Facebook’s founder is facing pressure to accept an invite from eight international parliaments, with lawmakers wanting to question him about negative impacts his social network is having on democratic processes globally.
Last week Facebook declined an invitation from five of these parliaments.
The elected representatives of Facebook users want Mark Zuckerberg to answer questions in the wake of a string of data misuse and security scandals attached to his platform. The international parliaments have joined forces — forming a grand committee — to amp up the pressure on Facebook.
The U.K.-led grand committee said it would meet later this month, representing the interests of some 170 million Facebook users across Argentina, Australia, Canada, Ireland and the U.K. But Facebook snubbed that invite.
Today the request has been reissued with an additional three parliaments on board — Brazil, Latvia and Singapore.
In their latest invite letter they also make it clear that Facebook’s founder does not have to attend the hearing in person — which was the excuse the company used to decline the last request for Zuckerberg. (Which was just the latest in a long string of ‘nos’ Facebook’s founder has given the committee.)
“We note that while your letter states that you are ‘not able to be in London’ on 27th, it does not rule out giving evidence per se. Would you be amenable to giving evidence via video link instead?” the grand committee writes now.
We’ve asked Facebook whether Zuckerberg will be able to make time in his schedule to provide evidence remotely — and will update this report with any response. (A company spokesman suggested to us that it’s unlikely to do so.)
Last week a New York Times report painted an ugly and chaotic picture of Facebook’s leaders’ response to the political disinformation crisis — which included engaging an external public relations firm which used smear tactics against opponents. (Facebook has since severed ties with the firm.)
The grand committee references this controversy in its latest invitation letter, writing: “We believe that there are important issues to be discussed, and that you are the appropriate person to answer them. Yesterday’s New York Times article raises further questions about how recent data breaches were allegedly dealt with within Facebook.”
The U.K.’s DCMS committee, which has been spearheading efforts to hold Zuckerberg to account, has spent the best part of this year asking wide-ranging questions about the impact of online disinformation on democratic processes. But it has become increasingly damning in its criticism of Facebook — accusing the company of evasion, equivocation and worse as the months have gone on.
In a preliminary report this summer it also called on the government to act urgently, recommending a levy on social media and stronger laws to prevent social media tools being used to undermine democratic processes.
The U.K. government chose not to leap into action. But even there Facebook’s platform is implicated because Brexit — which was itself sold to voters via the medium of unregulated social media ads (with the Electoral Commission finding earlier this year that the official Vote Leave campaign used Facebook’s funnel to bypass electoral law) — is rather monopolizing ministerial attention these days…
One of the questions committee members are keen to get an answer to from Facebook is who at the company knew in the earliest incidence about the Cambridge Analytica data misuse scandal. In short they want to know where the buck stops. Who should be held accountable — for both the massive data breach and Facebook’s internal handling of it.
And it is very close to getting an answer to that after the U.K.’s data protection watchdog, the ICO, gave evidence earlier this month — saying it had obtained the distribution list for emails Facebook sent internally about the breach, saying it would pass the list on to the committee.
A spokeswoman for the DCMS committee told us it has yet to receive this information from the ICO.
An ICO spokesperson told us it will not be publishing the list — adding: “At this stage I’m not sure when it will be sent to the committee.”
This article presents a modern approach to building an interactive infographic. You sure can have plain infographic with all the information available upfront — without any user interaction. But, thinking of building an interactive experience — changes the technology landscape we choose. Therefore, let’s understand first, why Vue.js? And you’ll see why GSAP (GreenSock Animation Platform) and SVG (Scalable Vector Graphics) become obvious choices.
Vue.js provides practical ways to build component-based, dynamic user interfaces where you can manipulate and manage DOM elements in powerful ways. In this instance, it’s going to be SVG. You can easily update and manage different SVG elements — dynamically — using only a small subset of features available in Vue.js — some of the staple features that fit the bill here, are, data binding, list rendering, dynamic class binding to name a few. This also allows you to group relevant SVG elements together, and componentize them.
Vue.js plays nice with external libraries without losing its glory, that is GSAP here. There are many other benefits of using Vue.js, one of which is that, Vue.js allows you to isolate related templates, scripts, and styles for each component. This way, Vue.js promotes modular application structure.
Vue.js also comes packaged with powerful lifecycle hooks that let you tap into the different stages of application to modify application behavior. Setting up and maintaining Vue.js applications doesn’t require a big commitment, meaning you can take phased-approach to scale your project as you go.
The infographic is very light-weight in a visual sense, as the main aim of this article is to learn how to think in terms of data, visual elements, and of course, Vue.js — the framework that makes all the interactivity possible. In addition, we’ll use GreenSock, a library for animating SVG elements. Before we dive in, take a look at the demo.
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An overview of Vue components in context of the SVG artwork;
Code samples and diagrams of key interactivity.
The infographic that we’re going to build is about Tour De France, the annual bicycle racing event held in France.
Tour De France — Interactive bicycle listing game stages (rear-wheel) and participating teams (front-wheel). (Large preview)
Overview Of Tour De France Data
In infographic design, data drives the design of your infographic. Therefore, while planning your infographic design, it’s always a good idea to have all data, information, and statistics available for the given subject matter.
During Tour De France of 2017, I learned everything about this biggest cycling event that I could in 21 days of the game in July, and I familiarized myself with the subject.
Basic entities of the race that I decided to go for in my design are,
Stages,
Teams,
Routes,
Winners,
Length and classifications of each routes.
This next part of the process depends on your thinking style, so you can be creative here.
I created two sets of data, one for stages and other for teams. These two datasets have multiple rows of data (but within limit) — which matched with two wheels of the bicycle with multiple spokes in each. And that defined the key element of the design, The Bicycle Art that you saw at the beginning — where each spoke will be interactive & responsible to drive what information is revealed on screen.
I mentioned within limits above, because what we’re aiming for in this instance is not a full-blown data-visualization in context of big data but rather an infographic with high-level data.
Therefore, spend quality time with data and look for similarities, differences, hierarchy or trends that can help you convey a visual story. And don’t forget about the amazing combination of SVG and Vue.js while you’re at it, as it will help you bring about the right balance between information (data), interactivity (Vue.js) and design elements (SVG Artwork) of infographic.
Here’s the snippet of a stage data object:
{
"ID": 1,
"NAME": "STAGE 01",
"DISTANCE": "14",
"ROUTE": "KMDÜSSELDORF / DÜSSELDORF",
"WINNER": "THOMAS G.","UCI_CODE": "SKY","TYPE": "Individual Time Trial","DATE": "Saturday July 1st","KEY_MOMENT": " Geraint Thomas takes his first win at 32"}
This infographic is operated by a very simple logic.
UCI_CODE (Union Cycliste Internationale) is the connecting key between the stage and the team object. When a stage is clicked, first we’ll activate that stage, but also use UCI_CODE key to activate corresponding winning team.
SVG Preparation
Having a couple of datasets and a rough concept of bicycle art ready, here’s the static SVG CodePen of the infographic I came up with.
We have created only one spoke for each wheel, that is because we’ll dynamically create rest of the spokes using a number of records found in the dataset, and animate them using GreenSock Library.
The workflow to create this SVG code is also very simple. Create your Infographic artwork in Adobe Illustrator and save as SVG. Make sure to name each group and layer while working in Illustrator, because you will need those ids to separate parts of SVG code that will eventually populate <template> area of Vue components. Remember that layer names given in Illustrator become element ids in SVG markup.
You can also use SVGOMG and further optimize SVG code exported from Adobe Illustrator.
Important Note: If you use SVGOMG to optimize SVG markup, your code certainly will look neat, but note that it will convert all <rect> elements into <path> with d attribute. This results into losing x and y values of the rectangle, in case you wish to adjust few pixels manually later-on.
Second thing, make sure to uncheck Clean Id option (right-hand side options in SVGOMG interface), this will help maintain all groups and ids intact that were created in Illustrator.
Vue Component Overview
Even if interactivity and data-flow in your infographic project is quite simple in nature, you should always take a moment to draw up a tree diagram of components.
This will especially help in case you’re not using any shared-data mechanism, where child components are dependent on the values sent from the parent component (i.e. via props) or vice-versa (i.e. this.$emit events). This is your chance to brainstorm these prop values, emit events and local data — and document them before starting to write the code.
Diagram above is the snapshot of Vue components that is partially derived from interactivity requirements and partially based on SVG markup. You should be able to see how SVG markup will be split up based on this tree structure. It’s pretty self-explanatory from hierarchy view-point.
Chain-wheel will imitate rotation of spokes.
Stage component is the rear wheel that will list all 21 stages.
Stage-detail component will display related information on a curved path (left-hand side).
Team component is the front wheel that will list all participating teams on spokes.
Team-detail component will display related information on a curved path (right-hand side).
Navigation will include back and next button to access stages.
The diagram below represents the same Vue components seen above, but in the context of the infographic design.
Less is more — should be the approach you should try to take while working on similar projects. Think through the animation and transition requirements you have, if you can get away with using TweenLite instead of TweenMax — do so. If you have the option to choose elementary shapes and simpler paths over complex ones — by all means try to opt-in for light-weight elements that are easy to animate — without any performance penalty.
Next section will take you through an exciting part with GreenSock animation and Vue.js.
GreenSock Animation
Let’s take a closer look at:
Text animation on a curved path;
Spoke animation on a wheel.
Animating Text On A Curved Path
Remember the curve path seen around the bicycle wheel, that curved path is slightly bigger than the radius of the bicycle wheel. Therefore, when we animate text on this path, it will look as if it follows the shape of the wheel.
As you increase the startOffset percentage, text will travel further through the circle perimeter.
In our final project, this animation is triggered every time any spoke is clicked. Now, let’s move on to a more exciting part of the animation.
Animating Stages/Spokes Inside The Wheel
It’s visible from the demo that stage and team components are similar in nature with couple of small differences. So, let’s focus on just one wheel of the bicycle.
The CodePen example below zooms in on just the three key ideas:
You may have noticed in the static SVG CodePen above that the spokes are nothing but SVG rectangles and text grouped together. I have grouped them together since I wanted to pick both text and rectangle for the purpose of animation.
Rotation To rotate spokes, we’ll simply map through all elements with className stage, and set dynamic rotation value that is calculated for each spoke.
Transform Origin Notice transformOrigin value in the code above, which is as important as index value, because “0% 100%” enables each spoke to rotate from the center of the wheel.
stageAngle This is calculated using total number of stages divided by 360-degree. This will help us lay every spokes evenly in 360-degree circle.
ADDING INTERACTIVITY
Next step would be to add click-event on each stage to make it interactive and reactive to data changes — hence, it will breathe more life into an SVG image!
Let’s say, if stage/spoke is clicked, it executes goAnimate(), which is responsible to activate and rotate the stage being clicked using the stageId parameter.
We’ll use DirectionalRotationPlugin…which is a key ingredient for this interactivity. And yes, it is included in TweenMax.
There are three different ways of using this plugin. It animates rotation property in 1) clockwise, 2) counter-clockwise and 3) in the shortest distance calculated to the destination.
As you’d have guessed by now, we’re using the third option to rotate the shortest distance between the current stage and new stage.
Review the CodePen above and you’ll see how Stage 01 is constantly moving around the circle, leaving its original spot for new active stage at 0-degree angle.
First, we need to find the angle of a stage being clicked, and interchange its rotation with Stage 01. So, how do we find the rotation value of the stage being clicked? Check out the diagram below.
Distance calculation from Stage 01 to the ‘clicked’ stage. (Large preview)
For example, if Stage 05 is clicked (as you can see above), the journey from Stage 01 to Stage 05 — requires 4 x angle-value.
And therefore, we can get the correct angle using, (Active stage Id - 1) * 17 degree, followed by ‘_short’ string postfix to trigger directional rotation plugin.
The final goAnimate() function will look something like below:
_.map(spokes, (item, index) => {
if(activeId == index+1) {
// active stage
TweenMax.to(item, 2,
{ rotation: 0+'_short',
transformOrigin: "0 100%"
})
} else if (index == 0) {
// first stage
TweenMax.to(item, 2,{ rotation: (activeId*angle)-angle+'_short',transformOrigin: "0 100%"})} else {TweenMax.to(item, 2,{ rotation: index*angle+'_short',transformOrigin: "0 100%"})}}) // end of map
Once we have the rear wheel ready, the front wheel (for team) should follow the same logic with a couple of tweaks.
Instead of stage, we’ll fetch team data and update registration point of transformOrigin attribute to enable spokes generation from opposite registration point than the stage wheel.
// set team spokes
map(teamSpokes, (index, key) => {
TweenMax.to(index, 2,
{ rotation: angle*key,
transformOrigin: "100% 100%"}, 1)})
Final Project
Like me, if you have written all animation and data related functions in Vue components itself. It’s time to clean them up using Vuex and Mixins.
Using Vuex state management to power both wheels with data. (Large preview)
VUEX
Vuex eases up the management of shared data among components, and more importantly, it streamlines your code, keeping methods and data() clean and tidy, leaving components only to render the data, not to handle it.
Lifecycle hooks are a very suitable place to perform any HTTP requests. We fetch initial data in created hook, when the Vue application has initialized, but hasn’t yet mounted into the DOM.
Empty state variables, stages and teams are updated using mutations at this stage. We then, use watcher (only once) to keep track of these two variables, and soon as they’re updated, we call in animation script (from mixin.js).
Every time user interacts with stage or team component, it will communicate with Vuex store, executes setActiveData, and updates current stage and current team values. That is how we set active data.
And when the active data is set after state update, goAnimate will kick in to animate (directional rotate) spokes using updated values.
Now that the data is handled by Vuex, we’ll separate out GreenSock animations. This will prevent our Vue components being cluttered with long animation scripts. All GreenSock functions are grouped together in mixin.js file.
Since you have access to Vuex Store within Mixins, all GSAP functions use state variables to animate SVG elements. You can see fully functional store.js and mixin.js in the CodeSandbox example over here.
Conclusion
Creating interactive and engaging infographics requires you to be analytical with the data, creative with visuals and efficient with the technology you use, which in this case is Vue.js. You can further use these concepts in your project. As a closing note, I’ll leave you with this circular interactive color wheel below that uses an idea similar to the one we’ve discussed in this article.
With no doubt, Vue.js has many great features; we’re able to create interactive infographics with just a few things, such as watchers, computed properties, mixins, directive (see color-wheel example) and a few other methods. Vue.js is the glue that holds both SVG and GreenSock animation together efficiently, giving you ample of opportunity to be creative with any number of subject matter and custom interactivity at the same time.
It’s time we change the way we sell. The old, tired, product-centric, sales techniques and methods have had their time.
Ask any buyer. They are fed up with the countless, lame, intrusive, valueless emails, cold calls and LinkedIn requests for 15-minutes of their time.
They are tired of salespeople not understanding their business and pitching irrelevant solutions. They are tired of long, cookie cutter demos that don’t address their needs as a company. They are tired of the seller’s company-centric pitch that talks about how long they’ve been on the Inc. 500 list or how many locations they have and how much their existing clients love them. They are tired of salespeople coming to them at the end of the quarter, pushing them to close with last-minute, end of the quarter deals to close before they are ready because the salesperson needs the sale. They are just plain tired of the old school sale world and it’s me, me, me, focus.
Buyers want something different. They just don’t have time to listen to salespeople talk about them, their products, their solutions, etc. Buyers want salespeople who uncover latent needs they, the buyer, didn’t know they had. Buyers want salespeople to put them first and take the time to understand their problems, their issues and what an ideal solution would look like. Buyers want salespeople who are emotionally connected to their outcome, not focused on quota, Presidents Club and their next commission check. Buyers want real trusted advisors, not the self-proclaimed, proverbial buzzword “trusted advisor.” Buyers want authenticity. They want someone who will tell them how it is and have the knowledge, understanding, and expertise to be right and be able to back it up.
The sales world has failed the buyer for decades now. With our focus on tools, and automation, and social, and, and, and . . . We’ve lost sight of the fact that we still have to sell. We still need to understand the problems, issues, and challenges our buyers are struggling with. We still have to understand where buyers want to go, their objectives, and goals. We still have to understand the buyers current processes, the impact of their current processes and problems have on the organization, why they exist and what it will take to solve them.
We’ve forgotten there is so much more to selling than fancy new structures and roles like inbound, outbound, SDR, BDR, Account Executives, Account Based Management, etc. We’re forgetting the selling part. The art of selling is losing out to the science, and the human element and buyers are the victims.
It’s time we change the way we sell. It’s time we put our buyer and the buyer’s organization smack in the center of the sale. It’s time we focus on the buyer’s issues, problems, and challenges. It’s time we LISTEN more. It’s time we ask more questions. It’s time we first seek to understand, not be understood. It’s time we subjugate our selfish needs to that of the buyers. It’s time we train our sales team on more than our products, but also on the environments we sell into, who we sell to and the issues and problems they face. It’s time management stop pushing salespeople to prematurely close a deal because they need to make an internal number. It’s time we change the way we sell.
We know marketers are always being pushed to find new ways to drive revenue growth and generate sales opportunities for their companies. One strategy you might not have considered, but should, is a referral channel strategy for your business. Read on for five reasons why creating a referral channel strategy can be a great option.
Referral marketing breaks through the noise
In today’s world, there is a ton of marketing noise. As people are shopping for products and services they are bombarded by advertising and information. One very effective way to break through that noise is getting a warm introduction to a prospective buyer from a trusted advisor. How can you do this effectively and at scale? Through a referral channel.
Scale with little overhead
Don’t have the budget for big marketing campaigns? That’s ok. Referral partner programs are a low cost way to scale your company’s partner output without adding additional resources to manage partner relationships. By utilizing a referral strategy with your existing partner channel, you can take low performing partners and turn them into high performing referral partners with little to no cost. In addition, a referral partner can have fewer barriers to success resulting in more people joining your partner program.
