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As sellers we often work in a haphazard manner.

We dart in and out of potential sales opportunities.

We drop everything looking for that next, big opportunity.

We multitask and say we’re going to reach more people than we do.

We often come up short, leaving at the end of the day or end of the week feeling dejected.

It’s a vicious cycle – but it doesn’t have to be this way. With just two things in place, you can change from negative “never enough” feeling  to one of accomplishment.

First, before we talk about those two things, think about brushing and flossing your teeth. Does a day (or half-day, or meal, for some of you) go by without brushing your teeth? Many people floss twice a day – others once. You know what happens if you don’t, and it is a pretty safe bet that those reading this blog are good tooth brushers and flossers.  You have a methodology  (how you go about it) of brushing and flossing and you have a process (what steps you take on a regular basis).

I know this sounds so basic, yet many sellers do NOT have a regular routine or plan on how you go about researching prospects and also most sellers don’t have a no-fail way of on-going follow-up for those not ready to buy. Why are we so inconsistent with this?

At the very minimum, you need to put these in place for better results -

• A regular process to go about finding new prospective buyers that fit your target buyer profile.  This includes regular times blocked out in your calendar,  and a plan for the tools that you use with some metrics to know how successful you are
• A regular system for connections you make with potential buyers who are not ready now to buy but are going to buy in the near future so that you can stay present in their mind through insightful follow-up, educational follow-up, and a genuine interest in helping them succeed.

How Sellers Do Follow-up Wrong

Many sellers have too many ways to capture information and it is not together in one safe repository (that’s a container!) If you use your CRM for all of your follow-up emails and social monitoring, that is a great start. But what about those one or two Excel spreadsheets with other information, or voice mail messages that don’t get transcribed?

Do you have future buyer information all in one place?

If so, tell us about it on this blog – we want to share your success secrets for finding potential buyers on an ongoing basis, and nurturing those relationships. We will continue to share tools, stories, and ideas that help with this important area of staying organized and not losing potential future opportunities.

A final note about feeling bad at the end of the day or week that you didn’t get enough done – you can CHANGE that feeling by setting 3 big goals to accomplish daily which means 15 by the end of the week. Or 3 that end up taking 5 days to accomplish. Either way, measure this success and leave your desk feeling good about your efforts. It will change how you sell.

Lori Richardson is recognized on Forbes as one of the “Top 30 Social Sales Influencers” worldwide. Lori speaks, writes, trains, and consults with inside sales teams in mid-sized companies. Subscribe to the award-winning blog and the “Sales Ideas In A Minute” newsletter for sales strategies, tactics, and tips in selling. Increase Opportunities. Expand Your Pipeline. Close More Deals.

email lori@scoremoresales.com | My LinkedIn Profile | twitter | Visit us on google+

The post Have a Sales Routine for More Success appeared first on Score More Sales.

Above: Brian Rothenberg, senior director of marketing for user growth at Eventbrite, speaks at VentureBeat's 2014 GrowthBeat conference in San Francisco on Aug. 5.

Image Credit: Michael O'Donnell/VentureBeat

SAN FRANCISCO — Like other technology companies, event-organizing player Eventbrite wants to bring in more revenue. But it’s no longer just waiting idly for people to start inviting people to events and thereby grab money through fees. Eventbrite has stumbled across a genuinely important correlation.

The secret is this: People who attend events also organize events. So the company is trying hard to get ticket buyers to understand that they can — and, of course, should — throw events on Eventbrite.

For instance, the company has directed its analytics team to watch for people’s patterns and trends when it comes to buying tickets. One observation: Once a person attends one event, they could very well attend another.

“That piece of data helped us use better targeted trigger emails once a person has attended two or more events,” Brian Rothenberg, senior director of marketing for user growth at Eventbrite, said at VentureBeat’s 2014 GrowthBeat conference.

Whatever the company is doing on the marketing side, it seems to be paying off. For years the company has been a candidate for an initial public offering, and it now boasts a valuation over $1 billion.

The connection between event attendance and event organizing has directed plenty of the company’s efforts to design the site. For instance, on Eventbrite’s order confirmation page, there’s “a very large call to action,” Rothenberg said, that can tell you if five of a person’s friends use the site to organize events. That data comes from Facebook. Altogether, the feature can “dramatically increase conversation rates.”

Not that the site has been static all this time. “My team on marketing side ran 127 A/B tests” to see what leads to conversions,” Rothenberg said.

And knowing what it knows, Eventbrite is experimenting with old-fashioned ways to reach out to people.

“We’re even testing outbound phone calls to people,” he said. “When behavior deviates from past behavior, we [can] reach out to them.”

For a company as mature as Eventbrite, then, it’s less about acquiring lots of new users and more about making the most of current ones. And to do that well, it’s critical to know what leads to the best results.

Asked to give one piece of advice, Rothenerg directed the audience to have a “ruthless focus on what’s important.”

We believe that anyone can be an event organizer. That’s why we’ve created tools that make it easy to sell tickets to all kinds of events — whether it’s a photography class or a sold-out concert, an inspiring conference or an a... read more »

Brian Rothenberg leads the Growth Marketing team at Eventbrite where he runs all user acquisition and retention programs globally to help accelerate Eventbrite’s rapid growth. Brian previously worked as TaskRabbit’s Co-Head of Mar... read more »

Last year, I published an article titled Why B2B Branding Still Matters. As the title of the artucke suggests, I argued that branding is still important for most B2B companies. In a book published earlier this year, Itamar Simonson and Emanuel Rosen provide a different and provocative take on the value of brands and brand building. Given the importance of this topic, I think it’s worthwhile to look at both sides of the issue.

Brands Still Matter

Recent research by both CEB and McKinsey & Company provides strong evidence that branding remains critical to the success of B2B companies and that brand building is therefore still an essential marketing function.

In a 2013 study (From Promotion to Emotion), CEB looked at the impact of a strong brand on various buying behaviors. CEB compared the behavior of high brand connection customers – those who gave brands high scores for trust, image, and industry leadership – with the behavior of no brand connection customers. The CEB study found that high brand connection customers were:

• 5 times more likely to give consideration to a brand
• 13 times more likely to purchase from a brand
• 30 times more likely to be willing to pay a premium for a brand’s products or services

You’ve all heard the phrase ‘preaching to the choir’ and it’s often a metaphor used to discourage spending money on the already converted. On the surface, it makes a lot of sense (especially from a B2B marketing standpoint). Sales lead generation can be costly and you don’t want to invest any more of it than you already have to.

But what if you actually do have to? Are you certain that once a prospect’s been converted to buy your solution, they’re going to stay converted?

It’s true that more complex issues regarding customer data can also be blamed for why B2B organizations don’t market to their own customers. That doesn’t mean you can’t have simpler and more obvious reasons for why they hesitate. One being that decreasing satisfaction is a reality that many B2B marketers acknowledge but don’t entirely face. They’d rather stick their hopes into the next big deal, the next big sale.

But if the 80/20 adage is true, maybe preaching to the choir might be the better idea after all. If it’s more expensive to acquire new customers, it logically follows that repeat buyers can generate more sales than they do in the long run.

Ironically, maybe this is why B2B marketers don’t see the need to keep marketing to them. It’s easy to see how generating a repeat sale doesn’t require too much effort. The real tragedy though is that it only looks that way at first glance. It only pulls more wool over your eyes, keeping you from considering the idea that your customers will lose interest. Here are several good reasons why they might:

• They’re looking for something new – One way or another, your prospects will be looking for something new. They might want a cheaper solution. They could take interest in another vendor. They might just simply grow dissatisfied. But in all cases, know that your prospects want something new.

• Solutions break, eventually – Why would you fix something that isn’t broken? Easy, because it might just break eventually. This does not mean undermine your current offerings though. It simply means you need to brace yourself when problems now start cropping up.

• You’re set to a standard – Finally, the reason why customers first came to you was because offered something that was different than what they had. Whether it was a way out of a problem or a new way to solve it, you gave them that. That means you’re held to that standard. They don’t you to juts solve one thing for one time. They want you to keep thinking ahead. That means staying in touch and marketing to them.

Think of it like planting a seed. You might think it might grow on its own but it’s still better to water it, pull the weeds, and essentially helping it grow. Sure you can take one or two days off of tending it but that’s a far cry from letting it wither and die.

Would you like to know which marketing content to deliver to whom and exactly when? Here’s how to stop guessing about your buyer persona and know.

Picture a man and woman who have been dating for several years. The relationship and conversations have been very one-sided. The man always talks about himself and doesn’t show much interest in the woman.

That could be an analogy for how marketers have communicated with their prospects for oh, about the last 50 years. Interruptive, one-way communication that might get attention but isn’t that useful or interesting for the prospect.

While that approach has sadly not stopped for a lot of marketers, prospective customers have some relief. Thanks to technology they can avoid more and more unwanted, interruptive marketing messages. And yet, many marketers still don’t grasp what’s going on.

This 2007 video from Microsoft brilliantly portrays this changing relationship.

Nowadays, prospective customers don’t have to put up with that one-way communication. Also, customers now prefer to do their own research before making a major purchase.

So how does a marketer appeal to their prospective customers if they can’t interrupt them with traditional methods like advertising, cold calling, direct mail and email spam?

With content. Useful, helpful and relevant content.

Easier said than done. A lot of companies understand that they need to create content for their prospective customers, but they still can’t resist the urge to talk about themselves. I call it “weeing” all over themselves. We this. We that. Our product this. Our people that. (You know who they are.)

Back to being useful, helpful and relevant. Step 1: stop talking about yourself like the guy in that video. Step 2: focus on your buyers.

This is why and how buyer personas have become so important in modern B2B marketing.

In Adele Revella’s “The Buyer Persona Manifesto,” she offers this definition of a buyer persona:

“It’s an archetype, a composite picture of the real people who buy, or might buy, products like the ones you sell.”

Buyer personas are like an avatar crafted from direct interviews with as many buyers as possible. And from their behavior observed at conferences, social media, etc.

Other characters who influence the buyer’s decision-making process will emerge from this research: procurement people, bosses, rivals, etc.

It’s important to remember that this buyer persona is not necessarily your customer. The development of the persona helps you discern the difference between who you THINK your customer is versus who you real customer is. Flowing from that is a wealth of strategic insights about not only who your customer is, but also how to talk to them.

“So instead of talking at the buyer, blurting out a “me-me-me” narrative with absolutely no consideration of his real concerns, marketers can get straight to the heart of the matter.”

However, when researching your buyer personas, it’s easy to become distracted by interesting but irrelevant facts about your buyers (e.g. hobbies, favorite TV shows, music preferences, etc.)

To help separate the signal from the noise of buyer persona research, Revella recommends focusing on “The Five Rings of Insight™.” These are the five things that will determine if you have buyer personas that will positively impact your content creation, lead generation and sales.

1. Priority Initiatives – “What causes certain buyers to invest in a solution like yours, and how are they different from buyers who remain attached to the status quo?” What three to five problems or objectives does your buyer persona dedicate time, budget and political capital? It’s not about you or your product.
2. Success Factors – “What operational or personal results does your buyer persona expect from purchasing this solution?” To understand the buyer’s approach to a Priority Initiative, identify what tangible or intangible rewards he or she associates with success.
3. Perceived Barriers – “What concerns cause your buyer to believe that your solution or company is not their best option?” What could prompt the buyer to question whether your company or solution is capable of achieving his or her Success Factors?
4. The Buyer’s Journey – “…reveals the behind-the-scenes story at each phase of the evaluation.” What process does this persona follow in researching and selecting a solution that can overcome the Perceived Barriers and achieve the Success Factors?
5. Decision Criteria – “Which aspects of the competing offerings do your buyers perceive as most critical, and what do they expect from each one?” What aspects of each product will the buyer assess in evaluating the alternative solutions available?

Armed with these five insights, Revella explains that your buyer personas will “reveal the buying decision you need to influence – telling how when and why the buyer engages to choose you or a competitor, or to stick with the status quo.”

To download an ebook on “The Five Rings of Insight™” as well as other helpful information from the Buyer Persona Institute, click here.

photo credit: evaingesl via photopin cc // ring graphic: Buyer Persona Institute

Occasionally salespeople will sign up for the challenge of trying to sell me something. This doesn’t always end well, but is usually entertaining.

I’ve had a few recent experiences with SaaS software providers trying to sell to me and I found myself thinking about John Kaplan and his comments around Seller Deficit Disorder. (My colleague Brian Walsh did a great job of breaking down the Sales Leader Deficit Disorder in this post.) This common “ailment” encompasses two of the biggest complaints buyers have about sellers:

1. You don’t understand my business.
2. You don’t listen.

My recent experiences were at different stages of the buying process, which led me to realize that Seller Deficit Disorder evolves during the sales process. As buyers make their decisions, their perspective on these two complaints actually changes, depending on where they are in the buying process.

