Rnordman

One of the great things about teaching is that while some students pass by like mist in the night others remain connected forever. I get to watch them grow into their careers and cheer them on.

—

Its been three and a half years since I first designed and taught the Lean LaunchPad class and lots of water has gone under the bridge since then. I’ve taught hundreds of teams, the National Science Foundation Innovation Corps has taught close to 400 teams led by our nations top scientists, and the class is being taught around the world.

But I still remember a team from the first class, one which wanted to build a robotic lawnmower. It’s now been over 3 years since the team has left my classroom and I thought I’d share with you what the two founders, Jorge Heraud and Lee Redden, learned then and what they’re doing now.

The Autonomous Lawnmower
They called their company Autonomow. And they were absolutely convinced what the world needed was an auto-driving lawn mover for institutions with large green spaces.

You can see their first slide deck in class below (and here)

Like in all our Lean Launchpad classes we teach a combination of theory coupled with intense and immersive experiential learning outside the classroom. Students need to get out of the building and talk to 10-15 customers a week.

The next week they came back in class and presented this:

Each week we’d teach them about one more part of what makes up a business model. All teams struggle with finding product/market fit.

By week four their presentation looked like this:

Notice something different about the cover slide? Massive pivot. Like all great Silicon Valley companies they started with a technology and guessed who the customers will be. They’re almost always wrong. They could have never figured this out sitting inside a classroom writing a business plan.

At week five (see here) they were actually getting into farm fields wearing hip boots and overalls. Now they were figuring out how to create demand.

The Customer Development process, this relentless drive to turn hypotheses into facts is what makes this learning so rapid.

At week six they were trying to figure out their distribution channel (here) after another pivot. They got their minimal viable product (a machine vision platform) up and running in the lab.

At week seven (here) another pivot happened when farmers taught them about how to price their product. Instead of an of selling hardware they were selling a service.

BTW, notice that they were now dragging their machine vision platform through the farm fields!  If there was ever any question of whether a minimal viable product can work for hardware, see what they say in their video below.

By week eight they were learning who they needed to partner with (see here). Most importantly they found a customer who taught them while weeding carrots was nice, thinning lettuce was where the money was.

After 9 weeks their final presentation looked like this.

When I teach in universities I’m not running an incubator. What I’m trying to do is to get students to learn a way of thinking about new ventures that will stick with them for life. And I try to do by having them teach themselves, rather than us teaching at them. Whether they start a company or not, I don’t keep score.

But some teams remain connected forever. I get to watch them grow into their careers and cheer them on. This was one of those teams. After class they took this idea and formed a company – Blue River Technology.

Over the last three years they turned their vision and PowerPoint slides into real hardware that solves real customer problems. And with 3 rounds of funding, including a grant from the National Science Foundation, they’ve raised $13 million.

Take a look and see what they’ve done.

If you can’t see the video click here

“The customers had way more insights then we had. They had been thinking about their own problems for so long…If you just go out and try to sell maybe you’ll find some buyers, but you won’t be learning about what you should be doing.”

Lee Redden – Blue River Technology

——

I’m off next week on the next great adventure. We’re going to launch the I-Corps @ NIH and change how our country commercializes life sciences.

Filed under: Customer Development, Lean LaunchPad, Teaching

RBC Capital Markets boils down the basics of cloud computing -- storage, compute, I/O and a few other features -- to come up with one unit of cloud pricing that can be compared across vendors. Check out the results.

Confused by cloud computing price comparisons? Here they are in one easy-peasy chart originally published by Gigaom, © copyright 2014.

Continue reading…

An Accenture survey conducted last year found that only one in five companies said that they were “very satisfied” with the returns they’ve received from analytics to date. One of the reasons analytics is working for the companies in this select group is because they tend to deploy analytics technologies and expertise across the breadth of the enterprise. But the survey also found that only 33% of businesses in the U.S. and Western Europe are aggressively adopting analytics across the entire enterprise. This percentage marks an almost four times increase in the trend of enterprise-wise adoption compared to a survey conducted three years earlier, but the question must still be asked — how can we improve this number?

Cross-functional analytics can be a challenge to implement for a variety of reasons including functional silos and a shortage in analytics talent. Yes, these obstacles can seem daunting at first, but our experiences tell us that they are not insurmountable. Following are tips organizations can follow to drive a horizontal focus on analytics and achieve their desired business outcomes, such as customer retention, product availability, or risk mitigation.

Identify the right metrics that “move the needle.” First, senior management should decide on the business goal for an analytics initiative and the key performance indicators to track that will put them on the right path toward success. For a high-performing retailer, we found that customer retention, product availability, labor scheduling, product assortment, and employee engagement were all leading indicators to driving growth and profitability for the company. Selecting the right critical metrics is a cornerstone of success as it brings focus and clarity on what matters most to the business.

Establish a center of gravity for analytics. Next, create an Analytics Center of Excellence (CoE) that spans the enterprise. A CoE is a team of data scientists, business analysts and domain experts from various business functions — sales, marketing, finance, and R&D, for example — that are brought together to facilitate a cross-pollination of experiences and ideas to find solutions to a variety of business goals. The CoE itself is organized into pods — generally made up of four to six people, with each person offering a different skillset — that are deployed across the business to solve problems that span multiple functions.

Develop a robust root cause analysis capability. Once CoE is created, the pod teams should perform root cause analyses to support the performance management process.  The retailer example mentioned above used root cause analysis to answer the question around what factors contributed to an unsuccessful marketing promotion. They tested hypotheses by asking questions such as: were results poor because of the marketing message, pricing and bundling, product availability, labor awareness of the promotion or did a competitor have an attention-grabbing marketing campaign happening at the same time? A successful CoE model provides a company with the capability to not only answer these questions with validated cross-functional insight, but also to determine the best decision around what to do next.

Make collaborative decisions. Using a CoE affords functional managers the ability to make collaborative and informed decisions. They are not left alone to develop root cause analysis insights in a vacuum. Rather, as a team, the managers and the CoE are able to make decisions and take actions based on the insights garnered together.  To accomplish this, it is critical to establish a forum with the cross-functional business leaders to share and visualize the data and interpret the insights for the purpose of decision making.

As an example, a consumer products company used a weekly executive management meeting as the forum to discuss the CoE’s insights and make decisions based on the outputs. In this instance, the head of the Analytics CoE was the facilitator of the meeting and focused the executives’ time on the decisions that needed to be made based on the important insights the data identified versus the noise that should be ignored (e.g. to better understand the effectiveness of a new product launch). The combination of data science, advanced visualization, and active decision making — along with an impartial facilitator with deep content expertise — was key to collaborative and effective decision making.

It’s important to note that once data-driven decisions are made and actions are set in motion, companies should track their progress against the metrics that were established at the start of their analytics journey. If goals are not being realized, they should repeat the process to understand the root causes of an issue that will help them achieve their business goals. In one instance, a bank’s Analytics CoE delivered such consistently positive results that the company formally branded all analysis coming out of the CoE so the business leaders could be aware of its quality and credibility outright. The branding encouraged business leaders to trust the insights and act on them faster.

When a company expands its analytics purview from functional to horizontal, it opens the door to greater opportunities and successes. While removing silos and taking a teaming approach to analytics is part of an internal virtuous cycle, another cycle is also created — the attained results are experienced by the customers and will keep them coming back for more.

Unit pricing makes comparing products—from one brand to the next or between different sizes—more like comparing apples to apples, so it's easier to see which item really saves you the most money. Unfortunately, the unit pricing on the labels you see at the grocery store isn't always reliable.

Read more...

One of the undeniable laws of content marketing is that it works better when you have a documented strategy in place. Past research from Content Marketing Institute shows that:

“Brands with a documented content marketing strategy:

1. Are far more likely to consider themselves effective at content marketing,
2. Feel significantly less challenged with every aspect of content marketing,
3. Generally are more likely to consider themselves more effective in their use of all content marketing tactics and social media channels,
4. Were able to justify spending a higher percentage of their marketing budget on content marketing.”

In an agency setting, we have a clear incentive to produce a clear content marketing strategy for clients before we begin work.

But, strategy takes time, especially for a new client. Researching new target buyers, learning the ins and outs of an entirely new topic, and trying to think of ways to produce high-quality content for a new market all take a lot of time. We could easily spend 100 hours on strategy and brainstorming for a client before we ever produced a piece of content for them – but that’s a hard sell, and I think it’s an unnecessary one.

As a result, we’ve done our best to develop a process for creating content marketing strategies that are both effective and simple. By focusing on the essentials up front, we can come back later and conduct more detailed analysis after we’ve started working with a client, without losing sight of the big picture.

The 12 Questions You Must Answer:

The following are what we consider to be the 12 essential, must-answer, unavoidable questions you have to answer to build what we call a Minimum Viable Content Marketing Strategy.

1. Why are we doing this?
2. How will content marketing support our broader business goals?
   The answer to these two questions should be the same. It’s important enough that it requires 2 questions.
3. Who are our target audiences that will buy from us?
4. Who are our target audiences that will consume and share our content?
   There should be some kind of difference between those two groups of people. Is the difference budget, or is it something else?
5. Who on your team is going to do the work?
   Literally – You want names and what they’ll commit to doing each month – you have to know your resources before you can decide WHAT you’ll be doing.
6. What can we offer to our target audiences at each stage of the customer lifecycle?
   Feel free to substitute sales funnel if that makes more sense to you.
7. How does our target audience find and consume content?
   Reddit? Email newsletters? Direct Mail? Facebook Feed? Book Clubs?
8. How should we differentiate within our market (not just from direct competitors, but within our topical domain)
9. How do we define success, and how do we define failure?
   This is the beginning of the conversation that addresses metrics and KPIs to reflect our broader business goals.
10. Where will we focus our content distribution and promotion efforts?
    This is your promotional channel plan and will address how you handle owned, earned, and paid media channels.
11. When do we publish stuff?
12. When do we measure results?

You should be able to answer most of these questions in a day, though you’ll want to conduct more extensive research on a few of them, particularly your user research and audience personas.

