WASHINGTON – Much of U.S. manufacturing has been decimated in the past decade by less expensive imports from China, but it didn’t necessarily have to be that way, according to a compelling new book by journalist Beth Macy.

Macy’s book, “Factory Man,” tells the story of one manufacturer who fought back. John Bassett III, a wealthy scion of a furniture dynasty in southwestern Virginia, responded to a flood of overseas goods by modernizing his factory and restructuring its products. More controversially, he successfully petitioned the U.S. government for protective tariffs on imported Chinese furniture, alienating many of his retailer customers. Those efforts kept his company, Vaughan-Bassett, in business.

Still, small factory towns in southwestern Virginia and North Carolina were decimated, as Macy illustrates. Forty per cent of residents in Galax, Virginia qualify for food stamps. Old factory conveyor belts are now used to distribute groceries in food pantries.

Yet perhaps even more interesting is the book’s vivid resurrection of the little-known history of the region, which dominated global furniture manufacturing for most of the 20th Century. That history includes intense family rivalries. Before taking on China, John Bassett was kicked out of his family’s namesake company, Bassett Furniture, by an ambitious brother-in-law, who had help from Bassett’s own sister.

In an interview with The Associated Press, Macy discussed the colorful history of the Bassett family and the larger lessons of the book:

The Associated Press: What motivated you to pursue this story?

Beth Macy: In Henry County, Virginia, 19,000 people, which is half the workforce, have lost their jobs. … First the textiles went, and then the furniture. So what happened to all these people that were left behind? What’s that look like? …When I write about economics, I write from the ground up.

AP: Your book features many unique characters, but are there larger lessons here? Could every factory owner have done more to save some of their plants, as Bassett did?

Macy: Bassett says in the book, ‘Sure, we had to close some factories, especially the factories that weren’t run very efficiently. But I don’t think we had to close them all.’

He had to reinvent the way he did everything. He didn’t just take on China, he redesigned the factory, he made it more efficient, he pumped the (tariff) duty money back in, he started a free clinic for his workers, he started worker incentives.

Everybody (else) was closing their factories. It was almost like it was the cool thing to do. There was a phrase in the furniture industry, ‘The dance card is filling up.’ If you don’t get over there and get signed up with a factory (in China) to make your stuff, you’re going to be left out in the cold.

AP: Did you expect such a Southern Gothic story, with all the family intrigue? Apparently a Bassett family patriarch fathered a child with an African-American maid.

Macy: That was just the worst-kept secret ever. I heard about it the first time I went there.

One of the ways I describe the book is there are two narratives. One is the narrative told by the company owners … and the people who have money and power in the town. And the other is the narrative told by everybody else. And everybody else knows the narrative that the rich people tell, but the rich people don’t necessarily know the narrative being told about them.

AP: The furniture-makers fought successfully against unions and kept wages low. You tell the story of workers who were making $6 an hour after decades in the industry. Did you ever think that these jobs weren’t worth saving?

Macy: That’s what the economists think. One economist I interviewed said, ‘We shouldn’t even be making furniture in America.’ And what I say to that is, you should go interview some of these displaced workers, who would crawl on their belly like a snake to have that job back again. Because what I see, are people working part-time at Wal-Mart, and on food stamps. … It’s just so out of touch with working-class America.

___

Follow Chris Rugaber at http://www.Twitter.com/ChrisRugaber

The post A US manufacturer who fought back: Book tells gritty story of fight against Chinese imports appeared first on Canadian Business.

Sales people are obsessed with products. We know every feature, function, feed, and speed. We know the most nuanced details of the product and how it’s used.

We know the competitors, comparing each thing the competitor does with what we do—”The competitor’s only comes in black, we offer four colors…….

We have endless analyses, brochures, case studies and testimonials about the superiority of our products. We have demos, benchmarks, and other tools that prove the superiority of our products.

We can spew endless features, advantages, and benefits. We are prepared to pitch anything about the product at a moment’s noticed–anxiously jumping at every opportunity to get in front of a customer with the product.

We may wrap fancy words around our products, calling them solutions. But too often it’s a thin veneer–we really focus on the products.

But all of this doesn’t make a difference to the customer. They simply don’t care.

Don’t get me wrong, having great products is important. But they aren’t what causes you to win. They are simply table stakes. They enable us to be considered, to be on a short list, with several alternatives.

But by the time you have been shortlisted with a few other alternatives, the customer has determined each alternative will meet their objectives. Any of the solutions under consideration will solve their problem. So if we’ve competed on a product feature, function, feeds, and speeds–the only way we can differentiate ourselves to an indifferent customer is through pricing.

So if it’s not our products, what causes us to win?

It’s us–sales professionals. It’s how we engage the customer in thinking about their business. It’s the understanding we have of their business, their goals–business and personal. It’s the insight on new opportunities. It’s showing them better ways achieve their goals.

It goes beyond painting a bright picture of the future and getting them hot and lathered to change. It’s helping them organize themselves to solve the problem and make a change. It’s helping them organize themselves to buy. Aligning diverse agendas, priorities and interests within their organization. It’s helping them build the case to gain management approval and support t0 invest in the change the buying team wants to make. It’s making sure they are successful and achieve what they had hoped to achieve in the purchase.

Eventually the product comes into play–but later in the process. The product is a part of what the customer needs to do to achieve their goals, but it isn’t what causes them to buy.

It’s amazing how many of us–not just in sales–have all this wrong. We focus on what we do, the products and solutions we build. We know little about the customer and their problems. We know little about the dynamics of how things get done within organizations. We go through endless product training programs, we ask for tools to help us tell the customer about the products. We spend very little time learning about what customers care about and how we can help them.

We need great products to be invited to play. But we win with all the other stuff that’s more important to the customer and what they want to achieve.

Do you know how to help the customer do this? Can you talk to the customer about their customers, markets, business, strategies and goals? Can you show them ways they can improve their performance and the results they can produce. Can you help them figure out how to buy? Can you continue through the buying process to help them be successful?

It’s these things that drive our ability to win, grow our relationships and reputations, and continue to win.

Dynamic pricing is a pricing strategy in which prices change in response to real-time supply and demand.

While this isn’t a brand new pricing strategy, (American Airlines first introduced it in the early 80’s) it is currently taking ecommerce by storm.

Dynamic pricing allows retailers to remain competitive with 24/7 price monitoring and changes, boosting profits by 25% on average.

How does it work? 

Well, dynamic pricing gives retailers the flexibility to decrease prices to increase sales when they’re sluggish and increase prices to generate more profit when they’re booming. 

 

What are the benefits?

Many retailers opt for pricing intelligence software that has the ability to scan Amazon for thousands of products every 10 minutes, lifting the burden of manually tracking competitors.

Pricing intelligence software has already caught on as 22% of retailers have chosen to implement it. An additional 7% plan to start using it within the next six months and 36% in the next year.

This shouldn’t be surprising, since research has found that price optimization software improves gross margins by 10%.

Dynamic pricing also provides retailers with additional insights on market trends. Retailers can implement different price levels and observe price elasticities before finding the optimal market price.

Amazon, one of the largest retailers that uses dynamic pricing, changes its prices every 10 minutes on average. The company saw a 27.2% increase in sales from 2012 to 2013 and generated over $44bn in sales just last year. This resulted in Amazon being named one of the top 10 retailers in the US for the first time. 

A leader in the loss-leader pricing strategy, Walmart, also changes its prices roughly 50,000 times a month. In 2013, its global online sales grew by 30%, a growth rate that topped Amazon’s for the first time in 5 years. Walmart’s success has continued well into 2014 with a 27% increase in global web sales in just Q1 alone.

Best Buy and Sears also incorporate dynamic pricing into their pricing strategies. Best Buy’s online sales increased by 25% in 2013 and has already seen a 20% increase in 2014. Sears also implemented price changes to about 25% of its products during the holiday season. It experienced a 17% increase in online sales in 2012. 

How does one start to weave dynamic pricing into existing pricing strategies?

Here are the top dynamic pricing tactics for online retailers:

1. Segmented pricing. Appeal to a larger market with segmented pricing. Using this strategy, retailers have tiered prices from value to premium in order to capture as much of the market as they can.

   Apple has recently started using this strategy for its iPhones, creating a value product to complement its premium product (5C and 5S, respectively).

   Apple also uses segmented pricing for other products, fluctuating its prices according to how much memory each item holds.

2. Peak pricing. Peak pricing allows retailers to take advantage of fluctuations in demand, increasing prices when demand is high or when competitors have low inventory.

   Retailers could utilize this strategy during the holidays when consumers have high demand for various products while shopping for gifts for their loved ones.

   This could also be used when there is a special event such as a championship game approaching. Consumers would want to properly represent their teams with shirts, caps and more.

   Retailers could capitalize on this by slightly increasing prices to accompany the increase in demand.

3. Time-based pricing. You know what they say, out with the old, in the with the new. Time-based pricing allows retailers to adjust prices according to the time of day or how long a product has been on the market.

   Retailers can increase the demand for an older product by marking it down. Microsoft used this strategy when pricing its game console, the Xbox. It originally had the Xbox 360 priced at $399, however when the Xbox One was released, with motion sensing technology, the Xbox 360 was marked down to $299.

4. Penetration pricing. Trying to introduce a new product into the market but unsure of how consumers will receive it? Penetration pricing allows retailers to set a lower price than the eventual market price in order to persuade consumers to try their product.

   Not only will this attract consumers to your store, it would pull them away from your competitors. Retailers can then gradually increase prices as the item becomes more and more popular.

As the ecommerce market becomes increasingly competitive, retailers need to be able to easily monitor their competitors and the market as a whole. Pricing intelligence software and dynamic pricing allow for this and incorporate other factors such as the level of demand and conversion rates.

What are other ways that dynamic pricing can help online retailers get ahead? Sound off below!

Contributing Writer: Amanda Lin

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Update at 12:21 p.m. PT: Updated to reflect the accurate name of the new version, that it has a separate pricing structure, not a separate product release. 

Two months ago, the Ginger Page app launched to help people improve their writing skills by correctly spelling and suggesting synonyms, better sentence syntax, and more.

Today, the company is launching Ginger Student, a version of its product focused on students and available as a desktop app and a browser extension. A new, more affordable, and student-friendly pricing tier is now available for the desktop app and browser extension of its Ginger Page app.

Normally, I’d consider such product repackaging rather yawn-worthy, but Ginger Student is attacking a question I’ve long had: Is there technology that can help people with their writing, just as we have technology to help with math and memorization?

Companies have gotten good at creating applications that spit out math problems that you can work out and submit an answer to. They’ve also gotten really good at providing you with quizzing apps to help with memorization (history dates, vocabulary words, etc.). But what about writing problems, which don’t have an objective answer, as math does? Writing skills also can’t be evaluated via a simple quiz as writing requires analysis on various levels and is highly subjective.

Just like in the original version, Ginger packs in a proofreader that detects grammar, spelling, and punctuation mistakes, a rephraser that suggests alternatives in real-time, access to a dictionary with definitions and synonyms, and a text reader that can translate text, with context, into more than 40 languages.

“We expect Ginger Student to be very popular among students this fall as it offers a number of unique features — such as contextual awareness, advanced proofreader and real-time corrections – that are critical to writing grammatically correct college-level essays,” said Ginger Software chief executive Maoz Shacht in a statement.

This version also sports a sort of “personal trainer,” which studies and adapts to each student’s writing style, crafting personalized feedback and training, and making a dictionary and a “favorites” section available while the student is writing.

