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Phil Zuckerman is a professor of sociology and secular studies at Pitzer College in Claremont, California. He is the author of Living the Secular Life, Faith No More, and Society Without God. He has also edited several volumes, including Atheism and Secularity, Sex and Religion, and The Social Theory of W.E.B. Du Bois. Zuckerman writes a regular blog for Psychology Today titled “The Secular Life.” His work has also been published in academic journals, such as Sociology Compass, Sociology of Religion, Deviant Behavior, and Religion, Brain, and Behavior. In 2011, Zuckerman founded the first Secular Studies department in the nation. He earned his PhD in sociology from the University of Oregon in 1998. He currently lives in Claremont, California, with his wife, Stacy, and their three children.

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Harris: Your most recent book is Living the Secular Life, and you founded the secular studies program at Pitzer College. Perhaps we should begin by clarifying what “secularism” is, because many people use it as a synonym for “atheism,” which it isn’t.

Zuckerman: I’m going to resist the urge to whip out all my lecture notes, because this stuff is central to what I teach, and I’ve got a lot to say here. But I’ll try to be as brief and concise as I can.

We’ve got three terms that are closely related, but also distinct.

First off, let’s start with “secular.” To me, that simply means “non-religious.” In a nutshell, I’d say someone is secular if 1) he or she does not hold any supernatural beliefs about deities, spirits, or netherworlds 2) he or she does not engage in any religious rituals or rites, and 3) he or she does not identify or affiliate with a religious group, denomination, or tradition.

Next comes “secularization.” This term refers to a historical process whereby a given society becomes less religious over time: Fewer people hold religious beliefs, fewer people place importance on religious rituals or rites, fewer people identify as religious, fewer institutions exist under the auspices of religious authorities, and so on.

Finally, what you asked about: “secularism.” For me, the “ism” is key here. It implies ideology. Social movement. Political agenda. How things “ought” to be.

On this front, we’ve primarily got good, old-fashioned Jeffersonian secularism, which at root is nothing more than the ideology or political position that church and state ought to be separate and that government ought to be as neutral as possible when it comes to religion in the public square. This version of secularism is basically anti-theocracy-ism (or what used to be called disestablishmentarianism). It is an ideology that is often embraced by both religious and secular people. And it most definitely is not the same thing as “atheism.” In this instance, “secularism” is a political or ideological position concerning the relationship between government and religion (keep them separate!), whereas “atheism” is a personal absence of belief in gods.

Harris: Yes, it was the Jeffersonian sense of the term I had in mind, and I think that’s the meaning worth emphasizing. Secularism in this sense does not require unbelief. It merely demands a commitment to keeping religion out of politics and public policy. Secularism is the only viable response to religious pluralism—otherwise incompatible religions will vie for political dominance. Secularism, essentially, is a condition of permanent truce.

Zuckerman: I totally agree. But there is definitely another popular form or manifestation of secularism—one that is much less focused on the separation of church and state. This form is about people and groups actively trying to disabuse other people of their religious beliefs or involvement. It is a secularism that actively seeks to combat and critique religion. It is predicated upon the view that religion ought to go away, that religious beliefs ought not to be believed in anymore, that religion is a harmful thing and society would be generally better off if it just went away. Think of the 1980s hit “Dear God,” by XTC. That song wasn’t advocating for the separation of church and state. Rather, it was trying to get its listeners to agree that believing in God is silly or absurd. Or think of your first book, The End of Faith, which is not a detailed defense of the separation of church and state but primarily about exposing the irrational, malevolent, and harmful aspects of religion. This form of secularism—as exemplified by XTC’s song and your first book—is definitely not the same thing as “atheism,” per se, but it comes fairly close: Most secularists who actively seek to make religion go away and want to disabuse other people of their supernatural beliefs are atheists.

Harris: Can you summarize the current commitment to secularism in the West? Is it increasing?

Zuckerman: In certain parts of the West—particularly Europe, Australia, and Canada—secularism is going strong. However, in other places, including the USA, the situation is much less clear-cut.

In terms of political secularism, we see many instances in which the realms of religion and government are becoming more clearly and strongly divided. For example, Sweden officially disestablished religion from government in 2000. And in Britain, challenges to religious involvement in the public schools are growing. In Israel, there is increasing opposition to the governmental support of religious institutions and to the ability of religious fundamentalists to opt out of compulsory military service. In France, the separation of church and state is widely celebrated, and restrictions on religion in the public sphere are increasing.

However, here in the United States, the wall of separation between church and state is becoming less secure, especially in light of recent court decisions. I’m thinking specifically of some cases decided in 2014: The U.S. Supreme Court ruled that closely held, for-profit corporations can claim exemption from laws that go against their owners’ religious beliefs. It also decided that kicking off city council meetings with explicitly sectarian Christian prayers is constitutional. Even the Massachusetts Supreme Court declared that the teacher-led, God-centric language of the Pledge of Allegiance doesn’t discriminate against the children of non-theists.

In other ways, however, the kind of secularism that involves weakening religious faith or lessening the strength, prestige, and pervasiveness of religion in society has been incredibly successful in the West, even here in the USA.

I don’t want to barrage you with endless numbers, but the stats are staggering when it comes to people in the West who are abandoning religion. Consider just these tidbits: A century ago in Canada, only 2% of the population claimed to have no religion, whereas today nearly 30% of Canadians claim as much, and approximately one in five does not believe in God. A century ago in Australia, less than 1% of the population claimed no religious identity, but today approximately 20% of Australians claim as much. A century ago in Holland, about 10% of the population claimed to be religiously unaffiliated; today more than 40% does. In contemporary Great Britain, nearly half the people claim no religious identity at all; the same is true in Sweden.

Furthermore, 61% of Czechs, 49% of Estonians, 45% of Slovenians, 34% of Bulgarians, and 31% of Norwegians do not believe in God. And 33% of the French, 27% of Belgians, and 25% of Germans do not believe in God or any other sort of universal spiritual life force.

In the East, the most recent survey information from Japan illustrates extensive secularization over the course of the past century: Sixty years ago, about 70% of Japanese people claimed to hold personal religious beliefs, but today that figure is down to about 20%. Such levels of atheism, agnosticism, and overall irreligion are simply remarkable—not to mention historically unprecedented.

I just got the latest data on Latin America: 37% of people in Uruguay, 18% in the Dominican Republic, 16% in Chile, 11% in Argentina, and 8% in Brazil are non-religious. These are all unprecedented levels of secularity. And Jamaica is currently at 20% nonreligious! Gabon and Swaziland are at 11%! (While that may seem small, keep in mind that only 8% of people in Alabama are non-religious).

Secularism is growing in virtually all nations for which we have data; even the Muslim world, which contains the most-religious societies on earth, has a growing share of secular people (many of whom, unfortunately, must keep their secularity well hidden because of the danger of prison or death for being open about their lack of faith).

The proportion of Americans walking away from religion has continued to grow, from 8% in 1990 to somewhere between 20% and 30% today. Secularity is markedly stronger among young Americans: 32% of those under 30 are religiously unaffiliated. And somewhere between one-third and one-half of all those who respond “none” when asked what their religion is are atheist or agnostic in orientation—so the rise of irreligion means a simultaneous rise of atheism and agnosticism. Furthermore, the vast majority of nonreligious Americans are content with their current identity; among those who now claim “none” as their religion, nearly 90% say they have no interest in looking for a religion that might be right for them.

Of course, one wrench in all this is birthrates. Religious people have more kids than secular people. So demographically, the future is unclear.

Harris: Many of us have acknowledged that although “replacing religion” may not be an appropriate goal, religion does offer people many things they want in life—and these are things that most atheists also want. We want nice buildings that function as dedicated spaces for reflection and celebration. We want strong communities. We want rituals and rites of passage with which to mark important transitions in life—births, marriages, deaths. We just don’t want to lie to ourselves about the nature of reality to have these things. This poses a real challenge, because once we get rid of religion, we are left without an established tradition for meeting these needs, and the alternative is often piecemeal, halfhearted, and unsatisfying. How do you see us solving the problem of creating strong secular institutions and traditions that don’t feel hokey?

Zuckerman: You are spot-on here. Religion provides so much for people in terms of social capital, life-cycle rituals, and so forth, and if it were to just go away, most people would experience serious lacuna. True, a few die-hard hermits out there want none of the things that religion provides, but they are quite rare. Most people want and enjoy at least some of the many things that religions have to offer, even if they don’t buy all the supernatural nonsense.

So here are the options, as far as I can tell:

First, secularize religion. By that I mean keep the rituals, the holidays, the buildings, the gatherings, the knickknacks, but let the supernatural beliefs wither and fade. The example of this that first comes to mind is Reform Judaism. Most American Jews get what they like out of Judaism—the ceremonies, the holidays, the sense of belonging, multi-generational connections, opportunities for charity—and yet they have jettisoned the supernatural beliefs. Many liberal Episcopalian congregations, too, are in this vein. Also Quaker meetings. And most Scandinavians, with their modern form of Nordic Lutheranism, are as well. They observe traditional religious holidays and they participate in various life-cycle rituals and they congregate now and then in church and they even “feel” Christian—and yet they do all these ostensibly religious things without a scintilla of actual faith in the supernatural.

Personally, I think it would be great to have Catholicism, Islam, Judaism, Hinduism, etc. all existing here and there, but neutered of their supernatural hoo-hah. I know that may seem contradictory or absurd, but I believe it is possible.

The second option is to create humanist congregations, like Sunday Assembly. The disadvantage here is that you are basically starting from nothing, which feels a little weird—there is no heritage, no tradition, no sense of something that has been around for generations. Not much for kids. But the advantage is that you get to create what you want and how you want it. I dig Sunday Assembly. I think the possibilities for such groups are strong. Obviously, they don’t appeal to most secular people—but for those who want the best of religious affiliation without all the supernaturalism, it is a damned viable option.

A third possibility is to find secular vehicles that provide at least some of the things religion has to offer. I’m thinking of sports, for example. Soccer. My Sunday morning soccer game fulfills me deeply: It makes me feel alive, it connects me to friends I otherwise would never know or see, it marks the end of the week, etc. Or music. My daughter’s love of music provides a lot: a sense of existential meaning, a sense of community via links with other fans, rituals in the form of concerts, and so forth. My younger daughter’s involvement in ballet serves a similar function, providing self-improvement, conscientiousness, camaraderie, performances. Others can find at least some of the things religion offers by communing with nature, or being creative, or engaging politically, or meditating.

I have learned in my research that the vast majority of people who walk away from religion don’t miss it and find numerous ways to live meaningful lives without it—through work, family life, friends, hobbies, art, sex, philosophy, theater, hunting, working on cars, dancing, and so on.

Of course, all that said, religion may not be so easily replaced, and the fact that secularism seems to correlate strongly with individualism could become a problem down the road.

Harris: Moving beyond religion is proving to be an immense challenge, and I greatly appreciate your contributions on this front. One of the main impediments to the spread of secularism has been the widely held belief, even among the non-religious, that religion will always be with us—as though the persistence of the current batch of supernatural ideas were a law of nature. I hope people will read your book to learn more about what the transition to secularism will look like. Thanks for taking the time to speak with me.

 

If your business already has a presence on your chosen social media profiles or if you are just starting out, you know that you have to post great valuable content continually and consistently to attract new followers and retain the ones you have.

You also know that social media is a hungry content machine!

Creating and publishing great content on a regular basis can be quite overwhelming and is a lot of work, so you need to get organized and figure out a schedule that works for your business with a (1) content strategy and (2) a content calendar.

(1) Content Strategy:

First, you need a content strategy, aka, A Plan! It should answer the following questions:

– What type of content do I need to post and promote
– Where will I find the content
– Who will find content
– Who will write the content
– How often will I post content

This is very important if you are a single business owner or a small business with a few employees. Are you going to do this yourself, task an employee to do this, or outsource?

The Secret: BLOGGING!
If you don’t already write a blog, then consider starting one very seriously! Blogging forms the infrastructure of your content strategy. Once you write a blog – every week, bi-monthly or even once a month – you will have 70% of your content for that whole month.

It’s called repurposing your content! Just break down your blog into many different mini posts for Facebook, Twitter, Linkedin or other social media profiles. Viola! You have 70% of your content.

Added benefit: Blogging boosts your SEO rankings. Google LOVES blogs – it’s new fresh unique content that Google loves to serve up in search results!

Use this Blogging Calendar to help you. It’s a very simple Excel spreadsheet calendar that I use for my clients (it can be shared on Google docs with team members if need be)

(2) Content Calendar

Second, you need a content calendar. This helps you with strategies for content creation and content curation, as well as an editorial calendar.

We always talk about making content more engaging, but never quite realize the importance of consistency. Too often, companies randomly publish a few appealing posts and tweets here and there rather than forming a system for regular content publishing. Posting content in this random way will not lead to social media success for your business.

When you’ve got a content calendar that you commit to, social media marketing becomes a lot less daunting.

This is an example of what a social media content calendar can look like:

Note: TWEAK your posts to suite that particular social media platform. Facebook and Google+ are more conversational. Linkedin is more professional. Twitter is 140 characters.

