Rnordman

By Tibor Shanto - tibor.shanto@sellbetter.ca 

I was talking to a rep the other day, he was telling me about his approach to structuring his week to help him succeed. He set certain activities to specific days, and filled in the rest of the time with things that were dependent on the buyers’ calendars. He had time set for writing account reviews, Thursday afternoons, this way if he had to get something from the clients he still had time in the week. Proposals were done on Wednesdays and Mondays, all he had to do is set the right expectation from the buyer. And so it went.

But when it came to prospecting, there were no allocations. I asked him about it, and he like others told me that he does it when he can, any time he can get around to it. I asked why he has clearly allocated time to all other key activities, does he not see prospecting and filling the funnel as a key activity? Of course he said. Well, then why does it not conform to the way you approach and execute the other key activities, I said “you have everything else all neatly in place in place, what’s the deal with prospecting?”

He hummed and haad, checking the tips of his shoes, but it was clear that the day he allocated to prospecting was Someday.

Now I don’t like prospecting any more than the next guy, especially cold calling, but it has to be done. Which is why I do it first, then it’s out of the way, and I can go on to doing what I like. But kicking the can down the road only works in Ottawa and Washington.

I know the beauty of Someday is that it never comes, but the deadline for your quota does come, and in light of the fact that those people who make quota hovers around 50%, and the number one reason most sales leaders give for that is a lack of prospects and too much dependence on their base, the day of reckoning will get here before Someday, specifically two months from Tomorrow, December 31.

Given the choice between Someday and Today, I would go with today!

What’s in Your Pipeline?
Tibor Shanto 

Have you ever been in a crazy-making relationship where you can’t do anything right?

One minute, everything is cool. The next, you’re being penalized for some “rule” you knew nothing about.

Yeah. Working with Google is exactly like that. If you’re feeling frustrated, here’s what you can do.

Just think about the mixed messages marketers have heard over the last couple years.

“Jump through the Authorship hoops and see your picture next to search results.”

“Never mind. We’re getting rid of Authorship.”

“Here are all the keywords people used to find your site.”

“Oops, now all keyword data is [not provided.]”

“Sites will typically have many “spammy” issues to risk an algorithmic penalty.”

“Well, maybe not.”

If this was a relationship, you would have walked away by now. Who needs to deal with an insane situation where things change on a whim?

Google’s crazy-making ways has turned into business-as-usual

As marketers, we deal with this every single day. We suffer over the SERP results and strategize ways to move the needle. We languish over our incoming links. We build teams (or hire consultants) to keep our knowledge fresh and stay in the game.

Knowing that any minute Google – like a bad relationship – can pull the plug on our sites and say “It’s over.” And there’s nothing we can really do about it.

Many companies rely on Google as a major part of their marketing pie. But why do we do this to ourselves, knowing that Google is a fickle mistress (at best?).

Here’s something to consider instead:

Rather than putting all your marketing eggs into Google’s basket, diversify your marketing efforts instead. No, that doesn’t mean you should stop your SEO campaign. Nor does it mean you should turn into a PPC-only marketer. I mean paying attention to other things that will truly drive targeted traffic (and sales, too.)

Here are three things you can do that will help you gain the results you want.

Newsletters

I am amazed at the number of sites that don’t have a newsletter. Or a company may have a newsletter and collect signups, but only send it out when they have something to promote.

Think about this for a moment. Your readers enjoyed your content so much that they opted-in to receive emails from you. That’s a pretty big deal in today’s information-overloaded world.

Newsletters allow you the opportunity to serve your hungry readers outstanding content. You can showcase your latest blog posts. You can re-introduce older blog posts and drive new traffic. And yes, it’s entirely appropriate to include sales messages (as long as it’s done with style.) After all, newsletter subscribers are typically your biggest fans. Why not give them what they want?

Still not convinced? I know of many companies that see a huge uptick in site visits and social media mentions every time their newsletter hits the virtual streets. That’s a pretty cool benefit.

Guest posting

Guest posting has always been a powerful way to drive traffic. You can reach new audiences, drive traffic to your site and gain new newsletter subscribers.

However, many marketers have recently steered away from guest posting. It’s true that Google has taken a stand against sites that accept spammy guest blog posts. However, guest posting is still a viable strategy if you do it right.

“Doing it right” means working with reputable publications that your target market actually reads. This doesn’t mean a “spray and pray” approach where your marketing department contacts 100 publications, all with the same pitch. It’s pinpointing the best publications, writing an original pitch email and suggesting on-topic posts.

When you do write your guest post, make sure it’s laser-targeted for the publication. Think about the pain points of that particular reading audience. What are they struggling with every day? Which posts generated the most comments? What actionable tips will help readers make more money, save them time, or help them master a confusing concept?

The better your content, the more opportunities it’ll get to be reposted across social media channels and drive even more traffic. Which leads us to the third way you can drive traffic without Google…

Think offline

It’s funny how we can get so focused on Google positions that we forget about other opportunities.

Direct mail is still a viable way to reach leads and eventually make sales. Writing books and being seen as an authority thought leader can result in speaking gigs, interviews and high-profile clients who want to work with the best. Holding exclusive one-day training events can help land new clients, establish your company as a market leader and even create a new profit center.

There are scads of marketing opportunities in every vertical. Rather than doing exactly what your competition is doing, why not zig rather than zag? Try something different. See what works. You may be surprised – and the process may be much less painful than sweating over the latest Google update.

Stop letting Google rule your marketing. There are many ways to reach prospects that has nothing to do with worrying about positions, conversions off the search results page and Google’s latest Penguin update.

Google may always be a big part of your marketing mix. But it doesn’t have to be the only part (nor should it be!).

The more you can diversify your marketing efforts, the less stressed you’ll feel when Google makes yet another change.

And that, by itself, is a wonderful thing.

What’s going to happen to the Euro in the coming year? What’s the next game-changing political development in the Middle East? What’s the fate of healthcare reform? The answer to all of these big, complicated questions is simple: we don’t know. We have no data on the future where innovation happens. This is what distinguishes innovation from all other forms of value.

For this reason, innovation is about experimenting, trying many things at once and seeing what works. Forget what people tell you about coming up with a plan and sticking with it. When you innovate, you need to change your mind. You need to make things up as you go along.

Excessive data-gathering is a form of resistance. We’ve all had to sit through the meeting before the meeting, read the e-mail about the e-mail. Don’t get stuck in the planning cycle. Run experiments now.

You can’t predict the future but you can look around and discover trends and patterns–drivers–that will help you reach your targets. Here are four places to look as you design your experiments:

Push: These are new technologies and new methods inside and outside your industry, like the development of non-invasive surgeries in the medical world.

Pull: These are emerging consumer demands, like the widespread desire for environmental-friendliness in the green movement.

Clash: These are the rising and existing competitors in your field. For example, think about the startups that we haven’t yet seen or companies that seem dead but then often surprise us like revitalization of local hardware stores in the 1990s.

Coordinate: These are ways of synching things up–technologies and devices that pull things together, like BaseCamp, the web service that facilitates communication among the diverse people working on the same project.

Consider all of these external factors–technologies, consumer demands, competitors–and ask yourself these questions: what is the probability that each of these things will actually happen? And, if they do happen, what kind of impact will they have on the success of your target?

Now that you’ve designed your experiments, it’s time to put them to the real test. In the early twentieth century, William McKnight came up with the now-famous 3M strategy test–a set of three questions to ask about an idea initiative. Now, almost a century later, they are still the best questions: Is it real? Can we win? Is it worth doing?

Part of innovating is stopping things now so can you make the room to do new things. Stop planning and start acting. Don’t let the uncertainty of the future slow you down. Be prepared to adapt as things happen. Expect the unexpected: leave room for the stuff you don’t know now.

One of the biggest problems I have as a small businessman is keeping track of everything: RSS feeds, competitors, backend performance data, social media mentions and trends, sales cycles, reputation warnings, revenue data, my inboxes, my calendar, key RSS feeds, search performance, tasks, and a million other sources of data. I never remember to check Google Analytics, Webmaster tools, my AdSense revenue, and even what’s coming in to my Desk.com help desk inbox as it happens. Tabs on my browsers, bookmarks, and email ticklers from the service providers are what keep me coming back. But that’s not enough. And worse, it’s responsive and not nearly proactive enough. And then there’s Cyfe.

Cyfe is a Business HUD

A HUD the acronym for heads up display. It’s about getting all mission critical data in one quick glance without distracting too much attention away from the mission, be it a dogfight in an F18 Super Hornet or a country road in a BMW sedan. Cyfe can reduce an entire daily routine from an hour-a-day down to just a couple minutes — and not just once-a-day. With Cyfe, you’re not just reading through all the logs and data once or twice a day during your data rounds but you’ll be able keep real time tabs on the mission-critical parts of your business. And, even if you have an SA tracking servers, an accountant tracking accounts receivable and payable, and a social media manager tracking media mentions, Cyfe can keep you directly connected to source data instead of everything going through any people-filters. Not to be paranoid, but I like the checksum that having knowledge of primary source allows me when I read the reports provided by my employees in order to check to make sure they’re doing their job properly, effectively, and to the level of quality that I expect. Trust but verify, is what I say (yes, I am that boss).

All the Widgets You’re Likely to Need

Remember Yahoo! Widgets and Google Gadgets? I programed theses guys for clients back in the day when I was a programer. They were pretty cool. And then they died. Goodbye guys. What I liked about Google Gadgets is that there were both lots of gadgets you could just install that added a lot of value but the framework for creating your own was also pretty simple for any developer. Same thing goes for Cyfe. Here’s a short list of the widgets already available: AWeber, AddThis, GetResponse, Amazon Web Services (AWS), Basecamp, Bitly, Desk.com, Eventbrite, Facebook, Flickr, Gmail, GoToWebinar, Google AdSense, Google AdWords, Google Alerts, Google Analytics, Google Calendar, Google Trends, Google Webmaster, Google+, Highrise, Instagram, Klout, LinkedIn, MailChimp, Moz, PayPal, Pingdom, Pinterest, QuickBooks, RSS, SERPs, Salesforce, SlideShare, Twitter, Vimeo, WordPress, and YouTube. There are loads others. And, it’s apparently very easy to build your own to meet your own needs. Have some structured data, XML, OPML, RSS, ATOM, or an API and you can create your own widgets that are purely suited to your own business needs.

Cyfe Does Small but Prefers Big & Dedicated

I have an iPhone 5, a Nexus 5, a Nexus 7, an iPad Air, and a wee Lenovo ThinkPad x220 with a 12.1″ screen. That’s it. Cyfe works great on them all. The app looks gorgeous in HTML5 on all my mobile devices via the web. On my ThinkPad, Cyfe is drag-and-drop-able that you can resize widgets and move them around, and even overlay them like flash cards so that I can fit 8 or 16 widgets into my 12.1″ screen instead of the 4 widgets that fit by default. My next purchase will be a big, clear, 4k second screen that I can connect to at my desk so that I can pile widgets into one Cyfe dashboard and keep running by itself on the separate screen. Then, I can stream social mentions, my inboxes, my site performance data, questions and queries happening on Twitter, Facebook, and Google+, help desk queries, and even project management stuff.

If you can’t sport the big screen, Cyfe is a lot like the X Windows in that it supports multiple desktops. You can run different things in each desktop and then easily switch between them. OSX does that too, I believe (yeah, I am running Windows 7 Professional). Well, with the premium account ($19/mo monthly or $14/mo yearly), you can have unlimited desktops that you can label and switch between. So, I could have a desktop for each client. I could have one just for Gerris brand monitoring, one for SEO, one for business processes, and one for things like inboxes, and one for just RSS feeds.

$23,832 Less Than the Bloomberg Terminal

With the free version, you’re limited to just five widgets, but the premium is pretty cheap for what it does. I mean, compared to the Bloomberg Terminal’s $24,000/year price tag, Cyfe is $23,832 less.

Like I said, it all starts for free. Give it a go; get access to 5 widgets at once. Take some time and try out all the widgets, one-by-one, and decide for yourself if it makes sense for you. Give is a good, solid, try though, because it will take a while to get over your habit of visit each and every site in person every day. I think it would be possible to decide how much you like it and how much you’ll use it with just the free version, but if not, you can always pay for the premium month-to-month for a few months, build it all out, see what you like, and then decide whether you can’t live without it or it’s just something else you pay for but never use (dammit, Salesforce, why can’t I quit you?).

