Rnordman

Dear Software-as-a-Service Provider,

I’m not sure you remember me, or at least it seems like you don’t, but I was one of your early customers. I really enjoyed your application when it came out, it seemed to fit my needs really well. I talked to many people about they way your app impacted my work and life, (I remember the #hashtag we started when you first launched!) and how I was so happy to have found it. The pricing was really great then, even through I didn’t care how much it cost, it was worth it all to me. Your product was awesome, and I still think its good, but something changed.

About two months ago, you changed the product in a few ways that threw me for a loop.You didn’t even ask me if I wanted a change, you just did it. Additionally, the changes moved everything I was familiar with around, and it was harder to use. I’m a pretty savvy user, but I have to admit, it left me with a bad taste in my mouth when I opened the app on Monday morning to find my life just got a bit harder with having to dig around for where my favorite functions were. And what did you do with my favorite feature? I really enjoyed that feature, but I guess I was the only one, so you took it away. And to cap it all off, all these new features I did not ask for changed the pricing. I would have been happy to give you my feedback, but it seems like your attention has turned away from the group of us that helped spread the word in those early days. So, I stopped using your app, and you never even noticed.

I did try to contact you back then to see if you could help me find that feature, or explain what happened. But I could not find a real person to talk to, and my email went into the abyss of “feedback@” email account that I doubt anyone ever reads. So I couldn’t even reach out to you. Your team was front and center on social media reaching out to new users, but I couldn’t find a single person to talk to when I had trouble.

I’ve found another product I like. They are smaller, and seem to pay more attention to the users. In fact the guys who make the app, use it every day and I feel like they understand where I am. Cost is not really a reason for my leaving, as I would have been happy to pay more for my older service with you, but I wanted to know I was paying for an app from someone who served customers, not just profits. My friends like this new app as well, and they are feeling the same things I am about your app. I’m sure they are all going to leave soon, even if they are using your app now.

I wanted to let you know why I left. I valued our relationship, but I guess it wasn’t mutual. I hope you can build on the relationships you have now, and change your ways to save some of those people who love your app now, and would be willing to go for the long haul. For me, it’s too little to late. I wish you the best.

Sincerely,

Sam “$10,500 LTV” Customer.

It is a lot easier to file down the claws of a tiger than to teach a sheep to attack.

How much of your day is spent on recurring social media activities? Are small tasks taking up too much of your time? When you know where tools can help you most, you can decide which tools best suit your needs. In this article I’ll address three time-consuming areas and share social media tools to help you [...]

This post 3 Social Media Tools That Help Marketers Save Time first appeared on Social Media Examiner.
Social Media Examiner - Your Guide to the Social Media Jungle

Whether you're calculating a tip or just in need of some fast math, percentages can be something even math students goof. This video from YouTube channel MindYourDecisions shows you the easiest way to find those numbers in your head.

Read more...

It says a lot about the giddiness surrounding China’s economy that Communist state media, international investors and Canada’s westernmost premier have all taken to hailing the ascendency of China’s currency in such ebullient terms, it’s impossible to tell who’s talking.

Here’s Beijing propaganda organ Xinhua the other day: “The globalization of the yuan, or renminbi, will not only benefit the Chinese economy, but generate global economic stability.” A survey of institutional investors earlier this year by Boston-based State Street found more than half believe that “as China’s economic influence grows, the global importance of the renminbi will become magnified,” eventually surpassing the U.S. greenback as the world’s primary reserve currency. Then, earlier this week, B.C. Premier Christy Clark met with Chinese business leaders to make her pitch for Vancouver to become North America’s first offshore hub for trading China’s currency. Asia, she said, “is now . . . the centre of the world.”

So to say there’s hype over China’s currency, variously referred to as the yuan or renminbi but also as the “redback,” would be an understatement. For years, China has campaigned to boost the importance of the yuan as a global currency, to establish it as a buffer against swings in the U.S. dollar. Then, last month, China and the U.K. agreed to set up a trading hub in London to allow the direct exchange of yuan for British pounds, bypassing the U.S. dollar, and making it cheaper and easier to settle yuan-denominated transactions. Where the yuan flows, it’s expected, increased trade will follow.

Which is why other financial centres, including Vancouver, Toronto and San Francisco, are clamouring to establish a similar offshore trading hub on this side of the pond. Clark told reporters she hopes Chinese officials will make a decision within a year. Whether the trading hub is confined to Vancouver or Toronto, or exists as some combination of both cities, it would no doubt go a long way to boosting trade with the country of 1.3 billion people and lessening Canada’s reliance on trade with the U.S.

Yet, as the race for a piece of China’s currency action unfolds, it would be foolish to overlook an equally important trend. Wealthy Chinese are desperate to get their money out of the place. Anyone living in Vancouver doesn’t need to be told this, of course. Stratospheric real estate prices have benefited, in no small part, from the influx of rich mainland Chinese who have been flocking to buy properties there, and in other Western cities, as a safe, stable store of wealth.

Buying homes overseas is only one of the ways China’s elite have skirted Beijing’s currency controls, meant to prevent individuals from moving more than US$50,000 a year out of the country. Last week, another path for yuan to flee China was exposed. In a report that’s sent shockwaves across the country’s financial sector, China Central Television reported that rich Chinese have transferred billions of dollars’ worth of currency out of the country through a secretive remittance program sanctioned by Beijing and available through several large banks. CCTV accused one lender, in particular, the Bank of China, of using the program to help clients launder money. The program has since been halted, following an investigation by China’s central bank.

Again, it bears asking: If China is the future of the global economy, why are rich Chinese so averse to keeping their money there?

Three possible answers keep coming up. The most innocuous is simply that Chinese investors are dissatisfied with the rates of return available in their country. The Shanghai Composite Index remains stuck where it was in late 2012, and is still a whopping 65 per cent below the peak it reached before the global financial crisis. At the same time, Chinese property prices make Vancouver look downright affordable (if you happen to have a seven-figure bank account, that is).

It’s also likely that a number of those Chinese eager to liberate their loot from the Middle Kingdom do so because they accumulated it by corrupt means. President Xi Jinping has vowed to fight corruption by officials at all levels, from “tigers” to “flies.”

Of greater concern to the West, however, is the most likely reason China’s elite want to get their cash out: They know a swath of the country’s stellar economic growth has been a mirage, fuelled by debt and wasteful investment. Michael Pettis, an economist, professor of finance and blogger who lives in China, has argued that, barring a massive transfer of wealth from the state to households, something the Communist party is loath to do, the only way to achieve GDP growth above three to four per cent is a further increase in unsustainable debt. The fear is that a debt crisis will shake China’s economy and seriously undermine faith in its currency.

That sentiment stands in stark contrast to the West’s exuberance over China. It’s worth keeping that in mind before we get too carried away by the hype.

The post China: The flight of the redback appeared first on Macleans.ca.

From consultants to books to articles, there’s no shortage of resources for companies that want to better use social media to raise awareness of their brands. Some are obviously doing it better than others.

READ: Hearsay social: How to sell using social media »

Wendy’s has cooked up – pardon the pun – a particularly ingenious effort to promote the return of its pretzel bun burger (which is great, by the way) with a Twitter campaign that has obviously been well planned out.

The lyrics to the song in the video below, Pretzel Love Songs, are all taken from tweets by real users, who either lamented the demise of the pretzel burger after its limited-time run expired last year or from their exaltation of its current return. The song, a ’90-style schmaltzy duet, is either funny or forced, depending on your perspective:

Regardless of its artistic merits, the song/video shows some clever planning on Wendy’s part. The company was obviously monitoring and saving tweets from last year for use this year, which is considerably more strategic than the simple blasting out of promotional tweets that many companies do.

Even more clever is the incorporation of real people, who are inevitably hearing about the video and thus spreading it themselves:

@BDSmith6 Did you see they quoted you? http://t.co/gAKVSlor1T

— Brielle Story (@bri_story) July 7, 2014

On the other hand, Wendy’s forward-thinking does make you wonder about how calculated those “limited-time” offers really are.

The post Wendy’s “Pretzel Love Songs” is a master class in social media marketing: Peter Nowak appeared first on Canadian Business.

Time and emotion — these are the two things most often wasted during a negotiation. We simply spend too much time on items that don’t really matter, because we let our emotions override any semblance of logic. It is a natural human response to act negatively, reactively, and emotionally to any negotiation points that are counter to one’s pre-disposed positions. It is also poor negotiation practice.

The mere fact of having a position lies at the root of why we get caught up in the drama of a negotiation, rather than focusing on the plotline or ending (i.e. goal) toward which we are striving.  In business school, students are sometimes taught the difference between position-based versus interest-based negotiation.  When you focus on the differences between your positions rather than the commonality of your interests, little progress can be made.  There is nothing necessarily wrong with having a going-in negotiating position, and we can’t really avoid having pre-existing assumptions and desires.  But when we don’t get what we want and frustration ensues, what can we do?  The key is to understand five areas that can both help move a negotiation forward and in doing so usually advance us to where we want to be:

