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So, we’ve discussed how to harness the power of FREE! as a marketing tool. Free offerings are effective marketing tools, and their clarion call can be hard to ignore for business owners as well as customers. Further, samples, trials, and demos can be a great way to entice and convert prospects. If you’ve ever enjoyed the Costco sample buffet, only to find yourself checking out with $300 worth of frozen taquitos, you know the principles at work here. But when it comes to your business, it’s important to realize that a $0 price tag doesn’t always mean cost-free. Having waded my way through my fair share of freebies, I’ve come to see that free doesn’t always quite live up to its name. Look, it isn’t that there is no such thing as a free lunch, it is just that sometimes free isn’t so free.

Working as I do in the digital realm, many of my default assumptions – and probably yours, too – are that certain products and services should be free. Where I’d react with suspicion if I showed up at Target and was handed a free shirt, I full on expect a software service I am checking out to let me have a free taste before I start my subscription. Based partly on this mindset, and based partly on my natural inclination to seek out a bargain, when it came to starting my company, I sought out free services.

Free project management software? Check. Free conference calling? Check. Free cloud storage, even though it came with limitations? Check, checkity, check, check. Heck, we still use free products in the day to day operation of Spring Insight… We love you Slack!

The Costs of Free

So take it from me, a freebie veteran, when I tell you I’ve learned some things along the way. If you’re making the determination of whether to go with a free service, make sure you take into account some costs that might not be immediately apparent.

Cost #1 Your Time

Free services differ pretty dramatically, some (typically the “have a taste” version) are great, others not so much. There is one thing that all free versions have in common: Customer service… or actually a lack of customer service. Of course, you aren’t going to get friendly customer service with a product for which you aren’t paying. That means that when you are factoring the cost, you need to factor in your time. No one is going to train you on how to use the product. No one is going to give you pointers on best practices. You are on your own. It is tempting to forget the value of your time when determining the “cost” of a product but don’t. Every minute you spend figuring out a product is a minute you aren’t doing the job you actually started your company to do.

Cost #2 Tailoring

Free services are basic services. They are the off-the-rack, one-size-fits-all services designed to basically meet the needs of a broad swath of people – which means they actually meet the needs of almost no one. When we started shopping for my daughter’s bat mitzvah dress, a friend offered to let us have hers. It was a couple years old, not quite my daughter’s color, and it had sleeves, which wasn’t really what my daughter wanted. But because it was free, we took it gratefully and she wore it happily for one of the events. (If you’re not aware, the bat mitzvah industrial complex is beginning to rival that of weddings, and we were game to shave off costs where we could). The same principle is at work for digital services. WordPress, the service we use to create websites is a great example. It is open source and free… Yay! But for every client, we have to build it out to meet the needs of our client – very Not Free. When we looked into the cost of tailoring the friend’s dress to fit, it nearly matched the price of a brand new dress! Now we were in the worst of all worlds – a product we wouldn’t have chosen at the outset – for nearly the price.

Cost #3: Lost Revenues

Products that force you into a framework that doesn’t work for your business are a problem not just because they may not match your vision. A poor fit or lower quality product could result in real lost revenue. There’s a reason those basic free services are accompanied by a premium upgrade option. Providers start at the lowest possible level, enticing you to access pay levels by offering higher quality and features you probably want and need for your business at those levels. What’s beyond the pay wall? A wider range of services? The ability to segment your audience well? The possibility of really producing revenue?

Cost #4: You are a Billboard

A favorite quote of mine is that on the Internet “if you aren’t the customer, you are the product.” How do you pay? Much of the time, you pay by promoting the service you are using by showing their branding. A free Wix or Weebly website isn’t just promoting your brand, it is promoting theirs as well. Free conference calls are great, but can be sometimes wonky, and the fact they’re free is announced at the start of every call. I was in a coffee shop recently where ads came on over the Pandora station. My first thought was, really? It wasn’t worth $5 a month to create a seamless, ad-free listening experience? (Is that a first world problem? Yep. Are those kinds of problems the kinds your customers are in tune with? Probably). In other words, these free services aren’t just forcing you to do their advertising for them: The freeness of these ads may telegraph something to your customers — about how you feel about quality control, user experience, or even your finances, which you don’t necessarily want to telegraph.

Cost #5: Gotcha Charges

My absolute least favorite cost out there is, unfortunately, coupled with my favorite way to take advantage of free services. I’m a big proponent of free trials. They make a meaningful introduction to your products and services, making it likely your customers can choose the best fit for them. What I really don’t like about a lot of free trials is the gotcha ding if you fail to cancel a free trial it in time. So many services offer free trials for potential customers – but these trials require your credit card info, and a paid subscription kicks in automatically if you fail to cancel your trial period in the time and in the manner prescribed. The automatic subscriptions that result if you don’t cancel remind me of that Up high! Down low! You’re too slow (ha ha ha) high five game kids play at recess. It’s all fun and games until you forget to cancel and end up feeling like a fool. I despise these gotcha fees, and find myself beginning to distrust the companies that rely on them. Even the most scrupulous of business owner may miss a deadline, especially when they’re in the market for new services and have lots going on. Be sure to factor in, up front, the costs if you do. And calendar exactly when and how to cancel any trials you do use!

Cost #5 Transaction Costs

Then there’re the transaction costs that come with free. These are no trifling matter. If you’re doing the trial period musical chairs thing, you’ve got to actually monitor when services end, cancel old ones, sign up for new ones, and occasionally jump through hoops to do either. For example, many services allow you to enroll in services via email, but you have to make a phone call to unsubscribe – during business hours, of course. If you’re trying to cobble together a bunch of free services into a smoothly operating machine instead of paying someone to build a customized offering or to manage your services for you, you’re spending time on that which you could be spending on your business. All of this time, to beat some poor horse here, is NOT free. More than that, it takes mental energy and adds a source of stress. It adds another set of balls to those you’re juggling, and you’re already juggling quite a few balls.

The Upshot

None of this is to discourage freebies entirely. Free services are a benefit of the golden age of the internet, and many are a great addition to your technology plan. Spring Insight still uses Slack (which I mentioned above) and freeconferencecall.com, and I find it works well and doesn’t alienate any of my colleagues. I also make use of free trials – but for their best and intended purpose – to test drive a product. As it happens, I’m in the process of making over some of Spring Insight’s web tools right now (stay tuned!), and have been using free trials to winnow down my options. (And I find it quite fun!) But not everything “free” price-wise is costless. When you’re calculating your monthly budget, be sure to factor in the ancillary costs that may come from leveraging free services.

We all have a great showcase of mobile apps on our smartphones. There is a wide range of applications such as banking, sports, courier, home delivery or other application. Indeed, a smartphone user has an average of 28 applications but uses only about 5.

Some Tips to Get Out Of It

There are a lot of applications ready to be downloaded on our smartphones. Why do some come in the top rankings? How to stand out in this very competitive field? The answers vary according to different elements such as the objective of the mobile application or the sector of activity.

What Can I Do To Be A “Used App” On A Smartphone?

Convincing smartphone users to download an application is the first challenge. It is followed by another: encourage the use of this application and avoid abandonment. It is important to recruit users efficiently because it’s hard to retain them. There are many reasons for abandoning a Mobile App, and the user may think that the ergonomics of the application is not adapted to him, that the content is not updated or optimized, that there is too much aggressive advertising.

To avoid uninstalling a mobile application, it is important to communicate with another user and send email notifications to push. Interact with the user and add value that should not be overlooked by the user. Our two speakers agreed on an effective tactic to remove fatigue: the establishment of a “gamification”.

Selling In an Application, a New Challenge?

We have often explained the different types of mobile apps by lingering on the freemium model which is interesting. Some applications are not chargeable at the time of download but can become so at certain strategic moments of our use. You have to know how to push the sale at the right time. Yes, this is difficult, but some brands are doing very well. The latter applies the e-commerce codes; After all, we get a little closer. To make the sale, on a mobile application, it is necessary to make this simple and fast. I will not explain the typical example of “one click” Amazon.

Some Good Practices for Developing Your Mobile App

First, you have to put yourself in the user’s place to better understand how to meet your expectations and even exceed them. We, therefore, speak the user experience (UX). You also need to know how to attract and inspire the user. To do this, all means are good: Social networks, emailing, video etc. The user must feel confident belonging to a community, that of this mobile application. Finally, once the download is done, and the committee developed, we must retain our customers so that it continues to use our mobile application. It is, therefore, necessary to listen to it, analyze its feedback and adapt to its needs.

What ROI to Expect With a Mobile App?

It is a legitimate concern, to know what will be the return on his investment. Developing a mobile app for your business can enable you to acquire customers or improve your efficiency and that of your employees. Let’s take a quick look at the return on investment you can expect.

Productivity and Efficiency: The Mobile Application Saves you Time
Time-saving is one of the main challenges of mobile business applications because it means greater efficiency and saving money. Can you measure how much time you spend on developing a project tracking report or an invoice at the end of your workday? How long do your employees spend on their reports, their balance sheets? Imagine the time it takes to track, report, send documents or expense reports directly during your activity, at your site, at your customer with or without an immediate internet connection … So much time to finally recalculate on other activities.

Many of our customers, SMEs, industrialists or craftsmen, have saved a lot of time thanks to their business applications.

Acquisition of Customers: The App Helps You to Make Your Business Sustainable
Acquiring customers can be a goal, especially if the mobile app is an interactive catalog or a decision-making tool to make the best choice in your products. The number of customers acquired via the mobile application is a very clear indicator of the return on investment that the application brings you.

You can also retrieve data about users of your mobile app, building a base of leads. If the value added of your app is real, it will even be an exceptional tool for promotion and loyalty: you reach your target actually and immediately in a snap thanks to pushing notifications!

Savings: The Mobile Application Saves You on Your Budget Communication
The application is a scalable, customized and adaptable tool that can be modified according to your wishes. You can use this existing support to hit your target, instead of generating new communication media (printing new pads or updating the catalogue). This is not a direct return, but the savings count!

Image and Notoriety: The App Helps You to Make the Buzz
By having your mobile app, you improve your image with your audience. You can benefit from the positive effects of buzz if your mobile app is appreciated and relayed. Even if these returns are not immediately quantifiable, the application helps to heal your image and allows you to show you accessible for your prospects/clients.

How to measure the profitability of its application?

You have or want an application for your business or your marketing strategy. You invest a lot in this project, and your expectations are quite high. One point not to be overlooked: As a mobile app has an even shorter lifespan than a web site, it is essential to make sure it is cost-effective. How?

Why Measure The Profitability Of An App?

When you invest for your business, you want it to pay off. The creation of an application, whether general or not, does not escape this rule. It should be noted that the lifetime of an app is relatively short: 3 years maximum. Next, we must consider a redesign, because it is necessary to adapt to the pace of evolution of smartphones and tablets. And there are always innovations in the field of mobile devices! Measuring the profitability of your mobile application is therefore crucial. If you renew your application every 2 or 3 years or so to “stay in the race”, you need to know that you are investing in communication or marketing tool that generates ROI.

For Each Type Of Application Its Criteria for Measuring Profitability

So how do you calculate the profitability of your mobile app? Depending on the kind of app you choose, there are different ways to consider measuring your ROI:

• • You have an “internal” business application: one of the great advantages of this type of applications is time-saving. You make your observations and other quotes “live” instead of having to spend 45 minutes to retype your notes taken by hand? This allows you to be more productive and manage more demands. You can encrypt this to give you an idea of what your app brings you.
  • You have opted for a “public” business application: this type of app allows you to sell. Whether in B to B or from individuals, your app allows your customers to choose the right reference from your product catalogue. By knowing some sales made through your app, you can find out how profitable it is or not.
  • If your app is intended for the general public, it helps to make you talk. You may be in one of two situations:
    • Your app is paying. Subscription revenue or application downloads will tell you if it brings you profits.
    • Your app is free. Many free applications are based on the freemium model. In this case, downloading is free, but access to high-value content is chargeable. If this is your case, you can do the same kind of calculation as for the paying consumer application.

In any case, you have to set up a measurement system, via your CRM, or even an Excel file. Be aware that it can be partially integrated into the app. For example, it is possible to know if a contact comes from your application.

Hope above tips help you to boost your mobile app ROI and helps you in the boost of your Business or Business Application.

Over the past few decades, cloud has gained immense popularity – courtesy of the increasing demand of data storage and rapid advancement of technology. Due to the latest developments, cloud is no longer a service that only large and medium enterprises can opt for. Instead, it has become accessible for businesses of all sizes. Nowadays, SMBs often rely on cloud based storage for keeping the business critical data safe and secure. It not only helps them save cut the cost of renting or buying physical storage but also enables them to secure all the data, in the best possible way.

Since file sharing, too, is an important task that almost every business has to perform, business owners prefer doing it via cloud. No matter whether it’s about sharing internal files or sending some documents to a client or a third party, doing it through the cloud is considered to be easy and fast. In fact, cloud based file sharing is considered to be an effective alternative for backup solutions. This is especially applicable for organizations who want to ensure flexible file access for all their employees. If you are planning to invest in cloud based file sharing and improve the document management system within your organization, there are certain things that you must know.

• Share files without file servers or VPNs – Most enterprises opt for cloud based file sharing or document management since it allows their employees to access important files from remote locations. They can also access these documents from mobile devices like tablets or smartphones. Apart from this, cloud based file sharing also helps replace the file servers that are placed on the different premises. This advanced feature helps cut the virtual private network costs to a great extent. However, in this system, the process of data storage becomes a little complicated.

• Document sharing is easy in the cloud – Cloud based document sharing is quite different from the conventional process of data sharing. All you need to do is share the access of those documents with the concerned team members. They will automatically get to view the documents and they can also modify the files on their own, based on their requirement. All you have to do is provide them with the due permission so that they can perform the tasks accordingly.
• File syncing to cloud acts as a strong backup solution – In the present scenario, the file syncing platforms have become a prominent solution for data storage. Employees who are working from remote locations, be it from home or be it while on the go, they must be able to access the files from different devices. No matter whether they are accessing the documents from an iPad, an Android device or a desktop, they should face no difficulties when it comes to syncing the files in the cloud.

If you are planning to shift to a cloud based document management solution and not sure whether or not it would be a relevant solution for your business, consider these factors thoroughly and take the right decision for your business.

For many tech workers, northern California isn't quite north enough.

According to a new qualitative survey of 43 high-growth Canadian startups, Donald Trump's election victory last November sparked a surge of immigration to Toronto among US-based engineers and tech entrepreneurs.

"These companies have been preparing for this opportunity for awhile," Karen Greve Young, vice president of partnerships at the Canadian company MaRS, which helps launch startups and compiled the new data, told Business Insider.

As Toronto's tech presence has grown over the last several years, so too has the Canadian government's desire to recruit talent from all over the world, Greve Young said. Most recently, in July, the government amended its Express Entry program of skilled worker visas to fast-track people (and their spouses) coming to work in Canada.

Unlike America's H1-B visa program, which is designed for high-skilled workers and only permits spouses to live — but not work — in the US (and which President Trump has threatened to reduce), Express Entry has become yet another signal Canada wants to be known for a thriving tech scene. ]

MaRS' study asked 43 local startups what kind of interest they've seen from both American and international workers over the last year. Out of that, 18 startups said there were noticeable and surprising upticks in US-based applications, while the remainder either saw no change or didn't keep track of that information. Greve Young believes the numbers could be artificially low.

"I think the others may not have happened to be hiring at that exact moment," she said. "Right now, artificial intelligence is absolutely on fire in Toronto, so we have a lot of companies that will be particularly relevant to these international audiences."

Natasha Flora, director of operations at the software company Figure 1, said people were preparing for a Canadian move even before Trump won in November.

"Before the election, one of our New York employees half-jokingly asked if he could work in the Toronto office if Donald Trump won," Flora told Business Insider. "More recently, one tenured professor in the US approached us about joining Figure 1 in some capacity and leaving behind a secure and highly coveted job simply because she desperately wanted to get her and her children out of the country."

