It’s here….Part 4: What makes a sales team that grows fast, is resilient through ups & downs and creates for itself all the great sales talent you need?
Including –
Read more on Download Part 4 Of The “Triple Guide” On Building an Epic, Scalable Sales Team…
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If you have a full-service investment account at a Canadian brokerage, your advisor has probably approached you in recent months to discuss the option of signing up for what is called a “fee-based account.”
This means that you would be charged an annual fee of somewhere between 1-1.5% of the assets under advisement (AUA) at the brokerage, rather than paying commissions on individual buy and sell transactions.
I am often asked which type of account — fee-based vs. commission-based — is better from the investor’s point of view. The answer, as with most good questions, is that it depends.
The first element in your consideration must be how often you trade.
If you trade often, and are in a commission-based account, you are paying fees on each transaction that can chip away a significant portion of any gains.
This is referred to in the industry as “friction,” and is a cost that institutional investors are keenly aware of and always trying to manage downwards.
Who can say whether the volume of trading in their clients’ accounts would have been lower if there was zero impact on their compensation?
Active trader friction adds up to significantly more than 1% of AUA per year, so switching to a fee-based model could save you a lot of money over the course of time, and there will not be marginal costs associated with each trade you make.
If, however, you and your advisor are more of the “buy-and-hold” types, then your annual trading commissions are probably far less than 1%.
In this instance, you would be much better off sticking with a commission-based account.
But many investors use a strategy that is more of a hybrid between buy-and-hold and active trading.
They often have a basket of dividend-paying equities that they expect to hold forever, and another basket of “good idea” investments that is more opportunistic and involves periodic trading.
This scenario is more complicated, since these investors want to minimize costs in both buckets, which cannot be done in a single account.
As a result, it may be most advantageous to open up two accounts, one commission-based account for the buy-and-hold assets, and another fee-based account for the transaction-oriented holdings.
This has the benefit of reducing friction (or, at least, adding certainty to how much friction there is) in one account while avoiding unnecessary fees in the other.
From the brokerages’ perspective, it is always advantageous to have all of their clients in fee-based accounts.
There are a number of reasons for this, but the primary one is the predictability of cash flows that fee-based accounts provide that commission-based accounts do not.
Since there are a lot more Canadians with long-term objectives and buy-and-hold mentalities than those trying to beat the markets (and suffer the consequences of paying taxes in real time) through active trading, there is no doubt that universal fee-based accounts would lead to higher profits (theirs, that is, not yours) in addition to more predictability.
Of course, this all assumes that an advisor’s behaviour would be the same under either type of account. Since even the most honest of us are still motivated by money, one should consider how an advisor might be motivated to act in either situation.
With transaction-based accounts, advisors have forever faced the obvious conflict of getting paid more to trade than not to trade, meaning that acting in the best interest of their clients could well cost these advisors money over the long term.
Even though the vast majority of advisors have the best interests of their clients at heart, they are still human. Who can say whether the volume of trading in their clients’ accounts would have been lower if there was zero impact on their compensation?
Conversely, when clients have fee-based accounts, advisors have a different motivating factor: value. If they don’t trade at all, then a client might rightly ask, “Why am I paying these annual fees for nothing?”
Consequently, the advisor is motivated to advise clients to trade more than they might under other circumstances to justify the fees being collected.
There is no easy nor obvious answer to the fee-based vs. commission-based conundrum.
But unless you don’t actually seek or follow the advice of your advisor (in which case, you would be far better off keeping everything in a discount account), remember that you need to pay for good advice, one way or another.
If you try to game your way to lower fees by having multiple accounts and always seek the cheapest solution, don’t be surprised when you don’t get the service you deserve and require.
Instead, try to quantify what your advisor’s counsel is worth to you and try to keep your annual fees, whether in the form of commissions or annual fees, within that range.
This way, you will sleep well knowing that your advisor is being adequately compensated for the provision of good service and you are being well rewarded, on an after-fee basis, for the risk taken in your investing endeavours.
David Kaufman is president of Westcourt Capital Corp., a portfolio manager specializing in traditional and alternative asset classes and investment strategies. He can be contacted at drk@westcourtcapital.com.
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We all know this story, or some variation of it.
Will Geer teaches Robert Redford in Jeremiah Johnson
Back in the wilderness days, a mountain man pulls fish out of a creek bed, one after the other with seemingly little effort. He’s made a bunch of traps out of brush and twigs and has set them in a prime fish-feeding hole. And now he’s reaping the harvest.
A starving homesteader comes upon the mountain man and begs him for help. The mountain man notices that that homesteader has on a nice winter coat, one in far better condition than his own.
The mountain man now faces a bunch of choices. He can:
What are the pros and cons of each of these decisions? What characterization choices would you have if you were writing this story? Let’s break them down.
For the First Scenario:
If he refuses to help the homesteader, the mountain man will definitely keep his territory to himself. There’s little chance that the homesteader (or his family camped in the valley below, waiting for their provider to bring home food) will survive the winter.
By ignoring the cry for help, the mountain man will continue to rule his world. But on the flip side, he will have no allies. If he needs help someday (and his delicate détente with the Crow Nation could fall apart very easily), there will be no homesteader nearby to come to his aid.
In terms of characterization, if we were to look at this scenario from the point of view of an audience, what would they think? Could we put a positive or negative charge on the two characters in terms of their external and internal well being from the audience’s point of view? That is, how might an audience interpret the external and internal conditions of these two characters?
The mountain man would have a positive “+” external charge, right? He’s got his food and he lords over his territory. He’s powerful and self-sufficient. But with his choice to ignore the homesteader’s plea for help, he’d take on a negative “-“ internal charge for the audience. Denying help to a fellow human in need is universally frowned upon. So for scenario number one, the mountain man would get a “+” external and a “-“ internal score.
What about the homesteader?
The homesteader’s external and internal states of being are both negative. Not only is he starving externally, he’s quit on himself. He’s begging for food from a more capable third party instead of finding his own and/or offering a service in exchange for help. He’s weak externally and internally. Negative/negative.
So in this first scene scenario the shift of charge for the mountain man moves from unknown/unknown at the beginning to positive external/negative internal after his decision. And for the homesteader it moves from unknown/unknown to negative external/negative internal after being denied aid.
If we were to keep score (and we should if we are a writer), it would come out like this:
MM +/-
H -/-
Scenario Two.
If the mountain man trades his fish for the homesteader’s winter coat, he will doubly win externally. He’ll get a better coat and not have to give up much in return. So our audience judges his external state “++.” He’s still lord of the mountain and he’s even in better shape at the end of the scene, because he has a better coat.
But this scenario will also make him negative in terms of his internal state of being too, wouldn’t it? Not only is the mountain man indifferent to the suffering of another, he’s ruthless enough to take advantage of a starving man to improve his own circumstances. If he chose to just take the coat and not give the homesteader any fish in return, well we’d have a villain, right?
So the mountain man’s unknown/unknown moves to ++/- by scene’s end in the trade for fish scenario.
What about the homesteader?
With one meal’s worth of fish, the homesteader and his family won’t increase their chances of survival all that much. They will probably end up dying just a little bit later than they would if the mountain man refused the fish. So the external state of being for the homesteader remains negative. “-“
It is not doubly negative because the fish increases his chances of survival in the short-term, but the loss of the coat decreases his chances of survival. I’d call that a wash. But what happens internally for the homesteader if he gives up his coat for the fish? It moves from negative to positive. Here’s why.
If the homesteader gives up his coat in order to get food for his family, he’s sacrificing himself for others. That is a heroic choice. So our audience now has a different opinion of this guy. He may be a terrible outdoorsman and wildly irresponsible for bringing his family into this impossible situation, but he isn’t a coward. He understands that it is his job to get himself and his family out of the mess he’s created, so he’s willing to pay the price necessary to increase the chances of survival of his family. And that price is the decrease in his personal chances of survival. So the homesteader now has a negative external and a positive internal state of being.
MM ++/-
H -/+
Scenario Three:
What if the mountain man just gives the fish to the homesteader without any strings attached?
The mountain man remains positive in his external and now also is positive in his internal too. Not wildly positive, but positive. He cares enough about his fellow man to give away some of his food. The audience will see that as a humane decision.
As for the homesteader who does not have to sacrifice anything to get the fish, he’s pretty much akin to his state of being in the first scenario, negative/negative.
MM +/+
H -/-
Scenario Four:
What about the fish trap trade for the winter coat?
The mountain man’s external remains positive, but it’s not double positive. Yes, he gets the new coat, but he will now have to make himself some new traps. What about his internal state of being?
It’s ambiguous, isn’t it?
Some audience members will see his trade as opportunistic/cynical. Without the winter coat, the homesteader’s external condition will substantially decrease and some would say that the mountain man is definitely gaining something larger than he’s giving.
But other audience members will view the trade as fair. Traps/food procurement for the long term is as valuable as a hearty winter coat. More valuable in my opinion.
What about the homesteader?
If the homesteader won’t give up his coat in exchange for the tools necessary to feed his family (even if he dies, they’ll probably survive), then his internal will be double negative as will his external.
Trade is Agreed Trade is Denied
MM +/? MM +/?
H +/+ H –/–
Scenario Five:
Selling the traps to the homesteader in exchange for some future service is a very interesting choice for the mountain man (or the writer telling the story). It’s interesting because it suspends the internal judgment of the mountain man for the audience.
While his external will remain positive (the mountain man knows how to survive), the audience will be in the dark about what the true motivations of the mountain man are. Is he setting up the homesteader for a serious fall or exploitation? Or is he a benevolent tyrant of sorts who merely wishes to hold the favor over the homesteader in order to protect his own kingdom?
What about the homesteader?
The homesteader agreeing to this deal moves from a negative external to a positive external and I would say a negative internal to an ambiguous internal. We don’t know much about the homesteader’s internal state of being either by the end of this scenario. Will he renege on the promise to do the service if the mountain man is no longer as dominant a force down the road? Will he sacrifice the good of his family to serve the mountain man? We just don’t know.
This scenario is a wonderful way to inject narrative drive into your story. You can’t help but wonder what is going to happen when this favor comes home to roost. Charles Dickens used this set up famously in Great Expectations.
There is a reason why Mario Puzo began The Godfather with the trading of favors. If you are like me when I first read the book, I had no idea what Don Corleone would want in the future from the undertaker who comes to him for “justice.” When Puzo pays off that set up later on in the novel, you find yourself completely enthralled by the Don Corleone figure.
So here is the score for the “Corleone” option:
MM +/?
H +/?
Scenario Six:
In this scenario, we have a trade variation which results in a positive external for the mountain man (he’s still master of his territory, plus he has a new coat that he has arranged as compensation for his taking the time to teach the homesteader) and a positive for his internal, he’s helped his fellow man learn how to fend for himself.
The homesteader now has a positive external. Despite losing his coat, he’s learned how to feed himself and his family. All he has to do is survive the winter without his best coat and he should be okay. He also has a positive internal. He’s sacrificed himself for the good of his family.
MM +/+
H +/+
Scenario Seven:
The mountain teaches the homesteader how to fish with no strings attached.
