Rnordman

Customers for Life

What an interesting thought – win customers for life. According to Ed Boyle and John Fleming (Gallup), “While other businesses rely on price cuts and short-term promotions, the best set out to win customers for life.”

They point out that for companies with the vision and commitment to set such a target, the rewards can be immeasurable – Roughly 30 trillion dollars in new customer spending will be up for grabs in the next 30 years and this type of mindset may be a way to get a bigger share.

Like most good ideas the notion of “customers for life” is easy to say but not so easy to do. In today’s market customer’s expectation are greater than ever before. The days of being a purveyor of product knowledge have been replaced with a demand for salespeople to bring fresh idea for framing the problem and creative solutions for solving it and that is just to close the deal.

This means for the customer for life concept to be realized, salespeople must understand their customers better than the competition and develop more trust and a different type of relationship than they have in years past. In order to get that done they must ensure that every customer interaction brings a small piece of value and strengthens the nature and extent of the relationship.

What else needs to be done?

• Be selective. When writing Getting Partnering Right (about companies forming extraordinary relationships with their customers) one of the insights from the background research for the book was the simple finding that it takes a lot of work, effort and commitment to develop extraordinary relationships – so be selective. Not every customer wants to be “a customer for life” and you probably don’t want every customer as a lifetime partner.
• Bring everyone to the party. To do what needs to be done to win a customer for life, Sales cannot do it alone. They need help and not just help from Marketing. The entire company has to come to the party – that includes the Manufacturing, R&D, and from those functions that deal with the money side of the business.
• Engage senior leadership. Because of the potential companies, who are serious about the customer for life concept, are instituting special Executive Sponsorship Programs where they assign a top senior leader to the account in addition to the salesperson. The purpose of these programs is to develop a special relationship with the C-level personnel in the customer organization so new opportunities can be explored. The customer needs to feel that the involvement reflects the thought that you care enough to form a relationship of a different kind – “they want to do more than just sell us more; they want to help us go where we need to go.”

As Gallup suggests, companies find that customers for life spend more, resist competitive overtures and are more forgiving about mistakes. We think that is right and although it might not be a great idea for everyone right now – it is an idea that needs to be on the agenda.

If I were to ask, “What is the number one source of revenue for your business?” I’m willing to bet current customers would rank pretty high on your list.

When Constant Contact conducted a survey of small business owners, 82 percent cited loyal customers as their number one driver of new business.

It’s not a surprise.

After all, relationships are one of the biggest advantages you have over your larger competitors. And putting in the work to build those relationships will be the key to your long-term success.

But while repeat business will always be a centerpiece to the small business success formula, there is also the challenge of bringing in new customers, as well.

In that same survey, 30 percent of small business owners cited finding new customers as their biggest roadblock to growth.

Sometimes it can seem impossible to reach beyond the people who already know your business.

Luckily, today’s technology has opened a number of new doors for small businesses to get discovered.

Using the tools to your advantage starts with understanding how consumers are using them to find businesses like yours.

For an increasing number of consumers, it begins with an online search.

75 percent of consumers use a mobile device to get real-time location-based information.

If a potential customer has already heard about your business — possibly through a personal recommendation — they will search for your name directly.

In this case, there are a number of places that could show up in a search result:

• Your website
• Your social media channels
• Online listing sites
• Online review sites
• Other articles/blog posts mentioning your business

Your website and social media channels are web properties that you set up. Which means you should have a good grasp on the type of information people are finding when they land there.

Online listing and review sites will require a little extra work. Sites like Google, Yelp, TripAdvisor, and YellowPages pull information about your business from a number of different sources.

There may also be sites that your business is already listed on, and you don’t even know it! As a result, this information can often be incomplete or out-of-date.

Luckily, you have the ability to take control of that information and add new details to your listing — like menu items, a list of services, photos of your store or office, and even buttons to call or shop online.

If people haven’t heard about your business, they may start by searching for a topic and/or location.

If someone is looking for a particular service in their area, for example, the search could look something like this: “caterers in Boston, Massachusetts.”

They could also be more specific like, “wedding caterers in Boston, Massachusetts.”

Search engines like Google or Bing will then use a number of different factors to generate a list of caterers in the Boston area. They will then organize the caterer’s websites based on their authority.

The higher a website ranks, the more likely it will be clicked on by the person searching for an answer.

One recent report found that the top ranked site in search results receive 33 percent of clicks. The top three results, receive more than 60 percent!

One of the best ways to build authority is to create content related to the topics people could be searching for.

This is part of a process known as search engine optimization (SEO).

Focusing on creating SEO-rich content on your website or blog can help your business rank higher in search results.

This could mean more opportunities for you to get discovered and bring new customers to your door.

In addition to making it easy for potential customers to find you when they are searching for solutions, you also want to make sure you have a presence in the other places people are hanging out online.

Social media is a great example of this.

On sites like Facebook or Twitter, you can build an audience for your business by sharing content that’s interesting and relevant to them.

Customers can endorse you by becoming a fan or follower, and can help extend the reach of your content through simple social engagements. When people talk about your business or like, comment, and share your content, their network can see it.

It’s this visible engagement and the positive endorsements that can help introduce you to new customers.

And when you’re ready, you can extend your reach even further with paid social advertising tools, like Facebook Ads. These tools enable you to target potential customers by interest, location, and even purchasing behavior.

Now it’s time to bring it all together.

Taking steps to get your business found online is critical to bringing new customers into your business.

This includes:

• Taking control of your online listings so that people can find the right information when searching for your business online
• Understanding how search engines generate search results and taking the necessary steps to build authority for your business
• Developing a presence on social media, and using the power of social visibility and paid promotion to reach the right audience for your business

We know there’s a lot to consider. That’s why we’re hosting a special training event, How to Stand Out and Attract New Customers: Simple Strategies for Getting Your Business Found Online

This session will show you how to stand out from the competition and make it easy for potential customers to find you.

Did you unplug a bit this summer? Lately I’ve noticed that when you ask people how they’re doing, they don’t generally use the word “productive” in their response. The word that often does come up, however, is “busy”. As you can imagine, when you feel extremely busy but don’t feel productive, the overall result is a sense of growing frustration. With the new normal of being in touch 24/7 with online access, digital communication, and streaming media, the pace can seem absolutely relentless. It’s enough to make you want to scream (like ‘80s weight-loss celeb Susan Powter) “Stop the insanity!”

Research is showing higher stress levels at work, less-than-ideal levels of engagement (~30%), and increasing incidence of mental and physical health challenges. None of that is surprising given the pace at which we attack our schedules, and how little time we carve out in it for ourselves. Studies have shown that more than 40% of American workers did not take all of their allotted time off last year (and Canadian stats likely aren’t much different), yet there is ample evidence that we are more productive and engaged at work when we take time for rest and recreation.

This summer I took more time to unplug from my usual role, and made an effort to prioritize some other aspects of life. I spent time with family in sunny Punta Cana, attended and hosted several family events, and completed the acquisition of another investment property (another one of my passion areas). While relaxing at the Royalton Hotel in Punta Cana (more on that in a future blog), went to the gym every other day, hiked, walked the beach, visited the huge waterpark with my sons, and got into a few books that really sparked my creative process.

The more you look at the research and observe the chaos of today’s organizations, the more you can see the value of 2 habits that Dr. Steven Covey discussed in his book, The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People:

1. Sharpen the Saw
   This habit is illustrated with the story of a lumberjack, who was so busy cutting down trees that he did not have time to stop and sharpen his saw. He labored away with his increasingly dull saw, producing less and less in the way of results. Likewise, your tired and overworked team members may be operating on diminished capacity, with an accompanying decline in productivity.
2. Put First Things First
   This habit is based on Covey’s insightful 4-quadrant time management model (There’s an image included at the bottom of this post, but if you’ve never heard of it, do a quick Google search – it’s worth the effort). Too often we spend time in the unproductive quadrants, #1 (Putting out fires – important and urgent) and #4 (Busywork – unimportant and not urgent). Instead, we need to expand the amount of time we spend in quadrant #2 – with things that are important, but not urgent. This would include planning, prevention, recreation, relationship building, and seeking out new opportunities.

Managers, when coaching yourselves and others, “Stop the Insanity” and ensure you have regular time for recreation and to unplug. Do whatever works for you – exercise, pray, meditate, read, walk, run. You can’t lead well when tired and stressed. You can’t give away that which you don’t have – so start with you.

Do you have staff members that are looking tired or burned out? It won’t be long before they disengage, if they haven’t already. When leading/coaching others, challenge them to reflect on their time usage and a productivity plan that includes time for recreation and unplugging. You will enhance engaged productivity in yourself and the others that you lead when you sharpen the saw and be intentional about productive prioritization.

Make it an awesome week – I’m off to the gym…

Online advertising is tough, and writing a strong PPC ad for your product or business is even tougher. Creating a strong relevant headline, optimizing keywords, and having specific calls-to-action helps. It can increase your conversions, click through rate, and overall performance. But to get your customer’s attention, you need to stand out from the others.

Here are 5 tips to help you write a better PPC ad:

1. Write An Awesome Headline

The examples above are okay. They use the keyword, “Backpacking Boots,” but could they be more effective?

You have 25 characters in your headline; use them wisely. For common keyword statements, like our boots, make it descriptive, if possible. If you’re targeting a specific brand of backpacking boot – like Oboz or Ecco – don’t forget to include the brand name in the headline.

It’s important to include your keyword not only to make it clear what you’re advertising, but also because they keyword will be bolded, making your ad stand out just a little bit more. But remember that if you have extra characters left, a descriptor or two can make a huge difference in campaign performance.

2. Create Your Differentiating Characteristic

This is where knowing your industry, the keywords associated with it, and your buyers, will come into play. Your copy has to captivate your audience, while also drawing in the right searchers. For instance, you know you have a “Backpacking Boot,” and clearly several other brands do, too.

But what is your differentiating characteristic? Is your backpacking boot the #1 choice by members of the Professional Hiking Guides Association? Does it have a high rating from customers like the searcher? Then flaunt it! I’m not sure about you, but if I see my peers give a product 4.7 out of 5 stars, I’m encouraged to see what all the rave is about.

3. Craft a Compelling Call-to-Action

Have you heard the age-old prompt WIIFM – “What’s in it for me?” I know, your product is amazing, and everyone is dying to “Buy It Now” or “Submit Now.” Submit what? My info? Hey, get to know me a little first, please!

What value are you providing me? With our examples, the value is money saved with ‘Free Shipping’ or ‘Up to 70% Off Retail Prices!’ There’s something in it for me. I can get my backpacking boots and save some cash. Ring me up!

4. Add Pricing to Your Ad

Now, this isn’t an absolute must, but one that can work for some retailers, especially those that are B2C.

An instance where this might be helpful is cell phone repair, and having recently shattered the screen to my phone, I can relate. Looking for “iPhone Repair in Delaware” resulted in several ads, but these two grabbed my attention. Why? They told me what it would cost.

The first ad is good, with prices “from $29” and a warranty, but the second ad is even better. It tells me what to expect. Sure, $99 stands out because it’s in bigger font, but reading the ad description indicates it should be $79 to fix my iPhone 4S. Eureka! It’s cheaper than I expected and certainly less than buying a new phone all together. I click on that, and off I go to schedule my repair.

5. A/B Test Every Time

“Always Be Testing.” You’ve got tremendous copy, leveraged your keywords, refined your audience, and launched a killer campaign. It’s doing well, but can it be doing better? Probably. You can A/B test any of these four variables:

• Headline
• Body text
• Link
• Keywords

Does tweaking one of these variables result in a better conversion rate? Do your ads better reach your intended buyer? A/B testing is a great way to determine what works best for your business, since every campaign is different.

Paid search can be tremendously beneficial to businesses big and small, so long as you optimize your campaigns correctly. Optimize your messaging here, and on other marketing channels, to increase clicks, conversions, and closes.

Do you sell the same way you did a decade ago?

In the classic movie Glengarry Glen Ross Alec Baldwin tells a group of salesmen that the key to selling is, “A-B-C. A – Always; B – Be; C – Closing. Always be closing.”
But this steamroller approach is now a relic.

According to bestselling author Dan Pink, sales has changed more in the last 10 years than the previous 100. Today, buyers have as much information as sellers—along with ample choices and the means to push back. Selling effectively requires a new approach.

In this interactive Harvard Business Review webinar, Dan Pink draws on cutting-edge social science and best practices from global organizations to reveal the new ABCs of selling. Pink reveals 5 ways to frame messages to increase clarity and promote action. He also discusses why problem finding is now more important than problem solving, how questioning your abilities before a sales call can actually help, and why the most effective salespeople are not extroverts.

Consumer testimonials. You either love them or hate them. But regardless of how you feel as a business owner, they have become an integral part of our everyday decision-making.

In the mood to try a new restaurant? You turn to sites like Yelp! to read reviews. Searching for a new doctor? You make an appointment with the one your friend or neighbor recommends.

We rely heavily on the input of those we trust in order to make these commonplace decisions, and the decisions people make about your product or service are no different. Your potential customers want to know that the people who have used your product or service before not only enjoyed it, but recommend it as well.

And that can be great for your business.

According to Demand Gen’s recent study on consumer’s B2B content preferences, 97 percent of respondents said they give more credence to content that includes user-generated reviews– which means that the more positive reviews your brand has, the more likely new customers will come walking through your door.

