Rnordman

Whether you’re an entrepreneur or part of a large corporation, having the right manufacturer for your products can save you a lot of money and hardship. Taking the time to find the best options is crucial to managing a successful supply chain and reducing the risk that comes with outsourcing. The following five tactics will not only help to ensure that you find that perfect fit, but save you the hassle of fumbling around an already difficult process.

1.  Brainstorm Your Needs

Many companies have no clue where to start when looking for a manufacturer, with most turning directly to the internet to try to find answers. Writing down your needs in regards to tentative budgets, project scale, desired materials, legalities and production timelines before exploring internet options will give you a better understanding as to the entire scope of your manufacturing needs.

2. Research the Industry

Understanding the manufacturing industry, how production works and distribution channel options can make streamlining your choices for a manufacturer easier. Industry research also gives you an overview of the costs and issues that can arise during the manufacturing process, so you won’t be surprised by any additional fees or legal hiccups. At this point, it’s good to speak to affiliates, mentors and even sales reps, to see if they can refer you to some good manufacturers that they have a strong relationship with. ThomasNet and Alibaba are both credible manufacturing directories to help you begin your search if you choose not to go with referrals. For some, the amount of industry information can be overwhelming and you may not feel comfortable about making the right decision for your production needs. In these instances, it’s a good idea to investigate manufacturing experts who are skilled in assessing factory operations as an alternative option.

3. Determine Your Supplier Type

Make, manufacture, wholesale, drop ship, custom, domestic or offshore? There are a lot of choices out there with advantages and disadvantages to each. First, it’s best to decide if you want to source your manufacturer domestically (in North America) or overseas. When sourcing domestically, manufacturers reputations are easier to confirm, language barriers aren’t an issue, and you know you’re receiving a higher manufacturing quality. Of course, all of these benefits do come with greater production costs. Take note that some items are not made in North America anymore, so it’s good to have done some research first to determine if you can manufacture domestically or if you’re stuck with sourcing overseas. Afterwards, you can look more specifically into what production model your product will fit into. These models include:

• Make – You create your own products, including the storage of the entire inventory.
• Wholesale – You buy product inventory (other established brands) direct from the manufacturers or from a middleman supplier at a discounted wholesale rate.
• Dropship – A company will manufacture and store your product. Orders are produced on request and sent directly to the customer.
• Traditional Manufacturing –A company will manufacture your product, and ship it to you to store. Inventory is purchased up front at whatever their minimum order is, and you take the risk of losing money if your product doesn’t sell in the marketplace.
• Custom Automation & In-House Manufacturing – A company will develop machines that increase your company’s in-house manufacturing capabilities.

Each model differs significantly in regards to the type of products it caters to and your choice will be determined both by which style is most financially optimal and what will fit best into your company’s business plan.

4. Ask the Right Questions

Once you’ve discovered some manufacturers that you feel would be a good fit for you and your company, asking the right questions will help you to streamline your decision quickly and efficiently. Discussing sample pricing, minimum orders, turnaround time, production and payment terms will help you decide if the company is the right choice for your needs.

5. Create Quality Documentation

Clear communication with your manufacturer from the outset will deter any complications that may arise during production. Meticulous documentation and detailed drawings will help the manufacturer to understand what results you are anticipating, while also ensuring that there will be no breaches of contract. Furthermore, by indicating your needs and expectations, product design engineers can provide you with detailed information about how feasible your product will be to produce, along with accurate cost estimates.

Finding the right manufacturer takes time and differs depending on a company’s needs. One manufacturer may be perfect for a larger company, but too expensive for a smaller one. Doing your research, asking the right questions and clearly communicating your expectations will ensure that you find the best fit for your business.

The only constant is change. That’s the mantra of many organizations. What is less clear is how they intend to help change happen positively and acceptably. Because people – usually the part of the equation that is most affected – typically detest change. We’re made that way, even when there are obvious positive consequences if we can just take a deep breath and get on with it.

So enterprises that need to change and that want to avoid a workforce revolt turn their attention to change management. If change is correctly managed, everything will work out fine, right? But that’s assuming everyone agrees on which tools or applications can effectively help. Project management apps like Clarizen, Wrike, JIRA and Zoho Projects have been designed with change management in mind, and collaboration tools can also be useful.

What is Change Management?

Change management is how an organization gets its people to adopt new ways of working required to reach business objectives. This people-centric definition is deliberate. While load-balancing a new IT network or fine-tuning a new automated production line may also be critical factors, they are technical changes rather than social ones. This leads us to a few more conclusions too:

• It’s about reducing or mitigating resistance to change too
• It’s not about improving processes. If anything, it’s about getting people to embrace improved processes
• It’s not stand-alone. It’s part (a crucial part) of some other overall change

Project management app vendors EPM Live, Liquid Planner and Vorex also emphasize the need to address change socially as well as technically. You can compare other PM apps too and the ways in which they tackle change management, from either a technical or a social project management standpoint. For instance, Clarizen, Genius Project and Wrike.

No Theory X Here, Thank You

Gone are the days when it was possible to simply tell people to get on with it. That’s a good thing, because the Theory X dictatorial style was mostly inefficient, unproductive and unpleasant. That means that change management needs involvement by those concerned. That participation also needs to be early and sought sincerely by the change agents or leaders. On whatever scale and often at a team or project level, software tools such as internal social networks, wikis, blogs and forums can all play a useful role in promoting healthy, constructive discussion and progress.

Change at the Speed of Agile

At the other end of the scale, some organizational activities literally have rapid change built-in. Agile project methodologies are a case in point. Software teams developing mobile applications for instance may build new versions of a product every day, and incorporate new product requirements every week. Agile manufacturing and logistics may have similarly rapid cycles of change. In these cases, software assisted solutions are often mandatory, because that’s the only way teams can keep up. But they still need to be the right project management, task management and collaboration tools, designed with agile cycles in mind. Further project management applications with functionality for technical change management include Genius Project, Innotas, Projectplace and Sciforma.

A Change Management Model

If you’re evaluating different possibilities to help change leaders such as project managers succeed, compare tools or apps available with this 8-point checklist from John Kotter.

1. Inject urgency. That’s urgency, not panic. Make objectives real, relevant and manageable. Set achievable if aggressive deadlines.
2. Create the right team. Identify resources, resolve scheduling conflicts, and build on existing emotional commitment. Reinforce with a PM app that gives you the right communications and collaboration tools too.
3. Build a vision. More than a slick statement, use 360-degree project documentation and collaboration to engage project team members fully. Make supporting files, notes and sketches easily available online to project team members and stakeholders.
4. Communicate. Goals, sub-goals, progress, challenges and interest in your fellow human beings. Choose a solution that multiplies your positive communication impact.
5. Empower. Give team members not just the authority but also the tools to do what they each need to do and to make the whole greater than the sum of the parts.
6. Short-term wins. Mark out meaningful goals that can be reasonable achieved now. Give team members a tool to let them see progress and results.
7. Keep on keeping on. Put mechanisms in place so you can encourage the team when you’re there and when you’re not there, and that reinforce team auto-encouragement too.
8. Make it stick. Track adoption of habits, validate the ‘three-week rule’, and build in support through technology to keep people on the new path to the results required.

Nudge, Nudge

Don’t let advances in change management theory and practice pass you by either. Good software applications will let you adapt your usage to get the most out of new concepts in change management, like Nudge theory. The basic idea is to manage change by designing in helpful and attractive new choices to the way people do things. So if you want your product release cycles to speed up or you spot a need for project stakeholders to engage better and encourage team members in their efforts, choose a tool with the functionality to let you do these things too. Find out more about new ways of handling change in projects by comparing applications like Clarizen and Projectplace.

Which project management app will best help you manage change? Click the links above to see individual app descriptions and comparisons between different apps, or try these project management app reviews. You can also check out this project management software infographic.

Whichever app catches your eye, be sure to look at the list of free PM software trials available via GetApp too. Try before you make your final choice so that you change for the change management that suits you best.

Author: Rachel Yarnold

Decisions, decisions! Even when we aren’t aware of them, we’re making them all the time. Many of those decisions we make easily, without even thinking – orange juice or coffee? Gym or happy hour? TV or sleep? But with larger decisions we tend to think more deeply, and take longer to decide.

Purchase decisions are similar. Some are made quickly, without much thought, while others can take weeks or months of research and deliberation to decide. That’s why, as marketers, it’s important to anticipate the decision-making path of your consumer, and to answer questions before they arise.

From the moment a consumer decides to start researching a purchase, she’ll inevitably be presented with many available options. How will you differentiate your marketing from the competition? As we discussed in our ebook, Deliver More Purchase-Ready Consumers with Marketing Automation, effective analytics are essential to unlocking the full potential of your marketing initiatives. And one of the key ways data can help you is by revealing the path your buyers take toward a purchase.

In 1968, researchers Engel, Blackwell, and Kollat developed a five-step model of the consumer buying decision process (known as the Engel-Blackwell-Kollat or EBK model), and that model is still useful for marketers today. Here are the five steps of the EBK model, and how you can use them to stay a step ahead of your buyers:

Step 1: Problem Recognition

The first step of the buying cycle is that the consumer recognizes a problem which needs to be solved, or a need which needs to be satisfied. Basically, the consumer is looking for a solution to resolve a state of discomfort. The discomfort could arise from anything – an inability to get work done in time, frustrating technology or processes, or a competitor gaining an advantage.

At this stage, having built brand awareness is extremely important. If you can be the first solution a buyer thinks of – before he’s even started to research – your company will have a huge leg-up. This is also why you should highlight customer challenges/pain points in your marketing – that kind of marketing will resonate in the problem recognition phase.

Step 2: Information Search

The second step in the decision making process is to gather all information available about possible solutions. The larger the purchase decision, the longer this process will take. A consumer will want to be very thorough in  her search and seek out info regarding features, pricing, ease of use, etc.

While buyers used to contact companies directly in order to research, today this information gathering happens through self-education – which is where marketing comes in. It’s crucial that your marketing is found by the consumer during her search. There are lots of ways to “get found,” but ranking highly in search results is crucial – our SEO Cheat Sheet provides a great overview on leveraging website optimization to get found. You’ll also want a strong content marketing strategy at this point, to help your buyers get educated while they research.

Step 3: Alternative Evaluation

The third step is the (often tedious) evaluation process. Most consumers have a list of criteria that the solution must meet, and as a marketer, you must know exactly what is on that list. What’s a deal-maker, and what’s a deal-breaker in the eyes of your consumer?

As the buyer evaluates, your marketing should speak to his needs and interests. There are many ways to make sure your marketing is relevant: you can build buyer personas to understand common criteria, objections, and challenges; you can segment and target your lists to send effective nurture emails; and you can personalize your website (and other content) in response to buyer attributes.

Step 4: Purchase

This is the fun step! Once the consumer has made up her mind, she no longer has a problem…she has a solution! Time to celebrate!

It’s also time for something even more fun – metrics! Now that you’ve guided someone from problem to solution, you’ll want to replicate that success with other buyers. And to do that, you’ll need robust reporting on how your marketing actually affected the sale. Check out our Essential 8 Reports for inspiration.