Between January 1 of 2016 and 2017, Figure 1 saw its US-based applications for senior-level roles double. Other companies saw similar jumps. Cyclica, a biotechnology company, saw its US-based applications for development roles increase from 35% in 2016 to 85% in 2017. Prior to last year, chatbot startup Zoom.ai had never had international interest; this year, 78% of software engineer applicants came from outside Canada. The greatest chunk, 31% of people, came from the US.

Trump's win isn't the only reason Canadian startups are seeing US talent trickle in, Greve Young said. Toronto and Vancouver are becoming powerhouses in the tech world. (They recently placed 9th and 14th, respectively, in Business Insider's ranking of the world's most high-tech cities.) 

"Toronto's star has been rising," she said. Trump's victory, Greve Young believes, convinced an entire swath of people who had been considering moving to Canada that the move was actually worth it. "We've seen an inflection point that was sparked by the politics, but we already had a massive increase here."

Silicon Valley may still be the capital of technology and innovation, but it's becoming less of a default for people looking to pursue tech stardom in North America.

"The best global tech talent wants to be where they anticipate the best global tech to be emerging," she said. "And you're also seeing indications that that might not be in the States right now."

SEE ALSO: Silicon Valley firms could start protecting immigrant employees by moving them to Canada

Join the conversation about this story »

NOW WATCH: Alex Trebek reveals the Canadians he admires most

Drip. Drip. Drip. Can you hear it? It’s the sound of economic opportunities going down the drain, a drop at a time. It’s the feel of job prospects dissolving. It’s a young family that can’t afford decent housing or small luxuries for the kids.

Is this the future we’re headed for? Surely we hope not. But, with all the best intentions, those who oppose any expansion of the oil and gas industry in B.C. could deprive many in the province’s present and future workforce of the prosperity they have every reason to expect.

Rather than encourage an industry that would lead the world in supplying the cleanest petroleum products on the planet, the province seems to be on a course to reject a major driver of B.C.’s future prosperity.

There’s an overwhelming scientific consensus that we must reduce our carbon output. At first glance, it would seem that ending our use of oil and gas is the best way to do that.

But to focus totally on ending our fossil-fuel dependency ignores the many ways we can mitigate its ill effects. As the drop in automobile emissions has shown us over the past 50 years, the greatest advances come in incrementally improving present technology rather than abandoning it for a vision that doesn’t yet have its kinks worked out.

If we somehow managed to take every gas-powered vehicle off the road tomorrow, we’d still need as much as 60 per cent of the oil we now produce. For some time to come, we’ll still need fossil fuels to heat our homes. We’ll still need specialty fuels for the aerospace industry and lubricants for every piece of machinery in our economy, from window cranks to nuclear-plant components. It’ll take decades to wean us off plastics. I’m not saying we’ll fail to eliminate our dependence on oil, but I’m confident it will take at least 50 years to do it.

In the meantime, Canada has the opportunity to take a world-leadership role in supplying the cleanest possible product to meet burgeoning Asian demand and, at the same time, create thousands of well-paying energy jobs.

Two projects in Kitimat are excellent illustrations of my point. Including the mining of the oilsands, their product would use less carbon dioxide per barrel than the conventional oil industry in Iraq or Nigeria. Pacific Future Energy promises “near-zero, net-carbon emissions” from its refinery through the use of new technology and carbon capture. Kitimat Clean Ltd. says its facility is “engineered to be the cleanest upgrading and refining site in the world.”

These two projects alone would create 13,000 good, full-time jobs in B.C., not to mention thousands of spinoff jobs.

There are supposed to be thousands of new jobs in green energy to replace the ones we could lose in the oil and gas industry. Where are they? Can someone point to even one $22-billion project (the price of one of the Kitimat refineries) that will take up the slack if we abandon our oil and gas industry?

Let’s not make our young people pay for an all-or-nothing approach toward a complex problem that requires multiple solutions. Canada, with our skilled workforce and advanced technologies, can be a world leader in clean energy. The oil and gas industry needs to be a part of that effort.

Joseph Maloney is international vice-president for Canada of the International Brotherhood of Boilermakers.

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Here's the thing about going on a great vacation: it's delightful, it fills your Instagram with amazing photos and makes your friends jealous, and then it's over, far, far too soon. 

But what if you could reorganize your life and rethink how you travel so you could do more of it—maybe a lot more?

If that sounds appealing, it might be time to check out the Pay What You Want: World Travel Hacker Bundle. It's a bundle of eight online courses, plus over 40 hours of travel life hacks and language lessons—all aimed at making your travels better and easier. So you can do more of them! Read more...

Yes, that’s what I said. You’re trying to steal from your prospects and it’s getting irritating?

What am I talking about? Why am I saying you’re stealing?  Because everytime you send out an email or leave a voicemail asking for “just 15-minutes of your time” without offering something of equivalent value for that time, you’re stealing.

Your prospects time is valuable. It’s probably the most valuable thing they have and you’re asking them to give it to you for what . . . ?

So you can tell them about your product or ask them what keeps them up at night?  Come on!  Cut it out!

Stop stealing people’s time and start adding as much value as you can.  I get it, it can be hard. But if you learn to make it a fair trade, their time for something you can offer that offers them value, you will get a lot more meetings and have a lot more conversations.

Here are a few tools and e-books to help you with this challenge.

How to Create Sales Emails that Actually Get Opened

Rate your emails probability of being opened

The post Salespeople – Stop Trying To Steal From Your Prospects appeared first on A Sales Guy.

The very concept of project management in business has seen a renaissance in recent years. New technology is making it easier for companies to identify the most optimal methods of conducting their internal operations.

However, technology—no matter how advanced—can only do so much. Ultimately, success will always depend on the people at the front lines and the tactics they employ.

PMI’s 2017 Pulse of the Profession report found that for every $1 billion invested in the U.S., $97 million is wasted due to lacking project management performance.

While this number sounds high, it’s actually a 25% decrease from last year.

Regain control with proven project management tactics

Even though the landscape of business is in a constant state of change (both inside and out), there are several tactics that have been helping brands and organizations achieve success for decades. Let’s talk about four of the big ones.

1. Transparent planning

Transparency in the workplace is by no means a new idea. But it seems like its value has been increasingly emphasized in recent years. While many project managers already realize the benefits, the trick is finding the perfect balance. Exactly how in-depth should you go?

Renowned U.S. Army General George S. Patton suggested that good managers don’t constantly try to tell everyone how to do their jobs.

“Never tell people how to do things. Tell them what to do, and they will surprise you with their ingenuity,” he is quoted as saying.

Another great Patton Project Management quote: “If everyone is thinking alike, then somebody isn’t thinking.”

Transparency in your organization should mean keeping everyone on the same page from start to finish, not micromanaging.

In my own experiences, I’ve found excessive micromanagement leads to an uncanny amount of hesitation before every single move. In turn, levels of disconnect happen all too often and result in wasted time and resources.

While many businesses strive for transparency, it’s easier said than done. Nowadays, running a company with remote workers is becoming a lot more common. In fact, a recent survey found that 68% of U.S. workers expect to work remotely in the future. This could make complete transparency much more difficult.

As more and more businesses shift toward mobility, your internal communication needs to do the same. At the drawing board, video conference and webinar tools such as ClickMeeting, Livestorm, and MeetingBurner can keep everyone in sync. With features such as whiteboards, presentation decks, screen sharing, and real-time chat translation, you can collaborate on project planning with complete transparency.

For example, at E2M, we have five employees working in San Diego in addition to our headquartered team in India. There is a 12-hour time difference between us, so we extensively use online meetings and real-time collaboration to keep our disparate teams on the same page.

Regardless of where your workers are, virtual meeting tools make it simple to be looped in on the finer details of all tasks at hand, at all times.

2. Closely measuring and tracking internal progress

When it comes to successful task completion, you should always be looking for bottlenecks and ways to improve the operation. The effectiveness of this concept goes back centuries.

For example, let’s rewind 100 years and look at Henry Ford’s revolutionary assembly line:

An early form of project management technology

Every action throughout the factories was (and still is) examined under a microscope to pinpoint inefficiencies in the system. Each day is viewed as an opportunity to increase production across the board. This very idea has set the tone and template for many modern businesses we know today.

The key is gauging your team’s output to find the weak spots. In 2017, having full visibility into task development will likely require some 21st century-era tools. Luckily, there are plenty of resources available to make this aspect of your operation much easier.

Project management tools such as Workzone, TeamWork, and MavenLink, for example, provide platforms where projects can be easily created, and progress can be monitored by everyone involved.

Workzone, an example of project management software

The best project management tools for small businesses offer a balance between overly complex enterprise tools and simplistic apps that are essentially just to-do lists.

In order to truly see improvement within the internal workflow, you need to get granular with your observations. Look for patterns. Where are the slowdowns occurring?

Your team’s effectiveness is a constant work in progress. The more accurately you track day-to-day responsibilities, the faster your company will grow.

3. Factoring risk into timelines

Simply put, risks are a part of life—both personally and professionally. But poorly managed risks can send negative ripples throughout an organization.

For example, one of the biggest reasons for missed deadlines is ineffective risk management. Case in point, IBM in Australia ran into a disaster starting in 2007 when developing a new payroll application for Queensland Health Department. They originally planned to have the $6 million project completed within a year. Due to a ton of unexpected issues, IBM did not complete the program for several years, and it ended up costing taxpayers approximately $1.2 billion. This debacle has been dubbed the “worst public administration failure in Australia.”

Why did this occur? The original timelines did not have risks factored in!

At the start of a project, it’s incredibly difficult—and sometimes downright impossible—to foresee all the little hiccups and snags that could potentially occur. Therefore, the best thing managers can do is expect the unexpected and plan timelines accordingly.

The first step is to hold a mandatory meeting for everyone involved. In this meeting, you must map out the entire project from start to finish:

• What are the details of each step?
• Who are the external parties involved?
• What is the budget?
• What is the estimated timeframe to completion?

Sean Casto, Founder and CEO of app marketing platform PreApps, knows a thing or two about IT project management in an age when apps are replacing desktop and even web-based software. He has this to say:

“In our field, we depend heavily on third parties. Proper risk management has been a saving grace for us countless times. At the end of the day, the classic saying ‘Plan for the worst, hope for the best’ is one of the most powerful pieces of advice for project managers.”

In a nutshell, preparation is the basis for your risk management system, and the right tools can take the hard work out of the process. Solutions such as LogicGate, Onspring, and RiskGap are can help you automate risk management to improve overall workflow and productivity.

An example of a risk workflow in LogicGate

The need for appropriately planning for disasters has been, and always will be, vital for success in any venture. The best project managers always seem to have a trick up their sleeve for when operations take a wrong turn, but they don’t just pull these answers out of nowhere; their success is the result of careful planning.

4. Ditching top-down management

The nature of the top-down management style runs on the mindset that the boss always knows best. Essentially, it puts 100% of the power with the people holding rank, and demands compliance without question. While this can be a necessary approach in some situations, it can often do more harm than good.

Psychologist Douglas McGregor, who studied leadership styles throughout his career, had two theories he used to explain the concept of management.

The first one, Theory X, represents the belief that subordinates are natural slackers and require a high level of supervision at all times. Top-down bosses do not give their employees the opportunity to provide unique input. In turn, people don’t feel trusted or valued. When this is the case, intrinsic motivation is killed and workers are less inclined to self-start.

On the other hand, Theory Y states that work is a natural part of life, in which workers generally want to succeed. They perform better when they are encouraged to share their ideas and be involved in the process.

Richard Branson has been a strong advocate of the more bottom-up management style for years throughout his ventures in the Virgin Group. He is well known for his ideology that a happy team makes for a successful business.

Branson being Branson

He had this to say at the 2012 World Business Forum:

“Being a good listener is absolutely critical to being a good leader. You have to listen to the people who are on the front line. By putting the employee first, the customer effectively comes first by default, and in the end, the shareholder comes first by default as well.”

As Millennials flood the professional world, one common observations is that they are not shy when it comes to job hopping. If they’re not feeling valued, they have no problem finding the door to their next opportunity. In terms of project management, promoting an open-minded approach can do a lot to keep employees around for the long haul. You never know, maybe their ideas are better than yours!

Your tactics?

A company is only as good as its internal system. While the landscape of conducting business will always be evolving, there are plenty of tried-and-true practices of which will never go out of style. If you don’t already, use these fundamental principles in your next project to keep it chugging along smoothly.

Let us know in the comments about your tips!

Congrats! You applied for a Customer Success position and are now preparing for your first interview. Whether this is your first time interviewing for Customer Success, or you’re an old pro, there are a few things that you should do to prep yourself for success.

Ultimately, what you are trying to solve for in an interview is whether there is a mutual fit for you and for the company. In order to have the best possible experience, be sure to do your due diligence in advance. There are aspects of the job that you should be assessed during the interview, such as company culture, working relationships with potential co-workers and manager, and overall core values. But this article is going to focus on what you should do before you even walk through the door.

Step 1: Research the Product and the Company

One of the most important steps is researching the product and the company. Technically, you should do some of this before applying for the position and then in greater detail once you make it to the next phase.

Customer Success Managers have many responsibilities and the majority of them are heavily focused on driving adoption of a product. You’ll want to demonstrate your abilities to the hiring manager. Give them a small snapshot into what the customer experience would be like with you at the helm.

A few things to think through are:

1. Is this product something that you can see yourself supporting, advocating for, and working with on a day to day basis? You should know this before you go in.
2. Most SaaS tools have a free trial. If you are interviewing for a company that has a free trial but have not used it, it sends a bad message. As a hiring manager, I am always impressed when a candidate comes in and tells me all of the amazing things they were able to do with my product. If a free trial is not available, research as much as you can about the product. Most companies have help centers, demo videos, and marketing collateral floating around on their website. Acquaint yourself with this content.
3. You will be representing this company, what they stand for, and what value they bring on a daily basis. Do you believe in what they are solving for as an organization? Look at review sites such as Glassdoor and G2Crowd. What are employees and customers saying? This is more telling than taking a guess.
4. Most companies will ask you “why us”. Do not just give a generic answer. Instead, hone in on the use case that stands out the most to you and get specific. If you are struggling to answer the “why us” in a passionate way, this may not be the right fit for you.

Step 2: Do Research On Who You Are Interviewing With

Do a quick search on everyone that you are interviewing with. Check out LinkedIn, Google and all of the regular spots. Always know who the customer is and during the interview, the individuals you are interviewing with are technically your customers (as you are theirs as well). Doing your due diligence on who they are and what functions they own will help you tailor your questions to be relevant. This is your opportunity to do a thorough assessment of who you will be working with and how you can mutually benefit each other in the organization. Not sure who you are interviewing with? Ask your recruiting contact for a list of individuals and what functions they own.

Step 3: Build Rapport Quickly

One of the more important things in Customer Success is one’s ability to win people over. Build relationships, understand what motivates people, and offer your help accordingly. Don’t be fake by any means, but definitely build rapport quickly. You generally have 30-60 minutes with each person, which is not a lot of time in the grand scheme of things, so make sure you are focused on the value you both may obtain through this mutual relationship.

Step 4: Customer Success, Customer Support, and Account Management

There is still confusion everywhere on the differences between Customer Support, Customer Success, and Account Management. Understand the industry standard outcomes that each of these roles drive, and how the company that you are interviewing for has aligned them. How the company views these roles will have a direct impact on your day to day responsibilities.

Step 5: Examples of Success

The company is looking for a new member of the Customer Success team. Are you the one? This assessment is made much easier if you bring examples of your success in Customer Success.

