Online content in the sales and marketing industries is constantly changing. The Marketing Sphere represents recent good reads from our digital circles about B2B marketing selected by PointClear colleagues.

 

B2B Buyers: Traits by Generation [Infographic]

You may have a target audience, but do you really understand your buyer? Acquity Group created an infographic that takes a look at buying trends based on generation. It splits buyers into three groups; the up-and-comers—millenials, established buyers—Gen X, and seasoned execs—baby boomers. As you’ll see they each have very different buying patterns. Via MarketingProfs

B2B Marketers Benefit from Customer Reviews

B2B buyers look for unbiased confirmation about products or services before buying, just like B2C buyers do. The best place for them to get this confirmation is from product or service reviews from satisfied customers. Learn the best ways to identify and request customer reviews. Via Fusion Marketing Partners

30-Day Challenge: 8 Little Changes to Your Marketing That’ll Make a Big Impact

Inspired by TED Talks, this article offers some ideas for marketers to improve their inbound programs in just 30 days. The TED Talks 30-day challenge from Google’s Matt Cutts asserts that anyone can do something for 30 days, so why not take the next 30 days to try something new. Via HubSpot

Study: Email Lands More Customers Than Facebook or Twitter, but Still Fewer than Organic Search

According to a recent report by Custora, customer acquisitions from email marketing have quadrupled since 2009, exceeding that of leading social networks. Organic search still leads the way with organic search customers ranking 50 percent more valuable than the average customer. Via Marketing Land

Do you have a resource from your sphere to share? Let us know in the comment section.

Without sales, your entire company goes under. Obviously, this makes sales manager positions crucial. In order to truly excel, every sales manager needs to play multiple roles for their team.

Based on a Geoffrey James article, we pulled twelve roles of the most successful sales managers. Let’s take a look at just what those are.

In case you’re in a hurry, here are the 12 roles again:

1. Coach
2. Teacher
3. Mentor
4. Politician
5. Communicator
6. Prioritizer
7. Recruiter
8. Surgeon
9. Fortune-teller
10. Conductor
11. Debriefer
12. Diplomat

Do you have any other roles you’d like to see on our list? Or comments in general? Don’t hesitate to share.

In the 1960′s, Warner Brothers aired a cartoon starring a singing frog.  In the cartoon, during the digging of the foundation of a New York skyscraper, a construction worker discovers a mysterious box. When alone, he opens the box and out jumps a singing, dancing frog. The entrepreneurial construction worker sells everything, borrows start-up capital, [...]

You could have the biggest contact lists, the absolute best creative, but if your contacts don’t receive the email…it isn’t paying off. Since I’m in the email deliverability field, I often get asked why a sender’s email marketing isn’t performing the way they’d hoped. The majority of the time the same five things stand out.

1) Assuming you have permission

Just because someone made a purchase from your store does not mean they want to receive your marketing email. It’s always a best practice to request permission before you add that contact to your marketing list to ensure you don’t trigger complaint issues. To increase the chance of that contact opting in to your marketing list, you could provide an incentive such as a coupon or eBook in return for confirmation.

2) Thinking more has to be better

Chocolate is delightful, but more isn’t better; you could end up with a stomachache. It can be easy to think that if you increase your volume or frequency you will make up for low deliverability numbers or lack of opens, but it can be exactly the opposite.

Increasing your volume or frequency can lead to list fatigue, which in turn could lead to increased unsubscribe numbers and spam complaints. If you want to increase your volume or frequency you should do so slowly and constantly monitor your metrics. If you notice an increase in complaints or unsubscribes you should dial things back immediately.

3) Continuing to send to contacts without any engagement

If you have contacts in your list who aren’t showing any engagement (such as opens or clicks in the past 12 months) it’s time to get rid of them because they could be doing more harm than good. I can hear a senders argument, “But they might convert and lead to a huge sale” and while I agree that’s a possibility – it is extremely rare.

After 12 months if a contact is not showing any engagement, such as opens or clicks, they should be removed. It’s possible that they aren’t responding because they abandoned that email address, and if that’s the case, the potential for that address to be turned into a spam trap by an internet provider is high. The potential deliverability issues from continuing to send to these contacts are not worth it. They should be suppressed so you can make way for newer contacts.

4) Ignoring spam complaints

If you notice an increase in the amount of spam complaints your emails are generating, it’s time to look into them. If your complaints are higher than .1%, or 1 in every 1000 emails sent, you should take a close look at your current practices. Did your frequency increase? Is this a new list? Or an old list? Try to find out what’s been changed.

5) Making it hard to unsubscribe

You’ve worked hard to build your contact list and hate to lose anyone, but you’re much better off having a contact unsubscribe rather than mark a message as spam. Too often I see senders make unsubscribing from their email incredibly hard. Either they make the unsubscribe link really small or they make the link almost the same color as the background.

One thing to try if you notice an increase in the amount of spam complaints is moving the “Unsubscribe” link to the top of the email. You want to make it easier for the contact to unsubscribe than to reach for the “This is Spam” button.

If your expected deliverability is off, take a look in these areas. You may find that you have been hurting yourself. These things are fixable; you can make some changes, and you’ll be that much closer to getting the deliverability you deserve.

Your Inbound Marketing efforts are starting to convert leads and even identify a few hot hand-raisers. Great!

Now what?

According to Forrester Research, companies that excel at lead nurturing generate 50% more sales-qualified leads at nearly 1/3 lower cost per lead. But, nurturing requires patience. Not every lead that converts on your content will be immediately ready to commit to a purchase. In fact, SiriusDecisions reports that since 2008, companies have increased their buying consideration cycle on average 22% and have at least three decision makers involved in the process. SiriusDecisions goes on to say that 80% of discarded leads actually go on to make a purchase within 24 months.

So, how do you build a nurturing calendar that’s right for your organization – and more importantly, right for your prospects? Nurturing leads into loyal customers is as much art as science, but there are a few best practices that should guide your efforts.

Evaluate who’s converting and identify topic buckets – Look at the leads you’ve generated. What topics have they expressed interest in? Based on your review, structure the content flow and expanded topic content based on what leads are telling you.

Determine the right communication frequency – How quickly and how often should high-scoring leads be touched versus low-scoring leads that may not result in anything for a long time, if ever? Chances are, high-scoring leads want to keep the process moving and are hungry for information. Talk to your sales team – the feet on the street often have fantastic insights regarding what leads need to hear and when they’re likely to be most receptive.

Identify the appropriate number of touches – According to Marketing Sherpa, 85% of tech buyers said they need to be exposed to at least three pieces of content before engaging with a solution provider. The number of touches tends to increase as you climb the ladder – the C-Suite can require up to 11 touches before a deal closes. Again, your sales team can be a valuable asset in determining the flow.

Plan your funnel progression behavior – Plot the number of touches in each stage of the funnel based on lead behavior and identify areas where personal interaction is warranted. A prospect who’s simply visited your site but hasn’t converted on advanced content may be completely turned off by a direct call, but a lead who’s shown a high-level of interest in your content may be just waiting for contact and wonder what’s taking you so long!

Analyze results – Refine your nurturing based on your leads’ behaviors and customer acquisitions. Conversion rates and close ratios will give you clear indications where new content is necessary, when timing should be changed or when your outreach needs to be tweaked.

Resist the urge to purge – Remember that 80% number mentioned earlier? Don’t be in a rush to eliminate non-responders. Segment your lead lists by lead score and responsiveness. Maybe these slow-pokes need to hear from you in six months to get them back on track.

Our Essentials of Lead Nurturing Tipsheet has more ideas to help you craft a nurturing program to guide prospects down the funnel and turn them into loyal customers.

Some say “money talks.” But a psychological work place study conducted last year, reveals otherwise. Only 35% of those surveyed claimed that they would choose having a better boss over earning higher pay. Indeed, many American employees feel under-appreciated and unmotivated, with their bosses left to blame.

This infographic from Pepperdine University’s MBA Online, provides a comprehensive list for employers to learn what employees find favorable in their bosses. And with 60% of American employees stating they’d work harder if they had a better relationship with their bosses, business owners and supervisors should take serious note.

Do you agree with these findings? Let me know in the comments below!

After addressing the primary reasons we see on-shoring as a high value choice for almost any modern company, it’s only appropriate that we discuss how you can begin the process now.

The brief points below will give you a fast ways that you can get started moving your operations back to U.S. soil.

Planning, Planning, Planning

I won’t make light of it. On-shoring is an incredibly complex task for anyone with well-established operations in a foreign country. Accordingly, the first step to beginning the process is developing a comprehensive, long-term plan around the changes.

Assuming you’ve already run due diligence on several U.S. suppliers and noted several candidates, consider the internal changes that will be necessary to execute. Who will principally be responsible for coordinating the change and how will positions necessarily shuffle through the process? Will additional hires be necessary, even if only temporary?