1. Understand the common goal and common interest. Make sure you fully digest and articulate any areas of common interest.  Is it simply to maximize value for the company or are there instances, for example, where the greater common goal may be to get a deal done to sell a business rather than optimize its value by waiting?  One of the best ways of making this happen is to simply to have both sides articulate their goals and interests in writing and share them to ensure clarity and alignment.
2. Understand the underlying and ancillary motivations of the other side. Oftentimes there are conflating or conflicting interests at hand.  As much as possible, you need to understand the total “motivational picture” of your counterparty.  For example, at our firm we have been in negotiations where we ultimately learned that what appeared to be irrational negotiating by the other side was driven by how they were compensated for the deal. Where possible, uncover if those negotiating for other side have any personal remuneration at stake, and how that changes with different outcomes – it will drive behavior.
3. Be transparent and explain the why of your points. It can be surprising how seldom people explain the why of a position for which they are fighting.  Take even the previous example on personal deal compensation. If something is going to impact you personally, it may be better for you to disclose it — at least the other party will understand.  So often it is taken for granted that the other side fully appreciates why you are asking for a term or condition when they actually have little clue.  Before you can do this, you also need to make sure you fully understand your own why for each of your points!
4. Calculate the materiality of each point. Much of the time sink of negotiations is unfortunately spent on elements that don’t really matter — things that will not materialize, or if they do won’t have a major impact.  Legal and tax counsel is always critical and highly valuable, but can sometimes also be the tail that wags the dog.  Once I was leading an important negotiation where we debated at length with legal and tax experts over “edge scenarios” that might negatively impact us.  This went on for two days until I took a step back to actually calculate what our largest dollar exposure could be.  It turned out to be less than the cost of of preparing a structure to avoid it and likely less than the professional and legal fees we had already accumulated thinking about it!  Do the math and calculate how material a point is — then determine if it is really worth fighting for in the bigger picture.
5. Look for points that have an asymmetry in value. Once you understand the math of a negotiation, look where there may be asymmetry.  There are always points where there is a fundamental difference in how each side perceives the value.  To be effective in negotiation you need to comprehend the balance of trade on every key point. Basically, look where your currency is worth more.  Consider, for example, the purchase of a house.  If the eventual price is the most important currency for you, then see where there may be a different lever (a different “currency”) to trade for your desired lower price. Sometimes a seller may care more about the timing or certainty of a closing than the price. Taking out a financial contingency, or letting the close happen on whatever time frame the seller wants, may gain you disproportionate benefit in the price. Remember the bigger context and have the empathy and rationality to think about it from the other side.

Following the five rules above will eliminate a large amount of futile negotiation on things that don’t matter, or things that matter much more for one side than the other.  The goal of any negotiation is to reach agreement, but unfortunately the journey there is usually painful.  We find ourselves “stuck” on terms or conditions we feel are must-haves, and lose perspective as to why we want the things we think we want.   It does not need to be like that. Focus on the two or three scenarios that really matter for each side and have reasonable probability of being realized, as opposed to every edge scenario. In the end it probably won’t be a contract that saves you. It will be the quality of your relationship, your rationality, and, yes, your ability to do effective subsequent negotiation (definitive documents are rarely definitive).  The reality is that you are more likely to get a fair deal — and even get the opportunity, from time to time, to have your cake and eat it too — if you stay disciplined on the underlying architecture and rationality of each negotiation point.  Good luck, and happy negotiating.

Enough already about social selling. I had an audience member last week ask me whether or not I thought they could shift from selling to social selling. I asked him what was social selling. He said “You know. Using social media to do the selling for us.” If that’s your definition of “social selling,” then the answer is a big, fat “no!”

It’s Not New – Just Faster

Does social selling work for Business to Business (B2B) companies? Whether or not social selling can be effective depends on how you define social selling. In a workshop I delivered to a group of CEOs last month, another attendee defined social selling as “connecting through your social networks to people who might be potential customers.” Let’s face it, none of this is new. It’s the way we have always communicated. It’s just that we now have new tools. The tools themselves make it possible to act faster than you did in the past. Online social networks are just like a car: A faster car could get you to your destination faster. It can also cause a fatal crash faster.

How It Used To Be

Nothing new has been invented in sales for the past 5,000 years. What’s changed is how customers research solutions to their problems. In the past, customers would describe a problem they were having. They might speak with trusted members of their community to see if others had the same problem or knew of a solution. They would research alternatives. They might even read some content and speak with an alleged expert. Before social media, all of that research and exploring happened in a customer’s local community.

What’s really changed today is that the customer’s community is now several communities. And rather than a tight geographic community of people they live near, the communities can now be spread across the globe. More importantly, it used to take weeks to speak with a dozen alleged experts. Now customers can get information from experts regardless of location within seconds.

Common Misconceptions About Social Selling

Social selling, to me, is about communicating effectively with your community so they know who can help them. There are three misconceptions about social selling that you need to avoid in order to succeed. It costs less and is more effective to actually create valuable content instead of making an investment to try to fake it. (SEO people who are faking it – yes, we’re talking about you)

Misconception #1: All content is good. When your customer contacts you and has self-diagnosed their situation and identified what they need, which is more common? A) They got it right, and properly identified the right solution; or B) What they ultimately end up needing is different than what they thought? I’ve asked this question to over 1,000 executives, and the unanimous answer is that the customer didn’t get it exactly right. So, when customers use information to determine the “treatment,” they usually get it wrong. Let’s face it, if I relied on the self-diagnosis I reached using WebMD.com, I would have had 8 funerals already.

Bottom line, create and share content that clearly explains what problems you are good at solving. This way, your ideal customer will see that you understand the problem, but won’t jump ahead to the potentially wrong solution.

Misconception #2: Include a brief pitch for what you do. The idea behind creating valuable content is, as my buddy Marcus Sheridan says, “be the best teacher” on that subject. Think of it this way, groundbreaking articles in the Journal of the American Medical Association don’t end with the message “To schedule your surgery, like us on Facebook.” The goal of “social selling” is to define the problems you solve with remarkable results so that people experiencing those problems will know you can help. With a bigger audience, you need to be more narrowly focused if you want to stand out from the competition. Be amazingly specific about the problems you solve. Smart customers will read the “about the author” and figure out how to find you.

Misconception #3: eBooks and Whitepapers Sell. When executives are making decisions, they first ask, “What problem does this solve, or why do I need it?” Then they ask, “What is the likely result we’d see if we made the investment?” What this means is that your best value is in sharing case studies. Spend most of your time defining the issue the customer was facing and the associated impact of that challenge (what made it important enough to solve). Then talk about the results. Leave the description of your brilliant solution for a later discussion.

What is Social Selling

Social selling is nothing new. It’s just that we now have easier access to more channels through which to communicate. Our audience is also inundated with a ton of self-promoting garbage. If you define social selling as being a great teacher to help your customers learn they can rely on you as a resource, then social selling is very effective.

It’s Your Turn

Think about the questions your customers ask and the problems you are great at solving. Share your description in the comments, and see who reaches out to you.

Credit and debit card payments made in physical stores add up to a huge amount of economic value — $4 trillion in transaction volume in the U.S. alone in 2013, and that volume is growing as more and more people move away from cash.

But traditional card payments technology has evolved slowly, and merchants must choose from a confusing and expensive array of services and equipment in order to accept credit cards. That's creating an opportunity for more agile players that can offer innovative technology, easy-to-understand pricing, and less clunky software and hardware.

In a recent report from BI Intelligence, we look at the complicated series of interactions among different legacy players that powers each credit card payment, outlining the six types of companies that play key roles in the credit credit payment chain. We explain what each of these players do, and how much value they add, and explain why two parts of this chain — the hardware providers and merchant service providers (MSPs) — are particularly vulnerable to disruption.

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

Here are some of our key findings:

• The credit card companies themselves aren't going anywhere for now. Visa and MasterCard in particular will remain an indispensable part of the chain because they don't actually process payments. They simply provide the rails that the credit card system runs on. Credit card processors like First Data that actually do the work of processing merchants' credit card transactions on the back-end are also in a strong position.
• Two pieces in the chain are particularly vulnerable to disruption: the makers of the actual hardware — basically card readers and registers — that are used to physically accept card payments at stores, and the hundreds of vendors known as merchant service providers, or MSPs, which set businesses up to accept credit cards.
• Manufacturers of register systems are vulnerable: Point-of-sale hardware faces an immediate threat from mobile devices. These devices are cheap and easy to implement, they do not require consumers to adopt new behaviors, and they free up retailer space previously devoted to bulky hardware.
• In addition, the new payments companies — including PayPal, Leaf, Revel Systems, Square, and others — could shove traditional MSPs aside as they bridge the offline and online worlds. They pair their mobile registers with consumer-side smartphone apps, and often also provide additional merchant services, like software for loyalty programs or for parsing online consumer data. These new companies want to replace the old players that focused mainly on logistics, i.e., helping merchants take credit card payments.
• But it's not all doom and gloom yet for legacy MSPs: they have existing relationships with the majority of merchants who accept credit cards and with banks. They also have established marketing channels and large sales forces. Large MSPs will move to acquire new payments technologies to squelch the disruption threat.

In full, the report: 

• Sizes the $4 trillion U.S. credit and debit card industry, taking stock of offline vs. online volume and growth
• Gives a detailed breakdown of the entire credit card transaction process
• Defines what role each of the players occupies within that chain
• Underscores which players in the credit card transaction process are most ripe for disruption from new payments companies, and which ones remain in the strongest positions
• Explains what services these new payments companies will most likely offer to merchants and consumers
• Examines how legacy players are responding to the threats from these new payments entrants

 

Join the conversation about this story »

Introduction

Sustainable sourcing is turning out as the most important function of supply chain management. And the reason why sustainable sourcing may very well become the single most important aspect of supply chain management, is because of how it grounds itself in future-proofing supply chains.

What does it mean to future-proof supply chains? Future-proofing supply chains means protecting your organizations performance in the future against a multitude of potential problems. Whether the future involves loss of access to key production ingredients or logistics providers, future-proofing attempts to mitigate potential dangers.

Trending in the environment towards future-proofing supply chains is sustainable procurement. Sustainable procurement has proven that it improves efficiency, effectiveness, and transparency for organizations (Rennie & Salandiak, 2013). Furthermore, sustainable sourcing not only improves employee & supplier relationships, it also improves an organizations reputation amongst their community and their customers. Lastly sustainable sourcing can dismantle poor waste disposal practices and reduce energy waste, improving company spend management.

Beyond the business case towards sustainable sourcing, ecologically friendly procurement practices are necessary for maintaining our environment.

This article will first begin with an overview of the benefits provided through sustainable sourcing and how e-procurement impacts sustainable supply chain management. Following that, the article will offer a brief analysis of how sustainable sourcing is achieved in Germany. The article will then conclude with a brief capstone from an interview with Eartheasy CEO, Ben Seaman.

What benefits can sustainable sourcing provide?

