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It will probably come as no surprise to sales managers, VPs of sales and business owners that a recent survey shows sales positions are the hardest positions to fill (see below - CareerBuilder Releases List of Hardest-to-Fill Positions). Yet, your sales force is your organization’s lifeblood. No matter how cutting edge your product or how on-point your marketing, without great salespeople, you will not be successful. Finding, vetting and hiring top performers is both an art and a science; there are innumerable methods and techniques. In this article, we’ll show you a few extra tips that are often forgotten in the urgency of hiring.

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…employers are struggling to find new employees for technology-related occupations, sales, healthcare and a variety of other areas,” said Brent Rasmussen, President of CareerBuilder North America

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1. Study How to Replicate Success Within Your Own Sales Organization

If you don’t understand what is successful, it is unlikely you will be able to replicate it. Watch your top producers. Are there traits they share or activities they all practice? Maybe they are all very good at coming up with novel solutions to client problems. Maybe they are all extraordinary speakers or time managers. Write down the commonalities; these are most likely critical to be successful in your sales organization and environment.

Track the activities that led to your top performers’ winning results. Do your top performers make twice as many cold calls as your mediocre salespeople? Do they send twice as much follow-up information as your mediocre salespeople? Benchmark success.

Once you have your list, look for candidates who resemble your top performers, then purposefully interview for the desired qualities. There are many ways to do this, but one tool is giving them a list of the 5 to 10 skills and traits shown by your top performers. Ask the candidates to rate themselves on a scale of 1 to 10 (with 10 as the highest rating).The best salespeople will rate themselves very highly, but beware. So might the misguided or the dishonest, so ask for quite a bit of detail. Self assessment is problematic, but may be insightful when combined with your own observations.

2. Search for Salespeople Who Will Only Get Better

A good way to determine a salesperson’s level of ambition is to delve into how they are trying to improve themselves in their chosen profession.  Ask what sacrifices is the candidate making to succeed. Are they real sacrifices or simply part of their jobs? What are they doing to improve themselves? What was the last sales book they read or sales video they watched or self-help seminar they attended.  Do they answer immediately, or do they stumble as they just spit out some names and try to come up with an answer?

As well-known business philosopher Jim Rohn said, “Formal education will make you a living; self-education will make you a fortune.” Hire the person who will make you a fortune on the way to making their own.

3. Calculate What Your Candidate’s Comfort Zone Means for Your Sales

According to author Brian Tracy, someone has earned at a consistent level over time, that could possibly be their comfort zone, and they may sabotage themselves before they exceed it. If they are a sales rep accustomed to making $70,000 per year, then they think of themselves as a $70,000 person. They may say they are interested in a move that allows the to make $150,000 per annum but are they prepared to do what it takes? If they start doing significantly better, they may remove their foot from the accelerator in order to return to their comfort zone and not even realize they are doing it.

This can be overcome by a persistent individual who is aware of the issue, but as a businessperson, you may be far better off hiring based on outstanding past performance than a hope the candidate will suddenly leap to the next level at your company.

Be meticulous in asking for a candidate’s pay stubs for the last year and verifying authenticity. Also ask the candidate what they have earned in the prior two or three years. Now look at your compensation structure and calculate how much the candidate would have to sell in order to reach the candidate’s accustomed income figure. This is likely the performance level you will get from this person, so if you are frowning at the figure derived, better take a pass.

4. Remember That Hiring the Best is a Two-Way Street

Demand for top sales talent far exceeds supply so the real top performers have many career options and tis point cannot be stressed enough. Yet another reason to get all the information you can about a candidate’s past earnings is so you can offer a competitive package to lure them to your company. Some employers forget that top performers are interviewing them, just as they are interviewing the candidates. You will need to sell top candidates on your company to make it worthwhile for them to change positions. The compensation package you offer is, of course, pivotal to luring top performers to your organizations. After all, if they are top performers, they will already be doing well financially.

5. Ask Other Key Personnel to Interview Your Top Candidates

As the hiring manager, you don’t need to make the decision alone, and, in fact, you shouldn’t. Others you may want to ask to interview your top candidates are people who are experienced in interviewing salespeople or who regularly interact with them. All should have a list of what the organization is looking for in a salesperson so you can discuss key points after the interviews. A good fit is critical to your new hire’s success, and fresh eyes may see things from viewpoints you cannot. For example, the head of marketing may be able to tell how experienced the candidate is using the kinds of marketing materials your company provides. A top performer in your company may be able to give you insights on how the candidate will hold up under real-life rigours in the field that are unique to your organization.

CAVEATS: – 1. Few people are experienced interviewers and understand both how to interview objectively and also stay within the confines of the law in your jurisdiction. Make sure anyone who is interviewing is properly trained to interview. 2. Any members of your team that are either weak or suffer from a lack of confidence, may feel threatened by a top performer. Make sure you are not sabotaging your sales recruiting efforts by having your top candidate interview with staff members who will not make an objective assessment or help you land a great sales person. 3. Great sales people want to join companies that are very selective in who they hire, but if your interview process seems unnecessarily long or challenging, then you might scare away top sales talent.

6. Expect Top Performers to Negotiate

Don’t be offended if a candidate wants to negotiate everything about the deal you offer. It does not mean they are not interested, assuming you are offering a competitive package that would make it worth their while to leave their current well-paying position. Top performers are also top negotiators, and you want someone who will be comfortable negotiating with your clients.

7. Take Your Time

Don’t jump to a decision just to fill an open position. It will cost you to hire a mediocre salesperson. It is more beneficial in the long term to keep searching for the superstar who has qualities similar to your current top performers, or, better yet, will raise the bar for your entire sales force.

References:

CareerBuilder Releases List of Hardest-to-Fill Positions

How Your Self-Concept Will Change Your Bank Account, Brian Tracy

Top 32 Quotes Every Entrepreneur Should Live By, Forbes

More on How to Hire Top Sales Performers: Alternative Ways of Evaluating Sales Candidates, Makes Sales Candidates Work Hard to Join Your Company, What are the Top Challenges in Hiring Sales People

Image courtesy of pakorn | freedigitalimages.net

The post How to Hire the Best Sales People – 7 Advanced Secrets appeared first on Peak Sales Recruiting | Sales Recruiter.

This week, Amazon released its first-ever smartphone, the Fire. 

It's a unique device, with functionality that Amazon describes as "dynamic perspective" that allows the phone to respond to the way you hold, view, and move it. You can switch between menus, initiate automatic scroll, and see images on the screen from different angles simply by tilting the phone or your head. The phone also comes with a "Firefly" feature that acts as Amazon's visual search engine for the real world. You can identify (and get detailed information about) products, art, contact information, video, or audio simply by pointing your phone's camera and pressing a button. The Amazon team started working on Fire four years ago. 

The phone starts at $199 on a two-year contract with AT&T or at $649 off-contract, which isn't the kind of dirt-cheap pricing strategy that people were expecting from Amazon. That price point is even more expensive than the average iPhone. 

Why is Amazon launching a smartphone now when the market is already so crowded and well-established? Of the more than 120 million devices sold in the U.S. in 2013, Apple and Samsung took 45% and 26% of the market-share respectively, with other makers struggling to gain marketshare.

Ian Freed, Vice President of Amazon's Fire Phone division, laughed when Business Insider asked whether he thought the Amazon phone's innovative features were enough to drag hardcore iPhone or Samsung Galaxy fans away from their favorite devices.

Amazon's not trying to completely take over the market (at least not yet), though it's confident that certain people will be extremely excited about the new phone. 

"With a tremendous number of customers who absolutely love Amazon, I think some will come over because of the ecosystem," he says. "The reason that there were rumors and so much noise about this launch was, in part, because customers are really excited about it." 

Amazon currently has 244 million active customer accounts, with "at least 20 million" of those people paying $99 a year for its Prime membership service. Another bonus of the Fire phone is that Amazon is throwing in a free year of Prime, even for users who already subscribe.

"You might have been thinking about Prime, you’re not really sure, while you’re also thinking about a new phone," Freed says. "That combination is a great reason to come over to the Fire."

By giving its phone such a unique user experience, Amazon is making a long-term bet that people will fall more in love with its features as third-party app developers start taking advantage of all its functionalities. The company released the development kits for Firefly and dynamic perspective at the same time as its launch event, and Freed says that he expects that the company will be surprised and amazed at what talented engineers all over the world come up with.

Overall, Freed says that combining the main "wow"-features with the little touches (like unlimited free cloud storage for photos) is what makes the phone such a great value for users. 

"We saw a large, under-served opportunity to innovate," he says. "We wanted to provide something to customers that wasn't available to them from any other company."

SEE ALSO: Hands-On With The Amazon Phone — These Are The Big Features

Join the conversation about this story »

Yesterday Apple released an update to their iMac lineup of computers that nobody saw coming. While there have been rumors that the guys and gals in Cupertino were looking to release a small update to the iMac lineup this week, the release of an entry-level 21.5″ iMac priced at $1,099 is a pretty big deal.

There’s no doubt that Apple is looking to fill a gap that’s currently present between cheap machines like lower-end Windows PCs and Chromebooks and Apple’s own computer lineup, but does this shift in pricing mean a more precise focus on developing markets and the needs of those who can’t afford $2,000+ machines?

Apple has always been a high-end luxury for most users and a necessity to hard core media producers, which is what has driven their value for as long as it has. Now that Apple has a solid name and place in the market, it seems that they can expand to offer, for them anyway, lower-priced devices that allow entry-level graphic designers, animators, and businesses to get in on the Mac party without breaking the bank.

Apple says in their press release of the new Cheaper iMac:

Apple® today introduced a new 21.5-inch iMac® starting at just $1,099, making the world’s leading all-in-one desktop even more affordable. Featuring a stunning ultra-thin design, brilliant display, Core i5 processors and the world’s most advanced operating system, the new iMac is the perfect entry-level Mac® desktop.

The new 21.5-inch iMac features a 1.4 GHz dual-core Intel Core i5 processor with Turbo Boost Speeds up to 2.7 GHz, Intel HD 5000 graphics, 8GB of memory and a 500GB hard drive. All iMac models include next generation 802.11ac Wi-Fi, and two Thunderbolt ports and four USB 3.0 ports for excellent expandability and support for high-performance peripherals.

This all seems great, but is the cheaper iMac just an experiment to move more devices into emerging markets and industries?

Apple’s Low Cost Plan

Apple has historically not cared too much about the affordability of their hardware, and surprisingly this has been a good thing. Over time the fact that Apple’s hardware was on a higher cost level than others in their category gave them an elite feel and attraction. How else did the original iPhone sell the numbers it did in a world where the common mobile phone was free?

Recently however, Apple has been releasing lower cost versions of their most popular hardware and even giving much of their software away for free. Many thought this low cost and free approach might hurt Apple, but instead it’s allowed them to move into markets they wouldn’t otherwise be able to enter.

