Cuppa PressJul 10, 2020
A Beginner's Guide to Sales Enablement
What does a hip nightclub have to do with Sales Enablement?
Are you calling yourself an Enablement team when you're in fact a Marketing team?
What does success look like in Sales Enablement?
Melissa Madian, founder of TMM Enablement Services and author of Enabler? I Hardly Know Her joined us on Cuppa Press recently to answer all of this and more.
Time Stamp:
00.46 - Sales enablement as an everyday concept
02.37 - The sales enablement equation
04.34 - Key traits of a sales enablement leader
07.32 - Sales enablement in an SMB vs an enterprise
09.03 - The need for a dedicated sales enablement team
10.54 - Getting started with sales enablement and the three pillars of sales enablement
12.38 - Common mistakes in sales enablement
14.37 - What success looks like in sales enablement
17.56 - A common misconception about sales enablement
19.11 - Helpful sales enablement resources
Differentiation Hot Takes
If asked about trashy differentiation tricks that are touted as best practices, most people might hold back.
But Peep Laja is not most people. Having spearheaded brands such as CXL and Wynter, Peep steamed out hot takes one after the other, without holding back.
"Differentiation has somehow become something you can sprinkle on top. So you're a SaaS company. And then you turn to your marketer or your copywriter and say, ‘Hey, can you add some differentiation on top?’ That doesn't work.
Differentiation is not a line of copy.
It starts with your actual DNA of what your company is about and how it behaves,” he started.
Makes sense, but how do you do that?
What factors can you differentiate on? Are there upsides if you choose to differentiate on brand over pricing? What about customer experience and features? Not to forget messaging and personal brand of key stakeholders.
And don’t even get us started on category creation.
In a tech world with differentiation strategies aplenty, how do you ensure you don’t end up becoming yet another commodity product or service?
Tune in to the latest episode on Cuppa Press to find out!
Time Stamp
0.38 - Commonly touted advice on differentiation that is trash
1.49 - Affiliation before differentiation?
10.56 - Feature differentiation
12.28 - Customer experience differentiation
14.31 - Price differentiation
16.22 - Brand differentiation
19.17 - Personal brand (of founders and key stakeholders) differentiation
22.04 - Messaging differentiation
24.17 - Gripe with general storytelling advice
26.12 - Testing for message-market fit
28.20 - A personal messaging failure
29.35 - What shouldn’t be included in messaging
31.27 - Brands standing out with messaging
32.34 - Category Creation
33.25 - About Wynter
Previously on Cuppa Press
- Content Strategy for Dummies
- Stories, Vulnerability, and Binge-Worthy Content
- How to Build Your Marketing Superhero Suit
- A Beginner's Guide to Newsletters
- Decoding Presales and Product Management
- Selling in This Digital Economy
- Content Marketing Playbook for SMBs
- LinkedIn, Quora, and Personal Branding
- All things Branding
- Brand Storytelling for Millennials
Live streaming as part of your outreach strategy
B2B brands have toppled the podcast bandwagon with a new podcast launching every 8.9 minutes (that’s a completely made up stat, but you get the idea).
They create these podcast episodes, cross their fingers, shut their eyes tight in prayer, and hope their listenership magically increases at the blink of an eye.
If this is you, you’re probably nodding your head now, especially if you’re just starting your podcast from scratch. And if you’re even remotely involved in content, you know this approach is every content creator’s Achilles heel.
But what if there indeed WAS a way to increase your listenership? No, we’re not talking growth hacking or throwing away dollars.
What if brands can leverage the audience base they’ve created across their social networks over the years? Genius, right? That’s where live streaming comes into the picture.
Peanut Butter: Jelly:: Live Streaming: Podcasting
We discuss all of this and more on this episode of Cuppa Press where Christoph Trappe, Content strategist at Voxpopme joined us. He’s also the Chief Content and Strategy Officer at the Authentic Storytelling Project and an avid podcaster.