Even LinkedIn’s 2013 Survey of B2B Marketers says testimonials are one of the most effective content marketing tactics. And if LinkedIn says so, then you better get moving.

Testimonials = More Customers

How exactly can testimonials get you more customers?

Well, when a customer sees that someone else has had a positive experience with your product or service, they’ll be more comfortable in their decision to trust you and engage with your brand. In this way, testimonials have the ability to help eradicate the worries that are common among many first-time customers.

So, How Can I Collect Testimonials?

To begin collecting testimonials, you’ll first need a place for customers to send you feedback. Your email newsletter, for example, is a great place to invite comments. Or, send personalized postcards to customers thanking them for working with you and ask for thoughts on their experience. You may even want to offer an incentive, for example, “First 25 Customers to Give Their Feedback Are Entered to Win a $25 Gift Card.” (Just make sure they fall within the FTC guidelines!).

Finally, create a dedicated section for reviews on your website, such as the homepage or checkout page. This will give your audience a place to read all of the awesome things about your brand.

Don’t Forget To Spread the Good Word

Whenever you get a new testimonial, be sure to share it with others via social media. Platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn are great for celebrating your wins and showing potential customers that your brand really is cool. Who knows, it may even encourage other customers to share their own testimonials as well!

Remember, no one tells your story better than your customers. People want to hear what it’s really like working with you, and your existing customers can describe the experience better than anyone else – even you!

Finding the perfect formula for driving sales, subscriptions and readers to your website who actually engage is a task that grows more difficult as the web continues to develop and grow. It’s quite easy to hit a plateau whether you’re trying to create fresh and appealing content for your personal or corporate blog; or creating a new angle that will attract buyers to your new product or startup. Successful online business is hard work and in reality it’s not for everyone. The defining quality that is proven to set winners apart from losers simply boils down to persistence.

The ability to launch winning traffic generation and business booming strategies does not necessarily require that you master every skill possible but more relies on you knowing your target audience’s needs and being honest with what you can and are willing to provide. A blog that covers social media marketing for instances, does not necessarily need to publish on every possible topic under it’s umbrella but should narrow the focus to where the impact is greatest based on the marketer’s skillset and targets for ROI. Especially in cases where a small business or blog is managed by one individual, the stakes are higher regarding using marketing time wisely for maximum effect.

So, what are some oftentimes ignored and underutilized techniques that can create success online for marketers and how do you enrich your content marketing efforts for greater ROI?

Narrowing Your Focus

Let’s face it, there’s a strong possibility that what you’re publishing on your blog has already been said and dissected somewhere on the web by a few other bloggers. It’s extremely difficult to be unique when content is being produced across the world at its current rapid pace. How do you create a unique voice for your brand and standout in the noisy crowd? The best strategy you can employ here is drilling down on your niche topics and narrowing and deepening your focus to go a step further with the general topics being discussed frequently on the web.

There are 3 benefits here:

1) You become an expert in a rarely discussed field – Many websites typically discuss the obvious facts and do not dive deep into the “how’s”, “why’s” and “if’s” of the industry. For example, Google launches a new product with “x” cool features. Everybody talks about that; you should then dive into commentary on the potential impact on users, use the service and offer detailed reviews and simply look for opportunities to provide and focus on various angles that aren’t evidently addressed. That’s how you create unique share-worthy and link-worthy content.

2) Benefit from valuable long tail keywords and niches – SEO is alive, will always be alive and you still can win. There is great value in long tail keywords. For example, you simply cannot compete with general, broad keywords like “social media marketing” or “increase sales.” However, you may discover greater opportunities and value for something more narrow like “how to increase sales without a zero budget” or “creating a social media marketing plan for small businesses.” The keyword competition will be less. Use a tool like Keywordtool.io to discover ideas for narrowing your keyword focus.

3) You save time and energy – Focus means that you strip your days of unnecessary work on things that do not add value to your bottom line and objectives.

Engage Your Target Audience Off Your Website

Promoting your website and getting feedback from readers and users is not all about you and your site. Advertising your latest blog post on Twitter each chance you get will not attract meaningful traffic and engagement unless you’ve already built a reputation through relationships on social networks. Simply put, people won’t be interested in your stuff if they have no idea who you are or what you stand for. Sure, you’ll get a few clicks from readers here and there but the results are negligible.

If you’re trying to get influencers to engage and share your content you’ll need to engage them as fellow human beings without strictly pitching to them. A recent study by Buzzstream reveals that 64% of writers and editors of popular websites think it’s important to establish a personal relationship before pitching a story to them.

Treat your target audience as a community and start interacting and building relationships on social media as well as taking advantage of meeting people offline. Share interests and add value to their daily lives by contributing things that they’ll find useful. Pitching is not your priority here. If an influencer knows that you always add value and always engaged with them on a human level, your profile, work and content will have more value in their eyes. Use tools like Commun.it, Hootsuite and Oktopost to effectively manage your social network relationships.

Build the relationships and you’ll find that you’ll achieve higher clickthrough rates on social media and engagement from the readers you acquire.

Evoke Curiosity

For whatever reasons visitors are coming to your site you should try to have something that directly addresses that. For example, if your website is directed at teaching readers how to play a musical instrument, you could collect emails from subscribers who would be highly engaged with what you have to offer; like a pop-up that says “Do you want to learn how to play the piano like Beethoven?” or something else the average aspiring student can relate to.

Therefore, how you present your content is very important and your wording should address a need the reader may have leading them to explore further. Writing a strong headline is an art worth perfecting.

Optimize Your Site’s Usability

Usability is something you should never take for granted. The more enjoyable and user-friendly the experience is for your readers the greater the chance of them spending more time to consume and use your content. They’ll keep coming back for more.

Make your readers’ experiences better with simple strategies like:

• Making key information easier to find
• Keeping relevant info above the fold
• Optimizing site load speed
• Eliminating dead-end pages that link to nowhere else on your site

Source

Here’s a list of free usability testing tools to help assess your site and determine what improvements you can make.

To conclude, increasing engagement relies heavily on your ability to communicate solutions effectively to your target audience with the help of a few tools. While also narrowing your vision to help produce unique products and content users will love and share.

Ever since I was a neophyte in sales, I’ve consistently heard the expression, "You have to continually sharpen the saw." I suppose that means one must periodically maintain the sharpness of their skills because working with a dull tool can take a lot more time and energy to accomplish the desired objective. Makes sense to me.

But, why is it that nobody every talks about the rest of the tools in your tool belt? It stands to reason that people who actually do use saws n their line of work would also use a host of other tools as well. And you don’t have to be a brain surgeon to assume that those other tools should also be in good working order to do the job was well. I remember reading a book one time where the author made a point of saying, "if your only tool is a hammer, then everything will look (to you) like a nail." He’s right, and if you’re in sales, that’s one of the best ways to squander lots of good opportunities.

I think you would agree that rarely are two sales conversations exactly the same. If that were the case, all you’d have to do is create a robotic script and ‘bam,’ you would presumably make the sale every time.

Instead, I’d like to know a little bit more about how and when I’m supposed to use this newly sharpened saw. Is it going to get me into new accounts? Is the sharpness of the saw going to help me understand customer’s needs, or convey more value? Is it going to differentiate my products and services from the competition? Maybe the saw can be used as a closing tool, in the sense that if you don’t buy from me, the saw will threaten to cut you the prospect to pieces. Seriously?

Here’s my question. What about all the other tools in your conversational tool belt? When does a tape measure come into play? You wouldn’t ever sharpen a tape measure, but people who use tape measuring devices in their respective vocations seem to use them a lot–usually before they start cutting with a sharpened saw. They also use a craftsman’s pencil to precisely mark where to aim before they just start hacking away.

Sometimes the job doesn’t call for a saw at all. Perhaps that’s when a screwdriver, or pair of pliers might come in handy. And a skilled craftsman would know whether he wanted to use needle nose pliers or a pair of vice grips. Of course, the craftsman’s tool belt would be filled with a variety of tools that might be needed not only get the job done, but to get it done right in the most expeditious and professional manner.

If we map this concept of "sharpening the saw" to sales, isn’t it true that without any warning, sales conversation can spin off in any number of different directions. Therefore, having multiple conversational tools at your disposal just might give you an ‘unfair’ advantage over the competition?

When you begin a sales call, for example, some customers immediately focus on much your product or service costs without even knowing what it does. Of course, this isn’t good for the salesperson because it’s always going to cost too much if it doesn’t address a recognized need. Thus, we need some initial conversation (and a “tool” that will help us navigate there) that will enable us to deal with the cost question in the appropriate context. So, how about this: Next time the first thing the customer asks is, “How much does it cost?”, you reach down into your conversational tool belt and pull out the following words:

Salesperson: “Mr. Customer, I’d be happy to tell you about all the different options we offer, the impact they will have on your business and the associated cost. Can I ask you a couple specifics in order to give you relevant information?”

Unless, the customer is in an unusually bad mood or they are just playing games, there’s a 99.9% chances they will say “Yes” to your comment. With their permission, you now have the opportunity to ask a series of what QBS would call Diagnostic Questions that will accomplish a host of objectives (including skyrocketing your credibility) in less than sixty seconds. That’s a pretty good investment I’d say, just by using the right conversational technique.

Another example happens as the sale nears the closing stage. Sellers are famous for bumbling to find the right words that essentially ask, “Are you going to buy from me or not?” The QBS salesperson simply pulls the appropriate closing question out of their conversational tool belt and delivers the question in a way that makes it easy for potential buyers to say yes. For example:

Salesperson: “Well, Mr. Customer, if this is what you need, and that’s what we do well, would it make sense to get the appropriate people together in front of a piece of paper so we can map out your options, the impact on your business, and the associated cost?”

Bingo! This is the least threatening way to find out where you really stand in the sale. And if you notice, you don’t have to use a saw or hit the customer over the head with a hammer to accomplish the desired outcome.

That’s essentially what the Question Based Selling Methodology is all about. Providing sellers with a host of strategies and techniques that can be used throughout the sales process to piques their curiosity, establish credibility, differentiate your value proposition, justify any differences in price, and secure the customer’s commitment to move forward in a way that is mutually beneficial.

The question we are now left with is, how many conversational tools do you currently have in your tool belt? I can promise you that everything is not a nail, so you’re going to need more than a hammer to be successful moving forward. And, while I do agree with the concept of keeping your tools sharp, just because you have an sharp saw, still means that it must be used appropriately and at the right time, or you could end up cutting yourself to pieces.

                                                                                                                         –Thomas A. Freese

For those of you still scratching your head over the ins-and-outs of Hive, Spark and Pig, don't bother. There's a race on to make complex Big Data technology like Hadoop easy for the lay user, and it has the added benefit of making you rich.

Yes, you.

After all, the closer you are to the end user of Big Data technology, the bigger the paycheck. Former Cowen & Co. analyst Peter Goldmacher nailed this years ago in a research brief, arguing that the "biggest winners in the Big Data world aren’t the Big Data technology vendors, but rather the companies that will leverage Big Data technology to create entirely new businesses or disrupt legacy businesses." 

As prescient as Goldmacher was in 2012, his dictum is more obviously true with each passing day. We rightly laud the builders of Big Data infrastructure, but the companies that will profit most richly from it are those that are closest to technical marketing and sales professionals who don't know MapReduce from a pivot table.

Selling Solutions, Not Technology

We're already seeing this with companies like John Deere building incredibly powerful, data-driven applications using Hadoop and NoSQL database technology. While Silicon Valley may like to think of itself as the center of the universe, it's that wider universe that is putting Big Data to best use. 

Not that this should surprise us. As Goldmacher writes, this has always been true of technology:

Past as prologue, if we look at the history of ERP, there were over 200 companies created to capitalize on the automation of standard business processes. This means that investors in 1990 had less than a 0.5% chance of picking either SAP or ORCL as the ultimate winners in the space. However, if an investor had purchased stock in the 30 components of the Dow in 1990 that were all deploying ERP, that investor would have benefited from a 35% decline in General and Administrative costs as a percentage of revenues, a five-fold increase in revenues as automation enabled massive scale, and an almost eight-fold increase in market cap.

Of course, Big Data infrastructure vendors like Cloudera will clean up. Cloudera is already worth several billion dollars, and a few other Big Data vendors like DataStax and MongoDB (my employer) are also worth in excess of $1 billion.

But there are a few reasons that Big Data infrastructure vendors won't ultimately capture the bulk of the value from their software:

1. Most Big Data technology is open source, which makes it easy to adopt and harder to monetize;
2. The immediate user of technologies like Hadoop is the developer. Developers are essential to driving adoption but tend not to spend a lot of money;
3. Companies that are closer to consumers or others with open wallets are most likely to be able to monetize Big Data.

Related to #1 above, Cloudera co-founder Mike Olson insists, "You can no longer win with a closed-source platform, and you can't build a successful stand-alone company purely on open source." This leads vendors to blend proprietary and open-source licensing to optimize monetization of adoption, but companies higher up the software stack don't have to bother with such licensing gymnastics. 

So who are these companies?

And The Winners Are...

Most obviously, they are application vendors that simply charge for the value they provide to the end user while burying all the complexity of the infrastructure. Workday co-founder Aneel Bhusri captured this thought years ago:

McKinsey & Co. details the different industries and the impact Big Data should have on them:

Such companies include the John Deeres of the world, as I mentioned, but closer to home in technology, who wins? 

