Inbound Quotes

Fame is simply an imbalance between inbound and outbound attention.

Tweet others the way you want to be tweeted.

Before we had our becoming here, we existed There, men other than now; we were pure souls. Intelligence inbound with the entire of reality, not fenced off, integral to that All. [...] Then it was as if One voice sounded. One word was uttered and from every side an ear attended and received and there was an effective hearing; now we are become a dual thing, no longer that which we were at first, dormant, and in a sense no longer present.

One can only know what occurs within the mind, which is the instrument or tool of conscious experience.   There is no such thing as "out there".   There is only our perception as inbound data. Everything is registered, just as it is. It is only via the mind that a selective representation of the data is created.   Thoughts are objects in the mind as things are objects in the world. The mind and the world are two separate dimensions, overlapping during the waking state. When you can so readily create a world when you dream, why do you believe the impossibility of your creating another world when you are awake?

If we all work together there is no telling how we can change the world through the impact of promoting positivity online.

the sales compensation plan is Batman, the sales contest is Robin.

The car boosted up and presumably out because I heard the drumming of rain against the bodywork. There was a faint smell of leather from the upholstery, which beat the odour of faeces on the inbound journey, and the seat I was in moulded itself supportively to my form. I seemed to have moved up in the order of things.

Indeed, these are the great lingering questions of the Lusitania affair: Why, given all the information possessed by the Admiralty about U-20; given the Admiralty’s past willingness to provide escorts to inbound ships or divert them away from trouble; given that the ship carried a vital cargo of rifle ammunition and artillery shells; given that Room 40’s intelligence prompted the obsessive tracking and protection of the HMS Orion; given that U-20 had sunk three vessels in the Lusitania’s path; given Cunard chairman Booth’s panicked Friday morning visit to the navy’s Queenstown office; given that the new and safer North Channel route was available; and given that passengers and crew alike had expected to be convoyed to Liverpool by the Royal Navy—the question remains, why was the ship left on its own, with a proven killer of men and ships dead ahead in its path?

Why, given all the information possessed by the Admiralty about U-20; given the Admiralty’s past willingness to provide escorts to inbound ships or divert them away from trouble; given that the ship carried a vital cargo of rifle ammunition and artillery shells; given that Room 40’s intelligence prompted the obsessive tracking and protection of the HMS Orion; given that U-20 had sunk three vessels in the Lusitania’s path; given Cunard chairman Booth’s panicked Friday morning visit to the navy’s Queenstown office; given that the new and safer North Channel route was available; and given that passengers and crew alike had expected to be convoyed to Liverpool by the Royal Navy—the question remains,

A quiet reflective mind is a wholesome mind. It is an inbound mind. This kind of mind is not only capable of deep contemplation – it is also capable of intense action. The centre of a cyclone is very quiet. It is from this centre that the cyclone attains its power. A revolving fan is still at the tip. It is here that motion is intensified to the point of stillness. A mind that has learnt to slow itself down is indeed a capable mind. For this, our minds need to periodically withdraw from the world of sensations. Like a tortoise withdraws its limbs into its shell – a sane mind goes inwards in search of its quiet centre.

What we want you to do is to change the mode of your website from a one-way sales message to a collaborative, living, breathing hub

The first method is to think across the traditional boundaries of your marketplace to alternatives, not just competitors.

The left loses most policy debates, leading them to engage in the politics of personal destruction. Many liberals do not see conservatives as human, so demonizing them as “stupid” or “evil” is inbounds....good liberals will not stand up and criticize the bad ones....Stop attacking individual conservatives unless evidence of crossing the line exists. When conservatives cross the line, other conservatives stand up.

Defining the sales methodology enables the sales training formula to be scalable and predictable. The three elements of the sales methodology are the buyer journey, the sales process, and the qualifying matrix.