Topics covered:
- 3.22 - Clubhouse: Podcast’s Friend or Foe?
- 4.55 - What makes a good podcast
- 8.11 - Outreach strategy and where live streaming fits within it
- 10.27 - When live streaming works best and what kind of audience you need for it
- 12.32 - Live streaming and content strategy
- 17.45 - Authenticity and live streaming
- 19.09 - Ensuring your content is audience-centric
- 21.42 - What makes a good story and why you need to repeat your story over and over again
- 24.29 - Why aren’t a lot of brands live streaming?
Content Strategy for Dummies
Posting content on every social media platform, every single day works for people with an extensive team dedicated just for this.
But will it work for you?
Making you ponder on this is Kris Hughes, a content strategist with over a decade’s experience. Kris has worked in multiple domains ranging from sports to SaaS. He’s also building the Leapfrog Collective, a community for emerging professionals to build their personal brands by leveraging content!
He breaks down everything related to content strategy in the newest episode of Cuppa Press.
Time Stamp:
2.41 - Why content calendar is not equal to content strategy and what content strategy really means for companies at various stages
4.08 - The steps to devise a content strategy
5.49 - How the steps differ for small, scrappy teams and larger teams
7.24 - When it's time to stop leaning on freelancers and make your first full-time content hire
9.16 - The most common reason people fail to succeed in content strategy
11.24 - One thing that non-experts believe to be true when in reality it's not
13.39 - What beginners should know about content strategy
15.27 - LinkedIn, content, and leveraging personal brands on LinkedIn
17.19 - Interesting trends in the content space post-Covid
19.06 - What success in content strategy looks like after 30-60-90-120 days
21.36 - Tools Kris cannot live without
Stories, Vulnerability, and Binge-Worthy Content
As the camera started rolling, a sense of comfort settled in on her face as if to reveal she was always meant to do this; as if she was home.
Hailing from the beautiful city of Uppsala, Sweden, Synne Lindén joined us in the recent episode of Cuppa Press.
A strong advocate of stories and creative writing, she helps brands identify cornerstones that set them apart and map out a course for content to ensure it reaches the audience in the right way.
In this episode, we explored the length and breadth of storytelling, empathy in creative writing, and creating a binge-worthy content experience for your audience.
Time Stamp
2.44 - Creative writing as a source of inspiration for business writing
4.44 - Significant detail in content creation
5.59 - Getting started with significant detail
7.10 - Why stories are the most powerful way of creating a true connection between a business and its customers
8.37 - How all stories cannot and should not be fit into a narrative structure
10.27 - How being vulnerable is a superpower in marketing and sales
14.02 - Identifying your voice and personality as a brand
17.21 - Making communication evocative, captivating, and interesting
19.16 - Creating a binge-worthy content experience
21.33 - One brand that does storytelling exceptionally well
How to Build Your Marketing Superhero Suit
"It's never about what we deserve. It's about what we believe." - Wonder Woman
What happens when you believe you can truly make a difference?
You become a Superhero.
Marketers are nothing short of being superheroes to the organization and the audience they seek to serve.
So, how do you go ahead with building a marketing superhero suit for yourself?
Join us in our conversation with Juinn Tan, the Head of Marketing at Supahands, an Olympic weightlifter, and an AI enthusiast, to learn how.
Time Stamp
3.11: Why a superpower is essential for every marketer
5.35: Most desirable superpowers
8.15: Importance of being concise
10.22: Hardest skill for marketers to attain (hint - it's not technical)
14.15: Coaching your team
18.17: Building a LEGO city
20.20: Responsibilities that come with the power of marketing
24.18: On believing in your product or service
25.53: Future of marketing creatives
29.39: Learning when to say no
31.04: Key superpowers to build your superhero squad
33.21: Approaching marketing with a scientific mindset
A Beginner's Guide to Newsletters
A newsletter is a doorway to your reader’s inbox and eventually his/her heart. From well-established brands to individual creators, everyone wants a share in this pie today and as a result, we’ve seen a sharp rise in the number of newsletters.
