If you’re lucky enough to work from anywhere, you can take advantage of your freedom and work while you travel. Our own Stephanie Lee just spent the last nine months as one of these “digital nomads,” with just a couple of suitcases and her laptop. Here are some practical things to consider if you want to be one, too.
Spotify
, the original titan of the music streaming world, is packed with plenty of great—but there are still plenty of third party add-ons that can enhance the original app even further. Here are some of our favorite utilities for doing more with Spotify and taking your streaming to the next level.
BEIJING, China – To the challenges facing KFC and Apple in China, add a surprise backlash from Beijing’s spat with the Philippines over the South China Sea.
Nationalists are protesting at KFC outlets and calling for a boycott, spurred by government accusations that Washington encouraged Manila to oppose Beijing’s claims to vast tracts of ocean.
Photos circulated online show young Chinese wearing scarves with patriotic slogans smashing Apple iPhones in protest.
State media have fanned public anger with a torrent of criticism of last week’s ruling by a U.N. tribunal, which found no legal basis for Beijing’s claim to most of the South China Sea.
“The Chinese public, as optimistic and positive as they are, are deeply patriotic and nationalistic, especially people who are younger,” said James Roy of the research firm China Market Research Group. KFC and Apple “are just very closely associated with the United States, and you are seeing people picking the closest symbol they can think of to demonstrate against.”
The protests are a reminder of the political risks for global brands in China, where they regularly become targets of nationalist sentiment, often stirred up by official media.
In 2012, sales of Japanese autos plunged when Tokyo and Beijing were in a dispute over control of uninhabited islands in the East China Sea.
The Chinese leadership has tried to tamp down this week’s protests with demands in state media to leave foreign companies and their customers alone.
“This is not the right way to express patriotism,” said the government’s Xinhua News Agency. The China Daily newspaper called the protests “jingoism that does a disservice to the spirit of devotion to the nation.”
Some KFC customers have responded by posting photos of themselves online with a bucket of chicken, axes or other weapons and signs reading, “patriotic hooligans, try harassing me and I’ll take you out.”
Phone calls to spokespeople for KFC in China and written messages sent through the company website weren’t answered.
A man in the eastern city of Yangzhou, northwest of Shanghai, said he watched a protest Tuesday morning after seeing a note online appealing to people to take part. He said it also told protesters to boycott Japanese and Korean goods.
“A group of more than 20 people including children broke into the restaurant and shouted at customers to leave,” the witness, Guo Lu, said by phone from Yangzhou. He said police arrived quickly and pushed the protesters out of the restaurant.
The timing is unusually bad for KFC, which is China’s biggest restaurant chain with more than 5,000 outlets but is overhauling its struggling business after a food scandal and marketing missteps.
KFC’s owner, Yum Brands Inc., is preparing to spin off its China unit, which also includes Pizza Hut restaurants, as a separate company in October in hopes of improving its performance.
KFC has long been an all-purpose target for protests about U.S. issues, especially in areas outside big cities with few other foreign symbols. In 1999, after NATO jets bombed the Chinese Embassy in Belgrade, protesters wrecked KFC restaurants.
The company and other foreign chain restaurants in China also face an upheaval as customers migrate to fast-growing local competitors they say offer more nutritious meals.
For its part, Apple has faced a series of legal hurdles this year in China, its second-biggest market.
In April, it suspended its iBooks and iTunes Movies services, reportedly due to an order by Chinese regulators.
The next month, an intellectual property tribunal ordered Apple to stop selling its iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus in Beijing after finding they look too much like a model made by a small Chinese brand. Apple was allowed to continue sales while it appeals.
Also in May, a court ruled a Chinese company is allowed to use the iPhone trademark on bags, wallets and other leather goods.
An Apple spokeswoman responded to a request for comment by pointing to CEO Tim Cook’s positive comments in April about the company’s future in China. Cook said Apple was “really optimistic” and planned to open five more stores in China during the current quarter for a total of 40.
___
AP researcher Yu Bing contributed.
The post KFC, Apple in China hit by South China Sea spat appeared first on Canadian Business - Your Source For Business News.
When comparing two front-end technologies like Bootstrap and HTML5 Boilerplate, the comparison is not as straightforward as you might expect. To start, one is a framework, and one is a template. So how are they different, and when is one best used over the other? In this article, we’ll take a look at these two front-end technologies to better understand how they compare.
Bootstrap is a free, open-source front-end framework. It’s the most famous and powerful front-end framework for web projects today. It was born at Twitter as a responsive solution with standard elements that help developers create mobile-first, front-end interfaces quickly and intelligently.
Originally called Twitter “Blueprint,” it was in fact a library. The team at Twitter created it for internal company tasks and to standardize UI components, but after receiving positive feedback from their colleagues, Mark Otto and Jacob Thornton decided to make the project public and open-source by putting the Bootstrap code on GitHub. That was four years ago and since then, there have been over 11,777 commits to its official repository (based on its GitHub bio).
The most recent major version of Bootstrap is Bootstrap 4, and one of its most useful basic templates is called Jumbotron:
Jumbotron is a very popular starting template for Bootstrap. It includes a few basic elements: a simple navigation menu, the extra attention block, and Jumbotron’s popular 3-3-3 columns grid system with headers, texts, and buttons; and of course, a footer.
New Bootstrap templates have been added over time, including this template that’s ideal for creating a blog:
To describe the full list of Bootstrap features would take too long—learn more in this article. For the sake of comparison, we’ll stick to its main purpose and a few defining features.
Here’s the main file structure of Bootstrap:
bootstrap/
├── css/
│ ├── bootstrap.css
│ ├── bootstrap.min.css
├── js/
│ ├── bootstrap.js
│ ├── bootstrap.min.js
├── img/
│ ├── glyphicons-halflings.png
│ ├── glyphicons-halflings-white.png
└── README.md
You can easily delete some files if you use Bootstrap “as is.” There’s no reason to include a non-minified version of CSS and JavaScript; using a full version is only necessary for a deep rebuild of code. So, bootstrap.css, bootstrap.js and readme.md may be excluded or deleted. Also, Bootstrap is very popular and a lot of public CDNs share it for free, like MaxCDN or CDNJS.
HTML5 Boilerplate (sometimes called H5BP) is a front-end template based on HTML5. This is the biggest differentiator from Bootstrap—it’s a template, not a framework. Boilerplate is, according to its author, “a package of useful contraptions, hacks, and cross-browser libraries.” While Bootstrap contains strong rules for each element of an interface, Boilerplate is more geared to help you with a fast and smart launch of your new project. H5BP is not about rules; it’s about a quick start.
With jQuery, no-js, CSS classes, project folder structure, and web server configurations for Apache and Nginx allow gzip compressing and 404 page functionality. The most recent major version is HTML5 Boilerplate 5.
Like Bootstrap, HTML5 Boilerplate is shared by MIT’s open-source license. The project was launched by a team of developers and is now supported and developed by a large community on GitHub.
Some other basic features of H5BP:
If you’re developing a mid-sized project, Bootstrap’s speed and united design of all elements will be a great plus. Also, Bootstrap provides you with a powerful and mobile-first grid system. You can specify a visibility or size for each block on every kind of device: desktop, tablet, or mobile.
Bootstrap is especially great for internal interfaces like admin panels of websites or intranets for companies. But without themes, Bootstrap doesn’t look very modern—you’ll need to use a service like Bootswatch, which offers 16 free themes that allow you change the design of main Bootstrap elements like a buttons, input fields, or colors.
If you need a quick start for a smaller project, that’s the main advantage of H5BP. In five minutes, you’ll have a template up and running for future development. Your eventual project may evolve a great deal down the line, with very little original H5BP left, but it’s a great jumping off point. To get started, clone H5BP from GitHub to a local machine and you’re ready to go!
After years of working with Bootstrap, I saw code like this many times:
Cancel
My App
Save
This is code for just two buttons, but with a lot of CSS classes. The excessive number of classes can make code unreadable and very hard to work on.
H5BP is just a template with some tools built in. While it’s good for small or intermediate-sized projects, more serious development projects shouldn’t rely on prepackaged configurations for web servers or CSS rules. All things must be coded and configured from scratch.
So, we’ve established that Bootstrap and HTML5 Boilerplate are not the same products. Did you know that you can merge them together in one package? It’s easy and fast to do using Initializr, a step-by-step wizard that allows you to tune up a new project from scratch. You can save a lot of hours with Initializr because it generates a ready-to-use customized template with modules that you choose.
For pre-configuration, just select which kind of Initializr package you need and click the “Download it!” button.
Classic H5BP Initializr
This version doesn’t have a template (visual parts), but includes Modernizr and jQuery, some CSS hacks for better cross-browser compatibility, and old IE fixes. Also, it has a lot of small tools like an included Google Analytics code, .htaccess code, etc.
Responsive Initializr
A step up from the Classic Initializr, Responsive Initializr includes a responsive template. It’s a good way to start making a responsive website if you’d rather not use Bootstrap, and it includes Modernizr and jQuery, too.
Bootstrap Initializr
Similar to Responsive Initializr, this version has Bootstrap classes instead of basic @media responsive classes. It’s a great option for Bootstrap lovers.
My answer? Both of them together. We can’t actually compare front-end frameworks with templates since they’re not the same products, but H5BP has a lot of nice tools and Bootstrap is incredibly popular and loved by developers around the world. Use them together and you’ll get the best of both worlds for your project.
Many B2B companies are built on technical expertise. They start with a great innovation and turn it into a thriving business. Yet in our work, we see many examples where a supplier’s mastery of technology masks an unhappy customer base. And in competitive markets, when your customers don’t like you, you lose them – fast.
Take the example of a highly specialised logistics firm. Their business is based on maximising the load on each of their trucks, a feat they achieve with sophisticated software and planning. They’re rightly proud of what they do and how they do it. But talk to their customers and you hear different priorities. They don’t care about ‘logistics infrastructure planning’, or whatever the special technology sauce is called. They want their expensive stuff delivered on time, in good condition and with all the right paperwork.
Cost objection? Or something deeper?
When we spoke to this firm’s customers, we heard many complaints about pricing levels. As far as the supplier was concerned, its prices were entirely justified by its expertise and service levels. But in our experience, price objections are rarely about the money. They’re usually a proxy for something else. In this case, in-depth interviews, using the IPA methodology, revealed that customers felt that the supplier was at best misunderstanding them or at worst, simply not listening to them.
When people feel treated this way, they first feel anxious; this then turns to anger – which in this case manifested itself as a metaphorical raised middle finger over the topic of pricing.
How does this happen? How can a company that’s a master of its sophisticated game end up with such disengaged customers?