I have to tell you, Major, if we don't get these bombs and stop this Jap fleet, they're gonna come in here and bomb the hell out of this place and maybe recapture it. Then their planes will be dropping these bombs on you. I've gotta have these bombs, sir, or we'll have a disaster on our hands.' Lupo asked who the major's superior was. The Army officer mentioned a colonel who stationed out toward the front. 'He's out fighting a war, and I'm not going to bother him." 'Well," Lupo said, "that's just too bad." The pilot pulled out his service revolver and pointed it at the major. Then Lupo handed the pistol to his radioman, Earl Gifford, instructing the flabbergasted aircrewman to hold the Army officer at bay. Lupo climbed into the cockpit of his plane and hailed the Fanshaw Bay on the radio. His fellow pilots from VC-68 and other Taffy 3 squadrons were already inbound

If you don’t show it, it doesn’t exist. Saying “We have great customer service” is likely said by everyone else in your industry. And if everyone is saying it, you can be assured it means nothing to the consumer—that is, until you show it.

Nor did the inquiry ever delve into why the Lusitania wasn’t diverted to the safer North Channel route, and why no naval escort was provided. Indeed, these are the great lingering questions of the Lusitania affair: Why, given all the information possessed by the Admiralty about U-20; given the Admiralty’s past willingness to provide escorts to inbound ships or divert them away from trouble; given that the ship carried a vital cargo of rifle ammunition and artillery shells; given that Room 40’s intelligence prompted the obsessive tracking and protection of HMS Orion; given that U-20 had sunk three vessels in the Lusitania’s path; given Cunard chairman Booth’s panicked Friday morning visit to the navy’s Queenstown office; given that the new and safer North Channel route was available; and given that passengers and crew alike had expected to be convoyed to Liverpool by the Royal Navy—the question remains, why was the ship left on its own, with a proven killer of men and ships dead ahead in its path?

Nor did the inquiry ever delve into why the Lusitania wasn’t diverted to the safer North Channel route, and why no naval escort was provided. Indeed, these are the great lingering questions of the Lusitania affair: Why, given all the information possessed by the Admiralty about U-20; given the Admiralty’s past willingness to provide escorts to inbound ships or divert them away from trouble; given that the ship carried a vital cargo of rifle ammunition and artillery shells; given that Room 40’s intelligence prompted the obsessive tracking and protection of the HMS Orion; given that U-20 had sunk three vessels in the Lusitania’s path; given Cunard chairman Booth’s panicked Friday morning visit to the navy’s Queenstown office; given that the new and safer North Channel route was available; and given that passengers and crew alike had expected to be convoyed to Liverpool by the Royal Navy—the question remains, why was the ship left on its own, with a proven killer of men and ships dead ahead in its path?

Have Candace bring the ball up,” she said urgently. It was totally counterintuitive: Candace was our go-to player, on whom we counted when we needed a score. If Candace brought the ball up the court, that meant she’d have to pass it off. It meant someone else would take the last shot of the game. It meant that if we lost, everyone in the country would want to know why we hadn’t gone to the best player in the game. I nodded. It was a high-stakes decision. But I loved being the trigger puller. Loved it. I went into the huddle—and made the last critical call I would ever make in an NCAA Final Four. I looked at Lex, who would be our inbounder. “Get the ball in to Candace,” I said. I turned to Candace. “They will converge on you. Find the open player.” They all nodded and took their places. What happened next is a credit to the culture of a program in which players are taught to commit, to play all out, to attend to every detail no matter how seemingly unimportant, to never go through the motions, no matter how routine seeming, to finish with as much energy as they started with.

Genisys, a Google Adwords-certified leading Digital Marketing Agency is operating multi facet digital services throughout India specializing in Web development, Web design, Software development, Digital marketing services which include-SEO (Search Engine Optimization), SMM (Social Media Marketing), PPC(Pay Per Click), Email marketing, Content marketing, Mobile marketing, Affiliate marketing, Brand marketing and promotion, inbound marketing, Local Business Marketing, Business listing solution, Video brochure, Ecommerce solution, CRM service, Reputation Management, Online Presence analysis, Conversion Rate Optimization, Goggle service and so on to keep up with the high-tech advanced digital world and connecting the clients goal to reality through creative designers, digital strategists and specialized innovative team.