Address the risks surrounding the process. What interruptions could occur and how will you deal with them? Further, what does the time frame for completion look like? Depending on your volumes and processes, on-shoring will likely be a multi-year process. Even so, risk mitigation begins as soon as your domestic supplier begins working.

Hire a Consultant

Early in the on-shoring process, find a supply chain consultant that can help you make the change.

Consultants have wide networks and knowledge of suppliers in multiple geographies. Their expertise is in finding the most-efficient suppliers and negotiating the best terms for your company. All of this makes them the perfect partner to help you select a replacement supplier and ensure that the process runs smoothly.

If you operations are particularly complex, there is a good chance that the switch will require personnel that you don’t currently have in-house. Managing the logistics of your current operations is probably burdensome already; attempting to get current staff to also implement a new solution may well break the horse’s back. Engaging a supply chain consultant, even on a short-term basis, could prevent anything from slipping through the cracks created by stretching your current employees too thin.

Bring Final Assembly to the U.S.

If the entirety of your manufacturing operations are international, moving final assembly to the U.S. could be the perfect first major step within the process of on-shoring.

Final assembly is often the most complex task in your supply chain. It requires the greatest logistics finesse and is the final point of quality assurance before you product goes to market. All of these facts make having stricter control, greater visibility, and increased communication paramount. By moving your final assembly to the U.S., you can only increase the quality of what you are producing.

Use bring final assembly to the U.S. as a benchmark. Quantify and record how much this small on-shoring move impacts your operations as much as possible. This analysis has to go much further than just cost analysis, however. How much more quickly were you able to implement design changes with final assembly in the U.S.? How much faster were your phone calls returned and invoices handled? Also, how much did the change affect your risk? The benefits you experience from moving your supply chain to the U.S. will grow exponentially as a greater portion of your operations are on-shored.

The choices you make for your supply chain must be made with respect to reducing cost, mitigating risk, and enhance flexibility. As foreign manufacturing options quickly rise in cost, the deep risk and rigidity that they are associated with will quickly offset any savings you might be holding onto.

Take action now to begin the on-shoring process and you’ll be setting your company up to maintain a leadership position for the long-term.

Video – Reducing Supply Chain Cost

We are curating a conversation about reducing supply chain cost at costflexrisk.com.  We interviewed Mike Mason, CEO of Weathermatic, Inc., about setting cost cutting priorities, and how he got there.  Click the image below and you will be taken to costflexrisk.com to watch the video:

Whether I’m sitting on the subway or waiting in line at the grocery store, Twitter is my favorite way to pass the time. My news feed is always full of updates and information, but even when bored, I’m picky about the tweets I read.

After I thought about what motivates me to click on a link, I realized that many moons ago, Aristotle would have been a real social media pro. The mediums of communication have changed quite drastically between his time and ours, but Aristotle formulated the rules to creating the perfect tweet in his Appeals of Rhetoric—which outline the method for creating a fool-proof argument (or a great tweet).

Logos: Greek for “word;” persuading your audience through reasoning and logic

First and foremost, your information has to be correct. A key aspect of creating influential content is gaining the audience’s trust. If you’re distributing incorrect information, don’t expect to get any retweets, favorites or followers – or if you do post incorrect information, as was the case with Papa John’s confusing the teams in the Stanely Cup Finals, you may face a serious backlash and hit to your credibility and reputation.

Ethos: Greek word for “moral character;” persuading your audience through the character or credibility of the author

Even if I trust the source, whether or not I click a link sometimes depends upon who is sharing it and whether or not I deem them a quality source for the topic. For instance, I might not read Perez Hilton’s opinion on a global crisis, but I would click on the New York Times. To have a greater influence on your audience is to tell them a little about yourself through the “About Me” section of your profile. Whether you’re a college freshman studying public relations or a professional social media guru, sharing your involvement or passion for the topic will give you more credibility with readers.

Pathos: Greek word for “suffering;” persuading your audience through emotion

Pathos is what really separates the good from the great. I follow a lot of news-oriented Twitter accounts, but I don’t always click on their links. Why? They’re boring. Tweets don’t have to be “out there” to grab a reader’s attention, but I really want to learn more when a little bit of personality peeks through in those 140 characters.

In honor of a great Bruins overtime win a few weeks ago, I checked out the top tweet for the #bruins trend. With 1,756 retweets and 742 favorites, fans all over the “Twitter-verse” went crazy from this tweet from ESPN. I decided to dissect the tweet and put Aristotle’s appeals to the test:

Although ESPN is a household name, this tweet really puts Aristotle’s principles to the test. All of the information about the Bruin’s All-Star goalie is not only correct, but timely (tweeted immediately after two overtime periods).  Even if you live under a rock and have not heard of ESPN, the network is humble enough to give you some background in their bio, proving that they’re a credible source in the world of sports.

Finally the tweet is awesome. There’s no way to get around it. It still gets across the message that Tuukka played a phenomenal game, but in an eye-catching and interesting way. There were thousands of tweets that said, “Great game, Tuukka,” but the ESPN tweet went further.

In this world of emerging content mediums, people are always seeking new ways to influence their audience. Sometimes, it’s best to keep it simple: Whether you’re trying to influence someone’s view of God in 300 BC or get a few more hits on your new blog post, Aristotle’s got it covered.

 

Sarah Ryan

Consumer PR Intern

Boston University ’15

Over 100 senior marketers attended our inaugural roundtable event in Hong Kong last month. 

They deftly explored and shared nimble ways to utilise the very latest digital marketing ideas and techniques in order to better equip themselves for their future endeavours.

Some were intent on making stronger inroads into mainland China, others were planning on taking full advantage of the small but also highly lucrative local Hong Kong marketplace (a jewel in the China crown), and for a fair number it was to better hone their abilities and skills to market across the whole APAC region.

Hong Kong remains an ideal and convenient pathway to accessing both mainland China as well as the rapidly prospering South-East Asian (ASEAN) countries, and it still serves for many as the ideal pivot point for reaching out across both these highly disparate markets.

But Hong Kong is increasingly coming under pressure by companies that are shifting their headquarters directly into the heart of China itself (usually locating themselves in either Shanghai or Beijing), and others that are heading closer into South East Asia to base themselves in the Republic of Singapore (especially with the emergence of the ASEAN Economic Community by 2015, being based in Singapore is proving increasingly popular).

Despite ongoing background shifts in terms of where companies prefer to base their regional head offices these day (and their marketing departments), Hong Kong continues to remain a hugely popular regional point of focus for many of the well-known multinational corporations (MNCs).

These still see it as their ideal location to manage business interests across these varied markets, and a fitting home for their senior management who enjoy living in this popular ex-British colony that exudes so much wealth, character and charm.

Hong Kong continues to enjoy having one of the best talent pools of both local and international marketing experts to be found anywhere in Asia Pacific, and it also hosts a plethora of innovative and technical support businesses that are explicitly set up to serve marketers in the region.

It’s not surprising therefore that our first Digital Cream event quite readily found a new home here in Hong Kong, and we certainly look forward to running many more over the years ahead.

[NOTE: if you or a colleague are based in Shanghai or Singapore, we’re running two Digital Cream events in October and November respectively.]

Below are some of the insights shared by attendees, based on notes and commentary provided by moderators:

Cross-channel marketing strives, but marketers fail to give credit where it's due

Measurement was a key discussion topic: some marketers already have it well under control, but the rest have adopted a laissez-faire attitude towards it. Cross-channel marketing appears to be fast changing in the region, but it also depends a lot on the structure of a business as to how complex this is to take on.

A particular challenge identified by delegates is connecting all the pieces together to build up an attribution model, and whether this is actually possible or not to do. Of particular interest was the diveristy of channels consumers are using.

Some of the conversations focused on multivariate and A/B testing, with the majority of attendees agreeing that optimisation is a significant challenge going ahead.

Despite monetisation difficulties, social media is (still) a hot topic

The vast majority of marketers agreed that social media (and particularly monetisation) is still a tough nut to crack. Questions brought up included:

• What is the role of social media? Is it about driving awareness, consideration, sales, reputation? There was some consensus that it's actually best to identify its key role as being around consideration.

• How do you get senior management to invest? One of the methods highlighted by participants was reassuring them that you know how to handle the risk, especially reputational risk. Then there’s a good chance that senior management will put some bucks behind. Another way is to go small, show some tangible progress and then build it up from there.

• What types of organisation are best suited to social media? It’s difficult to understand how to use social media unless you first understand what kind of organisation you are in. Flat and agile organisations tend to be quicker in decision making and are often the best at handling social media, whereas more traditional hierarchical organisations, where the management is removed from the day-to-day running of the business, makes social media a lot more difficult to implement.

Most companies focus on acquiring customers (and rarely on actually converting them)

Key discussion points included channel explosion, integrating channels effectively, channel conflict, finding ways to measure and track social and search, managing retention and preventing cart abandonment.

