Note: This post was originally written by Matt Hoffman of our sister program, the Sales Leadership Council.  You can read the original here.

It probably does not come as a surprise to readers of this blog that, as a profession, Sales has a slight image problem. As Dan Pink pointed out in To Sell is Human, when people think of “sales,” the first words that comes to mind are ones like “pushy,” “yuck,” “difficult,” or “annoying.”

What’s probably more surprising is the fact that Procurement, the function that Sales is so often pitted against, has an image problem of its own. Consider how these Dilbert cartoons portray Procurement. In one, a new Procurement officer is advised to “Give employees low-cost substitutes and claim the savings on your accomplishments;” in another, a Procurement officer announces a new system that “divides products into two categories: things you don’t want, and things you’re not allowed to buy.” The upshot is clear: people view Procurement as a function that makes it harder, not easier, to do their jobs well.

In the past, Sales and Procurement were able to perform well despite their negative images. Customers had to rely on salespeople to learn about the products they might buy, and they were beholden to Procurement’s approval process to obtain the products they wanted. We frequently talk about how the rise of informed customers is changing this dynamic for Sales, how empowered customers will refuse to buy from anyone pushy or annoying, favoring Challengers that can helpfully show them a new way forward. Interesting, the same force—the rise of informed customers—is starting to change Procurement.

To be sure, Procurement still cares about the total cost of ownership. But as informed customers have started to effectively lobby for highest-value, not lowest-cost, offerings, Procurement departments have started taking a closer look at the total value of ownership. Category managers—that is, procurement officers assigned to a narrow subset of products—have been particularly affected by this dynamic, as they are particularly attuned to the preferences of the very informed internal business partners they frequently interact with.

On the surface, Sales and Procurement’s goals appear to be at complete odds: the job of Sales is to make money by selling products at a high cost, while the job of Procurement is to save money by buying products at a low cost. This adversarial dynamic used to be completely true, but it’s only somewhat true in a world of informed customers. Both Sales and Procurement are now beholden to customers that care more about a product’s overall value and feature set than they do its price.

For possibly the first time in the history of their functions, this creates an opportunity for Sales and Procurement to partner together in a way that helps out both parties. If salespeople can help procurement officers understand the total value their products provide, they can sell more while helping procurement improve its status with their internal business partners. It will likely take years for this practice to become widespread—Sales and Procurement have been adversaries for decades, and combative habits are deeply ingrained in both functions—but informed, empowered customers will eventually prompt Sales and Procurement to partner together to bring the highest value offerings from suppliers to the people demanding them.

CEB Marketing Members, listen to these webinar replays on moving to performance-based agency compensation (co-sponsored by the Procurement Strategy Council) and crafting messages that help Procurement care more about users’ needs.

I don’t know if you’ve read my Fun Facts Friday interview, but I’m an occasional video gamer. One of my biggest weaknesses has been The Elder Scrolls series, from Morrowind and Oblivion to Skyrim and, now, The Elder Scrolls Online.

Full disclosure: I love the game. But as someone who works in the PR field and does social media and content marketing for tech companies, I writhed in pain when I saw the constant fumbling by developer Zenimax Online during the game’s rocky launch.

I specifically didn’t buy the game for a few weeks, because of the torrent of negative feedback. From Reddit to YouTube to Facebook to Twitter, people were hollering at Zenimax to fix glitches and latency issues. These were fair criticisms, but something struck me – the sheer volume of this discontent wasn’t even possible in 2004, when similar issues plagued a similar game (World of Warcraft) from the starting gate. I know how bad it was, because I was there.

The massive adoption of social media has made it possible for customers to instantly voice their discontent. A flawed, albeit good product, is something that loyal and understanding customers will support, but only if you reassure them that you’re working as hard as you can to fix the problems. Loudly and constantly.

Zenimax didn’t do that.

The Silent Treatment

During a crisis, companies instinctually go quiet. Business leaders want to make a cohesive plan. They want to make sure that everyone’s on the same page. They especially don’t want to spook shareholders. This can sometimes be resolved by great customer service, but if your customer service is a mish-mash of medieval-speak and nonsense (as players of ESO have reported), you’ll only isolate the customer base even more.

The problem with the silent treatment is that a company’s silence is quickly filled with the customer’s complaints. Negative feedback rushes over social media like a flood, with only a few anchors of haplessly loyal customers to keep things at bay. This doesn’t just hurt current customer experience, it harms future sales.

Here’s the thing every company needs to keep in mind during these crises of consumer confidence: 90 percent of customers say that their buying decisions are influenced by online reviews.

More importantly: Pew research found that Twitter isn’t a great source of majority opinion, it’s a great source of vocal opinion. As Pew writes:

”On Twitter, groups of people come together around news events they feel passionately about. But opinions expressed on Twitter often differ from broad public opinion.”

I’d say it’s safe to assume that’s also the case for online reviews, comments and social media in general. Vocal minorities play a very big role in the conversations that take place on the Internet, but many other people are listening. And, even brand loyalists (like myself) can be swayed by enough anonymous anger by people who have had bad experiences.

If prospective customers are evaluating your product – and already have a bias toward buying it – they still might refrain if all they see is negative feedback and no reassurance from the company.

Today, consumers are looking at peer reviews, not official statements from the company.

The Strength of Brand

Despite the negative feedback, the anger about very critical in-game issues, the YouTube videos demoing how laggy and/or generally unsatisfactory the game was and a cauldron’s worth of lukewarm reviews, I still bought The Elder Scrolls Online.

Two weeks into my research, I viewed the purchase as a very big risk that would potentially be a waste of money. But I was loyal to The Elder Scrolls brand that had been built up over the years. That particular brand loyalty managed to hold strong. So I bought the game, fully expecting to be disappointed.

But… I wasn’t. Nothing crashed. There were no obvious glitches. There wasn’t even lag.

What I found, instead, was that Elder Scrolls Online was pretty awesome. It took a few hours for me to even admit that to myself, because I had read the opinions of so many other people who were vehement about not enjoying the game.

Part of this is because I did wait for Zenimax Online to fix some things. I had been part of these kinds of launches before and wanted to sit this one out, until everything calmed down.

But the echo chamber effect of negativity means that, even after the game has largely been patched up, the bad reviews and angry comments still haunt prospective buyers. It took two days for me to convince my friend that the game wasn’t going to immediately burst into a ball of flame when he installed it, because he had seen the same kind of awful coverage.

A Social Media Time Warp

As for Zenimax, well, they released a “State of the Game” address two weeks after launch (and a new announcement today). That’s not bad, but, thanks to the 24/7 flood of social media – and the vocal minority citing horrible issues related to lost items, time and hours played – Zenimax’s response seemed like too little, too late.

Even though most players won’t experience any of the issues that the minority faced in the early days of the product’s release, it will continue to seem as if the issues were pervasive across the game.

Without a coherent communications strategy, Zenimax let a wave of negative customer experiences dominate the conversation and drown out any positive ones.

Crisis communications is a matter of transparency. Even on social media, people are reasonable – if it doesn’t seem like a business is trying to keep secrets. Proactive crisis management means being open with a community across every channel… and especially flexible about compensation (Zenimax just recently said it would reimburse customers for time lost). This won’t just help alleviate the concerns about customers who are already invested in the product, it will make them more patient and understanding of the issues at-hand.

A transparent business will ultimately get more support from the customer base than a company that seems to only be interested in revenue. That support can lead to advocacy, and that advocacy can help change the conversation.

That’s what businesses should realize. Social media channels have made product purchases into an interaction, real-time conversation. If companies aren’t part of that conversation, that doesn’t mean it will go away, it just means the company’s voice – and the great parts of the product – will get lost in the crowd.

---

Want to learn more?

In The Evolution of PR, Content Marketing and Blogging, we cover:

- The ongoing changes in the world of PR
- The principles of content marketing for tech companies
- Important blogging strategies
- How to use press releases for more than just brand-building

Download

I am currently attending the third Content2Conversion conference which is sponsored by DemandGen Report.  Drawing a crowd of approximately 400, mostly B2B marketers there is a thirst for knowledge and deeper understanding of how to advance their content marketing strategies.

Rather than try and recap all of the great sessions and information that has been given, which has been plenty, I have hand-picked some of the best Tweets from the conference and encourage those who are not present to follow #C2C14 for the second day, as just this approach will provide a wealth of education.

-          Via @AmandaF_Batista A recap on the Challenger approach to marketing: Content2Conversion Keynote Recap: 5 Tips For The Challenger Marketer elq.to/1g5Nq8j

-          Via @jolajola9 – Buyer personas: If you don’t Buyer personas: If you don’t know who you’re talking to, you won’t know what to say. @ardath421 @Content2Convert #C2C14

-          Via @barjosh29“If content is king, context is everything.” @TonyZambito

-          Via @GetCurata #ContentMarketing should be educational, not salesy! @dayroth 


-          Via @LaurenBarber 7 – Lead scoring goes hand in hand with nurturing #C2C14

-          Via @Ardath421 – Break up your buying process into stages so you can take metrics of each movement

In a nutshell and as you can see from the Tweets, the buyers are buying differently today – no secret there – CEB again reiterated this point by pointing out that B2B buyers are 57% of the way through their buying process before vendor engagement.  With this in mind, how do we engage with content?  It starts with strategy – it starts with the buyer and understanding the following:

-          Who from the buying company is involved in the sales process?

-          How do each of these buyers consume content through the buying process?

-          Where do these buyers access their content?

-          What are their needs and challenges?

-          Develop content accordingly and make it accessible to them in multiple formats.

However, as reminded by Jim Lenskold, not all content is designed to serve the same purpose – brand content is different that Demand Generation – so understand the purpose and build accordingly.

At the end of the day, an overwhelming amount of companies are “doing” content marketing, however, there are those who are doing and those who are doing it right.  Without a strategy, you are just going through the motions.

Author: Carlos Hidalgo @cahidalgo CEO and Principal, ANNUITAS

In September of 1982, David Ogilvy, often regarded as the father of modern advertising, sent an internal memo to the employees of his agency.

In it, he outlined 10 tips for great writing. While these tips aren’t specific to scriptwriting, they are certainly applicable.

His wisdom on the subject is timeless. 

1. Read the Roman-Raphaleson book on writing. Read it three times

Writing that Works is a well-established classic. Over the years, it’s undergone a number of revisions.

The current version even includes insights on writing emails and e-publications. Buy it. Read it. Study it.

2. Write the way you talk. Naturally.

Dialogue can be particularly tricky. It’s surprisingly hard to write dialogue that sounds natural when spoken. The key is to craft sentences so that they mimic natural speech patterns. (Use tip #7 to test if you’ve accomplished this.)

On a side note, grammar is important, but not more important than the way people actually talk. When writing dialogue, it’s okay to bend and even break some grammatical rules. For example, proper grammar dictates you say the following: “For whom is that package intended?”

However, no one talks like that. Instead, write, “Who is that package for?” ending the sentence in a preposition. Yes, it’s technically grammatically incorrect, but it’s also how real people really talk. 

3. Use short words, short sentences and short paragraphs

Long, flowery sentences tend to lose people. Short, punchy sentences capture attention and help the viewer maintain focus.

4. Never use jargon words like reconceptualize, demassification, attitudinally, judgmental. They are hallmarks of a pretentious ass

Non-insiders simply don’t know insider words. Even if you frequently use industry related jargon internally, ditch those phrases when developing a script.

Instead, use common words that require no explanation.

5. Never write more than two pages on any subject

Scripts should be short. The best marketing videos are 30-90 seconds long. They don’t require lengthy scripts. 

6. Check your quotations

If citing any source, double and triple check it. Make sure your quotes are accurate before considering your script done.

Inaccurate quotes damage your credibility and professionalism. It’s worth the time to make sure all quotes are perfect.

7. Never send a letter or memo on the day you write it. Read it aloud the next morning, and then edit it

Your script will be spoken aloud when your video is shot. It’s critical you read it out loud as you revise and edit it. If there are awkward sentences, you’ll hear them immediately.

Yes, it takes more time to read a script out loud than silently, but the insight you’ll gain is invaluable. 

8. If it is something important, get a colleague to improve it

Guess what? All scripts are important.

Before you consider the job done, read it out loud to someone else and get some honest feedback. Be sure to let your coworker know that, while you appreciate compliments, what you really need to know is where the script falls short.

Candid, critical feedback will help make your script even better. 

9. Before you send your letter or your memo, make sure it is crystal clear what you want the recipient to do

If your goal is a call to action, and any marketing video is surely intended to lead the viewer to some kind of response, make sure the script clearly communicates the desired outcome: “Call this number.” “Go to this website.” “Sign up for this trial offer.”

Keep this part of the script simple and straightforward.

10. If you want ACTION, don’t write. Go and tell the guy what you want 

In a sense, this is exactly what you’re doing by opting to use video rather than text to communicate your message.

You cannot sit down face-to-face with every prospective customer and have a conversation about your product or service, but video provides you with a means to simulate real interaction.

Of course, you can’t have a video without a script. As you’re developing your script, think of it as your side of a conversation with potential buyers. Keep it personable, easy to understand and attention grabbing—just like if you were having a real conversation.  

The script is the foundation for your video. Follow these tips and you’ll be well on your way to producing a solid video that makes a real impact on your business and your bottom line.

Most Sales Enablement practitioners we speak with think of Sales Enablement primarily or exclusively as ‘Sales Person Enablement’. The focus is on how to help the salesperson “consistently and systematically have valuable conversations” throughout the sales process. That’s the guidance we’ve received from Forrester and others, so who can blame us.

Our point of view is that this approach is insufficient. We agree that improving conversations is at the core of Sales Enablement, however, there are two other important Sales Enablement stakeholders: frontline Sales Management and VP Sales/Sales Ops, whose conversation quality and consistency in two critical use case scenarios you need to consider and inform in order to drive superior sales results, which after all should be the principal aim of “Sales” Enablement.

