Rnordman

Have you seen the More Cowbell sketch from Saturday Night Live? It’s more than just comedy. It’s a powerful metaphor for a successful work life. And it provides insight into the kind of people you need on your team, and what makes an effective team.

Everyone has at least one cowbell — it’s your unique, profitable talent people pay you for or your company’s unique offering. It’s something people have a fever for. When you discover it and give those people a ton of it, you gain success and happiness for both yourself and others. It’s a win-win.

A cowbell is simultaneously something you love doing and something other people really want as well (though you still may have detractors and critics). A cowbell creates joy for you and other people. They can’t get enough.

Teamwork: The Perfect Team Is Not Perfect

It’s awesome to have a group of peers or tight team of coworkers. You could have your own Blue Öyster Cult! (Yes, that’s the band from More Cowbell. And it’s proof that obscurity was an essential part of their DNA that they are the focus of one of the most famous SNL sketches ever, but not much more famous for it!)

Your group will not always be right, but they’ll still be awesome.

We need teams. You never see anybody seesawing by himself (we hope). Similarly, your cowbell requires someone else. It has to be played within an ensemble. Honestly, nobody wants to hear a cowbell solo. Someday there might arise a Jimi Hendrix of the cowbell, but to achieve that level of “artistry,” he’d have to be on even more drugs than Hendrix — and to enjoy it, so would we!

If what you think is your cowbell isn’t helping anyone else, it may just be an experiment in psychotic selfishness!

A cowbell has to add something. It has to make a contribution. Your cowbell should allow you to be part of a community. It gives you a role to play. The cowbell is rhythmic, but often that beat is established by the drummer. Do you understand how your cowbell fits in with others?

It’s important that your cowbell meshes within a community. In the sketch, the cowbell had to fit in. In fact, that was the source of most of the conflict.

Because a cowbell adds value to your community, it makes you an important part of that community. You may not be accepted at first; but stand up for your unique contribution, and others will acknowledge your value.

Fitting In

The overall meetings and conferences Brian and Garrison speak at go on for from one to several days. As keynote speakers, they’re not the only focus. They’re part of the process — a necessary part, but only a part. The speaker has to learn what conference is about, what the other speakers are going to talk about, and what the goals and theme of the conference are. Why is the audience there? What big issues are they working on? What big changes have happened and how have they affected the group? When speakers discover those answers, they can make a bigger contribution and become part of that community of being successful together.

So, how do you get your cowbell to fit into the community that needs it? There can be conflict in the process of fitting in, but everyone needs to figure out the best fit.

You need to be willing to say, “My cowbell doesn’t fit here the way it is right now. How can I make it fit?” New employees often go through that sort of transition. You ask, “What’s important to everybody else?” You get trained. You get the lay of the land. You learn the power structures. You learn that you can’t say certain things to certain people. You learn which things you want to do might step on somebody else’s toes. You adjust yourself to fit in.

People skills, diplomacy, and being helpful are critical for successful teamwork. If you don’t handle people well, your cowbell can rub them the wrong way, and then it’s not valued. Your behavior can eclipse your skill. A ton of people are fired every year despite their skills.

There’s a lot of talk in last 30 years about how to be an individual. We tell kids, “You don’t have to fit in. Be yourself. You’re good as is!” Absolutely you should be yourself, unless you’re naturally a bigtime jerk. Then don’t be yourself. Try to be nice. Read books written by people whose cowbell is diplomacy.

You can’t be part of community if the community believes you’re not making a contribution. You can’t be so different that they can’t relate to you. If you can’t adapt, you might need to find a different community. There’s nothing wrong with finding out you belong somewhere else.

Are you flexible enough to make adjustments along the way to reach the goal — both your goals and the team’s? In marriage, it’s not necessarily a 50-50 arrangement; maybe your spouse simply can’t change certain things and you should adapt to that.

An important part of being influential is listening. Make sure people feel heard, listened to, and cared for. If people feel that way, they’ll see you as a good fit. People accept you if they feel heard and listened to and valued.

Consistency vs. Change

Have you ever met anybody who’s a real character? These people are unique but we love them. We let them get away with more than we do the people we don’t like. If you don’t like someone, you can just suspect they did something, and you feel like you have cause to act (or speak) against them.

Why do we trust real characters? We know they’re being who they are, so we’ll let them get away with more. With a shrug and a grin, we might explain, “The laptops? Oh, yeah, ol’ Jimmy just stole ‘em… He’ll bring ’em back. You know Jimmy!” Now, this section is not written to demonize people named Jimmy, but our research shows that people named Jimmy tend to get in a lot of trouble — Jimmy Carter, for instance… to whom Brian is not related.

We all know a Jimmy type, don’t we? And their character is consistent.

People trust consistency. If you’re the same person in front of family, friends, loved ones, and coworkers, then you’re consistent.

It’s common for some guy to get promoted and suddenly be managing people who last week were his peers. Sometimes the new manager puts on a leadership mask, which creates a problem. He dresses and acts differently. People wonder what the heck’s going on, and it kills the trust they used to have with that person. “That ol’ Jimmy’s putting on airs now!” You’re not trusted as much anymore. You don’t fit in and you don’t have as much influence, especially if your name is Jimmy. Resist the temptation to be someone else. Be you. Be consistently you! You have authority now by virtue of your new position. Explain what’s going on and you’ll be good.

The hardest change for people to accept is a change in a person. We love to say that people don’t change, but they do. Changes in people cause a variety of problems. That’s one reason marriages fail. One spouse looks at the other and might not see who they married anymore, because they’ve changed so much. People lose trust. Women complain that men make money and become successful and change. A lot of people don’t deal well with fame (even microfame) or success.

So, how can you relate to people more effectively?

• Listen and make people feel valuable.
• Clearly explain the value of what you have to offer.
• Make sure people can see their input in your solution.
• Ask questions. Find out what they think and want.
• Know what’s important to them. What are their goals?

People who like you will adapt to you. And you can adapt to people you understand.

We’re not suggesting you make such radical, “community-approved” changes that your cowbell no longer resembles your cowbell. But if you can make subtle changes that enable your cowbell to intermesh better, you build stronger community for your cowbell. Community feels more tied to it/invested in it

Why Disagreement Can Be The Foundation Of Unity

Pro quarterbacks come onto a new team and are often released as soon as four months in. They may have their own way of doing things that doesn’t fit with the new team. Garrison went from playing public high school football to private. His new team had a completely different playbook. He tried to make improvements to what their playbook, but also had to accept their approach.

In the real world, change can cause more trouble than the theoretical benefit of the change itself. Small changes, if accepted, can create real improvement.

But keep in mind that people won’t accept change from someone who doesn’t care about them. Listen to your coworkers and try to understand them, and they’ll make changes for you.

To that end, Garrison developed a process called Ask – Listen – Agree – Recommend.

• Ask a question.
• Listen as they answer.
• Let them know that you agree.
• Recommend something that includes their input.

People love to hear their ideas in your solution. The things people say are the things they believe in and are committed to. Agreement is a critical step, because people hold very tightly to their beliefs and commitments.

The foundation of true agreement is disagreement. Let people be honest and put their cards on the table. Try to find out where you all agree. What can we all commit to, since we’re not on the same page? Look for middle ground that’s effective. It’s not about everybody contributing one weird piece, because that’s how you get a Frankenstein that won’t survive or thrive.

Want loyalty from your team? A person on a team in which members are allowed to disagree will be loyal to that team. Unfortunately, sometimes people mistake disagreement for disloyalty. Yet, it’s often observed that families whose members complain a lot are paradoxically loyal to each other, whereas families that don’t express how they feel are disloyal and dysfunctional. To build a strong team and community, everyone must be allowed to not agree.

And the sense of unity that comes from disagreement is exactly what you see in the “More Cowbell” sketch.

This post is an excerpt from the forthcoming book The Cowbell Principle: Career Advice On How To Get Your Dream Job And Make More Money, by Brian Carter and Garrison Wynn. Brian and Garrison will be giving away a limited number of digital copies at launch time. To get notified when they’re available, sign up at http://thecowbellprinciple.com/getnotified And don’t miss the cowbell launch giveaway, with $8,005 in prizes available!

       

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VANCOUVER – A report from the Pembina Institute pokes holes in the British Columbia government’s claim that exporting liquefied natural gas is the greatest single step the province can take to fight climate change.

The government has said shipping LNG from B.C. to Asia would help cut the use of coal, which emits higher greenhouse-gas emissions.

But the report released Monday said only strong climate-change policies will limit the output of emissions, and without those policies the use of coal and natural gas will increase over the next few decades.

Josha MacNab, co-author of the report with Matt Horne, said they haven’t seen any evidence to support Premier Christy Clark’s claim that exporting LNG will cut greenhouse-gas emissions.

In fact, she said, their research indicates “these claims are inaccurate.”

“The reality is that it’s actually climate policy, not the production of natural gas, or the availability of natural gas, that will determine our trajectory toward dangerous climate change and the mix of fuels that will avoid this outcome,” she told reporters on a webinar after the report was released.

The report looked at different scenarios over two decades for the use of coal, oil, natural gas and renewable energies, such as nuclear power.

Under the current policy framework, the report said the use of coal, oil and natural gas would all increase, while under strong climate policies the use of fossil fuels would go down by 2035 and renewables would increase.

“Our research indicates that, contrary to the government’s claim, natural gas will not reduce coal use and will not help solve climate change in a world with weak climate policies in place, which unfortunately is the world we live in,” said Horne.

British Columbia’s role could be to adopt strong climate-change policies locally and advocate for similar changes globally, he said.

The report’s first recommendation is that the province acknowledge that B.C.’s shipment of LNG to Asia won’t help reduce global greenhouse-gas emissions in line with efforts to avoid a two-degree Celsius warming.

Other recommendations would see the province investigate ways to reduce its own gas emissions, implement climate-change policy to reduce emissions and apply a proactive role on methane management globally by working with other LNG-producing jurisdictions to establish stronger policies.

B.C. Environment Minister Mary Polak was unavailable for an interview to react to the report that attempts to discredit her government’s claim that global GHG emissions would drop with LNG shipments to Asia.

But in an email statement, Polak said the province has worked with many international forums to encourage adoption of carbon pricing.

“This report validates the leadership position B.C. is taking in incenting innovation to address climate change,” her statement said.

Global energy systems are large and complex and take time to change, and preventing other countries from accessing low-cost, reliable energy as they begin to develop is not what we believe in, she said.

“Supplying the cleanest energy products we can contributes to global development and fights global climate change.”

Tom Pedersen, from the Pacific Institute for Climate Solutions, which commissioned the report, said it is imperative that the global community bring in policies that limit the worst impacts of climate change.

“The science is clear that we need to stay within two degrees of warming to avoid the worst impacts of climate change.” he said in a statement.

The Pembina Institute is a non-profit environmental think-tank.

The post Liquefied natural gas not the climate change solution B.C. promises: report appeared first on Canadian Business.

Are you ready for this? There’s good news and bad news. First, the bad news – project management is rapidly taking on a new, additional dimension. This will mean extra work, smarter people, better tools or some combination of the aforegoing. Now the good news – if you can integrate this new dimension into your enterprise or organizational projects, your business stands to go further, be more profitable, satisfy more customers and motivate more employees. This extra dimension is project leadership. Not just project management. And before you dismiss this as another whimsical idea from the HR department, there’s something you should know.

Doing Things Right vs. Doing the Right Things

This is perhaps the simplest and the best way to compare management (do things right) with leadership (do the right things). Both are essential for making an enterprise function successfully. However, project management has often, as its name indicates, focused on doing things right – the management part. Doing the right things was not the main focus. There was a project specification and the project manager’s job was to get on with it. That’s the bit that’s changing. Companies are facing up to the fact that projects need better leadership if the products and services they produce are to compete successfully. Turning out a perfectly built, rigorously tested blue widget on time and on budget is no good if the market has since veered 90 degrees to favor green thingummies [Editor's Note: That's British for Thingamajig].

Can Software Improve Leadership?

Now that software is eating the world (as Marc Andreessen puts it), it’s only natural to ask if it can also take over leadership duties. Well, not yet. However, the right kind of project management software can be a valuable support for better project leadership. It does this by facilitating project leadership aspects like:

• Shared project vision. Where management is more about making best progress along a pre-defined route, leadership is concerned with mapping out the end destination. Collaborative software tools can let the team at any time where it’s headed. PM apps encouraging collaboration include Wrike, Clarizen and AtTask.
• Communication. Project leadership focuses on openness, directness and providing a connection between the team and the rest of the organization. Whether it’s email, blogging or micro-blogging, leadership involves communication. Examples are Easy Projects and Zoho Projects.
• Integrity. Having the right values, following them and demonstrating that adherence is all part of project leadership. These values come out in exchanges with project team members and the actions taken. Project management (or leadership) software that provides transparency and digestible information paves the way for trust. See how Intervals, Mavenlink and AffinityLive Projects let you handle this.
• Lead change. Change and the future in general are easier to handle if you’re the one deciding what will happen. Sometimes however incidents and their accompanying stress just land on you and you have to do your project leadership ‘after the fact’. In that case, smart, flexible PM apps that don’t need a diploma in rocket science can help you react quickly and bring projects and their schedules back under control. LiquidPlanner, JIRA and Genius Project are examples.

