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Knowing how to do a successful product launch takes time, but doing so correctly can guarantee your product as a reliable source of income. Not sure how to begin? Here are a few tricks of the trade that will lead your next product launch event into greatness.

Right Product Launch Location and Context

When staging your product launch event, location and context are key. Your product event location should be chosen for its proximity to your targeted audience and whether the venue is reflective of your brand, also known as putting it in the right context. For instance, fashion-based products would be out of context at a digital tech trade show, but if they’re fantasy-themed, they could be a slam-dunk hit at comic-based one.

Smart Launch Management

Your company has created an amazing product that hits a specific need. Only, while passion is important, knowing how to effectively communicate that product through presentation at a launch event takes experience and know-how. Hiring event managers ensures that every aspect of the event launch, from big concepts to tiny details, is taking care of.

 

Schedule The Launch Effectively

Not allowing for enough time to create, plan, and execute the product launch event is the number one mistake companies make when launching products. A detailed plan should begin at least four months before the product launch event. This gives you a flexible amount of time to plan for and execute extensive marketing programs and PR activities, plus it gives your company enough time to get all of the product messaging, positioning, and pricing finalized.

While it is possible to schedule an event within weeks, it will be stressful and often leads to miscommunication and poor execution with less-than-desired results.

Consistent PR and Promotional Backing

From the announcement of your product launch to the post-event analysis, every action should be balanced. Consistently communicate your product between the planning and executing phases through a variety of public relations vehicles, including press releases, print advertising in trade magazines or local newsprints, and social media blitzes.

Depending on your company and product, consider running a Kickstarter or similar campaign up to the date of your product event launch and have backers receive their rewards on-site.

I was privileged to be part of a meeting last week with some of the folks from CEB and a handful of my colleagues in the B2B marketing and sales space. We were invited in to be part of a roundtable discussion on the trends we are seeing in the industry and also discuss the forthcoming book from CEB, The Challenger Customer.

The dialogue during the event was incredibly rich, as are the contents of the book that explores the concept that the buyers are driving today’s buying cycles and that these cycles are being driven by buying committees. In fact, the average committee is comprised of 5.4 individuals. As this is the new reality, the role of marketing and sales have changed dramatically.

While I could write much more than a blog post on the book and the conversation, I have boiled down the day into three words that I think capture the essence of both: Empathy, Change and Mobilizers.

Empathy:
There must be an understanding that the days of marketing and selling to one decision-maker in the organization are long gone. In an attempt to mitigate risk, B2B organizations have become consensus buyers and each member of the committee has their own biases and motivations for purchasing and at times, not purchasing. Understanding and empathizing with each of buying committee members is vital for B2B vendors to engage with potential buyers and a failure to do so can exclude them from consideration. This is no easy task, but in reality, the paradigm of today’s buying cycle leaves vendors little choice.

Change:
Throughout the course of the day and what I was able to infer from the book, the need for change was apparent. Today’s marketing and sales teams are lacking in their abilities to speak to buying committees and map to buyers buying cycles. The age of Consensus Buying necessitates vendors change their approach to demand generation and to sales. This is a book that can and should help spur on that needed change. It will also serve CMOs who need to make the case for change as they evangelize their sales counterparts, that buyers are now in control of the purchase process and the old ways of sales and marketing are forever changed.

Mobilizers:
In the book, CEB deftly defines the types of people that are on a typical buying committee. The standouts of this group are the mobilizers. Mobilizers are the ones within a buyer organization that will be the advocates for the purchase, which in reality is advocating for change within the buyers organization. Identifying this individual is paramount to success if vendors are going to secure the purchase. However, this is often not being done and again highlights the need for change in B2B marketing and sales organizations. This is demonstrated by what is written in the book:

“If we were to break down the reasons why core reps naturally gravitate to Talkers (and not Mobilizers), it’s largely because core reps aren’t thinking so much about driving customer change as they are about gaining customer access. For core-performing reps. Access equals action. Not surprisingly then, they take the very fact that a stakeholder is talking to them as an indication of that stakeholder’s ability to drive change. But the two aren’t the same thing.”

Identifying the mobilizers and engaging with them and their other committee members is needed to align content (marketing) and sales to the purchase process.

Overall, the book is one that every B2B marketing and sales professional should be required to read, no matter what their role or level in the organization. May the conversations continue, and may we as an industry begin to change and adapt to the Consensus Driven Buyers.

Author: Carlos Hidalgo @cahidalgo CEO/Principal ANNUITAS

“Change is the law of life. And those who look only to the past or present are certain to miss the future.” – John F. Kennedy

Millennials have been the “it” topic of study for consumer purchasing behavior for a while now. As the most educated, tech-savvy, and largest generation since the baby boomers, B2C industries such as retail, food and beverage, and entertainment are scrambling to collect as much data and glean as much insight as possible on this rising consumer generation.

But what about the rising influence of the B2B millennial buyer? Are our purchasing behaviors the same as B2C?

In 2014, IBM set out to find the answer to that question. IBM conducted a study with over 700 influencers of B2B purchasing decisions equaling $10,000 or more for their company. They compared these millennial (born 1980–1993) answers to generation X (born 1965–1979) and baby boomers (born 1954–1964), to discover any key differences between the three, and compare B2C vs. B2B millennial buying behavior.

Below, I’ve highlighted some of the study’s more surprising data points. Take these into consideration the next time you find yourself trying to woo a millennial in the B2B selling cycle.

1) We DO Consider Others’ Opinions in the Purchase Process

“56% of millennials feel they make better decisions at work when a variety of people provide input.”

Don’t get me wrong—us millennials love a good online review forum and the “1-click purchase” feature to get our Vitamix blenders. So it comes as no surprise that B2C companies like Amazon are killing it in the marketplace among millennials.

But in the B2B world, the same rule does NOT apply. We B2B millennials greatly value the input of thought leaders and colleagues that we respect. We will likely pull several other influencers into the dialogue, and enter into a collaborative process before making the final purchase decision for a B2B solution for our company.

At Kapost, we call this a consensus sale—and it is the key differentiating factor between the B2B and B2C buyer’s journey. So when creating your B2B marketing strategy, ensure that you’ve included ALL of the potential purchasing influencers within your target market. While the millennial may be the first engagement and champion of your solution, their baby boomer boss or their gen X colleague may need a different message and set of content, depending on the stage in the buyer’s journey and their specific role in the purchase process.

2) Contrary to Popular Belief, Millennials Actually DO Want to Talk to You on the Phone

It goes without saying that millennials are tech-savvy—we like information where we want it, when we want it. This is certainly true for the B2C consumer. If I can’t buy those ski gloves online, then I’ll likely find (and buy from) a vendor that does.

I wouldn’t blame you for assuming that this rule easily applies to the B2B buyer. But you would be dead wrong.

According to the IBM study, millennials prefer direct contact with B2B vendors over methods like online reviews, blogs, and articles.

But we don’t want to hear your sales pitch, we want to have a real conversation with a real person to think through potential solutions to our business’ challenges.

“[Millennials] don’t want to hear your sales pitch, they want to have a real conversation with a real person.”

But take note, we don’t want to speak with a brand before making a purchase because we enjoy talking on the phone (please—we practically speak emoji), but because we want to explore the possibility of your company as a solution to our business challenge.

The IBM report states that millennials “prize a hassle-free, omni-channel client experience personalized to their specific needs. They want data, speed and trusted advisers who are eager to collaborate.”

To put it simply, we are testing the waters to see what it would feel like to work with you and your company. In other words, we have to actually like you.

3)  In Fact, We Practically Want to be Besties with You

As a generation, millennials have been labeled as “unrelational,” valuing virtual connections over flesh and blood relationships.

In the case of the B2B millennial buyer, however, that couldn’t be further from the truth—even when compared with their baby boomer and gen X counterparts.

The IBM study shows that millennials prioritize vendors who offer a great client experience—while Gen X prioritizes quality of products and services, and boomers want speed to purchase and onboarding.

The takeaway here is that as millennials begin to dominate the B2B purchasing process, B2B companies must invest heavily in top-of-class customer service and support, particularly among SaaS companies. As B2B marketing becomes smarter with technology advancements and tools, it must also become more heavily involved with bottom of funnel engagement as companies focus on upsell and renewal. The future top-of-class B2B marketers will invest heavily to become a full-service marketing operation, no longer focusing on just top of sales activity.

4)  But Don’t Call Us—We’ll Call You

In the age of Facebook “stalking” and unending age-related dynamic ads in our news feeds (discount wedding cakes anyone?), us millennials are tired of being “sold” to. While it’s true that millennials like meeting with vendors during their research, once the sales cycle begins, it’s a different story. We want to be in the driver’s seat—so we’ll take it from here, thanks.

According to the study, once millennials have the information they need for a B2B purchase, they prefer to keep vendor interactions quick, easy, and virtual while they make their decision. Millennials are also interested in using social media, live chats, and instant messaging to connect with vendors during this phase.

The takeaway? Don’t call us every two days to “check-in” on whether we’ve decided to purchase or not—it won’t end well for you. Follow up with us, but don’t “stalk” us.

5) And If You Burn Us, We’ll Likely Bow Out Quietly

I’m sure you’ve seen the scathing reviews on sites like Amazon. If that food processor sputters out even an ounce of a millennial’s organic green smoothie, you better believe you’ll hear about it on the interwebs. In fact, 59% of B2C millennial consumers freely share very positive or very negative experiences buying a consumer product or service.

But surprisingly, it’s a different story for B2B millennial buyers.

Gen X and baby boomers are twice as likely as millennials to voice their frustrations with a B2B brand online.

As digital mavens, we millennials understand the ramifications of scathing online reviews. We know about PR nightmares on social media and humiliating viral attacks on brands—and hesitate to assault another B2B company in this way.

We’ll sing your praises to the mountaintop if we love your B2B solution and have a great customer experience, but if you burn us, we’d like to stay discreet. We’ll most likely seethe quietly and discredit your brand via word of mouth rather than embarrass your brand (or our professional image) online.

But don’t breathe a sigh of relief just yet. IBM reveals that gen X and baby boomers are twice as likely as millennials to voice their frustrations with a B2B brand online. 

And there you have it, fellow marketers. You can now start confidently planning your marketing strategy to woo us B2B millennials.

(And for the record, my favorite flowers are lilies…)

This article originally appeared on TLE-Online

Who owns the Customer?

In the 80s the typical hierarchy saw sales teams take the lead and Marketing Directors subjugated to exhibition stand design and brochure and signage production.

At that time many organisations started to see the disconnect between sales and marketing such as unaligned objectives, dysfunctional and often antagonistic interrelationships. As a result, we saw the rise of the Sales & Marketing Director who was often a combination of the creative entrepreneur and the hard driving sales machine – not always an easy balance to achieve.

Ultimately, that model wasn’t sound, but as organisations continue to evolve, is a conjoined sales and marketing function now more relevant than ever in a large B2B organisation?

Marketing throughout an organisation

Marketing is becoming more pervasive throughout organisations, McKinsey describes how ‘the chief marketing officer collaborates with the chief executive and other senior-team members to nail down a shared approach for designing, building, operating, and renewing customer touch points’.

The nature of marketing and sales activity has changed too and now revolves more around the customer experience and journey. It used to be the case that Marketing would pass largely unqualified leads through the hatch to Sales who would then largely ignore them. Latterly, as content and ‘self-feeding’ grew, Marketing was minding more of the journey and lead qualification and improvement grew healthily for Sales to focus more on conversion. Now, Sales and Marketing teams (should) share data, analytics and customer insight and build it into activity which ultimately means a smoother experience for customers, and the same experience regardless of channel.

Multiple channels also leads to a huge increase in the customer data companies collect and particularly in the speed at which it arrives. This requires a previously unknown intensity of analysis to process the data and requires teams working together both to achieve this, and further, to ensure that insights are drawn from the data and indeed acted upon.

