Rnordman

The Centre for Child Nutrition, Health and Development (CCNHD) brings world-class talent and resources together to tackle the most important nutrition-related health issues facing children and their families in Canada and around the world. We are a network of University of Toronto researchers and educators focused on nutrition and the prevention of obesity, chronic disease and malnutrition in children. www.childnutrition.utoronto.ca

FoodFit is a 12-week program for low-income community members who experience barriers around healthy eating and physical activity but who are motivated to make lasting changes to their health https://www.cfccanada.ca/foodfit

Thanks to Dr. Brian Wansink, Director of the Cornell University Food & Brand Lab https://foodpsychology.cornell.edu/ and author of Slim by Design https://www.slimbydesign.org/ and Mindless Eating https://mindlesseating.org

Simple Rules for Healthy Eating – Aaron Carrol for New York Times
https://www.nytimes.com

Mastering the Mindful Meal – Brigham and Women’s Hospital
https://www.brighamandwomens.org

eaTracker – Dieticians of Canada Apps for meal planning and food logging
https://www.eatracker.ca/

Fooducate – a personal grocery advisor, helping people make healthy food choices https://blog.fooducate.com

How to find real food at the supermarket flowchart https://summertomato.com

If you’re selling in any proper fashion, you’re working overtime trying to get to the root problem your prospect or customer is struggling with. You’re asking substantial business and process questions.  You’re inquiring about their goals and objectives and the desired outcomes. If you’re killing it, you’re trying to understand their current state and their desired future state.

However in the process of gathering information, if you’re like most salespeople you’re missing a critical step. And, in doing so, your leaving tremendous opportunity on the table.

What are you and other sales people missing? You’re not asking for definitions.

When a customer or prospect says they are losing a lot of money, rarely do we ask, “How much money are you losing?” or “Can you define a lot? When a prospect says they need to see substantial growth, we don’t ask; “How much growth are you looking for?”  When a buyer says it takes a long time to do something, we rarely inquire what a “long-time” is.

Look! More, a lot, less, increase, grow, declining, additional, fewer, longer, shorter, efficient, inefficient, lighter, heavier, greater, smaller, minimize, minimal, maximum, substantial, and meager don’t mean anything without definition.

Too often sales people accept these vague, nondescript adjectives as the gospel. I’ve heard it a million times. A sales person turns to me and says their customer wants to grow faster, and that’s why they’re interested in the product. Or they explain that their customer’s sales are slowing down, and they need to get them growing faster. In neither case, however, does the rep actually learn what faster means or what slowing down means. They just accept them at face value, whatever face value is.

When we don’t define these customer descriptions, we are leaving 50% or more of the sales on the table. We deny ourselves the insight necessary to successfully sell the deal.  Terms like a lot and faster, or slower are subjective even with definitions, but without definitions, they are useless.

Think about it this way. What if growing sales faster to your customer is, one year, and you think growing sales faster is three months. What if more to your prospect is 90% more, but to you it’s 10%.  Those are all very different expectations and objectives.

When we ask our prospects to define their objectives, to define; more, less, faster, etc. we get the information we need to understand truly and precisely the world they’re living in and the expectations they have. It allows us to see exactly where the prospect is struggling. We see exactly what they are looking to make happen. We see exactly where the problems are, how big they are and what it’s going to take fix them. When we leave them vague, we make it impossible to solve their problems. Why, because we don’t know what they are.

Don’t settle for vague, undefined environmental descriptions. When you’re doing your discovery, ask for specifics, ask for details, ask your prospect or client to define exactly what they mean by more, less, faster, shorter, etc.

Without a definition, you have nothing. Don’t have nothing.

Get good at asking; “Can you please define . . . ?

Many people operate under the mistaken belief that “If I focus on a single target market, I’ll miss a ton of opportunity.”

Well, the truth is you might forego some opportunity, but your success in your niche will be so great that you’ll never miss it. 

Once you've defined your target market, the next step is to establish a rock-solid reputation for serving your niche. Here are three strategies to help you create a reputation that leads to new clients within your target market.

1) Position yourself as a specialist.

Which opening statement do you think is more likely to create interest and curiosity about your value:

“I’m a financial advisor and work with small business owners who want to grow and protect their wealth.”

“I’m a financial advisor and I specialize in working with owners and executives in the printing industry who want to grow and protect their wealth.”

When you talk about your value proposition in a way that makes it clear that you specialize in serving your target market, you are more likely to catch prospects' attention.

Another word you could choose to use is “expert.” For example, “I’m an expert in … ” or “My expertise is … ” I know that some people have difficulty calling themselves “experts.” Personally, I think this is limiting thinking. With that said, you need to choose words that roll off your tongue with ease and confidence. Go with what you're most comfortable with.

2) Meet the influencers.

Every target or niche market has influencers, such as association presidents (past, present, and future), and the more successful or respected members of the sector. Meet these people. Find ways to serve them related or totally unrelated to your core business. For instance, perhaps you can assist them with their philanthropic interests.

Be careful not to come on too strong about the work you do. Serve first. Be interested in them. They will then eventually give the attention back to you and how they can help you once you’ve built trust.

3) Speak, write, get quoted.

Most experts who have achieved a wide reputation within a niche include writing and speaking as part of their strategic plan.

Perhaps you’ve heard the term “thought leader.” You establish yourself as a thought leader by writing for and speaking to your target market. These can be articles for an association newsletter, your own blog dedicated to your market, guest appearances at meetings, or even educational events that you host. Once you’ve truly established a reputation as someone who “leads the discussion” relative to your area of expertise, the market’s media will start to seek you out for interviews and other experts in your target market will start quoting you.

Don’t like to write? Talk your thoughts into a recording device, have them transcribed, and hire an editor to clean them up. Don’t like to speak? Take a course. Just make the decision to get over your fear and get good.

Are you having success in a target market? Are you considering a target market approach? I’d love to hear from you. Send an email directly to me at BillCates@ReferralCoach.com

I get my hair cut by the same person every time, no matter what. It’s not a hard cut: I go with a buzz, four up top and three on the side. Anyone can do it, really. But I go to the same person every time.

Why? Because she knows me. She knows what I like, that I’m in the neighborhood, that I work at HubSpot -- all that. And, in turn, I know her. There are no awkward silences. She never does a bad job, and the experience is always delightful.

In theory, anyone can cut my hair. But when it comes down to it, a lot of stuff matters that has nothing to do with why I’m actually there (to get a haircut).

This experience got me thinking about sales reps, and how important it is they do more than just make a sale. Nowadays, sales reps need to deliver an experience.

If a rep wants a customer to keep coming back, they need to do more than just accept a contract. Granted, an excellent product can sometimes outweigh a bad sales rep, but a lot of customers are betting on the salesperson. This is who they trust. This is who they believe will help get them where they want to go.

So what makes a sales rep unforgettable? I think it’s a combination of the following five traits.

1) They offer help.

In recent years, sales has transitioned from an “always be closing” to an “always be helping” model, and this shift has been tremendous for the customer. Instead of someone just selling a product, sales reps have taken on the role of a teammate and advisor for their prospects. As Pete Caputa, vice president of Sales at HubSpot puts it, “Inbound salespeople focus on helping prospects even if it results in them not buying.”

Together, you and your customer can accomplish their goals. With your help, their revenue can improve, their home can look better, or their car can run smoother -- whatever their desired result may be. It doesn’t matter what your service is; offering help is critical to success.

We’re seeing a transformation in the world of sales. The buyer has the same knowledge as the seller. The only thing they are looking for is for help with the buying process. When you reach out with that warm email, this is your chance to offer assistance to the buyer.

Here are some key phrases to remember when you first reach out:

1. “I can assist you with this decision about [enter subject]”
2. “Do you need any guidance with [relevant topic]?”
3. “How can I help you during this process?”
4. “Would you like any clarification about [relevant topic]?”

2) They know their customers.

What’s the most important part of sales? Many experts argue that it’s knowing your customer or prospect. This idea of building relationships has come to the forefront in sales these past few years, and for good reason. Now, people are buying from folks they trust, and who know about their business. Tom Cruise might have said it best in Jerry Maguire: “The key to this business is personal relationships.”

Excellent sales reps have done the research, know a company’s market and strengths, and can help identify a solution to their problem.

Buyers value relationships. Today’s memorable sales reps know where their lead went to college, where they worked prior to their current company, and their favorite vacation spot. They take the time to ask personal questions and develop a bond that goes beyond the scope of a project.

Whether you’re doing your research on LinkedIn or in person, really dive into your customers’ and prospects’ needs, wants, and personalities.

Here are five questions to ask when you first meet a prospect:

1. Where’s your hometown?
2. What’s the one word you would use to describe yourself?
3. What are your top three goals in life?
4. What made you look into our service?
5. What do you want to get out of this transaction?

3) They go the extra mile.

Whether it’s staying late to help with a support issue, following up to solicit feedback, or simply sending a “hey, how are you?” email, there are a lot of ways to show your passion for your customer and their success. According to Jim Cathcart, great sales reps are committed to the success of their client’s business like it was their own.

If you want to go the extra mile as a sales rep, there are a few easy things you can do. Start with sending quick emails to your prospects. Aim to do this once every two or three weeks, and hop on the phone at least once a month. Use these calls to solicit feedback from the customer on what they like, what they don’t like, and what they think could be improved. This is also a great chance to ask questions about life in general, and deepen the personal bond.

In addition, loop them in on added benefits. Whenever your service is doing something new, include them in the update and make a point to let them know that something unique is happening. Offering a first look can make all the difference to a prospect.

Finally, make a point of getting things right. Each time a customer comes up with a complaint, assist as best you can to solve the problem and put them in touch with the right person. Response time matters to customers, and being there as their sales rep is extremely important.

4) They use memorable words and phrases.

Sales reps understand that how they present themselves, what they say, and how they say it is crucial. Memorable sales reps utilize science-backed words that convert. For example:

• You. This process is about the buyer, and the sales rep has to focus on getting that across.
• Because. Because is the reason: “You need these new flowers, because you want your yard to look great."
• Looking forward. Focusing on what lies ahead as a result of this purchase is important. Can they reach their goals with your product and how?
• Value. Make it clear they are getting a great deal. This is a product that works very well for the price, and the customer will benefit by purchasing it.

In addition, think about buzzwords. What matters to your prospect, lead, or customer? What’s their need and how can you solve it? The more you can use the specific industry terms and descriptive phrases they’d use to explain their problem, the better.

To make the most of memorable language, come up with a list of five buzzwords to use during your first email or phone call. For example, if you’re a physical therapist, and your potential customer talks about having pain in their back, use words like “relieve” or “fix” or “improve.”

5) They assist and inform.

Modern sales reps have also taken on the role of teacher with their prospects. Buyers now have product information before they ever talk to a sales rep -- what they need is a salesperson’s expertise to make the offering work for them.

Memorable sales reps know their product or service like the back of their hand, which helps them give effective demonstrations and field a wide variety of questions. If you’re shaky on your product’s features or value proposition, recruit someone to get you up to speed. Make sure you know the company’s history, and that you can easily explain it to someone.

Finally, spend an extra few minutes with new customers to guarantee that they fully understand what they’ve just bought. While they’re still in the decision process, teach them tricks and hacks that they can bring back to their teams in order to make the most of your offering.

What makes me go back to the same person for my haircuts is the experience. I enjoy more than just the service. Similarly, sales reps today are being expected to take on the roles of a friend, teacher, and confidant, all wrapped up into one person. These are five easy ways to go above and beyond for your client, and become unforgettable. 

I recently wrote about why curiosity is the most important trait any salesperson can have. After writing that post, it made sense to dive into the signs that can alert you as to whether or not someone (or even yourself) is curious by nature.

These are the kind of folks you want on your team, talking to your prospects, representing your company, and building out your pipeline. They work hard, they learn, become more efficient, and ultimately solve problems -- both for themselves and for the customer.

Are you curious to discover just how curious you are? Here are 13 signs of curiosity, and why they matter in sales. 

1) You love to learn.

Curious people tend to be avid learners. In the world of sales, learning from what worked and what didn’t in a variety of scenarios is important to continuously refining your process. Whether it’s the style of prospecting they’ve adopted, the subject line they use in emails, or the script they follow when going through a demonstration, curious salespeople want to experiment, learn, and optimize.

As LifeHacker points out, being curious means having an active mind. You’re not satisfied until you learn all you can about your process, and have the requisite data to start doubling down on what works and forgetting about what doesn’t.

2) You live to solve problems.

Every customer has a need. It’s important to remember that whenever someone enters a sales process, they’re doing it because they want to improve on something. If you’re curious, you love this: You want to know their goals, how they plan to get there, and how you can help.

It’s a sign you’re curious if you think about a customer’s success as if it was your own. How do you get them to where they want to be? What strategies can you develop together to bring their goals within reach?

3) Questions don’t scare you.

Curious sales reps embrace questions. When approaching someone new, curious people aren’t afraid to ask questions and solicit feedback that they think will make them better. If you can learn from it, you’ll embrace that initial awkward moment and take in the information.

