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Client relations begin when the sales rep gives a prospect the impression that they matter—the most important form is remembering their names. This list of tips will give you the edge in forging trust at the very first handshake and turning succeeding follow-ups into a long-term relationship. Read on to find out more. RELATED: Salesperson […]

The post How Capturing One Unique Aspect Can Help Maintain Better Client Relations appeared first on The Sales Insider.

The Western idea of intuition is based on the concept that some information can be acquired without reason or observation: a gut feeling or a sixth sense that makes the person experiencing intuition feel one way or another.

For example, “I had an intuition he was a liar,” or “I felt that would be the right choice.” This is different from Japan, where they cultivate their inner intuitive voice as their primary method of reasoning. This requires mindfulness, awareness, presence, and an undistracted, meditative mindset developed over one’s lifetime.

The Value of Intuition

I think we in the West look down on intuition because it is difficult to quantify. In the movie As Good as it Gets, Jack Nicholson’s character is asked how he writes women so well, and his response is, “I think of a man, and I take away reason and accountability.” A woman’s intuition is spoken of negatively in the West, and I don’t think we respect it for serious matters. Intuition gets looked down on as being unreliable and lesser than analytical reasoning.

To be clear, in general, Western women reason in a linear manner. Compared to Western men, however, Western women tend to be more in tune with their feelings and intuitions. The conclusions based on this kind of knowledge are deemed less reliable than cold hard facts and logic. In my experience, this is one of the reasons women are underrepresented in Western STEM (science, technology, engineering, and math) classes, the finance industry, and upper-level corporate management. It is based on bias and not on ability. And I believe this bias is a key reason that a country like Pakistan has had a female leader, but the apparently more advanced, more progressive, and more open-minded United States has yet to elect a woman president.

Steve Jobs helped to change this mindset somewhat through his success. I consider him a hybrid of sorts: a Western-trained, linear thinker with Western abstract creativity that was able to learn intuitive thinking and a Zen-like pursuit of perfection and apply that to his work. College friend Steve Kottke described Steve Jobs saying, “Steve is very much Zen. It was a deep influence. You could see it in his whole approach of stark, minimalist aesthetics, intense focus.”[1]

In his famous Stanford commencement address, Jobs gave some very Zen advice: “Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life. Don’t be trapped by dogma—which is living with the results of someone else’s thinking. Don’t let the noise of others’ opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you want to become. Everything else is secondary.”[2] (Emphasis mine)

Steve Jobs’ accomplishments show how powerful intuitive reasoning can be even in the hypercompetitive Western business environment. It shows that linear analytical reasoning is not the only path to success and that intuitive reasoning can play an important role in our private as well as professional lives. Jonas Salk, who discovered the first effective polio vaccine, had a great quote: “Intuition will tell the thinking mind where to look next.”

I believe it is a shortcoming in Western culture that we do not properly value intuition.

It has been my observation that the Japanese do value intuition, or a mindful and meditative reasoning process developed over long periods of time that relies not only on conscious awareness, but also taps into the power of the subconscious mind. They do not use intuition just for simple decisions and for quick judgments on how they feel about something.

The Japanese cultivate their intuition. They will focus on a single discipline for years or even decades, and out of that mastery, develop a deep intuitive understanding of a subject, much like how a chess master can develop an intuitive understanding of how to win a chess match without necessarily having the ability to logically explain each move in advance. Intuitive understanding takes years of intensive focus to develop and the Japanese cultivate intuition for their form of analysis and reasoning in contrast to the linear logic of the West. This difference in perspective highlights two key areas of potential misunderstanding: the Japanese are not creative, and the Japanese are robot-like in their thinking; logical, but without feeling.

Skilled Innovation

It is my opinion that the Japanese are not creative, but that they are fantastic innovators. To be creative, by definition, is to bring about something new that did not exist before. If something did not exist, then it would have to start off as an abstract idea. As the Japanese mind views the world literally, the Japanese tend not to be good at abstract thinking. Therefore, the Japanese have not been very successful in creating new things.

To wit: Japan had the world’s second-largest economy before China recently surpassed them. Japan spent enormous sums of money on research and development both in the government and private sectors. Yet, the only big inventions to have come out of Japan over the past few decades have been the Walkman, ink-jet printing, the floppy disk, and LED lights. Note, these have nothing to do with the internet, machine learning, big data, the cloud, artificial intelligence, or any other part of the new economy.

Innovation, on the other hand, is very different from creativity. Innovation is taking something that already exists and making it better. The Japanese are fantastic at innovation. Early in Japan’s development, they were known for low-quality knock-offs. Later, in the 1970s and 1980s, Japan started to get recognized for making superior quality, innovative products. Japanese TVs and cars took the world by storm, as they were coveted for their high quality, durability, and reasonable prices. Japanese innovation was based on continuous small improvements. For example, Japanese machining on auto parts became so precise, US auto companies didn’t have measuring equipment sensitive enough to detect the difference between US and Japanese parts.

Westerners often hold the view that the Japanese workforce operates as unfeeling, robot-like worker ants. According to this stereotype, the rote education system of Japan didn’t teach workers how to think. Japanese workers were successful at building cars or robots or high-speed trains because of superior dedication and their robot-like work ethic. What is interesting today is that despite the competition from Korea and China, who by hook and by crook are imitating or stealing any technology they can get their hands on, Japan still retains an edge in certain areas. What accounts for this difference? Intuition-based craftsmanship.

The front portion of a Japanese bullet train is made by hand. The gears from Japan’s global leading high-end bicycle gear company are made by a couple of older craftsmen who work by hand and are the main bottlenecks in their manufacturing process. The production process of Japanese machine tools, the integration of parts into a Japanese hydraulic excavator or diesel engine, the material science in Japanese industrial motors, and the manufacture of small-sized robotic gears are all done by craftsmen. Their work is extremely difficult to imitate as Japanese production is art as much as science.

Far from being robotic, it is precisely the emphasis on using the intuitive part of the mind, the part that a computer cannot imitate, that makes Japanese companies so competitive at advanced manufacturing.

In an example of intuitive thinking in Japanese craftsmanship, Hajime Nakamura explains in the book Ways of Thinking of Eastern Peoples: “In the history of technology also the Japanese people have valued and still value intuitive perception (kan) more than scientific inferences based on postulational thinking.” The Japanese emphasize one’s judgment of craftsmanship over formulaic production methods. For example, Japanese swordsmiths never recorded the precise temperature for the water that quenched the red-hot steel. “Thus,” Nakamura writes, “this temperature has been transmitted from master to disciple, as a secret which must be understood only through intuition.”[3]

Today, Japan houses the only company in the world that can produce a nuclear core reactor vessel as a single unit with no welds. They produce it from a giant 600-ton ingot. This is as much art as science. If it were strictly science, the Chinese or Koreans could copy it. The material science behind this feat is based upon metallurgy know-how developed by this company centuries ago in the art of forging samurai swords.

I would like to emphasize that I’m speaking about tendencies. Japanese people tend to be literal-intuitive thinkers. But there are exceptions. Shigeru Miyamoto at Nintendo created Donkey Kong, Mario Brothers, Legend of Zelda, etc. Satoshi Tajiri, also at Nintendo, created Pokémon. These two are undoubtedly creative and are definitely capable of abstract thought. But I would emphasize that these two are great exceptions in Japan.

In summary, the Japanese are not good abstract thinkers, so they are not creative. They are, however, excellent innovators and through focused, intuition-driven thinking using processes that are as much art as science; the Japanese take existing products and improve on them.

The subconscious mind processes copious amounts of information beyond the scope of the conscious mind. An intense focus and a calm, effortless, and meditative mind-set better allows us to access insights developed subconsciously.

***

For more advice on cultural differences in American, Chinese, and Japanese thinking, you can find Culture Hacks: Deciphering Differences in American, Chinese, and Japanese Thinking on Amazon.

[1] Walter Isaacson, Steve Jobs.

[2] “‘You’ve Got to Find What You Love,’ Jobs Says,” Stanford University, June 14, 2005, http://news.stanford.edu/2005/06/14/jobs-061505/.

[3] Hajime Nakamura, Ways of Thinking of Eastern Peoples (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1968), 575.

Deals now are better than deals later. You would prefer to win now than, say, four months from now. Better results now are better than results later, something that is true for your dream client too. They would prefer to have their challenges dispatched sooner rather than some time in the future, and their opportunities realized earlier. Here is what you need to know to win deals faster.

How You Slow Deals Down

Much of what salespeople do to speed up deals slow them down or kills them altogether. What seems to be efficient is so ineffective, it slows sales to a crawl, if it doesn’t cause the client to dark—or disengage completely. If you want your deals to move forward faster, there are things you have to stop doing.

• Stop speeding through the process: You have a great couple of meetings, and your dream client asks for a proposal and pricing. You believe the client knows what they want and they’re ready to make a decision now. The truth is that their request for pricing and a proposal was part of their discovery and exploration; they want additional information. The information wasn’t enough to compel them to buy, and you left your sales meeting without anything on your calendar.
• Give up the one call close: There are some sales where a discovery meeting might end with a pricing proposal and a contract. In most B2B sales, however, this is not often the case. A one-hour meeting with one stakeholder followed by an email with pricing and a contract may as well be the one-call close. The email isn’t a second sales call.
• Stop believing you can win deals over email: Because of the prevalence of this medium, some salespeople think they can conduct the entire sales process over email, beginning with prospecting, asking discovery questions, chasing the client to schedule follow up meetings, and trying to argue for their solution. The medium isn’t up to the task of delivering the outcomes many want from it.
• Don’t go through the process with a single stakeholder: There are deals where a single stakeholder will decide to buy. These deals tend to be smaller, even though this is less frequent than it once was. They also seem to be more common in small companies, where the decision will impact fewer people. It’s a good rule of thumb to assume the more people who will be affected by the change, the more people necessary to a deal.

If you want your deals to move smoothly and as quickly through your pipeline, there are some things you can do to bend the curve in your direction.

How You Speed Deals Up

In endurance sports, if you want to complete a race faster, you go slower. You try not to do anything that would cause your heart rate to get so high and exert so much energy early that it makes completion unlikely. The speed of winning deals has much in common with endurance sports. Here is what you can do to speed up:

Implications of Waiting

First, a disclaimer. If you are going to share the negative implications of waiting to take action, what you share must be real and compelling. The consequences have to be something your dream client wants to avoid, and your pricing increase next quarter may not be enough to compel action. With that disclaimer out of the way, if there are real implications, sharing them can create a sense of urgency to avoid adverse outcomes.

I have to use an example where I failed to compel a client to change. The client was not making the necessary investment in the result they needed, and I shared it with them, explaining how it was going to cause them problems in the future, and likely damage the results they needed to provide their client. I failed to convince them of the implications, and they lost half their business because they failed their client.

If you want your client to move faster, you have to share the consequences of inaction, and do so with great empathy and diplomacy.

Control the Process

The sales conversation we have with our clients has gone nonlinear. More and more, it doesn’t line up with the sales process (a useful, orienting generalization as to what you need to get done to win a deal effectively), and it doesn’t look much like the buying journeys we pretend to be linear (another useful, orienting generalization). When we try to be sophisticated and line up these two views of the sales conversation, our attempt at linearity doesn’t change the reality of the difficulty human beings have making decisions—especially in groups.

When it comes to opportunity creation and opportunity capture, you might think about it like this: sell the meeting, sell the process (the things you and your dream client need to do), and then sell the solution. The sequence here matters. When you skip over “sell the process,” to get to “sell the solution,” you expose yourself to all kinds of problems that may cause your deal to slow down or stall.

In a decision as to who should control the process, believe that it is you. You should know better than your client what comes next and why. You can’t be like the salesperson I heard ask this question at the end of their first meeting, “Well, what would you like to do next?” The client responded, “Shouldn’t you know what I need to next? You do this all the time. I don’t?” You will have clients that need to insert their needs into your process, but part of controlling the process is understanding what they need and eliciting it so you can help them.

The Lost Art of Closing is my roadmap for controlling the process. If you want speed to a deal, you will control the process.No more pushy sales tactics. The Lost Art of Closing shows you how to proactively lead your customer and close your sales.

Build Consensus

Not only will you have to build consensus, but you are also going to have to do so among a group with divergent opinions and competing priorities. You suffer slow deals, stalled deals, and lost deals you might have won when you don’t take into consideration the stakeholders who need to part of the process–or who should be.

In many cases where there is a single contact the salesperson allows to present on their behalf, at some point, they hear: “We’ve decided to go a different direction.” Who is this, “we?” No evidence of a “we” is not proof that there is not a “we” lurking inside your dream client’s company.

The speed at which you win many deals depends heavily on how fast you can determine and engage the people who are going to part of your prospective client’s decision-making process (hopefully a process you are influencing). Deals don’t move faster when you leave out people who need to be seen and heard. If they are going to be part of the process, inviting them into it sooner means you win your deal sooner.

Be Present and Pay Attention

You compress the time by having a more significant presence (face-to-face is best, video face-to- video face is second best, the phone is next).

Salespeople often say something like, “I asked the client this question, and they didn’t answer me. What should I do now?” How is it possible for you to ask your prospective client a question without answering? By asking your questions over email, that’s how. Email isn’t the right medium to replace meetings. If you want to move things faster, you will have a presence.

The more your prospective client sees you, the better. More meetings are better than fewer, and fewer emails are better than more, generally. You get more done in meetings, where you have your prospective client’s attention, when you have their peers in the room, and where you can be seen and heard. You also want to be seen listening and taking notes. The more attention you give a deal, the sooner you close it.

I don’t know anyone who would argue that you not share the implications of waiting, who would suggest you allow your dream client to control the process when the process has them do something that is not in their best interest, who would recommend you stay single-threaded, or who tell you not to have meetings to speed up the process. Though you don’t have control here, you can try to influence things in a way that serve both you and your dream client better.

If you want to win deals faster, do what is necessary sooner rather than later.

Afterword:

Just a few more thoughts worth sharing and considering.

• It never hurts to ask directly what your prospect believes they need to do to make a decision. I might not ask what their process is, only because they may not think of the decision as a process. You might learn something that you can incorporate into the process you are leading.
• In many cases, it makes sense to ask about your dream client’s timeline for deciding and implementing. It always feels helpful to work backward from the date your prospect wants to go live. The milestones and a plan you both agree can help keep things on track when people are being pulled in different directions. This question works better if there are consequences for missing the deadline, all the better.
• It’s a good idea to ask who is going to participate in the decision and whom you are going to need to include. Your prospect may not think of the people on their team as a buying committee. I have heard task force more often than any other term used to describe the group of people leading an initiative. You might also ask who in leadership cares about the initiative and if you can brief them (even though this isn’t as much about speed as it is about winning when things get tricky).
• In some cases, it makes sense to ask about what might prevent your prospect’s company from being able to make whatever change you are recommending. You might be able to mitigate the challenge if you know what it is. If you know how your deal might stall, you can work to prevent it.

The post What You Need to Know to Win Deals Faster appeared first on The Sales Blog.

(Image Source: Pexels)

More online businesses are integrating machine learning into their operations, with the bigger and established ones trailblazing the revolution.

Machine learning has brought myriad opportunities and improved strategies to help business owners foster customer relationships and get more profit and conversions.

If you haven’t fully leveraged the power of machine learning in your business, let me give you five reasons why you should do so now.

1. Machine learning helps increase your efficiency.

Can you imagine buying from the grocery store without having to wait in line to pay for your goods?

If you can’t, then you’d better prepared because that is now a reality.

Amazon, for one, has applied machine learning to make grocery shopping ultra-efficient for your customers through computer vision, sensor fusion, and deep learning algorithms.

Using the Amazon Go app, customers only need to open it, scan the QR code when they enter, pick their items, and confidently walk out of the store.

Amazon Go detects the items they take out from the shelves, automatically adds them into their virtual carts, and charges the bill into their Amazon accounts when they leave.

Such is a classic example of how machine learning can increase the efficiency of your business operations and processes, and help your customers, too.

While you can use pre-built machine learning technologies, you can also master how to develop them yourself.

The concept may sound complicated, but through the right machine learning course, you can invest in building machine learning technologies that suit your specific business needs.

2. You can understand your customers better.

Since the launch of automation, businesses have embraced customer-centeredness.

If you want to maintain a competitive edge over other businesses, you need to know what your customers need and give it to them.

If you fail to do so, you can lose your potential customers to your competitors.

Here is where machine learning plays a critical role.

Machine learning can analyze and organize patterns, trends, and data about your customers’ demographic profiles, choices and preferences, behaviors, and others.

Machine learning can get these data from online tools and mechanisms that you use, such as emails collected from sign-ups.

Such ability by machine learning enables you to know and understand your customers more quickly.

For instance, for your advertising campaigns on Google Adsense or other channels to be effective, they should be deeply targeted according to the mentioned data.

The more accurately you can understand your customers and their needs and wants, the more sharply you can target your ads.

3. You can personalize your marketing campaigns.

When customers feel that your offers are accurately aligned with their preferences — or personalized — they are more likely to patronize your business.

The question now becomes, how do you personalize your campaigns and customer shopping experience?

The answer is by using machine learning to build them based on the data gathered and analyzed, just like Flybits does.

Flybits is a context-as-a-service product that helps businesses provide hyper-personalized digital content and experiences for your customers.

With its easy user interface, your digital marketers can easily and instantly access internal and external data through cloud synchronization.

Its real-time mobile analytics allow you to customize your content and campaigns for your customers according to their location, weather, and others.

What’s more, Flybits ensures your customers’ data are safe and kept confidential. Your customers retain full ownership over their data as well.