Learn the Full Process In Our New Workbook:

If you want to read the complete guide to building your Minimum Viable Content Marketing Strategy in a single 8-hour work day, we’ve published a digital version of our new workbook, The One-Day Content Marketing Strategy Conversation.

Sign up in the form below and we’ll send you a PDF copy.

• Email
• Join Our Private Newsletter:
  • Send me content updates via email

Note: We published this as a printed workbook, too. If you’d like a print copy, we’re happy to send you one for free – just email kane [at] contentharmony.com.

Source

As we’ve seen, consumers have the power to change a brand’s story. No brand, no matter how large or small, is so powerful that they don’t need to worry about consumers’ effects on their bottom line. Consider the new brand story of Apple, which has recently faced backlash regarding faulty software updates and, worse, phones that bend when crammed in a pocket too long. If a brand as big as Apple is susceptible, yours is, too. We also know now how to combat a changing brand story, but these measures only help after the fact. How can you take pre-emptive measures to avoid many future problems? By making sure you craft a solid, powerful, and compelling brand story in the first place. What do you need to do this?

Know Your Value Proposition

If you know your value proposition, then you know your brand’s story. Your value proposition contains your brand’s history, reflects your journey, encompasses your goals, projects your promise and understands your buyer personas. Start with your value proposition—remember how you got from the beginning to where you are now. Write it all down and the story will begin to take shape.

Know Your Characters

If you know your buyers personas, then you know your brand story’s characters. The next step is to turn these personas into figures your audience will care about and root for. Your buyers should be invested in the characters, should somehow relate to them. They should experience the same pain points and require the same relief.

Allow Interpretation

Yes, consumers can change your brand story if you’re not careful. That also means they have the power to finish it for you, too. If you’re too busy beating them over the head with your message, you give them no room to come up with their own conclusions. Would you read a mystery novel if the author told you “whodunit” on the first page? Of course not! Let your buyers interpret for themselves and they’ll be that much more attached to your brand. As long as you provide all the elements and shape the story for them, your customers will follow along. You’ll all arrive at the same place at the same time.

Practice and Understand Fiction

Most of what we’ve covered so far stems from absolute fact: value proposition, buyer personas, and pain points. You can tell a great non-fiction story with this information, but is that enough to draw your buyers in? To really make the most of brand storytelling, you must learn to apply the non-fiction to fictional settings. Creativity, personal style, and a narrative that really packs a punch are what will impact your buyers in a way that will reverberate for years. Susan Gunelius says, “…The best brand storytellers understand the critical elements of fiction writing, which are skills that few marketers have been formally trained to do.” If you know creativity and fiction aren’t your strongest points, don’t simply settle for nonfiction. Seek out someone who can help you write a compelling, exciting, interesting, and individualized brand story.

Are you ready to start crafting your brand story today? We can help you flesh out your characters and turn your value proposition into an incredible story, so give us a call.

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A new documentary on Bitcoin hits theaters in New York, Los Angeles, and Cleveland today.

The Rise and Rise of Bitcoin debuted at the Tribeca film festival and has generated a decent amount of buzz. A lot of that has to do with being in the right place at the right time.

The documentary follows Daniel Mross, a self proclaimed libertarian and computer programmer in Pittsburgh. Mross got involved with Bitcoin in 2011, a few years after the crypto-currency got started, and quickly built his own Bitcoin mining tools, garnering him a bounty of Bitcoin. After his initial investment, Bitcoin started to quickly take off. Mross’s brother suggested they document the phenomenon as it was happening.

What is so compelling about the film is that it’s the first comprehensive look at Bitcoin’s short history. Starting with a little backstory on Bitcoin’s 2008 emergence via the mysterious Satoshi Nakamoto, Mross introduces us to early Bitcoin celebrities, walks us through the crash of several Bitcoin exchanges (along with the crash of the currency itself), and then delivers us to the birth of new, more financially responsible, crypto-currency based companies.

Mross starts by explaining Bitcoin’s mission to eliminate the third party in financial transactions and empower purely peer-to-peer money sharing. The idea was that such a system would facilitate faster, cheaper money exchanges and sales.

As a quick explainer: You “mine” Bitcoin by solving complex mathematical transactions in a process. As more Bitcoin are released into circulation by these mathematical efforts, they become more difficult to mine — and there’s a finite number of possible Bitcoin.

Read: Bitcoin for idiots: An introductory guide

“Now the incentive for Bitcoin miners is to earn Bitcoin, so the Bitcoin have to have a value,” Nicholas Mross told me in an interview. This is why Bitcoin is both a currency and a payment method.

To make fluid, bankless transactions, Nakamoto — the inventor of Bitcoin — developed a public ledger to prevent “double payment,” blocking people from using the same piece of currency simultaneously for two different transactions. Traditionally, banks keep client records private as a security measure. In contrast, the Bitcoin ledger transactions are inherently public. To achieve privacy, Nakamoto created anonymized Bitcoin address codes, so the identity and location of the transactor are not immediately known.

Because of this anonymity component, the currency has developed something of a bad reputation for facilitating illegal transactions for everything from hitmen to illicit drugs on Instagram.

One of the main Internet hubs for this kind of activity is the Silk Road. The average person may not be familiar with the Silk Road, though it has gotten a lot of press in the last year, thanks to the arrest of Silk Road creator “Dread Pirate Roberts,” also known as Ross William Ulbricht.

To illustrate and demystify the dark web, Mross hands his audience over to a shadowy Silk Road drug dealer (you can’t see any identifying features). The dealer walks the audience through the process of launching TOR (an anonymous browsing tool) and introduces us to the Silk Road interface and its cache of weed varieties.

Throughout the film we meet many of the early Bitcoin players, like Gavin Andreesen, chief scientist at the Bitcoin Foundation; Yifu Guo, who developed the first ASIC Bitcoin mining operation; and Charlie Shrem, founder of Bitcoin transfer service Bitinstant. They all talk about the promise of the Bitcoin ecosystem, both as an alternative to traditional banking and as a currency with an exciting amount of value.

Shutdown

Mross then takes us through Bitcoin’s epic crash.

In October 2013, the FBI shut down Silk Road. In February of 2014, Mt Gox, the largest Bitcoin exchange, stopped trading. Days later, the company filed for bankruptcy after losing $473 million worth of Bitcoin ($116 million of which were recovered later). Bitcoin’s value started to plummet.

Following the Mt. Gox disaster, Shrem was indicted on charges of aiding in a Silk Road money laundering scheme (Shrem pled guilty to lesser charges in September). Even Mross felt the effects. Suddenly his Bitcoin weren’t worth anything, the mining equipment he’d ordered wouldn’t come through, and his opportunity seemed lost.

“To the mainstream consumer, it meant Bitcoin is insecure, Bitcoin is over,” said Jeremy Bonney, VP of Product at CoinDesk, a Bitcoin news and analysis hub, who I interviewed for this story.

But Bitcoin came back. Mross shows us the beginning of a whole new Bitcoin ecosystem. The movie ends with an optimistic look into the future of Bitcoin.

It’s true that Bitcoin is looking up. Recently, companies ranging from Dell to Overstock have started to accept the currency. In April, venture capitalists had invested $72 million in Bitcoin companies, according to CoinDesk. Then in July, Bitcoin vault Xapo landed another $20 million in funding from Greycroft and others, bringing investment in the Bitcoin ecosystem closer to $100 million.

Part of the reason for that investment was that Bitcoin companies are increasingly focused on proving Bitcoin can be a legitimate currency that plays by the rules. Companies like Xapo and BitGo show that Bitcoin can be more secure than Mt. Gox was. And exchanges like Coinsetter and Coinbase have put efforts into following financial regulations already in place for financial exchanges in order to eventually obtain licensing (a focal point likely precipitated by Bitcoin’s crash).

Today, nearly 6 million people have downloaded Bitcoin wallets from Coinbase, Multibit, and BlockChain. That’s the best measure of how many people have adopted the currency, according to CoinDesk’s Bonney.

Even so, that’s a niche group compared to other currencies. And because of Bitcoin’s inherent value, a lot of people are hoarding it.

”While companies are increasingly accepting Bitcoin, few transactions are actually made using it,” Alex Liu, head of content at Ripple Labs, a cryptocurrency payment network, told me in an interview.

Payment network oversight

Though The Rise and Rise of Bitcoin acts as an excellent primer and general historical reference for understanding the world of Bitcoin, it doesn’t talk about one of the biggest promises of the currency: its function as a payment network.

So much of the world’s attention is drawn to Bitcoin as a currency. But it may be as a payment network, not as a currency, that Bitcoin finds its most lasting impact.

Bitcoin can facilitate fast transactions. You can send Bitcoin to another country, for example, a lot faster than you can cash. With Bitcoin as a vehicle, money can be exchanged instantaneously, converting cash to Bitcoin and then sending it digitally. Sending cash via a money transfer or through a bank can take days. Also, transaction fees are much higher when banks (or PayPal) are involved.

And though Bitcoin is used that way, the media mostly discusses its use as a highly valued and very volatile currency. That perception may be a barrier for Bitcoin’s development, especially as regulators move to bring it under control.

But it’s an inherent problem with a decentralized currency, Mross acknowledged to me. “Bitcoin has no marketing department,” he said.

“I think that’s one of the big challenges now as regulators are starting to look at it. A regulator who’s treating it as a currency is going to look at it completely differently than a regulator who’s looking at it as a payment token or an asset,” said Mross.

In the meantime, other companies are developing systems that mimic Bitcoin’s use as a payment network. Ripple Labs, which uses a digital asset to transfer funds internationally, just began working with two banks in the U.S.

Although Bitcoin has been around longer than Ripple Labs and has had success convincing companies like PayPal to accept it as a form of currency, it hasn’t made any headway with banks. As a decentralized currency and asset, Bitcoin doesn’t have anyone to make these kinds of inroads on its behalf.

That doesn’t mean it’s doomed to failure. Bitcoin already has enough of a user base to stay relevant, especially within a certain population. People who want an online cash equivalent, a currency that’s nearly anonymous and untraceable, will continue to use Bitcoin.

“You don’t need an account to use cash, and you don’t need an account to use Bitcoin, and that wasn’t possible before Bitcoin,” Mross reminded me. This one use case may help the currency to grow in countries with poor infrastructure too.