The answer, as ever, is the company that does most to obscure the complexities of difficult technology and make it actionable by mere mortals. 

Microsoft, for example, fits this mold. Look what it's doing with machine learning on Azure. Azure ML promises to remove nearly all "of the startup costs associated with authoring, developing and scaling machine learning solutions," adding "Visual workflows and startup templates [to] make common machine learning tasks simple and easy."

While it's easy to criticize Microsoft (I've certainly had lots of practice), it's also true that Microsoft has done more than any other company to lower the bar on otherwise complex computing. Azure ML follows in the footsteps of Windows, Visual Studio and a host of other technologies that made it possible for mainstream sysadmins and developers to be productive.

Geeks Be Gone!

However, we may need to go a step further. After all, while it's nice to serve the less technical developer or sysadmin, what is really needed is to make Big Data easy enough for you or me. Wikibon analyst Dave Vellante gets this:

Business Intelligence created a special class of analyst but never truly went mainstream. We need Big Data to go mainstream.

One company that seems well-positioned to do this is Adobe. While historically focused on the creative professional, with the purchase of Omniture years ago Adobe jumped firmly into the Big Data world, but with a focus on assisting marketing professionals make informed decisions about how to reach prospective customers. 

Harnessing Big Data is less about out-of-control data volumes and more about a proliferating variety of data sources and types. For a company like Adobe, this involves ingesting and analyzing data from social media streams, cash register receipts and more as it seeks to understand consumer behavior and enable a marketing professional to make a decision within milliseconds as to the right advertisement, graphic or other content to display.

Time To Get Out Of The Weeds

Microsoft and Adobe are but two examples of likely Big Data winners. There are, of course, others, hopefully including your own company. 

But to get there, we need to stop diving into the weeds of Big Data technologies and instead focus on the business value they can provide. Such value will be expressed through applications that you or I can use, and not necessarily Mary the rocket-scientist-developer-down-the-hall. 

As Olson said in an interview with Bosch's Dirk Slama recently, he talks to a lot of people who obsess over "Big Data as Big Data," acknowledging that "Those are bad people for us to work with, because they are not fundamentally driven by a business problem." The real winners in Big Data will be those completely focused on solving real business problems. 

 Image courtesy of Shutterstock. 

When most people think of digital marketing, they think of websites that are well-designed and optimized for search. So, when they have someone build a new website or update their old one, they have two basic concerns: that it looks good and that it has lots of key words for web crawlers to pick up. Good design and SEO—that’s about it then, right? But what’s going to make people want to find your site in the first place? And what are they going to do once they’re on it? The bottom line here is that without a good all-around digital marketing strategy your website is pretty much useless.

What Else Do You Need?

The internet has become the most important channel for businesses to reach potential customers. Let’s face it, no one watches the commercials anymore, and no one wants to stand around and listen to another sales pitch. There’s still something to be said for simply getting your business’s name out there for people to see. But when people want to buy something these days they start by going online to do some research. That’s why a sound digital marketing strategy is crucial. No matter how awesome your website looks, though, no matter how many key words are stuffed into it, if your web content doesn’t offer visitors any valuable information then you can count on them going elsewhere to find some.

So what goes into a more comprehensive web marketing strategy? And what role does your website play in it? Ultimately, the goal of your website is to increase your sales. You can think of your website as a salesperson who works 24/7. Just as you wouldn’t want your salespeople walking around carrying signs instead of talking, you don’t want your website to have nothing but a bunch of static text. Instead, you want your website to actively engage with visitors, to give them the information they’re looking for, and to encourage them make a purchase.

Your web marketing strategy should focus on three central areas:

Content

Google relied on key words back in the day, but search algorithms are much more sophisticated now. They take into account things like how many other sites link to your content, how many people share your content, and what people do with your content. And the algorithms have ways to penalize sites that try to game the system by stuffing them full of key words or purchasing links from third-parties.

The best way to think of this is that the search engines are in the business of helping users find quality content, and they’re really good at what they do. So to get some attention from potential customers you’re just going to have to create some quality content for the search engines to find. Your website should either have a page for your blog or link to a blog hosted elsewhere. The idea is to post information about your industry: news, product reviews, explanations of standard practices, answers to basic questions, etc. You’ll still want to focus on key words, but you want them to be an honest reflection of the content you’re offering.

Blogging regularly (enough to keep up with your competitors) is just the beginning though. You can also create more in-depth materials like white papers and e-books. You can host webinars or in-person events. You can offer downloadable versions of archived webinars. You can make podcasts and videos. Remember, your potential customers are going to do lots of research before they decide what to buy and who to buy it from. By giving them plenty of helpful resources you establish trust, demonstrate your expertise, and strengthen your brand.

Distribution

Once you’ve created some valuable content, the next question is how are your potential customers going to find it? Search engines are well and good, but you can’t rely on them for all your traffic. For one thing, you may want to attract more local traffic. For another, you’ll probably need some links and shares before you start to rank on search results pages. So how do you get over this initial hurdle? The first thing you’ll want to do is start building up a presence on the various social media networks like LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter.

Always give site visitors the option of sharing your content on social sites or via email, and give everyone the option of signing up for email newsletters that include links to your most popular posts. You’ll have to spend some time learning what kinds of stuff to post on which outlets, and you’ll need to follow some rules to avoid having your stuff marked as spam. But if you concentrate on providing quality content and take the lead in sharing it you can get traffic off to a good start.

Conversion

This is what it all comes down to. The whole reason you want to get more people to visit your site is so you can get more sales. And this is ultimately why a static website is useless (well, almost useless). If you get a million people to visit your site, even if they all think the design is totally spectacular, it doesn’t do you any good if none of them end up contacting you or making a purchase. The purpose of your website isn’t to impress visitors—it’s to convert visitors to leads, and convert leads into customers. Depending on what kind of business you have, you can do this a lot of different ways. The most basic method is to attract visitors to your site with quality content, like a blog post that answers a basic question about the products or services you offer.

On the blog, you can either post links to product pages or to more content. At the end of your post, for instance, you may have a call-to-action that allows visitors to click for more in-depth, premium content, like a white paper. Clicking on the CTA brings them to a landing page, where they provide a name and contact information in exchange for the white paper. They get the information they want; you get a sales lead. You can follow up with and nurture that lead, offering more content or a chance to ask questions directly. Eventually, as you keep generating and nurturing more and more leads, you’ll have many more opportunities to close sales.

Okay, so your website isn’t completely useless. At some point in the decision-making process, your prospects are almost certainly going to visit your site to get some basic information about who you are and what you’re about. Your website offers you an opportunity to convey your professionalism, your commitment to quality work, and your brand identity. You can also use your site to host your blog, or post links to your landing pages on it. But the simple fact is that to compete in today’s digital marketing arena you need a lot more than a good-looking website.

In 2013, 182.9 billion emails were sent every day, according to The Radicati Group’s “Email Statistics Report, 2013-2017.” And if they’re reporting on trends that haven’t even HAPPENED yet, you know they’re good.

Seriously, though, how many of those emails did YOUR business send out today? This week? This month? Are they worth your time? More importantly, are they worth the time of the people who received them? Let’s look at a few ways to know how your email marketing is performing and ways to get better results.

You’ll get most of the numbers from your email service provider reports (we’re talking HubSpot, MailChimp, Constant Contact). Where further math is required, we’ll break it down.

1. Bounce Rate

The percentage of total emails sent that could not be delivered to the recipient’s inbox, either because there is a temporary issue with the email address (full inbox, etc.) or because of an invalid or non-existent email address.

What to Look For

The lower the better. A high bounce rate can be an indication that you’re using a stale list.

How to Improve

Your recipients’ ISPs use bounce rates as one key factor in determining an email sender’s reputation. Too many hard bounces may cause you to be blacklisted. So, immediately remove hard bounce addresses from your email list.

2. Delivery Rate

The percentage of emails that were actually delivered to recipients’ inboxes. To have any chance of engaging a customer or prospect with an email campaign, that message has to get delivered to their inbox – obviously.

What to Look For

A delivery rate of at least 95%. If your delivery rate is decresing, you may have problems with your list (e.g. too many invalid addresses).

How to Improve

If one particular campaign has a lower than average delivery rate, examine the subject line and content of that message. Could something have been flagged as spam by corporate firewalls and major ISPs? If so, you may have been blocked!

Not sure how to avoid getting caught up in spam filters? MailChimp posted a great explanation. Basically, certain words and phrases typically associated with spammy messages (“urgent,” “buy now!” etc.) are assigned a number score. Once a message reaches a certain threshold, it’s marked as spam.

3. List Growth Rate

How fast is your email list growing? It’s important to maintain a healthy growth pattern because you need new names all the time just to keep your audience numbers steady. A large number of the addresses on your email list will naturally “go bad” over time as people change jobs, switch ISPs or email programs, etc.

Calculate your growth rate by subtracting opt-outs and hard bounces from the number of new email subscribers gained in a given month. Then, divide that number by the original list size.

What to Look For

According to the popular marketing resource MarketingSherpa, the natural churn rate of an email list can be 25% annually or higher. So, if you can keep yours steady or even show a modest growth rate, you’re doing well.

How to Improve

Keep fresh contacts coming by adding great content and opt-in forms on a regular basis.

4. Click-Through Rate

The percentage of the audience who clicked on one or more links contained in an email message. Calculate CTR either by dividing unique clicks by the number of emails delivered, or by dividing total clicks – including multiple clicks by the same recipient – by the number of emails delivered. Either method works, as long as you use the same one each month!

What to Look For

Monitoring email CTR is vital, because it reveals whether or not the message was relevant and the offer compelling enough to encourage recipients to action.

You may want to separate your campaigns into buckets here because CTR will vary by the type of message you send. For instance, emailed receipts and order confirmations often have a tremendously high CTR (think, “I want to go eye those gorgeous shoes I just ordered one more time!”). Newsletters may have a higher CTR than promotional messages, and so forth.

Obviously, the higher the better here.

How to Improve

Including several links to the same content. Research suggests that more opportunities to click will generate more clicks. Always tell people what they’ll get when they click. For example, “For more leads and sales now, get your email success ebook here!” rather than the completely unmotivating “click here.”

5. Email Sharing/Forwarding Rate

The percentage of recipients who clicked on a “share this” button to share to a social network and/or clicked on the “forward to a friend” button. If your subscribers find your email newsletter articles compelling enough to share with their peers, you’ve likely hit on a hot topic for your audience.

Emails that get shared or forwarded outside of your own list can end up being your best performing campaigns, because you’ve drastically increased the reach of that message by tapping into the viral nature of your subscribers’ social networks.

What to Look For and How to Improve

Watch your sharing rates carefully to discover which types of articles and offers tend to get shared the most, and use that knowledge when planning future campaigns.

6. Conversion Rate

The percentage of recipients who clicked on a link within an email and completed a desired action, such as filling out a lead generation form, registering for an event, or purchasing a product.

What to Look For

The higher your conversion rate, the more relevant and compelling the offer was for your audience and the more successful the campaign overall. Keep in mind, though, that conversion rates are dependent on factors beyond the original email message, such as the quality of your landing pages or the performance of your online store and shopping cart.

How to Improve

Take a close look at the landing page you linked to. See if you can figure out why recipients who clicked on a link might not have completed the process. You may find the landing page’s headline or copy needs improvement, or that a registration form or checkout process was too confusing or clunky, causing many visitors to abandon the process.

Measuring conversion rate requires integration between your email platform and your web analytics. If you’re handy with Google analytics, you can create unique tracking URLs for your email links that identify the source of the click as coming from a specific email campaign.

7. Revenue Per Email Sent

This metric really only applies to ecommerce marketers who generate direct sales from email campaigns. Again, it requires integration between your ESP and your ecommerce or web analytics platform. If you are already tracking conversion rates, you also can collect the order value for each conversion to perform this calculation.

What to Look For

More money, of course!!!

How to Improve

Review your email copy, calls to action, your landing pages and your website. It all works together to improve this number.

Since email is still incredibly powerful as a marketing channel, it’s worth the time it takes to figure out what is working and what isn’t and then make the needed changes. Go forth and email!

Yes, leadership matters. A successful leader possesses a variety of qualities that range – in no particular order – from integrity to confidence to decisiveness to the ability to delegate to positivity… the list can go on and on. And thanks to escalating content overload, the list does in fact go on and on, so much so that it’s now quite literally swarming with enough overused traits to arouse the curiosity of… Bueller… Bueller?

Identifying the top X number characteristics of influential leaders (often from the relatively distant past) is the same as treating the sales enablement process like it’s something new. In reality, while both are worthy of mention, neither narrative is actually new, so let’s not treat them as such. Instead, we should look at the traits of leaders as building blocks to drivers of action – or the stuff of evident value. How have extraordinary leaders achieved success? What strategies were instrumental to their accomplishments? How have they inspired and facilitated team action?

The recent Market Basket saga presents a noteworthy example of an influential leader whose tactics not only united a team, but motivated them to take cohesive action in the face of immense and controversial strife. No matter your opinion on the outcome of the events that followed (some of us certainly missed our reliable discounts), what’s remarkable is this group’s resilient dedication to the exceptionally valued leadership tactics of Arthur T. Demoulas (the formally ousted CEO) and their steadfast resistance to the poor qualities they envisioned in the new leadership.