How often should you post per day? Facebook, Linkedin, Google+: 1-2 posts. Twitter: 5-7. Pinterest and Instagram: 1-2 images

Ideas for Content on Social Media

Remember the 80/20 Rule: Make sure your content consists of 80 percent value, 10 percent about your company/product/services.

Here is a list of ideas for your content calendar:

– Blog posts broken into 4-5 short posts
– Quotes
– Ask Questions
– Trivia
– Did You Know
– Fun Facts
– Article Links
– Sharing of other valuable Facebook posts in your industry
– Re-Tweeting other valuable tweets in your industry
– Photos/Images
– Videos
– Case studies
– Infographics
– Charts
– E-books
– Company news and announcements
– Product launches
– Industry events
– Seasonal content

You can schedule your updates with Hootsuite, Post Planner, Buffer, Tweetdeck. Remember: schedules updates are no substitute for real-time engagement across social networks. It’s critical to be responsive.

Developing a social media content strategy with a monthly content calendar will ensure that you are posting content consistently. This leads to both community growth and increased opportunity for engagement as fans and followers react to the published content. These two goals should always be at the center of your social media strategy.

A list of leads is a potential revenue gold mine. The problem with potential is it either has to be fulfilled or it goes to waste. No matter how good your list is, it comes down to what you do with it, in order to get the best return from your database.

Well meaning intentions and great plans can result in hundreds of “strategic planning” hours spent on well worded documents and emails, none of which helps the bottom line. Then the next quarter rolls around and you wonder why your boss is asking where the results went from the last quarter.

But don’t despair!

Those lofty ambitions can still be achieved, if you take positive steps forward. After all, why waste time getting a list of prospects if you aren’t going to do something with the information?

Try taking the following steps if you have an email list which has gone cold.

1. Give them a blanket and some hot chocolate: Warm them up first.

The first email shouldn’t be sales based, it needs to be generic, “Hi, I know we’ve not spoke in a while”, which is good to acknowledge, since you both know you’ve not spoke in a while, “how are you doing?” That’s it. Just reminding them who you are and how you have their email.

Anticipate a high unsubscribe and bounce rate on this kind of email, which is fine, since they’re the prospects who aren’t really prospects. Just an email you used to know.

2. Keep up the conversation. But be realistic.

Now you’ve narrowed down the list to a smaller, more manageable group you can concentrate on taking them through a new buyer journey.

Don’t rush into trying to throw at them every element of your content marketing mix, or developing whole new content around these prospects. And at all costs stay clear of hinting at all those grand plans you had for giving them content which you wanted to do, but had no time for previously. Take it steady. Give them realistic expectations for how and when you will be in contact.

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Why does 86% of email go unread? Think back to the last email you received that was irrelevant to you. Did you read it to the end? Check out this Case Study on how to re-capture your audience’s attention in your own campaigns.

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3. Blasting hot air doesn’t warm people up.

After a few emails you might start wondering where the influx of new prospects is. They should be calling all hours, a line should be stood around the door, surely?!

This depends on what you are saying. Hitting them with sales copy with urgent calls to action won’t often result in sales. Instead focus on giving them engaging useful information which makes them anticipate your next email, or read your blog, interact on social networks, and they themselves will reach out and make contact.

4. Take an interest.

You have their email, but what else do you know? Can you personalize content so that your customer feels more valued? Combine that with more valuable content and you are more likely to get warmer prospects.

5. Find out when is a good time for them.

The problem with every customer being unique is their timescales won’t always suit yours. Find out when they might be interested. Use that information to plan ahead, putting them into the relevant sales funnel and content cycle which will keep you on their minds without it being intrusive.

With these more realistic, more manageable strategies in place you will be able to keep prospects at the right temperature, so that no list needs to go cold again.

Download our free guide, Amp your Lead Gen w/Next Gen Social, and learn what really matters with social listening and marketing automation.

Attentive.ly is a social marketing platform that drives engagement with your digital campaigns by turning your existing audience into brand advocates.

With Christmas only 22 days away, I repeat 22 DAYS AWAY, we are all now being bombarded with ads everywhere promoting all the hottest gifts of 2014 and sales that are hard to pass up. Anytime you turn on the TV or radio you hear your favorite holiday tunes with store names sneakily added into the lyrics, and some of the songs are so catchy you might even find yourself singing along. Another place that we get bombarded with advertisements is in our email. While I hate receiving annoying emails just as much as the next person, I do find it interesting to see what techniques retailers are using to set their email apart from the rest of the hundreds of emails in our inboxes. Here’s a few of the email subject lines that caught my attention, this Black Friday/Cyber Monday, enough to open up the email and see what their message had to say .

1. Beyond the Rack – “10 Best Trending Gifts…”
2. Sephora – “We’ve Got a Surprise For You”
3. Crate & Barrel – “2 Very Merry Offers”
4. Redbox – Text Now For a Surprise Deal”
5. Zappos – “How To Look Holiday Fabulous with Michael Kors”
6. Victoria’s Secret – “OMG Free PINK Socks With a PINK Purchase – Starts Tomorrow!”

I believe that these specific subject lines caught my attention for two reasons:

Advice

I don’t know about you, but I’m definitely a fan of using Google and looking up basically anything I need to know. I can recall hundreds of times that I’ve started out a Google search with “How to…” as well as something like “Best gifts for…” While I can usually find some kind of directions for what I need help with or a list of good gifts, it’s pretty nifty when companies do all the hard work for you and send it out to you. “10 Best Trending Gifts…” and “How To Look Holiday Fabulous with Michael Kors” caught my attention because they were both things that seemed like they would be helpful information for me to read. Yes, at the end of the day they are just advertisements, but at least I felt like I was learning something and gaining new knowledge about hot gift ideas and fashion.

Special Pricing and Free Stuff

How many times have you been at a store checking out and the cashier says to you, “if you want to spend this much more, you will get a free tote bag with your purchase or a percentage off your entire purchase.” I think we can all say we are guilty of then rummaging around the store looking for an item that is exactly that amount in order to get that free item. Getting free stuff or a discount on our purchase makes us feeling like we are getting more bang for our buck. These emails caught my eye because I was either intrigued about the free item they were giving away or I wanted to know more about the special pricing and deals they had to offer me.

I also noticed that I never opened an email that said something like, “40% Off Today Only!” While I did sometimes read the title, I had no need to actually open the email if all the information was in the subject line. Also, with so many companies sending out this exact same subject line, all of those email titles just started to run together.

While it may seem like you are running out of days to shop for all your gifts, marketers still have plenty of time to send you emails about sales, special pricing and freebies. Do you notice a trend in the emails that you open? If so, I want to know what it is!

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Investor and Twitter philosopher king Marc Andreessen sparked an online debate yesterday, after he claimed that opposing the idea of disruption was “to be against consumer choice” and against equality.

For Andreessen, disruptive new products inevitably bring more accessibility to goods that were once only available to wealthy elite (i.e. MIT’s Edx bringing Ivy League classes to everyone).

While personally I agree, Andreessen and I got into a friendly debate over how well he was representing his critics. I think Andreessen gives short shrift to the very real and somewhat compelling fears of those who haven’t jumped on the disruption bandwagon.

Technology brings greater consumption equality but decreases financial equality. That is, everyone gets more stuff, but the richer command more of the money, as jobs are replaced by a smaller group of high-skilled workers and entrepreneurs.

Financial inequality creates a world where the average Joe has less control over their government and their own lives. Innovation tends to concentrate economic power, even if it raises the overall quality of life.

So, for the past six years, I’ve been developing a series of surveys that get to the heart of the anti-tech/pro-tech divide. I hope it helps people understand each side.

It’s an ongoing project, but the preliminary results are instructive in understanding the current national debate over “disruption.”

Survey (answers at the bottom)

(If you want to participate in a similar survey for my research, take this one before reading on.)

1. Is an economy better when there’s a bigger pie with huge inequality or a smaller pie with much greater equality?

-Smaller pie, greater equality
-Bigger pie, less equality

2. To make schools and hospitals as effective as possible, which of these strategies is best?

-Schools and hospitals should strive to give the same quality of service to everyone.
-Schools and hospitals should compete to see who can discover the best ways of delivering service.

3. What is the most effective way the government can help the economy ensure broad prosperity?

-An economy where the gap between rich and poor is not too large
-An economy where everyone has the opportunity to be successful and innovative

4. Hypothetical moral dilemma: Two people are drowning in the ocean. An individual can save one. One person is the individual’s best friend. The friend is unemployed and lives off his parents’ wealth. The other person is a stranger who researches cures for cancer. Who should be saved?

-The best friend
-The cancer researcher

5. Some states make organ donation enrollment automatic (when people get a driver’s license), with an option to opt out. In other states, people are left to choose whether to be an organ donor. Which do you think is best?

-Opt-in
-Opt-out (automatic enrollment)

6. If you had the choice between developing a product that saved the lives of 1 person today or 2 people in 50 years, which do you have a greater moral obligation to do?

-1 person today
-2 lives in 50 years

Answers* (see method notes at the end of the article): The second option in every question is the pro-tech side. By “pro-tech,” I mean that these are the answers that I usually get from Internet founders.

I’ve also been interviewing people who protest outside Google buses (and the local San Franciscans who support the protestors). Their answers have helped me shape the response options for the anti-tech crowd.

Equality in stuff vs. equality in control

Andreessen claimed that “Money is only useful in terms of what it can buy.” In other words, equality is about stuff.

In my interviews, many tech critics chose the “small pie with much greater equality” option. The anti-tech crowd fears disparity in power far more than in their relative purchasing power.

“What’s better for people is where there’s less disparity and people have more control over how they make that money,” said one local San Franciscan, who wants heavy regulation and taxing of the Internet companies.

Pro-tech folks like meritocracy; anti-tech folks prefer uniformity

Disruption, by its nature, is uncertainty. On the path to a better life, parents still need to feed their children and pay for college. This is where labor unions come in. They protect workers from the chaos of the market.

This is why some cities have moved to kneecap ridesharing startup, Uber — at least until cab drivers can find more reliable work. I once interviewed a Seattle, Wash. legislator who supported a bill delaying the the legality of Uber. In addition to protecting cab drivers, she told me that there should be regulations against surge pricing, since she thought consumers deserved predictable costs. In other words, behind regulation lies a preference for predictability.

On the flip side, technologists love meritocracy — in everything. Mark Zuckerberg has been a giant supporter of charter schools, highly experimental public schools that often function without teachers unions. Tech folks want everything to function like a business, even essential government services.

Behind meritocracy is a moral dilemma: society vs. loved ones

Meritocracy may benefit folks over the long run, but it often requires short-term sacrifices, such as the loss of jobs. At the core of whether to support greater social gains or to protect jobs is a classic dilemma in the field of moral psychology: Do people have more of an obligation to protect those we know and love, or to help all of humanity equally?

Innovation may benefit lots of strangers, but it also brings a loss of jobs. When faced with this choice, organizations like labor unions are going to fight to protect their workers first and foremost.

(Note: In a separate survey I’m currently testing, I ask whether a company is more valuable for how it improves society vs. how it pays its employees. Preliminary results reveal a similar divide.)

In the drowning dilemma above, the pro-tech side says we should save the scientist, and the anti-tech side is to save the best friend.

A fascinating implication of this is how we think about the benefits of future innovation. If we have the same moral obligation to all of humanity equally, then we have a greater obligation to start inventing things that will help future generations, since there’s a lot more people that will exist in the future than currently exist today.

For instance, when I interviewed Paypal cofounder Peter Thiel about the importance of technology, he said, “I always find it odd that people are as complacent as they are about things. One out of three people at age 85 has dementia, and this is not even cause for general alarm.”

Pro-tech folks see more urgency in innovation than anti-tech folks who are — quite reasonably — more concerned with the present than the future.

Conclusion: two reasonable sides

While I personally side with Andreessen, the anti-tech folks have a rational distrust of the sacrifices we must make in the name of innovation. So, Andreessen and his supporters can talk all they want about the great things that technology will provide everyone.

But all tech critics will hear is more power disparity and hardships for those they love. Unless the tech community starts speaking with a different set of values in mind, the national conversation will continue to go nowhere.

*Notes for methodology geeks:

The survey is informed by 65 semi-structured interviews, conducted in person and over the phone with Internet founders and people who show up to technology protests in San Francisco. A lot of the questions have changed or been significantly altered over these interviews. So I don’t have a statistically meaningful sample size yet, just a consistent pattern of responses. For instance, the tech founders I interviewed had a habit of talking about a “zero-sum” world, so I began to ask questions related to those responses.

Second, while not every question is my survey is binary, many are. I’m not a fan of Likert scales. Respondents have a tendency to think the government should do everything it can (build schools, enforce a high minimum wage, protect workers, fund cancer research, etc.). But in the real world, elected officials have hard decisions to make because money is scarce. Binary response options are one way of imposing real-world scarcity on otherwise unrealistic respondents.