A few things that I like to see are:

• Proven churn reduction techniques – Did you reduce churn by 5% on your previous portfolio? Great. Show them how.
• Process you built to improve onboarding experiences – How have you improved your customer onboarding experience? How did you increase adoption and renewal rates? Come with stories and examples.
• Examples of bad fit customers and how those relationships were turned around and/or separated – Yep, it happens to all of us. No matter how hard you try, some customers will never be a good fit. How did you approach that? What did you do with those learnings to help avoid similar situations going forward?
• Upsell and renewal strategy – Did you own upsells and/or renewals? What strategy did you incorporate to help usher your customer base across the finish line?

Step 6: Come with Questions

Last, but certainly not least, come with questions. Lots of smart questions. I touched upon this a little bit above, but this is worth reiterating. Tailor your questions to who you are meeting with, asking irrelevant questions is just as bad as asking no questions. Even if you interview with 6 different people, make sure you have at least two questions for each interviewer. It’s okay to repeat questions if you are looking for different perspectives on the same topic.

As always, this is not all encompassing but should give you a great starting point on preparing for your upcoming interview. The key is to do your homework, come as prepared to your interviews as you would for a customer meeting.

Marketers understand people rarely purchase after their first touch with a website or brand. Consumers need nurturing at multiple stages throughout the purchase funnel.

Lifecycle marketing allows companies to send multiple emails with the goal of educating prospects so they understand what the company offers and how it can help them succeed. In other words, companies use lifecycle marketing to increase the likelihood of purchase, increase retention, and lifetime value.

But as Anthony Nygren, from EMI Strategic Marketing, says: “Lifecycle Marketing isn’t just about sending messages customers might like — it’s about positively influencing their behavior.”

Lifecycle marketing campaigns aren’t one-size-fits-all tactics that you can just plug and play. You must adapt each campaign to your industry, your personas, and your specific goals.

In this post, I’ll share ten examples of companies that use lifecycle marketing to communicate with their subscribers and customers.

Software

Campaign Monitor

A great way to learn about lifecycle marketing is from Campaign Monitor. I’ve been using it to promote my personal blog for some time, and recently, I decided to use it to launch a new email-based personal project of mine.

After I signed up, I immediately received a welcome email: it starts with a warm thank you that includes some social proof. Then, it recommends three clear ways to get started. Since it’s common people have questions before getting started with any tool, Campaign Monitor also offers customer support help in case you need it.

After I sent my first campaign, I was reminded to analyze the results, which was both helpful and useful.

A day after I sent my campaign (which had been scheduled), I received a second email with a direct link to the analytics reporting, and a link to Worldview and the iOS app.

E-Commerce

Allbirds

Allbirds is a shoe company from New Zealand that sells wool shoes that are all the rage with tech folks, millennials, and nearly everyone else.

The first email I received was a brief explanation of what they do and what they stand for. The email shared the company’s values rather than just talking about the product itself. They talk about their shoes, but from a value perspective (environmental sustainability, benefits of their shoes) and not about specific features. What I love about Allbirds is their values, so it makes sense they talk about them before they talk about their shoes.

After I submitted my order, I received a standard order confirmation email. Simple and effective.

After my order shipped, I received another email providing me the tracking number.

What I didn’t receive is a product review email or education about the importance of wool and sustainability. It would have been great if I had, but so far they are a small company and their lifecycle marketing campaign is simple and effective.

Bodybuilding.com

Bodybuilding.com is an online retailer specializing in dietary supplements, sports supplements, and bodybuilding supplements.

After I signed up for their newsletter, the first email I received was a thank you, with simple 1-2-3 steps: browse their most popular products, see what new content they have, and find a training plan.

A few days later, I received an extensive news update with information about training, nutrition, and motivational content. Lastly, it contained a promotion.

The last email I received was purely sales-focused. It contained a large array of products available with a discount, mostly focused on pre-workout products.

All the subsequent emails I received were either news-focused or sales-focused.

Just Eat

Just Eat is one of the largest online food delivery companies in the world with a market valuation of over $5 billion.

After signing up for their service, I received a welcome email with my login credentials. This email could be even more effective if it recommended places close to my location, steps to order for the first time, and FAQs, among other things.

After I placed my first order, I received an email order confirmation with the details of the order, including the time of delivery, the food ordered, and the shipping destination.

A few hours after I received the order, I received an email with an offer for my next order to incentivize a repeat purchase.

A day after my order, I received an email asking for a review. This is a smart move, as reviews are one of the most effective content types people use to make a purchase.

Nonprofit

Note: The example emails were sourced from Really Good Emails, Pinterest, and Charity Email Gallery.

Charity Water

Charity Water is a nonprofit organization bringing clean, safe drinking water to people in developing countries.

The first email they send after sign up says “Welcome, world changer.” It touches on one of Charity Water’s user goals: helping to change the world for the better. The image is quite emotional and shows the results of a potential donation, which motivates potential donors. It also uses the typical 1-2-3 steps we have seen, with three recommended actions to take: learning more about how they fund the projects, how they prove their donations, and how they rely on local experts.

The second email is simple and specific: donate water today and help someone in need. It’s simple but works well given they know their subscribers care about the cause and it is tied to Giving Tuesday, a specific nonprofit holiday.

The third email focuses on stories of children who’ve done the impossible to donate to the charity. It’s inspiring and emotional, which works great for nonprofits like Charity Water. By focusing on the importance of their cause, they persuade people to donate.

American Red Cross

American Red Cross is an important nonprofit organization which provides emergency assistance, disaster relief, and education in the United States.

The first email engages new subscribers with the values of the organization. They also set the expectations for you can expect by being a subscriber which is a great email marketing best practice. Surprisingly, they offer a discount for their online store, in which they sell emergency and first aid kits, among other related products. They close the first email with links to follow them on their social media channels, to donate, and volunteer.

The following two emails sent are focused on donation campaigns. Both emails mention other donation and volunteering opportunities, and news about their organization. Both emails are good, as they are true to their organization’s goals (i.e., to get donations and volunteers).

WWF

The World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) is one of the largest nonprofits in the field of the wilderness preservation and environmental protection.

The first email is a perfect example of a well-thought out welcome email. It starts with a powerful message about protecting elephants and how you can help achieve the goal. Then, WWF suggests a specific action: talking about why you want to help them protect the earth. Thanks to the power of commitment and consistency, this small action makes people more likely to continue volunteering and donating. It closes with the signature of an executive of the organization, which makes it even more compelling and powerful.

The second email is focused on making a donation to an important cause. Once again, they start with a visual picture. Triggering imagination and emotions help move people towards action. If they focused on the rational side (e.g. “you should donate because there are 1,000 turtles left), people may have a harder time doing something about the problem. They focus on the why (the purpose), not the what (the problem).

The third email focused on selling merchandise. What makes it effective they package up the merchandise in the form of a donation and focus it around a holiday.

Travel and Hospitality

Agoda

Agoda is travel fare aggregator selling destinations around the world.

After signing up, I didn’t receive a welcome email. But after booked my first trip for a hostel in Singapore, I received a booking confirmation email. Besides the standard booking information, Agoda also suggests tasks for managing my booking details, customer service, and their site’s mobile apps.

A few days after my stay in the hostel, I received a second email asking for a review. This email is very simple and focused on encouraging me to write a review. They also explain how to write a review, which made it easier for me do so.

Booking

Booking.com is one of the world’s largest travel fare aggregator website and travel metasearch engine for the travel industry.

The first email I received wasn’t a welcome email, but a booking confirmation I made after opening an account with them. The email is long and detailed; most of the email is a mix of booking information and suggestions for changes in the booking. They mention everything about the reservation, including details of the hotel and its reservation rules, and their own rules for changes, cancellations, and returns.

Later that day, I received a discount offer for other trips close to Kuala Lumpur, the location of the hotel I booked. This was one of the many offers I’ve received since then. That same day I received a referral link to give out to my friends, which would help them both get a discount on a reservation. In this last email, they mention how the referral process works and why it matters, which makes it easier for me to use the referral link.

A day later, I received yet another offer and a reminder of the booking details which was a few days away. They also suggested attractions in the city, which is useful for most tourists.

One day after my booking ended, they sent me an email asking for a review. After I gave a review, I received a thank you email. Both emails were simple and focused on the review.

AirAsia

AirAsia is one of the largest low-cost airlines in the Southeast Asia market.

The first email I received was a welcome email, which like most of these emails, focus on giving help to new subscribers. In this case, they explain a few simple ways to accumulate points and how to redeem them, how to make it easier to book and log in. Overall, a useful email that helps a potential customer be more efficient in their bookings.

After I had booked a flight, I received a booking confirmation email. It’s simple and focused on the most basic links to manage my booking and check in. A few days before the flight, I received another email with the travel itinerary and the things I needed to bring to the airport.

Once I made the flight, I received a customer satisfaction survey with the option of loyalty points. The award ended up being enough incentive for me to take the survey.

Wrap up

The companies you’ve seen in this post come from completely different industries and all benefit from the use of lifecycle marketing using email and automation.

Free-Photos / Pixabay

According to Merriam Webster, a “coach” is “one who instructs or trains.” Such a broad definition leaves a lot open to interpretation, making it easy to see why there are so many different styles of coaching, especially when it comes to sales.

For “instruction” and “training” to be effective, sales managers must find a way to get reps to listen and take what they learn in their 1:1s and apply it to their day-to-day activities. Of course, this is much easier said than done, especially when you consider the following statistics:

– Only 12% of learners apply what they learn in training to their actual jobs
– 62% of managers believe that they are not doing a good job meeting learners’ needs
– Ineffective training costs companies $13.5 million a year per 1,000 employees

Clearly, for every successful sales coach, there are dozens of mediocre or misled managers. So how do you ensure that the golden nuggets bestowed upon your reps aren’t simply going in one ear and out the other? Read on for three harsh yet honest truths about why your coaching and sales 1:1s may not be as impactful as you would like.

You’re talking too much.

“But how do you instruct and train if you don’t talk?” you might ask. Good point, but think of it this way: would you rather a rep make 1,000 calls and book one meeting, or make 100 calls and book ten meetings? The same mentality of quality over quantity applies when providing feedback in your sales 1:1s.

Too often, sales managers fall into one of the below traps during 1:1s, causing them to spend too much time talking and not enough time listening:

1) One-sided Conversations: The most negative of all coaching tactics is to talk at a rep, rather than with him or her. During these conversations, managers spout off about all of the things they would have done differently if they were in the reps’ shoes, offering subjective feedback that provides little value.
2) Performance Evaluations: One of the most important things to remember about coaching is that it is not a performance evaluation. Sales 1:1s should never be spent providing play-by-plays of past behaviors and rehashing everything a rep did right or wrong.

To avoid become “that” manager, it’s important to listen more than you speak. This will allow you to uncover the true challenges and issues that your reps may be having, and provide more strategic and valuable advice. Before providing feedback, try this quick litmus test: is what you’re about to say going to contribute to your rep’s career development or performance improvement? If not, save your input and wait for a more impactful moment to speak.

You haven’t taught your reps to fish.

As the saying goes, “Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish, and you feed him for a lifetime.” Fishing aside, this same sentiment applies when it comes to sales coaching. When sales 1:1s are spent reviewing reports and rehashing metrics, reps can quickly become passive participants.

The best sales managers ensure that their reps have access to key reports, and focus initial one-on-ones on teaching them how to effectively analyze their sales data and generate actionable insights on their own. Once this foundation has been laid, subsequent meetings can be spent coaching to the information that has been uncovered and helping reps optimize performance.

Fostering this level of rep accountability encourages reps to actively engage in the type of problem solving and strategy that should take place during these meetings. When your reps feel invested in managing their own performance, they self-diagnose issues, come to 1:1s prepared to talk about solutions and listen carefully to your advice.

You have a reputation as a micro-manager.

Have you ever felt micromanaged by someone? Anyone who has pretty much knows that this is the worst feeling ever. Constantly being put under a microscope and having your every move questioned and critiqued is nothing short of a nightmare.

According to the founder of The New Sales Coach and author of two best-selling books Mike Weinberg, managers get this reputation by focusing too much on rep activities, and not enough on results. “The key to holding reps accountable without micromanaging is that you start with results, and then you dig into the pipeline,” he revealed in a recent interview. “And if the pipe is healthy, full of opportunities and moving along, you never ask about a rep’s activity.”

Weinberg goes on to say that if a rep’s pipeline and results are not up to par, then it’s time to dig into their activities. And while this may feel like micro-management, at this point, it is constructive coaching. In this case, Weinberg suggests being upfront and transparent by telling this rep, “‘I hear you, and I don’t like doing this either. Once you improve your results and fill your pipeline, I won’t ask you, but until then, I will keep asking. Only you can change the way this meeting goes by doing your part of the job.’”

What Kind of Coach Will You Be?

It has been reported that effective sales coaching can increase win rate by as much as 25% – how cool would that be!? Don’t just dream of becoming this type of coach; be one by getting as close to your reps’ needs as possible. Following the tips proposed in this blog post is a great first step. Next, try downloading this free guide: 5 Reasons Why Your Reps Don’t Want to Use CRM (But Should!).

We started this blog a little under eight years ago, and you may have noticed there are a couple of terms we’ve used from time to time: “marketing funnel” and “sales funnel.”

But we’ve never done a blog post focused on the marketing-sales funnel, and how they relate to your inbound sales strategy. It’s time to answer the question…

What is the marketing funnel?

You might hear of this concept referred to as the “marketing funnel” or the “lead funnel” but it’s all part of the same journey. Think of it in driving terms: You’ve switched from Interstate 276 to Interstate 76, but you’re still on the Pennsylvania Turnpike.

In this case, the journey is from prospect to lead to customer, and the funnel is the road they take.

The funnel has three stages:

1. The top of the funnel

Otherwise known as the “awareness” stage, this is the point in which your lead is trying to solve a problem, and they’ve come across the content you’ve created in their quest for a solution.

If your audience is like most people, they conduct online research before making a purchase. Roughly 80 percent of people research before they buy, and people get through 60 percent of the buying process before they’re ready to talk to someone about their purchase.

Today’s customers are looking for answers relating to the problem that sparked their search. One of the best ways to get their attention at this stage is through high-value content such as blog posts, whitepapers and eBooks, along with other educational materials.

There’s no guarantee at this point that they’ll buy from you, but those leads who do find your content useful at this stage may continue to the middle of the funnel.

2. The middle of the funnel

When a prospect arrives in the middle of the funnel, you’ve gotten their attention. We typically refer to this as the “consideration” stage of the buyer’s journey: they know what their problem is and they are considering solutions.

This is a critical stage. It’s where potential customers begin to weed out solutions that aren’t a good fit. And it’s where you’ll need to show why your solutions are the ideal option. This is where you nurture your leads, and try to build trust between your brand and your audience.

That’s why the content you create here should demonstrate why you are experts in your field, through things like webinars and expert guides.

And nurturing leads through this stage of your inbound sales strategy pays off. Nurtured leads yield, on average, a 20 percent increase in sales opportunities.

3. The bottom of the funnel

The “decision” stage is where someone makes a purchase decision. It doesn’t necessarily mean they’re going to purchase from you, but if they’ve gotten this far, they at least see something in you that speaks to them.

At this point, they just need a small push. The right content with the right call-to-action can make all the difference in turning this lead into a customer.

This is the stage where customers are more open to talking to someone from your sales team, so the content you share with them can include free trials and project demonstrations, as well as case studies and product literature.

geralt / Pixabay

Maybe you’ve heard the term ‘maturity assessment’ floating around in the sales and marketing departments…but you’re not quite sure what exactly it is.

Let’s clear that up.

For the user, a maturity assessment is essentially a resource that helps indicate whether or not a certain solution or strategy is right for you based on the answers provided within the assessment.

For the business, it’s a discovery tool that helps better qualify leads based on responses within the assessment – to see if they’re “ready.

Let’s look at these in a bit more detail, explore the advantages of using them, and examine some real-life examples, too.

