This is a preview of a research report from Business Insider Intelligence, Business Insider's premium research service. To learn more about Business Insider Intelligence, click here.

The fast-growing global drone industry has not sat back waiting for government policy to be hammered out before pouring investment and effort into opening up this all-new hardware and computing market. 

A growing ecosystem of drone software and hardware vendors is already catering to a long list of clients in agriculture, land management, energy, and construction. Many of the vendors are smallish private companies and startups — although large defense-focused companies and industrial conglomerates are beginning to invest in drone technology, too. 

In a report from Business Insider Intelligence, we take a deep dive into the various levels of the growing global industry for commercial drones, or unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs). This report provides forecasts for the business opportunity in commercial drone technology, looks at advances and persistent barriers, highlights the top business-to-business markets in terms of applications and end users, and provides an exclusive list of dozens of notable companies already active in the space. Finally, it digs into the current state of US regulation of commercial drones, recently upended by the issuing of the Federal Aviation Administration's draft rules for commercial drone flights. Few people know that many companies are already authorized to fly small drones commercially under a US government "exemption" program. 

Here are some of the key takeaways from the report:

• We project revenues form drones sales to top $12 billion in 2021, up form just over $8 billion last year.
• Shipments of consumer drones will more than quadruple over the next five years, fueled by increasing price competition and new technologies that make flying drones easier for beginners.
• Growth in the enterprise sector will outpace the consumer sector in both shipments and revenues as regulations open up new use cases in the US and EU, the two biggest potential markets for enterprise drones.
• Technologies like geo-fencing and collision avoidance will make flying drones safer and make regulators feel more comfortable with larger numbers of drones taking to the skies.
• Right now FAA regulations have limited commercial drones to a select few industries and applications like aerial surveying in the agriculture, mining, and oil and gas sectors.
• The military sector will continue to lead all other sectors in drone spending during our forecast period thanks to the high cost of military drones and the growing number of countries seeking to acquire them.

In full, the report:

• Compares drone adoption across the consumer, enterprise, and government sectors.
• Breaks down drone regulations across several key markets and explains how they’ve impacted adoption.
• Discusses popular use cases for drones in the enterprise sector, as well as nascent use case that are on the rise.
• Analyzes how different drone manufacturers are trying to differentiate their offerings with better hardware and software components.
• Explains how drone manufacturers are quickly enabling autonomous flight in their products that will be a major boon for drone adoption.

Simply put, The Drones Report is the only place you can get the full story on the rapidly-evolving world of drones.

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Product training is important. You can’t sell without knowing what your solution does, where it fits, how it makes a difference, and why your clients should change what they’re doing. While a sales kickoff provides an opportunity to do some training, product isn’t normally the area where salespeople need help.

Mindset

If you are going to work on anything, the first place to start is mindset.

I’ve seen good companies get this right, and I’ve seen them get this wrong.

Let’s look at how they get it wrong first. They spend half a day on reviewing the numbers. Let me give you an example. At one SKO, I watched the CEO speak, where he reviewed the numbers and talked about shareholders. Then the CFO spoke and did a deeper dive into the numbers. Right after his speech, the head of sales reviewed the same numbers, just broken down by category.

At another SKO, I watched a senior VP announce 9 products. After I spoke, the salesforce spent a half hour in 9 breakout sessions to explain the new products, and that checked the box for training. That isn’t training.

One client I have spoken for a number of times gets things right. They spend an outsized amount of the time speaking to their team about who they are, why they do what they do, how it makes a difference, and why it is important that they deliver the value that only they can deliver. They are working on improving the engagement of their team. They are using the chance to get the team together to build an army of believers.

Another company I have spoken to more than once makes their clients the center of every presentation and conversation, using their stories and sometimes having them speak to share how what the sales force and company does helps them with their mission.

Skill Sets

Most of the product training that is done doesn’t really help the sales force to sell more. There are exceptions, especially for companies with complicated solutions. But generally, this isn’t why or how salespeople lose.

Salespeople lose because they lack the skill sets.

They don’t know how to prospect, or they don’t do enough of it. Improving this one skill improves results more than product.

They don’t know how to control the sales process, leaving their client to try to figure out what comes next and how to improve their results. Commitment-gaining is a critical skill set and salespeople are missing this skill.

Whenever I hear sales leaders suggest their salespeople can’t negotiate, I push back, telling them that I believe that their salespeople are terrific negotiators. The only thing I would change is that I would have them negotiate with the client instead of negotiating a concession with their sales manager.

Selling is more difficult than ever, and in many ways, selling is in decline. In many ways, we are getting worse. A good part of the reason for poor salesmanship is the complete lack of development in the new competencies the sales force needs, like commitment-gaining, controlling the sales process, and building consensus.

If product is allowed to crowd out these outcomes, you can have a really nice meeting, show off your new products, and send that same sales force back out into the world no better equipped to create value or deliver results than they were when they showed up.

The post Product Training and Your Sales Kickoff appeared first on The Sales Blog.

stevepb / Pixabay

Every small business owner knows the disappointment of receiving compliments instead of sales. By learning about what motivates purchases, you can improve your bottom line while helping shoppers get what they really want.

Consumer buying behavior is not rational. Consumers manifest all kinds of reasons why a purchase makes sense, but buying is essentially emotional. If that wasn’t the truth, “retail therapy” wouldn’t be so empowering. Even when a shopper is looking over features and specs, they are really experiencing how those facts make them feel about the item.

With that being said, if you want to increase your payments, be mindful of these 5 reasons why customers choose to buy so you can use them to your advantage when marketing your products and services.

1. Necessity

Psychologist Abraham Maslow famously established a hierarchy pyramid of needs: survival, security, belonging, self-esteem, and self-actualization. Present items to meet these needs and people will be motivated to buy them.

Start by identifying a common problem that your audience is facing and use your product or service to provide the solution. In a sense, you’ll have to get sales (as long as you market accurately) because people will need what you’re selling for their everyday lives.

2. Convenience

The world is increasingly stressed out and people purchase items for relief and decompression. That being said, while your product or service may not be a necessity, it can be a convenience and people love convenient things.

This is why we buy fast food after a long and rough day because of it easier. If you can find a way to make people’s lives easier and less stressful, you’ll be well on your way to getting them to buy from you.

3. Identity

People are motivated to buy things that demonstrate they are part of a niche identity, like college students or foodies. People want to connect (sometimes emotionally) with a product before making a purchase. What better way to prompt that connection than by targeting a specific audience and focusing on how they identify themselves?

You can also emphasize the cultural implications of popular items, such as celebrities who use them. Though celebrity selling is becoming a tactic of the past.

4. Obligation

Giveaways do more than let consumers realize how much they like an item. They activate a subtle suggestion of reciprocity. Many people will feel as though they are in debt until they buy something in return.

You can also play on logical fear to sell by letting prospects know what’s at risk if they don’t buy your product or service. If you’re a web designer, for example, it could be something as simple as warning people that they won’t come off as a true professional without a quality mobile-friendly site which can lead to them not gaining the full trust of their audience.

5. Hope

Psychologists report that people buy things that encourage an idealized version of their lives, so encourage optimistic viewpoints.

I experienced this as a consumer when I recently paid for a health and nutrition program with the hope of losing some more weight and getting back in shape. Use your products and services to demonstrate a positive result or good outcome that can be expected.

Summary

If your business involves selling of any kind, you must understand the many reasons why people choose to buy something. Use these reasons to your advantage and as an angle for your marketing.

That being said, you don’t want to use deceptive marketing and make false promises, but you can play on the value of your product and clearly spell out why people should consider buying from you.

Using the RACE OSA process to structure a marketing plan A marketing plan is an essential tool to compete and grow your business since it gives focus to your marketing activities by setting realistic, achievable priorities within your budget. It …..

The post How to structure an effective marketing plan in 15 sections appeared first on Smart Insights.

By Tibor Shanto – tibor.shanto@sellbetter.ca

Despite the state of discourse in general these days, in a one on one settings, like a sales meeting for instance, most people are helpful by nature. As a sales professional, we need to walk the line of leveraging that to help us make a sale, while not taking advantage of it.

I know some days it is hard to convince you that people are helpful, especially when someone just hung up on you, or you’ve run out of ideas how to get a response from someone who said thy were ready and would have the order ready a month ago. But, when you can put those moments aside, there are things you can do to help both the prospect and you succeed.

As with many elements of sales that are more subjective in nature, how effective we are will be influenced by personalities, and how you approach things.  People who naturally social, who draw attention the minute they walk in the room, find soliciting help much easier than another rep who may take a more cerebral style; the difference is in how they solicit help, not their ability to leverage people’s helpful nature.

A simple example is one used by many in prospecting into companies they have not dealt with before, ya, cold calling.  One lady I worked with does this extremely well, she pours her maternal self into every call, and with the warmest and “lost voice” she will call her intended target, and start with the following:

Seller: Is this Mr. Chapman?
Prospect: yes,
Seller: I am hoping you can help me.

She then goes on to introduce what she sells, not a product riff, but as a true graduate, she speaks to objectives and outcomes she and her company have delivered to other similar buyers.  She ends her intro by asking:

“Who should I be talking to about that?”

When the person identifies themselves as the right party, she continues:

“Wow, that was fortunate, ….”  She then continues to close on the appointment.

It is important to remember that this does not guarantee an opportunity, people will still evaluate the premise of the offering, timing, and more.  But she does have more conversations, and is able to explore further than in scenarios where the call does not start with a call for help.

The main reason for this, is that by asking for help, we help the mind focus and understand that they are looking for an answer to the caller’s “dilemma”.  When they get a plain cold call, it is perceived as an interruption, and the mind listens and weighs their perception of the call vs. being interrupted. As soon as it is labeled an interruption, the mind shifts to “we gotta get rid of this disruption, and get back to my work.”  When we start by asking for help, the mind shifts to “I gotta listen and see if and how I can help.”  Again, I am not suggesting that asking for help will lead to an instant prospect, but it will lead to a more attentive one, and by extension, and better shot.

Hope that helped!

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The post I Need Some Help appeared first on Renbor Sales Solutions Inc..

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Yes, it’s the name of a popular television show, but it’s also an extremely important quality that salespeople need to have in today’s competitive marketplace.

X Factor, def: “A variable in a given situation that could have the most significant impact on the outcome.”

What is the Sales X Factor?

Your Sales X factor is that variable that gives you a significant advantage over the competition. In customer-facing events like presentations and demos, it is often the ability to:

• Quickly connect your solution to your prospect’s unique challenges
• Structure your message in a compelling and memorable way
• Deliver your message in a way that wins the minds and hearts of your audience and inspires them to take action

Why you need an X Factor

Each day your prospect navigates through a steady stream of vendor e-mails, voice mails, proposals, presentations, and demos. Each vendor claims to be the best. But product superiority alone is not enough. Many a salesperson has lost business to a lesser competitor. And with the differences between solutions getting smaller and smaller and new competitors continually entering the market, it’s foolhardy to count on it. While you may have the edge when it comes to one feature, your competitor may be slightly better when it comes to another.