The typical progression for a buyer in their buying process is relatively simple:

1. What are my Needs?
2. What are my Choices?
3. How do I mitigate Risk before buying?
4. How do I ensure Success after buying?

When you consider the buying process, Seller Deficit Disorder progresses. It’s no longer simply, you don’t understand my business and you don’t listen. See the graphic below:

What drove me to think about Seller Deficit Disorder when I was being sold to? I received the following email, after I downloaded a whitepaper that was “needs-focused”:

I noticed you were on our website. Is there something specific you were looking for? Perhaps we can chat tomorrow at _____ to discuss your interest in ______

The lack of any reference to what Force Management does makes me assume the seller didn’t review our website or my LinkedIn profile. The follow-up email also didn’t address the “need” that prompted me to download the white paper in the first place. By tailoring even just one sentence, I wouldn’t be saying to myself that ‘he doesn’t understand our challenges.’

A wise seller will keep Seller Deficit Disorder in mind when communicating with customers and prospects throughout the entire buying process. A value-based selling approach focused on effective discovery, required capabilities and positive business outcomes is the ideal remedy to address this disorder.

What actions have you taken in your sales efforts to overcome buyer preconceptions?

Please Comment and Share.

Do you attempt to follow up with prospective buyers because they haven’t contacted you when you thought they should? Do you know what is stopping them from contacting you? Or where they are along their decision path – their steps from idea to consensus, from change to choice, that buyers must address – while we sit and wait, hoping they’ll close?

With a focus on understanding need and placing solutions, you may have no idea what stage they are at: did you originally connect when they were first considering possibly fixing something? Or when they were comparing your solution to an internal workaround or their favorite vendor? Were they just seeking information to share at a planning session? I bet you don’t have all the data on this.

BUYERS DON’T WANT US EVEN WHEN THEY NEED OUR SOLUTION

We tend to think buyers need our solution, but that’s only a part of the issue. They don’t really want to buy anything, merely to solve a problem. And they always start out by trying to find a way to fix the problem themselves (When we think they are stalling, this is what’s going on that we don’t see.); it’s only when they realize that a workaround isn’t sufficient, or their internal folks can’t resolve the problem, or their regular vendors aren’t around, or or or… are they willing to buy.

But they have work to do before they are ready – and cannot not buy, regardless of how great a fit your solution is with their need, until these steps are completed (and all sizes/types of solutions require some form of these):

1.They must assemble anyone who will touch the final solution, (not obvious)
2. get buy in and consensus from both decision makers and influencers, (not easy)
3. manage any change a solution will bring. (complicated, even with a small sale).

Price is not the issue. Competition with other providers is not the problem. The problem is how they will manage the internal change your solution incurs (separate from the benefits of your solution). Read my article on the complete list of steps buyers must take before they can buy.

If you want to facilitate their decision making, and your prospect is aware they need your solution and they seem to be stalling, call with these questions:

• What would you and your decision team need to address to manage the types of change that would be required by purchasing our solution?
• How will you and the decision team know that an external solution might be more effective and efficient than an internal workaround?

I’ve developed Buying Facilitation® to use in conjunction with the sales model to give you the tools to help buyers manage the necessary steps to be ready to buy your solution. Use your follow up contact to help them figure out how to resolve any of these issues that might cause them to be stuck. Your solution is perfect for them; they just need help getting their ducks in a row so they can give you the order.

____________

See my new Entrepreneur Programs: Getting Funded; Creating a Selling Machine; Marketing to Buying Decisions

____________

Sharon Drew Morgen is the NYTimes Business Bestselling author of Selling with Integrity and 7 books how buyers buy. She is the developer of Buying Facilitation® a decision facilitation model used with sales to help buyers facilitate pre-sales buying decision issues. She is a sales visionary who coined the terms Helping Buyers Buy, Buy Cycle, Buying Decision Patterns, Buy Path in 1985, and has been working with sales/marketing for 30 years to influence buying decisions.

More recently, Morgen is the author of What? Did You Really Say What I Think I Heard? in which she has coded how we can hear others without bias or misunderstanding, and why there is a gap between what’s said and what’s heard. She is a trainer, consultant, speaker, and inventor, interested in integrity in all business communication. Her learning tools can be purchased: www.didihearyou.com. She can be reached at sharondrew@sharondrewmorgen.com 512 771 1117 www.didihearyou.com;
www.sharondrewmorgen.com

Using Follow Up Effectively is a post from: SharonDrewMorgen.com

MOSCOW – Last week, tens of thousands of Russians sunning themselves on Italian beaches and Turkish resorts received an unpleasant surprise: their tour companies had gone bust, stranding them and forcing them to pay double for a ticket to get home.

The bankruptcy is the fifth among major Russian tour companies in less than two months — a sign that cracks are appearing in Russia’s economy after a months-long conflict in eastern Ukraine and an escalating stand-off with the West.

It’s not just sanctioned Russian billionaires who are feeling the pinch now — uncertainty over the future has caused the currency to drop, hurting the average Russian’s ability to travel abroad and buy imported goods. And as new sanctions by the U.S. and the European Union start to bite, companies worry about a looming recession and a future without access to the West’s massive financial markets.

“The more tense the geopolitical situation, the more expensive (foreign) currency will be,” said Konstantin Sonin, an economist at Moscow’s Higher School of Economics. “And with sanctions, it becomes harder for financial institutions to give credit, and there will be fewer business projects and fewer goods being produced. Income and salaries drop and consumption doesn’t increase.”

The U.S. and the EU have accused Russia, which annexed Ukraine’s Crimean Peninsula in March, of fomenting tensions in eastern Ukraine by supplying arms and expertise to a pro-Moscow insurgency, and have imposed asset freezes and loan bans on a score of individuals and companies.

Tour operators, some of whom are among the nation’s oldest, say they have experienced an unprecedented slump in demand, which they blame on the bad political climate and the depreciation of the ruble, which has lost up to 10 per cent against the dollar since January. The closure of one tour operator alone, Labirint, has left over 20,000 people abroad without a return ticket and affected another 40,000 who had already bought travel packages, tourism officials said.

The low-cost airline Dobrolyot, which was sanctioned by the EU because it services the Black Sea region of Crimea annexed by Russia, has temporarily cancelled all flights.

Companies also blamed the collapse in tourism on Moscow’s request that members of the security service, interior ministry, and military report where they travel to. The move, which authorities justified as an attempt to keep government employees out of any country that has an extradition agreement with the U.S., has discouraged trips abroad among the several million people who work in those sectors.

Until the recent troubles in Russia’s budget tourism industry, the direct casualties of Western sanctions had been few and far between — and rich. Gennady Timchenko, an oligarch with an estimated fortune of $14.2 billion who as a longtime friend of President Vladimir Putin was hit with U.S. sanctions, said Sunday he could no longer fly his private jet because it was serviced by American company Gulfstream. Though other companies could in theory service the plane, he told Russian news agency ITAR TASS they would not have the right replacement parts for maintenance.

The collapse of major tourism companies could be the first sign that Russia, which is reeling from months of market volatility an estimated withdrawal by investors of $75 billion in funds, could be at the start of a lengthy recession. In July, the International Monetary Fund slashed its forecast for 2014 from 1.3 per cent to 0.2 per cent.

Any attempt by Moscow to fighting back against the sanctions is also likely to come at a high cost to Russian consumers and investors. Russia has banned a range of fruit and vegetable imports from Poland, in what Polish government officials said was retaliation for its support of the latest round of EU sanctions.

Shares in Russia’s state airliner, Aeroflot, were trading down almost 6 per cent Tuesday after leading business daily Vedomosti cited anonymous government officials as saying they were considering closing the airspace over Siberia to European flights heading to Asia. The move, allegedly in retaliation for the EU sanctions on Dobrolyot, would deprive Aeroflot of payments it receives from European airlines for the right to use Russian airspace.

The government had no comment on the report, but Putin said Tuesday he had ordered officials to develop measures in response to Western sanctions. He did not elaborate.

Though the Russian government is in relatively good shape financially, with little public debt, its budget will be strained this year as revenue drops from state-owned companies and new burdens of infrastructure and pensions come to bear in Crimea. On Tuesday, the government said it would likely use money in contributions to employees’ privately-controlled pension funds to smooth over holes in the budget for the second year running. A report in Vedomosti estimated that amount at 300 billion rubles ($8.3 billion).

While Western officials say the main purpose of sanctions is to target the country’s elite, so far businessmen close to Putin have shown little public intention of backing down and have only ramped up hawkish, anti-Western rhetoric in response to the measures. During his interview with ITAR TASS, Timchenko, who is on the US sanctions list but has a Finnish passport and therefore is not on the equivalent EU list, bragged that he was ready to spend more time in his homeland and expand his growing Russian and Soviet art collection.

“In any situation, Vladimir Vladimirovich (Putin) is guided by the interests of Russia,” Timchenko said. “There can be no compromise here, and it doesn’t even come into our heads to argue on the subject.”

The post As cracks appear in Russian economy, collapse of tour operators leaves thousands stranded appeared first on Canadian Business.

At your national sales meeting two years ago, your channel partners started bringing up the topic of mobility with you.

Last year, they showed you an example of a competitor’s sales enablement app.

This year, they cornered you at the opening night dinner and asked how long until we get ours?!

You know how important it is to support your channel partners and keep them happy.

So you ask yourself, “Just how much do channel partner sales enablement apps cost?”

The short answer simply is it depends.

Think of a channel partner sales enablement app like a boat.

Remember the famous boat scene from the movie Caddyshack? (Here’s the video link)

Do you want people to notice you in a boat like Judge Smails’ skipjack, or Al Czervik’s sporty double decker party boat?

Sometimes all you need is a skipjack to cruise the lake, but you decide to go big like Al Czervik because… well, it’s totally cool (and it has that awesome horn)!

There has to be balance between what your channel partners need and what it will take for their customers to notice your products.

So, when it comes to giving a sales enablement app to your channel partners—consider what you’re willing to bet on your corporate image. You may think your dealers need a pontoon overflowing with everything you can throw at them, but they will probably want to hit the water in something that makes them look awesome.

That’s because they will be using this app:

• Every time they meet with their customers
• Every time they go to trade shows
• Every time they go to a site for service 

We see manufacturers very confused when it comes to deploying apps that can reach their channel partners, which results in paralysis back into the status quo of mailing catalogs and boxes of brochures.

You’re still mailing print materials right now…aren’t you?

To help you avoid this paralysis, let’s look at some key variables that affect the cost of every sales enablement app and some that are specific to channel partners:

• The number of dealer reps (100 reps or 10,000 reps?)
• The sophistication of the manufacturers product mix (1000′s of SKUs or a handful of large complex machines?)
• The image the app portrays (Whether the sales enablement app needs to have your branding and corporate image or your dealers demand their own branding)
• The manufacturers’ connection with channel reps (Can you talk to them directly or is there a barrier?)
• The amount of effort the manufacturer has to put in update digital sales collateral in the app (PDFs, videos, PowerPoint product presentations, etc.)
• OS upgrades (Think about your smart phone. Often you must update its operating systems. Same goes for sales enablement apps.)
• Feature upgrades and additions. Inevitably, your channel partners will ask for new and different features. Those features (and what it takes to code them) will surely drive the cost up.

So, the first key is to understand what your channel partners need and will allow.

Then, take that set of parameters to determine the best sales enablement app to match those needs.

After you have that information, we can tell you exactly how much an sales enablement app costs to support them.

Let’s look at some potential options for channel partner apps and some ballpark costs. Think back to the skipjack vs. the party boat.

Simple Web-Based File Sharing App

- Designed for manufacturers just getting started. If you want to test out a sales enablement app with a few channel reps, this is your ticket.

These web-based file sharing apps are limited by their inability to access files without Internet connection.

Examples might include Dropbox, Box, your web-based file sharing system and the manufacturer’s website.

Pricing - It can range from free to $5,000 per year, depending on need. Don’t forget your cost associated with supporting the updating of materials, though.

Positives – Inexpensive, fast to try, common apps and websites are familiar to dealers already.

Negatives – Manufacturers’ files are unavailable without Internet, no branding, no tracking to see who’s using it, and no warm fuzzy feeling from dealers that you bought them a cool new tool.

Complex Sales Enablement Apps

- Designed as fully functioning sales tools. Complex apps are fully equipped for manufacturers with world-wide dealer networks that may range from 100′s to 1000′s.

