Geothermal energy — using natural heat from underground to generate electricity or heat — is a proven clean technology with high potential in British Columbia. But our opportunity is in danger of going cold.

Geothermal could play a significant role in a long-term strategy to transition to clean and renewable sources of energy for electricity and heat alongside other rapidly developing sources such as solar, wind and wave power.

This is not the stuff of legend. The U.S. has nearly 4,000 megawatts of geothermal installed. Heat exchange, which is the lowest temperature and simplest geothermal technology, is not uncommon in homes. And SaskPower has plans to deliver 50 per cent of Saskatchewan’s power from renewable sources, including geothermal by 2030. What’s more, B.C. already has many of the skills needed. With some basic training, workers from the oil and gas sectors can also work with geothermal.

There’s more good news. Much of the research to prove the potential for geothermal is already in place because accelerating the development of geothermal is an important part of the work of Geoscience B.C. and others.

In 2015, we funded a technical and economic assessment using publicly available information for 18 geothermal “hotspots” around the province. This work used a comprehensive model to determine viability and takes into account resource exploration, confirmation, and development costs for using geothermal to generate electricity. It also considers the required investment in a power plant — field and power plant operational and maintenance costs as well as other economic inputs such as costs for power lines, roads, permitting and leasing.

The study found that 11 sites across the province could deliver eight per cent of the province’s annual electricity demand, or roughly five terawatt-hours annually. This conservative estimate accepted the risks involved by assuming a 50-per-cent chance of success at each site and was based on known current “reserves” of heat and existing technology. Since then, we have followed up with research looking at the potential for using the direct heat from geothermal sources for heating applications such as industrial drying processes. We have also produced a roadmap document for communities considering developing geothermal projects.

There is no doubt that the upfront costs and risks are high. Potential developers must invest significant dollars long before there is any certainty of success thanks to high exploration costs and there is competition from B.C.’s other sources of cheap energy. With no current large-scale geothermal heat or energy production in B.C., people are also understandably nervous about being the first to give it a try.

Nevertheless, the benefits are clear. Geothermal is a very B.C. option, using our abundant natural resources and unique geology to create clean and sustainable energy. Also, the reliability of geothermal makes it an ideal part of an energy mix because it keeps going when the sun doesn’t shine and the wind doesn’t blow. It also has some interesting applications which could help address wider issues in B.C. — how about growing fresh local produce in the North using geothermal heat in greenhouses? And because it is a renewable natural resource, costs remain stable and free of the ups and downs of commodity markets.

It’s time to turn up the heat on geothermal in B.C. A little further research and exploration would go a long way to adding this powerful technology to B.C.’s energy mix.

Carlos Salas is vice-president and acting CEO of Geoscience B.C.

Getting more sales is paramount as an author. And Amazon continues to reign king. So, how do you do it?

How to sell more books on Amazon is something I’ve spent countless hours researching and refining. So, suffice it to say, I know it well.

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Want the recipe to sell more books on Amazon? 5 Key Ingredients are here! via @bookgal #amazonhacks
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There are a lot of factors that go into the recipe for success on Amazon, a big part of which is being willing to change your book marketing plan as Amazon changes. And like all things in today’s world, the only thing certain is change.

With that in mind I’ve published lots of great articles on how to get more Amazon sale. From making use of subtitles to maximizing the bang of your keywords. And let’s not forget the importance of Author Central Profiles (including those in other countries) and book covers that perform well.

Top Tips and Tricks to Get More Amazon Sales!

So how do you remember all of this? Well, we’ve created a handy infographic that you’ll want to bookmark and refer back to. I think you’ll find it’s incredibly helpful for remembering some of the Amazon tips and tricks that might not seem obvious.

Of course, there are far more things to keep in mind as you boost your Amazon sales. So while these 5 ingredients are among the most often overlooked, you can find more to improve on!  To stay on top of the latest and greatest Amazon tips and tricks, definitely follow our blog. Love this list? Please share it with your indie author friends!