Your prospect is like a busy casting director sifting through a parade of well-qualified actors all competing for the same role, all reading from the same script. It’s no surprise that prospects struggle to keep us straight! Decision-makers may not get together for days or weeks to discuss your proposal, and they are likely to see many other presentations in the meantime. How can you be certain that you and your message remain top-of-mind after you walk out the door? You need the X Factor!

The actor with the X Factor delivers more than just the right lines. He brings something unique to the part, leaves a lasting impression on the casting director. He sets the bar for every competitor who comes after him, and pushes everyone who came before out of mind. Weeks later when going through resumes, the casting director can say with great confidence, “We want him.” That’s the X Factor at work.

Like a great actor, prospects want that one salesperson to wow them, rise above the pack and make their decision an easy one so that they can “cast the part” and move on to their next project. The X Factor can help you by being that variable that makes a significant impact in the outcome of the sale.

The following quiz will help you find out what your Sales X Factor is — and how to increase it!

What’s Your Sales X Factor? (Answer: Yes or No)

1. I spend time not just preparing the content of my presentation, but preparing mentally, physically and vocally to deliver it with impact.
2. I have updated my presentation style to gain and hold the attention of today’s busy decision-makers.
3. I leverage the art of storytelling to establish an emotional connection with my audience.
4. I know how to keep my audience engaged to increase recall.
5. I have a winning strategy for opening and closing my presentation that makes my message “sticky.”

Key:

5 Yes’s: Congratulations! Your Sales X Factor is sky high! But don’t get too comfortable, the competition is right behind you. Continue to stretch yourself by finding new ways to connect with your audience.

4 Yes’s: Nice work! What is the one area you are not leveraging? Explore ways to include it into your repertoire and reach your full potential.

1-3 Yes’s: You are at risk of not being remembered. Pick one of the areas above that will have the greatest immediate impact. For example, perhaps you haven’t changed your presentation style since the 80’s. Start by updating your presentation to connect with today’s buyers.

0 Yes’s: Danger! Why work so hard chasing a lead, developing a strategy and getting an appointment — only to be forgotten when the buying decision is actually made? Start working on your X Factor by reviewing the resource links in the 5 questions above.

If you want to be memorable, you can’t do what everyone else does. After all, they can’t buy from you if they can’t remember you.

There are numerous ways to advertise your business. While everyone has to start somewhere, you don’t have to necessarily put flyers under windshield wipers, create a publicity stunt or attach a giant ad to your car.

Here are some ways less dramatic ways to advertise your business and possibly create consistent income.

1. Read up on Facebook ads and see if they are right for you.

When it comes to Facebook Ads, Facebook Ads Coach Monica Louie says there are three common mistakes that people make when getting started. Marketers tend to lack the following: commitment, strategy, and education. She points out that if someone can dodge these pitfalls, they’ll be on a better path to Facebook ad success.

Louie says if someone is new to Facebook ads and uncertain about where to start, they should do two things:

She explains to”First, educate yourself about the various ways to approach Facebook ads for your type of business. Then commit to developing a strategy for their business. Once you’ve completed these two steps, you can then learn how to create effective campaigns in the Ads Manager.”

2. Identify patterns and take on other work

Some fields lend themselves to doing better financially at different times of the year. Wedding photographers may start booking after Valentine’s Day and tend to be super busy in the warmer months. Event planners may be very active from April to June with high school and college graduations.

No matter the type of business you’re in, it can slow down for everyone from time to time. You might have to come up with more creative ways to stabilize your income. No matter what you do, have a plan in place, so you’re ready to deal with the lull. You won’t have to scramble to come up with a new strategy every time. I once met someone who installed pools. People only utilize their pool in the North East for 3 months. He also did landscaping and snow plowing to generate enough money throughout the year.

3. Get paid to get in front of leads

Depending on your line of work, consider teaching classes at local community ed organizations. Think of it as getting paid to fill your sales funnel and present in front of warm leads. You can possibly get new clients down the road. You’ll stay top of mind, and hopefully, you can ramp up business when things are typically slowing down.

Also, consider writing blog posts on websites in your niche. If you design wedding invitations, maybe you can offer free content to a popular wedding blog in your area.

Casey Fleming, Mortgage Advisor, Author and Website Owner at The LoanGuide.com has reaped the benefits of appearing on a podcast. After appearing on a show one time, he landed two different clients and received numerous calls. He explains, “The most recent was just last week – six months after the podcast published.”

The Bottom Line
Most people experience a time of year that is slower than others. Try your best to plot out what you can do when you’re not as busy as usual. It will hopefully help you pull in extra money and potentially draw in new customers.

Any business, no matter how long it has been around, faces challenges when it comes to bringing in leads and making sales. Just getting your business off the ground is enough of a challenge in itself. But, furthermore, maintaining that level of success over time becomes even more difficult as the needs and desires of customers changes.

It all comes down to one thing:

Marketing.

Everyone will have to overcome obstacles at some point over the lifecycle of the business. But, if you know how to prepare for these marketing obstacles, it will make your business that much stronger.

Creating a Budget Specifically for Marketing (and Sticking to it!)

One of the biggest marketing challenges comes from the headache that arises when figuring out how to actually pay for it. In the beginning, businesses will need to dedicate a decent sum to marketing in order to spread the word. Likewise, those businesses who have been around for quite some time will still need to find new ways to market to their audience.

Either way, every company needs to always have a ‘stash’ when it comes to their marketing budget. More importantly, companies need to make sure they stick to this budget.

The good news is that overcoming this obstacle is easier than you think. That’s because these days, marketing doesn’t need to be expensive. There are so many options companies can utilize, like social media or affiliate marketing, that they don’t have to spend very much at all. You can also use free marketing tools from around the web to help you stay within that budget.

Sparking People’s Interests

It’s one thing to spend a lot of money in marketing. But, what happens when your investment goes to waste? That’s why before you even start with a marketing campaign, you need to know who you’re trying to reach out to.

Obviously, figuring that out can be difficult. And, even if you do know who you’re targeting, some people just aren’t that interested.

You need to make people CARE about who you are.

So, how do you do that? Well, there are a few ways. You can do a creative marketing campaign and share it far and wide. You can do something good for the world that will make people trust your brand. These are all great initiatives, but in most cases, you just need to get lucky.

Your best bet is teaming up with companies who already have a big following. Take your time reaching out to as many relevant companies as you can, and see if they can give you a bylink or offer a discount to products on your site if they find you via their page.

Getting People to Come to You

Once you’ve already had some success with your marketing strategies, you’re going to want to start having the people come to you. Ask any successful business owner and they’ll tell you that the best part of running their company is when they barely have to do anything anymore, and the money just comes in.

Well, marketing automation can help with this a lot.

You need to have ways to generate traffic and leads without going too overboard with time and expenses. One of the simplest ways to do this is by having a consistent and effective content marketing strategy.

Publish awesome, high-quality content, share it via your marketing automation software and let the people come to you. And, make sure you give them plenty of opportunities to convert. Make sure landing pages have a place for them to opt-in and offer as many free things as you can before attempting to make a sale.

Email marketing has come back in full force, and brands that know their way around best practices can reap huge returns.

According to a survey of marketers conducted last summer, the average ROI from email campaigns was over 100 percent!

This ROI beat out other marketing channels by over four times, including social media, paid search, and direct mail.

One study from 2015 even found that email marketing could generate as much as $38 for every $1 spent, which equals a mind-blowing 3,800% percent ROI.

For anyone trying to squeeze more out of their email marketing or turn around their lackluster campaign success, here are 7 pointers for increasing the effectiveness of your email efforts.

Segment Your List (Or Risk Being Irrelevant)

Talk to people about topics, products and ideas they are interested in.

According to an infographic by Mailigen, using segmented, relevant messaging more than doubles your open rate while driving 18x more revenue for your campaigns.

This approach makes a lot of sense if you have ever been to a party where someone is droning on and on about something you just don’t care to hear about or have any interest in.

“Have you seen how expensive jogging strollers are these days?” they ask, not bothering to remember you don’t have kids and haven’t jogged since high school.

While the person talking may feel like they aren’t being terribly rude, to the recipient it can feel a bit more personal.

“I don’t care what you are actually interested in” the person communicates.

“Everyone is equally interested in what I have to say.”

Not having email segments is the same thing.

Ensure your list is segmented by buyer persona so that every message is as relevant as possible.

For people who self-subscribe, you can even give them a chance to customize the content they receive by interest, product category and other choices from a pick-list.

Just don’t count on them to do all the work of segmenting for you!

Using an email automation system like Constant Contact or MailChimp is critical to keeping these segments organized, but you can also potentially do-it-yourself by just separating your mailing lists into separate content buckets.

Once you have segments established, take a moment to strategize the difference between each segment based on consumer traits, progress through sales pipeline and other situations.

Then, outline the type of content that would be most relevant to each segment as well as what would be least relevant and should not be sent.

Taking a moment to get to know your audience can dramatically increase your open rates while lowering the amount of frustrated subscribers.

Use Personalization to Perk Subscribers Up

When we hear our names — even if we know it’s someone else with the same name being called — we tend to take notice.

Chances are good that your parents were pros at this technique.

When they said your name before a sentence, you knew they meant business!

We have the same reaction when we see our names in an email.

Personalization with a name and other details increases open rates by 26 percent, and it can even help drive brand affinity.

Note that personalization involves more than just adding a first name to an email.

The entire message should be framed as if the recipient is having a 1:1 conversation with the sender.

LinkedIn has become a pro at this tactic.

They use personalization in a way that makes you sit up and listen.

Looking at moi? Go on, I’m listening!

The above message not only includes a name but signals that an exciting activity has happened.

It says people are looking at your profile.

Think of ways to mirror this effect so people get excited or intrigued just from looking at a subject line.

Segmenting your user base by the products they have bought (or expressed interest in) is another way to connect more deeply right from the subject line.

“New Jeep Anniversary Fog Lights” can be a way for a Jeep Wrangler owner to have immediate interest, for instance.

Data shows that this type of personalization is table stakes for marketers with successful email programs.

“88 percent of those that exceeded revenue expectations have personalization measurement systems in place,” says Inc.

Test Subject Lines Rigorously

A lot of marketers mess up promotional emails right from the moment they begin creating the subject line.

You should scrutinize your subject line, get in-house feedback from a fresh set of eyes, and A/B test different subject lines before rolling out massive campaigns.

The first step is to make sure you are using some sort of subject line preview tool, like this one.

Seeing your subject line visually helps you better-imagine how a recipient would react to it in their inbox.

Take special note of how the email looks on mobile devices since over half of email opens come via mobile.

People tend to filter out what emails to read by the subject line alone.

69 percent of email recipients will report a message as spam based solely on the subject line.

Worst words to use include:

1. FREE
2. $$$
3. Earn
4. Guaranteed
5. Whitepaper, journal, report

Some of the best words include:

1. [Recipient Name]
2. You/Your
3. Thank you
4. Account
5. Monthly
6. Subject 1 | Subject 2 | Subject 3 (e.g. “Bid Bonds | Liability Insurance | Worker’s Comp”)

Note that not every “common marketing knowledge” pointer like this list may work for you and your audience.

