Rnordman

Innovative companies face a unique challenge: if the customer fails at using the technology, the company is to blame.

They’ll blame the innovator even if they only logged in once.
They’ll blame the innovator even if they never fully implemented the program.
They’ll blame the innovator even if they only used a fraction of the features.
They’ll blame the innovator even if they used it for the wrong purpose.

Without a longstanding reputation and proven track record, customers are likely to blame the innovators for the failure of the technology despite their own negligence in using it.

Until They Don’t Blame the Innovator…

Whether the product is B2C or B2B, the customer still has a limited amount of time and money. Adopting a new technology takes both. If the process of understanding how to use the product is not made easy, their patience will run out before they can realize the value of the innovation. Even though it may be the fault of the customer for not taking the time to learn how to use the product, they will blame the innovator when they feel they have wasted their time and money.

The blame game may seem arbitrary, but the consequences are not. When a customer blames the innovator, they will take the first opportunity to sever their relationship with the innovative company.

There’s a learning curve when adopting new technology and it takes effort to overcome it. This effort will either burden the customer or the innovator. The difference is that the customer is sure to give up long before the innovator does. For this reason, it is the responsibility of the innovator to shoulder the burden of pulling a customer over the learning curve.

This is why innovative companies must invest in customer success. Customer success teams and technologies serve not to shift the blame – but to mitigate the reason for blame entirely.

How Customer Success Mitigates the Need for Blame

When a product is new and ground breaking, the end user will have to learn how to use it. This learning curve needs to be as short as possible. By employing customer success professionals and technologies, an innovative company can teach customers how to gain the benefits of their investment.

It’s important to remember that marketing and sales teams focus on conveying the “what” and “why” factors – but not “how”. Without knowing the nuances of how to get the what, they’ll never fulfill the reason why they bought your innovative product in the first place.

Without knowing the nuances of how to get the what, they’ll never fulfill the reason why they bought your innovative product in the first place.

Customer success teams and technologies can assist the customer in using all the features necessary to make the most of their purchase. We sell our products at a pricing point that is calculated with the value of using the product to its fullest, so it is to our benefit to ensure our customers view the price as fair.

A central role of customer success is identifying and optimizing what is and isn’t being used, the capacity at which it is being used and the various applications it is being used for. Consider the difference it makes when we use features like air conditioning and cruise control while driving; or if the car was only being used to drive in a one-block radius. Explaining these features and that it can be used to drive long distances completely changes how much the driver values the car.

Another part of customer success is showing the customer that they are achieving their goals with your innovation. This can be an automated process, built into their analytics or even emailed directly from your customer success team. Whatever approach is appropriate for the company, proving the innovation’s value to the customer is essential to maintaining a long relationship with them.

Fortunately for innovators, there are a lot of great professionals and technologies to employ for the purpose of bringing your customers over the learning curve. Customer success is becoming a standard part of business as innovation leads the economy. The only tricky part is finding the right combination of people and technologies for you.

Sales is Social

It’s funny to me that people forget that sales is a social process. Selling is mostly an interaction between people. Granted you can buy some products or services from a website and never need to talk to anyone. But, most B2B sales require humans to talk to other humans while understanding the buying process and determining problems that need to be solved. Every good seller has a sales process that follows the way people want to buy. Today, for most sellers, that process should include using social media. So, let’s take a look at how to use social media throughout the sales process.

Missing a Crucial Step

First, I’ve outlined a simple sales process below. If you follow a process with a strong strategy, you will have the best possibility of getting great results. There are many ways to execute the actions for each step, but many salespeople are missing a crucial one. It seems that even as many sellers are using social media to prospect, they don’t find ways to intertwine social media throughout the entire process. Social media can be the key to success in every step of a successful sales process.

Successful Sales Process Example

1. Target Audience
2. Build Awareness
3. Determine Needs
4. Educate the Client
5. Close the Deal
6. Implement the Work
7. Retain the Client
8. Grow the Business
9. Get Referrals

In my world, a successful sales process starts with targeting the right audience to ensure successful prospecting. Next, you build awareness and develop interest, so the target audience has heard of your company and identifies with your brand when they are ready to buy. When they are ready, the process then moves through determining the prospect’s needs to educating and closing the deal. But it doesn’t stop there. Implementation is critical. Even though most salespeople feel this part is completely out of their control, it is part of the process. Unhappy customers do not continue to buy, and they do not refer you to others. An effective sales process moves the customer through implementation in a way that makes them happy and retains their business. Happy customers buy more and become loyal clients who provide excellent referrals.

Use Social Media for Every Step

I want to show you how social media can help in almost every step of this process — even when it may not be obvious. Here’s how you can use platforms like LinkedIn to move through your sales process to close more deals and make your customers so happy they become walking advertisements for you! These ideas will work with many of the social platforms out there, but my favorite for B2B sales is LinkedIn.

1. Target Audience

To target your audience effectively on social media, you first must define your ideal customer. To clearly identify your ideal client, think of these characteristics:

• Demographics: The age, revenue, location and business sector for your ideal customer
• Psychographics: The attitudes, values, or lifestyle your perfect client embraces

Once you know who your audience is, then you can figure out where they are and how to contact them. I prefer a variety of methods in the prospecting stage that include, social media, email, mail, voicemail, events and getting introductions.

LinkedIn makes it easy to find your target audience by allowing you to search for companies that meet specific criteria for these characteristics. Do a search and make a list of 10 businesses that fit your criteria.

Once you have a list, it’s time to do some Google stalking. Search each organization in Google to find its official website and social media accounts. Now, follow the business on each of those outlets so you can watch its activity and start interacting, which is the next step.

2. Build Awareness

Once you’ve identified a list of companies and connected with each on social media, it’s time to interact. Every like, comment and share will draw the attention of your target customer.

Be aware that larger companies usually assign a marketing person to operate their social media. But, in smaller companies the owner often runs these channels. Even in a large business, decision makers typically run their personal pages. So, you’ve got a good chance of drawing the attention of the chief decision maker.

You’ll also want to connect and build awareness with the company’s individual employees — especially those in decision-making roles. In LinkedIn, you can click on the company page and see all the people connected to that organization. Start interacting in a friendly, personable way to build awareness.

Once you’ve started developing a relationship with someone by interacting with their posts on LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook or other channels, you can ask to connect. If they accept, you have an opportunity to discover shared interests and how you might help.

Offer some ideas, resources or articles that might pique your new connection’s interest. Once you’ve done this and received a positive response, it’s time to move the conversation offline.

I found a very cool tool to track the links I send via LinkedIn and email. It’s called SalesWings. If the link goes to my website, I can see if the person clicked the link. If the person clicks the link, this tool analyzes past and future visits to my site. Moreover, it scores the level of engagement/interest of that person.

Once you’ve connected with your contact and offered them some valuable information, they are likely to say yes to a meeting. Now, your prospect knows who you are because you’ve interacted. You’ve built awareness. This person also knows you have integrity because of what you post and what you shared. That is how you develop interest.

3. Determine Needs

Typically, at this point in the sales process, it’s time to get off social media and meet in person or a Skype or GoToMeeting because of distance. You need the direct interaction of a conversation to ask the right questions and determine your client’s needs and the solutions you can provide.

However, you can use social media to anticipate your customer’s needs. For example, many companies will publish job openings on social media. These posts can provide insight into an organization and its needs. Or, see if your contact is posting in a LinkedIn group with a question or request. Watch for the release of new products. Be savvy and follow the clues companies and their employees send on social media.

After you’ve conducted a needs analysis, you must follow up with the client. Since you’ve moved the relationship off of social media, you may think that you’re finished with it. Wrong! Platforms like LinkedIn can be very valuable to break through the clutter of your contact’s inbox. Some people have so many messages that they are not going to see your emails or listen to your voicemail. If you follow up with them on social media, especially LinkedIn, your message may stand out more. One caveat: Make sure to ask your contact how they prefer to communicate during your needs analysis.

Another way you can use LinkedIn with a prospect at this stage is to send them to your website for more information on their specific needs with links that track their activity. This allows you to see when they last visited the site and what they clicked. This information can help you continue to determine your prospect’s interests and move the sale forward. As I mentioned previously, SalesWings is the tool I use to do that. If you have a sophisticated marketing automation system, it should be able to track the links you email, but it won’t follow the links you send through LinkedIn. I use SalesWings for both email and LinkedIn.

4. Educate the Client

Once you’ve evaluated the prospect’s needs, it’s time to educate them. This process probably will not take place primarily on social media. But, some parts absolutely can. For example, post your educational decks on SlideShare and share them with your potential clients. YouTube is another great place to share demos or product information. If you use a company like Consensus to have demos on your website, then send the link to those. (Don’t forget to track those with SalesWings!)

5. Close the Deal

Now, closing a deal is not going to happen online. That is direct communication with the client. However, once you have closed a deal, social media comes back into play. For example, many companies like to announce new partnerships or deals on social media. If the company you’re doing business with likes to do this, then use a platform like LinkedIn, Twitter or Facebook, to post about how you’ll be working together.

6. Implement the Work

After you close the deal, your company needs to implement and deliver the promised work. This part of the process is typically not the salesperson’s job. But, as your business is performing, you can stay in touch with your customer through social media. Continue to interact with their posts and at the appropriate times send a direct message on LinkedIn asking how the implementation is going.

7. Retain the Client

Retention is another area that may fall to the salesperson. Many people in your company may work to help retain this customer. But, social media can help you easily keep in touch with multiple accounts over time. While it may be difficult to call each client frequently while you are out hunting for new business, you should continue to use social media to stay connected. Try sending your contact an article from your company blog, a thank you or interacting with a post they’ve created. Social media gives you a great way to stay in touch in a low-pressure way. The great thing is you can do it any time of the day or night, so it doesn’t interfere with your prime prospecting hours.

8. Grow the Business

Many salespeople must also get more business from existing customers. Lucky for you, you’ve already developed a relationship with your clients on social media, and you can listen for additional needs. Watch what they post and see if it creates a new opportunity for your business. You can also use social media to suggest other services and products with a soft touch. Here is another place that SalesWings comes in handy. When you send those links through LinkedIn, SalesWings will track them. Thanks to the SalesWings algorithm, once they have clicked the link, you can tell how hot the lead is. Moreover, the “Lead’s detailed interest of last visits” feature allows you to see where else they go to your website, thus giving you the opportunity to respond proactively.

9. Get Referrals

The final step in the sales process is leveraging your existing customers to create new connections. If you’ve followed this process to this step, you have a satisfied client. You stayed in touch with your new customers and grown your relationships by adding value. You’ve earned the right to ask for referrals. Loyal customers are happy to give you a reference when asked. This step is an excellent opportunity to use social media again.

Social media provides you access to your connections’ connections. What you want to figure out is to whom you want an introduction. Use LinkedIn to see what ideal customers your client is connected to and then determine the best way to ask for an introduction. This point is when I get off social media and get on the phone or send a quick email. Here are a few examples.

Hi Jim,

I hope things are going great. I saw that you were in NYC recently and had the chance to catch a few shows. That must have been fun.

Last time we talked I mentioned that I was growing my business and looking for a few more great clients like you. I noticed on LinkedIn that you are connected to Susan Smith. I’m wondering if you know her well enough to make an introduction? Let me know so we can discuss.

Thanks,

Alice

Here’s another example:

Hi Anne,

I loved your recent article on online learning. You are absolutely right about the way things are changing.

I was on LinkedIn and notice you are well connected to three of the companies I am following, Century, Bristlecone and Heritage. I’d like to meet some of the key players from these companies. Would you feel comfortable making a few introductions for me?

Have a great day!

Alice

As you can see, both emails are really personal. These are examples of emails, but my conversations are similar. The key is, you must know them well enough and have an established relationship that earns you the right to ask.

Lather, Rinse, Repeat

And now, we’re back to the beginning of the process — you’ve targeted a new ideal customer and are following them or have been introduced. You are ready to build their awareness of you and your company and develop their interest and continue the process.

By following each step of this sales process with social media, you can be more successful and grow your business.

If you want more targeted tips on how you can use social media to make more sales, schedule time to chat with me or call me at 775-852-5020. And if you want to use the cool tracking tool, it’s SalesWings, the world’s first LinkedIn Message Tracking Plugin.

The post 9 Ways To Win More Sales With Social Media appeared first on Alice Heiman, LLC.

I had an interesting conversation with Femi Olajiga last Friday. He is working on a book about agile marketing and called to ask about my experience. Unlike Femi, I never trained as an agile coach. Instead, my experience comes from working with agile product development teams, a fair amount of reading, and some trial and error. During our discussion, Femi asked thought provoking questions, so I thought to share parts of our conversation with you. I hope you find it helpful, and I’m sure he’ll these questions in more detail in his upcoming book.

How did get started with agile marketing?

I first applied agile to marketing while developing a new software application in the US. The product design and software development teams were working really well, but there seemed to be a disconnect with marketing. We brought the marketing team into our scrum planning and started treating marketing task as scrum stories. The experiment was a success and started focusing on using agile techniques to improve our marketing engagements.

Marketing has changed a lot in the past decade. It has become far more data driven and by using the data correctly, small businesses can really derive value from their marketing investment. This excites me. It means that without spending large sums of money and by being agile, small companies can take on the incumbents in a market.

Tip: Read The Elements of Scrum when you get started.

Do you follow Scrum or Kanban or another approach?

No, not really. I would say we’ve blended elements of both these methods into our approach. Our goal is to be as efficient as possible. Over the past 3-4 years we’ve found a method that works well for us and our clients. We strive to create high performing agile marketing teams.

How closely do marketers follow the agile approach?

Being a creative bunch. We tend to bend the rules to suit our needs. I’m sure you’ll see varying degrees of Agile adoption at companies, even amongst product and software development teams. Typically resources are limited in small companies and roles often get blurred. I often work with ‘marketing teams of one’ following some degree of agile adoption.

How do you train your clients to use agile?

Like most things in marketing, it’s about consistency. We’re usually working with high-tech companies, so their people have already been exposed to agile and scrum. It’s not difficult to get marketers at these businesses used to following an agile approach. However, in larger, more conventional organizations it can be more difficult. They often have very entrenched marketing process and this necessitates a degree of cultural shift.

In most cases, we run a 2-day workshop with our clients and afterwards provide coaching for about 3-months until they are comfortable to go it alone.

Do you have stand-ups every day?

It depends on the client and what we are working on at the time. Our teams consist of copywriters, business consultants, sales consultant, designers, and marketers dispersed around the globe. Virtual stand-ups help us to connect for 15-minutes everyday and make sure we’re moving forward without any obstacles. We also use it as an opportunity to accept and handover work –– for instance a team in Toronto may take over an email send campaign from the team in Romanian and in turn, make sure they have everything they need to start the next day. It’s very much a follow the sun marketing team.

Another trend we see in high-growth teams is a shift away from email and meetings toward using tools like Slack. Instead of daily stand ups, there is a constant flow of information on the #Marketing channel and perhaps only a 30-minute weekly meeting.

How do you plan?

We offer a combination of sales, marketing and operational consulting. Typically helping companies of 10 to 100 people break through to the next level. This means going beyond defining a marketing strategy. Often these companies still need to define their vision and long-term goals. We use tools like the Entrepreneurial Operating System (EOS) to help them create a long-term plan. Once that’s in place, we focus on goals for the coming 12-months and how marketing can support these goals –– breaking them into quarterly goals, then into task that can go into sprints.

We define quarterly marketing campaigns geared toward attaining the 12-month goal. Continually assessing all the elements of a campaign to evaluate what is working and what isn’t working. If something isn’t delivering the results, we change it.

Tip: Read Get a Grip on implementing an operating system at your business.

How flexible are your sprints?

Typically we work on two-week sprints. Once we’ve decided on the tasks for a sprint, we don’t often change them or add a new task. There’s always pressure from sales and executives to quickly produce a presentation, or, create a 1-2 page brochure. You need a strong lead to deal with these requests; otherwise the team can become distracted. We do leave some capacity for emergency tasks if they arise. Over the years we’ve used sprint points to estimate how much work a task takes. For example, a blog post is 3 points, we don’t measure in hours. We use the point system as part of our pricing model to ensure clients always get the value for every dollar, pound or euro spent.