It’ll certainly be interesting to see if Ginger Student becomes popular with students and to see how helpful this natural language processing company’s tool really is. Ginger Software originally began as a company focused on helping English learners. While it can likely help students get their writing to a decent level of competency, can it help them take it to an even more advanced level?

That remains to be seen. Moreover, there are other similar services including Hemingway, which recently released a desktop app after starting on the Web, and Writer Pro, a pricey software suite that handles the entire writing process. Students, and writers, should definitely check them all out.

Ginger’s mission is to build products deeply rooted in the Semantic Web and more specifically in Natural Language Processing (NLP), which revolutionize the way computers and mobile devices understand language. Ginger’s patent-pe... read more »

SaaS used to stand up for something much bigger than just software delivered over the internet.

At its inception, SaaS was the anti-thesis of big, stodgy software companies: IBM, Microsoft, Oracle, SAP. Where big software companies had hefty prices, SaaS was affordable. Where big companies had convoluted pricing licenses (Microsoft’s Licensing, anyone?), SaaS promised straightforward per-user pricing. Where big software companies required upfront long-term contracts leading to “shelfware,” SaaS promised paying for only what you truly needed.

As both a SaaS customer and a SaaS vendor, I want to talk about three tactics where I see the industry veering off course.…

There are many factors that can influence the design of your call-to-action and it’s certainly a feature that benefits from extensive testing and tweaking.

An effective CTA should leave the shopper in no doubt about the next step they need to take to add an item to their basket, complete a purchase etc. 

To achieve this, they need to catch the user's attention, and eyetracking is a great way to measure the effectiveness of different CTA designs. 

Thanks to Luke Hay, Research and UX Director at noporkpies, we have some useful tests on CTA design for you... 

The tests

Luke ran eyetracking tests to see what effect different designs and placements for call-to-action buttons would have on users. 

The study included 62 participants, using eyetracking to measure the areas of greatest attention on each page. 

The tests took existing product pages from sites, tweaked them, and gauged users' responses. 

Repositioning the CTA

In the first test, Luke took a product page from the PC World website and changed the positioning of the main call-to-action button.  

The current design has the button positioned in the top right and the test was whether moving it closer to the product details would have any impact. 

According to Luke: 

Our thinking was that that the CTA on the current design seemed a bit removed from the product details. The natural pattern of the eye would tend to suggest that the user would look below the product details for the button rather than moving back up and to the right.

Results

As predicted, more people focused on the button in the variation. This does not mean that they are more likely to buy of course but it might be worth trialling as an A/B test to see what, if any, impact it may have on conversion rates.

Models looking at the CTA

In the past, studies have found that people often follow the gaze of the eyes if there's a person in the photo.

So would this work with the model looking at the call to action? 

Results

The ‘add to bag’ button in this version did indeed get more attention, though it wasn’t as clear cut as might have been expected.

Part of the reason for this could be that the photo used was not a close up of a face and therefore that the eyes aren’t as obvious. It does still show though that subtle changes can lead to notable differences.

Using arrows to highlight the CTA

Using arrows in your designs can be a good way to influence your users, so Luke put this theory to the test by using the current Crazy Egg design, with a clear arrow, against a version with no arrow.

Results 

The results suggest that the arrow makes a difference. The current version of the site, with the arrow, has more activity around the pricing table while the arrowless design has more attention higher up the page. 

In addition, the option highlighted in black and red, for $49 per month, has drawn the most attention. 

Flat vs Skeuomorphic CTAs

In the final test, Luke looked at the impact a flat CTA had against a more ‘button-like’ version.

Would the design that looked more like a button draw the eye more, or are people now more used to’ flatter’ objects?

Results

Luke: 

There was virtually no difference between the two designs. This test is quite inconclusive, perhaps due to the fact that there was little content on either design to draw attention. To get a better idea of the impact of flat design we would need to run several tests on different designs with flat and skeuomorphic buttons.

This test would be another good contender for A/B testing though, as the conversion rate may have little relation to where users focus on the page and more to do with how well they identified the call to action as a button.

In summary

In most cases these tests have backed up the hypotheses and shown that subtle changes to a design can indeed have a big impact on how a user engages with a page.

It is also good to have these ideas backed up with real evidence, rather than just assuming them to be true across the board.

There are a couple of caveats though. For one, these tests on their own do not necessarily tell us which variation of each design is the ‘best’.

That is still open to interpretation as users focusing on your call to action buttons does not automatically mean that they are more likely to make that purchase.

What they do is give us some useful information on what draws a user’s attention on each design which we would not be able to get from traditional user testing or website analytics.

The second caveat is that eye tracking should be used alongside other UX methods such as MVT and A/B testing in order to form a more complete picture.  

Our Festival of Marketing event in November is a two day celebration of the modern marketing industry, featuring speakers from brands including LEGO, Tesco, Barclays, FT.com and more. 

How do you speed up the relationship part of selling? What does it take to fast-forward the “trust factor” often associated with winning the business?

Some researchers are tempted to throw out the idea of relationships and trust as the ghosts of selling past. It’s true that several B2B buying trends – including team buying scenarios, decision-maker turnover, stringent rules regarding “gifts” acceptance and procurement-driven buying cycles – have all but eliminated traditional relationship-selling tools of the trade. But, it doesn’t mean the requirement to establish trust has gone away.

Instead, the challenge has become accelerating the trust curve. How can you establish the kind of trust level that previously took years to form with a single buyer, and do it in a couple meetings with a collaborative buying team?

The Power of a Crisis

I’ve been researching situations that seem to drive nearly instant trust and camaraderie in ways that quickly overcome the usual barriers, such as political and religious beliefs, ethnic differences or cultural boundaries, to bond together unlikely allies. There are three powerful places this “trust acceleration” process can be found:

• Bars – Think alcohol and “I love you man.” For the purposes of this column, let’s eliminate this example. Even, if it’s true that people can connect faster after throwing back a few drinks, bars take us back to the old-school approach to relationship selling where it was important to get your client “liquored up.”

• Battles – Think foxhole and “I’ve got your back.” A shared crisis or a common enemy can turn mere acquaintances or unlikely pairings into instant allies, rallying to the task. In an instant, you are on the same team, with a shared objective to respond to and defeat the challenge that lies ahead. Same thing happens in World Cup soccer when members of competitive teams within a country put down their rivalries to quickly bond and take on the rest of the world, representing their country.

• Blows – Think natural or man-made disasters and “We’re in this together.” When terrorists, tornadoes, hurricanes and other tragic circumstances strike, differences melt away and people jump into action, side-by-side, with nary a care for the things that would otherwise pit them against each other. Afterward, many become lifelong friends, bonded by their unselfish, unified response.

Stop Selling. Stop Solving. Set Your Sights.

It’s my theory that the same opportunity exists between you and your prospects and customers. Not wanting to make light of the severity of the circumstances identified above, or even compare, I do think there’s a similar social psychology that can be put to work by salespeople.

First, stop selling. Second, stop solving.

As sellers, your prospects see you as a necessary gatekeeper to getting something they want and would just as soon bypass you if they could. They bear with your pitches to place the order. As problem solvers, you’ve been told to identify needs the customer has that require fixing. In both cases, it still projects an “us” versus “them” mindset on both sides.

A better way involves you coming around to the customer’s side of the desk, side-by-side, and putting your arm around him or her (all figuratively, of course) and looking at a common enemy, together observing and dealing with an emerging industry crisis.

The urgency to build trust doesn’t take place because you have a new product, with new features the customer doesn’t already have… nor does it happen because you can ask a bunch of questions to link something the customer says back to the capabilities of your solution. Instead, the urgency comes from helping your clients set their sights on an unexpected enemy that threatens their desired outcomes. You must also help them make meaning out of the risks and opportunities created by these surprising and disruptive forces. You must share a deep understanding and empathy for the challenges involved in responding, and position yourself as the experienced “mentor” to help them assume the hero’s role of taking their organization from the unsafe status quo to the new safe normal.

Positioning yourself this way will help build trust faster than you can say “enjoy a box of donuts” or “here’s a pair of tickets to the big game.”

 

*This article originally appeared on CMO.com. To read more of Tim’s Marketing Messenger insights, visit http://bit.ly/UY7jGY.

 

 

 

 

What is this secret weapon? This secret weapon not only is free, but it’s available on mobile, desktops and it’s a weapon that every person reading this has access to and can use today! Give up?

Screenshot Awesomeness!

Also known as… Print Screen or Alt+Print Screen or for mac CMD+Shift+4 or if you have a smartphone your camera app!

Now before you stop reading as you think this is a joke…. let me share some uses cases and experiences where screenshotting not only won over my bosses but also motivated me to tune out the haters!

Have you ever asked yourself: “How do I show value and validate what I’m doing today is important, so that leadership gives me enough time to implement my long-term strategy?“ For me the answer is easy “Screenshot when Awesomeness Happens!” Sounds too simple I know, but when you add up multiple little moments of awesomeness creating a “portfolio of awesomeness” not to be confused with my “portfolio of oops’s”, this portfolio can be a powerful response to your boss or even the motivation you need to get through the tough times.

What should I screenshot and Why?

• A Thank You Tweet saying what you did
• A Motivational Tweet
• A blog post mention
• A Thought Leader mention
• An Influencer “Quote” RT
• Something your competition does great or something they do dumb.

I could go on forever but for me if I’m not screenshotting small wins a couple times a week, I’m not doing a good job listening or I’m not providing value to my followers. Why would you screen shot these little sometimes meaningless wins. Because a single Facebook comment isn’t that powerful when answering your bosses question about Social Media ROI but 5 FB comments 10 Tweets and a Linkedin Email all showing customers talking about what they did and why their decision was impacted because of a social media will be just the ammo you need to make management happy, allowing you time to accomplish your long-term strategy and goals.

Social Business or Employee Advocacy Programs

Screenshot internal notes or comments that highlight increased productivity, collaboration or even employee morale! With social business solutions focus is on collaboration and open communication and often its hard to get leaders to buy-in but when you screenshot an excel document that was updated and collaborated on by 40 employees and show the leaders that screenshot explaining that if this wasn’t done within your solution the leader would have had 4o versions of that same document in his inbox, he will soon be your biggest fan not because you said it will help him but you showed him.

Personal Branding:

When I was looking for management buy-in of a personal branding and social selling project I pitched the idea and was approved but management let me know that they didn’t think it would work in our industry and they weren’t sure legal would approve. Rather than fight this battle with trivial social media data and generic use-cases I focused on businesses and leaders within our industry that not only were doing something similar but also were doing it within our community and with our potential customers. By not saying “Everyone else is doing it” rather showing multiple real examples this hard proof not only won over legal and management but led my boss to ask me to work with him on building his personal brand story!

Don’t write it down or think you will remember it, why you must Screenshot when Awesomeness happens!

You might be asking: “Why not just write these things down?” For me there are small elements that can only be captured with a screenshot because you don’t know exactly what you might need to reference in the future. Such as: Time & Date of engagement, Tool used to engage, Time it took to respond, Hashtags used etc. I ‘ve also implemented tools such as Evernote Web Clipper, SnagIt as well as utilizing the @IFTTT app to automate the organization of my screenshots. But rather than focusing on the tools and adding steps to your workflow, keep this simple and make this something that is easy to do on a daily basis so that when you need that pick me up or need to respond to the bosses “what have you done for me lately” comment the wins are right there waiting for you! Don’t forget that when in a bind every smartphone has a camera that works great for documenting and capturing those moments of awesomeness!