The same principle applies when you’re making a sale. Some questions and follow-ups can be awkward. But curious folks don’t shy away. They welcome uncomfortable moments and embrace the idea of learning something new. After some practice, these reps become familiar with the unfamiliar. And this is a huge advantage for anyone in sales, as unfamiliar moments are the rule, not the exception.

4) You’ll talk about anything.

Studies have proven time and time again that maintaining a healthy level of curiosity about different viewpoints enables people to more easily form and maintain social relationships. According to Ben Dean, Ph.D, curious folks are often above-average listeners and conversationalists.

In sales, being a great listener and conversationalist goes a long way. Leading sales reps are no longer cold calling prospects. Instead, they’re offering assistance and building a relationship. They focus on the person they’re connecting with, and talk about what they’re interested in, struggling with, and aspiring to.

5) Virtually nothing bores you.

Curious people are always investigating something new and as a result are constantly building knowledge. No matter the situation, they can find something interesting to explore.

In sales, curious reps tend to maintain high activity levels and discover interesting facts about their prospects. While others are procrastinating or putting off talking to the “same old” buyers, these reps are reading books, and learning new methodologies.

6) You question everything.

Why should we settle? In this HBR article, Warren Berger encourages company leaders to create a culture where every practice is questioned. He emphasizes the importance of questions in order for a company to “innovate, adapt to change, and maintain an edge in fast-moving, competitive markets.”

Curious sales folks aren’t afraid to question old tactics, and this helps them continuously optimize their practices, messaging, and habits.

7) You don’t mind extra hours.

Curious people want to figure stuff out. When something piques their interest, they stick around until they discover more about the issue, or get to the bottom of the problem. And if the resolution won’t be uncovered for an hour or two after 5 p.m. rolls around, curious people settle in for the long haul -- with a smile on their face.

8) You’re self-motivated.

Being consistently interested in new things means you’re self-motivated to put in the time and effort to learn. You don’t need anyone to tell you that you have to do something; instead, you’re focused on doing it because you want to. Being curious and self-motivated also means you don’t get down when something goes wrong -- instead, you’re all the more motivated to solve the problem.

9) You keep it positive.

Believe it or not, curious people tend to be more positive than their less-curious counterparts. In sales, this attitude helps curious reps take rejection in stride.

10) You’re naturally empathetic.

As Greater Good points out, empathy and curiosity are linked. The more empathetic you are, the more curious you’re likely to be.  

Empathy is important in sales for several reasons, most notably because it enables the ability to connect with a prospect or a lead. An empathetic sales rep can instantly step into anyone’s shoes and identify with their pain points.

11) You love to achieve.

While most folks are afraid of what lies ahead, Harvard psychologist Ellen Langer found that curious people anxiously await their opportunity to move forward. When others become satisfied with their position, curious people continue to boldly move forward and take the next step. It goes without saying that an achievement attitude is essential to sales, where reps are held to quotas as well as other concrete metrics.

12) You’re creative.

Creativity and curiosity have been linked in several studies. The Huffington Post noted that “Creative people are insatiably curious.” Instead of zoning out, curious people observe and look at things differently. In sales, creative reps are the ones who experiment with new techniques and think of different ways to cater to prospects, often winning more deals as a result.

13) You stay in the moment.

Finally, and perhaps most importantly, curious people are present and stay in the moment. As studies have shown, thinking about several things at once can negatively affect your learning. Multitasking creates an inability to be fully present and take in everything that is happening in front of you. On the other hand, because curious people are so interested in what they’re doing, they find it easier to be present and focused.

Even though sales reps are tasked with juggling numerous deals at once, curious reps can tune all the other conversations and priorities out when they’re on the phone with a prospect. This focused attention deepens the rep-buyer bond, and ensures that the seller doesn’t miss any important information.

Being curious has tremendous benefits for sales performance. Focusing on developing and cultivating curiosity is important for success at all stages of a sales career.

Digital marketing is the ultimate phase of the Internet World. Irrespective of its nature, one of the classic questions in digital marketing is “Should my business be using a Pay-Per-Click (PPC) strategy or an organic Search Engine Optimization (SEO) strategy?” The fact is, done correctly both PPC and organic SEO can get you on the front page of the search engines for targeted terms.

Robert Wulff: Says your SEO efforts will directly help your PPC results as well.

What’s SEO?

To put it simply, the process of acquiring top position in search engine result page in an organic manner is Search Engine Optimization. The best way to start SEO is to get your website created and content for the website added. Once you are done, you can start with your website optimization.

These three basic tips that can help you with it:

Great website comes with great content. For optimizing your website, content is as important as water for floating a boat. Use important keywords that you think people will use to search products or services you offer. Content without relevant keywords is like a boat in the water without a boatman.

A domain name or the web address of your website, for example, www.submitedgeseo.com should be as short as possible and it should be comfortable with your brand name. After this, you should start naming your URLs. A specific page of your website is the URL, for example www.submitedgeseo.com/infographic-creation-service.html. URLs will only prove helpful for your site, if it includes main keywords related to that page.

Metadata is data about data. It describes basic information about data. The page titles and descriptions within metadata are what control how your page information is projected in search results.

What’s PPC?

PPC ads are sold in an auction. Why? It is a paid form of internet advertising where advertisers pay for each click that directs the user to a dedicated website. You pay what you bid for a click on the ad. In other words, it can be said that popular Search engines like Google, Bing and Yahoo allow business groups and individuals to buy listings in their organic search results by the way of specific targeted keywords. There are three areas which are to be covered while planning for PPC.

Keyword research is the soul of PPC advertising. The Success of PPC ad largely depends on keyword research. Setting up your campaign before conducting keyword research is like taking bath without soap.

Link is a very important part of a PPC ad, which is capable of directing users looking for your products or services right away to your website. There needs to be a call to action on the page where your customers land. If you are selling something and you just send your users to your home page and instead not on to the dedicated page of your website, then you may not get the result you’re hoping.

PPC is expensive, but then, a lot of marketers even like to go for PPC ad, because of its instant result. PPC is good for business groups and individuals who need instant and not constant traffic.

Why it’s important?

SEO
SEO can fetch free traffic for your website and can last longer when compared to PPC. SEO’s return on investment will continue to rise long after PPC has peaked. It improves the user experience and usability of website. SEO helps you earn visitors and instead not pay for visitors. It can bring wonders to your SEO campaign.

PPC
Pay per click advertising is the best way to get visitors when you need traffic and immediate result. As you pay for PPC when an ad is clicked, it’s easy to trace conversions, manage costs, and track ROI. An intelligently managed PPC campaign is profitable for both, advertisers and search engines. PPC has the potential to drive qualified traffic if it is done in the right manner.

Let’s analyse better

SEO
85% of clicks resulting from a search are on the organic links rather than the paid ads. As SEO listings are free and without any sponsorship, the ROI on SEO could be much better when compared with PPC. PPC will display your ads only on that search engine to which you have paid, but SEO will display your ads on all search engine results without any sponsorship or payment.

PPC
PPC ads can be much faster to generate traffic and bring leads to your website. You can manage your budget and measure your ROI much more easily with PPC. PPC advertising enables you to schedule the ad campaign during the best sales period and further enjoy better ROI.

How trustworthy are they?

SEO
SEO is more trustworthy when compared with PPC advertising. Internet searchers usually trust organic SEO listings more than PPC listings, and instead many of them have even trained themselves to ignore paid listings. If your business, is inclined towards instant result, then you ought to trust SEO.

PPC
50% of people arriving at a retailer’s site from paid ads are more likely to buy than those who came from an organic link. PPC enables you to change the targeted keyword of our ad in mid-campaign, so adjusting your traffic to achieve pre determined goal becomes easy. If your goal is brand building then you ought to trust SEO.

Let’s draw the Conclusion

SEO organic listings and sponsored/paid PPC listings both can place your site on the first page of Search engine result. Choosing PPC or SEO largely depends on your online marketing goals, the time slot in which you want to achieve them and also your budget. In other words, it can be said that if you need instant but not constant traffic, then go for PPC and If you need affordable and reliable traffic for long time, then go for SEO. It is always suggested that, SEO should be combined with PPC for faster and better result.

The marketing funnel has been a mainstay for B2B marketers seemingly forever. In fact, we’ve even written about it with some regularity.

It was a great way for B2B marketers to organize and visualize how they move potential customers from awareness to MQL. First, you use marketing channels like display, social, and content to create awareness. Then, you create consideration and interest with even more content, search, and retargeting. And then you convert visitors into leads through gated content (ebooks, webinars, etc.).

As soon as the marketing efforts successfully get the visitor to fill out a form, the funnel ends. That’s where the lead is passed off to the sales team and marketing is no longer responsible for the engagement. After MQL, the marketing team wipes its hands clean.

The marketing funnel gives a clear and straightforward goal for marketing strategy and tactics: leads. Without the data and tracking capabilities to go beyond this, tracking to MQL can be a good shortcut for tracking business value. While the projection from leads to business value is notoriously unreliable, it’s certainly a step up from not tracking anything.

But because the marketing funnel typically ends there, marketers are disconnected from the closing of the deal and the ultimate revenue decision.

Some marketers think this is actually a good thing because the funnel’s limitation removes revenue accountability. Unfortunately, that also means that it removes revenue credit.

The B2B marketing funnel is dead.

The marketing funnel is bad for marketers

The existing B2B marketing funnel is keeping marketers from receiving the credit they deserve. Of course when marketers are evaluated based on the number of MQLs they generate, they optimize for MQLs. But as we mentioned earlier, the projection from leads to actual business value is unreliable. On average, just 1% of those leads convert to customers. Reporting on a number that, on average, produces success 1 out of 100 times isn’t very meaningful, nor is it very actionable. Executives aren’t impressed, and marketing just looks like an unfortunate means to the sales teams’ ends.

It’s also bad for the company…

Even worse is that the marketing funnel’s limitation is not just bad for marketers, it’s bad for the company’s bottom line.

Marketing and sales needs to be aligned for B2B companies to be successful, and that can’t happen when marketing is using one funnel and sales is using another.

Marketing could generate tons of leads, but if they’re not very high quality, they’re useless. The marketing funnel will look good (tons of leads!), but business results will be bad. That’s the problem when marketing is focused on a goal that is misaligned with what the rest of the company needs.

The health of the marketing funnel alone doesn’t represent the health of the company’s pipeline, and ultimately the health of the company.

With the B2B marketing funnel, goals and incentives are misaligned.

The B2B marketing funnel is dead; the pipeline funnel is alive.

The pipeline funnel starts at first contact and, unlike the marketing funnel, it ends at sales closed. It gives the marketing team and the sales team the same goals and the same language to communicate with each other. Success is measured by business goals, not marketing goals; revenue, not leads.

Marketers, with the pipeline funnel, focus on generating more MQLs, more SQLs, more sales opportunities, and more deals. It’s about using the entire pipeline to achieve business goals. When marketers are connected to and can see all the way down to the deal, they are able to see that if they generate higher quality MQLs and SQLs, more deals happen. Marketers are incentivized to look at quality, not just quantity.

It changes the marketing team’s mindset to be aligned with the rest of the organization.

When the marketing team reports on the pipeline funnel and is held accountable for revenue, they’re speaking the same language as everyone else, and it gives them legitimacy.

It says, We’re all in this together.

So when you come across content that promises lead gen growth or demand gen growth or anything else that focuses on just one part of the full pipeline funnel, don’t ignore it outright — think about and assess whether the tips and tactics they lay out help drive the most important funnel metric: revenue.

The pipeline funnel is alive.

It seems the adage from Greek philosopher Heraclitus has firmly come home to roost at LinkedIn:

Everything changes and nothing stands still.

The quote is probably better known in its modern version:

The only thing that’s constant is change.

LinkedIn members are already settling into the additions and changes in the Messenger platform. Now, we’ve learned that the business-networking giant is changing, adding and subtracting all kinds of features in its Groups.

If you’ve never seen the LinkedIn Groups area or have never really explored it, there’s a lot of features and strategies that you can use in Social Selling. Simply put, though, LinkedIn Groups is an online “place” for business professionals to share content, find answers, post/view jobs, make business contacts, and establish themselves as industry experts.

What’s Changing

There’s been quite a bit of tweaking and changing to Groups. A lot of those alterations are for the people who run Groups; as such, I won’t detail those in this article.

Several changes have been made to the “user” (Groups members) side, too:

• Two Group Types. Once upon a time (a week or two ago), the different types and permutations of Groups were a bit confusing. Now, just two Group types now exist:- Unlisted Groups, which don’t show up in search results. Also, the individual Group owners can invite members to the group.

  – Standard Groups, which do show up in search results and any member can invite any of their 1st-degree connections to join. Also, when a member requests to join a Standard Group, their connections in the Group can approve the request. Of course, Group owners and managers can still approve memberships into their Standard Groups.

  (In other words, the old “public” Groups are no more, and the old “private” Groups are now “standard” Groups.)