That’s powerful stuff. Employees and buyers alike revolted against poor leadership for what they knew worked, what they found consistently advantageous, and what ultimately made Market Basket both a satisfying place to work and to shop. In other words, they really, really, liked what Arthur Demoulas was doing.

Sales leaders in today’s increasingly competitive and complicated landscape, typically already have what it takes to lead – the acquired and hard-earned X number characteristics lead them here – what is important to consider, however, is how to take those qualities to the next and possibly most significant level: empowering a sales team to execute using their utmost potential, by choice. And because buyers today are savvier than ever, when something’s not working with the sales team (take repetitive and plain old erroneous messaging, for instance), buyers feel it — and that affects your bottom line.

In an ideal world – a world where most highly regarded leaders have either strived to be or came incredibly close to creating – a team’s dedication is a direct result of them sharing the vision for success and incorporating the need for customer satisfaction as a credo to selling. So how can you come millimeters away from achieving this idyllic state of sales? As all things in life, it takes baby steps, preparation, and a good deal of work. Are you ready?

“Believe in the unbelievable”

Anthony Iannarino recently wrote an excellent post highlighting some of those key steps you can take in your journey to inspire and mobilize your sales force. Here’s a selection of a few timely ones that will get the results desired.

1. A Great Sales Manager who Leads: Every salesperson is owed a great sales manager to lead them. You should expect any salesperson who isn’t provided with a leader to fail, and it will not every be their own fault. This is the first and most important thing to provide your sales force.
2. Mindset: You have to teach your sales force how to think about what it takes to do their job. You have to help them understand what they have to believe in order to succeed. You might think that you aren’t responsible for motivation, and at some level you are right. But you are responsible for giving them something to believe in. Mainly themselves.
3. Skills Training: If you want your sales force to succeed, you have to help them improve their skills. One of the ways you best help them improve is by providing skills training. The best skills training is focused on fundamentals. The game is won through blocking and tackling.
4. A Sales Process: Your sales force isn’t responsible for developing their own sales process. You must provide them with the collected knowledge and wisdom of your sales force on how deals are successfully moved from target to close. They may have their own style, but they should not have their own process.
5. Coaching: Every great performer in every field has a coach. Or coaches, more likely. Your salespeople have blind spots. If they could see their own mistakes, they wouldn’t be making them. Coaching is how you help people recognize and take advantage of new possibilities, and by doing so, improve their own performance. It also makes them responsible and accountable for their own growth and development.
6. Tool Kits: Playbooks. Differentiation charts. Sales call planners. Client questionnaires. Sales force automation software. Technological tools. Your sales force needs to be well equipped to be as effective as they can be. You owe them the tools of the trade.

Using this handy checklist as a guide ensures streamlined and energized team efforts that are imperative to the success of every sales organization. Whether you’re the leader, or you need to demand these traits from one, these initiatives will help garner the dedication and cohesiveness every team needs to succeed.

Let’s face it: It seems simple. It seems tempting. Everyone else is probably doing it, right?

There are many articles that describe the best social media engagement techniques, but buying followers is not one of them. Paid followers on Twitter or likes on Facebook may seem attractive as it is meant to give viewers the impression that your business is popular. There is a belief that having high amounts of likes and follows on social media websites will give your business additional credibility. While I won’t argue that “more” may give the impression of “popular,” the truth is that there are side effects of these services that may work against your marketing in the long-run.

What Are These Services?

There are companies that exist which provide a service of quickly amassing thousands of likes and follows on your social media pages for a fee. Such companies have created thousands of faux accounts on social media sites that are used for nothing other than this service. When a customer makes a purchase, the company uses an automated technique to instruct all of their accounts to follow your page. There is very little human interaction involved.

If You Plan On Purchasing Ads, Don’t Purchase Followers

Do not make the mistake of believing that the likes and follows you purchase are real people. These are not potential leads or customers. Don’t expect them to share or link your content. Think of these social media accounts as robots doing the same thing for everybody.

Those who pay for likes and follows are typically doing so in hopes of growing their exposure. It’s a legitimate assumption that if one is willing to pay for likes and follows, they are probably more apt to purchase advertising on these sites as well.

Let’s imagine that you purchased 5,000 likes on Facebook and 5,000 follows on Twitter. You see your new “fans” pouring in, and you decide that next week to purchase some advertising. Paid ads on these sites work in several ways, but most often will be sent to those who follow your account, as they’re believed to be leads that already show interest in your business/product. After completing your purchase and designing your ad, Facebook will promote your add to you followers. However, in this case the vast majority of your followers are fake accounts from your previous purchase of follows. As a result, your paid ad gets shown to fake, empty profiles with no chance of organic engagement.

Aside from the obvious pitfall of purchasing social media follows as described above, what is the true value of amassing a larger number of fans? I believe a lot of marketers and other decision-makers make the mistake of believing that higher fan numbers reflect a more popular product. The idea that visitors will think “if this business has a lot of fans it must mean it is popular and I should follow them too” is not always correct. As the generation of technology advances, more and more people are becoming aware – whether directly or subconsciously – to these strategies.

While purchasing followers can hurt your outreach and may not be the best, social media provides many other ways to interact with your fans. Let’s discuss some ideas for healthy, organic engagement.

Organic Social Media Engagement

To be successful, the best social media marketing requires implementing two core activities particularly well:

1. - Creating great content that begs to be shared
2. - Building large and engaged social networks

Tapping into the business power of social media is not an approach that focuses solely on capturing more Facebook likes and Twitter followers. It is about building a brand through a multifaceted approach of creativity, multimedia, and publishing content that begs to be shared. When a user shares your content, they are exposing it to others outside of your typical reach and in essence are attracting new leads to you.

You may be wondering what kind of content to create and promote. A good rule of thumb would be to focus on content that people like to share. The most successful viral marketing tends to be one of these types:

• Special Deals (sales, coupons, etc)
• Humor  (see this famous example Oreo created during the Super Bowl blackout on Twitter)
• Cause Marketing
• Other Viral Marketing

Special deals and coupons include promotions that seem exclusive to a small community. One example would be a promotion on Facebook that states a certain item or deal will be activated after a post has been shared x number of times, or once a certain amount of new fans have been acquired. Another example could be a post about a sale that says “Share this with your friends! If this is shared at least 100 times we will select one fan at random to receive a prize!”

Cause marketing is content that is cleverly designed to initiate engagement with the reader. One of my favorite examples is from a user who was promoting his new business startup on Facebook. He created a post on his personal Facebook page with a photo of him holding a $1 bill. In the post he mentions his business and how he promises to donate $1 to charity for each time his post was shared and his business page was liked. He cleverly adds that he only has $20 max to donate, yet the post was still shared over 100 times! On top of this, his strategy was featured in several articles about the best social media engagement – resulting even more exposure.

Genius viral marketing is my term for marketing that appears to be anything but. For example, when Sara Bareilles released her song “Brave,” one incredible marketer had the idea to piggyback off of Katy Perry’s fame by anonymously accusing Katy Perry’s song as sounding similar to Sara’s, indirectly suggesting that one may have taken ideas from the other. Regardless of whether or not the claims are true, it erupted a firestorm of controversy and comments from fans. As a result, many Katy Perry fans were introduced to Sara’s music and became fans of hers as well. Personally, I did not know who Sara Bareilles was until I saw this controversy on Reddit, and later I realized how genius of a marketing strategy it may have been.

In Conclusion

Purchasing fans on social media may not have much of a positive effect on your bottom line, and instead could be detrimental to your future exposure. Instead, try designing content like the examples provided above. Our goal is to leverage the power of social media by having viewers entertained, interested, and feeling as though they are in an exclusive club that they want to share with their friends.

It happens in nearly every business field, and the lead generation industry is no exception: Well-meaning colleagues end up giving you bad advice on the best approach for your B2B lead generation and appointment setting.

These mistaken suggestions are where social proof goes wrong. Sometimes, you just need to listen to an authority within the sales and lead generation industry rather than just your colleagues who have only dipped their toes in the waters of outsourced sales and lead management.

Here are five pieces of advice you need to stop listening to regarding outsourced sales support and lead generation tips:

Bad Tip #1: You Need Experts With In-Depth Product Knowledge

Whether you’re in software sales or any other specific B2B service industry, your lead generation personnel don’t have to be experts on your specific product. Your product experts should be saved for closing the sale and for long-term customer service – not for cold calling and initial appointment setting.

Rather, in the initial prospecting process, you need a sales team that’s better at establishing relationships and qualifying sales leads more than you need product experts.

Bad Tip #2: You Need A Face-To-Face Lead Generation Team

Knocking on doors to generate new leads is a practice of the past. In the modern age, you don’t need a team of face-to-face salespeople in order to make genuine connections with your prospects – after all, there’s a reason why outbound telemarketing is still a highly successful business model.

Instead, you should hire a lead generation team that pursues every new opportunity in your contact database. Whether you find a new contact at a tradeshow event or a networking lunch, your lead generation team should be following up with that contact in a timely manner.

Bad Tip #3: You Need In-House Lead Generation Specialists

A lot of businesses believe that if their B2B lead generation isn’t done by their own employees, then they can’t control the message sent to their prospects. These business leaders fear an outsourced sales team would not represent their brand well but most of the time that fear isn’t even credible.

In reality, reliable lead generation specialists act as an extension of your business and their appointment setting experts will be trained well to represent the brand image you want to communicate. Outsourcing your lead generation efforts also ensures that your leads are highly qualified and never dead-end opportunities.

Bad Tip #4: You Need More Leads, No Matter What

Another common piece of advice from colleagues is that your company always needs more leads, regardless of quality or personnel bandwidth. However, this lead-heavy situation is far from the ideal for most businesses.

If you load too many leads into the top of your sales funnel and you don’t have the ability to follow up with those prospects, the contact information from those leads is likely to go bad – and prospects are likely to have moved on to a different vendor or supplier. As we’ve covered before, quality of leads always outweighs quantity of leads, and you should have a sales team with the bandwidth to follow up and close the deal.

Bad Tip #5: You Need Only A Single Sales Channel

While certain marketing and sales channels might be more popular or easier to execute, no single channel is certain to reach your entire customer base. If you want to ensure you don’t miss out on any potential customers, you need to start capitalizing on more than one sales or marketing channel.

For example, you may need to purchase contact lists and start cold calling prospects, or maybe you need to start utilizing marketing automation software or you might need to hold more webinars or tradeshow events. No business is likely to have covered every single channel or mined every single opportunity – the key is to keep diversifying your opportunities to maximize your top-line growth.

There’s a lot of bad lead generation advice out there, so it’s time to start debunking the myths and cutting through the speculation. Start by tuning out these five bad lead generation tips and begin listening to advice that’s proven to produce results.

Discover how the Science of Sales™ helps your business realize more top-line growth without bogging you down with administrative costs and hiring hassles. Click below to start a conversation with a Sales Scientist™ from Invenio Solutions on how to make your lead generation smarter than ever.

Some firms are just realizing that the traditional B2B sales process is ‘changing’. But what they don’t realize is that the model has already fundamentally ‘changed’ forever. Thanks to the Internet, your next prospective customer has too much information at their fingertips; to do their research, get informed in order to make their own decisions about your company, products and services…before speaking with one of your sales reps.

And guess what?! They don’t always get it right!

It is not their job to figure out what you do, how you will help them, the benefits your service provides…that’s your job. And when it comes to the blocking and tackling of the traditional sales process, prospects are even more leery of old-school tactics. Some would argue it is not a “sales cycle” any longer but a “buying cycle”. And that sales people must learn new skills, and have engaging sales support material to let buyers go through the buying process at their own timeframe and speed (thanks Frank Belzer author of Sales Shift).

Today’s sales people must be armed with the necessary sales assets (hint hint marketing folks) to respond to prospect’s educational needs without “selling“. One way to give prospects the education they need while building relationships during the sales cycle, is to integrate a thoughtful approach to B2B sales video production in your sales work-flow. At a time when prospects are decreasing the face time sales people get with prospects, sales video communications will bring the human element into the sales process earlier on in the sales cycle. So does this make video the new ‘cold call’?

B2B sales video communications provides is the ability to have sales people “get off the script”. Sales people have always been criticized for “talking to much” which make prospects loose credibility with sales “know it alls”. Sales videos provide sales people with engaging assets that allow them to teach and showcase company’s human skill sets without saying a word.  Crafting well thought out video marketing communication plan will address common questions prospects have, introduce your firm’s expertise, highlight specific use case / application of a product or showcases key metrics other companies have attained. Thus providing the educational prospective a buyer needs to build trust and confidence towards a purchase decision.

Take any B2B software, SasS or professional service technology sales as an example. Who do sales people bring with them to important meetings to give answers to the most commonly asked questions? During the buying cycle, executive, technical and operational teams will often accompany the sales person on big deals to provide valuable insights, expertise and experience.

This same insight, expertise and experience can be captured via a professional video production company.   Then the sales person will have valuable professional video communications to send before, and after, these big meetings, allowing the prospective buyer (many times more than one person on a decision making committee) to get informed, experience the human element of a company, and have that “I feel like I already know you already” feeling and support important relationship building tactics.

B2B technology and professional service sales are highly relationship driven, so creating videos will actually put the human relationship element back into the sales process while having a more educated buyer.

This strategy places a more important role on the marketing department; to produce more sales video content for the sales cycle and other content to drive awareness and convert new leads.   NOTE: online video marketing content that is geared towards brand awareness and conversion may, or may not, be the same video production content that is meant to be used as a sales tool.   The approach that marketing departments take with paper-based assets should be taken with corporate sales video communications.