Out of Sight, Out of Mind

For me, Cyfe is an important step towards keeping all of my balls in the air. Having multiple clients when you have a small agency is tough. The biggest fear I have is leaving anyone behind or dropping anything through the cracks. It’s like that nightmare where I go through the whole semester forgetting I had signed up for Spanish, only to realize finals are tomorrow and it’s too late to drop. Out of sight, out of mind; the squeaky wheel gets the grease, and all that. Cyfe keeps everything in my sight and in my mind, all at a quick glance. Let me know what you think. How do you keep organized and on top of everything?

All the Cyfe Widgets

• AddThis
• Alexa
• AWeber
• AWS CloudWatch
• Basecamp
• Basecamp Classic
• Bitly
• Campaign Monitor
• Chartbeat
• Compete
• Constant Contact
• Countdown
• CSV File
• Desk
• Eventbrite
• Facebook Pages
• Flickr
• FreshBooks
• GetResponse
• Gmail
• Google AdSense
• Google AdWords
• Google AdWords (MCC)
• Google Alerts
• Google Analytics
• Google Analytics (Real Time)
• Google Calendar
• Google Doubleclick for Publishers
• Google Spreadsheets
• Google Trends
• Google Webmasters
• Google+
• Google+ Search
• GoSquared
• GoToWebinar
• Highrise
• iContact
• IFrame
• Image
• Infusionsoft
• Instagram
• iTunes Connect
• Klout
• LinkedIn
• LinkedIn Company
• MailChimp
• Marchex
• Mixpanel
• Moz
• PayPal
• Pingdom
• Pinterest
• Private URL
• Push API
• Quantcast
• QuickBooks
• Recurly
• RSS Feed
• Salesforce
• SendGrid
• SERPs
• Shopify
• SlideShare
• Text
• Time
• Twitter
• Twitter Search
• Unbounce
• Vimeo
• Weather
• WordPress
• Xero
• YouTube
• Zendesk

SlideShare is the “quiet giant of content marketing,” according to Forbes contributor Steve Olenski. But with the kind of attention it’s getting, one can hardly call it quiet anymore. Giant? Yes.

Before I divulge its secrets, let me tell you how giant SlideShare is according to CMO.com and SlideShare.com. It has more traffic from business owners than any other major social media platform. As the world’s 121th most visited site, SlideShare has:

• 3 billion presentation views per month averaged over a seven-year history
• 15 million-plus presentation uploads
• 400,000-plus new presentations each month

With a huge potential for content marketing and not many marketers using it, here are 11 killer tips to really power up your SlideShare visual content marketing.

1. Think like an infographic

SlideShare isn’t a blogging platform. It’s a visual platform. You have to adapt your thinking away toward a more visual experience. The best presentations are those that tell a story in visual form. Putting lots of words on your slides does not make people want to look at them. Yet, as Dashburt’s SlideShare Zeitgeist 2013 reports, 45% of the presentations on SlideShare average 24 words per slide – that’s about the length of two average sentences. Presentation developers are slowly getting the less-text, more-effective message as Dashburt’s statistics reveal. In 2013, the number of words declined by 29% and “more visual content saw the most success.” The number of images increased by 53% and they were 16% bigger, too – think lots of big pictures and you’ll be more successful.

2. Make it clear

A lot of presentations in SlideShare are useless because they are designed to accompany a spoken presentation. The slides are merely visual glitter to keep the audience awake. The whole idea of using SlideShare in content marketing requires the presentation to be used as a standalone form of content. Here’s an example. I have no doubt that “snackable in action” meant something in the spoken presentation. In SlideShare, however, it’s meaningless.

Contrast this with Rand Fishkin’s SlideShare on “Why Content Marketing Fails.” His presentation reads like a standalone comic strip:

That’s what you’re going for. A presentation should have clear progression and easy-to-follow slides, with or without an accompanying dialogue.

3. Repurpose blog posts

Repurposing content is genius, and it works remarkably well with SlideShare. You can turn most blog posts into a SlideShare presentation. This isn’t a quick-and-easy task. Anyone who has made slide presentations can testify to the fact that they take a lot of hard work. It’s worth it, though, because they allow you to expand your content reach to a new platform. Better content on more platforms can mean better content marketing.

4. Add the details

When you upload the presentation, fill in the fields completely. Pick the category that best fits your presentation and audience. Make your written description as detailed as possible. You get 3,000 characters, which is quite a bit of content real estate. The more details you add, the better chance you have at posting a presentation that gets attention. Don’t forget to add valuable keywords in the tag field.

5. Post infographics and videos

SlideShare is not only about slide presentations. It is a forum for other visual content, too. Make posting a part of any good infographic promotion strategy. SlideShare is no YouTube, but it is a great place to upload your videos. You’ve gone through the effort of making a video, so you might as well give it additional attention on SlideShare.

6. Share every presentation

When you create a presentation, upload it. If you put in the effort to make a great standalone presentation, you might as well share it. It’s an obvious point, but worth reinforcing – the more places you promote your presentation, the broader exposure it will receive. At a minimum, you should share it on all social networks and embed it into a blog article. SlideShare provides ways to one-click your presentation to Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, and Google Plus. You also should add the presentation to your LinkedIn profile.

7. Produce frequently

As with other content marketing efforts, consistency is key. If you plan to use SlideShare, use it regularly. SlideShare rewards presentations that are recently created and uploaded. The more often you post, the greater your chance of getting featured by SlideShare.

8. Make a killer cover slide

The cover is the most important slide of your entire presentation. This is what draws in people to view your presentation. Make it as visually powerful as you can.

9. Create a powerful headline

The value of the headline is as great in SlideShare as it is for a written article. SlideShare recommends writing a great headline as the number one way to get featured.

10. Keep it short

People know how many slides are in your deck before they click on it. If they think it’s going to take them too long to view, they’ll avoid it completely. The average SlideShare length in 2013 was 14.4 slides, four fewer slides than in 2012.

11. Use a call-to-action

To make your presentation on SlideShare as effective as possible, use a call-to-action (CTA) at the end. SlideShare allows you to insert a clickable link in your slides that takes the user to a separate site. In presentations I post in SlideShare, I use a get-in-touch form to let people receive more information.

I also provide a CTA for people to start a free trial of KISSmetrics.

Remember, content marketing isn’t just about the content. It’s about the marketing, too. Adding CTAs, capture forms, and other features to your SlideShare post helps improve your content ROI.

Conclusion

SlideShare is a great visual content marketing tool for the toolbox. If you maximize all the opportunities it provides, it can be one of the most effective tools you use. How have you used SlideShare for content marketing? Share your experiences in the comments.  

Want more expert advice on what tools to leverage in your content marketing toolbox? Check out all the fantastic CMW sessions that are available through our Video on Demand portal.

Cover image by lindsayascott via pixabay.com

The post 11 Killer Tips to Leverage SlideShare’s Power in Your Visual Content Marketing appeared first on Content Marketing Institute.

Workers scrape a wall which had a publicity photo of former CBC radio host Jian Ghomeshi in the broadcasting corporation’s Toronto offices on Monday October 27, 2014. (Chris Young, The Canadian Press)

Hey, guys: is “person loses good media job for potentially unfair reason” really the news story of the century? Where exactly have you all been living for the past 10 years?

One reason the Jian Ghomeshi story was particularly jarring was that Ghomeshi was fired by the unionized, market-proof CBC—a nearly unprecedented event. But, in a weird way, this goes to show how the cocoon mentality of CBC talent, which expects to remain in harness for life in spite of anything shy of orphanage arson, has settled upon even explicit opponents of the Corp. They see Ghomeshi as having been “destroyed” because he might have had to go find another job, possibly one in the icky world of private broadcasting.

Even those of us who’ve had two dozen colleagues lose their living for no better reason than “You were hired last,” or “Tough break being born in the wrong year” are somehow willing to accept this premise. It’s a bit of a mystery. Although I grant that commercial broadcasting does look to me like a low-to-medium level of Hell, even without comparing it to the cushy CBC.

The idea propounded by Ghomeshi and his lawyers that a person cannot be fired for information he brings to his employers first is certainly laughable. Think about how this would work out for you if you tried it yourself: “You guys know I’m usually super high when I do the corrosion tests on the heat exchanger, right? Ha ha, now you can’t sack me.” This principle goes double if the employee in question is asking for laborious, expensive help in defending his reputation against accusations relating to his private conduct—although we of course learned within hours that Ghomeshi’s problems lay partly within the workplace.

Related reading: Sex, lies and the CBC

Ghomeshi admits—it is a point he emphasized on Sunday—that none of the people he had problems with had complained to the CBC. His negotiations with the Corp’s human-relations department happened at his own behest; he wanted help heading off a wave of Internet “mud” that, at the time, existed in his own imagination. It doesn’t seem to have occurred to many people that making lots of work for HR can get you fired, particularly as an on-air personality for a broadcasting company, in itself; that whether you are fired for a publicity problem, as a broadcaster, depends partly on your general replaceability and your value to the company; that Ghomeshi’s accusers didn’t have any contact with the CBC; and that it is perfectly legitimate for them not to come forward with their names while they collaborate with an investigation intended to find out, primarily, whether other women had had the same sort of experience with Ghomeshi that they did.

They obviously did not have any intention of subjecting him to some sort of court martial, and neither, apparently, did the Corp, until he decided to insist on one. Ghomeshi was offered a chance to walk away, go across the street, and find a comfortable cage in a drive-time Morning Zoo. Some people were initially impressed that he refused to do this and went on Facebook to burn the world’s entire supply of bridges instead. It sort of looked like integrity, if you squinted. But it now appears that the correct interpretation, one which should have been entertained from the start, is that Ghomeshi was rapidly running out of options, even unthinkable ones, within his trade.

Related reading: Why it’s harder to believe the worst of a host

A lot of people expressed admiration for the help Ghomeshi apparently received from a public relations firm in preparing his pre-emptive Facebook statement. Oh, what artisans! They “got out in front of the story”! I daresay some of those people now realize they ought to have demurred from applauding a transparent attempt to (a) play a sexual identity card in the face of accusations of disrespectful behaviour and assault; (b) create a conspiracy theory in which one Ghomeshi enemy somehow managed to rub brain-fogging perfume on a limitless number of other disgruntled women (who then appeared on cue); and (c) cultivate mock outrage about chatter concerning the lives of celebrities, as a person whose career was built entirely on chattering with celebrities about their lives. As a bonus, Ghomeshi then immediately (d) launched a hopeless-looking lawsuit which, by some strange coincidence, seemed most carefully designed not to win money or achieve justice, but to signal extreme litigiousness to non-parties.

I’m willing to believe that Ghomeshi’s publicists were doing their best within the limits of the instructions from their client. Probably they have made the job of rehabilitation harder for the next set of publicists. But you had better believe there will be a next set, along with religious, moral, or psychological experts willing to testify that Jian has sought help, done some super serious introspection, and really changed deep down in his heart. I wonder if we will remember the contrived attempt to play the crucified Jesus of kinksters: the “I’ve done nothing wrong” and the “I have nothing to hide” and the “truth will conquer all.”

The post Notes on Ghomeshi appeared first on Macleans.ca.

Yesterday, at The Calloway Way event at MIT, I ran into Joe Caruso. I’ve known Joe for a while – we met through Techstars Boston, where he’s been a great mentor and very active angel investor.

He had just read my post on being uncomfortable with the phase of the current cycle and told me an anecdote from the great Internet bubble of 2001 that I hadn’t heard.

A guy came up to me and said “I just sold my dog for $12 million.”

I responded, “WTF – who would ever buy a dog for $12 million? That dog must have gold plated teeth!”

The guy responded, “Nope – but it’s a normal dog. But I was able to get two $6 million cats for it.”

When I got back to my room last night, I noticed Fred Wilson’s post from yesterday Averaging In And Averaging Out. In it, he talks about how he handles public company stocks that he ends up with either via an IPO or a sale of a company he’s involved in to a public company. We have somewhat different strategies, but we each have a strategy, which is key.

This morning I woke up to an email thread from a founder of a company I’m an investor in. He’d gotten a random note asking about his valuation when we invested relative to another financing that was just announced. When we made our investment, the company got about 3.5x ARR. The other company, which was much smaller at the point of investment, got an 11x ARR valuation.

My response to the specific situation was:

Valuations have increased on a relative basis.

They raised relatively little so probably had supply / demand on their side – which drove competition and enabled a higher price.