From this broader vantage point, the three most important conversations in sales are those between: 1) the sales person and buyer(s) throughout the sales process, 2) the sales manager and each sales person across the team during 1:1 deal reviews, and 3) VP Sales/Sales Ops and executive management during pipeline reviews. The following table reframes Sales Enablement’s focus in the context of each stakeholder’s critical conversation and points to the impact of improving the quality, consistency, and comprehensiveness of these conversations over an extended period.

Stakeholder	Critical Conversation	During	Impact
Sales Person	With buyers	Sales process	Win rate improvement
Sales Management	With salespeople	Deal reviews	Quota attainment
VP Sales/Sales Ops	With exec management	Pipeline reviews	Forecast accuracy

In all cases, the goal is to improve the effectiveness AND productivity of each of these conversations.

Conversation effectiveness. From a ‘conversation effectiveness’ perspective, we want to increase the likelihood that the designated stakeholder will be able to achieve their desired outcome from a particular interaction. As such, we need to start by defining the conversation goals for each stakeholder’s key use case.

• Sales person. Their buyer meeting conversation goal is to continually gauge and generate interest, need, and progress across the buying organization and throughout the sales process and, eventually, close the sale and position the buyer and the seller’s company for a successful implementation and a mutually-beneficial long-term relationship.

• Sales manager. Their deal review conversation goals are to correctly assess key deal progress, risk, and health; coach salespeople on the most advantageous next steps; and formalize the strategy in the form of Call Plans all geared to upping the probability of advancing and closing these strategic opportunities.

• VP Sales/Sales Ops. Their pipeline review conversation goals are to gain better visibility into key deals’ true likelihood of advancement or closing at various stages in the funnel, assess pipeline health, and forecast accurately (BTW, the CEO, executive team, and board also deeply care about this).

To help each party accomplish their respective conversation goals and optimize meeting effectiveness, we need to provide guidance regarding best practices for what needs to happen before, during, and after each “critical sales conversation”.

• Before: Plan key questions to ask, points to make, responses to possible objections, and next steps to suggest; and communicate the agenda.
• During: State and gain agreement on meeting goals and agenda, discuss planned key questions and talking points, identify and address issues, and prioritize and schedule concrete action items/next steps.
• After: Assess meeting effectiveness, update progress in CRM relative to meeting focus (deal, pipeline, forecast), summarize and email next steps, and note key information to uncover/discuss during the next meeting.

Conversation productivity. By ‘conversation productivity’ we mean the ability to obtain and provide all of the targeted information during the conversation in the span of time allocated to the meeting. For example, if there are five key pieces of information you want to uncover and another five you want to put forth, chances are that if you don’t prepare and conduct the meeting adequately that you’ll walk out with only a portion of your ‘conversation information goals’ completed. This is both a time and information management issue.

WHAT TO DO: To optimize conversation effectiveness and productivity and help each stakeholder easily and consistently prepare and conduct high quality meetings, we need to equip them with CRM-integrated tools that are customized to their critical conversation use cases. These can include:

• Conversation planning guides and templates
• Meeting agenda templates
• Meeting guides comprised of best practice talking points, questions, and optimal meeting outcomes
• A system to easily and quickly capture and communicate meeting notes
• Email templates to use before the meeting to communicate agenda and after the meeting to communicate action items
• Instruction on what information and activities need to be updated in CRM

Chances are you have already been doing this for your sales folks. But to hit the aggressive growth targets you all are expected to hit, it’s in everyone’s best interest to also focus on Sales Management and Sales Ops “critical conversation” enablement. If you’re a Sales Ops leader, don’t be shy. You can also invite yourself to the Sales Enablement party. After all, you’ve probably been hosting it all along.

Are you taking a holistic approach to “Sales” Enablement?

 

 

 

 

Coach, the New York-based luxury handbag and accessory line with a global presence, is definitely learning a thing or two about consumerism. Having just watched 21% of their Q3 profits go into the pockets of Michael Kors and other luxury dealers, it appears they cannot get their North American act together.  Sure, their European and Asian stranglehold continues to impress; suffice it to say, we can all treat Coach’s downtrodden financial state in North America as an opportunity to learn.

Here’s what businesses great and small, offline and online, can learn from Coach’s concurrent demise:

Engage the Consumer

Coach boasts 5 million Facebook followers, yet all they do is ‘like’.  I’d be willing to bet my iPod with 3,300 bought-and-paid-for songs that I could scrape up 300 million people that like milk.  The difference between consumers ‘liking’ and ‘buying’ involves an action which takes less time than showering yet reaps more benefits than smelling good: engaging the consumer.  This means mollifying the displeased 30 year old woman that was treated like garbage at her last trip to a Coach outlet.  Or, it could mean a simple poll to figure out what women really want in stores.  Perhaps it means spreading news of interest to current Kors or Vera Wang customers on the fence about buying from Coach.

Today’s socially demanding, fast-paced environment should merit more attention than Coach is currently giving its customers, the reason why people flock to a more socially active society found within Michael Kors.

Takeaway: Whether you see social media as relevant or not, that’s where consumers share experiences; the more positivity you foster, the more new buyers will flock to your side.  Speak often, yet with relevance.  Listen to anger, and respond with real answers or ongoing solutions – not boilerplate copy/paste crap.  Be a brand ambassador, and avoid operating your business like a kleptocracy.

Include all Income Classes

Vera Bradley, the peer to Coach and co-competitor to Kors, hasn’t been faring much better of late.  However, Bradley has two distinct selling points that Coach cannot touch:

1. An obvious ‘Sale’ link located right when consumers land on Verabradley.com;
2. Free shipping on orders over $75, which is half of Coach’s threshold.

With these two obtrusive items located where consumers can clearly see them, we’re now able to make two more observations:

1. Vera Bradley is running with Coach on a luxury level, yet cares enough about the middle to lower class woman;
2. Coach isn’t offering sales on discontinued or heavily overstocked items, which speaks volumes about the former statement.

If you’ve ever been to a Coach Outlet store, you’ll notice that sales do exist on certain items; this, however, does little for the fashionista that happens to be disabled, nowhere near an outlet or currently unable to travel due to work or family business.  Offering competitive sales online will not only encourage women to shop online (duh), but would garner the opportunity for millions of disabled or middle/lower income class women – you know, the ones working their fingers to the bone for pennies – to enjoy Coach products.

Takeaway: There’s nothing wrong with offering higher end products that appeal to ‘heavy spenders’.  What becomes the problem for many businesses is when they attempt to grow beyond their preset demographic, yet continue with their same price points.  Should you wish to expand beyond your company’s current comfort zone and lower price structure to encourage a larger audience, make sure that price point is realistic.  Make your ‘free shipping’ offers worthy enough to run with, or overrun, competition.

Coach-ed by Players?

Imagine boxing against Manny Pacquiao in your first official appearance in a boxing ring.  You may last until the first round bell, but highly doubtful given Pacquiao’s quickness and punch accuracy.  For many, that first experience would sour their stomachs enough to quit boxing forever.

Coach isn’t exactly a newcomer to the fashion ring, yet they’re still managing to get battered by competition; in many cases, they’re getting TKO’d in the third round.  Besides, North American markets are rather tough to begin with right now, given the vast majority of unemployed professionals were luxury shoppers at one point.

Whether or not Coach’s recent abysmal earnings performance is giving investors a sour stomach remains to be seen.

In order to go 10 rough rounds with your competition each day, you’ll need an well-rounded plan of social attack.  You’ll need to cater to both high end shoppers and lower income buyers that would love the feel of Coach products in their hands.  Finally, you’ll need to invest in social representation for growing accounts to avoid being that business that spits in the face of consumers after the purchase order is filled.

Another idea to consider: watch your competition before engaging them.  Learn their moves, embrace their finesse.  Do this from a distance, taking notes of all flaws, flounders and fatalities.  You’ll be surprised how easy it will be to overtake a company’s high ranking sales position simply by wearing their social presence down – much like what you’re seeing right now with Coach.

Every day, leaders are repeatedly bombarded with difficult challenges that generally fall into two distinct camps—puzzles and paradoxes. Puzzles are problems with clear and defined answers, such as, “How can we increase production by 20 percent? or “Should we invest x dollars in marketing?” Paradoxes, on the other hand, are defined by two or more competing alternatives that can never be resolved. These perplexing, recurring issues can be found everywhere: the conflicting goals of purpose and profit, short-term returns vs. long-term investments, consistent global brands that need to customize a brand experience in local markets, or recognizing individual needs while maintaining equitable policies.

The fact is, as leaders climb up the proverbial ladder, they face fewer puzzles and many more paradoxes. As that begins to happen, leaders use puzzle-solving skills—such as the need for control, consistency, and closure—to tackle paradoxical challenges. The bottom line is that this approach never works. Why? Paradoxical problems always have several right answers and many wrong ones. They can’t be solved, only managed. Effective leaders today embrace that reality and even celebrate it.  So, leaders must adopt an approach that can feel uncomfortable at first, but will pay off over time in building an intelligent, agile organization that can handle complexity.

Let Go of Control: Taking control of a situation is an impulse that comes naturally for most leaders. The drive for control serves managers well, because they are usually solving more straight-forward puzzles. But, in the executive ranks where paradoxes abound, that approach limits creativity, reduces problem-solving, engenders passivity, and limits agility. Instead, leaders must give up the illusion of control, with the understanding that bad luck and unavoidable complexity can derail even the most well-laid plans by an “in control” leader. As Eisenhower said, “Plans are useless but planning is indispensable.”  Let the challenge “breathe,” and be open to outside inputs, serendipity, and the interesting surprises inherent in complexity.

Value Inconsistency In Behavior:  Most companies learn to value and reward consistency and can view it as a sign of the maturity and the stability that we’ve come to expect from our leaders. When a politician changes her mind, it’s seen as “flip flopping” versus an altered point of view based on changed circumstances or new inputs. In business, consistency in behavior can lead to rigidity and lost opportunities. Leaders today need to tolerate inconsistency in actions and skills while remaining vigilant when it comes to maintaining consistency of purpose and vision.

Embrace the Open Ended: Who doesn’t love putting a nice ribbon around a problem or crossing something off of a to-do list? It feels good. It feels like you’ve accomplished something. But, that feeling can create larger problems, especially when others have pushed the paradox up to you rather than dealing with it themselves. Solving a puzzle works well when they have definite answers, but paradoxes resist a tidy resolution and can remain on to-do lists for years. Get used to never having closure and instead celebrate milestones along the journey, especially if you’re trying to create a responsive, agile, and intelligent organization around you.

Paradoxical problems are ones that seemingly never stop giving. They can be viewed as the greatest source of leadership pain or the perfect environment to remain agile, innovative, and creative. Learn to thrive in ambiguity and you’ll be on your way to mastering the most challenging problems that you face as a leader.

However as companies create more and more content in order to appeal to an ever-expanding range of customers and clients, the more internal and external obstacles they are faced with.

Although some companies have the budget to create their own content or outsource its production, the majority feel they don’t have the right organisation or internal structure to utilise the content properly. Retrieving the right content, promoting the content sufficiently and measuring its effectiveness are all major problems that companies are facing right now.

It doesn’t help that channels where content marketing has previously worked before, Facebook’s news feed for instance, are being tweaked to make it tougher for branded content to appear in front of a company’s own audience.

MSLGROUP has recently published a survey entitled Curing the Content Headache in which 100 communications professionals from complex global organisations were asked in April 2014 about the current state of their content marketing strategies.

These are some of the results of that survey.

Production

The majority of companies surveyed are producing original content specifically for digital channels rather than repurposing existing content made for TV, print or other media.

Although this can prove a much costlier exercise, especially if resources are tight, tailoring content to specific channels will help improve engagement. 

Then again, as more and more content is needed for multiple audiences and as those audiences are using digital channels more than they are traditional media, it makes economic sense to have in place a system where previously created content can be retrieved and stripped to its component parts in order to be refreshed for a new client, customer or audience.

Sharing

When asked which digital channels are they using to distribute and share content, 93% use their own website for corporate communications and 73% for consumer communications.

In terms of social channels such as Facebook and Pinterest, the balance between corporate and consumer communication is tipped towards the consumer side, as these channels are far more effective for B2C engagement, and the less corporate the tone, the better. 

YouTube is showing an almost even split which is a testament to the fact that video, whether it’s produced for corporate or consumer edification, works incredibly well. In fact YouTube has recently made its content playbook for brands available and it explicitly states how your company can create successful content for the channel.

Investment

As I mentioned in the headline, 91% of companies are distributing more digital content now than they were one year ago. In one year’s time, 88% of companies surveyed believe they will be producing more than they are currently and 10% believe they’ll be producing the same. This leaves only 2% of companies believing they’ll be producing less content next year.

Here’s how the marketing budgets were divided for digital content creation and distribution in 2013.

This is the expectation for 2014.

Investment looks set to increase. Nearly all the companies that are devoting between 6% to 50%+ of their budgets to content will increase around 4% this year. Companies not spending any money on content in 2013, will apparently be non-existent this year.

Challenges

Looking ahead to next year, these are the four biggest challenges facing companies in content production and distribution.

• 51% claim that having a big enough team internally to cope with the demands of content marketing is the number one challenge.
• 49% believe that there’s a lot of great content being produced by their company but it’s difficult to retrieve, therefore ‘harvesting’ content is the next biggest challenge.
• 35% say obtaining the budget to achieve what they need to accomplish is their biggest challenge.
• 33% state that proving the business value of investing in content creation and management is the hardest part.

For more help and guidance on content marketing, check out our tool: The Periodic Table of Content Marketing.

William Bernstein, cofounder of investment management firm Efficient Frontier Advisors, writes in his recently published ebook "If You Can: How Millennials Can Get Rich Slowly" on the importance of having a basic understanding of finance in order to successfully save for retirement. On his website and re-posted here with his permission, he recommends reading the following books on investing.

Those of you who are seeking investing enlightenment are not going to find much of it on the web.

I suggest you log off, power down your computer, and read some books. Take your time. The months you spend perusing this list will be well spent.

I'd recommend reading at least the first four books listed before even thinking of getting your hands dirty with real investing.

1. "A Random Walk Down Wall Street" by Burton Malkiel

An excellent investment primer. It explains the basics of stocks, bonds, and mutual funds, and will reinforce the efficient market concept.

