There’s been a fair amount in the news lately about how Twitter is getting a bit more restrictive on its API. This is not new; Twitter has a long history of being hard on third-party developers.

That made me wonder about the kind of Twitter tools that are still out there. So I did some poking around and found there are still some cool Twitter tools out there, specifically for doing local Twitter search. Let’s take a tour.

Start With Twitter Itself

Since Twitter tweets are limited to 280 characters, searching can be a bit of a struggle, and when compared to full text resources like Web or search engines, it might even seem pointless. But Twitter does have a very robust advanced search available at https://twitter.com/search-advanced .

Towards the bottom of the page there’s a setting called Place, where you can enter a city/municipality.

You can use that search element alone — no keywords are necessary — and you’ll get tweets from that area. Be sure that the Twitter search results tab is on Latest and not on Top!

Twitter’s advanced search is great if you’re looking for a bunch of Tweets in one area. But if you’re looking for a particular category of tweets — like political ones — check out Categorized Tweets.

Categorized Tweets — http://www.categorizedtweets.com/

This site is in beta, but it’s still terrific to use. As the home page explains, “Our proprietary algorithm sorts a politician’s (or influencer’s) tweets into 9 key issues so you can get up to speed–quickly.” You start with a zip code — sadly, 90210 didn’t find any legislators, so for this resource I’ll be using 27925, the zip code for Frying Pan, North Carolina.

The first thing I get is a page with the elected officials for that area, from federal to local.

Click on a representative. In this case, I’ll choose Dan Forest, the North Carolina Lieutenant Governor. It’s a little hard to show in a screenshot, but when I pick a representative, Categorized Tweets scans their last 200 tweets and divides them into categories including Gun Laws, Race Relations, LGBTQ, and climate change.

For the reps I looked at, nobody posted about everything. Mostly it was like you see here, either plenty of posts or very few. Dan Forest’s most-heavily tweeted topic was Education. Click on the category name to see the tweets associated with it.

I really like the way these are laid out to show all associated media and not just the text. Note, however, that retweets are included, which is why you’re seeing a Mark Johnson tweet in the Dan Forest timeline.

In addition to this zip code search, Categorized Tweets also lets you review tweets by influencers and by category — you can look up economy tweets, for example, and then choose a politicians from whom you want to see tweets. Definitely worth a browse!

Twit Job Seek — http://www.twitjobseek.com/

To be clear, Twit Job Seek is not so much an independent Web site as a way to format searches before passing them to Twitter. But it’s very good at that. The front page prompts you to enter the kind of job you’re looking for and a location. You can also specify if you’re looking for “freelancing” type gigs and if you want your search to include job-related language (I recommend ticking that box, especially if you’re using amorphous words like writer to define your job.) You can also specify the radius of your search.

Instead of going to its own results page, Twit Job Seek formats your query and takes you to a regular Twitter search results page. As always with Twitter’s search results, make sure your results tab is on Latest and not on Top!

Less interested in job searching and more interested in the Twitter zeitgeist in general? For that you want Trendsmap.

Trendsmap — https://www.trendsmap.com/

Two things to know about Trendsmap: first, it’s a pay site. There’s enough free in it that I find it worth using, but to get right down in the bones you’ll need to pony up some money. Second, I could not get this site to work in Chrome. At all. I finally got it running in Firefox.

When the site first loads it is a map covered with Twitter tags. It’s slow and unwieldy, or at least it was on my Ubuntu rig. There’s a layers button at the top left of the site. When you click on it you’ll get some options (I’ve shaded them in yellow on the screenshot below.) Before you do anything else, unclick the “Trends” option. Those tags will disappear and you’ll be able to navigate the map.

Once you’ve navigated around the map (it works like Google Maps; you can zoom in and out using controls at the upper left part of the page, and move the location of the map by dragging) and found the place you want to see tweets for, turn the Trends layer back on. Much smoother that way. Here’s Omaha, Nebraska.

Click on a tag you find interesting and a panel will open with relevant tweets.

There’s a lot more you can do with this site if you’re a paying customer; subscriptions start at $25 a month or $250 a year. For myself, I find it useful for exploring trends in places I know absolutely nothing about (hello Omaha) and using the hashtags I find as a jumping-off point for exploring Twitter proper.

Seekatweet is another site that I can’t quite get right in Chrome, but it works well enough to use. I’m not sure it’s even being developed anymore, but it’s fun to play with as your searching can get as precise as address-level.

Seekatweet — https://www.seekatweet.com/

I can’t get the Pricing or About or Contact links to work. When I look at the Twitter account for the person who apparently developed Seekatweet (@scotiasystems) I see that it’s tweeted only once in the last two years. The apparent Web site for the Twitter account is still active, but maybe the developer’s found something else to do.

In other words, this might be a zombie site – just running, not updated, not supported. But I’m going to tell you about it anyway because its search offerings are very specific and as far as I can tell it still works.

On the front page you can enter an address or start typing in a place name. To take a random example, the World’s Largest Ball of Twine.

I didn’t find that this worked well without keywords (might have just been where I was searching) so take advantage of the keyword search. There’s also a “radius” search with no radius specified. It can’t be kilometers, at least I don’t think so, because 6000 kilometers would be something like 3700 miles, right? I looked at the page source and that didn’t clue me in.

At the end I just left that setting alone, because searching just for the ball of twine location and the word twine worked fine:

I don’t see Twitter getting cozy with third party developers again for a long time if ever. But there are still nifty tools to use for exploring Local Twitter; you’ve just got to look around a bit.

There’s never a shortage of tips and advice – e-commerce hacks – on improving e-commerce sales. And while some are indeed valuable, others are just outdated suggestions that produce little to no results. And with every year introducing a new wave of marketing trends and technological advances, it becomes obvious how adaptability plays a crucial role in keeping businesses afloat.

In this post, we’re offering the latest emerging trends within the field of e-commerce that every forward-thinking marketer should be aware of.

1. Create and identify your ideal buyer persona.

A buyer persona lets you create a marketing strategy that resonates more with your target customer, as opposed to generic marketing tactics that can hit or miss.

The beauty of creating these personas is that you end up with a better understanding of what customers need. From there, it becomes easier to create a uniformed language pattern or identify communication channels to reach your ideal audience.

Tips on creating buyer personas:

• Try using avatar generators like Avatar Maker to create a visual representation of different buyer personas. You can create as many personas as your business needs.

(Image Source)

• Try surveying existing customers and find out the following information:

1. Demographic – such as age, gender, and location.
2. Pain points – find out what challenges they’re facing related to your business.
3. Preferences – get to know their interests or find out what they would have liked improved on your e-commerce website.

2. Use ‘knolling’ for more visual appeal.

Many e-commerce websites now put the spotlight on high-quality photography to catch an audience’s attention. This isn’t surprising considering how people are largely affected by visual stimuli. Most Facebook product advertising focuses on highlighting images to increase click-through-rate.

One popular approach used in the fashion industry that is used in e-commerce businesses is a product photography technique called ‘knolling.’

As Creative Market describes it, knolling is arranging products at 90-degree angles from each other and taking the shots from overhead, creating a symmetrical effect that’s visually appealing.

3. Adapt minimalism in menu navigation.

There are generally two schools of thought in website design: less is more, and more is more.

But the more is more mantra is going out of style, as customers feel too overwhelmed with the plethora of options. Instead, try to keep your product categories as narrowly structured as possible. Don’t over-clutter your menu. Try to provide higher-level categories that gradually introduces the lower-level classifications.

If you own a small e-commerce store, your best bet to offer a clutter-free navigation menu may be to choose from a selection of free WordPress blog themes that focuses on minimalist design.

4. Optimize for mobile users.

If you aren’t already aware, mobile shopping is predicted to be the future of e-commerce. But this prediction isn’t anything new. It’s been a trending topic since way back in 2014.

Just consider the following statistics:

• 52.2% of all global online traffic comes from mobile phones. (Source: Statista)
• In the US, smartphone and tablet users account for 57% of all online traffic. (Source: BrightEdge)
• 69% of users admit they’re more likely to buy from businesses with better mobile experience for addressing their questions and concerns (Source: BrightEdge)

5. Promote brand stories and not just products.

Storytelling is another of our favorite e-commerce hacks. Depending on the type of e-commerce site you own, it may work to your advantage to create an engaging story that increases the emotional appeal of your brand.

The effectiveness of this approach lies in how well you can evoke emotions that can potentially create advocates for your business. The values or ethical principles upheld by your company is likely to attract like-minded customers who are happy to share your products with friends and family.

6. Invest in cybersecurity.

One of the common types of cybercrime is payment fraud. And considering how most smaller e-commerce websites can have multiple vulnerable areas, investing in cybersecurity is more important than ever.

Outside of financial implications, a breach in network and data can be damaging to your brand’s reputation. This can quickly lead to the abandonment of loyal customers who fear some form of compromise.

Examples of cybersecurity threats for e-commerce websites:

• Data phishing — phishing attacks target login credentials and credit card information, usually from social engineering, which deceives users through email, text, or instant messaging.

(Example of a phishing email which is typically marked as spam.)

• Price manipulation — this isn’t something most e-commerce store owners know, but it is possible for an intruder to install lower prices into URLs and get away with the data.
• Malicious code threats — this includes everything from viruses that can corrupt files to trojan horses that attack users’ devices after convincing them to download something from the site.
• Ransomware — imagine having your computer locked by a cyber attacker who won’t release your device until you’ve paid a set amount of cash. If you’re not careful setting up cybersecurity for your website, this may become a problem for your customers, which is guaranteed to hurt your reputation almost irreparably.

Final Thoughts

Running an e-commerce website is already a challenging feat. But it’s undoubtedly a venture that can reap huge profits if managed well. And equipped with the six tips shared above, any modern e-commerce store owner should have no trouble seeing a significant boost in sales, while at the same time increasing brand awareness.

What is important to remember is to consider the nature of your e-commerce store, see how it differs from the rest, and test out the different e-commerce hacks to see which works best for your specific business. After all, no business is ever the same, and that includes in the field of e-commerce.

This interview is part of a series featuring the presenters participating in this year's Core77 Conference, "Now What? Launching & Growing Your Creative Business" , a one-day event aimed to equip attendees with tangible skills and toolkits to help produce and promote their products or services.

What began as an opportunity to assist a colleague in launching their crowdfunding campaign not only ended up leading Alex Daly into a new career, but also helped her carve out a job title that was previously completely unheard of. As the founder of Vann Alexandra, a firm that helps people interested in running crowdfunding campaigns meet their financial goals and get noticed, Daly stands out as a vanguard in the crowdfunding space with a wealth of knowledge on not only how to get people's eyes on a product, but also have them enthusiastically open their wallets. After years of successful campaigns and over $20 million raised for clients on Kickstarter and Indiegogo, Daly decided to do something new once again by starting DalyPR, a firm that would help these companies get attention even past their crowdfunding launch. 

In a recent chat with Daly, who will be leading a workshop titled "Life After Launch: How to Keep Your Audience Excited & Engaged" at the 2018 Core77 Conference, we talked about her qualms with the standard public relations model and tips for anyone interested in getting attention from audiences and journalists alike.

What was your initial drive for wanting to transition into not only running Vann Alexandra, but also DalyPR? 

To start, DalyPR was born organically: after managing dozens of successful crowdfunding campaigns, clients soon began asking us to handle their publicity after their campaigns ended. At first I was averse to the idea—I was not a huge fan of PR agencies and didn't want to call ourselves one. We had worked with agencies for our campaigns with not a lot of success and had also heard horror stories from clients. I felt like PR firms were a smoke and mirrors industry with too big of a price tag.

On the other hand, at Vann Alexandra, we had to be results-driven. We needed to constantly hustle—we couldn't wait around for a "news cycle," we had to lock stories for our campaigns, otherwise how would people find them? That said, I was advised to always say yes to new business, so I thought, "What if we did PR differently?"

So, we decided to apply our crowdfunding services on a longer-term basis. Just like crowdfunding campaigns, which are essentially launching a brand into the world, we don't think PR is just getting an article mention—it's branding, strategy, copywriting, events, and most importantly, connecting with your community.

And can you talk to me a little bit more about what that learning curve was like in terms of how these two industries between crowdfunding promotion and general PR differ?

I think that the big difference is this idea of the news cycle. We try to position a lot of our crowdfunding campaigns around an important moment that connects to that campaign. But [in a typical PR situation] a lot of the time brands are looking for awareness immediately. We can't leverage the immediacy of a launch the same way we do with crowdfunding campaigns, so we have to sort of create that urgency, even if a news cycle doesn't exist. We're always trying to create a sort of relevance to what we're launching, no matter when we're launching it.

Another big differentiator with our firm is we only believe in online press. Because that's where everybody is reading these days. So we barely ever go out for print media, because we think that all the conversations are happening online.

I think another differentiator is, we are good at finding other communities as well. What we learned from crowdfunding was that there are always so many crowds out there who will probably be interested in what you're doing, right? There are the obvious ones— if we're doing a design project, we look for design crowds. But then there's also, branching out and finding the business stories, an art story, a lifestyle story, a leadership story. And so it's also going out there and finding other communities, outside of your existing one.

You were talking earlier about the qualms you have with the old structure of PR. Can you talk about what the typical cycle of PR used to be, and maybe how that's changing now based on the internet and other technological innovations?

The old PR model is building relationships and going out and trying to find the right story that fits in the right news cycle, and all you are trying to do is get that piece of press in the newspaper, or in a magazine. Once you did that, then everybody would read it and would be talking about it.

So it started with just this one piece of press that would trickle down to many different people finding out about this story. But I think that sort of PR model flipped. Now it's about getting it in front of the online community, getting it in front of bloggers, influencers, social media, having tons of people talking about it. Then it sort of trickles up to that big explosive one big piece maybe, in print media, or a big profile or something like that.

Now it's about targeting the individuals, the bloggers— the 'micro-influencers' if you will— to tell stories so that there's a lot of chatter and conversation about it online. And then it can kind of explode into this big thing.

I do feel like the PR world is a very obscure industry. Like, "oh, our work is about going and having a drink with a journalist, and we're talking to the journalist, and we'll see when they can write a story about it'. We never had that luxury from crowdfunding, we always had to create a story even if it wasn't there, but we've had to find a way to make it fit.

We are much more data-driven. Because if we got press that didn't convert into funding or money, we had failed. We have to find another way to get those conversions. So I think that's just the way that our brains are wired when it comes to PR. That we can't wait for a news cycle, when we're always under pressure on a daily basis, we've had to hit these numbers. We're always asking, how are we going to get awareness that converts into something tangible?

Do you feel like you had a leg up on PR because of your experience with Kickstarter?

Definitely. There's a lot more that goes into PR these days, it's not just publicity and getting stories. I think it's also branding, it's copywriting, it's the messages on your website, I think it's having a great website. All those things create a really strong awareness of the company. Those are things that we also learned from Kickstarter. We had to have a strong video, we had to tell a really strong story, we had to get people on social media, tweeting about this, posting about it on Instagram. And we learned that PR is not just publicity, it's so much more now. You have to have all these pieces in place, to tell your story in the best way possible. And we definitely learned that from crowdfunding.

Your firm seems to focus a lot on developing personal relationships with everyone that you work with. And I was hoping you could talk about how that's helped you, in terms of getting stories, finding clients, all that. What's the importance of connecting with communities?

Oh yeah, totally. In general, we believe that community is power—now especially, because of the Internet. So community could be described as how you talk to people on social media about what you're doing, that can be the relationship you're building with journalists. We try to make sure that community is at the center of what all of our clients are doing because that's so important nowadays.

"Funding is important, but that crowd that will show up when the product is done, that has a longer-term value. That's what creates longevity."

What I learned from crowdfunding was that the funding was important, obviously, but the crowd was even more important in the long-term. So a simple example of this is: say you want to raise money for a movie. One option is, you can go and do that and get three people to write a check for you. Or you can get a thousand people to put in a smaller amount of money. And then you can expect that when that film comes out, a good percentage of those thousand people will go to the movie theaters to go see the film. So the funding is important, but that crowd that will show up when the product is done, that has a longer-term value. That's what creates longevity, that's how you get repeat sales, that's how you get people coming back, and championing for you as well; it's having that community. And that's how you create a sustainable company.

And so how have you personally gone about making your connections with media?

I've learned it's definitely a longer-term gain. There needs to be a level of trust. You know, when we started with our Kickstarter campaigns, we had no experience in PR, none of us had traditional experience, so we all sort of had to learn from scratch how to do that. On my first campaign, I had to google how to write a press release! I didn't learn that in school. What I did know is that people like great stories, and so we really tried to pick the best products with really strong stories. And over time, the more pitches that we do that are interesting, the more journalists are going to open the emails and read them.

So the connections that we made didn't really start with taking journalists out to drinks. All of ours started online, by just pitching all the time, products that were interesting. But also products that were successful in the long-term; that when they were made, they were great products, that people actually wanted to have in their homes.

We've honed relationships by pitching products in a really exciting way. And sort of making sure that these products have a follow-through. I mean, you can never predict if a product or company is going to fail, but I think that we always do our due diligence, making sure that these products we work with are not throwaway products, ones that will have a long life and actually do something good for the world in whatever way. And I think that is beneficial for the writer too because they end up writing stories about companies, and businesses, and products that end up having a long life.

Then at one point, after we started pitching the same people, and getting these stories out, I was like, "Oh, I have to meet this person, they've written some great stuff about our clients, and I like how they write, I like their work, so I'll just ask them out for a drink or something". It was very organic, and I think that is clear on the other side too.

"When I'm pitching [a product] I always try to ask myself, 'Would I want to read this whole email?'"

So basically what you're saying is, if you're someone who actually has a company that you're trying to get money or press for, it's imperative when you're creating a product that you're thinking about that story and who it's marketed to, right?

Yeah. Exactly. Making it super targeted for sure, and making sure that the story is told in the most accessible, clear way. When I'm pitching I always try to ask myself, "Would I want to read this whole email? No? Then I need to cut this in half." It's always good to think about what somebody on the other side would be interested in.

You have experience in journalism too right?

Yes, and I think that that helps. I did some writing, but I also was a fact checker, so attention to detail, that was really important to me.

Okay, last question: if you're talking to someone who wants to do their own press, their own Kickstarter launch, what are your biggest pieces of advice for trying to do it on your own? Is it reaching out to other people to help? Is it honing in on your own skills?

I think it's both of those things. It's really, knowing what your strengths are, and if you are really good with design and you're not a good writer, find someone to help you with that who is. Collaborate together and use all of your individual strengths to make the best possible pitch.

I also think that targeted promotion is the way to go. it's much better to pitch 20 really targeted super strong journalists who you've done a ton of research on and know they're the right people for the story versus pitching like a thousand on a mass mailer, that's not going to convert at all. You'll find so much more success with a targeted approach.

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You want to start a creative business. Now What? Come to our 2018 Core77 Conference to learn more about launching & growing a product line or design studio of your own, October 25th, in Brooklyn!

Buy "Now What? Launching & Growing Your Creative Business" Tickets here.

The first publisher who asked for my first book, The Only Sales Guide You’ll Ever Need,  hated the very first chapter because it was about self-discipline He said, “Why would you start a book with a chapter on self-discipline. Everybody hates that.” This what not exactly what you hope to hear about your work, let alone from a person who asked you for the book.

Selling Exposes Character

I patiently explained two idea to this acquisition editor. First, I explained that the things that I called “Mindset” in the book tend to be exposed more in sales than in other endeavors. I went on to explain how things that show a lack of character are amplified, and when one is deficient in these traits, they tend to fare poorly in sales.

After explaining this first idea, I went on to explain that if a person is unable to keep the commitments they make to themselves, then much of what comes after self-discipline is of little or no use to them. If someone can’t will themselves to prospect or follow-up or keep their commitments, how can they be expected to succeed?

The publisher parted ways at the end of our conversation. Fortunately, Portfolio understood that my book was a competency model, though one of my friends described it as “ If Anthony Robbins were mixed with Neil Rackham.”

The Enabling Character Trait

My belief that the ability to will oneself to take action is still the first among disciplines has only grown stronger over the last couple of years. More and more, the gap between a salesperson’s results and their goals is not made up some deficit of skill. Instead, it’s a deficit of will—coupled with an absence of accountability.

With few exceptions, we each know what we need to do to produce the results we want. When we don’t, that knowledge is available with a few keystrokes or a phone call. There is no lacking when it comes to discovering the recipe. What is more difficult, however, is following the recipe. For most of us, the largest obstacle between our current results and the results we seek stares back at us in our mirror each morning.

As it turns out, the first acquisition editor was incorrect. Not everyone hates self-discipline. Those who know the power of self-discipline very much appreciate it.

The post On the Extraordinary Value of Self-Discipline appeared first on The Sales Blog.

In 2010, Google rocked the $60 billion broadband industry by announcing plans to deploy fiber-based home internet service, offering connections up to a gigabit per second — 100 times faster than average speeds at the time. Google Fiber, as the effort was named, entered the access market intending to prove the business case for ultra-high-speed internet. After deploying to six metro areas in six years, however, company management announced in late 2016 that it was “pausing” future deployments.

In the Big Bang Disruption model, where innovations take off suddenly when markets are ready for them, Google Fiber could be seen as a failed early market experiment in gigabit internet access. But what if the company’s goal was never to unleash the disrupter itself so much as to encourage incumbent broadband providers to do so, helping Google’s expansion in adjacent markets such as video and emerging markets including smart homes?

Seen through that lens, Google Fiber succeeded wildly. It stimulated the incumbents to accelerate their own infrastructure investments by several years. New applications and new industries emerged, including virtual reality and the Internet of Things, proving the viability of an “if you build it, they will come” strategy for gigabit services. And in the process, local governments were mobilized to rethink restrictive and inefficient approaches to overseeing network installations.

The story of Google Fiber provides valuable lessons for future network transformations, notably the on-going global race to deploy next-generation 5G mobile networks.  It seems, then, a good time to review the story of how the effort came into being, what it achieved, and what it  teaches investors, consumers, and community leaders eager to ensure continued private spending on internet infrastructure.