KGI Analyst Ming-Chi Kuo made a prediction earlier this year that Apple would create a lower-cost Mac for emerging and foreign markets. Those of us in the major markets for Apple can see lower-cost options from Apple as fluff and a dilution of an elite brand, but in actuality it means Apple can enter markets they were otherwise economically shut out of.

Apple seems to be keeping the high-end items where they are while introducing lower-cost items to help even out their market. This isn’t to say that a $1,099 computer is cheap by any stretch, but for apple, it’s a move in a good direction.

Check out Apple’s press release on the new cheaper iMac pricing here.

When you apply for a job, you get one shot — one resume and cover letter — to present to a potential employer and hope, out of hundreds of applicants, they choose you to interview. A business plan is no different.

In this post, you will understand which sections of the business plan are considered the most critical and why, as well as learn what to include in these sections.

A full-length business plan could contain the following sections:

• Executive summary
• Company legal description
• Products and services
• Marketing plan
• Operations plan
• Organization and management
• Bios of key management
• Personnel plan
• Intellectual property and other key assets
• Financial plan
• Appendix

Which sections do you think are the most important for an existing small business plan in most situations?

If you answered it all depends, you are a smart entrepreneur. It all depends on what you are trying to accomplish and who is the audience.

That said, after having written and reviewed hundreds of business plans, I feel there are four key sections used in almost all situations, and these are augmented by additional sections depending on the circumstances. These four key sections are the executive summary, marketing plan, key management bios, and financial plan. Let’s talk about each in some detail.

1. Executive Summary

This is one of the shortest sections of a business plan, but the one you should spend the most time working on. Whether your business plan is 5 or 30 pages, an executive summary must recap all of the material in your plan in only two pages. The reason this section gets so much attention is that it might be the only section the reader looks at when making a decision to go forward or stop.

To paraphrase an old proverb, “you can tell the quality of a business plan from its executive summary.”

The executive summary is the ultimate elevator pitch where you introduce the idea, provide background, talk about approach and results, and convey confidence that you will be successful. When you get the reader excited about your business idea, they will be inclined to explore it further. The executive summary is much more than a summary; it is your call to action.

In one paragraph, the executive summary should include a description of your business and the customer problem being uniquely solved so the reader understands what you are trying to achieve. The marketing paragraphs should include information about the size of the market, sales forecast, demographics of your potential customers and competition, and your competitive advantages. In the operations/staffing/management paragraphs, demonstrate management’s leadership and industry experience, along with a few key details about the location, staffing, and operations.

The financial section of the executive summary should include the projected income and cash generated during the first three years, and if you are seeking funding, a clear statement of how much is needed to fund the project. And of this sum, show how much you will be investing versus the amount being sought from the funder.

Remember that while the executive summary appears first in the business plan, it should be written last since it is the summary. A business plan is developed from the bottom up, so you need to work out all the details before you can write the summary.

2. Marketing Plan

The number one issue for small businesses is finding customers. For many business owners, this is the most important section, and much time is devoted to developing it. For without demand, there are no sales.

A marketing plan has three principal sections: market analysis, competitive analysis, and specific marketing actions.

The purpose of the market analysis section is twofold. First is figuring out how big the market is: You need to know if there will be sufficient customers to buy your product or service so you can generate satisfactory revenue. The second is to describe your potential or ideal customer so you will know how to reach that market when conducting your outreach.

The point of the competitive analysis section is to make sure you understand what you are up against. This section should list about five competitors and their strengths and weaknesses, like operating hours, accessibility, pricing, return policy, marketing budget size, reputation, product delivery policy (is it provided free, at cost, or not at all), complementary products and services, current/outdated versions (which might also apply to current/outdated styles), and buying quantities (which may equate to lower or higher costs).

The specific marketing actions are developed in the Marketing Action Plan, which is used to implement your business idea. In other words, what are you going to do to drive traffic to your front door — both literally and figuratively? What five marketing steps you will be undertaking? For each of the five marketing steps, note the cost to implement (which, when totaled, becomes your marketing budget), if the items can be completed by you alone or whether you will need assistance, and the sales expectations (which when added together, become the sales forecast). The marketing budget and sales forecast will be used in the financial forecasts.

3. Key Management Bios

With a limited track record and usually few assets, the success of a small business is typically a bet on the owner. So this section must convince readers that the bet is a good one.

Include a one-page bio on each of the key people involved, which should be written in a style that demonstrates: “been there, done that, and have the T-shirt.” You want to demonstrate that you have the technical chops for the business as well as the leadership skills. Where there might be experience/skills gaps, mention how you plan to add others to the team to provide this expertise.

4. Financial Plan

One of the final elements in your business plan is the financial statements. While the financial plan is a very important section, it’s appropriate for it to come last, because if the executive summary is a discussion of all that is to follow, the financial section is a recap of all that precedes it.

The products and services, marketing, operations and personnel sections demonstrate that the business idea is feasible, but it’s the financial section that demonstrates it is viable.

For many, tackling this section last is fine because it’s the one plan element that most entrepreneurs dread. They frequently feel like they have hit a wall when it comes to writing this section, and they blame it for holding up their business plan. Typically this is because they don’t understand it, are afraid of it, or have made it unnecessarily difficult because they haven’t carefully completed the rest of the business plan. Don’t let this happen to you. Seek guidance from a SCORE mentor or other free services as mentioned here.

Financial statements are charts with lots of numbers and few words describing what they are all about. Therefore, it is advisable to have an introductory page in your financial plan explaining in plain English the key assumptions and how each one was determined. If you can convince the reader about the reasonableness of the assumptions, then the sale has already been made when they read the financial statements.

Key Lessons

• The executive summary, marketing plan, key management bios, and financial plan business plan sections are critical and should be included in all business plans.
• Additional sections can be added to these four when targeting specific purposes and audiences.
• It’s imperative to get readers excited about your business idea from the outset in the executive summary, or they may not read any further.

Next Steps

• Sketch or outline what you will include in each business plan section, and then get the data and facts that support it.

Next month, we look at when is the best time to revamp your business plan.

People love to visit New York City.

But tourists, especially those seeing the Big Apple for the first time, often get sucked into expensive and overrated tourist traps.

These are the places you should skip, and alternatives that are more authentic, cheaper, and more fun.

Instead of seeing the sights from the top of the Empire State Building, take in the city skyline (for free) on the Brooklyn Heights Promenade.

The Empire State Building has great views of the city, but it’s not worth the expensive ticket and long lines.

A better way to take in New York’s amazing skyline? Go across the Brooklyn Bridge to the Brooklyn Heights Promenade. It’s free, beautiful, and one of the best places to see NYC’s skyline, day or night.

Instead of being gouged for “Italian” food in Little Italy, go to Arthur Avenue in the Bronx.

Little Italy is a sad little strip nestled right above Chinatown. The real Little Italy — with its amazing Italian-American food — is on Arthur Avenue in the Bronx.

You can find fresh cheese at Casa Della Mozzarella, an amazing selection of fish at Cosenza’s, and a slew of fantastic Italian-American bakeries.

Instead of taking a pedicab ride, rent a Citi Bike.

Pedicabs are a part of life in NYC, especially around Central Park and midtown where it can be hard to catch a cab. But they can be expensive and slow.

We recommend trying a Citi Bike. You can sign up for a day pass for $10 and ride around the city yourself. Read more about how to use a Citi Bike here.

Instead of waiting months to have high tea at the Plaza Hotel's Palm Court, have a tea party at Bosie Tea Parlor. 

High Tea in the Plaza Hotel’s Palm Court is iconic, but even with a reservation, you’ll likely be waiting for your table and tripping over tourists in the process.

Your tea and pastries will be much cheaper at Bosie Tea Parlor in the West Village. High Tea for two is only $55 and comes with 2 teas of your choice, three types of sandwich, macaroons, scones, and cake.

Instead of battling tourists at Central Park, head to the more low key (and gorgeous) Prospect Park.

Don't get me wrong, Central Park is great, with Shakespeare Gardens, grassy knolls, and a gorgeous double skyline with skyscrapers rising above the trees. But man, is it crowded.

Brooklyn’s Prospect Park was created by the same architects — Frederick Law Olmsted and Calvert Vaux — but they had much more free reign with their Brooklyn design and were able to create a real pastoral haven. With woods, a lake, and a mile-long meadow, anyone who visits Prospect Park will forget they’re in NYC for a little while.

Instead of cupcakes at Magnolia Bakery, try the amazing cookies at Levain Bakery.

Magnolia Bakery's cupcakes may be tasty, but with its long lines and recent health code violations, this tourist stop is highly overrated. A much better option is the beyond-delicious Levain Bakery on the Upper West Side.

The cookies are gigantic (they look more like scones than cookies), and though they cost $4 per cookie, they are the tastiest, softest, and most scrumptious cookies I've ever tried. Try the chocolate chip and walnut cookie and thank me later.

Instead of going to Century 21 for discounted designer fashions, hit up a real NYC sample sale.

The racks at discount designer store Century 21 can be fun to pick through, but more often than not these stores are chock full of deal-seeking shoppers and tourists, long lines, and picked-through inventory.

A better idea is to hit up some of NYC’s amazing sample sales. There’s usually always something going on 260 Fifth Avenue (sign up for email updates here) or in SoHo — Racked NY always has a great rundown.

Instead of spending a fortune to ice skate at Rockefeller Center, skate at the less-crowded McCarren Rink in Brooklyn.

To skate at Rockefeller Center, it costs $27 for an adult ticket ($15 for kids) plus $12 for skate rental. That’s a total of roughly $40 to skate with 150 other people for an hour and a half.

McCarren Rink in Brooklyn is a better option that is both less crowded and cheap. It costs $8 for adults ($4 for children), skate rental is only $5, and you can skate as long as you want.

Instead of watching the city flash by on a tour bus, go walk around.

New York City tour buses can help new arrivals get a feel for all of NYC’s neighborhoods, but a much better (and healthier, cheaper) option is to just walk around.

From the Upper West Side to the Financial District, every area in New York has a distinct personality. If you want a more in-depth look at each neighborhood, there are walking tours you can sign up for.

Instead of going clubbing in the Meatpacking District, head to where all the cool kids are in Williamsburg.

The Meatpacking District may be where certain celebrities, big shots, and models hang out, but for the rest of us, it’s expensive and you may not even be able to get past the door.

Williamsburg has awesome (and cheaper) bars and nightclubs like Output, plus way less pretentious and annoying people. There's a wide variety of nightlife, too, from watering holes for cocktails snobs to drunk bowling.

Instead of sharing a frozen hot chocolate sundae at Serendipity III, have a romantic night at The Chocolate Room.

The made-from-scratch treats at The Chocolate Room in Brooklyn far exceed those at Serendipity III, and the ambiance is much more romantic. Perfect for a birthday or a date, the restaurant is dimly lit and cozy.

If you’re not sure what to order, try the brownie sundae and their ice cream sandwiches. All their cakes — from classic chocolate to chocolate almond — are also delicious.

Instead of Grimaldi’s Pizza in DUMBO, head down the street to Juliana’s Pizza.