Many B2B companies will be slow to start using video as they deem it impersonal. But integrating a strategic sales video communications plan will actually bring a sense of humanity back into the buying cycle. Allowing the buyer to get the information they want, when they want it, directly from the people at your company that make your company your company.

If you didn’t understand the need to set your company apart from its competitors, you probably wouldn’t still be in business. However, there’s a big difference between intuitively understanding the need to communicate your firm’s value proposition, or VP, and creating a compelling statement that captures your brand and clearly differentiates it from what others are doing. To bolster the ability of your digital marketing strategy to convert your website visitors into customers, a concise and compelling company value proposition is critical.

What Is a Company Value Proposition?

Simply put, your company’s value proposition, also known as a unique selling proposition, aims to convince prospects why they should do business with you instead of one of your competitors. This sounds simple enough, but far too many business owners and marketers do not develop or effectively communicate a compelling value proposition.

Developing Your Value Proposition

Crafting a value proposition that seamlessly complements other aspects of your digital marketing strategy requires several well thought-out steps. These include:

• Identify your highest-value prospects and group them into “buyer personas”: Using historical sales and lead generation data, group your company’s ideal prospects and customers into cohesive segments whose members have the same needs, goals and pain points. For example, our ideal buyer persona is a company owner or marketing executive who needs to generate qualified leads for their sales team to close sales and grow the revenue for their company. Their prospects conduct research online for their type of product and they need to attract their prospects to their website to engage with them and convert them to a qualified lead. Our ideal buyer persona’s annual company revenue is at least $3 million a year.
• Zero in on each group’s specific objectives and pain points: Although the members of each buyer persona group have some obvious similarities, it’s still essential to list out what makes their needs, goals and pain points unique. For instance, a company owner or marketing executive lacks a significant volume of leads in order to give their sales team more opportunities to close more business. The marketing executive needs to significantly increase their organic website traffic through search engines such as Google, Bing and Yahoo in order to convert more leads for their sales team. The organic search engine visitors typically have much higher conversion rates to leads than other forms of advertising.
• Present a tailored solution to each group’s needs: Make each buyer persona feel as if you’re directly addressing their needs, goals and pain points. For instance, our buyer persona needs a proven marketing system for:
  • Attracting more visitors to their website.
  • Converting a higher percentage of those visitors to leads.
  • Nurturing those leads through content offers that matches their buying cycle to help their sales team close more business.
  • Continuing to engage their customers after the sale to increase upsell opportunities.

Putting It All Together

These steps require you to collect and synthesize a lot of information. However, your value proposition always needs to be short and punchy. Ideally, it should fit into one or two sentences with an outside maximum of 40 words.

If you can’t break down the high-level solutions your company can offer to its prospects, it might not be a bad idea to take another look at this process and see if you can’t isolate your core areas of appeal even further. You can bet that your competitors are doing the same.

To help you get started, here is an example of Xcellimark’s Value Proposition: Our inbound content marketing service has helped business owners and marketing executives increase their organic traffic and lead conversions by an average of 93% within 12 months.

To learn more about how you can get similar staggering results for your company, download the free case study “Digital Marketing That Converts: See How A New Digital Marketing Plan Drove A 210% Increase In Conversion Rate.”

Do you have a big contact database that may or may not include actual, qualified leads? If you do, you’re not alone.  Every year 25% of contact databases will expire and many will do nothing to clean out this list. Instead, marketers send email after email to this database because they believe the more people they reach the more successful email marketing will be. Contrary to this belief, holding onto your entire contact database over the years is actually harmful in a number of ways including:

• Old contacts can consume your budget, especially if you are paying for each contact to be housed in your database

• Email marketing analytics become convoluted from contacts who will likely never buy from you

• Your brand reputation may be at stake. Do you want to be known as the spammer? Sending email blasts to a database that hasn’t been cleaned in years may result in your brand being known as a spamming company.

While many of these contacts may be dead end leads or customers who won’t be coming back, you won’t know the true quality of them if you don’t clean out your database and try to re-engage those that are worthy. Although completely dependent on your sales cycle, I’d recommend cleaning out any contacts who haven’t clicked an email, downloaded your content or visited your website in the last 6 months before sending any new emails.

Once your list is cleansed, you can use lead nurturing to re-engage those who haven’t engaged in a while but are still quality leads. Because lead nurturing is an automated process for email campaigns, it’s the ideal method to re-engage contacts. Once you establish re-engagement campaigns through the use of lead nurturing, you can keep these campaigns in place to continually clean out contacts.

5 Ways to Re-Engage Your Contact List with Lead Nurturing

1. Surveys

Why won’t your contacts open your emails? Is it because they don’t find your content valuable? Are you being too promotional and they’d rather receive informational content? The best way to find out is to ask. Below is an example of a great re-engagement survey. Not only does Stoneyfield make it easy to opt in or out, they also use fun and engaging copy to ensure contacts want to stay in touch.

credit: stonyfield organic

2. Segment & Personalize

If you aren’t already segmenting your list by the contact’s marketing persona or unique characteristics, it is no wonder why you have a giant database of unengaged contacts. Not only should your lead nurturing emails be customized to the contact’s name, they should also be drafted to appeal to that contact’s pain points, objectives and interests. To re-engage your database, set-up lead nurturing campaigns that show you really know who the contact is.

3. Show Them Why They Should Engage

When I say show them, I literally mean to give them something visual. We all get hundreds of emails in a week so you have to make your emails eye catching to stand out in the crowd.  Keep in mind that visually appealing content doesn’t mean clutter.  If design is too busy, the contact won’t know what you want them to do next. Keep your email’s objective in line with design.

4. Serve Up Fresh Content

It’s nearly impossible to re-engage contacts who’ve already read your content and know all there is to know about your product or service.  To re-engage contacts, one of the most important things you can do is develop new, compelling content that is relevant to them.

5. Offer Incentives

If you are often sending out newsletters, promotions and some drip campaigns, your contacts likely think that you’ll always be around when they need you, but what can you do to make them need you now? Offer discounts or limited time offers to incentivize contacts to re-engagement today rather than tomorrow.

After running several re-engagement campaigns, clean out all those contacts who still aren’t engaging despite your continued efforts. Your brand, budget and those contacts will appreciate you so much more.

(Elastic Path)

Vancouver e-commerce company Elastic Path Software Inc. is the Shopify of big brands, catering to companies with revenues in the tends of millions of dollars. Customers did $6.5 billion in sales last year through Elastic Path’s platform last year, and today the firm announced it has raised $5.35 million in equity investments led by the BDC Venture Capital IT Fund.

Despite standouts like ClearlyContacts.ca, Canada trails our southern neighbours on the retail side of the e-commerce landscape, with less than 50% of businesses having something as basic as a website. But the amazing success of Shopify highlights the major role that Canadian companies have played behind the scenes of digital shopping, with a huge chunk of sales running on Canadian-built platforms.

READ: Kent Thexton of OMERS Ventures on how to build Canada’s next RIM »

Harry Chemko (Elastic Path)

“I like to think of e-commerce as an iceberg—there’s a part that you see as a consumer, and underneath that is all the tools to manage it, which involves some very complex processes,” explains Elastic Path CEO Harry Chemko. “Think about a large retailer that might have five million items in their catalogue—that’s pretty tough to manage with a spreadsheet. You need to have the right systems to manage that.”

Chemko discussed the company’s plans for its fresh injection of funds and the future of e-commerce.

Canadian Business: How did this investment round come about?

Harry Chemko: Elastic Path was started in 2000, right out of university, and we were a bootstrap company until last summer when we started raising capital. We’ve really started to grow as a company and started to move to a subscription-revenue model which is something that required more funding as we expand not only in North America but Europe as well.

There’s growth in the partnerships we want to roll out, and that’s a big reason for the funding. We [also want to] expand more geographically, to get better reach into areas like Western Europe where you need to have a really localized presence and a couple of partners in each region to be able to do a good job of covering your customer base there. Those things start to add up.

Between you and Shopify, Canadian e-commerce platforms underpin a large share of online transactions. Is there something about Canada that makes these kind of e-commerce businesses successful?

Part of me thinks that its because Canadian entrepreneurs get frustrated because our e-commerce experiences aren’t as good as they are south of the border! [E-commerce] is a hard problem to solve—it changes based on consumer technology, which is different from most business software, which changes based on business need. I think that Canada has a lot of very smart entrepreneurs, and I think Canada is very focused on e-commerce because of frustration that we haven’t had access to the same level of goods and services in the U.S. Something like two-thirds of Canadian consumers who shop online are shopping from U.S. websites.

READ: Canadians love shopping online, but our businesses are missing out »

What does the future of e-commerce look like?

As consumer technology changes you have to really think about what you provide as an e-commerce platform. It seems to work in five-year cycles to me. In 2000–2005 it was just about getting a site online. Then 2005–2010 was really about multi-channel—how you can have your online channel through your website work alongside what people are doing when they come to your store. The next five years really to me is about driving amazing customer experiences, taking advantage of all the great technology that’s available on the consumer landscape.

There a definite change in how companies are thinking about the future of e-commerce. It’s really been catalogue-based ecommerce websites and maybe a mobile site over the last several years. We really think that the future means that if you’re a large retailer you’re probably going to have dozens if not hundreds of touchpoints. You see what Apple’s announcing today with some sort of NFC payment system with a watch—all of a sudden you start thinking about conducting e-commerce through a wearable.

READ: Apple’s new payment system will finally give digital wallets critical mass »

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The post Vancouver’s Elastic Path raises $5.35 million to invest in e-commerce’s wearable future appeared first on Canadian Business.

Nowadays, you cannot deny just how crucial mobile marketing is in boosting any company’s marketing campaign. Over thirty seven percent of web users use their mobile devices to surf the Internet, and another study concluded that sixty seven percent of smartphone users in the United States alone claimed they are more encouraged to buy if the site is mobile-friendly. Hence, it’s only right to explore various marketing options to give your business a much needed boost. Here you’ll find some mobile marketing tools that will help boost your business.

Get the Right Mobile Architecture in Place

In order to get the ball rolling for your mobile marketing efforts, you need to have a plan. The right mobile architecture must be in place to help you get started. What does this mean? Simply that you need to make your images, texts, and other visual aids/forms more dynamic and flexible for the users and readily conform to their preferred device whether it be a laptop, desktop, tablet, or smartphone.

A responsive design has various levels of navigation and large images if you look at it from a desktop, but looks entirely different when you browse through it using your smartphone.

However, this is not just limited to websites and the principles can be applied to your Facebook apps, newsletters for emails, coupons for download, etc. The only way you can be sure it looks good, though, is to test this on a regular basis.

Mobile Marketing Tools to Explore

Mobile Ads

Right now Facebook has over six hundred million users that are active on mobile. Nearly fifty percent of people using social media to gain access to their favorite platforms do this from their phones and other mobile gadgets. Just make sure your ads, text, and images are easy to read, see, and understand so you don’t give your viewers a hard time dissecting the message you’re trying to get through. If you’re not using Facebook to your advertising advantage, then you don’t know what you’re missing.

Email Updates

To this day email is still one of the best ways to announce the latest news about your business’s products and services, sending resources or announcing promos and giveaways. This is one of the best ways to keep your loyal customers up to date, and for this reason, you’re going to need MailChimp. It’s an email tool with a free plan available that’s especially designed for those who are just starting out on their new businesses. They also give you the best mobile templates and provide the best practices to make sure you get started on the right track.

Special Phone Numbers

These days, 1300 numbers are very popular and in demand especially for Australia-based businesses, regardless of size. These inbound numbers lend a professional appeal to a business, even if it’s a small start-up yet to make headway in the industry. Customers are more inclined to call a 1300 number since it charges them the cost of a local call when dialed from an Australian landlines. What’s more, these numbers are compatible with phone answering services, providing your business with 24/7 availability.

QR Codes

Now, you simply cannot undermine the value of QR codes as one of the best mobile marketing tools. When you set up a QR code, your customers have the option of receiving coupons, announcements about special events, contests, newsletters, etc. Moreover, it makes it a lot easier for collecting and managing all these information. Remember, the point of encouraging them to receive newsletters or liking you on Facebook is to promote a long-term relationship and open communication with them. For instance, if your customers received coupons on their emails every now and then, don’t you think they’d drop by and shop more often?

Choose a third-party app. If you really want to build a solid custom Facebook app then you need a third-party app that can do this for you because they have the necessary mobile capabilities to do it. They use “Smart URLs” to know if the user is accessing it from a desktop or from a mobile device. Only then will the appropriate content be served to suit their device.

So what are you waiting for? Now that you know what mobile marketing tools your competitors are using, it’s time to step up and gain some leverage as well. Many tools are widely available to help your business turn into a mobile-friendly company. Just make sure that what you’re giving your customers is easy and convenient to use, otherwise, don’t expect them to give you the time of day. Plan your marketing campaign now and improve your strategies along the way. Then, sit back, relax, and watch your business grow.

This article originally appeared on Marquetingquery and has been republished with permission.

Sending an automated, calibrated series of messages to get a customer to take action is nothing new. However, startups often consider the value of their marketing to be the value of their product, and sometimes consider “marketing” (particularly anything “outbound”) to be either ancillary, or outright annoying to any potential customer.