The Value of the Maturity Assessment

As we touched on earlier, the maturity assessment is a resource that provides value both to the participant and for the business distributing the assessment.

Prospects that complete an assessment enter their unique input and are able to learn about their needs, pain points, and gaps in service through their own self-discovery process. Overall, this makes the lead education process feel more organic and more personalized, as it’s not a formal sales pitch – and it’s a highly personalized experience, too.

For example: A business owner interested in learning about VoIP options might complete an assessment to find out if they currently have the right phone solution in place, to see if they have enough bandwidth to take on an upgrade, or to see how they stack up against other businesses already using this technology.

For marketers, these assessments are helpful because they allow sales teams to spot super MQLs who are ready to be sent to the sales team as ideal customers.

Maturity assessments can be big contributors for middle-funnel content – a vital lead scoring opportunity that can help the sales department better prioritize leads to follow up with.

For example: Based on the responses to one of these assessments, sales teams can categorize respondents who fit the super MQL criteria and quickly follow up with them to continue the lead nurturing process.

In some instances, this might mean entering these leads into a specific email segment so that automated email campaigns can continue the lead nurturing process via a drip campaign.

Now that we understand the value behind maturity assessments, let’s look at some examples from companies who are leveraging these resources to understand what they look like in action.

Examples of Maturity Assessments

IT Assessment

In the example below from Service Now, we can see how a person completing this assessment is actively learning about their unique IT needs, while also sharing important customer data at the same time.

The beautiful thing about this is that both parties are getting value out of the engaging, interactive experience. There’s no pushy sales pitch being made, and the customer is being honest about their needs and service gaps. Win-win.

Image source

Credit Management Assessment

In this maturity assessment from Euler Hermes, participants are learning whether or not strategic credit management could be helpful for their business. As the user works through the questions, they’re actually scoring themselves as prospective leads – but they’re also learning about their pain points and gathering helpful information along the way. The information is flowing two ways, not just one.

Image source

Website Assessment

Hubspot conducts a free website analysis for those who are interested in learning two things: 1) How well their website currently performs, and, 2) Where improvements can be made.

Since Hubspot is a website platform, this is a fantastic way for them to provide valuable information to potential leads in exchange for customer data. From here, they can follow up with personalized marketing messages based on the results of the assessment and nurture leads until they’re ready to convert.

Image source

How to Make Your Own Maturity Assessment in 5 Steps

Maybe at this point, you’re thinking, “This all sounds great! I’d love to build my own maturity assessment…but where do I begin?”

Step 1: Identifying Top Sales Qualifying Criteria

There are a few key sales qualifying criteria you’ll want to include in your assessment to help gather the right information you need for the sales and marketing teams.

Often times, the best way to find out what you should include is to conduct your own assessment of sorts:

Talk to your sales team. Ask them about what information is essential to them to properly qualify leads. Find out which questions are asked right at the beginning of demo calls as well as whom the ideal buyer is/ what their situation looks like.

Reach out to current customers. Gather feedback from your current customers and look for patterns in what made them choose your solution. There may be common pain points you solve for them or benefits you offer that many of your ideal clients need to hear about.

Step 2: Create a Value Exchange

The strength of any piece of interactive content, maturity assessments included, is to deliver an immediate and valuable result for participants. That result could be a quiz score, a calculated metric, or, in this case, an evaluation.

Let’s look three at different B2B examples of the value proposition along with the follow through:

HotSchedules, a project management and e-learning solution

Campaign Creators, a digital marketing agency

ServiceNow, an IT solutions company

The results page is unique to the participant based on their answers, and shouldn’t be a one-size-fits all. If the result is the same no matter what, repeat users will realize this, and you’ll lose credibility.

Even better is to sync the participant’s result to a specific piece of follow-up content or CTA. If they are an advanced prospect, maybe a demo request. If they fall in in the middle, suggest longer-form content on a subject that would be helpful.

Essential tip: Lead forms should be placed directly before the results page. This allows you to collect answer data before asking for contact information, but also builds momentum for the participant to complete the form and see their result.

Step 3: Make the Design Simple and Brief

Because a maturity assessment is a representation of your product and how it can help your audience, it needs to be on brand. Keeping the color scheme and imagery simple and in service to the experience will help your conversion numbers.

That doesn’t mean there can’t be added graphics or animations to make the experience more engaging, but it needs to be secondary to the questions and answers that are being presented.

The key to maturity assessment copy is keeping it brief and conversational. This includes both number of questions and the word count on questions and answers.

Best practice for assessments is to keep question count between four and eight. Anything more than that will test the participants’ patience and lead to drop off rates.

For copy tone, let’s look at HotSchedules one more time.

While the question is direct and on the formal side, the answers are colloquial and match what a person might actually answer if they were talking to another human instead of, well, a piece of content. This helps create a more interesting experience for participants and drives them to the results page.

Notice, also, how HotSchedules uses a progress bar at the bottom of the content to indicate how many more questions are coming. This is also a high-converting tactic as participants are not left to wonder if this assessment goes on for another 75 questions or just one more.

Step 4: Marketing Automation/ Lead Scoring Tool

Before launching your maturity assessment, make sure it is hooked into to your marketing automation, CRM, or lead scoring platform.

While this process varies between different interactive content platforms, it is an essential step in content marketing scalability. For some platforms, it’s as simple as filling in a few fields.

Other platforms don’t always have this functionality, which can prove time-consuming or even wasteful if the data is going into a vacuum, or relying on complex and time-consuming data merges.

Here’s an example of how that might look with SnapApp’s marketing edition of Which Game of Thrones House Are You?

While not a full-on maturity assessment, we do include some qualifying questions in a more fun and seasonal experience.

Which syncs with our marketing automation platform for lead scoring and follow-up content.

Step 5: Promotion and Display

The last step: promote!

Just because this is a more middle-funnel content asset as opposed to top-funnel, doesn’t mean it shouldn’t see the light of day. Promoting assessments is actually easier than traditional blogs or static content because they invite user-participation.

On social, you can challenge your audience to benchmark themselves. Here’s example from ServiceNow:

On your website, you can help present the assessment early, right on the homepage, to identify hot leads.

Check out how Paycor uses a qualifying assessment on their website:

In the blue bar, they ask visitors a question immediately that both helps them identify the best solution, but also pulls in data about their company size.

Using maturity assessment on landing pages instead of a lead form can accomplish the goal of lead capturing, but also boost the data you receive. At the end of the experience, users get the ebook, or webinar, that the landing page was serving.

Leverage the Maturity Assessment

We know that lead scoring is already being used by 86% of marketers, but the question is: How can those efforts be fine-tuned for better, more efficient results? It seems that content like interactive assessments is certainly part of the answer to that question, thanks to their ability to gather customer data in a passive, engaging format.

Now is the time to start thinking about how you can build your own assessment to bolster your sales in the year ahead. By gathering the right customer data up front, you can vastly improve the efficiency and effectiveness of this department and generate impressive ROI (which are both always good things.)

Media can be the great differentiator. It can take your LinkedIn profile from ho-hum to phenomenal—and compel viewers to contact you about your products and services, job opportunities, and more.

My most recent LinkedIn User Survey showed that less than half of the respondents are taking advantage of this powerful profile feature. Don't tell anyone at LinkedIn that I said this, but I think it's so good that they could probably charge for it.

In a nutshell, prominently displaying media or links to media on your profile is an awesome way to share your professional brand with the whole world. And if you're part of the 52% of users who aren't taking advantage of this incredible feature, I doubt that's because you don't think it would be helpful and pretty cool but because you can't figure out how to do it or you don't know what you should share. So let me help you with both.

How do I add media to my profile?

You can add media to three sections on your LinkedIn profile—Summary, each Job Experience entry, and each Education entry—and it will be displayed at the bottom of the selected section. These entries not only add additional information about you, but they add a certain level of visual appeal and interest to your profile.

It's as simple as clicking the pencil icon for the section you want to add the media to and scrolling down to the Upload or Link button. Then cut and paste the link or upload the media file. For more detailed instructions, follow the steps outlined in the LinkedIn Help Center by clicking here.

What type of media should I share?

Like most of the information you share on your profile, it depends on your specific LinkedIn strategy. Here are some suggestions of what you might want to include, and I've categorized them by some pretty typical LinkedIn strategies.
.

Improving your overall branding and market presence
.

• Pictures, slide presentations, pdf files of some of your work samples
• Articles or videos where you are mentioned
• Certificates or awards you have received
• Articles you have written or coauthored
• Link to your personal blog or other social media pages
  .

Generating sales leads
.

• Slide presentation of your company's capabilities, products and services offered, and markets you serve
• Articles or videos of your products in action
• Case studies or testimonials from your customers
• Registration page for upcoming events
• Link to sign up for your company newsletter or other free resources (ebook, tip sheets, white papers, etc.)
• Link to your company's blog or other social media pages
  .

Finding a job
.

• Upload of your resume (traditionally written or video)
• Pdf upload of letters of recommendation
• Video links or uploads of examples of your work
• Detailed list of references
• Personality test results or strengths-related information
• Slide show summarizing your career or job experiences
  .

Helping your favorite nonprofit or school
.

• Videos or articles that mention the organization
• Links to register for upcoming events
• Articles highlighting accomplishments of members, alumni or students
• Uploads or links to examples of student projects
• Link to sign up for the organization's mailings
• Link to a form for updating alumni contact information

Now that you know how to add media and what types of media you should share, take a few minutes right now and add some media to your profile so I can not only read about your accomplishments and interests but I can also see them. Trust me—a few keystrokes can greatly enhance your professional image.

If you'd like me to show you other hard-to-find, "can't miss" LinkedIn features, help you formulate your personal LinkedIn strategy, plus provide an in-depth critique of your LinkedIn profile, sign up for a one-hour, one-on-one consultation with me for the significantly reduced rate of $175. (This is a limited-time offer.)

Book your personal session today at https://calendly.com/waynebreitbarth/special1on1linkedinconsult.

The post Here is a Really Easy Way to Spruce Up Your LinkedIn Profile appeared first on Wayne Breitbarth.

Most businesses have marketing problems, but these 7 marketing problems can tank your marketing efforts if you’re not careful.

We’ve all been there.

You throw dollars and time at marketing your business, reading the latest advice from the gurus, piecing together how the newest social media networks are supposed to work, downing bad coffee and stale pastries at networking mixers…

And, at the end of the month, you’re not really sure exactly where your time and money went and if any of it actually generated a lead or sale for your business.

This is what I like to call “meh marketing.”

Yes, you know you need to do SOMETHING, but nothing seems to be helping you actually grow your business, so you’re left feeling just a little sick to your stomach and exhausted by the idea of putting more time and money in next month.

(We help our clients with their marketing problems by analyzing their marketing and suggesting a strategy — and we have a DIY version of our entire process. It’s called the Analyze Your Marketing ebook, and you can learn more by clicking the button.)

Diagnose Your Marketing Problems

The first step to marketing that actually generates leads and sales is to diagnose the marketing problems you’re currently facing.

Most “meh marketing” stems from one or more of the following marketing problems.

1. The Shotgun Effect

Do you have different strategies brewing in your head all the time?

Maybe you bounce around and try several social networks, throw out some Google ads, run a radio spot, and then, just to see if it works, you run a Groupon or some other offer.

Do you have a hard time explaining what you’re doing in marketing, because the answer really depends on the day of the week and what idea you came up with this morning?

You may be suffering from the shotgun effect.

Sure, 80% of success is just showing up, and man, you are showing up all over the place, so good job, right?

But you’ve got to show up consistently.

Sporadic, off-the-cuff, zero-consistency marketing activities won’t win you shit.

2. Paralysis by Analysis

Or, maybe your problem is that you worry SO much about doing things the “right” way that you just never do anything.

You’ve poured hours into research and planning and scoping out competitors, but you’re afraid to just pull the trigger on your own strategies and campaigns.

3. The Cheap-O

Social media has killed the marketing budget.

There’s a myth so many business owners and marketing directors have been led to believe… that if you work hard enough, you can successfully market your business online without spending any actual dollars.

Let me tell you, that’s just not the case. Nothing in this world is free, and a successful marketing strategy requires a healthy budget.

4. Resource Deprived

“No man is an island,” right?

No woman either for that matter.

Without the right team of people in place, your marketing problems will always pile up beyond your ability to handle them. If you can’t dedicate the time and energy yourself, it’s time to hire either a dedicated employee (or team) or an agency.

If you’re constantly scrambling to keep up or just not tackling the marketing tasks because they seem too daunting, it’s probably time to stop doing it alone.

5. Bright & Shiny Syndrome

Similar to the shotgun effect, the bright and shiny syndrome makes it virtually impossible to focus on a strategy and see it through.

There’s always a new network, an awesome idea, a better tool, or a guru pushing a method.

The temptation to take a left turn and leave your current strategy in the dust is SO strong.

But, if you’re constantly starting something new, how will you ever know what really works for your business?

6. Zero Accountability

I am absolutely baffled by the amount of time and money that gets poured into marketing with no idea if any of the marketing activities actually generate a return.

It can be complicated to understand the ROI of different marketing activities, but that doesn’t mean it should be a free-for-all.

A good marketing plan should always include a way to track what’s working and what’s not.

7. Poor Implementation

Even the best strategy will fail when it is poorly implemented.

Inconsistent activities, poor design, terrible content, and off-brand interactions will never generate the leads and sales you expect — these are serious marketing problems no business owner should have to deal with.

Hiring or working with professionals will elevate you from your competition and make your brand stand out. Well implemented strategies will cost you much less over time as you see results faster.

And investing in the expertise and experience of a professional marketer or agency will yield a much higher return on your marketing investments.

The Cure to Meh Marketing Problems

Whew! That was pretty depressing, huh?

With so many ways to go wrong in your marketing efforts, how does anyone get it right?

Here’s a peek at how we develop and implement marketing strategies that help our clients win more business.

1. Know Yourself and Your Target Market

Before we even begin to think about a strategy, we first get to know the brand and their target audience.

Each business has their own unique voice and key personality traits. Every marketing strategy and tactic should support the brand and how they want to be perceived by the general public.

The target market is one of the most important aspects of creating any marketing strategy.

It is absolutely key to understand exactly what motivates people to purchase your products and services; what fears do they face that you help eliminate, what pain are they in and how do you help them feel better?

What does “success” or “winning” look like to the target market, and how can you set up your products and services to perfectly guide them to that success?

2. Set Your Goals

Once we have a crystal clear picture of the business and who they are targeting, we set goals.

What, specifically, does the business expect to have happen as a result of their marketing strategy?

3. Create a Plan Based on Reality

Then, it’s time to do some research.

We look into everything we can to learn about what the business has done in the past and how effective (or not effective) it has been.

We study their analytics and campaign reports to find out how their marketing is actually performing.

We also look at competitors and successful businesses marketing to the same audience.

What can we learn about what they do? What should we emulate? What should we refrain from?

We gather information about the target audience through surveys, reports, and accumulated data to understand them as best we can.

Then, finally, after all the groundwork is laid, we create a specific strategy outlining exactly what marketing activities need to take place over the next 6–12 months based on their goals.

That strategy is complete with key tracking metrics, a method for tracking those metrics, and suggested checkpoints to ensure their marketing is on track for success.

Our most successful clients either have a fabulous in-house team, or they hire us to implement the strategy for them.

A stellar strategy with no one to implement it won’t do anything to grow a business.

Ready to Give Your Marketing Problems a Kick in the Teeth?

If you’re sick of meh marketing and you’re ready to up your game, we can help.

Our Analyze Your Marketing ebook gives you the plan you need to stand out in your market, start generating the leads you need, smack down your marketing problems, and close sales faster.

Click the button to learn more about the ebook.

And give your marketing problems a kick in the teeth.

Get the Marketing Strategy PDF

Conversion rate optimization (CRO) for SaaS companies can be both more forgiving and more challenging when compared to CRO for a single landing page, product page, or checkout process.

