Your website is the foundation of your business. Studies show that it only takes 1/10^th of a second to form a first impression about a person, and websites are no different. Site visitors form an opinion about your website within 50 milliseconds of landing on your page and decide whether to stay or leave.

That said, it’s no surprise that having a website with poor user experience sets your business up for lost opportunity and wrong first impressions.

Unfortunately, our team at LeadG2 and The Center for Sales Strategy (CSS) won't be sharing a Thanksgiving Day meal together, but if we were, there would be a lot of thankfulness passed around the table, such as:

• Our incredible company culture 
• Our proven set of services that continue to empower B2B organizations 
• Our growing list of clients and organizations we serve 
• The amazing growth LeadG2 and CSS has experienced within the last year 
• Our people

As we celebrate Thanksgiving Day in the U.S., we reflect on the good things in our lives and enjoy the precious time with family and friends. And since we can't carve the turkey together, we're taking this opportunity to virtually say 'thank you' to our team and to brag about our company culture and our clients.

In today’s market, two of the biggest differentiators for success in sales are based on sales coaching and sales innovation. The most successful salespeople are multi-talented, with their greatest differentiators being knowledge and professional development.

Proactive sales coaching is vital to sales teams because of a well-known principle in the field of psychology known as self-serving bias. Self-serving bias is defined as people’s tendency to attribute positive events to their own character but attribute negative events to external factors.

Salespeople with a self-serving bias will not ask for coaching, or don’t feel the need for further innovation because they don’t think anything is wrong. Additionally, there are six other biases stopping salespeople from closing sales.

Choosing the right inbound marketing agency isn’t something an organization should take lightly, as there are a lot of really great options out there (especially when it comes to HubSpot partners). However, not all agencies are created equal—and even ones who are equally effective might not be the right fit for your business.

Most marketing agencies will be on top of their game, claiming to have mastered digital marketing services. The claim may be valid, but beware, there's a fine line between trendy and truthful. Website design, email marketing, and social media campaigns are all fundamental services of inbound marketing agencies; however, they're just simply marketing tactics. To effectively implement inbound marketing, you need an agency with a comprehensive, strategic program in place. 

If you’ve ever been to a comedy club, you’ve seen at least one improv performance. This is where actors make up a scene, completely on the fly, often using suggestions provided by the audience. This popular form of entertainment tickles the funny bone and allows audience members to blow off steam.

Creating good improv is more complicated than it looks—but at its core is the power of Yes, and…It’s this simple phrase that gives this actor’s tool the potential to boost your business.  

This concept alone has immense value in business. Yes, and... keeps the door open for more conversation, shows agreement, and demonstrates an interest in problem-solving. Think of how powerful it would be if you had to find a way to agree in every meeting or negotiation. Instead of shutting down the conversation, you would be open to listening, seeking common ground, and collaborating. 

Before making any significant purchasing decisions, we’re willing to bet that you do some extensive online research. That includes browsing websites, images, and social media accounts, but most importantly, it means you’re reading reviews.

With that said, the power of reviews should never be underestimated. There will never be a better marketer for your company than your satisfied clients and consumers. Sharing real experiences helps deliver on your brand’s promise, but positive reviews also bring what other marketing efforts just can’t.

However, reviews can easily make or break a brand. How can you encourage satisfied clients and customers to share their positive experiences online for the world to view?

It’s every salesperson’s biggest challenge. How to get in front of more qualified decision-makers.

Everyone needs more opportunities going into the top of the funnel, and the first step in filling the funnel is securing that first introductory/discovery call or meeting. Life is good when our calendars are filled with new prospects who’ve agreed to carve out 30 minutes of their time. However, all too often, salespeople’s calendars have large swaths of empty space.     

So, what if there was a way to have appointments with your target decision-makers just show up on your calendar? Better yet, what if these appointments rarely cancelled because the day and time was selected by the prospect? In fact, it’s the prospect who initiates the idea of the appointment all together! And, what if these appointments didn’t require any cold calling by an outsourced call center or you? Sounds great, right?   

As recent as 10 years ago, marketers wouldn’t have used the terms ‘inbound’ and ‘outbound’ to differentiate marketing strategies and tactics. Marketing all fell under one umbrella, and the idea of separating the two was really just in its infancy in many ways.

Because of the vastness of the internet and its ability to connect people to any kind of information they want at any given moment, it has become important to understand not only the differences between these traditional, outbound methods of advertising and promotion, and the newer—largely digital—inbound strategies, but also how these two types of marketing can work together.

As inbound marketers, we work really hard to generate leads for our salespeople. We labor away at content revisions, review analytics and trends, optimize for SEO, schedule tweets and posts, and do everything in our power to get qualified visitors to the site to ultimately convert into leads. 

But what happens when a lead comes in, goes through the sales funnel, and your salespeople make critical mistakes that jeopardize your chance of closing the deal?

Your salespeople could be wasting your hard earned inbound leads by not following up correctly, often enough, or at all. Keep reading, we have a solution! 

As the economy heats up and businesses are growing, business leaders are seeking ways to take advantage of market opportunities and maximize their revenue growth potential. They’re renewing their focus on core competencies and eliminating distractions wherever possible. They can’t afford to devote their most valuable resource – time – to things like processing payroll and managing human resource policies. 

There’s no doubt that these are important tasks, and there are significant risks associated with neglecting or taking short-cuts in these areas. But no entrepreneur starts their business dreaming of someday shopping for the most cost-effective healthcare benefits. 

They would rather solve customers’ problems, build their brands, and grow their revenue. Therefore, more and more companies are choosing to outsource these human resources tasks and functions to professional employer organizations (PEOs) and human resource outsources (HROs).