Will Your PM App Suit or Cramp Your Style as a Leader?

Leadership style can vary enormously. Sometimes it’s a personal thing – you prefer or feel more comfortable using one approach, rather than another. At other times, the best leadership style may be dictated by the situation. For example, if your enterprise is fighting for survival, you may need to tell people what to do. On the other hand, if things are going well and you want to build a strong project team for the future, then collaboration, discussion and empowerment may be better choices.

• Command and control. Or “Don’t argue, get on with it”. Less in favor in these enlightened times, command and control may still be required in crisis situations. C&C leaders need PM apps that let them communicate clearly, check results and receive appropriate progress reports.
• Put it to the vote. Democratic or consensus-driven project leadership seeks to involve the team to improve participation, productivity and decision-making. The flip side is that this process takes a little longer and may make it more difficult to achieve on-time, on-budget results.
• Empowerment. Builds on the notion that fully engaged team members can set their own goals, possibly more ambitious than the ones their management would have set them. Smaller, ‘on-the-job’ groups react faster and more productively to local issues. The risk is a perceived laxity in leadership and possible loss of overall focus.
• Servant leadership. A style that has become popular with agile project management and processes like Scrum. The leader ensures the process is kept to and caters to the needs of the team so that each member can get his or her job done properly.

But here’s an important point. You may not succeed, at least in the longer term, if you stick to just one style of project leadership. To paraphrase the popular saying, if your only project leadership tool is a hammer, you may see every project challenge as a nail. Sooner or later, each of the styles above and also the many others that have been defined will bump up against its limits.

Picking Your PM Software

So it’s wise to look for PM apps that offer flexibility to let you vary your project leadership style as needed. PM apps for related functionality include:

• Task management (Wrike)
• Newsfeed (Wrike), real time team updates (Clarizen)
• Discussions within tasks (Wrike)
• Time-tracking (Wrike, Mavenlink)
• Centralize project collaboration (Mavenlink)
• Time and resource planning, time approval process (AffinityLive Projects)
• Collaborative planning (Clarizen, AtTask)
• Issue tracking (Clarizen, JIRA)
• Mobile app for iPhone and Android (empowerment) (Clarizen), Mobile version (Easy Projects)
• Explicit agile and scrum support (JIRA, Genius Project, Projectplace)
• Built-in online/phone conferencing (Easy Projects)
• Online project chat (Zoho Projects)
• Easy scheduling (ProWorkflow)
• Risk and change management (Genius Project)
• Priority-based scheduling (LiquidPlanner)
• Drag-and-drop prioritization (LiquidPlanner)
• Project dashboard (Intervals)
• Weekly timesheet submissions (Intervals)

Time to Do the Right Thing?

With free Project Management software trials available from the GetApps project management software listings, you can check out these possibilities at no cost. See which one best suits your style as a project manager and leader and make the most of the trial period to try out the added project leadership value.

Over the past year and a half, the social media scheduling app Buffer has gotten four acquisition offers. 

Selling the company "would have been a life-changing event," COO Leo Widrich tells Business Insider, "and not just for the founders, but employees, too." 

Over the summer, he and the leadership team got everybody together on a Google Hangout to announce the happy news: They were turning the latest offer down.

Widrich and CEO Joel Gascoigne said that they wanted to be running Buffer for a long time. 

"But what does that do for stock options?" an employee replied. 

Widrich was completely taken aback — stock options weren't considered at all in the decision-making process. 

They would have to go back to the drawing board. If they didn't want to sell the company, how could stock options make their value actually materialize? And how could the nearly 4-year-old company bring in investment without giving up control? 

The usual methods didn't sound great. The traditional means of getting to liquidity (turning stock options into cash) are through "exits," like making an initial public offering or getting acquired.

"This idea of a big exit in 10 years is antiquated," Widrich says.

The normal startup drill is that the company raises round after round of funding, thereby diluting the value of the stock options handed out to employees. The options are worth less and less over time. 

So Widrich, Gascoigne, and the rest of Buffer's leadership team decided to go radically transparent. Widrich and Gascoigne have long emphasized transparency as a value: They made their salary formula transparent late last year, and they did the same with equity in April. 

Increasingly, transparency is becoming a best practice in the startup world: Basecamp CEO Jason Fried blogs openly about running his company, while Tony Hsieh has baked transparency into the culture of Zappos since the beginning. 

Now Buffer is bringing transparency to funding.

Starting today, Buffer is raising $3.5 million in funding at a $60 million valuation — publically. 

A million of that will go to company growth, the other $2.5 million will provide a bit of liquidity to the founders and early team members, who can sell their stock options as part of the investment round.

Buffer has already pulled in three investors: Collaborative Fund, Red Swan, and the Vegas Tech Fund. 

There's still $350,000 left to raise, and they're looking to secure it through AngelList, in a kind of venture capital Kickstarter campaign. 

If you want to take part, head to Buffer's AngelList listing. 

Widrich hopes it will help change the model for how funding works. 

"There are some people who will sell 5,000 shares, which gives them $30,000 or $50,000," Widrich says. "It helps with the downpayment of their house or the mortgage."

It sets the precedent while Buffer is still small, he says. And those who keep their shares can obviously wait until Buffer is worth three, four, or five times more. 

"It's more like showing people, 'Hey, this is becoming real, that your stock options will materialize,'" Widrich says, "instead of you joining and saying 10 years from now if we ever IPO, you get some of that stock." 

SEE ALSO: 14 Surprising Things That Affect Your Willpower And Decision Making

Join the conversation about this story »

I have the good fortune to work with many sales managers and their teams. Depending on the industry, each successful rep might have a different personality. They might be extroverts or introverts. They might speak slowly or fast. But, there are several essential qualities that I see consistently with top performing salespeople. Keep in mind, some of the most capable ones don’t even have the word “sales” on their business card. Regardless of the title, the ones who contribute the most to business growth are wired differently. As an executive who might have the daunting task of managing these maniacs, here are six areas where you can get the greatest results.

Take Ownership vs. Make Excuses

Top performers encounter challenges just like everyone else. However, those who excel at growing business never use obstacles as excuses. They don’t complain about things out of their control. Rather, top performers figure out how to succeed even when the deck is stacked against them. As a manager, you need to do the same thing. Don’t complain that marketing has not produced what you promised. Don’t make excuses. Top performers are not wired that way.

Instead, when faced with an obstacle, engage your top performer in the solution. You might ask “Chris – We were hoping to have what you need by now, but we don’t have it yet. I was thinking these [list them out] are the key elements of the marketing piece we would need. What suggestions do you have that would make this work for the client?” These people are great problem solvers, so they might have tremendous insight.

Reward Subject Matter Expertise

The line between sales and marketing continues to blur each day. Your team members who regularly interact with customers know the questions customers are asking and how best to address them. They might also know where your offerings shine, and where they might be seen as deficient. As Marcus Sheridan, an expert on inbound content marketing says, “Not everyone is a great writer. In that case, have someone interview them to capture their wisdom. In just an hour, you can come up with half a dozen pieces of valuable content/articles.”

The more your top performers are seen as subject matter experts, the more they’ll succeed and the less they will be viewed as salespeople. Ask the following question: “Are your so-called salespeople valuable enough that the customer would pay for a meeting with them?” For many of your top people, the answer will be “Yes.” Encourage their proficiency, and invest in their development.

Be OK With “No”

Top producers certainly are driven. But, they also value their time. They are quick to qualify opportunities and know when an opportunity is not worth pursuing. This can frustrate many managers when you see an opportunity that, on paper, appears to be a good fit. You might encourage them to chase everything.

It’s ok to ask good questions to ensure you are not overlooking anything. But, trust that your top performer is likely making a solid judgment on a given opportunity. Even better, ask them why they feel the client is not worth pursuing. You might gain insight that will help streamline qualification of opportunities for others on your team.

Never Stop Learning

When CEOs and executives bring me in to conduct a sales immersion workshop, they often will say, “My top dog may not want to participate. She [or he} is already doing great and may not want to take time away from the field.” Ironically, the top performers often seek to constantly improve their skills. At a recent program with a group of skilled sales professionals, a couple of the attendees had a conference call scheduled. We scheduled our break to coincide with their call. They came back into the session high fiving each other.

The top performer said, “We took some of these new concepts out for a test drive, and it was awesome. They client is thrilled, and wants us to take on more business. What else can you teach us?” Keep in mind, top performers can detect a fraud in about twelve seconds. But, if you bring in a true professional with real-world experience, you’ll see your A players turn into A plus players, some B players will become A players, and the C’s… well… not everyone can be a top performer. We don’t give prizes for twelfth place in the sales category.

Demonstrate How What You Want Benefits Them And Clients

Why do so many sales professionals hate complying with CRM systems? There are two main reasons: 1) They don’t like someone looking over their shoulder; and 2) They don’t see how it will help them. If you want top performers to comply, then show them how what you want will benefit them or the client.

For example, instead of saying “Darn it! Enter your contacts into the CRM!” Try saying “Pat – Customer service reached out the client today only to have the client say that you had just spoken with them last week about the same issue. We hate to do things that might interfere with your deal or make the customer lose confidence in us. If you could quickly log that into the CRM, we can do a better job of helping you and serving the client.” They still might not like you looking over their shoulder (yep – it’s an ego thing). But, if they see how it benefits them and the client, you’ll probably get SOME compliance using the system.

It’s Your Turn

OK – the list only had five qualities. The sixth one is for you to complete. What did I leave out? Please share your experience in the comments. I’m betting other readers will be glad you did.

(Photo: Foodthinkers)

The following is a guest post by Mark McClusky, the editor of Wired.com and founding editor of Wired Playbook. Previously, he was a reporter at Sports Illustrated and a member of the baseball analytics collective, Baseball Prospectus.

Can “juicing” for performance enhancement sometimes involve juice alone?  Beet juice, spinach, celery, or chard, perhaps?  In this post, we look at fact versus fiction, dosing, and results you can potentially replicate.

I’ve added some thoughts of my own in brackets. In other random news, I’m finally on Instagram! Here I am, and here is a pic of Tony Robbins palming my entire face.

Now, back to our piece…

Enter Mark

The latest craze in sports drinks for Olympic athletes isn’t something citrusy from one of the big sports labs. It’s not chocolate milk, which has been shown in study after study to be a great, low-cost drink for muscular recovery…

No, today’s hottest sports drink is deep red and frothy, and tastes a little bit like dirt. Drink the recommended dosage, and you may find that your urine and feces become pink from taking it. But you also might find that you’re faster in your races. Ladies and gentlemen, I give you beet juice.

The key researcher into beet juice’s effect on athletes is Andy Jones, who became well known in sports science circles through his work with marathon world record holder Paula Radcliffe. How much has Jones, a professor at the University of Exeter, in the UK, become associated with the beverage? His Twitter handle is @andybeetroot.

So why beet juice? (Or beetroot juice, as it’s sometimes known, especially in the UK. They’re the same thing.) The key is the very high level of nitrate found in the juice. The body transforms nitrate into nitrite, and then into nitric oxide. According to Jones, nitric oxide has two major effects on an athlete. “The first is that it causes blood vessels to dilate, so you can provide more blood through them,” he says. “Simultaneously, it seems to make the mitochondria more efficient, so they are able to create the same energy while consuming less oxygen. So you really have two things happening. Lower oxygen cost because the mitochondria are more efficient, and then you have a higher oxygen supply—in terms of performance, that’s a pretty good combination.”

That combination does, in fact, seem to offer a strong performance boost for a particular kind of event. Jones’s group has published a study that seems to show a nearly 3 percent gain for athletes involved in efforts that last between five and thirty minutes.

We’re commonly told that nitrates and nitrites are potentially dangerous, and that we should limit our consumption of them. The fear is that inside the body, nitrates and nitrites can combine with meat proteins to form compounds known as nitrosamines. There is some evidence that these compounds are carcinogenic, which is the reason that most health organizations advise that we limit our intake of cured meats like bacon and hot dogs, which use sodium nitrite in the curing process.

But Jones and his team have shown that we’re still very early in our understanding of what nitrates and nitrites do in our bodies, especially when it comes to athletic performance. As opposed to cured meat, beet juice contains nitrate, not nitrite, and there’s no protein that could lead to the formation of nitrosamines. (Other vegetables also have high levels of nitrate, including spinach, celery, and chard. They presumably could have similar effects, but such studies haven’t been conducted yet.)

The protocol that’s been studied the most by sports scientists involves about 300 mg of nitrate delivered as beetroot juice between 2 and 2.5 hours before exercise. Jones and his group did a study the looked at the dose-response curve for beetroot juice—more juice did have a greater effect on nitrite levels in the blood, although there seemed to be a diminishing return when it came to the actual performance boost. The optimal level in their study was two concentrated shots that are the equivalent of about 600 mL of juice.

