Victoria Nessen

Ask yourself the following three questions to better understand what’s going on for you: 1. Was I present and actively listening to the lead? (Check yourself - can you list the buyer’s motivations?) 2. Was I clearly articulating the value of my service or offering in terms that mattered to the prospects? 3. Did I make a specific ask? If not why? Using these three questions to evaluate your performance will help you identify where your skills might need sharpening.

Think about language choices. Three tactics that can be helpful: 1. Avoid the use of jargon. Jargon and how our assumptions that others understand it leads to confusion and makes people feel left out. 2. Simplify. Pretending you are explaining it to a child by using language everyone understands. 3. Full body expression. Accentuating your explanation with gestures. Thinking about how facial expression and hand movements can help your audience better understand a concept. For example if the concept has three parts, hold up a finger for each part so they know its step one, two or three. We assume everyone speaks the same language but often when things get complex we forget others may feel like they are in a foreign land.

As part of your strategy development you can consider examining your audiences (both internal and external) as well as who should be enrolled in the strategy development and who should be enrolled in the strategy once completed.

Watch your competitors, notice what moves you to action, read reviews – all can be great sources of inspiration. But the best source for inspiration is your customers; get curious about how they behave, how they respond, and what they say to spark your creativity.

"Setting and forgetting is a thing of the past," states Victoria Nessen. Marketers need to be open and ready to try and test new ideas. Even when a test fails, you have gained greater insight and can use that to shape success going forward.

@Victoria Nessen suggests that when testing, focus on one variable at a time so you can determine which variables are impacting the results. As an example, calls-to-action in digital ad or send times of email campaigns. "The key is to isolate the variables, predetermine how you will measure success, and then test." For example, Victoria shared, "in a recent digital ad campaign, 2 of the four images being tested were close-ups of smiling faces. The close-ups performed better than the other images. So in the campaign's next iteration, we tested close-up images of men vs. women. We learned that tightly cropped images of women's faces elicited more people to click on the call to action."