Leverage the partners traditionally on the sidelines
As mentioned above, referral programs are a great way to leverage existing partners that don’t fit the traditional reseller mold. By turning these partners into referral partners (versus reseller partners) you can drive value from an otherwise inactive group within your partner program.
Drive conversions
If you’re still on the fence about a referral channel strategy, consider this fact: referral leads from partners tend to convert at a very high rate of 31 percent lead-to-deal conversion versus an average lead.
Get demonstrable ROI
Finally, and perhaps most importantly, a referral program can directly produce revenue for your company. Not only that, with proper tracking and automation through the use of referral software you can easily demonstrate the return on investment (ROI) of your referral program efforts.
Regardless of the type of business you’re running, you probably spend a good part of your day setting appointments. This appointment mastering is well worth what it will do to increase your productivity. When you book more appointments, the more business you’re generating.
At the same time, the back-and-forth of scheduling appointments can consume valuable amounts of your day. As a result, you aren’t as productive as you could be.
So, what can you do to ensure that you’re still booking appointments and remain productive? Start by mastering your appointment setting.
Lay the groundwork.
Like any other campaign you launch, you first need to determine who your audience is. How you can help your main customers and what’s the purpose of setting the appointment? This will vary from business to business. But, you should already have these answers.
Let’s say that you’re a small business consultant that helps new businesses develop strategies like organizational and functional strategy.
As a small business consultant you wouldn’t be concerned about reaching out to enterprise level businesses. Especially if this requires an IT consultant. Instead, you would focus on your niche audience and why you’re best suited to help them develop strategies to improve their business.
Strategizing for this information will help you determine SMART goals, time frames, and strategies to reach your target audience.
Regardless of the industry that you work in, the first step you need to take is getting a prospect to move to the next stage of the sales process. This may take some time initially. But it lays the groundwork for setting all future appointments — which will make setting appointments going forward much easier.
Qualify prospects.
Speaking of prospects, you want to only focus on reaching out to individuals who are a good fit for your product or service. This shouldn’t be too time-consuming process. After all, you’ve done the research to determine who were ideal customer is. This way you can call, email, or connect with them on social media to schedule an appointment.
To further narrow down your prospects, and save time so that you can focus on other areas of your business, pay attention to people who have already interacted with you. This could be the people who visited your website or social channels, downloaded a piece of content from your website, signed-up for a newsletter, or attended an event you hosted.
Offer online booking.
At this point, if you’re setting appointments, then it’s expected that you offer online booking. This way your customers and clients can schedule an appointment with you 24/7 without playing phone or email tag. This makes scheduling a breeze for your audience. More importantly, it allows you to actually do what you excel at, as opposed to scheduling appointments all day.
Because there are no shortage of online appointment scheduling tools on the market, you want to find a tool that does more than just book appointments. At the minimum you’re looking for a tool like that allows clients to cancel or reschedule appointments on their own, sends out reminders, and syncs with your calendar. It also wouldn’t hurt to use a tool that integrates with your payment system.
Automate, automate, automate.
I just alluded to automation above. But, it’s key if you want to become more productive.
If you’re using scheduling software, then it should automatically send out confirmations, reminders, and follow-ups via email or text. If your online calendar is synced with the software, then it will also automatically notify any changes that have been made to the appointment. This way you’re not spending time manually reminding a client about an upcoming appointment or if you have to reschedule.
Automation goes above and beyond your scheduling software. You can be automatically scheduling social media posts to warm-up leads. It could be automatically sending previous customers a “thank you,” coupon on their birthday, or reminder to schedule an upcoming appointment. For example, if you run a salon or auto shop, you could send your customers a reminder that it’s time for a new haircut or to service their vehicle without personally contacting each of them.
Reach out during “off hours.”
This isn’t applicable to every business. But, I’ve found that if you want to successfully reach your clients or customers, you should do so early in the morning or later in the afternoon.
Obviously you don’t want to call or text a prospect or high-profile client at 6am or 9pm. But, contacting them directly before office hours or when they’re winding down for the day increases the chances of them responding to your request.
While you can set automated messages to be sent during these hours, there are times when you have to personally reach out them. Doing so during “off hours” can also be beneficial for you. Like your clients, you’re calling, texting, or emailing during times when you’re not focused on deep work. I actually make this a part of my morning routine and then in the afternoon when I’m working on soft tasks before I go home for the day.
Leverage referrals and reward existing customers.
Instead of constantly reaching out to prospects and previous customers, why not have them come to you?
One way to achieve this is through referrals. This is where loyal customers will refer you to their network. Sometimes this requires you to ask for referrals. Other times it involves launching a referral program where existing customers receive an incentive for referring others to you. However, if you over deliver and provide top notch customer service, existing customers will do this voluntarily.
Another way to accomplish this is by offering your customers discount cards, coupons, or gift certificates. This rewards customers for supporting your business. In return, they’ll keep returning to your business again and again.
Practice your elevator pitch.
Your elevator pitch is simply a value statement or value proposition.
This should address a pain point or state how you’re different from your competitors. And, you need to be able to explain this in just one or two sentences.
Perfecting your elevator pitch gives you a chance to quickly intrigue prospects, whether if they reach out to you through or email or when attending networking events, to book an appointment with you in just a couple of minutes.
Prepare for objections.
When dealing with new prospects there will be some objections before they commit to booking an appointment. You can’t fault them. If they don’t feel like they’re a good fit for your business, then why would they waste their time meeting with you?
Take the time to prepare for these objections. This way you aren’t caught-off-guard and have an appropriate response to their question or concern.
Don’t schedule back-to-back appointments.
If you’re a service provider it’s tempting to squeeze in as many appointments as possible in a day. The problem is that sometimes a meeting runs five-minutes over. You get stuck in traffic. You also need to eat, respond to emails, and catch your breath. As a result, you get burned out and keep your customers or clients waiting.
While you always can’t avoid the unexpected, you can at least prevent matters from getting worse by not scheduling back-to-back appointments. For example, if you’re a doctor, then you could schedule 15-minutes between seeing patients. This way you can grab a snack and review the next patient’s records so that the next appointment runs more smoothly.
If you’re using scheduling or calendar software, then you can do this by just creating blocks of times when you’re unavailable in your calendar.
Empower your team.
If you’re working with a team, then scheduling can be a hassle. In fact, it’s almost an art-form creating a schedule that accommodates everyone’s availability. Instead, you may want to give your team access to your scheduling or calendar software. This way they can input their own availability and when they’re away, like during a break or vacation. However, you still need someone to oversee this. You don’t want a majority of your staff on vacation at the same time!
By 2022, almost half of all employers predict that automation could cause a shift in their workforce, namely a shift away from human employees. With huge margins for productivity and revenue growth, automation comes fast, but smart business leaders do well to consider the more human aspects of their operations. With automation comes opportunity to free up the creative energies of us humans, turning soft skills into valuable assets for businesses, no matter how far that automation may go
Within a decade or two, millions of people could see their very own responsibilities and positions replaced entirely by robots, but not every business can operate like Amazon’s cashier-less grocery store. The soft skills of human employees have yet to be replicated through robotics, preventing many positions and even entire industries from welcoming in automation. Reliance on human-specific skills like emotional intelligence, creativity, problem solving, curiosity, and humor make medical fields, education positions, and even technology jobs among the lowest likely to see automation. It’s because of this very idea that not all experts agree on just how far automation will penetrate and one study has even shown that under 5% of occupations can become fully automated. Instead of absolute replacement of human employees, smart business leaders keep the bigger picture in mind; blending the precision and predictability of automation with the personality of human beings to drive success and further innovation.
Though the automation revolution may well be units way, we can keep our competitive edge by looking inwards and turning humanity into an asset in itself. To truly robot-proof tasks, it will take personal growth from employees and attention to detail from managers. Take a look at this infographic for more detail on the present application of automation, how they are paving the way for the future of automation, and how our unique human skills grow in value alongside robotic capabilities.
William Hurley, commonly known as whurley, is an American entrepreneur and the founder of Chaotic Moon Studios, Honest Dollar, and Equals: The Global Partnership for Gender Equality in the Digital Age. He is currently chairing the Quantum Computing Working Group for the IEEE Standards Association (IEEE-SA), and is the founder and chief executive of Strangeworks.
The word “quantum” gained currency in the late 20th century as a descriptor signifying something so significant, it defied the use of common adjectives. For example, a “quantum leap” is a dramatic advancement (also an early ’90’s television series starring Scott Bakula).
At best, that is an imprecise (though entertaining) definition. When “quantum” is applied to “computing,” however, we are indeed entering an era of dramatic advancement.
Quantum computing is technology based on the principles of quantum theory, which explains the nature of energy and matter on the atomic and subatomic level. It relies on the existence of mind-bending quantum-mechanical phenomena, such as superposition and entanglement.
Erwin Schrödinger’s famous 1930’s thought experiment involving a cat that was both dead and alive at the same time was intended to highlight the apparent absurdity of superposition, the principle that quantum systems can exist in multiple states simultaneously until observed or measured. Today quantum computers contain dozens of qubits (quantum bits), which take advantage of that very principle. Each qubit exists in a superposition of zero and one (i.e., has non-zero probabilities to be a zero or a one) until measured. The development of qubits has implications for dealing with massive amounts of data and achieving previously unattainable level of computing efficiency that are the tantalizing potential of quantum computing.
While Schrödinger was thinking about zombie cats, Albert Einstein was observing what he described as “spooky action at a distance,” particles that seemed to be communicating faster than the speed of light. What he was seeing were entangled electrons in action. Entanglement refers to the observation that the state of particles from the same quantum system cannot be described independently of each other. Even when they are separated by great distances, they are still part of the same system. If you measure one particle, the rest seem to know instantly. The current record distance for measuring entangled particles is 1,200 kilometers or about 745.6 miles. Entanglement means that the whole quantum system is greater than the sum of its parts.
If these phenomena make you vaguely uncomfortable so far, perhaps I can assuage that feeling simply by quoting Schrödinger, who purportedly said after his development of quantum theory, “I don’t like it, and I’m sorry I ever had anything to do with it.”
Various parties are taking different approaches to quantum computing, so a single explanation of how it works would be subjective. But one principle may help readers get their arms around the difference between classical computing and quantum computing. Classical computers are binary. That is, they depend on the fact that every bit can exist only in one of two states, either 0 or 1. Schrödinger’s cat merely illustrated that subatomic particles could exhibit innumerable states at the same time. If you envision a sphere, a binary state would be if the “north pole,” say, was 0, and the south pole was 1. In a qubit, the entire sphere can hold innumerable other states and relating those states between qubits enables certain correlations that make quantum computing well-suited for a variety of specific tasks that classical computing cannot accomplish. Creating qubits and maintaining their existence long enough to accomplish quantum computing tasks is an ongoing challenge.
IBM researcher Jerry Chow in the quantum computing lab at IBM’s T.J. Watson Research Center.
Humanizing Quantum Computing
These are just the beginnings of the strange world of quantum mechanics. Personally, I’m enthralled by quantum computing. It fascinates me on many levels, from its technical arcana to its potential applications that could benefit humanity. But a qubit’s worth of witty obfuscation on how quantum computing works will have to suffice for now. Let’s move on to how it will help us create a better world.
Quantum computing’s purpose is to aid and extend the abilities of classical computing. Quantum computers will perform certain tasks much more efficiently than classical computers, providing us with a new tool for specific applications. Quantum computers will not replace their classical counterparts. In fact, quantum computers require classical computer to support their specialized abilities, such as systems optimization.
Quantum computers will be useful in advancing solutions to challenges in diverse fields such as energy, finance, healthcare, aerospace, among others. Their capabilities will help us cure diseases, improve global financial markets, detangle traffic, combat climate change, and more. For instance, quantum computing has the potential to speed up pharmaceutical discovery and development, and to improve the accuracy of the atmospheric models used to track and explain climate change and its adverse effects.
I call this “humanizing” quantum computing, because such a powerful new technology should be used to benefit humanity, or we’re missing the boat.
Intel’s 17-qubit superconducting test chip for quantum computing has unique features for improved connectivity and better electrical and thermo-mechanical performance. (Credit: Intel Corporation)
An Uptick in Investments, Patents, Startups, and more
That’s my inner evangelist speaking. In factual terms, the latest verifiable, global figures for investment and patent applications reflect an uptick in both areas, a trend that’s likely to continue. Going into 2015, non-classified national investments in quantum computing reflected an aggregate global spend of about $1.75 billion USD,according to The Economist. The European Union led with $643 million. The U.S. was the top individual nation with $421 million invested, followed by China ($257 million), Germany ($140 million), Britain ($123 million) and Canada ($117 million). Twenty countries have invested at least $10 million in quantum computing research.
At the same time, according to a patent search enabled by Thomson Innovation, the U.S. led in quantum computing-related patent applications with 295, followed by Canada (79), Japan (78), Great Britain (36), and China (29). The number of patent families related to quantum computing was projected to increase 430 percent by the end of 2017
The upshot is that nations, giant tech firms, universities, and start-ups are exploring quantum computing and its range of potential applications. Some parties (e.g., nation states) are pursuing quantum computing for security and competitive reasons. It’s been said that quantum computers will break current encryption schemes, kill blockchain, and serve other dark purposes.
I reject that proprietary, cutthroat approach. It’s clear to me that quantum computing can serve the greater good through an open-source, collaborative research and development approach that I believe will prevail once wider access to this technology is available. I’m confident crowd-sourcing quantum computing applications for the greater good will win.
If you want to get involved, check out the free tools that the household-name computing giants such as IBM and Google have made available, as well as the open-source offerings out there from giants and start-ups alike. Actual time on a quantum computer is available today, and access opportunities will only expand.
In keeping with my view that proprietary solutions will succumb to open-source, collaborative R&D and universal quantum computing value propositions, allow me to point out that several dozen start-ups in North America alone have jumped into the QC ecosystem along with governments and academia. Names such as Rigetti Computing, D-Wave Systems, 1Qbit Information Technologies, Inc., Quantum Circuits, Inc., QC Ware, Zapata Computing, Inc. may become well-known or they may become subsumed by bigger players, their burn rate – anything is possible in this nascent field.
Developing Quantum Computing Standards
Another way to get involved is to join the effort to develop quantum computing-related standards. Technical standards ultimately speed the development of a technology, introduce economies of scale, and grow markets. Quantum computer hardware and software development will benefit from a common nomenclature, for instance, and agreed-upon metrics to measure results.
Currently, the IEEE Standards Association Quantum Computing Working Group is developing two standards. One is for quantum computing definitions and nomenclature so we can all speak the same language. The other addresses performance metrics and performance benchmarking to enable measurement of quantum computers’ performance against classical computers and, ultimately, each other.
The need for additional standards will become clear over time.
How are you using customer success stories in your inbound marketing?
In inbound marketing, customer success stories directly address your customers’ pain points while providing social proof of the efficacy of your products or services. If you are only using them on the Testimonials or Customers page of your website, you’re missing an opportunity to leverage powerful marketing content.
In a recent article titled Stories Sell: How to Write a Powerful Customer Success Story, we shared the process of writing customer success stories and why you should include customer stories in your marketing content. In this article, we’ll go a step further and explore the ways to use customer success stories, or case stories, in inbound marketing. While this article focuses on customer success stories, the same opportunities exist to leverage case studies and testimonials.
Ways to Leverage Customer Success Stories in Inbound Marketing
Blog
A customer success story is a celebration of a customer’s success that tells the story of how they overcame obstacles by finding a solution to their problem and achieving their goals. Use these stories on your blog to shine the spotlight on your customers, while also providing insight into how real companies are using your product or service and the reason they chose you over the competition. Case stories provide an opportunity to earn your potential buyers’ trust while they are considering their options.
Ways to write blog articles around customer success stories include interviews, guest posts from customers, and articles featuring customers in a particular niche who have a common need and are similarly using your product.
Video
The power of video in marketing is undeniable. There are many ways to use customer success stories in video marketing. Video testimonials provide compelling proof of your service and can be brief or expanded. Include them in customer stories which dive into the company’s history, their growing pains, and how your service solved their problem and allowed them to overcome their roadblocks. Or, simply produce a short but impactful video showing the company, their problem, the solution, and their success.
With one customer success story you could create multiple videos of varying lengths which can be hosted on YouTube, embedded in web pages and blog articles, and shared on social media.
Social Media
Sharing customer success stories on social media is an excellent way to highlight your customer while expanding your reach. Tag your customers’ accounts so that their followers can engage with the post and celebrate their success as well. Be sure to avoid being self-promotional. Focus on your customers for better engagement.
Types of social posts you can create from customer success stories include links to blog articles, videos, “Customer of the Week” posts, and quotes.
eBooks
When creating new resources and eBooks for your inbound marketing campaigns, don’t overlook the power of case stories. There are many ways you can include them in marketing resources, including:
Create a compilation of customer success stories into one eBook.
Use customer success stories in your eBooks as examples of how companies have successfully implemented the methods laid out therein.
Write an in-depth case study and offer it as an eBook or white paper.
Conduct a research study using data you’ve gathered from your customers. Add case stories to bring the data to life.
The use of content is a prime opportunity to align marketing and sales. Customer success stories should be made available for use by your sales team when working with buyers. They will appreciate being able to use customer success stories in outreach and follow-up emails, sales calls and pitch decks.
Now that you have a few ideas for using customer success stories in inbound marketing, we’d love to get your feedback. Have you tried this? What has been successful for you? Share your comments with us so we can learn from you!
One of the most dangerous mistakes we can make as sales people is believing that our customer – and particularly the sponsor we have been working with – knows how to buy.