See things from the customer’s viewpoint
It’s all about perspective. In particular, learning how to see things the way your customer sees them. Many people find this very difficult to do. Technically focused businesses, in my experience, find it especially hard. They struggle to make the leap from thinking about their own capabilities and products to thinking about what the customer really wants, from his or her own point of view.
Changing your frame of reference to see things from your customer’s perspective is, in essence, like practising empathy on a corporate scale. My last blog post illustrated how difficult this is: the ‘cup exercise’, for example, shows how one word can mean many things to different people, depending on their frame of reference at the time.
How do you “reframe”? These exercises are tried-and-tested ways to shift your perspective:
Translate your new perspective into new services
However, while reframing is hard, it can be even harder to translate it back into the service you provide. Here’s how we’re doing it for the logistics company:
So reframing, and putting it into practice, takes effort. But the insights and changes can be transformative. Using the methodology above, our logistics supplier is now developing new service packages that match the customer needs it now understands.
As business coach Joshua Spodek says, “Flexibility in changing your perspective is one of the most important tools in changing your world, creating freedom for yourself, and in building intelligence.”
Co creation
And once you have a new perspective, there is also an opportunity to ‘co-create’ with customers, as in the six-step example above. This means that rather than creating a new product or service and then market-testing it, you develop it iteratively with customers. You lose some control, but potentially gain resilience in the customer relationship.
Think like a master, act like a servant
In some ways it’s like taking a servant’s perspective. No-one is better attuned to customer needs than a person whose job it is to attend to them 24/7. As Helen Mirren’s head servant in the film Gosford Park said:
“What gift do you think a good servant has that separates them from the others? It’s the gift of anticipation. And I’m a good servant; I’m better than good, I’m the best; I’m the perfect servant. I know when they’ll be hungry, and the food is ready. I know when they’ll be tired, and the bed is turned down. I know it before they know it themselves.”
B2B companies don’t need to lose their mastery. It’s essential to keep the specialist expertise that got you to where you are today. But if you want to stay there, perhaps you need to start thinking like a servant, too.
The Information Age has made it easy to get ahold of almost anything you could want to know, but it’s created a problem for people who want to be heard. How do you make your content discoverable in an ever-deepening sea of information?
Social bookmarking sites are a great resource for those looking to promote their websites. They allow you to bookmark your sites and engage in discussions about them. They’re also an indispensable SEO tool. Here are the biggest ones you should be on.
Regardless of what your business or brand is, you’re going to need paid promotions at some point to gain an edge on the competition. The only problem is that you need to carefully consider your options and use the platforms that are most efficient (more impact, less cost). Here are some that do just that.
There’s a difference between existing and connecting. It’s good that you’re on the right platforms and you’re posting enough to be conspicuous, but you also need to connect with people. You can do that by responding to their comments or simply reaching out to individuals. Here are some ideas to get you started.
Content is a product that can be turned into ten other products. Your competitors will move on those opportunities as soon as they see them, so why don’t you do it first? Present your content in a variety of ways and you’ll attract a variety of readers, watchers, and listeners.
The idea behind this is pretty simple: redirect the customer trust you’ve cultivated from one product to another.
Get into or create groups and forums where people with the same interests come together. This could be your marketing and networking base. Just like a market, you can exchange utilities on such groups.
Did we miss one of your favorite tools or tips? Let us know in the comments!
Businesses today are more complex and move faster than ever. In order to keep up with the rapid pace of business, across every industry we are seeing companies rely on vast partner ecosystems to drive sales and explore new markets. A strong network of partners can help you grow your business in many ways. Partners can help you scale and maximize your existing business lines by extending the footprint of your sales force. Partners can help you enter new markets, regions and industries to grow in areas where your company might not be familiar. And partners can provide a new channel for selling new products.
A thriving channel partner relationship can mean a competitive advantage for any business that is looking to grow. But managing these partner relationships is anything but simple. When critical information exists in fragmented systems, you lose productivity and some of the power that comes from your collaboration.
What do profitable partnerships have that struggling partnerships don’t? In short, Partner Community enables companies to manage the entire end-to-end partner lifecycle, from onboarding to selling to diving into analytics.
Here are ten traits that make great partnerships run smoothly.
1. New sales reps can onboard smoothly
Minimize onboarding time and maximize selling time with an easy way for new partners to get up to speed on your products, pricing structures, selling processes all within a single portal.
2. Educational and training materials are easy to access
There’s a lot to learn when it comes to enabling new partners to sell like one of your own sales reps. Success requires that partners can educate themselves with training modules and get certified in all of the appropriate areas so partners can become evangelists for your product or solution. When training materials aren’t in a central location, partners spend more time trying to find the educational resources and have less time to learn.
3. Partnership goals and KPIs are jointly set between the two companies
Without a blueprint for your channel partnership, you could hire a great channel team, recruit partners, and spend a great deal of time selling, but yield only minimum returns. Open communication within a community enables partners to maximize returns by aligning the channel sales strategy together.
4. Both companies CRMs are synchronized to make co-selling seamless
With a community as a crucial piece of the core-selling process, lead data from partners is integrated and synchronized with your CRM. Partners can collaborate on lead approval, management, and distribution in a way that is transparent and fair, minimizing conflict.
5. Marketing budgets are managed transparently
With Partner Community you can distribute marketing development funds and budget for campaigns to specific partners and track co-marketing ROI. Marketing teams stay in lockstep so they can share challenges, successes, and drive successful campaigns.
6. Salespeople have an easy way to contact product experts
Each member of the community has an individual profile that lists their roles and expertise. If a partner needs to contact an expert to ask a question or help them close the deal, they can do so right within the community, on the opportunity, with just one click.
7. Access to a content marketing hub with everything partners need to close a deal
When done right, content marketing can be a huge advantage for a sales team to address prospect pain points and message the product or solution in the best way possible. But how do partners find all the amazing e-books, whitepapers, and blog posts that can help them close the deal? When content marketing assets are accessible within the community, salespeople have a one-stop-shop for experts, pipeline numbers, and content.
8. Seamless access to key analytics
With Wave Analytics for Community Cloud, you can give your partners the insights they need to drive sales. With the right numbers located in the context of the rest of the community, you can collaborate more effectively because every partner is always working with the most up-to-date numbers.
9. Personalized privacy settings make everyone feel secure
Keep security top-of-mind with privacy settings that ensure that the right person can view the right information (and only that information). These privacy settings can be controlled on a person-by-person basis, or what content is displayed based on partner tiering and types.
10. Mobile-first partners never miss a beat
No matter where they are, partners can access Partner Community from their mobile devices and contact experts, view files, or ask questions — anything they need to provide a quote or close the deal. The Salesforce1 Mobile App lets you can take your community with you wherever you go, so you can collaborate, share information, and close deals from anywhere.
A partner community creates a bridge between two companies, combining joint business planning, shared resources, shared pipeline, shared analytics, and more, all in one easily accessible, fully mobile location. With the right tools, you can create a one-stop-shop for everything your partners need throughout their day-to-day — whether they’re out on the road meeting with customers, just getting started, or need to identify an expert, fast.
To read more about how Partner Community can optimize your channel business, download the free e-book: How to Transform Your Channel Business with Seamless Partner Management.
Years ago I heard an older Briton explaining how, as a child, the tales of his first visit to America shocked his English friends at home. "In America you can get a pizza delivered to your house," he told them.
"WOT?" they said. "You mean, ready to eat?!?"
Here in NYC you've long been able to get everything delivered to your door, from Ukrainian desserts to books to illegal drugs hidden in a pizza box. Across the country, Amazon has now acclimated everyone to having anything delivered. Where we once went to stores, we now wait by the buzzer. But if there's one thing I never imagined being delivered, it's gasoline.
Not to your home, of course. But now a rash of startups armed with pickup trucks and smartphone apps will deliver gas directly to your car's gas tank, topping it off when you're not even there. Whether it's parked outside your house overnight or sitting in the parking lot at work, you can leave it empty and come back to it full. Once you've joined their app and hooked up a payment system, you just punch in the desired time and leave your gas door open.
There are at least six players in this market:
Yoshi charges "no fees other than the cost of gasoline" for non-members, though it's not clear how they peg their prices; members who pay a $15 monthly fee pay prices "set to be competitive with the lower priced gas stations in the area." They cover Atlanta, Nashville and the San Francisco Bay area.
Filld charges "the lowest price of the three stations closest to you plus a small delivery fee, typically $3." They cover Silicon Valley and San Francisco.
WeFuel charges a $7.49 fee per fill up and covers Los Altos, Menlo Park, Mountain View and Palo Alto.
FuelMe charges "a small delivery fee," which sounds fishy since that takes longer to type out than a dollar sign followed by a number. Also, bizarrely, their website doesn't even mention what parts of the country they cover.
Purple offers prices "competitive within the average fuel cost in your area," and charges a $6 fee for gas delivered in one hour, or $4 for a three-hour window, their only two options. They're serving Los Angeles, Orange County, San Diego and Seattle.
GasNinjas has the most insane pricing: "We're offering free delivery and you pay the same price as at the pump," they claim. Their only region is Miami.
It will be interesting to see which one comes out on top, if any. I for one like that there's at least a half-dozen players all battling it out; competition is good for consumers and it helps keep the economy stimulated.
I'm certain there's a subset of drivers willing to pay for the convenience of not making a trip to the station, the "time is money" crowd. And services like these will presumably also appeal to people who work late and don't like the thought of driving into a sketchy gas station after hours.
As for how the companies themselves make money, it appears they buy their gasoline wholesale and in bulk. But it's not clear if one will become more profitable than another, nor even if any of them will survive; as with earlier disruptive businesses like Airbnb and Uber, lawmakers have yet to get a handle on what is and isn't quite legal.
For instance, Bloomberg has reported that several months ago, Fire Department officials began poking their noses into these unregulated trucks driving around and dispensing gasoline, apparently didn't like what they found, and made proclamations like "It is not permitted," from a San Francisco Fire Department spokesman, who urges anyone witnessing these refueling acts to drop a dime on the perpetrators.
An L.A. Fire Department Captain was a little more conciliatory, saying that "at this time is it's not allowed as per our current fire code," but that they "are exploring a way this could be allowed with some restrictions."
Chris Aubuchon, Filld's CEO, had the best (and most Silicon-Valley-esque) quote: "You can never ask for permission," he said, "because no one will give it."
How do you assign value to a paid social ad like a Snapchat Filter or a Twitter Ad that targets your audience through emojis? Your followers may have ‘liked’ it and it may have gone viral on the platform… but what does that mean for your bottom line?