2. "Common Sense on Mutual Funds" by John Bogle

It provides as much detail as you could ever want about this important investment vehicle. Mr. Bogle is the founder and retired chairman of The Vanguard Group, and has been an important voice in the industry for decades. Beautifully written, opinionated, and highly recommended.

(The book also demonstrates the democratization that has swept the investment industry in recent years. Until a decade ago the sort of sophisticated mutual fund analysis described in his book was the brief of just a handful of professionals with access to expensive proprietary databases and mainframe computers. Almost all of Bogle's work was done with a subscription to Morningstar and a statistically competent assistant, and could have been performed by any small investor with similar software and ability.)

3. "Global Investing" by Roger Ibbotson and Gary Brinson

This is a beautifully written volume on the history of investible assets. An informed investor cannot know enough about market history, and this is the best single source in this area. Want to know what the returns for U.S. stocks have been in each of the past 200 years? The price of gold for the past 500 years? Interest rates and inflation for the past 800 years? It's all here.

As implied by the title, the authors also provide an excellent perspective on the place of foreign assets in a diversified portfolio, and provide some worthwhile insights on portfolio theory and the efficiency of the marketplace.

4. "What Has Worked in Investing" is a free pamphlet from Tweedy, Browne

A low-key sales pitch for their funds, it is also the best compilation I've seen of the data supporting the value method.

5. "The New Finance, the Case Against Efficient Markets" by Robert Haugen

If you're intrigued by the Tweedy pamphlet and wonder why value investing still works after all these years, this is your book. The prose is breezy, even quirky Ben Graham meets Hunter Thompson on bad acid.

6. "Value Averaging" by Michael Edleson

An extremely useful how-to guide on deploying a lump sum of money among multiple assets. Finally back in print as a Wiley Classic Edition.

7. "The Intelligent Investor" by Ben Graham

A popularized and more readable version of his earlier classic, "Security Analysis," written with David Dodd. Although it has great relevance to the markets in general and should be read by any serious investor, it is particularly pertinent to those who feel compelled to buy individual stocks.

Many of today's most successful money managers obtained their original financial inspiration from these two books. It is always fun to look at excesses in the marketplace and ask, "What would Ben say about this?" This 2003 edition benefits from annotation by one of finance's most brilliant observers, Jason Zweig. (By the way, if you get bitten by the Graham bug and decide to do "Security Analysis," make sure you read the original 1934 edition, recently reprinted by McGraw-Hill.)

8. "Devil Take the Hindmost" by Edward Chancellor

You simply can't learn enough about market history, and Chancellor's story of boom and bust in the capital markets, beginning in the 17th century, is pure mind candy. Supersedes Mackay's "Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds."

9. "The Millionaire Next Door" by Thomas Stanley and William Danko

If you can't save, it doesn't matter if your name is Warren Buffett. If you think the road to happiness runs past a Beemer and a McMansion, this book will scare you straight.

10. "Asset Allocation" by Roger Gibson

Covers much of the same ground as my own books with more emphasis on the qualities of individual assets. For hard-core enthusiasts only; oriented towards the financial advisor.

Unless you're a glutton for punishment, you won't read all of these books. But however many you do, it's time for a treat: a small bon bon written in 1940 by a man named Fred Schwed called "Where Are the Customers' Yachts?" The most recent version from Wiley is graced with forewords by both Micheal Lewis and Jason Zweig should tell you something; aside from being snort-out-your-nose funny, it is also both profound and prescient, full of observations about the financial markets that would not become generally accepted for a few more generations. You won't be sorry.

SEE ALSO: How Young People Can Get Rich Slowly

Join the conversation about this story »

In its simplest form, strategic thinking is about deciding on which opportunities to focus your time, people, and money, and which opportunities to starve.  One of history’s greatest strategic thinkers, Napoleon Bonaparte summed it up this way: “In order to concentrate superior strength in one place, economy of force must be exercised in other places.” If dead, despotic French emperors are not really your style, Michael Porter said it like this: “The essence of strategy is choosing what not to do.”

At the highest level, this usually means deciding to sell off one company in order to buy another one. More often it simply means deciding to move some initiatives to the back burner in order to concentrate the bulk of your resources in a single key area.

Sounds simple enough. Yet, three pervasive myths continue to make strategic thinking an elusive skill set in today’s organizations.

Myth 1: Productivity is the goal.

Productivity is about getting things done. Strategic thinking is about getting the right things done well. The corollary of that truth is that strategy requires leaving some things undone, which stirs up a potent cocktail of unpleasant emotions. When you leave projects undone or only half-completed, you must sacrifice that feeling of confidence and control that comes from pursuing a concrete goal (PDF). You will have to fight through the universal psychological phenomenon of loss aversion that results from saying goodbye to a cherished project in which you have already poured heaps of time and money. You will also have to deal with the social pain and feelings of rejection that come from telling some people on your team that their big idea or entire functional area has been demoted in favor of something else more valuable.

In the face of all that unpleasantness, it is tempting to continue striving for productivity. After all, what’s wrong with being productive?

The problem is that productivity is strategically agnostic. Producing volume is not the same as pursuing excellence. Without a strategy, productivity is meaningless. As Peter Drucker famously said: “There is nothing quite so useless as doing efficiently that which should not be done at all.” So the next challenge is figuring out which things are the right things.

Myth 2: The leader’s job is to identify what’s “important.”

Here’s a quick exercise: Make a list of every project and initiative your team is working on right now. When you finish the list, draw a line through all of the things that are not important.

If you’re like 99% of teams, not one project on your list will get crossed out. That’s because every project your team is working on is “important” to someone somewhere somehow. They all “add value” in some vague way. That’s why debating about what’s important is futile. Strategic thinkers must decide where to focus, not merely what’s “important.” Strategic leaders must consciously table some “important” projects or ignore some “important” opportunities.

While productive teams log overtime hours in order to knock out one important project after another on a first come, first serve basis, strategic teams decide which projects will contribute most to the declared strategy of the organization, and put the rest of the “important” projects on hold.

Myth 3: Strategic thinking is only about thinking.

Strategic leadership is not a math problem or a thought experiment. Ultimately, strategic thoughts must yield strategic action. Thorough cost/benefit analyses replete with mesmerizing forecasts, tantalizing linear trends, and 63-tab spreadsheets beautiful enough to make a newly minted MBA weep with joy are utterly useless without an actionable decision. In spite of the uncertainty, complexity, and the ever-present possibility of failure, a strategic leader must eventually step up and make the call about what the team will and will NOT focus on.

Tipping his bicorne cap to this truth, Napoleon once said, “Nothing is more difficult, and therefore more precious, than to be able to decide.” Perhaps that’s also why this precious ability to decide is the defining feature of those deemed worthy to hold the highest leadership positions.

LinkedIn, the largest social network for professionals, now boasts 300 million members around the world, with 100 million members in the U.S.

In an effort to engage — and retain — users who, like myself, checked into LinkedIn no more than once a month, LinkedIn developed the Influencer program, which invited ~500 high-profile professionals to contribute regular columns on topics LinkedIn users cared about — and it worked.

For LinkedIn users, it was an opportunity to learn from the best and brightest professionals in the world. For those select professionals, it was a channel that allowed them to reach a highly targeted audience of millions — for free. Dharmesh Shah, Co-founder and CTO of HubSpot and a LinkedIn Influencer (as well as an investor in Shareaholic), penned a post describing the brilliance of the initiative.

With access to LinkedIn’s publishing platform, influencers had free reign to publish anything their hearts desired. LinkedIn would then distribute those posts to users across the platform using the Pulse app.

Shah’s description of the experience can easily be interpreted as the #1 easiest way to go viral:

Within 48 hours your post has received over 1 million page views – and from that one article, over 500k people decide to follow you so they can read subsequent posts. Sound like a fantasy? It’s not a fantasy if you’re Bill Gates, you wrote this post, and you’re a LinkedIn Influencer.

To many users’ delight, in February 2014, LinkedIn announced it would open up its publishing platform to all other users, non-Influencers. Upon hearing the news, I, on the other hand, was not as bright-eyed and optimistic.

Within the publishing platform, Influencers indeed had a first-mover advantage. The spotlight shined on them as they were part of a privileged group with access to publish their thoughts on a platform that offered free and limitless distribution. LinkedIn’s move to grant publishing access to all of its users would inevitably overwhelm the network with loads of new content – for better and for worse – and would dilute its value proposition for new content crafters.

Skeptical, but curious, I sought to gain access to LinkedIn’s publishing platform, and within a month, I had published my first post. To my disappointment, the article didn’t generate 100,000 views, nor did it propel me to LinkedIn superstardom. Twenty-four hours later, what did happen was the post received several thousand views and dozens of encouraging comments. Although I was right in my assumption that the publishing platform held less opportunity for new users than it did for Influncers, I realized it didn’t have to.

In fact, for many businesses, 6,000+ readers and 30+ commenters can really help move the needle, especially when the audience is an engaged group of professionals. But don’t trust my word alone. I queried 8 business owners and members of the Young Entrepreneur Council (YEC) for their responses on the following question:

How do you utilize LinkedIn’s publishing tool to grow your company?

---

1. Expanding Our Reach

Brett Farmiloe of digital marketing firm Markitors says, “Business blogs often have trouble reaching their target audience. Utilizing LinkedIn’s new publishing tool as a blogging platform can help you push relevant content to a built-in audience of your business connections. We plan on publishing more content on LinkedIn to expand our reach and increase our ability to attract the right readers.”

2. Building Brand Awareness

Eric Siu, CEO of Single Grain, shares, “LinkedIn’s publishing tool is just another channel to increase your reach. LinkedIn can easily help you reach the top-tier readers you want to talk to.”

3. Adding Credibility

John Rampton, president of marketing agency Adogy, suggests LinkedIn’s advantage is it “is a great place to gain credibility. If you’re a main author on a site such as LinkedIn, people will listen and follow you because of the trust you’ve gained.”

4. Amplifying Our Content

With more ambitious plans, Thursday Bram, owner of Hyper Modern Consulting, notes, “We’ve already bet big on content marketing, but having a new channel is useful for us to amplify our content further. After we’ve had time to test out LinkedIn in more depth, I expect us to create custom content for LinkedIn and drive traffic back to our own sites.”

5. Driving Engagement

“LinkedIn already helps us generate significant website traffic, but the publishing tool has the potential to help us establish an ongoing conversation with our LinkedIn audience,” says Heather Lopes of EarlyShares. “We hope the new features will help us get more feedback on the content we share and drive more insight from our networks.”

6. Increasing Quality Content Distribution

Brewster Stanislaw knows, “LinkedIn is a tremendous platform to distribute company content, have perspective and build your credibility in a single space.”

As the CEO of Inside Social, Stanislaw uses LinkedIn to “publish our blog posts, white papers and other thought pieces. LinkedIn also allows you to target the folks who should be hearing your message. It’s a great way to improve the quality of your distribution instead of just increasing quantity.”

7. Building Thought Leadership

Jason Grill of JGrill Media believes, “Building your thought leadership credentials is the best way to grow your brand or business. LinkedIn’s publishing tool allows individuals to do this in a way that has never been done before — on a high-level business professional networking website. Content marketing is king these days, and this is a great avenue to build credibility directly with individuals in your industry or business.”

8. Creating a Blog People Will Read

The greatest advantage to LinkedIn’s publishing platform is the instant audience you generate through your network of connections and LinkedIn Pulse recommendations.

Andy Karuza of social media marketing firm Brandbuddee suggests, “With this tool you can express your ideas and expertise without trying to get people to go to another website. In today’s society, using fewer clicks is better. People want to spend less time browsing and go to the place that has it all. Because there is already a lot of attention and engagement on LinkedIn, you can now put your content front and center to encourage more views.”

What has LinkedIn’s publishing platform done (or what do you suspect it could do) for your business?

Over the years, one of my chief objectives has been to help technical professionals become more comfortable with the sales role. My reasoning is understandable: Discomfort with sales keeps many professionals from getting more actively involved. More involvement, logic would suggest, will lead to more sales.

But the fact is that most A/E firm sales come from a handful of people who don't mind selling. They often have another kind of shortcoming—they're too comfortable with it. Why is that a problem? Because most buyers have a problem with sellers. One study found that 85% of buyers have a negative view of salespeople. My own informal polling of professionals in our industry yields similar results.

Why so much dislike for salespeople? RainToday conducted a survey of professional service buyers to learn what we are doing wrong. They found that 80% of buyers experienced at least one major problem during the sales process. The most common problems were:

• Not listening
• Slow response to client requests
• Not understanding the client's needs
• Talking too much
• Lack of personal chemistry
• Unable to demonstrate adequate value
• Failing to craft a compelling solution
• Overzealous in trying to win the work

I'd like to see a survey of professional service sellers asking what mistakes they most often make. I suspect their answers would be quite different. That's what happens when we get too comfortable with anything we do—we develop blind spots. And that can prevent us from taking the steps necessary to substantially improve.

Given the widespread distrust of the selling profession, there's little reason to get too comfortable. Do you really think you're immune to the common perceptions of sellers? Sure, you've probably had success. But how much more successful could you be if you looked at the sales process through the client's eyes?

Rethinking the Sales Process

I had been a business development professional for many years before I finally had an epiphany on the way to work one morning. I realized that my approach to selling embodied many of the same flaws that I disliked when I interacted with salespeople. I had been focused on what worked for me rather than what worked for the client. I started to imagine how I was really perceived by clients, and it made me uncomfortable.

That started a process of rethinking and redesigning my sales process. But the most important step was changing my mindset—from focusing on the outcomes I wanted to focusing on the outcomes the client wanted. I discovered that serving clients produced better results (for both parties) than selling to them. Hence, I developed an approach I call Service-Centered Selling.

Following are the core principles of Service-Centered Selling:

FOCUS: Serving, not selling. While most people hate to be sold, everyone appreciates being served. When selling professional services, building trust is the foremost objective. Traditional selling erodes trust because it's seller-oriented. But serving the client in the sales process restores trust. 