Personalized campaigns are influential in increasing your conversions and sales, and machine learning help you create them.

4. Machine learning recommends products to your customers.

In line with personalizing your campaigns, machine learning can recommend products similar to what you previously viewed, purchased, or added to your cart.

Amazon is one company that uses machine learning to recommend similar products.

Machine learning picks up on the features of the items you previously searched, viewed, or bought, and creates algorithms from those data.

Amazon then personalizes its recommendations to you by stating your name and showing similar items.

It can also recommend to you similar items that other customers viewed or bought.

Let’s say you clicked on some Omine grey loafer sneakers.

Machine learning notes the features of the shoes, such as color, size, and style, and then shows you what other customers also bought.

In this way, they leverage social proof and fear of missing out (FOMO) to entice you to consider buying what other customers also liked (besides widening your range of options).

That said, machine learning helps you improve your sales and conversions significantly.

5. Machine learning helps to detect fraud.

The convenience that online payment systems offer, especially through mobile applications, has attracted both customers and businesses to transact and purchase online.

However, transmitting money online has also attracted cybercriminals and given them opportunities to execute fraudulent attacks.

Some businesses have implemented different cybersecurity measures but find that they need more to stop fraud.

If you’re experiencing the same problem, there’s fortunate news for you. Machine learning can now help strengthen businesses’ fraud detection system.

For instance, PayPal uses machine-learning mechanisms to catch suspicious and shady transactions and separate them from legitimate ones.

Machine learning further assists you by inspecting specific attributes among your data and develop standards as the basis for examining each transaction.

Machine learning, therefore, helps prevent malicious transactions from taking place even before you can complete them.

Another example is Uber.

Aside from other technologies like GPS spoofing, Uber uses machine learning to detect fraudulent transactions like stolen credit cards and account take-overs.

For example, a legitimate user new to Uber usually takes the time to review the company’s profile and services offered.

However, a criminal who has stolen credit cards and acts as an agent service provider acts differently.

He will spend more of his time moving pins and changing addresses and payment methods.

Thankfully, Uber’s machine learning can differentiate patterns in tap sequences between a regular user and a fraudster.

As such, Uber can act accordingly to stop frauds from being fully implemented.

Leverage the power of machine learning.

Machine learning can radically improve the way you operate your business.

Whether you’re looking for crucial insights to create a solid content strategy, recommend a product, or learn about your customers’ attitude overall, machine learning can help you accomplish just that.

Leverage the power of machine learning, and you’re likely to see positive results out of your business endeavor.

Think machine learning is that cool? Share this post to tell others what you learned.

Choosing the right sales interview questions requires careful thought and preparation. Each question needs to have a clear purpose so (1) you can find out whether the candidate is qualified and (2) you can convince stellar candidates that your company is a step above your competitors.

To help you make the right choices, we scoured Glassdoor for questions B2B unicorns are asking sales candidates. For one reason or another, these questions stood out to real candidates during real interviews — enough that they wrote about their sales interview experience. By comparing these questions with sales interview best practices, we parsed some valuable lessons and came up with a list of more direct, specific questions for you to use the next time you interview a salesperson.

1. Walk us through your resume from start to finish.

Yep, we know. This is a pretty basic sales interview question. On the surface, it seems generic and boring. You can just as easily read the candidate’s resume, right? But asking this question — from a Slack interview for an Account Executive position — is an effective way to evaluate the candidate’s presentation style and poise while simultaneously learning how they’ve performed in other positions.

Salespeople need to be extremely comfortable with giving presentations. Pay attention to how they respond: Is the candidate prepared, or do they have difficulty remembering past position responsibilities? Are they making eye contact, or are they nervously shifting in their seat?

Also take note of the following, based on sales presentation best practices:

• Does the candidate highlight past position accomplishments that speak to your company’s pain points?
• How unique is their presentation approach? Do they simply list positions, or do they provide a quick narrative around each one?
• Do they use a bunch of sales jargon, or do they explain past responsibilities in layman’s terms?
• Do they clearly state numbers achieved in past sales positions, or are they vague about their accomplishments?

Look for candidates who present their resume confidently and enthusiastically and provide hard facts — you’ll want the same type of presentation style with potential customers. As one Slack candidate explained about what sales managers are looking for with this type of question, “Everything matters — how you hold a meeting, how you greet others, the questions you ask, your composure.”

2. In three sentences, describe [Company Name] as if you were pitching to a client.

This question comes for an Airtable interview for a Sales Development Associate position. It puts a creative sales-related spin on the traditional question, “What do you know about our company?”

Hopefully, the candidate has researched your company in-depth, but this question puts that knowledge to the test. Not only will you discover if the candidate is familiar with your product/service offering but also whether they have what it takes to sell it to potential customers.

Here’s how to evaluate the candidate’s answer:

• Is the candidate easily able to fit their pitch within three sentences, or do they have trouble with succinctness?
• Is their information about your company accurate? Did they find the info on your website, or did they have to dig a bit, such as by reading press releases?
• Do they merely list the benefits of your company, or do they weave together a compelling story that makes you want to purchase your own product/service?

As with the first question, also observe the candidate’s presentation style.

3. Let’s run through a mock sales call.

Especially if you’re hiring for a sales representative role, it’s important to see how the candidate responds under pressure. LegalZoom, hiring for a Sales Specialist, asked the candidate who wrote about the interview on Glassdoor, “How do you handle stress?” A better approach is to put the interviewee in a commonly stressful sales situation and see how they respond.

A mock sales call is nerve-racking for a candidate, but it is a great way to test the candidate under pressure and demonstrate how they would react to potential customers in real life. It will help you assess the following:

• Can the candidate think on their feet when thrown a curve-ball question?
• Can the candidate re-explain the offering if the potential customer doesn’t understand?
• Is the candidate pushy, or are they focused on building rapport with the potential customer?

Prepare a mock sales-call script before the interview by going into your CRM and finding a recording of an actual sales call between a potential customer and one of your current sales reps. This provides real-life application to your own product/service.

Although the goal is to see how the candidate reacts under stress (he or she might not have much sales experience), the exercise will also offer a demonstration of the candidate’s selling tactics.

4. Describe our company and sales culture based on what you’ve seen or heard.

To suss out whether a candidate was a good fit for their company, Zoom asked a potential Sales Development Representative, “What do you look for in a company culture?” We tweaked it. Use it to learn what candidates understand about your company so far and whether they’ll be a good match for your company culture and sales team. Look for their understanding of the following:

• Your values and mission
• Your management hierarchy
• Your team and work environment (this applies if you share behind-the-scenes looks of your team/office, such as on LinkedIn)

For example, maybe your company is focused on relationship building — both with clients and with employees. You invest time in customers and close sales based on quality over quantity. So if the candidate answers, “I believe [Your Company Name] is dedicated to generating as many leads as possible and getting fast results,” he or she might not be the best fit for your company (and probably proves that they haven’t been observing closely).

This question also helps the candidate figure out whether your company is right for them. For example, if your company and sales culture encourage a transparent and collaborative work environment, some candidates who prefer working solo might not feel comfortable with this arrangement.

5. Walk me through your sales process and how you consistently met your sales goals at your last company.

If you ask candidates a question like Zenefits did for a Sales Representative role (“Have you consistently met your sales goals?”), it’s easy to get answers like “I achieved my quota every sales quarter I was with XYZ company.” That information is great to know, but it doesn’t explain “how” the candidate reached that number.

Instead, pose the question so the candidate takes you through each step of their sales process. This is a knowledge-based question — you can see if candidates have a clear understanding of sales stages. You also find out how long it takes the candidate to go through the sales process and where his or her strengths lie.

For example, a possible (simplified) answer could be, “My goal at the beginning of Q3 was to achieve a quota of 50 new subscribers. I focused on social selling to source 200 new leads and build a relationship during the prospecting stage.” The candidate eventually moved 50 of these leads into the closing stage.

You get the idea. Rather than the candidate providing a vague quota number that doesn’t provide context, this question determines how the candidate’s actions during the sales process helped them reach their desired quota.

6. Tell me about one deal that you didn’t win and what you took away from the experience.

This question was originally reported on Glassdoor by someone who interviewed for a Gusto Account Executive position as, “Tell me a time you failed and what you learned.” We made it more sales specific. Failure is a part of any job, but it’s something that salespeople deal with on a regular basis. It’s what a candidate takes away from these failures that matter.

This question should help you determine the following:

• Can the candidate admit to a mistake, accept it, and learn from it?
• How did the candidate use their failure as a way to improve?
• Based on the above two questions, is the candidate coachable?

Probe for answers that are very specific. For example, a report of a generic failure like “I lost an important deal because I’m a perfectionist and tried too hard” is not enough. Keep digging for the detail. Your goal is to get a response like this instead:

“I had a big deal that I had been nurturing for a couple of months. My contact was excited about our service, and I was ready to close the deal. However, when it came time to sign on the dotted line, the contact said that the key decision-maker (who I should have been working with all along) wasn’t comfortable with the purchase. Since then, I’ve been striving to improve my qualification tactics by doing XYZ.”

Every salesperson has weaknesses, but the differentiator here is that the candidate recognizes this fact and is striving to improve. Make sure the candidate will be responsive to sales coaching if needed and will maintain a positive attitude in spite of failures.

7. Please give examples of sales books, blog, or podcasts that you follow to educate yourself outside of work.

For an Inside Sales Representative Role, Asana asked the question, “What’s something you learned recently?” Get more specific with this type of question. Find out if the candidate is motivated to grow and improve their sales skills in addition to their work responsibilities.

Are they reading popular sales books by experienced sellers, such as The Sales Bible, by Jeffery Gitomer? Do they follow sales blogs? How about informative podcasts? Ask for specific examples and a quick summary of each, and ask them to share the key takeaways.

If the candidate can’t name any specific sales resources or publications, see if he or she offers details on other ways they’re trying to improve. Maybe they completed a social selling course on LinkedIn. Or maybe they attend sales conferences every year. The point of this question is to see if the candidate is committed to personal development (a great indicator of a top-level employee).

Ask direct sales interview questions

Ask thoughtful, direct questions to help both you and the sales candidate get the most out of your time together during the interview. You’ll come away with a better sense of the candidate’s selling capabilities and whether they’re the right fit for the position. The candidate will see how seriously you take sales and the position, and your standards for success will be clear.

Failure is common in sales. In many circles, people like to reframe failure as “learning” and, in many cases, that’s true. From an early age, we learn how to do things by making mistakes. When we start to walk, we fall -- a lot. When we learn to ride a bike, we experience missteps and crashes (depending on how hands-on your helper chose to be).

The idea of learning through failure is a principle that has inspired many people to persevere when the going gets tough. Inspirational sales gurus are famous for quoting the failure statistics of great achievers like Abraham Lincoln, Thomas Edison, and Colonel Sanders. These innovators became successful because they learned from their mistakes -- and that inspires us.

But what if failure isn’t addressed correctly? What if failure just leads to more failure and locks a person into behaviors that facilitate poor performance? That might sound extreme, but research provides insight into how missing sales goals may be preventing a salesperson from finding success.

When Failure Leads to More Failure

Dr. Michael Ahearne, a colleague at the Stephen Stagner Sales Excellence Institute at the University of Houston, published an article in the Journal of Marketing, titled, “Learned Helplessness Among Newly Hired Salespeople and the Influence of Leadership.”

Dr. Ahearne and his team examined salesperson behavior, sales leader influence, and addressing missed goals. They found salespeople often repeat the very mistake that created the missed opportunity in the first place.

This can be a devastating scenario for a new salesperson without a strong manager. It also helps to explain why turnover rates are often high for new salespeople. If someone is constantly missing their goals, why in the world would they stay in an organization?

The research Dr. Ahearne and his team conducted examined a large group of salespeople over a period of six months to determine their level of success (or lack of) as well as specific sales behavior intentions.

The research team also captured data on the role the manager played in helping to correct the missteps. During the study, one of the key findings was that salespeople who began to experience poor results (i.e., missing their personal goals) rapidly shifted their approach with customers.

The more failure they experienced, the more they shifted from customer-oriented behaviors to sales-oriented behaviors. In other words, they started selling and stopped trying to understand a customer’s unique situation in order to craft a personalized solution. They went from the “diagnosing professional” to the “pushy closer” and results got worse.

Sales-Oriented Behaviors vs. Customer-Oriented Behaviors

As a former regional vice president of sales in a retail organization, I’ve seen sales-oriented behaviors firsthand. In some cases, they showed themselves when a newer salesperson had worked the good part of a day in the store without seeing many customers. Near closing time, a couple would finally enter the store and it was game on.

The salesperson, desperate to make at least one sale before closing time, would move quickly from basic qualifying questions to closing. They missed digging deep enough into the customer’s situation and the pressure would mount. Finally, the customer would thank the salesperson, ask for a business card, and quickly leave the store.

In other situations, the salesperson might take one or two points of information from a customer and move quickly into presenting what they believe are the best options.

Unfortunately, more often than not, the recommendations are based on the salespersons previous experiences and not the prospect’s real needs. I remember hearing a prospect say to an overzealous, sales-oriented associate, “Do you really think you know what’s best for me after two minutes of conversation?” Needless to say, that sales interaction did not end well.

If you are a salesperson stuck in a “rut” you may be experiencing this exact phenomenon. Sales-oriented behaviors undermine customer trust, and without trust, it’s hard to find success. In order to shift back to customer-oriented selling, there are three questions to ask yourself after every sale:

1. What was my customer’s unique need?

When a salesperson can articulate what was unique about their customer versus other customers, it demonstrates a personalized approach. The answer to this question reveals the depth of exploration that occurred as the salesperson was helping the customer. The more a salesperson can identify their customer’s uniqueness, the more likely they’re focused on the right things.

2. How can I/we solve my customer’s unique problem?

At the heart of customer-oriented selling is crafting a tailored solution to meet unique needs. When a salesperson can articulate how the organization’s products or services can be combined for a personal solution, they’re focused on the uniqueness of the customer. Demonstrating a clear solution through your product or service offering is a proven path to sales success.

3. Why didn’t they decide to buy?

The post-mortem in selling is not always an exact science, but it goes a long way in helping the learning process. Salespeople who can identify the reasons why a customer may not have purchased will develop their ability to be empathetic.

This is a step that is best completed with another set of eyes or ears. Looping in a colleague or your manager can help make this discussion productive by sharing the experience and checking to see what you may be missing. The examination itself quickly shifts the salesperson’s mindset to their customer and creates a valuable learning opportunity for future interactions.

Each of the questions above will help to place a salesperson in the “shoes” of their customer and the more they focus on the customer, the better the chances of staying in the customer-oriented behavior space. When that occurs, salespeople are likely to find success.

The Impact of Missed Goals

For sales managers, understanding the impact of missed goals is critical for developing your approach with your team. As a sales manager, your goal is to help everyone on your team succeed.

More often than not, when someone begins to struggle, a sales manager starts coaching and performance management work. Unfortunately, if this is not done correctly, you run the risk of encouraging more of the wrong selling approach.

Early in my retail selling career, I worked with an experienced manager as part of the training for my new position. This manager was one of the top salespeople in the area, and she was known for closing a higher percentage of customers than most.

At the beginning of the day, we discussed the plan for our time together and she made it clear that before any customer walked out of the store without making a purchase, they should speak with her.

She was nice about it, but very direct. It wasn’t long before I walked my first customer through finding a good solution for them. The interaction went well but when it came to decision time, they wanted to shop around a bit more.

Before I could think through what to do next, the manager walked over and stepped into the conversation. She quickly transitioned the customer away from me and into another part of the store where she continued the selling process.

Ultimately, they decided to make a purchase and the sale was won. Unfortunately, I had no idea what went wrong. More importantly, I had no idea what to do if I ever encountered a situation like that again, so I continued to struggle through my early days as a salesperson.

The Importance of Coaching Through Failure

One of the findings of the research on sales behavior revealed that typical sales manager coaching and performance management are less effective when instances of missing sales goals accumulate.

In fact, salespeople who do not receive proper coaching and an opportunity to talk through what they learned are 25% more likely to increase sales-oriented behaviors. If the issue is not addressed quickly, the road back to achieving goals is more challenging. However, there are specific steps a sales manager can take to help a struggling salesperson get back to productivity:

1. Set and adjust goals

Wins are important for salespeople who are missing goals. When a manager works directly with their salespeople on establishing goals beyond the standard budget objective, the stage is set for achievement.

Behavioral targets such as number of contacts with new customers, post-sale follow up calls, or quality of initial sales presentations provide alternative metrics that create the possibility for early wins. The key for new people is that managers are willing to adjust the goals based on actual performance. Providing achievable objectives that escalate over time as goals are accomplished help to keep a salesperson focused on the customer versus the sales target.

2. Teach and model customer-oriented behavior

When discussing or participating in sales calls, emphasize the most important customer-oriented behaviors. These behaviors include thoughtful questions to understand the situation, use of trial closes to gauge progress, persistence in follow up and follow through, and the creation of customized solutions for each customer.

When the manager models these behaviors then the salesperson learns through the experience.

3. Encourage mistakes

This step will be a challenge for most managers. Before I explain it, I want to be clear that encouraging mistakes is more than just observing a mistake about to happen and stepping in to save the situation. That type of approach teaches salespeople to rely on their manager to fix their problems.

Encouraging mistakes helps to reduce the shock associated with falling short on goals. Providing a sales team the safety they need to apply customer-oriented behaviors will lead to better results. Deemphasizing short term results will prompt salespeople to take more risks and that is how learning happens.