In this case, the mountain man’s internal charge is ambiguous…dependent upon the point of view of the audience member. The audience could see the mountain man’s choice to teach without compensation as a positive. He’s chosen to gift the homesteader with the knowledge that he’s painstakingly learned himself. But the choice would probably elicit just as many suspicions about his motivations by the audience too, thus making it ambiguous.
Now teaching the homesteader without getting anything in return is definitely a negative for the mountain man’s external. With the trap knowledge, the homesteader will be competing with the mountain man for food. So the mountain man is trusting in the goodness of the homesteader not to take advantage of him and to treat his gift with respect. Or he’s setting him up for something else. We just don’t know yet. So the choice to gift the skill sets up additional questions.
The same thing goes for the homesteader. We really don’t know what this guy will do now that he has the advantage of keeping his winter coat and being able to feed his family.
So with this last scenario we end up like this:
MM -/?
H +/?
As you can see, the simple set up of a man with fish and a man without fish asking for help has quite a number of dramatic possibilities.
Like a seasoned Game-theorist, the writer must pick apart the choices each of the characters he’s introduced into the scene may or may not take. Then the writer must make the perfect choice for the particular scene she is writing. An Act Climax scene choice will certainly differ from a scene choice that serves to simply progressively complicate an Act.
The way writers make those perfect choices is hard work. They detail and analyze how an audience would judge the external and internal charges of a particular scenario. And then they pick the one that best moves their story forward. The way forward is by making choices that raise as many questions (if not more) than they answer.
This is how to think like a writer.
[Join www.storygrid.com to read more of Shawn’s Stuff]
A team of Morgan Stanley analysts flew to Detroit recently to take meetings with the investor relations staff of the Big 3 car companies, and came away believing that Uber was about to transform everything. "The highlight of our trip, however, was the 3 Uber trips we took between meetings," the note says.
We haven't seen such a glowing note to investors in a long time. Taxis and car rental companies are going to die, the Morgan Stanley team suspects:
Now that Morgan Stanley allows employees to submit Uber and UberX journeys as reimbursable expenses, we may never use a traditional car service or rent-a-car again unless absolutely necessary.
That sentence was bolded in the note, so that readers don't miss it.
What seems to have happened is that Adam Jonas, Ravi Shanker, Paresh Jain, and Neel Mehta decided to use Uber in Detroit instead of regular taxis. Instantly, they noticed that taking Uber from the airport and around Michigan was about half the price of regular taxi service. They also really liked their drivers, whom they profiled briefly in the note. It sounds like the team had a good time "Rollin' in the 'D'" (yes, that's the title of the note):
Our champagne-colored 2005 Toyota Camry pulled up in front of PF Chang's to take us to the heart of downtown Detroit to GM's headquarters in the Renaissance Center.
PF Chang's!
Anyway, the point is that all three Uber drivers they encountered told them a similar story: Uber was the only job they could take that offered them enough flexibility to handle their other commitments. Regular jobs — with their rigid schedules — made it impossible for the drivers to take care of their kids, attend class, and renovate a house, respectively. Because Uber allows these people to earn wages they can't normally, the team believe it may unlock some economic growth that is suppressed by more traditional jobs:
... there may be even deeper implications for how people move around, live and work. ... Our journey through Southeast Michigan further opened our eyes to the birth of a shared economy in a region starving for growth and opportunity.
At Business Insider, we're familiar with these sudden road-to-Damascus conversions in favour of Uber. We had one ourselves earlier this year. Uber isn't just a car-ride service. What makes it huge, and justifies its astonishing $17 billion valuation is a company, is that it's basically a geographic supply-and-demand matching engine that guarantees a level of trust between strangers (because both driver and passenger can get the real identity of the othert party, and both parties can rate and ultimately exclude the others from the system for bad behavior.) It's not just about cars, in other words. Uber's software could be used for any transaction involving the physical exchange of goods or services between strangers who need to trust each other.
To underscore the impression Uber left on them, the Morgan Stanley team referenced the fact that the folks at Ford also believe Uber is going to change everything:
In a recent presentation, Ford Motor Company said that alternative mobility/car sharing/ride sharing is the single most disruptive trend to the automotive business model. We agree.
A new service on Twitter allows users to reserve a hotel room with just a couple of tweets.
The system is called #TweetStay, and is from the hotel booking website Stayful.
Here is how it works:
First the costumer tweets their request to a Stayful account, including destination, price range, arrival date and number of nights. At this point, the Stayful team negotiates a private deal with the hotels available in town, securing a cheaper offer than most of the costumers would get on their own.
Here is how it looked when we tried to book a room in Seattle for Thanksgiving.
The only condition is that the trip must be within 30 days.
Once Stayful has secured a handful of deals, it tweets back the top three to the costumer, who can choose their preferred option and book it on a payment page, all managed by Stayful. There is no direct exchange of money between the costumer and the hotel.
Here is how the different options are presented. You have 8 minutes to complete your booking, because every deal is negotiated in real time.
The perk is that there is no need to register or open an account, and a booking normally takes about two clicks.
Stayful was founded last year by Cheryl Rosner, who worked at Expedia and Hotel.com. Her co-founder Shariq Minhas also worked at Expedia, as well as Hotwire. The company manages a huge database of independent, boutique hotels in most American cities, and claims it can secure the best deal on the market: "Since we negotiate prices behind the scenes in real time, we can offer #TweetStay costumers a better price that they can find online, and the process couldn't be simpler..." says Cheryl.
Deals tend to vary from city to city, but the company doesn't look at the cheapest areas: the budget class lists deals normally below $100 (£65) per night, the middle range is up to $150-$180 (£95-£115), and anything higher is premium.
At the moment, the #TweetStay service is available in 24 North American destinations (you can read the whole list here), but plans to expand rapidly. It will launch in Europe next year.
Here is a recap:
1. Tweet your booking: "@stayful #TweetStay I am going to [destination] and want a [category] hotel, [mm/dd], [#nights]
2. Wait for the options selected by Stayful. In the case presented below, we only had one option: Boston looks crowded for Thanksgiving!
3. Click your preferred option and book.
4. Pack your luggage, call your travelmates, you are ready to go!
The talk is all about marketing automation nowadays. On a group of email geeks, or leading email proponents depending on your view, that I hang out in called Only Influencers, the question was asked this week; are email blasts dead? This led to an interesting debate which, to my mind, completely debunked the myth which is marketing automation. For me, marketing automation is a term, thought up by email marketing companies who want to muddy the waters enough to get a foothold in the market.
Let me explain. Almost from the inception of email broadcasting companies like Saber Software (who became e2 communications) were using “marketing automation” to sell software services online – only they called it adaptive sequenced messaging and it was only one of the elements of email broadcasting which we now call marketing automation. Jeff Farris, former CEO of Saber and founder of esp e2 Communications in 1997 explained that to sell more software online they began offering free trials of their software via download, something we take for granted now but which was evolutionary in 1994. Supporting this program was marketing automation: six sequenced emails triggered over a 31 day period staring with a welcome email and followed by a ‘hope you’re getting on well with the product’, ‘do you need any help’, ‘buy now email for a discount’, ‘your free license has expired, click here to buy’ emails and finally ‘you already have the software downloaded, why not buy it at the new discounted price? email.
Saber now just wanted to shift licenses because they had already incurred the cost of sale. If during this period you had already purchased the software then you were “automatically” moved onto a different support path rather than sales path and received a whole new range of emails – marketing automation or as Jeff called it Adaptive Sequenced Messaging. Starting to sound like the title of our last blog…what’s in a name!
The point of the story is marketing automation has been around as long as email marketing has and it is an essential part of the mix but it isn’t here to replace email blasts, it is here to augment them. When it comes to bulk blasts, and I am deliberately using the terms email marketers like to shy away from, I am fully behind targeting through list segmentation and dynamic content driven by data and utilising a preference engine to determine who gets what copy and images. So is an API that plugs straight into the CRM tool so that you can optimise the content and creative marketing automation or an email blast? I think it depends on your point of view but for me it is one and the same thing.
There is also a place for an email blast that everyone on your receives. Christmas campaigns and sales for example should go to everyone on your database. Just because I normally buy diet coke doesn’t mean tomorrow I might not want a beer. So for me marketing automation in email has always been a part of the mix but that’s all it should be; just one of the tools in a successful email marketers armoury. Use it, embrace it, love it, but don’t exclude the good old fashioned blast because of it.
In my next blog I am going to take a look at the types of marketing automation you could be benefiting from and how you integrate them into your email toolbox.
When the iPhone started taking over the US in 2008, Nick Walter was in Japan doing Mormon missionary work without a smartphone.
"When I got home, my dad was super nice and bought me an iPhone 4, and it was my first introduction to apps," the 25-year-old remembers. "I was like, 'These things are crazy! They can do anything!'"
Since that first introduction, Walter, who graduated from Brigham Young University with an information systems major (which includes elements of both computer science and business), learned to code and started doing freelance work building iPhone apps for local companies in Utah.
About four years later, Walter was reading "The 4-Hour Workweek" and was inspired by the idea of creating a business that wasn't super time intensive. Author Tim Ferriss recommended creating an online course, but Walter didn't know what he could possibly teach — until Apple announced its first new programming language in over a decade, called Swift.
"From the day they announced it, everyone was on an equal field trying to learn," Walter recalls. "I thought, 'Personally, I'd love to learn it just for fun and future stuff, but I have an opportunity to be one of the first people to teach it to other people. Maybe I could make a class where I'm learning as I teach.'"
Walter spent four days reading Apple's documentation of Swift, "kind of translating into English and giving some extra examples." Apple announced its release on June 2, and four days later Walter posted 50 videos, or one full course, to the online education site Udemy. It was an introduction to Swift for beginners, called Swift By Examples.
That first month, his course earned him $45,000.
Udemy charges students a set price — in this case, $99 — to access the online course as many times as they want. If these students find the course through a link sent by Walter, he gets 97% of the money. If they find the course through Udemy, he splits the money 50/50 with the company.
Not every month was quite so dramatic. Walter estimates that the following month, he earned $7,500, then $5,000 the month after that. His earnings evened out around $3,000 for a few months, until he put up his second course in September: How To Make iPhone Apps, for $199.
That month, he earned $66,000, a full year's salary for many people.
One might imagine a 25-year-old with that kind of windfall would head straight to Vegas. But Walter, who is a longtime fan of financial guru Dave Ramsey and highly recommends "The Total Money Makeover," did nothing of the sort. "I bought a 2010 Toyota Corolla," he says. "I got my full emergency fund set up, and I've just been investing the rest in mutual funds."
Today, more than 8,500 people have taken the original course on Swift, and more than 3,500 have gone through the iPhone class.
Next, Walter plans to publish a class on how to build apps for the Apple watch (he's now running a Kickstarter campaign to fund its creation) in which, he says, there's a lot of opportunity for someone who wants to create the kind of income stream that he has.
"It reminds me of when apps first came out for the iPhone," he says. "I think there's a real opportunity for people to make apps for this new watch and be the first-comer there. Someone has to be the first weather app or the first jogging app. If you can move quickly enough, you're bound to have an awesome advantage."
