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Chatbots are those things you see that pop up on sites asking you if you have questions or need additional help.

Sometimes, there is a real person on the other end of that chatbox, but most often, these are bots that are programmed with responses based on frequent questions or algorithms.

These bots aren’t just another bit of code to add to your site. They can actually have a big impact on your success. Here’s why:

Users Actively Engage with Them

Chatbots aren’t typical pop-ups that annoy users and send them searching for ad blockers.

Users actually engage with these bots and rely on them for information. Many have reported that they feel like they are working with their own personal assistants on the site to find the information they need or achieve their goals, such as finding the right car to buy or the right couch to have with children around.

Bots end up improving the user experience on the site, which makes people feel better about your brand and be more likely to return. Bots also help people find exactly what they need, which means that you are helping to solve their problem and potentially earn a customer.

Think about how bots can help users find information on your site and incorporate them effectively. Make sure you set up the design to show users how they can be helpful, and include information encouraging them to engage with the chatbot in a way that shows this usefulness.

They Don’t Require Downloads

Users are very leery of downloading software or information on their own computers, especially from sites that they have just started using.

Bots don’t require that users download anything, which means that people are much more likely to use them. Therefore, you will get more usage, which increases your chances of generating a lead or making a sale.

Since bots don’t require a download, they also put less strain on your coding and hosting capacity.

Bots are Optimized for Mobile

Mobile marketing is the focus of the future for all brands. There are now more mobile searches than there are desktop searches, and mobile users are growing constantly.

If you want to remain relevant, you have to develop a strong marketing plan for mobile users. That includes optimizing your design and your content for these smaller devices.

Bots are optimized for mobile without you having to do anything else to make them that way. Bots were used on mobile devices for many years, so their design has already been perfected for mobile users. You can be sure that they are helping you to capture more of this important demographic for your site.

They Have Minimal Cost

Unlike developing a dedicated app, bots have a very low cost. You won’t have to spend thousands of dollars to incorporate them into your site.

Bot platforms have created the basic infrastructure for creating bots, so you don’t have to hire a team to do all the extensive development required for building a program from scratch.

In addition, bots require minimal maintenance, so you won’t have to make a big investment of time or money to keep your bot up to date or secure.

Not only do you not have to pay a lot of money to get or maintain a chatbot, but you will get a huge return for having one on your site. Users will feel more engaged, you’ll get more leads, and you’ll make more sales as a result of having the bot on your site.

They are More Popular because of WhatsApp

WhatsApp is a popular messaging platform that allows users to send messages without using a texting service. People can instantly send messages without having to pay for an additional service or without using the data on their plan.

Because more people are using WhatsApp, they are comfortable with these kind of messaging services and are more open to using them. That means that when they see the chatbot on your site, they are going to be more willing to engage with it.

They are going to understand that they can communicate easily and without being charged for the privilege. The more they use the bot, the more likely they are to get the information they need and to become a lead or a paying customer.

The more you can include on your site to increase user engagement or to promote sales, the more successful you will be. If you are not already using chatbots on your site, it is important that you look into how to incorporate them and start developing one.

You may find that a simple bot that answers frequently asked questions is enough to get the results you need, or you may find that you need multiple bot models depending on the user and the device. Either way, you will find that the investment is well worth it.

Life always seems to be zooming past us and things can get pretty intense and complicated. When we feel pressed by time constraints, the demands on our personal live and our professional time, the sheer volume of all we feel responsible for, the things we must do and the the things we want to do, it can feel overwhelming. There are many things we can do to simplify our lives and still get a great deal accomplished. If you check online you will find hacks for work, hacks your love life, exercise, and anything else you can imagine. Setting up all of these hacks requires a hack or an app of its own.

Strategies for A Simpler Life

1. Keep your list short.

• The fewer things we try to accomplish, the more we will be able to get done.
• Make a list in the morning (or the night before) of the two or three most important things you want to get done at work today.
• Before you leave work, make a list of the one to three most important things you want to get done while you are at home.
• Make a new short list for the weekend.
• This action of making a working list will force you to prioritize so that you can focus on and succeed at accomplishing the tasks that are most important to you.

2. Focus. Stop Multitasking.

• Switching back and forth between two or more tasks is inefficient.
• Learn to focus on one task until it is complete before moving on to something else.
• Try this for a week and notice the difference it makes.

3. Pare down your diet and your waistline.

• The next time you are shopping for groceries, make a list, and stick to the edges of the store.
• What is on the edges? Lean protein, vegetables, fruits, and dairy. Throw in some nuts, some healthy whole grains and you have a healthier diet.
• You will save time and money at the store while working to improve your health.

4.Write shorter emails.

• Try to limit your emails to five sentences.
• If an email is five sentences, no one will complain that your email is too short , too long, or too wordy.
• You can maintain relationships without spending a lot of time typing a senseless email and repeating information people already know.
• If the topic will take more than 5 sentences, then pick up the phone or walk to the other person’s office as the situation calls for it.

5. Get to bed on time, or early.

• Any extra time that we are awake at night is rarely productive.
• Most people spend evenings nodding off in their favorite chair while the TV watches them. Break your TV habit.
• Get to bed early and get up early.
• You will get more done.

6. Sort through your mail as you enter your home.

• Every day, take the mail from your mailbox, and stand over the garbage can.
• Throw out the junk immediately, and sort the rest.
• Put it all away in its appropriate place.
• This will help avoid the frustration of lost bills and clutter.
• Save your precious time and energy for more important tasks than going through a huge stack of junk every time you need to find a bill or other important paperwork.

7. Go off-grid.

• I know that it seems like more and more work must be completed on the computer, but there are pitfalls to working online.
• The internet can be, at times, both the best and worst thing ever invented.
• While it provides us with tremendous resources, it is also an absolutely perfect way to waste a lot of time.
• Would you rather complete the billing report for your boss or watch a video of kittens riding on the back of a goat? See?

Try out these seven simple methods and see how they can make a significant impact on your life and your productivity.

What other things can you add to this list?

Keep your life simple and it will be easier to get through each day with a sense of accomplishment.

In order to run a successful social media campaign, you need the right tools. If you attempt to do everything manually, you’ll spend your entire day trying to keep up with all of your social media pages.

There are many tools and services that automate tasks such as posting, social listening, ad management, analytics and more. How do you choose the right social media tool for your business? Here are five questions to ask before choosing a social management tool.

1. Does It Support Multiple Platforms?

Some social media tools only work with one social media platform. There are some that focus exclusively on Twitter, for example. Others support both Twitter and Facebook. If you use more than this, you should seek a service that supports multiple platforms. You may decide you need more than one tool. It’s simpler, of course, if you can manage all of your campaigns from one dashboard. Even if you use two or more social tools, it’s convenient if they each work on multiple platforms.

Social media is rapidly expanding. More and more people now have accounts not only with Twitter and Facebook but also with LinkedIn, Pinterest, Instagram, Google Plus and others. You don’t have to use every social media site in existence. In fact, it’s best to focus on a handful where your audience is most likely to be found. At the same time, it’s more efficient to find a tool that works with a large number of sites. That way, if you decide to expand your marketing to include another social media platform, you can continue using the same tool.

2. Does It Offer Flexible Plans and Pricing?

When choosing social media services, you naturally have to consider your budget. The cost of such tools varies a great deal. There are some services that offer free plans, though these only provide limited features. Others offer free trials. Both free plans and free trials are good for assessing the value of a service without a commitment. The more sophisticated tools usually offer several tiers of service.

When you can choose among several plans, you won’t be paying for services you don’t need. Additionally, you can upgrade the plan as your business grows. Some of the higher end social media services offer customized plans. This is often best for businesses that are serious about getting the most out of social media. A customized plan ensures that you’re getting exactly the tools you need. When considering the cost of the tool, you should look at the overall value it provides. If it’s going to help you to reach more people, save you time and improve the ROI of your ads, a higher cost may be justified.

3. Does It Provide Solid Analytics?

Social media analytics is at the heart of successful campaigns. It’s essential to know the results of your social media actions, including views, engagement, ROI on ads and customer loyalty. Among other things, analytics are crucial for giving you insights into your target audience. They help you fine-tune your ads by showing you which ad types, headlines, images and other factors are most effective.

All social media tools offer some type of analytics. The social media platforms themselves offer basic metrics. For example, Facebook has About Page Insights, which provides useful data about your page. Some tools offer more comprehensive analytics, which allows you to do things such as tracking your paid campaign performance across many different platforms. This type of data is extremely useful if you do extensive advertising on social media. It’s important to identify your analytics needs and find a tool that gives you the data you need.

4. What Kind of Options Does It Offer for Publishing and Scheduling?

One of the biggest benefits of social media tools is that they let you publish content on a regular schedule. You can create your posts in advance and schedule when you want them posted to different platforms. This is an area where it’s necessary to perform analytics. You want to identify when your audience is most responsive and create your posting schedule accordingly.

A social media tool that lets you do comprehensive content planning for both organic content and paid ads helps make your campaigns more efficient. It saves you time and makes it more likely that people will engage with your content. It also makes it easier to maintain a consistent image and message across platforms, which is important for brand building.

5. Does It Offer Tools for Social Media Monitoring and Listening?

Monitoring the millions of conversations happening across social media can be overwhelming. There’s so much data, it’s difficult to organize and make sense out of it. On the other hand, if you have a tool that helps you monitor the conversations that are relevant to you, it gives you a major advantage. Without effectively monitoring social media, it’s hard to know where your audience is spending time. Since the social media landscape changes so rapidly, you want to be able to keep up with the very latest conversations.

Social media listening is crucial to help you understand the needs and interests of your audience. It tells you the questions they’re asking and what type of products they’re looking for. This helps businesses plan ads, posts and even new products and services. Monitoring also keeps you informed about what people are saying about you and your competitors. When assessing tools, you should make sure you choose one that helps you monitor the social web.

Choosing the Right Social Management Tool

There are many social media tools on the market, with more appearing all the time. You have to decide which of these are most helpful for your own campaigns. When comparing tools, you have to consider your budget, which platforms it supports, the features it offers and how user-friendly it is. You also have to determine if you need multiple tools or if you can find one that handles all of your needs. The above five questions can help you narrow your choices down.

The post 5 Questions to Ask Before Buying a Social Management Tool appeared first on Sysomos Blog.

Explainer videos are a perfect way to teach, inform, inspire and familiarize potential customers with your business, but do you know all the other great ways to use these videos to your advantage?

Today, I’m going to tell you how.

Before we can go full steam ahead, however, I want to make sure I clarify what an explainer video is. It’s pretty self explanatory, but an explainer video introduces a product or service quick and memorable – quick being the operative word here.

According to Wistia, You can expect the average viewer to watch 82 percent of the video if it’s between zero to 30 seconds, and 75 percent of the video if it’s between 30 to 60 seconds. Which doesn’t surprise me, since a survey conducted from the National Center for Biotechnology recorded in 2000 the average attention span was 12 seconds, and it decreased to 8 seconds in 2013.

Better get your message across quickly or people will lose interest. There are all types of explainer videos too – from simple whiteboard videos to complex 3-D animation. When done right, explainer videos are a great way to engage with potential customers.

Increased Conversions

The longer you can keep a visitor on your website, the better the chances are to make a conversion. According to a recent survey conducted by Video Rascal, 85 percent of people are more likely to buy a product once they see an accompanying explainer video.

Most of all, explainer videos can relay your message in an efficient and effortless way for your users to comprehend. Thus, you increase your conversion rate. Sure, copy on your website is great for SEO, but when someone comes to your page, there is a slim chance they’ll even read the majority of your content.

Dropbox is a great example of a company who took full advantage of the effectiveness of explainer videos.

They limited their homepage design to contain only two simple things: one explainer video and one download now button. This video increased conversion rates over 10 percent, and with the video being viewed 750,000 times in one month alone, the 10 percent increase resulted in several thousand extra sign ups per day.

Turn Customers Into Promoters

A big reason online videos are so popular is because videos are easy to share. That is why social video generates more than 1,200 percent more shares than text and images. Though it is unpredictable what makes certain videos spread like wildfire across the internet, providing those easy to share videos will help spread your message.

It also provides your current customers who love your product or service with a simple way to become promoters through their social platforms.

Content Retention

To me, this is the largest advantage to explainer videos. According to Western Ontario University research, great visuals make potential customers remember your business story. On average people recall 10 percent of any visual data three days after and up to 70 percent of audiovisual information.

By harnessing both the visual and auditory senses together, explainer videos increase retention rates and clarify their value concept in a condensed way. By utilizing this knowledge of brain science, developing compelling explainer videos will increase memory retention. This two-sided approach gives new information several different avenues to enter long-term memory.