Always test to be sure!

Promise to Not Waste Their Time

Thinking like a recipient means coming up with ways to offer something they might actually want.

For sales and promotional offers, think of the hottest product they might want or the best offer possible.

Don’t just tell them there’s a “sale”; tell them what that means.

Humble Bundle, which offers discount video game bundles, leads with its most popular game in the package.

When offering something non-material, like information, explain clearly how the contents of the email benefit the user.

It could be something deep/important like “Want More 5 Star Reviews☆☆☆☆☆?” or even the promise that “You’ll Laugh Way Too Hard at These Marketing Puns”.

Many email marketers find great results by telling their audience how they can get more out of the products or services they already use.

The New York Times has gotten this down to an art.

Since there is a million different pieces of content on their site other than what you see on the homepage, they take it upon themselves to inform subscribers about how they can learn and do more on NYTimes.com.

Get more from my subscription while spending less time? Sure, why not?

Use Powerful Images and Video

HTML-based email templates have transformed inboxes from a boring wall of text to a gorgeous place for showcasing compact content or well-designed advertisements.

Images are especially important for mobile since they make messages more colorful and intriguing as well as easier to read.

Since 80 percent of email users are expected to access their inbox via mobile at least some of the time by 2018, thinking about their needs is vital.

Using human-centered images like this stock photo can invoke emotion and draw the eye to certain email sections.

Make sure you have text-only alternatives for image blockers, and try not to get too overboard with the images you use.

Using images in a sloppy or unappealing way can sometimes hurt rather than help.

Using video embedded within email or as a link can likewise help you improve open rates and click-throughs.

According to one source, just using the word “video” in a subject line can boost clickthroughs by 65 percent and opens by 19 percent.

Tell People What to Do with a Single CTA

This one is simple: every email should have a call to action (CTA).

Your CTA can be nearly anything, including:

• Go buy this product
• Take advantage of a limited-time offer
• Try our tips
• Go learn/read more at this page
• Attend our event
• Upgrade your current service package
• Book a free consultation

Ensure that your CTA is crystal clear and compelling.

Every recipient should know exactly what you want them to do and how to do it.

Providing a landing page after clicks to direct them more linearly to an offer can help simplify the process further.

That way, your real CTA is just “Click Here,” and then you can drive more complex conversions from the landing page.

Avoid conflicting CTAs or multiple messages.

No matter what you say, your ultimate conclusion leads the audience down ONE possible path.

This practice will help your clickthroughs thrive.

Study Email Marketing Analytics Like You Have a Test Coming Up

Lots of email marketing strategies tend to work well across the board for a majority of industries, but there is no single set of hard-and-fast rules.

Instead, every company has to study their own data in order to find what their audience seems to like/dislike about their emails.

Learn how to learn more from your email analytics, and use the lessons to optimize your approach over time.

Trial-and-error is the only way to truly get better at something, and luckily email gives you plenty of lessons in the form of data.

Stick to Email Marketing Best Practices

Mastering email marketing takes a lot of experimentation, practice, trial-and-error and attention to detail, but by following the best practices mentioned above, you can be well on your way towards greater success.

Just to recap your keys to success:

1. Use segmentation to maximize relevance
2. Personalize emails to get attention
3. Test subject lines, mind your length and think like a recipient
4. Promise true value to the recipient through your word choice and messaging
5. Use emotional images in your layout
6. Direct people to act with a single strong CTA
7. Use analytics data to optimize your approach over time

Pay attention to what your data tells you, and keep up with the latest email marketing trends and advice on our blog to learn best practices that make you an email genius over time!

Pixabay

As a society that’s constantly evolving with technology, we’ve reached an era where it’s perfectly acceptable to use artificial intelligence (AI) for answers that once required human conversations. Whether it’s asking Siri (from Apple) for directions or Alexa (from Amazon) about the weather tomorrow, AI has made simple tasks more convenient and less time-consuming. In the B2B (business-to-business) world, however, AI has been slow to catch on due to the need to make customer service communications engaging and memorable. So how can you keep these conversations impactful and valuable for your customers? Here are a few ideas…

When possible, have the same agent work with specific customers – It’s still surprising how many businesses stick to the “next agent up” approach to customer service. Instead, do your best to have the same agent work with specific customers that they have helped in the past. Sure, the customer may not get a response immediately, but they are more likely to have an engaging conversation with someone they’ve spoken to before. Creating a level of comfort with customers is ideal for maintaining strong communications.

Personalize the interaction by ensuring agents complete up-front work – When training agents, make sure there is an understanding of the prep work required before they respond to a customer. By keeping a thorough activity log in software and utilizing customer service integrations, it’s easy to avoid repetitive information requests. As a good practice for B2B agents, address the contact by name and start off the conversation with details about what was discussed in the past. This shows you understand their company and increases engagement because you’re immediately shifting the conversation to their business (a topic they know very well).

Have agents be quick with responses and show genuine interest – Try to avoid those dreadful scripted conversations with long pauses and avoid putting the customer on hold as much as possible. These wait times can be alleviated with an intuitive customer service software solution that displays an abundance of company information in one place. Having everything right in front of you makes it easier to quickly find the information you need. In addition, if it makes sense with B2B customers, feel free to fill the conversation with casual dialogue (i.e. “How’s business been?”). Not only does it show you care but it also keeps the conversation going and the customer’s mind engaged with yours.

Always try to keep the conversation alive with follow up interactions – Especially for large customers and/or important conversations, instruct agents to say they’ll send over a recap of what was discussed. Not only are you making the customer’s life easier, but here you can ask any relevant follow-up questions to keep the dialogue going. A recap is also a great way to ask for feedback on their experience with your business. This is an excellent communication tactic as it generates yet another opportunity for customers to be heard.

Wrapping up, there are several tactics for improving customer service communication so your valued B2B customers feel more engaged. Having the same agent work with a specific company when possible is a good first step for forming a one-to-one customer relationship. From here, utilizing B2B support software for smarter communicate is essential to show customers you understand their business and have learned from past discussions. Lastly, don’t forget to open the door even further through follow-up opportunities to make their life easier. Providing your customer service team with a plethora of information and encouraging them to be conversational will only help with increasing customer engagement.

Econsultancy’s State of Marketing Attribution report, published in association with AdRoll, looks into the current adoption levels of marketing attribution. 

It also investigates what skills are required for success, the effectiveness of various attribution methods, as well as the barriers marketers face today.

Read more...

Having a well-planned headline is an important element for your personal brand in which your content can stand out right away. The right words can either pull in a reader or make them move on to a competitor.

There are several ways that the right title can work for your brand, which can bring more website visitors and social media fans and followers. Knowing the needs of your audience enables your company to write emotionally compelling words that speak to them directly.

Creating the right headline takes testing, and involves knowing what words to use according to each topic. Here are several ways your titles can bring more attention:

• Keep it simple – Avoid using too many words — a clear, concise, and simple description is much easier to understand. Keep in mind that many people are reading your content on their mobile devices and don’t want to scroll through a lot of text to get to the message.
• Use uncommon words – Phrases that are used often are just like the other thousands of posts online. These appear like spam, and can be a real turn-off for the reader. Go beyond the sales message and write titles that present their problem in a unique way.
• Ask people to share their opinion – Questions are a fun way for your readers to engage with your content and for you as a brand to learn more about your target market. This type of headline can help you improve upon your content and provide more value for your customers.
• Make a deadline – A specific date will compel your audience to want to find more about the an event, launch ect. This can work for a historical reference as well as something coming in the future. By providing a deadline they will be more likely to read about why they should take action.

Writing headlines that cater to your readers will keep your personal brand’s content attractive and shareable. It’s more important than ever that your posts get seen above the ordinary copy that is often published online.

Uber has made a concerted push to expand its reach in New York City, and it's starting to reap the benefits.

For the first time ever, more people are using Uber in New York than the city's classic yellow taxi cabs, the New York Times reported this week. On the average day in July, for example, Uber completed 289,000 rides while New York taxis recorded 277,000 trips, according to the report.

Uber's new lead is the result of sending thousands of black cars to New York's outer boroughs, such as Queens and the Bronx, according to The Times. Cabs can be hard to find in those areas, which also lack easy access to public transit.

The total number of New York taxi trips fell 11% to 123.7 million in 2016, and industry revenue dropped 9% to $1.8 billion, according to Crain's New York Business. Meanwhile, Morgan Stanley estimated that the share of ride-hailing trips accounted for by traditional taxis fell from 84% in April 2015 to 65% in April of last year, as app-based competitors, including Uber, Lyft, and Via, gained market share.

New York is one of Uber's biggest markets, but its ascendance in the city hasn't been easy, thanks in part to several run-ins with the Taxi and Limousine Commission.

Taxis likely won't disappear anytime soon, but it's clear they're now operating in Uber's shadow. 

Read the full New York Times report here.

SEE ALSO: Uber reportedly facing new criminal probes from the Justice Department

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NOW WATCH: SCOTT GALLOWAY: Bad behavior cost Uber $20-30 billion

Sheryl Sandberg and her peers in Silicon Valley may not want to admit this, but Big Tech has become Big Media. 

And with that change comes major responsibilities — ones that the tech giants are currently shirking. 

Sandberg, the chief operating officer of Facebook, made news this week when she steadfastly refused to acknowledge in an interview with Axios editor Mike Allen that her company is in the media business.

She may be the most prominent denier of Big Tech's new role, but she's not the only one. Sandberg's colleague, Andrew Bosworth, Facebook's head of consumer hardware, echoed her position on Twitter this week.

Their argument goes like this: because tech companies generally don't employ journalists who report and write the news, they can't be media companies.

But that position ignores the facts of how the media business has changed and how people today consume news, information and entertainment.

Facebook's news feed has become what the front page of the newspaper was for older generations of people; at least 66% of the social network's 2 billion users rely on it as a news source, according to a 2016 Pew study. Meanwhile, consumers turn to Twitter for breaking news, and they search Google for news updates. 

But consumers didn't just change their media habits on their own. The tech companies argument also conveniently disregards how the big tech companies themselves have purposefully and intentionally tried to become go-to news destinations.   

Facebook purposely designed its algorithms to customize users' news feeds to show them the stories and other information they're mostly likely to engage with, whether by clicking on a headline or typing in a comment. Google not only operates Google News and touts live news events on YouTube, but it's even altered its core search feature to show links to relevant articles above search results when users search for newsworthy items. And Twitter has launched numerous features, including a "What's Happening Now" page and a "Moments," to highlight news stories and information. 

Perhaps most damning to Big Tech's line of argument is the impact those companies, particularly Facebook and Google, have had on the rest of the media business. Advertising is the lifeblood of media companies. And with ads increasingly shifting away from traditional media such as newspapers and television to digital ones such as the web and mobile devices, old media companies have been trying to move in that direction too.