Amongst the numerous benefits sustainable supply chain management (SSCM) can provide, the more important benefits include competing with a green strategy and improving market competitiveness.

Green strategy involves reducing waste management costs, trading ethically to attract ethically-conscious customers, and reducing energy resource waste.

Improving market competitiveness involves reducing procurement delays by adequately projecting future sourcing activities against potential environmental hazards, government regulations, shift in customer attitudes towards environmental concerns, and changes in supplier relationships.

In fact, sustainable sourcing practices can enhance buyer-supplier relationships through increased transparency (Rennie & Salandiak, 2013).

Why is E-procurement often considered the best step towards SSCM?

Before we get into why most organizations are choosing to optimize their supply chain consider this single piece of info: “One manual purchase order can cost a company as much as $150 to process, even if the purchase order was issued to buy a $25 part” (Chien & Ahrens, 2001).

The cost of issuing manual purchase orders add up when considering the time spent sending documents back and forth between approvers, buyers, and receivers. E-procurement systems have become significantly more popular as a means of removing the tedious travel time of documents.

In fact, according to Tony Chien & Daniel Ahrens (2001) there are three significant ways that e-procurement improves the purchasing process.

1. Goodbye paperwork. E-procurement systems eliminate paperwork by generating electronic purchase orders which can be immediately routed to the appropriate person. Resulting in less paper cost from purchasing paper and disposing of it, as well as less time spent between key personal.
2. Commitment to vendors. E-procurement systems can be used as a means of compelling end users to only purchase from company approved vendors. This commitment to approved vendors is one way of mitigating the possibility of corporate fraud within the organization. An example of such would include a fake vendor where funds can be funnelled into.
3. Spend visibility. Although spend visibility may sound like a generic buzzword, spend visibility is an integral function of e-procurement systems. Spend visibility allows managers full control and their company and department spending.

So how are we currently tackling SSCM in Germany?

German Sustainable Development Strategy

How is Germany alone approaching SSCM? In fact, the German government has made a formal commitment towards SSCM through the German Sustainable Development Strategy (GSDS).

The purpose of the GSDS was to classify procurement activities and find a means of attaching measurable aspects to them. The five procurement activities that are accountable within the GSDS are; 1) reducing logistics and freight intensity, 2) reduce land use, 3) implications against partners because of sustainable aspects, 4) quality of employee working conditions, and 5) enhancing quality of employment (Large, Kramer, & Hartmann, 2013).

Within reducing logistics and freight intensity, the GSDS measures greenhouse gas emissions, use and disposal of truck tires, and measuring driver behaviour according to environmentally conscious driving standards (Large, Kramer, & Hartmann, 2013).

The purpose of measuring land use falls on the dimensions of reducing energy waste, increasing renewable energy for warehouses & factories, and actively considering the environment in property choices (Large, Kramer, & Hartmann, 2013).

Under the GSDS, sustainable partner activities used for measurement include whether they use rail or ship cargo, whether partners use environmentally friendly transport services which does fall into the first activity above, and whether partners use combined transport to reduce freight intensity (Large, Kramer, & Hartmann, 2013).

For a long time, the procurement industry was overrun with allegations of poor working conditions and low access to essential services. However through the GSDS, German firms are observing whether employees are given services during the day and on weekends. German firms are also attempting to maintain a standard level of pay and minimize the use of temporary workers (Large, Kramer, & Hartmann, 2013).

And the final activity dimension measurable under the GSDS involves education and enhancing qualified employment in all levels of supply chain operations.

The GSDS is indeed a highly ambitious effort in attempting to measure sustainable practices within the German procurement industry.

The case for Eartheasy

Eartheasy was built on the philosophy that we need to protect our natural environment if we want to keep the things we love. Eartheasy is a go-to website that focuses on providing eco-friendly products, guides, and articles to its visitors. Eartheasy is a case where sustainable sourcing and procurement became an important enough issue, which the founders decided to share their culture with their customers (Kolenko, 2014).

Sustainable procurement is incredibly important for the future success of an organizations supply chain, but also for our environment and planet. The difficulties are not unheard of when considering green procurement strategies, however the strategic advantage that one could attain can last well into the future. And that’s what they mean when someone talks about future-proofing their supply chain.

Bibliography:

Chien, Tony, and Dianne Ahrens. “E-procurement the future of purchasing.” Circuits Assembly 12.9 (2001): 26-32. Print.

Large, Rudolf O., Nikolai Kramer, and Rahel Katharina Hartmann. “Procurement of logistics services and sustainable development in Europe: Fields of activity and empirical results.” Journal of Purchasing and Supply Management 19.3 (2013): 122-133. Print.

Kolenko, Sean., “The value of sustainability: An interview with Ben Seaman, CEO of Eartheasy.com.” Procurify. Posted June 14, 2014. Web. Accessed July 17, 2014 http://blog.procurify.com/2014/06/04/importance-sustainability-interview-ben-seaman-ceo-eartheasy-com

Rennie, David, and Trudy Salandiak. ” Sustainable sourcing for competitive advantage .” Keeping Good Companies 65.11 (2013): 652-656. Print.

Agents & Distributors – can’t live with them and can’t live without them

Without exception every B2B manufacturing company exec with whom I speak laments the challenges they face in channel management.  The complaints are nearly verbatim.  Channel partners expect and demand 10-20% (or higher) margins/commissions yet the manufacturer often must create, close and deliver the projects.

Certainly there are different, valid perspectives.  Some channel partners drive real value (often those focused on just a line or two) and some proactively create projects and manage the sales process.

But many just wait for the phone to ring….and piss and moan incessantly.

Supplement, replace, upgrade and delight

The internet, though, and industrial marketing tools can substantially shift this dynamic for companies willing to step back and consider alternatives.

There are four fundamental ways in which digital marketing can reshape the manufacturer/channel partner relationship in the B2B sales world.

1. Supplement – In some cases channel partners actually do a decent job managing and closing projects.  But they distinctly underperform in opportunity identification and project creation.  You can work with this (and in industries/geographical markets where relationships are a currency of business, you’ll need to!)  Digital marketing can cast a wider net than any channel partner, anyway, and can be the source of a flow of marketing qualified leads.  Internationally you might need to hand off earlier in the process (let the partner nurture the lead to a sales qualified status) while domestically you can often run your nurturing through marketing automation, handing the lead off to the channel partner once it is sales qualified.
2. Replace – But what if the channel partners not only don’t create projects but basically just tag along while it’s up to your employees to manage projects and close deals?  You’re probably fed up with paying commissions in return for essentially no value – but you’re hesitant to drop them because otherwise you’d have nothing.  With digital marketing you’ll have far more than nothing – you’ll have a flow of leads which you’ll be working to manage and close just as you are now.  So why allow useless channel partners to continue to extort commissions from you?
3. Upgrade – Somewhere you have one of those channel partners that really works.  They create projects, they nurture leads, they help enhance your brand while building theirs, they close deals, the create value for their customers and you enjoy working with them.  Why do you only have one?  Or at least a small percentage?  Struggle to find the right ones?  Have you thought of approaching that prospecting like customer prospecting?  Here’s where digital marketing can help.  Create a “channel partner” persona and market for them, based on business issues and value, just as you would for customers.  You’ll be easily able to filter out the opportunistic, single transaction crap from the legitimate business partner leads.  And further, you could effectively implement a GE/McKinsey style “up or out” system to continuously upgrade your channel.
4. Delight – Have some awesome channel partners?  Plan to find more using digital marketing?  Once they’re in place then you can further solidify strong collaborative relationships through a flow of high quality marketing / sales qualified leads.  You know the drill – even good channel partners always whine that you don’t send enough leads.  And then when you do, the follow up is poor – often matching the quality of the leads that you’ve sent.  So break the cycle.  Start generating and sharing high quality leads that convert into profitable business for both of you….and see how the relationship flourishes then!

It’s your business – run it like you mean it

Here’s the bottom line.  If you had an employee that only worked occasionally – when you happened to stand there and demand it – they wouldn’t last long.  And yet you tolerate that from channel partners.

Stop!!

Tools are available if you’re willing to change your mindset and leverage the tools.

Want to explore upgrading your domestic and international B2B sales channel?  Let’s talk.

Want to understand how to leverage internet marketing for your manufacturing business?  Check this out.

images – planetmarketing & cxotoday

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Noel Wurst: Hello. This is Noel Wurst with Skytap. I am speaking today with Michael Spayd. Michael's going to be speaking at the Agile 2014 Conference in Orlando, Florida, on Monday, July 28. It had a really interesting sounding session, and I just wanted to learn a little bit more about that session and some of the topics that may come up during it. 

Michael, how are you doing today?

Michael Spayd: I'm doing well.

Noel: Great. 

Michael: Thank you for hosting this, Noel.

Noel: No problem at all. Your session, again, on Monday, July 28, is titled "What would it mean to Coach an Agile Enterprise?" I noticed that the first sentence presents a huge challenge in enterprise level software development today. In your abstract you say, "Enterprise agility is both a hugely popular aspiration and a widely misunderstood buzzword.” That comes up a lot in agile, with the ability to “do agile” in so many different ways. 

Is that the reason that maybe enterprise agility is only an aspiration for many people, and not something they can call an accomplishment? That maybe the phrase is so loose or so misunderstood that, it’s like the difficulty in defining 'done' sometimes, that you get so many versions of it that it's hard to know when you've reached it?

Michael: I think you're definitely pointing in the right direction. I guess, what I'll say about it is that it's an aspiration because people want it. They want what they have experienced on their teams, on their agile teams: more harmony, more productivity or satisfaction, more customer value, and all that kind of stuff. They want that in a big way. They want that everywhere. They don't just want it on their team. They want it with their leadership. They want it in their organization's culture. They want it in the funding process. So that's what attracts people, I think, to it. 

