SELLING TODAY

Hire an ‘Ever-Blooming Rose’

BY TOM WEBER

Employees and culture are two of the most important assets a company can build upon. Hiring new executives, who are integral to developing both, is never an easy task! How many times have you seen one of these scenarios? A newly hired executive almost immediately makes a positive impact on the company. On the other side of the coin is the new executive who creates more turmoil and upheaval than is good for a company.

Hiring the right people is one of the most strategic, cost-saving, and value-producing practices a company can implement. Th e goal is to hire that “ever-blooming rose” that rejuvenates themself and others and adds great value as they blossom in their role. Th e diff erential is the selection process of these strategic executives. It is not an easy task to fi nd the executive who is a perfect fi t for a role. It requires a unique set of skills of those who are fi nding the candidates and of those who are in the hiring progression.

Few companies actually have a complete, defi ned recruiting process that includes every person involved in the decision. Th e fi rst requirement is to truly understand the needs of the company, the defi nition of success in the position, and the appropriate skill sets required for the role. While this sounds simple, this procedure many times is quickly homogenized to get a job brief written and candidates into the pipeline. Next is to have everyone involved in the process agree to the needs to be fulfi lled and the skill sets required. Often during an interview process, those interviewing have diff erent viewpoints on the issues and the best skills for creating solutions.

A recruiter must have a strong grasp of the company culture and the requirements for the role. Understanding culture goes a long way in the ability to transition the correct type of executive into a role. It would be of great value if they had actual experience in retail, the position, and the type of company. Th ey need to understand the grassroots culture that allows the company to be successful. Defi ne the culture on paper, and create questions that identify the characteristics of a candidate who would be a good fi t. A strong candidate must know the basic elements such as daily decision-making and, on a higher level, have the talents needed for long-term success in the role. Create a detailed job brief that, through the overview and requirements, immediately defi nes a clear pathway for the proper candidates to be determined. Initially, one has to search out those who have the skills on paper. Once accomplished, prepare a list of questions that lead the dialogue beyond a candidate’s resumé history and into an understanding of their true skill sets, desires, and fi t into the culture.

Have discussions with the hiring manager and the team who will be interviewing the candidate. Make sure everyone is concentrating on the same elements when interviewing. Creating a set of leading questions for the interviewers, which again delves beyond the candidate’s resumé, can be of great help. Do allow for independent questions to occur where needed. Don’t make fi rst-impression or gut decisions as to the quality of a candidate. Take your time and control the interview so no one is hawking the company and candidates do not oversell themselves. Th is is a matching of needs and skills. You need to be looking for the best solution for each party. Consider follow-up interviews with a diff erent set of questions, including a few that have already been asked of the candidate. Confi rm that the original decision was the correct one.

Th is is a broad overview of the methodology in a strong hiring process. Th ere are many more detailed elements, but this aff ords you some insight into the opportunities and needs of hiring the correct executives. Create a set of recruiting and interview procedures that bring forward candidates who can be “blooming roses” and deliver strong value to your company and its continual positive cultural growth. 

Tom Weber is president of WeberSource LLC and is AICC’s folding carton and rigid box technical advisor. Contact Tom directly at asktom@aiccbox.org.

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Strategies to Increase Website Leads

BY TODD M. ZIELINSKI AND LISA BENSON

It is not a secret that buyers conduct self-directed online research and have short-listed their choice of vendors before ever speaking with a salesperson. This is why it is more important than ever to ensure you have a solid inbound marketing strategy so customers can find you—not only find you but be motivated to contact you. Inbound marketing should be combined with outbound marketing as part of your overall marketing strategy to see the greatest impact.

Inbound and Outbound Marketing Explained

As you know, when referring to sales and marketing, we are talking about activities and processes that go into converting a sale. Sales and marketing activities can be further broken into inbound and outbound, which have been characterized as pull and push marketing, respectively.

Inbound marketing involves the activities and processes that pull prospects to you, usually through your website. It can be summed up as a process of attracting, nurturing, and converting leads. This is more passive as you are not reaching out directly to a specific person. You are targeting a persona, i.e., a semi-fictional representation of your target customer, with specific strategies to encourage people fitting this persona to contact you. Your inbound marketing strategy will include search engine optimization (SEO) of your website and content, social media, and tactics that help a prospect who needs corrugated products find your relevant content.

Outbound marketing includes activities and processes that push information to your prospects—phone calls, voicemails, emails, direct mail, etc. These are typically directed at specific individuals. Outbound marketing can be used in parallel with inbound (i.e., reaching out to individuals or companies that fit your target profile), but it also complements it. Once marketing leads come in through your website, you need outbound activities to convert them to sales-qualified leads and then to a sale. This article will not go into outbound marketing too deeply, other than to iterate the importance of following up with inbound leads.

Importance of Inbound Marketing

When done correctly and used as a component of an overall marketing strategy, inbound marketing is an effective method for increasing your lead flow. Inbound marketing reaches audiences interested in the types of products you sell.

There are several stages in a buyer’s journey—awareness, consideration, and decision. As prospects search the internet for solutions (awareness), they are more likely to find you if you have implemented current best-practice inbound marketing strategies. This can be done with content on your site or off-site, for example, through social media. As they acquire more information from several vendors and learn what each offers (consideration), your content that explains your competitive advantage and addresses their pains can help lead them to a decision. Inbound marketing is used to reach prospects at each stage of the buyer’s journey.

Elements of an Effective Inbound Marketing Strategy

It is important to note that inbound marketing is not a set-it-and-forget-it method for generating leads. The buyer’s journey is evidence that a strong web presence is vital. However, building a flashy new website and walking away are not enough to keep a flow of relevant leads coming to your website. The following several ways buyers can land on your site must be considered when developing your strategy: • A direct search is when they enter your URL directly into the browser. • A referral is when they arrive at your site from a backlink, which is when another site, like a trade show page, links to your site. • An organic search is when they use a search engine, type in keywords (such as “cardboard boxes in Wisconsin”), and click on one of your webpages that appear in the results. Remember, people don’t always know the correct terminology, and as painful as it might be, your content should use the terms people use in their searches. • Other types include social, pay-perclick (paid links), and email links.

Encouraging buyers to come to your site is achieved through SEO. This means optimizing your website and content for search engines, such as Google, to find your content, trust your content, and deliver it as a top result. This doesn’t happen overnight and takes continual work.

As a side note, we talk about Google instead of some of the lesser search engines because Google has 83% of the global market, according to Statistica. Google has begun prioritizing content quality related to search queries, so the changes made to your site based on its recommendations will likely enhance results on other search engines, such as Bing and Yahoo.

Updating Content Is Key

You first need a strong website, which includes being optimized for load speed, URL structure, site hierarchy, images,