Grimaldi's has slowly become more and more of a tourist trap through the years. Patsy Grimaldi sold Grimaldi’s pizza parlor in 1998, but he opened another little pizza place down the street recently that he calls Juliana’s.

And while Grimaldi’s is just okay, Juliana’s is the real gem  — its ingredients are fresh and vibrant, the pizza isn’t greasy, and they make a truly amazing sauce. Don’t forget to try the homemade Brookie deserts (a combination of a brownie and cookie).

Instead of seeing sex toys and exhibitionist exhibits at the Museum of Sex, go to a burlesque show at Galapagos Art Space.

The Museum of Sex might raise eyebrows, but it's underwhelming, crowded, and not worth the price for admission. If you’re in the mood for a risqué attraction, get tickets to a burlesque show at Galapagos Art Space.

With fire breathing, aerial performances, “tantric yoga,” and more, this will definitely be a far more entertaining way to spend your evening. Plus, the venue is gorgeous.

Instead of going to Times Square, go literally anywhere else.

Seriously — this city is huge with plenty of boroughs, neighborhoods, shops, restaurants, and cultural attractions to explore.

Walk through Times Square if you must, take your pictures, and then never, ever go there again.

SEE ALSO: The Best Tourist Attraction In Every State

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The buyer's journey isn't what it used to be. Thanks to the transformational nature of the digital world, the buyer's journey has been radically changed.

In order to reach today's buyer, marketers must understand the new realities of this journey and align their digital and content strategies to them.

We've all heard of the 'buyer’s journey.' It’s that mystical, CandyLand-esque pathway that buyers take on their way to purchasing a product or service.

And we’ve been taught that it’s a pretty standard process, regardless of industry. Discovery, consideration, and decision…or something like that.

But digital is a very disrupting influence. Not only have digital processes rewired entire industries, they have fundamentally transformed the way that people purchase (i.e., the buyer's journey).

In order for organizations to maximize their opportunity to convert shoppers into buyers, marketers must understand the new realities of these changes and align their digital and content strategies accordingly.

1. It’s no longer linear

Up until digital really changed the way people interact with organizations, the buyer’s journey largely looked like this (1):

It was a straight shot with one step following the next, a linear color-by-numbers approach. But because of digital, the buyer’s journey has taken on a shape more like this (2):

How did digital transform the linear buyer's journey into this spaghetti mess? Most likely because consumers are inundated with information 24/7/365.

From social media or the web, new information comes online every second that can impact a purchase decision (i.e., a new review).

As such, consumers are bouncing around the different aspects of the buyer’s journey—discovery, consideration, and decision—as new information is discovered.

What's the impact? Because buyers can move so easily (and haphazardly) between the different buyer's journey steps, organizations must recognize that making a purchase decision may take longer than before and plan revenue projections accordingly.

2. Discovery can happen at any time

The linearity of the buyer’s journey ultimately became disrupted by one critical factor: the availability of information.

When the information is all known and available, the process can obviously be linear. The consumer goes through a product research process that has a start and an end.

But in the digital world, where new information can be created each second of the day, that’s not the case.

A consumer can think they are finished with the evaluation process and suddenly find new reviews, new write-ups, or new videos about their intended purchase decision…new information that can even insert another competitor into the mix sending the consumer back down the slide to start all over again.

What's the impact? Organizations need to produce content consistently and continually.

A great way to do this is simply to publish questions and their answers to build an on-going library of fresh content about how the organization solves critical customer challenges with its products or services.

3. Outbound marketing can be futile

The problem with outbound marketing, that is 'broadcast messaging', is that it’s trying to reach a consumer that is not traveling on a straight line.

Without any knowledge of where the consumer is going to be in the buyer’s journey, sending messaging out in the hopes that they'll find it is futile.

In fact, so much of the messaging delivered through this shotgun-like approach is lost that there is little in the way of ROI.

Think about the click-through rate for banner advertisements today, less than 1%. Inbound marketing, on the other hand, seeks to participate in the conversations that consumers are having.

Inbound marketing is about publishing helpful content that will lead the consumer back to the information that they need to help them make a purchase decision.

What's the impact? Organizations must adopt an inbound marketing strategy and think about the venues through which they publish their content.

It's not about campaigns as much anymore as it's about engagement and involvement in the venues (like social media and communities) where users frequently look for answers to make a purchase decision.

#4. The end goal isn’t just a purchase anymore

In the golden days of marketing, the linear buyer’s journey pointed to one end goal, making a purchase. And when the consumer was happy with the purchase, they told some friends. They recommended your company.

Digital has exacerbated that a thousand fold. Now when consumers have made a purchase, they might share their experiences on social media (good or bad). They might write a review. They might pen a blog post or post something on YouTube.

The purchase is no longer the end game. It’s the relationship after the purchase. That’s the real value anyway. Thanks to social media and other digital communication channels, one purchase with a good experience can lead to dozens of new customers.

What's the impact? Organizations must focus marketing energy not just on conversion but on nurturing as well. A fair bit of energy must be put towards relationship marketing.

However, according to Econsultancy's Cross-Channel Marketing Report 2013, 22% of firms aren't currently doing this. 

Does your company carry out relationship marketing?

5. Decision making is crowd sourced

If there is one thing that the digital world has done it’s to empower everybody with a voice. Anyone can have a blog. Anyone can create a Facebook profile.

And through these mediums, they can say whatever they want to whomever might listen. That is no truer than when it comes to buying products. It seems that everyone has an opinion.

Just read through the Amazon.com product listings. When today’s consumers think about buying something, they appeal to the wisdom of the crowd. They post questions on bulletin boards and on social media…and the crowd weighs in with their thoughts helping the consumer not only to make the decision but also to direct further inquiry.

What's the impact? Organizations need to learn to drop a lot of the sales-focused messaging and just learn to participate in the channels that consumers use (i.e., social selling).

This can, once again, lengthen the sales pipeline but can potentially produce more qualified opportunities than traditional broadcast messaging. 

(1) This specific version of the buyers journey is courtesy of SiriusDecisions

(2) This illustration is taken from the book "Recommend This! Delivering Digital Experiences that People Want to Share."

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A full quarter of companies that adopt marketing automation boost revenue between 30 and 49 percent, according to a new study by RazorSocial’s Ian Cleary. Another 20 percent of companies see revenue jump between 15 and 29 percent.

But significant errors in system selection can lead to negative ROI — and dissatisfaction.

“Picking the wrong tool, not assigning the right resources, and not managing the initial and ongoing implementation can lead to reduced or even non-existent ROI,” Cleary says. “Almost half of those who have implemented marketing automation are not sure, months or years later, whether the time, energy, and money to do marketing automation has been worth it.”

That’s a striking dichotomy: significant ROI on the one hand, and seemingly inexplicable unhappiness with results on the other hand. Other researchers have reported similar confusing results.

One cause is confounding variables, according to Cleary.

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Cleary’s report is available on VB Intel:
How to dramatically increase revenue with marketing automation tools

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The reason is that most companies implement a marketing automation system when they are either in a state of growth, expecting growth, or planning for growth. So your sales might be increasing anyway, making it harder to determine what actually caused the growth.

“Your automation tool may help you increase revenue more quickly, but all revenue increases may not be attributable to marketing automation exclusively,” Cleary says.

Correlation may not conclusively indicate causation, but the connection between marketing automation and growth is strong. The most common result, achieved by just over a third of firms, is that companies adopting marketing automation increased revenue modestly, between five to 10 percent. Over 10 percent saw a massive 50-74 percent increase, however, and almost 20 percent experienced greater than a 75 percent increase in revenue.

Almost 150 companies using marketing automation participated in the study.

As Cleary’s research shows, however, there’s a lot of room to grow. Companies that select the wrong system don’t see the results that they want, and about 60 percent of companies that adopt marketing automation are not sure if they’ve picked the right solution.

One key, Cleary says, is a step that many companies skimp on: investing in the implementation.

“Without a plan, with target dates to achieve each stage, the implementation will drag on, and this will cost you money,” he writes in the report.

 

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When Robert Downey Jr. found out that he was going to play Iron Man in the movies, he said, "We need to sit down with Elon Musk."

That's because Musk — colonizer of Mars, transformer of cars, shepherd of solar panels — is the closest thing we've got to a superhero. 

Born in South Africa, he sold his first software — a game called Blastar — when he was only 11. He went on to found and sell a startup to Compaq for $300 million in 1999, and parlayed that into a major stake in PayPal, which eBay bought for $1.5 billion in 2002.

With that dough, he got into three world-changing companies: Tesla, SpaceX, and Solar City. And though Tesla and SpaceX nearly went bankrupt, each of the companies is now shifting their industries. 

Yet Musk — with his 100-hour workweeks, estimated $11.7 billion net worth, and habit of never taking a note in meetings — remains enigmatic. So we went looking for clues to his vision, goals, and thinking process. 

Here's what we found.

On finding your own education

"My background educationally is physics and economics, and I grew up in sort of an engineering environment — my father is an electromechanical engineer. And so there were lots of engineery things around me.

"When I asked for an explanation, I got the true explanation of how things work. I also did things like make model rockets, and in South Africa there were no premade rockets: I had to go to the chemist and get the ingredients for rocket fuel, mix it, put it in a pipe."

[Wired, October 2012]

On his childhood experiments

"It is remarkable how many things you can explode. I’m lucky I have all my fingers."

[Businessweek, September 13, 2012]

On his favorite book when he was a teen, "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy"

"It taught me that the tough thing is figuring out what questions to ask, but that once you do that, the rest is really easy."

[Businessweek, September 13, 2012]

See the rest of the story at Business Insider

When 40 percent of B2B buyers say LinkedIn is important when researching technologies and services to purchase, signing up for a LinkedIn profile and just posting automated weekly updates (or nothing) leaves a lot to be desired.

Here’s the thing: There’s more to LinkedIn than posting updates and connecting with contacts after networking events. It’s a wide world of open content publishing and networking and association groups having real-time and long-term conversations.

You need to get in on this conversation by becoming active in and contributing to LinkedIn industry groups. Here’s a five step prep list to get your LinkedIn profile ready for deeper, more effective networking within LinkedIn industry groups.

1. Tighten Up Your LinkedIn Profile

Time needed: 30-45 minutes

When you start to post more frequently, users will be interested in you and what you do. You will notice that there are more people viewing your profile than ever before.

Before you participate in LinkedIn industry groups, you’ll want to make sure that your profile is ready for the folks that are sure to see it.

Focus on making sure your LinkedIn profile page provides a clean, professional, online business card that showcases your experience, and make the profile welcoming.

• Make sure your headline is impactful and says more than just your position at your company.
• Use a professional photo. It doesn’t have to be “suit and tie,” but use what’s appropriate in your industry.
• Write a keyword rich, welcoming personal summary. Use a free online tool grammar and spell checker like GrammarBase to tighten it up and make it sound better. Remember if you’re trying to establish contact with potential customers, tell them how you can help solve their problems.
• You’ll also want to update your standard URL (often filled with numbers) to one that includes your name. Make sure that your summary and experience provide enough detail so that a potential customer has a conversation starter.

