Rnordman

Is that glowing tech review real or fake? Here's how one website is trying to make the world of online reviews more honest.

There are two big problems with online product reviews: finding good, quality reviews takes time and then, even when you think you've found them, you never know if they're legit. Yelp and Amazon, for example, have been widely criticized for fake reviews posted by competitors or people hired by companies to fabricate complimentary feedback.

G2 Crowd is a software review site that tries to get around the problem of fake reviews. Its secret sauce? Among other mechanisms, G2 Crowd uses LinkedIn to authenticate users and make sure companies aren't reviewing their own product (or slamming a competitor's).

The G2 Crowd algorithms are designed to catch, say, someone who works at Oracle trying to review an Oracle product or, conversely, a competing SAP product. On top of that, a human looks at every review before it's posted to try to catch concocted reviews that may have slipped through. And as a third weeding-out mechanism, the platform lets its crowd of users help report abuse by up-voting or down-voting other people's reviews.

"People are pretty good at sniffing out what's real and what isn't in terms of the online world," G2 Crowd CEO Godard Abel says.

Users can also see reviews written on G2 Crowd by their LinkedIn connections. You may be surprised at how many of your professional associates have taken the time to review software on G2 Crowd. A handful of my connections have done it, with dozens more registered with G2 Crowd to access its content.

Abel says, in the 15 months the website has been live, 12,000 users have contributed 14,000 reviews of business software.

It helps that the process is incentivized. By submitting reviews, users earn points that enter them into contests to win things such as Amazon gift cards and iPad Minis, with more points allocated to users who take the time to do a feature review that entails answering 65 questions. G2 Crowd also awards additional points for validating a review by uploading a screenshot that shows a person actually logged in to the software solution they're writing about.

G2 Crowd lets you filter reviews according to number of stars and whether a product is better for small, medium, or large companies. Reviews include answers to questions about what a reviewer likes and dislikes about a solution as well as what business problems it solves and which benefits a person has realized because of using it.

Within a product category, you can click on an Overview tab and get a G2 Crowd Grid, which looks quite like Gartner's Magic Quadrants, a graphical way to compare tech providers within a market. To place software solutions on the grid, G2 Crowd uses a scoring algorithm that looks at more than 30 online signals for a particular software solution, such as public and social data regarding number of employees, market share as reflected in number of ratings and reviews, Web traffic and inclusion in Google search trends, number of followers on social networks, what employees say about the brand on Glassdoor, as well as public company information such as age and revenue.

G2 Crowd also looks at products that are often compared and holds them up side by side, showing metrics for how reviewers rated each solution in terms of ease of use, setup, and administration, as well as quality of support and product direction. The platform also lays out which reviews users have rated to be most helpful, both in terms of being favorable and critical.

Forbes contributor Louis Columbus has criticized the website for not having many verified reviews of enterprise software such as SAP ERP. Abel says there are about 300 categories of business software on the market, and it will likely take a few years for the G2 Crowd community to build robust content for all of them. Columbus also notes that Abel recently invested in and became CEO of Steelbrick Inc., a Palo Alto, California-based company that has its pricing software listed on the G2 Crowd platform, which he says is a potential conflict of interest. (Abel, however, says there is none, and that his or his team members' opinions don't matter because the ratings are driven by data.)

Overall, G2 Crowd is a robust resource for learning more about which features people appreciate and dislike when it comes to business software. Abel says G2 Crowd, which earlier this month received $2.3 million in Series A funding, gets 60,000 unique visitors a month.

Think about someone you seek out when you're working through a challenge.

They help you think things through, see what’s important. They ask the right questions. They listen. They don’t just give you answers—they help you come up with them.

On the other hand, they’re not afraid to tell you what they think, share their ideas, and take a stand when they feel strongly about something.

People like this make us better. They help us see what's possible. That's why we get so much from interacting with them. That's why we seek them out. Again and again.

The sellers who are winning major sales these days are starting to look just like these people.

Today's buyers have a lot of information and choices because of the Internet, but they don’t necessarily have more wisdom or confidence. They need people to share ideas, and help them think ideas through.

Yet this is where so many sellers are struggling, falling short and losing, while a select few are getting it right and winning...

Summer’s just weeks away and floating with it is the promising idea of a tropical vacation. Sadly, kids and teens have it pretty easy when it comes to the planning. You on the other hand can’t seem to catch a break. How do you get back to work once the heat and sun are over and done? Did you miss any appointments? Did Mr. H from HCorp call back? What about that email from John Doe Industries? Who followed it up?

Leaving instructions while you’re away is part and parcel of any business process. And as far as sales and marketing is concerned, yes you should think about how your telemarketing setup is geared to keep going while you’re gone. The problem is you don’t seem to be satisfied and can’t help but over prepare.

This can be stressful for both you and your telemarketers. Remember, you’re planning to go on vacation. Going on vacation isn’t flying off to Honolulu and just taking the phone calls from there. If that’s your idea of it, then it won’t be surprising that you’re one of the 59% who feel vacation-deprived.

So to make sure you’re not harassing yourself and the agents who handle calls for you, here are some tips:

• Keep workload exactly as how you left it – And by that, it doesn’t mean your telemarketers should help reduce the number of prospects for you to close. Even if you manage to put in extra effort and close a high score of leads, more leads will come in anyways. This renders any form of ‘de-cluttering’ absolutely pointless. Rather, use your telemarketing resources to leave you with no more and no less than the number of appointments you left with.

• Ask for a summary only after vacation’s done – At some point, it might mean your B2B telemarketers won’t be making any leads until it’s almost time you’re expected back. That doesn’t mean they have nothing else they might want to report to you about. But of course, this is only when you get back. Don’t make any hints of you dropping lines or making excuses to delay your big break. Learn how to brush these things at the back of your mind when you’re supposed to be relaxed.

• Finally, reeeeelaaaax – A key part of getting the vacation mood is actually relaxing yourself on a daily basis. With so much information coming from your telemarketers, don’t just slam the brakes by announcing your vacation. It’s better if they’re actually used to you taking time for quick breaks. What better way to let them feel what it’s like once you go on your big one?

Relaxation isn’t also the only perks of vacation. You’ve got family catch-up time, soul-searching, a chance to hang for a girl/guys night out. What good is all that fun when you can’t leave your work behind? So the next time you leave it up to your telemarketing agents, actually mean it and take your vacation.

BIG IDEA: Buyers can’t buy until they’ve handled all of their internal stuff and everyone involved agrees they’re ready, willing, and able to bring in something new. With a solution-placement focus, sales and marketing limit us to finding only those who have completed those tasks and deem themselves ready to engage – the low hanging fruit.

PROBLEM: The problem is not in getting our solution sold; it’s in getting our solution bought. Buyers have Pre-Sales work to do that doesn’t involve the content we spend a lot of resource trying to push on them. Our sales and marketing efforts are set to seek ways to ‘get in’, get read, or determine ‘need’, ignoring the buyer’s need to figure out how to do their real change work: to assemble the most appropriate people, get consensus, try workarounds, and manage change. Because of the selling biases in our listening and questioning, we extract partial data, from people who don’t have the full fact pattern yet; promised dates get ignored; people disappear; there is no buy-in. We waste our time pushing content and waiting, hoping they’ll buy, instead of entering earlier to facilitate the change with them.

PROBLEM: The flaw in the sales model: designed to place solutions, sales starts selling before buyers are ready/able to buy, restricting success to those who deem themselves ready- the low hanging fruit (5%). Indeed, buyers don’t want to buy anything: they just want to solve a (business) problem with the least disruption.

PROBLEM: The status quo is preferred and is the basis of decision making. Regardless of a buyer’s real need, or the relevance of our solution; regardless of relationship or pitch/content/price; it is only when there is buy-in for systemic change, and an action plan that manages disruption, will buyers investigate the most agreeable solution. This holds true regardless of type or price of solution.

SOLUTION: Buying Facilitation® is a unique consulting model that facilitates change and decision making. Used with the sales model, it enters the buyer’s buying decision process to facilitate excellence, teaching buyers how to manage all the systems/change stuff they must do: recognize and manage all of the back-end, idiosyncratic, internal issues they must address before they can consider a change in the area our solution can help in (i.e. you’re not helping them determine if they need new software if you sell leadership training.). It can be used with small personal products, cold calls, help desks, complex sales, and marketing.

The post Being a Salesperson Sucks (Think Like a Farmer Instead) appeared first on Copyblogger.

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Content marketing — like any other type of online marketing — is continually changing and evolving. Meaning, if your content campaign today looks just like it did in ‘07, then it isn’t as effective as it was in 2007.

Example: one of my Internet marketing buddies’ content marketing campaign was built heavily around article directory submissions (think Ezine Articles). His traffic continues to decrease daily.

Another fellow marketeer heavily invests in an up-to-date, regularly updated blog and complementary social media; and his traffic and brand authority are skyrocketing.

If you’re behind the content marketing curve, now’s the time to get caught up — here are 17 content marketing trends relevant to 2014.

1. Social Media Reigns King

Image source

Social media marketing is the most popular content promotion tactic by a mile. Or more accurately, by 6%. 87% of B2B content marketers are active on social media, while 81% (the runner-up content marketing tactic) have articles on their websites.

You really shouldn’t be surprised at this trend, however, considering the many resources available and comparative ease of use and cost-efficiency social media marketing brings to the table.

2. eNewsletters Top Blogs

In all honesty, I did not see this coming, but the research is there to support it.

Sending out eNewsletters tops blogging as a content marketing tactic — 80% of content marketers use the former, while “only” 76% blog.

3. 65% of Content is Based on Industry Trends

Chart image sources: KISSmetrics

Industry trends make up the vast majority of the topics of all content created. Somewhat surprisingly, profiles on leaders finishes with second place. I would have expected company-centric content to have figured as the top or second-to-top topic, but instead it retains third place.

4. Driving Sales is the Highest Priority

Image source: Marketing Profs

Every and any major decision a business makes should focus on improving the bottom line. Otherwise, it’s a complete waste of resources.

Fortunately, marketers have their priorities straight, with new sales & leads being the driving motivation behind all content marketing efforts.

5. Only 63.4% of Content is Original

The rest of it is either curated (24.0%) or syndicated (12.6%). What does that mean for you?

Not all content you create has to be original. It’s okay to reuse and repurpose existing content on the web (so long as you get permission from the original creators first). Whereas only outputting original content can be resource-intensive, curation and syndication are comparably less burdensome and easier to deal with.

6. 16% of Marketers Curate Content Daily

Of the above 24.0%, only 1/6th are curating content on a daily basis. That can mean one of two things: we’re getting lazy, or we’re still relying too heavily on original content.

Take into perspective that 48% are curating once a week, the former seems a lot more likely. Whatever content you produce — original or not — needs to produced on afrequent, regular basis.

7. In-Depth Guides are “In”

It started with Neil Patel’s 30,000+ word guides to digital marketing, and since then websites like Qualaroo and Vero have been picking up on the trend as well.

Rand Fishkin of Moz talked about it in his interview with Search Engine Watch as well. Investing in one big piece of content could easily drive more ROI than 50 small pieces — the kind that tend to go unnoticed.

8. Brand Journalists Are The New Content Marketers

After Yahoo! hired Katie Couric, a hugely popular journalist and T.V. news star to reface one of their content strategies, an interview show, more people with backgrounds in journalism and information design are taking lead roles in content campaigns (Content Marketing Institute).

9. Interest Targeting

BuzzFeed — literally the king of the viral content space — is a leading ambassador of this content marketing trend. Their content is highly targeted, playing on people’s identity, emotions, and information needs.