MOTIVATION: Meeting client needs, not primarily your own. We distrust salespeople because we question their motives. We suspect they're driven by their own needs,not ours. And most of the time we're right. So what about your firm? When does selling become a priority? When you really need the revenue! Think clients don't notice? Client focus is not as easy to fake as many think it is. Motives matter in sales; put the client first and watch your own needs get met as a result.

GOAL: Developing profitable relationships, not just pursuing projects. A sometimes myopic focus on winning and doing projects plagues our industry. This despite the fact that most firms boast that about 80% of their work comes from repeat clients. Sustainable success is founded on enduring client relationships. Not surprisingly, those firms that concentrate on relationship forming during the sales process—versus simply chasing projects—have a distinct advantage.

COMMITMENT: Time spent with the client is always mutually beneficial. The one aspect of my old sales approach that most convicted me was failing to properly respect the value of the client's time. Clients were generally kind enough to meet with me, and I believe some genuinely enjoyed it. But the fact is they could usually have made better use of their time. That is, until I committed to bringing something of value to every sales conversation. This is what I call the "entree," which typically involves helping the client address a need or solve a problem.

OUTCOME: The sales process is the primary way you differentiate your firm. Qualifications-based selection rules may prevent clients from shopping your services on price (sometimes), but don't assume they really make decisions based on qualifications. The truth is they screen firms based on qualifications (sometimes), and then select the one they feel most comfortable with. The trust-building, relationship-forming advantages of a service-driven approach to selling positions you to be the firm of choice. Don't tell clients how good you are, show them!

So what's your comfort level with selling? If it makes you a bit uncomfortable, then stop selling and starting serving. On the other hand, if you're comfortable in the sales role, ask yourself this question: How comfortable is the buyer on the other side of table? Really. Is it time to reevaluate your approach from the client's perspective?
 

Mrinal Desai knows what it feels like to be rejected. Before he became the cofounder and CEO of address book app addappt — whose name is infused with the spirit of resilience — he was turned away more than he was welcomed.

As he wrote on a recent Quora thread, his application for a student visa to the U.S. was rejected twice. Once he'd made it to the States from India, he was unemployed for three years after the dot-com bust and became increasingly familiar with getting turned down for jobs. 

In a way, this period of constant rejection was good for him, he says, because it toughened him up. "One of the best outcomes of it for me personally was getting very, very comfortable with being ignored, hearing a 'no,' or, as some like to phrase it, being rejected," he writes. "If you have never experienced this, I would highly recommend practicing and seeking it out."  

As Desai got more comfortable being rejected, he learned to push through it. He says when he first approached LinkedIn for a job in 2003, he got a polite "no," since they weren't hiring business people at the time. But he didn't let that stop him. "I stayed in touch for over a year and eventually went to work there as their first business development manager in 2004 when they had about 15-20 employees."

"Very often it is the fear of rejection that stops us from trying," Desai writes. "You can always try and fail, but [you should] never fail to try."    

Here are some of Desai's tips for overcoming rejection, published with his permission and edited for clarity:

1. Always, always keep moving — to the next alternative job, investor, date, etc. You might be wrong, but not moving is definitely wrong. Nothing happens until you do something.

2. Never accept no. The only one who can stop you in your tracks is you. Henry Ford said, "Whether you can or can't, you are right."

3. Realize that it is not about you. Put on some blinders, and stay focused on the goal.

4. Often (like in the case of my three-year unemployment), you are looking for only one "yes," so keep going since it is a matter of time.

5. People are busier than ever now, and you are not their priority.

6. Almost nothing valuable is easy, and if it is coming easily, you are not pushing the envelope. The value will be fleeting. Read about hedonistic adaptation — the harder the struggle, the longer it will take to reach "equilibrium" and become blase about your last achievement.

7. Everything can be practiced. Do more, and work towards more no's. I would recommend you integrate a feedback measure to make the practice meaningful to improve on each initiative.

8. Be optimistic. If anything, "no" is an indicator that you are onto something and others don't get it, at least not yet.

9. Remember that you are not the only one getting rejected. You are in the good company of people like Michael Jordan, Walt Disney, and J.K. Rowling, to name a few.

SEE ALSO: 23 Incredibly Successful People Who Failed At First

Join the conversation about this story »

Social selling expands on the age-old basics of getting to know what prospects want, meeting their needs and moving them through the decision making process to close. In the old days, we got a glimpse into what was important to prospects and customers by meeting them at their office and looking at what was on their walls. Back then, these things were our conversation starters.

Today, sellers have unprecedented access to a myriad of social media tools that can be incorporated into their traditional sales activities. Prior to walking into that next sales meeting, you can be armed with the information you need to start more interesting and relevant meeting conversations.

Focus on the Customer

Customers today want to connect and converse in their preferred communication channels. The blunt, un-nuanced “Mad Men” style of selling is no longer effective. Social selling techniques allow today’s business professional to engage with customers and prospects with relevance and purpose. It’s not WHAT you sell that matters, it is HOW you go about it.

Buyers no longer want information pushed at them. But when you share educational and informative content that provides a benefit to them in some way, they will pay attention. Be a Go-Giver. Find out what they care about, what challenges they face, get to know them and focus your energies on helping rather than overtly selling. All this will lead naturally into a discussion of how you can solve a problem or improve their business, and why you and your company is the right choice to help them.

5 Steps to Building Influence

Social selling is a two-way street, a relationship, a conversation. Jon – Nimble’s CEO – describes the basic tenets of this process by using what he calls, the five “E’s”:

1. Educate.

Here’s where the “why” comes in. What exactly do you have that they need? Why should they buy something from you? Don’t tell and sell; educate. Let them see value, benefits and results. You feature product pitches simply bore them. (There’s a place for product information on your site, however, as a valuable self-serve option for visitors!)

Perhaps more important than educating your prospects and customers on the value and benefits of what you sell is educating them in the broader sense—to help them succeed. Be generous with information that informs and educates…industry trends, news about their competitors or economic factors that might impact them. Keep your focus on sharing content that fits what your prospects, customers and partners care about – not what you are trying to sell!

The information that you share should be information that can be acted upon; information that improves their business in some way. Mix up the content: ebooks, tip sheets, articles, and commentary. There are no short-cuts in relationship building, and while education is a longer-term investment, in social selling it is an extremely important one. When buyers are ready to make a purchasing decision, they will remember your generosity and openness.

2. Enchant.

Enchantment is the human voice that enlivens a systematic process. People buy from people that they know like and trust. Be open, authentic, relevant, and transparent all with the goal of developing trust, because without trust, you have nothing. Enchant them throughout each step of the sales process and give more than they ever expected.

In today’s social selling world, creating an online presence that positions you as an influencer in your field must be a big part of your sales brand identity. Create social profiles that speak to what buyers care about – results. Determine what you want to be known for and share content that consistently supports that brand image.

3. Engage.

Like. Chat. Get involved. Connect people to others. Share their content. Comment on their status updates and posts. Even if they’re not potential customers, they have colleagues that are.

Develop the daily habit of viewing what’s happening in your social networks. Reach out, keep relationships active. Buyers are busy and they have sellers hounding them at every turn. Remaining consistent visible means having a system that keeps you from losing track of people, and tools like Nimble.com make it hard to let important sales activities slip through the cracks.

The key to social selling success is spending time where your prospects and customers are likely to hang out. Rather than jumping around from one social site to another, you can see and interact with all your contacts in one place. Using the Signals tab, you can easily monitor conversations across multiple networks. Consistent, daily interaction is what leads to sales opportunities down the road.

4. Embrace.

How we sell today has changed, and it is important to modern day sellers embrace the art of social selling in a big way. Use social channels to identify people you can help and who can also help you. Forge connections with the people – prospects, customers, partners and other influencers that matter most to you. Engage in their conversations by chiming in with your thoughts, listen to what others are saying and who they connect to.

LinkedIn groups are one great way to share experiences, ask questions, get to know people, and develop ideas. There are thousands of groups, something for every interest. With group discussions, you can contribute your insight and expertise in ways that are of benefit to the entire group. Doing so sets you apart from the less enlightened sellers who try to use groups to simply pitch their wares. My contributing your point of view in ways that enrich the conversations will attract the buyers you’d like to meet.

5. Empower.

Empowerment means giving people the tools they need to be successful. When sellers have access to the best ways to engage and educate their prospects, clients and partners, they become viewed as trusted advisors in the minds of their prospects and customers. As a result, selling opportunities increase.

At Nimble, we believe that when salespeople can see each person in their contact list in a multi-faceted way, not just as a flat business card record, they have a much richer view of what’s important. At the end of the day, it is not about contacts it is the personal connections and relationship intelligence that matters!

The Social Selling Advantage

By factoring these “Five E’s” into your daily sales activities, over time you can capitalize on sales opportunities more quickly.

What’s Stopping You?

Why not take our FREE 14-day Nimble Test Drive? There is no credit card required, and you’ll be up and running in minutes. Use Nimble to put the Five E’s of Social Selling to work for you! After you get started, come back and tell me how you are doing. I’d love to hear your success stories!

At BuzzPlant, one of the ways we help our clients communicate with their audience is by creating content that’s real. Content that simply rings true. It has that special little touch – one you can’t quite put your finger on. But you know it when you see it. The secret ingredient? Authenticity.

“Authenticity” isn’t just a charming concept or moral value. We believe that having authentic social media, print, and digital content is at the very cornerstone of The Recommendation Age. We spend a lot of time on philosophy and mindset here on the BuzzPlant Blog because we believe productive actions must follow some internal set of guiding principles. So, for more on the “what and why” of authenticity, see this post.

Today, I’m going to skip past the philosophy and get right into the nuts and bolts of creating content that’s authentic. Content that’s real. Here are four ideas to get you started!

4 Ways to Create Authentic Social Media Content

1. Attribute authorship. Ok, your company has a “voice,” but there’s always a human being somewhere on the end of a Tweet or blog post. “Admin” is not a blog author. “Bob Hutchins” is a blog author. You can attribute authorship with Twitter, too. See how representatives on the Bank of America Help handle identify themselves (signatures: ^hc, ^bm, ^as, etc.).
2. Take the time to listen. Creating content is not about being a loudspeaker. It’s about having a conversation. It’s common for brands to make at least one of these two mistakes: (1) They only talk, and never listen. (2) They assume they know what their audience wants to hear. Avoid these pitfalls by actively asking your customers for feedback.Also, there are tons of great analytic tools out there, so use them! If people are coming to your blog through a “peanut butter sandwich” keyword phrase, then maybe you should be creating more content about peanut butter sandwiches and less about ham! Common sense, right? You’d be surprised how many companies would instead think, “There must be a problem with our ‘ham’ content,” while neglecting the obvious peanut butter opportunity right in front of them!
3. Share content you didn’t create. You can’t be a creative genius all the time. And, even if you were, it’d be kind of antisocial of you. So, when you see a great piece of content – video, blog post, Tweet, etc. – share it with your followers. This helps build trust and rapport with your followers. It shows you aren’t trying to close the sale 100% of the time.
4. Respond to individuals. I’ve found that many people who are new to social media believe they should always speak to the masses – that by responding to individual inquiries, they’re wasting their time. This couldn’t be further from the truth. When you publicly acknowledge a complaint or otherwise engage with an individual customer, it has a ripple effect. Other users get to see your company being authentic on social media. Plus, you may turn that disgruntled customer into your biggest fan!

How Does Your Company Do It?

What do you think is essential for having authentic social media content? We’d love to hear about your approach. Jump in the comments below!

Companies want to deliver an incredible customer experience.They also want to turn a profit, increase market share, and engage their employees.

If those goals don’t seem surprising, it’s because they shouldn’t be. Forrester’s latest Customer Experience Index report finds companies that outperform their peers in customer experience are likely to turn customers into repeat customers, and repeat customers into loyal brand ambassadors.

Unfortunately, there is no ‘better customer experience’ switch. In most organizations, the structure, hierarchy, and culture are obstacles to improving the customer experience.

“Organizations need to re-evaluate the organizational structure,” says Josh Linkner, CEO of Detroit Venture Partners and author of Disciplined Dreaming. “Who’s the king? Is it the hierarchy? The bureaucracy? The shareholders? Or is the customer the king?”

Business leaders must dig into the fabric of their organizations, revamping structures, processes, systems and mindsets to create a consistent customer experience. This takes more than writing a new mission statement.

Here are five steps to turn customer experience aspirations into reality.

1. If it’s not broke…

Improving customer experience doesn’t mean ripping the organization apart. Sometimes it just means looking at information you’ve already collected. UK toy retailer The Entertainer is a great example of using existing data and information to drive new outcomes. By combining its view of inventory for online sales with that of its bricks-and-mortar stores, the retailer delivered two new services which transformed its customers’ experiences and increased online sales by 32%:

• Click and Collect. Customers can place orders online and pick up in-store, in as little as 30-minutes if products are in-stock.
• 90-minute delivery. Customers in applicable postcodes can have their online orders delivered to their home via a delivery service called Shutl.

2. Map the Customer’s Journey

Too many companies follow an “inside-out” approach to their operations – making decisions based on what they believe are the best interests of their customers (think JC Penney’s ill-advised move to eliminate coupons), instead of building their processes outside-in, from the customer’s perspective.

Customer journey maps can help an organization capture the interactions between your customers and brand across time, channels, and touch points. Kerry Bodine, a vice president and principal analyst with Forrester, has taken the concept one step further with what she calls ecosystem mapping, which helps companies identify the complex relationships that shape these interactions.

3. Remodel Your Metrics

Many organizations say they want to reduce average call times in their call center. This may be operationally efficient, but it’s not really customer-centric. Instead of measuring how quickly a call center rep helps a customer, try tracking how frequently the customer calls back. This incents an agent to take a little extra time to ask, “Is there anything else I can help you with?” Experiment by measuring customer experience based on lifetime value, not transactions.

4. Add Glue

Every organization needs a champion to ensure silos are connected, or better yet, destroyed. I’ve written before about how one of marketing’s core responsibilities is being a force multiplier that transforms a bunch of departments and titles into one, holistic entity. Rather than completely reorganizing the structure, marketing should be the glue.