This all means that rather than putting more leads in the funnel, we’re seeing more collaboration ‘through the funnel’ where Marketing and Sales sit in the same room and look at which levers to pull to achieve a sales result.

Marketing Automation done properly (i.e. regularly maintained not just set up and left to run) can ‘operationalise’ certain aspects of outbound, social and content and also drive marketing transformation throughout organisations.

Measurement and Success

Key to the success of Sales and Marketing teams integrating and working together is having tightly defined and shared responsibilities. Shared dashboards are built on the same data and allow shared KPIs in terms of both revenue and conversion.

Sales operations teams are also critical again and are increasingly appreciated as more than just report builders. Their strength lies in their analytical skill and ability to inform the data- driven, decision-making now demanded by Sales and marketing.

The future?

The ultimate internal combination is a powerful triangle of Sales, Sales Operations (who know the targets and analytics) and Marketing who have the voice of the customer – a voice they are getting better at interpreting every day.

The future owner of the customer is us all.

Drew Nicholson is the CEO of OgilvyOne dnx in the UK

 

Thanks to companies in Silicon Valley, employees have high expectations of the perks that your company offers.

Besides perks like medical and dental benefits, employees are looking for companies that think outside the box and create an atmosphere that makes employees want to spend time there.

Employees want a work environment that encourages fun and helps them be more productive.

But it’s important to remember that perks don’t make a company culture.

You can have all the beer and arcade rooms in the world, but if you’re underlying culture is bad they won’t make a difference.

Employee perks are also good for retention, which is an important issue. Talent is more scarce than ever, especially good talent, and they know that companies are out-perking each other.

Even if you don’t have a lot of resources, you can still create an amazing place to work by being a little creative.

As you’ll see with this list, most of the perks that matter to employees are free, or cost very little. Even the ones that do cost money have such a high ROI that it’s worth it.

You don’t have to implement all of these, these are just suggestions. A good tip is to ask employees for feedback about what they want.

1. Parental Leave – More Than Legally Required

Having a baby is one of the most beautiful, stressful times in someone’s life. Why should you make it any more complicated for an employee?

In the United States, companies legally need to provide 12 weeks of unpaid leave. In Canada, it varies by province, but it’s usually anywhere between 15-40 weeks, not all of which are paid.

Follow in the footsteps of Netflix, and offer unlimited maternity and paternity leave. From the Netflix blog:

Parents can return part-time, full-time, or return and then go back out as needed. We’ll just keep paying them normally, eliminating the headache of switching to state or disability pay. Each employee gets to figure out what’s best for them and their family, and then works with their managers for coverage during their absences.

Absolutely amazing.

2. Education Reimbursements For All Classes Taken By Employees

The idea is to encourage employees to take classes on their free time to get better at what they do.

If you want to go a step further, you can allow employees to take classes that have nothing to do with their jobs or the company, just ones that interest them.

This one will cost a bit of money, but it’s worth it.

A more educated workforce means a more productive workforce

There are tools to help you with this. Udemy for Business and Udacity for Business are great tools that you should check out.

If employees know that they don’t have to worry about the cost of those programs and that your company encourages them to develop their skills, they’ll be happier at work.

3. Donation-Matching Program

The research is clear about employees wanting to work for companies that give back to the community.

More than 85% of millennials correlate their purchasing decisions (and their willingness to recommend a brand to others) to the responsible efforts a company is making.

If you’re not offering this already, this can be an easy way to show your employees that you care about raising money for nonprofits and that you encourage employees to donate.

If you are offering it already, make sure that it is widely known about, you can even use it as part of your recruiting efforts.

DoubleTheDonation is a great service that I would recommend checking out to help you.

4. Unlimited Vacation

Modeled after Netflix’s famous policy, unlimited vacation is starting to catch on at progressive companies like Hubspot, General Electric, and even GSoft (Officevibe’s parent company).

The idea is simple: don’t track the number of vacation, sick, or personal days that an employee takes.

There is no vacation policy, be responsible about when you take vacations, but take as much of it as you want.

More than anything, it’s about treating employees as adults.

As we shift more to giving employees autonomy and letting them manage themselves, this policy makes a lot of sense.

The reason this perk makes so much sense is that it shows employees that you trust them to make the right decisions.

One thing to watch out for: employees might not take any vacation with this policy. Some companies have had to implement mandatory vacation because of this.

5. Gym Membership

Employee wellness programs should be viewed as a strategic initiative, and not a simple employee perk.

Healthy employees will take less sick days, work harder, cost you less, are happier at work, and are more likely to make friends with other coworkers.

This is a perk that will cost you some money, but the benefits far outweigh the expense.

Also, showing employees that you care about their health is an easy way to get them to stay at your company.

As a creative idea, you could set up a friendly competition between employees or departments to incentivize everyone exercising.

6. Cake On Your Birthday

Bringing an employee cake on their birthday is such a simple and inexpensive way to show appreciation to someone on their special day.

It’s a great way to show employees that you care. When an employee comes to work on their birthday, they’re hoping someone remembers and wishes them a happy birthday.

Getting them a cake takes it a step further, and is a nice bonus for their coworkers.

Also, taking a couple of minutes to eat a piece of cake with your teammates is great for team-building.

7. Shared Kindles

This employee perk is like a book club 2.0.

We have this at Officevibe, and it’s a great way to discover new books and take a break at lunch.

The way it works here is there are 10 Kindles that anyone can rent at any time, and buy a book that the company will pay for.

Another side effect of this program is that you get to know your colleagues through the books they like (and if we have any in common), and how they describe the book.

When someone shares a book with the team and writes a whole paragraph about why they’re sharing it and why they enjoyed it, you learn a lot about who they are.

8. Paid Time Off To Volunteer

Giving employees time off to go volunteer is a great way to let them know that you support giving back to the community.

Many employees would love to volunteer, but simply can’t because of their work schedules. Having a dedicated program to help employees do that is a great way to let them volunteer.

Explain to employees that they’ll be paid for their time and not to worry. Let them enjoy!

Perhaps limiting it to one day per month or something to start would make sense.

9. Flexible Schedules

This is one of the best employee perks you could offer. This perk is completely free, and on many surveys of what perks employees want, this one comes up again and again.

Flexible schedules are about showing your employees that you respect them and trust them enough to make their own decisions.

Some people are better in the morning, and some people are better in the afternoon. Some people have families that they’d like to get home to, and that’s fine.

For example, I work 10-6, and I have a coworker that works 7-3. Whatever works best for everyone.

I understand that there are some jobs where people need to be there at a certain hour, but perhaps in this scenario you could implement shifts to make it easier.

10. Catered Meals

Providing meals to your employees is a great way to give them one less thing to worry about.

The cost of restaurants and the hassle of making your lunch make this a perk that you should be offering employees.

There are many services that provide healthy meals for employees, but if you don’t know of any, simply go to Google and type in “[city name] meals delivered to work”

Another advantage to this is you can offer employees healthy alternatives to whatever restaurants are near your office, keeping them healthier and more productive.

11. Allowance For Mental Health

This is an important perk that often gets forgotten about.

Often, when people talk about employee wellness we think of gym memberships and healthy food in the kitchen, but mental health issues in the workplace are huge.

Imagine giving employees an allowance for something that will help them mentally, like going to a spa or talking to a psychologist.

You can get really creative here, but don’t forget about mental health. Many employees are scared to talk about this stuff, it’s up to you to help them feel comfortable.

12. Company Retreats

There is no better team building activity than a retreat where employees travel somewhere for an extended period of time.

Every year, our company does a Christmas trip that brings everyone so much closer. Last year we went to Punta Cana for the weekend! Who knows where we’ll go this year.

You don’t have to go as wild as an all-inclusive resort, but a weekend in a cottage somewhere can bring the team so much closer together.

13. Game Rooms

This is a standard perk that’s almost a requirement at any tech company.

It’s important to remind employees that they can take time to relax and you support that as an employer.

It doesn’t matter what you actually do, whether it’s a TV, a game system, foosball table, it honestly makes no difference.

The point is to show employees that work-life balance is important to the company.

14. Lunch and Learns

Lunch and learns are a way for a subject matter expert to share their knowledge and teach other employees something new.

Not only is it a great way to learn something new and bond over lunch, it’s a way to learn more about the employee that’s teaching.

Finding out what’s important to the subject matter expert will give you insight into what they like.

Pro tip: one cool idea could be to bring an expert from the community in to talk to employees.

15. Transportation Allowance

Not everyone drives to work in a Mercedes and has a parking spot near the front door.

Providing an allowance for transportation shows your employees that you want to help get to work as safely and easily as possible.

Monthly metro passes can be pretty expensive, so it’s a nice gesture to offer that to your employees.

In many cities they have bikes that you can rent and ride to work, in Montreal we have Bixi, in the US I believe it’s Citi bikes. Offering to subsidize that is a way to help employees like a healthy lifestyle.

16. Company Swag

A simple perk that helps promote the company and reinforce the core values. Depending on what your company does, this could be a very cool perk to offer.

My winter hat and sunglasses are company branded and I wear them with pride :)

17. Beer On Tap

A nice perk that’s becoming very common, especially in startups.

Friday afternoon brainstorms could be much more fun with a beer to get the creative juices flowing.

As long as employees are responsible, this is a great perk to have that also reminds employees that it’s okay to unwind and not work yourself to burnout.

18. Pets Are Welcome

Pets are good for boosting employee happiness and company morale.

A study done by researchers at Virginia Commonwealth University found that access to dogs boosted morale and reduced stress levels, whether people had access to their own pets or other people’s.

This doesn’t cost you anything, and shows employees that you like to create a fun and friendly work environment.

19. Interest-Free Loan

Not every company can do this, but many companies have excess cash flow that they could use to help their employees out.

The idea is to provide employees with an interest-free loan that they can easily pay back over time if they have to make a big purchase.

It’s a very nice thing to do, and more than anything, shows employees that you care about them and are there for them.

20. Free Fruits

Offering free fruits to employees is a great way to keep them healthy and productive.

It’s an inexpensive perk that pays great dividends.

Providing free fruit shows you care about the health of your employees.

Finding a provider that delivers fruit is simple. All you have to do is go to Google and type in “[city name] fruit delivery for work”

You can start simple, maybe with one basket and scale up if you see employees like it.

Fun fact: At our 120-person company, GSoft, when we did a survey about which perks employees love most, the free fruit was the number one answer.

21. Matching RRSP Contributions

Contributing to your RRSP (or 401k) is a smart idea, as you try to plan for retirement.

It can be tough for most employees to contribute a meaningful amount, which is why this is such a powerful perk.

Many companies do this, but employees often don’t take advantage of it. Why turn down free money?

22. Desk Swap

The idea here is to allow employees to sit somewhere new and “swap desks” with another colleague.

It’s great for team-building, as it allows employees who might not necessarily interact to get to know each other better.

It can also help employees with their personal growth because of the knowledge transfer that will take place.

In an article for the Wall Street Journal, they talk about how powerful this perk can be:

Proponents say such experiments not only come with a low price tag, but they can help a company’s bottom line

23. Stock Ownership Plan

One of the hardest parts of employee engagement is getting employees bought in to the company’s mission and values.

The owners want their employees to be as passionate about the company as they are.

Why try to make employees act like owners when you could just make them owners?

This can be the most powerful employee perk that you have at your disposal as an owner. Employees want to feel invested in the company they work for, this is a great way to make it happen.

24. In-House Yoga

When looking at the research on how exercise affects happiness, yoga has been found to be one of the best things you can do.

Meditation is one of the best things you could do increase your happiness, as is exercise, and yoga is actually a perfect blend of the two.

Offering employees an in-house yoga class once or twice a week can lead to a huge increase in employee happiness.

25. Standup Desks

Sitting all day at work is terrible for you.

Getting your employees a standup desk shows them that you care about their well-being and want them to be as energized and productive as possible.

You don’t necessarily have to buy something expensive, you can make one for $22.

You also don’t have to buy one for every person. Buying one that employees can share on rotation is a nice idea as well.