10. “Director of Content” is the Snazzy New Marketing Job Title

Considering the huge ROI there is to be had with content marketing, more and more entrepreneurs & CEOs are taking the plunge to invest in a director of content for their marketing campaign.

11. New Softwares & Tools for Content ROI Calculation

Jayson DeMers pointed this out on Forbes, and he’s 100% right. Only 28% of businesses are able to measure the ROI of content marketing right down to the piece of content (The Drum). That’s foreseeable, considering that the majority of content marketing benefits revolves around intangibles, such as building brand awareness.

Jayson expects to see several new SaaS & softwares come out to help marketers calculate content ROI, and I’m in full agreement.

12. Google+ is Set to Gain Huge Popularity with Marketers

Would Google the Internet giant do something so questionable as to correlate more Google+ shares with higher search engine ranks to increase the popularity of their faltering social network?

No, of course not.

With research that just can’t be denied, Google+ is an unofficial ranking factor. Consequently, the use of Google+ (for inbound marketers, at least), is significantly on the rise.

13. European Businesses Are Slow to Pick Up on Content Marketing

According to some research done by Mashable, European businesses have been slow to hop onto the content marketing bandwagon compared to their U.S. contemporaries. In fact, content marketing garners close to 400% as much interest in the U.S. than in Europe.

What does that mean for you? Well, if you’re based in Europe, you could have an opportunity to dominate your competition through content if they haven’t yet caught on.

14. Content Campaigns are Diversifying

In 2010 & 2011, marketers only used an average of 8 different content marketing tactics (e.g. newsletters, blogs, white papers, etc.), while in 2012, marketers were using 12 (Inbound Writer). In 2014, I fully expect content to be diversified even more as new channels are explored.

15. Big Brands are Sharing User-Created Content

Social media campaigns like #30yearsold from Kenneth Cole serve to show that user-generated content is becoming a marketing priority. And why not? It’s a huge engagement booster.

16. Interactive Content

Like the previous trend, this one is also a no-brainer. As Internet users become more tech-savvy, they need more and more to stay engaged. Nowadays, marketers are meeting that need by creating interactive content (the KISSmetrics quizzes, for example) that capture their audience’s attention.

17. Automation

As marketers seek to be able to produce more and more content on a regular basis, they’re turning to SaaS products to help them get more done. Brad O’Neil from Tech Validate predicts a huge rise in both the use of content marketing automation and the invention of automation software.

Wrapping Up

Content marketing, just like the rest of the Internet, is evolving. Our Internet audiences are telling us what they want to hear — if you can’t pick up on that, you might just have to drop out of the game.

Make sure you’re able to stay ahead of the curve and the competition by going out and implementing these trends in your content marketing campaigns.

In the debate over how to manage Millennials, one important point gets lost: Developing younger employees takes work--and that's your job.

I found myself in an online conversation recently with a number of friends and fellow small-business owners. The topic was the difficulty of getting good employees.

Someone had offered the story of an entrepreneur who sneered about the people who worked for him. They were all lazy, had no sense of work ethic, and were a waste of time. There was nothing to be done until the "kids" changed their attitudes. What a bunch of entitled whiners, right?

I doubt it. What a ridiculous amount of whining from someone who wouldn't do his job. Every business owner has a responsibility to help employees develop and succeed.

Perhaps Millennials are more prone to a different relationship with authority and work than many entrepreneurs are accustomed to. Or maybe this is the same dynamic that has appeared, generation after generation, for literally thousands of years. In the words of Socrates, according to Plato:

The children now love luxury; they have bad manners, contempt for authority; they show disrespect for elders and love chatter in place of exercise. Children are now tyrants, not the servants of their households. They no longer rise when elders enter the room. They contradict their parents, chatter before company, gobble up dainties at the table, cross their legs, and tyrannize their teachers.

Ah, how youth is wasted on the...ancient.

Maybe there is a combination of actual change and the echo of resentment of elders toward the young. There are also systemic factors. Younger generations grow up seeing the expansion of general income inequality, the broken promises of corporations, dwindling benefits, and a doubtful future retirement. Not a lot to inspire confidence and fidelity.

But all of that is ultimately a list of excuses. There will always be challenges in running a business. One of them is managing employees. If you want your company to thrive, you must work to hire the best people, have a business robust enough to foot the bill for good compensation and benefits, and then lead your employees to success. This isn't a nicety; it's part of your job.

You bring employees along in a number of ways:

• Offer sufficient training.
• Correct errors without attacking.
• Recognize and reinforce the right behavior.
• Seek to understand what systemic problems you may have created that drive unwanted behavior.
• Respect them.
• Provide a good example yourself.

The last two are vital. People learn from example and react to respect, or its lack. Treat employees badly and you ask them to return the same. If most of your interactions with people who work for you result in a spoken or silent rebuke or dismissal, then you are definitely doing something wrong.

What can help is to remember when you were also young, callow, and lazy. If you're convinced that you were always a self-made person, then ask a parent, aunt, uncle, or other older person who knew you when. I'm sure one of them can remind you.

If we face the truth without shielding our eyes, we know that content marketing is about making money. Whether for SEO, brand awareness, or lead generation, ultimately we are creating content to increase the weight of our wallets (or those of the businesses for which we work).

So how do we do that better? Are there ways we can be creating content that specifically encourages a purchase or conversion?

In this article I hope to answer that question with a 10-point “Yes!” I’ll address the 10 approaches you can use to increase conversions when creating content or writing copy.

1. Use emotion to motivate

I imagine we’re all very tired of hearing, “Use emotion when writing content,” so I won’t say it (though it’s true and cuts to the very heart of writing for conversions…).

What I’ll say instead is, “Use emotion to motivate,” which is more specific and therefore more useful. The goal of writing good content is not, it turns out, to encourage someone to feel any old emotion. The goal is to encourage someone to desire.

There are several approaches that work better than others when eliciting desire (and no, this isn’t James’ Guide to Wooing Your Lady):

• Peer pressure: In this increasingly socially-conscious online world, knowing that other people are experiencing the same things you are, are engaging in things you aren’t, or are “liking” things you should be aware of is an incredibly powerful marketing force.
• Self-improvement: People want to be the best at what they do. As a result, try framing your content in terms of, “10 Things you Don’t Know About…“, “Things you Missed About…” or “Ways to Make You Awesome at…“.
• Fear of missing out: Fear is advertising and marketing’s great motivator — particularly the fear of missing out on an opportunity. Fear elicits a desire for insight, secrets, or loopholes. Consider the success of blog articles like, “How I Increased Page Conversions by 250% and Drove $500,000 in revenue!” in gaining your attention.

Optimizing your copy like you would a landing page

Some of you may be familiar with the “LIFT” model for conversion optimization. Normally associated with landing pages, the five points are just as applicable when writing for conversion as they are when designing for it. You may be more familiar with it as an airplane, but I’ve decided to go with a flying car, ’cause why not?

The next five points of content optimization are all related to this flying car model.

2. Add urgency 

Limitation on time or availability. A fear of missing out. These aren’t just factors you need to be implementing in your online ads, landing pages, and marketing emails. They’re factors you need to be implementing across the board.

For example, if you’re going to charge anything for your upcoming webinar, conference, eBook, or study, try making it free for the first 100 people to provide an email address. This will actually increase the assumed value of the piece of content (in the long run, anyway) and increase the chance of those first 100 spots going fast and spreading virally.

Even in your blog content, you need to induce interaction through urgency (even if the urgency isn’t real).

Here are a few blog titles that show what I’m talking about:

• Before It Closes: The Loophole That Increases Facebook Organic Reach by 330 Percent
• The 23 Strategies That Can Turn Leads Into Customers, Today
• “Stop Making These 9 Email Marketing Mistakes Now

3. Increase the relevancy 

“Write for your reader” is one of the most tired phrases in our business sector. But that doesn’t mean it’s not true or essential when writing to drive conversions. When creating content, only when that content genuinely appeals to the needs, concerns, and issues of your reader will you end up with a conversion.

How this works:

• Segmenting your audience: Sometimes you need to exclude part of your readership to speak “one-on-one” with another part. Consider creating sector-based eBooks (also awesome for easily segmenting leads) that work through a particular strategy, with sector-specific examples given.
• Cover your bases when it comes to varying experience levels: In particular, I recommend one out of every five blog articles be written for the advanced reader. This is because I recommend writing theme-based content that can be compiled into an email-gated eBook. Yes this excludes readers, but it also makes your communication with another part of your readership more intimate and personalized — something they’ll respond well to.
• Root your content in reality: Keeping your content relevant is not only about focusing on your audience, it’s also about focusing on the world outside your business domain. Keep in mind holidays, seasons, sporting events, and anything else your reader could possibly be thinking about in their real (offline) lives. Not only does it increase the chance of engagement, it increases how personable your business comes across (increasing potential trust and, thus, chances of a sale).

4.  Increase the clarity

Clear, straightforward copy and content is how you communicate value in terms that will be understood by your entire audience. If your content comprises paragraph after paragraph of nothing but your own thoughts on the newest marketing theories, you might generate readers, but it’s unlikely those readers will turn into leads — or customers, either.

The first article I wrote for CMI was about Mark Schaefer’s content shock theory. While I could have (and did with my colleagues in the office) simply discussed the idea of content shock, what it meant for content marketers, and my own opinions on the matter, I tried very hard to steer clear of this in the article itself. Why?

Because, in order to write content that increases awareness of your brand, you need to write content that benefits your reader, rather than content that simply informs them.

Here’s how this process works best:

• Introduce your topic.
• Explain it in easy-to-understand language.
• Explain how it affects your reader.
• Explain your recommendations (bullet points or check-boxes) on how to approach, or benefit from, the issue.
• Discuss how you think this issue will affect your reader in the future.
• Provide relevant email-gated content as the article’s call to action (CTA).

5. Reduce anxiety

Are you trustworthy? Why should someone believe in your recommendations or, more importantly, trust you enough to buy or download something you say they should?

Great content reduces the anxiety of the reader. Not just by educating them about something they’re concerned with, but by convincing them that the words they’re reading come from a credible, experienced source who understands their needs and wants.

Trust within the sales funnel (of which content marketing is an integral part) is a huge component, and is only getting bigger. But people don’t necessarily trust sales teams these days (well, not entirely), and they likely don’t trust your CEO (if they even know who he or she is). They will, however, trust people who are “just like me” — in fact, this kind of trust seems to grow stronger every day:

Source: 2014 Edelman Trust Barometer Executive Summary

Here’s how creating content that communicates trust works:

• Empathize, don’t just sympathize: Put yourself in your reader’s shoes. What issues do they have? Have you had those same issues? Describe how you overcame the issues they’re facing. Perhaps talk (subtlely) about how your company’s tools, product, or business helped you (or a current customer) address similar problems.
• Tell a story: Show you’re more than a robot by using anecdotes, fun metaphors, and analogies when creating content. Integrate your real life into your blog content by sharing personal experiences your audience can relate to.
• Show yourself: Feature a headshot or brief author bio at the bottom or side of your blog. Ask for feedback, and be open to questions.
• Don’t be afraid to express frustration or show emotion: Test this one (and keep in mind your content creating persona).

6. Eliminate distractions

Content should be focused on a single “ask,” rather than multiple requests all at once. Just as with landing pages, you’ll increase conversions by guiding readers along the path you want them to take, and keeping them from getting sidetracked along the way.

Where this issue pokes its head up most often is in link building within content. While blogs chock full of links are great for SEO, this can actually detract from a page’s conversion rates, as following these links can take readers away from your page before they reach your primary call to action.