It’s probably worth finding the minimum effective dose of beetroot juice, given some of the side effects. Many athletes suffer from gastric distress when they drink a lot of the juice. World Champion cyclist Mark Cavendish highlighted another side effect of beetroot juice in a tweet:

Doesn’t matter how often it happens, taking a pee the day after drinking beetroot juice will always freak you out!! #pissingrainbows

— Mark Cavendish (@MarkCavendish) January 13, 2012

As contrasted to the results for those 5 to 30 minute events, the results are more ambiguous for longer events. The Exeter researchers found that while there were small performance increases for cyclists in a fifty-mile time trial when using beet juice two hours before the event, they weren’t large enough to be statistically significant. [Note: There was no re-dosing in this time trial]

Of course, that raises an important question: is “statistical significance” [versus clinical or practical, for instance] the right measurement to use when we’re evaluating a study like this, especially for athletic performance?

LET’S TALK ABOUT STATISTICS

In the 1920s, English statistician Ronald Fisher created the concept of the p-value. The idea behind the p-value is that it’s an expression of the probability that the result see in an experiment is due to random chance [p-value], rather than the result of an intervention or treatment.

So, when you’re doing a study that seeks to show the effect of beet juice on cycling time trial performance, you start out assuming that it will not have an effect—this is called the “null hypothesis.” [i.e. It will not work] After collecting your data and doing your analysis, you crunch the numbers and come up with a p-value. A smaller p-value means that the evidence against the null hypothesis is better; that the effect of the intervention (in this case, beet juice consumption) is more likely. The p-value tries to express the reliability of the conclusion that researchers draw from their experimental data.

[In other words, a high p-value increases the likelihood of random chance, coincidences, or dumb luck explaining your outcome.  The lower the p-value — ostensibly — the higher the likelihood that your “treatment”/intervention produced measurable differences.]

Fisher argued that a p-value of less than or equal to 0.05 was a good informal line to draw when it came to evaluating research. That means that there is a 5 percent or lower chance that the null hypothesis would be true (i.e. <5% chance that the results are due to chance alone and not an intervention like beet juice), therefore giving a 19 out of 20 chance that the experimental intervention was responsible for the effect seen in the data. In general, if you’re a scientist and you do a study where p is greater than 0.05, you’re unlikely to ever see it published. If p is 0.05 or below, it’s assumed by many to significant; most journals follow this cutoff.

Will Hopkins, a New Zealand sports scientist and statistics guru who has written a massive primer on the use of statistics in scientific papers, advocates a different way of evaluating sports science research.

Hopkins points out that a reliance on p-values below 0.05 completely falls apart when you’re looking at elite sports, where the margins are so tight. “You would see effects in studies where things would help an athlete, and yet it wasn’t statically significant, so people would say there was no effect,” says Hopkins. “It’s crazy to say there’s no effect, it’s crazy to make that kind of decision. It’s clearly wrong. What matters is a probability of it helping an athlete. We need to decide what we take as sufficient evidence to use something or not use something with an athlete.”

The issue with the use of p-values is that if you have a small sample size for your experiment, you need a very strong effect to cross the threshold of statistical significance. But when you’re trying to do studies on elite athletes, you have, by definition, a pretty small cohort. And if you are studying something that might only have a small effect, you’re probably not going to get over the p-value threshold with that sample size.

Hopkins’s solution is to express the results of research in terms of what he calls “confidence intervals.”

Instead of a binary view, where a result is either significant or not, he talks about the likelihood of a benefit or negative effect. So, he’ll express the results of a study in terms of it being very likely beneficial, or almost certainly not harmful. Because when researchers and coaches are working with elite athletes, they have to conform to that central principle of medical ethics: First, do no harm.

“You’re trying to do better,” says Hopkins. “But you have to make sure not to do worse.”

BACK TO THE BEETS

With all of that in mind, we can look more closely at the study I mentioned above, where Jones’s team looked at the effect of beet juice on a 50-mile cycling time trial. If you read the abstract of the study, you see the following:

In conclusion, acute dietary supplementation with beetroot juice did not significantly improve 50 mile TT [time trial] performance in well-trained cyclists. It is possible that the better training status of the cyclists in this study might reduce the physiological and performance response to NO3- [nitrate] supplementation compared with the moderately trained cyclists tested in earlier studies.

That seems pretty clear—”did not significantly improve.” But then you look more closely at the experiment. There were eight cyclists involved in the study, and they did a double blind experiment where each rider did two time trials, one after drinking 500 mL of normal beet juice, and one when they drank the same amount of juice that had been nitrate-depleted. Here’s the key line of the paper with the results of those trials:

Compared to PL [placebo], BR [beetroot juice] supplementation resulted in a group mean reduction in completion time for the 50 mile TT of 0.8 % or 1.2 min (PL: 137.9 ± 6.4 vs. BR: 136.7 ± 5.6 min), but this difference did not attain statistical significance (P > 0.05).

So it wasn’t that the riders didn’t improve. When you look at the mean, they improved by 0.8 percent. But the sample size was small, and the improvement was small, so the p-value was above 0.05. That’s why the authors correctly note that it didn’t attain statistical significance.

[Note from Tim: Here’s what one researcher friend of mine added to this: “This is a classic problem of “underpower” (beta). With only 8 subjects in a cross-over design, you’d need to see a 10% difference or so to achieve p<0.05! Let me put this in perspective, since TT [time-trial] is my sport. These races are won or lost by seconds, not minutes. 1.2 minutes is a long time for a 50-mile TT. The problem with this study was power, plain and simple. I can’t speak for Jones and his team, but what are you thinking when you design a trial with such a small N? A power table tells you up front how big a delta you need to see. I guess they assumed the difference would be 10x what it was, but again, you think you’d know that from “pilot data.”]

But Jones knows that part of his audience is scientists working with competitive athletes. Drawing on Hopkins’s concept of how to express the results of an experiment, the paper states:

It is noteworthy, however, that although the group mean improvement in 50 mile TT performance did not attain statistical significance, an improvement in completion time of 0.8 % would likely to be practically meaningful during competition.

And digging even deeper into the study, you find something else. Of the eight subjects, five of them had their level of plasma nitrite increase by 30 percent or more after drinking the beet juice, which is what you’d expect when you drink something rich in nitrates.

But the other three riders didn’t get the same increase in nitrite in their blood—in fact, one actually had a decrease. This sort of individual difference in response is actually a common phenomena across lots of things, from nutrition to how we react to a workout. (In my book, Faster, Higher, Stronger, I argue that those individual differences mean that each of us is doing an experiment with just one subject, a perspective that’s near and dear to many of the readers of this blog and Tim’s books).

When you look at just the responders to beet juice, the improvements look very different. They had a mean time reduction of 2 percent, which would be more in line with what previous studies have found.

One other interesting result of Jones’s research is that beet juice seems to be a more effective ergogenic aid for regular athletes than it is for elite performers. “If you think of the things beet juice helps with, like blood flow and mitochondrial function, in elite athletes, those abilities are pretty well developed,” says Jones. “So there, you do have an issue of diminishing returns—any ergogenic aid might have a smaller benefit in the elite. But even if the benefit is just 0.1 of a percent, it’s probably worth trying.” This is one case in which regular folks like you and me might get more out of beet juice than an Olympian, but as Jones notes, even the small chance of a benefit for that elite athlete make it worth trying. And they certainly have been.

Jones tells me just about every top nation at the 2012 Olympics was using beet juice with its athletes. “It was actually pretty difficult to buy beet juice within ten miles of London,” he says.

SO WHAT DOES THIS MEAN FOR ME?

As Jones says, the good news is that beet juice is likely more effective for more normally athletic people like you and me. The best recommendations I have for you right now are:

• Beet juice’s benefits are best established for events that last from five to 30 minutes. Lots of athletic events fall into that time frame, from middle distance swimming and running to rowing, all the way up to 5K, and even 10K if you’re a fast runner. Research has pegged these gains at around 3 percent.
• Most research has been done with the equivalent of 500-600 mL of beet root juice consumed between 2 and 2.5 hours before the event. (So, for instance, the research on longer events didn’t include athletes re-dosing due to the length of the effort). This can be in the form of regular juice, while some athletes have started to turn to concentrated beet juice which makes it easier to get the nitrates without so much bulk in the stomach.
• Team sports have been studied less than individual sports, but there is some research that indicates that beet juice can improve performance in the so-called Yo-Yo recovery test, which simulates the stop and start action that you get in sports like football, basketball, and soccer. Many sports teams are starting to use beet juice.
• As discussed above, the data on endurance events over 30 minutes isn’t as clear as the data for shorter events. But there’s no evidence of harm to performance with the standard dosages. So feel free to try it and see if you’re a responder or non-responder.
• Speaking of responders and non-responders—keep track of your data! You won’t be able to correct for the placebo effect when you use beet juice, but by tracking your performance (whether it’s a training log, a fitness tracking device, or a site like Strava), you can see if you’re getting a benefit, or if you’re just #pissingrainbows for no reason.

###

My book, Faster, Higher, Stronger: How Sports Science Is Creating a New Generation of Superathletes, is an in-depth look at the science and technology that allows the world’s best athletes to push the boundaries of human performance.

Further reading:

• 10 Uncommon “Superfoods” from the World of Ultra-Endurance
• How To Lose 20-30 Pounds In 5 Days: The Extreme Weight Cutting and Rehydration Secrets of UFC Fighters
• Are Saunas the Next Big Performance-Enhancing “Drug”?
• How To Gain 20 Pounds In 28 Days: The Extreme Muscle Building Secrets of UFC Fighters

Did you know that Darth Vader is polling higher than all potential 2016 presidential candidates?

Yes, it’s true, according to the recent Washington Post article, which recapped the results of a clever survey by Nate Silver’s respected statistical analysis firm, FiveThirtyEight.

Stepping outside of its usual political and sports predictions to bridge the gap between politics and science fiction yielded the surprising (and funny) survey result — and garnered media attention beyond the usual wonks and sports writers who closely follow Silver’s blog.

FiveThirtyEight’s polling and research taps into one of the underlying principles of content marketing: Find a way to provide relatable, relevant content that brings something new and thought-provoking to the conversation.

Comparing your opinions to those of a larger interest group is intrinsically engaging — especially when the insights from such research are unexpected and/or entertaining. But even more than providing shock value, research helps you uncover your audience’s motivations, opinions, and pain points, and can be transformed into many different deliverables across your marketing channels.

Here’s how to use research as part of your content marketing strategy:

1. Get your ducks in a row. Before you contact potential research partners, there are several things you need to consider:

• How many questions do you want your survey to have?

• How many respondents do you expect?

• Will you need to offer incentives in order to encourage audience participation?

• What will be the balance of qualitative vs. quantitative questions?

• Will phone interviews be required or will your survey be web-based?

• What is your timeline?

• Do you need a partner who can take care of the entire process for you, or are you willing to roll up your sleeves and do much of the work yourself?

Not surprisingly, the cost and timing to produce research can vary widely depending on what you require.

2. Compile a list of potential research partners. Researchers come in many different flavors. Some researchers have the capability to do market research but aren’t full-service research groups, which means they won’t recommend audiences or draft the survey questions for you. Others offer to create white papers as part of a complete research package, which may include everything from developing questions to identifying targets, to conducting research, and developing additional content.

Research firms and their analysts often have well-established relationships with the same constituents that your company likely wants to reach — so you’ll want to partner with an organization that has a solid relationship with your target audience. Response rates and credibility of the answers will be higher when you work with an organization that has a growing relationship with your respondents. To find the right research partner, ask key stakeholders throughout your organization which firms they trust and who your customers seek insight from. For example, if you’re doing market research in the healthcare industry, you might select the Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society to conduct your research, since it has deep roots in the healthcare community.

Also take a look at the companies you admire and the media outlets you read, and get a sense of which analysts they’re quoting. If you want to do research on consumers’ technology-purchasing habits, looking to analysts who are quoted in The New York Times and popular technology blogs is a good starting place.

3. Build your questions. Work with your researcher to develop questions that will best capture your story and set the parameters for the audience you want to poll. During this process, start thinking about how the survey results can be illustrated visually and interactively. This is also a great time to involve stakeholders from your external communications and sales teams to get their perspective on which questions will yield the most helpful insights.

4. Turn the results of your research into news, and use them as the basis for a press release, an article on your corporate website, and an internal article.

Create a press release that:

• Focuses on the three key messages from the research that matter to your audience and your stakeholders

• Develops quotes from the researcher and your senior executive that voice how the research was conducted, what stood out most to them, and what the implications are for the industry

• Highlights key statistics from the research and quotes any interesting anecdotal insights from research subjects

• Includes a headline to highlight the counterintuitive or unique aspect of the findings (How does your research add to or change what people already know?)

Example: Take a look at how marketing company DNN did this with its press release recapping commissioned industry research about the increasingly precarious marketing technology landscape.

Distribute the release under embargo to your wish list of 10 to 15 media outlets (usually a week or two in advance) and offer them an opportunity to speak with the researcher and your executive. This advance release will go a long way in making a big splash on the day the news is announced. Once you’ve secured these meetings with media outlets, pay attention to the questions they ask and which results they key in on – they’ll give a taste of the questions that your larger audience will have.

5. Write your own article for the public: Take reporting into your own hands and create a 500- to 800-word article for your website or blog that is the dream version of how you’d want the media to cover your story.

Example: A recent PayPal survey, for example, looked at Americans’ coffee habits: how many cups we consume per day, how long we wait in line, and how much we pay. PayPal turned the survey results into an article and accompanying infographic, which was then covered and published by Huffington Post.

