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Understanding the Sales Force by Dave Kurlan

The May issue of Top Sales Magazine is now available and in addition to my monthly article, this month's issue is loaded with important reading on sales and selling.

Bob Terson posted my article, Are Your Salespeople Still Cold Calling - The Ugly Truth over at the Selling Fearlessly Blog.

When marketers and writers tell us that cold calling is dead, they never remember to qualify what they are trying to sell us.  The amount of death in cold calling is dependent on a number of variables that never seem to be discussed.  If we take a good hard look at these variables, we can see that taking a broad brush stroke to cold calling is a mistake:

• New Salespeople - Even this needs clarification.  New to selling?  New to the industry?  New to the vertical?  New to the company?  New to the role?  Unless brand new salespeople are fed an endless number of leads, there may be no other way to establish themselves other than making cold calls.  On the other end of the argument, veteran salespeople who come from the industry, territory, or vertical, and are simply new to the company, may not ever need to make a single cold call to reestablish themselves.
• Size of the customer pool - If the company has 12 potential customers in the entire world, cold calling is not in the salesperson's future.  On the other hand, if everyone is a prospect, there may be no other way of reaching them all without using cold calling to target the most elusive of them.
• Size of your online network - If a salesperson has a large and influential online network, that individual might be able to generate enough introductions to keep a full pipeline.  But the key word is "might", and when it isn't happening, cold calls will be required to supplement.
• Expectations - If a salesperson's role requires 20 new meetings to be scheduled each week and there aren't 60 leads flowing in to support that outcome, the salesperson will need to cold call.  On the other hand, if the salesperson is only expected to schedule 5 new meetings each week, it's possible that a combination of leads, customer referrals and online networking can support that goal.
• Skills - This is clearly the biggest variable of them all.  IF cold calling will be necessary, then the amount of cold calling is in direct disproportion to the salesperson's skills at performing this.  I know this was true for me as I started 3 businesses in the 70's and 80's.  I hated it, but was willing to do it.  I vowed to get so good at it that I wouldn't have to spend a minute more doing it than was absolutely necessary.  While others spent their entire days making cold calls, I scheduled the meetings I needed to schedule in less than an hour.

As long as we are discussing the variables that must be considered before we say cold calling is dead, you might be interested in these additional 15 articles on the death of various aspects of selling.  These have all been written over the past 8 years or so.  Has my thinking changed?

The Latest Fiction for the Sales Force - No More Hunters and Farmers 

Double Article Friday and the Death of All Selling Forever 

Sales Candidate Shortage - More Proof That Sales Isn't Dead Yet 

Could it Really be The Death of SPIN Selling? 

Sales 2.0 - The Answer to our Prayers or a Costly Distraction? 

Sales Management Best Practices - Are Top Salespeople Challengers? 

Is There a Lack of Clarity on the Current State of Selling?

Insider Opinion - Why Sales Experts Can't Agree on Anything 

Has the Death of Selling Finally Arrived? 

The Death of Selling Revisited 

Seth Godin - Sales Expert or Marketing Genius? 

The Death of the Sales Force is Greatly Exaggerated 

Sales, Sales Force, Sales Call - More Death 

The Death of Selling Part 4 

The Death of the Sales Force Part 5 - Will Selling Live On?

 

Copyright: wavebreakmediamicro / 123RF Stock Photo

(c) Copyright 2014 Dave Kurlan

Join me for this special webinar looking at:
The Objective Seller – presented by salesforce.com
May 12, 1:00 pm Eastern – register here

All businesses have objectives, focusing on objectives and the buyer’s desired return on those objectives, are the most effective way to engage and align with buyers. With changes in the buying and selling dynamic, B2B buyers who are ready to buy are much better informed and more empowered than ever, you need to shift the conversation from your product to their objectives. Those buyers not in the market, the so called Status Quo, are more likely to respond to a conversation about their objectives and how to reach them than to traditional sales approaches and conversations. Impervious to pains, needs or solutions, a large segment of your market is better able to cocoon themselves from traditional sellers and sales conversations, but they all have Objectives.

The presentation will cover how to take advantage of current realities and present specific ways sellers can successfully approach and engage prospects, and create selling opportunities where others may not see any, and in the process build credibility, expert status, and loyalty with existing and new buyers. You will be presented a process based, value driven approach for success in selling to Status Quo buyers, the most overlooked segment of the market.

• Breaking down “Value” to core components and why people buy
• Leveraging past experiences – Won, Lost and No Decision deals – 360 Degree Deal View
• Building a better question
• Proactive exploration

Hiring high aptitude and high performance salespeople is really hard, but hiring managers don’t make it any easier on themselves by often making the following sales hiring mistakes. Let’s take a look…

The post [Infographic] 5 Biggest Sales Hiring Mistakes That Cost Companies Millions! appeared first on SalesDrive.

There is no doubt that both people and companies are extremely dynamic. It is almost unimaginable that a company or a person would remain static for even relatively small stretches. And yet we have a collective view that roles or functions are somehow more static. This actually creates an unnecessary limitation when building teams: permanence.

To understand how this plays out, consider a company in its very early days that has a prototype of even beta version of a product. You tend to hire one or two sales people early on to start working with customers. This is a critical step in understanding the market, getting specific feedback, and developing repeatable selling motions that will serve you as you grow.

In these early days, the primary objective of sales is less about selling the product and more about developing some sales muscle. When the company is started, you have a hypothesis about what your value is and how you might explain that to people. You have probably developed pitches, but these are aimed primarily at the investment community. And you actually don’t even have a vetted idea of who is likely to want your product.

The first task for your fledgling sales team is to hone the message.

Now think about the kinds of skills required to identify your target market segment and develop a sales message. You need someone who is particularly good at messaging – not delivery of but creation. This starts to look a little bit more like a marketing person than a salesperson. But if you are in a high tech company, your early sales will tend to be technical. So you need to balance that messaging acumen with a solid understanding of the underlying technology. This starts to look like a cross between marketing and product management or strategy.

Of course, to pitch an idea to would-be customers, your salesperson has to also have sales skills. She needs to be able to identify target accounts, make contact, and get the meetings. And unless you are expecting a single-meeting close, she has to be able to manage a relationship over the entire sales cycle.

Basically what I am describing is a mix of sales, strategy, and marketing. And not just a little bit of experience in each. The ideal candidate is actually adept at all three of these. This looks a bit more like a Renaissance man or woman, capable of doing many things.

So imagine for a moment that you find this Renaissance hire. How do you get her to join?

There is the requisite discussion about overall corporate impact. This job is huge, so that is easy. You might talk about the product or the people. Ok. But eventually you get to compensation. How should you compensate this person?

The temptation here is to compensate her as a sales person. You might construct some comp package that is a combination of base salary and commission. To make it attractive, you might even ratchet up the commission plan so that she makes a killing if she sells.

But the objective here is not to sell. The objective is to develop the message, and outline a selling motion that can then be repeated by the next group of sales people who come in. In the early days, sales will be low. In fact, until your company finds the right product-market fit, this is actually the expected outcome. And to make things even tougher, you actually expect this woman to fail more often than not. She will run into countless walls en route to finding the right answer. Failure in this case is not unwanted; every failure helps tune the process that much more.

So if failure is expected, building a compensation plan centered around success means you are likely to have an all-star candidate who is under-compensated and frustrated.

Well, the alternative is to give her a huge base salary and some commission. But the challenge with this is that you end up setting a precedent that is not sustainable as you build the sales organization.

What do you do?

The whole issue here is permanence. As you look for this Renaissance woman, you have this idea that she will be a salesperson for the next 10 years. You end up building assumptions into the role based on the flawed view that this role is forever. But if you take a more pragmatic view, you might draw some different conclusions.

This type of sales role has a lifespan on it. Once you have the selling motions nailed, you want to then hire a bunch of hunters to go execute it over and over. Rather than assuming that the role is forever, you should build into the plan up front the eventual retirement of this position.

It’s hard to do that. When we talk with candidates, we talk about people being lifelong company cohorts. Our interviews assume that the particular job exists over some multi-year horizon that we intuitively know is impossible to predict. How many of our most talented hires remain in the same role for many years? The answer is almost none. We take our best people and we move them around. We might shift them from one project to another, or from one group to another. We promote them. We might even lose them to other companies who put them in bigger positions. Our hiring ought to reflect this reality.

The point is that roles are not forever. When you have a job to be done and you need a new person to do it, then hire someone for that job. And to be clear, I am not talking about hiring people just for 3-month tasks. Developing a selling motion might take a couple of years, especially when you include the training of a new sales team over time. But you don’t need to hire someone who will both develop the selling motion and then hunt accounts for the next 5 years.

Once you remove this long-term burden, then you can be creative with how you attract someone. If you know the job is 2 years, what happens if you change the compensation a bit? Rather than spreading equity out for four years with a one-year cliff, you might consider a two-year vesting period with a two-year cliff. The compensation ought to match the particular job you are trying to get done.

The real punch line here is that once you remove the notion of permanence, you get a lot of freedom to make creative choices about who you hire and how you attract them. By dropping the shackles, you might find that you are more able to create an adaptive team that better fits the dynamic nature of both companies and individuals.

[Todays’ fun fact: Ancient Egyptians slept on pillows made of stone. And I didn’t even know they had Radisson hotels that long ago!]

If you’ve followed this blog for anytime at all, you know how much I tout personal branding, social selling, social media and more. So, the fact that I’m doing a webinar on social selling and it’s impact on recruiting shouldn’t, won’t  surprise you.

Check it out and I’ll see you there;

——————

“Too busy” to deal with social networking or build a following?  Think again.

These days, brands want to hire salespeople and sales leaders who have taken the time to cultivate an engaged social following and become a trusted resource to their customers and partners.  In effect, a candidate’s social footprint demonstrates his ability to tap into his network’s collective intelligence and influence prospective buyers online.

Discover how to build your social sales dream team, or how to groom yourself to become a part of that team.  Join A Sales Guy CEO Jim Keenan and KiteDesk CRO Sean Burke to learn:

·         Why ignoring or abusing social is equivalent to career suicide

·         Heads of Sales, how to know if someone is an A player through their social graph

·         How to close the gaps by bolstering your social graph

Register today!

Email marketers often ponder the optimum frequency for sending emails. Is the number of emails we’re sending too high? Too low? Just right? Finding a sweet spot that keeps subscribers engaged without overwhelming them is harder than Goldilocks finding the right porridge.

Jen McGahan, content marketer and founder of MyTeamConnects, suggests marketers focus on how to get subscribers to “appreciate more emails” rather than worrying about sending too many. After all, the risk of email fatigue is outweighed by the benefits of engaging subscribers over multiple touches.

What is Email Fatigue?

Email fatigue occurs when buyers get tired of email. They start to ignore messages, then delete, unsubscribe or send to spam. Direct marketing veteran Dave Lewis points out that “Email fatigue is the result of two things: mailing irrelevant content and mailing at too frequent a cadence.” In other words, sending the wrong message to the wrong people at the wrong time, a fundamental yet common marketing blunder.

Is Email Fatigue an Actual Problem?

It’s not that consumers don’t like getting emails. ExactTarget found that the preference of email for commercial use—marketing messages—has been on the rise since 2008, and now at least three-quarters of consumers prefer email for receiving branded communications.

It’s just that consumers don’t like getting emails that aren’t relevant to them. Again, it’s all about delivering the right message to the right person at the right time. Most emails are generic templates sent to large email lists. If emails aren’t personalized, segmented or triggered by consumer behavior, all you’re doing is blasting the same untailored message to your entire list, a non-strategy that will derail an email marketing program faster than you can say “spam filter.”

As a person receives one unwanted or irrelevant email after another, the likelihood of that person disengaging from your messages and your brand grows significantly, regardless of his actual level of interest in, or engagement with, your brand. As a result, your email list starts ignoring, deleting and unsubscribing. This negatively impacts your email deliverability and ROI, making inbox placement and overall email program success harder to achieve.

How Can Marketers Defeat Email Fatigue?

Fortunately, there are a number of proactive steps marketers can take to reduce and prevent email fatigue.

• Use data to monitor for signs of email fatigue: Gradual decrease in standard engagement numbers—opens and clicks—are a common symptom of email fatigue and should be investigated further, especially in a segment of historically engaged subscribers. 
• Update permissions regularly: Lewis reminds us permission is not a one-time thing, but should be revisited on an ongoing basis to adjust for subscribers’ evolving preferences and needs. Offer subscription options based on topic or email frequency and prompt your recipients to update their preferences regularly.
• Segment your list based on demographic & behavioral data: This brings us back to the idea of sending the right message to the right person at the right time. Your subscribers are unique individuals with unique needs and levels of interest and it’s critical you communicate with them accordingly. Gather Email Intelligence data to learn more about the people on your email list and send them email that’s going to pique their unique interests.
• Know when to disengage: An important consideration to help combat email fatigue and its related consequences is knowing when to deploy a reengagement campaign and when to simply let subscribers go. Unengaged subscribers drag down your performance metrics so it’s best to focus resources toward leads that show an ongoing level of interest.

One of the strongest defenses against email fatigue is leveraging data for list segmentation and tailored messaging. Learn more about how to use data for modern marketing strategies in the eBook “3 Ways to Use Subscriber Data to Modernize Your Email Marketing.”

Co-create a solution with your buyer. Don’t just present a proposal.

If you can get decision-makers to co-create a buying vision – like homeowners who “co-create” IKEA furniture – they will more highly value the end solution.

Duke University behavioral economist Dan Ariely and his colleagues have shown that when it comes to creating value, “labor leads to love.” In other words, the more you can get a buyer to invest in building the solution, the more value they assign to it.

In a series of four experiments, the researchers showed that the act of building IKEA furniture led buyers to value their completed products more than the exact same furniture offered to them already assembled.

“When people construct products themselves, from bookshelves to Build-a-Bears, they come to overvalue their creations,” according to co-author Michael Norton. “We call this phenomenon the IKEA effect, in honor of the wildly successful Swedish manufacturer whose products typically arrive with some assembly required.”

One conclusion drawn by the researchers:  “It is possible, and even likely, that building products increases both thoughts about the positive attributes of that product and positive effect and emotional attachment to that product.”

What are the implications for your executive selling strategy? 

When selling to the C-suite, it’s only natural to assume that time and attention are limited and that you should quickly demonstrate expertise to show your executive buyers how choosing your solution will solve their problems, right?

Consider this, rather than presenting a summary of your executive’s business needs and how your solution addresses them, consider conversation strategies that engage the customer in “co-creating” the solution.