• ALL Groups are now “private.” One used to be able to click into what were known as public Groups to read their conversations prior to joining. Now, discussions are hidden until a LinkedIn member joins a particular Group.
• ALL Groups are now “members only.” To join a Group, you now need to either be invited to the Group or approved by the Group’s owner(s). Previously, you could join certain types of Groups and start contributing immediately.
• The bar for content moderation is a bit lower. Once you’re “in” a Group, any content you post now gets automatically posted. Group owners can still remove content and place members into moderation, though. Other Group members can flag content and comments as being inappropriate. Don’t take the “lower bar” statement as a license to spam or post lower-quality content, though. You will get busted by a Group owner/manager or a Group member.
• Mentions in Group conversations. In the same way you can mention other members in Status Updates and comments to LinkedIn Publishing posts, you can now reference other Group members and bring them into a conversation by typing “@” followed by the Group member’s name.
• Other features include improved content filtering, the removal of the Promotions tab and Subgroups, and the ability to post images in Conversations.

If you’d like to see all of the changes to Groups, or you want to read about LinkedIn’s reasoning behind its decision making, the company has provided thishandy list.

What All of This Means

As someone who worked for a company that launched a socially powered professional networking platform, I understand LinkedIn’s desire to improve continuously its user experience the best it can be for its members. As a user of such platforms, though, I also get how “change” can affect members’ feelings towards the platform. Sometimes it’s good; other times, not so much.

For those of us who use Social Selling to increase our leads and sales, the new Groups platform offers both challenges and opportunities.

Perhaps the biggest problem is getting in on these conversations in the first place. I understand that Groups were starting to become more than a bit unwieldy and even spammy… especially the public ones. Some kind of quality control was needed.

Nuking public Groups was a good move. I can also see the logic in making standard Groups private, too. I’m not so sure about unlisted Groups, though. I wonder if the proverbial pendulum is now swinging a bit too far in the other direction, especially when it comes to in completely hiding unlisted Groups from public searches. I hate to use the old cliche “only time will tell,” but it applies in this case.

One of the better places to be, Group-wise, is in one that was private before the change, and is now unlisted. At least now the standard for new people to join that particular Group is much, much higher. The opportunity to build your brand will be much better in this particular situation.

A big opportunity exists, though, with Groups. With the tighter controls on the Group owner side, it is more advantageous than ever to open and own your own Group in the area (industry-wise and/or geography-wise) into which you sell your goods or services. This topic is definitely worth an entire article of its own, though, and I’ll have one next week.

As with anything, change can be scary. But if you embrace it and figure out how to use it to your advantage, change can bring opportunity. And opportunity does exist in the new LinkedIn Groups.

This article was originally published on LinkedIn.

HBR STAFF

In discussing his new book, Machines of Loving Grace: The Quest for Common Ground Between Humans and Robots, the journalist John Markoff pointed out how polarizing the subject of automation and its effect on employment tends to be.

“You can go from the International Federation of Robotics on one side, which argues that we are on the cusp of the biggest job renaissance in history, to Moshe Vardi, a Rice computer scientist, who argues that all human jobs will be obsolete by 2045,” Markoff observed. “Which group is right?”

If Peter Drucker were around, I don’t think he’d hesitate to serve up an answer: Neither.

Drucker, who had watched this struggle play out many times over many years, believed that the inexorable march of machines was neither a panacea nor a complete catastrophe. And he was wary of any analysis that tipped too far in one direction.

“The technology impacts which the experts predict almost never occur,” Drucker wrote in his 1973 classic Management: Tasks, Responsibilities, Practices.

Indeed, Drucker viewed automation as a decidedly mixed bag—a lift for those fortunate souls with the knowledge and skills to take advantage of the shifting landscape of work and a huge challenge for many others invariably left behind.

One of Drucker’s first looks at this double-edged dynamic came in 1946, when he visited the Mississippi Delta and witnessed the mechanical cotton picker replacing laborers in the field—for better as well as for worse.

“It is easy—and very popular in the Deep South today—to see only one aspect of the technological revolution through which the Cotton Belt is passing: the removal of the dead hand of the cotton economy and plantation society, the establishment of a sound agriculture and of a better balance between industry and farming, higher incomes, better living standards, the end of sharecropping—in short the final emancipation of both white and colored from slavery,” Drucker reported in Harper’s magazine. “It is also easy to see only the other aspect: dislocation, the suffering, the uprooting of millions of people who will lose their homes and their livelihood.

“However,” Drucker added, “the full picture, as in all technological revolutions, emerges only if both—the better life for those who can adjust themselves and the suffering of those who are pushed out—are seen together and at the same time.”

Over the decades, as agriculture gave way to manufacturing and much of manufacturing was supplanted by knowledge work, Drucker worried ever more about those who were being “pushed out.” He feared that they would lose not only their income, but also the basic sense of dignity and fulfillment that comes from putting in a solid day’s work.

The “shrinkage of jobs in the smokestack industries and their conversion to being capital-intensive rather than labor-intensive, that is, to automation, will put severe strains—economic, social, political—on the system,” Drucker warned in his 1986 book The Frontiers of Management.

From his earliest writings to his last, Drucker offered the same prescription to deal with such hardship: the creation of meaningful opportunities for lifelong learning. After all, he wrote in 1955, “if there is one thing certain under automation, it is that the job . . . will change radically and often.”

Of particular note now—in an age where artificial intelligence threatens to upend the careers of even the most well-educated white-collar workers—Drucker didn’t preach the importance of lifelong learning for any one type of occupation. Everyone, he thought, must continually be prepared to take in and master new ways to approach their job.

“This will be true in all areas of the organization: rank and file, office work, technical and professional work, managerial work,” Drucker asserted. “On every level, adult education . . . will be needed.”

Making this happen was, in Drucker’s eyes, a joint responsibility. The public sector has its part—to make sure that “schools and employing institutions . . . work together in the advanced education of adults.”

“School,” Drucker wrote in 1993’s Post-Capitalist Society, “has traditionally been where you learn; job has been where you work. The line will become increasingly blurred.”

Employers also have their role, including “active and energetic attempts at retraining for specific new job opportunities,” as Drucker put it. And each employee must step up and be ready to embrace what’s being taught—over and over and over again. “People have to learn how to learn,” Drucker advised. “No one is allowed to consider himself or herself ‘finished’ at any time.”

These concepts are not, in and of themselves, earth-shattering. But they are extremely difficult to execute, for they require from all parties—educators, executives and individual employees—attributes that are distinctly human: vision, heart and courage. As Drucker knew all too well, none of that comes with the simple press of a button.

This post is one in a series of perspectives by presenters and participants in the 7th Global Drucker Forum, taking place November 5-6, 2015 in Vienna. The theme: Claiming Our Humanity — Managing in the Digital Age.

You know those little smiley faces you send to your pals in a text, the ones that come in the form of cats and high-fives? If you didn’t already know, those bad boys are called emojis. Whether you think they’re ridiculous or a great way to add flair to your chat, they’re taking over the way that people text and communicate online. Because of this, it’s time for marketers to take heed and amp up their emoji literacy because this is more than a trend – it’s a form of expression, and marketers can capitalize.

Emojis are changing the way we communicate.

When Apple added the emoji keyboard in 2011 they not only created a fun way to express emotions in text, they developed a new virtual language. Since then, digital language has escalated to nearly half of all comments, captions and texts containing emoji characters. So what’s the draw of these silly little characters? They communicate expressions without the need for words, which in this hyper-fast era of gifs and memes is a valuable commodity. Who needs to type out that they are “lol-ing” when they can simply send to convey the same message. Emojis are even incorporated in the way users search on social media platforms. For example, Instagram just enabled a new feature, allowing users to search emojis to find related image content in the same way that users can search for hashtags.

Emojis are changing the way we should market.

When it comes to marketers, emojis are valuable in a completely different way than traditional written content. It seems silly to think that a mini photo of a taco could build a relationship with a focus demographic, but it can! The key to effective marketing is speaking the language of your target audience. Because emojis are so frequently used by the coveted millennial market, they allow brands to make connections with young consumers and improve the effectiveness of their messages.

Some brands are already doing it right.

Some brands have already caught on to the fact that emojis can be a faster and more efficient way to communicate with their audiences. For example, statistics show that speed and simplicity are two things that consumers typically look for when ordering fast foods like pizza. According to Mintel’s report Pizza Restaurants – US, November 2014 61% of consumers say that they don’t mind ordering this type of food through the Internet or an app because it’s easier than calling a restaurant.

Domino’s is at the top of the emoji game, now allowing its customers to order pizza by simply texting a pizza emoji to a specified number, and offering free emoji literacy flashcards for their costumers. The company has understood that emojis are a growing trend, which is important, as some experts have stated that emojis are actually the fastest-growing language on earth.

Now, even Starbucks is hopping on the emoji train with it’s first TV ad campaign featuring life’s sweetest moments celebrated through text and emoji.

There’s one key takeaway for marketers:

Emojis may be sweeping the world, but they’re about more than cute interpretative pictures. Brands would be wise to stay on top of the curve and adopt the use of emojis into their marketed content. Consumers will appreciate brands that speak directly to them in a language they can understand, embrace, and use daily.

Former Avid Life Media CEO Noel Biderman, pictured in 2014. (Eugene Hoshiko/AP)

Noel Biderman had a rough summer. His Toronto-based business, Avid Life Media (home of infidelity dating website Ashley Madison) found itself the subject of a massive international scandal when a hacker collective illegally breached the site and began leaking confidential user data. For the company, the fallout was as quick as it was damning. The prurient nature of the business and the sheer scope of the hack garnered the incident far more negative media coverage than corporate data theft typically receives. And since Avid Life had long assured customers that their personal information was safe, ticked-off users wasted little time in launching a nine-figure class-action lawsuits.

How to handle a public relations crisis

So Biderman,—the self-described “King of Infidelity”—who just last year told PROFIT 500 researchers that “there’s no such thing as bad attention for our business”—did something that would be unthinkable to most entrepreneurs: He fired himself. In a statement released in late August, Avid Life announced that Biderman had decided, by “mutual agreement” with the company, to abandon his job as CEO. Assuming it is in fact true that Biderman left of his own accord, at least in part, he deserves credit for it.

To understand why, contrast Biderman’s actions with those of American Apparel founder and ex-CEO Dov Charney, Biderman’s peer in the small but notorious fraternity of bad-boy Canadian entrepreneurs.

Dogged for years by accusations of despicable behaviour (including charges of sexual harassment of subordinates), Charney was suspended and later fired in 2014, when the struggling company’s board finally decided the CEO’s actions were costing too much to be tenable. It’s been the opposite of a clean break. Charney has spent most of 2015 lobbing lawsuits related to his dismissal against his former employer, its board members and the hedge fund that took it over after his departure. The legal to-and-fro has cost American Apparel millions of dollars. In its most recent earnings report, the company stated that it might not have enough cash to sustain operations, and sure enough in early October it filed for bankruptcy.

When you’ve conceived, launched, grown and sustained a successful enterprise, you get attached in a way that a hired-gun CEO never can, not quite. The idea of abandoning a business in distress is akin to leaving an injured child to fend for herself: It goes against deep, fiercely protective instincts.

Such fealty is mostly a good thing, and it’s what has driven countless entrepreneurial success stories. But it also has a habit of skewing one’s perspective, especially when pride and ego are involved. The CEO can start to see himself as both indispensable (there’s no way the business could survive under anyone else’s guidance) and exceptional (normal rules don’t apply to him). So he’ll stay put, not realizing his own culpability in the very problems he is convinced only he can solve.

Avoiding this fate requires objective self-evaluation—not a habit to which most entrepreneurs default. Solo soul-searching can help you see yourself the way others do, but it’s generally easier—and more reliable—to draw that information from external sources, like a board of directors, an advisory panel, anonymous reviews from employees or a mentor you trust to tell it to you straight. Whatever the method, the goal should be to assess your actions like any manager would. Ask yourself: Would you fire someone else for your kind of performance?

How to prevent an Ashley Madison–style hack by company insiders

Unlike Charney, Biderman didn’t ignore the clear answer to that question. His departure from Avid Life represents a tacit acknowledgment that things went very badly under his watch, and that as CEO, he bears ultimate responsibility for it. He may not have left with dignity, exactly, but there was a certain stoic integrity to his choice to go without melodrama. Whether Avid Life as a business can recover is unclear; the company claims to have attracted “hundreds of thousands” of new customers since the hack. But at least it won’t be saddled with a leader who refuses to recognize reality.

MORE ABOUT THE ASHLEY MADISON HACK & PUBLIC RELATIONS:

• How to handle a public relations crisis
• How to prevent an Ashley Madison–style hack by company insiders
• The Ashley Madison hack is yet another wake-up call on data security
• American Apparel’s new code of ethics doesn’t go far enough
• Why did American Apparel tolerate Dov Charney’s escapades for so long?

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The post When scandal hits, some CEO exits are more graceful than others appeared first on Canadian Business - Your Source For Business News.

There’s a difference, you know:

Between hawking a product at an disinterested group and telling your friends about a movie they can’t miss.

Between spamming everyone you know and passionately proclaiming good news you can’t keep inside.

Between manipulating people to buy something and just simply sharing something you’ve created.

But some never understand this. Some people think that if you have anything to sell, ever, then you’re instantly a fake, a charlatan, a scammer. And these people will never be satisfied. They will always criticize and find reasons to tell you what you’re doing is wrong.

And you should ignore them.