Visual clarity

Many companies have a tough time expressing what it is they do or sell in a way that potential customers can easily comprehend. An explainer video will help take the guess work out of describing just that. Text can be construed in numerous ways, and your audience may miss your main selling points. However, when you are explaining your story on video, there is a less chance of confusion, because videos tend to create less jumble than copy alone.

Having an explainer video replace your boring text will result in less misreadings and misunderstandings. It’s equivalent to an in person business demonstration.

Case Studies

Another way to use explainer videos to your advantage is to incorporate case studies into the script. Using case study stories can help bring down the level of “salesiness” in the video. It adds a certain level of authenticity to your communication, as the message is coming from the customer, rather than straight from your business.

Viewers of your videos are often “researchers” who are attracted to hearing about experiences of people “just like them.” People love to connect to a story and situation.

Qualified Leads

Explainer videos allow your company to convey the perfect message every time. It’s easier to communicate unique selling points to a visitor in a video by showing – rather than telling – them how your product works. Once a visitor decides to convert to a lead, they will be much better educated and much more qualified when your salesperson gets them on the phone – a stepping stone to generating more revenue for your business.

Do you currently have a great explainer video? Share with us some of the free ways your take advantage of it.

Personal branding is commanding a lot of attention these days, especially from job seekers and people trying to get ahead in the workplace. Google the topic and you’ll be greeted with a cacophony of advice to take your career to the next level or turn you into the next Richard Branson. (Good luck with that last one.)

But branding the individual is especially relevant in the professional services, where developing thought leadership is a critical tool in an expert’s rise to prominence. I’m not talking about the self-described, “empty-suit” expert. Instead, these are serious professionals who want to increase their visibility and become recognized industry experts.

These high-profile individuals are often referred to as thought leaders or Visible Experts. But it takes more than knowing your stuff to build a following. To become a true thought leader you need to focus your attention in the right areas.

What areas, specifically? Here are seven critical tips that will build your personal brand and put you on the path to higher visibility.

Top Personal Branding Tips

1. Focus your expertise

Don’t try to be an expert in too many things. The more narrowly you focus your expertise the faster your personal brand will grow. Why? Because people are not very good at associating an expert with more than one thing. Not to mention, it’s very difficult to master multiple disciplines. A few exceptionally gifted people have become experts in more than one field, but most are remembered for only one of them.

If you could become the go-to expert in one thing, what would it be? Try completing this sentence:

“I am the leading expert in ____________.”

Whether or not you consider yourself the leading expert yet is unimportant. “Leading expert” is in the mind of the beholder. If you can state your expertise in clear, simple language, you’ve already taken a huge step forward.

Let’s look at a quick example. Suppose you’re an accountant and you say your expertise is in taxes. That’s probably not going to cut it. “Taxes” is just too broad a concept. Could you credibly be considered “the leading expert” in taxes? I doubt it. A focus on “state and local taxes” would be better, but you may need to go even narrower to find an expertise platform you can “own.” How about “state and local taxes for online purchases”? That’s more like it! It’s very specific, but still applies to a lot of businesses out there.

Okay, you get the picture. Narrower is better.

2. Pick your issues carefully

One more advantage of a narrow focus is that it limits what you will write and speak about. No longer faced with a wide world of possibilities, you can work within a clearly defined range of issues.

But won’t you run out of things to talk about? That’s very unlikely.

When you zoom in on an area of specialty you’ll discover a whole new ecosystem of problems, challenges and ideas just waiting to be answered, explained and debated. In fact, it’s possible to become overwhelmed by the complexities of practically any niche.

The key is to focus on issues where you can shine. Here are three questions to help you filter out the noise:

1. Where do your interests lie?
2. Where do your clients struggle most?
3. Where can you deliver the greatest value?

At first, focus on just two or three issues. These will be issues that you write and/or speak about on a regular basis, so you should either understand them in depth already or be prepared to put in the research to get up to speed. Your goal is to become closely identified with these issues, so make sure they align well with the services you sell.

Choose issues that have legs. That means that they 1) don’t have an easy solution, and 2) aren’t likely to go away soon. If you want to get the most traction from your issues, you should try to take a position that’s different from other experts who work in this area. If you can take a contrarian or controversial stand, so much the better. That’s how you attract notice and stick in people’s minds.

3. Shape your personal profiles to be consistent with your expertise

Take a look at your bio on your website and the personal profiles on your social media pages. Do they present you as a highly credible professional? Do they convey a consistent message? And do they connect you to the issues you’ve chosen to write and speak about?

Next, take a look at your areas of expertise and tags. Do they align with the image you are trying to project? If someone were to look at those alone, what would they communicate about you?

Finally, turn your attention to your photo(s). Professional photography is essential if you want to convey a high-end personal brand. That doesn’t mean it has to lack personality — you can take your shot in any setting. But it needs to look great. A web cam portrait or cropped dinner party shot isn’t going to put your best foot forward.

4. Develop a signature piece of content

Most high-profile experts have a high-value piece of content that demonstrates their expertise and amplifies their reputation. It’s an important way they deliver on their brand promise. And it’s their signature calling card. In rare cases, this piece can become even better known than the expert, herself.

For many thought leaders, this signature piece is a book. Sometimes this book becomes the tipping point that catapults an expert to stardom. Most of the time, however, the effect is less dramatic but still critical to the expert’s reputation. If you aren’t ready to write the book on your area of expertise, however, there are other options to enhance your personal brand.

Here’s a great way to start: write an executive guide on one of your issues. Guides are typically 20–30 pages long and cover a topic at some depth. Think of it as an advanced introduction to an issue. Usually, it’s best to write your guide in plain English with the goal of explaining a technical subject to a non-technical audience. (This ability to simplify complex issues is a hallmark of Visible Experts.)

Another option is to produce white papers. These pieces are usually shorter than guides and can be quite technical. Most white papers range in length from a few pages to 20 pages or so.

You can also consider an entirely different approach to your signature content — conduct a research study that explores a problem of intense interest to your target audience. If possible, the topic of the study should align with one of your issues. And when you publish the final research report be sure to include your expert analysis along with the findings, and identify some practical takeaways your readers can apply to their businesses. As an added bonus, you’ll be able to use the findings to inspire countless blog posts and speeches (see #5 below).

Whatever format you choose for your signature piece of content, it should be a sample of your expertise at work and position you as a knowledgeable and creative thinker.

5. Write regularly on your area of expertise

A person’s reputation isn’t created in one big push. It’s built up over time, little by little. That’s exactly how you should think about your thought leadership, too. Writing on the issues you care about in small, steady increments is one of the best ways to build a loyal following.

And writing on a regular schedule comes with significant added benefits, too: it helps you master new material — deepening your expertise — and it forces you to think through and refine your arguments.

Where do you publish your writing? Your firm’s blog or e-newsletter are ideal outlets for your thinking — they are cheap to produce and flexible enough for a busy schedule. You should also look outside your firm for new opportunities to share your ideas. Seek out publications and blogs that speak to your target audience. If you were ambitious, you could even establish a regular guest column in an outside publication, becoming the resident expert on your issue.

However you end up structuring your writing, keep your eye on your end goal: to broaden the visibility of your personal brand and get in front of people who otherwise might never find you.

Now, your writing doesn’t always have to break new ground. Many of your readers will be new or unfamiliar with the issues you cover, so it’s okay to return periodically to your most important points and apply them to different situations. Even long-time readers may appreciate looking at a familiar topic from a new angle.

The important thing is to set a schedule and stick to it. Even when you are busy. Try reserving a time on your calendar every week for writing. If you schedule won’t allow a fixed schedule, you may have to carve out time as it becomes available, or plan to do your writing during off hours.

6. Embrace speaking events and webinars

Public speaking is one of the most popular — and effective — tools used by Visible Experts. It’s a terrific way to demonstrate your expertise and strengthen your personal brand. If you choose your speaking events carefully, you can reach groups of people who not only are in your target audience but are very receptive to your ideas. And if you can meet members of the audience face to face after the event, you can make personal connections that are just not possible online.

Webinars are another great way to expand your visibility to new audiences and build your personal brand. Like speaking events, webinars allow you to share your knowledge and express your personality. You can even field their questions at the end. And once you’ve been doing them for a while, webinars can attract hundreds of qualified and engaged prospects at a time.

Each format has its pros and cons. There’s nothing like standing in front of a live audience to convince people that you are the genuine article: a true expert. But public speaking can be time consuming and, in many cases, expensive. While webinars can’t convey the full range of your expertise, they can be remarkably effective at building your reputation and brand. They free you from the bounds of geography and take less time and effort to pull off. You can also record them and use the recordings again and again.

Whether you choose to speak publicly or conduct webinars (or both), live events provide a unique opportunity to give your audience a taste of your personality. They can also expose you to a new set of people outside your local area who haven’t yet discovered you through your writing.

7. Network with peers and prospects

Here’s a personal branding tip that shouldn’t surprise you: networking can be a powerful tool. It has two important dimensions:

1. Who you network with, and
2. How you do it

Let’s look at these in turn.

Without a doubt you, should be rubbing elbows with people who can use and buy your professional services. That’s a no brainer. But there’s another important group that might not be so obvious — experts. Don’t be afraid to network with other experts, especially those who serve an audience similar to yours but don’t directly compete with you. (For instance, if you an expert architect, you might reach out to top engineers or construction managers.) Their recommendations can hold a lot of burnishing power. And just associating yourself with respected authorities can place you in their league. It’s not necessarily a bad idea to network with your direct competitors, either. They can’t always handle all the work that comes their way, so they can be valuable referral sources. Or if you take a different angle to solving problems, it might complement their own approach.

So where can you find other experts like you? Follow them on social media, get to know them online, and start exchanging ideas. This approach will make you a better expert and put your brand on a higher plane. Building a rapport online also makes it easier and less awkward to meet in person at industry conferences, where you can deepen the relationship.

The “how” is easy. While face-to-face networking has some real advantages, its reach is limited by the time you can spend on it. Social media, on the other hand, can be a faster and easier way to build your brand. (Don’t get me wrong. It still takes time.) To the uninitiated, social media — with its plethora of platforms and tools — can be intimidating. But most industries favor just a few. LinkedIn is the most common social platform across the professional services, and many firms use it exclusively. In higher education, Facebook is very popular. A quick review of competitors’ websites should point you to the one or two essential social media tools in your industry.

If in-person networking is working for you, by all means keep doing it. But if you haven’t yet dived into social media, it offers a lot of possibilities to increase your exposure, meet prospects and other experts, debate relevant issues and share your expertise. This is exactly how personal brands are built.

So there you have it: seven personal branding tips that can make you a better, more visible expert and a recognized though leader. You don’t have to tackle them all at once. You may even be doing some of these things already. But the more you time you can devote to building your personal brand, the faster your stock will rise.

If you’d like to read a few real-life personal branding stories, check out this post that profiles four experts from a variety of industries.

Welcome to the latest installation of our weekly blog series – Psychological Hacks for Marketers. Each week we will introduce a new shortcut that the consumer’s brand takes and how the crafty marketer can take advantage. Last week’s topic was Confirmation Bias.

This week we are discussing:

Anchoring

Anchoring refers to the cognitive bias for human beings to overly rely on one piece of information, usually the first piece of information, and to judge additional information provided against it. This impacts decision making, because instead of parsing out options and weighing them evenly, we tend to place more importance on the first option and then compare and contrast each proceeding option against that one.

That means that options are not on an even playing field, even though we’d all be better off if they were.

For marketers, however, this means that there are some best practices you can follow to steer consumers in the direction you want them to go. Here are a few examples of how to do that:

• When presenting a discount or special offer, always mention the full price first. Rather than simply describing something as half off, quote the full price and then show the new, lower price. That discount looks a lot better when compared to our anchor, which is much higher.
• Pricing tiers are common in many industries, especially among technology and service companies. Pay one price, get X. Pay a higher price, get X +Y, and so on. You will notice that a common practice is to show three different plans side by side. That’s because if there were two plans, people would steer toward the cheaper one. But with three, people are comparing the second two to the first one, and will usually choose the middle option.
• When comparing your own products to those of your competitors, anchoring is a powerful tool. By choosing the specific characteristic where your product offers more value and highlighting it, you are controlling the conversation in the consumer’s mind.

Successfully deploying strategies that take advantage of anchoring can help companies convince consumers to make the right decision right now.

Attracting and retaining Millennial employees is becoming a real challenge for big companies. Millennials, according to studies, are choosing smaller companies and startups over bigger, more established corporations. They want competitive salaries, but they also expect work-life balance and a diverse and engaging workplace culture. More importantly, many Millennials want to make a difference in their work—something they don’t think they can achieve working for a big conglomerate.