In this episode of Cuppa Press, Dozie T'Challa Anyaegbunam, who has been successfully running his newsletter—The Writing Nerd—for over 2 years now, talks about what it takes to start a newsletter.
Time Stamp
- 1:10 - Shift from Sales to Marketing
- 3:34 - You can’t sell what you don’t believe in
- 4:42 - Choosing a niche
- 6:59 - Building an email list
- 10:23 - Determining the frequency
- 11:20 - Special appearance by Dozie’s 4-year-old
- 13:04 - Choosing a service provider
- 15:19 - When should you start charging for subscription
- 16:39 - Staying committed to creating content
- 19:08 - An experiment that worked well
- 20:28 - Newsletter content creation as a service
- 22:11 - Dozie’s top 5 favorite newsletters
- 22:58 - Mutual obsession over Cole Schafer’s newsletters
Hit the follow button if you don't want to miss out on the upcoming freshly brewed episodes on Cuppa Press!
Decoding Presales and Product Management
A Passionate presales and product management specialist, Kishore never agrees with anyone who says presales is just about preparing presentations.
Latest in Cuppa Press is a very candid conversation with Kishore, who currently heads Presales at Kriti Labs.
Some key topics addressed in this conversation where we decode Product Management and Presales include:
- Role of content in product management
- Overcoming friction between content and product teams
- Why stories matter in presales
- Why a degree cannot replace problem-solving skills
Kishore is also actively mentoring people in the product management and presales domain. Hit him up with a text on LinkedIn and he'd love to talk to you!
Selling in This Digital Economy
He further goes on to call the pandemic “Online’s Big Bang moment”. Talking about how businesses can enable sales in today’s digital economy, Mike predicts the following:
1) Collaborative and easy-to-use platforms are going to replace the old legacy platforms
2) Virtual tours and augmented reality interactions are going to take the e-commerce world by storm!
3) Our fundamental approach to delivering services to our clients will be disrupted
4) Massive reallocation of budgets
5) Increased sensitivity towards data and privacy
And a lot more.
Tune in to this episode of Cuppa Press if you don’t want to leave your money on the table!
Content Marketing Playbook for SMBs
“As a content marketer, what has always excited me about my job is to get the stories of brands across to their audience and create magical experiences.
On the other hand, it is also quite depressing to see that businesses focus on selling and swamping people with ads”.
Attention all Small and Medium-sized businesses!
At some point, you might have been guilty of doing the same.
If you think you’ve invested sufficient resources, time, and money into content marketing and are still not seeing results, you may have to reconsider your strategy.
In this episode of Cuppa Press, Content and Campaign Marketing Manager, Novnish Ramesh, lets you in on the common content marketing mistakes most SMBs make, and ways to overcome the same.
LinkedIn, Quora, and Personal Branding
Personal Branding is no longer reserved for C-Suite executives.
It has got little to do with your achievements and a lot to do with putting your vulnerable, authentic self out there.
Amidst all the noise about personal branding, how do you devise a strategy that works for you?
How can you leverage LinkedIn and Quora to power up your personal brand?
What is the end game?
Hardik Lashkari—founder of Content Flavour—reveals in this episode of Cuppa Press.
All things Branding
When Jeff Bezos said, “Your brand is what other people say about you when you’re not in the room”, he clearly knew what he was talking about.
But is there a way to direct this dialect?
In this episode of Cuppa Press,digital marketer Imraan Moh gets candid and answers the frequently asked questions about branding. He drills down to the basics of what branding really means and builds up from there.
He also has an important message - stay tuned till the end to find out.
Brand Storytelling for Millenials
In this episode of Cuppa Press, Brand Storyteller Vanshika Mehta throws light on how brands can convey their story in a way that will make people, especially millennials, pause, listen, and connect with the story.