Don’t be afraid

Someone recently asked me:

Do creative people have trouble getting paid for their work?

Indeed, they do. In fact, I believe this applies to anyone with remarkable skills they take for granted. Many gifted people don’t understand the value of their gifts. They minimize them, dismiss them, and sabotage their work.

But why?

Because, they reason, why should I get paid for something I enjoy? It’s easy. Fun. Effortless. But not for everyone. Just for you. Which only makes what you do even more valuable.

Here’s a challenge: Stop apologizing for your art, and embrace the fact you have something valuable to share. Something that’s — dare I say it? — worth money.

Charge for your best work

Recently, our friend Lisa delivered a kitchen table she refinished for us. This was an old, worn table riddled with stains and water marks. We didn’t have high expectations for what could be done with it.

When we saw our friend’s finished work, we didn’t even recognize the table. It was amazing. My wife just kept saying “thank you.”

After we asked her what we owed her, Lisa said, “I hate charging friends…” But then she told us the price and we gladly paid it.

Why do we do this? Why do we hate charging people to do our best work? I think it’s time we stop apologizing and start valuing the contributions we can make.

How to not sell out

This isn’t license to sell out and turn every word you write, every photo you take, and every picture you paint into a paid product. No. That’s not the point at all. The point is this:

Now, you can be your own patron.

In an age when artists don’t have to be at the bottom of the food chain, dependent on the generosity of others, the only thing holding creative people back from success is themselves.

Don’t mistake me here. If you don’t want to make money off your art, don’t do it. Nobody’s forcing you to do it. But don’t use lack of resources as an excuse to not create, because you no longer have that excuse.

The world values your work. The question is, do you?

If you struggle with this, you’re not alone. I’ve been there before, too, which is why I’m so passionate about getting people to value their creative work. In fact, I’m doing something special this week just for you.

I’m teaching a free training series to help you find your 1000 true fans and get paid to share your message. This includes three, pre-recorded videos plus live Q&A events throughout the week. I’ll share how I grew an audience of 100,000 people in 18 months, what I learned, and how you can start building your own tribe.

The series begins tomorrow, but you can join me on Blab today at 1:30p CT today, where I’ll be talking with Kevin Kaiser, a long-time creative advisor who has helped best-selling writers get out of their own way and reach tens of millions worldwide.

What’s a gift you’re undervaluing that you should be sharing with the world? Share in the comments.

Image via BigStockPhoto.com

It’s no secret that to build long-lasting relationships and attract new leads, your content should be informational, provide value, and be entertaining. Most content marketers understand the first two, but seem to have trouble with the latter. Fortunately, humor is a valuable tool—and is certainly very entertaining!

Let’s take a look at one shining example, from The Dollar Shave Club. This is a company that sells a seemingly boring product: shaving razors. In March 2012, they released a promotional video entitled “Our Blades are F***ing Great!” The title is enough to make you want to click, but the video itself is the epitome of comical awesomeness.

And guess what? Within just 48 hours, the Dollar Shave Club received 12,000 new monthly subscribers, and the video has since generated more than 20 million YouTube views. Not bad.

So how did they do this? And more importantly, why is it so funny? The answer: They incorporated humor by using the Benign Violation Theory.

What is the Benign Violation Theory?

Coined by Caleb Warren and A. Peter McGraw, authors of the book The Humour Code, Benign Violation Theory attempts to discover why people find certain things amusing. (highlight to tweet) They drew upon inspiration from linguist Tom Veatch to suggest that people find something funny when the following two conditions are experienced at the same time:

1. Benign: The person consuming or experiencing the content feels safe
2. Violation: Involves a violation of an expected norm

Image via the Humor Research Lab

The Dollar Shave Club’s promotional video violates the viewer’s understanding of the expected norm during commercial advertisements through their use of the word “f***ing.” This is a “safe violation” of commercial etiquette for people watching the video—a perfect use of Benign Violation Theory.

But it doesn’t stop there. During the video, the CEO of The Dollar Shave Club mentions that his product is so gentle that even a toddler can use it. The viewers can then see a toddler shaving a man’s head. This is an obvious violation of expected normal human behavior.

This isn’t the only example we see in everyday life. Television shows that cleverly utilize Benign Violation Theory humor include Peep Show, It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia, and South Park, to name just a few.

How to Create Funny Content

Now that you know what it is, how do you incorporate Benign Violation Theory into your own content? The good news is that you don’t need to use naughty words all the time in your content marketing—this isn’t the only way to be funny.

The key is to understand your audience by working out what they consider to be accepted social norms.  It’s important to use humor sparingly too, so that you don’t take the focus away from the topic you set out to cover.

And it’s all about timing. A good time to use humor is in a title (like The Dollar Shave Club did) or towards the beginning of your article (sometimes referred to as the “hook”). This gets people interested in your piece of content and makes them care about it.

If you’re good at evaluating risk, chances are you will be good at producing funny, entertaining content for your audience. Ultimately, not everyone will appreciate every bit of humor you add to your content or every joke you tell, but this certainly doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t tell jokes.

If you’re about as funny as a wet towel, don’t stress. There are plenty of funny people out there who would be more than willing to work with you to help produce content that tickles your audience’s funny bone.

Get more content like this, plus the very BEST marketing education, totally free. Get our Definitive email newsletter.

       

(Skynesher/Getty)

Ram Charan has a curious job: He wanders the world, offering counsel to CEOs. On the day I happened to speak with him, he was on a train travelling across the northeast U.S. A day later, he’d be getting on a plane for India. He is 75 years old and this has been his life since 1977. He’s advised the leaders of GE, Verizon, Citicorp and DuPont. He arrives when beckoned, solves a problem and vanishes. He sounds like a comforting myth invented by CEOs—a visit from the management fairy. Charan says he owes his extraordinary career to a knack for “listening, searching for the viewpoints of different people, and learning. That’s what I do.”

In business and politics, leadership doesn’t look like it used to

It might sound like a humdrum skill set for a man who charges up to $20,000 per day (as reported in Fortune). But the ability to listen—something we’ve all been told to value since kindergarten—is actually a rare talent. A landmark study published in 1957 found people tend to forget one-half to one-third of what they hear within eight hours. And there is evidence this skill is particularly undervalued in the C-suite. In a 2014 survey, only 40% of sitting CEOs viewed an ability to communicate as a crucial skill for an executive, ranking far behind adaptability and strategic vision. Executives seem concerned about having an opinion on what needs to be done, not on hearing from others. Which is unfortunate. Being able to actively listen to someone, and ask effective follow-up questions, isn’t just about garnering knowledge to be better at your job. As Charan demonstrates, listening properly to another person can actually make them better at what they do.

By asking questions, leaders “can move away from command-and-control leadership to a dynamic in which your direct report grows through self-reflection,” Amy Jen Su wrote in the Harvard Business Review last year. Questions lead people to consider their own position—including assumptions they might not even know they’ve made. And as author David Rock observes in his book Quiet Leadership, advice can be challenged and debated; that’s far harder when people reach a conclusion based on their own answers to open-ended questions. Eric Schmidt, the former CEO of Google, says the benefit that he drew from having an executive coach was having someone in his life to say, “Is that what you really meant?”

Indeed, the idea that well-asked questions can lead to better management decisions has been formalized as “coaching,” with executive coaches like Charan acting as rock stars of the field. But stripped to its core, this field is based on the simple notion that listening to an individual’s problems and then following up with questions is an effective problem-solving tool. It’s certainly a cost-effective one: Participating in a three-day management training program increased the productivity of managers by 22.4%, according to a 1997 study by psychologist Gerald Olivero. In contrast, one-on-one coaching hiked productivity by 88%.

Top New CEO of the Year: Mark Barrenechea, OpenText

In our recent annual issue celebrating Canada’s Best CEOs, our panel named Mark Barrenechea of OpenText as Best New CEO of 2015. When he joined the company in 2012, he didn’t storm in with a plan already set. Instead, he focused on listening, since, in his words, “The employees know the business better than I do.” For companies looking to instill leadership skills in their executives and managers, that’s an excellent model to follow. Sit and listen for awhile like Ram Charan does and then, when you’re ready, ask a question. Or a dozen.

MORE ABOUT MENTORSHIP & MANAGEMENT:

• How to mentor a promising employee or entrepreneur
• How companies can stop making their best employees miserable
• Great employee engagement starts as soon as the hire is made
• In business and politics, leadership doesn’t look like it used to
• CEO of the Year 2015: Canada’s Most Innovative Leaders

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I’m here today with a reminder about an all-important truth when it comes to content strategy: research is everything.

When I evaluate copy and content strategies, I often see what amounts to copycat content.

Not that these people are stealing. No.

Typically, it’s clear to see they are working off of limited information (perhaps their client is stiff-lipped) or simply looking around to see what everyone else is doing — and then creating something similar and safe.

Both those approaches will lead you to a content strategy that is DOA: Dead on Arrival.

Here are six areas you should research to avoid that, so your content marketing gets — and holds — your audience’s attention.

1. Consumers

Your research should begin and end here.

This step is not about your company or your client’s company. Nor is it about what you or your client thinks about the consumer.

Lay all opinions aside.

Instead, interview about a dozen prospects and a dozen actual customers.

Read what people say about the company or product on social media and in forums. Look at reviews on Amazon. Send out surveys.

Find out customers’ hopes and fears. Create an empathy map, map out the customer experience, and build a persona.

And then continue to understand your customer. Ad nauseam.

Consumers should inform the content you produce.

2. Competitors

Examine both direct and indirect competitors.

Direct competitors are companies who compete with similar products for the same customers.

Indirect competitors are a little harder to find.

For example, let’s say you are an online wine commission.

Direct competitors would be other online wine commissions, wine stores, wineries, and so on. Indirect competitors would be sellers of other breeds of alcohol (moonshine distillers and mail-order microbrews).

But other indirect competitors could also include drugs that induce relaxation and euphoria (a marijuana bar, for example).

Your job, content marketer, is to understand all the options out there.

And then create a value proposition for your content strategy that makes you the only obvious choice.

And by the way, if this sounds like a lot of hard work — it is.

3. Company and product

Your next step is to know everything about the company and product. This is pretty straightforward.

Talk to executives, salespeople, developers, engineers, the customer service team, and help desk folks.

Read through the testimonials and customer service email exchanges. Look for a thread that runs throughout the company about the product.

• Is everyone on the same page?
• Does there seem to be a conflict of opinions about the product?
• How can you create a unified message from these different perspectives?

Next, use the product.

Give it to your family and friends to use. Watch people using the product. Listen to what they say about the product, and ask yourself these questions:

• Is the company’s opinion of the way the product should be used the same as the user’s?
• Are people using the product in unexpected ways?
• What are people saying when they use the product?

4. Channels

Channels help you understand how the product gets from the company to the customer.

• How does a prospect find the product?
• How many distribution channels (the method of getting the actual product in the customer’s hands) are there? Are they reliable?
• Are the channels tested? Regularly?

Then you need to understand what happens after the sale.

• How satisfied are customers with the product?
• Is customer satisfaction guaranteed? Is there a return policy?
• Is there a reliable method to encourage satisfied customers to refer the company and product?

A customer journey map comes in handy here.

5. Industry trends

Follow up those four activities with a hard look at what is going on in the company’s industry. What are the fads (short-term popularity)? What are the trends (long-term, stable popularity)?

Pay attention to what thought leaders are saying. Scour news sources, social media accounts, and the conversations occurring at the bar stools and hallways of the big conferences.

Subscribe to relevant trade journals, consumer magazines, and blogs. Keep an eye out for local, state, and federal laws that could impact the company and product.

Usually big news will bubble up to the top, but if you are proactive, you can stay one step ahead of competitors and catch wind of a shift in the market before everyone else.

6. Major world events

Finally, what’s going on around the world?

Are there events in Southeast Asia that could impact your business? Perhaps you have a sizable market in that area you want to tap into but a deep recession has just hit.

Or perhaps there is political turmoil in northern Montana that may upset the balance of Internet freedom.

Who knows? Anything can happen.

Thus, it’s best to have your ear to the ground, so you don’t get caught off guard. You might also recognize an easy opportunity to capitalize on a current event.

Fortunately, staying abreast of current events is a pretty simple process if you follow major newspapers online and/or listen to podcasts or other audio content about world news.

Discover and reveal something new

Research helps you find the startling hook that allows you to create content that stands out.

Your goal is to position a company or product so that when people think about “Topic X” they think about the company or product.

Not only will you be able to place your content in the best possible position to win, but you’ll also dig up mountains of content ideas.

And keep in mind that research is not a one-and-done process; it’s a routine custom. You’ll lower your learning curve in the initial phase of research, and after that, it’s all about refinement.

Read all of the posts in our content strategy series

• 16 Stats That Explain Why Adaptive Content Matters Right Now
• 13 Simple Questions to Help You Draft a Winning Content Strategy [Free Worksheet]
• A Brief Guide to Fixing Your Old, Neglected, and Broken Content
• 4 Ways to Identify Site Visitors (and Why It Matters)
• 8 Conversion-Boosting Ways to Personalize Your Content
• 5 Powerful Ways to Keep Building Authority Once Your Content Has Matured

About the author

Demian Farnworth

Demian Farnworth is Chief Content Writer for Rainmaker Digital. Subscribe to his podcast Rough Draft. 