SEE ALSO: 16 Things That Make You A Financial Adult
Join the conversation about this story »
NOW WATCH: JAMES ALTUCHER: Why investing in a 401(k) is a complete waste of money
“We’re not quite ready to make a big announcement on the cell and battery gigafactory, but we are exploring a lot of different options right now,” Tesla Motors CEO Elon Musk told investors during his company’s quarterly earnings call last November. “If I were to guess, I think we would do that, that soup-to-nuts gigafactory…that factory would most likely be in North America, but we are investigating other options as well.”
Behind the scenes, as Musk uttered those words, there were seven states scrambling to submit proposals to host Tesla’s “gigafactory,” the ambitious manufacturing facility required to build the batteries in Tesla’s electric cars for the foreseeable future.
According to Fortune’s Peter Elkind, who published the incredible in-depth story on how Musk manipulated several states into bidding on his massive plant powered completely by renewable energy, Musk lured business recruiters from each state by charming them, inviting them to test drive the Model S, restricting their abilities to take notes during his pitches, and then forcing them to submit their proposals in just three weeks' time.
Once Tesla received all the proposals from the states — including California, Nevada, Texas, New Mexico, Oregon, Washington, and Arizona — Musk informed the states Tesla would make a business decision in “one to two weeks,” but kept them waiting for over a month.
Keeping the states’ officials in the dark was part of Musk’s strategy. Joey Grisham, president of an economic development corporation in Texas, says he didn’t even know who he was courting; Tesla was only identified as a “publicly traded high tech company.”
But states were aware of the competition between them— and there was even in-state competition. For example, Grisham says he had heard of rumors of Ross Perot Jr. personally pitching a few different sites to Musk. Eventually, Tesla sent “a team of company executives and financial experts” to show a PowerPoint presentation comparing Grisham’s proposed area versus “The Competition,” keeping that leading prospect unnamed.
This forced Grisham, and other states, to negotiate with Tesla in the dark.
“As you can tell, we want you in Hutto!” Grisham wrote to the Tesla team after the presentation. “I believe Tesla fits the Austin region and we will do EVERYTHING in our power to help make that a reality!”
Other states tried to seduce Tesla: Nevada chartered a 10-passenger Learjet for $10,000, offering to pick up Tesla’s team in California and show them around the state. Tesla agreed to the jet, but “an emergency call halted it” as the plane was taxiing toward the runway. Tesla's team took a commercial plane to Nevada, instead.
After narrowing down the list to Texas, Arizona, New Mexico, and Nevada, Musk upped the ante. Now he didn’t just want 90 acres; he wanted 1,000. This forced all the contenders to become super aggressive, offering to provide massive amounts of energy until the gigafactory could run on its own renewable fuels. Even California, which had been eliminated from contention, “begged Tesla to reconsider, promising to come up with a sweet offer and expedite the dreaded environmental reviews.”
Tesla kept asking for more: free land, a 25% electricity discount, and “zero taxes of any sort for 20 years.” In the meantime, Musk was bluffing on earnings calls, saying Tesla planned to break ground on “multiple” gigafactory sites. This forced states to redouble their efforts as they believed they were approaching a deal with the company.
In a dazzling act of manpower, Nevada convinced Tesla it would be “the bride.” With Tesla’s money and Nevada’s planners, the state summoned “an armada of 200 earthmovers and graders” to work 24 hours a day, seven days a week, on the thousand-acre site, displacing more than 3 million cubic yards of dirt in the process. It even had drones flying overhead to take photos and video showing how the project was progressing. State officials later called it a “biblical” show of force.
But just as Nevada was about to close the deal, Musk once again upped his demands. He asked for $500 million in cash, instead of some of the tax breaks for electricity. It’s unclear why he changed his mind, but it may have had to do with a deal struck days prior, when the state of Tennessee announced it would give $230 million to Volkswagen to help it build a $600 million plant in Chattanooga. But Nevada, with a budget of $6.5 billion, put everything on halt, sending its 240 construction workers home, and walking away from the deal.
In the ensuing earnings call in July, Musk told analysts it had indeed broken ground in Nevada, but said “the ball is in the court of the governor and the state legislature.”
Other states kept pitching Tesla in the meantime: Texas Gov. Rick Perry drove a Tesla up to Sacramento to show he was serious about fighting for the factory; the mayor of Tuscon, Ariz., sent a building permit “good for a $3 billion, 5-million-square-foot building at an Arizona address ‘to be determined.’"
But even as the posturing ensued, and Nevada became unsure of its position, Tesla couldn’t find any other takers at the $500 million in cash asking price, so it finalized the deal. Tesla would get 980 acres, which were level thanks to the previous groundbreaking effort. The state would pay to extend US Route 50, a major highway, to reach the four-lane road leading to the industrial park, and Tesla would receive $1.1 billion in abatements, including 20 years without having to pay a sales tax on equipment and construction materials, 10 years without property taxes, and a 10-year break on payroll taxes. And it would also receive $8 million in electricity discounts.
In return, Tesla agreed to give $37.5 million to local public schools in Nevada starting in 2018, donate $1 million to battery research at the University of Nevada, and wait for its subsidies to kick in only after the company reached its targets for job creation and investment.
With all of those subsidies and abatements — as well as a final $195 million in transferable tax credits and the $113 million in highway funds — Nevada's total tally for landing Tesla was a whopping $1.4 billion.
The deal was done in August, but other states didn’t know Tesla had made its choice until Labor Day.
You can visit Fortune to learn more about this story.
SEE ALSO: This 90-Second Video Will Convince You That Tesla Just Unveiled The Future Of Driving
SEE ALSO: The Making Of Tesla: Invention, Betrayal, And The Birth Of The Roadster
There are about 7 billion people on Earth.
Over 864 million of them check Facebook every day.
That's an awful lot of daily habits, and it's part of the reason Facebook is worth some $200 billion.
So why is the social network so addictive?
Nir Eyal, a multiple-time entrepreneur and Stanford Graduate School of Business lecturer, has written a book that answers that high-stakes question.
As its title promises, "Hooked: How to Build Habit-Forming Products" reveals the psychological processes that occur when our favorite products become integrated into our daily routines.
We talked with Eyal about why habits are so crucial to doing effective business, why branding is unnecessary, and how Facebook became a part of our everyday lives.
Here's an edited transcript of our interview.
BUSINESS INSIDER: At the start of the book you write that "companies find that their economic value is a function of the strength of the habits they create." Why do you make this claim?
NIR EYAL: The cold truth is that the best products don't always win. Many times it's the products that have the ability to keep users coming back and using them without conscious thought and using them out of habit, are the ones that keep us coming back.
Let's say Google. Google is one of these products that I think is incredibly habit-forming, and it's the kind of product that shows this characteristic of something that we use with little or no conscious thought.
You don't even consider whether there's a better search engine out there for people who are habituated to Google, and the evidence is in head-to-head comparisons, when you strip out the branding, people can't tell the difference between Bing and Google. It's a 50/50 split. And yet Google dominates the market with something around 87% of the market share. So these habits because a huge competitive advantage, and one of those advantages is that they keep competition out.
BI: What's the difference between habit-forming products and something like brand loyalty?
NE: Don Draper-style advertising is really only available to the biggest brands out there. It's only commodity goods that use those kind of messages because they have to differentiate goods that are really hard to differentiate between — Shell gasoline versus Exxon, Coke versus Pepsi, Sprint versus TMobile, it's all the same thing! The only way they can really differentiate is through brand.
But you don't see many commercials for the greatest tech companies in the last five to 10 years because they're creating these associations not through brand impressions, but through experiences — and experiences form habits.
BI: Let's use a case study. More than 864 million people use Facebook every day, and a full 30% of Americans get all of their news on Facebook. How has Facebook become a habit for so many people?
NE: I think the main hook is pretty simple. What Facebook wants to create an association with is every time you're bored, every time you have a few minutes. We know that, psychologically speaking, boredom is painful. Whenever you're feeling bored, whenever you have a few extra minutes, this is a salve for that itch.
The internal trigger is boredom, and the external trigger are these notifications — every time someone posts something and you get a little jewel icon on your phone that says check Facebook.
Eventually you don't need those, because we just start checking those out of habit, but at the beginning we just get triggers from those. The action is as simple as opening the app.
I can alleviate my boredom, I can scratch that itch, just by scrolling through my newsfeed.
What photos do people post? What are the comments going to say? How many likes do people get? It's a slot machine with lots of variability of what I might find.
BI: How does the product keep you coming back?
NE: Through investment. Investment comes every time I like something or add a friend.
And by loading the next trigger. I'm loading the next trigger because when I send someone a message on Facebook, or I like something, or I comment on something, guess what Facebook gets to do?
They get to send me an external trigger, bringing me back, saying so and so replied to something that you were involved with. And you did it! You prompted that message; it's not Facebook spamming you. You posted a photo and someone liked it, come see it. Loading the next trigger is when they send you this external notification that you prompted and now you're passing through the hook once again, continuing through the same basic cycle. Forever and ever.
SEE ALSO: How To Form A Habit That Sticks
Here's what your planet looks like this morning:
1. Growth has come to a halt in Germany. GDP there grew just 0.1%. That's pathetic. Europe's economic powerhouse has run out of steam, it seems.
2. Richard Branson just made another £70 million. The IPO of challenger bank Virgin Money raised £1.25 billion overall.
3. Asian markets are up. Japan's Nikkei climbed again, closing up 0.56%. Hong Kong's Hang Seng is also currently up 0.13% just ahead of the close.
4. David Cameron is warning of more sanctions on Russia. Russia could face further sanctions if it does not commit to resolving the conflict in Ukraine, British Prime Minister David Cameron said Friday, as he called Moscow's actions "unacceptable".
5. The heirs to the Samsung fortune are cashing in on their stakes as succession looms. An IPO for a unit of Samsung put a value of 5.6 trillion won ($5.09 billion) on shares held by the Samsung Group's three heirs.
6. The US used spy planes to suck up data from citizens mobile phones. Everyone was targeted, the Wall Street Journal reports. Basically, the tin-foil hat people turned out to be right.
7. The Islamic State has announced it will mint its own currency. And yes, they've basically chosen a variation on the gold standard. "The highest-denominated 5 dinar coin is set to contain 21.25 grams of 21 carat gold, worth about $694," The Financial Times reports. “The purchasing power of the money they’re emitting will be wholly dependent on what the purchasing power of gold, silver and copper are,” a professor of economics at Johns Hopkins University told the FT.
8. People who leave Britain to go fight for Islamic State will be banned from coming back. PM David Cameron proposed the new law in a speech in Australia last night.
9. The market cap of Apple is now bigger than the entire Russian stock market. Bloomberg reports: "If you owned Apple Inc., and sold it, you could purchase the entire stock market of Russia, and still have enough change to buy every Russian an iPhone 6 Plus."
10. S&P gave a "junk" rating to Twitter's debt and its stock price dropped 5%. The ratings agency didn't like the company's cashflow. Twitter, naturally, disagrees.
And finally ...