In other words, you must find ways to encourage your customer to help “build” the buying vision with you to take advantage of the possible “IKEA Effect.” Here are three possible strategies:

1. Engage the executive buyer at the “What to do?” stage rather than the “Who to choose?” stage of the buying process. This gives you more opportunity to introduce unconsidered needs and unspecified capabilities. Executive buyers tell us that, “you (sellers) see more people who look like me than I (buyer) do, so tell me something I don’t already know about a problem or missed opportunity I didn’t even know I had.” This opens up more possibilities and creates a more collaborative approach to co-developing a solution.
2. Ask more provocative questions that engage your executive-level buyer in shaping the ultimate solution. Instead of traditional discovery questions you should offer something like this: “What would be the top two or three things a new approach would have to accomplish to get the results you really need to show?” Seek to break them out of the status quo or comfort zone to spur more creative conversations around broader considerations, requirements and possibilities.
3. Instead of offering one “best and final” solution, consider presenting two or three different options with different feature-price trade-offs. Asking your buyer to weigh the pros and cons of each offer stimulates more discussion and perceived involvement in developing the final solution.

The bottom line? If you want your executive buyers to value your solution more, don’t just present your proposal. Instead, create more value by encouraging your customers to build a buying vision and solution approach with you.

Watch this video to see Dan Ariely explain more about the “IKEA Effect.”

 

Dan Ariely, featured speaker at the Upcoming Conversations That Win Conference

Want to learn more from Dan Ariely, the groundbreaking behavioral economist, TED-star and author of Predictably Irrational? Dan will prove why your (and your customers’) decision-making process isn’t nearly as rational as you think. He is an expert on how people actually act – and why they act – in all kinds of business and economic environments and what this means for business innovation, strategy, marketing and pricing. Learn more here.

In an earlier blog post, I had introduced the “SIMPLE” framework to increase your sales effectiveness. I had elaborated on the 1st step which was about how to “Surprise” your customers to initiate their engagement.

The second step in the process was to “Inspire” your customers, which entails that you paint a picture of possibilities.

The third step in the process is to be able to “Motivate” your customers to take action. The biggest competition to any sale being concluded is not your competitors but the “inertia” in your customer organization to change.

We need to understand that every significant purchase involves some amount of change management – the complexity of which is directly proportional to the product/service purchased.

A lot of sales executives do a great job to identify potential challenges that their product or service could solve. They probably also understand the need to build buy-in from all the stakeholders in the buyers organization.

However, we need to understand that the buy-in alone is not sufficient if the sale that you are looking at involves a significant change (which is what you could expect if you followed the first two steps in the process).

You would need to be able to “inspire” them about their future and then motivate them to go for it.

You could do the following to motivate your customers to take action:

• Acknowledge Inertia: There is a need to bring the inertia or the resistance to change to the open rather than allow it to be in their heads.
• Identify the risks involved: This openness about inertia, will enable you to discuss and list down all the possible risks that the buyer could potentially face.
• Risk Mitigation: Also discuss some ideas to potentially mitigate some of the risks.

Notice that we are still talking to the buyer on his needs, challenges, possibilities, risks, etc. We are not yet positioning our product or services.

You can move to the next step in the process, once the buyer has identified some risks associated (if they go after the vision that you have painted for them in the “Inspire” step) and has some mitigation ideas.

What you have achieved in the first three steps is the following:

1. Provide insights useful to the buyer.
2. Inspire your buyer about the possibilities.
3. Motivate the buyer to decide to take action.
4. And most importantly, created a good level of trust with your buyer.

Now, it is time for you to move to the next step, which is to position your product/service and explain why you and your organization are best positioned to help them achieve their vision (which you have helped them articulate).

This is probably the most important step in the framework. It doesn’t matter, how great your insight was; it doesn’t matter how inspiring your vision was; if you are not able to motivate your customer to decide to take action, you are not going to get the business.

Also, this is probably the most neglected step in any sales process and the chasm that most sales executives fail to cross, leading to many deals never seeing the light of the day.

So, it is critical that we understand the importance of this step and spend a good amount of thought and effort in making sure that you are able to help your customers decide to move ahead and hence cross the chasm.

Every business has a story. Whether your company has been family owned and operated for generations or you just launched to promote a life-changing new product, there is certain to be something about your business that sets it apart from the competition. Let ImageWorks help you share that story with the world.

In today’s increasingly competitive economy, good storytelling is as integral to success as your price point and quality. Buyers are overwhelmed with options, and thanks to Google, it takes mere minutes for them to search up a list of businesses, evaluate them, and move on. With such a brief opportunity to make an impact, you need to use every tool in your arsenal to stand out.

What does that mean?

In short: never be boring.

Your site’s design should spark immediate interest, and your content should be compelling so that potential clients won’t be tempted to leave your site in favor of a competitor’s.

So, what makes for a great story?

From a scientific point of view, good storytelling will get your readers to tap into different parts of their brain as they connect with the descriptions in your story. When you successfully connect with your readers on a personal level, they will find themselves relating and rooting for you.

The Basics of Great Storytelling for Businesses

Of course, there are some key components that should be a part of any storytelling effort.

Use good grammar: You’re asking your audience to trust you with their money, their business, and their time. Make a professional impression with good grammar, proper spelling, and a text free from typos.

Keep your audience in mind: Think about who your customers are. A middle-class stay-at-home mom isn’t going to be compelled by the same story that would touch a Fortune 500 CEO. If your company needs to appeal to a broader audience, stick to stories that reflect the human experience – connections with friends or family, embarrassing moments,

Don’t get mired in the details. It’s true that details involving the five senses will help your readers to picture themselves as part of your company’s story, but too many details can detract from your message. You aren’t writing the next Lord of the Rings Trilogy or A Song of Ice and Fire. Pare down your story so that it’s both concise and compelling.

Make it memorable. Charts and graphics are all well and good, but personal stories are the ones people remember. Instead of posting sales figures, tell a story about a client who used your product to reinvigorate his struggling business. Tell your readers about a mom who was able to spend more time with her children because she used your services. That kind of storytelling will stay with your audience long after they leave your website.

What Will Storytelling Do For Your Business?

Telling a good story takes time and effort. What sort of return can you expect on your investment?

Rudyard Kipling said,

“If history were taught in the form of stories, it would never be forgotten.”

History is home to some of the most compelling stories, and what we know about compelling stories is that they’re memorable. Even if your visitors don’t make a purchase or initiate contact the first time they visit your website, the impression you make will stay in their minds long after they click away. Days or even weeks later when they are ready to move forward, that memory will bring them back to you.

Storytelling builds trust. By creating personal connections with your prospects, relating to them as a human being and not just a B2C or B2B provider, you can forge a relationship based on mutual trust and understanding. Tell of a time when you failed; don’t be afraid to use your past failures as an example of what you’ve learned and how you’ve improved since then. No one is perfect, but sharing a story about a time in which you found an opportunity to learn and grow can make your brand seem trustworthy and compelling.

Tell a story about your product. Do it well, and your readers will imagine themselves using it. They’ll see how your company can make their lives easier, richer, or more fulfilling. Remind them of a problem they have and then walk them through a story that illustrates how your business is prepared to solve that problem. Expand their imaginations and make your products or services a part of your readers’ own stories.

For decades, storytelling has been a buzzword in marketing. While other buzzwords have come and gone, storytelling has remained a key component of any successful campaign. In fact, the need to tell a great story grows stronger the more competition there is. A customer who is drawn to your company’s story won’t be overwhelmed by a glut of information on the web. She’ll remember – and return to – your business when the time is right.

“So Jonathan, are there too many salespeople in the world?”

That’s not really a question one expects to be confronted with at a private dinner party, but unfortunately, like those poor medical practitioners who are regaled with requests for advice on everything from ingrowing toenails to haemorrhoids, I have kind of accepted that if any of my fellow guests have a beef about sales-related issues, then I am going to be in the firing line for the evening.

I usually begin by trying to explain that everybody, everywhere, sells every day: Then I have to elaborate, and eventually, I find myself defending this fine profession, which actually, after a couple of glasses of a decent Burgundy, I can do all evening – even with my eyes closed.

But let’s take a more pragmatic approach to the question: Are there too many salespeople in the world?

What we do know is that there are too many under-performing salespeople on the planet – about 52% of the current sales population according to all the most recent reports.

Why?

That is a far more complex question to answer; that is to say, there are several answers.

To begin with, most companies, in most industries, find it easier to keep hiring new salespeople, rather than investing in those that they have already: Rather than stopping and taking stock of their current assets, and thinking about what it would take to get that team operating at optimum performance levels, they play the numbers game, which of course is a complete nonsense, and totally unjustifiable financially.

Let me give you an example. What % of sales leaders do you think could accurately answer the following questions about their own team?

• If you benchmarked your team on an individual basis against the best in your industry/sector how would they fare?
• What would it take for them to become the very best?
• Are you able to measure the impact of any investment you have made in training and developing the team in recent years? – I.e. what return have you seen on that investment?
• What further development is required in order for them to achieve optimum performance levels?
• If any members of the team are currently underachieving do you know why and do you understand what will be required to get them back on track?
• Who in your team is capable of much higher levels of achievement, if they were to receive appropriate coaching?

And then follow that up with:

When thinking about your own sales force:

• Do you understand their motivators – what is driving them?
• Do you have visibility of their numbers – year to date, forecast vs. required performance?
• Activity levels – are they working hard and smart enough?
• Engagement – are they talking to the right level in their prospects/accounts?
• Messaging – are they capable of delivering an appropriate message at the right level?
• Qualification – are they only spending time on deals where they can compete and ultimately that they can win?
• Closing – are they constructing successful campaigns and closing business?

I’ll repeat the question – what % of sales leaders could accurately answer those questions?

Let me give you a clue, it is more than 1% but less than 5%.

That is pretty frightening isn’t it?

Secondly, H.R. are getting in the way: They don’t mean to, but particularly in the corporate space, they have far too much authority and far too little experience to make the decisions about sales team development that they are making.

In my experience, in this critical area, most H.R. departments are about as useful as a one-legged man in an ass-kicking contest. They should stick to what they are good at, like looking after employees welfare; ensuring that the company adheres to the maze which is today’s employment laws, and spending as much time as possible at conferences and on training courses, to add another qualification to their CV. Not in your company? You are very lucky!

Finally, unlike most other professions, there are no qualifications required to become a professional salesman or woman: I find that very disappointing, and I am also deeply concerned that even the super-rich corporations, who used to put their latest intakes on a solid two year program before letting them loose on an unsuspecting audience of buyers, now believe that around two weeks of product training is quite sufficient.

However, those companies who have implemented their own “academies” – including most of my clients – are reaping rich rewards: Turnover has been reduced to virtually nil; teams are happy, and feel valued; staff typically work longer hours, but are also working smarter, and they are totally committed. None of that should come as a surprise to any of us. When a company demonstrates its commitment to its employees by investing back into them, those employees are anxious to repay that faith – it is a “no-brainer”and definitely “win-win”

How about you, are you really valued by your company? Or are you one of the at least 80% of sales professionals who remain under-qualified to do your job properly?

Banks sell very similar products. Of course each bank has its own special sauce, but overall, the products are similar-enough to lull prospective buyers into believing that it doesn’t matter which bank they buy from, or which solution they choose.

 

PROBLEMS SELLING A BANKING SOLUTION

Bankers therefore encounter a few problems when selling: if solutions seem the same, how does a prospect choose one over the other? or why should a person change banks?

Then there is the matter of the sales process bankers use: the focus is on getting an appointment – not on getting a sale. The overriding industry belief is that it is only with an appointment that a sale can be made, forgetting that a focus on getting an appointment is making a double sale, the first sale being the appointment, which is declined by over 90% of good leads before you even get to discuss needs or solutions.

The problem is that because the lead believes they are already taken care of, they don’t need to see you (whether they might need you or not). Not only do you leave behind a huge majority of people who might buy from you, but you are wasting humongous amounts of time. You end up meeting only a fraction of the people on the Buying Decision Team, and may need further meetings (wasting a whole lotta time) IF the original group you met with are able to convince others to meet with you again.

Read some of my earlier posts on the problems involved with seeking appointments first.

Your next major hurdle is your focus on getting strangers to change bankers and banks. Given they can’t differentiate you, and don’t want an appointment, you only have a fraction of your available prospect universe to work with. When you finally get interest, you’re attempting to get someone to get rid of the person they’ve been using for X amount of time. What you are saying, effectively, is:

Hi Mr. Jones. So nice to meet you. Say, I’d love to find out what your needs are, and what your current banking relationship is like, so I can figure out where the holes in the service are so I can get you to leave them and choose me instead. Now. That’s right. I’d like you to do it now – or once I get you to like me better than the person you’ve been banking with for the past 5 years even though you think our solutions are similar and you’re happy with them.

Really?

WHAT NEEDS TO CHANGE

Using Buying Facilitation™, it’s possible to start the conversations by entering as a decision facilitator rather than a Trusted Advisor or Relationship Manager or whatever nicey nicey term you’re using so a stranger will think you care and aren’t just trying to sell something.

Your conversation would begin by you helping the prospect ‘look around’ their environment and see what the difference is between where they are at, and where they need to be, and see if they can figure out how to get to Excellence with their current resources (Yes, including their current banker. They will go to him/her first anyway.)

And, btw, give up the need to ‘understand’ your prospect at the beginning of your relationship: you will never, ever, understand what is ‘going on’ for them, in re the internal politics of changing bankers, as an outsider! Of course, when it’s time to place the proper solution you will need to understand everything. That comes later. Your first job is to lead them much like a GPS system knows how to get you to your destination without understanding the nature of your journey.

A couple of Facilitative Questions to use midway down the Buying Facilitation™ funnel might be:

• What is stopping you from achieving the full range of banking support you might need over time?
• How would you and your Buying Decision Team know when/if it were time to add new banking services to the ones you are currently using?

It is only when, or if, their current banking relationship has something missing – something they hadn’t noticed until you taught them how to look around (by facilitating a journey of discovery – read Dirty Little Secrets: why buyers can’t buy and sellers can’t sell and what you can do about it to understand this discovery) – and gotten buy-in from all of the people – ALL of the people – that will touch a solution, that they can consider changing providers.

Stop attempting to sell. Stop pushing solution. Your solution is viable. You first need to help buyers recognize and manage all of the back-end decisions they must address on their way to Excellence. Then you’ll be a true Trusted Advisor and Relationship Manager. It’s not about your solution: it’s about when or how or if they buy.

For those wishing to design a Buying Facilitation™ training for your team, please contact Sharon Drew at: sharondrew@newsalesparadigm.com

Selling for the Banking Industry is a post from: SharonDrewMorgen.com

As I venture outside the field of sales I have been meeting decision analysts, coaches, and organization development folks who believe that decision making is different for them.