Here’s why:

SaaS has different business cycles, purchasing decisions, and key metrics. The free-trial-to-subscription business model means you need to be constantly “converting” – when your customers see the invoice at every billing cycle, they’ll decide if they want to continue the subscription.

CRO For SaaS is More Forgiving

The SaaS customer lifecycle means you’re constantly interacting with your customers, giving you multiple touchpoints to build trust and relationships with them.

There are more opportunities to test and refine your branding, messaging, and user interfaces to optimize results across the board.

In addition, the multiple touchpoints mean that incremental improvements in the individual stages can multiply to deliver a substantial increase in the overall conversion rate.

On the other hand…

CRO For SaaS is More Challenging

The flip side of having these multiple touchpoints in the customer journey is that there are more moving pieces – every customer touchpoint could either lead the users further down the customer lifecycle or cause them to discontinue the service.

This means CRO is no longer just for the landing page or checkout pages. It needs to be treated as a mainstream discipline that’s applicable to all stages of interaction with customers.

The approach to optimizing SaaS conversion rate requires a strategic approach, starting from understanding the complexity of every single step in the customer lifecycle:

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Don’t be intimidated by the complexity of CRO for SaaS – instead, use it to your advantage to strategically build trust and relationships with your customers every step of the way by implementing these 7 CRO strategies:

1. Identify Strategic Touchpoints and KPIs

The relatively complex customer lifecycle for a SaaS business model means you have to plan out and measure interactions before users sign on, as well as further down the relationship, (e.g. 90 days after signing up).

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Start by mapping out how your customers are interacting with your brand, and identify key performance metrics (KPIs) to optimize:

1. Attract high-quality leads to sign up for free trial
2. Turn free trial customers into active users with a well-designed onboarding process
3. Convert users from free trial to paid plans
4. Reduce churn rate with continual customer support
5. Encourage upgrades
6. Cultivate loyalty and advocacy that leads to referrals

2. Generate High-Quality Leads

To capture leads, you’d most likely be directing traffic to a landing page where customers sign up for your free trial.

You can tweak your landing page design till the cows come home, however if the traffic you’re driving there is not a good match for the offer, your conversion rate is not going to budge.

You need to generate high-quality leads that are most likely to convert. You can do so by:

• Driving high-quality traffic by making sure that the messaging of the traffic source is helping you attract the attention of your ideal customers.
• Creating multiple versions of the landing page, each with a slightly different messaging or emphasis to match that of the traffic source in order to deliver a coherent user experience, which will help increase conversion.
• Now that you’re getting the right people to your landing page, you can optimize its layout and copy to make sure it’s turning traffic into leads.

3. Activate Free-Trial Users

Getting people to sign up for your free trial is just the beginning. Did you know that when people sign up for a free trial of a SaaS application or software, 40% to 60% of them will only use it once and never return?

If they don’t stick around to use your product, you won’t have the chance to convert them into paid customers.

You need to design an engaging experience for your free trial users to get them “hooked” the moment they sign on:

• Engage users right away – serve up a couple of hands-on tasks that users can complete so they can experience success with your software.
• Identify the “aha” moment – the “tipping point” at which using your product becomes a habit for your customers – and take the users to that point as quickly as possible. E.g. Twitter found out that once users are following 30 people, most would be active forever. They design the first-run user experience so those who sign up for an account will follow 30 people quickly possible.
• Keep the user interface simple – don’t make your customers read a 40-page how-to manual or jump through a 16-step account set up process, (hint: they won’t).
• Inspire users to stick around – use simple demo videos or a product tour to showcase the full capability of your product without overwhelming your customers.

4. Turn Free-Trial Users Into Paying Customers

This is a key stage in the customer journey. How successful you are at converting users from free trial to paid plans translates into how profitable you can be.

To optimize the outcome, implement a well-designed customer onboarding process that encourages those who sign up for a free trial to continue engaging with your application:

• Move users along the customer journey with highly relevant content that maps to their progress and success milestones, delivered via life cycle emails, in-app messaging, or even personal emails or phone calls.
• Encourage users to integrate other apps with their accounts, or upload their data or contact lists so they get more involved with your software.
• Make transitioning into paid plans as frictionless as possible.
  Review your metrics and see if there’s any particular point at which users tend to drop off – you can look into improving the user experience of that step to increase conversion rate.
• For many SaaS products, a clear feature and pricing comparison chart will help facilitate the customers’ decision-making process.

5. Reduce Churn Rate By “Constantly Converting”

Every time a customer gets billed, he’s making a decision to continue paying for the usage of your product.

In a sense, you’re constantly “converting” users by making sure they’re getting value out of being your customers.

Not to mention, you need your customers to stick around long enough so the customer lifetime value exceeds that of the acquisition cost.

To cultivate customer loyalty, you need to continually communicate with them, build trust and relationship by adding value, and provide excellent customer support:

• Offer relevant content to increase trust and relationship. E.g. guides to help users get the most out of your software, a repository of relevant resources, or bonus customer-only training or events.
  
  
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• Design a comprehensive customer support system and provide omni-channel customer care, to make sure customers are having an outstanding experience at all times.

6. Encourage Upgrades With Customer Communications

Sometimes you just have to remind your customers how awesome you are! Seriously, to be “constantly converting” you need to regularly reiterate the value that your product delivers so your customers will stay on and even upgrade to higher-level plans:

• Implement a customer communication plan to share new functionalities or creative ways to use existing features on a regular basis.
• Conduct survey to find out what your customers want, and let them know when you launch these new features (this may entice some customers to upgrade if their dream features are available in higher level plans.)
• Offer free trials of features available in higher-level plans to entice customers to upgrade.
• Reach out to customers with a personal email or phone call to help them get the most out of your product. When they understand the values your product delivers, they’re more likely to upgrade.

7. Convert Customers Into Advocates

Turning your current customers into advocates can help boost your conversion rate.

Not only will you be getting high-quality leads at lower cost but these leads are also more likely to sign up as customers.

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To optimize conversion rate of referral marketing, make it as easy as possible for your customers to share your SaaS product with their family and friends:

• Include referral prompts in all interaction points, such as in-app, in email, on social media, and on website.
• Incentivize and clearly communicate the reward.
• Streamline the referral process so your customers can share your product with as little effort as possible.
• Reinforce success by letting customers know they’ve earned a reward every time someone uses their links to sign up.

It Doesn’t Have To Be Complicated

Technology is fast evolving and there are always new tools and widgets that claim to help you increase conversion rate.

Instead of chasing bright shiny objects, make sure you start by designing a user-centric experience, which is the foundation for conversion rate optimization.

Over to you – what have you done to optimize conversion rate for you SaaS business? What works best for you? Leave a comment below and share your insights.

No more seminars on the other side of the world that require an enormous investment of time and money! Today, conferences are digitizing and with the webinar, organizing one has become easier than ever before.

What Is The Webinar?

The webinar is an abbreviation of web and seminar. More than just a digital conference, it offers you the opportunity to share and deepen your knowledge without leaving your office or home. Unlike web conferencing, which has been practiced in business for many years, this new approach allows you to reach a wider and more invested audience. It goes without saying that auditors who have decided themselves to participate in training should be professionally and personally concerned. Note that so far, the main topics discussed in webinar relate to new information technologies and emerging professions in the digital world.

Moreover, this method of communication promises great ease of use. To organize a webinar, only sign up on one of the dedicated platforms, including YouTube live, which allows you to easily manage the setup of your webinar as well as its live broadcast. You can also opt for a paid alternative to enjoy greater freedom, especially in the organization, management and invitation of your listeners. Among the many platforms currently available to speakers are GoToWebinar, ezTalks, Livestorm and Webex.

Define your targets

The primary objective of webinar marketing is the acquisition of new qualified contacts. It is necessary that before the creation of your web conference you describe who it is addressed for. Indeed, you have to define topics according to the people you want to reach. To determine your target audience ask you what people are facing the market issues you are addressing? Once your target has been identified, you can choose the title of the webinar and write a description of the latter. The title must be eye-catching, it must attract the attention of Internet users and make them want to read the description of the webinar. The description should not be too long or too short. It should match the title and explain the topic of the webinar. About 5 -10 lines are enough.

Plan a webinar program

It is a good idea to schedule a webinar program on several dates. Such an organization makes it possible to adapt its subject and title according to the objectives sought, the previous experiences and the results obtained.

The subject of your first webinar has generated a significant number of qualified contacts, and your goal is to get more, you can then foresee a succession of webinars with the same subject (spaced four weeks).

Your first webinar has brought you a lot of qualified prospects, but you want to expand your target (or change target), so for that purpose, you can make variations on your initial topic.

Finally, your objective is to acquire different prospects and to retain the contacts gained, and you can opt for an annual program of 2 to 6 different subjects. To do this, recycle the content, re-make the webinars perform, create new webinars.

Use all communication channels

To promote your event, all means of communication are good. As soon as you create your webinar, you can advertise it on your site. Five weeks before your webinar you can start promoting on social networks and accentuate it the seven days before the event. Finally, a month before your web conference invite your prospects and customers via an invitation emailing.

Working with Winning Contacts

Analyze your performance

As soon as you have finished your webinar, you have access to key indicators. Indeed, you know your registration performance, the typology of the participants, the scoring and level of commitment of your members, as well as your performances of generation of contacts and export of the file. All this information allows you to evaluate the relevance of your webinar, but also, and especially to know more about your audience and your contacts gained. A prospect is considered to be a prospective registrant who has acted such as participation in your webinar, document download, and business card swap, an award of a note or even someone who has viewed the conference in a replay.

Contact generated leads

You have contact files; you only have to communicate with them. You have understood, with the webinar marketing you have the undeniable advantage of knowing and being known to your prospects. When you contact them there is no need to represent in detail your company and its expertise, they already know! Engage the conversation by asking them what they thought of your webinar if they found your document interesting when they downloaded it etc…. Such an approach will differentiate you from other companies in the eyes of your prospects and will make your negotiations Trade flows.

Repeat the Operation Several Times

The webinar marketing: a means of communication apart

The webinar marketing is not a communication process “one shot”, it implies the implementation of a real strategy in the long term. Besides acquiring contact, it tends to retain existing prospects and customers. It must, therefore, be integrated into your overall marketing strategy as a means of communication in its right.

An action plan must be determined upstream; it must include the number of webinars, Topics and the development of an appropriate communication plan. By analyzing the performance of your first webinar, you will be able to evaluate your performance and adjust your strategy accordingly.

For example, you see that a subject has interested a lot of people but has not generated a lot of participants, in this case, there is certainly a discrepancy between the content of the title and that of the description so that the people arrested By the title did not find in your description the themes that had initially aroused their interest. You will, therefore, opt for another title more in line with your subject and generate the expected contacts.

Recurrence is virtuous

The more you do marketing webinars, the more you are performing and generate qualified contacts. By repeating or diversifying your webinar topics, you will reach a significantly larger target audience. In addition to the retargeting of registered to each webinar, the implementation of a personalized communication plan ensures maximum visibility. Through repetition, you will be able to unveil all of your expertise. Indeed, a webinar with its format of 30 minutes of presentation and 15 minutes of question is not sufficient to offer a complete view of the proposed solutions.

Moreover, thanks to the key indicators of your webinar marketing transmitted at the end of each conference you know your strengths and weaknesses and can adapt your speech. This advantage is, of course, valid for future webinars but also for your daily interactions with your prospects and customers. Recurrence also helps retain clients or even bleak prospects who need to be reassured. Indeed, by inviting to each webinar your bases and your prospects you propose to them to know more about you and to follow your evolution.

Marketing tips for successful preparation

Webinars are a powerful tool for generating leads and helping to transform your prospects into customers. By creating an interactivity with the potential candidate already active in its search for information, you have all the cards to initiate an exchange, premise of your future commercial intimacy.

But we do not run webinars without preparation. Their effectiveness is built in the long term and imposes an impeccable implementation: choice of subjects, added value, and quality of speech, upstream promotion and integration in the process of lead nurturing.

Three good practices for preparing your webinars

Leave room for emotions. For a webinar to provoke commitment and be “a beautiful webinar”, it must “arouse in the passion “, “with a top speaker, a popular conference subject, an exceptional live. Marketing commitment is emotion”.

Do not just talk about you / your business. “Content marketing is like a first date. If you want to talk about yourself, there will be a second date.”

Respect the decision-making path of the buyer. Your webinar, or rather your webinars, because the rhythm and regularity are important, will answer the questions of the customer. Its problems and needs will not be the same according to where it is in the cycle of purchase:

• 1 st stage of the buying cycle: Awareness (the prospect will identify his need).
• 2 nd step: consideration (compare and study offers),
• 3 rd stage: The decision (to select and perform the act of purchase).

5 Tips for Successful Lead Generation Webinar

1. Promote early and often: If you are building your webinars cleanly, Internet users will come – but only if you promote it. Use all possible channels: email campaigns, social networks, paid advertising, website, etc. Also, make sure that your sales team sends out invitations to their prospects and customers. The more you work to promote your webinar, the more participants you have, and your fame will be improved!

2. Using the webcam: The webinar can be a very engaging experience for the participant. But if you just scroll through PowerPoint slides and add a voice over, you will miss a real opportunity to create a real connection with your audience. Consider the webinar as a lecture you give before a physically present audience. You will want the audience to focus on you and on what you say. The slides should just come in support of the key points you develop.

3. Ask the Public: Voting with the public is a great way to stimulate your engagement and keep their attention. Integrate surveys into your webinars. Share the results of these studies live with the public so they can see what other webinar participants are thinking.

5. Create individual slides for each webinar: Do not overload your text slides because a webinar is often viewed on a small computer screen. Use great visuals and short headlines to convey your message. If you are viewing data, make sure to present them in a chart or diagram of interest.
6. The follow-up to attract additional Internet users: Once the live webinar is over, you still have the opportunity to attract additional prospects to watch it on demand. And as long as the presentation is up-to-date, it can appear in your content library and continue to attract new leads. This will help improve the reputation of your business.

Conclusion

So if you’re looking for a new way to do lead generation, try the webinar. You will surely realize that this is an excellent way to engage your prospects and create more opportunities for your sales team. This will increase your brand awareness!

In the near future, three of the most studied generations will converge on the workplace at the same time: Generation X, the age cohort born before the 1980s but after the Baby Boomers; Generation Y, or Millennials, typically thought of as those born between 1984 and 1996; and Generation Z, those born after 1997, who are next to enter the workforce.

In a survey of 18,000 professionals and students across these three generations from 19 countries, we found some important differences in their aspirations and values. We hope that results from this survey, conducted by the INSEAD Emerging Markets Institute, Universum, and the HEAD Foundation, will be useful to companies seeking to retain, develop, and attract employees from these talent pools. However, it’s important to note that our findings are a snapshot of where these employees are at this moment in time; employees’ needs and expectations often evolve over the course of their careers, and we hope future surveys will update these findings.

Leadership Ambitions

We found that across the globe, becoming a leader was important to 61% of Gen Y, 61% of Gen Z, and 57% of Gen X respondents. But responses varied by country: For example, in the Nordic countries respondents were significantly less likely to covet leadership roles than those in Mexico. Among Gen Y respondents, 76% of Mexicans said attaining a leadership role is important, but only 47% of Norwegians said the same. 77% of American Gen Y professionals said that gaining a leadership position was important to them.

Organizations should keep these preferences in mind. Those in markets lacking enthusiasm for leadership, including Denmark, Sweden, and France, across which only 56% of Gen Y professionals said becoming a leader was important to them, will find their talent pipelines harder to fill; those in countries like Mexico, the U.S., and India will have to find ways to manage expectations and provide leadership experience or other motivation for ambitious workers.