The important step here is for the sales manager to coach the behaviors and not the results. Take the time to ask questions so salespeople can identify what they learned.

Challenge teams to answer how they would adjust the next time they’re in a similar situation. Properly coaching and providing opportunities for salespeople to learn will keep them on the path of customer-oriented behaviors.

If you’re missing your sales goals and your approach is to “push” harder -- watch out. You and your team might be sealing your own fate. The research tells us missing goals often leads to more of what you don’t want to be doing.

You have an opportunity to reset the direction of your team and your organization by pursuing an intense focus on the customer and taking the time to learn from mistakes. In today’s world of customization and personalization, those who focus on customer-oriented behaviors will be the ones who find success.

Ask salespeople what their number one issue is and you’ll probably hear, “getting good prospects.” Here’s a simple fact: you can’t close a sale until you have someone to sell to.

So what does it take to successfully prospect? As I’ve worked with thousands of salespeople and written the book, High-Profit Prospecting, I have narrowed it down to what I like to call the “10 Keys to Prospecting”:

Check out the video where I discuss these 10 keys:

 

 

1. Have a dedicated time on your calendar to prospect. Don’t allow interruptions! This is absolutely essential! The most successful salespeople are those who commit their time to prospect and stick to it. Saying that you’ll start prospecting as soon as you’ve taken care of everything else is not a strategy but an escape tactic to avoid prospecting!

2. Never start what you can’t finish. Prospecting is about following up. Reaching out to a bunch of people without following up with repeat contacts will never result in any type of success.

3. Believe 110% that you can help others. If you don’t believe in you, why should anyone else believe in you? Top performing salespeople are successful regardless of what they sell, because they know their objective is to help others; what they sell is merely the means in which they do that.

4. Qualify quickly. There’s nothing worse than having “prospects” in your pipeline just taking up your time but never becoming your customers. I’m a firm believer in having a fast moving prospecting pipeline that allows you to spend more time with fewer prospects. Yes, I know that is the exact opposite of what many sales managers say. We have to think quality, not quantity!

5. Have a prospecting process and stick to it. You won’t know if your process works unless you’ve executed it for a period of time that is twice the length of your average buying cycle. This is my rule. Here’s an example: if it takes 3 months to move someone from a lead to a customer, then you need to run your process for at least 6 months before you’ll know if it is working. Too many salespeople give up on their plan far too soon.

6. Don’t rely on social media as your primary means to generate leads. Social media is great, but not 100% reliable all of the time. Use it as one of your sources. Social media has a long lead-time. Too often, salespeople starve to death because they’ve put such a strong emphasis on social media, thinking it’s all they have to do. Use it to create awareness and confidence. The leads you get are purely a bonus.

7. Follow up promptly. This sounds simple, but more opportunities are lost merely due to the salesperson failing to follow up quickly when leads/prospects indicate that they want to move forward. Countless opportunities are lost because the salesperson is afraid that they’ll be seen as a stalker. If stalking helps me close more deals, sign me up!

8. Use the telephone. Don’t fall for the myth: “the telephone doesn’t work because nobody answers it.” Sure, the telephone isn’t as effective as it used to be, but don’t give up on it. The telephone allows you to have conversations with leads and prospects which in turn allows you to qualify them faster and ultimately help them far beyond what they initially expected.

9. Do not only rely on the Marketing Department for leads. It’s always great to have leads supplied, but top performers know they have an obligation to get leads and prospects. Relying on the Marketing Department is merely an excuse for not taking control of yourself.

10. Make the prospecting process about the other person. It’s not what you sell, it’s the outcome that you can help the prospect reach. That is what will get you the high-value prospects you need. If all you do is tell others what you do and what your product features are, you’re destined to fail.

 

Copyright 2019, Mark Hunter “The Sales Hunter.” Sales Motivation Blog. Mark Hunter is the author of High-Profit Prospecting: Powerful Strategies to Find the Best Leads and Drive Breakthrough Sales Results

A UK parliamentary committee has published new evidence fleshing out how membership data was passed from UKIP, a pro-Brexit political party, to Leave.EU, a Brexit supporting campaign active in the 2016 EU referendum — via the disgraced and now defunct data company, Cambridge Analytica.

In evidence sessions last year, during the DCMS committee’s enquiry into online disinformation, it was told by both the former CEO of Cambridge Analytica, and the main financial backer of the Leave.EU campaign, the businessman Arron Banks, that Cambridge Analytica did no work for the Leave.EU campaign.

Documents published today by the committee clearly contradict that narrative — revealing internal correspondence about the use of a UKIP dataset to create voter profiles to carry out “national microtargeting” for Leave.EU.

They also show CA staff raising concerns about the legality of the plan to model UKIP data to enable Leave.EU to identify and target receptive voters with pro-Brexit messaging.

The UK’s 2016 in-out EU referendum saw the voting public narrowing voting to leave — by 52:48.

New evidence from Brittany Kaiser

The evidence, which includes emails between key Cambridge Analytica, employees of Leave.EU and UKIP, has been submitted to the DCMS committee by Brittany Kaiser — a former director of CA (who you may just have seen occupying a central role in Netflix’s The Great Hack documentary, which digs into links between the Trump campaign and the Brexit campaign).

“As you can see with the evidence… chargeable work was completed for UKIP and Leave.EU, and I have strong reasons to believe that those datasets and analysed data processed by Cambridge Analytica as part of a Phase 1 payable work engagement… were later used by the Leave.EU campaign without Cambridge Analytica’s further assistance,” writes Kaiser in a covering letter to committee chair, Damian Collins, summarizing the submissions.

Kaiser gave oral evidence to the committee at a public hearing in April last year.

At the time she said CA had been undertaking parallel pitches for Leave.EU and UKIP — as well as for two insurance brands owned by Banks — and had used membership survey data provided by UKIP to built a model for pro-brexit voter personality types, with the intention of it being used “to benefit Leave.EU”.

In one email — dated November 10, 2015 — CA’s COO & CFO, Julian Wheatland, writes that: “I had a call with [Leave.EU’s] Andy Wigmore today (Arron’s right hand man) and he confirmed that, even though we haven’t got the contract with the Leave written up, it’s all under control and it will happen just as soon as [UKIP-linked lawyer] Matthew Richardson has finished working out the correct contract structure between UKIP, CA and Leave.”

Another item Kaiser has submitted to the committee is a separate November email from Wigmore, inviting press to a briefing by Leave.EU — entitled “how to win the EU referendum” — an event at which Kaiser gave a pitch on CA’s work. In this email Wigmore describes the firm as “the worlds leading target voter messaging campaigners”.

In another document, CA’s Wheatland is shown in an email thread ahead of that presentation telling Wigmore and Richardson “we need to agree the line in the presentations next week with regards the origin of the data we have analysed”.

“We have generated some interesting findings that we can share in the presentation, but we are certain to be asked where the data came from. Can we declare that we have analysed UKIP membership and survey data?” he then asks.

UKIP’s Richardson replies with a negative, saying: “I would rather we didn’t, to be honest” — adding that he has a meeting with Wigmore to discuss “all of this”, and ending with: “We will have a plan by the end of that lunch, I think”.

In another email, dated November 10, sent to multiple recipients ahead of the presentation, Wheatland writes: “We need to start preparing Brittany’s presentation, which will involve working with some of the insights David [Wilkinson, CA’s chief data scientist] has been able to glean from the UKIP membership data.”

He also asks Wilkinson if he can start to “share insights from the UKIP data” — as well as asking “when are we getting the rest of the data?”. (In a later email, dated November 16, Wilkinson shares plots of modelled data with Kaiser — apparently showing the UKIP data now segmented into four blocks of brexit supporters, which have been named: ‘Eager activist’; ‘Young reformer’; ‘Disaffected Tories’; and ‘Left behinds’.)

In the same email Wheatland instructs Jordanna Zetter, an employee of CA’s parent company SCL, to brief Kaiser on “how to field a variety of questions about CA and our methodology, but also SCL. Rest of the world, SCL Defence etc” — asking her to liaise with other key SCL/CA staff to “produce some ‘line to take’ notes”.

Another document in the bundle appears to show Kaiser’s talking points for the briefing. These make no mention of CA’s intention to carry out “national microtargeting” for Leave.EU — merely saying it will conduct “message testing and audience segmentation”.

“We will be working with the campaign’s pollsters and other vendors to compile all the data we have available to us,” is another of the bland talking points Kaiser was instructed to feed to the press.

“Our team of data scientists will conduct deep-dive analysis that will enable us to understand the electorate better than the rival campaigns,” is one more unenlightening line intended for public consumption.

But while CA was preparing to present the UK media with a sanitized false narrative to gloss over the individual voter targeting work it actually intended to carry out for Leave.EU, behind the scenes concerns were being raised about how “national microtargeting” would conflict with UK data protection law.

Another email thread, started November 19, highlights internal discussion about the legality of the plan — with Wheatland sharing “written advice from Queen’s Counsel on the question of how we can legally process data in the UK, specifically UKIP’s data for Leave.eu and also more generally”. (Although Kaiser has not shared the legal advice itself.)

Wilkinson replies to this email with what he couches as “some concerns” regarding shortfalls in the advice, before going into detail on how CA is intending to further process the modelled UKIP data in order to individually microtarget brexit voters — which he suggests would not be legal under UK data protection law “as the identification of these people would constitute personal data”.

He writes:

I have some concerns about what this document says is our “output” – points 22 to 24. Whilst it includes what we have already done on their data (clustering and initial profiling of their members, and providing this to them as summary information), it does not say anything about using the models of the clusters that we create to extrapolate to new individuals and infer their profile. In fact it says that our output does not identify individuals. Thus it says nothing about our microtargeting approach typical in the US, which I believe was something that we wanted to do with leave eu data to identify how each their supporters should be contacted according to their inferred profile.

For example, we wouldn’t be able to show which members are likely to belong to group A and thus should be messaged in this particular way – as the identification of these people would constitute personal data. We could only say “group A typically looks like this summary profile”.

Wilkinson ends by asking for clarification ahead of a looming meeting with Leave.EU, saying: “It would be really useful to have this clarified early on tomorrow, because I was under the impression it would be a large part of our product offering to our UK clients.” [emphasis ours]

Wheatland follows up with a one line email, asking Richardson to “comment on David’s concern” — who then chips into the discussion, saying there’s “some confusion at our end about where this data is coming from and going to”.

He goes on to summarize the “premises” of the advice he says UKIP was given regarding sharing the data with CA (and afterwards the modelled data with Leave.EU, as he implies is the plan) — writing that his understanding is that CA will return: “Analysed Data to UKIP”, and then: “As the Analysed Dataset contains no personal data UKIP are free to give that Analysed Dataset to anyone else to do with what they wish. UKIP will give the Analysed Dataset to Leave.EU”.

“Could you please confirm that the above is correct?” Richardson goes on. “Do I also understand correctly that CA then intend to use the Analysed Dataset and overlay it on Leave.EU’s legitimately acquired data to infer (interpolate) profiles for each of their supporters so as to better control the messaging that leave.eu sends out to those supporters?

“Is it also correct that CA then intend to use the Analysed Dataset and overlay it on publicly available data to infer (interpolate) which members of the public are most likely to become Leave.EU supporters and what messages would encourage them to do so?

“If these understandings are not correct please let me know and I will give you a call to discuss this.”

About half an hour later another SCL Group employee, Peregrine Willoughby-Brown, joins the discussion to back up Wilkinson’s legal concerns.

“The [Queen’s Counsel] opinion only seems to be an analysis of the legality of the work we have already done for UKIP, rather than any judgement on whether or not we can do microtargeting. As such, whilst it is helpful to know that we haven’t already broken the law, it doesn’t offer clear guidance on how we can proceed with reference to a larger scope of work,” she writes without apparent alarm at the possibility that the entire campaign plan might be illegal under UK privacy law.

“I haven’t read it in sufficient depth to know whether or not it offers indirect insight into how we could proceed with national microtargeting, which it may do,” she adds — ending by saying she and a colleague will discuss it further “later today”.

It’s not clear whether concerns about the legality of the microtargeting plan derailed the signing of any formal contract between Leave.EU and CA — even though the documents imply data was shared, even if only during the scoping stage of the work.

“The fact remains that chargeable work was done by Cambridge Analytica, at the direction of Leave.EU and UKIP executives, despite a contract never being signed,” writes Kaiser in her cover letter to the committee on this. “Despite having no signed contract, the invoice was still paid, not to Cambridge Analytica but instead paid by Arron Banks to UKIP directly. This payment was then not passed onto Cambridge Analytica for the work completed, as an internal decision in UKIP, as their party was not the beneficiary of the work, but Leave.EU was.”

Kaiser has also shared a presentation of the UKIP survey data, which bears the names of three academics: Harold Clarke, University of Texas at Dallas & University of Essex; Matthew Goodwin, University of Kent; and Paul Whiteley, University of Essex, which details results from the online portion of the membership survey — aka the core dataset CA modelled for targeting Brexit voters with the intention of helping the Leave.EU campaign.

(At a glance, this survey suggests there’s an interesting analysis waiting to be done of the choice of target demographics for the current blitz of campaign message testing ads being run on Facebook by the new (pro-brexit) UK prime minister Boris Johnson and the core UKIP demographic, as revealed by the survey data… )

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Call for Leave.EU probe to be reopened

Ian Lucas, MP, a member of the DCMS committee has called for the UK’s Electoral Commission to re-open its investigation into Leave.EU in view of “additional evidence” from Kaiser.

We reached out to the Electoral Commission to ask if it will be revisiting the matter.

An Electoral Commission spokesperson told us: “We are considering this new information in relation to our role regulating campaigner activity at the EU referendum. This relates to the 10 week period leading up to the referendum and to campaigning activity specifically aimed at persuading people to vote for a particular outcome.

“Last July we did impose significant penalties on Leave.EU for committing multiple offences under electoral law at the EU Referendum, including for submitting an incomplete spending return.”

Last year the Electoral Commission also found that the official Vote Leave Brexit campaign broke the law by breaching election campaign spending limits. It channelled money to a Canadian data firm linked to Cambridge Analytica to target political ads on Facebook’s platform, via undeclared joint working with a youth-focused Brexit campaign, BeLeave.

Six months ago the UK’s data watchdog also issued fines against Leave.EU and Banks’ insurance company, Eldon Insurance — having found what it dubbed as “serious” breaches of electronic marketing laws, including the campaign using insurance customers’ details to unlawfully to send almost 300,000 political marketing messages.

A spokeswoman for the ICO told us it does not have a statement on Kaiser’s latest evidence but added that its enforcement team “will be reviewing the documents released by DCMS”.

The regulator has been running a wider enquiry into use of personal data for social media political campaigning. And last year the information commissioner called for an ethical pause on its use — warning that trust in democracy risked being undermined.

And while Facebook has since applied a thin film of ‘political ads’ transparency to its platform (which researches continue to warn is not nearly transparent enough to quantify political use of its ads platform), UK election campaign laws have yet to be updated to take account of the digital firehoses now (il)liberally shaping political debate and public opinion at scale.

It’s now more than three years since the UK’s shock vote to leave the European Union — a vote that has so far delivered three years of divisive political chaos, despatching two prime ministers and derailing politics and policymaking as usual.

Many questions remain over a referendum that continues to be dogged by scandals — from breaches of campaign spending; to breaches of data protection and privacy law; and indeed the use of unregulated social media — principally Facebook’s ad platform — as the willing conduit for distributing racist dogwhistle attack ads and political misinformation to whip up anti-EU sentiment among UK voters.

Dark money, dark ads — and the importing of US style campaign tactics into UK, circumventing election and data protection laws by the digital platform backdoor.

This is why the DCMS committee’s preliminary report last year called on the government to take “urgent action” to “build resilience against misinformation and disinformation into our democratic system”.

The very same minority government, struggling to hold itself together in the face of Brexit chaos, failed to respond to the committee’s concerns — and has now been replaced by a cadre of the most militant Brexit backers, who are applying their hands to the cheap and plentiful digital campaign levers.

The UK’s new prime minister, Boris Johnson, is demonstrably doubling down on political microtargeting: Appointing no less than Dominic Cummings, the campaign director of the official Vote Leave campaign, as a special advisor.

At the same time Johnson’s team is firing out a flotilla of Facebook ads — including ads that appear intended to gather voter sentiment for the purpose of crafting individually targeted political messages for any future election campaign.

So it’s full steam ahead with the Facebook ads…

Yet this ‘democratic reset’ is laid right atop the Brexit trainwreck. It’s coupled to it, in fact.

Cummings worked for the self same Vote Leave campaign that the Electoral Commission found illegally funnelled money — via Cambridge Analytica-linked Canadian data firm AggregateIQ — into a blitz of microtargeted Facebook ads intended to sway voter opinion.

Vote Leave also faced questions over its use of Facebook-run football competition promising a £50M prize-pot to fans in exchange for handing over a bunch of personal data ahead of the referendum, including how they planned to vote. Another data grab wrapped in fancy dress — much like GSR’s thisisyourlife quiz app that provided the foundational dataset for CA’s psychological voter profiling work on the Trump campaign.

The elevating of Cummings to be special adviser to the UK PM represents the polar opposite of an ‘ethical pause’ in political microtargeting.

Make no mistake, this is the Brexit campaign playbook — back in operation, now with full-bore pedal to the metal. (With his hands now on the public purse, Johnson has pledged to spend £100M on marketing to sell a ‘no deal Brexit’ to the UK public.)