I’m here to tell you that all decisions, regardless of bias, industry, type or importance of the end result, have the same basic human components, separate from the analysis, weighting, or outcome of the decision sought.

 

1. Those responsible for the end result must have at their disposal the full fact pattern of their status quo (the rules, people, activities, culture, output, outcomes, beliefs). For sales, change, and leadership, everyone on the Decision Team must understand ALL of the systems elements that must be included for congruent change (or a new decision) to be effective. And all new decisions become a change management issue.
2. The system will have difficulty changing it perceives there is any possibility the underlying problem can be fixed by any element of the system. It’s the law of Homeostasis in action.
3. All – ALL – of those who will touch the solution must buy-in to the change (the new decision) and know how to bring in the new elements without disrupting the system. The system is sacrosanct, and must know how to end up congruent as part of any change or decision-inspired initiative.

ALL DECISION MAKING IS THE SAME AT THE HUMAN LEVEL
Regardless of the outcome, the type of decision, the import, the amount of change – i.e. is it a large implementation that involves many factors and people? or a small change that can be made by one person? – the steps are the same.

Regardless of the focus of the decision - whether it is for decision analysis to choose the best oil rig, or for a software implementation – all of the above steps must be taken. And to ensure bias and buy-in are managed adequately, everyone who will touch the solution must be involved at the human, internal criteria/beliefs place.

Information – that which we collect or share to sell solutions, or which we offer to lead an initiative or gather decision criteria – is the last thing that should be addressed. Unfortunately, we have a tendency to focus on this first, thus biasing the end-result.

What would you need to believe differently to be willing to put the people piece first? What skills would you need to add to what you are doing to delay the information aspect of your approach?

Contact me: sharondrew@sharondrewmorgen.com, or go to www.buyingfacilitation.com.

How Do Decisions Get Made? is a post from: SharonDrewMorgen.com

Examples and techniques for integrating video with your email marketing

It doesn’t take a scientist or even a marketing expert to know that most people check their emails every day. Your friends, your coworkers, your mom, your grandmother, her grandmother. Email is used by virtually everyone regardless of age or any other demographic you can think of.

Email marketing is critical to your brand’s success and is still the best way to engage your audience and keep customers coming back. According to eMarketer, one of the top benefits of email marketing is that it yields a wealth of data about who a company’s best customers are.

Marketers can target those people and offer incentives or discounts to encourage them to share with their friends and advocate on behalf of the brand. Add video to your email marketing campaigns and you have an inexpensive, visually appealing and adaptable marketing medium for your business or service.

The popularity of online video cannot be denied, and certainly not ignored. Over 6 billion hours of video are watched each month on YouTube alone. Video captures attention and inspires engagement. Boring text-only emails, well … not so much. But adding video to an email to get your message across: now there’s something that works!

Engage and Retain

It’s difficult to admit, but attention spans these days are getting shorter and competition for attention has gotten fiercer than ever. Over time, the emails you send regularly to your contact list can get ignored or lost in the shuffle.

However, according to Convince & Convert, 33% of email recipients open emails based on subject line alone. Cisco reports that adding the word ‘Video; to a marketing email typically increases open rates by 7% – 13%.

Adding videos to your email campaigns helps combat the increasing tendency of recipients to ignore, spam or trash typical text-only emails they are bombarded with every day. So it makes sense to add videos to your emails to captivate and retain attention through visual engagement that speaks to your target audience.

Of course, you must think carefully about the best technique for embedding video in email,  as explained in this post by Tim Watson. As Tim explains, static images or simple animated Gifs encouraging emails to be played in a web browser or on YouTube are still the most practical option. In this post I look at ideas for types of engaging video to showcase in email to encourage clickthrough.

Video emails allow you to showcase personality and create a unique brand presence. They give your business or service the personal touch that text alone cannot communicate. And they keep customers coming back!

Return on Impression

Video emails are a highly effective way to impress, inform, engage, and even entertain your potential new and existing customers. As painful a reminder as it may be, think about your next dental appointment. Your dentist will send you a cookie-cutter snail-mail postcard to remind you of your next appointment. As responsible as you may be about caring for your teeth, you already dread the thought of having them drilled and you get enough paper junk in your mailbox already. That postcard from your dentist with the smiling clip art image or stock photo will likely get thrown in the trash. The end result:  you are likely to forget or ignore your next appointment.

On the other hand, if your dentist sends you a targeted video email, and tells you on camera not to forget your appointment and then offers you a 20% discount or free whitening on your next visit, you now have a patient who just received a personalized reminder with a special offer and is likely to return.

Personalize and Capitalize

When targeted correctly, video emails are one of the most effective ways to inform and engage people who are interested in learning about your business, and are likely to become a customer or to remain a loyal one.

According to eMarketer, approximately half of marketers who use video in email campaigns see increased click-through rates, increased time spent reading the email, and increased sharing and forwarding.

In a recent eMarketer poll, websites were the most popular destination for video content, used by nearly 84% of respondents, while around 60% of those polled sent videos via email.

Video emails can be used for just about any type of business communication: holiday greetings, news updates, product demos and more. Throw in deals or special exclusive offers every time and you have customers for life! Realtors, for example, typically list a property and show pictures, but with a video email, they can not only give potential buyers a personalized tour of the property in a video, but also frame it in a branded template with their contact information for immediate action.

Add social media sharing and forwarding functionality to the branded video email and your product or service gets exposure to a whole new audience beyond just your contact list!

Even major league sports have used email marketing to increase engagement. According to a report by Marketing Sherpa, NFL.com leveraged the data they already had on their contacts to create emails as relevant and targeted as possible using improved segmentation.

Each recipient was segmented based on their favourite team and then given the most up-to-date, real-time content available, including videos, schedules and upcoming game information. The 2013 report says NFL.com’s email newsletter is up 121% for opens,  click-through rates are up by 26% and mobile opens are up 9%.

Best Practices for using Video Email

As I mentioned before, you have to select the best technique for embedding video in email. But beyond, this you need to feature the email in the best way in the email and then continue the experience when the video is played. Here are some other techniques I have found effective.

• Relevance is key – keep your message relevant to target audience
• Keep videos brief, under 3 minutes if possible. If a video goes over 10 minutes, consider breaking it up into multiple parts
• Expand video marketing efforts into your social media strategies. Include links to social media sites and share functionality in your message
• Tailor your greeting, tone and audience – know when to be formal or informal; whether to regionalize your message; when to employ humor, etc.
• Customers join mailing lists to receive discounts, deals and special offers.  Offer exclusive deals to subscribers and include calls to action relevant to your video.
• Be creative! Don’t forget that the goal is to engage customers and make them remember you when making purchasing decisions. Make an impact, that’s the biggest strength of video.

Ryanair is a unique brand. It managed to become one of Europe’s most-successful airlines despite a reputation for poor service that occasionally bordered on contempt for its own customers.

The ‘no frills’, challenger brand ethos became such an important part of Ryanair’s image and tone of voice that it ended up antagonising consumers as well as the competition.

But changing consumer expectations and mass adoption of digital technology means that Ryanair risks being left behind if it doesn’t change its ways, so new CMO Kenny Jacobs has been tasked with overhauling the customer experience and improving people’s perceptions of the brand.

The airline’s appeal comes from its low prices and massive choice of routes, so that has to remain intact if the business is to continue growing. Therefore Jacobs is focusing much of his efforts on improving the digital experience.

The biggest change is going to come in all things digital. So what data we get on customers, how we use it to make the experience better, how we personalise and retarget, what we do on CRM, mobile and content.

All of those things over the next two years will become the bigger levers of, not new growth, but improved customer retention.

Implementing an effective digital strategy within a business that has been lagging behind the competition is no easy task. So what exactly does Jacobs have planned?

Digital vs. traditional advertising

Ryanair is in an enviable position where it has already established massive brand awareness, so Jacobs’ faces different challenges to most CMOs.

If you contrast it with price comparison, which is where I previously worked, everyone in that industry is bidding massively for PPC and is working really hard to own the key terms in SEO just to create brand awareness. 

But we have incredible brand awareness, so the job is to communicate that we’re making changes and improving the service.

This impacts Ryanair’s marketing budget and the channels that it uses to broadcast its message, and in order to make a big noise about the new brand image Ryanair chose to run its first ever TV campaign.

Jacobs sees TV and above-the-line advertising as the perfect method to communicate the changes, and consumer research shows that the campaign has been a success in terms of driving site traffic, awareness of new services and brand reappraisal.

But once these initial goals have been achieved then there will be a greater focus on digital advertising.

Once we’ve improved the product and the service we’ll aim to use digital such as the website itself, email, retargeting and display to communicate our prices, alongside a bit of above-the-line and our owned media within the aircraft and airports.

CRM

According to Jacobs around 40% of Ryanair customers are repeat buyers and the company is busy developing its CRM platform as it works to improve this rate of retention.

Ryanair works with a custom-built CRM platform and is also building a new data platform on Hadoop, but much of what Jacobs has planned is on hold until all the systems are in place and feeding into one another.

At the moment the target is to have the CRM platform in place by September, at which point Ryanair can begin to implement more targeting and personalisation.

We need to be able to feed all the customer and user data back into the platform, so we can personalise the experience including everything from the desktop journey down to the emails that we send you.

The company is so far behind in terms of its digital marketing that it still can’t send targeted email campaigns, a channel that Jacobs believes will be extremely powerful for improving the customer experience.

We want to be able to start adding in new stuff like personalised content on where they’re going to, as well as upselling ancillaries. We haven’t done that well enough so far.

The new website

It wasn’t going to be difficult for Ryanair to improve its clunky, old school website, but the new site that went live in April is a massive improvement.

Ryanair's old website

The interface and booking system are far more user-friendly, however this is only the beginning of the development process.

At my previous companies building a website would be like unveiling the new Taj Mahal, and then you had the next one two years later. Now you start in a caravan and upgrade it bit by bit and keep things moving forward, it’s a more iterative process.

Jacobs has daily meetings with his ecommerce team to track visits and conversions in each market, as well as flagging up any anomalies and discussing any issues that are being worked on.

Bigger development projects are then discussed in more depth at regular weekly and monthly meetings.

Ryanair's new site

Part of the challenge is that Ryanair operates in 30 markets and in 18 different languages, so it’s a huge task to understand how conversions are affected along the entire journey.

To help solve this problem the company is on a massive recruitment drive for developers and data scientists, with plans to triple the size of the dev team in the next few years to around 100 employees.

Search issues

It was thanks to Ryanair’s attention to detail that it was able to quickly rectify an error with its URL structure that occurred when the new site went live.

The airline failed to implement redirects for many of its old pages, which meant that 404 pages began showing up in SERPs and caused a massive drop in rankings.

But though the problem made the national news, it wasn’t a big deal for Ryanair as around 90% of traffic comes direct or from people searching the brand name.

It was only long-tail terms that were affected, and as non-branded search makes up just 0.5% of traffic it wasn’t the end of the world.

According to Jacobs:

For many head terms, like ‘cheap flights’, the rankings actually went up, but it was the long tail that was impacted. I’d take an increase in the head terms vs. a drop in the long tail any time.

Going mobile

Jacobs admits that Ryanair has fallen behind when it comes to mobile, and despite unveiling the new website in April it still doesn’t have a mobile optimised version.

I’ll be honest, Ryanair wasn’t aware enough of the change in consumer behaviour in moving to mobile. It wasn’t a strategic decision to take our time, we’ve missed it and we’re now catching up.

That process is well underway with a mobile optimised site due to go live in June followed by an app in July that will allow customers to search and book flights, check in, and use a mobile boarding pass.

Sadly that comes too late for those of us that had to pay £65 to print out a boarding pass in the past...

New content

With the new site and a move to social marketing it's inevitable that Ryanair will need to start producing more of its own content.

At the moment the website is quite thin but the content team is in the process of creating hub pages and content guides for key locations.

However Jacobs pointed out that if Ryanair is to deliver a truly excellent customer experience then it needs to go beyond generic content that can be found anywhere on the web.

For example, if a customer is heading to Barcelona for the weekend we need to be able to come up with unique and interesting ideas rather than just advising people to go to Las Ramblas.

Jacobs said that one of the brand’s strengths in this area is its range of destinations, which could make user-generated content an interesting option.

This would also feed into its social strategy as the content would be eminently more shareable than branded comms.

Social

Ryanair only joined Twitter in late 2013 but it has already posted close to 10,000 tweets thanks to its focus on answering customer service queries.

This includes questions about specific routes, flight delays and even problems with the website.

@twitrayon Hi Alexandre, this route is not operating at the moment. Thank You. AA

— Ryanair (@Ryanair) May 6, 2014

The content and earned media teams also have some control over the Twitter feed, but it’s primarily used by the customer service department.

Jacobs said the aim is to build out a wider presence across Twitter, Facebook, Google+ and YouTube then integrate the user data back into its CRM platform. As with other aspects of Ryanair’s digital strategy, there is still some way to go until this is full implemented.

That trinity of social, content and mobile, and how we figure out what we want to do there and integrate it into our customer experience, will be a first for us.

Retain its challenger brand status

Despite the massive changes that are underway in terms of the customer experience, Ryanair will retain its tone of voice and position as a challenger brand.

This is evident with the new TV adverts, which promote the improved website while giving a sly nod to the brand’s reputation for dodgy customer service. 

Irony is a very good tool to use, as I think people expected us to do a bit of mea culpa and apologise, but the setup we went for has worked without being too clever.

Rather than trying to be very classy or stick two fingers up, we want to be confident in the product that we have and still position ourselves as the challenger brand.

This means we can expect a new style of communication from Ryanair, one that has a modern outlook and doesn’t rely on controversy for spikes in PR.

That said, the challenger brand status does mean there’s room for the occasional disruptive campaign, with Jacobs citing K-Swiss and Dollar Shave Club as examples that Ryanair might seek to emulate.

Digital video is cheaper and focuses on a different audience. We need that as Ryanair is for everyone.

All things considered, Jacobs has a big task ahead of him at Ryanair, with the ultimate aim being to establish the company as a leader in digital rather than a laggard.

But he benefits from the fact that the company is seeking to make changes from a position of strength.

I’ve a very supportive boss who’s up for change, so we just need to get on with it. We’re not precious about things as we’ve become Europe’s biggest airline with, let’s be honest, a rubbish website that didn’t work on mobile and barely worked on tablet. We didn’t even have a decent email programme. 

So imagine if we hold on to the low fares, keep adding the destinations and have a great website that works on mobile alongside our app. If we then improve the in-flight service as well, then the opportunity is huge.