The most significant challenges highlighted by attendees included tracking customers, driving them to the online channel, measuring impact, and moving from achieving branding to sales. A lot of retailers have more assets for their brand experience than for their sales. One has to invest a lot in creating great content, but how do content and social conversations help generate actual sales and how do you measure their impact?

Most marketeres in the region don't use sophisticated optimisation techniques: segmentation and A/B testing are typically used, but few organisations have started to delve into usability and multivariate testing.

Multivariate testing is considered to be fraught with the diversity of languages, cultures and segments. A big challenge highlighted by delegates, particularly in the luxury sector, was around using personalisation to get closer to customers.

Customer experience is about measuring value as well as collecting useful feedback

With CRM, big data, and a lot of segmentation being carried out, plus a lot of business-to-business surveys being undertaken, understanding the lifecycle of the product, and how this fits in with your customer is currently being done fairly well in Hong Kong.

It’s in delivering customers’ needs that there remains a great opportunity for companies operating in Hong Kong and the Asia region more broadly. Overall, there is a lot of opportunity in delivering more on what customers are really looking for.

Marketers are starting to look a lot more closely at technologies - apps and mobile are growing rapidly and there’s an urgent need to develop better mobile skills.

The consensus was that it’s ultimately about measuring value and collecting feedback, it’s not just about generating revenue over time. Few companies know how to build and measure advocacy, and herein lies a great opportunity for companies in the region.

Will real-time bidding deliver on its promise?

Real-time bidding is growing rapidly, but is also leading to an increased concern among companies in the region: is it smoke and mirrors, or is there any substance to it? Some marketers said that a lot of local agencies are still experimenting and learning how various technologies work, so progress is quite slow.

The cost of display is very likely to go up, therefore an important consideration is how does one still get value with display advertising in the future? Looking at microsites with good quality content or advertising on your own site was highlighted as a way to keep advertising without incurring additional costs.

The consensus was that “we’re the cheapest, we’re the best” may not really be the optimal approach, and as costs are continually rising, it won’t be a winning formula for the future.

Few companies are strategic about content planning and development

Everyone knows and has a basic understanding of how to make use of content, but very few companies in the region are creating or curating content in a scientific way, and using keywords research methodology.

It takes time to develop a content marketing strategy, and one company took a whole year to put it together. Delegates also agreed that user experience is actually very important, and keeping people involved in social is something that needs more attention. An example was highlighted where a brand created a Weibo app so that users could sign into their email account without ever leaving Weibo.

There was significant discussion around localised and adaptive content, with the vast majority saying that content created in the US or at a head office somewhere far away simply doesn’t work.

Resourcing is a major issue in the region: who is going to plug in the mobile content for your mobile sites? In-house or third-party options? Some delegates emphasised that agencies don’t have the dedicated resources to fully understand the brand angle, content and offering, and how to bring it all together. One attendee spent six months looking for a content strategy agency, and still had no luck. Getting the right resources is a major challenge, but most companies understand the importance of having a dedicated content team.

Measurement is also in a fairly infant stage, and nobody appears to have a systematic process of linking content to the bottom line. Multivariate testing is pretty much non-existent, A/B testing isn’t that developed either and attribution modelling isn’t too prevalent in the region.

Mobile is big, but brands are slow in grasping the opportunity

Technology is rapidly driving changes in the marketplace, and where it is going is often quite unpredictable. Speed of change is putting a strain on mobile investment, and the days of just doing something to show off an impressive mobile app appear to be fading.

Budgets are generally very modest in mobile these days, and there is a lot to do in order to have a strong mobile offering, including dealing with language issues.

Many organisations at Digital Cream felt that it is important to have a simple design in mobile, and not to over-complicate things (particularly avoiding long forms). There was also a discussion around what is good mobile content and how it differs from creating web content. Location-based marketing is creating quite a lot of buzz in Hong Kong.

Marketing automation significantly lags the West

There still remains some confusion about what marketing automation is exactly, with many participants saying it's mainly about customising the brand's content and messaging. However, the adage that if you get garbage in, you will pretty much get garbage out was unanimously agreed on, especially by those who considered that their databases are pretty bad to begin with.

When asked whether one could name some of the key players in the marketing automation space, most participants simply couldn't. There was a feeling of not knowing enough, and not having enough information being made available in this area.

Big data and actionable insights - the gap between hype and reality

Most companies in the region agree they find it extremely difficult to handle scattered data sources. Marketing and sales data often belong to different owners and some participants suggested it's more likely to be due to legacy issues rather than technical feasibility. Additionally, few of the praticipating companies said they have access to CRM data to aid their retention efforts.

Overall, there was a strong belief in actively leveraging data as intelligence in future marketing campaigns, but few currently know how to approach this.

Econsultancy would like to thank and acknowledge the following moderators for their contributions to both the Digital Cream Hong Kong event and to this blog post:

• Ged Carroll, Director, Digital, Social and Interactive, Burson-Marsteller
• Charlie Pownall, Communications Consultant/Trainer, Advisor to WATATAWA
• Matt Dooley, Founder, Connected Thinking
• Peter Dingle, Interactive Marketing Head for Mobile Experiences and Marketing Analytics in APAC, Intel
• Max Sim, Regional Head of Marketing (Digital), JobsDB
• Eddie Choi, Executive Director, Milton Exhibits Group
• Eu Gene Ang, Principal Trainer, eAcademy Asia (Econsultancy public course partner for Asia)
• Joni Ngai, Econsultancy trainer, lecturer and China Vice Chair for I-COM
• Janis Wong, Digital Manager APAC, Mattel East Asia Ltd

So let's get this straight: both Samsung and Apple are soaring, with profits at all-time highs and a comfortable duopoly in the industry-defining mobile market. Cause for celebration, yes?

Well, no. Both companies have seen their share prices slide in recent months as their dramatic growth has shown signs of cooling, along with the broader mobile market. But as analysts downgrade the mobile market's hottest players, they might want to remember a bit of computing history.

After all, if Microsoft's PC experience is any indicator, owning a new computing market's dominant platform will generate decades of outsized revenue.

Wall Street's Curious Myopia

Samsung recently reported operating profits of $8.3 billion on $49.9 billion in revenue this quarter, up from $6.4 billion in Q2 2012. This represents 8% sequential growth, but comes in 6% to 8% shy of what analysts had been projecting. This fed analysts' fears that the smartphone market is slowing. As IDC notes, the smartphone market grew just 12% in the last year to 31.6 million units shipped in the last quarter, representing its lowest growth rate since 2004.

That's clearly bad.

How bad? Bad enough to send Apple's stock price into a 30.5% freefall over the past year.

Samsung's stock price, too, was battered after it preannounced record profits that also suggested a slowing growth rate.

As Neil Mawston, executive director of Strategy Analytics, posits, “Apple is suffering from iPhone fatigue, while Samsung is suffering from Galaxy fatigue.”

But is this "fatigue" justified?

Today's Dominance = Revenue For Decades

Consider, for example, what an iPhone user is worth to Apple. Not only is there an immediate sale, but once a user is hooked on iOS they're that much more likely to purchase another Apple product, be it an iPad or MacBook.

Due to the inherent app store lock-in, they're also much more likely to buy apps, with a 30% cut going to Apple, and to spend around $40 per year on iTunes media purchases, according to Asymco.

That's a lot of money, and it seems to be forgotten by Wall Street analysts that fixate on smartphone growth rates.

The numbers look even better if we delve into iTunes account growth. As Asymco highlights, iTunes accounts doubled from 2007 to 2009, then doubled again in 2010, again in 2011, and again in the following 18 months.

While the average revenue per account has declined from $99 to $40 in that same time period, this is reasonable given the shift away from highly committed early adopters to mainstream buyers. If we throw in the cost of devices, which is reasonable since Apple's App Store and iTunes accounts tend to follow the purchase of Apple devices, then the average Apple user is worth roughly $300 per year to Apple, according to an Asymco analysis.

Now consider what would happen if Apple (or Samsung) figure out other services to sell to existing mobile customers? A bonanza that lasts for decades.

Learning From Microsoft

Just ask Microsoft, which once ruled 90% of the PC market, and continues to print profits in a market that few consider relevant anymore. Microsoft's Windows monopoly turned into billions of dollars in Office revenue, and arguably positioned it to succeed in the enterprise market with SharePoint, Windows Server, SQL Server and more.

As I've noted before, revenue follows market share, which is why Google (and Samsung) has been so smart to focus on dominant market share even at the expense of near-term profits. Hence, so long as Samsung and Apple continue to own the mobile market, no matter its growth rate, they are setting themselves up to deliver outsized returns to investors for decades to come. 

Wall Street analysts, focusing only on smartphone growth rates, seem to be missing this long-term view of the mobile market. Device sales are important, because they generate near-term profit but also because they set a firm up for long-term platform-related add-on revenue. 

When Steve Blank appeared on the cover of Wired magazine nine years ago, his company then, Rocket Science Games, was expected to revolutionize the videogame industry. At the time, Blank didn’t let the skepticism of critics faze him.