Employee Perks Are Good For Retention

Employee retention is incredibly important because of the effects of turnover.

When an employee leaves the company it lowers morale for everyone else.

It creates a culture of fear, where no one knows how safe their job is. This in turn affects their work, because they spend so much time worrying about if they’ll be let go.

Creating an environment where employees want to stay is important.

Replacing an employee is annoying, time consuming, and costly.

JDA, a professional services firm, did a study on how much it would cost to replace an employee.

They say that for an employee with a $60,000/year salary, it would cost $150,000 to replace them.

Having perks like these can help retain your best and brightest employees.

What Employee Perks Do You Like?

Now over to you. Let us know what you think the best employee perks are in the comments!

There are 60 million refugees globally right now. This is a number not seen since the end of the Second World War. It’s a crisis by any measure. And the horrifying photos you’ve seen of dead children washing up on European beaches only represent a tiny fraction of the millions suffering in Syria, Sudan, Burma, Colombia, and a dozen other conflict zones around the world. This number has been mounting for a decade, but unfortunately we didn’t start to notice until a few of them began to cross the Mediterranean.

What is Canada doing to help? Not much. While Prime Minister Harper has claimed Canada has been extremely generous in accepting refugees, the actual numbers tell a different story. According to the federal government, Canada usually accepts 10,000 refugees per year. That is 1/60 of one per cent of the total global refugee population. That’s like spitting on a house fire.

The Conservative government is fond of boasting that Canada settles “one out of 10 refugees” worldwide. That is an incredibly misleading figure that assumes only 100,000 (of the 60 million) refugees around the world are resettled each year.

In truth, we’re doing very little compared to other countries. Annually, we are letting in one quarter of one refugee for every 1,000 Canadian citizens. By contrast, Germany is expecting 800,000 new arrivals this year, or 10 per 1,000 citizens. If one compares the economic ability of a country to accept refugees, Canada is accepting one-quarter of a refugee per $1 of GDP per capita. Germany is accepting 80 times that amount, or 17.4 refugees per $1.

In January the Conservatives pledged to accept 10,000 Syrian refugees over a period of three years, of which Immigration Minister Chris Alexander reports 2,500 are now in Canada. Prime Minister Harper later increased this multi-year target by another 10,000. Liberal Leader Justin Trudeau has upped the ante and called for a target of 25,000. The NDP have been less specific, but Thomas Mulcair has said Canada is “not doing enough.”

Sadly, these promises are almost meaningless. Canada is capable of so much more, and so much more is what is needed. Numbers rarely move us or our leaders to do great things. Sixty million is just a statistic. But we relate to people, and the image of a drowned child, lying in the surf on a Turkish beach, sent a shock of anger through the Western world. This is the moment when we want our leaders to do the right thing, to do something bold. Unfortunately, in Canadian politics, “thinking big” means thinking a little less small.

RELATED: His name was Alan Kurdi

If we wait for the political parties to lead in this crisis, nothing will happen. We all know this.

So, let’s lead them. Let’s push a real proposal to the political candidates, their parties, and their leaders. What if Canada aspired to do one-quarter of what Germany is doing? We wouldn’t double the number of refugees we accept, or even triple. We would increase it twentyfold, from 10,000 to 200,000 per year.

That would be 4.4 refugees per $1 GDP per capita, as compared to Germany’s 17.4. Not heroic, but not shameful.

How much would this cost? Contrary to popular perception, the government of Canada pays very little to support refugees arriving in Canada. Financial support can be provided for up to one year or until they find work, whichever comes first. In Ontario, a single refugee could receive up to $781 per month for a year, in addition to a one-time allowance of $905. Germany calculates that they spend slightly more, about $11,600 (in Canadian dollars) per new refugee. Increasing our refugee intake by a factor of 20 would cost approximately $2.2 billion a year.

That might sound like a lot, but it works out to $63 per Canadian. The parties would only need to give up a few of the boutique tax credits they are sprinkling across the country. Better yet, the government could pledge to match whatever the public promises up to a maximum of $1.1 billion. This would cut the cost in half and force Canadians to put up or shut up. When this approach has been used in the past, to address an overseas natural disaster for example, the public has been extremely generous. We might surprise ourselves.

A real long-term solution will still require bringing stability to Syria and a dozen other war zones. And accepting 200,000 refugees per year is still only one-third of one per cent of the global refugee population. It seems like almost nothing in the bigger picture. But it would change the lives of 200,000, and that’s something.

So, Canada, let’s try something different. Let’s think big for once. Email your candidate and ask them why we can’t increase the number of refugees we take by twentyfold. And if they don’t answer, just keep sending them photos of dying refugees. Sadly, you have an almost endless supply.

RELATED: Inside the Syrian refugee crisis

The post Why Canada should take in 20 times more refugees appeared first on Macleans.ca.

Following decades of weak innovation performance, Canada is seeing small improvements in some areas. In the latest Conference Board of Canada’s innovation report card, Canada earns a “C” and ranks 9th among 16 peer countries. This is an improvement over the “D” grade and 13th-place ranking in the last innovation report card.

“Canada’s improved grade is largely due to an increase in venture capital investment and a strong showing on a new measure—entrepreneurial ambition. These two indicators suggest that a healthier start-up and entrepreneurial environment may be emerging in Canada, an important element of innovation performance,” said Daniel Muzyka, president and CEO of The Conference Board of Canada.

Highlights

• The country has improved on venture capital investment and connectivity, and fares well on entrepreneurial ambition. It remains weak on information and communications technology investment, patents, business R&D and productivity.
• Ontario, Quebec, and British Columbia are the top-rated provinces, while Prince Edward Island and New Brunswick are the lowest-ranked provinces.

Although the set of indicators used is somewhat different than in past years, there is enough overlap to allow for some comparison. In this year’s revamped report, 10 indicators were used to evaluate the innovation performance of Canada and 15 peer countries. This includes indicators in three categories:

• innovation capacity—i.e., investments and resources that provide a foundation for research, idea-generation, and insight-sharing (including public R&D, researchers engaged in R&D, connectivity, and scientific articles);
• innovation activity—i.e., entrepreneurial ambition, investments in ICT and venture capital, and business R&D activity that help to transform ideas into commercialized products, services and processes; and
• innovation results—i.e., evidence of the impact of research, innovation and commercialization as captured in patents, and overall labour productivity.

Canada is a middle-of-the-pack performer on most of the indicators —it gets one “A”, three “B”s, three “C”s, and three “D”s.

Canada earns its only “A” on the new indicator, entrepreneurial ambition—a measure of the share of the working-age population reporting early-stage entrepreneurial activity, such as attempts to establish or own a new business.

Read: “Epic collapse” of VC markets can be reversed: IIAC

Increased venture capital investment in a number of provinces, along with lagging investment in European countries since the recession, has vaulted Canada from being one of the weakest to one of the strongest countries on this indicator. Canada moves from 14th-place and a “D” grade in 2009 to 2nd place and a “B” grade in 2013 (the latest year for which comparable data are available).

However, much of the growth has been in late-stage funding, which raises concerns about whether Canadian start-ups will have the early stage financing they need to thrive. The country also receives a “B” on scientific articles, measured as the number of peer-reviewed scientific articles produced in natural sciences and engineering per million population.

Canada has made some improvements on connectivity and information and communication technologies (ICT) investment moving from a “D” to a “C” grade on both indicators. The country scores its other “C” on labour productivity (measured as GDP per hour worked), where it ranks 14th among the 16 international peers. The reason Canada scores an average “C” grade on this indicator despite being at the bottom of the list of peer countries is because of the extremely low score of the last two countries in the list.

Canada’s public R&D as a share of GDP has decreased slightly in recent years, going from 0.89% in 2009 to 0.81% in 2013. As a result, Canada falls from “A” to a “B” grade on this indicator.

Already a laggard on business enterprise R&D (BERD), Canada has fallen from 15th to last place among the 16 international peers and receives a “D” grade. While most international peers have seen their BERD rise for much of the past decade, Canada’s BERD has been steadily dropping—both in absolute terms and as a share of GDP.

Read: It’s a recession — now what?

Moreover, with nearly half all of business R&D conducted by just twelve firms, there is even more reason for concern about long-term BERD performance. Canada also receives “D”s on patents and researchers engaged in R&D (including researchers employed in businesses, higher education and government).

For the first time, this year’s How Canada Performs Innovation report card includes the provinces in the rankings and reveals that, while some provinces lag international peers, others perform near the frontier of global innovation excellence.

Ontario, Quebec, and British Columbia are the top-rated provinces and each earns a “B” grade overall. Not only do they rank highest within Canada, all three rank in the top 10 of the 26 comparator regions (10 provinces and 16 peer countries). Alberta sits in the middle of the pack and earns a “C” grade; while the remaining six provinces are at the back of the class with “D” and “D-” grades.

This article originally appeared on Advisor.ca

MORE ABOUT INNOVATION & R&D:

• The 15 Most Innovative Canadian Companies of 2015
• How InnoCentive marshals freelancers to do cheap R&D
• How established companies can think like startups again
• Vancouver’s booming Gastown tech startup scene, mapped
• Kik aims to win at mobile messaging by not playing Facebook’s game
• Former Lululemon CEO Christine Day wants to reinvent the frozen dinner
• The freelance economy prompts the rise of a new kind of temp agency

The post Why Canada’s getting a “C” for innovation appeared first on Canadian Business - Your Source For Business News.

We’ve been talking a lot about influencers lately – and with good reason. The right mix of thought leaders and valuable content can catapult any integrated marketing campaign into vast new heights and audiences. Finding and connecting with those ideal influencers, however, has always been the challenge.

While there are multiple discovery tools available for influencer marketing research, identifying your influencers is only part of the battle. The next part is reconciling them with your overall program objectives. It’s here that we’ve witnessed disconnects between marketing teams and their executive leadership – and where the need for executive buy-in is crucial for any influencer marketing campaign. Executives may crave big names – chief executives of major industry organizations who may/may not have an active social presence.

Additionally, any influencer marketing campaign should always provide value to your influencers (as well as your brand). In order to get the right influencers on board, it needs to be a mutually beneficial relationship.

As you look to achieve executive buy-in for any influencer campaigns, recognize the pros/cons of social influence as the primary determinant for your research.

Seeking High Profile Influencers

Those who venture into the world of influencer marketing may dream of attracting major executives or thought leaders into their campaigns. These influencers may likely contribute regularly to high-visibility blogs like Forbes, Search Engine Watch, or their own personal blogs.

Collaborating with a high profile influencer could add instant credibility to your marketing initiatives, though relying on this metric alone can reduce overall amplification potential.

• Pros of Collaborating with High Profile Influencers
  • Immediate access to a large audience, with a variety of audience and traits
  • Instant credibility for your message with media, press relations
• Potential Hurdles of Collaborating with High Profile Influencers
  • If social presence is limited, campaign might not have long-term viability
  • Getting participation from high profile influencers may be challenging

Availability is the primary barrier for connecting with big names for your content. Assume that most high-visibility influencers are fielding requests like yours every day, and might not have the time to fully dedicate themselves to your program. Again, this is where the value you offer to the influencers you work with comes into play. Do what you can to make it easy for them to participate and clearly articulate the potential value to them for collaborating.

Focusing on Socially Active Influencers

When we look to define what makes an influencer, clout definitely plays a factor. But what if we also look for those who trade major publication bylines for frequent social activities?

These are your potential advocates – influencers who already dedicate significant time to foster their social communities. They may or may not have the immediate draw of big name contacts, but they can offer sustained support beyond the initial campaign launch.

• Pros of Socially Active Influencers
  • Built-in social amplification opportunities with current audience
  • Greater availability and variety in verticals and messaging
• Potential Hurdles Working with Socially Active Influencers
  • Overall reach limited may be limited
  • Must build credibility overtime without well-known influencers

Building credibility is the main challenge in collaborating with influencers that are socially active but are not high profile. However, they in turn offer greater opportunities for long-term relationships between themselves and your brand.