But Bitcoin’s lack of an overseer or decision-making authority may mean that the digital asset won’t realize its full intended potential for a very long time.

The Rise and Rise of Bitcoin debuts today at the Quad in New York, the Los Angeles Arena in Los Angeles, and Cedar Lee in Cleveland. Its is also available for pre-order on iTunes.

*This article has been updated. An earlier version of this story referred to Daniel by his brother’s name, Nicholas. An earlier version also incorrectly indicated that Charlie Shrem pled guilty to the same charges he was indicted on. He pled guilty to aiding and abetting an unlicensed money transmitting business. 

Last year we created 50 Stats You Need to Know About Content Marketing, which garnered over 200,000 views on slideshare and was one of our best performing blog posts of all time. This year we’re taking it a step further, demonstrating not only why you should invest in Content Marketing, but why you need to as well.

The following SlideShare will demonstrate the value of Content Marketing and how it can help build your business. We hope you can walk away with a better understanding of Content Marketing – and even convince your CEO – why this should be your number one marketing priority.

56 Reasons Why Content Marketing Works: 2014 Edition from NewsCred

We believe three things absolutely:

1. Content marketing is necessary to efficiently build your business

2. Customer acquisition requires many simultaneous tactics

3. Blogging, email marketing, and social media are the main drivers of brand engagement

• Where Are We Coming From? Last year we created 50 Stats You Need to Know About Content Marketing, which garnered over 200,000 views. This year we’re taking it a step further, demonstrating not only why you should invest in Content Marketing, but why you need to as well.
• Where Are We Going? Content marketing is not a tactic, it’s a long-term strategy. The best content marketers prove the value of their efforts, showing how content drives brand awareness, lead generation, engagement, and sales. The following slides will demonstrate the value of Content Marketing and how it can help build your business. We hope you can walk away with a better understanding of Content Marketing – and even convince your CEO – why this should be your number one marketing priority.
• This deck covers the following themes:

1. Banner ads are the problem and content marketing is the answer

2. Businesses with a defined content strategy have smarter marketing

3. Investing in a content marketing team is crucial to building your business

4. Blogging and social media drive customer acquisition

5. Email marketing generates revenue

6. Visual, relevant, and social content builds brand engagement

The Claim: Banner ads are the problem and content marketing is the answer

• Consumers reject banner ads at rates greater than 99%. (Content Marketing Institute)
• The average click-through rate for display ads is 0.11%. (Coull)
• Mobile banner ads have an average click-through rate of 0.35%. (Coull)
• 58% of B2B marketers and 60% of B2C marketers will increase their content marketing budgets in 2014. (Marketing Profs)
• 78% of CMOs believe custom content is the future of marketing. (Business2Community)

The Claim: Businesses with a defined content strategy are better marketers

• 80% of B2B marketers who have a documented content strategy are creating more content than they did one year ago. (Content Marketing Institute)
• Average website conversion for companies with defined content processes is more than twice that of companies without (5.9% vs. 3.8%). (Kapost)
• Using content-driven tactics saves an average of 13% in overall cost per lead. (Hubspot)
• Testing content efforts propels ROI improvements: Companies who test are 75% more likely to show ROI for content marketing than those who fail to test their strategies. (Hubspot)

The Claim: Investing in a content marketing team is crucial to building your business

• 86% of the most effective B2B marketers have someone who oversees content marketing strategy; however, only 46% of less effective marketers do. (Content Marketing Institute)
• Marketers work in very small teams: 81% of all content teams contain fewer than six people. (Hubspot)
• Blogs require roughly 9% of marketers’ total full-time staff dedications and demand just 7% of marketers’ total budgets. (Hubspot)
• 16% of companies employ a full-time social media specialist and 11% are paying a dedicated email marketer. (Hubspot)

The Claim: Blogging drives customer acquisition

• 82% of marketers who blog see positive ROI for their content-driven marketing. (State of Inbound Marketing)
• 79% of ‘best-in-class’ B2B marketers rate blogs as the most effective customer acquisition tactic. (Content Marketing Institute)
• 82% of marketers who blog daily acquired a customer using their blog, as opposed to 57% of marketers who blog monthly. (Hubspot)
• Brands that create 15 blog posts per month average 1,200 new leads per month. (Hubspot)
• Blogs produce low-cost leads for 24% of the marketing community. (Hubspot)
• Companies that excel at lead nurturing generate 50% more sales-ready leads at 33% lower cost. (Hubspot)
• The Claim: Social media drives customer acquisition
• 77% of buyers say they are more likely to buy from a company whose CEO uses social media. (Emarketer)
• 52% of marketers generated a lead from Facebook in 2013. (Hubspot)
• 43% of marketers generated a customer from LinkedIn in 2013. (Hubspot)
• 36% of marketers found a new customer from Twitter this year. (Hubspot)
• Customers spend more money when they convert from Pinterest than any other social referral. (Buffer)

The Claim: Email marketing generates revenue

• CMOs say email marketing: generates brand awareness (76%), increases customer retention (75%), increases website visits (73%), drives lead generation (69%), and generates sales (65%). (icontact)
• 59% of B2B marketers say email is the most effective channel in generating revenue. (Hubspot)
• Subscriber to lead conversion rates increase 51% when video is included in email marketing campaigns. (Digital Sherpa)
• Consumers who received email marketing spend 83% more when shopping. Their orders are 43% larger and they order 28% more often, too. (icontact)
• The word “exclusive” in email promotional campaigns increases unique open rates by 14%. (Hubspot)

The Claim: Visual content builds brand engagement

• The top three most widely adopted content marketing tactics are videos (87%), website articles (86%), and in-person events (85%). (Content Marketing Institute)
• 90% of information transmitted to the brain is visual, and visuals are processed 60,000X faster in the brain than text. (Billion Dollar Graphics)
• Photos are liked 2x more than text updates, while videos are shared 12x times more than links and text posts combined. (Sprout Social)
• 80% of your online visitors will watch a video, while only 20% will actually read content. (Digital Sherpa)
• Video constitutes 50% of all mobile online traffic and over 90% of internet traffic. (Diode Digital)
• 58% of online video watchers watch content on a social network site. (Pew)
• Infographics have seen the largest year-over-year increase in usage. In 2013, 38% of B2B marketers were using infographics, compared with 51% in 2014. (Content Marketing Institute)

The Claim: Relevant content builds brand engagement

• 73% of online consumers get frustrated with websites when content appears that has nothing to do with their interests. (Hubspot)
• 90% of consumers find custom content useful and 78% believe that organizations providing custom content are interested in building good relationships with them. (CMO Council)
• The most effective B2B marketers tailor content to the following categories: trends (65%), decision maker profiles (59%), company characteristics (55%), buy-cycle stage (43%), content preferences (21%), competitor’s content (11%). (Content Marketing Institute)
• Twitter users follow a median of six brands on Twitter, looking for things like interesting and fun content, news and updates, and discounts and promos. (Buffer)

The Claim: Social content builds brand engagement: Facebook

• Among retail brands, posting 1-4 times a week on Facebook generates 71% more engagement (Kissmetrics)
• Facebook posts with photos get 53% more likes, 104% more comments, and 84% more click-throughs. (Kissmetrics)
• Facebook posts with 80 characters or less get 66% more engagement. (Kissmetrics)
• Facebook posts with questions get 100% more comments. (Kissmetrics)
• Among retail brands, posting 1-2 times on Facebook a day gets 40% more engagement. (Kissmetrics)

The Claim: Social content builds brand engagement: Twitter

• Twitter drives amplification for brand messages. 78% of user engagement with a brand’s Tweets is in the form of retweets. (Buffer)
• Tweets that specifically ask followers to “retweet” receive 12x higher retweet rates than those that do not. (Buffer)
• Content that is greater than 1500 words on average receives 68.1% more tweets. (Quicksprout)

The Claim: Social content builds brand engagement: LinkedIn

• LinkedIn accounts for 64% of all social referrals to corporate homepages. (Buffer)
• 60% of LinkedIn users are interested in industry insights. (Buffer)
• Posting at least 20 times per month can help reach 60% of your unique audience. (Buffer)

The Claim: Content fuels our social web – Instagram

• By using just three hashtags, brands can gain a 110% increase in likes on their Instagram posts. (Piqora)
• By using five hashtags, brands can gain a 180% increase in likes on their Instagram posts. (Piqora)

The Claim: Social content builds brand engagement: YouTube

• 90% of internet users say that watching a video about a product is helpful in the decision process. (Digital Sherpa)
• 50% of executives watch business-related YouTube videos at least once a week. (Video Brewery)
• Website visitors are 64% more likely to buy a product on an online retail site after watching a video. (Digital Sherpa)

At Ifbyphone, we know how important call conversions are to search. Thanks to smartphones, search has gone mobile, and is expected to generate more than 70 billion calls to businesses in 2018. What’s more, study after study has confirmed that inbound calls are more lucrative than web conversions, on average converting to revenue 10 to 15 times more frequently. Search marketers can no longer afford to ignore call conversions if they wish to optimize ROI.

Here are three tips on how to track and manage call conversions to optimize the value of your search campaigns.

Track Calls from Keyword through to Sale

Understanding which search keywords drive inbound calls is an important first step to improving ROI. But since your ultimate goal is to drive revenue, you should also track which keyword searches actually result in sales, not just calls. Plus, if you integrate that call data with a bid management tool like Marin, you can optimize campaigns to drive more calls and sales automatically, the same way you do for clicks.

Keep Bad Calls from Reaching Sales Reps

Studies show that 19% of inbound calls are high-quality sales leads, while others are things like job requests, misdials, and solicitations. You don’t want those bad calls to waste your sales staff’s time. Instead, send callers to an IVR virtual receptionist first to answer and qualify the lead. The IVR can ask questions to weed out the misdials and solicitors, provide answers to callers inquiring about non-sales related matters, score the leads, and send the good calls to a sales manager to assist.