5. Form a SWAT Team

Employees generally want to do right by their customers – but often don’t have the support to do so. “There’s a huge untapped resource among employees who wish they had some way to help solve customer issues, but they can’t because so many companies have a huge infrastructure with boundaries that no one is supposed to cross,” Bingham said. These types of bottom-up “SWAT” teams could help organizations deliver a seamless experience.

I’d love to hear your thoughts, as customers and professionals. What is the future of customer experience?

Photo: Olivier Le Moal / shutterstock

This article originally appeared on LinkedIn Today on April 29, 2014.

Learning to dance the East Coast Swing has long been on my bucket list. Because life is short and I’m not getting any younger, I’ve started chipping away at this goal. “Chipping away” is not the most elegant description, I realize, but given my diagnosable rhythmic impairment, it is accurate. Let’s just say that this is how I imagine I look when dancing:

And this is how I actually look:

So yeah, I’m working on that.

The process of learning a specific dance is similar to building a career in sales in that there are some basic but critical steps that will get you where you want to be (and keep your knees from buckling and your face off the floor.)

1. Get Good Instruction

We’re talking about your career here… Don’t sell yourself short or waste time by not connecting with effective mentors. My dance instructor embodies the perfect blend of encourager and perfectionist. Who can be that for you? When you think big picture about your career, spending a few thousand bucks on coaching is a very small investment that will likely result in disproportionately large returns over the long haul. And for the record, I put my money where my mouth is: I will spend over $10K this year on career coaching for myself. Yes, that’s a lot of jack, but doing this keeps me accountable to always be improving my performance. (Reading free vocational advice online inspires zero accountability!)

2. Practice (Get Your Ego Out of the Way!)

If you’re a normal, red-blooded human being, practicing your skills is not your favorite thing to do. (That may be putting it mildly.) And practicing in front of other people…ugh! How do you get past the “ugh?” Think of it this way: you need to decide if your ego will be the single biggest factor in shutting down your skill development. If it is, good luck with that. If not, then get over yourself and make practicing a routine part of your life. Getting over yourself = getting better at what you do. I’m dancing in private at present; soon the whole world will see!

3. Perfect the Most Critical Moves

There are some basic moves that are the foundation of every dance; everything else is just for show. Similarly, the basis of the sales presentation comes down to how you perform in critical moments. Building rapport, determining the pain, finding personalized value, asking for the sale: these are the critical moves. Get these down (see step 2.) and then get them down some more. And some more. More. Practice until those critical moves become second nature.

4. Have Fun

Have you ever seen an uptight dancer perform? It’s not pretty. And, it’s contagious. When we watch someone who is tense and awkward, we feel the same way. It’s weird how that works, but we all know it’s true. It’s the same way with salespeople. Overly aggressive, intense, serious, bored, or annoyed salespeople bring all of those feelings to the sales presentation and they quickly spread to customers. Don’t be that person. Loosen up! Don’t take yourself so seriously. (A boatload of practicing will free you up to have fun…see how that works?!) If you are having fun doing your work, it will be good for you and even better for your customer.

Learn the sales dance by remaining a student. Perfect the moves that will engage and impress your customers, and you will change their world.

The efficient markets hypothesis (EMH) is one of the more controversial theories on how the financial markets work.

Popularized by Nobel-prize winning economist Eugene Fama, the EMH basically argues that all available information at any given time is priced into the market. And therefore, it's almost impossible to try to invest in a way to beat the market.

Folks like Vanguard's Jack Bogle and Nobel-prize winning economist Robert Shiller disagree with the EMH because it essentially denies the existence of asset bubbles.

With high-priced momentum stocks like Twitter and Groupon crashing lately, people are once again suggesting that we are seeing a failure of the EMH.

To that, famed venture capitalist Marc Andreessen offers a couple of Tweets.

Andreessen explains that the current price of a company is often factored into the valuation model for that company. And as George Soros' theory of reflexivity posits, you basically get a feedback loop that can cause prices to keep going in one direction or another.

Because of this relationship, "prices drive the creation of theories" that explain the moves.

"Therefore a boom in theories of how everything's a bubble and certain to crash is evidence of a cyclical bottom, not a cyclical top," he says. "Therefore Efficient Market Hypothesis is correct if for "all information" you substitute "all information, theories, noise, and bullsh*t"."

With that conclusion, Andreessen is more or less bridging the gap between Fama and Shiller.

Here are all of Andreessen's tweets.

1/Conventional view of how to value companies: (1) Analyze company + its financials + future cash flows; (2) Calculate correct valuation.

— Marc Andreessen (@pmarca) May 7, 2014

2/What actually happens: (1) Observe current market valuation; (2) Construct theory and model to explain that valuation.

— Marc Andreessen (@pmarca) May 7, 2014

3/In this way, George Soros's theory of reflexivity is exactly correct. http://t.co/iX3cWkmZP0

— Marc Andreessen (@pmarca) May 7, 2014

4/Fundamentals influence prices which influence fundamentals which influence prices which influence fundamentals... ad infinitum.

— Marc Andreessen (@pmarca) May 7, 2014

5/At cyclical top, high prices drive creation of theories to explain infinite future glory; negative investors & analysts get fired.

— Marc Andreessen (@pmarca) May 7, 2014

6/At cyclical bottom, low prices drive creation of theories to explain permanent future misery; positive investors & analysts get fired.

— Marc Andreessen (@pmarca) May 7, 2014

7/Therefore a boom in theories of how everything's a bubble and certain to crash is evidence of a cyclical bottom, not a cyclical top.

— Marc Andreessen (@pmarca) May 7, 2014

8/Therefore Efficient Market Hypothesis is correct if for "all information" you substitute "all information, theories, noise, and bullsh*t".

— Marc Andreessen (@pmarca) May 7, 2014

9/Since we are social animals, the challenge of actually standing outside of herd is brutally hard. Pressure to conform is constant/intense.

— Marc Andreessen (@pmarca) May 7, 2014

Join the conversation about this story »

One of the hottest topics in our industry and at a recent panel at SMX West is the reality of multi-device or multi-channel attribution and its impact on conversion optimization. If a user enters your funnel on one device and then picks up the process on another device, what does that do to your CRO efforts? It raises questions around managing the customer experiences, determining when and where cross-platform optimization is appropriate, and what if any impact this evolving reality has on our ability to measure and maximize conversions. Here’s a closer look at multi-device attribution and some preliminary thoughts on how you can work with this in your own efforts to increase conversions in your business.

Image source: Flickr user adactio

What are we really talking about with multi-device attribution, anyways?

Avinash Kaushik wisely points out that there’s a significant amount of confusion when discussing multi-device attribution. He suggests that to some extent, different audiences perceive it uniquely, mostly according to which interpretation matters to their own immediate priorities. Executives and managers at the highest levels may perceive attribution challenges as determining how your online activity drives online profits. (I will follow his recommendation and refer you to this great case study from Google Think Insights on HP’s Online-to-Store conversion tests to help you explore this issue more in depth).

At a more digital level, which is where I will focus today, there are two distinct challenges that we face as marketers managing the impact of multiple devices on our conversions. The first is the reality that most users today are what Kaushik calls Four Screen People. Four Screen People interact with our brands in multiple digital formats: television, computer (desktop or laptop), tablets, and smartphones. There are three salient challenges with this reality:

1. How do we control and architect the customer experience for each device AND across devices?
2. What brand encounters are our customers and prospects having, and which ones are really matter?
3. With so many options, how do we achieve the right mix (and create the right sequencing) in this potentially fragmented environment?

And then finally, there’s the attribution challenge, as in “where do I allocate credit for driving my actual conversions?”

How do I know what’s driving my conversions in a multi-device world?

A theoretical buying funnel often looks something like this: your prospective customer is searching Google for information about social media management tools. She sees an organic result or perhaps a PPC ad for your brand. She goes to your website, and gives you her email address in exchange for a white paper about how social media tools work. You start nurturing the relationship, by sending regular emails. Eventually, there’s a call to action (maybe a discount) that’s too strong to resist and then you make the sale. This is a buying funnel that’s simple to understand. The process of where she came in, how you moved her along and deepened the relationship, and ultimately made the sale is clear. It’s possible to look at that objectively and optimize any part of that interaction.

Now, consider the funnel through this view for the same product. Your customer is in a meeting and realizes her company needs a social media management tool. She conducts a search on her iPhone and hits a PPC ad for your product. She emails herself the link, which she browses on her tablet over lunch. In the afternoon, she goes back to her laptop and checks out your site more in depth, eventually signing up for your mailing and printing off your white paper to share with her colleagues. She gets your emails over the course of a few weeks, reading them across devices. Eventually, a headline catches her eye one morning when she’s using her partner’s Android phone and she makes the purchase from his phone using her PayPal account. Technically, the same thing happened, except that looking at the situation through the lens of which devices played a role vastly complicates things.

At the highest level, you can still optimize any of the components. Perhaps your insights are actionable – X% of your conversions are mobile, so your sales and checkout process had better be optimized for mobile. But there’s a bigger question in play. You can only spend so much on digital advertising and content deployment. The real benefits of most optimization techniques are incremental, and you need to focus on specific things to capture that. So when you’re looking at the high level overview, you’re really trying to determine which devices and what channels really contributed to the conversion, so that you can attribute credit. Credit translates into future digital spending and how you allocate precious staff time and creative investments.

The trouble with attribution models

There are a number of different attribution models that are used to figure out which digital interaction point “made” the conversion. This list isn’t exhaustive, but rather meant to illustrate some different approaches to thinking about the process. I’ve also listed any issues or advantages to each one. The bottom line, though, is that most of the attribution models that we currently have are insufficient for the complexity of the situations that we’re managing, particularly in a multi-device world. The idea is to get to attribution data and an analytical model that provides sufficient information for an upgrade in the way that we do business.

First click: the first click attribution model looks at which click brought the lead into the funnel and attributes credit there. It’s helpful because it lets you know where you’re being seen, but limits insight on what really drives the final conversion.

Last click: the last click attribution model looks at which click closed the deal. This information is great because you know what converted, but you don’t understand their behavior beforehand or what initially brought them in.

Even attribution: in an even attribution model, you have some insight into the different touch points that are impacting your business. This is better than a single click model, and instead looks at multiple channels throughout the funnel. Rather than determine which ones have more weight, you attribute value to each one equally. In this scenario, you’re getting more insight on which clicks matter but you’re not able to weight and rank them, and in turn derive insights for your spending.

Time decay model attribution: This is a more complex version of the even attribution approach. It takes into account the multiple clicks or touch points during the funnel, and weights that according to recency. Things that happened just before the conversion are attributed more value than those actions that happened in the past. It’s better than an even attribution, but it doesn’t really account for the power of nurturing a lead or quantify the universe of factors that could be influencing the conversion.

Custom or adjustable attribution: Custom or adjustable models are the best. They allow you to use multi-channel behavioral reports to look at the whole lifecycle, and use mathematical modeling and other intelligence that your business gathers to create an algorithm that’s customized to your business and gives you highly personal insights into the right attribution for your funnel.

Closing thoughts

In raising the idea of multi-device and multi-channel attribution, it’s a bit like opening a can of worms. It’s an important issue worthy of examination, even if there are no clear cut answers or silver bullet tools. The thinking is evolving in the direction of multi-channel behavioral reports and using customized algorithms to help you attribute value. The insights derived from this are general enough to help executives make big spending decisions and micro enough to let marketers and analytics professionals tweak variables in the funnel and look at how they convert differently.

Managing this conversation in your own organization probably starts with educating your colleagues on the different types of multi-channel attribute challenges and which ones matter most to your bottom line. It’s then helpful to take a look at where your data and level of understanding is today, and create a roadmap that gets you to a richer analysis. Every incremental improvement will improve your ROI, and get you closer to your conversion ideal.

Is multi-device attribution an issue for you? How are you handling it? Let us know in the comments.

From the dawn of language to today’s ultra-fast technology culture, words have always mattered. For marketers, word usage influences how concepts are perceived and how behaviors are driven. For better or for worse, marketers have become married to certain words and phrases – and for some reason, they feel obligated to use them over and over again. The better part of this marriage is that it’s easy because it’s a cookie cutter. But the worst part is that certain repetitive phrases have lost market value over the years and are now no more than empty statements.

A recent New York Times article, Words We Love Too Much, points out that the use of clichés are sinful and regularly frowned upon in the newsroom. In fact, journalists are always actively looking to identify thoughtless words and phrases that not only add little value, but have proven to be “played out.” Why? Because a journalist knows that her readers are smart. Just as journalists connect with audiences with thoughtful writing, marketers need to better connect with consumers with meaningful content.

Here’s a good indication of how important this is: The Washington Post keeps a running list of words to avoid. To be honest, we’ve all been guilty of using them. And while 150 have been identified like using the word “imagine” as the first word in your lede or the phrase “time will tell if… ” the top 25 list below covers a good pool of phrases we should, at least, use sparingly moving forward.

1. At first glance (or worse, “at first blush”)
2. As a nation (or worse, “as a society”)
3. Upon deeper reflection (why not reflect deeply from the start?)
4. Observers (unless referring to people actually sitting around watching something)
5. [Person] is not alone (from anecdote to generalization, we get it)
6. And [someone/something] is no exception
7. Pundits say (or “critics say”)
8. The American people (unless in a quote)
9. The narrative (unless referring to a style of writing)
10. Probe (an uncomfortable substitute for “investigation”)
11. Opens/offers a rare window (unless it is a real window that is in fact unusual)
12. Begs the question (unless used properly – and so rarely used properly that it’s not worth the trouble)
13. Be that as it may
14. If you will (actually, I won’t)
15. A cautionary tale
16. Needless to say (then don’t say it)
17. Suffice it to say (if it suffices, then just say it)
18. This is not your father’s [anything]
19. [Anything] 2.0 (or 3.0, or 4.0…)
20. At a crossroads (unless referring to an actual intersection)
21. The powers that be
22. Outside the box (describes creative thinking — with a cliche)
23. A favorite Washington parlor game
24. Yes, Virginia, there is a [something]
25. Christmas came early for [someone]

You just can’t get people to buy your stuff

Despite the detailed information you’ve provided on your website, people are not signing up for your offers, not engaging with your social media programs and maybe just a few are actually walking into the door of your store.