Circle Back to the Objectives

When weighing the decision to prioritize what types of influencers you pursue, it always helps to review the overall program objectives. Is your influencer campaign built around awareness of a major initiative or product launch? Perhaps you may want to consider collaborating with some high profile influencers to add credibility to your brand message.

Conversely, are you looking to build a long-term campaign that dissects industry changes and teaches new processes? In this case, socially active influencers might be advantageous in that evergreen scenario.

What combination of high profile and socially authoritative influences have you found works best for your organization?

Image via Shutterstock 

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© Online Marketing Blog - TopRank®, 2015. | Influencer Marketing: Should You Pursue High Profile or Socially Authoritative Brand Advocates? | http://www.toprankblog.com

The post Influencer Marketing: Should You Pursue High Profile or Socially Authoritative Brand Advocates? appeared first on Online Marketing Blog - TopRank®.

Sierra Wireless is one of fastest growing telecommunications hardware companies in the world. Sierra Wireless has just introduced an IoT hardware device that has an acceleration platform built into the device. By using the combination cloud and IoT, organizations can achieve a worldwide deployment of IoT sensors quickly and easily using the new acceleration platform. What makes Sierra Wireless so special is that it combines third party vendors technology into an all in one, easy to use platform.

One of the big advantages of the new Sierra Wireless IoT Acceleration platform is that the devices are able to directly connect to Google Cloud Platform and take advantage of BigQuery. In practice, by being able to automatically report data back to the GCF, administrators of the new Sierra Wireless IoT platform can gain access to instant analytics about the data their devices have recorded.

"Reducing the complexity in building and deploying IoT connectivity solutions is critical for our customers in getting their products and services to market quickly, and delivering real value to their organizations,” said Emmanuel Walckenaer, Sierra Wireless' SVP of Cloud and Connectivity Services.

“Our fully integrated IoT Acceleration Platform is designed to empower customer innovation and get IoT solutions to market faster with the ability to scale and grow quickly,” adds Walckenaer.

Sierra Wireless's new IoT Acceleration Platform gives businesses an out of the box, end to end solution for their next IoT Deployment. With AirVantage, organizations can deploy IoT sensors in different regions, thus allowing organizations the ability to capture the data they need for their organization.

Sierra Wireless will be showing off their new IoT acceleration platform at a trade show in Las Vegas called CTIA Super Mobility Week. This event lasts from September 9th to September 11th. Sierra Wireless has its own stand (#5632) and you can stop by and check out the new IoT innovations for yourself if you are lucky enough to be in Las Vegas during the event.

The post Sierra Wireless Simplifies IoT with New Acceleration Platform appeared first on CloudWedge.

What’s the most important component of a client relationship? Is it regular communication? Sharing the same values? Having a strong personal connection?

These are all key parts of a healthy professional relationship, but they pale in comparison to the basis of all relationships: trust.

Why is winning your prospect’s trust so important?

Trust is the foundation of every good business relationship. If your prospects don’t trust you, they won’t tell you where and how they need help. If they don’t tell you their problems, you can’t discuss possible solutions. If they think you don’t know what you’re talking about, they’ll move on to someone who does.

Not only is establishing trust necessary to close deals with prospects, it also pays long-term dividends. Customers return to salespeople and vendors that have served them well in the past, and give referrals to their friends and colleagues.

The bottom line is that people don’t buy from or refer customers to people they don’t trust.

Trust builds naturally over time. But as a salesperson, you usually won’t have months or years to spend with your prospects. You might have no more than a few hours.

So how do you build trust in a short window of time? Here are six techniques to show prospects you’re on the same team.

How to Win Your Prospect’s Trust: Six Tactics

1) Do your homework.

You’ve researched your prospect’s company -- now you have to research your point of contact to understand who they are. You should know the following:

• How senior are they? 
• What’s the best way to provide them information?
• Do they want to manage the purchasing process or take your direction?
• What’s their personality type?
• What metrics and goals are they responsible for?
• What is important to them? How do they personally benefit from working with you?

Don’t ever call a new prospect without researching them first. You can’t establish trust if your prospect thinks you don’t care about them. A few minutes of due diligence will go a long way in demonstrating that you’re invested in your prospect as a person and a professional.

Bonus tip: If you’re calling a C-level executive, be prepared. You’ll likely only have 30 seconds to explain why you’re calling and two minutes to start to build trust, so you’d better use it well.

I recently helped a salesperson craft an outreach strategy for the CEO of a $500M company. He spent hours researching the contact and preparing a voicemail script before he called the CEO’s office. Guess what? The CEO picked up and was willing to have a conversation. Luckily, he was prepared to run a full-fledged connect call, but would have certainly ran a much less valuable conversation had he not done thorough research beforehand.

2) Start with a strong introduction.

Be humble, but establish your capabilities -- your prospect has no reason to trust you otherwise. Show your credentials. Explain your background and your relevant accomplishments. Stop short of being self-promotional and obnoxious, but let your prospect know you’re someone they can trust.

Have you helped customers with similar problems? Did you come from the industry your prospect works in now? Let them know.

Here’s a sample introduction: “Hi [Prospect], my name is John Doe. I am a [title] at [Company]. I’ve worked here for X years and have helped hundreds of companies get started with [value proposition]. Today, I’d like to ask you some questions about your company, learn a bit about your Y strategy, explain [product] and see if it is a good fit. Sound good? Let’s begin.” 

3) Put your prospect at ease.

Find out what makes your prospect tick. Do you have any common connections? Shared interests? This point of commonality doesn’t have to be an outside-of-work hobby. Just try to find something to make sure your prospect sees you as a human being.

Remember -- it’s a whole lot easier to trust somebody you like.

4) Try to understand their goals.

Ask your prospect open-ended questions about their problem to start the conversation. Then, listen to what they say and focus your conversation on interesting points. Dig into any specifics that jump out at you.

Don’t worry that you’re getting too granular -- not only does a high level of detail empower you to better solve your prospect’s problem, asking questions also demonstrates that you care about their issues and aren’t just trying to check items off a list.

5) Get on your prospect’s level.

This one’s especially important if your prospect’s personality is extremely different from your own. By nature, I’m an energetic person. When I’m truly engaged in a conversation, I have a tendency to talk loud and fast. This style of communication works really well for people who have a similar personality to mine, but can be off-putting to others. So when I’m speaking to people I know might interpret my enthusiasm as aggression or simply get overwhelmed, I adapt.

Try to mimic your prospect’s mannerisms and voice tone. Don’t take it too far, but research shows that people respond positively to being mirrored. 

6) Don’t be too salesy.

People don’t want to be sold to -- they want to choose to buy. Rookie sales tricks are a huge turn-off. Pushing a prospect to close too soon is similarly off-putting.

Focus on helping. If your prospect is a good fit, the close will come naturally as you explain how you can get them where they need to go.

If they’re not a good fit, let your prospect go. Suggest alternative solutions to their problems and tell them you’re always here if they need you. Nothing cements a prospect’s trust in your good intentions than your willingness to walk away from a deal that truly wouldn’t have helped your prospect. And if one day they do become a good fit, they’ll remember you.

As difficult as it is to gain trust, it’s even easier to lose it. If you don’t practice building trust and winning your prospects’ confidence, you’re doing yourself and your business a disservice.

What are your most effective tactics for building trust? Let us know in the comments below.

The United States is the richest nation in the world with an annual GDP of $17.3 trillion in 2014. However, some states are greater contributors to the economy than others. To illustrate differences among state economies, the folks at HowMuch.net created a chart that shows the relative economic value of each US state. The states are also color coded based on which region of the country they're in.

The three regions that contribute the most to the economy are the Far West (18.6%), Southeast (21.3%), and Mideast (18.2%). California (13.3%), Texas (9.5%), and New York (8.1%) have the largest economies in the country. Maine, Rhode Island, North Dakota, South Dakota, Montana, Wyoming, and Alaska all represent about 0.3% of the US economy each, and at 0.2%, Vermont has the smallest economy of all 50 states.

SEE ALSO: This one map explains the entire worldwide economy

Join the conversation about this story »

NOW WATCH: Here are some incredible toys hedge fund boss Steve Cohen has bought with his billions

What should companies screen for when identifying marketing talent? The best candidates have strong hard and soft skills that will allow them to succeed and add value to the organization from day one. Read the full article at MarketingProfs

Being involved in social media is great fun and very rewarding, and it is one of the best ways to market your business. But sometimes you can feel a little stuck when it comes to new ideas for posts and content on the various platforms.

We help you to combat this issue with this article, in which we look at 35 different post ideas for social media. If you do one every day, that’s over a month of great content that should allow you to stand out from the other businesses in your industry. Do one of these every other day, and you’ve got over two months of your social media content calendar worked out.

So here are the ideas for your social media platforms. Enjoy.

1. Behind the scenes photos. These are used a lot by companies that want to show that they are a trustworthy and accessible brand. It’s best to keep it as natural as possible, and we suggest putting a twist on things, like ‘a week in the life’ for example.

2. Post up a funny or inspirational image. Make sure it fits in with the lifestyle and/or aspirations of your audience. Be sure to include your logo on the image somewhere as well. A picture can be better than a thousand words, so choose wisely and it could be a real engagement tool.

3. Use an infographic. You don’t need to make your own by the way. Find one that your followers would really like to see and which provides value, and then put it out there.

4. Grab a great product photo and use this on social media. Many companies find this is a way to gain great exposure for your product (it’s in the picture) as well as gain some real social proof as the customer or client uses the product or service. Make it as natural as you can, otherwise it will look like a staged effort.

5. You could also include photos or videos that literally have nothing to do with your product directly, but instead have resonance with your audience. This means showing an image of a pair of interlocked hands to link to that romantic break you’re offering customers, for example. It creates a little bit of intrigue and it also makes your company appear less like a pushy sales organisation.

6. Going back to those product shots again. If you manufacture stuff, show people how it is done. Many a company has benefitted from showing images or videos of their production line or other parts of the manufacturing process. If you provide a service, show how it is created and delivered.

7. Case studies are excellent ways to bring variety and also a little extra marketing potential to your posts. Case studies need to be done right though, so spend time finding great customers to interview who have lots to say.

8. If you have people on your social media profile who are obviously fans of your product, share a photo of them on your channel. This allows you to make a connection with the audience you are reaching and also gain extra marketing potential.

9. If you want to give a little more to your audience and to ensure that you don’t come across as some desperate marketer, share a great book you have read recently. This allows you to show your mindset, and also that you and your company are human.

10. You could become even more creative with your post ideas and link to a ‘day in the life’ post that you have created. You could focus on one member of your team and get them to write a short post that details their working day. It works a treat for making your company more approachable, and it also allows you to bring even more engaging content to your audience.

11. You could ask questions. If you have a burning question that needs answering and your customers may be able to answer it, pose it. Ask a question and if it is interesting enough people will respond and therefore your community will build. It doesn’t take a lot of work and it allows you to keep that update flow going.

12. Take a look at some social media profiles in your industry that you like and recommend them to your following. This shows expertise and a sense of connectedness to your industry, and will also allow you to get some reading of your own done as you peruse these other profiles.

13. If you have a particular audience (as in female) then you will probably do well if you share a Pinterest board that the followers would like to learn more about. There are many opportunities here, and it shows that you are sharing for the value you can offer, rather than just sharing for sharing’s sake.

14. Find a customer who has stayed loyal for a long time and arrange for a full, professional video testimonial to be recorded. This is very effective because it has social proof and it is easy to take in.

15. Hold a contest. Some of the best contests involve customers taking photos of themselves using your product in unusual places for example. This means you get some real engagement, and if you have a prize you will get a great response. It builds up a sense of community and allows you to have an exciting post on your social media as more and more photos come in.

16. Have a debate. Post a question and then get people to answer and offer their own opinions. This can be a little tricky to manage, especially if the debate becomes a popular one. Monitor it as closely as possible and ensure that you stay on top of it and it could even provide you with content ideas for weeks to come.