Just as we did with used cars, take a moment to brainstorm every single reason (fear, worry, question, concern) as to why someone would not buy from your company. What would hold them back? What would keep them from clicking “buy,” swiping their credit card, or writing that big check? If you do this activity properly (especially if you do it with fellow employees), you should come up with ten to 20 reasons, if not more (sadly, a surprising number of businesses struggle with this one small task, all because they’ve lost touch with the most important part of their business: what the potential customer is thinking).

Strategic content/inbound marketing costs 62% less than traditional marketing & generates 3 times as many leads.

We want products in stock and immediately available to customers, and we want minimal total inventory in order to keep associated holding costs, and thus prices, low. To achieve both, there is a right amount of inventory. We use historical purchase data to forecast customer demand for a product and expected variability in that demand. We use data on the historical performance of vendors to estimate replenishment times. We can determine where to stock the product within our fulfillment network based on inbound and outbound transportation costs, storage costs, and anticipated customer locations.

Demian Farnworth offers this definition: “Content marketing means creating and sharing valuable content to attract and convert prospects into customers, and customers into repeat buyers. The type of content you share is closely related to what you sell; in other words, you’re educating people so that they know, like, and trust you enough to do business with you.”2

Rushing into selling destroys your credibility and you may never recover.

The very best salespeople have mastered balanced prospecting in the same manner that wealthy people have mastered balance in their investment portfolios. Balance simply means that to get the best return from your prospecting time investment, there should be a mixture of telephone, in-person, e-mail, social selling, text messaging, referrals, networking, inbound leads, trade shows, and cold calling. The relative distribution of your time investment in each prospecting methodology should be based on your unique situation.

Interactions should support reading digital text skimming for salience, deep reading for comprehension and evaluation, as well as support for following and evaluating inbound and outbound citations, implicit links and high resolution explicit links. Annotations which ‘live’ in their own dynamic environment, text for thought–and so much more. Interactions should also support sitting under a tree and reading a paper book with beautiful typography and nothing to come between you and the physical paper pages of the document, be it book or paper or whatever else you would like to read. Of course, in due course interactions will include all of those, at once.

Begin by asking questions. What are the sacred-cow rules in your industry that should be rethought?

So how do you open with a pattern interrupt? We recommend something like this: “This is William Rogers with ABC Company. I am guessing you probably have not heard of me or my company.” Another example could be, “This is William Rogers with ABC Company. I am guessing my name is not ringing any bells.” Finally, our personal favorite: “This is William Rogers with ABC Company. Just to be completely honest with you, this is an inbound solicitation to discuss business. I don’t like sending these any more than you like getting them, but if you could take 47 seconds to read this and let me know if it even would make sense to have a further discussion (and I understand if it is a no), I would truly appreciate it.

During the chaos of the morning attacks, planes inbound from Enterprise, as well as a squadron of B-17 bombers coming from the mainland, had come under assault—from the attacking Japanese as well as the defenders. That was somewhat coincidental and to some extent unavoidable. Enterprise lost six planes in the melee. Halsey had been right to be worried. They were indeed shooting at his boys. By evening, however, defenders should have been alert to distinguish between friend and foe. “Don’t shoot, don’t shoot, incoming friendlies,” the control tower on Ford Island advised all ships and shore installations as this second group of aircraft from the Enterprise, the six Wildcats, entered the pattern with landing lights ablaze. But over the dry docks, nervous gunners on the Pennsylvania opened fire. That was all it took. The entire harbor erupted in gunfire. Four of the six Wildcats were shot down and three American pilots killed.

Buyer personas are semifictional representations of your ideal customer based on quantitative and qualitative analysis.