These apps are large, scalable, and flexible to support different sales channels and multiple languages.

Everything is branded, private and secure to meet high corporate standards.

Pricing - $10,000 to $100,000 per year depending on all the bells and whistles.

Positives – Everything is available offline, without the need to Internet access. These apps make updating products and materials simple, and help make the manufacturer look technologically ahead of the curve.

Service and support are present to help manufacturers distribute materials and the app. They can be branded for both channel partners and/or the manufacturer. Made to handle both 1000′s of SKUs and complex file types. Can be deployed via MDM or in the AppStore.

Negatives - Well, pricing and costs.

So, what do channel partner sales enablement apps cost?

The answer is it depends on which “boat” is the best fit for your dealer team.

Stop pitching and start engaging: This is the battle cry for the modern sales rep.

Sales reps lugging around briefcases of brochures and one-sheeters are boring their customers and prospects to sleep with a lack of engagement and effectiveness.

A modern sales rep is cashing in their commission check after closing deals from leveraging enterprise mobility and their mobile sales tool.

The rigors of today’s fast paced, high tech, mobile business marketplace just put the odds in favor of a modern sales rep over a non-conformist sales rep holding on to their paper handouts and leaving their iPad at the office.

Mobile technology is simply becoming a leading driver of sales success.

Successful sales reps need instant access to product information, digital collateral and account information−anywhere at anytime.

That gives the advantage to the modern sales rep.

We are here to tell you there is hope out there for those striving to become a modern sales rep.

And for those not striving but being pushed into the modern age, you need to embrace this. It could save your career.

Integrate the tablet into your sales process

Whether your company uses iPad, Android, Windows or has some other tablet deployed, you need to start using your tablet in front of customers.

We mean today.

The tablet gives power to the modern sales rep, and here are four ways how:

1. Data on-demand − All of your digital collateral, CRM, product and pricing information, etc.
2. Productivity − More time selling rather than driving back to the office to look up account information
3. Showing vs. telling − Forget trying to explain how a product works when you can show them a video of the product in action
4. Virtual sales calls − Go over information in real time by sharing your tablet screen with customers over the Internet

While tablet and sales tool adoption can take time, integrating a tablet into your sales process will eventually lead to achieving your sales objectives.

Modern sales rep best practices

Remember those Holiday Inn Express commercials where guests become experts at different things overnight?

Well just using your tablet in the field doesn’t make you a modern sales rep.

In today’s marketplace, change is constant.

The modern sales rep needs to stay sharp because of changing technology, sales methodology, or both. How can you stay sharp using your tablet in the field?

1. Listening − The best asset to being a modern sales rep is listening to other modern sales reps. Learn what tablet tactics have worked for them. A great source would be champion users within your company who are already seeing selling success from using their tablet and sales tool.
2. Joining the conversation − Don’t be bashful just because you are new to this and want to become a modern sales rep. Ask questions that will make you more informed. You can’t learn anything without asking sales enabling questions. LinkedIn groups like this one are a great way to learn more and join the conversation.
3. Becoming a thought leader − After listening and joining the conversation, start your own conversations about your experiences as a modern sales rep. Share your thoughts with your fellow team members, sales enablement groups, anyone willing to learn how to become a modern sales rep. Giving back to the process is what will make all modern sales reps stronger.

Do you have what it takes?

Of course you do, but sometimes change is difficult.

Hand writing to typewriting to desktop typing to tablet tapping… this didn’t happen overnight.

Technology has evolved, and so has the sales process along with it.

So long as customers want to be sold with instant information and digital collateral, the modern sales rep needs to leverage the tablet to their advantage.

If you don’t take the first step to becoming a modern sales rep, your customers will go find someone else to buy from!

Teamwork. Whether in meetings or retreats, there’s no doubt you’ve heard these words repeatedly preached by senior executives. However, few firms actually focus on alignment where it counts most: linking big-picture strategy with the nitty-gritty of customer acquisition and retention in sales efforts.

Poor alignment of sales and strategy incurs both direct and opportunity costs, putting your company at a severe disadvantage. As proven by income statements, selling is by far the most expensive part of implementation for firms. Companies in the United States invest in their sales forces three times more than consumer advertising, 20 times more than online media, and 100 times more than social media. Despite this spending on sales, 56 percent of senior executives agree their biggest challenge is ensuring that day-to-day decisions are in line with strategy and allocating resources in a way that supports strategy.

Selling is also increasing as a portion of costs. In the first decade of the 21^st century, the average S&P 500 company reduced its cost of goods sold by about 250 basis points, primarily through continuous improvement in production efficiencies and back-office functions. But SG&A (Selling, General and Administrative Expenses) as a percentage of revenue has not declined. Winning in business is ultimately measured by relative advantage. Given these numbers, where would you – and should you – look next for a competitive edge? As referenced in Aligning Strategy and Sales: The Choices, Systems and Behaviors That Drive Effective Selling (Harvard Business Review Press), a good starting point is the “3Ps” of your organization:

• Priorities: Strategy is about choice, especially choosing which customers to focus on – and not all customers are created equal. If you don’t choose, then over time either your competitors or your customers will choose for you. Neither group necessarily has your best interests at heart.

• People: Companies don’t execute strategy; people do — especially those people in the field who deal with customers. Yet many companies maintain their equipment better than they develop their people. In sales, you need disciplined hiring approaches linked to your strategy (not to a generic selling methodology or allegedly all-purpose assessment), focused training initiatives, and market-right organizing principles that help people broaden their skills even as markets and sales tasks change. Almost all serious research underscores these fundamentals and debunks the many glib prescriptions about talent acquisition. There are practical ways to do this. For example, HubSpot and other firms now use data to track sales managers’ assessment criteria during interviews and the performance of those who are hired. This increases accountability as well as capability in recruitment.

• Process: Alignment is a process, not a one-shot deal at an off-site or periodic “customer focus” initiative. It starts with a coherent strategy. And it also requires ongoing management of what I call the Strategy –> Sales Performance Cycle: 1) setting performance expectations and behaviors; 2) creating plans that trigger actions needed to achieve performance expectations; 3) identifying relevant metrics for monitoring our progress (or not) towards goals; and finally, 4) rewarding, coaching, and changing behaviors as the market changes. Why? Because it’s not the responsibility of the external world to be kind to your strategy. It’s your responsibility to understand the market today – not yesterday – and adapt.

Business is a performance art, whereby value is measured by actuals in the field, not by strategic intent. If your strategy is failing, one or more of these 3Ps may be the culprit. Fixing them will improve selling and strategy.

While we may like to believe that employees work for the love of it, the reality is that unless you have a lotto winner on staff, most of your employees will need to receive payment for their work.

The first step in any remuneration review is establishing a fair day’s pay for a fair day’s work. The next step involves developing a structure that promotes and rewards achievement that exceeds expectations. The final step is to communicate your strategy to your team so they know what they are working towards and how their performance and contribution will be measured.

Remuneration reviews should take into account four key factors:

• Organisational goals
• Individual goals
• External environment
• Internal relativities

Your organisational goals, vision and values will influence your remuneration strategy and where you position your business in the remuneration market – consider the different employee value propositions of Air New Zealand and Jetstar. Performance based pay is a popular remuneration strategy that promotes the delivery of organisational goals which is why many businesses link their performance management system with their remuneration review. One proviso is the need to clearly define what constitutes good performance and to set targets so that employees know what is expected of them to achieve the desired results for the business and themselves.

Any remuneration strategy has to serve double duty – rewarding performance retrospectively while at the same time acting as a motivator for future performance. As your employees’ individual needs and goals will invariably differ, your remuneration strategy will need to take into account what motivates your employees and the simplest way to uncover this information is to ask them!

By reviewing your remuneration structure regularly and proactively benchmarking against external market trends you insulate your business from nasty surprises when it comes time to recruit replacements in your team and allows you to have better control over your wage and salary costs. Your employees will also be aware that you take an active interest in market conditions and appreciate that their remuneration package remains competitive – a simple way to attract and retain good employees and reduce staff turnover.

Remuneration trends are closely linked to general economic trends therefore, regular external benchmarking also keeps you well informed and prepared for any labour market changes and allows you to adapt and update your workforce plan accordingly.

Your remuneration review will also include an inward focus and examination of internal relativities among employees to ensure that your pay rates are fair for all roles across your business.

An annual review cycle is common and if timed just after your financial performance reports are completed (April or June depending on your financial year-end cycle) you will also have access to company performance data which is critical to pay for performance strategies.

SPONSORED POST

This sponsored post is produced by Mick Hollison, CMO, InsideSales.com

There has been a lot of talk recently about accelerating sales through technology. In fact, hundreds of millions of investment dollars are flowing into companies making up the growing sales acceleration category.

This is all fine and dandy, but as a business leader, you want to know how all of this hype in SaaS-based predictive analytics and sales tools is translating into increased revenue. Here too, the proof is flowing in as companies using SaaS technology to accelerate sales are experiencing dramatic revenue increases.

DoubleDutch, a provider of mobile event apps, has indicated they have experienced a 200 percent increase in annual revenue since adopting SaaS-based sales acceleration technology provided by our company, InsideSales.com.

“It has had a phenomenal impact on our business,” said Russ Hearl, DoubleDutch vice president of worldwide sales development. “We’re having more conversations, more demos are being booked, more opportunities are being created, and we’re closing more deals.”

Sales Acceleration Technology Growing as a Category

Companies are spending billions of dollars in North America on sales acceleration technology designed to help salespeople contact leads, qualify prospects and close deals faster than ever before.

Based on data coming in from thousands of companies, businesses that implement sales acceleration tools can expect to:

• Increase revenue – anywhere from 37 percent to 200 percent in moderately short amounts of time.
• Boost contact rates – anywhere from 2X to 10X. Companies such as Act-On have reported a 2X boost in contact rates after the first day of implementation.
• Improve close rates: up to 34 percent. Citrix research indicates that video conferencing increases sales close rates by 34 percent.
• Expand deal sizes: CallidusCloud reports that companies that use technology for such functions as sales coaching and compensation achieve 181 percent larger average deal sizes.

Shift to Inside Sales Driving Need for SaaS Technology

According to Mike Moorman, senior leader in ZS Associates’ B2B sales and marketing practice, “B2B companies have been ramping up their inside sales investment.”

For example, “Astra Zeneca has replaced virtually all of its field sales force support for its mature brand Nexium with a 300-person inside sales team,” Moorman reports on the Harvard Business Review blog.

As high-growth companies build large inside sales teams, it is only natural for them to look to technology to help make the overall sales process as efficient and profitable as possible.

We are definitely at a crossroads. The new SaaS-based, technology-driven inside sales model is quickly becoming the standard way to conduct sales and marketing. It is a place where science and data work together to accelerate sales – and ultimately increase revenue – for businesses of all types and sizes.

Predictive analytics can enable marketers to target the best possible prospects with the most compelling offers with surgical accuracy. It lets salespeople know how and when to communicate with those prospects based on systems that leverage every imaginable variable that affects a customer’s decision to buy.

A lot more research needs to be done and it will, but it is quickly becoming apparent that venture-backed SaaS companies are fueling the new wave of sales for the 21^st century and beyond.

Sponsored posts are content that has been produced by a company that is either paying for the post or has a business relationship with VentureBeat, and they’re always clearly marked. The content of news stories produced by our editorial team is never influenced by advertisers or sponsors in any way. For more information, contact sales@venturebeat.com.

I think that we can all agree that not all leads are created equal. For this reason it is important to properly define what a qualified lead means for your business. This will allow you to take steps to not only improve the quantity of leads, but also the quality. Below are some quick tips that if implemented could really help to increase your return on investment from your paid search buy.

1. Agree On A Clear Definition Of What A Qualified Lead Means To Your Business.

This definition can be quite a bit different from company to company. In your line of business a qualified lead may be someone who submits a specific form on your website and provides a valid phone number and email address. They may also need to be located in a specific area. Phone calls could also be defined as leads. What makes them a qualified opportunity for your business? Perhaps the call needs to be 30 seconds or longer in duration.

If this definition varies based on time of day or day of week, this should be taken into consideration. An example could be phone calls that come in after business hours. Are they routed to an answering service? Are they directed to voicemail? Does your voicemail allow them to leave a message or does it tell them to call back during normal business hours? This can result in shorter calls from prospects that are good leads.

2. Use Targeted Keyword Lists That Are Not Too Broad.

Once you have identified what a qualified lead looks like, your paid search team can start implementing changes to better target the right prospects.

The keywords selected for your paid search campaign, as well as the match types, can greatly impact lead quality. For example if a qualified lead for your business needs to have good credit, you would not want to appear for searches specific to people with poor credit or no credit.