Despite the omni-channel world we now live in, there are still those who consider web self-service to be a second-rate customer support channel. In this four-part blog series, we will be addressing some of the most common myths surrounding web self-service.

Part 1: reviewed the myth: “It’s fobbing customers off with a second-rate support channel.”

Part 2:“It’s all about cutting jobs in the contact centre.”

Successful implementation of web self-service software can lead to a significant reduction in the number of inbound enquiries an organisation receives, with ContactBabel reporting that virtual web-service agents can deflect 25% of calls and 50% of e-mails. This can lead to a belief, that the main driver behind offering customers online self-service, is to help the organisation to cut the number of agents needed in it’s contact centre.

However, our own recent Synthetix Client Survey showed that the opposite of this is actually true. When asked to rank the six key drivers for the adoption of online customer service by priority:

• 75% of respondents ranked raising customer satisfaction in their top two
• 63% of respondents ranked deflecting avoidable contact / reducing abandonment rates in their top two

The main influencing factors for the vast majority of clients, were to improve customer satisfaction levels by helping customers to self-serve information quickly themselves, and to deflect the volume of common inbound calls and e-mail enquiries, that could be easily answered online.

Perhaps more revealing, is the fact that reducing contact centre costs and cutting staff levels, proved to be very low on the list of priorities for those surveyed:

• 50% of respondents didn’t consider reducing contact centre costs to be a driver in adopting online customer service
• Only 37% of respondents considered rationalising contact centre costs through staff cuts to be a factor

Indeed, even the 37% that did consider rationalising contact centre costs through staff cuts to be a contributing driver, all of those still ranked it either low or bottom by priority and felt that persuading more customers to use self-service would actually result in staff being redistributed rather than cut.

The majority of questions asked via intelligent FAQ knowledge-bases are often repetitively asked questions, which can be answered quickly and easily via self-service tools. The result of this is that the contact centre agents are freed up to be routed more complex enquiries and sales leads, which by nature require more of an agents time and are more rewarding to handle.

The deflection in the volume of the more mundane routine calls, can lead to a change in the type of calls an agent receives, resulting in them being trained to handle more technical issues. This in turn can result in a more challenging role, leading to better job satisfaction for the agent and quicker query resolution for the customer.

A good web self-service strategy will have a central knowledge-base of information at it’s core, shared out across all channels, allowing customers to access the same answers across all touch-points. Agents should also be able to access the same knowledge-base internally, ensuring the information they give customers is consistent.

An internal agent knowledge-base, constantly up-dated with the latest information and documents on products and services, has been proven to improve agents response times and reduce training times. From the agents’ perspective, they have quick and easy access to all of the information they require in one place, helping them to increase FCR rates. This in turn improves customer satisfaction levels and reduces costs by improving efficiency – a win-win situation for both the customer and the organisation surely? The recent ContactBabel report however shows that only 45% of agents surveyed have access to a searchable knowledge-base.

It is important to highlight that a well-managed content strategy is also key to the success of the knowledge-base and constantly reviewing customer analytics / feedback mechanisms to up-date the database is vital. A knowledge-base is only as good as the information within it and the agent is only as good as the knowledge they’re given.

In part 3 of this series, we will be addressing the myth: “web self-service is just for support, not for customer conversion.”

At just 12 years old, Maggie Valentine weighs over 200 lb. “My doctor said I’m a statistic,” says Maggie, who has short, wavy blond hair. “I think it has something to do with my weight.” She’s trying hard to shed pounds, following the same advice we’ve all heard countless times. Maggie jogs and kayaks; she regularly swims laps, and walks her dogs. She also does her best to watch what she eats. Her mom buys her “reduced fat foods” in the supermarket, like Triscuit crackers and certain cereals. Despite their best efforts, though, Maggie’s weight stays the same. “Sometimes, it gets a little bit frustrating,” the preteen says quietly.

Maggie is one of several kids and teens featured in Fed Up, a new documentary from executive producer Laurie David, who was behind the Oscar-winning An Inconvenient Truth. It is a powerful call to arms about obesity—a message we’ve been hearing for years, and apparently have yet to heed. Between 1985 and 2011, the obesity rate among Canadian adults more than tripled; by 2019, overweight and obese adults will outnumber those of normal weight in half of our provinces, predicts a new report in Canadian Medical Association Journal Open. Childhood obesity, too, has risen significantly in the past few decades. Obesity is now seen in babies as young as six months old, and it’s become a global crisis. We all know we’re supposed to eat less and exercise more, but that mantra doesn’t seem to be working. What if the accepted wisdom on obesity—that to lose weight, we simply need to burn off more calories than we consume—is dead wrong?

That’s the case presented in Fed Up, and by a number of doctors and experts. Despite what we’ve heard for years, they say that not all calories are created equal, and that some may be worse for us than others. Beyond that, one of our favourite ingredients might be making us sick. It’s something we’re hard-wired from birth to seek out, and it’s been described as addictive. Yet it seems to be spurring on not only obesity, but—if the emerging science is right—other plagues of modern society like heart disease, diabetes, and perhaps even Alzheimer’s. The culprit, these doctors and scientists say, is sugar.

Related:
Infographic: How much sugar do you eat in a year?

Dr. Robert Lustig, a professor of pediatrics at the University of California at San Francisco, who appears in Fed Up, is the most vocal and visible proponent of this way of thinking: that sugar is, as he puts it, a “toxin.” Even a “poison.” If that’s true, we’re in trouble. We consume it in astounding quantities. According to the latest Statistics Canada figures, Canadians downed 110 grams of sugar a day in 2004, from all sources.

That’s the equivalent of 26 teaspoons, amounting to over 21 per cent of our daily calorie intake, and it’s surely gone up since then. Canadians
eat, on average, 88 lb. of sugar per year; the average nine-year-old boy will consume a whopping 123 lb. of sugar per year, and male teens, 138 lb. A Canadian teen’s primary source of sugar, according to the report, is soft drinks. Americans, meanwhile, have a mean daily intake of about 28 teaspoons; over a year, they’ll consume 96 pounds of sugar, according to a U.S. Department of Agriculture spokesperson.

Even for people with the best of intentions, who refrain from eating ice cream, candy and chocolate bars, sugar is almost impossible to avoid. According to Fed Up, of the 600,000 food items sold in U.S. grocery stores, 80 per cent have added sugar. Sugar and its ilk (including high-fructose corn syrup) are added to nearly everything we consume. Pasta sauce. Bread. Salad dressing. Peanut butter. One tablespoon of ketchup can contain as much as a teaspoon of sugar. “Low fat” products, especially those intended for kids, are often the biggest sugar bombs of all. Sugar-laden processed foods are everywhere: even at the local health food store, it’s truly a matter of buyer beware. Honey, agave syrup, fruit juices, and other sweeteners that often appear in “healthier” options—all are sugars.

Amid growing alarm about sugar, the World Health Organization (WHO) recently released new draft guidelines on how much of it we should consume. Sugars should make up less than 10 per cent of our total energy intake per day, it states, a number we already exceed. It further adds that cutting this below five per cent—less than half what Canadians currently consume—would have “additional benefits.” (The guidelines refer to almost all sugars in our diet, not including what’s in whole fruits, vegetables, or dairy.) “The evidence [against sugar] is expanding by the day,” the WHO’s Dr. Francesco Branca said of the new recommendations, voicing particular concern about the “hidden” sugars in processed foods.

Woe to the average Canadian, who almost reaches the WHO’s upper 10 per cent limit with just one can of regular pop, and gets within spitting distance of the five per cent lower cutoff after a four-ounce serving of regular Activia yogourt. Still, they wouldn’t know it from checking the nutrition information listed on the product. On the “nutrition facts” panel on Canadian food labels, the grams of sugar in a serving is listed. But what percentage that represents of our daily intake remains a vacant space, as it does in the U.S. Health Canada doesn’t set a recommended limit on sugar consumption (although it says it’s reviewing the WHO’s proposal). A number of experts and groups, like the Childhood Obesity Foundation, are calling on Health Canada to set a daily recommended sugar limit.“It’s so revealing of how the processed-food companies are more powerful than the regulators, supposedly watching them on our behalf,” says Michael Moss, Pulitzer prize-winning author of Salt Sugar Fat: How The Food Giants Hooked Us. “Look at that nutrition fact box—there’s a huge gaping hole next to sugar. They’ll tell you how much is in the product, but not how much is added, and how much is natural. And they won’t tell you how much sugar to eat.”

Industry maintains there’s good reason for this. “Science hasn’t found a specific level of sugar that causes harm,” says Sandra Marsden, president of the Canadian Sugar Institute (CSI), which represents our country’s sugar manufacturers. As part of the WHO’s public consultation, which wrapped up in March and will lead to a final report, the CSI swiftly submitted comments listing perceived problems with the new guidelines, as did other industry groups, including the Canadian Beverage Association (CBA) and Food and Consumer Products of Canada (FCPC). “There is no evidence for a five per cent limit,” adds Maisie Vanriel of FCPC, which represents our food product manufacturers. “Even as a dietician, it would be a toughie for me.”

Critics accuse food and drink companies of putting the bottom line ahead of consumer health. The fiercest critics draw a comparison they surely dread. “The industry is responding to obesity exactly how tobacco responded to concerns about lung cancer,” says New York University dietician Marion Nestle, author of Food Politics: How the Food Industry Influences Nutrition and Health. “Attack the science, undermine the critics, [pay for] industry-funded studies.” In a study published in PLOS Medicine in December, researchers looked at 17 papers on sugar-sweetened drinks and their relationship to weight gain and obesity. They concluded that those papers in which authors had a “financial conflict of interest with [the] food industry” were five times more likely to find no association between sugary drinks and obesity.

David Moran of Coca-Cola Canada counters: “Tobacco cannot be consumed in a healthy manner whatsoever. We’re a beverage company. Beverages fit into a healthy lifestyle, but it depends on how active you are, and how many calories you consume.”

There’s a war under way, and consumers are at the heart of it. Heather Reisman, CEO of Indigo Books & Music and an executive producer of Fed Up, is hoping to spark a cross-country movement toward healthier eating, a decision that will impact her company’s bottom line. “We’re eating way more [sugar] than we used to, and it has this really bad effect,” she says. Indigo is removing all sweets from its impulse section (although they will still be sold further back, with teas), which is expected to cost the company $3 million per year. “We know that has a financial impact,” says Reisman. “It’s a small step we can take to show leadership.”

The danger that sugar presents “has nothing to do with the calories,” Lustig says in a YouTube video called “The bitter truth,” which has been viewed over 4.6 million times. “It’s a poison by itself.” Poison or not, we’re programmed to seek it out, and our brains are wired to crave more. It’s a craving that industry understands and anticipates.

Forty years ago, a similar fear gripped consumers in Canada and the U.S., but back then, the enemy was dietary fat. With heart disease rampant, groups like the American Medical Association and the American Heart Association called for a reduction in fats. Food companies rolled out new lines of health-conscious, “low fat” products. (A low-fat label, it turns out, persuades us to eat as much as 50 per cent more, according to Cornell University’s food and brand lab.)

The problem was, these new foods tasted “like cardboard,” Lustig says. To make their offerings more appealing, manufacturers added sugar, or high-fructose corn syrup (“glucose-fructose” on Canadian food labels), which made its appearance on North American store shelves in the 1970s. Not only is high-fructose corn syrup much sweeter than refined sugar, it’s also way cheaper, and soon it was in all sorts of foods that shoppers might not expect, from pretzels to deli meat to processed cheese.

It’s human nature to seek out a sugar rush. High-calorie food stimulates the same parts of our brain as drugs and alcohol, brain-scan studies have shown. “Sugar, fat and salt are the basic drivers for survival,” says Dr. David Jenkins of the University of Toronto, who holds the Canada Research Chair in nutrition and metabolism. For most of our history, “we’ve struggled like mad to get sugar,” and now, within just a few decades, we’ve become buried in it. Before food processing, when we got sugar mainly from fruits and vegetables, we consumed about 30 grams per day of it, according to Lustig’s estimates. By 1977, Americans consumed more than 70 grams per day, and by 1994, it was 110 grams.

With food scientists focused on how to make their products tastier, cheaper and more convenient, resisting the lure of processed food became all but impossible. “It starts with the bench chemists,” says Moss, who’s spent years investigating the inner workings of the food industry. “Through trial and error, they determine the perfect amount of sugar, salt and fat.” Moss describes his encounters with Howard Moskowitz, the mastermind behind bestselling Cherry Vanilla Dr. Pepper and other blockbusters. “He coined the term ‘bliss point,’ ” Moss says, “that perfect amount of sugar that’ll send us over the moon, and will send products flying off the shelves.”

But sugar isn’t just incorporated into food and drink as a taste enhancer. “It provides so much more,” Moss continues. “It’s the preservative that allows [foods] to sit in the warehouse for months. Or the cheap substitution for other ingredients, like fresh herbs and spices, or fully ripened tomatoes.”

Soon enough, people were consuming sugar—whether they knew it or not—at breakfast, lunch and dinner. Food manufacturers “added sugar to things that didn’t used to be sweet,” Moss continues. “Flavoured yogourt can have as much sugar as ice cream,” making plain yogourt taste unforgivably bland by comparison. “It teaches us to expect sweetness all the time,” he says.

All sugar, even high-fructose corn syrup (now vilified as “unnatural”), is processed by the body in pretty much the same way. “Physiologically, sugar is sugar,” Nestle says. Refined sugar consists of glucose and fructose molecules bonded together. Sugar’s fructose component is metabolized mainly by the liver, which is what Lustig and others believe makes it uniquely dangerous. When it hits in a rapid dose, say a soft drink or a Twinkie, it’s quickly converted to fat in that organ. Doctors don’t worry about fruits and veggies, because they’re full of fibre and digest more slowly, giving the body a chance to use up stored energy. And fibre leaves us feeling full, unlike a handful of candy. (The jury’s still out on artificial sweeteners, but studies have linked them to weight gain, suggesting they prime the brain to seek out high-calorie sweets later.)

Of course, as a source of calories, eating lots of sugar leads to extra pounds. But it’s more complicated than that. While sugar isn’t the direct cause of diabetes, for example, it seems to spark a cascade of effects that wreak havoc in the body. Dariush Mozaffarian, a cardiologist and epidemiologist at the Harvard School of Public Health, explains: “Fat in your liver is linked to insulin resistance,” when the body no longer makes good use of that critical hormone, which helps cells throughout the body absorb glucose and use it for energy. Glucose then builds up in the bloodstream, raising the risk of Type 2 diabetes. Type 2 diabetes is now common, most alarmingly among kids—which was all but unheard of less than three decades ago. By the year 2050, according to Fed Up, one in three Americans will have diabetes.