Step 5: Post-Purchase

The best marketers know that the process doesn’t end at the purchase step – in fact, that’s only the beginning of a customer’s value for your company. Once acquisition is out of the way, your new goal is to create long-term relationships between consumer and company, ensuring that you get the most value out of your customers, and they get the most value out of your products.

Now that you know the steps of the consumer decision-making process, start thinking ahead! Optimize your marketing for every stage of the process, by building brand awareness, upping your inbound marketing game, personalizing your marketing efforts, running robust reports, and continuing to market to your current customers.

Do you consider the five-step decision-making process in your marketing? If so, how? If not, why not? Let us know in the comments below.

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How Consumers Decide: Marketing for the 5-Step Model was posted at Marketo Marketing Blog - Best Practices and Thought Leadership. | http://blog.marketo.com

As the last of the Millennials transition into adulthood, they have firmly cemented their way into every retail market. Realizing the Millennial value, more and more retailers are adapting to their needs, which are very different from the needs of the baby boomers who birthed them, as well as their predecessors, Generation X. Property owners who want to attract Millennial renters need to understand what they are looking for and how to adapt.

Pets are very important to the Millennial generation, with over 76% owning cats or dogs. Rentals that can accommodate furry friends will be a big selling point. With the ease of googling recipes and the Food Network a mere click away, 61% of Millennials enjoy cooking and they are dining out less than before. A tiny, outdated kitchen could be a total turn-off for more than half of this generation. 22% of Millennials have never written a physical check, so make sure online payment options are available. Aside from making payments online, Millennials rely heavily on the ratings and reviews, so make sure your online reputation is upstanding. See 6 more things you should know about how Millennials inhabit their spaces happily in the infographic below by Appfolio.

Perhaps as early as 1815. As the Battle of Waterloo raged, Nathan Rothschild was able to get advanced information on how it was progressing from his network of agents. With the London Stock Exchange on tenterhooks, he learned of Wellington’s victory hours before anyone else, and quickly began dumping stocks onto the market. Other traders, assuming he knew Wellington had lost, followed his lead, drastically reducing the value of stocks. Rothschild then began snapping them up at rock-bottom prices, making himself a fortune when the information that he already knew filtered through to London: Wellington had won.

Can I pick your brain please? How about a free lunch? Will you review my mobile application and tell all of your friends about it? We have all seen and heard these desperate marketing attempts at gaining free knowledge and help.

If you have worked a day in business you likely know that time is money. If you do not put a value on your time, nobody else will. You must put a value on your knowledge, resources and time you spend on whatever it is you do. When you put value on your time and knowledge, those around you will do the same.

There is not a day that goes by that I am not bombarded by requests to meet for a free “pick your brain” session, review new mobile applications, videos, marketing plans, infographics and the list goes on.

Every morning I jump on to Twitter to find people begging for follows, downloads of apps, and sharing of content to help it go viral. The truth is that there is no cookie cutter solution to starting, launching and growing a business for real results. You must get in the head of your audience. You must set goals and you must nurture relationships that can help you grow.

When you spend your days online begging and pleading for free help you are hurting your brand more than helping.

I am not saying we shouldn’t give our time to those in need. My point is that those asking for free time should first build a relationship with the person who they want to engage with and learn from.

Life and business is about relationships. It seems that too many are wanting to skip the relationship in exchange for the magic carpet ride and easy button, which in reality does not exist. The sooner you can learn this fact, the better your business and life will be.

In this episode of the Social Zoom Factor podcast I share with you why I do not accept the “pick my brain” free lunch invitations. I also share with you exactly how you can work with me, my agency and our team.

Episode Highlights

• The importance of placing value on your time and knowledge
• Building relationships as a first priority
• Why I do not accept the “free lunch brain picking” invitations
• How to avoid spamming and brand damage
• How you can work with me and our agency, Marketing Nutz

You have successfully made an official Twitter account… what’s next? You need to grow your followers.

Twitter is one of the many social media platforms that allow businesses to market and advertise itself without the use of additional manpower or expensive resources. The concept around Twitter is that you tweet with a limited character count of 140 which forces you to think about your tweet.

You then put some #hashtags into your tweets, which simply work as tags grouping together tweets containing the same thought. As a registered user, you are allowed to retweet, share, and follow numerous sites which could gain you new followers as well.

But no one follows me

For your business to gain popularity on Twitter, you have followed different social media marketing strategies. You followed the other businesses and possible field influencers. You retweeted numerous tweets and even posted some of your own with numerous hashtags as well.

But when you look at your profile again, it seems that the number of your followers are way lower than those whom you are following. You start to question why actors with scandals have greater number of followers and you begin to plan a scandal of your own…. besides, good or bad, publicity is still publicity, right?

But are you sure you are doing the right thing? What might be the problem? Here are the 12 mistakes you shouldn’t make on Twitter if you want more followers.

1. Late night tweeter

The main goal of tweeting and having followers retweet your post relies greatly on the time it was posted. No wise businessman posts at night since the people responsible for liking and retweeting are already asleep.

2. What hashtags?

You do not include hashtags in your tweet or you put too much hashtags in your tweet, either way this won’t get you anywhere. Hashtags create a higher visibility rate on Twitter. Apparently, Offerpop reveals that among all the hashtag users, more than 70% of the people use hashtags posting through their mobile phones compared to only 30% of those using hashtags on their computers. Hashtags help increase your popularity in Twitter but make sure to limit it to two hashtags per tweet.

3. You are an egg

As an active Twitter user, you should be responsible in fixing your profile including your display picture or company logo. No one would follow a user who does not even bother to fix their own profile.

4. Lengthy tweets

Twitter has a limited number of characters per post since it is designed for people on-the-go. If your tweets are too long, users tend to skip through it. Go for short but meaty tweets. According to Social Media Examiner, shorter tweets get 17% higher engagement from other users. Short tweets allow room for conversations, and a greater audience for retweeting and commenting.

5. You don’t ask for retweets

Usually, people do not go for users asking for retweets. However, for business brands, there is no excuse to be shy or hesitant about it. Trying to ask for retweets is a huge opportunity that most brands fail to realize. Reports say that asking for retweets results in 12 or more times RTs. Moreover, spelling out the entire word, ‘retweet’ than the abbreviation RT is 23 times higher than the latter. Then again, make sure that your requests are once in a while; too much might be annoying.

6. Posting too much

The only thing left for your followers is too click on that unfollow button and your back to square zero. A Forbes article states that the more you tweet, the more likely you could have followers. However, this is not entirely correct. Though posting promotes visibility for your company, too much of it is appalling.

7. Following everyone

Yes, you heard me right. Following everyone does not guarantee you of a great number of followers. In social media, you should have a target audience which you could use to leverage your popularity. Take advantage of Twitter’s sidebar for recommendations on who to follow based on your industry. Also, make sure to follow with a strategy in mind. Follow those who would follow you back based on the balance between their followers and following numbers.

8. Your tweets are not worth retweeting

Quality and quantity is key towards an excellent tweet. Avinash Kaushik, an expert in social media campaigns, reveals that content is important to gain the applause of your audience. Your tweets must be short and catchy. It should even be relatable to your targeted audience. Producing quality content will definitely help you get the attention of users and may as well gain the retweets your page needs.

9. No interaction with followers

Engagement is one thing most of the followers or fans prioritize. Getting people follow you is not all about your posts but mainly on how you engage with them through replies and even direct messages.

Followerwonk, a free tool designed for Twitter users, allows you to search for key terms pertinent to your industry’s nature and view the topics which have the highest response rates, thus enabling you to expand your social graph. Through this, you could engage with them using the same key terms.

10. Including bad links to your posts

You click on a link and then it does not work; worse part is, it led to a virus. Double check the links that you include in your posts. Having errors on the links force followers to lose interest in your page. You wouldn’t want to lose your current followers right?

More than worrying about your number of followers, you should focus more on the content that you publish. Marketing in social media should aim for creating and sharing content that has both quality and credibility, and has a target audience.

11. Poor timing

Timing is everything. Just like the world, there is no way the Twittersphere goes to sleep. Users continue to tweet from different parts of the world. As such, if you are determined to increase your followers, you have to monitor your target audience’s time zone. You have to adjust your tweets as well as the gap in between tweets to avoid flooding your followers’ walls.

12. You do not post pictures: BORING!

In every marketing strategy, pictures greatly attract people. The same goes in social media marketing, Tweets containing images or videos have greater chances of retweets and engagement as well.

Social media marketing strategies differ. Other than these tips, consider looking at conversation, amplification, applause, and economic value, the four tips of Avinash Kaushik’s social media metrics to help you in your campaign. Now, have you decided what to do with your Twitter problem? Scandals are for the desperate! Maybe it’s time for you to retweet more, change that profile picture, and tweet more! Go ahead and if you’ve resolved these issues, your Twitter account might fly as high and as viral as Flappy Bird!

The difference between successful investors and unsuccessful ones is often as simple as doing a few things right and steering clear of some common mistakes. Avoid these 5 traps and you’ll be well on your way to achieving your financial goals.

Don’t Fly Blind

Would you start a major project at work without first setting some goals and creating a plan of attack to accomplish them? What about if you were remodelling your kitchen or buying a car? The answer is “of course you wouldn’t”. So why do so many people fail to create a plan for their long-term financial goals? In fact , in a recent Wealthminder survey, 82% of respondents said they did not have a formal financial plan. These people are flying blind. Don’t be one of them. Creating a basic financial plan isn’t complicated and doesn’t have to be very time consuming. Answering a few simple questions about your goals, your current financial situation and your willingness to take risk is enough to see whether what you are doing is likely to work or not. Once you have a plan in place, it becomes much easier to judge if you’ve gone off-course and it gives you a framework for making decisions on how to get back on track.

Focus on the Big Picture

When is the last time you thought about whether to buy or sell shares in Apple? How about when you last thought about what percentage of your portfolio should be in emerging market stocks? The reality is most investors spend all of their time thinking about questions like the first one and almost no time thinking about questions like the second one. The problem with this is studies show over 90% of your long-term returns are driven off of your asset allocation choices and not the individual assets you select.

A key output of any financial plan is a target asset allocation. Make sure your portfolio lines up with your planned allocation and you’ll be a step ahead of the crowd.

The Early Bird Gets the Worm

It’s cliche, but the earlier you start the easier it will be to reach your goal. The primary reason for this lies in the power of compounding. There’s simple rule every investor should learn to help with understanding this. It’s called the “Rule of 72”, and here’s how it works. If you have an expected rate of return for your portfolio, simply divide that number into 72 and the result is the number of years it will take for your money to double. For example, if your portfolio is expected to gain 7.2% per year, it will take 10 years to double your money.

You can also use the formula to determine what rate your portfolio needs to grow at in order to double your money in a set number of years. For example, say I want my money to double every 8 years. Using the “Rule of 72”, I know I will need to earn a 9% return.

