a lot of money for recruiting services, but I’ve found that recruiters can sometimes unintentionally muddy communication between the hiring manager and the candidate. There are good headhunters out there, but in general, I’ve always had better luck finding candidates who come to me through referrals from people within my own network.

When I am looking to fill job openings, I often go onto LinkedIn to search for candidates through my connections. A few months ago, when I was trying to find someone to help me with SEO, I did a search for candidates using the “Advanced Search” feature, looking for people who lived within a drivable radius of the office, and typing in key skills I felt were important, such as “white hat” and “content strategy.” Lo and behold, I came across a guy who seemed to have the perfect profile.

Here is the InMail I sent to him:

Here are a few pointers you can take away from this InMail:

1. Keep it brief. My InMail was only six sentences long. Get to the point quickly and tell the recipient why you are reaching out to them, ideally in the very first line of the message. Remember, they are probably reading the InMail on their phone and might not ever open it again. A short message makes it easy for the other person to respond to you, also with a short reply.
2. Emphasize common ground. Establish a shared purpose with your recipient – one that is genuine, not fake. I could tell from the content on the candidate’s profile that he was a true believer in ethical SEO techniques, which is very important to me, too. I also mentioned his background in linguistics, because I thought this was another sign of potential synergy.
3. Lead with them, not you. Notice that the entire first paragraph, and most of the message in the example above, is all about the recipient. There was only one sentence out of six where I mentioned the company, and even then, it was to convey the benefits we could offer to the candidate.
4. Make it highly personalized. Yes, my reference to candy and the Simpsons might have been a little, err, corny, but I happen to like both, and I wanted to connect in a more personal way with someone who seemed like a fun, cool person to work with. That can set the tone for a joyful working relationship in the future. It’s fine to go there, as long as you don’t sound like a stalker or pretend to be something you’re not.

So, did it work? InMail success! The candidate actually gave me props on the creativity of the outreach. Sadly, he didn’t want to make a career move just yet, so my dreams of debating the merits of the rel=canonical tag while munching on candy corn to a Simpsons soundtrack were dashed. However, my belief in the power of InMails was justly reinforced, because he referred me to some other candidates.

2) The “Crazy Big Ask” InMail

This type of InMail is one you’ll have to use sparingly. I’ll admit, before I tried it, even I had never considered using an InMail to request something really big and audacious. Glad I tried, because it resulted in a book deal with a major publisher.

But lest this sound a little too easy, first, a bit of background.

I had an idea for a book I had been pitching through an agent to no avail. Frustrated, I ended the agent-author relationship. Then one evening, I wondered if I might have better luck by reaching out to an editor to make my case directly.

I began searching for editors at major publishing houses, again using Advanced Search on LinkedIn. After locating each editor’s profile on LinkedIn, I also researched them online to learn more. What kinds of books did they publish? Were they on Twitter? What did others say about them? Did they have a sense of humor? (I didn’t want an editor who was too stodgy or old-school. Writing a book is a big commitment, and I wanted it to be fun.)

After finding an editor who fit the bill, I sent her this four-sentence InMail:

Wordsmiths: How Translators Are Changing Civilization

April 27, 2011, 10:09 PM

Dear Marian,

I write on language issues for the Huffington Post and for a popular blog on translation with more than 30,000 subscribers. My latest book, Wordsmiths, will show how translators are helping humanity move from the “information age” to the “information transformation age.” Much like blacksmiths enabled the Industrial Revolution, wordsmiths are creating a new kind of revolution. Do you think the book might be a good fit for you? I’m happy to share more details.

Thank you,

Nataly

She replied and said she would love to learn more and provided me with her email address, that signal in business networking that says, “Let’s take this to the next level.” Ding-ding-ding! I gave her a longer pitch via email, and from there she requested a proposal. The rest is history.