In 2009, Congress charged the Federal Communications Commission with the development of a National Broadband Plan (NBP).  The plan set aggressive targets for expanding high-speed broadband service throughout the U.S., continuing to rely almost entirely on private investment. The overall goal:  to ensure at least 100,000,000 Americans had access to broadband speeds of 100 Mbps by 2020.

As it turned out, providers blew past that milestone as early as 2016. But in 2009, no leading carrier was planning a major upgrade of its existing physical plant. This was a break from the previous decade, when technical improvements and competing technologies meant constant upgrades, advancing from dial-up through early cable-based broadband, DSL service offered over the analog phone network, early fiber-based deployments (notably Verizon FiOS) and cable’s last major upgrade, known as DOCSIS 3.0.

By 2009, however, Verizon had scaled back plans for more fiber and DSL technology was falling behind improvements in cable. Major markets were migrating to two segments — a high-end served by cable and a low-end served by DSL.

The broadband market was experiencing a classic “prisoner’s dilemma,” where neither cable nor DSL providers felt a competitive threat from the other requiring substantial new investment, trusting in relative peace within their own market segment. Continued expansion of broadband capacity was on the verge of stalling.

Google sets off a “game of gigs”

In response to requests from the NBP team, Google suggested construction of a fiber-based gigabit testbed to demonstrate the competitive and economic importance of new applications that would not be possible without next-generation infrastructure — including virtual reality, smart grids, autonomous vehicles, advanced tele-health, electronic government, and distance-based education.

Rather than wait for incumbent providers or a government-funded experiment, the company announced that it would build a small number of experimental gigabit networks itself.  To everyone’s surprise, Google was overwhelmed with cities promoting themselves for the test, receiving 1,100 proposals rather than the 10 to 50 they expected.

Cities saw great value to their communities of being one of the testbeds.  They also understood that what Google was looking for was not tax breaks or other financial incentives so much as speed in execution, and in particular commitments from the participating communities to minimize build-out delays—and help in lowering construction costs.  In short, Google wanted partners, not antagonists.

The finalists offered administrative efficiency—a single master contract, a sole point of contact in city government, streamlined procedures for permits to install equipment on city-owned property, and permission to dig up city streets to lay conduit.  These costs—in dollars, time, and political conflict—had proven to be a major hindrance for network deployment, and Google knew that its test wouldn’t unleash entrepreneurial and competitive energy if it couldn’t deploy quickly.

Google was always coy about whether its real goal was to become a nationwide broadband provider, or simply to stimulate investment in next-generation networks by incumbent providers and other new entrants. What is clear is that Google’s own interest in fiber stemmed from a conviction that faster speeds would eventually generate more revenue and services for the broader Alphabet enterprise, making the investment justifiable if not profitable. Becoming a competitive ISP itself was a secondary aspiration.

So Google went about announcing locations, and incumbent broadband ISPs, including AT&T, CenturyLink, Comcast, and Time Warner Cable, would quickly counter by promising improved pricing, faster speeds, network upgrades or some combination of the three. A “game of gigs” had erupted.

In the end, Google announced plans to build in 34 cities, playing a kind of broadband whack-a-mole game. Incumbents, who initially dismissed the effort as a publicity stunt, accelerated and reprioritized their own deployments city by city as Google announced follow-on expansion.

As the game of gigs played out, city leaders were forced to offer the same administrative advantages to incumbents as they had to Google Fiber. Construction costs fell, and the speed of deployments increased.  Only six years after Google’s initial announcement, according to the Fiber Broadband Association, 30% of urban residents had access to gigabit Internet service.

Though Google appears to have paused future deployments, the broadband business has permanently changed.   Fiber investments by former telephone companies have accelerated or restarted.  More advanced DSL using fiber-copper hybrid technology was rushed into operation, as were new fiber-to-the-home services from AT&T, CenturyLink and Frontier. Cable companies once again upgraded their technology, accelerating deployment of gigabit-capable standards.  New technologies — including low-orbit satellites and “fixed wireless” — were developed for remote and rural locations.

The two-tiered market of high-speed cable and lower-speed DSL broadband has given way to a free-for-all, forcing adoption of more disruptive strategies by incumbents and new entrants alike. The result is increased competition between providers and among cities and regions eager for game-changing private investment.

But we believe Google Fiber’s most significant impact was to change the nature of relations between infrastructure providers and local authorities. Even after substantial deregulation in the 1980’s and 1990’s, and even as separate networks and technologies converged on a single internet-based standard, local governments continued to treat network providers as quasi-governmental public utilities, regulating their construction efforts and access to public rights of way with cumbersome procedures developed decades earlier.

Thanks to Google Fiber, the monopoly mindset gave way to one in which both sides understood the other could walk away. Cities learned that inefficient construction management would lead providers to invest elsewhere, while ISPs came to see that cities could only do so much to improve the economics of upgrades and new deployments. Following Google’s lead, the ISPs and the cities created public-private partnerships such as Research Triangle’s North Carolina Next Generation Network, in which both got more, in terms of their goals, than they gave.

A shift in competition and investor mindsets

The Google Fiber experiment caused a reexamination of basic assumptions about competition in what was seen as a static infrastructure industry. Somehow, a powerful new entrant that dominated an adjacent market began a competitive service, deployed it city-by-city, and ignited investment and new competition among the incumbents.

As the authors of the National Broadband Plan hoped, enthusiasm for gigabit internet testbeds broke a logjam in infrastructure investment, accelerating fiber deployments perhaps by as much as two years and stimulating incumbents to commit an estimated $7 to $10 billion in additional capital spending.

Google Fiber’s entrance also — and crucially — changed investor mentality. Wall Street had punished Verizon for investing in its FiOS network ahead of market demand, and likely would have punished other incumbents for upgrading copper-based networks to compete with cable, which had a cheaper upgrade path. Similarly, Wall Street would have punished cable for upgrading its technology when it was already beating DSL in both performance and market share.

Investors, on the other hand, did not punish Google for entering the ISP market. When cities and their residents unexpectedly embraced the vision of gigabit Internet, investors then allowed the incumbents to respond to the new opportunities and threats Google Fiber created.

At the same time, to the benefit of all stakeholders, Google’s entrance into the broadband market exposed long-standing federal, state, and local regulatory inefficiencies that made deployment slow and expensive.   With wasteful processes reformed, providers improved the efficiency of their capital investments.  Consumers got new services.  Cities saw revitalized industries and positive press coverage.

As the U.S. and other economies now undertake even more expensive deployment of next-generation 5G mobile network technologies, heeding the lessons of Google Fiber will distinguish the winners from the losers.

What it means for a 5G mobile network

5G promises speeds and new applications that will make mobile broadband competitive even with fiber. And deployment will likely follow the new city-by-city model pioneered by Google Fiber. Local governments will again have to rethink their approach to construction oversight, including permitting, zoning, franchising, tower siting, and fees.

And there is evidence that they are. For example, rental costs for rights of way, pole attachment rents and other recurring charges, long seen by some cities as a rich source of funding for budget shortfalls, are now being fiercely negotiated by providers. In Boston, Sacramento, and other cities that have secured early 5G investment, local governments are finding that carriers are more than willing to deal, but may walk away if officials demand too many concessions.

For example, authorities are finding, as with Google Fiber, that they must offer competitive rates or risk delaying private investment in new networks, a critical source of local development and competitiveness. In effect, they are learning to balance long-term objectives against short-term fee maximization.

The winners once again will be those communities that appreciate the importance of forming early and comprehensive private-public partnerships with network operators and their investors.

That’s quite a legacy for a project that, at least on paper, looks like a failed experiment. And it’s yet another example of the very different rules that apply in the growing list of industries being rapidly transformed by digital change.

This might sound like a silly product, but if you've ever left your house, then had to double back thirty minutes later because you were certain you'd left the door unlocked, you'll see the value.

The SureKey is a little cover that slides over your existing key. Inside are an accelerometer and a gyroscope that can detect the motion of a key rotating within a fixed point in space (i.e., a lock). Because this is a very precise motion that is impossible to accidentally duplicate, the SureKey knows for certain if it was last used to lock or unlock the door. A little indicator confirms it.

For the super-forgetful, the SureKey can also detect if it's been left inside the lock, and will emit a sound to let you know. (The developers do not specify what the sound is, but I'd like to hear a guy in a Brooklyn accent yelling "Take your keys, dumbass!")

It of course requires a battery to operate, but the one it comes with reportedly lasts for five years.

The SureKey has already been successfully Kickstarted. If you want to get in on it, they're going for $19 and there's 19 days left to pledge.

The inception and the subsequent popularity of the Internet have had a profound influence on our lives. Today, we rely heavily on the online medium to gain access to information regarding a variety of product and services. Thus, it is imperative that business enterprises across the globe strive to gain an online presence, to cater to the needs of their target audience. Digital Marketing, which essentially means advertisement through online channels such as websites, search engines, social media, mobile applications, and email, is a prerequisite, especially for start-ups. Garnering online visibility enhances the chances of acquiring new leads, spreading brand awareness which eventually leads to goodwill in the market for business enterprises.

If you are starting up your own business, it is important that you imbibe the latest tech trends to be successful and have a long-lasting fruitful journey in the industry. Marketing your product or service requires circumspection at the highest degree and resorting to innovative measures using the available online tools. It is important to realize that in the world of Digital Marketing there are no shortcuts. Persistence is the key here, and with time, favorable outcomes are bound to come.

To market your product to your target audience, the first and foremost requisition is that of a business website. However, simply having a business website that orchestrates varied products and services is not enough. Ensuring that potential customers locate your website on the search engine is crucial for the growth and success of your startup. To understand the essentials of digital marketing and its implementation, let us first take a quick look at a few terms that are associated with this vast and dynamic field.

1. Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

For startups, it is extremely important to possess an SEO-friendly website. But how do you make your website SEO friendly? To answer this question, one must have sound knowledge of the intricacies of Search Engine Optimization, and what it means in the truest sense of the term.

SEO means integrating your website in a way that it achieves a favorable rank on relevant search engines such as Google, Bing, and Yahoo. The higher your webpage rank on these search engines the greater are your chances to gain more users, who can then be converted into new customers for your business. It is a solid marketing strategy that will give you and your business impressive results. It involves optimizing different parts of your website such as title tags, page content, page speed, alternative text for images, etc. Off-page SEO, on the other hand, refers to enhancing the domain authority of your website by creating a vast array of high quality of back-links.

In a nutshell, this what SEO essentially means. It is an integral part of Digital Marketing, something startups must incorporate in their regime. Hiring an SEO analyst or a company that provides personalized SEO services will prove to be extremely beneficial for your cause.

2. Social Media Marketing (SMM)

The meteoric rise of social media and the relevance it has on our lives signifies the importance of using this medium as an effective marketing channel. Social Media websites like Facebook, Instagram and Twitter offer entrepreneurs and business enterprises the opportunity to market their product and services to the target audience. Making full use of this platform is an essential requisite for startups.

Social media websites are an effective platform for marketing because you can reach out to your target audience, customize the reach according to your budget and track down potential leads. Startups must have a clear vision regarding the kind of online users they want to attract and the amount of money they can spend on this marketing practice. The ROI should be your primary concern while doing Facebook or Instagram ads. Startups need to be aware of the ever-changing algorithms of social media websites and strive to engage the audience with the content they want to promote.

3. Pay Per Click (PPC)

While at the initial stages of your business, it is critical that you draw as many users as you can to your website. High traffic will further lead to enhanced chances of conversions. Pay Per Click (PPC) is an internet business mechanism that allows you to draw direct traffic on to your website at a price which needs to be paid to the host website.

Engaging with your target audience is an important aspect of digital marketing that can be accomplished with the PPC model of online marketing. The revenue model again must be carefully constructed, and it must adhere to the budget. Once startups start to gain online visibility, they can effectively engage the audience and start acquiring loyal customers.

A successful PPC campaign helps startups gain a substantial customer base, and also enhanced brand awareness.

4. Email Marketing

Engaging with the target audience benefits startups in gaining more leads coupled with a high website traffic volume. It is a cost-effective way to interact with targeted customers. An extensive analysis of user behavior, their likes and dislikes are a must before starting an email campaign. Startups can not only consolidate their existing customer base but also build brand loyalty through this marketing module.

An integral part of the dynamic field of digital marketing is email marketing. Creating attractive promotional emails about products and services and engaging the audience with those is an effective tool that startups need to imbibe and implement in the to successfully gain loyal customers.

Content Marketing

Startups must have a clear content marketing strategy to become a successful brand on the internet. There are certain fundamentals which you must address before creating content for your website. Knowledge about your own product and services and how relevant they are to your target audience is essential.

The content on the website of a startup should not simply be a propaganda text, but it should talk about in detail how it solves real-life situations for prospective buyers of a product or service. Moreover, content must not be simply targeted to potential customers, but it should also cater to the existing customers.

As the world of global technology evolves at the end of each passing day, business organizations, especially startups must absorb the latest digital marketing trends to become a successful enterprise. The world of Digital Marketing is vast, and it has plenty of elements. It requires an understanding of these the intricacies of digital marketing to be a successful startup business enterprise.

Sales is a hyper-social, customer-facing role that can get highly stressful. In this article we talk about the top indicators of sales burnout and how to tackle them.

We all know Sales is the job for the people person — the high-flying, always-on-the-go charmer that’s on the phone, in meetings and/or closing deals. The same goes for recruitment — you’re constantly talking to people, helping them find their next big opportunity.

You see, sales, success and recruitment both share the same problem . You’ve got a target to hit, a boss to report to, and if you don’t meet said goal your job’s on the line. In general, you have about a month’s job security at any given time, and sales and recruitment are often the first to be cut.

To quote Salesforce’s Day In The Life Of A Salesperson, sales is equal parts exhilarating, rewarding, stressful and lonely, an industry built of dedicated early-risers.

When you begin, you’re also often left with a list, a target and not much else to go on. The result is that you’re left to the wisdom of the crowd and the advice of your coworkers. Especially early on in your career, there’s a huge emotional and professional mountain to climb.

Related: Tapping Into Your Soft Side with Emotional Intelligence in Sales

Article overview:

1. 6 Top Indicators of Sales Burnout
2. Tackling Sales Burnout — 6 Proven Ways
3. Anti-Burnout Resources
4. Your Time is Your Time. Don’t Waste it

6 Top Indicators of Sales Burnout

1) You’re tired, no matter how much you sleep

It’s easy to forget that it doesn’t just take physical effort to tire you out. Mental stress — especially when you don’t get a chance to truly relax — can linger through even regular, regimented sleep.

2) Everything just feels more difficult

You’re having trouble closing leads that you used to be able to do without thinking. A half-an-hour sales call feels like it takes forever. You’re exhausted halfway through your day, and even small tasks feel like a dramatic undertaking.

Related: The 3 Biggest Mistakes Sales Reps Make on the Phone

3) You’re not eating

Burnout puts you in a form of fight-or-flight. Despite the fact your body desperately needs food, it’s running on instinct.

4) It’s hard to focus

You may not realize it, but you’re physically and mentally drained. And so keeping on task and getting everything done is much, much more difficult.

5) You’ve got a short fuse

This isn’t just you blowing up over small things — everything is irritating. Little things that used to pass you by now get under your skin. You’re ready to snap at any point.

6) You’re far less optimistic

In an interrupt-driven environment, you’re spending a great deal of time trying to keep hope alive that you can successfully prospect and close. Burnout creates a vicious circle. It makes you tired, irritable, and you don’t believe in yourself. All of this leads to poor sales performance thus making you tired, irritable and hopeless.

So, What Do You Do?

You can’t just take a month off of work to relax. So I’m going to lay out an approach to structuring your day to both relieve some of these stressors and keep burnout away in the longer term.

1) Approach your work with a plan of attack (and research)

In customer-focused roles, your only focal point at first may be one big list and a few set calls. The trick is to set a schedule that you can stick to and create a reliable drumbeat, with each part feeding into the other.

For example, it’s great (and I realize this is an oversimplification) to begin your day making an actual action plan and the research to back up said action plan for the rest of the day. This means that once you begin your outreach/prospecting, you’re armed with the things you’ll need without having to interrupt your workflow as you go.

When you’re feeling down about your work, you now have a structure to follow that exists in the good times and the bad.

Structure is also crucial for when you’re feeling like you don’t get enough done. You can point at your day and say “Hey, I did that” beyond the sales goals that you just have to follow for work.

2) Build a rhythm to your day, and try not to get interrupted

When you’re planning out your calendar, try and build your momentum and execution of your workflow around the meetings for the day.

If you know you’re going to be having a sales meeting at 1PM, don’t set up a meaningful presentation call at 2PM. Furthermore, if you know you’re going to dedicate specific hours to outreach (such as hitting clients that are on the East Coast), make sure to clear that time so that you’re able to focus your energy on one specific task at hand.

It’ll help save yourself from the mental burden of trying to do three or four things at once.

3) Explore workflows and playbooks that match your style, and experiment

Sales and Customer Success remain jobs that require you to pull the proverbial rabbit out of the hat. You have to get something from almost nothing, and build meaningful, revenue-generating relationships from research and sheer aggression.

This means that there are likely thousands of sales strategies you can go after, and finding the right one is a mixture of:

• Seeing what works
• Understanding what works for you
• Actively measuring said success

Most organizations set quotas for outreach, but going deeper into the metrics adds a meta-game to sales that breeds competition with yourself. Don’t simply resign yourself to one strategy because it works for someone else.

Read up on the best prospecting methods out there (even in books, Millennials!), and assess yourself objectively and numerically.

4) Actively seek mentorship (and self improvement)

We’re taught as a society that strength is being able to do things alone, but in sales and success that’s not true.

Great organizations breed a culture of mentorship. Your managers want to see you succeed, which means leaning on them and actively seeking their expertise. This means opening yourself up to (fair) criticism, which can hurt, but it also stops you from feeling exhausted and alone when things aren’t working.

Sales burnout can come for you even when you’re doing well, so keep an active dialogue with them during the good times and the bad. If you’re feeling exhausted, they’ll have advice, and absolutely have faced it too.

Mentors can also be a valuable source to help you calm down, refocus and sympathetically work through when you’re truly, utterly burned out.

5) Find ways to improve your productivity and efficiency

I’ve touched upon understanding the metrics of your own success, and the end goal is to improve your sales productivity and efficiency.

Take a step back from the process and ask yourself the questions beyond the quotas:

• What does it take to get on someone’s calendar?
• How do I engage with X customer in Y industry, and what does it take to get them to not simply reply but continue an ongoing dialogue?

You may find that certain industries aren’t responsive to emails or social selling, but are quick to pick up the phone and amenable to a chat. There are some that may entirely want to talk over email, but getting clear-cut answers from them may be difficult.

So how do you make a phone call easier? When you’re spending less time banging your head.

Also, as with every job, there are manual task and processes that can distract you from your goal. Make use of the top sales automation tools to free up your time, for example.

6) Finally, have self-compassion

This is the most important part of your anti-burnout strategy.

If you’re pursuing a career in sales, recruitment and success, you’re going to face failure and rejection almost every day.

Be aware of how this can affect you. Understand that it hurts, and it sucks, but rejections are part of the job.

Learn from them and, if they’re happening a lot, understand the commonalities, but don’t hate yourself or think you’re bad as a result. You’re a human being, and that’s what makes you great at your job.

This also means having the ability to notice you’re burned out, and taking the necessary measures. A personal day or a vacation definitely helps to disconnect.

Anti-Burnout Resources

• It’s cliché, but meditation (using an app like Headspace) is a time-efficient way to relax and release yourself.
• I also recommend reading as much as you can about the problem of being busy in general. Kevin DeYoung’s Crazy Busy is an excellent book on being overloaded, and finding space to do, as he puts it, nothing at all.
• Tim Ferris wrote a very honest piece on burnout. Arianna Huffington has also written about how she literally collapsed from exhaustion, and how that has changed her for the better.
• Counseling through an online counselor like Talkspace, or in-person might be a good idea too. People who seek counseling aren’t crazy! In fact, they’re making the incredibly smart decision to talk to a professional about their brain, a long term way to improve their health and happiness.
• Exercise and more sleep are obvious, but what isn’t quite so obvious is the ability to truly disconnect from work. It’s a big concept with simple beginnings — it just means being prepared to put your phone away at 7:30pm and not check email past a reasonable hour.

Your Time is Your Time. Don’t Waste It

Sales burnout is a powerful, painful and real experience that’s only compounded by careers that require us to always be on the ball.

Keep that at work — make work a focused, organized, exciting and energetic experience that you put your all into. Then take your free time to relax and enjoy your life. Your work is part of, but not all of you. Burnout comes for us all, and you can absolutely beat it!

The post Sales Burnout is Real. So Are These Top Indicators and What to Do About Them appeared first on Sales Hacker.

Entering the job force is the precarious, but obviously critical, first step into the real world for most new college graduates. And the process it takes to find that perfect career fit is one of the most stressful times for everyone that has walked down that path. Think about it – you’re stepping out on your own and it’s suddenly imperative that you find a career where you see yourself rising through the ranks for many years to come. All of those thoughts about your future that seemed so distant not long ago are suddenly dropped at your feet as questions which must be answered.

As you start having conversations with potential employers and fielding real job offers, what factors really help you choose the best fit for your future? How will you weigh important factors such as salary, work environment, co-workers and the future potential of the industry you are about to join?

My personal approach was to place a heavy emphasis on something my peers in this endeavor largely ignored or dismissed: corporate culture. This is what ultimately led me to choose a career in professional sales – and it also helped me select the company I chose to sign with.

Professional sales stood out as a career path that had the highest potential to create a rewarding culture in my day-to-day work life. While future earnings potential was (and remains) very important to me, I knew I would also take less money initially in order to learn and grow in a place that is fun and worth being a part of everyday (as opposed to making a little more money at a company where the work environment is poor and largely boring).

The Secret to Surviving Tough Times

According to an article on Foundation Recruitment titled, “Why is company culture so important?”:

If a company values its employees, allowing them to work in an environment that they feel comfortable in, motivated and considered as an individual, it will boost employee morale, which in turn, will increase employee retention as well as increased productivity for the company.