Kaiser’s latest evidence may not contain a smoking bomb big enough to blast the issue of data-driven and tech giant-enabled voter manipulation into a mainstream consciousness, where it might have the chance to reset the political conscience of a nation — but it puts more flesh on the bones of how the self-styled ‘bad boys of Brexit’ pulled off their shock win.

In The Great Hack the Brexit campaign is couched as the ‘petri dish’ for the data-fuelled targeting deployed by the firm in the 2016 US presidential election — which delivered a similarly shock victory for Trump.

If that’s so, these latest pieces of evidence imply a suggestively close link between CA’s experimental modelling of UKIP supporter data, as it shifted gears to apply its dark arts closer to home than usual, and the models it subsequently built off of US citizens’ data sucked out of Facebook. And that in turn goes some way to explaining the cosiness between Trump and UKIP founder Nigel Farage…

 

Kaiser ends her letter to DCMS writing: “Given the enormity of the implications of earlier inaccurate conclusions by different investigations, I would hope that Parliament reconsiders the evidence submitted here in good faith. I hope that these ten documents are helpful to your research and furthering the transparency and truth that your investigations are seeking, and that the people of the UK and EU deserve”.

Banks and Wigmore have responded to the publication in their usual style, with a pair of dismissive tweets — questioning Kaiser’s motives for wanting the data to be published and throwing shade on how the evidence was obtained in the first place.

Nanosheet devices are scheduled for the 3-nanometer node as soon as 2021


The most popular time to read emails in the United States is in the morning, with opens peaking between 10 AM and 11 AM, according to recent research from Litmus. Read the full article at MarketingProfs

This list of marketing thought leaders is designed to be a place where you can find some of the best and brightest minds on most marketing topics. Who's on this list? 100+ genuine marketing thought leaders spanning a wide range of marketing disciplines. Read the full article at MarketingProfs

• Traffic management, shipping, and logistics are among the areas with the most potential to be improved by artificial intelligence.
• Waymo is ahead of competitors in cracking autonomous vehicles, having logged 10 million miles with self-driving cars since October 2018.  
• This article includes an overview of AI in transportation, including the top three trends to watch, and how advances in smart vehicles are pushing the need for better infrastructure solutions.
• Read how AI is transforming health, retail, consumer technology, and more in other articles from our special report, How AI is Changing Everything.

Opportunities abound in the world of smart, internet-connected transportation infrastructure. This is the next frontier in intelligent systems design that touches every level of urban life: from the roads on which we drive, to the way we move around our cities and neighborhoods.

The paradigm shift is already happening, albeit in ways that might not be obvious. Sensors embedded in roadways can communicate with signaling systems to optimize traffic flow. Parking structures can send information about space availability to an app on your smartphone. And eventually, roads will be able to communicate more directly with autonomous vehicles and traffic signals in tandem, thereby reducing the friction caused by unpredictable human drivers.

But there is much further to go, and the current state of existing roads, bridges, railways, and other infrastructure in the US has lagged far behind the technology that futurists envision will power modern cities. The biggest metropolises in the US Los Angeles, New York, and Chicago contain an amalgam of the old and the new, adding further complexity to the task of modernization.

"We have to bring our infrastructure back up to standard before we can even consider modernizing for the future," Professor Lucio Soibelman, chair of the civil and environmental engineering department at the University of Southern California, said in an interview with Business Insider.

"So many of our roads, tunnels, and bridges in the US are in such poor condition, they can barely serve our current needs today."

The American Society of Civil Engineers seems to agree with Soibelman. It gave America's infrastructure a D+ in its 2017 report card, the most recent scoring of the nation's infrastructure, which includes bridges, dams, hazardous waste, public parks, ports, roads, transit, and more.

In order to realize the full potential of transportation infrastructure driven by artificial intelligence, those technologies must be integrated during the planning stages.

Researchers at the University of California, Berkeley's Institute of Transportation Studies find that three key infrastructure improvements are necessary to facilitate that process, among them: sensors that help connected vehicles talk to signaling devices. "These will enable two-way communication between the vehicles and traffic-management systems so that they can maximize safety, efficiency, and traffic flow," they said in a comprehensive 2017 report on intelligent transportation systems and infrastructure.

Architects, civil and software engineers, and local legislators have to provide the expertise and funding to ensure the buildings, roads, and bridges that crisscross our cities are equipped for such a future.

The top 3 opportunities for AI in transportation

Self-driving vehicles: Nascent 

As noted by Ayoub Aouad, a Business Insider Intelligence senior research analyst, this segment is poised to be "the biggest opportunity AI creates in the transportation space," to the tune of $556 billion by 2026, expanding at a 39% compound annual growth rate from $54 billion in 2019, according to Allied Market Research. Silicon Valley has stepped up here, with Waymo, Mobileye, Uber, Tesla, other companies forging ahead.

Signaling and traffic monitoring: Growing

The autobahn system in Austria relies on a connected roadways system developed by Cisco, which connects more than 6,000 traffic cameras and tens of thousands of sensors to help monitor traffic and road conditions, the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers notes in its own roundup on the ways in which the Internet of Things will unify roadways and traffic signals. Electronically regulated toll-road systems serve a similar function in major cities in the US. These lanes could eventually be designated for autonomous vehicles or robo-taxis.

Shipping and logistics: Growing 

This sector is moving quickly thanks in part to rapid expansion in e-commerce led by companies like Amazon. To that end, tech giants like Oracle are helping companies find the most cost-effective way to ship goods, Business Insider's Rachel Premack reported recently. The Oracle Logistics Cloud product uses artificial intelligence and machine learning to pair long-distance truckers with companies that need a driver to transport goods. 

Connected vehicles are helping to accelerate the shift toward smart infrastructure

These vehicles are already roaming streets and highways in large numbers, guided by satellite navigation, and equipped with intelligent systems that allow the vehicle to sense its immediate surroundings to assist drivers and help prevent collisions. The endgame is for these cars to drive themselves, with no human intervention.

But that costs a lot of time and money.

Waymo, Alphabet's self-driving-vehicle unit, is way ahead, having logged 10 million (seven zeros) miles with its autonomous cars as of October 2018. Its vehicle fleet covered that distance in 25 cities across several cities in the US. In terms of miles driven in its own computer simulations has logged 10 billion virtual miles.

The company's significant investment in autonomy has some Wall Street analysts projecting massive valuations for the business. In December 2018, Jefferies raised its long-term value estimate for Waymo to $250 billion.

Waymo has sought partners in its effort to bring autonomous vehicles — in the form of robo-taxis — to market. It partnered with Lyft in May, delivering ten of its vehicles to be used on the ride-hailing company's platform in Phoenix, Arizona.

Vivek Wadhwa and Alex Salkever, who co-wrote the 2017 book, "The Driver in the Driverless Car" say it makes sense that the self-driving automobile would spur innovation in infrastructure, and eventually change the landscape in the US.

"We will no longer need traffic lights: robot cars will synchronize wirelessly to time mass movements across city intersections and entries onto freeways or balletic dances around four-way stop signs."

"When all the driverless cars are talking to each other, there will be no need for them to ever come to a complete halt and waste all their kinetic energy."

The proliferation of railways and highways had a similar effect during the second industrial revolution in the 20th century. Indeed, connected cars, and eventually self-driving vehicles, by virtue of being the primary beneficiaries of intelligent city design, are bound to do it again.

The Takeaway

"We have to bring our infrastructure back up to standard before we can even consider modernizing for the future."

-Professor Lucio Soibelman, University of Southern California.

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• Workplace applications of AI in development include helping managers measure and run their teams effectively, and cost-savings through greater efficiencies. 
• As disrpution roiled its sector, IBM used AI to help transition it to a skills-based company. Those tools help other companies now. 
• This article includes an overview of AI in the workplace, including the top three trends to watch, plus an analysis of how IBM applied its innovations to solve its own problems. 
• Read how AI is transforming health, transporation, consumer technology, and more in other articles from our special report, How AI is Changing Everything.

We're in the early stages of a massive technological transition that is spreading across every type of industry. Chief among the worries caused by this seismological shift is the loss of steady, long-term careers to automation — and the disappearance of the financial and emotional stability that jobs provide.

At first glance, the numbers seem to support this fear. Consulting firm Bain estimates millions of jobs will be lost in the US over the next two decades, displacing as much as 25% of the labor force. Ginni Rometty, CEO of tech giant IBM, has been even more direct with her predictions: she's said artificial intelligence will change "100% of jobs in the next five to 10 years."

But let's take a historical breather. After all, automation wiping out jobs isn't new; what's changed is the method: Deep machine learning is now capable of replacing more than just manual labor. This makes it easy to imagine robot bosses coldly monitoring our work and firing us when we don't meet pre-calculated criteria — HAL 9000 in a suit and tie.

And yet, the inevitability of AI's increased presence in the workplace doesn't have to cause despair. While Rometty is clear things will change, her company has been proving that when used with managers and employees in mind, machine learning can be a powerful asset in keeping jobs safe.

Over the past five years, IBM has developed a suite of AI-powered tools that help recruit and map career paths, and even determine salaries. And because the company is so influential, the programs they introduce could find their way to your office soon.

Major corporations are aware of the fear that often accompanies these changes (not to mention the bad press). Amazon, which has faced criticism for the way AI is used to terminate underperforming factory employees, announced in July 2019 that they would invest $700 million over the next six years to retrain 100,000 employees whose jobs are at risk of automation.

The professional services company Accenture has also been an industry leader during these changing times, investing about $1 billion in job training each year over the past four years. So far, it has retrained 300,000 workers. Its AI program (the whimsically named Job Buddy) helps employees whose roles are in danger of being replaced find new opportunities within the company. "What it does is it tells our people that, look, this percentage of your job is likely to be lost to automation; your skills are adjacent to these skills, so go take this training," Accenture's HR head Ellyn Shook told Business Insider.

Brands around the world are using AI to enhance their human-resources departments. Research shows that more than 70% of employers and recruiters use some form of automated résumé parser to process CVs, create summaries of the candidate pool, and even rank candidates. Consumer-goods giant Unilever and mobile provider Vodafone have bet that AI can help eliminate bias from the job-application process. HR-services firm Pymetrics develops quizzes that test entry-level job candidates for traits like focus, memory, and propensity for risk. Its algorithm determines whether a candidate is worthy of a closer look from a hiring manager.

Pymetrics CEO Frida Polli told Business Insider her company is not looking to replace hiring managers at large companies. Rather, they want to free them from having to consider thousands of applications when they could instead be focusing on the top candidates. "People are being elevated to a much more strategic role with the use of it," she said.

AI in the workplace is still in its early stages, and these experiments are largely confined to companies with access to advanced technology. But the tools are worth exploring not just to improve output and productivity, but to enhance employees' well-being.

Top 3 opportunities for AI in the workplace 

Making managers more effective: Nascent

A manager augmented by AI is vastly superior to a program that outright replaces a boss. At IBM, managers use an AI tool called Compensation Advisor that sorts through historical data on thousands of employees and competitors to present a salary range managers can work with, saving time and reducing the scope of judgment required.

Providing employees with career-advancement opportunities: Nascent

The developed world is at another inflection point, where technology is transforming jobs at a rapid rate across industries for all professionals. IBM's Blue Matching program analyzes data automatically collected about a worker's skill set and weighs that against requirements for other roles within the company. The employees can then use the Your Learning hub to acquire new skills, from project management to cybersecurity basics.

Cutting time-consuming tasks to boost productivity: Growing

Automation has always been used for tasks that a machine could perform more efficiently than a human. However, a new generation of tools is not only cutting time, it's enabling managers and employees to work more effectively. IBM employees used to have to answer long surveys about their skill sets, then go over them with their boss. Now this data is collected by AI, giving teams more time to focus on the discussions rather than the paperwork.

How IBM used AI to transition to a skills-based company

In 2014, IBM's leaders realized the tech giant was facing massive disruption. Cloud computing (software distributed online instead of through hardware), blockchain (secure ledger tech), and advancements in AI were redefining their industry. Left unchecked, the drive to automation would leave much of IBM's 350,000 employees without a job.

Diane Gherson, who'd been named IBM's head of HR the previous year, knew that if the company was going to thrive in this era of change, it had to shift into becoming a "skills-based organization" — that is, employees would now be assessed primarily by their collection of skills, allowing them more flexibility in a rapidly changing environment. And AI, which was partially responsible for this sudden and drastic shift, was going to help them adapt. "It was a huge leap," Gherson told Business Insider.

Veteran IBM researcher Anshul Gupta was one of the leads in developing AI-powered tools for this purpose. Fundamental to his team's mission was finding solutions to problems that already existed, rather than creating software they found interesting and seeing what stuck. First on his list was figuring out how developers would approach the problem. He told Business Insider that a question he had to ask himself was "How do you think about enhancing their experience through your offerings, but in their workflow?"

As Gupta and his team set about crafting those tools, another powerful AI was being developed elsewhere at IBM. The company introduced in 2016 a consumer version of Watson, the question-answering AI that famously made its public debut as a "Jeopardy!" contestant. Kelli Jordan, who's overseen IBM's New Collar Job training program and its apprenticeship initiatives, asked developers to find ways to implement Watson into their own workplace.

"When you start to think about careers and development, especially at a company as large as IBM (and especially in the environment that we're in now where skills are changing so rapidly), it's just hard for an employee to really take it all in and make the right decisions and understand where to look," Jordan told Business Insider.

The resulting suite of tools that branched out of Gupta's research and the Watson initiative touches nearly every aspect of the working experience, from answering a job candidate's questions to alerting managers when employees should be considered for promotion — or when they're in danger of missing a quota.

IBM has determined through quarterly assessments of financial and performance impacts that these tools saved the HR department $107 million and "thousands of hours" in 2017. The company has since greenlit further development on the tools.

Of course, as with any AI, each program has to learn through data accumulation and recognition of patterns. So when the skills assessor first rolled out to an initial batch of employees around the world, it didn't have data enough to work with.

Peter Usacov, an IBM project manager based in Hungary, volunteered to be an early adopter of the skills assessor program. He told Business Insider that he and his manager found it useless at first, though he decided to keep engaging it to see what happened. "It was like, 'Oh, this is rusty and doesn't really give me anything,'" Usacov said. "Two, three months later, I'm like, 'Oh my God, what happened in between that this became so smart and accurate?'" Usacov said he is now using it for help as he considers new career paths at IBM.

The company claims that its skills assessor currently has between 85% and 95% accuracy.

IBM also employs hundreds of AI experts to fine tune the various tools' data sets, to adjust for outliers or decisions stemming from unwanted human biases. Gupta told Business Insider that the compensation advisor is proof of how confident he and his team are in the accuracy of their programs' ability to gather and analyze vast amounts of data, since such a tool is not something you would undertake and use if you were "just playing around" with AI. So far, it's been used for 2,000 pay recommendations. 

The world where AI is capable of matching or exceeding human intelligence is "very far away," Gupta said. Still, the tech is now at a stage where it can be trained to do a particular function, like determining how much to consider paying an employee "very, very well."

"That's an area where you enhance the employee experience, you deliver good business outcomes, but you also transform the roles of the team itself," he added. "I think that's a practical reality of what we've seen as we've deployed it within IBM."

The Takeaway

"One-hundred percent of jobs are going to change with artificial intelligence — we know that, right? But that doesn't have to be terrifying. ... If you can make people educated about how to make change and engage them in it, then you're going to end up in a better place. And people are going to be happier because they're doing more value-added work."

— Diane Gherson, SVP of Human Resources at IBM

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• Internet of Things (IOT), the tech industry term for hardware devices that are connected to the Internet, is already being used in manufacturing, construction, agriculture, oil and gas, and other industries.
• A Microsoft survey shows that the majority of leaders in enterprise companies who make decisions about Internet of Things are already adopting this technology and see it as critical to business success.
• Microsoft's head of Azure IoT Sam George explains what makes Microsoft stand out in its IoT technology, compared to its rival clouds.
• Read more BI Prime stories here.

Whether it's tracking workers in risky environments or detecting contamination in food, Microsoft says it's making it easier for customers to take advantage of the rising trend towards internet-connected hardware.

This type of technology is called Internet of Things (IoT), the industry term for machinery that can connect to the Internet and be remotely monitored. IoT is finding uses in improving employee productivity, manufacturing efficiency, and supply chain management, as well as in improving safety and security.

"The most important thing is that IoT is really going mainstream," Sam George, Microsoft's head of Azure IoT, told Business Insider. "It's reaching that point where it's well recognized as a key ingredient in transformation and it's really happening now."

To George's point, Microsoft has released IoT Signals — a new report surveying 3,000 leaders in enterprise companies who are making decisions about IoT. Per that survey, 85% of respondents are already adopting this technology, and 88% of them see it as critical to business success.

Already, IoT devices can be used to track workers in fields like construction or oil and gas. If the worker faces a problem or gets injured, others can be alerted right away. Or, in the case of food production, IoT devices can better detect if there are any toxins using a combination of powerful cameras, UV lights, and artificial intelligence technology.

The idea is to use the power of the cloud, like Microsoft's own Azure, to make previously "dumb" devices like cameras or microphones a little smarter. 

"IoT took advantage of cloud," George said. "What it meant was that if you want to build an IoT solution, you can take advantage of cloud data centers and cloud services."

A skills gap in IoT

Still, 97% of respondents to the IoT Signals study have security concerns about IoT. It's not stopping them from using the technology, but George says that this shows that the industry still has a ways to go to assuage user concerns. 

There's also a skills gap in IoT right now. Nearly half of the respondents, at 47%, say there aren't enough skilled workers in IoT, which can slow down companies in adopting this technology. 