This might be a reasonable assumption if our prospective customer is buying a familiar solution in a familiar way – for example a repeat purchase from a well-known source.
But if our prospective customer is looking for an unfamiliar solution: something they have not had to buy before – from an unfamiliar source: a vendor they have no previous relationship with, the assumption of buyer expertise is very dangerous.
Buyer unfamiliarity can represent either an opportunity or a threat – depending on how we choose to respond to it…
There are two key dimensions to this buyer unfamiliarity effect, and either or both may be at play: the prospective customer may be unfamiliar with what they need achieve their goals, and/or they may be unfamiliar with how to navigate their own organisation’s buying decision process.
Breaking new ground
There is a third, less-common class of unfamiliarity: no-one in the buying organisation may have any experience of buying this class of solution before. This used to be common when – for example – organisations had only ever bought on-premise software and were now considering a SaaS based solution for the first time.
Although this is now an increasingly rare scenario, the contractual differences between acquiring on-premise and SaaS based solutions are profound, and many legal and procurement teams used to struggle to get their heads around the radically different commercial and contractual mindsets.
If we find ourselves in a similar situation, we need to identify the challenge early in the sales cycle rather than be hit with an unpleasant surprise at the end, and we need to need to engage and educate the customer’s legal and procurement teams sooner rather than later.
Unfamiliar solutions
When an individual, a decision group or an organisation is buying an unfamiliar type of solution for the first time, they are likely to be on a steep learning curve. They may assume that the buying behaviours that have stood them in good stead in the past are going to be applicable in this new scenario.
But it is just as likely that they may feel like they are “running in the fog”. They may not have a clear idea of what they really need. Despite their attempts to conduct research over the internet or by asking their peers and colleagues, they may not be clear about their requirements or how to prioritise them.
This may prevent them from achieving stakeholder consensus about what they need to do or to agree on what their shortlisted options should include and thus increase the likelihood that they will ultimately decide to stick with the status quo.
This is where we can and should step in and help. This buying decision may be unfamiliar to them, but we can share how we have helped dozens, hundreds or thousands of similar people in similar organisations to master the complexities and arrive at the right decision.
Without having to resort to “hard-selling” our solution, we can help our prospective customer to shape their decision criteria based on the experiences of others like them. We can educate and inform them and earn ourselves a position as a trusted advisor.
Unfamiliar processes
It’s sometimes harder to identify the fact that our potential champion is unfamiliar with their organisation’s own decision-making and approval processes – and if this is unfamiliar territory for them, they may make some unjustifiable assumptions about how easy it is going to be.
Our champion may innocently assume that they are familiar with their organisation’s buying decision processes. But unless they have regularly and recently bought similar solutions, it is very likely that even if they believe they understand the general principles, they may not understand the finer details that can derail the decision process.
This is not just a matter of identifying all the gates in the process or all the people who will be involved. It’s also about ensuring that our champion understands what’s expected from them in the form of a business case or other requirements.
And – in particular if our champion is an inexperienced buyer – we need to help them to recognise that their pet project is likely to be competing for attention and funding with a range of other potential investment opportunities, and that they need to ensure that their project is positioned with the appropriate degree of urgency and relative priority.
Once again, this is where our experience can help. We may not understand the full detail of their organisation’s decision and approval processes, but we have probably got a pretty clear idea where projects like these can potentially go astray and by asking the relevant questions and sharing the relevant insights, we can equip our champion for the journey they are about to undergo.
Unfamiliar source
And, as is likely, if this is the first time that their organisation has bought from our organisation, we need to recognise that questions are going to be asked not just about the suitability of our proposed solution, but also of our credibility as a potential supplier.
Even if we have convinced our champion of our bona fides, we need to recognise that others in the decision loop will want to satisfy themselves of this. And we need to factor in the time taken for us to be verified as an approved supplier into our projected close dates.
If we don’t know, we mustn’t assume
If we don’t know how these factors are likely to play out, it is very dangerous to assume that things will evolve smoothly. I expect you can think back to opportunities that you thought were a sure thing to close, only to find that an unanticipated factor or factors emerged at a late stage in the process.
In this, as in so many other aspects of selling, ignorance is not our friend. If we don’t know, we mustn’t assume. We need to make sure that we have the clearest possible picture of how and why our prospect makes buying decisions. And if, as is highly likely, they are not expert buyers, we must make sure that we share our experience and help them.
Isn’t that what being a “trusted advisor” really means?
Growth is good. When growth occurs, so does the expansion. But growth brings new challenges. As leads pour in, it becomes challenging for your current sales reps to manage their book of business and properly prospect. As a sales manager, you have to ask yourself “Do I simply hire more salespeople, or is it time to implement an SDR program?”
Driving sales is such a vital component of every company’s strategy, so it may seem illogical to even consider outsourcing any part of your sales process. While outsourcing the right elements of your sales strategy can be a powerful way to give your company the boost that it needs, building an in-house SDR team and scaling it can exponentially benefit your company in the long run.
In this article, I’ll talk about the pros and cons of complete outsourcing, outsourcing certain functions of the SDR role, and building your entire SDR team in-house. At the end of the day, all of these options produce results. It’s up to you to determine what fits your company best.
The reason SDR outsourcing is becoming more and more popular is because companies are beginning to realize that they can get similar or better results for a fraction of the price of creating their own internal team. If you’re just beginning to build your SDR team, outsourcing might be a great option to start. “According to most surveys, cost savings is the primary reason for outsourcing. Interesting data from leading job sites like Glassdoor, Indeed, and AngelList suggest the average SDR base salary ranges from $47.8 to $62K” (Hubspot). Keep in mind that this number does not factor in the cost of hiring, training, software, hardware or other typical overhead. Something else to consider is the fact that the SDR position is often viewed as a short-term launchpad to a career in sales, meaning that SDR turnover can be quite high for internal reps.
Perhaps the costliest and most time-consuming part of the entire process is forming a quality team. The amount of time it takes to launch a professional sales development program is drastically reduced if the function is outsourced to a firm that already specializes in prospecting. This route can prove to be much more efficient and can even take the launch time from months to weeks because outsourced firms have people ready to start making calls immediately.
Many companies that begin building their SDR programs internally quickly realize that it is much more difficult to manage than anticipated. Other than having a team ready to begin making calls at any instant, outsourcing also reduces the cost of mistakes. When you outsource your SDR team to a specialized firm, mistakes can be easily fixed as opposed to an internal program where mistakes could have a long-lasting impact on your bottom line.
Outsourced SDR teams are much more flexible and quick to adapt to changes, removing the burden of recruiting, hiring and managing an internal team. This is because outsourced teams know the ins and outs of the business. They’ve seen it all and are able to adapt to changes with minimal effort and little to no time delays, while an internal SDR team might struggle to adjust due to their lack of experience.
Add that to the fact that most SDRs spend around three hours a day on research itself, just imagine the amount of deals your sales team could be closing within that time frame. The reality is that your salespeople will not consistently prospect. Your team should be focused on their job of using their skills to close more deals while letting someone else handle the “dirty work”. In order to watch your revenue grow, your company should outsource prospecting to a qualified agency that is specifically created to make phone calls that lead to real sales appointments and more clients.
When you’ve finally made the decision to outsource, make sure you keep these top three things in mind when selecting the firm that will be doing your outsourcing:
Cost. Make sure you get the most bang for your buck but that the cost also includes top-notch service.
Transparency. The company you choose should be upfront about price and metrics.
Results. Aside from the numbers, be sure to check out the client reviews and testimonials.
Finding the right outsourcing partner for your business is no easy feat. By taking the time to do your research and selecting the best partner for your organization, you’ll be rewarded with a strong team that provides a strategic option for scale while your internal sales team focuses on closing deals.
Option 2: Outsource certain functions of the SDR role and keep some functions in-house
This hybrid approach involves the company hiring in-house SDRs that focus on qualifying leads, engaging with accounts and filling pipelines while also working on special projects. In this situation, the outsourced reps work alongside the in-house team and perform a similar set of engagement and lead-qualification activities. This blended approach allows your company to use the outsourced SDR team as a resource that is always on and available at any time, prepared to ramp up quickly and then scale down when needed.
This method can be useful in situations where hiring and training an internal SDR team would be too time-consuming or costly. The combination of flexibility, reliability and experience from the two teams makes this approach beneficial for many B2B companies.
Option 3: Zero outsourcing
The initial costs of bringing an SDR team in-house can be quite high, costing even more than having your team outsourced. However, after the initial setup, internal SDR teams become more cost-effective over time. The SDR function is the face of the company, so keeping it close to the chest makes sense. After all, first impressions matter, and the thought is that by keeping your SDR team in-house will make your brand image easier to control.
Keeping this forward-facing entity in-house eases a lot of worries, particularly around the security of critical information involved in the process. SDRs have access to a lot of valuable information including client details, pipeline information and client notes that your company would probably want to maintain control over. “Understandably, when it comes to sales, control is a top reason for not outsourcing. SDRs are people who contact your potential clients directly. You don’t want them to screw it up” (Hubspot). Letting eminent information fall into the wrong hands could potentially damage your reputation.
Building your team internally can give you much more satisfaction and control over your newly specialized sales team. Investing in and training your own SDRs ensures that your team will be focusing exclusively on growing your business. Long-term, businesses are better off building their SDR teams in-house, and scaling. Once you’ve realized that having a highly skilled team that focuses on prospecting leads is integral to a successful business, you need to start building your internal all-star SDR team. Here’s what you need to do to start:
Ensure that your sales executives can handle a higher influx of leads.
Hire in tandem. Resist the urge to hire just one SDR as you won’t be able to assess their productivity (with at least two SDRs, you can benchmark and compare).
Make sure you either dedicate someone to be the SDR team manager, or hire someone for that position.
Create an onboarding plan for your new SDR team members that provides structure and direction for you new SDRs.
Establish an incentive plan to motivate your SDRs.
Ideally, once more than two SDRs are on board, a manager is a must. Someone who is specifically dedicated to leading, managing and motivating your Sales Development reps. SDR managers set a positive and upbeat culture for the team and reward high performers with perks and new opportunities. Having a good manager is vital to ensuring that your SDR team’s needs are being met and that they are working to their fullest potential.
In addition to a manager, every successful SDR team requires the proper resources. There are several key technologies that can assist in setting your team up for success including: a proper CRM, sales automation technology and other sales intelligence tools that aid in finding contact and company information.
Once you have all of the tools in place, you can begin to scale your team! It’s important to keep in mind that scaling a team takes time. Many managers are tempted to scale too fast, but if they focus on doing this gradually, over time your company will have a highly productive SDR team bringing in qualified leads and closing more deals.
What is the role of automation?
With the evolution of technology, it can be difficult to tell whether or not the SDR on the other end of an email is a real person or a robot. While automating the SDR process companies could be saving both money and time, people want to do business with people, and not have a machine “closing the deal”.
Humans have the ability to be authentic and genuine, traits that can never be entirely automated, and the automation process cannot engage or move the sales process forward the same way a person can. At the same time though, automated prospecting can save time for your SDR team and improve lead quantity while helping your reps prioritize where they should invest their research and calls.
Determining which tasks are smart to automate and which should be done by a person is a very important factor to consider. There is no one-size-fits-all solution, so this decision should be made on a case-by-case basis. Choosing the right balance depends on several criteria, including the market size, the complexity of the deal, and the importance of the individual prospect.
When you are working with a very large market, you don’t need to be super specific with your SDR process. However, if your market is very limited, you’ll want your messaging to be more direct.
For complex purchases, you’ll want to build stronger relationships with the client, which means personalized outreach can help you establish a more solid connection. Regarding individual prospects, if there is a client you’re really after, then you need to do whatever you can to get them. In this case, you’ll want highly personalized communication.
Once you’ve determined your prospect category, it will be easier to streamline your process. The most effective way to streamline without losing complete personalization is to semi-automate the SDR process. SalesLoft suggests “10% personalization in the first sentence, 75% template for the body, and 15% personalization at the end of emails.”
Regardless of your SDR choice planning and execution are your keys to success. Remember, growth is good, so embrace this challenge and enjoy the ride.
What makes sales performance coaching truly successful? How can you assess sales performance coaching techniques?
If you sometimes feel there are no clear answers to these questions, you are not alone. After all, not many universities offer degrees specifically in on-the-ground selling techniques. This is because true sales talent is innate and cultivated through on-the-job experience, along with effective sales performance coaching.
Unfortunately, most Sales Managers believe that reporting numbers to senior leadership is their top priority.
To what extent does this type of data make any difference in sales reps reaching their goals? Almost none.
To be an effective sales coach, you will need to leave behind the obsession with forecasting and numbers management. Instead, focus on improving the skills your salespeople need to achieve those numbers.
8 Key Questions to Help You Assess Sales Performance Coaching
1. Are you regularly clarifying your organization’s purpose?
One of the single most effective things you can do in your sales performance coaching is clarify your organization’s purpose on a regular basis.
Make sure your sales team members know exactly what they should be doing and why they should be doing it.
First, lay out the vision of your organization for yourself by answering questions, such as:
What does your company do best?
Who needs what you do?
Who is your target customer, and why?
2. Are you coaching or teaching your salespeople?
Coaching is very different from teaching. Teaching imparts knowledge and helps the student grasp it. Coaching, on the other hand, helps someone master this knowledge so they can effectively apply it.
Make sure you are not taking a more observational role in your sales performance coaching. Sales performance coaching is an active, continuous process that goes far beyond merely giving your sales reps instructions to follow.
3. Are you connecting the dots between sales actions, sales goals and business outcomes?
It is easier than you may think to lapse into “big picture” thinking during sales performance coaching. Sometimes, though, you need to zoom in on the detailed, practical pieces of what you need to accomplish.
To make this happen, remember that you cannot control the results of everything you implement with your sales reps. You can realistically only manage the actions your sales reps are undertaking. This means you need to make clear connections between sales actions and sales outcomes in your coaching.
If this seems a bit abstract, there is good news! When you skillfully manage your sales reps’ actions, it often results in achieving your own sales goals.
3. Are you dedicating enough time to coaching your sales team?
CSO Insights’ 2017 Sales Manager Enablement Report revealed that 9.6 percent of Sales Managers spend more than two hours a week on coaching sales skills. However, 47.1 percent devoted just half an hour or less!
The appropriate amount of time spent on sales performance coaching will vary for each company. But you should start by assuming you are not already devoting enough time – it is a very safe bet. Make coaching a genuine priority in your schedule.
4. Does your sales coaching mostly involve asking, or telling?
It is a common misconception that effective coaching is all about telling your sales reps what they should be doing. It is not!
The best coaching is all about collaborating with your sales reps to understand any issues they are facing. From there, you should jointly arrive at an assessment of what is working and what is not as you create a plan of action.
Your sales performance coaching style should be full of questions to help the seller express these issues properly. From there, your constructive feedback can walk them through how to improve.
5. Are you relying on generic coaching models?
Simply put, a career in sales is incredibly unique! That means sales coaching is, too.
Cookie-cutter coaching models flounder in a sales-driven environment. They lack specificity and do not emphasize the sales behaviors that will have the greatest impact.
6. Do your sales coaching methods include spending too much time reviewing numbers?
It is tempting to dwell on what has already happened by running the numbers ad nauseum with your sales reps. Instead, switch out at least half of these conversations for early-stage pipeline strategy discussions.
Think about how often you and your colleagues ask these questions:
When do you expect that deal to close?
When will you have that contract?
Has that order come in yet?
Can I get a status update on that invoice?
The truth is, very little can actually be done to influence these late-stage deals. Make time to focus on earlier-stage deals instead. Your team members can think through where optimal value can be created in the sales cycle. They can direct their best resources and techniques toward those deals, instead.
Do not miss a powerful opportunity to improve sales performance by only focusing on these late-stage deals.
7. Does your hiring process result in sales reps who want to succeed?
Sales performance coaching is much easier when your sales candidates have the most critical personality trait needed for success: Drive. 80+ years of research shows that it is the most important factor for sales success.
Drive is that deep sense of passion and determination that makes top-producing salespeople relentless in their quest for success. They want to learn and they want to be coached, because they are determined to do whatever it takes to succeed.
Identifying Drive prior to the interview allows you to spend your time on only high-potential candidates.
>> Discover how to zero in on Drivebefore the interview begins, so you only spend time interviewing the candidates with the greatest potential. <<
8. Are you reinforcing positive outcomes?
Once your sales performance coaching leads to improvements in sales skills and behaviors, you will need to reinforce these changes.
Regular meetings are essential. Also, make sure to quickly point out any old habits that resurface. Otherwise, your salespeople may lapse back into old habits or become complacent.
Never forget this counter-intuitive truth: even positive change tends to feel uncomfortable at first. You will need to be alert and reinforce the positive changes your sales team members are making.
Sales Performance Coaching Is Worth Mastering
When done well, sales performance coaching replaces much of the counterproductive busy work that makes sales managers feel stuck.
When it comes to sales coaching, there is no one-size-fits-all solution. However, intentional focus combined with the right kinds of conversations with your sales representatives will dramatically improve results.
“There are many reasons why ABM might not be working, but you have to take a step back and figure out why you’re doing ABM in the first place. Often, expectations are not set correctly or you’re doing ABM for the wrong reasons.
Most of the ABM programs I’ve seen fail in the last few of years were caused by a lack of commitment, not understanding the implications, not understanding metrics, or lack of a solid plan.
Let’s take a step back and isolate the problem. Start small and reset your expectations. Take a few SDRs, one demand Gen and one Sales Rep and narrow down your orchestration plan. This will limit where the process breaks. Once you get it working, then use the learnings to convince the SDRs and the Sales teams this is going to work. Once you have their trust, then you can optimize and grow it through the rest of the group.