What about sales teams?

Do sales teams follow the agile methodology? None that I have encountered. Sales people still thrive on chaos. It keeps them on their toes. Honestly, we haven’t had sales people join the stand-ups, after all, these are busy people. However, they occasionally get involved in the planning sessions, which is great because they know their customers well.

Marketing and sales teams do need to work closer. Even in small companies marketing and sales teams are often be working in different directions. Agile aside, owners and CEOs must do everything they can to bring these teams together. Especially given the nature of the modern consumer. By the time they get to talking to a sales person, they likely know more about the product than the salesperson does.

Tip: Read The Sales Acceleration Formula on using data, technology, and inbound sales.

I’m looking forward to reading Femi’s book soon. I’m sure it will bring some excellent insights to companies considering agile marketing. In the meantime, feel free to download a copy of our eBook on Scrum for Marketing. And feel free to share, we’d love to hear your thoughts on agile marketing.

It’s coming…are you ready? I remember seeing the movie The Perfect Storm, and still have memories of the climate conditions building that created such a catastrophic event. (If you’ve not seen the movie, it’s worth it to rent!).

The perfect storm I’m referencing is the business storm brewing, the one far beyond the horizon, difficult for the untrained eye to see, yet is building as we speak.

It’s a storm that could potentially whip your business into a frenzy, crippling profits for a substantial period of time. Clearly it’s an emerging storm to which every business leader must pay attention.

And, as it’s forming, in the spirit of preparation, there are 2 critical sets of questions that needs to be considered.

Here’s the first:

Is my company vulnerable to the storm?

And if so, how much?

And if so, in what ways?

The answer to these questions will in fact describe why it’s a perfect storm and what comprises it. First, let’s look at the definition: a particularly violent storm arising from a rare combination of adverse meteorological factors.

So from a business perspective, what are those rare combination of factors? Here they are:

1. The now largest population of employees ever that make up the labor pool are millennials. They have a strong orientation and very specific sensibility to relationships with team members, leaders and company culture that define the quality of their work experience.

2. Companies have leaders and managers who are baby boomers, matures and older Xers, many of whom are not oriented this way, don’t see the need or appreciate the value of this type of work experience. In fact, many are resisting this new workplace reality!

3. The labor market is tightening. Reported today, the unemployment rate is now at 4.6%. It’s the lowest in several years. That means there will continue to be less candidates from which to choose and when they are hired, many companies don’t have the management or culture to retain them — to in fact give them the experience they are seeking and expecting.

4. A new administration looks to spur substantial economic growth, exacerbating the labor shortage. As the labor market continues to tighten, it will support and validate a generational approach to employment, “If I don’t like this job, I can quit and go find another.” The millennial generation tends to have no problem leaving a job without having another if their work experience is not satisfying. So, with a tightening market, they know they will easily be able to find a job and company more to their liking.

5. Dated views and beliefs on how to spend money (allocate financial resources) to manage talent for better company performance. (I address this in my latest executive briefing release Show Me The Money!) The old model for spending money is spend on operations, spend a little on employees. The new model is spend more money on employees to have better operations. The new mantra?, “Happy employees = better operations = more company profits.”

There are many companies who, in addressing the needs of the largest employee population, have been paying attention to their cultures and their leadership /management effectiveness. They have been diligently working on ways to improve the employee experience with an eye towards recruiting, engagement, and retention.

Those who have been active in this way, whether they are aware or not, are shoring up their business for the storm to come. These efforts are strengthening their company’s infrastructure to weather the operational challenges sure to come.

And this brings us to the 2nd set of questions…here we go:
1. Do you have the kind of culture to retain and leverage the talent of the new workforce?
2. Are you as a key decision-maker resisting reality?
3. Are your leaders and managers resisting this reality?
4. What updated leadership/management development initiates have been implemented to address this need?
5. What new leadership/management competencies will be needed to successfully lead?
6. How have you been collectively preparing your company culture to fully integrate all generations to mitigate poor collaboration which creates operational bottlenecks and undermines profits?
7. Does your financial spend reflect a response to this changing workforce landscape?
8. Are you well insulated from or even remotely prepared for the storm?

The answers to these questions are a valuable resource for your 2017 plans. Consider this post a foghorn warning of the storm to come. We know it’s coming! We just don’t know how fast. This year, many of my clients have already felt the pre-storm raindrops and we’re helping them make preparations…are you?

Pic Credit: http://www.slideshare.net/HRTechWorld/workforce-technology-2016-the-perfect-storm

After all of the changes LinkedIn has made to groups, it’s no wonder LinkedIn users and social selling experts are questioning the value of LinkedIn groups for sales and marketing programs. It makes you wonder if LinkedIn groups will experience the same fate as Google+ Communities, deserted after members go elsewhere for relevant discussions and cutting-edge content?

What happened to LinkedIn groups?

LinkedIn groups began as forums centered around communities asking and answering insightful questions to learn from each other. With the rise of content marketing, many zealous marketers began clogging the discussions stream with self-promotional links to landing pages, white papers, and webinars. Unmoderated groups morphed into spammy blog feeds with real discussions being buried. On the other hand, the best LinkedIn groups discovered how to moderate discussions, minimize spam, and foster on-topic discussions among members.

Social sellers started using LinkedIn groups as a way to spam group members with unsolicited sales pitches. They neglected to follow protocol: send a connection request, gauge the prospect’s interest, and then send an appropriate follow-up message. LinkedIn has addressed this issue by limiting LinkedIn users to a total of 15 free 1:1 messages per month. This dramatically slowed down the number of uninvited sales messages sent to group members.

Are LinkedIn groups still worth your time?

The LinkedIn groups user interface would benefit from a makeover, but LinkedIn groups can still be one of the best places to actively prospect, connect with like-minded professionals, and learn from industry thought leaders.

If you want to make the most of your groups, you should first identify the best LinkedIn groups for your goals, and then effectively navigate and participate in your high-value groups.

Participating in LinkedIn groups is one of my preferred ways to engage with prospects, industry peers, and subject matter experts. Because LinkedIn is a professional social network, interactions within LinkedIn groups are different than the more personal Facebook groups or casual Twitter chats.

Now that we’ve established the value in LinkedIn groups, here are my three best practices for using LinkedIn groups effectively, connecting with the right people in groups, and becoming a well-respected group member.

1. Post discussions consistently

Become an active participant by sharing regular, relevant posts with your groups. To be considered a regular contributor, share a discussion with your groups every one or two weeks, depending on the activity level of each group.

I would caution you against using too much automation when sharing discussion. Avoid mass-blasting the same blog article, discussion title, and description to ALL of your groups. Steer clear of social scheduling tools and post discussions manually.

Personalize each discussion based on the focus of that LinkedIn group and the group members (seniority, subject matter expertise, industry). Follow each group’s rules before submitting a discussion.

Use the discussion area to ask questions of group members as a smart way to spark comments and learn from other subject matter experts.

Here’s a good example of a well-crafted discussion:

Here’s an example of a spammy, self-promotional discussion:

Summed Up: Don’t post spam. Don’t post the same discussion in all groups. Follow the group’s rules. Stick to the subject matter of each group.

2. Monitor groups weekly

Visit each of your high priority groups on LinkedIn with the intention of commenting on others’ discussions on a weekly basis. Commenting within your groups is just as important as posting your own discussions. When you fail to comment on other group members’ discussions, your discussions often are ignored by group members. Group members expect each other to post relevant discussions and comment on discussions. It’s how a thriving community works.

When you do leave a comment, mention the group member (by tagging them with the @ sign) who posted the discussion. Then provide an insightful, unique point of view on the discussion. Generic comments like, “Awesome!” are worthless. And please do not use the comment box as a place for blatant self-promotion.

Here’s an example of a what-not-to-do comment:

Monitoring your groups can take a good amount of time each week. I pick my top 8-10 groups and monitor these on an almost daily basis. As for my other groups, I subscribe to the weekly update email to ensure I don’t miss any relevant discussions.

Here’s how you can adjust your settings in each group to get the weekly or daily update email:

Summed Up: Comment regularly in your high priority groups while monitoring the others less frequently. Always provide value when you comment. Engaging with a comment is one of the best ways to support your groups.

3. Connect with members

Pay attention to group members—especially potential prospects—who are actively participating in groups and look for ways to interact with them inside the group and then connect with them.

A great benefit of LinkedIn groups is interacting with people outside your network who should become part of your network. Group members are able to search the group membership by job titles or keywords, which can help you find ideal prospects. Actively posting and commenting in your groups helps you gain visibility you would not otherwise have inside the group.

When you are an active group member, you will receive connection requests and LinkedIn messages from other members because you are regularly providing value to the group. I’ve made some of my most valuable professional connections from those within my LinkedIn groups because I am a visible group member, comment regularly, and follow up with those who comment on my discussions.

You can also take a more proactive approach to connecting with group members, but be cautious not to appear too eager to connect. The easiest way to make a connection (that I’ve found) is to comment on a trending discussion and then send a personalized connection request to other commenters. Active group members enjoy connecting with other participants. Win-win.

Here’s a good example of a personalized connection request:

Summed Up: Be authentic. Look at the profiles of potential connections to ensure they are a good fit. Don’t send generic connection requests.

Are you using LinkedIn groups to connect with prospects or increase brand awareness? If so, which of these tactics could you incorporate into your LinkedIn groups strategy?

According to McKinsey & Company, just improving sales force performance can give organizations up to a 10% revenue boost. Effective coaching also drives a better customer experience – something identified at Dreamforce as a company’s biggest competitive differentiator. For both of these reasons, business executives need to pay attention to coaching.

However, because many managers are former sales people, they often don’t have the appropriate training. Leaders need to make sure that there is a coaching process in place – and that it includes the following four essential requirements.

Essential #1. Prioritize 1:1 Coaching Time

A coaching framework must include 1:1 coaching time between manager and rep. In their presentation at the recent Sales Summit, McKinsey & Company’s Lareina Yee and Maria Valdivieso said that sales managers should be spending over 50% of their time coaching. This makes coaching a huge part of a sales manager’s job.

You need to make individual rep coaching a clear requirement for sales managers from the start. Additionally, managers need to understand that sessions should be used to impact and improve rep behaviors – not merely reviewing account status or what reps did wrong. The experts advise that managers need to coach the practice, not the result.

Essential #2. Personalize Rep by Rep

According to the Sales Management Association, 25% of managers don’t coach their sales teams. Yet, reps say they want more coaching – and they want it personalized to their particular requirements.

Time is precious in sales. By supporting reps with the right technology – such as self-assessment tools – managers will understand the areas that will provide the most value to each rep. One rep may not be at the right activity level for success, whereas another might need help on messaging. Additionally, there are different coaching requirements based on experience level – for example, a millennial versus a seasoned rep. Self-diagnosis of their individual needs is the crucial first step.

Essential #3. Focus on the Frozen Middle

When coaching, managers often too much time on the top or bottom performers – whereas coaching has been found to have the biggest gains with the middle performers. Moving the middle – which represents the bulk of sales reps – will move your sales needle the most. Help managers gain understanding into what the top performers do differently, so they can share those behaviors with the middle performers and have the biggest effect on your sales.

Essential #4. Monitor Performance

We live in a digital world. To stay ahead of the competition, you need to embrace all available resources. Coaching software that leverages analytics gives you critical insights to monitor and improve performance. Quickly compare how your managers’ coaching techniques are tracking with rep performance. Are they having an impact? What methods are most effective? By seeing where performance falls short—through analytics – managers can act as performance consultants, giving reps the counsel that they need to succeed. This can range from the right content to new learning opportunities to performance support tools or instructor led training.

Coaching has the biggest impact on your sales organization’s performance – making it vital to your business – but you need to understand what you need to coach to make a difference.

By establishing prescribed processes and a solid coaching framework, you make it easier for your managers to drive more consistent behaviors across the team. With better onboarding and coaching to optimize processes, organizations can sell more – faster.

Welcome to “The Pipeline” — a weekly column from HubSpot, featuring actionable insight from real sales leaders. For more “Pipeline” Content, check out our Flipboard.

Love them or hate them, referrals are one of the most crucial components of a successful inbound sales strategy. In fact, there’s no more reliable way to grow any business than through sourcing referrals — but only if it's done in a systematic, smart way. Unfortunately, most salespeople use outdated, hit-or-miss methods to get referrals.

It’s no wonder that referrals inspire dread — and procrastination — for so many.

But referrals don’t have to be the bane of your existence. Instead, they can transform your sales for the better. The following eleven referral strategies, when implemented systematically as part of your sales approach, can double your sales within one year.

1. Stop calling them “referrals.”

It might sound contradictory, but it’s true: Asking for “referrals” isn’t the best way to get more. Many of your customers aren’t sure what the term means. They might think you need a reference, or assume you’re just looking for names and numbers. But what you really want is an introduction. So, why not ask for one directly?

By cutting out the referral talk and simply asking for introductions, you’ll make a lot more progress in a shorter period of time. Try it the next time you’re on the hunt for referrals. Your client or friend will immediately understand what you need.

To learn more about this referral strategy, check out this video:

2. Overcome your fear of asking.

If you’re afraid of asking for introductions, you’re not alone. Many salespeople balk at the prospect of starting a conversation to ask for an introduction. The only way to get over this fear is to just ask anyway. Think of it this way: You’ll never lose business by asking for an introduction, but you never know how much business you’ll lose by not asking at all.

Armed with that mindset, it’s time to overcome your fear of asking for introductions — and just do it. Fear of asking for introductions is a major opportunity loss. Force yourself to work through the fear, and you’ll thank yourself later.

3. Phrase it as a request for help.

When you ask for introductions, it’s important to phrase it as an ask for help. Why? Because people love to help other people, especially when they already know and like them.

Begin your ask for introductions by saying, “I was wondering if I could get your help with something … ” When you do that, you’ll set yourself up for a productive chat and leave the other person feeling good about helping you out.

4. Leverage your entire network.

Take advantage of your entire network. And when it comes to referrals, this is especially true. Don’t limit yourself to just one group of your network when you ask for introductions. Your existing clients are a great resource, but they’re far from the only one.

Your past customers, industry connections, former and present colleagues, friends, family members, social acquaintances, friends of friends — everyone is fair game. The more people you include in your quest for introductions, the more introductions you’ll get, plain and simple.

5. Get specific about your ideal introduction.

One of the biggest mistakes salespeople make is not being clear about the kind of introductions they want. Far too often, salespeople say, “So who do you know? Who do you think might be a good fit for what I have to offer?” This puts all the burden on the person helping you. Instead, you should be specific about what your ideal introduction looks like.

When you ask for an introduction, give clear examples about the types of prospects you’re interested in connecting with. Share information such as their specific job titles, the companies they work for, the industry they’re in, their average revenue, and other important factors. Then, let the person think about who in their network fits the bill for an introduction to you.

6. Ask for one introduction per day.

This might sound like a lot of work, but how long does it actually take to ask for a single introduction? You should be able to accomplish this in just 15 minutes — so make it the most important 15 minutes of your day, every workday.

When you ask for one introduction per workday, you ask for five each week, ultimately requesting around 250 per year. That’s huge! Imagine how many ideal prospects you could connect with from 250 introduction requests per year.

7. Hold yourself accountable to numbers.

Don’t just say you’re going to ask for one introduction a day — make a plan, stick to it, and actually follow through. Failing to hold themselves accountable to numbers is one of the most common reasons why salespeople don’t get referral business. If your goal is five introductions per week, then create a system that holds you accountable to that number every single week.

The key is to make sure that your goals are realistic, and to use a reliable online calendar or CRM system to track your introductions. Holding yourself accountable to your new introduction strategy will lead to a dramatic increase in your sales.

8. Host exclusive, invitation-only events.

This strategy is the absolute best approach for attracting new clients. To make it work for you, ensure that your event feels very exclusive. Invite high-level prospects and clients to a high-end venue. By inviting both clients and prospects, you’ll even see your best clients begin to do your selling for you. That’s where the magic happens.