“I thought I was a genius,” he says. Three months later, when he called his mother to let her know he was about to lose $35 million in investor funding, he wasn’t feeling quite so genius anymore.

“I had lots of choices, including that I could have quit,” he says. “Learning from that failure for me was one of the best experiences of my life.” And learn he did. In 1996, Blank founded the startup E.piphany, which went on to earn $1 billion for each of its investors.

In the past 10 years, says Blank, the culture around entrepreneurship has become increasingly failure-friendly. Serial entrepreneurs in Silicon Valley hop from one failed business to the next and billionaire entrepreneurs like Richard Branson wax on publicly about their failures almost as much as their successes. Still, “no one likes to fail,” says Blank. “We are hardwired for success.”

But what if you could actually use failure to help you succeed? Here are five keys to start failing your way to success:

1. Call failure something else.

When was the last time anyone got hired for a senior-level position without any experience? For serial entrepreneurs, “experience” is simply another word for “failure,” says Blank. By labeling a failed effort an opportunity to expand your knowledge base, you’re framing it in a more positive light, allowing yourself to add to your credibility as a more seasoned entrepreneur.

2. Use failure as a stepping stone.

With every failure, identify what you know you did wrong and be conscious not to repeat your mistakes. This will bring you one step closer to success, says Steve Siebold, a Palm Beach, Fla.-based consultant who works with corporations and entrepreneurs on mental toughness and critical thinking.

“I’ve never heard [a millionaire entrepreneur] say they hit it right the first time out,” says Siebold, whose book How Rich People Think (London House Press, 2010) is a culmination of nearly three decades of interviews. “The bigger they are, the more they’ve typically failed.”

3. Never fail alone.

Entrepreneurs like to be trailblazers. But make a mistake on your own and you might have a hard time determining what went wrong. Having a partner you trust and respect can turn every failure into an opportunity for collaboration. “A good partner can help you determine what not to do again,” says Karl Baehr, director of business and entrepreneurial studies at Emerson College, a private four-year college in Boston focused on communication and the arts.

4. Don’t hide your failures.

Be proud that you were brave enough to take a risk in the first place. By being forthright about your mistakes, you open yourself up to learning from others.

Baehr’s mentor, Walter Hailey, whose insurance company Lone Star Life Insurance went on to become a Kmart insurance company, used to take an hour-long walk at 5 a.m. every morning with a group of close friends to talk about ideas, successes and failures. “By the time they got back to the house, they had solutions,” says Baehr. “They had a plan for the day.”

5. Redefine what you want.

Revisit and refocus why you got into business in the first place. “Look for your emotional motivators. We are emotional creatures. Logic doesn’t motivate us,” says Siebold, who launched five consecutive unsuccessful businesses before he started his current consulting company. For Siebold, that motivator was one day becoming a millionaire, a goal he achieved at age 31. “Most people only half-heartedly decide they want a lot of things. You have to get really clear on what you want,” he says. “The question is: How badly do [you] want it?”

One key part of being a great inbound marketer is understanding how -- and why -- other people think and act the way they do. Think about it for a second. How can you create compelling content if you don’t know why it would be compelling to your audience in the first place? How can you personalize content to reach the right people if you don’t know what type of content they would like, and why they would like it?

Before you start jumping into all the tactical nitty gritty of marketing, it’s really helpful to understand how people operate … which is essentially what the entire field of psychology attempts to explain. Understanding some key principles in psychology can take your content from good to amazing, all because the right audience is reading and identifying with it. Bonus: if you understand these principles and weave them into your marketing, you’ll also convert more visitors into leads, and leads into customers.

Many of these psychological concepts can be used across many aspects of your marketing, but we’re just going to give one example for each. They also aren’t universal; we all know people who are outliers, do we not? With that in mind, let’s get started!

9 Important Psychology Concepts You Can Use in Your Marketing

1) Reciprocity 

Introduced in Dr. Robert Cialdini’s book, Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion, the concept of “reciprocity” is simple -- if someone does something for you, you naturally will want to do something for them. No, this isn’t bribing. If you can act in a sincere and giving way, the other person will naturally want to help you.

When You Could Use This in Marketing

Give away something -- for free -- to help build community or customer loyalty. You don’t have be rolling in dough to give something away; it can be anything from a branded sweatshirt, to an exclusive ebook, to a free desktop background, to your expertise on a difficult subject matter. Even something as simple as a hand-written note can go a long way in establishing reciprocity. By delighting your audience with these small gifts, you’ll be one step closer to establishing a true, solid relationship with your visitors, leads, and customers. 

2) Commitments 

Another principle developed by Cialdini, “commitments” is another way of saying that people don’t like breaking their promises. If someone commits to something -- whether it is meeting for lunch or signing up for your product, they feel like they’ve made an obligation to you. Once they make that commitment, people will be much less likely to bail.

When You Could Use This in Marketing

This is a great way to fight customer churn. Though you should never stop trying to delight your customers (per principle #1), it’s important to keep in mind that the longer the commitment they make to you, the harder it could be for them to churn. Think about your pricing structure. Can you lower prices but have new customers sign up for 12 months instead of one? Then, once you’ve gotten your customers’ commitment, fuel it by offering great products and customer service -- and maybe even customer-specific content.

3) Authority 

Most people naturally obey authority figures, according to another principle in Cialdini’s book. When we view someone as having authority, we’ll be much more likely to trust his or her opinions and suggestions, simply because we believe the person is credible.

When You Could Use This in Marketing

Amp up your authority in your content by prominently featuring authors’ information alongside their blog posts, ebooks, whitepapers, or videos. This way, your audience can see just how smart and amazing your inbound marketers are, which can be a step in the right direction if you’re trying to establish thought leadership as a brand.

4) Social Proof 

We’ve talked about social proof a few times on the blog already, but basically, it boils down to a situation in which you adopt the beliefs or actions of a group of people you like or trust. In other words, it’s the “me too” effect. Think of this like an awkward middle school dance -- few people want to be the first one on the dance floor, but once a few people are there, everyone else wants to join in. (Keep in mind, this desire to conform doesn’t go away when you get older and less bashful about your dance moves.)

When You Could Use This in Marketing

One easy way to make the most of social proof is on your blog -- if you're not already, use social sharing and follow buttons that display the number of followers your accounts have or the number of shares a piece of content has. If those numbers are front and center and you already have a few people sharing your post, people who stumble on your post later will be much more likely to share.

P.S. We actually have a post all about using social proof in your marketing, if you're interested. 

5) Liking

Another psychological theory by Cialdini, “liking” means that if you feel positively toward another person or company, you’ll be much more likely to interact with them or buy from them. It may not matter how smart the other person is or how profitable the company is -- if you think they’re cool, you’ll want to be seen with them more often.

When You Could Use This in Marketing

Liking is crucial to developing your company’s brand. Keep in mind that being “likeable” doesn’t have to mean being “nice.” Your brand could be raunchy and kind of offensive … but if your audience likes it, you can still take advantage of “liking.” You just want people to feel positively affiliated with your brand. So however you make that happen, it's worth a try.

6) Scarcity 

Ever gone to buy airline tickets and seen a tagline that says “only 3 seats left at this price!” Yup, that’s scarcity (again, another Cialdini concept). This psychology principle goes back to the simple formula of supply and demand: the more rare the opportunity, content, or product is, the more valuable it is. Note: If you want to properly use this principle, you need to be careful how you word it. If you approach the scarcity concept as if there used to be a ton of a product or service, but due to popular demand there’s a few left, people will be very receptive. On the other hand, if you approach it from the angle that there are only a few products total, so get it now, the principle won’t be as effective. Check out this post from Nir and Far for a deeper explanation on why that distinction is important.

When You Could Use This in Marketing

This could be a great tactic to use when planning events. If you’re looking to increase ticket sales, it might be worth sending a personalized email to people who haven’t registered yet to remind them that there are only X number of tickets left since so many people have registered. 

7) Recency Illusion

Ever heard about a product and then start seeing it everywhere you look? While that may be part of some clever ad retargeting online, it most likely is because of the “recency illusion.” It starts happening after you encounter something for the first time, and then you start noticing it everywhere you look. 

When You Could Use This in Marketing 

This is important to keep in mind when you’re designing marketing campaigns -- you should be aiming to develop robust, integrated campaigns, not just a one-and-done piece of content. By not pigeon-holing your inbound marketing to one type of content on one platform, you not only expose your content to new audiences, but more importantly, keep reinforcing your message with people who have encountered previous marketing pieces. 

8) Verbatim Effect

According to this psychological concept, people are more likely to remember a fuzzy, general idea of your content -- not the longer, more detailed piece you originally created. For example, people will most likely remember that your presentation was generally about blogging for business -- not necessarily the details about writing and editing blog content.