Change is tough and although I’ve embraced the idea that for me change is my passion and what I love to help others embrace, it isn’t that way for everyone and the battle often feels lonely.

I recently wrote an article titled: “Hey Social Media Managers you’re not alone on that pony! Please Don’t Give Up!” which as many of you know when working in digital and social media or in any role that requires you to lead and teach change, the fight can be exhausting and never ending. If you follow me on twitter (@iSocialFanz) I often use the hashtag: #HatersGonnaHate to remind myself and my followers that you will always have people that will say you can’t or that will fight against the majority and yes we all have dealt with our own trolls but the key is tuning out the haters and focusing on those small wins to keep you motivated and inspired knowing what you’re doing is not only worth it, but something you aren’t willing to let others stop you from accomplishing!

Too often we focus on learning, studying and over analyzing our failures but we don’t match that same focus when we have small successes.

So I challenge you to screenshot the good things that happen not only in social media but also in life and when you’re having a bad day or need inspiration, those screenshots of awesomeness are right there to keep you motivated and to remind you the small wins and successes far outweigh the tough times!

Interactive and Instructional Tool Gives Sales Professionals the Conversation Content They Need for the Most Important Part of the Sales Cycle

LARKSPUR, Calif. – August 19, 2014 – Corporate Visions, Inc., the leading marketing and sales messaging, tools and training company, today announced the availability of Power Playbook, an interactive sales enablement asset that gives salespeople the conversation content and skills needed to create more opportunities. Available through multiple platforms, including Corporate Visions’ mobile application, salespeople can use Power Playbook to easily and conveniently prepare for critical, early-stage conversations.

In a recent Corporate Visions survey, respondents ranked the “opportunity creation” conversation as having the greatest impact on helping salespeople achieve quota. But, they also ranked it as the conversation that salespeople are the least prepared to have.  “The Power Playbook was designed to fill this enablement gap where salespeople feel the least equipped to have their most important conversations,” said Jim Moliski, vice president of content products for Corporate Visions.

Power Playbook is created based on Corporate Visions’ proven conversation skills training portfolio to help salespeople generate opportunities, create value and build a buying vision that compels prospects to change. That value and vision generates enough momentum to propel those opportunities through the sales cycle, resulting in more closed deals. By leveraging the Power Playbook, salespeople can access the most important content and learn the most critical conversations skills needed to defeat the status quo bias that keeps opportunities from getting off the ground.

Specifically, the Power Playbook includes information on how salespeople can successfully share a distinct point of view to challenge the status quo; introduce unconsidered needs by asking provocative questions; demonstrate value by showing the power of business change; and secure pivotal agreements that help salespeople regain control of the buying cycle.

“Today, most sales playbooks are overloaded with content that has nothing to do with the conversations they are supposed to enable,” said Tim Riesterer, chief strategy and marketing officer for Corporate Visions. “Now, salespeople can benefit from our experience in applying decision-making science to sales messaging and sales skills training, and all of it comes in an easy-to-use tool designed for those critical early-stage meetings.”

About Corporate Visions, Inc.

 # # #

The U.S. economy is still sputtering. (See GDP growth chart above.)

Why is growth so slow and weak?

One reason is that average American consumers, who account for the vast majority of the spending in the economy, are still strapped.

The reason average American consumers are still strapped, meanwhile, is that America's companies and company owners — the small group of Americans who own and control America's corporations — are hogging a record percentage of the country's wealth for themselves.

In the past 5 years, American corporations have boosted their profits and share prices by cutting costs (firing people) and buying back stock. As a result, unemployment remains high. And wage growth for the Americans who are lucky enough to be working has been pathetic — the slowest since World War 2.

Meanwhile, America's corporations and their owners have never had it better. Corporate profits just hit another all-time high, both in absolute dollars and as a percent of the economy. And U.S. stocks are at record highs.

Many people seem confused by this juxtaposition. If corporations and shareholders are doing so well, why is the economy so crappy?

The answer is that one company's wages are other companies' revenues. Americans save almost nothing, so every dollar we earn in wages gets spent on products and services (including, in some cases, those of the companies we work for.) The less American companies pay their workers, the less American consumers have to spend. And the less American consumers have to spend, the slower the economy grows.

This isn't a complex concept. We're all in this together. People make it complicated by casting it as a political issue and inflaming partisan tensions. But it has nothing to do with politics.

Importantly, it doesn't have to be this way.

There's no "law of capitalism" that says that companies have to pay their employees as little as possible. There's no law of capitalism that says companies have to "maximize short-term profits." That's just a story that America's owners made up to justify taking as much of the company's wealth as possible for themselves.

Ironically, this short-term greed on the part of America's owners is likely reducing their long-term wealth: Companies can't grow profits by cutting costs forever, because their profits can't grow higher than their revenues. At some point, revenue growth needs to accelerate. But that won't happen until companies start sharing more of the wealth they create with the folks who create it — their employees.

Let's go to the charts ...

1) Corporate profit margins just hit another all-time high. Companies are making more per dollar of sales than they ever have before. (Some people are still blaming economic weakness on "too much regulation" and "too many taxes." That's crap. Maybe little companies are getting smothered by regulation and taxes, but big ones certainly aren't. What they're suffering from is a myopic obsession with short-term profits at the expense of long-term value creation.)

2) Wages as a percent of the economy just hit another all-time low. Why are corporate profits so high? One reason is that companies are paying employees less than they ever have as a share of GDP. And that, in turn, is one reason the economy is so weak: Those "wages" represent spending power for consumers. And consumer spending is "revenue" for other companies. So the profit obsession is actually starving the rest of the economy of revenue growth.

In short, our obsession with "maximizing profits" is creating a country of a few million overlords and 300+ million serfs.

Don't believe it?

Flip through these charts ... AMERICA TODAY: 3 Million Overlords, 300 Million Serfs

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Money goes further in some states than others.

The Tax Foundation released a map, via Elliot Turner, showing the relative value of $100 in every state compared with the national average using the data from the Bureau of Economic Analysis.

In expensive states like New York, you can afford comparatively less than average; while in less expensive states like Mississippi, you can buy relatively more.

If you look at the map, you'll notice that the relative value of $100 is higher in the center of the country, while it is significantly less in the Northeast and West Coast.

"The same amount of dollars are worth almost 40 percent more in Mississippi than in D.C., and the differences become even larger if metro area prices are considered instead of statewide averages," writes the Tax Foundation. "A person who makes $40,000 a year after tax in Kentucky would need to have after-tax earnings of $53,000 in Washington, D.C., just in order to have an equal standard of living, let alone feel richer."

Here's the map:

The states with the smallest relative value of $100 were:

• Washington, D.C. ($84.60)
• Hawaii ($85.32)
• New York ($86.66)
• New Jersey ($87.64)
• California ($88.57)

While the states with the largest relative value of $100 were:

• Mississippi ($115.74)
• Arkansas ($114.16)
• Missouri ($113.51)
• Alabama ($113.51)
• South Dakota ($113.38)

NOW WATCH: The Best And Worst Deals At A Bar

 

 

 

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Pinterest has been a slowly waking giant for several years, but it has finally wiped the sleep from its eyes and is in the process of ferociously conquering the social marketing space. Just because you have relegated Pinterest to "that other social site" in your mind and your marketing strategy doesn't mean that it has paid any attention to your dismissiveness. As of earlier this year, Pinterest passed Twitter for the number of U.S. adult users, making them the second most used social site for probable buyers.

The Leadership Playbook: Leaders Over-Communicate is a post from: The Sales Blog | S. Anthony Iannarino

Once I was speaking at a conference when the CEO of the company leaned over and whispered in my ear. He said, “I am giving the same speech I’ve given the last two years. The stories are different. The examples are different, too. But it’s the same message.”

The CEO wondered whether he was wrong in doing so, and asked me what I thought. I told him, “Your message was right three years ago. It was right last year. And it’s right this year. As soon as you change your message, your people are going to be confused about who they are and where they are going. You aren’t delivering change. You’re doubling down.”

Great leaders relentlessly communicate their message.

Mission: Great leaders relentlessly communicate their company’s mission. Those who never speak of “mission,” never capture the hearts and minds of the people they have the honor to lead. Great leaders aren’t afraid to communicate about the difference their organization is making, and they remind their teams of that mission with a steady stream of examples.

Vision: Great leaders also take every opportunity to remind the people they lead where they are going, how they are going to get there, and who they are going to become. They communicate this vision, knowing that they win converts slowly and over time.

Values: A leader leads through her values. What is important to her is important to her organization. What she ignores, they will also ignore. Great leaders draw a line in the sand separating “who we are” from “who we will never be.” I know one leader who refuses to make money from his vendors, money his competitors take. I know another who never stops talking about caring. Their companies live those values.

Who We Are: Effective leaders talk about their competition. They explain to the people they lead how they are different from their competitors, why they do things different, and why it matters. By talking about these things, they help the people they lead understand their place in the world.

As a leader, it is impossible to over-communicate in any of these areas. It is possible to cause people to lose their enthusiasm if you don’t bring these ideas to life with stories, anecdotes, and examples of people getting things right.

By Tibor Shanto - tibor.shanto@sellbetter.ca 

Being different seems to be really important to some people in sales. From their buyers, to product, to the way the sell, people want to cling to being different. It is like “Difference” is some sort of badge of honour, a reason to pay a premium, or worse, a rationale for results.

You often hear people talk about how the complexity of their sale makes it different. But all sales are complex in their own way, just because one may have more moving parts than another, does not make it more complex or different. Sure the moving parts in selling desalination plants may differ from those found in selling business process outsourcing, but the core components and core execution, not that different. Wanting it to be different does not change the fact that it has to be executed along a defined path (or process, you know, that’s a bit more complex), and one step at a time.

The “sophistication of the solution”, does not equate to “different” or “complex”. Just ask someone selling a fairly simple and standard product, in a highly competitive, price sensitive environment; these sales people have a much more complex selling challenge, especially if they can maintain price integrity. But in the end there is less difference than many sales professionals would want to pretend.

I remember meeting with a VP of Sales with a “Solutions Provider “, and indeed they had a product that was “cool”, and in demand, addressing a common requirement in their target market. From the time we met at a conference he was into the “I am interested in what you do Tibor, but you gotta understand we’re different.” I don’t know, he like everyone at their booth, had two arms, two legs, a big mouth, didn’t seem that different, maybe I’ll figure it out when we meet at their office.

Later at the office, he was right back at it, preaching the (invisible) difference. As one who likes to break the sale down to logical sequential steps, I thought I would explore.

TS:     So let me get this straight, your people do not have to prospect, you went to the conference because you had marketing budget to blow. You normally have prospects lined up out the door, but you knew I was coming this morning, so cleared a path for me?

VP:     No, no, our folks have to prospect, they need to make calls every day, I have them working the show leads now, those shows are expensive, I am always reviewing their activity, and we should be converting more of these leads, especially with our product.

TS:     OK, but once you get in front of the prospect, it is smooth sailing, they get it, and want to switch or buy right away, no?

VP:     I wish, we have to needs assessments, work through a bunch of data, and for sure three demos, sometimes more.

TS:     But at that point, they just ask for the proposal, and away we go.

VP:     Rarely, we have to help them maneuver internally, that’s why we end up doing multi demos, and data crunching, all the players involved.

TS:     All laid out in your process, right?