These events are also a perfect opportunity to ask everyone in your network for introductions to people who might get value out of your event. You’ll quickly find that people love the opportunity to get invitations for their friends and colleagues to an exclusive event.

9. Strategically time your referral requests.

Rob Scott, Managing Director at Aaron Wallis Sales Recruitment, says, "There is a time-tested sales technique that always works: when a customer is satisfied, ask them for three referrals. You may not get three, but you will often get two and almost always get at least one.

"Asking for a referral during the negotiation process can also be effective. Instead of immediately offering discounts, propose a value exchange: provide a price reduction in exchange for a referral or testimonial once the client is happy with your work.

"The best time to ask for a referral is when a client is genuinely thrilled with your work. This is your ‘Golden Moment,’ so be sure to take advantage of it every time.

“Additionally, it’s important to remember that referrals are based on relationships. Always follow up with a handwritten thank-you note or card when you receive business from a referral. A personal touch can make a big difference in today's digital age. And don’t forget that referrals are a two-way street. Look for opportunities to send business back to those who have referred you. This will strengthen your relationships and generate more referrals in the future.”

10. Incentivize referrals with tangible rewards.

Andrew Lee Jenkins, Owner of Catalyst RVA Marketing Agency, says, "I've found that offering incentives is a highly effective strategy for generating customer referrals. People often need a little extra motivation to take action, even if they love your product or service.

"By providing a tangible reward—for instance, a discount on their next purchase, a small gift, or even entry into a contest for larger prizes—customers feel appreciated for their referrals and have a clear benefit to doing so.

"Another important part of the strategy that I use is to make the referral process as easy as possible. This can involve providing customers with a simple link that they can share with friends and family, or having a straightforward form on your website. The easier it is to refer someone, the more likely they are to do it.

“These strategies have been successful because they not only motivate customers through incentives but also remove any barriers to actually making the referral. By addressing both the 'why' and the 'how' of referring, you significantly increase the chances that your customers will bring their friends into the fold.”

11. Leverage indirect competitive referrals.

Michael Scott, Enterprise Account Executive at Neara, says, "When looking for referrals, you must understand whether or not your market is directly competitive with one another. Asking for a referral only to reduce a customer's perceived competitive edge of working with your product by selling to their competition never works.

"That said, referrals are one of the best warm leads you can ever interact with, so you need to be creative in how to get them in competitive markets. One way I have done this is to look for a related business that everyone interacts with and ask for a referral to that business. From there, ask that connected business who you could be referred to from there.

"An example of this comes from my time selling to the construction market. I could not ask a contractor to refer me directly to another contractor. The regional market was too small to ask for a referral to another business doing the same work; however, all of these contractors worked with a gravel pit in the region.

"I would ask for a referral to that gravel pit, have some introductory conversations with that ‘connected business,’ and ask for a referral from that business to another contractor. This strategy of referral from my target market to an outside vendor, then from that vendor to a target customer, was incredibly successful over the years. It led to warm intros and didn't ever put me in the awkward position of asking a customer to introduce me to their competition.

“Referrals from a customer represent ”social equity,“ and when someone introduces you, they are helping vouch for who you are and what you are saying. Leveraging referrals successfully is an easy way to get a few runs on the board, but there needs to be some strategy to make a customer feel comfortable in helping connect you.”

Do you already have more referrals than you can possibly handle? Probably not. Which of these eleven powerful strategies will you use to double your business through referrals over the next year?

Editors Note: This post was originally published in July 2023 and has been updated for comprehensiveness. 

Today’s marketing leaders are faced with the hefty task of prioritizing their digital responsibilities. Once their top priorities are determined, they need to assess if they can be achieved. A recent study reveals an interesting imbalance between these top digital priorities and accomplishing them. Many marketing executives believe they’re not capable of achieving their top priorities. For instance, marketers want to connect conversions to marketing, yet few believe they’re doing it.

There is one conversion that can help marketers better understand the effects of their marketing: the call conversion. Many marketers overlook this conversion because they’re not aware that they can garner data around it, but that’s going to change. CMOs are recognizing the unexpected impact of call conversions and here are the top three reasons why they cannot be ignored:

You Struggle to Prove Marketing ROI Without Call Conversions

As spending on mobile advertising increases, so does pressure on CMOs to prove ROI. Proving ROI is a top concern for many marketing organizations: In a recent survey asking marketing executives about their biggest challenges, the number one answer given was “difficulty in measuring ROI.”

If you aren’t connecting call conversions to your marketing, proving your true ROI becomes extremely difficult. Without calls, you could be missing attribution on a large percentage of conversions and customers, and the ROI you report could be off by up to 50% – perhaps more for some industries.

Alan Gellman, CMO at Esurance, understands the value in connecting the dots between digital marketing and offline conversions: “Ultimately, multi-touch attribution has to look across channels to see the true impact of offline and digital campaigns. We are getting smarter by adding calls to the multi-touch attribution picture to see the true impact of offline and digital campaigns.”

You Risk Losing Customers by Misallocating Budget

Many marketing organizations rely on benchmark data such as CPL (cost per lead) and CPA (cost per acquisition) to determine how best to allocate their budget for optimal return. If these metrics are incomplete or inaccurate due to missing call conversion data, however, marketers believing they are making the right decisions may actually be investing in underperforming activities. You may also be inadvertently reducing or eliminating spend on more lucrative marketing channels, campaigns, and search keywords.

John Challis, Senior Director of Performance Marketing at LendingTree uses call data to determine the full effect of their marketing campaigns: “We measure which channels drive not only the most calls, but the most customers. That data helps us make marketing optimization decisions.” Without this data, they would be making less effective marketing optimization decisions.

You Can’t Own the Customer Experience

Consumers today expect a quality customer experience, whether they engage with businesses online, in person, or over the phone. Companies failing to provide it will lose customers and revenue to competitors that do. It‘s why in a recent survey of 500 CMOs and senior marketing leaders, 86% said they will own the end-to-end customer journey by 2020. If your call channel remains a blind spot, you risk lower lead-to-sale conversion rates and higher customer churn that comes with leaving an important touch point to chance.

Understanding a customer’s journey before they call an agent gives your bottom line a boost. “When a customer calls, we know who they are and the marketing campaign they are calling from. We pool all information together to start the lead for the loan specialist, so when they start the call they have it available,” says Rich Smith, recent CMO at ditech. Equipping their agents with this data prior to answering a call helps set them up for success. They can use it to form how they approach their sales conversations with customers.

Interested in learning how today’s CMOs and marketing executives are using call data to improve their marketing ROI? Download The Wake-Up Call for CMOs: The Unexpected Impact of Call Conversions on Marketing ROI.

x.ai’s mission to build an autonomous AI agent is an undertaking that required about three years of intense R&D – an approach Dennis R. Mortensen, the company’s CEO, calls decidedly anti-lean. To follow through with this approach, x.ai had to raise substantial funds to validate the idea and build the initial model. And to sustain their efforts, they had to be sure to find customers not only willing, but eager to pay for the product.

To land on the perfect pricing plan, Stefanie Syman and Brian Coulombe, VP of Customer Experience & Communications and Customer Acquisition Director respectively, rolled out three pricing tiers:

Here’s how they did it.

The Right Price Starts with the Right Mindset

“It’s our mission to democratize the personal assistant,” says Syman. “That’s how we’ve thought about our product from its inception, and what flows out from that idea pretty immediately is the need for a price point that’s digestible to the professional individual.”

“Not only do we think that everyone should be able to have an AI personal assistant for meeting scheduling,” Syman explains, “we see x.ai as a core piece of the technology infrastructure in much the same way that email is a core piece of that infrastructure. It’s part of the suite of tools that you need to operate, to be a functioning professional, whether you’re a big-economy professional, the CEO of a startup, or someone more junior who is just entering the workforce.”

“Thinking about the problem with that mindset, knowing and believing that we’re actually changing norms in a way that email changed norms, leads you to quickly understand where you need to land on price in terms of scale,” Syman says. From there, the team was ready to dive into the logistics of the pricing problem.

Anti-lean Pricing Depends on the Details

“We are a very data-driven company,” says Coulombe. “And, we really did our research on pricing.” The team conducted in-depth research on customer personas and use cases and tapped beta customers for specific feedback on pricing scenarios. They used surveys as well as in-person, roundtable-type discussions to collect customer input, which was then factored into the development of the pricing structure.

The Audience

‘We’ve spent the time to build a really nicely defined persona for our core customer,” says Coulombe. “We’ve clearly envisioned who that is and know details such as their job titles, company size, location, pain points and what it takes to get someone not only interested in the product but also willing to pay for the Professional (or mid-tier) edition.”

To reach this intial group of beta customers, x.ai gained exposure through organic word of mouth as well as a formal referral program. “Many of our initial beta users were CEOs at small startups who were using Amy and Andrew to schedule meetings with people in similar roles at other companies,” Coulombe explains. “That was an effective way to get our product in front of more of the right people. We also started a program to reward our professional customers who referred us to colleagues.”

The company also enjoyed some good press, but most of their beta user growth was the result of a product-led approach that focused on creating “scheduling nirvana” – or Amy-to-Amy meetings – for customers. “Growth has really been driven by our existing customer base encouraging other folks in their network to sign up,” adds Coulombe.

Finally, the x.ai team also made use of the B2C2B approach. “Ours is one of those products that easily translates from someone starting the Professional edition, and then selling the product through to the rest of their team,” Coulombe says. “Once the team is using it, then other departments and company partners get wind of it, and before you know it we’ve onboarded a larger business.”

The ROI

Whether considering individual or company-wide use cases, the x.ai team focused on delivering value as a key component of the pricing strategy. “We all know that no one, except maybe SVPs, gets a personal assistant anymore,” says Syman. “We also know from our research that the people with the most scheduling-related pain are among our most successful customers. For these people, our mid-tier price point is not a big deal because the product delivers a huge value (in the reduction of their pain) that greatly exceeds the actual price.”

The x.ai team uses a clear demonstration of this ROI in their marketing. “Emphasizing the ROI is one of the things that stands out as a total no-brainer,” says Coulombe. “If we agree that it typically takes about three-and-a-half five-minute emails back and forth to schedule a meeting, and we assume that you’re scheduling eight meetings a week, it’s simple to do the math and see that you’re spending close to ten hours a month just scheduling meetings.”

“On top of those numbers, we can also add in the ‘switching’ cost, cognitively,” adds Syman, “of your day being constantly interrupted by endless chains of scheduling emails.”

The Long-term Business Vision

The team also sought to understand how different price points might relate to one another. “Our starting point was conveying that the core product utility is the same across all editions,” says Coulombe. “But then we were able to start thinking through which users would be interested in which features.”

“Once we established our definitive editions, we ran the data to look at the percent split between each and then did the math to determine which scenario would drive the most revenue over time,” explains Coulombe. “So, for example, would a $39 midrange price point anchored by $59 high-end price point end up driving more revenue than, say, a $39 price point anchored by a $69 offering?”

Pricing is Always a Work in Progress

By closely examining what each segment of x.ai’s target market would be willing to pay, the team was able to build out a pricing structure that delivered an irrefutable value to both the customers and the company. And while they are happy so far with the market response, they acknowledge that pricing is always a work in progress.

“In any pricing scenario, we do our best to make informed choices, but we don’t present our results as the perfect solution,” says Syman. “We used the data to make the best decision we could, but we expect the strategy to evolve.”

For now, however, both Syman and Coulombe feel like they’ve hit a sweet spot. “We are indeed a software company and not a service company,” Coulombe says. “We’re beyond something like Netflix or Spotify and more in the realm of Dropbox. Our price point fits nicely between being something that everyone can afford and really utilize and something that is so premium that only a few people can afford it.” And if the company’s wall of Love Notes is any indication, x.ai’s customers agree.

The post Anti-lean Startup Pricing: How x.ai is Making it Work appeared first on OpenView Labs.

Microsoft's $26.2 billion acquisition of LinkedIn, which was announced back in June, finally closed on Thursday — and Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella outlined where the two companies are going to integrate their products next.

As expected, the companies will integrate LinkedIn's Sales Navigator tool for salespeople into Microsoft's CRM tool, Dynamics, which was the main reason for the buy.

This integration is the main concern of CRM leader Salesforce, which is now trying to persuade European regulators to block or impose certain conditions on the Microsoft-LinkedIn deal, claiming it would shutter access to LinkedIn's data.

Some of the other integration points are predictable, like integrating LinkedIn notifications into Windows, and integrating LinkedIn's identity system into the Office 365 suite so people will be able to see and use LinkedIn information in their workflows.

But there are also a couple of surprises that relate to Microsoft's online business.

For instance, Nadella said the companies would develop a "business news desk" across MSN and other properties, and would extend the reach of sponsored content — presumably allowing MSN advertisers to buy space on LinkedIn, which boasts more than 100 million visitors a month.

Here's Nadella's full note:

SEE ALSO: 51 enterprise startups to bet your career on in 2017

Join the conversation about this story »

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You've done your research and created buyer personas -- now what? Columnist Jacob Baadsgaard explains how to place financial value on your personas in order to determine your search marketing budget. The post How to use your buyer personas to build your 2017 search marketing budget appeared first...

Please visit Search Engine Land for the full article.

Asking questions and avoiding questions. We’ve looked at every angle over the past three months here in the CONNECT2Sell Blog. Although we’ve mentioned this once before, it bears repeating because so many sellers get it wrong. Why? Because there are too many tools, books, training programs and managers who are trying to make things easier for you.

In their efforts to help you, these resources are hurting you. There’s simply no way to shortcut when it comes to asking questions. You can’t depend on a script or a list of prescribed questions. Every conversation is (and should be) different. Your prepared questions interfere with the natural course of the conversation. Asking questions that are natural is always more productive.

Asking Questions Should Not Be Scripted

This is the last precaution for asking questions. For sellers who are new to asking questions, it is tempting to rely on pre-scripted questions. After all, there are many resources for effective sales questions and planning ahead could eliminate some of the challenges related to asking the “wrong” questions and/or constructing less effective questions.

But scripted questions should be avoided. They aren’t natural, and they will interfere with the seller’s ability to stay in the moment and conduct an interchange of ideas and information. Scripting questions before a buyer meeting causes sellers to depend on what’s written and miss opportunities to ask follow-up questions stemming from natural curiosity. Scripted questions feel impersonal and manipulative to buyers.

The other significant risk of relying on scripted questions is the implication needs assessment is a one-time event. But sellers who are operating with a strategic plan to understand buyer needs will be prepared to ask questions at any time, as buyer needs change frequently and unexpectedly.

Asking Questions Takes Practice. But It’s Worth It!

Sellers who master the skills of question-asking won’t need to depend on scripted questions. Instead, they will be fully equipped at any time to steer conversations with buyers so they can readily identify actionable needs, avoid asking manipulative questions, properly sequence questions to drill down from broad buyer needs to narrower needs linked to their own products, and advance sales smoothly.

Avoiding the wrong questions leaves room for the right ones.

Next Steps:

• To learn more about DISCOVER Questions® and how to get connected in meaningful ways with your buyers, order your copy of this bestseller from Amazon.com
• When you need sales or management coaching, customized sales training, or a dynamic speaker call us at 408-779-PFPS or book an appointment with Deb.
• Check out these resources for sales managers and front line sellers. New webinars, infographics, research, podcasts and more added every month!

The award-winning CONNECT2Sell Blog is for professional sellers who believe, as we do, that Every Sale Starts with a Connection.

Deb Calvert, “DISCOVER Questions® Get You Connected” author and Top 50 Sales Influencer, is President of People First Productivity Solutions, a UC Berkeley instructor, and a former Sales/Training Director of a Fortune 500 media company. She speaks and writes about the Stop Selling & Start Leading movement and offers sales training, coaching and consulting as well as leadership development programs. She is certified as an executive and sales coach by the ICF and is a Certified Master of The Leadership Challenge®. Deb has worked in every sector and in 14 countries to build leadership capacity, team effectiveness and sales productivity with a “people first” approach.

The post Asking Questions that Are Natural and Productive appeared first on People First.

As a sales leader, are these problems plaguing your salespeople?