Re-using statistics from your infographics, eBooks, and other email-gated content is great, as anytime you’re driving blog traffic toward becoming a lead you’re doing something right. But any link that sends a reader to an unrelated, un-”optimized” blog article is a link that is, in my opinion (and I welcome the comments this might generate), a waste of effort.

7. Add another voice, endorsement, or testimonial

In my sector (B2B and software as a service), it’s not uncommon for a business to work with name brands while their own is still less than famous. It’s not uncommon, either, for good content marketers to interact on a personal level with industry influencers, as they strive to become influencers themselves.

If this is the case for you or your business, you need to take advantage of it. Your readers, blog subscribers, and half-nurtured leads are far more likely to be convinced of your business’ legitimacy if they see you associating with someone they recognize.

Here’s what I recommend:

• Push for a podcast, interview, or webinar with a well-known influencer (after you woo them for a while).
• Give a well-known influencer access to your tool or product for free in return for an honest testimonial or endorsement (or, better yet, a how-to guide).
• Try to interest well-known businesses in co-authoring an eBook. John Jantsch calls this “co-branded content.”

These kinds of interactions and relationships are awesome for increasing brand awareness and should be nurtured carefully. But don’t try to develop so many relationships that you can’t maintain them. Relationships with influencers are like taking care of a plant: Forget to water them for long enough and they’ll die of thirst. But water them too much and their health will suffer just as surely from overindulgence.

8. Poke the pressure points

This is one you need to test fully, but it’s worth trying, nonetheless: If you know your niche market’s primary pain points, don’t be afraid to push buttons that will make your audience more aware of them, as well.

I sound a bit callous here, so let me give you an example of how this works in content creation (so you don’t think me a sales-hungry ogre with slicked back hair and a Wolf of Wall Street coke addiction):

• “Half of all CMOs have said they are unable to measure their social media ROI. Are you one of them? Are you pouring time, energy, and resources into social without a clue as to how it’s benefiting your business? Are you paying a social media manager $55,000 a year and are at a loss as to whether it’s worth it?“

These kinds of questions (the questions your readers may be avoiding asking themselves) can not only pique their general interest but may also increase their desire for any solution you might be providing. Does your tool measure the ROI of social more accurately? Or are you promoting an eBook that offers tips on gauging the effectiveness of social media? Now would be a good time to push it.

9. Give advice, not pitches

If your entire content stream is promotional, no one will trust what you say. But if 90 percent of your content stream is educational, informative, and related to solving the problems of your readers or leads, those readers or leads are far more likely to believe you when you say, “Oh, and, genuinely, this product we developed makes this whole process really easy.”

I’m not joking around with that 90 percent rule. Don’t get flustered: You can still generate those vital inbound links with your content, and can still promote your business in the sidebar, banner, in mail-outs, and in that “Download Our eBook” CTA at the bottom of your articles. Just don’t do it within those articles. And, in those sidebars, banners and CTAs, make sure you always give legitimate reasons why your business is able to actually benefit those who do become customers.

Not only will this decrease the chance that people will get get scared away by your spammy content, but it also increases the likelihood that they’ll share your genuinely advantageous product info. Want virality? This is how it’s done right.

10. Close with the right call to action

Notice I said the “right” CTA. That’s because I’m going to assume you’re already including CTAs in your content (and throughout every other communication point in your sales funnel, from social posts to unsubscribe pages).

But the “right” CTA makes the difference between someone being inspired by your content’s insight, eloquence and information and deciding they’d like to become an email subscriber or start a free trial, and someone being inspired, but deciding to simply bookmark your page for later perusal.

Here are a few suggestions:

• “For more on [your blog subject], check out my new comprehensive eBook!“
• “If you’re interested in [your blog subject], I’ll be diving into the nitty gritty in this week’s podcast. Spots are limited, so sign up now!“
• “Start receiving weekly insights from dedicated experts. Sign up for our RSS feed today!”
• “What are the obstacles stopping you from achieving your Facebook marketing goals? Book a time with me now and we’ll talk it all through!”

Conclusion

Hopefully these 10 tips have inspired you to test or tweak your own content creation strategy. Remember that as you’re optimizing for SEO and SMO, you can also be optimizing for conversions.

Have you utilized any of these strategies? Let me know how it went in the comment section below!

For more great ideas, insights, and examples for creating killer content marketing, read Epic Content Marketing, by Joe Pulizzi.

One of the most important aspects of owning a company is generating leads. If you want potential customers to find your company, and use its products or services in the future, then you need to generate leads. Lead generation has been carried out by companies big and small for decades, but now, thanks to technological advances, and the prevalent use of technology in everyday life, lead generation has greatly evolved.

What is Lead Generation?

Lead generation refers to marketing techniques that are designed to generate consumer interest in the products or services of a particular business. Generating leads helps a business to create sales leads, which may, in the future, convert into a sale for a company. Leads can come in many varieties, such as in the form of names or email addresses. Generating leads is a highly important aspect of marketing for all companies, big or small.

Marketing: Then and Now

Due to technological advancements, the way consumers find products and services has changed. In the past, companies would have to actively seek out customers to make themselves visible. They would do this by placing mass advertisements, among other techniques. In the past, the marketing techniques used by businesses were designed to find customers. Nowadays, however, things are different.

Now, thanks largely to the Internet, consumers are the ones finding businesses. In today’s society, people are bombarded with a much larger quantity of information than they were in the past. Now, consumers aren’t just exposed to advertising via the television, magazines, newspapers or the radio. They are exposed to tons of advertising and a great deal of information every day through the internet. From search engines, to social media, consumers are now bombarded with advertisements wherever they go, meaning that it is getting harder and harder for businesses to be visible to their target demographic. Consumers are getting better at ignoring messages and advertising that they aren’t interested in. This is causing consumers to actively find businesses themselves. As a result, lead generation techniques that were once effective, are much less effective in a digital age. Now, companies have to focus on consumers finding them, rather than the other way around.

Techniques for Generating Leads

There are many simple, yet effective techniques that you can use to boost lead generation:

1. Make sure your CTA is Clear and Effective

A good call to action is clear and effective. It prompts the consumer to take action, and it’s clear about what action is required. Your website’s call to action should clearly tell the visitor what action they need to take. If you want your visitor to sign up to your company’s newsletter, then you need to make this completely clear in your CTA. The positioning of your call to action on the page is also very important. Your call to action should be displayed, without the visitor having to scroll down the page.

2. Provide Visitors with a Phone Number

Add a phone number to your site. It’s a simple notion, yet many companies neglect it. People want to know that a company is reputable and trustworthy, before they use its services or purchase its products. If a potential customer visits your site, and sees that you have a phone number displayed, then they will instantly see your company as more trustworthy. Including a contact number on every page of your site makes your company appear more credible. Even if you don’t want contacts via phone, you should still include a contact number.

3. Place a Contact Form on Every Page

If you want viable leads, then you must make your contact form accessible. Place a contact form on every page of your website, in a place that is easily visible to visitors. Consumers are busy, and they don’t want to have to work hard to find your contact form. Online, competition is strong, and if a customer has to work too hard, they’ll leave your site and go elsewhere.

4. Make your Website Concise

Nowadays, people are incredibly busy. People are also exposed to so much information nowadays, that they tend to skim through it. As people are so busy, you don’t want to overload them with too much information. This is why it’s so important that you keep your company’s website concise. Your visitors must be able to scan each page, and take away the information that they need. Don’t place huge chunks of text on your website, or visitors will become bored and they will leave your site. Make sure that each page of your site contains plenty of white space, and use bullet points and shorter paragraphs where possible. Using images is also a good idea.

5. Offer Quality Content.

High quality content that is optimized for search engines is an incredibly important part of generating leads. If you want to boost lead generation, then you need to include high quality content on your website and blog. High quality content is content that is useful, relevant and valuable to your customers.

6. Don’t Neglect Outbound Marketing

While inbound marketing is, arguably, more effective in a digital age, outbound marketing still has its place in generating leads. If you want to improve lead generation, then it’s important to incorporate a couple of outbound marketing techniques, such as email marketing and display ads, into your marketing campaign.

7. The Importance of Nurturing Leads

Once you generate leads, it’s important that you nurture them. Sometimes, a consumer may just not be ready to purchase your company’s product or use its services yet, but in the future, they may be. This is why it is important that you nurture all of your leads. The most effective way to do this is to provide your potential customers with helpful tips and information via a newsletter each week.

Make a few simple changes to your website and your marketing campaign, and you will see your lead generation improve.

Innovation requires something new that changes the way in which an activity gets done. In this formulation, ideation is the processus maximus, the best way to get something new. It properly is the most frequent mode of innovation. It delivers results. But sometimes, it’s good to shake things up. Change up the routine to refresh the sources of […]

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Price “should” have a direct correlation to value. The right value drives the right price. The higher the perceived value, the higher the acceptable price. The lower the perceived value, the lower tolerance for price. It’s really simple. If you want to keep your prospects and customers buying, make sure the value in what your selling is commiserate with what they are paying AND that they see it. Get out of whack or they don’t see the value and you’re fucked.

About 10 years ago, I had just taken a position as a head of sales with a telecom company. It was the first month and I was thrust into a contract negotiation where the team was telling me we needed to lower our pricing to keep one of our biggest customers. I wasn’t convinced. I pushed the team to explain why or where our value had been eroded. They said it hadn’t. I then asked where the customer could go to get the same level of service at the same value. They couldn’t tell me. To be fair, they did say the customer could do it themselves and probably would if we didn’t bring the price down. I was not convinced.

After several rounds of debate and discussion, I tell the team they can’t provide a discount.  As I saw things, the value we were providing the customer was worth every penny we were charging. My team, and in particular, one person on the team told me I was wrong (not so politely or respectfully as I recall, he pretty much was a notch down from calling me a fucking idiot.)  and that we were going to lose the customer and they were going to leave us if we didn’t offer them lower pricing.  They were so adamant, that they tried to convince me that if we sent them the same pricing from the current contract, the customer would walk away and we wouldn’t even have a chance to engage with them. They said it would be over immediately and we’d have no chance to save it. This is when I knew my team had lost control and were afraid.

No client walks away on price alone unless they don’t see the value for that price in the first place and demonstrating value is the sales person’s job.

This past week I was working with a client and one of the sales people was about to send pricing to a prospect. It was the biggest deal this sales person had worked on and it will be his biggest deal if he closes it. The CEO and he are talking about pricing and how much they should charge. The sales person wants to quote a 40% discount. He says if he doesn’t, they will walk away and he’ll lose the deal. I push him on this. Why do you think they’ll just walk away, leaving you at the alter? He say’s he’s not sure, it’s just his gut. Needless to say, this sales person is convinced standard pricing is too high and is terrified that if he sends over standard pricing he’ll lose the deal. And that’s when I knew — he hadn’t sold the customer. He’d been a glorified order taker and now he’s paying the price.

After good debate, the CEO and I let him provide a “volume” discount of 10% and nothing more. There was no way he was going to provide a 40% discount out of the box on “gut.”   The sales person pushed back. He had convinced  himself that we would lose the deal and we’d never hear from them again and that’s when I said;

If your pricing scares them off to the point where they won’t even engage with you, then you haven’t sold them a thing and they aren’t a real prospect in the first place.

He sent the pricing without the monster discount and guess what. They didn’t run away. They didn’t lose their shit. They asked some legitimate questions and are still in the funnel, moving forward.

Here’s the deal, if you’re afraid of the pricing you’re about to deliver, that’s the little voice inside your head telling you, you haven’t sold shit and they don’t see the value. When you’re not confident in your pricing it means you’re not confident in the value of what you’re selling OR you know you haven’t shown it to them and that’s a problem.