VCs are currently living in FOMO land so they’ll overpay for aspirational value in the future if they see growth.

There’s a lot of inefficiencies at these price levels. 

A “good price” is when you have a willing buyer and a willing seller, both happy, and willing to work together on whatever path you are on!

Each of these examples got me thinking about the relative valuation trap.

In the first case, we’ve got a dog and two cats. Who knows what they are worth – you can get a dog for free at the pound and as far as I can tell cats believe they belong to themselves and do whatever they want. But trading one dog for two cats, where the person owning the cats values them at $6 million each, means you can “mark your dog to market” which is currently $12 million. Now, if you can find someone to give you $12 million in cash for the dog, you have a $12 million dog. But you can carry it at a value of $12 million for as long as you want if you don’t want to sell it. Granted Rule 157 says that you need to mark it to market every quarter, but that’s a different messed up issue.

In Fred’s example, he does a great job distinguishing between optimizing and satisficing. Two weeks ago Twitter stock hit $54 / share. Today it is trading at $42 / share. Should you have sold it at $54? How about $52? How about $49? Or, now that it’s fallen to $42, maybe it’s time to sell it at $42. If you have it at $42 and believe you should hold it because it was recently worth $54, you are falling into the relative value trap. You should hold it because you think it will be worth more, but not because it was recently worth $54. It could be worth more or it could be worth less – making your decision on what it used to be relative to what it is today is a trap.

In the financing discussion, it’s easy to look back in time and say “wow – we got too low a valuation.” It’s just as easy to look at valuation in current terms and say “that’s not high enough” because you heard of someone else, relative to you, that got a higher valuation. Or it’s easy to feel smug because you got a higher valuation than someone. Unless we are talking about the final exit of the company for cash or public company stock that is fully tradable, this is a trap. It’s like the $6 million cat and the $12 million dog. How did someone come up with the valuation?

A simple answer is “well – public SaaS companies are currently trading at 6x average multiples so we should get a 6x ARR valuation.” There are so many things wrong with this statement (including what’s the median valuation, how do it index against growth rates or market segment?, what is your liquidity discount for being able to trade in and out of the stock), but the really interesting dynamic is the relative value trap. What happens when public SaaS companies go up to an 8x average valuation? Or what happens when they go down to a 3x valuation? And, is multiple of revenue really the correct long term metric?

As I said in my email this morning, A “good price” is when you have a willing buyer and a willing seller, both happy, and willing to work together on whatever path you are on! I deeply believe this – my goal is not to get the best price, but a fair price. I don’t subscribe to the philosophy that both parties should feel slightly bad about the terms of the deal, meaning that each had to compromise on things they didn’t want to in order to get the deal done. Instead I’m a deep believer that both parties should feel great about the deal – the terms, the participants, and the dynamics.

Ultimately, whatever stage you are in, you should be focusing on building long term value. It’s always a mistake to optimize for the short term, and when you do, you’ll often confuse relative value as justification for specific behavior.

The post The Trap of Relative Value appeared first on Feld Thoughts.

Last week, in part one of this five part series, I discussed how LinkedIn has made major strides to help prospective students research and decide where they want to begin their educational and professional journey. This week I want to focus on how the new “YOUniversity” dashboard is also geared toward current students. As a current student, you can still use the new features made available for prospective students, such as University Rankings, University Finder, and Decision boards; but LinkedIn’s focus for current students expands further, which I will discuss in this post.

Are you a current a student? Are you on LinkedIn? If you are not on LinkedIn, what are you waiting for? The sooner you join the sooner you will be able to use the platform to find and land your next opportunity (i.e. job, internship, graduate school, mentor, etc.). Once you are signed up, there are three steps that LinkedIn has outlined on the “YOUniversity” dashboard, that are designed to help propel your professional career from the classroom to the outside world. To get to the “YOUniversity” dashboard, click on the education link nestled under the “Interests” tab. Then, as a current student, you will want to select the “Students” tab.

University Pages

LinkedIn suggests that students start their three-step journey by connecting with their current college or university.

Once you join the university page you will have access to a TON of valuable information such as:

• The careers of numerous students and alumni

• A list of notable alumni

• Recommendations for the university

• General university information

Access to this kind of information makes it easier for students to find mentors, subjects for projects, new opportunities, and much more. Gone are the days where students only have access to alumni at board meetings, homecoming, and other university networking events.

Your Profile

After you join your school’s university page, the next area of focus for students, as outlined by LinkedIn, is your individual profile. LinkedIn states that, “Complete profiles get 7x more views from classmates, alumni, and recruiters.” We have found this to be true and we hear stories time and again about how students have landed new opportunities shortly after optimizing their profiles, whether through one on one coaching or attending our workshops. For information on how to create a rock star student profile, take a look at my post, “The Value of LinkedIn for College Students and Recent Grads” and then download Intero Advisory’s helpful Profile Builder Guide.

Student Job Portal

Once you have tapped into your school network and have created a kicka** LinkedIn profile, you can then use LinkedIn to, as they put it, “Get a jump on landing your first job.” LinkedIn has created a student job portal that highlights positions that are internships and entry-level opportunities geared towards students and recent grads. I am amazed and honestly a little jealous that I didn’t have this feature at my disposal coming out of school years ago.

Simply click on the “Search Jobs” link and LinkedIn will direct you to the “Student Job Portal,” where you can then select what kind of job you are looking for and search LinkedIn’s massive job database.

I hope that this overview gets students amped to join LinkedIn and to use it to its full potential! Next week, I will cover how to use the “YOUnivesity” dashboard from an alumni perspective, so stay tuned!

The leads are weak? You’re weak!

If you have never seen the movie/play “Glengarry Glen Ross,” do yourself a favor and watch it. Alec Baldwin rips into the late Jack Lemmon for commenting, “the leads are weak,” with a classic Baldwin-esque tongue-lashing: “The leads are weak? The <expletive> leads are weak! You’re weak!”

There’s already an abundance of marketing sources on the internet. It can seem at times like everyone wants to tell you how to approach online marketing, with constant reposts of the same content.

That’s why we set out to find a selection of blogs written by people who really know what they’re talking about, and who can provide you with unique insights on how to tackle the murky waters of establishing a solid online presence.

So, without further ado: these are 10 digital and internet marketing blogs that you should follow if you want to stay up to date with trends and get solid advice on how to succeed.

1.  Moz - http://moz.com/blog

Moz Blog is part of SeoMOZ, a group that specializes in providing SEO-optimization and digital marketing tools. Their blog is a popular and authoritative source for unique insights and concepts when it comes to getting your site ranked.

Rather than just giving you advice on how to successfully market your business, contributors will often share wisdom on how to build a solid business with strong client relationships. While the blog is free to access, their proprietary tools will cost you a (reasonable) investment.

2.  HubSpot – http://blog.hubspot.com/marketing

The HubSpot blog for Inbound Marketing attracts over 1.2 million readers a month. Have a quick glance at the content and you’ll see why. This beautifully designed blog is full of interesting tidbits of information, and will familiarize even technology novices with internet marketing concepts. Inbound Hub will deliver a wealth of knowledge to you at a steady pace, discussing everything from closing sales leads to ensuring your eBook is well received.

3.  Occam’s Razor – http://www.kaushik.net/avinash/

Occam’s Razor is the analytics-focused blog of Avinash Kaushik. He uses this portal to demonstrate the benefits of understanding your website’s traffic metrics, and the best practices for managing and presenting your business online. Avinash is also the author of two popular books on analytics: Web Analytics 2.0, and Web Analytics: An Hour a Day. Use the information on this blog to empower yourself with knowledge that few others will make use of!

4.  Copyblogger – http://www.copyblogger.com/blog

Copyblogger is a fantastic resource for those of you seeking advice on content creation and content marketing. Not only do they provide industry-killing seminars, webinars, and e-books, they also provide incredibly useful tips for free via their popular blog. The posts there are full of interesting, unique, and daring perspectives. To trust Copyblogger is to be part of the forefront of internet marketing.

5.  Unbounce – http://unbounce.com/blog

Unbounce is another one of those blogs that provides fascinating insights on metrics and analytics. Beyond that, their main focus is on helping you understand how to make as many conversions as possible. Everything from creating a captivating landing page to producing relevant and convincing copy is explained here, making it a fantastic source of information for those of you frustrated by low sales numbers.

6.  Mail Chimp – http://blog.mailchimp.com

Ah, MailChimp. An industry-leader in the newsletter game, the company knows much more about reaching readers than just delivering your content on time. You may not know it, but they also run a blog from their official website which shares some effective guidance on how to make successful work of what can often be a murky medium to utilise. Even better, readers can subscribe to the blog by entering their e-mail address at the bottom of the page.

7.  Blind Five Year Old – http://www.blindfiveyearold.com

Despite a rather tragic year for author AJ Kohn, and a somewhat questionable business name, his blog remains an aesthetically gratifying and much-valued stockpile of internet marketing tips. His advice is often delivered in a playful manner, but it is immensely useful and frighteningly accurate nonetheless. You should bookmark this blog immediately if you’d like to hear from a genuine internet marketing pioneer.

8.  ViperChill – http://www.viperchill.com

Glen Allsopp is a renowned name in the SEO business. He’s an internet marketing guru who’s been in the game since a young age, and is now trusted to provide regular and reliable (and oftentimes ground-breaking) guidance on taking your internet business to the tippy top. Glen’s work is as much about making new discoveries as it is sharing tips on how to use the tools available to you to exist efficiently and productively. Listen to this man and you will reap the benefits.

9.  Danny Brown – http://dannybrown.me

Danny Brown’s blog is as much a homage to wonderful web design as it is a place for helping you to understand an ever-changing internet. This is where an award-winning internet marketer discusses everything from eBooks to analytics, managing comments, and making conversions. There’s an almost serene quality to time spent on Danny’s website, and we highly encourage you to take a breather there now and again, too.

10.  Jon Loomer – http://www.jonloomer.com

Jon Loomer is a social marketing guru who’s unafraid to get his point out there. His official blog details not only how to market yourself using the social web, but also how it’s changing and what you should expect from each change respectively. A highly intelligent person, Loomer is a man who has earned his stripes having contributed to (and spearheaded) several successful internet marketing campaigns.

There are always going to be the new kid on the block when it comes to web marketing blogs, so keep your eyes peeled for excellent newcomers. But these 10 blogs are standby successes that every marketing pro should have bookmarked.

And when you find one that you really love, make sure to either subscribe via RSS, or sign up to the appropriate mailing list so that you never miss a new nugget of gold one of these experts is giving away.

The post 10 Digital Marketing Blogs You Need to Follow appeared first on Blogging Tips.

Seeing these bad habits creeping in?

The pressure is on to maximise sales growth and hit those end of year targets, so taking your eyes off the prize is a big NO at this time of year. Reduce the risk of missing your year-end target by keeping your sales team’s performance high and making the most of every sales opportunity.

We’ve taken a look at some of the bad habits that can affect your team’s performance. So if you see these ghoulish traits creeping in, stamp them out (ASAP) so you and your team can maximise sales growth and get ready to smash your 2015 targets.

What traits do you NOT want in your sales team? And what CAN you do to ensure you hit the ground running in 2015?

Bad trait: Bad-attitude

If you want to lose your prospects fast, a bad attitude is needed. And make sure it definitely translates across in your team’s calls and communications with prospects.

70% of B2B buyers rate how vendors (that’s your sales team) engage with them as more impactful than what they’re actually selling. Work attitude translates easily across a person’s tone of voice and even more so in face-to-face meetings.

Get Happy

A good attitude is infectious, it’s impossible to help your team maintain a positive attitude if you’re not positive at work. Get your team laughing and you’ll see the positive results translate into their work.

Bad trait: Dis-organised

Timing is definitely not everything if you want to make sure you’re losing those hot leads. Don’t bother reminding your team to be timely and relevant with calls to prospects or pre-schedule call-backs too. Oh, and definitely do not research prospects before making contact with them either.

Get ahead of the game

Your odds of qualifying a lead are 21x better if you follow up within 5 minutes of that lead’s creation (rather than 30 minutes of that lead’s creation). Make sure your team are quick off the bat and well prepared in understanding how your prospects think and when they’re ready to buy.

Bad trait: Laziness

If you want to be incredibly unsuccessful this final quarter of the year, then make sure your sales team definitely don’t nurture any leads through the funnel. And don’t bother checking in with your marketing team to see what lead-nurturing activities they’re doing either.

