Spark Best Practices

Yep — we keep getting asked “What are the best practices when using Spark?” and we’re gonna tell you.

But, if you have following this blog for some time, you know we just don’t tell you all the answers right away — we make you earn them — by thinking about your own experiences.

So, with that said — here we go. What are the best practices when using Illumineto Spark:

• We’re sure that you need need to plan your year, your quarter, your week and even your day — that is if you take your profession seriously. The same approach needs to be done with Spark — PLAN how the page is going to be laid out. Does it tell a story? Does it have too many pieces of content? (No more than five, ever!) Does the first piece of content answer the prospects/clients question? Would I like to get this page myself in answer to the question(s) asked? Does it take to long to read? You get the idea — too many times we see Spark pages thrown together without a plan in place on what needs to be communicated.
• Clarify your understanding of your prospects/clients issue. It’s so easy to just go through the same steps over and over by “throwing over the fence” information that you think your prospect needs to have to make a decision (no, we won’t be discussing the art of “listening” here — we can’t help you with that). Providing a Spark page to your prospect shows that you have been listening — because when you laid out the page in the planning phase, you were able to tell the story of how your solution/product solves their issue. For the first time, you, as a sales professional, can now tell a story about how you solve problems for clients in the world. Before Spark came along, you had to do it through numerous emails and phone calls. Now it can all be done the first time, every time. Don’t waste the technology that is at your fingertips.
• Establish next steps, before they are even realized! With Spark, and how you build the page, you can put the next steps on the page without pushing your prospect away from you (in fact, we think you will see them moving closer to you). Establishing next steps in today’s sales world comes after you have your prospect engaged — with Spark, you can put next steps at the bottom of your page — almost like a gentle reminder to your prospect that IF they go for your solution/product, you already have laid out what’s going to happen next and there won’t be any surprises. They don’t have to wait and see what you are going to do next (just add them as a new section with the content shown as file icons).
• Stay in touch with your prospects and clients. Illumineto built Spark so you can send out monthly newsletters, or walk a prospect down a path over a month (by sending different pages), or by receiving the best practices of what’s happening with the rest of your sales team (by sharing the best pages with each other). There is no excuse not to use Spark to stay in contact with your prospect — and once Marketing realizes that Spark does this better than they ever would, we won’t be surprised when Marketing starts pushing back on Sales to stay in touch and not them.
• Target and choose the right audience. With Spark Campaigns, you can hit dozens or even hundreds of leads at the same time. You can build lists that are specific to the target market that you want and in turn, build pages that “speak” to that target, converting them to viable prospects. No, we don’t pull the lists for you or tell you who your target is, but we do let you target them in a new and unique fashion that has never been done before. Why not let Spark do the work for you?
• Reusing your templates. Just like you do today, you reuse your emails from one prospect to the next as well as reusing the same Powerpoints and .pdf’s. Makes perfect sense. So, why not do that with a Spark page? Build two or three templates for each line of your product (or service) and reuse them. Think of it like reusing a TV commercial every time you use a Spark template page. Save time, save money, get deals done.

Of course there’s more. Many more. Feel free to paste them in the comment section if you want. But, think of Illumineto Spark as a tool, used for sales, for advertising, for marketing, for promotions, and even for public relations. It’s for you — use it how you want, but, use all of it — there is no limit to what it can do for you.