But they're failing, thanks to Big Tech. Last year, Facebook and Google accounted for 99% of all the growth in digital advertising, according to the Interactive Advertising Bureau, leaving peanuts for the rest of online media platforms. That dynamic will almost certainly repeat itself this year. 

And that's not to mention Big Tech's broader effort to become Big Media. Facebook, Google and Twitter, as well as Apple and Amazon, are all all aiming at Hollywood by investing in originally produced entertainment videos, television shows and movies. 

In a very real way, Facebook and the other companies are deciding what news millions of people see. There's just no disputing the fact that Big Tech has massive influence over the way people consume media.

But it's also become increasingly clear that the big tech companies aren't shouldering the responsibility that comes hand in hand with that influence. 

The denials from Sandberg and others about even being in the media business are just a piece of that. A bigger, more important example is how the companies have reacted to the growing pile of evidence that propagandists linked to Russia manipulated their sites and systems in an effort to influence last year's election. 

In the days after the election, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg gave his infamous "pretty crazy" comment about the notion that his company influenced the result by distributing propagandistic fake news. (He recently took those comments back.) While Google CEO Sundar Pichai acknowledged that such fake news could possibly have swayed voters and said the company needed to crack down it, his company and the other members of Big Tech, have done little to solve it 11 months later.

And it's not clear if the tech companies will ever fix the fake news and propaganda problem on their own, despite the public outcry. In recent months, executives at Google and other companies have argued — privately — that the problem was just too big to solve. Much of the value these companies believe they have comes from allowing users to post pretty much whatever they want to their sites. If the companies were to more thoroughly police what users post, they worry they would lose that openness and undermine their sites' appeal. 

But Big Tech will likely only be able to duck from its duties for so long. If it won't accept the responsibility that comes from it's transformation into Big Media on its own, it may be forced to. 

Already there are rumblings among different governments that they may step in. A pair of senators concerned that Russian-backed groups surreptitiously tried to influence last year's election are working on a bill that would force companies like Facebook to track and, in some cases, publicly disclose the purchasers of political ads. Meanwhile, the UK is considering formally reclassifying Facebook and Google as media companies, which would subject them to new legal responsibilities.  

So whatever Sandberg might say, it's clear that tech has taken over media. And Big Tech is running out of excuses for why it should see the benefits that go along with that change — but not bear the burdens.

SEE ALSO: Sheryl Sandberg got everything wrong about Facebook's role as a media company

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NOW WATCH: All blue-eyed people have a single ancestor in common

There are so many types of marketing we hear about today – online marketing, influencer marketing, network marketing… the list goes on.

There are so many types of marketing we hear about today – online marketing, influencer marketing, network marketing… the list goes on.

But have you heard of attraction marketing? It’s not exactly a new player in the business side of network marketing, but it has exploded in popularity recently.

That’s because it can gain leads for your business very quickly.

It involves giving value and offering free content to pull prospective leads into your company. The ‘attraction’ part of the equation is the important bit here – the idea is not to bang on about your merchandise or your company, but to grab people’s attention on an unconscious level so that they don’t really know they’ve been converted until they take action.

Basically, you are giving before you take, and putting things into the marketplace to attract people to you. By giving, I don’t mean the product itself, but knowledge or information about it that would help the customer make a wise choice.

The workflow of attraction marketing is represented below:

Source

Let’s consider HubSpot as an example.

The marketing platform supplies its users with a volume of informative and educative content on inbound marketing.

It also provides an arsenal of tools for email marketing, CRM, selling among many others.

Source

While users may not buy something from HubSpot the first time they visit the website, they will get acquainted with HubSpot over time through its content. When the time arrives for a customer to buy a tool for marketing, they will think of HubSpot because it has already provided them with value.

This is the essence of attraction marketing. Customers, by nature, are curious to know how something works, tastes or performs before buying it as well as how much value it yields for the money spent.

For example, Home Depot is a reputed home supply company in the US. To improve its engagement with homemakers and make them buy more/stay loyal to the brand, Home Depot conducts weekly classes on how to use equipment or how to lay a tile on a small surface, etc.

Customers who attend these classes tend to buy more from the store immediately to test out what they have learned. This is the trigger mechanism of an attraction marketing strategy.

If done right, attraction marketing can be a trump card to magnify the lead generation and conversion rate of a business.

How to master attraction marketing

The basic principle of attraction marketing is to educate customers about the ‘goodness’ or desirability of a product before you even suggest that they buy it. Think of someone handing out samples of barbecue chicken in a shopping mall. They are not explicitly suggesting you buy it, they are simply giving you something that will probably make you want to buy it without them having to say a word.

Here are six simple ways you can master attraction marketing.

1. Spread knowledge

Like I said before, attraction marketing is all about educating customers. First, let them LEARN about your product. Then, take away the ‘L’ to earn from them. To do this, you have to spread knowledge about the product, its praiseworthy points and how it can be used to address specific customer pain points.

2. Earn trust

Trust wins, at all times. In fact, when it comes to attraction marketing, it is the only thing that ever wins. Customers only want to buy from a brand or seller whom they believe is authentic and trustworthy, so be sure to align your message with your audience in an authentic way.

3. Be authentic

In marketing and branding, authenticity has a high price. Customers pay for brands which have authenticity without batting an eyelid. Think Adidas, Apple and Amazon – they are all trusted to deliver the goods whether it comes to product quality or service efficiency. Use them as inspiration.

4. Be social and responsive

Social media plays a big role in amplifying the reach of attraction marketing. Kim Harris writes in this Huffington Post article that communicating and connecting with your customers on a consistent basis is one of the most fundamental rules of attraction marketing.

5. Give insights

Do you know where the market is heading? Or what the next big game changer that will disrupt the industry is likely to be? Feel free to share it with your followers. One thing that customers expect out of marketers is subject matter expertise and it will also amplify their loyalty to you.

6. Generate and distribute content

Content can come in the form of long-form blogs, infographics, creative banner images, videos or anything that customers can consume to know about your product. In attraction marketing, through using various forms of content or repurposing already existing content, you can gain maximum visibility. When providing content, focus on creating content that educates. People want to know ‘how’ and ‘why’ more than anything else.

Final words

The best sales prospects are the ones who come looking for you. Attraction marketing makes it easy for customers to understand your product and assess its value through legitimate means. Attraction marketing improves engagement, and as an end result, increases sales.

The key to success when using attraction marketing lies in having a genuine interest in customers and their needs. Your attraction marketing strategy must therefore be devised to address such needs head-on without any hidden agendas in mind.

The business needs of profitability and sales will happen once customers are convinced about the product.

In essence: attraction marketing is the best way forward if procuring high-quality leads is your priority.

Pixabay

As a data minded, marketing professional I’ve come across a very important marketing principle in my travels across the B2B and B2C marketing universe. That principle is the proper tagging and segmentation of marketing data. Every successful marketer knows that good data makes a successful marketing initiative. The three key areas where I’ve seen good data have a huge positive impact is Data Capture, Data Transfer, and Data Reporting.

Data Capture

This may seem like a straightforward area, but it isn’t. When gathering information, whether it be on your web forms, webinars or even tradeshows, you can’t stop at the data that the prospect/customer provides you. You must take the data that is provided and create a clear picture of that person. This clear picture will determine if they are the right fit. How do you do that? You can accomplish this by adding and tagging additional information that will allow you to better segment and bucket your leads.

For example, if they indicate their title is, Director of Process Improvement, it’s important to break the title out into two meaningful parts: One being title level and the other being buyer persona. Through marketing automation, you can tag additional fields with their respective title level and buyer persona.

The more you can use the existing data to your advantage the more meaningful picture you can create. This will allow you to take that data and send the right people down the right path the moment you gather their data, almost like PLINKO for Marketing Data.

Data Transfer

This area is one of the biggest struggles I’ve seen companies have in my time as a digital marketer. This ties directly into my first point that if you don’t capture and provide data to the Sales team in the right way, it can seriously affect the outcome and ROI of the marketing events that are run.

The best impression we can make as marketers to our sales counterparts is with clean, accurate data. Customer dinners, amazing tradeshow booths, and fancy websites are great, but what do each of those items have in common? Data! What does the sales team see on a daily basis from marketing? Leads in their queues. Now imagine if you only put the right prospects in your sales teams with the most meaningful picture in their queues. This will better ensure your leads are followed up on faster and more effectively. A happy Sales Team member means a healthier marketing ROI!

Data Reporting

In a perfect world, every CFO and CMO would allocate their marketing budget in their highest performing areas to get the most bang for their buck. Without accurate reporting, this is an impossible task. What if I told you it’s possible to pull the right reports without using a lot of man hours gathering data from multiple technologies? You can achieve this through tagging and proper segmentation

Being able to identify your KPIs and metrics for reporting will allow you to decide how to best tag and segment every lead that goes through marketing’s hands.

For example, it’s important to show what marketing program the prospect was generated from and that it directly affected sales revenue. But, if that’s all the data you have, you can’t make it repeatable or even make it more cost-effective. Now, if you could tag the prospect at every crucial moment in the Lead Generation process, along with the date, you’d have much more data to report on. You can now look at your data in two new ways: 1) accurate conversion rates and 2) conversion velocity. Each of these two directions can help you take a more strategic approach on your Lead Generation process.

Good data has become more important to marketing to ensure the right things are done at the right time. Adding a few extra fields/data points can drastically improve your whole marketing approach.

Over the past decades, I have attended and presented at many business meetings and public events. I’ve seen many good speakers, lots of mediocre ones, and (unfortunately) even more bad presenters. All people make mistakes, and sometimes we use words or say things that we don’t intend to. In most cases, this is really no problem. Just remember Dale Carnegie’s observation – I’ve already quoted it a few times on this site – that there are always three speeches for every talk you delivered: the one you practiced, the one you gave, and the one you wish you gave.

But there are some phrases that sound wrong and unprofessional, each time a speaker articulates them. Phrases that can easily be avoided when you pay attention and anticipate, and if you invest that little extra time in preparing and rehearsing your presentation.

There are already a number of such lists circulating on the web, but below is my personal top 10 of speaker phrases that (in my humble opinion) never should be used.

1. “This presentation is about…”

You may always assume that the people in the room are familiar with the agenda of the meeting or the event. Even worse, simultaneously with pronouncing this infamous phrase, you’re most probably putting up a title slide that says exactly the same thing.

Most people in your audience will decide within the first seconds of a presentation whether a speaker is worth listening to. So, you must take this opportunity to grab their attention by intriguing, surprising or provoking them – instead of telling them something they already know.

2. “I’m not really familiar with this subject.”

This phrase is often followed by something like “but I’m replacing a colleague” or “but the organizers asked me to present this topic”. Well, there are no “but”s and no excuses for not being prepared. Preparation and rehearsal are key ingredients of any successful presentation. And, obviously, you should never talk about things you don’t really know about. This will only hurt your reputation, deny your ‘right to speak’, and prevent you from being invited as a presenter at future events.

3. “I didn’t have much time to prepare.”

I repeat: there is no excuse for not being prepared. And admitting this publicly only makes it worse for you.

4. “Can people in the back of the room read my slides?”