In general, Gen Y and Gen X professionals are more enthusiastic about the coaching and mentoring that comes with management jobs than the higher responsibility. However, Gen Z cites higher levels of responsibility and more freedom as attractive attributes of leadership. Geographically, Gen X respondents in Spain put coaching and mentoring others as what is most attractive about leadership, but this was a lower priority for respondents from Germany, Norway, Denmark, Britain, and the U.S., who all put challenging tasks as the most attractive aspect.

Men and women’s leadership preferences also differed across generational cohorts. For Gen X, 63% of men and 52% of women said becoming a leader was important to them. Among Gen Y and Gen Z professionals, it was 63% of male respondents and 61% of women. (Other research has similarly found that younger women are as ambitious as their male peers but that companies may be draining female employees ambitions.) Our survey respondents gave varying reasons. In general, Gen X women are more likely to enjoy the challenging work involved in leadership, as well as getting to coach and mentor others. Gen Y women also put opportunities to coach others ahead of other activities, while Gen Z women felt that high levels of responsibility was the most attractive thing about leadership. Men across all generations were more interested in future earnings and high levels of responsibility.

When we asked about barriers to leadership, high levels of stress in particular put off Gen Z respondents in countries such as Japan, France, and the U.K. This was the same among Gen Y professionals, with respondents from the U.S., Switzerland, and Finland standing out in terms of citing this concern. Gen Xers in all these countries concurred; German, Swiss, and Emirati Gen X respondents were most worried about achieving work-life balance.

We also found that women, across both geographies and generations, were more likely to be put off by stress, more likely to feel they lack the confidence to lead, and more likely to fear failing than their male colleagues. But women also worried about different things in different countries. In China Millennial women were most concerned about being unable to find the developmental opportunities they need to progress, while Chinese Gen X women worried more about not being able to enjoy their retirement. Both generations feared not finding an alignment between their personalities and the jobs available. In the U.S. female Millennials worried most about not being able to realize their career goals. In Sweden female Millennials were most concerned about being overworked.

It will be crucial for companies to understand the different concerns holding women back in their global workforces. Most multinational companies have globally or regionally defined inclusion initiatives, rather than ones customized to a national level. But what women want in China differs greatly from what those in India want. Leadership development initiatives may have to be tailored by country to address these differences.

Entrepreneurial Ambitions

We found a strong interest in entrepreneurship across all three generations. Our results show that one in four students (Gen Z) is interested in starting their own business. And among those already in the workforce (Gen Y and Gen X professionals), one in three yearned to be entrepreneurs. Gen Y professionals in Mexico (57%) and the UAE (56%) were the most interested in starting their own businesses.

When asked whether they would want to work for an international company or start their own business, respondents in Gen Z favored working for an international company, while Gen Y and Gen X professionals preferred starting their own business. Only 27% of Gen Y professionals in Mexico reported wanting a career at an international company. In India 43% of Gen X wanted to start their own businesses and 25% to work for an international company.

To keep those interested in entrepreneurship close to the firm, leaders might want to consider “intrapraneurship,” giving employees the ability to work on startup projects within the firm.

Relying on Technology

When we asked which technologies are likely to revolutionize work in the coming decade, we learned that Gen Z was most enthusiastic about the potential of virtual reality (VR). This was stronger in certain countries such as Mexico and Singapore and weaker in countries such as India. Gen Y professionals also saw VR as the technology most likely to revolutionize their work in the coming decade, putting it ahead of wearable technology, project management, and audio/video conferencing. Companies may want to consider virtual reality as a tool for recruiting these cohorts.

Gen X, on the other hand, believed virtual reality technologies would have a low impact on their work. They had the most enthusiasm for project management tools, with certain countries, such as Germany, Japan, and Russia, also expressing excitement about cloud computing and e-learning tools.

We also asked whether respondents saw technology as helpful to or hindering their work lives. More older professionals considered technology a hindrance in Britain, Sweden, and Norway. Technology was most viewed as helpful by Gen Xers in Denmark, Sweden, and Mexico. Among Gen Y, respondents in Mexico, Sweden, and Germany perceived technology most favorably. And Gen Z students in Germany, Japan, and Mexico also saw technology as useful, while those in China, the U.S., and Canada were more likely to view technology as a hindrance to their work.

While these cohorts want very different things from technology, both young and older workers agree that their organizations’ digital capabilities are not up to scratch. Over 70% of Gen Y and Gen X professionals thought their employers’ digital capabilities are important, but only around 40% of both generations said their companies’ digital capabilities are high.

Finally, more than 70% of respondents across all generations said flexible working arrangements represent an important opportunity for their work lives in the next 10 years. The Swiss across all generations put flexibility as a top opportunity. So did Singaporeans in Gen Y and X (Gen Z Singaporeans put flexible working locations first). Chinese and Japanese respondents were excited about the international job opportunities and working with clients and colleagues in other countries.

Training

Respondents differed in their preferences for work training. When asked if they would take an online course if offered one by their employer, 70% of Gen Z respondents said yes, while 77% of Gen Y and 78% of Gen X professionals said they would take it.

Given the choice between an online course and an in-person one, 69% of Gen Z chose an in-person program, compared with only 13% choosing an online one. It was the Gen Xers who gravitated most toward online training, with 25% of respondents choosing this option. But 21% of Gen Y professionals also said they preferred online training over in-person teaching.

Fitting In

All generations were concerned about whether their personalities fit with where they work (50% of both Gen Y and Z respondents and 40% of Gen Xers). Japanese Millennials (66%) and Spanish Millennials (57%) were most concerned about fit; this was observed among Japanese Gen Zers (60%) and French Gen Zers (64%), too.

Japanese, Danish, and Indian Gen Xers also put fit as an important priority. But what most bothered Gen X in general was not being able to enjoy retirement, getting stuck with no opportunities, or losing job security. Not being able to enjoy retirement emerged as a top concern in the UK, the U.S., and Spain.

In sum, firms and leaders need to understand the different preferences among these generational cohorts in order to make better decisions about leadership development, technology, training, and culture-building.

6 top tips for creating a strategic social video on a budget

It only takes one train journey or a merry stroll through our towns to notice people of all demographics are glued to their phones. Much of the content they’re consuming is video and not just any video but mobile first video on social channels.

In the marketing world, whenever video is mentioned there is a misconception that it’s budget breaking and therefore it’s overlooked in favour of less engaging formats. However, there are a number of cost saving hacks, which can be applied at different stages of the marketing funnel. These range from the use of phone footage and user generated content (UGC) through to ad spend and obtaining efficiencies through effective targeting. With that in mind, let’s explore how to incorporate video into your social strategies, even on a small budget in order to meet your objectives.

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One thing to remember is that a good idea always wins. This doesn’t mean you have to be the new Cecil B. DeMille producing epic pieces of content for social channels. It’s important to deliver content that reaches the right audience, resonates with it and encourages a high-value action.

1. Use real people as your hero content

Hero content is usually an advert or branded content. It aims to increase brand awareness amongst the masses and will likely have the highest production budget. 

It’s a myth that animation is, as a rule, cheaper than filming, but animation must be very strong to be a hero piece of content. If you have lower budgets, then filming a real person may be your cheapest and most effective option. Real people can also warm up brands in industries such as finance or insurance.

However, whilst real people are cheaper than actors, don’t expect them to be actors! Real customers can speak in the first person about your brand and can share authentic experiences but remember that you won’t be able to dictate or 100% predict their answers. So, writing interview questions to trigger and steer their answers is key. Spend time at the preparation stage making sure you get the best out of your contributors. Pick locations and topics that they are comfortable with. You will still need to cast for appropriate customers. Just because someone has written a great feedback email, it doesn’t mean they will express themselves well on camera.

2. Shoot on your phone for hub content

Hub content usually comprises industry or thought leadership insights. It aims to engage audiences in the discovery phase with regularly scheduled video releases.

Are you vlogging at industry events? Are you asking thought leaders and experts for insights when you bump into them at those networking events? Are you doing market research, asking the public what they think of industries/ issues/ topics? You can do these on your phone, just watch some vlogs online and practise! Consider the balance between the value of your content quality and the financial value of your production spend. If the content is strong enough, then production spend can be lower. Understanding this equilibrium is essential for you to be able to make cost savings.

3. Consider user generated content (UGC) as hygiene content

Hygiene content is your ‘always on’ content. It sits further down the marketing funnel and retains your audience rather than attracts a new audience. It typically has the lowest production budget

You may have to incentivise your community offline to do this. But for the sake of offering vouchers or discounts, the value of authentic content often far outweighs this expense. If you have customers who are geographically widespread, UGC can offer an easy way to gather content from customers in more obscure areas where travel and accommodation expenses make it impractical to shoot. But do be aware that if you are asking for product reviews or similar and you are incentivising, you may have to declare this if you are using it for advertising. With UGC, it’s important to be prescriptive with your brief. Provide clear guidelines for submissions including whether you want your videos to be horizontal or vertical, with or without background music, whether you want your contributor holding the phone or propping it up in front of them etc.

4. Identify economies of scale

 There is an argument that production value reflects the quality of your product / service. This is partly true. In terms of allocation of production budget, you should spend more on your hero content than on your hygiene content, but with regards to output, you should be creating a blend of all three types of content to ensure your customer’s journey to purchase is seamless.

High end, luxury brands are not exempt and should still be creating hygiene content that can (assuming it doesn’t breach brand guidelines) be of a lower production value, providing that they aren’t leading with it.

When planning your content, it’s important to look at your strategy in its entirety and not just your video strategy in isolation. You will be able to identify and apply cost saving measures if you take a holistic approach to planning content and avoid working in silos.

For example, you may be able to film your hero, hub and hygiene content all in one go if your hub content will be excerpts from the hero video or quick vox pops filmed on a phone in your breaks and your hygiene content is a behind the scenes video or a trailer/ teaser.

You could perhaps take photos of the actors or customers you are using on the day of your video shoot so that you can create a bespoke landing page for when someone clicks through from your video to create a seamless journey for your customer. Or if you are engaging display advertising, you could shoot still or moving images in specific formats to suit your chosen ad units.

If gathering all of these assets over one shoot is too much to manage personally, then consider hiring an additional cameraman. The cost of one extra person on the day will be far cheaper than an additional shoot day and time spent organizing diaries.

5. Allocate your media spend at the outset

A good rule of thumb for budgeting creative is to use the old methodology of 80% of your budget should go on media and 20% on creative. This still stands true today. Before organic reach diminished, social media practitioners were not concerned by ‘media’. This led to increased content budgets and practically zero media spend for a lot of companies. As algorithms changed, platforms have begun to monetise their propositions and we now see a necessity for paid media on social channels.

Make sure you include media spend when you budget your video project or you may find you have to allocate more funds when you come to delivery.

6. Make sure the right people are seeing your content

When it comes to targeting, a common mistake is either going too broad or too narrow, with an audience. Even though targeting on social channels is getting better, it’s not perfect and if you target too broadly then your message is unlikely to resonate with the intended audience. Are 15 million people really interested in your product or service?

Conversely, if you go too narrow you will find CPM’s (cost per mille/ 1000 impressions) increase dramatically and the effectiveness of your campaign will diminish.  At Jellyfish, we plan to reach a maximum of 70% of any given target audience on social and utilize reach and frequency tools, where appropriate, to drive awareness.

It’s also important to match the format with the campaign objective. If you’re trying to drive conversions, then utilizing video may not be the best way to go. Video is best used to drive top funnel metrics and can help tell a brand story. The more advanced strategies out there involve sequenced messaging, which essentially retargets engaged users of a video with another piece of content.

Put simply, understand your audience. Make sure that if you are creating content for an audience in the US for example, that your planned launch time suits that time zone. Take a look at your analytics and see when your target audience is most engaged with your content and plan your launches around that.

As mentioned above, a good idea always wins and with the power of media behind your efforts you do not necessarily need to create a video for every day, or even week. Focus on delivering quality content that is cost effective to make but excites your audience.

Discover How to Best Connect with Today’s Online Influencer

Are you trying to find the right influencer outreach for your brand?

Not sure where to find the best connections in your industry?

The most powerful brand messages today come not from brands themselves, but from consumers with loud online voices who have the ability to reach broad audiences and the power to drive action. These users, known as influencers, are passionate, and have invested time and effort in growing an audience that trusts their authority.

When your community spreads the word about your products or services this can dramatically increase your reach and sales. According to Tapinfluence, “influencer marketing content delivers 11X higher ROI than traditional forms of digital marketing.” They also report that nearly half of all buyers on social media make a purchase based on recommendations.

If a lead or customer is impressed with your company based on meeting their needs then this can provide free advertising for your brand. Word-of-mouth marketing is becoming a dominant force online as more people strive to find trusted sources. Even just one positive recommendation can have a viral effect online.

Konnie Brown of Dell shares her thoughts about this on the TopRank blog:

Key factors will be a brand’s focus on customer experience, in this case in brand publishing, and much improved understanding of building long-term, human-to-human influencer relationships.

There are several ways you can identify influencers and measure the impact they can have on your marketing program.

1. Start to identify and engage with influencers

Make a list on a spreadsheet, app or online software program of top leaders in your industry. Start with your own social media connections and lists and segment them according to their area of expertise. As you go through each business or individual you will discover how many followers they have, who they are connected with, how active and engaged they are with their community, and whether they are relevant to your target market.

An influencer may or may not be familiar with your brand name and so you will want to start the process of reaching out them by sharing their content, offers, and so on. You can even write a great post that mentions their name with a review or quote from their website or an eBook. As you promote them chances are they will be more interested in building a relationship with you online.

2. Discover like-minded people based on reach

There is a way to attract influencers and that is through shared, similar content. Conduct a search for blogs that have similar topics to yours — preferably ones that have a large number of subscribers. The goal is to get noticed based your shared interests such as book marketing tips or small business budgeting.

Use a spreadsheet or something similar to record all of the content that is close to yours. These don’t need to be exact, but in the same topic. The best avenues to accomplish this is through trending posts in your niche, specific hashtags on places like Twitter and Facebook, videos, slideshows, etc. After sharing their content you could reach out to some of these authors and ask them to share yours as well, especially if you have a mention of them in your posts.

3. Integrate into your current campaigns

If you have a live video channel, podcast, or blog series consider partnering with other influencers to share their insights and product or service information. Most people love to share their expert views, especially if this means promoting their brand name to an active and engaged audience.

Encourage your participants to share your coverage on their social media networks, which will help increase your subscribers and traffic back to your blog. A great example of this type of exposure is Pat Flynn’s podcast, Smart Passive Income, which features various experts like Amy Porterfield, Dan Clark, and Chalene Johnson on topics like list building, sales, and branding.

4. Measure your success

After a few months, you will want to take a look at who is exactly recommending your business and how your audience is responding. This is most effectively done with the analytics and online software that can pull information from your blog and social networks.

Take a look at each campaign to find out how people are interacting with influencers recommending your brand. If their follower numbers are high, but engagement levels low then you might want to consider other leaders in your industry to connect with. This will directly impact your conversion rates as you attract more interested buyers.

Influencer marketing is one of the best ways to reach your target market today as more people look for authenticity and transparency. Once you have established good relationships this can translate into a greater ROI — especially as you diversify your content into videos, infographics, webinars, blog posts, and social media advertising and campaigns.

There has never been a better time than now to promote your business online through the right connections. Recommendations are like gold — leverage them the right way and the payoff can be great!

Welcome to Transportation & Logistics Briefing, a new morning email providing the latest news, data, and insight on how digital technology is disrupting transportation and delivery, produced by BI Intelligence.

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UBER’S LOSSES NARROW DESPITE LYFT’S GAINS: Uber increased its revenue and narrowed its losses in Q2 2016 in the face of increased competition from Lyft and a spate of recent scandals that led to the resignation of its former CEO, Travis Kalanick, Bloomberg reports. The ride-hailing giant increased its net revenue 17% from the previous quarter to $1.75 billion, while its losses decreased 9% to $645 million. 