Listen to that little voice, it’s telling you something. It’s telling you whether you’ve done a good job selling or whether you haven’t.

If it’s telling you, you haven’t, get selling it’s your job.

For Led Zeppelin that emerged from the heady '60s music scene, there were countless groups that fell by the wayside. 

Some argue that those groups nevertheless helped make bands like Zeppelin what they were. And now, one band is making that case literally.

The last living member of the band Spirit, as well as the estates of some of its deceased members, plan to sue Led Zeppelin for stealing the main riff from "Stairway To Heaven," BloombergBusinessweek's Vernon Silver reports. 

And there's a decent chance they'll win. Zeppelin has previously settled with black blues musicians and their estates who say the band ripped off their licks, and in a recent interview with the New York Times Zeppelin guitarist Jimmy Page acknowledged the debt the band owed to other musicians' works.

According to a 2008 Conde Nast Portfolio story quoted by Silver, royalties from "Stairway" have earned rightsholders more than half a billion dollars since the track was released in 1971. It's not clear what is prompting the suit now, but Zeppelin is planning a massive re-release of all its albums, and a lawyer who is currently suing the singer Usher for infringement plans to file an injunction on behalf of Spirit members.

Below is "Taurus," released in 1968. It's got a 45-second proggy intro before you hear deceased guitarist Randy California softly picking through a melody that distinctly resembles that of "Stairway", although it quickly meanders into something with less "Led"-ish rock and more "Love"-like orchestration. Check it out: 

And here's "Stairway":

Click here to read the full story at BloombergBusinessweek »

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Most of us are able to recognise a world famous painting or sculpture when we see it, but we’re not so good at recalling the story, history or much about the artist behind the piece. Smarthistory from the Khan Academy fills in the blanks for you, with more than 100 educational short videos prepared for the Google Art Project. With more than 100 videos produced, there’s plenty of free education on here to vastly expand your knowledge of the art world. And thanks to the Google Art Project, you can study all of the featured works in detail at your own leisure too – just click...

Read the full article: Smarthistory: Learn About World Famous Art & Paintings Through Khan Academy Videos [Stuff to Watch]

When Summer gets started, the conventions come out to play (and don't stop until Christmas). Whether you're gearing up for Comic Con, Dragon Con, PAX, Comikaze, E3, or any of the other hundreds of other cons, there are a few survival tips that can help maximize the fun.

Read more...

Small businesses are often seen as being too strapped for time and resources to invest in the social good. But the latest instalment of the American Express Small Business Monitor shows that’s just not true. This edition of the quarterly survey focused on social responsibility. It polled more than 500 Canadian firms with fewer than 100 employees, and found that roughly nine in 10 feel it’s their duty to contribute to their communities, with the same ratio reporting the rewards transcend the financial impact. Additionally, almost three-quarters of respondents believe customers today expect businesses to give back to society.

The companies that approach social responsibility as a long-term investment tend to get the best returns, finding that giving can create a symbiotic relationship between a business and the people it serves. The more involved in the local community a firm is, the more its efforts boost its image and lead customers to respond with increased support and loyalty. This, in turn, encourages the business to continue its social contributions.

Many of the companies polled found there were concrete rewards as well: 20% of survey respondents attributed business growth over the past five years directly to their social endeavours. Interestingly, while being a good corporate citizen is an important lure for talent, it seems to have little effect on staff retention. More than three-quarters believe their efforts have helped them attract like-minded employees, but 88% find the initiatives are not a significant factor in retaining existing staff.

Here are other key findings of the AMEX Monitor, co-produced by Canadian Business.

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Ask Stephanie Fauvelle (of PhishLabs) what got her into Customer Success and she’ll tell you it’s the perfect marriage of her interests in technology and interacting with people. She admits she always has her phone on her and is constantly checking email, staying on top of everything that’s going on so there’s nothing new in her inbox by the time she gets to the office (even though I’m not in customer success, I definitely appreciate a cleared inbox ;) ). It’s obvious from her dedication that her job doesn’t end when her day ends. In fact, she’s a perfect example of a CSM who understands that delivering value to the customer happens on the customer’s cadence.

She jumps into the picture once sales closes the deal and she’s then responsible for product training, onboarding, and ongoing nurturing — on average she maintains about 15 accounts simultaneously. Once the accounts hit the renewals or upsells phase, this is handled by the sales team. At her organization, they strive to maintain the reputation of their CSMs as trusted advisors. As such, there isn’t a financial quota attached to her role as a CSM. Her company has structured out their compensation with a base salary and a yearly bonus structure based on performance measured by MBOs (Management by Objectives).

Her best practice advice to others in the field? “Learn the art of listening to client requests and understanding the rationale behind it. There will sometimes be requests that can’t be accommodated immediately. This will help you avoid overcommitting yourself and the company while keeping clients happy.”

Their chain of command goes from CSM → CEO.

In a similar role at a different company, Sara D’Angelo, who works at Box, spends about 4-6 hours a day on average on calls with clients doing kickoff calls, implementations, quarterly business reviews, and strategy discussions. Although there is daily risk management — checking to make sure her accounts are in good health — her goal is not to focus on renewals, it is about helping her customers get value.

She jokes that her best and most successful customers are so invested and happy with her company you’d have to pry the product out of their cold, dead hands. :-D “It’s important to understand the ecosystem of the client,” she explains, “You need to know why they purchased your product, what they were trying to achieve…but you’ve also got to make sure they don’t forget their original driver either. It happens!”

Her personal success story: Sara was working with a client who seemed very reluctant to push new technology to their end users out of worry that no one would adopt it as they weren’t a very tech-savvy organization. Despite some internal pressures to proceed with their usual speed and process of onboarding these new customers, she pushed back and strongly urged that they work on the client’s cadence, to get them comfortable. Although it was a slow process (it took about a year), her consistent follow up with the client helped establish her role as a trusted advisor to them, and the CIO of the customer’s company finally reached out saying they were ready and needed more help. By understanding their concerns and resistance, Sara was able to establish an adoption plan that helped her client get to where they wanted to be while also giving them the time they needed to get there.

Does she handle support tickets? “Not directly. We work tightly with Support and monitor the tickets that come in from our accounts. I add internal comments to give added context to our support team so they can resolve the issues better.”

Their chain of command goes from CSM → Manager of CS team → SVP of CS → COO.

If you’re curious about Customer Success compensation, don’t forget to check out my post on the 2014 Customer Success Salary Survey Report.

Wowing customers doesn't have to be expensive. But it takes diligence and attention to detail.

At the end of a long day I remembered I was scheduled for a critical client meeting the next morning. I looked down at my scraggly, chipped nails. Oh no. This will not do.

Three to five seconds. That’s all it takes to make or break a first impression. You may remember how to make a positive impact on a personal level, but what about at your place of business?

There wasn’t time to get a manicure from my favorite nail salon across town, so I pulled into another salon near my house. I ran in and flopped into a vacant chair. And then I looked around. The salon was disgusting. Plastic palm trees and faded flower arrangements were covered in dust. Stacks of old magazines spilled onto the floors. Electrical wires dangled, mail was piled high, linoleum floors were grimey. I got a decent shellac French manicure, but for sure, I was not coming back. I thought: This is a business designed purely for the purpose of helping people look their best. They sterilize their tools of the trade (I hope), so why wouldn’t they invest in keeping the salon looking spiffy? Where was the design and planning?

The look and feel of your business speaks volumes. Real estate professionals invest in "curb appeal" because it brings in buyers. You've no doubt seen neglected establishments. Run-down restaurants. Dumpy dentist offices. Lifeless lobbies. There are countless television shows now dedicated to the renovation of these establishments. Here are three things every business should check before the first customer walks in the door:

A clean office or store says, "We care about quality." Eliminate any sign of neglect or laziness. Wash windows. Sweep floors. Vacuum carpet. Keep the restroom tidy and fresh, for goodness sake! Even if your office doesn’t attract retail foot traffic, you’re sending a message to employees and vendors. Don’t let dust bunnies stand between you and more revenue.

Adding a pop of color to your business location can create a positive and welcoming look and feel. Home sellers plant flowers. Creative agencies flaunt bold furniture. Tech startups paint bright walls. Hospitals use soothing pastels. Use colors and design to make a statement about your brand and attract the right customers without saying a word.

It doesn't matter what type of business you own. The owner of our favorite Szechuan restaurant kept it clean but used a table in the dining room as her "office." It got worse and worse, and I wasn’t surprised when her clientele dwindled and she eventually closed. Apparel stores with merchandise all over the floor. Offices with paperwork piled high. Cardboard boxes, outdated magazines, knick-knacks, office supplies, and other stuff that sits in plain view of customers. It’s not only distracting, it’s disrespectful to patrons.

Three to five seconds to make an impression that can last a lifetime. There are far too many options for customers and their loyalty is fleeting. Keep customers focused on what you’re selling, and not what you're stockpiling.

Recent reports predict the demise of clerks at point-of-sales terminals, but retail will always benefit from the nuance of human interactions.

If you went shopping over the weekend, chances are you paid at a register. It's likely, too, that a human took your money or monitored your use of a plastic card.

But that's going to change, according to Michael Chui, a partner at the McKinsey Global Institute. Thanks to technology that connects physical objects to networks--the so-called "Internet of Things" or IoT--your retail future is unlikely to include actual point-of-sale (POS) transactions. Here's how M.V. Greene describes it on the National Retail Foundation's site:

Someday in the not-too-distant future, Chui says, a customer will be able to walk into the store, grab what she wants and simply leave. It may seem extreme, but IoT portends dramatic change in the customer experience. "People have said when checkout is working really well, it will feel like stealing," Chui says. "You grab a pair of shoes and you just walk out."

Through a population of sensor technologies placed strategically within stores, retailers will recognize customers when they walk in the door through smart devices or other means, Chui says. Stores will have payment cards on file; customers will be billed when they leave the store with the merchandise, essentially bypassing the checkout. "That could create a really interesting way to improve the customer experience," says Chui.

I'm hesitant to disagree with Chui about this. After all, what he describes is quite believable, given today's technologies. And as John Tierney points out in The Atlantic, the notion of obviating the POS experience is not exactly farfetched or unduly futuristic. Nonetheless, here are three reasons I believe human beings will remain at checkouts for the next several years:

1. Retailers are slow adopters. For mom and pop stores, their thin margins make new technologies prohibitively expensive, even if you can argue (as the salespersons of these technologies have for decades) that over time, the technology will pay off.

For large chain stores, there's still something of a slowness or cost-concern in adopting or fully implementing new technologies. "Many companies are behind schedule in updating their systems to comply with a chip-based smart card standard known as EMV," reports Bloomberg. The same article notes that it took Wal-Mart eight years to fully update all of its POS terminals with the EMV technology.

One of the IoT products retailers may potentially use is made by Zebra Technologies, which Motorola recently acquired for $3.5 billion. But the Wall Street Journal's story about the acquisition noted that investors were "skeptical" because retailers "have often been slow to adopt new technologies."

The same article mentioned that another IoT technology, radio-frequency identification tags (RFITs), has "failed to gain broad appeal, largely because of the expense. An RFID tag costs about eight cents, compared with less than a penny for a bar-code label." According to the Journal, this cost is why J.C. Penney Co.--which started to replace bar-code labels with RFID tags in 2012--ultimately dropped the project.

2. Concerns over hacking and privacy. The Department of Transportation and the Federal Trade Commission are "moving more deliberately," when it comes to potentially regulating the IoT, notes Bloomberg. The reason? These agencies are "concerned that devices may be vulnerable to hacking, lead to misuse of personal data or even cause physical harm to their owners."