• They rely too often on features and functions rather than business value
• They are unable to differentiate from the competition
• They’re selling too low in the organization
• The deals always come down to price

If so, you’re likely dealing with a problem in sales messaging. Your reps don’t know how to effectively articulate the value and differenitation of your solutions in a way that has meaning to the buyer. Don’t waste another quarter waiting for a miracle to happen. Put the rigor needed behind enabling your sales team to drive consistency in the sales conversations.

Build Alignment Behind the Sales Message

We aren’t talking about developing scripts and canned responses to buyer. Effective sales messaging starts with building alignment across your company around these essential questions

What problems do you solve for your customers?

How do you specifically solve those problems?

How do you do it differently than you competition?

What’s your proof?

You cannot grow your sales revenues without defining these answers for your sales reps. So before you whipsaw your troops and rally them to cold call or go their accounts to get bigger proposals signed from current customers, take a step back and think about whether you have clear alignment across your company around those essential questions. That’s not just on you as a sales leader. It’s a company-wide initiative.

Enable an Effective Discovery Process

Good salespeople ask investigative questions to uncover pain points and needs with true business impact. They also understand the basic value of listening to a prospect’s responses. However, a truly effective discovery process means digging deeper with insightful open-ended questions. (Here’s a great blog post on asking effective questions)

Many reps accept simple answers to questions and launch right into features and functions without digging deeper. You don’t want them offering up a remedy or solution without getting a full scan of the prospect’s pain. Teach them to keep asking questions until they get there. Otherwise they’ll lose too many deals late in the sales cycle or will be forced to consistently lower the price.

One of the most effective ways salespeople can improve sales conversations is to link their solution to an issue that is so critical to an organization, the prospect can’t go another day without fixing it. If the problem is big enough, it doesn’t matter what your product costs. Opportunities move forward a lot faster when they’re aligned with an issue that can’t go another day without correction.

Focus Differentiation on Buyer Needs

Too often, salespeople rattle off differentiators that may be compelling, but not important to the buyer. If your reps are doing this repeatedly, their buyers are likely thinking your solution is more than they need. Instead, give them a framework that teaches them to ask trap-setting questions that elevate your differentiators in a way that distinguishes your solution from the competitors.

Trap-setting questions are nothing more than discovery questions meant to show your competitor’s weaknesses. They highlight the value that a customer will receive with your solution and the components they won’t have if they choose your competitor. We have a pretty solid podcast on the topic which can be found here.

In addition to a focus on the sales conversation, there is nothing more valuable to a sales team than practical tools to execute in the field. If you’re tools and frameworks are too complicated, they won’t be used and your sales revenues will never improve. Whatever sales initiative you implement in 2017, ensure it’s consumable for your reps and your managers.

When developing the optimum pricing strategy in business-to-business (B2B) markets, it’s essential to have insights into how the market is likely to react when a product or service is sold at different price points. That’s where market research comes in. It informs pricing strategy by revealing likely levels of demand, revenue and profitability under different pricing scenarios.

There are four main techniques used in pricing research and I’ll explore them all in this and my next blog post (all in plain English, with real-life examples you’ll be pleased to hear). This week I take a look at the Gabor-Granger and Brand Price Trade Off (BPTO) techniques.

Gabor-Granger

The Gabor-Granger technique seeks to identify levels of demand at different price points. To do so, survey respondents are shown the product at an initial price point and asked how likely they would be to buy it. The price is then dynamically raised (if they indicated that they would buy at the previous price point) or lowered (if they wouldn’t) and the question repeated. This continues until the highest price they are willing to pay is reached. By pooling data from all respondents, a demand curve can then be formed which shows the percentage of customers that would be likely to buy the product at different price points. For example, in a study for a supplier of telecoms management services we uncovered the following pattern:

As would be expected, this chart shows that as price increases, demand decreases (purple line). More interesting though is the revenue curve (blue line) which is calculated by multiplying each price point by the number of people likely to buy at that point. This shows that the optimum price for this service would be £75 as this would maximise revenue.

Brand Price Trade Off (BPTO)

In some situations, products are very similar and the brand is the primary determinant of the price people are willing to pay. Here the Brand Price Trade Off (BPTO) technique is more appropriate than Gabor-Grainger as it looks specifically at the price premium a brand commands rather than the price a certain set of product features justifies. BPTO also has an advantage over Gabor-Grainger as looks at the price of one product relative to competitors just as buyers would do in real life.

To do so, BPTO presents the survey respondent with brands which they might consider and attaches a price to each (these prices could start off at the same point for each product or they could be set in line with market reality). The respondent then indicates which brand they would be most likely purchase. The same brands are then presented again, but this time the price attached to the brand chosen first time around is increased with the others remaining as they were. These incremental increases continue until a different brand is chosen. The price of this second brand is then increased until a different brand is chosen and so on until all brands have been selected. If the ‘none’ option is chosen before all brands have been selected, then the price of any remaining brands are lowered until they’re selected (or can be lowered no further).

The major advantage of using techniques like BPTO or Gabor-Granger is simplicity. However, there are a number of downsides:

• The choice may be over-simplified and no longer reflect real-life decision scenarios which can be complex and based on a series of conscious and unconscious trade-offs
• With the linear raising or lowering of prices, respondents can easily guess what the researcher is doing and may be tempted to ‘game’ the result
• Prompting respondents with an initial price point will frame their subsequent responses and thus under- or over-estimate the true price they’d be willing to pay
• Only allowing a binary ‘would buy/wouldn’t buy’ response doesn’t capture important shades in between where people start to become more or less comfortable with a particular price point

Two other pricing strategy techniques – Van Westendorp Price Sensitivity Meter and Conjoint Analysis – overcome these issues and it is to them which I’ll turn next week.

According to Deb Calvert, author of DISCOVER Questions Get You Connected, most salespeople rely on the same three types of questions: Straightforward fact-gathering questions, objection-surfacing questions, and goal-assessment questions.

These question “flavors” can be highly valuable, but only if you combine them with other ones. Three types of questions will lead to just three types of answers -- and that means you’ll likely overlook valuable information, misdiagnose pain, make incorrect assumptions, and dig into the wrong areas.

To avoid these mistakes, incorporate the seven question categories below into your sales conversations.

The 7 Types of Sales Questions Reps Should Ask Prospects

1) Fact-Gathering Questions

Fact-gathering questions give you more insight, background, or context. Prospects can usually answer them in one or two sentences.

Although these questions are helpful for learning more about your buyer’s situation, the buyer doesn’t benefit. After all, they’re reciting information they already know.

Asking too many fact-gathering questions can also damage your credibility. Prospects expect you to research their company and industry before you call or meet with them, so try to find an answer to your question through a different channel first.

Here are three examples of fact-gathering questions:

• “How long have you been in business?”
• “What are your average monthly operating expenses?”
• “Which of your locations is most profitable?”

It’s easy to discover online your target company’s age, so avoid asking the first question. However, you probably couldn’t find the answers to the second or third questions independently.

2) Goal-Assessment Questions

Once you know your prospect’s goals, you can demonstrate how your product will help achieve them.

Use goal-assessment questions during the discovery process. Depending on your product and the buyer, it may make sense to ask about multiple objectives:

• Their personal goals (the promotion they’re angling for)
• Their functional goals (hitting a certain sales number or running X campaigns each quarter)
• Their team’s goals (working with X number of clients or decreasing overhead)
• Their department’s goals (rolling out a new product or expanding to a new market)
• Their company’s goals (raising another round of funding, opening another office, increasing customer retention, and so on)

These questions are fairly straightforward. Ask, “What are you responsible for accomplishing in the next [week/month/quarter/year]?” Alternatively, ask your prospect to describe the projects they’re currently working on and how each maps to their high-level objectives.

3) Priority Questions

A well-crafted priority question identifies the buyer’s most important objectives or challenges and is a fantastic follow-up to goal-assessment questions. Many salespeople assume they already know prospects’ priorities based on previous customers -- to their detriment.

For example, if the vast majority of small biotech startups you work with struggle to raise funding, you might take it for granted your current prospect's company is having the same issue. If you don’t probe into your prospect's high-level concerns, you could potentially base your entire strategy on a false premise.

Take a look at these sample priority questions:

• “What are you most focused on achieving this [month, quarter, year]?”
• “Define what success would look like for your [role, function, team, company].”
• “Of the [goals/challenges] we’ve discussed, which are you most eager to [achieve/solve]?”

Try to avoid asking closed-ended priority questions, which can influence your prospect’s response. For instance, it’s better to ask “How important is fixing [issue]?” rather than “Is fixing [issue] your top priority?”

4) Thought-Provoking Questions

These questions reveal new information or ideas to the buyer and reframe their existing worldview. An effective thought-provoking question reinforces the salesperson’s status as a trusted advisor.

Most thought-provoking questions begin with, “Did you know … ?”, “Have you heard … ?”, “Are you aware ... ?”, and other similar openers.

Here are a few examples:

• “Did you know [surprising statistic]?”
• “Have you considered [innovative strategy]?”
• “What was the impact of [unexpected fact] on your company’s strategy?”

5) Hypothetical Questions

To help your prospect realize the true costs of inaction, pose a hypothetical question requiring them to think about the future without your solution.

For instance, you might say:

• “What will happen if you don’t achieve [goal]?”
• “Fast-forward to [X weeks/months] from now. [Situation] hasn’t changed. Would you be concerned?”

Not all hypothetical questions need to be negative. Positive hypotheticals lead your prospect to imagine a better future (preferably, one with your product).

To craft a positive hypothetical, you must know the buyer’s specific pain points and how your product can mitigate them. Combine that knowledge with this formula to help your prospect envision a new world:

“Imagine [X weeks/months/years] from now. [Issue #1] and [issue #2] have disappeared, thanks to [product effect #1] and [product effect #2]. How do you see that impacting your [ability to do X, specific initiative, organizational success, etc.]?”

You might say, for instance:

“Imagine four months from now. Employee theft has been halved and vandalism issues have been eliminated, thanks to the motion-activated cameras we’ve installed. How do you see that impacting your revenue and ability to manage the store?”

6) Clarifying Questions

Clarifying questions let you check in with buyers and make sure you’re coming to the right conclusions. Since you’re confirming past answers rather than looking for new ones, these questions are usually closed-ended.

Ask a clarifying question after your prospect has given you a lot of information or said something unexpected.

The sample dialogue below demonstrates the value of untangling a complicated statement:

Rep: “How have you attempted to decrease claim denials?”

Prospect: “Claim denials have always been a concern, but we haven’t taken any concrete steps to cut down on the practice’s rate.”

Rep: “I want to make sure I’ve understood correctly. In the past few years, you haven’t changed your claim submission policy to avoid the risk of insurance companies rejecting them?”

Prospect: “Well, I guess we have implemented a couple changes, like … ”

7) Objection-Surfacing Questions

It can be nerve-wracking to explore the buyer’s concerns. But if you don’t get their objections out in the open, you can’t address them. If the buyer still has significant concerns by the time you close, they’re unlikely to pull the trigger.

When you sense your prospect isn’t completely comfortable or bought-in, say, “I’m sensing a little bit of hesitation. Am I off-base?” or “What reservations do you have about [detail of the product]?”

These questions will help you expose hidden objections in the final stages of the sales process:

• “Does anything about the product concern you?”
• “From 1 to 10, where 1 is ‘I never want to hear [product name] again,’ and 10 is ‘I’d like to buy immediately, what number are you?” followed by, “Why did you pick that?”
• “What are the areas you feel least comfortable with?”
• “Are you ready to move forward?”, followed by “Why not?” if they say no

Varying the questions you ask will lead you to the most accurate, productive answers. This strategy also makes your calls feel like conversations, not interrogations.

Grabbing a reader’s attention in today’s world isn’t too hard, but getting them to read every word is almost as impossible as breathing in outer space. People simply don’t have the time, or more accurately, the attention span, to read your entire piece of content. Despite this uphill battle in the world of content marketing, there is still a way to get your message across and grab the attention of today’s buyers: writing scannable copy.

On average, people will read roughly 20% of the text on your page. It’s a sad truth, but embracing it will allow you to find a way to reach your audience without having to bore them to death with endless copy. Today’s readers don’t technically read—they scan. Writing scannable content is easy, you just have to know what works and what doesn’t.

Get to the Point!

While attention spans are at an all-time low, you can still effectively get your message to your audience: you just have to be quick and concise about it. Journalists use the “Inverted Pyramid.” This is a method of getting the most important and relevant information out of the way early on before your reader abandons ship.

You also don’t want to be too wordy. You’re not writing Moby Dick, you’re writing content for potential customers. You want to finesse them, but not too much. Cut the adverbs, wordy adjectives, and the passive voice. Make sure that you provide them with the information that they’re looking for, but in as few words as possible. They’ll appreciate the easy read as much as the helpful information.

Adapt for Scanners

According to Jakob Nielsen “users have time to read at most 28% of the words during an average visit; 20% is more likely.” When visitors happen upon your site, they will find the vast text alarming and they won’t want to read, let alone scan it. Why not make it easy and simple for them by changing your format to benefit scanners? There are several tactics that you can employ to successfully create scannable content.

Make the text pop out on the page by using bold, links, italics, and even colors. This will draw the readers’ eyes in to focus on the words. The use of bullets and sub-heads are also crucial, because it tells the reader that the content that’s being broken up is different and important. Make sure to keep each point your making in its own paragraph, as to not confuse the reader.

You also want to make use of the white space by not filling it up with words. A webpage completely filled with copy instills anxiety and dread. No one wants to read all of that content. They want t get the key points and move on; so embrace the empty space.

Avoid Subjective Language

Making things as simple as possible for your readers is one of the most effective ways to grab their attention. Readers like when the language is simple, but they also want to know that it’s credible. Using facts and figures makes your content more trustworthy. If you make a claim and don’t back it up, your reader will be suspicious and question whether or not to continue reading.

If you’re trying to share helpful information, your reader wants to know that you’re presenting honest copy, not trying to sell them something that they don’t need. Be fair about what you’re writing about. Highlight the advantages while at least acknowledging the disadvantages. Readers will trust you if you give them reliable and unbiased information.

Using these practices will allow your content to be read, and your message to get across to the reader. Scanning is the new form of how people consume content, so adapt to the style instead of refusing to evolve.

Stream’s Kick-Start Step: Take a look at a piece of your content and see how you can edit it to cut down to make it more scannable. Add bolded text and bullet points to make it easier for your audience to digest.

Learn the best practices and avoid the mistakes by download our Content Marketing eBook.

A decade ago, there were only a couple thousand electric vehicles (EVs) on the road worldwide. Last year, they cruised past a million—and kept going. But that’s nothing compared with what’s to come.

China, for one, plans to add as many EVs next year as exist in the entire world today. And considering that transportation represents more than half of all oil use in the world, the type of vehicles we’re driving will have a huge impact on that industry. According to the International Energy Agency, reducing pollution to levels consistent with limiting climate change to less than two degrees would see 715 million EVs cruising the streets in 2040—which would also shrink global oil demand by 20% relative to today.

These numbers are worth keeping in mind when considering not just the environmental impact of recently approved pipeline projects—but also whether or not they’re even good long-term investments. EVs are the future, and in a global economy, being left in the past is never a good thing. Given that infrastructure investments are made with decades in mind, which is the better bet: oil infrastructure or EV infrastructure?

So far, Canada has taken a scattershot approach to building charging infrastructure and deploying more EVs, one led primarily by provinces. That’s left ample room to grow: in 2015, just under 7,000 Canadians bought an EV. That’s a healthy 32% jump from the year before, but still just 0.4% of all new vehicles sold across the country.

Contrast that with the situation in Sweden, Denmark, France, China and the U.K., where EVs have already surpassed the one per cent mark for market share. And then there’s Norway and the Netherlands, which saw market share reach 23% and 10%, respectively.

Despite their relative novelty here at home, Teslas, Chevy Volts and Nissan Leafs are turning up on roads, in neighbours’ driveways and at mall charging stations. And beyond the cachet and gas-saving factors that draw drivers in, there are good reasons for governments to nudge Canadians into choosing electric.