Pro-active lead nurturing

Companies that excel at lead nurturing generate 50% more sales-ready leads with a 33% reduction in costs. And when it takes an average of 80 calls to develop a new opportunity, it’s no use calling just once and leaving those leads to go cold. Be pro-active in nurturing your leads, send them relevant content and contact them regularly to keep them engaged.

Bad trait: No focus on the overall goal

Definitely do not focus your sales team on targets, and driving revenue. Increasing your average order values and maintaining consistent call times are pointless if you want to lose out. If you want a super unfocused team, make sure they aren’t reporting back to you on their daily, weekly and monthly figures – so you can be sure you have no idea where you are to target.

Focus, Focus, Focus

Some sales teams won’t close up to 53% of their forecasted deals, so it’s absolutely essential to continually monitor your sales pipeline with daily reports and feedback from your team – you’ll be able to evolve your pipeline, shorten sales cycles and focus your team on leaky funnels to maximise performance.

Oh, and remember – “Without a customer, you don’t have a business – all you have is a hobby.” Don Peppers

Want to smash your 2014 targets and really hit the ground running? Then download our guide to building a healthy sales pipeline or check out how to build the A-grade sales team.

This blog was originally posted on the Lead Forensics website. Read the original article here.

Hiring staff is one of the biggest pain points for small businesses, especially start-ups. Inevitably, you’ll need auxiliary roles to help with day-to-day operations. Hiring freelance or offshore staff is a practical way to fill in knowledge gaps when you have a limited capital. The question now is, how will you determine whether to hire or contract a role?

Here’s how you can bootstrap your hiring strategy:

Segment

Keep essential roles in-house. Separate your revenue from cost-generating functions. Break down your tasks and identify the roles you can outsource.

Factors to consider when determining whether to hire or contract:

Volume of work and cost
If you’re only going to need several hours for a job in a weekly or monthly basis, such as graphic design, hire a freelance worker. The catch is you’ll need extra effort for administrative tasks like recruitment and payroll.

If you need a full-time employee, such as an accountant, hire offshore staff. The catch is you’ll have to sign a contract and make sure that you pick the right offshore service provider.

Knowledge loss
While hiring extra help is practical, think about the knowledge you will lose if you delegate that role to a third party. For example, outsourcing back office means you’ll have to rebuild the process if you take it back in-house. But that isn’t a big deal compared to a contractor who leaves after helping to develop your product or service.

In a different scenario, contracting out a role can deprive your team from domain knowledge. For example, you can hire an extra hand for support. But this means your developers won’t gain the necessary know-how to fix problems later on.

Keep it lean.

Scratch off roles that you’re not going to need in the early stages. As a start-up, you’re not going to need HR yet. Talk to your local employment lawyer. Do your own recruitment because no one else can convey your vision as much as you.

On the other hand, think about the roles that are cost generators, but can be essential to other processes or in the future. Marketing is a cost centre but it can generate leads, segment customers, and ensure consistent branding. This will greatly help sales in closing qualified leads, as well as contribute to finding product/market fit.

In essence, keep your start-up lean but also consider future options and scalability.

Bonnie and Clyde, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, content marketing and social media. Yes, like those other famous pairings, content marketing and social media are partners in crime.

In this post, I’d like to share how social media can be a useful support for content marketing, helping you get the best results from your marketing efforts.

1) Amplification

Using the pareto principle (‘the 80/20 rule’), think of ways you can maximize minimal efforts to get big results, which of course is very useful for busy marketers (all of us!).

Social media can help you amplify your content – potentially making it go viral if the content has high intrinsic value, is actionable and is unique to the target audience.

So how can social media impact your content’s amplification potential?

• Adding hashtags can help non-targeted audience to see/view your content, making it easy for your content to gain traction
• Boosting the credibility of the page/content through the number of shares seen in the social sharing buttons gives visibility to your brand and helps you easily connect with influencers
• When one influencer shares your content, it makes easy for other people to see and can entice them to share your content as well.

2) Influencer outreach

There are many ways to reach out to top personalities, experts or influencers in your industry.

You can do it through email or phone, but the easiest way to engage them is through social networks (particularly Twitter).

You can reach many people by simply using social listening.

Social listening can help you find influencers in your space and people who’re building their own brand but are likely to share your content.

Influencer outreach in social networks can also help you in other online marketing activities, such as:

• Finding guest post opportunities directly from influencers
• Getting testimonials for your website that can add credibility and trust to your landing pages – these are very important factors in earning more sales and leads for your business.

3) Engagement

Social media, in my opinion, is for engagement, not for broadcasting. Whether you are talking to your customer, friend or colleague, social websites will help you engage with them and perform necessary actions that will be valuable for your business (e.g. sharing useful content on Twitter).

Engagement can also lead you into many useful places, such as:

• Understanding your customers’ wants and needs, which can help in the content creation process of your brand (this will ensure that people will already trust, share or even link to from their websites or blogs)
• Providing more growth opportunities for your business as you can easily determine what features or products you still need to offer to your users to keep up with industry changes and customer behavior.

Content marketing when combined with social media can help you get your desired results fast.

Given that social media can allow you to personalize and humanize your brand, it can be an easy way for your business, site or content to get traction on the web.

Two Key Acronyms to Keep in Mind 

When it comes to lead generation and search engine marketing, you need to remember two key acronyms:

• KISS – Keep it Simple Stupid: and
• SEO – Search Engine Optimization

Less is More

It’s also important to take note, when designing a lead form that, philosophically and practically, “less is more.” Using SEO and key words to direct people to the lead form landing page is the first step you want to take in attracting prospects. By the time they land on your page, you want to ensure the form is easy to complete and will make it possible for you to develop a sizable opt-in client base.

Make It Easy to Sign Onboard

You may have a great website and landing page, but in order to get people to become your customers, you must also make it easy for them to sign onboard with you and your company.

Write Compelling Copy

The basis for getting people to fill out the form is to write compelling copy in the first place. How you present yourself is essential in introducing the benefits of your service or product. These advantages contribute to writing a CTA or call to action that will convince visitors to sign up.

Incorporate Testimonials into the Lead Generation Copy

Lead page copy should introduce you and your business as being an expert resource. Include testimonials to add to your credibility. The copy that leads to the lead generation form on the landing page then should provide the kind of details that will promote site visitors to want to provide their contact details for further interaction and contact

Purchase a Domain for Your Landing Page

Support your search engine marketing campaign by purchasing a domain name that fits in nicely with what your business is offering. Some host providers offer domain names when you buy their services.

Secure the Services of a List Management Company to Increase Your Contacts

Once you have your lead page copy written and your domain and web hosting into place, you can build your lead generation page. If you want to regularly send a newsletter, you may want to think about utilizing the service of a list management company. By doing so, you can add to your contact base.

Market Your Lead Generation Page

Market your lead generation page by adding the domain name on your off-line and online marketing brochures and materials. Include the web address in your e-mail signature and on advertising brochures and business cards.

Make the Form Super Simple to Fill Out

Again, the lead generation form should provide a CTA that makes it easy to fill the form out. For example, it might say – “Don’t Wait! Now’s the Time to Learn more about this Amazing Product Line! Add a clearly marked space for the name, e-mail address and phone contact.” Don’t make the form too long. Design it so it can be filled out in 15 seconds or less.

Follow Up Immediately

Once the leads start coming in, follow up on them right away. Deliver your offer and supplement the information with further details. Add lead info on your future online and off-line correspondence to increase the chances for more sales.

How to Use Cialdini’s Principles and A/B Testing to Increase Sales and Conversions written by Guest Post read more at Small Business Marketing Blog from Duct Tape Marketing

It’s guest post day here at Duct Tape Marketing and today’s guest post is from Anand Kansal  – Enjoy! 

There is arguably no more important book in the world of persuasive selling than Robert Cialdini’s “Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion”. With the rise of online marketing, it was, therefore, only a matter of time before the principles of influence that Mr. Cialdini talked about began to be used by online business owners and marketers to increase sales and conversions on their websites. Specifically, in the world of A/B testing, many successful testers have used them to construct variations which employ one or more of these principles. These principles have been used on major eCommerce and SaaS websites to run tests that result in more and more visitors driven into a conversion funnel or tempted to click on that ‘Add to Cart’ button.

In this post, I’ll be giving an overview of each of the 6 principles before demonstrating a successful A/B test that was conducted on this principle and how you can use this principle to increase the persuasive power of your website. Let’s get started!

Principle#1: Reciprocity

People tend to return favors. The reason why you get free stuff (newsletters, eBooks, guides) all the time in your inbox is because of some marketer wanting you to return the favor by either trying out their product, subscribing to their stuff or sharing their stuff on social media.

Artsy Editor, a premium WordPress WYSIWYG editor, tested 3 combinations of Call-to-Action(CTA) buttons on their homepage. Let us take a look at each of the variations in turn.

Variation 1

Variation 2

Variation 3

The goal of the test was the number of people who clicked through to their demo and pricing page. Variation 1 increased their CTR by 47%, Variation 2 by 17% and Variation 3 resulted in no improvement.

What does this show? If you push too hard at the beginning, the visitors may feel uncomfortable and leave the site. Especially for a SaaS product, the primary CTA should be demo/trial.

Principle#2: Social Proof

People see what they see others are doing. We are more likely to put money in a collection jar which is half full and buy a product recommended by someone known to us. FietsPunt.nl, a Dutch online biking solutions store, used this principle to run an A/B test on their website. What they did was adding a customer testimonial widget to their product pages. This is how the control and the variation looked.

Control

Variation

Comparison Image

The variation recorded a 36.73% increase in orders and had a 99% chance to beat the original. Needless to say, this was a hugely beneficial test.

Principle#3: Scarcity

The fear of losing out is much more than the joy of winning. This is why salesmen are quick to point out that the ‘special discount’ they are offering is only for a ‘limited period of time’.

RIPT Apparel, an online retailer of designer tees and wearable art, make a new design available every day starting at midnight. This design is available only for 24 hours, post which it is retired for posterity. They tried to use this ‘scarcity hook’ by including it in the text on their CTA button. This is how the control and the variation looked.

Control

Variation

The variation resulted in a 6.3% increase in sales. So what do we see here? A company increasing sales – not by changing business models, adding products, giving offers – but just recognizing a persuasion hook and using it to drive more conversions. This is the power of persuasion.

Principle#4: Authority

People tend to believe in figures that exhibit some sense of authority or leadership. This is why pharmaceutical companies use doctors in their marketing campaigns. Or why we are likely to believe a ‘stock market expert’ even though most of what he/she says turns out to be made up.

Bag Servant decided to use this principle in setting up an A/B test on their product pages. In the variation, they replaced the Twitter Followers badge in the header with a relatively rare WOW badge that was presented to them by a renowned business woman.

Control

Variation

Comparison image

As a result of this test, product exploration increased by 60.42%.

Trust badges like the one seen above can be used to radically improve the trust factor of your website.

Principle#5: Liking

Many marketers tend to overlook the fact that people are more likely to be persuaded by people who they can relate with, and therefore, like. That is why advertisements of household appliances prefer to show moms and not celebrities.

Medalia Art, an online art store tried to trigger this principle by replacing the images of the painting with images of the artists themselves. This resulted in an increase in conversion rate of more than 95%.

Control

Variation

One way of using this technique is advertising your product through your consumers. Customers today are skeptical and they are more open to word-of-mouth than clichéd advertisements.

Principle#6: Commitment and Consistency

Human beings, in general, have a deep desire to be consistent with their actions. If you’re able to show people that not using your product/service will negatively affect what they most want, they will be more likely to buy from you. This is why you see headlines like ‘Do you want to have 6 pick abs?’ or ‘Do you want a Mercedes in 2 months?’ (Yeah, right)

I have to admit something here. I lied at the beginning of this article. No good test has yet been conducted to see whether Commitment and Consistency really result in increased online conversions. I want to give you this opportunity to show us how you conducted a test based on one of these principles and whether it worked or not. Feel free to comment below.

Anand Kansal is a Marketer at VWO. He is involved in VWO’s lead generation activities. He’s also responsible for creating content offers, including eBooks and blog posts. Passionate about helping websites increase leads and revenue, he loves to read about behavioral psychology and decision science. He can be found on Twitter at @anandkansal88

Part of the challenge of B2B sales and lead generation is that sometimes the right solution doesn’t work the first time you try it.

When a roadblock appears, you need to troubleshoot the root of the problem so that you don’t inadvertently dismiss a valuable tool or strategy.