Most marketers’ report that proving ROI is their biggest challenge. It’s dizzying just thinking about the number of channels and devices to measure across. Americans now own four digital devices on average, and the average U.S. consumer spends 60 hours a week consuming content across devices.
When it comes to your paid social strategy, what is the best way to measure success and streamline your analytics across all of your channels?
Here are the seven paid social metrics you should be tracking:
Social platforms, especially newer channels like Instagram and Snapchat, limit or curate their ads to avoid disrupting the user experience.
That’s why most social channels use a bidding system for their paid ads where advertisers auction for real estate on the feed. Advertisers often bid on factors such as time, location, and audience. The more popular the ad slot, the more expensive the bid. The strategy here is to hit the sweet spot, where you get the most value without overreaching your budget.
Bidding systems are run with two different options: CPM and CPC.
CPM, most commonly known as cost per 1,000 impressions, is the cost for every 1,000 unique displays or views your ad receives.
CPM is good for brands looking to boost awareness, since you pay purely for reach and not for performance. This bidding model also works really well for brands with high click-through rates. With CPM, you get more clicks for less – let’s say you are paying $1 for 1,000 impressions, your cost doesn’t increase whether one person clicks or all 1,000 people click.
Unfortunately, there’s very little information on what each social channel considers an impression. For example, on Facebook, an impression is when an ad shows up as a user browses their Newsfeed, but does it register only after the user has paused their scrolling, or does it still register if the user scrolls past it? No one can be sure.
Ultimately, a high volume, high performing CPM ad can be a cost savings over a CPC ad, but you don’t take your impression counts at face value.
IDEAL FOR: If your paid social strategy is focused on building brand awareness around a new product and you just want to get it in front of as many people as possible, this is the bidding model for you.
CPC is the cost for each time a user clicks on your ad. The CPC model guarantees that you’re paying for ads that generate results. For brands with lower budgets or limited resources, CPC is a friendly alternative to the CPM.
If you have a strong sales funnel, CPC can also be a sure-fire way to drive quality leads to convert.
Do keep an eye on how your CPC corresponds to conversions. If you are paying for a high number of clicks but don’t see it move your bottom line, it can mean that you need to reevaluate the post-click experience.
IDEAL FOR: If you’re just getting started with paid social or find the CPM is too pricey for your budget, try out the CPC bidding model. CPC is also ideal for brands with hyper-targeted content.
Another way to track paid social success is by keeping tabs on how your follower size grows. A positive growth rate shows that your content is resonating with your audience.
This engagement metric should be tracked alongside likes, retweets and favorites, which help gauge the success of individual content pieces.
IDEAL FOR: If your paid social strategy is about building up your social community, this is the metric you’ll want to keep an eye on.
Potential reach shows an estimated number of users your post will reach.
This metric can be helpful when it comes to setting your target audience and planning your budget.
IDEAL FOR: On LinkedIn, you might want to take a look at your potential reach when you are deciding between targeting eCommerce CMOs in New York City versus eCommerce CMOs in California. You might find that your audience in California is a little too big and would dry out your budget too early, in which case you would narrow down your targeting.
Click-through-rate is the total number of users who click on your ad divided by the total number of times the ad was served. The higher your CTR, the more compelling your content and call-to-action.
However, be cautious of click-through-rates that native analytics dashboards provide within the social platform. Facebook, for example, counts all clicks, not just link clicks. These numbers might make it look like your ad is outperforming other social channels that only count link clicks.
Paid social drives 25% more conversions than organic social because the content is more targeted and timely.
A conversion is when a user takes an action that you want them to take, like a purchase, a visit to a landing page, a download or more. Many social channels will provide tracking pixels to add to your website, which helps track a user’s journey from the channel to your site.
At the end of the day, the way you use these metrics will vary depending on your goals and which paid social channel works best for you.
Not only does each channel have a slightly different way of calculating metrics, but each of them serve a different purpose in the conversion funnel.
The key to optimizing your paid social strategy is to start from the top down. First understand where your customers are engaging and how they are moving through the funnel before building out each individual channel.
Azad Chaiwala says he first "came out" as polygamous when he was just 12 years old.
"That was when I was courageous enough to do so," the 33-year-old businessman told Business Insider. "I told everybody I knew. I announced it. I told everyone I was a polygamous person."
Throughout his teenage years and 20s, the British Muslim blocked out his desire to marry numerous women and instead focused on growing multiple businesses.
The Sunderland-based entrepreneur now claims to employ more than 100 people who run his investment portfolios, properties, YouTube channels, and websites.
It is a truism that successful business ideas often come from solutions to problems. Chaiwala's problem was that he was finding it difficult to find a second wife.
Prior to their arranged marriage, Chaiwala had made it clear to his first wife — to whom he is still married — that she would not be his one and only.
"There was a taboo about the subject," Chaiwala said. "No family member wanted to help me [find a second wife]."
Frustrated that there were websites catering to every "niche, desire, and fetish" except his own, Chaiwala launched SecondWife.com in 2014. After reaching profitability with the venture, Chaiwala opened a second website, Polygamy.com in 2016, to facilitate non-Muslim polygamous marriages.
Controversially, neither website accommodates women who want multiple husbands. Chaiwala said that this was simply because "it's not a viable business model."
However, he claims that this results from an essential difference between the "nature" of men and women.
"I think polygamy is more in tune with [man's] nature than monogamy," Chaiwala said.
The businessman said that membership across both sites is "just touching 70,000" and that it is responsible for at least 100 marriages (the number of couples who have sent him thank you letters.) He suspects that there are 400 or 500 more.
However, despite his success as a polyamorous matchmaker, Chaiwala has so far been unable to find his own second wife.
"From a personal point of view, it’s a bit sad, but it's still the early stages," said Chaiwala, whose ultimate aim is to have three wives.
But most people might wonder why a woman would want to share her husband with other women.
SecondWife.com user Alisha, whose name has been changed to protect her anonymity, is a 39-year-old care worker from London. She has four children from a marriage that ended in divorce.
A strict Muslim, Alisha told Business Insider that she signed up to the site in 2015 to find a "husband on a part-time basis."
"Everyone seems to think the woman has the short end of the straw [in polygamous relationships], but I think it is the bloke because he has got to split his time, his finances, and his attention. He has got to make sure that the two families are both happy," Alisha said.
"Whereas I can go about my career, look after my children, and do what I need to do, all while knowing that I'm married and I've got my independence," she added.
Alisha did not always want to be a part of a polygamous marriage. When she first heard about the concept in her mid-20s, she was not interested.
"I wanted a full-time husband and I was immature, so it didn't make sense to me," she said.
However, as her marriage became strained, she began researching the subject. Later, she suggested polygamy to her husband as a solution to their problems.
She even set up a meeting between her husband and a woman who she thought had potential to be his second wife.
"He wasn’t capable," Alisha remembered. "He was an absolute d---head."
Their marriage ended in divorce. Not long after, she began browsing Secondwife.com.
Alisha admitted that she understood why some women would experience feelings of jealousy when sharing their husband with other women. However, she said her religion allowed her to ignore feelings of possessiveness.
"The thing is I've come to this understanding in my life, where I don't think I possess anything," Alisha explained. "Everything I have belongs to God — even my children are a blessing from God."
However, after months of looking, Alisha still hasn't found a husband on SecondWife.com. She said that too many of the men she met through the site were more concerned with the physical aspect of a relationship, without the emotional or financial commitment.
"That's not permissible in my religion," she said. "For a man to take a second wife, he has to provide for her financially."
Polygamy is permitted in Islam: the Quran specifies that each man can have up to four wives.
However, it is illegal in the UK, according to Section 57 of the Offences Against the Person Act 1861. The law states that those who practice bigamy can face sentences of up to seven years.
Chaiwala avoids legal difficulties by encouraging British polygamists to take religious or civil ceremonies, which are not legally recognised.
"But you have announce it, you have to make a hoo haa," Chaiwala said. "Don't just say you are husband and wife — that’s kind of cheating the system."
The problem with unofficial polygamous marriages is they leave both spouses without the legal and financial rights that come with marriage under British law.
Chaiwala said that this was an unfortunate "hurdle" that could be crossed.
"I'm hoping one day it can become legal and recognised and they can register their marriages legally, but there have to be some sacrifices made at the beginning," he said.
Another hurdle Chaiwala is facing on his battle to break what he calls the "last taboo" is convincing his own children of polygamy's moral value.
Recently, Chaiwala had a conversation with his young daughter who, apparently "regurgitating something a relative told her," said that polygamy was wrong.
"I tried to explain to her that’s it’s not wrong and that I her love mummy and that I love her," Chaiwala said. "But that I am a man."
Small business owners are a special breed. They work hard, so they need their service providers to work hard for them. If your business is built to serve small businesses, you’ll need a sales approach designed to address their main concerns head-on.
Below are six tips that will help you connect with small business owners, keep them happy, and build long-standing relationships that can lead to valuable referrals.
Money tends to be tight for small businesses. Owners constantly worry about covering their expenses and earning some kind of a profit. Though they were willing to take a leap of faith and start their own business, they may have little appetite for risk left over.
This means that proving your value is critical. Testimonials, trustworthy reviews, guarantees, and even third-party verifications all go a long way toward convincing a small business owner that you will indeed deliver on your promises. If there’s any doubt in their mind, they’ll probably put your brochure on the shelf.
This ties into the last point. Your sales promises all have to be kept, or better yet, exceeded. Make sure that your sales enthusiasm carries over into service enthusiasm, or repeat business will drop to zero. Small business owners watch expenses carefully, and if they aren’t getting immediate returns, they’ll be quick to cut you out. The grace period after the sale will be quite short, so make it count. Follow through and follow up to seal the deal.
Long-term benefits are nice for a well-funded organization that can weather quarterly ups and downs. A small business generally can’t do this, so investing for long-term gain is difficult if there are no short-term gains to be seen. Make sure your value timeline aligns with the resources of your small business customers.
If your offering requires long-term investment, you’ll have to work that much harder to demonstrate that it’s worth the wait. You’ll also have to be adaptable to their financial constraints in the interim, which may mean delayed payments or other creative solutions.
Small business owners are a community and they trust one another. If your solution helps one owner who’s willing to say so, others will be inclined to give you a shot. Make it easy for your customers to spread the word (electronically or otherwise) and provide referrals so that you can get a foot in the door with new prospects and capitalize on your successes.
All small business owners dream of growth and stability. If what you’re selling ties into growth, be sure to highlight that fact. Since many of your prospects are constantly worried about generating enough business, growth means security. If your service will bring growth and security, you’ll be a savior to your customers. It’s also helpful to highlight customer retention benefits. Repeat business is huge for small operations, so show them how your product or service keeps familiar faces coming through the door.