I don’t love pilot programs in ABM because it can get you into trouble. I’ve seen marketers interpret a pilot to mean a test campaign. You’re either doing it for a business reason or you’re not, and if you’re not, then don’t do it. You must be able to define the result you’re after. But if you’re doing ABM because it sounds cool or you want better leads, you’re going to fail.”
Jessica Fewless,
VP ABM Strategy, Field and Partner Marketing, DemandBase
“First, you need to diagnose the problem, then set to solve it. Here are eight key areas where we see things go awry:
Sales Leadership stops coming to your meetings – We talk about ABM being a team sport and how it’s imperative that Sales is onboard. If they don’t think it’s important enough to sync with you on a regular cadence, they either they aren’t invested in ABM or they might think it’s not working.
Sales keeps changing the target account list – It is really hard to hit a moving target. So if Sales keeps moving accounts on and off the list, it is hard for your marketing to pack a punch! While it doesn’t need to be a static list, it does need to stay locked for a quarter at a time to let your marketing do its magic!
Sales isn’t supporting or participating in your programs – Getting buy-in from your Sales team in advance of your programs is critical. If you don’t, often times your campaigns will fall flat! Don’t do random acts of marketing just to stay busy – make sure they’re meeting the needs of your Sales team!
Inside Sales isn’t still goaled on quantity-based metrics (or maybe Marketing is!) – If two teams are working towards different goals, they will not be working together. Period. And in ABM it is not about quantity, it’s about quality. “Connects” and “hand raises” are counter to that objective. Instead, work toward “pipeline” and “revenue.”
You Don’t Have a healthy (or increasing) number of target accounts on your website – As we know, more than half of the buying process happens online, and specifically, on your website. If your programs aren’t driving your target accounts to your website, your messaging is wrong or your tactics aren’t targeted enough.
A large percentage of leaders are coming from outside your target account list – First and foremost, everyone in marketing needs to focus on the Target Account List (TAL). But having a list alone isn’t enough. You must segment the list by accounts and contacts to to make sure it’s relevant and contextual to your audience.
The percent of revenue coming from your target accounts list is decreasing – We typically see 70-80% coming from the TAL, but if you see it dip for multiple quarters, there might be an issue with your list, or your Sales team has lost faith in the process. Either way, time to take action!
You can’t prove the ROI on your ABM-specific technology – Did you buy technology in advance of a full ABM Strategy? You did, didn’t you? Well, go back, build the strategy, reassess the technology that makes the most sense to support that strategy, and ditch the rest. Guaranteed, it will be a much easier conversation next year.”
“ABM not working for you? Well, don’t have a knee-jerk reaction and go looking for yet another silver bullet. Let’s take a quick peek at what you have in play and here is where you can begin. You have to determine if you are account-based or account-centric. Account-centric is when you have taken a set of accounts and drawn a box around them.
You are marketing to them and your sales development reps are calling many contacts. This is not account-based it is simply good old-fashioned outbound. Account-based is when an organization, not just sales not just marketing but rather an entire organization, commits to getting revenue out of a very specific set of accounts. And, those accounts are selected with some level of intelligence. Not a random list of accounts the AEs always wanted to get into but never could. Then you start looking for relationships. Who knows someone at that account that we may be able to use as a door opener. That may or may not be an option so you need to be prepared with a set of plays that you can run against that account. The beauty of a well-designed play is that everyone knows their role and goal.
At the end of the day, an account based model is a well orchestrated, strategic set of activities that allow you to rise above the noise of everyone else selling to that account. Your goal is to get that account to say “Hey, I want to talk to you.”
“In working with clients across the country we’ve seen a lot of companies doing ABM but their first attempt has been treating it like a short-term campaign. They don’t put in that sustainable, scalable programmatic effort. We strongly believe that if you’re doing ABM well, it’s not a campaign, it’s a culture change. It’s a different way of doing business across the board.
There’s another case we’ve seen where companies do ABM campaigns, see significant results as a part of that, but then they’re not necessarily excited about doing it again because of the manual effort involved, because of some of the friction in the program that caused them to make that a harder deal. ABM inherently, it’s a lot harder than just pressing send on 100,000 emails and saying well, we’re done, but the impact is significantly greater, especially tied to the most important prospects in your target audience.
Ultimately, we’re talking about scaling ABM and inherently it’s hard to scale a program like this without the underlying ABM technology that enables that. But make no mistake – technology is not your strategy. Start with your strategy, then map your actions and play, which will direct the technology you need.
According to CEB, there are 7-10 decisions makers in B2B deals. A lot of companies recognize this and will identify those people in the organization, but they will still market to them individually, in silos. That doesn’t do anything to build conversation and consensus in the buying unit. Your job as a seller is not just to introduce the idea of a solution and introduce the idea of an outcome that they need to focus on, but to create and build consensus within that internal buying committee that can create greater urgency and greater velocity towards making a decision. Part of that is literally listing out those individuals and then enumerating what are their priorities, what do they care about, where are people that have things in common, etc.
Part of your job as the seller is to understand and then create that connective tissue between those internal buyers. Think about that buying committee and leveraging it, and those that are see better result.”
“If ABM isn’t working, it’s time to ask dig into ‘Why‘ – and maybe 3, 4, or 5 ‘Whys.’
Don’t assume you know what’s broken until you’ve gone through that process. Imagine working through a scenario like this:
Why aren’t we seeing results from our ABM programs? Well, what results are we aiming for? More revenue, Faster closes, Higher ASP? Shoot, we didn’t set success metrics up front.
Why didn’t we set success metrics before embarking on this project? Well, we just needed to get it off the ground, and quite frankly, we don’t know what the results will be until we try it for the first time
Why are we scared to set target goals? We don’t want to fail and miss the targets and have everyone lose confidence in what we’re doing
Why do we think not setting goals is going to inspire more confidence than setting them and then using this first phase to see what works and what doesn’t? Hmm, well, we weren’t thinking of this as just a first phase. That may make it easier. Then, let’s start there.
That is just one way the conversation could go. Alternatively, it could end up identifying that there wasn’t executive buy-in, there was not good data on target accounts and contacts, or there was complete misalignment over what ABM really means. Whatever the reason, spend enough time to really understand it – and then take swift action from there.”
– – –
As you can see, when ABM isn’t working, there are many things you can do to get ABM back on track. There’s never going to be a magic bullet. You may try one thing and course correct, or you may have to try many. But whatever you do, don’t give up.
Maximizing your digital marketing campaigns should be your primary goal.
However, lots of digital marketers are launching successful marketing campaigns like clockwork. And just like you, they’re also doing their best.
Somehow, that lessens your chances of making an impact, unless you make an effort to stand out!
I’m sure you already know this, but:
There’s more to digital marketing than SEO, content marketing, and other popular methods!
They produce results, which is why most marketers swore by these digital tactics. But there are also other powerful approaches that can help you reach more people with your campaign.
In this post, find out the different marketing strategies you should try on for size if you want something new and different.
Remarketing allows you to show your offer to people who have shown interest with your business over and over again until they eventually convert.
Convince them to take a step further.
Since you’ve already caught their attention before, it’s much easier to turn them into clients or customers.
But you need to proceed with caution.
Otherwise, targeting the wrong people will widen the gap between you and your prospects. And it will give you a horrible nickname: that annoying marketer.
If you don’t want to be branded as such, follow the tips below on how to launch a remarketing strategy:
Give importance to timing. Engaging within an hour increases success 10x.
Use social media and get people involved.
2. SMS
Back then, SMS marketing was like throwing spaghetti on the wall and see if it sticks.
Sending SMS messages and hoping it would yield results was hardly a strategy at all!
However, thanks to the advent of smartphones, the technology behind SMS marketing smartened up as well.
This means that you can count on people who belong to this age group to regularly check their phones. Their penchant for accessing their phones gives you an opening to broadcast your message.
Still, the problem of the crapshoot approach of SMS still persists.
Hence, the new ability to track and measure the results of one’s SMS strategy is why tools like SMSEdge is a godsend. They help businesses see the effectiveness of their campaign. You can also split test your campaigns to see which version generates the best results depending on your goals.
Using the data at hand, you can optimize your campaigns further and squeeze out better open rates. You can also track specific numbers and see how they respond to your messages. This helps you create more granular campaigns that answer to the needs of your recipients.
Therefore, SMS marketing now plays a huge part of your marketing plan. And in this mobile-centric world, it plays a vital role in getting your name out there.
You also shouldn’t turn your back on old-school approaches like direct mail.
Apart from being more personalized than email, direct mail helps complement your digital marketing approach.
It creates an opportunity for engagement, presents information formally, increases trust, and is highly authoritative!
In fact, more than 60% of direct mail recipients were influenced to visit promoted websites.
After all, it boils down to a classic truth: people appreciate those who make an effort.
Producing a snail mail that looks and feels elegant, regardless of your business, shows to your audience that you care.
And if people can sense this effort of creating a personalized direct mail piece, they’re likely to return a portion of that investment to you.
4. Speaking Engagements
If you have the fondness for talking in front of an audience, then you already have another marketing tactic in the bag!
Being a keynote speaker makes this list considering 3/4 of people attend an event because they can relate to the topics covered by the speakers.
So if you can speak about valuable information pleasantly, you have the power to attract people and get them to listen with what you have to say.
If you’re launching a new product or announcing your earnings, seize the opportunity to produce positive public exposure.
Here are some tips to help you out:
Connect with your audience extemporaneously. Don’t read a speech to them.
Use relatable facts as examples.
Keep your talk sweet and straightforward.
Be catchy and memorable.
5. Chatbot
Chatbots are an anomaly. They help you create automated messages to your audience, but they interact with users just like a human would.
This reason is what makes them useful if integrated into your marketing strategy.
Chatbots can take care of all the necessary queries for you. And it can be around to accommodate these queries 24/7.
There are lots of chatbots to choose from, but Drift stands heads and shoulders above the rest. Aside from the usual chatbot features, this tool can help you qualify leads, automatically book your meetings with people, and seamlessly connect with your email campaign.
So start developing a highly engaging chatbot. Here are tips on how to do it:
Choose valuable features and make it provide essential information.
Make a proactive bot that initiates interaction as soon as visitors come to your website.
Add personality to it by making it sound human-like.
Of course, it can usually handle necessary information. But that doesn’t mean it will leave people hanging.
If someone asks a question that is too complicated for a chatbot to answer, you can always let a live operator jump in.
Final Thoughts
As seen above, there are lots of marketing strategies that you can use to boost your business. Again, you don’t have to limit your marketing campaign using the same old tactics and techniques.
If done correctly, you can unearth more leads and sales by putting the strategies above into practice!
At the same time, you can’t expect all of these to produce the same quality of results. It’s up to you to evaluate the effectiveness of each. Their effects vary depending on different variables.
Ultimately, the world is your (marketing) oyster. But it’s a matter of choosing and implementing the best marketing strategies that will work for your business.
You’re confident in your business’s value proposition. But to truly understand how your business activities create the most value for your customers and result in a strong profit margin, you must conduct a value chain analysis.
Let's take a deeper look into value chain analysis and learn how you can analyze your business activities.
Value chain analysis is a way for businesses to analyze the activities they perform to create a product. Once the activities are analyzed, a business can use the results to evaluate ways to improve its competitive advantage.
While one goal of value chain analysis is to improve operational efficiency, its final and most important goal is to establish an advantage over competitors.
Components of a Value Chain
If you’re like me and are curious about what *exactly* goes into a value chain, let’s turn to Michael Porter, a Harvard Business School professor. In his book Competitive Advantage, Porter introduces a simple value chain model. He lays out the components of a value chain analysis and places business activities into two categories: primary and support.
Identifying the primary and support activities is critical in creating a value chain analysis. You’ll know where you spend the most resources, where your business can improve, and where your competitors may have an edge over you.
Using Porter’s value chain model, you can look at your business activities, pinpoint a unique value proposition, and determine the best way to establish dominance over your competition.
Let’s take a look at these activities below.
Primary Activities
There are five primary activities. These activities are all of the actions involved in creating a business offering and competitive advantage. Here’s a breakdown of each one:
Inbound logistics. This is how materials and resources are gained from suppliers before the final product or service can be developed. In your analysis, take a look at the locations of your suppliers and shipping costs from their facility to yours.
Operations. Operations are how the materials and resources are produced, resulting in a final product or service. Here, you may look at the cost of running your warehouse, machinery, and assembly lines.
Outbound logistics. Once a product is finished, it needs to be distributed. Outbound logistics describes this process. Consider your shipping costs to consumers, warehousing fees, distributor relations, and order processing operations.
Marketing and sales. This is how your product or service is presented and sold to your ideal target market. In your analysis, take into account advertising costs, promotional costs, reach, and cost-per-acquisition.
Services. This is the support a business provides for the customer, which can include product support and training, warranties, and guarantees. You’ll look at repair costs, product training costs, product adjustment frequency, and more.
Support Activities
Support activities help the primary activities maintain efficiency and create an advantage over competitors. They include:
Firm infrastructure. This entails all the management, financial, and legal systems a business has in place to make business decisions and effectively manage resources.
Human resource management. Human resource management encompasses all the processes and systems involved in managing employees and hiring new staff. This is especially important for companies that provide in-person service.
Technology development. Technology development helps a business innovate. This can be used in various steps of the value chain to gain an advantage over competitors by increasing efficiency or decreasing production costs.
Procurement. This is how the resources and materials for a product are sourced. The goal is to find quality supplies that fit the business' budget.
Value chain analyses require research and can take time to develop. Below are the general steps for creating one.
It’s now time to bring it all together in a unified process to create a value chain analysis. Let’s get started.
1. Determine the business' primary and support activities.
As I mentioned above, your business’s primary and support activities are the main components of the value chain. These activities include each action required in developing a product or service, from raw materials to the final product.
Pro tip: Not sure what to include or where each activity belongs? I find it helpful to use a template when I need guidance. HubSpot’s Value Chain Analysis Template is a great resource for this exercise.
2. Analyze the value and cost of the activities.
When I’m tasked with creating a value chain analysis, I know the first thing I want to do is brainstorm ways each activity provides value to customers and the business as a whole. Then, I compare the activity to the competitive advantage I'm trying to achieve and see if it supports the goal.
After the value analysis is complete, look at the cost of the activities. Is the activity labor-intensive? How much does X raw material cost?
Asking similar questions will help identify which activities are cost-effective and which are not. This is where areas for improvement can be identified.
Pro tip: Don’t be afraid to pull out the books for this step. You need to know exactly what the costs of goods and services are for all of the activities you’re analyzing. Refer to your balance sheet to make sure you’re not missing any costs.
3. Refer to your competitors' value chains.
A value chain analysis improves your competitive advantage, so any business that conducts one should keep that information close to the chest. In all likelihood, you won‘t happen upon a nuanced, in-depth picture of your competitors’ primary and support activities.
Still, you can get some concept of your industry peers' value chains through competitive benchmarking — using relevant metrics to compare your company to competitors’. The practice is multifaceted and is used for three primary functions:
Strategic benchmarking. Comparing business models and strategies.
Process benchmarking. Comparing business and operational processes.
Performance benchmarking. Comparing business outcomes based on a set of metrics.
Once you‘ve identified the benchmarking category you’d like to pursue, you can pick the competitors you‘d like to measure yourself against. Then, you’d choose metrics that you can realistically collect data for and leverage resources that enable the relevant research.
Pro tip: I find it helpful to look at how other companies create a value chain analysis, even if they aren’t direct competitors. Here’s an example of a value chain analysis for Starbucks that I find useful.
4. Understand your customer base's perception of value.
You and I both know how the saying goes: the customer is always right. So, however valuable your customers perceive your product or service to be is exactly how valuable it actually is. Customer perception might be the most crucial factor in framing your competitive advantage, so you need to have a pulse on it.
Pro tip: Conducting customer surveys or gathering feedback from customers helps you understand your target market’s perception of you and is central to conducting a fully realized value chain analysis.
5. Identify opportunities to gain a competitive advantage.
Once the value chain analysis is complete, the primary stakeholders in the business can see an overview of where the business is excelling and where improvements can be made operationally.
Begin with the improvements that take minor changes and provide high-impact results. After the easy wins are identified, you and your team can tackle the bigger challenges that might be hindering efficiency.
The value chain analysis gives businesses a clear idea of how to adjust their actions and processes to provide the most value to their target market and increase their profit margins.
Still not sure how it all works? Let’s take a look at an example.
Value Chain Analysis Example
Completing a value chain analysis allows businesses to examine their activities and find competitive opportunities.
For example, McDonald‘s mission is to provide customers with low-priced food items. The analysis helps McDonald’s identify areas for improvement and activities that add value to their products and services.
Below is an example of a value chain analysis for McDonald's and its cost leadership strategy.
Primary Activities
Inbound logistics. McDonald's has pre-selected, low-cost suppliers for the raw materials for their food and beverage items. It sources suppliers for items like vegetables, meat, and coffee.
Operations. The business is a franchise, meaning a franchisee owns each McDonald's location. There are more than 41,000 McDonald's locations worldwide.
Outbound logistics. Instead of formal, sit-down restaurants, McDonald's has restaurants that focus on counter-service, self-service, and drive-through service.
Marketing and sales. Its marketing strategies focus on media and print advertising, including social media posts, magazine advertisements, billboards, and more.
Services. McDonald's strives to achieve high-quality customer service. It provides its thousands of employees with in-depth training and benefits so they can best assist their customers.
Support Activities
Firm infrastructure. The McDonald’s corporation has both C-suite executives and Zone Presidents who oversee the firm’s operations in various regions, with a general counsel overseeing legal matters.
Human resource management. It maintains a career page where job seekers can apply to both corporate and restaurant roles. It pays hourly and salaried rates and promotes its tuition assistance program to attract talent.
Technology development. The restaurant has invested in touch kiosks to facilitate ordering and increase operational efficiency.