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Check out these 5 ingredients for more Amazon sales! via @bookgal #amazonhacks
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And, if you’re ready to master Amazon and really get more Amazon sales, I’ve got something just for you! My recently revamped exclusive video series will help you stand out above the crowd. With 4,500+ books published every day, that’s super important. So let me help you turn Amazon into your 24/7 sales machine. Click here to see everything the series includes and to get started!

 

There is no debate that questions are at the core of selling. There isn’t a sales guru, training, blog or sales video channel that doesn’t espouse the importance of questions in managing a sale. That debate has been settled, so this lesson isn’t about asking questions, it’s about getting better at asking questions.

If there is one thing I notice with salespeople when it comes to asking questions is this, THEY SUCK AT IT. Sorry, but you do. Yes, I said YOU!

So many salespeople suck at asking buyers questions that I feel perfectly OK, telling you, you suck at it because the 1% of you who don’t, won’t be offended by the comment. The rest of you need a wake-up call.

Learning to ask questions is an art. It takes time and a commitment to perfecting the craft. I wrote the blog post The Question Test a few years ago, and it’s one of my favorites. I purposely wrote it to prove to myself that I could pass the questions test myself and to show readers the power of asking questions without making the other person feel like they are being interrogated. The post was written entirely with questions. It’s 414 words long, and I don’t make a single statement, it’s all questions. The post is fluid; it doesn’t make the reader uncomfortable. It doesn’t feel like an interrogation yet the entire post is nothing but questions.

Lesson 5 – Learn to Ask Questions Better

If you want to sell better, you have to get better at asking questions. There is no way around it. To be great at selling requires information and the best way to get information is from your buyers. Winning a sale rests in what customers know and don’t know about their organization and the possible solutions and then what you do with that information.  Therefore, being a real badass in asking questions will elevate your sales game.

When it comes to questions, there are four factors to asking killer questions you must keep in mind

1)  Tone – The right tone is critical when it comes to questions. It’s too easy to ask a great question, delivered with the wrong tone. Tone is fundamental when it comes to asking questions. You have to understand what tone is appropriate, how to use the tone accurately and when to shift from tone to tone. Imagine you are about to ask a tough question regarding a process your buyer built themselves, in which they are very proud. You know the process is why they are having problems and know it’s shit, but you have to get him to see that, so you need to ask a number of very sensitive questions relating to the process. If your tone is accusatory, demeaning or even dismissive, you’re screwed. In a situation like this, I’d argue even a confident tone would fail. To win in this type of situation a tone of humility, openness, suggestion, and deference is required.

Tone is an art. When it comes to asking questions, it’s an art few sales people even consider, never mind understand. Salespeople often say they struggle with asking more than a few questions. They say they struggle with not feeling like they are interrogating their buyers. The reason they feel this way is because they are not in tune with the buyer and their tone is not aligned with their questions and the buyer’s emotions. Make sure your tone is right and aligned with the questions, the buyer’s emotions and the environment you’re inquiring about.

2)  Timing – Timing matters, just because you can ask a question, doesn’t mean you should. The purpose of asking questions is to get information that isn’t readily available. It’s to get the information you can’t get on the web, or in a Google search.  Because of this, you’re going to want to ask personal and sensitive questions that you just can’t blurt out in the very beginning. Asking questions isn’t the objective, getting information is the aim. Therefore, if you ask a question and the buyer is unwilling to answer it or gives you a shallow, weak answer, you lose. You wasted a question.  To sell better, you have to understand the timing of your questions. What questions should be asked now and what questions should be asked later? What questions should be asked first and what questions are follow up questions? Understanding the order and flow of your questions allows great sales people to establish a flow that takes the buyer on a journey. It’s all dependent on the order and flow of your questions. Not understanding timing is awkward. When timing is off, like anything else, the experience is jolting, difficult to follow and eventually leaves participants feeling uncomfortable. Flow matters when it comes to asking questions, particularly when it comes to doing a kick-ass discovery call. As you work on your question skills, pay attention to your timing.  Learn to create a rhythm and flow in your questioning that takes your buyer on a journey. If you can get good at it, the destiny will be filled with informational gold.