2. Write an Introduction

Time needed: 10 minutes

When you first join a group, you’ll want to take the opportunity to introduce yourself. Write a 2-3 sentence introduction that’s appropriate to the industry group:

• Include your name and what you do (this doesn’t have to be your title if you want to be more conversational).
• Give a short, conversational version of your elevator pitch.
• Include an idea of what you’re looking to get out of the group.

Introduce yourself in a way that is honest and genuine, but also strategic. If possible, include conversational keywords that will make it easy for anyone who reads your introduction to leave a comment and start a conversation.

You may even want to end with a question to elicit some responses and kickstart a conversation.

Let’s look at an example. If you’re in the healthcare industry, you might kick off your conversation with an introduction like the following:

Hello! My name is Mark and I run a healthcare software solutions company, Health2Go. I’ve joined this group because I would love to hear about your biggest healthcare B2B software complaint. If you’ve had a hair-raising, awful experience… tell me about it in the comments!

This introduction accomplishes three goals:

1. It gives the reader a sense of who you are and what you do,
2. It hints at a professional yet humorous attitude, and
3. It offers an obvious opening to write back and start a conversation about the reader’s software concerns.

3. Find the Right Groups To Join

Time needed: 30 minutes – 1 hour

When you’ve got your home-base networking elements in place, it’s time to find the most useful groups for you by deploying creative and effective database searching techniques.

Start by pulling up the profile of someone in your industry, a sales person at a competing company or one of your target customers. Examine their profiles and identify the groups he or she is active in. Look at the keywords and titles used that identify the group, as well as the industry tags. Make a note of them.

Then, perform the same reconnaissance on the businesses and brands within your target market, too. Search using your own network, the location of current and former clients, and even former company employers in your target market. Add these to your keyword list and use them to perform more specific and practical industry group searches.

Don’t feel like you have to join several groups at the start. You want to have time to participate, so start small — 3 groups or fewer.

4. Update Your Settings

Time needed: 10 minutes

Here’s a tip we learned the hard way: unfortunately, every time you join a group you’ll be automatically registered to receive daily and weekly updates from that group. You’ll need to adjust your LinkedIn update settings manually.

After you are accepted into a group, navigate to your LinkedIn homepage. Hover the mouse over your photo in the top right of the screen and select “Privacy & Settings.” On the next screen, select “Groups, Companies, & Applications,” then “Set the frequency of group digest emails,” and adjust accordingly.

5. Set Your Alarm / Schedule Time

Time needed: 30 minutes per week

You’ll only get as much out of LinkedIn industry groups as you put into them. Rather than checking in whenever you get a moment — because more often than not, that moment never comes — set an alarm or meeting appointment to engage in your groups for 30 minutes each week.

It doesn’t have to be at a particular time, just whatever works for your schedule. A quick 30 minutes on Monday to start your week, or a Friday afternoon send-off. You can even do it over the weekend. What matters is that you spend consistent time doing it.

You only have a limited amount of time to invest in your online networking efforts, so put the time in where it counts! Make a name for yourself in LinkedIn industry groups where your B2B clients are looking for you.

If you want to have a blog that makes a difference in the lives of those who read it, I would highly recommend getting clarity around these three simple (yet powerful) questions:

• Who are your readers?
• What do they need?
• How will they change as a result of reading your blog?

Mid-last year I wrote very briefly about these questions and suggested that they might be a great way to come up with a purpose statement for a blog.

Since that time I’ve had conversations with four ProBlogger readers who took these questions and applied them to their own blogs – and in doing so saw marked improvements in their blogging.

So today I want to emphasise them again.

Lets tackle the first two together and then look at the third.

Who Are Your Readers? And What Do They Need?

Understanding who reads your blog (or at least who you want to read your blog) and what their needs are is so important because it will inform:

• what kind of content you should create (topics, style of writing etc)
• how to attract readers to your blog
• how you can engage with your readers and build community on your blog
• how you monetise your blog (if this is a goal for you)

Understanding your reader also informs things like design, what social media networks you should be engaging in, what subscription methods you should use, how frequently you should publish, and much more.

I’ve previously published an exercise in building a reader profile or persona to help you get clarity around this.

Ultimately – knowing who is reading enables you to take a big step towards producing a useful blog.

Without this clarity you’ll be stumbling around in the dark!

How will your reader change as a result of reading your blog?

Over the years I’d focused very heavily upon understanding readers needs, but it has only been the last year that I’ve taken things to the next step and doing thinking about how to ‘change‘ readers.

Knowing who is reading is one thing, but if you want to build a blog that is epic, your blog needs to leave an impact upon people.

I recently spoke about this idea at a conference and shared the following slide. While I didn’t spend a heap of time unpacking the idea, this was the most tweeted quote of the talk I gave.

Blogs that change people are blogs that those people will keep returning to.

Blogs that change people are blogs that build trust and relationship with their readership.

Blogs that change people are blogs that their readers share with their networks.

I’ve always know this – it’s not really rocket science – but for some reason I never actually identified the change I wanted to bring to my readers!

As a result, some of my blog posts hit the mark with readers – but many did not.

Why leave it to chance as to what change we want to bring to our readers? Why not define where they are and where we want to take them?

Name the Change and Then Break It Down

Lets take a look at my main blog, Digital Photography School, as an example.

My answers to the above three questions are not really that complicated:

• My readers are camera-owners
• My readers are not using their cameras to their full potential
• My readers will gain creative control over their cameras as a result of reading dPS

I know if dPS can give camera owners creative control over their cameras,  they will start taking images that help create amazing memories for their families, start capturing magical moments in the trips they take, and that they’ll start creating art and ways to express themselves creatively.

These are tangible benefits and outcomes of reading our site and enhance the lives of our readers.

So once we’ve defined the change we want to bring to readers, then we can begin to make more informed decisions about the content we create by simply breaking that down.

What does having creative control over a camera look like? There are many parts of bringing about that change. Some would include:

Obviously this is just a few of the things a camera owner needs to grasp, but you can see here that we’ve already identified a number of topics to explore that help to bring about the overarching goal of the site.

By doing this exercise, we end up with a content and community strategy that is much more intentional that simply sitting at the keyboard each day and asking what we feel like writing about.

By being intentional, we’re creating content that moves people through a process and takes them to an outcome that changes their life in some tangible way.

So What Change do You Want to Bring?

My challenge today is to answer the three questions above, and then to begin to break down the change that you’re wanting to bring.

• Who are your readers?
• What do they need?
• How will they change as a result of reading your blog?

Originally at: Blog Tips at ProBlogger


How to Build a Blog that Has Lasting Impact Upon Its Readers

The murky world of lobby groups bankrolling politicians is garnering more attention, but is there a way to find out which representatives are in the pocket without a lot of tedious research? A 16-year-old programmer has developed a browser plugin...

Anthony Ha / TechCrunch:
Codecademy Partners With Google And DonorsChoose To Boost Girls' Interest In Computer Science  —  Programming education startup Codecademy is announcing a new initiative with a stated goal “to double the number of high school girls studying Computer Science.”

TORONTO – Cisco Canada plans to invest $150 million over 10 years in a variety of Canadian startup companies, technology development incubators and new technologies that it thinks have the potential to affect the global market.

Cisco Canada’s president Nitin Kawale said Canada has many innovative entrepreneurs but that there is a lack of funds and expertise to turn their ideas into commercial products.

“This is the void we’re trying to fill,” Kawale said Thursday at a Toronto launch announcement that included federal Finance Minister Joe Oliver.

Oliver said no federal matching funds have been allocated to the Cisco Canada Innovation Program.

“This is a private-sector initiative. After all, the private sector is entitled to, and should be, pursuing their own initiatives. Government doesn’t have to be everywhere. It shouldn’t be and, in fact, we’re going to achieve our balanced budget next year because we’re going to be acting responsibly with taxpayers money,” Oliver said.

However, Oliver said the effort does complement the federal government’s plan for stimulating investment in Canadian innovation.

Under the Venture Capital Action Plan announced by Prime Minister Stephen Harper in January 2013, the government will deploy $400 million over a period of several years and expects to attract nearly $1 billion in new private sector investments in small- and mid-sized innovative companies.

About $250 million of the total is to establish large “funds of funds” that will partner with institutional and corporate investors as well as interested provinces.

Kawale said that Cisco’s investment program and the federal government’s fund-of-funds approach could be “symbiotic.”

“The funds that are created by the federal government could conceivably, and most likely, invest in the same kind of companies that we’re investing in. So we see this as a symbiotic thing, as opposed to a completely separate thing.”

Kawale said there have already been investments made under the new Cisco investment program, adding that there are short-lists of potential candidates, but he declined to identify any specific deals.

“Today was really about announcing the initiative. Stay tuned, there will be lots of announcements to come.”

Cisco has already made a number of investment announcements for Canada, including a 10-year deal with the Ontario government that was signed in December by Premier Kathleen Wynne, whose Liberal party was recently returned to power with a majority government.

Under that agreement, Wynne said Ontario would provide up to $220 million over the next decade to support a Cisco initiative that the company says will add up to 1,700 jobs in the province, expanding its current Ontario workforce to 3,000 over six years and to 5,000 within a decade.

Cisco later announced in March that it has identified Toronto as one of four new innovation hubs it plans globally. The other cities are in South Korea, Brazil and Germany.

Kawale and Hilton Romanski, the Cisco executive who heads the company’s overall venture capital investment program, both told Thursday’s event in Toronto that they see Canada as a source of resource-oriented technological innovation.

“If you look at the industries that are material to our GDP — oil and gas, utilities, agriculture, mining, health-care, manufacturing, etc. — these industries are ripe,” Kawale told reporters after the presentation.

Romanski, Cisco’s senior vice-president for corporate development, said the Canadian innovation fund will invest both directly in innovative companies with global potential and indirectly in funds that are investing in such companies.

“Our direct investment activity will tend to be closer to the core businesses of Cisco, where we have the ability to bring expertise and resources to the table to help those companies,” Romanski said.

Cisco — which made its name as the leading global supplier of Internet equipment for large businesses — was at one time considered a potential buyer of Nortel Networks, before the Ontario-based company collapsed. Cisco has continued to thrive and broaden its product lines, including for the home, but it is still largely a supplier of communications equipment.

— Follow @DavidPaddon on Twitter

The post Cisco Canada to head $150-million fund for innovative startup companies appeared first on Canadian Business.

“What do you do when the customer looks you in the eye and says, ‘I agree with you,’ and still doesn’t buy?”

This is the point in my conversation with Brent Adamson, Managing Director at CEB and co-author of “The Challenger Sale,” when the choice between Challenger Marketing and thought leadership seems stark—like choosing between being smart and being successful.

The issue with tirelessly pursuing thought leadership is that it often fails to deliver on the true objectives of the business, which is selling your product or service, Adamson says. Organizations believe thought leadership will lead to higher win rates or bigger deals, “when it really leads to people thinking your smart,” he says.