What are you doing wrong? You just can’t get more people to buy your stuff.

Does this sound familiar?

I’m going to share with you one of the biggest marketing secrets to make more sales: When you focus on the features of your services or products, your marketing efforts won’t work.

It’s really just that simple.

Understanding your customer’s challenges

The first step to learning how to sell solutions and not just your products is to really listen to your customers when they talk about their problems. Once you understand how your services can untangle their obstacles, the next step is to start selling solutions that create a motivating force for someone to buy from you.

People don’t want to buy your product or services. They want to buy solutions for their problems. They want to know how your stuff can provide them with a specific outcome to make their lives easier.

I use to be in sales

Want to know where my first real grown-up job was? My junior year in college I got my first ‘I can’t believe they’re paying me this much to work here’ job at a local radio station. I worked in sales at the Top 40 station that all the college kids locked into the first place on their car radio buttons.

I spent the first month learning all the secrets behind the music and voices on the air. I soaked in as much as my college brain could handle. For the next fifteen years, I found a home in radio.

With the exception of accounting, I’ve done just about every job you could imagine at a radio station. I even did a small part on the morning show at our local country station for about a year and half.

Then came that fateful day when the big box store corporations took over my world. I moved to the online division and eventually my frustrations with the way radio was changing caused me to leave.

I left radio to start my own business in 1999. That was truly the day the music died.

The real reason I stopped selling

I worked in sales for over ten years. By the time I worked at my last radio station, I moved my desk into the marketing department.

Want to know the real reason I stopped selling? I’m abso-freaking-lutely terrible at the hard sell. Quotas were getting harder for me to reach. Management was always on me to close more deals.

I tried, I really did but it just got to that uncomfortable, awkward icky place.

Truth was – I sucked at selling the product.

Ironically, over those ten years in sales, I did make money and hit my commission numbers. People bought from me because of my customer service skills.

They bought from me because I showed them how to get more folks through their doors, more people to show up to their events and more orders for their stuff.

At the time, I didn’t realize that I was selling them solutions.

I gave them reasons why they should use my radio station – my listeners where loyal to the station’s advertisers, they were the right customers these businesses wanted and they had the money and the right problems to buy.

You’d think I would have been the top sales person and drive a big fancy car from all that solution selling.  But I didn’t.

Businesses wanted lower rates. They wanted to know they were getting a good deal or they’d buy from the radio rep that was waiting for his turn to get into the manager’s office.

It was a different time back then. Those were the days before social media and the idea of one-to-one engagement.

Sell the Solution, Not the Product

Most of the statistics I found said we see over 250 marketing messages per day. That number includes everything from TV commercials, outdoor billboards and online banner ads.

There’s no way our brains can process that many messages. Chances are, you probably only recall seeing about a third of those marketing ads.

But the right message telling us how it can fix our problems? Now that will get our attention. A marketing message that shows us something we want will get noticed and remembered.

How do we show our customers we have the right answers to their challenges?

1. Establish value

I’m not talking about the “do you want to make that a value meal?” kind of thing. I mean to focus on the value your products can bring to your customers.

Does your service help them save time? Will using your product reduce the risk of something that concerns them?

Don’t just list all the selling points of your stuff. Use your marketing messages to tell them about how they’ll benefit from buying from you.

2. Engage and then inform

When you pull your customers in with something that connects with them, they’ll be more open to hearing about your offers. I always say that people do business with PEOPLE that they know and trust. Building that relationship with them is the key to selling solutions.

Show them you know what you’re talking about with blog posts that teach them the basics. Establish your expertise with tips on YouTube videos or creating step-by-step image-based ebooks.

Think about a way to tell your company’s story through selling solutions. Keep asking yourself the question, “How can I help my customer?” until you find the answers where you connect with your customers on an emotional level.

Only then can your products and services turn from just trying to sell them your stuff into something they want and need. And most likely, will pay anything to get it.

Photo credit: Pretty water drops 

PS Are tips like these helpful to figure out your social media marketing? Download the Strategy Builder workbook and get more of my secret tips to help you develop your social media plans. It’s an easy to follow marketing strategy workbook to you create successful social media campaigns.

Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs has a lot to teach when it comes to hiring the right employees.

Even if you're not in total agreement, most of us heard about Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs in Psychology 101 class. In a 1943 paper, Abraham Maslow suggested that people make fundamental and predictable decisions based on different behavioral needs. These needs range from primitive, e.g., requiring water or food, to being completely fulfilled. He separated these states into five distinct levels and referred to them collectively as a hierarchy of needs.

According to Maslow's hierarchy, a person couldn't move to a higher level unless the needs of the lower level were satisfied first.

When it comes to hiring, the theory suggests that job candidates jobs are likely motivated to work to fulfill one of three core needs: economic, social or achievement. The problem is that while companies all want to hire those with the need to achieve, they only consider those who first have an economic need to apply, and second, those among this group who possess some arbitrary list of skills, experiences and personality traits.

It seems to me that this bottoms-up process is why companies can't hire stronger people.

Consider that a person who is unemployed or underemployed seeks a new job primarily for monetary reasons, with the actual work less important. This is the economic need in action. The second motivating need is team-driven. Many people leave companies due to lack of a supportive manager or an inability to develop personal relationships with co-workers. They also accept jobs for these very same reasons. The third job-seeking driver is career growth. Those with an achievement need leave when this is missing and won't accept another job without it.

Knowing what underlying need is driving your candidate to look for another job is essential if you want to find and hire the right people for the right reasons. For example, a passive candidate who is not looking might be enticed to explore a situation if it offered significant upside potential and growth. On the other hand, if the candidate is driven by a short-term economic need, the person will likely be less discriminating and take a position primarily for the salary and benefits.

The problem is that once these lower order economic needs are filled, dissatisfaction with the work itself will quickly follow.

To get yourself out of this self-defeating dilemma, you'll need to redesign your hiring process from a top-down Maslow perspective. Here's how to get started:

1. Stop using skills-infested job descriptions for advertising, screening and selection.

Recognize that a list of skills, experiences and academic requirements is not a job description, it's a person description. Using traditional job descriptions eliminates all of the good people who can do the work exceptionally well, but have a different mix of skills and experiences. It even eliminates all of the best people who have the skills, but don't want to take a lateral transfer.

2. Prepare performance-based job descriptions to replace traditional job descriptions.

Clarify the performance expectations of the job by defining what a person would need to do to be considered a top performer, not what a person needs to have in terms of skills. Here's a full description of how to implement this critical step. This is the information achievement-motivated people need to know before they'll even engage in a serious career discussion. Here's a sample job posting emphasizing performance over skills. The response was overwhelming.

3. Offer career opportunities, not lateral transfers.

The difference between what you need done and what the person has already accomplished represents a career move. If the gap is too wide, the person is too light. And if the difference is not wide enough, the person is too strong. You can use the "most significant accomplishment" question to make sure the gap is just right.

4. Learn to slow dance.

If your hiring processes are designed to fill positions as quickly as possible with the best person who applies, you won't find many people with an achievement need. People with an achievement need require more time to fully evaluate the career potential of any job switch. That's why slow dancing is so important. Here are the basic steps.

5. Close on career growth, not compensation maximization.

Before negotiating an offer, I ignore the compensation and ask the potential hire if they really want the job. If the answer is yes, I then ask why. If they can't convince me they fully appreciate the career value of the job, they won't be able to convince anyone else either. These are the people who are likely to take counter-offers or be lured by the biggest comp increase.

While the logic of all this can't be disputed, some naysayers in your HR department will claim non-compliance. In this case, send them this white paper by one of the top labor attorneys in the U.S. It's part of the validation study we prepared for The Essential Guide for Hiring & Getting Hired. Bottom line, if you want to see and hire more people driven by the achievement need, don't try to attract them with lateral transfers or screen them out on their economic need and the possession of skills and experience that don't predict performance.

You don't need to invoke Maslow to reach this logical conclusion, but it might help.

Content marketing has gone mainstream. Most B2B companies now use content to raise brand awareness and stand out from their competitors.

However, new research from the Content Marketing Institute and MarketingProfs has some surprising statistics. According to the B2B Enterprise Content Marketing: 2014 Benchmarks, Budgets, and Trends – North America report, only 32% of enterprise B2B marketers think their content marketing is effective.

Why is this?

Many factors could be at play, but another statistic in the report sheds some light on this. According to the report, only 41% of enterprise B2B marketers have a documented content marketing strategy.

A strategy shapes every aspect of your content marketing. It tells you where you are today, describes where you want to go in the future and gives you a roadmap to get there. If you don’t have a content marketing strategy, it’s like you are driving to a new location without a GPS. Chances are you will get lost along the way and waste money on gas.

Here are seven questions to ask when you develop a content marketing strategy:

1. How will you get key stakeholders on board?

It will be hard to get results from your content marketing if you’re the only one committed to the initiative. You’ll need to show others in your enterprise the value of content marketing and why it is necessary. If they don’t see the need, you won’t get buy-in. You should also address their concerns and discuss potential risks. For more information on getting content marketing buy-in, check out this article.

2. Why are you using content marketing?

Before you publish another piece of content, think about why you are doing content marketing. Is it to raise brand awareness, attract more high-quality leads or improve your customer service? Your content marketing strategy should support your larger business and marketing goals. The better you can align each piece of content with a larger business goal, the better your results will be.

3. Who are your target audiences for your content?

You can produce tons of content – even great content – but if it’s not relevant to your target audience, you are wasting your resources. In the latest TechTarget Media Consumption Research Brief, B2B technology buyers stated that “media is only effective if the information that it features is relevant to their research”. If your content isn’t relevant, your buyers will search elsewhere to find what they are looking for.

You can create targeted content for each audience based on their role, needs or stage in the sales cycle. However, don’t try to create content for every buyer and influencer right away. Start by focusing on one or two of your key audiences. Spend time getting to know them. What are their needs? What is their typical day like? How do they consume content? It’s better to gain a deep understanding of one key audience than it is to do a half-assed job creating content for lots of audiences.

4. Where are you at today?

Before you leave for your destination, you must know from where you are leaving. Perform a content audit to determine what content you already have and where you need to fill the gaps. For example, are you missing content that speaks to a key audience? Do you need content to support an upcoming product launch? Do you need to publish to your blog on a more regular basis?

When you conduct your content audit, you should refer to your analytics to see how your current content is performing. This will let you know what topics your audience finds the most valuable. You can then create similar content to bring more targeted leads to your website.

5. What topics are you going to cover?

After you identify your gaps, think about what you want to be the “go-to” resource for. Then, create an editorial calendar with lots of content about these topics. Your editorial calendar doesn’t need to be complex. It can be as simple as an Excel sheet with columns for the following:

• The content’s title
• Format (i.e. blog post, webinar)
• Author
• Publication date
• Status (i.e. in development, published)
• Target audience
• Keywords
• Call to action
• Related campaign

6. What channels will you use?

Before you get excited about the latest social network, find out if your target audience hangs out there. If not, you should focus your efforts on the places where you can interact with your target audience.

Also think about how your target audience prefers to consume content during each stage of the buying cycle. Do they rely on white papers to educate themselves about your type of product or service? Do they prefer to view content on desktops or mobile devices? Are they likely to attend webinars or watch videos? Be sure that you create content for all their preferred channels.

7. What resources do you have?

One of the biggest B2B content marketing challenges is finding the resources to produce content. Do you need more copywriters, designers or developers? Do you have a social media manager who will share your content on all your social networks? Do you want to get your internal subject matter experts to blog for you? Do you have a content marketing manager to oversee your content and make sure you tell a consistent story across all your channels? If not, you may need to staff up or look for freelance help.

Creating a content marketing strategy can put you on the road towards marketing success. The most important thing to do is put your audience first. When you create content that resonates with them, you’ll improve your results.

When our businesses are doing well, we naturally want them to do even better. If we generate 10 leads in a month we want to generate 20 the next month. Sometimes stepping up your goals can be good for business. But if you’re high expectations become outright greed, your company may be in trouble.

Greed can wreak havoc on your business if you allow it to start influencing your actions. Here are 10 ways greed can ruin everything you’ve worked to achieve:

1. You Look for Ways to Make Money, Not Ways to Improve

Every business should want to improve customer experience. If you’re not trying to help your customer, you’re not helping yourself. Unfortunately, many businesses seem to run counter to this idea. Instead they’re looking for ways to charge their customers more rather than help them out, and that will lead to a decline in business if people feel you don’t really care about them.

2. You Make Bad Personnel Decisions

If you care only about making money, you may overlook flaws in your employees if they are still producing strong monetary results. For instance, you may ignore the sexual harassment being inflicted by one of your managers just because he happens to be a top salesman. That’s bad for the company because it will hurt morale and lead to employees leaving.

3. You Don’t Spend Money Making Your Employees Happy

Happy employees make for good businesses, because they are the bridge between you and your customers. When employees are unhappy, they won’t do their best for you, and that can actually lead to a decline in sales. Invest money in making your employees happy, whether you spring for lunch on Fridays or stock free sodas in the company fringe. It’s money that will come back into your own pocket.

4. You Forego Vacations to Work

Everyone needs a little break. Even if you let your employees have vacation but don’t take one yourself, your lack of downtime will come back to hurt you. You’ll be more productive and a better businessperson if you take time off every once in a while.

5. You Take on More Clients than You Can Efficiently Manage

You’re probably thinking more clients equals more money, so the more the merrier, right? Wrong. If you stretch your staff too thin with your workload, those clients will not be happy with your work. Worse yet, word may leak out to other potential clients that you’re not meeting deadlines or producing good work.

6. You Alienate Your Employees

Far worse than merely annoying your employees, you could alienate them if you are stockpiling all the money for yourself. When they realize they are working hard but getting little return because you’re hoarding the money you would have given for raises, you can expect them to start heading for the exits — and they won’t do you any favors by badmouthing you at their next workplace.