The post Don’t Create Your Content Strategy Until You Research These 6 Things appeared first on Copyblogger.

Guest author Scott Gerber is the founder of the Young Entrepreneur Council.

Recently, Uber and other companies that provide on-demand services have been under the regulatory microscope. Despite these setbacks, it's still a great industry to get into, full of potential advantages for a would-be entrepreneur.

That said, there are a few best practices that you should follow so that the problems Uber and Handy are facing don't become your problems, too. To set you down the right path, I asked nine founders from YEC what entrepreneurs should consider before starting up in this space.

Set Up Workers As Employees, Not Independent Contractors

It might seem easier to hire independent contractors, but if you get nailed by the government for hiring those same people because they are technically employees, it will not be pretty. If you think you might have employees, they're employees. If you think you are cutting it close, they're employees. If you're operating in the gray area, they're employees. When I first started my company, we worked with a lawyer to set up contracts with 20 independent contractors. This was great for two years until suddenly the government audited our contractors and found that they were all employees. Despite fitting almost every single independent contractor requirement, one tiny discrepancy caused us to get fined. We had to pay back taxes and fines going back two years, and halt business until we got everyone switched over. It's not worth the risk! —Vanessa Van Edwards, Science of People

Consider Potential Conflict With Other Companies

Uber faced a backlash that may have been unexpected, but could have been predicted and maybe even prevented. If your business involves commandeering customers from other companies, consider how you can tailor your business to better coexist within the current industry. —Andrew Namminga, Andesign

Understand Who Your Customer Is

As the W-2/1099 debate wages on, it is important that you define who your real customer is. Uber has made a case that their customers are the livery drivers and not the passengers. Entrepreneurs really need to make sure they have a concrete reasoning as to who their customer is, in cases where they may be in a gray area. —Reza Chowdhury, AlleyWatch

Create A Solid Process For Vetting Your Partners

I feel that ensuring the safety of customers is a major issue for these types of companies. If Uber sends out a driver with a criminal record who ends up assaulting a customer, you can bet that customer's going to blame Uber. So, as Uber, you need to be prepared to spend the time and money to fully vet your partners in a way that instills customer security and confidence. —Alexandra Levit, Inspiration at Work

Operate With Scrappy Fierceness

Starting a business in the on-demand economy is a balancing act. On the one hand, prepare to be persistent. Travis Kalanick, CEO of Uber, calls this “scrappy fierceness.” Every day, you will have to make decisions and fight for your startup's survival. You’re not going to make it by going about things in a conventional way. On the other hand, if you get into the new spaces of the sharing economy and grow large enough, you’re going to end up dealing with legislation and public policy. This might sound like a lot of headache-inducing bureaucracy and red tape, but you are going to have to work with policy makers to a certain extent if you want to succeed. —Breanden Beneschott, Toptal

Concentrate On The Supply Side

Establishing a healthy flow of suppliers is more important than generating demand. You have to make sure your value proposition for suppliers is good enough that people are eager to sign up for your platform. Since suppliers—people who rent out their house, their car, their services, or their products—often put more time into the transaction, you have to focus on attracting and engaging them. If your value proposition works, then finding demand for your services should be easy. If you're not doing enough for people to perceive value in supplying that demand, then no amount of marketing or consumer outreach will solve the problem. —Jared Brown, Hubstaff

Ensure Both Sides Of The Marketplace Are Even

When you create a two-sided marketplace, you must ensure it is well outlined and stays consistently balanced on each side. This remains the hardest aspect of breaking into a two-sided marketplace. This will be a constant balancing act of consumer and client growth. If one side becomes larger than the other, it's time to reevaluate your business plan. —Jayna Cooke, Eventup

Meet Regulation With Automation

Startups often face tax hurdles. You can smooth a lot of friction if you develop a system that manages and advances the logistics of both tax collection and payment. After initially resisting the idea that it should collect local hotel taxes, Airbnb started collecting these taxes and, in some cities, it's making it easier for their hosts to file those taxes. It was a true win-win situation—the cities make more money, and Airbnb now has an advantage over newer startups that might spring up to offer shared accommodations, but can't handle the tax implications. The move was reminiscent of Apple's idea that people only stole music because it wasn't easy to pay for a digital single. —Jere Simpson, Kitewire

Connect With Your Business Lawyer

The legal and regulatory environment we operate in is changing as rapidly as the businesses themselves. It's impossible as an entrepreneur to stay abreast of all the intricacies and shifts, so rely on your experts. Cultivating relationships with lawyers, accountants and advisors can be very beneficial as a business owner. If you're making critical decisions about your business, take the time to sit down with these experts and get their input. Set yourself up for success by avoiding legal and regulatory pitfalls from day one. —Robert De Los Santos, Sky High Party Rentals

Photoillustration by Madeleine Weiss for ReadWrite

“The upshot of every marketing team being a de facto publisher is colloquially known as ‘content chaos’: a scenario of overlapping, invisible, and underused brand assets and collaterals.”— Forrester Research, Inc.

Rampant content chaos drains time and resources and stretches the sanity of marketing teams. Digital marketers today are expected to manage content organization while also crafting relevant content for every internal team.

Talk about a full plate! This is even harder to accomplish when teams work in silos, focused on their specific tasks and neglecting to share plans, campaigns, or marketing materials in a timely way.

The success of B2B organizations often comes down to effective communication with the customers you are both courting and serving, combined with the clarity and quality of your internal communication with employees.

It’s time to get to the root of why content keeps running wild and rein it in with a few key digital content organization tactics.

Get Clear, Then Get Creative

It’s difficult to maintain a one-team, one-mind mentality if digital content organization is always last on the list of priorities.

To avoid content chaos and keep digital marketing assets in check, marketing teams need to start with:

• A clear plan of action that spells out the type of content assets needed for the organization as a whole
• Providing clear, easy access to content, in a central location
• An organized system that details all the different marketing efforts happening at any given time, for every marketing or social media channel
• Knowledge of content gaps
• Insight on content effectiveness and needs shared by all content stakeholders, including sales, field marketers, customer service, etc.

“80% of top-performing companies utilize templates to streamline content production.” —The B2B Marketing Playbook

Even simple additions like content templates can maintain a simple, organized look and serve as a time-saver for digital marketing efforts.

Build the Pillars for Your Digital Content Marketing Organization System

Clarify common goals and initiatives and work toward them

As a B2B organization, your strength is in your ability to connect and resonate with all the different types of people who make purchase decisions within your unique sales pipeline. To build a cohesive buyer’s journey, each internal team needs to understand the big picture and how their efforts fit into it.

Get the ball rolling with these questions:

• What digital channels you use to communicate with customers?
• Do you have well-defined buyer personas?
• Is there a clear outline of the buyer’s journey, and is it working?
• Is there a way to track and report the results of digital assets and how they loop back to a specific stage in the sales pipeline?
• What metrics define the success of campaigns, downloads, click-throughs, social shares, and qualified leads?

Your answer to these questions will help you build the foundation for digital content organization that makes sense for your company and provides an incentive for everyone to get on board.

Build and Religiously Maintain a Master Calendar

It may not be glamorous, but the most powerful tool for any B2B organization is the master calendar.

Hosting the calendar in a shared content repository allows each team to provide information on their specific campaigns and plans in one spot, and offers a high-level view of what campaigns are planned, in progress, and completed. It also alerts the marketing team of any content needs.

“81% of marketers struggle with collaboration and coordination between content production resources.” —The B2B Marketing Playbook

The most powerful aspect of a master calendar is that it gives every team access to necessary information that will enhance collaboration, save time, and build a more cohesive buyer’s journey that loops back to shared goals.

Organize Digital Marketing Campaigns to Maximize Social Influence

Content themes and timelines are your best friends when organizing content development and social sharing.

Think of a content rollout for a new product or service like a three-course meal. Plan an appetizer, entrée, and dessert, spacing each out in a timely way for maximum impact. Then follow the same process for each campaign.

With a master calendar in place, it’s easier to manage all ongoing campaigns and marketing efforts, make tweaks as needed, and spark innovative cross-promotional opportunities. Organized digital marketing efforts also enable you to do more specific A/B testing and apply the results as quickly as possible.

The true value-add of digital content organization is the seamless integration of all your digital marketing efforts. When you can integrate your marketing and email campaigns with your chosen marketing automation tool, CRM, and content platform, you get a clear, organized view of what’s working and what needs a little love.

What are some simple digital content marketing organization tips that help streamline your internal and external communications?

When you’re on the road, every minute counts — even more than usual. Add the financial costs of airfare, accommodation, and meals to the opportunity costs of being away from work and family, and you want to be sure that you’re getting the most out of your time on the road.

A new generation of on-demand websites and mobile apps help you do just that: not just Uber and Airbnb, but a whole range of online services that bring the world to your door, wherever your temporary door may be. By making it easy for you to get the transportation, support, and resources you need, peer-to-peer services let you trim the wasted time from your business travel, and even help you rethink the nature of business travel itself.

Those services are most abundant in high-tech hubs like San Francisco, New York, and Seattle, but they are rapidly spreading to other cities. As Jeremiah Owyang and I note in our recent report, The New Rules of the Collaborative Economy, the number of people nationwide who use peer-to-peer car sharing and accommodation has more than doubled in the past year.

So after collaborating with Jeremiah long-distance for 18 months, I was eager to try out for myself some of the on-demand services that he gets to use as a Bay Area denizen, to see how they could transform my two weeks in San Francisco this summer.

You and Your Team

An aside: it may seem like an indulgence to get your groceries delivered and your car valet parked, but expenses that don’t make sense at home often do make sense when you’re traveling. Consider your overall travel costs in addition to your billable rate, salary, or the work that’s not getting done while you run errands. If an on-demand app can save you an hour for less than that hour is costing you, it’s almost certainly worth paying that markup.

If you want to use on-demand apps to squeeze every last minute of value out of your travel, you can and should make them part of your trip from the moment you start planning. Here’s how:

Before you leave

Make room for meetings: Booking your accommodations through Airbnb, VRBO, or another peer-to-peer site allows you to get a space big enough to entertain clients and colleagues. Particularly if you’re traveling with family, it may be easier to arrange casual business meetings if you can bring people back to your place. Look for a spot that offers locals something special: in our case, the rooftop deck of our temporary digs gave our colleagues a new view of their own city.

Pack light: If you’re used to checking a bag because you don’t have time to do laundry, pack a carry-on and get Washio to do your laundry for you. Or skip the packing altogether by using a rental service to get the clothes you need delivered to your destination: borrow the outfit you need for a major presentation or event from Rent the Runway (women) or The Black Tux (men). If you’re a frequent traveler, you may want to subscribe to a monthly service like The Ms. Collection, The Mr. Collection, or Le Tote, all of which send you a monthly box of garments; just arrange for each month’s box to be delivered to your destination that month.

Hit the ground running

Streamline logistics:  Use on-demand services to simplify the job of getting up and running in another city.   Get help from Taskrabbit to get luggage to or from the airport so you can go straight to a meeting instead of to your lodgings. When we moved from an apartment to a hotel, a Taskrabbit helper picked up all our bags from the apartment and took them to the hotel bell desk, giving us back half a day. Or use Postmates or Instacart to deliver any forgotten essentials instead of rushing out to the drugstore.

Combine transportation options: Uber isn’t the only way to get around in a new city. Depending on the length and nature of your trip, it can be a lot more efficient to combine multiple options. Car2Go lets you find a nearby car, drive it to your destination, and then leave it; it’s handy if you’re doing quick hops around town and don’t wan to commit to a vehicle (or pay for parking). On-demand valet parking services like Luxe will send a valet to meet you at your destination, take your car, and then bring it back on request so so that you don’t spend thirty minutes circling for a parking space.

Max out your networking

Find a local workspace: Yes, you can always go to Starbucks when you need to check your email, but you’ll be a lot more productive if you find a local co-working space that offers drop-in access. Not only will you have access to facilities like printers and meeting rooms, but it can be a great way of meeting local entrepreneurs and building your network. If you need a more private workspace or a spot for a meeting, try Breather or DesksNearMe.

Entertain efficiently: If you’re going to use your temporary digs as a spot to catch up with colleagues or host meetings, you need to be able to feed people — but you don’t want to waste precious travel time on shopping and cooking. Use a grocery delivery service like Instacart to stock your fridge with snacks so that you have some options on hand if you want to invite someone over for a spontaneous meeting; I lured more than one colleague to our apartment with the promise of Bi-Rite ice cream. Get an assortment of wine, beer, and liquor from a service like Thirstie. And if you want to invite someone over for a meal, use a meal prep service like Spoonrocket or a restaurant delivery service like Caviar (my favorite) to offer your guests top-notch cuisine. 

Plan it all: If you feel exhausted at the prospect of finding and signing up for all these different services, there’s a service for that, too. Magic is a text-based service that lets you simply text your needs to a single number; they’ll coordinate with all the different on-demand services to get you whatever you’re looking for.