This is the “Work hard, play hard” mentality functioning to the benefit of both the employer and the employee. It’s also the best way to describe the nature of professional sales. To be sure: there is no sugar-coating the toughness required to make it in a sales job. The majority of sales floors are competitive environments and if you don’t put in 100% everyday, there are plenty of other professionals out there who will outwork you. At times, it feels like there are more downs then ups in sales, and you will face daunting challenges along the path to success. But some of the best sales pros learn early on to feed off a strong office culture and use that atmosphere to catapult them to high achievement. To achieve the right balance between working hard and enjoying well-earned down time, I needed to find a company that would invest in its employees while actively working to create a dynamic, fun work atmosphere.

This piece on RealStreet, which is focused on the four benefits of a well-defined company culture, further explains just why culture matters so much:

Company culture is the fiber that holds your team together. It explains who you are, what you believe in and where your business is headed in the future. This common ground designates everything from your team’s work ethic to the way they treat one another. A clearly defined culture reminds everyone that they belong, are unified and are all working toward the same shared goals.

How will you know?

What are the hallmarks of a firm that places an emphasis on having a strong corporate culture? Here are a few great examples from a piece in Entrepreneur Magazine titled, “10 Examples of Companies with Fantastic Cultures”. Each of these companies does something unique to stimulate their people and positively impact the corporate culture.

For example:

• Zappos utilizes a unique way to keep people engaged and retained. New employees are offered $2,000 to quit the firm after the first week of training. If they decide the job isn’t for them, they are free to go. Zappos hires heavily according to cultural fit. It has established a company culture and fitting into that culture is the most important thing managers are trained to look for when hiring new employees. Imagine how confident that makes Zappos appear to be (in their culture, in their team, in the offerings) to an outsider job-seeker?
• Employees of Twitter enjoy free meals, along with yoga classes and unlimited vacations for some. Their folks also assert that a big reason they love being there is how much they love working with other smart people. Employees talk about being part of a company that is doing something that matters in the world.
• At Squarespace, management intentionally built a very flat organizational structure with positive results. Employees feel their voices can be heard when they aren’t lowered under layers of management. This level of freedom and empowerment creates confident employees and has improved morale.
• Adobe has created a culture that tries to avoid micromanaging in favor of trusting employees to do their best. They work to give their team members difficult projects, but surround them with all the resources they need to achieve success. Putting trust in employees goes a long way towards cultivating a positive company culture. Trust leads to independent employees, and independent employees will help your company grow.
• No list like this is complete without mentioning Google – the company that sets the bar when it comes to placing an emphasis on building great culture. From free meals, to employee trips and parties, Google places acute value on giving great minds a workplace that feels special.

Making the Choice Easy

When the time came to pick a place where I could launch my sales career, I looked closely at the culture. When I placed memoryBlue under the microscope, there was an overwhelming amount of evidence which suggested the company cared a great deal about this aspect of the job.

In particular, the firm has some strong commonalities with the companies mentioned above. memoryBlue invests time and money to create a fun work atmosphere for the staff – while also letting employees have a big voice in the shape of that culture. There is a designated, join-at-will team called “The Culture Club” in each office comprised fully of employees. This group is tasked with planning festive work outings and teambuilding events. At these meetings, any employee can come forward with an idea that they want the company to participate in. If the employee gets enough widespread support and the idea fits within the budget, the club executes the idea. This gives employees a voice and active role in directly shaping company culture.

Some of the more popular culture events in recent years include:

• Company-wide “get-away” day at a Washington Nationals baseball game in DC.
• A full staff bus trip to Atlantic City, NJ, for time at the beach and in the casinos.
• Field Day, held each Fall, which includes an array of fun teambuilding activities outside such as potato sack races, badminton, beach volleyball and more.
• A company evening cruise on the Potomac River treating employees to beautiful views of DC and the surrounding area.
• Corporate sports teams competing locally in kickball, softball, flag football, and soccer.
• Annual Holiday events, beer and wine tasting parties, fantasy football leagues, and more.

In addition, the CoFounders at memoryBlue present company performance metrics and goals on a quarterly basis for the entire staff. This type of full disclosure isn’t par for the course with privately held companies. The practice is known as “Open-Book Management” and it places memoryBlue among just 7% of U.S. private companies who provide all employees with regular updates on the company’s quarterly and annual financial performance.

Following these quarterly business reviews, memoryBlue hosts lively happy hours that include both current and former employees (known as alumni) where networking and bonding are commonplace. At these events, alumni frequently take time to share insights and techniques with current sales pros around how to be successful in high-tech sales, along with practical advice on just how the training and skills they learned at memoryBlue positively impact them in their current role.

According to the Subitup article, “10 Types of Workplace Culture: Which is Best for YOUR Business?”:

Workplace culture revolves around leadership – both existing and rising. Mentorship programs, coaching programs, and leadership training are implemented and stressed. Existing leaders put their subordinates in positions to succeed, and the best performing employees are put on the fast track for leadership positions of their own.

This is exactly what memoryBlue strives to do through a vibrant employee mentorship program and heavy emphasis on rapid career development. In fact, memoryBlue has been so innovative when it comes to building a great company culture that it was the lone recipient of the America Association of Inside Sales Professionals’ “Best Corporate Culture” award in 2018. The incentives, perks and rewards for results that the company offers constantly help high-energy sales professionals (like me) stay focused on goal time, not clock time.

No Regrets

In the end, if you’re going to work in professional sales, make sure you take into consideration the office culture when evaluating job offers. The ups and downs of sales requires steady support to maintain peace of mind and stay consistently energized. This career path is incredibly rewarding, but it’s also not for the faint of heart. And while company culture may not always rise to the top of mind during the sales job search process, factoring it in to your final decision will be something you won’t regret.

A strong social media presence is not just an option, but a necessity for brands nowadays. According to the latest report by CoSchedule, 2/3rds of all Americans use social media, with 88% of businesses being active on various social networks. The same report states that customers spend 20-40% more money on brands who engage with them on social media.

While social media isn’t necessarily the be-all and end-all of your online marketing efforts, it can play a significant role in getting you substantial results, and that includes lead generation.

Why should your business be on social media?

Considering that 90% of B2B top decision makers give a blind eye to cold calls, with 76% of buyers ready to have a social media conversation, it makes sense for your brand to be super active on social media.

The main benefit of lead generation on social media is the ability to focus on qualified leads via advanced targeting. An analysis by eMarketer shows that one of the main goals of B2B marketers is improving the quality of leads.

Let’s now cut through the chaff and stick to some unique strategies to generate leads on social media.

1. Run Photo Contests

Running photo contests on social media allows you to generate new social fans and generate, eventually spreading brand awareness while engaging existing leads. A photo contest entails the participants to submit a photo related to a certain topic of your choice. In return, you get the personal information of participants, indicating new leads besides user-generated content (UGC) in the form of pictures. Not all businesses have the necessary resources to create eye-catching visual content, and asking your followers for little help doesn’t hurt. You can share the UGC across other social networks or publish on branded assets, such as your website.

Dia & Co, a clothing brand, once ran a photo contest on their Facebook page to discover their forthcoming style icon. The participants were stoked to share the contest in order to garner many votes for their entry. The winner was chosen from the entries with the highest number of votes. Finally, when the contest came to an end, it received 2,291 leads and thousands of shares in a few weeks. In the process, Dia & Co got some attractive photos from their followers who adored their brand.

An important takeaway here is to know the interests of your target audience. This was shown in both the quality and quantity of the entries they received. The prize chosen by the brand and the clear rules were some of the important factors behind the campaign’s success. Furthermore, the organic exposure of the content was greatly increased by the encouragement received by the participants.

Before you run a photo contest, write down your goals. What are the results you want? What theme will lead to the most engaging UGC? How will you get your fans involved? How can you make it a win-win situation for you and your participants?

2. Promote Gated Content

This is perhaps one of the easiest lead generation strategies on social media: Gated content.

Most of your social media followers are people who haven’t made a purchase from you. They are aware and remain on the top of the funnel. Maybe they are considering! Your next job should be to get them to act, and that can be achieved through gated content.

Gated content is content that can be accessed by users once they perform an action. This indicates they have to sign up, or like/share a post. A point to note while creating gated content is to make it EXCELLENT so that your target audience understands that their name and email is a tiny price to pay in return to what they’re getting.

Neil Patel used this strategy while announcing his recent blog post on Twitter.

On clicking the link, this is what they see:

On sharing the name and email address, the user can get access to the gated content. This is a simple and effective strategy. However, some brands do it the wrong way.

An important takeaway is to make your gated content of tremendous use to your fans. If you ask them to fill out a 10-minute survey, they will not be getting leads since the effort of taking the survey is not quite worth the benefit.

3. Leverage On Facebook Custom Tabs

Your Facebook business page can act as a magic wand for lead generation on social media. Based on a research by University of Massachusetts Dartmouth Center for Marketing Research from among US millenials who follow any brand on Facebook, nearly 66% do so to get discounts and coupons, while 37% do so to take part in contests. This can be a tremendous blessing for marketers, since contests, discounts and coupons are all different types of robust lead generation tools on social media.

Tabs are essentially menu items that appear on the left side of your Facebook page. A majority of business pages on Facebook use some of the standard tabs like About, Photos, Pins and Posts. However, very few use custom tabs, which can be a fantastic way to showcase offers and contests used for generating leads on social media.

If you have a developer in your team, you can build custom tabs right from scratch, but you can always find loads of Facebook page apps that can easily assist you in creating custom tabs, which includes lead gen forms. And the best part is you don’t have to invest in any social media lead generation software or know any code.

Conclusion

While trying to generate leads from social media, you can use any of the above-mentioned approaches. However, the technique you use should align with your marketing objectives and the audience you’re targeting.

Have you ever generated leads on social media? Share your stories in the comments below.

• Theranos, a blood-testing startup that claimed it would revolutionize healthcare by doing away with "big bad needles," crashed and burned after it was revealed that it lacked concrete science.
• But biotech startups remain hot in Silicon Valley, with nearly a third of the companies from startup hub Y Combinator's latest class falling into the category.
• So we asked the top investors in the space to tell us what can be done to avoid the pitfalls of Theranos.
• Their answers contain some key lessons.

Few tech companies have crashed and burned in recent years like Theranos, a blood-testing startup that claimed it would revolutionize healthcare by doing away with "big bad needles."

But money moves fast in Silicon Valley, where the company began — and sometimes it moves too quickly for the ideas behind it to keep pace.

In the case of Theranos, launched over a decade ago by Stanford drop-out Elizabeth Holmes, investors put hundreds of millions in a concept with little-to-no published science to support it. When it was gradually revealed that the advanced technology required for such an idea did not yet exist, the company — and Holmes, who'd amassed a net worth of $4.5 billion after the company was valued at $9 billion — toppled. This week, the company announced in an email to shareholders that it would formally dissolve, the Wall Street Journal reported.

Biotech remains a growing sector for venture capital. Nearly a third of the companies in the latest class of Y Combinator, Silicon Valley's biggest startup accelerator, are in the biotech sector. Last year, just 8% of startups were biotech-focused. In January, the incubator announced it would be offering a separate track called YC Bio specifically for healthcare and biotech startups.

We asked the leading VCs at some of Silicon Valley's top venture firms what investors and startups can do to avoid the pitfalls of Theranos. Their answers contain some powerful lessons.

Reality-check the science behind a big idea.

A handful of biotech investors who watched from the sidelines as their peers inked deals with Theranos told Business Insider that the biggest mistake was a failure to vet the science behind the concept.

That doesn't necessarily mean those firms needed to have scientists or diagnostics experts within their ranks, biotech investors said, but if they didn't have an internal person to reality-check the science, they should have consulted with outside experts who could do it for them.

"You need to know what you’re investing in," Dylan Morris, the bioengineering lead at VC firm CRV, said. "Do you need a tech or engineering background? No, but if you don’t have it you’d better find somebody you trust who does and take their perspective seriously."

All of that due diligence is essential in biotech investing, Benjamin Tseng, a principal at venture firm 1955 Capital, said.

"When you’re looking at these areas where real technology is essential, you have to do your homework," Tseng said. "You can’t just count on a charismatic CEO who will cobble together some people and say, 'OK this is going to work.'"

Remember that when it comes to healthcare, lives are at stake.

Certain aspects of venture capital are inherently appealing to biotech startups, like breaking free of the slow pace of academic research. But not everything that applies in tech venture carries over to biotech, some investors warned.

"The framework of 'move fast and break things' is not acceptable when we’re thinking about human health," Francisco Gimenez, the resident data scientist at venture firm 8VC, said.

"You can be Uber and flout the law of taxis because people want what you have so bad that the world will find a way to accommodate you," he said. "With human health, you can hurt people."

Racquel Bracken, a vice president at VC firm Venrock, agrees. For her, it was Theranos' repeated promises of a breakthrough with no concrete follow-up that raised the biggest red flag.

"The sustained promise and no delivery — how that played out with putting patients at risk — that’s a cautionary tale with going too far in applying tech principles to healthcare," Bracken said.

"There are lives at stake," she added. 

Beware the cult of personality.

With her characteristic black turtleneck — reminiscent of Steve Jobs, who she idolized — and magnetic personality, Elizabeth Holmes managed to secure funding not only from big VC firms but also from established companies like Walgreen’s and respected officials like current Secretary of Defense James Mattis. But none of them ever saw the company's product. That should be a big warning for biotech investors today, given how much emphasis is still placed on team and personality.

"It's about being smart as you’re thinking about investing," CRV's Morris said, adding that that means "doing a clear-eyed risk assessment — even if you like the team."

Julie Grant, a partner with venture firm Canaan who leads many biotech and healthcare investments, pointed out that persuasion is a powerful drug, especially when it comes from the founder of an up-and-coming startup that promises to shake up an engrained part of the healthcare system. But that means doing even more due diligence to validate that startup's claims, she said.

"Even exceptional people can be duped and drawn in by brand," Grant said.

SEE ALSO: A Silicon Valley startup founder got interrupted during a board meeting while showing a slide of 5 new female hires, and it offers a lesson to other companies

DON'T MISS: 40 AND UNDER: The Silicon Valley biotech stars who are backing startups aiming to cure disease, fix the food system, and prolong life

Join the conversation about this story »

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Your company has recently hired a B2B marketing agency to help build brand awareness, redesign your website, generate leads or produce thought leadership content. This can be an exciting time since this marketing agency can help your company identify new business development opportunities, close new deals, and generate new revenue. In terms of maximizing the value of this B2B marketing agency partnership, the following are some best practices.

Trust

Your company hired an agency because they are the experts on which B2B marketing tactics work and which practices may not be optimal. You hired the agency to take the lead and, because they do this all of the time, there needs to be an element of trust. There does not need to be blind trust, but there needs to be some faith that the B2B marketing agency knows what they are doing. Constant questioning and skepticism tends to impede the process and slow down results.

Define Success

Before starting a project with a B2B marketing partner, it is critical to define what success is and ensure that the agency you have hired is confident that they can deliver on your expectations. Success should be formally defined before a contract is signed. You should not ask for a guarantee of success, but at least make sure that your company and the hired agency are on the same page. Is success tied to the number of leads each month, closed quarterly business, increased traffic, securing a specific client, or something else? Success needs to be formally stated and written down.

2 Things You Know Best

Trust is important but there are 2 things you will know better than the agency you hire: your company’s ideal client profile and your company’s sales process. Make sure to aggressively communicate both items as much as possible—not only at the beginning but through the entire partnership. This proactive communication will ensure that tactics employed by the agency will result in more engagement with your ideal prospective client AND give you the tools in the sales process to nurture this prospect from a general inquiry to a qualified lead to a committed relationship.

Agency Takes The Lead

Let the marketing agency do their job and take the lead. You don’t want a B2B marketing agency to be order takers. Rather, you want them to be proactively thinking of ways to generate more business for your company. Make sure you allow them to drive the lead generation strategy and be creative on ways to build brand awareness. In the agency interview process, if you find a prospective agency to be passive and not aggressive, move on to the next option.

Reporting

If your company and the agency have defined success, it better be measured monthly! In in the agency interview process, directly ask about an agency’s reporting and optimization process. Demand that there is a monthly report and activity call so that you can determine that you are getting the most from your relationship. Regular reporting will track results and hopefully showcase success.

Conclusion

Selection of the right agency is critical. If you don’t select the right agency the first time, it can postpone success for years. However, just as important as the selection of an agency is managing the agency effectively to maximize your company’s investment. If you adhere to the philosophy above, you will be on the right track.

Sales is an incredibly unique career path.  The job of a salesperson, after all, is to bring value to a company by convincing customers to spend their money on something they might not even want at first.

As a Sales Manager, you know not just anyone can do this job. Hiring the very best salespeople for your organization is essential, and always requires thinking outside the box.

When you do find the right candidate, you can have a loyal employee for life, and all the time and resources it took to get there will be worth it.

To make this happen, you have to tune out the many sales hiring myths that continue to circulate as “best hiring practices” out there today.  Following these myths can lead you to make the wrong hiring decision.

Here are five of the most enduring sales hiring myths, and the most important truths to remember instead.

 

Sales Hiring Myth #1: Candidates are most concerned about compensation.

The truth: Salespeople choose their jobs based on growth opportunity.

While it varies between organizations, generally sales base salaries tend to be similar throughout the company, regardless of years with the company or title.  Especially once taxes are taken out, base compensation is not usually enough to be the deciding factor for sales candidates.

Instead, present a well-defined path for growth to your prospective sales hires.

By doing so, your candidates should be able to easily envision the career they could create at your company based on defined milestones and measurable goals.  The hardest workers among your candidates will be up for the challenge.

 

Sales Hiring Myth #2: Perspective sales hires are looking for plenty of perks.

The truth: The salespeople worth hiring care much more about their potential account territory and meaningful training opportunities your company can provide.

You likely would not want to hire a salesperson who is drawn in by surface-level perks like organic snacks in the kitchen or a ping pong table in the break room.

Because sales can be such a challenging career, the ones who really excel will not be spending time in your organization’s game room, for example.  They will be out making sales!

During the structured interview, emphasize the opportunities for your salespeople to receive high-quality sales training, and share with them what their account territory might look like in terms of potential.  This will help you weed out the sales reps who are overly-concerned with perks, which actually signals misplaced priorities and a poor fit for your company.

 

Sales Hiring Myth #3: Your company’s “great culture” is a key selling point for potential sales hires.

The truth: Emphasize your organization’s dedication to recognition and mentorship opportunities.

In reality, sales teams are often working separately and dealing with their own deliverables.

Your highest-quality candidates will not be drawn to vague promises of the “great culture” at your company.

A supportive environment that rewards top performers and provides mentoring opportunities for salespeople to learn and grow from, however, is likely to resonate with them.

Salespeople choose this career path because they are competitive self-starters.  They want to be surrounded by the best of the best.  Make sure they understand your company is the perfect environment for that.

 

Sales Hiring Myth #4: The more experienced salespeople are not trainable, so stick with a younger demographic when hiring.

The truth: Anyone you hire can be difficult to train – if they are the wrong person for the job.

The conventional wisdom is that senior salespeople can be set in their ways and can be resistant to coaching and training.

Sometimes, this is absolutely true, but this is also sometimes the case with recent college graduates if they are not genetically built for sales.

Instead, think of the personality traits you want (and would not want) in a salesperson, and screen for those instead.

If a salesperson does not have the personality traits needed for sales, no amount of training will improve their performance.

 

Sales Hiring Myth #5: To avoid making a regrettable hiring decision, go with your gut.

The truth: Use an objective assessment based on data and non-teachable characteristics.

The truth is, nearly every candidate you interview will be on their very best behavior and are likely aware of what you want to hear.

This does not necessarily mean they are being dishonest, only that it is natural for people to show the best parts of their personalities when being evaluated.

However, successful sales careers have been linked to one critical personality trait: Drive.

Drive is made up of three non-teachable personality characteristics: Need for Achievement, Competitiveness and Optimism.

While knowing this information is helpful, how can you tell for sure if a potential salesperson possesses this make-or-break personality trait? 

How can you avoid wasting time interviewing, let alone hiring, people who do not have this deep sense of inner drive?

Instead of going with a gut feeling upon meeting potential candidates, use a forced-Choice personality assessment.

The DriveTest® is the simple way to identify whether your potential salespeople are Driven – before you even schedule the interview. The DriveTest® also measures key teachable skills that are essential for a successful sales career, including confidence, persuasiveness, relationship skills and organization.

Your potential salespeople either have these traits or they do not, so screening for them prior to the interview will save you precious time and resources.

 

Conclusion

The world is overflowing with mediocre salespeople, and the truly great ones are rare.

Finding the standout salespeople can be difficult, but at the end of the day you cannot afford to hire the wrong person.

The costs of making an unwise hiring decision can often include damage to your company’s reputation, lost opportunities, the considerable expense of training and replacing a bad hire, as well as unnecessary stress.

Keep these five truths in mind for your next round of hiring, and watch as your highly successful salespeople take your company to new heights.

 

 

The post The Truth Behind 5 Common Sales Hiring Myths appeared first on SalesDrive, LLC.

We’ve all been there, the situations in which ‘the customer is always right’. Dealing with difficult customers can certainly be challenging, and you aren’t always going to see eye-to-eye with your customers. This can put a strain on your professional relationships.

However, if you have a process in place that can de-escalate the situation, then you can improve your customer-CSM relationship, and create further opportunities for between your company and the customer. Here are some best practices for customer success that will help you avoid conflict with your customers and better prepare for their long-term success.

Be transparent about your goals

It cannot be stressed enough that communication is a key factor in building a successful customer relationship. The more open the conversation is, the less likely you are to run into conflict down the road. In order to get the conversation flowing and setting objectives, ask your customer open-ended questions.

Drawing a baseline of the limits to your capabilities will make it easier for them when to set expectations. This will help you better align your goals with your customer’s. Whether you send the questions before your initial meet or ask them at the first meeting, your ultimate goal is to drill down on what your customer’s current pain-points and aspirations are.

Your motive for asking these questions at this stage is not to solve the problem—that will come after the discovery process—but to be aware of them. The only bad question is the one that never gets asked. Get out of your comfort zone to see the effectiveness of your communications improve dramatically.

Some questions you can ask yourself to gain better perspective are::

• ‘What are they looking to gain from this relationship?’
• ‘Where do they struggle most?’
• ‘What are their goals for the quarter or the year?