Create a piece for in-house use: Next, get your internal stakeholders – especially sales and marketing – amped up with an internal article that gives an insiders’ look at what went into developing the research, why it’s important for your company and customers, and how it can be used as a tool to increase your company’s influence and bottom line. In advance, internally post the research being made public to give time to your sales team to plot their strategy on how to use the research.

Tellabs CMO George Stenitzer, in an interview with CMI, said arming Tellabs’ sales force with the research findings in the form of a slide deck, executive summary, and full report is an important tactic in starting discussions with customers and prospects. Moreover, requiring others who want the full report to make an appointment with the sales team drives Tellabs’ direct-engagement opportunities even further.

6. Keep on repurposing. After spending a good chunk of change on research, you want to get the most out of it – beyond the news items mentioned. Turn your research results into an infographic, a blog series, tweets that restate some of the questions in your survey, a white paper, or a webinar.

Example: Revisiting DNN, it transformed the research into several assets, including:

• An infographic that distills the most exciting findings into a compelling visual that was shared on social media and published by media outlets as part of their larger coverage of the research findings.

• A webinar, “Marketing Got Complicated,” functioned as a marketing tool, engaging potential prospects to register their contact information and directly interact with DNN’s experts and the research firm, and ask questions about how marketing can get uncomplicated.

Example: OKCupid, an online dating site, molds its research findings into many forms. It even has a blog dedicated to the dating research – oktrends. Now, while you might not go as far as dedicating a whole platform to your organization’s research, oktrends’ posts themselves are instructive: They get to the point of why the research matters by making the results actionable for their audience (and including lots of great visuals.) Case in point: the best questions to ask on a first date. In fact, the research most recently spawned a book, which in turn spawned interviews and coverage from The Daily Beast, Columbia Journalism Review, The New York Times and more, spreading the word about the research even further, and establishing the company and its president as thought leaders.

7. Drive engagement: Make the takeaways of your research even more relevant by asking members of your audience to chime in on the results. What surprises them? What do they agree with? Which questions would they answer differently from the majority? How do they see the findings from the research playing out in their own spheres?

These insights can also be used as sound bites for media outreach and interviews promoting the survey, and in interviews and thought leadership pieces long after the survey is published.

Have you commissioned industry research for your company? What were the challenges? How did it pay off? What recent survey caught your attention and why? Chime in below.

Want more expert insight on addressing content marketing’s biggest challenges? Check out all the fantastic CMW sessions that are available through our Video on Demand portal.

Cover image by Ian L via publicdomainpictures.net

The post How to Turn Research Into Content Marketing Strategy AND Tactics appeared first on Content Marketing Institute.

One of business’ Big Data challenges is the integration of different data silos. The integration of these disparate customer data helps your analytics team to identify the interrelationships among the different pieces of customer information, including their values, interests, attitudes about your brand, interactions with your brand and more. Integrating information/facts about your customers allows you to gain an understanding about how all the diverse variables work together (i.e., are related to each other), driving deeper customer insight.

A data set can be described by the sample size (number of things you are measuring) and the number of variables (number of facts about a given thing). I revisited an article published earlier this year on the size of Big Data. The interactive graphic plots many different data sets along these two size-related dimensions.

Data sets in the upper left quadrant of this chart include a few things on which many facts are known (Human genome). Data sets in the lower right quadrant include many things on which a few facts are known (US Census). Data sets about the human genome characterize the former data set. Data silos in business characterize the latter.

Mapping and understanding of all the genes of humans allows for deep personalization in healthcare through focused drug treatments (i.e., pharmacogenomics) and risk assessment of genetic disorders (e.g., genetic counseling, genetic testing). The human genome project allows healthcare professionals to look beyond the “one size fits all” approach to a more tailored approach of addressing healthcare needs of a particular patient.

Siloed data sets prevent business leaders from gaining a complete understanding of their customers. In this scenario, analytics can only be conducted within one data silo at a time, restricting the set of information (i.e., variables) that can be used to describe a given phenomenon; your analytic models are likely underspecified (not using the complete set of useful predictors), decreasing your model’s predictive power / increasing your model’s error. The bottom line is that you are not able to make the best prediction about your customers because you don’t have all the necessary information about them.

Data Integration As Your Customer Genome Project

Figure 1. Data Integration is an exercise in creating your customer genome.

Using the 2×2 graphical approach to understanding data size, we can see how the value of your integrated business data is greater than the sum of its parts. Figure 1 looks at four different scenarios of how businesses can use their data. In the lower right quadrant, it is business as usual; when departments keep their data siloed, each department only knows a few things about the customers. Analytics is able to build general rules for broad customer segments (e.g., male vs female; age segments).

The lower left quadrant represents one-off projects where a sample of customers are used to study a phenomenon. Analytics in these types of projects may be less valuable due to lack of generalizability (to the other customers) and poor models (e.g., underspecified) due to omitted metrics.

Key Account programs are best categorized as projects falling in the upper left quadrant, where you know a lot of things about a few “important” customers (Accounts). In these situations, analytic results of a small set of accounts may be difficult to generalize to the entire customer base.

Integrated data sets (those in the upper right quadrant) allow you to a lot of things about all your customers. Analytics applied to these types of data help you generate better predictive models containing all the key variables that are useful in predicting your outcome. Additionally, using these “customer genomic” type data sets, you are able to target specific customers with personalized treatment that resonates with them (i.e., segmentation on steroids).

Summary

Businesses can get much more useful insight about their customers if they integrate their data silos. The mapping and understanding of human genes provides a useful analogy for business leaders. Each data silo contains only a small part of what defines your customers. Your insights are limited by the variables used in your modeling. By knowing more about your customers (the variables and how they are related to each other), you can better describe each specific customer, build better, more comprehensive predictive models to improve the customer experience through personalization.

Not taking time off from work isn't just making you more stressed — it's costing you money.

That's because employees who don't use all of their paid time off are essentially working for free during the extra days, a new study says.

The study, paid for by the US Travel Association and conducted by Oxford Economics, finds that American workers lost a staggering $52.4 billion due to unused vacation time in 2013.

That's an average of $504 per worker, all because people are worried what will happen if they take time off.

"Americans are taking the value of their time for granted," Adam Sacks, founder and president of Oxford Economics' Tourism Economics division, says in a statement.

The study says that Americans, known as some of the hardest workers in the western world, are taking even fewer vacation days now than they were in the past.

Using data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics and a survey of 1,303 American workers done by GfK Public Affairs and Corporate Communications, Oxford Economics finds that US employees took an average of 16 vacation days in 2013, down from an average of 20.3 days between 1976 and 2000.

The study found that if workers were to go back to taking 20 vacation days a year, they would add $284 billion to the US economy, including $118 billion in direct travel spending and another $166 billion spent in other places like restaurants and retail shops.

SEE ALSO: Americans Can't Stop Working, And It's Becoming A Problem

Join the conversation about this story »

My network is a microcosm of professionals looking to network, interact and drive new opportunities.

We all have several networks. Personal, professional, family, faith-based, hobby-based. In general, I have a reasonably diverse network. The one that is the most diverse? My LinkedIn network.

People often ask me how I figure out who should be in my network and how I decide good connections from not-so-great connections. And just yesterday, a client questioned whether you can really have 500 meaningful connections. I do and I think you can depending on how you are using LinkedIn.

First, do you need to have more than 500 connections? No, you don’t. Remember the goal is to always have a highly engaged network. People know you and you know them, that’s key.

If you are using LinkedIn for sales (business development or client development) and/or recruiting you need to build momentum. Here are a couple of ways to do that:

• Increase the size of your network
• Increase the number of Groups you belong to
• Increase participation (engagement) within your Network and within key Groups

Consider what you are trying to do with your LinkedIn network. Do you offer:

• Specialized services to a diverse range of industries, types of organizations, people (That’s what Intero does)
• Specialized services to specific industries, types of organizations, people (i.e. an accounting firm that sells accounting software to small businesses or a promotional marketing company)
• General services to a diverse range of industries, types of organizations, people (i.e. Insurance, IT Managed Service Providers)
• General services to specific industries, types of organizations, people (i.e. content providers specializing in the nonprofit area or within a B2B vertical like technology)

My network is an absolute reflection of working with a range of people in a variety of industries in the for-profit area and a variety of missions in the nonprofit area. I like that.

Why?

It’s the perfect way to help others in finding good people to meet and potentially work with. Regardless of what category best represents you above, you can define, expand and tap into a rich network.

According to Demand Gen’s Report 2014 Buyer Behavior Survey—

• 76% of people say they prefer to work with vendors recommended by someone they know
• 73% prefer to work with SALESPEOPLE recommended by someone they know

I have great people who lead and/or work for great companies, small, mid-sized and large. It’s pretty easy for me to mention someone I know in a particular business. What’s the point of having a strong network if it’s not useful to you and others?

I can make the case that the more useful your network is to others the more useful it will be to you in the long run.

There are three or four coffee shops/cafés in Baltimore that are go-to places for business professionals to meet. People visit those places not because they have great coffee but because they are easy to get to, interesting people are there, there’s a definite energy or vibe and people know it’s a place to be seen. I can think of a dozen times I have gone to meet someone for coffee and saw other people I know and did some quick networking. Being seen keeps us top of mind.

Think of your LinkedIn network as the cafe. The more people that go there, the more you want to go there and the more benefit there is to everyone. People say hello, remind themselves they need to call you, catch up, introduce people to one another. It’s the community hub. Be the owner of your own private, virtual café—your network. The café owner thinks of new ways to keep their place interesting and relevant—new menu offerings (adding and updating your profile), fast wi-fi (being on LinkedIn every day), hosting small events (participating in Group discussions), changing up the design, style or table arrangement (creating, posting, sharing different types of content).

Translate that to your network—

• Ask people what they are up to, how you can help them, who they are interested in networking with.
• Watch what they post, like and comment on it.
• Notice what Groups they are in. Does it make sense for you to join any of those Groups?
• Check out some of the people they are connected to (2nd level connections); would you benefit from knowing them?
• Be a connector— make intentional introductions for others.

Are there people I don’t know well? Absolutely. Some I should know better? Absolutely.

When I think of my LinkedIn network, I am grateful to connect with and know accomplished professionals who do great work every day. As I consider how I can add even more value to my network, I invite you to learn more about some of my connections. You may even consider connecting with them.

Many of them are CEOs and lots of people want to connect with them so don’t assume they will automatically connect. In fact, many are discriminating connectors. So, NO selling here, please. Give them a reason to connect with you or just learn more. This is a random selection from my LinkedIn network below and I will continue, over time, to showcase a broad group of my connections.

• Kurt Steiner, CEO, CharityHowTo — webinars for nonprofits
• John Leahy, CEO, Target Marketing Group — branded products and online programs
• Eliot Wagonheim, Principal, Wagonheim Law — legal services to small and mid-sized businesses
• Rich Rubinstein, CEO, America’s Remote Help Desk — IT solutions to businesses and law firms
• Larry Eason, CMO, ieCrowd —breakthrough innovations into solutions to address global challenges
• Susan Bishop, Principal, Unlocked Box — personal and business coach focused on creativity, branding and change
• Yvonne Lyons, Vice President of Content Marketing, Right Source Marketing — strategic marketing and digital services
• Roy Fazio, CEO, Protocall Group — employment recruitment and staffing firm
• Brian Myrick, Technologist, Interversant — technology consulting
• Michael Paul, Partner, Direct Mortgage Loans — licensed direct mortgage lender
• Marc Halpert, Multipreneur, connect2collaborate— LinkedIn Trainer and Evangelist (we often share and collaborate)

You see, we are using LinkedIn for the same purpose hopefully; to build meaningful business connections to help us influence and drive our business goals. For me and Intero Advisory that includes brand awareness, training and consulting opportunities, and recruiting of high-capacity people for Intero and our clients.

I want to create a vibrant, diverse café rich in conversation, intention and results. Don’t you?

OK, I’ll admit it. At first, I didn’t buy into the “social selling”craze. I’d see social media experts popping up everywhere, claiming that social selling was the wave of the future. But I didn’t even know who half of these “experts” were. (Then again, six months ago I thought Twitter was what a chatty bird might do, and Google Plus was an internal email service for Google employees. My bad.)

Good thing I started consuming massive amounts of content on the topic, because I soon realized that the statistics on social selling were not a joke, and I finally figured out all social media avenues that are vital to sales people who are truly interested in joining the ranks of the ‘quota-crushers.’ Don’t just take it from me – here’s what social media expert Jill Konrath (@jillkonrath) has to say: “Sales professionals who use social selling are 51% more likely to exceed their quota.”

Say what? Who the heck wouldn’t want to try social selling with a stat like that? I can honestly say that I’m not anexpert, but I can say my slowly evolving adoption of social selling has had a major impact on kicking my quota’s tail. Would I leverage social media exclusively? No, but it is sure is making a huge difference.

Practical advice lacking

I’m going to get into my secret sauce of social selling in a minute, but before I do, I think it’s important to give a little background into why I started buying into social selling. At first, the experts bogged me down with their theories about the power of social selling. But it was all theory – rarely would I find practical advice to help me achieve what I set out to do (which, as I mentioned before, is quota-crushing).