Metabolic syndrome affects 20 per cent of Canadians. It’s a cluster of risk factors, from having a big waistline and fat packed around the abdomen, to high blood pressure, both of which raise the risk of cardiovascular disease—and again, Type 2 diabetes. In February, a study published in JAMA Internal Medicine found that consuming added sugar was associated with increased risk of death from cardiovascular disease. (Although the Heart and Stroke Foundation of Canada takes a position on several issues around nutrition, from sodium to trans fats, it has yet to make a recommendation about sugar intake. It’s working on one.)

Even the rising Alzheimer’s epidemic could be linked, at least in part, to our modern diets. Suzanne de la Monte, professor of neurosurgery at Brown University, suggests that Alzheimer’s might be a form of insulin resistance in the brain—a “Type 3 diabetes,” as she calls it. Insulin, she explains, is “the master hormone” throughout the body, including in the brain, where it plays a crucial role in plasticity, and stimulates brain cells to take up and metabolize glucose for energy. While Alzheimer’s does have a genetic component, “you can’t really explain this soaring increase in Alzheimer’s disease on the basis of genes alone,” de la Monte says. “It has to be the environment, because we’ve changed the environment and what we eat so drastically.”

Still, there’s roiling debate among scientists about whether the fructose in sugar really is the devil that Lustig and others make it out to be. Dr. John Sievenpiper, a scientist at St. Michael’s Hospital’s Li Ka Shing Knowledge Institute in Toronto, has published a series of papers concluding that excess calories from fructose aren’t any worse from other sources. He believes science doesn’t justify recommending a daily limit for sugar consumption: “I don’t care if it’s five grams or 100 grams,” says Sievenpiper. “If it’s providing excess calories, it’s a problem.”

Others fire back that sugar can be a danger, but add that refined starches are just as bad, and of course we consume those in huge quantities, too. Unlike sugars, these are only made up of glucose, which isn’t metabolized like fructose in the liver. Yet if it comes in a rush, from a piece of white bread, for example, it’s converted to fat in the liver, too, says Mozaffarian. He was lead author on a 2011 study in the New England Journal of Medicine, finding that some foods are more likely to pack on pounds—and undermining the notion that all calories contribute equally to weight gain. In his paper, the foods most associated with extra weight were potato chips, sugary drinks, and the old staple of many dinner tables: potatoes. Fibre-rich foods like fruits, veggies and nuts had the opposite effect. “Eating a piece of white bread is no different than Skittles,” Mozaffarian says. “It’s basically sugar.”

Investigative health and science journalist Gary Taubes, author of Why We Get Fat: And What To Do About It, thinks that when it comes to obesity and other conditions, “sugar is probably the primary problem,” pointing to traditional Asian cultures, where white rice is a staple, and which had low rates of obesity and diabetes until recently. He’s co-founder of the Nutrition Science Initiative, a non-profit funding two upcoming studies that will track overweight and obese people, while tinkering with their diets (in the second study, virtually all carbs will be replaced with fat). These studies, Taubes says, are intended to test what he calls “the central dogma of obesity, that a calorie is a calorie.”

It’s a message we hear from the food and drink industry over and over again: that a calorie is a calorie is a calorie, and that the true cause of obesity is a failure to burn them off. “Sugar is like any source of calories,” says Marsden, of the Canadian Sugar Institute. To lower the risk of obesity, she says, “you need to focus on total calories and activity.” “It’s always been very important to the sugar industry that a calorie is a calorie,” says Taubes. “As long as people think we get fat [just because] we eat too much, industry can say, eat in moderation, and exercise more,” but don’t abandon a beloved product.

The worry is that much of the debate around sugar plays right into industry’s hands. Like a game of Whac-A-Mole, as soon as one ingredient—whether it’s gluten, peanuts, trans fats, or something else—is pegged as particularly harmful, companies rush out a line of products with a reduced amount of that “problem” ingredient, but these new products aren’t necessarily healthier. “Industry loves it when we concentrate our concern on one thing, whether it’s sugar, fat or salt, because they can adjust,” Moss says. “They can lower the amount of sugar, and boost fat and salt, and put it on shelves next to the regular version. It will increase sales,” he says, “not diminish them.”

When it comes to the food industry, a consumer can feel a bit like David before Goliath. Designing the perfect products to reel us in, scientists consider everything from the ideal noise level for the crunch of a chip, to something called “vanishing caloric density,” that feeling when a food hits the tongue (think ice cream or Cheetos) and all but disappears, leaving an insatiable craving for more. Laden with sugar, fat and salt, these products are palatable, convenient and cheap.

The companies’ genius extends from the lab to the shelves of our local grocery store. Take the cereal aisle. In a new study that looked at 65 cereals in 10 different U.S. supermarkets, researchers from Cornell found that those intended for kids are placed half as high on shelves: about 58 cm, compared to 122 for adults. What’s truly unnerving, though, is their second finding—that the colourful mascots on those boxes gaze downward, on average, at a 9.6-degree angle, so their eyes essentially follow kids. (Characters on adult cereal, meanwhile, mostly stare straight ahead, locking eyes with us.)

Marketing to children has been, and remains, one of the most controversial practices of the food industry. In the U.S., it’s extremely hard to limit, says Kelly Brownell of Duke University’s Sanford School of Public Policy. “The first amendment protects speech, and one form is commercial speech,” he explains. Since 1980, Quebec has banned all marketing to kids under 13, and the province “is ahead in that regard,” says obesity expert Yoni Freedhoff, medical director of the Bariatric Medical Institute in Ottawa, and author of The Diet Fix: Why Diets Fail and How to Make Yours Work.

But even without Cap’n Crunch peering down from the cereal aisle, processed food, for kids, is nearly impossible to avoid. Fed Up explores its encroachment into U.S. schools where, because of cutbacks and industry pressure, fast food lunches are the norm. (In the documentary, Duke University’s Brownell compares schools to “a 7-Eleven with books.”) School lunches “are horrendous here, too,” says Freedhoff, an adviser on Fed Up, who decries “the use of junk food in fundraising, and to reward, pacify and entertain kids. It’s so normal now,” he continues, “that when we speak up against it, people get mad.”

Efforts to reduce sugar consumption can lead to friction with big companies. In 2012, Coca-Cola sent letters to Ottawa city councillors over a public health campaign urging people to cut back on sugar-sweetened drinks. Stephanie Baxter of the Canadian Beverage Association explains: “No one single food or beverage is responsible for weight gain and obesity. By targeting one category, you’re creating a false sense [of security] for consumers.” Following a meeting between public health officials, Coke representatives and the CBA, the Ottawa campaign, which emphasizes nutrition and activities like walking, continues. “At the time, there was some misinterpretation we were targeting particular companies or products, which was unfortunate,” says Sherry Nigro of Ottawa Public Health.

Brownell is buoyed by a renewed push to remove junk food from U.S. schools—one that began at the local level, with individual districts. Ontario, too, introduced its new school food and beverage policy in 2011, which includes beefed-up nutrition standards.

Although New York’s famous “soda ban,” which would have limited the size of sugary drinks, is stalled before the courts, the ideas of taxes and bans are no longer so far-fetched. In November, for example, voters in San Francisco will decide whether to support a tax on sugar-sweetened beverages.

Last year, for the first time, Coca-Cola addressed obesity in a global television campaign. Its ad highlights the company’s more than “70 low- and no-calorie choices,” smaller portion sizes, and the move to post calorie content on the front of the can or bottle. (This initiative was launched by the Canadian beverage industry in 2011.) In schools, Coke offers healthier choices like water, juice and diet drinks, it notes. The ad concludes with a familiar message. “All calories count,” the female narrator says over images of kids and teens dancing, jogging and playing hockey. “No matter where they come from, including Coca-Cola and everything else with calories. If you eat and drink more calories than you burn off, you’ll gain weight.”

Observers like Freedhoff insist we can’t expect the food and drink industry to solve the obesity crisis. Companies are out to make a profit—and will keep selling us products we’re willing to buy. “These aren’t social service organizations,” he says. Change has to come, Freedhoff maintains, from “empowering the individual to understand the marketplace, whether it’s calorie counts on menu boards, banning certain claims on the front of packages,” or issuing clear guidelines on how much sugar we should have in a day.

Following its public consultation, the WHO is now finalizing its updated guidelines on sugar. Earlier this year, Health Canada launched a public consultation of its own: one aimed at improving our country’s nutrition labels. Many will be watching to see what is said about sugar. For now, though, that space on every nutrition label in the country remains troublingly blank.

The post Death by sugar appeared first on Macleans.ca.

If you’re wondering how email marketing can boost your business, you’re not alone. Plenty of savvy business minds have pondered that question.

Like any smart business owner, you want to know the benefits of email marketing. There’s a whole list of benefits, which we’ll cover here, but one of the most compelling reasons to use email marketing is its return on investment (ROI).

According to the Direct Marketing Association, email marketing brings in about $40 for every $1 you spend. That’s one of the highest ROIs for any type of marketing.

While that statistic is impressive, we know you desire more information to make an informed decision, so we turned to Jill Bastian, our Community Education and Training Manager. With her help, we’ve outlined five ways that email marketing can help your business.

1. Email marketing can increase sales

You want your email efforts to pay off in sales. By sharing information about your business through emails, you help customers see how valuable your product or service is, Bastian says. That leads to money in the cash register.

What kinds of emails bring in the most sales? The best way to increase sales through email marketing is to send a variety of emails to your customers, but there are a few types of emails that generally help drive sales more than others:

Promotional email

Nothing entices a customer more than a great deal. Your customer saves a few bucks and your bottom line gets a boost. Not bad, right? Keep in mind, promotional emails aren’t reserved for only things like, “Don’t miss our 50% off sale.” A promotional email can offer other perks too, like free shipping or a free product trial. For example, J.Crew offered free shipping in this email.

New arrival email

When a hot new item, service or update arrives at your store, an email spreads the word about this must-have product. In the email, include a link so shoppers can make a purchase instantly. Electronics giant, Apple, does this with its new products. Check out the example below.

While these emails can boost sales, you can’t sell 24/7. Your customers want more than that. Every email you send can get customers one-step closer to making a purchase, which is why a variety of emails is the best strategy. Emails help you build trust, establish a relationship, and improve brand awareness – all of which play a role in the purchasing process.

2. Emails keep your business top of mind

Email marketing can help your product or business remain top of mind to your consumers. Emails serve as gentle reminders about your business. Let’s say you run an auto body shop and regularly email your customers promotions and car maintenance tips. When Susie gets in a fender bender, your business springs to mind because of your consistent emails. As a result, Susie heads to your shop for repairs. Emails help you stay in front of your customers on a regular basis, Bastian says.

What kinds of emails keep your business top of mind? There are several actually. These emails are more about staying in touch with customers and less about selling. Here are a few examples:

Newsletters

A company newsletter is a great way to update your customers about your business. The sky’s the limit for newsletter content. You can offer small history lessons about your business, talk about upcoming events, highlight employees, or offer industry-specific news and tips. The newsletter below even offers free downloads.

A holiday email

When a holiday rolls around, you can send your customers a holiday email. It can be a three-sentence email that wishes everyone a Happy New Year, or a colorful banner that celebrates the Fourth of July and offers customers a discount. It can be a nontraditional holiday, too. Either way, a holiday is a good reason to reach out to your customers.

3. Keep customers coming back with regular emails

Emails help you build a lasting relationship with your customers. You don’t just want one-time customers; you want loyal customers who keep coming back again and again. Email marketing can make that goal a reality. By regularly reaching out to your customers, you encourage them to make another purchase. Just like bumping into a friend on the street can lead to meeting up for drinks later, an email works the same way. The email is the spontaneous meeting, and a purchase is the result.

What kinds of emails keep repeat business booming? Again, a variety is best, but there are few emails, in particular, that help bring customers back into the sales cycle.

Reorder emails

If you have a product or service that is consistently needed, a reorder email is an excellent way to remind customers that it’s time to purchase. For instance, if you sell printer cartridges, you can send an email to a customer two weeks before the cartridge is set to run out. This requires some tracking, of course, but it’s a great way to encourage repeat business.

‘We miss you’ email

When a customer has fallen off the sales grid for a while, you can send an email that encourages them to come back. The email can say something as simple as, “We miss you.” You might include a discount to entice the customer to come back again.

4. Use emails to establish your authority

Email marketing can help you establish authority in your field. You want to show customers that you know your business inside and out. Through creative emails you can showcase your knowledge without bragging. The best way to do that is to send emails that provide value to your customers.

Plus, emails that provide value get shared. It’s like virtual word of mouth. When you send Bobby an email that’s helpful, he may forward it on to his buddy. You’re establishing your business as a leader in the industry and gaining customers. There’s an array of emails that can establish your vast array of knowledge. Here’s a look at three options:

Product use tips

Help your customers get more out of your product by giving them helpful advice. Offer maintenance tips or highlight features of a product. For instance, if you sell silver jewelry, you can send emails that show customers how to keep their accessories from tarnishing. A camera retailer sends this simple email to its customers. The email takes customers to a blog post that highlights winter maintenance tips.

Industry news

Give your customers information they care about by highlighting news in the industry. If you sell tax software, send an email about new deductions.If you sell women’s clothing, send an email like the one below that gives ladies a fashion tip.

Newsletter

A newsletter is an effective way to share news, tips, how-tos, events and even a promotion or two. The mix of information makes newsletters valuable and informative.

5. Establish and nurture relationships through email

It’s human nature to rely on those you trust. It’s no different in business. You can use email to establish and nurture a relationship with your customers. Think of emails as a virtual handshake or a conversation between you and your customers. Emails give you a chance to make a personal connection. Whether you’re courting new customers or engaging with loyal members, an email campaign is one of the best ways to build a relationship. A variety of emails serve this purpose, but here are a few that are perfect for relationship building:

Welcome email

When a new customer signs up for your email list, a welcome email can introduce them to the company and its products or services. It can be a quick welcome email with a promotion, or you can try a welcome email that offers more information, like the one below.

Newsletter

Newsletters make customers feel connected to your company. It’s a big piece of the relationship puzzle.

Testimonial email

Use email marketing to share customer reviews. By sharing a testimonial you reaffirm your customers’ choice in your business. That’s helpful when you’re nurturing a relationship. Here’s an example:

Of course, VerticalResponse is here to help you make the most of every email you send. We’ve got helpful resources and a team available to help you create emails that can set your business apart. We’ll help you make each one of the benefits listed above a reality.

This guide written by Lisa Furgison and edited and produced in full by VerticalResponse.