To attract this elusive generation, one company is tapping into a platform millions of Millennials visit every day. According to Bloomberg, Goldman Sachs started running ads on Spotify earlier this month in an effort to recruit Millennial employees. The audio and banner ads, which target Spotify users in the U.S. and the U.K., direct potential employees to a careers quiz page where people can explore the various departments and roles in the company.

Why Goldman chose Spotify

The bank’s decision to run its ads on Spotify isn’t surprising given the streaming service’s popularity among young music listeners. In The Everything Guide to Millennials, we revealed that 35 percent of Millennials are subscribed to the music streaming service. (Twenty six percent of Generation Z, the cohort after Millennials, are subscribed to it, according to another Vision Critical report.) With over 100 million users—a majority of them 35 or younger—Spotify is a good place to get in front of potential employees.

Spotify is just one of the new channels Goldman Sachs uses to build its employer brand. In 2015, for instance, the finance company used Snapchat Stories to lure Millennial employees.

“Spotify and Snapchat are unconventional media choices for us,” admits Amanda Rubin, global co-head of Goldman Sachs’ brand and content strategy, to Bloomberg. “We’re trying to be valuable and help young people understand Goldman.”

Diversity and impact

Goldman’s Spotify ads aim to highlight the company’s diverse workforce. “It’s a place where talented people from diverse backgrounds come to make a difference—from building a new app to managing an IPO,” the ad says. “We’re people who have studied the humanities, science, math—you name it.”

That messaging is a nod to the fact that most Millennials value diversity in the workplace. The campaign also aims to address the fact that Goldman Sachs is still ‘mostly white and male’—an issue that the company is actively working to correct.

Recognizing that Millennials want to do meaningful work, the ad also emphasizes the potential of working for the company. “When you want to make an impact in unexpected ways, think Goldman Sachs,” the ad concludes. According to our study, ‘making a difference’ matters to 26 percent of Millennials when it comes to their ideal job—a six percent lift from Gen Xers. Among Gen Zers, that number jumps to 32 percent.

Retaining Millennial employees

Goldman Sach’s aggressive push to reach Millennials and Gen Z is just another reminder of the intensifying war for young talent. As these generations take over the workforce, leveraging their skills, talent and business acumen will become an even bigger competitive advantage for companies.

But just as crucial as attracting Millennials, companies need to figure out how to retain these younger employees. Millennials tend to change jobs more frequently compared to older generations. So, while running ads on Spotify and Snapchat is a good start, companies like Goldman Sachs can’t afford to stop there. More than ever, big companies need to invest in understanding the motivations of their Millennial and Generation Z employees—and build a workplace culture that meets their expectations.

Photo credit: WORLD ECONOMIC FORUM/swiss-image.ch/Photo Rèmy Steinegger

Before I started Boardroom Insiders I worked as a consultant to some of the biggest tech companies in Silicon Valley, helping them improve their return on investment in industry events.

Along the way I developed specific expertise in CXO events—those rarified experiences designed to attract the highest level of executive. As CIOs, CFOs, CMOs and even CEOs became important target audiences for technology vendors, my clients worked to navigate the CXO event landscape. Many even launched their own C-level events with varying degrees of success.

With Chief Information Officers becoming one of the most popular targets for tech vendors, events targeting CIOs have proliferated. The “holy grail” is Gartner Symposium ITxpo (ITxpo for short). Their annual event, just held in Orlando last month, is arguably the biggest gathering of CIOs in the world, attracting more than 3,000, as well as thousands of other senior technology executives. It regularly sells out and has expanded to seven other cities worldwide. If your company is seriously targeting enterprise CIOs, you have to be there.

Participating in ITxpo is a very, very expensive proposition. It’s not just sponsorship fees; many vendors invest in parties, dinners and other add-ons, such as industry-specific sessions and special exhibits designed to wow and engage attendees. Every year, ITxpo sponsorships and “extras” sell out months in advance.

So you get the picture. This is one hot event with everyone trying to stand out and grab the attention of the biggest players in technology.

But here’s the disconnect. Despite their staggering investments in ITxpo and other major events, few companies go the extra mile to engage meaningfully with the attendees, particularly the CIOs. Instead, what prevails is a “build it and they will come” mentality.

To its credit, Gartner tries to lead sponsors in the right direction with pre-event conference calls in which attending CIOs talk about what gets their attention. I sat in on a few of these over the years and the CIOs always say more or less the same thing:

Tell me how you can solve my business challenges and help drive my business goals and I will meet with you. If you are just giving me a generic sales pitch, I’m not interested.

Yet year after year, I’ve watched companies fail to follow this advice. It makes me nuts to witness such a huge (and costly) missed opportunity. Here are some of the essential things that companies fail to do at CXO events like ITxpo—followed by five things you can do to improve your ROI at CXO events in the future.

They don’t identify which of their target accounts are registered for the event. Gartner—and many other event producers–often provide this info to top sponsors weeks and months before the event. While they don’t share the names of the registrants, they will give you a list from which you can find out, for example, that 25 people from GE are registered. Their titles are also typically provided, so you can figure out which business units or departments the attendees are coming from.

Even when they do know which accounts are going to be on site, they do little or nothing to try to engage these accounts. Sales leaders have told me that without the exact names of who is coming, it is “awkward” for their salespeople to reach out to key accounts pre-event. Really? Why can’t a salesperson call a customer and say, “Hey Joe, I know you guys are sending a lot of senior people to XYZ event and that one of your big initiatives is ABC. I think we can help you with this. Can we set up a meeting on site with you or some of your colleagues?” I worked with one company who spent hundreds of thousands sponsoring ITxpo and in the end had just a handful of meetings even though thousands of their top customers were on site. Major fail!

They treat everyone the same: If you have a $100 million customer on site, shouldn’t you plan a special experience for them, as opposed to a $500,000 customer—or a prospect? Companies should segment their audience and create special VIP experiences for top accounts. I have made this recommendation to many clients over the years but they seldom follow through. And this next point below is the main reason why they are unable to do so.

They fail to get their own CXO team to leverage major conferences as a crucially valuable face-to-face-customer opportunity. Many who work on ITxpo or other big events are unable to convince their own C-level leaders of their importance. With so much talk about the importance of being “customer centric” and engaging customers at the C-level, it is amazing that more tech company CXOs don’t use key events as an opportunity to learn and network alongside some of their most important customers. Imagine you are a CIO and a sales leader tells you that the CIOs of many of your top 100 customers are going to be at an event. Would there be any question that you should be there, investing several days, setting up as many customer meetings as possible, hosting hospitality events and participating in multiple sessions alongside customer CIO peers? How better to spend your time than meeting face-to-face with your most important customers? And how convenient is it that so many are in one place the same week?

The failures described above are common across many different types of CXO events, including proprietary events costing hundreds of thousands—and in some cases millions—of dollars. As a rule, companies spend more time and money on planning the food and beverage than they do targeting and learning about their C-level attendees! ITxpo is just one example of how we have seen companies fail to do what is required in order to make the most of their investment in a CXO event.

OK, end of rant. Now let’s look at five things you can do to get some real value out of your investment in CXO events.

1. Ensure Your Own CXOs’ Participation: If you are targeting enterprise CXO customers, you need to have your own CXOs at the event. Period. Enterprise CXOs want to meet their peers. In fact, if you secure a commitment from your own CXOs early in the game, you can use their presence as a hook to schedule more customer meetings. Some companies designate one or two CXOs to be the official “hosts” of their customers and build a whole VIP experience around them that includes receptions, customer lunches and dinners, by-invitation-only presentation sessions, meetings in a company hotel suite, VIP booth tours, prioritized seating at keynotes, etc. Do you get how a customer CXO might be a lot more interested in this type of experience than a vague invitation to “Come meet with us?”

2. Have an Account-Specific Strategy: Your top accounts merit special pre-event outreach and activities such as those described above. Obviously you can’t invite every single account to be a part of your VIP events, so you should prioritize whom to invite and then make a special effort to get them to attend through personalized communications and CXO-to-CXO outreach.

3. Prioritize CXO-to-CXO Meetings: Private CXO meetings are where the rubber meets the road. An event like Gartner ITxpo gives your CXOs an opportunity to knock out literally dozens of customer meetings without having to travel all over the country. It goes without saying but just to be clear: you should prioritize your most important accounts for these meetings and make sure that every scheduled meeting is worthy of your CXOs’ time.

4. Do Targeted Pre-Event Customer Outreach: Meetings between CXOs don’t just happen on the fly. Their time is scheduled months in advance. I have seen companies just hope and wait for a CIO to happen by their booth. Really? Instead, decide which customers you want to engage and then design a strategy for doing so, well in advance. Executive-to-executive outreach works best, so ask your CXO sponsor if they can send out personal emails (that you write for them using information you know about each customer) or make a call to their peer to seal the deal.

5. Do Your Homework—Thoroughly: Once you have a CXO’s commitment to meet with your company, do your homework so you can brief your executives on every aspect of the customer, their company, and your company’s relationship with them. This includes not only information from your CRM and sales team, but up-to-the minute external research including any published interviews and insight from their latest earnings call. One tech CXO said that he doesn’t go into a meeting without knowing absolutely everything there is to know about the customer, including “what color socks they are wearing.”

And, as President Abraham Lincoln famously said, “Give me six hours to chop down a tree and I will spend the first four sharpening the axe.” This is a great guiding principle when it comes to planning your presence at CXO events. Time and money spent getting your own CXOs on board, targeting the right customers, and doing your homework on them is more important than the catering.

There are two main reasons you aren’t producing the results you want now.

Not Enough Activity

The first reason you aren’t producing the results you want right now is because you aren’t taking enough action to produce them. There is no harvest in the Fall if you do not plant in the Spring.

Activity is what produces results, not desire, not intentions, and not luck. If you really desire a certain result, you’ll do the work necessary to produce it. Otherwise, it’s just talk. Intentions are important, but only when coupled with action. You can grow old waiting for luck to find you; she only looks for hustlers.

If you aren’t where you want to be right now, it’s very likely that you aren’t doing what is necessary to get there. If you were, you would already have what you want.

Not The Right Activity

Maybe you are taking massive action and still aren’t where you want to be, even though that’s less likely to be true.

You may believe that the activity you are taking isn’t the right activity. Before you  decide that this is the case, you have to honestly determine whether or not you’ve done enough of that activity to get the results you want. Have you gone all in? Would some impartial party know exactly what you were trying to accomplish by looking at the actions you are taking, believing it to be an extraordinary effort?

You also have to decide whether you’ve done enough activity  for long enough to get the results you want. Some outcome you want require persistence, and that’s why so few produce those outcomes. It rarely makes sense to switch strategies and tactics without first executing against what you believe to be right.

All that said, if what you are doing isn’t working, treat each failure as feedback, and then change your approach. Find a model, someone who is already producing the result you want, and look for clues as to what they are doing differently. Repeat this until you find something that works, and then go all in.

The obstacles to success are almost exclusively internal. Even when they are not,  with enough energy and effort applied consistently over time, the obstacle will yield.

The post The Hustler’s Playbook: Two Problems You Have Generating Results appeared first on The Sales Blog.

At the end of the day, your ultimate professional success could rely on one basic thing — getting people to do what you want.

The trick is, being persuasive without adopting dishonest or manipulative tactics.

However, no matter who you are and what industry you're in, the ability to influence others is crucial.

Here are nine methods for persuading others — some might seem a bit tricky, but they could provide a serious boost to your career:

1. Always have a good visual handy

A picture's worth a thousand words.

As Forbes previously reported, Dartmouth University's Brendan Nyhan and Georgia State's Jason Reifler ran a study looking into strongly held political convictions.

The researchers presented information that contradicted with the worldview of the study participants — hoping to see what it'd take to persuade them. Subjects didn't respond well to a written summary of evidence or attempts to assuage their self-esteem and make them feel comfortable.

However, all isn't lost. According to the study, charts were actually persuasive.

This won't always be easy — it's not like you'll always have a chart or a powerpoint on hand whenever you need to convince someone of something. However, this is an important to keep in mind. Cold facts and personal connections won't always do the trick — sometimes, a visual presentation is the edge that you need to sell your point.

You don't even have to get too fancy. As Stephen Meyer wrote for Forbes:

"All visuals used in the study were simple plain-vanilla graphs, so their power had nothing to do with fancy design or big production values. They were effective because they spoke to the brain in its native language."

2. Make people feel good

Dr. Robert Cialdini, author of "Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion," lists "liking" someone as a major "weapon of influence."