If you’re interested in giving your input on one of the latest surveys, you can take it here. If you’d like to be interviewed for the survey or want to contact me, email me at gregory at venturebeat dot com

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Amazon just changed the way that it charges for some of its cloud computing services. This barely qualified as a major announcement—Amazon billed it as a “simplification” of its pricing policy—but to some observers, it was a sign of something big. It showed that after years of playing catch-up in the cloud computing game, Google […]

The post Google and Amazon Pricing Faceoff appeared first on CloudTweaks.com.

The days of product, even solution based differentiation, are long passed. We can no longer count on great products to provide sustained differentiation and competitive advantage.

Don’t get me wrong, great products and solutions are the foundation of our businesses and the value we create for customers. They are the things our customers buy and implement to achieve their own strategic growth goals. So they are critical to thriving economies and company growth.

But as we look at our customers’ buying processes, great products and solutions are table stakes to getting considered. Ultimately, the differentiator is the knowledge and experience we bring–both in the selling process and as our customers implement and use our solutions.

There are lots of studies about the importance of the customer buying experience in winning business and building customer loyalty. CEB data puts this at 53 percent of why people buy/continue to buy. It’s the knowledge and experience sales teams (not just sales people) bring to customers that become the ultimate differentiator.

So knowledge and experience become critical assets to our own success and growth. Not just the knowledge that exists in our labs, development teams, factories, and back offices. But the knowledge sales team demonstrate every day in working with customers and growing the business.

But then we are smacked in the face with interesting data. The average longevity of a sales person (voluntary and involuntary attrition) is less than two years–add to that, average ramp time to productivity is 7-10 months. The average longevity of a sales manager/executive is less than 19 months.

It’s an intriguing problem. If our differentiation and success is based on the knowledge and experience we bring to customers, yet we churn through people before they can acquire the necessary knowledge and experience, then how to we maximize our own organizational performance?

So many of our corporate and individual behaviors seem to be running in opposition to the things that have an impact and make a real difference in our own result, growth, and success! Knowledge, experience, sheer raw brain power are the keys to our success, yet we don’t seem to treat these as the differentiating assets they are.

Organizationally, too often we have a mentality of churning through people. If we’ve hired the wrong person, no worries, we fire them, find another, hire them and so on. We hit road bumps in the achievement of our goals, so we conveniently “right size” adding people when we need to, reducing people when we need to–just to get the numbers to fit.

Individually, we aren’t much better. We move from organization to organization–chasing bigger paychecks, escaping bad bosses, chasing new dreams–yet never building deep knowledge and experience. A colleague share the idea, “the same one year experience repeated five times does not approach the real experience we have in five years.”

We are constantly confronted with data about disappointing sales performance. Declining performance against quota, declining win rates/average transaction value, customers engaging sales people later in their buying cycles.

We try to address these through providing better training, tools, systems, processes—but these seem to address the symptoms and not the core issue.

If we are to compete and differentiate based on knowledge and experience, how do we build and retain a strong asset base of knowledge and experience? How do we attract and retain the best and the brightest? How do we develop them, continuing to provide exciting new opportunities within our organizations, so they don’t have to look elsewhere for challenges and advancement?

Too many organizations seem to be pretty short sighted on this. I seldom see development plans for people (having a decent performance plan is hard enough). I am rarely involved in discussions about creating exciting growth opportunities to retain our people, providing continued challenges and new opportunities. Too often, we seem to have a mentality of “renting” talent for a period of time, expecting they will move on.

We talk, mostly about millennials, about the “facts” they will move from job to job to job–accepting that as the way “they are.” But what if we addressed the issue differently, but looking at creating opportunities and challenges within our own organizations.

Too many high performing organizations are defying “conventional wisdom” with millennials, Gen Y, X, Baby boomers, Old farts, by creating exciting challenging work places, competing based in knowledge and experience, providing growth opportunities.

It may be the reason they are high performing companies is they are doing these things–and those companies that struggle with consistent performance and growth are not.

In a global world, where knowledge and experience is the differentiator, we can only be successful by looking at people as our most critical assets, protecting them, developing them, challenging them, growing them. It’s an issue that’s too important to be left to HR.

If you implemented your eBilling solution a while ago and it’s been running smoothly ever since, you probably don’t feel the need to review it – right?

Not so fast… First read my tips below – you may want to adjust your 2015 strategy accordingly.

Here are my top 4 tips to help you update your eBilling strategy:

1. Think Mobile

If you don’t make your email documents mobile friendly, you will not reach your customers. Did you know that over 51% of people view their email on their mobile phone and that a staggering 75% of emails viewed on a mobile are likely to be deleted if they are not optimised for mobile?

Mobile design is no longer a “nice to have” option, but rather a minimum standard requirement for all email communications.

2. Paperless Adoption!

Post office strikes are crippling businesses that still send customer communications via paper mail and the cost of delivering documents via courier is unfeasible. The solution: Convert the majority of your customers to email and reduce your print and postage costs at the same time.

Now is the perfect time to review your paperless adoption strategy. Follow these golden rules:

• Make it easy for customers to register for email communications. While we appreciate that there are security requirements, be smart about how many questions you ask your customers. If you expect them to go through a laborious and time consuming registration process, you will never achieve high paperless adoption rates. Instead, enable customers to go paperless in one – click
• Capture email addresses via all possible touch points with the customer and remember to ask them if they want to switch to email documents at the same time.
• Data hygiene goes hand in hand with successful paperless adoption. Sometimes email addresses are incorrectly captured at source, or the customer’s details are no longer valid. Be sure to make data hygiene a top priority if you want your eBilling strategy to succeed.

3. Legislation:

Although POPI (South Africa) is not in force yet, we believe it will be within the next year. It has a major impact on how you communicate with your customers. Although the law is not in full force, it could take some time to implement. Start understanding what the requirements are and be prepared.

4. Innovation:

Nothing says “we care about our customers” more than when you give them the easiest way to transact and communicate with you.

Have a look at these exciting ways to enhance your customer communications via email:

• Document formats – Make sure that you present your documents in a convenient and graphically exciting way. If you are still sending your customers flat “print format” PDF documents, you will quickly lose their interest, as they are used to more interactive websites and Apps. You need to consider creating a more interactive document that drives customer engagement. For example: give them the option to sort their data, view graphs and submit information directly from their eBill.
• eDocument design: Clients will be more likely to open and review their documents if you regularly update your eDocument design, even if it’s just banners and images. If you haven’t refreshed the look and feel of your documents in the last 6-12 months, you are in great danger of falling behind on design improvements and losing appeal with your customers.
• Bill Pay – Why not enable payments directly from within the email bill and reduce your DSO?
• Retail receipts – Send your customers’ receipts via email and transform this simple log of purchase into a powerful email trigger
• eConsent – Allow your customers to switch off paper with a single click from within an email.
• eAcceptance – Send contracts to clients and get them to sign them digitally, no more paper and physical signatures required.

Are you offering all of these solutions to your clients? Your competitors are and they are reaping the benefits…

Make sure that you don’t get left behind in 2015!

Social media has evolved the way marketers can identify new and expand engagement to more influencers (as I explained in Part I of this series), but that’s only the start of the relationship. Managing both online and offline interaction is key for forging strong, meaningful relationships that will truly benefit your brand. The challenge lies in learning how to harness the power of social media to build engagements, while keeping track of multiple prospects through a coordinated, transparent approach.

Managing engagement with thought leaders isn’t complicated, but to be effective, the effort has to be consistent, reliable, and organized.

Consistent: Determine Functional Ownership

Once you’ve identified your influencers, determine who in your organization will own the relationship. Generally, there are set “swim lanes” when it comes to various outlets and ownership. For instance, traditional news outlets are owned by public relations, and industry analysts are owned by analyst relations; ownership is specialized to cater to and support the specific needs of those relationships. The same is true for this newer breed of influencer who’ve built their identity online.

The goal of ownership is to ensure consistency in engagement and further the relationship, helping to move influencers progressively through awareness, credibility, emotional connection, loyalty and advocacy. While ownership might me one primary contact overseeing the relationship, it doesn’t limit the relationship to only that primary owner. It’s important for the engagements with influencers to be relevant and specific, which often means involving subject matter experts to enrich the touch points and continue to build the relationship.

Reliable: Activate Key Employees to Build Trust

Just like a real-world relationship, engaging with influencers is not a one-way street. Connecting is one thing, but building meaningful relationships with influencers is quite another. By sharing relevant content, insight, and more, employees can start to build dialogue, earning credibility and trust.

Consistent engagement is good, but rather than a forced cadence, focus on making sure engagements are meaningful. Offering a reliable resource underscores trust in your brand that will prompt influencers to do just as you hope: influence others.

Organized: Create a System to Develop, Track and Grow Engagements

While engagements with influencers should be genuine, it’s also important to keep track of how and when you engage – especially if your influencer relations team comprises more than one person. There are countless ways to coordinate management, but here are the components of what I consider to be a good solution for managing and tracking influencer engagement:

• Record management: centralized contact base, influencer profiles, business groups, permission-based access
• Workflow rules and management: assign tasks, alerts, rules-based notifications
• Collaboration: cloud access, multiple language support, easy to use UI, mobile interface
• Reporting: lead gen reporting, share of voice reporting, ad-hoc reporting

This system could be built on something as simple as Excel or a QuickBase or as complex as your company’s CRM database. The goal is to have records on the time and resources spent in managing the influencers to better measure the value of those relationships – which I’ll explain in part III of this series.

How does your organization manage your online influencer programs?

In 2014, we’ve witnessed digital marketing spending average one quarter of marketing spend, and Gartner’s recent Digital Marketing Spending report asserts that over half of the companies surveyed plan to increase their digital marketing budget by 17 per cent. Global brands lacking digital savvy were playing catch up in an attempt to finally acknowledge and address where the industry has been going for some time: toward faster, mobile, real-time, more targeted, automatic marketing. For a long time, advertisers were viewed as the predominant tastemakers, but now technology has literally put the power in the peoples’ hands. Consumers, now accustomed to the control and thirsty for more, will drive the next wave of marketing trends for 2015 with more influence, agency and social power. Here’s what to expect:

1. Influencer marketing will soar

Social media influencers are the new celebrity ambassadors. Visual platforms like YouTube, Instagram, Pinterest and Vine have transformed everyday consumers into brand influencers. These “instastars” have amassed a large legion of followers and fans just by being socially savvy and relatable– and it’s been a huge benefit to brands, which is why we’ll certainly see more influencer/brand collaborations in 2015. The market for these influencers will steadily increase and we’ll also see more technology suited to leverage opportunities and match brands with relevant influencers in a way that’s organic, yet mutually beneficial.

2. Social media Desaturation

To say social media is crowded is an understatement. Though social networks are a gold mine for native advertising, users don’t want to be bombarded with ads, relevant or not. Therefore, brands that have struggled to standout on social media in the past will really have to rethink strategies for 2015 as things just got a little bit tougher with Facebook’s announcement to limit reach for brands’ unpaid, organic posts starting in January 2015. The message is clear: step up and get more creative with native advertising or allocate a larger budget for social media.

3. Mobile is a strategy, not a campaign. Learn it. Live it.

We’re seeing more brands embracing mobile, but as a campaign and not a full-fledged strategy. In fact, The CMO Council published a report stating that, of 250 marketing participants surveyed, only 17 percent had mobile strategies fully integrated and operational with their overall marketing. That needs to change in 2015, and it will as more companies come to understand the value of mobile marketing as a unique ad experience and way to engage consumers with content specifically crafted for mobile. Screens are larger and consumers are hungry for highly-engaging visual content they can access via mobile device. Brands that can oblige will win.

4. Content marketing channels are opening up

The content you create, curate and share can be one of your best marketing tools. However, it’s not just about branding, but actually being a thought leader with a presence on a variety of different channels. Blogging is nice, but it’s time to think bigger. If content is still king then content marketing channels are queen. To get content marketing right in 2015, you will need to understand where your power to influence lies, whether it be via blogs, social videos, podcasts, or elsewhere. Opening up your channels allows you to hit a variety of targets with a consistent brand message.

5. Marketers will take more risks than ever before

The stakes are higher and attention in shorter, so don’t be surprised to see traditional marketing fade more into the background. 2015 will be all about taking high risks in exchange for immense rewards. From advertisers experimenting with Snapchat, to social media accounts like iHop taking a trendy approach to their marketing, which are all efforts to appeal to younger demographics, brands are stepping out of the box to grab consumers and standout amongst the growing competition. May the odds be ever in your favor.

It’s Monday morning at 9:00.  You are sitting in your weekly pipeline and forecast meeting with your executive team.  You spent four hours over the weekend compiling forecast spreadsheets for each of your sales reps and you updated which deals are in commit, likely to close or pure upside based on what your managers have told you and what know about the deals.  It’s what you do every weekend.  You wish you were spending that time with your family instead and you know whatever you did will only be about 60% accurate.

When the meeting is over and the CFO, CSO or any CXO is done pounding on you about the forecast, you take all of those changes you made and ask your team to go back into your CRM system and make updates (sometimes they don’t).  It’s time consuming, clunky and a waste of precious time.  You wonder how you got here and if there is a better way.