Yes, different people mean very different things by it, from just scaling up the actual software delivery process, as if you could do that in isolation, and maybe to some extent you can, but along with that comes all kinds of cultural assumptions, and cultural beliefs and values, shared values, and organizational structures, and processes and policies and stuff that impact your ability to do that. So you can't just scale, per se, in that dimension, I don’t believe. That's not my experience, so it means a lot of different things. It means all those different things and various ways to different people. It's complex. It's probably complicated, also. It's big, and it's hard.

Noel: Right, it is. That's one thing that no one's ever accused agility of being was an easy process, especially with there not being an end to it. Then to look back at the abstract for this session, again, which I really enjoyed. You talk at one point about the “limits of culture.” I was curious as to what those limitations are. That's not something I feel like I read a lot about is the limits of culture. We hear how about agile, DevOps, and all of these other practices are all about culture. I know one thing we've talked about, here, at Skytap before is the idea that it’s all about culture; you do need that, but at the same time, if you don't have some of the, maybe, collaborative tools or collaborative abilities of your teams to actually do their work and to have access to the environments they need, when they need them for as long as they need them, then you can have all that culture but if people can't get their work done—that there really are some limitations to culture. So I was curious as to maybe what you saw some limits to be?

Michael: Cool. If you'll permit me a digression it would help to explain a little bit of the model that I am developing to answer that question. It's called “Integral Agile” which means a complete view of things, or all the necessary parts. It comes from a field of integral studies or integral theory that is out there in the world, like the agile movement, actually. It's actually a big movement. I'm adapting that into the enterprise agile world. So it talks about four fundamental perspectives that we can take on things that usually we tend to have our bias toward one of them or maybe two of them as being the truth, and we don't pay attention to the others, but to have a complete view of things we really need to take all four perspectives. 

Let me just describe each of them briefly. One of them is what people talk about as being agile, as opposed to doing agile. Those are two of the four perspectives. The being side, what I experience, what I value personally. Maybe my pride in being a software craftsman or my motivation to serve on a team, to not just be an individual contributor, for instance, but to really be part of something bigger than myself. That's one perspective, the being side of things, you might say. 

A different side is what you actually do. The behaviors you engage in. What other people can see from the outside. I may value software craftsmanship or I say I do, but do I really check in code all the time? Do I really pair with people? Do I really write tests before I write code? That's the behavior side. Do we really follow our team agreements of not letting the sun set on conflict, or whatever it is—do we actually engage in those behaviors? Similarly, what actual processes do we engage in? If you were looking at us from the outside, If an anthropologist was looking at our team or our organization, what behaviors would they notice we engage in? That's an outside perspective, a little more objective. 

On a collective level we have the internal side, which typically we call “culture.” What's the experience? What's the feeling of being in this organization or on this team? I've got to be careful what I say in this organization because we have an uptight culture. Or I work at start-up in Silicon Valley, and we bring our dogs to work, and we wear sandals, and we feel really free and open. That's a more feeling kind of thing or experience: what we share together, what we value together. 

The objective side of that, or the outside of that is what organizational structures do we have? What's our org chart look like? Is it flat? Is it lots of layers of bureaucracy and hierarchy? What about our policies? Do we have lots of policies and really detailed? Do we have very few policies and people have a lot of freedom to make their own decisions? How do we structure things? How do we staff things? How do we deal with funding or whatever? 

So if you think about all those different kinds of things, usually we each have a bias. I might say, "Oh, what I want is, or agile would be great…." My business partner, Lisa Adkins, likes to say, "Agile would be great if only individual leaders would get it." Or somebody else might say, "Agile would be great if only our culture changed." Or somebody might say, "Agile would be great if only we visualized the work flow." Or somebody else might say, "Agile would be great if only we actually followed the agile practices." 

So all those perspectives are valid, but they're also partial. So changing the culture, one, is really difficult, but, two, even if you do shift the culture, the feeling, the belief set, whatever—that might not change the structures. We might have structures, a certain level of bureaucracy or layers or whatever, that keep us entrenched the way we are. 

Noel: Your answer leads me into my next question. It's good that you did digress there for a little bit. It helps out with this next question. You talked about changing culture is hard. A lot of times we hear about how, for agile to have any chance of succeeding, you have to have buy-in from the leadership or executive level, especially on the enterprise scale. I was curious as to, maybe even looking at your Integral Agile that you're working on, what are some of the ways that, maybe those who are in the leadership, executive level, then maybe some ways to approach them, and to be able to sell them on this, maybe not just agility. 

Michael: A couple of things. One is that I think that going in with a persuasion mindset, that “I want persuade them about something,” is usually not very successful. I mean, clearly there are exceptions to that. Particularly, let's say you went in there and you started that way, if that works, great, keep going. But when it starts to reach a limit or when they act like they're interested or whatever, but then they don't. Or they say they're interested but they don't act like it, they're not consistent with what they actually do afterwards, then you've got a problem. 

Usually it helps to go in with seeking to understand. Steven Covey's "Seek First to Understand." We teach in our coaching classes a professional coaching idea of asking powerful questions to people, which are not leading questions. They're not trying to get somebody somewhere, in particular; they're trying to help them explore their own values and what's true for them. Approaching executives, you need to understand where they're coming from. What they're motivated by. What's important to them. How they see the problems in the organization, rather than selling them a solution to what you think is a problem, that they may agree that some part of it is a problem but they may not see it in the same way, and they definitely may not share the same values that you have. 

Another part of the book is talking about different levels of cultural development and individual development, different value sets that see the world in different ways. If you're coming from a success-driven, achievement-driven philosophy exclusively, only part of what the agile manifesto says is going to be interesting to you, not all of it. You're really not going to care about people being empowered, particularly, or shared values together. You're going to care about results and customers being happy, but you're not going to actually embrace all of the manifesto, an organization, or excuse me, a leader or executive wouldn't. Then you're going to have a disconnect. 

So part of what my presentation and my book, Coaching the Agile Enterprise is about, and the parts that I've released called "Downloading the Integral Operating System," part of what that's about is about giving people a framework to understand what's going on in an organization, in an enterprise, so they can make sense of it in a different way. 

If you're coming from one kind of motivation and the leader you're approaching is coming from a different kind, that's doomed to failure on some level. So seeking first, like I say, to understand, to go in and understand the mindset, the value set, that the person is coming from, and then decide what to do with that. Are you really trying to change them or persuade them? Are you trying to do it through aggression, through your own ego, in some sense? Or are you actually doing it in a way that's facilitating and that's useful to the other person or to the organization? Or is it just that you think it will be? Those are really different. 

Noel: Yeah, absolutely. I was just thinking that it seems like it maybe hard sometimes to go in there and talk about needing to change a culture if that's not something that that person, like you were saying, has ever experienced or known was a problem, but then being able to show them how, through that change, customers, perhaps, get a higher quality product, and even faster than they were getting in the past, is a good idea. 

Michael: Yeah, you have to connect to what they find to be of value and that may not be ... They may focus on that thing. Let's say it's a faster time to market, but they may not want to bring all the other things along with it, particularly, or they may not value them. Then you've got a disconnect. Then you've got a disappointed agile coach. We see a lot of them. 

Noel: Lastly, to wrap things up, for those who are able to attend your session which, again, is at Agile 2014, in Orlando, Florida, on Monday, July 28. For those who are able to attend it, what's maybe something that you hope that in that short amount of time that you them there in the room, that you can basically give them something small enough that they can begin, on day one, when they return, maybe to their own projects or organizations?

Michael: I think it's really more than something that they would do afterwards; it's a way that they would see the world differently. 

Noel: Oh, wow.

Michael: So that's what I think that the integral perspective has to offer people is a very different way of seeing the world. Seeing its greater complexity. Being able to, at least, start to work with, in a realistic way, the complexity of it, not think that there's easy answers to it, because there's just not. Easy answers are usually ... They sound good and they're tempting, but they usually fall flat after some period of time. 

My hope would be that people would actually start thinking about things differently after my session. That would eventually lead into what they would do differently, but it would really start with, I think, helping them understand why things are happening in their organizations, particularly things that disappoint them about the adoption of agile in a more widespread way.

Noel: That's awesome. I hope the session is a huge success. I'm going to definitely try and be there myself. Sounds fantastic. 

Michael: Okay. Well, thank you. 

Noel: Your welcome! Again, everybody, this was my conversation with Michael Spayd who is going to be speaking at Agile 2014, Monday, July 28, with a session called "What would it mean to Coach an Agile Enterprise." Thank you so much again. 

Michael: You're welcome. Thank you, Noel. 

Sports innovation comes from a wide rage of business sectors including Digital, Food & Drink, Life Sciences, Product Design Engineering and Textiles. With the right support, Scotland's R&D strengths in these sectors can underpin future sports innovation

Customers have learned that in order to have a more customized experience they need to provide the data to drive those high-value communications and experiences. However, the burden is on marketers to become better in delivering on that expectation in order to give customers a reason to supply the necessary data.

In a recent study by Consulting firm Emnos, it was noted that shoppers want relevant solutions – tips and advice that will simplify their lives, save on time, and deliver information. However, 83% feel that retailers are not providing sufficient information and resources.

This should be a wakeup call to marketers to do more than just collect data. They should use customer information to provide a clear and obvious improvement in the customer experience.

This fact is reinforced by a recent survey from data insight company ClickFox, which stated that about 32% of consumers said they’re most willing to share personal data if they feel loyal to a brand.

Data influences every decision that Avis Budget makes, from product, to distribution, to communication.

With records from 40 million customers, finding data to analyze wasn’t an issue, it was how to structure the use of data that was the challenge. Understanding the value of the “total” customer through data helped the company to determine communication strategies and helped to differentiate customer service solutions.

Jeannine Haas, CMO, Avis Budget Group stated, “…we look for ways to infuse the customer experience with data… It helps us organize our contact strategy…, which in turn increases [its] effectiveness … The most critical achievement of the project may be the “single view” of the customers…Information is consolidated into a web-based dashboard that the front-line customer-facing employees can access.”