7. You Do SEO Too Aggressively

Yes, everyone should have a good search engine optimization strategy in place, but if you find yourself resorting to black hat tactics such as keyword stuffing or link farming in an attempt to get more business, you’re not just hurting your company’s reputation. You could even be penalized by Google.

8. You’re Not Mentoring Anyone

Mentoring doesn’t really fit in well with greediness. There’s no monetary reward for mentoring, so it can quickly fall by the wayside. This is foolish, because great mentors produce great workers who can carry on your business for years to come — and ultimately make you more money to boot.

9. You Squander Your Clients’ Trust

When it becomes clear that you only care about making money, you risk losing even the most loyal clients. They want someone working for them who sees them as more than just a dollar sign.

10. You Don’t Help Others

Greediness kills kindness, and that’s a deadly business sin. Sometimes an industry-wide collaboration or a friendly retweet of a rival’s appeal for charity donations can show your humanity and also remind you why you got into business in the first place.

Don’t let success make you forget what’s truly important for your business, its clients and your employees. If you see too many of these examples lurking in your business practices, it may be time for a change.

Social media marketing must be justified. At the end of the day, social admins must show how their efforts affected a client, or a company’s, bottom line. Testing, timing and targeting are integral in social management, but the real questions remains: How do we give value to the fleeting micro engagements that make up social media interaction?

The Growth of the Social Web

First, consider the world we live in today. The Pew Research Internet Project predicts the Internet, and the way we communicate through it, will continue to become more and more embedded into our everyday lives. As the web grows, so too will the number of users invested in social media networking. In order for anyone (brand or individual) to reap the benefits of social, businesses must establish a reputable (i.e. searchable) presence in their niche or industry. This takes A) time and B) money.

Quantitative

Lets be honest, it’s no secret social isn’t the BEST medium to generate leads, especially in outbound orientated B2B. Not all channels are created equal; and, according to your audience, certain channels will work better for different brands. Nevertheless, a healthy social presence can only improve your marketing efforts. Your social strategy must reflect, and adhere to, the measurable data produced when posting. This data will direct how you conduct future social media campaigns – where ROI really matters.

So, what data should we measure in order to gauge social media’s effectiveness? Well, it’s a good idea to start with individual social channels and their respective engagement indicators. Are your Facebook posts attracting likes, shares or comments? Are your Tweets getting retweeted? If you’re social strategy seems like you’re shouting into space, aggressive testing is the best way to optimize your results. Experiment with different types of content (video, pictures, blogs) and rearrange your messaging (syntax and rhetoric) to uncover what “clicks” with your following. This takes time.

Facebook Page Insights and Google+ Ripples are great native features that allow social admins to measure reach, but sometimes that’s not enough. To gain a better grasp on social data, businesses employ third-party applications to monitor, schedule and track social content. Hootsuite, Buffer, and Hubspot are just a few of the popular social publishing tools for deep social insight. Statigram, now Iconosquare, is great for Instagram insight. Another key reason to invest in social tools is automation. By scheduling your social posts, admins can test frequency and timeliness, two key aspects of the real-time nature of most social networks.

Now, for the bottom line. Lead generation, referral traffic and conversion are metrics most online business efforts care about to measure web marketing. A strong social media presence can influence these metrics, but it’s well known that social should never be the nucleus of your sales efforts, but rather a tool for relationship building, thought leadership and customer service. With the exception of budgeted advertising, social media ranks low in generating significant conversion. However, there are hidden, immeasurable benefits to social.

Qualitative

Conversation, or connecting with two or more people to share an idea, is fundamental to social media. Yet, how can we attribute value to a conversation? One point to consider is the idea of social capital. Simplified, social capital can be described as an investment that creates unseen benefits through transparent cooperation between groups and individuals (take a second to read that again). In an article by Rig Dragon, social capital is difficult to predict and measure, but most definitely applicable in social media. Social media, like advertising, creates unseen impressions too important to ignore.

In marketing, we often refer to the customer experience as the ultimate goal of a successful business. Users, new and old, who happen upon your social presence must be overwhelmed by the quality of information they see in order to be affected by your social efforts. On a personal level, the value of transparent community engagement initiated from a social admin cannot be measured empirically, but we all know it does indeed affect those who engage. Just think about it; how do you feel when your favorite restaurant retweets your picture or a brand publically replies to you? Five minutes of fame and appreciation goes a long way.

Think of your social media efforts as a transaction of energy. Reciprocal conversation, online or in person, is rewarding to all parties involved.

 

Photo Credit: Mike Licht, geekbinge, nextness

Sales Training Article: Who Buys?

By John Holland, Chief Content Officer, CustomerCentric Selling® - The Sales Training Company

Image courtesy of Worradmu at FreeDigitalPhotos.net

Years ago I worked on a transaction with an insurance company that was an IBM mainframe client. I had gotten a foothold into the account by selling them disk drives about 6 months prior. They were the only non-IBM devices in the entire Data Center.

The client was experiencing performance problems because they needed more memory. That meant replacing their processor at a cost of about $6M. I had an offering that could expand the memory and defer an upgrade for about a year that cost $250K. What appeared to be a slam-dunk financial decision became a political situation. Things got complicated.

The IBM salesperson enjoyed a close relationship with the CIO, a person I couldn't gain access to. My highest contact was the VP of IT who was a level below and was responsible for the Data Center. He made me aware that the IBM rep would likely not make quota that year if the mainframe upgrade order wasn't placed.

Sign-up for a sales training workshop to learn how to better navigate sales cycles and improve sales performance.

The decision hung for about 3 weeks until the VP suggested having lunch to discuss where things stood. During the meal, the pros and cons were considered. Bill flip-flopped numerous times about whether to make a financial or political choice. When the bill came, he took it and said he would pick up lunch. Instinctively I took the check from his hand and told him as the vendor it was mine to pay.

The following week, I got the order. To this day I'm not sure exactly how it happened. That said, I'm convinced that Bill's offer to pick up lunch was his way of saying: Sorry. You aren't getting this order. I'm virtually certain IBM would have gotten the upgrade had I not bought lunch.

I sometimes tell this war story during workshops to make the point that selling is a combination of science and art. While CCS® tries to swing the pendulum toward being more of a science, there will always be the human element. Selling is complex and situational. Experience in reading buyers along with process is a hard combination to beat.

---

Need some help with your sales performance? Take a look at the sales training workshops available to you and improve sales performance. Your Roadmap to Revenue Growth® awaits!

Read more sales training articles from CustomerCentric Selling® - The Sales Training Company.

We all know the importance of creating original content, but the reality is, it’s hard.

Out of necessity many content marketers have developed their skills at “re-imagining” (h/t Ann Handley) their content to extend the life and value it can deliver.

Beyond the value extension of content through repurposing is the function of personalizing content for different markets and using a modular approach to segmenting useful information for specific audience targeting. Reusing content is efficient and it’s also effective when architected through a smart strategy that sees beyond simply publishing the same thing 3 ways.

At the B2B Content2Conversion conference in New York this week, my friend Pam Didner (Global Integrated Marketing Strategist at Intel) gave an excellent presentation on repurposing content.

Before you repurpose, reuse, and refresh content there are a few things to think about first.

• Personas:  Who is your audience?
• Editorial:  What topics will you use to engage with them?
• Content:  What materials to use to engage with them?

It’s essential to know who you are creating and repurposing content for in order to create a more useful experience for buyers and to be more effective as a marketer. A few ways you can better understand your target audience include:

• Buyer research
• Seller interviews
• Keyword research
• Social listening – sysomos
• Direct observations

Intel created a CTO persona for sales engagement, but  marketing’s focus is on IT Managers. The CTO persona is used to help educate the sales team on how to talk to CTOs. For marketing, the focus is not on the CTO, but on IT Managers. As a result, the targets for sales and marketing will probably need slightly different content. For customer targeting and persona’s it’s important to see the difference in who marketing and sales need to connect with.

In the case of Intel, the persona they created is global. How can you do that? Focus mostly on the commonalities across regions and countries for that segment.

When identifying personas, also include who their influencers are (roles, vendors, companies).  A good persona provides insight for content ideation, creation and marketing.

Creating Personas:

• Name
• Personal profile
• Job description
• Challenges or desires
• Content needs
• Preferred media to receive information

How Personals Provide Insight into Editorial Planning

• Pain points
• Keyword research
• Jobs description
• Attributes
• Desires
• Used to brainstorm content

Be focused, but understand you cannot please everyone. Say “no” with a plate of cookies.

Editorial Topics & Content Continuum. Talk about content that relates to what customers care about relevant to your products and services. When you have to create a large amount of content, start with broad topics. Find a balance between content that is helpful and content that sells.

• Yearly – Strategic
• Monthly – Strategic
• Weekly – Social and Paid Tactics
• Daily – Social and Paid Tactics
• Hourly – Social and Paid Tactics

And example would be to create a calendar of topics and overlay a calendar of events (if your company is active with events) as triggers for content topics.

Select content planning tools:

• Divvy HQ
• Gather Content
• Kapost
• Compendium (Now Oracle Marketing Cloud)
• WordPress
• Trello
• Opal Moments

An example  of repurposing content

One 18 page white paper can be repurposed as:

• 1 podcast interview author
• 1 shor video animation
• w white board video
• 5 short blog posts
• 3 infographics
• 1 presentation

For social media – break down long form content into smaller pieces for social sharing.

Another example of “Hero Content” that is repurposed was the Sophisticated Marketer’s Guide to LinkedIn.

BTW, this campaign won a Killer Content Marketing Award at the conference! Congratulations to Jason Miller, Deanna Lazzaroni and the team at LinkedIn Marketing Solutions as well as the agency teams (including TopRank Marketing‘s work with the eBook) that produced this amazing campaign.

Elements of this campaign included a consistent visual them repurposed in multiple formats for multiple specific audiences:

• eBook
• Infographics
• Webinar
• Presentations
• Print book
• Blog posts
• Global versions of the eBook in different languages
• Vertically specific versions – CMO’s, Healthcare, Event Marketing, etc

This was done over a period of months

Repurposing content is time consuming and it can be expensive. With no budget, you need to wear multiple hats and you’ll need to get partner support.

Resources to find freelancers:

• fiverr
• tenrr
• scripted

Takeaways:

1. Evaluate your content, start with promotion in mind
2. It takes time, budget and effort to repurpose, reuse and repackage. You must prioritize!
3. Create a RRR (repurpose, reuse, refresh) plan.
Start with flagship content and connect the dots by pulling in materials form different pieces of content.

Here’s Pam’s full presentation below and a blog post as well (see how she practices what she’s preaching?).

How is your company incorporating repurposing content in your content marketing planning? Have you seen any great brand examples of reimagined, repurposed, reused and refreshed content?

Graphic: Shutterstock

---

Gain a competitive advantage by subscribing to the
TopRank® Online Marketing Newsletter.

© Online Marketing Blog from TopRank® Online Marketing, 2014. | Content Marketing Trifecta: How to Repurpose, Reuse & Refresh Content – Intel’s @PamDidner at #C2C14 | http://www.toprankblog.com

Which measures are best for evaluating CRM programmes?

There is certainly no shortage of things to measure in the world of customer relationship management. With modern CRM systems straddling multiple departments, disciplines and channels, it’s a number crunching nightmare.

‘CRM technology can deliver benefit in lots of different ways,’ explains Richard Boardman, founder of Mareeba Consulting. ‘You might use it for lead management purposes to help you increase the number of leads you get and the percentage that you convert to end business. It can be used to help you manage your existing customers more effectively and sell more to them. It can be used to help you with your marketing communications or improving the quality and speed of fulfilment of your products and services or streamlining your support operation. It really can be used in lots and lots of different ways.’

Indeed, it may even be used to do all of these things simultaneously. With so many moving parts involved in a CRM project, it’s enough to make your head spin. But struggling with CRM metrics may be symptomatic of a much wider problem.

‘A lot of CRM initiatives historically have gone awry or are perceived not to be successful, but when you dig into them you find out that there is really no way to tell if they were successful or not, because you find that the projects didn’t have any metrics to find to be able to determine success,’ notes Bill Band, VP and principal analyst at Forrester Research.

‘Typically that points to a deeper rooted issue – it’s not that metrics are so important in and of themselves, but usually the companies haven’t thought through metrics around customer-facing initiatives, and often it speaks that they don’t have a strategy. Metrics are only relevant in relation to a strategy that you are trying to execute. And when I see that metrics haven’t been defined, often the root cause is because there really isn’t a customer relationship strategy that has been worked out.’

Having already covered the building of a CRM strategy earlier in this series, this shouldn’t be a problem you will encounter. But even with a robust strategy in place, with clearly defined aims, this doesn’t mean that everyone within the organisation has a similarly clear line of sight to the targets – something that Ed Thompson, VP and distinguished analyst at Gartner Research believes is a particularly acute problem for the staff working at the coal face.

‘One of the problems we have identified is that even if the company knows what it is trying to achieve – in other words, it is pretty clear about its financial goals and top-level goals about acquiring more customers or improving campaign responses or lowering cost of service or whatever their goal is – there can be an issue in that Joe Blogs the frontline employee can’t see what he’s doing in his day-to-day life has got anything to do with it,’ he explains.

‘And the reason is that he’s being measured on something completely different – he’s told to improve his first call resolution rate and can’t see why his metric ties to the big CRM initiative and why he has an impact on it.

‘The granularity of metrics and how they link together means that people feel disconnected and disenfranchised. You end up with a disconnect between the frontline staff and the senior management and it is very difficult to change that unless you have really thought through the metrics quite carefully and put a metrics plan together.’

Clearly, there is more to metrics than meets the eye. And getting the wrong metrics in place not only means that you’ll struggle to monitor and manage performance, but you’ll also potentially create disaffected staff.

So how do you select the right metrics for your CRM Strategy?

Operational metrics

The three departments that are most associated with the influence of CRM systems utilise a whole range of different operational metrics to measure their related performance. By department, these include:

• Sales
  • Number of prospects
  • Number of new customers
  • Number of retained customers
  • Close rate
  • Renewal rate
  • Number of sales calls made
  • Number of sales calls per opportunity
  • Amount of new revenue
  • Number of open opportunities
  • Sales stage duration
  • Sales cycle duration
  • Number of proposals given.