Accurate sales forecasting is truly a combination of technology, process and people.  The big elephant in the room is that the technology and process part are the easiest to implement – it’s the people part (human behavior) that most companies struggle to manage.

To have accurate forecasting, no matter what technology or process you use, your sales reps and sales managers need to ensure that they are working on the right qualified opportunities, that those opportunities are in the right sales stages, with the right deal value and have a customer-validated close date. Bad data in your CRM system will only lead to bad forecast accuracy.  Sales behaviors are directly correlated to bad data.

On average:

• 38% of all opportunities in a pipeline are in the wrong stage.
• Pipeline values are over-stated by 40%.
• 22% of a pipeline is consistently being pushed.
• 27% of deals in a pipeline have an expired close date.

Here are a few ways you can improve sales behaviors and curb the elephant in the room.

1. Find the key sales behaviors that are eroding your data integrity. Run a diagnostic that will tell you the critical sales behaviors that impact your data quality.   At Marseli, we have a diagnostic application (and a great sales forecasting solution) that our customers use to see how sales people are using their sales process and the impact it is having on their business.  To stop behaviors like sandbagging, deal pushing and proper deal valuations, you have to get to the root cause – the sales reps who are doing it and the managers who are allowing it.
2. Plan for change. Once you know the behaviors and can validate the impact, go for change.  Start by getting leadership approval and support.  Once you have support, run a pilot in a test group.  You will have to train front line managers on how to coach to the behaviors. This is your “crawl” phase.  Once managers have a handle on coaching to the behaviors (and holding themselves accountable to it).  Then move to the walk phase.
3. In the walk phase, you roll the intelligence out to the sales reps in a very simple dashboard. This dashboard will allow them to see the key behaviors in real time and the impact they are having on their personal business.  It is this dashboard that reps will review weekly with sales management.
4. After 3-4 months of walking and ongoing coaching to behaviors, then introduce 2-3 more behaviors. Follow the same process as the first 2-3 behaviors that you rolled out.  Once these are in the field and being managed, then you can bring forecasting and commitment management back into your CRM.  That is your run stage.

When it comes to sales, change is inevitable. As a business leader you want the insight to be able to get ahead of the curve and to know how to react to sales behaviors before they become a problem. Keeping an eye on sales behaviors and the sales pipeline starts with ensuring that your sales process and key activities are integrated into your CRM system and that you are tracking the key behaviors of your sales force.

With a solid sales forecasting technology and process in place (take a look at what Marseli offers), the improvement in data quality through improved sales behaviors will make a dramatic impact on your accuracy and you will no longer have an elephant in the room.

What is the value of an existing customer in our digital age? In today’s online world?

For years we’ve heard it said that it costs more to develop a new customer than it does to retain an existing one. (I’ve been guilty of spreading, and believing, this rumour.) But is it true? Not so, says Ipsos Loyalty!

According to Ipsos Loyalty:

“This myth is so pervasive and so seemingly intuitive that it has stood unchallenged for 20 or more years! 

We, too, have published prior works repeating this fallacy. There is currently enough contrary information to bury or significantly qualify this truism, based on three major flaws.”

The myth was revealed as having three flaws, according to the book Loyalty Myths. You’ll find them laid out in this pdf created by Ipsos Loyalty (click here to download).

But whether or not new customers cost more to acquire than existing customers, it still makes sense to take good care of and retain the customers we have, especially in today’s online world.

Customers Carry Much More Power & Influence Today

Today, existing customers carry much more power and influence than they did before social media entered the picture. A comment posted online about a product, service or organization can travel far and wide in a day, reaching dozens, hundreds, and even thousands or more people. The information is also floating ‘out there’ in cyberspace, waiting to be discovered by some eager searcher.

This is true of both negative comments and the positive ones. Of course, the negative ones are likely to travel faster and farther than the positive ones. (One only need watch, read or listen to the news to confirm this!)

So, the apparent myth that it costs more to develop a new customer than to retain an existing customer, shouldn’t sway us from focusing on taking care of our existing customers. Because today, in our online world, our customers play such an important role in determining our brand reputation through their online influence.

When we lose a customer due to poor products, services or customer service, the potential is there for the ex-customer to share their discontent much more broadly today than they could in the past. And there is a cost to this kind of negative advertising.

Recommendations From People We Know Rated #1

Nielsen’s 2013 ‘Under the Influence: Consumer Trust in Advertising‘ report, based on findings from an online global survey across 58 countries, showed the following as the top 3 most influential forms of ‘advertising':

1. Recommendations from people I know – 84% (up from 78% in 2007)
2. Branded websites – 69% (up from 60% in 2007)
3. Consumer opinions posted online – 68% (up from 61% in 2007)

Number 1 and number 3 are far more likely to come from people who have done business with us, than those who have not. Thus, the influence of our existing customers is more potent now than in the past, due to the internet. This carries financial ramifications – good for businesses that deliver on their promises, not so good for those who don’t.

It’s not uncommon for businesses to spend more time, energy and money on getting new business than on retaining existing customers. And as long as we’re taking great care of our existing customers, in their minds not just ours, then spending time and money to attract new business makes sense. New business is needed to keep our business going and growing, to generate income so we can pay our day-to-day and ongoing expenses, including salaries, etc.

But if we go after new business at the expense of our existing customers it will come back to haunt us, and in a way that couldn’t have happened 10 or 20 years ago.

A satisfied client is one of our best and most cost effective marketing tools. In today’s online age, this type of advertising, ‘word-of-mouth advertising’ from satisfied customers, is invaluable: it usually can’t be bought, it has to be earned! It’s also an important and influential factor in our ability to attract new clients and build our business.

So how do you harvest the benefits of happy customers? Stay tuned … this is my next post and it’s ‘in the works’ for sharing at the end of this week.

Original article.

Copyright: kchung / 123RF Stock Photo

Some news stories just don't go away.  Today those stories include Ferguson, Bill Cosby, ISIS and The NFL's Domestic Abuse Problem.  There is also Obamacare, Immigration and Ebola.  They remain in the news more because the media continues to milk these stories then readers demand to know more.

When we look at the sales stories of the recent past, the topics that sales experts continue writing about are Social Selling, Inbound Marketing, LinkedIn, Twitter, CRM and Lead Nurturing.  They remain in the news more because the writers are attempting to sell their own services that happen to support those topics more than readers demanding to read more about it.  There's nothing wrong with these topics of course, but sales experts should be addressing topics more closely aligned with helping sellers sell, instead of so much space being devoted to what takes place at the top and above the top of the sales funnel.

So if not those topics, then what should we all be writing about - all the time - that would be a real difference maker for salespeople?

I believe that it's the importance of and ability to sell value.  Why, you ask? 

Last month an article was written and widely circulated about a former employer of mine, the who is not important, what was important was the assertion that they lost their mojo because they shifted focus from being all about the “mission” to maximizing shareholder value. These types of articles always cause me to pause because the downward spiral of a business is not one decision, but a series of decisions. But, the fact remains when you stop delivering value to your customers; you are exponentially less likely to follow a growth trajectory.

Please do not read this to say shareholders and investors are NOT important. They are important. Very important. Without investors, it’s hard to make a product and bring it to market. Without shareholders, it is challenging to grow. But, in my experience, you maximize shareholder value by being monomaniacal about the mission of solving the customer’s problem. When you do that, people buy and they buy again and again and again.

The Customer is at the Center

The customer should always, always, ALWAYS be at the center of your business. And the mission is what supports the customer in the center. Having a mission means you care enough about the customer that you have built solutions and tools for them to make their lives better. When you have the customer at the center, it makes you listen to them because solving their problem and supporting the mission are one in the same. When you listen to the customer, you find new ways to innovate the product or service to be better at delivering on the mission. Without customers, you have no sales, without sales, you have no shareholders. It is a simple equation. The fact is; one begets the other.

About that Mission

Chances are, your brand has a mission statement. Which technically is different that being a mission-driven business. Either way, my question is: How are you living that mission? Does every decision you make as a brand support the mission? Do you sometimes make decisions that are easier but not aligned with the mission? Probably. And here is where I say: You must be monomaniacal about your mission. Making sure that everything you do and decide supports your mission is the only way to put the customer at the center. Being monomaniacal about the mission is about doing the things that may be hard or un-scalable at first to support the customer and the mission.

If it Doesn’t Support the Mission, it’s Crap

Our mission at SME Digital is to “Help marketers become business Rock Stars by proving marketing’s effectiveness.” We know that too much in our profession is not measured and we think that sucks. We believe that you must measure your efforts. And you should have a seat at the C-Suite table because you know what’s working and what’s not and are nimble enough to make a change in line that will support the mission that is measurable. So, when I write strategy, I am never pitching something that we cannot measure. Yes, there may be something that is bright and shiny in the marketplace, and we will try it with a client IF it is measurable. If it isn’t, we simply won’t do it and will recommend someone who will. At CredHive, it’s all about building world-class tools for talent to manage their career. If it isn’t contributing to talent having better tools to manage their career, we ain’t doing it.

In both instances, the client/customer is at the center of the business. They matter most. The mission is critical and if something comes up that is new and interesting as a company, we develop it to support the missions we have. If it doesn’t support the mission and the client/customer, it’s a non-starter.

The Pitfall

With my rose-colored glasses on, these two examples are examples of small, lean companies who have the flexibility to keep the focus on the customer. Because, this is where things fall apart when businesses grow. We all start out from a place of solving a customer problem and as we grow, we lose focus on their problem and make it all about the brand. And that, my friends is the slippery slope of shifting from mission-driven to shareholder-driven. It is a path that is not sustainable and there are countless use cases to support this assertion. We can all name them. It’s important to be hungry enough to be focused on the customer. Try not to lose that. Stay with the mission, it pays off.

One of my early observations of sales methodology was that it was very hard for sales professionals to execute on their Account Plan. There was lots of valuable strategy to use, but very little support on the practical execution. (That was why we developed Dealmaker). Developing a plan has limited benefit unless you have the requisite tools and action plan to help you follow through. In this post, I give a short summary of an account planning approach and detail how you might think about your action plan.

In my book, “Account Planning in Salesforce,” I set out three basic themes or phases for your account plan, and ifyou are developing your plan for next year, you should keep these themes in mind.

Research for Insight: Account Planning is strategic business planning applied on an individual customer basis. Research, as you know, is not limited to the customer. It must also encompass all of the Three Cs: Customer, Competitor and Company. If you do your homework on the Account, and apply the experience you have gained from working with other customers, you should be able to bring insight to the customer. If you don’t do the research, then you won’t have the knowledge, and then you can’t bring insight – and that is a missed opportunity.

Integrate for Velocity: There are four primary sources of input to your Account Plan that you needed to integrate to achieve maximum velocity.

• Existing CRM data in Salesforce (or other CRM).
• Knowledge of the Account Team.
• Information shared by the customer.
• Supplementary data from research sources such as Data.com.

Without a centralized way to manage the plan, velocity and effectiveness suffer. Integrating your team and the customer with the data in Salesforce and the pertinent data from supplementary data sources is the only way to provide a single sharable resource.

Focus for Impact: Focus is the parallel thread that runs alongside Mutual Value from the beginning to the end of Account Planning. It is in fact the catalyst for Mutual Value as you prioritize the Plan Units in your Account Plan and target the opportunities on which to focus where you can uniquely and competitively deliver maximum value.

As you become master of your plan, you’re also on your way to becoming a leader in your own marketplace. You understand business goals and pressures, initiatives the customer might consider, and the obstacles they must overcome to be successful.

Winning account teams respond to these goals and pressures, initiatives and the obstacles and work collaboratively to discover or deliver:

• Information to create alignment between your actions and the customer’s business objectives.
• Insight to see where the new opportunities are within the account, and to track the actions taken to pursue those opportunities.
• Demonstration of professionalism through deep understanding of the customer’s needs.
• Justification to secure scarce resources from management.
• Co-ordination among the team in a goal-oriented fashion.
• An action plan.

This last piece, the action plan, comprises the directional signposts that point to the attainment of your goal. Experienced practitioners develop Objectives, Strategies and Actions that transform the plan into a sequence of actionable steps that you can be progressed.

It is best to think about objectives in three categories:

Revenue Objectives: Current opportunities that you are pursuing need a Revenue Objective. You should have one for each Plan Unit (Division or Account) that you have selected, focusing on the combined revenue from your current opportunities in that unit over the duration of the plan.

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Business Development Objective: Every Plan Unit that has a Potential Opportunity needs a Business Development Objective that focuses on qualifying, in the short term, your future opportunities.

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Account Objectives: In addition to Revenue and Business Development Objectives, you also might require broader objectives that apply either to the Plan Unit, or to all of the Plan Units that you have included in your plan. These objectives – that might include Marketing, Partnering, Relationship, etc. ensure that you utilize all of the resources available to you to effectively maximize your position.

Planning on its own can be valuable to help you to frame your thinking, but the execution of the plan is where you will derive the most benefit.

 

 

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SPONSORED:

This sponsored post is produced by Rackspace Managed Cloud.