By keeping these questions in mind, you can help your customers achieve their goals, and their eventual success will reinforce your organization’s values and best practices.

Don’t be afraid to apologize to your customers

No one is perfect and no one expects you to be. Any CSM who is 80% proactive and 20% reactive is hitting the mark. When things don’t go according to plan, belting out an “I’m sorry but…” isn’t a statement your customer wants to hear. “But” is the sign of an excuse coming. Instead, you should say, “Sorry, and…- ” so you acknowledge your mistake and follow that up by telling them how you plan on mitigating the situation and being proactive in the future.

We’re all human and things sometimes slip through the cracks, but the most important thing to keep in mind is how to move forward together. Your customers will want to hear an action plan to recover from the damage and in doing so, you are letting them know you care about their success.

In the event that the relationship is strained from ongoing conflict, it is up to both parties to decide whether or not the relationship is worth continuing. Not every customer will be a good fit for your organization, so it’s key to recognize this before too many resources are wasted by both of you.

Allow your customers to vent

You can be the most proactive CSM but somehow, somewhere, an angry customer is bound to pop up. When this happens, allow them to vent their feelings until the steam eventually blows off.

All that is expected of you in this situation is to remain calm. Even something as little as letting them know that you understand their frustration can help them settle down. In such situations, you need to be analytical and actively offer solutions that will help the customer.

Your customers want to know that they are valued and that their problems matter. By putting on a face or not using the correct tone, you might come off as apathetic and miss out on a chance to show them that you genuinely care about their success.

Convey empathy with a soft tone by using words such as “typically,” or “occasionally” or “possibly” with customers who might not respond the best to harsh sounding words like “always” or “never”.

Moreover, avoid talking over your customer. This is a given for any successful relationship. Usually, people vent because they want to be heard, not so someone can deliver immediate answers that cut into their monologue. Learn to listen. This will show your customers that you value their feedback, and help you turn your challenges into opportunities.

Find common ground with your customers

During a conflict, when both parties find a place of agreement, a common ground, they are more likely to have a relationship with long-term collaboration and cooperation. However, this does not mean you should forget about yourself and solve the problem by agreeing to everything the customer wants. This, in the long run, is an unsustainable way to resolve conflicts.

When a customer remains unhappy and rejects the solutions you provide, you should ask them what they would benefit from in their perspective. For example, use a statement like this:

“I’m sorry that you feel this solution won’t be the most beneficial. I’d love to hear what would make you happy, and see if we can work something out in a feasible way.”

If all alternative methods have been exhausted, it is up to you to lay out the limits of your service and conclude the interaction.

When all is said and done, it is important to manage customer expectations but make sure that it’s not done at the expense of your well-being. It might take time to adapt, but you’ll start seeing results as long as you keep being proactive, maintain a positive attitude, and encourage the conversation.

To grow your customer base, try this subtle but monumental shift in the way you think about your audience. It will change everything about the way you monetize marketing efforts.

It’s important to understand that you have three audiences in place at all times.

Close your eyes and visualize a 360-degree stadium with a stage in the middle of the field and a curtain running right down the middle of the stadium, dividing your audience in half. The dividing curtain separates your first two audiences and the stadium itself separates them both from your third audience.

Audience 1:This includes your existing clients and strategic partners—everyone who is spending money with you. They are seated on one side of the curtain, backstage in the VIP section of your owned-media audience.

Audience 2: This group sits on the other side of the dividing curtain and includes everyone on your e-mail list or snail-mail list who has not yet decided to spend money with you. They are paying attention—but you haven’t established enough affinity with them to move them backstage with a purchase.

Audience 3:This group is outside your stadium and includes everyone who has no idea who you are but could benefit from your products, services, or message.

Most marketing and advertising campaigns focus on reaching as many audience 3 people as possible and trying to immediately convert them to audience 1 who will buy something from you or sign up for some high-touch appointment like a free consultation.

The reality in today’s skeptical landscape is that few people are ready after the very first brand impression to take that large of a jump the first time they hear about you—which means that marketing and advertising campaigns that drive people to this kind of call to action provide much less value than they should.

When you reach people in audience 3, there are basically three things that can happen:

• A tiny percentage are ready to buy immediately (less than 1 percent on most campaigns).
• A small percentage are intrigued and want to learn more but aren’t yet sure if you’re the right person/product/service for their need.
• A large percentage have no interest whatsoever.

Focus your marketing efforts on turning Audience 2 people into Audience 1 people: taking somebody who knows about you from Facebook or email, to somebody who buys from you. Put energy and creativity behind your content marketing. Create a mutually beneficial way for them to get value and learn more—giving you a chance to nurture that contact and build affinity over time, moving them down toward the stage to head into the VIP section with fellow customers.

You will be surprised how this change in perspective will help you focus your limited time and resources.

When I worked for an employer, during my first week of training my manager asked me to create an email folder titled ‘canned responses’. I had no idea what that meant. I filled it with the email messages I was told to place there and went on about the rest of my training week.

I soon learned how important that canned responses folder was and now that I’m self-employed, I lifted that tip to start implementing a similar system for my business.

The truth is, email can be a true soul sucker. It takes a ton of time and energy to manage a busy email inbox. If your emails are all about the same topics, it can start to seem boring or like an inefficient use of time to send the same responses day in and day out.

This is why I love canned responses and autoresponders. Here are a few reasons why you need to start using them for your business along with how to get started.

Reasons to Use Canned Responses

Saves Time

The most common benefit of using canned responses is the fact that it saves you time. No one wants to spend a ton of time repeating the same stuff to people over and over again. At the same time, when you get inquiries about your business, you don’t want to ignore anyone or give off the wrong impression.

Using canned responses can help you limit the time you spend doing unpaid email work.

Saves Mental Energy

Going through emails requires a ton of mental energy especially if you have to respond to them. Most professionals give themselves a 24-hour email response deadline. Even so, the average solopreneur can receive hundreds of emails in just one day.

If you’re receiving emails that fall into a handful of categories, creating some canned responses will allow you to preserve your mental energy for other tasks that will help move your business forward.

Can Get a Mass Message Out

If you have an important announcement to make, setting up a canned response or email autoresponder will be a great way to get the word out with very little effort on your part. If you’re trying to set expectations with clients or customers, a canned response is an easy way make sure that everyone who’s contacting you is on the same page.

For example, if you do generally respond to emails within 24 hours of receiving a message, that will let people know that you may not respond within the hour.

Frees You From Being Glued to Email

Let’s face it, no one wants to be glued to email all day long. If not controlled properly, your email inbox can take over all your free time. Canned responses can give people an automatic or general response in a timely manner so you don’t have to sit at the computer all day and do it yourself.

Common Types of Canned Responses (And How to Use Them)

Now that you know why canned responses are so important if you want to have an efficient work day, let’s go over the common types of canned responses you can create and how to set them up.

FAQ

If you receive the same questions day in and day out, set up a canned response to answer those frequently asked questions or provide additional resources. Do people need more details after buying a product or service from you? Do they often have some reservations or questions before they decide to start working with you? You can set up a special page on your website and include the link in an autoresponder or canned response.

Directory

Want to present people with specific actions to take? Your canned response can serve as a directory showing them how to book a consult with you, provide a review of your services or products, or pay your invoice.

My accountant uses an online portal to communicate with his clients and safely share tax documents. I love that he includes it in every email he sends because it prevents clients from having to email and ask him for it.

If you have specific pages, tools, or resources that your customers or clients need to access regularly, be sure to create a canned response or autoresponder so they can the options at their fingertips without having to interrupt your day with an email.

Marketing and Promotion

Use your canned response to market and promote yourself because you can. Allow people to book a meeting or consult with you or share your latest blog post or media feature.

This can be a great way to build credibility and even book business passively.

How to Create Your Canned Response

There are two main ways you can go about creating your canned response. You can create email drafts to store in a separate folder. Then, copy and past them as a quick response to get through your email messages quickly or have an assistant do the task.

Gmail allows you to create a canned response easily by going to Settings —> Labs —> then choosing ‘Enable’ under the canned response section. From there, you can create and edit your own custom response so you can easily use it whenever necessary.

Or, you can create autoresponders that get sent out with no additional effort on your part.

I tried both methods and they are each effective in their own way. Copying and pasting an email while adding a change or two is a pretty mindless task. It definitely beats typing out the same thing from scratch over and over.

Autoresponders are great too, and you can usually set them up through your email service provider. If you have Gmail, it’s just a simple tool you’ll use. Open your Gmail account and click the settings bar (the little wheel). Click on settings. Then scroll down to the ‘vacation responder’ option and create your message.

You can also set a start and end date so it’s great to use if you’re actually away from the office, or if you just want to send out a temporary message.

Creating a canned response or autoresponder is easy and can help you avoid distractions during your day so you can be more efficient. I honestly don’t know why everyone doesn’t set one up.

Be sure to edit and update your responses as needed and limit a lot of email back and forth so you can focus on what truly matters – producing value for others and growing your business!

Ann Handley is a world-class writer and marketer. She's The Wall Street Journal bestselling author of Everybody Writes and the chief content officer at Marketing Profs. She keynotes at conferences worldwide. She's built a loyal fan following. And she's been sending an email newsletter to her audience for years. “My feelings about newsletters are strong. It’s the one enduring place that we have as marketers, and it’s the place where conversations are most intimate,” Handley says, noting that subscribers voluntarily opt in to your newsletter and choose to receive your emails. “[Newsletters] are 100% effective and they’re still the backbone of so many content marketing efforts." Yet, in 2017, she sent only four newsletters. She missed talking directly to her audience on a regular basis. That's why she knew it was time to approach her newsletter differently. Handley wanted something she was excited to send, and that her subscribers would be excited to open. So in January 2018, Handley unveils her TotalAnnarchy newsletter. It was unlike any other email she had sent before.  And it's one of our must-read newsletters. During my interview with Handley, she explains the format of her revamped newsletter, how to gauge if your newsletter is successful, and her writing process for crafting effective emails fast.

What is TotalAnnarchy?

TotalAnnarchy is sent every other week, and it's filled with curated content for marketers, writers, and content creators. Handley begins each TotalAnnarchy email with a long-form essay on one topic — like Mr. Rogers, the words people hate, and even her battle with the squirrels who are eating her tomato plants. She follows this essay with content pieces she thinks are worth sharing that week, like the most common grammar mistakes people make. Each newsletter is riveting, valuable, and beautifully written.

How to determine if your newsletter is successful

Every great newsletter helps its subscribers. It educates, amuses, or provides some kind of value. But how do you know if your subscribers are actually finding value in your emails? Email analytics and qualitative data (like responses from your subscribers) can help. For Handley, there are four email health indicators she examines to determine if her newsletter was a success on a given week:

1. Welcome email responses

When someone subscribes to TotalAnnarchy, they automatically receive a welcome email from Handley. Within this email, Handley asks subscribers why they signed up and what they hope to learn. The responses to this question help Handley know what kind of content her subscribers prefer. “[My welcome email] has been hugely helpful in terms of figuring out what kinds of content I think will resonate the most. I keep [answers] in a spreadsheet, and I’m able to look at them and figure out what my audience is looking for. It’s a pre-metric in a way,” Handley says.

2. Email open rates

While email click-through rates are an indicator of success or failure for many email marketers, Handley doesn’t focus on them. Instead, she examines her open rates. “Because [my newsletter] is pretty broad, I don’t obsess about the click-through rate too much. I’m more interested in the open rate and seeing how people interact with it throughout the two weeks,” Handley says. A high open rate tells her that her audience is engaged and found value in her prior newsletters. Related: The Easiest Way to Skyrocket Your Open Rates

3. List growth

If her email list is growing, Handley knows that people are sharing her newsletter with friends and colleagues. This word-of-mouth marketing grows her list. On top of that, it demonstrates that people are getting value from her emails. Related: How to Get Your First 50 Subscribers in 30 Days

4. Replies to her newsletter

The final indicator of email success for Handley is the number of personal email responses she receives from subscribers after sending her newsletter. If she receives an above average amount of personal notes from subscribers, her newsletter that week was especially engaging.

4 tips to streamline the writing process

Writer’s block is common. In fact, even Handley struggles with it. “Writing is hard for me, too. A lot of writers will say that they hate to write but they love to have written. I think that is absolutely true.” To combat her own writing block and craft content more quickly, she uses four tactics:

1. Write down your ideas in a notebook or document.

When you sit down to write, a blank page can feel overwhelming. That’s why Handley recommends jotting down ideas whenever they strike. “I carry a notebook with me pretty much anytime, anywhere I go. And I’ll just write a few lines about something I saw, something I observed, or something that just popped into my head. When it’s time for me to write, I’ll get a lot of ideas that way,” Handley says.

2. Don’t perfect your first draft.

In fact, your first draft doesn't even need to contain full paragraphs or sentences. “A lot of people stop themselves from writing because they’re intimidated by the process. They stop themselves before they start,” Handley says. To avoid this, Handley recommends a 4-stage drafting process: Draft 1: Think of your first draft as a grocery list. Simply list out the points you want to make in your content. Draft 2: Flesh out the points you wrote down. Drafts 3 and 4:  Make it your own. Add your voice. Ask yourself, “Does this content sound like it’s written by me?” Each draft leads you another step closer to a perfected piece of content. “Writing to me is an iterative process. And I think that’s the only way to do it and to do it well,” Handley says.

3. Think about one person.

To make her writing more personal, Handley thinks about one person as she's writing her newsletter. This could be a person she talked to during the week, a friend, or a subscriber who reached out to her with a question. Her newsletter is a personal letter to this individual. “Think about the word 'newsletter.' I don’t focus on the news. I focus on the letter. That makes my voice more accessible. It makes it more human, and it also makes it a whole lot easier to just write,” Handley says. Related: Are You a Newsletter Master or Novice? Take This Quiz to Find Out

4. Write your first draft. Walk away from it. Then edit.

Finally, Handley advises waiting before you edit your first draft. She says, “I never write something and then publish it. I always put some distance between me, my writing, and the publishing. And I do that because I believe that the editing is just as important as the writing.” To listen to our full interview with Handley, tune in to our podcast interview with her below.

Try Handley's email marketing platform of choice — for free!

Get a 30-day free trial of AWeber and start sending an engaging email marketing newsletter today.

The post Why World-Class Writer Ann Handley Completely Revamped Her Newsletter in 2018 appeared first on Email Marketing Tips.

Editor’s Note: This article first appeared on the Avenue Talent Partners blog here.

If you’ve been in startup leadership for any amount of time, when I say retaining sales employees is especially hard right now, you probably know exactly what I mean.

It is PAINFUL when your best people leave you and you’re left figuring out how to rebuild. But if you’ve experienced this first hand, you’re not alone – some of the data swirling around on sales retention for tech startups is a little scary:

1. The Tech/Software sector has the highest turnover rate of any industry (13.5%)
2. Salespeople turnover at twice the rate of the rest of the labor force (27%)
3. The average tenure of a VP of Sales has shrunk to just 19 months

Why is this so hard right now? Can you eliminate or reduce it?

Without a doubt, yes. There are ways to combat this (it’s why I founded ATP in the first place) and there are two sides to it: your processes as a company and know which people are the right ones to hire in the first place.

Each of these is a substantial topic, so in order to make this practical, I decided to split this into two articles. We’ll focus on what you can do with your business and your leadership to increase the chance that your sales reps will stick around in this one.

Let’s get into it.

Why Do Salespeople Leave?

Type that question into Google and you’ll find a variety of articles on the topic. Most of them point towards compensation as being the number one reason. However, I think compensation is just the tip of the iceberg.

Great example: while not specific for sales, a recent study on why 10,000+ professionals left their jobs by LinkedIn suggests other factors are the bigger culprits:

Compensation only comes in at #5 (Courtesy of Linkedin)

However, here’s the thing: my experience talking to people every single day about what their missing pieces are is consistent with these data points – especially for top performers. And while yes – top performing salespeople need to have top-level compensation ($ for value folks!), the real reason you’re going to actually retain them isn’t as simple as throwing money at them.

Simply put, all-star talent has a different mindset… or to paraphrase Simon Sinek, “they see compensation as a result, not an end.” They know that the real game they need to play is to better serve their customers… and that the better they do this, the better they’ll be paid (or should be).

They also know things like the mission of the company (a big piece of culture), product/service, opportunity, and leadership are the foundations for allowing them to do that. So no amount of money is going to make up for failures in those things, since it’s going to stop them from winning the game they need to play (cue Einstein’s definition of insanity).

So that said, here’s what it takes to fight the reasons for departure above and hold on to your best people.

1. Create Continuous Opportunities For Growth That All-Stars Can’t Resist.

What do most top performers in sales want? To grow – both themselves and the startups they work for. That’s what makes them top performers! So the moment that potential stops existing is the moment they’re going to get bored and start looking for something new.

This can include everything – from compensation to title to responsibilities. And to keep A+ salespeople engaged, you’ve got to keep raising the stakes for them across the board at the right frequency.

While this will look different for every team, the best way I’ve ever seen this done is with a “feeder system” of promotability – or in other words a strategically designed, transparent system of targeted milestones that increase in difficulty and responsibility over time.

An Example

If you have SDR’s, know what it takes for them to be successful and help them earn a promotion to AE inside of the first year (including a comp boost). This “quick win” for a newer hire is the way to “set the hook” in young, hungry A+ talent with the grit to succeed (it’s the reason why people who hit the jackpot at a casino often end up having gambling problems later in life).

From there, set the milestone a little bigger. Offer the opportunity to progress to Mid-Market and make it a little more difficult to achieve. And so on and so forth to Enterprise to Team Lead to Director and more.

Not only will this help you keep your talent engaged and excited, it’s also the best hiring strategy around. It promotes from within, saves a lot of $$ on churn, and you’re only hiring for a skills gap from the outside to compliment the team.

Something To Keep In Mind…

Your advnacement plan has to be fair, achievable, and you’ve got to do your part as a leader to help your people actually hit the milestones. Remember, top performers want to see and feel results. Furthermore, this has to be well-defined, easy to digest,  and transparent. You should be discussing and explaining it to those you hire in from the outside in interviews so that expectations are properly set.

2. Be A Leader All-Stars Trust.

It’s been said that “people leave bosses, not companies.” I think truer words have never been spoken. It’s really hard to do great work if you’re facing obstacles where you need to be receiving support.

I’ve written an article previously on what great leadership looks like and how it has impacted the businesses I’ve been personally involved with throughout my career. But to summarize what it’s all about, being a leader that world-class talent trusts really boils down to empowerment.

How To Be A Great Leader:

1. Create psychological safety. Google studied what makes teams more productive and this was the single most important factor. Essentially, this means creating an environment where your team believes they are safe to take interpersonal risks.

2. Become a master listener. Great leaders take their team’s contributions seriously, and go out of their way to show their people that they’re valued by truly absorbing what they say.

3. Communicate clearly. Keep in mind, doing this is more than just your words. It’s everything you do to connect with your team, including your presence, actions, attitude, tone of voice, the way you phrase things, your timing, and more.

4. Know your “why”. Inspiring leaders have well-defined, well-articulated, and unwavering vision for what needs to be achieved. After all… if you don’t know where you’re going, how will your team?

5. Operate with integrity. Your people can’t trust you if you don’t do what you say you’ll do. Period.

3. Build A Magnetic Culture

Nope, I’m not talking about ping-pong and free beer. Real sales culture looks like the team at Inspire, a clean tech company with a mission to help consumers and businesses tap into the power of clean, renewable wind energy led by my dear colleague Zac Lowder.

What do Zac/Inspire get so right? They have built their culture on clear and compelling mission and work their tail feathers off to make sure they hire and empower all-stars that have both the skills and desire to join them. The result? 2-3x growth (there’s a reason they call themselves Avengers).

A+ salespeople care about culture – one they can believe in, and will be excited to get out of bed in the morning for. And, one that will support them on their quest to serve your customers better. Here’s some of the best ways to do that:

1. Have a vision your talent can get behind. And be able to articulate it in a compelling way.
2. See the point on leadership above. It all starts from the top.
3. See the point on opportunity above. Allstars crave a bigger stage.
4. Set the tone with a strong candidate experience and onboarding program. This going to require an entire point all by itself…

4. Roll Out The Red Carpet During Interviews And Onboarding.

I’ve added this last point about interviews and onboarding last for one very important reason… you can do all the work on points 1, 2, and 3 above and still totally blow it on this last step if you don’t get your candidate experience and onboarding done right.

When you go to hire, you MUST make sure the things your candidates will really experience when they join you shines through transparently. Difficulties, rainbows, and all.

You can’t fake this if you want talented people to stick around… you need to give them a chance to make an honest assessment if it’s right for them. Failing (or choosing not) to do so just makes the inevitable more painful for both of you.

Not everyone always realizes this is happening, so here are a few things I’d recommend incorporating into your interview process and onboarding experience if you’re not already:

1. Get your candidates involved with the team pre-hire. And not just a half-hour handshake… give them a real chance to live and breathe what it’s like to truly work with you. Have them ride along for a day or jump in on a few brainstorming meetings – really try them on for size!

2. Answer their questions completely and honestly. Pop up the hood and show them what’s inside. Don’t deceive here – let them (no, encourage them) to ask difficult questions and give them straight, no B.S. answers in return.

3. Get real with them about the difficult parts of the role. Be open with them about the challenges what they will face, either through exercises during interviews or by letting them “experience it” before they have to do it.

4. Show them different parts of your business, not just the sales team. Have them spend time with client success, product, finance, etc. and let them see how the organization really works.

5. Set the tone with onboarding that matches your culture. In other words, if you expect it to be fast moving and competitive, the onboarding should mirror that. Ask for feedback and implement that which you receive. This is still a two-way street!

6. It doesn’t stop after offer. Get them immediately setup with a mentor. Map out their first month with the team. Have their equipment ready and waiting. Schedule proper kickoffs that first week. Have the “welcome wagon” waiting. Create a concierge type process. Remember the golden rule here, it will pay off and then some.

Final Thoughts

We’ve covered a lot here, but if you take these to heart, you’ll not only keep your best people, you’ll build a workplace environment that A+ salespeople won’t be able to resist. The reason I started here is none of that knowledge really helps you if you don’t have your company and culture solidified first… even if you find great talent, they’re still not going to stick around.