The company used data technology to get a single 360-degree view of its customer by applying a segmentation strategy called ‘customer lifetime value.’ They looked for ways to infuse the customer experience with intelligence Tim Doolittle, vice president of CRM, Avis Budget noted that “Differentiation today is based on customer service and customer experience… We lacked an organized process and analytics infrastructure to leverage our data assets, to improve marketing ROI and the customer experience and to drive long-term customer value…”

“…We’ve added win-back and peer prospecting for a total of six segments, and that’s how we organize our contact strategy group. That approach has increased the effectiveness of our contact strategy, in many cases above 30% over control.”

5 Takeaways for Using Customer Information to Drive High Value Customer Experiences

1. Use Data to Provide Useful Information - Make it easy for shoppers to understand that you’re collecting data in order to give them a better experience.
2. Use Data to Solve Problems – Identify issues and solve problems based on customer input and customer communications.
3. Positive Experiences Drive Customers to Share Data – Marketers need to continuously provide excellent customer experiences because this is what proves knowledge of customers as more than a transaction–but as a person.
4. Use Data to Actionably Improve Customer Communication – Due to lack of customer insights companies are often only able to provide generic responses, leaving the customer feeling more frustrated. Personalize communication, responses, and experiences.
5. Don’t Just Collect Data … Use it as a Tool - Look beyond the last click, or the most recent search, to provide an experience that covers a consumer’s entire purchasing journey.

I’m scaling my training down, down, down these days — two days is too much, one full-day is still too much, and a half-day still seems challenging. I regularly get requests for a one-hour training. But what I’m realizing is that it’s not the length of the training, but how it is delivered. As I continue to tailor my TeleSmart training to meet the needs of Millennials, I reference the psychologists and educators who are tailoring educational systems for maximum impact in this new generation.

Millennials are currently flooding inside sales organizations, and their numbers aren’t going to be reduced. They come in a broad range of work personality-types: some are uber-professional superstars with high leadership potential, while others treat the office like a dorm, walk around with their wrecking balls, and have extremely short attention spans.

The challenge of ramping them up and doing the knowledge transfer is big. Since many of them don’t want anyone telling them what to do, any type of training that involves a talking-head or an authority figure is not well received. Here are some of the issues:

Millennials Don’t Trust Authority: Millennials approach education and professional training as a “transaction.” They won’t buy into without a clear understanding of what it’s going to give them. Further, Pew Research revealed that most Millennials are less trusting of others, especially authority, than previous generations. Connect your training lessons to real life (and current culture) to communicate the timely value and relevance of what you’re delivering and be sure to clearly highlight the most valuable takeaways from the training.

Millennials Defy Hierarchy: The same study shows that Millennials prefer a less formal learning environment that allows them to interact informally with the instructor and their peers. A recent LinkedIn internal study reported that 1 in 3 Millennials have texted their boss outside of work for a non-work-related issue compared to only 10% of the boomer generation. Growing up in a more child-centered society, many Millennials find hierarchical relationships to be uncomfortable or foreign. Open your training up to more direct contact in and around the learning sessions.

Utilize Strategic Peer-to-Peer Learning:  Millennials really respond best to learning from peers, even if their peers have no idea what they are talking about. Beware that these peers may do an incorrect knowledge transfer, so stay tuned with the leadership, professional types.

Millennials Crave Variety: according to a Dalton State College study, Millennial culture has been “inundated with multimedia,” making Millennials “huge multitaskers.” Millennials won’t hold their attention on one type of instruction, much less one talking-head. The study advised introducing more variety when teaching Millennials, incorporating videos, social media, television, and other sources that allow Millennials to spread their attention around.

Millennials Admire Honest but Tough Professionalism: As much as you want to be hip and cool with your Millennials,  you might not be “cool enough.” And the coolness factor is short-lived anyway. Trying going to the opposite extreme to win the attention and support of the more professional Millennials who are there to learn — your potential superstars — and who are as annoyed as you are with the wrecking crew: Be the cool professional, strict and smart with a take-no-prisoners attitude. Let them know that you expect great things from them, and you just might get their attention!

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For more on inside sales strategies and trends, subscribe to the RSS Feed for this blog and sign up for our Email Newsletter. If you need weekly injections of inspiration and motivation, sign up for the Smart Selling Motivational Texts. 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: The Talking Heads

The post Millennials Are SO Over Talking-Head Training appeared first on TeleSmart Communications.

Often overlooked as a minor detail, the call-to-action included in each and every article on your blog is vital to driving results from your efforts.

As part of your content marketing strategy, the goal of your blog should be to educate your audience, stir the right emotions, and build a positive memory of your business as it pertains to your expertise. But it’s also meant to drive traffic, increase social media conversations around your business, generate more conversions in the form of downloads, and add email subscribers to your marketing list.

The call-to-action, or CTA, is text, a visual, or a combination of the two that drives a person to perform an action after reading your blog post—whether that’s downloading an e-book, signing up for your email list, activating a free trial of your product, or another action that slowly drives results for your business.

Why a CTA Matters

Everything your team does should relate back to the core objectives of your business, which is why it is crucial that every blog post written by your company helps move your organization closer to achieving its goals.

Including a call-to-action within and around every blog post can help drive more readers to your blog content, increase lead generation, and improve the relationship between your company and its customers.

According to Search Engine Journal, companies that blog have more inbound links, and over 434 percent more indexed pages, than those that do not blog. This highlights how beneficial blogging can be as part of your content marketing strategy, since the medium can dramatically increase ongoing interactions with your business.

The Components of an Effective CTA

Calls-to-action can come in many forms, but they all share a few components that make them successful.

Your blog’s CTA should be:

• A soft sell that isn’t highly promotional or sales focused—think of how you can provide more value with more premium content or service;
• Non-disruptive to the reader experience on the blog (make the CTA blend in as part of the article or blog homepage, but don’t let it get lost);
• Relevant to the article next to which it is being displayed;
• Simple and concise, driving a user to easily perform the desired action;
• Well-written (visuals can be helpful, but aren’t always necessary);
• Gripping, with a hook to provide incentive for a reader to take action;
• Designed with the reader in mind (be sure to get insights from testing different formats).

Examples of Successful Blog Post Calls-to-Action

Many organizations out there have mastered the art of the CTA. Here’s what they are doing right.

1. KISSmetrics blog: KISSmetrics is a measurement tool that provides insights on who’s performing an action on your website. At the bottom of all the KISSmetrics blog posts is a call-to-action that encourages readers to download a related e-book. This way, leads who have just read an article will get an offer of more related content—but to access it, the lead has to fill out a download form.

2. Nasty Gal blog: Nasty Gal is a women’s apparel brand based in California. The brand’s blog occasionally features articles that mention some of its products; at the bottom of those articles, the reader sees a grid of thumbnail pictures that feature these products. This helps Nasty Gal direct readers to the specific products included in a post, emulating the thumbnail experience elsewhere on their e-commerce store. Here, the brand decided to take a visual approach, presenting the products it sells like a Pinterest board and letting the content do the talking.

3. Dell’s Tech Page One blog: The popular consumer tech brand Dell has a blog called Tech Page One, focused on providing technology and operational insights to business owners. At the right-hand side of all blog content is a CTA to sign up for the blog’s email list, and a CTA in the form of an ad for some of the company’s relevant product offerings. Including multiple calls-to-action on your blog is an effective way to ensure you are capturing as many relevant leads as possible. However, too many on one page can confuse the user by not clearly conveying which action the person should take next.

4. Big Commerce blog: Big Commerce is an e-commerce software solution for businesses of all sizes. The company’s blog homepage and every individual blog post features a visual CTA on the right-hand sidebar that drives users to start a free trial of its product. This is an example of using an engaging hook to drive interest from your readers, and the free offering increases the likelihood that they’ll take action. The ad doesn’t disrupt the reader’s experience, which is an essential component of any CTA. In this example, writing is key—every word matters when you’re trying to get the user to take action immediately.

Remember, while CTAs are a critical factor in your content marketing strategy success, they have to be done right to generate leads and build relationships with your clients.

What are your content marketing strategy goals? What kinds of calls-to-action do you plan to experiment with in the future? Share your thoughts in the comments below.

This article originally appeared on the Content Standard.

A new study by Adaptly, in partnership with Facebook and Refinery29, shows that sequential Facebook ads that incorporate brand storytelling and awareness outperform sustained campaigns with ads solely focused on getting conversions.

The survey results were eye-opening: Sequenced ad campaigns that slowly led viewers down the sales funnel received 87 percent more view-throughs and 56 percent more email subscriptions compared to sustained call-to-action campaigns.

While producing a successful Facebook drip campaign requires notable time, creative input and strategic planning, the payoff can be worth it.  New to the concept? Our cheat sheet covers 5 essential rules for creating a successful sequenced ad campaign!

For more digital advertising insight, download Flightpath’s 2014 Social Media Strategy guide.

Note: This post originally appeared on the Flightpath blog.  

Your team has found what look like some great candidates for your open sales position. You have planned your interview questions to help filter out the mediocre and find the top performers. You have reviewed your compensation package and are certain it is competitive. You feel you are ready to hire the company’s next super star. STOP.

Before you sit down at your desk to interview candidates, make a stop at HR, or you may be risking a law suit. Many questions that seem innocuous can land you in legal hot water, and the laws may have shifted without your realization. It is part of HR’s job to keep up on changes in employment law, so be sure you ask them to review your intended questions before sitting down with candidates.

Here are some questions and issues you may want to discuss with HR or your organization’s legal department before diving into your interview process:

Age: Most sales managers are aware they should not ask directly about age, but may not be aware they can violate age discrimination laws with offhand comments that may indirectly ask the candidate to expound upon or reveal their age.

• Illegal: Wow, you look much too young to have been a top sales performer at such a large organization!
• Legal: How long did you work for XYZ Company, and can you tell me more about your accomplishments there? How many deals were you able to close, who are your primary buyers; do they reside in the C-suite?

Gender-specific questions and questions about marital status and family: It is illegal to discriminate based on gender. It is crucial that you don’t ask any question that could be interpreted to be digging for information about the candidate’s marital status, spouse or children.