Interview with @brentadamson: What’s the difference between Challenger Marketing and thought leadership?

Much of thought leadership, Adamson says, fails to compel buyers—not because it isn’t poignant or well-packaged, but because it doesn’t truly challenge the buyer.

But let me back up for a moment. Why was I having this early phone call with Adamson from a hotel room in Austin, TX anyway?

Along with his colleague Matthew Dixon, Adamson wrote “The Challenger Sale,” which is textbook for sales teams at some of the top businesses out there. Its message is to move away from the “relationship sale” and focus on leading customer conversations by delivering insight. In other words, the best sales reps challenge buyers to think differently about their industry and business.

Now Adamson and CEB have turned their attention to marketing. They’ve outlined an approach naturally called “Challenger Marketing.”

Since we’ve discussed content marketing’s role in the Challenger Sale, I asked Adamson to lend me an hour of his time to explain what differentiates Challenger Marketing from, well, marketing. Here’s a sampling of what I learned from our talk.

It’s About Delivering Commercial Insights, Not Just Thought Leadership.

At this point, you can probably tell Adamson isn’t advocating doubling down on thought leadership. Instead, he says marketers need to focus on delivering commercial insights to buyers.

So what’s a commercial insight? CEB’s official definition is “a compelling, defensible perspective from a supplier that materially impacts a customer’s performance and directly leads back to their unique capabilities.” Adamson put that in question form: “What do our customers currently not know their about their business, but should?”

If marketers focus on developing content that delivers these kinds of insights—rather than strict thought leadership—they’ll enjoy more success, Adamson predicts. Insights outperform because they tackle any business’s number one competitor: complacency.

“Many customers will say, ‘What I got is good enough.’ That’s who were really competing against: good enough,” Adamson says. Thought leadership, he says, extols the virtues of an alternate course of action; commercial insights present the painful costs of not acting. Challenger Marketing explains why the customer needs to act, rather than why it would be so much better if they chose to act. Insights create urgency.

What Challenger Content Looks Like

If commercial insights represent the heart of Challenger Marketing, then content is the arms and legs (and probably the mouth). I asked Adamson how he spots content that meets Challenger Marketing standards.

Content should “look the customer in the eye and tell them what they’re currently doing is wrong.”

“The litmus test,” he says, “is simply if you provide me a piece of content—whether an infographic, a book, or sales collateral—show me the moment, the paragraph, the bullet where you look the customer in the eye and tell them what they’re currently doing is wrong.”

The purpose of the content isn’t to paint a rosy picture, it’s to drive home the price of ignoring change, that sticking to the status quo costs organizations money and exposes them to risk.

But every new blog post, eBook, video, infographic doesn’t need to deliver a brand new commercial insight. It isn’t feasible. A typical company might develop one or two commercial insights, then let those insights guide the creation of content.

“Start with the commercial insight and then build all your content off that insight,” Adamson says. “Create all sorts of different content objects that lead—like a trail of breadcrumbs—towards that core insight.”

Challenger Marketing Is Not Synonymous with Sales Support.

Adamson is keen to point out that Challenger Marketing isn’t just about stellar sales enablement. A lot of people believe Challenger Marketing “is sales support, because that’s where they first hear about it.” But that perspective is off-base.

Challenger Marketing is not sales support.

In fact, Adamson says, assigning different departments responsibility for different sections of the pipeline is a mistake. Many organizations envision the pipeline as if “there’s a vertical line where marketing owns everything from the left and sales owns everything on the right,” he says. In reality, “there’s a roll to be played by sales and marketing at any given point.”

Content, then, isn’t just about steering leads toward a conversation with sales. It’s about guiding the conversation from the outset, making buyers understand the cost of not acting.

Adamson is now spreading the message of Challenger Marketing. But one thing is clear: insight is at the core of practice—and getting those insights out to the market quickly, ahead of our competitors, in the form of cogent content marketing, will be the real challenge for marketers.

Sales and marketing systems are usually built in isolation from each other, and the results are predictably disjointed. What is surprising though, is the introduction of robust processes do not deliver any of the benefits we'd have expected. In this blog, we will focus on just one chapter from our landmark 2014 report into alignment. Chapter two looks at why the introduction of sales processes improves marketing outcomes, adding marketing processes improves sales outcomes, and building shared processes lifts the outcomes for both. We'll also show you how to get the whole report, for free, at the end of this video.

read more

Today's post is by Bob Urichuck, speaker, trainer, founder of the Buyer-Focused Velocity Selling System, and best-selling author of Velocity Selling: How to Attract, Engage & Empower Buyers to BUY and Motivate Your Team in 30 Days. Let me share the biggest target challenge I faced and met in my 50-plus years in sales and 20 years as a sales trainer. Several years ago in Dubai, I met with a CEO of a major land-development company, who wanted my help to get back on target. It was late September. The company’s year-end target (December) was US $5.7 billion. Current sales...

In today’s ever increasing complex B2B environment having a high performing outbound lead generation team is not an option any longer. The notion that B2B buyers are 70-90% through the “buying journey” is only for “buyer initiated purchases”. There are millions of sales closed everyday by professional sales people. The most successful sales professionals are often backed by a team of inside sales professionals whose primary job is to identify, contact, and engage the organization’s best prospects. This process will open a dialogue with the buyer(s) as to quickly qualify (or disqualify) them as whether they should be entered into the sales funnel and moved along to the next step in the cycle.

Having a top notch inside team or individual on the phone and email as to introduce, nurture and ultimately pass along to a quota-driven sales professional is one of the most effective ways to increase sales and revenue on a consistent basis.

Here is a short list of attributes one should look for when putting together an inside outbound lead generation team.

1. Experienced. I have worked for organizations in the past where the hiring practices were highly questionable in this respect. Some feel that if you hire a young and inexperienced sales person (inside or outside) that you can train and mold them to their standards. If you are selling copier paper maybe. In any other complex organization the skill set is just not present to attain the desired results. These same old school managers often feel that “experienced” sales people are too set in their ways. Old dogs can’t learn new tricks thinking. Provide a culture that is inclusive of all and welcomes ideas and this won’t be a problem.

2. Educated. You want smart people on the phone. People that understand business, people and how to communicate effectively. Those with higher educations tend to fall into this category.

3. Listener. We all know that effective sales people and successful leaders need to be good listeners. So I won’t bore you with the endless and overused analogies of two ears and one mouth.

4. Sense of Humor. People that take themselves and the world too seriously can be a drag. If they can laugh at themselves and make others laugh, that is a good thing.

5. Persistence. The understanding of polite persistence is the difference between a mediocre sales person and  a superstar. Always striving for a next action and never quitting until they get a “no”.

By no means is this a complete list, it is just what I have found to be the best skill set for this very important position.

One last thing. Don’t hire on the cheap. Find well qualified individuals for this position and compensate them well. They are your first line of offense to increasing revenue. After all, it is an investment.

Good Luck and Good Selling!

 

As customers delay sales contact, Marketing is under increasing scrutiny for its management of Lead Generation and Nurturing. To support these efforts, a majority of marketing departments are increasing investments in content creation and automation technology. But many marketers are finding that even the best technology and most robust operational efforts can come up short in delivering commercial outcomes.

To put things in perspective – in a recent CEB Survey, Marketing ranked Lead Generation 15th out of 20 in terms of company effectiveness, and Sales ranked it 20th out of 20. This of course begs the question – where are companies faltering?

CEB Marketing’s latest research has revealed 3 broad areas of improvement in planning and executing Lead Generation campaigns. Follow the guidance in three points listed below to overcome these challenges

1.       Deciding campaign objectives: In the rush for increasing lead volumes, marketers often run campaigns, which even they’re unsure of running. Before rolling out a campaign, pause and think, “what’s the business or marketing objective it helps fulfill?” If you can’t put a finger on one solid business reason why the campaign must run, it probably shouldn’t be run. If, however, you do have a solid business objective for running the campaign, make sure you create a tightly defined campaign brief. As a part of your campaign brief, CEB’s campaign alignment tool can help you precisely define the behavioral and communication tasks for your campaign.

2.       Selecting impactful topics: With the popularization of content marketing, several topics quickly gain and lose popularity. Such distractions can definitely divert marketers’ attention toward campaign topics that make for a good buzz, but eventually don’t drive customer action. Even before creating any content, critically examine whether or not the topic(s) you shortlisted for your campaign (a) impacts customer thinking, (b) drives urgency, and (c) prompts customers to act. CEB’s topic selection tool can help you prioritize and select topics that meet all three criteria.

3.     Securing sales support: A surprisingly high number of marketers struggle to get their Sales counterparts to follow-up on the leads they generated. Sales’ primary reason for a slow/no follow-up is their differential understanding of lead scoring, and follow-up procedures. To avoid this trap, clearly articulate, communicate, and validate lead scoring and follow-up protocols with your Sales counterparts. CEB’s lead scoring, lead handover, and lead prioritization tools can help you synchronize your lead generation efforts with Sales.

 

CEB Marketing Members: Access the full toolkit on planning and executive Lead-Gen Campaigns on our website.

Content marketing is an ideal companion to a B2B sales team. Why? Two reasons:

1) The B2B sales process inherent nature (a longer sales cycle, smaller potential client pool, higher priced purchases and multiple decision makers) requires multiple touch points with a prospective client.

2) The traditional B2B “sales funnel” is evolving from a predictable linear model to a much more diverse and jumbled path—requiring marketers to consistently remind prospective clients of a B2B brand through relevant, new content on an infinite number of platforms.

In this article, we’ll outline steps in the B2B sales process and corresponding content marketing tactics that can help guide a client from discovery to decision.

Discovery

Attracting web visitors and transforming them into qualified prospects is the first step in a B2B sales process. These customers are conducting a web search, gathering preliminary information and sourcing referrals from trusted sources. Most importantly, they’re trying to find a business they can trust, meaning helpful content that addresses their need will nurture the relationship much more than pushy, fluffy sales talk.

Content to engage the discovery stage includes:

• Tip lists
• Curated articles relevant to the industry
• Free downloads such as guides and white papers
• Portfolio gallery
• Customer testimonials

The most critical component to creating this content is also having a call to action to guide them to the next stage. Your discovery content can feature any of the following:

• Comment on a blog post
• Share content across social media
• Follow business on social media
• Subscribe to a newsletter

Consideration

During the consideration phase, a qualified lead recognizes a B2B brand as potential suitor and understands the firm’s unique value proposition. They’re most likely comparing a firm to competitors and have a clearer picture of their project needs. Recycling the same content from the discovery phase is a bad idea. These qualified leads want to engage with a B2B firm and in return receive personalized answers and attention.

Content for the consideration phase include:

• Case studies about similar B2B firms
• Long-form content such as eBooks
• Demo videos
• Webinars
• Newsletters
• Service guides
• Competition comparison and analysis reports

Calls to action within this content include stronger “consideration content” (e.g. registering for other webinars, downloading similar resources). Consider any action that pushes a prospect closer to the decision stage such as requesting a free consultation or trial.