Now, let’s use the “rule of 72” to illustrate why starting early matters. Say we have 2 investors, Sally and Joe. Both invest $10,000 in a portfolio that will return 7.2% per year and never save another dime. The only difference is that Sally does this at 25 and Joe does it at 35. If they both retire at 65, Sally’s portfolio will have grown to 16 times it’s initial value, $160,000, while Joe’s portfolio is only 8 times larger at $80,000. The numbers only get bigger when you assume regular savings over those 10 years.

Don’t Buy High and Sell Low

I know, it’s obvious. Unfortunately, it’s exactly what most investors do. Study after study shows that investors follow the herd and pile assets into whatever has worked well in the recent past. Then, when those assets fall, investors hang on almost all the way to the bottom before selling in a panic right before things turn for the better. To illustrate these points, we’ll use a couple of examples.

Morningstar is a widely respected company best known for it’s mutual fund rating system. Funds that get a coveted 5 star rating garner 90% of all new money going into mutual funds. Unfortunately for investors, the 5 star system is mostly about recent past performance, and as the chart below shows, you are actually more likely to pick a winning fund going forward from the 1 star pile than from the 5 star pile. Oops.

On the other end of the spectrum, let’s look at an example courtesy of Blackrock that shows how investors buy more as the market gets closer to a top and sell more closer to the bottom. While some will quibble that this is an oversimplification, the basic premise is sound.

Costs Do Matter

Last, but certainly not least are investment costs. Costs come in a variety of forms, but the biggies include fund expenses, trading costs, bid/ask costs and taxes. Studies have shown that the typical mutual fund with an average expense ratio and turnover rate has to outperform its benchmark by 2.5-3% per year just to match the benchmark after costs.

At first blush that might not seem like a lot, but if you assume that the average moderate portfolio is only expected to make 6-7% a year, that means the fund has to outperform the benchmark by 40-50% just to match its return after fees and taxes. Not surprisingly, the result is that most actively managed funds underperform their target benchmark and the magnitude of the underperformance is equal to the 2.5-3% penalty they are trying to overcome.

Wrapping It All Up

So, our 5 simple steps to getting ahead of the game are:

• Start as soon as possible (like today!!)
• Create a plan that helps you understand what you need to do to achieve your goals
• Actually follow your plan (make sure your total portfolio’s asset allocation matches your plan’s)
• Stick to your asset allocation and rebalance periodically to help you buy low and sell high instead of the other way around
• Think about returns after fees and taxes when picking investments, because that’s what you get to keep

Digital is everything. Are you listening?

I read the following quote from a recently published Forrester report titled, The Future Of Business Is Digital:

"Business leaders don't think of digital as central to their business because in the past, it hasn't been. But now your customers, your products, your business operations, and your competitors are fundamentally digital. While 74% of business executives say their company has a digital strategy, only 15% believe that their company has the skills and capabilities to execute on that strategy. A piecemeal strategy of bolting on digital channels or methods is no longer sufficient. Instead, you must think of your company as part of a dynamic ecosystem of value that connects digital resources inside and outside the company as needed to compete. You must harness digital technologies, both to deliver a superior customer experience and to drive the agility and operational efficiency you need to stay competitive." 

How digital is your organization?

From a marketing perspective, the ability to do digital advertising seems elementary, at this point. Yes, you can use websites, mobile apps and social media to sell a message (much in the same way that advertisers do with television, radio and print). The bigger shift (and the kind of stuff we have been working on at Twist Image for close to a decade) is helping brands to solve their business challenges by creating digital products and services. This means that a website is (and can be) a whole lot more than a printed brochure brought to life, and it also means that brands can now create and sell digital products alongside their physical goods via e-commerce. Technology, obviously, enables a lot more. Now, you can build a framework of analytics, KPIs and metrics that can be baked into these products and services, long before any of it goes live. What does this mean? You now know things like cost per acquisition and how something is performing live and in the moment. Brands are able to move data from the rear view mirror to the passenger seat. From that, the complexities of the communication layers become apparent. Now, the role of marketing becomes to not only build these digital products and services, to build those KPIs and analytics into them, but then to figure out how to tell, share and connect these assets to an audience. If you're reading this thinking that there's nothing new being written here, ask yourself this: which brands are actually doing this (instead of talking about it or reading about it)?

That is the transformation that most businesses must face in this business of digital. 

Put aside your profession. Look at how you conduct yourself as a consumer. Where do the traditional channels of communications fit? Where do the digital channels and opportunities lie? We live in a world where:

• YouTube reaches more US adults aged 18-34 than any cable network.
• Social Media has overtaken porn as the number one activity on the Web.
• The fastest growing demographic on Twitter is the 55-64 year age bracket.
• 189 million of Facebook's users are mobile only.
• 93% of marketers use Social Media for business.

Let's not miss the future.

I must have read the quote at the beginning of this blog post ten times in the past few days (probably more). Every time I read it, I think to myself, "isn't this obvious? Doesn't everybody know this? Haven't we been saying this for over a decade already?" Then, I switch gears, and I think to myself, "isn't it obvious how profoundly amazing it is to be working in the digital marketing space? There is so much opportunity." Businesses are struggling through this phase. It's not going to get any easier. As technology gets easier for consumers to connect with-  and more appliances go from being plugged into the wall to being mobile and connected - it's going to create many more layers of complexity. In this, brands will need to think differently about what it means to be a marketer in a world where the future of business is digital...

...and the present is very digital as well. Still, it feels like most brands are working very analog.

Tags: business challenge business leaders business transformation cable network communications customer experience digital digital advertising digital business digital channel digital products digital services digital strategy digital technology e commerce ecommerce facebook forrester forrester research kpi marketing mobile mobile app social media technology twitter web analytics website youtube

A dating site and a social network recently admitted to experimenting on unsuspecting users, sparking a heated discussion on where and how brands should set online boundaries. Gathering customer data can and should be a transparent process in which companies obtain user permission and use the insights to improve the customer experience. Problems arise when marketers think about their customers as merely subjects or users who generate clicks.

In an increasingly mobile and social world, involving multiple devices and countless interactions both online and off, it’s easy to forget that the consumer is a human being. This dehumanization of marketing only alienates potential customers and hurts the bottom line.

The Empowered (and Overloaded) Consumer

The new mobile-and-social landscape has enabled customer advocacy, instant communication, in-the-moment reviews, and the freedom to consume nearly anything at any time and on any device. Inundated by all manner of digital content, we have never been more saturated — or better equipped to make purchasing decisions. Marketers, however, aren’t making the most of this new reality. Rather than hyper-personalizing the customer experience to appeal to their audiences, they’re trying to shoehorn traditional approaches to fit social and mobile channels. They’re spending more money for less engagement, resulting in fewer conversions.

Mobile and social are more than channels for ads — they are a rich source of signals about customer interest, location, intent and buying stage. Combining this data with insights from CRM and marketing automation allows the marketer to deliver offers and products to the right person at the right time, on the right device.

Personalization: An Imperative, Not an Advantage

Marketers talk a big game about personalizing the customer experience, but many are doing so by creating rules that fail to address unique interests, needs and preferences. Companies that don’t create tailored and dynamic experiences will lose customers and fall behind their competition. Marketers need to use data intelligently to adjust their efforts, in real time and at scale. Big Data, while an overused term, is crucial for progressing the customer-brand relationship and delivering content that will encourage engagement and conversions.

Consumers are interacting with brands in myriad ways, and this trend will only continue. Smartphones and tablets aren’t replacing laptops, but are enriching the digital experience and filling a different need. The key for marketers is to understand how the customer behaves across devices, over the course of their lifecycle, and use this information to drive results.

The Technology Need

Leveraging data for the customer’s benefit requires a centralized source of information. Marketers must be able to pull together information — about the customer’s current context, attributes and past behavior — and synthesize it to tailor the experience on the fly. Increasingly powerful analytics tools help marketers to predict the most compelling customer experience, and automation technologies allow marketers to deliver personalization at scale.

The consumer is a person, not five browsers, two email clients, a smartphone and a tablet. To provide real value, companies need to obtain a cohesive view of the individual with whom they are interacting and understand behavior across different touch points. –Marketing platform technology can be used to achieve this, delivering the authentic, human brand conversations that build lifelong relationships with customers.

Learn more about winning customers for life at our fourth annual Sitecore Symposiums, September 8-10 in Las Vegas and September 15-17 in Barcelona.

Someone once said calling yourself an expert is not a very good idea – because an ex is a has been and a spurt is a drip under pressure!

Old jokes aside, how can you really call yourself an expert and why would you want to?

The WHY is pretty simple – because specialists are sought after and get paid a lot more than generalists.

It’s as simple as that. If you want to create demand for your services, be a specialist expert, offering a specific solution for a specific problem to a specific target audience.

No more chasing clients, they seek you out!

So now we know WHY, the next step is HOW..

HOW do you define yourself as an expert?

First you need to identify what your expertise is. If you are in the finance industry, mortgage business or an accountant or real estate agent, you need to stand out from the crowd, otherwise you just look like everyone else in that field. Saying you offer better quality or service is not good enough.

Yes you might have specific training, qualifications, background or knowledge, but what REALLY makes you so special? It needs to be something prospects CARE about.

My definition of an area of expertise is simple:

It’s something that others find incredibly difficult to do, that you do with ease.

Maybe it’s getting the value right, speaking the right language to the banks, reading the trends, knowing the optimal procedure, translating facts and figures…

It’s something that, over time and with insight and knowledge, has become automated to you, like second nature or 6th sense. It enables you to see the wood for the trees and to make decisions based on gut instinct that others would be unable to even see let alone be able to make informed choices about.

It’s what makes you special, a specialist, an expert.

If you are still struggling to find this focus, here is a simple and easy tip:

Ask your clients what it is that you do for them!

Ask a few and write it down word for word (or record it) because the same words will come up over and over again. What did you give them, how do they describe the special way in which you helped them deal with a difficult situation they had no idea how to approach.

Chances are, they will describe your expertise perfectly.

Remember and record their words, because they are unlikely to use jargon and you can use their words to help communicate your expertise to others.

What’s next now that you know the WHY and the HOW?

It’s the WHAT.

What do you do with this newfound knowledge about your specific area of expertise?

You use it to position yourself as an expert in your brand and marketing and you package that uniqueness and ‘productise it’ so you can generate multiple streams of income from it.

This can be the most difficult to do because your expertise is something you doinstinctively, without paying attention to the process. That’s where some guidance can really help you propel your business further and faster than you ever thought possible.

A really experienced branding specialist can be exactly what you need, because they can see your expertise from the outside - in.

They know how to package and market your expertise as a brand. They know how to develop your marketing communication so that resonates and engages with the perfect prospects who will seek out your expertise and become an army of raving fan clients who do your marketing for you.

Ask for case studies and testimonials when you are looking for a personal branding specialist and choose someone who understands how to define your core message that encapsulates your expertise as your brand.

You’ve all heard it before. The B2B buying process isn’t always as emotionally distant as its made out. And yet, that too is an ironic demonstration of perception being more prevalent than technical fact.

Often times, lead generation campaigns are geared towards combating this. For instance, call scripts are designed to handle objections that dispute misconceptions about your industry. Shouldn’t it be about time to adopt the opposite approach?