"This was something we started seeing a few years back when we realized IoT will have a profound impact and devices across the planet," George said. "If you think about the number of developers that are required to power that transformation, it outstrips the number of developers that are available today."

Naturally, Microsoft isn't the only one chasing this technology: Amazon Web Services, the market-leading cloud computing platform, has its own IoT strategy, as does Google Cloud, which lags behind Microsoft as the third-place player in the cloud industry. 

George says that what makes Microsoft's cloud stand out from its rivals is its hybrid cloud strategy. Specifically, its IoT technology works both on private data centers, as well as the cloud. That's important, because it means that it can work with a company's local servers, even if  the connected device itself is in a situation where access to the wider internet is slow or otherwise unreliable. 

"Hybrid and on premises is very important in IoT, especially given some sectors like manufacturing," George said. "When you walk through a giant manufacturing environment, you realize all these production lines, you have to keep going, even if there's a network interruption locally."

Read more: The head of Microsoft's data cloud business says that its tech 'battle hardened' and ready to face Google and Amazon on his home turf

In addition, Microsoft also relies on its partners, who can customize the technology and train customers on how to use it. George says that given the skills gap in IoT, this is especially important.

To address the skills gap, Microsoft is currently investing in developing an IoT School, which provides free online training about how to use this technology. It also recently launched IoT Plug and Play, which makes using this technology easier for users, without having to engineer and set up these devices on their own.

"We have a long history of taking complicated technologies and democratizing them," George said. "We're doing that for IoT to make it broadly useful for all these businesses."

SEE ALSO: Microsoft is acquiring a startup that will help its cloud customers control how their data is being used

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You signed the dotted line on a shiny new piece of sales technology.  It’s an exciting day!  Then you realize the work is just beginning – now you have to implement the technology and get the team to adopt it.

*deep breath*

Adopting a new technology isn’t an event. It’s a journey made up of incremental projects. We developed a framework, 7 Considerations in the Sales Technology Adoption Journey, to help you navigate the journey as painlessly as possible. This step-by-step guide is a framework that we use to help our own customers succeed in reaching full utilization of our platform and achieve their ROI.

7 Steps For a Successful Adoption Journey

1. Plan your implementation
2. Define your engagements
3. Configure your account
4. Launch authentic customer engagements
5. Measure your results
6. Expand your success
7. Empower your team

To implement a new technology as seamlessly as possible, there are a lot of questions to ask yourself, your team, and your vendor partner.  If you don’t do this every day, it’s easy to overlook key considerations.

Consider step one: Plan your implementation. In this stage, you will build a customized implementation plan tailored to fit your team’s needs. Here are some of the questions to consider

• What is your ideal go-live date?
• Who from your team needs to be involved in the implementation?
• What features are you planning on utilizing?
• What type of training will you require?
• Is your team ready for this change in software?

After considering these questions, you might discover that you need to dive deeper into a specific area.  We’ve linked to some articles that provided more detailed help in each step.  Link this one on Creating Buy-In: 6 Strategies for Change Management.  (Pro tip: invest in change management early to save time, money, and headaches!)

We also understand that part of this adoption journey is measuring results and replicating success.  This guide includes information about how to reflect on reporting to understand team trends and identify areas of success. Don’t be afraid to dig into dashboard elements and analyze the underlying data for more insights than you originally thought possible. As you look to scale success with your new platform, think outside the box.  Areas for expansion go beyond adding more licenses.  Take your sales program to the next level! Think about leveraging innovative integrations or engaging with your sales community to share best practices.

Download this framework to uncover the most effective way for your sales organization to adopt technology so that you see a return on your investment. You will come away with:

•  A framework for assessing your team’s progress in a new technology adoption journey
• An understanding of what you should be evaluating each step of the way
• A library of additional resources to help you at each step.

So what are you waiting for?  Fast track your way to ROI! Download the guide here.

We don’t often speak to the fact that selling is a form of competition. In a contest measured by the value the salesperson creates, there is a winner and a loser. The victory often goes to the salesperson and sales organization who can solve the client’s problem, the best of whom solve the problem before it’s a problem. We give to little attention to the need to more competitive in sales now, with most people merely going through the motions, doing their job, hoping to win. This is how to be more competitive in sales now.

Competition to Displace

Right now, your competitors are calling on your existing clients. Some of these competitors pose a threat to the future of your relationship. Even if you delude yourself into believing your competitors are all terrible, their results likely prove different. Your competition intends to displace you, removing you from the relationship altogether, and taking the business for themselves and their company. Sometimes they achieve their goal, and you lose business.

You know this is true because you are calling on companies that belong to your competition. You are trying to take your competitor’s clients from them, making you a threat to your competitor and their business. Both you and your competitor are both susceptible to being displaced when you are apathetic, complacent, or entitled. You also lose when you stop creating the value that won you the business in the first place.Win customers away from your competition. Check out Eat Their Lunch

Because selling has moved in the direction of creating displacements, the strategies and tactics for doing so have improved to the point where more salespeople and sales organizations are capable of creating a displacement without having to wait for the client to be dissatisfied enough to change. Instead, the salesperson and their teams create the environment for displacement and compel change. Even though many sales organizations haven’t adopted these practices (we are slow to make difficult transitions), there tends to be some in every industry.

Retention as Competition

Retention is also a competition. It is difficult to grow sales while losing clients and customers. It is difficult to get out of a hole while you continue to dig. You are competing to keep your clients, and there are two ways to prevent being displaced: Execution and New Value.

• Execution: If you don’t execute well, you open the possibility of being displaced. If you can’t produce the outcome you sold, your client is going to have no choice but explore relationships with someone who can. Retention is one part execution.
• New Value: The best way to avoid being apathetic, complacent, and entitled is to create new value for your client. To create new value, you have to develop and win a new opportunity or create some change that improves the result you are producing—or forms an improvement in some other way.

If you don’t execute and create new value, there are plenty of people who will.

Competition for New Entrants

Sometimes you compete for a client who is buying what you sell for the first time. These prospective clients have no existing relationship and are exploring their options. The competition here is in some ways easier because you don’t have to remove a person and company with a long history of working together. It is also in some ways more difficult because your prospective client often lacks an understanding of what you sell, the choices available to them, and the trade-offs and concessions they are making without really understanding them.

There is one winner in these contests. In mature markets, there are not too many of these contests, and the winner can keep a client for years before their new client ever considers changing, making the stake high for all who compete.

Consequences

There are rewards for winning and consequences for losing. Some believe it impolite to speak about the rewards and the consequences of winning and losing. They prefer not to think of selling in terms of contests or winning and losing. Some believe that the idea of competition breeds terrible behaviors, and maybe for the segment of the population already in possession of low moral intelligence, that could be true. However, in more cases, competition compels good sales behaviors, as far more salespeople have high moral intelligence and do not possess a “whatever it takes” attitude when that means giving up their integrity and reputation.

The consequences of losing contests are many. When you are displaced, you lose the revenue, the profit, some part of the relationship, and the financial rewards you would have earned had you retained them. Your company also lost the financial rewards, but they might also have lost a strategic client, a reference for future acquisitions, reputation, and in some cases, market share.

In business, some competitions create a disruptive in the market, displacing and harming a whole industry, as Uber and Lyft have done to the taxi industry in major cities (something that happens to industries over time, and a threat this is difficult to discern if you are not of the mindset to disrupt yourself before it happens to you).

How to Compete

• Believe It Is a Contest: To win a contest, you have to believe you are competing. It isn’t enough to show up. You have to possess a strong desire to win. When a contest has consequences, you have to bring your very best effort to the competition. You are not served by showing up, and there is no benefit of just doing your job. You have to play to win.
• Focus on Creating Greater Value: There is no reason to focus on your competitor. You cannot do anything about them or their approach, even if they always win by lowering their price. The way that you compete in a contest for a client’s business is in large part is creating greater value than your competitor. You win by being more valuable to your client than your competitor. You tilt the playing field in your direction when your dream client perceives more value.
• Create a Preference to Work With You: We don’t spend nearly enough time on this concept. Clients decide that they want to work with someone more than they want to work with someone else. When you lose, they decided they want to work with your competitor. Your approach to selling is a differentiator. So is your bedside manner, what it’s like to work with you. Your business acumen and situational knowledge also help position you as the right partner, as your competency creates trust. It would be difficult to overestimate the importance of intangibles.
• Make Every Interaction Count: If you believe you are making another sale call, you are not playing the game as well as you could. When you think you are engaged in a contest, a struggle where you win or lose, you treat each interaction as if it is critical to the outcome—because it is critical.
• Leverage Every Resource Available: It is a mistake not to engage with the people on your team who might help you win a deal. If you can, bring your leadership into the contest. If there are things you can do, like visiting their site and meeting with their teams to better understand their world, you do it. If you can invite them to your location for a whiteboard meeting to share ideas, make it worth their while to join you. Use every resource available to you to win.

Sales is a competitor, and you are a competitor. Even though we don’t talk enough about competing, winning means recognizing you are in a contest and playing to win.

The post How to Be More Competitive in Sales Now appeared first on The Sales Blog.

 

Our belief in a higher power, and the search for guidance and pilgrimage are shifting from sacred to secular. Brands and their spokespersons now play the role of churches and preachers.

“Google is not a search engine. Google is an atheist God. . . . Where do we pray? Where do we send information, hope there is divine intervention, and get a better answer back? Our new God: Google.” —Scott Galloway, Founder & Chairman, L2

We confide our most intimate secrets and questions to search engines such as Google. They provide us with an immediate answer, unlike at church where we must have faith the answer will come one day. This is one of the reasons why America is becoming increasingly secular and church attendance across the country keeps decreasing. The number of people rejecting any religious affiliation rose from 6 percent in 1992 to 22 percent in 2014. Among millennials, the figure is 35 percent. Yet Google searches increase. Although churches are becoming deserted, 70 percent of unaffiliated Americans believe in God or a universal spirit. These individuals have a more personal spiritual experience, rather than through a religious institution.

While traditional religious institutions struggle to attract new devotees, people turn to other institutions (and brands) to fulfill their quest for spirituality and belonging. Many brands claim to serve a higher purpose, establish rituals, gather their customers in sanctuaries and preach a new way of being, all by borrowing heavily from the sacred codes and terminology. Also, we will see how certain cultural gatherings and music festivals substitute for the rites of passage and pilgrimages traditionally offered by religious institutions. While not always obvious, the power of cult-like marketing is undeniable. It has contributed to the success of brands like Apple, Harley-Davidson, SoulCycle, and Yelp. Let’s take a closer look, in a non-judgmental way, at the meanings we seek (or once sought) from religion and the metaphors brands use to fulfill these meanings.

How Brands Borrow The Codes Of Religion

Cult-like brands provide their followers with a strong feeling of belonging to a group (almost a family) of like-minded people. From a marketer’s standpoint, these brands deliver a very high level of customer loyalty and a sense of ownership with the brand. Cult-like brands also don’t lose traction like fads do. It has been over 35 years since the inception of the first Harley Owners Group (H.O.G.). Today, H.O.G.s have over 1 million members worldwide, through 680 chapters in the U.S. and 700 chapters abroad. To attract followers and turn them into fanatics, brands borrow heavily on the premises and terminology of religion.

Serve A Higher Purpose

Brands have no sacred texts to rely on so they create texts of their own. “SoulCycle instructors guide riders through an inspirational, meditative fitness experience designed to benefit the body, mind and soul,” reads the company’s S1 filing. “We believe SoulCycle is more than a business, it’s a movement.” In this same document, SoulCycle promises a spiritually uplifting workout to visitors “inspired to open themselves to the possibility of change.” The workout pushes our limits with the aim of reaching transcendent and altered states.

Embody A Sense Of Belonging And Social Identity

One of the key tenets of a cult is that it unites members to oppose what they see as an illegitimate or oppressive mainstream culture. To that end, many brand communities have converted both customers and merchants into devotees. In 2004, the now-popular review-site Yelp was struggling to grow its business. To surface new ideas, it decided to gather about 100 power users. Then Yelp realized that people were motivated by other people like themselves, not by the businesses they were reviewing. The number of reviews grew exponentially afterward. The Yelp Elite Squad gathers the platform’s most active reviewers and “role models” and distinguishes members of the Squad with a colorful elite badge featured on their account profiles. Five years of being part of the squad grants you a Gold Elite Badge. After ten years, you’ll receive the much-coveted Black Elite Badge.

Sacred And Ritual Consumption

In its religious sense, sacred means “connected with God or a god or dedicated to a religious purpose and so deserving veneration or regarded with great respect and reverence by a particular religion, group, or individual.” In marketing, sacred consumption refers to events and objects that are out of the ordinary and which we regard with the upmost respect. Rituals are patterns of behavior tied to events that we deem as important in our lives. These events often come from our cultures, religious background, and traditions. They often have some special symbolic meaning and are repeated regularly.

Ritual consumption is the consumption of goods and services that is tied to specific rituals. Artifacts are the items we use in a ritual. For brands, ritual consumption is the holy grail of loyalty. If we consume a product regularly and follow a ritual, we end up using a lot more of it and re-purchasing this same product without thinking twice about it. That’s why Olay tells us to use their facials everyday, Oreo teaches us to “twist, lick and dunk,” and Corona beer comes with a lime. Dunkin’ has become #1 in the coffee category by establishing its products as an artifact we use throughout the day: Dunkin’ is our all-day, everyday stop for coffee and baked goods.

You will find many more case studies and tips in my new book Brand Hacks: How to Grow your Brand by Fulfilling the Human Quest for Meaning.

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Sales is suffering from 9 brutal ills:

1. The Bro Culture, 
2. Lack of Coaching
3. Too Product-Centric and Not Problem Centric
4. Not enough salespeople understand the game/rules of sales

• Too much reliance on selling tools.
• Not enough training in the industry/space
• Too much activity management
• Little respect for prospects and buyers time
• Not enough humility

 

Here we are problem number four. This is a problem is like a dormant virus. Almost every salesperson is afflicted with it, but they don’t realize it. Most salespeople don’t understand the game of sales. They think selling is about them. They think selling is about their product. They think selling is about competition. They think selling is about quota. They think selling is about President’s Club and being the top rep. Salespeople look at selling in a lot of ways, but few actually get what sales is all about. They don’t understand the game of sales and it’s costing them deals, partnerships, and greater success.

Of all the misconceptions salespeople have, the biggest is they think it’s about them, their company, and their product. Look at most of their decks, pitches, emails, voicemail messages and the one pagers they send out. They almost always, exclusively talk about their product and their company. What they don’t understand is that customers and buyers don’t give a shit about your or your product.

 

Gap Selling Truth Bomb #2

No one gives a shit about YOU!

 

Sales is not a selling sport or a commission sport or a telling game. It’s a helping game. It’s a discovery game. It’s a thinking game. It’s a creativity game. It’s a support game. It’s a problem-solving game.

Buyers care about themselves. They have problems they are trying to solve. Their business is suffering somehow and they need to stop the bleeding. They don’t care about you or what product you sell or how long you’re company has been in business. They care about their own world and it’s our job as salespeople to understand as much about their world as possible.

What salespeople struggle understanding is that they aren’t paid to sell. They are paid to influence a decision and that can’t be done when you’re focusing on you, your product or your company.

When a salesperson doesn’t understand that it’s their job to influence they become an order-taker and order takers don’t provide as much value as decision influencers.

The game of sales is a data game. It’s about getting as much information as possible about the buyer’s current state and what’s going on. It’s about understanding the current environment, the problems they are struggling with, the impact those problems are having on the organization, the reasons they are having them and how it’s making them feel. It’s about understanding where they want to go. Why they want to go there, what happens if they are successful and what solutions would be most effective in ensuring they get there.

This is all data. No telling, pitching, no demoing, no hard close, not manipulation. It’s simply being a data hound, and getting as much information as possible, that will allow you to influence the sale leveraging everything the buyer told you.

Salespeople, it’s time to change the way we sell. The days of pitches, product-centric selling are over. The game has changed. Don’t be an order-taker. Be an influencer, be a problem-centric seller.

The post 9 Things Terribly Wrong With Sales Today: The Sales People appeared first on A Sales Guy.

By Tibor Shanto

I’d like you to take a look at the marketing material or collateral you use to prospect and sell. For many, you will find one piece or set aimed at your market. Some will have iterations based on the role of someone in the decision process. Others may reflect the size of the target company or a couple of other demographics. But there is a singular erroneous assumption that goes into pieces, making them all but useless, and often get in the way of selling. It is not so much that they are too product-centric, which they are. But they are completely ignoring the buyers’ state of readiness.  That is the time between NOW, and when the buyer indents on making a decision.

Most materials provided to salespeople or made available for buyers directly is geared towards one type of prospect. Namely, those who are out there actively looking, searching on Google, downloading stuff, checking out your webinars. These people are ready, and you don’t want to be missed. As a result, most organizations’ collateral is aimed at that Active Buyer, boldly traversing 57% of their journey before succumbing to a salesperson.

The challenge is that the number of Active Buyers is tiny. Depending on your industry, and who is measuring, it usually is 10% or less of a given target market. Now, if you can make quota capturing your share of this market segment, all the power to you. But the vast majority of salespeople I meet admit that they need to sell to other prospects as well. And that’s when they are on their own.

When you looked at collateral earlier, did it speak to anyone that is not intent on buying? Were there different pieces based on time to decision? If yes, congratulations. But there are not many companies that do, just enough to prove the rule.