When making a “crazy big ask,” something you dream of but probably don’t really expect to become a reality, here are some things you can borrow from my experience:

1. Choose the recipient with great care. If I had sent an InMail to every editor I could find on LinkedIn, I would not have had the same success. Not only that, but LinkedIn would have locked my account for spamming people. Don’t make the mistake of sending out large volumes of InMails thinking that it will boost your chance of success. Quality trumps quantity here. I hand-picked the recipients based not just on their title and company, but on their online personality.
2. Show the value. Not many publishers will take an author seriously unless they have credibility and a platform of readers. I made the value clear to Marian from the start. Before you write your InMail, ask yourself: What does the other person need that I can offer? How are they compensated? What will get them promoted? How can I help them succeed at their job?
3. Make it memorable. Editors get pitched all the time, as do most people that you’d want to contact to achieve a big, wild dream. I had to appeal to her desire as an editor to work on a project that is unique and interesting. “What do translators and blacksmiths have in common?” Probably not the same pitch she hears every day.
4. Don’t be daunted. It can be scary to send an InMail to a powerful person, but remember, they probably have more in common with you than you realize. Take a cue from writers or salespeople. Those of us who’ve worked in these professions have learned not to take rejection personally. So long as you are authentic in your outreach, there is no reason to feel embarrassed, no matter how famous or important the recipient may seem to you. Be the squeaky wheel that gets the oil.

3) The “Let Me Offer You Some Specialized Help” InMail

This is my favorite type of LinkedIn InMail, and the one I send most frequently. If there’s a connection or influencer I have my eye on, I simply reach out to offer them something I am uniquely prepared to help them with. In marketing terms, this might be considered your “first touch,” in which you’re simply making them aware you exist along with the “brand attributes” they should associate with you as a person. And, as with everything in marketing and sales, it’s always important to include an offer to lead them to the next step.

What should you offer? I generally advise against using an InMail to offer people giveaway items or “free gifts,” because this can come across as too brash. (Exceptions: Candy corn and Simpsons-related items.) The best offers consist of things that they can’t easily get anywhere else, such as your time and expertise.

Also, don’t forget to mention in your InMail that you’re willing to help other people in their company, or that you’d like to contribute to causes they care about or volunteer for. This helps the other person view you as not only someone who is willing to serve, but who really cares about the greater good of that person’s team, business, and the other things that motivate them in work, and in life.

Here is an example of a “helpful” InMail that I sent to connect with a fellow marketer:

Here are some things to take away from this InMail example:

1. Summarize in the subject line. To get a busy person to open your InMail, give it a subject line that clearly conveys what you have to offer. My subject line for Joe was simple: “In case you ever need a global content SME … ” Whatever you do, don’t use the dreaded guilt-inducing subject line, such as “Trying to get in touch with you again.” Making the recipient feel like they owe you something is definitely not a good way to start a relationship.
2. Read their profile. All of it. I had no idea that Joe majored in Spanish until I got to the very bottom of his profile on LinkedIn. How often have you stopped reading a profile after scanning the Work Experience section? If you’re crafting a targeted message for an InMail, make use of those little glimmers on a profile that give you a connection to someone. This shows that you care more about them as people than just about where they happen to currently work. That makes you more credible and likely to get a response.
3. Build on other interactions. I had mentioned Joe in a tweet the week before sending the InMail, when quotes from both of us were featured on a calendar published by the American Marketing Association (AMA). He responded to me on Twitter, so I wanted to build on that interaction further by extending it into another social channel where I would have a few more characters available. Whenever someone connects with you in some other way – via phone, in person, or online – use this opportunity to connect with them via LinkedIn right away, while you’re still fresh in their mind.
4. Show your personality. I knew that Joe got a kick out of the fact that the AMA calendar had spelled his name wrong (hey, we’re not judging … everyone is allowed a typo now and then). So, I joked about it with him again in my InMail, as I was pretty sure he’d remember it. Don’t be afraid to show the other person who you really are and display a tasteful sense of humor, even if you can be a bit of a cheeseball at times (guilty as charged).
5. Take a real interest in their work. Be careful not to kiss up to the recipient of your InMail or praise them in a way that’s artificial. However, a genuine compliment never hurts. In this case, simply mentioning the recent post that Joe’s team produced made it clear to him that I follow and appreciate the work he and his team are doing. I didn’t have to get all schmoozy-woozy.

“And to Think It All Started With an InMail … ”

You never know where an attempt to build a relationship will lead, but an InMail is often a great first step. Sometimes, the best results come from doing something so simple that it’s easy to overlook: genuinely taking an interest in others and reaching out to help them.

No matter how complex they may seem, business relationships are ultimately built on relationships between individuals. So, simply focus on how you can offer something of genuine value to the person you’d like to connect with. Do that one simple thing, and whether your outreach takes place via a LinkedIn InMail or some other channel, you’ll see results come back to you that are far better than you probably ever expected.