Why not value people’s perception instead of always betting on technical facts?

Not all PR and marketing professionals believe that the facts can establish rapport. If you’ve been following news on Apple, you’ll know that its upcoming launches have been overshadowed by a scandalous leak that purportedly originated from its iCloud service.

Despite disproving any actual breach in the system, the damage to Apple’s reputation has left its mark. It’s like you’re the accused in a high-profile murder case. It doesn’t matter when you’ve been proven innocent. More people focus on the fact that you were accused. Your reputation is as good as compromised and this is something that no marketer would want to take lightly.

Now how exactly do you go about improving those perceptions?

• Break down the facts – Sometimes reputation is really a fact packed into a smaller package. Think of the adage “No such thing as a free lunch.” On one hand, a popular saying, but on the other it represents the economic idea of opportunity cost. This helps because a common measure against information overload is to externalize the data, making it easier to remember and digest.

• Spread it around – Don’t think of it as rumor-mongering. Think of it as an alternative way to share information. When you focus on spreading a simpler message, the message itself starts to move by itself. This is usually how internet memes go viral and when you reach that level, you’ll know everyone’s been listening.

• Connect and be convenient – You might not deliver the most outstanding performance, but it can make a difference if your marketing provides more convenience to potential customers. Give them shorter contact forms, offer freebies, or simply set very accommodating appointments.

It’s true that you might want to discuss harder facts during the sales meeting. But when you’re just still trying to get prospects’ attention, perception is the first challenge. Instead of treating it liken an obstacle though, why not work towards cultivating a better one?

  Recently I did a free webinar with Anthony Iannarino on closing more sales now and understanding the price value relationship. If you missed it (or even if you did make it to the webinar), I have GREAT news!  Anthony and I are doing a Part 2 on Sept. 18.   Yes, more insights on […]

Here are five key indicators that the time has come to invest in a multi-channel retail solution.

Many businesses suspect that their current IT systems are not up to scratch, but without concrete evidence, justifying the investment can be difficult. The reality is that data is the lifeblood of your retail operation, and if you are to make a successful transition to multi-channel retailing, and also fully recognise cost-savings, the quality and availability of information becomes critical.

Here are five key indicators that the time has come to invest in a true multi-channel retail software solution.

1. Incomplete KPI reporting

Before being able to monitor KPIs, you need to be able to capture relevant metrics. And to assess how well your business is performing, you need to be able to accurately report on every aspect of operations.

For businesses with a bespoke system, this level of granularity should already be present. For retailers using best-of-breed software, the information may be available, although tying the relevant data together from multiple sources into a single report could be time-consuming.

Your current KPI reporting system may need replacing if:

•       You cannot gain a holistic overview of your multi-channel retail operations easily.
•       Data takes days or weeks to be collated from disparate systems for reporting.
•       Information is not available quickly, preferably in real time.

“The dashboard and auto-alert reporting technologies employed by Best-in-Class organisations provide the capability to rapidly make the organisation aware of changing performance metrics. These approaches can also serve as a way to inform the organisation of specific actions that can improve performance and alleviate harmful situations before they happen.”

Smart Decisions: The role of Key Performance Indicators, Aberdeen Group.

 

2. Stock visibility

Many retailers struggle with stock planning and management because they cannot accurately identify stock levels throughout their supply chain. This causes further problems when trying to allocate orders, process returns and manage back orders.

With a transparent stock management system, your business will benefit from:

•       Reduced costs – no more over- or under-ordering of stock.
•       Better allocation of stock to various channels.
•       Improved handling of customer orders and returns, helping to improve satisfaction levels.
•       Easier warehouse planning.
•       The potential to introduce drop shipping to further reduce stock management costs.

If your current syestem contains ‘blind spots’ where stock is invisible, you need to look for a replacement.

 

3. Customer satisfaction scores

The Internet has levelled the playing field when it comes to product offerings, leaving little to differentiate retailers. Customer experience is rapidly becoming the deciding factor for shoppers, and is vital for encouraging brand loyalty.

Retailers need to take a long, hard look at their customer turnover statistics to define:

•       The difference between customer acquisition and attrition rates.
•       The cost of acquiring a new customer.
•       The average lifetime value of each customer.

You should be able to easily call up a full purchase history for existing customers so that you can easily answer queries when they contact you; being able to respond immediately will further raise customer satisfaction levels. And with clever use of your data, you can tailor services to the individual customer’s needs to improve their experience.

If your system cannot deliver customer data and satisfaction scores quickly, it’s time to invest in a new multi-channel retail system.

“Companies with the highest Customer Engagement levels were found to yield an annual increase on ROI of 8% above the industry average, while companies with low engagement levels saw a decrease on ROI 23% below the industry average.”

The importance of customer satisfaction and customer engagement in business outcomes – Peoplemetrics

 

4. Operational costs

The idea of a multi-channel retail software system is to provide value to your business. Whether your business opted for an off-the-shelf solution, a bespoke platform tailored to your specific needs, or a best-of-breed mix of applications, if they are not saving money, they are failing at their most important task.

Legacy systems based on old technology are inflexible and can be costly to maintain. Changes to your mode of operation, or the addition of a new sales channel may also be beyond the capabilities of your existing system.

Your business needs to:

•       Carefully calculate the annual running costs of your existing system.
•       Calculate the projected running costs of a suitable replacement.
•       Factor in efficiency savings of the new system.
•       Estimate the growth potential allowed by the new system.

With these figures in place, if the old system cannot compete with a replacement, it’s time to change.

 

5. Sales lead times

The faster you can get your product from the supplier to the customer, the quicker the route to profit. To sell more, you need to be able to increase sales throughput. This means identifying and resolving bottlenecks in the supply chain.

Does your current system allow you to see . . .

•       Order lead times?
•       Delivery issues?
•       Product supply issues that result in lost sales?

As with stock visibility, the more of your supply chain that is visible, the better you can plan orders and improve customer service to reduce the likelihood of lost sales. Greater transparency will help improve sales throughput.

 

Taking the decision

Do you need to invest in a multi-channel retail system? The answer is yes, if:

• You cannot access information from every aspect of your business quickly and easily.
• You cannot easily see stock levels at every point of your operation.
• You do not have easy access to customer data to improve service offerings.
• Your system costs more to manage than it saves your business.
• Your current software is limiting your business expansion potential.
• You cannot see supply chain issues that negatively affect sales lead times.
• You want the ‘single customer view’ that can identify the consumer and track activity; be flexible enough to cater for consumers across devices and channels; and join these up so that no activity is run in a silo.

To find out more, download: How to guide: smaller retailers which became multi-channel success stories now!

This article was first published on the Sanderson blog

Lately, I’ve been having quite a few conversations with clients about the importance of blogging. Some, firm believers in the power of a blog and are eager to join the ‘blogosphere’. Others aren’t so eager and are questioning the value of blogging for business.

The blog bandwagon

If you fall into the “not-so-sure” category when it comes to blogs, read on dear reader.

Shootin’ the breeze

When you blog you connect directly with your site audience. You can create a dialogue by asking your audience questions at the end of your posts or allow comments and feedback. By reviewing and responding to comments, you create an audience rapport, build trust, and gain valuable insight into what your customers are looking for. Remember: your readers can be potential AND current clients; equally valuable.

Positioning, positioning, positioning

No matter how small your business is, you can build trust by providing valuable, expert information in your blog posts. Over time, you establish credibility and become a trusted resource. This credibility is proven to lead to higher conversion rates, as you nurture your audience through the buying cycle.

Give voice to your brand, and your cause

Having a blog opens up a channel that’s more personal than what you can build through traditional marketing channels. Blogging gives others a sense of corporate standards, vision, and the personality of your company.

Beef up your social presence

Every time you blog, you create an opportunity for your audience to share your blog with others. Whether they link to your blog post, tweet it, or email it to others, it’s ‘free’ marketing and further validates your credibility.

Boost you SEO

Google loves quality, fresh, regular content. The best way to provide that to Google is with blog posts. By blogging consistently, you give Google and other search engines new content to index and create opportunities for the keywords you want to show for. And thanks to the recent Google updates, Google loves bloggers even more. We blogged about this a few months ago, check it out here.

As managers and leaders we like working with our top performers. It’s creative, they “get it,” we focus on how we win, how we grow the business. If we’re doing our jobs right, however good they are, we are always coaching, developing, stretching them to grow, and achieve more.

Sometimes, we give them special developmental opportunities, exposure to execs, special projects–but they deserve it, and it helps build them as sales and business professionals.

By contrast, dealing with poor performers is difficult. It’s not pleasant. They aren’t doing the job, reviews become contentious. We struggle to get them to improve, they don’t —or it’s not enough. They just don’t seem to get it, possibly they don’t want to get it. It’s frustrating and draining both for managers and the sales person.

Too often, we just ignore it. We don’t take the time to address performance issues. We don’t take actions to terminate them because it means we have to get HR involved, we have to go through all the HR stuff, to make sure we do it right so we don’t get sued.

Sometimes we just let it go, never taking action, making excuses because we are busy doing other things, letting the situation persist.

Sometimes we just let it go, thinking, it’s better to have someone in the territory, getting whatever business they can, even though it’s not what they should be doing.

Not taking action on poor performers is wrong!

It’s wrong for our customers! It’s wrong for our businesses! It sets the wrong standard for their peers! It’s wrong for the poor performer!

It’s simply an avoidance of our responsibilities as managers to our organizations, our people, and the poor performers.

Let me dive into some of these issues:

It’s wrong for our customers: We’re supposed to create value in every exchange with our customers. Poor performers clearly aren’t doing this, they are wasting the customers’ time, costing them money–both in the time wasted and in lost opportunities to grow and improve their businesses. But customers solve this pretty easily. There are those that create value for them–possibly our competitors. They won’t let the poor performer waste their time, they just won’t see the poor performer. Furthermore, they’ll have a poor impression of our company, they may give bad referrals to others–in territories not covered by the poor performer, adversely impacting our business in other areas. As managers, we should be terrified of this–a pissed off customer talks to far more people than a satisfied one. The customers will take care of themselves, if we don’t act. Unfortunately, they take care of themselves in a way that always hurts our business.

It’s wrong for our organizations: As managers we are responsible for maximizing the performance of our teams in executing the company strategy and delivering results. Poor performers cost us money–often in the millions. Mistakenly, people think it’s just the expense of their salaries and overhead. But it’s lost revenue–the revenue they should be producing and the revenue lost through unhappy customers sharing their experience with other customers. Think of it, if a sales person has 10 customers who could produce $100K each, but they spend that $100K on the competition, we’ve lost $1 M. But if each of those pissed off customers also talks to 10 other potential customers (who could be buying $100K each from one of your other sales people), and 50% 0f them choose to buy from competition based on the negative reference–that’s 50 customers each spending $100K on someone else for a total of $5M. By not taking action on the poor performer, we’ve lost $6M plus their salary and overhead. But hold on–in a moment, you will see it gets worse.