17. Find a video that inspires you and your company and share it on your own social media channels. Pick one that will resonate with your audience and then just make a small, simple comment. It works wonders for reconnecting with your audience and it is of course easy to do.

18. As always, one of the best things you can do is to share industry news that is up to date and relevant to your audience. This makes for a much more engaged audience, and they will start to listen to you on the big topics of the day and latest news.

19. Create a simple but honest profile on an employee. Interview them perhaps, and put that interview out on social media. People like to see the human side of a company and this is a great way to do it.

20. Go deeper and find some research in your industry that you know will be of interest to your followers. This shows expertise. Then back it all up with plenty of data.

21. If your company has received an award or quality mark, share the news in a post. Make it a clear and factual post and this shows you are not bragging, but are instead just informing your audience of the quality you produce.

22. Share company news that is important not just to your employees but also the audience you communicate with regularly.

23. Create a series of posts and run them over a week. This is a great way to keep readership up, and it also shows that you are developing thought leader status.

24. Host a hangout on Google+. This is a great way to talk to your customers, and a transcript of the Hangout can be produced and given away as part of your social media management. Make it a fun one that is important to your audience and you’re flying.

25. Give away product. If you get your fans to comment or post an entry, give them something free in return. This is a great way to build up engagement, and also to populate your social media.

26. Interview an industry expert and link to it or post it on social media. This is a great way to build up that expertise level.

27. Tease your audience with a snippet for an upcoming blog post that you’ve been working hard on. This builds anticipation in your social media following.

28. Check out your FAQs and think of a new question that you get asked a lot but is not included in your FAQs. Answer the question or series of questions and then use this for your posts.

29. If you know some great groups on LinkedIn, and the group is sharing valuable content with some excellent conversations, then link to the group. This makes for an excellent resource for your followers.

30. Check out what your competitors are doing and share some of the same stuff they are. It shows that you are looking at your industry and showing respect to your competitors. You can even credit them as well. It also shows that you are confident in what you do, confident enough to share your competitor’s best stuff.

31. Take a look at your social media analytics and work out what is being engaged with the most and share more stuff that is in a similar vein. This is a classic way to build up even more engagement.

32. Find a blog post that you have read recently that was really successful and take the best snippet you can from it. Then share that snippet as part of your social media with a link to the post.

33. Share tips and tricks that will make the lives of your customers better. This is value-sharing at its best.

34. For even more fun, take a photo of your desk (tidy, of course) and show what you can’t be without on a typical working day. This brings more engagement and a sense of fun and personality to your company.

35. Create a tutorial on a particularly tricky part of your product offering or industry. Make it using video if you can, or an excellent quality infographic. This is where social media first started, in offering value. So go offer value.

Those are just some ideas on how you can create new and exciting content regularly for your social media platforms. The best thing is they are all easy to do, and you should be able to put something together quickly in most of these cases.

Creating rich and varied content regularly is important in social media. Use the above to stay one step ahead of that game.

To stay even further ahead of that game, you need high quality data and metrics at the push of a button. Try LocoWise for a free trial to get the most out of your social. Find data quickly on all aspects of your social media within seconds (and look at some very beautiful charts at the same time).

Marketing teams face a perpetual challenge: create content that captures new leads within a manageable budget. As new content forms emerge, it’s easier than ever to meet this challenge with a bit of creativity.

Interactive content is game changer. Calculators, in particular, break the mold — they give potential clients tangible figures they’re looking for in an interactive, engaging form.

What works better than real numbers? Nothing. Here’s why:

1. Short and Sweet Content Hits the Mark

Calculators get down to the nitty-gritty, offering easy, tangible solutions to questions that plague your audience. The interactive structure offers a palatable experience for leads, without requiring that they wade through long-form copy.

In fact, 95% of B2B buyers prefer shorter content forms. And they’re better for you too — calculators are “evergreen” and never go out of style. They also can yield higher levels of personal and social shares, as they offer such great value to your audience and their peers.

2. Calculators Limit Risk

According to the Seth Godin, risk aversion is the biggest deterrent in B2B sales. Individuals checking out new possibilities would rather stick with the status quo than rock the boat. If a deal goes sour, or proves to yield low ROI for a company, the employee’s standing or security could be in danger.

Calculators limit risk by offering tangible facts that ground the conversation and assure leads that they are on the right track. They also make it easier for an individual to present a new product or service to the decision maker. The calculator is a visual element that does the job for them. Instead of needing to completely flesh out the pros and cons, a simple email forward with the results can tip the scales at the end of a buyer’s journey.

3. Transparency Builds Trust

Calculators offer a transparency that builds trust, not only in B2B but in B2C marketing, too. DocBraces, an Orthodontics practice located in New Brunswick, Canada boosted their landing page conversions to 45% by implementing a calculator that helps families to discern the expected costs of orthodontics.

This kind of openness brings awareness to costs and allows families to prepare ahead of time — building a sense of trust between the consumer and the company. It also increases productivity, saving employees in the office from needing to have as many preliminary conversations leading up to a financial commitment.

4. Personalization is Key

With personalization as an emerging trend in the marketing world, it’s more important than ever to talk to the individual. There’s no one-size-fits-all solution for clients. The research supports this trend — an Infosys survey found that 78% of customers are more likely to develop a longer term relationship with a retailer if they receive personalized offers. Calculators allow you to personalize to the specific needs of clients before a sales conversation even begins, putting you in the best position to speak to their needs

B2B consumers expect one-to-one relationships, too, rather than blanket content. Calculators are a great place to start the personalization journey because they give customers the exact answer they need based on a long list of factors. What could be better than that?

5. Interactivity Offers a Clear Service

Calculators offer an upfront and complimentary service — just as those amazing food samples reel you in at Trader Joe’s, calculators reel people into your website. Chances are they’ll stay longer, too.

Calculators are becoming increasingly popular as a service to audiences in multiple sectors. The New York Times, for example, created a student loan calculator that spoke to their young professional and student readers. The NYT was not selling a service related to the topic but offering a free product with the intention of deepening their relationship to their audience.

Motiv, a SaaS startup, did the same thing, targeting their audience (freelance creatives) with a calculator that discerned their ideal hourly and year-long rate. Their calculator’s unsurpassed ability to target incomes boosted SEO, and caught the attention of publications who shared it with enthusiasm.

Calculators not only do the math on purchases, they offer a simple service to your audience. As content marketing experts know, offering quality (and complimentary) services is one of the best ways to capture leads.

6. Clear ROI Shows the Benefits

When SilkRoad wanted to help potential customers understand the advantages of their cloud-based HR system, they turned to an interactive calculator to lead the way. Not only did their calculator jumpstart a positive dialogue with clients, it resulted in a 46% lead submission rate.

Why? Because ROI calculators not only decrease risk, they offer a clear indication of the benefits. Calculators are the perfect last step in the buyer’s journey, giving consumers the confidence to follow through with their sales team.

Not only do calculators help convert online leads, they also empower salespeople during conversations at large scale events. Instead of relying solely on the abilities of your team, you complement them with interactive content that works.

Blackbaud did exactly that with a simple time-savings calculator they created: rather than pulling up stats or slides, the sales team could bring up the calculator during a sales call and have a straightforward conversation about value with their prospect. Thanks to that value-add, the sales team brought in an additional $600k in new revenue during that quarter.

7. Awesome Feedback Loops Mean Continual Improvement

When you offer a calculator to your audience, you not only supply leads with an immediate service and personalized attention, you capture a set of specific information about their current circumstances. Calculators, unlike a survey about a company’s financial well being, are not intrusive but give you detailed snapshots of your leads.

Securing this kind of data can revolutionize your marketing plan. With information about the people on your website and their specific circumstances, you can finetune strategy rather than working by trial and error. Similarly, data allows you to segment clients and informs your sales team — as the buyer’s journey continues, you are in the driver’s seat.

There’s no doubt that B2B buying behaviours have changed dramatically over the past few years. If you’re selling a complex, high-value solution, then you’ll almost certainly having to deal with better-educated buyers who expect more from their interactions with sales people - and are often disappointed.

And it’s not just the fact that you’ve got to satisfy the demanding expectations of increasingly well-informed buyers - the number of stakeholders that have a significant say in B2B buying decisions has grown steadily. According to research by the CEB, an average of 5-6 stakeholders are actively involved in every decision process - and in complex, high-value deals, the number is often significantly higher.

Unfortunately, many sales organisations have failed to re-design their traditional sales attitudes and processes to reflect the new buying reality. Their attempts to drive out-dated sales thinking even harder in the hope of turning things around are simply depressing win rates even further.

The myth of the single decision maker

It’s increasingly hard to sell to a single powerful decision-maker. Even if you can identify them and get to them they typically require that their team is fully bought-in to any decision. And in large part because of this need for consensus, decision-making has become increasingly cautious and risk-averse.

To compound the problem, if left to their own devices buyers are inclined to engage with sales people later than ever in their buying decision process - after many of the fundamental assumptions and decisions have been made. And when they do finally engage with sales people, the least they expect is a genuinely value-creating conversation and not a sales pitch.

Your strongest competitor is the status quo

So it’s perhaps no wonder that according to a number of recent studies, the most common outcome for even apparently well-qualified B2B sales cycles is now not a win or a loss, but the prospect deciding to “do nothing” - and that your most powerful competitor is not another vendor, but the status quo.

And it’s therefore no surprise that traditional sales attitudes are becoming increasingly ineffective, year after year, or that the consequences are seen in longer sales cycles, harder price negotiations, smaller deal sizes and lower win rates. Simply put, many historically successful sales approaches have had their day, and fresh thinking is urgently required.

That’s why many of today’s most effective sales forces have reacted by shifting their perspective away from driving a set of prescribed sales actions and towards finding ways of first understanding and then facilitating their prospect’s decision making process.

Sell the problem before you sell your solution

This has a number of profound implications, not least of which the recognition that you’ve got to sell the need to solve your prospect’s problem before you stand a chance of selling your solution. It requires that you lead towards your solution, rather than with it. And it requires that you first help the prospect identify the costs and consequences of inaction before you pile in with a Return on Investment projection.

Let’s face it, some historically effective sales people are inevitably going to struggle with this transformation, and many are not going to make it. You might well be employing some of these traditional sales types even today - and it’s almost certain that you will have employed them in the past. But without help, many are not going to make it in the new world of B2B buying.

A new breed of sales person

The ability to build relationships with buyers simply isn’t enough nowadays: we need our sales people to be alert, genuinely curious, and able to empathise with the customer but also - and this is an increasingly critical skill - with the ability to constructively challenge the prospect’s current thinking and open their eyes to new possibilities.

And they need to be capable of identifying the true mobilisers within the prospect organisation - the people with a strong reputation for leading successful change programmes - and co-opt them in the challenging task of aligning all the disparate stakeholders around the goal of selecting and supporting the vendor’s solution.

This new generation of sales people needs to work within a sales process that is closely aligned with the prospect’s buying process. Because of the need to adapt and react, these processes must be look more like skeletons that flexibly shape and support the necessary sales behaviours rather than rigid cages that constrain the sales person’s ability to innovate.

Facilitating the prospect’s buying journey

In short, vendors are having to (re)design their sales processes around their prospect’s typical buying decision journey. From a buyer-centred perspective, this journey might look something like:

• Satisfied with the status quo
• Curiosity aroused
• Establishing case for change
• Identifying potential solutions
• Selecting best option(s)
• Negotiating and validating
• Approving and confirming

Whilst one enlightened individual within the prospect might initiate the exercise, as the process unfolds they will need to progressively build a “coalition of the willing” amongst their peers who both buy-in to the critical need for change and progressively align around a single preferred solution.