Transportation emits nearly a quarter of Canada’s carbon, meaning EVs are a potentially big climate solution. They produce no tailpipe pollution and, in most provinces, drivers plug in to relatively clean power grids.

With its crippling air pollution, China recognized these benefits early on, overtaking the U.S. last year for total new EV sales. In 2015, a record US$325 billion was invested in renewable energy globally, and just over one third of it was invested in China. Beyond using this clean electricity to power homes, offices and manufacturing plants, the Chinese also view it as the fuel of choice for the growing number of vehicles hitting the road, setting a goal of putting five million “new energy” vehicles (EVs, plug-in hybrids and fuel-cell cars) on the road by 2020.

Bloomberg New Energy Finance has forecast that global sales of EVs could hit 41 million by 2040, representing just over one in three new light-duty vehicle sales. Is this achievable? It’s a stretch, but recent trends suggest it’s possible.

For starters, the cost of an electric car battery—the most expensive component—dropped 35% last year alone. And these costs will keep dropping. As a result, Bloomberg researchers expect unsubsidized EVs to be comparable in price to their gasoline competitors within six years.

Meanwhile, battery density has increased, extending the distance a battery-powered vehicle can travel on each charge. That’s allowed manufacturers to launch more affordable EVs that can travel farther, like the Chevy Bolt, which can travel 383 kilometres on a single charge.

Half a decade ago, few Canadians had ever even seen an electric car. Now, a majority of Canadians think EVs will outnumber gas-powered cars within 10 to 20 years, according to a 2016 poll from Abacus Data. And drivers will soon have more options to choose from, as the world’s major auto manufacturers plan to roll out dozens of new electric models over the next decade.

Still, “range anxiety”—the fear of getting stranded with a dead battery—is the number-one worry for people considering an EV (despite the fact that 80% of Canadians drive 50 kilometres or less each day). In the U.S., the federal government has announced a sweeping plan to fund EV charging stations every 50 miles over 25,000 miles of American highways, spanning 35 states.

As part of a climate and clean growth plan, the Canadian government needs to do the same and invest in EV fast-charging stations along highways throughout the country. Fast chargers along key transportation corridors will put prospective buyers’ minds at ease and boost the odds that their next vehicle is electric.

Getting barriers off the road to EV adoption will help clear the way for clean economic growth and a more competitive Canada in the global market. After all, while pipelines may fuel many of the cars on the road today, the future is a one-way street—and there’s no question which direction it’s headed.

Merran Smith is Executive Director and Dan Woynillowicz is Policy Director of Clean Energy Canada (@cleanenergycan), an initiative of the Centre for Dialogue at Simon Fraser University.

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MORE ABOUT ENERGY & SUSTAINABILITY:

• Canada’s cleantech industry is bigger than you think
• Why rising oil prices may not signal a rebound for Canada’s oil companies
• How Seven Generations Energy keeps growing in an era of low gas prices
• How MBA programs focused on energy are defying the oil price slump
• Why energy firms like Enbridge are hiring environmental activists
• Inside the race to clean up and rebuild Fort McMurray
• How the Trudeau government tore up the rulebook on pipelines
• How to build a greener business

The post How to jump-start Canada’s electric vehicle infrastructure appeared first on Canadian Business - Your Source For Business News.

Trends come and go. Remember bellbottoms, fanny packs and shoulder pads? What about email marketing? Although marketers predicted the demise of email after its tremendous decline in the mid-2000s, the tool is now soaring to new heights. That’s right folks – email is back in style.

Now, you might be wondering why email is on the rise and how your brand can hop on the email bandwagon, but first, let’s talk about why this medium is cooler than ever.

Why is Email Cool Again?

Well, the truth is that email marketing never went out of style. Instead, it’s gone through a digital makeover. We live in an age when people want information that is relevant, delivered quickly and accessible at their fingertips. People constantly check their text messages and social media accounts to stay informed, and, now, they read emails more than ever.

This is good news for marketers because email is the single most-effective mediumfor raising awareness, attraction, conversion and retention, and it’s one of the best ways to target and build relationships with customers when they’re not at their computers. According to Marketing Land, email allows marketers to effortlessly nurture leads and create messages specific to a customer’s location, device, purchase history and real-time status.

Email also offers an astounding return on investment compared to other forms of direct marketing. In fact, the Direct Marketing Association found that email yields an estimated 4,300 percent ROI. Leveraging email marketing is one of the most affordable ways to communicate to customers without risking a lot of money. If a campaign doesn’t perform as well as hoped, it can always be tweaked and redistributed at a significantly lower cost than, let’s say, if an expensive TV ad failed. In addition to helping save companies money, email also brings in revenue. According to eConsultancy, 55 percent of U.S. companies receive more than 10 percent of their sales from email marketing.

Not only is email marketing an efficient, cost-effective, measurable tool, it’s also a great way to communicate to audiences of varying generations because Boomers, Gen X and Millennials all favor communicating with businesses through email.

How Your Brand Can Hop on the Email Bandwagon

Now that you know why email is cool again, you may be thinking to yourself, “No one ever opens our emails” or “People unsubscribe a lot” but don’t fret. Here are some tips to help increase the success rate of your email campaigns:

1. Use smart email marketing: To build relationships with your customers through email, follow a strategic formula when developing your email campaign. First, be sure to raise awareness by informing customers of a product, service, offering or event relevant to your business. Then, to peak their interest, tell them when and where to get said offering, making sure to include all the details such as location, link to learn more, etc. After that, help guide them to a conversion and create customer retention by sending more relevant content they’ll likely be interested in.
2. Execute a mobile-friendly email design: Marketers have quickly adopted responsive website designs but have been slower moving on mobile-friendly email designs, but remember, people are reading emails now more than ever. In fact, it’s been found to be one of the top activities of smartphone users. According to Litmus, 48 percent of emails are opened on mobile devices, therefore, by adopting responsive email design, conversion rates are sure to increase.
3. Focus on content: To bring down unsubscribes, try drawing attention to your emails with more powerful content and visuals. Your emails should be relevant to recipients and should have a voice. It’s important to deliver quality, niche-specific content that your audience needs/wants and shares with others. For visuals, consider using video for your next email blast. People love watching videos, and according to an infographic by Clickz, video can increase email click-through rates by 50 percent. You could try inserting games/contests, infographics, animation, carousels and more into your future emails because they’re unexpected, visually pleasing and engaging if you use them correctly.
4. Craft a catchy subject line: Everyone’s inbox is full of emails with sales, ads, offers, news, reminders and information, so it’s important to know how to make your email cut through the clutter. A subject line may be the only thing your recipients see before they choose to open your email. To increase your open rate, make sure subject lines are short (49 characters max), personable, significant to the recipient and attention-grabbing (with humor, urgency, the person’s name, a question, etc.)
5. Redistribute to non-responders: We do this for a lot of our clients. Redistributing an email 12 or 24 hours after the first distribution (especially if it’s during a busy time of year) gives recipients a second chance to view and engage with your email. Warning: Overuse of this strategy could result in unsubscribes.
6. Add social sharing buttons: To increase email click-through rates, add social sharing buttons to your emails. Recipients are more likely to trust your brand, and as an added bonus, it can increase your click-through rates by 158 percent.

If your company is like most organizations, there’s a disconnect brewing. Between what the CEO wants and what everyone else wants. And, according to new research, especially between what the CEO wants and what the CMO wants.

As the head of the company, the CEO’s job is to grow the organization. Increase revenue. To do this, many top executives are focused on “disruptive growth” – they want their top leaders to find ways to catapult the company forward. To do this, they’re relying on their team to have that same growth mindset.

But according to a report from Accenture, for which they interviewed hundreds of CEOs and CMOs, the CMO is decidedly not focused on disruptive growth. Just 37 percent of CMOs surveyed by Accenture considered disruptive growth “very important,” compared to 44 percent of CEOs.

Uh-oh.

The Accenture authors suggest that having control of an organization’s digital assets is the key to being able to drive disruptive growth, and that 75 percent of CMOs say they have this level of control. The problem is that too many CMOs are thinking small. Their marketing department spend too much of its time (60 percent!) focused on old school tactics and following the same old muscle memory, even though they’re getting very little ROI. As the report authors wrote:

“Disruptive growth has nothing to do with entering yet another traditional sales agreement in a traditional outlet that has historically seen good sales figures.”

In other words, if your marketing team is focused on launching yet another advertising campaign that’s focused on getting in front of a bunch of eyeballs – eyeballs that are “owned” by whatever media outlet they’re advertising with – then they’re not going to create the exponential growth the CEO wants. Unless you’re literally spending hundreds of millions of dollars like Geico or Coke or GM, traditional advertising is only going to produce incremental improvement – if you’re lucky. I’d consider that a waste; wouldn’t you?

So, as the CEO, if your marketing team is coming to you this budgeting season saying they need more money to advertise, you need to question whether you have the right marketing team. It isn’t about their skills or their experience; it’s about their mindset. Too many CMOs are focused on providing service to the rest of the company rather than driving outcomes.

Of course, that also demands that the CEO encourages the CMO to take chances, to risk failure. This requires patience and faith, which doesn’t always happen. For a lot of CEOs, the stuff that’s going on in the marketing department is a bit mysterious. Frequently, the organization’s leader has come up through sales, and while sales and marketing are aligned, they are very different. Typically, the relationship has consisted of the sales department complaining that the marketing department isn’t providing them enough leads, and the marketing department responding, “Oh yes we are.” That’s an adversarial relationship, and it isn’t helpful.

If you, as CEO, are going to demand a new approach to drive disruptive growth, you need to provide cover for the new way of doing things. In other words, when the VP of Sales complains that MQLs are down in the first quarter, the CEO needs to have the marketing team’s back and explain that there’s a new approach.

That frees up the CMO to innovate. Unfortunately, the evidence suggests that most CMOs don’t have the right mindset to drive disruptive growth, but if you give them the chance, at least you’ll know whether you have the right person leading marketing.

It’s Sunday night. You’re the deputy mayor of a big city. You sit down to watch a movie and ask Netflix for help. (“Will I like Birdemic? Ishtar? Zoolander 2?”) The Netflix recommendation algorithm predicts what movie you’d like by mining data on millions of previous movie-watchers using sophisticated machine learning tools. And then the next day you go to work and every one of your agencies will make hiring decisions with little idea of which candidates would be good workers; community college students will be largely left to their own devices to decide which courses are too hard or too easy for them; and your social service system will implement a reactive rather than preventive approach to homelessness because they don’t believe it’s possible to forecast which families will wind up on the streets.

You’d love to move your city’s use of predictive analytics into the 21^st century, or at least into the 20^th century. But how? You just hired a pair of 24-year-old computer programmers to run your data science team. They’re great with data. But should they be the ones to decide which problems are amenable to these tools? Or to decide what success looks like? You’re also not reassured by the vendors the city interacts with. They’re always trying to up-sell you the very latest predictive tool. Decisions about how these tools are used seem too important for you to outsource, but raise a host of new issues that are difficult to understand.

Insight Center

This mix of enthusiasm and trepidation over the potential social impact of machine learning is not unique to local government or even to government: non-profits and social entrepreneurs share it as well.  The enthusiasm is well-placed. For the right type of problem, there are enormous gains to be made from using these tools. But so is the trepidation: as with all new “products,” there is potential for misuse. How can we maximize the benefits while minimizing the harm?

In applying these tools the last few years, we have focused on exactly this question. We have learned that some of the most important challenges fall within the cracks between the discipline that builds algorithms (computer science) and the disciplines that typically work on solving policy problems (such as economics and statistics). As a result, few of these key challenges are even on anyone’s radar screen. The good news is that many of these challenges, once recognized, are fairly straightforward to solve.

We have distilled what we have learned into a “buyer’s guide.” It is aimed at anyone who wants to use data science to create social good, but is unsure how to proceed.

How machine learning can improve public policy

First things first: There is always a new “new thing.” Especially in the social sector. Are these machine learning tools really worth paying attention to?

Yes. That’s what we’ve concluded from our own proof-of-concept project, applying machine learning to a dataset of over one million bond court cases (in joint work with Himabindu Lakkaraju and Jure Leskovec of Stanford University). Shortly after arrest, a judge has to decide: will the defendant await their legal fate at home? Or must they wait in jail? This is no small question. A typical jail stay is between two and three months. In making this life-changing decision, by law, the judge has to make a prediction: if released, will the defendant return for their court appearance, or will they skip court? And will they potentially commit further crimes?

We find that there is considerable room to improve on judges’ predictions.  Our estimates show that if we made pre-trial release decisions using our algorithm’s predictions of risk instead of relying on judge intuition, we could reduce crimes committed by released defendants by up to 25% without having to jail any additional people. Or, without increasing the crime rate at all, we could jail up to 42% fewer people. With 12 million people arrested every year in the U.S., this type of tool could let us reduce jail populations by up to several hundred thousand people.  And this sort of intervention is relatively cheap. Compared to investing millions (or billions) of dollars into more social programs or police, the cost of statistically analyzing administrative datasets that already exist is next-to-nothing. Plus, unlike many other proposals to improve society, machine learning tools are easily scaled.

By now, policymakers are used to hearing claims like this in sales pitches, and they should appropriately raise some skepticism. One reason it’s hard to be a good buyer of machine learning solutions is that there are so many overstated claims. It’s not that people are intentionally misstating the results from their algorithms. In fact, applying a known machine learning algorithm to a dataset is often the most straightforward part of these projects. The part that’s much more difficult, and the reason we struggled with our own bail project for several years, is accurately evaluating the potential impact of any new algorithm on policy outcomes. We hope the rest of this article, which draws on our own experience applying machine learning to policy problems, will help you better evaluate these sales pitches and make you a critical buyer as well.

Look for policy problems that hinge on prediction

Our bail experience suggests that thoughtful application of machine learning to policy can create very large gains. But sometimes these tools are sold like snake oil, as if they can solve every problem.

Machine learning excels at predicting things. It can inform decisions that hinge on a prediction, and where the thing to be predicted is clear and measurable.

For Netflix, the decision is what movie to watch. Netflix mines data on large numbers of users to try to figure out which people have prior viewing histories that are similar to yours, and then it recommends to you movies that these people have liked. For our application to pre-trial bail decisions, the algorithm tries to find past defendants who are like the one currently in court, and then uses the crime rates of these similar defendants as the basis for its prediction.

If a decision is being made that already depends on a prediction, why not help inform this decision with more accurate predictions? The law already requires bond court judges to make pre-trial release decisions based on their predictions of defendant risk. Decades of behavioral economics and social psychology teach us that people will have trouble making accurate predictions about this risk – because it requires things we’re not always good at, like thinking probabilistically, making attributions, and drawing inferences. The algorithm makes the same predictions judges are already making, but better.

But many social-sector decisions do not hinge on a prediction. Sometimes we are asking whether some new policy or program works – that is, questions that hinge on understanding the causal effect of something on the world. The way to answer those questions is not through machine learning prediction methods. We instead need tools for causation, like randomized experiments. In addition, just because something is predictable, that doesn’t mean we are comfortable having our decision depend on that prediction. For example we might reasonably be uncomfortable denying welfare to someone who was eligible at the time they applied just because we predict they have a high likelihood to fail to abide by the program’s job-search requirements or fail a drug test in the future.

Make sure you’re comfortable with the outcome you’re predicting

Algorithms are most helpful when applied to problems where there is not only a large history of past cases to learn from but also a clear outcome that can be measured, since measuring the outcome concretely is a necessary prerequisite to predicting. But a prediction algorithm, on its own, will focus relentlessly on predicting the outcome you provide as accurately as possible at the expense of everything else. This creates a danger: if you care about other outcomes too, they will be ignored. So even if the algorithm does well on the outcome you told it to focus on, it may do worse on the other outcomes you care about but didn’t tell it to predict.