The supply ship Antares (AG-10) was inbound to Pearl Harbor, heading toward the submarine nets protecting the entrance channel. Between Antares and the barge it was towing, Captain Outerbridge made out the unmistakable silhouette of the conning tower and periscope of an unknown submarine. There was no doubt in his mind that this was an intruder intent on following Antares through the open submarine nets and into the harbor. Outerbridge called for speed and ordered a turn toward the target as the Ward surged to twenty knots. At 6:45 a.m. the destroyer fired two shots from its four-inch guns. The first passed directly over the submarine’s conning tower and missed. The second hit the submarine at the waterline between the conning tower and its hull. As the Ward’s action report later characterized it, “This was a square positive hit.” The target heeled over to starboard and appeared to slow and sink, drifting into a tightly spaced salvo of depth charges set for 100 feet that the Ward dropped as it crossed the submarine’s bow. Outerbridge couldn’t be certain, but a large oil slick on the surface after the depth charges exploded indicated that his quarry had likely sunk. He radioed a voice transmission saying the Ward had “dropped depth charges upon subs,” but two minutes later, fearing that the report might be taken merely as one more in a long line of sketchy contacts, Outerbridge made clear that this had been no illusion: “We have attacked, fired upon, and dropped depth charges on a submarine operating in defensive sea area,” he radioed. Seconds later, just to be certain his information had been received, Outerbridge queried, “Did you get that last message?” The answer was yes, and the report made its way up the chain of command, reaching Admiral Kimmel about forty minutes later. Like others who’d relayed the message, Kimmel was skeptical. “I was not at all certain that this was a real attack,” he later told investigators. It would take sixty years before a Japanese midget submarine was discovered in some twelve hundred feet of water with a hole in its conning tower—evidence that Outerbridge and the Ward had indeed inflicted the first casualties of the day.4

If you’re reading this, stuck on inbound, it’s your time. Time for outbound action, even mastery, where you become the most

Figure 1.1 Correlation of Sales Characteristics to HubSpot Sales Success (Results of the First Regression Analysis).

They push phone prospecting, e-mail prospecting, social selling, trade shows, referrals, networking, or inbound marketing as the one true way while disparaging all other forms—usually by labeling the forms they don't like “cold calling” to create the ultimate turnoff. “Do it my way,” they'll tell you, “and you'll get unlimited qualified leads. All for only $999!

first is the huge increase in competition. Today no niche is safe.

World-class sales hiring is the most important driver of sales success.

I realized that every salesperson has her unique strengths. Some are great consultative sellers. Some crush their sales activity goals. Some deliver exceptional presentations. Some are amazing networkers. Some just know how to make their customers feel like family.

Statistics suggest salespeople who are intelligent and helpful, rather than aggressive and high-pressure, are most successful with today's empowered buyer.

Taking a moment to be thankful for the things that easily could be, but are not. If we live in a place where there are no bloodthirsty lions walking around on the roads, let's be thankful. If there's no inbound asteroid or other imminent extinction event befallen on us, let's be thankful. If we are mostly free of disease or disorder in ourselves and those around us, let's be thankful. If there's no starvation in our own house or the house of neighbour, let's be thankful. If there's no lifethreatening pollution in our parts of the atmosphere, or water, let's be thankful. If we're not isolated, imprisoned, without any real prospects of a good future, let's be thankful. If we do not live near an active volcano, or within an area prone to earthquakes, super storms or other destabilizing natural phenomenae, let's be thankful. If it's not raining diamonds or acid [as is reality on some cosmic bodies], and if every part of our mighty Earth is habitable and healthy, let's be thankful. And if we collected some parts of tranquility for ourselves, or others, in this otherwise brief life, let's be thankful. It can be difficult to see, without concious effort to remind ourselves, that things are probably pretty good, also. Though, it is no excuse for laziness and inaction with regards to our duties in lending a hand according to the size of our hand, and perhaps with some regard for our own dignity, and to foresight.