VP:     Not really, what we laid out should follow a different path.

TS:     But once you present the proposal, it’s done, no back and forth, no negotiations, no price haggling.

VP:     Are you kidding, even after all that, we still have to deal with that, all the ROI we show them, and we still go through that.

TS:     So tell me again how you are different?

What’s in Your Pipeline?
Tibor Shanto 

We’re going back to basics! As an agency that follows the principles of inbound marketing, sometimes we forget that not everyone out there is drinking the inbound Kool-Aid. So this week, we’re taking a step back and looking at the basic elements of inbound marketing that guide us through everything we do for ourselves and our clients.

If you’re new to the concept of inbound marketing, or you’re looking for a quick and dirty rundown of it’s elements, then this blog is for you. Whether you hire an agency or undergo the process on your own, here are the 4 main goals of inbound and the associated services that you can expect to find in a solid inbound marketing plan.

Goal 1: Generate Qualified Website Traffic
Associated Services: Content Marketing (Blogging!), Search Engine Optimization, Social Media Sharing

Let’s say you’re shopping for a new bike. Perhaps you’ve seen some ads in the paper, or on television, but you’re the kind of person who does their research, so you turn to the trusty Google. You type in “Best Bikes for City Biking” and come across a wonderful blog article about various types of bikes that are great for city biking. After you finish the article, you notice that the site hosting the blog has a lot of other blogs about biking, bike maintenance, bike tires, etc., and you start to think, “Hey, these people really know what they’re talking about, they’re bicycling experts!” Suddenly you feel affinity towards that brand; you might even want to buy a bike from them. Boom. Inbound marketing at work.

Search algorithms are becoming increasingly smart about content and context. When you write relevant content that answers your customers questions and addresses pain points you set yourself up to attract more qualified website traffic. When you blog and share those blogs on your social media channels, you establish yourself as an expert, build awareness, and gain credibility for your brand online.

Goal 2: Convert Website Visitors into Leads

Associated Services: Call-to-action (CTA) buttons, Landing Pages, Forms

Part of being a successful inbound marketer is turning qualified traffic into qualified leads. To do this, you need to use premium content pieces, calls to action, and landing pages.

Creating more in-depth premium content pieces and offers like eBooks, Webinars, Free Demos helps you generate leads when you place them behind a form. When you ask a website visitor to fill out a form in exchange for a free piece of your premium content, you turn that visitor into a lead and obtain valuable data that allows you to guide them down the sales funnel.

Goal 3: Turn Leads into Customers
Associated Services: Email Marketing, Sales Consulting

Generally speaking, prospects don’t have a tendency to just call out of the blue and say “I want to buy something from you!” Even if they are interested in your brand, most people need a little more convincing before they’re willing to shell out the cash. That’s why we utilize the process of lead nurturing to guide prospects down the path to purchase. Utilizing email marketing is a great way to accomplish this.

Remember that premium content offer we talked about? The person who downloaded it might also be interested in an ebook or webinar on a similar topic. In order to market to this individual, you would set up an automated email campaign that sends a series of emails suggesting various top-of-the-funnel, middle-of-the-funnel, and bottom-of-the-funnel offers to keep them engaging with your content and your brand.

Eventually, when your sales person gets on the phone with this individual, they have an exact idea of what the prospect is interested in and how to best accommodate their needs. It’s the farthest thing from a cold call.

Goal 4: Measure, Analyze, Interpret & Refine
Associated Services: Marketing Automation Software, A/B Testing, Misc. Analytics Tools

If you’re going to put in the effort to create a killer inbound campaign, it’s important to make sure that what you’re doing is actually working. Marketing automation software, like Hubspot, provides you with an integrated platform to facilitate and analyze all of your inbound marketing efforts.

One easy way to gauge results is through the use of A/B testing. For example, with A/B testing you can try different text on a call to action to see which performs better. You might determine that more people are likely to click on a CTA that says “Get Your eBook Today!” as opposed to “Download Now.”

Utilizing analytics helps to fine-tune your campaigns and offerings, allowing you to replicate successes in the future and dispose of the occasional failed effort as quickly as possible.

Takeaways

To stay competitive in this changing marketing landscape, you must create campaigns that place your brand directly in front of your target audience. You need to be able to answer questions, address pain points, give expert advice, and entertain with fresh, original content.

Applying these core elements of inbound marketing methodology, you too can create a campaign that will attract more qualified visitors, generate more leads, and convert more leads into customers. Happy marketing!

SPONSORED POST

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This sponsored post is produced by David Karel, CMO of Bizo.

It used to be that educating prospects and shaping their purchase decisions was the responsibility of salespeople. They nurtured prospects by taking them to lunch, letting them know about the latest and greatest, and moving them toward a sale.

In the digital world, much of the nurturing process has fallen to the marketing department, which educates and engages prospects typically via email – and often via marketing automation software. Almost 95 percent of marketers say lead nurturing is important to their strategy, according to “The State of B2B Lead Nurturing,” a Bizo survey.

In fact, today, marketing is the primary driver of B2B company revenue. More than half of the respondents to the survey said that marketing sourced between 20 and 60 percent of company revenue.

Here are six trends C-level executives should understand about how lead nurturing is changing marketing and business:

1. Changes to the B2B buyer’s journey elevates Marketing’s importance.

Buyers are doing much of their research online before ever contacting a salesperson. In fact, some data from Forrester suggests that 90% of the purchase process is over before a salesperson has a chance to engage. The implication of this trend is that marketing needs to fill this gap in order. And the best marketers are using their nurturing programs to reach prospects and keep their brand, messaging, and content in front of potential customers from the very start of the buying process.

2. Marketing automation continues to grow in importance.

The key to great prospect nurturing is programmatic nurturing. And programmatic nurturing requires embracing data and systems. Marketing automation software eases this process, putting scaled methodical prospect nurturing in reach of any marketing organization. It also puts marketers in a very strong position to scale the impact of their investments in programs and people. According to ClickZ, more than 50 percent of B2B Fortune 500 companies have deployed marketing automation software – up 25 percent from a year ago.

3. With marketing automation, lead nurturing’s impact on the bottom line is finally measurable.

Email nurturing tracks known prospects via their email addresses which makes it entirely measurable. With this data, the marketing department can track which leads turn into sales and can measure ROI. And this kind of intel leads to smarter budgeting of marketing dollars based on what is actually working.

4. Be aware of the drawbacks of lead nurturing via email.

Email is a powerful channel but it’s inherently limited. 95 percent of website visitors don’t hand over their email addresses. And even when prospects do share an email address, the vast majority of them don’t read your emails – open rates hover below 20 percent. If your website were a storefront, you’d quickly go out of business if 95 percent of the people who came through your door, looked around, spent no money, and left, never to return. This is pretty much what your anonymous website visitors are doing. With email nurturing, you’re telling your story to only a handful of every 100 people who click through to your website/storefront.

5. Lead nurturing expands beyond the inbox.

Multi-channel nurturing is now making it possible to reach anonymous prospects – without relying on email. One way to get beyond the inbox is with services like Bizo Multi-Channel Nurturing, which allows marketers to deploy display ads and social media ads to reach anonymous website visitors. In this way, you can engage not just the 5 out of 100 who signed up for your email newsletter but the other 95 percent who are clearly interested in your company – they visited your website after all.

Nurturing is core to how effective B2B marketing is done today. Expanding lead nurturing beyond the email inbox to include display and social advertising can stack the deck to ensure that when your prospects are ready to pick up the phone, they’re dialing your sales reps. For more information on lead nurturing, download this new guide, “Multi-Channel Nurturing: Beyond the Inbox.”

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On average, there are 70 voicemails left per day per sales rep. Each voicemail requires roughly 60 seconds each. That’s 30 seconds to listen to a greeting and 30 seconds to leave a voicemail. That equates to approximately 25 hours per month per sales rep just leaving voicemail.

If you look across a team of 50 sales reps, they’re actually spending 1,277 hours per month just leaving voicemails. That’s about 15% of every sales reps’ time simply leaving voicemails. As a salesperson, you should have two important goals.

1. Consistently leave great voicemails

2. Reduce the time spent leaving those voicemails

What exactly makes a great voicemail? Here are nine voicemail tips that you can start using today to dramatically improve your return results.

1. Always provide context

Providing context makes certain that no cold call is truly cold. Your prospects receive voicemails everyday from sales reps and companies. How is your voicemail going to stand out from the crowd?  The answer is context.  We no longer live in a world where content is king. Context is king and context equals relevance.  Relevance is what’s going to make you stand out from the crowd.

For example, I might say I wanted to thank you for accepting my LinkedIn request and tell you how RingDNA provides a total call solution for your sales teams.  Another might be, thank you for downloading our latest eBook and I was wondering if I could help you make a decision with X, Y or Z.

2. Offer clear value

Now that your voicemail includes context and relevance, you better tell me in the next five seconds how you’re going to make my life exponentially better, or you’re going straight to voicemail hell. Quickly delivering a value proposition tailored to the prospect is critical.

For example, at RingDNA our reps are consistently coached on how to include value props in their voicemails, such as RingDNA will help you dial 300% more leads everyday, or by using RingDNA, you’ll double the number of daily sales conversations you have which should also double your sales conversation rates.  Deliver a message that helps the prospect see an idealized version of themselves.

3. Cowboy up - Ask for what you want

Like a cowboy, keep it simple, clear, and uncomplicated.  Some examples that I use when leaving a voicemail may include:

I want to schedule ten minutes of your time.

Does two o’clock on Wednesday work for a demo?

Get to the point and ride on.

4. Never forget to say it twice

Your prospects are very unlikely to have a pen sitting in their hand. Instead, their finger is probably sitting on that delete button. You’ve given them a reason to call you back, now make it easy for them to write down your information without having to rewind the message.  Say the critical information twice. That includes name, company and phone number.

5. Project energy and enthusiasm!

Conveying true excitement and a belief that you’re working with the best company is going to also separate you from other sales reps. People want to talk to winners and therefore, you need to sound like a winner. If I’m not feeling it, I may take a walk or listen to my favorite song on Spotify. Find something that pumps you up to get you back in the game and leaving better voicemails.

6. Keep it under 30 seconds

Your prospects don’t have time to listen to a verbose voicemail message.  Keeping your voicemail short and to the point will show your prospect that you respect their time as well as your own.

Your company’s entire value proposition is almost certainly not going to be conveyed in a 30-second voicemail. Instead, focus on introducing yourself, providing context, stating a key value prop, and ask for what you want before moving on.

7. Automate

What most salespeople don’t understand is that each of the tips I’ve previously suggested can be achieved through voicemail automation.  Let’s face it, salespeople, as business people, are under a lot of pressure, not only to deliver results, but to be efficient, consistent and work extremely fast.

Using voicemail automation is one way to make sure that you are efficient, provide personalization, and record the perfect message every time.

8. Test variables

With voicemail automation, you can deliver the perfect voicemail every time while testing several different versions of those voicemails.  Think of it as A/B testing for your voicemail. Every industry is different. You should test a variety of voicemails, or a combination of voicemails, and track your response rate to see which tactics work best. By testing these variables, you’ll see huge differences in response rates, which ultimately lead to more conversations and more sales.

9. Optimize call times

If we structure our days so that we’re dialing people when they’re most likely to answer the phone, chances are we’ll be able to handle more conversations, we’ll have better conversations and we’ll be leaving less voicemail. We’ve found that the best time to call is Wednesday through Thursday from 6:45 to 9:00 A.M. or Wednesday through Thursday from 4:00 to 6:00 P.M. The worst times are Mondays 6:00 A.M. to noon, and Friday afternoons.