Unless you’re presenting to a group of visually handicapped people, there should be no reason to ask such a question. If you don’t overload your visuals with walls of text, endless bullet lists, or tiny fonts, even the back-row seaters will be able to enjoy your slides. Use font sizes 28–36 for titles, and don’t go below 20 points for the body text.

5. “On this slide, you can see…” or “The next slide shows…”

If you have used a font size large enough, people can – and will – read what’s on your slide. These meaningless intro sentences are a waste of time, and a lost opportunity to say something more interesting to catch (or renew) the attention of the audience.

6. “I know this is a complex diagram, but…”

Confucius knew: “Life is really simple, but we insist on making it complicated.” Most of the (sometimes complex) topics you present can probably be explained in a plain and simple way that all people understand.

Simplicity always works. There’s no need to overload your visuals with lots of boxes, arrows and clouds. You’ll spend too much effort creating them and too much time explaining them. Your audience will also spend too much energy to understand them – most often, the accompanying text on the slides will be too small to read by these people in the back of the room anyway. And, oh yes, also refrain from using acronyms, difficult words, expert jargon, and long sentences.

7. “As all of you will know…”

Don’t overestimate your audience. Never assume that everyone in the room is as bright as (you may think) you are. Even if a few experts fully understand the technical details on your slides, most of your listeners may not. Remember that very often it’s not the engineer, but rather his or her manager that attends a conference. And that it’s not always the person that ask many ‘interesting’ questions who’s taking the (business) decisions at the end of the day.

8. “Does that make sense?”

Although these words are commonly used by speakers to check if their audience understands or agrees with what they’ve just said, this phrase may also show a lack of self-confidence and even undermine your authority. It may suggest that you have doubts about the credibility of your story, or about your listeners’ capability to understand your content.

Try instead to read the audience. If you’re telling strange, stupid, or too difficult things, you will certainly get it from their body language. And in case you still want to do the “does that make sense?” test, then save the question for launching the Q&A at the end of your talk.

9. “I’m running out of time, so I’m going to skip the next slides.”

Let me believe that all the visuals you prepare are made to be presented. So, running out of time either means that you’re talking too much or too slow, or that your presentation deck has too many slides. A simple root cause analysis will tell you that in both cases something is wrong with your preparation and/or your rehearsal.

It’s actually quite easy to calculate the number of slides you need to prepare and want to present. You could simply apply Guy Kawasaki’s 10/20/30 rule, which says that a good presentation should have ten slides, last no more than twenty minutes, and contain no font smaller than thirty points (which is even larger than the 20 points I recommended above). Or – if the time slot that has been reserved for you happens to be longer or shorter than these 20 minutes – deduct 1/5^th from your speaking time for Q&A, and divide the remaining minutes by 2 and by 3. The results of this simple calculation will give you an upper and lower limit for the number of visuals you can comfortably run through.

10. “That’s all I have to say. Thank you for listening.”

Never end your presentation with a dry “thank you for listening.” Finish your performance on stage in a memorable way and dismiss your audience with clear directions. Tell them what you want them to remember (summarize your main ideas and key points), what they need to do (give them some homework, or invite them to visit your webpage or read a handout), and how they can get there (by engaging in a next step with you or with your company – don’t forget to put your contact details on the closing slide!)

That’s all I have to write today. Thank you for reading ;-)

Pixabay

The fourth quarter is here, fall is in the air, and in the business world, it’s time to jumpstart strategic planning for the new year.

Do not permit yourself to be lulled into complacency. Yes, the weather is still balmy at times, and yes, the trees still hold some fall color. But year-end is less than twelve weeks away, and between now and then we welcome Halloween, Thanksgiving, Christmas Eve, Christmas Day and New Year’s Eve. With parties to attend, and shopping and feasting, it’s easy to postpone business planning until “later.” But before you know it, January 1st has come and gone, sweeping away all your great plans for a fresh launch into the new year.

Your best competitors are not complacent. They are already setting plans, developing tactics, and mobilizing. They are assessing their past performance as well as yours, and developing strategies to take you out of the game. Competition for the new year begins right now.

It’s time to act decisively. Take a critical look at your business. Identify opportunities and threats, and evaluate options to maximize your competitive position.

Jumpstart strategic planning with these 5 key questions:

• What worked well in the past year? Consider the products, programs and campaigns that were successful. Analyze them to explore commonalities. Are these things you are able to replicate, and if so, do you want to replicate them? What improvements can you make? Are there other similar things you can offer, or can you expand on the key concepts? Success is good; learn from your successes.
• What didn’t work? Face up to your failures, and learn from them. How could they have been avoided or mitigated? Do you want to modify them and try again, or eliminate them? What new options do you see? Growth comes from calculated risk, and failure can help define the path to success.
• How is your marketplace changing? Be aware of the dynamics which can create opportunities for new winners and change winners into losers. Technology is changing daily, creating new capabilities and eliminating whole industries. Pocket calculators meant the end of slide rules (ask your grandparents about slide rules,) and self-driving cars will revolutionize transport. Anticipate disruption, and act now to meet new demands and markets.
• How are competitors changing? What new entrants are coming into your marketplace? Grocery stores now face competition from big box stores and national online retailers. In turn, grocery stores are adding cafes with hot prepared foods, going head to head with fast food restaurants. What strategies are your current and future competitors using? How will you meet all these new challenges?
• How are your customers changing? Are your customers aging out of your marketplace? Or are you having problems connecting with changing customer expectations? How can you take advantage of customer changes and trends to capture more of the market? What new products can you design to best meet future customer needs?

Be proactive. Jumpstart strategic planning and launch into the new year. Take a look back, and plan for the future. Assess your marketplace, competition, and customer base. Think now; act now and position your business to take the lead.

Numbers and data are no longer a daunting task — they’ve now become an integral part of a company’s operations.

The issue is most companies are only given the basic facts of their data without the what’s, how’s, and why’s that are driving the analytics.

Jaywing, a British data-based digital agency, found that brands across the board are failing to take advantage of marketing technology innovations, including how data can lead to larger explanations of how their audiences consume. Further, the agency’s 2017 Data-Driven Marketing Report found that 23 percent of marketers rate data science and analytics as the least important marketing skill.

By contrast, the Data & Marketing Association found that 33 percent of marketers said having the right technology for data collection and analysis as the most important tool for understanding audiences. Given these disparities (and the fact that marketers are expected to spend 11 percent of their budget on analytics), it’s important to understand why data is an essential part of your client's business and how you should present it to garner the best results. 

How companies are using marketing analytics:

1. Clients now expect more from analytics.

As clients get more familiar with data jargon, they begin to understand more about what is being collected. Further, they’re hearing buzzwords like “big data,” so naturally they want more than just numbers thrown at them — they want an explanation.

Clients now want to know what data does, its fluctuations, and how it will affect their business. Agencies are currently searching for the right direction to send their clients in as well as condensing data into points of value. Data is coming from all directions, and having the right people on staff who can analyze it well — whether it be from Google Analytics or other sources — is critical.

2. Make your analytics actionable.

Once you find your data, be ready to compile it all together and prescribe the next actionable steps for your client. Rather than presenting a problem and three different solutions for it, explain what’s causing the problem in the first place.

For example, if your client’s email marketing campaign is struggling, don’t provide ideas of what more he can do, like sending emails more than once a day or sending him with a different graphic. Instead, incorporate that data you found into your advice. By asking, “Why don’t we take this data point and that data point to rethink our strategy?” you'll provide fresh ideas for your client and fresh content for his consumer.

3. Add an analytics expert to your team.

Being knowledgeable about current events is a good thing in any industry, particularly when that knowledge can seriously deliver for your clients. By identifying someone on your team who has a hankering for numbers, you can then encourage him or her specifically in the analytics realm.

This type of training will not only boost productivity, but it will also create a more well-rounded team, which will provide your clients with diverse expertise from both creative and data-driven angles.

4. Alternatively, outsource an analytics expert.

Given the fact that customers want data to drive their future decisions, the idea of actionable analytics isn’t going anywhere. Therefore, outsourcing will save the time and money needed for educating a team member on data analysis, should you find that it’s not imperative to have that talent in-house.

Partnering with an expert in data analysis is your best bet for accuracy with a quick turnaround. Design groups, on the other hand, are often bold, creative, and artistic. Their wheelhouse lies within the arts, so asking them to assess metrics would be like asking them to pick up a foreign language — it takes patience, understanding, and most importantly, time: a commodity that can’t be wasted in the marketing world.

But by outsourcing, the work is done for you by someone with authority in his or her field. That leaves more time for all of your team members to focus on what they know best and to deliver in a timely manner.

5. Find the balance of analytics customer service.

Making your data analytics transparent and educational has a strong effect on customer trust; however, striking a balance between too much and just enough consumer knowledge is key.

A study by MIT Sloan Management Review found that initial steps taken to enhance customers’ service knowledge were received positively. However, customer education can be a costly venture; while it’s important, it shouldn’t be the center of your agency’s attention. It sometimes turns on you by making your consumers choose a competitor or a different option for their needs.

All in all, the addition of data analysts to agency teams is a budding trend within the marketing world. In other industries, analysts are in high demand, with IBM reporting that 2015 saw 2.35 million openings for data analytics jobs in the United States. By 2020, it estimates that the number will increase to 2.72 million. Given these staggering numbers, this is one movement that can’t be ignored by marketers.

Thanks to Drew McLellan for sharing their advice and opinion in this post. For nearly 30 years Drew has been in the advertsing industry. For 20 of those years, he has owned and run an agency. Additionally, Drew leads the Agency Management Insitute, which advises hundreds of small- to medium-sized advertising agencies on how to grow and build their profitability through agency owner peer networks, consulting, workshops, and more. You can follow him on Twitter.

The buyer has changed, and the future belongs to sellers who change with them. Today’s buyers enjoy unprecedented access to information. And technology allows them to build solutions on their own. Research published by Forrester shows B2B prospects go through 70% to 90% of their customer journey before engaging with a salesperson. 

At the same time, more data requires greater stakeholder participation in buying decisions. The result is varied options and competing opinions.

It doesn’t stop there. Technology has created a divide between the buyer and seller. In fact, Forrester forecasts that by 2020, 1 million B2B salespeople will lose their jobs to self-service ecommerce.

The good news: Sellers can leverage seven key traits to bring the buyer back to the table.

7 Ways to Bring Buyers Back

1) Avoid seller-centric behaviors

Many sellers believe they’re customer-focused. However, their behavior rarely reflects this belief. Research from McKinsey revealed B2B companies averaged less than 50% on a customer experience index rating. In other words, the customer is not feeling the love.

Become more customer-centric by avoiding the impulse to jump to the sale. Instead, start with incisive questions like, “What are your business goals this year?” or “What roadblocks are preventing you from meeting those goals?” This dialogue uncovers business needs that get to core challenges. In the end, sellers can position the product when the time is right.

2) Use consultative selling

Move from transactional selling to consultative selling, or learning about the buyer’s challenges before discussing your product. This shift enables you to accurately diagnose their pain points -- which is important because these business challenges are often obscure even to them.