The other piece of retention is really knowing who is going to pan out in the long run and who is not. I’ll tackle that in another post, so stay tuned!

The post 4 Proven Strategies For Retaining Your Best Sales Employees appeared first on OpenView Labs.

I can already picture half the readers.  Raising their eyebrows, perhaps rolling their eyes, thinking, “Well Dave, the answer is obvious……..”

The obvious answer is to address needs, perhaps to solve a problem.  Once that is acknowledged, the more sophisticated immediately leap to understanding the buyer’s journey.  Too many focus only on the “seller’s journey.”  hoping the buyer is interested in riding along.   Inevitably our focus is on buying and selling, but we are still not aligned with the customer and their journey.

Yet the customer is on a different journey.  Of course they are addressing a need.  That could be developing a new product.  It could by opening new markets.  Or improving operations–reducing costs, improving quality, improving productivity/efficiency.  It could be about implementing a new strategy that drives overall business growth.   It could be addressing problems and challenges in their operations.  Or addressing new opportunities.

Too often, our focus is not on the customer journey–just the part of the journey we are interested in–the buying part.

Inevitably, this creates a challenge in our ability to connect effectively with the customer.  We are supposed to be focused on what they are trying to achieve, but we keep translating that focus into the part we are interested in.  Stated differently, their task is not just buying, it goes far beyond this.  This separation causes a disconnection between what we do and what our customers need to do/achieve.

The more we focus on buying, or even more narrowly, selling, the less helpful we are to what the customer is trying to achieve.

What do we do about this?  Some thoughts:

1. Recognizing buying is just part of the customer journey, is an important first step.  Understanding the customer’s task is far broader and trying to understand those tasks is important in aligning with what the customer is trying to achieve.  Making sure the customer understands we recognize this difference is a great first step (Empathy is always helpful.)
2. Understanding the importance of the buying part of the journey, relative to the rest of the journey, helps us figure out where we can be helpful and where we can’t contribute.
   1. In some cases, for example a new Financial Management system, a new Machine Tool, the buying part of the journey may be a significant part of what they are trying to do.  We can play a major role in the success of their project.
   2. In some cases, buying will only be a small part of what they are trying to do.  They may be implementing a major new business strategy, involving massive changes to their organization, operations, how they engage customers, and so forth.  Our solution may only address a small part of the strategy.  We may, further, be unqualified in addressing the broader parts of their journey.  Trying to help them, where we are not qualified to help, causes more damage.  We need to define, with the customer, where we can play, and how we can be most helpful in that part in which we can contribute.  And then we need to back out on the areas in which we cannot contribute.
   3. We need to recognize the overall project may involve a number of disparate buying journeys.  For example, a customer building a new plant has numerous buying journeys–getting the land, building the facility, putting in the manufacturing lines, staffing the plant, deciding on the software that will be used, looking at who will supply meals in the cafeteria, deciding who will supply soap and toilet paper in the bathrooms……  Some of these are major buying decisions, some are simpler, but these are tasks in the customer journey and things they need to get done to achieve their goal.  Not recognizing that we are just one part in what they are trying to do demonstrates our lack of understanding of their goals and causes us to be unaligned with the customer task.
   4. In all of these variations, perhaps the area in which we can be most helpful, is that whatever part of their journey is focused on buying what we sell, making that part of their journey as simple as possible, creates tremendous value to the customer.  It removes one of many challenges they face, enabling them to more effectively complete everything else in their project.
3. Understanding we fit in their overall priorities and project is important for another key reason.  While we may be successful in the part of the journey that involves our solutions, if they aren’t successful with their entire project–we may never get the business.  The most visible example of this is the “embedded product sale.”  We may sell components of a larger product the customer is trying to bring to market.  The customer may choose our products as part of their project—but they may later decide to cancel the overall project.  While we “won” the business, we’ve ended up getting nothing out of this.  Stated differently, there are a lot of things that impact our ability to get an order, than just having them select our products/services.  We need to understand this and its impact on our ability to achieve our goals.
4. We talk, sometimes arrogantly, about taking control of the process–but in reality as we look at the entire customer journey and how small the buying journey may be as a part of the overall project, there is really very little that is actually something we can “control.”

At this point, you may be throwing up your hands, thinking, “What do we do, how do we connect with the customer, how do we help them with those parts of their project where we can be helpful?  How do we, at the same time, achieve our goals?”

I think there are some bright spots in this, perhaps, bleak picture:

1. Demonstrating our recognition of the customer’s tasks and the project they are undertaking-beyond just buying, demonstrates great understanding and more effectively aligns us with the customer.  They don’t expect us to solve things that are outside our capabilities, but they want us to understand their task is more than a buying journey.
2. Always helping the customer “connect the dots” between what we contribute and the customer’s larger “job to be done,” is critical.  After all, the customer must complete the whole project, including the buying part, to achieve success.  Remember, “for the loss of a horseshoe, a kingdom was lost.”  Even if we are the “horseshoe,” we play a critical part in the customer’s success, we can’t forget this or let them forget this.
3. Recognizing that buying is just a part of what they are doing, everything we can do to make buying simpler, the more we free them up to focus on the success of the rest of their project.  That creates huge value for the customer.

Customers don’t buy just to buy.  They buy as part of an overall effort to achieve their objectives/goals/project success.

If we focus just on the buying journey, we are not maximizing our ability to connect with the customer and create value with them.

 

In many organizations, user research creates friction. It directly challenges the intuition of others, often at the highest levels. It slows product development. It costs money. It has no clear ROI.

But it’s also essential—89 percent of customers stop doing business with a company after a bad experience. User research delivers the quantitative and qualitative insights to improve those experiences.

The key is to connect user research to an improved user experience and, in turn, an increase in customer retention, leads, or any other metric for which C-suite members are accountable.

You won’t, however, build a culture of user research by touting slide decks of best practices at all-hands meetings or highlighting case studies from other companies.

So what should you do? Here’s how to start from scratch.

Why user research matters

Amazon owes its success, in part, to user research. Its mission—“to be Earth’s most customer-centric company”—depends on understanding and resolving online shoppers’ pain points, whether through web design tweaks or free-and-fast delivery. (Eugene Wei, a former Amazon employee, identified the latter as the company’s invisible asymptote, or key limiter of growth.)

At Samsung, user research led the company to redesign its televisions in 2005, doubling their market share in just two years. (Samsung found that television owners saw their sets as furniture and, therefore, valued sleek design.) Febreze realized that consumers craved a “scent reward” for cleaning—even though its fragrance-free versions successfully removed unwanted odors.

Yet the justification for user research extends beyond anecdotal evidence from industry leaders. A study by the Nielsen Norman Group (NNG) showed that commercial enterprises—as well as non-profits and government agencies—consistently generate a strong ROI from investments in usability.

According to that same NNG research:

• Ecommerce sites can expect to double their sales.
• Lead generation sites can expect to double their conversion rates.

User research is the foundation for those gains.

Which questions user research can—and cannot—answer

When should you conduct user research?

1. When you want to assess the intuitiveness and functionality of your design (be it an app or an automobile).
2. When you want to fine-tune your design by testing prior decisions.

For web-based products, user research can deliver quantitative measurement of on-site user behavior and qualitative insights from open-ended surveys and user recordings.

For conversion optimization, user research is pivotal. It forms several components of our ResearchXL framework:

• Analyzing web analytics data to understand how users currently move through a site.
• Conducting mouse tracking analysis to understand which components earn the most attention, how far users scroll, and where users click.
• Conducting qualitative surveys to understand why visitors came to a website and whether they achieved their goals, and to ask current customers about their experiences.
• Reviewing real-time user tests to understand users’ thought processes as they try to complete a task on a website.

The ResearchXL framework uses quantitative and qualitative user research to inform CRO strategies.

In contrast, user research is not a good idea if:

• You don’t have the budget to do it right. A non-scientific approach that bases product decisions on the opinions of one or two users is useless.
• Your product is not ready. A rush to test a buggy prototype is unlikely to yield useful feedback.
• What you really want is market research. User research focuses on how users behavior while interacting with your product, not whether your product has business potential or with whom it may generate interest.

Making sure that you’re conducting user research for the right reasons can remove one potential roadblock when it comes to winning over skeptical executives.

Why executive buy-in is so hard to get

Expecting executives to lead advocacy of user research is about as likely as designers championing quarterly earnings targets. User research affects earnings, and earnings validate user research, but accountability differs.

So how do you get executives to value user research? It’s not about trying to “change the culture,” according to Krista Godfrey, who led efforts to revamp the user experience at Memorial University Library:

Rather than transforming a culture drastically, it is better to aim for new goals over time that will influence existing culture. As these goals are adopted and achieved, they can influence the broader culture of the organization, effectively transforming the culture.

The limits of persuasion in the C-suite

Nor, even for experts, is cajoling executives into culture change possible: “I’ve been pitching our services for 23 years and I’ve never once successfully convinced an executive of anything,” writes UX and design expert Jared Spool.

Spool continues:

You can find out what your executives are already convinced of. If they are any good at what they do, they likely have something they want to improve. It’s likely to be related to improving revenues, reducing costs, increasing the number of new customers, increasing the sales from existing customers, or increasing shareholder value.

Good UX can help with each of those things.

Once you start talking about what the executives are already convinced of, it becomes easier to get them to make investments. You’re no longer trying to get them to change their focus. You’re playing directly into their main field.

A generic presentation about how Apple or some other company has a great user experience program (or worse, a presentation showing all the bad user experiences in the world), won’t convince anyone of doing anything different.

You’ll need to do something custom. Something specific to their current focus.

These are the steps to build that custom strategy—and to ensure it resonates with the executive team.

5 steps to create a user research culture from the ground up

You could try to effect change independently. But your silo—whether product design or marketing or web development—isn’t the only one that needs or benefits from a user research culture.

Only a company-wide user research culture enables iterative testing throughout the product design process. Otherwise, the impact of user research is limited by the stage at which it occurs. For a SaaS product, it may be impossible (or, at least, prohibitively expensive) to redo the user interface (UI) if user research doesn’t enter the equation until the final stages of development.

Fostering widespread interest in user research begins with the identification of internal allies.

Step 1: Build a team of internal allies.

People inside your company—and outside your department—feel your pain, even if they don’t define that pain as a lack of “user research culture.”

• Marketing staff relies on user persona research to target the right prospects.
• Sales representatives know that a happy customer is a potential referral that can generate a quick and lucrative commission.
• Customer success personnel know that satisfied customers don’t complain about the same issue over and over again.
• The finance team understands that content customers are less likely to churn and destabilize revenue flows.

Change begins by building relationships with other internal advocates. Working with multiple departments quickly shifts the conversation from a design- or UX-centric language to the broader goals of user research—customer satisfaction and brand advocacy.

The vast scope of research that may take place within an organization. (Image source)

Real-world user research teams

Google. When Google embarked on a massive and unprecedented redesign of its core products, designers found that collaboration with engineers forced them to choose a shared vocabulary.

Rather than focusing on specific design elements, they articulated changes in the shared language of user success: “This is going to solve user problems. It’ll take less steps, or people will find that perfect place for a romantic dinner.” (They also validated design choices quantitatively with “voluminous” user testing.)

Yahoo. At Yahoo, they created a centralized UX Research and Accessibility team that included “researchers from existing design research, mobile UX research, ads and data research, [and] accessibility.” (Yahoo enjoyed top-down support for their effort, but the lessons still apply.)

The diversity within the Yahoo team all but guaranteed that user research would counter beliefs of those involved, something Yahoo viewed as positive: “When teams learn information that they were not expecting, they see the value in user research.”

Despite that benefit, the range of professional backgrounds mandated investment in internal team building, too: “Time spent understanding the team and the product is just as valuable as time spent understanding the user, and one needs to spend time doing both to be successful.”

Memorial University. Memorial University Library took a similar approach to their user research, establishing a “permanent” team devoted to usability. The permanent component was a subtle argument for the centrality of user research:

As a permanent group, it highlights both the importance of user feedback and evidence-based decisions within the organization. A standing team devoted to usability testing also implies administrative support for the practice and values the skills the group will develop among its members. As skills grow and spread from this team, usability becomes an organizational value and inherent aspect of the library culture.

A “braided” approach to UX and design

In all cases, the resultant teams adhered to what McKinsey labels a “braided” approach to product development, which weaves design, strategy, and technology efforts—and employees—into a single strand:

McKinsey’s “braided” design model ensures participation from multiple groups throughout product development. (Image source)

To find allies, ask:

• Which departments indirectly use your product and have connections to people in the user roles you’re targeting?
• Is there a project sponsor who can help sell the value of research and connect you to additional team members?
• Are there employees in other departments whose individual goals align with getting better user feedback?
• Are there departments within the organization (sales, customer service) that can offer connections to customers who want to provide candid feedback?

Once you’ve established an internal team, you can begin to weave together the disparate threads from each member.

Step 2: Create a framework for user research.

If you’re the first internal champion for user research, your team may be starting from scratch. As with any brainstorming session, the initial step is to compile existing data (e.g. buyer personas, user research conducted by various groups) and moderate an open-ended discussion about what user research should look like for your company.

An online space—Slack, Basecamp, Trello, etc.—may support spontaneous contributions or be more sustainable for multi-location organizations.

The goal is to define a set of user research principles to guide your organization. At Yahoo, they identified four principles: timely, believable, actionable, and surprising. (“Believable,” for Yahoo, meant “statistical valid or credible” not “aligned with intuition or experience.”)

Avoid merely listing complaints or perceived missteps. Otherwise, your project may seem like a direct challenge to management.

How much user research is enough?

As you compile existing user research, you may wonder: Do we have enough? All research has a point of diminishing returns, and user research is no different. Quantitative research offers a threshold of statistical significance as a measure of credibility, albeit an imperfect one.

For qualitative surveys, we’ve found that 100–200 respondents is the right range—anything larger typically becomes repetitive (and unnecessarily expensive). For user testing, NNG wryly notes that, “The answer is 5, except when it’s not.” The recommended number of test users varies, in part, on the type of research: card sorting (15), eye tracking (39).

If you have a big budget for user research, NNG argues that the money is better spent on more research methods, not higher user volumes for fewer methods (even if you have millions of users or multiple target audiences).

Once an initial synthesis of user research and a forward-looking framework are in place, you can seek involvement and feedback from the wider company. Your established structure protects the ideas and process from free-wheeling input that can dilute your message.

Step 3: Share user research with your team.

Where do you keep customer journey maps? What about user personas? For most organizations, they’re buried in file folders or isolated within small teams. That reinforces the idea that user research is, for example, “marketing’s job,” rather than a company focus.

There are overt opportunities to share research. MailChimp prominently displays user persona posters at their offices:

MailChimp decorates its walls with user personas to reinforce the centrality of users in product development. (Image source)

There are also other, more interactive ways to engage your organization in user research:

• Invite employees to watch user tests, live or recorded. (Free food or drinks are a simple but effective motivator.) A shared calendar with session times can make it easier for others to participate.
• Regularly send out edited highlights of sessions. Include notes from your internal team that explain how insights are influencing product development.
• Encourage anyone involved in product development to observe in-person user testing sessions. (Yahoo offered an adjacent room with comfy furniture and whiteboards to entice visitors and encourage real-time brainstorming.)
• Host informative lunch-and-learns to present user research best practices and highlight novel findings.

In short, treat your outreach as an internal marketing campaign to build interest in and show the value of user research. (Note: You may want to exclude management if your user research campaign is building toward a presentation to executives.)

Step 4: Prototype a change based on user research.

A prototype validates an improvement in the user experience. While prototyping is far easier in the digital space—a redesigned app UI is cheaper to mock up than a prototype for the phone it operates on—a bare-bones approach can yield a persuasive impact.

Indeed, Mozilla and Disney—two household names—successfully prototyped product updates with paper and cardboard, respectively.

Prototyping a digital product

Mozilla prototyped a redesigned support page on paper. (Yes, paper.) Like many sprawling sites, Mozilla struggled to make it easy for users to drill down into subsections to identify a solution to their problem. The initial interface offered about 30 potential solutions and a search bar:

Mozilla plowed through seven prototypes in two weeks by using paper prototypes. (Image source)

Designers used paper prototypes—printed mock-ups of various screens—for user testing, allowing designers to make real-time adjustments based on user feedback. If users struggled to find a section or understand a label on a paper prototype, designers could immediately test alternative versions without time-intensive and costly recoding.

The final product, built through the user-tested prototypes, delivered a simpler interface that vastly increased the chances of the first click being the right one:

Mozilla’s redesigned support page makes it much more likely that a user’s first click is the correct one.

As research has shown, a correct first click leads to a 70% success rate for a task, while an incorrect first click drops that likelihood to 24%.

Did it work for Firefox? Help questions in its support forum dropped by 70% after the relaunch.

Prototyping a physical product

Disney employees used a prototyped physical environment to pitch the Magicband, a new piece of tech that provided park visitors with a friction-free user experience.

The proposed band allowed visitors to pay for anything, unlock their hotel room, and track their location (so characters could proactively greet a birthday boy or girl, or a hostess could take patrons directly to their tables).

The prototype for Disney’s Magicband featured a demonstration in a cardboard version of the park. (Image source)

The team that developed the concept knew executives would be hesitant—implementation was a “billion-dollar bet” on the technology. They unveiled the prototype in an empty warehouse with cardboard cutouts to represent various park sections and interaction points.

The fake park allowed wristband-fitted executives to walk around and experience its benefits. Showing, rather than explaining, is the gift of a prototype. How else could you describe the sense of freedom from exploring the park with no tickets, credit cards, or reservations to remember?

A prototype is not the final step, however. While it validates UX improvements, only a proof of concept demonstrates feasibility.

Step 5: Build a proof of concept for your prototype.

A great prototype isn’t necessarily a profitable one—it may not address the underlying UX issue or may be implemented incorrectly, two failures that can torpedo anticipated benefits to the user experience and the bottom line. A proof of concept tests the business value of a prototype.

For a media site, a proof of concept could be an A/B test of a redesign for a subset of articles with, say, increased ad clicks defining success. For an app, it could be a beta version of a new feature, with user engagement metrics delivering the proof. (Google is known to leave products in beta for years, in part to gather feedback but also to temper user expectations.)

The goal of a proof of concept is not to validate user research but to show the potential business value of the changes. If the current C-suite focus is reducing churn, roll out changes to a high-churn segment of your user base. If the C-suite focus is growth, make changes that affect key acquisition channels (ad copy, landing page design, etc.).

Ultimately, a proof of concept should provide the final connection between user research, user experience, and business goals.

Keys to building a successful proof of concept:

1. Pick an inexpensive project or small market segment to simplify rollout.
2. Choose a project that directly supports management’s goals and relies on user research.
3. Ensure the improvement is measurable to demonstrate ROI.

Conclusion

“The best thing to do if you want to get people to care about user experience,” UX Designer Paul Boag argued in an interview, “is show that user experience can help them personally.” That means finding common languages to discuss the user experience and common goals to measure improvements.

Did a cluttered design confuse users? Did cleaning it up simplify the checkout process? Are sales up?

Was the value proposition based on features users didn’t care about? Did more empathetic copy increase click-through rates? Are lead numbers higher?

Those sequential questions reveal the thread that runs from conversations in user interviews to those in executive boardrooms. The strength of your user research culture depends on how well you can trace that thread through your company and how many strands it contains.

Closing a deal is often as difficult as slaying the Minotaur—you know, the monster of Greek myth who’s half-man, half-bull and lives in a giant maze. Never met him personally but I’ve heard stories. People love to gossip.

As a seller, you find yourself trapped inside a labyrinth of a sales cycle and at the will of the Minotaur.

You take wrong turns trying to find scattered content you hope will push the deal forward. You hit walls waiting for Marketing to deliver you the right content at the most opportune time. You take blind chances on pathways to explore, but those pathways are dark, ominous, and downright spooky. Without the right tools, your sales effectiveness is non-existent, and it cripples your decision making.

Don’t be that guy who blindly runs in first (usually screaming)—see Jones, Indiana.

Being the first to the sales cycle is worth diddly if you don’t take the right path. And often times it’s the Minotaur that finds you, and you’re unprepared. “Not interested,” “We’ve gone with someone else,” or the ever-charming, “Reach out next year.”

With that said, don’t be that guy who falls behind the pack—see Doo, Scooby.

Sellers that aren’t focused on improving sales effectiveness are lagging behind and consistently losing.

As a marketer, you have no insight into your seller’s movements in the labyrinth. You hope they use the materials you’ve provided, but you have little to no communication or feedback. They’ve gone rogue, and you’re helpless—knowing the only way to defeat the Minotaur and close the deal is by working together.

Together. What does that mean?

Theseus, the hero tasked with slaying the Minotaur did not make the attempt without help. He worked in cahoots with Ariadne—the daughter of the king who built the maze, and who gifted Theseus a sword and crucial ball of thread.

With this thread, Theseus could track his movements effectively through the maze, right up to the Minotaur’s lair, slay the monster, and take the thread’s path to escape from the Labyrinth.

Ariadne’s thread in the sales world?

Sales enablement.

Sales enablement allows sellers to be met with gleaming content that finds them, not waste time searching down dark pathways.

A dedicated sales enablement strategy is a key to improving sales effectiveness.

With sales enablement, both Sales and Marketing have visibility into what materials drive sales effectiveness during the cycle. Sellers are armed to the teeth, prepared with the right arsenal of content if—and when—the Minotaur pays them a visit.

Like Ariadne’s thread, sales enablement guides the seller along each step, helping them through conversations that keep buyers engaged and their mouths watering. With it, sales effectiveness goes through the roof, sellers are no longer trapped in a maze and at the will of the buyers, and they know the direct route to close.

Alas, we’ve spent all this time on how to slay the Minotaur, yet none on the Minotaur himself. Poor guy. I think if the angry Minotaur sat in a therapist’s chair he’d lament that he’s just misunderstood.

And he’s exactly right in the sales world. According to Forrester Research, 77% of executive buyers claim sellers don’t understand their issues and where they can help. 77%. Just think of all these sellers trembling around the Labyrinth, with swords that couldn’t trim the Minotaur’s beard. Or is it mane? Half-creatures always confuse me. Still, the Minotaur has no choice but to swallow all of them whole.