When You Could Use This in Marketing 

In our world today, people are headline-hungry. Given the “verbatim effect,” you should try to pack as much relevant and descriptive information into your headline as you can. Besides the fact that your headline will be fighting for attention all on its own on social media (as opposed to being accompanied by the full article text), your headline is only a few words that sum up your entire post. So use it wisely -- it may be all that your readers remember. If you need some help writing compelling headline copy, check out this post on our blog.

9) Clustering

People have a limited amount of space in their short-term memory. In fact, most people can only remember seven pieces of information (plus or minus two pieces in any given situation) at a time. To cope, most people tend to cluster similar pieces of information together. For example, if you had a whole grocery list of random items, most people would tend to mentally group items into certain categories (dairy, grain, meat, etc.) to be able to better remember what exactly was on the list.

When You Could Use This in Marketing

Do the legwork for your audience: group similar topics in your writing together -- either under numbered bullet points or with different header sizes. Besides being much easier to scan, your writing will be much easier to remember and recall down the road -- especially if you’re creating long lists of content.

What psychology principles do you use in your every-day marketing? Share your thoughts with us in the comments.

Image credit: Saad Faruque

Video’s a really effective way to market. No, really – people spent twice as much time on sites with video, video attracts almost triple the monthly visitors, and that’s just the start.

And with video apps like Vine and the new addition of video to Instagram, you don’t even need cameras, equipment or a budget to start recording video for your business.

Here’s a run-down of all the ways you can do video on a tight budget – and their pros and cons so you can decide what’s best for you.

Quick, Creative Video Shoots

You can create some awesome, impactful video with just a smartphone and 6 to 15 seconds. Two video apps make it super simple to get your message across and make your business memorable. And they’re easy to share since they’re owned by Twitter and Facebook respectively.

Vine

Vine is Twitter’s video sharing app – and is the most creatively restrictive.

Vine limits you to capturing 6 seconds of video, which means you’ll need to plan your message carefully. But 6 seconds is plenty of time to make a memorable impact, demonstrated by the brands below.

Toyota experiments with 6-second stop-motion:

Lanzamos el primer spot en #vine ?Os gusta? #toyota http://t.co/NJXbf9fC

— Toyota Espa?a (@Toyota_Esp) January 28, 2013

And a local newspaper shares a wild moment from a concert in town:

That's Pete, singing "Saturday" and then crowd-surfing. #FOBCHICAGO http://t.co/GszHQTJu

— RedEye's Soundboard (@redeyechimusic) February 5, 2013

Video for Instagram

Instagram came to fame as a smartphone photo sharing app to take and edit photos on the fly. In June, Instagram announced new video features.

Instagram lets you record up to 15 seconds of video, with the ability to go back and delete clips to re-take them if you don’t like how they turned out.

Another win for Instagram video? Cinema mode, which features video stabilization – no more shaky camera while you’re filming with a phone in your hand.

Brands are already experimenting with Instagram’s video feature:

Like Lululemon, who found a fun way to show off their yoga gear:

Or Burberry, who took their followers backstage with sights and sounds from their fashion show:

Other Video Solutions

Vine and Instagram share the benefit of quick, easy video that’s super shareable – no fancy equipment required. But what if you need more than 15 seconds to tell you story?

YouTube and Vimeo are two free sites that can host your video and help share it with a wider audience.

YouTube

YouTube is the most popular video sharing site by far, with over 1 billion monthly users and 100 hours of video uploaded every minute.

Best for: Video blogs, product demonstrations, or any video you want a chance to go viral.

Vimeo

Vimeo is a much smaller community of filmmakers and video producers. The site sees 14 million monthly users and 16,000 videos uploaded each day. On the plus side, it means your video has a better chance of getting found and seen.

But Vimeo is more focused on creative, artistic videos – the site was founded by a group of filmmakers who wanted to give other artists a creative online outlet. A lot depends on your video’s quality.

Best for: Creative, cinematic video. In a business’s case, this likely means creative video ads that will spark an interest in others to check out your service. The more creative you can get, the better.

The drawback to these solutions? They’re not quite as simple as point-and-shoot-with-a-smartphone. You’ll at least need to invest in a camera to get the quality results you’re looking for (and that people will want to watch).

What’s the best video solution for your business? Quick and quirky Vine or Instagram creations? Or more traditional online video formats? Share your video tips in the comments!

Eric Enge has published an interview with Matt Cutts, Google’s head of search spam. The interview is similar to the format he published in 2010 with Cutts, but in this interview, the topic revolved mostly about link building and what is wrong with how SEOs do it today. In short, Matt Cutts...

Please visit Search Engine Land for the full article.

Above Image: The orange Wikispeed SGT01 Roadster: crowd-funded, crowd-designed, crowd-produced, hitting the streets in small batches now for $25k, oh, and it gets 100 miles per gallon.

What if I told you the next affordable, long range, fuel efficient vehicle might be assembled in your garage or built by your neighbors?  That’s what I was surprised to hear, when I learned about the Wikispeed auto project.

Wikispeed is a business that crowd sourced designs, production, development, and has created a SAE registered, road legal approved car the Wikispeed SGT01 Car, now on sale in limited quantities. This case example is part of my ongoing coverage of the collaborative economy, on how the crowd becomes a company.

I had the opportunity to meet Joe Justice (pic) of Wikispeed at the Aspen Institute, a center dedicated to the advancement of thinking, our roundtable has been focused on how institutions must innovate in the rapidly changing environment. I’ve shared elements of the Collaborative Economy research, which has been one of the under current themes at the event.

Above: Wikispeed cars boast modularity, where individual components are assembled by crowd and shipped to a buyer’s garage to assemble. A car can quickly become a truck, by removing and replacing body.

What’s Wikispeed, it’s a project that taps into the crowd to design, create, manufacture, produce, and bring to market products. Their most notable project is producing a 100 mpg vehicle made of modular, interchangeable parts. Some findings of note about the Wikispeed project:

• Like Wikipedia, a global set of experts are People are participating, in various levels of commitment.
• They competed in XPrize challenge, against Tesla, Tata, and others
• They’ve crash tested front and side impact tests, and created a suite of impact test simulations to test rapidly.
• Design was crowdsourced, using Dropbox and Google apps like Groups, Hangout, Talk, Cal, Drive, and more.
• Specifications are modular allowing interchangeable and fast assembly
• Production Methodology is “Extreme Manufacturing”, bringing a new iteration of product every week. Like the agile software method deployed by many tech companies, a similar mindset of rapid iteration rather than long term planning has emerged at WikiSpeed.
• Assembly of vehicles can happen anywhere, including in Joe’s Garage in Seattle
• Car Specs: 100MPG, maximum speed is 149 MPH.  For safety, they’ve built for NHTSA and IIHS specifications and await official rankings
• Features:  Airconditioning, Radio (but no cup holder), using a Honda engine, but they’ve built the housing so other engines could be used, as a modular component.
• The car body can be quickly interchanged with a pickup truck body, allowing instant versatility.
• Multiple forms of currency are accepted, including crowd created Bitcoins

Corporations at Risk as Crowd Becomes Empowered
From my perspective, the disruptions are coming at an accelerated pace, sharing, markers movement, augmented reality are quickly emerging. Companies who don’t adopt the Collaborative Economy  are at risk to being disrupted as their own customers start to develop their own products, build new services.  A natural reaction of most corporations is to battle these trends with legal, policy, and competitive measures such as deploying fear uncertainty and doubt, or combative marketing and sales measures.

Corporations and Crowd Have Complementary Resources
As the crowd starts to become like a company, it offers risks and opportunities for all corporations, although I prefer to focus in on opportunities.  In a broad stroke, corporations lack flexibility, the ability to customize for individual needs, and struggle at constant innovation. In general terms, the crowd lacks a trusted brand, mass production, an army of customers, resources, and mass distribution.  Together, they can create a new resilient organization that negates these weaknesses and that taps best of corporations and the crowd.

Together, Startups and Corporations must adopt Collaborative Economy Value Chain
Companies who want to avoid disruption and benefit from opportunity must follow the Collaborative Economy Value Chain (read the full report), which taps into new models of Company-as-a Service on demand offerings, motivating a marketplace for resell of goods and services, and provide a platform to allow customers to augment and enhance every business function in your company.

This was initially posted on Huffington Post, I cross-posted here.

"So, what do you do?"

Now that’s a million dollar question! If you answer it correctly, the thick walls protecting the inner sanctums of big companies come tumbling down and the red carpet is rolled out for you.

Answer it incorrectly, and you get stuck on the outside, envious of those who managed to get in and wondering why no one wants to meet with you.

Everyday you meet people who could use your products or services or who know others who could benefit from what you do. But unless you tell them what you do in a clear, concise and compelling manner, these relationships go nowhere.

That’s why you need an elevator speech – a short description of your business that enables prospective buyers to know who you work with and what value you bring to the relationship. An elevator speech conveys these marketing messages in a manner that literally attracts the right customers to you.