Fortunately, your sales efforts come equipped with an effective troubleshooting tool: your detailed buyer personas.

Here are three frustrating sales problems you can prevent or solve by tapping into your buyer personas.

1. Lengthy inquiry calls with no progress in sight

The more you know about your prospects, the better you can focus your content to meet their needs and position your company as a specialist.

Inquiry calls are exciting because they represent the possibility for new business. But if you’re getting lots of calls with no ultimate sale, or experiencing sales cycles that are incredibly long, there’s something missing between your sales pitch and the customer’s buying decision: you aren’t providing attractive educational opportunities to each persona.

Solve this problem:

The more you know about your prospects, the better you can focus your content to meet their needs and position your company as a specialist.

Start by getting even more specific with your buyer personas and evaluating the conversations you have on the phone. We sometimes record phone calls and play them back to evaluate how well a sales person relates to the buyer on the other end.

The key to good inbound selling is listening. “Leaning forward” and listening closely to what buyers say, then documenting those in your buyer personas can help you identify trends you can use to better relate to and identify with prospects.

Focus first on listening, and if you find yourself talking for more than a few minutes, stop and ask a question to encourage them to talk about their situation.

Use your buyer personas to create articles that you can send prospects in recap emails after the phone call. Track your email opens to see how serious they are. If they open your recap email and click the link, you might be advancing the sale.

2. Tire kickers who waste your time with sales calls

Price shoppers will always show up in your lead generation efforts. They tend to use the web to do research and lurk in the shadows, but sometimes you’ll come across one who isn’t afraid to reach out and engage your sales team.

Solve this problem:

There are two strategies that can help you deal with tire kickers.

First, you may want to take the time to create a buyer persona specifically for the tire kicker that describes their behavior and helps you understand what drives their price needs. Depending on the results, you may want to list pricing or a general statement about pricing on your website or within the sales process itself. Another alternative would be to have a price guide that’s ready to go but not shown on your website. You can send this to the tire kicker when they call.

Second, use helpful website content, PDFs, and guides to help educate the customer on the value of what you offer. Because information on pricing and other questions they may have are on your website, you may spend less time with them on the phone. You may be also be able to convince them to pay a premium for your product or service.

3. Declining web traffic and lead quality

Web traffic and lead quality are great indicators of the quality of your content and website.

Web traffic and lead quality are great indicators of the quality of your content and website. When you’re checking your web analytics and see that your website traffic declining, or if you get leads that never call you back (or no leads at all), you’ve got a problem.

Solve this problem:

Go back to the drawing board to get into the mindset of each buyer persona. Consider which words each customer would use to find your company and target your content and on-page SEO accordingly.

You may also want to read your website’s key pages again. Does the homepage have to much company-focused, “we” content? Do you talk about the buyer’s situations and focus on their problems, or is it all about your company?

Combine this insight into an overall effort to make sure your website copy is benefit-driven and customer focused. For example, if your company typically sells to an equipment manager inside a manufacturing facility, your website copy and lead generation offers should focus around the specific challenges that this person will face, such as navigating the procurement/purchasing process, lowering risk or minimizing downtime.

How do you get a seat at the table when nobody’s officially invited you to pull up a chair?

That’s the challenge for today’s businesses and the marketers tasked with making them gloriously conspicuous by establishing brand presence, generating demand, and enticing leads to come hither. With the majority of buyers in full control of their own buying process, much of their research is done – and their minds made up – long before they invite you to take a seat.

In fact, if you’re lucky enough to be contacted or have your sales call accepted, you’ve already made the buyer’s short list of contenders. (Forrester reports that typical buyers are 70 to 90 percent of the way through the buying process before they ever agree to engage with a sales person.)

The net:net of the new normal is that marketers must change the way they approach lead generation; they must figure out how to be highly visible and valuable during that 70-plus percent of the buying process. Says Jay Hidalgo, principal of Demand Gen Coach, “The more marketers can get into the mindset of the buyer upfront, the better chance they have of introducing themselves closer to the beginning of the buying process.”

A primary target for honing this new approach is your website – arguably THE most important marketing tool for introducing your brand personality, demonstrating your expertise, showcasing your products and services, and proving your value. Don’t take my word for it; according to a B2B Technology Marketing study, 90% of marketers agree this is so.

With that in mind, here are 4 foundational strategies that will help your website get the mindshare it deserves and generate the leads you want.

1. Know Who They Are

Yes, I’m talking about personas. And yes, if you had a penny for every time you saw this topic, it might add up to real money. But it bears re-re-repeating because personas are still not being developed by an astonishing number of branded websites … even those that you’d think would know better.

Case in point, a well-known technology company (it shall remain nameless here) has 37 hyperlinks on the home page. Thirty-seven. I have no idea what they want me to do. It’s akin to what happens when I walk into Costco without a shopping list. I get so overwhelmed with the over-abundance of disparate options that I no longer know why I went there in the first place.

Takeaway: If you don’t know who your buyers are, you can’t possibly streamline their journey and deliver what they need.

So create personas. They’re the key that helps you hone in on and understand who your buyers are, and they’re the basis of everything else: your site design and navigation, your messaging, your content mix, your talk tracks, your nurturing strategies, everything.

Do it. Here’s a great post on how it’s done (and the images are cool).

2. Uncover What They’re Looking For

This isn’t about having the Vulcan Mind Meld with your prospects (though wouldn’t that be a handy little skill to have?). It’s about paying attention to collective behaviors to understand what your current and potential buyers want, which will ultimately help you attract the right kinds of visitors.

• Discover relevant keywords and phrases. Find out what business- and/or industry-specific words, terms, and phrases are being searched on. Free tools such as Google AdWords Keyword Planner, Google Trends, and Microsoft Advertising Intelligence are good places to start.
• Monitor your on-site search. Keeping regular tabs on what visitors are searching for while on your site opens a birthday box of ah-ha’s into your prospects’ wants, needs, pain points, and interests. This informs all kinds of things including your content marketing strategies, talk tracks, and persona refinement.
• Talk to your teams. Your customer support personnel and salespeople are a wellspring of information about what prospects and customers are looking for across all stages of the funnel. Ask them and reap the benefits of their frontline knowledge.
• Track visitor behavior. Tracking where your visitors come from, what pages they visit, and which types of content they interact with is fundamental to delivering the right information at the right time. At a minimum, you should be reviewing your website analytics (e.g., Google Analytics, WebTrends, etc.). For even more visitor intelligence – including who each visitor is and their unique history on your website – you can integrate your site analytics into Website Visitor Tracking technology.

3. Deliver the Content They Want

Here’s where a big chunk of rubber hits the road. Content is king … as long as it’s the right content at the right time. According to Jim Stengel, former global marketing officer for Procter & Gamble, “In a real lead generation website, every page has a distinct purpose.”

Content is the bedrock from which all other marketing strategies and tactics emerge. The premise is as old as the hills, but its heightened importance (particularly on such a global scale) is a new development, compliments of the digital world.

Quality content makes your website more powerful in every dimension because content is what everyone is seeking all the time. From case studies and eBooks, to videos and webinars, to forms and landing pages, by creating content that answers the specific questions your target customers are seeking during the 70-90 percent of their self-guided buyer’s journey, you exponentially increase your chances of closing the deal when they come a’knockin’.

You can get your feet wet with content marketing here and here. For deeper knowledge, download our free toolkit, Creating Killer Marketing Content.

4. Help Them Find You

If you want your website and all the great content you’ve created to get found, search engine optimization (SEO) is essential. In fact, it’s quintessential.

Consider this: 4 out of 5 buyers start their product research in a search engine. (Pew Research) This means today’s buyers not only do their own information-gathering well in advance of contacting you, most use search engines (primarily Google) to kickstart the process.

And here’s one more: Natural search drives the most traffic of all channels, responsible for nearly half (47%) of all visits compared to paid search, which drives only 6% of all visits. (Conductor)

To be sure, SEO is a deep well that requires dedication and diligence. But the upside is incredibly impressive and, in many cases, a game-changer for business.

There are plenty of tools, vendors, and consultants that can help you understand and implement SEO. If you’re an Act-On customer, you likely use the Act-On SEO Optimizer to keep your website search-friendly. If you’re new to it, you can get started here and here. Additionally, our eBook, SEO 101: The Basics and Beyond, is a beneficial reference.

A New Approach to Value

The evolving brand-consumer dynamic continues to turn marketing on its head, forcing marketers to rethink how to get in front of today’s new breed of buyers who actively search for – and rely on – specific and relevant information to narrow their purchase decision.

A winning approach to being both visible and valuable is to leverage the power of your website, effectively becoming part of the buyer’s research process. If you can do this, you’ll increase your site’s lead-gen magnetism. And when they’re ready to buy, they just might motion you over to take a seat at that coveted table.

Take a Deeper Dive into Lead Generation

Ready to learn even more about tapping into the lead-gen power of your website? Download our new eBook.

“House Do Want That” uploaded by Heartless_Lyn, used under Creative Commons license.

Back to a medical analogy, wouldn’t it be great if you had tools like your doctors have? Tools that could magically see inside your Marketing “body” and allow you to instantly diagnose problems. Not enough MQLs? Instant diagnosis. Conversion problems? There’s a cure for that.

The truth is – you do have an “MRI” for your Marketing troubles. It’s called a Demand Funnel. If you are using it properly, you have all the diagnostic tools you need to completely understand what is and what isn’t working properly in your Lead process!

Get Started
Interestingly enough, most organizations have some semblance of a Demand Funnel in place, but many are only used as reporting tools and some are not used at all. Step number one is to understand exactly what your Demand Funnel is telling you. When using an MRI machine as a diagnostic tool, if the doctor has no idea what to look for in the imagery created by the machine, it is useless. Your Demand Funnel works the same way. If you, the Demand Gen expert, don’t know what to look for, it is not effective as a diagnostic tool. Let’s make sure we understand what we’re looking for in your Demand Funnel diagnosis.

Basic Demand Funnel Metrics

In your Demand Funnel, you are measuring the three things you can affect that relate to total Demand:

• The number of Contacts in each stage, and the sum of those representing the entire Funnel.
• Conversion rates from stage to stage.
• Time in stage, which reveals Funnel velocity.

Before we move to diagnostic details, here are a few things to consider. You may not have complete or reliable data past MQL. (For more information, see this {Demand Gen Brief} post.) This is OK, because you can perform a diagnosis on the data you do have. If your MAP is not automated to the point of updating Funnel stages in a timely fashion, you probably need to build (or have built) a program to match your funnel stages, definitions and attributes of Contacts in stage. Otherwise, you will not be working with up-to-date data.

Reading your Demand Funnel MRI

We just determined the three things you can affect relating to total Demand, so now you need to determine the metrics that tell us how well your Demand Gen team is doing. First is to determine the volume of Contacts in each Funnel stage. While your Demand Funnel will be different, it should look something like this:

Prospect              191,302

Inquiry                22,956

MQL                    11,019

SAL                      10,138

SQL                      2,433

Secondarily, we need to determine the conversion rates from stage to stage and, in turn the composite conversion rate for the entire funnel. Based on this example:

Prospect – Inquiry:          12%

Inquiry – MQL:                 48%

MQL – SAL:                       92%

SAL – SQL:                         24%

Prospect – SQL:                01.27%

Finally, we need two additional data points to determine stage velocity throughout the funnel: stage date (a date/time stamp applied when the Contact reaches any given stage) and time in stage (a calculation based on the stage date for the next stage in the series minus the stage date for the calculated stage). We want to understand this number because total demand is a function of both how many contacts in the funnel convert andhow quickly they convert. Think of velocity this way: with the identical conversion rates, if you can cut the time in stage across the entire funnel in half, you can create twice the SQLs at any given point in time. Like conversion rates, time in stage adds up to a composite across the entire funnel. Based on this example:

Prospect                8 days (Inquiry Stage Date 10/18/2014 – Prospect Stage Date 10/10/2014)

Inquiry                  18 days (MQL Stage Date 11/05/2014 – Inquiry Stage Date 10/18/2014)

MQL                      22 days (SAL Stage Date 11/27/2014 – MQL Stage Date 11/05/2014)

SAL                         2 days (SQL Stage Date 11/29/2014 – SAL Stage Date 11/27/2014)

SQL                        15 days (Closed Stage Date 12/14/2014 – SQL Stage Date 11/29/2014)

Composite            65 days

Your next step is to begin documenting the Demand Funnel baselines for each of these metrics on a periodic basis. Start documenting on at least a monthly cadence, with the intention to move to a weekly cadence. The objective is to determine if your metrics are moving in the right direction. Your conversion rates need to go up and your time in stage needs to go down. Volume then becomes a calculation based on how many MQLs or SQLs your sales team needs.