Email sequences, however, can be tremendously useful both for encouraging initial purchases or sales appointments, or to encourage use or retention of a product. 

Try signing up for a Twitter account, Facebook account, or LinkedIn account and see if you’ll get sequential, calibrated email follow up in your inbox. You will. Go ahead an make a purchase from colossal eCommerce companies like Amazon, Priceline, or eBay, and see if you find yourself getting emails to encourage future purchases. You will.

Yet some of us think auto-responders might be “too pushy” or “aggressive,” and that our product should be reason enough for users to come back and engage / purchase, time and time again. Hint: If Facebook (maybe the stickiest “killer app” on earth) uses email strategically to encourage engagement, you should, too. In this article we’ll cover some of the basic building blocks for doing just that.

When conducting your email campaign, there are three main elements (or “ingredients”) to consider if you’re to make it a success, and ensure that your messages are read and actions are taken from the subscriber. Like a balanced diet, a healthy mix of these ingredients ensures that you nurture subscribers properly, but still swing for the conversions you’re ultimately looking for.

Ingredient 1) Education and Information

Telling business owners and managers to provide information about their business is perhaps like telling a fish to swim, but you’d be surprised at how many people take this simple step for granted. Communicating what it is that your business is about in a way that is both exact and beneficial for your operation is an art form in itself — and could be the subject of hundreds (even thousands) of individual articles. But there is an easy way of incorporating this ingredient into your email marketing campaign mix, and it is essential that you do it right.

The thing to keep in mind is: your email marketing campaigns are not the same as your website. The information you give will have to be succinct, summary and relatively short, at least when compared to the “About” section on your official online presence. This is no time for mission statements, you need to convey exactly what it is your specific product/service is about and at the same time try to anticipate why somebody might be interested. Do you have some interesting statistics concerning the subject of your email? Or some facts that might give your product a great context to sell it in? Here is the time to utilise those little nuggets. The more you know about your prospects, the more you can educate them in the way they’d like most, so look into using what you know about them (industry, company size, interests, etc…) to help tailor your education.

Remember, this is not the same as a fully-fledged page-long description. More often than not (depending on your own circumstances) your email will contain links to more substantial outlets of information for your readers to go to if they need more. 

There are a million and one ways to do this the right way, but just because this part of the email is a staple of almost any sales-orientated communication, doesn’t mean that you can discard this from the realm of prolonged thought and contemplation. Remember: it’s an email. Not a doorstep chat or a conference talk. Treat it as such to make the most of your email campaign.

Application: Take your reader on a journey of learning about your product or service, and the benefits it brings. Early in the sequence, it might be an important, succinct overview. Then, you might walk through individual product features in each individual message, always grounding the lessons or tutorials on “what’s in it for them.”

Ingredient 2) Social Proof/Testimonial

This is perhaps the ingredient in your email marketing campaign that is likely to make the biggest difference. Having somebody else verify that the product/service that is being sold to you is actually worth the paper it’s written on (or screen, let’s not get picky) is like gold dust to those in business. Having somebody separate and unaffiliated with the organization endorse and support your product means that any potential buyer has literal proof that what you offer is of some substance.

This doesn’t have to be someone of particular repute either, ordinary customers (who have been in the same position as the reader) often mean more and are less obviously affiliated with the organisation/business in question. Although a well-placed celebrity endorsement can be extremely valuable. The rich and famous have tremendous clout and brand power and sales evidence from all over the globe has demonstrated that a simple thumbs up from a famous face can work wonders on a business’s profits and takings. Don’t make the celebrity endorsement your sole concern in this regard however, academics and relevant experts often make even better patrons in email marketing campaigns, dispelling any prior concerns a reader might have over a product’s ability to perform to specification. 

Testimonies are not optional if you want your communications to be seen as valid, well meaning and of some worth. People are sceptical of salespeople who appear to be out to make a quick buck and nothing else, social proof is proof that you and your campaign are not that. To leave them out is to risk your email marketing campaigns ending up in the trash.

Application: Make a subscriber know that what you have is for them. Use case studies of other clients or customers who’ve gleaned specific benefits from your work. This could be in the form of direct testimonials, but it also might be a feature explanation seen through a successful client use-case. The more relevant the testimonials or case studies, the more conducive they are to generating sales, which is one more reason to segment and communicate differently to your list segments earlier rather than later.

Ingredient 3) Calls To Action

What exactly is the point of this email that I’m reading? What am I supposed to do with this information? They sound like a patronizing questions, but there are companies (big, successful ones aren’t excluded from this) who conduct email marketing campaigns without those questions in mind and the consequences are disastrous: wasted time and (even more importantly) wasted money.

This part of the email should be the culmination of the previous two pillars and the work they’ve done for you. To put it in inappropriately aggressive sales lingo — if the first two pillars have weakened your opponent into a lucid salesperson-friendly state, then the “Call To Action” should function as the killer blow. Whether it’s purchasing a product, making an appointment, requesting a quote or provoking a log-in on your website (of which the reader is already member), the purpose of the email should always remain clear, even if you’re not outlining it in every single paragraph of your communication. But it should be explicit, an email that requires somebody to search around for the point isn’t going to be a successful one.

Don’t be shy. Just don’t come across too pushy either. There is a fine balance, but we can all instinctively distinguish between the cocky “big talker” and the measured – but assertive – individual who is most likely to get the response your campaign is intended to provoke. If you ever struggle with the tone and style of prose in your email, always relate your words to real-life examples of people trying to sell you something. I find that always helps. Sign up for Wayfair or HubSpot to see how successful eCommerce and consultative sales companies use “calls to action” in a professional way that still delivers results.

Application: You have to close. Whether it’s a click to a sales page, a reply email, an appointment form filled out, or an active user who’s eager to keep paying after their 30-day free trial – your campaigns have a job to do, and you’ve got to direct your prospect accordingly.

Conclusion

These three “pillars” of emailing marketing are not the sole considerations for a every campaign, a lot of what you’re doing will depend on your own circumstances and aims. They are, however, almost universally applicable as a foundation upon which to lay the details of your outbound messaging. If you’re missing one altogether, you might just be missing the boat when it comes to converting prospects with email.

If you don’t have prospect-to-customer sequences in place at all, or any kind of retention emails in place for existing customers, this article (in addition to following the email marketing example of successful companies) will give you some solid building blocks to get started with. If you have a sequence in place, take a look at it through the lens of the three “ingredients” and see if anything’s missing altogether, or could be heightened to help the customer and garner more conversions.

“Freedom lies in being bold.” – Robert Frost

This episode’s guest is the incredible Peter Thiel.

Peter is a serial company founder (PayPal, Palantir), billionaire investor (first outside investor in Facebook, 100+ others), and author of the new book Zero to One. Whether you’re an investor, entrepreneur, or simply a free thinker aspiring to do great things, I highly recommend you grab a copy.  His teachings on differentiation, value creation, and competition alone have helped me make some of the best investment decisions of my life (e.g. Twitter, Uber, Alibaba, etc.).

This podcast episode was experimental, as I was on medical leave.  It includes both audio and written questions. What are Peter’s favorite books?  Thoughts on tech and government, and more?  Answers to these “bonus questions” can be found in the text below.

For the longer, main audio discussion, you can:

• Listen to the episode on iTunes
• Download it as an MP3 (right click “save as”): Here it is.
• Or stream it now below (If you’re reading this in e-mail, please click here to stream):

Now, a bit more on Peter…

Peter Thiel has been involved with some of the most dynamic companies to emerge from Silicon Valley in the past decade, both as a founder and investor. Peter’s first start-up was PayPal, which he co-founded in 1998 and led to a $1.5 billion acquisition by eBay in 2002. After the eBay acquisition, Peter founded Clarium Capital Management, a global macro hedge fund. Peter also helped launch Palantir Technologies, an analytical software company which now books $1B in revenue per year, and he serves as the chairman of that company’s board. He was the first outside investor in Facebook, and he has invested in more than 100 startups total.

There are a lot of lessons in this podcast, even more in his new book, and below are a few follow-up questions that Peter answered via text.

Enjoy!

TIM: What is the book (or books) you’ve most often gifted to other people?

PETER: Books by René Girard, definitely — both because he’s the one writer who has influenced me the most and because many people haven’t heard of him.

Girard gives a sweeping view of the whole human experience on this planet — something captured in the title of his masterwork, Things Hidden Since the Foundation of the World — but it’s not just an academic philosophy. Once you learn about it, his view of imitation as the root of behavior is something you will see every day, not just in people around you but in yourself.

What is your favorite movie or documentary?

PETER: No Country for Old Men — a movie about whether all events are simply random, but also a work in which no detail is left to chance. I catch something new every time I watch it.

To increase technological growth/progress, what are the key things you think the government or people should do for greatest impact?

PETER: Libertarians like to call out excessive regulations, and I think they’re right.

But it’s a vicious circle: when governments make it harder to get things done, people come to expect less; when expectations are low, technologists are less likely to aim high with the kind of risky new ventures that could deliver major progress. The most fundamental thing we need to do is regain our sense of ambition and possibility.

For those who want to improve their ability to question assumptions or commonly held “truths,” which philosophers, or reading, or exercises, or activities might you suggest?

PETER: It’s a great exercise to revisit predictions about the future that were made in the past.

People write a lot of history, and they make a lot of predictions, and I consume a lot of both. But it’s rare that people go and check old predictions. It’s a way to see — with the benefit of hindsight — the assumptions that people didn’t even know they were making, and that can make you more sensitive to the questionable conventions that surround us today. For example, The American Challenge by Jean-Jacques Servan-Schreiber argued in 1968 that Europe would be eclipsed by relentless American progress. But that progress never came. It’s instructive to go back and see why Servan-Schreiber was optimistic.

###

Now, some questions for you all…

Who should I interview next?  Please let me know in the comments by clicking here.
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On September 13, 1970, The New York Times published an article by Milton Friedman castigating any managers of businesses who were “spending someone else’s money for a general social interest” – in other words, requiring customers to pay more, employees to be paid less, or owners to accept smaller profits so that the firm could exhibit some amount of social responsibility beyond the requirements of the law. Already, in his 1962 book Capitalism and Freedom Friedman had declared that “there is one and only one social responsibility of business–to use its resources and engage in activities designed to increase its profits so long as it stays within the rules of the game, which is to say, engages in open and free competition without deception or fraud.” Choices about whether and how to use money to remedy social problems should be left to individuals, he argued, who would be in better position to provide it if they were not being in effect taxed by corporate managers who thought they had better ideas for how to spend it.

The article shocked the sensibilities of many who worried about rising corporate power in the world, but for many executives struggling to chart courses through the chaos of newly globalized and deregulated markets, it offered an irresistible clarity: one need only focus on owners’ interests. In 1976, Professors Meckling and Jensen put a finer point on things with their economic rationale for maximizing shareholder value. Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher gave the idea political cover. Very quickly, shareholder value became the gospel of capitalism.

The tight focus on generating returns drove many gains. It hurried along the formation of global supply chains with ever greater efficiency and economies of scale. As more firms became multinationals, fewer showed loyalty to particular communities or any hesitation to migrate their operations to wherever costs were lowest. Employees were viewed more as fungible inputs to operations, and customers viewed more as targets within more and less lucrative segments.

Yet it also began to be evident that, even if the goal was to serve the interests of a single stakeholder, the pursuit could not be so single-minded. Incentives to maximize shareholder value pushed managers toward decisions that paid off in the short term but were devastating to the long term viability of firms. As I’ve explored elsewhere, pervasive short-termism hampered the United States’ capacity to compete in international markets; encouraged a massive trend of offshoring that destroyed major segments of the US economy; generated “bad profits” that undermined customer loyalty; “financialized” the economy, making it vulnerable to increasingly severe financial crashes; undermined economic recoveries; and drastically reduced rates of return on assets and on invested capital of US firms.

These problems hardly arose overnight; they began brewing early. However, it was after the advent of the internet that the challenges to the shareholder value maximization became forceful. This is because the internet …

• Shifted power in the marketplace from seller to buyer. Customers, who had access to reliable information about the available choices and a capacity to interact with other customers, were suddenly in charge.
• Raised customers’ expectations. As “better, cheaper, faster, smaller, more convenient, and more personalized” became the new norm, the ability to innovate with committed employees and agile processes became critical.
• Shredded vertical supply chains. Customers could buy a wider array of stuff online cheaper, and often quicker, than in a physical store. First books and music, then almost anything.
• Spawned vast new horizontal value chains, in which millions of people began creating their own virtual meeting places and marketplaces with their own lateral economies of scale. First computer code, then ideas, then music, photos, and videos – and finally, physical things.
• Enabled firms to create huge ecosystems of suppliers and customers that could achieve enormous scale without the sclerosis of big hierarchical bureaucracy.

As a result, a new era is emerging. Harking back to Peter Drucker’s insistence in 1973 that “there is only one valid definition of business purpose: to create a customer,” Roger Martin has declared that we are finally entering “the age of customer capitalism.”  If firms serve customers well, Martin asserts, benefits for shareholders and the community follow. Customers as stakeholders become the new center of the capitalist universe and its new gospel.

The shift in goal entails a transformation in management practices from those of hierarchical bureaucracy, including a shift from controlling individuals to enabling teams, networks, and ecosystems; a shift in the way work is coordinated from rules, plans, and reports to agile processes and dynamic linking; a shift from the values of efficiency and predictability to those of continuous improvement and transparency; and a shift from one-way, top-down communications to interactive conversations. These shifts are not just a grab-bag of unconnected management gadgets. They constitute a coherent constellation of leadership and management practices, as described by more than a score of books.