With an understanding of both stated and unknown needs, the seller can leverage the most cogent data to reach a solution. This “data distillation” is critical in today’s world of information overflow where only relevant data counts.

3) Lead with a plan

Outline your plan early. Sellers can demonstrate credibility by starting with a well-articulated outline for the conversation. An organized approach also signals your respect for their time, so be sure to prepare not only the outline but how you’ll present the material.

It’s crucial these initial remarks grab the buyer. Why? A 2017 survey from Richardson revealed 26% of buyers believe “combating the status quo” is the biggest challenge when making a purchasing decision. Overcome inertia by engaging the buyer's sense of practicality.

4) Get smaller committments leading up to the close

Big decisions are difficult, but sellers can ease this burden by eliciting feedback from the buyer. Request their opinion on your insights and you’ll gain incremental commitment. As a result, instead of asking for the sale all at once, the seller asks in pieces.

This process creates alignment between the buyer and seller. Feedback also helps identify objections early when sellers are best equipped to respond.

5) Ask smart questions

The successful seller is the informed seller. This information must come from the buyer, so sellers need to ask the right questions. But because buyers are increasingly pressed for time, it’s imperative to start with critical questions first.

Most importantly, questioning provides the opportunity to float ideas. Buyers may be more willing to entertain new ideas when the seller frames concepts as questions, which makes effective questioning the core of a consultative approach.

6) Understand the neuroscience behind how buyers buy -- or don’t

Despite the widening divide between buyers and sellers, both groups are joined by a few fundamental needs. The Social Determination Theory assumes all people are fundamentally motivated to integrate new experiences into their lives and develop mastery over their work. It also illustrates our common need for autonomy, competence, and relatedness. Insightful questions help sellers respect these needs.

To help the buyer feel autonomous, avoid manipulative leading questions. Reinforce their sense of competency by focusing on their concerns and ideas, and create an emotional connection by mentioning your commonalities and empathizing with their situation.

7) Work from facts, not assumptions

Anchoring bias is our natural tendency to favor one piece of information over another as we make decisions. It’s a challenge sellers are overly familiar with, but it’s not insurmountable. Sellers can overcome this problem simply by talking with the buyer openly about why they favor certain information when making decisions. Learning why your buyer relies on these facts will give you greater insight into how to move the conversation and the sale forward. Avoid anchoring bias by practicing mindful listening, and you’ll be better positioned to offer a solution.

Information and solutions are limitless, and analysis is scarce. Effective sellers demonstrate their value by leading customers through the decision-making process, and these seven practices help the seller and customer work together to find the solution that best fits their needs.

For a closer look at Consultative Selling, download Richardson’s latest whitepaper, “Elevate Your Consultative Selling Approach to Compete Today.”

If you own an Amazon Alexa device, you can use Alexa Skills to be more productive; keep track of your day, finances, and calls; make travel easier; hear the news you care about, and more.

Alexa Skills are built-in capabilities activated by your voice. New ones are added to the Alexa Skill library all the time.

The 30 Best Alexa Skills for Professionals

1. Web analytics: Monitor website performance
2. Welto: Keep track of your finances
3. Shopify: Get important store information
4. Time Tracker by eBillity: Track your time
5. Quick Events: Add calendar events
6. Life Bot: Get ready for the day
7. Weather Sky: Get a weather update
8. Conference Manager: Dial into calls
9. Chat Bot for Slack: Post to Slack
10. SMS With Molly: Send text messages
11. Uber: Order an Uber
12. Lyft: Order a Lyft
13. Flight Tracker: Arrive at the airport on time
14. I’m driving: Get an ETA
15. Fitbit: Check your health
16. Guided Meditation: Meditate
17. ESPN Flash Briefing: Get sports updates
18. StatMuse: Learn sports stats
19. The Hustle: Get startup updates
20. Wall Street Journal: Get personal finance stories
21. Harvard Business Review Tip: Get advice
22. Famous Quotes: Be inspired
23. GaryVee 365: Learn how to hustle harder
24. TED Talks: Listen to TED Talks
25. This Day in History: Get a fun conversation starter
26. Domino’s: Order pizza
27. Reorder with Grubhub: Get delivery
28. Amazon Restaurants: Reorder a recent delivery
29. Starbucks Reorder: Save time on your coffee pick-up
30. OpenTable: Make reservations

Productivity Alexa Skills

Web analytics: Monitor website performance

If you need to know how your site is performing, this Web Analytics Alexa Skill will be highly useful. It pulls website and blog traffic -- for a specific day, month, or year. You can also get detailed metrics like average session duration, pages per session, and more.

Welto: Track your finances

As a salesperson, your income changes on a quarterly or even monthly basis. That means you should always know how much you’re spending and saving.

Welto eases the burden of personal finance management. You can ask, “What’s my current balance?”, “What are my expenses this month so far?”, “How much money have I made this year so far?” and more.

In addition, the highly useful timed bill pay option means you’ll never incur late charges or overdraw fees again.

Shopify: Get important store information

Shopify store owners, rejoice. This Alexa Skill will answer all your questions about your business, orders and sales, best-selling products, average purchase value over a specific time period, store visitors, unfulfilled orders, and more.

Anything that’s on your mind can be answered in a second, so you can make smarter decisions faster.

Time Tracker by eBillity: Track your time

Although primarily designed for freelancers and other professionals who bill by the hour, this Alexa Skill is a no-hassle option for tracking your time.

Just say, “Start a new timer for prospecting,” or “Create a new time entry for two hours for client meeting.”

Quick Events: Add calendar events

Instantly add events to your Google Calendar without skipping a beat. Not only will Quick Events make sure you’re not scheduling over an existing event, it’ll let you add all the necessary details, such as date, time, length, and location.

Meetings are set to 50 minutes by default, but you can specify any length -- even all-day and multi-day ones.

Life Bot: Get ready for the day

Life Bot makes your morning a little less hectic. New features are added every week, but here are the current ones:

• “Alexa, ask Life Bot to start one-minute meditation”: You can also ask for two, five, 10, or 15 minutes.
• “Alexa, ask Life Bot for my calendar”: The app will tell you the next three events in your Google Calendar.
• “Alexa, ask Life Bot to send me a reminder about X”: You'll get a text reminder.
• “Alexa, ask Life Bot for my news”: Not only will you hear personalized news headlines, the articles will be sent to your phone.

Weather Sky: Get a weather update

Weather Sky gives you a detailed summary of the weather or temperature for any location in the U.S. The default is for that day, but you can also ask about weather for future or past dates.

That’s not all. If you ask for, say, a blizzard, you’ll hear corresponding sound effects. This is a great white noise solution if you like falling asleep to the sound of rain or working to the sound of snow.

Communication Alexa Skills

Conference Manager: Dial into calls

Vonage’s Conference Manager integrates with your Google Calendar to find your upcoming call, identify the conference call number and your meeting code, and dial in for you. The call will go through your Alexa device. Simply say, “Alexa, have Conference Manager start my call.”

The skill currently supports WebEx, Citrix GoToMeeting, BlueJeans, and Vonage Business. Support for additional services is coming soon.

Chat Bot for Slack: Post to Slack

Chat Bot for Slack makes it insanely easy to post to Slack. Link your Slack account, then specify the channel you’d like to post to and your message.

For instance, you might say, “Alexa, start Chat Bot. I want to post ‘Closed Solange deal’ to ‘wins.’”

SMS With Molly: Send text messages

When you’re running around and can’t spare the time to pick up your phone and type a text, SMS With Molly is a lifesaver. You can say “Alexa, tell SMS With Molly to send ‘Running five minutes late’ to Hugh” or “Alexa, tell SMS With Molly to send ‘Be outside in 10’ to Blake.”

Enable the skill, add your most frequently used contacts, then start texting. You can send up to 30 messages per month.

Travel Alexa Skills

Uber: Order an Uber

If you’ve got an in-person meeting, you can save valuable time by ordering your Uber via Alexa. Just say, “Alexa, ask Uber to request a ride.” Riding in style -- or trying to save money? Say, “Alexa, ask Uber to order an Uber Black” or “Alexa, ask Uber to call an UberPool,” respectively.

You can also change your default pickup location, ask how far away your driver is, or cancel your ride. And if multiple people in your family use Uber, just tell Alexa to switch the Amazon Household profile (for example, from “Aja” to “Jordan”) to get a pick-up for the right person.

Lyft: Order a Lyft

If you’re a Lyft user instead, try this Alexa Skill. Set your home and work addresses in your Lyft app, then say, “Alexa, tell Lyft to call a line to work.” You can also ask Alexa where your ride is, rate your driver, and get an estimate for how long it’ll take to get to work.

One thing to note: Lyft for Alexa always sends a car to your Lyft “Home” address, so if you’re on the go, use your phone instead.

Flight Tracker: Arrive at the airport on time

Frequent travelers know the secret to staying productive while regularly jetting off to different cities, states, countries, or even continents: Spend as little time at the airport as possible. Whether you’re an outside rep or simply someone who loves to travel, you know the pain of arriving at the airport only to learn your flight’s been delayed.

With Flight Tracker, you can get the latest flight status for a specific flight. Just look up the airline and flight number (for example, “Alexa, ask Flight Tracker for flight status for Delta 15”) and you’ll learn whether it’s currently on time or running late.

Pro tip: This is also a useful skill when you’re picking up someone at the airport and need to know when to leave.

I’m driving: Get an ETA

Driving to the office, a coffee shop, a coworking space, or another work destination? Learn whether you’ll make it on time for your first call or meeting. Tell Alexa, “I’m driving,” then specify your destination (“the office,” “work,” “WeWork,” and so on.)

You’ll get estimated travel time as well as route recommendations based on current traffic.

Health Alexa Skills

Fitbit: Check your health

With Fitbit’s skill, staying on-track with your health goals is easier than ever before. Say, “Alexa, ask Fitbit how I’m doing today” to get a general overview of your daily metrics, such as steps logged, calories burned, calories remaining, hours slept, active minutes, and more.

You can also ask if you hit your sleep goal -- a handy way to gauge whether you should stay in bed, wink wink -- or how you did yesterday.

Guided Meditation: Meditate

Meditation is an important routine if you’re plagued by stress, depression, insomnia, a lack of focus, and more. With Stop, Breathe, & Think’s guided daily meditations, you’ll always have a quick but impactful way to collect yourself, get some perspective, and become more mindful.

This Alexa Skill will come in handy whether you’re already a regular meditator or need some help making it a habit.

News and Inspiration Alexa Skills

ESPN Flash Briefing: Get sports updates

Few subjects are more reliable rapport-builders than sports. However, keeping up-to-date on the latest sports news isn’t always easy when you’re juggling a billion tasks -- especially if you’re not that into sports in the first place (we know you’re out there!)

ESPN Flash Briefing is here to save the day. Say “Alexa, what’s my flash briefing?” and you’ll hear the latest stories in sports.

StatMuse: Learn sports stats

Sports nerds, rejoice. StatMuse’s Alexa Skill lets you explore statistics, schedules, and scores, so you can instantly discover everything from who had the most touchdowns last season to the date of the Falcon’s next game.