According to the American Psychological Association, when we have a good feeling about someone, we're more likely to find them persuasive.

That's not too surprising. Still, for anyone that's a bit shy or awkward, that probably sounds easier said than done. However, as Business Insider previously reported, there are a few habits that you can get into in order to come across as more likeable.

3. Look the part

Would you buy something from a salesperson who's slouching, fidgeting, and avoiding eye contact? Of course not! They could be the most honest person in the world, but it wouldn't matter. Their body language projects a lack of confidence at best, deception at worst.

If you're going to become persuasive, you've got to brush up on some body language tips and start looking the part.

4. Repeat yourself

"Words, words, words," as Hamlet said.

Repetition can be pretty annoying. In writing, it's horrendous if overdone. In conversations, it's brutal (we all know someone who keeps cycling between the same few anecdotes — or, if you're like me, you are that person).

However, repetition in speeches and pitches isn't necessarily a bad thing. Plenty of famous speakers employed rhetorical devices that involved repetition. Feel free to adopt it to emphasize and drive hope your point.

5. Make people want to help you

The American Psychological Association reports that Cialdini found "reciprocity" is a key factor in persuasion.

This makes perfect sense. People tend to be more comfortable supporting individuals who've demonstrably done something for them.

So it's not a bad idea to start establishing a network of people that "owe you one."

6. Don't whine

When you're trying to present a convincing point, it can be difficult to strike a good balance. You don't want to appear passive, but you also don't want to come on too strong.

John Brandon of Inc. writes that it's probably better to air on the side of honesty and politeness:

"Some of the most miserable people I know have this attitude about persuasion that it's all about cajoling others. You try to trick them — usually through a stern attitude or a demanding voice — to get what you want. It doesn't really work, unless 'what you what' is the same as feeling miserable."

7. Demonstrate your value

What makes gold, diamonds, and Ninetales so valuable?

Scarcity.

According to the American Psychological Association, scarcity it another one one Cialdini's principles of persuasion.

People tend to value what is rare and unusual. It can be tricky sometimes, but try to use hat psychological quirk to frame and construct a convincing argument.

8. Have people do favors for you

Counterintuitively, people tend to like you more when they do things for you. It's called the "Ben Franklin effect." So if you can put yourself in a position where others do favors for you, that's a good start. As Changing Minds notes, Franklin once wrote, "He that has once done you a kindness will be more ready to do you another than he whom you yourself have obliged."

9. Tell a story

Humans are emotional creatures. Data and facts are crucial, but if you really want to be persuasive, you've got to appeal to emotion as well. This means finding a compelling way of conveying what's on your mind. Whether you're speaking with your boss, interviewing with a hiring manager, or even giving a presentation, you should always strive to tell a story.

SEE ALSO: A Stanford psychologist shares a smart trick for landing your dream job

Join the conversation about this story »

NOW WATCH: Shake Shack founder Danny Meyer explains the 3 keys to building a powerful brand

With less than two months left until the end of the calendar year, it’s time to take stock of what resources you have left.

By this point most holiday planning and expenditures have already been made. Depending on how their years have gone, many marketing leaders will find themselves with a little margin left over in certain budgets. If you’re one of them, how can you make the most of the various pockets of cash lingering in your marketing department’s balance sheet?

One of the most reliable ways to get consistent productivity from spare budget space is, without a doubt, contract marketing staffing solutions. It’s an excellent way to bring in extra production capacity and expertise to work on a pet project, overhaul outdated systems, or give your hard working full-time team a little breathing room.

Use It or Lose It

Depending on your business, your fiscal year may end on December 31^st or at some other time. Regardless, after that point any unused funds you had available throughout the year will typically be removed by that time.

Unanticipated wiggle room in the budget can appear all the time, for a variety of reasons. Perhaps a big campaign you planned earlier in the year ended up being a little cheaper than originally projected. Maybe the heads of the businesses opted to divert extra funds your way for a big last-minute push.

It may be appropriate for some parts of the business to aim to operate under budget whenever possible. Marketing is usually not one of them. Unused funds are missed opportunities for better ROI and short or long-term growth.

Of course, that’s not to say that you should spend extra cash frivolously. But if there’s a consistent, smart place to invest them then, you should take advantage of it. And fortunately for marketing leaders, there’s one sure bet that reliably drives returns in almost any situation: talent.

Marketing Staffing Solutions: The Sure Bet

The wisest investment you can ever make in marketing is into talent. But when you’re dealing with temporary budget surpluses, you can’t count on those funds being available in the future.

That usually closes the door to full-time hires. You don’t want to bring someone new in if you’re unsure where their salary will come from next year.

But there are still plenty of talent resources out there to pull from that don’t require an indefinite commitment. Interim marketing consultants, contract marketing staffing, freelancers and more can all add experience, expertise and production capacity to a marketing department that’s been stretched thin throughout the year.

Perhaps best of all, that temporary expertise doesn’t have to end at midnight on January 31^st (or whenever your fiscal year ends). A good marketing staffing agency can work with you to pull from existing time-sensitive budget space and structure a contract that makes marketing talent available well into the future.

Where to Look for Budget Leeway

The way I’ve been talking, you’d almost think that most marketing leaders just have piles of cash laying around ready to be used at their discretion. The reality, of course, is that most of your marketing budgets will typically get used up more or less as expected throughout the year. It’s not like marketing departments are just overflowing with money.

That said, you may be able to pull from more budget buffer space than you realize. There are the typical marketing department budgets, of course—campaign and special project funds, technology and IT budgets, vendor accounts, etc.

But don’t forget to look at agency budgets, reserves set aside for consultants, and the general operating budget. These are places that senior marketers who get wrapped up in the day-today rigors of marketing might not consider. But with a little creativity and an experienced staffing partner, any extra space found in these cash pools can be translated into more experienced marketers working alongside your team.

Ideas for Making the Most of Your Staffing

Most senior marketing managers have a million things on their plates. There’s no shortage of directions they’d love to divert more hands and brains. But if you’re lucky enough to find yourself with some spare budget and wondering whether to put it towards a flexible talent resource, here is some inspiration:

• Knock out that pet project you’ve been sitting on. You know the one I’m talking about. Every high-powered marketing executive has a vision that they’ve never been able to execute due to lack of capacity. Bring in just the right expertise for the job through an interim workforce to get your idea off the ground. You can even try something crazy you’re not 100% sure will work.
• Get a systems audit. Sure, your marketing operations are performing well enough. But are they the best they could be? Bring in a growth hacker or other interim marketing consultant to evaluate your internal processes, tools, and systems to identify obvious problems that you might not have noticed.
• Modernize outdated assets. Got some old creative assets that look like they’re from the 90’s (because they are)? What about clunky site pages and legacy code that are killing your SEO and customer experience? Use your marketing staffing solutions to bring the archaic parts of your business into the modern era.
• Reinforce your team during extended absences. Are you expecting a member of your marketing department to be on extended leave due to vacation, maternity, sabbatical or something else entirely? Find a contractor with the right skills to fill the gap while they’re gone and minimize the disruption of their absence.

Financial services has the reputation of being a dry industry. Even for consumer-facing financial businesses, it can be challenging to communicate such in-depth and complicated concepts as financial health and wealth management, budgeting, retirement investment plans and so much more. For B2B fintech companies, the complexity intensifies. They’re dealing with executives who are in the financial trenches and understand the market — including all of its regulations. So it’s easy for fintech brands to pack in the jargon and generate the same uber-professional content they always have.

But the fintech world is changing in exciting new ways. With global investment in financial technology increasing 75% in 2015, fintech brands have the opportunity to differentiate their brand and their marketing by embracing new content trends, formats and tactics. To spark some inspiration, we wanted to spotlight some B2B and B2C financial brands that have fearlessly broken new content marketing ground:

1. Content Discoverability and Bingeing: American Express

American Express has always eagerly experimented with different messaging tactics and content marketing approaches — for both its B2B and B2C divisions. We recently showcased how the brand’s commercials featuring Tina Fey were great examples of buyer-focused messaging in action, and we’d be remiss if we didn’t spotlight some of its B2B content, as well.

Using results from an in-depth survey of business travelers, American Express and its Global Corporate Payments division developed an immersive content hub spotlighting business traveler behaviors, experiences and even their pain points. The hub features a variety of supplementary assets, such as blog articles, listicles, infographics and presentation. All visual and tactical in nature, these pieces helped put a fun spin on meaty survey data. Additionally, the research, which was developed in partnership with the Global Business Travel Association (GBTA), helped position the Global Corporate Payments division as a thought leader in the industry, while also providing knowledge and insight to business leaders.

2. Video and Mobile Optimization: Rocket Mortgage

Searching for a house can be tiring. You have your list of must-haves and deal-breakers; you need to consider the location, school district, taxes and so many other factors. Once you find the house of your dreams, though, you need to get pre-approved for a mortgage. This swallows up even more time and a lot of paperwork. Rocket Mortgage by Quicken Loans is striving to solve this headache. And the brand’s turnkey website, how-to video and streamlined mobile UX all contribute to this goal. (If you need proof, just sift through the site. It’s really so easy to navigate.) Quicken Loans allows buyers to choose their own journey based on whether they want to get a mortgage or refinance their home. Then, they walk through the process, showing how visitors can build their account, share financial information and get approval. If visitors have any questions, they can instantly connect with an expert through chat.

The Quicken Loans site, companion mobile app and supporting content are all integrated, helping to make the experience as easy as possible for user. That, at the end of the day, should be the central goal of your content marketing efforts.

3. Pain Point-Driven Blogs and Newsletters: Square

Over the past decade, there have been significant shake-ups in the point-of-sale market. New mobile apps and solutions helped level the playing field — allowing consumers to exchange money and helping smaller businesses better track their sales and streamline operations.

Square was undoubtedly one of the contributors to this market disruption. Over the years, Square has had to develop a content arsenal that speak to both consumers and businesses. How can both parties use Square? What are the features and capabilities? What are the benefits? Because Square targets small businesses, high-tech jargon simply won’t do. This is why Square’s content strategy really shines. An introductory video illustrates how Square works and lays out the short- and long-term benefits. The brand also shows its vision for helping businesses grow via additional services like Square Dashboard, Square Instant Deposit and Square Capital, as well as its suite of software products.

Finally, the Town Square Business Resource Center serves as the small business owner’s guide to success. Touching on everything from marketing and operations to employee hiring and retention, Square shows that beyond being a solution provider, it has a lot of small business savvy that can help business owners in the long term. People can even subscribe to the blog so the latest business insights and best practices are delivered right to their email inboxes.

4. Data Visualization, Personalization and More: Mint

At its core, Mint was designed to make people’s financial lives easier. Through a single platform and mobile app, you can develop and track budgets, pay credit card bills, get your credit score, and so much more. The solution itself is streamlined; users can track their progress by tapping into visual dashboards and looking at vibrant charts. The information is easy-to-digest and is always bolstered with follow-up advice and support based on users’ unique behaviors, affinities and goals.

The Mint blog, called MintLife, takes a similar approach. Targeting young professionals who want to be more “money smart,” MintLife features quick-hitting articles on budgeting, holiday planning, building credit and more. Its diverse coverage shows that MintLife has successfully become an integral resource for maintaining financial health.

As you can see, there are truly no limits for financial brands that want to educate and empower their buyers. Even B2B brands are breaking the mold of 30-page briefs and daunting research reports — and are using storytelling, blogging, video and other methods to convey their unique value proposition and add value to buyers’ lives.

Jim Collins “Good to Great” has been the inspiration for many CEOs who are determined to elevate their companies from run-of-the-mill to lasting greatness. There are many lessons to be learned from the book, but one of the most significant is the idea that before organisations can stand a chance of realising their potential, they must get the right people on the bus, the wrong people off the bus, and get the right people in the right seats.

This concept holds true for every department, but the principles have particular relevance for companies seeking to build an excellent sales organisation that is capable of significant, scalable growth whilst delivering reliable revenue performance every quarter along the way.

Making bad hires or failing to address personnel issues has a particular impact on the sales function. In organisations with complex or lengthy sales cycles the knock-on impact of bad recruiting or the acceptance of poor performance can resonate for multiple quarters – and cause sales leaders to lose their jobs…

EXPERIENCE ISN’T ENOUGH

Markets and buyer expectations are evolving so fast that we cannot rely on experience as the primary factor in recruitment decisions. Attitude, aptitude, adaptability, curiosity, cultural fit and the capacity for continuous learning have become far more effective predictors of long-term sales success.