You’ll usually be dealing with a single person (the owner) when you work with small businesses. It’s rare to have access to the top dog in most industries, so make the most of this special opportunity and build a relationship. If you become more than just an expense to the owner—if you’re dependable, understanding, and flexible—you’ll set yourself up for a long-term relationship that withstands even the off-season.
We hope these tips were helpful! Have some other smart sales ideas? Let us know in the comments!
Why do car dealers still put sticker prices on car windows when we all know that “Dealer Invoice” is not what the dealer actually paid and MSRP is just an artificially inflated number? It would stand to reason that if we recognize this obvious sales tactic, it won’t work … but it does. In fact, experiments show that even a randomly generated price has a direct influence on what we are willing to pay for an item, even when we know that the price was randomly generated. This phenomenon, called the anchoring effect by social physiologists, suggests that we have a common human tendency to use the first available piece of information to make a decision. The initial information is the anchor and provides our brains with a mental shortcut when considering a decision, such as what a reasonable price is for a specific product or service.
In 2006, Drazen Prelec and Dan Ariely of MIT conducted research to test just how influenced we are by an initial anchor price, even if we know that the price is completely disconnected from the value of the item we are buying. In the experiment, Prelec and Ariely auctioned off everyday items, such as a bottle of wine, a trackball, and a textbook, to their students. Before students could bid on an item, however, they were asked to write down the last two digits of their own social security number next to the item, as if it were the price. Amazingly, students with social security numbers from 80 to 99 paid significantly more for items than those with numbers from 00 to 19. For instance, those with high social security numbers, on average, paid $26 for a trackball, while those with low social security numbers paid an average of $9 for the exact same item. Even when students knew the number was unrelated to value, they could not overcome their subconscious bias. (Ariely, “Predictably Irrational” referenced by youarenotsosmart.com.)
So as a seller, should we artificially inflate our prices and let the anchoring effect work its magic? Probably not a good idea. There is an offsetting sales principle called “price integrity,” which, as it turns out, is essential for building trust and sustainable business relationships. We shouldn’t demand a higher price without demonstrating more benefit, and likewise, we shouldn’t lower our price without a reduction in benefit. In both directions, clients should expect and see integrity in our price.
Does that mean we should disregard the anchoring effect altogether? That doesn’t seem like a good idea either; clearly, there is power in this natural bias. As sellers of value, our objective should not be to inflate prices, but to use the anchoring effect to help us deliver the highest level of benefit for which our clients are willing to pay. This might mean layering our solutions in a good, better, and best approach for a particular need. Our best solution is our anchor and provides the most benefit to our client. Consequently, it has the highest price. If our client is unable or unwilling to purchase this solution, then we have established a point of reference for both benefit and price, allowing us to tier down our solution until we fit the highest level of benefit with the highest acceptable price.
To learn more about how an understanding of neuroscience can help you become a better sales person, check out these other articles: The Neuroscience of Sales: Unseating an Incumbent & The Neuroscience of Sales: Resolving Irrational Objections
The post The Neuroscience of Sales: The Anchoring Effect appeared first on Richardson Sales Training and Enablement Blog.
What if I told you that the call center could be one of the biggest revenue generators in your entire enterprise?
Today, the call center is seen by many COOs as a cost of doing business – a necessary evil – rather than as a revenue-generating group.
This negative perspective didn’t start overnight. It’s the result of a much broader changing tide.
Five or ten years ago, core call center activities would perform efficiently and effectively. Take outbound sales, for example. You had a challenge, and the typical buying behavior was to reach out to a salesperson, or have them reach out to you, to discuss potential solutions.
Today, though, consumers do their own research on the web, talking to salespeople as a final step (if ever at all!). Customers are also more interrupted than ever, with a million calls, emails, and advertisements vying for their attention. They screen cold calls, ignore solicitation emails, and are harder than ever to get in touch with.
Because of these new customer behaviors, when today’s call centers do outbound sales, they perform very poorly. This means that those activities are dragging down the efficiency and effectiveness of the overall call center team.
But the other side of the call center – customer service – is blooming because of those same changes to consumer behavior.
Customers want on-demand support, constantly putting calls into the support team looking for help with their service. When they do, effective customer care specialists can upsell and cross-sell organically, offering advice around complimentary products or service upgrades, and doing so in a non-interruptive way.
If the customer is calling about the shoes they just purchased, a good customer care specialist will be able to weave socks, shoe polish, and insoles into the service conversation. Today, this is the most efficient and effective way to create revenue through the call center.
Call center revenue generation doesn’t happen without a detailed end-to-end process, though.
These are the three big concepts to consider when building out your call center process for real revenue generation:
Selling is not the primary function of customer support, but that doesn’t mean Care Specialists don’t need to be good at the soft sell.
Ensure that you’re training your customer support team to get to the heart of the customer’s challenge, steer the conversation around cross-sell and upsell opportunities, know the inventory and catalog inside and out, and don’t apply pressure. Your training program should revolve around the power of support and suggestion.
While the aim is not necessarily to create a sales culture within the customer support team, clear goals and objectives do need to be set so that the team knows what they are shooting for.
How much should your Care Specialists be selling each month? Based on their volume, how does that translate into conversion levels? What’s the average revenue per call across the team? With clearly defined metrics in place, this level of tracking becomes easy, and by monitoring how individual Care Specialists are performing, then they can be strategically motivated through positive feedback, incentives, and end-of-year performance appraisals.
Finally, incorporating big data. Your customers have very particular tastes – no two are alike. How then, can a Care Specialist know what products or services to recommend? The answer lies in the customer data.
By knowing what customers have purchased in the past, and knowing what products and services generally complement or follow a purchase, the Care Specialist can truly add value to the customer experience.
Amazon has been a long-time leader in this kind of predictive analytics, and every company investing in customer experience should be following suit. By being smarter with data, it’s going to be easier to sell, the team’s conversion rates will increase, and the cost per interaction will decrease.
At the end of the day, the goal of the customer support team is to provide the best possible level of service. For the call center to start driving real revenue, instead of simply being a cost of doing business, Care Specialists need to strike a balance between creating a great customer experience and being on the lookout for soft-sell revenue generating opportunities.
To be able to do that, the customer care team needs to be properly trained on cross-sell and upsell skills, they need to understand their team’s goals and individual objectives, and they need the support of predictive care analytics to supercharge their conversion rates.
Is your call center simply a cost of doing business, or is it a revenue generating machine?
You’ve heard the words “your worth” in the context of income, and if you’re anything like me, it makes you cringe. It implies there’s a price on your value as a person, but the phrase refers to the work you do, not who you are. Writer Libby Kane points out that this is an important distinction when it comes to negotiating.
Although B2B sales outsourcing provides numerous financial and logistical advantages over handling all of your sales functions in-house, misunderstandings about what outsourcing involves are common. These misunderstandings can create dead ends in your path to finding the right outsourced sales and lead generation partner.
The confusion arises from a lack of clarity about the underlying model for an agreement with a sales partner: It’s a solutions-based contract, not a transaction-based contract. In this way, it’s more like finding someone to paint your house than it is like buying new tires for your car: There’s no standardized product involved, just an array of options, offered by providers with widely varied competence. Your challenge is to find the exact options you need, and the sales and lead generation partner that can provide them most effectively.
Start your buying journey by understanding the truth about outsourcing programs:
Some low-price, low-value services are more concerned with fitting you into their pre-packaged offerings than they are with providing solutions for the pains you’re experiencing.
Your unique needs could involve some combination of inside sales, lead generation and nurturing, channel marketing, database building and maintenance – or more. Don’t settle for an out-of-the-box solution that solves some of your sales troubles but misses others. You also don’t want to pay for functions and services that you don’t need, just because they come with a standard program.
Since choosing an outsourced sales partner is a solutions-based purchase, you need to look not just at the services potential partners are offering, but the quality of the results that those partners will deliver. For instance, the complex nature of the sales lead generation process means that each firm competing for your business will offer a very different program. More importantly, their results will be very different as well.
These differences make comparison shopping challenging: You should be more concerned with finding the best value, in terms of the projected ROI, and not just the lowest price.
A great partner will minimize your workload or manage the program to your needs, but success requires collaboration. Whether you outsource your entire sales department or just certain functions or channels, it is essential that you work cooperatively with your partner.
If a potential partner tells you that you’ll rarely have to meet with the client services team, view that as a red flag: You should work with a partner that wants to work with you.
Using these three guideposts and asking the right questions as you search for an outsourced sales partner will help you find your way to greater results.
In the last post, we talked about the evolution of Account-Based Marketing (ABM), the hottest little 40-year-old trend around. We covered how ITSMA launched the buzz back in 2004, how Don Peppers and Martha Rogers wrote about it in The One to One Future back in 1993 and even covered how the original blue sheet of the Miller Heiman Strategic Selling incorporated it back in 1976. This insight led us to beg the question: If it’s not new, what’s the big deal?
Let’s pull up the most famous of all Miller Heiman sales tools, the blue sheet:
This strategic analysis that was once filled in with paper and pencil captured everything from opportunity to buying influences to key drivers, and most importantly, how to execute a plan to advance your opportunity. Specifically, the blue sheet was built to capture:
That is a ton of information! And, when you stop and think about the amount of research required to know all of those things, get them right and keep them current, it’s easy to see why this approach was limited to a small set of strategic accounts. Not only that, but having taken a thorough, fact-based approach into what the next best action was, you still had to take that action in a primarily analog way; you had to pick up the phone and schedule a face-to-face meeting.
So, what’s changed to make an ancient practice like ABM all the rage today? It’s simple—SCALE. Advances in database marketing, sales force automation and marketing delivery platforms were revolutionary for scaling the level of interactions and visibility into activity that influenced the buyers in your favor. No longer is a salesperson (or their assistant) head down at a research terminal or on the phone trying to identify key influencers and competitors—and then using that information to decide on the next best action.
Enter big data and predictive analytics. The ability to accumulate and connect the massive amounts of data required to identify and evaluate the actions, interests and behaviors of potential buyers—at the individual and company level—in both known and anonymous environments is the biggest single factor that has led to the advancement of ABM as a leading marketing strategy.
Add to that the ability to use analytics to predict what move is most likely to advance the cause and mix it with the millions of interactions to validate and refine that approach, and you have the best of the MHI blue sheet on steroids. Predictive analytics have truly changed the game with the ability to identify other accounts that exhibit similar interest and intent signals and put them on the radar for Sales and Marketing activities. Which is why leaders in the ABM discipline report improved alignment between Sales and Marketing. Because, what sales person doesn’t want more information to drive Sales and more accounts predisposed to their solution?