You don’t just need a coach - you need a mobiliser

Rather than the traditional sales approach of identifying the ultimate decision maker and trying to sell to them directly, or clinging on to a friendly coach that may have little ultimate influence, the modern B2B buying environment requires that sales people identify and engage with a powerful mobiliser within the prospect organisation and work with them to progressively build a consensus for change.

It depends on sales people (and the marketing team that supports them) breaking through the prospect’s reluctance to engage early by presenting genuinely interesting and thought-provoking concepts that arouse the prospect’s curiosity and make them want to learn more. Provocative content pieces are part of the solution, but they need to lead - as early as possible in the buying journey - to a series of increasingly substantive conversations.

Influencing the prospect’s thinking early

That’s why the ability to have constructive conversations as early as possible in the prospect’s decision making journey - often before the prospect has fully recognised the problem or its impact for themselves - is such an important element of a modern B2B sales process.

It’s during these early conversations that the seeds of success are sown. And these early stage conversations should never be about the vendor or their solutions - they need to be about the prospect, and their challenges and consequences - whether the prospect has recognised them yet or not.

Is your sales team fit for the challenge of 2016?

With all of these changes underway, it’s probably worth re-assessing your current sales process - is it really as effective as it could be in facilitating the prospect’s buying decision process? And with 2016 less than 4 months away, what are you going to have to change to face the New Sales Year with confidence rather than trepidation?

 

Strategic alignment is the only way to systematize revenue growth for 2016. Market research is the first step toward achieving that alignment.

Market research helps you understand your market, accounts, buyers and users. But who should take the lead on this? Product management, sales or marketing?

Each person in a sales meeting brings his own concerns to the table. When you can get their thoughts out into the open, listen to the buyers’ concerns, and empathize, you can positively—and dramatically—affect the sale and the whole customer relationship. To do that, listen for the cues and have the courage to encourage discussion about them.

Sales: “The leads from marketing are weak!”

Marketing: “Sales can’t close on the great leads we give them!”

And so went the age-old debate between sales and marketing … but times and tools have changed. There’s no longer a reason for a pointless battle between two departments that belong to the same company. Two little words can lead to a harmonious relationship between former rivals: Sales enablement.

Sales enablement is a strategy to provide the sales department with leads, data, tools and content that helps them sell more successfully and generate revenue. Your marketing team can play a vital role in increasing the success of your sales team and, ultimately, the profits and success of your company, in measurable ways.

Sales Enablement

What It Is

Sales enablement is primarily about providing salespeople with what they need, when they need it, to successfully engage their target buyers throughout the customer lifecycle. This allows the salesperson to deliver a customized, meaningful experience that’s more likely to help convert prospects to loyal customers who go on to share their enthusiasm with others.

Sales enablement involves placing more emphasis on the buyer’s interests and needs and involves a variety of components which allow marketers and sales reps to work smarter, not harder. (And to work together.)

Why It’s Important to Marketers

It’s Not Like the Old Days

Simply put, marketing has changed – a lot. Back in the day, a marketer’s job was mainly about pushing out one-way messages to consumers about products and services, and hoping something struck a chord.

Now that automated marketing is here, it’s a two-way street. You’re inviting customers to seek out your company’s services and to willingly place themselves into your lead generation funnel via your website, content and social media platforms as they connect with sources of information and trusted advice generated by your team. It’s about inviting people in, welcoming them when they arrive, and making sure they’re happy once they’ve committed to staying.

Marketing is now very revenue- and technology-driven:

• It enables the delivery of valuable information to buyers in a scalable, controllable way
• Marketing now often owns a “revenue number”
• Technology spend is accelerating – it’s not unusual for CMOs to have larger technology budgets than CTOs
• Hitting a number, owning responsibility for customer-relationship-building throughout the lifecycle and investing in technology produces lots of data, so data-driven marketing is quickly becoming priority #1 for marketers.

Which brings us to our next point:

Digital Marketing is Measurable, So It’s Easier to Prove Your Value

Besides enabling prospects to find and interact with your company more easily, automated marketing also allows you to measure the results of your efforts, including factors such as who visitors are, how they find your site, how they’re accessing your information, where they work, and more. This relates to sales enablement because marketing is now more responsible than ever for delivering qualified leads that convert into bona-fide opportunities.

Using the rich analytics available to you through automated programs helps marketing to optimize future sales enablement efforts based on what does, and doesn’t, connect with audiences. When executed correctly, attraction, conversion, and retention numbers begin to soar very quickly and the marketing team’s ROI is very easy to validate with reports and data.

Your Bosses are Watching

Because sales enablement leads to differentiation between competitors, higher customer satisfaction, and increased profits, executive teams now have a laser-focus on conversion rates at all stages rather than just lead numbers, and are holding marketing accountable. No one wants to be responsible for longer sales cycles or lost revenue opportunities.

When you’re utilizing marketing automation tools to generate qualified leads, deliver customized content to customers and boost sales and retention, you’ll relish rather than dread the reports your bosses are reading.

Stats Show Sales Enablement Works

Numbers don’t lie.

• Demand Gen Report: 95% of B2B purchase decisions are directly influenced by content
• MarketingSherpa: Adding lead scoring to your existing marketing automation and CRM environment can decrease non-ready leads sent to sales by 52% while increasing revenue by 41%.
• Aberdeen Research Group: 51% improvement in lead conversion rates and 54% year-over-year increase in sales reps attaining quotas

How to Accomplish It

Know Your Target

Sure, marketers know they should be able to identify their target audiences, but developing content for, and marketing to, today’s buyer is more complex than ever. Having a deep understanding of who your tech-savvy contemporary buyers are, what they want, and when they want it is crucial in order to achieve the primary goal of marketers: to get the right message to the right people at the right time.

Other tips for honing in on your target:

• Know that SEO is important, but remember that you’re ultimately writing for human beings, not search engines.
• Tap into internal (particularly sales and customer support) resources to gain valuable input and insights into just who you’re writing for and what they want to know.
• Use analytics tools and software functions to gather data about current customers to educate yourself about what they buy, read, share and respond to.
• Test your messaging, landing pages and email campaigns; what works for one segment may not work for another. With A/B testing you can get it right the first time, and be just that much further ahead as you iterate.

Lead Scores and Alerts – Have a Plan

Part of your job is to generate qualified leads that translate into qualified opportunities and won deals. There’s a simple equation behind how to score leads: actions + attributes = lead score.

But it doesn’t do any good to have the right information ready to go to leads if it isn’t delivered at the right time. Once your teams have determined when and to whom lead alerts will be sent, with a well-integrated sales and marketing technology platform, you have the option of automating those tasks.

Follow Up with Content

The other key component to successful modern marketing is having the ability to create and deliver content that helps sales teams advance and close deals. Ease–of–use is the key to getting salespeople to use the resources you create – and you need to make sure they’re easy to find.

Some examples of content that salespeople use at customer lifecycle stages are:

• Attract: Content (social media, blog posts, white papers, webinars…) that’s relevant and gets the attention of contacts during the prospecting stage, particularly pieces that educate audiences on new technology, trends, challenges and give tips for success
• Capture: Forms and landing pages to encourage visitors to share their contact information in order to gain permission to market to them, and provide them with customized experiences
• Nurture: Useful resources and links to share during email and social selling campaigns
• Convert: Customer testimonials and case studies
• Expand: Blog posts and email newsletters about new products, services, and updates on existing tools aimed at current customers in order to keep them informed and prevent churn, and that are compelling enough to for industry influencers to share

It’s a major paradigm shift to say that, in today’s B2B environment, marketing and sales aren’t enemies, but quite the opposite – partners working together, for mutual gain. The marketing teams that understand this are learning how to evaluate, implement, and execute sales enablement strategies and tools that empower sales to gain and hold people’s attention, sell more effectively, and earn customer love and loyalty.

By focusing on the changing dynamics of the buyer’s journey and by customizing the customer’s experience to make it relevant and enjoyable, you will help enable sales to dramatically increase the bottom line – and that’s good for everyone.

Are you ready to mold together your sales and marketing departments? Sales enablement implementation can be a lot quicker and easier with a resource like our Free Toolkit: Aligning Sales & Marketing for Greater Revenue Growth. Download it for free, and join the list of well-aligned organizations that have seen an average of 32% annual revenue growth!

As an ecommerce merchant, one of your most challenging tasks and crucial ones is to grow your business. Creating growth via growth hacking (the fancy word for marketing that’s focused on growth) isn’t magic and it isn’t luck (although it does take a bit of that), rather a combination of innovation, knowing what your visitors want, and using different tactics to “connect” with your site’s visitors.

“Growth hacking is just GET USERS!” – Gary Vaynerchuk

Growth hacking for ecommerce sites is not just getting more consumers. Whatsmore, growth hacking for ecommerce has two sides: gaining new consumers and increasing the value of each and every one of you consumers.

I suggest you grab a cup of coffee and get ready to see how with some simple, yet effective growth hacks you can create rapid growth!

1. Coupons

We all like to buy things that are marked-down from their original price, and hence you have to put your “thinking cap” on to see how you can capitalize on this fact.

How can you use coupons as a growth hack? According to tests that we ran here at StoreYa, offering a 10% discount is the “sweet spot” and converts better than bigger discount offers. What you need to do is use a variety of different deals for different goals.

Raw Generation saw a $28,000 increase in sales over a three week period, and gained another 1,900 email addresses by offering a huge and urgent offer.Read their story → How Raw Generation Used Urgency to Get Instant Sales. Doesn’t that sound like something you’d want?

2. Sell on Multiple Platforms

Even if you are first in search engine search results for every relevant keyword, there is still plenty of reason to sell your products on other platforms, such as eBay and Amazon. Why? These sites spend their money on bringing traffic to their sites, and as a result to your products.

You want to be seen by more people that have an interest in the types of products you sell → this is how you do just that.

How can cross-platform sales be a super growth hack? It’s quite simple. You already have product images, descriptions, prices, and everything else – all the heavy work has been done. What you can do is list a few products on different platforms, by selecting those products that will make the buyer want more (one part of a collection) so that after purchasing they got to your site to get another product. Did I mention that this is one of the things that helped Air BnB grow?

Think of the cross-platform distribution of products as your way of spreading your brand to as many people as possible just like McDonald’s has 70-Plus Locations in Manhattan.

Need a few marketplaces to add your list? Check out our list.

3. Optimize Images for Social Media

We are all addicted to social media. Not being able to use social media for a day is like being stranded on an isolated island. To the point: we upload and share more than 1.8 billion photos on different social media platforms every day! That is not a typo.

How can optimized images be an efficient growth hack? Optimized images get shared more than those that aren’t. I myself have chosen on occasion not to share content or to share something without an image, if the image size is not appropriate.

Ideal sizes:

Optimization doesn’t end with the sizes. With your images being showcased everywhere, it is crucial to add a watermark to the image or photo you’ve worked hard on creating. Don’t you want people to know that you are the one they should buy their next phone cover, shirt, shoes, or other product from?

A bonus tip to create virality with your images is to run giveaways or contents that are possible to enter only if they person adds a picture of themselves wearing or using your product to Facebook, Twitter, and/or Instagram.

With Pinterest’s “Buyable Pins” great images become more crucial than ever.

4. Guest Blogging

Blogging is one of the best ways to grow your business (and a great growth hack). Not only does it give you another form of digital media that you can share with your own community, but it also helps you get in front of a huge number of potential buyers.

How can you guest blogging be an effective growth hack? Heard of Buffer? The company was able to acquire 100,000 new users within their first nine months just from guest blogging. No matter what you sell, there are people interested in reading more about it. Here’s more proof:

5. Create a Blog

Content is king – and that is not going to change. We humans enjoy viewing and reading content and the search engines love it too. I’ll ask you a question. What do you see get shared more often on social media platforms, an image, a product page, or some type of blog post? For the majority of us, the blog posts are the dominant types of content that we see getting shared.

How can I make my blog a successful growth hack? If you use the “5 C’s” formula you’ll start generating more sales from day one (discover the “5 C’s” here). You’ll generate sales from new visitors via improved SEO and from the newly generated content that you can now share with your current email subscribers and social followers as well as in different social media groups and forums.