It’s wrong for their peers: Think about the rest of the sales organization. They recognize poor performance with their peers. If they see management is taking no action, if there are no consequences to poor performance, then why should they work 50-60-more hours a week trying to do their jobs? Why should they try to excel? Poor performers will suck the marginal performers down with them. They will pull down the performance of mediocre performers. Overall revenue suffers, morale plummets. But hold on, it gets worse. Top performers thrive being around top performers. If they see management doesn’t hold people accountable for performance, if they see the performance of the organization slipping, they won’t want to be around. They want to be associated with winners, they’ll go someplace else.

So imagine the cumulative impact! It’s enormous–all because we don’t have the courage or don’t take the time to deal with poor performance!

And it’s not fair to the poor performer! Some have a misplaced sense of compassion–”I’ll ignore them, it’s too much hassle to try to improve them, it’s too much hassle to fire them, plus I don’t want to throw them out on the street…..” They become “charity cases.” This is not compassion, it’s the ultimate in lack of respect for the individual.

If they are poor performers, they are probably in the wrong job. It doesn’t mean they are poor performers, in general, it means they just can’t perform in their current job. It’s our obligation as managers to give them the opportunity to find a job where they can perform. A C player might be an A player somewhere else! If we don’t take action–either moving them into jobs in our organizations where they can be A players, or moving them out of the organization so they can find a job where they can be an A player (or at least a B player), then we are cheating them!

Terminating a poor performer–after you have given them a fair opportunity and coaching to improve their performance–is the most compassionate thing you can do for the poor performer. While it may not look that way, to them, initially, it forces them to find a role where they can contribute, where they have the potential for being an A player. We are obligated to give them that opportunity–not withhold it, treating them as charity cases. We are obligated in our last conversations, as the leave, to coach them on the types of opportunities they might look for where they can perform and contribute.

It’s interesting, I’ve had several people I’ve terminated, call me up sometime later, thanking me. While they were initially angry about the termination, it forced them to find opportunities where they could be top performers. We cannot cheat poor performers of the opportunity to find a role in which the can perform, enjoy their jobs, contribute and grow. It’s the ultimate sign of disrespect not to terminate them.

Managers who cannot deal with performance issues are performance problems themselves. Hopefully, their managers will recognize this and take appropriate action–for the good of the business, for the good of their teams, for the good/respect of the poor performers.

Imagine one of your managers walks into their subordinate’s office and says, “Our data analysis predicts that you will soon get restless and think of leaving us, so we want to make you an offer that our data shows has retained others like you.”  Would your employees welcome the offer, marveling at the value of your HR analytics?  Or, might they see images of Big Brother, and be repelled by a company snooping on the data they generate as they work? Predictive analytics can enable a customized employment value proposition that maximizes mutual benefit for organizations and their talent; but at what point do predictive analytics become too creepy?

For example, predictive analytics can reduce employee turnover costs. In 2009, The Wall Street Journal reported on Google’s algorithm that crunched data from employee reviews and promotion and pay histories to determine which employees are most likely to quit, and more recently Google was lauded for pioneering the use of big data to predict employee turnover.  Laszlo Bock said this helped Google “get inside people’s heads even before they know they might leave.”  This month, Credit Suisse said it calculates who is likely to quit, and proactively offers them new career roles.  Will Wolf, the Global Head of Talent Acquisition & Development said that even if employees are not interested in the offered roles, “they are blown away that we’re going out of our way to try to find them something interesting and new.”

Creepy? Or, perhaps not so much.  Yet.

But companies are looking beyond cost savings—to driving outcomes. HR predictive analytics is touted as transforming HR from retrospective and reactive administrative reporting to strategically integrated modeling to predict behaviors, attitudes and capabilities that drive tangible organizational outcomes.  Some evidence shows a correlation between HR predictive analytics and organizational performance. Companies like Google are taking this even further. Google is launching a new firm called “Calico” designed to use search tools to improve life expectancy, and it was previously reported that a question considered by the Google People Analytics group was “what if working at Google increased your life span by a year?” In the quest to improve productivity and work life, the information that companies can analyze about you at work is limited only by software.

This insight has produced a common mantra for HR analytics: “to know our employees as well as we know our customers.”  It’s no coincidence that this sounds like consumer marketing.  Marketing concepts like brands, segments, value propositions and engagement are fertile metaphors for retooling HR, but there is also a more subtle lesson here.

Marketing often influences consumers through unconscious habits, as described in Charles Duhigg’s book, “The Power of Habit.” Duhigg describes his own habit of buying a cookie in the company cafeteria at 3:30 p.m. each day. He realized this was a combination of mid-afternoon boredom, and a desire to get away from his desk and to gossip. The cookie was incidental to the actual reward, but that made it no less a culprit in weight gain.  Once he realized that, he could break the cookie habit.  Suppose predictive analytics found such cookie-eating employees using your data on work schedules and cafeteria purchases, and you shared it with them, to help them be healthier?  Would they be delighted or disturbed?

Consider this object lesson from marketing.  Pregnancy is an event that changes otherwise stubborn purchasing habits, so retailers want to know about a pregnancy as early as possible.  Duhigg’s New York Times story reports that Target marketing analysts built a predictive algorithm to identify pregnant customers based on their purchasing habits and other demographic information.  They sent those customers ads for pregnancy related products.  What could be wrong with helping pregnant women be aware of products or services they need, as early as possible?

Apparently, women responded negatively if it was obvious that they received pregnancy ads before they revealed their pregnancy.  They responded more positively if they received “an ad for a lawn mower next to diapers.”  Duhigg reports one executive saying, “as long as a pregnant woman thinks she hasn’t been spied on, she’ll use the coupons…As long as we don’t spook her, it works.” Duhigg also reports that Target company executives said the article contained “inaccurate information,” so the story may exaggerate, but the lesson remains:  Effective predictive analytics depends on how real people react, not just on the elegance of the analytics.

Organization leaders will increasingly confront such situations with their employees, not only their customers.  Consider the potential to influence employee behaviors in arenas such as employee benefits, health care and wellness.

In the rush to ask “What can HR analytics predict?” perhaps the more vital question is “What should HR analytics predict?”

Legal compliance may not be a sufficient answer.  A business law journal article, “The Eavesdropping Employer” concludes that “The American legal system’s effort to protect employee privacy is … not properly equipped to defend against excessive invasions of privacy that come from increasingly-sophisticated monitoring practices.”  Appropriate standards may vary across companies and demographic groups.  Google employees have said to me, “as long as our data is held and analyzed by our own HR Department, we trust them.”  Google’s employees may be unique because they work for an organization dedicated to changing the world through personal data and analytics.  Yet, one study reports that one-third of employees are comfortable sharing personal data with their employer, particularly millennials who will become a larger share of the future workforce.  Mark Berry, the Vice President of Human Capital Analytics and Reporting at ConAgra Foods has said, “we want to know our employees as well as our customers,” but added that the company has safeguards for types of data that can and cannot be collected.

How should those safeguards be constructed?  What is the balance between predictive feasibility and predictive acceptability?  These questions require artfully combining analytical rigor with sensitivity and insight into the humanity and ethics of work.

HR is a discipline well-suited to answering these questions, but are HR leaders prepared?  Encouraged by constituents, product vendors and compelling stories, HR leaders understandably rush to increase analytic and data skills. Yet, an even more vital and unique role for HR is to help leaders balance what can be predicted against what should be predicted.

Complex sales can be hellish. They usually involve wider and deeper business challenges that require longer sales-cycles and result in larger average deal sizes.

What turns ordinary people into Buyers from Hell is that they don’t wake up one day and say, “I know the exact extent of my challenges, who I should talk with, and what I need to know in order to solve them.” They might not even be convinced they need to be solved.

For those of you whose job it is to contact potential buyers before getting an explicit invitation beware! As a friend of mine at one of the world’s largest companies and an admitted Buyer from Hell said, “I feel like I have a bulls-eye on my back. I get approached 5 times a day. I have become a complete asshole to spare myself a ton of aggravation and wasted time. I have one clear rule.  I simply don’t take sales calls that I don’t initiate.”

He went on to say, “Most of the many approaches I get absolutely suck. There is no clear value prop for me, whatsoever, to waste my time talking to them. Often, I’m the wrong buyer for what they sell.  And then, the approaches suck, to boot.)

I’m sure there are many self-professed Buyers from Hell out there. Here are three rules of thumb for selling to them.

1. It’s about the buyer stupid
   “Why are you calling me?!” That’s the first thing they want to know (even if it goes unasked).  The answer to that question better be addressed right up front and  it better not be something about wanting to know whether they’re the right person to talk with about X, Y, or Z. What is the value for them, in taking your call? That’s what you want to focus on. You must do your pre-call research. In complex sales (versus transaction-based sales) there is no way around it. You will not be successful if you haven’t found a hook FOR THAT PARTICULAR BUYER.
2. They’ve got 99 problems and you’re one of them
   You are an interruption. You’re one of several salespeople calling them that day. Rest assured, they are not sitting there waiting for your call. In fact, they aren’t likely to even pick up the phone—that’s how much they don’t want to talk to you. Asking them to tell you about their current use of [your words here]… or to tell you anything about their role, is not wise on a first call. If you don’t want to be seen as a problem, you must add value and for that to happen, you have to find a way in. Look for trigger events that you can reference on the call. Trigger events are anything that would indicate a newly recognized or prioritized need. Trigger events are great door openers.
3. “Average” is a fail
   Be exceptional. Look for a way you’re connected and make reference to it. Or better yet, have that person make the introduction. Using LinkedIn Sales Navigator is a quick way to discover connections within your own company or network. Find a presentation your Buyer gave at an event and comment on it. Send a link to a related document they might find interesting. Average Sellers just pick up the phone and dial. Average Sellers expect to earn trust and engage instantly. Average Sellers expect the objective of a first call to be an appointment. Exceptional sellers know they must provide a bread-crumb of value over time if they want the Buyer to take a specific path.

I asked my Buyer from Hell friend the magic question,”what approaches do work with you.” He had a tough time coming up with an answer. As is so often the case, it’s easier to know what you don’t like than it is to know what you do like (especially when you’re presented with so few examples of the good stuff). None-the-less, here were his main points for what works:

• They did some research and know something I’m dealing with or that the industry is struggling with.
• They know my exact role and what I’m a buyer for, rather than assuming it’s everything in the ecosystem.
• They used a referral or intro to get to me.
• They take a low key approach and don’t use standard “sales techniques.
• They can clearly and concisely provide a value story, especially what they’ve done for someone in a similar situation.

If you’re dealing with Buyer’s from Hell, be sure you’re not a Seller from the same place. Elevate your approach if you expect to escape their rath and be welcomed into a productive conversation.

Businesses need to respect today's informed customers.

Content marketing is quite clearly a red-hot topic in the world of marketing – it seems like we’ve had nonstop conversation about it for at least two years. And despite all that talk, there still seems to be a lot of confusion over what is and what isn’t content marketing. Some people favor a very broad definition – it’s all content! – while others think it’s better to have a narrow focus on the definition, which can make those of those that feel that way seem a little curmudgeonly.

Some may say it just doesn’t matter, but I think it’s important that we put some parameters around the term; if the definition is too broad, it becomes meaningless.