3) Type – The type of question matters because you have to know what information you’re looking for.  Different types of questions get various kinds of responses. A combination of tone and timing, type questions target a specific content or response. Think about the kind of questions you ask like different kinds of screw drivers. There’s flat head, a Phillips head, a Torx drive, a Robertson and an Allen wrench. All of these are screw drivers, yet are different types of screw drivers. The same concept applies to questions. There are personal questions, challenging questions, provoking questions and validating questions.

– Personal questions are designed to get personal information about the buyer, how they feel, what’s important to them, why they did something etc. Personal questions are just that personal.

– Challenging questions are designed to challenge the buyer. They are meant to make the buyer defend a position, challenge their position on a topic or evaluate a current belief system.  Challenge questions are exactly how they sound. They are meant to challenge the buyer.

 – Provoking questions are similar to challenge questions; they are intended to drive or provoke new ways of thinking. Provoking questions are informational questions that offer the buyer an alternative to ponder. Provoking questions are designed to get the buyer to look at something in a different way. Provoking questions start with words like, “Have you considered?”  or “What would happen if . . . ?”  They aren’t exactly challenging the buyer or a something the buyer believes, but the question is asking them to think in a way they haven’t considered. Buyer questions are compelling questions for expanding the conversation and identifying new opportunities. Work on your ability to expand your use of provoking questions. They are excellent at developing the conversation AND position you as an expert.

– Validating questions are meant to validate a position. Validating questions clarify a buyer’s statements, intent, beliefs, and position. Validating questions should be used to make sure you and the buyer are on the same page. Too often we leave meetings or discussions only to find out that what you THOUGHT the buyer meant, she didn’t.  Validating questions ensures you and the buyer are on the same page and that what you heard is what they meant. Always use validating questions at the end of every sales call to confirm you’re on the same page AND before shifting to a new topic. Use validating questions to stay linked and on the same page with your buyer.

4) Objective – The objective of your question matters. What information are you trying to get? Too often sales people ask questions without being clear about the information they’re looking for. Getting good at questions, means be good at understanding what you’re asking for and why.  Why do you want a particular piece of information? Being very precise and calculated in what information you’re looking for from your buyer and why you’re asking for that piece of information is key. Too many times I hear reps ask completely unrelated questions. When reps ask questions, or for information that’s not aligned with the solution you provide, the role the buyer plays, the environment you’re in or align with the timing of the conversation, everything comes unhinged. Be diligent about exactly what information you’re looking for and the objective of the question. Why are you asking the questions? What information are you trying to get? How does the information/question advance the sales call and the deal?  Learn to know what you’re asking for and why.

If you want to get better at selling get better at asking questions. Learn how to use each of these types of questions as tools to get the information you need to create better solutions and better position yourself against the competition. Learn how to use the right tone, with the right type of question at the time, with the right objective, and you will be amazed at what you learn.

Asking questions is the holy grail of sales skills. It’s where the art of selling resides. Learning to ask questions a with an elevated sophistication is how the greatest sales people separate themselves from the pack. Having phenomenal question asking skills will change your life forever. No single skill can improve your life better than learning how to ask questions better. If you want to get better at selling, learn to be better at asking questions. It’s the holy grail of selling.

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How To Sell Better is an on going series tackling the challenges and issues sales people need to focus on to get better. I don’t know how long the series will be or how many I’ll write, but feel free to check all the lessons here.

Updated: I removed this part of the Tone section ( It’s said that when it comes to communication 58% is body language, 38% is tone and only 7% is the spoken word.  Only 7% is the spoken word that makes tone five-times more important than what you say. Do you remember the adage, it’s not what you say (or ask) but how you say it? That’s what we’re talking about here.) after it came to my attention that it was an inaccurate interpretation of a study in done in 1964.  You can read more about it here:

The post How to Sell Better: Lesson 5 – Learn to Ask Questions Better appeared first on A Sales Guy.