In today’s fast-paced world, the average person is bombarded with thousands of marketing messages from multiple mediums every single day. Advertising is everywhere – television, radio,road signs, email, banner ads, direct mail, clothing, pens, newspapers and magazines. These pervasive, and often intrusive methods of capturing attention have created a backlash; most people don’t even notice them anymore.

To break through all this marketing clutter, it’s imperative to have an enticing elevator speech that speaks directly to the needs of your customers. And, it has to roll off your tongue easily, naturally and conversationally.

Many people intuitively know this, but still struggle with how to respond. If you’re unsure about the quality of your elevator speech or want to improve it, check out my Attracting More Customers eBook. Here’s what you’ll learn:

• The most common responses to “What do you do?” and why they’re ineffective.
• How to develop a compelling elevator speech that attracts prospective customers.
• How to fine-tune the delivery of your elevator speech.
• Different ways to use your elevator speech to market your product or service.

Developing a clear and compelling elevator speech helps you attract more of your ideal customers and gives you enhanced clarity about the work you do. Plus, if you repeat it often enough, it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. You’ll become even more of what you want to be.

It's dismaying how easy it is to screw up college.

I don't know exactly when, why, or how it happened, but important things are breaking down in the US higher education system. Whether or not this system is in danger of collapsing it feels like it's losing its way, and failing in its mission of developing the citizens and workers we need in the 21st century.

This mission clearly includes getting students to graduate, yet only a bit more than half of all US students enrolled in four-year colleges and universities complete their degrees within six years, and only 29% who start two year degrees finish them within three years. America is last in graduation rate among 18 countries assessed in 2010 by the OECD. Things used to be better; in the late 1960s, nearly half of all college students got done in four years.

Have graduates learned a lot? In too many cases, apparently not. One of the strongest bodies of evidence I've come across showing that students aren't acquiring many academic skills is work done by sociologists Richard Arum and Josipa Roksa and summarized in their book Academically Adrift: Limited Learning on College Campuses and subsequent research.

Arum, Roksa, and their colleagues tracked more than 2300 students enrolled full time in four-year degree programs at a range of American colleges and universities. Their findings are alarming: 45% of students demonstrate no significant improvement on a written test of critical thinking called the Collegiate Learning Assessment (CLA) after two years of college, and 36% improved not at all after four years. And the average improvement on the test after four years was quite small.

Consider a student who scored at the 50% percentile as a freshman. If he experienced average improvement over four years of college, then went back and took the test again with another group of incoming freshmen, he would score only in the 68th percentile. The CLA is so new that we don't know if these gains were bigger in the past, but previous research using other tests indicates that they were, and that only a few decades ago the average college student learned a great deal between freshman and senior years.

These declines in learning and graduation rates come during a time of exploding costs. the Pew Research Center found that the price of a private college education tripled between 1980 and 2010, and that average student loan debt for bachelor's degree holders who had to borrow was more than $23,000 in 2011. This debt is not dischargeable even in bankruptcy, and is certainly not erased if you fail to graduate.

Smart students from affluent homes and elite colleges and universities continue to do really well, but the rest of higher ed is sliding backward. Why is this? As was the case with the sub-prime crisis and subsequent economic meltdown, there is plenty of blame to go around. Many non-elite colleges have seen their enrollments jump in recent decades without similar increases in budgets, so resources per student have declined.

It also seems, though, that colleges in general have stopped asking students to work as hard, and the students have been more than happy to take them up on that offer. Arum, Roksa, and their colleagues document that college students today spend only 9% of their time studying (compared to 51% on "socializing, recreating, and other"), much less than in previous decades, and that only 42% reported having taken a class the previous semester that required them to read at least 40 pages a week and write at least 20 pages total. They write that "The portrayal of higher education emerging from [this research] is one of an institution focused more on social than academic experiences. Students spend very little time studying, and professors rarely demand much from them in terms of reading and writing."

Here's my advice to recent high school grads (and their families): don't be part of this shameful and lazy bargain. Resolve to work hard, take tough classes, and graduate on time. Many changes are necessary in higher ed, most of which will take a great deal of time. But the most effective interventions can start the day you show up on campus. Crack the books, find good teachers, and take the education part of your education seriously.

Arum and Roksa found that at every college studied some students show great improvement on the CLA. In general, these are students who spent more time studying (especially studying alone), took courses with more required reading and writing, and had more demanding faculty. So the blueprint is here. Please take my advice and spend some time this summer thinking about how you'll put it into action.

A common lament of marketing teams is that they often find themselves acting as a service desk to the sales team. In b2b marketing, it is a consistent dilemma.

read more

Face-to-face sales interactions are typically viewed as the most valuable activity by Sales Leaders.  5 years ago they were right. Nothing was more important than executing in the trenches.  But during those times, the trenches were out in the field.  In this post we will explore how the trenches have changed. Today, getting in the door is more difficult than executing face-to-face sales calls.

Today your sales people have multiple product specialists, overlays, and management support.  But these resources don’t engage until they get in front on someone.  The vast majority of training is focused on selling once you are face-to-face.  But buyers are much more informed today. This fact makes getting in the door more than half the battle.

The primary differentiator of today's top Sales Rep is the ability to prospect.  This could be prospecting for new business or different buying centers within existing customers.  Both are difficult.  Both are where the potential is.  Managing a relationship or taking orders from existing customers are table-stakes.  Opening new doors is a unique and difficult skill.  Few are really good at it. 

We have captured 5 modern prospecting best practices from top performers.  Download this tool to rapidly improve your prospecting results. 

 

 

I recently had a discussion with a Sales Leader about his team’s ability to prospect. 

He told me that, “Prospecting is a basic skillset all my reps should have.”

I asked what skills he was referring to.  He couldn’t articulate their prospecting strategy.  He basically told me they should make cold calls and “beat the streets”.  I then asked how they make phone calls and what their success rate is.  He gave me a blank stare.  "What do you mean?  They call and explain who they are and why they are calling.  Then they ask for an appointment."

As shocking as this example may seem, it is the norm.  A majority of sales people are terrible at prospecting.  They call the same buyer each week hoping something has changed. They open a phone call with what their company provides.  They knock on a door and leave a business card.  The success rate using outdated methods and poor messaging is under 5%.  And Sales Managers wonder why their people aren’t prospecting.

 

Why do sales people inflict so much pain on themselves?

 

• They are instructed to use outdated prospecting techniques
• They are resistant to change and make excuses such as, “our buyers aren’t on social media”
• Most sales training is focused on execution once in the door
• Organizations inhibit the use of modern prospecting methods
• They make the mistake of relying on someone else to prospect

 

How to get in the door:

 

1. Approach the right doors - some doors aren’t worth approaching.  Is your sales team focused on customers with the highest potential to buy your solution?  Or do they call on low value prospects and saturated customers?  Clearly define your target audience first. 
2. Buyer Centric Messaging - have you ever had a feeling that an advertisement was meant for you?  It may have been 1 out of 100 advertisements.  The goal is to make every communication speak directly to your buyer.  You should understand them so well they think you have their job.  Speak directly to the buyer’s fears, objectives, and personal wants.
3. Use Social Listening – understand what your buyer cares about.  Is there a better way than watching their behavior first hand?  This works whether using social prospecting, email, or phone.  Your buyers will give you the answer to the test and you aren’t cheating. 
4. Refine Writing Skills – produce succinct, clear, and compelling copy that drives an actionable response.  Think of how many more emails you send than conversations you have each day.  We communicate via the written word much more frequently than orally.  Yet we focus most of our time on improving oral communication skills.  Your prospects spend more time reading about you than listening to you. 
5. Incorporate Social Prospecting – LinkedIn is not a clogged channel.  Email and the phone are.  You can use relationships to get access to buyers.  Using social is more effective and less painful than cold calling.

Use this tool to spread these best practices across your sales organization.  Prospecting can be enjoyable and effective if approached correctly.

 

Author: Scott Gruher

Follow @ScottGruher

Follow @MakingTheNumber

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How do clients buy?

If you know the answer to that question, you can change your sales and marketing processes to match it. The challenge is how clients buy and what they want from sales and marketing changes. Their problems, their needs, their preferences, their markets—they all change over time.

That means your sales and marketing approaches must also change.

To keep from putting time, money, and effort into things that yield little results, Bruce W. Marcus says you must know your market, know your service, know your tools, and manage your tools.

Luxury brands in China are grappling with a worrisome trifecta.

1. Policymakers cracked down on 'gift giving' at the start of the year, as citizens got increasingly frustrated with official corruption. 2. The impact of the economic slowdown on consumption. 3. Chinese are traveling more, and making their luxury purchases abroad, benefiting from weaker currencies and lower taxes.

Swiss watches have been pretty hard. Back in May China said it would cut import taxes on Swiss watched by 60% over 10 years after the two nations sign a free-trade agreement.

In a new report, Deutsche Bank's Francesca Di Pasquantonio writes that "de-stocking in China is not yet over."