Route Callers to the Right Store, Office, or Agent

Where you route callers can play a critical role in whether they convert to a sale. Don’t just treat every call the same way. Here are a few examples of call routing options to consider:

• If you have multiple store locations, for example, you should route callers to their closest open store.
• If you have offices in different time zones, be sure that you always route calls to an office that is open.
• If you have some sales agents who routinely outperform others, they should get a higher percentage of calls.
• If you have agents who work from home or in the field, you should route calls to their home and mobile phones simultaneously to ensure calls aren’t missed.

It can be tricky to route every call optimally on a call-by-call basis, but call routing solutions with geo-location technology can help.

Let’s say that your marketing team has already successfully executed their lead generation campaign, resulting in some interested prospects. The next step is to convert those leads into deals – and that’s where the sales team steps in.

Converting a prospect into a client can be a very delicate process, since over 3 out of 4 marketing leads never convert into successful sales, according to a recent study by Hubspot. Salespeople require constant attention to detail, excellent communication skills, and persistence. So where do you start?

The first step for any salesperson is to get organized – and a Customer Relationship Management (CRM) platform can help you with that. With most CRM’s, you can register/follow up with leads, track interactions and even assign leads to other team members within your organization all in one place.

Once you have a decent CRM in place, it’s time to start doing research on your prospects to create a unique and personable sales experience. Meeting with the prospect in person can add an additional human element to the sales process, allowing you to present visuals for a more immersive experience.

There’s obviously a lot more to successfully closing a sales lead than what I mentioned. Take a look at the Infographic below, created by Refresh – an app that helps you discover common ground for better conversations – outlining 5 steps to help you close a sales lead from start to finish. What tips have you found most helpful in the sales process?

What is your plan to achieve your revenue goal? A plan starts with a solid strategy. But to achieve what you’ve planned, you must execute. CEO’s are under increased pressure from the board to deliver expectations. Every quarter, they will hold you accountable for execution that leads to results.

Every business wants to improve its sales funnel, but not everyone has the time for a complete revamp of their sales process, even if it is beneficial for revenue growth.

Sometimes you just need quick and simple ways to make your sales funnel more efficient – whether it’s through warming up more leads or nurturing latent prospects. If you’re pressed for time or don’t have the bandwidth for bigger improvements, here are three fast, easy ways to make your sales funnel more efficient:

1. Increase Your Rate Of Contact

You already have an extensive database of leads and prospects at your fingertips, but are you leveraging them for all they’re worth? By increasing your rate of contact with leads, you provide a steady influx of sales opportunities for your sales funnel.

If you’re not contacting your entire sales database 1.8 to 2 times per year, you’re missing out on potential revenue. Calling through your database on a predetermined schedule ensures that you eliminate out-of-date contact information and that you unearth any latent leads, which might just become some of your next finalized sales.

2. Evaluate Opportunities In Your Sales Pipeline

Another easy way to increase the efficiency of your sales funnel is for every member of your sales team to regularly evaluate each of his or her leads to establish whether they are schedule opportunities or nurture opportunities. Determining the number of schedule and nurture opportunities is an easy way for salespeople to gauge their sales pipeline for the month – and to know when it’s time to ramp up further lead generation.

Schedule opportunities include any lead or prospect that has been previously contacted but who needs a future contact. Your salespeople should compile data and their personal experience to determine how many more phone calls or touch points are required for a schedule opportunity to become a closed sale. With time, your sales team should be able to look at a given number of schedule opportunities and forecast the expected sales for the month.

Nurture opportunities are more promising as these prospects have at least one element of BANT (Budget, Authority, Need and Timeframe), yet they do not have all four elements. For example, a company may have the budget, need and timeframe for your product, but when it comes to making a purchase, they might not have the authority to do so – yet. These opportunities require further lead nurturing and they’re much more likely to become a final close; thus, your sales team should focus on these leads so they don’t slip away.

3. Map Out The Buyer’s Journey And Optimize Accordingly

Your sales funnel is always full of uncertainties, but too many sales teams don’t map out what they can be more certain about, namely the buyer’s journey. Start by determining what success looks like for your sales team – be concrete and specific about various sales metrics, timing and dollar amounts. Then, map out which milestones your prospects pass before they become finalized sales.

Taking those milestones, break down the needed steps and Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) that should be present for each call and contact with a prospect. Next, clearly communicate these new steps and KPIs to your salespeople, as well as eliminate old metrics that don’t measure actual sales success. For example, many sales managers urge frequent dialing, but more dials don’t always translate to more sales (or higher quality sales). The best salespeople make fewer calls because their decisions are more efficient regarding lead quality and prospect milestones.

Once you’ve established your definition of success and have mapped out your buyer’s journey, your sales team forecasts sales and close rates more accurately since you know how many leads have passed particular milestones. With these forecasts and KPIs in hand, your entire team makes better decisions about which opportunities to follow-up with and which to leave behind.

You can’t always completely overhaul your sales funnel, but that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t improve your sales cycle where possible. With these three fast and easy tips, you’re able to make your sales funnel more efficient than before – giving you more time to generate leads and close deals.

Need more quick tips on how to improve your lead generation or sales funnel? Click below to download a tip sheet from Invenio Solutions™ and discover how the Science of Sales™ helps you generate warmer leads and optimize your sales process for maximum profitability.

In my work as a marketing consultant I often meet with marketing departments and small business owners to discuss, “how they are building awareness and visibility for their products or services?” What I end up finding is that their mindset toward marketing is a one time deal, I call it the “shotgun approach.”

They believe that you can run an ad, hand out a special gift, follow-up, host events, etc. just one time and that will bring in customers and put them in the top-of-mind position. My answer is always no, no, and no.

What would happen if you took only one breath? You would die. The same is for your marketing. One time marketing is “death marketing.”

Marketing is truly a process. The process of helping potential customers find your company – often before they are even looking to make a purchase – and then turning that early awareness into brand preference and, ultimately, into leads and revenue. In essence, it’s about bringing prospects to your front door and then nurturing them through the sales process.

Online this process involves creating compelling information and linking and sharing great resources, your potential buyers are likely to search for, before they know they have a problem your company can solve. These resources can include:

• blog posts,
• e-books,
• podcasts,
• guides,
• infographics,
• statistics,
• webinars,
• videos,
• white papers,
• checklists,
• case studies,
• and more.

Offline this process involves communicating valuable information, trends, news ,etc. in the places where your potential buyers are likely to hear or read it and getting your message directly in their hands. These resources can include:

• direct mail,
• physical location,
• business networking,
• PR,
• teaching classes,
• workshops,
• seminars,
• marketing material,
• product samples,
• local press releases,
• radio,
• tv,
• outdoor media,
• speaking,
• contest,
• coupons,
• trade shows,

These are just a few ideas to use. Find the ones that work for you and implement them. If they work , repeat them, like your breathing. If they kind of work, fix them, then repeat them. If they don’t work , get rid of them and do something that works. It’s a process.

Is It Smart to Hire High-Drive Salespeople?

The hiring process is difficult as is, so there is no need to make it more challenging and stressful by falling for hiring myths and allowing preconceived notions to rule your decision making process.

When it comes to people with high levels of Drive, do you have apprehensions about hiring them because you think they will be difficult to manage?

It’s time to uncover the truth and learn who these high-Drive salespeople really are.

 

The Truth About High-Drive Salespeople

Some hiring managers have said they want to be sure not to hire sales reps who are overly aggressive or obnoxious, and they wonder if a high sales test score on Drive is an indicator of these traits.

The short answer is no. Drive is a clinical trait that relates to a person’s innate ambition to grow and achieve, and has nothing to do with being overly aggressive or obnoxious.

In fact, people who are high in Drive actually have a variety of personality traits. Some are quiet and reserved, while others are outgoing – and yes, some can be aggressive. However, aggressiveness and Drive are not the same. Aggressiveness can be derived from Drive, but Drive is not marked by aggression.

In terms of management, high-Drive people are not any more difficult to manage than average or low-Drive people. In many ways, they are easier to manage:

• High-Drive salespeople are self-motivated and self-starters.
• They often require less direct management
• They are known to start and finish tasks on their own – with little intervention.

As a result of these characteristics, management is able to have more time to focus on tasks that are truly important, instead of constantly checking in on their sales team.

 

What Is Drive and Why Do Your Sales Reps Need It?

Drive is composed of three distinct, non-teachable personality traits:

1. Need for Achievement

Need for achievement is defined by an “intense desire to attain excellence and accomplish challenging goals.” In other words, it is the desire to become great at what one does so that tangible rewards can be garnered.

2. Competitiveness

Competitiveness refers to “the unquenchable thirst to outperform one’s peers and win the customer over to his point of view.” It is essentially the desire to achieve results that are better than everyone else’s. Each potential customer or client is seen as a competition that will be won or lost.

3. Optimism

Optimism is “the certainty and resiliency that cannot be denied.” It is what keeps sales reps confident that the next sales will be in their favor and keeps them coming back to work each morning, regardless of whether yesterday was good or bad.

When you focus on understanding what fuels Drive, you can begin to see that it is a very important trait for your sales representatives to possess. It is anything but the negative characteristic that many hiring managers make it out to be. With these three key traits in mind, you can learn how to best manage employees who are high in Drive.

 

How Do You Manage High-Drive Employees?

The most important task is to make sure high-Drive salespeople clearly understand the company’s mission, because they can become frustrated if their extra efforts are not valued and/or recognized. You should set specific goals and checkpoints for your high-Drive employees and offer rewards when they are accomplished.

It is difficult for someone high in Drive to be in a low-Drive environment and/or surrounded by low-Drive people. They may not leave right away, but they will likely satisfy their need for achievement outside the workplace by finding hobbies and interests.

Essentially, this means the company is missing out on an opportunity to harness passion and hard work.

 

It’s Not All About the Money

While money is certainly a major motivator, high-Drive people are generally looking for more. As mentioned earlier, they want their efforts to be valued and appreciated. Instead of using raises as the primary method for motivation, learn to use other techniques. Here are some tips for getting the most out of your high-Drive salespeople:

• Bring on the praise. Praise is easy to give and can yield high returns. High-Drive salespeople want to be thanked and appreciated – especially in front of others.