The confusing reality of the moment, however, is that there are (at least) two different systems, operating simultaneously, at different speeds and on different trajectories.

One—the Traditional Economy—is the economy that we inherited from the 20th Century. It’s a world of command and control, focused on making money through economies of scale and comprising big hierarchical bureaucracies that push out products and services and get customers to buy them with sales campaigns and advertising. This is still the larger of the two economies. It’s been in steady decline for a number of decades. It doesn’t generate net new jobs. It’s not very agile. It’s becoming steadily more efficient. But it’s not good at innovation. It’s less and less able to capture the gains of its efficiencies. It’s still a big part of what’s going on in the world. But it doesn’t have much of a future.

The other economy—the Creative Economy—is an economy of continuous innovation and transformation. This is the economy of firms and entrepreneurs that are delivering to customers what they are coming to expect, namely, “better, faster, cheaper, smaller, lighter, more convenient, and more personalized.” The Creative Economy is still relatively small but it is growing rapidly and, when implemented well, is highly profitable. It is the economy of the future. It doesn’t have to be invented: it’s already under way. Its practices represent a paradigm shift in the strict sense laid down by Thomas Kuhn: it’s a different way of thinking, speaking, and acting in the world.

The shift from the Traditional Economy to the Creative Economy isn’t just a technical wrangle about economics or management theory. It’s a shift in what society demands of the managers of its most powerful institutions: from narrow definitions of their owners and decisions that serve their short-term interests, to broad acceptance of the responsibility that comes with power and leadership concerned with what is best for society. In the shift, we are learning that an argument about the proper activities of managers can be logical, can be strongly argued, can influence decades of practice in the world’s largest corporations – and can still be plain, flat, dead wrong.

This post is part of a series of perspectives by leading thinkers participating in the Sixth Annual Global Drucker Forum, November 13-14 in Vienna. For more information, see the conference homepage.

Don’t lose sight of your brand personality your #video strategy

Storytelling has been around for millennia. As children we grew up with tales and fondly remember stories opening with ‘Once upon a time…’. With this nostalgic link in mind, businesses use stories as central parts of their advertising and messaging campaigns when seeking to humanise their brands.

Source: Shutterstock

Today, social media are an ideal vehicle to distribute these stories.  And with good reason, the online landscape is becoming noisier every day.  Storytelling is an effective method for getting heard above the din.

On a practical level, storytelling is a great way to engage, motivate and connect with your readers. But with so much content being shared daily by so many brands, the written word just doesn’t have the same impact anymore — particularly for the reader who has grown up expecting a multi-media experience.

These folks need content that can appeal to their visual, auditory and cultural knowledge base.

Animated video marketing is a perfect example of how stories can frame your product like never before.

Why use story telling in your animated videos?

Source: Shutterstock

• Simple takeaways. Storytelling makes it easy for the viewer to follow what you’re saying. Your messaging is much more memorable and compels the viewer to share your content.
• Emotional connection. Animated videos embrace the old adage of ‘show don’t tell.’ You can only write ‘Our product is the best’ so many times before people start questioning what you really mean. With animated videos you can share a clear story of your product’s value proposition.
• Calls-to-action. Video compels viewers to act in ways the written word can’t. By depicting the action on the screen, you can show exactly how the user will benefit, yielding higher engagement rates. Telling stories are much more likely to motivate, inspire action and excite your audience.
• Trust and loyalty. By clearly illustrating how your product works, you give potential customers a heightened sense of your company’s values and mission.

How to create a story for your animated video

• With all good stories (whether you’re a presenter conducting your audience, or a brand trying to get key messages out there) you need to have the structure in place before you start.  So first hash out the beginning, middle and ending.
• Tighten up how your story flows as you want to capture the attention of your viewers, draw them in and make sure they stay with you to the end; there’s nothing worse than a video that meanders and doesn’t get to the point!
• Clearly communicate how your product can help. What’s the problem or challenge that your customer or potential client faces, and how can you address them? Don’t sell the features; people don’t buy features. You need to have a value proposition and identify the benefits for potential customers.
• Use characters. You want to ensure that the characters you depict enable your audience to connect emotionally to your product.  When choosing your leading character consider basing him or her on the problem your company helps solve for the viewer.
• Know your audience / customer and always focus on them. User studies can help target your message for greater efficacy.

Content planning

Now it’s time to think about context.  A great way of doing this without using lots of text is through themes and settings. So, for example, if you’re talking about an office environment you can use themes, props and settings associated with the look and feel of office life.

At GoAnimate, we use various different types of themes and styles to help you create your animated video and share your story.  Below are our favourites:

• Whiteboard

Whiteboard animation is one of GoAnimate’s most popular themes. It includes thousands of hand-drawn assets like props and backgrounds, plus hundreds of character actions that fit a wide variety of business settings.

Another benefit of using Whiteboard animation is that it’s perfect for nuanced topics that need to be explained to a wider audience.  The light look and abstraction away from irrelevant details really help to focus the viewers’ attention.

• 2D Animation

2D Animated videos look very similar to popular TV programmes. They are easy to absorb and help increase speed of engagement. Similar to whiteboard animation, they abstract away from irrelevant detail, enabling the communication of complex ideas in a simple way. This style is perhaps better for storytelling than whiteboard animation, since it’s easier for the characters to make an emotional connection with your audience.

• Animated video infographics

Animated video infographics are our latest feature and really do bring data to life!  Proprietary data can be powerful.  But it’s often difficult for the storyteller to portray in an engaging and effective way. That’s why animated infographics work so well. Not only do they showcase each of the components but they also make it much easier for the viewer to understand and absorb. Since they are still fairly new, it’s a great way to make your data-heavy content stand out and really ‘wow’ your customer.

Are you using storytelling as part of your content marketing? What type of animation style videos do you find the most engaging? Please do leave a comment and share this post to let us know your thoughts!

Thanks to Gary Lipkowitz for sharing his thoughts and opinions in this blog post. Gary has been waiting for convergence his whole life. He has always loved media, entertainment and technology and is really glad he gets to ‘work’ in these fields. He joined GoAnimate in 2011, after spending ten years in Asia working with Wego.com, Mediacorp Raintree Pictures, Yahoo! Southeast Asia and MTV Asia. He also spent a few years dubbing anime franchises such as City Hunter, Legend of Crystania, Queen Emeraldas, Tekken and Sonic the Hedgehog for ADV Films.He holds a BA (Magna Cum Laude) from NYU, an MFA in Film from Northwestern, and an MBA (With Distinction) from INSEAD. He enjoys playing ice hockey and collecting Balinese art. You can connect via LinkedIn.

With the digital age has come the celebration of “platforms.” The concept is that an enterprise can add value at either of two levels. It can provide a broad foundation upon which others can profitably build, or it can be one of those latter efforts, taking advantage of an existing platform and offering solutions that more narrowly target specific opportunities.

When people talk of valuable platforms, they are typically thinking of things like the operating systems for personal computers, tablet computers, and smartphones, all of which allow and indeed encourage software developers to invent “apps”; or the Amazon selling system which provides a layer of basic logistical functions for independent retailers. But platforms have a longer lineage than these. In an earlier age, “general purpose technologies” such as electricity and communications networks were recognized by economists as their own category because they provided vital inputs for all kinds of businesses, revolutionized the way business was conducted in general, and literally redefined what it meant to live in modern society.

Platforms can also be thought of more broadly than technological systems. Government policies, whether established by legislatures, regulatory agencies, or judicial rulings, constitute legal platforms that also enable commerce. There is an extensive academic literature, for example, on how the “rule of law” — property and contract rights that can be enforced, and disputes peaceably and efficiently resolved by a trusted judicial system — is a precondition for both economic growth and advanced living standards (although some economists argue that the causation runs both ways – that economic growth also supports the rule of law by making more resources available for it, and causing more demand for it).

I’d like to argue that ideas can also qualify as platforms, to the extent that others rely or build on them to make their own marks. Further, I would claim that, in the realm of business, more of these platform ideas have been developed by economists than many entrepreneurs and business leaders imagine. I’ll offer three examples.

The Idea to Break Up AT&T

The internet would not be what it has become without huge private investments in its “backbone” – the fiber optic cables that route packets of zeroes and ones to the network nodes close to the hardware (PCs or smartphones) where they originate and end up. But it is all too easy to forget (or not to know) what encouraged those fiber investments in the first place: the federal government’s successful antitrust lawsuit against the “old AT&T” that once monopolized telecommunications in the United States.

Economists were instrumental in providing the intellectual rationale for the Justice Department’s landmark filing of that lawsuit, and just as important, of the relief the government sought: breakup of “Ma Bell’s” control over both long-distance and local telephony. Breakup was critical to the development of the Internet because as long as AT&T faced no competition in long-distance, the company had no incentive to replace its copper wires with the fiber optic technology that ironically was developed by Bell Labs. Post-breakup, long-distance competitors MCI and Sprint, among others, induced the new AT&T long-distance company (which later was acquired by Southwestern Bell but kept the AT&T name) to lay the fiber optic cables across the country that became the Internet’s backbone.

So, when browsers came along in the 1990s, the web was ready for the explosion in commercial traffic and searching that quickly followed. It is not at all clear that Sergey Brin and Larry Page, founders of Google or Jeff Bezos, the founder of Amazon, would have been interested or able to launch their now-iconic companies had not the internet been ready for them when they had hatched their ideas and were ready to implement them.

The Idea to Deregulate Transportation

While web retailing has made shopping hugely more convenient, none of it would be possible at the scale it has achieved without the retailers’ being able to tap into a highly flexible and efficient transportation system capable of delivering goods promptly to customers. We have that transportation system now, but this was not always the case.

Before 1980, all routes and fares of the airline and trucking industries were regulated by agencies of the federal government, dating from Depression-era statutes. In retrospect, it is clear that this system of “economic regulation” was designed to insulate incumbent carriers from competition; neither air nor truck traffic were natural monopolies requiring price and entry controls.

Many transportation economists had argued for decades that economic regulation of airlines and trucking was inappropriate, mainly serving to jack up prices for the consumers and businesses buying these services. Amazingly, President Carter and Senator Ted Kennedy listened to them, using their arguments to persuade Congress to dismantle price and entry controls in these industries in 1978 (airlines) and 1980 (trucking). Carter also appointed noted economists like Alfred Kahn, Elizabeth (“Betsy”) Bailey, and Darius Gaskins, to key regulatory positions, where they were able to administratively deregulate first, where possible, and also to make the case to Congress that ultimately only legislative repeal would really do the trick.

Deregulation not only lowered shipping prices; it unleashed fierce competition between Federal Express and UPS that eventually produced the efficient and flexible transportation system that turned out to be ideal for internet commerce. So when Jeff Bezos and other web retailers came along in the 1990s and later, they were able to tap into that system, without having to buy trucks and plane fleets of their own, which would have been prohibitive barriers to entry. That they didn’t have to is a tribute to the eventual power of economic ideas and research.

Ideas about Energy Price Control

A huge transformation is underway due to the recent, remarkable surge in domestic oil and natural gas production. The reason is well known: the combination of horizontal drilling technology with hydraulic fracturing (“fracking”) has enabled energy producers to locate and bring to the surface oil and gas in “tight” rock formations. The unforeseen energy turnaround has been a boon to U.S. manufacturers, inducing some to rethink their location decisions.

What many don’t fully realize, however, is the unsung role that economists have played in this story. I am old enough to remember the dark days after the Arab oil embargo in 1973-74, which triggered a quadrupling of world oil prices at a time when monetary policy makers and elsewhere were already struggling to contain inflation. Even Republicans in the White House (Nixon and then Ford) were not comfortable with the political implications of the higher gasoline prices this jump in crude prices entailed, and so they implemented a complicated system of controlling the price of “old oil” (that discovered before the price jump) and new oil, alongside a preexisting and even more complicated system of controlling different vintages of natural gas. The results were prices to consumers that were below market clearing levels, which any economist could have predicted would result in shortages: long lines at gas stations for motorists and rationing of natural gas for heating homes.

Economists in both the Ford and Carter Administration were instrumental in decisions dismantling energy price controls, which were gone by the early 1980s. This took some guts, especially by President Carter (again), who agreed to decontrol oil prices toward the end of his term by which time crude oil prices again had soared (Carter and a Democratically controlled Congress did enact a time-limited windfall profits tax on energy producers, however).

Why is this history important? Because when oil prices again rose in the 2000s, politicians had learned their lesson and did not rush to impose price controls. Higher prices did what economists predicted they would do, but admittedly even more successfully than many probably thought: they provided the economic impetus for energy companies to combine horizontal drilling and fracking, a coupling that has produced remarkable results. So score several points for the technologists and the risk-taking oil and gas production companies, but score at least one point (maybe two) for the economists in the background.

*  *  *  *  *

Is it proper to cast these ideas as “platforms”? Based on what has been built since, it seems fair to say yes. The first two examples were hugely influential in enabling the Internet economy; the third benefited all energy-using industries. The people behind them all belong in the club I call the Trillion Dollar Economists.