"The results of our analysis suggest that while globally exports should hold up reasonably well in a normalizing demand environment, we see de-stocking in China as not yet over, and in light of still poor sell-out indications in Q2 provided by industry players, we do not see a pick-up in supply to that region in the short term.

"However, when demand normalizes, a substantial positive impact on the supply side should be reported. This could happen earlier for other luxury spending categories, but in our view it will require a bit more time for the watch industry.'

The chart above looks at Swiss watch exports to Greater China, including Hong Kong, which accounts for 28% of Swiss watch exports. This luxury watch indicator if you will, shows China's slowdown registering since May 2012 in China, and September 2012 in Hong Kong.

SEE ALSO: China's Strong Yuan Can't Be Justified

Join the conversation about this story »

Since the advent of the commercial Internet, I’ve collected tens of thousands of data points that have given me the ability to identify the top 8 Money Draining Website Mistakes. These are the things that literally cause a business website to leak serious money every day in the form of lost sales.

The good news is that business owners can immediately stop the cash drain. You can also do it on your own without any technical skills. The result outcome will be more visitors to your website, more leads, and more sales.

Here are 8 money draining website mistakes:

Mistake #1: No baselines or goals

When I ask a business owner, “How much of an increase in unique visitors would you need to see in order to hit your revenue goals?” the typical answer is, “I don’t know…we just need more.”

Don’t fall into the trap of “just needing more.” Instead, dig into your Google Analytics account and create baselines for vital metrics like unique visitors, current conversion rate of visitors into leads, and current conversion rate of leads into sales.

Then, use these baselines to establish S.M.A.R.T. (specific, measurable, attainable, relevant, and time-sensitive) goals. Next, take your baselines combined with your S.M.A.R.T. goals for revenue and work it backward. That way you’ll know by how much you need to increase site traffic, leads, and conversion rate to reach your revenue goal.

Mistake #2: Lack of distinction

What are you uniquely qualified to provide and to whom are you providing it? Clearly define what makes you different.

Complete what we call the X-Y-Z exercise. My friend and mentor Darren Hardy, publisher of SUCCESS Magazine taught me this valuable exercise.

• We do X (x = your products and services)

• For Y (y = your customer profile)

• So they can Z (z = the result outcome your customers are seeking)

We do X, for Y, so they can Z.

For example, our X-Y-Z is: “We do digital marketing by applying our patent-pending Predictive ROI Method for companies with $1 million to $30 million a year in revenue so they can increase their online return on investment by 200 to 500% or more, guaranteed, or it’s 100 percent free.”

Make your X-Y-Z short, concise, and packed full of value for your customers.

Mistake #3: High bounce rate

When someone visits a page on your site and immediately leaves without making a single click, that’s called a bounce. The typical business website has a bounce rate between 50 and 60 percent. Track your bounce rate in Google Analytics. Your goal should be 30 percent or less.

Reduce bounce rate in three simple steps:

1.) Place your X-Y-Z message on the left side of your Home Page, above the fold so visitors can quickly understand what you do

2.) Eliminate visual clutter on your content pages

3.) Present clear calls-to-action

Bounce rate tends to be the most expensive money drainer but, the easiest to fix. Why is it so expensive? Assume you have a typical conversion rate of 2 to 4 percent of unique visitors. If your bounce rate is 50 to 60 percent, you’re losing nearly 42 percent of your potential revenue. That may represent $250,000 a year or more in lost sales for some small business owners!

Mistake #4: Poor search engine optimization (SEO)

Good SEO requires the creation of content your visitors will thank you for but also content that revolves around what I call “Predictive Keywords” or keywords that are searched for every single day in Google and are relevant to your business. Here’s how you find them.

Create a free account on SEOBook.com and use their Keyword Selector Tool. The tool will show you the number of times a particular keyword in Google is searched for every day. Awesome data!

Then, do an exact match search in Google (place the keyword in quotes) and develop content pages that focus on the keywords that have fewer than 1 million competing pages in Google.

Mistake #5: Not knowing your customer

Are your typical clients in school? Are they parents or retirees? What are their hopes, dreams, challenges, and fears? What keeps them awake at night? Answer these questions and you’ll have a “client avatar” or client profile that you can reference.

For example, we call our “client avatars” Sally and Harry. They’re business owners who are ambitious, want to learn new things but sometimes feel like they don’t know what they’re doing and that they are missing out on opportunities when it comes to digital marketing. They have been burned in the past by so-called experts but yearn to trust someone who can deliver on promises.

Having these avatars or profiles will help you serve your customers better and tailor your site content to meet their needs in a relevant way.

Mistake #6: Bad customer experience

You may not even realize that your site is difficult to navigate because what seems clear to you may be confusing to a visitor. Ask yourself what your avatar is looking to do — make a purchase, ask a question, download free advice, etc. Be sure your site includes easy-to-follow instructions, simple forms that only ask for the necessary information to begin a relationship, and other cues to guide visitors toward your calls-to-action.

Mistake #7: Too much institution speak

Your content should sound like it comes from you — a real person. It’s a problem I see far too often. Remember, you’re trying to make an emotional connection with your customer. You’re not just trying to “wow” them with facts, stats, your knowledge of industry jargon, or your impressive facility. Be you and your visitors will reward you for it!

Mistake #8: Ambiguous calls-to-action

Each page of your site should have a clear call-to-action, along with easy steps visitors can take to move forward and hire or buy from you. Consider adding three simple steps as a place to start:

1.) Download your latest eBook

2.) Register for your upcoming webinar

3.) Buy or call you now

Eliminate these 8 Money Draining Website Mistakes and you’ll see more visitors, more leads, and more sales!

What are some things that have worked well and not so well on your website? Tell me below.

 

Deal debt is one of the most egregious management practices perpetrated on sales people today.  Deal debt is the result of end of the quarter pressure sales leaders put on their sales team to pull deals into the current quarter that aren’t slated to close until the next quarter — all in order to make the number. Pulling future deals into the current quarter in order to make quota, is the same as borrowing money at exorbitant interest rates. It’s bad debt.

We’ve all been there.

It’s the final two or three weeks in the quarter. The outlook looks bleak and the number looks in peril. To avoid “perceived” diaster  management starts asking if there are any deals the team can “pull in.” This simple request, backed by the best of intentions, triggers a nasty, and almost impossible to escape, cycle that dooms the sales team for quarters to come.

Here is the gig.

Once the team pulls deals forward a quarter, it’s like borrowing from the upcoming quarter and this is a problem — a big problem.  Like any other debt, deal debt has to be repaid. And in sales, this means it has to be repaid the next quarter. When management asks the sales team to pull a deal forward, it leaves fewer deals in the pipeline for the upcoming quarter. This pipeline hole now has to be filled and unfortunately, most of the time the sales team is unable to generate enough new opportunities to pay the debt in the quarter. So, you guessed it, management asks to the team to pull deals in again. They go back to the well, borrowing from the new upcoming quarter to make the current quarters numbers, BECAUSE they couldn’t pay the deal debt they created the quarter before. It becomes a vicious cycle.

Deal debt is crippling! It’s a giant ponzi scheme, constantly shuffling deals around in order to avoid reality; the fact that there weren’t enough deals in the pipeline in the first place.

I’m amazed at how prevalent deal debt is. I see it at Fortune 500 companies and with small businesses. It kills sales organizations. Deal debt is worse than credit card debt. It hangs over sales organizations like  heavy cloud that gets thicker and thicker as the end of the quarter approaches. It’s debilitating.

No Respect for the Customer

The other problem with deal debt is it strains the customer relationship. It puts the customer’s buying needs on the back burner and makes it about your quota needs. That’s bad business.  I’ve sat in on more of these calls than I’d prefer.  I’ve listened to reps ask their customers and prospects if they’d be willing to close the deal today rather than next mont as planned. They ask them if they’d be willing to shorten the demo or accelerate the delivery process or “accept” the order before it ships etc. Anything to get the deal in now. I’ve seen some of the most creative contortions in order to get the deal early and none of them put the customer’s needs first.

Price in the cross hairs

When sales teams go to the customer to bring in a deal, there is almost always a concession in order to make it worth while for the customer. This concession is predominately pricing or something related to pricing such as; additional features for the same price, extended terms, etc. All of which translate into less profitable sales.

When we go into deal debt, not only are we borrowing from the future to pay today’s quota bills, we’re paying a higher price for the deal. Just like real debt, there is a cost to debt and in sales it’s no different.