It doesn't look good for AC/DC. The rock band's drummer was behaving erratically even before he was charged with threatening to kill someone, the band says. Bass player Cliff Williams told The Guardian, "We had a few issues before with him, even when we were recording it was hard even to get to him to do the recording ... And then he was supposed to show up to do promos with us, to do video shoots and a few shoots and a few other things, and he never showed up for that either. So, at this stage, it’s a pretty tough call for us.”
Email and social media can be a powerful combination. In order to really get the most value out of both channels, it’s important to look at them as complementary elements that speak to each other, creating a whole picture that’s greater than the sum of its parts. Cross-channel marketing is about aligning your branding, messaging, offers, and timing across multiple delivery points; for many brands, the two most effective channels to align are email and social media.
When you start integrating social media and email marketing, you’ll likely want to include links to your social networks. But what kind of links? There’s a difference between sharing and connecting on social media.
No matter what type of social link you’re providing, you need to make sure the value of sharing or connecting with your brand is very clear right up front, and that you’re using the social media platforms that make the most sense for your audience.
Of course, it can be easy to go wrong with social media – and when you do, the word spreads quickly. Companies just getting started with social often make mistakes that are easy to avoid, but the important thing to remember is to be honest and open about them, very quickly, instead of trying to cover up. Because, somehow, that rarely seems to work.
Here are some of the most common mistakes people make when combining social media with email marketing:
Always using social media to sell something. Your customers and prospects aren’t on Twitter because they’re shopping. They’re sharing. They’re learning and connecting. So if you spend all your time on social media shouting about how great your products and services are, you’ll alienate people pretty quickly. If someone has signed up for your promotional emails, that’s great. But once they click the link over to a social site, they’re probably not expecting the hard sell. Use that opportunity to give them content that’s useful and interesting, and gradually lead them to your website for deeper engagement and the chance to buy.
Letting your social site become a ghost town. The only thing worse than a company with zero presence on major social media sites in one with an out-of-date presence. A Facebook page that hasn’t been updated since they added pictures of the company picnic … two years ago. A Pinterest page with a few product photos from last year’s catalog. A LinkedIn page where the HR manager still posts job openings – and that’s about it. Once you’ve decided to invest in a social media presence, continue to do it, and make it a priority. If you find that your customers aren’t actually using Pinterest, that’s fine; stop posting. But don’t keep linking to your now-silent board in every email you send – the customers who click through will see how little effort you’ve put in to maintaining your presence.Once you get it right, social media can be a powerful ally for your email marketing campaigns. For example, it’s often a great way to introduce strangers to a landing page on your website where you invite them to sign up to receive your emails. Or you could direct people to a new infographic or quiz, taking them another step along a lead conversion path.
Remember to include the benefits of signing up for your email or connecting with your organization through social media. Because if you can’t think of a benefit, your audience won’t be able to either – and that means they’ll unfollow, dislike, and unsubscribe in a hurry.
Get the jump on it with this free toolkit:
As content marketers continue to put more emphasis on content promotion and distribution, it’s becoming increasingly difficult to amplify content. Some great pieces spread naturally, but it’s rare to display the right content pieces to the right people without first setting the table with effective amplification across paid, owned and earned channels.
Paid distribution is a repeatable and scalable way to amplify content, but you should still invest time looking for more efficient, organic forms of promotion to help drive down your overall distribution costs… like email.
I’m not talking about mass email marketing, though. I’m talking about employee email signatures.
Think of how many emails you send on a daily basis to relevant individuals and companies. Now multiply that by the number of employees in your company and just imagine the power that email signatures have as an owned content promotion channel.
On average, individuals send over 100 billion business emails per day; those impressions mean far more than what a display ad can deliver because it’s one-to-one communication with current or prospective customers and other relevant entities.
Marketers spend a lot of time and resources creating content and then either don’t do anything at all to promote their work, or just throw a bunch of money at it and hope it attracts the right kind of visitors and attention. Sound familiar?
We go through all the familiar forms of content promotion across all channels, but our email signatures are all too often overlooked, despite it being a constant stream of quality impressions.
To illustrate this, here’s a few examples of some companies taking advantage of their signatures:
At ProofHQ, we leveraged Xink’s campaign tool to help us distribute our whitepaper, 4 Insights Proven to Increase Marketing Agility, via our newsletter and have seen a steady uptick in downloads directly from our signatures, which otherwise wouldn’t have occurred.
Matthew Bellows, CEO of Yesware, does an outstanding job of promoting video-based customer testimonials of Yesware through his email signature, which helps create context for the conversations he’s having with prospects.
While promoting content through your email signature results in more traffic and downloads, it also serves as collateral which can assist your customer-facing teams in sales, marketing, client-services and support.
Getting in front of key individuals is a major part of any marketing campaign, so being able to effectively turn your email signature into a marketing channel is a huge advantage, and one where you can significantly drive down your cost-per-lead and cost-per-acquisition averages.
Promoting content through your signature is an excellent way to nurture prospects while increasing traffic, but it can also serve as a direct engagement platform.
For example, Tuft & Needle, a disruptive mattress company, implemented a customer feedback option through their support team’s email signatures, which is an incredibly powerful way to gauge customer happiness.
You can express your opinion on their services by choosing ‘Great’, ‘Okay’, and ‘Not Good’. This transparency and commitment to customer service serves the company’s brand and support team by creating more trust and engagement with both prospective and current customers.
When executing a content promotion strategy, it’s important to build context with as many of the right people as possible and to think through all the channels s that are feasible and appropriate to create a value-add conversation. While there are many ways to do this, email signatures provide a simple, cost-effective way to promote messages in a more passive manner and take advantage of a valuable owned channel in peer-to-peer email.
(Pochetti/Facebook)
Formal corporate fashion is dead. With tech whiz-kids in hoodies and jeans and the very real possibility of your boss strolling into the office in a short suit, we’ve come a long way since the days when the CEO uniform was a wide tie and wing-tips.
But despite this invasion of business casual, there’s still a market for conventional executive fashion. Some retailers are doubling down on tradition, opening upmarket menswear stores and expanding the colour palette for formal duds beyond the usual black. Pochetti, a Toronto-based e-commerce company, is looking to ride the re-formalization wave by focusing on a niche market: pocket squares.
MORE: Holt Renfrew targets male shoppers »
“I noticed that whenever somebody wore a suit they’d wear the suit, pants, tie, shirt, socks, shoes, belt, but they were always missing the pocket square,” explains Vatche Pirjanian, founder of Pochetti. “We believe your outfit isn’t complete without the pocket square.” After a year of selling individual accessories online, Pochetti is launching a subscription service today in which customers can sign up to receive a pocket square in the mail every month. The company hopes its “Squarescription” will tap into the same market for having personal care products delivered to the door that has proved so profitable for the likes of Dollar Shave Club.
Pirjanian discussed his company’s recent successes and plans for the future.
How many pocket squares have you sold so far?
Customer-wise we’ve had close to 1,500 unique customers and we’ve gone through about 8,000 orders so far, which is pretty good in a year. Our average items per order is about three-and-a-half. In Canada we offer free shipping, but a lot of our customers from the U.S. are seeing the value in placing multiple unit orders so they just pay for shipping one time. A lot of our clients are very happy with our turnaround and shipping time. If we get an order today, it ships the same day and usually arrives within the Toronto area the next day or elsewhere in Canada within two days.
What’s a “Squarescription?”
It’s something that we’ve wanted to do since the first day we started, but we’ve been working out the pricing, timing and logistics of shipping on a monthly basis to our customers. It’s like a magazine subscription. If a client wants to receive a pocket square every month, that’s fine. If they want one every two months, that’s fine as well. The options will be every month, two months, three months and six months.
What we’re going to do with the subscription product is have a questionnaire asking clients what styles and colours they like and hate, what colour suits they usually wear, if they wear them casually or at the office, what colour their shirts and ties are etcetera. We have a staff team of designers and wardrobe consultants to whom we’ll give those answers to help us pick the right kind of pocket square to go with the clients’ answers. As with all our products, if we send a customer a pocket square and they don’t like it, they can always send it back. If somebody doesn’t want to do the random thing, we’ll let them pick which ones they want to receive. There’s going to be a lot of choice involved with the Squarescription.
What’s the size of the market for this service?
I haven’t crunched the numbers, but in our mind it’s anybody that wears a suit essentially. We’re trying to make pocket squares a more relevant product, make it very mainstream and not only what the stuffy white-shirt guys would wear. We’re even going after women now. We have a big push online where we’re trying to get women to wear pocket squares as well, so we’ve taken some advertising shots of women wearing pocket squares with their blazers. That’s worked out quite well for us because we’ve got quite a high number of women clients who are not only buying for their significant others as gifts but they’re also buying them for themselves as well.
A lot of these subscription services are run out of bigger retail brands, or they’re collectives like Fancy. Are you looking to partner with someone bigger?
Part of our five-year plan was to spend the first year getting our brand up and running, to make a name for the Pochetti brand, but eventually we’d like to make Pochetti the place to go for pocket squares of any brand. We’d like to partner up with the Hugo Bosses and Armanis of the world and approach them with the proposition that if somebody is looking for a pocket square, we’re the place to go. People don’t call tissues ‘tissues,’ they call them ‘Kleenex.’ What we’re trying to instil in people is: it’s not a ‘pocket square,’ it’s a ‘Pochetti.’
The post Four questions for the founder of a subscription pocket square service appeared first on Canadian Business.
Getting more retweets is a great way to extend your reach and influence on the web.
Retweets may turn into gaining more followers, more visitors to your links, and more exposure for your brand.
Getting more and more of retweets is a mixture of art and science.
Now if you want to maximize your retweet potential your the best way is to have a catchy headline, clean English, and cool content to drive your tweet home.
In this article I’ll share top 20 tips to help you get more retweets.
Try these twitter tips out for yourself and watch as your tweets are retweeted far and wide!
How to get more retweets on Twitter starts with posting messages and content that will be of interest to your followers and have a high probability of being retweeted. It is pretty simple; people retweet info they find interesting. Find out what your niche market is interested in and then give it to them.
Place a retweet button on your website or blog to give your readers an option to retweet it if they find it interesting enough to share it with others. Digg Digg is a great WordPress plugin for your blog and it makes it very easy for your visitors to share your post on Twitter and other social networks with one click. As this scrolls along with your post so your visitors see it and act on it.
You can also use the @ sign to tag people in your network so that they would be notified of your new post. For example; @username I appreciate the info! A hashtag may be a keyword that is utilized often. You can even start your own hashtag! Using these two items increases the chances of your message gaining attention and to possibly get retweeted. Some people overuse hashtags so use them sparingly. Hashtags help others identify quality content quickly; again increasing your chances of obtaining more followers. Recent twitter study shows hashtags receive a 16% boost in retweets.
You can also simply ask your followers to retweet. Most people are willing to do favors by retweeting if they are asked to do it.
A few known effective call-for-action phrases for retweets are:
You can start by retweeting your followers content. Many of them will reciprocate by retweeting your content as well. If you always look to give more to others than you expect in return, the return is always greater in the end.
Like everything in life, what goes around comes around. Chris Brogan practices a 15:1 ratio when it comes to retweets — for every self-promotional tweet, he will help promote at least 15 tweets for his followers.