It wasn’t long ago that “cloud” referred to the public cloud. Today, it’s synonymous with multiple forms of cloud computing, from private clouds to hybrid models of interconnected data centers, to a single, managed hosting environment. Whatever your business requirements, there’s likely a cloud solution to meet your specific needs.

Because nearly 90 percent of SMBs are currently making use of the cloud, it’s almost unnecessary to talk about the benefits of cloud adoption in simple terms. Advantages like total cost savings, flexibility, and decreased time to market are so universally acknowledged that they have become baseline expectations.

Through our ongoing research efforts, we’ve uncovered some interesting and overlooked trends particular to cloud adoption within small and medium businesses. Here are four surprising trends that highlight how and why SMBs are using the cloud:

1. Moving to the cloud aids better customer service

Most companies have long known that customer service matters, but a slew of recent reports are beginning to quantify just how much. A 2014 study by the Harvard Business Review found that satisfied customers spend on average 140 percent more than customers who experience poor customer service.

The data show — somewhat unexpectedly — that cloud adoption has been a major factor in positive customer support experiences. As you see in the infographic below, up to 70 percent of businesses report that they’re able to put money saved back into their business as a result of moving to the cloud — 36 percent of those companies reinvested these savings into improving their customer service.

Making the decision to deploy in the cloud has also led to incremental improvements in application stability, uptime, decreased page-load times, and faster average responses to customer issues, all of which have boosted customer satisfaction.

2. The Cloud is often more secure than traditional data centers

Even with cloud adoption skyrocketing, it’s clear that security concerns are still the number one barrier to adoption. And with high-profile breaches like iCloud and Dropbox, it’s easy to understand why.

But a number of recent reports are starting to frame cloud security differently. In their 2014 Cloud Security Report, analysts at Alert Logic assert that, “we don’t believe the cloud today is inherently less safe than enterprise data center environments.” In fact, while vulnerability scans were up across both on-premise and cloud providers this year, the report shows that brute force attacks were 30 percent more common in on-premise data centers. Alert Logic suggests that a transparent, collaborative relationship between customers and hosting providers will go a long way toward keeping cloud environments secure.

3. Smaller businesses are adopting the cloud faster than mid-sized businesses

Among businesses with fewer than 20 employees, 68 percent report having adopted the cloud in some way, with six percent saying they plan to so within six months. Contrast that with the adoption rate of businesses with 500 to 1000 employees — only 53 percent report cloud adoption. It’s clear that the smallest companies are leading the charge.

This trend can best be attributed to two factors: the IT skills at smaller businesses are likely to be spread thin, and, the cost for utilizing cloud-based solutions for major business functions is relatively low. Eighty percent of small businesses say they use cloud-based email, while the vast majority of mid-sized companies choose to host email on premises — probably because they have the in-house IT skills and bandwidth to manage it.

4. Content Filtering: The hidden driver of cloud adoption

It’s no surprise that companies report web hosting, email, and backup to be the top workloads they’re running on the cloud. But nearly half of small and mid-sized businesses are also using the cloud to keep unwanted content — malware, cyber attacks, malicious websites and emails — out of their networks.

Cyber-threats are a looming presence that can disrupt business operations and compromise sensitive data, and security-as-a-service providers have stepped up to counter them. Workforces that are increasingly distributed throughout the world as well as the rise in adoption of the BYOD model present many more potential points of entry for would-be attackers. But the cloud is able to scale security solutions to keep unwanted content at bay. For example, cloud-based secure web gateways start using malware signatures and blocked URL lists as soon as they become available — replicating the protection quickly around the network. Traditional IT environments are often much slower to bring in new defenses.

Learn more about Rackspace Managed Cloud.

Tom Bressie is the Director of Product Marketing at Rackspace, focused on Managed Cloud. Prior to joining Rackspace, he served as the Global Leader of Cloud Product Marketing for a Fortune 50 technology company and has a broad professional background in both technology and business, ranging from product marketing to product management to analog circuit design.

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Stop Undervaluing Yourself and Get Paid What You’re Worth written by Guest Post read more at Small Business Marketing Blog from Duct Tape Marketing

It’s guest post day here at Duct Tape Marketing and today’s guest post is from Stephanie O’Brien – Enjoy! 

As your skills as a marketer or businessperson grow, one of the best ways to increase your revenue is to raise your rates.

Because you’re getting better at what you do, you can give more value for the same amount of time and effort, and your pay should rise accordingly.

But sometimes, that’s easier said than done. Not because your clients won’t pay what you’re worth, but because YOU won’t ask for it.

You’re used to valuing yourself at a certain level, and when you think about asking for more, uncertainty floods in. “What if they say no? What if I can’t give them enough value to be worth that? What if they’re disappointed, or they take their business elsewhere?”

All too often, people will allow those fears to make them underquote, so even though they’re attracting clients, they’re still losing a lot of potential revenue because they’re being underpaid.

In this blog post, I’ll help you to make a shift that will allow you to not only make the income you deserve, but also to serve your clients more effectively, so they WILL be happy to pay you what you’re worth.

It’s all about the questions you ask.

Right now, you’re probably asking yourself two questions when you set your prices. They are,

“What are my clients willing to pay?” and “What is my competition charging?”

While it’s true that these questions may come into play when your client is considering your offer, you can’t rely on them when you’re setting your rates. If you do, they will limit your income, and keep you from seeing and showing your own true value.

It also places imaginary limitations on your clients’ buying power, when in reality those limitations might well exist only in your mind.

What can you ask instead, that will give you more income and your clients better service?

The next time you’re about to set a rate, start by asking yourself, “How much money would make this job worth my time?”

This can be uncomfortable, especially if you feel it would be unfair to your clients, or are afraid of scaring them off. But it has to be done – in fact, I’d like you to do it right now, before you continue reading.

Once you’ve done that exercise, if you feel like this figure is too high, DON’T lower it.

Instead, ask yourself: “How much value am I giving?”

How much time will you save your clients? How much money will you MAKE for them?

How much will their health, mindset, lifestyle or relationships improve?

How much happier will they be after they work with you?

Remember, it isn’t just about the effort you put into the job. It’s about the benefit that your work gives to your clients.

What if the value you’re offering seems like less than the price you want to charge?

Once again, do NOT drop your rates. Instead, raise your value.

For example, I was recently hired to help one of my clients rewrite her ‘about’ page. I wanted the page to reflect her real story and the source of her passion, instead of reading like an encyclopedia.

To do this, we needed to have a conversation via Skype, and I wanted to be paid $75 for the time we were going to spend on that. But simply getting her to tell her story didn’t feel like it was enough; I wanted to give her real value for the money I was charging.

So I made her an offer: while I was getting the story for her page, I would also teach her how to tell her story in a way that drew her clients in, so she’d be able to use that skill any time she needed to.

She agreed, and was happy to pay me $75 for the call.

Are you charging as much as you want to be?

If not, when are you going to raise your prices?

If you don’t feel like your services warrant a price increase, how will you raise their value so they WILL be worth it?

I look forward to reading your opinions, insights and commitments in the comments.

Stephanie O’Brien is a copywriter, marketing coach, entrepreneur, novelist, and self-growth addict. She uses her twelve years of fiction-writing experience to make her copywriting fun and inspirational as well as effective, and her lifelong exploration of the human mind helps her to get inside her clients’ heads, pick out the words they’re trying to find, and put them onto paper.

To learn more about Stephanie, and to get more tips to help you connect with your readers in a unique and authentic way, visit her website at www.captivatingcopywriter.com.

 

As 2014 draws to a close, you can catch up on some of the year's best business books, like Peter Thiel's "Zero to One" and Sophia Amoruso's "#GIRLBOSS." But it's also time to start looking forward to some of next year's big releases.

We've looked through the books that have been announced for 2015 and picked out the highlights, from a history of money to the story of Marissa Mayer's rise to the top.

"The Self-Made Billionaire Effect: How Extreme Producers Create Massive Value"

Release date: Dec. 30, 2014

This one may be on the cusp of the new year, but we're looking forward to it. John Sviokla and Mitch Cohen interviewed and studied some of the world's 800 self-made billionaires, including Mark Cuban and Sara Blakely, and determined that their defining feature was a "Producer" mindset that allowed them to add tremendous value to a company through the creation of new strategies rather than meeting or even exceeding preexisting goals. The authors break down this Producer mindset into five habits anyone can learn from.

Pre-order here >>

"Marissa Mayer and the Fight to Save Yahoo!"

Release date: Jan. 6

Business Insider's own Nicholas Carlson has turned his 2013 long-form article on Yahoo's polarizing CEO into a full-length book. It's a detailed look at Mayer's controversial rise to power and her attempt to turn Yahoo from a has-been back into a pillar of the tech world.

Pre-order here >>

"How to Fly a Horse: The Secret History of Creation, Invention, and Discovery"

Release date: Jan. 20

Author Kevin Ashton is the man behind the term "the Internet of Things" and is a pioneer in the field of radio frequency identification (RFID) networks. His book is a study of the behind-the-scenes process of world-changing creativity, as told through the stories of how the Wright brothers set out to "fly a horse" and how the stealth bomber was the result of a 25-cent bet.

Pre-order here >>

See the rest of the story at Business Insider

In his annual address to the nation on Thursday Russian President Vladimir Putin announced that the country's reserve funds, usually earmarked for investment in state projects, should be used to bail out troubled Russian banks. In doing so he revealed just how grim the prospects for financial institutions have become following the rouble's collapse. The Russian private sector appears to be on state-funded life support.

In particular, the move strongly suggests that the Russian banking system has been running out of collateral that can be used to get dollars from the central bank. Access to dollars is critical because the banks took out foreign-currency loans from investors that they have to pay back in the same currency. Current estimates suggests Russian businesses need to repay a total of $35 billion this month.

Unfortunately Russian banks face major challenges funding this at present with Western sanctions freezing them out of global capital markets on the one hand and a weakening domestic economy putting pressure on profits on the other. These issues have been compounded by a fall of around 40% in the value of the rouble since June. As it falls it becomes increasingly difficult to pay back those debts because the rouble is becoming less and less valuable, making those debts more and more expensive.

Usually it is the job of the central bank to provide emergency funding for a country's banks. In Russia this is typically done through what are know as "currency repo auctions," where banks offer collateral (such as high-quality bonds) in exchange for access to currency, especially dollars, that they need to meet foreign-currency obligations.

However, there has been limited use of this facility by Russian banks despite the rouble falls. The central bank had tried to explain this by saying that low demand was a consequence of there being plenty of dollar liquidity in the financial system.

Putin's statement that the country's reserve funds should be used instead to back its banks strongly suggests that this claim was wrong.  There was not a lack of demand, rather the banks' collateral was insufficient to get dollars in exchange.

On Thursday the Russian central bank cut the foreign exchange repo rate, the interest rate it charges on the currency it gives to banks. The rate fell from 1.5% above the London Interbank Offered Rate (Libor) — the benchmark interest rate at which banks lend to each other — to 0.5% above Libor. A lower interest rate should make it less expensive for banks to borrow from the central bank and therefore more appealing.

The rate cut illustrates that the central bank itself is growing concerned about the ability of Russian banks to meet their debt repayments. If they fail to pay, it could trigger a wave of defaults that would further hit the fragile Russian economy, which is already expected to fall into a recession in 2015.

Yet if the problem is a shortage of collateral these measures are unlikely to be enough. Back in February, JP Morgan analysts warned of just such a scenario: around 60% of available collateral was already pledged of an  upper limit of around 75%. That top level is the point at which JPM says the stress in the banking system, in the form of increased rsk of default, may start rising rapidly.

We appear to be near that point.

Judging by today's news, banks appear to have been forced instead to seek help from the state.

This would explain Putin's move to divert money usually earmarked for infrastructure investment (for example, in Russia's ageing road and rail network) into a bank bailout. Reuters quotes Putin as saying:

Using our reserves, firstly, the National Wealth Fund (NWF), I propose to ... recapitalise leading domestic banks with funds offered ... to use for lending to the most important projects in the real sector of economy.

The news wire reports that VTB and Gazprombank have already applied for 250 billion roubles ($4.7 billion) and up to 100 billion roubles in additional support. This would put a further dent in Russia's reserves after the country saw total international reserves drop some $90 billion so far in 2014, mostly in failed attempts to bouy the falling rouble.

It might also open the door for non-bank companies to lobby for additional support. Oil company Rosneft requested 2 trillion roubles last month but was turned down.

Join the conversation about this story »

Running a Small Contracting Business – 10 Vital Success Tips from the Pros

Even at the best of times, running a small contracting business can be an uphill battle; and it’s a steep mothersucker! You face myriad challenges, some of which you’re ill-equipped to handle. Think of the troubles you battle each day…. employee issues, customer service nightmares, product problems, cash flow that doesn’t, vehicle breakdowns, and shipping that was always supposed to be here yesterday.

The key to success? Minimizing these bumps in the road, and paving a smooth highway to the profit land. There’s got to be an easier way.

Yeah, there is.

To help make your paving job glass smooth, I spoke with several long-time A/V industry vets. They’ve navigated through more than a few chuckholes in their day, and spent years building successful companies in all facets of this difficult business. What they’ve discovered can help you grow yours, make it easier to run, and even squeeze a few extra scheckles out of the ole’ pig once in a while.