• Illegal: Do you have children? Will you be able to travel for business and work the long hours this job requires or do you have to be home by 5:00 to take care of your children?
• Legal: Your sales territory would include five states, so you will be on the road quite a bit, and that will include some overnight stays. Since you will be busy with sales calls during the day, you may have to do some paperwork nights and weekends. Would you be willing and able to work these kinds of hours and spend some nights away from home?

Sexual orientation: Questions about sexual orientation are illegal in California and some other places. There is no reason to inquire about this at all.

Country of origin: It is illegal to discriminate based on country of origin. You cannot ask about nationality or native tongue, but you can ask candidates to verify they can work legally in the country. You can also ask what languages they can speak or write fluently – if that is critical to the job. HR should have attorney-approved forms regarding legal-to-work verification. It is best just to let HR verify these forms and supporting documentation.

• Illegal: We have a position opening up in Mexico City. Are you from Mexico? Is Spanish your first language?
• Legal: We have a position opening up in Mexico City. Are you fluent in Spanish?

Ethnicity and race: It is illegal to inquire about either ethnicity or race, even if comments or questions seem complimentary.

• Illegal: Since you are African American, you would do well in this sales position, because there are many African American prospects in the territory.
• Legal: There is really no legal question or comment about ethnicity and race.

Religion: Don’t ask about religion with the reasoning that you are trying to find out what holidays the candidate will want to take off or for any other reason.

• Illegal: Are you Jewish? Will you want Hanukkah and Passover off? It would be great if you were willing to cover for some of the other client service representatives around Christmas.
• Legal: The company gives the following holidays off: [List them.] You also can take [#] of personal days per year. (Check with HR about this one, as it is possible you may have to give important religious holidays off in certain jurisdictions.)

Disability: You cannot ask a question that would cause the candidate to tell you about a health issue or disability.

• Illegal: We are looking for real go getters who can take a tough schedule on the road, because this sales territory is quite large. How many days were you sick last year?
• Legal: The schedule for this job can sometimes be grueling. The territory is quite large, and it requires long hours and a lot of time on the road. Can you handle being on the road 50% of the time?

Physical attributes: You cannot comment on height, weight or other physical attributes.

• Illegal: With your good looks, you shouldn’t have any trouble getting in the door to pitch new prospects.
• Legal: Tell me about your experience in getting through the gatekeepers in order to pitch new prospects.

Affiliations: It is illegal to ask generally about clubs and affiliations.

• Illegal: What clubs do you belong to and what are your political affiliations?
• Legal: Do you want to discuss any professional organizations you think are relevant to helping you perform your job?

Military status: It is best to just avoid any comment on their military background.

• Illegal: It is important that our clients can reach you, and that they feel their rep is available to them. I see you were in the military. Are you still in the reserves? Might you be called away from work to serve?
• Illegal: What kind of discharge did you receive?
• Legal: Do you have any potential plans that would require you to take time away from your field position?

Arrests: It is illegal to ask if a person has ever been arrested, because someone could have been arrested and then exonerated.

• Illegal: We really need someone we can trust in this positon, because you will have access to confidential company and product information as well as certain financial accounts. Have you ever been arrested?
• Legal: It is legal to ask about felony convictions, and factors about the felony can be considered when making a hiring decision. There is a fine line here when weighing these factors, and it is better to avoid this issue during your interview and just leave gathering to HR. HR will likely use attorney-approved forms. Of course, HR can also be helpful in performing background checks.

Financial information: It is illegal to ask if a candidate has ever declared bankruptcy, but it is legal to run a credit check.

• Illegal: We want high-powered salespeople who know how to make money. We are looking for winners. Have you ever declared bankruptcy?
• Legal: Do not ask about financial background during an interview. Rather, your HR department can ask the candidate to sign a form giving consent to a check credit. Many U.S. states allow employers to use credit history as a factor in hiring decisions, but in some states there are restrictions.

Special Note on asking about earnings: It is a common practice to evaluate a sales person’s level of success by looking a their history of commission earnings and in most jurisdictions it is legal to ask a candidate to prove their income in one way or another. Once you have had your interview questions sanctioned by the HR department, if you need to deviate a bit during the interview, stick to the straight and narrow and only ask obviously job-related questions. If there is any doubt at all about the legality of a question, don’t ask it. An off-hand comment can cost the company a lawsuit.

Sales Managers, liked what you’ve read? Click here and subscribe to our @Peak Executive email series and get easy to digest recruiting insights delivered right to your inbox bi-weekly!

 

 

*CAVEAT: This blog does not give legal advice, but here are some questions and issues you may want to discuss with HR or your company’s legal department. Questions labeled as “illegal” and “legal” should be checked with your HR department or attorney. Examples are based on U.S. and Canadian law, but U.S. and Canadian law differ (from each other and other countries), as do laws from state to state in the U.S. Please check with your HR department or attorney regarding the issues raised in this blog post and how they apply to your company.

Sources
8 Interview Questions You Should Never Ask, Inc.
13 Questions to Avoid During a Job Interview, Entrepreneur
Discrimination during a Job Interview, Lawyers.com
Interview Questions: Legal vs. Illegal, Canada Human Resources Centre

Image courtesy of  Naypong | FreeDigitalPhotos.net

The post Interview Legal Landmines: How HR Can Help appeared first on Peak Sales Recruiting | Sales Recruiter.

I have been working in marketing for over twenty years. I’m sure you’ve noticed too, that recently, Pay Per Click (PPC) marketing has gone from being virtually non-existent to being one of the largest channels in marketing today. Don’t get me wrong, I have nothing against PPC. The problem is that if you sell through channel/sales partners, PPC is ineffective, and often, a complete waste of money.

PPC doesn’t work because, typically, it’s untargeted. A broad brush approach rarely works unless a number of factors are in your favour, like a strong website, a good selection of keywords, and not too much competition on the terms you want to bid on. I don’t know about your business and your marketing strategy, but if I’m spending my marketing budget on something, I do not want a large part of the budget to succeed or fail purely on luck.

So what does work, when your products or services are sold through a complex sales partner network? Well, for one, social media.

A recent study showed that 71% of IT buyers used social media sites like Twitter and Facebook to research future purchases (1). We’re not talking about just consumers here either, we’re talking about business customers looking at business solutions, using social media as a way of researching the companies which they intend to purchase from to deliver their enterprise solutions.

I bet you’re thinking that this is brilliant, but how can you get to these buyers, considering they don’t actually follow you? You could try Twitter and Facebook ads, but in my experience (and I am sure you’ll agree), its expensive, and you get a lot more junk coming through, than quality.

In my opinion; social media amplification through your partners is a good solution. With social media amplification platforms, you can finally share and syndicate your content via your best assets – your channel partners, sales employees and key influencers – and make social media work for your brand.

Importantly, I would be willing to bet that if you counted up all of your partners’ and employees’ followers, you’d soon find that you’ve added hundreds of thousands of followers, all reading and sharing your content. Imagine counting up the followers of your partners, and finding you’ve got an extra 4.7 million engaged prospects to influence with your branded, and syndicated content.

What about cost though? Aren’t these platforms complex, expensive and hard to successfully deploy? Well, I’m happy to share some stats from our platform to demonstrate costs aren’t an issue;  compare the cost per click of ‘social media amplification’ vs ‘PPC’. The typical cost per click on our platform, for global enterprises in the IT and Telecommunications industries, is just $0.16 (2), against a typical cost per click through PPC of $1.39 (3).

That’s a 90% saving click-per-click versus Search Engine Marketing. 

What’s more most of these platforms are web-based and are easy to use (these aren’t the complex PRMs of the 1990s!). My advice; don’t waste your money. Look at the activity you’re doing, and look into social media amplification. I am biased, but I have also worked in Channel Marketing, and have approximately 20 years of developing and deploying B2B PRM systems both in the US, and in Europe. I think it’s a far more effective way of spending your money, but please, feel free to make your own mind up.

(1) http://blog.hubspot.com/blog/tabid/6307/bid/30239/71-More-Likely-to-Purchase-Based-on-Social-Media-Referrals-Infographic.aspx

(2) This average was calculated in January 2014, based on the clicks generated via socialondemand for purechannelapps’ top 10 global customers.

(3) http://bryaneisenberg.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/10/google-adwords-benchmarks.png

If you are in marketing then chances are you spend a lot of time looking at customer data. However, today we are experiencing information overload, and it can be hard to determine which data is the most critical to collect and will ultimately affect the bottom line.

There are certain sets of data that tell you a lot about your customers and allow you to adjust or implement strategies based on the information you collect.

If you are new to this whole ‘analytical reporting’ thing, here are a few data sets that I think you should start with.

The Basics:

• Names
• Email
• Job title
• Age
• Gender

This may seem obvious, but without this basic information it makes it very difficult to target and personalize your campaigns. This data is critical for personalization, but do not forget what else this info tells you. It tells you WHO your buyers are.  Find out more about how to build your buyer personas.

If you are using GreenRope, take advantage of the ‘Contacts Research’ tab in each Contact Record. GreenRope will scour the internet to find out more details about your contacts and automatically create user-defined fields based on the information we find!

Website Visits:

Tracking who visits your website is valuable information. It tells you which pages leads and clients visit, how long they spend on the page, and how often people leave your site. This not only helps you gauge the effectiveness of your website and overall marketing efforts, but also allows you to gain a deeper understanding of your customers. Sales reps can take this information and use it to their advantage by pinpointing particular topics, features that leads visited. This builds trust and encourages a deeper relationship between the company and the lead.

Transaction/conversion history:

Now, I realize that not all businesses sell online, but that does not mean that you shouldn’t be tracking conversions. A conversion does not always need to represent a monetary value, but rather a phase in the buyer lifecycle, such as ebooks downloaded and responses to targeted offers. Tracking conversions ensures that you don’t double up on content and provide a more personalized customer experience. Knowledge of the customer journey, and what triggers each person to take an action is great for evaluating and improving your marketing strategies. It also plays a roll in determining lead interest and quality.