Casting your tweets at the right time is perhaps the most important factor of all. After all, there is no point pushing out tweets when none of your followers are tuned in, right? According to Dan Zarrella’s The Science of Retweets, 2 p.m. to 6 p.m. EST is the best time to ask for a retweet.
But wait! There is no one-size-fits–all solution for this. Your followers may not be living in the same time zone as Zarrella’s study samples. That’s when Tweriod comes in handy.
If you would like to reach people in different time zones, you can schedule some of your posts to be posted while you are away or sleeping. This is a great way to broaden your reach and have an opportunity for retweets in other areas of the world. You can schedule your retweets using SocialOomph or Twufer.com.
Do not forget to thank the followers who have retweeted your messages. People appreciate the recognition so posting a message thanking the people who have reposted your messages goes a long way in building the retweet relationship.
Make your posts as short, but meaningful, as possible. Short messages are easier to post and the retweeter would be able to add some comments as well. A good rule of thumb is to keep your tweets to 120 characters leaving 20 characters for those who retweet you to add a comment. There are approximately 55 million tweets posted daily to Twitter. Your aim is to make your tweet as interesting as possible to those that follow you.
Somtimes tweeters post multiple tweets in one fell swoop. They dump 10-15 tweets into their feed all at once. Whenever you do this, it makes it hard for people to concentrate on your post simultaneously. Additionally, some view this as spam when they see someone posting multiple tweets on the hour every hour. To maximize your retweet chances, space your tweets out.
After all it is called “social media’ for a reason. Respond to direct messages, retweets and interact with others who share content that you find engaging. Building relationships is my ULTIMATE retweet tip.
Quotes are good for retweets, especially if they strike a chord with your followers. Data shows quotes get a 19% boost in Retweets.
If you wish to build up your Twitter presence using quotes, try to dig up some great ones from the Internet. There are plenty of websites or blogs that collect series of quotes. And, it’s easy to find quotes using Google (just try “best quotes for [your topic]”).
Before you post a tweet, consider the terms and labels people are using.
Google Trends is handy when it comes to localizing your language. For example, the term “cookie law” is more frequently used to refer to the new law that came into force in the United Kingdom in 2011 instead of “cookie regulations” or “privacy law.” Hence, when you tweet about this incident, it’s best to use the phrase “cookie law” in order to resonate with your followers.
Dan Zarella’s study on over 30 millions retweets shows that the 20 most retweeted words are (in descending order):
If you are trying to get more retweets, consider using these favorable words/phrases more often.
Here are the 20 least retweetable words according to Dan Zarrella’s report:
Notice any trend here? Most (if not all) of these words are common-use words for conversations or to describe mundane activities.
Tweets using these words are simply a big turn off for retweets — c’mon, no one is interested in a tweet about your bedding time or what you are listening to on Sound Cloud — unless of course, you are Justin Bieber.
Based on data tweets with links tweet better than tweets without links. The reason for this may be largely due to the fact that tweets without links are often simple daily updates, which make no sense to retweet.
Do not misinterpret this data and think that tweets without links cannot retweet well. Some of my bolder tweets are on par, in terms of retweets, with tweets containing links to my most valuable content.
People don’t really engage equally with every tweet that is sent out. Recent Twitter data shows tweets with images are 35% more likely to get retweeted than text-only tweets, and tweets with video links gets 28% more retweets.
But in this case different industries may find different results, and it’s always advisable to do your own testing to figure out what resonates best with your audience.
If you worked hard on a blog post that you know deserves some attention don’t be afraid to tweet it out a few times.
When you repeat your tweet, mix it up. Don’t tweet the exact same tweet every time. Re-word your tweet and you will appeal to different people each time you tweet it.
There are now in excess of 100,000,000 tweets a day. It is harder than ever to get your tweets noticed these days, due to the sheer volume of tweets.
As long as you don’t spam, and add value, it’s fair game.
Trending topics are a powerful way to get into a stream of tweets that as many as thousands of people are tweeting about at once, and this can help a clever tweet go viral fast.
By tweeting about a trending topic you give your tweet greater exposure than it typically will receive. Some people use this tactic on a regular basis and those who do so with success are often retweeted hundreds or thousands of times and can pick up several thousands of followers in the process.
Include the twitter user name of others in your blog post, and then send a shout out to them on twitter letting them know.
There is a good chance other people will retweet your post when they find out they are in the post you are sharing!
If you can manage to build friendships with twitter giants you will benefit from their exposure when they talk to you, and if they retweet your tweets.
Some people with considerably fewer followers than me retweet my content all the time and when I notice this I often return the favour. Even though someone might have many fewer followers I still appreciate the help.
Last but not the least a superb infographic from Neil Patel of Quicksprout helps you to get more retweets in a visual way.
Now that you know these powerful ways to get more retweets go out and put them into action!
What other ways you follow to get more retweets? Let us know in the comments section below.
Oh, and one more thing: Please RT this post!
The B2B sales conversation is a complex dance between seller and buyer. One misstep, and the whole conversation can be knocked off balance. But sellers who are able to maintain a steady selling rhythm and keep value at the forefront during the conversation are far more likely to succeed in closing the opportunity.
Below is a list of four common personas that show up during a sales conversation, taking it down the wrong path quickly. We’ve also included tips on how you can help steer your salespeople away from becoming these types of sellers.
The “Know-It-All” is an often-seen salesperson. You’ve likely been on the receiving end of this type of seller. We’ve experienced it ourselves on more than one occasion. He or she kicks off a sales call by rattling off a laundry list of premium features and benefits without ever taking the time to ask the prospective buyer about their needs or pain points. The result is a one-sided conversation because this seller already thinks he/she knows what the customer wants.
The “Know-It-All” can be avoided with a consistent messaging platform reinforced by your management team. Educate them on the Seller Deficit Disorder and the importance of an effective discovery process that uncovers the critical business issues that drive opportunities forward.
“The Apprentice” is the seller who shows up to the call without preparation, research, or rehearsal. The result is a generic conversation in which the buyer doesn’t experience the confidence that comes from speaking with a best-in-class salesperson.
Reinforcing the use of pre-call planners, discovery and opportunity guides can help drive consistent preparation with every sales call. Consistent messaging drives repeatability that will improve the execution of even your newest reps. As a sales leader, you can never stress enough the importance of researching and preparing for each call with your sales team.
Remember, there are two kinds of people who float down a river – Paddlers and Drifters. Paddlers make their way downstream with speed, intention, and the ability to maneuver sharply. Drifters float with the current and let the stream take them where it will.
“The Drifter” can ruin a sales conversation faster than most. It happens when a seller does not set an agenda for the call, doesn’t define outcomes of the call and in turn, allows the call to go in no particular direction. The result is that the seller is unable to move the conversation forward with intention and maneuver as necessary.
Don’t let your salespeople show up without a paddle. Train them to be customer-focused and audible-ready. No matter the conversation, audible-ready sellers are focused on value, differentiation and how they can solve their buyer’s greatest business challenges. Here are a few ways to equip your sellers to sell with intention and maneuverability:
Most B2B buying decisions involve multiple decision makers. Less experienced salespeople often make the mistake that they can have the same conversation with each decision maker.
When you move through multiple decision makers in your buying organization, you need to determine the positive business outcomes, the required capabilities, and the metrics that are important to each buyer. Approach each decision maker as a new discovery opportunity.
A lower-level employee (or possible end-user of your solution) will have a different interest in your solution than will a manager, who will have a different interest than the CEO. Your salespeople will engage many people along the customer chain, they need to understand that their conversation can’t be the same with each. Your seller’s ability to uncover the pain and connect the value to the right person at the right time will make all the difference in having a successful sales conversation.
Military officers spend their time in service leading men and women in high-stress, high-stakes situations, and they earn their titles after rigorous, specialized training. It would be a waste not to transfer these skills to the business world upon returning home.
The University of Southern California noticed several years that many veteran officers were enrolling in its Marshall School of Business Executive MBA program, and found that there was a demand for help with transitioning into civilian life.
So last year, after three years of development, USC launched a Master of Business for Veterans (MBV) program. It's a one-year course with biweekly weekend sessions, and there are 50 students enrolled this year.
Its program director, James Bogle, has served in the Army and the office of the US secretary of defense. He says that the MBV program is a traditional business education with an emphasis on assisting vets with the transition from the structure and rigor of military life into civilian life, which includes building upon the skills they already learned. USC has been developing relationships with companies that have embraced MBV graduates, including the Walt Disney Company.
We asked three MBV students what leadership lessons they learned serving in the military that have prepared them for the corporate world. Here's what they said.
You can only become a military officer if you are incredibly sure of yourself, says Jennifer Baker, who served as staff sergeant in the US Army's 82nd Airborne Division. "Remaining calm under pressure will ensure your coworkers follow your lead and remain calm as well, which will keep morale and motivation high," she says.
"When faced with problems, you must be persistent until a solution is created; you cannot quit when the answer isn't obvious," Baker says. Her time in the Army taught her that a team is as dedicated as its leader, and this requires "getting your hands dirty every once in awhile."
The military is, of course, regimented, and Baker finds that this dedication to following orders develops better leaders. It's a skill that translates well to the corporate world, keeping managers humble and adverse to micromanaging.
"Strong leaders can understand that people have different experiences and backgrounds, which enables them to bring valuable ideas to the overall mission. The worst thing a leader can do is to let their position or power prevent them from reaching their goal or meeting the bottom line," she says.
"When I assume a new position, the leadership skill I focus on most is taking ownership of the responsibilities and mission set before me," says R. Alex Urankar, an active-duty captain in the US Marine Corp. "I approach everything with the mindset that my reputation is attached to the end result."
Urankar tells us that being a Marine has taught him to use a stressful situation as an opportunity to run toward obstacles and overcome them rather than lingering in indecisiveness.
"When the mission becomes difficult or overwhelming, a leader must take action and calmly guide their team through the challenges. Effective leaders do not get overwhelmed by a challenge, they develop solutions and take action," he says.
"Upon entering the Marine Corps Wounded Warrior Battalion Head Quarters aboard Camp Pendleton, the words, 'Have compassion, for everyone is facing their own internal struggle' are featured on the wall," Urankar says.
"A great leader recognizes that the needs of their people are just as important to mission success as accomplishing tasks," he says. "This means having genuine compassion for your team."
Mark Fetterman served as lieutenant commander in the US Navy. He says it taught him that a position of power is not sufficient for holding authority over a team, but rather it is the "willingness to accept responsibility" and commit to it that makes a leader.
Fetterman says that the only way to maintain the respect of your superiors and reports in the military is to remain consistent.
"There are many ways to lead, but whichever path is chosen the true value lies in consistency," he says.
Fetterman learned that being a leader sometimes means "bearing the burden of solitude."
In a speech to an incoming West Point class in 2010, the essayist and critic William Deresiewicz said, "The position of the leader is ultimately an intensely solitary, even intensely lonely one. However many people you may consult, you are the one who has to make the hard decisions. And at such moments, all you really have is yourself."
True leaders know that they cannot handle every challenge on their own and that they can employ others to make up for their deficiencies. "Knowing we are imperfect gives rise to empathy, a key to true leadership," Fetterman says.