Procurement. The firm uses Jaggaer, a digital procurement firm, to establish relationships with key suppliers across various regions of the world.
Value Chain Analysis Templates
In my experience, templates have been helpful when I want to better understand a process or exercise. Here are a few value chain analysis templates to help you develop your own.
Available via Google Sheets and Google Slides, HubSpot’s free template is an interactive version of Porter‘s Value Chain Analysis. What I like best is the template can be customized to outline your company’s value chain. Get your free copy.
If you really want to understand a concept, you have to go straight to the source. This Porter's value chain analysis template is a free download that provides a general overview of business activities.
If you‘re analyzing the cost versus expected profit margin from your primary and support activities, this template’s for you. I like that you can easily replace the data in the template with your own information while still maintaining the template structure.
Value chain analysis isn’t a concept reserved for businesses that sell products or services. Educational institutions and non-profit organizations also benefit from this business strategy. What I like about this template is that this model looks at the value chain involved in developing academic research rather than analyzing the activities that go into creating a product or service.
Did you recently acquire or merge with another business? Or maybe you plan to? If so, use this template to forecast and analyze the steps involved in the transition.
Grow Your Business with Value Chain Analysis
Your value chain analysis will help you identify areas for improvement and the activities that provide the most value to your customers and your business as a whole. Eliminating inefficient business activities speeds up production, improves your competitive advantage, and increases profit margins.
Editor's note: This post was originally published in November 2018 and has been updated for comprehensiveness.
This story was delivered to Business Insider Intelligence "Fintech Briefing" subscribers. To learn more and subscribe, please click here.
Singapore has established itself as one of Asia’s biggest fintech hubs. This year alone, its fintech efforts included launching a marketplace lending committee, fast-tracking fintech patents, and making efforts to boost its AI capabilities. These efforts seem to have paid off, and this week we saw three international banks establishing innovation labs in Singapore.
Here are key details about each of the projects:
The Bank of China. One of the four biggest state-owned commercial banks in China has opened its first fintech innovation lab in Singapore. It will use the lab for research and development, and eventually to showcase its latest technologies to customers. Additionally, it wants to form partnerships with local startups, universities, and the government. Bank of China plans to focus on technologies including AI, blockchain, big data, and cloud technologies.
Westpac. The Australian bank has launched its innovation hub, dubbed Westpac co.lab, in Singapore. Westpac will use the hub to help Australian fintechs keep track of the Asian market. Additionally, it wants to enhance local partnerships in those areas. This marks Westpac’s fourth innovation lab.
Deutsche Bank. The German Bank has created an innovation lab in Singapore, which aims to develop new wealth management solutions with startups. The bank already has innovation labs in London, New York, Berlin, and Palo Alto. However, this marks the first innovation lab housed within the bank itself.
The number of international players gravitating to Singapore as a hub for innovation underscores the city-state’s fintech appeal.Setting up innovation hubs in Singapore will yield benefits for banks and fintechs in their home countries.
But the moves will also help Singapore to further strengthen its fintech reputation and ecosystem alike as it connects to major banking players around the world. Forming these global partnerships will help Singapore stay relevant as these banks expand and innovate further.
We already saw major banks, including China Construction Bank, open offices in Singapore. We expect to see even more to follow suit and establish a connecting point with the city-state.
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By Brenna Lofquist, Marketing Consultant for Heinz Marketing
Advice from an everyday marketer not a copywriter
This topic might seem very basic or some people might not even take the chance to read it, but I am sure there are others out there like me, who don’t have a strong writing background and still need to write engaging marketing emails.
Growing up my mom always said that I was such a great writer and I thought so too but writing about non-fiction prompts for State exams or English class is a little different than writing in the business world. Fast forward to now – I have been at Heinz Marketing for a little over 2 years and have quickly learned (and still learning) how to properly write Marketing emails.
There’s the usual basics of how to write a great email that I’m pretty sure people already know or has at least heard like:
Use actionable or personalization (when possible) in a subject line to catch the reader’s attention
Establish relevancy – align the subject line with email copy
Empathize with the customer, don’t just pitch the product
Anyways, that stuff is great and all, but I’m more interested in talking about how to write the actual email – like how does one begin to compose an email, what’s the email structure or the best part of the email to start with. Here are a few things that I think about or the process I take to write marketing emails that helped me, and I am hoping can help others too!
I’m sure this is common but, just to paint the full picture I usually start out thinking about the audience the email is going to; what do they care about, pain points, motivators, etc.
Then I tie in the offering or content asset and how it will benefit them. That’s the ideation part! You might have a document to reference such as buyer’s persona map or messaging framework to help you pull these ideas together but either way this is where you should start.
When it comes to writing the email, I never start with the subject line. I always wait to write the subject line last because that’s usually when I try to be clever and that takes a little more creative juice. It’s also the easiest way to get hung up, which I try to avoid at all costs. Majority of the time, when I’m done writing the email, I have already come up with a subject line idea or it’s easier to write since I’ve been thinking about the audience and offering but this works best for me.
(Stay tuned for a blog post all about how to write subject lines from Heinz Marketing’s writing expert Josh Baez)
Next, I try to write the email fairly quickly. It’s easier to get something down on paper and then go back to it. I also find that when I don’t get something down, I end up thinking too much about one word or one sentence and getting hung up. Also, you aren’t going to write the perfect email in one shot, that’s why there are drafts and a review process.
Lastly, in trying to keep the email somewhat brief since you don’t want to bore the reader to death, following a simple email structure should do the trick.
First, a catchy intro sentence, this can be a statistic or question.
Then another sentence or so to set up the rest of the email. Depending on the offer or content asset provide a sentence or two about why it will benefit them and if applicable, include a few bullet points.
If you can, include a button with a clear call to action and lastly wrap up with a closing sentence. At the end of this sentence I’ll usually include the call to action again just to reinforce what you’d like them to do and then wrap up with your usual sign off or signature.
Pretty straightforward right? It’s not rocket science but, for someone who’s job isn’t solely writing or maybe something you have struggled with, I am hoping these tips are new and helpful in your writing journey!
If you are someone like me and have some tips to share, I’d love to hear them!
As we increasingly understand the “Chaotic Buying Journey,” as illustrated by the great work done by my friends at Gartner; marketing and salespeople are struggling with, “How do we respond?”
Too often, the thinking is, “We have to meet the customer where they are at!” Some marketing and sales enablement people are reveling in the new content challenge, thinking, they have to provide content and related support for every one of these points in the buyer journey. The thinking is, “We must mirror the buyer journey.”
The underlying principle of aligning with the buyer’s journey and intercepting them where they are at, as they wander through the chaotic buying process, seems to make sense–at least on the surface.
On reflection, though, one might think, “Just because the buying journey is chaotic, doesn’t mean it should be or that the customers want it to be that way!”
In fact, one quickly comes to the conclusion, that anything we can do to help the customer simplify and reduce the chaos they experience, creates great value for the customer. As a result, one then realizes, that mirroring and aligning with the chaotic buying journey is the wrong thing to do.
Sales (and marketing) create the greatest value when we can help the customer reduce the complexity, confusion, and duplicative work. When we help add clarity to what the customer is trying to achieve and the simplest way to align priorities and interests in helping them through their buying process, we help them achieve their goals more quickly and with greater certainty.
While we will never make it a straight path (as much as we may long for the days of the linear buying/selling processes, we can provide leadership in improving the process, making it much less chaotic and more predictable
Vancouver, BC, November 16, 2018--Deloitte announced the 2018 winners of its Technology Fast 50, Companies-to-Watch and Leadership awards programs. BC tech companies topped this years list taking down the top two spots (with Vanrx Pharmasystems in the #1 top spot, followed closely by Mojio in the #2 spot). 12 BC tech companies were included overall in this years list of Canada's top 50 fastest growing tech companies.
Corporate bribery—that is, the practice of companies paying government officials for preferential treatment—is not only illegal in dozens of countries. Studies show that it’s also counterproductive resulting in lower profit margins, return on equity, and employee morale; costly delays as players haggle over the size of the kickback; and poverty and poor governance in the markets where they’re paid. Yet, according to the World Bank, roughly one-third of firms around the world use kickbacks, paying an estimated total of $400 billion a year. Since 2006, hundreds of companies — including global brands like Novartis, Hewlett-Packard, and Rolls Royce — have reached settlements with U.S. authorities on charges of overseas bribery.
Why do kickbacks continue? According to my own research into dozens of bribery cases and five years of reporting on four continents, it’s because executives believe that their competitors are using bribery as a tool to get ahead, so they must, too. “[Bribes] are like steroids,” one oil consultant told me. “Everybody’s doing it, and if you don’t do it, you fall behind.”
Of course, copying what your competitors do—especially when it is illegal and inefficient – is the opposite of innovative. How can companies kick this habit? After surveying corruption experts and business executives (including one who went to jail for bribery) I identified four strategies:
Have a resistance plan for bribe demands. Managers on the ground should be prepared with the following line: “I can’t give you a bribe, but I can do this, this and this, for you,” says Kent Kedl, the senior partner for Greater China and North Asia at Control Risks. The key is to better understand what motivates the official seeking the backhander. More often than not, Kedl explains, the bribe is not about money; it’s about that person wanting to feel respected. “We tell companies, ‘What’s another way to give them some respect, to have them be a key opinion leader for you?’” One way is to offer the person or his or her staff members a chance to participate in high-level discussions about the company’s commitment to the local community and to give that office a greater voice in shaping those decisions. Another is to offer to create more jobs or provide more training or technical service than your competitors are offering. You can highlight the lasting legacy you want to help the official create and promise to publicly highlight his or her involvement.
Build the cost of avoiding bribery into your business projections. Bribing government officials has costs. But saying no can be expensive too: from delays in delivery (the customs official refuses to release goods at the border until he gets a kickback) to failing to win a contract outright (the minister who expects his 10% cut of a procurement contract). Firms should calculate these costs into their business plan, says Frederick Davidson, the CEO of Energold Drilling. He provides an example: “What we normally run into is in customs. A lot of these countries pile rule upon rule upon rule. If you’re one of the locals, you have to pay somebody off and you skip all the rules. We don’t anticipate doing that. So, we build into any bid additional brokerage costs, legal costs, etc. You can easily add 10 to 20 percent. Let’s say you’re talking a $300,000 contract. You would factor $30,000 to $60,000 in certain places just to address the bureaucracy that they put in place.”
Companies should also explain to investors that, rather than ratcheting up their quarterly forecasts, they are smoothing them out to account for delays in avoiding kickbacks, adds Richard Bistrong, who went to jail for paying bribes around the world and now heads an anti-bribery consulting firm. He offers an example of how to present this: “Our normal expected return in a particular region is 18-24 months, and we believe that is attainable, but we’re projecting 24-36 months to achieve those objectives in a way that is sustainable and ethical.”
Identify “moon markets” and walk away. Some markets—for example, several in China—are too rife with bribery to get around it, and no amount of innovation can change that reality. Kedl therefore advises companies to treat these markets are as if they were on the moon (that is, inaccessible) and reset their ambitions accordingly. This may mean a contraction in profits in the short-term, but in the long run it also means building a more resilient company, with consistent growth year after year. “And that’s what companies in challenging markets need to be thinking about,” he adds.
As a corollary to this, firms may need to invest in gathering the intelligence to identify moon markets, and other costs associated with avoiding bribery. Coca-Cola, for example, uses data from Transparency International to build a map of its bribery risks in various markets each year, and then determines where to focus its anti-corruption efforts.
Recalibrate performance-based targets and compensation relative to high risk. In markets with high corruption risk, front-line employees have little incentive to refuse a proposed kickback if it means failing to make their quota and risking a significant portion of their compensation. Salespeople shouldn’t receive “a financial haircut” for saying no to corruption, Bistrong says. One best practice he highlights? The creation of an annual bonus pool for these sorts of situations. “Let’s say a foreign official is demanding a bribe. When the front-line salesperson raises the possibility that the bribe demand may cause delays, management will actually pay any accrued bonus as if the sale had been completed, drawn from the bonus pool. At that point, everybody will lean in together to fix that problem in an ethical and compliant manner, even if it takes considerably longer,” Bistrong says. “That’s enlightened management.”
By 2016 , after Novartis and GlaxoSmithKline paid multi-million-dollar fines following investigations of their alleged bribery around the world, both companies shifted the way their sales teams operate. GlaxoSmithKline did away with sales targets, CNN reported, and now rewards reps based on their knowledge of the needs of patients and doctors. Novartis capped its performance-based compensation at 35% andreps are rated from 1 to 3 based on their values and behavior, not a quota; receiving a bonus requires scoring higher than a 1, according to Reuters.
In today’s world, a company that creates state-of-the-art products, and devises state-of-the-art strategies to sell them without bribes is not only innovative, but disruptive, helping to dismantle a centuries-old system that perpetuates poverty abroad and stifles creativity within.
Canada has a rich history of innovation, but in the next few decades, powerful technological forces will transform the global economy. Large multinational companies have a commanding head start in the race to succeed, and Canada risks falling behind. At stake is nothing less than the country’s prosperity and economic well-being. Innovation Nation sets out to explore what is needed for businesses to flourish and grow.
Over the next three months, the Financial Post will talk to some of the innovators, visionaries and scientists on the cutting edge of the new cutthroat economy about a blueprint for Canadian success.
Canada has a rich history of innovation, but in the next few decades, powerful technological forces will transform the global economy. Large multinational companies have jumped out to a headstart in the race to succeed, and Canada runs the risk of falling behind. At stake is nothing less than our prosperity and economic well-being. The FP set out explore what is needed for businesses to flourish and grow. Over the next three months, we’ll talk to some of the innovators, visionaries and scientists on the cutting edge of the new cutthroat economy about a blueprint for Canadian success. You can find all of our coverage here.
We no longer understand how to generate wealth. We think we do, but we don’t. We marvel at the ability of companies such as Amazon.com Inc. and Alibaba Group Holding Ltd. to bend economies to their will, yet we spend little time thinking about how those companies became so big.
Our lack of curiosity is impeding Canada’s ability to generate the economic growth that will be necessary to fund the healthcare system, schools and universities, and public pensions. By sticking with an outdated view of how the economy works, we are leaving money on the table. There are reasons why the biggest publicly traded company in the United States is one that fundamentally changed the way the world consumes and shares information, and the most valuable company in Canada is a bank that generates 60 per cent of its revenue at home and an additional 25 per cent in the U.S.
“We have to move beyond energy as the driver of our economy,” Wayne Wachell, chief executive of Vancouver-based Genus Capital Management, which manages assets worth about $1.5 billion, told me in an interview. “Toronto has a bunch of banks. What do the rest of us do? Sell insurance and wealth management? Nobody seems to be having that conversation. How do we make the country more entrepreneurial?”
An unexpected consequence of the media’s obsession with the NAFTA talks was that a business story became one of the most talked about issues in the country. The narrative implied either a weak grasp of how modern business works, or an unwillingness to challenge the stories of lobbyists for legacy industries.
The most valuable company in Canada is a bank that generates 60 per cent of its revenue at home and an additional 25 per cent in the U.S.
In August 2017, Chrystia Freeland, the Foreign Affairs Minister, presented six broad objectives for the NAFTA negotiations, a list that she said was based on 21,000 public submissions.
First among them was a commitment to “modernize” the North American Free Trade Agreement, a commercial arrangement completed three years before Sergey Brin and Larry Page registered Google as a domain name. “NAFTA needs to address this, in a way that ensures we continue to have a vibrant and internationally competitive technology sector and that all sectors of our economy can reap the full benefits of the digital revolution,” Freeland said.
She was right. A shallow dive below the surface of Canadian hiring data would have revealed that the action in the economy was around services, including in the area that Statistics Canada describes as “professional, scientific, and technical services.”
That category is a proxy for the “intangible economy,” where wealth is generated by things such as intellectual property and work processes, rather than tangible goods such as canola and brake pads. Ocean Tomo, a merchant bank, estimates that about 85 per cent of the value reflected in the Standard & Poor’s 500 stock index is derived from intangible assets, compared with about 30 per cent in 1985.
The intangible economy isn’t about the future; it’s the present. Yet Freeland left the impression that her nod to modernizing the North American Free Trade Agreement was to satisfy readers of the Economist, or perhaps a few vocal technology entrepreneurs.
Politicians and journalists like to root big concepts like international trade with real-world examples. Freeland is both, so it was unsurprising that she dropped the names of a few companies. Her choices were telling. She didn’t mention Ottawa-based Shopify Inc., the brightest of the new economy stars. Nor did she talk about CGI Group Inc., the Montreal-based information-technology firm that employs more than 72,000 people around the world, or Open Text Corp., the Waterloo, Ont.-based provider of data-management software.
Instead, the heroes of Freeland’s tale about why trade matters were three champions of the pre-Google era: Magna International Inc., the Aurora, Ont.-based maker of automobile parts; Pratt & Whitney, the American builder of jet engines that has a large operation outside of Montreal; and Precision Drilling Corp., the Calgary-based supplier of oil rigs.
All fine companies; but none are good examples of the kind of economy we should be striving to create.
The combined contribution of the automobile and aerospace industries to gross domestic product is less than that of the firms that StatCan bundles under the heading “computer system design and related services,” according to Stephen Poloz, the Bank of Canada governor. The oil-and-gas industry has some track left, but its ability to generate wealth likely has peaked given the global shift away from carbon. The mining and oil-and-gas industries added about 18,000 jobs from the start of 2017 through August of this year, compared with about 92,000 in the healthcare industry, according to StatCan’s monthly survey of company payrolls.
Yet we still tend to talk about ourselves as a country that derives its wealth from resources, automotive plants, and (maybe) financial services.
Foreign Affairs Minister Chrystia Freeland.