Therefore, here are some of the parameters for content marketing and content execution that I think are important… so much so that I’m pretty adamant about them. In fact, I consider them truths, not just assertions. My list:

1. Content marketing isn’t content marketing unless it’s audience-focused. Content that is inward facing is not content marketing, at least not in my book. I’m not saying that you should create sales collateral and press releases and the like; I’m just saying it isn’t content marketing. Content marketing must be useful or educational to the prospective customer, and educating her about your wonderful products doesn’t count. And that’s because….
2. The buyer is in control. The buyer’s journey has changed. Thanks to the Internet, the buyer can research and browse as she sees fit. Two-thirds of the buying process now occurs digitally, as the buyer conducts research before ever engaging with the potential provider. That means the buyer dictates the when, how, why and what of the content they consume. Content marketers therefore need to bend to the buyer’s will and play the game.
3. The goal of content marketing is to build trust. Because in 2014, the buyer has many options. If they don’t trust you, they won’t buy from you. Content is an awesome way to build that trust. By delivering thought-provoking content that helps your audience live their lives or do their jobs, you’re giving them something important – your thinking. Once they understand your beliefs and approach to solving their problems, they’re far more likely to want to do business with you.
4. Content marketing never ends, so you better be in this for the long haul. With content, the campaign approach to marketing is dead. If you’re going to build trust, you need to make a commitment to the audience. A commitment lasts longer than a fortnight.
5. Content marketing requires an editorial sensibility. There have been plenty of attempts to “engineer” content, to apply algorithms to figuring out the audience. But the content marketing teams that have an innate understanding of the audience  – what it wants, how it wants it, when it wants it – is going to have an advantage. You need people with editorial training to bring this to your efforts.
6. Emotion is extremely important. Just because you’re writing about accounting, or the law, or ERP software, doesn’t mean you can’t bring it to life. Content that brings emotion to the reader is far more likely to break through. We’re all inundated with information, and just adding to the pile of lifeless jargon-filled content isn’t helping anyone.
7. You need to figure out your editorial promise. This should align with your brand promise. What do you stand for? Once you figure out that, how does your content support that raison d’etre?
8. Simply hiring a copywriter probably won’t fulfill your content marketing needs. Because you need a strategy, not someone to just bang out copy. Additionally, I can pretty much guarantee that you’re going to take that writer and give them a list of possible blog topics… but first you’re going to have them write a speech for the CEO, and maybe provide their thoughts on that PowerPoint for sales. Next thing you know, you have a writer who’s very busy, but that isn’t doing any content marketing.
9. Content marketing without strategy is a waste of time. There are plenty of organizations that are blogging about any ol’ thing. Or that blog once a quarter, because they don’t have a plan. You must, must, must have a strategy for content, that identifies key themes, an editorial calendar, an execution plan and goals and metrics.
10. Everybody has a hard time with content creation. There, feel better? It isn’t easy to continually create a flow of high quality content. It requires passion, stamina and talent. It requires commitment. However, the potential benefits make it worth it. If you’re practicing content-driven inbound marketing and you’ve ever sold a prospect that had consumed your content, you know how easy it is. Trust us – you’ve never made an easier sale.

Christian Lanng was only 19 years old when he founded his first startup in Denmark. Although it closed after just two years, it was enough to make him the youngest division head in the Danish government.

There, he was asked to keep track of the government’s 25,000-plus suppliers, who were sending over 15 million invoices every year. Since most invoices were — and still are, in a lot of companies — paper-based and mailed to buyers, it was extremely hard to manage invoices and collect payments.

That’s what inspired Lanng to build an electronic invoicing platform. Through his software, companies were able to send invoices and track down payments immediately. Within 10 months, 95% of all companies in Denmark were using it.

Fast-forward to 2009, Lanng once again felt that entrepreneurial itch. He decided to launch his own startup, based on a similar electronic invoicing idea. He called it Tradeshift.

Tradeshift offers a paperless, cloud-based invoicing software. Companies are able to digitally send invoices and collect payment through it, expediting the whole payment process.

But Lanng built Tradeshift with a bigger problem in mind: boosting cash flow cycles.

Companies usually pay suppliers in 30-, 60-, and 90-day cycles. This inevitably slows down the cash collection period and smaller companies suffer — and often go bankrupt — because cash is not immediately available.

“More than $2 trillion are locked up in late payments in the U.S.,” Lanng told Business Insider, citing an industry report.

In fact, a recent survey by Basware, another e-invoicing company, revealed that over half the companies are actively engaged in late payments, while a third of them believe late payment is “a fact of business life.”

Buyers usually delay payments because they want more cash in hand and spend on more-immediate needs, like R&D or dividend payouts. Because of this delay, suppliers often take out bank loans to sustain their business, which adds cost.

To solve this late-payment culture, Tradeshift offers services that incentivize companies to pay faster.

One option is Dynamic Discounting, where companies can offer discounts to clients who pay early. Basically, the earlier the buyer agrees to pay, the less money they’re owed.

Another is called Supply Chain Financing. With this, a third-party bank would pay the supplier immediately, at a low interest rate, and the buyer (who owes the money) would pay back the bank instead in 60 days or more. This benefits both sides of the deal because the supplier gets the cash immediately and the supplier gets to delay the payment.

“It’s true that big companies can save a lot of money by delaying payments,” Lanng says. “But they’re also hurting themselves because suppliers could go out of business while waiting for payment. Companies could save up to $30 million a year easily, just by paying earlier.”

Some of these features are available on other similar services, too, like Ariba (which was acquired by SAP for $4.3 billion), Taulia, or Basware.

But Tradeshift is free for all suppliers, and has a unique social-media-like layout that makes it really easy to use. Its real-time news feed enables a collaborative commenting and work-assigning environment. And it's all open source, so you can build customized apps on top of it.

In its first six months of launch, Tradeshift made it into over 100 countries. Now, in a little over three years, Tradeshift has become one of the fastest-growing cloud invoicing services, with more than 500,000 clients worldwide, including DHL, Dell, and the U.K.’s National Health Service.

Over the last 18 months, Tradeshift grew 300%, and it’s projected to process over $50 billion in annual transactions. And with roughly $130 million in funding so far, Tradeshift is worth nearly $300 million.

Because of its disruptive nature, the electronic invoicing business is quickly becoming a hot industry. But Lanng is confident that Tradeshifit has cracked the code and will be able to beat out larger competitors like SAP or smaller startups like Taulia.

“People always ask if I’m going to sell to SAP, and I (jokingly) tell them, 'No, I’m going to buy SAP,'” Lanng said. “We think this is the future of big businesses.”

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Here’s how big shot literary agents make a compelling living.

A client brings an idea to the agent who advises the client about its commercial possibilities. It’s important to note that this advisement traditionally means whether or not the agent thinks he will be able to sell the project to a major publisher for a compelling advance against royalties. Not whether there are actual people out there willing to pay money to read such a book idea.

The way the best sale works (meaning to the best advantage of the writer and agent) with a major publisher is to make sure that the publisher’s advance guarantee exceeds the amount of royalty that the writer will actually earn.

For the life of the book.

So for example, a new love story from Ms. Bestselling Writer will sell to a big publisher for say a $5,000,000 guarantee against an industry standard royalty that escalates to 15% of the retail cover price for a hardcover purchase and 7.5% of the retail cover price for a paperback sale and 25% of net revenue for eBook.

Let’s say Ms. Bestselling Writer’s books sell on average 700,000 copies in hardcover, 650,000 copies in paperback and 650,000 copies in eBook…for the life of the book. Let’s say also that the average retail price of is $25.00 per copy per hardcover and $10.00 per copy for paperback and eBook. So, for those 2,000,000 copies sold, she’ll have earned:

15% of $25.00 is $3.75 earned for every one of the 700,000 hardcover books sold or $2,625,000, plus,

7.5% of $10.00 is $.75 earned for every one of the 650,000 paperback books sold or $487,000, plus,

25% of the publishers net from retailers (70% of $10.00 or $7.00 per unit sold going to publisher) for 650,000 copies sold would be 25% of $7.00 times 650,000 ($1,137,500).

Or $4,250,000 ($2,625,000 + $487,500 + $1,137,500)

So Ms. Bestselling Writer has earned $4,250,000 but has been guaranteed $5,000,000. So her book does not “earn out.”  She’ll never get a royalty statement with a check in it.

So the publisher lost money on that one, right? Not by a long shot.

The publisher has made a major return on investment even though it has paid $750,000 more than the book earned. How did that happen?

The publisher gets 50% of the retail cover price for every copy sold, or $8,750,000 for 700,000 copies sold of the hardcover and another $3,250,000 for the 650,000 copies sold of the paperback. (The other 50% goes to retailers).

For eBook the publisher gets 70% of the retail price of $10.00 for the 650,000 copies sold or $4,550,000.

Let’s not forget about returns though.

To print and ship the necessary number of hardcover copies to sell 700,000 would require about 900,000. For paperback, to sell 650,000 copies would take about 800,000. So the publisher would have to pay for the printing, shipping and processing of returns for about 1,700,000 copies. This would cost about $2,800,000.

But for the eBook, the cost would be negligible. Hence the land grab to control eBook between Amazon and the Big Five.

So the bottom line for the publisher is gross revenue of $16,550,000 minus the $5,000,000 guarantee to Ms. Bestselling Writer, minus the $2,800,000 to print and ship the physical books. Or a total of $8,750,000 ($16,550,000 – $5,000,000 – $2,800,000) to their bottom line.

Even though the book never “earned out.”

Everyone wins.

But let’s say the agent was only able to negotiate a $1,000,000 deal for the writer who sells 2,000,000 copies, not $5,000,000. Then the publisher gets to keep the $750,000 that it didn’t “overpay” and the writer earns $4,250,000 paid out over time…in six-month installments attached to her royalty statements.

How far would a publisher be willing to dip into their pool of revenue to overpay for a book? This is the question literary agents enjoy contemplating. For the above scenario…if the publisher had a crystal ball and knew that the book would sell 2,000,000 in that combination of formats? I’d suspect they’d go as high as…$10,000,000.

Naturally a literary agent wants to have a lot of clients like Ms. Bestselling Writer. Clients who cannot command a competitive bidding situation (more than one publisher vying to purchase the rights to the book), they’d prefer to pass. If only one publisher wants your client’s book, you have very little leverage to negotiate.

The big books from big name writers (who don’t bleed red ink, but don’t earn out either) are the coveted ones for agents. Although it may be apocryphal, agent Andrew Wylie has been credited with having once said, “If my client’s book earns out, I haven’t done my job.”

But here’s the thing…

When I began in publishing in the 1990s, there were at least 20 “major” houses to submit a book proposal or novel. Today there are only 5 major corporations that control the trade book market. Sure, you’ll hear that there are tens of different publishing imprints within the major corps that “compete” with each other for properties. But when the time comes to put money on the table in a book auction, only one of those imprints from each of the five will end up bidding. The most big bids you’ll ever get as an agent today are 5.

And you can never discount the power of negative commentary around a book on submission.  Book publishing is so connected that if an editor at Random House didn’t care for a submission, you can count that an editor at HarperCollins who also received the submission will get that information before his having to make his own decision.  No one likes being the only one to like something.