Buyers want to be challenged, not coddled. 80% of the sellers they meet have agendas focused on presenting their products, rather than understanding the buyer, their company, and its business challenges, according to the same Forrester Report. That means 80% of sellers are toast before they shake hands with buyers.

Also, executive buyers consider only 19% of the meetings they have with sellers to be valuable. That sounds like a discouraging statistic, but it’s just the opposite. Since 81% of sales meetings are unproductive snooze fests, consider the impact of well-prepared seller with content that speaks to a buyer’s business and commands their attention. You’ve got a seller with superior sales effectiveness and that’s outpaced the competition.

The Minotaur analogy isn’t just half-man, half-bull. Sales enablement helps sellers sift through it, if you catch my drift.

Organizations that have implemented a sales enablement solution have seen a 350% increase in content usage, 275% boost in conversions, and 65% more revenue generated by new reps. Furthermore, Aberdeen has found that organizations with a sales enablement platform experience a 13.7% annual increase in deal size. This is the direct result of a concentrated effort to improve sales effectiveness with a sales enablement strategy.

Organizations will continue to feed their sellers up to the Minotaur. But the best organizations, those that guide their sellers down the path of sales effectiveness and slaying the monster, will give them Ariadne’s thread and a hero’s sword. They will bestow them with sales enablement, and with it, they’ll close deals once thought to be myths.

Marketers often become obsessed with one area of their funnels, and as a result, end up leaving other essential segments of their funnel neglected or downright ignored. Typically, that obsession is centered around lead generation, which, while necessary, is only one section of an entire lifecycle that can be leveraged for growth.

Typically, the need for an audit arises because a desired outcome isn’t being achieved. Perhaps you’re doing a great job bringing in leads, but they just aren’t converting. Maybe your leads are converting, but your churn rate is unreasonably high and unsustainable compared to the number of new customers coming in.

While there are plenty of reasons for needing an audit, it’s worth noting that even if you don’t see an issue currently, that doesn’t mean one isn’t slowly creeping up, ready to surface and become a problem.

A growth marketing audit is essential to every business and should be performed at least quarterly (though an annual audit should suffice also). Focus your audit on the entire lifetime value of your customers so that you’re able to deploy tactics and strategies that will improve not just the value of your initial sales, but also the frequency and number of purchases in the future.

How to Perform a Growth Marketing Audit

Building and performing an internal growth marketing audit is all about creating a better understanding of your business and ensuring your growth strategy actually works. To do that successfully, you’ve got identify not only strengths, but weaknesses and bottlenecks in each stage of your funnel:

Awareness

Are you using the right channels?

While you might start with a shotgun approach to building awareness, over time you should be able to determine your top three channels. Typically, this boils down to reading and understanding your analytics and figuring out what’s driving traffic to your landing pages.

If you’re using social media marketing, it should be easy to see which sites have the largest audience, are getting the most engagement, and ultimately, are driving the most traffic. From there, you can determine which blog posts are getting the most shares, ranking higher, and driving traffic.

Once you have a clear picture of what’s working and what isn’t, you can then confidently pull all your resources from lackluster channels and put everything into your top three. Tools like BuzzSumo can be especially helpful in determining what works for your company and what’s working for the competition.

Are your public relations in order?

Consumers are smart and resourceful these days. Not only are they reading all about your product and what it can do, they’re also reading case studies, reviews, and rants all over social media and review sites to find the dirt on your company’s shortcomings.

Bad press and bad reviews should be addressed and fixed (if possible) routinely and in a timely manner. Some great tools for this are The Brand Grader or the more robust Mention, both of which help you keep tabs on your company’s online reputation.

Interest

Is your lead nurturing and relationship building approach working?

A whopping 65% of marketers don’t have an established process for lead nurturing. Without proper nurturing, leads will either grow stale or straight up opt-out, which can lead to huge bottlenecks and wasted marketing resources. Nobody wants that.

The best and most cost-effective, way to nurture leads is with marketing automation. In fact, companies using marketing automation to nurture leads see a 451% increase in qualified leads on average, along with a 53% higher conversion rate. Tools like Mailshake allow you to send automated follow-up emails, see who’s opening and interacting with your email content, and schedule meetings with the right integrations. All on autopilot.

What cache of content do you provide to lure prospects closer to conversion?

A harsh reality is that consumers no longer need salespeople to make educated decisions about buying. Sure, there are intricate details only a seasoned salesperson can provide, but the majority of people do in-depth research and read about your product before they ever talk to you. What kind of content is out there related to your product or service?

High-quality content is a sensational tool for lead nurturing and building trust. While it’s important to put out your own content, you shouldn’t neglect the added credibility that comes from a third-party. Nobody likes to hear someone talk about themselves or their product, which is why teaming up with industry groups, professional associations, content review sites, and macro and micro-influencers is so important.

Conversion

Is it easy to say yes?

If you aren’t making it easy to say yes, then you may be repelling potential customers. Offering freemium products, free-trials, cancel at any time offers, and money-back guarantees can boost conversions because transparency is captivating, genuine, and charming.

On the other hand, lengthy, constrictive contracts or jargon-rich terms of agreement can give people anxiety and doubts about purchasing. During your audit, make an effort to make signing-up or purchasing as easy as possible. Eliminate doubts, tweak the user experience (UX), and get feedback from actual customers for best results.

Are your conversions increasing month-over-month?

“You’re either growing or you’re dying” is a harsh, but true statement. Conversion numbers should always be improving, even incrementally – otherwise, you’re doing something wrong.

Not only should you be comparing conversions to last month, but historically from the prior year as well so you can track trends and seasonality. Finding a way to grow, even by a small percentage, every month has the potential to compound exponentially over time.

For example, Paul Graham, founder of Y Combinator, wrote that a 10% growth per week will result in 142x growth in 12 months. That type of incremental growth for a company with 1,000 users would mean 142,000 users in a year.

Loyalty

Are customers responding to the onboarding experience that you provide?

Successful onboarding means your client is ready to use your product, feels supported, and has a plan in place to achieve the goals they set out to accomplish by purchasing your product.

Some ways to tighten up the onboarding experience are sending out Net Promoter Score (NPS) surveys at the end of onboarding, tracking initial usage metrics, and scheduling “check-in” calls or emails at key moments post onboarding.

Depending on the size of your operation it can also be useful to assign them a dedicated Product Success Manager to act as their single point of contact through initial usage stages. An assigned role like that can help get over the initial hurdle of learning to use your product and provides a more turnkey experience.

Where are you upselling and providing further value?

There’s inherent stickiness is providing your customers with multiple products and services – especially if they integrate well and come with a bundled discount. Doing so makes it difficult to switch brands or cancel their service with you because doing so would require they find a new supplier for all their different needs.

If you struggle with this question, brainstorm possible ways you can create further value to your customers. What other adjacent lines of business could you offer? What features could be stacked on top of your current offering?

What mechanisms are in place for consumer feedback?

It’s crucial to find a way for customers to provide feedback during onboarding and after. When using your product, customers are more like to stay loyal if they know where they can get advice, repairs, support, etc. in a timely manner.

One way to do this is to strategically offer an NPS survey at key intervals. Post-onboarding is an excellent place to start. Another is after interactions with your customer success team to make sure issues and questions were promptly and adequately resolved. Finally, offer these surveys throughout the year at regular intervals to determine customer satisfaction and track at risk-clients who may be in need of further touches and nurturing.

Advocacy

Does your product live up to expectations?

If your customer success department is slammed, your churn rate is higher than the industry standard, or the review boards are riddled with negative reviews, it could be time for your executive team and product engineers to take a step back and revisit key areas of your product or business.

Perhaps you’re targeting the wrong type of consumer. For example, some companies roll into key account and enterprise solutions too early and can receive backlash from customers for not living up to expectations. Alternatively, perhaps your company has grown and is now better suited for larger accounts which leaves small businesses feeling like your product is too complex or too pricey.

Is your customer service up to par?

Poor customer service is arguably the number one reason you’re going to receive bad reviews and resistance when it comes to creating promoters. It’s common sense. If your customers don’t feel adequately supported it will be difficult for them to recommend your product.

Potential remedies can include offering other ways to contact customer support like live chat or rolling out an enhanced onboarding and training program. Finding a balance between being cost-effective and offering a world-class support department is tricky, but well worth the effort.

Running a Growth Marketing Audit

A periodic growth marketing audit is essential if you want to know whether your growth strategy is working or not. Break it down by funnel stage and try to keep a neutral perspective on the results. Make decisions based on hard evidence, clear data, and customer feedback rather than “going with your gut” and make sure the changes you implement have elements of quick wins and plans for long-term sustainable growth.

Setting an overall sales goal for a company is relatively easy. The leadership team decides how much growth is needed in real dollars as a percentage over last year’s sale. That’s a great starting place. To actualize that goal, build a sales strategy that breaks it down so that everyone understands what they need to sell by when and the best way to make that happen.  

Here are the 6 steps to set and reach your goal.  

Step 1: Break it Down 

Once you know the goal, figure out where exactly to focus.  

How much: 

• Of each product or brand should be sold? 
• Will come from recurring revenue? 
• Will be new sales to existing clients? 
• Will be new sales to new clients? 
• Revenue will come from each vertical? 
• Will each rep provide in each category? 

Step 2: Do an Assessment 

Before you begin to plan the future, look toward the past. Do an assessment of the previous year of business with your team. Here are some questions to consider with them. 

• What were our sales last year?  
• How much did your team sell? 
• Who sold it? 
• To whom did they sell it? 
• How much will result in repeat business? 
• Which clients brought in the least and most profit? (Make sure to add in support time!) 
• Which clients had the shortest sales cycles? 
• Which clients had the highest revenue? 
• What has changed? 
• Where is the most logical place to look for growth? 

By understanding where you have been, you can begin to determine where you should go. 

Step 3: Determine Your Market Strategy 

Now, start thinking about where you are going. 

This is the time to think about a market strategy. Consider the following questions based on your work so far: 

• How much can you grow existing accounts? 
• How can you leverage existing accounts to get referrals? 
• How much can you increase revenue inside existing territories with existing products? 
• How much can you increase revenue inside existing territories with new products? 
• How much can you increase revenue in new territories with existing products? 
• How much can you increase revenue in new territories with new products? 

The most cost-effective, fastest sales will be with existing accounts, then referrals. The slowest and most expensive new revenue will result from cultivating sales of new products in new territories.  

Start with the most cost-effective and fastest sales by building key account plans for your top 10 clients. 

Step 4: Create Your Timelines 

When you are clear about when revenue needs to be obtained you can create a plan to hit those timelines. Take a look at the existing funnel and make realistic predictions about what can be closed each quarter. If you don’t see enough revenue from what is in the funnel, it’s time to start creating a plan that will fill the funnel with qualified leads.  

As Alice always says, “Close dates come from clients, not quotas.” Of course, your clients will buy what they want to buy, when they want to buy it. Good salespeople will be positioned properly to get accurate close dates. But, creating clear timelines to hit goals can help your sales team prioritize their work. 

Step 5: Find Opportunities in Existing Clients 

How much money is sitting on the table with existing clients because you don’t have a clear plan for expansion? 

Look for opportunities in all accounts by doing some white-space mapping. Make a spreadsheet of existing clients and what they buy.  

Determine which clients to include. List all your clients, the top 100, the top 20% or whatever makes the most sense for you.  

Determine which products to list. For example, if you have many products list your top 3 products or product groups.  

Use some indicator of the size that will help you identify potential. It might be the sales revenue, the number of employees or the number of locations.  

Doing this exercise identifies the growth opportunities. Work with your sales reps to look at the potential of each account, then determine how much to project and how that fits into the sales goal. 

Tools like Revegy that sit inside of Salesforce.com make it very easy to do this but the example below is a simple, low-tech, inexpensive solution. 

Step 6: Look for Leads 

If there is not enough in the funnel to support the goal, create a plan to fill the funnel.   

Here are some methods to consider.

1. Inbound Marketing 
2. Account Based Lead Gen 
3. Conferences and Networking 
4. Social Selling 
5. Referrals

What is a realistic amount of leads from each of these sources?   

If the numbers still aren’t adding up to hit your goal, then it is time to revise your goal. 

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What steps do you take to hit your sales goals? We’d love to hear! Leave a comment below.

The post 6 Steps to Setting Strategic Sales Goals appeared first on Alice Heiman, LLC.

When people talk about lead management, they’re often just talking about lead scoring. I’ll just take a stand and say that this is wrong. Lead scoring is one-sixth of Lead Management. A few weeks ago, we posted a blog about how to define a sales-ready lead. That comes back into play now as it is the foundation of lead scoring. This is a huge miss for so many organizations, as scoring is often built with criteria that Marketing thinks qualifies a lead as sales-ready. When we facilitate this in session, we always, always see that marketing defines a qualified lead in a very different way than how Sales defines a qualified lead. How then, can lead scoring – often built without reflecting on that agreed upon definition of a sales-ready lead be accurate? in this blog, we’re going to take an in-depth look at this essential stage of lead management.

Remember that a sales-ready lead (or qualified lead) is defined using a combination of digital behavior and demographic information. Lead scoring is built to auto-magically qualify leads based on this criteria. We assign a numerical value to specific actions (visits to the website, downloads of an asset, etc.) that a customer or prospect takes throughout their engagement with you coupled with key demographic information. When the sum of their scores meets a pre-determined threshold, the lead is considered to be sales-ready (or marketing qualified) and is passed over to Sales for follow-up.

The primary objective of lead scoring is to get higher quality leads to sales when the buyer indicates readiness. In time, and when the algorithm accurately reflects quality, this automation can improve Sales efficiency, Marketing effectiveness, and alignment between Sales and Marketing.

• Increased Sales efficiency and effectiveness
  Because lead scoring focuses Sale’s attention on leads that digitally indicate that they are ready to buy, Salespeople spend considerably less time on ‘junk’ leads.
• Increased marketing effectiveness
  Lead scoring is never complete. It needs to be tweaked and updated over time based on Sales feedback and funnel conversion metrics. With a lead quality feedback loop in place, Marketing is able to zero in on and nurture the right kind of leads for the business.
• Tighter Marketing and Sales alignment
  The fact is, once Marketing starts sending higher quality leads to Sales that actually convert to revenue, the relationship changes. Anything that adds potential revenue to the sales pipeline gets the attention of Sales Leadership. In time, the relationship between Marketing and Sales is more symbiotic. But again, it all starts when you establishing a common definition of a sales-ready lead (defined in Stage 1 of the lead management process).

There are some best practices to abide by to develop a holistic lead scoring model. Most importantly, it is essential to establish a common lead language. Everyone must agree on what qualifies as a lead for Sales engagement, as well as the labels and definitions of lead statuses.

Next, create the lead scoring model along with key Sales staff in a 1-2 hour working session. Keep the lead scoring model simple at first. As you being to pass leads to sales, collect feedback from Sales on the quality of the leads. You will want to adjust scoring if too many unqualified leads get through (suggesting that your algorithm is too loose) or if not enough leads are getting through (suggesting that your algorithm is too rigid).

As you build out your scoring model with your Sales partners, be sure to cover the following questions:

• Which demographic variables are most important to your Sales team?
• What demographic attributes are most common in closed/won deals?
• Which behaviors represent buying interest?
• Which behaviors should be weighted highest?
• Which behaviors indicate negative buying interest?
• Can you classify your behaviors into buying stages (early, mid or late stage buying activity)?

It is also important to use one lead scoring model across the entire organization. You can customize the model for a business unit or product as needed, but there should only be one lead scoring model that everyone can refer to.

Once you have created your lead scoring model, it’s time to test and verify your new lead scoring design. We often suggest that our clients run a small pilot of sample leads through scenario tests with a newly designed lead scoring program.

• Example 1: Existing closed/won customers
• Example 2: Existing closed/lost opportunities/contacts
• Example 3: Leads that were unqualified by Sales

Ask yourself this key question – Would these leads have been assessed correctly by our new scoring model?

If the answer is yes, it’s time to move forward with the next steps. Build out new lead scoring campaigns and if you have an algorithm in place, retire old lead scoring campaigns. Reset your lead scores (demographic and behavioral), rescore on demographic information and then monitor your new scoring programs for the next four weeks.

Four weeks after launching your new lead scoring model, it’s time for a re-assessment. Assess the current state of your lead scoring algorithm by asking Sales for feedback. Verify your design through a pilot test. (Are qualified leads meeting the MQL threshold? Are the right leads qualifying for scores? Are they where they are supposed to be in the funnel?) Finally, update your scoring model.

Finally, lead scoring is an iterative process. Your lead scoring model should be reviewed, at a minimum, every quarter. As your lead quality and volume stabilize, you can push that back to every 6 months.

To reiterate, while lead scoring is not the entirety of the lead management process, it is an important part of the whole. Good lead scoring increases Sales’ efficiency and effectiveness, Marketing’s effectiveness, and helps bring Marketing and Sales into tighter alignment. World class lead scoring is:

1. Reflective of the definition of a sales-ready lead.
2. Created by Marketing and Sales.
3. Inclusive of digital body language (behavioral data).
4. Limited to one lead scoring model with customization for a business unit, ABM or product as needed.
5. An iterative process.

One of the most pernicious things about easy credit is not simply that it allows us to live beyond our means, but that it readily tricks us into believing we're not doing so.

You can max out your credit cards filling your home and your life with nice things—a big-screen TV, a remodeled kitchen, a brand new car. And then you get to live day after day surrounded by those things. And a funny thing happens: you start to feel wealthy because you're surrounded by trappings of wealth. A sort of circular reasoning sets in, at the gut level if not the cognitive level:

"I have all this nice stuff, so obviously I was able to afford it. And because I was able to afford it, it's not a problem that I have it. Nothing to worry about."

This is the Illusion of Wealth. Communities that have maxed out their proverbial credit cards experience a similar illusion. And it manifests itself routinely in the illogic with which some civic officials and boosters respond to our observations about the fiscal hole they're in. 

Some common objections to the observation that a place has built an unsustainable amount of public infrastructure are:

"Well, it might be unsustainable for a poorer community, but we're doing well over here, so we can afford a little extravagance."

"We're a growing, desirable community, so the debt is an investment in our future."

"We need to spend this money to keep up with our population growth."

It may be true that you'll be able to pay it all back. But the mere fact of growth isn't evidence that you will be fine. That's a circular argument, just like the fact that you just bought a big-screen TV is not actually proof that your personal finances are ship-shape.

Relying on the fact that you've been able to build some shiny new stuff and attract some rich taxpayers to live in your city is a bad bet to stake your future solvency on. Here's why:

1. Many rich neighborhoods don't stay rich forever.

If you're going to talk about private wealth as the reason you can splurge on public infrastructure and amenities, you need to remember that private wealth can up and move. From a municipal government's perspective, wealthy residents are not so much like the indebted homeowner in the analogy that led off this essay—he knows he's fine putting that BMW on credit because he just got a promotion at work. Wealthy residents are more like the bling—the car, the TV, the kitchen—because cities can, in a sense, "buy" them, and cities can also lose them.

High-income individuals who have a choice of where to live may flock to a community with good schools, nice new modern houses, roads with no potholes, attractive landscaping: the trappings of the illusion of wealth. They can just as easily flock elsewhere a generation down the line.

Our friends at City Observatory released an interactive report called Lost in Place that tracks neighborhood change from 1970 to 2010. Pick a region you're familiar with and pull up the map of it here. Look at the "fallen star" neighborhoods. Those are places that have gone from low poverty to high poverty in a generation and a half. Here's a slideshow of three example metros (you can find a lot more by visiting the link above)—Indianapolis, Atlanta, and Houston:

Your local tax base is most likely dominated by property taxes, and although real estate can't up and move, it can lose value. Sometimes a lot. Property values are a prediction, an expectation about the future of a place. See how they fare when the school system declines, the roads start to crumble, and people of means move out of the community. This fate is, if anything, even more likely for suburban communities whose primary selling point is precisely their shiny newness.

This analysis is limited by the fact that the comparison is only to 1970. If you really wanted to see some dramatic reversals of fortune, you'd look at the places that were clusters of concentrated affluence even earlier. Many, maybe most, of them are no longer their respective regions' prestige ZIP codes. How many poor neighborhoods are dotted with quite literally the luxury housing of, say, the 1880s?

If your path to long-term solvency relies on being a prestige ZIP code forever, I might suggest you develop a plan B.

Detroit, MI. Source: Juan N Only via Flickr.

Source: Baltimore Heritage via Flickr.

2. The return-on-investment of public spending is often highest in poor neighborhoods, not rich ones.

Strong Towns president Chuck Marohn made some waves in 2017 with an article entitled "Poor Neighborhoods Make The Best Investments." I'll let him summarize it in his own words:

This map of Lafayette, Louisiana, based on research conducted by Strong Towns and geoanalytics firm Urban3, illustrates that the city's lower-income neighborhoods, on balance, deliver a higher return on public infrastructure investment, while many of its wealthier areas are money-losers.

What is obvious here is that the poor neighborhoods are profitable while the affluent neighborhoods are not. Throughout the poor neighborhoods, the city is—TODAY—bringing in more revenue than they will spend to maintain the neighborhood....

This might strike some of you as surprising, yet it is important to understand that it is a consistent feature we see revealed in city after city after city all over North America. Poor neighborhoods subsidize the affluent; it is a ubiquitous condition of the American development pattern.

Of course, the reason for this isn't that, through some voodoo, these neighborhoods are magically producing more tax revenue per resident. Rather, value per acre is where they tend to shine. Poor neighborhoods usually have a more sustainable ratio of public infrastructure obligations to private wealth, even despite the lack of private wealth in these places.

Much of that is because 20th-century suburbanization left behind poor people in the places with a traditional development pattern. So it's not some ironclad law of economics that poor neighborhoods are more financially productive. What is actually the case is that the productivity advantage of the traditional development pattern is so dramatic that it actually outweighs the advantage of having wealthier residents and more expensive property.

Old and blighted: total value $1.1 million.
Shiny and new: total value $618,000.