I went back to the drawing board and figured out that if I invested the time to understand social selling, and mastered some basic techniques, I really would have the competitive advantage. (I am a sucker for anything that gives me a competitive advantage.)

Building relationships

My social selling approach has certainly evolved, and surprisingly, it has really allowed me to enjoy both the digital journey and the amazing people I have met along the way. (The additional sales were nice, too.) Now, I’m starting to understand the power of digital networking, and the importance of digital relationships. You might be surprised to discover how many of these relationships have created a sale, both directly and indirectly, or that they are evolving into connections that deliver value to both sides.

I’m not saying that all of these digital relationships have turned into a sale, and that’s certainly not the way to leverage social selling. You use social selling as a way to understand, educate, get educated, and build long-lasting relationships with people, adding value to your professional growth. The good news is that sales do come with the territory.

Disclaimer: Social selling can be a ton of work. But don’t worry. You may need dedication and a long-term commitment if you want to see any kind of success, but I promise this will pay off. I can’t begin to tell how many times I wanted to simply give up. We’re in sales, right? We love instant gratification. Unfortunately, that’s not how the world of social selling works. This is a slow process, and it’s only for those looking for long-term success.

Rule 1: Always Be Connecting

Jill Rowley (@jill_rowley) coined this term and she was one of my major influences when it came to social selling. Anyone you meet, schedule a meeting with, run a meeting with, interact with, run into at a grocery store (I think you get it by now), you need to connect with them!

I always start with a LinkedIn connection, and I add a personalized message talking about how and when we met. About two months ago, I met a prospect at a bar while having a brew and let me tell you, never judge a book by the cover. It turned out that he was a very well-known CEO, and I managed to connect with him via LinkedIn after a brief conversation that involved no self-promotion. I have nurtured that relationship, and just might hit two quotas at one time in the near future from my adoption of ABC.

Rule 2: Always Be Prospecting

Prospecting is a non-stop process. Here’s how I do it. I find a company, one that fits my profile, and I add two decision makers, a middle manager, and a few non-decision makers on LinkedIn and Twitter. My goal here is to add multiple contacts in an organization to my social funnel, because after all, not all decision makers have adopted social media yet. Additionally, it’s not always about decision makers when it comes to the digital world or purchasing technology these days. Typically in an organization, whether large or small, a group of people make the purchasing decision.

Remember to always personalize your LinkedIn invites. Do a little research through Google to find something you have in common, or refer to how you found them and why you are trying to connect. I also think mentioning one of their blog posts is a great way to do this. Additionally, after you add them on Twitter, it’s always a good idea to re-tweet valuable posts, and then go for the LinkedIn add. Nobody appreciated getting a spam invite, and most people will ignore you. The next step is to like their company LinkedIn page, add their company Twitter handle, and like their Facebook page. (Yes, you need to do all three.)

On top of that, I add myself to all of their personal digital marketing outreach, like subscribing to their newsletter and blog updates. This will take a little time and research, but it can be well worth it.

Rule 3: Always Be Listening

Now that I’ve connected and started prospecting, it’s time to start listening. This is the most important part of social selling. I’m constantly monitoring all of my social feeds throughout the day as I’m running meetings, building relationships, and closing deals. After all, social selling is a round-the-clock strategy.

As companies and prospects in my social funnel are communicating, I’m listening and soaking it all in. (And I bet that my competitors aren’t.) I’m learning what’s important to my prospects through their company communication, professional communication, and most importantly, their personal communication. By personal communication I’m not talking about their personal Facebook page. I’m talking about their professional self-promotion blogs, websites, or newsletters.

Rule 4: Always Be Engaging

Now that you’ve connected with the right prospects and started the listening process, it’s time to start engaging. This is the most fun part of social selling process, in my opinion. Start commenting and adding value to their social media posts on the various social media channels. Who doesn’t enjoy seeing likes, tweets or comments on their posts? We all love people who make us look awesome on social media.

Most companies and professionals don’t have a ton of these engagements, and I know my heart starts beating when my phone makes that special social media alert sound. Finally, someone loves me and finds value in what I have to say! Be genuine as you engage and give your honest feedback. Don’t be the kiss-ass, because that doesn’t add any value.

Figure out a way to get more engagement, and I can tell you right now that you will start to get noticed. This is a process, and it needs to be done on all of the different social media channels. You can like a case study on Facebook today, re-tweet it tomorrow, and share it on LinkedIn the next. Once you start engaging, you start building credibility, and the relationship begins. This is where you can separate yourself from the competition.

Rule 5: Always Be Educating

At this point, it’s time to start contributing to the relationship by educating others. You’ve figured out what’s important to them and you’ve started to get noticed. This is where you take all your hard work and start educating the client on what value that you can add to the relationship. Start sharing your content and be strategic about it. If you’ve done a good enough job of listening, then it won’t be that hard to post content that you know they will find valuable. With all of the content out there, it’s important to give people in your funnel information that they will engage with. They’ll return the favor.

Of course, all of this may be a waste of time if you aren’t strategic with your content, because that’s how you start adding value – and first impressions are everything. Without delivering the right content, in the right place and at the right time, you’ll get lost in the crowd, and pretty soon you’ll vanish off their social media radar.

So: be smart, be persistent, stay engaged, add value, and soon you’ll find yourself crushing your quota with social selling.

Just getting started with social media? Download this free toolkit.

Not long ago I interviewed Beverley McIntyre, director of member services and support at News UK.

The extent to which a paywall has changed life at The Sun is quite remarkable. Last weekend, fingering Twitter, I saw that The Times and Sunday Times is offering a free iPad Mini to anyone taking out a premium subscription.

This intrigued me and I looked further at The Times member page, a more advanced product than The Sun when it comes to paywalls at News UK, having been in place for a while longer.

I saw a lot of features that I take to be trends in publishing strategy, customer support and web design.

Here they are...

Multichannel support

Live chat is becoming increasingly important in a variety of sectors. Telecoms is an area where it will become increasingly prevalent, with a mix of poor websites and complicated billing leading many to call contact centres that are often overwhelmed.

Live chat allows for a number of simultaneous queries for each agent and it can ensure quicker reply and resolution for the customer. For The Times, live chat is a great boon to customer support but also conversion (see below). And customers love it.

Of course, there are still customers more comfortable calling a contact centre, which The Times offers. There are also extensive FAQs provided in an effort to reduce the cost to serve as far as possible (and to delight the customer).

Live chat for support

..and conversion.

Added value to digital subscriptions

The move from ownership to digital subscription in media has meant paywall newspapers such as The Times have needed to add value to memberships.

They need to do this to elevate a paid digital offering (or digital and print) above the millions of free media offerings online. If The Guardian website and majority of its app content is free, why should I pay to access The Times?

Well, leaving political allegiance aside, the reason one might be tempted is because of the associated 'stuff and opportunities'. Not all of it is free, some of it is merely exclusive, but that's equally as enticing.

This 'stuff and opportunities' is potentially a new revenue stream for The Times. It means new partners or new angles for existing partners.

The added value of an iPad Mini!

The Times+ is the name given to the members club offering 'private events and mingling with other Times+ members'!

Affiliate deals work well with membership due to a well qualified audience. This provides more exclusive offers for subscribers.

Choice and unbundling

No fewer than eight membership packages are offered, depending on combination of print and digital, The Times and Sunday Times, and whether you take out a trial (and I think there are more packages out there I didn't find).

This choice, giving the customer a price they will likely pay more than and a price they might not stretch to just yet is of course good psychology.

Take a look at the options by clicking through below and note how the trial option doesn't come with a free iPad Mini. That iPad is a pretty big carrot with which to lure customers in for 18 months.

As well as choice, unbundling is increasingly important for newspapers. The Times isn't doing this yet but if you look at the New York Times, which is taking the lead in this area, you can see products such as the NYT Now app, designed to be affordable for snacking readers that aren't yet ready to subscribe in full.

Choice, click through to see the membership packages.

New York Times unbundling of products.

Design

On a web design note, The Times membership pages are all scrollable, look nice and big on tablet and include full page video in the sports section.

This design element is something The Sun is playing catch up on. The more persuasive, interactive and long the membership page is, the greater the possiblity of signing customers up.

Click through to see full page video.

Long membership product pages can continue to persuade the customer as they scroll.

Cold calls are the bread and butter of successful sales development reps. But what about the times you call and don’t get an answer? Leaving a message is a hard starting point to a demo or qualified appointment.

Instead of being dejected when you don’t get an answer, use it to your advantage. When you’re confident in voicemail, prospects that don’t answer can be your silver bullet.

Leave a voicemail to remember with these five tips:

1. Be Intriguing.

Don’t sell. Intrigue a prospect so that he or she is motivated to pick up the phone and call you back.

Don’t give enough information for the prospect to make a decision on the spot. Rather, offer a taste to pique their interest or let them know you’d like to ask a quick question.

2. Don’t Assume Or Guess. Always Know.

When you sound hesitant on the phone, you don’t provide a value proposition that motivates the prospect to return your call.

Don’t overstep the boundaries of a stranger by claiming to understand all the prospect’s business challenges.

Instead, start by building a relationship.

Be polite and assertive to start building trust. As you do, prospects will feel comfortable sharing their challenges with you.

3. Stand Out, Be Memorable.

The absolute best (and most difficult) way to stand out in a voicemail is to be truly memorable.

Don’t sound like every other drone whose voicemail goes something like this: “Hi, Bob. This is Greg from Company X. The reason for my call today is to discuss blah blah blah…”

Use inflection and tone to project your interest, and leave a message that’s personalized.

Make your prospect need to call you back. Just like in emails, you have the opportunity to add a short personalized quip about the prospect’s business, alumnus, or favorite sports team to set yourself apart.

4. Don’t Be Pushy.

There’s a time and place for battling objections and asking edgy questions. Voicemail is not one of them.

Don’t dig yourself into a hole by outlining your entire product in detail and repeating how much your prospect needs it. Because they might not.

The less you pitch, the better the voicemail will be received. Remember, always try to intrigue the prospect, not overwhelm them. Also, no one likes to be sold to.

5. Keep It Short.

Say what you have to say, and hang up. Keep it to 30 seconds or less.

When was the last time you listened to a three-minute voicemail and thought, “I’m glad I did that. Everything I heard was important and impactful?” Probably never. In fact, most people have probably made a decision about whether or not they’ll return the call after 30 seconds.

To keep voicemails short, cut out any reference of failed attempts, such as, “I tried to call yesterday,” or “I sent you an email and never heard back.”

With a time limit, you’ll avoid rambling, and with practice, you’ll be able to provide a compelling and concise voicemail that warrants a call back. Finish with your phone number. Repeat it twice, so your contact has a verification and can easily copy it down in a single listen.

With these five tips under your belt, you’ll be able to take advantage of voicemail opportunities by enticing prospects to call you back.

Customer Interactions

Four in ten senior executives in larger companies don’t know the lifetime value of their customers. That’s according to MarketingCharts who quoted a Forbes and Sitecore study that surveyed 312 senior executives in North American companies. Not only did 40 percent of the leadership surveyed not know the financial value of their customers, over half of them don’t plan to. In other words, they don’t care or see the merit in this important number.

This absolutely surprises me. If the leaders of these organizations don’t know, then you can expect that the employees don’t know either. Yet when employees know and have clarity about the lifetime value of the customer, they can make better customer-focused decisions.

Let’s look at a simple example that most of us can understand. We’ve all gone grocery shopping. Several studies indicate that an average customer of a grocery store spends from $80 to $200 each week. Let’s make this easy. Let’s say that the average customer spends $100 each week. Assuming he or she takes a couple of weeks off for vacation, that’s 50 weeks they buy groceries, which comes out to $5,000 each year. But, it’s even more than that. Because we’re talking about the lifetime value – not the annual value.

The average family moves about every seven years. Assuming they move out of the neighborhood, that means that the average customer or family is worth about $35,000 in business over those seven years. So, the next time they complain about a carton of spoiled milk, give them their money back! Is it worth upsetting a customer over a few dollars, when they are worth $35,000? Of course not!

Once you know the lifetime value, you must know what to do with it. Here is a five step solution:

1. Calculate: Determine the lifetime value of the customer. How much the average customer spends each time they buy, how often they buy in a year, and how many years do they buy? This is a bit of a simplification, but a good start.
2. Communicate: Share this information with employees so they can make better decisions.
3. Demonstrate: Give them examples of the kinds of decisions they can make; refunds, exchanges, upgrades, and more.
4. Recognition: Recognize when employees make good decisions. Encourage them to do more of the same.
5. Teach: Conversely, if an employee makes a bad decision, help the employee feel good about trying to make the right decision and confident about what to the next time.
6. Share: Tell the story. Share the good – and even the bad – examples that demonstrate how employees are making decisions based on the lifetime value of the customer. It’s part of their ongoing training. In short, knowing the value of a customer makes sense. Here is a simple guideline: Manage the interactions you have with your customers with the lifetime value in mind, with each and every interaction.

In short, knowing the value of a customer makes sense. Here is a simple guideline: Manage the interactions you have with your customers with the lifetime value in mind, with each and every interaction.

Integrated Marketing often means a combination of marketing tactics as part of a specific campaign tied together with a common goal and audience. As consumers become more diverse and sophisticated in how they discover, consume and interact with digital content, it only follows that marketers correspond their efforts to provide a common (yet relevant to the channel) experience for customers.