Ask any organization what’s happening in the sales department on the last few days of the month and the entire last week of any fiscal quarter. You’ll probably get an uncomfortable laugh and a shake of the head.

Sales teams are closing deals, at all costs.

The market is pushing companies to hit incredibly high numbers, quarter after quarter and month after month. To comply, firms turn up the pressure tactics and close last-minute deals in unnatural ways. Data shows that sales reps give better terms to customers who wait until the last minute — with both sides knowing they can rely on dropped prices and a sure closing, thanks to the end-of-the-month company push.

It is a vicious cycle. And companies know it. Yet they continue the practice, month after month and year after year, perhaps unaware of how much it’s really costing them.

InsideSales Labs, a division of our company, InsideSales.com, recently conducted research analysis on 9.8 million sales transactions from the anonymized data of 151 U.S. companies over nine consecutive quarters (Q1 2014 through Q1 2016). Collectively, these companies annually sold a combined $54 billion, averaging $360 million each.

We learned that at the end of the month reps often push deals that are not ready. Our data shows that salespeople close three times as many deals at the end of the month as during the rest of the month — but lose 11 times as many (11.43, to be exact). Thus, while the end of the month shows an increase in a firm’s overall number of sales, the end-of-the-month push coincides with a 51% decrease in overall sales win rate. Reps are less effective at closing the right deals, with appropriate pricing, at the end of the month: Our study found that overall deal size declined 34.5%.

These inappropriate end-of-month behaviors are costing companies millions. The decrease in deal size and win rate results in an estimated $98 million per year in lost revenue for the average company in our data set. Conversely, it represents a potential gain of over 27% in revenue per company if properly addressed.

How have companies let this happen, and who is to blame? Increasing market pressures from Wall Street and investors, heightened competition, and fears for the future of the national and global economy all come into play.

But sales managers also have to take some blame. Yes, the patterns established through decades of sales behaviors are difficult to break. And yes, some sales leaders may suggest the huge rise in losses at month’s end may be caused by the practice of cleaning out “bad” opportunities — deadwood that will not, and should not, carry over to the next quarter. Even so, there is a dramatic shift in the rate and size of closings at the end of the month, which savvy organizations should address.

So the $98 million question would be: How are organizations going to fix this pervasive problem?

The answer requires support from the highest levels of the organization, but the biggest transition will be, of course, within sales. Teams must be educated on the full impact of their end-of-the-period behaviors. Sales leaders will need to create action plans and compensation schemes that reward appropriate, long-term behavior. Here are some specific places to start:

Focus on weekly forecasting, not monthly quotas. When companies focus on sales data by the week instead of by the month, they get a much more interesting and useful picture. For example, what days and times of the week present the best opportunities to sell? On which weeks and days do the largest deals tend to land? Sales teams can use this information to shape their behavior throughout the quarter, not just at its end.

Use smarter financial incentives. If their compensation structures change, sales reps will notice. Consider a compensation structure that rewards salespeople for not procrastinating. For example, perhaps the organization can offer a larger bonus for deals closing between the first and the 17th of the month, a medium bonus for sales between the 17th and the 24th, and remove the bonus for deals closed the final seven days of the month.

Focus on the customer’s timeline, not yours. Every smart salesperson knows they should focus on what’s in it for the customer. But that’s true of timing, too, not just features and services. Train sales representatives to enter every conversation from the standpoint of providing a solution that meets the customer’s agenda — and timeline — as opposed to their own.

Increase the skills of your sales force. To get away from the traditional end-of-quarter desperation tactics, improve your sales team’s skill sets. Encourage them to brainstorm new, more strategic ways of selling. Perhaps you could study the prospect’s S-1 and their CEO’s letter to shareholders to develop an ROI proposition that is uniquely of interest to them. Host an exclusive VIP dinner. Target your advertising on LinkedIn and Facebook with a greater degree of precision. Have your executive leadership send the prospect a thoughtful gift, along with a handwritten note.