Take a sales methodology that’s been around for decades, mix in technology that’s emerged in the last 10 years and you have the recipe for the hottest new trend in marketing today. Who knew?
Two of the most popular ways to present products are review posts that focus on the details of a single product and side-by-side comparisons that allow buyers to look at competing options. But while both of these strategies have strengths, which one has the best overall sales advantage? The answer likely has more to do with the products than the presentation strategies themselves.
This means that your goal should be to match your products with the right format for their particular characteristics, rather than rely too heavily on what you might consider the stronger strategy. You can’t sell everything the same way, but you can understand the sales process and execute it more effectively.
Most consumers are familiar with side-by-side comparison shopping because they associate it with buying products like laptop computers and smartphones – products that need to perform specific tasks and have similar competitors. In fact, it’s not uncommon to see tech specs listed in charts comparing one product to another so that consumers can see exactly how they line up.
This strategy is effective for computers and other high-importance items because they can help potential buyers narrow in on what might be considered key customer pain points. If you can identify the challenge a product meets and then point to how different products successfully (or unsuccessfully) address that issue by posting a comparison, then side-by-side spec reviews can also enhance purchases and customer satisfaction.
Another scenario in which side-by-side comparisons are helpful is when you’ve got a few products in your inventory that just don’t sell very well. Maybe you’ve had them listed at a sale price for months or aren’t moving through your stock of something and it’s stuck in your warehouse. In these cases, using a price comparison can be a good way to push a poorly selling product along.
This works well when there aren’t enough competitors for an item or a base knowledge of expected cost for buyers to use as an anchor point. Putting two similar products on the market at different price points can help the less expensive one build sales momentum because it looks like a steal compared to its higher priced counterpart.
Obviously, a specs approach to comparison shopping is a fairly detailed take on a product, but it’s still less likely to be comprehensive than a direct review of a single product. That’s because side-by-side comparisons are great at reviewing objective details about products, but reviews are better able to capture the subjective factors – a reviewer who you have a lot in common with is more likely to offer you helpful information than one you’ve disagreed with in the past.
Reviews can also stretch beyond specs. It’s one thing to say “this mattress is made of foam” and another to talk about the “personalized sleep experience.” The former fits in a spec comparison – material types and quality – but what does the latter mean in a comparison? It’s worth discussing, but it needs a different context.
A second way to harness reviews is to call on customers to give them. Customer reviews can increase sales rates dramatically, both by increasing the likelihood that people will buy in the first place, and by increasing sales rates when customer reviews reach a critical amount.
For obvious reasons, customers trust reviews by other users more than they do those that come from retailers or paid product testers. Customer reviews also help your website by providing fresh injections of content, which can draw more attention to a product. That’s why it’s worthwhile to send out surveys or solicit other forms of feedback with permission to use them on your site. Customers will also be flattered that you value their opinion.
Marketing is a science, and how you present and review your products makes a big difference in how successful you are. When trying to choose a format, look at what your potential comparison points might be as well as what information you think really matters to buyers. Then choose the format that allows you to foreground that information.
Ultimately, the right marketing strategy is the one that equips your customers to make smart product choices.
Almost every business conceivable has a digital presence today, from the cheap noodle shop next door to the massive upscale supermarket an hour’s drive away. But simply having a website isn’t going to cut it anymore.
Companies today increasingly use information technology to improve their productivity in a number of key sectors. Consider going digital in the following areas to improve your business’s overall efficiency and boost your bottom line.
Ah, the HR department. From sifting through piles of resumes to reminding employees about casual Fridays, HR has never been particularly glamorous — but that doesn’t mean it isn’t critical. After all, obtaining and retaining the best people is probably the most important thing a business can do to ensure its long-term viability. And fortunately, big data is coming to the rescue.
There’s an increasing number of cloud-based software services, such as Talentsoft, that provide easy solutions for businesses to find and interview the best candidates for a position. These services crunch vast amounts of data that would take ages for humans to complete. That’s much easier than letting resumes pile up and hoping for the best.
There’s also a host of performance appraisal software available that can help employees provide constructive feedback, which means less time and money spent on HR and better suited candidates for a position.
Sales is an excellent place to start implementing digital solutions to improve productivity. If you’re not conducting at least part of your sales online at this point, you need to reconsider.
Tweak your business’s website, so customers can obtain exclusive deals by signing up for newsletters and the like. You can also add a custom ordering section, so your clients can order products without visiting the store only to discover what they want just went out of stock.
A price estimator on your websites can save your employees time and effort, and you can adjust your website to offer more customized products as well. Such services are simple additions that could provide significant benefits.
Everyone’s talking about social media, and there’s a reason for that: Social media is an easy and almost completely cost-free way to boost productivity. If your business can creatively engage customers online, you will experience raised product awareness, which can mean more sales.
How does social media make your business more productive? It’s free, but it’s also efficient as a way to reach existing and potential clients. If you own a small business, you can manage your own social media relatively easily.
If you’re a medium-sized business, consider hiring a “growth hacker” to create authentic engagement that will translate into added visibility and sales. Hiring a growth hacker usually comes with a onetime fee, and it can be a good solution if you don’t want to spend too much effort trying to build an audience on social media — a process that can be hit or miss.
Remember your employee’s face at the latest meeting when it was clear she hadn’t read the company-wide memo? Let’s make sure that doesn’t happen again. Research shows that poor internal communication in a business leads to obvious losses of productivity. When your employees aren’t up to date, or managers are not giving clear orders or opportunities for feedback, your business will suffer.
Fortunately, easy digital solutions can improve the productivity of your workers through better communications. User-friendly services, such as Slack, make sure employees can quickly and efficiently communicate with each other or within different groups. Slack makes it easy to form teams that communicate directly with each other, making it efficient to share files and search archives — a much less painful task than trawling through your email to find an old PowerPoint presentation.
Going Digital Makes Sense for Everyone
It doesn’t matter if your business is large or small. Digitizing basic processes by going paperless makes financial sense. For small businesses in particular, the rewards can be even greater. Employees often waste time looking for documents — some firms waste as much as 6 hours per employee per week. It’s no secret that going paperless helps the environment and saves supply costs. Besides making your employees more productive, digitalization will make your business more efficient and help your bottom line.
The Time Is Now
Running a tight ship in our current “knowledge economy” means going digital. Beneficial digital solutions are currently in vogue for a good reason: They cut costs and allow you to focus on your core business, which, as any good boss knows, consists largely of keeping your employees and clients happy. Once you accomplish that, the rest will come easily.
TORONTO – The Pokemon Go sign directing people to the front door of Rock Candy Boutique in Halifax has only been up for a week, but Jeff Powers says he is already seeing it pay off.
“Downtown is alive in a way that I haven’t seen in a long, long time,” said Powers, a manager at the store, which sells various rock music T-shirts, hoodies, hats and other paraphernalia.
“There is just a flood from everybody, from young kids to older adults, and you can tell they’re playing this game.”
That would be Pokemon Go, which officially launched in Canada on Sunday. The wildly popular video game sends players on a quest to find superimposed animated characters on a map-like interface using the camera on their smartphones. It is currently the most downloaded app in the Apple app store.
Powers said Tuesday the sign has brought people into the store who wouldn’t normally shop there but hear it’s a good place to play the augmented reality video game.
“This has just blown up bigger than anybody has expected,” he said, adding that the various Pokemon merchandise the store carries have also been flying off the shelves.
“It leads people to travel down streets they normally wouldn’t. It’s bringing a lot of foot traffic down to the side streets and a lot of people are coming in and buying things because they were just in the area.”
Some Canadian businesses have been jumping on the craze by actively encouraging potential customers to use their shops as PokeStops or Pokemon gyms — locations to play the game.
But marketing professor Ken Wong cautioned that although it may seem like a no-brainer for businesses to capitalize on Pokemon Go’s popularity, it can also backfire.
“It’s a statement of what your brand is, who it stands for and who it seeks to appeal to,” said Wong, who is with the Stephen J.R. Smith School of Business at Queen’s University.
“While it may generate traffic for you, whether or not that traffic generates profitability in the short, and more importantly, long term is a different story. If you’re in a business that needs a promotion to stay in business, you’re already on a slippery slope.”
Wong said the publicity stunt would mostly profit businesses that appeal to the biggest demographic of Pokemon Go players or have a link to the game — for example, stores that sell cellphone accessories or comic books.
There may be a potential to grow business in the short term, but he doesn’t see that enduring.
“Eventually the novelty will wear off. There will always be diehards but it’s no different than the Trivial Pursuit craze,” he said.
“If you are the right kind of business, get in as soon as you can when the fad has the greatest duration of effect, because if you wait too long, the fad will be over.”
In Toronto, Peter Coulter set up a chalkboard sign Monday outside his optical store featuring a promotion offering passersby a free glasses cleaning if they can capture a Pokemon creature inside.
Although he says he hasn’t seen any direct sales from the sign, he stands behind it.
“It’s quite the phenomenon,” said the manager of Optical Thirty 8. “The sign was just something catchy to encourage people to come in and use their phones so we can show them some of our services and at the same time, maybe they’ll buy some new glasses.”
Follow @LindaNguyenTO on Twitter.
The post Canadian businesses catch Pokemon Go fever, trying to capitalize on the craze appeared first on Canadian Business - Your Source For Business News.
After weeks of emailing and calling, you finally land a meeting with one of your more elusive prospects.
When the big day rolls around, you've done your prep and are raring to go. You dial into the call early just to make sure you're on time.
Five minutes go by and your prospect hasn't called you. "They're probably just running a little late,"
After 10 minutes, you send the "reminder" email.
You're still more alone than Will Smith in I Am Legend (and he at least had a dog) 15 minutes in, and that's when the realization sets in: You've been no-showed.
If you're most people, your first reaction to this scneario will be: "Is there anything I could have done differently to prevent this?"
No-shows are a silent quota killer.
Ask any salesperson why they missed quota on a given month, and you can pretty much expect to hear the same laundry list of explanations:
I've never heard someone say "I got no showed too much," but no-shows are just as dangerous over time as any of the above for two reasons:
The first harm is obvious and needs little explanation, but to illustrate the second, here's an example:
Recently, I had a day of back-to-back sales meetings, when a prospect -- let's call them Company X -- that was a great fit popped up on my radar unexpectedly that morning.
Company X was hoping to meet ASAP because they were on a tight timeline, but their only availability was during a slot I already had a meeting booked with a different prospect. We were able to make something work a few days later, but this cut it close with their decision date.