To elevate their ability to provide such an experience, many marketers are challenged to find new platforms, best practices and strategies. In many cases, the answer to improving customer experience across marketing channels is sitting right in front of them within customer service, sales, public relations and product management.

By tapping managers for trends and front line staff for specific examples of what prospects, customers and the media are thinking relevant to the brands products and services, marketers can gain insights into what buyers care about, the triggers that move them to action and most importantly, the questions being asked.

Here’s an example of what I mean:

Marketing Goals – Let’s say your company is focused on increasing sales of a premium product. The logical hypothesis would be that the brand needs to connect with higher end customers with the desire and discretionary income to purchase the premium product.

Customer Insights – Analysis of customer data can reveal key demographic and behavioral indicators of what characterizes the target customer. Along with customer surveys and 3rd party data for segmentation, a profile can be developed for this customer group. Insights about what she cares about relevant to the premium product, preferences for content discovery, consumption and engagement can inspire the content plan.

Marketing, Customer Service, Sales Insights – Along with customer insights, conversations with front line customer service and sales can reveal the triggers and the key questions the target customer group often has. After an initial survey, efforts to continue to receive these insights can prove invaluable. BCCing answers to questions posed via email is probably the easiest.

Tactical Marketing & PR Mix – With knowledge about the key interests, desires, behaviors and most important questions being posed by the target audience for the premium product, marketing can architect a plan that integrates owned, earned, paid and shared media to represent the brand as the best answer for what the buyer cares about most. In other words, part of the premium product content plan will answer customer questions through:

• Blog posts on the brand website
• Social content on networks
• 3rd party media online and offline
• Industry blogs
• Paid search ads
• Social media ads

Think about the confidence you would build in your premium product of the key questions customers have are being answered in industry press, on the brand’s blog and through social networks. The combination of such an integrated marketing and PR effort is very powerful.

Any opportunity to engage the target audience in social content creation would be leveraged as well. If the customer segment uses Facebook and Instagram in a meaningful way, then a contest that inspires customers to take selfies with the product might engage more organic content interactions, increasing reach and providing content to run social ads from.

Key Performance Indicators – KPIs show progress towards program goals (or not). Metrics in a program like this example might include benchmarks and then continued tracking of:

• Exposure in the media
• Social network mentions
• Search visibility
• Conversations online
• Placements in specific media
• Mentions on relevant blogs
• Mentions in offline media
• Social shares
• Context and sentiment of social shares
• Social content created by customers
• Network growth
• Visits to relevant blog and website content
• Referring traffic to hub content
• Contest participation
• Inbound and social links

Business Outcomes – Ultimately, the goal for the program is to sell more premium product, so sales and overall revenue are the measures to focus on. As the program matures and insights from KPIs are used to optimize the program messaging, tactics and effectiveness, additional measures such as shortened sales cycle, profitability and referrals could be considered as well.

The idea with this example is that marketing that functions as a silo in an organization is at a distinct disadvantage over a scenario where customer insights and internal staff that interact with customers are tapped to help formulate a more targeted and meaningful experience for buyers. The most straightforward ay to start is to connect with customer service and sales staff to identify key conversations they’re having with prospects and customers to reveal what buyers care about and what questions they have.

Overlay those insights with actual customer data that the brand already has a relationship with and you may have some pretty compelling content to work with for a much better integrated marketing effort.

What data sources are you using for customer insights? What information sources are you using as a base for integrated marketing?

Photo: Shutterstock

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© Online Marketing Blog - TopRank®, 2014. | For Better Integrated Marketing, Look Inside for Insights | http://www.toprankblog.com

Someone recently asked me a question along the lines of “Why are we creating content and why is our audience going to care about this?” For someone like me, who lives and breathes content marketing every day, this type of question is infuriating. BUT, for content marketing newbies, this kind of question makes sense. You create the content, then what? If you build it, will they come? Why does content promotion matter?

The answer is yes – if you build the content, they will come. But, in order to attract visitors to your content, you need to promote it. It is all called marketing for a reason and by creating a coordinated and strategic campaign for your content, not only will it get seen by more people, you are likely to generate more leads as well.

This was the focus of one my favorite educational sessions at HubSpot’s Inbound conference earlier this fall and here, I’m going to share with you what I learned and how you can take your content marketing to the next level witih a great promotional strategy.

All it takes is three simple steps…

1. ORGANIZATION AND PLANNING

SET GOALS

First of all, decide what you’re going to do. Get your team organized and brainstorm your project. Ask yourself what your goals are: are you working on branding? Building traffic? Generating leads? You can’t market successfully without first setting goals so that when your campaign is complete, you know how to measure your success.

GET ORGANIZED

Once you’ve set goals and understand what the goal you’re working towards is, organize your tasks and figure out who’s doing what. Everything from social media promotion, writing, editing, and graphic design should be delegated here – as well as deadlines.

SET A TIMELINE

What’s your timeline? When do you want your content to launch? Determine when everything needs to be ready. Blog posts, email copy, LinkedIn discussions, and social images should all be ready to go one to two weeks out. Then set a time when you’ll analyze everything after the fact – a month? A week? Knowing all this before you start working on your content will keep your team organized and ensure everything goes smoothly.

2. CONTENT PROMOTION

Once your campaign is outlined, look at all the ways you can promote your content. These might include:

• Blogging
• Website
• Email
• Guest blogging
• Social Advertising

I personally love HubSpot’s Campaigns tool because it provides me with a nice, condensed checklist of the ways I can promote my content for a particular campaign and rolls the results up all in one placer for me to review.

BLOGGING

Did you know companies that blog are 13 times more likely to see a positive return on investment (ROI) from their marketing than those who don’t? Blogs are incredibly useful tools when it comes to promoting content. One of the best ways is to simply use your content piece to build ideas for blog topics. Some examples:

• Pulling sections from an eBook
• Creating lists related to your content
• Expanding on one of the topics
• Updating an older post related to the topic
• Sharing misconceptions about the topic
• Providing examples

And if you’re stumped for things to blog about, you can always download our Guide to Creating Mind Blowing Content. It is full of tips on brainstorming that will help clear your writers block!

YOUR WEBSITE

Your website is your greatest marketing asset and should be the hub of all your online marketing efforts. More people will view your web pages than anything else, so use your calls to action strategically. Three easy ways to promote your content on your website include:

1. Creating a knowledge center (so much more effective than the typical “resources” page)
2. Use your login page (if you have one) to promote key offers
3. Have a featured offer strategically placed around your site (just make sure your offers are relevant to the page content on which they are displayed)

You have about three seconds after someone lands on your web page to grab their attention and good calls to action can be an incredibly effective way to draw your visitor in and get them to engage with your website.

SOCIAL MEDIA

Social media is a great way to reach a larger audience and after your website, is easily one of the most important channels for marketers and sales professionals alike.

There are a number of simple ways to use social media to promote your content:

• Facebook: Change your cover photo and use that space to promote an offer, post updates promoting your content multiple times during launch week, and continue to post once per week the month after launching your content.
• Twitter: Change your cover photo to feature your offer, pin a tweet about your content to the top of your page, use tweets with images, and be sure the author of the content is using their personal Twitter account to tweet about his/her content!
• LinkedIn: Be sure to post to your company page on launch day, and before you launch, consider starting a group discussion.

The key with social media is to understand which platforms your audience is spending time on, and then focus your efforts where they will have the most impact.

EMAIL

Not everyone is going to visit your website or search you out on social media, but just about everyone will check their email every day. Did you know that email has an ROI of 4,300%? Email is great for content promotion – and you can always up the ante by personalizing it with the recipients name (or, if you are using the new HubSpot COS, smart content) and encouraging sharing (make it fool proof with pre-created tweets/posts). Get creative – creativity is never punished!

GUEST BLOGGING

Why guest blogging? When you post your blogs on someone else’s site, you get your content in front of a whole new audience. And if you structure your post properly, you get inbound links to your website (an SEO win!) and you can promote lead conversion (through strategic use of calls to action). These are all wins when it comes to promoting your content.

SOCIAL ADVERTISING

We’ve talked before about the difference between Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn advertising. Why is it important here? Well, for starters, social advertising gives you access to over a billion people and allows you to target a specific audience. The best part? It is proven to be effective. Studies have shown that promoted tweets increase offline sales by 29% and the ROI of Facebook ads is continuing to increase.

While many companies have used generic Facebook ads to promote their business, a more effective approach is social advertising to promote content. It gives your audience a clear reason to click through, because they know there is something in it for them.

3. ANALYZE YOUR CAMPAIGN

So remember the goal you initially set back when you were discussing your content and how to promote it? Now’s the time to measure your success.

What are you analyzing? Your traffic? Look at website views compared to an equal time period before the launch of your campaign. Measuring branding? How many new followers/mentions/blog views/comments/reviews do you have? Looking for new leads? How many did your campaign generate?

Track your results from the networks you promoted on. From LinkedIn (how many discussion comments did you get?) to your CTAs (how many downloads?) to your promotional email (how many downloads?), tracking your results and looking at the goals you set beforehand is a great way to measure your success as well as see what works and what doesn’t.

The growing focus on Customer Success and the important role it plays in renewals, cross-sells, advocacy, and more within organizations only amplifies the challenge of finding the right people to lead the charge. The people that fill these roles need to have a specific skill set, but more importantly the personality, drive and passion to be on the frontline of shaping customer experience.

As we continue to grow, I’ve been thinking (a lot) about the traits of an ideal Customer Success Manager (CSM) and how to separate the good from the bad. Customer Success blends techniques and skills that traditionally serve different functional departments (think account executive or customer support associate), but melds and adapts them in order to be successful. As I was thinking about the characteristics of an ideal CSM, I began developing a list, which I’m sharing below with you. I based my methodology off of an exercise and article debuted by Ben Horowitz about good and bad Product Managers and then Totango’s CEO, Guy Nirpaz about good and bad Developers.

#1 – A good CSM knows her customers and the value she is delivering to them. She understands her customers’ businesses and products, needs, problems, deliverables and goals. She can articulate why/how her customers’ customers are using her product and leverages that information to provide valuable insights and best practices to them.

A bad CSM only focuses on the tasks: managing the relationship, tracking phone calls, and having meetings. She turns her attention and care towards key users, often based on title and doesn’t ask the questions that dig past features and into the business problem a customer needs to solve.

#2 – A good CSM knows how to fight fires and has the toolbox to do it effectively. He proactively troubleshoots to gets customer issues solved, and relays and tracks customer feedback to the correct team – he fosters real change. He leads cross-functional teams and orchestrates them to effectively solve the issue.

A bad CSM hears customer feedback and lets it drop, patches issues but doesn’t investigate where they fit in the organization or tap into other teams to see feedback through to completion. A Bad CSM is not a big picture thinker.

#3 – A good CSM is accountable. She is active with her customer accounts and engages appropriately with each customer. She can explain the status of a customer in terms of how to best deliver value to them – i.e., she runs campaigns to provide best-practice insights, she actively identifies and nurtures opportunities for growth, etc. She also understands the importance of focusing on all users and not just the contract contact, adapting her communication for each user.

A bad CSM doesn’t feel ownership over her customer accounts. She can’t explain a customer’s goals or identify their needs, her communication is based on her own goals and cycles, she log calls and considers the account managed. She relies on off-cycle personal touches only in an emergency.

#4 – A good CSM has deep product knowledge, he knows his product inside and out and knows his customers’ products. He is deeply knowledgeable about his customer base, their use cases and how they compare to their competitors. He expertly understands the inner-workings of the product, and understands its use from the customers perspective. He anticipates trouble-spots and drives roadmap changes to address customer needs.

A bad CSM knows the basics of the product and is familiar with the sales pitch. He can’t use or deploy the product without a significant amount of help. He doesn’t know his customer base or his individual customer’s business well enough to match them with relevant use cases or best practices.

#5 – A good CSM is a communication conduit, she is an instrumental feedback channel to the product group and has her finger on the pulse of customer use, engagement and sentiment. She is the face of the company with a view of all of the relevant messages and how the customer consumes and engages with her.

A bad CSM doesn’t convey feedback because she doesn’t understand the impact of the feature request or doesn’t feel empowered to share. She is not the communication center you need, and doesn’t participate cross-functionally. She may only be familiar with the champion accounts and can’t choose an example that’s similar to the customer at hand.

As we have found, taking the time to hire the right CSMs is extremely important and worth investing in because they add strategic value to your company. They do so by identifying opportunities and deepening customer relationships by consistently ensuring that value is being delivered. The best ones are so passionate about what they do that you cannot imagine your organization functioning without them.

Do you have something to add to this list? What do you see as make it or break it criteria in hiring CSM’s? Let us know in the comments below.

Getting Familiar with Smarketing…and Why It’s Important

It’s an old business world trope that you’re probably familiar with: the sales team thinks the marketing team is flighty and irrelevant; the marketing team thinks the sales team is lazy and simplistic. As a result, cohesion between the two teams’ strategies can seem impossible, and inner office struggles abound.

With the rise of inbound marketing, however, the necessity of effectively aligning your sales and marketing departments has never been greater, nor has it carried more benefits. When it comes to lead generation and lead nurturing, having a united front on the sales and marketing planes can be the difference between success and failure.