“Friends, Romans, resellers, lend me your customer networks!”

Selling your product or service through partners can make a ton of sense, and rapidly expand your ability to reach customers without the overhead that comes with maintaining an enormous direct sales channel. Even when you have a great offering, sales can be a surprisingly (and frustratingly) customized challenge that requires you to tell unique stories to unique audiences. Many companies are able to make great products BECAUSE they don’t spread themselves thin trying to sell to the world. That’s where a great partner selling program can make a huge difference.

My colleague — and prolific blog contributor — Brian Pesin recently recently relaunched our partner program here at Contactually, and he was kind enough to explain a few of the lessons he’s learned, and how he’s baking them into the foundation of our new program. Here’s some of what he shared with me.

1. Focus on the quality of partners, not the quantity.

The first thing many brand new partner initiatives are worried about is, of course, finding willing partners. This often leads companies to assess the quality of their new program by simply counting sign-ups. This is a mistake.

You can accomplish a lot with just a few good partners.

A true partner sales channel isn’t about brand-awareness or promotional marketing. It’s really about making partners successful, and in the process, making your business successful as well. Raw partner numbers won’t do that, and in many cases, you can end up with the overhead and logistics challenge of an enormous program without any real impact to your sales. Qualified, motivated partners aren’t just BETTER; they’re the only ones who can really make your program work. If a smaller, less well-known partner is truly aligned with your objectives, believes in what you do, and is excited to share it with their market, focus on them. They’ll do a lot more for you than a big name who just signs up for everything.

2. Provide effective education for all partners.

When you delegate any part of the sales process to partner businesses, you’re effectively making these people brand ambassadors, whether they know what they’re talking about or not. Partners who truly understand your product and are comfortable talking about it are going to be more eager to meet with prospective customers, and far more likely to be engaging and convincing when they do. Don’t put this on them, though — make simple, high quality education easy, accessible, and required. Once your partner has the basics down, it’s a lot easier for you to trust in their ability to tailor that information into a sales pitch that makes sense to their niche audience.

3. Make the partner experience as easy as possible.

Education is just one example of the kind of groundwork that must be laid in order for partners to succeed. The less of this sort of thing your partners have to figure out for themselves, the better. Signing up, learning specifics about the offering, creating a vendor profile, reporting sales; these are all things that should be easy for partners, and not require them to jump through tons of hoops. Creating an easy partner experience might not seem like a high priority to some people at your company (“Why are we doing this work? Isn’t this why we have partners?”), but every minute your vendors are spending swapping emails with you or trying to deal with some terrible web form is a minute they aren’t spending with customers. Eventually, you’ll pay for these self-created inefficiencies, so get it right the first time.

4. Let partners express themselves.

Every partner is different; that’s what makes them valuable! When you add them to your program, don’t lose track of what makes them special by forcing them into a narrow, generic vendor profile that doesn’t highlight what they’re good at. If you sell a publishing platform, and your partner helps small, local newspapers go online, there’s no value in forcing them to talk about how great your platform is for e-commerce, or social networking. Unless the only thing you need is pure distribution (which does happen sometimes, especially with physical goods), this will only tie your partner’s hands and prevent them from doing what they do best.

5. Don’t be afraid to adapt or reboot.

Lastly, there’s no magic bullet for “how to build a partner program”. It depends on what you need, what your partners are good at, how your product/service works, and a host of other variables. The best thing you can do is start small, see what works, and retool. If you’re constantly working hard to make the program worthwhile, your truly engaged partners won’t just tolerate change. They’ll embrace it!

Video marketing is an extremely powerful yet often overlooked channel of marketing. People often (mistakenly) think that succeeding in video marketing is a matter of luck. That you just put out a video and cross your fingers and hope that it “goes viral.” That’s not how video marketing works at all.

Just like any other marketing tactic, video marketing involves taking systematic steps to create a desired result. Video marketing, when done properly, can bring in thousands or even hundreds of thousands of visitors. This happens deliberately, not by accident.

Yet most people who try their hands on video marketing don’t ultimately succeed. Why is that? It’s because they make one of these ten traffic-destroying mistakes along the way.

Mistake #1: Relying on One-Hit Videos

If any part of your business plan relies on your videos “going viral,” you’re out of luck.

Yes, a small (miniscule) amount of videos do go viral every day. But the amount of videos that make this mark are so tiny that shooting for it at all is completely unrealistic. If you’re spending any amount of time or energy on trying to go viral, you’re running yourself in circles.

If you’re going to get into video marketing, expect to be in it for the long haul. Yes, you can and will drive a lot of traffic. But it’s not going to happen overnight and it’s not going to happen from one video.

Mistake #2: Not Developing a Channel

Having a YouTube channel allows anyone with a Google account to subscribe to your channel. It allows you to build your brand by customizing your background. It allows you to sequence your videos however you like. It allows you to lay out your page in many different formations.

Each of your videos should be a part of a larger plan for your entire channel. Don’t just publish standalone videos. It’s impossible to “follow” a standalone video. If you’re just publishing single video after single video, you’re not going to build an audience.

Work towards building a channel. Spend time perfecting your channel’s layout and design. Your channel’s followers are your core viewer base.

Mistake #3: Focusing Too Much on Fancy Effects

Fancy special effects are a fantastic add on to your videos. If you want to add a flashy intro sequence, if you want to “blur in” your subtitles, if you want to “explode” out of your video at the end, that’s all great. But special effects should never become to focus of your video.

You should also never let special effects hold up the production of your video. If it’s going to take forever to get a special effect intro done and you’re ready to launch now, then you’re probably better off just saying “go” now.

Special effects, more often than not, are done primarily for the video creator’s ego. They don’t truly add any value to the end viewer’s experience. Focus on the content, not the effects. If you can get effects in without too much time or money, go for it. But don’t let your product get delayed special effects.

Mistake #4: Getting Hung Up Over Video Equipment

The world of video equipment can be incredibly confusing. Should you get a wide lens camera or a long lens? What about telephoto? Should you get a condenser microphone or a dynamic microphone? What about wireless – Should you go with a lavaliere mic or an over ear mic? How do you avoid static? What about lighting? How many lights do you need and do you need to purchase a lighting kit?

The questions go on and on and on. You could literally spend days researching the perfect video setup and still have questions leftover.

The reality is, for most people who’re doing their own video setup, a simple setup will do. You can go very far with just an iPhone 4 camera and a dynamic microphone. Your whole setup can be done for under $200.

Give yourself a deadline. If you’re setting up a studio from scratch, give yourself two days to do all your research and buy what you need to buy. No more. Don’t spend weeks and definitely don’t spend months figuring it out.

If you really want quality high enough to warrant months of setup, you’re better off hiring a professional to shoot for you than trying to set it up from scratch yourself.

Mistake #5: Not Knowing Your Audience

The kind of content you think your audience wants can be very different from the kind of content they actually want. For example, you might have a YouTube channel geared towards real estate agents. You might share some of your personal best tips for closing sales and feel great about sharing. But your audience’s main problem might not be closing sales – It might be getting leads in the first place.

If you don’t know where your audience is at, it’s very difficult to produce the kind of content they’re looking for. So how do you know where your audience is at?

Ask. Ask them what kind of content they want. Respond to their comments. Better yet, respond in the video itself. Acknowledge them by name, read their question then answer it for them.

Get to know your audience. Don’t just share what you want to share. Instead, aim to actually figure out what your audience wants and needs and give it to them.

Mistake #6: Expecting Results Too Quickly

It’s quite rare that a new channel starts up and instantly gets hundreds of millions of views. Instead, you’re more likely to start off with just tens or a couple hundred views. Then your second video will get a few more viewers. Your third will get even more.

As you publish more videos, more and more people will join your audience. Your reach will have a snowball effect. A few months or years down the line you’ll be able to publish a brand new video and have it get hundreds of thousands of views instantly. But that takes time.

Expect your video marketing efforts to take at least six months to pick up.

Mistake #7: No Call to Action

Does your video tell people what to do next, or does it just give them the content then leave them there?

When you create a high quality video, you create a lot of goodwill. But in order for that goodwill to translate into clicks, into leads and into sales, you have to have a call to action.

Your first call to action is probably going to be to “click here” or to direct people to an address on your website. Make your call to action as clear and as powerful as you can. Then use other call to actions to move people through your sales funnel.

Mistake #8: Being Afraid to Spend Money

It’s very hard to create a high quality video without spending any money. Here are just some of the things you’ll probably want to invest in:

• Getting a professional intro sequence done.
• Video editing.
• Having slides put in.
• Editing software (if you’re doing it yourself)
• Audio quality enhancement
• Etc

Yes, it is possible to do it all yourself and not spend any money. But the result will probably be a lot of wasted time and an inferior video. Trying your best to spend as little as possible is a terrible way to create a video.

Instead, focus on how to intelligently invest your money. Invest in things that’ll really make a big difference.

Mistake #9: Not Tracking and Analyzing

YouTube offers a fairly comprehensive analytics package. It can tell you how far along people watch in your videos before leaving, it can tell you what your traffic sources are, it can tell you about who’s watching your video and more.

A lot of people completely ignore YouTube’s analytics. Even people who’re fanatical about website data for some reason seem to ignore YouTube data altogether. This is a huge mistake.

YouTube’s analytic package is a gold mine waiting to be explored. Using this data, you can hone in on exactly what’s working and what’s not. This will help you create more home run videos in the future.

Mistake #10: Not Promoting Your Videos Enough

Another mistake is thinking that you just put your videos up on YouTube and they’ll promote themselves. That’s not how it works.

In the early stages, most of the traffic that comes to your video is going to come from you and your existing audience. In time, your YouTube audience and YouTube’s traffic will bring you a lot of people But when you’re first building up your following, you have to be the driver of traffic.

Promote your video(s) on your website, on your list, on your Twitter feed, on your Facebook page and on anywhere else where your audience is. Get the word out about your video(s) and start driving those view numbers.

Last week I talked about “quick wins”. Among all the feedback I received, some readers expressed their fear and shared common instances of B2B lead generation failure. Yes, there are many reasons your marketing and sales activities can fail and they occasionally will. It’s hard to admit, but what you learn from failure is sometimes much more valuable than what you might gain from winning.

We are strong and mighty and all powerful while we win and conquer. The moment we experience failure, we become weak and fearful. The fear of failing again prevents us from moving on to newer challenges with the same intensity, passion and dedication we had before having failed. It’s ironical how the one organ that makes us the strongest race on the planet is also the one that weakens us—the brain, the seat of the human mind. Reflect for a moment on these words of wisdom:

“All that we are is the result of what we have thought. The mind is everything. What we think, we become.”- Gautama Buddha

It’s important to think like a winner, even when you fail. Like I’ve said before, you need to fail fast and recover even faster in order to keep moving ahead. So what does it mean to “fail fast”? It means being able to see the warning signs and recognize failure quickly so that you have enough time to stand up and get back in the fight.