Why your current way of working is costing you time and results and how to fix it.

I was a budding entrepreneur who had just quit her full-time job and was working hard to build a solid consulting practice. The entire weekend was spent cleaning my home from top to bottom in an effort to remove every hidden dust particle or sneaky pollen invader that could have contributed to my husband’s tortuous allergies. It was Monday morning, and I was telling my male business mentor how I had spent my weekend, expecting him to sing my praises as a business owner who also made time for family. I was wrong. “Crystal! How much do you charge an hour!? Why in the world did you pay $100/hour for home cleaning!?” That one sentence changed my life forever. Had I devoted that time to my business, I could have made nearly ten times over what a cleaning service would charge.

Work Smarter not Harder

The phrase “Work smarter not harder” has been a part of the American consciousness since the 1930s yet many professional fail to grasp the meaning. It’s not the motto of the lazy. In fact, if you’d like, you can still work the same amount of hours. However, by working smarter, you’ll get better results in those hours which can lead to raises or business growth.

Three Tips for Increasing Efficiency and Effectiveness

1. Create a prioritized to-do list daily. The key word is “prioritized.” Start with those items that are revenue generating or will result in the greatest return. Getting contracts out, following up on hot leads, finishing up your boss’ beloved pet project—all of these things are more important than filing and other administrative tasks. You can justify not completing reports if you’re exceeding your sales goal by 30%. However, you cannot justify lagging sales with too much data entry work. In fact, in the first scenario, you may score a new (or additional) assistant!
2. Perform non-revenue generating activities only once. Whether you’re an employee or business owner, if you are involved in revenue generation, that should be your primary focus during the day. All other items should be outsourced, whenever possible. Did upper management create a new weekly report for you to complete? Fill it out one time while creating a screen capture video of the steps and then outsource it to an internal or (if legal) external assistant. If the item can be completed remotely, consider finding help on a site like Odesk.com or Guru.com. Don’t do this though. Simple research, data entry, and other similar items should also be delegated/outsourced. Again, create screen capture videos, write directions, or have the person who will assist you observe and record out thorough instructions.
3. Schedule down time. The Society for Human Resources Management (SHRM) recently conducted a study to measure the effects of vacations on work productivity. 77% of supervisors responded that employees who take vacation are more productive in the workplace. Breaks play an equally important role. A University of Illinois Study found that the brain’s ability to focus drops after centering on a single task for an extended period of time. Even brief diversions from a singular task can help increase productivity and focus.

When it comes to using social media for your business, there will always be experts sharing vital information and tips that can help you increase your sales online. If you want to know what the social media experts say, keep reading.

 1. “Social media is virtual networking. Take the time to build relationships just like you would face to face” – Laura Cummins, Owner of NineDotz Consulting.

2. “Be consistent and be yourself” – Sean D’Souza, Chief brain auditor at Psychotactics.

3. “Every business has a story. What’s yours? Share it in a way that attracts clients and encourages prospects to take action” – Rebekah Radice, Social Media Strategist.

4. “Fight social media overwhelm by keeping it SIMPLE; don’t be on every social media network – only where your audience spends lots of time and help them” – Mike Gingerich, Co-Founder at Tabsite.

5. “After creating your accounts, follow like minded businesses, then watch and observe the tone of the platform, then begin to engage” – Pam Wood, Ballroom made simple.

6. “Go above and beyond on your original content and be consistent with it. When it works, its the gift that keeps on giving” – Melonie Dodaro, Founder of Top Dog Social Media.

7. “Share something small every day. Small things over time get big.” – Austin Kleon, Author of Show Your Work!

8. “In social media, content leads to conversations, conversations build relationships, and relationships result in ROI” – Robert Caruso, Founder & CEO at Bundle Post.

9. “Don’t talk to people, talk with them” – Catherine Russell, Content Writer.

10. “Pick one network and do it well first. Choose one that you like to use personally and are comfortable using. Master it.” – Julia C. Campbell, J Campbell Social Marketing.

11. “Quality trumps quantity. Pick one or two social media platforms, and devote yourself to learning about them and using them well” – Joseph Cole, Content Writer.

12. “Watch your spelling!” – Tammy Weaver.

13. “Visuals are easier to relate to than test, so include images in your content than can be pinned to Pinterest and shared across other networks” – Cynthia Sanchez, Oh So Pinteresting.

14. “Learn from the experts and never pass up a social media class or seminar” – Charles River Running.

15. “Be honest, be warm, be authentic, and put yourself in the shoes of your customers on social media” – Kim Garst, Boom! Social.

16. “Be useful and indispensable” – John Haydon – Founder of Inbound Zombie and Author of Facebook for Dummies.

17. “You don’t have to create all original content, just be a good source for trending content in your industry” – Shannon Faulkner, CEO at Delphis Creative Marketing Solutions.

18. “Study your competition and watch where they participate in social dialog. Don’t reinvent the wheel” – Mike Stelzner, Founder of Social Media Examiner.

19. “Don’t take on too much. Focus on doing one thing right on social media before moving on” – Lisa Kalner Williams, Founder of Sierra Tierra Marketing.

20. “Identify your goals, then make a plan!” – Ashley Taylor Anderson, SinglePlatform.

21. “Share the reason “why” you love what you are doing. If you can’t tell it, you can’t sell it” – Warren Knight.

These are just 21 top tips from experts in the digital industry. If you would like to see all 50, you can view the presentation here.

I recently had a conversation with someone who is a recognized figure in the world of B2B Marketing Automation. Everything was humming along well until he said: “Social Marketing Automation is nothing but Traditional Marketing Automation with social logins and sharing enabled”. I was dumbfounded at this assertion coming from an ‘expert’.

We at NextPrinciples have a different view on Social Marketing Automation and how it differs from the traditional Marketing Automation solutions such as Marketo, Eloqua etc.

My colleagues and I have many scars on our backs from years of designing products in the CRM space and implementing them in mid and large sized organizations across the globe and therefore have some knowledge about CRM and related processes such as Marketing Automation.

We have combined this experience with the last 4 years in the Social Media space to come up with our definition of Social Marketing Automation (SMA). Below is a summary of how we believe it is different from but complementary to Traditional Marketing Automation (TMA). I will follow up with posts that go into the details.

1. Identification of Leads: Most of the leads that serve as inputs to the TMA process come from lists that are sold by vendors. They usually don’t provide any insights into the leads apart from name, title, company and email. SMA on the other hand focuses on identifying potential leads based on the conversations and profiles that are being publicly shared on social media channels. Also, TMA doesn’t actually generate leads while one of the core steps in the SMA process is to generate new leads.

2. Scoring: In order to meet the scale that mid and large enterprises demand, both TMA and SMA should utilize the concept of lead scoring. This helps the Demand Generation and Sales teams prioritize the leads that are the most relevant. TMA usually score a lead based on the available demographic information as well as actions the lead carries out such as clicking on a link in an email or filling up a form. SMA not only takes demographic information into account but also behavioral information based on content that the lead is posting on social channels.

3. Engagement: In TMA, the most common form of engagement is via email campaigns. The leads are sent emails with content that may or may not be personalized depending on the wealth of information available. TMA typically focuses on nurturing your marketing list with different pieces of content with a ‘hope’ that they are relevant to them. With SMA, there are multiple forms of engagement available. The vendor organization could start following the lead, retweet/favorite/like the lead’s content in order to make soft touches before sending tweets directly to the lead.

This is just a summary of the 3 key differences between TMA and SMA. In subsequent posts, I will dive into details about each of the differences and highlight the ways in which SMA can complement TMA and make a significant impact to the effectiveness of a company’s demand generation process.

Your thoughts are welcome!

Mr. Frost, my superb economics teacher in England, once shared the story of two people talking about a lecture given by the late Milton Friedman, the father of Monetarism. The first said, “Twenty years ago, I went to the worst lecture I’ve ever heard! Friedman gave it and I still remember how he just muttered on and on and all I could make out was the word ‘money.’” The second man responded, “If you can remember what the key message was some twenty years later, I think it might be the best lecture you ever heard!”

Indeed, Friedman’s singular message — that by controlling the supply of money, you can stabilize the whole economy — became, arguably, the most impactful economic theory of the second half of the 20^th century. The point I wish to emphasize is not an economic one, but a human one: if you try to say too many things, you don’t say anything at all.

It is clear, in the conference keynotes that I give anyway, that if we take on too many subjects, the message will not be remembered 20 days later, never mind 20 years later. The communication challenge is immense: often such events are packed with a dozen different speakers, each with a plethora of ideas. Then there is the digital distraction of the participants’ smart phones within easy reach. According to research reported in TIME magazine, the average phone user unlocks their phone 110 times a day and at the highest levels, 900 times a day. The best compliment I ever received from a conference organizer was that she had not seen one person reach for a digital device during my presentation. That doesn’t happen every time, of course. But through trial and error over many years, I have learned a few lessons about ensuring that the essential message is heard amidst all the nonessential noise:

1. You can’t communicate what you haven’t defined. I was once asked to work with an executive team who wanted to find a sticky message for a new initiative they wanted to run. But after interviewing a series of executives involved, all on video, I realized the problem was really a strategy problem dressed up as a communications problem. They couldn’t communicate the message with greater effectiveness until they defined their message with greater clarity. And that meant making decisions about what their initiative was and what it was not. I have found that designing a message around the following helps: “I am teaching [this narrow subject] to [this specific audience] in order that they [clear learning objective/call to action].”

2. Lose the slides and have a conversation. I recently spoke at SXSW, a conference held in Austin, Texas that attracts thousands of creative movers and shakers.When I spoke, there was standing room only and a palpable energy. Sensing the pulse in the room, I killed the slides and just had a conversation. Basically, I asked one question: “Why are otherwise intelligent people tricked by the trivial?” Lots of people shared their thoughts and we riffed on each of the comments, which ranged from “We’ve been trained from our first days in school to do what we’re told without question,” to “We have so many things to do, we’re overwhelmed.”

Then, instead of simply moving on to another question, I led the conversation back to the same one. We just kept going deeper on the same question and the conversation in turn became richer. Slides would have inhibited that conversation. One person said afterwards that the session had been the highlight of SXSW for him; another said it was the most interactive session of the whole event. Slides lead people to lean back in their seats while a conversation causes them to lean forward and engage.

3. Kill your darlings. Stephen King has written that in order for a story to come to life, you must “kill your darlings, kill your darlings, kill your darlings, even when it breaks your egocentric little scribbler’s heart, kill your darlings.” The same type of self-editing can be applied to telling stories. Jack Dorsey, the CEO of Square and co-founder of Twitter, thinks his primary job is to be the Chief Editor of the company in order to “present one cohesive story to the world.”

4. Be repetitive without being boring. Alastair Campbell, the communications advisor to Tony Blair for years, explained at a CIPR conference the challenge we face today in getting a message through in our noisy world: You’re in a huge room with a wall on the far side that’s painted white. Your job is to paint it blue using only the paint gun in your hand. You shoot a single ball and it hits the wall on the other side and makes the tiniest blue mark. You’ve got your message out there once, but it’s still drowned out. So you shoot another ball over. Then another and another and another. You keep going with great persistence until you look over there and the wall starts to look as if you aren’t sure if it’s white or blue. This, according to Campbell, is the best you can hope for.

But before you can be repetitive, you have to decide on the one message you want to hammer home – which means prioritizing. When the word priority came into the English language in the 1400s, it was singular. What did it mean? The very first or prior thing. It continued to have that useful definition for the next five hundred years. However, in the 1900s we pluralized the term and started speaking of priorities. But can we really have many first or prior things? Words can be potent enough to change the world, but if we try to share too many different messages, we water down the power of our message.

Whether you’re an executive preparing to give a high stakes keynote or an event organizer (which might be the most underappreciated job out there), you want participants to be impacted and inspired. You want a home run, not another forgettable talk. You want participants coming up to you months—or years—later thanking you for giving that talk or bringing in that speaker. It can be done, if you practice the disciplined pursuit of less, but better. That is the price for having people say, “That was the best lecture I’ve ever heard.”

Agile email creative means creating and curating email content not before send, or at send (with automated or dynamic content) but at the moment the customer opens or re-opens an email.

This agile creative allows the marketer to change pictures in an email depending on time of opening, location of opening (via IP address), weather in that particular area, or the device the email has been opened on.

Movable Ink is a company currently providing this technology as part of its email build and insights platform, a layer that sits on top of a company's email service provider. I spoke to Matt Potter, VP UK and EMEA, to get some more detail on agile email creative.

What can be done with this technology and in which sectors might it prove particularly useful?

Streamlining the customer experience

A lot of what this agile creative can achieve boils down to eliminating extraneous steps from the user journey when they open an email.

Device recognition is a good example of where the journey from an email can be streamlined. In the example below from Seamless, you can see that the call to action to download the company's app has been tailored for the device the user has opened the email on.

In this instance, the device is iOS, and so the picture downloaded invites the user to download from the app store and is linked to the correct page in the Apple store.

If the user had opened the email on an Android phone (or indeed reopens it on an Android), the Google Play image and link would have downloaded as part of the email.

This agile creative precludes the user from having to click through to a landing page first, then selecting the right app store download. This kind of optimisation will likely increase the proportion of customers that download the app, as fewer will fall by the wayside after clicking to download.

If this kind of targeting was done based on past user behaviour (and not agile creative), there may be some instances where the user has changed devices and hence the personalisation would be inaccurate.

 

Targeting locations

Here's an example of using agile creative to target users in particular locales with appropriate content, with doing any prior segmentation.

The NCAA Men’s Division 1 Basketball Championship in the USA is down to last four every March. Finish Line wanted to promote merchandise to customers in the surrounds of each school involved.

The IP address of the device the email is opened on is used to locate a user. If the IP is registered to within 100 miles of one of the four schools, a particular team's merchandise will be promoted in the image that loads into the mail.

If the recipient is outside these zones, a default image showing all four teams is downloaded (on the right hand side in the image below).

No delivery of expired promotions

Using agile creative to download different images for promotions depending on what time the recipient opens the email allows a company to adapt. The countdown clock in emails is the traditional or original use of agile creative, but this can be taken further and made more sophisticated.

This tactic also allows marketers, when the promotion has expired, to load an image in the email explaining this and pointing the recipient to a different or more appropriate landing page.

This example from Boden shows exactly this tactic in use. The second email shows what happens when opened after expiry. Note the call to action to make Boden a priority next time.

Content during promotion..

..and after promotion expiry.

 

Which sectors could really up their game?

Publishing

Syncing web content into email images, or in effect adding an RSS functionality into email, would be a boon for publishers.