Targeted Keyword In This Example: Honda Financing Specials

Keyword To Avoid In This Example: Honda Financing After A Bankruptcy

3. Use Calls-To-Action That Steer Your Prospect To A Desired Action.

While this may seem like a no-brainer, you would be surprised at how often this is an issue.

If you are trying to drive phone calls from mobile devices, your ad copy specific to mobile devices should prompt for a call.

If you are trying to drive more price quote requests, the call to action should push a price quote. Remember that the call to action used on your landing page should match the paid search ad copy for the best results.

4. Location Targeting / Time Of Day Targeting / Day Of Week Targeting

Your paid search team has many targeting options available. Many of these targeting options can help fine tune your campaign to better focus on those searchers who are most likely to convert to a lead and/or a sale.

The top three targeting options for optimizations are location targeting, time of day targeting, and day of week targeting. Reports can be pulled to show what areas are most likely to convert for your business, as well as what times of day and/or days of week are the most profitable.

Bid adjustments can be made on any or all of these targeting options based on performance.

Google is continuously testing new ways to target the “right” prospect. For example, we are currently running some Demographics For Search betas that allow us to increase or decrease bids based on age or gender. This is a very powerful tool for those companies who know their ideal customer profile.

5. Collect The “Right” Information In Your Lead Forms.

Be sure to only require fields that you need for conversion. The more hurdles and form fields, the fewer the leads. The goal is to find the proper balance between the quality and quantity of leads. If you rule out too many potential buyers, your opportunity for growth can be severely diminished. However, you don’t want to waste money on leads from areas that do not convert or for leads with invalid contact information.

For those fields that you do need to collect, make sure that your web forms are setup to require necessary fields (i.e. phone number, email address, etc.). Make sure that your code is checking for proper formatting before form submission is allowed. For example, you will want all 10 digits of a phone number, email address format should follow email@address.com , etc.

You can even take it a step further to block phone numbers starting with 3 of the same digits (555, 444), or area codes entered that are not valid area codes in the continental United States. This can easily be done with reference tables or lookups.

6. Provide The Tools That Your Paid Search Team Needs To Make Good Decisions.

Make sure that your paid search team is fully aware of your business objectives and that they have access to sales data and all relevant CRM data. Make sure that you have an open line of communication between your sales team, your management team, your other marketing departments, and your paid search team. Feedback and proper tracking are critical to your success.

7. Call And Lead Audits – Refine PPC Strategy And Sales Approach Based On Findings.

Periodically listen to call samples to see if there are any trends that need to be addressed. This can either be with lead quality, or with the sales process itself. As important as it is to pre-qualify your PPC leads, it is just as important to make the most out of each and every opportunity received. Both pieces of the equation are necessary for the best results.

Everyone knows the old saying – the more email subscribers you have, the better you feel, so get folks to signup, and give them a good deal! What, you’ve never heard that one before? Something about beans? Whatever, you’re crazy.

Email newsletter subscribers are valuable soft leads that, with the right amount of gentle cajoling, could end up one day as full-fledged customers or clients. That’s why today, we’re bringing you 27 genius (if I do say so myself) strategies to boost newsletter subscribers! Can you sense the impending full inbox? I sure can! Here we go.

Blowout the incentives. One DMA report shows that 60% of users sign up for an email newsletter to receive offers and sales. So push it – push it good. Here are some incentives that might attract signups:

• Sign up now for PuppyParcel and get an adorable puppy delivered to your doorstep each week. Soon you’ll be swimming in unconditional love! And probably some poo.

Or, more realistically:

• Sign up and get cutting-edge marketing insights delivered to your inbox.
• Subscribe to our dining newsletter – we’ll dish out exclusive deals and coupons for local restaurants.

Be likeable. The same DMCA report from above also claims that 40% of respondents sign up for your newsletter because they like your brand. Put on a smile and charm the pants off of your visitors!

Embed a data capture form instead of a link to a signup page. A link to your signup page means clicking away from the main site, inputting personal info, and confirming. These multiple steps add up, as every extra click decreases your chance of fresh signups. Instead, make it as easy as possible and put the data capture form right on your page, be it in a sidebar, header, or footer.

A email sign up in the footer from JCrew

Run a contest, giveaway, or sweepstakes. Ask for email signups within your contest entry form.

Keep your email newsletter signup form short. Really short. Like maybe just ask for the email address.

Add a newsletter signup option to the comment box. Many commenting sections require that users input their email address in order to add a comment (done mainly to prevent spam). Since they’re already adding their email, why not add a “signup for our newsletter” checkbox alongside it? Any place where users are already inserting their email address is a great opportunity to add a subscriber checkbox to opt in to your email list.

Consider signup form placement. There are a few main spots most marketers choose to place their newsletter signup forms. While all these options can work, the optimal signup placement can vary depending on your site design, audience, and industry. These are recommended spots for placing your newsletter. A/B test different placements and see what works for you.

• Top of the sidebar
• Top header
• After a post
• Footer
• Pop-up box

You can even try multiple newsletter signup options at once, just try to avoid coming off as spammy.

Affiliate advertising. If you know the value of a subscriber, affiliate advertising is another option for increasing your subscriber base. You’ll pay an affiliate a set amount for every time they get someone to sign up for your newsletter (basically, an ad for your newsletter on another person’s website).

The goal here is to make sure you are paying the affiliate less than the value of a new subscriber. This requires that you already have an understanding of your usual cost per lead and the value of a new lead for your business.

Offer a multi-part email educational course. One incentive for getting site visitors to sign up for your email newsletter is by promoting an email course you’ll receive when you sign up – for example, “Learn How to Start a Blog in Just 3 Days,” with a new lesson sent to subscribers each consecutive day.

Give a sneak peek. Provide part of a resource for free, promising more when a user signs up. For example, do a post on “5 Ways to Get More Traffic to Your Blog.” At the bottom, have something along the lines of:

Learn more traffic techniques – sign up for our newsletter and receive our exclusive Guide to Boosting Traffic whitepaper with 4 additional strategies on increasing traffic.

Remind visitors of subscriber-only benefits. On your site, remind visitors that newsletter subscribers get exclusive benefits, like your latest and greatest white papers, or free download kits.

Amy Lynn Andrews emphasizes the exclusive tips available in her “useletter”

Consider social proof. Once you have a decent number of subscribers, consider including social proof by indicating how many email subscribers you’ve already obtained. Make sure you test this though, as some actually found this to decrease subscriptions.

Add signup options to your social media accounts.  Some social media sites make it easy to add a newsletter signup option on your social network page. Facebook has numerous third-party apps that let you add custom tab options, such as an email signup!

Not all sites make it so easy though. If you have the space, try adding a newsletter signup link in your social media about section, in addition to your regular website link.

Post offers on Facebook that require an email signup to obtain. Put up an email signup gate that requires users to join your newsletter before obtaining offers. Then promote the offer on Facebook. If you’re providing something valuable, many users will gladly give their email address in exchange for a resource.

Instant offer for first-time subscribers. Try offering an instant incentive for becoming a newsletter subscriber. E-commerce sites like H&M might offer a 20% off discount voucher.

Host webinars. Use your webinar signup form to collect email addresses before viewers attend the advice. Bonus benefit: hosting a webinar gets your name out there and shows that you are a knowledge powerhouse to be reckoned with and admired. Who wouldn’t want to sign up for your newsletter?

Place your newsletter signup after your blog posts. Maybe not every one, but the good ones at least.

Add newsletter pop-ups to website. Good strategy, but make it quick to read, just (ideally) one form field asking for an email address, and a big, easy-to-click X to close out the box for those who refuse.

Take advantage of your email signature. Link to your newsletter signup page in your email signature (and have co-workers do the same).

Host exclusive giveaways for email subscribers. Host giveaways for email subscribers, but make sure to post about the giveaway on your blog and social sites so that everyone knows about the giveaway. They may sign up as a subscriber so that they can join in on the fun!

Add email signup option to your checkout page. If you’re e-commerce, add an “opt-in for our newsletter” checkbox in your checkout page. Don’t forget to remind them about the coupons they’ll get which they can use on their next order.

Always consider visitor intent. When placing your newsletter subscriber forms, always think about the mindset of user at that moment within your site’s page structure.

Your copy should vary depending on where your signup link or form is placed. For example:

• In e-commerce checkout: Opt-in for our newsletter to get coupons, special discounts, and the latest fashion news delivered straight to your inbox.
• In a blog post: Did you like this post? Sign up and we’ll send you more awesome posts like this every two weeks.

Remember, matching intent is everything. Always take a step back from the details and consider the larger scope.

Try a floating signup form. Some sites implement a floating newsletter signup form that follows the user as they scroll down your page. This can be discrete or tacky depending on how you go about it – make sure it doesn’t interfere too much with the users’ experience.

Give your newsletter an enticing name. Just calling it “the newsletter” can get stale. Instead, try something a bit more snappy like:

• InsiderBeat
• StyleMail
• MarketingMavericks

Try using the word “free.” While it’s already expected that an email newsletter will be free, the word itself can be quite alluring. Try adding the word “free” to your signup copy and see how it affects signups.

Be upfront about email frequency. Users get hives at the idea of having their inbox flooded with spam. Setting good precedent about how often you’ll be emailing them will help alleviate those fears. Consider using the words weekly, bi-weekly, monthly, or even “periodically.”

Purchasing or renting emails. It is an option, but not a fantastic one. Those leads aren’t qualified and could make you come off as spammy, damaging your reputation. They also won’t likely be subscribers for very long. Confused users getting emails from a business they have no experience with will quickly unsubscribe from the mailing list.

If you tell me to test one more time…. Well guess what yo? I’m gonna. A/B testing your sign up forms is probably the most powerful thing you can do to increase email signups. Test button color, placement, copy, punctuation, style, etc. Go all Frankenstein on that thing.

“I bought that machine because I simply loved the logo.”

Ever heard that before?  Expect to ever hear that?  I didn’t think so.

Let’s get this out up front – brand is a powerful concept which can have a powerful impact on business.  For companies in the B2B space that have broad brand recognition (e.g. Grainger, ITW and Safety-Kleen) certainly some portion of their leads and new revenue can be attributed to their brand.

But your company probably doesn’t have that.  So where should you focus – on trying to build brand awareness, or generating sales qualified leads?

I recommend that latter – without hesitation.  Here’s why.

Your company’s essence

Your brand is really the distillation of what you do, your business philosophy and how you impact others.  And the first barrier to branding is that many B2B manufacturing companies have never codified those elements into a brand which they have internalized.  Indeed before a brand can be publicly effective it must first be embraced internally.

Assuming you’ve been through the important work of developing your brand, but it’s not widely recognized, then traditionally you would need to convince the market one individual at a time.  (A tremendously resource intensive undertaking!)  Typically that involves a number of interactions, and many more declarations.

But if you’re like nearly every SMB you have neither the time nor money to tell folks repeatedly how groovy you are.  So what do you do?

Model it

Instead of blathering on about how each glance at the corporate mirror reconfirms your company’s awesomeness, rather use your digital marketing to reach new folks and legitimately help them with your great content and thought leadership.  Simultaneously you’ll spread your message and demonstrate the essence of your brand…and instead of an useless “awareness” metric you’ll have a lead too!

In today’s world of spin and messaging you instinctively understand that the “chitter chatter” is meaningless.  That’s why you have a particular opportunity to move the needle with substantive business value – because it’s relatively rare.  The “pitter patter” of your content marketing will attract potential customers, establish your thought leadership and introduce them to your brand, convert them to leads and then help you nurture them into customers.  Each interaction will establish and reinforce your brand as a byproduct – and as a result of their experience rather than your “say so.”

Blocking & tackling

None of this is complicated – but none is easy.  If you have a strong, recognized B2B industrial brand that’s great.  It’s not going to translate to revenue directly, but rather it will give you an initial credibility boost.  If you don’t have a widely recognized brand, but have clearly defined the important elements of a brand internally, then work on building your business and brand will follow.  But if you don’t have a clear understanding of your company’s brand, then don’t waste time or money on marketing because your message is likely to be so diffuse as to be worthless.

Have a clearly defined brand and need help attracting the right prospects to introduce them to your brand and capability?  Maybe we can help.  Check out our approach to internet marketing for manufacturers.

B2B manufacturing internet marketing video 1 of 3 series

If you’re wondering whether it’s time to get serious about internet marketing, download our free “Essential Step-by-Step Guide”!

image – marketects

What first attracted me to Twitter and social media six years ago was that you could achieve global marketing for free. It’s called organic reach. This enabled bloggers to build global brands.

That is changing.