NOTE: Doing great work goes without saying, so it’s not included here. However, you can do world’s best work and still end up beating your head against the wall. It’s the other stuff you’ll need to keep the shiny side up and the rolly side down in your contracting business.

Here are 10 tips from the experts that’ll help you smooth the road to a more profitable contracting business.

1 – Put Scalable Systems and Procedures in Place for Your Operations

Get this wrong and growth is a cluster….. you get the picture. One of the custom installation industry’s leading experts on business systems and growth is Paul Starkey.

Paul has been a consistent industry innovator, running some of its most respected companies. He served as VP, then President of Elan, followed by Chief Marketing Officer of Nortek’s Core Brands. Now, he’s looking to redefine how the custom industry works with Vital MGMT. Their mission is bringing large organization data-driven management and business practices to the custom industry, while aggregating leading companies to gain economies of scale, and boost profits.

I bounced a few things off Paul on how companies can improve efficiency and position themselves to be successful in the long term.

WELD2 – What are some of the biggest problems you see with integrators trying to improve efficiency and grow their organizations?

Starkey - “Implementing best practices is very tough. Everybody believes their current practice is best (in their mind). Resisting the temptation that software is the best practice and getting to the root process and/or requirements through documentation begins the process.”

WELD2 – What’s one thing they can do to operate with best business practices?

Starkey - “For most companies, operating through tribal knowledge and having crisp, step-by-step instructions for each employee, on virtually all activities is a key to getting to a best practice. In small companies, having documented baselines for on boarding, training, expanding skills and replicating success is a critical measure.”

WELD2 – What’s the best advice you can add on facilitating growth?

Starkey - “Scale can only be accomplished when habits of the organization occur without re-invention.”

This makes perfect sense. Having to change processes to accommodate growth means you’re back at the bottom of learning curve hill, lookin’ up.

2 – Don’t Forget Marketing

Marketing isn’t all about getting new projects. It’s about having solid qualified lead pipeline for sales to work with. An overlooked benefit: Good marketing delivers better, more profitable projects, not simply more projects.

Marketing is communicating your brand’s value proposition in a way that your market doesn’t just understand, but embraces. To do that, answer marketing’s 3 most important questions:

• Who is my target audience?
• What truly motivates them?
• How can I reach them and communicate my brand’s value proposition?

Jeff Kussard, head of J. Kussard Consulting LLC, is a former market development exec with long tenures at both CI-oriented manufacturers (Russound, Harman), and leading custom install firms. He brings up an excellent point; most dealers pay far too much to acquire their customers.

“The investment made to capture a sale is called the Sales Acquisition Cost. It consists of the related portion of marketing costs plus the direct costs of sales attributed to making the sale. Customer Retention Cost is the cost of gaining additional sales from existing customers. It costs ten times more to make a sale to a new customer than it to make a sale of same value to an existing customer. Most systems integrators invest little to nothing in marketing of any kind.

As a result – and by default – ALL of their sales are burdened with the cost of creating a new customer. Meaning that if you do no marketing at all or, if your marketing is aimed at attracting new customers, your Sales Acquisition Cost is ten times higher than they should be. To save yourself real dough, it just may be a good idea to invest a little to communicate with your past / established customers. Familiarity builds loyalty. Loyalty generates sales “

That’s an illuminating perspective, and one many business owners fail to realize. Focusing on bringing in and endless stream of new customers costs more, and subsequently reduces profit.

Flip it! Shifting some marketing focus to your existing customers is a great way to:

• Shorten your sales cycle
• Reduce sales costs

Both things near and dear to a business owner’s heart. Keeping regular contact is a recipe for growing customer loyalty that cooks up tasty good. Use the same ingredients for that you’ve used for the rest of your business. Deliver value. Know what they want, and give it to them, while simultaneously planting the seed for doing additional business together.

Then, there’s your brand. At WELD2, we like to remind integrators “YOU are the most important brand you sell.” Apologies aside to the myriad CE brands most custom installation firms offer, but it’s you who the customer is really buying. With that in mind, that’s who your marketing should revolve around. The harsh reality is this: The average consumer doesn’t know most of the brands you carry. It’s all about you.

3 – Hire People Smarter and More Talented Than You Are.

Maybe better looking too…. Business luminary Jack Welch, a best selling author and former CEO of General Electric, put that as one of his most vital business principles. While he was at the helm of a mega multinational, it’s just important when you’re pondering the next hire for Jack’s Electrical and Audio LLC.

Jeff Kill, Manager at long time Portland, OR integrator Room Service Home Technologies, says many factors combine to produce the best fit for the company and position. However, it’s the ones you can’t teach that are the most difficult:

“As someone who’s been looking to hire another technician for about a year now…I have a pretty good idea of what fits our business model. Unfortunately it also comes with some governance from the state in the form of Limited Energy Electrical Licensing.

If you pull wire, you must be licensed, and that doesn’t always coincide with a knowledge of our business! It’s been a difficult task. Take the license out of the equation my hire needs to process a real meat and potatoes consumer side to their personality that also has programming skills that can be expanded rather than a real large programming/engineering skill set with little consumer skills. Much easier to teach programming skills than human skills.

In short, integrators need to pair solutions based on a very “technically simple” society and not let the “this will be cooler than they ever imagined” side of them get in the way.”

Andrew Blake, Area Manager for high end Phoenix, AZ based integrator AVAI advises investing in key employees, especially in this day and age of rapidly changing technologies. That’s good for both employer and employee, he notes. As a next step, he says getting key employees invested the business is a powerful way to retain key talent.

“…investing in your employees training, certifications, etc, then maybe even offering a piece of the action or ownership”

Eric Lee, owner of a leading Chicago-area integration firm, Integrated Control Experts, and former CEDIA director, says an employee focus is key to employee retention and en effective organization:

“Family – This is in your commitment to the employee and their family. Ensure that the employee can provide security to his or her family. Everything else is immaterial.”

Key takeaway? Your staff is your firm, really, but only if they’re well chosen and “bought in”. As owner or manager, you’re the backbone. Working together and setting clearly defined goals has always been a constant theme of successful firms, and little has changed. What can you do to facilitate this?

4 – Focus on ROI, ROI, ROI

Do your expenditures deliver a measureable return? Not all will, but most should. Those that don’t should be tied to an activity that will contribute to revenue growth at some point before the dinosaurs return. In a small business, this gets forgotten. Many small business owners fail to take an ROI perspective, either because they have no formal business straining, or aren’t “numbers people”.

Lee had some judicious advice on this, too. As the owner of a successful firm that’s been around for a while and made it through the recent “dark times”, his words carry some weight:

“For me, money is not a renewable resource that grows on a tree in the back yard. You only have so many opportunities based on the resources at your disposal, so you need to maximize your resources. Customer Service is always the best ROI for my money… It is easier to keep a customer than it is to obtain new ones.”

That dovetails perfectly with what Jeff Kussard told me. Keep your customers. It’s not only easier than finding the constant stream of new ones necessary to sustain your business, but a damn sight more cost effective, too. Great customer service is excellent marketing, good business, and the right thing to do.

5 – Cash Is King

You send your kids to college and pay your mortgage with profit, but your business runs on cash. It makes the world go round. Businesses profitable on paper have gone out of business due to poor cash flow.
Here’s a post on the American Express Open Forum with some excellent ways to improve yours and make things run more smoothly in 2015.

The best advice I’ve used for improving cash flow? Stay ahead of the curve. Keep up with billing. As many small contractors can attest, this is often easier said than done. Even so, your customers can’t pay bills they don’t have.

Once they’ve been billed, you know there will be some that don’t pay, even after a friendly reminder. Sadly, that often has nothing to do with ability. Instead it’s a matter of priority. Your invoice just isn’t a priority. Change that, and that money will be in your bank, instead of theirs.
Offer incentives to pay on time, and penalties for failure.

Make sure you’re doing your part, too. Business customers often require certain things to ensure payment. Verify you’re meeting their requirements. Avoiding back and forth equals faster payment.

6 – Document Everything

The devil’s in the details, and when you’re going through those details, it’s a heck of a lot easier if they’re all written down, entered on your tablet, or put in your phone’s job tracker app. In a large part, communication is key to success. That’s never been more true than when running a contracting firm.

Jobs change constantly. Let a few details drop through the cracks and great execution becomes impossible. Job costs skyrocket, and referral chances plummet like a falling safe. Ask Wylie Coyote about that one.

On change orders and T&M projects great documentation becomes doubly important. It’s where the money is….. or isn’t, as the case may be.

AVAI’s Blake weighed in on this, as well. His most important advice on documentation?

“Get the scope clearly defined, and signed off by the client. Contracts with allowances, then T&M if allowance are met are always helpful”

He hit the nail on the head. A clearly defined scope…. failure here can be disastrous, and has bitten more than one contractor in the butt. Here’s hoping you keep yours tooth free.

7 – Know How to Choose the Best Customers

Sure, all customers are desirable in some way. They all contribute revenue, can offer the potential for future business, and possible referrals. Some, however, just aren’t worth the trouble. Yeah, you know it’s true.

There have probably been a few you’d have been better off writing them a check to just get lost! Spotting them early, then parting ways on a good note is going to save both parties more headaches than post-Superbowl Monday.

It’s like any other business activity. Doing a customer’s job should deliver a solid ROI, and there are customers that simply don’t return much for what blood, sweat, and (mostly) tears you put in. The key is being able to spot those from a mile away before you commit to a project.

8 – Plan for the Little Things

Ask any business consultant, large organization exec, or brand leader, and they’ll all extol the virtues of strategic planing. The big stuff and mile-high view is important, but for a small contractor, it’s often the little things that really kick your ass. Planing the day-to-day is what drives efficiency, and profits.

Turning a $5.00 part into a $500 one because you had to get it shipped overnight and the job slid back a day…. that’ll kill you faster than anything. Even having to run to the store for something quickly adds an extra c-note to whatever you’re grabbing. The extra cost wasn’t in the budget, and gets ripped straight from your bottom line. Raise your hand if it’s happened to you!

Obviously, things can and will pop up. It’s not about that, but dicing your proposal with a fine toothed comb to minimize those little “I forgots”. Even if they’re non-inventory items you don’t directly bill for, include them in the job parts and materials list to be sure they make it to the site when needed, if not before.

9 – Find What Works, and Stay There

“If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it!” Never were truer words spoken, especially in the world of technology contracting. The temptation, and sometimes the requirement to go out on a bleeding edge limb is always right around the corner. Don’t get seduced by it!

Room Service’s Jeff Kill recommends focusing on what’s proven to work and make clients happy:

“As we’ve (Room Service) come through several years of the Wild Wild West of system design and products being used for the first time on our clients, we have come back to an old school approach. Do business with those that have been in business a very long time and deliver repeatable and predictable systems. Then focus more than ever on managing our clients expectations to more parallel what we do.

Taking our clients to that cutting edge is what has eroded consumer confidence over the years. How many times have we heard “I just want to watch TV”. Well, that’s more challenging these days as well, and it’s our job to keep that expectation managed. Our clients by in large are not DIYers and Techies. They just want a responsible team of professionals to lead them through the good, bad and ugly parts of technology and deliver a high quality well executed solution.”

10 – Outsource What Makes Sense

From the top, you can’t be good at everything. Even if you’re a freakin’ rock star, the fact is, you’re too expensive! Here’s an example our own Frank White likes to illustrate: If your company does $1,000,000 annually, and you work 50 hours a week, that means 2 things.

1) You work too much!

2) You’re responsible for bringing roughly $384 an hour through your door. What’s the most efficient, least expensive way you can do that?

There are things you outsource because it plain makes sense. External providers can do those functions better and less expensively than you can. That means your dollars dedicated to these functions generate a larger ROI (see above) when used for outsourcing them, than if spent doing them internally.

Examples include:

• Vehicle maintenance
• Marketing functions (PR, email marketing, web design and maintenance, blogging, social media, etc)
• Accounting
• Taxes
• Payroll
• Office Cleaning
• Landscaping
• etc.

When was the last time you crawled under one of your vans to change the oil or lube a zerk? Do you have your programmer or hook-up guy do it? Exactly!

Outsourcing is your path to better results, higher profitability, and less time working.

The Bottom Line (Yours)

Finally: It bears repeating; If you’re a custom integrator, the most important brand you sell isn’t Crestron, Runco, or Sonance. It’s yours! That’s what your customers are buying, not an CE brand they’ve likely never heard of. Focus on boosting your own brand equity. Plumbers, electricians, and other trades, too; it’s the same. Your bottom line will thank you.

Running a small contracting business isn’t easy, but it can be one of life’s most frustrating experiences…. or the most rewarding. What have you found that really made a difference, and could help others in your shoes? Let us know; thanks!

Bill Gross is out with his latest investment outlook, and in it he asks one main question: "how could they?"

Gross starts his letter with a discussion of some social norms that were accepted in the 20th century that we now find abhorrent.