Imagine sending upgrade offers to free registered users where the content is real-time upon opening. This may allow publishers to provide as relevant and compelling call to action as possible, as part of a paywall strategy.

Travel

Travel is so time-sensitive, both booking and then when taking up your airline seat or hotel room.

Agile creative could be used to change messages to potential seat reservers about how many seats are left on their plane. It could also be used to let the customer know the next stage of taking their flight, whether checking in, dropping a bag or checking in for the return.

Yes, these are instances where subsequent emails could be triggered, too, but the power of being able to change a link in an old email could work for trying to remarket or remessage to reopeners.

Government spend on cloud computing is set to overtake that …

Some workdays, you have so much to juggle that you just need a quick, easy way to post to your social networks. These 10 ideas can keep your social channels full of relevant, timely, and useful content--fast! Read the full article at MarketingProfs

Sam Fiorella, Partner at Sensei Marketing, recently wrote “Community Management: The 90-9-1 Rule is Dead,” about how the old concept that 90% of all your followers are just lurking, 9% are engaged, and that only 1% of the community actively produces content. Sam believes this is dead and that it’s closer to 70%/20%/10%, according to some research by Paul Schneider (back in August of 2011).

I don’t know if I agree with this — I think it’s more like 990-9-1 — we’ve attained a culture that is getting further and further from being an actor and more and more comfortable in the audience.

From Producers to Audience, from Hobbyists to Consumers

It’s happened like this over and over: photography, filmmaking, recording, radio, television, computing, the Internet, message boards, blogging, and now social media. At the beginning of each of these creative innovation, there was a heyday of hobbyism, during which ambitious and creative innovators were able to use their wits, a little money, and loads of sweat equity to become the earliest of adopters, well before commercial interests even knew there were commercial opportunities available.

I have recently become obsessed with Amateur Radio. Even though radio has been commercialized since the mid-20s, Ham Radio holds on to the hobbyist nature of radio, almost as if radio were captured in amber. Amateur radio reminds me of what it was like being a blogger in the late 90s using tools like Greymatter, Zope, and Pyra Labs (pre-Blogger). You needed to connect to your platform intimately, understanding all the layers of online communication: hosting, web service, bandwidth, programing languages, monetization, plugins, domain names, DNS, moderation, anti-spam strategies, site architecture, SEO, and the rest. With message boards, it was the same thing. Even if you weren’t a creator, admin, or host, it took quite a lot of effort to become a USENET member. If you wanted to join alt.fan.lemurs, you really needed to figure out your computer, your modem, you ISP, your terminal, your BBS, and then find your way through a gateway or two, until you found your way into USENET — and then you’d need to find your way around that entire thing.

It’s not like that any more. There’s very little need to be a hobbyist to engage with the Internet any more. Who even needs to know what Apache is, what an IP address is, how to set up a DNS, navigate the MX records, hack an .htaccess document or be concerned with ping latency. Now, all of that stuff is invisible, seamless. The barrier to entry has been (mostly) razed.

There are still coders, hackers, geeks, nerds, and hobbyist around, but those are hundreds-of-thousands of folks and not hundreds-of-millions — to say nothing of the 2 billion folks who are online, globally. Today, circa 2014, it’s tough to even get that close. You need to go out of your way, these days, to be able to run your own mail and web server from your own home. It’s not even easy to get an ISP or web host to give you access to shell access.

And, if you don’t know what the hell I’ve been talking about in the last few paragraphs, you’re part of the problem and not the solution.

So, as a result, we’re entering a world with fewer and fewer active Internet-, Web-, Blog-, Social Media- and Content-Creators. Social media, including Pinterest and YouTube, is becoming more and more celebrity-, brand-, agency-, and studio-driven.

Again, as inheritors of all previous communications innovation, we’ve pretty much transitioned from being makers to being takers — and if you don’t think this is true then maybe you’re just surrounded by geeks. Don’t let that influence your perception. And, let’s say every one of those 1.19 billion monthly active users of Facebook do engage, OK? Well, they’re probably just micro-sharing: cat photos, family photos, selfies, and dinner plates. These are insular, contained communities. Even amongst these communities, while there is a very high level of engagement when it comes to photos of cats, children, babies, vacations, etc, these are completely insular friend-and-family communities. While each member may very well follow Ellen DeGeneres on Twitter and Like her on Facebook, they’re probably lurkers in that community.

If they’re from Atlanta, they’re required to follow The Coca-Cola Company on Twitter, Facebook, and Google+ — but will they engage? Will they participate in a real way through sharing and commenting? (Are you still a lurker if you Like things? Are Likes really true participation or does participation require a share, reshare, or retweet?)

900-90-9-1

I have been a professional online community manager since 1999 and the numbers for online participation between passive lurkers, the engaged (commenters) and creators of content (on generalist sites) is closer to 99.989% lurkers, .01% engagers, and .001% creators, or 1000 lurkers for every 10 engagers for every 1 creator. This is for a generalist site, and is more realistically 1,000 people who are followers but not aren’t paying active attention — active listening, 100 who are actively listening, maybe even Liking or Plussing, and surely clicking through to your links, and then there are only 10 who are resharing, retweeting, commenting, and repinning, and finally, only 1/1000 are actively writing, publishing, tweeting, blogging, or even dropping links into sites like reddit, becoming true OPs. Or, if I were to be more charming, 900-90-9-1.

This is an important differentiation. Those 900 are important, even if 90% of them bounce, there’s still an impression. It took me a while to register the importance of my long tail blogger outreaches. While my conversion is roughly around 15%, of the 4,000 bloggers I’ll reach out to via loosely-targeted personalized emails in any particular outreach, around a thousand respond directly to the pitch and click through to the social media news release. With the project I did for Mizuno, The Mezamashii Project, one-half of the 4,000 bloggers we reached out to clicked through to the SMNR. To the world of altruism and branding, this is possible the first of seven touches that they will have received.

While we all want conversions to sales and we want true-believers, true-bluers, and a hoard of fan fanbois, marketing and sales isn’t only about farming and over-farming the same superfans again and again. The same thing with lists, groups, communities, etc.

Don’t we need to devote at least some attention to those detached majority? I know why we don’t, actually: we’re afraid of scaring off our fan base, right? We’re afraid of diluting what has been working for us into something that nobody wants. We’re afraid of selling out, maybe, and losing the attention of our reliable core.

The Lurkers Still Consider Themselves Citizens of Your Community

I used to be on the Vestry of an Episcopal Church on Capitol Hill. As part of the Parish’s edification, we hired an Organizational Consultant. The facilitator was called Bob Gallagher of Congregational Development. He told a very good story that helped explain the nature of the community to me — which is also a perfect analog to the virtual online community. The model works perfectly because all online is an opportunity to globally communicate and commit with people who have the same interests, passions, or concerns as you do.

The Members of the Church Analogy

Who are the members of that church at the center of town? The one right off the square? The one with the fine bell that chimes. Is it the Rector? The Vestry? The Choir? Those who are registered members? The daily attendees? The every Sunday mornings set? The Christmas, Easter churchgoers? The people who only come in for weddings and funerals? No more, right?

Well, according to Bob, the effect of this simple town Parish goes much further. People who have family ties to the Church even if they don’t attend. Let’s go further. According to Mr. Gallagher, he once knew of a parish church that suddenly lost its bell. The bell tower collapsed and the church did not have the funds to repair it right away.

The bell went silent and it wasn’t just the tithing members of the church who noticed, it was everyone in the town. Not just the average 184 church members, but the average 6,200 residents of a small town. The constant presence of the church building and signage, its persistence involvement in the community, and its constant soulful tolling bell, touched much more deeply than the Rector and Vestry were consciously aware (especially after counting the donation plate after Sunday services these days).

Its regular tolling — and the stoic and beautiful presence of its belfry on the town square — had become part of everyone’s identity. It was as important a part of the culture of the town as anything else. When that bell stopped ringing, it freaked everyone out. People who had never actually attended church clearly perceived the church as “their church” too.

In the case of this simple, apocryphal, story, it would be an error to limit the appeal for the money required to repair the bell. If there really is, indeed, a much larger perception amongst the greater town that the church with the broken bell is, indeed, “their church,” were they asked, then targeting too tightly — down to only the closes and most active members of their faith community — would have been a mistake.

It seems to me that it would be better to find a way to appeal both the greater 6,200 residents as well as anyone and everyone who had ever lived in that town — the alumni of the both the town and the church, even if they had moved away.

To bring it back into focus, while those 6,200 citizens in the small town were not active members of the church community — they were very passive lurkers — many of them not only were very aware that the bell has stopped chiming but they were more than willing to self-identify with the church being theirs and of members of the church, their church, the same church they had never attended in their lives.

Even so — even though they were not active participants — they were willing to contribute to the “save the bell” fundraiser.

Targeted Versus Untargeted Followers and Lists

Granted, there are surely better numbers than this. When I talk about the 900-90-9-1 rule, I am discussing communities in which there are little or no targeting. Communities like mine, for example. My Facebook, Twitter, Google+, Tumblr, Instagram, Vine, Flickr, Pinterest, YouTube, and blogs are open to the world. I have around 5,000 friends on Facebook, around 50k followers on Twitter, 5,643 followers on G+, only 387 followers on Tumblr, 7,236 followers on Instagram, a mere 326 followers on Vine, 404 followers on Flickr, 1,863 followers on Pinterest, and 3,483 subscribers on YouTube. While I try to draw people into my communities who are interested in digital PR, social media marketing, and online reputation management (ORM), I don’t do a very good job of only creating content about that. So, I have a relatively low engagement with folks who do follow me, though I do have quite a lot of influence. I create so much content on so many topics, all the time, that people are always bumbling into me through one channel or another. While this is terrible when it comes to a quick conversion, a quick sale, my channels do introduce quite a lot of people to what is often their first experience of what I am reviewing, discussing, or sharing; however, with such general followership over so many platforms, numbers of followers and volume of content count.

However, targeting tightly requires some choices. How are you going to collect a targeted list? Are you going to collect a loose list and then ping/pitch it a few times to try to collect together a sanctum sanctorum — an inner sanctum — of influencers? Are you going to be discerning and exclusive? Are you going to work hard to collect that list of influencers or are you going to be lazy? Will this then mean that you’re in a competitive space, fighting with others for these choice, engaged, few? Are you willing to buy lists? I believe folks like my friend John Hlinko collect very effective and extensive lists and groups of people who have a proven interest and passion. In John’s case, it’s liberal and progressive politics. His lists are not cheap at all, but they’re worth it because he’s done a lot of work and shouldered a lot of risk.

The way I do it is by doing a broad, deep, and large loose outreach on behalf of my clients. Of the 4,000, there are probably upwards of a thousand folks who respond positively to the outreach; and, while they might not be ready to message or share on behalf of my client over that particular issue, offer, or pitch, they’re generally interested in keeping connected.

Each time you engage the larger community, you can then skim off the most responsive participants. You can skim off the folks who have their hands out, the folks who are mean, unresponsive, uncool, and uninterested and then collect those who are willing to engage into a social CRM or some other method — a Rolodex? A CRM? — to allow you to engage and track the relationship over time. To add what you know about them and what they’re interested in, over time. To build not only a rapport but actually intimacy, connect, and fellowship.

Conversion Carries Across Channels and Platforms

Numbers matter. According to an article by Spring Metrics, “A 2007 Article in Target Marketing cites 2.9% as the average conversion rate. Most numbers that you see fall somewhere around the 2-3% range, which hasn’t changed much for a decade.” And it won’t change, generally-speaking, unless you really learn how to both hyper-target your lists, followers, following, and groups. If you want to be lazy, then it’ll be just a numbers game for you. No matter what sort of list, followership, collection, community, or platform you target, no matter how general — when you just take it and throw it again the wall — you’ll probably get a 2%-3% conversion rate. So, numbers matter.

Empower your .001% to empower your .01% to empower your 99.989% — make sure the closest member of your inner sanctum feel empowered to be brand ambassadors on your behalf. Converting the 9 to become a member of the 1 is as essential as having the 9 bring the 90 closer. These are gimmes. If you can convince your closest, most passionate 91 to bring members of the lurker community — the 900 — into the fold, then you’re really being a community manager.

At the end of the day, 100% of your followers and friends — even the lurkers — are members of your community, even if they’re not converting. You could, of course, reject those lurker as freeloaders just because they’re not bending a knee in your pew every Sunday (at least) and passing an envelope to your donation plate; or, better yet, you should 1) empower your deeply engaged and embedded members to act as ambassadors on your behalf, encouraging them to bring the lurkers closer 2) develop a more engaging content strategy that will draw more of your lurkers into the fold — but beware: changing the programming of your channels may well turn off your most passionate fans. You’ll need to make a choice when you come to the crossroads: selling out for popular success and untold riches or keeping things tight in order to keep things authentic and real.

It’s all up to you.

Either way, pop me a note. I’ll always be a member of your sanctum sanctorum. Go git ‘em tiger!

If you’re in sales leadership or management and you aren’t learning why you won or lost deals directly from your customers, you’re squandering a significant opportunity to improve sales effectiveness.

I had the opportunity to chat with Rick Reynolds, CEO of AskForensics, about this subject. Rick and I discussed his company’s most recent report. I thought an interview with Rick would provide some real value for you.

Here is the interview:

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Dave Stein: What are the differences between losing a new sales opportunity and losing a rebid on an account you have had for several years?

Rick Reynolds: Our data reveals that sales team actions and a lack of account support are the top influencers for why companies lose new sales. Of the executives we have interviewed to find out why they did or did not purchase from a company, 37% cited sales teams actions as the top reason for not buying from a company. Sales team actions that jeopardize sales include late proposals, poor presentations, and an overall lack of understanding of prospects’ requirements. A lack of account support encompasses the actions of both corporate and direct client facing teams.

In contrast, for rebids price becomes more of an issue. Thirty-four percent of executives reported price as the top issue for why they did not renew a contract. When price is the issue during a rebid, it’s usually because the incumbent’s price was significantly off from what other bidders submitted or the competitor simply submitted a superior bid. If your price is significantly off from other bidding companies, it means you didn’t fully ascertain the prospect’s needs.

DS: Why are executives willing to open up and share their candid views on a company’s sales process, especially when they did not buy from the company you’re representing?

RR: Senior executives are usually not asked for their views on sales events, so they appreciate that we are contacting them to find out their opinion. They have a vested interest in helping because they often want the bidding company around for the next time. It ultimately benefits them in the end when a bidding company is better able to understand their needs. Finally, we are a third-party with no intent to sell for our client. Since we only want their unvarnished opinions, we provide a safe environment for them.

DS: How should a company most effectively act on what they’ve learned from why they won or lost a sale?