Editor’s note: This post was originally published in May 2015 and has been updated for accuracy and freshness.

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How Can Small Businesses/Websites Compete with Big Players in SEO? - Whiteboard Friday

Posted by randfish

It may seem like an impossible uphill battle to compete with big sites in the SERPs, but there are benefits to running a smaller site that can make a tremendous difference to your SEO. In today’s Whiteboard Friday, Rand explains how small businesses and websites can target opportunities the big sites can’t, in spite of their natural advantages.

Click on the whiteboard image above to open a high-resolution version in a new tab!

Video Transcription

Howdy, Moz fans, and welcome to another edition of Whiteboard Friday. This week we’re going to chat about how you, as a small site, could compete against big sites.

Big site advantages

Now look, big sites in SEO have some big advantages. Those include things like:

• Domain authority
• Quantity and diversity of the links that are coming to them, which bias engines to generally rank their content higher than they ordinarily might if it were on a brand-new site or a smaller site that they didn’t recognize.
• Trustworthiness. They’ve built brand associations in the space through advertising and through their size and scale and their reputation over time and over years that means that people have these biases towards trusting that brand, liking that brand, buying from that brand.
• Financial resources that likely you are not going to have as a small website. If we’re talking about Expedia here versus randstravels.com, they have tens if not hundreds of millions of dollars that they can put towards their web marketing efforts and their SEO efforts, and I have, well, my bad self.
• Ability to invest if and usually not just if, but if and when, if and when something is a major priority. If it’s not the case that something is a major priority, then Expedia is probably not going to invest in that, and this is where a lot of your advantages come from.

Small site advantages

So as a small website:

• Nimbleness. You can choose to say, “Here are all the things we could be investing in right now, and you know what, this is the highest priority right now,” and a week later decide this is no longer the highest priority. We’re going to change direction and go pursue this instead. You don’t have to check with a manager or a team or a boss. You don’t have three layers of management that you have to run that approval process through. You can be extremely nimble. Small teams can get remarkable amounts done in small amounts of time compared to much larger teams.
• Creativity. You are allowed to go outside the boundaries of what’s been set. If you have an idea, you can execute on it. If you have an idea at Expedia, you need to get a lot of approval before you can go after it, and you better make sure that all of the rest of your work is done, too.
• Focus. As a small business, you can choose to focus your web marketing efforts on one specific thing. So if you know that SEO is where all of your opportunity lies, you can ignore your other web marketing channels, you can ignore retargeting for a few weeks, you can ignore your PPC accounts for a few weeks and simply focus on SEO. At Expedia, a marketing manager is going to have a long list of things that they need to do that they are responsible for, and they can’t simply ignore all their duties to focus on something new.
• Niche appeal. So yes, Expedia built up their brand around travel, and they have associations around hotels and flights and bookings and all this kind of stuff. But you can choose to take a small slice of those for your particular business and say, “We’re going to focus exclusively on this, and we’re going to become the authority in this particular niche,” which gives you a bunch of advantages that we’ll talk about.
• Authenticity on your side. So a big brand will often have big brand associations. A smaller brand can build very strong positive associations with, granted, a smaller audience, but you don’t need to monetize as many or as fast or as directly as a big brand needs to. You can concentrate on building your brand’s appeal to your very specific niche. If you monetize them well enough over time, you can build a great business, a small business but a great small business.

5 ways to compete

So, five ways to compete.

1. Target keywords the big sites are unwilling, unable, or so far aren’t trying to compete on.

First off let’s talk about keywords. So in the SEO keyword universe, there are going to be keywords that a big brand, like in this example Expedia, is unwilling, unable, or has chosen not to target yet because they have an indirect path to ROI or legal issues or PR issues. Those can be things like:

• Long-tail keywords. So maybe Expedia is definitely targeting something like “Istanbul city guide,” but they are definitely not targeting something like “best shops to visit in Istanbul’s Grand Bazaar.” By the way, I looked that up, and I could not find a great list. So if someone wants to make a list of those, that would be real handy because the Grand Bazaar, very hard to find things.
• Comparison keywords. So Expedia can’t go after their competitors’ brand names, and they certainly wouldn’t choose generally to compare themselves to another brand. So Venere flights versus Expedia flights, they’re just not going to have a page on that. But you can have a page on that, and you can compare those things to each other. That’s an advantage that a small website is going to have over a larger one.
• Editorial keywords. So Expedia has business relationships with a lot of different hotels. Therefore, it is not in their interest to rank hotels in a particular locale from 1 to 10 or from 1 to 100. As a small website, you don’t have that constraint, and you can go after those types of keywords that your bigger competitors bias against doing, and that can be very powerful as well.