All of the various scandals and controversies surrounding Uber in recent months did not seem to dent the company’s financial health. It ended the quarter with $6.6 billion in cash on hand. Meanwhile, gross bookings — the total dollar value generated from its rides — increased to $8.7 billion, up 17% from Q1. That growth in gross bookings actually accelerated from 9% the previous quarter.

However, rival Lyft has still been making gains on Uber, despite the larger company’s continued growth.

• Uber’s share of the US ride-hailing market fell from 84% at the beginning of this year to 77% at the end of May, according to Second Measure, which analyzes anonymized credit card data.
• Uber’s market share decline coincided with major growth at Lyft, which saw a major boost from the #deleteUber social media campaign. Lyft had a 60% spike in new users when the campaign started in January. That helped the company net 4.8 million total passengers during February 2017, more than double the number it serviced in February 2016.
• Lyft also grew its gross booking faster than Uber did in Q2, with a 25% jump to $1 billion.

Uber remains mired in controversy following Kalanick’s departure, and needs to fill several key executive positions to help it handle increased competition around the world. In addition to its open CEO position, the company has also been searching to fill its COO and CFO positions. For now, the company is being steered by an executive committee. Meanwhile, Kalanick has been sued by Benchmark Capital, one of Uber’s biggest investors, which claims he has been undermining the CEO search. Uber's competitors have moved aggressively in recent months to gain market share and take advantage of Uber’s damaged reputation. Lyft has expanded to more cities in the US, raised new funding, debuted premium ride services to compete with UberBLACK and UberSUV, and launched a new self-driving car division to beat Uber to autonomous taxis. Grab, Uber’s biggest rival in Southeast Asia, also raised $1.5 billion in new funding earlier this year. Uber must fill its leadership void and develop a strategy to counter these moves by its competitors. However, it’s unclear if that will happen soon, as the company’s board is reportedly split over possible CEO candidates.

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FLYTREX AND AHA LAUNCH DRONE DELIVERY IN ICELAND: AHA, Iceland’s largest online marketplace, has partnered with Israeli drone startup Flytrex to deliver online meal orders and other goods by drone in Iceland’s capital, Reykjavic, CNBC reports. The launch of a commercial drone service in a highly populated area marks an important step forward for drone delivery around the world, as most drone deliveries conducted today are still early-stage tests in rural areas.

Right now the drones only operate a single delivery route across the bay that cuts Reykjavic in two and makes delivery by ground vehicle in the city very time-consuming. An employee at an AHA facility loads packages on to the drone, which then flies autonomously across the bay to another facility, where a courier picks up the package and takes it to the customer’s home, according to The Verge. The two companies say that drones have cut their delivery times by up to 20 minutes during peak hours, and have cut delivery costs by 60% compared to regular ground delivery.

Flytrex doesn’t build the drones itself — in this case it’s using a DJI Matrice 600 outfitted with a special package compartment — but provides the software and services that make the program operational, including employee training, drone maintenance, and a cloud-based platform for remotely tracking and managing the drones in-flight. Flytrex CEO Yariv Bash said that the company hopes to expand the partnership to more delivery routes — including delivering directly to customer’s doorsteps — by the end of the year. The drones will hover in the air and lower packages to the ground by a wire to drop them off at customers’ homes.

Flytrex and AHA received regulatory approval to launch the service from the Icelandic Transportation Authority, which said the drones could improve road safety by taking delivery vehicles off the roads. Regulatory authorities in most jurisdictions around the world have taken a cautious approach to drone deliveries, particularly in densely populated areas. China’s Civil Administration, for example, allows companies to conduct commercial deliveries by drone in rural areas, but specifically forbids companies from using drones to deliver in cities. In the US, the FAA has yet to allow a commercial drone delivery program to operate in a major city, but NASA and 7-Eleven have each conducted limited drone delivery tests in Reno, Nevada. Improvements in autonomous flight technology and in air traffic control systems that can track large numbers of drones are necessary before regulators allow large-scale drone delivery programs to operate in US cities.   

AUDI AND QUALCOMM INVEST IN CONNECTED CAR STARTUP: Cubic Telecom, a connected car startup based in Dublin, Ireland, raised $46.5 million in Series C funding from a group of investors that includes Audi and Qualcomm. Cubic has already been working for a while with Audi, and is on track to put its technology into 1 million vehicles by the end of the year, according to CEO Barry Napier.

The startup offers a virtual networking solution that lets cars (and other devices) connect automatically to internet service providers in any country, which helps cars maintain internet connection when they cross borders and eliminates roaming costs. It accomplishes this through a virtual SIM card that it preloads on to vehicles during the manufacturing process.

Typically, automakers have to install a physical SIM card into their cars for connectivity, and arrange network agreements with carriers in whichever country the model might be sold. Each network agreement requires a different SIM card, making managing these partnerships and the physical hardware a time-consuming operational task. Along with the virtual SIM card, Cubic has partnerships in place with 30 mobile network operators covering more than 180 countries, eliminating the hassle of arranging and managing network agreements for automakers.

With automakers putting more and more digital technologies in their cars, they have to manage increasingly complex ecosystems of digital partners that include connectivity, cloud, analytics, cybersecurity, and infotainment providers. That is a complex task for companies like automakers that don’t have roots in the digital world. That means companies that can help automakers manage those ecosystems — as Cubic does with networking providers — will be particularly valuable partners for auto companies.

In other news…

DHL eCommerce, Deutsche Post DHL’s e-commerce fulfillment division, launched a new software-as-a-service (SaaS) platform in partnership with logistics management solutions provider FarEye to help it manage deliveries on behalf of its retail clients.  The platform will help DHL, retailers, and their customers track orders in real-time as they make their way through the fulfillment process to final delivery. DHL said that it picked the platform to support its e-commerce fulfillment division because of the flexibility it offered in being able to scale up computing resources depending on demand. That will allow it to draw on more resources during peak shopping and delivery times.

FedEx announced it is expanding its same-day intra-city delivery service to Jacksonville, Florida, as well as Austin and San Antonio, Texas. The service, dubbed FedEx SameDay City, is now available in 25 markets, and allows same-day delivery on orders picked up as late as 1:00 p.m. for business delivery, and 4:00 p.m. for residential delivery. The move comes as more retailers are experimenting with same-day delivery. Walmart announced recently that it is expanding a same-day delivery test it is running with Uber's UberRUSH delivery service to new markets, while Target is now testing same-day grocery delivery in New York. 

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When taken at face value, the Internet culture driven social media success seems to depend on a dash of creativity and a ton of luck.

Yet, the more one looks at the data, the clearer the picture gets. Engagement boils down to the intrinsic value a post brings to the audience. And this can’t be more true for Facebook Live video.

Introduced in April 2016, Facebook Live has managed to take over the social platform. Standing for more than 20% of all video content, the ability to stream a live feed on your wall is a tool that has changed the way brands interact with their audience.

While a video requires a certain level of quality, planning and preparation, with Facebook live things can be as simple as pushing a button on your smartphone.

In fact, as people tend to be engaged with recency, the success of the feature is predictably obvious. When you stream live content, you humanize your brand and allow your customers to be directly engaged with you the moment you press the live feed button.

Of course, you should properly plan and strategize your Facebook live content for quick brand wins, but compared to native video, the resource investment can be far lower. At the same time, the expected result can be that much higher.

But if it was so easy, everyone was going to do it, right? While it can be argued that some of the biggest brands on Facebook are all transitioning towards having proper live content strategies, it’s also true that a Facebook live feed can be much more difficult to plan than native video.

For starters, you are limited to footage that isn’t edited. Plus, a live stream is usually far less consistent than one single video idea and doesn’t have a straight storyline. Knowing the statistics and seeing how a single stream can greatly boost the overall engagement of your audience, we decided to try to inspire you. That being said, and without further adieu, here are five out-of-the-box ideas to boost your Facebook live game.

1. Stream a Tour of Your Office

People love getting behind the scenes. Understanding how a company works and showing the faces behind the product/service you provide can do wonders for your brand. Plus, it can drive up the engagement of your Facebook live videos.

Take Arnold Palmer’s office tour from Callaway Golf for example. It managed to garner up more than 243K views and is still one of the most popular videos of the brand to this day. And what did they do? They simply picked up a camera and did an office tour.

Granted, it was professional golfer Arnold Palmer’s office and not their own, but the fact of the matter is that office tours work.

Even though not a Facebook live stream, you can also take the infamous Wyoming intersection YouTube live stream as an example of what you can achieve with simplicity. In just a few days, the stream became an internet sensation and people shouted Red Truck as a meme out of nowhere.

Now consider simply setting up a camera in the corner of your office with the consent of your employees. Who knows? In just a few days, people might start shouting and cheering each time someone uses the copier. The biggest success comes from a risky investment in creative content.

2. Create a Pet Live Stream

People love pets. Whether they want to witness the birth of a baby giraffe or to simply marvel at the adorable creatures from the animal kingdom, people love watching live streams of animals.

One of the biggest Facebook Live video success stories was the #MakeADogsDay partnership between Subaru and BuzzFeed. In the video that gathered more than 221K views, Subaru helped make dogs have the time of their life in over an hour.

Granted, the video was planned and needed a lot of resource investment from both brands. Nevertheless, a similar effect can be achieved with a simple office pet stream. If you have an office pet (and if you don’t, get one), simply make a corner dedicated to it, set up a camera and live stream it to the world. Similarly to the Wyoming example, you never know when success might hit and plus the investment will be minuscule compared to the potential success.

3. Have a Q&A Live Stream with your Team/CEO

Another way to quickly and creatively boost your Facebook live game would be through a Q&A session with your team or CEO. The direct interaction with the audience will be a great boost for your overall engagement.

Take Legendary Game of Heroes Q&A live stream for example. The developers have about 60K likes on their page and receive a mere 5 to 10 reactions (likes) to their usual posts. Even their videos receive at most around 70-100 reactions.

However, when the team decided to set up a Q& session, they’ve managed to gather up to 6K views and over 300 reactions. This is an engagement increase of over 3000% to what they are usually getting.

Going even further, compared to the other videos posted by the brand, the live stream got over 350% more engagements, despite having almost the same number of views as most of their videos.

What’s more, the Q& can be a great way to humanize your brand. You will also be able to receive direct feedback from your audience and learn what they are interested in the most without having to perform complicated surveys.

4. Stream a Company-Wide Event

Whether your company consists of five people or two-hundred people, you won’t be wrong with streaming a company-wide event. If there’s one thing people love more than pets, it’s the entertainment that comes with the social activity failure of others.

It’s true! Especially when the failure is evident for the performer, like on most Karaoke open mic nights, people are inclined to have fun and laugh at the expense of others.

While some of their decisions are rather questionable, BuzzFeed did manage to creatively take advantage of Facebook Live video streaming when they did a Dance Craze Battle. With over 219K views the battle received notable attention.

Plus, due to the curious dance moves of some BuzzFeed employees, the viral potential of the resulting GIFs was undeniable. So next time you are planning to make a team building event make sure to bring your phone with you and press the Facebook Live stream button.

5. Take Advantage of Events

Speaking of events, using events that are celebrated within the culture of your target audience is always a nice way of going about content. Dunkin Donuts proved that this is a viable technique for Facebook Live video as well, with their Valentine’s day special.

The stream, which was only 18 minutes long, managed to get more than 203K views. To use this strategy to your advantage, simply take a look at your calendar and see what’s the next best holiday event you can use for your live stream.

Of course, you should always be culturally aware and target either worldwide holidays or specific events within your community, but events, in general, are definitely a thing to keep in mind when planning your next Facebook live video move.

Be Creative and Think Outside of the Box!

Live video streams don’t have to be the next big thing. As LADBible showed, the simple melting of lollipops on a roof can result in 6.3M views. You don’t have to be a genius and your company doesn’t have to spend millions to feature a huge Hollywood celebrity.

Instead, embrace your creativity. Think of something you’d be willing to watch when you are bored.

And don’t forget to get out of the boundaries of what’s considered normal. TasteMade made a sensation with their TinyKitchen boasting more than 3.8M views. Plus, their video content is being recycled to this day.

Not to mention, such out-of-the-box ideas can be used regardless of the industry you are in. Take Jason Carr’s live stream video feed as an example. With 110K views, the video he streamed managed to surprise his fans while showing a wider audience some behind the scenes footage.

StartupStockPhotos / Pixabay

An organization’s culture is one of its most singular aspects. It’s one of a handful of characteristics that simply can’t be replicated.

That poses a specific challenge. If your organization is acquiring or merging with another company, can your culture keep its most important attributes?

Yes, but it pays to do your homework in advance to avoid any destructive hiccups—that, and to be open to the possibility that your existing culture doesn’t have to survive in its current form.

The Risks of Culture Clash

Conflicting cultures have been identified as a common problem in mergers, acquisitions and other forms of organizational movement that have proven unsuccessful. Recent studies have found that the failure rate of mergers can be as high as a discouraging 75 percent. Researchers also suggest that mishandled culture— differing views and philosophies that can’t seem to find common ground—is a culprit behind many such failures.

One of the first steps to help move one culture into another is to examine the cultures of the organizations involved. In many cases, cultures will simply prove far too different to come together or have one supplant the other—for instance, an organization with a more relaxed and informal environment attempting to merge with or replace a more traditional, buttoned-down mind-set.

This article details a number of well-known examples of culture clash that simply proved too much to overcome.

That’s very much in line with the thinking that my Anticipatory Organization Model promotes. In effect, by being anticipatory and examining differing cultures before things get too far along, you can avoid potentially destructive mergers and acquisitions before investing the time and resources to try to make them happen.

Collaboration as a Solution to Culture Clash

An anticipatory strategy that addresses culture clash is the importance of enhanced collaboration—the value of promoting an environment where organizations, people and resources voluntarily come together to boost the common good.

That’s very different from cooperation, which is action born of necessity. By contrast, collaboration is far more voluntary, a choice to pool talent and energy to create greater abundance for all.

That line of thinking can carry over to the issue of differing organizational cultures. For one thing, keeping your culture intact doesn’t necessarily have to be an all-or-nothing proposition. For instance, if organizations find common ground in only a few key elements of culture, that can sometimes be enough to offset any differences.

Another element of an Anticipatory Organization Model is an emphasis on communicating over informing. That can be particularly valuable when looking to blend organizational cultures in a way that creates something even better.

Not only should employees have a clear understanding of what the “ideal” combined culture should be, they should also see how they fit in, and they should be given a voice in how that blended culture comes about. That can boost employees’ sense of having a genuine stake in an organization’s future.

Lastly, don’t expect an effective blending of culture to happen in the blink of an eye. Allow adequate time not merely to find a suitable blend of cultures, but also to allow everyone within an organization to feel comfortable with what may be a completely new environment—for everyone.

5 Phrases To Banish From Your Copywriting (And What To Replace Them With) written by Guest Post read more at Duct Tape Marketing

As marketers, we’re all doing two things:

1. Writing with the intent to sell something. Maybe it’s a product description in an e-commerce store, maybe it’s a landing page trying to generate a lead, or maybe it’s a blog post (like this one!) that’s trying to sell you an idea.
2. Writing phrases and clichés that turn off our audience.

The point of copywriting to make somebody feel something, which causes action. You’ve likely seen tons of examples of emotion at work in copywriting:

• Fear – fear of missing out (FOM) is a common motivator for companies marketing to Millennials.
• Pity – Look no further than the success of the ASPCA commercial featuring Sarah McLachlan. Or don’t.
• Hope – Nothing gets somebody to open their wallet faster than the hope of fixing his problem.

These are just a few examples. Making our audience feel something by using emotional triggers in our copy helps us sell. But what you don’t want your audience to feel is annoyance, or worse, outright anger, that you wasted their time.

The marketing industry is producing more online content than ever, and there will be more tomorrow! If you want to stand out, do your audience a favor by respecting their time and intelligence by banishing the following clichés and filler phrases from your copy.