And now, when we look back at things to which people used to turn a blind eye: domestic violence, racial and sexual discrimination, and smoking almost everywhere, the question we ask is, "how could they?"

Turning to our current, broad-based efforts to fight huge debt loads with more debt, Gross wonders if our grandchildren will look at the actions of today's policymakers and say, "how could they?"

Gross writes:

"How could policymakers have allowed so much debt to be created in the first place, and then failed to regulate their own system accordingly? How could they have thought that money printing and debt creation could create wealth instead of just more and more debt? How could fiscal authorities have stood by and attempted to balance budgets as opposed to borrowing cheaply and investing the proceeds in infrastructure and innovation? It has been a nursery rhyme experience for sure, but more than likely without a fairytale ending."

Gross writes that now, "it is difficult to envision a return to normalcy within my lifetime." 

"Markets are reaching the point of low return and diminishing liquidity," Gross writes.

"Investors may want to begin to take some chips off the table: raise asset quality, reduce duration, and prepare for at least a halt of asset appreciation engineered upon a false central bank premise of artificial yields, QE and the trickling down of faux wealth to the working class."

A stern warning from Gross, the man formerly known as the Bond King. 

SEE ALSO: GMO Capital's James Montier Destroys The Idea That Maximizing Shareholder Value Is Good

Join the conversation about this story »

Your channel partner strategy plan needs to begin with "who"? But like so much of strategy, the "who" question isn't "what sort of channel do I need", but "who is my buyer", and therefore "what sort of channel do my buyers need." We're arguing here that your channel partner strategy plan needs to be based on what your buyers need, not on what you need. What type of channel you r buyers need, and how many channel sales people you need to provide to meet that need, changes as the market matures.  We'll show you how to work out your channel partner strategy plan based on what your buyers need, and how many sales people you need, in this week's show.

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B2B buyers are becoming increasingly risk-averse. A sales rep’s assurances that the product or service works isn’t enough for most prospects to sign a contract. They want evidence that it does what you claim, and not from you -- from another customer.

But what if you don’t have a reference customer for a specific product or service line? Or in the case of a startup, if you don’t have any customers at all? It’s a rare company that lives on the bleeding edge of adoption. They might be willing to take a chance on your offering

Paying clients are the lifeblood of any business. Before they hand over their hard-earned dollars, however, they need to be convinced that the product or service they’re spending their money on is worth it. But what if you’re a new entrant? What if aside from your parents, siblings and friends, nobody knows you’re in business? It will be extremely hard to attract prospects, let alone the paying ones, to a business they know nothing about.

You can always go the traditional route: TV/radio/print advertising, cold-calling, trade shows, or spam mails. But know that with the growing ubiquity of the Internet and the penchant of the Internet population, particularly the millennials, to consider reviews and peer recommendations prior to making a purchase, traditional marketing has become more expensive and less effective.

The alternative? Inbound marketing.

Inbound marketing, as a HubSpot infographic by IMPACT Branding & Design illustrates, is a six-part process:

• Develop a successful marketing strategy.
• Create and maintain a powerful website.
• Generate more traffic.
• Convert traffic to leads.
• Convert leads into sales.
• Measure everything.

For this article, we’ll focus on lead generation, which, as BusinessDictionary.com puts it, is the process of collecting names and contact information about qualified prospects who will then be contacted by the sales department in the hope of moving them further down the sales pipeline until a sale is finally made.

With that in mind, here are 10 lead-generation strategies to consider:

1. Optimize your website for better conversion.

Optimize, they say, is a buzzword, and because it will be used multiple times in this blog post, allow me to borrow Merriam-Webster Online’s definition of the word: “to make as perfect, effective, or functional as possible.”

For better lead-generation results, website design, which covers fonts, color, navigation, images, footer information, and others, should be carefully considered. Below are some tips:

• Place your call-to-action (CTA) above the fold.
• Make your CTA button stand out by using a contrasting color.
• Get rid of automatic sliders.
• Minimize form fields.
• Use clear headlines.
• Your contact information must be clearly visible.
• Add testimonials from real customers.
• Include a contact number.
• Incorporate trust seals.

2. Implement search engine optimization (SEO) strategies.

SEO is getting a bad rap because of illicit techniques some unscrupulous marketers implement. Despite all this, it’s still the primary lead-generation strategy used by top digital marketers, as good ranking in search results means higher visibility for websites or landing pages, generating a good number of leads in the process. SEO, however, is no longer just about ranking for high-traffic keywords. It has evolved into a complete package that incorporates content, social and search engine marketing.

Consider the following tips:

• Create a list of targeted search terms through keyword research and analysis.
• Use keyword-based titles.
• Create meta tags descriptions for better click-through rates.
• Strategically inject search phrases or selected keywords into your pages. Avoid keyword stuffing, though.
• Submit sitemaps so search engines can more easily index your website.
• Continually test and measure your SEO initiatives through A/B testing and analysis of web traffic data. SEO/SEM software can greatly help with this.

3. Create an email marketing campaign.

“The money is in the list.” If you’re a marketer, you probably already heard that a countless number of times. And of course, there are those that say the money is actually NOT in the list. Whichever side you’re on, one thing remains true: It’s no longer enough to get into your prospect’s inbox every month with boring newsletter content.

To generate real leads, you need to engage your prospects with the right content at the right time. This can be more easily accomplished through marketing automation software, particularly if you manage a huge database of leads at various stages in the sales pipeline. Marketing automation tools allow you to understand what your prospects need (i.e., somebody who downloaded free content may simply be curious, as opposed to somebody who has been in your list for a while and just waiting for the right time to buy your product) and offer content that targets specific buyers (e.g., end user, finance manager, or IT guy), for example.

An email marketing mantra to live by: Create email conversations that are relevant and valuable to your target audience.

4. Launch a product video.

An article by Shane Parrish on the The Week lists 12 things about how the human brain works, and as I was going through them, two facts resonated with me:

• We don’t pay attention to boring things.
• Vision trumps all other senses.

Goes to show why video marketing works, eh?

If a picture is worth a thousand words, Dr. James McQuivey of Forrester Research asserts that “a minute of video is worth more than 1.8 million words,” a testament to the fact that video is many times more powerful than images or the written word. Creating an explainer video of the product or service you offer to make visitors “see” is a worthy goal, as delivering information in a concrete, concise and easy-to-digest way can exponentially impact your lead-generation targets. Besides, according to this infographic, YouTube is the second largest search engine, bigger than “Bing, Yahoo!, Ask and AOL combined.”

Then again, keep in mind that video should only be part of your overall content strategy because articles, images and infographics still occupy an important place in the inbound marketing universe.

5. Blog consistently.

Blogs are powerful lead-generation tools, and that can’t be stressed enough. Customers won’t buy from people or companies they don’t trust, and what better way to showcase your expertise than in a corporate blog? Blogs are a great way to engage with visitors, address customer concerns, and contribute to a discussion your target audience cares about. While it’s not a requirement to blog every day, following an editorial calendar for consistency is a good strategy.

To maximize the lead-generating capabilities of your blog, here are some pointers:

• Strategically place CTAs such as free consultation, mailing list opt-in form, and free trial around your blog content. Areas can include the end of blog posts, the site header or footer, and the side bar.
• Offer valuable downloadable content for free. These can take the form of ebooks, templates, or whitepapers.
• Aside from your own site, consider guest blogging for sites related to your industry. If done right, this is one surefire way to reach an audience you would otherwise not reach on your own.

6. Optimize your landing page.

A landing page, as its name suggests, is the page where visitors “land” on your website. Make no mistake, however, because a landing page isn’t just about any page on your site. Landing pages exist solely for a reason: to entice a visitor to do something specific, like click-through to another page, as in the case of ecommerce sites, or enter their contact information (name and/or email address) to download a freebie, register for a webinar, sign up for a free trial, and so on. Landing pages are distinct in that they’re focused on a single objective, unlike your main website where visitors can do a bunch of things, such as play a video, read a blog post, partake in a poll, among others.

As Unbounce further explains, there are two types of landing pages: (1) click-through landing pages, and (2) lead-generation landing pages.

To optimize your landing pages, take note of the following:

• Use a strong and relevant headline.
• Your copy must be concise but convincing, and your form shouldn’t scare people away. Ask them for just the right amount of information. Don’t ask for an address when you’ll only contact them via email.
• Ensure your design is clean, and your call-to-action button is clickable and stands out.
• Optimize your landing page for search.
• Use social sharing buttons.
• Include customer testimonials.
• Continually test and measure your results.

7. Engage in social media marketing.

Social media is undoubtedly one of the most effective avenues for lead generation. More and more people are converging on popular networking platforms like Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter, and if your business doesn’t engage in social media marketing in any way, shape or form, it’s time to rethink your strategy. People ask brand questions on social media. The same way they gush about products or services they care about, people share their customer experience nightmares to friends on social media.

As marketing is more about communicating and reaching out to your target audience, it’s no wonder social media has evolved to become the marketing force it is today.

Some important tips to remember about social media marketing:

• You don’t have to be where everyone is. To maximize the power of social media, find out which platforms your target audience spends most of their time.
• Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter aren’t the only sites that work. Google+, SlideShare, Instagram, and Pinterest are worth looking into as well.
• As in all types of content and messaging, relevance, and value are keys.
• Communication is a two-way street, and so is social.

8. Tap Influencers to review your product.

There is this thing called influencer marketing, which, in the most simplistic sense, is a form of marketing focused on the identification of “individuals with influence over potential buyers,” as Kyle Wong in his Forbes article explains. This type of marketing is particularly prevalent in the moms and millennial demographics, as actual user reviews now play a larger role in consumers’ purchasing decisions, more so if these recommendations come from people they trust and look up to.

Most brand influencers have the following tell-tale characteristics:

• A large follower base
• Credibility and subject matter expertise
• Good relationship with followers

It’s also worth noting that an influencer doesn’t always have to be a celebrity, a journalist or a blogger. As a matter of fact, an influencer can be somebody’s neighbor, best friend, doctor, relative, spouse – anybody, really. Think: word-of-mouth marketing.

Identifying your influencer targets can be done via a simple Google search, some detective work on LinkedIn, Facebook or Twitter, searching through Technorati and Google Blog Search, or by using PR software like Cision or Vocus. When tapping brand influencers to review your product or service, don’t just focus on the big ones. Consider the small ones, too.

9. Speak at conferences, trade shows, or events.

Speaking at events and conferences increases your visibility and establishes you as an industry authority. MarketingTango enumerates five ways to generate sales leads through speaking engagements:

• Extend your exposure by asking the event’s host or marketer for permission to promote your products or services after your speech. A table or booth with your marketing materials is a great idea.
• Educate, instead of sell. When attendees realize the value of your knowledge and expertise, selling to them may no longer be necessary.
• Work with partners by cross-promoting to each other’s attendees.
• Capture your attendees’ information and build your database of leads.
• Make it easy for your audience to buy from you. Be ready to take orders or answer any questions. Bring additional staff to help out, if necessary.

10. Optimize your About

A website’s About page is one of the most clicked website pages for obvious reasons. Visitors want to know more about you, who you are, your story, and what you stand for, particularly if your content is spectacular and they want to get to know you beyond what you’ve already written. People buy from businesses with a compelling brand story, and clicking on your About page is an indication they’re ready to take things up a notch with your business.

Jeremy Smith, a conversion optimization professional, lists four reasons why the About page is one of the most essential pages on your website:

• An About page is conversion-ready.
• It’s a high-traffic page.
• A superbly crafted About page makes visitors remember you, your products and/or services.
• It humanizes your brand, enhancing the connection between you and your visitors.

There are various ways to infuse your creativity into your About page, but it should contain at least one thing: a link to your landing page.

What other lead generation techniques can you recommend?

 If there’s one mortal sin content marketers commit way too often, it’s obsessing over tools or tactics instead of customers. When we talk marketing, we love to jump right into a discussion about a given social network, a new tactic hitting the blogosphere, or some other content format we “have to” learn. Instead of asking customers how we can help them, we ask other marketers how many words make up an ideal blog post or which marketing automation tool they use. Important? Sure. Good place to start? Nope.

It’s understandable that we do this. We’re experiencing such rapid change all the time, and the new technology now at our disposal is staggering. We’re like a group of kids furiously attacking an ice cream sundae bar: We gorge ourselves on toppings in a wild rush to get the most or best of it all. (“How about some customers with that bowl of marketing tech, kiddo?”) It’s all so damn irresistible and addicting.

But, unfortunately, we sometimes forget the actual human beings we’re supposed to serve. This is not only backward in theory – it’s bad for business.

So consider this instead: Smart content marketing (and really, smart business overall) is about helping our customers solve problems or fulfill desires. It’s never about a tactic or tool – those are means to the aforementioned end.

Great products solve problems and fulfill desires, whether you sell marketing software or basketball shoes. Great content must do the same.

Don’t listen to me

All that stuff might sound nice, but you can still easily shrug it off, forget about it, or outright ignore it. But I’m not expecting you to take my word for it. Instead, heed the words of someone who is far and away one of the best innovators of our time. Fortunately for us, this innovator handed us a blueprint for being more effective, more creative, and more customer-focused content marketers … and he didn’t even realize it.