In fact, smarketing, the practice of aligning your sales and marketing team, can yield your company up to a 20% increase in annual revenue growth. With so much to gain, making the decision to integrate sales and marketing is a no-brainer.

But how do you successfully orchestrate this integration within your company?

We’ve compiled a few tips to help you get started.

Align Goals

Before you can get your sales and marketing teams to work cohesively, you’ll need to align their mutual goals.

The easiest place to start in regard to mutual goals is the financial goal: each team’s goal is to increase the company’s revenue. As you both agree that this is your mutual goal, you can begin to build towards aligning additional goals within the smarketing process.

For instance, the idea of smarketing has no chance of success if the marketing team is pursuing a different buyer persona than the sales team. You must align your buyer persona so that one team’s efforts feed clearly and easily into the other’s; decide on a uniform buyer persona that both the sales and marketing teams thoroughly understand. Update the persona regularly, and hold regular meetings with the sales and marketing teams to ensure that there is a mutual understanding of the buyer persona at each stage.

Have Frequent Meetings

It is absolutely imperative that you get your sales and marketing teams thoroughly familiar with one another before you attempt effective alignment. Not only are you likely to encounter different philosophies in regards to use of time and styles of approach, you might have to educate each department on exactly what the other does.

Holding frequent meetings, especially at the beginning of your smarketing efforts, will help each team get familiar with the other and provide platforms for open communication, debate of ideas and creation of resolutions. With open communication comes greater comfort in expressing honest opinions and working towards a well-spelled-out common goal.

Hold Each Other Accountable

Inevitably, there are going to be instances when one team simply doesn’t understand the other team, whether it’s an idea, a strategy or a goal. When it comes to discrepancies in opinion, you should always have data to back up your claims or to bolster your proposal.

For instance, if the sales team thinks the leads being generated by the marketing team’s efforts are low quality leads, they’ll need to present cold, hard data to back up those claims. Presented with such data, the marketing team will have no choice but to acknowledge the misstep and take immediate action to find more qualified leads.

Similarly, the marketing team should hold the sales team accountable when highly qualified leads aren’t being pursued correctly. Having data on hand to visually explain your opinion will always be more effective than verbal expression alone.

Institute Closed-Loop Reporting

One of the most important steps to take in your smarketing efforts is to institute what is known as Closed-Loop Reporting. In closed-loop reporting, the sales team reports the outcome of leads that they have pursued and whether or not they were able to close the leads. With this valuable information, the marketing team is able to see where their most qualified leads are coming from.

There are, in fact, multiple benefits of closed-loop reporting, for both the sales and marketing teams.

Closed-Loop Reporting Helps Marketing Teams by:

• By providing them with up-to-date contact info and status updates
• Increasing Marketing Return-On-Investment
• Providing insight into which programs are working, and which are not

Closed-Loop Reporting Helps Sales Teams by:

• Prioritizing Leads
• Increasing the likelihood of successful calls
• Increasing Sales Team Close Rate

Closed-loop reporting is among the most effective practices for smarketing teams. Both the sales and marketing teams benefit from the communication, and the accountability of the data keeps both teams moving toward a common goal.

Integrating your sales and marketing teams is a smart move, one which can yield multiple benefits for the financial health of your company and the happiness of your customers. With open communication, careful collection of data and aligning each team’s goals, you can be well on your way to the wonderful (and lucrative) world of smarketing.

I have a very long commercial memory, and I remember with considerable clarity that in days long ago, the “marketing function” was a sideshow, almost an after-thought, or an add-on to the real engine room within most companies – the sales force.

Typically, the inhabitants of the marketing department – yes, that was way before they became divisions, or even functions – were either failed salesmen or women, who had lost the appetite for full on daily competitive skirmishes, or they were returning mothers looking for some part-time income.

Their days typically began at 8.55 am on the dot, and ended at 5.01pm. They closed down typewriters/word processors (yes, I am really talking about that long ago) at 1.00 pm, to unpack their lunches, and then religiously packed all the Tupperware and flasks away again at 1.59 pm.

They did not so much enter rooms, but rather shuffle in nervously – almost apologetically – as if in fear of being asked if they could possibly justify their existence.

They may have thought that they were responsible for promoting – and occasionally defending – the company’s image, but in reality, they were at the beckoning of anyone in the boardroom/C-Suite. Come to think about it, they were also at the beckoning of anyone in sales too.

My goodness, how times have changed. Marketing heads now stride across the sales floor; they look the sales team in the eyes; they have become an important and integral part of the “offense unit” …. In fact, marketing teams who know what they are doing are as valuable as high-achieving sales professionals.

Why? The advancement in very high quality and efficient sales/marketing alignment tools, have propelled the marketing function into a formidable front-line function, producing a constant stream of high quality leads and opportunities. In many organizations, they have replaced cold calling and established themselves as the “new business creation stars”

So why still the stand-off? Why still no legal wedding with sales? Why an uneasy truce – a kind of “marriage of convenience?” I think I have the answers, but I’ll save them for another post.

Successful relationships are launched with open and honest communications generating not only trust but a comfortable safety zone for conversation.

You can’t build a foundation with silence or filtered information. It doesn’t work.

Of course you don’t want to harm feelings or be politically incorrect but if you choose to zip the lips, then you are doing a tremendous disservice to both yourself and the other party.

Misinformation, resentment or incorrect assumptions may end up taking a leading role because you did not voice your opinion. In valued relationships, whether professional or personal, make sure you ask questions, maintain an open mind, listen clearly, foster feedback, act, don’t react upon the responses, and follow up with a summation and action steps of the discussion.

Having the knowledge, tips, tools and skillset to successfully perform your job is vital to your success but more important is your instinct and soft skills to help nurture your partnership. If your interpersonal communication skills need a little polish or you’re only in it for financial gain, then you may suffer the consequences.

It is so important to uncover what IS working as well as what ISN’T working otherwise the relationship could dissolve.

Confidence In Communications

Thriving vendor – client partnerships prosper with ongoing conversations that don’t merely revolve around sales or projects but also the dynamics of the process as a whole. Initiate the dialog with the desire to listen and communicate clearly. It is a two-way street and you each have something important to say. Encourage a secure, non-judgmental environment.

“Too many business owners and sales people try to sell their product or service, neglecting the fact that their customer is a person. In fact, the customer is a person who has feelings, influences and a mind of their own. They want to be connected with, and to trust and believe the person from which they are buying.” – Rebecca Wilson

Honestly, how many times have you thought?

“I wonder when Mr. Park N. Later will send me the files to finish the project?”

“I don’t believe Ms. Jan C. Never followed up on my email last week?”

“Wow! Mr. Bee Frankly is right on top of my feedback survey. This is a great day.”

Do you know what runs through your client’s mind? Are they 100% satisfied with your products AND service?

Recognize there is a vast difference between service and services. Create the ultimate customer experience with unsurpassed service and they will continue to buy your services.

ASK! Don’t assume things are fine simply because you have a contract.

Don’t wait for issues to arise.

Outline Your CHIPS™ For Effective 2-Way Communications

CHIPS™: Client Handbook: Ignite Partner Success is your company framework or platform which shapes systems, processes, communications and strategies for your everyday service and solutions. Let it be a guidepost of how you effectively relate to your stakeholders, creating detailed segments for each facet of your business, like a policy manual.

1. Schedule periodic calls to check in to discuss what is working and what isn’t; where can you both improve
2. Don’t rely on an email or text message. Things get lost in translation. Making the investment is a values based opportunity to demonstrate your respect and interest in not just the sale but your client and relationship
3. Jot down a few notes highlighting the good, the bad and the ugly
4. Give each party plenty of time to speak, vent or otherwise share their thoughts regarding your partnership
5. Understand YOUR role is to provide the best customer experience
6. Be flexible and willing to compromise
7. Understand your client’s point of view
8. Clearly and kindly articulate your own viewpoints
9. Cultivate continuous improvement and dialog
10. Summarize the call, reiterating what you heard
11. Create action steps
12. Ask for feedback about the call
13. Before you hang up, commit to the next conversation

“Communication leads to community, that is, to understanding, intimacy and mutual valuing.” – Rollo May

Embrace every relationship you have by investing in authentic conversations because you care enough to want it to succeed.

Because you want build empowered, valued partnerships.

Because it feels good. It is fulfilling.

Never shy away from asking the real questions, the most difficult questions of what is working and what isn’t working.

Who will you call today?

Lead nurturing is not an end goal but rather an ongoing tactic that allows you to leverage content to more deeply connect with your target audience, and by doing so, to more efficiently convert leads into customers and brand advocates.  Sounds pretty great, right? It also has the benefit of being true.

The problem many companies face when attempting to successfully nurture their lead database is how to put it all together.  For example, your business may have trouble understanding how to generate qualified leads through your online channels.  Alternatively, you may be unsure how to best segment your leads to improve the targeting capabilities of your email marketing efforts.  Whatever the case, I believe this article will help you piece together the puzzle.

That said, let’s take a look at lead nurturing as part of a holistic process that, when executed properly, will help improve the effectiveness of your inbound marketing campaigns.

Premium Content Offers

Let’s not get too far ahead of ourselves; before we can nurture, we must first generate leads.  You might ask, “Well, what is the best way to generate qualified leads?”  Let me open your eyes to the world of premium content offers.

Premium content offers include ebooks, whitepapers, webcasts, video series, and many other forms of in-depth digital marketing content.  Unlike your business blog, which can be read without providing personal information, premium content offers give your brand an opportunity to turn site visitors into marketing leads.

For example, after creating an ebook, offer it as a free download on your website.  Although it may be free, make sure to have visitors provide their name, email, and other basic demographic information in order to receive it. Through premium content offers, your brand is able to capture the contact information of people who have an interest in the content you are creating. In other words, your brand is able to register new qualified leads.

But, where do these would-be leads input their information to download their premium content offer?

Landing Pages

A landing page, in its most basic form, is a page on your website that allows you to capture visitor information through a customized lead form.  Most businesses have at least one landing page on their website, normally some type of “Contact Us” form. Visitors can enter basic information to connect with the brand, most likely receiving a phone call or email in return for their submission.  If this type of landing page is the only point of conversion on your website, you probably aren’t reaching your lead generation goals.

With premium content offers, you create more conversion points for potential lead generation.  Be sure to accompany such content offers with a corresponding [optimized] landing page for visitors to enter their information and download the content.  For tips on creating optimized landing pages, check out this infographic!

But, how do visitors get to the landing page to download such a premium content offer?

CTAs

CTA stands for calls-to-action. A CTA is a banner, button, or some other graphic or text on a web page, social platform, or email message directing prospects to take a specific action, such as “click here,” “download,” “submit,” or “purchase.” CTAs are the best way to grab the attention of your prospects and effortlessly direct them to your corresponding landing page.

CTAs and landing pages work in tandem to promote your premium content offers.  A CTA directs user attention to the content offer, and the landing page finishes the job, providing your prospects with a clear understanding of the benefits received if they choose to enter their information and download the content offering.  If you are interested to see a CTA in action, take a look at the bottom of this blog article!

However, be aware that the design and placement of CTAs requires careful thought and planning to fulfill their role in the lead generation and lead nurturing process.  Want to learn more about creating effective CTAs?  Click here!

But, how do I communicate with leads after they’ve clicked on a CTA, visited a landing page, and downloaded a premium content offer?

Email Marketing

Your lead nurturing strategy does not end with a web visitor converting to a lead by navigating your CTA and landing page and downloading your premium content offer.  Next, you must coordinate a well-timed, personalized email marketing campaign as a follow-up to their premium content download.

I suggest your business creates an incremental, multi email marketing campaign to correspond with each premium content piece you feature on your website. By doing this, any leads that download a particular content offering will be placed in that offering’s email campaign. This approach will allow you to tailor the content within each email to increase its relevance to the user, which in turn will increase download rates.

As you create email nurturing campaigns, keep these tips in mind:

1. Number – Don’t overwhelm your newly acquired, qualified leads with an abundance of emails begging for their business.  However, you do want to build lasting connections with your prospects.  Therefore, as a rule, 3-5 emails are usually most appropriate as a follow-up to a premium content download.

2. Timing – Be sure to consider the timing of each email in your campaign.  Once again,you don’t want to annoy your leads by overbearing them with multiple emails in a shortperiod of time.  A “thank you” email may be sent immediately after the download, while additional emails should be spaced out over the span of two to three weeks.

3. Content – ATTENTION – THIS IS IMPORTANT!  Your emails must add value to your leads and not simply serve as a promotional platform for your brand.  Each email in a given campaign should include links to content that will provide prospects with additional information and insight not covered in the original premium content piece they elected to download. The goal should be to strategically influence your leads down the sales funnel through content; encouraging them to convert/transform from a lead to a customer (or recurring customer).

Takeaway

Keep in mind, for this process to be successful, every element needs to be executed effectively. Be sure to continuously monitor, measure, and refine your lead nurturing efforts to increase conversion rates and grow your business.

To further understand how the lead nurturing process fits into an overall integrated digital marketing strategy, check out Synecore’s IDM Blueprint: Connect and Convert.

SALES QUESTION:

"How do you stay motivated, day in and day out?"