Fiona, Director of Customer Service at Brayola:

“…Everyone says content is king, and it is, however it has to be good content. We have posts on our blog that are super successful (with great SEO) and others that are more informational, however both are as important as each other. Quality is the key, that will drive sales and also will create a good brand awareness. We are Brayola, we are a lingerie marketplace, but our brand awareness is so important to us, and this is one of the ways we can show our brand “personality”.”

6. Social Payments

What in the world do I mean by social payments? It’s a term for making certain types of content or products on your site “locked” until the person either shares it on a social media network of their choice. The most basic concept in getting more users is getting your brand in front of more people. Odds are that if you do that, then sales will rise.

How can you use social payments as a growth hack? Here are a couple of examples for which you could “lock” a certain something on your site:

• a new product that you will be selling
• blog posts
• video tutorials
• discounted products

This way the visitor gets what he/she wants and also spreads the word about your business. Social media has turned into a form of “word of mouth marketing”, which is still one of the most effective forms of marketing. Check out “Social Locker” (for WordPress) and “Pay with a Tweet”.

As rational people, we are more likely to buy something from an online site or retail store when someone we know shares a product from that store.

7. Social Proof

Growth hacking for ecommerce means increasing the value of your current consumers. A highly successful trend being used by top merchants today is the use of social proof, or in other words using social media statuses, comments, and images to show what people think of your products.

How can social proof be used as a growth hack? Are you seeing high rates of cart abandonment or a low conversion rate on product pages? If so, the reason could very well be that even though someone likes the product, they have not been convinced that they should buy it from you. Using different social proof tactics such as embedded tweets or statuses from other social platforms showing happy customers does the trick.

Via the Heyoya blog:

“Adding a human element to reviews not only drives sales, but it increases engagement. People spend 100% more time on product pages with voice reviews and share across multiple social networks 50% more”.

8. Emails

Yes sending emails is a growth hack. Growth hacks don’t have to be something revolutionary. The only characteristic that has to be relevant in a technique to make it a growth hack is its ability to create growth. Email has that. What would you say if you could double the click-through rate you’re getting from your email marketing?

How can you harness email to function as a growth hack? You’ve got to be creative, and also straightforward with your emails. Here are a few types of emails that have proven time and time again that they work (just don’t use them every week).

• Number of Product Sold Email: It’s always convincing when thousands have already bought it.
• Urgency Email: the sale ends today or something else that has a very close expiration date.
• Freebies almost always get our attention
• Replenishment Email: remind people to re-order

See our successful post that has already helped merchants increase email open-rates.

9. Referral Program

One of the recurring themes to a handful of these growth hacks is their “social” aspect. Our list of growth hacks for ecommerce merchants would not be complete if we did not get into how referral programs stimulate growth.

People are 4 times more likely to buy when referred by a friend – Nielsen

The DropBox Story:

After launching their initial pay-per-click test showed that the cost for acquiring a new customer was in the range of $233-388. On the other hand, their life time value was $99. DropBox implemented their referral program – “invite a friend and both get extra free space”. The results speak for themselves: 100k registered users grew to 4M registered users in just 15 months.

DropBox’s story is relevant to you no matter what you sell!

How can you make a simple referral program a healthy growth hack? First of all know where you want referrals to work, as not every social media site will bring positive results or results as well as other ones (for instance, LinkedIn versus Facebook).

Then make a nice graphic for it so that it stands out – this is not meant to be a secret (“Greats” has added their referral program to all their pages, including the “about” page).

65% of new business comes from referrals – New York Times

A referred customer is 18% more loyal than a customer acquired through a different method – Journal of Marketing

Don’t forget to try StoreYa’s Refer a Friend.

10. Giveaways

Just as we like to get things at a discount, we also love giveaways. One of the things that attract people to participate in giveaways is the exclusive feeling of winning the giveaway. According to a study by the British Promotional Merchandise Association, 79% of those that had received a promotional product for free within the previous year would be likely to do business with the company again.

11. Exit-Intent Pop-Ups

You may think that they are annoying, however they can also be extremely powerful. For the site ConversionXL, these “exit pops”, as we call the, accounted for 30% more subscribers each month. If that hasn’t convinced you that exit-intent pop-ups are a godd idea then maybe this will: according to Conversific.com 30% of the Top 1000 US ecommerce sites uses popups – 22% are using entry popups, 14% are using exit popups, 6% are using both!

12. Importing your store to Facebook

This is a concept that is quite similar to listing your products on other platforms. In this case you have even less work to do, as StoreYa’s Facebook shop automatically imports your products and syncs with your inventory. With a Facebook Store you can engage and interact with your followers and have them purchase products without ever leaving Facebook.

13. Converse in forums, groups, and Quora

How does blogging and guest blogging act as a growth hack? By creating content that shows you as an authority on something, you buy people’s trust. You can achieve the same thing, maybe even in less time, by answering questions and being a part of conversations on sites like Reddit and Quora, as well as niche forums for your respected products.

14. Partnerships

One of the benefits of guest blogging is that you have the opportunity to acquire more consumers by using another site’s audience. Here too, by working with another store that sells products that could be of interest to your audience, and your products to their audience, you have a cost-free opportunity to help each other. Need an example? Each one can mention the other in their next email or offer discount points on the other person’s store.

15. Use Video

Why has Facebook added the automatic video feature? Because it gets people to interact more. How can you use videos? As tutorials on your latest products, to revive interest in an older product, as a video blog, to introduce new products, and even for tutorials.

Here are some statistics to exemplify the power of video and how they can help you grow. 90% of online shoppers at a major retailer’s website said they find video helpful in making shopping and buying decisions. Finally, 52% of consumers say that watching product videos makes them more confident in online purchase decisions.

16. Money Back Guarantee

According to Quick Sprout, when stores added a money back guarantee to their products, they saw a 21% increase in sales was seen, and of those that purchased, only 12% of customers asked for their money back.

That’s the list for today. Are there more options? Yes there are and maybe I’ll share the rest of the list later :). In the meantime give these growth hacks a try and let me know in the comments if you have any success with these growth hacks or have any questions on implementing them successfully. Good luck!

How many times have you and your content team gotten together to create content for your site, only to find that you were struggling coming up with things to talk about? It happens to even the best among us every once in a while. If this happens more often than it doesn’t, though, it’s possible that your inbound marketing efforts might need some work. Most of them would not consist of asking philosophical questions as the image below might suggest:

A great site doesn’t simply present readers with a group of one-off pieces surrounding a single topic. If you expect to convert visitors, your site needs content that builds off of itself and helps inspire and inform content across multiple channels–blog posts, white papers, demos, video, etc. With an average bounce rate of 40 to 60%, failing to engage visitors after they’ve consumed that first piece of content is where most content websites fail. A great site’s content works together to guide a reader from simple curiosity to satisfied (and hopefully returning!) customer.

Here are the steps you should take to begin creating content that doesn’t simply entertain your readers but builds towards converting them into customers:

Clearly outline your buyer’s journey

How do your site’s visitors and readers find you? What is it that you want them to do? Are there benchmarks that you want them to hit along that journey?

Creating a customer journey map helps you understand where potential buyers are at the beginning of your interaction and where you need to take them to complete the conversion. For example, according to Interconnected World, 44% of online shoppers begin by using a search engine. If your goal is to get visitors to, you’ll need to start by moving them from the search engine to your website.

Determine what content is needed at each stage of that journey

Once you understand how your prospects will move through your marketing funnel, determine what kind of content will help keep them engaged at each step of that journey. According to Aberdeen, 84% of marketing executives plan on developing a process to map content assets to buyer journey stage.

If 44% of your visitors are coming from search engines, the blog or other introductory content you create should focus on answers to common searches related to your industry. As they progress along their journey from curiosity and fact finding to deciding to take action, you’ll want to supply content that does that: white papers, eBooks, etc.

Make sure each piece of content bridges the gap

Instead of creating a swath of content that all says basically the same thing, you want your content to convey an understanding of what they might have already consumed. Make sure whoever is creating your content knows what search, blog or landing page brought them to it and what offer or recommended content they will be presented with when they have finished. This content should clearly communicate where in the buyer’s journey they are as well as start subtly guiding them toward the next step you want them to take, whether it’s clicking for more information, joining that mailing list, or taking the leap and pushing the metaphorical “buy now” button.

The best way to accomplish all of these goals and create an optimized buyer journey is to ensure that you are always on top of your analytics. The creation of your content calendar and each piece of content you recommend should be driven by the data you’ve collected and personalized to each visitor’s unique journey. What kind of content can you create that best serves that data?

Introduction

One of the core values of SalesHacker and The Harris Consulting Group is our continual desire to learn. We push ourselves and our clients to be better, fail faster, iterate quickly, adapt, and improve. We believe this is essential to being successful in sales and is part of our “Warrior Training”.

Like many people in sales we look to learn from others as much as we look to help others learn. In this post we are going to explore two concepts that have really struck a chord with us in 2015 as we look at the sales world. One is resilience, the other is empathy.  

Before we get into the topics specifically we feel it’s important to acknowledge those who helped encourage us to explore these paths. While the topic of “Empathy” in sales may have been around quite a while we were not really aware of it until we met Sean Kester from SalesLoft in January 2015. If you follow SalesLoft, Sean, or Kyle Porter you will hear this word used often when discussing the right attributes of a good SDR or Sales Person. And we agree whole-heartedly.

With regards to “Resilience” we began to apply a deeper thought process around this word and how it relates to inside sales while reading the book, Resilience, A Hard Won Wisdom for Living a Better Life, written by Eric Greitens. To be honest, this book has absolutely nothing to do with sales, but on the other hand so much of it can be applied it’s hard not to see it.

“Resilience explains how we can build purpose, confront pain, practice compassion, develop a vocation, find a mentor, and create happiness. Mr. Greitens explores all of this drawing on both his own experience and wisdom from ancient and modern thinkers.

While we write posts specifically from the point of view of an SDR or Inside Sales perspective, we do realize that much of this post could be applied to anyone from any perspective or occupation, during any part of one’s life.

Empathy

So what’s the first word that comes to mind when you think about a salesperson? Go on, be honest. Often times the words we hear are: dishonest, untrustworthy, and our favorite, liar. In fact if you stop to think about the top professions that are known for lying often include the following: Politicians, Lawyers, and of course Sales People.

Now let’s explore this word “Empathy”. According to Merriam-Webster, empathy is “the feeling that you understand and share another person’s experiences and emotions: the ability to share someone else’s feelings”

Unfortunately a lot of sales people will think they are being empathetic but unfortunately it comes out insincere and sounding more like sympathy. It is our opinion that taking a sympathetic tone can actually create distance between you and your prospect as opposed empathy which will build a greater bond of mutual respect and trust.  To be more specific, having sympathy often means feeling sorry for someone’s situation. Your customers do not want your sympathy. They do not want you to feel sorry for them. Empathy means you actually understand your customers’ feelings at the emotional level.

As an example. One may lose a loved one and people will and should be sympathetic. What if you are a person who has not had that experience in your left yet, could one truly be empathetic? Some people by nature can. Others have a harder time making this connection.

So now comes the hard part for sales people. Everyone has experience and experiences in life. The goal of a good sales person is to understand the challenges you’ve faced in your life or career. Take the emotions behind those experiences and work to appropriately identify ways to share your life with your prospects in such a way to create the right win-win situation.  

So here is a simple exercise for you to try. We call “Happy & Sad Times”.  Below write down 3 experiences in your work or personal life that brought you happy feelings. In the second section write down experiences that evoked sadness.

Exercise 1 – Happy Times

1. The day I closed my first 5-figure deal.
2. The day I shot a hole-in-one.
3. The day my children were born.

Exercise 1 – Sad Times

1. The first time my heart was broken.
2. The time I lost a big sale to the competition.
3. The moment I found out my father had cancer.