Fast forward to the slot they'd wanted, and lo and behold, the original prospects I was supposed to meet with no-showed.
I frantically tried to see if Company X was still available, but their schedule had long filled up. I ended losing the deal to a competitor at least partly due to their immediate need for a solution.
This story exemplifies that the real cost of a no show is not just the time you spend waiting -- it's the other deal you could have been moving forward during that time.
After all, there are a finite number of hours in a day that you can spend actively having coversations with your potential buyers. To sacrifice any of them to someone who stands you up has a large cost that compounds over time.
There are two kinds of personas who will no-show you:
You can use the three strategies below to deal with both of these persona types effectively and reduce the cost of no-shows on your resources.
Much of the time, the manner in which meetings are booked holds the greatest weight in determining whether or not the other party shows up.
Avoid scheduling 'update calls' or 'check-ins' -- you're just asking to be blown off by a "Busy Brianne." Be explicit about why the meeting is important, and give your prospect a real reason to show up.
Here's one way you can phrase the follow-up meeting request so this so that the other party understands the value of the meeting and shows up:
Typically I find that after you see our competitors' solutions, it is beneficial to go over the differences between the platforms so you can make an informed decision. Do you think you would benefit from this? If so, what times work for you this week?"
Instead of booking an ambiguous check-in call, you have now given your prospect an explicit agenda for the meeting that is tied to an incentive they have as a buyer.
Not sure if your next meeting is built on a solid foundation or quicksand? Before proposing a meeting with a prospect, ask yourself the following: "If I was a busy person with a packed calendar, and I saw this meeting on my calendar with a salesperson I just met, would I show up to it?"
If the answer is no, rethink why you are requesting a meeting in the first place.
As salespeople, we often think that deals are dead in the water if there is not another step with the potential client on our calendars. That's often true, but I would rather have an empty calendar than a calendar full of meetings that are empty of purpose. Let dead deals lie and spend your time on ones that could close.
Even if you've booked a meeting with purpose, the battle is far from over.
Priorities shift -- you are not selling in a vacuum. Your prospect is likely meeting with other companies as well as internally with other stakeholders, and a lot can change between the day you book the meeting and the day it happens.
For that reason, I always send a pre-meeting "affirmation email."
For an early discovery meeting, this email might be just be a list of qualifying questions. I sell HubSpot Sales, and the following email is an abbreviated version of an email I might send:
Hi <<first name>>,
I am looking forward to our meeting this week. In order to help me prepare could you please answer the following questions:
Best,
Sam
This email helps you gather important context to make the meeting productive (or disqualify right off the bat). It also plays an important role in preventing no-shows by reminding the prospect of the impending meeting, and provides an implicit contract through their response to the questions that they will be attending.
If you do not get a reply to this email after a friendly reminder or two, odds are you're dealing with a "Ghost Gary." It may be worth canceling the meeting altogether so you get the time back in your day to book with someone who is actually an active buyer.
For a meeting later on in the sales process, the email would probably look more like this:
Hi <<first name>>,
When we last met we agreed that you would __________ , and we would then meet to ____________. Is this still your expectation for our meeting this week? I want to make sure I am prepared if so.
Best,
Sam
I recommend saving these emails as templates so you can easily automate sending and personalizing them out from your inbox or CRM.
Even with flawless preparation, no-shows will always be a fact of life. How you respond to a no-show is equally as important to how you prepare for your meetings.
Your immediate emotional reaction may be to say "screw it," shut down the deal, and never follow up again. While this is advisable for a "Ghost Gary" who was never worth your time in the first place, it is important not to lose the "Busy Briannes" who are still engaged.
A good way to deal with this situation is to send automated personal emails to re-schedule meetings with the prospect. This way you do not waste too much time on the Garys, who won't respond anyway, but still capitalize on the Briannes. Here is an example of a three-email sequence I use:
Hi <<first name>>,
I waited for 10 minutes today on the line before ending the call as I did not hear from you. Don't worry, I know how busy things can get this time of year.
Let's find a new time to meet? You can see my availability here: <<insert link to calendar booking tool>>
Hi <<first name>>,
I wanted to follow up as you had not responded to my initial email to reschedule -- any particular reason I have not heard back yet?
If this is still a priority, please find sometime on my calendar here: <<insert link to calendar booking tool>>
Hi <<first name>>,
At this point as I have not heard back from you after missing our meeting, I am assuming you are no longer interested in __________.
If you have just been jammed up, please let me know or grab sometime with me here: <<insert link to calendar booking tool>>
A no-show here and there won't make or break your success any given month. But at the end of the day, every extra hour you spend with active, engaged buyers counts.
If you do not combat no-shows, your sales cycle will get longer and the amount of calories you spend closing deals will increase, but you'll only be working more to generate the same output as your peers who manage their calendar more adeptly. Even more importantly, you might miss out on opportunities to spend time with engaged buyers if you fail to manage them effectively. The techniques above could make the difference between good and great long-term sales performance
Prospect engagement with marketing automation and email marketing doesn’t need to be a mystery. As these technologies advance and the capabilities expand, there are those who don’t use it well and those who do.
Weak
Including more than 2 CTAs in an email. It will only confuse your audience and dilute your expected results.
Strong
Lengthen the engagement; create touches at a cadence that makes sense for your buyer’s buying cycle and include new CTAs as additional touch points in a nurturing initiative. Repeat the same CTA at least twice in your email or twice as a button and once in the text for better results.
This keeps the conversation going with your prospective buyers, and allows you to test what’s working and what’s not as you optimize the prospect experience. According to Herbert Krugman’s, “The Impact of Television Advertising: Learning without Involvement,” a person has to be exposed to something at least 3 times before it registers as a true reminder. This is a similar idea, just applied to email.
Weak
Custom-code mailto: links (especially as your primary CTA). Sure, it’s possible and we’ve all seen it: you click an email, and an auto-populated compose message pops up in your outlook. This is not only annoying, but it’s not trackable in certain platforms. If a tree falls in a forest… you get the idea.
Strong
Include CTAs like:
The CTAs then lead to a form, 5-7 fields max. Add some pre-population and progressive profiling as it makes sense. If you really want to kick the hot leads over to sales, ideate a lead scoring model that makes sense and creates delineated thresholds for what is mutually defined (between marketing and sales counterparts) as a marketing qualified lead (MQL).
Taking a definitive and strategic approach to your marketing automation efforts will reap benefits across the board for you and your department:
I once had a boss who said, “If it’s not repeatable, scalable processes, do not talk to me about it.”
Weak
Pre-show and post-show engagement emails. As a last ditch effort, yes, it fits the bill. As a longer engagement, not really.
Treating email as a conversation rather than an information board adds a human element to your campaigns. Keep the emails short and concise and stay top of mind, rather than doing what 98% of the market does with event-related email.
Strong
Create a 4-5 touch email campaign. Send 2 emails prior to the show, 2 emails during the show for those who click through or register, and 1-2 emails post show.
People plan their engagements, and it’s respectful and more fruitful to give advance notice, even in B2B and B2C marketing. If you have a greater presence (i.e. a networking event, exclusive party or a sponsored dinner) at an event and want to get maximum mileage out of it, start the marketing communications 4-6 weeks in advance.
Mastering the art of prospect engagement doesn’t have to be complicated. Be consistent and strategic, and you’re good to go!
Most sales models include a conversion funnel in which reps try to convert a marketing-generated lead into a prospect and then a customer through sequential steps. In this model, sales people are expected to make the process as friction-less as possible for the potential buyer and to close the deal at the end by using certain phrases and techniques to “overcome objections.” This perspective is promoted in books and seminars, but research indicates it is not how people buy.
As one of us noted in a previous article, buyers work their way through parallel streams (rather than a funnel) as they explore, evaluate, and engage in purchase decisions via web sites, white papers, social media, and contact with other buyers through sites like Marketo, and so on.
This why the end of a sales process is the worst time to handle objections — prospects typically contemplate their objections long before “close,” and, to avoid conflict, often cite a socially-acceptable rationale such as price, which may not be the real barrier to buying. To better address this reality, sellers should ask prospects to make incremental commitments throughout the process.
Along with improving sales results, research has shown that incremental commitments can boost charitable giving, increase show rates for blood drives, and reduce smoking. In a seminal study, a team posing as volunteer workers canvassed a neighborhood and asked residents to put a large “Drive Carefully” billboard in their front yards. Most residents, over 80%, refused to do so, mostly because the signs would have obstructed the views of their homes. Researchers had better luck in a near-by neighborhood, however, by first asking residents to display a smaller, three-inch sign that read “Be a Safe Driver.” This request was met with almost universal acceptance. Then, two weeks later, when researchers returned and asked this second-group of homeowners to put the large “Drive Carefully” billboards in their front yards, 76% agreed to do so.
An incremental approach to sales has many benefits. It allows reps to glean more information from prospects and to gauge their commitment rather than just their comprehension — a crucial difference in a customer conversation. Usually, reps are taught to listen for phrases from prospects such as “that makes sense” or “that’s a valid point” or nonverbal signals such as head nods. But these cues mean only that a prospect is comprehending what you’re saying. They’re analogous to the conversational si in Spanish and many other languages, which means “I hear you,” not “I agree with you.”
Commitment, on the other hand, requires action. For instance, if you were to periodically prompt prospects to confirm that they agree with the data or objective you’ve cited, and then ask them if they’d be willing to act on that agreement via some small action, you’d receive much clearer feedback. If the prospect commits, you can move on; if not, you should identify the objection or barrier, and deal with it.
Because incremental commitments are so vital, you must be intentional in securing them. As a general rule, the earlier you can identify objections, the more likely the sale will occur.
Incremental commitments can also convince prospects to change, which is vital in selling new products or services. Unless the proposed benefits of a new product significantly outweigh their perceived losses of a change, prospects tend to stick with what they know, a phenomenon known as the endowment effect. The incremental-commitment approach can help to overcome status-quo inertia.
Consider Paccar, a designer and manufacturer of premium trucks, which has consistently introduced new products and maintained a price premium of 10-20% over its rivals. One reason for Paccar’s success is its online interactive that shows potential customers the expenses that accrue during the lifetime of owning a truck. You can input gasoline costs, tire rolling coefficients, and vehicle weight to quantify the benefits of a Paccar truck versus those of competitors. You can do the same for resale value, maintenance, driver retention (useful data if you run a fleet), and financing costs.