Knowing how much money your organization is likely losing to the traditional sales cycle should be a resounding wake-up call. Solving the problem will not only limit reps’ revenue-hurting behaviors but also improve cash flow, forecasting, and your company’s ability to onboard and implement the purchased solutions, since installation and delivery won’t all fall into the final days of the month. Now is the time for the path to a better, more profitable result to begin. Don’t put it off until the end of the quarter.

• By announcing sweeping price cuts at recently-acquired Whole Foods, Amazon succeeded in once again wreaking havoc on the grocery industry.
• It's just the latest example of the company wiping out billions of dollars of competitor market cap with a corporate announcement, and it's bound to happen again.
• Competitor stock prices are looking more sensitive to Amazon news than their own.

Amazon is once again sending shockwaves rippling through the retail industry.

The Jeff Bezos-led juggernaut announced on Thursday that it will start cutting prices at Whole Foods, the organic grocer it acquired for $13.7 billion back in mid-June. The pricing overhaul will take place on Monday, the same day the deal is expected to close.

The news had a quick and devastating effect on the share prices of competing grocers. Kroger dropped as much as 8.3% on the news, while Sprouts Farmers Market slipped 6.6% and Target lost 4.2%. Walmart, which sells the most groceries in the US, fell more than 2%.

The widespread weakness in the grocery industry highlights an interesting wrinkle that's developed: companies in Amazon's crosshairs are moving more on what the retail giant is doing than on their own specific news and fundamentals.

Take Sprouts for example. It fell just 1.7% after its second-quarter earnings report — a piece of news that actually had to do with its operations. Walmart found itself in a similar situation when it announced results last week, falling just 1.6%, even after giving a lukewarm third-quarter forecast.

The collateral damage among grocers is just the latest example of Amazon imposing its will on an entire industry with a simple corporate announcement, leaving billions of dollars of erased market value in its wake. And there's nothing to suggest this dynamic will slow down anytime soon. Retailers are being forced into a new reality where the spectre of Amazon lurks at every turn.

It's something that first happened to the grocery industry right after the Whole Foods deal, with the group losing 8% over the following week. Sporting good retailers felt similar pain around the same time amid speculation that sneaker and apparel giant Nike would start selling products on Amazon.

In the end, Amazon had added $18 billion in market cap in just a week's time, while its competitors had lost a total of $31 billion. Add the two amounts together and you had an almost $50 billion gap.

Only time will tell which industry will be the next to feel Amazon's wrath. It's entirely possible that competing grocers will feel the pain multiple more times before it's all said and done. Or it could be another area entirely.

And that's the scary part: any section of the retail universe could be next.

SEE ALSO: Amazon can borrow money more cheaply than Russia, Mexico and China

Join the conversation about this story »

NOW WATCH: THE BOTTOM LINE: New record highs for stocks and a deep dive into Apple's iPhone

Here’s something from left field: maybe the number of initial public offerings has been trending lower over the past few years not because of the amount of work that’s involved to go public, but because investors don’t want them.

Based on the performance of some recent IPOs, investors have more than enough supporting evidence to justify not needing them. In short, most of them haven’t consistently traded above issue price, though two of this year’s IPO crop — Canada Goose Holdings Inc. and Jamieson Wellness Inc. — are both trading about 20 per cent higher than their issue price.

But those outliers have to be considered against the others. Source Energy Services Ltd. is down by just over 35 per cent from its revised $10.50 issue price (the original plan was to sell stock in the $17-$20 range); Real Matters Inc., which according to reports at the time was well oversubscribed, is off by more than 30 per cent; and Freshii Inc., which raised its offer price during the marketing period, is down by more than 23 per cent from its $11.50 a share IPO price.

Also consider Vancouver-based Zymeworks Inc., a clinical-stage bio-pharmaceutical company, which went public, largely in the U.S., last May at US$13 a share. Buyers were prepared to pay just over half that price on Thursday.