So maybe you haven’t hit a hole-in-one but maybe you hit a home-run.  Maybe you’ve never lost a big deal to the competitor but perhaps you didn’t get the job you wanted. In both cases the emotions felt within the experience allow them to be shared. It’s this shared emotional feeling that allows someone to be truly empathic.

So as a sales person how do you take these feelings and share them with a prospect?  There are three things that will help you.

1. The words you choose
2. Your tone of voice.
3. The words you choose after you express empathy.

Empathy sounds like this.  “Wow, that’s awesome.” Or, “oh, wow that’s not much fun.”  

Often times a sales person will try to follow up their statement with something that tries to push the deal forward. We suggest that in most cases trying to move the deal forward is not the best choice at this moment. If you do, then that where the “pushy used car” salesperson stigma comes to mind for most people.  It is possible your prospect will feel like you are not listening to them. If they think you are not listening, then they will not trust you, and this is where you lose the deal.  What ends up happening in many cases is that the prospect will interpret the sales persons’ empathy as sympathy. And prospect do not want their sales people to feel sorry for them. They want their sales people to feel their pains.

We believe that continuing to discuss how this situation is affecting the prospect will lead to greater trust and the deal will move forward naturally. Don’t get us wrong, you still have to ask for the sale or the next appropriate steps but you don’t need to push it simply because you do not know what to say next.

Resilience

So now let’s shift gears and move towards our other topic, resilience. Resilience is the ability to adapt necessarily based on changing circumstances. The most important thing to remember is that you aren’t really born with resilience, it’s something you develop over time through life, through experiences both good and bad. Resilience is not given to you, it’s earned, and often times painfully. The good news about resilience is that it will always continue to develop, and nobody can take it away from you.

As a sales person whether you are in inside sales, field sales, an SDR, or Customer Success, the ability to be empathetic and resilient are essential to your overall success. Your prospects and customers do not desire this, they actually expect it.

Here’s an example of building resilience. Right now, as I am finalizing this post my father is upstairs in the hospital. He’s going to die in the next 24-48 hours. In the next 20 minutes, I have a business call I need to make. Some people may think that I am not doing the right thing. In my world, my reality, and my father’s world he would want me to focus on something other than himself even for a few minutes. This is resilience, this is “Warrior Training”. That even in the face of certain death of a loved one the human spirit will continue, it can grow stronger, and it will help you persevere. This experience, while tragic and terrible will build my resilience. I will have lost someone very dear to me, but I will have also gained strength, perspective, and improved my ability to be empathetic to others who lose. It could be a person they lose, it could a pet they lose, or it could be a business deal. But ultimately I can empathize with anyone who loses something they care about.

Conclusion

In conclusion we would like to leave you with some thoughts you can use to help you continue to build your ability to be empathetic and help you continue to build your resilience throughout your warrior training. This is actually based on something we read in Eric Greiten’s book, Resilience, A Hard Won Wisdom for Living a Better Life.

• Begin with empathy.
• Act with empathy
• End with empathy.
  • Empathy leads to clarity.
  • Clarity leads to an open mind and open heart.
  • With an open mind and an open heart I see every as being my equal.
  • When I have an open mind and see others as my equal it gives me permission to let them teach me and for me to teach them in tandem. .
  • With every person as my teacher I grow in resilience and wisdom.
  • As I grow in resilience and wisdom empathy becomes a greater strength, a massive asset.
• Begin with empathy.
• Act with empathy
• End with empathy

Sources:

https://ericgreitens.com/books/resilience-book/

www.merriam-webster.com

The post The Resilient and Empathetic Sales Person appeared first on Sales Hacker.

If you are heading to INBOUND or another conference in the next few months, it’s time to start booking meetings! If you wait until the conference starts, or even worse, after it’s over to follow up with everyone you meet, it's too late. The most successful conference goers go in with a plan and book a reasonable number of key meetings ahead of time, hold some impromptu ones, and forge meaningful new relationships.

I’m heading to #INBOUND15 with the Venngage team. Because most of our customers upgrade automatically, our biggest goal is meeting up with bloggers, influencers, and potential content partners to help us increase the amount of organic and referral traffic we receive. In previous roles when I was more focused on direct sales, I would be looking to meet new prospects, and connect with active opportunities and existing customers who I wanted to call upon down the road.

While the target audiences are slightly different, the goal is the same: Meet with as many people as possible during the however many days your conference lasts. Here's a glimpse into how I prepare for conference meetings so as to make the most of the event. 

Start Connecting Now

If you haven’t already, set aside some time to research who will be going to your upcoming conference. Send out a tweet that you're going, and post on LinkedIn. In addition, reach out to your contacts with a personalized email to see if they’re going and possibly schedule a time to meet up. 

When prospecting on social media, it’s important to work as a team. The last thing a great prospect wants is seven different people from the same company tweeting at them, “@prospect I'm going to #INBOUND15 - would love to meet up!” Divide and conquer among your colleagues, and be sure to search the conference hashtag every day to discover if anyone new has announced their attendance.

Reignite Stale Leads

Were you working on a deal a few months ago that went cold? If you know that the prospect is heading to INBOUND or any other upcoming conference or industry event, use this knowledge to reach out with purpose: 

“Saw you're attending #INBOUND15 - would love to catch up and learn what’s new since April.”

It may very well be that nothing is new, but it's also possible that the influencer who was blocking you has left the company and your champion is now ready to push the deal through. All you need is a good reason to reach out.

If you’re working on a deal that's stalled or stuck, use an upcoming conference as a way to get face time and push it through. Get in front of as many prospects as possible to maximize the ROI of your ticket.

Offer a Valuable Introduction

This doesn’t happen all the time, but when it does, it is truly a win-win-win situation. You probably have hundreds, if not thousands of connections on LinkedIn. While they may not be the strongest relationships, it’s far better than a cold call.

Before heading out, ask your prospects if there is anyone you can introduce them to. They will appreciate the selfless gesture, and if they take you up on the offer, you can cash in on this social capital down the line.

In an absolute best case scenario they will request to meet an existing customer who can tell your prospect about the success they’ve had with your solution. Hearing a testimonial from an actual customer carries a lot more weight than if it came from you.

Separate New Connections as You Make Them

Create two different piles for people you meet at the conference. As you're handed a new acquaintance’s card and look them up on LinkedIn, ask yourself: Do I really want to meet with this person down the road? If the answer is yes, connect with them ASAP to set your next meeting while you’re both there in person.

For everyone else, send them a note immediately after meeting summarizing what you've spoken about (to refresh your memory later), and set a reminder using Sidekick to follow up once you’ve both gotten back to the office.

Look Out For Unexpected Meetings

Meetings can happen in unexpected places. Check the conference hashtag on Instagram and Twitter while you’re at the airport. Who knows who may be on the same flight as you? If you’ve cleared security and have some time to kill, it's a great time for a conversation without the exhaustion or pressure of having to be at the next session or meeting. The most successful sales professionals keep their head on a swivel, and know when to pick their shots.

Research shows that the most successful sales organizations are embracing analytics. I recently sat down with Ralph Lentz, a senior sales executive with 25+ years of sales management experience, to find out how analytics are changing the industry and why sales leaders must pay attention.

Here are my two key takeaways from our conversation:

1. Sales leaders can gain a lot more knowledge and increase confidence about their pipeline by using analytics.

2. Sales leaders can better understand their ideal targets with new sales analytics tools.

Sales managers always want to know the likelihood of reps making their numbers – and the effect that has on their own committed number. It’s difficult to believe that as little as 10+ years ago, sales leaders managed the pipeline solely on gut instinct!

Today, with CRM systems, sales analytics, and sales acceleration tools, sales leaders have access to tons of data. And sales leaders can gain immense value by looking at the trends and correlation uncovered by the data captured by these solutions.

Say, for example, you have a rep saying a deal is going to close. But a report generated by your sales acceleration tool shows that the rep hasn’t engaged with the prospect for over three weeks! This would make most sales managers think twice before adding the deal to the pipeline.

On the other hand, if you can see frequent engagement between your rep and the prospect, the validity of the deal goes up.

There are dozens of tools to collect data, analyze trends, and make correlations on a variety of pipeline metrics. By harnessing this information, sales leaders can:

• Get answers to key sales questions about their pipeline
• Improve decision making for the business
• Refine sales processes with insight into prospect engagement

What makes a good prospect for your company?

Do you understand why people are buying – or not buying – your product or services? What process do you have in place to review your sales wins and losses?

As a sales leader, analytics that capture data about what types of companies did and didn’t buy can be extremely valuable. By correlating data, you can put together a target persona or target vertical or another target cross-section that’s important for your company. Many companies offer analytics tools to help you leverage data for more effective prospecting.

On top of this, with sales acceleration tools, you can quickly filter marketing’s good leads from the poor ones. With visibility into which prospects are most engaged, your team can narrow the funnel to focus on the most promising opportunities.

As a sales leader, you need to track patterns to gain insights into your pipeline’s accuracy and improve prospect outreach. Analytics give you a more complete picture about your sales organization, the biggest trends, and your ideal targets, so you can build more predictable and repeatable sales processes.

Sales will never be a complete science, but analytics have become an essential part of a sales leader’s skill set. Learn more about how analytics benefit sales leaders in this White Paper “Why Sales VPs Are Turning to Digital Listening to Accelerate Sales.”

Original Post

  Ah, the blame game. It never ends, just like the merry-go-round that spins round and round. The only thing that seems to change are the kids on the ride. Gee, sure sounds like a lot of Sales and Marketing Departments. The question “who is to blame for bad leads” seems to get asked anytime […]

Personas help your marketing team internalize who your ideal customers are and identify with them as humans, not a demographic. Buyer personas are vital to content creation, acquiring customers, sales retention, and beyond. By creating buyer personas, you are able to tailor your marketing efforts to your ideal buyers.

In this blog post, we will discuss the three best ways to research buyer personas without interviews.

Look at current leads and customers

This may seem like an obvious choice, but is one that marketers may overlook when trying to create their buyer personas.  Your current leads and customers may not give you all of the information you are looking for, but it works as a good starter. Some information you may have accessible about your current leads and customers may include:

• Background information (basic details)
• Job details
• Pain points
• Content consumed
• Purchasing process

If this information isn’t available from your current leads or customers, consider sending out a questionnaire with an incentive for filling it out.

Update your forms

Updating the forms on your website can also be crucial to capturing the proper data for your buyer personas. You want to use form fields that capture important persona information. Questions you may ask on your forms are:

• Job role
• Company size
• Biggest challenge
• Goals
• Personal demographics (location, age range, etc.)

While it probably doesn’t make sense to gather all of this information in one form, you can pick certain form fields that are extremely crucial to helping define your buyer personas.

Talk to your internal teams

Another great way to gather information for your buyer personas is by talking to your internal teams, particularly in the sales realm. Have a conversation with your top-performing sales reps and gain some insight on buyer behaviors and characteristics. Questions you may ask your sales team include:

• Who is buying?
• How do the buyers communicate?
• What pain points do the buyers have?
• What companies do the buyers work for?
• What was the buyer’s journey?

Be sure to meet with sales regularly so you are able to refine your personas based upon what they are seeing.

Creating your buyer personas may seem like a daunting task, especially when you throw interviews into the mix. By using the three tips above, your buyer personas formation will be off to a great start.

What other ways have you researched your buyer personas without interviews?

The post How to Turn Bad News into Happy Customers appeared first on Copyblogger.

Buying a drone is equal parts exciting and confusing. With so many models – and even more parts – simple research can easily explode into a full-blown quest to find the best drone for your intended purpose and budget. As such, it’s important that we take a look at some common beginner questions, and do our part to address each of them in a way that’s easy to understand without being overly jargon-heavy or further muddying the waters. Drone or Quadcopter? We should start with a bit of a lesson on nomenclature. Nearly every consumer-grade “drone” is actually a “quadcopter”; an...

Read the full article: 8 Questions To Ask When Buying Your First Drone