In 2014 we are seeing the rapid emergence of “pay to play” to reach your followers. So a question needs to be asked.

Is the social media “free lunch” over?

That also leads to another question. Is social going the way of mass media where the only way to gain attention is to pull out the cheque book?

The answer is much more complex than that.

Is Twitter’s organic reach going to disappear too?

Facebook is pushing the boundaries of organic reach. That was shown by reader’s reactions to a post I wrote on”Why You Should Forget Facebook” which saw nearly over 270,000 views and nearly 1,000 comments when posted on LinkedIn.

For Twitter the filtering is not an option as it is a news breaking social network. Applying filtering algorithms to it’s stream will take away its meaning for existence and continuing evolution.

You only have to look at its latest hiring trends that are mass media and television centric to realise that Twitter is pushing towards the integration of television, social and mass media.

That focused push by Twitter management to make mass media and social work together is maybe one of the reasons that its latest quarter two results that broke every analysts expectations. The World Cup marketing coup by Twitter was evidence of that successful and ongoing evolution.

I don’t expect Twitter’s organic reach to disappear as it has too much to lose if it takes the Facebook path. It’s not in its DNA.

Twitter facts and statistics

Below are some surprising facts and statistics that show Twitter is on the path to successfully reinventing itself.

1. There was a 24% increase in monthly active users (MAU) over the last 4 quarters with the total now at 271 million.

2. Twitter has added 53 million users in the last 12 months

3. Twitter’s monthly mobile users now total 211 million, which is a gain of 29%

4. 81% of Twitter’s advertising revenue came from mobile ads

5. Increase in sales is up 124% from a year ago at $312 million compared to $139.3 million in second quarter of 2013

6. Twitter expects to have revenue of between $330 and $340 million in the third quarter of 2014

7. Twitter is growing the fastest in Asia Pacific with expectations it will increase its user base by more than 33% in 2014 according to eMarketer

Source: eMarketer

8. Twitter penetration rates in Asia Pacific stand at 19.8% for Japan, 18.3% for for Indonesia and 12.2% in Australia

9. Twitter penetration rates in the USA stand at 27.9% of all social networks users, 19.2% of internet users and 15.2% of the total population

10. In the USA the number of Adult Twitter users is estimated at 34.7 million

11. Timeline views reached 173 billion for the the second quarter of 2014

12. Twitter is currently valued at $27.3 billion which is 200 times forward earnings compared to Facebook at 39.4 times

13. During the World Cup there were 672 million tweets

14. Germany’s defeat of Argentina in the final generated 618,000 tweets per second

15. There were 32.1 million Tweets during the World Cup final

16. The previous record for an event was the Superbowl, and that received 24.9 million tweets

17. Twitter spends more than its competitors on stock based compensation as a percentage of revenue on its employees at $158 million (50.29%) compared to Facebook (10.9%) and LinkedIn (14.3%)

18. Advertising revenue per thousand timeline views reached $1.60 in the second quarter of 2014 which is an increase of 100% over the last year

19. Katy Perry has the most Twitter followers currently at over 55 million followed by Justin Bieber (53 million) and Barack Obama (44 million)

20. Tweets with images receive 18% more clicks than those without

What about you?

What facts and figures surprised you? Did you think Twitter was declining or growing? Do you think you should be using Twitter more for your marketing and brand awareness?

Look forward to your insights and feedback in the comments below.

Substantial research and evidence exists to show that people are irrational about prices … and predictably irrational. Another study, this time in the hospitality industry, demonstrates this fact. Cornell University did a research study on menu pricing in restaurants. The key findings of the study include:

“The researchers cite a case where the names of restaurant menu items were changed to make them more exotic: The seafood filet, for example, became “succulent Italian seafood filet,” and red beans and rice became “Cajun red beans and rice.”

Sales of these renamed items with descriptions rose by 28% and were rated as tastier, even though the recipes before and after were identical. What’s more, diners were also willing to spend an average of 12% more for a menu item with a fancy name.”

The researchers found other interesting correlations as well. The point for all is that price is highly controllable by you and it is likely you are under-pricing your goods or services. Further, some simple actions on your part could gain you higher prices, increased sales and more profit, while leaving your customers happier. Sounds like a win-win to me.

What experiences have you had?

Mitch

Having spent 25 years in the direct mail business, I can confidently say there are 10 reliable ways marketers can boost rates of consumer response and engagement.

1. Retail events drive urgency and freshness: Whether it’s a car insurance promotion or a limited-time offer to receive a new roof, a retail promotional hook is guaranteed to generate a rise in response.

2. Rotating formats: If you find a creative execution that performs on par with your standard mailing, rotate it in with your scheduled mail drops. You’ll see an even larger lift in your average response rates.

3. Interruptive formats get noticed: Formats such as greeting cards, Visa promotional packages, and disruptive colors and textures all help your piece stand out and get opened—which, ultimately, is the first phase in driving responses.

4. Good/better/best presentations: Show your offer in a small-medium-large format, with the largest option called out as the best-value proposition.

5. Envelopes without teasers on the exterior: The objective of an envelope package is to get the recipient to open it. By not disclosing what’s inside, you leave room for some mystery and let the recipient decide whether they are interested in opening it.

6. Interruptive graphic elements: Treatments that seem gimmicky at first, such as using a handwriting font, highlight marker or metallic ink, get the reader to pay more attention to the message.

7. Use analytics to maximize audience response: Marketers always feel like they know their market better than anyone. Don’t fall victim to this false premise. Make a point to invest the time and the effort to get unbiased data that can boost response rates from your prospects.

8. Use a variety of creative elements: Even subtle variations, such as addressing a lead differently than a blind prospect or adding personalization to make the piece more relevant, can make a difference in your response rates.

9. Last-chance urgency: As consumers, no one wants to feel like they are about to miss out on a great deal. Positioning that your offer is about to expire will drive a bump in sales just before your offer closes down.

10. Tell prospects they are unique: Creative executions with messages such as “You’re pre-approved” or “This exclusive offer is just for you” will make consumers feel like this is a deal they can’t find anywhere else.

The post Every Direct Mail Package Will Get Results If You Just … appeared first on KERN.

By Mark Schaefer

At some point in every business person’s life, you will have to give a presentation and if you’re like me, it can still be an anxious experience.

I have given hundreds of talks and presentations and here are 10 ideas to help you get over the nerves and into some presentation sizzle. At the end I have a little video clip to pull it all together for you …

1. Local color

No matter where you are, find some interesting or funny comment about the town you are in or the group you are with. A reference to the weather, your last visit, a local sports team, or a news event can be fun. Find something to bring people in, get their attention and maybe have a laugh.

People feel warm when you take the time to bring in a story about their town or organization.

2. Getting over the nerves

Here’s a secret. You just need to get through the first two minutes. If you can get through the first two minutes, you will relax and be fine.

So here is a trick. When you find your “local color” piece to open your talk, memorize it. Just say it over and over and over again so when you get up on the stage, you have your first two minutes down cold, people will laugh and you are on your way.

3. Be visually profound

Many speaking coaches recommend that you get rid of slides altogether. Sometimes that’s OK, but images can also help you create a more fun and interesting presentation.

Whenever I do a talk I challenge myself to add something visual and cool that will help make the audience remember me. With all the sources of free or low-cost visual elements on the web today, this is easier than ever. For less than $20 you can even buy animations to embed right in your powerpoint. Is there something you can do visually to make them go WOW? Laugh? Sit up and take notice?

4. Visual prompts, not bullets

By now, there should not be a presenter on earth talking from a list of bullet points. That is so 2005. But to help you get through 45 minutes of talking, you might need some visual prompts so use large photos and images to accompany your story, not derail it.

5. Involve the audience in a low-impact way

There is nothing more awkward than asking your audience a question and then getting total silence. Instead, ask a question that simply calls for a raised hand, like “how many bloggers in the audience?” This gets people involved without putting them on the spot.

6. The 7 minute intervention

Here is a test. The next time you are listening to a great speaker, count how many times your mind starts to wander back to the office or the upcoming lunch break.

Of course this varies by person and even by setting, but on average people start to fade away about every seven minutes — even if they are interested in your talk!

So every seven minutes I have an intervention to bring them back to me. I’ve already mentioned a few ideas like introducing something visually profound or asking the audience a question. Other ideas might be to say something funny, physically change my position, dramatically raise or lower my voice, or shifting the emotional tone of the talk.

Every seven minutes, do something to shake them a little in their seats.

7. Rule the slides

I recently rolled out a brand new speech on the future of social media. I practiced that thing so many times I was sick of it. But I’ll tell you what. When it was showtime, I was smooth as silk without even looking at the slides.

By the time I was on the road with this talk, I could hit that 45-minute time limit on the button without looking at a clock. Organizers appreciate that, believe me. It’s OK to be a little under, but never go over the time limit.

Rule the slides, don’t let them rule you.

8. Entertain to teach

When I first started speaking I approached it as though it was as an extention of my teaching. That was a mistake.

When people attend a speech, they expect some entertainment. At some point I crossed a line and I became more of an entertainer than teacher … but it makes me a more effective teacher. Make sense?

9. Assemble stories

Many of the best speakers rarely create all-new speeches. They collect different stories from their careers and then assemble them in a way to make it relevant to an audience. I was told that former US President Bill Clinton, one of the highest-paid speakers in the world, keeps a stack of note cards with his “stories” and then assembles them right before his speech.

I am getting better at this. I have enough stories now that I know which ones really connect to different audiences but this only comes from experience.

Start collecting now!

10. The two minute warning

Most standard talks include a Q&A period and you don’t want to face dead silence!

Here is a trick to keep that Q&A session lively. Two minutes before you are through, say this: “I’d like to move to my final point before taking your questions … so start thinking about your questions now.”

This gives the audience a task and a signal that they need to formulate a question now. This trick works with every audience except college undergraduates. People who ask questions are keeping the rest of the class from leaving the room so it normally doesn’t happen in a college classrom! : )

Putting it all together

Here is a two-minute video clip of my recent speech on the Future of Social Media at a conference in Minneapolis. Watch for how I incorporate some of the interesting presentation ideas:

1) Visuallly powerful animation

2) Well-rehearsed local color

3) Asking for a raise of hands

4) Entertainment value

5) A physical intervention in the form of an extended pause.

Click here if you can’t see the two-minute video of keynote speaker Mark Schaefer.

Mark Schaefer is the chief blogger for this site, executive director of Schaefer Marketing Solutions, and the author of several best-selling digital marketing books. He is an acclaimed keynote speaker, college educator, and business consultant.  The Marketing Companion podcast is among the top business podcasts in the world.  Contact Mark to have him speak to your company event or conference soon.

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So who do you think your top performers are?

Recently released research by The Bridge Group and VorsightBP studied over 2,000 sales professionals — including individual contributors, front-line managers, and directors — asking specific questions about their jobs, their organizations and their perspectives. The study focuses on the management qualities and tactics that are found around the most motivated and enthusiastic employees. In the area of job satisfaction:

• 45% of respondents were “Detractors.” They’re least likely to recommend a role in their organization to a colleague or friend.
• 28% were “Passives.” They’re not too enthusiastic about recommending a role to a colleague or friend.
• 27% were “Promoters.” They’re enthusiastic about recommending a role.

The study identified 4 keys to successful sales rep motivation focusing on motivational influencers:

1. “My manager is hardly available for any coaching” -  Reps who reported 3+ hours of coaching per month were twice as likely to be enthusiastic “Promoters.” The catch is this: reps reported 40% less hours per month spent on coaching than their managers reported. Reps are not perceiving the same value as managers as far as coaching goes. Managers should make getting in sync with their teams on coaching a priority.
2. “And what’s next after I accomplish that?” - Identifying skills development goals will make reps 3x more likely to be “Promoters,” according to the study. Reps (and this is especially true of your Millennials) really value a sense of progression and achievement in the workplace. If a rep has a development goal in mind for the coming months and they’re receiving regular coaching to help them get there, then they’re going to be much less likely to get antsy and feel like they need to move on.
3. “Can you explain my comp plan to me one more time? Um . . . I don’t get it” - 3 out of every 10 reps in the study reported being unclear about their incentive compensation plan, a state that correlated to a 300% drop in engagement (i.e., they were 3x less likely to be “Promoters”). Three out of ten isn’t overwhelming, but considering how motivation — or the lack thereof — is contagious on the sales floor, it’s definitely enough to be influential.
4. “I’ve been here 3 months and believe I’m ready for the next step”- The study reported a significant gap between expectations on when a rep ought to be promoted up the chain into a new role. The less experience the rep had, the less time they thought it should take. This is a frequently cited issue with managing new Millennial hires. It’s also a major reason why being “in on the conversation [about career path expectations] early” is a major motivation factor sited in this study.