So perhaps the so-called dismal science of economics should be celebrated a bit more. Mention the word “economist” and most people conjure up mental images of macro forecasters, making pronouncements about, or in the case of the Fed, actually influencing measures of the overall economy: GDP growth, inflation, and unemployment. We should shine more light on the other, “micro” economists – the ones studying individual firms and markets. Among these are the thinkers who are even now hatching new platforms. Years from now, we’ll see the new companies that were enabled, and the existing businesses whose growth was accelerated, by their most powerful, policy-bending ideas.

A shortcut is only a shortcut because it is a lesser-known way. Once everyone becomes aware of the shortcut, then it takes a new role in the world as “The Way.”

Over the last several years there has been a monumental shift in the way businesses are selling their goods and services to consumers. Whether B2B, B2C or some combination of the two, businesses have taken their physical sales forces and replicated them in the virtual world. In the world of B2C this is most commonly referred to as “E-Commerce” and in B2B the favorite lexicon is “Social Selling.”

Using Social Media and Content Marketing To Sell?

Ever since Google’s Zero Moment (ZMOT) study, the cat has been out of the bag. The use of content as a way to engage buyers in the sales process is commonplace. With the data not only showing strong growth year over year, but continued growth, it wouldn’t surprise me at all to find out that buyer’s are now looking at 15-20 pieces of content during their purchase journey.

With the data of ZMOT along with some staggering statistics from analysts like Nielsen and Forrester on the role of influence in the new buyers journey, what is now known for sure is that people are looking to brands and their networks for guidance in their purchase decisions. Often looking something like this

B2B Purchase Journey:

SEARCH –> CONTENT –> SOCIAL PROOF –> MORE CONTENT –> BRAND ENGAGEMENT –> PURCHASE

B2C Purchase Journey:

SOCIAL INFLUENCE –> CONTENT –> BRAND ENGAGEMENT –> PURCHASE

While the journey may vary a bit for every buyer, both content and social queues are now playing a part in all but the most transactional purchases.

I have had people tell me that no one does content research on the groceries they buy and to that I often suggest that while they may not do specific research before choosing their groceries, their decision to purchase certain foods are often impacted in a big way by the content that is shared on social networks about a product.

Consider when a story comes out about an unhealthy ingredient that you may find in your favorite snack food. Does it influence your decision to continue eating it? While the answer for everyone is individual, the fact that you stop to consider means that the social buzz around the product is impacting part of your purchase decision.

What is absolutely certain is that brands of all shapes and sizes have taken to content and social as a marriage made in “Marketing Heaven” to get to their target consumer. Regardless of sale type, this is no longer the unknown shortcut rather this is now just the way.

Every Business Has The Choice In How They Go To Market, But Selling Is Social Period

Regardless of the target market or the terminology used for engaging customers in the online world, the bottom line is that selling is a social activity.

Whether the first meeting is done live and in person only to be followed up by some iteration of the journey outlined above, the influence sphere for the vast majority of purchases are going to be touched by social media.

For companies that have been doing this for a while, they are safe. Now it just comes down to tweaking the content, the brand story and the systems of engagement on social channels.

However, for companies that think they are embarking on something new or worse yet that they can avoid the online component of a buyers journey, they are missing the point. At some level, online influences every sale. This is the affect of content, of social, of search, and what the new purchase journey looks like.

But just realize that social selling isn’t new, regardless of what you call it. For brands large and small that desire to be found, seen and heard online, the key to winning more business is to make sure the buyer can find out what they need to know online from your brand, your social and your content. Perhaps this not so new but more important than ever method is best described as “The Way.”

Photo: Creative Commons Post first featured on Forbes and can be found here.

When companies think about growing their business, they may think about expanding their territories and attracting new clients. However, what they may miss is the ways in which a business can grow through staff development. In fact, staff development can be one of the most effective ways to create a solid foundation for growth throughout an organisation. There are a number of ways that developing staff can contribute to overall business growth.

Building Expertise

While many workers enjoy the opportunity to build new skills, businesses can target the expertise that they need and train their own employees in those skills. This builds up an expert workforce and also leads to greater staff retention due to higher employee engagement. A better-trained staff also means better customer service, more precise understanding of procedure and more effective practices.

Maximising Employee Potential

Employees allowed to take part in various development activities will be working at the top of their form, and this is good for the business itself. With this approach, a company needs to concern itself less with recruiting the right individuals with all the right skills and instead with identifying and developing potential. In a sense, the great employee is made and not born. Staff development means employee potential can be shaped in a way that is satisfying to both the worker and the employer.

Creating an Atmosphere of Innovation

Development opportunities for staff engender a sense of trust and loyalty that leads to innovation and the desire to share that innovation. Employee and company can strive to benefit one another in an environment that encourages innovative thinking, and this type of thinking leads to expanded business opportunities and growth.

Building a Team

Team-building can be one of the more difficult aspects of management. People with the appropriate skills must be identified, but they also must work well with the other employees. Staff development means teams can be custom-built according to the existing temperaments and talents of the current workforce. Rather than constantly seeking to recruit new employees who will fit in well with the culture of the workplace, employees can be identified based on what is already known of their work styles.

Savings Through Ongoing Development

It is more cost-effective to retain employees than to constantly recruit and train new employees who only stay long enough to acquire new skills and then move on. Employee reviews can be used at times for workers and management to work together in order to identify mutually beneficial goals, but this is also something that should be part of an ongoing conversation between workers and their supervisors.

Companies may want to consider putting a mentor program in place which goes a step further in helping to develop employee skills and build loyalty.

Investing in people over the longer term can be one of the most cost-effective and powerful ways to grow a business. Ultimately, people are the business, and developing workers develops the business.

With systems in place that match company needs with employee potential and endeavor, businesses with a loyal base of employees will thrive and grow.

GUEST POST

Image Credit: Ryan Rix/Flickr

Can you build a billion-dollar enterprise-software company without a sales force? Today, not only is that possible, it’s preferable — at least for some types of software companies.

Take the software development tools company Atlassian. Without a single salesperson, Atlassian has acquired more than 25,000 corporate customers and a collective 8.5 million users. The company has been profitable since day one, has raised $210 million, and is valued at more than $3 billion.

Atlassian is a great example of a software company that’s made all the right plays, including adopting an “enterprise freemium” sales model. With this emerging sales model, customers organically adopt free versions of your product, which spread virally through their organizations. Soon, companies see the value in your product and begin paying for more robust versions without being asked. Instead of hiring a huge sales force and sending these people out to convince potential customers to buy your product — the way Oracle, SAP, Microsoft, and even Salesforce.com built empires — a freemium model is a perpetual motion machine through which your product “sells itself.”

Atlassian Co-chief executive Scott Farquhar summed up the company’s business model in a recent Wall Street Journal interview. “Fifteen years ago, as long as you had the best distribution, you would win; it didn’t matter whether Oracle was worse than SAP,” he said. “These days, people are making decisions based on how good the products are.” Frankly, it’s amazing this traditional model persisted for so long.

In a typical enterprise-software sales scenario 10 to 15 years ago, companies like SAP or Oracle would send their respective sales teams to meet with prospective customers. Over the course of six to 12 months, the teams would court the “line of business” buyer, like the chief financial officer or the vice president of sales, and the IT staff at the prospect company, providing endless demos and drowning the potential customer with product collateral. Once the prospect was convinced the product was right for his or her company, the prospect would fork over millions to license the product, spend millions more on a systems integrator like Accenture or KPMG to install it, and then spend six months teaching employees how to use it. The customer took all the up-front risk by shelling out millions before even using the product. The relationship between the software vendor and the customer was asymmetrical: The customer took all of the risk, while the vendor got paid without having to provide any value.

No wonder end users love the bottom-up freemium method of using software first and then paying for it only if it delivers value. The model forces software companies to build great products, as they will only get paid (and ultimately get the renewal) if the product provides real value. All parties’ interests are aligned.

Some enterprise companies use a variant of the freemium model through which they offer a free, lightweight version of their product to acquire a large base of users, then supplement that with a traditional sales force to upsell customers on more sophisticated enterprise products. Box is a good example of a company that has successfully executed this version of freemium, and the model is driving very rapid revenue growth for the company. The approach is particularly effective at driving high-quality leads for the sales organization. Salespeople simply look for clusters of active users of the freemium product in an enterprise account; those customers are likely getting value, so they’re good candidates for an upsell.

In addition to Atlassian and Box, there are a wide range of software companies using some flavor of the freemium model, including Dropbox, WordPress, Shopify, MongoDB and Zendesk. In every case, the freemium model has helped accelerate their growth, and the results have been impressive. Every one of these companies is worth more than $1 billion, based on values assigned by recent private investments or in the public market. That success isn’t a coincidence. The freemium sales model is the common thread that ties these companies together.

Of course, freemium models don’t work for all types of software companies. They’re best suited for products used by engineers or other technically oriented employees who need help getting their job done. Their work could range from coding to project management to website development to analytics. These employees want elegant, easy-to-use tools to get tasks completed quickly and efficiently, and they are comfortable enough with technology that they don’t mind downloading software and figuring it out on their own, without help from IT. If you are a software company selling to a technical buyer, like developers, a freemium model might be the right path to consider.

Conversely, the enterprise freemium model so far hasn’t had much success in larger, traditional workflow categories like enterprise resource planning, or with customer-relationship management (CRM) products like those made by Workday and Salesforce. These products must be deployed across an entire organization all at once to make an impact, so these types of enterprise companies still rely on sales teams to sell big contracts with hundreds or thousands of seats. That said, the day is coming when freemium will likely creep into these sectors as well. Some companies, like Clari and Accompani, are parceling out critical components of CRM into lightweight mobile apps, and freemium might work well with that model.

As an enterprise software entrepreneur, what steps can you take to create a product that’s suited to the freemium model?

• Tip 1: Know your customer. As I mention above, if you are selling into a technical buyer, you should strongly consider a freemium offering. Non-technical buyers who may struggle to deploy enterprise software may be more challenging.
• Tip 2: Make sure a lightweight version of your product can deliver real value. Some product categories are good candidates for this, while others are not. In particular, products requiring complicated data integrations or lots of end-user training may not be a good fit. After all, if end users don’t see real value from the free version of your product, you won’t be able to upsell them the premium version!
• Tip 3: Figure out where to draw the line between “free” and “mium.” This is a delicate balance, because the free product has to be good enough to provide real value, but you want to leave enough functionality in the premium version so customers will be willing to pay.

It’s a new day in enterprise-software sales, driven partly by the new freemium model — and most companies would be wise to explore the option.

Roger Lee is a general partner at Battery Ventures in Menlo Park, Calif., where he invests in great entrepreneurs building innovative companies across the software and consumer landscape. Read his blog at rogerleevc.com.

Atlassian is a software company that provides innovative enterprise software solutions to a number of organizations. Originally founded in 2002 in Sydney, Australia, the company has quickly grown to establish a global presence with ove... read more »

A multi-stage investment firm focused on technology and innovation worldwide. The firm partners with entrepreneurs and management teams across technology sectors, geographies and stages of a company’s life, from seed and start-up fin... read more »

In most companies, social media falls into the broader “marketing and communications” category. There’s either a digital marketing team behind social channels or an agency helping with those efforts. This makes sense – the majority of businesses rely on social media as a way to build brand awareness and grow customer engagement.

However, the narrow focus on social media as a promotional tool has made a lot of people forget that Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn can all be used as sales tools, too. Social selling can be extremely effective – LinkedIn found that sales reps who use social media as a way to connect with prospects are three times more likely to exceed sales quota.

But what is social selling? And how does it fit within the marketing and communications category where social media has been relegated?

Brand Champion V. Brand

It’s much easier for companies to dictate what goes up on the brand’s social media profiles than an individual’s social media profiles. While it’s guaranteed that a blog post or new company initiative will get promoted on the corporate Twitter handle, for example, a lot of businesses have trouble encouraging employees to help amplify that message.

We’ve talked about the difficulty in getting employees to help with social promotion before. Basically, if employees don’t have a personal stake in the promotion, they’re not going to be passionate in helping spread the word about the content.

Social selling is different. A sales rep who can use social media to improve his or her performance is far more likely to invest time and energy into being social. The case for social selling is simple: a social network like LinkedIn has a lot of valuable data about potential prospects. Reps can easily search for people who are the most qualified prospects and get in touch.

The challenge at this point – and the social part of it – is how you connect with someone to build a conversation and a relationship, rather than filling their inbox with unwanted spam.

Common Connections, Common Content

People don’t like being called by strangers. In the B2B world, cold calling is the least effective tactic. In one survey, only 4 percent of B2B buyers said they would have a favorable impression of a salesperson from a cold call. However, 87 percent of buyers said they would have a favorable impression of a salesperson who was introduced to them through a social network.

A rep can use social media to become familiar with a prospect and start a conversation around the prospect’s interests. That’s where PR and marketing can come into play – while sales can help research prospects, PR can create content that integrates within the sales cycle. For example, if the company is making a big push into the healthcare field, a PR team can create related content and coverage in the health field. So when a sales rep does contact a prospect, it will be possible to draw on that material to build up a conversation.

The reverse works just as well. If your PR team is working with marketing to qualify inbound leads, those names can be passed onto sales people who can research the leads via LinkedIn and Twitter. From there, sales can contact the prospect and talk about a follow-up discussion based on the original content that was downloaded.

Social selling is much more about the “social,” but if sales works with marketing and PR to create meaningful relationships with prospects, the “selling” will naturally follow.