One day, Ryan thought bitterly as he watched the inbound steamer come lumbering up the Clyde as if it had declared war upon the ocean — one day the sky would be black with smoke and the sea just a constant din of engines. Gone forever would be the pavane of man, sail and wind, the elegant, pagan dance of wood and water, sweat and sinew. That day, Ryan would mourn.

As a Marketer (specifically a Digital Marketer) your job is not to prove the operational or fulfillment side of your company wrong by providing so much activity it proves fundamental flaws in the systems, but rather to ensure the activity you are creating is educated, nurtured and that the internal operational systems are in place to support the operational side of your organization so that it can quickly pivot and learn from the data your activity creates. A marketer has to be able to market externally, but also systematically utilize that data to change strategies when and if needed internally. How and what to do with the activity's data is a responsibility that falls with production\fulfillment AND marketing\sales. "I brought you 1,000 inbound leads it's not my fault we couldn't fulfill them" is no longer acceptable.

Crystal Knows This is my favourite Chrome extension; I absolutely love it! Crystal Knows can tell you anyone’s personality directly from their LinkedIn® Profile. It can help you to understand yourself better and improve your team, as well as prospect more effectively and close more deals.

This is a structure you can use to both give your own recommendations and to ask your clients to recommend you. Question 1: Who are you and who do you help? Question 2: What challenge(s) were you having before working with me? Question 3: What reservations did you have before working with me? Question 4: What surprised/delighted you? Question 5: What results have you had since working with me? Question 6: Why was it fun working with me? Question 7: Would you recommend me and why?

HubSpot is an inbound platform, which means they strictly advise against contacting people who have not opted in to hearing from you or given you some form of consent to email them—for example, having met them at a trade show or conference. You therefore should desist from purchasing lists of cold emailing contacts who have never heard from you. If this is an important part of your strategy, it is highly suggested to use another type of email platform to prevent you from compromising your HubSpot portal. Connecting your social media accounts Social media is a crucial channel for businesses to engage with potential and existing customers, but it can also be a time-consuming activity.

Important Note HubSpot is an inbound platform, which means they strictly advise against contacting people who have not opted in to hearing from you or given you some form of consent to email them—for example, having met them at a trade show or conference. You therefore should desist from purchasing lists of cold emailing contacts who have never heard from you. If this is an important part of your strategy, it is highly suggested to use another type of email platform to prevent you from compromising your HubSpot portal.

The purpose of business is to create and keep a customer. —Peter F. Drucker

You can increase conversion rates and return on investment (ROI) by several times by making PPC landing pages extremely relevant.

In God we trust; all others bring data. —Dr. W. Edwards Deming

One inbound SDR can typically handle about two hundred to three hundred leads a month when fully ramped. There is some variation based on average selling price, data quality, and other factors. But in my experience, this seems to be the magic number.

Victra stands to the side listening to enemy chatter. “Response teams inbound. More than two thousand mixed units.” She’s also patched to the strategic command on Orion’s ship, so she can gather battle data from the huge sensor arrays on the flagship. Looks like Roque launched more than fifteen thousand men at us in his leechCraft. Most will be in the Pax by now. Burrowed through to find me. Silly bastards. Roque gambled big, bet wrong. And I’ve just brought three thousand crazed Obsidian berserkers to a mostly empty warship. The Poet is going to be pissed.

PR people excel at content. PR people such at measurement.

Inbound PR is about transforming an outdated agency business model and making it relevant again for the digital future.

What sets Inbound PR apart from traditional PR is the ability to measure results.

Enter Inbound PR, where content meets measurement and helps PR people show the real return on investment (ROI) of their efforts in the new digital era.

Inbound PR combines the best of two worlds (public relations and inbound marketing) and alleviates PR's biggest weakness (measurement) and inbound's biggest challenge (content).