Decision

Finally, a percentage of prospects from the discovery stage have made it to the decision stage. Remember that even if a lead is ready to buy, a B2B firm should build a case of credibility through content before moving to a proposal.

Content that helps the decision making process, not hinders it, includes:

• Phone call with a representative
• Special offers
• In person events
• Comparison to competition (experience, process, pricing, etc.)
• In-depth how-to and service delivery articles
• Pricing information

In the decision phase, calls to action that draw a prospect in, instead of pushing them away include some of the following:

• Claim a special offer/discount
• Contact your business (either by email, phone or a signup form)
• Register for an event
• Time sensitive offer
• Order today

Advocacy

You didn’t think it all stopped once they became a buyer, did you? Think again. B2B content should be providing repeat value to a current client, reaffirming the quality of a brand and its brand promise: its service delivery.

Here is content to keep current clients engage and become long-term advocates:

• Feedback surveys
• Contests and giveaways
• Specialized newsletters
• Product podcasts
• Ongoing in-depth training
• Special offers for current clients

These calls to action should be mutually beneficial, such as sharing your content with other potential leads, participating in future webinars as a co-presenter or offering a customer testimonial.

Take Away

Content marketing is an effective strategy for the B2B sales process. What makes it successful is when it’s customized for every stage—with consideration to the lead’s questions, concerns and needs along the way.

32 Days. 32 Countries from around the world. It’s a month-and-a-day of global soccer mania that beats the excitement and fan frenzy of any other world sporting event. Personal and professional schedules are being carefully planned to catch the games we absolutely don’t want to miss. Bets, wagers and pools seem to be the order of the day in offices, residential neighbourhoods, even schools.

While most fans will pick their team to cheer before a FIFA game begins, the halftime analysis and score are key. A lot of discussion and pondering happens during those crucial 15 minutes of the half-time interval. You want to listen to what the expert commentators are saying, discuss the outcome with your buddies, and maybe rethink your forecast for the rest of the game. All other essential tasks, i.e. washroom break, drink refills and meals are wrapped up very hurriedly during halftime.

As we come to the halftime of 2014, this is a good opportunity to review your B2B lead generation efforts and analyze what’s working, what’s not. What are some important questions to ask as you conduct this review and assessment?

10 Key Questions to Ask about Your B2B Lead Generation Performance

1. Are we working towards enhancing the Lifetime Value (LTV) of our customers? It is typical to arrive at marketing costs stacked against the percentage of sales achieved. In our immensely empowered times of predictive analytics, however, a better way to calculate this would be to measure the Lifetime Value of our key customers. The next step then is to enhance that LTV, i.e. to nurture these key relationships and increase their dollar value as a result. One way to do this is through Growth Hacking—read more about it.
2. Do we have a dependable measurement strategy in place to determine marketing effectiveness? Let’s look at the activities that are driving bottom line revenue. Consider whether or not our sales people are accepting and working the leads passed on by marketing. What lead conversion and closing rates are we achieving at an organizational level? In a recent piece in the CMO Spotlight Series, I talked about the different types of metrics for measuring marketing effectiveness.
3. Is our B2B marketing and lead generation strategy forward-thinking and adaptive to change? Audiences are easily bored so we can’t let them. We must innovate and change before we have to. Read 5 Ways to Ignite B2B Demand Generation and Achieve Customer Delight.
4. Have we established our brand promise within the content marketing landscape? Or is our B2B Content Killing Sales? We need to publish content that is both relevant and easily found by our prospective buyers at various touch points during the buying cycle.
5. Which of our lead nurturing techniques are generating the most quality conversions? The keyword here is ‘quality’. Not only should we look at adding more customers but we need to look at bringing on more high net worth customers who are also strong influencers in their markets. For instance, if an email campaign with gated content such as a white paper helps to bring on those A level customers, then should we not be investing more time and resources doing more campaigns like that? Of course, we must also adopt a personalized approach that caters to different segments of our audience.
6. Are we putting BIG Data to BIG use? Or is it simply another analytics and report-gathering exercise that is done because it is industry best practice?
7. Do we have a 360° view of our lead generation campaigns? It is possible today to analyze buyer behaviour throughout the buying cycle and gather clues that are predictive of sales wins, referral business and repeat purchase. Does our lead generation program offer us a 360° view? If not, how are we monitoring and managing return on investment?
8. Is Omni-channel customer experience management merely on our wish list or have we put it into practice? If we want to offer a consistent customer experience across all channels, we need a responsive marketing strategy. What does this mean? In a nutshell, our website needs responsive design, our content must be mobile and multi-device friendly, we need branded apps to collect user data, our email campaigns need to be personalized and mobile friendly, and our channel partners need to be agile, flexible and responsive to gain an edge over the competition and win more sales.
9. Who runs our marketing and sales? There is only one correct answer to that question—The Customer. Everything we do must be driven by customer need, expectation, behaviour and feedback. That’s the true meaning of personalization. Not only will personalization boost sales but in the long run, it will garner repeat business and customer referrals. Perhaps the most desired outcome of personalized lead generation and marketing is the ability to reduce cost per lead and increase speed to market.
10. What’s left of our marketing and lead generation budget? And what’s the ROI on what we spent in the first half of the year? These questions must precede the common lament about an “insufficient budget”. The reality is, there will never be enough money to do all that we want to do, so let’s first aim to deliver on what the customer expects and the competitive landscape demands. The remaining budget for this year should be carefully utilized to fill the gaps in customer relationship and experience enhancement. The ‘wins’ that arise from these proactive efforts will drive next year’s budget as a ratio of increased Lifetime Values per customer. Here is an interesting piece on how to determine the ideal marketing budget.

What are some of the questions keeping you or your CMO up at night? Is B2B lead generation delivering the results your company is seeking? Think about some of the key changes you need to implement in the second half of the year to build more engagement, drive greater conversion and increase revenues. 

As a software company, your sales force is primarily focused on signing up new customers, but that’s not all they should be paying attention to. High-margin software maintenance and other subscription-based software is an often-overlooked source of revenue, and it affects long-term customer retention.

Even with newer business Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) subscription models, the initial transaction is just the start of your relationship with the customer, and they continually evaluate your sales and service performance after the initial contract is signed.

Traditionally, the business software sales process was just a single transaction: You closed a sale, collected the revenue and moved on to your next prospect. Today, you need to establish an ongoing relationship with your customers.

And to do that, you need a different sales process.

Your Software Sales Must Focus On Renewals

Today, more business software deals are sold in shorter sales cycles than ever before. Because of this increased closing speed, many salespeople assume they don’t need to follow up and ensure that current customers are renewing their subscriptions. That assumption is dead wrong.

Your sales team might be closing new customers at a faster rate, but if you’re losing just as many current customers at the same rate, your business has no top-line growth.

You need to hire salespeople who connect all the dots for prospects and pitch in a way that guarantees customer renewal. In every renewal period, a customer must make the conscious decision to pay your subscription fee – and your salesperson’s pitch should be keeping that recurring decision point in mind.

Adopt A Long-Term View

In order to be successful in the new software sales environment, your sales force needs to remember the lifetime value of a customer – not just the short-term value of a quick sign-up. Salespeople need to take a full sales cycle approach that touches on every aspect of the customer experience.

This doesn’t just apply to ensuring renewals, either: Upsell pitches on new product features are critical and increase your profit margins even more. However, a customer only purchases upgrades or new features when he or she trusts the relationship you’ve already established.

What would your revenue stream look like if you had 100% customer retention for your software? The view of your sales pipeline would be dramatically different, wouldn’t it?

Talk To The Rest Of Your Team

Capturing the long-term value of a new customer isn’t just the domain of your salespeople, it’s also the task of your entire company – from customer service, to fulfillment, to client renewal and even administration and marketing.

To accomplish this team-wide effort successfully, you need to establish more opportunities for communication and cooperation between teams so you’re able to more proactively solve any customer issue. Create cross-company customer feedback loops, such as:

• Feedback loops between customer service and sales
• Feedback loops between sales and marketing
• Feedback loops between fulfillment and sales

When your customers have a question about your software, they expect a fast and helpful reply, and they don’t want to wade through several contacts at your company before they get an answer. If they don’t receive a prompt, helpful reply, they’ll soon be looking elsewhere for their business software needs.

Research The Marketplace

Your software sales and customer service processes don’t occur in a vacuum: Not only are your competitors talking to your same prospects – and even long-time customers – but your customers are also talking more to each other than ever before.

Ask yourself: How often do I talk to my current customers, even just to check-in? And, how often does my competition talk to those same customers? It might be more often than you think. The only way to continually outsmart your competitors is to research their approach and go one step further to lock-in customer loyalty.

Sometimes your worst competition is a bad review posted in a place all of your prospects are looking. Here’s where customer service feedback loops become even more important: If customers aren’t pleased with your subscription-based software or the service they received, they’ll post their feedback in industry forums and discussion boards such as Spiceworks. What once was a problem with just one customer becomes a huge barrier to closing more sales with millions, so you must stay on top of these reviews.

The business software sales cycle is constantly changing, but the aspect that always remains the same is building a solid customer relationship based on trust. Remember these tips as you embrace this new software sales process with your team:

• Focus on customer renewals, not just initial sign-ups
• Adopt a long-term view that considers the lifetime value of a customer
• Establish feedback loops with your other teams to ensure continued customer happiness
• Study your competitors’ approaches and lock-in customer loyalty
• Research your reviews in the marketplace for additional feedback to catch problems before they get out of hand – especially if the end-user of your product isn’t the buyer

Struggling with lead generation or closing deals in your software sales process? Click below to download a free tip sheet from Invenio Solutions and start generating warmer leads and creating a more successful sales cycle for your business software company.

Are you getting an increase in traffic but still not seeing the lead conversion rate you’re looking for? The problem may be a simple fix for your digital marketing team. If you’re generating traffic, this probably means that your content is more or less relevant to an audience. However, the reason you’re not seeing better conversion rates may mean that your messages and your content aren’t targeted specifically enough.

It’s one thing to attract, but entirely another thing to attract the “ideal customer.” And if you’re not attracting the potential lead then you’ve wasted valuable time and resources. Here are a few of the most important issues to consider when launching or modifying your digital marketing campaign as well as producing more effective content.

Understanding Your Buyer’s Persona

Before you launch into creating multiple pages of content geared towards a particular subject, stop and consider your buyer’s persona. Traditional marketing and advertising devotes as much early research time as they can afford. Talk to your customers. This can be in the form of a questionnaire or quite literally talking one-on-one to your customers. Knowing the specific concerns of the actual, ideal buyer in your niche market will help to form your landing pages and other digital marketing content. Some key demographic and psychographic issues that you might want to consider are:

• Age
• Gender
• Religious Beliefs
• Average Annual Income
• Where they live
• Where they shop
• Level of Internet literacy

Knowing the language and the content that fits these criteria, you’ll be able to create advertising that targets them directly. This analysis is valuable insight into the minds of your customers, and should not be overlooked. Then, when the time comes to pay for click-through advertising, choose the portals where these leads are more likely to gather on the web.