While you can use any or all of these on-demand services to make business travel a little easier, the real payoff comes from the way they allow you to rethink when, why, and how you travel. If you can simplify the logistics, a three-day trip that doesn’t seem worth the effort suddenly feels feasible; if you book an apartment rather than a hotel room, a series of short trips may make more sense as an extended visit. All that logistical support also makes it a lot easier to combine personal and business travel: the last time we tried a combined business-trip-plus-family-vacation in San Francisco, it was a stressful disaster, but this time out, it was easy, fun, and productive.

Most important, by letting you pack more business into your business trips — but with a lot less stress — on-demand services help eliminate the trade-off between having a productive trip, and having an enjoyable trip. Use on-demand services to eliminate the time and energy-wasters from your travel, and you’ll have the time you need to work and enjoy what your destination has to offer.

I have spent some 27 years as a sales and marketing professional, and for the last 10 years I have prided myself with perfecting the “product marketing discipline.” Yet, I’m here to tell you that that role as it has existed no longer applies. – James Norwood, EPiServer

The B2B marketing world is undergoing a seismic shift. While mass-market ad campaigns are still part of the ecosystem—and important for reaching audiences at scale—there are new complexities at play. For one, digital has completely changed how people consume media: in the B2B sector, research processes have transitioned from being sales-driven to entirely self-directed. Not to mention, growth channels have become more data-driven and marketing teams are more cross-functional than ever.

It’s this evolution that has given rise to a new role: the product marketer. This individual is an organization’s glue—responsible for bringing sales, product, engineering, and executive teams together to better reach a company’s target market. This person harnesses a mix of left and right-brained skillsets, has strong research skills, and can uncover new direction when facing ambiguity. In the next few years, more companies are going to need this role, which means that the hiring landscape is going to become more competitive.

It’s important to know who you’re seeking out so that you can start targeting that person early (hey, this person might even be in college or even high school right now). Below are the key skills that the future B2B product marketer will embody.

Strategic Intelligence

Everyone has their strengths and weaknesses, which means that your product marketer likely won’t be a “jack of all trades”—and that’s a good thing. You’ll want to hire someone who can double down on their “superpower” to add value to your organization. But you’ll also want a B2B product marketer who understands how their skills fit into your organization’s bigger picture.

You’ll want someone with diverse marketing experience—someone who has “tried it all” to figure out what they love and excel at most. This perspective will make them a strong, cross-functional team player. They’ll know how to connect marketing efforts together and how to double-down on efforts they pursue.

At the end of the day, product marketing is about tradeoffs. At any given time, there are dozens of channels for your company to pursue. It’s important to take a step back and focus on the ones that will deliver the most impact. Your B2B product marketer, having a breadth of experience, will know how to do exactly that.

At the end of the day, product marketing is about tradeoffs

Empathy

Product marketing is an extremely tough role. The biggest challenge? It’s tough to balance long-term company goals with short-term fire drills and low-hanging opportunities. Not to mention, product marketers regularly work with multiple business teams, switching gears from engineering to analytics and collateral development.

A strong sense of empathy is essential to this process. The best product marketing hires will be able to put themselves in their stakeholders’ shoes to determine the right course of action. They will be able to absorb information from multiple sources, translate information into business recommendations, and communicate results. Most importantly, they’ll be highly attentive to their audience’s needs.

Patience

Results take time to achieve. In search of clarity through ambiguity, product marketers often hit dead ends, frustrating setbacks, and even lost revenue. It can be tough for any person to keep going when there’s friction.

But the best product marketers understand that big results take time to achieve. Even when facing pressure to scale fast, top product marketers will remain patient and persistent, building a strong foundation for a healthy marketing operation.

When it comes to success with product marketing, you don’t want to depend on luck. You need to create steady and predictable processes instead. The best product marketers won’t let low-hanging pressures cloud their judgment.

VB INSIGHT:

Web personalization is different from other marketing channels, according to a new study by Andrew Jones for VB Insight.

In Jones’ most recent study, he explains that the majority of your web visitors — 95-98 percent for B2C and 57-90 percent for B2B — are anonymous. That means you can’t rely on the kind of rich profile data you might collect, and make use of, in your customer relationship management (CRM) or email marketing solutions. But all is not lost.

“Browsing is a very active process,” Jones said in his study. “Each mouse hover or click is a signal, and even factors like time spent on a page correlate to interest (or perhaps disinterest if it’s very short). In email, by contrast, there’s very little signal beyond open-rate and click-through.”

But there’s an issue right now.

While web personalization is characterized by active, real-time data — including important signals such as purchase intent and current interests — the fact is that most marketers aren’t making use of it on their B2B or B2C websites.

In one of Jones’ previous studies of personalization, he showed that web personalization is not commonly employed. About a third of marketers are achieving limited personalization on either a landing page or the home page, and fewer than a quarter are personalizing content or products.

That lack of personalization is an issue if you sell to “digital natives” — those late Gen Y and Gen Z types who have grown up using computers, smartphones, and other digital devices. It turns out, according to my own research, that 77.5 percent of respondents in this age group want you to give them a truly personalized experience, both on your website and within messages.

This is no surprise. As we found in our Digital Pitchforks report — a study of how people complain to brands on social media — social media natives (SoMes) are a new breed:

SoMe natives were born and raised on social media. They’re young, and social media is their native environment, making them skilled in its use. For a SoMe native, collaborative creation is practically the reason the Internet exists. Social platforms such as Instagram, Vine, Twitter, Tumblr, YouTube, Reddit, Pinterest, and more allow SoMe natives to create, consume, remix, and republish content in ways not seen before. SoMe natives expect your social presence to be as immediate and engaging as they enjoy with their friends and connections.

Of course, the needs of one type of consumer alone can’t drive the personalization agenda. But it is worth pointing out that — in all our combined research on personalization — almost every age of consumer either wants a more relevant experience or is happier when personalized delivery increases the value they get from the brands they interact with.

I’ll be digging into this topic in my keynote on day one of NexterdayNorth in Helsinki. If you can make it to the event, I’ll be taking questions on the day. If you can’t make it, send your questions to me via Twitter. In order for me to see them, please mention me (I’m @TheRealSJR on Twitter) and use the hashtag #Nexterday. The best questions will be asked on stage during the event, and I’ll reply to all others on Twitter during the two-day “anti-seminar.”

The results, and returns we’re seeing from personalized content in our studies, can’t be argued with, so it’s time to collectively raise the bar. Join me in person on November 9-10, 2015 in Helsinki, or join me online to find out more.

With the passing of Back to the Future Day in late October, it's official: We're living in the future. I'll take my hoverboard and self-tying shoes now, please.

Okay, maybe the movie wasn't 100% right at predicting what 2015 would look like, but can you blame the filmmakers? No matter how hard we gaze into our crystal balls, the way things unfold years down the road never ceases to surprise us.

Since Back to the Future came out in 1985, the sales profession has undergone some radical changes (although reps don't wear their pants inside out to client meetings). The internet and social media has revolutionized the way salespeople research and engage with their buyers. And reps still using the tactics they learned in decades past are being outsold by their peers who are embracing new technology and transforming their sales processes accordingly.

Does the future hold more change for salespeople? According to the following SlideShare from Cranfield University, it does. Check out the deck to discover what just might be around the corner for sales in 2020. 

TEDx Talk 2014: Sales 2020, Future trends in sales and sales management. from Cranfield University

Better, deeper, insightful, and well-rounded understanding of customers and buyers is on the top of the list for many CEOs and CMOs today.

In recent studies by IBM and other research studies on CEO sentiments, customer insight and understanding are identified as a top focus for CEOs. A majority of surveys also find a growing concern for both establishing and retaining customer loyalty in today’s digital marketplaces.

There are two additional concerns CEOs are finding of increasing importance to the growth, as well as, survival in competitive environs. These two are:

• CEOs and CMOs have a growing concern about the relevancy of their products and services in the digital economy.
• CEOs and their organizations are finding it hard to keep pace with new digital technologies.

Redefining The Meaning Of Buyer Understanding

These three pressing concerns are causing CEOs and CMOs to reevaluate how to understand their buyers and their abilities to help buyers achieve their goals. Traditional survey methods and conventional win/loss analysis are proving to be dead end approaches. The promises of Big Data and analytics are limited in their ability to detect changes and cannot offer deeper assessments related to behaviors.

In today’s robust evolution of digital technologies, CEOs and CMOs seek buyer understanding to address these three concerns. Resulting in a 3D view of buyers, which can help inform strategies related to each.

Many organizations are still relying on a win/loss perspective when it comes to understanding buyers. CEOs and CMOs today should not be confused with newer terminologies surrounding this traditional perspective. A case in point is the term “buyer’s journey.” This is still a narrow buying process perspective designed to view the buy/sales cycle to a “win” as opposed to a “loss.”

Buyer Research Intent Requires Change

From a research point of view, not much has changed or moved beyond buyer profiling in the last couple of decades. Even more so, buyer profiling is still confined within the context of win/loss despite changes in terminology. As mentioned in previous articles, CMOs in particular, will now have to succinctly discern between buyer profiling and buyer personas. (This discernment is needed for it is unfortunate that conventional buyer profiling and win/loss analysis is being repackaged, if you will, as buyer personas by agencies and individual consultants. Which, then leads to organizations staying in the status quo of buyer profiling, as well as, win/loss analysis.)

A case in point is we see a glut of content on what to find out about buyers, especially related to buyer profiling “repackaged” as buyer personas. Content, which suggests finding out basic demographics, pain points, personalities, and buying criteria. This is then combined with win/loss questioning focused on the buying process (or buyer’s journey). Questions related to asking buyers to tell you what they did when they started researching and proceeding with a “then what” approach. This is classic win/loss interviewing technique as opposed to qualitative buyer research. Yet, not very helpful for addressing the three concerns mentioned earlier nor to true goal-directed behavioral research related to buyer personas.

The intent of buyer research, as related to buyer persona development, should be to address understanding the goals of buyers and whether the organizations is relevant to these goals. And, whether the organization is keeping pace with technologies, which enable buyers to accomplish their goals.

Importance Of B2B Ethnography Grows In The Digital Economy

The rise of the digital economy and the evolution of digital technologies have had a transformative impact on both buying and organizational behaviors. Changing the way people collaborate and buy. An important aspect essential to this transformation is how people and businesses interact. These shifts dramatically influencing how and why decisions are made.

In order to see how behaviors and interactions are changing, CEOs and CMOs will need to embrace B2B ethnography. Ethnographic research uses techniques, which allows businesses to have conversations with and observe people in their cultural, as well as, natural environments. This enables companies to gain deep insights that cannot be attained through surveys, focus groups, or through the use of telephone-based win/loss analysis.

The use of ethnographic research can be especially valuable for companies engaged in complex B2B marketing and long sales cycles. In such situations, buyers can find it difficult to articulate the behaviors and activities they engage in that now are part of their subconscious thinking.

For example, in one B2B ethnographic study conducted on behalf of a Fortune 100 organization, as part of an overall buyer persona development effort, we found before buyers began researching a specific SaaS customer support solution they performed internal assessments with key internal stakeholders. The focus on how to solve difficulties in international customer service and support. What could not be described through surveys or telephone-based win/loss style interviewing was observed in the customer’s own natural environment. Particularly how various customer support teams collaborated virtually to resolve international support issues.

Seeing and observing the difficulties their potential buyers had in providing support to their international customers enabled the organization to develop enhanced content, as well as, effective sales conversations. These valuable insights also led the organization to develop useful tools potential buyers could use to help facilitate assessment with their internal stakeholders. Ultimately resulting in larger deal sizes.

This ethnographic approach in B2B also allows for understanding contextually how people and organizations are interacting to arrive at decisions. And, to see how other businesses are adopting new digital technologies.

Addressing Three Main Concerns On Part Of CEOs And CMOs

Gaining understanding on how to achieve deeper customer loyalties, be relevant to customers, and keep pace with rapidly changing technologies requires new thinking on B2B buyer research. No longer will surveys or attempting to understand buyers within a win/loss context suffice. Valuable and important insights, which can only be observed, will be missed with these limited surveying methods. And, these conventional approaches are inadequate for insightful buyer personas.

The originating principle behind personas is one of understanding goal-directed behaviors and designing effective human-centered interactions. Which, at its origins, was and still is predicated on the use of ethnographic research. This has never been more important. In complex B2B environments, important insights can oftentimes best be seen rather than heard.

Ever wanted to get some one-on-one sales coaching by Steli? The team of AutoUncle did, and here's the full recording of the call, and a writeup for those who prefer to quickly get the gist of it:

You have some really great calls with prospects. They dig your product; they understand the benefits and sound super-interested in signing on the dotted line.

Yet, once you send over the follow-up and contracts, you hit a stumbling block. Everything slows down. They want to go away and discuss it with their team, and all the great discussion from your first call is lost.

Eventually, you have to get back on the phone and go over it all again. The sale takes three times as long as it should, or even worse, breaks down completely.

Plenty of businesses experience problems like this and recently Steli sat down with AutoUncle to help them tackle the problem of getting deals over the line.

AutoUncle’s vision is to make the used car market transparent and attract more buyers and sellers. They create transparency by gathering, and cleaning up, the jungle of adverts as well as evaluating the market price of every car for sale.