SEE ALSO: How Veteran Unemployment Compares To Overall Unemployment In Every State
If you’ve made it this far you probably have some understanding of social listening. However, it remains a sometimes complex or confusing concept and in many senses is still in its infancy.
The Wikipedia page about what Brandwatch does defines it as “software which archives social media data and conversations happening online in order to provide brands with information and the means to track specific segments to analyze their online presence.”
However we like to take a simpler spin on it: “the act of using technology to track what is being posted online”.
In essence any social listening platform will allow you to do one key thing at its core; tally the volume of instances that a particular topic is mentioned online. The corresponding metadata, user metrics and other analysis follows the aggregation of this original data.
Those with a fine eye for detail may have noticed a slight shift in how social listening companies like ourselves define what they do.
A year ago the majority of the social listening industry described themselves as social media monitoring companies (we still do to some extent). Yet in recent months there’s been a shift to instead using the term social listening.
Social Listening vs Social Media Monitoring on Google Trends.
But why change the name? There’s no clear reason for this, instead it’s made up of a accumulation of smaller points – perhaps even that social listening is less of a mouthful and to distinguish it from traditional media monitoring.
A common practical thought is the term monitoring can assume you are looking at a specific subject; global temperature, price of bread, students grades etc. Keeping an eye on things, if you like.
In contrast, with listening you don’t just monitor, but you actually comprehend. This can be anything – from a Royal Baby to an anecdote from space.
You really can use social listening to do an awful lot. It’s much more than upgrade of old school market research: it’s actionable, unsolicited and real-time.
Comparing mentions of Premier League competitors over the last 7 days.
Comparing Ben & Jerry’s ice cream flavors over time.
Negative mentions of Apple increasing during the #bendgate crisis.
There are plenty of criteria to consider when selecting a suitable platform for your needs.
Things to look out for here are:
You also want to check how easy it is the harness the power of the social listening tool. Some things to look out for could be:
Add ons are also pretty important when considering your purchase, they allow you to figure out value for money. How strong is their customer support? How committed are they to innovation? Do they publish expert content about their field?
Within the next year you should see a lot of small innovations that will not only make social listening easier, but more valuable to your company.
In the short term you should expect a whole host of incremental advancements: faster and larger data coverage, more languages, increased location accuracy and eventually photo tagging and analysis. The kinds of things you might expect, perhaps.
In the long term, social listening has the potential to amplify into something with far wider application than today. What exactly that is, we’re not too sure yet, but here’s a few ideas.
Don’t disregard social listening due to a lack of understanding or belief in the tool – try one and make that choice yourself. If you happen to be using a tool that you’re not happy with, don’t settle.
If you owned Apple Inc. (AAPL), and sold it, you could purchase the entire stock market of Russia, and still have enough change to buy every Russian an iPhone 6 Plus.
Bloomberg’s chart of the day shows the total market capitalization of all public companies in the world’s largest country slipped below that of the world’s most-valued company for the first time on record. The gap, at $121 billion on Nov. 12, is about the price of 143 million contract-free 64-gigabyte iPhones, based on Apple Store prices.
The value of Russian equities has slumped $234 billion to $531 billion this year, while Apple gained $147 billion to $652 billion, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. The technology company’s innovation and brand value attract investors, while Russia’s political conflicts, sanctions and the threat of economic stagnation next year make them nervous, according to Vadim Bit-Avragim, a portfolio manager who helps oversee about $4 billion at Kapital Asset Management LLC in Moscow.
“Apple works with shareholders to maximize returns and is based where property is protected by law,” Bit-Avragim said. “In Russia, the legislative protection for property is not as good, most state-run companies have poor corporate governance, resources are concentrated in state hands and borrowing costs are shooting up. After all this, when you get involved in conflicts with your neighbors, it becomes very hard to persuade investors from all over the world to invest here.”
Russia faces a 70% chance of recession in the next 12 months, economists surveyed by Bloomberg project. The country is buckling under sanctions punishing its involvement in Ukraine, while a plunging ruble stokes inflation and the sinking oil price erodes export revenue.
Russia, the 20th largest among the world’s major markets, is not the only one Apple has surpassed. The company, which forecasts a record holiday-sales quarter and has $155 billion in cash, is also bigger than 17th-ranked Singapore and 18th-ranked Italy.
What’s driving the acquisition of digital marketers?
Last month, technology services company Cognizant bought interactive marketing agency Cadient, and tag management vendor Ensighten picked up marketing analytics firm Anametrix. In September, Alliance Data, owner of email vendor Epsilon, acquired digital marketer Conversant.
In July, LinkedIn announced its purchase of B2B digital marketer Bizo, and Priceline snapped up hotel marketing platform Buuteeq in June. IBM purchased digital marketer Silverpop in April.
Last year, Salesforce bought digital marketer ExactTarget, PricewaterhouseCoopers got interactive marketer BGT Partners, and Adobe landed marketing automation firm Neolane.
You get the idea. While each of the deals comes with its own particular reasons, the question is whether there is a common reason.
It’s like the early days of the Internet, LiquidHub CEO Jonathan Brassington told VentureBeat. His Wayne, Penn.-based IT integration firm recently bought digital marketer Foundry9.
He compared these waves of marketing acquisitions to “the merging of the Internet professional services firms” in those early days, acquisitions that built Razorfish, USWeb, and Sapient.
“Back then,” he said, it was an “e-business strategy [to create] multi-disciplinary firms” that might include analytics and a digital marketing or ad agency, in addition to the IT division that built websites.
The main driver at that time, Brassington said, was the rush by most businesses to get a website, and later the rush to have ecommerce capabilities. The professional services firms wanted an “integrated multi-disciplinary capability” so they would no longer have to act as a general contractor supervising a variety of vendors.
Now, he told us, “the momentum is the shift of power from the enterprise to the consumer, [from] the Information Age to the Age of the Customer.”
Companies are now “in an arms race to build customer service [and experience] access across multiple channels,” he said, because the customer can quickly and easily move between retailers and service providers.
The key pillars of a modern integrated digital provider these days, he said, are social, mobile, analytics, and cloud — and the first three often involve some kind of digital marketing technology.
In other words, Brassington said, when customers can easily and quickly move to a competitor, and when so many products have become price-drive commodities, the companies with the best customer experience will win.
And digital marketers, which create and manage customer expectations, become essential players in creating and managing the best customer interface.
Stacey Bishop, a partner at investment firm Scale Venture Partners, told VentureBeat she agrees that digital marketing firms have become increasingly important. Her firm’s digital marketing investments include Hubspot, Sailthru, Demandbase, and Bizible.
She pointed out that the new Age of the Customer, where buyers are educating themselves and making purchases later in the sales cycle, now means that most “of the [sales] funnel is in the hands of marketers, not sales.” She points to a Forrester Research finding that 75 percent of the buying cycle is completed by the customer before the sales team gets involved.
“The customer is in control when deciding to engage with a vendor,” Bishop told us. This represents a “changing of the buying cycle, [in which] much more of buying is about marketing.”
In that environment, she said, the key business need is “how do I get in front of the customer” to answer their questions, stimulate demand, and so on.
And getting in front of the customer is what marketers do.
Are you even aware how important content is to your brand? And not just the content on your website, though that’s probably the most important. Any message you release to the world has an impact on your brand. To control your brand story, you must have complete control of your content. Still not sure how powerful your content is? Let’s examine some truths.
If you’re not regularly sharing content with your followers, there is a very good chance they’ll make up their own message regarding your brand. A stagnant content strategy removes your branding power because you’re not taking the opportunity to share your brand’s voice and vision every chance you get.
By creating and publishing content on a regular basis, you control the message your buyers hear. As long as your content maintains your brand voice, informs your customer base, solves your buyers’ pain points, and remains relevant at all times, your content could be the number-one, most powerful tool in your marketing arsenal.
As a brand, you’ve worked hard to create and maintain a specific voice. How do you think your followers, leads, and buyers hear that voice if you’re not providing quality content? Your blog, website copy, videos, social media posts, and graphic design all work together to convey your brand’s image, vision, and, yes, your voice.
That’s why particular attention to each word or image you publish is so important. Whether you’re crafting blogs or updating the material on your website, keep your buyer personas in mind. How will they interpret your content? Will that interpretation support the brand image you’ve worked so hard to cultivate? That is the true power of compelling content and how it affects your voice.
Your potential customers want someone with specialized knowledge in your field. The more you know about your products and services—and the more you share that knowledge with your followers—the more powerful your content will be. With every word you publish or video you share, you have the opportunity to stand out from the crowd. Beat your competition by proving yourself the true expert in your field.
To do this, you must create and publish truly compelling content. There is no room for social media posts that don’t continue to inform and entertain or blogs that are filled with fluff to meet a particular word count. Create thoughtful posts that consider your buyer personas and their every pain point. You’ll be the go-to guy in no time.
Without adequate content, your site could suffer at the hands of search engines. Every word and image you publish should work toward driving more traffic to your site. That means you have a responsibility to your company and to your target to publish only the highest quality, most relevant content possible.
Understanding your brand and sharing your knowledge are both huge requirements for creating content that will boost your SEO results. Without first concentrating on your brand strategy, you can’t possibly create content your buyers personas will find. Without knowledgeable content, Google may deem your content irrelevant or of poor quality. And we all know what happens to content Google doesn’t like.
Creating a content strategy that takes all of these points into account isn’t an easy task. Start first with a solid, unwavering understanding of your brand, and the rest will follow.
Your old strategy for sales and marketing just won't work. And neither will your next one, or the one after that. Sure they will work for a while, and then they won't. What's going on?
Buyers change as their own familiarity with a new innovation changes. Put differently, when a new idea is put to the market, it will appeal to a certain segment of the market. Then a different segment, then a different segment again. So, should your strategy for sales and marketing be based on the industries these segments operate in?
No, absolutely not. Then yes, then no, no and yes.
In this week's blog, we'll explain how to choose your target based on who is ready, and when.
The holidays are just around the corner, and every marketer knows what that means. It’s officially email marketing season.
Consumer spending on Black Friday alone exceeds 10 million dollars, and nearly half of consumers say holiday deals and savings drive their purchase decisions. Virtually all marketers know the holidays drive some serious revenue, and the volume of email marketing sent out absolutely skyrockets. Before you begin to feel hopeless, keep in mind that consumers are engaged. Open rates and click-throughs actually increase in November and December.
That doesn’t mean success will be easy for your upcoming email marketing campaigns, however. Inbound marketers need to be extra savvy to stand out on Black Friday, Cyber Monday, and during other seasonal sales.
The holiday shopping season provides marketers with a strong opportunity to capture new business. While it’s certainly wise to use the holiday season to reward and recognize your businesses’ most loyal customers, it’s also important to create special campaigns for other segments of your email list, too:
When it comes to creating segments and personalized messages, the options are only as limited as your imagination. While only 66% of marketers segment their email lists, targeted messages account for 760% of all email marketing revenue. Highly personalized communications are sure to be an effective way to stand out this holiday season.