The interactive makes it easy for prospects to comprehend the relative economics at play and allows them to make small but meaningful commitments during the search and sale process, alleviating their fears. This is no small feat since truck owners, like Harley riders, are often beholden to a particular brand, and sometimes even tattoo its logo on their bodies. The process also improves prospecting and sales productivity because it allows reps to gauge the willingness of customers to commit before Paccar devotes expensive resources to closing the deal.
Other companies have found similar success. One firm, which sells complex technical services to telecom companies, was spending 9 to 12 months of its 24-to-30 month selling cycle in proof-of-concept meetings with multiple groups at the customer — a big sunk cost if the sale was not closed. By instituting demos at various parts of their buyers’ journeys, the firm decreased its selling cycle by 6 to 12 months, increased close rates, and freed-up more time for selling to other prospects.
To add to that, many companies are using content marketing campaigns to uncover potential objections, generate initial commitments to successive aspects of their value propositions, and identify more promising leads. This is more productive than relying on downloaded white papers or blogs, which often generate a broad and often unproductive array of leads.
New sales enablement tools are making it possible to make incremental commitments a measurable pipeline activity. Showpad and other services allow reps to forward materials to prospects and observe how the prospect engages (or not) with the content. Does the prospect look at the price list? Does she forward the document to others in the buying unit? Which collateral or trial offers do and do not generate action? This helps to pinpoint where incremental commitments can be best located.
It’s important to keep in mind that it’s not the customer’s responsibility to make selling easy; it’s the seller’s job to align sales activities with actual buying behavior. So don’t treat closing as the last step of a linear process; instead, you should always be closing — always — throughout the sales process via incremental commitments.
B2B brands face special challenges when trying to reach their clients because they are businesses also and know all the “tricks of the trade” for trying to increase sales and leads. Selling to a business is like trying to tell a joke to a comedian, or show a magician how to do a trick, or sing Happy Birthday to a pop star. Unless you really know what you’re doing, you aren’t going to make the impact you want.
However, selling to other brands doesn’t have to be that hard — they do still need to invest in products or services to run their own operation, and if you have what they need to get ahead, there’s no reason why you shouldn’t be able to land the sale. All you need is a little B2B marketing 101:
Whether you are marketing to individual consumers or Fortune 500 companies, the first thing you need to do when creating a marketing campaign is to really get to know your audience. You can’t settle at basics like “small business” or “people who need finance software.” You need to define your audience as narrowly as you can without rejecting potential clients.
For example, you may sell finance software, and you may define your audience as “companies with 50 to 100 employees who have an operating budget of xxx dollars and perform professional services in house.”
You can narrow your audience by industry, company size, budget, location, and terms of operation. You can find out this information about your potential clients by looking at their own published materials, conducting focus groups, or even hiring a market research company. With a narrowly defined audience, you can create a targeted marketing campaign that you can measure. You can then create the strategies that are more likely to be successful.
Your audience doesn’t care about what you have to sell — they care about solving their problems. If you can show that your product or service helps them to solve a problem, you can make them care about what you have to sell. But before you do that, you often have to solve other problems for them by providing informative articles and white papers, video tutorials, and other content.
Whether you are writing content for your blog or you are interacting on social media, if you just keep in mind that your primary goal should be to solve a problem for your audience, you will be more successful. That goal should be in mind for every tweet you send, every comment you make in a group, and every post you publish on LinkedIn. Providing solutions will attract more readers and followers, who will become a captive audience when you are ready to promote your own products and services.
More so than with B2C marketing, you have to establish yourself as a real authority to find success with B2B marketing. Businesses have too much on the line to waste their time — and their money — on products or services that will not give them what they need. You can establish your authority in a number of ways, such as through content marketing, referral marketing, and community marketing.
Perhaps the easiest way to establish your authority is through content marketing since all you really need is a blog and a quality point of view. Besides writing content that provides real value for your readers, you need to write extensively and authoritatively on a subject. You can start with your current blog and look for any gaps in your coverage. Write about those niche topics that you haven’t yet covered, or write more in-depth on those topics you have already covered. Turn your site into a true resource for your clients and then share that content across your channels.
You can’t know if your marketing campaign is successful if you don’t have clearly defined goals and if you aren’t measuring your results. You can measure your results by looking at the sales or leads you bring in following the launch of a specific campaign. You can measure them by monitoring your web traffic, your social media likes, or other forms of engagement. You can also measure them by monitoring your site’s ranking in search.
Again, it is important that you define your goals before you start your campaign. If you want to increase sales but you only get an increase in web traffic, that campaign could be considered a failure. You might leverage that traffic for more sales later, or that traffic could fizzle out after that initial bump. It doesn’t have to be hard to get results with B2B marketing, but you do have to be methodical and you do have to be consistent. Follow these basic tips to help you get started and to start seeing results.
There’s a new way game Twitter and gain followers that goes like this: perform searches for keywords and hashtags on topics of interest and then go about “liking” as many of these posts as possible in the hopes that those accounts will follow you.
There are some emerging tech tools that will automate part of this process – making it ever easier. An algorithm sifts through posts based on criteria you’ve selected – keywords or hashtags – and presents dozens of tweets at a time for your liking.
You don’t have to actually read these tweets, or the underlying links if there are any. Just simply like a bunch of them. You know that feeling you get when someone likes your tweets? That’s what you are doing here but at a manufacturing scale.
Some people I’ve spoken to swear this is a sound way to grow a Twitter audience and (ostensibly) gain online influence. To me, it’s a gimmick and such gimmicks on Twitter are about as old as Twitter itself.
The classic ploy is to follow a bunch of people knowing most will follow you back – and then secretly unfollow them a few days later. With just a little effort you’ll be able to grow a sizable following on Twitter.
More importantly, gamers believe, the number of people that follow you will, by all outward appearances, rapidly outpace the number of people you follow. The implicit message? Followers and ratios as a hallmark of online influence.
In reality, this is nothing more than a superficial fabrication.
As with the previous example, there are tools here too that will automate aspects of this technique as well, which arguably removes the “social” from social media.
More importantly, what is the value to the business and what is it that drives marketers to such ends?
At first glance, such words might sound technophobic, but they are not. I believe technology gives us leverage, but like Peter Thiel says in his book Zero to One, it works best when it augments humanity rather than replaces it.
There’s an old saying in public relations circles that you’re only as good as your last hit – you always need more placements. And that gets to the core of the point here – this is about the psychology of more in marketing: more content, more followers, and more leads.
It never ends. It is never enough.
As a result, marketing finds itself on the hamster wheel of more. Marketing rarely slows down to consider the impact or stops to analyze the results beyond the idea those metrics that suggest we are getting more.
And while it’s not always conscious or by design, sometimes, that leads us to gimmicks.
* * *
Maybe the metrics for more are right and they are working for your business. But the next time you feel the pressure for more, pause for a moment to consider: If we do get more does that help us meet the business goals?
Absent that pause marketing is on a hamster wheel where running faster looks industrious, but otherwise, doesn’t accomplish much. And that isn’t a whole lot different than the absurdity of gaming Twitter for followers.
Note: A version of this post was originally published on Sword and the Script under the title The Psychology of More in Content Marketing and Social Media.
Photo credit: Flickr, Ian Norman, Human Hamster Wheel (CC BY-SA 2.0)
We all want to make our content go further. No matter how many followers you have on social media and no matter how many people visit your website every month, sometimes your great content just doesn’t get as much mileage as it could.
Your most loyal readers will read your content, of course. While feeding your existing audience great content is important, your existing audience is limited.
There is a much larger audience who has yet to even hear about you or the awesome stuff you’re writing.
So if your goals include giving your content a second life and continuing to grow your audience, Medium can definitely help you.
Evan Williams and Biz Stone founded the crazy popular blogging platform in 2012. It touts itself as the place where “everyone has a story to share and the best ones are delivered right to you.”
You can think of Medium sort of like Twitter for long-form content, except it has an algorithmic timeline that tells you what stories you’re going to be interested in.
I’ve been publishing on Medium for just over a year now and have discovered many great benefits.
If you haven’t yet taken the leap, here are 10 insanely good reasons you should syndicate your content on Medium.
If you have blog content anywhere on the web, Medium can import it. All you have to do is click on the “Import a story” option.
After you’ve imported it, you can edit it however you want. Change your title, move around the images, and play with the formatting until you’re ready to hit publish.
Medium even adds a line at the bottom of your imported post that says where and when the post was originally published, including a link to the original post.
If you’ve already built up a good-sized social media following, there’s good news: yes, you can take your audience with you to Medium. So you basically have a built-in audience with no effort on your part!
You can link your Medium profile to your Twitter and Facebook IDs. Medium will then figure out which of those users are also on Medium and connect you with those people automatically.
Medium will tell you how many people viewed one of your stories, as well as how many people made it to the end. The average reading time is pretty amazing, usually between 7 and 11 minutes.
Engagement on Medium is much better than on Twitter. You could get millions of impressions on Twitter, but only 50 actual clicks on your content. That’s because users are spending all of 2 seconds on your tweet before all the other new tweets start flying by.
If you post something that’s memorable, inspiring, and interesting, your content might just make a stronger impact on Medium than it had initially.
Medium’s algorithmic timeline will open your content to a different audience that otherwise never would have heard of you. Essentially, Medium helps create a new audience for you, regardless of whether you already have a big audience. (Your audience could always be bigger, right?)
The key is getting people to recommend your posts. On Medium, it’s all about hearts.
As you can see here, based on an analysis of several hundred posts, I’ve calculated that the more people who click on the heart icon posts, the more likely it becomes that you’ll show up in other people’s timelines, including those people who don’t yet know you.
If you can get 200 hearts within 24 hours, you will likely end up being one of the top stories of the day – a Medium unicorn! Those top stories get featured prominently on the website and in the app.
In addition, Medium sends out a personalized email digest to users, where they will share two or three of the top stories for you.
Many large publishers no longer accept applications from authors. They’re tired of being inundated with terrible pitches. Sadly, it’s turned into a “Don’t call us, we’ll call you” situation.
However, publishers are still finding and adding new contributors to their sites. How? By scouting for popular authors on Medium.
As long as you’re consistently publishing great posts, and you have talent and creativity, eventually you’ll hit a home run. Maybe, just maybe, a Business Insider, Huffington Post, or New York Observer might ask to syndicate one of your posts – or even ask you to become a regular contributor.
Medium has no API. Although APIs are essential in some ways, they also sometimes ruin social networks. Probably 99.9 percent of spam (like fake followers and people scheduling and tweeting garbage content) is due to aggressive API usage.
Unlike on Twitter (which is ridiculously noisy), the signal to noise ratio on Medium is pretty good. Way more of my 52,000 Medium followers seem legit compared to your average Twitter “followers”, and the lack of noise has in part helped me become one of Medium’s top authors.