2. Aim for authority and brand association in a very specific niche

So like we talked about, Expedia is focused on travel. But Rand’s Travels can focus on city-specific itineraries or ranking travel destinations or some other thin slice of a niche that Expedia can’t build that same brand equity in.

3. Pursue indirect/harder-to-monetize content

So Expedia knows that they’re generally pursuing not just keywords, but content that helps people buy directly from Expedia, and they’re going to be looking at that path to conversion. But you might say, “I don’t care if it takes three visits or four visits or five visits for someone to convert. I want to build trust. I want to build authority in my niche. Therefore, I can go after content that Expedia would not go after.” They might be hotels, flights, cars, and cities. You might be recommended websites and travel education and news and tactics and tips and neighborhoods.

4. Go deeper and provide more value with content than what your big competition can afford to scale

You can invest more in a single piece of content than Expedia or a big brand ever could. So when you take your small niche and you say this keyword or this set of keywords is extremely important to me. This search intent is extremely important. I’m going to create 10x content. I’m going to put 10 times more effort and energy and resources into building that than what my big brand competitor can do. If they are a two-star resource, I’m going to be a five-star resource.

5. Build relationships 1-on-1 that big competition will never invest in

In addition to that element of building better content, you can also build better, more direct relationships with the people you need those relationships with. So Expedia goes through their PR team, and they have their teams of folks that do their relationships. But you can go direct. You can say, “I’m Rand’s Travels. I’m going to go meet with people in Istanbul while I’m there and forge those relationships personally and build those relationships up on social media and have conversations and leave blog comments, and that will reinforce my authenticity and my niche appeal.”

That’s a huge advantage as well, and that can help to amplify the reach of your content and to get you visibility on these keywords and this content that your competitors simply can’t touch because they’re too big. They need to do this stuff at scale. When you need to do things at scale, you simply can’t focus in the same way, and that’s where your big advantages come from as a small website.

Now, looking forward to our comments and hearing more from you about how you’ve been able to compete against the big guys, and we’ll see you again next week for another edition of Whiteboard Friday. Take care.

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14 Signs Your Sales Email Is Actually Spam

Even if you have a steady stream of inbound sales leads surging into the pipeline, odds are, you’ll have to supplement your funnel from time to time with outbound prospecting. And that’s totally fine … if you go about it in the right way, that is.

Sales emails, when written well and sent to the right people, can be incredibly effective tools to generate new customers. But when they’re written poorly and devoid of value, nothing prompts recipients to flag a message as spam faster.

Sending valuable, customized, personalized sales emails is a legitimate sales tactic. Blasting out spam is not. So how can you tell if a cold sales email actually spam? Use these 14 signs to make the call.

How to Tell if Your Sales Email Is Warm Outreach or Spam

1) The email doesn’t use the recipient’s first name.

We’ve all gotten emails addressed to “Hi [prospect]” or “Dear Sir or Madam.” Did you read the rest of the message? I didn’t either.

Failing to use the recipient’s first name is a dead giveaway that this email was not intended solely for them. If you’re working from an email template, double and triple check that you’ve filled in the correct name at the top, or risk getting sent to the spam graveyard.

2) The email offers nothing of value.

“My company is great. Let me tell you all about it. We do W, X, Y, and even Z.”

Um … and this is relevant to me how?

Never send a sales email to a prospect without including something that will be valuable to them, such as a piece of content, an introduction to someone they would benefit from knowing, or a helpful tip.

3) The email is not personalized in the slightest.

You’re on LinkedIn, right? Good. (If you’re not, stop reading this blog post and join right now. Seriously.)

LinkedIn offers up a wealth of knowledge about your prospects for the taking. You have no excuse to go into a cold email totally cold. Grab a few tidbits from the prospect’s social media profiles and call them out in your message to show you’ve done your homework.

4) The email contains no customization.