At a recent event hosted by the CBC, Freeland was asked by a member of the audience what she thought Canada had gained from the NAFTA talks. She said that her “personal favourite” was the removal of Chapter 11, which allows companies to sue governments. Freeland also said that she was pleased to have gotten rid of the clause that gives the U.S. guaranteed access to Canadian energy, and that she was happy to have won enhanced market access for exports of margarine and sugar.
That was her top-of-mind list. Nothing about intangibles.
“Because of decades of failed innovation policies that completely ignored IP ownership, Canada is a large net importer of IP, so this is a bad deal for Canada’s plans to build a 21st century economy,” Jim Balsillie, the former co-chief executive of Research In Motion, the company that created the BlackBerry, said in a statement after Canada, Mexico and the U.S. agreed on a revised trade agreement at the end of September.
The way we talk about the economy matters because generating economic growth from ideas instead of goods will require different policies than the ones with which we have become comfortable.
Gina Cody, the former executive chair of CCI Group Inc., a Toronto-based engineering firm, thinks Canada’s position to capitalize on the shift to intangibles “couldn’t be better.” That’s mostly because we remain open to immigration at a time when the U.S. is issuing fewer visas, giving us a competitive advantage in the global war for talent.
But liberal immigration rules won’t be enough. Cody, who serves as chair of Concordia University’s industrial advisory council, told me in an interview that the country’s post-secondary institutions are underfunded, which is one of the reasons they end up doing deals with Big Tech that grants the rights to any IP to the non-Canadian funders of the research programs universities must offer to lure the best students.
In their book,Capitalism Without Capital, Jonathan Haskel and Stian Westlake argue that an economy that wants to excel in the intangible economy must be prepared to spend heavily on education. That will be a challenge. As a society, we’ve come to associate good governance with balanced budgets; the federal government and most of the provinces are running deficits, so there will be resistance to significant new spending. This problem is exacerbated by Canada’s lack of an endowment culture; Cody said she donated $15 million to Concordia’s department of computer science and engineering earlier this year partly to spur more wealthy graduates to do the same. “We need an educated population,” she said.
An employee in the “grow room,” at Scientus Pharma, a biopharmaceutical company focused on medicines based on cannabis, at their their facility in Whitby, Ont.
The kind of company that a serious commitment to ideas creates looks like Toronto-based Scientus Pharma, which is close to securing a patent on a new process for extracting the active ingredients from cannabis. The company’s founders benefited from spending time at the MaRS Discovery District, an incubator for technology upstarts. The early research benefited from government grants. The company now employs about 30 people and has a new production facility in Whitby, Ont.
Har Grover, the chief executive, said in an interview that the company’s success will be depend on the extent to which its patented extraction process becomes the industry standard. (Scientus says its method ensures a consistent level of active ingredient in capsules and oils, a problem the cannabis industry hasn’t yet solved.) That will require taking advantage of the lead Canada achieved by legalizing recreational pot, and lobbying governments to apply the same standards to the marijuana industry that they demand of medicine and food.
“Canadian companies need to be aggressive about maintaining leadership,” Grover said.
Aggressiveness isn’t a trait for which this country is known, at least away from the hockey rink. We will need to be, because companies such as Scientus Pharma will be going up against international behemoths that long ago figured out that their most valuable assets were their ideas, and that the best way to protect that wealth was to set the rules by which everyone would play. Canada might have gained more access to the North American market for Canadian margarine, but the U.S. successfully extended patent protection for its pharmaceutical industry.
“It is hard to compete with giants,” said Cody. “That’s an obstacle.”
Canada has a rich history of innovation, but in the next few decades, powerful technological forces will transform the global economy. Large multinational companies have jumped out to a headstart in the race to succeed, and Canada runs the risk of falling behind. At stake is nothing less than our prosperity and economic well-being. The FP set out explore what is needed for businesses to flourish and grow. Over the next three months, we’ll talk to some of the innovators, visionaries and scientists on the cutting edge of the new cutthroat economy about a blueprint for Canadian success. You can find all of our coverage here.
At first blush, Uber Advanced Technologies Group’s downtown Toronto office in the MaRS building looks pretty unremarkable. There are long rows of workstations with big curved computer monitors, mostly used for writing computer code. The conference rooms have whiteboards with inscrutable notes and symbols scribbled on them. De rigueur for any self-respecting tech company, there is a well-appointed kitchen with candy dispensers, snacks, catered lunches and beer in the fridge.
The toy car parked in the back corner of the office is the only hint that some cutting-edge fundamental research is happening here. The little white model Volvo is about a half-metre high and made of plastic, but it has a big black cone stuck on the roof, which takes the place of what will be a light detection and range (LIDAR) sensor that will hopefully allow full-sized cars to one day drive autonomously through cities, revolutionizing transportation and upending the world.
“We focus on building the brain of the self-driving car,” said Raquel Urtasun, Uber ATG’s chief scientist and head of the Toronto lab, which is one of the key outposts for the San Francisco-based ride-sharing company’s autonomous vehicle work.
Raquel Urtasun, Uber ATG’s chief scientist and head of the Toronto lab, is the sort of highly in-demand expert in machine learning that Canada is becoming famous for.
Urtasun is the sort of highly in-demand expert in machine learning that Canada is becoming famous for. She wears a lot of hats. As well as her job at Uber, she’s an associate professor in computer science at the University of Toronto, and a Canada Research Chair in Machine Learning and Computer Vision. When people in the tech world talk about “top talent” they’re talking about people such as Urtasun.
And that’s what makes the Uber ATG lab such a divisive thing. Top talent is in short supply, and critics say that Uber and other giant companies are using Canada as a sort of colonial outpost, setting up branch plants to gobble up university grads, siphon off all the economic benefit, including the intellectual property, and smother homegrown tech companies in their infancy.
Foreign company interest in Canada’s tech scene is undeniable, especially since Toronto and Montreal are globally significant centres for artificial intelligence research. According to MaRS, which supports the innovation sector in Toronto, $1.4-billion worth of new investment announcements by tech companies in the city were made in September alone.
But aside from a monster $500-million real estate deal by Ottawa-based Shopify Inc., all the other investments came from companies based outside Canada.
Microsoft Corp. said it will expand its Toronto office, investing $570 million and adding around 500 new jobs, while Intel Corp., Pinterest Inc. and Instacart also made announcements about plans to expand there, too. And Uber chief executive Dara Khosrowshahi visited Toronto in mid-September to announce plans to invest $200 million, partly to expand Urtasun’s ATG lab work on autonomous vehicles.
Carl Rodrigues, chief executive of SOTI Inc., says talent is so tight in Canada his Mississauga software company is expanding its Ireland office and hiring 150 workers overseas.
Such investments would seem to be a good thing, creating high-paying and interesting jobs that can entice the best and the brightest to stay home, but you don’t have to look hard to find local voices grumbling about the investments. The lack of available talent often tops their complaints.
“You can’t find that talent in Canada because your government is bringing in all these foreign entities who have amazing brand names,” said Carl Rodrigues, chief executive of SOTI Inc., a Mississauga company that makes software to connect mobility devices and internet-connected sensors.
“If I could hire 300 top-tier software engineers here in Canada right now today, I would. I have the need for it. You know, I just can’t find that fast enough here in Canada, and one of the reasons is that thousands of these software engineers in Canada are hired by Microsoft, hired by Google, Facebook, et cetera.”
Instead, SOTI is doing the next best thing. Last month, the company announced plans to expand its Ireland office, hiring 150 workers overseas.
Rodrigues said that companies making splashy hiring announcements in the tech sector is nothing to get excited about.
“We are at full employment,” he said. “If I want to hire somebody to do a job in this country, I literally have to steal that person from another company. I’m not creating a job.”
But it looks like many Canadians don’t share Rodrigues’ concerns about foreign technology investment, according to an online poll 1,111 Canadians done for the Financial Post by research company SurveyMonkey.
The poll found that 18 per cent of respondents thought there were too many foreign technology companies investing in Canada, but 33 per cent said there was “the right amount” and 43 per cent felt there were too few.
The argument for more FDI is neatly laid out by a 2016 report by the federal Advisory Council on Economic Growth: “Foreign direct investment (FDI) is a critical driver of economic growth for both developing and advanced economies. In slower growing advanced economies, new investment by foreign firms in productive capacity can provide a boost to national income and employment. In any economy, it can help raise productivity, competitiveness, and living standards over the long term.”
That same 2016 report voiced concerns that Canada is “falling behind” global peers, and that fear is borne out by Organisation for Economic Co-Operation and Development data.
The MaRS Discovery District in Toronto, one of the world’s largest urban innovation hubs.
The OECD reported that Canada had US$69.3 billion in foreign investment in 2013, but that has steadily slipped to just US$24.7 billion in 2017.
The slide is even more dramatic when expressed as a percentage of GDP. Canada ranks 27th when comparing foreign investment to the total size of the economy, according to the OECD, behind the U.S., India, Slovenia, the United Kingdom and a host of other countries.
But even though the economic case to reverse dropping FDI numbers is easily made, some in the technology sector continue to complain about the amount of interest foreign players have in Canada.
Part of their unease is the tight labour market, but another widespread complaint is that foreign tech companies that do research and development work in Canada are developing valuable intellectual property on the backs of Canadian workers, but the value of that IP ultimately goes outside the country.
Software is infinitely replicable, so once developers build a product, companies can sell it an unlimited number of times, thereby deriving huge value from the intellectual property.
Most citizens don’t see that as a concern, and welcome foreign tech investment. Indeed, the SurveyMonkey poll found that 55 per cent of respondents said the Canadian government is not doing enough to attract such investment.
The poll coincided with a visit to Ottawa by SurveyMonkey chief executive Zander Lurie. The company is based in San Mateo, Calif., but he called Ottawa the company’s “HQ east” and said he plans on significantly expanding his workforce in Canada.
“We by no means feel like we’re coming in and stealing jobs,” he said “In fact, when we come into a market, we try to concentrate and focus on having a few thriving offices as opposed to many branch offices, so for us, this is very much a consolidated effort to invest in the market, serve our customers better, reward our employees with valuable investments and compensation, and be an active participant in the community.”
The idea of being an active part of the local tech community is something that comes up a lot in discussions about the industry’s talent shortage. To have a thriving sector, such as there is in Silicon Valley, you need a complete ecosystem, and that means a good mix of big and small companies.
The big players are magnets for top talent, and they give the best new graduates their first jobs out of university, offering training and experience. But those tent-pole players don’t hold onto employees for life.
As people progress in their careers, they move to bigger roles at different companies, or they follow their entrepreneurial startup dreams. When some of those startups inevitably fail, the tech giants offer a soft fallback job for mid-career tech professionals.
Big, established tech companies could be even more important to the Canadian tech sector — even if they’re foreign companies — because a recent study by University of Toronto professor Richard Florida, director of the Martin Prosperity Institute, suggested that the domestic tech scene is decidedly underwhelming without them.
Florida, working with Ian Hathaway, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, a U.S. research group, looked at 100,000 venture-capital deals across 300 cities around the globe to quantify the relative levels of tech startup activity.
By focusing on just venture-capital deals, the study gives a picture of what the Canadian tech scene looks like once you strip away the FDI from big tech companies.
“Decidedly third tier” is how Florida described Toronto’s startup ecosystem compared to the innovation powerhouses of the world, namely Silicon Valley, New York, Beijing and Shanghai. Montreal and Vancouver sit another tier below even that.
Florida said the U.S. made up between 90 and 95 per cent of global venture-capital deals in the 1990s, but that has now fallen to less than 50 per cent. Toronto makes up less than one per cent of such deals to rank 20th overall. The next-best Canadian cities are Vancouver at No. 35 and Montreal at No. 47.
“I hope we get these things right, but I think we’re missing the boat more in terms of startups and also in terms of FDI,” Florida said.
Ultimately, the issue of foreign players setting up in Canada is more than simply focusing on whether U.S. tech company branches hurt local tech companies, because Florida’s research shows the actual competition is global.
Back in the Uber ATG lab, Urtasun said she’s an example of how things really work.
Urtasun said she moved to Canada four years ago from the University of Chicago in no small part because Toronto is a hotbed for interesting artificial intelligence research, and she took Uber’s job offer rather than staying in academia because it offered her the resources to do the most exciting, cutting-edge research.
“The competition that we have is not just Canada. We are in a global market, where, you know, if people have better opportunities elsewhere, they’re going to go elsewhere,” she said, pointing out the U.S. is often that destination.
“If you have more talent here, that attracts more talent that can actually feed the local ecosystem. And one of the things that is very interesting is that a lot of the local startups have said that since the opening of all these foreign labs, they have a much easier task in attracting talent.”
91% of manufacturers are investing in predictive analytics in the next 12 months, and 50% consider Artificial Intelligence (AI) a major planned investment for 2019 to support their subscription-based business models.
New subscription business models and smart, connected products are freeing manufacturers up from competing for one-time transaction revenues to recurring revenues based on subscriptions.
By 2020, manufacturers are predicting 67% of their product portfolios will be smart, connected products according to an excellent study by Capgemini.
71% of manufacturers are using automated sensors for real-time monitoring and data capture of a product’s condition and performance, yet just 25% have the infrastructure in place to analyze it and maximize product uptime.
Manufacturers need to break their dependence on just selling products to selling services if they’re going to grow. Smart, connected products with IoT sensors embedded in them are the future of subscription business models and a key foundation of the subscription economy.
Product Reliability and Uptime Help Create Subscription Economies
In a subscription economy world, whoever excels at product reliability and uptime grows faster than competitors and defines the market. Airlines with the highest on-time ratings have designed in reliability and uptime as part of their company’s identity; their DNA is based on these goals. Worldwide Business Research (WBR) in collaboration with Syncron, a global provider of cloud-based after-sales service solutions focused on empowering the world’s leading manufacturers to maximize product uptime and deliver exceptional customer experiences, recently surveyed to see how manufacturers are addressing the reliability and uptime challenges so critical to growing subscription business.
The research study, Maximized Product Uptime: The Emerging Industry Standard provides insights into how manufacturers can improve their after-sales service solutions. A copy of the study can be downloaded here (PDF, 23 pp., opt-in). Please see pages 20 – 23 for additional details on the report’s methodology. WBR and Syncron designed the survey to gain a deep understanding of manufacturers’ ability to deliver on their customers increasing demand for maximized product uptime, surveying 200 original equipment manufacturers (OEMs), with respondents evenly split between the U.S. and European markets, as well as 100 equipment end-users
Key insights from the study include the following:
34% of manufacturers are ready to compete in a subscription economy and have created a service strategy based on maximized product uptime. 39% are planning to have one in two years, and 22% are predicting it will be in 2020 or later before they have on in place. Capgemini found that manufacturers’ plans for smart, connected products would extend beyond these projections, making it a challenge of manufacturers to realize the new subscription revenue they’re planning on in the future.
71% of manufacturers are using automated sensors including IoT for real-time monitoring and data capture of a product’s condition and performance, yet just 25% have the infrastructure in place to analyze it and maximize product uptime. 51% of manufacturers have systems in place for analyzing the inbound data generated from sensors, yet report they still have more work to do to make them operational. The 25% of manufacturers with systems in place and at scale will have at least an 18-month jump on competitors who are just now planning on how to make use of the real-time data streams IoT sensors provide.
Predicting part failures before they occur (83%), optimizing product functionality based on usage (67%), and using stronger analytics to evaluate product performance (61%) matter most to manufacturers pursuing subscription models. Autonomous product operation (56%) and implementing stronger analytics on ROI ( 50%) are also extremely important. These findings further underscore how manufacturers need to design in reliability and uptime if they are going to succeed with subscription-based business models.
91% of manufacturers are investing in predictive analytics in the next 12 months, and 50% consider Artificial Intelligence (AI) a major planned investment for 2019. Creating meaningful data models from the massive amount of manufacturing data being captured using automated sensors and IoT devices is making predictive analytics, AI and machine learning extremely important to manufacturers’ IT planning budgets for 2019 and beyond. Combining predictive analytics, AI and machine learning to gain greater insights into pre-emptive maintenance on each production asset, installed product or device is the goal. Knowing when a machine or product will most likely fail is invaluable in ensuring the highest uptime and service reliability levels possible.
77% of manufacturers say having an after-sales service model is critical to their customers’ success today. Customers are ready to move beyond the legacy transactional, break-fix model of the past and want a more Amazon-like experience when it comes to uptime and reliability of every device they own as consumers and use at work. Speed, scale and simplicity are the foundational elements of a subscription business model, and the majority of manufacturers surveyed say their customers are leading them into a value-added after-sales service model.
You’re confident in your business’s value proposition. But to truly understand how your business activities create the most value for your customers and result in a strong profit margin, you must conduct a value chain analysis.
Let's take a deeper look into value chain analysis and learn how you can analyze your business activities.
Value chain analysis is a way for businesses to analyze the activities they perform to create a product. Once the activities are analyzed, a business can use the results to evaluate ways to improve its competitive advantage.
While one goal of value chain analysis is to improve operational efficiency, its final and most important goal is to establish an advantage over competitors.
Components of a Value Chain
If you’re like me and are curious about what *exactly* goes into a value chain, let’s turn to Michael Porter, a Harvard Business School professor. In his book Competitive Advantage, Porter introduces a simple value chain model. He lays out the components of a value chain analysis and places business activities into two categories: primary and support.
Identifying the primary and support activities is critical in creating a value chain analysis. You’ll know where you spend the most resources, where your business can improve, and where your competitors may have an edge over you.
Using Porter’s value chain model, you can look at your business activities, pinpoint a unique value proposition, and determine the best way to establish dominance over your competition.
Let’s take a look at these activities below.