Change the conversation.

Your MRI training is now complete. You know how to read it and diagnose your Demand Funnel problems. Conversations that used to revolve around how many contacts need to be added to the top of the funnel can now be fine-tuned to talk about conversion rates and velocity. Remember, the ultimate goal is closed business (Closed/Won Stage) and the conversation needs to be about how to get there as quickly as possible, rather than how many nebulously-defined “leads” can you generate. You have a powerful diagnostic tool. Use it to your advantage!

Notes:

Your Demand Funnel is your chief diagnostic tool for Demand Generation.

Using the tool to determine specific problems will lead to specific, focused solutions.

Remember, the issue is closed business, not the number of undefined “leads” in the funnel…

You will also be able to understand where Contacts are “stuck” in the funnel and apply tactics designed to move them to the next stage. That is where we will pick up next week – using your Demand Funnel diagnostics to determine where to apply specific tactics to solve specific problems in: Three Ways to Use Your Demand Funnel, Part 2. Getting Leads Moving.

This week's blog comes from guest blogger, Dave Kurlan. Dave is a top-rated speaker, best-selling author, sales thought leader and highly-regarded sales leadership expert.

On the rare occasion that I have the opportunity to golf, it doesn't matter what I choose for clubs, balls, gloves, tees or clothing. At this point in my life and very short golfing career, just being out with a friend is good enough for me and if we count his strokes, and my lost balls, our final scores might even be competitive!

That's how some companies recruit salespeople. It doesn't matter who they are, where they come from, if they have selling skills, and whether or not they have any experience. These companies treat sales recruiting like the instructions on their shampoo bottle - they rinse and repeat.

This approach is a self-fulfilling prophecy which, because of their willingness to accept anyone who will take the job, is guaranteed to fail. Nearly every recruit will fail quickly and they will find themselves restarting the recruiting process again a short while later.

When it comes to finding and selecting new salespeople, you can choose the easy path and have consistently poor outcomes, or take the more challenging path and have consistently good outcomes.

When you look at it that way - easy gets you bad and difficult gets you good - there isn't much reason for continuing to do it the easy way. Of course, if you have always done it that way you may not be willing to change...

What makes the difficult way so difficult?

You'll need a lot more of the right candidates, and a few great tools to help with selection.

One client, hiring for an inbound sales role, assessed nearly 1,000 candidates in the past 12 months and that was just the beginning!

Another client needed to identify a needle in a haystack. They needed an extremely capable salesperson that could sell big deals to the C-suite of enterprise size companies AND the winning candidates would also need to have highly evolved technical skills. Nearly 200 candidates were assessed for that role.

A third client assessed around 250 sales candidates for an inside sales role while a fourth client assessed more than 2,000 candidates for a traditional outside sales role.

Each of these clients saved huge amounts of time by doing the following 10 things:

1. They assessed first and asked questions later.
2. They used a very accurate, sales-specific assessment that is incredibly predictive of success in a sales role.
3. They did not look at the resumes or contact any candidate that was not recommended by the assessment.
4. They used online applicant tracking for candidates to collect experience-based information to further filter which candidates would be contacted.
5. They interviewed the recommended candidates with the right experiences by phone for 5 minutes.
6. They scheduled face-to-face interviews with the best of those candidates and only then ran their normal recruiting processes.
7. They selected, hired and on-boarded great salespeople.
8. They coached, directed and guided these great salespeople, holding them accountable to appropriate KPI's from day 1.
9. They significantly reduced turnover, increased ramp-up time and exceeded goals for sales revenue.
10. They did not have to start the recruiting process again.

This was all made possible by the use of one, very customizable, very useful and accurate sales candidate assessment. It works for every sales role. It works in every industry. It will work for you too. If you would like to take a test drive, click the image below for a free trial!

Once again, Facebook is doing exactly what it should be doing: Investing for the long term.

And, once again, Wall Street is appalled.

Last night, the moment Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced that Facebook would invest aggressively next year and therefore generate modestly less profit in the short-term, the stock tanked.

Never mind that this year of investment will almost certainly increase Facebook's long-term profits and value over the long haul.

Wall Street has become so obsessed with short-term profit maximization that it no longer understands the concept of "present value of future cash flows" — a concept that includes not just next year's cash flows but ALL future cash flows.

This short-term profit obsession isn't just hurting Facebook's stock. It's hurting great companies. And it's hurting the economy.

In deciding once again to invest aggressively for the future, Facebook is striving to create the most possible long-term value for its four important constituencies: Customers (users), employees, shareholders, and society.

Many more American companies should be doing this.

But most American companies have become so hijacked by short-term Wall Street traders, and so obsessed with annual bonuses and stock prices, that they think about little more than "beating analysts' estimates" next quarter.

In so doing, they often under-invest in opportunities that could create vastly more value over the long term.

Instead of making big, bold bets on projects that won't pay off for 5-10 years, for example, companies cut research and development to squeeze out a couple more pennies for this quarter's bottom line.

Instead of investing in redeploying and retraining talented employees, they fire them.

Instead of paying good employees well enough that the employees don't have to be poor, they "control labor costs." (Hello, Walmart. Hello, Starbucks and McDonald's. Hello, Apple Stores (although these, to Apple's great credit, do pay more than they have to)).

And so on.

As the accompanying charts show, the profit-maximization obsession has led to the country's biggest companies earning the highest profits in history, both in absolute terms and as a percent of the economy.

Meanwhile, the companies are paying the lowest wages in history.

And the companies are investing in capital equipment at one of the lowest rates in history.

If you talk to companies about this, they will say they obsess about short-term profits because they have a "duty to shareholders" to deliver the highest financial return and highest stock-price possible, at all times.

Importantly, however, the companies do not say this because it's some immutable law of business. (It isn't.)

The companies say it because it's what they've been told by short-term traders, who are worried about how their funds are going to perform week, next month, and next quarter.

There are lots of causes of Wall Street's obsession with short-term profits, so it's not worth trying to pin the blame on any one participant.

The important point is this:

Our collective short-term profit obsession is hurting companies, hurting average Americans, and hurting the economy.

Why?

Because the "cost-savings" that companies get when they don't invest in attractive long-term projects represent lost wages for American consumers and lost sales for other American companies.

And those lost wages and lost sales constrain the economy's growth rate.

In other words, our obsession with "maximized short-term profits" is one reason the economy is suffering through this interminable period of slow growth. 

That brings us back to Facebook.

Over the last two years, to Wall Street's short-term dismay, Facebook has frequently announced that it was going to reduce its profits by investing aggressively for the long term.

Each time Facebook has done this, Facebook's stock has temporarily tanked. And each time, as the investments have paid off, the stock has then recovered and moved on to a new high.

In other words, by ignoring Wall Street's short-term profit obsession, Facebook is building its business — and stock value — for the long term.

And, in the meantime, Facebook's aggressive investment is pumping cash back into the economy in the form of wages and the purchase of equipment and services from other companies.

That last trend is not just good for Facebook. It's good for the global economy.

So we should all tip our hats to Facebook.

In short, Facebook isn't just dancing on Wall Street's puppet strings. It is focusing on creating value for the four constituencies that every great company should create value for:

• Customers
• Employees,
• Shareholders, and
• Society

That's a great thing. 

Not just for Facebook's customers, employees, and shareholders. But for the global economy, too.

More companies need to think this way.

And we should all celebrate the ones that do.

SEE ALSO: Sorry, It's Not A "Law Of Capitalism" That You Pay People As Little As Possible

Join the conversation about this story »

It can be hard to recover from a less-than-stellar performance review, especially one that you didn’t see coming. You might feel angry, embarrassed, and confused. How do you regain your professional confidence? And how do you make the best use of the critical feedback?

What the Experts Say
Negative feedback often contradicts the stories that we tell about ourselves — what we’re good at, what we’re capable of — and sometimes confirms our worst fears. But don’t let a negative review unravel the story of who you are. “No one bats a thousand,” says Mitchell Marks, professor of management at San Francisco State University and president of the consultancy JoiningForces.org. “We’re human beings. And sometimes a reality check is quite valuable.” Without feedback, after all, there wouldn’t be any possibility for growth. “Always getting a glowing review means that you’re not challenging yourself,” says Sheila Heen, author of Thanks for the Feedback: The Science and Art of Receiving Feedback Well. Critical input can be “a signal that you’re tackling things that are stretching you.” Still, it doesn’t feel good. Here’s how to bounce back from a negative review.

Reflect before you react
It’s tempting to get angry or defensive, especially if you’re accustomed to positive reviews. But it’s important to “hold your emotions in check,” says Marks. “There’s nothing to be gained by lashing out or putting down the system or the person delivering the review.” Take a few days to let the feedback sink in. If it helps, find a friend to vent to, says Heen, but try to do it outside of the office.

Look for your blind spots
It’s possible that you may not recognize yourself in the feedback. That’s because, despite our best intentions, there is often a gap between how we see ourselves and the way that others actually see us. “We need other people to help us see ourselves,” says Heen. Although it can be comforting to lean on a sympathetic friend, try to seek out those who will be candid with you instead of telling you that the input isn’t true. “Think about talking to friends who can help you learn from the feedback, rather than simply reinforce your self-perception,” says Heen. Ask yourself: What might be right about this criticism? Have I heard it before? Perhaps your tone comes across as more exasperated than you intend, or colleagues feel you shoot down ideas too quickly even though you believe that you keep an open mind. If after some self-reflection, you still don’t understand the roots of the critiques, reach out to colleagues for additional feedback, again “making it clear you are interested in honesty, not consolation,” says Marks.

Ask questions
Once you’ve cooled off, make sure you fully understand the review. That may involve going back to your boss with questions. “If anything is not crystal clear, ask,” says Marks. Be careful with your tone: You don’t want to appear as if you’re challenging the review.” “Ask as many questions as possible,” says Heen. If your boss says you aren’t taking enough risks, ask, “Can you give me an example of a time when I should have taken the initiative but didn’t? What might you have done?” If your team is excelling in some performance targets, but bombing in others, ask what level of performance might be considered a success and for insight into how to achieve it. Make it clear you want concrete examples of what you should be doing differently.

Make a performance plan
The purpose of feedback is to help you improve in your job, and that requires a detailed plan of action. That may involve learning new skills, reprioritizing your tasks, or reevaluating how you come across to colleagues. Agree with your manager on what you need to do to make changes. “Give yourself thirty days or sixty days to experiment with trying to do a couple of things differently,” says Heen. “Then check in with the relevant people, and say, ‘Look, I’m changing how I’m approaching this but help me see if I’m on track.’” Marks also suggests asking for an interim review with your manager to make sure that you’re making the performance improvements that you want to make. “Ask your boss if you can set a date now for a meeting in three or six months,” he says. That way you can make sure your performance meets everyone’s expectations.

Give yourself a second score
Remember that the evaluation may not be fully within your control, but your reaction to it is. Imagine that there is a second assessment, based on how you respond to the review and give yourself a score for your handling of it. “You could get an F on the exam, but if you get an A on what you do with it, that’s what matters,” says Heen. “That’s what determines whether you get an A the next time.” Aiming for a great second score, and perhaps sharing that with your boss will remind you that the negative review is not the end of your professional story.

Look at the big picture
Once you’ve taken the time for introspection, you may realize that your lagging performance isn’t a result of a blind spot, but rather an indication that you simply aren’t in the right position. “Sometimes it takes an event like a negative review to realize you’re not a good fit for the organization,” says Marks. Regardless of whether you stay or move on, use the review as a springboard for change — and success. “Many, many successful people have failed at various points in their career, and most of them later looked back on it as a real opportunity,” says Heen. “So even though it feels really crappy, just think, this is your chance.”

Principles to Remember:

Do:

• Ask questions and get clarifications — it’s critical to understand the specific ways you can improve
• Take the initiative to make a detailed plan of action
• Remember to see the value in feedback — it can be a springboard for positive change

Don’t:

• Get angry or argue with the feedback — you’ll only make things worse
• Turn only to sympathetic friends to vent — you also need honest mirrors to make sense of the review
• Consider the review the final word — how you react to the feedback is far more important

Case Study #1: Clarify in order to move forward
When Denis Coleman was promoted from finance to management in a fast-growing electronics manufacturer, he didn’t have any experience leading a team. But the company was expanding throughout Europe, and Denis was tapped to lead a new team in the Czech Republic. “To be honest, I was woefully under-qualified,” says Denis.