Personalization pertains to the person – their job, their goals, what they share on social, and so on. Customization, on the other hand, revolves around the prospect’s company and industry. What’s happening at their organization? What trends are shaping their industry? What are the major priorities of their department or business unit?

An email that only addresses the prospect’s business in bland generalities won’t strike them as particularly relevant. Take time to research the company and tailor your value proposition specifically to the organization’s needs.

5) The email is just an ask.

“Hi. Do you have time for a 30-minute meeting?”

Hmm. Let me think about that. Considering what I know about said meeting and the value you promised I would get out of it, I’m gonna go with no.

Don’t be lazy. Yes, the ask is your email’s punchline, but it can’t be the entire message. Make it clear why the prospect should spend their precious time on you, or they won’t give your request a second thought as it disappears into Spam Canyon.

6) The email is solely about your company.

Remember your mother’s sage advice about not talking about yourself too much? Yeah, that applies here. If your email is just one long advertisement for your company, your recipient has no reason to care. Make it about them, not you.

7) The email is sent to a large list of people at once.

Nothing says “Do business with me because I’ll give you a personalized buying experience” like sending a cold sales email to every single lead in your pipeline. Yikes.

And don’t think you’re being clever by putting everyone on BCC. Buyers know what that means. Mass emails smack of spam, plain and simple.

8) The email is riddled with typos and grammatical errors.

“I can insure you’ll get the bset service youve ever experenced plus we have a discount running right now for …………. 50% OFF!!!!!!”

Just typing that sentence made my writerly heart hurt a little. You can imagine how a message positively dripping with poor grammar and misspelled words will come off to your buyers. Spoiler alert: not good.

9) You send the email to a person who doesn’t resemble your target buyer in the slightest.

Maybe you’ve crafted a beautifully customized sales email template specifically targeted to companies in the technology industry.

So … why are you sending it to a prospect who works in education?

It’s a no-brainer – people don’t want irrelevant information. Why would they? Keep this in mind, and only contact prospects who closely match your ideal customer profile.

10) The subject line contains spammy words.

“Earn Extra Cash While You Sleep”

“Dear Friend”

“F R E E Will Not Believe Your Eyes!”

I bet you couldn’t wait to open emails with these subject lines. </sarcasm>

Certain words and phrases set off spam triggers. If you’re using any or several of them in your subject line, your email might not even reach your recipient’s inbox. For a complete list of spammy words to avoid, check out this post.

11) The subject line is misleading.

Remember that even if your message makes it past the spam filter, prospects still have the power to mark it as spam in their inbox. And when do people mark something as spam? When the sender makes them mad.

Inserting a false “Re:” or “Fwd:” in your subject line when you’ve never contacted the prospect before is deceptive, and can invoke recipients’ ire. Other headers that fall into this category are those like “Long time no talk” or “We should catch up.”

If you don’t know the person, don’t act like you do. You might lull them into a false sense of familiarity for a second, but this will quickly turn into anger when they realize your cheap trickery.

12) The email contains words and/or sentences that have been obviously copied and pasted.

Here I’m talking about sentences that all of a sudden switch fonts or color. Here’s an example:

You think this is a template that the salesperson customized? Just maybe.

Again, using templated emails is a smart move, but make sure the email looks uniform.

13) You copied and pasted the entire email.

Templates and scripts are not the same thing. Templates provide a starting point for salespeople to build on and contain areas that need to be customized. Scripts are blocks of text that salespeople simply copy and paste over, and over, and over again.

No two buyers are the same, so there’s simply no way you’re providing value to anyone if your email prospecting consists of sending the same message to everybody.

14) The email is only a link.

Clicking on suspicious links is a surefire way to get a computer virus. That said, a sales message that’s just a link looks awfully spammy:

“Hi! http://ift.tt/1I49CzA.”

You might be directing the prospect to the most helpful resource in the world, but there’s zero chance they’re going to check it out if you don’t put in the effort to explain what it is and how it will help them. And by the way – if it won’t help them? Don’t send it at all. 

If you’re ever in doubt as to whether your sales email is spam or not, use this simple rule of thumb. If your email isn’t customized enough to be sent to one person and only that person, it’s straddling the spam line. Go back and personalize until the email is as unique as your prospect herself.

Editor’s note: This post was originally published in July 2015 and has been updated for comprehensiveness and accuracy.

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