Content engagement:

Yes, I am talking comments, retweets, mentions, keywords, etc. We live on planet social media, and while your clients are orbiting the Twittersphere, you better be listening. Keeping up with what people are saying about you and your company is another great way to get to know and engage your customers with content they are looking for.

Open Rates:

This is email marketing specific, but in my opinion, the most important. Why? Because without this data you will never know the success of your campaigns. Your open rate tells you the percentage of people who opened your newsletter relative to how many people you sent it to. Your open rate tells you a lot about your subject line, the content, as well as the best times to send out your broadcasts. Finding out what content produces the highest open rate will not only make your marketing more effective, but also increase engagement with your brand.

Do not try and analyze everything at once. First figure out how you are going to track and organize these data sets, then put the ball into motion.

Whether a business has products, services or both, the only way they can make a profit is by making sales. To do this, many companies use lead generation. New businesses, or those who are looking to improve their sales and learn more about the best ways of generating leads, may turn to lead generation blogs for tips, ideas and advice from experts and those with experience in this field.

What is Lead Generation

Lead generation is a way that businesses and individuals attempt to get potential customers interested in the services or products that they are trying to sell. Potential customers can then be turned into real sales. Traditional methods of generating leads are advertising, customer referrals, events and telemarketing. Modern strategies revolve more around utilizing technology and include organic search engine results, the Internet, social media and using specialist online lead generation services.

What are Lead Generation Blogs Discussing?

Anyone interested in finding out more about lead generation will find that there are plenty of lead generation blogs out there with lots of advice, tips and information on the subject. Each has their own specialist areas, so you can find information on just about anything to do with lead generation.

However, some subjects are more topical than others at the moment. Hot topics on these blogs at the moment include using social media, building lists, content marketing, increasing online traffic, paying for leads, using lead generation services and search engine optimization.

1. Lead Views

Lead generations and sales closure are the main topics of this blog. There are nine contributing authors, all of whom have backgrounds in marketing, sales or online business. There are eight categories of posts on here each with their own section, so it is easy to just read about the topics you are interested in finding out more about rather than having to trawl through a long list of blog posts. The subject categories include, among others, B2B Lead Generation Blog, B2B Marketing Insider and Sales Pulse Blog.

2. Leads Explorer Blog

Lead Explorer Blog has an extensive catalog of articles aimed at professionals to help them succeed in business. Leads Explorer is actually a professional web service that businesses can use to generate more traffic and keep track of all the relevant data and statistics you need to monitor how well your lead generation campaign is working, as well as other in-depth information.

3. Traffic Generation Cafe

This is a great blog for online businesses or any business that has a website as it is all about generating traffic. Traffic Generation Cafe is a blog written by Ana Hoffman, an expert in this field. Alongside the in depth blog posts, there is also general marketing news that Ana has researched form across the Internet.

Her aim is to use her own experience to help small businesses with a small marketing budget to increase traffic to their site. She offers all readers a free book about strategies. Overall, it is a good blog to learn about trending marketing topics as well as traffic generation.

4. B2B Lead Blog

B2B Lead blog covers many different marketing and sales topics. As the name of the blog suggests, this lead generation blog predominantly focuses on B2B. In terms of leads, categories include lead generation, lead management, lead scoring, lead qualification and lead nurturing. There are 15 resident contributors, each of them has their own specializations and vast experience in marketing, sales, promotion and lead generation.

The aim of the blog is to give professionals relevant and topical information to help them succeed in an evolving marketplace. Although this lead generation blog is best for those interested in finding out about B2B issues, there is a wealth of information available on all aspects of marketing so it makes good general reading matter.

5. Point Clear

In terms of variety of subjects, this blog probably offers the most diverse and extensive range of posts when compared to other blogs about lead generation. Practically every sub-topic you can think of that relates to marketing, lead generation and general business strategies is covered on this blog.

They also promote a number of other lead generation blogs that they think will be informative and beneficial to their readers. The blog is part of the main Point Clear website. It is their in-house specialists who create the content for their blog, although they do have guest blogs that offer readers informative articles written from a different perspective.

6. iMediaConnection Blog

Most of the blog posts on here are about marketing, social media, advertising, generating leads and web analytics. However, there are also posts on other business subjects, such as research, desktop apps, emerging platforms and best practices. A variety of bloggers contribute to this blog, each bringing their own professional experiences and knowledge to the fore. The layout of this blog means it is easy to find the most relevant blog posts in relation to what you want to learn or which topics are of the most interest to you. Also, the blogs are written in a style that makes them easy to understand, even for novices.

7. B2B Lead Gen Blog

This blog tells you everything you need to know about generating leads, with a particular focus on B2B. The posts cover both the basics of lead generation as well as trending topics relating to this subject. The posts are written by business development professionals who have extensive knowledge and experience in marketing and lead generation.

The lead generation blog is part of a website that offers lead generation services and there are a number of other resources that blog readers can use. These include a media library and a sales proposals and quotes calculator that helps you to determine how many leads you will need to hit your sales and profit targets.

8. Insightpool Blog

This is a blog on a professional social engagement activation service. The posts discuss various aspects of marketing and using social media as a way of generating leads for your business. Although the blog is aimed at promoting the services they provide, there is a lot of useful information for people who have limited knowledge of marketing and social media. While you are on this blog you may also want to check out the other resources available on the sight. These include webinars, audio and video resources and case studies.

9. ReTargeter Blog

ReTargeter is an advertising platform service that helps you to market your business across the Internet by targeting advertisements and optimizing your marketing spend. Their website also has a blog with content written by the company’s leading specialists. The main topics covered in the posts are generating leads, advertising, marketing strategies, re-targeting, recruiting, social media, testing, retail and business optimization. This is a great blog for finding information and tips that will help you to improve all aspects of marketing your business.

Summary

Overall, reading any of these blogs is a fantastic way to find out how you can generate leads, improve sales, increase profits and advance their business to the next level. Anyone who is serious about succeeding in their business should make the most of the rich information and advice there is to be found in blogs, as the articles are written by people with direct experience of generating leads. Furthermore, you can pick up a diverse range of tips and advice to improve all other aspects of your business alongside learning about lead generation.

Today's post is by Bill Wallace, vice president of Revenue Storm, a global sales consulting and revenue acceleration firm. Can’t We All Just Get Along? More than 40 percent of business-to-business (B2B) sales professionals missed quota in 2013, according to research from CSO Insights. The culprit, if you ask sales, is often the quality and volume of leads from marketing. Marketing, on the other hand, blames the sales team for ignoring leads and not working hard or fast enough to close them. It’s a problem as old as business itself: sales and marketing just can’t seem to get on the...

If you’re part of an inside sales team, this scenario is probably familiar to you:

You have a bad sales call; the person on the other end of the line is just rude and abuses you as an emotional punching bag. You hang up - and immediately vent your frustration: “Wow, I can’t believe this guy! Such an asshole!”

Another sales rep turns around and inquires: “What happened?” (The person asking that question is most often the person who not performing well that day either. When you’re on a roll, you’re focused to stay in the game.)

Now you’ve basically got an invitation to keep venting, and that’s exactly what you’ll do: “You know what this guy said? He said bla bla bla! Can you believe this?! So I told him bla bla bla, and then he bla bla bla! Total asshole!”

Other sales rep: “Yeah man, I had a call like this last week, screw these assholes, bla bla bla.”

Now the next sales rep joins the conversation, and soon you’ve transformed a bunch of sales champs into a congregation of complainers. The whole room is filled with negative energy.

And for what?

Just because your feelings were hurt when a sales call went bad. Congratulations, you’ve successfully brought down your entire team.

What should you do instead right after a really bad call?

 

What’s a better way to recover from shitty sales calls and bounce back?

First of all, step away from the desk. Get up from your chair, and get out of the room.

• Take a five minute break.
• Get a coffee.
• Go for a walk around the building. Go outside, take some fresh air.

Get some distance from what just happened, so you can have perspective.

When you return to your desk, do something that’s fun. Just take a minute or two and listen to your favorite song, or read some motivational quotes, do something that lifts up your spirits and puts you into a positive emotional state.

And then get back into the ring. Pick up the phone and dial another number. Close the next deal. Focus on the work in front of you.

Don’t Put A Lid On Your Emotions

There is a time and place to talk about bad feelings. Don’t keep it all inside. You absolutely should have an outlet for the stress bad sales calls causes.

But do it in the right setting and at the right time. Have a framework for expressing emotions that leads to a productive outcome, rather than a destructive one.

It’s best to have a designated time and place, rather than just impulsively letting it out:

• when you’re at lunch,
• at team meetings,
• have somebody in the sales team whom you regularly share your challenges and successes with - sometimes colleague can be the best coaches.

By creating a structure for this, you avoid carrying the negativity over into other sales calls (or even worse, your personal life).

Ask Yourself These Questions To Turn Bad Sales Calls Into Growth Opportunities

These questions direct your thoughts and feelings into a positive and productive direction:

• How can I deal with people like this better?
• What could I have said better?
• How could i have managed the situation differently?
• How could I have responded to the external and internal challenges better?
• How can I deal with feeling bad?
• How can I develop more emotional stability, and have more state control?

Come up with your own questions too, this isn't a complete list, it's just a starting point.

How Real Sales Pros Think Of Asshole-Customers

Remember that those jerks are the reason you even have a job.

If everybody would be easy, there would be no reason for companies to pay salespeople to bring them business.

If you can turn an asshole into a friend, if you can turn no into a yes, if you can turn rejection into affection… that’s when you’re great at sales!

Next time when you have a shitty sales call… don’t do the easy thing and use it as a reason to bring the entire team down. Instead, do the hard thing and turn it into an opportunity to become a better (sales) person.

One of the most common misconceptions among B2B manufacturers is that their channel partners will create demand for their products. The reality is that the demand generation responsibility rests almost entirely with the manufacturer. As a B2B manufacturing organization, you must realize that the purpose and goal of channel partners is to make money and profits from selling your products.