5 Warning Signs of B2B Lead Generation Failure

1. WEAK DEMAND GENERATION STRATEGY: If your demand generation strategy is on a shaky foundation, you have a host of problems on hand. Common issues include not following a regular list hygiene process, missing solid account mapping and lead scoring metrics, not being in touch with the dynamics of your market and not fully comprehending the issues your customers find most challenging. What can you do to ensure your strategy is well-defined and strategically aligned to deliver on your lead generation goals?
2. YOU HAVE NOT MAPPED THE B2B BUYING PROCESS: B2B procurement is not a simple process. Not only do you have to comprehend it generically, but you also need to map it for every B2B buyer you are targeting and working on to achieve a sale. Recognize that it is going to be a long and complex sales cycle with more than one ‘power buyer’ involved. In addition, the buying process within your client’s organization may be impacted by factors such as budget issues, growth patterns, debt situation, staffing and personal issues, economic factors, and more.
3. TOO MANY WALLS: Marketing is tossing ‘qualified’ leads over the wall to Sales. Sales is not picking up on those leads because they do not seem promising. Finance is breathing down the CMO’s neck questioning the purpose of all the lead generation activities and demanding ROI. The CEO is drinking from a fire hose with a desk that’s piled high with Big Data. All in all, everyone is functioning behind walls and in silos rather than in an environment where learning, resources and customer analytics flow freely between departments. This is a fairly typical scenario in large and medium-sized B2B companies. But it doesn’t have to be this way.
4. TOO MUCH CONTENT: Is there such a thing? Hard to believe since everyone is going nuts with social media and content marketing. The problem is, the buyer is experiencing too much noise. If your social media and content marketing activities are not grounded in buyer persona profiling, your time and resources are going to waste.
5. TOO MUCH RELIANCE ON EXTERNAL SOURCES: Marketing automation toys, fancy CRM software, trendy analytics tools and reports, paid social media channels, all of these are the flavour of the day. Unfortunately, a heavy reliance on these creates a situation where you now need ‘experts’ and ‘specialists’ to make sure you are getting results from your latest investments in B2B lead generation. You have to remember, though, that a specialist will pressure you to spend more time and money on activities within her or his field of specialization. That’s when the specialist can show your company some measurable results. If you find yourself sacrificing tried and true marketing techniques to replace one or two newer ones, know that you are also compromising the integrity of your overall demand generation strategy. Expert advice and partnerships with specialists are beneficial but you must know the key questions to ask your B2B lead generation partner.

Turn Every B2B Lead Generation Failure Into An Opportunity

Let’s look at some examples of how to do this.

• Did you spend a ton of money on ads to buy Facebook “Likes”? If you aren’t getting any conversions, the campaign is failing; but it isn’t the end of the road. Use a small, focused budget to turn those Likes into engagement. Over a period of time, as you engage and interact with your fans, you will work your way slowly but surely towards conversions and ROI.
• What can you do if your email marketing is not effective? Recognize that your process may be wrong. Start again with a properly segmented list and start sending customized emails. As you succeed with engaging even one small segment of your target audience, you will reach bigger milestones along the way. Your engaged audience will start contributing towards sharing and expanding your network.
• What happens when your appointment setting team isn’t getting results? A quick solution would be to assemble a S.W.A.T. team and do a deep dive into the metrics you do have. You can usually find some gold in prospects that haven’t been nurtured and followed up with properly. Instead of spending more money finding new leads, start working the leads you have.

Image credit: Shutterstock

The rise of social media, expected to capture 2.5 billion users by 2017, represents a paradigm shift and a new opportunity in B2B marketing. For the first time, B2B customers are a community of users who discuss everything from their jobs to politics to business products and services.

Forrester Research confirms that B2B customers are buying through social media. Of those surveyed, 81 percent visit LinkedIn monthly, with 74 percent going there at least in part for business purposes. Of the 85 percent who visit forums monthly, 81 percent are there exclusively or in part for business purposes.

Still, many businesses have been slow to act, with less than 25 percent having a comprehensive social media strategy. Those who have tried and failed complain about being under-resourced. But failure is less about resources than about strategy. Social selling is different, and many businesses haven’t been able to pivot from conventional B2B marketing to the new paradigm.

What is Social Selling?

Social selling is a way for businesses to engage potential customers, build relationships and leverage those relationships to sell. Whereas traditional marketing begins with a sales pitch, social selling begins with smart conversation. That means learning to:

• Listen — to find new prospects and sleuth out key decision makers
• Relate — by discovering common interests, both business and personal
• Engage — by providing relevant content that establishes authority and expertise
• Partner — based on mutual benefits and shared concerns

How to Find Social Selling Opportunities

You can’t sell your products until you find customers. The great thing about social media is that customers are already there, talking about their buying intentions. Finding them means identifying where and when those conversations are taking place. Tools like Tweetdeck, Google Alerts, and Nimble will let you monitor on all those conversations so you’ll know the most opportune moment to make your move.

Finding customers is step one. Step two is finding out everything you can about them. You can do some of this by visiting their website and reading their annual report. But social media will let you dig deeper, hear what’s being said in real time, learn how buying decisions are actually made and identify business needs at the moment they surface. Step three is making your approach — and closing the sale.

Closing the Sale: How to Use Landing Pages

Landing pages are a great tool for helping you find highly qualified leads and convert them into paying customers, and you can’t qualify leads unless they respond to some call to action, pushing a button or filling in a form.

Strong landing pages are the sine qua non (essential action) of strategic social selling. To be effective, your landing page needs four pillar features:

1. Headline: A headline that grabs readers attention and compels them to read more. The headline is the most important element of your landing page to optimize and test. Login to your Pagewiz account and create two landing page versions with everything identical but the headline message
2. A compelling image: Visual content such as graphic elements and especially video can increase conversion rates dramatically. As the web becomes more visual, browsers expect to see more color on the screen. If they don’t, you’ll lose buyers.
3. Your product’s benefits: Organize and simplify benefits by presenting them in bulleted lists.
4. Call to action: This is essential. Not having a call to action on your landing page is like making a great impression with a prospective date, then not handing over your telephone number. If your call to action is a form, you can gather valuable data to use further down the sales funnel.

Social selling requires a shift in mindset and a new set of skills. B2B salespeople have a vested interest in learning those skills, not to replace traditional marketing practices, but to complement them. The potential rewards of a winning strategy for social selling with landing pages are well worth the investment of time and money.

How do you optimize your social selling process? Please share with us in the comments below.

Generating software sales leads for your company shouldn’t be a mysterious art or a clandestine skill. With so many unknowns and changing relationships, it almost seems as if lead generation and closing sales are arcane talents, but they aren’t. In fact, your software sales approach should be scientific.

With a science-minded approach, your software sales team is driven by data, facts and experimentation – and isn’t just left blindly following industry fads or superstitious sales advice.

So what are some of the secrets to this scientific software sales approach? Here are three to get you started:

Secret #1: Person-Oriented Research

Establishing a solid software sales lead always begins with finding the right decision-maker. When you’re in contact with the right person (such as the Director, CEO or other position you’re targeting) from the first or second call, then your software sales lead is not only more qualified, but you’re much more likely to close the deal in a timely manner.

In an ideal world, you’d already know the perfect time to call to reach these key decision-makers. In the real world, instead of guessing or hoping you stumble upon the best time, you need to take a scientific approach to your data. Start by analyzing your attempt history for what times of day are best for contacting your target decision-makers.

Watch your metrics and consistently test new times until you discover your most successful niche. For example, between 8-9 a.m. or 4-5 p.m. are usually the best times to contact SMB owners and decision-makers.

Secret #2: The Science Of Selling A Service

The second secret to better software sales leads depends heavily on the nature of your business software product. If you’re selling Software-as-a-Service (or SaaS), you need to shift your sales paradigm entirely.

While most sales teams assume that B2B sales leads are interested in the interface and reporting structures of your software, your salespeople should actually be focused on the service aspect of your SaaS. Because subscription-based software is so service-based, the primary purchase decision for your prospects revolves more around the service aspect of your software and less around the product features.

Put prospects’ fears to rest by reassuring them that your software’s service offerings address all of their pains and concerns. Once a prospect feels safe, securing that first appointment – and ultimately closing the deal – is much easier to accomplish.

Secret #3: Proven Lead Generation Procedures

Generating sales leads for your subscription-based software doesn’t always require extensive product knowledge. While product knowledge is important, it’s not the single pivot point for lead qualification.

Prospect discovery is the most important part of the lead generation process – learning and uncovering a particular contact’s needs and wants in a given solution. Most lead generation experts have enough experience in the sales process that they’re able to seek out and qualify new leads for almost any software product or service imaginable.

So, whether you’re hiring lead generation specialists in-house or you’re outsourcing your top-of-the-sales-funnel team, loading them down with comprehensive details, demos and particulars about your software doesn’t necessarily mean they’ll be better at qualifying B2B sales leads or setting those initial appointments.

Since lead generation is such a specific, scientific skillset, your time would be better spent investing in the training and professional development of your lead generation experts. That way, they’ll be constantly improving on lead generation – and worrying less about walkthroughs and widgets.

With a scientific outlook on lead generation, you empower your sales team to more effectively prospect for new appointments and close more sales. Generating new software sales leads is no longer superstitious sorcery – it’s now a science that benefits your bottom line.

Want to learn more about the Science of Sales™ and the scientific method for generating software sales leads? Register for this webinar hosted by the Sales Scientists™ at Invenio Solutions and discover how the closed-loop reporting of Inveniology™ gives your sales team the insight it needs to drive more revenue for your business.

In today’s tech-savvy world, most companies leverage sales applications as one of the major tools used to close deals with prospective customers. The sales process has quickly evolved in that one or more apps may be used to cultivate product interest, generate leads, contact customers, and ultimately, make the sale.

The continued importance of the sales rep role, however, should not be downplayed.

Below are three reasons why sales reps are the unsung heroes of all successful organizations:

1. People buy based on mutual trust and confidence in the salesperson

Trust begins with interaction, and no one but a fellow human being can interact effectively with your prospects. Establishing a sound relationship with the sales prospect is key to scoring a sale. Letting your client know that you identify with who he is, what his needs are and understand what his problems and concerns are is an assurance that you are selling him a product that can add value to his life.

People would rather buy from a salesperson who can answer their questions and warmly discuss how their products can benefit them, rather than from an app, a website or an email that offers mechanized answers to their queries. According to Baymard Institute, 67.45% of online shopping carts are abandoned prior to making a purchase. One of the main causes of losing a sale is failing to establish a relationship of trust with the customer.

2. Salespeople offer personalized service

Could it be that your product is not a match for what they’re looking for? Or perhaps they want the product but want it delivered in a slightly different way. Is there anything you can do to make the product or service perfectly suited to the customer? The great thing about having sales reps available to talk to prospects is being able to answer questions, even complex ones, and get answers that overcome objectives and solve problems.

Flexibility and creativity allow salespeople to be a cut above any technology on the market. Salespeople can identify what the customer needs even before the customer realizes his own suffering. Salespeople can present other options and work out a way to ensure that a client gets the product the way he wants it. Most importantly, they are able to turn features into benefits, and products into needs, such that the customer comes to an understanding of why he has to have the product right now.

3. Salespeople offer consultative services

Today, as technology is taking over the entire processes of marketing and selling, a sales rep can adapt to the role of consultant and specialist. He can educate customers on how a product can improve their quality of life. He can assist customers with the use and optimization of their new product purchases. He can also help define the type of product that would best suit a prospect. Most importantly, he can connect with customers while facilitating sales, upselling and influencing customer retention, ultimately delivering every company’s ideal – repeat purchases and brand loyalty.