– For more on inside sales strategies and trends, subscribe to the RSS Feed for this blog and sign up for our Email Newsletter. You can follow me on Twitter, connect on LinkedIn, and join the conversation on Inside Sales 2.0 Trends Talk LinkedIn Group. If you want epic inside sales training for teams and managers, contact TeleSmart. photo credit: Sigfrid Lundberg via photopin cc

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The chief marketing officer role is undergoing a renaissance. Overly simplistic notions – “the people who do the advertising”– were based on stereotypes that never accurately reflected the range of responsibilities that many CMOs had. Those notions are even more outdated now.

Instead, the last few years have seen a proliferation of C-suite titles that include a component of marketing. Some are chief customer officers, chief experience officers, chief client officers, or chief digital officers. This diversity reflects not only a deepening understanding of the connection between growth and customer satisfaction, but a much greater awareness of what marketing can do to help forge that bond.

Digital disruption has driven much of this shift. Digitally enabled tools and processes have altered what and how a business sells, flipped the tables on the typical customer relationship, introduced a glut of new channels and competitors, and made it harder for organizations to break through the “noise.”

That shift has created an increasingly commoditized product and service environment. Digital has removed barriers across sectors, even in old-line businesses known for “sticky” products, such as telecom and insurance. And that same transparency has radically shortened the shelf life of any new competitive advantage. “We’ll spend a lot of time bringing product to market, but we need to plan for the fact that a launch gives us a six-month head start and no more,” says Gary Booker, CMO of Dixons Retail. “While our competitors catch up, we have to get into the mindset of already moving onto the next thing.

All that has elevated – and complicated – the role of CMO. Delivering above-market growth increasingly hinges on differentiating the customer experience and building tighter customer relationships . That in turn relies on not only having excellent marketing capabilities, but also connecting marketing with the entire organization. That isn’t easy, but the payoff is worth it: Our most recent research shows that companies with excellent marketing capabilities outperform the market with 2-3X greater revenue growth.

While the CMO role necessarily varies across sectors, we see three activities that are now required of all CMOs.

1. Discover data-driven insights that drive growth.

Clear, meaningful insight into the market and the consumer decision journey is job one for today’s CMO. “When it comes to who asks the provocative questions [and] who agitates for customer-led change,” says Tariq Shaukat, the CMO of Caesars Entertainment, “it is the group closest to the customer and the group with the data. And that really is on the backs of marketing.” McKinsey’s DataMatics 2013 survey shows that companies that use customer analytics extensively are more than twice as likely to generate above-average profits as those that don’t. They also outperform their peers across the entire customer lifecycle, are nine times more likely to enjoy superior customer loyalty, and a remarkable 23 times more likely to outperform less analytical peers on new-customer acquisition. That means churning through data to find insights that others haven’t seen and then developing the organizational capability to act on them faster and better to drive above-market growth.

At a large hospitality company, for instance, the CMO can use analytics to find out not only which property or category was up or down over the weekend, but how key customer segments moved as well. If data shows the lucrative “weekend tripster” segment cut back on the average length of their stays, marketers can respond with offers or other perks, such as late checkout or complimentary upgrades, to drive changes in behavior and protect revenue.

Better analysis of those insights can improve marketing return on investment (MROI) by 10-20 percent and drive average profit growth of 14 percent. Yet, only 30 percent of companies believe they understand their customers’ needs well enough to identify what initiatives will drive growth. That’s a major missed opportunity according to Ian Ewart, Head of Products, Services & Marketing at Coutts. “I see far too many data that don’t go anywhere and that’s just a cost.”

To have the influence to help set business strategy for the company, CMOs need to translate customer insights into terms meaningful to senior leadership. Deborah DiSanzo, the former CEO of Philips Healthcare, was once a CMO. She knew that to have a role in steering strategy, she had to earn the trust of her CEO and board. “To get that trust,” she says, “you have to speak with authority, you have to speak with empowerment, and you have to speak with the facts—and your marketing plans had better have a return on investment.” Data-driven customer insights give the CMO the power to do all that.

2. Design the right strategies and processes to carry out the vision in a multichannel world.

Talk about how complex marketing has become is very much in vogue, but there’s much less discussion about the operational (and diplomatic) muscle CMOs need in order to get things done. Customer journeys are complex and crisscross the organization. Even simple-seeming tasks, such as browsing or buying, often involve several steps, each touching a different part of the business. A customer may go online, compare products, scan a bar code, search, and call an agent. Designing a consistently positive, rewarding experience across all those touchpoints takes system-wide thinking and an integrated service-delivery approach. Point solutions, such as focusing on the call center, the store, or the website, no longer cut it in a multichannel environment, not when delivering excellent customer journeys can increase revenues up to 15 percent and cut costs by up to 20 percent.

Any well-designed interaction starts with a clear understanding of customer needs and the capabilities of front-line employees. That means plotting and, in many cases, reformulating processes to create a smooth and satisfying customer experience. To stitch it all together meaningfully, CMOs are increasingly expected to act as general managers with P&L or shared/shadow P&L responsibility that drive revenue growth. That bottom line sensibility is crucial. Says Abi Comber, Head of Marketing for British Airways: “Having P&L responsibility is incredibly powerful. CMOs need to show the ROI of every pound spent on marketing and how it delivers against the bottom line.”

CMOs are also now often judged on how well they can design and run an organization that reaches across the entire business. We’re seeing marketers develop centers of excellence, particularly around digital, to advise and support business units and functions in serving the right information to the right person at the right place and time.

To hit P&L targets, for instance, the CMO at one technology company focused on shortening the sales cycle. Data revealed the initial sales meeting and RFP were especially influential in shaping buying outcomes. So marketers collaborated with IT to design an iPad application that allowed salespeople to enter their book of business and receive detailed customer profiles with background on important customer decision-makers and priorities, as well as status updates and other useful information. That helped account managers focus their pitch on the client’s business issues and build rapport. The CMO also worked with the finance office and product managers to link pricing and benchmark data into the RFP process, which improved quality and response times.

Similarly, when web analytics revealed a spike in the number of unique visitors at a student loan site, the CMO helped orchestrate the responses. To woo high-value, low risk customers, the CMO worked with the risk team to fast-track the credit approval process. They also worked with the call center and IT to create a “chat live” button to make it easier for customers to complete forms online before they drifted off to a competing site. And when customer data showed that first-time applicants were more likely to move forward when there was a human touch to the process, marketing helped assign a sales person to individual customers. Those steps helped the bank drive up loan volumes, a tangible bump the CMO could point to in discussions with other leaders.

3. Become the organizational “glue” to deliver change.

“If marketing is not driving the change agenda then either the agenda is wrong or marketing is not being effective,” says Ewart.

Companies across the spectrum are grappling with change as new technologies, innovations, and customer behaviors disrupt old business models. When it comes to transforming an organization, clearly leaders across the C-suite, starting with the CEO, have critical roles to play. But the CMO has a unique and critical role to play to deliver the change. Deep insights into customer behaviors and market trends mean that the CMO needs to identify what changes are necessary. More importantly, the CMO then needs to motivate and help drive the required changes through the organization.

“You have to be able to command the pace of change in your organization in order to keep up with what consumers are looking for and the ways in which they’re interacting with you,” says Comber.

The most obvious changes are often the ones affecting the customer experience. Providing a consistent customer journey across all the touchpoints of an organization is critical because customers today punish companies that don’t deliver a consistent experience. Banks, for example, have a very strong correlation between consistency on key customer journeys and overall performance in customer experience. When we sent an undercover-shopping team to visit 50 bank branches and contact 50 bank call centers, the analysis showed that for lower-performing banks, the variability in experience was much higher among a typical bank’s branches than it was among different banks themselves.

Improving a customer journey is not something, however, that CMOs can do on their own. It requires that the CMO work with other leaders in the company who have responsibility over various touchpoints along the journey. The CMO needs to sit down with the head of sales, the COO, the customer service center leader and others to map out what exactly customers do on a given journey, which function has responsibility for which interaction, and what each then needs to do to ensure a consistent and excellent customer experience. With so many parts of the organization needing to come together to deliver on a customer journey, the CMO has to operate as the “glue” across the organization.

That bonding role extends to other aspects of the business as well, such as delivering on products and services. “Marketing is the integrator in the end-to-end chain,” says DiSanzo. “If you don’t have a world-class marketing enterprise, your solutions won’t meet the market.”

At Philips Healthcare, that integration takes the form of a “Great Marketing Plan.” The core of that plan is a 15-page blueprint detailing what various parts of the organization need to do and how different functions need to work together in order to bring something to market. Marketing plays an oversight and coordinating role in this process.

Erwin van Laethem, CEO of the Dutch energy company, Essent, highlighted that connecting talent when describing what he was looking for in a CMO: “We were looking for somebody who had a track record in fact-based marketing and someone who was also very engaging for the whole organization – what we call an ‘attractor’ for other people who would then follow the vision and the aspiration that we set out.”

In delivering on change, the CMO is increasingly being asked to go beyond providing an orchestrating role across the organization to deliver products, services, and experiences. We see CMOs, with their strong communications and creative skills, increasingly move into a position to drive changes in the culture itself. At British Airways, for example, the CMO was a leading force in using social media to transform the organization into a much more transparent, customer-oriented business. Interactions with customers went from a “tell” to a “conversation.”

“This is a far more open version of British Airways than we may have had ten years ago,” says Comber.

To affect changes in culture, some CMOs are partnering more closely with human resources. Says Peter Markey, CMO of Post Office (and former CMO of the RSA Insurance Group), “The HR director is a vital relationship for me because a lot of what we’re trying to do through marketing and brand is drive culture change in an organization. So the HR director has to be my best friend.”

Such a partnership is also helpful in establishing the right performance incentives. For example, a large conglomerate needed to mobilize 500,000 employees around a new customer-focused initiative. To do so, it linked customer and operational performance metrics, and then prioritized them based on their ability to lift customer satisfaction and market performance. That approach to linked metrics served as the basis for developing employee incentives, such as bonuses.

The truth is that for all the hard skills needed to master the operations of marketing, CMOs really need to excel at the soft skills to succeed. Forging strong working relationships with leaders in the C-suite, building bridges across functions, being transparent, demonstrating the value of marketing, and helping other leaders succeed is becoming the core factor in a CMO’s ability to succeed.

The need to deliver on organization-wide imperatives creates lots of pressure for CMOs. But it’s also raising the CMO’s profile, a fact that explains in part why Fortune 100 CMO tenures are growing to an average of 45 months (Russell Reynolds data), nearly double the 23-month average formerly considered the norm. CMOs who bring data-driven insights to all decisions, build effective bridges across the organization and use their experience and acumen to drive above-market growth will see their profile and influence grow significantly.

The Internet Of Things will reshuffle priorities and costs for global enterprises. 

The IoT will be a diffuse layer of devices, sensors, and computing power that overlays entire business-to-business, consumer-facing and government industries. The IoT will account for an increasingly huge number of connections: 1.9 billion devices today, and 9 billion by 2018. That year, it will be roughly equal to the number of smartphones, smart TVs, tablets, wearable computers, and PCs combined.

In IoT research from BI Intelligence, we look at the transition of once-inert objects into sensor-laden intelligent devices that can communicate with the other gadgets in our lives. This represents a major challenge and opportunity for all large companies. The most valuable IoT applications will almost certainly be enterprise uses. 

Access The Full Report And Data By Signing Up For A Free Trial Today >>

• The Internet Of Things, or IoT, represents a major departure in the history of the Internet. The Internet is moving beyond the rectangular confines of smartphones and tablets and helping to power billions of everyday devices, including factory assembly lines, workplaces, and parking meters. 
• The numbers being forecast for the IoT are truly mind-boggling. Because it will come to encompass a layer of devices and apps across industries, it will account for an increasingly huge number of connections, 1.9 billion devices today, and 9 billion by 2018, according to BII estimates.
• Market research and tech firms agree that the IoT, especially enterprise uses, will come to drive trillions in economic value as it permeates business life. The really valuable applications may be enterprise uses like the auto insurance industry’s early use of monitors to charge motorists for only the amount of time they actually drive. 
• The main obstacles to the quick rollout of the IoT are still-immature and fast-changing technologies and standards. There are also challenges presented by the massive scale and uncertain ROI of investment in IoT-type projects. Data security is also a factor. 