• Grant responsibility. High-Drive sales reps love titles and responsibilities. Consider adding additional duties to their job responsibilities to keep them engaged and motivated.

• Give awards. Make a habit of giving awards and recognition during weekly meetings or at the end of the year. Better yet, run ongoing contests to track performance. Whatever you choose to do, it’s important to provide tangible awards that high-Drive sales employees can appreciate.

 

How Can You Identify Drive in Sales Candidates?

At SalesDrive, we believe that high-Drive individuals make the most successful salespeople. Forgo your preconceived notions about hiring sales reps that are high in Drive and the myth that they are difficult to manage.

By implementing a proven online sales test, such as The DriveTest™, in your hiring practices, you will be able to identify early on whether or not a candidate has what it takes to become a successful salesperson within your company.

As a busy sales manager, it is important that you spend your time and effort identifying and interviewing potential hires whose sales test results specifically exhibit need for achievement, competitiveness and optimism.

 

You will quickly realize that hiring high-Drive salespeople is not the mistake; it is failing to bring them on board that is hindering your success.

 

For more information on our sales aptitude test and the other high-quality products and services we offer, contact us today. We would be happy to answer any questions you may have.

 

 

The post Are High-Drive Salespeople a Challenge to Manage? appeared first on SalesDrive LLC.

IRBIL, Iraq — Scores of young women forced into sex slavery, hundreds of mass executions and thousands of other gross human rights violations of every imaginable kind, especially against Shia Muslims, Christians and Iraqi minority groups such as the Yazidis […]

BUENOS AIRES, Argentina – Argentina’s Merval stock index plunged just over 7 per cent Thursday in a sell-off sparked by the naming of a new central bank chief who many believe will favour interventionist policies.

Traders expect new central banker Alejandro Vanoli will order even more restrictive currency controls in trying to stem capital flight and boost Argentina’s frail economy.

Juan Carlos Fabrega resigned Wednesday after President Cristina Fernandez publicly suggested that the monetary institution might have leaked inside information that led to a steep drop in the peso.

Confidence has been dwindling in Argentina’s economy, which is in recession as it grapples with falling central bank reserves and one of the world’s highest inflation rates.

The stock index ended the day down 7.05 per cent, at 10,703 points.

The post Argentine stocks plunge after central bank chief quits and replacement causes worries appeared first on Canadian Business.

Google's move is likely to spur other big cloud providers to do the same Read More

Next week, a Boston-based tech company called HubSpot plans to raise ~$100 million in an inital public offering on the New York stock exchange. 

Hubspot is a software-as-a-service company, which means it makes software that companies subscribe to, rather than simply buy and install.

The software it makes is marketing software for small to medium-sized business.

Reports say Hubspot shares will go for $19 to $21 per share, resulting in a market cap of ~$600 million.

We took a long look at HubSpot's S1, chatted with some sources familiar with the company's inner-workings, talked to a competitor, and spoke to analyst.

There are a few things we learned about Hubspot that anyone considering investing in the company should know.

In July, Hubspot's top two technical people quit the company. Hubspot's chief product officer, David Cancel, and vice president of engineering, Elias Torres, quit at the same time to go start a new company together. It's not a small loss. Cancel and Torres hired most of Hubspot's engineering staff. So far, none of those people have followed them out the door — but insiders expect that to change six months to a year from now.

For what it's worth, the breakup seems to have been amicable; Cancel and Torres came into the company through the acquisition of their prior startup and they were never secret about their plans to someday go start another company. They decided to leave this summer before they got locked into Hubspot as company officers post-IPO.

Hubspot management blew its relationship with Salesforce.com, costing themselves hundreds of millions of dollars and costing the company sales. A few years ago, $35 billion SaaS giant Salesforce invested in Hubspot. Soon, it was sending some of its customers Hubspot's way. Then, in early 2013, Salesforce approached Hubspot with an offer to buy the company for a price north of $1 billion. Hubspot management said no. Salesforce.com went with plan B and bought the parent company of a Hubspot competitor, Pardot. Now Salesforce is going to its customers it previously set up with Hubspot and offering them discounts to switch to Pardot. Meanwhile, Hubspot is looking to IPO at a price lower than Salesforce's offer a year and a half ago.

Hubspot has higher than normal customer churn. In part because Hubspot sells to small and medium-sized business , it has a higher than normal customer churn rate. The number Hubspot cares more about, "subscription dollar retention rate" isn't much better. In 2013, the last full year reported in the company's IPO filing, it was 82.9%. That means 17% of 2012's subscription revenue dollars went away in 2013. This white paper from Bessemer Venture Partners says healthy SaaS companies keep their retention rate above 90%. 

Hubspot's plan to reduce this revenue churn is to upsell its existing customers with new products. It just came out with new sales software for that purpose. It changed its pricing so that customers who use the product more, pay more. There is some evidence the plan is working. In Q2, subscription dollar retention rate was 90.3% year-over-year.

Another silver-lining: Hubspot 12,000 customers. That's a lot compared to its closest rival, Marketo. That means Hubspot has a lot of upside if it can figure out how to upsell those customers.

Hubspot's customer-acquisition costs keep rising. We're told it takes something like 20 to 24 months for a single Hubspot customer to generate enough revenues to pay for the marketing costs it took for that customer to be acquired. 

Hubspot declined to comment on this story.

Join the conversation about this story »

 Earlier this week, Google lowered prices 10 percent across the board on their Google Compute Engine cloud platform . The cost is getting so low, it’s almost trivial for anyone to absorb the costs of running infrastructure in the cloud, but you have to wonder as the cloud pricing wars continue, how low can they go and if it’s a war anyone can win. The end game is obviously zero,… Read More

Ask most executives and managers if they are great leaders and you’ll hear, “No, but I have every intention of becoming one!” Aligning time, skills and effort to the intention to build leadership skill and capacity is not easy, but it is more important than ever.

Two startling studies reveal that 87 percent of employees aren’t actively engaged in their work and 20 percent of those employees undermine value created by more engaged co-workers.

What’s more, experts put the blame on how managers spend their time and how effectively they lead. Too much time goes to low level details and not enough goes to leadership activities that engage people for great performance, such as communicating goals, shaping strategies, coaching and recognizing strong performance.

While the vast majority of employees aren’t engaged in achieving the organization’s goals, a whopping 77 percent say their performance would improve with more feedback. In fact, regular feedback engages 60 times more employees than none at all. The need for leadership is obvious given the stark contrast between a disengaged, even destructive workforce and a high performing one.

How much capacity do you have today?

How can leaders working long days get operational facts and status needed for execution and find more capacity to lead? Goal achievement requires understanding where you are and where you’re headed so resources and efforts align to desired outcomes.

Facts are often hard to come by and are captured through mind-numbing meetings, conference calls, emails and spreadsheets providing a stale picture that saps managers’ time. Without transparency, time is wasted reacting to surprises. These cycles become habitual and detract from leadership activities like communicating goals, coaching and recognizing contributions.

Establishing a culture and systems of transparency for both goals and current status across the organization provides managers with efficiencies that increase their leadership capacity. Employees have greater clarity on the mission and their contribution to it.

The following quick assessment can help determine out how much transparency you have today, how effective you are at leadership activities and where opportunities for more skill and capacity exist.

Ask each team member to answer these four questions:

1. Our top five priorities as a team are…
2. The 10 most important action items and deliverables I’m responsible for in the next 21 days are…
3. I’m [totally aware] [sort of understand] [baffled] how my actions support our business goals.
4. My career aspirations for the next year are… In three years, I’d like to be…

Ask yourself these five questions:

1. I last communicated our goals ___ [weeks] [months] ago.
2. I last communicated specific feedback to every team member ___ [days] [weeks] [months] ago.
3. Our five priorities and strategic initiatives for the next 90 days are…
4. My 10 most important action items and deliverables in the next 21 days are…
5. To get status on our progress toward goals takes me [five minutes] [55 minutes] [five hours ] [five days] [six weeks into next quarter]

Build leadership capacity and skills. To give ample time to both engage as a leader and execute on goals, you need tools to more efficiently communicate goals and status for greater transparency. To move from reactive, transactional manager to an effective leader who coaches, enables, empowers and executes also requires new practices and mindset.

This daily framework for balancing time across execution and engagement activities can jump start new habits.

Monday, set your intention. Start with the intention to be a great leader. Get centered on your strategic goals and assess what’s needed to achieve them.

Tuesday, communicate the mission. Communicate or reinforce the mission and ensure team activities align with goal achievement through direct engagement.

Wednesday is for coaching. Invest time in enabling your team members to succeed. Tather than asking for status, ask what you can do to help. And listen to the answers!

Thursday is for execution. Focus on what you need to do to achieve the goals. Guard against diversions on misaligned or reactionary activities (e.g. ignore email missiles!)

Friday, calibrate: Tune into your top, mid and bottom performers and their needs and contributions. Identify career paths for each and allocate time advancing them on it.

Saturday, rejuvenate: Don’t work, even a little. Renew your energy with exercise and enjoyment.

Sunday, reflect: Bring your inspirations and aspirations consciously to mind.

To sustain new practices, focus on the day’s theme. Week by week, your intentions will get stronger, the mission clearer, your coaching better, execution more consistent and skills stronger. Transformation takes time, but it’s well worth it personally and professionally!

There is an awful lot of content circulating around about content curation and why it is essential to well…everything, apparently. While I agree that knowledge sharing is a powerful business tool I have some doubts regarding the hows and whys of modern content curation and distribution.

You didn’t write it. Or read it.

If you’re anything like me….you’re probably a little busy (okay, that was irony). And there is simply not enough time in the day to read all of the content that is being created and shared. Like me, you probably have your preferred news outlets, favorite blogs, and nifty applications to push quality articles to your inbox. And I’m also guessing that, like me, you probably only read, maybe 25% of the content you share online. Don’t worry, I polled a few contacts and this behavior is common. Perhaps it is a side effect of our hyper-networking, peer pressure best practices, keeping up with the Joneses social stream outflow tendencies. Or perhaps we’re all too trusting and entirely too lazy. And how does this constant flow of content affect knowledge sharing? And more importantly, knowledge retention?