For example, if you are a real estate agent, selling homes in a new development, perhaps prior developments of similar quality and location have appealed only to small families. In this case, cost is one issue, of course. But, smaller families tend to buy with their instincts and their hearts, rather than pocketbooks. Your content may appear to be doing effective digital marketing because you’re answering the question about cost, but is it addressing the questions about lifestyle that your actual buyers are searching for? As such, you’ll want to discuss local parks and green spaces, access to local schools, descriptions of community events and plans for the future.

On the other hand, if the housing development appeals more to retirees, then your content should be more tailored towards that persona. In this case, what is the infrastructure for walking, pathway access and dog parks? Are there restaurants and social clubs nearby that appeal to this particular age bracket. Older residents have more disposable savings, but they are less concerned about the future of the housing development.

Digital Marketing Tips to Finding Your Audience

Yes, doing proper SEO on your landing pages will ensure that customers using certain keyword search terms will allow them to find you. However, when you’re advertising, or targeting your audience more selectively, you need to know where they hang out. Again, if we look at the realtor example, we can determine that young families and retirees hang out in different locations on the web.

Couples with small children are more likely to wander through Facebook and Pinterest to get a “feel” for a certain neighbourhood. They’ll want to see community events being broadcast. They’ll want to hear the voice of their neighbours. Therefore, social media plays a larger role in their lives than retirees, so follow them to their Internet haunts.

Your site, product or service is valuable to a very particular group of Internet searchers. Once you’ve discovered where they hang out, you can then become a presence in that location. Lead existing customers with positive testimonials towards those social media spaces. Your goal is to start relationships with others that mimic the relationship that you already have with your best customers. They are, after all, your best brand advocates. So use them.

More Marketing Isn’t Necessarily Better Marketing

Never assume that spamming or casting a large net will appeal to any of your customers. It’s very rare that your blanket message will be read or appreciated by potential clients. In the long run, you may be doing more harm than good. Your brand persona should be one of trust and information: not exposing an overt digital marketing agenda.

The fact is that less than 5% of your website visitors will end up buying anything simply on their first visit. The key is to provide enough valuable content on your landing page to get your audience engaged. The next step is to engage with them. Follow up with emails or free eBooks that go into detail about the questions that they most likely have.

Again, using the realtor’s example, if you have found a study about links between higher quality education and smaller housing projects, then produce them in an eBook that targets those young families. If you’ve discovered a study that links health to outdoor activities, then target this eBook towards retired people. The key is to be a resource to your specific targeted audience. You need to learn the questions and produce the answers as directly as possible.

Use Analytics to Determine Effectiveness

You’ll need to know what’s working, so make sure that you have analytical data to examine. How long does a person linger on a certain page? How many pages do they visit before they fill out a form? Which blogs are getting read? Which tweets were re-tweeted or shared on social media portals?

These numbers will give an indication as to what digital marketing initiatives are working and which need to be tweaked. The good news in all of this is that it’s not too late to start. Unless you’ve throw away tens of thousands of dollars on printing and sending out costly fliers and direct mail, you haven’t lost that much time or money. Start today by looking at your site to determine which pages have gotten the most views. Then focus on these pages to encourage more flow-through to the more unique pages that do the job of selling.

In the end, the key is research and putting in as much time as you can towards understanding your customer. Just because digital marketing has the mythical reputation of being able to “generate sales with a click of a button,” it’s important to never throw away traditional marketing tactics. The more tailored your approach to reaching your customers, the more benefit you will see in terms of high-quality traffic and better conversion rates.

What are your thoughts on this? Have you seen a shift already in terms of your online content and the response you’ve generated from your audience? Are you satisfied with the amount of traffic and impact your content is having? Please leave a message here to tell us your story or to comment on digital marketing effectiveness.

In a world where everything is constantly evolving and changing, staying at the top of the tide of changes takes smart marketing and cutting edge tactics.

One particular marketing tactic that many internet marketers have used to help their clients stay cutting edge is the use of engaging eBooks. Why? That’s a great question. Simply put, they help move potential customers further down the sales funnel. Let’s take a look at this.

3 Types Of Visitors

When it comes to website traffic, you’ve got three different types of visitors – browsers, comparers, and buyers.

Typically, websites will focus on one or two of these types quite well (we’ve seen, not at all as well).

Buyers are ready to, as you probably guessed, make a purchase immediately, and websites that give clear leadership with “buy now or call now” type call’s to action will benefit from giving that clear leadership.

Comparers are just looking around and want to know how your brand’s services or inventory match up to your competitors.

Companies who make it easy for them to compare products will benefit in being able to possibly move them down the buying cycle and turn them into a buyer right there. Possibly.

Browsers often just want to see what’s going on. They don’t have any real future intention to buy. Perhaps they just enjoy learning more about your industry, or just want to see what’s out there.

It’s possible to format your site in such a way that they move themselves into comparers or directly into buyers. Possibly.

This is where ebooks play their key role in your sales funnel.

You see, not everyone in the comparison or browsing stage is going to become a buyer. Statistically, they won’t be back if you don’t have a way to market to them again and compel them.

This means, all your hard work in getting them there in the first place didn’t have nearly the impact it could have had for your business.

By using the right ebooks with call’s to action, you can get browsers, comparers, and buyers, into your sales funnel. They may not make a purchase, but they often will be willing to give their name and email for a valuable ebook that addresses a need at their stage of the buying cycle.

See how that can be powerful?

Now, you have an opportunity to market your brand to a segment of people who wouldn’t have been connected to it otherwise, moving them down the sale’s funnel from browsers to comparers to buyers!

Keep reading to find out more about how to do this.

What are eBooks?

When we use the word ‘eBook’ in this post, it’s actually a blanket statement that covers a variety of styles. In its literal translation, an eBook is an electronic book that can be read on a computer, tablet, or mobile phone and was designed specifically for such a purpose.

eBooks are not all exhaustive textbook-like tomes. Instead, eBooks can also refer to a ‘white page download.’ This would be a shorter article, rather like a blog post, that targets a very specific topic.

eBooks can be used as online material to prepare a customer for a procedure. For example, a plastic surgeon may have a variety of eBooks available that address his most commonly performed procedures. These books would act as a guide for prospective or confirmed patients that need to know how to prepare for the procedure, what to expect the day of, and what recovery will look like.

eBooks can be short or long. They can be technical and informative, or casual and engaging. They can come in a variety of styles on innumerable topics, and can always be tailored to exactly fit your buyer persona or target demographic.

We know. We’ve seen them in action.

About eBooks In Marketing

In essence, eBooks are gigantic articles – informative, helpful, supplementary material used for educational and marketing purposes. So, what are the advantages of distributing eBooks in addition to blog posts? Since time is money, are they really worth their weight in gold?

We say, yes.

Fits Well In Our Digital Environment

In the old days of digital marketing (which wasn’t actually that long ago) when people had a problem, they would consult the local expert. They would settle for whatever answers were close by. However, with the expansion of the internet and the technological overtaking that has brought us into a new digital world, people now do their own research online. So, in order to reach them, you must provide helpful information via the internet in order to find them and move them through your sales funnel.

Conveys Expertise And Authority

If the company next door provides a short blog post about a given topic, but you provide a long eBook about the same topic, you show your level of expertise. People love comprehensive and helpful sources of information that are written to specifically meet their needs and speak to their problems.

They will be more motivated to schedule an appointment, sign up for a free consultation, or give you a call if they’re convinced that you can provide them with unique benefits. Gain their trust by supplying them with helpful information that displays your expertise. If you show them that you’re reliable, they will trust you.

People are ready to work with a company when they feel that you care more about solving their problems than you care about their money. They know that you can’t work for free, of course, but they want to know that you’re honest and trustworthy, as opposed to just out to get their hard-earned cash.

Communicates Your Brand/Offerings

People want to know who you are, and a blog post can only tell them so much. While you can insert a CTA at the end of an article that encourages the individual to purchase your product or service, they may need more convincing than that.

People are more likely to buy from companies and businesses that they know and understand – they want to be sure they have the whole story before they put any money on the table. Hence, an eBook is an effective way to convey to a prospective client how your business works, your company offerings, your discounts, your procedures, what they can expect when they contact you, and how to evaluate whether your services would work well to fix their problems.

Offer them as much information about yourself as you possibly can – and then, they will be more likely to trust you, your brand, and your services.

Timeless Marketing Asset

Blog posts have a timestamp, and they get lost in the archives. Yes, intersite linking and featured posts help keep old posts circulating, but an eBook that that is always readily available as a fresh piece of downloadable content is a great marketing asset.

Your blog posts can link to the eBook. Your landing pages can feature the eBook. And, as long as the information in the eBook stays current, the eBook is an invaluable piece of content that can generate a lot of ROI because it’s timeless.

How to create and display Ebooks

There are no hard and fast rules regarding what to include in an eBook and how to write it, so when it comes to creating an eBook, use the writing styles and techniques that are going to best fit your buyer persona. This might take some research—check out our post on creating your buyer persona to get you started.

Instead, what we want to focus on here is the tools that you will need to use to compile and distribute your eBook.

Compiling Your eBook In Microsoft Word

Word is our current favorite tool to use for writing and compiling downloadable content. Yes, you can use Adobe InDesign if you want, but it’s far more difficult. Take advantage of Word’s headers feature and other such tricks to speed up your formatting process.

Want to make it especially easy? Download this free Microsoft Word eBook template we created just for this blog post!

Email Capture With Wufoo Forms

eBooks are a fantastic way to collect people’s email addresses. We’ll talk more about this a little later.

At Fannit, we capture emails by setting up a form using Wufoo (a form creator tool). You can create a new form, add mandatory name and email fields, and make the “submit” button redirect to the URL of your eBook. Once completed, your eBook can only be accessed when people give you their email address using a very simple form.

Wufoo saves form submission information so you can access email addresses, or you can sync it with a MailChimp email list.

Landing Pages

The best way to have people download your eBook is to have an entire page on your website dedicated to just the eBook.

This page should have an attractive banner image displaying the eBook, a call to action right near the top telling users to go ahead and download it, some brief information, and your download form. Here are a couple examples of eBook landing pages we’ve created for clients:

• The toxic mold eBook landing page for Clean Crawls
• The landlord’s guide to renting for North Pacific Property Management

These landing pages persuade site users to do one thing: download the eBook. Now, you’re happy to have their email address, they’re happy to receive high quality free information, and the landing page has made it simple and to the point.

Using Calls To Action (CTAs)

Once you have an eBook and it’s out on a landing page, you can promote it across your site with CTAs. These can be just text linking over to the landing page, but a better option is to use graphics that persuade users to navigate from whatever page they’re on to the landing page.

A good example of this is the CTA at the end of a blog post about product liability in car accidents for the Jones Firm.

Images draw the attention of blog readers, and leads them toward downloading the eBook. These useful CTA’s aren’t restricted to use on blog posts, however, and should be used throughout your site; homepage, the blog sidebar, and other such places.