If we are to recruit the right sales people onto our sales bus, then we need to assess their character as well as their claims of accomplishment. We need to judge whether they are likely to fit in to our environment, and whether they have a powerful internal commitment to continual personal development that is not dependent on how many training courses we end up paying to send them on.

My observations suggest that the more people candidates interact with during the interview process, the better – including their potential peers. The more we test what they are capable of actually doing, rather than saying, the better – through realistic role plays and scenarios. Conducting formal role based psychographic sales assessments can also make an important contribution.

A 360° PERSPECTIVE

But what really seems to matter is taking the time, combining all the inputs to get a complete 360° view of the candidate, and involving multiple people in the decision. It’s expensive in time and resources. But the cost of a bad sales hire is far higher. Recruitment is hard: I’ve learned that it’s critical that we take the process seriously, set the bar high, and refuse to accept sub-standard hires.

Which then leads to the question of where we stand with regard to existing members of the sales team. Were they in retrospect the right people in the first place (would we hire them again?), are they still the right people, and are they in the right seats – from the perspective of both their potential contribution to the organisation and their personal development goals?

Just as in recruitment, attitude, aptitude, adaptability, curiosity, cultural fit and the capacity for continuous learning are the key indicators of whether any individual has the potential to do better than they currently are. But they are also the factors that tend to be innate and hardest to change.

DIFFICULT DECISIONS

It can lead to some tough conversations, but we cannot afford not to confront these issues. We need to give able people who are willing the chance to improve. We may need to accept that we have failed them and that we need to do more to enable them to realise their potential. But both in recruiting new talent and managing the existing team, ensuring we always have the right people on the bus in the right seats is one of every sales leader’s most critical responsibilities.

We can’t ignore how easy or difficult it is to manage each individual. Our chances to change behaviour are highest where people are open and responsive to fresh ideas and keen to learn. Conversely, we can all probably reflect on the frustrations of trying to manage someone who refuses to see the need for change, and may even overtly or covertly rebel against it.

Organisations typically only tolerate these “lone wolves” for as long as they deliver their numbers. But even that tolerance may be misplaced. If these mavericks cannot see how the world is changing around them, it’s only a matter of time before their luck will inevitably fail – and let’s not forget that their impact on the rest of the team can often (but not always) be corrosive.

Having observed a few of these situations over the years, I’ve concluded that attitude and aptitude problems have to be confronted, even if sales performance appears to be currently satisfactory. If attitude and aptitude show promise, it’s worth investing time to see how the individual can be developed and whether they would do better in another seat on the sales bus.

LEARN FROM THE BEST – AND LET THE WOLVES GO

Understanding what makes your role-model top performers tick, and systematically sharing their best practices with the rest of the sales organisation can be tremendously productive, and is usually welcomed with open arms by sales people who are willing to learn and committed to continual personal development.

As far as the “lone wolves” are concerned, you need to make it clear that their performance is assessed not just in terms of their personal revenue numbers, but the way in which their results are achieved and their contribution to both the satisfaction of the customer and the well-being of the sales team as a whole.

These conversations needs to take place, and they can’t be informal: they needs to be clearly documented and deviations from expected behaviour recorded and reviewed, because you may need this information to justify a conclusion that the individual no longer has a role to play in your future sales organisation.

Some sales leaders take the view that “lone wolves” are incapable of changing their spots (to mix a carnivore metaphor), but I believe that it’s worth at least one honest attempt to help them recognise the need to for change, and to support them in achieving it. But there need to be limits to our tolerance.

In the long run, excellent sales organisations are built from smart individuals in appropriate roles, in a supportive environment in which the whole team learns and develops together. So – when you think about your sales organisation today, and your ambitions for the future: do you have the right people on the bus in the right seats? And what are you doing about the people that will only hold the bus back if they remain on it?

Email is still the top business communications tool. 58% of us check our email first thing in the morning, and – according to market research firm Radicati Group – 100+ business emails were sent and received per day per user last year – and that number is set to reach 140 by 2018.

Email is easy to use, virtually everyone has an email address, and email can be instantly accessed from wherever you are via your mobile device.

However, too often sales leaders don’t spend enough time developing an email strategy. If you think of email simply as a tactic for your sales people and don’t invest in the appropriate planning, you lose a tremendous opportunity for differentiation and competitive advantage.

It all starts with the subject

If you can’t get your prospective customer to open your email, what is the point in coming up with compelling content?

The subject matter is the only thing that affects the open ratio and how many people you get to convey your message to.

The subject matter has to provoke or intrigue your prospect enough to motivate them to move to the next stage. It must be unique, timely, and relevant.

You must have the right messaging

If you can’t effectively and consistently communicate the value of your service or solution, you won’t get anywhere. Organizations should have a process in place to make sure that their sales people are using the right language and messaging for the right audience.

Using email templates is one way to do this. By creating quality email templates for a particular audience, you save your sales reps time and gain the confidence that reps are using the messaging that best addresses your prospects’ needs and problems.

Sales templates give your team a powerful foundation for outreach that gives reps more time in the day and improves internal alignment within the organization. Further, with today’s technology, your reps don’t have to sacrifice personalization or control. Dynamic fields allow for immediate personalization, and reps also have the ability to customize as needed for particular accounts.

In addition to reducing the time your team spends writing emails, email templates have the added bonus of ensuring that emails are clear and concise and without grammatical errors.

Make sure delivery is as efficient as possible

In sales, time is your most valuable commodity. You don’t want your team manually sending out large numbers of emails. With advanced automation, you can instantly deliver emails to a much larger group of prospects. If you aren’t automating email delivery, you’re wasting a huge amount of your reps’ daily selling time.

Consider when you come back from a huge event such as Dreamforce. If your reps are writing or even just sending individual emails to the entire list of prospects, it will take days – or even weeks. By then, your competitors will have gotten to them first.

Follow-up based on buyer interest levels

As you create an email strategy, pay attention to how you will execute follow up. You need to have a system in place to prioritize your team’s follow-up activities.

Everyone knows that you should focus on the best opportunities to maximize sales efforts. But, how can you do this? Email engagement analytics make it easy and fast to identify the best opportunities. These analytics provide real-time insight into how prospects are interacting with emails and content – providing the guidance your reps need to determine which prospects they should call or email first.

Refine email processes for greater success

Continuously monitor your email programs and campaigns. See which ones have the most success. What was done differently? By understanding which approach works best, you can repeat it and use it across the team at scale.

Analytics have the power to provide you with this knowledge. With engagement analytics, you can see which email templates get the highest response rates – so that you reuse the templates that work the best and toss out the ones that don’t work well.

Marketing has long employed subject line A/B testing to improve and refine its messaging. Now, sales organizations have the same capability. If you have a group of 50 prospects, split it into two. Send 25 prospects an email with one subject line, and 25 prospects the same email with another subject line – and see which one performs best. Learn what type of approach resonates best with your target audience, so you can copy the same style for future emails.

Make your sales emails more effective

To get the most from sales emails, leaders need to be sure that their email programs and campaigns are well thought out, personalized, and executed in the most efficient way possible.

With an optimized email strategy, organizations save time – speeding conversion rates. Which is why today’s top performing sales organizations are incorporating sales engagement analytics and automation as part of their sales email strategy.

My last post was prompted by this question from Jim, “How do I know my efforts on social media are working, or am I just spinning my wheels?” As a struggling entrepreneur, Jim wanted to know how to measure the ROI on his social media marketing. I discussed the first four metrics in part one and today I will cover the remaining five.

Rate of Applause

What?! This is written content, why are you talking about applause? It might sound funny but it is possible. The standing ovation after a speech would be a sign that your job is well done. When it comes to your social media, the rate of conversion and share (applause) would aid you in measuring the content quality.

You may also use the data from Google Analytics to measure your content’s quality. When there is a new post on your website, you have to check the page views count. Also, you need to be mindful of the time of day you receive the most visitors. When these numbers go up, you can say that you are progressing, the content’s quality is high and people visited your website to get information.

Conversion share

This is a metric that will take some research to compute for your social media marketing. Breaking it down to the simplest explanation, it is comparing your conversion rates with your competitors’ conversation rates. When you do this you can see what part of your targeted audience you are reaching and also see who your competitors are reaching. If you keep track of it over time and you see your conversion share decreasing, you know you need to reevaluate. You can also use this when analyzing your competition. What are they doing that attracts customers? Is this something you can do better or different?

Sentiment

Social media is influenced by the sentiments of the audience. To measure the sentiment accurately, you should do it manually. This is the labor intensive process which includes the sorting of your posts. It also involves determining if the feedback obtained is positive or negative.

Economic value

Most businesses use social media to generate sales, leads, and profits. This is where the rubber meets the road. You can begin by simply tracking the total number of conversions obtained from the online users who visited your website via your social media platforms. But you need to take it another step and track the total rate of conversion. Next, you need to factor in the cost of customer acquisition. This will help you determine the economic value of social media marketing.

All of these metrics should be in your social media marketing toolbox. You can use these to determine how well your marketing plan is working and where you need to do things better or do things differently to get your maximum return on investment.

Why is it that the Sales Operations role is so obsessed with data?

A position relatively new to the modern sales family, the sales operations role is a crucial data bridge across the entire company, but what is it about data that drives almost 100% of their focus? Well, nearly all marketing and sales initiatives are lead generating campaigns. And within each of those campaigns, the leads are funneled back into the company’s CRM (in most cases, Salesforce).

So given this modern era of hyper-volume, hyper-speed, hyper-personalized communication, data volume is higher than even, making data obsession a primary focus for the Sales Operations role.

From beginning to end, data is the fuel to their purpose: overall team improvement. That process starts with the input of data into Salesforce. But there are a number of data sources that contribute to this, from lead conversions on your website, to leads generated from your sales development teams’ cold calls.

That’s why we created our newest ebook, “Salesforce for Sales Engagement: Sales Operations Leaders,” to talk about why the Sales Operations role is so data-obsessed, and what features they can leverage to manage that data.

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DOWNLOAD THE EBOOK TODAY

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So how exactly do you, the Sales Operations pro, manage all of this data? Lead organization and data clarity are both priorities, and Salesforce has a huge impact on both, especially in the data- obsessed Sales Operations role. Here’s a few ways to manage all that data:

1. Salesforce leads and accounts.

There may be countless tools and technologies for everything from lead routing to advanced predictive analytics, but no matter how complex Salesforce data gets, lead and account records remain the building blocks of the Sales Operations role and initiative. So before you can build out any additional or unique functionality, you need to make sure your building blocks are in order. The more streamlined you can make your records, the easier it will be to leverage the information in those records throughout the sales process.

2. ICP and lead grading.

Once you’ve established your lead and account records, the next step is to determine which leads the company is after. This requires the development of an ideal customer profile, or ICP. Your ICP should list all of the characteristics (like industry, company size, and growth stage) of the accounts that your business is most likely to close. Then, there are a ton of technologies that can be added to Salesforce to help with lead grading, or the process of assessing how well an incoming lead matches your ICP. If a new lead is in the wrong industry, or their company is too small, you don’t want your sales team to waste time pursuing that lead.

3. Clean data.

All of your configuration of lead records and scoring means little if the data isn’t right. Cleaning sales data is a constant process — especially when inputs are coming from all over. Duplicate data can distract from productivity, but rules like Salesforce’s de-duping prevent duplicates upon creation, while also encouraging merging practices. This way, by managing the data at a high level and using an installed data quality dashboard package, you can see where the pain points are in the sales data, and what the potential causes for those pains could be.

Download your free copy today and start getting the most out of Salesforce. While CRMs weren’t built with modern sales tactics in mind, but remember: a team with solid Sales Operations data in Salesforce crushes numbers, while teams that just wing it barely hit quota.

The post Why the Sales Operations Role is so Data-Obsessed appeared first on SalesLoft.

An animated video creation, production and marketing service company for technology companies like Cisco, BMC Software, Compuware, IBM, UPS, Brocade, Oracle, CA Technologies and many others did not have the systems or processes in place to build and leverage relationships. They relied on “word of mouth” and on satisfied clients continually coming back without any urging. But because of the “marketing slow down” when enterprise IT technology companies shrank their marketing budgets, clients stopped investing in expensive animated videos.

Because there was no “keep in touch” system in place, previous clients forgot about the animated video firm as they were no longer on “top of mind.” So we went to build a LinkedIn community to re-engage clients and prospects and provide them with discussions and content that moves relationships forward. But most of the company’s content was around video production so it was later stage content. For example, here are the blog articles the firm was creating:

• Don’t forget sales when creating your explainer videos
• How can your video content address group dynamics
• Starting at the end: constructing videos around the call to action
• Six questions to ask when planning a 2-Minute Explainer
• 3 things to understand in planning an enterprise explainer solutions
• The must-have information to include in a two-minute B2B video
• Five mistakes B2B organizations make when condensing information into two minutes
• Why make your introductory B2B content marketing video two minutes long?
• 4 ways to help ensure your B2B content marketing videos create conversations
• How to condense your product information and marketing messages Into a two-minute
• (or less) video
• Why I don’t like storyboards for B2B videos

What Was Wrong with This Content?