SalesBuzz Answer:

Back in the late 80's and early 90's there was a popular mantra being touted by Motivational Speakers:

P.M.A.

P.M.A. Stands for: POSITIVE. MENTAL. ATTITUDE.

The pitch was, that having a POSITIVE MENTAL ATTITUDE (P.M.A.) would lead you to higher sales and success. 

In theory, having a positive attitude should generate better results than having a negative attitude would. 

The problem, however, with the whole "P.M.A." thing was that most sales reps weren't being taught to have the right perspective, in order for it to work. 

So what ended up happening was most sales people would try it and, eventually, fall back into a low motivational state, while others PRETENDED to always be happy (driving everyone around them crazy as they acted happy, but really weren't). 

Here's the problem:

Simply telling yourself to "be happy" or "everything is great" isn't going to last long unless you have a true source, understanding or perspective on why things really are great, even in troubling or difficult times.

Example: Having gatekeepers continue to refuse to put your calls through, prospects ignore your voicemails, delete your emails or flat out reject you when you do get them on the phone, and then telling your mind that things are great, probably won't be of much help to your state of mind (or bank account). Sure, it may help for a day or even a week, but to expect it to sustain more than that could be setting yourself up for failure.

But being thankful that you actually have a job and an opportunity to learn how to be better so you can reduce those work related "rejections", will keep your P.M.A. strong all day long. 

Taking a moment to realize that you GET to go to work - You GET to make cold calls - You GET an opportunity to overcome pricing objections. Choosing to be happy because you have these opportunities is a much different perspective over simply telling yourself to be happy without merit.

Without truly being thankful that you have a job to go to, leads to call, sales challenges to learn how to overcome - without the right perspective, your P.M.A. will go M.I.A. real fast.

Making (or thinking) statements like: "I would be happy if, instead of making cold calls, we only had inbound leads" is doing you, and everyone around you, a disservice. If you truly don't want to make cold calls anymore, then simply learn how to generate inbound warm leads. No one is suggesting that you continue to do something or live with a situation that you don't like. Feel free to make and mold your life the way you envision it. 

Having a P.M.A. doesn't mean you aren't allowed to make adjustments or improve the situation you may be in. Having a P.M.A. means being thankful that you have an opportunity to be better. 

And P.M.A. doesn't mean pretending to be happy. 

It means having the right perspective.

Being a content marketer is hard. I know that first hand! There is a ton of content to create, your strategy needs to be coordinated with various teams and internal customers, you need to know exactly the right content to create for the right buyer, and you need to provide it to that buyer at the right time. Plus, content creation can be a manual and creative process that simply takes time.

In my experience and in speaking to numerous content marketers over the years, here are some top content marketing productivity killers:

1. Too Much Guessing

When creating content, a big productivity killer is creating content based on your best guess instead of making data-driven decisions. As content marketers, there are a variety of elements to creating a content strategy: business priorities, industry trends, internal stakeholders needs, and so on. But, sometimes the decisions about what to create can be best guesses vs. decisions based on historical data about what content drives the most traffic, shares, leads, and revenue. And of course creating content based on best guesses is a huge productivity killer since you are not spending your time creating the right type of content that will ultimately move the needle for your business.

Instead of playing the guessing game, content marketers need to make sure they are tracking metrics on a regular basis throughout the entire sales funnel. Additionally, benchmarking content against your competitor content is a great way to see what your buyers react to and consume.

2. Coordinating Writers and Content Contributors is Tough

It takes time to manage a team of writers. It takes time to coordinate different tasks like creating outlines, writing, editing, reviews, and design. Many content organizations today are simply doing this type of coordination through email and spreadsheets, which can get confusing (and I know this from personal experience). Content marketers are asking themselves questions like “where is that ebook?”, “has it been edited?”, “is it in design?”.

Content marketers should become more sophisticated and implement tools that help them produce content more efficiently. There are many platforms, like Captora, and other project management tools that can help make the process of coordinating content much more efficient, manageable, and scalable.

3. Too Much Content, Not Enough Views

You are creating what seems like a lot of content—ebooks, slide decks, infographics, and so on, but your content is not being consumed. Clearly, the right buyers are not finding you online. Spending time creating a lot of content that isn’t resonating or isn’t even seen by your audience is a huge productivity killer. Coordinate with your teams to ensure content is distributed across the right channels, and make sure that your teams are using your content in campaigns at scale. For new content assets, consider promoting them through email, social, paid campaigns on search, organic campaigns on search, paid programs like content syndication and sponsored emails and your blog.

And then once your content does start being consumed track the piece and the campaign that generates the most leads and revenue.

4. Trouble Coordinating Content and Demand Generation Teams

Every company is organized differently. Sometimes content is on the demand gen team, sometimes it is on product marketing, sometimes it is on communications, and sometimes it is on an island of its own. But one of the most critical connections is between your content and demand generation teams. Content is created largely to support lead generation and lead nurturing programs within the organization, so it becomes problematic when the two teams aren’t aligned. And by alignment I mean demand generation should be in the know about what the content team is creating, and content needs to know what campaigns demand gen is running so that the two teams can be in sync for content needs. When this does not happen you end up with content that does not have a promotional plan, and promotional plans that do not include the right content.

Both teams should be in tight alignment with one another because content drives leads and provides color to a demand generation campaign.

Want to learn more about how to understand what your buyers are searching for and how to create content-driven campaigns at scale? Be sure to check out Captora’s webinar with Innotas, to learn how to attract and convert more top-of-funnel buyers.

I’d love to hear what kills your content productivity and how you’ve found a way to overcome it in the comments below.

Most of the time, a senior sales leader on the market for a new job will get hired into the industry in which they have the most experience. Competitors want to tap into your customer and technical knowledge as well as leverage your contacts, and recruiters are all too happy to bring all that rich industry experience over to their shop.

NEW YORK, N.Y. – Energy companies are tugging U.S. stocks lower at midday as the price of oil slips.

Goldman Sachs lowered its outlook for crude prices. Fading business confidence in Germany, Europe’s largest economy, also weighed on financial markets.

The Dow Jones industrial average fell 29 points, or 0.2 per cent, to 16,775 as of 12 p.m. Eastern Time Monday.

The Nasdaq declined 13 points, or 0.3 per cent, to 4,470. The Standard & Poor’s 500 index slipped seven points, or 0.4 per cent, to 1,956. Energy stocks fell as oil languished around $80 a barrel in New York.

The energy sector was down 2.1 per cent, the biggest decline among the 10 S&P 500 sectors.

The post US stocks fall at midday as oil prices drift to around $80 a barrel appeared first on Canadian Business.

Over 50,000 people attended this August job fair in Chongqing, China (ChinaFotoPress/Getty)

From Alberta alfalfa farmers to industrial giants like Magna International, many Canadian companies have hitched their fortunes to China’s growth engine. But companies doing business in China have concentrated their efforts on traditional economic centres like Beijing and Shanghai, as this map detailing the findings of the Asia Pacific Foundation of Canada’s biannual survey of Canadian businesses operating in China shows:

“The easy entry points are really Beijing, Shanghai, and Hong Kong; this is where you have direct flights from Canada,” explains Professor Yves Tiberghien, director of the Insitute of Asian Research at the University of British Columbia. “Those cities have easy infrastructure to support business but they are probably not the best place today for investment.”

The country’s new growth centres are located further inland, in provinces like Chongqing, and Guizhou, and cities like Chengdu. But Tiberghien notes that China is not a simple market to enter, unlike Canada’s favourite export target, the United States. Connections to government and support networks are vital to doing business in China, and they form an intimidating barrier for many companies. “It reflects the transaction costs and the risks of going where the growth is,” Tiberghien suggests. “Going to even Sichuan or Hunan if you are a mid-sized Canadian company in China is too difficult.”

Canada’s prosperity outlook is now firmly tied to China’s economic health, and the world’s second-largest economy has been slowing. Operating conditions have proved hostile for some large companies, with the Chinese government aiming to create “national champions” in high-margin and high-tech industries like pharmaceuticals and automobiles. While the federal Conservative government has indicated a desire for free trade talks with China, any agreement will require torturous negotiations and is unlikely to be reached any time soon.

READ: Think EU trade negotiations took forever? China and India will take even longer »

But it’s not all doom and gloom for Canadian SMEs looking to China for growth. Chinese companies have indicated they’d be willing to offer a discount to partners that transact in renminbi, a cost saving that could prove significant. And governments are working to smooth the way for our businesses, with key provinces like Ontario and British Columbia making overtures and setting up partnerships.

Businesses looking at interior China with interest have an ally in Phillipe Rheault, the Canadian Consul General in Chongqing. “Lots of Canadian companies—small, medium and large—are working pretty closely with us and we’re seeing a lot of positive results,” he says.

Canada has long had a presence in Chongqing, with the consulate established in 1997 upgraded to a consulate general in 2012 with veteran trade diplomat Rheault appointed to head it. While there’s still opportunity in traditional economic centres like Beijing or Shangai, there are also plenty of businesses looking to cash in on those chances. “Out here, there’s more and more opportunity but no sot many people chasing it,” Rheault notes. “It’s a little bit of a sweet spot.”

READ: Market research companies find opportunity in China »

The Department of Foreign Affairs, Trade and Development’s various consulates and trade commissioner offices scattered across China provide Canadian companies with links to local officials and potential business partners. “They’re liaisons and facilitators,” says Alfred Wahl, President of Polar Genetics. “They can offer translation, and provide the benefit of official response or categorization in China”

Wahl’s firm has done business in Chongqing and Sichuan, because that’s where the market is. “I’m in the livestock export business, particularly swine—live pig exports and frozen boar semen,” he explains. “To some extent, the development areas are going to be in the west more so than in the east—the coast is quiet heavily populated with pigs already because of previous years’ trade. So we’re going to follow some of this development where it goes.”

Chinese governments have spent recent decades building monuments to the country’s new prosperity and record-rivalling infrastructure projects. The strengthened western provinces provide a good manufacturing base, with giant corporations like Ford and HP taking advantage of the just-in-time shipping enabled by the Chongqing-Duisburg railway and improved maritime transport on the Yangtze river. Rheault notes that the logistical advantages of interior China outweigh labour costs that are now higher than those of upstart neighbours like Cambodia or Bangladesh.

The result is a so-called New Silk Road mirroring the old pathway to Europe. Many of the provinces leading China’s second wave of growth are located along that corridor, alongside resource-rich areas like Nei Mongol:

But there’s now more money to be made from consumers than outsourcing. “We know that the growth model of China—which is an agglomeration of a lot of messiness, but is based heavily on infrastructure, exports and heavy industry—is running its course,” notes Tiberghien. “[The Chinese government] is trying to move their growth model towards consumption, urbanization and sustainable growth that is more and more energy efficient.”

READ: In both India and China, the growing middle class is in trouble »

As a perverse reward for its rapid growth and heavy infrastructure investment, China is starting to face some of the trials of mature economies: a stagnant workforce, a real estate bubble, and high local government debt levels. Tiberghien says companies need to take those risks into account. “It’s not for everybody, and you need to carefully map this out,” he says. “But the potential is still very large, and it’s not just in Shangai and Beijing—it’s way beyond that.”

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The post The real opportunities in China today are found farther inland appeared first on Canadian Business.

Ah, change…You may have noticed that here at Qvidian we talk a lot about this word. We acknowledge that change can be seen as an overused theme calling for a vague form of action, but we disagree – we think about it differently.

To us it’s a word that carries value, value that we intend to transform into real and quantifiable action. If thought about with enough determination, it’s also a word that facilitates improvement. In this age of increasingly complicated happenings (be it in the world of international politics or in our own personal world of daily initiatives, such as sales), change can be a force of the much needed good.

Adapt or be left behind

While change is inevitable (it’s the only constant, right?) it’s also the most difficult to implement and accept. In our ever-transforming technologies and processes, companies must adapt to change more quickly and more frequently than ever. Moreover, sales organizations are faced with unprecedented competitive pressures, complex methods of communicating with customers – all while juggling competing demands for their time and attention.

Change has unquestionably become a way of life and many companies continue to rely on the same outdated training techniques to satisfy their ongoing (and ahem…changing) sales and onboarding initiatives. This reveals a fundamental disconnect; a lack of continued value in the sales enablement process.

The same selling techniques and those same best practices become outdated and the stuff of yesterday quite quickly after implementation. We need a commitment to change to offer customers something new and different to help solve their own ever-changing and complex problems.

Achieving this demands a mindset shift among your sales team and agile sales execution strategies that are perfected through value-added and dynamic coaching methodologies – abandoning the belief that all is smooth sailing following some training and best practices. Sales reps are only human – they forget.

By internalizing a learning sequence that masters one piece of customer information at a time, your sales reps are better positioned to address unique customer needs – perfecting the customer experience and staying agile in the process.

Looking to learn more?

Check out our latest eGuide that focuses on how you can solve some of the biggest challenges in your sales organization, all while taking on a fresh approach towards empowering your sales force through an end-to-end guided selling platform.

Today buyers dictate how they choose companies, products, and services with online content driving action.

At the HubSpot Inbound 2014 conference, I delivered a short keynote speech in front of some 10,000 people. My slot was fantastic - between a surprise appearance by the band OK Go and a keynote from celebrity author Malcolm Gladwell.