Let's put it this way: If using your debit card in a retail setting isn't totally safe in 2014, why wouldn't the government take its time before figuring out how to monitor the next wave of technology? Likewise, if our established automakers are paying record-setting fines for malfeasances, why would the government be so quick to entrust a new wave of automakers with cars that drive themselves?

It's dangerous. "The 'dark side' of having devices connected to the Internet may involve hackers remotely taking control of appliances inside homes to create a fire or vehicles to kill people, according to Internet Identity, a computer security company based in Tacoma, Washington," reports Bloomberg.

Already, the FTC has settled an IoT case against Torrance, California-based TRENDnet Inc. for selling Internet-connected home video cameras. (The cameras had lax security controls, and got hacked.)

3. Retailers need thorough, in-person customer service to differentiate their brands. Thanks to the demands of modern life, most consumers have to enter a store every few years to buy a new phone or a new computer or even a new TV. For many shoppers, the thought of making this high-tech, high-priced purchase without a lengthy, in-store conversation is hard to fathom. The best retailers will seek to master these conversations, making buyers comfortable not only with the edgy technology but also with the idea that they can return or exchange the purchase if they're dissatisfied.

I recognize that in IoT scenarios, these conversations might still happen--it's just that the actual purchase won't require a person-to-person exchange.

Still, I believe that the best retail experiences involve interactions with engaged, knowledgeable store employees all the way through--from storefront gaze to curious browse to POS purchase. Trust has to be built, when you're asking consumers to spend a lot of money on products they don't fully understand.

This is especially true for products like phones, computers, and TVs. Yes, in some cases, consumers will choose based on price or features. But in others, consumers will choose based on the company or retailer they feel most comfortable dealing with--before, during, and after the actual transaction.

And that's why an in-person POS conversation is still important. There are some questions customers only think of when they're ready to pay--questions, for example, about return and exchange policies.

You might think that retailers don't need human beings to communicate their return policies, but the truth is, humans help. In fact, if there's one area online retailers (in the absence of human interactions) need to improve, it's in the communication of their return policies. Last year, a software-as-a-service company called Granify analyzed more than 20 million online transactions. Their big takeaway was that the most important thing for online shoppers wasn't price. It was either return policy or viable testimonials about the product. Brady Cassidy, who heads Granify's digital marketing, told me that "online retail is still miles behind the offline world, in terms of customer experience."

The bottom line is shoppers--whether they're shopping online or in person--need to trust the retailer. And in-person interactions facilitate that trust.

That's why I think they're here to stay. Even at the register, where, strictly speaking, they're no longer necessary.

How the “Law of Least Effort” impacts your messaging

 Do you believe prospective buyers are generally rational? Do you assume that the more information and evidence you pile on them, the better your chances of winning the sale? This must be the case, or why else would there be so many hefty whitepapers with gobs of text, or PowerPoint decks with hundreds of slides, or complicated ROI calculators and spreadsheets out there?

It’s almost as if there’s an unwritten law that says, “Thou shalt overwhelm your customers with content.” But, any such law would be in direct conflict with the Law of Least Effort.

Law of Least Effort
In his popular book, “Thinking Fast and Slow,” Daniel Kahneman, winner of the Nobel Prize in economics, says, “If there are several ways of achieving the same goal, people will eventually gravitate to the least demanding course of action.”

Nowhere is this truer than in decision making and how people make choices. According to Kahneman, people find thinking too hard about a decision to be unpleasant and avoid it as much as possible. He says humans are always seeking “cognitive ease” and, as a result, are prone to place too much faith in their intuitions.

When applied to marketing and sales messaging, these findings mean there’s a good chance your prospects need significantly less information to make a decision than you or they think they do.

System 1 and System 2 decision making
To help you understand what’s actually going on in your prospect’s mind, Kahneman identifies two systems in the brain that impact decision making. To make it simple, he calls them System 1 and System 2.

System 1 is the smallest, simplest part of the brain (we sometimes refer to this as the “old brain”). It operates automatically and quickly with no sense of conscious effort and no sense of voluntary control. System 2, on the other hand, is where mental activities requiring effort take place, such as complex computations (we sometimes refer to this as the “new brain”).

We like to think that System 2 is the hero in decision making, and that conscious reasoning drives beliefs and choices. But in reality, Kahneman says it is System 1 where all the action takes place. It quickly creates impressions and feelings, which ultimately become the main source for the explicit beliefs and deliberate choices made by System 2.

System 2 is supposed to take over when decisions get difficult, constructing thoughts in an orderly series of steps to facilitate choices. But, most of the time it does not overrule the impulses and intuitions of System 1. This becomes even more prevalent when System 2 gets busy, strained and stressed like many of your prospects and customers.

In other words, by the Law of Least Effort, the thinking part of the brain is merely a rubber stamp for the conclusions drawn by the emotional part of the brain.

Impact on your messaging
So how does the Law of Least Effort impact your marketing and sales messaging?

Here’s one idea for you to consider. System 1 relies heavily on intuition to make choices. Intuition works by identifying similar past experiences, and then making associations with the current decision on the table.

One great tool for appealing to intuition is using familiar metaphors and analogies — find a way to connect your solution to something already familiar in your prospects’ story. It could be personal or professional, but the key is to associate the decision you want them to make with other, similar decisions they’ve successfully made in the past, or connect it with familiar concepts and experiences.

(Example: I did the above when I used the “rubber stamp” analogy for the way System 1 and System 2 interact on a decision — making a complicated, abstract concept more simple and concrete for you to understand.)

In her book, “Metaphorically Selling,” author Anne Miller describes one of the more famous metaphorical sales pitches.
It took place in 1980 when Lee Iacocca, chairman of Chrysler Corporation, went to Congress requesting a billion-dollar bailout. The problem was that Congress wasn’t interested in having taxpayers bail out a company. America is built on free enterprise after all, and companies start and fail all the time. This would set a dangerous precedent.

Iacocca attempted to change the perception by substituting the word “safety net” for “bailout,” and pitching the idea that Chrysler’s problems were really America’s problems and Chrysler’s bankruptcy would be very bad for America. Congress connected the decision to other “safety nets” it had approved to protect the American people in the past, and responded with the money he requested.

I’m not saying that one catchy metaphorical phrase changed the entire game, but you see how it can significantly change the perception of your message and potentially the response of the emotional, intuitive decision-maker called System 1.

The best metaphors and analogies get incorporated into stories about how someone else, just like the prospect you are speaking with, was struggling and made the changes you recommend and is now successful. Metaphors wrapped in a customer story will help System 1 quickly self-identify the need for change.

*As originally seen in the April 10, 2014 issue of Sales & Marketing Management.

Shark Tank is a popular show that puts entrepreneurs in the unenviable position of going in front of five investors, fondly called “sharks,” to attempt to raise money to keep their companies alive. It is not easy for the entrepreneurs. The sharks ask a lot of probing questions to assess whether they can get a good return on their investment if they give the entrepreneur the funds he or she is seeking. If you listen carefully to the sharks’ questions, you can learn a lot about how company value is determined … the value of all companies, not just start-ups.

Recent episodes uncovered some common mistakes that many business owners make related to product positioning, pricing, and valuing their companies. Take these steps to avoid their pitfalls:

Value marketing and use it from the start.

Inventing a new product that fills a known market or customer need is most likely an easy win. Customers are just waiting to get their hands on it. But inventing a new product for a relatively unknown market or customer is much more challenging. Owners often overlook the time and expense needed to educate the marketplace to generate awareness and drive demand for their product. You may have the best product in terms of quality and functionality, but if customers don’t know they need it, the sales won’t materialize.

Bring in the sales and then perfect the product.

It is tempting for owners to want to perfect their product BEFORE they take it to market. Many businesses get stuck at the product development stage and run out of money. Owners have to remember that cash is the lifeblood of the business and without sales, there will be no cash. Product development should be iterative. You have to ship a “version one” at some point, or there won’t be a version two. Version one needs to be good quality, but it doesn’t have to encompass every bell and whistle, or there will be no room for shipping a “new and improved” product at a future date.

Actual cash flow trumps emotional value.

Owners tend to place more value on their business than buyers or investors will. After all, they have spent most of their time, money, and effort on starting and growing their “baby.” How could others NOT value what they have built? Shark Tank reminds us that, regardless of the investment made to get a business off the ground, there must be profit and positive cash flow in order for buyers or investors to get a return on their investment. Financial projections are nice, but having signed contracts and orders in hand go a long way toward legitimizing the business and reducing the risk. Tangible results are what owners need to demonstrate value.

The Tank provides lessons not only for start-up entrepreneurs but for seasoned business owners as well who need to be reminded what drives real company value! After all, someday all owners will have to pass the torch to others, either internally or externally, or face liquidation to fund the rest of their lives. To ensure continuity and receive what they deserve for their companies, they will have to prove the business value to their successors.

Currently we’re merely listening for what we want to hear, thereby restricting the full potential of social listening. As more than merely a tool for monitoring, text mining, analyzing, or customer experience management and intelligence, social listening can determine when and how to actively facilitate buyers, users, and followers through to the desired outcome.

There are 13 steps all buyers or followers – consumers of products as well as services, B2B as well as B2C – take before they finally choose to buy a new solution. The first 10 of these steps include hidden, change management, and buy-in issues that are essential, but not directly related to, a purchase. We’re not tracking or listening for these steps but it’s quite possible to do so: they are hidden in the unstructured data and generally missed by keyword based analytics and sentiment analysis.

With an enhanced understanding of each step along the buying decision journey, we can first apply our powerful analytical and predictive tools, and then follow up with additional facilitation vehicles to guide next steps, such as helping them assemble those whose buy-in is necessary. We wait for them to take these steps anyway: it’s possible to actively enable them.

Let’s not squander the full capability of the powerful social tools we’ve got; let’s begin listening to everything our customers have to tell us.

Let’s chat. Together we can partner with your current tools and technology and add some capability to facilitate the buying journey. sharondrew@sharondrewmorgen.com.

For more information on Buying Facilitation® and to read the original article go to www.buyingfacilitation.com . To read more about the 13 buying decision steps go to www.dirtylittlesecretsbook.com .

Social Listening: Are We Really Hearing Our Customers is a post from: SharonDrewMorgen.com

I recently saw this interesting Infographic which offers a peek into the Marketing Mind. As B2B marketers, it would be of tremendous value to us to get a similar insight into the B2B buyer’s mind. There’s only one problem here—the B2B buyer is far more complex and changing more dynamically than the B2B marketer ever can or will.

Companies try to study and analyze buyers in many different ways. Here is one buyer behaviour report that dives deep into aspects such as how soon you should call a new lead, months of the year and how they impact buyer behaviour, which days of the week work and don’t work for lead conversion, and so on.

Let’s examine today some key behavioural traits that characterize our new age B2B buyer. How do you identify and recognize these traits? Then once you do, what changes must you make to your B2B lead generation strategy in order to attract, engage and convert this new, complex buyer?

6 Characteristics of the B2B Buyer and How to Manage Expectations

Search and Research Savvy. Today’s B2B buyer is very adept at using online search techniques to find out as much information as is available in the online world related to the product/service/industry of interest.

B2B Marketing Tip #1: Publish relevant content and make sure it is found by your prospective buyer in a variety of access and touch points throughout the buying cycle.