So What About The Others

It’s more than just “others” if only about 10% is actively looking, 90% are in various stages of not looking. Specifically, about 20% are Passive Buyers, people who know they need to make a purchase, but their timeline is 12 to 18 months. Based on their last buying experience, four years ago, the buying cycle took about four months. Knowing things have changed and advanced, they mentally add two months, “cause you never know, I don’t need to buckle down for 10 – 12 months.”

Talking to these people in the same language and about the same things as you would to an active buyer, is asking for trouble. They are a year out from transitioning to Active, which means you need to speak to them in the way someone a year away from an event would be thinking. Topics may be about issues or opportunities your product can address, but they are not in product mode. They are in any number of types of “trying to figure it out mode.” Few companies arm their salespeople with collateral aligned to milestones that occur before there is “product talk.”

While buyers would welcome some thought leadership about their scenario, what it means, how much attention it may or may not need, etc. It is dangerously too soon for “solutions,” especially a year out from the start of considerations.

Profiting From The Past

I get some push back on this in the form of “how do I know that?” All I can say “360 Degree Deal Review“. If you make it a habit to understand how the journey unfolded for the buyer, these factors will make themselves apparent. But you need to start by making it a habit, and you need to look at the entire buyer journey, not just when they reach the vendor selection stage. Just like you were able to create specific material based on role or other attributes. You can figure out what impacted decisions and how, how things evolved long before the product stage. The key to success is the habit you develop for knowing, not the tool you choose.

Understanding how they prioritize projects, typical blind allies people get caught in, help you add value long before others may. But that value has to be situational, based on the client’s situation, not your quota, and indeed not product related. Done well we can plant seeds during this stage that we can more efficiently harvest when they are in Active mode. If you plant the right business concepts early, you can align them very specifically to your product when they go Active.

Even Less Receptive

The group described above, the Passive Buyers, which make up about 20% or so of a given market. Add that to the 10% Active, and you are only up to 30% of your market. At least these two sets of buyers have a timeline. The remaining 70% of buyers, commonly known as the Status Quo, have no schedule or deadline. Mostly they do not perceive a need of any sort. They don’t know about our product, that we exist, or what our product does. They are busy doing their thing, “thank you very much; don’t need anything, especially that thing.”  Ignoring the buyers’ state of readiness is fatal with Status Quo prospects.

The messaging created for Active Buyers will do little more than piss people off or suggest that you do not understand them. While you may think you do, your narrative says not. There is only one way to engage with the Status Quo, that is through objectives. Most sellers will use the same intro with someone ready to go as they would with someone totally removed from the market.

No Pain No Gain

I know many will protest, but if you introduce yourself with the pains, needs and problems you solve, you’re sabotaging your opportunity. I know yours is more refined, but most prospecting pitches come down here’s the need, here’s the pain, and we got the cure. Which is why it does not work with someone refusing to see and acknowledge the things you desperately need them to. If they don’t see themselves in the picture we paint, there is no need to continue.

On the other hand, if you led with objectives they may have, (you’d know from the 360 Degree Deal View), they may want to engage. Probably not ready to buy, but with these folks, engagement is a real step forward. You can apply many of the practices described above, aligning the message with their pre-product journey. You know how we like to talk about a Client Life Cycle? That cycle starts long before many are aware or track. But with no compelling event, your best shot is to become their emotional favourite from the time you engage, to when they begin to consider things in Passive stage. Right through to when they become Active Buyers, familiar and comfortable with you. Ignoring the buyers’ state of readiness will always make for a long and often a more lonely journey.

The post Ignoring The Buyers’ State of Readiness appeared first on TiborShanto.com.

Adobe recently published a report detailing the findings of a survey we conducted of 1,215 marketers and B2B buyers in the U.K., France, and Germany. The findings reveal that European business buyers expect vendors to display traits traditionally associated with consumer brands, demonstrating B2B and B2C landscapes are no longer distinct.

The “Creating Epic Customer Experiences” report shows how the B2B buying experience is more similar to B2C, giving rise to a “Business To Everyone,” or “B2E” world. With 70% of B2B marketers saying they can’t differentiate, B2E poses a new challenge for all business in an already competitive environment.

The report highlights three areas of convergence:

Desire For Security, Protection, And Transparency Align B2B And B2C

It’s safe to assume that all buyers—both B2C and B2B—are looking for a great product at a reasonable price. Other buyer must haves are security, protection, and ease of business, are important to both consumers and business buyers. Marketers won’t be surprised to learn that the vast majority of buyers say it’s vital a supplier is serious about protecting both their organization’s and their own personal data. 85% want to be treated fairly as a customer, and 78% want a brand to be transparent about how they work.

The Rise Of Altruistic Brand Purpose In B2B

B2B buyers are increasingly motivated by other factors. Sustainability is an essential area of consideration, with 67% of buyers seeking to work with companies that are striving to lower their impact on the environment. Of course, a focus on green credentials is hardly a nascent trend. Being eco-friendly has been a hot topic for years, and marketers are well aware of the value of this. What’s interesting is the emerging importance of brands showing their stance on people, ethics, and the “big social issues” of the day. In short: altruistic purpose and brand values.

B2C and B2B buyer sentiments are converging. For example, just as many consumers will no longer shop with retailers whose ethics they disagree with, 30% of B2B buyers will disengage from a brand whose values don’t match their own. 68% of B2B buyers place a high importance on how a company treats its employees. A similar amount (64%) seek to do business with brands that ensure their operations are fair to people throughout the supply chain—and 63% expect suppliers to demonstrate authentic ethical values. Meanwhile, three in five want the brands they work with to take real action to support human rights at home and abroad.

These are big changes that stand to drastically alter the way marketers work, the campaigns they create, and the messages they deliver. In fact, many have already been impacted, with almost half (48%) of marketers agreeing they have lost sales in the last two years because they haven’t demonstrated a strong enough sense of brand purpose. So, for B2B organizations, purpose might not only be thing that sets your brand apart—a lack of it could even stop you from winning new customers.

All Buyers Crave A Personal Experience

Consumer brands are increasingly turning to technology to help deliver personal experiences across all digital touchpoints, and solve business challenges like driving first to second purchase, notifying visitors when products are back-in-stock and deploying relevant messaging based on behavioral data. This report indicates personalization is crucial to keep B2B buyers too, with 49% saying tailored offers and communications will encourage them to stick with a provider.

Accounting For The Generational Divide

B2B marketers face an additional challenge in that not all buyers feel the same way. The study shows, younger buyers are more likely to feel passionately about working with a company whose brand purpose aligns with their own values and beliefs. But for older buyers and board members, the landscape changes significantly.

Just 42% of board members are looking for suppliers to stand up for something bigger than their own product and services, in comparison to 64% at the sub-board levels. Meanwhile, only 34% of board members expect a brand to invest in and engage with cultural issues, next to 57% of sub-board employees. Finally, the board is 20% less likely to think it’s important that a company shows genuine engagement with diversity and inclusion for employees. However, board-level buyers are more likely to be concerned about being treated fairly as a customer and having both their organization’s and their personal data protected.

It’s a complex situation. There’s no point pushing this messaging on a big-ticket investment that will require board approval, when factors like security, privacy, and the promise of efficiency savings are more likely to be appealing. But if they don’t include brand purpose in “top of the funnel” marketing sent to younger/sub-board buyers, they may risk being passed over for RFPs. Marketers must have a nuanced understanding of when to bring out purpose-based messaging—and they have to find a way to create a customer experience that factors all of this in.

CXM And The Importance Of Lifecycle Engagement

39% of B2B buyers won’t switch providers if they’re doing a good job, so vendors need to adopt a robust full lifecycle engagement strategy and focus on customer experience, not just in marketing but across an organization. Whether it’s analyzing data to provide funnel-tailored messages, creating engaging experiences across different platforms, or delivering multichannel customer communications, marketers need to ensure they’re providing the end-to-end experiences that customers seek.

With all these challenges, it’s little wonder that marketers are finding their task harder across the funnel. To survive and thrive, all businesses should be looking at creating the same engaging emotional connections already prevalent in B2C because in a B2E world vendors can’t afford not to. Marketers in all arenas must adopt a robust CXM strategy and focus on engagement and experience to build trusted, long-lasting relationships.

The post B2B Vendors Need To Play Catch Up In A “B2E” World appeared first on Marketo Marketing Blog - Best Practices and Thought Leadership.

• The convergence of data and cloud technology has enabled businesses of all sizes to use AI for automation, better customer information, and online transactions. 
• Facebook uses AI tools Sapienz and Infer to debug source code, while Google's AutoML helps develop new machine-learning software. 
• This article includes an overview of AI in enterprise technology, plus the top three trends to watch, and how Google and Facebook use AI on their products. 
• Read how AI is transforming health, transportation, investing, and more in other articles from our special report, How AI is Changing Everything.

Artificial intelligence has accentuated the ongoing disruption of two huge markets: the data center and enterprise IT.

The rise of cloud computing over the past decade has radically changed the way businesses — from big corporations to mom and pop shops — access and use computing resources. 

The cloud made it possible for them to set up and run their computing infrastructure, allowing them to downsize, if not totally abandon on-premise data centers, dramatically cutting IT costs.

AI is helping speed up and enhance the benefits of that transition. Traditional tech powerhouses have played an important role in this change.

Ruchir Puri, IBM's chief scientist, said AI's rise in enterprise IT was due largely to the explosion of data — online transactions, wide-ranging customer information, social media posts — that businesses could now collect, process and draw valuable insights to use for making tactical and strategic decisions.

"Data is the epicenter of the AI revolution," he told Business Insider. "A lot more data became available. The whole data infrastructure became more prevalent. Then a lot more compute available which was needed to deal with that data."

In fact, AI's impact extends to the basic component of modern computing: the chips used to power data centers and the cloud.

AI triggered a push for more powerful processors that could handle the more intensive computing needs of AI systems, especially the fast-rising trend called deep learning, which is based on neural computing networks that mimic the way the human brain works. 

More powerful AI-enabled data centers and cloud platforms paved the way for more powerful, more sophisticated business software applications. 

AI is making it possible for businesses to automate key parts of their operations, from sales, customer relations, managing inventory to long-term planning. AI software applications are enabling business leaders to make faster and more insightful decisions, helping them save time and money. 

Enterprises worldwide are expected to spend $35.8 billion on AI-based systems in 2019, said a recent report from the analyst firm IDC. AI is spreading so rapidly that by 2022, three-fourths of IT operations will be handled by "AI or analytics-driven automation," cutting operational expenses by more than 25%, another IDC report also said.

"It's about pattern detection. It's about autonomous decision-making," Juergen Lindner, an Oracle executive focused on the tech giant's cloud software business, told Business Insider. 

AI is making it possible for business leaders to make far-reaching decisions. It is "elevating their decision-making to an unprecedented level," Lindner said.

Top 3 opportunities in AI for enterprise tech

Cybersecurity: Growing

Software makers have been helping businesses defend against hacks and other network threats for decades. AI is creating new cybersecurity capabilities on steroids, offering faster real-time protection and pinpointing potential risks long before they hit. It's a particularly serious need as more companies take their networks to the cloud. Crowdstrike, an AI cloud security startup, went public last month after raising $600 million.

Sales and Customer Relations: Growing

Cloud platforms, such as Salesforce, already let sales reps and managers keep track of customer leads and accounts. AI is dramatically expanding what they could do with all that data, letting them quickly figure out which leads are most promising, which sales rep is best suited for a customer, or how best to engage with a client. 

Programming: Nascent

Developers at Facebook and Google have been using artificial intelligence to help them be more productive. At Facebook, developers use the AI tools Sapienz and Infer to debug and test code. At Google, developers use AutoML to automatically create artificial intelligence algorithms for products like Google Photos.

"I think this is going to be one of the most transformative but also one of the most rapid changes we're going to have," Rajen Sheth, vice president of product management at Google Cloud told Business Insider. "Now we have a lot of the tools that set that up for success."

AI tools Facebook and Google use to debug code and detect malware 

At Facebook, engineers frequently use two AI tools — called Infer and Sapienz — to test and debug their code. Alexander Mols, software engineer on the Sapienz team at Facebook, says that before, testing code was a tedious, time-consuming process that would still result in errors. 

Now, it uses Infer to scan the source code for errors, while Sapienz is a simulator that mimics the way an actual human would use the app. Mols says these two tools "naturally complement each other" to find errors, bugs, and glitches. 

Infer came out of Facebook's acquisition of the startup Monoidics in 2013, while Sapienz came out of its acquisition of Majicke in 2017. Both these tools are used for Facebook, Messenger, Instagram, and Workplace, while WhatsApp makes use of Infer.

"It takes a lot of work away from the engineers," Mols said. "Instead of them having to spend time writing tests for the code, the algorithms take care of this for them."

Still, Mols says, there are things Sapienz and Infer can improve on. Right now, the team is working on improving the capabilities of these tools, such as adding automatic fixing and better explanation of the bugs it finds.

"We could work on better ways to document and explain these issues to engineers," Mols said.

Google is taking a slightly different approach: The search giant has developed a way to make it easier to use machine learning — the technology where a computer algorithm can learn from data, identify patterns, and make predictions without a human explicitly telling it what to do. 

Google's tool is called AutoML, and it essentially helps programmers — both internally at the tech titan, and its Google Cloud customers — use machine learning software to train machine learning software. 

It might sound meta, but the idea is that developers — even those who don't know much about working with machine learning — can bring their data sets to Google Cloud. AutoML will automatically create a machine learning model, which can be used for making predictions, identifying images and videos, or understanding text. 

"What we found with that is we can use the latest deep learning technologies to give people models that are highly accurate to their dataset," Rajen Sheth, vice president of product management at Google Cloud, told Business Insider. "They don't have to have machine learning expertise to do this."

Within Google, AutoML is used for tasks like recognizing and aggregating photos in Google Photos, automatically composing replies in Gmail, and detecting malware. 

"What we see within Google is that within a period of four years, we've gone from very little AI within products in Google to using it in every single product," Sheth said. "Now almost every developer at Google has access to machine learning."

Sheth says these tools make machine learning easier to more developers, helping them take advantage of the rising popularity of the technology. Now, Sheth says, the challenge will be to help those programmers stay on top of the latest trends with the technology.

"We're going from a world where machine learning has been very, very new, to now a world where there are many more tools and so many more people can access it," Sheth said. "Over the next decade, every single business will be radically transformed by AI. We need to transform every developer to use this in the right way for their businesses."

The Takeaway

"AI is the future of software. Software is the language of automation. It's very clear that AI is going to impact every industry." 

-Jensen Huang, CEO of Nvidia to VentureBeat

Join the conversation about this story »

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Marketing B2B tech companies is challenging.

For most, it requires investing significant efforts in creating awareness, generating leads, and closing sales. For B2B tech startups, you can also add the pressure that comes along with launching a new product, as well as the lack of resources to invest in marketing in the first place.

However, even without a big budget, you can still spread the word about who you are and why you’ve gone into business. Of course, you shouldn’t expect to pull out all the stops from day one. But with the right strategy, you can still put a robust framework in place and garner considerable attention along the way.

Being smart and stretching every dollar can go a long way in putting your business on the right path. Here are five inbound marketing strategy tips any tech startup can use to grow awareness and get quality leads.

1) Market through your experts

Whether you’ve recognized this or not, you already have one of the most valuable resources at your disposal when it comes to your marketing strategy: your employees.

Outside of the benefit of already being on your payroll, many employees also have an intimate knowledge of your products and services. That level of insight can be key to educating your audience and convincing them of the perks of doing business with you. Cultivating those internal thought leaders helps your experts grow and build authority in your industry, driving visibility and trust for your brand.

If you’re still not convinced, consider this: employees have ten times more followers and get eight times more shares than their company’s social media accounts. That’s because people don’t trust the brand as much as they appreciate the people behind it.

Even if not every one of them has the writing skills necessary to capture attention with high-quality, optimized blog posts, they can still generate ideas and create outlines. A professional writer can use it to develop compelling copy, turning thought into practice, and with any luck, conversions—all while saving you money.

So, support your experts. Have them build an online presence and market through them. Encourage your top-notch employees to manage social accounts, take speaking engagements, and publish articles on your business blog. They’ll become the best brand ambassadors you’ll ever have!

2) Use strategic calls to action to capture leads

Inbound marketing relies on creating content with a purpose. That means every piece should do more than just deliver a message—it needs to be the right message, in the right way, to the right people, at the right time.

That’s possible if you guide your visitors through a buyers’ journey, which aims to convert strangers into prospects and leads and, eventually, paying customers.

To reach that, you need clear calls to action (CTAs) to convince people to move in the right direction. Think about it as a strategy, in which every CTA is part of the story and makes it clear for the readers what you want them to do next.

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Lead generating calls-to-action deliver a message at the right moment. Adding a well-designed CTA button to your article templates can increase revenue by up to 83 percent in one month.

Make sure that every time people arrive on your page, they have clear instructions on what they’re supposed to do next. That way, you maximize your chances to build long-term business relationships, which are crucial to B2B tech startups.

3) Promote your content

The value of your content primarily depends on the number of people it reaches. Even the best article, eBook, or white paper is worth close to nothing if no one reads it. Hence, the golden rule of inbound marketing: If you create content, you need to promote it. Otherwise, you’ll see little to no return on your marketing efforts.

As a tech startup, your content is the perfect tool to build awareness and establish your brand as an authority and a solution in your industry. If you don’t share your content with the world, no one will know you exist, and it’ll be hard for you to break into the market.

Close to half of business decision-makers consume between three to five pieces of content before contacting a salesperson. If your well-researched articles aren’t among them, no one will knock at your door.