At the end of the day, a salesperson is someone that adds value to a company, much more than any app or technology platform ever could. Without salespeople, good ideas wouldn’t become great and innovations wouldn’t become the next big thing. Clearly, a company cannot go forward without trusted sales reps who can warmly walk customers through the sales process, answering questions and providing expertise, delivering the necessary human touch that is missing from many sales interactions today. Though apps may be able to boost sales and increase productivity, it’s the people behind the apps that essentially make the sales process a success.

Who you have in your store is nearly as important as what you have in it. Your staff has a direct effect on sales, customer satisfaction, and the overall success of your store, which is why it’s important that you should not only invest in finding and hiring the right people but also put in the effort to keep them happy and motivated.

To help you accomplish this, we’ve put together some pointers on how to drive employee morale and performance. Go through them and see whether you can apply them in your retail store.

Regularly recognize people for a job well done

Matt Heller, author of The Myth of Employee Burnout, says that recognition is one of the best ways to stimulate your employees to take the actions you want them to take.

If staff members are making a positive impact on your business, be sure to tell them how awesome they are. “The more people hear how they are having a positive impact on others, the more they will want to do it again and again,” adds Heller.

Also note that recognizing employees shouldn’t be something that you should only do every once in a while. The key to truly motivating people is recognizing the good that they’re doing on a regular basis.

“Too often company initiatives are talked about in an orientation program only to be never mentioned again. This can actually be very demotivating, because people start to wonder why they are doing what they are doing,” he says.

“On the other hand, if you regularly communicate how an employee’s behavior is impacting others, they will start to understand how they support the bigger picture and company goals.”

To illustrate how a storeowner could motivate the staff, Heller offers the following scenario:

Let’s say you have an employee, Josh, who is very good at resetting the store and displays after large crowds have come through. Recognition that ties his behaviors back to the company goals might sound like this:

“Josh, I noticed how quickly you get out on the floor to reset the displays after a big rush of guests. I really appreciate this! It helps the guests find what they need and ultimately creates a more pleasant shopping experience for everyone.”

Now Josh knows that what he does has a direct impact on the guest experience and the performance of the store, and is much more likely to be motivated to take that action again.

Keep this example in mind whenever you see your employees doing their job well. Verbalize how much you value their work and make sure they know that what they’re doing directly affects your business.

Encourage peer-to-peer recognition

Rachel Cooper, a marketing specialist at incentive program platform provider Perks.com, re-affirms the importance of employee recognition but adds that companies must also encourage their staff to recognize their fellow employees.

“Not only is it important that managers recognize employees for a job well done, it is equally important that there is some sort of peer-to-peer recognition going on at work,” mentions Cooper.

“Think about it. People you work with have a large impact on your self-esteem and ability to succeed. These are people you are seeing on a day-to-day basis. Even if you don’t want to admit it, their opinions matter.”

Promote a positive work environment by encouraging your workers to support and build each other up. One effective way of implementing this is by sharing “recognition stories.”

In an article on Forbes.com, Josh Bersin of HR research and advisory firm Bersin & Associates writes that they identified storytelling as one of the most powerful practices in employee recognition.

“When someone does something great and is recognized by their peers, tell people about it,” he writes. “These stories create employee engagement and learning.”

So the next time you have a meeting or even a social gathering with your staff, be sure to brag about their success by telling feel-good recognition stories.

On top of motivating employees to perform better, having a “recognition-rich-culture” can also lower turnover rates. According to a study by Bersin & Associates, companies that do a great job at fostering recognition and engagement “have 31 percent lower voluntary turnover than their peers with ineffective recognition programs.”

Pay and train your employees well

Money may not be the only thing driving your staff, but you have to admit that it does play a significant role when it comes to employees—especially in retail.

Multiple studies have shown that retailers with well-paid, well-trained employees outperform competitors that didn’t invest enough in their staff.

In a NewYorker.com piece about retail staffing, James Surowiecki cites a Wharton School study that found that “every dollar in additional payroll led to somewhere between four and twenty-eight dollars in new sales.”

Similarly, MIT professor Zeynep Ton conducted an in-depth study on the operations of various retailers and discovered that companies such as Trader Joe’s, Costco, QuikTrip, and Mercadona, which invest significantly more in their employees, “have high profits, low prices for their industry, excellent operational metrics, and a reputation for great customer service.”

“These retailers deliver great value to their customers, employees, and investors all at the same time,” she adds.

It may be tempting to cut labor costs when you’re trying to increase profits or reduce expenses, but Ton warns that doing this can cause your operations to suffer. Remember that properly stocking shelves and serving customers requires significant effort and judgment; not paying your staff well could discourage them from exerting themselves fully.

As Ton aptly puts it:

It’s the low-paid employee, not the inventory-management software, who notices that a shelf looks messy or that some of the products are in the wrong place. It’s the low-paid employee who notices that some of the lettuce has gone bad or that there are still signs up for last week’s promotion. It’s the low-paid cashier who can tell the difference between serrano peppers and jalapeno peppers during checkout. It’s the low-paid employee who notices that there are too many customers waiting in the checkout and offers to open an additional cash register. When retailers don’t invest in human capital, operational execution suffers and the company pays with lower sales and lower profits than it could have had.

It’s best to view labor as a sales driver rather than a cost driver. Realize that paying and training your employees well leads to better output and, in turn, higher sales and customer satisfaction.

Empower them with better tools

Invest in up-to-date and well-functioning tools and equipment. This not only empowers your staff but also increases productivity and helps them do their jobs better.

Let’s consider the case for upgrading your point-of-sale system. Having your employees use an outdated cash register with limited functionality slows them down, whereas having a cloud-based POS makes their job faster and easier and can enable them to get more things done. (Plus, using a sleek POS system feels much better than a clunky cash register).

The call to give workers more modern tools has been echoed by companies such as Intel. In a study on the effects mobile technology on employee productivity, Intel found that employees who were given a wireless notebook to work with gained nearly 100 hours of additional productivity per year.

See whether you can put this tip to work in your store. Look around for tools or equipment that are due for an upgrade and consider replacing them with something better.

ZipRecruiter’s VP of Inside Sales, Kevin Gaither, was tasked with hiring 25 inside sales reps in just three months. This is his story.

Kevin joined ZipRecruiter in the summer of 2013. By January 2014, he’d grown the inside sales organization to a dozen reps, proving out both the concept and model.

With greater than 8K inbound leads per month, it came time to scale.

Four months and 700 candidates later, Kevin hired 23 reps (and lived to tell the tale).

Kevin shared three things he did right.

1) Approach the hiring process like you would a sales process.

Kevin’s ‘hiring funnel’ included:

• 7 ‘stages’
• A 4.5 hour process per hire
• Starring roles for himself, his Managers, and Reps
• 3.5% conversion rate from candidate-to-hire

Kevin’s advice:

Utilize your sales process mindset. Think specialization, conversion rates, and scale. Just like you’d coach your reps, ‘avoid the temptation to settle (bad breath is better than no breath).’ Stay true to your process from beginning to end.

2) Aggressively disqualify at the top of the funnel to save cycles at the bottom.

If you've reviewed cover letters and resumes, you well know there is no standardization. With hundreds of applicants, you need a mechanism to make a side-by-side comparison possible.

Since Kevin’s process involved his Managers and Reps as interviewers, diligence on the front-end was key to not overtaxing them. 

We used our own technology (ZipRecruiter) and asked every candidate 4 open-text questions. Their responses served as a litmus test of sorts and directly influenced whether they made it on to the initial phone screen.

3) Referrals are your best source of candidates.

To hit his target, Kevin used all the tools at his disposal (i.e., recruiters, network, social, etc.). His best source was his current team and wider network. In fact, nearly 25% of new hires came from just a handful of his reps. Kevin’s advice:

Our hire rate on referrals was double all other sources. But you have to actively seek these out. The key is effectively getting in front of your network and fueling their referrals.

Advice for other leaders on the same path.

Kevin shared that this process was exhausting. He made himself available 7AM-8PM for three full months. At the peak, he was conducting 12+ interviews a day. Kevin’s advice:

Having someone in a talent acquisition role to help with screening is key. But you must make sure they understand the most important characteristics of a good candidate. Take the time to get them up to speed on which characteristics predict future success in the role and how to identify them early on.

Final thoughts

For me, the bit that stands out is the rigor that Kevin and team put into the front end of the process. Only 1 out of 5 candidates made it to Stage 4 (the DriveTest assessment). If you’re going to commit your team’s effort and energy to interviewing, you have to make sure you're only passing along the best.

Any thoughts or questions for Kevin? Please share in the comments. (Also if you’re local to Santa Monica, he’s still hiring.)

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Before we go into the concept of content repurposing, let’s do a quick test; write down the top five articles that you’ve ever published.

Do you have them? Chances are you know them off the top of your head. These are your hall-of-famers, your best work. Now think – how many of these five articles did you really get the most out of?

When I say, “get the most out of” what I mean is, “How many of them did you make available to as much of your audience, over as many channels and platforms, in as many formats, and for any many purposes as possible?” If you said all of them, then you are already a master of repurposing, but for the rest of us mortals, I’ve created a matrix to help guide you in your content repurposing.

What is content repurposing?

To start off, what exactly is content repurposing?

Here’s my definition:

Content repurposing is the act and process of altering a content piece in order to reach a new audience and / or achieve a new goal with the same, or new, audience.

Why do I need to make content repurposing a regular habit?

Here is a list of reasons why you should regularly repurpose you content.

1. Expand reach to new and old audiences

When you repurpose content you make it accessible over new channels and in new formats. The direct benefit of that is increased reach.

For example, sharing all the key points from a blog post in a piecemeal fashion over a regular period of time (daily, for instance) will inevitably bring more people back to your article. Just as important, though, it gives you the opportunity to promote your article to people who may have missed your original promotion push when the article first published.

2. Find the sweet spot where quality meets quantity

Let’s face it: nobody should be creating mediocre content. On the other hand, great content should be made accessible to as many people as possible. In content marketing theory, quality should outperform quantity; however, in practice, you are pressured to produce more than your competitor, which is done at the cost of quality. Repurposing your content allows you to scale the quantity of your high quality content.

3. Avoid content burnout

What’s worse than mediocre content? No content. Depending on the type of topics you write about, the amount of interesting and engaging ideas you can think of is limited. With content repurposing you will be able to maximize output from each of your great ideas.

4. Create familiarity to increase likeability

Here’s a term worth looking up: “the mere-exposure effect”. It’s a psychological phenomenon by which people tend to develop a preference for things merely because they are familiar with them. By simply making your content available on many channels you increase the chance that any one person sees your content on different occasions, and each time that happens, you are creating likeability for your content and for your brand.

Additionally, by repurposing your content, you not only get to tell one message multiple times, but in different ways. So if your target audience wasn’t convinced in one approach, you get the chance to succeed in another.

5. Increase the ROI of your content

Every content piece that you repurpose saves you from making a new one from scratch. You save a lot of time, energy, and trial and error by taking what works and repurposing it. Great content takes a lot of effort to make and after all the effort and time you put into creating great content, you would be foregoing a lot of untapped value if you are not repurposing it.

Let’s say you conducted a survey about a topic that your customers are very interested in. It took you a week to make the questionnaire, three to collect the data and another two to write a hall-of-famer article about it.

Here’s a hypothetical series of steps you can take after your first promotion push:

1. Write a series of blog posts addressing each sub-topic or each question.
2. Develop an infographic showing the relation or juxtaposition of different points.
3. Share the results of the survey over Twitter in tiny parcels of information.
4. Combine the blog series into a whitepaper and/or a PDF report.
5. Launch a webinar to discuss in detail the insights from the survey.
6. Use the presentation of the webinar to create video tutorials and SlideShares.
7. Collect the main takeaways from the blog series and create a guide or checklist from it.