Always in a Hurry. Just like everyone else, the B2B buyer too is severely pressed for time. While this is true, the buyer will still take the time to diligently find the required information way ahead of a purchase decision. SiriusDecisions estimates that the average buyer’s journey is 70 percent complete by the time a salesperson is contacted. A recent CMO Council study of B2B buyers indicates that 87 percent of buyers believe that online content impacts their buyer journey from vendor selection to purchase decisions.

B2B Marketing Tip #2: Make it easy and quick for your buyers to find what they are looking for. If their patience wears thin because you take them through unnecessary clicks and insist they fill a form or make a phone call to get any real, useful information, you’ve lost them.

Averse to a Sales Pitch and Avoids the Salesperson. It’s a bit ironical if you think about it—on the one hand, marketing is all about personalization, but on the other hand, the buyer does not want to make contact with a salesperson or have any hint of a sales pitch until he or she decides the time is right, or that the interaction is even required at all. Take a typical example of an enterprise software that can be purchased online. The buyer wants to be able to get the relevant information, make the payment, download the product, understand the user instructions and troubleshoot any starting problems, all online. Your Live Chat representative may try hard to get some attention in order to upsell or pitch a complementary product at a discounted price. Most often, however, the buyer will simply close or ignore the chat window. This is normal and we as B2B marketers must expect that the typical buyer will be elusive and does not want to be hunted down.

B2B Marketing Tip #3: Ensure that you have robust tracking, monitoring and measurement tools and processes in place. Analyzing buyer behaviour throughout the online flow of information in the buying cycle can be predictive of conversion as well as repeat purchase. Ask that your lead generation program allows a 360° view so you can keep a close watch and carefully manage return on investment.

A Victim of Organizational and C-Suite Histrionics. Much as the B2B buyer likes to stay in control of the buying process, there are factors at play within the buyer’s organization that throw up constant challenges. CMOs come and go, budgets get sliced without notice, accounts are lost and people fired mercilessly, new strategies come into play and targets get bumped up—all these things happen and the buyer cannot help but be impacted. Plus, the ‘buyer’ is usually never just one person in the B2B world, so there are inter-personal factors that also influence a purchase decision within teams. It is common for marketers to experience that dreaded “many a slip between the cup and the lip” or sheer surprise and delight over a very quick sale from a lead that had been deemed cold or even dead.

B2B Marketing Tip #4: Devise very high-quality lead nurture programs that proactively reach out to and engage buyers even through what may seem like inordinately long buying cycles. When the winds change suddenly, you will have the mechanisms in place to provide the right information at the right time to the right person.

Knows More than the Seller. Deny it all you want, but your ideal buyer is almost always likely to be better informed than your strongest salesperson. With information available at their fingertips anywhere and everywhere, these buyers have no patience to listen to a repeat of what they already know. They want something more valuable. They want the consultative marketer who advises them on industry trends, best practices, solutions to the toughest challenges, high-efficiency, reduced cost methods of operation and ways to garner greater return on investment.

B2B Marketing Tip #5: Play the devil’s advocate. Pre-empt the questions and concerns your buyer might have and strive to answer them proactively. Email newsletters, whitepapers, e-books, webcasts, etc. are great tools for this type of consultative selling approach.

Is Not A Machine. Buyers are tired of automated lead generation campaigns that treat them like a name on a list. This is one of the main reasons for marketing automation failure. B2B purchases are usually a fairly significant investment. Buyers want to feel comfortable and confident that they made the right choice. The only way to make them feel like that is by winning their trust. Read this piece on how to win your buyer’s trust.

B2B Marketing Tip #6: Even if the buyer goes all the way through to the sale independently without needing or wanting human intervention, there is life after the close. In fact, the post-sale relationship is a far greater contributor to ongoing customer loyalty and referral business than any other innovative lead generation campaign you may come up with.

Does the complex B2B buyer challenge your marketing and lead generation strategy? It’s a natural, logical and inevitable progression of our digital age. What is your organization doing to understanding the buyer psyche and tailor organizational strategy to cater accordingly? Share your thoughts and let’s discuss this on my blog.

Image credit: Shutterstock

The best technology in the world won’t do an ounce of good without proper strategy in place. Your sales and marketing teams must set up a structured and seamless content management system and then stay strong and true to its well-defined tenets.

Give them content management.

GIVE THEM ACCESS
The ability to access high-performing marketing content and subject-matter expertise (SME) with a simple click, tap or swipe draws a bold line between sales presentations that win big and those that fall short.

A rich, cloud-based sales portal gives your reps the power of time and space – the ability to prepare anytime, anywhere.

GIVE THEM INSIGHT
It takes effective, accurate and customized content to seal any deal these days. And B2B buyer awareness is the crux of that powerful content.

Tools that provide intimate insight into your prospects and clients help sales reps build hyper-personalized materials to catch wandering eyes and shift paradigms.

GIVE THEM ORDER
Do you have jaw-clenching, game-changing content? The stuff that makes that buyer get up and dance? If your sales team can’t find it or doesn’t know it’s there, those gems are worthless.

Tools for content mapping, cataloging and organizing cut down on time spent searching for materials, thereby curing that “manic panic” and ramping up sales productivity.

Give them the vehicle.

Your sales reps are only as good as the value they bring to the buyer’s table. The value is in the education and solutions that solve problems and pains. If you’ve got the value, you’re halfway there. Now your team needs the vehicle to preserve, refine and convey it.

Empower your team with the ability to quench an insatiable buyer in an unforgiving market – to keep pace with times, trends and technologies that do anything but stand still.

With the optimal Sales Enablement Platform in place, your sales reps are empowered to perform at their best.

It’s all about value transmission: clear communication between sales and marketing and powerful exchanges between reps and buyers. Click below to see how a Sales Enablement Platform unlocks this value vehicle and jump-starts your sales success.

I was reading an interview with Laura Ramos, VP and Principal Analyst with Forrester, and a couple of things she said caught my eye:

“The ideal model for understanding how B2B buyers buy is a life cycle, not a funnel.”

“When your sales involve multiple buyers in a complex, highly considered process, and when there is a distinct hand-off from marketing to sales—it can get a bit murky when figuring out where marketing’s influence ends and sales’ influence begins.”

The question that came up for me (and has for some time) is: Why is there a distinct handoff?

If you look at the first quote above (which I also agree with very strongly) there’s no stop and start for marketers. A life cycle indicates a continuum, not a campaign-type focus. There shouldn’t be any stopping. There shouldn’t be a pause.

What marketers should be doing is addressing each stage of the buyer to customer to advocate life cycle as it happens and in relation to what’s relevant at the time.

If marketers are to prove business impact, they must be able to show influence at every point and pivot.

This doesn’t mean that they need to own it as a “marketing” function, but that they empower the relationships held by buyers and customers with the company – no matter how or with whom they happen.

Marketing has a brilliant opportunity to become the support system for the customer experience lifecycle - across the organization.

Think about all the ways customers play in your business, including:

• Marketing to Sales
• Customer support, service and training
• Product development
• Branding, reputation, credibility
• Advocacy and referrals

Marketing, as the organization responsible for attracting, engaging and initiating relationships, must expand beyond that early role to sustaining and growing those relationships over the entire continuum of the life cycle.

Here are a few reasons why:

• Marketing collects a lot of data about customers and the marketplace their companies serve. They are the ones positioned to provide the most value by integrating other sources of data and feedback from other departments to evolve the big-picture view used to drive business.
• Marketing is on the front lines;, they are often the first “face” presented for the company. If they stop there the story stops with them. Then the organization has to count on whatever story sales shares is complementary and that the story also makes the transition through to customer service and support. Good luck – did I mention that “hope is not a strategy?”
• Buyers and customers are clamoring for higher relevance and vendors who can help them set the vision, realize it and move gracefully forward into the future. This requires consistency in experience and the story that’s started to continue to develop and expand over time. Marketing is in the best position to facilitate this.
• Social media has shoved everyone into a marketing and potentially customer-facing role. Someone needs to provide some orchestration for how the story is shared from those differing perspectives in a way that honors both the brand and the customer.

By staying in the game, marketers can enable every touch point with customers with the parts of the story needed to build a longer-term relationship. With the technology available today, all the points and pivots can be tracked. Proving business impact doesn’t mean marketing must close deals, it means they must be able to show influence across the continuum of the customer life cycle and relate it to business-driving metrics.

It will take time. But I firmly believe a continuum approach is what’s next given the changes we’ve seen so far…

How Your Sales Intelligence Systems Might be Hurting Your Salespeople

Marketing training and education company, Marketo, recently offered insight into a rising trend in the B2B sales arena – the use of sales intelligence tools. With the rapid rate that new technology is introduced into the sales landscape, sales leaders are jumping at the chance to gather important and meaningful data about their prospects throughout their journey in the selling cycle.

However, a problem that seems to arise from this emphasis on sales intelligence is that, without a clearly defined system to gather the metrics you actually need, the tools can become more of a distraction than an asset.

Marketo brings up the example of collecting leads into sales intelligence software. Many of the tools that are out there clump leads of varying quality into the same category. Meaning that there’s no way for your salespeople to differentiate between someone who simply “filled out a form” and someone who has researched your product or service and is showing express interest in making a purchase. This makes it far too easy for your sellers to spend an inordinate amount of time chasing leads who will ultimately amount to “no sale.”

This doesn’t’ mean you should avoid these tools. They’re a helpful (and even necessary) part of the sales process. What’s important is that, as a sales leader, you have a plan in place to leverage the tool.

Using a sales tool without an actionable plan is like hammering away at a piece of wood without a blueprint. It might feel productive, but at the end of the day you’ll find that you’re no closer to your goals.

When considering how to use your current sales intelligence tool (or, if you’re in the process of acquiring a new one) follow these three steps to make sure you’re using the tool to work for you:

1. Find a way to differentiate and categorize low-quality leads vs. high-quality leads, so your salespeople can prioritize the more important leads.
2. Have a clear follow-up plan for each of your salespeople so they know what to do with each qualified lead when they get one.
3. Be sure that your sales tool can gather and store important personalized information about a prospect so that your sales rep can begin a meaningful conversation with them.

Best-In-Class Sales Organizations Use Non-Cash Incentives

The Aberdeen Group just released an in depth report entitled, “Incenting Success: Best-In-Class Sales Management.”  The highlights from this study include how:

• Best-in-class firms are far less likely to rely solely on financial incentives for salespeople
• A large percentage of top performers consider non-cash incentives a must
• Incenting sellers to be cross-trained in other customer facing roles is a helpful tactic
• Best-in-class firms are using public recognition to motivate sales performance

One of the most notable data points that came from this report is that sales organizations are using cash incentives less and less for sellers. Instead, best-in-class sales leaders are utilizing other ways to drive performance – consisting mostly of positive public recognition, team-based compensation, and alternative compensation programs such as gift cards, travel options, and merchandise.

You can download the full report here.

Best practices for managing CRM implementation projects to avoid the common sources of failure

CRM projects are well-known for high failure rates since there are many different obstacles along the way that can derail the initiative. In this article I will look at some of the typical challenges and ask experts how problems can be avoided.

Some of these obstacles to projects occur as a direct result of poor preparation. For example, in a study of over 500 individuals involved in CRM projects by Forrester Research, two-fifths (40%) reported that some of the biggest challenges they encountered related to CRM strategy, such as a lack of clearly defined objectives.

Other CRM obstacles are tools-related. In the Forrester study, a third (35%) reported that they had experienced challenges related to technology deficiencies, such as functional shortfalls in vendor solutions and poor usability.

Hopefully, we’ve already managed to square off most these issues in the previous articles in this series concerning building a CRM strategy and selecting a CRM solution.

But there are a host of other challenges that face businesses in their CRM implementation process along the journey. And these must be addressed if your project is to have a fighting chance of success.