They have a ton of value to add to car dealerships and have helped hundreds of businesses. So why aren’t their prospects converting? What can they do in their phone conversations to get prospects over the line?

1. The prospect needs emotional buy-in

AutoUncle has some stellar case studies. When speaking to prospects, they can show off a range of clients who have all achieved great things with their platform.

Their product makes sense to prospects, and they understand how it can help their business. But sales isn’t a rational business. People need to be emotionally invested to make a purchase decision, and they need to trust you. It's your job to establish trust.

AutoUncle needs to reinforce an emotional buy-in, not features sets or ROI discussions. It comes from telling stories your prospect can relate to.

Here’s how they could do it:

Sales rep: “Remember when people started selling cars online. Quite a few people were skeptical and didn’t get involved right away, instead sticking to what they knew: traditional methods like magazine and newspaper ads.

Looking back, do you think jumping on the Internet early would’ve benefited your business?

This is the same type of opportunity. I’d rather you were one of the first customers so that you get all the benefits: the most reviews, the best positioning, etc. You’ll benefit from our growth.”

This type of story plays to a number of the emotions that drive sales; pride (being first and looking smart in front of their peers), fear (of missing out on a great opportunity), etc.

2. Be authoritative

Once you’ve established that your product or service will be beneficial to your prospect, it’s no longer a case of asking them to buy, it’s time to tell them to buy. Be respectful, but authoritative. Let your experience shine through. For example:

Sales rep: “I’ve done this hundreds of times and here’s what tends to happen. You want to do this deal, but you have other things to do: a business to run, cars to sell, and a family life to maintain. Obstacles will always pop up in the way.

In a couple of weeks, I’ll follow up. Then I’ll follow up again and again until, three months down the line, we close a deal that we could’ve closed in the next hour. During those 3-4 months, we could’ve gotten your cars in front of an extra 15,000 potential customers.”

In this situation, you want to help your prospect move faster. It’s not just about you getting the deal closed, but even more about having this company reap the benefits of your partnership as soon as possible.

3. Tell relevant stories

When you’re showcasing your current customers and the results you’ve created for them, ensure your chosen stories are as relevant as possible to your prospect.

Using big logos and recognized brand names can be impressive. But benefits don’t always translate to a prospect if it's not a truly relevant case study.

For example, a prospect from a small, local car dealership will have completely different problems from one at a large, national dealership.

You’ll need to experiment and see what works best. Sometimes quoting a large company will really grab the interest of your prospect. Other times saying, “two companies in your area already see amazing results,” will be more effective.

When we launched our sales as a service startup, one of the crucial elements of our sales script was to tell people that we're calling startups in the area. Why? Because it is an immediate indicator of relevancy! I've shared the story in a past Pioneers talk.

Sales rep: “The biggest car dealership in the country is using our product and they drive thousands of new leads per day. Also, two local garages in your area have been on our platform for three months and have seen a 20% rise in sales leads.”

4. Onboard the prospect during the call

Once your prospect has shown an interest, get the ball rolling and start the onboarding process.

Whether that means walking them through the website sign-up or sending over a contract, try to do it while they’re on the line.

Sending over a contract or link after a call means your prospect has to take more time out of their day to go back through and re-read everything.

This is a less-than-appealing task for most people. And it will definitely fall to the bottom of any to-do lists.

Before a call, set up an email template using a tool like Close.io, so that everything is ready. Then, when you have a prospect on the line, send the contract (or whatever material you need to onboard them) and go over the contract together with them. Tell them: "Hey, I've just emailed you the contract. Let's open that email and quickly go over the contract together right now."

This way, you’ll be able to influence their experience, manage objections on the spot, clear up any questions that come up while they’re reading the contract and avoid having details derail your deal.

After reviewing the contract, reinforce your key metrics and how your product will help. Where possible, show the prospect how they will see ROI right away:

Sales rep: “Our average customer of your size makes three extra sales per month using our platform. It only takes one sale to break even and 90% of our customers see a profit in month one.”

Get the prospect to sign the contract while you’re still on the phone. Make it happen right now! 

Experiment and learn

Make these four sales techniques part of your repertoire and practice working them into your conversations each day.

Perfecting your sales calls won’t happen overnight. You’ll need to experiment and see what works with different prospects.

Once you’ve figured out what works for you, you’ll move prospects through the buying stages faster and close more deals.

Want to pick Steli's brain on a specific sales challenge? Click here to apply for a free 15-minute sales coaching session! 

A couple of weeks ago I had lunch with an old friend – we hadn’t seen each other for nearly 12 years. We worked together at IBM and took the CIM Post Graduate Marketing Diploma together and that’s where we had a little giggle.

For some reason, I was in possession of all of her notes from the course so I proudly reunited them with her over lunch after moving them from one house to another (10 houses in all…I’ve moved a lot these last few years).

We were flicking through the 4 Ps and discussing how much marketing had changed since the ‘old days’ and how ‘our generation’ were taught strategic marketing when digital wasn’t even featuring on the syllabus.

The 4 P’s are still relevant…it’s just that previously companies could clearly differentiate themselves by focusing on 1-2 of the Ps. However, digital has disrupted this model. Transparency has spawned open honesty…about your product, your service, your delivery and your price. Consumers expect nothing less than their last experience of exceptional customer service. The standard is getting higher and higher.

So here are some thoughts on how I believe the 4Ps have been accompanied by the 4Cs.

Product

• Today, a good product needs to come as standard. The digital age is hugely transparent. If your product is poor you’ll get found out. Online consumer reviews now dictate the how successful your product will be received.TripAdvisor, Check-a-trade or Trust Pilot – they’re all there to do one thing. Provide transparent insight into the quality of products that consumers have bought for the benefit of future consumers.

Price

• These days it’s pretty difficult to differentiate your product on price unless you’re a premium brand and invest heavily in your marketing. Price transparency challenges companies to be competitive. Data is available everywhere – on computers, on mobile devices and on tablets. As consumers browse shelves they can check online prices real-time and switch within seconds.Last week Tesco, a huge supermarket chain in the UK, launched their Brand Promise vowing to price match any branded product with other supermarkets. The difference will be paid back to you at the till as you pay for your shopping.

Place

• If availability were ever a differentiator, it probably needs reviewing. Amazon now offer their Amazon #PrimeNow (1 hour delivery…even on a Sunday) and many other retail outlets offering “order by midnight and have it delivered next day” services.Consumer expectations are set. Retail outlets not offering this level of service may pay the price of customers switching brands. Digital has dramatically shifted the balance of power when it comes to retail.

Promotion

• It’s a fact. People are less trusting of brands and more trusting of peers and influencers. Certainly in the B2B industry, nearly 70% of the buying process is complete before the buyer contacts the vendor.Buyers are educating themselves online. They’re researching and reading content prior to entering a sales cycle. They are interested in expert opinions and customer experiences.They are seeking authentic content – not necessarily branded content. Successful marketing now hinges on creating influencers, harnessing the power of advocacy and creating content that is relevant…not promotional.

I’ve seen posts written about the 4Cs before but nothing that really addresses digital marketing. I believe that digital transformation is a chance for marketing to reinvent itself. Here’s why:

Customer

• Everything today is about the customer experience. Every brand touch point including the website, the chat window, the telephone conversation, the branded vehicle on the road…EVERYTHING contributes to brand perception. Smart companies are trying to map the digital journey as much as possible. Pre-empting where the customer will be at a certain point of their journey with content that will be relevant to them. However, digital platforms are very noisy. We’re bombarded with approximately 3000 branded messages a day and our attention span has reduced to just 8 seconds. Customers are picky and rightly so. There’s too much sub-standard content out there and its confusing buyers. The customer experience needs to be at the centre of every touch point.

Community

• Nurturing a community is probably the best long-term customer experience investment a company can make. It won’t happen overnight. It’s a long process. But it’s one of those competitive advantages that cannot easily be replicated. SAP is a brilliant example. A community of over 2M members made up of employees, customers, developers and even competitors! It was a transparent mash-up of thought leadership, technical Q&As, product ideas and feedback. A treasured asset and often the go-to place to test functionality, find inspiration and crowdsource innovation.Your community also has the power to become an army of advocates, defending your brand and fighting your corner. They are also a sounding board to tell you when things aren’t great so treat your community with respect. Don’t spam it with marketing messages. Nurture it, facilitate good conversation and encourage healthy contribution.

Collaboration

• To get the best out of your workforce and your relationship with customers, collaboration is key. Too often, internal collaboration tools like Jive Software, SAP Jam or Yammer are utilized as another place to store documents along with Microsoft SharePoint etc. Sound familiar? Collaboration tools, when used correctly, can massively improve productivity, reduce the quantity of emails flying around and can support a more transparent working environment.Naturally, leaders may not be too accepting of such change because suddenly those conversations that used to happen around the coffee machine are now visible to everyone internally. However, I believe this is a cultural bump that organizations just need to get over in order to achieve true digital transformation. It may be painful to start with, but embrace the transparency. In the long run this will make your organization a better place.

Communication

• Where do I start? Well, first Communication isn’t a department, it’s the fabric of a business. It’s everyone’s responsibility.Why? Because digital has changed everything. Leaders who bury their heads in the sand spouting “I’m too old for social media” will soon have a shock when they suddenly find a majority of their workforce is made up of the millennial generation. A generation that have only ever worked in a wired world.Communication is now transparent across the organization and across the ecosystem. Customers may take to social media to complain about an experience and in most cases expect a response within 1 hour. Failure to do so will most likely lose you a customer or worse, create a brand detractor – someone who actively works to discourage others to use products or services

So, there you have it. My version of the 4Cs in relation to this new ‘digital marketing’ era that we find ourselves in.

Have I missed any?

You’re nearing the end of the sales process. You had a good discovery call with your prospect, ran a strong demonstration, and are handling standard objections. Then, you get a phone call.

“Hi,” the decision maker on your account says. “I just wanted to call and let you know that we’re probably going to go with a competitor.”

What do you do?

It may seem like your deal is sunk, but don’t worry, you still have options. It’s not over yet -- follow these seven steps to put yourself back in play.

How to Win a Competitive Deal

1) Get yourself on the decision maker’s calendar.

Don’t get angry. Your prospect has done you a favor by calling and giving you a heads up. Many leads simply stop picking up the phone and don’t even have the courtesy to tell you they’ve gone in another direction. Thank her for letting you know.

Ask the decision maker to bring you up to speed. Are there features or services she’s looking for that you don’t provide (or she doesn't know you provide)? Are there intangibles that affected this decision (for example, does an employee from a competing company sit on their board of directors)?

Listen for specific reasons she’s chosen to go in a different direction, and see if that squares with your understanding of her problem.

Set a call for the next day. Ask, “Can I review my notes and send you a response within 24 hours?” Thank your prospect for their time and get to work!

2) Review your notes.

Look over everything you’ve ever sent or received from your prospect -- emails, call notes, and resources. Use the following questions to guide your review:

• Did you miss an indicator that this account is a bad fit?
• Did you gloss over a particular product strength that’s important to your prospect?
• Did your discussions focus on issues important to your prospect?
• Have those issues changed along the way?

3) Call your coach.

In B2B sales, a coach is somebody at a target company with insight into a purchasing decision who can give you the inside track on decision criteria, stakeholder priorities, and appropriate next steps.

Call your coach as soon as possible and let him know there’s a problem. Find out the current status of the deal. Is a contract signed with a competitor? Or are there still a few final things to iron out before the door closes?

If there’s any inside baseball you need to know about, now is the time to ask. Are there people blocking your product? Is there an especially important piece of the decision process you didn’t know about?

4) Gather competitive intelligence.

You walk a fine line when you’re compiling competitive information. You have to be fairly aggressive but avoid disparagement or rudeness. The best type of competitive intelligence is an objective third-party assessment that stacks your company up against its competitors, so it’s free of partiality.

5) Send materials in advance.

Prepare your case in writing first. Then, send it over to the prospect's team prior to your scheduled call so they have time to review everything before you speak.

6) Speak with your prospect.

Thank your decision maker again, and then ask if everyone has read the materials before proceeding. This is an early indicator of how things will go -- if they’ve reviewed what you’ve sent them, you still have a shot.

Ask her to walk through the steps that led them to choose your competitor again. See if anything conflicts with her previous explanation. If both stories line up perfectly, she’s likely the driving force behind the decision.

Spend no more than 10 minutes highlighting reasons why your product is superior. Don’t let this drag on too long -- after all, you’re trying to get back in the fight. Go for the most impressive points of differentiation instead of trying to cover everything.

The goal of the call isn’t necessarily to win the deal back on the spot. If you can, that’s great. But above all, aim to cover a few points that will put you back in play.

7) Go for the touchdown.

After your call, assess your options. What Hail Mary passes do you have in your back pocket that will wow a prospect?

Some tactics I’ve used over the years:

• Have one of your best customers call your prospect (preferably one who’s evaluated the competitor as well)
• Have one of your executives call your prospect (only if there’s a personal connection)
• Invite your prospect to visit your headquarters and give a formal presentation
• Visit your prospect’s headquarters

These plays are big. Their purpose is to show you’re willing to make an extra effort to win the deal. You can even tell your prospect, “I want to be helpful. If there is anything we can do to earn your consideration, please let me know.”