In full, the report digs into some of the top applications for the IoT:

• Industrial uses including Internet-managed assembly lines, connected factories, and warehouses, etc.
• Connected advertising and marketing. 
• Intelligent traffic management systems. This includes toll-taking and congestion penalties, as well as smart parking-space management. 
• Waste management systems. In Cincinnati, residential waste volume fell 17% and recycling volume grew by 49% through use of a “pay as you throw” program that used IoT technology to monitor those who exceed waste limits.
• Smart electricity grids that adjust rates for peak energy usage. 
• Smart water systems and meters. The cities of Doha, São Paulo, and Beijing have reduced leaks by 40% to 50% by putting sensors on pumps and other water infrastructure.

To access BI Intelligence's full report, Here Comes The Internet Of Things, and our deck on the Internet of Things, sign up for a free trial subscription here. Subscribers also gain access to over 100 in-depth reports on social and mobile, and hundreds of charts and datasets. 

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I read an article recently that discussed how content can “help push your prospects through the sales funnel.”  While I am quite aware of B2B’s fascination and obsession with funnels and waterfalls, the truth is buyers couldn’t care less and certainly will not be pushed through anything.

Perhaps this is the problem with so many organizations and their inability to be effective with Demand Generation and Content – according to a study we conducted here at ANNUITAS of enterprise B2B organizations, only 2.8% of organizations claimed they are effective at achieving their goals.  Pretty anemic!  However, if organizations are taking the very insular view of “pushing their buyer through the sales funnel” it would explain quite a bit about the lack of effectiveness.

Let’s take a look at today’s sophisticated buyer according to the Demand Gen Report 2014 B2B Buyer Survey:

• 41% of B2B buyers state they are waiting longer to initiate contact with vendors than in years past
• 68% stated the number of sources used to research their purchase has increased
• 34% of B2B buyers have seen an increase in the number of team members involved in the purchase process.

According to Corporate Executive Board (CEB):

• The average B2B buyer is 57% of the way through their purchase decision before engaging a supplier sales rep
• Suppliers have 12% of the buyers total mindshare across the entire purchase path.

So not only are B2B buyers taking longer, researching more and having more people involved in the purchase process, but they are also giving very little mindshare to the vendors throughout the entire purchase cycle.

Given these insights into the ways B2B buyer’s purchase, how is it plausible for an organization to think, “we will push our buyers through the sales funnel?”

While I believe the concept of the funnel or waterfall is legitimate for tracking conversion metrics between marketing and sales. However, it is not at all feasible for an organization to map content to it or expect that a B2B buyer will simply follow the very linear, step by step process simply because that is what the vendors prefer.

This entire concept of buyer centricity is not something new, however it seems that B2B marketing and sales professionals have been very reluctant to embrace this understanding and adapt their behaviors.  Even worse, recent studies show that organizations are inexplicably duping themselves into believing they are maturing, when statistics show otherwise.  The 2.8% of effectiveness mentioned above notwithstanding, Forrester also highlights the alternate reality in their July 2014 Study Compare Your B2B Content Marketing Maturity that shows 51% of those surveyed rated their Content Marketing Practice as mature, yet an overwhelming 85% say it is only somewhat effective.

The sophisticated buying process that exists in today’s B2B environment is not a trend, it is now our way of life.  Organizations that continue to look through the lens of a “sales funnel” or “pushing their customers” are still stuck in the old fashioned Mad Men era of marketing and as Forrester states, “risk losing to more empowered competitors.”

Author: Carlos Hidalgo @cahidalgo CEO and Principal, ANNUITAS

To the untrained eye, social media is a useless tool for growing sales. You can’t directly sell on the site, and likes and retweets do not always equal sales growth. So how can Facebook or Pinterest lead to more sales and lead generation?

Social Media for Sales

Don’t ever underestimate the power of social media for sales. On those platforms, your audience awaits you, and if you’re too slow to create accounts, your competitors will get to them before you. Social media is one of the best tools out there to simultaneously promote your brand, generate strong leads and, most importantly, grow your sales.

In order to make these platforms work for you, you have start creating accounts and building a presence. Follow these four effective tips for using social media to generate sales and see what a little social media marketing can do for you.

1. Research, post, repeat

Social media marketing is never a one-stop show , especially when you’re trying to generate sales and leads. This first step takes a lot of work, but as you go, you’ll truly learn who your audience is and how you should go about reaching them.

After opening your accounts, begin by regularly posting. Some marketers believe you shouldn’t post every day as it’s “too much,” but it’s not really too much until your audience says so. Post articles, ask questions of your audience and invite them to share your page and visit your site. Connect your social media accounts so your posts reach consumers on multiple platforms. Remember, not everyone has a Facebook and Twitter account. Though they are usually the largest, some users stay on more targeted sites like Pinterest and Instagram so you want to be sure you’re reaching out to them as well.

Using Google Analytics. Image source: Google Analytics Blog.

The key here is to post at various times of day to see which times get you the most interaction, meaning at what times throughout the day did you get the most likes, retweets or other social media nods. This will tell you two things:

1. Your customers are online at this time. If you continue to post at or around this time, you have a better chance of reaching your audience.
2. You’re posting the right kind of content that people are responding to. Keep at it and find new ways to get people commenting on your posts.

From here, you can be better assured that you’re reaching your target audience, and you’re giving them good information that they want and will return for again and again. Always keep looking for new ways to improve this. Periodically, you should be posting at other times of the day to see if there is a demographic you are missing.

This first step is also easier if you have an analytics tool like Google Analytics. With this one tool, you’ll be able to monitor all sorts of activity on your website and your social media accounts. You’ll see how long the average person is staying on your website and how high or low your bounce rate is.

From here, you’ll be better able to see where improvements and adjustments can be made, just like Nissan Motor Company does. The car manufacturer uses Google Analytics to better understand their users’ preferences, such as colour, make and model, while still measuring conversion rates. Google Analytics was able to provide both features and help Nissan better tailor its ads and campaigns.

With all of your various social media posts, you’ll have so much data to better predict what your audience is looking for and turn leads into sales .

Google Analytics case study of Nissan Motor Company.

2. Branch outside traditional social media platforms

Every social media marketer worth his or her salt knows that having Facebook and Twitter accounts are essential. They have the biggest number of members, and those members are as diverse as any. From teenagers to their grandmas, you can find them on either Facebook or Twitter. Most marketers will also recommend their clients create other accounts with Pinterest, Instagram and YouTube to attract a more dedicated audience.

But did you know that social media really reaches beyond these platforms? Did you ever consider blogging, podcasts or live chats? These forms of social media are often overlooked because your audience isn’t immediately present. You have to work to gain an audience , but once you start and get going, your audience’s effect on your sales will be felt much harder than on Facebook or Twitter.

Why not try podcasting?

Blogging is one of the best ways to establish a lasting relationship and conversation with potential clients. It’s a great way to keep clients coming back to your site over and over as you post more content. Google’s algorithm also pushes websites that are frequently updated higher in their search results so you’ll have an added search engine optimisation advantage over your competitors.

Similar to blogs, podcasts bring relevant content to your audience on a weekly or monthly basis, or really as often as you like. Many consumers like to see who they’re buying from, and if people can connect your face to your brand, they’ll be more likely to remember you. Podcasts also offer you the chance to host interviews with other industry experts as well as panel discussions about big news in your industry.

Live chats allow you to respond to consumers and connect with them. Platforms, such as Reddit’s “Ask Me Anything” threads and Google Plus’s hangouts, bring interested consumers to the table to get real, honest answers to their questions. This is a great opportunity for you to show off your personality and illustrate what makes your company stand out from your competitors.

No one does this better than Marriott International, the hotel chain that excels at business blogging. CEO and writer Bill Marriott maintains an authentic voice and honest rendering of his life and his experiences throughout each article. Written from his perspective, the blog tackles Marriott’s personal adventures as well as his views on the hotel industry, offering personal advice for business success. Who better to take advice from than one of the biggest hotel owners in the world?

Bill Marriott’s blog gives a personal touch.

This is by far the best use of these mediums: establish yourself as an expert within your community. By writing creative content that offers helpful information to readers, you present yourself as more than just a seller. You’re someone who is active in his or her industry, someone who’s always looking out for the next advancement or the latest news. Your audience will come to see you as someone they can trust for honest advice and an answer to their industry questions.

When it comes time to buy, you’ll be the one they go to.

3. Make ‘em work for it

Heath Ledger’s Joker from 2008′s The Dark Knight is probably the last person you’d want to take business advice from, but he did have a point when he said, “If you’re good at something, never do it for free.”

A good social media marketer can take this and apply it to the content you’ve just created. You worked hard on it, and it’s generating quite the buzz around Facebook and other social media sites. More people are sharing it, and traffic is coming in more steadily to your site. Now how to you turn avid readers into avid clients?

It’s simple: don’t give away your content. Make your audience work for the great content they know you provide.

This tactic works best if you offer a teaser of your content. Allow users to see the first 100 words of your article or the first 30 seconds of a video. This will both intrigue and entice buyers. Before they can move any farther down the screen, ask them to either fill out a form or sign into their free account with your site.

By asking your reader or viewer to fill out a form, you ensure that you have a consumer who is genuinely interested in you and your product or service. They want the latest updates from your industry, and they know that a quality product or service is worth a few seconds of paperwork. Ask for their name, email, and why they’re visiting your site. . You might also ask for how they found your site.

In turn, you’ll be able to pass on your lead to a sales person or better direct your marketing efforts towards assisting your consumers’ most common problems. You’ll also see how people are finding you and get ideas on how people can better find out about you.

For ecommerce sites, it’s almost essential for buyers to have their own accounts. They can put their favourite items on wish lists or in their shopping cart, which then allow you to see which products are selling the best and how you can better promote those products.

The One Question uses a different approach to get leads.

Your lead generation tactics don’t always have to be forms or accounts. Get creative like the people at The One Question (T1Q). Their home page asks, “What should I do with my life?” Viewers are then invited to take a short quiz to help them discover an answer, which requires giving T1Q an email address. Boom! A lead is generated, and now the user can work towards answering that question with the great content on T1Q’s site.

Now admittedly, some will turn back, but those who don’t are going to be stronger leads. Your form doesn’t have to be elaborate. In order to get an account, a customer should only need their name, a valid email address and maybe their birthday. Either feature should only take about 30 seconds to fill out, long enough to get some good information and short enough not to lose their attention.

4. Talk, talk and keep talking

Social media isn’t always about posting questions on Facebook or blogging. Some lead generation and sales growth can come from directly responding to people who either are talking to you or about you. Traditionally, businesses have remained stoic, announcing new information through press releases, but with social media, more businesses are interacting with their customers, and it’s showing potential for major sales growth.

Start by interacting with your clients through comments and tweeting back to them. You’ll show them that you value their input and opinion without coming on too strong. Be yourself and answer in the same voice that writes for your blogs and articles.

A company’s social media account can serve as a customer service extension.

You should also be posing questions regularly to garner feedback on how you’re perceived and what your company could do better. Customers love it when their voices are heard and taken seriously, and if you don’t open your mouth, how will you ever know?

No one really likes getting negative comments or complaints, but they can provide you with an opportunity to show clients that you take responsibility for your company and you’re willing to go the extra mile to please them. If you handle a tense situation with open communication and a genuine desire to make things better, your customers will be more likely to look past the negative comment, respect you for facing the problem head-on and continue to buy from you.

Don’t forget about comment sections on blogs and articles. This is where your industry goes to discuss the subject and further debate or ask questions. Who better to answer those questions than a real expert? By answering these questions and providing links to your site, readers will start coming to you for more advice.

This tactic is especially effective if you’re on your competitor’s website. Don’t badmouth their company, but show that you are equally as competent and also have great ideas to share.

Kimpton Hotels and Restaurant uses Twitter as a social listening desk.

One of the best examples of this is Kimpton Hotels and Restaurants, a master of using Twitter to its full advantage. The company hired four people to monitor what they call the social listening desk, a position all about watching what people were posting about the company and responding back in creative and memorable ways. When one guest complimented the hotel but mentioned she was feeling unwell all in a tweet, the front desk sent her tea, soup and a kind get-well-soon card. The desk is also monitoring guests’ birthdays and other special occasions so they can make them extra special.

You might not have the man power to routinely monitor every tweet or post to your Facebook page, but the main takeaway point here is that you should be looking for opportunities to interact directly with consumers . By showing them that you care and you’ll go out on a limb for them, you’re giving them a lasting reminder that when they go to book a trip or order a dress, they’re going to go to you first.

“I think at its core, lead generation is really about relationships,” said Brian Carroll, Executive Director of Revenue Optimization, MECLABS.

In a recent interview, Brian sat down with Steve Gershik of LeadSpace.com to talk a little shop about the fundamentals of lead generation, what’s new (and unchanged) in the world of the complex sale, and how empathy marketing is the way forward.