You see there was no content to drive demand. There was no content to create an unconsidered need and an unexpected urgency and demand for the company’s services. You see, the company was only basing their content on what customers were saying what their needs were. So, they were responding to those known needs with commodity messaging that were very much like the information their competitors were providing. They weren’t showing prospects a pathway to change and giving them the urgency to do it now.

A recent Forrester study shows that 74% of committed executive buyers will invest in the company that is able to create the buying vision and turn it into a path to value. Can you tell me how articles around video production creates the buying vision? It doesn’t!

How the Animated Video Explainer Firm Started to Create the Buying Vision and Demand

In talking with our client, we found out that in many cases their animated explainer videos were just being put on the homepage or product page and used within their tradeshow efforts and that was it. Now as Content Marketing Institute shows, marketers are using at least 13 different content marketing tactics.

So our client needed to put a social content marketing plan in place, where there were articles, podcasts, white papers and webinars on how the videos should be integrated with social media platforms like LinkedIn, webinars (how videos should be used before, during and after the event), email marketing, PR and other marketing initiatives.

The animated explainer video firm literally laid out a road map that shows how the videos should be used within their everyday sales and marketing activities and demonstrated concrete results for clients that were using an integrated approach.

Notice, how the firm is now creating an unexpected need. Their prospects’ minds and budgets may be on a different approach like webinars but now they see exactly how they can get an even greater ROI for the initiatives they are focusing on.

The firm also created a plan to focus on sales enablement and how sales and marketing leaders need to have a new thinking about explainer videos and design them for buying teams that not only involved IT but also operations, finance, sales and marketing and other departments. This content that created a new need led to a completely new revenue stream for our client: Buyer’s Journey Video Bundles.

Cisco invested in the bundle to communicate the business value of their workload automation software to data center operations, to data center architects and to big data specialists – 3 different and unique audiences. Axios invested in the bundle to help IT champion the extension of their popular assist platform and to help other departments like HR, corporate finance department and facilities and security understand how they can automate repetitive tasks and replace high maintenance home-grown solutions with ITIL-compliant cloud solutions. Five9 commissioned the video bundle to target IT operations, COOs, and sales execs within contact center outsourcers. Journey sales used the video bundle to tell sales managers about how their analytic features can help fill the pipeline, tell the sales team how they can use smart rooms to increase engagement and provide a video invitation to customers to show customers how smart rooms benefit their team.

Community Building, Re-Engagement and Lead Nurturing with the Right Social Content Leads to More Revenue Using LinkedIn

Once the animated video firm had the right content they were then able to create a LinkedIn community that was filled with discussions that focused on the unexpected video needs of IT sales, marketing and sales enablement leaders. Because their discussions introduced new ideas their prospects weren’t thinking about and because these discussions led prospects to content that created the buying vision, there was a quick demand for the video firm’s services. In fact, after re-engaging with a former client on LinkedIn, the firm received a video project that generated $38,000 in revenue and it was an opportunity that would have otherwise been missed.

Based on the sales and marketing initiatives that the target companies were engaged in – and on the needs and goals of the target decision makers, the company also began a 1-to-1 nurturing campaign that showed the prospects how they should be using videos. From there, they led prospects to white papers that they can download. They were then able to nurture the prospects on and off LinkedIn. Through an email campaign, prospects were getting our client’s articles that were published on top websites like MarketingProfs (which has 600,000 global members including entire marketing organizations at the world’s largest corporations) and the CMO Council (which has 10,500+ members that control more than $450B in aggregated annual marketing expenditures and run complex, distributed marketing and sales operations worldwide). And, the LinkedIn nurturing campaign focused on issue based content that moves prospects forward.

So our client’s prospects, which included enterprise IT companies like Microsoft and Oracle saw that our client was a thought leader and they realized that they would not just get a video delivered to them. But, they will also get a plan and vision for using those videos in the most effective manner.

Let’s Talk Results….

• More than 500 sales, marketing and sales enablement leaders from companies like Act On Software, Compuware, ADP, Kapost, BMC, CA Technologies, Flexera and others are part of the firm’s LinkedIn group
• The firm had sales ready conversations with companies like Microsoft, DynamicWeb, Qubole, Dell, SDL, Serus, Netsertive, EMC, iSupport and many others
• The firm gained more than $100,000 in additional revenue from new clients from LinkedIn like Deltek, Oracle, Dynatrace, Seeburger, JourneySales, Axios Systems and others
• The firm gained $65,000 in additional revenue from their Buyers Journey Bundles that we created after the company saw demand for the buyer’s journey content they were creating.

Now, take a look at the content you’re sharing on LinkedIn and other social media platforms? Is your content driving demand and an unexpected urgency?

Maybe it’s time to rethink your social content strategy. To help you, click here to watch our webinar on how to influence buying decisions using LinkedIn and content.

WOULDN’T IT BE GREAT IF YOU COULD GENERATE UP TO 64% OF YOUR WEBSITE REFERRAL TRAFFIC JUST FROM LINKEDIN?

Having a successful LinkedIn profile does not happen overnight; I know because it has taken me years to achieve a 6-figure income from speaking opportunities coming directly from LinkedIn.

There is a process which can help you achieve more connections, leads and sales from LinkedIn as a speaker and I am going to share this with you today. If you want to take that next step, and become a real success as a speaker on LinkedIn then keep on reading for my secret “sauce” to winning business as a speaker.

1. BUILD A NICHE NETWORK

The first part of your LinkedIn “sauce” may seem obvious, but you do need to build a niche network of targeted business connections. The reason I am telling you this is because of LinkedIn’s news feed algorithm.

Did you know that when you “like” a post on LinkedIn your network will be notified, and vice versa? I have over 22,000 connections all in different niche areas of business, which means that more of my connections will engage with me on LinkedIn because they are seeing their connections doing the same.

It’s simple really; the bigger the network you have, the more people will see your updates, and engage with you.

I do want to add that connecting with “anyone and everyone” will not work; only connect with people who you know or want to know professionally.

2. POST ENGAGING UPDATES

I will talk about LinkedIn Pulse as the next “sauce ingredient” but before then, I want to talk about posting updates. It can be very difficult to measure the type of content you should be sharing as an update.

If I have a new blog, I share this five times on Twitter and I do this to give me an idea of the type of content that gets engagement. The content I write is both suitable for Twitter and LinkedIn because it is educational, and informative. Knowing what works on Twitter helps me understand what I might get the most engagement from on LinkedIn.

It is a survival of the fittest and sometimes it works, and sometimes it doesn’t. Find out the topics that DO work inside of LinkedIn to reach a high amount of engagement.

3. LINKEDIN PULSE

LinkedIn Pulse has been, without a doubt the most successful LinkedIn feature for me, especially this year. I now have over 12,000 people following my LinkedIn Pulse and have had hundreds of thousands of views on my posts.

More than a million LinkedIn users have been posting on Pulse, with over 130,000 posts being published every week.

One of the best ways you can utilise Pulse is to get featured on their channel. To make this a possibility, use your keywords in the title of the blog, and in the content. You can also reach out to them on twitter via @LinkedInPulse and ask them to feature your content in a specific category.

This however, isn’t always enough. This is just one network. Utilise your other social networks with the link to read more being directed to your article on Pulse as a biggest factor when LinkedIn are featuring posts is based on traffic, and engagement in the first few hours of setting that content live.

These are the three key factors to my LinkedIn secret sauce. There is of course, a lot of basics like completing your profile, having a professional image and having recommendations and endorsements that contribute to winning business as a speaker.

Likes + Engagement + Content = A large LinkedIn network that drives sales.

WHERE TO GO FROM HERE:

Want to generate 3 leads in 7 days at ZERO cost?

I will be running a LIVE and FREE 1 hour certified webinar on 15th November at 7pm and it will take you through his 6 step checklist to generate 3 hot leads over the next 7 days using LinkedIn without SPENDING A PENNY.

WHAT THE WEBINAR WILL COVER:

• My Six step formula to building your profile and generating leads
• Build your LinkedIn network with 500 QUALITY business connections
• Generate 1 Lead Per Day
• How to find potential customers using LinkedIn’s search functionality
• Get to the top of LinkedIn for your specific keywords in less than 60 seconds
• Utilise all of LinkedIn’s features to put you one step ahead of your competition
• How to share targeted and relevant industry information
• Learn 3 SECRET LinkedIn features you didn’t know about
• The Do’s, and don’ts of your profile image
• Design and implement a networking strategy for success

All I ask for is 60 minutes of your time so I can help you master LinkedIn to grow your business, and be a success on LinkedIn. You can sign up for this webinar here.

This story was delivered to BI Intelligence "Fintech Briefing" subscribers. To learn more and subscribe, please click here.

India's prime minister, Narendra Modi, announced on Tuesday that existing R500 ($7.5) and R1,000 ($15) banknotes would no longer be legal tender from November 9, with airports, railway stations, and hospitals only accepting them until November 11.

The government made the surprise move in a bid to combat "black money," or currency that is unaccounted for, and counterfeit currency. Consumers have until December 30 to exchange their R500 notes for new editions with enhanced security features, while limited numbers of new R2,000 ($30) notes have been issued. A replacement R1,000 note will be introduced in "due course," according to a government official. 

Here's how the government's move could benefit the fintech sector: 

• Limited availability of cash will drive people to digital alternatives. The government is restricting the number of notes a consumer can exchange to R4,000 ($60). There are also restrictions on ATM withdrawals, and huge queues have already formed outside of post offices and banks, according to the BBC. This means people may not be able to retrieve the new cash they need before official businesses stop accepting the old bills, which could force them to turn to other methods of payments they have not previously considered, including mobile wallets and P2P solutions. 
• The unbanked may now have no other options except digital payments. Many segments in India are unbanked, especially drivers, small grocery store (kirana) owners, small retail shop owners, and travel agent businesses, according to Forbes. With a suddenly diminished availability of cash, these segments will be compelled to find alternatives — and many will likely turn to mobile wallets as they are typically easier to acquire than bank accounts with debit cards.  
  
• More digital transactions will generate more customer data. This will allow online lending platforms, alt lenders, and other fintechs to make better assessments of potential borrowers' creditworthiness. As a consequence, availability of credit from these fintechs may increase.  

A boost to the fintech sector could help another government policy succeed. The Indian government has been promoting digital finance for some time. Earlier this year, the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) launched United Payments Interface (UPI), a tool that allows users to access multiple bank accounts and merchant payments within a single mobile app. The government is keen on a transition to a cashless economy because it could be cheaper to run, help reduce the underbanked population, and reduce financial crime as electronic payments are easier to track. Growth of the fintech industry, and increased use of fintech products, will only further drive the move toward a cashless economy. 

We’ve entered the most profound era of change for financial services companies since the 1970s brought us index mutual funds, discount brokers and ATMs.

No firm is immune from the coming disruption and every company must have a strategy to harness the powerful advantages of the new fintech revolution.

The battle already underway will create surprising winners and stunned losers among some of the most powerful names in the financial world: The most contentious conflicts (and partnerships) will be between startups that are completely reengineering decades-old practices, traditional power players who are furiously trying to adapt with their own innovations, and total disruption of established technology & processes:

• Traditional Retail Banks vs. Online-Only Banks: Traditional retail banks provide a valuable service, but online-only banks can offer many of the same services with higher rates and lower fees

• Traditional Lenders vs. Peer-to-Peer Marketplaces: P2P lending marketplaces are growing much faster than traditional lenders—only time will tell if the banks strategy of creating their own small loan networks will be successful

• Traditional Asset Managers vs. Robo-Advisors: Robo-advisors like Betterment offer lower fees, lower minimums and solid returns to investors, but the much larger traditional asset managers are creating their own robo-products while providing the kind of handholding that high net worth clients are willing to pay handsomely for.

As you can see, this very fluid environment is creating winners and losers before your eyes…and it’s also creating the potential for new cost savings or growth opportunities for both you and your company.