Always emphasize that you’re doing this with the intention of signing your prospect on as a new customer. This will be their decision point. If your decision maker is willing to talk next steps with you, she’s still making her final evaluation and there’s hope for your product. If she’s not, it’s done.

If You Lose the Deal

Accept it with grace and move on. Let them know you completely understand and that you’re always here if they need you. Even top salespeople lose deals. The key is to follow a good sales process and control what you can.

I sometimes call prospects that I lost to a competitor about 90 days after the deal is closed. (In software, that’s around the time where implementation starts getting gnarly.) Determine what that time period looks like for your product and schedule a call on your calendar. Ask your prospects how the product is working out for them, then see if they’d like to be put on a drip campaign for all your top content related to their problem. Tell them if it gets too hard, you’re happy to help.

It’s never fun to lose a deal to a competitor. But hopefully by following these seven steps, you can win back a good portion of sales.

What do you do when your prospects say they’re choosing a competitor? Let us know in the comments below.

Analysing your customers behaviour using buyer personas to improve your B2B E-commerce strategy

Is your B2B e-commerce strategy stagnating? If so, your buyer personas may be the weak link. A buyer persona is a semi-fictional representation of your ideal customer that’s created by studying demographics, attitudes and buying patterns. Detailed buyer personas guide everything from product development to marketing decisions, improving your business’s ability to identify, cultivate and convert the best leads into loyal customers. However, companies often get lazy about their buyer personas. When demographics steal the spotlight, businesses overlook the complex motivators, attitudes and behaviors that influence how individuals shop online. 

The result: Your business wastes valuable resources investing in leads with a low probability for conversion, while missing out on higher utility leads.

The solution: build a smarter e-commerce strategy through an in-depth understanding of how buyer personas influence B2B purchasing behavior.

[Editor's note: Our Digital Experience toolkit provides several detailed examples of B2B Personas and an Excel template for creating your own pesonas]

How to Develop More Effective B2B Buyer Personas

Buyer personas are more than just a brief summary of your target customers. They are a fully developed, thoughtfully cultivated portfolio that helps you better understand your buyers’ needs, knowledge of your products and services, how your buyers consume media, which communication channels they prefer, who influences their buying decisions, and how they will respond to different messages. While most businesses develop B2B buyer personas, too many spend excess energy building the persona’s backstory and focusing on descriptive details that they miss the bigger picture.

Consequently, businesses end up with complex backstories that are better suited for actors developing a movie role than for businesses developing a base strategy and creative work. When developing buyer personas, businesses need to focus less on the personal habits of these personas and more on the motivating factors that influence how personas develop consensus, visualize objectives and manage professional obstacles.

In the age of e-commerce, how your personas behave online also matters. Recently, MasterCard identified five global online personas for e-commerce: passive users, proactive protectors, solely shoppers, open sharers and simply interactors. Rather than targeting a specific demographic based on the traditional markers of age, income and geography, MasterCard’s approach focuses solely on online behavior. “These personas are determined by behaviors, attitudes, and awareness regarding sharing personal information … essentially a new paradigm for merchants on the Internet,” says MasterCard. The implications for e-commerce are vast. Online retailers are best served when they build marketing campaigns based on shopper behavior, rather than demographic assumptions.

While MasterCard’s research focuses on B2C e-commerce, the same implication — that buyer behaviors, attitudes and awareness surrounding online shopping matter more than demographics — are just as applicable to B2B e-commerce. When building your buyer personas and analyzing customer behavior, be sure that they answer these important questions:

1. How well does this buyer know your product/service? Is this a new product or an improvement on an existing product within the marketplace? When buyers do know your product or service, are they familiar with only limited features or sophisticated users?
2. What impact does this product have on your buyer’s overall life? What points of impact does the product have? Does it save your buyer money or time, mitigate risk, or improve business outcomes?
3. What media do your buyers consume and how does this consumption influence the decision making process? Will your buyers prefer to get to know you through social media, email or your company blog? Maybe your buyer checks Facebook, Twitter and Instagram on a daily basis and only checks into LinkedIn once per week. However, time on Facebook equates to low-quality interactions (the occasional status like) while time on LinkedIn is a higher quality interaction (reading multiple articles, messaging industry contacts, etc.).
4. How early do they adopt new technologies? Early adoption and comfort with new technologies is especially important for e-commerce. If your buyers are used to a specific online shopping experience, like Amazon, they’ll expect the same ease of use for your website and may become frustrated if certain purchasing features are not offered.

Using B2B Buyer Personas in the Age of E-Commerce

Improving the online shopping experience for your clients starts with an in-depth understanding of what motivates these prospects to make a purchase, how prospective clients search for information and solutions, and what influencers play a role in the final decision. On average, B2B researchers conduct 12 sales prior to engaging with a specific brand’s site, with 73 percent of these searches originating from search engines. Once they find your website, businesses expect the same interactive, streamlined shopping experience that they are accustomed to receiving with B2C shopping. They don’t have time to waste searching for product information or comparing different solutions. When it’s time to buy, they want to confidently select a solution without wading through unnecessary or redundant information.

At the same time, B2B customers cannot simply click and buy as soon as they land on your website. The B2B buying cycle is now 20 percent longer than it was three year ago, according to Destination CRM. Why so long? Internal buying process complexity hampers efforts to streamline purchases. Nearly one out of every three B2B sales include at least five decision makers, and 70 percent include at least three decision makers. However, they’re not all in the C-suite: 81 percent of non-C-suiters report having a say in the decision making process. A better understanding of the motivators, attitudes and behaviors of these decision makers will improve your e-commerce strategy.

With B2B e-commerce predicted to top $12 trillion by 2020, every company is angling to maximize their share of the e-commerce pie. In order for your B2B website to be effective, it needs to meet multiple buyer needs, serving as both a sales tool to close the deal, and as an e-commerce site to simplify and streamline the purchasing process. By understanding what motivates and drives your target buyers, your business will be best positioned to capitalize on the booming e-commerce marketplace and customize your website to meet your buyers’ most pressing needs.

Thanks to Stephanie N. Blahut for sharing their advice and opinions in this post. Stephanie N. Blahut is Marketing Director at Figo. You can follow her on Twitter or connect on LinkedIn.

DAVE WHEELER FOR HBR

Many firms talk about talent management, but few deal systematically with a basic fact: average annual turnover in sales is 25 to 30%. This means that the equivalent of the entire sales organization must be hired and trained every four years or so, and that’s expensive.

Consider these stats. Direct replacement costs for a telesales employee can range from $75,000 to $90,000, while other sales positions can cost a company as much as $300,000. Moreover, these figures don’t reflect the lost sales while a replacement is found and trained. In sectors like medical devices, big capital equipment, and many professional services, including these opportunity costs can push turnover cost to $1 million or more per event.

The challenge is compounded by the fact that there is no easily identified resource pool for sales positions. According to Howard Stevens in Achieve Sales Excellence, more than 50% of U.S. college graduates, regardless of their majors, are likely to work in sales. But of the over 4,000 colleges in this country, less than 100 have sales programs or even sales courses. And, even if companies are lucky enough to find qualified grads, the increased data and analytical tasks facing many sales forces mean that productivity ramp-up times have increased. Each hire is now a bigger sunk cost for a longer time.

Bottom line: companies typically spend more on hiring in sales than they do anywhere else in the firm. So how do you improve the returns on this investment? Here are four places to start:

Hire for the task. In business, you hear so many opinions about what makes for a good salesperson. But most are a bland summary of the Boy Scout Handbook, with traits like extroversion, assertiveness, empathy, modesty, and an “achievement orientation.” These platitudes are often reflected in firms’ competency lists and are so broad that, at best, they simply remind us that people tend to do business with people they like (but not always and not as often as many sales trainers assume). At worst, these abstractions are irrelevant to the execution of business strategy, and they make hiring, in sales and other functions, a classic example of the cloning bias: managers use these slogans to hire in their own image.

Selling jobs vary greatly depending on the product or service sold, the customers a salesperson is responsible for, the relative importance of technical knowledge, and the people contacted during sales calls. A review of hundreds of studies about sales productivity finds that “[t]he results of this research have simply failed to identify behavioral predispositions or aptitudes that account for a large amount of variance in performance for salespeople. In addition, the results of this research are quite inconsistent and, in some cases, even contradictory.” Common stereotypes about a “good” salesperson (e.g., pleasing personality, hard-wired for sociability, and so on) obscure the realities you face.

Selling effectiveness is not a generalized trait. It’s a function of the sales tasks, which vary according to the market, your strategy, the stage of the business (i.e., startup or later stage), the customers targeted by your strategy, and buying processes at those customers. This is true even for firms in the same industry. Think about the difference between sales tasks at Nordstrom, where personalized service and advice are integral to strategy execution, and Costco, where low price and product availability make sales tasks less complex and variable.

The first step in smart hiring and productivity is understanding the relevant sales tasks in your market and strategy and then reflecting those tasks in hiring criteria and a disciplined hiring process.

Focus on behaviors. Research based upon thousands of exit interviews shows that a primary cause of poor performance and turnover is poor job fit. People, especially salespeople with a variable pay component, become frustrated when they’re hired for tasks that are a poor fit with their skills and preferences. Conversely, as the saying goes, “You hire your problems.” Zappos CEO Tony Hseih estimates that bad hires have cost his firm $100 million. Famously, Zappos will pay people to leave voluntarily after a few months on the job.

The key is to focus on the behaviors implied by the sales tasks. In many firms, this means upgrading assessment skills. Managers are excessively confident about their ability to evaluate candidates via interviews. In reality, studies indicate a low correlation (generally, less than 25%) between interview predictions and job success, and some indicate that interview processes actually hurt in hiring decisions: the firm would have done better with blind selection procedures! The best results, by far, occur when those making hiring decisions can observe the potential hires’ job behaviors and use a recruitment process based on a combination of factors, as illustrated in the following graphic:

There are many ways to do this, including simulations, interviewing techniques, or (as at Zappos) providing an incentive for self-selection after recent hires experience the required behaviors. Especially in expensive sales-hiring situations, many organizations could emulate the practice used by investment banks and consulting firms when hiring MBAs: the summer job is, in effect, an extended observation by multiple people at the firm of the candidate’s abilities before a full-time offer is extended.

Then, immerse reps in the tasks they will encounter in working with customers. At HubSpot, which provides web-based inbound marketing services to businesses, Mark Roberge has sales hires spend a month in classroom-style training but also doing what their customers do: create a website from scratch and keep that site populated with relevant content. Roberge notes, “they experience the actual pains and successes of our primary customers: professional marketers who need to generate leads online. As a result, our salespeople are able to connect on a far deeper level with our prospects and leads.”

Be clear about what you mean by relevant “experience.” Previous experience is the most common criterion used by sales managers in talent assessment. In one survey, over 50% of respondents cited “selling experience within the industry” as their key selection criterion, and another 33% cited “selling experience in [an] other industry.” Driving this view is a perceived trade-off between hiring for experience and spending money on training. But because selling effectiveness depends upon a company’s sales tasks, “experience” is an inherently multidimensional attribute. It may refer to experience with any (or any combination of) the following:

• A customer group: e.g., a banker or other financial services recruit hired by a software firm to call on financial firms; or, in health care, firms sell different products, but many sell to hospitals.
• A technology: an engineer or field-service tech hired to sell a category of equipment.
• Another part of the organization: a service rep moved to sales because internal cross-functional support is a key sales task and that rep “knows the people and the organization.”
• A geography or culture: a member of a given nationality or ethnic group who knows, and has credibility within, the norms of the relevant customer’s culture.
• Selling: an insurance agent or retail associate with experience in another sales context.

The relevance of each type varies with your sales tasks. So consider what type is, and is not (see below), relevant, and require the people doing sales hiring to clarify what they mean by experience.

On-going talent assessments. Markets have no responsibility to be kind to your firm’s strategy and sales approach. It is leadership’s responsibility to adapt to markets and develop the competencies required today, not yesterday.

As organizations confront new buying processes, required competencies are changing. The figure below, based on an extensive database of company sales profiles, indicates the changing nature of sales competencies at many firms. Competencies that, only a decade ago, were considered essential are now lower in priority.

Does this mean that developing leads, qualifying prospects, and adapting to different buyer motivations are no longer important? No. Rather, as one should expect in a competitive activity where success is ultimately measured by relative advantage, the focus of productivity improvement in sales is shifting. Yesterday’s sales strengths have become today’s minimum skill requirements.

This underscores the need for on-going talent assessments to stay in-touch with changing tasks and required behaviors. The good news is that the tools for doing such assessments, based on behavioral research findings, are more available and have more granularity and practicality for sales leaders. Conducting a skills inventory and determining the best fit for your sales tasks need not be the standard mix of folklore, various embedded biases by front-line managers, and the content-free platitudes about “selling” that populate many blogs. And it is increasingly necessary because companies must ultimately be worthy of real talent.

It’s often said that many firms maintain their equipment better than they do their people. If so, you ultimately get what you don’t maintain, especially in sales.