This concern came up repeatedly in our own work on bail decisions. We trained our algorithms to predict the overall crime rate for the defendents eligible for bail. Such an algorithm treats every crime as equal. But what if judges (not unreasonably) put disproportionate weight on whether a defendant engages in a very serious violent crime like murder, rape, or robbery? It might look like the algorithm’s predictions leads to “better outcomes” when we look at overall rates of crime. But the algorithm’s release rule might actually be doing worse than the judges with respect to serious violent crimes specifically. The possibility of this happening doesn’t mean algorithms can’t still be useful. In bail, it turns out that different forms of crime are correlated enough so that an algorithm trained on just one type of crime winds up out-predicting judges on almost every measure of criminality we could construct, including violent crime. The point is that the outcome you select for your algorithm will define it. So you need to think carefully about what that outcome is and what else it might be leaving out.

Check for bias

Another serious example of this principle is the role of race in algorithms. There is the possibility that any new system for making predictions and decisions might exacerbate racial disparities, especially in policy domains like criminal justice. Caution is merited: the underlying data used to train an algorithm may be biased, reflecting a history of discrimination. And data scientists may sometimes inadvertently report misleading performance measures for their algorithms. We should take seriously the concern about whether algorithms might perpetuate disadvantage, no matter what the other benefits.

Ultimately, though, this is an empirical question. In our bail project, we found that the algorithm can actually reduce race disparities in the jail population. In other words, we can reduce crime, jail populations and racial bias – all at the same time – with the help of algorithms.

This is not some lucky happenstance. An appropriate first benchmark for evaluating the effect of using algorithms is the existing system – the predictions and decisions already being made by humans. In the case of bail, we know from decades of research that those human predictions can be biased. Algorithms have a form of neutrality that the human mind struggles to obtain, at least within their narrow area of focus. It is entirely possible—as we saw—for algorithms to serve as a force for equity. We ought to pair our caution with hope.

The lesson here is that if the ultimate outcome you care about is hard to measure, or involves a hard-to-define combination of outcomes, then the problem is probably not a good fit for machine learning. Consider a problem that looks like bail: Sentencing. Like bail, sentencing of people who have been found guilty depends partly on recidivism risk. But sentencing also depends on things like society’s sense of retribution, mercy, and redemption, which cannot be directly measured. We intentionally focused our work on bail rather than sentencing  because it represents a point in the criminal justice system where the law explicitly asks narrowly for a prediction. Even if there is a measurable single outcome, you’ll want to think about the other important factors that aren’t encapsulated in that outcome – like we did with race in the case of bail – and work with your data scientists to create a plan to test your algorithm for potential bias along those dimensions.

Verify your algorithm in an experiment on data it hasn’t seen

Once we have selected the right outcome, a final potential pitfall stems from how we measure success. For machine learning to be useful for policy, it must accurately predict “out-of-sample.” That means it should be trained on one set of data, then tested on a dataset it hasn’t seen before. So when you give data to a vendor to build a tool, withhold a subset of it. Then when the vendor comes back with a finished algorithm, you can perform an independent test using your “hold out” sample.

An even more fundamental problem is that current approaches in the field typically focus on performance measures that, for many applications, are inherently flawed. Current practice is to report how well one’s algorithm predicts only among those cases where we can observe the outcome. In the bail application this means our algorithm can only use data on those defendants who were released by the judges, because we only have a label providing the correct answer to whether the defendant commits a crime or not for defendants judges chose to release. What about defendants that judges chose not to release? The available data cannot tell us whether they would have reoffended or not.

This makes it hard to evaluate whether any new machine learning tool can actually improve outcomes relative to the existing decision-making system — in this case, judges. If some new machine learning-based release rule wants to release someone the judges jailed, we can’t observe their “label”, so how do we know what would happen if we actually released them?

This is not merely a problem of academic interest. Imagine that judges have access to information about defendants that the algorithm does not, such as whether family members show up at court to support them. To take a simplified, extreme example, suppose the judge is particularly accurate in using this extra information and can apply it to perfectly predict whether young defendants re-offend or not. Therefore the judges release only those young people who are at zero risk for re-offending. The algorithm only gets to see the data for those young people who got released – the ones who never re-offend. Such an algorithm would essentially conclude that the judge is making a serious mistake in jailing so many youthful defendants (since none of the ones in its dataset go on to commit crimes). The algorithm would recommend that we release far more youthful defendants. The algorithm would be wrong. It could inadvertently make the world worse off as a result.

In short, the fact that an algorithm predicts well on the part of the test data where we can observe labels doesn’t necessarily mean it will make good predictions in the real world. The best way to solve this problem is to do a randomized controlled trial of the sort that is common in medicine. Then we could directly compare whether bail decisions made using machine learning lead to better outcomes than those made on comparable cases using the current system of judicial decision-making. But even before we reach that stage, we need to make sure the tool is promising enough to ethically justify testing it in the field. In our bail case, much of the effort went into finding a “natural experiment” to evaluate the tool.

Our natural experiment built on two insights. First, within jurisdictional boundaries, it’s essentially random which judges hear which cases. Second, judges are quite different in how lenient they are. This lets us measure how good judges are at selecting additional defendants to jail. How much crime reduction does a judge with a 70% release rate produce compared to a judge with an 80% release rate? We can also use these data to ask how good an algorithm would be at selecting additional defendants to jail. If we took the caseload of an 80% release rate judge and used our algorithm to pick an additional 10% of defendants to jail, would we be able to achieve a lower crime rate than what the 70% release rate judge gets? That “human versus machine” comparison doesn’t get tripped up by missing labels for defendants the judges jailed but the algorithm wants to release, because we are only asking the algorithm to recommend additional detentions (not releases).  It’s a comparison that relies only on labels we already have in the data, and it confirms that the algorithm’s predictions do indeed lead to better outcomes than those of the judges.

It can be misguided, and sometimes outright harmful, to adopt and scale up new predictive tools when they’ve only been evaluated on cases from historical data with labels, rather than evaluated based on their effect on the key policy decision of interest. Smart users might go so far as to refuse to use any prediction tool that does not take this evaluation challenge more seriously.

Remember there’s still a lot we don’t know

While machine learning is now widely used in commercial applications, using these tools to solve policy problems is relatively new. There is still a great deal that we don’t yet know but will need to figure out moving forward.

Perhaps the most important example of this is how to combine human judgment and algorithmic judgment to make the best possible policy decisions. In the domain of policy, it is hard to imagine moving to a world in which the algorithms actually make the decisions; we expect that they will instead be used as decision aids.

For algorithms to add value, we need people to actually use them; that is, to pay attention to them in at least some cases. It is often claimed that in order for people to be willing to use an algorithm, they need to be able to really understand how it works. Maybe. But how many of us know how our cars work, or our iPhones, or pace-makers? How many of us would trade performance for understandability in our own lives by, say, giving up our current automobile with its mystifying internal combustion engine for Fred Flintstone’s car?

The flip side is that policymakers need to know when they should override the algorithm. For people to know when to override, they need to understand their comparative advantage over the algorithm – and vice versa. The algorithm can look at millions of cases from the past and tell us what happens, on average. But often it’s only the human who can see the extenuating circumstance in a given case, since it may be based on factors not captured in the data on which the algorithm was trained. As with any new task, people will be bad at this in the beginning. While they should get better over time, there would be great social value in understanding more about how to accelerate this learning curve.

Pair caution with hope

A time traveler going back to the dawn of the 20^th century would arrive with dire warnings. One invention was about to do a great deal of harm. It would become one of the biggest causes of death—and for some age groups the biggest cause of death. It would exacerbate inequalities, because those who could afford it would be able to access more jobs and live more comfortably. It would change the face of the planet we live on, affecting the physical landscape, polluting the environment and contributing to climate change.

The time traveler does not want these warnings to create a hasty panic that completely prevents the development of automobile transportation. Instead, she wants these warnings to help people skip ahead a few steps and follow a safer path: to focus on inventions that make cars less dangerous, to build cities that allow for easy public transport, and to focus on low emissions vehicles.

A time traveler from the future talking to us today may arrive with similar warnings about machine learning and encourage a similar approach. She might encourage the spread of machine learning to help solve the most challenging social problems in order to improve the lives of many. She would also remind us to be mindful, and to wear our seatbelts.

Google Adwords is the single best online advertising platform in the world. Advertisers spent over $60 billion in 2015.

Big data is responsible for Google’s success. It allows advertisers to narrowly target users and build highly profitable campaigns. Many advertisers are taking advantage of big data and Adwords campaign experiments to boost the ROI of their campaigns.

Savvy advertisers are collecting their own data to optimize their campaigns. If you’re a new AdWords advertiser, it is a good idea to learn about big data.

Why Big Data has Changed Google

Google has become even more dependent on big data over the last couple years. It tracks its users carefully, so advertisers can market to a narrowly targeted customer base. Here are some ways that Google uses big data.

New Demographic Targeting Options

In 2014, Google began allowing advertisers to target users by age and gender. Adwords advertisers could already target users by region, but these new targeting features are even more valuable.

Remarketing

Remarketing is still a fairly new feature on the Adwords platform. However, it has already proven to be very effective. Loews Hotels generated over $60,000 in sales from a $800 remarketing campaign.

Keyword Data

Google has always kept careful track of user searches. This data is aggregated to its advertisers, so they can easily choose the best keywords for their campaigns.

Using Big Data for your Adwords Campaigns

Adwords has a number of features that allow you to create highly targeted campaigns. However, they won’t do you any good unless you track them carefully to see what works.

You need to test different targeting options and monitor results. It’s a good idea to store data on the cloud, so you determine which demographics and keywords convert the best.

This is especially important for ecommerce brands, because they face unique marketing challenges. They usually need to store customer data on the cloud, especially if they are running app advertising campaigns. Here are a couple of reasons cloud storage is so important for many brands advertising on AdWords:

• Most local advertisers such as auto repair shops or real estate agents can make a handsome profit from only half a dozen leads. This isn’t the case for ecommerce companies, because their products tend to have lower conversion values. Many online companies sell lower ticket items and operate on very slim profit margins, so they need to keep their costs as low as possible.
• Ecommerce brands are marketing to a much larger customer base than local advertisers. In 2017, an estimated 63.4% of all Internet users will access the Internet through a mobile device. App developers also aren’t limited to geography.
• They need to carefully optimize their campaigns and push as much volume as possible. This requires a massive amount of data.

Local brands don’t need to generate as much volume with their campaigns. However, they are still using big data to improve their AdWords campaigns. p80 is a New York based company that optimized its AdWords campaigns with big data. They increased their revenue by 40% after starting a data-centric AdWords campaign a couple of years ago.

Other brands are beginning to recognize the benefits of using big data. Their results are encouraging more brands to advertise on Adwords. In the fourth quarter of last year, AdWords revenue rose to $21.3 billion. That figure will probably continue to rise as more brands recognize the benefits of leveraging big data for advertising.

Post first published on Catalyst For Business.

Amazon Payments, the e-commerce company's payments service that competes with PayPal, Apple Pay, and Google Wallet, already owns a sizeable market share and may be its most "underappreciated" business, according to RBC Capital's managing director Mark Mahaney.

Speaking at Business Insider's Ignition conference on Wednesday, Mahaney said Amazon Payments is showing a lot of potential to "disrupt" the payments space, and perhaps, could become the next big revenue driver for the company.

"I think Amazon’s ability to disrupt payments is vastly underappreciated," Mahaney said.

Mahaney's thinking is based on data from ChannelAdvisor, a leading e-commerce software maker that publishes quarterly data on the general market. As seen in the chart below, 15% of the market cited Amazon Payments as the most preferred payments method after credit card, only trailing PayPal, and coming in way ahead of Apple and Google's competing products.

Amazon Payments enables customers to pay through their Amazon accounts while shopping on other e-commerce sites, saving them the hassle of entering their credit card and shipping info again. Since its launch, the product has gotten thousands of sites on board, but with only a few big names — like the inflight Internet service Gogo — making the list. 

In April, Amazon Payments launched a new Global Partner Program which allows e-commerce platform providers to easily integrate its service. TechCrunch reported at the time that Amazon has 285 million account holders, with over 23 million of them having paid through their accounts on other sites.

Still, Mahaney said it's unclear if Amazon Payments will be able to catch up to PayPal and become the de facto paying platform. Payments in general is not a completely underserved market, and Amazon may decide to invest more on growing other initiatives, like its grocery delivery or shipping logistics businesses.

"The one challenge here to whether this really becomes the fourth pillar for Amazon is that it’s already a reasonably efficiently served market," Mahaney said.

 

SEE ALSO: How Amazon can become the world's first trillion-dollar business

Join the conversation about this story »

NOW WATCH: Watch the trailer for the new Martin Scorsese film that took over 20 years to make

Whenever you email yourself a file or use something like Dropbox to transfer files between devices, your data lives on a server somewhere as an intermediary. If you’d rather cut out the middleman, Takeafile.com uses peer-to-peer technology to transfer files, no plugins required.

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Snapchat is on the rise, and businesses are starting to join the network to connect with a younger demographic. Snapchat can be a little intimidating at first, but it is an excellent network for building visibility and adding value to your customer. In this post I’ll review some basic Snapchat for business do’s and don’ts.

Snapchat is all about telling a story. A string of moments that can be used to let your fans in and get to know your business. It’s about engaging your audience in small snippets instead of longer form content. So let me help you sort this all out.

The Do’s

1. Partner with influencers

Taking a page from my post “5 ways to quickly grow your Snapchat following” – partnering with influencers can be a great way to build a super engaged following. Use influencers to build buzz for a launch or let an influencer “take over” your account for day. The right influencer’s audience will follow your Snapchat account in order to gain access to the takeover – exposing your brand to new eyes.

2. Use Snapchat for Q&A sessions/product how to’s

Snapchat’s short form allows for a great way to host quick Q&A or mini training sessions. Besides being a great intro and a jump start some interaction and following on Snapchat you’ll be able to provide your customers with extra info or answer questions that may be stopping them from purchasing from you. Let your audience know you’ll be holding a session beforehand to drive traffic to your Snapchat account.

3. Go behind the scenes/Preview products

Behind the scenes is always a winner with your online audience because they are getting access to you r brand or business that they otherwise would not have. Let them in on your photoshoot set up, show them a day in the life at your office, or invite them to check out backstage happenings at your next event.

Steal a page form bigger brands and give your Snapchat followers and exclusive preview of upcoming products. In the next point I have a brief example of how Burberry used Snapchat to preview and build buzz for their Spring/Summer 2016 fashion show.

4. Mix it up with photos, videos and text

Use a mix of videos and photos to add more dynamic to your story. The different mediums make your story more engaging to follow and lets you get creative in how you share your story with your followers. Below is an example from Burberry’s Spring/Summer 2016 collection preview – all done via Snapchat. To add a little more context (an to help when sound is off) Burberry shared blank screens with text in between photos and videos of models in some of their items before the show took place.

5. Plan your story

Getting started on Snapchat can be a little intimidating. I suggest planning out your story (create a story board if needed) to make sure your story makes sense and is easy to follow. This way you know where you need text, how long videos should be and how you may want to further engage your audience.

6. Use Snapchat stickers, filters, emoji’s and doodles

Snapchat is a network where you can have fun! Use Snapchat’s native features to add a little personality to your posts. Overlay your photos with emoji’s, use the built in markers to show off doodling skills or try Snapchat’s 3D stickers to add some more pizzaz to videos.

Learn how to use Snapchat 3D stickers here.

7. Engage!

It can be a little difficult to engage Snapchat users – but not impossible! Use calls to actions in text, and ask followers to snap back to you. You can add your favorite snaps to your story by taking a screenshot or picture of a picture (remember you can see when anyone screenshots your snaps). You can also ask followers to help you choose between two things by asking them to watch your story a second time and screen shot their favorite option as a voting method. This leads me to…

8. Remember to look at your story views and screenshots

Metrics on Snapchat rely on two things: views and screen shots. Remember to review your story before it disappears so you can keep track of how may people watched your story and if any screenshots were taken. To review click on your story and swipe up. You’ll see a list of watchers and screenshot-ers.

9. Create Geofilters for your next big event or launch

Snapchat Geofilters are a great way to get your brand awareness up! People love using fun filters and Snapchat gives you the option to create them for your business. If you have basic design skills you can put one together for your next big launch or event and cost can be relatively low. Your filter will be available to anyone using Snapchat in your designated area (at least 20,000 sq. ft.) and can be a great way to get your branding out there.