This a fun way to stay briefed on sports so you can network more effectively. Plus, it features the real voices of Peyton Manning, Drew Brees, Terrell Owens, and more players.

The Hustle: Get startup updates

If you work with young companies and/or in the tech industry, knowing the latest news in startup world is important.

Use this Alexa Skill to hear the daily headlines from The Hustle, an entertaining, well-curated email digest covering business and technology. Once you’ve gotten a snapshot of the news, head to your email inbox to read the full stories.

Wall Street Journal: Get personal finance stories

Trying to stay briefed on personal finance? This Alexa Skill from the Wall Street Journal will clue you into valuable insights on student loan debt, home prices, insurance, retirement, and more each and every day.

Harvard Business Review Tip: Get advice

HBR’s email newsletter is known for its practical tips. Whether you’re a sales manager or an individual contributor, this audio version of its digest will help you start your workday on the right foot, give you conversation starters, and remain mindful.

Famous Quotes: Be inspired

When you need inspiration, quick, ask Famous Quotes for a quote. Alexa will randomly choose a saying from a famous person -- it might be funny, serious, or thought-provoking.

GaryVee 365: Learn how to hustle harder

Along similar lines, everyone’s favorite entrepreneur Gary Vaynerchuk has an Alexa Skill that’ll provide you with daily motivational quotes. He covers everything from empathy and gratitude to self-esteem, and, of course, hustling.

This is original content created solely for Alexa, so you’ll hear snippets from Gary Vee no one else is getting access to.

TED Talks: Listen to TED Talks

For on-demand inspiration, use the TED Talks Alexa Skill. It will play you the most recent TED talk or find you a random one, based on your command. You can also search for talks by topic, speaker name, or theme, i.e. “funny,” “inspiring,” “courageous,” and so on.

With new TED talks every single weekday, you’ll always have access to motivation when you need it.

This Day in History: Get a fun conversation starter

If you’re tired of building rapport with questions like, “How’s your day going?” or “Is it feeling like fall yet in [prospect’s town]?”, This Day in History is a good Alexa Skill to set up.

Ask Alexa to launch This Day in History to learn the historical events that happened on this day. Once you jump on a call, tell the buyer, “I actually just learned Yosemite National Park was founded on this day in 1890. Have you ever been?” or “The Model T was unveiled on this day in 1908. Would you rather drive around a vintage Model T or a Tesla?”

It takes a certain level of quirkiness to pull this off -- and the right audience -- but do it right, and you’ll be the salesperson who’s also a history buff (versus the ninth person that week to ask about the weather).

Food Alexa Skills

Domino’s: Order pizza

On those days when you’re working like crazy and need a low-effort, delicious meal to help you power through, you’ll love this Alexa Skill from Domino’s.

You can start a new brand-new order, request your most recent order, or ask for your default order. Once the order is out, Alexa will tell you which stage it’s in -- from the time it’s placed to when it’s ready for delivery or pickup.

Reorder with Grubhub: Get delivery

Maybe you’re not a pizza lover. You can still enjoy the convenience of hands-free delivery. Link your Grubhub account to Alexa, then reorder your favorite dishes and/or entire orders.

Amazon Restaurants: Request anything from your Amazon Restaurants order history

Prime users in Atlanta, Austin, Baltimore, Brooklyn, Chicago, Columbus, Dallas, Houston, Los Angeles, Phoenix, Portland, Manhattan, Miami, Minneapolis, Northern Virginia, Orlando, Oakland, San Diego, San Francisco, San Jose, Seattle and the Eastside, Tampa, and Las Vegas can order from Amazon Restaurants.

Say, “Alexa, order Thai food from Amazon Restaurants,” or “Alexa, order pizza from Amazon Restaurants.” Confirm the order, and it’ll be on its way.

Starbucks Reorder: Save time on your coffee pick-up

Waiting in line at Starbucks can eat up valuable minutes of your morning. But few salespeople can operate without their A.M. caffeine boost (and let’s be honest, their afternoon one as well).

Make your coffee run as seamless as possible with the Starbucks Reorder skill. It lets you reorder your “usual” from one of the last 10 stores you’ve ordered from or pick an order from your last five.

OpenTable: Make reservations

You’ve just confirmed a meeting with a prospect or customer. Now you need a reservation. Rather than browsing OpenTable on your phone or computer, just say, “Alexa, launch OpenTable.”

Then, search for the restaurant you’re thinking of, request a time, and viola -- you’re booked.

Alexa Skills FAQ

What are Alexa Skills?

An Alexa Skill is a capability you can take advantage of if you own an Amazon Echo, Echo Dot, Echo Show, Tap, Fire TV, and Fire Tablet. There are currently over 25,000 Alexa Skills.

Are Alexa Skills free?

All Alexa Skills are free. Of course, you have to pay for an Alexa-powered device.

How do you get an Alexa Skill?

You can enable Alexa Skills on your phone via the Alexa app. Alternatively, you can turn them on in the Alexa Skills store on the Amazon site.

Lastly, if you know the exact title of the skill, say, “Enable [skill name] skill.”

Once you’ve enabled a skill, use it by saying, “Alexa, open [skill name].”

More and more businesses are embracing the concept of big data versus treating it like just another buzz-phrase.

Once heralded as “the next big thing,” adoption of big data analytics is at an all-time high with no signs of slowing down anytime soon. With big data and business analytics software projected to reach nearly $200 billion in revenue by 2019, it's clear that the business world's decision to bet on data has paid off so far.

So, what's the catalyst for such rapid adoption in the first place?

After all, not all data is created equal and the need for massive numbers varies from company to company. According to a 2017 big data survey conducted by NewVantage, the top reasons for big data initiatives include decreasing expenses, exploring innovation opportunities and launching new products and services:

Although big data has uncovered new opportunities for businesses to reel in revenue, it's also created a slew of challenges for marketers.

According to analytics firm SAS, the most common problems presented by big data to marketers are three-fold:

• Determining which pieces of data to gather: with so many moving pieces of any business, it's natural for marketers to find themselves in a situation where they're drowning in a sea of numbers
• Picking between analytics tools and platforms: more data means more tools, which means more picking and choosing on behalf of marketers already saddled with time and budget constraints
• Turning data into action: while it's easier than ever to acquire mounds of data at a moment's notice, the act of spinning that data into gold is easier said than done

Does that mean that all hope is lost for marketers looking to benefit from big data?

Absolutely not.

After all, data-driven marketing has become the norm of today's businesses. Rather than trust assumptions or gut feelings, modern marketers are making decisions by the numbers available to them. In fact, spending on data-driven marketing was up over 60% between 2015 and 2016.

The key takeaway here? Data is in high demand. Likewise, there's an expectation for marketers to use data analytics to capture leads, fine-tune their campaigns and ultimately grow the bottom lines of the businesses they represent.

To say that big data analytics is a game-changer for marketers would be a massive understatement. Below we've outlined five distinct up-sides of data analytics, along with the tools and real-life examples of how marketers can use analytics to their advantage in today's data-driven world of advertising.

1. Better Analytics = Better Design

As noted in the NewVantage survey, some of the greatest value of big data comes in the form of decreased expenses and faster launch of new products and services. This is being played out in the design world, where data is helping machines learn how to create sophisticated branding elements.

Your logo is the anchor of your brand, but getting one created can be a costly and lengthy affair:

Source: Design Toronto Web

Do it yourself, and you risk missing key elements that designers have been trained to understand.

Online platforms like Tailor Brands are eliminating the need for expensive designers and creative teams, getting brands up and running quickly and inexpensively. They’ve discovered how to take a user’s subjective input about their brand, and apply that to the huge amounts of data collected through their user base to provide machine-generate designs in minutes.

The system makes artistic decisions around colors, typefaces and layout based on design best practices and user feedback, essentially providing access to a massive database of design knowledge. Because their system is set up to continuously learn from all user input, they are able to spot design trends and preferences too, continually improving results.

All of this means brands no longer face the expense of working with logo design teams and can get out there and start marketing in record time.

2. Perfectly Timed Content

Speaking of time, marketers today face some major pain points in regard to content. That is, squeezing the most out of each and every piece we publish is much easier said than done.

Bear in mind that there's more content floating around social media and the blogosphere than ever before. Smart Insights' Email Marketing statistics 2017 shows the best open and click-through rates for email campaigns in the UK.

Fortunately, analytics can play a major role when it comes to timing and content distribution.

Consider how Growbots' email marketing platform optimizes send times based on engagement and the peak activity of email subscribers based on data from over one million cold campaigns.

The results of their analysis are nothing to scoff at, either. According to Growbots, email delivery optimization has the potential to nearly double the conversion rate of any given campaign.

Collecting data on followers and subscribers ultimately teaches marketers the best window to reach them, time after time.

This same logic can be applied to the world of social media, too. That's why solutions such as social scheduling tool Sprout Social created its “ViralPost” platform which automatically schedules tweets and posts in conjunction with the online activity of relevant influencers. This sort of scheduling clues us into both the power of data and automation for today's marketers.

Big data often reminds us of a rather obvious detail of any given marketing strategy: we can't be everywhere at once. With these tools on deck, however, the task of marketing around the clock actually becomes a reality.

3. Boosting Sales

Given the cost and legwork involved with leveraging big data, there should be a financial incentive for hopping on the bandwagon, right?

Luckily, there is.

Take the world of ecommerce, for example, where a keen attention to analytics could potentially make or break a business. As noted by Dataconomy, big data has huge implications for sales as it applies to...

• Optimized pricing: by tracking purchases and trends in real-time, brands can ultimately identify patterns that result in higher profits (something that 30% of businesses fail to do year after year)
• Demand: big data analytics can forecast needs for inventory and essentially prevent the need for a business to ever be out of stock

Predicting trends: keeping a close eye on industry data provides opportunities to determine which products are buzzing with consumers and what's falling flat.

For marketers making digital sales, even the most minor details uncovered via analytics could result in major profits or losses. Again, the information gleaned by big data often represents points that many marketers wouldn't think twice about until they were aware of where they might be going wrong.

4. Conversion Optimization

The need to craft our on-site content in such a way to decrease bounce rate, improve click-throughs and increase conversions is a no-brainer.

Yet the degree to which big data analytics can help accomplish these goals may be less obvious.

If nothing else, analytics help marketers better understand how their leads and traffic get from Point A to Point B; meanwhile, those same marketers can understand bottlenecks in their funnels and where their lost traffic is dropping off.

Bear in mind that 48% of big data is attributed to customer analytics, meaning that drilling deep to understand customer behavior should be a matter of "when" not "if".

The rise of big data is a stern reminder for marketers to take a data-driven approach to conversion optimization. With variables such as headline and CTA copy to color scheme and imagery, there's plenty to consider on any page of your site or store.

The more data you have to assess the behavior of your traffic, the better.

5. Promoting Personalization

 With so much emphasis on metrics in regard to big data, it's easy to forget the people and relationships behind those same numbers.