After months of researching and reporting this important trend, Sarah Kocianski, senior research analyst for BI Intelligence, Business Insider's premium research service, has put together an essential report on the fintech ecosystem that explains the new landscape, identifies the ripest areas for disruption, and highlights the some of the most exciting new companies. These new players have the potential to become the next Visa, Paypal or Charles Schwab because they have the potential to transform important areas of the financial services industry like:

• Retail banking

• Lending and Financing

• Payments and Transfers
• 
Wealth and Asset Management

• Markets and Exchanges

• Insurance

• Blockchain Transactions


If you work in any of these sectors, it’s important for you to understand how the fintech revolution will change your business and possibly even your career. And if you’re employed in any part of the digital economy, you’ll want to know how you can exploit these new technologies to make your employer more efficient, flexible and profitable.

Among the big picture insights you'll get from The Fintech Ecosystem Report: Measuring the effects of technology on the entire financial services industry:

• Fintech investment continues to grow. After landing at $19 billion in total in 2015, global fintech funding had already reached $15 billion by mid-August 2016.
• The areas of fintech attracting media and investor attention are changing. Insurtech, robo-advisors, and digital-only banks are only a few of the segments making waves. B2B fintechs are also playing an increasingly prominent role in the ecosystem. 
• It's not all good news for fintechs. Major hurdles, including customer acquisition and profitability, remain. As a result, many are becoming more willing to enter partnerships and adjust their business models. 
• Incumbents are enacting strategies to ensure they remain relevant. Many financial firms have woken up to the threat posed by fintechs and are implementing innovation strategies to stave off disruption. The majority of these strategies involve some interaction with fintech firms. 
• The relationship between incumbents and fintechs continues to evolve. Fintechs are no longer viewed exclusively as a threat, nor can they be ignored. They are increasingly viewed as partners, but that narrative alone is too simple — in reality, a more nuanced connection is taking hold. 

This exclusive report also:

• Assesses the state of the fintech industry. 
• Gives details on the drivers of its growth. 
• Explains which areas of fintech are gaining traction. 
• Outlines the range of current and potential models for fintech and incumbent interaction. 

The Fintech Ecosystem Report: Measuring the effects of technology on the entire financial services industry is how you get the full story on the fintech revolution.

To get your copy of this invaluable guide to the fintech revolution, choose one of these options:

1. Subscribe to an ALL-ACCESS Membership with BI Intelligence and gain immediate access to this report AND over 100 other expertly researched deep-dive reports, subscriptions to all of our daily newsletters, and much more. >> START A MEMBERSHIP
2. Purchase the report and download it immediately from our research store. >> BUY THE REPORT

The choice is yours. But however you decide to acquire this report, you’ve given yourself a powerful advantage in your understanding of the fast-moving world of financial technology.

Join the conversation about this story »

We know a lot of work goes into a sales presentation. For many salespeople, the PowerPoint deck drives the conversation and is the one tool you may leave behind for your prospects to socialize internally.

For all those hours spent on the presentation deck, here’s one critical question to ask your sales reps that will drive success in those prospect conversations:

Is this deck focused on the customer needs?

Think about the majority of your team’s sales presentations. Do they contain the slide that talks all about your company? When your company began, how many employees you have, the number of customers, your locations all over the globe…

Your company may be long-established and have a great history of pleasing customers, but those slides don’t drive an effective sales conversation. Potential customers really don’t care about your financial stability or company culture when they’re trying to solve a problem. They want to know how your solutions can help them achieve their business objectives. Use your sales conversations to highlight how your solutions can help alleviate the specific challenges faced by the customer.

Don’t focus them on your company story, no matter how good it is.

What if a prospect asks about your company?

We aren’t saying avoid the topic at all costs, but it’s important you use that valuable time with a prospect to focus on how you can solve their problems. Our Delivery Partner, Brian Walsh, coaches our salespeople in Command of the Message® training to frame the question in a way that provides value for the prospect.

Instead of answering the question directly, say something like this, “I would love to tell you about our company. However, I want to make sure I do that in a way that provides value for you. Do you mind if I ask you a couple of questions first?”

This technique allows you to do the discovery necessary to have a value-based sales conversation. There’s a time and a place to talk about your company history and other organizations you’ve worked with. However, you should save them for the right time in the buying process.

If you find yourself discussing your company’s financial stability or its leading position in the industry, instead of engaging your customer in a discussion of their needs and requirements; it’s time to retool your approach.

Logos make for nice and colorful PowerPoint slides. Mapping solutions to problems make for signed deals.

Event-based marketing is a popular strategy to engage new prospects. In the digital age, this personalised approach remains an effective method to create intrigue.

To succeed with this strategy, though, it is important to follow up with new marketing leads after meeting them at an event.

The following is a look at some key tips to follow up with business leads after marketing events.

Plan Ahead

The first key to post-event follow-up is to have a plan in place before the event. If you wait until after the event to decide how to follow-up, it is too late.

People expect to hear from you in a timely manner, or they forget about the interaction.

Your plan should include the communication goals, message format, content and sequence for all scheduled post-event executions.

Load Your Database

Your data collection actions during the event have a lot of value as well. You need to load up your database with as much detail as you can gather about prospects.

Depending on the traffic at the event, you may not have time to capture much more than a name, number and address.

Paper forms, QR codes, interactive surveys and kiosk forms are among the approaches used to gather prospect data at events.

Start Immediately

Begin your event-based follow-up right away. You could even start with an automated email message after capture, or with a social message on LinkedIn or Twitter.

This immediate message reinforces that you valued meeting the prospect. It also allows for rapid digital connection.

Offer a free gift to help ensure that the contact pays attention to your initial follow-up message. Perhaps the prospect can click on a link in your social message or email, fill out a more involved questionnaire, and receive the prize.

Establish Objectives and Formats

Two key aspects of effective follow-up messages with marketing leads are clear objectives and appropriate formats.

Common post-event message objectives include: delivering more in-depth information, driving the prospect to your website and arranging an in-person visit.

Your goals likely dictate which format or formats you communicate with. If the goal is to quickly engage in a sales introduction, your follow-up may include a sales contact.

Often, though, you send direct mail pieces or email messages that further establish the connection. These approaches allow you to direct the contact to your website for more information and solution landing pages.

From there, you can continue the conversation with a sales call.

Wrap Up

Successful event-based follow-ups with marketing leads are driven by effective planning, data collection, message objectives, timing and formatting.

Map out your intent and strategy to turn the event prospect into a more engaged buyer or a qualified sales lead.

• Some of the world's most recognized companies have founders who served overseas. 
• The companies include retail giant Walmart, whose founder Sam Walton served as an Army captain.
• Here are other successful businessmen with roots in the military.
• Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories.

It should be no surprise that skills learned in the military such as decision-making under pressure, organization, and leadership translate well to the corporate boardroom. 

People like FedEx CEO Fred Smith or Walmart founder Sam Walton have become household names for their business success. Less known is their service prior to founding major companies.

After World War II, nearly 50% of veterans went the entrepreneurship route, though that number has substantially declined today. Still, there are currently around 2.5 million majority-veteran-owned businesses.

Here are nice companies started by military veterans.

Paul Szoldra wrote a previous version of this article.

SEE ALSO: This man built a cutting-edge stealth boat for the US Navy. Then the government tried to put him out of business.

Real-estate giant RE/MAX was cofounded by Air Force veteran Dave Liniger.

Prior to founding "Real Estate Maximums" — better known as RE/MAX— Dave Liniger served in the Air Force during the Vietnam War.

From 1965 to 1971, he served as an enlisted airman in Texas, Arizona, Vietnam, and Thailand, according to his LinkedIn.

"The military really gave me the chance to grow up. It was fun. I thought it was a fabulous place," he told Airport Journals. "It also taught me self-discipline and a sense of responsibility."

After he got out of the military, he started flipping houses for profit, and eventually got his real-estate license. He cofounded RE/MAX with his wife Gail in 1973.

Sperry Shoes was founded by Navy veteran Paul A. Sperry.

You can thank a former sailor in the US Naval Reserve for inventing the world's first boat shoe.

In 1917, Sperry joined the Navy Reserve, though he didn't stay very long. He was released from duty at the end of the year at the rank of Seaman First Class. 

Still, his experience there and further adventures sailing led to the founding of his company, which eventually created the first non-slip boating shoe. He founded Sperry in 1935.

During World War II, the Navy purchased Sperry Top-Sider shoes by the boatload. Nearly a century later, they are still a favorite of sailors everywhere.

FedEx was founded by Marine Corps veteran Fred Smith.

Back before FedEx was the behemoth logistics company it is today, founder Fred Smith was observing how the military was getting things from point A to point B.

After graduating from Yale University, he was commissioned as a Marine Corps officer and served two tours in Vietnam. He earned a Bronze Star, Silver Star, and two Purple Hearts, according to US News.

Only two years after he left the Corps, he started Federal Express.

"Much of our success reflects what I learned as a Marine," he wrote for Military.com. "The basic principles of leading people are the bedrock of the Corps. I can still recite them from memory, and they are firmly embedded in the FedEx culture."

Walmart was cofounded by Army veteran Sam Walton.

Walmart is the largest retail company in the world.

It was founded by a former Army intelligence officer named Sam Walton. From 1942 to 1945, Walton was in the Army and eventually rose to the rank of captain. His brother (and cofounder) Bud served as a bomber pilot for the Navy in the Pacific.

According to the company's history, Sam Walton's first Walmart store, called Walton's Five and Dime, was started with $5,000 he saved from his time serving in the Army and a $25,000 loan from his father-in-law. Walton passed away in 1992.

Web-hosting company GoDaddy was founded by Marine Corps veteran Bob Parsons.

The company responsible for registering a large portion of the world's web domains, GoDaddy, is the brainchild of Marine veteran Bob Parsons.

Parsons enlisted in the Corps in 1968 and later served in Vietnam, where he earned a Combat Action Ribbbon, the Vietnamese Cross of Gallantry, and the Purple Heart for wounds he received in combat.

"I absolutely would not be where I am today without the experiences I had in the Marine Corps," he writes on his website.

In 1997, he started GoDaddy. In 2014, it filed for a $100 million IPO. He left the company around that time to focus on his philanthropic efforts.

WeWork was founded by Israeli navy veteran Adam Neumann.

Coworking company WeWork's CEO Adam Neumann served in the Israeli navy.

Adam Neumann started a coworking office space for entrepreneurs in New York City back in 2011. Today, the company has 466,000 members across 28 countries, and it is valued at $47 billion.

Born in Tel Aviv, Israel, Neumann served as a navy officer there for five years before moving to the US in 2001.

Taboola was founded by Israeli army veteran Adam Singolda.

Another veteran of the Israel Defense Forces is Adam Singolda, the founder of content-recommendation engine Taboola.

Like many other successful Israeli entrepreneurs who served in the IDF (military service is mandatory in Israel), Singolda developed many of the skills that would help his company later on in the military intelligence field.

He ended up serving for seven years as an officer with the elite Unit 8200, the Israeli military's version of the NSA.

He started Taboola back in 2007, and you've probably seen his work under the many millions of articles that feature "Content You May Like." The company projected over $1 billion in revenue as well as profitability in 2018.

Kinder Morgan, a North America energy infrastructure company, was cofounded by Army veteran Richard Kinder.

Vietnam veteran Richard Kinder cofounded one of the largest energy companies in North America, Kinder Morgan. Along with his business partner, William Morgan, he started the company in 1997.

He earned his law degree at the University of Missouri before serving in Vietnam as a US Army captain. He was in uniform for four years as a Judge Advocate General officer (aka a military lawyer).

USAA was founded by a group of Army officers.

It may not be a huge surprise that USAA — a company that exclusively caters to military veterans and their families — was started by veterans.

Interestingly, though, it doesn't have just one founder: It has 25.

Back in the 1920s, it was pretty hard for military service members to get (or keep) auto insurance, since it was either way too expensive or likely to get canceled because they moved around so much.

That's why Maj. William Henry Garrison and 24 of his fellow Army officers got together in 1922 to form their own mutual company to insure themselves, according to Encyclopedia.com. Today, the United Services Automobile Association provides insurance, banking, and investment services to 12.4 million members.

Disclosure: Former Business Insider editor Paul Szoldra has USAA insurance and use its banking services.

SOFTlab creates handmade mesh sculptures that appear to melt and flow from ceilings, down stairwells, and from vaulted lobbies. Their most recent, Ventricle, evokes the human heart. (more…)

Istanbul-based Ouchhh created AVA, a geodesic surface installation that serves as a convex screen for physics-inspired moving images. The stark black-and-white pulsing forms look especially impressive with one lone spectator in silhouette against AVA. (more…)

Lasagna. It’s a family favorite that’s full of flavors. With each layer of pasta, sauce, and cheese you uncover more deliciousness than the layer before.

But what’s all that got to do with selling to people? I’m glad you asked.