• Data

Bill Band, VP and Principal Analyst at Forrester Research, highlights one of the more common issues he encounters when talking to businesses.

‘Many have problems because they didn’t pay attention to the customer data management requirements early in the project,’ he explains. ‘They didn’t really think through what data they would need, how they were going to keep it clean and how they were going to manage it. CRM applications are just databases with some logic on it, so if the data is bad, then everything else will collapse.’

Richard Boardman, Founder of Mareeba Consulting, adds: ‘Good systems require good data, and, if the new system is to be populated with existing data, it’s important that the quality of that data is high.

Many organisations are surprised at how many data sources they possess and how poor the data quality is. The cleansing of data and reconciliation of different versions of the same record in multiple data sources can be very time consuming. While there are tools that can help, this process tends to be very manual, and is not something that can be fully outsourced as it requires considerable input from the data owners.’

He continues: ‘The problem is that organisations don’t necessarily understand all the complexities associated with it. They think that if they have 20 Excel spreadsheets on the PC, they can just dump it into the system and don’t think about the fact that the same person probably appears on six of them, with slightly different details on all six. There is some inappropriate expectation on a lot of people’s part on how much data they are going to be able to get into the system.

Therefore, you need to get them to focus on what is the core useful data, and not try and bring everything in, because that will create a potentially ridiculous amount of work. It is a case of treating the data as a key stage in the project and not a minor sideline to it all.’

• Processes

CRM implementations are also commonly blighted by business process problems, according to Forrester’s research. In its study, it found that nearly half (44%) of respondents agreed their CRM projects faced problems relating to the likes of poor/insufficient definition of business requirements, inadequate business process designs, and the need the customise solutions to fit unique organisational requirements.

In a recent blog post, David Taber, CEO of SalesLogistix and author of ‘Salesforce.com Secrets of Success’, notes that CRM projects done right mean business changes. He highlights a number of business process issues associated with CRM projects, including:

• Unclear/undifferentiated processes. Job descriptions in marketing and sales must reflect highly differentiated process roles and responsibilities, with unique ownership of goals that can be independently achieved. ‘You’re looking for specific descriptions of cogs in a machine, not vague statements about teamwork,’ notes Taber. He recommends that businesses pay close attention to service level agreements (SLAs) that involve lead generation/cultivation, inside sales, and channel managers and sales partners, with each SLA including explicit quality criteria and deadlines.’
• Terminology. Taber advises that businesses have clear definitions for what the likes of leads, contacts, accounts and opportunities mean to the marketing and sales process. Discourage people from saying misconceptions such as ‘converting leads into opportunities’ and look at every record type and status value for the sales objects. Taber notes that you must have qualifications and conditions that ensure all leads, contacts, accounts and opportunities fit into the scheme and that at least 80% of these fit into one record type or status value at any one time. He adds: ‘For the status fields (leads, contacts and accounts) and the stage field (opportunities), make sure, again, that there is clear definition of what the status value means, as well as a set of unambiguous entry/exit criteria.’
• Metrics for key success factors should be clearly identified and enforced. These should evaluate things that individuals can actually control (i.e. a classic mistake is to hold outbound marketing accountable for revenue, when overall pipeline volume would be more appropriate; or hold sales reps accountable for customer satisfaction even though they have nothing to do with customer service or product quality).

Incentives is another area that demands attention if it isn’t to derail the company’s CRM project.

‘You can get conflicts between different departments when they try to collaborate,’ explains Ed Thompson, VP and distinguished analyst at Gartner Research. ‘The best example is the utility who builds an inbound cross-sell tool to get people to buy dual fuel. The test was successful, they’ve modelled which customers are most likely to buy the deals, and which ones they should offer them to, the pilot was successful, they’ve increased sales dramatically with double digital growth in revenues as a result and everyone is happy and ready to go ahead.

‘Then the customer services director highlights that when they do this they’re going to increase the average length of call by three minutes on the calls where they do the cross-sell because they have to set up a direct debit and go through a series of steps. This means they are not going to meet their service levels because my service levels are about a number of rings before they pick the phone up, and these correlate with customer sats, and the sats are going to go down. The customer service department is compensated on sat therefore they’re not going to hit their targets. So the service director requests 500 additional head count for his contact centre and wants to transfer some budget from market. But the marketing director says no. And so service says well ok my team isn’t going to read your scripts for cross-selling and you end up with a dead CRM initiative.’

‘So the tech works, the process works, the pilot worked, but it is not going to happen because the senior execs are compensated in competing ways and they haven’t resolved that issue. And that happens fairly regularly. So compensation plans and incentives need to be addressed.’

Boardman has also identified business process pitfalls surrounding the sign off procedures at key milestones in the implementation process. ‘It’s common that sign offs will involve a range of individuals in the organisation as well as senior executives making up the project board,’ he says. ‘The logistics of coordinating sign offs can be complex. The simple act of diarising review meetings that all required parties can attend can add months to a project, and is a phenomenon that isn’t well catered for in many project plans.’

• People

However, nearly half of all problems with CRM projects are the result of people issues, according to Forrester. Its study found that 42% of respondents report issues such as slow user adoption, inadequate attention paid to change management and training, and difficulties in aligning the organisational culture with new ways of working.

And staff problems can start early on in the implementation process, according to Boardman. ‘CRM projects are hungry on the use of internal resources. For example, users will be involved in requirements definition activities and training, the IT team in project management, key users and sponsors as part of the project team, and senior management in overseeing the project. When fully mapped out, the demands on internal staff can be considerable, and, as most will have ‘day jobs’, projects often suffer disruption as staff struggle to balance their day to day activities with the demands of the project.’

The implementation process is also likely to put further strain on any relationships that have had a history of problems.

As Mike Muhney, CEO of vipOrbit, explains: ‘The enterprise environment of what the sales department needs and what the IT/ design department does are often at odds. I once was personally at the headquarters of a Fortune 100 company with the both the CTO and the VP of Sales. The VP of Sales was literally ready to jump across the table in fury because the IT department would not allow input from the sales people who really needed it to be designed the way they work. Instead, IT felt that it exclusively ‘owned’ this ‘project’ and designated a non-sales type individual to singularly focus on the ease of process integration with the technical side of the business.’

In his blog on best practices for CRM success, analyst Bill Band explains that the top people challenges to implementing a CRM solution include cultural resistance to adopting new ways of working (45%), difficulties in achieving user adoption (44%) and insufficient planning and attention given to change management (42%).

All of which reflect what Ed Thompson, VP and distinguished analyst at Gartner Research, has seen in his experience.

‘There are two things that always seem to come up in terms of organisational change. With sales it is adoption – how do we get the sales guys to adopt it when there is not benefit for them and all the benefit is for the sales management? And in the marketing department, the problem is often that they are under-resourced – they decide to industrialise campaigns and start targeting much more refined segments and having more specific messages and have a higher campaign response rate with better quality leads, but to do that they need to increase the head count. So that’s a resourcing issue.’

• Serious people problems

Band lists the following advice to tackle the most serious people problems that you can encounter during your CRM implementation.

• Use continuous improvement to soften culture shock. Successful CRM requires that an organisation learn and accept new business processes and supporting technologies, which is never easy. Use quick wins to gain support for the new CRM system and continuous improvement to keep interest high.
• Overcome adoption issues by letting users influence functionality. New CRM processes and technologies that do not have a clear benefit for users and that are not properly socialized will not be adopted. Enterprises should ensure that users have opportunities to influence application functionality and enhancements.
• Plan carefully to facilitate changes in management and employee behaviours. The tone for a customer-centric culture, and the need to adopt new processes and tools to serve customers more effectively, is set by the top executives of an organisation. Employees look at the behaviours of the senior leadership team to determine which activities are valued and which aren’t.

Band adds: ‘Leadership is an important factor in making these things successful. Make sure senior leaders are doing what they can to communicate the importance of the project. But also you must really focus on supporting user adoption and having a really good change management plan, recognising that people need to know why things are changing and give them the tools and training so that you can support them in their new roles.’

Boardman strongly advocates a phase of user acceptance testing.

‘This can be a surprisingly extended process as many members of staff representing each functional area may be involved. It’s not unusual to have to go through several rounds of testing. This is also at this stage that additional requirements emerge particularly if the original requirements were lightly specified,’ he notes.

‘The reality is that you’re probably looking at a couple of months to test. You have all of these iterations and it can take quite a long time to get all of that sorted out. Meanwhile, you have got all of the pressure of the looming live data and expectations set, with senior management probably baying for the system to go live – and what often happens is that the team get pressured into allowing the system to go live with a lot of bugs still in it. Then the users go in, find the bug, say it isn’t ready, stop using it, and in many cases never resume. User confidence in systems is fragile and if you break it straight away it can’t be repaired.’

‘Therefore, first of all get your testers – you need people on the project team to be involved and going through and checking it all back against the documentation. You also potentially want users themselves feeding back their thoughts on it. But make sure you set aside a fair amount of resource.’

Finally, arguably the biggest ‘people issue’ that impedes CRM implementation is the thorny issue of user adoption. An effective CRM system requires consistent and systematic usage. Over the years, the CRM industry has realised that the biggest challenge for CRM systems is getting people to use them. And just because a vendor says their software is ‘easy to use’ and ‘fantastically intuitive’ does not guarantee adoption.

‘If we’re looking to run our business processes through a CRM system we need everyone to use it and use it the same way, otherwise we’re not going to get the outputs from the system,’ says Boardman. ‘If you really want to add value then you need the team to use it consistently in a structured way. And that doesn’t come easy. Traditionally the entirety of a user adoption programme is a half day training course – and that’s it. But just because they’ve been on training courses doesn’t mean they’ll use it. So you need a lot of structure and infrastructure around that to look at usage and see where there are issues and take action to address them and be proactive about it.’

‘Getting the usage bit is really hard work and really resource intensive – but if you’re not prepared to devote the resources, then don’t do it.’

Here are some final tips for CRM implementation, courtesy of Geoffrey James of Inc.com from the Base CRM blog.

• Take a gradual approach. Roll out a pilot project to small group, that will serve as both an in-house evaluation period and also enable you to tailor the system to match your sales process. Furthermore, a pilot team providing a ringing endorsement of the new system will help corporate-wide acceptance.
• Entice don’t force. Trying to force salespeople to use CRM creates resistance and resentment. Show reps how it can save them time and help them make more sales.
• Make the executives use it. Everyone must be involved and talking the same language if CRM is to hone the company’s sales strategy, so everyone – including the execs – must be using it. Furthermore, nothing will undermine CRM quicker than if not using CRM is seen as an executive privilege.
• Don’t support multiple systems.While some may want to continue to use spreadsheets, emails and handwritten notes, because that’s what they’ve traditionally done, managers must refuse any report not generated with the official system. Reps will soon understand that it’s less work to use the system than to rekey the data.

Thanks to Neil Davey for sharing his advice and opinions in this post. Neil is editor of MyCustomer.com, an online community of CRM, customer strategy, marketing and customer service professionals.

Are you trying to use ‘networking’ to generate new business or as an alternative to spending time with your family or doing the things you know you should be doing in the office?

Most ‘new business’ networking is a complete waste of time because we hang with people we know (often from our own organisation) at the same kind of events. It does provide an opportunity to do something different, but rarely the new business opportunities we are after.

Here are a few common sense tips that might help you or your staff break out of that rut.

1. Set a goal

Most of us turn up to networking events without a specific outcome in mind. Three hours later we go home disappointed that we did not get the outcome we were after. The chances are you don’t even know what that outcome was.