RR: When companies win there are two primary actions. One is to transfer best practices to upcoming selling opportunities. The second is to address all issues and concerns  uncovered during an investigation. When companies lose, it’s important to take relevant learning and apply it to new prospects. In other words, don’t repeat mistakes. Over time you obtain trend findings that can be applied to sales training and coaching. When acting on these trend insights we find overall sales performance increases.

DS: Can you share with me some of the high level reasons why companies win or lose major opportunities? I would venture to guess you have found some unexpected reasons.

RR: Our 2014 SalesForensics Annual Report reveals some interesting findings about the shifting role of price in why companies lost sales in 2013. Data revealed that service quality, account support, and culture took on more significant roles in why companyies lost deals in 2013, and price, while important, was less of a factor in 2013. However, when price was cited in both years, the losing company’s financial bid was significantly off from what competitors offered and prospects were seeking.

When it comes to what companies could have done to win a deal, executives mentioned the following six actions in 2012 and 2013. Click for graphic.

• Incorporate more innovation / technology into the solution
• Better understand prospect’s requirements
• Offer value-added programs
• Improve presentation
• Offer more proactive ideas
• Respond to questions and requests in a more timely manner

Here is a link to a graphic on the reasons for losing:

DS: If a company wanted to launch a sales win/loss program, what pointers would you give them?

RR: First, make sure you are interviewing the right people and that they are high enough in the organization. Their opinions are most important. Second, be sure that the people who interview your prospects had no involvement in the sale. It is essential to avoid any perception of attempting to re-sell to your prospects.

Here is the link for the source of this data.

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About Rick Reynolds

Rick Reynolds is a co-founding Senior Partner of AskForensics. He brings unrivaled expertise in business forensics to the team, having led thousands of investigations over a 20 year period for best in class Fortune 500 corporations.

About AskForensics

AskForensics assists Fortune-ranked companies in winning and retaining multi-million dollar accounts. Using a forensic science approach to sales, AskForensics has been delivering objective insight into what’s really happening behind the scenes with prospects and customers for more than 24 years. AskForensics has evaluated more than $10.6 billion worth of prospect and client accounts for world-class Fortune-ranked companies, identifying more than $3.3 billion of vulnerable accounts and generating millions of dollars in ROI for its clients. Clients include FedEx, ARAMARK, Equifax, Marriott, and Coca-Cola. Follow @AskForensics on Twitter. For more information, visit www.AskForensics.com

The post Why Does Your Sales Team Lose Opportunities? AskForensics Will Tell You. appeared first on Dave Stein's Blog.

What’s the easiest way to win a debate? Don’t invite the opposition to the debate.

This is exactly what I did on my latest podcast episode #52 where I debated Ralph M. Rivera. I clearly won the debate even though I never invited him or even told him I’d be debating him. All’s fair in podcasting.

Why most marketing doesn’t work

It all started last week during a conversation with Ralph. We often share things we’re working on. It helps keep us both sharp and get second opinions on projects we’re in the heat of.

Ralph shared a web site he was going to be rebuilding for a new client. He warned me this site would be very ugly.

Instead, what I saw was a web page with endless copy. There were lots of bold sub headlines, long paragraphs and different colors within the text.

But this looked very familiar to me. I didn’t read the content but I knew exactly what the original writer’s intent was.

So Ralph and I began a heated debate about how long or short copy should be. My argument is that it doesn’t matter how long copy is or how ugly it is. All that matters is whether it causes the desired action to be taken. This is the only thing that matters.

It’s always Always ALWAYS all about the marketing

I’ve said it before and I will say it again. At the end of the day, the tool doesn’t matter. The social media tactic doesn’t matter. The look and feel doesn’t matter. All the bells and whistles and latest and greatest new crazy advertising mechanism that you just have to use or else… doesn’t matter.

What matters is just marketing. Marketing is the gasoline that makes the engine go. It is what makes all those other things work or not work.

I destroyed Ralph on my podcast

So this podcast was devoted to the destruction of Ralph in a debate about long, short, ugly, pretty copy. And I was victorious.

Never mind that Ralph wasn’t there.

I may have even completely taken him out of context and twisted what he said in order to serve my own purpose for creating a narrative for this podcast. If he doesn’t like it, I will debate him a second time without telling him.

What matters is on the podcast I share several strategies for writing copy that works. Copy that gets people’s attention, gets them emotionally involved and excited and gets them to take action.

If you’ve been reading this blog, you’re well aware of the impact that properly-constructed buyer personas can have on sales and marketing. But – and this might seem strange – for best results, you don’t want to send your personas straight to the sales team.

There’s one more step, and it’s crucial, because sales people are one of the primary beneficiaries of the deep insights you’ve uncovered. A misstep has consequences that can cast your persona initiative in a less than favorable light.

Remember that an insightful buyer persona talks about what buyers want from solutions like yours. Sometimes buyers want something your solution can’t deliver. Or the buyers may describe expectations where you need to give some thought to your response.

Here’s an example – say “easy to use” is an important part of your persona’s decision criteria. From the interviews that we conducted with real buyers, we know that buyers who say “easy to use” want it to “work just like other programs I use, so I won’t need any additional training.”

But your product might not work just like these other programs. It might need additional training. So Marketing would work with involved departments to make the training something that can be minimized – say with a 30-minute video that will bring users up to speed simply and effectively.

Now Sales can address “ease-of-use” with a direct, factual response that keeps the company honest. “It’s just a 30-minute video.”

When Marketing communicates buyer expectations without describing the appropriate response, it can lead to a lot of counterproductive behavior, including that classic move where Sales makes things up to impress the buyer. Or Sales may avoid following up on your leads, feeling defeated because they can’t deliver on every expectation.

Marketers also need to remember that sales people are trained to treat every buyer as unique. Talk about buyer personas and you could spend your time defending the entire concept of an example buyer, distracting everyone from the powerful insights you’ve uncovered and how your salespeople can leverage that knowledge in their sales calls.

Sales people are reluctant to follow up on leads when they don’t have experience with a particular solution and buyer. Understandably, they’re concerned about what questions might arise or how the competitors might derail their sale. With buyer personas, we can give them advance warning – here is the type of buyer that you’ll be talking to at every step in the sale. These are the expectations that each person will bring to the table. And, best of all, here are the resources you need to address those expectations and close the sale.

Keep your personas in marketing, but by all means communicate the insights you’ve uncovered and your strategies to address them.

At a fundamental level, the decisions managers make about revenue and profits fall into two categories—those related to growth and those related to cost reduction. Both types are meant to increase margins. But how data are used in each decision-making process is completely different.

Cost reduction data are precise. Firms know their cost structure very well and can compute with a reasonable level of certainty the savings each alternative being considered will generate. Managers use cost-related data as an objective input for decision making, since they consider it both reliable and reasonably predictable.

Managers do not treat growth-related data in the same way, and for good reason. Growth alternatives usually involve either launching new products or entering new markets, and these are activities where uncertainty is high. Here data are used mainly as a tool for persuasion among managers. A stereotypical example would go more or less like this: Managers gather the data that reinforce their own point view on what they believe is the right business decision. During a meeting they all explain their various rationales and present their various data points. Usually, they end up reaching a consensus that they all consider makes sense. Then they leave the room still thinking that their own alternative was best but that in life you have to make tradeoffs.

Most growth-related decisions in management are made this way because managers do not have data that reliably predicts how new customers will react to their offerings or how any customer new or old will react to innovative offerings. If only Coca Cola would have predictably known that its customers would not embrace New Coke! But its executives lacked a way to generate predictable information on that score or tell them that the data they’d generated from their taste tests would ultimately not be relevant.

Disruptive innovation practitioners have just such a tool for reliably predicting customers’ behavior. It’s a methodology that uncovers what in disruptive innovation parlance is called a person’s “job to be done.” Briefly, the idea is this: Consumers don’t go to the store to buy products. They go to the store to buy something that will enable them to get some important job done in their lives. The classic example, attributed to HBS professor Ted Levitt, is that people don’t want to buy a quarter-inch drill; they want something that will make a quarter-inch hole. Making a quarter-inch hole is the job to be done. The product that does that job most reliably, easily, conveniently, and less expensively is the tool they will be most likely to purchase for that job.

Work out your customer’s jobs-to-be-done, disruptive innovation practitioners have found, and you will generate data that more reliably predicts what a customer will buy and why. How do you do that? Traditionally, corporate innovators are told to conduct ethnographic studies, starting with no preconceptions, and to observe customers’ behavior and frustrations with the same open mind that start-ups employ. Human nature being what it is, that’s a hard thing to do.

Here, instead, is a simplified version of a methodology for identifying a customers’ job-to-be-done that starts with information about your own product. Since product information is not part of a job-to-be-done, the information about your product will drop out of the process in step 6, so that it doesn’t distort your results. But in this way, you can make your way to a new insight by starting in familiar territory. (And you’ll not keep the people you’re interviewing wondering what all your questions are about during the entire interview process.)

Step 1. Prepare a list of the key characteristics of your offering. List at least 10 of them. Your product or service may be faster than your competitor’s. Or cheaper. Or have a better screen resolution. Or have leather seats. Or a battery that lasts for many days. Or connect to the internet and let you play with other people online. Let’s say you sell cars. Your list might include characteristics such as speed, gas consumption, how little it pollutes the environment, number of doors, colors, type of seats, cup holders and amenities inside the car for the driver and the passengers.

Step 2. Interview at least 10 consumers and 10 nonconsumers about the various features connected to your offering. Nonconsumers are people who are not buying either your offering or your competitors’. So in this case you would be interviewing both people who drive cars and people who could drive cars but chose not to. The interviews can be anonymous, but you need to record the entire conversation. For each of the characteristics listed above ask three questions. First, “Where are you when you are using this feature?” Second, “When you use this feature, what are you really trying to do?” And third, “If this feature were not available, what would you be using instead?” Now, here’s an important part: for consumers, you need to ask the second two questions without reference to your product. So, to return to the car, let’s say you asked: “Why do you sit in the passenger’s seat of your own car?” and the answer was: “I am a salesman, and in between meetings I work in the car.” Then you ask: “When you do that what are you trying to accomplish?” He answers: “I try to have an environment that mimics my office space so I can concentrate and work comfortably for a while.” Then the third question: “If you could not do that what would you do instead?” He replies: “In the car I use the cup holder for my coffee, and in the passenger’s seat I can work with my laptop and recharge my phone. If I could not do that I would go to a cafeteria, but it is difficult to concentrate there. It’s noisy and I waste time locating one.”

Step 3. Transcribe the recordings. It is important that you do not miss anything. The transcript must end up looking like an interview, faithfully recording exactly what was said, complete with pauses. Being systematic about when the data stop is important for the statistical analysis used in step 5.

Step 4. Codify the transcripts by tracking all the meaningful nouns, verbs, adjectives, and adverbs. To continue our example we would extract from the sentence: “I try to have an environment that mimics my office space” will result in the following codes: “try,” “environment,” “mimics,” “office,” and “space.” With this you create a table in which you count the number of instances of each word (so if in the entire first transcript the word office is only repeated once you would have a 1 in the first row). Complete the table until all the sentences from all the transcripts have been codified. There are software tools available to do that more easily.

Step 5. Group the codes. Using the statistical technique of cluster analysis, group the codes based on their proximity. That is, it measures how many times each word appears close to one another (that’s why the pauses matter). Let the software that you choose determine the optimal number of clusters. The end result is that all your codes will now appear in groups.

Step 6. Remove descriptive data so you have only prescriptive data left. To do this, you remove all the groups that contain information about your product, in this case, all the groups that contain the word “car.” The end result is a series of groups that each contains a number of different code words. Within each group, these codes refer to the customer’s way of thinking and the portions of the context that the customer considers relevant to deciding on which product alternative to buy. If you compare how product performs in relation to the concerns expressed in each group, your next product improvement will become compellingly clear, not only to you, but also to your colleagues. In this example, it would become easy to make the case for focusing an innovation effort on helping salespeople become more productive and work more comfortably in their cars. Better electrical outlets, perhaps, so people can charge more than one item at a time? Storage for computers or samples? Something that mimics a desk more effectively? The point here is this is a fruitful avenue for further attention since most car models sell fewer than 100,000 units per year, but millions of people work in their automobiles.

During the 1950s Edward Deming and others developed such tools as statistical process control charts and total quality management techniques that have made the cost-reduction data we use today predictable and reliable. Before that, though, data about cost reduction was as unreliable as growth related data are today. Now the first tools are starting to emerge that add predictability and reliability to growth related decisions. Jobs-to-be-done is one such tool. Once managers learn how to compute a job-to-be-done by themselves, their growth related decisions will become much more objective and less opinion based.

Other than lack of time, the biggest challenge now facing B2B content marketers is producing enough content, according to the latest content marketing survey by the Content Marketing Institute and MarketingProfs.

The volume of content required for effective B2B marketing has increased dramatically over the past few years in part because publishing new content frequently is important for improving search engine rankings. More significantly, though, companies must produce more content because of the need to make marketing messages more relevant for potential buyers. To improve relevance, marketers are increasingly using two best practices:

• They are creating buyer personas and developing content that is tailored to address the particular needs and interests of each persona. This increases what I call personal relevance.
• They are developing content that is specifically designed for each stage of the buying process, which increases what I call situational relevance.

This approach can be extremely powerful and effective, but it can also turn content development into an overwhelming job for many companies. For example, suppose that you’ve created four buyer personas and that you use the traditional four-stage buying process (Awareness-Interest-Consideration-Decision). This scenario would literally require 16 unique content assets to fully implement a persona-specific/stage-specific content marketing strategy, as illustrated by the following table.

While there is no “easy” button for content development, there are some steps you can take to make the job more manageable. One important step is to ask how much customization is really required to achieve the necessary level of relevance.

For example, the reality is that you probably would not need 16 distinct content assets to have an effective marketing program in the circumstances described above. If you take a close look at your buyer personas, you would probably find that they have similar interests, concerns, and information needs when they are in the early stages of the buying process. In many cases, the need for content that is customized for each buyer persona increases as potential buyers move through the buying process.

What this means is that you can often use one early-stage content asset to “cover” multiple buyer personas without incurring a significant loss of relevance. The table below shows how this approach could be used to reduce the number of assets needed for an effective content marketing program. In this example, the number of required assets goes from 16 to 11, which represents a 31% reduction in the number of assets needed.

The above example is for illustration purposes only. There’s no universal rule that predicts how much streamlining this approach will enable you to achieve. Your business circumstances will dictate how much streamlining is possible, and you should only streamline if you can maintain a high level of relevance. But, if you can lower your content requirements by even 20% or so, that will make feeding the content beast easier.