Denis had always been a hard worker, regularly volunteering for assignments. He took the same hard-charging approach with his direct reports. “I thought being a successful manager meant working long hours and doing lots of things,” says Denis. “And pushing my team to do the same.” After a year, his manager sat him down and said, much to Denis’s surprise, that he wasn’t meeting expectations. “I actually thought he was joking,” says Denis.

After several days of anger and frustration, Denis began to think maybe his boss had a point. He wasn’t effectively communicating to his team which tasks that they should prioritize. “I treated every single thing that came up in front of me as urgent,” he says. As a result, the team had no focus. “I was managing by hours and tasks,” says Denis. “I needed to manage by outcomes and results.”

In order to make sure that he fully understood his manager’s critique, he went back a week later and asked for further clarification. “I said, ‘Look. I don’t fully understand this. Please, can you just explain it to me again?’” Thanks to that conversation, he got a better understanding of what the organization was trying to achieve in the region and how he and his team fit into that approach. “I took that feedback and cascaded it down so that what we were doing was informed by the organizational strategy,” he says.

Denis also asked his boss to check in with him more regularly to give him feedback. As a result, “I got more advice, more direction, more mentoring,” he says. For the following three years, Denis was nominated as Employee of the Year within the company. And his negative review had a lasting effect on him: Today, he’s the founder and CEO of Work Compass, which creates online performance reviews and performance management software for companies.

Case Study #2: Be proactive about your improvement
Stephanie Barnes Taylor had recently transferred to the contracts division of a law firm in Houston. It was early in her career, and she had little experience drafting contracts. “It was a totally different type of work than what I had been doing,” she says.

Still she was unprepared for the scathing performance review a few months later. “I had never got any feedback that suggested that there were major problems,” she says. It was also her very first experience with negative feedback in general. “In college and law school, my work ethic and performance had always been excellent,” she says. “So it was a double shock.”

After she got over the “hurt,” as she put it, she set her mind to improving her performance. She found a contract drafting class that was starting two weeks later and signed up. She developed a performance improvement plan that addressed all of the issues raised during the evaluation, and consulted other trusted attorneys in the firm on her approach.

She then took her plan to her manager. In that conversation, she also asked if he would be willing to coach her more directly. She implemented the plan over the next year and her performance improved. She ended up taking another position at a different firm before the next evaluation period, but since then, she’s never gotten another negative performance review.

Today, as the CEO of The Fruition Group, a leadership and strategic planning firm in Ocean Springs, Mississippi, Stephanie sees the negative review as a pivotal career moment. “Negative feedback is still good feedback because it shows where your opportunities are to improve,” she says. “Rather than focus on the bit that you didn’t do well, you now have an opportunity to really improve in an area where, otherwise, you would continue to be mediocre or failing in.”

More on giving and receiving feedback:

Delivering an Effective Performance Review

Find the Coaching in Criticism

Everything You Need to Know About Giving Negative Feedback

How do you create an atmosphere that keeps top performers at your organization? How do you keep your competitors from plucking your best talent? How do you minimize top performers leaving for opportunities elsewhere?

Gone is the “You should be grateful to work here” paradigm. It has been replaced by Millennials with “Why should I work (or keep working) for you?” Leadership expert, John C. Maxwell, says, “Your ability as a leader to find, develop, and retain the best people is the single greatest factor in determining your success.”

The key to retaining young top talent is to cultivate a company culture that is hard to leave. Company culture starts with the leader. By leveraging these three guiding principles you can create a workplace irresistible to Millennials.

Connect with your team.

More than ever before, it’s more acceptable to be yourself in the workplace. These days, letting your hair down won’t undermine your authority but rather will boost the connection with your teams. The erosion of many of today’s workplace formalities has caused a rise in more and more people bringing their authentic selves to work.

Because they place a high value on transparency, Millennials respond well to authentic leaders. They won’t want to leave a culture where diversity is celebrated, one-of-a-kind experiences are shared, strengths are valued, voices given, and stories are shared.

At the end of the day, people leave people not companies. Invest the time and energy to create personal connections with your team.

Coach for development.

The #1 reason Millennials leave an organization is due to lack of career opportunities. In my experience, it’s not because these opportunities didn’t exist within the company but it’s because the leaders didn’t communicate those opportunities. They were too busy bossing their talent that they forgot to coach their talent.

Leaders will receive more valuable feedback at all levels of the organization if they value each person in the organization regardless of their position or generation. Former captain of the Navy destroyer USS Benfold, D. Michael Abrashoff, says it best, “Every leader needs big ears and zero tolerance for stereotypes.” If you’ve taken the time to create a personal relationship, you’ll know what uniquely matters to them and will be able to coach them beyond their perceived potential.

Boss less. Coach more.

Strive for what matters.

It’s easy for someone to quit a job but it’s much more difficult for them to quit a cause…especially Millennials. They are suckers for significance. They long for meaningful work.

Lean into their quest for good by casting the vision of the net impact your organization is having in the world. And remember, vision leaks so be sure to cast vision as often as possible and find creative ways to keep the vision front and center and top of mind.

Creating a culture dedicated to fostering authentic personal relationships, developing talent, and focusing on a cause will result in Millennial loyalty.

Retain on.

Question: What other workplace elements have you seen that attract young talent?

When your schedule is packed, deadlines are looming, and your goals are falling short, you may find yourself in a driven, "I need to get things done" mode. That no-nonsense approach is great for getting things accomplished. (No procrastinating for you!)

But it can affect your correspondence and interactions with prospects and clients. A brusque approach can cause you to sound uncaring, unsympathetic, and selfish—exactly what you don't want customers to perceive you as. You might also push too hard for a sale, which will also cause buyers to turn away.

You need to show customers your softer side—the side that empathizes, is curious, asks questions, offers advice, and works to develop a relationship with buyers. For it's growing and maintaining strong relationships that will lead to sales and referrals.

Hashtags are probably nothing new to you, especially if you’ve been using social media for marketing in any way. If you don’t have a serious strategy for branding with hashtags in place, however, you might not get any benefits. Why would you bother with hashtagged phrases if they’re not helping your brand? Besides appearing culturally relevant, of course.

The hashtag is there to set you apart from other brands, to help you craft your brand story, and to help your fans find and follow you. Do you keep these things in mind when you’re posting to social media? If not, you may need a crash course in hashtagging for your brand.

Benefits Of Hashtagging Your Brand

Perhaps the biggest benefit of branding with hashtags is that potential new followers can find mentions of your company across social media platforms. By encouraging your current fans and advocates to tag any mentions of your brand with your own hashtag, you set yourself apart from other similar companies. Any Twitter or Instagram user who is intrigued by a post that mentions your brand can then click the hashtag and read what countless others have said about your business. So, how does it work? Let’s take a look.

Hashtags To Fit Your Brand Story

In some cases, simply choosing to add the hashtag to your brand name is an excellent choice. What if other companies have already claimed that hashtag as their own? You can’t simply adopt the tag anyway and piggyback on another brand’s success.

There’s at least one more case when simply tagging your company name won’t do. When your company name is a group of last names—such as with a law firm or accounting firm—applying the hashtag isn’t the best plan. For one thing, unless your brand is already huge, potential buyers won’t know a thing about your company when they see a bunch of last names tagged. For another, the list of names can get pretty long. What would you think if you saw #wallerlansdendortchanddavis? I mean, after you managed to separate the names and read them.

Instead of trying to cram a hashtag in there with your brand name, consider using them to tell your brand story. KitKat does a great job with this by taking their tagline “Give me a break” and creating #HaveABreak. The brand is still recognizable through their hashtag, still fun, and still conveys the right message.

Hashtags To Fit Your Marketing

Each brand doesn’t get only one hashtag. You should always have one go-to for your brand as a whole, but you can also select hashtags for your marketing campaigns, too. Old Spice has really done a great job with this in the past. Their current social media marketing campaign is Old Spice Advice, where, as you might imagine, irreverent and often irrelevant advice is doled out in the name of comedy. The hashtag #OldSpiceAdvice helps anyone following the conversation and keep up with the latest and greatest advice. They also have a hashtag for their television ad, the Old Spice Robot. Followers who search #OldSpiceRobot can not only see the latest videos, but they can also see what others have to say about the brand.

Hashtags For Social Listening

So far, we’ve talked only of users searching hashtags to find you, but this isn’t the only benefit of the practice. You can also search your own hashtag on social media to see what others are saying about your brand. This is a great practice for keeping up to date on customer service concerns as well as developing a realistic view of your brand in the real world.

In addition to general social listening, you can use your hashtag to start a chat on social media. The tag will help you locate any new questions or comments so you don’t miss a thing. This is a great way to maintain control of your brand story at all times. Not only can you direct the conversation, but you can also discover any comments that voice concern over your brand and make everything right again.

You don’t have to have an expert grasp of social media to use hashtags correctly, but you should have an expert grasp on your brand. If you need some help developing your social media strategy so that you can stay true to your brand story, we can help.

Analysts from all the big banks started coverage of e-commerce company Alibaba today. 

All of them, with one exception, love the stock. Street Insider says that 12 of 13 analysts have a positive rating. Only Goldman Sachs is neutral on the stock. (And even Goldman is actually bullish, which you will see below.)

The positive analyst reports aren't doing much for the stock, though. It's down 2% this morning to $97.60. 

In mid-September, Alibaba priced its IPO at $68 per share, raising $21.8 billion in the biggest public offering in history. The shares have soared over $100 since then.

JP Morgan put out a 158 page report on Alibaba. It thinks Alibaba has the potential to blast to the moon. In a "best case scenario" it thinks Alibaba could be worth $178/share. In the "worst case" it could be $60. For now, it has a $114 price target. (This is fairly typical for the analysts. They cover their bases with a lot of price target options.)

"Alibaba has profoundly changed Chinese consumers’ purchase behavior, and is one of the most profitable and fast-growing large cap Internet companies globally," says JP Morgan. "We believe its sustainable growth outlook and impressive profitability on an already large-scale makes it a highly sought-after Internet asset for global investors."

Here are the two reasons JP Morgan is high on Alibaba:

• Beneficiary of structural tailwinds in China ecommerce. In addition to the much-discussed Chinese economy shifting to a consumption-driven mode, we believe there are structural reasons originating in different retail infrastructure in China vs. US that should result in ecommerce playing a significant role in China vs. a complementary role in the US. China ecommerce will account for 18% of China’s total consumption spend in 2018.
• An ecosystem, not a company. Alibaba operates and administrates the largest and most sophisticated ecommerce ecosystem globally to facilitate online shopping for retail and wholesale buyers in China and overseas. We believe such an ecosystem should lead to sustainable benefits like: 1) high entry barriers 2) a structure that competitors might find difficult to replicate, 3) structural cost advantages, and 4) strong synergies across various business units (e.g. retailers and wholesalers, merchant and service providers, Taobao and Tmall, etc.).

Here is RBC's take on the company:

China’s Internet Utility – Just as Google, Amazon & Facebook have become Internet Utilities in the U.S., Western Europe, and some other markets, Alibaba has become an Internet Utility in China. With an expected $360B in GMV in CY14 and with almost 300MM Active Buyers, BABA is THE dominant Chinese ecommerce platform. Highly profitable too, with an expected $6B in EBITDA (49% margin) in CY14. We have tracked Alibaba for a decade and have been impressed with the vision and discipline of the mngmt team and the development of the platform. In terms of the stock call, we are positive on BABA’s Total Addressable Market, Business Model, Management Team & Competitive Moats (our 4M structure), and we view current valuation as reasonable.

And here is Evercore:

We are initiating on Alibaba with a Buy rating on the thesis that China consumers and sellers are experiencing several secular tailwinds that stand to benefit the Alibaba platform and its unique combination of assets, including dominant reach and seller efficiency. Our Buy rating contemplates manageable estimate expectations in addition to several valuation methodologies that all point to upside from where shares currently trade.

Here is Goldman, the only bank that feels meh. It expects the stock to crash all the way up to $133.

Alibaba dominates the world’s fastest growing e-commerce market, with 279mn buyers and 8.5mn merchants across 118 product categories. It drives globalization of sourcing and distribution, and its proprietary data technology, powered by an industry-leading cloud computing system, supports outsized transaction flow in its various marketplaces. Near-term prospects appear well discounted, so we launch with a 12 month TP of US$102; however, with steady growth, we estimate equity value could appreciate to $133/share in two years, or a $350bn market capitalization.