See, your prospects are a lot like lasagna. They too have layers that you as the salesperson must understand to best solve their problems.

To do this, we use a concept called layered questions. There are three distinct layers of questions that correspond with the needs your prospect has:

• First Layer Questions
• Second Layer Questions
• Third Layer Questions

In this post, inspired by the book The Science of Selling, we’ll talk about what makes each layer distinct from the next, the types of questions within each layer, and how to use these questions in conjunction with each other. And just like lasagna, I’ll keep the cheesiness at an all-time high. Let's get started.

First-Layer Sales Questions

First-layer questions are preliminary questions that initiate a conversation by revealing thoughts, facts, behaviors, and situations. They are the foundation (like lasagna noodles) used to gain a basic understanding of a subject, so they’re the best questions to use when beginning conversations with buyers.

First-layer questions often answer the questions “what?” “who?” and “when?” In general terms. You won’t get many specifics here like names, firm dates, or complete strategies. Instead you might hear about departments involved and quarterly goals or deadlines.

I’ve found that the majority of salespeople I meet focus on asking first-layer questions, but that’s a missed opportunity.

First-layer questions only expose rudimentary information — they don’t provide a thorough understanding of the buyer. This limits the salesperson’s ability to customize the experience for those buyers.

You probably have several first-layer questions that you already use. But if you need more, check out the list below.

Examples of First-Layer Sales Questions

• What percentage of market share do you currently have?
• What are the requirements you have established for this project?
• What is your process for deciding which vendor you will choose?
• What is your budget for this project?
• How many other providers are you considering?
• What are your current assembly capabilities?
• When your organization considers an investment like this, who is involved in the decision process?
• When will your team migrate to the new product?

Second-Layer Sales Questions

After asking your first-layer questions, you should have a wealth of high-level information about your prospect’s situation. Now, it’s time to understand these big ideas in a bit more detail. It’s time to add the sauce.

I have discovered that these questions are what top salespeople ask more than any other. In fact, they are the key to asking meaningful follow-up questions.

Second-layer questions ask “why.” They encourage buyers to explain first-layer responses in more detail. These types of questions are vital because they prompt prospective customers to think through a thought, fact, behavior, or situation.

Since second-layer questions help us synthesize information, you’ll likely ask these questions without thinking much about it. Many second-layer questions simply ask customers to either assess or explain a first-level response.

Examples of Second-Level Sales Questions

• Why did the board decide to go in that direction?
• Would you ever consider investing in a product that did not include this feature?
• May I ask why you chose that vendor?
• Is aggregating your data in this manner what you would like to do moving forward?
• That sounds like it is very important to you. May I ask why?
• If you could change one thing about the training your end users receive, what would it be?
• Based on what we have discussed, does it make sense why so many companies are choosing to use our consultants?
• Why is it important to solve this concern right away?
• Do you believe that this issue is causing the lack of productivity you described?

Third-Level Sales Questions

As insightful as second-layer questions are, there is still one more level that goes even deeper. It is the most critical of all the levels of questions because it addresses buyers on an emotional and tactical level. When you leverage third-level questions, you’ll uncover information that will transform the entire sale.

Third-layer questions ask “how” and guide potential customers to their dominant buying motive -- the emotional reasons why they would purchase your product or service. Two popular buying motives are the hope for gain and the fear of loss.

Regardless of the type of sale, buyers often become willing to purchase a product or service when they believe that doing so will move them closer to what they desire or further from what they fear losing. This is why third-level questions are so powerful: They help you understand how potential customers will benefit from investing in your product or service.

As buyers engage with your third-level questions, you’ll build rapport with them and they’ll begin to trust you — and for good reason. Third-level questions show that you’re empathetic, considerate, and helpful. These are the best questions to ask, just as cheese is the best part of lasagna.

Examples of Third-Level Sales Questions

• If we could reduce your costs as we have discussed, how would that positively affect your company’s profitability?
• If the problem you have described is not resolved, how will it impact your organization’s sales?
• This seems like a very important issue to you personally. May I ask what it would mean for you and those on your team if this issue is not resolved?
• If your end users were thoroughly trained and using this platform effectively, how could that increase company productivity?

The 3 Levels of Sales Questions Script

Here's an example that demonstrates how first-, second-, and third-level questions work together in the context of a real sales scenario:

Salesperson: How efficient is your current equipment? [First-level question]

Buyer: It’s older equipment and not very efficient. In fact, I’ve been tasked with improving that, so any new equipment would need to make a difference in that area.

Salesperson: If you were to invest in the new equipment we’ve discussed, how would that impact efficiency levels? [Second-level question]

Buyer: Based on our conversation today, I would estimate that it should improve efficiency by around 6%.

Salesperson: How would that positively affect the business if efficiency improved by 6 percent? [Third-level question]

Buyer: Well ... it would be a big deal. It would increase our profitability and help us fund our new growth initiatives.

Ask Layered Questions to Close the Deal

Organizing the questions you ask a prospect is a lot like making lasagna. You need to layer your questions just right so that your sales positioning aligns perfectly with their needs. When you ask meaningful questions in the right order you can influence your prospect’s buying decision. By embracing the model of first-, second-, and third-level questions, you’ll better understand your potential customers and close better deals.

Editor's note: This post was originally published in November 2016 and has been updated for comprehensiveness.

The New Yorker cover for the November 21 issue has been released following President-elect Donald Trump's election win on Tuesday, featuring a colossal brick wall.

The illustration, by Bob Staake, not only provides a sinister glimpse at one of Trump's most infamous campaign promises, but also captures the resounding shock many Americans received Tuesday night after Trump's stunning upset victory.

"When we first received the results of the election, we felt as though we had hit a brick wall, full force," art editor Françoise Mouly wrote on the website.

New Yorker editor-in-chief David Remnick has been a vigorous critic of Trump, and lamented the impact his victory will have on Americans' civil liberties, the Supreme Court, and the newly emboldened Republican-controlled Congress.

"The election of Donald Trump to the Presidency is nothing less than a tragedy for the American republic, a tragedy for the Constitution, and a triumph for the force, at home and abroad, of nativism, authoritarianism, misogyny, and racism," he wrote.

SEE ALSO: The latest New Yorker cover perfectly captures America's election despair

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A hundred years ago electricity transformed countless industries; 20 years ago the internet did, too. Artificial intelligence is about to do the same. To take advantage, companies need to understand what AI can do and how it relates to their strategies. But how should you organize your leadership team to best prepare for this coming disruption? Follow history.

A hundred years ago, electricity was really complicated. You had to choose between AC and DC power, different voltages, different levels of reliability, pricing, and so on. And it was hard to figure out how to use electricity: Should you focus on building electric lights? Or replace your gas turbine with an electric motor? Thus many companies hired a VP of Electricity to help them organize their efforts and make sure each function within the company was considering electricity for its own purposes or its products. As electricity matured, the role went away.

Recently, with the evolution of IT and the internet, we saw the rise of CIOs to help companies organize their information. As IT matures, it is increasingly becoming the CEO’s role to develop their companies’ internet strategy. Indeed, many S&P 500 companies wish they had developed their internet strategy earlier. Those that did now have an advantage. Five years from now, we will be saying the same about AI strategy.

Insight Center

AI is still immature and evolving quickly, so it is unreasonable to expect everyone in the C-suite to understand it completely. But if your industry generates a large amount of data, there is a good chance that AI can be used to transform that data into value. To the majority of companies that have data but lack deep AI knowledge, I recommend hiring a chief AI officer or a VP of AI. (Some chief data officers and forward-thinking CIOs are effectively taking on this role.)

The benefit of a chief AI officer is having someone who can make sure AI gets applied across silos. Most companies have naturally developed siloed functions in order to specialize and become more efficient. For the sake of argument, let’s say your company has a gift card division. There is a reasonable chance that AI could make the selling and processing of gift cards much better. If the team has the expertise to attract and deploy AI talent, by all means let them do so! However, in most cases, that’s unrealistic. Because AI talent is extremely scarce right now, it is unlikely that they will attract top talent to work on gift cards at the division level.

A dedicated AI team has a higher chance of attracting AI talent and maintaining standards than a single gift card division does — and anyway the new talent can be matrixed into the other business units in order to support them. But the dedicated team needs leadership, and I am seeing more companies hire senior AI leaders to build up AI teams across functions.

Hiring the right AI leader can dramatically increases your odds of success, but only if you pick the right person. Here are some traits I recommend you look for in a chief AI officer or a VP of AI, based on my experience in leading and nurturing some of the most successful AI teams at Google, Stanford, and Baidu:

• Good technical understanding of AI and data infrastructure. For example, they should ideally have built and shipped nontrivial machine learning systems. In the AI era, data infrastructure — how you organize your company’s databases and make sure all the relevant data is stored securely and accessibly — is important, though data infrastructure skills are arguably more common.
• Ability to work cross-functionally. AI itself is not a product or a business. Rather, it is a foundational technology that can help existing lines of business and create new products or lines of business. The ability to understand and work with diverse business units or functional teams is therefore critical.
• Strong intrapreneurial skills. AI creates opportunities to build new products, from self-driving cars to speakers you can talk to, that just a few years ago would not have been economical — or might even have been in the realm of science fiction. A leader who can manage intrapreneural initiatives will increase your odds of successfully creating such innovations for your industry.
• Ability to attract and retain AI talent. This talent is highly sought after. Among new college graduates, I see a clear difference in the salaries of students who specialized in AI. A good chief AI officer needs to know how to retain talent, for instance by emphasizing interesting projects and offering team members the chance to continue to build their skill set.

An effective chief AI officer should have experience managing AI teams. With AI evolving rapidly, they will need to keep up with changes, but it is less important that they be on the bleeding edge of AI (though this helps attract talent). What’s more important is that they can work cross-functionally and have the business skills to figure out how to adapt existing AI tools to your enterprise.

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Sales leaders look for the edge that helps their team bring in more deals – often turning to the latest training program or best-selling book. And there are times that training is important – like when you’re onboarding a new staff member, going through a major transition, or adding a new tool.

To gain that competitive edge, sales teams need a documented, managed sales system.

A sales system isn’t your CRM or your sales automation tools. It’s not your list building software or your email templates. It is the step-by-step, pre-defined set of interactions that your sales team uses to identify, qualify and convert them, along with the tools they use to make those connections.

A sales system goes beyond the why and how that you learn from training. It creates procedures that your team can follow, taking out the guesswork and makes your process repeatable.

Of course, the importance of a system goes beyond just your sales process. You can leverage the importance of systems across your business (and your life). With your customer service department, train on complaint resolution – and take it further by implementing a case system that allows you to escalate cases and evaluate your performance. Productivity training makes a lasting impact on your team when it’s partnered with a project management or task tracking system that’s effective for your team.

How Sales Systems Help

People forget information quickly. According to the Ebbinghaus forgetting curve, we forget 42% of what we have learned within 20 minutes. Within 31 days – a typical onboarding timeline, we lose 79% of what we learned.

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Consider how much you’re investing in sales training – nearly two-thirds of which is forgotten before your team gets home for the day. It may be time to invest in designing and implementing a sales system to reinforce your best practices.

Tying a system to your training helps you:

• Identify and measure what you want to accomplish. When documenting your system, build in your key performance metrics, including how you’ll measure them.
• Identify what is working – and what isn’t. Measurements throughout your system help you leverage your high-value activities that are driving you forward. You can also focus on closing gaps.
• Leverage the expertise of the people involved. When your team understands and trusts their system, they’re able to use their expertise to improve your systems and help close your customers.
• Free up time for more important sales leadership activities – like coaching. Leveraging a sales system – not relying on training – allows you to dedicate time to building your team through coaching.

Don’t just “train to train” – train people to a repeatable system. Just as there’s no single best diet for everyone, there’s no single best sales system that works for everyone. You need to find one that’s the right fit for your team.

You can choose to start from an existing system, like the one we teach in Predictable University, based on the best-selling Predictable Revenue book. This system is based on the Cold Calling 2.0 methodology that I created at Salesforce.com to help ramp revenue faster. It’s a framework that uses a combination of phone calls, emails, and social to learn about companies and their pain points, connect with decision makers, and move them into a sales cycle – in a predictable and scalable way that works for students. Other popular systems that you may want to look at include Sandler, Challenger, Salesgravy or Barry Rheins’ Selling Through Curiosity.

Whatever you do, however you do it, anything you can do to systematize your lead generation and sales processes should be equally helpful to both management – who gets predictability – and to your salespeople, so they don’t have to figure things out on the fly every day and have more confidence that they have a proven path to making quota. If your people don’t see personal value to them in the changes you want to make, they’re more likely to ignore or even resist them.