The innovator is Ev Williams, founder of Twitter, Blogger, and Medium, and one of the biggest historical influencers on how we create and communicate.

And the blueprint he gave us is this gem of a quote intended for start-up founders:

Here’s the formula if you want to build a billion-dollar internet company. Take a human desire, preferably one that has been around for a really long time … identify that desire and use modern technology to take out steps.

Huh? He’s talking about businesses and tech. What does that have to do with effective content marketing?

In a word: Everything.

Great content removes steps

Williams’ quote appeared in a 2013 Fast Company interview. During the conversation, he told Fast Company that the internet is “a giant machine designed to give people what they want.”

At this point, you should have a light bulb over your head. That’s the perfect way to describe our content marketing work. We are in the business of giving people what they want. We offer value in the form of educational or entertaining content, which enables us to ask for value from our customers in the form of their time, actions, and dollars. We give them what they want, and then they give us what we want.

But we think about those things in reverse. We constantly strive to get better at getting what we want. However, if we think about better ways to give customers what they want, then our agendas are more likely to succeed. Unfortunately, there’s the temptation of the Ice Cream Sundae Syndrome again. We rush toward tech, tactics, and toppings without thinking about customers first. We obsess over what should enhance our focus on solving customer problems – not replace it.

Back to Williams for a second. We can swap two little words from his quote (“modern tech”) for two others (“content marketing”) to get the following:

Take a human desire, preferably one that has been around for a really long time … identify that desire and use [content marketing] to take out steps.

Williams was talking about building great companies and, more specifically, great products. We’re talking about content marketing. But shouldn’t the two always align? If you really think about it, doesn’t great content marketing eventually lead someone to the product? The ease with which we can use Williams’ quote to talk about content marketing or products leads to one conclusion:

Great content marketing is just solving the same problem that your product solves.

Yes, your content solves those problems through different media and perhaps less well than the product (more on that to follow). But ultimately, if we ignore all the noise and start by thinking, “How can I solve this problem for my buyers?” we’re set up for much more success than we are when all our questions center on channels, trends, tactics, and tools. Those things should be attacked in the context of solving a buyer’s problem.

If my product helps you create videos more easily, then my content should too. It should be educational, easy to access, and practically useful for video creators.

If my product helps you train better in the gym, then my content should too. It should help you track your workouts or educate you on proper weightlifting form.

If my product helps you [insert benefit here], then your content should [insert exact same benefit.] You get the idea.

Create content that removes steps

Unfortunately for us and our potential customers, we tend to muddy the waters – or should I say, overload the ice cream – by focusing on the toppings too much.

So instead, the next time you walk into a brainstorming meeting or begin to research content formats and ideas:

1. Write down a problem facing your buyer. (If you can’t come up with one, you have bigger issues than content marketing. Talk to actual customers and, if you can’t, talk to sales, support, and other customer-facing teams. But mostly, talk to actual customers. Get out – literally, get out of your office and find some customers.)

2. Next, with that problem written on the board, list every step down to the smallest detail that the buyer must take to overcome that problem.

3. Finally, think about what content resources you can create to remove a step or make a step easier to complete.

And if you need to kick-start your brainstorming in the final step, try this simple, science-backed brainstorm process.

(It’s important to note that for some B2C companies, the emphasis might shift from solving problems to fulfilling emotional desires. Luxury fashion and entertainment electronics are good examples.)

For a more concrete example, let’s say you sell analytics software and your product helps other marketers make better, more data-driven decisions. Instead of rushing toward the sundae toppings of our industry – “We need SlideShares! We need a LinkedIn strategy!” — start by visualizing your buyers’ steps for completing a task, such as pitching their boss:

Start generating ideas and creating content based on the above framework.

This process also helps vet whether a type of content would be successful. For example, using Williams’ notion of removing steps to pitch the boss, an eBook or guide (a go-to content format in B2B) is a lousy solution. It actually adds a step – read this big resource.

Instead, why not create a research report or curate industry benchmarks and other data? That removes the first step. Your target buyer now has some valuable data to go pitch her boss.

You can continue this pattern when you need more content too. You could remove step two by offering a reporting spreadsheet and step three with a pre-designed pitch deck ordered correctly to tell a compelling story, requiring only a few tweaks by your buyer to present to her boss.

The “oh-by-the-way” moment

We’ve just taken the buyer’s five-step process and used content to turn it into two steps. And here’s the best part – you then reach this “oh-by-the-way” moment with your buyer. In theory, it would sound something like this: “I see you’re trying to pitch your boss and make data-driven decisions with our content, but – oh by the way – the very best way to do so? Check out our product.” Now, in a very natural way for the buyer, content marketing turns into product marketing and sales. The buyer is already trying to get this stuff done, and you’re able to tell her simply: You’re already doing this and it’s with our content, so why not check out the better solution in our product?

If we visualize this based on how well you’re solving a customer’s problem, it might look like this:

Not only does this framework of lining up and removing steps yield more ideas for you as a marketer, it ties those ideas directly to what customers actually want and marches them straight toward your product or service.

(And remember, Williams says that the internet is “a giant machine designed to give people what they want.” Done and done, Mr. Williams, sir.)

3 things true content marketing innovators do

We can learn a whole heck of a lot from Williams in business, but in content marketing in particular, these three things stand out, all around the idea of solving customer problems:

1. Content marketing innovators remove steps for their customers.

We worship content marketing influencers and innovators for their abilities to generate unique projects or spot new trends. While many are great at those things, the true innovators are hell-bent on helping their customers solve a problem or fulfill a desire. And they do so with the content they create. That real innovation can lead to massive, industry-altering success, according to Williams.

For proof, just look at some of the most innovative companies of our time, like Google, Uber, and Facebook. They all remove steps for us, whether we’re searching the world’s information, hailing a ride, or connecting with friends.

2. Content marketing innovators attempt to solve the same problems that their products solve for customers.

Our content and our products need to occupy the same emotional and intellectual space in the minds of our buyers. As you continue to add value to your audience by removing steps, you more easily generate highly qualified traffic looking for solutions like yours, all leading up to that oh-by-the-way moment. In doing so, you give away little pieces of the product or service, whether practically (like a guide or workbook) or theoretically (like an inspiring video conveying the same emotional benefits). You’re here to help your customers through your content or your product.

3. Content marketing innovators don’t view themselves as marketers, writers, or creators – they’re problem solvers.

We are problem solvers, not simply creators and distributors of content. It shouldn’t matter how we solve problems (eBooks, blog posts, interactive tools, graphics, SlideShares, etc.) or where (Facebook, Twitter, email, events, etc.) It just matters that we do it successfully, consistently, and better than anyone else. And if a certain tool, tactic, or trend helps us achieve that, then it’s perfectly fine to obsess over those toppings at that point.

So, as content marketers, let’s view ourselves as problem solvers who just so happen to have content and a bunch of related technologies and tactics in our toolbox. And when we obsess over them, it’s done in the context of solving a specific problem for our buyer.

In the end, don’t start with the leads you need or the views you want. Don’t start with the content types you should create. Don’t start with the flavor of the week in the marketing echo chamber or the latest buzzword or the shiniest technology.

Don’t start with any of that.

Start with your customers.

Want to rethink your approach to your content marketing’s “ice cream” or learn more about all the toppings? Learn more from Jay Acunzo and dozens of experts at CMW through our Video on Demand portal.

Cover image courtesy of Joseph Kalinowski/Content Marketing Institute

The post Twitter’s Founder Unintentionally Gave Content Marketers the Best Advice Ever appeared first on Content Marketing Institute.

You’d think there would’ve been more people like me at the Brand Innovators “mega-trends” in digital marketing conference. In fairness, the event was targeted at top digital marketers who work at leading consumer brands and agencies. So what was a B2B marketer like me doing there?

I wanted a glimpse into the future of B2B marketing.

I know what you’re thinking, “When it comes to marketing isn’t B2B different than B2C?” There’s no question pitching technology software is worlds apart from promoting laundry detergent. The B2B buying process is far more complex and involves a number of decision makers. On the other hand, who’s doing the buying?

It’s people like you and me.

And we want authentic and helpful content that breaks through the “me-too” marketing messages that we’re inundated with every day. We want to engage with vendors where and when it’s most convenient for us, not them. We like to hear about the products and services that our friends and colleagues recommend.

Guess what?

These are the same issues facing brand marketers, and they’re starting to figure this out in a way that moves the dial with target audiences.

B2B marketers? Not so much.

We’re still struggling with implementing the basics of content marketing and social media. Our “Holy Grail” is NOT to emotionally connect and inspire customers where and when they want, it’s to successfully implement “best practices” on our terms … even though you can never win by doing best practices alone.

What Should B2B Marketers Focus On?

That’s why I look to brand marketers to get insights into what B2B marketers should start focusing on now — before they become best practices for everyone else.

With that in mind, here are seven ways that B2B marketers need to think more like brand marketers:

1. Tell stories with content marketing

Brand marketers understand that stories are how people learn, create an emotional connection and get moved to action. So they are increasingly making their content about customers (hopes, dreams, challenges), not about the products they sell. What’s the bottom line? B2B marketers must think more like storytellers and less like product marketers.

2. Engage with video

Brand marketers are leveraging the power of video to drive engagement. For them, it’s all about YouTube, Facebook, Vine and Instagram for getting their content viewed, shared and talked about. What about B2B marketers? Still too focused on webinars, white papers and case studies even though video works for lead generation.

3. Think mobile first

Brand marketers are integrating mobile into everything they do. Whether it’s investing in apps, making mobile-friendly websites or buying mobile advertising. Buyers are watching more videos, reading more content and doing more product research, on their phones. What should B2B marketers do? Start thinking mobile first. For example, when was the last time you checked how your website looks on your phone?

4. Start mobilizing brand advocates

It’s not only consumer brands such as Apple, Harley Davidson and Starbucks that have customers passionate enough to recommend their products or services. Every company has brand advocates, even those that sell to other businesses. B2B marketers need to make identifying and mobilizing advocates a priority. Why? There’s no one more effective at championing our products and services than our customers.

5. Invest in social customer service

Brand marketers understand that their company’s reputation is increasingly dependent on providing awesome customer service. And where do customers want to engage? On social media, of course. And business buyers are becoming more like consumers in terms of what they expect from the companies that serve them. The time has come to figure out your social care strategy.

6. Tap into the power of earned media

Brand marketers value the credibility, brand awareness and website traffic that’s generated when online publications write about their companies. They view PR and earned media as a critical component to achieving their marketing goals. However, for many B2B marketers the connection between PR and sales results seems tenuous at best, and they don’t even talk about earned media. The result? Traditional paid media is still the (expensive) go to method for getting the word out.

7. Leverage social advertising

Brand marketers are now investing heavily in advertising on Facebook and Twitter to reach consumers where they are most active and engaged. What about B2B marketers? They need to move beyond the traditional B2B ad networks, email marketing programs and paid media sponsorships and instead begin leveraging social advertising to generate leads.

Now It’s Your Turn

How are you learning from brand marketers to improve your B2B marketing programs? Are you too focused on best practices and not enough on truly reaching and engaging your target buyers?

(Note: this article was first published on CMSWire)

Want to learn more about what digital marketers are up to? Check out: How Digital Marketers Engage on Twitter

On Wednesday, Dropbox unveiled a new API (see our API explainer) intended to let large corporate clients tie third-party security tools into Dropbox 's cloud storage. Next week, its rival Box plans its own security announcement aimed at helping employees at big organization collaborate and manage their cloud-based information in a secure way.

It's the latest skirmish between the leading independent providers of cloud storage. Dropbox, which claims more than 300 million users, dominates among consumers. But it has struggled in its attempts to take on Box, which focused on big-company customers from its inception. (Both companies face additional competition from increasingly cheap Google and Microsoft cloud-storage services.)

See also: Dropbox For Teams Isn't Ready To Take On Box

Dropbox first debuted its business service, then known as Dropbox for Teams, in 2011. In early 2013 it launched a more serious foray into the corporate world with its renamed Dropbox for Business service. Its most recent upgrades to that service added security features and made it much easier for users to keep business and personal files separate on Dropbox, but still fell short on collaboration features and the use of third-party corporate-grade apps.

See also: All Your Files Are Belong To Dropbox

The new API—dubbed, naturally, the Dropbox for Business API—goes part of the way toward closing that gap. It already offers more than 20 enterprise integrations, many with a heavy emphasis on security, according to Dropbox.

The new API is launching with several integrated corporate applications related to security—for instance, ones that cover legal functions such as electronic discovery and "legal hold," data loss prevention, management of digital rights for copyrighted material, identity management and so on.

Box says it will fire back next week with an announcement detailing new ways companies can secure their cloud data. Tellingly, Box plans to emphasize secure-collaboration features, an area where Dropbox for Business has traditionally been weak.

The new API is unlikely to affect present Dropbox for Business pricing, which is $15 per user with a minimum of five users. Some current Dropbox for Business customers include News Corp, Spotify, Under Armour, and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. 

Lead photo by Rupert Ganzer