And so on and so forth. Through this process you can go from one content piece to seven, effectively increasing your ROI in addition to benefiting from the other four points stated above.

Can I repurpose every content piece that I make?

Ideally you should only be creating high quality evergreen content that adds value to your audience. So yes, in that case you should be repurposing all of your content to get the most out of it.

In practice, however, we all face time constraints and end up publishing content that we could have made better given more time and resources. So choose the ones you are proud of and over time you will have a rhythm of developing great content and then repurposing the hell out of it.

When deciding which content you should repurpose, look to your audience. The number of shares and other social signals are a good indication of how much your audience likes a particular post. Traffic is a good indicator as well, but keep in mind that traffic is influenced by virality and social signals. Conversion is a also a good indicator.

How should I go about content repurposing?

There is no single right or wrong way to go about it, however there are some things you can keep in mind.

Take a look at the Content Repurposing Matrix below. It explains the relationship between target audience, purchase decision phase and value that your content needs to provide to advance them through stages.

The axes are as follows:

User’s knowledge

Users’ knowledge about the subject matter is an independent variable that directly influences the level of complexity a content piece needs to have in order to appeal to your audiences. Over time your audience will increase their knowledge about the subject matter and move from left to right on the “user’s knowledge” axis. The main implication of that is you need to provide basic, advanced and expert level content through your channels.

Value provided

Since the content is intended to take the audience through “purchase decision” phases, you are in essence taking them from bottom to top on the y axis. Only value adding content will take the user through the stages of a purchase decision.

Purchase decision phase

The goal of content marketing is to get traffic to your website, convert the traffic to leads and nurture the leads so that they make the purchase. So then, the content you create needs to fulfill all of these phases. Consequently, you have content that is good for generating traffic (contact), time investment (consideration) and commitment (conversion).

As you can see in the Content Matrix, memes, piecemeal/micro content and tips and tricks blog posts are meant for generating traffic, while video tutorials, infographics and case study blogs will make your audience spend more time on your channels. Given that all of your content is remarkable, the audience will want to access content on the other side of a gated landing page such as a webinar or a whitepaper on the topic that they are interested in, at which point a valuable lead has been generated.

Content repurposing in action: linkbird case study

In September 2013, linkbird launched a campaign with the goal of generating more traffic, leads and eventually sales in the German market. Here’s how we used content repurposing to achieve these goals.

Core idea of the campaign:

1. Conduct a survey about Content Marketing in SEO
2. Use the results to create a lot of different content
3. Market the content in sequence to build and sustain momentum
4. Offer resources made from the survey to generate leads and revenues

In the beginning of August 2013, we created the survey questionnaire and sent it to our network. Within three weeks we reached the sample size representative of the target population, after which we did the following things:

• In the first week of September we launched the first content piece, a blog post featuring the results in conjunction with a well-known German ecommerce magazine.
• In the same blog post we linked to the second content piece: an infographic showing the results in graphical representations.
• We created an in-depth report from the results of the survey and offered it as a resource called “Content Marketing in SEO”.
• A presentation was created explaining the different sub-topics of content marketing and how they related to SEO. This presentation was shared on SlideShare.
• The SlideShare and the report were used to create a webinar to discuss strategies for using content marketing in SEO.
• The presentation, report and webinar were used as inputs to create a whitepaper detailing the same strategies discussed in the webinar.

By repurposing the content six times we were able to achieve very good results. The campaign was launched in the first week of September, after which we received a strong boost to our traffic.

Other key performance indicators also shot up shortly after the launch of the campaign. Newsletter subscriptions experienced a sharp rise along with resource downloads. Subsequently, trials and sales went up.

At linkbird we repurposed the survey results to

• Reach different audiences across various platforms
• Offer content for audiences in different purchasing decision phases
• Increase our reach by seeding our content in different languages (German, English and Dutch) and by sharing it with other sites to use in their publications
• Satisfy the content needs of different levels of users by offering them complex content like whitepapers and reports and easy-to-digest content like infographics and blog posts

Repurposing your content will allow you to expand your reach, scale the volume of high-quality content, avoid content burnout and increase the ROI of your content marketing.

With so many potential benefits, it’s tempting to apply this process to everything you create. Remember, repurposing should only be used with your very best content. Examine social signals, traffic generation, lead generation and conversions to inform you of your best performing content- the ideal candidate for repurposing.

Finally, tie every new repurposed content piece back to your goals of reaching new audiences with different messages across a variety of platforms. As with any campaign, monitor your pre-defined KPIs (e.g. traffic, engagement, conversion) and make adjustments along the way as you learn new insights about what’s most effective in each community.

What kind of repurposing successes (or failures) have you seen recently in content marketing?

Is it necessary to pre-qualify inbound leads? That’s the overarching question I recently presented to a panel of industry experts. Over the course of this three part series, you’ll hear from 15 leading voices in the world of B2B sales, marketing and lead generation, as they share their insight in response to the following questions:

• Are companies wise to invest money and time to pre-qualify inbound leads from marketing automation systems that have been assigned a “perfect” lead score?
• Should CMOs feel confident that these leads from marketing automation are ready for sales to close?
• Without additional qualification measures (such as tele-qualifying), will these leads inevitably clog and choke the sales pipeline?

In the first part of the series, we heard from author and consultant Ardath Albee; entrepreneur Kyle Porter; author and consultant Joanne Black; and consultant and speaker Dave Brock.

Here, in the second of this three part series, we will hear from The Funnelholic’s Craig Rosenberg; Annuitas Group’s Carlos Hidalgo; Sales Lead Management Association’s Jim Obermayer; Direct Marketing News’ Ginger Conlon; consultant and trainer Dave Stein; and agency founder Matt Heinz.

Is it necessary to pre-qualify inbound leads? That’s the overarching question I recently presented to a panel of industry experts. Over the course of this three part series, you’ll hear from 15 leading voices in the world of B2B sales, marketing and lead generation, as they share their insight in response to the following questions:

• Are companies wise to invest money and time to pre-qualify inbound leads from marketing automation systems that have been assigned a “perfect” lead score?
• Should CMOs feel confident that these leads from marketing automation are ready for sales to close?
• Without additional qualification measures (such as tele-qualifying), will these leads inevitably clog and choke the sales pipeline?

In the first part of the series, we heard from author and consultant Ardath Albee; entrepreneur Kyle Porter; author and consultant Joanne Black; and consultant and speaker Dave Brock.

Here, in the second of this three part series, we will hear from The Funnelholic’s Craig Rosenberg; Annuitas Group’s Carlos Hidalgo; Sales Lead Management Association’s Jim Obermayer; Direct Marketing News’ Ginger Conlon; consultant and trainer Dave Stein; and agency founder Matt Heinz.

Founded in 1999 and acquired by Amazon in 2009, Zappos has long been admired for its attitude to staff and customers. 

This focus is all about retention of customers and staff. And it saves the company a fortune on marketing and recruitment. 

Indeed, Zappos can boast customer retention rates of 75%, while staff rates are 85%, figures not many other firms can match. 

Companies are often more focused on acquisition than retention, but Zappos has turned this on its head, looking to market itself through quality of service.

It's worked too, with Zappos reaching $1bn in annual sales before the Amazon acquisition. 

Here are just a few lessons that can be applied to other businesses...

I've divided this post into points on staff and customer retention, but there is a lot of crossover.

For example, empowerment of staff makes for better customer service, which means happier customers and greater retention rates. You get the picture... 

Staff retention lessons

A great work environment

Offices full of computers, phones and desks can be pretty dull places. As Paul Boag explains, the workplace is vitally important for staff retention and effective collaboration. 

Zappos tries to make its office fun for employees, allowing them to customise desks and pretty much turn it into a jungle.

It may look crazy but there is a serious purpose behind this. 

Giving employees responsibility

One of the biggest gripes when calling customer services is the fact that, no matter how they may understand your issue, the staff have their hands tied and can only work within certain limits. 

This means frustration for the customer, and the inevitable demands to speak to a manager. It's not good for employees either (I've been that call centre agent in the past) as they simply can't do the job properly. 

The solution is simple: trust your employees and give them the responsibilty. The best staff will respect you for it and customer service will improve. 

That's what Zappos does: staff can give people a free pair of shoes if they feel the situation merits it. No need to have people waiting for a call from their team leader. 

Free lunches

This may seem a trivial point, but this and the other employee benefits offered by Zappos have a positive effect on staff morale.

Also, though some hot meals come with a small charge, healthier options like salads and cereals are free. All staff also receive a generous 40% discount on any purchases from the site. And there are more. 

Benefits like this show staff that the company cares about them and wants them to enjoy their jobs and the company culture. 

Of course, there are costs associated with providing these benefits, but Zappos has taken the view that happy employees make for better service, and that higher staff retention rates means less spent on recruitment and training. 

Recognition for staff

Staff want to be rewarded financially, but recognition from managers and colleagues for good work can be just as important. 

In addition to the 'Desk of epic glory' there's a monthly parade to recognise employee 'heroes' and a Zollar Store, where staff can redeem zollars earned by achieving work-related goals. 

Customer retention lessons

Size information

Shoes can be tricky to buy online. Since you can't try them on, it's hard to know exactly whether they'll fit when the package arrives. 

To avoid this, Zappos provides as much information about the fit of shoes as possible.

In addition to this survey summary, there's lots of related information among the reviews. You can't be 100% certain, but increasing the likelihood of finding the right fit makes for happy customers. 

Easy returns

And, if shoes don't fit, reassuring customers that they can return them easily is the next best step. 

More importantly perhaps, returns are free so customers don't incur any costs if shoes just don't fit. 

According to Craig Adkins of Zappos:

Our best customers have the highest returns rates, but they are also the ones that spend the most money with us and are our most profitable customers. Zappos' modus operandi is not to give its purchasers the cheapest footwear on the block, but to give them the best service: hence, a 365-day returns policy, and free two-way shipping.

The personal touch

This is a great example, in which the employee has gone the extra mile to ensure the customer is happy. She didn't need to do this, but the result is an even more happy customer, and one that will be a brand advocate. 

It also leads to lots of positive stories online, which further reinforce the brand image. 

Getting the last mile right

This is vitally important, as delivery issues are guaranteed to deter repeat purchases, but Zappos focuses on getting the last mile right. 

In a nutshell, it's about under-promising and over-delivering. While Zappos promises delivery within five business days, the majority of orders are shipped overnight. 

Looking at the right customer service metrics

In the past, I've worked at call centres where team leaders and management spent more time worrying about service levels and call metrics rather than whether or not customers actually received good service, which is what really matters. 

In fact, staff were often told to manually note down customer details for a later callback rather than actually dealing with the problem there and then. That may mean targets are met, but it does nothing at all for the customer. 

Instead, Zappos focuses on metrics which measure whether the customer's problem has been dealt with, and whether agents have made a connection with the caller.  

This is better for customers and staff alike. 

A focus on customer service

Providing excellent customer service is central to the company culture, with the aim to 'deliver WOW through service'. 

Good customer service means happy customers who are more likely to buy again, and to become advocates. It's a great marketing strategy when you get it right. 

 

Our Festival of Marketing event in November is a two day celebration of the modern marketing industry, featuring speakers from brands including LEGO, Tesco, Barclays, FT.com and more.