I do agree that content curation plays an important role in defining your social footprint and building a solid foundation for your personal thought leadership. However, I feel the pendulum needs to swing closer to the less-is-more side. If you share an article that you haven’t read — what exactly does that mean? From a social metric standpoint probably not a lot. Page views will be good, share metrics great, and the author will feel their content is resonating with their network. But how many people who retweet, share, and +1 your post are actually reading the article? A frighteningly low percentage.

For the last two months I have taken a more manual approach to content curation. I actually read the majority of the content I am sharing online. I’ve started using Meddle to add my own commentary to certain articles that I found particularly interesting before sharing with my networks. And I’m pleased with the results. My outbound streams are less regimented and engagement is higher. I’ve seen a >10% increase in engagement, and it’s only been a few weeks using this new slimmed down content sharing strategy. Less is turning out to be much more.

Sharing is caring. Seriously?

Ask any social media professional and they will passionately tell you that engagement is the most important metric to monitor. And social share metrics are weighted lower than comments. A few years ago commenting was more popular. As was link building via commenting. Maybe that’s why we all stopped. A lot of blogs simply turned off the commenting feature to avoid being spammed. It is also one less metric to track and be graded on. But comments have value.

The quality of content that is being produced today is top notch. I am constantly impressed by how great and how frequently certain individuals and companies are able to create consistently good content. And in a variety of mediums. Blog posts, infographics, videos, slideshares. The list goes on. Are we as recipients showing ample gratitude simply by sharing a piece of content? Yes, sharing a news article or blog post helps the author amplify their message. But if you truly found value in it I suggest that you take a few minutes, leave a comment, and start a conversation.

Like, what?

What is the value of a Like? What can it be equated to in real life terms? A smile? Maybe a high five? This I know to be true…you cannot buy groceries with Likes. Likes are vanity metrics and similar data such as favorites, pageviews, and even blog subscriptions are easily manipulated. Refer instead to active user data that shows undeniable engagement — Mentions, Shares, and Comments. These metrics can loosely be termed referrals and will lead to increased awareness and (sooner or later) revenue.

The nature of community is that people imitate behavior. Set the standard high for content sharing behavior in your network by not just liking but also re-sharing and adding your own commentary. And don’t be afraid to share the same post several times. Social streams move quickly and it’s unlikely that your target audience will see everything you post. Share the same post at different times of the day and week (and even farther out for really stellar information) for maximum exposure. Fewer posts shared at optimal times on your social networks will guarantee an increase in engagement.

Content curation is an important piece of the social business puzzle. We are all our own journalists, editors, publishers, and archivists. Armed with content aggregator applications, content distribution tools, and social networks, we are powerful voices. My hope is that we make a concentrated effort to use our powers for good and share thoughtful opinions. Not just echoes. Share content that affected you and tell the world why. This behavior will build your personal brand faster than simply posting, liking, and retweeting.

Marketers today encounter a mind-boggling array of technologies. CMOs I talk to are swamped by meeting requests from technology vendors, and most feel an acute pressure to climb on the tech bandwagon. But they worry about the massive distraction of full-scale technology assessments—and about the risk of buying expensive tools that don’t live up to their potential.

My colleagues and I believe CMOs can make better technology sourcing decisions by asking five fundamental questions. The first two focus on avoiding the all-too-common trap of treating each technology decision in isolation.

1. Will the technology advance a critical marketing priority? This seems like an obvious consideration, but we often see the technology tail wagging the marketing dog. Plenty of the new tools have the potential to add value in an absolute sense, which is why they appear on CMOs’ radar screens in the first place. But the real question is how much value the tool under evaluation adds relative to other possibilities.

Marketers who ask this question make individual technology assessments in the context of the overall marketing priorities that a given tool will address. It’s hardly rocket science. But this common-sense discipline often falls victim to a combination of poor planning and siloed decision-making—for example, when individual marketing teams independently make narrow, channel-specific technology choices without accounting for interdependencies and appropriate sequencing.

2. Will the tool add balance to the marketing technology portfolio? It’s useful to categorize marketing technologies into three buckets. The first helps a company deliver more personalized marketing content and experiences to customers and prospects (especially through digital media). The second allows marketers to use data and analytics to reach better decisions. The third improves the effectiveness and efficiency of core marketing workflows. These buckets are interlinked. For example, marketing automation technology helps deliver personalized content and offers to large numbers of individual customers on a scale that would be unfeasible using traditional manual processes.

Over time, marketers should strive to build a technology portfolio that is balanced across the three buckets. So any individual technology assessment needs to account for how a given tool fits into the architecture of the overall portfolio.

In many ways, acquiring a new technology is the easy part. The harder part is getting people to use it—which raises three additional questions.

3. Is the organization culturally ready to adopt the new technology? Like technologies elsewhere, marketing technologies can unsettle long-held views and ways of working. Changing these attitudes and behaviors requires a multi-pronged approach: championing by senior leadership, evangelism by believers on the marketing front line, and active involvement of middle managers in encouraging the change. This “sponsorship spine” is at the core of effective change management and raises the odds of disciplined, deliberate adoption. Success requires identifying desired adoption behaviors, anticipating resistance and challenges, and having a deliberate mitigation plan — all before acquiring a new technology.

4. How readily can current marketing workflows integrate the new technology? To take one example: a number of new technologies can improve the analytic power of marketing test-and-learn processes. But many marketers still treat test-and-learn as an adjunct to their main creative and campaign-management workflows. If test-and-learn remains a sideshow, the impact of these new technologies on marketing outcomes will necessarily be limited. It’s only when core marketing processes are overhauled to integrate ongoing testing and iteration (so-called agile marketing) that the value of the new technologies will be realized.

5. Do potential users have the skills they need to benefit fully from the technology? Even when marketers are excited about a new tool, they may lack the skills and capabilities to use it. While most vendors do provide training and support, it may be inadequate to an organization’s needs. Additional training and other support—even new hires—may be required to bridge the capability gaps. Hence, the technology assessment needs to include a plan (and a budget) for whatever additional training and capability investments are needed.

Questions like these are part of the playbook of technology buyers in other parts of the enterprise, who have been adopting new technologies for more than two decades. Marketing is a relative newcomer to this game, which is why so many CMOs feel overwhelmed. The good news is that a well-planned technology diligence process—a process that anchors individual decisions in a larger context and focuses on creating the right environment in terms of sponsorship, process changes, and capabilities—can significantly improve the odds that marketing’s many new technologies will deliver on their promise.

LinkedIn is no longer just about flaunting your resume when you're trying to get a job.

The social network has become an incredible resource for building your professional identity online, no matter where you are in your career. And an important part of that process is done not through its desktop site, but through its apps

However, many people don't even know that LinkedIn actually has many different apps that everyone who cares about their professional network should download, including Connected, Pulse, and the recently launched SlideShare app. (The company even has a specific app for recruiters called Recruiter Mobile.)

You can use LinkedIn's apps to stay on top of industry news, prep for meetings, and then add connections on the fly after those successful meetings.

Let's start with ways you can get more value out of LinkedIn's flagship app for Android, iOS or Windows:

1. Add your calendar to get info about someone before an interview.

Want to come up with a conversation topic to break the ice with that manager you'll be meeting within half an hour?

If you sync your phone's calendar with LinkedIn's app, you'll be served up the profile of anyone you have penciled in on your schedule, so you can refresh yourself on their info before you meet. You'll always feel more prepared if you know your interviewer's background.

Simply select "Calendar" from the list of options in the app's menu bar and follow the instructions. 

2. Follow specific companies that you're interested in.

From the app's menu, hit "Companies" to browse through a personalized list of recommendations of which ones you should follow. You can also search for specific companies yourself.  

Once you follow a company (or, better, a bunch of companies!), LinkedIn will call up its profile in the Companies tab, so you can browse its page and see its updates, employees, and job postings quickly and easily. The Companies tab becomes a one-stop destination for all the news you need about a company you're interested in. 

Plus, once you're following a company, its updates and any content that it shares will also show up in your news stream.

3. Apply for jobs directly through LinkedIn's app.

Did you know you could land your next job based on just your killer LinkedIn profile?

The list of positions in the "Jobs" section of LinkedIn's app are tailored to your interests (customized from your own LinkedIn data), and you can apply for a position just by submitting your profile. Browsing through your list of recommendations can save you a lot of time by avoiding a long, painful hunt through other posting sites. (Plus, the small screen is perfect if you're stuck in a job you hate and want to browse new positions during work, since you're not broadcasting your intentions on a big monitor.)

4. Use your news stream to build your personal brand and strengthen your connections.

As you scroll through your news stream, you'll see updates from your connections, content being shared by companies and people, updates about the new jobs of people in your network, and more.

Instead of just consuming, though, you can interact and add to the conversation when you have something to say. You can "like" and comment on almost every kind of post, whether that's saying congrats to a connection who scored a cool new job or adding your thoughts to an article about a topic related to your industry. Nurture your network. 

5. But don't go too crazy with comments.    

"If you look at the comments on LinkedIn, they're very insightful," LinkedIn mobile product lead Tomer Cohen tells Business Insider. "They're a great continuation of the content itself."

Remember that saying something just to say something isn't a good strategy. Adding to the conversation in some way highlights your expertise or insight into a certain area. Be conversational, but not too casual, because using slang or not checking your grammar could be a turn-off to potential employers. 

Yes, it's social, but LinkedIn isn't Facebook; you still want to stay professional. 

6. You can use the Pulse tab to see a personalized selection of articles and news about topics related to your industry.

LinkedIn will recommend you follow certain categories related to your industry (and it's easy to add more). You can then browse through and read articles from a wide variety of publishers and LinkedIn Influencers — and even long-form pieces by your peers. 

7. Love the Pulse tab? You'll love the Pulse app even more. You can download it for Android or iOS. 

Pulse is LinkedIn's dedicated news app, and your new best friend if you want to stay on top of what's happening in your industry. It makes finding interesting stories an easier and much more visually focused process.