To learn more read: How to Create & Use Custom Snapchat Geofilters For Your Brand or Business

10. Offer Snapchat only incentives and discounts

Network exclusive content is a great way to entice your audience to follow you on a specific network. Conduct Snapchat only interviews, employee or influencer takeovers or offer discounts only accessible to your Snapchat audience.

The Don’ts

11. Don’t go off brand/post irrelevant content

I will go blue in the face telling you to keep things relevant to your brand. Keep your posts closely related to interests of your target audience. Context is everything – so even if you are going for more of an engaging post, remember to tie it back to your brand.

12. Don’t post long stories

Keep your stories short and entertaining. Remember 200 seconds on Snapchat is about 20 snaps – that’s a lot – for both you to create/post and for your audience to watch.

Bonus: Save your Instagram content to re-purpose on your blog, or other social media networks.

Using Snapchat for business can be a lot of work but you’ll be able to give your audience more context and value while showing the personality behind your brand. All this equals to a deeper connection with your audience – one of the main reasons we use social media for marketing.

Having trouble using social media for your business? My mini course, Building Your Brand on Social Media can help you sort it all out. Get details and enroll here.

This post was originally published here.

Perhaps no single factor has a greater impact on a company’s future — for better or worse — than the selection of a new CEO. Choosing a CEO is a high-stakes proposition, arguably the most important decision a board can make.

While some situations demand outside successors — such as a turnaround or a discontinuous shift in the industry and strategy – we believe that internal candidates remain the future CEOs-of-choice. And keeping pace with innovation in an increasingly complex, continually morphing business environment requires a new sort of leader — one who can build complex social networks and tap the “latent innovation” of the organization and its business partners. Not surprisingly, the edge often goes to someone who is a known quantity, who is respected by the organization and the larger ecosystem in which it operates.

Insight Center

How can a board go about finding a new CEO who’s equipped to deal with 21st-century challenges? Below we share what we consider the seven defining tenets of a “gold standard” succession process:

1. Align the board on future CEO profiles that are driven by business strategy. Start well in advance of a planned succession by engaging the board in a strategic alignment process to define short- and long-term business priorities. Then link strategic priorities to the experiences, competencies, and personal traits required in the next CEO. Fold all this into a CEO Success Profile to be used as a blueprint for evaluating internal and external CEO candidates.

2. Assess candidates against industry benchmarks, valid indicators of executive potential, and the CEO profiles you’ve developed. Acquire an accurate, unfiltered, multi-dimensional view of candidates’ strengths and weaknesses in a mix that includes quantitative assessments that can evaluate not only relevant competencies and experiences but beneath-the-surface personal traits and drivers that will align with success.

3. Think 2-to-3 CEO moves ahead; don’t just seek to replace the incumbent. CEO succession is an ongoing process designed to develop the talent pipeline — not an isolated event. Companies should develop a dual focus that includes both preparing capable near-and mid-term leaders and identifying those deeper down in the organization who possess future leadership potential.

4. “Cross train” generations of CEO successors with a mix of on-the-job training, intensive coaching, mentoring, and education. Once you’ve gone deeper to find not merely a replacement CEO, but generations of successors with the potential to serve as future CEOs, help that potential blossom with individually tailored development plans geared to both individuals’ needs and what the organization will require in a future leader. As potential successors become real contenders for the role, the focus should be on identifying areas to accelerate growth and close critical gaps.

5. Become intimately familiar with the bench and their potential. There should be 7 potential CEOs in your company across several generations. Do you know who they are? In addition to enabling future CEOs to develop their potential, these individuals should gain regular exposure to the board in both formal and informal settings so directors can continue to assess their potential as possible future CEOs. Once an individual is in the running for CEO, the board will need to know more: What is this person like under pressure? How does this impact his or her leadership? Does he or she possess the agility and courage required to make difficult choices? Insight into leadership traits and motivations of a leader are as important as an individual’s experiences and proven track record.

6. Keep CEO succession as a standing board agenda item since it ensures a multi-layered, multi-generational process. CEO succession is an ongoing, “evergreen” process that continues, even immediately after the appointment of a new CEO. As potential leaders emerge from a few layers down, the board should be kept apprised of development plans so it can be assured that the organization’s future leadership needs can be met.

7. Ensure that your talent management and development planning is linked to your longer-term business strategy. During both regular board meetings and at intensive off-sites, many companies now link strategy sessions and talent development sessions to ensure that any shifts in the strategy will inform what will be required of future leaders. Since an array of possible “futures” need to be planned for, corresponding different leadership profiles should be planned for as well.

Growing and maintaining a leadership cadre of this caliber requires a commitment on the part of companies and their boards and an investment over time. Internal succession candidates don’t spring up fully formed overnight. Capable successors are the product of years of planning, mentoring, and guidance — ideally as much as five years ahead of a planned transition — to ensure that they acquire the skills and experience they will need and that their hardwiring relative to their internal traits and drivers has a chance to emerge before they take the helm as CEO.

This is an investment that will be paid back many times over, as it enables companies to continually strengthen the leadership needed to deliver strategic priorities for high performance, while simultaneously developing next generations of leaders for an ever-changing world. Taking this approach also enables an organization to be the sort of place top talent vies for because it an attractive place for personal development and career growth. Last but not least, almost nothing is more tightly aligned with protecting shareholder value than meeting this “CEO succession gold standard,” as it assures the probability that the right leaders will be in place to deliver sustainable, successful results.

In 2016, content reigned supreme. But not just any kind of content. This year saw an increase in demand for compelling interactive content, such as 360-degree virtual reality videos, the growth of visual content, such as infographics, a bigger push for online video, and much more.

According to the Content Marketing Institute, “Sixty-two percent of B2B marketers in North America say that compared to one year ago, their organization’s overall approach to content marketing has been much more or somewhat more successful.” In order to remain successful in the upcoming year, content marketers will need to consider that personalized content, visuals and real-time content are just a few trends that are expected to take over. Take a look at what some industry experts predict for the world of content marketing in 2017.

What Are Your 2017 Predictions for Content Marketing?

1. Joe Goldstein, Operations Manager and Lead SEO at Navolutions

In 2017, I think we’ll start seeing more DIY multimedia content creation platforms like Pablo by Buffer. Expect to see new platforms for creating and sharing resource lists, data-driven maps, interactive tools, and more.

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2. Hannah Wright, Co-Founder of HR Partner – @hannahwrightAK

In 2017, content marketing will be all about driving value and educating readers. So many companies are creating content, which means readers are looking for content that really stands out. They want to read articles that teach them something they didn’t know before. On top of that, readers will want that quality to be consistent.

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3. Tom La Vecchia, Founder and President of X Factor Media

• You’re going to see less articles and more video as they rank better on both Google and Facebook and will reach more impressions easier.
• Infographics are hot as they supply information in graphic form which is easier to read than an article
• Podcasts are making a comeback and a great way to build your brand while reaching a wider audience through audio
• Photo sharing sites are hot: IMGUR, Flickr and Pinterest will become more relevant for building your brand.

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4. Jessi Carr, Digital Marketing Specialist with Inseev Interactive

I predict that in 2017, content marketers will have trouble obtaining proper attribution for their pieces due to the rise in content-scraping sites, both on the web and over social media. Those who wish to succeed in content marketing will need to find ways to both protect their intellectual property while also stay on top of the ever-competitive content marketing space.

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5. Whitney DePaoli, Marketing Specialist at BeFunky

Content writing will get shorter as unique visuals become more important to capture audiences with shorter attention spans than ever. This will mean more GIFs, short videos, and standout imagery that drives the message home without the need for long blog posts and word-heavy captions.

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6. Jonathan Whitney, Founder of Bloggeroid.com

I would expect social media to have any even larger SEO impact in terms of how content is shared. As search engines become more efficient at tracking authentic social media shares from trustworthy accounts, this should have a larger SEO impact.

This is what SEO experts refer to as relevance, and the more impact this has in the SEO equation, the more it will be social sharing will be taken seriously by content marketers.

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7. Jessica Harris-Stout, Director of Content Marketing at Truebill.com – @imjessharris

• Content in most industries has become so saturated, that the floodgates of bad content have fully opened as brands struggle with creating quality, unique content. I think we’re going to see a shift in content that focuses on indexing quality resources vs. creating new content
• Pulling out and separating the superior content from the bad, and indexing that in one spot for your readers. Essentially doing the legwork of sifting through the much for them, so they know they can count on you to be the one who serves up the best for them.

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8. Ulysis Cababan, SEO Specialist at Rapidvisa

Content marketing starting this year has really evolved since the early days of social media especially Facebook and Linkedin.

2016 was an interesting year for content especially since the introduction of AMP that tested readers’ patience since most of the readers and viewers want speed to access the data. I would say that videos would still remain top of the list and text based with huge, good-quality image would increase its click trough rate on these social media platforms.

These content would focus on the ancillary keywords that if you are a marketer, that you can reach much broader audience and influencers.

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9. Sean Lees, Digital Marketing Specialist at Pest Xterminators – @SeanLees1992

In 2017 CM will become more competitive like never before.

• Visual Content. The key to success: Video Explainers, Infographics, GIF’s;
• Deep Niche Content;
• Don’t upload the next blog post. Optimize each post so readers engage, subscribe, and keep coming back.
• Social Media Content Distribution: Did you focused on Facebook in 2016? In 2017 you must think about promoting your content assets on this powerhouse of a channel even more. Don’ forget about Twitter and Instagram. Snapchat?

Real Content Marketing Strategy. Companies who actually have one (and review it constantly) are more likely to be successful.

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10. Claire Trevien, Head of Content Marketing at Passle – @CTrevien

Personalised content marketing will come of age and with it bigger data privacy responsibilities. In the midst of fake news and post-truthing, I also think we’ll see a larger move away from ghostwritten content towards more authentic user-generated and expert-led content.

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11. Thomas Caulton, Digital Marketing Executive and SEO Consultant at Dijitul – @TomCaulton5

I believe 2017 will see content marketers devising content designed for human intent rather than producing content for the sake of simply updating a website’s blog. After all, what good is a piece of content if it isn’t going to help someone, gain shares/links, or increase a website’s ROI? With the introduction of Rank Brain, and penguin as part of the core algorithm, producing content for human intent has never been more important.

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12. Anam Khawar, Marketing Manager for E Fundamentals

• Content topics will trump keywords

Before content was heavily centred around keywords and ideas that will increase traffic to your website as well as make your website look more active. As this has produced a plethora of regurgitated content which isn’t saying anything new, isn’t engaging or helpful, and coupled with how people search for content is changing with how Google is starting to present content, a big focus will be on shifting your content strategy to start focusing on key topics, not keywords. Though keywords are still important, how your content strategy is structured will change from concentrating on producing posts that are centred around a cluster of ideas and not just specific search terms.

• B2B and B2C will become more aligned

Even though it has been renowned that there is a clear division in the way B2B and B2C produce content, B2B will start to induce more emotion and storytelling into their content with integration of influencers like B2C already do. Irrespective of whether you are targeting professionals or consumers, bottom line is that you are still targeting people who want to be engaged, inspired and feel your brand is trustworthy.

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13. Beth Griffiths, Content Marketer at Bowler Hat – @beth_griffiths

In 2017, more content will be produced, making it a lot harder for your brand to stand out.

Therefore, in 2017 there will be an emphasis on content that is original, creative, and stands out. We are seeing this with Pokemon Go, where content is more relevant and engaging, and perhaps 2017 will see more brands utilise AR and VR. Whatever the future holds, content needs to be of higher quality, provide greater value and experiences, and form deeper connections.

Content marketing will continue to grow and evolve in 2017, and continue to provide value for both businesses and audiences.

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14. Lizzie Benton, Content Marketing Manager at Datify Ltd

• Content Amplification will accelerate. Not enough content marketers amplify their content or their clients, despite this being the foundation for successful content. Whether it’s due to cost or time, there has been a lack in amplification by a number of agencies creating incredible content. However, due to numerous studies that have been done that show amplified contents success, it will be adopted much more readily.
• Content will become more diverse. With an increase in video content and platforms such as Facebook and Instagram adopting live streaming, businesses and brands will saturate this style of content to offer more educational and entertaining content.

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15. David Attard, Founder and Entrepreneur of Dronesbuy.net

As SEO gets more competitive, the only content which will be able to rank well will be long-form content. This is content is more likely to fully answer a user’s search query intent. Using latest signals such as dwell time, and engagement, Google will rank longer content faster and better.

For this reason, we will likely see content marketing becoming more focused towards posting content less often, but in much more detail than ever before. To keep a user engaged, we will see more content which keeps the user on the page, such as video, clickable content (such as interactive data views) and anything else will is more likely to keep a user engaged on the page for longer.

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16. Asif Ismail, Principal and Chief Marketing Officer at Inspired Global Marketing

There will need to be more unique content

Content marketing has mainly been about blogging, ebooks, and other written content that is geared towards generating email subscribers and leads. These strategies work, but with the amount of noise out there, brands will be more creative with their content’s formats to break through the noise. These could include more video, more gifs (yay!) and other visual content. Search engines will also need to get better at reading and analyzing images to determine what your website is about.

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17. Liza Viana, CEO of CMK Marketing – @cmkmarketing

• Companies will increase focus on promoting content rather than just churning it out; what good is great content if no one ever sees it? This will save money and increase exposure. We’ve heard for years that a lot of content is needed to have search engines view your site as authoritative and relevant; while great content IS still king, companies will try harder to get the most mileage out of existing content, producing less of it, but increasing quality.
• More marketers will focus on strategy; right now, many produce content then just throw it out there, with no firm strategy in place for increasing views, collected leads via, etc. An effective strategy will allow marketers to be more effective.

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18. Alex Novkov, Marketing Expert at Kanbanize

I expect 2017 to be the year of video content. Everybody loves videos and prefers to see with their own eyes what marketers are talking about. Even now video content brings highest ROI and this trend is likely to expand over the next year.

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19. Gary Elliott, Marketing Director at weliketowork.com – @_garyelliott

The bar will raise (again) for content marketing. More devices, channels and platforms will push brands for bigger, better, more engaging content. 600 words and a stock image just won’t cut it. And to cope with the dazzling array of media types and formats, brands will need to reconsider how they resource content marketing. Large, inefficient internal teams will give way to small, nimble on-demand teams.

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20. Shelley Grieshop, Creative Writer at Totally Promotional

My prediction for content marketing in 2017 is for a huge increase in the use of video, photos and other graphics. It’s been repeatedly proven that images get the attention of readers much quicker and retains attention longer than text. But it takes more than just reusing what’s already out there on the Internet. Videos and photos must be homegrown and unique. They also must be relevant to the story or blog, and of good quality.

Our company, Totally Promotional, utilizes our photography and videography departments to create our own images of the custom promotional products we sell. We also use our own unique artwork for social media and blog content. Doing so gives us authority in search engine optimization (SEO) to increase organic traffic to TotallyPromotional.com and our other websites. It also allows us to be more flexible and creative in all of our marketing efforts.

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21. Elizabeth Giorgi, CEO of Mighteor – @lizgiorgi

• As short form video becomes more pervasive, everyone will be looking to replace Vine. Young people will look for tools to tell micro stories, especially those audiences that really latched onto the platform who are now without a home for their 6-second comedy favorites.
• While YouTube tutorials for makeup and fitness were once the dominator in the ‘How To’ category, we think the new trends will be towards 1-minute tips – like a single fitness move or a single makeup technique – shared in daily or weekly series on platforms like Instagram.

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22. Peter Schroeder, Digital Marketing/Social Media/Customer Success Manager at RendrFX

Content in 2017 is going to be dominated by video. Video should be on the top of every content marketer’s to-do list in 2017 and for good reason. Audiences love video when they are short and to the point. As of now, not many brands are embracing video, but almost everyone is consuming it. Expect to see video everywhere in 2017.

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23. Chuck DeMonte, President of GrooveFox – @groovefoxradio

My predictions for 2017 is more businesses should and will be developing original podcasts. It is a great way to establish yourself as a voice leader in your industry, as well as create fun, interesting, and easily consumable content for potential and current customers.