The good news is that your channel partners’ revenue growth and profitability will directly impact that of your organization. So it is in your best interest to empower channel partners with the right training, tools, resources, incentives and continued support. By doing so, you will help your channel partners:

• Follow up more effectively and efficiently on qualified leads
• Ensure sound lead nurturing processes
• Set the right parameters and use realistic metrics for monitoring and measurement of lead generation activities
• Work in close coordination with your channel managers to bring about better customer experience management
• Practice the highest standards of customer service for long-term retention
• And ultimately, boost sales through their channel to drive revenue growth for their own organization as well as yours.

10 Essential Steps to Boost Sales Through Channel Partners

1. Define your channel marketing framework. Give your channel partners a sound framework within which to operate. If you have a direct sales force in addition to channel partners, you need to ensure they are not competing with each other. Demarcate geographies, markets, industries, speciality focus, etc. to avoid any overlap.
2. Create the right lead generation programs. Make sure your distribution and coverage model is cost-effective if you have chosen to adopt channel marketing. In order to do that, your lead generation programs, discount points, special promotions, partner incentives and channel training programs must be tried and tested for greater effectiveness.
3. Teach channel partner representatives to speak like the decision makers. Executive decision makers in buyer organizations want to speak with people who think and talk like them. If your channel partner representatives speak at a level that is lower than these top executives, they will, by default, be delegated to speak to non-decision makers at a lower level in the buyer company. You can help prevent longer sales cycles by giving channel partners the right training and communication programs to speak the right language and engage the buyer. Do this with your own sales force too if you use a blended approach of direct sales and channel marketing.
4. Facilitate harmonious market coverage. A common challenge for manufacturers is having to deal with compensation issues when their direct sales force ‘encroaches’ on a sales territory assigned to a channel partner. To avoid this, focus your channel partners by incentivising them to pursue smaller accounts that are high volume, lower price point. Your direct sales representatives should be trained to focus on larger accounts and longer-term engagements.
5. Train channel partners on your sales engagement model. Many B2B manufacturers fail to align channel partners with their end user sales engagement model. This leaves channels to devise their own, often ambiguous and loosely crafted model. Give your channel partners the right support, communications training and sales tools to help them adopt and embrace your defined sales engagement model.
6. Upsell opportunities for channel partner’s products/services. One of the biggest incentives for channel partners to market your product is the opportunity to upsell their own. Some other reasons your partners will want to sell more for you are high market demand for your product, a “hot” offer that helps them attract quality leads, full range of integrated marketing tools and tactics and a lead generation program that allows a 360° view.
7. Objection handling tools. Work with your channels to find out and predict the most common objections from prospective buyers during the sales process. Arm your partners with compelling benefit statements, customer success stories, case studies and client testimonials.
8. Branding, advertising and promotional tools and support. The brand marketing efforts required for effective demand generation are mainly the manufacturer’s responsibility. Not only does it allow you better control of your marketing messages and brand positioning but it also helps your channel partners to align with the same and present your product with one strong, consistent voice in the marketplace.
9. Show them how to leverage social media.Many B2B players today have started realizing that volume of social media activity alone cannot fuel demand generation. Unlike B2C, B2B is not transactional. It is structural and complex, the buying cycles are longer and more involved. What is needed is a social conversion solution. This has to be derived and extract from intelligence and insights that examples, case studies, benchmarks and best practice studies can provide. Work together with resellers to develop a strong conversion engine for social media—it’s the one thing severely lacking in B2B.
10. Be accountable in order to demand accountability. You get what you give; it’s as simple as that. If you make promises to your channel partners that you don’t always keep, you cannot expect them to deliver and be accountable for the sales targets they commit. Have defined processes in place to inspect and evaluate deliverables from channel partners so they get regular feedback on performance and overall quality. Remember that they will also expect the same degree of commitment and accountability from you; whether it is in terms of the lead generation programs, branding activities, training initiatives or any other incentives and partner programs you promise them.

Keep in mind that you may not be the one and only manufacturer that a channel partner is marketing for. You have to work your way towards incremental mindshare before you can expect increased revenue and continued loyalty from the channel. In order to do this, you have to gain the respect and trust of channel partners and then ensure you keep it. A partner that trusts your organization will be self-motivated and driven to perform better.

I would love to know about how your B2B organization supports channel partners for greater effectiveness. Feel free to leave me a comment. 

Image credit: Shutterstock

Over the last 10 years, technology has evolved and become more integrated with the marketing world. Thanks to the geniuses at Google and Facebook, instead of guessing at the “Who, What, When, Where, and Whys” for campaign strategy, modern marketers have access to troves of robust data to inform our decisions. Today, companies big and small are dedicated to producing new technologies for the future marketer to generate actionable insights to make more efficient and impactful campaigns.

There are three main subgroups of technology that form the Marketing Intelligence Ecosphere: Listening Platforms, Customer Relationship Management (CRM), and Marketing Automation. While most companies have one or two of these services, most are greatly underutilized and out of sync with one another. The most effective digital marketing strategy involves the utilization of all three technologies, custom-­fit for your client’s needs: and you should be looking at these technologies to develop a comprehensive ecosystem for your company’s marketing efforts.

Listening Platforms

Tracking web chatter about your brand is becoming tougher with the proliferation of Twitter, Facebook, Pinterest, and hundreds of other blogs and review sites. Instead of trying to keep track of these sources individually, listening platforms provide thorough aggregation and analysis technology to collect only the vital and relevant information to track and define customer sentiment, trending topics, and other data from every source on the internet. Not only do you have access to a wealth of real-­time consumer feedback and market research information, but these platforms allow you to engage and collaborate with your customers on a new level. In an increasingly competitive digital environment, this may be the one thing your brand can do to differentiate itself from other voices clamoring for your audience’s attention.

The battle among listening platforms has become a two­‐horse race. Radian6 provides a feature­‐rich product with all the strength and support of the Salesforce brain trust. As a part of a greater Salesforce Marketing Cloud package, Radian6 provides a diverse selection of tools to listen, analyze, and engage with social media. They utilize a unique credit system that allows you to use virtual tokens to purchase new analytic metrics from third party partners. Another notable feature is the Radian6 Engagement Console, which integrates cross‐department collaboration in ongoing social threads.

Heartbeat, from Sysomos, differentiates itself with a transparent pricing structure and a clean, easy-to‐use dashboard. With most marketers utilizing less than half of their enterprise software’s capability, Heartbeat provides the most utility for the price for the majority of companies out there. Sysomos presents a robust product with an integrated and streamlined interface that is easy to get the hang of. Combined with an excellent filtering system, Heartbeat provides the necessary tools to monitor the latest chatter and generate valuable insights for your brand. Sysomos also has a parallel product called MAP, or Media Analysis Platform, which provides insight to key conversations. Featuring unlimited queries and access to billions of conversations, MAP enables you to conduct in-depth research, identify trends, and discover top influencers. Furthermore, Sysomos separates itself through its HTML 4 & 5 design—which is compatible cross browser and mobile.

Customer Relationship Management (CRM)

Most companies (including yours) probably already have some form of CRM service. If you don’t, you should, because companies that adopt software-as-a-solution services see “increases in productivity” and “lower expense rates.” According to a recent ITIC survey, 74% of small and medium businesses surveyed indicate they have a CRM platform. Of course, the most well-known service is Salesforce (over 100,000+ customers), but the CRM landscape is extremely diverse with a wide range of providers to fit your company’s budget and needs. Benchmark studies show that CRM applications account for revenue increases of up to 41% per sales person, 27% improved customer retention, and decreased costs in sales and marketing by 23%. However, more often than not, companies underutilize or misuse their CRM platforms in the larger scope of their marketing campaigns. Most are treated as basic databases to be filled with customer data and accessed from time to time. Instead, CRMs should be actively curated to update and nurture prospects—from cold calls to warm leads—to be passed on to your sales force. Additionally, you should be actively monitoring your contact points to ensure efficiency and that no potential revenue stream is left untapped.

Marketing Automation

Marketing automation serves as a tool to streamline sales and marketing efforts by automating repetitive processes that were once performed manually. In addition to process automation, these platforms provide robust analytics tools to measure and analyze relevant metrics of your marketing campaigns to track efficiency and ROI. According to research done by Gartner and Forrester, companies that automate lead-generation see a 10% or greater increase in revenue within 6-9 months. Also, lead-nurturing gives way to 50% more sales-ready leads at a 33% lower cost. The Marketing Automation sphere is similarly limited: featuring companies such as Act-On, Marketo, and Eloqua, the prior suited towards small and medium enterprises looking for a Marketing Automation solution that can merge with other services such as Salesforce. On the other hand, Eloqua and Marketo are geared towards the most advanced and challenging companies looking for a full‐featured, thoroughly customizable solution. The better product depends on the individual company; each service provides great efficiencies for any marketing program.

With integrated behavioral tracking, marketing automation can give everyone on your team a richer picture of who your audience is and a more holistic view of your leads’ behaviors. Finally, iteration is your friend. In order to get something right, don’t be afraid to get it wrong first. Try small pilots, gather insights from analytics, and then turn insights into optimized digital experiences.

Discovering Synergies with an Integrated Solution

With most companies adopting at least one of these tools in recent years, the question is no longer “Why should we use these products?” but instead, “How can we get the most out of these products?” First, look into what your company’s marketing needs are and how you are looking to scale in the coming years. The services required for a local brand will be much different that a giant multi‐national brand. After getting an idea of where you’re heading, seek to acquire the services you feel best fit your needs. There is no one‐size‐fits‐all solution, so be patient and do your due diligence. Many companies will also be able to give you a run‐down of best practices. Finally, implement your marketing intelligence services. The company will be able to help implement your solution, but also consider enlisting the help of a digital agency to partner with you to customize your platform to fit your organization like a glove. This will help to ensure you are fully utilizing your tool.

It may take a bit of work to find an optimal solution, but with some insight and application of business intelligence, you will see great gains in efficiency and productivity. These tools represent a continual process, not just a one-time installation. Be sure to keep the big picture in focus as you develop your marketing intelligence strategy.