As a guideline, you should put a bare minimum of 20 percent of your effort/money into promoting your content. In a perfect world, content creation gets only 20 percent of the resources, leaving 80 percent of the budget and efforts for promotion.

Yes, you read that right. Believe it or not, three perfect pieces of content promoted through multiple networks can do way more than a ton of blogs and eBooks that wait quietly on your website to be discovered.

4) Set up automation

Tech startups don’t need a lecture on the importance and benefits of automation when it comes to business operations. If there’s someone out there who can make the most out of human-machine collaboration, it’s you.

Marketing a B2B tech company requires a sophisticated strategy across a wide range of marketing channels. Chances are, you don’t have the time or bandwidth to do all of that manually.

On the other hand, CRM and other marketing software enables you to create workflows and optimize communication with potential clients. Automation refines your marketing by allowing you to design a buyer’s journey and build content around it.

Of course, you still need to put in some time and energy toward setting up your automated processes correctly. Once you’ve done that, automation allows you to scale your business as much as you want or need. You’ll be able to send emails to ten, 100 or 1000 people with relatively small costs and without increasing the working hours for your team. It’s a cost-effective way to open and keep conversations, remain relevant, and provide constant value.

Moreover, automation also enables you to segment your audiences and target marketing messages on a deeper level than manual processes. On a large scale, it helps you to increase ROI and close more deals.

5) Have your content ready in advance

Startups are synonymous with hard work, tight deadlines, and unforeseen issues that often crop up unexpectedly. Events and the launching of new products and services require a lot of attention and effort. If you’re able to find time for content creation in the process, it will pay dividends in the long run.

Make sure you create content ahead of significant events. Don’t wait until a day or week before the launch to start writing a press release or compelling post, especially those with high conversion potential. The pressure of time constraints and last minute details will inevitably distract you. So, you’ll end up with delivering low-quality content that doesn’t generate the buzz you need.

Not only does having your marketing materials ready in advance guarantee better content, but it can also boost your SEO strategy. When you have the chance to work on your B2B content strategy and integrate the right keywords and links, you’re more likely to get excellent results.

Content strategy is a long-term play, not a one-time show. So, make a plan and give your team the time necessary to craft the right content for each business event.

Conclusion

The success of your B2B tech startup depends on how well you can craft a strategic marketing plan. Of course, this plan will change over time as your business grows. But having a clear image of where you are and what you want to achieve can make the difference for your brand.

In summary:

1. Use all of your expert resources to create well-supported, top-notch content ideas. Then bring in the professionals to whip it into shape to be both compelling and optimized for search engines (if you don’t have them internally).
2. Make sure to use CTAs to direct visitors to other helpful content or down into the funnel.
3. Promote!
4. Automate to save time and money.
5. Put a content strategy together and plan so you don’t compromise quality when things get hectic.

It may all seem a bit complicated at first glance, but once you put the framework in place and see the first results, it all becomes easier. And remember, inbound marketing is a long-term investment meant to position you in the market and help you build valuable business relationships. So, even if you don’t see results overnight, that doesn’t mean you’re not already on your way up!

As we discussed in part 2 of this series, even the largest and oldest companies are facing a new B2B selling environment where “old school” marketing and sales just doesn’t work like it did. Companies that talk to their prospects instead of listening and working with changing customer requirements are starting to lose out.

Large B2B corporations are often filled with silos. Corporate marketing, product marketing, sales development, field sales and other groups may all be talking to prospects and customers without regard for the overall conversation. A lot of disjointed noise doesn’t make for a great customer experience and prospects are screening it out.

Companies that still think in terms of sales funnels are surprised when the expected opportunities don’t fall out the bottom. Often their response is to push marketing to pour more leads into the top.

What happens when the funnel starts drying up? Let’s take a look:

• Company X – let’s call them Acme – has always focused its marketing and sales efforts around “the funnel.” They see the world in terms of Marketing Leads, Sales Leads, Opportunities and Customers. Of course, Sales doesn’t always value Marketing Leads, and Marketing efforts aren’t always in tune with what Sales is trying to sell. But the execs look at the funnel metrics religiously to see how many leads are making it through. Recently the velocity has slowed, and more leads are falling to the floor. Naturally, marketing is pressured to make it rain and big campaigns are planned. But like many companies, Acme doesn’t have a way to measure effectiveness. Funnel results are their metric. How can they instead match their efforts and metrics to customer needs?

If Acme’s story sounds familiar, it’s because we all regularly engage with companies that have outmoded customer engagement models. Instead of thinking about what we the prospect might need, they toss leads into an artificial funnel or buying stage path and see what comes out the other side. These companies don’t realize that more isn’t always better. As customers, we’d all like to see fewer but more relevant emails and no obvious break in the conversation when marketing hands off to sales.

This scenario often occurs in mature companies struggling to evolve as their market changes. Tactics that used to work for them are showing signs of age. Newer technologies and tools are giving their competitors better ways to nurture and sell clients. They know they must integrate systems, data, and processes in order to enable a Revenue Marketing model that is based on continuous communication. But their funnel approach is familiar and change is hard.

Companies like Acme must refocus their efforts on the long-term versus the immediate sales need. Instead of spraying emails, marketing learns to nurture prospects with stage-appropriate offers based on their interactions – the right message at the right time in the right format and channel. Sales learns to engage at the right time, tailoring their approach based on activity history. Campaigns feature cross-functional plays and all customer touchpoints become orchestrated.

If your company is a bit too much like Acme, focusing on customer experience instead of the funnel will help you take customer relationships to a new level. As you move from one-sized-fits-all to personalized marketing, your customers will experience fewer disjointed communications, more relevant and timely information, and offers that enable their own growth and revenue. They will purchase, buy more, renew, and even advocate. You’ll see breakeven, profitability and maximum life-time value.

If your prospects are not fitting into your funnel, consider changing your model. Treat the customer journey as an infinite loop that results in more revenue and loyalty over time.

As we discussed in part 3 of this series, even the largest and oldest companies are facing a new B2B selling environment where “old school” marketing and sales just doesn’t work anymore. Instead of talking to your prospects, you need to listen to what they want. Instead of hitting leads with more disjointed messages, you need to deliver the right information at the right time in the right channel. Continuing to sell from the inside-out won’t work. Brands must learn to sell from the outside-In.

What happens to companies that resist change? Let’s take a look:

In CXP Lessons 1-3 we looked at an unfortunate company called Acme. They were industry leaders but are now seeing competitors eating away at the prospect and customer bases. Why? Acme has failed to deliver the experiences that customers now require. Instead of delivering relevant information at the appropriate time, Acme blitzes prospects with unrelated emails and poorly-timed sales calls. They fail to understand customer buying needs, instead walking them through traditional funnel stages. At Acme, it’s about what they want to sell and when, not what the customer needs

If Acme’s story sounds familiar, it’s because we all regularly engage with companies that have antiquated customer experience (CXP) models and out-of-date marketing tactics. They haven’t figured out how to get with the CXP program! The good news – many companies have successfully transformed. The bad news – it’s a big job. But consider the cost to your company’s future if your approach to CXP doesn’t change from inside-out to outside-in thinking.

As the global marketplace changes, many companies are recognizing the need to evolve not just their marketing tactics, but the many ways they interact with prospects and customers. What used to work for them is no longer effective as competitors employ newer tools and techniques to nurture, sell and serve clients. Systems, data, and processes must be integrated in order to enable a Revenue Marketing model that is based on continuous, personalized communication.

But lip-service doesn’t make it so. Real changes are required to get to Revenue Marketing and the optimal Customer Experience. Executives must clearly communicate the CXP vision, functional silos must be bridged, systems must be integrated, and data must be used in the service of customer engagement.

Focusing on the customer’s experience versus your standard procedures will evolve your customer relationships to a new level. As you move towards Revenue Marketing, your customers will experience fewer disjointed communications, more relevant and timely information, and offers that enable their own growth and revenue. They will purchase, buy more, renew, and even advocate. You’ll see breakeven, profitability and maximum life-time value.

If your marketplace is changing without you, it’s time to commit to CXP. As in all of life, profitable long-term relationships require personal two-way communication and commitment.

I can’t believe I got fired from the calendar factory. All I did was take a day off! Opening today’s post up with a bit of levity felt fitting, because calendars can cause much anxiety. They bring to mind deadlines, meticulous organization, and time crunches, which are often oppressive realities for marketers with a million things on their plates. But the truth is that you’re likely to encounter much more dread if you don’t house your content planning within a documented and strategic editorial calendar for blogging. Building out a set schedule (with a bit of flexibility) ultimately makes your life easier because it provides a guiding light, and ensures your content strategy remains cohesive and oriented around your objectives. In other words, editorial calendars are no joke. Here’s how you can construct one that seriously drives your company’s blog (or any other content initiative) forward. 

Fortify Your Editorial Calendar in Five Steps

Whether you’ve already got a content calendar, which you hope to refine and improve, or you’re starting from scratch, these five steps will put you on track.

Step 1: Crystallize Your Objectives

The biggest issue with many content plans is that they’re aimless and wayward. When you’re figuring things out on the fly, it can be difficult to tie everything back to the same goals and desired outcomes. So the first step is to zoom out and nail down what you’re trying to achieve with the content in question. For instance, if your blog is designed to generate leads with specific audiences, are you tethering each piece on your calendar back to this outcome in some way?  Placing objectives front-and-center is a key benefit of documenting your content strategy, and making them the underpinning of your planning will help ensure everything you publish has a purpose.  via GIPHY

Step 2: Chart Your Pillars and Timely Focuses

With objectives clearly defined, you can formulate content pillars that will serve as the cornerstones of your editorial calendar. Also known as topic clusters, these are the general categories that all of your content will nest under. Pillars are determined by the intersection of what you want to be known for, and where demand exists. They should be informed by SEO research around keywords and queries, hitting the sweet spot between search volume, expertise, and buying intent. Here on the TopRank Marketing Blog, our pillars are aligned with our agency’s core services — content marketing, SEO, influencer marketing — and so pretty much everything we create for the blog approaches these topics from various angles for people who are interested in learning about them and looking for insight. Don’t view content pillars as restricting; there are a wide range of ways you can address almost any topic, either directly or tangentially. Organizing your calendar around them will help ensure you stay focused, and relevant to your target audience. In addition to identifying a topical mix, you can start to define your content types — how-tos, thought leadership, influencer collaborations, conversion-driven pieces, etc. These can be aligned with various stages of the buying cycle, and mapped back to the key objectives established in Step 1. At this point, it’s also smart to map out industry events or seasonal milestones that you’ll want to create content around.  [bctt tweet="Don’t view content pillars as restricting; there are a wide range of ways you can address almost any topic, either directly or tangentially. @NickNelsonMN #ContentMarketing #ContentPlanning" username="toprank"]

Step 3: Coordinate with Your Broader Strategy

This is a vital consideration that is all too frequently overlooked. Whatever channel you’re scheduling content for — be it a blog, email, social, etc. — think about ways you can coordinate with other departments or disciplines in the organization. For example, does your sales team experience higher volumes of inquiries at certain times of year? Or are they attending a trade show next month that you could support with content? Maybe one of your executives will be speaking at a conference, and you want to queue up some thought leadership around the subject of their talk in the days leading up. A strong editorial calendar should reflect the company holistically. In this sense, it can be helpful to make your calendar visible to everyone and not just the folks on your team.  [bctt tweet="A strong editorial calendar should reflect the company holistically. @NickNelsonMN #ContentMarketing #ContentPlanning " username="toprank"]

Step 4: Plot Your Cadence and Schedule Out Your Content

How often will you create content? And why? We all know it’s valuable to publish regularly, because this is how you build an invested and trusting audience, but “regularly” can mean different things under different circumstances. Is it daily? Three times a week? Multiple times per day? This decision shouldn’t driven by guesswork, but by data.  Although it’s a little older now, HubSpot has a helpful post on determining how often companies should blog based on variables like company size and B2B vs. B2C. But you’ll also want to dig into your own visitor behavior analytics and draw conclusions on what your audience wants. Test different cadences and compare the impacts. As a general rule, more publishing equals more traffic, but that doesn’t necessarily mean it’ll be worth your while to create new content each day.  As Alfred Lua of Buffer writes: “I would recommend experimenting and finding a suitable editorial cadence based on your content goals and the amount of time you have. There is no one right editorial cadence. HubSpot publishes several articles a day while Backlinko publishes less than once a month.” (As a side note, we highlighted Backlinko’s quality-over-quantity approach here earlier this year.) Having made this decision, you can start filling out the calendar appropriately, using your content pillars and organizational directives as guides. Plan as far out as you’re comfortable (at least one month, but forecasting three or more months is even better). Make sure you’re building in enough topical variety to keep things fresh and diverse. Once you get your schedule documented, it becomes easy to spot gaps or overloads. 

Step 5: Leave Room for Change

Note that you don’t want to completely fill out your editorial calendar. As we mentioned earlier, it’s important to leave some flexibility so you can nimbly address timely matters as they arise and account for the (expected) unexpected. Contently editor-in-chief Jordan Teicher proposes a 75/25 rule, wherein one out of every four slots in your calendar is left blank.  “In my years managing the site, I’m certain of one thing: s*** happens,” Teicher writes. “People miss deadlines. Sources don’t respond in time. The design team can’t find the right image. My day gets stuffed with meetings, which prevents me from editing a draft. A flexible content calendar is about more than just coming up with ideas for the current news cycle. It’s also about realistic expectations.”

Smart Practices for Getting the Most Out of Your Editorial Calendar

The five steps above will help you solidify your calendar. Here are a few additional tips to help make the process smoother and more effective.

• Hold group brainstorming sessions. Usually, the toughest thing about building out a content calendar is coming up with enough concepts to fill it in. I recommend setting up a time where a bunch of your creatives come together to load up the pipeline with ideas (run these ideas past your content pillars and SEO research to assess strategic viability). Make sure to incorporate voices from various departments. 
• Slice up and repurpose. It’s always valuable to get the most mileage possible out of your content. If you’ve got a big, meaty blog post planned on a certain subject, why not divvy it up into three parts and run it as a series? If you’re looking for a reliable performer next month, why not take your most successful piece from last month and flip it into an infographic, or conceive a follow-up post that expands on it? Repurposing is a great way to get the most out of your content leftovers.
• Lean on the right tools. For some content teams, a spreadsheet or even a Word doc can be sufficient for organizing your editorial calendar. In other cases, this initiative can be run through your project management software. But for high-volume teams with many elements to track and account for, it might be helpful to go with a dedicated content-centric solution. There are plenty of them out there, including Contently, DivvyHQ, Kapost, CoSchedule, and more.
• Create comprehensive coverage. What this looks like can vary in different scenarios. It might mean approaching your topical pillars with best-answer content that addresses every subtopic your customers are interested in learning about (especially those queries carrying any level of purchase intent). If you’re in a crowded niche, it might mean gobbling up every bit of white space your competitors are missing. If your content is oriented toward B2B buyers, it might mean creating content for every role on distributed buying committees, and speaking to each stage of a lengthy purchase cycle. 

Right on Schedule

If you feel apprehensive about building an editorial calendar from scratch, you’re not alone. It can feel intimidating to schedule out so far in advance, and to consistently manage and maintain this resource. But I assure you, once you get into the groove, your life will be much easier and your results will improve.  Following the steps and recommendations above will help you stay on target and derive maximum value from your efforts. Want to add further efficiency and foresight to your strategy? Learn more about getting ahead with your content planning. 

The post Content Marketing Planning: How to Build Your Editorial Calendar appeared first on Online Marketing Blog - TopRank®.

Scrum was developed out of necessity. Jeff Sutherland and Ken Schwaber needed a better way to develop software and built Scrum out of three very simple ideas. Empirical process, self-organized teams and continuous improvement. Those three ideas defined the framework that over the last 20+ years has been used by thousands of teams to solve complex problems.

Scrum’s roots are in software, but it is being used in many more domains ranging from developing cars, drugs, even running the police force. Scrum is an approach that helps teams and teams of teams to form around solving complex problems. It encourages a focus on learning via done work and continually allows the team to plan via transparency.

It should, therefore come as no surprise that marketing has taken the ideas of Scrum and started using them to better approach their work. I am not a marketing expert, but over the last few months I have learned how marketing and Scrum seem to be a perfect fit. I wanted to share my learning journey as we launch, with Avanade and SiriusDecisions, a podcast series that describes our thoughts on how Scrum and marketing fit together. David Carmichael from Avanade also talks more about the podcast and the reasoning behind it here.