Just as book fever can escalate if multiple editors pursue a particular project, so can “negative” feedback kill a book before it’s ever had a chance.  Talk to any agent and they’ll talk your ear off about a submission of theirs that got killed by a single snarky comment.

What all of this comes down to is the fact that becoming one of those coveted major bestselling writers who can garner $1,000,000 plus advances is as likely for a fresh faced young actor to become Brad Pitt.

As for literary agents, the notion that they’re going to build a stable of these unicorns is just as likely.

If only there were a way for writers to do their work, find people who like it, and then offer the book to them directly through free distribution networks as well as their own…  Instead of having to curry favor with a big shot literary agent, then hope the literary agent is able to drum up enough interest from the Big Five to make a good deal, and then wait 12 to 15 months for their work to reach the public and then another month to learn whether the book “worked” or not and then hope that their next book will be embraced by their publisher, all the while never knowing who actually bought their book or why…

Big corporate book publishing will always have a place for Ms. Bestselling Writer.  But if you aren’t her, wouldn’t all of the time you spend hoping to magically become her be better spent learning how to become Ms. Master of Permission Marketing?

And guess what?  Once you do master permission marketing and build your own platform to speak directly to your book buyers, guess who’ll come knocking on her door?

Big Literary Agent and Big Publishing, that’s who.  But by then, you may find that what they’re offering isn’t such a great deal.

This week the stats roundup offers you programmatic trading, international ecommerce, phablet shipments and the ever popular Twitter and TV.

Don't forget to check out the Internet Statistics Compendium for more internet marketing data and charts.

International ecommerce 

OC&C Strategy Consultants have produced a little piece of research with Google looking at UK ecommerce exports. 

For UK companies international export, a £13bn opportunity now, is set to grow to £45bn by 2020. 

This chart demonstrates how quickly internationalisation is now sought by pureplays compared to companies that did it pre-web.

Click to enlarge

OC&C cites the global nature of search as one factor that is driving the opportunity for UK pureplays.

Programmatic

Brand use of media agency trading desks has declined from 81% of advertisers in 2013 to 69% in 2014, according to a WFA poll of marketers from 43 of the biggest global brands (with $35bn annual advertising spend). 

• Independent trading desks and demand-side platforms have seen their usage increased from 8% of brands in 2013 to 29% in 2014. 
• Zero marketers using agency tradind desks reported that they were 'completely satisfied'. 
• Half of the respondents with concerns were unhappy with the way data is captured, stored and utilised.
• 85% were concerned about ad placement.
• 64% of marketers said practices such as 'arbitrage' were not acceptable – even if they were getting improved value from manual trading. 

Phablets

According to a new forecast from the International Data Corporation (IDC) Worldwide Quarterly Smart Connected Device Tracker, worldwide phablet shipments (5.5-7 inch screen size) will reach 175m units worldwide in 2014. 

• This is larger than the 170m portable PCs expected to ship during the same period.
• In 2015, total phablet volumes will hit 318 million units, surpassing the 233 million tablets forecast to ship in the same year. 
• In 2013, a phablet cost an average of $568 and a smartphone $320. IDC forecasts that in 2014, those prices will drop to $397 and $291, respectively. 

Click to enlarge

Brand switchers

eBay Advertising conducted research which revealed that, on average, 30% of shopping journeys are carried out by 'brand switchers'. These are people who care about brand, but are not loyal to one in particular and are may switch before making a purchase decision. 

By comparison, the eBay Advertising research found that only 37% of shopping journeys focus solely on one brand.

The remaining 33% are carried out by brand agnostics - focussing on product, price and functionality. 

Further findings included: 

• Consumers list previous ownership (68%), visiting a store (53%) and recommendations from family and friends (34%) as the biggest influences on their brand decision.
• 'Availability' of a product (68%) ranks higher than 'attractiveness' (40%) when it comes to brand choice. 
• Younger people tend to consider more brands before making a purchase, 25 - 34 year olds considering 3.14 brands for every purchase, compared to the 65+ age group at 2.72 brands. 
• 19% of shoppers say they actively continue searching even after they have decided on a brand. 

TV appointments to view

Must-see TV is driving consumers back towards planning evenings around the linear TV schedule, according to new research from Carat.

The data from surveying 11,000 British consumers reveals that 35% of people now actively plan their evenings around the TV schedule.

• This is 5m more people than four years ago when TV on demand started to increase significantly.
• This change is being fuelled by social media use and appointment-to-view (APT) TV shows, such as Breaking Bad.
• The research shows that 57% of people are second screening in some way while watching linear TV, and 33% are commenting on Facebook or Twitter about what they’re watching during the show.
• 20% of people say that their friends and family have had a big influence on their TV viewing – compared to only 5% in 2010.

Twitter and TV

18% of people online follow the show they’re watching on TV via Twitter, according to a report from global forecasting firm Strategy Analytics.

The categories above are discussed as such: 

• “couch potatoes” - Very focused on TV when watching it. None of this group uses Twitter on a weekly basis to follow a show they’re watching.
• “OTTers” – less interested in TV. The most likely to go 24 hours without watching it. They prefer to watch shows via online or via a smart TV.
• “Couch chatterers” - similar to couch potatoes but are more than twice likely than the average person online to phone or text others about what they’re watching on TV. However, again, none of this group use Twitter to follow a show they’re watching.
• “Indifferent multi-screeners” are the least interested in TV. 83% use another device whilst watching TV and they’re highly likely (84%) to phone or text people about what they’re watching. Nine in ten use Twitter to follow a show.
• “Moderate multi-screeners” watch TV 45% of the time on computers, tablets or smartphones. 90% go online if they’ve missed a show. However, they're likely (66%) to have a pay TV subscription. They phoneor text (93%) about a show but only 1% use Twitter on a weekly basis to follow a show.
• “Manic multi-screeners”  have a pay TV subscription, use a variety of devices to watch online and use a phone to text and tweet about TV shows. 

See the study for more information.

Email spam

According to a poll of 2,000 UK adults by Webtrends, the average UK inbox contains 260 unopened emails.

• 56% of these emails are from brands the user has signed up with and subsequently found to send irrelevant content.
• However, the survey also revealed that of the 20% of respondents who never open brand emails, 60% say they would be more likely to open them if the subject line was personalised.
• Only 19% admitted that personalised content would make no difference to their response.

Customer satisfaction

Last week I covered some stats from ZenDesk’s quarterly report on customer satisfaction.

Here’s some of the data presented in a more digestible form.

Click to explore

 

Sales is a crucial part of marketing. Too often we focus so much of our energy on advertising, and forget to pay attention to what happens when the advertising works. It gets people to visit or call, gets them to request more information, or research your products and services. But then you have to sell them.

Sure, in some industries, you rely on people to checkout themselves. You might not have a sales force. But in most you do, and it is a big part of the marketing team’s job to give that sales force the tools that they need to turn interested prospects into paying customers.

Here is a brief look at the sales cycle and what marketing can do to assist sales all the way through the process.

Beginning/Interest:

Your advertising generates interest. Activities on social media can generate interest. All efforts by the marketing team at this first stage should be intended to reach new prospects and start them down the sales funnel by piquing their interest.

You can create whitepapers or promotional material and use them to generate leads on your website. You can design your website to encourage people to email, or chat, or call, connecting them directly to someone on the sales team. You can create special offers and discounts that encourage people who otherwise might not shop with you to take an interest.

Middle/Selling:

At this stage, your sales team has leads in the queue. This is when the selling starts.

Sales people should be provided a variety of different assets to help them sell. A basic information packet, in the form of a PowerPoint or single document can be used to reach out to people initially. In addition, when prospects ask for more information on a specific area, the salesperson should have something to show them. This might include case studies and references from other clients or customers, a more detailed brochure explaining what you offer and how it works, industry research, etc.

End/Closing:

To close the sale, it is important to provide sales people with a certain degree of flexibility. At this stage, the ability to discount the price or create added value for the customer could mean the difference between a sale and a missed opportunity. Make sure salespeople know what they can do to close the sale, and what they can’t. And give them the proper answers to all possible customer questions.

All other aspects of your marketing might be dynamite, but if you can’t close the sale once you pique someone’s interest, your business will not succeed.

Personally or professionally, and especially in sales, sometimes it’s not just about working harder, but about working smarter. You need strategies and solutions that make your work more effective – and not just ideas that require you put more time on the clock.

With so much at stake in the sales process – such as driving new lead generation, managing a prospect database and closing big accounts – any methods of making your efforts more cost-effective are worth implementing right away.

Here are five practices you should initiate immediately in your sales process to ensure your time and budget are well spent in driving more top-line growth for your business:

1. Capture Data Throughout The Process

Better data drives better decisions. To make your sales process smarter, you should first determine what information you need from every stage of the process. Systematically think through each stage of your sales process and identify where your sales team needs to learn and improve.

Then, with learning opportunities identified, start capturing the data on a regular basis. In order to ensure your data gathering becomes a habit (and not just a well-intentioned thought), employ tools like marketing automation software and sales analytics to generate your needed reports.

2. Create Feedback Loops In The Sales Process

Capturing sales data is the first step, but without putting this data in the right hands, it’s ultimately useless. You also need to establish feedback loops that ensure your marketing, sales and IT teams stay up-to-date on needed changes to your sales process.

For example, you might need to create a feedback loop that determines how many leads your average salesperson uses in a month. This may prevent you from buying a contact list that’s too extensive and that expires before your salespeople are able to properly work through it.

3. Design Your Team And Program Strategically

No two sales teams are exactly the same, so when it comes to your specific personnel, you need to design your team’s structure and organization to maximize their particular strengths and minimize their weaknesses. This often requires that you test and profile each member of your marketing and sales teams so that you understand each person on a more in-depth level.

You should also apply the same level of strategic planning to the other aspects of your sales process. Elements to consider for your company’s specific sales pipeline include:

• How often you should call each contact in your lead database
• How well leads are qualified by your marketing versus sales teams
• How industry verticals affect timing and price considerations (e.g., accountants are too distracted in March and April; retailers are too busy in December)

4. Keep Your Teams Talking

In many organizations, large information silos often exist between marketing, sales and IT departments, but those silos are costing you in both time and effort. Instead, you need to keep your teams talking to one another, sharing information and collaborating on everything from lead generation, prospect database management and closing deals.

Collaboration is only half of the effort though: You should also make sure that your teams are sharing information and insights in the form of data and tangible metrics. Subjective data exchanged over the water cooler isn’t as effective in the long run, especially when a prospect passes between several teams or when you have high turnover in sales personnel.

5. Develop Your Whole Sales Team (Not Just The Top Performers)

While it’s an easy temptation to reward only your top performers in terms of quantitative sales data, it’s a practice you should avoid if you’re trying to build a smarter sales process. Instead, pair a quantitative evaluation (e.g., hard revenue numbers) with a qualitative evaluation (e.g., their sales approach and team relationships) to gain a more holistic picture of each team member.