Our distant ancestors built Rome and Jerusalem and Xi'an and Teotihuacan. Our more recent ones Kyoto and Buenos Aires and Paris and Marrakesh, and many more of humanity's timeless cities. And most of them did it not through vast infusions of wealth, but through many average citizens working incrementally. You don't have to be wealthy by modern standards to create a great place and maintain it. The genius of the traditional development pattern is exactly that: your place has the potential to thrive in the future even if the people living there then are of modest individual means.

3. Your suburban town probably can't afford its development pattern even if it is rich.

Here's a common sense observation: There is a limit to the amount of public obligation we can take on. And that limit is separate from any question of short-term cash flow or debt financing—i.e. the ability to write the checks today and have them clear.

Reductio ad absurdum: Suppose we built Elon Musk's Hyperloop and connected every city over a million people in the U.S. to the system. Could we afford to do it? If someone were willing to lend us trillions of dollars, sure, in a sense we'd be able to "afford" it: we'd have a loan through which we could pay contractors to make construction happen. Would it be a good idea? No. It'd be completely insane.

So we should all be able to agree there is a theoretical limit on the amount of infrastructure we can afford per capita. This is obvious and trivial. What we're arguing about is where the line is between affordable and not affordable, sustainable and not sustainable. Crucial to the Strong Towns argument is that the line isn't where you think it is.

We've been living so long with an illusion of wealth that we assume, "We must be able to afford all this stuff we've built, because it exists."

Reductio ad not-so-absurdum: If the state of Georgia wanted to double its road network, and someone were willing to lend the Georgia DOT the money to do it—backed by promises that the new capacity would unleash a virtuous cycle of economic growth and the investment would pay for itself—it could do so. If the debt financing were available, humans could be put to work building those roads, and then they'd exist.

I bet most readers will agree that this would be over-the-top. That wave of economic growth wouldn't materialize, because road spending doesn't really create much prosperity; it just tends to move it around by enabling people to live and work in new places and commute longer distances. Georgia would be stuck with a lot of expensive pavement in need of eventual maintenance.

Georgia currently has an estimated 271,000 lane miles of public road. The cost of a new road is highly variable but let's go with a lowball estimate of $1 million per lane mile. The state could double its existing road network for the low, low price of $271 billion. Divided over 30 years (a reasonable estimate of the lifespan of a road) and 10.43 million current Georgia residents, that's $866 every year for 30 years for every man, woman, and child in the state of Georgia. (Note for the nerds in the crowd: Yes, this is extremely simplistic in countless ways—it's a thought experiment, not a fiscal analysis.)

That's just roads: what if we also doubled the extent of sewers, water mains, pump stations, treatment plants, sidewalks, and so forth? And keep in mind the state has still got to maintain all of the stuff it's already built.

The thing is, this isn't actually that preposterous. Because we have done it before, and in a place without Georgia's booming growth. As Jason Segedy points out, Cuyahoga County, Ohio—home to Cleveland—more than doubled its built footprint from 1948 to 2002, while its population ended up being exactly the same in both years: 1.39 million.

Cleveland built a whole new Cleveland for no net new residents. And we wonder why we're going broke.

Suburban Atlanta can be smug and say, "But Cleveland is a Rust Belt city. It's been in decline for decades. We're growing."

Oh yeah? For how long are you going to keep that up? What happens when you don't grow?

So let's lay to rest the excuses of those who claim that the math about the unsustainable cost of infrastructure under the suburban development pattern doesn't apply to them:

"No one would lend us this money if it weren't a good investment."

"We wouldn't take on this debt if it weren't a good investment."

"Our growth itself is proof that we're doing something right."

"Well-to-do people keep moving here, so we must be doing something right."

"A government budget isn't like a household budget. We take on debt today in order to spur the economic activity that will pay down the debt tomorrow."

Sure, some municipal investments do pay off multiple times over—but the onus is on the government to do a rigorous cost-benefit analysis, absent the hand-waving that typically accompanies assertions that new spending is an investment in growth.

This isn't a small-government argument. It's actually agnostic to the normative question of how small or large local government ought to be. If you, the residents of an affluent community, want to tax yourselves more to invest in your quality of life, go for it. But can you back out of that obligation if your circumstances change?

Infrastructure is perilous because it's physically permanent. Cannibalizing your future tax base, via TIF or another means of jump-starting development right now, is perilous. When you commit your children's generation to paying for something you built, you need to think differently about that decision: because you don't know their situation, or even who will be living in your city then.

Carmel, Indiana. Source: Goodfreephotos.

Carmel, Indiana, had $1.2 billion in public debt as of 2017. The city has gone on an above-and-beyond municipal spending spree in recent years—road projects, civic buildings, a New Urbanist downtown out of thin air—in a bid to be Indianapolis's premier suburb. It has vociferous defenders who claim the debt is not a problem, because it's all backed by future revenue streams.

Let's unpack "future revenue streams." I take that to mean taxes that will come in over the coming years under existing projections: that property values will remain high and Carmel will remain Indianapolis's premier suburb.

But the track record of 1970's or 1990's premier suburbs being 2018's premier suburbs is spotty at best. So here's my question: would the defenders of Carmel's high public debt be sanguine about it no matter who was living in Carmel? Or if Carmel's per capita income were just over the poverty line, would louder voices be calling for the heads of its municipal leaders for mismanagement of the city's finances?

The answer is telling. If your growth strategy only works as long as wealthy people live in your town, your growth strategy is deeply fragile.

(Cover photo: Wikimedia Commons.)

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After the usual summer lull in publishing, September brings about a flood of new books to dive into. These are just some of the books we'll be getting between the covers of in September. It was really hard limiting this list to 25 books, and we'll most likely be talking about some others that aren't on this list over the coming month, so stay tuned. 

Leading Matters: Lessons from My Journey by John L. Hennessy, Stanford Business Books

Scholar, engineer, philanthropist, leader. In this new book, former Stanford President John Hennessy draws on his experience as an educator and technology entrepreneur to offer thoughtful and visionary guidance on leadership and service.

In Leading Matters, current Chairman of Alphabet (Google's parent company), former President of Stanford University, and "Godfather of Silicon Valley," John L. Hennessy shares the core elements of leadership that helped him become a successful tech entrepreneur, esteemed academic, and venerated administrator.

Hennessy's approach to leadership is laser-focused on the journey rather than the destination. Each chapter in Leading Matters looks at valuable elements that have shaped Hennessy's career in practice and philosophy. He discusses the pivotal role that humility, authenticity and trust, service, empathy, courage, collaboration, innovation, intellectual curiosity, storytelling, and legacy have all played in his prolific, interdisciplinary career.

Hennessy takes these elements and applies them to instructive stories, such as his encounters with other Silicon Valley leaders including Jim Clark, founder of Netscape; Condoleezza Rice, former U.S. Secretary of State and Stanford provost; John Arrillaga, one of the most successful Silicon Valley commercial real estate developers; and Phil Knight, founder of Nike and philanthropist with whom Hennessy cofounded Knight-Hennessy Scholars at Stanford University.

Across government, education, commerce, and non-profits, the need for effective leadership could not be more pressing. This book is essential reading for those tasked with leading any complex enterprise in the academic, not-for-profit, or for-profit sector.

21 Lessons for the 21st Century by Yuval Noah Harari, Spiegel & Grau

In Sapiens, he explored our past; in Homo Deus he looked to our future. Now, one of the most innovative thinkers on the planet turns to the present to make sense of today’s most pressing issues.

How do computers and robots change the meaning of being human? How do we deal with the epidemic of fake news? Are nations and religions still relevant? What should we teach our children? 21 Lessons for the 21st Century is a probing and visionary investigation into today’s most urgent issues as we move into the unchartered territory of the future. As technology advances faster than our understanding of it, as hacking becomes a tactic of war, and as the world feels more polarized than ever, Yuval Noah Harari addresses the challenge of navigating life in the face of constant and disorienting change and raises the important questions we need to ask ourselves in order to survive.

In twenty-one accessible chapters that are both provocative and profound, Harari builds on the ideas explored in his previous books, untangling political, technological, social, and existential issues and offering advice on how to prepare for a very different future from the world we live in. How can we retain freedom of choice when Big Data is watching us? What will the future workforce look like and how should we ready ourselves for it? How should we deal with the threat of terrorism? Why is liberal democracy in crisis?

Harari’s unique ability to make sense of where we have come from and where we are going has captured the imaginations of millions of readers around the world. Here he invites readers to consider values, meaning, and personal engagement in a world full of noise and uncertainty. In such a world deluged with irrelevant information, clarity is power. The ability of 21 Lessons for the 21st Century to present complex contemporary challenges clearly and accessibly makes it essential reading.

Farsighted: How We Make the Decisions That Matter the Most by Steven Johnson, Riverhead Books

The hardest choices are also the most consequential. So why do we know so little about how to get them right?

Big, life-altering decisions matter so much more than the decisions we make every day, and they’re also the most difficult: where to live, whom to marry, what to believe, whether to start a company, how to end a war. There’s no one-size-fits-all approach for addressing these kinds of conundrums.

Steven Johnson’s classic Where Good Ideas Come From inspired creative people all over the world with new ways of thinking about innovation. In Farsighted, he uncovers powerful tools for honing the important skill of complex decision-making. While you can’t model a once-in-a-lifetime choice, you can model the deliberative tactics of expert decision-makers. These experts aren’t just the master strategists running major companies or negotiating high-level diplomacy. They’re the novelists who draw out the complexity of their characters’ inner lives, the city officials who secure long-term water supplies, and the scientists who reckon with future challenges most of us haven’t even imagined. The smartest decision-makers don’t go with their guts. Their success relies on having a future-oriented approach and the ability to consider all their options in a creative, productive way.

Through compelling stories that reveal surprising insights, Johnson explains how we can most effectively approach the choices that can chart the course of a life, an organization, or a civilization. Farsighted will help you imagine your possible futures and appreciate the subtle intelligence of the choices that shaped our broader social history.

The Person You Mean to Be: How Good People Fight Bias by Dolly Chugh, Harper Business

An inspiring guide from award-winning social psychologist at the New York University Stern School of Business on how to confront difficult issues including sexism, racism, inequality, and injustice so that you can make the world (and yourself) better

Many of us believe in equality, diversity, and inclusion. But how do we stand up for those values in our turbulent world? The Person You Mean to Be is the smart, “semi-bold” person’s guide to fighting for what you believe in.

Social psychologist Dolly Chugh reveals the surprising causes of inequality, grounded in the “psychology of good people”. Using her research findings in unconscious bias as well as work across psychology, sociology, economics, political science, and other disciplines, she offers practical tools to respectfully and effectively talk politics with family, to be a better colleague to people who don’t look like you, and to avoid being a well-intentioned barrier to equality. Being the person we mean to be starts with a look at ourselves.

Dolly argues that the only way to be on the right side of history is to be a good-ish—rather than good—person. Good-ish people are always growing. Second, she helps you find your “ordinary privilege”—the part of your everyday identity you take for granted, such as race for a white person, sexual orientation for a straight person, gender for a man, or education for a college graduate. This part of your identity may bring blind spots, but it is your best tool for influencing change. Third, Dolly introduces the psychological reasons that make it hard for us to see the bias in and around us. She leads you from willful ignorance to willful awareness. Finally, she guides you on how, when, and whom, to engage (and not engage) in your workplaces, homes, and communities. Her science-based approach is a method any of us can put to use in all parts of our life.

Whether you are a long-time activist or new to the fight, you can start from where you are. Through the compelling stories Dolly shares and the surprising science she reports, Dolly guides each of us closer to being the person we mean to be.

You Are a Mogul: How to Do the Impossible, Do It Yourself, and Do It Now by Tiffany Pham, Simon & Schuster

As the founder of Mogul—praised by Sheryl Sandberg as the #1 millennial platform—Tiffany Pham created a global technology and media empire by the age of 27. As living proof that the old rules of success no longer apply, Tiffany writes the new rules for following your passions and forging your own path in an age of disruption.

Traditionally, the word “mogul” has been attributed to men. But Tiffany Pham has redefined it—now, when you Google the word, the top search result is the company she founded: Mogul. The platform enables millions of women, across 196 countries, to connect, share information, and access knowledge.

So how did a young woman—who arrived in the United States without speaking a word of English—turn a dream of connecting women into a fulfilling career and highly profitable company that has changed so many lives?

Tiffany chronicles her path to becoming one of the most successful entrepreneurs of her generation, and offers specific, actionable advice that covers everything from overcoming self-doubt, to pursuing side-hustles, to crushing it at life and work by over-delivering, all while remaining your authentic self. You will learn how to negotiate job promotions, secure and balance multiple career roles, hire and manage teams, and become a mogul yourself. The book also features strategies and insights from ten of the most powerful moguls worldwide, including Nina Garcia, Star Jones, and Rebecca Minkoff.

You Are a Mogul addresses the new reality that few of us will work for one company for our entire career and that there is no one straightforward formula for a “good life”—personally or professionally. To succeed, we have to be agile, flexible, and strategic. You Are a Mogul is an indispensable road map to the kind of life and career that is demanding and challenging—but also exciting and full of opportunities, if you know where to look.

Smart Business: What Alibaba's Success Reveals about the Future of Strategy by Ming Zeng, Harvard Business Review Press

How Strategy Works in an Interconnected, Automated World.

Leaders already know that the classic approach to strategy—analyze, plan, execute—is losing relevance. But they don't yet know what replaces it. As everyone and everything becomes more interconnected and digitized, how do you operate, compete, and win?

Ming Zeng, the former Chief of Staff and strategy adviser to Alibaba Group's founder Jack Ma, explains how the latest technological developments, such as artificial intelligence, machine learning, the mobile internet, and cloud computing are redefining how value is created. Written especially for those outside the technology industry or the startup arena, this book introduces a simple, overarching framework to guide strategy formulation and execution in this data-rich and highly interactive environment.

Revealing the revolutionary practices that he and his team have developed at Alibaba, Zeng shows how to:

• Automate decisions through machine learning
• Create products informed by real-time data from customers
• Determine the right strategic positioning to maximize value from platforms and suppliers
• Repurpose your organization to further human insight and enable creativity
• Lead your company's transformation into a smart business

With insights into the strategies and tools used by leaders at Alibaba and other companies such as Ruhan and Red Collar, in a variety of industries from furniture making to banking to custom tailoring, Smart Business outlines a radically new approach to strategy that can be applied everywhere.

Under Contract: The Invisible Workers of America's Global War by Noah Coburn, Stanford University Press

War is one of the most lucrative job markets for an increasingly global workforce.

Most of the work on American bases, everything from manning guard towers to cleaning the latrines to more technical engineering and accounting jobs, has been outsourced to private firms that then contract out individual jobs, often to the lowest bidder. An "American" base in Afghanistan or Iraq will be staffed with workers from places like Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, the Philippines, Turkey, Bosnia, and Nepal: so-called "third-country nationals." Tens of thousands of these workers are now fixtures on American bases. Yet, in the plethora of records kept by the U.S. government, they are unseen and uncounted—their stories untold.

Noah Coburn traces this unseen workforce across seven countries, following the workers' often zigzagging journey to war. He confronts the varied conditions third-country nationals encounter, ranging from near slavery to more mundane forms of exploitation. Visiting a British Imperial training camp in Nepal, U.S. bases in Afghanistan, a café in Tbilisi, offices in Ankara, and human traffickers in Delhi, Coburn seeks out a better understanding of the people who make up this unseen workforce, sharing powerful stories of hope and struggle.

Part memoir, part travelogue, and part retelling of the war in Afghanistan through the eyes of workers, Under Contract unspools a complex global web of how modern wars are fought and supported, narrating war stories unlike any other. Coburn's experience forces readers to reckon with the moral questions of a hidden global war-force and the costs being shouldered by foreign nationals in our name.

Creative Selection: Inside Apple's Design Process During the Golden Age of Steve Jobs by Ken Kocienda, St. Martin's Press

An insider's account of Apple's creative process during the golden years of Steve Jobs.

Hundreds of millions of people use Apple products every day; a few thousand work on Apple's campus in California; but only a handful sit at the drawing board. Creative Selection recounts the life of one of the few behind the scenes, a highly-respected software engineer who worked in the final years of the Steve Jobs era.

Ken Kocienda offers an inside look at Apple’s creative process. For fifteen years, he was on the ground floor of the company as a specialist, responsible for experimenting with novel user interface concepts and writing software for products including the iPhone, the iPad, and the Safari web browser. His stories explain the symbiotic relationship between software and product development, and reveal what it was like to work on the cutting edge of technology at one of the world's most admired companies.

Kocienda shares moments of struggle and success, crisis and collaboration, illuminating each with lessons learned over his Apple career. He introduces the essential elements of innovation—inspiration, collaboration, craft, diligence, decisiveness, taste, and empathy—and uses these as a lens through which to understand productive work culture.

An insider's tale of creativity and innovation at Apple, Creative Selection shows readers how a small group of people developed an evolutionary design model, and how they used this methodology to make groundbreaking and intuitive software which countless millions use every day.

Unleash Different: Achieving Business Success Through Disability by Rich Donovan, ECW Press

If you discovered a new market comprising 53% of the world’s population, would you act to invest in it?

When it comes to serving the disability market, Unleash Different urges companies to replace "nice to do" with "return on investment."

There are 1.3 billion people around the world who identify as having a disability. When you include friends and family, the disability market touches 53% of all consumers. It is the world’s largest emerging market.

Unleash Different illustrates how companies like Google, PepsiCo, and Nordstrom are attracting people with disabilities as customers and as employees. Replacing “nice to do” with “return on investment” allows market forces to take over and the world’s leading brands to do what they do best: serve a market segment—in this case, the disability market.

Business managers will come to understand: 

• how taking a charity-oriented approach to people with disabilities has failed,
• what action is required to capitalize on the world’s biggest emerging market, and
• how their organizations can grow revenue and cut costs by attracting people with disabilities as customers and talent.

Rich gives the reader a peek into how he rose from a Canadian school for “crippled children” to manage $6 billion for one of Wall Street’s leading firms. He makes it easy to relate to the business goal of serving disability—because he has actually done it.

The Value of Everything: Making and Taking in the Global Economy by Mariana Mazzucato, PublicAffairs

In this prescient book, a renowned economist exposes how modern capitalist economies are increasingly rewarding businesses for the amount of wealth they capture for themselves rather than the value they add to the economy—and why we need to instead build a capitalism that works for us all.

Modern economies reward activities that extract value rather than create it. This must change to ensure a capitalism that works for us all.

A scathing indictment of our current global financial system, The Value of Everything rigorously scrutinizes the way in which economic value has been accounted and reveals how economic theory has failed to clearly delineate the difference between value creation and value extraction. Mariana Mazzucato argues that the increasingly blurry distinction between the two categories has allowed certain actors in the economy to portray themselves as value creators, while in reality they are just moving around existing value or, even worse, destroying it.

The book uses case studies—from Silicon Valley to the financial sector to big pharma—to show how the foggy notions of value create confusion between rents and profits, reward extractors and creators, and distort the measurements of growth and GDP. In the process, innovation suffers and inequality rises.

The lesson here is urgent and sobering: to rescue our economy from the next inevitable crisis and to foster long-term economic growth, we will need to rethink capitalism, rethink the role of public policy and the importance of the public sector, and redefine how we measure value in our society.

Everything for Everyone: The Radical Tradition That Is Shaping the Next Economy by Nathan Schneider, Nation Books

The origins of the next radical economy is rooted in a tradition that has empowered people for centuries and is now making a comeback.

A new feudalism is on the rise. While monopolistic corporations feed their spoils to the rich, more and more of us are expected to live gig to gig. But, as Nathan Schneider shows, an alternative to the robber-baron economy is hiding in plain sight; we just need to know where to look.

Cooperatives are jointly owned, democratically controlled enterprises that advance the economic, social, and cultural interests of their members. They often emerge during moments of crisis not unlike our own, putting people in charge of the workplaces, credit unions, grocery stores, healthcare, and utilities they depend on.

Everything for Everyone chronicles this revolution—from taxi cooperatives keeping Uber at bay, to an outspoken mayor transforming his city in the Deep South, to a fugitive building a fairer version of Bitcoin, to the rural electric co-op members who are propelling an aging system into the future. As these pioneers show, co-ops are helping us rediscover our capacity for creative, powerful, and fair democracy.

The Execution Factor: The One Skill that Drives Success by Kim Perell, McGraw-Hill

From a real-life rags-to-riches phenomenon—the proven program for putting ideas into action for ultimate success in business and in life.

At the age of 23, Kim Perell was broke. By 30, she was a multimillionaire. Kim is the first person to say that this can be anyone’s story. Yet she succeeded while others who had enormous talent struggled to get their ideas off the ground It’s not about being a business genius. It’s about mastering one simple skill—execution—and this book teaches readers how to build this skill quickly and effectively.

The Execution Factor reveals the five traits needed to become an execution expert. It shows readers how to identify areas of personal strength, develop clarity on what they’re truly passionate about, create a roadmap for achieving goals, and implement it all for greater success in their business life. The book includes a proprietary “execution success” test enabling readers to determine their execution strength.

Dear Founder: Letters of Advice for Anyone Who Leads, Manages, or Wants to Start a Business by Maynard Webb, with Carlye Adler, St. Martin's Press

Wise, practical, and profitable letters to entrepreneurs, leaders, managers, and business owners in every field—from a leading executive, investor, and business founder.

Maynard Webb—Silicon Valley angel investor, board member at Salesforce and Visa, former chairman of the board at Yahoo!, and former CEO of LiveOps and COO of eBay—has long been considered one of Silicon Valley’s most trusted sources of advice for entrepreneurs. Known for sharing his insight through personal letters to new company founders and entrepreneurs, Webb now reveals to all business readers what he has previously counseled to a private audience.

Dear Founder, a collection of more than eighty thoughtful, wise, and wide-ranging letters, is rich with sound advice on an array of business topics: how to hire your first employees, how to build and manage culture, how to raise money, how to set and reach goals, how to scale, and how to think about legacy.

These and dozens of other business-critical subjects are addressed with a blend of empathy, humor, candor, tough-love, and hard-won wisdom from more than forty years in a range of businesses from start-ups to established companies. Dear Founder is an invaluable book for anyone who wants to lead and succeed in any business.

Rule Makers, Rule Breakers: How Tight and Loose Cultures Wire Our World by Michele Gelfand, Scribner

In Rule Makers, Rule Breakers, celebrated cultural psychologist Michele Gelfand takes us on an epic journey through human cultures, offering a startling new view of the world and ourselves.