Not to be forgotten is Aritzia Inc., which raised $460 million in its IPO last fall at $16 a share — a price that was the top end of the range. This year, in a move that surprised the market, it did a $350 million secondary offering at $17.45 a share. The shares closed Thursday at $12.76.

Most of the offerings have performed worse than the S&P/TSX composite, which is about flat for the year.

STEP Energy Services, which planned to price its IPO in the $14-$16 a share range before settling on $9, is a relative winner in that it’s off by about six per cent. So is Kinder Morgan Canada Ltd. which is up seven per cent.

One possible explanation for the overall lackluster performance of most IPOs is the lack of adequate tension between seller and buyer. Clearly the companies aren’t worth as much as the issuers are demanding. Bucking the trend this year, Canada Goose Holdings and Jamieson Wellness have traded above issue price.

Even special purpose acquisition companies, or SPACS have not been spared. Of the four that have completed a qualifying transaction, three are trading below the $10 original issue price: Alignvest Acquisition Corp. (which morphed into Trilogy International Partners) trades at $9.64; Acasta Enterprises Inc., which made three acquisitions, closed Thursday at $5.54; Gibraltar Growth Corp. (which acquired LXR Produits de Luxe Internationale Inc.) trades at $6.70; Kew Media Group Inc., which acquired 10 companies, closed Thursday at $10.06. The SPACs are different because investors also received a warrant at the time of the IPO that, if nothing else, has time value.

Even some issuers that enjoyed a good run for a period of time are now struggling, Consider Cara Operations Ltd., the country’s “largest full-service restaurant company,” which went public in the spring of 2015 at $23 a share. It hit a high of $36.48 in the fall of 2015. The shares, which pay a dividend, closed Thursday at $22.67.

Of course there are the exceptions, both of which are in the technology area. Consider Shopify Inc., a company that provides the back office solutions for ecommerce companies. It has been a winner. It went public at US$17 a share through an offering geared to U.S. investors. Those same shares closed Thursday at $133.50. But the Ottawa-based company still doesn’t generate a profit. Another is Spin Master Corp. which defines itself as a “leading global children’s entertainment company with significant scale and reach.” It went public in the summer of 2015 at $18 a share; those shares closed Thursday at $45.26.

Financial Post

bcritchley@postmedia.com

From The Terminator to Blade Runner, pop culture has always leaned towards a chilling depiction of artificial intelligence (AI) and our future with AI at the helm. Recent headlines about Facebook panicking because their AI bots developed a language of their own have us hitting the alarm button once again. Should we really feel unsettled with an AI future?

News flash: that future is here. If you ask Siri, the helpful assistant who magically lives inside your phone, to read text messages and emails to you, find the nearest pizza place or call your mother for you, then you’ve made AI a part of your everyday life. Even current weather forecasting systems, spam filtering programs, and Google’s search engine – among so many other practical applications – are AI-powered. Now, artificial intelligence doesn’t seem that alarming, right?

What Is Artificial Intelligence?

AI refers to machine intelligence or a machine’s ability to replicate the cognitive functions of a human being. It has the ability to learn and solve problems. In computer science, these machines are aptly called “intelligent agents” or bots.

Not all AI are alike. In fact, what is considered artificial intelligence has shifted as the technology develops. Today, there are three recognized levels in the AI spectrum, all of which we can experience today.

Assisted intelligence – This refers to the automation of basic tasks. Examples include machines in assembly lines.

Augmented intelligence – There is a give and take with augmented intelligence. An AI learns from human input. We, in turn, can make more accurate decisions based on AI information. As Anand Rao of PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) Data & Analytics puts it: “There is symmetry with augmented intelligence.”

Autonomous intelligence – This is AI with humans out of the loop. Think self-driving cars and autonomous robots.

Deep Learning

It is actually just in recent years when a good number of scientists and innovators began to devote their work to artificial intelligence. Technology has finally caught up with faster and more powerful GPUs. Industry observers tack this resurgence to 2015, when fast and powerful parallel processing became accessible. This is also around the birth of the so-called Big Data movement, when it became possible to store and analyze infinite amounts of data.