With a better idea of each person’s strengths and weaknesses, you’re better able to incentivize your overall team – and not just a single performer. Addressing the quality and dynamics of your team as a whole ensures that your sales process is working smarter from start to finish and isn’t being bottlenecked around a particular person or step.

The sales process is continually changing and becoming more complicated, so it’s time you start implementing practices like these to make your process smarter.

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 sales process smarter than ever.

Whether you’re an experienced veteran or a wide-eyed rookie, lackluster strategy could be bogging down your efforts and preventing your company from meeting its full potential in service sales. Avoid these six beginner blunders if you’re serious about crushing your sales quota this year:

1. Swinging for the Fences

Ahh, the homerun… certainly the most exciting way for baseball teams to score, but swinging for the fences every at-bat is likely to end in strikeout after strikeout. Getting home safely as a result of a single or double, on the other hand, is a much more probable event. It’s the same with service sales. It’s tempting to go after high-dollar service contracts, neglecting lower-value contracts because they’re too time consuming and tedious to track and manage. But veteran sales leaders know that these smaller contracts add up in value. Not only massive in volume, low-dollar contracts can also lead to massive revenue gains when you take the right approach. Automating the sales process associated with renewing these contracts is your first order of business and there are solutions out there that will not only eliminate all the time and headaches involved, but also generate results nearly overnight.

2. Sticking With Spreadsheets

All too often rookies get stuck in the spreadsheet maze of yesterday, which means they are bound to waste valuable time and miss important service sales opportunities. Spreadsheets can only go so far in covering the scope of actionable opportunities, and the data they contain is typically stagnant. New service sales technology allows for dynamic dashboards, integration across multiple data sources, sleek mobile apps, extreme automation and increased functionality that drives sales growth and profits for your organization, not to mention time savings. Case in point, Tech Data: with over 7,000 low-dollar service quotes delivered per month, the distribution giant saved more than 500 hours of sales time through automation, and has saved its reseller partners over 1,500 hours. That’s huge!

3. Low Quality Data

Poor data quality leads to revenue leakage, inefficiency and loss of sales force productivity. Clean, actionable data is imperative for creating valuable business intelligence that will enable your sales team to identify and win recurring service revenue opportunities that might typically fall through the cracks. Building your core of actionable data requires a focused data quality management plan and buy-in from different groups within your organization. And remember, it’s not uncommon for a company’s product, customer and attached services data to be contained across five or more separate databases – all of which have limited or zero ability to communicate with each other. Yet, when aggregated, this data can provide you with a 360-view into the service renewal opportunities that exist across your installed base.

4. Thinking of Service Sales as “One and Done”

One of the first and most important rules to remember with service sales is that they’re not just a one-time sale. They’re an annuity, and they go hand in hand with opportunities to expand your relationship with your customers across the full product and service lifecycle. Your installed base data can reveal a goldmine of sales opportunities — from service and subscription renewals, to unattached assets, accessory and consumable sales, product refresh opportunities and rebate and incentive programs. What that means is an instant sales pipeline for you, and a never-ending stream of revenue for your company. If you look at your service sales practice as a product and service lifecycle business, you’ll never be lacking a sales pipeline again.

5. Bad Timing

Timing is everything in sales, especially when it comes to service renewals. Here’s where the benefits of quality data, automated email campaigns and streamlined processes all come together. The key is to reach out to the right person with the right offer — at the right time. You’ll want to send a new service quote out to your customer 30-60 days in advance of a contract’s expiration. If you’re too early or too late, you risk losing the sale. With today’s new breed of automated systems, you’ll be sure to time it right, and that’s one big reason why service renewals are having a greater impact on the bottom line for manufacturers than ever before.

 6. Leaving Channel Partners in the Dark

Don’t make the rookie mistake of forgetting your channel partners. They are an important extension of your sales team, so collaborate with them on the front end by bringing their customer data into the mix as you get your business intelligence in order. And by all means, give them ongoing access to the sales pipeline you build so that they can work smarter and faster to achieve their sales quotas. It takes a team to be successful in services, and your partners may very well be the most important part of that team.

If your organization is making any of these beginner blunders, do what’s necessary to turn the train around. There’s still time to make up for missed opportunities with service sales if you step up your game between now and the end of the year.

If you’re a lean mean startup, you probably don’t have the funds to build a massive sales team or to design a robust inbound marketing program. However, to jumpstart any sales program, you’ll need to track ongoing conversations with prospects and a way to generate qualified cold leads– basically folks who would be a good fit for using (and paying for) your product. At Iterable, we’re in the process of creating a structured sales process, and here are the Chrome extensions and other free tools which we’ve found to be extremely helpful.

1. Streak

Streak is a helpful Chrome extension that turns your Gmail inbox into a CRM platform, which is perfect since most sales and customer service-related conversations happen over email. With Streak, you can create “boxes” for each of your prospects or clients; you can then use these boxes for storing email conversations. You can also design multiple pipelines with various stages (lead, contacted, demo, closed) right inside of Gmail to keep track of where each of your contacts are in the sales process.

Sales requires persistence and multiple rounds of follow-ups. Streak allows you to snooze emails for reminder purposes or schedule emails to be sent at a later time. Sales emails can also be slightly repetitive in nature. Thus, Streak allows you to store email snippets, so you can reuse a similar message in emails to different people. Just remember to personalize it before you hit “send”!

However, my favorite part of Streak is how it allows you to see if people have viewed your email. If they’ve seen your email, a green eye displayed. If they are currently reading your email, the green eye will be flashing. It’s a little bit sneaky, but also immensely helpful to see if a prospect has seen your message (also beneficial for PR folks to see if a reporter has read your pitch, but I’ll save this for another post on free PR tools for scrappy startups).

 

2. Data.com Connect

In my first job out of college, I was a cold leads generator at a startup, meaning I specialized in finding ideal prospects and their contact information. My team aggressively used Jigsaw, which is now Salesforce Data.com Connect, to find lead contact information. It’s basically the “give a penny, take a penny” dish of sales. You submit a company or an individual’s contact info (name, title, company, email, phone number) and get rewarded with points to redeem for another contact’s info. You can also buy contacts for $250-1500/year depending on the number of contacts you wish to access. Note, however, that since the contact info is crowdsourced, the information is not always up to date and correct. In general, expect at least 15% of the contacts you receive from Data.com to bounce.

3. Connectifier

Connectifier was built as a tool for recruiters to easily get more information about a job candidate, but it doubles as a super sweet sales tool. It’s a Chrome extension that provides more info about an individual when you land on his/her Linkedin, Twitter, Facebook, Quora, GitHub or other social profile. The additional information provided includes the person’s bio, location, email address and links to his/her other social profiles. It’s a useful tool for learning more about a person’s background, company role and getting their contact info.

4. Rapportive

Rapportive is a Chrome extension that will show you additional information about a user in a sidebar based on an email address.

Since Rapportive’s acquisition by LinkedIn, it isn’t quite as helpful as it used to be, but it is still helpful in certain situations. For example, if Connectifier does not have a contact’s email, your next best bet is try and guess the person’s email and to use the Rapportive to verify if an email is correct. If it is the correct email, then the Rapportive sidebar will pop up; if it’s not the right email, then the sidebar info will not appear.

 

To use it, enter a “potential” email address and see if the Rapportive sidebar shows up with the person’s info. You might need to try a few iterations of the email address (firstname@company.com, firstname.lastname@company.com, etc).

The Rapportive sidebar info also shows up when you hover your mouse over an email address.

5. Ghostery

Ghostery is a browser extension that shows you all the companies that are tracking you when you visit a website. How is this useful for sales? Well, essentially Ghostery shows you the technologies a website is using.

Here is our use case. Since Iterable is an email platform that allows people to A/B test any part of their emails and to send triggered messages based on events, we figured that our ideal client would be very interested in A/B testing and events tracking. As a result, when using Ghostery, we look for websites who are already using Optimizely, Mixpanel and Kissmetrics. This signifies that they are open to learning about other A/B testing, events tracking and analytics products, like Iterable!

6. Good Ol’ Google Related Search

Perhaps you think you’ve left no stones unturned in the world of cold outreach. Or maybe you’re just running low on sales inspiration. Behold, the Google related search– a godsend for finding more prospective companies!

First, simply think of an existing company that’s using your product or another website that is an ideal customer for your product. Next, use the ‘related’ search by entering “related:websiteURL”.

Bingo. Now you have a whole slew of new prospective companies for outreach.

Hopefully you found this post useful for your own sales purposes. Know of any free tools that are missing from this list? Feel free to share them in the comments below!

This post was originally published on the Iterable blog.

When looking at creating a social media strategy plan, you first need to understand that a strategy is where you are looking to head to in the next few months, and the plan is how you are going to get there. So, how much time should you spend on your social media strategy plan?

When you look at creating a social media strategy plan, you will first need to know that it comes down to a simple, three-part concept; plan, implement, then measure.

To really understand how long it will take you to put your social media strategy plan into action, you will need to use a time-tracking tool, like Harvest. Harvest has a 30 day free trial, followed by $12 per month for up to three users.

Harvest allows you to create timesheets and projects, invoices, time reports and much, much more giving you the control to know where you are spending your time. Once you have inputted all the information, you will see where your time is being spent.

Basically, if you are going to spend 7 hours a week on your social media saturday, every monday you need to revisit your social media strategy to keep you focused and on the right track. This should take one hour. When looking at Monday-Friday, you are implementing your strategy which includes scheduling and creating updates along with engaging with your community. This should take one hour. Every friday, measure your success to see where you can improve and whether you are on track to achieving your goals. This should take one hour.

It really depends on your business and how much time you want to dedicate to your social media strategy. You may have hired a person to manage all social media, who can give 40 hours per week or you may be doing it yourself and can only allocate an up to an hour a day.

Taking a more indepth look at the three-part concept earlier; plan, implement and measure, here is what you should be considering.

Plan

When it comes to planning your social media strategy, you first need to decide what your core focus will be. Awareness? Increasing sales? Build loyalty? If you want to increase awareness, you’ll want to track your social media growth, engagement and increase in likes and subscribers. If you want to boost your sales, you’ll want to track click rates, sales and conversion rates and last but not least, if you want to build loyalty, you will need to track engagement, sentiment and influence.

Without planning your purpose for why you want to use social media, you won’t know how to implement or measure your strategy.

Implement

When implementing your social media strategy, you first need to look at content creation then building a community.

What kind of content are you going to be sharing on social media and how often? Implementing the strategy may seem like it will be very time consuming but using a tool like Hootsuite will help you save time by scheduling 90% of your social media activity (bar real-time conversations). For example, I suggest that SME’s tweet 5 times a day which should include latest blog, news surrounding your business sector, product of the day and promotional news. How you share this is up to you however try and spread this out between 9AM-5PM during the week.

Measure

If you are using a scheduling tool like Hootsuite, you can measure how many click throughs you are getting on each shortened link. You can use Google Analytics to track most of your social media activity but for a more indepth look at visits, conversions and amplification, use a tool called sproutsocial which is a great social media management tool. You will get a 30 day free trial and will cost $59 per user monthly once the trial has ended.

Are you ready to better your social media strategy?