Here’s a transcript of that discussion:

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“What roles do I need to be successful with a content marketing approach?”

I hear this question all the time, from both large enterprises and even larger “small” businesses. It’s a critical question, and one that is not easy to plan for… but we must plan, nonetheless.

I started to think about categorizing different content marketing roles about a year ago. Why? Because there are just so many moving parts to effective content marketing creation and distribution, that it’s imperative that everyone involved knows who is responsible for each task, and that all the most essential tasks are accounted for in your content marketing plan.

Most organizations today, are still so used to traditional marketing tactics that telling stories to create and sustain business opportunities is like using a muscle that has atrophied.

As Content Marketing Institute’s Chief Strategist, Robert Rose has said, “In many businesses (especially in B2B), the marketing department is an order-taking, tactical function that runs on the hamster-wheel of demand generation, trying to keep up with “client” orders for new collateral, press releases, case studies and, at times, marketing-qualified leads (MQLs).”

If our new call to arms centers on creating and growing owned audiences, it’s clear that our marketing skill sets may be… well… a bit too dated to keep us competitive over the next decade.

The new roles of marketing

While there is no perfect structure for a marketing organization, it’s apparent that we are starting to see marketing departments transform themselves into publishing organizations. And with that transformation comes a shift in the key business roles that marketers must now fill.

NOTE: Don’t think of the list below as new job titles, per se, but rather as the core competencies that need to be accounted for across the enterprise.

1. Chief Content Officer

This is your content ambassador, also known as an organization’s chief storyteller. This person should be responsible for setting the overall editorial/content marketing mission statement and integrating that throughout the enterprise. As every silo (PR, email, social, search, etc.) starts to create and curate content, it is the CCO‘s responsibility to make sure that the stories remain consistent and make sense to the audience(s).

In addition, the CCO must understand how the stories translate into results that address the organization’s business issues (driving sales, saving costs, or creating more loyal customers, for example).

2. Managing Editor

Half storyteller and half project manager, the managing editor executes the content plan on behalf of the CCO. Whereas the CCO focuses on strategy, the managing editor’s job is all execution, working with the roles below to make the stories come alive (including tone, style guides, and content scheduling).

3. Chief Listening Officer

The role of the CLO will be to function as “air-traffic control” for social media and your other content channels. This person should be there to listen to the groups, maintain the conversation, and to route (and/or notify) the appropriate team members who can engage in appropriate conversations (customer service, sales, marketing, etc.). This feedback mechanism is critical to our content actually making a difference for our customers. The CLO also needs to keep tabs on how the content is performing on owned media sites (like a blog), and get that intelligence back to the CCO and Managing Editor.

4. Director of Audience

This person should be charged with monitoring your audience/buyer personas, making sure all content creators are intimately familiar with their characteristics, their passion triggers, and what actions you want them to take. The Director of Audience should also be responsible for building subscription assets (direct mail lists, email lists, social media subscriptions) that can grow and be segmented as your content mission matures and expands. If it makes sense, this person can also oversee the marketing automation platform for your organization.

5. HR for Marketing

As every employee and stakeholder becomes a more integral part of the marketing process, it will be increasingly necessary for marketing to work closely with human resources to make sure that employees understand their roles in the marketing process and to help your organization leverage your employees’ audiences without creating conflicts or confusion.

Marketing and HR begin to heavily overlap as employee performance becomes increasingly tied to marketing (i.e., in the form of content performance).

6. Channel Master

Wherever your content is headed (social media, email, mobile, print, in-person, etc.), the channel master will be responsible for getting the most out of each channel. What works best on SlideShare? When should we send our emails, and how frequently? What’s the appropriate ratio of owned vs. curated content your business should distribute on Twitter? Who is keeping track of mobile strategy and execution? Your team will look to the Channel Master for these, and other answers.

This person should also be responsible for curating the current content assets for distribution. (In fact, I just brought this up in my recent post about hiring an internal content curation specialist.)

7. Chief Technologist

As marketing and information technology continue to merge, there will be a need for at least one (maybe more) individual whose sole purpose is to leverage the proper use of these technologies into the content marketing process. The person in this role will be responsible for staying on top of these ever-increasing changes as they relate to the storytelling process — from calendaring and approvals to marketing automation, freelancer integration, and emerging technologies.

This role could be combined with the channel master if you have a small company, but larger enterprises will likely need to keep the two functions distinct.

8. Influencer Relations

The role formerly known as media relations will evolve into that of a manager of influencers. This person’s responsibilities should include developing your “hit list” of influencers, maintaining direct relationships with them, and integrating them into your marketing process in the most impactful ways.

9. Freelancer and Agency Relations

As content demands continue to evolve (and increase), your organization’s reliance on freelance talent and other external content vendors will grow as well. Organizations will need to cultivate their own “expert” content teams and networks, and it will be this person’s job to negotiate rates and responsibilities so that all members of your team are united in their work on behalf of your marketing program.

I see this role evolving out of the “procurement” department, but with a larger focus outside of just financial issues.

10. ROO (Return-on-Objective) Chief

This person will be responsible for ensuring that there is an ongoing return on marketing objectives, and for communicating to all teams why your business is developing content assets in the first place. Do you have an analytics person in your organization? If so, give them a raise and make sure they understand the core objectives behind your content marketing. This role will be the CCO’s best friend.

Yes, we are selling products and services, but the way in which we do that is changing faster than we ever anticipated. This means focusing on content as an asset — which, in turn, means that our marketing departments will continue to evolve. Putting the above roles in place now will help make sure the rest of your enterprise is prepared to evolve right along with them.

What additional roles are you seeing emerge on the marketing landscape? I’d love to hear your thoughts!

Editor’s note: This post is an update of materials drawn from an earlier CMI post, as well as a version published on LinkedIn.

For more insight on the evolving roles and skills necessary for successful content marketing, join us at Content Marketing World 2014, September 8–11, 2014. Register today!

Generating sales is what leads to cash coming into a business, increasing sales is very beneficial to any company. But before concentrating on increasing sales you should concentrate on increasing the flow of cash with in the business. (Save a failing business- Part 2- Increase Cash Flow) Sometimes cash flow and sales revenue are mistaken to be the same thing, but this is Incorrect. Sales revenue is the money that a business receives from selling goods or services, where cash flow tracks the cash coming in and out of a business.

There are three types of sales/clients/customers a business can have:

1.Short term- direct clients
2.Medium term- Immediate short term referral sources
3.Long Term- long term referral sources

Having a healthy total of each of these will allow your business to flow and your revenue to be constant which will eliminate any dry periods.

When increasing sales there are numerous strategies a business can implement. Taking into account the two main types of businesses, ‘service’ related or ‘goods’ related, below are outlines of different basic strategies/techniques to implement to help increase sales.

Directed towards existing customers-

•Referrals-

This would be directed towards business’ that provide a service more so than a goods related business. Referrals are a great way to increase sales as word of mouth marketing is one of the more influential forms of marketing. It is generally noted that to receive referrals it is important to make a positive impact on your original customer/client, if you make such an impact it is more likely that the customer will talk about you or refer your service to a friend. You can do this by;

-Thank you letter- it may seem simple but it is effective. Just send your customer/client a letter saying thank you for doing business with you.

-Feedback- show your interest in your customer and ask for feedback, the information could be valuable to your business and you will make the customer feel valued as well.

•Customer Incentives/loyalty plans-

One of the principle reasons any business starts up a customer loyalty plan is to increase sales. This is because it gives your customer an incentive to do more business with you over other businesses. They are generally easy to implement and can be a simple program such as offering a free product or a discount after a set number of purchases.

•Staff Incentives-

Give your staff a reason to sell more with staff incentives. By offering your staff possible trips to the movies or bonus percentage pay you offer them an incentive to sell more. You can also encourage your employees to upsell; this is where the employee would suggest related products or services to the customer. This is more likely to succeed if there is a promotion or deal with the two related products/services.

•Free Samples-

Free samples are an easy and effective way to entice new customers. It gives them the opportunity to try something new, and they may even find their new favourite product through trying it. Businesses should definitely take advantage of the use of free samples as it is a way to hook new customers and sometimes it’s less than it costs to advertise.

Finding new customers/entering new market-

To find new customers within your market or to enter a new market entirely you first have to understand your market completely and understand your customer completely, this is achieved through market research.

This can be achieved quite easily and inexpensively, an example would be sending surveys to your existing customers to find out information regarding there demographics, buying habits and further important information.

Certain products and services may appeal to one audience but not to another, so understanding the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats in your target market is critical.

Now that there is a strong understanding of your target market you can start generate leads, these can be achieved through numerous techniques (there definitions provided as well);

•Cold calling- making unsolicited visits or telephone calls to someone in an attempt to sell goods or services.

•Networking- interacting with others in order to develop professional or social contacts.

•Affiliate Marketing – performance-based marketing in which a business rewards one or more affiliates for each visitor or customer brought by the affiliates own marketing efforts.

•Advertising – the activity or profession of producing advertisements for commercial products or services.

Grow your branding identity-

Get yourself and your company known within your market area. Write articles, letters to editors, offer expert input to reporters etc. This creates brand awareness for yourself as an authority in what you do. This therefore means that you are more likely to gain new customers through the awareness of your brand and the products/services you provide.

Advertising-

Advertising your business is one of the more obvious solutions to increasing your sales. Advertising can be through numerous methods, some more Traditional and some more towards the style of Guerrilla marketing.

Some of the more traditional and cost effective methods of advertising is all through the web-

Online Directories – any business can generate a wide amount of exposure through listing their business on on-line directories, most are free and can generate decent leads.

Social Media Networks- Some businesses will benefit from Social Media more so than others. If you believe your business would be ideal for these platforms than this type of advertising is a very beneficial venture.

Pay Per Click Advertising- this is more of the expensive option for advertising but one that is very efficient in driving massive amounts of high converting traffic to your site. But you will have to be careful as it could also be a massive drain on you budget.

Overall increasing your sales leads to your cash increasing as well, the sales to cash timeline though can be different as the type of customers comes into the equation; whether they are short, medium or long term customers. ‘Sales’ is a very important part of the business and can one of the factors that save it from failing. Good Luck.

The relationship between today’s marketers and the Google search engine has always been a turbulent one. However, this relationship is just but one of the many the search-engine giant has with the rest of the world. And while you can argue that marketers have quite an impact on the development of its search engine, the impact of other influences shouldn’t be underestimated. You have the views of those using the system to locate information. You also have those taking it further by calling legal actions and controversies against the giant (just search “Right to be forgotten”).

Hence, it’s important that your sales lead generation strategy is prepared for the worst: when the land of SEO is no longer fertile because of it.

An insurance salesman may disagree but situations like this are almost the equivalent to acts of God. It’s a change or an even that just feels a little bit out of your control. For example, the recent Penguin rollout has finally sparked an outcry from long-time Google believer Eric Enge from Search Engine Land. He complains that the new changes aren’t as forgiving anymore and show absolutely zero mercy to small businesses. One might even take it further and accuse Google of kissing up to ad-paying brands (all at the expense of smaller businesses).

So is this the end of SEO? Perhaps. It may be one thing for other sites to game the system. But if Google itself is found to be the one gaming, you need to brace yourself for the day when SEO becomes a less fruitful option.

On the other hand, there’s still hope that these changes may not be as bad as they sound. There are still those who believe that these new updates are simply more proof that the technical side of SEO is fading way while its new reincarnation is bringing all other styles of marketing into the picture.

But even if this is true, you have to prepare all the same. These changes could still mean that raw SEO shouldn’t be wholly relied upon anymore. The land is drying up and it’s time to consider finding (or perhaps maybe creating) a new pasture:

• Think back on your objectives – What was the main point of looking to SEO for your lead generation campaign? Exposure? More inbound leads? Remember, there are still other ways to generate these without necessarily becoming an unwitting Google acolyte.

• Test different means to the same end – Following that, know that testing is usually the next step to preparation. Since there are so many other alternatives out there, you can’t afford to place your bets in all of them. Outsource some of the alternatives first before trying them out yourself. Check to see if SEO-dependent results can be replicated with less reliance on Google.

• Consider other search engines – Bing may not be as big a hit as Google but it could be getting there. And who knows? Maybe a third upstart might show up to join in the race. With Google’s reputation more and more at risk, it might be high time to include other players if you insist on investing in an SEO-based strategy.

Are Google’s days numbered? None of this is really enough to indicate. What’s more likely numbered are the days of counting on raw SEO to improve sales lead generation. The land is going dry. Either nurse it back to health or find a new pasture.