The biggest benefit of the Inbound PR model is that you use pull rather than push.

With Inbound PR, PR is taking over a lot of the more traditional marketing activities but that’s only natural and makes perfect sense—PR people excel at content and it is good, quality content that converts unknown visitors into leads. There are no good leads without good content. Nor are there any good relationships without added value.

Inbound PR can help you build brand awareness, generate leads (customer or media), nurture them, close them as customers or publishers, and then delight them to retain them with even better services, stories, and strong relationships.

Inbound PR enables you to measure the real ROI of your efforts.

Inbound PR is about educating people and helping them make decisions.

Inbound PR is about being human-centered with content that is relevant, remarkable, and created for a specific audience and its needs.

Scalable, predictable revenue growth.

Another facet of the FDI strategy was that much “foreign” investment was not really foreign. Nearly half of inbound direct investment has come from Hong Kong, and while much of that may simply reflect the activities of Hong Kong–based subsidiaries of American or European firms, it is clear that Hong Kong firms have been major investors in the mainland.

We now have the power to let brands influence us or equally to not let them.

Scrupulously update your lists so that you’re constantly focused on the people who are most important to you, and so that you are able to filter both outbound and inbound messages. You want to be getting everything your “1”s are putting out into their newstreams, daily; “2”s you may want to check in on only once a week or month; “3”s once a month or quarterly. Build these “tours” into your work schedule.

Section One Summary Here’s what you should take away from this section about on-page optimization:         On-page optimization is what you do on your website to influence SERPs on Google.         Doing proper keyword research is the first step to a successful SEO campaign.         Having proper meta tags is essential. Always include your keyword phrase(s) in your meta tags.         The proper meta tags include your title tag, description tag, keywords tag, and robots tag.         Choose your URL carefully. Your URL doesn’t have to have your keyword included but it helps when other sites link to your site. Avoid exact match domains.         How you format your page is important for optimization purposes.         Make sure you design your web pages so Google is forced to read your on-page content first.         Verify that your code is W3C compliant.         Don’t forget to include your keyword phrase(s) in , , and header tags. This signifies the importance of your content to Google.         Label each graphic with an alt tag that includes your keyword phrase.         Place your keyword(s) in the first twenty-five words on your web page and the last twenty-five words on your web page.         Eliminate Flash if it’s the main presentation of your website. Google does not view this favorably.         If you’re going to use JavaScript to enhance the overall visitor experience of your website, place the code in an external file.         Include a sitemap that’s easily accessible by Google. Submit an XML version of your sitemap through Google Webmaster Tools.          Never underestimate the power of internal linking. A good internal linking structure can improve your SERPs.          Keyword development is one of the most important on-page optimization strategies.          Research keywords and competing websites to select ideal keywords.          Research the strength of competing websites before selecting your final keywords using Google PR and authority (ex: number of inbound links).          Page load speed is a significant factor in Google rankings. Ensure that your home page loads more quickly than those of competing

If you have your target keywords in the URL itself, you'll have a higher chance of getting anchor text with those keywords when people link to your page.

Inbound now at twenty thousand feet, moving swifly toward the island, came a wave of twin-engine Betty bombers and thirty Zeros, fuel burning fast on half-empty tanks.

Nothing is more powerful than an idea whose time has come. —Victor Hugo

everything for miles in all directions. The Space Needle. The aquarium and the science center. Amazon.com’s headquarters. Safeco Field. And every Starbucks in between. All of it was gone in the snap of a finger. None of the city’s twenty-one state-of-the-art air raid sirens went off. They had originally been installed in the early 1950s during the Cold War. They’d been cosmetically upgraded in 2006 at a cost of $91,000. But they’d been useless. No one in the mayor’s office or the police department or the fire department knew the missile was coming. No one knew the threat that was inbound. Thus no one had activated the sirens. But even if someone had, would anyone in Seattle have known what to do or where to go? Would there have been any time to seek shelter? No one was left to ask the questions, for now the air raid sirens and the city they were designed to protect were gone entirely. Untold thousands lay dead and dying. More would join them soon. Indeed, the death toll in Seattle alone would soar into the hundreds of thousands within hours. An enormous mushroom cloud, crackling with toxic radioactive dust, now formed over the city. Those not blinded by the initial

Life is a two-way ticket; inbound is random, outbound is unknown

Many people in sales are struggling as inbound demand for their services has declined, and those without a reliable process to develop new business are in a world of hurt.