Thus, we reach today, the era of Deep Learning. Deep learning pertains to the use of artificial neural networks (ANNs) in order to facilitate learning at multiple layers. It is a part of machine learning based on how data is presented, instead of task-based algorithms.

Deep learning has led the way in revolutionizing analytics and enabling practical applications of AI.

We see it in something as basic as automatic photo-tagging on Facebook, a process developed by Yann LeCun for the company in 2013. Blippar, on the other hand, has come out with an augmented reality application that employs deep learning in real-time object recognition in 2015.

You can look forward to driverless cars and so much more. In the same we, we can expect AI to be applied further in business, particularly in decision-making.

Artificial Intelligence in Business

According to Dr. John Kelly III, IBM Senior Vice President for Research and Solutions: “The success of cognitive computing will not be measured by Turing tests or a computer’s ability to mimic humans. It will be measured in more practical ways, like return on investment, new market opportunities, diseases cured and lives saved.”

Yes, AI technology isn’t the end but only a means towards effectiveness and efficiency, improved innovative capabilities, and better opportunities. And, we’ve seen this in several industries that have begun to adopt AI into their operations.

According to a survey by Tech Pro Research, up to 24 percent of businesses currently implement or plan on using artificial intelligence. Stand-outs are in the health, financial services and automotive sectors.

In financial services, PwC has put together massive amounts of data from the US Census Bureau, US financial data, and other public licensed sources to create $ecure, a large-scale model of 320 million US consumers’ financial decisions. The model is designed to help financial services companies map buyer personas, simulate “future selves” and anticipate customer behavior. It has enabled these financial services companies in validating real-time business decisions within seconds.

The automotive industry, on the other hand, has developed several AI applications, from vehicle design to marketing and sales decision-making support. For instance, artificial intelligence has led to the design of smarter (even driverless) cars, equipped with multiple sensors that learn and identify patterns. This is put to use through add-on safe-drive features that warn drivers of possible collisions and lane departures.

Like in the financial services sector, AI is used to develop a model of the automobile ecosystem. Here, you have bots that map the decisions made from automotive players, such as car buyers and manufacturers, and transportation services providers. This has helped companies predict the adoption of electric and driverless vehicles, and the implementation of non-restrictive pricing schemes that work on their target market. It has also helped them make better advertising decisions.

The key here is how artificial intelligence systems are able to run more than 200,000 GTM (go-to-market) scenarios, instead of just a typical handful. What you get is optimized scenarios that maximize revenues.

It’s a similar case in the fields of retail, marketing and sales. According to Adobe Marketing Cloud Product Manager, John Bates: “For retail companies that want to compete and differentiate their sales from competitors, retail is a hotbed of analytics and machine learning.” AI application development has provided marketers with new and more reliable tools in market forecasting, process automation and decision-making.

AI and Business Decisions

Prior to the resurgence of AI and its eventual commercial application, executives have had to rely on inconsistent and incomplete data. With artificial intelligence, they have data-based models and simulations to turn to.

According to PwC’s Rao, limitless outcome modeling is one of the breakthroughs in today’s AI systems. He reiterates: “There’s an immense opportunity to use AI in all kinds of decision making”

Today’s AI systems start from zero and feed on a regular diet of big data. This is augmented intelligence in action, which eventually provides executives with sophisticated models as basis for their decision-making.

There are several AI applications that enhance decision-making capacities. Here are some of them:

Marketing Decision-Making with AI

There are many complexities to each marketing decision. One has to know and understand customer needs and desires, and align products to these needs and desires. Likewise, having a good grasp of changing consumer behavior is crucial to making the best marketing decisions, in the short- and long-run.

AI modeling and simulation techniques enable reliable insight into your buyer personas. These techniques can be used to predict consumer behavior. Through a Decision Support System, your artificial intelligence system is able to support decisions through real-time and up-to-date data gathering, forecasting, and trend analysis.