Shopping and consumer spend remain high throughout the months of November and December. However, there are some highly predictable patterns to when purchases will peak during the holidays. According to email marketer Brad Smith, the following dates are prime opportunities to capture customers:
Early Shoppers: Black Friday
eCommerce Enthusiasts: Cyber Monday
Last-Minute Shoppers: Green Monday
Plan ahead, and target your messages to meet the distinct needs, fears, and concerns of these three categories of holiday shoppers.
Email subject lines are a crucial component of a successful inbound marketing campaign. However, they’re never more important than when your subscribers are receiving an extra-large volume of messages in their inbox.
In addition to respecting subject line best practices, consider integrating one of the following concepts into your subject lines and campaigns:
It may come as a complete surprise to the more dedicated shoppers among us, but not everyone enjoys holiday shopping. In fact, some 80% of Americans believe that making purchases in November and December is more stressful than any other time of year. While the sparse parking and long lines at major retailers certainly don’t help, make it easy for your customers by compiling gift guides.
Marketer Cara Olson reports that holiday gift guides are an exceptionally high-performing option to embrace this shopping season. The more demographic information you have on your email contacts, the better you’ll be able to target your gift guides. Most importantly, there’s no reason to stop with just one compilation of purchase ideas.
Here are some creative ways to group gift options:
While it’s always the right time of year for customer appreciation campaigns, the holidays are an optimal time to say thank you. Research shows that the single most common reason that clients leave companies is perceived indifference. Feeling underappreciated is why 68% of clients churn, as opposed to just 14% who drift away due to product dissatisfaction.
To keep your customers engaged, create a sincere message of thanks this holiday season. Some ways to stand out to your most loyal buyers could include:
As the shopping season approaches, your customers will begin to get bombarded with email promotions. However, that’s no reason you can’t make the most of the season. With the right mix of creativity and email marketing best practices, you could see some truly magical results for your efforts this November and December.
Are you planning any creative holiday email marketing campaigns this season? Share your tips, questions, and goals in the comments!
There’s as much differentiation in how you sell as there is in what you sell. The most successful salespeople don’t stand out from the competition by touting features and functions of their latest product. Rather, they are diligent about selling fundamentals and following key sales best practices.
A salesperson who focuses on value and solving problems with business impact will make a lesser competitor nervous every time. Use these best practices to differentiate yourself with your prospects and stand out from the competition:
The best way to rise above the competition with any buyer is to ask the right questions. Remember, deals are won and lost on effective discovery. Why? Because an effective discovery process uncovers the most pressing business issue. It allows you to attach your solution to the problem with the largest business impact.
If you’re not able to identify your prospect’s pain points or business goals, you’ll be seen as just another vendor. Don’t just stop at finding the issue, you also have to uncover the impact. If your customer needs a more efficient way to conduct remote meetings, that’s good information to use in your conversations. But, if you can quantify that impact in dollars, you’ll be able to justify purchasing your solution much more effectively.
Stay away from the bells and whistles of your new product and focus on the value it can provide to your buyer. Why should the buyer even schedule a conversation with you? What value are you going to provide?
While your competition is busy conducting product demo after demo, differentiate your solution by tying it to the business value for the prospect organization.
Remember, B2B buyers often research your product or service online before even speaking with you, so they likely know more about your solution than they ever have before. Help them form a solution to their business needs.
Get the decision to the decision-makers. Many B2B sellers find themselves stuck in a frustrating cycle of “no-decision,” while trying to have a sales conversation with mid-level managers who aren’t qualified to make the final call.
Differentiate yourself by elevating your sales conversation to the C-Suite. Once you uncover the largest business problem, your conversation will likely shift to issues needing C-level input. Focus your conversation on the business impact that demands this high-level attention and you’ll find yourself dealing with those who hold the purse strings. You can enjoy watching your competitors wallow with the technical buyers.
Two critical components to rising above the competition are (1) defining what is needed to make your solution a success and (2) gaining agreement on those requirements. If you’ve conducted your discovery process effectively, your solution’s key differentiators should be part of those required capabilities. If they are, it will be hard for your competition to sell your customer on their inferior solution. Game over.
It’s not uncommon for sales organizations to leave the “selling” to the seller, and as a result they abdicate the outcome of the sale to chance. If you asked your salespeople these questions, would you get the same answer?
If you can’t guarantee that your sales team is articulating these answers in the same way to the customer, you likely have a messaging problem. With a consistent sales messaging methodology, your customer-facing messages are in sync. This repeatability provides clarity for the customer on your value, while your competition waffles with mixed messages.
Providing sales consumable tools for your team gives them a roadmap to closing a sale and enables them to use consistent messaging throughout the sales conversation. Their ability to tie the right solution to the buyer’s problem is your secret sauce – your value currency. Using positive business outcomes (PBOs), required capabilities, and proof points throughout the sales conversation is what keeps the buyer focused on your ability to provide a solution, not on whether you’re cheaper than the next guy.
Many sales reps and sales managers commented and shared about the previous post on How Salespeople Goof Up on LinkedIn so we were compelled to share more ideas to help sellers do better.
First, I wanted to share that our blog is up for an AWARD – as one of the top Sales Blogs at Top Sales World. If you agree, would you please take a moment to vote for us here? Thanks. You can vote every 12 hours through Dec. 12 (Midnight Eastern) THANK YOU in advance.
Everyone agrees with the top goof up sellers make on LinkedIn as mentioned last week – the old “Quick Connect” as I call it. Stop doing that if you are – and don’t do it if you have not. Take time to get to know more probable prospective buyers. Learn about their buying cycle, not your selling cycle.
Sellers goof up big time by having a tool and not understanding the big picture about how it works.
Sellers goof up because they don’t have a strategy in place to optimize it. They just see “tool” – they go online and start doing stuff. If that is how you work, stop doing that. Stop being reactive – make a plan of attack and use business-building, professional connection strategies as your framework.
Build your brand online. It is the most important thing you can do, and has been mentioned here and on other sites many times. This is the perfect time of year to set a goal to complete your LinkedIn profile if you are new to it, and if you’ve been around, it is time to make your profile buyer focused and not recruiter focused.
Become a student of social selling. You don’t have to be active with social strategies or think of yourself as a “social seller” to learn about ideas that the average new seller is incorporating into their daily routine for more success. Work to make a 1% improvement in getting your brand and the value you offer out to the world socially. See our LinkedIn tips here.
Home in on who your buyers and referrers are. Focus your efforts there.
Years ago I created an e-book called Winning Teammates (download for free) and encourage you to read it if you don’t have a clear idea on how to gain referrals through strategic partners.
Get educated on professional strategies for brand building online before you start throwing messages to valuable prospective buyers so that you don’t prevent or damage relationships.
As the old TV commercial for Head and Shoulders shampoo used to say, “You only get one chance to make a first impression.” That could not be more true with the social platforms we have at our disposal. Move forward wisely.
Lori Richardson is recognized on Forbes as one of the “Top 30 Social Sales Influencers” worldwide. Lori speaks, writes, trains, and consults with inside sales teams in mid-sized companies. Subscribe to the award-winning blog and the “Sales Ideas In A Minute” newsletter for sales strategies, tactics, and tips in selling. Increase Opportunities. Expand Your Pipeline. Close More Deals.
email lori@scoremoresales.com | My LinkedIn Profile | twitter | Visit us on google+
The post How Salespeople Goof Up on LinkedIn Part 2 appeared first on Score More Sales.
In today’s purchasing landscape, consumers are smarter than ever. They are more informed, more skeptical, more influenced by outside content, and less likely to fall into campaign traps. Marketers have come to rely on content to engage customers and prospects, establishing a brand trust that is vital to lead generation.
93% of B2B marketers use content marketing as part of their overall strategy. Having a strong content marketing strategy creates a relationship with your audience and target customers, which makes your business’ sales funnel more effective and ultimately converts more leads into sales.
Across industries, there are a number of techniques that brands can employ to have a strong marketing strategy and establish brand trust.
Be A Thought Leader
Any brand can publish product-related content, but the trusted companies are those that add value to conversations and are focused on helping their target audience. Create content that educates your consumers while showing that you are an authority and source of knowledge in your industry.
Your target audience is searching for answers to their biggest questions, and if your brand can provide those, it can become a main content source and stand out from competitors. Thought leadership also gives brands the opportunity to put faces and real people behind the brand name, which helps establish trust and strong relationships with customers and potential buyers.
Get Visual
Audiences become bored with large chunks of copy. Visual content is important to engage users, draw attention, and prioritize information. Designs don’t always have to be custom, but whenever your brand gets the chance, give your content that extra boost with visual elements.
For quick content turns, find innovative ways to repurpose content pieces you already have to make it more visual. These assets that have visual appeal will be easier for users to consume and more likely shared out by users as content they can depend on.
Establish a Company Blog
If you don’t already have one, a brand blog is a great tactic for generating leads. Blogs open the door to conversations, which are very effective for securing quality leads. A company blog should focus on providing content that is great for its readers, by keeping them interested and sparking their curiosity about the company and what it can offer.
Remember that consumers reading your blog may not even know what your product is. Use less actionable CTAs by asking people to follow you on social media or subscribe to email streams rather than signing up for a demo right away. This will lessen skepticism and leave them more open to conversations down the road.
Host Webinars
Webinars are an efficient way to get leads because users will provide their contact information in exchange for knowledge, often without any hesitation. The value that webinars provide consumers is so great that people are happy to give those details to companies. It also doesn’t hurt that they can participate from virtually anywhere.
When hosting a webinar, be sure to pick a topic that is specific to your audience, has a compelling speaker, and has the real-life application consumers are looking for. The value of the webinar is crucial to develop the brand trust you seek and become a dependable source of knowledge.
Leverage Industry Events
Industry events are another great way to put faces and real people to your brand name with speakers. Events also open doors to prospective leads so it is important to establish a strong voice and presence that consumers will trust. Content at events should provide value back to your target audience with the information they seek.
The real challenge comes with creating content that promotes your event in a way that the value lives on beyond the day-of. Consider interviewing speakers beforehand to promote the event, using a unique hashtag so consumers can track conversation before and after, sharing live updates via Twitter or the company blog, curating event-related content to share, and using photos to compile in a photo album.
The biggest mistake marketers can make is putting out content that their consumers don’t care about. Content marketing has become a vital part of the lead generation process to increase conversations and uncover leads.
Brands must attract, acquire, and engage a target consumer audience to grow business; building trust through content marketing is one of the best strategies to do so.
GUEST POST
When is the last time you performed a systematic customer research and segmentation exercise on your business?
I stumbled upon an interesting, and somewhat alarming, observation earlier this year following a CMO peer group discussion in Boston during which we were discussing our company positioning and how we determined the approach.
In the discussion, there was a universal theme: Every CMO talked about performing thorough customer, partner, and employee interviews when they joined their company and using that feedback to drive positioning and messaging decisions. It’s a great move and helps you to segment the audience and develop messages and tactics suitable for the targeted market. I’ve done this for years and find it a vital exercise coming into a new company as a leader.
After hearing exec after exec describe a similar process, I picked up on a remarkably common theme: We all did this when we first joined a company.
But markets don’t stand still, nor do customers, nor do product/platform capabilities or their fit with the market. As a group, we all appeared to do really critical thinking when we first joined a company, but not one person (including me) ever described going back and re-challenging assumptions the way we all did on day one.