With a mix of brilliantly conceived studies and surprising on-the-ground discoveries, she shows that much of the diversity in the way we think and act derives from a key difference—how tightly or loosely we adhere to social norms.

Why are clocks in Germany so accurate while those in Brazil are frequently wrong? Why do New Zealand’s women have the highest number of sexual partners? Why are “Red” and “Blue” States really so divided? Why was the Daimler-Chrysler merger ill-fated from the start? Why is the driver of a Jaguar more likely to run a red light than the driver of a plumber’s van? Why does one spouse prize running a “tight ship” while the other refuses to “sweat the small stuff?”

In search of a common answer, Gelfand has spent two decades conducting research in more than fifty countries. Across all age groups, family variations, social classes, businesses, states and nationalities, she’s identified a primal pattern that can trigger cooperation or conflict. Her fascinating conclusion: behavior is highly influenced by the perception of threat.

With an approach that is consistently riveting, Rule Makers, Rule Breakers thrusts many of the puzzling attitudes and actions we observe into sudden and surprising clarity.

Saudi America: The Truth About Fracking and How It's Changing the World by Bethany McLean, Columbia Global Reports

Bestselling author Bethany McLean reveals the true story of fracking's impact—on Wall Street, the economy and geopolitics.

The technology of fracking in shale rock—particularly in the Permian Basin in Texas—has transformed America into the world's top producer of both oil and natural gas. The U.S. is expected to be "energy independent" and a "net exporter" in less than a decade, a move that will upend global politics, destabilize Saudi Arabia, crush Russia's chokehold over Europe, and finally bolster American power again.

Or will it?

Investigative journalist Bethany McLean digs deep into the cycles of boom and bust that have plagued the American oil industry for the past decade, from the financial wizardry and mysterious death of fracking pioneer Aubrey McClendon, to the investors who are questioning the very economics of shale itself. McLean finds that fracking is a business built on attracting ever-more gigantic amounts of capital investment, while promises of huge returns have yet to bear out. Saudi America tells a remarkable story that will persuade you to think about the power of oil in a new way.

The Change Maker's Playbook: How to Seek, Seed and Scale Innovation in Any Company by Amy J. Radin, City Point Press

In The Change Maker's Playbook, Amy Radin shares her insight-driven, down-to-earth approach to deliver innovation results under today's uncertain, complex, and rapidly changing conditions.

Any leader in any size company, no matter the size or sector, feels the pressure to innovate, find new ideas and business models, and create enduring customer value. There is no one formula or set process to find and execute the ideas that achieve these goals; customers set moving targets, shareholders are unforgiving and demanding, and society expects companies to care about much more than the bottom line.

The fast and furious forces of change stimulated by technology, demographics, lifestyles, and economic, environmental, political and regulatory impacts—or any number of these in combination—are easy to see. They are easy to talk about. They are easy to intellectualize. The problem? The answers are hard to execute and require nuanced combinations of leadership, skills, strategy and tactics. On top of that, innovation has moved from an abstraction that will matter at some distant date to a front-and-center deliverable that must show evidence of impact in the space of the calendar quarter.

In the stories, tools, techniques and advice inside The Change Maker's Playbook, leaders will find tangible steps to find and safeguard the plans that will deliver the sustainable business-changing impacts—new customers, new relationships, new sources of value and growth—their businesses need.

Separated from the pack of academic and consultant innovation theories, Radin’s approach stems from her own experience sitting in the innovation hot seat at some of the world’s most demanding companies and is bolstered by interviews with 50 corporate executives, founders and startup investors representing media, e-commerce, payments, healthcare, government, professional services, and not-for-profit sectors.

The book walks readers through Radin’s adaptive, 9-part framework, engaging them in ready-to-apply techniques. Her work shows leaders how to find the big ideas that will meaningfully address customer needs, take the insight from idea through implementation in a way that delivers in the short and long-term for the organization, and lead effectively through the obstacles that tend to derail or diminish innovation. Three phases—Seeking, Seeding and Scaling—organize the framework within an intuitive, logical and useable format, with concrete actions outlined every step of the way.

The answer to the dilemma every business faces today is that innovation is exhilarating, rewarding and even fun when it is approached as a unique challenge, but it can also be polarizing, unpredictable, and scary. Success requires that leaders rethink how they lead innovation. Leaders know they must set aside preconceived notions of what works, and look to those who have already walked in their shoes. This is why The Change Maker's Playbook was written, and why it will become an ongoing resource for any innovation leader.

Wisdom at Work: The Making of a Modern Elder by Chip Conley, Currency

Experience is making a comeback. Learn how to repurpose your wisdom.

At age 52, after selling the company he founded and ran as CEO for 24 years, rebel boutique hotelier Chip Conley was looking at an open horizon in midlife. Then he received a call from the young founders of Airbnb, asking him to help grow their disruptive start-up into a global hospitality giant. He had the industry experience, but Conley was lacking in the digital fluency of his 20-something colleagues. He didn’t write code, or have an Uber or Lyft app on his phone, was twice the age of the average Airbnb employee, and would be reporting to a CEO young enough to be his son. Conley quickly discovered that while he’d been hired as a teacher and mentor, he was also in many ways a student and intern. What emerged is the secret to thriving as a mid-life worker: learning to marry wisdom and experience with curiosity, a beginner’s mind, and a willingness to evolve, all hallmarks of the “Modern Elder.”

In a world that venerates the new, bright, and shiny, many of us are left feeling invisible, undervalued, and threatened by the “digital natives” nipping at our heels. But Conley argues that experience is on the brink of a comeback. Because at a time when power is shifting younger, companies are finally waking up to the value of the humility, emotional intelligence, and wisdom that come with age. And while digital skills might have only the shelf life of the latest fad or gadget, the human skills that mid-career workers possess—like good judgment, specialized knowledge, and the ability to collaborate and coach—never expire.

Part manifesto and part playbook, Wisdom at Work ignites an urgent conversation about ageism in the workplace, calling on us to treat age as we would other type of diversity. In the process, Conley liberates the term “elder” from the stigma of “elderly,” and inspires us to embrace wisdom as a path to growing whole, not old. Whether you’ve been forced to make a mid-career change, are choosing to work past retirement age, or are struggling to keep up with the millennials rising up the ranks, Wisdom at Work will help you write your next chapter.

Adam Smith: Father of Economics by Jesse Norman, Basic Books

A dazzlingly original account of the life and thought of Adam Smith, the greatest economist of all time.

Adam Smith (1723-1790) is now widely regarded as the greatest economist of all time. But what he really thought, and the implications of his ideas, remain fiercely contested. Was he an eloquent advocate of capitalism and individual freedom? A prime mover of "market fundamentalism"? An apologist for human selfishness? Or something else entirely?

In Adam Smith, political philosopher Jesse Norman dispels the myths and caricatures, and provides a far more complex portrait of the man. Offering a highly engaging account of Smith's life and times, Norman explores his work as a whole and traces his influence over two centuries to the present day. Finally, he shows how a proper understanding of Smith can help us address the problems of modern capitalism. The Smith who emerges from this book is not only the greatest of all economists but a pioneering theorist of moral philosophy, culture, and society.

Imagine It Forward: Courage, Creativity, and the Power of Change by Beth Comstock & Tahl Raz, Currency

Beth Comstock, the former vice chair and chief marketing officer at GE, and their longtime head of business innovation and change initiatives, tackles the one issue that keeps managers, executives, and leaders up at night at every corporation in America and throughout the world—how to stay nimble, adapt faster, and constantly evolve in the face of almost daily change and disruption.

In Imagine It Forward, Beth Comstock, the former vice chair of GE, describes her twenty-five year efforts to be an instigator of change at every level of business. When she first moved from NBC to parent company GE in 1998, she was ignored as a woman in a man’s world, treated as an outsider because she didn’t have a business background, and ignored as a mere PR person. But CEO Jeff Immelt realized even then that the industrial giant, like so many businesses, had to change fast in order to stay relevant in a world where Google and later Facebook and an explosion of internet companies were transforming how goods and services were marketed, made, and sold.

In a deeply personal journey filled with practical takeaways from two plus decades of initiating change at the top levels of corporate America—from the Ecomagination initiative that transformed the way GE worked with their customers, to the company’s famed FastWorks methodology designed to bring new products more quickly to market—Comstock lays out the challenges, opportunities, tools, and practices needed to embrace change, whatever industry you are in, and make it part of every management decision.

Heartland: A Memoir of Working Hard and Being Broke in the Richest Country on Earth by Sarah Smarsh, Scribner

An eye-opening memoir of working-class poverty in the American Midwest.

During Sarah Smarsh’s turbulent childhood in Kansas in the 1980s and 1990s, the forces of cyclical poverty and the country’s changing economic policies solidified her family’s place among the working poor. By telling the story of her life and the lives of the people she loves, Smarsh challenges us to look more closely at the class divide in our country and examine the myths about people thought to be less because they earn less. Her personal history affirms the corrosive impact intergenerational poverty can have on individuals, families, and communities, and she explores this idea as lived experience, metaphor, and level of consciousness.

Smarsh was born a fifth generation Kansas wheat farmer on her paternal side and the product of generations of teen mothers on her maternal side. Through her experiences growing up as the daughter of a dissatisfied young mother and raised predominantly by her grandmother on a farm thirty miles west of Wichita, we are given a unique and essential look into the lives of poor and working class Americans living in the heartland. Combining memoir with powerful analysis and cultural commentary, Heartland is an uncompromising look at class, identity, and the particular perils of having less in a country known for its excess.

Fins: Harley Earl, the Rise of General Motors, and the Glory Days of Detroit by William Knoedelseder, Harper Business

The author of Bitter Brew chronicles the birth and rise to greatness of the American auto industry through the remarkable life of Harley Earl, an eccentric six-foot-five, stuttering visionary who dropped out of college and went on to invent the profession of automobile styling, thereby revolutionized the way cars were made, marketed, and even imagined

Harleys Earl’s story qualifies as a bona fide American family saga. It began in the Michigan pine forest in the years after the civil war, traveled across the Great Plains on the wooden wheels of a covered wagon, and eventually settled in a dirt road village named Hollywood, California, where young Harley took the skills he learned working in his father’s carriage shop and applied them to designing sleek, racy-looking automobile bodies for the fast crowd in the burgeoning silent movie business.

As the 1920s roared with the sound of mass manufacturing, Harley returned to Michigan, where, at GM’s invitation, he introduced art into the rigid mechanics of auto-making. Over the next thirty years, he functioned as a kind of combination Steve Jobs and Tom Ford of his time, redefining the form and function of the country’s premier product. His impact was profound. When he retired as GM’s VP of Styling in 1958, Detroit reigned as the manufacturing capitol of the world and General Motors ranked as the most successful company in the history of business.

Knoedelseder tells the story in ways both large and small, weaving the history of the company with the history of Detroit and the Earl family as Fins examines the effect of the automobile on America’s economy, culture, and national psyche.

American Prison: A Reporter's Undercover Journey into the Business of Punishment by Shane Bauer, Penguin Press

A ground-breaking and brave inside reckoning with the nexus of prison and profit in America: in one Louisiana prison and over the course of our country’s history.

In 2014, Shane Bauer was hired for $9 an hour to work as an entry-level prison guard at a private prison in Winnfield, Louisiana. An award-winning investigative journalist, he used his real name; there was no meaningful background check. Four months later, his employment came to an abrupt end. But he had seen enough, and in short order he wrote an exposé about his experiences that won a National Magazine Award and became the most-read feature in the history of the magazine Mother Jones. Still, there was much more that he needed to say. In American Prison, Bauer weaves a much deeper reckoning with his experiences together with a thoroughly researched history of for-profit prisons in America from their origins in the decades before the Civil War. For, as he soon realized, we can’t understand the cruelty of our current system and its place in the larger story of mass incarceration without understanding where it came from. Private prisons became entrenched in the South as part of a systemic effort to keep the African-American labor force in place in the aftermath of slavery, and the echoes of these shameful origins are with us still.

The private prison system is deliberately unaccountable to public scrutiny. Private prisons are not incentivized to tend to the health of their inmates, or to feed them well, or to attract and retain a highly-trained prison staff. Though Bauer befriends some of his colleagues and sympathizes with their plight, the chronic dysfunction of their lives only adds to the prison’s sense of chaos. To his horror, Bauer finds himself becoming crueler and more aggressive the longer he works in the prison, and he is far from alone.

A blistering indictment of the private prison system, and the powerful forces that drive it, American Prison is a necessary human document about the true face of justice in America.

The Expertise Economy: How the Smartest Companies Use Learning to Engage, Compete, and Succeed by Kelly Palmer & David Blake, Nicholas Brealey

The workplace is going through a large-scale transition with digitization, automation, and acceleration. Critical skills and expertise are imperative for companies and their employees to succeed in the future, and the most forward-thinking companies are being proactive in adapting to the shift in the workforce.

Kelly Palmer, Silicon Valley thought-leader from LinkedIn, Degreed, and Yahoo, and David Blake, co-founder of Ed-tech pioneer Degreed, share their experiences and describe how some of the smartest companies in the world are making learning and expertise a major competitive advantage.

The authors provide the latest scientific research on how people really learn and concrete examples from companies in both Silicon Valley and worldwide who are driving the conversation about how to create experts and align learning innovation with business strategy. It includes interviews with people from top companies like Google, LinkedIn, Airbnb, Unilever, NASA, and MasterCard; thought leaders in learning and education like Sal Khan and Todd Rose; as well as Thinkers50 list-makers Clayton Christensen, Daniel Pink, and Whitney Johnson.

The Expertise Economy dares you to let go of outdated and traditional ways of closing the skills gap, and challenges CEOs and business leaders to embrace the urgency of re-skilling and upskilling the workforce.

Women, Minorities, and Other Extraordinary People: The New Path for Workforce Diversity by Barbara B. Adams PsyD, Greenleaf Book Group

Diverse, inclusive organizations have a distinct business advantage over other organizations. They innovate faster, outperform other companies, and even produce higher financial returns. Workforce diversity, as a business strategy, drives success and can transform a company.

But inclusive diversity is difficult to attain, and honestly, about more than just economic benefit. People are looking for guidance on how to do this vital work. Companies that want greater diversity inevitably find that they come up against culture and obstacles they are ill-equipped to handle. When the way we’ve done business no longer represents the kinds of organizations we want to be, how do we step out of our old models and mindsets?

This book is for anyone who wants change in the workplace and knows their companies could do more and be more. It’s for business leaders, hiring managers, human resources, all those within an organization who believe things can be done differently.

In this book, Dr. Adams lays out clear, actionable steps readers can take to develop sustainably diverse and inclusive workplaces. As an organizational psychologist who’s been helping companies create measurable change for over 20 years, she offers tangible solutions to complex issues that will enable companies to walk a new path of diversity and inclusion, heightening their performance and success.

Make Time: How to Focus on What Matters Every Day by Jake Knapp, John Zeratsky, Currency

From the New York Times bestselling authors of Sprint, a simple 4-step system for improving focus, finding greater joy in your work, and getting more out of every day.

Nobody ever looked at an empty calendar and said, “The best way to spend this time is by cramming it full of meetings!” or got to work in the morning and thought, Today I’ll spend hours on Facebook! Yet that’s exactly what we do. Why?

In a world where information refreshes endlessly and the workday feels like a race to react to other people’s priorities faster, frazzled and distracted has become our default position. But what if the exhaustion of constant busyness wasn’t mandatory? What if you could step off the hamster wheel and start taking control of your time and attention? That’s what this book is about.

As creators of Google Ventures’ renowned “design sprint,” Jake and John have helped hundreds of teams solve important problems by changing how they work. Building on the success of these sprints and their experience designing ubiquitous tech products from Gmail to YouTube, they spent years experimenting with their own habits and routines, looking for ways to help people optimize their energy, focus, and time. Now they’ve packaged the most effective tactics into a four-step daily framework that anyone can use to systematically design their days. Make Time is not a one-size-fits-all formula. Instead, it offers a customizable menu of bite-size tips and strategies that can be tailored to individual habits and lifestyles.

Make Time isn’t about productivity, or checking off more to-dos. Nor does it propose unrealistic solutions like throwing out your smartphone or swearing off social media. Making time isn’t about radically overhauling your lifestyle; it’s about making small shifts in your environment to liberate yourself from constant busyness and distraction.

A must-read for anyone who has ever thought, If only there were more hours in the day, Make Time will help you stop passively reacting to the demands of the modern world and start intentionally making time for the things that matter.

Gartner, the leading supplier of categories to the Information Technology Industry, has come out with a new one: Buyer Enablement Tools. “Today’s buying journey isn’t just hard — it has reached a tipping point where it’s become nearly unnavigable without a significant amount of help,” according to Brent Adamson, principal executive advisor at Gartner. “Much like sales enablement, sales organizations must focus on what we call ‘buyer enablement’.”

Gartner research indicates that two-thirds of any B2B buying journey is devoted to “gathering, processing and de-conflicting information.” Customers appreciate suppliers who provide information that makes the buying process easier. “Buyer Enablement Tool” is not (yet) a Gartner Magic Quadrant category, but whether or not a piece of sales content fits into the category seems consequential to me now. If you start out to make content that makes the buyer’s job easier, you may well end up discovering new types of effective content that work for you.

Buyer Enablement Video

Take video, for example. What is a logical objective for a video designed for buyer enablement? It might not be “describe key features and benefits” — not all members of a buying team care about the same features and benefits. More targeted objectives might be:

• Clear up common misconceptions
• Answer a frequently asked question
• Show how easy it is to do an important task
• Explain why we think the way we do
• Provide reassurance on a key issue

If meeting objectives like these is really going to help out the buyer, you don’t want to keep her waiting. You’ll want your video to come to the point quickly, and stop there. The result of planning video productions like this will be a series of concise videos that can be widely shared — a very good thing if your sales process is complicated. And you’ll be building a library of short video content that is appropriate for sales enablement and account-based marketing programs.

Interactive Buyer Enablement Video

Some buyers will want a thorough understanding of what it’s like to use your solution, who uses it and how, how it gets implemented, and so forth. White papers, implementation guides, case studies, blogs, and video can all address needs like these. Buyers don’t expect video demos, webinars, tech talks, and the like to be short and punchy. But buyers will surely be grateful if you help them learn what they want to know as quickly as possible.

If you want to be as helpful as possible, you’ll break longer videos into ~2-minute chapters. Billboard the chapter titles in a table of contents. Knowing that the video covers subjects she cares about, a prospect is more likely to click. Even better, with clickable chapter headings, viewers can jump right to what interests them most.

You can make the longer-form videos even more customer-friendly by providing buttons along the way that link to more in-depth content or branch to different content. (You can do all of this pretty easily, as described here: Make interactive videos for free with open source software .)

Different versions of videos

Providing the appropriate information and resources to buyers when they need them in the channels they prefer means you’ll need different messages for different individuals delivered in different formats. That’s not quite as daunting or costly a task as you might think. For example, we frequently make “silent” versions of narrated videos for use in noisy environments and social media where a lot of viewing takes place with the audio turned off. From a production standpoint, this is easy and inexpensive, especially if the videos are produced at the same time.

Longer videos, such as like demos, that are “chapterized” can be easily excerpted to make short versions to share in social media. Re-purposing video content is virtually cost-free.

A useful framework for content strategy

You could do a lot worse than adopting “buyer enablement” as a criterion for planning content. It will suggest new approaches that, in the long run, will help to improve the customer experience. It’s the focus of the 2018 Gartner Sales & Marketing Conference — so it’s a trend to watch in 2019.

We’re knee deep into a series that is focused on helping you plan for 2019 by identifying the channels too critical for you to ignore. Today, we’re going to investigate the value of infographics.

Visual content works. Consider these facts:

• The human brain processes visual content 60,000 times faster than it does text.
• Infographics are liked and shared on social media three times more than any other type of content.
• High-quality infographics are thirty times more likely to be read than text articles.

An infographic allows you to communicate complex ideas in an easy to understand format. They make it easy to show the relationship between various elements so your audience can see the bigger picture.

You can deliver more information because the format itself is simple, clean and holistic in how it presents your ideas. If your audience needs to understand how one fact or choice impacts other elements – an infographic may be the right choice. If you know that your audience is faced with multiple options, help them follow the path to the outcomes tied to each decision.

Infographics are also a smart option for telling a linear story and showing the flow of events in a relational way. Think of it like a storyboard that outlines the key events or milestones. You can use colors and design choices to suggest emotions behind the facts and set a tone for the entire discussion.

For those of you that invest in research, be it a customer satisfaction survey or actually going out into the field and doing primary research, consider using an infographic to communicate the most important findings. You will enjoy the increased distribution that infographics garner and you’ll be able to connect the dots for your audience.

Infographics are incredibly effective when you need to communicate the facts underneath an emotional issue. By using graphics, facts and building the story to show multiple sides of an issue, you can help your audience separate their sentiments and examine the data so they can make an informed, fact-based decision.

As you might imagine, infographics are a no-brainer when you need to demonstrate something visually. Whether it’s a spatial relationship or a comparative that is tied to how the elements look, you need to show it, and an infographic gives you that ability.

If you’re going to jump on the infographic bandwagon, there are some best practices you need to keep top of mind.

Be mindful of your audience. Think about your color, font and graphic style decisions based on who you’re talking to. You also need to think about your own brand standards and make sure that you don’t violate those boundaries.

Be mindful of the size. Remember, you’re going to be sharing this on your website and social channels. A file that is too wide or too long will either display badly (or not at all) or discourage people from passing it along.

Remember that color and fonts are critical tools. This isn’t just about the colors or fonts that your designer likes or even your own brand standards. The color palette and font choices within your infographic are all about making your information easier to consume. Be mindful of color contrasts and font legibility and how they help tell your story.

Infographics offer marketers a fresh way to share the complex, demonstrate connections and make a compelling case that would normally be dry and less interesting. Think about how you’re communicating some of your more complicated messages and explore whether a visual representation would make it more compelling and easier to understand. Infographics probably aren’t going to be the staple of your 2019 marketing toolkit, but they should probably be one of the supporting elements.

 

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