Here's what the Pulse app looks like:

8. Become a resource for your network by sharing the best, most helpful content you read. 

On Pulse, you can easily share articles (and your comments on them) to your own LinkedIn profile, as well as to Facebook, Google+, or Twitter in just a few taps. (Depending on whether you have Android or iOS, there are a few other sharing options, too.)

By developing yourself as a thought-leader in your industry, you'll build your network and make yourself a more attractive job candidate the next time you're looking. 

9. Stay up on what's happening even when you don't have Wi-Fi.

If you've got a commute before work, you can read up while underground if you save a story. Or you could read on your flight on the way to your next business meeting.

10. Use LinkedIn's new SlideShare app to check out presentations shared by people in your network or other experts.

Whether you want to scope a relevant presentation to prep for a meeting or check out your boss' latest presentation to show you did your homework, SlideShare has you covered.

The app will give you access to more than 15 million presentations and you'll get a notification whenever someone in your network uploads something new. 

11. Try the Connected app to make networking easy (even if you usually hate it).

When you open LinkedIn's Connected app, you'll be greeted with a list of the most important updates in your network — if it's someone's work anniversary or birthday, or if they changed jobs, or were mentioned in the news. It's an easy prompt to reach out to those people, to congratulate them or ask them about about their new gig. Every day, the app delivers a new list of targeted updates that will help you find ways to strengthen your existing relationships with a personal touch. 

SEE ALSO: You can use this new LinkedIn feature to highlight your work and make your profile pop

Join the conversation about this story »

Earlier this morning, I received an email from a company asking me to participate in their survey.

Being a client for over 5 years and someone who relies on similar surveys for his own company inclined me

to want to help out.  But as much I want to take every survey – I still have to make sure they’ve earned my time.

Here’s the email:

So did I respond to their survey? Yes. and here’s why.

Personalized greeting for the win.

You should always use merge tags when you send any email to a customer/client. This is an automated process that will increase effectiveness overnight.

Even though I know they didn’t craft the email by hand…at least I know that they took the extra effort to cater the opening to me and every other customer.

**If you don’t collect their names. Start. (First names at least).

Open with praise and a thank you

The fastest way to convince your customers/prospects to close your email is to start with “the ask” in the first sentence.

I generally will customize this portion whenever possible, but you can use template copy to show that you appreciate and value them as a customer first and then place “the ask” in the second paragraph at least.

Foreshadow “the ask” and the benefits of participating

In the email, they do a great job of letting me assume that a request is right around the corner.

It’s not being slammed down my throat, instead, they talk about how they value my time and are willing

to “pay” me for it. They offer a discount just for receiving the email and then go step further for full

participation.

I was a clincher at the 50% discount, but if I had any doubts, the promise to waive my next monthly payment seals the deal. Not to mention makes me want to give even more though out answers.

So, whether it is a dollar amount or just their time, it is an essential portion of your copy to present these figures
clearly.

Keep it short and show some personality

You would think that this email came from someone that knew me personally and that is exactly what you need to do in order to reach your target audience(s) effectively.

The tone of your voice is an important discovery phase, but did you know that humans have a shorter attention span than goldfish?

Do you know what this means?

It means that your copy needs to show personality, but do it concisely.  If you need to have a long letter.  Just up the personality and make sure you include subheads that walk through the sales process quickly.

What’s the takeaway?

Make sure to avoid the common mistakes of asking right away, treating your customers like robots and not giving an incentives to .

You don’t fill in a survey just because you’re asked to, so don’t expect others to do any different.  It might only cost them two minutes, but you need to show that you know that their time is valuable and worth something to you.

When you’re going to send an email out to your users, follow the email structure above and you will only increase your conversions.

You probably didn’t set out to fail on your social media efforts. Like a cheesy horror flick, something bad happened when you went into the basement. Maybe after you finished with the rest of your work, you only had a little time left over. Or maybe you didn’t have a strategy and you got into the details without a roadmap. Here are some ideas so you can perform the best bellyflops known to social media kind. You’ll thank me later! And by the way, there are TONS more mistakes, so as they say, “you’re only limited by your imagination!”

Twitter

Cross post from Facebook

You’ve seen these posts with the Facebook link. You’re making your followers go to Facebook to get your content when you do that. Don’t be that person.
Fix: You can post using a scheduler, such as HootSuite, or post from within Twitter.

Use the wrong hashtag

Whoops! You just used the hashtag of a major spammer or a porn site.
Fix: Check out your hashtag first by searching. The shorter the hashtag, the better (because the hashtag cuts into your 140 characters), but you still want one that’s somewhat unique.

Make your account private

If you want followers, make it easy for people to follow you. When your account is private, no one can see what you’re tweeting, so how will they know if they want to follow you?
Fix: Make your account public. Unless you don’t want anyone to see what you tweet, that is.

All hashtags, all the time

Your tweet is all hashtags and nothing else. Who wants to read that?
Fix: Although your real estate is limited, create a headline at least. It’s easier to read.

Don’t engage

Would you stand on a table and yell all the time? Some accounts are in broadcast-only mode, but to do that successfully, you might be a celebrity or a news station.
Fix: Check your notifications and see who’s writing to you, retweeting your tweets, or trying to engage with you. And write them back!

Vent

Doesn’t everything make you angry? There are so many lost causes! And people have such bad manners! So tell them, as often as possible, preferably using ALL CAPS!
Fix: Don’t. Just don’t.

Drunk tweet

There’s a fine line between “Wine Wednesday” and “Wino Wednesday.”

Fix: If you must drink, hide your smart phone from yourself. Maybe give it to your sober friend or designated driver. Some comedians are funny when they drunk tweet, but most other people? Not so much.

Overpromote

Follow me! Read my book! Come to my seminar! Being on the receiving end of those tweets can get tiresome.
Fix: Promote with a gentle touch. Offer value first.

Don’t reciprocate

People retweet you, mention you, and try to have conversations, but you never reply. So even if you have a lot of followers, you might not have much engagement.
Fix: Retweet others, say thank you, talk to people. Just like in real life!

Let your account go inactive

Stop tweeting for weeks or months at a time.
Fix: Send a few tweets every once in awhile. That way, no one will have to call you and ask if everything is ok.

So Much Failure, So Little Time

As you can see, the sky’s the limit as far as failure goes! Have you seen any Twitter failures lately?

Possibly one of the only problems with the 80/20 rule is that it still risks cutting off minority customers in favor of a majority. Honestly, if you think going into B2B business is going to free you from the politics of discrimination, profiling, and partisanship, you’ll find yourself sorely disappointed.

There are ways that your lead generation campaign can accidentally turn off a particular percentage of your target market with dangerous consequences. History is full of cases where a minority grows bolder to challenge the status quo.

Here’s a real business example: Facebook and retail. According to one article on Forbes, people who criticize the use of social media marketing are just as correct as those who believe it generates valuable business. For the critics, the use of social media didn’t impact a majority of customers but data from the advocate side showed the ones that did, became high-value clientele.

Now you might think that this is just another version of the 80/20 rule in play. After all, it’s clearly obvious that the 80% here are the customers spending 50% more than the non-Facebook fans, right?

Don’t be so sure. Maybe instead of 80/20 it’s actually 50/50. And if you ever decided to invest in more marketing to just one half, you end up losing the other.

What you need to do is to better establish who is the 20% that’s really generating 80% of your revenue. Better yet, maybe you shouldn’t see it in terms of percentages at all. Some alternatives could be:

• Understanding their connections –Perhaps the more loyal customers act as an extended marketing arm to those who aren’t. That means if you’re trying to implement a referral-based marketing strategy, you need to keep marketing to both buyer personas.

• Use appropriate lead generation techniques – Different buyer personas might require different techniques. A viral campaign might work for the larger part of your audience. But for the more critical personas in your target market, it might not help.

• Restore balance – Sometimes you realize that you have already made the mistake of favoring one segment of your target market. Thus, like the old cliché, you must restore the balance. Take a second look at your target market and see if you’ve ever accidentally marginalized prospects fitting a particular persona. What can you do to learn more about them and what products can you pitch (or even develop) to better your relationship with them

Many lead generation resources will tell you that it’s not good to waste too much marketing on the least interested buyers. However, that’s a bit different from not recognizing the value they still have to your business. No matter where they are between the 80% to 20% understand that it takes both to result in a hundred.

Cross-channel marketing combines direct mail, telemarketing and email to great effect. 

How many marketers use email in their campaigns? Nine out of ten. But six or seven of that ten are using traditional direct mail and telemarketing too Used together, the channels can deliver more than the sum of their parts. Why? Because of the nurturing effect. Send a prospect a package and he’ll either open it… or not. But follow it up with an email and he’ll remember it better. Reading about it on social media will make him think about it again. Finish with a personal phone call and he’ll be ready to take action.

That’s what cross-channel marketing delivers – action uplift.

The uplift stems from using additional channels around the “core” to eke out every last percentage point of response. Here’s a suggested campaign plan that uses the strengths of each.

Creating the core: direct mail

Boxes or envelopes don’t always close a sale, but they get opened at far greater rates than email – particularly greater than the “scattershot” campaigns all-too-prevalent in today’s marketing. The reason isn’t hard to see: you’ve incurred a cost.

A physical box with a stamp on it has cost its sender money.

Traditional mail lets its recipient know you’re serious about contacting them. That’s why direct marketing lists tend to be cleaner than email lists: instead of a cloud of returned electrons, a package returned to sender costs serious cash. That’s why we suggest you put direct mail at the core of your next campaign. A clean list to get it on the right desk, a campaign idea to interest your contact in opening it and a targeted offer to start off the journey down the sales funnel. But it doesn’t end there.

Adding the buzz, with social media

Social media can do two things well. First, it can create buzz: an audience “making it their own” can spread the word further and cheaper than any broadcast medium. Second, it can extend the life of a campaign, by keeping it alive long after the envelope hits the desk. (Or – if you get it wrong, as Morrison’s did recently – cause offence to your core customers.)

You can use social media in many ways, but make sure it’s integrated.

How about putting a #hashtag on the buckslip (that piece of paper that falls out of the envelope first) and prompting your recipient to check Twitter? When they do, you Tweet back with an added offer. (Known as “box and key” marketing. Or tell them the value of their offer will double if they send a blank email to you before midnight (letting you gather their email address.) All those light touches across social media add up to an increased chance of response.