A relatively simply question began to form in my head: If I joined my company today as a new hire, how would I freshly look at the business, and would I arrive at the same segmentation, positioning strategy, and messaging platform?
It seems simple to say now, but so few people seem willing or able to truly step back and assess critically once their boat leaves the dock. Markets and product/market fit are constantly evolving, and so should we.
So I signed myself up to a stretch goal: Step away from all but the most critical tasks for several weeks in order to attempt to interview every single one of our customers. I was determined to interview customers and partners the way I had done two years prior.
Remember how excited you were when you first joined your current venture? You probably interviewed any customer or partner or team member who would make eye contact or take your call. You probably asked what now seem like basic questions, and your eyes were wide open for insights that would help you nail the perfect way to pitch your product.
How did customers find us? What pains are we solving? How are they using our product? How do they describe the benefits that we were providing? When we didn’t close a deal, did we really understand why? What other challenges around our industry are our customers facing, and how might we apply our product to address them?
This stuff is obviously easier to do as a new hire because your perspective is perfectly fresh and you’re genuinely listening. Not to mention that you’re probably not yet getting 100+ emails a day and getting pulled into meetings left and right.
Committed to a real and fresh look, I partnered with our head of Product and invited everyone on the marketing team to listen in on the calls we conducted. I personally emailed and called project sponsors and system administrators. We also sent broader emails to everyone in our customer database. I began speaking with any human in our accounts who was willing to spend a few minutes with me. In the end, I managed to speak with someone at nearly 70% of our installed base.
We amassed an awesome number of findings from our installed base that led to a few notable changes for our business.
We much better understood our winning conditions and specifically why we were chosen or renewed (we’re a SaaS business) over competing approaches. Customers and partners were grouped according to several new and existing factors, and a different view of our market segmentation emerged.
This newfound clarity indicated that our product/market fit was strongest in a narrower slice of the market than we originally believed. While it’s sometimes disappointing to be pursuing a smaller total available market, precision of audience and go-to-market tactics for a growing company are indispensable.
Our overhauled messaging platform drove rewrites of major portions of our website, sales tools, and marketing programs. Time on site and website conversion metrics started to improve almost immediately. Lead-flow waterfall metrics have also been improving, and we’re starting to see the early leads close from this effort. After reinforcing this use-case with industry analysts, we also saw an increased number of customer referrals/sales leads from the analysts themselves.
Perhaps more surprisingly, we uncovered a brand new customer segment — a use for our product that we hadn’t fully understood or appreciated before this effort. After validating the hypothesis with several fresh prospects, we launched a brand new product offering that has become a reliable offer with which to “land” in a brand new account before “expanding” with our broader enterprise offering.
As mentioned above, markets don’t stand still. Doing this kind of “resegmentation” research was a lot of work and not something you can or need to perform monthly. But there are some great ways to keep yourself and your team attached to the customer and market.
There is only upside from this kind of work. You’ll either confirm that you’re in the right place or you’ll uncover important changes that are worth making to your segmentation and go-to-market approach — or perhaps even stumble upon new use-cases.
Mark Lorion is CMO for Apperian, a software company that provides a hosted enterprise app store and management platform. Prior to Apperian, he ran marketing for Spotfire, a venture-backed software company that developed data discovery and analytics software. He blogs about startup marketing at MarkLorion.com.
There are many reasons you’ll want to know Tami McQueen.
Beside her bright smile and South African charm, Tami is totally focused on helping your sales team become better at setting more qualified appointments and demos.
Since diving in to the world of sales development in June, Tami has created some great work that could help you out.
Here are some of our favorites:
For all her hard work, Tami is nominated for two TAG Marketing Awards. Yeah!
If you’d like to get to know her and discover more valuable sales development content and news, follow her on Twitter @localATLast.
One of the biggest advantages of online marketing in a tight, competitive market is a company’s ability to quickly produce and distribute relevant, timely content that grabs the attention of customers. And now that 2015 is just around the corner, many marketers are reviewing their successes and failures from the past year to inform tactics and strategies moving forward.
With that in mind, take a look at 10 stats that will help you create a content strategy that rocks you past the competition in 2015.
Content strategy has evolved way beyond brochures, ads in print publications, and sending people to a well-written web page. You need:
When you can incorporate these elements into your content strategy, you are setting yourself up to reap the advantages of online marketing—and giving potential customers exactly what they need to make fast, confident purchase decisions.
If you aren’t part of this 35% of B2B content marketers, what’s stopping you?
A content strategy is no longer a “someday” project for an intern; it’s what’s going to help you keep your skin in the game and increase the number of “touch points” for connecting with your target audience.
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Ladies and gentlemen, email marketing is NOT dead, and should definitely be included in your future content plans. This is a huge return on marketing dollars invested, and that kind of ROI adds up. The key is crafting an interesting email marketing campaign that engages users and nurtures them toward purchase.
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A blog can be one of the most powerful weapons in your content arsenal. And benefits go beyond thought leadership and engagement. As this stat shows, blogs have a huge impact on lead generation. But to get the most out of the channel, it takes planning, collaboration, and consistency. Without these elements, a good blog will quickly go bad.
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If you aren’t already blogging regularly about topics relevant to customers, you are losing significant online market share. Remember, focusing on education in blog posts is a must. Grasping for a sale in every post is a major turn off, although linking to items or services for purchase is perfectly fine. The more you can provide value, the easier it is to get people to click around the site, come back more frequently, and build the kind of trust that leads to a purchase decision.
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Branded content rules the roost. And with all of the information flying around the web, quality content helps you stand out as an expert in your field. People don’t always enjoy being blatantly advertised to, but they do want to read information that comes from a trusted source, enriches their lives, and can be applied to their careers. By developing more branded content in 2015, you are creating an easy way to be seen as a thought leader and go-to resource for your target audience.
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Beyond the passive content in print and online, make room for interactive content. Apps, quizzes, polls, and other “functional” pieces entice people to participate and share their thoughts or results on social media. Interactive content adds a whole other dimension to “word-of-mouth” advertising, and is pushed through more diverse channels by people outside your business.
And if you need more convincing, interactive content also drives 2X the conversions.
Online video has always been a powerful tool, but it’s becoming more mainstream for businesses of all sizes. The combination of visual and audio elements adds an immediately engaging, human, and emotional touch to content. And as mobile viewing stats continue to increase with the rate of technology advancements, video has more outlets for potential “eyeballs” than ever before.
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Videos and podcasts geared toward executives are a great investment for a variety of reasons. Not only are executives more willing to purchase after watching a video, but they also share videos with colleagues, creating a valuable business and social dynamic around the video experience.
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This is a milestone in the Internet Age, and solidifies social media’s top spot in shaping a strong content strategy. People use digital networks to connect over shared interests and have real conversations. Being part of these interactions gives businesses the opportunity to engage with target audiences in a meaningful way, and provides insight into developing trends and news.
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We all knew that the rise of the machine was coming, but the impact it has on your content strategy is still under construction. Now is the time to figure out how to automate key aspects of the sales process and add personalization into your content strategy. Tackling this in 2015 will help you match the needs and expectations of your customers, and will keep you ahead of this trend instead of struggling to catch up.
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Now is the perfect time to ramp up your content strategy for 2015. These stats provide insight into what marketers and, more importantly, buyers find valuable in today’s digital world. What will you take into 2015?
Out of all of the B2B lead generation strategies floating around, one strategy continues to rise to the surface – content marketing.
An overwhelming number of B2B marketers use content marketing to generate leads (93%, according to a recent survey by the Content Marketing Institute). And that number continues to grow year over year.
Are you feeling overwhelmed by all the content marketing advice out there? Still not sure how to use it to generate sales?
Your feelings are completely normal.
Out of the 93% of B2B marketers using this hot tactic, only 44% had a documented strategy.
Even though marketers are using content to boost business, confusion still remains over how to implement an effective approach. If you’re one of the many confused marketers out there looking for specific B2B lead generation strategies for your business, we have a few tips to help.
One of the top reasons marketing strategies fail is because there is no consistent plan. Marketers do not know when to post, what to post, what to write about, or who to target.
Not enough emphasis is placed on generating consistent content.
With an editorial plan and a strategic approach, your content can attract the right audience. It can bring in quality leads that will turn your marketing dollars into sales.
If you want to generate leads, here’s what you should include in your plan:
Sporadic postings about something that floated through your mind one day don’t work. To be effective online, you must know what your leads are looking for.
With that information in mind, start coming up with a few topic ideas.
Now that you have the topics, come up with a medium for delivery.
There’s no right or wrong answer. In fact, the best answer is to vary the way you deliver your content. This way, you can reach the largest segment of your target audience.
Now it’s time to start scheduling.
The choice is yours. What is important is that you keep your content plan consistent. Without having a strategy in place for how you will write and disperse your content, you will simply churn out blog post after blog post without results.
Create your plan and then decide how you will promote what you put out there.
People love the word “free.” There’s a magical ring to that word that gets people excited and eager to see how they can snag what’s up for grabs.
Traditionally, marketers were afraid to give away too much for free. As the saying goes, “why buy the cow when the milk is free?” The same thought was true of marketing.
Over time, people found out that didn’t work. If you want proof, read Michael Stelzner’s book, Launch. In it, he discusses how he used free giveaways to grow his empire. You can use that same thought pattern to generate leads and grow your business too.
Free information is the biggest attractor. Everyone wants more information and more help solving a specific problem they’re experiencing. Give it to them.
Hubspot, a company that has experienced tremendous success online, uses a variety of types of content to giveaway for free. Here are a few ideas that you can use:
A free offer does not have to be expensive for you. It just has to be valuable for the person receiving it.
What do you get out of offering something for free? A lead!
By giving away your secrets you’re showing the world that you’re an expert. – Michael Stelzner
Always, always, always ask for an email address or phone number in exchange for the freebie. That’s how you’ll weed out the lookie-loos wanting something for free but having no interest in buying from you.
By getting contact information in exchange for something for free, you’ll have your foot in the door. Then, your sales team can follow up with someone who is truly interested in what you have to sell and who needs your product or services.
You have all this great content. Now what?
Now, you promote it! In today’s digital age, social media is the best channel to do this. In fact, 87% of the B2B marketers surveyed by Content Marketing Institute said that they use social media to distribute their content.
It works because it’s so easy to target your message to your audience – but to do it right you need a smart approach.
LinkedIn is by far the most popular channel for B2B lead generation. With over 300 million members around the world, and 100 million here in the United States, you can reach a lot of professionals who need you.
Not sure how to reach these people? We can help. We’ve put together a free report called The Complete Guide to Leveraging LinkedIn for B2B Lead Generation. In it, we describe how you can set yourself apart from the competition and establish your company as experts in your field.
Download your copy of the report for details about how to set up your LinkedIn presence to support your content and generate high-quality leads for your business.
Content marketing is here to stay. With the overwhelming amount of content being produced, it’s critical that you have a strong strategy. Without a strategic approach to your content marketing, you’re wasting your time and burning your money.
Get real results from your content by outlining the basics of when, how, and what you want to put out there. Then, use strategic social media marketing to bring in the high-quality leads your sales team demands.
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