• Marketing
  • Number of campaigns
  • Number of campaign responses
  • Number of campaign purchases
  • Revenue generated by campaign
  • Number of new customers acquired by campaign
  • Number of customer referrals
  • Number of web page views
  • User goal completion rate on the web
  • Time per website visit
  • Customer lifetime value
  • Cross-sell ration
  • Up-sell ratio
  • Email list growth rate.

• Service
  • Number of cases handled
  • Number of cases closed the same day
  • Average time to resolution
  • Average number of service calls per day
  • Complaint time to resolution
  • Number of customer call backs
  • Average service cost per service interaction
  • Percentage compliance with SLAs
  • Calls lost before being answered
  • Average call handling time

In addition to these more traditional operational metrics, recent years have seen businesses expand their measurements to outside of the business, specifically incorporating Voice of the Customer feedback measures (such as customer satisfaction, Net Promoter Score, customer loyalty, likelihood to purchase and likelihood to recommend) and social media metrics (such as sentiment, influence, reach and share of voice).

‘If you think about the history of CRM from a technology point of view, it has been more defined primarily as an optimisation of internal operational activity, so the metrics that traditionally have been associated with it have been driven from an internal operational point of view,’ highlights Band. ‘But companies are becoming more sophisticated at understanding they need to have both the internal operational and the external perception metrics side-by-side as opposed to scattered independently throughout the organisation.’

Taken as a whole, this represents a staggering number of metrics to consider, although Band emphasises: ‘You won’t want to do all of these, but people need a starting point.’

He adds that there are three “buckets” of metrics that he recommends that brands pay particular attention to:

• 1, Business performance metrics. Band says: ‘What are the outcomes from a business point of view – the pipeline, closing cases more quickly, cross-sell, up-sell, sales, marketing and service.’

• 2. User adoption metrics. ‘Track how the CRM solution is being taken up in the organisation, including number of log-ins and completeness of the data and a host of other IT metrics.’
• 3. Customer perception metrics. ‘This includes customer satisfaction and experience. If the customer isn’t experiencing any improvement from their end and you’re not taking that into account then you haven’t got a complete picture.’

Sylvain Reiter, Development Director at Cyber-Duck, rattles off a number that he recommends as particularly valuable:

• Number of new contacts added per week/month. ‘Based on your company activities (pitch, networking, etc) you should have a target of potential clients, affiliates, partners, suppliers and so on to be added every week,’ he notes.
• Response to marketing campaign. ‘A well composed and relevant CRM should have better return/response rate to all your outgoing communications. If not, it may mean contact details are out of date or irrelevant entries are in the CRM.’
• Productivity. ‘A CRM should help the staff work smarter, giving them faster access to data and enabling them to make more informed decisions.’
• Customer satisfaction. ‘At the end of the day, a CRM is there to help your business provide a better service, so your end customer should give the judgement and confirm your services have improved.’

‘The key takeaway is that these bread and butter metrics continue to be important – depending on your strategy,’ notes Band.

And it is this line-of-sight from metrics to strategy that he says is of critical importance.

He continues: ‘When you look at ongoing operational metrics, we see of lot of them in companies, but the question is whether they are tied to an overall strategy. Often that is a missing linkage. In the call centre you might have lots of operational metrics, or in marketing there are traditional marketing, like campaign management and close rates and so on, but I see a lack of tying metrics to a strategy.’

As we established earlier, if operational metrics aren’t tied to the CRM strategy it can create confusion and disconnection. So how can organisations ensure that their CRM strategy, tactics, goals and metrics are all in alignment?

Getting the right metrics

In his paper, The Right CRM Metrics For Your Organisation, Band suggests that the starting point is to establish the goal of the CRM initiative, and then build it out from there. For instance, is it to increase revenue per sales rep, decrease customer acquisition costs or decrease service response times? The process of defining a value-based CRM plan starts with linking the highest-level corporate business goals to a clear set of specific CRM strategies and tactics.

Forrester 4 step guide for CRM Metrics

1. Define and quantify business goals. Quantify how your CRM initiative will either increase revenues from customers or decrease the costs of acquiring and serving them. For each targeted business outcome, define a method for estimating the size of the expected benefit.
2. Formulate CRM strategies and tactics. Define your strategies and tactics to achieve the goals you’ve defined and quantified, and identify appropriate tactics for each important customer-facing function, i.e. marketing, sales and service.
3. Establish appropriate CRM measures. For instance, customer service metrics might include number of calls handled per agent, or first call resolution. Voice of the customer feedback metrics might include Net Promoter Score. Establish the current baseline of performance before you start your CRM initiative and define the increment of improvement that you want to achieve at a specified time in the future. Monitor these metrics on a regular basis and take remedial action if you find yourself falling short.
4. Link CRM goals, strategies and metrics. For instance, if your business goal is to improve revenue from new sources by 10%, your strategy might be to increase average deal size by selling more solutions instead of individual products. The metrics associated with this approach could be average deal size and average revenue per sales rep.

What is the challenge of CRM Metrics?

This isn’t always a straightforward process, however. ‘One of the challenges that people do have is that there is one business goal and single set of tactics and strategies and it all ties together,’ warns Band.

‘But in most companies that I work with, they in fact have different brands and different products which may all have different strategies and requirements in terms of what is trying to be achieved. Therefore it is not so black and white to be able to work through this process and end up with one simple set of metrics because most companies are more complex that this implies. But the thinking process at a product or brand level can still be applied.’

While there is no silver bullet metric to successfully monitor CRM, by applying these principles to your project you should be able to work through the process of finding the most appropriate measures. And if done properly, you’ll not only have metrics that enable you to manage your CRM initiative, but you’ll also provide your staff with a clear indication of what they must achieve to support the overall targets.

‘People always ask us what metrics they should use,’ says Band. ‘And I say it is hard to say until you tell me what tactic you are trying to implement so you can track that – and that tactic ought to relate to a strategy for achieving your business goal.’

Many businesses start off as small operations, often with just a handful of employees, without a marketing agency, in an effort to keep operating expenses low as they attempt to grow the business. As the business expands more employees are hired and outside vendors are contracted to handle various tasks.

Additional sales representatives, customer support representatives, managers, and even marketing and advertising professionals are hired to assist with the growth. Is handling your marketing in-house the way to go or would your business benefit more by hiring a marketing agency? Here are seven signs that your business should look into hiring an outside marketing agency to help increase your sales and revenue.

1. Not Enjoyable

If you are attempting to run the daily operations of your business and then trying to squeeze in some marketing on the side it will show. Not every business owner is going to enjoy the marketing aspect of his or her business, and that is fine, but lackluster effort across social media and on your company blog will be evident if you are not 100% into and focused on your marketing effort. Marketing agencies have a very deep love and passion for what they do, and that type of creativity and excitement will be reflected in things such as emails, website landing pages, social media, and blog posts.

2. Little Marketing Being Performed

When you are stretched thin your time is so valuable that you need to allocate it to the tasks and duties that are going to keep the business above water. This is completely understandable, but you are actually doing more harm than good with this approach. Marketing is a full time job and requires strategy development and ongoing testing, so if you cannot dedicate your time to it fully then hire a marketing agency. Professional agencies only do marketing, so they can focus 100% of increasing your brand awareness and revenue.

3. You or Your In-House Marketing Department Lack the Experience

You are a business owner, yet that doesn’t mean you are automatically going to be a marketing expert as well. There is also a good chance that the full time marketing professional that you hired lacks the creativity and experience to propel your brand to the top and help you reach your growth goals. Hiring a marketing agency will allow you to instantly benefit from their skills and experience.

4. No Budget for a Complete Marketing Department

Every business would like to have a complete marketing operation to handle all of the inbound marketing, content marketing, pay-per-click advertising, lead generation, website design, and search engine optimization. The reality is that it costs a lot of money to staff a full team, and this is an expense that most businesses cannot handle. Hiring an experienced marketing agency that can provide you all of those services is more cost effective and you benefit greatly from their experience handling several clients.

5. Sales are Horrible or Declining

If you are not witnessing any growth in your sales, or if they are dropping each month then it is time to call in the professionals. An expert can quickly look at your current strategy, including your inbound marketing effort, lead generation and nurturing tactics, and your conversion data. Having an outside agency audit your marketing effort is a good way to quickly identify the problems and come up with solutions to get your sales back on track. Here at Market Domination Media we offer free audits and consultations to let you know what you are doing wrong and what we can do to help you fix it.

6. Your Sales Team Isn’t Converting Your Leads

If your sales are slow or declining it isn’t always due to a poor sales force. Many times it is the quality of the leads you are generating. In order to generate quality leads you must know who your target audience and end buyer is. Marketing agencies can dive into your product or service and determine who your target market is and then create a lead and sales funnel built to properly nurture every prospect and push them towards the purchase. This results in high quality leads that are easier to convert for your sales team.

7. Lacking a Solid Marketing Plan

If your marketing effort lacks focus, direction and a solid plan then it is time to consult with a professional. You could be wasting all of your effort on a strategy that just doesn’t work for your business. An experienced marketing agency will evaluate your business goals and the hurdles you need to overcome in order to succeed and then develop a plan to exceed those goals. It also takes constant adjusting and refinement to keep the marketing plan on track towards those goals.

Marketing a small business has become overwhelming with all the online platforms, tools and strategies. There is so much complexity with all of your choices, how do you simplify marketing so it eliminates confusion and enables you to focus on what is important? What’s the secret to choosing the right platforms, tools and strategies to maximize your web presence and drive qualified inbound leads?

Whether you are a new business or one that’s been around for a while, it is a good idea to get back to marketing basics to help you make intelligent decisions on where you should spend your time and resources.

Narrow your focus

Are you trying to be too many things to too many people? Do people know exactly what you do and how you benefit them?

The first step to simplify marketing is to narrow your focus by picking a niche within your industry sector. The more focused you are, the more likely your business will be visible, not only to those you are purposely targeting, but to others that may feel your services will help them solve their challenges as well.

Service businesses such as marketing, business coaching, construction, IT, home improvement, legal or financial services benefit from creating a niche that you can dominate and become known as the expert. Why?

• You can be more visible in a niche market than in the general market
• You can market your services with more clarity
• People pay more for services from experts

Being too broad makes it difficult to find a viable target audience and craft messages that resonate with that audience. It is much easier to explain what you do and why to a group of people with a specific need.

Determine what business you are in

Why did you start your business in the first place? What value do you provide your ideal clients?

What business you are in is not about the products or services you sell. The business you are in is more about the experience you create and the result of your efforts. Think about your business from the perspective of what you enjoy offering your clients and how you add value to them.

• Are you in a life coach or do you help people overcome personal obstacles to success?
• Are you a hairdresser or dentist or do you help people gain more self-esteem?
• Are you an organizer or do you help simplify the lives of your clients so they have more time to enjoy each day with less stress?

Determine what your business really sells, the experience you create and the value that your customers get from your products or services, and you have your foundation for your marketing plan.

Identify who you serve

Do you enjoy working with your current clients? Is there a group that would better appreciate what you do and make your passion come alive?

When you speak precisely to your target audience, you simplify marketing because you are extremely clear about the value you offer and why your ideal clients should work with you. This clarity attracts the right audience, which empowers you to turn away those clients that drain you of energy.

Knowing exactly what your ideal client wants or needs and how to best reach them makes your marketing more effective and saves you money by not wasting it on activities that don’t make sense for your business and the clients you serve.

Refine your goals

Are your marketing goals still realistic and achievable? Have you written goals that are specific, quantifiable and aligned with your business purpose?

It’s easy to lose sight of your goals when things get hectic. Setting realistic and measurable goals helps you focus on efforts that produce the results you want, eliminating activities that waste time or direct your attention elsewhere. Goals also help you make decisions about whether to spend resources on a marketing activity. If the activity doesn’t get you closer to your goal, look spend time elsewhere that does.

Develop your core message

Do you have difficulty with answering the question “what do you do”? Can you tell people what you do and why they should with you?

Once you know what makes you different, incorporate it into your core message about the benefits of working with you. A captivating core message speaks directly to the needs of your ideal client, allowing you to connect with them.

Your core message is a short description of your business that enables prospective buyers to know who you work with and what value you bring to the relationship. It conveys this message in a manner that literally attracts the right customers to you. A good core message projects what makes you unique and a benefit to your ideal client.

Your core message creates credibility and relevance for your ideal client, explaining how you help your ideal client, the value they will receive and the end benefit to their business. Your prospects do not care what you do or how you do it. They care about what you can do for them. They will be interested in you if you can solve a problem, improve a process, increase sales, cut costs, find new clients or open new markets.

Review your pricing and packaging

Is what you sell in line with what your audience wants to buy? Do you make it easy to do business with you?

Pricing and packaging is an important aspect of marketing that needs to be carefully planned and executed. The tradeoff between what you charge for a service and what your ideal client thinks it is worth is a careful balancing act. As a service business, people pay you for what you know and how you apply what you know to solve their problems. How your ideal clients perceive the value of your services is a critical component to being paid what you are worth.

• Are you offering the correct services that appeal to your ideal client?
• Are they packaged so they are easy to understand the value being offered?
• Are they value priced so that you get more money for your time but your ideal client feels good about the value these services provide?

Be unique and offer your services in a way that makes you stand out from your competition to make your business memorable and credible. You want a prospect to be able to quickly and easily understand what you do and what sets you apart from your competitors.

Choose your marketing activities wisely

Have you started too many activities and not seen results? Are you spreading your resources too thin?

Now that you understand the market you are targeting, you can begin to select the marketing activities that will help you achieve your goals. Not all marketing strategies will reach your ideal client so be sure to align them with your industry, ideal client and goals. Spending time on a social media campaign may drive visibility, but if it doesn’t drive your business success and help you achieve your goals, it is a wasted effort.

When things get crazy, get back to basics

With all the hype around digital marketing and social media, business owners forget that online is simply a new channel that helps you reach your ideal client. Before you can get the digital channel, or any marketing channel to work for your business, you need to get back to marketing basics.