If you are using networking as a top of sales funnel prospecting activity – set yourself a target number of new business cards. If you are using it further down the funnel to mature relationships or expand opportunities within a large account then identify the people you want to speak to before hand and make sure you get in front of them.

What is your goal?

2. Select the right events

What does your ideal customer look like, sound like, eat, drink and say? More importantly, what kind of events are they attending? Too often we turn up to the wrong events and think we have done our networking. ‘Industry’ events are often of no value from a new business perspective as it is simply you and your competitors hanging out.

Where do your ideal customers spend their time?

3. Be Bold

The easiest thing when you arrive at an event is to gravitate to the group you know and to stay within the safe confines of the little circle of love you have created. You are not going to meet anyone new that way.

That person standing on their own would welcome your presence as would that empty chair on that table of people you have not met.

Lacking confidence? Take on the attitude of ‘host’. Pretend it is your event and people have come at your invitation. Of course they will be willing to say hello to you.

When you actually get the conversation going, don’t leave it without accomplishing your goal. Offer up your business card, and if appropriate suggest a catch up in the near future.

4. Be prepared to listen

It’s not all about you.

When we meet new people most of us are thinking so much about what we are about to say next we do not even hear them say their name. Just this fact can lead to us walking away awkwardly from someone who could in fact be an ideal new customer.

Listen carefully to their name and responses and get them talking about themselves. People love to talk about themselves. In fact – the less you say the more impressed they will probably be with you.

5. Be prepared to answer

At some stage (assuming you moved out of your circle of love) you will be asked ‘So….. what do you do?’ What are you going to say? Answer with the problems you solve NOT the work you do.

Contrast response A with response B:

A: I work in a digital print and communication business.

B: We take dirty and incomplete customer data from organisations, clean it and enhance it. We then construct highly personalised print, SMS and email communications to help companies better engage with their customers and drive sales.

Which response is most likely to lead to a follow up question or match a challenge that person might be facing?

6. Follow up

If you said you would call someone – call them. If you mentioned a relevant case study or article then take the time to send it through.

In a perfect world you will hand over your contacts to marketing and they will then have a drip program to nurture the new leads you have introduced into the top of the funnel. The reality is that many of the people you meet in this environment will not be ready to buy from you today. However, they may be in six months.

If you don’t have this kind of program in place, think about what you can email them a week later that would add some value to them and keep your conversation top of mind. Also make sure you capture their data in one central place.

There were only meant to be six tips here, but here are a few bonus ones for advanced networkers.

7. Meet the guest speaker – if those you are trying to reach thought they were worth listening to then they are probably worth getting to know.

8. Post a key fact / location on your social networks

9. Turn up on time (early can be the best time to find people who are happy to chat)

10. Exit gracefully – have a strategy for leaving that conversation that is going nowhere.

11. Remember your business cards.

What are your tips?

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Predictive analytics startup Context Relevant has been making inroads lately.

The Seattle-based startup has added offices in New York and San Francisco and tripled its headcount in the past year, and financial services companies have been adopting its software.

And the growth won’t stop. Today Context Relevant is announcing $21 million in new funding.

Lots of other companies offer predictive analytics capabilities: Infer, InsideSales, Lattice Engines, Reflektion, RapidMiner, and so on. Also, Apigee just bought InsightsOne.

With today’s funding, Context Relevant can handle more customers and have a better shot at challenging competitors.

The company claims to automate machine learning, so systems become smarter over time on their own as more data gets fed into them. The software can work alongside data analysis tools like R and SAS, so people can spend less time with them. It supports a wide variety of data types, including social media streams and web logs.

The company focuses now on prioritizing sales, although some people use it for fraud detection and bond price analysis, Stephen Purpura, Context Relevant’s co-founder and chief executive, wrote in an email to VentureBeat.

But Purpura declined to name customers. “The technology and solution we provide provides our customers with an unfair strategic advantage over their competitors and our customers do not desire to inform their competitors about the details of this advantage,” he wrote.

Context Relevant started in 2012. To date the startup has raised $28 million. Formation 8 led today’s round. Bloomberg Beta, Madrona Venture Group, Vulcan Capital, and angel investors also participated.

Context Relevant announced a $7 million venture round in July.

Context Relevant (contextrelevant.com), sells the first predictive analytics application with automated machine learning for data-driven CEOs, CMOs and their analyst teams. The company provides real-time behavioral analytics solutions ... read more »

CEO and a co-founder of Context Relevant, Stephen has more than 20 years of experience as a data scientist, an inventor, an academic, and a production software developer. He has worked on both Microsoft Windows and as the Chief Securit... read more »

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Using big data smartly can benefit digital marketers significantly in enhancing their business ROI and lead generation and conversion process. More organizations are shifting their attention towards using big data as part of their digital marketing strategies. B2B lead generation process is likewise depending upon big data utilization and internet marketers are beginning to leverage on using big data insights to convert leads and produce better sales for their business.

The big data massive volume – how to manage them

In the modern digital market, the flow of data is quite fast paced and the volume of data can be overwhelming to an internet marketer. Being able to manage the voluminous data sources requires skills, technology and professional IT teams in order to bring out better market value for your business data. Two aspects of big data management require some insightful views among digital marketers in order to infuse better marketing results:

1. Marketing Insights

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The big data market will likely grow in the coming years and every digital marketer should be able to build good marketing insights. Big data delivers valuable marketing insights such as the latest market trends, competitive intelligence to your business, planning for product campaigns and influencer outreach. How to take these insights as part of your actionable plan may involve doing the following:

• Use the insightful data to launch a full scale campaign using viable marketing channels such as social media, social listening process and infographics. This allows you to launch a simple or non-technical approach of exploring the data.
• Include using social data tracking that gives marketers better ability to listen to their customers for feedback and comments as well as understanding their needs by monitoring hangouts, forums and social mentions.
• Use the social channels as a primary data source in order to build business intelligence in addressing customer sentiments and feedbacks as well as finding opportunities to grow your digital marketing campaigns.
• Use social media analytics and SEO tools for collective gathering of resources with specific target market and leads.

2. Marketing campaigns and lead conversion

The biggest challenge about lead conversion using big data is how to connect and integrate your digital marketing programs, lead management process and targeted point of sale. Here are some of the helpful strategies that can help you organize your digital marketing campaigns at a higher success rate:

• Use a hybrid approach of consolidating data from the data volume available. Use data management tools and analytics for less time consuming process of integrating optimization for marketing campaigns.
• Use automated marketing campaigns such as email marketing and social marketing.
• Employ interactive marketing engagement using charts, infographics and reports for better engagement of your target leads.
• Use social sharing for fast marketing campaign of your business across various social media channels.
• Leverage on social listening to spot the latest trend to make sound marketing decisions and drive lead conversion.

How to drive your business for better lead generation using big data

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Big data offers vast areas to explore and exploit in order to embark in a better digital marketing campaign and lead generation process. You can determine valuable signals that are important to your internet marketing strategies such as:

• What are the top performing products for your business?
• What are the sources of the top converting leads for your business?
• What digital marketing approach is most effective in social engagement?
• What forms of digital marketing automation processes best convert leads?
• What marketing campaigns are poorly performing for lead conversion?
• What is the rate of your website click through performance?
• What areas of your web page design are less enticing to your website visitors?

In order to prepare your competence in converting leads to profit for your business, you need to know how to address and respond to these signals delivered by big data sources. You can do the following:

• Evaluate the transactional report made available by your big data analytic tools that are related to your sales and customer engagement.
• Filter results and identify which aspects of your digital marketing campaigns can draw better response from your leads. Use this in order to further strengthen the poorly performing web pages on your site for instance.
• Make prediction of your lead activities more accurate by tracking down customer behavior patterns and shopping activities. Filter relevant metrics that will fully reinforce your products and services to entice prospective leads to convert.
• Make an inventory about your digital business marketing structure to identify your strong and weak points to drive out quality lead conversion results.

Turning data into actionable sources

Consider big data as your insight factory where there are voluminous data available for you. The main problem is the data volume can be complex and may overwhelm marketers which specific data will be valuable and important for lead generation and better conversion. To help guide you through the process of using big data as actionable sources for lead conversion, here are some of the insightful steps that you can employ in your big data management and analytics.

1. Understand your lead marketing goals

There are loads of data available and filtering them will require knowing what your lead marketing goals are. You tend to focus better in spending your marketing efforts and resources by utilizing data driven lead marketing campaigns that are proven to deliver better ROI to your business. For instance, you can discover from your data that a particular product is gaining momentum on its sales. You can focus your lead generation towards enhancing the conversion rates of your leads that are inclined to be interested on that particular product for better profitable results.

2. Start small, accomplish big

Your insightful data are big and voluminous. Your approach should be using small but selective data that tend to address the immediate needs of your lead generation and conversion campaigns. This will help you avoid the complexities of managing data overload. As you start utilizing small data, begin in working out in adding an additional layer of data utilization to expand your marketing campaigns. Overtime, what started as a small data gathering and utilization in understanding your customer behavior can become one with a big set of data that you can maximize of using to generate better leads and sales conversion.

3. Generate insightful data with speed

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The digital market is fast paced. You need to be competent in embracing each data value as they come and make actionable response in real time in order not to lose the opportunity of increasing your lead conversion process. Using automated marketing tools like email marketing is an effective lead conversion tool that can help you send automated offering of related products to the ones recently purchased by your customer from your site.

"Marketing automation" is software that replaces manual methods for marketing purposes. Marketing automation is data-driven, requiring data that is valid, up-to-date, reliable, and complete. Generally, data originates in various places; however, to be used most effectively, data should be managed in a central database where all contributors and users follow a format-and-content standard.

Although the IT department typically maintains such a standardized database, marketers should be responsible for their database, not only for the content, but more importantly, for the quality of information. It is important that marketing, which initially enters leads, be aware of what happens to data provided to sales. Realizing the significance of this, some companies have their own technical specialist, a Chief Marketing Technologist, assuring that data will be used most effectively with a "marketing automation" tool.

At the very least, a database should have an up-to-date contact name, title or job function, company, address, phone, and email. Beyond this, for better communication with prospects and customers, a database should have more, such as (a) past inquiries and purchases and (b) web, social-media, direct mail, and e-mail activities. The better you know your prospects and customers, the better you can serve them.  By contrast, with limited or bad data, customer relationships fade.

A successful marketing automation system is more than software and technology, and more than automating your current marketing process. Indeed, if you are not getting and using data effectively now, manually or with another system, then marketing automation will merely amplify what's not working right.

How Marketing Automation Helps B2B Marketers Use Data More Effectively

For data, marketing automation will:

1. Standardize data entered by all contributors for easier access by all data users
2. Integrate data from various sources, such as reps and third-party sources
3. Validate, correct, de-duplicate, and clean imperfect data
4. Manage data and lead processing more effectively
5. Increase qualified leads, such as by nurturing leads carefully until the time is right rather than trying to sell from the get-go
6. Sort and segment the database

For data-related marketing activities, marketing automation will:

1. Manage campaigns more effectively and efficiently, such as targeting the right prospects at the right time with the right information
2. Build templates and landing pages
3. Track leads and trigger marketing in which action by a lead triggers a response email
4. Improve the alignment between marketing and sales
5. Reduce time to manage email lists
6. Cross-sell (an additional product) or up-sell (a higher-end version of original product)
7. Produce reports
8. Assure that nothing slips through the cracks

Marketing automation helps you gain a competitive advantage and make better decisions, faster. To learn more about marketing automation and data, please contact us at 800-897-9807, x 224. And if you would like more information on how to turn qualified leads into sales, download the free whitepaper on lead nurturing.