Following up: email reminders

While email campaigns work, the channel can also be used as a nudge: regular reminders that an offer period is expiring or that the campaign is moving fast.

A series of nudges over time can increase the response rate of the core campaign dramatically.

Think of your audience as individuals, each with hot buttons and key issues to solve. How many will respond to a straight reminder of the offer? Perhaps 1%. How many will respond to a survey? Another 0.3%? Well, you’ve just increased your total response by 30%.

Driving the response: telemarketing

Personal contact by phone is a pricey channel and we suggest you use it last to get the largest (and most profitable) chunk of your audience engaged in your campaign.

What is that most profitable chunk? It’s the people who don’t have time to respond immediately.

In B2B it’s the most senior people, the largest budget holders, those with a great deal else on their minds. The most effective sales method understands your customers’ needs and speaks in a human voice… both ideally suited to telemarketing.

Don’t forget the data!

Of course, cross-channel marketing needs one overarching tactic: data. Don’t ever use a separate “email database” or “address database” and call it a cross-channel campaign. (61% of marketers say their business has been damaged by dysfunctional silos.)

The point with using multiple channels is not to “overlap”. It’s to cross-connect, make all the parts of your campaign look like an integrated whole.

Remember:

Follow this cross-channel marketing campaign plan for more sales leads:

• Put direct mail at the core to show your customers that you are committed to getting your message to them personally.
• Extend the life of your campaign by creating a buzz on social media.
• Reinforce the message and remind your prospects with an email ‘nudge’.
• Drive the response by telemarketing to the top decision makers.
• Remember to cross-connect to create an integrated cross-channel campaign.

Go Social

Discover the added benefits of making your campaign ‘social’ in the free guide, Encourage sharing to grow your database. Hint: Customers will share your email and direct mail campaigns – as long as you deploy the right sharing strategies.

This article was first published on the Marketscan blog. 

This week I fly solo and dive into the need and strategy to bridge social media with your web for an integrated sales funnel.

It’s all about keeping it practical, doable, and leading edge so you can grow more leads and sales online.

The online web and social media marketing strategy for a business needs to be integrated and cohesive, with all parts working in sync.

Too often when I’m invited in do consulting or a digital marketing audit, one of the first findings I uncover is that the marketing is splintered. What is done on Facebook is not connected to the strategies used on the website, or what is tweeted has no connection to lead capture initiatives on the website, etc. It’s essential to get that corrected!

Let’s dig in!

Tips for Businesses Using Social Media:

• Be a Resource
• Share valuable content besides your own!
• Solve problems
• Be social and have some fun

By offering interesting, helping, and even entertaining content in a style that reflects the company’s unique culture, a company can grow their online community.

Social Media Marketing Foundations:

 

The Integrated Sales Funnel:

1. Top of Funnel Content – Engaging & Attracting

Engaging and attractive content needs to be broad, searchable, relevant, and geared to do just what it says, “attract and engage.” This is where you are seeking to grow your audience by reaching out, “planting seed and watering” or put another way it is “chumming the waters” to attract your desired audience. This is not the harvest! It is content that is helpful and serves your audience. It is NOT product specific to your business. Think of it as “chumming the waters” prior to fishing for sharks. It draws in a crowd and gets them excited about your site and the nuggets you are providing. Your content core resides on your website, you then amplify that to and with social media. Your social media engagement can serve by itself as attraction and engagement messaging as well.

2. Mid-Funnel Content – Incentives to encourage email list sign-up

This part serves to move visitors into the lead funnel, and from an unknown fan to a known lead. This type of content offers something useful and of value in exchange for a simple name and email sign-up. It can be access to a eBook, a video, a podcast, or a resource related to your products and services that that those interested in your offering would find of value.

The opportunity it provides a business is the ability to grow its email list, through which nurture campaigns can educate and offer a way to sell. The value is that these can be setup once and then run continuously to reach hundreds and even thousands of visitors. This is where integration is needed. Sign-up will not occur “in” social media, but is used by social to drive fans and followers to your website/landing pages.

3. Closure Content – Specific offers and Sales opportunities

The final element of the 3-pronged content strategy to plan for is the “closure content” or specific sales offer content. This will likely be only 15-20% of your overall content plan mix. If it is more than that, your audience can get turned off from continual sales pitches, particularly on social media sites, but if you are adhering to the content strategy above then your audience will be ready for these timely and specific offers to purchase.

In today’s age of information overload, content isn’t difficult to come by – it’s everywhere, in all forms. And the more content you consume, the more knowledge you digest…right? Personally, I’m not so sure. Instead, I often find that the seemingly endless stream of information is overwhelming, contradictory, and plain old wrong – leading to a diluted conclusion as opposed to the possibility of informed analysis. I’m not alone in this conundrum. And when it comes to an overflow of collateral in a sales portal, your sales reps are very likely just as overburdened by data deemed necessary for reasons unknown.

Everyone in the company – with all the right intentions – with access to information they foresee as useful to a sales teams, use sales portals as what are essentially endless archives. The collateral is dumped in a box, and while the existence of the box is real, the content – due to constant and impulsive overload – is eventually neither properly accessible nor strategically utilized. That is to say, the content might as well be invisible.

There’s an old and exhausted school of thought out there: Enabling sales reps means providing them more collateral for them to send to buyers.

Let’s explore why this thinking is indeed as worn-out as your Michael Jordan jersey. In a nutshell, change happens. Market conditions can (and do) change at a moment’s notice, therefore enabling your sales teams with collateral and sales tools only contributes to an overly complex, time-consuming and frustrating environment.

Sales reps simply end up wasting too much time on internal activities such as logging in to a system that is disconnected from the tools they use every day (CRM system, tablet, email, etc.) and searching from loads of often outdated and broad content, and less time on actually selling to customers. This leads reps, especially new hires, to feel overwhelmed, lose confidence, and stick to the materials they’ve saved on their desktops. Clearly, this isn’t working….A new school of thought is in order.

By providing your sales teams with tools for a dynamic, guided and step-by-step approach to selling and communicating, you are are effectively executing on synthesizing an overflow of information, allowing for:

Empowering your sales team to have value added conversations with buyers supported by personalized selling content sets you on your way to fix what’s broken and execute effectively.

• Intelligently consolidated information
• The ability to provide content that’s customized to the opportunity at hand
• Timely “guided selling” assistance, giving sales reps information relevant to their current status in the sales process

Empowering your sales team to have value added conversations with buyers supported by personalized selling content sets you on your way to fix what’s broken and execute effectively.

Traditionally, sales has relied largely upon human relationships: successful salespeople know their product and their audience and are enthusiastic about talking to people, pursuing, and closing leads with persistence and moxie. Aside from these personal qualities, until the advent of Salesforce in 1999, the only external tools a salesperson needed were a Rolodex and a phone. In the last decade, technology has dramatically changed the landscape in which inside sales reps operate: the Internet has given the general population unprecedented access to information, the penetration of mobile has allowed people to access this information anywhere and anytime, and (somewhat ironically) the number of people who actually answer phone calls has diminished.

At the same time, the tools that salespeople rely on have evolved and have changed how salespeople gain insight into leads, interact with customers and prospects, and organize their efforts. Here are a few tools that have helped salespeople gain new insights and pursue new strategies for success:

Document Analytics

Each step in the sales pipeline is affected by the exchange of documents: client education, contracts, marketing materials, business proposals, letters of intent and just about everything in between. Email attachments have made the process of sending documents faster, but, until recently, once a document was sent out, its fate was a mystery. Salespeople had no way of knowing if clients or prospects opened an attached document, when they looked at it, how long they spent looking at the doc, or, crucially, whether they forwarded it to a competitor. Further, many email services aren’t built to handle the large PDFs necessitated by lengthier docs.

Document analytics services like DocSend not only accommodate large file sizes with ease, but provide sales reps a wealth of insights into how and when clients or prospects are interacting with the documents they send. This gives salespeople actionable intelligence that helps gauge when and how to follow up with customers, reducing the risk of a call wasted on a client who isn’t ready to talk and saving time and energy for customers who are more prepared to engage.

Lightweight CRM

For larger companies, a heavy-duty CRM tool like Salesforce is an indispensable asset for the sales process, but the task of keeping it up to date is often cumbersome, requiring hours of attention and a team that is well-acquainted with the nuances of the software. For smaller companies, a lighter, more nimble tool like Streak, Landslide, or Nutshell is often more appropriate. For Gmail users, Streak is useful because it works within your inbox, eliminating the inefficiency of hopping back and forth between inbox and CRM.

A good, lightweight CRM will sync with your contacts and calendar, keep track of follow-ups, allow you to easily share proposals and deals within your team, and work seamlessly with existing applications that your company uses.

Social Media

Until the robots take over, leveraging human contacts will always be a critical component of the sales process. There is no way to overstate how important social media tools are in developing, maintaining, and growing relationships with customers, prospects, colleagues and competitors. LinkedIn and Twitter are not only vehicles for building your brand or product story; they’re also real-time news feeds that keep salespeople up to date on industry trends, who is working with whom, big news, etc.

One of the challenges with social media is that it moves quickly, and keeping up can be a chore in itself. Step away from Twitter to eat a sandwich, and you could easily miss a major piece of information that impacts what people are talking about for the rest of the day. Tools like Hootsuite and Buffer allow users to manage multiple social media accounts using one dashboard. These tools can be used to track conversations and activity across platforms, schedule posts and tweets, create measurable campaigns, and track analytics, meaning that salespeople can spend less time fretting over scheduling a tweet or spending fruitless hours scanning LinkedIn.

Furthermore, a browser extension like Rapportive brings social search right into the user’s inbox, giving salespeople a wealth of publicly-available information all in one place, and is a good option for those who are less involved or familiar with social media but still want the wealth of information.

Of course, tools are only as good as the salesperson using them. No shiny new toy will make up for a sloppy social media strategy, poorly edited marketing materials, unprofessional-looking websites or lackluster follow-ups. However, in capable hands, these tools can help busy salespeople manage their time and efforts more efficiently.