The many benefits of using Scrum for marketing

About a year ago I sat down with David Carmichael, who leads Global Solutions and Industry Marketing at Avanade, to talk about how they were using Scrum. David described how he was introduced to Scrum when he was asked to better market Avanade’s use of Scrum. When David learned about Scrum it made such sense to him that he decided to use Scrum in marketing. To paraphrase David, the results have been fantastic not only in delivering more “stuff” to market faster, but also improving the morale of the team and getting better alignment to the customer. Hearing him describe the initial experiences highlighted some key benefits of using Scrum for marketing:

• Different priorities are dealt with in a clear and concise way. Marketing suffers from priority overload with every part of the organization wanting attention and effort. Strategic plans often get added to as sales teams or product management discover immediate opportunities, which were not known at planning. By having a Product Backlog that clearly shows the priority, it allows marketing to have better discussions with stakeholders. There is never enough time or money, but making sure that everyone understands that their ask is not alone and that decisions have to be made ensures that there are fewer surprises.
• Regular reviews bring stakeholders together. Marketing is often accused of being a blackhole in which requests go in and then they deliver stuff that does not work for the local field, product teams or communications groups. Sprints provide a regular opportunity for stakeholders to review what teams are doing and provide feedback. They also allow changes in local conditions to be quickly delivered to marketing to ensure that work is not wasted.
• The Product Owner makes decisions even if there are many different “important” stakeholders. Marketing has many customers and that can mean work is slowed down to gain input, review and signoff. By empowering one person to drive the priority of the work and be accountable for the value delivered, Scrum reduces the overhead of multiple customers. Input is still given throughout the process and the Sprint Review provides a regular mechanism for review and feedback, but time is not wasted waiting for input from stakeholders. Decisions are made, even if they are wrong!
• Improved marketing analytics changes the way planning happens. Traditionally marketing delivered programs to market and then slowly captured the results of those programs through closed sales or customer surveys. Today marketing has more modern tools to provide better insight into customer use of the materials. By having a regular Sprint cycle and encouraging feedback that leads to changes in planned work, Scrum provides a way to take that data and use it. Also, by surfacing some of this data at the Spring Review, stakeholders who would never read the emails or reports get more visibility, which then, in turn helps with their feedback.

Dealing with pressures from every side

The conversation with David led me to discussions with Simon Jones from SiriusDecisions. SiriusDecisions, now part of Forrester Research, is an analyst firm that specializes in marketing and strategy. Simon described a landscape with an increased need for agility as marketing departments deal with pressures from every side. He described:

• Shorter timescales demanded by organizations. We live in the age of rapidly changing information cycles. The news is perhaps the best example with stories coming out and being forgotten in a blink of an eye. Marketing communications also has been affected by the changes in how people consume information. These changes have not gone unnoticed by organizations, which in turn has put more pressure on marketing to deliver faster and more frequently.
• More potential knowledge about the customer. Along with changing information cycles comes the improvements on the amount of information we can capture about the customer or the customer value stream. Of course, the high-profile information acquisition by companies like Facebook and the increased European legislation (such as the General Data Protection Regulation) has put a spotlight on how this works, but the reality continues to be that we have more ways to learn about our customer. But that information is only valuable if it is acted on. This means a fundamental change in the way in which marketing plans work, or evens describes that work. More frequent data means more frequent decision-making and thus changes to plans and work products.
• Focused, more frequent customer deliverables. The increased amount of data in turn leads to more focused customer deliverables, which in turn leads to more data. To keep any handle on the work requires increased transparency as the work becomes more and more complex with fewer knowns and more unknowns. Complex project plans are replaced with simple backlogs and planning is broken down to “just in time” or “just before we do it.”
• More skills required to deliver value. The promise of technology coupled with the increased specialism of the profession has led to the need to involve more skills in delivering marketing value. For example, you need an SEO expert, a data scientist, a copy editor, a messaging expert and a graphic designer just to create a Google ad. This means that everyone is dependent on everyone else, which has led to project management gridlock and chaos.
• And everyone “knows” marketing because of the internet. Just like everyone now is a mobile app expert or can provide advice on how to use the power of Google Ads, the mysticism of “mad men” has been replaced with a false sense of science provided by social media. Everyone thinks they know the right Google Ads or Facebook placement. Everyone wants to hire an SEO expert or data scientist. This has led to many of the traditional, still important aspects of marketing being ignored or time spent on them questioned.

Using Scrum to address complexity

Marketing, like so much knowledge work, is suffering from complexity; complexity because of the customer, stakeholders, improved data and the increased rhythm of the market. Scrum is great at dealing with complexity. As we spent more time looking at marketing, I uncovered a few other members of our community working in this space.

Professional Scrum Trainer, Yuval Yuret has been working with many marketing teams, helping them to use a combination of Scrum and Kanban to effectively manage complexity. His blogs describe the way in which marketing maps to the agile manifesto.

Professional Scrum Trainer, Dave Dame described the journey that he was part of at Scotia Bank. He explained how Scrum provided a better connection with the customer and drove clear progress towards shared goals.

Vymo, a New York-headquartered startup that operates an eponymous mobile-first service to help salespeople manage their leads, has raised $18 million in a new financing round to expand its footprint in the U.S. and other markets.

The Series B round for the six-year-old startup was led by Emergence Capital, a VC firm that focuses on enterprise cloud firms. Existing investor Sequoia India also participated in the round. Vymo has raised more than $23 million to date.

Vymo serves as a CRM (customer relationship management) solution and also works with other popular CRMs such as Salesforce. The service helps salespeople automatically capture their business calls, visits, messages, emails, calendar, and the engagement levels to better track and manage their leads, Yamini Bhat, co-founder and CEO of Vymo, told TechCrunch in an interview.

The ease is crucial for salespeople. “CRMs have existed for more than a decade. But they still see under 15% to 20% day-to-day adoption,” Bhat explained. “Salespeople don’t actively log their activities into the CRM, which creates management challenges. People don’t know which deal will close and when it will close.”

Research and advisory firm Gartner said in a report that “field representatives aren’t going to “live” in [sales force automation systems]…that ship has sailed.” In contrast, over 75% of Vymo’s registered users log in and take actions on the app every day. Vymo’s offering also looks at a salesperson’s activities to identify what is working best for them and makes recommendations for “high-value activities” to other members based on that.

Vymo, which employs about 100 people, has amassed over 40 enterprise customers including life insurance firms AIA Group and AXA in seven nations. More than 100,000 salespeople use Vymo’s service. The startup will use the fresh capital to expand its business in many parts of the world and also begin operations in the U.S. market, Bhat said.

“With its exceptionally high user adoption metrics and steadily expanding user base — 100,000 salespeople at over 40 global enterprises and counting — Vymo is delivering transformational value. It’s the kind of company we at Emergence love partnering with — one that stands to drastically improve the day-to-day work lives of millions of people,” Jake Saper, a partner with Emergence Capital, who joins Vymo’s board as part of the financing, said in a statement.

Shailesh Lakhani, Managing Director of Sequoia Capital India Advisors, said, “As early partners, we’ve seen Vymo grow rapidly across all metrics, but most importantly in avid adoption by mobile-first workers at some of the largest global enterprises. Vymo is uniquely positioned to become the standard by which sales and distribution is run in these institutions.”

Outbound marketing is the best way to get leads quickly.

Let’s say you pay for a commercial to run during the Super Bowl. Potential customers see those ads, and then a tiny fraction of them buy your product. It’s simple, right?

The problem is that it’s also an insanely expensive way to put your offer in front of your target audience. While most viewers expect and even enjoy the commercials during the Super Bowl, when it plays again and again interrupting other games or favorite TV shows, it’s just disruptive. Outbound marketing tactics are always disruptive.

But what if, instead of pushing your offer onto people when they haven’t asked for it, you could use valuable content to draw them in, when they want to come to you?

You can: It’s called inbound marketing. Sure, it takes a while to get going, but once you have an engaged audience of potential customers who trust you, generating leads becomes much, much easier—let me explain.

Inbound marketing: What you need to know

Inbound marketing relies on quality content, whether it’s in the form of articles, emails, videos, podcasts, or books. However, the content landscape is getting more and more competitive due to a virtually unlimited amount of quality content out there. In fact, Mark Schaefer argued back in 2014 that content marketing is not a sustainable strategy and that we are in the age of the so-called content shock.

Image via Mark Schaefer

Schaefer predicted that there would inevitably come a point at which producing content that can compete with what’s already out there will simply become too expensive to be a viable marketing strategy.

Take a look at this graph that he used in his post:

Image via Mark Schaefer

If you think about how the content landscape changed in the five years since Schaefer wrote that article, you’ll quickly realize that he did predict the future accurately.

Sure, in 2014 it was already competitive, but now you have seven-figure companies pouring their vast resources into creating in-depth articles with cutting-edge insights, extensive reports with original research, professionally produced videos and podcasts—you name it.

Now, Schaefer’s final prediction hasn’t come to fruition yet, and content marketing is still a viable strategy. However, if you decide to use inbound marketing to generate leads, you have to go into the arena with your eyes open. You have to become obsessed with producing top-quality content and providing as much value to your audience as humanly possible. And you have to be patient because you won’t break through the noise overnight no matter how great your content is.

That is the only way you will be able to compete with the established players out there.

You’ll also need to understand that inbound marketing is an indirect way of generating leads. You aren’t going to potential customers and pitching your product, you are encouraging them to come to you by offering them free, valuable content.

And when they do come to you, you don’t try to sell to them straight away. You encourage them to take the next step in your sales funnel by subscribing to your email list. And once they are on it, you keep providing value via email newsletters, but now you occasionally mix in sales pitches.

Basically, your aim should be to gain the potential customer’s trust and build a relationship with them. That way, when they are ready to purchase a solution to their problem, your product will be the first thing that comes to their mind.

This approach requires a lot of patience because you have to play the long game—but if you can play that game, it’s worth it.

5 strategies for better inbound lead generation

Let’s take a look at the top five inbound lead generation strategies that you can use to build an engaged audience.

1. Grow your email list

There’s a common misconception among people who aren’t marketers that email is an outdated technology. It’s better to invest in social media, right? Wrong.

According to DMA’s “Marketer Email Tracker 2018” report, in 2017, the average return for each £1 spent on email marketing was £32.28. That’s a pretty crazy ROI if you ask me.

It’s great to have a blog, a YouTube channel, a podcast, or a best-selling book, but the most valuable online marketing asset you can have is an email list.

That is why you need to make sure that you are using all the other inbound marketing methods to draw people to your email list. You can do that by adding opt-in forms to your website and encouraging people to subscribe. You can even make it mutually beneficial by offering something in exchange, like an ebook, video course, or a webinar.

And once you’ve grown that list? Remember that no one wants to be spammed with endless sales pitches, so make sure that your emails add value. One company that does this really well is a male grooming brand Beardbrand.

Image Source

This company sends their subscribers a mix of helpful grooming tips, interesting grooming-related content, and promotional emails. Now, when a subscriber of theirs who enjoys their emails wants to buy, say, beard oil, who will be the first company that comes to his mind? Beardbrand.

So figure out what your subscribers want and give it to them. What problem do they have that you can offer a solution to in the form of an email?

2. Build a high-quality blog

Blogging is a great way to establish yourself as a thought leader in your field. For example, when Groove was struggling to attract customers, the company decided to bet everything on content marketing by building a blog.

As Groove’s founder Alex Turnbull recalls:

“We were only a few short months from running out of cash, and things didn’t look good. Our marketing efforts were failing, and nobody was visiting our site or signing up for our product. We were desperate. We were lost. And we were terrified. That was when we decided to finally get serious about content marketing.”

First, they reached out to all the content marketers that they respected and asked them for advice. A few responded. The Groove team was shocked by the feedback they got and realized they were doing it all wrong. They needed to find a unique angle for their blog.

Image via Groove

The team started scouring the Internet trying to understand their target audience—small business owners—better. This wasn’t just passively observing relevant discussions, either. Groove proactively reached out to people and asked if they could pick their brain.

Image via Groove

Eventually, the Groove team realized that people in their target audience were going through the exact same challenges they themselves were struggling with. So Groove decided to share their startup journey and launched a blog called “A SaaS Startup’s Journey to $100,000 in Monthly Revenue.”

Image via Groove

And it resonated with their target audience immediately: 1,000 email subscribers within 24 hours, and 5,000 within a month! Three years later, in 2016, the blog was getting over 250,000 unique visitors per month, and Groove was generating over $5M a year in revenue.

Pay attention to how Groove built this high-quality blog: market research, unique angles, and superior content. That’s what makes a blog a great lead-generation strategy. The Groove blog attracts small business owners, those small business owners join Groove’s email list—over time they start liking and trusting the company and eventually, once they need help desk software, they purchase it from Groove.

Want to do the same with your company’s blog? Analyze the market, find a gap in it, and then fill that niche the best you can.

3. Start a podcast

Podcasts have become an integral part of our daily lives. We listen to them while on the way to work, while doing chores, and while out for a walk.

This is especially true for young people. According to Music Oomph, almost a third of American adults between the ages of 25 and 34 are podcast listeners.

Image via Music Oomph

A podcast can be a great way to generate leads for your business—as long as you can build a large enough audience.

For example, Tropical MBA, a popular business podcast that is focused on location independent entrepreneurship, allows the hosts Ian and Dan promote their membership website and grow the business.

Image Source

They started their podcast back in 2009. At the time, they were running an ecommerce business and were just learning the ropes of location independent entrepreneurship.

Here’s how Dan and Ian explain it:

“Back then we hardly knew anybody growing a location independent business, especially one that had real physical products. It seemed to us that most of the websites and podcasts weren’t run by people with compelling business experience or insights. We wanted to meet others who we felt were legit. So we started sharing our story on a more or less weekly basis. Because of that, many of the episodes were just me and Ian sharing the stuff we were learning directly from our day to day work. That business taught us a lot. It started with—literally—a dream, and ended with a multi-seven-figure exit.”

As their podcast grew, a community of like-minded individuals formed around it, and the hosts leveraged it to launch their membership website, their business conference, and their remote jobs board.

Of course, in 2009 podcasts were a nascent medium. Since then, they have exploded in popularity, so if you launch one now, you are in for an uphill battle that Dan and Ian never faced.

However, what you can learn from them is that they found a unique angle, produced interesting shows, and kept going at it for a decade. With a loyal following, you can promote email sign ups to generate leads and sales for your business.

4. Upload video content to YouTube

Did you know that Youtube is the second biggest search engine in the world? You can leverage this massive platform to generate leads if you can rank for popular search terms related to your field.

For example, Brian Dean, the SEO expert behind the popular Backlinko blog, built an SEO-focused YouTube channel.

But he admits that when her first launched his channel, he struggled to get any views.

Here are some of the tips Brian shared:

• Use YouTube’s Search Suggest feature. Simply type in a word or a phrase into the search bar and look at the suggestions. These keywords are great because they are based on what people are actually looking for.

• Analyze popular videos in your niche. This is great way to identify keywords for YouTube, and then you can optimize your own videos around the same keywords.

• Identify the best keyword from the keyword list that you created. Look for low-competition keywords. You can do that by typing in a keyword and then checking the number of search results. The higher the number, the more competitive the keyword.

Now, Brian’s YouTube channel has 213,000 subscribers and generates leads for his business (he provides SEO training).

Your aim should be to convert YouTube subscribers to email list subscribers, so provide a link to an opt-in form at the end of your videos and encourage them to subscribe.

5. Write a book

Books might seem old school, but people still read them, and nothing gives you credibility like a book.

You don’t even have to sell your book in physical bookstores; it’s enough to simply put it on Amazon or even sell it as an ebook on your website.

Back in 2015, essayist and entrepreneur Taylor Pearson wrote a book called The End of Jobs, which not only made him a lot of money but also helped him to establish himself as an expert in entrepreneurship.

This was Taylor’s first book and he sold more than 5,000 copies during the launch month. How did he manage to do that?

Well, he had a background in marketing, and he decided to run his book like a business.

What exactly does “run his book like a business” means?

It all boiled down to these two key ideas:

• Allocate resources equally between product development and marketing. “As Gabriel Weinberg and Justin Mares point out in ‘Traction: How Any Startup Can Achieve Explosive Customer Growth,‘ almost every failed startup has a product. What failed startups don’t have is traction. Likewise, every author has a book. What most don’t have is marketing traction.”

• Iterate quickly and publicly. “Startups release products quickly to ever larger groups of customers because it both improves the quality of the product faster (due to tons of feedback) and weaves that feedback into the narrative of the product in a way that makes customers feel a sense of ownership. I tried to do the same with the book.”

He gathered feedback by sending the first draft to five close friends, then by publishing sections of his book on his blog, and finally by sending the second draft to 70 early readers.

He also created a landing page for The End of Jobs around six months before launching it, and everyone who signed up got a free copy after the launch. That way, he built a community around the book, which was very helpful in terms of social media buzz, early Amazon reviews, and word-of-mouth marketing.

When he finally launched, he set the price as free, and the book was downloaded thousands of times on the launch day and hit #1 in Small Business Top 100 Free category.

However, Taylor didn’t stop there. He kept actively promoting The End of Jobs during the launch week, and then leveraged the success of the launch to gain even more exposure.

Not only did Taylor made a lot of money from his book, but it also opened many doors to him – the credibility boost of being the author of a best-selling book helped him get more speaking gigs and consulting clients, as well as sell his own products.

Want to publish a book? Learn from Taylor. Writing is only half of it. Marketing is the other half. You need both if you want to capture those readers and turn them into email subscribers.

Bonus tip: Have a clear call to action!

Inbound marketing is much less aggressive than outbound marketing. However, that doesn’t mean that you should be passive and just sit there, fingers crossed, waiting for people to sign up for your email list.

No, if you want them to take action, you need to tell them what they should do next.

So make sure that each piece of content you create has a clear call to action that encourages people to sign up for your email list.

It doesn’t have to be intrusive:

• An opt form at the end of a blog post.
• A link at the end of a video.
• A reminder at the end of a podcast.
• A link at the end of an ebook.

Just make sure that you clearly convey the value the person will get from subscribing. You can’t expect people to subscribe to your email list just because. You need to give them a reason.

What’s next?

It’s not 2009 anymore. It’s 2019.

This means that while inbound marketing is without a doubt still a viable lead generation strategy, it is also more competitive than it has ever been.

Want to succeed with it? Then be prepared to invest time, energy, and money into consistently producing top-notch content.

And don’t expect quick results. It takes time to build an audience. But time will pass anyway. Why not spend it on building assets that will generate leads for your business for years to come?