Medium won’t be right for everybody. However, certain industries have really great, established audiences.
Topics that do really well on Medium include:
Marketing posts do OK, provided that you’re not overly tactical.
You initially use Facebook and Twitter connections to create your Medium audience. But then a funny thing happens. Medium will start helping you generate new Facebook and Twitter followers.
One thing I do is put an “About the Author” footer in all my articles, which includes links to all my social profiles – Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, and Instagram – as well as, of course, a link to my company website.
Medium is actually the number-one driver of traffic to my Facebook page!
Another great way to gain exposure is by starting your own Medium publication. So even if people aren’t following you individually, but they start following your publication, it’s highly likely they’ll start being exposed to your content anyway.
I started a publication called Marketing & Entrepreneurship that features tips and news on social media marketing, online advertising, search engine optimization, content marketing, growth hacking, branding, and more. It has over 10,000 followers as of this writing.
Quite a few brands have actually given up on traditional blogs and now just publish on Medium.
This is crazy. Look at these stats – all just from syndicating columns I’ve already written and published. Nothing new or original required!
Hopefully, this helps you understand the awesome power of Medium, especially for your personal brand. You can gain an impressive amount of traction by republishing your existing content with minimal effort.
Bottom line: There’s a lot for you to love about Medium. So what are you waiting for?
Artificial intelligence is hot, but also daunting. The latest advances — known variously as cognitive computing, machine learning, and deep learning — sound complicated and expensive. And they are, despite the enormous potential they bring to the marketplace. For many companies, the price tag and the commitment of resources are too high a hurdle. And for other reasons, even a giant like Apple is facing challenges.
But the good news is that the early dividends from AI are already within reach of most midsize companies as they look for ways to expand their digital boundaries. In fact, the building blocks of AI can produce great results with fewer technical requirements and less time and money than many companies realize. What’s more, those that take this initial step are getting a leg up on AI’s future, since that step is going to be a prerequisite for everything that follows.
First, let’s get our bearings.
At the high end of artificial intelligence are systems like cognitive computing that are allowing driverless cars and other machines to develop the capacity to learn from their experiences in the world — by incorporating nuances, remembering outcomes, and adapting to mistakes. (A recent accident involving a Tesla “autonomous car” has raised questions about AI’s current limits.)
At the less-expensive end is a knowledge-based approach that organizes data and language into highly malleable and helpful blocks of information. These “AI Lite” systems don’t learn new tricks — unless their human minders use new code instructions to “teach” them. But they can become very smart indeed about sorting and distributing their information in extremely fast ways.
What follows are some guideposts to help you put AI Lite to work.
Find the right places to use it. Even in this new information age, not everything requires the razzle-dazzle of AI. But companies and government agencies are starting to find plenty of places where knowledge-based tools can make a huge difference. These include improving data-mining operations, helping with training, and making structured, repeatable tasks and processes far more efficient and less costly. And they are finding the tools increasingly useful, of course, in dealing with online customers.
For example, Allstate Business Insurance, a division of Allstate Insurance, used the tools to develop a virtual assistant known as ABIe (pronounced “Abby”) to answer questions from its 12,000 agents. It was a bit like hiring Apple’s Siri at a sliver of the cost. Mike Barton, the division’s president, put it this way: “We think of ABIe as our precursor to cognitive computing on a shoestring.”
When the company upgraded its commercial insurance line for small businesses a few years ago, the agents jammed internal call centers with questions about how the policies worked and how to set sales quotes. The cost of simply expanding the call centers was prohibitive.
Enter ABIe (shorthand for the Allstate Business Insurance Expert), which my firm helped develop. Employing a rigorous approach to the words and phrases at the heart of the company’s products, ABIe’s avatar-driven interface offers accurate answers to policy questions while streamlining the quote process. From just a few thousand queries a month in 2013, ABIe now handles 100,000 — from all of the company’s employees, and not just from agents. A new version of ABIe will soon be taking queries directly from the customers. Best of all, ABIe paid for itself the first year, so almost all of the ongoing savings now drop to the bottom line.
Roll up your sleeves. AI Lite is far less complicated and less expensive than the high end of the spectrum, but that doesn’t mean it is off the shelf. One size does not fit all — and there are no plug-and-play magic bullets.
For example, it took nearly a year to design, build, and implement ABIe. Allstate Business assigned a team of managers and subject-matter experts to the project to figure out the “taxonomy” of the words, phrases, and data that ABIe would require to answer all of those questions. ABIe pulls its answers from a data warehouse, where all the knowledge relating to the company’s products and processes has been organized. In AI speak, that meant all of the company’s numbers, charts, words, and phrases had to be chopped, chunked, tagged, and HR-optimized to give ABIe the ingredients for those answers.
In short, companies that want to get into this game will have to roll up their sleeves and do some old-fashioned blocking and tackling. But the prize is worth pursuing: If the right data is married to the right vocabulary and terminology, a company’s information capabilities will soar.
Don’t expect everything to be perfect. Given all the moving parts, however, mistakes, and the need for midcourse corrections, are inevitable, so prepare for them. In ABIe’s case, the team started out by offering some answers that were far too thorough, essentially telling the questioner how to build a clock when all that was sought was the correct time. It took trial and error — including detailed debriefs of those using ABIe — to arrive at very specific and actionable answers and to put in place the governance, metrics, and change-management processes to make controlled, methodical updates.
Don’t make your AI too lite. When using AI to interact with online customers, keep in mind that piecemeal approaches won’t work. Most organizations are deploying department-level solutions and standalone tools without sufficient funding. The results are typically inconsistent and haphazard, forcing time-consuming and costly fixes.
One department at a company, for example, may see the customer through a transactional lens, while another puts the emphasis on promotions. The differences in their data models will slow, and perhaps hobble, the entire program.
Getting your money’s worth from AI — whether at the knowledge-based end of the spectrum or later on, with more extensive, and expensive, applications — requires three things. The effort must involve careful analysis and preparation, which takes into account each department but keeps the focus on the full enterprise. It must have a formal (and nuanced) governance structure. And someone at the most senior level of the company must sponsor it.
Without those foundational elements in place, you will fall short in deploying the incremental power of AI Lite and be ill prepared for the revolutionary changes that AI promises to bring.
Flashcards aren't known as the most fun way to learn, but Duolingo is hoping to change that with its new Tinycards app, which not only helps you learn a new language, but any other subject you want.
The post Learn to do pretty much anything with flashcard-based learning app TinyCards appeared first on Digital Trends.
In the never-ending talk about business marketing platforms, it seems like one is always forgotten: good old-fashioned print. It can be easy to cast off print as the ugly stepchild of today’s multimedia marketing platforms, but studies show we may be dismissing its reach too soon. Many business owners opt to replace paper advertisements with ever-popular video walls, online advertisements, social media marketing campaigns, and other innovative digital renditions. However, it appears the businesses with the most success use a combination of print and digital advertising.
Gone are the days of ink-smudged fingertips and clipping the funnies from Sunday’s newspaper to hang on the fridge…or are they? I personally hope not. I’m a huge advocate of print—books, advertisements, and other media. While I do enroll in paperless billing (who wants to kill trees for bills?), I don’t think paper books can be replaced with digital media. I feel the same about print advertisements. While I browse Groupon with the best of them, I also check my daily mail for print coupons and deals from local establishments.
Without print, the world would be trapped in the digital sphere—a sphere that does have drawbacks, despite technology companies’ best efforts to make you think otherwise. As Go 2 Advertising points out, digital media’s immense amount of accessibility leads to distractions such as popup and sidebar ads tailored specifically to your personal needs using your search history. Many people (including myself) find these ads intrusive and irritating—almost an invasion of privacy.
Print advertisements not only enable your company to reach a non-digital audience, but they also give consumers a positive impression of your brand. Print is currently trendy in millennial circles, as are most “old school” practices. To think that print media could even be classified as “old school” makes me cringe, but here we are in the 21st century, and digital media has been around for almost half a century (no, really, I looked it up). If you wait long enough, you can introduce print media as a “new” advertising platform and really wow Generation Z.
When you engage in print advertising, you’re reaching your audience in a unique manner that not every company takes advantage of. Print advertisements leave a lasting impression on customers, who associate your brand with out-of-the-box thinking and industry trend-setting. Combining digital marketing with print marketing can be the perfect way to generate new leads and increase brand awareness—a fact now backed by current research.
According to a study by Fluent and the Newspaper Association of America, print advertisements continue to carry sizeable influence and reach a large audience. The graph of their findings shows that print ads are topped only by television ads based on a recent survey of retailers’ marketing channel reach. Print ads tied with online ads (39%) for second place—a statistic that may surprise many retailers who believe online ads have long-since outstripped print media.
The study refers to the combination of print and digital advertising as the “Omnichannel Advantage.” It states that companies reaching consumers with a higher number of media channels—including print media—experience greater sales success. Omnichannel marketing drives sales and is conducive to generating new leads through customers who consume print media more than or as much as digital media.
Print media isn’t only beneficial because of the wider audience it reaches. The printed word may also hold more persuasive weight than digital content. A neurological study from Temple University for the United States Postal Service shows that the human brain processes physical media ads better than digital ads. While test subjects absorbed digital ads more quickly, paper ads engaged them for a longer period of time. When the study tested the same subjects one week later, they showed a more emotional response for physical media ads than digital.
The neurological response the brain has to paper may be attributed to greater ventral striatum activation—the part of the brain most predictive of purchasing behavior. Physical ads caused more brain activity in this area in test subjects, leading to the belief that these advertisements may be more powerful than digital media when it comes to securing a sale. The outcome of this study shows that physical media beat digital media in five out of nine categories, tied in three categories, and only lost in the “Attention” category.
The Temple University study proves that physical ads have more emotional weight than digital ads and therefore lead to better audience retention. Customers can process more information about your brand, accurately remember the source of the advertisements, and generate a subconscious desire for the product—a prominent end goal for any business. If you had to choose between a short-lived burst of attention for your brand and a long-term emotional impression, surely you’d pick the latter.
As digital media continues to make headlines, will those headlines eventually stop being printed in ink? It’s my sincere hope that the art of physical print never dies, and if the statistics continue to lean in print media’s favor, I may not have anything to fear. If the goal of your business’s advertisements is to engage your audience, it appears that print media still takes the prize over digital media—at least in long-term engagement.
Whether this trend will continue is anyone’s guess, but if you combine your digital ads with print ads, it appears you can’t go wrong. Double the press equals double the power. Creating engaging physical and digital mediums has the potential to make your advertisement stand out for all the right reasons.