Inbound Covenant air support,” Blue-Four reported over the COM link. “ETA is two minutes, Chief.

Tour Operator Software :- Our Tour Operator software helps inbound and outbound tour operators sell tours and activity packages online, manage bookings, inventory and also manage agents and their commissions.

What is the most important goal the company needs to achieve? Customer count? Profitability? Customer success? Market share? New product distribution? New market penetration?” Then ask yourself, “How can the sales compensation plan be aligned with this goal?” Do not underestimate the power of the compensation plan. You

Inbound marketing is a powerful tool. I’ve spent sizable chunks of my own career helping companies improve in this arena, which is why I know that the power of frame-of-mind awareness isn’t absolute.

When you are scaling a sales team, the to-do list is endless. Hiring, training, coaching, pipeline reviews, forecasting, enterprise deal support, leadership development, and cross-functional communication are all part of the day-to-day.

The first change is to hire more slowly. Only 10 percent of your applicants (at best!) will be top performers, so you go through far more applicants and interviews. I say at best, because in fact the top performers in most industries aren’t actually looking for work, precisely because they are top performers who are enjoying their success right where they are. So your odds of hiring a great person based on inbound applications are low. But it’s worth the wait because, as Alan Eustace, our SVP of Knowledge, often says, “A top-notch engineer is worth three hundred times or more than an average engineer. … I’d rather lose an entire incoming class of engineering graduates than one exceptional technologist.

Picking the Perfect Keywords

In reality, as the load balancer is acting as a proxy it’s not actually NAT; the inbound connection is terminated and a new outbound one created with a different destination IP address. Of course it’s far easier to think of it as NAT.

prerequisite

When hiring new marketers, use the DARC criteria: Digital Citizen, Analytical, web Reach, and Content creation.

recently at a meeting of corporate strategists. More than 70 percent responded that their strategy was

Everett Wilkinson in Florida oversees all inbound and outbound marketing efforts, including content creation, SEO, social media management, brand management, business development, and direct mail, in his current position. Focused on the results that matter most to his customers, Everett works tirelessly to improve marketing communications, gain a deeper knowledge of his clientele, make the most of current business prospects, and increase profitability in both the short and long term.

Multiple inbound adapters can invoke the same inbound port.

Instead of the presentation layer, the application has one or more inbound adapters that handle requests from the outside by invoking the business logic. Similarly, instead of a data persistence tier, the application has one or more outbound adapters that are invoked by the business logic and invoke external applications.

hexagonal architecture, which consists of the business logic and one or more adapters that communicate with external systems. The business logic has one or more ports. Inbound adapters, which handled requests from external systems, invoke an inbound port. An outbound adapter implements an outbound port, and invokes an external system.