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24. Dennis Koutoudis, Founder & CEO of LinkedSuperPowers.com – @denniskoutoudis

Individuals and brands will more and more understand the crucial importance of content distribution and not just utilise the publish and pray approach. Therefore I believe, we will see more and more actions towards content distribution practices and not only on creating great pieces of content. After all, what is the point of having a great piece of content, when nobody can see it?

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25. Emily Sidley, Senior Director of Publicity at Three Girls Media – @EmilySidleyPR

• As users continue to connect with brands in more than one forum (from email and blogs to social media), content marketers will need to become adept at quickly tailoring their content so it stands out to consumers despite the noise.
• Content marketers will need to be proficient in telling their brand’s story through both words and images/video.

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26. Matt Buder Shapiro, Co-Founder and Chief Marketing Officer of MedPilot – @MBuderShapiro

• Videos, videos, and more videos. It’s no secret that they bring a remarkable ROI. Social platforms like Facebook, Instagram, and Snap are riding this wave and optimizing their feeds so we see more of them. Videos also help improve SEO. Break out the cameras!
• The days of big, broad messaging are over. Content needs to be much more tailored in order to attract an audience. If you want to increase sales at your coffee shop, why would you read an article titled “Best ways to gain customers” when you also see something titled “Best ways to attract customers to your coffee shop”?

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27. Mandy McEwen, Founder & CEO of Mod Girl Marketing – @MandyModGirl

2017 is the year of real-time content. Brands who embraced this live craze in 2016 experienced amazing results and plan to ramp up their live efforts in 2017. It’s a fact, that brands who personally connect with their audience on a real level experience growth on multiple levels. We expect to see live video become even more popular in 2017 and becoming a ‘necessity’ in the coming years. The best marketers use real-time content to increase their mobile and social media email opt-ins to keep building their contact lists across channels.

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28. Andrew Loader, Writer at Influencer Marketing Hub

2017 will be the year of influencer marketing. It is such a cost effective form of marketing, suitable for businesses of all sizes. Large businesses, such as Red Bull, have used it so extensively that they can now be considered influencers themselves.

Traditional online advertising will diminish as the effect of Adblockers reduces its effectiveness. Who actually clicks on an online banner ad – they have become invisible to most browsers. Companies will more aggressively build up their social networks, as they find that (with the younger generations at least) their target customers spend far more time there than watching television or listening to radio.

Marketers will finally understand that the influencers for Generation Z (and to an extent Y) are everyday people who run YouTube channels. If your brand can attract the attention of popular YouTube channels, (perhaps for a review or even an unboxing) you have a ready-made audience. Businesses will create their own quirky YouTube channels and build up their own followings.

Content marketing requires quality content. There is too much rubbish out there, which quickly sinks to invisibility. If your brand creates and shares quality content you will be noticed.

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29. Lindsay Beltzer, Manager of Marketing Communications at Tenet Partners – @LindsayBeltzer

Long-form, more in-depth content will reign supreme in 2017. If the article is mobile-optimized, engaging, and offers something of value, chances are it will capture readers’ attention. There¹s growing evidence that long-form content consistently ranks higher in Google’s search results ­ brands that create long-form, evergreen content have the potential to stand apart from the competition and be seen as trusted, reliable sources. In-turn, they will reap the rewards by enduring customer loyalty.

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30. Holly Rollins, President of 10x digital – @hrollins

• Measurement and ROI of content will be key for garnering and keeping clients;
• Weeding out bad content while focusing on authoritative content;
• Placing an emphasis on a brand’s story that’s engaging and authentic;
• Using influencers as a crucial component of the content marketing process.

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31. Ria Fiscina, SEO Manager at Active Web Group – @awg

• Paradigm shift from user acquisition to retention by providing useful information more frequently.
• Widespread incorporation of video to improve SEO and ROI. Just as mobile users now eclipse desktop, video-fed site traffic is way up.
• Increased use of specific targeting with less emphasis on broad/generic messaging. Specifically, more articles focusing on answering questions as clearly and succinctly as possible.

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32. Ed Brancheau, CEO of Goozleology Digital Marketing

Bloggers and business owners will want to figure out a creative way to implement Instagram Stories into their content marketing strategy. Instagram launched Stories back in August when they realized that its users were creating finstagram accounts, fake Instagram accounts on which users would post their lower quality pics and videos.

I think Stories will give content creators to produce quick, creative and experimental videos and share them with followers while not worrying about them being around forever because Instagram will delete them in 24 hours. They could shoot little videos with special offers or give a tidbit of exclusive advice.

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33. Joe McCambley, SVP of Content Marketing at POP – @jmccambley1

2017 will be the year that we see an explosion in the use of tools to connect people with content. We’ve seen it here and there in the past. Go to WebMD’s Symptom Checker and tell it what ails you, and WebMD will deliver relevant medically-oriented content. Amazon and Netflix use data about our past purchases and usage to tell us what other content and products we might like. With the dramatic growth in wearables and The Internet of Things and the “quantifiable self” movement, we’ll see everything from fitness trackers to automobiles, refrigerators and insulin pumps use data to find and deliver content that will be helpful and useful to their owners.

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34. Danyal Effendi, Digital Marketing Manager at PureVPN – @DanEffendi

My top prediction about Content Marketing in 2017 is that content strategy development will emerge and will be effectively used by content marketers and companies as whole. In 2017, it will be really difficult to succeed without having a clear and concise content strategy for specific product/service. Besides strategy, the increasing role of video, specifically live streaming will have a great impact on overall content marketing. Influencer marketing will be used more than ever for content distribution and I think some more engaging social platforms will come to limelight in next year.

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35. Swapnil Bhagwat, Senior Manager of Design & Digital Media at Orchestrate Technologies, LLC

Content marketing is bound to grow in volume at the onset of 2017 as more companies go digital. With an increase in the number of smartphones and the digital marketing eco space expanding, companies would look for niches of markets for the purpose of content marketing. The content marketers would be more target-oriented and more personalized content offsetting the noise, which are short and sweet would be more in vogue. Video content would increase as that generates more ROI. Brands would become more creative and in that, would attempt to increase engagement levels than ever before.

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36. Daren Low, Founder of Bitcatcha.com – @bitcatcha

Many people are predicting that AI-generated content will rule, but I believe the more narrow focus will be on adding a personal touch. This is the way that small businesses will stand out from the crowd, and AI-generated content can help them achieve that. How-to and How-not-to guides will still be popular. Long-form content will be phased out because the average internet user’s attention span continues to decrease; that means content in the range of 1,000 – 1,500 words is optimal. To craft that content, precise value proposition will be the most important factor in order to resonate most effectively with the target market.

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37. Paige Arnof-Fenn, Founder & CEO of Mavens & Moguls

I predict Content Marketing will grow in importance with the quality gap growing as well so that good/relevant content leveraging influencer marketing strategies will be more important than ever. If you know your subject well and can tell compelling stories then you will build your brand and following using Content Marketing in 2017, this is your year! The good will get better and the bad will be ignored. People are getting savvier to fake news and things that waste their time so be a brand they trust and follow.

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38. Anne Janzer, Author of Subscription Marketing and The Writer’s Process

As companies internalize the importance of customer retention to ongoing revenue growth, they’ll invest in creative, innovative content to nurture and support existing customers.

Businesses that align with customers’ values (like Patagonia) will build and sustain competitive advantages in their industries. While products can become commodities, authentic stories are unique.

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39. Nate Kristy, Vice President of Marketing at Automational – @automational

Customers are showing preferences for increasingly visual content – in social media, in emails and even in the articles they read. Smart marketers will continue capitalizing on this trend in 2017. For example, GIFs have grown in popularity on social media, and many companies are just now starting to experiment with these animated images in their email marketing and on their websites to attract and engage audiences. Since the majority of consumers are viewing digital content on mobile devices (88% for millennial consumers, in fact), the preference for attention-grabbing visuals and shorter text will prove the best way to reach audiences in 2017.

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40. Alona Rudnitsky, Co-Founder & COO Helix House Digital Advertising Agency – @myhelixhouse

Content marketing will begin to shift from traditional, stagnant, one-time posts to more dynamic, interactive, live-stream videos in order to present a message or relay information. We’ve been seeing this over the years, so that people who live in other states or around the world can take a closer look at individual businesses/operations at a more intimate level. Live-streaming was most prevalent throughout the 2016 presidential election, where various small news sources would suddenly go viral from people sharing posts, etc. We will definitely see more live-streaming efforts from all different industries in the upcoming year.

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41. Ryan Nathanson, VP of Digital Strategy & Ad Operations at Federated Media

In 2017, dark social will begin to emerge as a dominant force. We see dark social as the interactions people have online via channels that are not yet measurable like sharing a link via HipChat or email. In 2016, we saw tech companies like Facebook make massive investments in dark social channels via chat apps and they will look to take that investment to the next level. We believe in the next year we will be able to open up traditionally “dark social” channels to data collection giving us the ability to attribute engagement on Content Marketing to those interactions.

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42. Karen McCandless, Content Editor at GetApp

2017 will be the year of creating long-term, coherent content marketing strategies tailored to the specific needs of an organization. In the past, drawing on the fail fast mentality, companies have drawn up and ditched content marketing strategies at the drop of a hat (or the latest tactic that a so-called expert pushes out as the holy grail). Instead, content marketers will finally take the time to think about their purpose of their organization and content, as well as their customer’s pain points, so they can produce content that has real value to readers.

Infographics and video are also here to stay but content designed to be consumed on platforms such as mobile will take off, while companies will harness native advertising platforms such as Outbrain and Taboola as a more subtle way of advertising to consumers.

One trend that I hope will take off but I fear will not is an end to content for content’s sake. The internet has been filled with poorly-written, meaningless, clickbait content for the past few years, partly due to a belief that writing is easy and anyone can do it. Instead, companies will hire well-trained writers (journalists ideally) who understand what it takes to craft a compelling story that is both engaging and useful to readers. In short, an end to quantity over quality and a resurgence in people reading content rather than just sharing and retweeting because they like the headline or sentiment.

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43. Annika Rautakoura , Content Manager at Smarp – @AnnikaRautakou

• Content Marketing Distributed Across the Organization

With social media pushing content increasingly towards individuals, Content Marketing will become more of a joint effort. Content distribution and production along with their KPIs will move beyond one team to cover several departments.

• Influencer Marketing

The role of influencers in marketing will pick up; the voices of a few select will continue to be heard amidst the crowd. This provides great potential for brands, but only when done in a way that engages audiences and adds real value to branding. Influencer marketing strategies, definitions and targets will be revisited.

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44. David J. Hlavac, Group Account Director at Bellmont Partners – @djhlavac

• The static corporate white paper must continue to evolve and improve as marketers realize the best way to educate customers and prospects isn¹t by boring them to death. By engaging audiences with valuable information that¹s also easy to digest – including infographics, video and short-form case examples that paint vivid pictures of real-world business challenges – white papers can remain a truly useful piece of the content ecosystem.
• Quality, professionally-produced video content firmly shifts from “nice-to-have” to “must-have,” as both creative and price barriers continue to fall and marketers realize that clever, compelling video content is both affordable and attainable. As video content becomes more ubiquitous, focus will shift back to the message vs. the medium. Accordingly, the question of 2017 will not be “should we invest in video?” but instead “how can I attract and retain new audiences for all of our content, including video?”

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45. Bridget Nelson Monroe, Vice President at Bellmont Partners – @BridgetMonroe

As content marketing programs launch and mature, the need to break down any remaining walls between PR, marketing, sales, advertising, social media, customer service and IT will only become clearer in order to truly track and understand how content can best be used throughout the sales funnel and customer journey.

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46. Keyvan Hajiani, Co-Founder and Head of Marketing at SocioFabrica and Nicho

• Enhanced user experience and seamless omni-channel marketing will be key, given the growing mobile marketplace and number of connected devices.
• More companies will begin automating content through ongoing innovations in artificial intelligence and advanced algorithms.
• In an attempt to counter the use of ad blockers, producing content that doesn’t disrupt user experience through native advertising will soar.
• Marketers will focus more on creating quality content and storytelling. Innovation and value will be key factors to cutting through the clutter of abundance of content.

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What are your predictions for the future of content marketing in 2017? Sound off in the comments section below!

Responses have been edited for clarity and length

Sales software changes as rapidly as the sales landscape, which is to say at light-speed. The best way to stay current with sales technology is to look to the future.

While no one knows exactly what 2017 will bring, we predict that the future of sales software will introduce more customization and the power of big data analysis to all industries. Let’s take a closer look.

Analytics

Customers flood the internet with data signals every day, and much of that we give freely to the websites we visit (whether consciously or not). From digital body language to our email addresses and insights on the types of content are most interesting to us, every search, click, and form entry on the internet can be translated into data.

What’s new with this data for 2017? How we use it to guide sales decisions. In the near future, more businesses will use analytical tools to combine customer data with unstructured communication, industry benchmarks, and artificial intelligence (read: algorithms). Our insights there will help us understand the sales cycle, personalize outreach, and reduce the time to convert. The current generation of sales software is making these functions smarter and more accessible by helping users of all technical levels learn the ropes.

Automation

Piggy-backing on all of this data collection and analysis, we will continue to see a lift in automation across marketing and sales departments — even the smaller ones. Automation allows teams to follow up instantly on customer behavior and to personalize experiences from banner ads to emails to suggested products.

Sales automation works hard on those menial tasks that fill your day, so your teams have more time to hone their strategy at critical touch points and move leads down the funnel. Most of these features will find their home in CRM sales software, but some may also come with best-of-breed tools for lead management, email, dialing, or reporting.

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Text Parsing

In a nutshell, text parsing takes the unstructured data and turns it into a standard format that can be searched and understood by a computer.Text parsing is becoming more common in business intelligence sales software, but we predict that the mining of unstructured text data from social media, forums, and email will become a staple in the sales automation tool belt.

Think of a text parser as an automated triage system for all your text communication. Sales teams will be able to use this advanced capability to understand a customer’s feedback (is a tweet response positive or negative?), automatically filter those responses to the correct channel, and notify your teams about urgent matters. Sales and customer support can both become more agile in their customer responses.

Gamification and Dashboarding

Employee motivation has evolved beyond simple bonuses and pay raises. Don’t get me wrong, everyone loves money, but a little healthy office competition never hurt anyone, especially when sales goals are at stake. Gamification software boosts employee motivation by making goals and data transparent. Dashboards provide instant feedback to participants, including leaderboards and sales metrics.

Thanks to gamification software, your sales team can engage in friendly competition that improves your ROI. Some companies offer small bonuses like monthly gift cards for winners, while others rely on the intrinsic motivation of building the business and meeting personal goals to motivate users. Many companies use shared dashboards or leaderboards to publish company metrics and team goals, building transparency and employee trust.

Social Media

2016 saw continued growth for time spent on social media. Global counts say people spend an average of 118 minutes logged into social networks a day, and 80 percent of that is on mobile devices. This means that B2B and B2C sales teams have an amazing opportunity to connect and convert through this channel.

Social media helps customers feel like they know a brand, because it’s a way to connect with a person rather than a logo. They show the human side of a business, and a whopping 66 percent of marketers find LinkedIn to be their most effective social media channel for sales. 49 percent of marketers are using some sort of automation to connect with their audience. 2017 will show continued growth in sales software that analyzes and connects sales with their social media audience.*

*Studies found from Statista, Marketing Land, Content Marketing Institute, and Email Monday

Account-Based Everything

Sales and marketing teams that use marketing automation software for many of their tasks will find that they have more time to dive deeper into customized marketing, sales, and customer support processes. We’ll see more teams focusing on groups of decision-makers at key accounts — resulting in higher conversions and more customer advocacy.

Sales software has come a long way since the spreadsheet. We predict that 2017 will continue the growth of analytics and continue to blur lines between the sales and marketing. By breaking down the silos and employing the right technology, teams can better understand buyers and their needs.

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This post was written by Tamara Scott, an analyst at TechnologyAdvice. She writes about technology, business, and SEO in Nashville, TN. Find her @T_Scottie on Twitter. 

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