The concept of big data creating more personalized experiences may seem like an oxymoron but just take for example how chatbots are being used to boost customer satisfaction.

For example, the more a fashion chatbot for a brand like H&M “talks” to a customer, the more it learns about their preference in terms of products. The bot is then able to come up with personalized product recommendations as a result:

While marketers aren't expected to rely on robots, they are expected to regularly gather data from customers in pursuit of a more personalized experience.

Even beyond the world of bots, Amazon's recommendation engine is a prime example of personalized recommendations via data collection. Considering that lack of personalization annoys nearly three-quarters of all consumers, the key is for marketers to deliver relevant recommendations only.

And although personalization is considered a must-do, 39% of marketers note that a “lack of data” is their biggest challenge toward making it happen.

Therefore marketers looking to get closer to their customers should learn more about them sooner rather than later. Through the power of big data analytics, that crucial personal connection is more than possible.

Breaking Down the Benefits of Big Data

Each of these points speaks to the need for marketers to make data-based decisions versus trusting their guts. From increased opportunities to reach leads and increase sales to fine-tuning your existing marketing campaigns, many marketers have yet to tap into the power of big data. Yet if the upward trend towards further adoption of big data analytics is a sign of things to come, those who get on board today most certainly have an edge over their competition.

3 Strategies to Making All Salespeople Top Sellers

A company that relies on only a few customers for most of its revenue entertains a risky proposition. By not diversifying much beyond those first few accounts, chances are good that if an account were to leave or file for bankruptcy, that company would be taken out, too.

Sales organizations often find themselves in a similar predicament, relying on a handful of their salespeople to drive revenue. If a top performer leaves, then business suffers — not just because of that individual's absence, but also because the company has failed to develop other sellers on the team. Quite simply, a reliance on a few — regardless of what that few is — limits a company's ability to expand and evolve.

While it might seem counterproductive, a company's best option is to encourage its top performers to excel but also allow those top sellers to pursue alternate opportunities by creating a support system that nurtures a steady stream of talent. This process inevitably leads to a company with greater depth and viability in the increasingly dynamic marketplace.

Great Sellers Can Be Born — and Made 

Traditional wisdom suggests that great salespeople are born, not made. And top performers generally share common qualities: They're ambitious, hardworking, and on an upward trajectory. Thus, these individuals tend to draw focus away from other employees. But this tendency can lead the “chosen ones” to feel overworked and unfairly burdened with the task of keeping up their team’s numbers, as well as cause others to feel undervalued. 

Essentially, the point of arrival for any company should be every seller being the best seller. And while this may seem idealistic, the whole discipline of sales enablement focuses on achieving this objective. In fact, salespeople are often most successful when allowed to play to their own strengths, which means providing the right mix of tools and training that helps an individual understand those strengths and cultivate them. 

Because this training isn't a one-size-fits-all undertaking, and even though some individuals may be predisposed to selling, identifying the attributes that render successful quotas and then working with each salesperson to build those attributes can create more consistent and evenly distributed success.

3 Strategies for Implementing Sales Education

Ultimately, creating great salespeople isn't a cosmic undertaking. It's simply a matter of striking the right balance between training and individual development. How leaders go about empowering their sales teams will vary by person and organization, but these three strategies can set them on the right path to installing the most effective curriculum:

1. Look to and lean on your top performers. Your top performers excel within your organization, so studying what makes them tick and diving deeper into the systems, processes, and people they leverage to succeed helps you understand how to structure your current and future training techniques and elevate the rest of your sales force. 

Most importantly, don't go at this training alone. While your top performers always have a lot on their plates and you may hesitate to ask them to take on additional duties, the institutional and industry knowledge they possess can only be understood and effectively relayed by them. Have them help you develop best practices in your training modules and make that available to the rest of your organization. You can even incentivize their input by offering them monetary or other rewards.

2. Nurture customer and sales intelligence. Though companies are hard-pressed to develop business strategies without data, salespeople need insights into their client base that go beyond data to provide actual account solutions. Getting your team in the same room together can help them develop strategies, challenge preconceived notions, and review past results. You’ll end up with a sales force that is not only collaborative, but one that can also more effectively solve customer problems. 

Moreover, because the B2B sales cycle is arduous and it can take 18 months or longer to convert, salespeople need to wholly understand prospects and customers to keep them engaged. That's why leaders who foster strategic collaboration to nurture customer intelligence not only enhance the teams' knowledge about the industry, the market, and the competition, but also help them better understand the influencers, stakeholders, and decision makers within the company.

3. Play the long game with training. Onboarding new talent is never a quick fix. It takes years of training and experience to get salespeople to perform at their highest potential, so leaders must go beyond the basics and invest in their sales teams by continually developing and evolving their skill sets.

Take the technology corporation Oracle as an example: It uses a “Class Of” sales program in which new trainees are paired with experienced salespeople after nine months of training and lead generation. By having its salespeople work with “mentors” over a period of time to sharpen skills and learn the organization’s best practices, Oracle is able to render a more consistent and deeper sales process companywide. 

It’s easy to get comfortable when a sales team is reaching its goals. But resting on laurels is never a good idea. Instead, companies that devote the time and effort into enhanced sales training and a work to construct more uniform system can continue to weather the variability of the marketplace and don't have to worry so much the next time a star seller departs.

Sona Jepsen is the global head of sales enablement at Fidelity National Information Services (FIS). Her team empowers FIS’s global sales teams with sales content, strategic insights, and world-class learning and development opportunities.

StartupStockPhotos / Pixabay

For a long time, isolation and miscommunication between marketing and sales departments have been huge. What’s more, this concept has been highly supported by the top management due to operational convenience. Anyways, this time has passed and market dictates new rules. Now all departments of the business consolidate to assure the best customer experience with a brand.

The best-in-class have already experienced this transformation and their results totally inspire us:

We collected best alignment practices and worked out a clear action plan for you to implement it in any company no matter shape and size.

Let’s start big – with Customer Centricity

A lot has been already said on this matter. That’s without a doubt one of the biggest milestones for your biz. All reorganizing process from now on will turn around your customers, their needs, interests, and experience. And for a good reason, as it’s going to bring you a myriad of insights to grow the business further.

No worries, it’s not that large if approached smartly. You simply set the customers’ experience with your brand as a strategic commercial goal. Here is your actions breakdown to proceed with:

1. Decide on the unified definitions

This one is not that complicated. Instead of using common terms, discuss them with your whole team to make sure everyone’s on the same page.

You’ll need to define at what point prospect moves to a lead category when the lead is considered as MQL or SQL, and most importantly, draw a common portrait of your ideal customer.

Chances are you’ll come up with a couple of peculiarities to add to the definitions connected with your market or sales process. Plus it’ll help structure the customer journey even better and minimize misunderstandings.

2. Get Joint Sales and Marketing Planning done

Gone are the days when Sales and Marketing teams operated all isolated. Nowadays, marketing is not only the provider of leads but also one of the responsible parties for the company’s revenue.

To realign your organization, start with planning shared between Sales and Marketing:

• Present reimagined product(s) and your value proposition focusing on your customers’ core issues;
• Agree on how Sales will capitalize on the existing Marketing Offering;
• Map out your typical customer journey to separate areas of responsibility;
• Important! Define Sales and Marketing assistance resources to help reach stated goals. All content materials should support your customer-centered strategy.

3. Set aligned strategic business goals

Here it’s all about breaking down strategic commercial goals onto smaller related marketing and sales segments:

• Determine common goals and objectives;
• Divide those between Sales and Marketing teams and make sure they contribute to overall income;
• Set revenue-focused KPI’s for each department;
• Connect KPI’s to a solid motivation scheme, both personal and for teams.

That’s basically how to shift your company onto so highly hyped customer-obsessed approach. And here is why:

Internal communication

This part is the key to the operational success of the entire transformation project. Uninterrupted communication between the teams delivers agreed, unified concepts everyone shares. It goes without saying that brand messages marketing is communicating should be praised by sales.

1. Sit down both teams and agree on brand voice messages across all available channels – not to get customers confused, on all stages, via every source – sales or marketing, they should get a unified brand vision. Create the letters and communicate them religiously to your target audience. Inconsistency is frustrating.
2. Launch a feedback system – sales will constantly get in touch with leads brought by marketing. So these guys are the best source of quality feedback for marketing. Just arrange it in the most suitable form and coordinate marketing campaigns with a sales team. You’ll see, it’s a real game-changer!
3. Marketing updates sales on upcoming campaigns – ensure a seamless interaction with the leads by sales getting ready to pitch them beforehand. Always share some strategically important changes or novelties with your Sales team. Not only this will provide extra insights into your customers’ interests, but also will give time to think through the approach.

Benefits:

• agreed brand and buyers vision;
• more satisfied customers and consistency at approaching them;
• continuous improvement of the major KPI’s.

N.B. Happily, we live in the era of rich technology and you can (and should) pick a solid one-and-done automation tool to implement all those changes and step up your market game.

Account-based marketing

Not to get you confused, Account-based Marketing in B2B is approaching your target entire companies/accounts in a personalized manner.

Marketers across businesses find this approach smarter than a pure inbound marketing because suitable needs of a single insider don’t necessarily mean that the whole company is the right fit.

All your previous steps are complementary to this stage. And want it or not, account-based marketing is impossible with pen and paper. It’s high time to find a tool that will help achieve your Strategy.

1. Pick a tool for managing accounts – you’ll need a complex platform that not only allows storing profiles’ data but also track all stages and touch points with accounts, pitch with personalized emails, adverts, and content;
2. Import all available data on your prospects and clients – no matter what phase your company is at, you have pieces of info. They’ll become a starting point and help the platform find insights about your target audience (yes, those tools are smart and helpful!);
3. Research more data and expand accounts – after you enter some basic info, usually all public info will add up to profiles automatically. But still chances are, you’ll need to manually edit it and add some more private details like relevant phone numbers, job titles and email addresses;
4. Engage and reactivate – now that you’re ready with the target accounts, start using all benefits of an automation tool. Depending on which one you choose, those platforms will usually provide activity-based insights for personalized addressing each account. Not to mention, these platforms include all needed tools to build and implement targeted emails, advertising campaigns, cross-sell offers, etc.

Benefits:

• more personalization => shortened buying cycles;
• overall better customer service;
• Accounts analytics is clearer => relevant insights for future.

It’s great if you adopt one mutual platform for shared information between Sales and Marketing at all times.

Takeaway

My only message would be “Hurry up” if you’re not there yet because the majority of players already are. Don’t waste your resources for a scanty output that degrades like mad.

All you need is to establish communication in between divisions and you’ll see how it boosts entire business.

Organizationally aligned companies experience 24% faster three-year revenue growth and 27% faster three-year profit growth. In sales, they enjoy 36% higher customer retention rates and 38% higher sales win rates. And overall, synced teams are 67% better at closing deals.

It’s hard to overrate the importance of aligning your sales and marketing teams. Account-based marketing requires this, customer-centered approach requires this. Best time-tested business practices showcase this.

Looks like high time to implement it! Don’t you think?