Primary Activities
There are five primary activities. These activities are all of the actions involved in creating a business offering and competitive advantage. Here’s a breakdown of each one:
Inbound logistics. This is how materials and resources are gained from suppliers before the final product or service can be developed. In your analysis, take a look at the locations of your suppliers and shipping costs from their facility to yours.
Operations. Operations are how the materials and resources are produced, resulting in a final product or service. Here, you may look at the cost of running your warehouse, machinery, and assembly lines.
Outbound logistics. Once a product is finished, it needs to be distributed. Outbound logistics describes this process. Consider your shipping costs to consumers, warehousing fees, distributor relations, and order processing operations.
Marketing and sales. This is how your product or service is presented and sold to your ideal target market. In your analysis, take into account advertising costs, promotional costs, reach, and cost-per-acquisition.
Services. This is the support a business provides for the customer, which can include product support and training, warranties, and guarantees. You’ll look at repair costs, product training costs, product adjustment frequency, and more.
Support Activities
Support activities help the primary activities maintain efficiency and create an advantage over competitors. They include:
Firm infrastructure. This entails all the management, financial, and legal systems a business has in place to make business decisions and effectively manage resources.
Human resource management. Human resource management encompasses all the processes and systems involved in managing employees and hiring new staff. This is especially important for companies that provide in-person service.
Technology development. Technology development helps a business innovate. This can be used in various steps of the value chain to gain an advantage over competitors by increasing efficiency or decreasing production costs.
Procurement. This is how the resources and materials for a product are sourced. The goal is to find quality supplies that fit the business' budget.
Value chain analyses require research and can take time to develop. Below are the general steps for creating one.
It’s now time to bring it all together in a unified process to create a value chain analysis. Let’s get started.
1. Determine the business' primary and support activities.
As I mentioned above, your business’s primary and support activities are the main components of the value chain. These activities include each action required in developing a product or service, from raw materials to the final product.
Pro tip: Not sure what to include or where each activity belongs? I find it helpful to use a template when I need guidance. HubSpot’s Value Chain Analysis Template is a great resource for this exercise.
2. Analyze the value and cost of the activities.
When I’m tasked with creating a value chain analysis, I know the first thing I want to do is brainstorm ways each activity provides value to customers and the business as a whole. Then, I compare the activity to the competitive advantage I'm trying to achieve and see if it supports the goal.
After the value analysis is complete, look at the cost of the activities. Is the activity labor-intensive? How much does X raw material cost?
Asking similar questions will help identify which activities are cost-effective and which are not. This is where areas for improvement can be identified.
Pro tip: Don’t be afraid to pull out the books for this step. You need to know exactly what the costs of goods and services are for all of the activities you’re analyzing. Refer to your balance sheet to make sure you’re not missing any costs.
3. Refer to your competitors' value chains.
A value chain analysis improves your competitive advantage, so any business that conducts one should keep that information close to the chest. In all likelihood, you won‘t happen upon a nuanced, in-depth picture of your competitors’ primary and support activities.
Still, you can get some concept of your industry peers' value chains through competitive benchmarking — using relevant metrics to compare your company to competitors’. The practice is multifaceted and is used for three primary functions:
Strategic benchmarking. Comparing business models and strategies.
Process benchmarking. Comparing business and operational processes.
Performance benchmarking. Comparing business outcomes based on a set of metrics.
Once you‘ve identified the benchmarking category you’d like to pursue, you can pick the competitors you‘d like to measure yourself against. Then, you’d choose metrics that you can realistically collect data for and leverage resources that enable the relevant research.
Pro tip: I find it helpful to look at how other companies create a value chain analysis, even if they aren’t direct competitors. Here’s an example of a value chain analysis for Starbucks that I find useful.
4. Understand your customer base's perception of value.
You and I both know how the saying goes: the customer is always right. So, however valuable your customers perceive your product or service to be is exactly how valuable it actually is. Customer perception might be the most crucial factor in framing your competitive advantage, so you need to have a pulse on it.
Pro tip: Conducting customer surveys or gathering feedback from customers helps you understand your target market’s perception of you and is central to conducting a fully realized value chain analysis.
5. Identify opportunities to gain a competitive advantage.
Once the value chain analysis is complete, the primary stakeholders in the business can see an overview of where the business is excelling and where improvements can be made operationally.
Begin with the improvements that take minor changes and provide high-impact results. After the easy wins are identified, you and your team can tackle the bigger challenges that might be hindering efficiency.
The value chain analysis gives businesses a clear idea of how to adjust their actions and processes to provide the most value to their target market and increase their profit margins.
Still not sure how it all works? Let’s take a look at an example.
Value Chain Analysis Example
Completing a value chain analysis allows businesses to examine their activities and find competitive opportunities.
For example, McDonald‘s mission is to provide customers with low-priced food items. The analysis helps McDonald’s identify areas for improvement and activities that add value to their products and services.
Below is an example of a value chain analysis for McDonald's and its cost leadership strategy.
Primary Activities
Inbound logistics. McDonald's has pre-selected, low-cost suppliers for the raw materials for their food and beverage items. It sources suppliers for items like vegetables, meat, and coffee.
Operations. The business is a franchise, meaning a franchisee owns each McDonald's location. There are more than 41,000 McDonald's locations worldwide.
Outbound logistics. Instead of formal, sit-down restaurants, McDonald's has restaurants that focus on counter-service, self-service, and drive-through service.
Marketing and sales. Its marketing strategies focus on media and print advertising, including social media posts, magazine advertisements, billboards, and more.
Services. McDonald's strives to achieve high-quality customer service. It provides its thousands of employees with in-depth training and benefits so they can best assist their customers.
Support Activities
Firm infrastructure. The McDonald’s corporation has both C-suite executives and Zone Presidents who oversee the firm’s operations in various regions, with a general counsel overseeing legal matters.
Human resource management. It maintains a career page where job seekers can apply to both corporate and restaurant roles. It pays hourly and salaried rates and promotes its tuition assistance program to attract talent.
Technology development. The restaurant has invested in touch kiosks to facilitate ordering and increase operational efficiency.
Procurement. The firm uses Jaggaer, a digital procurement firm, to establish relationships with key suppliers across various regions of the world.
Value Chain Analysis Templates
In my experience, templates have been helpful when I want to better understand a process or exercise. Here are a few value chain analysis templates to help you develop your own.
Available via Google Sheets and Google Slides, HubSpot’s free template is an interactive version of Porter‘s Value Chain Analysis. What I like best is the template can be customized to outline your company’s value chain. Get your free copy.
If you really want to understand a concept, you have to go straight to the source. This Porter's value chain analysis template is a free download that provides a general overview of business activities.
If you‘re analyzing the cost versus expected profit margin from your primary and support activities, this template’s for you. I like that you can easily replace the data in the template with your own information while still maintaining the template structure.
Value chain analysis isn’t a concept reserved for businesses that sell products or services. Educational institutions and non-profit organizations also benefit from this business strategy. What I like about this template is that this model looks at the value chain involved in developing academic research rather than analyzing the activities that go into creating a product or service.
Did you recently acquire or merge with another business? Or maybe you plan to? If so, use this template to forecast and analyze the steps involved in the transition.
Grow Your Business with Value Chain Analysis
Your value chain analysis will help you identify areas for improvement and the activities that provide the most value to your customers and your business as a whole. Eliminating inefficient business activities speeds up production, improves your competitive advantage, and increases profit margins.
Editor's note: This post was originally published in November 2018 and has been updated for comprehensiveness.
In football, there’s nothing quite so intense as the “two-minute drill.” With the clock ticking down toward zero, an offense must achieve peak focus and efficiency to put points on the board while they still can.
As the clocks runs out on 2018, many salespeople find themselves in a similar position. Whether we’re trying to hit our annual goals, or simply want to close out deals and finish the year on a high note to build momentum for 2019, there’s added pressure to get things done in these final weeks.
Springboarding off his suggestions, we’ll add our own thoughts on how you can incorporate these methods into your B2B digital selling approach, especially on LinkedIn.
B2B Sales Closing Techniques to Conquer Your 2018 Goals
“To be truly effective this time of year, B2B sellers need to leverage real-time buyer insights to determine whom to call, what time to call, and what to talk about,” writes Goldberg. “Not only should this lead to better conversations this year, but it also puts you in a better position to start strong next year.”
It’s all about accurate, actionable buyer insights. Let’s unpack Goldberg’s three recommendations for putting them to use.
#1: Prospect research should be easy and informative
Goldberg notes that, per a recent D&B study, it takes B2B sellers an average of two hours — and as many as seven — to research prospects before reaching out. I wouldn’t say this is necessarily a bad thing, because gathering up information is a valuable activity and shouldn’t be rushed. But spending so many hours on the process at this stage of the year is like spending too much time in the huddle during a two-minute drill. The game clock might reach zero while you’re trying to draw up the play.
With the right systems in place, comprehensive prospect research doesn’t need to be such a time-consuming task. Use these tips to quickly find the most pertinent details in a LinkedIn profile. Their company’s LinkedIn Page will also often contain easily accessible tidbits you can use (zero in on how they present their message in the “About Us” section, as well as their most recent updates and shares).
For teams using Sales Navigator, the platform includes many features to help identify viable prospects more easily and streamline your research, such as Advanced Lead/Company Search and Lead Recommendations.
#2: Prioritize contact data you have confidence in
Trying to chase down a prospect based on outdated contact info can be a major time-waster. Not only that, but once you actually get in touch with someone, your conversation may run off the rails if you lack readily accessible, up-to-date information to propel things forward.
Goldberg advises that contact data “be sourced from multiple places – from first-party data that’s generated through your company’s website or CRM platforms to third-party data that can enrich and complete the information you have in house.”
Sales Navigator Deals is designed for this exact purpose. It provides a central view of your pipeline for all reps on the team, and syncs with your CRM so that updates and edits are transferred over in real-time. This way you can source contact data from multiple places but keep it all stored on the same convenient dashboard.
#3: More than ever, focus on opportunities to add immediate value
In the right circumstances, deals can move along toward a close very quickly around this time of year. Perhaps a buyer has some 2018 budget left to use up, or they want to get a new solution in place before the start of 2019. These are golden opportunities for sellers, but it’s all about spotting and capitalizing on them.
Earlier this week on the blog we explained how LinkedIn’s sales team uses real-time sales updates to strike while the iron is hot. By serving alerts to your LinkedIn homepage and email inbox, you get potential sales trigger events sent to you rather than needing to seek them out.
A Game Plan for Closing Out the Year Strong
Whether we’re talking football or sales, the ability to execute late in the game is a decisive advantage. Making a successful play takes preparation, practice, and leadership. I recommend reading Goldberg’s full piece at Dun & Bradstreet for an in-depth look at sales closing techniques, and activating his guidance in your digital selling strategy for the rest of the year and beyond.
All you’ll have left to figure out is your end zone celebration.
Editor’s Note: This article was first published on LinkedIn here.
For almost a decade, I worked with innovation and transformation teams at four large banks in Canada and the US. As they say, it was the best of times, and it was the worst of times.
Prior to the financial crisis, leading change was fun, as it involved thinking about emerging technologies, online experiences, and new ways to generate revenue. In contrast, being on the “change the bank” team during the dark days of the crisis required quick utilization of every method possible to reduce costs while managing risk. Regardless of the time or the bullish or bearish nature of the market, driving innovation inside these behemoths was a daily lesson about what happens when an unstoppable force meets an immovable object.
Today, I live in Silicon Valley and work in technology. Despite being immersed in this wondrous place of ideas and innovation, I have come to realize that I gained an equal number of lessons about leading transformational change and disruption from those trying times in banking.
For any company large or small that’s looking for the key components of successful innovation, here are seven tried-and-tested principles to adopt.
1. Innovation connects what’s possible to what’s valuable.
One of the challenges with introducing the topic of “innovation” is that people often have different ideas of what it is, which is why this phrase — “Innovation connects what’s possible to what’s valuable” — became my working definition. Just because something is possible, doesn’t mean it should be pursued. Unless it adds meaningful value to your customer or drives purposeful change inside your organization, then you run the risk of getting distracted and wasting limited resources.
In order to coalesce people around a shared definition and understanding, it’s also helpful to define what innovation isn’t. In the context of a large, very established bank, innovation isn’t simply ideation (it’s an end-to-end process from idea to execution), nor is it big-bang moonshots (small changes can add real value) and it certainly isn’t limited to technology. Recognizing this point made me realize the important role of context.
2. The context for innovation is what matters.
Having now worked in several different industries, I’ve come to appreciate just how contextual innovation is. Innovation means completely different things in different companies. The role of innovation is very different at Apple than it is at Boeing. Every organization has its own innovation genome made up of a multitude of factors including its industry, history, assets, leadership, customers, and so on. In short, context matters.
Your starting point matters, too. My banking colleagues often voiced frustration that we couldn’t easily replicate what the disruptive FinTech startups were doing. That’s the downside of being an incumbent player; unfortunately, it means starting with a myriad of legacy factors (like outdated systems or disparate data) and built-in complexity.
As much as we might all love to begin again with a greenfield opportunity, that simply isn’t a reality for many corporations. The lesson here is that your innovation journey will result in a lot of dead ends if your approach doesn’t factor in an awareness of your starting conditions and unique context.
3. Innovation adds a new value, not necessarily new things.
Corporations often begin their innovation efforts by gathering all the great ideas their employees have. This strategy, while commendable, raises a distinct challenge: what are you then going to do with all those ideas? How do you filter through them? And which ones can you actually implement? Organizations can create a sense of disillusionment among employees by actively engaging them in the ideation phase, only to leave them disappointed when few, if any, of their ideas end up being implemented.
Instead of a wide-open approach to ideation, focus employees on the new value that innovation can create. Importantly, this strategy doesn’t always involve the creation of new things. The person who added wheels to the bottom of the suitcase obviously didn’t invent either but instead unlocked tremendous value by bringing the two concepts together. Your employees are ideally positioned to pursue this kind of innovation because they know what assets you have to play with, but they will need to look on old treasures with fresh eyes.
4. Incremental innovation helps create the right culture.
Another stumbling block occurs when companies get hung up on the notion that they must find the “next big thing.” I’m here to tell you: innovation is rarely a Big Bang idea. When working in financial services, people referenced how groundbreaking the introduction of the ATM was… in the 1960s.
The point is, if we wait around for the next ATM-type breakthrough, we miss the opportunity to generate huge amounts of incremental value and improvements along the way. And little improvements can pack a large punch. The genius who decided to turn the Heinz ketchup bottle upside down made a small change but had a big impact on the customer experience.
The most innovative organizations place equal value on continuous, incremental improvement because they know that championing incremental innovation does a lot to create a culture of creativity and a mindset of progression and change within your organization.
5. Innovation is rarely about the technology alone.
Too many innovation agendas get hijacked by an obsession with new technology and new products. As many change leaders learn, technology often proves to be the easiest part of the innovation puzzle. What’s far more difficult is driving successful change across people, processes and culture.
However, finding ways to creatively re-engineer processes can deliver in meaningful wins. Look for the canaries in the coal mine, which are symptoms of bad processes. For example, any paper-based form or — heaven forbid — a fax machine, by definition, in a digital age is an opportunity for process innovation. While you might be tempted to jump immediately to a technology solution pause first to purposefully design your ideal process and understand how you’re changing the way work gets done. Otherwise, you run the risk of ending up with a half-baked solution that underwhelms users and doesn’t create the seamless, digital experience you were hoping for.
6. Innovation occurs when three things align.
In order for innovation to be successful, a perfect intersection of three things must occur. Think of it as three legs of a stool where, if one leg is shorter than the other two, failure is inevitable.
The first leg is obvious: there must be a market or a customer need. At RBC, our first foray into mobile payments failed because only certain customer segments were ready to adopt them, which illustrates why it’s critical to enter the market right before the tipping point of mass adoption, but not too soon before. Too early or too late and you’ll fail to capture all the benefits, or worse still, a better-timed competitor will.
That point dovetails nicely with the second leg of the stool: timing. Despite an idea’s potential for tremendous growth, it’s sometimes too early. The slopes of Silicon Valley are littered with the skeletons of promising startups that had the right idea but were ahead of their time. They languish, only to watch later entrants swoop in and capture the market at the perfect moment. Remember MySpace? Or Bebo? As they say in these parts, the only thing worse than being wrong is being early.
Which brings me to the final stool leg: there must be technology robust enough, mature enough, and scalable enough to support your idea. All too often with emerging technologies, the merit is there, but the technology isn’t stable enough to scale for an enterprise-wide deployment at a large multinational company. It’s one of the reasons why the marriage between small startups (who desperately want to secure large customers) and enterprises (who are equally desperate for the innovation that startups bring) is fraught with peril, broken promises and disappointment.
7. Utilize an innovation conveyer belt, not a funnel
Combining these six principles is key for driving successful innovation but it’s particularly important to be attuned to timing.
Timing is one of the major reasons why the notion of an “innovation funnel” inside a company doesn’t work. By its very nature, a funnel implies that lots of ideas go in at the top with only a few making their way out of the bottom after being put through your organization’s “innovation process.” Logically, the ideas that make it through are those where the three legs of the stool are the same.
But what if there was an emerging market need that simply wasn’t developed enough? Or a promising technology that hadn’t hardened sufficiently? Those ideas are potentially worth revisiting in the future but may get permanently discarded when you use a one-way funnel.
I’ve seen countless examples of an idea being surfaced only to be shot down by others with the rationale that ‘we looked at that before’ or ‘we tried that and it didn’t work’. A healthy innovation practice involves challenging prior conclusions, examining previous assumptions and being open-minded about revisiting ideas.
Conclusion
Alfred DuPont Chandler, a business historian at Harvard Business School, put it perfectly when he said “You can’t do today’s job with yesterday’s methods, and still be in business tomorrow.” Given the relentless pace of change in this digital era, innovation has to become a core competency for every organization. Without it, survival is not guaranteed. For today, it is the only job.