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I heard an arresting comment at the LeadsCon conference in New York in August. The speaker claimed that inside sales has outstripped outside sales in B2B, a statistic that both surprised me and got me thinking. Turns out, the statement was based on a recent study showing that inside sales is growing 7.5%, compared to field sales at only 0.5%, and that as of 2013, 53% of the B2B sales rep population sells by phone, instead of face-to-face. It strikes me that this development bears enormous implications for B2B marketers.

On reflection, I suppose I shouldn’t have been surprised, since phone-based selling is so much more efficient than hitting the road to make face-to-face sales calls. Inside sales has graduated over time from the role of inbound order-taker to a full-fledged territory rep with a full sales quota, but one who can handle a lot more accounts.

Interestingly, inside sales reps appear to be more effective as well. The same study shows their quota achievement levels at 85%, compared to field sales, who only achieve their quotas 81% of the time.

Many large enterprises have moved to a tiered selling model, where field sales cover large accounts, inside sales manages the relationship with mid-level accounts, and the smaller, less active customers are served by distributors, catalogs, or e-commerce.

Another common model is pairing up one or more field reps with one inside rep, who handles tasks like appointment setting, and in effect extends the reach of the field reps by keeping in closer contact with their accounts and nurturing the relationship. The efficiencies of both sales coverage models are apparent.

Another driver of this trend is changes in buyer behavior, where business buyers are researching online, and demonstrating buying signals. The first human interaction with these researchers is likely to be over the phone, in a lead development role.

But where does marketing come in to the mix? Very similarly to the traditional field sales model: by providing qualified leads, lead qualification and nurturing programs, sales materials, opportunities for sales contact–like webinars, events and online communities. So, as inside sales takes on the role of account management, marketing needs to provide them with the support known as “sales enablement.”

But there are differences, as well. Marketing needs to recognize the constraints that characterize a phone based relationship, and seek creative ways to overcome them. Here are some ideas:

Digital contact tools, like text chat and video chat, to supplement the inside salesperson’s traditional phone and email interactions. Also it’s a good idea to provide reps with email templates and robust content libraries so they can easily craft informative email messages.

Video. B2B video applications are wide ranging today. For an inside sales rep, video can be an easy and efficient way to deepen customer relationships. Reps can not only create self-introductory videos, but also product reviews, helpful analyses—the possibilities are endless.

Social selling tools. IBM, for example, provides social selling tools and training to its inside sales reps. Each rep has a web page, containing a social media feed, a video self-introduction, and links to content; some are provided by marketing, and some are selected personally by the rep. Reps can also monitor social conversations to identify trends and opinions. One IBM inside sales rep reported connecting with a CIO through LinkedIn and ending up with a $500k deal.

Community. Phone based sales reps may find online communities a productive environment for interacting with customers and attracting prospects.

Face to face opportunity. Just because the rep is on the phone doesn’t mean there’s never a chance to meet the customer in person. Send your inside sales people to the trade shows where their customers are in attendance. Make sure they book appointments in advance. Organize meeting opportunities at the show, like breakfasts or coffee events.

Reasons to call. Inside sales reps are always looking for good excuses to contact individuals in their accounts. A steady stream of good quality content is essential to this mission. Conduct regular statistical modeling of customer purchase patterns to identify “next best product” ideas. A rep will welcome the chance to call a customer with a relevant suggestion for cross-buying.

Do you have other ideas for how marketing can provide leverage to the inside sales team?

Marketing automation is a powerful way to build stronger relationships with customers – and to do it faster and more effectively than manual processes ever could. The benefits are especially clear when you look at the ways marketers and sales teams can use email campaigns to nurture prospects along the journey to conversion. A targeted series of email messages can quickly turn lukewarm leads into hot prospects, and website visitors into loyal customers. Plus, the reporting and visibility marketing automation provides can make it easy to understand what’s working and what’s not, so you can adjust your approach accordingly, on the fly.

Better Visibility and Shorter Sales Cycles

Research shows nurtured leads close faster and generate larger deals than non-nurtured leads (10% and 40%, respectively, according to the Aberdeen Group). Marketing automation gives marketing teams the ability to more effectively nurture leads with tailored and timely content, draw them through the funnel more quickly, and deliver more highly qualified leads to the sales team. According to Bulldog Solutions, companies that invest in marketing automation solutions see 70% faster sales cycle times.

Act-On customers are gaining the kinds of results that confirm the data. Recently, we conducted a case study with LEGO Education North America – they’re part of The LEGO Group, the world’s third-largest manufacturer of play materials. Lack of visibility into the sales funnel meant the team never really knew how their touch points were driving leads down into the marketing funnel. Marketing automation helped LEGO Education solve these challenges and more.

Using marketing automation dashboards, the LEGO Education team is able to see into the status of leads in the funnel to understand where leads are, how they’re progressing, and also to drill in to find out which campaigns are moving those leads through the funnel – and which ones aren’t pulling their weight. It’s a powerful advantage: The team can invest more of their budget into the areas that move leads through the process more effectively, while also pinpointing tactics that aren’t working as well in order to modify or replace them.

The LEGO Education sales team is also generating more leads, and they’re able to nurture those leads in a better and faster way, which significantly shortens the sales cycle. LEGO Education’s marketing team can hand over hot leads to the sales team to generate sales faster and make sure they get the attention they need at the right moment. This level of marketing efficiency has optimized use of their sales force, as well. Rather than calling on cold leads, the sales reps are able to prioritize on calling the abundance of nurtured leads they receive from the marketing team.

Email Marketing to the Max

Email remains the most effective marketing channel for both conversion and retention. In fact, the ROI of email marketing is an eye-opening 4300%, according to the Direct Marketing Association. Using marketing automation, sales reps can automatically send the right personalized messages to the right prospects at the most optimal time. Trigger emails can be customized and launched based on specific actions (like signing up for a newsletter or downloading a particular piece of content), to keep prospects engaged and momentum going. All email communications are captured in the activity history for each lead.

Using marketing automation, the team at LEGO Education is able to speak to customers and target audiences in a very personalized and customized way. They’re running multiple types of email campaigns: Some are trigger campaigns, some are drip campaigns, and some are a combination of both.

Before implementing Act-On, the marketing team at LEGO Education North America was able to execute only one or two email campaigns a year. This year, they’re running 14 different campaigns, and next year they plan to run even more. Each campaign is customized to the individual based on their title, previous behavior and activity, web pages visited, or a combination of all of these variables. As a result, the emails delivered are more relevant – and more effective.

Read the LEGO Education North America case study to learn more about the many ways marketing automation has helped gain visibility, shorten the sales cycle, and use email marketing to improve their business results.

The benefits of marketing automation for sales teams go far beyond enhanced visibility and better email marketing. Check out this eBook to learn more, and find out how it can increase the productivity of sales teams while helping to maximize resources.

A new survey by the Content Marketing Institute found that 86% of businesses are using content marketing. CMI found that marketers spend an average of 28% of their marketing budget on content, with the most effective marketers devoting an average of 37% to a content marketing strategy. And nearly half of the companies surveyed have a dedicated content marketing team that works either independently or across organizational silos.

According a new study by Starfleet Media, 63% of B2B companies plan on increasing their content marketing budget in 2015. These businesses intend to employ content in a variety of ways, and are hoping to see some important benefits from these efforts, such as:

• Lead Generation – An impressive 84% of study participants reported that they’re seeking to gain new customers by increasing their content marketing.

• Sales Conversions – 78% hope to convert more leads into sales through the use of persuasive, high quality copy that educates prospects and helps them through the decision-making process, thus reducing the duration of the sales cycle.

• Increased Web Traffic – More than half of B2B companies hope to gain more visitors to their website by building up their content.

• Improving SEO Ranking – Just over one-third of the companies surveyed are looking to boost search rankings as a result of their increased content marketing efforts.

But Forrester’s latest report on B2B content marketing found that for 87% of participants, developing engaging content is a major challenge. According to Forrester VP and principal analyst Laura Ramos, while many B2B marketers are engaging in content marketing, only 14% are getting the results they had hoped for.

If you intend to increase your B2B content marketing budget as so many others are doing, how can you be sure that your efforts are not wasted?

The CMI study lends some insight. It found that 60% of B2B marketers with a documented content marketing strategy say that their efforts are effective, compared with 32% of those with only a verbal strategy. And while most do have a content marketing strategy, only 35% have actually documented said strategy.

In other words, they hold team meetings, devise a plan, assign roles, and take action (all good things), but fail to put it into a spreadsheet or other form of documentation. Which makes it very difficult to track results, especially their ROI. And most do not:

We believe there are a number of factors that contribute to this aversion to documenting B2B content marketing.

1. Study participants reported that they’re currently working on an average of thirteen content marketing initiatives and plan to add an average of eight more. With all of these initiatives floating around, forming a content marketing strategy with a well-defined structure can be something of a pain. (Everyone’s thinking it; we’re just saying it.)
2. Email marketing, blog posts, syndicated content, white papers, social media posts and content curation might all work toward the same objective, (to generate leads, improve page ranking, etc.) but they take different paths to reach it. And results from many scattered activities can be difficult to track.
3. To be the most effective, B2B content marketing should not exist separately from other forms of marketing you are using. The complexity of making content an integral part of an all-encompassing marketing strategy can be off-putting.
4. Brainstorming is more fun than adding cells to a spreadsheet. It’s energizing to discuss everyone’s ideas about how to market with all of this amazing content you’re going to create. But documenting, for many of us, equals tedium.
5. Since brand awareness is one of those fuzzy benefits that are more difficult to track, it’s easy to simply assume that content marketing is having a positive effect: “Well, we’re um…creating brand awareness.”

Content marketing can be fraught with frustrations. But marketers are not content, if you will, with the status quo; 36% say they’ll start working on measuring content ROI in the coming year. And they also plan to make their content more engaging, a topic I’ll delve into in a coming post where I’ll offer my take on a recent article from Forbes.

This article was originally posted on the InsideUp corporate blog, Inside Updates.

photo credit: kevin dooley via photopin cc

New Technology

It’s been in the news. Lowe’s, the chain home improvement store is experimenting with robots that help with customer service. I have seen an amazing video of a customer holding an item in front of the robot, and then that robot actually leading the customer through the store to the exact location of the item.

At first I thought, “How cool is this!” Then I started thinking about what was great – and not so great – about this new technology.

What’s great about it is that it really is cool. It’s a novelty at this point. The robot is built and programmed for accuracy. I show or tell the robot what I want, and it leads me to the exact location of where that item is in the store. For the retailer, there is the benefit of efficiency. While the robots aren’t inexpensive, they aren’t as expensive as typical labor costs. Over time, the robots pay for themselves.

Now, what’s not so great? To start with, it’s hard to create a bond with a robot. The relationship can be lost. How can a robot make a customer feel appreciated? Smart retailers will recognize that the robot, at least for now, is an enhancement versus a replacement for a good employee forging a relationship with the customer. There is also the helpful factor. No doubt that showing a customer where to find their item is good, but what if the customer has questions about how to use the item? And, at least at this time, the robot most likely isn’t capable of making recommendations, to up-sell or cross-sell at the appropriate times.

So you probably think I’m against the robot. On the contrary, I’m excited about robots. This is just the first generation. Think about what’s to come. I anticipate that the concerns I’ve mentioned about the relationship and lost sales opportunities will be a moot point in the somewhat near future. Once the public accepts the concept of a machine helping them, the robot manufacturers and programmers will go to work to make sure they take this experience to the next level.

So, here’s another crazy idea. Why do we even need robots? Don’t our mobile phones do just about everything? If a phone can give me directions, and lead me, step by step, to an address a mile away, surely an app can be built to help me find a hammer a couple of aisles over. This app can be programmed to monitor my shopping patterns and make appropriate suggestions about what else I should buy. And, the app allows the retailer to communicate with me during and after the shopping experience by offering special customized promotions and coupons. It might even send an email or text me a gift certificate for my next visit, thanking me for my loyalty.

The robot is super cool. But, what’s in my pocket – my mobile phone – is super cool, too. When I started my business in the early 1980’s helping people deliver better customer service, I would never have dreamed that robots and mobile phones could actually enhance the customer experience. We live in some exciting and interesting times, and I’m looking forward to what lies ahead!