1. Industry leader, industry-leading

You can find this phrase on a huge percentage of About pages for companies everywhere. It usually looks something like this:

“With more than 20 years of experience, [Company X] is an industry-leader in [industry]…”

Yawn…

Not only is this a self-centered way to introduce your company or brand to a web visitor generous enough to grant you a click, it tells him nothing about your company! Why should he care if your company is an “industry leader?” Does that mean lower prices or better service?

This phrase contains no value, is hyperbolic, and its ubiquity means it’s become a complete throwaway phrase.

Replace with: The reason your company is a leader in the industry!

Does your product or service help start-ups get to market faster? Explain that with a numerical anchor. Does your company have a mission it’s trying to accomplish? Lead with that, but make sure to write it in context of the audience.

2. Relatable

This phrase has gained massive popularity for the past several years as a standalone adjective. For example, take a look at this Google search results page.

We get it—Anna Kendrick is adorable and quirky; just like all Millennials, right!? Insert eyeroll here.

The word relatable causes us to skip out on all the wonderful adjectives available to describe the person more accurately and paint a picture for the audience.

It’s worth noting, however, that “relatable” has become fodder for click bait headlines—it might be able to get you that click, but at what cost to your reputation?

Replace with: A description of the quality that makes the person relatable to a specific audience or niche. Further reading on the origin of our current use of the phrase.

3. Actually/Basically/Seriously/Really

Ah yes, conjunctive adverbs—possibly the only thing worse than regular adverbs. When somebody uses one of these words he’s usually trying to establish a tone, emphasize a point, or create humor. There’s nothing wrong with that so long as it doesn’t come at the expense of your audience’s patience or your own credibility.

If you have more than three of these words in an 800-word blog post, you should go back and drop the grammar hammer before publishing your draft.

Replace with: A fact that proves the emphasis.

For example:

“I’m basically/seriously/really broke.”

Becomes:

“I’m broke—my bank account is in the single digits.”

4. In order to

This phrase is an example of needlessly adding words to a sentence—90% of the time, you don’t need “in order” to get your point across. I’ve singled out this phrase because I see it used far too often.

Replace with: This is an easy one—just use “to” instead.

5. In today’s world

If you’re looking for a quick way to waste screen space and sound old-fashioned at the same time, look no further than this tired qualifier.

For the record, we’re all aware of what year it is, and you’re probably reading this on a smartphone! Unless you’re directly comparing some part of modern civilization to Mesopotamia, you’re better off omitting this altogether. Synonymous and equally useless phrases include: in modern society, in today’s fast-paced world, etc.

Replace with: Consider omitting entirely or restructuring your sentence. What is the point of comparing to the past? Is it relevant to your argument or persuasive to your readers? If not, just get to your point.

BONUS ROUND – Filler phrases galore

The filler phrase—helping high school students achieve word count since word processing was invented. Once you reach a certain level of clientele, filler phrases become the bane of your existence.

Every filler phrase, which says nothing, is an excuse for your reader to get bored and leave your site. Here are a few examples:

• For all intents and purposes
• With that in mind
• The fact of the matter is
• When all’s said and done

These words literally mean nothing. People include them in their writing because they feel they enhance the flow and readability of an article, but what they do instead is to make it sound like you have nothing of substance to say.

Be extremely cautious with filler phrases.

Replace with: NOTHING! Eschew filler phrases completely—your audience will thank you.

Is there a right or wrong way to conduct copywriting for your business? Of course not—if it works, go with it. Cormac McCarthy, one of the greatest American authors, is famous for his lack of punctuation.

The difference between Cormac McCarthy and your business, however, is that when somebody is reading his writing, they’ve already bought what he’s selling.

About the Author

Logan Mayville is a content strategist with bonus skills in copywriting, SEO, and digital marketing. He partners with clients who share his strategic, analytical, and creative style. Connect with him on Twitter or LinkedIn.

Chart of the Day: B2B consumers value a much more personal service than B2C consumers

Across the web, you will find hundreds of thousands of articles describing the difference between B2B and B2C marketing and the differing needs of their respective customers. But it can be hard to know which set of data and recommendations to act upon.

This is where a report produced by Marketo, the marketing automation company, comes in useful. They surveyed 2000 consumers globally and found that B2B consumers value brands or vendors that have a deep understanding of their needs, actually care and offer a personalized service much more than B2C consumers.

This makes sense when you consider that B2C consumers have become used to and prefer purchasing via ecommerce stores, which don't deliver a personal 1-to-1 service. Where as B2B sales are all about the relationship between the vendor's sales reps and the client.

• Sample Size: 2000 global consumers and marketers
• Source: The State of Engagement from Marketo
• Recommended Resources: 10 Business-to-Business Mistakes

One of the most common misconceptions about money is that income is the biggest driver of wealth.

While of course income helps, in reality, the main determinant of wealth (or erosion of) is dictated by your spending habits, and many people fall into the habit of spending more as they earn more.

Making smarter decisions about money presents a big opportunity for people under 40.

The benefits of making smart money moves now will compound over time and have the potential to make a big impact on your financial picture.

1. Don't stop after maxing out your 401(k) contribution

If you're able to make the maximum annual contribution to your 401(k) and still have funds left at the end of the month after your other obligations, congratulations!

But that doesn't mean you should spend the extra cash. What you should do is investigate other opportunities to put your surplus funds to work for you.

The most flexible type of investment account is a brokerage account. There are no limits on how much you can contribute and the funds can be liquidated and used for any purpose at any time. It's important to keep in mind that a brokerage account is a taxable account, so unlike tax-deferred retirement account like a 401(k) or IRA, you'll need to square up with the IRS every year based on your gains, losses, and proceeds from dividends or interest.

2. Keep your investment strategy boring

Buying single stocks in search of the next unicorn is certainly more fun than a diversified low-cost investment strategy, but trying to win big comes with a lot of unnecessary risks and questionable rewards. Especially if you have a day job, it's probably unrealistic to find the time to pour over financial statements and speculate on earnings reports in hopes of competing with Wall Street analysts who use satellite images to count the number of cars in the parking lots of major retailers.

Instead, keep your investment strategy boring. Don't try to time the market or buy a stock because you like a company's product. Diversify your holdings with a global portfolio of investments, like low-cost ETFs and bond funds aligned with your risk tolerance and time horizon. Try not to limit yourself to just one or two asset classes either. For example, if you only hold an ETF that tracks the S&P 500 you will miss exposure to small cap and mid cap equities in the U.S. and abroad.

3. Get life insurance right

There are many different types of life insurance — all of which have additional options and variations, and it can be confusing and overwhelming for many consumers. However, when it comes to buying life insurance, it's really important to get it right.

Of course, what is "right" for you will depend on your goals, budget, family situation, and so forth— but it's important to keep these key points in mind:

Term life insurance is the cheapest option, and for many individuals, completely adequate for their needs. As the name implies, term life insurance will provide a death benefit if an individual dies within the policy's term, up to 20 years typically.

In contrast, whole life insurance is permanent insurance and will cover your entire life. Before buying (or getting sold) a whole life policy, step back and assess your needs. Many parents realize they would only need coverage from a life insurance policy until their children are out of college.

If you are single, depending on your situation, whether you have dependents and so on, you may not actually need life insurance at all.

Finally, don't buy an annuity without doing your homework. Annuities are complex and expensive insurance products that aren't appropriate for a lot of investors.

4. Take an honest look at your spending

Let's dispel one big money myth to start: the more you earn, the more you save. For most people, spending on lifestyle items — like houses, cars, vacations, and so on — only increases with income. Sometimes growth in spending even outpaces growth in earnings.

While it is important to enjoy your success, the truth is that it doesn't matter how much you make if you spend all (or nearly all) of it every year. Taking an honest look at your spending and finding ways to cut back can really pay off later in life.

To do this, consider focusing on your big ticket items, ones that really move the needle. Keep the ones that really make you happy and add value to your life. Consider cutting back on the others.

This may be particularly important if you have children or plans to in the future. Getting a head start by saving aggressively while expenses are lower can provide a lot of flexibility down the road.

You can only spend a dollar once, but a dollar saved and invested can grow significantly over the long-term, which is a unique opportunity for those under 40.

Kristin McFarland, CFP® is a Wealth Advisor for Darrow Wealth Management, a registered investment advisor in the Greater Boston area. Her primary focus is helping individuals under age 45 develop a financial roadmap and get serious about investing. Kristin is a regular contributor to U.S. News & World Report. The material contained in her articles is for general information only and should not be construed as the rendering of personalized investment, legal, accounting or tax advice.

SEE ALSO: Why it seems like everyone else can afford the things you can't

Join the conversation about this story »

NOW WATCH: We may have been wrong about ‘good’ cholesterol all this time

One of the most common misconceptions about money is that income is the biggest driver of wealth.

While of course income helps, in reality, the main determinant of wealth (or erosion of) is dictated by your spending habits, and many people fall into the habit of spending more as they earn more.

Making smarter decisions about money presents a big opportunity for people under 40.

The benefits of making smart money moves now will compound over time and have the potential to make a big impact on your financial picture.

1. Don't stop after maxing out your 401(k) contribution

If you're able to make the maximum annual contribution to your 401(k) and still have funds left at the end of the month after your other obligations, congratulations!

But that doesn't mean you should spend the extra cash. What you should do is investigate other opportunities to put your surplus funds to work for you.

The most flexible type of investment account is a brokerage account. There are no limits on how much you can contribute and the funds can be liquidated and used for any purpose at any time. It's important to keep in mind that a brokerage account is a taxable account, so unlike tax-deferred retirement account like a 401(k) or IRA, you'll need to square up with the IRS every year based on your gains, losses, and proceeds from dividends or interest.

2. Keep your investment strategy boring

Buying single stocks in search of the next unicorn is certainly more fun than a diversified low-cost investment strategy, but trying to win big comes with a lot of unnecessary risks and questionable rewards. Especially if you have a day job, it's probably unrealistic to find the time to pour over financial statements and speculate on earnings reports in hopes of competing with Wall Street analysts who use satellite images to count the number of cars in the parking lots of major retailers.

Instead, keep your investment strategy boring. Don't try to time the market or buy a stock because you like a company's product. Diversify your holdings with a global portfolio of investments, like low-cost ETFs and bond funds aligned with your risk tolerance and time horizon. Try not to limit yourself to just one or two asset classes either. For example, if you only hold an ETF that tracks the S&P 500 you will miss exposure to small cap and mid cap equities in the U.S. and abroad.

3. Get life insurance right

There are many different types of life insurance — all of which have additional options and variations, and it can be confusing and overwhelming for many consumers. However, when it comes to buying life insurance, it's really important to get it right.

Of course, what is "right" for you will depend on your goals, budget, family situation, and so forth— but it's important to keep these key points in mind:

Term life insurance is the cheapest option, and for many individuals, completely adequate for their needs. As the name implies, term life insurance will provide a death benefit if an individual dies within the policy's term, up to 20 years typically.

In contrast, whole life insurance is permanent insurance and will cover your entire life. Before buying (or getting sold) a whole life policy, step back and assess your needs. Many parents realize they would only need coverage from a life insurance policy until their children are out of college.

If you are single, depending on your situation, whether you have dependents and so on, you may not actually need life insurance at all.

Finally, don't buy an annuity without doing your homework. Annuities are complex and expensive insurance products that aren't appropriate for a lot of investors.

4. Take an honest look at your spending

Let's dispel one big money myth to start: the more you earn, the more you save. For most people, spending on lifestyle items — like houses, cars, vacations, and so on — only increases with income. Sometimes growth in spending even outpaces growth in earnings.

While it is important to enjoy your success, the truth is that it doesn't matter how much you make if you spend all (or nearly all) of it every year. Taking an honest look at your spending and finding ways to cut back can really pay off later in life.

To do this, consider focusing on your big ticket items, ones that really move the needle. Keep the ones that really make you happy and add value to your life. Consider cutting back on the others.

This may be particularly important if you have children or plans to in the future. Getting a head start by saving aggressively while expenses are lower can provide a lot of flexibility down the road.

You can only spend a dollar once, but a dollar saved and invested can grow significantly over the long-term, which is a unique opportunity for those under 40.

Kristin McFarland, CFP® is a Wealth Advisor for Darrow Wealth Management, a registered investment advisor in the Greater Boston area. Her primary focus is helping individuals under age 45 develop a financial roadmap and get serious about investing. Kristin is a regular contributor to U.S. News & World Report. The material contained in her articles is for general information only and should not be construed as the rendering of personalized investment, legal, accounting or tax advice.

SEE ALSO: Why it seems like everyone else can afford the things you can't

Join the conversation about this story »

NOW WATCH: Amazon has an oddly efficient way of storing stuff in its warehouses

When your opportunities shift from mid-market to enterprise level, not only do the deals get larger as more decision makers and money become involved, the length of your sales cycle will undoubtedly increase as well.

According to TOPO’s 2017 Benchmark Report, the average sales cycle of enterprise deals is 7.7 months. So roughly 2/3 of the year can be spent working a single account from lead to close.

This long sales cycle should be treated like a marathon rather than a sprint, with the consistent care for your sale to take you across the finish line. Like any marathon runner will tell you, getting through the race is as much a mental game as the skill set required. You need to blend the necessary sales skills with patience and gusto to keep the sale moving forward.

So to prep you for the long journey ahead, here are a few ways you can move your slower sales process towards a win.

Aim for a Quick Turn Around

A Harvard Business Review study found that companies that contacted potential customers within an hour of inquiry were seven times more likely to have a meaningful conversation with a key decision maker soon after. In comparison, companies that responded after 24 hours or longer were 60 times less likely to have a conversation.

When you are working with enterprise-level accounts, each and every action you take contributes to the evaluation of your company, including your turnaround time. It’s not just your pitch and demos that are scrutinized, but your attention to detail, response times, and ability to follow up. A quick and attentive turn around could be the key to a prospect’s decision between you and your competitor.

So stay diligent and respond to your prospect’s as soon as possible! With SalesLoft you can enable Live Feed notifications that ping you when prospects reply to your emails, immediately prompting you to respond. Plus, with Snippets you can increase your response times by piecing messages together with reusable, informative content. Delivering a quick response with targeted information will show your prospect you’re fully committed and focussed on their company.

Communicate Often with Consistent Nurture

With long sales cycles, it’s easy for you and your opportunity to fall out of touch. To keep your long sales cycle alive you need to consistently communicate with your prospect. Keeping your prospect in a nurture cadence gives your sales cycle reliable checkpoints that can keep everyone engaged with the sale.

Think of your long sales cycle nurture cadence like a safety net for communication. Ideally, you will be scheduling meetings with your prospects that will develop your business relationship. But setting a nurture cadence with monthly pauses keeps you on the prospect’s radar if conversation isn’t already flowing.

You can even keep your nurture cadence aligned with enterprise prospects that you’ve established good rapport with. If you consistently speak with a prospect, SalesLoft allows you to schedule your emails in advanced. This way your prospects can still receive valuable emails from your nurture cadence at just the right time for them.

Know What’s Best for the Prospect

Over the course of the long sales cycle you’re going to talk to your prospect. A lot. You are going to discuss the pain points and goals of their business, revenue, growth opportunities, how their weekends were, and more. And through all of this communication you should learn the company’s buying style and adapt your sale to fit their needs.

Use those initial conversations to feel out your prospect’s personality. Gauge from cues whether the prospect is more introspective and may need you to motivate them throughout the sale or if the prospect is a take charge kind of person, they may want to guide more of the sale themselves.

The most important thing to keep in mind when you are working a long sale cycle you aren’t just pushing a sale, you are building a business relationship. If you strategically manage your steady sale cycle, not only will you win the deal but you will form a partnership as well.

Download a copy of the eBook today and take your account executive team into the modern sales era.

The post Slow and Steady: Winning the Long Sales Cycle appeared first on SalesLoft.