It’s a Leadership Problem

Listen carefully, deal debt is a sales leadership problem, period! Deal debt is the symptom of a poor culture and poor sales management. Deal debt happens when sales leadership;

• isn’t willing to take it’s lumps when they aren’t hitting their numbers.  They’d rather borrow from the future to pay for poor sales performance today
• doesn’t do a good job managing the sales funnel earlier in the quarter and develop tactics or approaches when they recognize the quarter is short
• has a shitty sales team in place and aren’t doing anything about it
• doesn’t ensure there are solid deal strategies in place
• doesn’t have a “long” view of sales and the sales funnel
• doesn’t understand their closing ratio and lacks good forecasting skills
• has a shitty “NOW” culture!
• pays little attention to the customers needs and focuses on its own needs

Deal debt is a vicious cycle that infects far too many sales organizations.  It destroys moral, affects profit, and undermines customer satisfaction and customer relationships. Deal debt is a cancer that plagues the health of the sales organizations. It prevents growth, creates unneccessary stress, creates an unrealistic view into the health of the company and limits transparency.  It’s a mess.

Healthy sales organizations don’t “pull deals in.”  They manage the sales cycle appropriately and build pipelines that allow quota to be met without borrowing. Deal debt is just like real debt, it’s expensive and can crush you. However, unlike real debt that can be leveraged to create financial gain, deal debt ONLY has a downside. There is no leverage in deal debt. It’s more akin to buying a car  you can’t afford.  The car is depreciating AND the weight of the payment is crushing you.

Stay out of deal debt!  There is no upside!

 

 

 

Sales Training Article: Disappearing Differentiators

By John Holland, Chief Content Officer, CustomerCentric Selling® - The Sales Training Company

Organizations strive to develop sustainable advantages in their offerings. Overnight, a company enjoying differentiators can have the tables turned by a competitor's announcement. Shorter shelf lives of differentiators and product life cycles have implications for sales organizations.

In her new book The End of Competitive Advantage, Rita Gunther McGrath says top line revenue strategies built upon long-term differentiators are becoming more difficult to execute and may become irrelevant in the future. The trend of shorter product cycles shows no signs of slowing. Companies that develop sales strategies around having differentiators may face rude awakenings.

McGrath's view is that organizations must forge new paths to winning: capture opportunities fast, exploit them decisively, and move on with new strategies or approaches before the current ones run their courses. CEO's that recognize the pitfalls of relying upon product advantages are likely to look to new strategies to achieve business plans.

Problems arise if senior executives create strategies that assume employees have the requisite competencies to execute them. Skill and knowledge gaps can undermine otherwise brilliant strategies. Consider the challenges companies face in migrating from product sales. It's a radical change to have sellers focus on business outcomes first and then determine what specific parts of their offerings can help buyers achieve their desired outcomes. The success the first CCS® client had in migrating from hardware to workflow sales is available here for your reference.

Companies strive to offer the best products at the best price. While this is an admirable goal, even if it were possible to achieve, success isn't guaranteed. If price and product are roughly equal (+/- 10%), I'll place my bet on a seller that does "outcome based selling" by executing the following steps:

• Gain access to Key Players
• Learn the business outcomes (goals) each Key Player wants to achieve
• Do diagnoses to help each buyer see barriers that stand in the way of achieving outcomes
• Articulate capabilities that address the barriers
• Establish value and a compelling cost vs. benefit
• Negotiate a Sequence of Events with the buying committee that maps out activities and estimated dates that lead up to making a formal recommendation

Implementing sales process isn't easy. Organizations that are successful in doing so can capture and share "A Player" best practices. Ultimately they make the way their salespeople sell a competitive advantage. By doing so, the impact of the ebb and flow of product advantages on top line revenue is more easily managed.

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Need some help with your sales performance? Take a look at the sales training workshops available to you and improve sales performance.

Read more sales training articles from CustomerCentric Selling® - The Sales Training Company.

…And How to Spot Them Before They Burn Up Your Time And Money

Have you ever felt burned by a sales candidate who looked great in the interview but failed to meet your expectations?  This is one of the most heartbreaking and frustrating experiences for sales managers and business owners… And, unfortunately, it is also one of the most common.  Many candidates come with seemingly ideal experience and potential, and yet the best sale we get out of that candidate is their interview performance.  Although these situations can be very discouraging, we can avoid them by looking beyond the candidate’s demeanor, experience level, and even track record, and instead into the most important non-teachable predictor of success: the candidate’s innate level of what psychologists call Drive, a critical personality trait and key aptitude that research shows must be in place to succeed in “hunter” type sales positions.

As discussed in our book, Never Hire a Bad Salesperson Again, Drive is composed of three traits: Need for Achievement, Competitiveness and Optimism.  Hiring managers who do not specifically test for these three traits risk repeating the pattern of heartbreak.  For example, many sales managers look for candidates who have experience in their industry, and candidates with a track record of success at a well-known company or two can seem particularly attractive.  However, when interviewing such a candidate, we need to find out whether their previous success was because of their own ambition and hard work, or whether their company’s big name and collateral material were really making the sale.

Similarly, many hiring managers, particularly those responsible a new product or market, look for candidates who can be good “evangelists” for their product.  These hiring managers are often tempted by candidates who are particularly outgoing and personable.  However, brand new products often have longer sales cycles, as prospects need additional education before moving forward.  We need to make sure the candidate has the optimism necessary to withstand a long sales cycle and remain focused, refusing to give up.

The key to avoiding falling in love with a candidate for the wrong reasons is to use a sales test that measures Need for Achievement, Competitiveness, and Optimism prior to the interview.  A well-constructed test helps us weed out candidates who may talk a great game but lack the passion and dedication to succeed in the long run.  (We have developed a test called the DriveTest™ that specifically over-weights Drive characteristics, but the main point here is include an objective diagnostic tool in your selection process).  For candidates who pass the test, interview them using questions specifically focused on the three elements of Drive.  For example, to assess Need for Achievement, ask, “Tell me about the kinds of sacrifices you have had to make to be successful.”  For Optimism, ask, “Tell me about a time you remained persistent, even after others around you gave up.”

To be sure, we also need to vet for other important factors, including fit with the company culture and level of sales experience.  But, by combining a robust sales test with a well-constructed behavioral interview, we greatly increase our odds of hiring salespeople with the desire and capability to routinely exceed our expectations.

Even if you’re able to eradicate the dysfunction from your sales team, it doesn’t mean you’ve necessarily created a high-impact team.

Shipments in the global PC market during Q2 2013 of this year showed a fall for the fifth consecutive quarter – “the longest duration of decline in the PC market’s history”, says research firm Gartner.

The post PC sales fall for fifth consecutive quarter, marks longest duration of decline appeared first on Digital Trends.

The federal court ruling describing how Apple fixed prices in the ebook market reads like a thriller: Steve Jobs was seriously ill in 2009, and his SVP in charge of books, Eddy Cue, raced all over New York to sign up five major publishers into a pricing agreement before he died.

At the same time, Apple was about to launch the iPad in 2010, and Cue and Jobs wanted all the publishers on board with the iPad's iBookstore before the launch event.

Cue played hardball with the publishers, and they got their wish — Hachette, HarperCollins, MacMillan, Penguin, and Simon & Schuster all signed on with Apple,and book prices went up by as much as 50% virtually overnight, even though Amazon controlled 90% of the market.

What is startling about the ruling is how overt the cooperation was between the publishers and Apple. The publishing CEOs literally held regular dinners to discuss how they could rid themselves of Amazon's dominance of the market, and CEO Jeff Bezos' insistence that all ebook be sold at a mere $9.99.

And then there's the star power. In addition to Apple's Jobs and Cue, Rupert and James Murdoch, and authors Stephen King and Sarah Palin all had cameo roles.

Here's how it happened, according to today's ruling.

This is the takeaway: Apple orchestrated the whole thing.

The backstory: In 2009, Apple had no ebook reader and Amazon dominated 90% of the market.

Publishers HATED Amazon's low-price policies.

See the rest of the story at Business Insider

Chinese trade data unexpectedly fell in June. This has raised some concerns about the strength of the Chinese yuan.

"One key policy take-away from this trade report is probably that the strength of the yuan can hardly be justified," wrote Societe Generale's Wei Yao in a note to clients.

The yuan has already had a strong climb in trade-weighted terms. And this will impact the nation's export competitiveness, even as external demand remains weak.

"Since end-August 2012, the CNY has gained 3.3% against the USD. Over the same period, however, the CNY has appreciated from 12.3 to 16.2 Japanese yen (JPY), a net 31.7% gain. We estimate that the CNY nominal effective exchange rate (NEER) has risen by a net 7.8% since end-August 2012," writes Standard Chartered's Robert Minikin. 

"The combination of the powerful climb in the CNY’s trade-weighted value, China’s lackluster export performance and subdued domestic inflation suggests to us that more CNY appreciation is not warranted near-term," according to Minikin.

China has also been cracking down on speculative Forex inflows, that has in part been reflected in the disappointing trade data. China controls capital inflows and outflows to prevent a rise in asset bubbles.

"As capital inflows are curtailed, the balance in the currency market should tilt towards yuan depreciation," writes SocGen's Yao.

Those betting on yuan appreciation should be more cautious.

SEE ALSO: Everything You Need To Know About The Renminbi

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