And while seeking out the opinions and perspectives of people like ourselves may lead to a more personal and familiar buying experience, what’s even more amazing is the impact those trusted sources have on conversion rates. B2B sales cycle data from Salesforce demonstrates that, when it comes to lead conversion, the interest that originates from customer and employee referrals converts to deals at rates fifty times higher than email campaigns!9 Furthermore, data from marketing automation giant Marketo indicates that leads originating from referrals convert to opportunities at rates of four times the average, and similar to the next three highest-converting lead sources combined (those being partner, inbound, and marketing-generated).10 My personal experience over the years greatly corroborates these statistics. For example, when I started my own sales practice, Cerebral Selling, I needed to have a logo designed. Around the same time, my friend had recently had a nice logo designed for his business. I asked him who he used, he told me, and I just did the same. No further research or investigation required. A short time later, I wanted to head out of town with my wife for an overnight trip to the beautiful Niagara wine region of Ontario to celebrate our anniversary. I didn’t know where to stay or which restaurant to go to, so instead of sifting through pages of online content and reviews, I asked a friend who runs a vineyard in the region. When he gave me his recommendations, I simply booked the places he told me. No questions asked. Were there better places to stay and eat? Potentially. Were there other creative design shops that could have generated equally if not more spectacular logos? More than likely. Do I care? Absolutely not! I love my logo and had a great anniversary outing, and feel secure in my decisions around both because of the feeling I received by selecting recommendations from people I trust. Both experiences are perfect examples of the prescriptive-led sales cycle we spoke about in chapter 2. This means that when it comes to your selling motion, one of the most unobtrusive, empathetic, and authentic ways to convert prospective buyers is simply to surround them with like-minded customers who love you.

For example, on the “Do Not Be on It” dashboard, we had a chart that showed any new leads that were not touched within one hour of converting through the website. We had a chart that showed any free trials that were one week old and had been called fewer than three times. We had a chart illustrating the demo requests that were three days old and had been touched fewer than two times. You

And, luckily many of the same principles of an inbound marketing strategy can also be applied to web design. A website designed for inbound is one that focuses on bringing interest to a small community of tightly identified people and integrates these main elements:

Once you’ve listed each of these fears or reasons for not buying, now comes the critical step: How many of these issues (fears, worries, concerns, questions, objections, and others) have already been addressed well (a few sentences don’t count) on your company website? How many have been addressed within your sales process?

Just as we did with used cars, take a moment to brainstorm every single reason (fear, worry, question, concern) as to why someone would not buy from your company. What would hold them back? What would keep them from clicking “buy,” swiping their credit card, or writing that big check?

When someone subscribes to your list, they’ve opened a direct line of communication. Using the Five Awareness States, this direct line uniquely allows you to nurture and develop a subscriber across all stages of awareness. This is one of the great features unique to email marketing. Remember, email is the only communication channel on the internet that you completely control. No algorithm changes, no policy updates, no platform risk - and potentially fully automated. This is part of the reason terms such as “inbound” and “funnels” are almost synonymous with email. Just try progressing and tracking a potential customer’s Awareness State on a platform like Facebook or Instagram. It will be very difficult, if you’re able to pull it off at all.

We should never let our personal opinions screw up smart business choices.

The ideal ratio, from the customer’s point of view, is 5 to 1 or better. In other words, you should refer to the customer five times more than you refer to you and your company.

Yeah, but Marcus, aren’t you afraid you’ve now introduced them to the competition?” If you’re thinking this, let’s be clear about something: If someone wants to know who your competitors are, roughly, how long will it take them to figure it out? Seconds, if they’re slow! The reality is this: Consumer ignorance is no longer a viable sales and marketing strategy.

Look at it like this: If your products and services start at $50,000, and that person has a true budget of $20,000, do you think he is magically going to come up with an extra $30,000 for your products and/ or services? In most cases, the answer is no. Instead of scaring the person, you’re going to educate him, which brings relief and saves time for all parties involved.

Putting It into Action Write down every question you’ve ever received from a prospect or customer who was asking you to compare two or more things. This could include products, brands, methods, companies, and other subjects. It could also include your products and services or ones you don’t even sell. The key, though, is that you consider the many comparison-based questions that potential buyers and customers are asking (and searching) in your industry right now. Once you’ve made this list, address these questions honestly and transparently throughout your digital marketing efforts—be it with blog posts, videos, buying guides, webinars, and so on.

Multiple recent studies have shown one specific eye-popping statistic: Today, on average, 70 percent of the buying decision is made before a prospect talks to the company. Yep, 70 percent.