What Does An eBook Do?

By this time, you should be asking yourself “What does an Ebook offer my marketing strategy?” What’s the benefit of incorporating all this time and energy into a project?

Email Capture

This, the most sought after of internet marketing treasures—the name and email address. Using downloadable content, such as Ebooks, (should) provide this golden opportunity. As users see and desire to read whatever brilliant content you have available in downloadable form, they will enter their email address into your system.

Sweet!

This email, this simple string of letters and symbols, is your key to nurturing this lead. With an email, you are able to periodically send follow up emails, notifications of sales, inquiries as to whether they have additional questions, surveys, and so forth.

If we communicate nothing else as far as benefits for Ebooks go, understand this—email capture is one of the best ways to nurture a lead and convince them that you’re trustworthy.

Brand Awareness

A well-developed Ebook that reaches a wide audience can work wonders in creating brand awareness. When a customer downloads your content and reads your enlightening and inspiring message therein, they are going to file your brand away in their heads as someone to trust, to return to—to talk about. They may even go so far as to post links to your amazing Ebook on social platforms or email it to a friend. Either way, when someone loves your Ebook, you can rest assured that your brand is implanted in their brains forever.

Social Engagement:

This goes hand in hand with brand awareness but is important enough to mention as a stand alone. The use of eBooks in social media are incredibly useful. Not only is this content ‘evergreen’ in that it can be used over, and over, and over, it is a simple way to get people interested in your brand. A well-timed social media update with a link to your eBook can generate a lot of social interaction.

We will put it simply—more social engagement, the better your rankings, the greater number of backlinks, the better your brand reputation and awareness will be. Social + ebook = $$$

Brand Reputation:

What does good content from a knowledgeable source communicate to a client?

“These people know their stuff. Not only do they know their stuff, but they are good souls that share their knowledge with the rest of the world. They get the message out. They communicate. They have ME in mind when they are thinking about what content to produce. What do I need? What do I like?”

The better your content, the better your reputation. There’s nothing worse than going to a website that seems like it will have helpful information and, instead, finding that it’s thin, useless, and doesn’t answer any of potential customer’s questions. You never, ever want that to be your content, your website, or your Ebook.

Instead, produce amazing content that people want to read. We promise, your reputation will soar. If this hasn’t been you in the past, don’t worry. People will be forgiving as soon as you start producing something that’s worth reading.

Companies can create the greatest videos but if no one sees it, it doesn't matter. Here are six ways to increase traffic to your videos.

A sampling of how companies large and small have used the new GIF capability for their marketing purposes.

There’s 1 minute left on the clock and you’re up by 5 with the ball. As you pass it in and your opponent does something you haven’t seen before- The Full Court Press! You turn the ball over… They drain a 3. It happens again. Another full court press and you turn the ball over…. They drain another 3 to take the lead and win the game. How did that happen? Did you not see it coming?

When Lebron James steps on the court again against the Spurs in the NBA Finals, do you think he knows what their strategy is? What plays they are known for?  Of course he does. Would he be fooled by a full court press?  I think not! So why is your business being surprised by the competition. Why are you losing the ball with less than a minute left? Because you didn’t do the research and didn’t see that coming.

Competitor research is one of the most important things you can do for your company. Unless something is truly innovative, it has all been done before. We are all a product of our surroundings and have the benefit to learn from those who have walked before us. Like Picasso once said “Good artists copy, great artist steal”. When you steal an idea, it’s not the same, you make it your own and that’s how you should look at competitor research. What is your competition doing that not only could you do, but that you could do better. Lets take a look at a few of the things you should pay attention to when doing competitor keyword research.

Where to Look?

You can always gain a competitive edge by knowing the ins and outs of your closest competitors. Lets take a look at what you should be paying attention to when you conduct competitor research.

Website

Hopefully you know to look at your competitor’s website, but what are you looking for on there? By looking at a competitors website, you can find their featured products or services, you can get a sense of their target market and you can see what phrases they are using to optimize their site for keywords. This information can be helpful when trying to find what differentiates your company, and may even give you a few ideas of what you’re missing out on.

What does their Search Look Like?

PPC & Organic

Evaluating your competition’s organic and paid search is a good way to help your own SEO strategy. SEMrush.com is a great site to get a little glimpse into your competitor’s keywords.

Knowing the keywords they target for paid, as well the ones they get found for in organic can give you a good idea of what your blogging and paid strategy should be formed around. Type these keywords into a search engine and see what kind of content is showing up. Then see if you could steal the idea and make it better! Copying the idea will only put you on the same playing field.

Shelf Space

Now do an actual search of your competitors name in Google. What does their “Shelf Space” look like? And by shelf space I mean what do you see on the first page of Google for your competitor. Of course their website will pop up, but what else? Do you see any videos, a blog, reviews or maybe one of their socials? Take note to this and compare this to your own search. What’s missing? Could you be doing something better? Have you left out a strategy that they are possibly converting leads on. Algorithms are always changing, but doing these searches can help you see what your competitors are doing to get more space on SERPs.

Social Platforms

Take a glimpse at their social platforms and see what they are doing. Facebook, Twitter, Google+, LinkedIn and Youtube are all great ways that businesses can improve their SEO and engagement. See what works well for you competitors and then you will know where you want to have a presence online. It ‘s easy to see which platforms work best by seeing how many followers they have, which platforms get the most engagement and where they post most frequently. Pay attention to the type of content they post as well and see which pieces perform the best for engagement. Then try to implement these ideas yourself. Remember, steal their idea, don’t just copy it.

Blog

Do they blog? Reviewing their blog is one of the best places for getting an idea of what content they think is important to your target market. And you will be able to tell if the audience finds this information useful by the number of social shares and comments each piece receives. These topics are great for you to generate for your own blog as long as you have the same target market.

Time for the Full-Court Press

So it’s time for you to put your own full-court press on your competitors and steal that BALL (aka ideas)! Lebron James and Tim Duncan aren’t sitting back waiting for their competitors to strike, they are the ones formulating a plan to strike. So take a deep dive into your competitor’s websites and see what they are doing right and try to improve on it. Remember “Good artists copy, great artist steal.” And as you are improving on what they are doing right, make sure you don’t fall into the same pitfalls they experienced by learning from what they are doing wrong.

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More than 50 percent of surveyed teens send sexual texts to each other, and 28 percent of them are photos, according to a new study from Drexel University.

“Under most existing laws, if our findings were extrapolated nationally, several million teens could be prosecuted for child pornography,” explained a 2012 study on the rise of sexting among minors.

Despite adults’ attempts over the last two years, teens have not suppressed their inner demons in favor of legal prudence (shocker). Many teens could be held liable for texts they sent as a minor or between their friends of different ages.

Part of the difficulty with figuring out the prevalence of sexting is because there’s no agreed upon definition. “Exactly what constitutes a sext is not entirely clear,” note the researchers from Drexel. While 50 percent may seem high, this was a self-reported survey of extremely incriminating questions, which means the actual numbers could be much higher.

Beyond the legal ramifications, The Atlantic’s Alexis Madrigal has a fascinating look into another academic study on the double standards for girls. Girls who send sexts are considered promiscuous, while those who don’t could be socially isolated.

“This indicates that sexting is a lose-lose proposition for girls; regardless of whether or not they sext, their behavior is evaluated in harsh and often sexist terms,” explain the University of Michigan’s Julia Lippman and Scott Campbell.

In the study, one 14-year-old claimed, “I have received some pics that include nudity. Girls will send them sometimes, not often. I don’t know why they think it’s a good idea, but I’m not going to stop it. … I like classy girls, so I don’t like them as much anymore. It makes them look slutty.”

Interestingly enough, the rise in disappearing photo apps, including a brand new Snapchat competitor from Facebook, may help shield some from the legal and social consequences of lasting pictures. But reputations will still be on the line, and that can cause all the psychological trauma of high school drama.

Surprisingly, today’s teens are the most sexually conservative on record, with plummeting teen pregnancies (which could be due to better information about and access to contraception, granted). But digital outlets are not exempt from teenage hormones, and all signs point to increasing prevalence of sexting.

The graphic above shows the largest company by revenue in every state.

Created by Mike Simmons in collaboration with Broadview Networks, the map drew information from Hoover's — a Dun & Bradstreet company — database of company profiles. The site updates information based on figures available from the most recent fiscal year.

Simmons based decisions for each state off company headquarters and excluded any subsidiaries or government agencies as well as companies with foreign offices.

Some of the top companies make perfect sense, like Exxon in Texas, with $438.3 billion in revenue; General Motors in Michigan, $155.4 billion; and Wal-Mart in Arkansas, $476.3 billion.

Others, however, deliver a shock. You might think Microsoft or Boeing reigns in Washington, but a look at the data reveals that Costco, with $105.1 billion in revenue, actually comes out on top. 

These states, as some of the biggest in the country, naturally house many of the companies with the most revenue, too.

Visit Hoover's and use the filers at the bottom to check the top companies in your state.

SEE ALSO: The 50 Best Employers In America

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You've been offered a new job, and your prospective employer wants you to sign a noncompete agreement. Should you? Many people don't really understand what these agreements entail or what questions they need to ask.

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Don’t hire your brother. Don’t hire your sister. Don’t hire your mother, or your father. And just to be on the safe side, don’t hire your uncle or your aunt. New research shows that adding family members to your company could be bad for business.

When you’re thinking of a succession plan to keep a family business entrepreneurial as it gets passed down through generations, the research suggests that you recruit non-family members.  “If you bring in more external people in the firm and board, it’ll be positive for the company,” said Einar Lier Madsen, the study’s author and a researcher at the Nordland Research Institute in Norway. Bringing in outside employees will help the business avoid complacency and inertia.

READ: What Happens when Kids Take Over the Family Business »

The study was presented recently at the 2014 Babson College Entrepreneurship Research Conference at Western University’s Ivey Business School in London, Ont., which set out to uncover the factors that “influence variance in entrepreneurial orientation”—risk-taking, innovativeness, pro-activeness—among family firms.  Madsen looked at 609 family-run companies in Norway, many of which were small, first-generation companies, to see whether a firm’s family influence and dynamic capabilities hinder or promote the type of entrepreneurship the business is working towards.

The results showed that as family businesses get passed down through generations, the possibility of a company stagnating in an unchanged state could pose a threat to its overall health. Madsen said that young family businesses (those companies that didn’t have as much experience) were shown to possess or develop more dynamic capabilities than older and more family-controlled family businesses.

READ: How to Revitalize the Family Business »

During the question period it was clear that the results from Madsen’s study didn’t take into consideration whether some family members involved with the business could have been studying or working abroad. From those international experiences, family members could possibly act as an external contributor to the business, which might lead to similar results as bringing in a non-family member to the company. So, if your brother, sister, mother, father, aunt or uncle has done some time abroad, then you might  want to consider keeping their application in the candidate pool.

The post Here’s why your company shouldn’t hire your family members appeared first on Canadian Business.