For business owner and email marketers, establishing a vibrant and effective Welcome Series is an essential first step in attracting and keeping customers.
You never get a second chance to make a first impression, after all, and having an engaging welcome email series is the best way to show potential customers what your company is all about.
Remember, your welcome email series is the first real interaction you have with many of your potential customers. They may have seen your Facebook ads, or skimmed through your website, but a lot of them still don’t really know what it is that separates your business from the competition.
An engaging, well-constructed email welcome series can effectively communicate that information for you – and it can win you a lot of new business in the process. This series is even placed in the #1 spot on Neil Patel’s list of 7 email automations every Ecommerce store needs.
So it must be important!
It’s the crucial introduction, pre-sell and relationship building tool you need to create interest in your business. And for many brands, the welcome series is the top revenue driving email automation.
With a little time and creativity, you can turn this email sequence into a consistent source of revenue and new customers.
Let’s take a look at the essential parts of a winning welcome series.
An Ever-Increasing Subscriber List
Before we break down the actual layout of your welcome series, we need to make one thing abundantly clear:
Your welcome sequence will not drive any significant amount of revenue if you’re not continuously sending people through it.
If this sounds remedial to you, good – that means you take list growth seriously.
If you’re not actively trying to grow your list, though, you need to allocate some time to doing so ASAP. These strategies won’t make a lick of difference to the performance of your welcome series if you’re not constantly funneling new subscribers into it.
There are two basic ways most ecommerce owners gain email subscribers who have not yet bought from them:
1. By relying on the user to scroll all the way down to the footer of their website and enter in their contact info
2. By placing an opt-in form directly in front of their visitors in the form of a popup
Which approach do you think consistently produces the highest conversion rate?
But the extent to which they work depends on how thoughtful you are in creating them.
Take a look at these examples.
The first is a very standard newsletter opt-in form; the second is a more unconventional version of the same thing.
While they both are trying to achieve the same end (getting more people to subscribe), there are a few key differences that you should pay attention to if you want to create a highly-successful opt-in form of your own.
1. HeadlineText
Popups are much more common than they used to be and thus less likely to grab the same kind of attention they did ten years ago. To remedy this, you need headline text that keeps visitors interested enough to not default-close your popup. Using a boring headline like “Sign Up for Updates!” isn’t going to cut it.
2. CTA
Think outside the box with your CTA. Words like “Subscribe” or “Submit” can carry a negative connotation because they imply commitment on the part of the user. They’re also incredibly boring. While the tone in the second CTA example above won’t work for every business, it’s a good example because it’s different and makes the user want to hit the button, in part because it’s written in the first person but more importantly because it hints at a signup gift.
3. Incentive
Which sounds more appealing to you: updates or presents? The presence of a defined incentive in the second form (“Your welcome gift”) makes it much more likely to convert than the first version. Telling people exactly what the incentive is, for example 10% off your first order, also works extremely well. In fact, most brands use this approach.
If you can afford to do so, we strongly recommend using a discount or free gift as an opt-in incentive.
Creating the Perfect Popup – Incentivize and Test Frequently
People are getting increasingly protective over their inboxes, which makes tying an offer to your sign-up form so necessary.
The offer doesn’t have to be crazy—10-15% off the first purchase should work—but you need to give potential customers a reason to divulge their contact information (this can also profoundly help turn new subscribers into loyal purchasers, by the way).
Once you’ve decided on the offer you’d like to extend to anyone who subscribes to your emails, you’ll want to conduct split tests to determine what sort of copy, content, and popup triggers work best with your audience.
We’re partial to using exit-intent triggers because they’re relatively unobtrusive, but the only way to determine what’s truly optimal for your brand is by testing. Isolate one variable, test two different versions, declare a winner, and move on to the next. It’s pure Darwinism—only the strong survive.
Repeat this process frequently enough and you’ll have a reliable, high-converting opt-in popup in no time.
The Emails
Email #1: Get to the point
When people opt-in through your incentive-laden popup, they don’t want to stare at long paragraphs of text in the follow-up email rhapsodizing about how terrific your company is.
They want the goods.
They want the discount.
And they want it now – so give it to them. Immediately.
Configure your first email so that the very second a new subscriber joins your list, it’s sent to them with the coupon code prominently displayed. Include a brief thank you/welcome note at the end and leave it at that. You can see some examples of winning welcome email designs here.
(Note: It’s a good idea to set the code to expire anywhere from 2-14 days after issuance and to let the customer know that. This will help build urgency throughout the rest of the sequence.)
And make sure the code appears as text, not just overlayed on a graphic, so it can easily be copied on a mobile device.
Email #2: Introduce yourself
Your first email was short and sweet, giving a quick introduction while providing the incentivizing discount code. Now you can take some time to provide background on your company and to officially welcome new subscribers to your family or tribe or whatever affectionate term you use to describe your group of customers and subscribers.
Use your second email to highlight your USP and to begin to establish the specific tone you’ll be using in all future communications.
You really want to develop a distinct personality for your brand that will be readily identifiable to your subscribers. This will make them less hesitant to purchase products from a new source, as they’ll feel they actually know who you are as a company.
Use Smart Automation
Before we get into the nitty gritty of what sort of content to include in these next few emails, we’re going to take a second to emphasize the importance of using smart automation to ensure any emails you send are relevant to where your subscribers are in the buying process.
Let’s imagine someone hits your website, subscribes to your list, receives the discount code, and immediately uses it to make a purchase. Should they then receive the next four emails in your sequence that remind them to use the discount code before it expires?
No. A thousand times no.
Not only will those emails be irrelevant, they’ll also be annoying. They’ll make your company look amateurish and unprofessional, and they’ll jeopardize your ability to maintain that customer’s trust and loyalty.
You want to capture their attention (and business) with the fewest amount of emails possible. Yes, conveying your brand’s value and USP are important, but if a subscriber purchases from you the second they get your welcome discount, you don’t really need to continue selling yourself – they’re clearly picking up what you’re putting down. Don’t blow it by flooding their inbox with irrelevant messages!
Most ESPs have intuitive filters that make it simple to exclude purchasers from receiving unnecessary emails, regardless of how many total emails are in your welcome sequence.
Let’s take a look at how we can use a conditional rule to filter out anyone who’s made a purchase from receiving the next two emails in this series. We’ll use Klaviyo for this example, a favorite tool of many Ecommerce email marketing specialists, but any good ecommerce ESP will possess similar capabilities.
By using a conditional split based around the “Placed Order” metric after the second email, we’re able to filter out anyone who’s made a purchase after beginning this welcome sequence.
Depending on the content in your emails and in your other automations, you can put the split after first email too. It is sensible to send people down a different path immediately after the first purchase in most cases.
Lastly, if your ESP supports this as Klaviyo does, you could add a filter to the entire sequence that automatically removes anyone who purchases, regardless of what stage they’re at.
This is incredibly useful in helping achieve our goal of sending the minimum number of emails required to convert a subscriber to a customer.
We’ll repeat this process for the following two emails.
This kind of conditional logic is easy to implement in your email sequences and will help keep your emails relevant to your recipients. And again, if you don’t want to set up these different exit points, just apply a filter to your whole sequence to remove buyers as a more blanket approach.
Email #3: Social Proof
If a subscriber hasn’t made a purchase after receiving the first two emails in your sequence, they likely still need some convincing that your products are as great as you claim.
Who better to convince them of this than your existing customers?
Take your third email as an opportunity to showcase some of your best reviews, either of your hero product or a number of items in your collection.
Don’t just focus on mere star rating here, focus on the content of the review. Try to showcase testimonials that highlight how your product has helped solve a particular problem or proved itself superior to a competitors’. If the reviewer included a photo with their review, include it in the email to give your subscribers an idea of how they too might put your items to use. Include clear call to action buttons that link directly to the featured product page where possible.
Email #4: Product Benefits + Urgency
If a subscriber hasn’t been filtered out by purchasing at this point, they need further convincing.
Use this fourth email to highlight and describe some of your best-selling products. Include high-quality photography, clear CTAs, and remind your subscribers that their coupon grants them X% off – but that it’s going to expire soon. Creating urgency is a great way to nudge these hesitant would-be purchasers across the finish line.
Email #5: Urgency, urgency, urgency
Now it’s crunch time.
Your new subscriber has already received four emails from you and remains steadfastly unmoved by your offer. What now?
Let them know that their discount will expire in just a few hours, and once that midnight hour hits, their opportunity to save on that fantastic product will be gone for good.
If they’re on-brand, use phrases that connote a sense of urgency—“don’t be left behind,” “you’re missing out,” “your last chance at a great deal,” etc.–while reinforcing the expiration time.
While you need to hammer home the fact that the discount is going to expire very soon, don’t lose sight of the fact that at the end of the day you’re selling a product – not your discount.
Remind subscribers of what makes your products different and if you have a warranty or no-questions-asked return policy, mention it. Perceived risk is one of the key factors that prevents people from buying from unknown brands, so by addressing it head-on you may be able to overcome this common obstacle to purchasing.
Final Thoughts
In addition to split-testing your opt-in form, you should also remember to be constantly conducting tests throughout the entire welcome series itself.
Factors like content, subject line, email frequency, CTA, and discount-offering will play a big role in determining how well your welcome series performs, and you should continue to test them to see what strategy is most effective.
There’s no shortcut to determining what’s best. Just use best practices as a starting point then prepare for lots of vigilant testing and re-testing. And make sure that whatever decisions you make are accurately represented in your series – you don’t want to tell customers they have 48 hours to redeem a coupon code and then remind them three weeks later that time is running out. It’s important to be consistent with your email series; keeping your series relevant will do much to ensure customer loyalty and subscription rates.
Finally, don’t rush through setting up your welcoming sequence without some deliberate thought and strategy. This is a powerful chance to make a lasting impression for potential customers, so take your time. Make sure you have the right popups in place for your series.
You might not get everything right the first time around, but consistent split-testing will help you get to where you want to be.
There’s no one-size-fits all strategy to email marketing, but by following the steps in this article, you will be well-equipped to make a welcome series that can turn new subscribers into paying customers. Good luck!
The ultimate goal of content marketing is to foster consumer relationships that drive conversions and grow a brand’s customer base. In order to do that, content marketers need to understand which parts of their marketing are delivering purchase-driving information to customers—and which aren’t.
Many content marketers have discovered the unlikely secret to accessing rich, timely, firsthand insights that improve customer acquisition and revenue—consumer phone calls.
Conversation Analytics Is the Solution
In today’s mobile-first world, many consumers that visit a site via search or digital advertising convert by calling. Search, social, and display will drive over 162 billion calls to US businesses in 2019. That’s more than double the amount they drove in 2014. Call volume to businesses is exploding.
Getting insights into these calls and conversations at scale is a powerful way for marketers to improve SEO, content marketing, and conversion rates.
Conversation analytics works by transcribing the call, then using powerful AI algorithms to analyze the transcriptions, telling marketers:
If the call was answered or sent to voicemail
The exact words and phrases spoken on a call
If the caller was a quality lead
What products/services they were interested in
What the sentiment of the caller was
If the caller converted into a customer
Which sales agents and business locations are converting the most, and least, calls into customers
Analyzing conversations from consumer calls can also serve as a powerful lens into how well your content converts potential buyers into customers.
Give Consumers the Information They Need to Convert
Analyzing what is being said on phone calls placed to your business can help you better understand what information your content marketing is missing. Phone conversations are rich with high-quality insights into what consumers need to know about a product or service before they make a purchase or book an appointment. By analyzing those conversations and incorporating insights from them into your website content and overall messaging, marketers can anticipate their audience’s needs and convert more website visitors to customers.
The leading wholesale provider of equipment and supplies for the foodservice industry, Central Restaurants, uses DialogTech’s conversation analytics technology to, among other things, analyze what happens on the calls their content generates.
“Most of our orders come from phone calls, and this is especially true for higher-priced products that people might not feel comfortable buying online,” said Nathan Smith, Marketing Database Analyst at Central. “We can analyze calls from a specific product’s webpage to see what questions callers are asking, then have our content team update the details on that page to answer them.”
Throughout two years of using DialogTech’s conversation analytics and call attribution technology, the Central team was able to understand exactly which channel, ad, keyword search, and website interaction drove calls that convert. Smith says his team has increased calls by 23% and new customers by 13% year-over-year.
Shorten the Customer Journey
If you notice a particular web page or blog post is driving a high number of calls, it’s important to understand why. Are consumers calling because this content features a high-selling product or service? Is this particular piece of content exceedingly successful in convincing readers they should become a customer? Or is the content lacking in key information, leading to high number of calls to inquire about product details?
Conversation analytics can point to the pieces of content that drive the most calls and, through AI-powered technology, help you understand what customers are saying on these calls.
For example, Galeton.com, a B2B work clothing and safety gear e-commerce site, was looking to boost conversions. The Galeton marketing team ran a series of website optimization tests covering 78 website elements. One of the biggest revelations from their testing was from their product detail pages. Customers were calling Galeton’s agents to ask which size they should purchase despite the fact that the sizing chart was on the page—albeit at the bottom. Galeton moved the sizing chart above the fold and boosted their conversion rate by 13%.
Understand Which Content Drives High-Quality Calls
Analyzing phone calls can also inform other aspects of your content marketing program, like the creative for search and display ads. When combined with call attribution, conversation analytics can tell you which specific ads (or marketing channel, keywords, or webpage) are driving the most calls, and the highest-quality calls.
This level of in-depth understanding of your call channel allows for ad optimization through powerful methods like A/B testing.
Your marketing team can develop multiple versions of the same ad and, with call attribution and analytics, understand which creative is delivering the highest-quality and highest-converting leads over the phone.
Increase Search-Driven Site Visits
If people are asking questions about your products or services on the phone, they are also likely asking those same questions in search engines. Answering those questions by creating digital content will increase visits from SEO (including voice search) and achieve higher SERP rank for your brand. This leads to a more informed and more purchase-ready consumer audience.
Enterprise tech startups have been on a 12-month IPO joyride.
From MongoDB to Dropbox to Eventbrite, more than 20 startups in the enterprise tech industry have sold shares to the public and made splashy Wall Street debuts this past year.
Unlike consumer internet companies whose products are usually free and designed for the masses, these enterprise startups create products and service that are sold to other businesses. It's a massive $3.7 trillion worldwide market, and yet these startups don't always enjoy the mainstream name recognition of their consumer counterparts.
To help you familiarize yourself with this new crop of public tech companies, Business Insider has rounded up some of the key players driving the growth and the success behind the scenes.
The names may not be as familiar as Mark Zuckerberg, and there may not be movies about them, but these 15 executives are the stars you need to know about to really understand where the red-hot Enterprise tech market is going.
Eliot Horowitz is one of the founders of MongoDB, along with Kevin P. Ryan and Dwight Merriman.
MongoDB, an open-source database company based in New York, went public in October 2017. MongoDB had raised $256 million before going public with a valuation of $1.6 billion. Since then, the company's market cap has swelled to $3.6 billion under Ittycheria. Today, MongoDB has over 30 million downloads and over 1,000 technology and service partners.
Horowitz’s programming career began at age four when he wanted to create a chess-playing AI. And at age nine, he started programming for his mother’s medical practice.
Starting in 2007, Horowitz wrote the core codebase for the popular open-source database today. Today, as CTO he oversees the engineering and product teams. Recently, he led MongoDB in introducing new licensing to prevent major cloud companies from selling its software without open-sourcing it.
Before MongoDB, Horowitz also co-founded an online retail search engine called ShopWiki, which he built and later sold in 2010. Horowitz had also worked as a software developer in DoubleClick.
In 2006, Horowitz was listed in BusinessWeek’s Top 25 Entrepreneurs Under Age 25, and in 2015, he was listed in Business Insider’s “Under 35 and Crushing It” list. Just last year, he was also named to Crain's NY Business 40 Under 40 Class list.
Sameer Dholakia, CEO of SendGrid
Sameer Dholakia is accustomed to using both hands to accomplish a variety of jobs — and not just because he's ambidextrous.
The executive has served in numerous roles in the tech industry, from sales to product management.
Since Dholakia took the helm as SendGrid’s CEO in 2014, the company's revenue has quadrupled, and he led the company to IPO on Nov. 15, 2017. Twilio announced it would acquire SendGrid in a $2 billion deal.
Dholakia has previously served as CEO at VMLogix, which was acquired by Citrix. And he worked in sales, business development and product management for Trilogy, where he helped the startup grow to a $300 million business.
And his ambidexterity has given him another special skill: he can write with his left hand and throw a fastball with his right.
Lynne Laube, COO and Co-Founder of Cardlytics
Lynne Laube is one of the co-founders of Cardlytics, along with Scott Grimes and Hans Theisen. On Feb. 8, Laube took Cardlytics public, and since 2008, she has secured over $200 million in capital from investors. At the time, this Atlanta-based company had a valuation of $273 million.
Cardlytics partners with more than 1,500 financial institutions to run banking rewards programs for customers. It also uses insights on how consumers spend money to help marketers target likely buyers and measure the impact of marketing campaigns.
Laube wanted to build a company where people love coming to work everyday. For example, Cardlytics encourages and funds employees to start their own extracurricular groups, such as the rock band The Redeemers, a beer brewing club and a mentorship organization
In 2016, she was named one of the top 10 venture-backed female founders by Inc. Magazine and Entrepreneur 360. She has also been a finalist for the E&Y Entrepreneur of the Year Award twice.
Within Cardlytics, she launched Women of Cardlytics to provide career mentorship and support for women. Before founding Cardlytics, she worked at Capital One and Bank One.
Outside of work, Laube loves to cook, and she swears by her on-demand workouts.
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