Customer Relationship Management (CRM)

Artificial intelligence within CRM systems enable its many automated functions, such as contact management, data recording and analyses and lead ranking. AI’s buyer persona modeling can also provide you with a prediction of a customer’s lifetime value. Sales and marketing teams can work more efficiently through these features.

Recommendation System

Recommendation systems were first implemented in music content sites. This has since been extended to different industries. The AI system learns a user’s content preferences and pushes content that fit those preferences. This can help you reduce bounce rate. Likewise, you can use the information learned by your AI to craft better-targeted content.

Expert System

Artificial intelligence has tried to replicate the knowledge and reasoning methodologies of experts through Expert System, a type of problem-solving software. Expert systems, such as MARKEX (for marketing), apply expert thinking processes to provided data. Output includes assessment and recommendations for your specific problem.

Automation Efficiency and AI

The automation efficiency lent by artificial intelligence to today’s business processes has gone beyond the assembly lines of the past. In several business functions, such as marketing and distribution, AI has been able to hasten processes and provide decision-makers with reliable insight.

In marketing, for instance, the automation of market segmentation and campaign management has enabled more efficient decision-making and quick action. You get invaluable insight on your customers, which can help you enhance your interactions with them. Marketing automation is one of the main features of a good CRM application.

Distribution automation with the help of AI has also been a key advantage of several retailers. Through AI-supported monitoring and control, retailers can accurately predict and respond to product demand.

An example is the online retail giant, Amazon. In 2012, it acquired Kiva Systems, which developed warehouse robots. Since its implementation, Kiva robots have been tasked with product monitoring and replenishment, and order fulfillment. They can even do the lifting for you. That’s a big jump in Amazon efficiency, compared to the time when humans had to do the grunt work.

Social Computing

Social computing helps marketing professionals understand the social dynamics and behaviors of a target market. Through AI, they can simulate, analyze and eventually predict consumer behavior. These AI applications can also be used to understand and data-mine online social media networks.

Opinion Mining

Opinion mining is a kind of data mining that searches the web for opinions and feelings. It is a way for marketers to know more about how their products are received by their target audience. Manual mining and analyses require long hours. AI has helped shorten this through reliable search and analyses functions.

This form of AI is often used by search engines, which regularly rank people’s interests in specific web pages, websites and products. These bots employ different algorithms to get to a target’s HITS and PageRank, among other online scoring systems. Here, hyperlink-based AI is employed, wherein bots seek out clusters of linked pages and see these as a group sharing a common interest.

The Future of Business Decision-Making With AI

With no Terminator or Replicant looming in the periphery, there really is no danger to artificial intelligence, only potential. Arguably, there shouldn’t even be the more practical scare of losing people’s jobs to machines. Experts say that AI can actually enhance people’s jobs and allows them to work more efficiently.

And surely, this rings true with respect to decision-making. When decision-makers and business executives have reliable data analyses, recommendations and follow-ups through artificial intelligence systems, they can make better choices for their business and employees. You don’t just enhance the work of individual team members. AI also improves the competitive standing of the business.

The gap lies in developing artificial intelligence systems that could deal with the enormous amount of data currently available. According to Gartner, a marketing research organization, today’s data is set to balloon to up to 800% by 2020. With this, you get about 80% of unstructured data, made up of images, emails, audio clips and the like. At this point, there is nothing – neither human nor artificial intelligence – that can sift through this amount of data, in order to make it usable for business.

According to IBM’s Dr. Kelly: ““This data represents the most abundant, valuable and complex raw material in the world. And until now, we have not had the means to mine it.” He believes that it is companies involved in genomics and oil that will find the means to mine this resource.

He delves further on the future of AI and analytics: “In the end, all technology revolutions are propelled not just by discovery, but also by business and societal need. We pursue these new possibilities not because we can, but because we must.”

Interactive content is buzzing around more and more in marketing departments and B2B marketers are eager to learn more about this topic and begin to see if it makes sense for them.

Often, that means we hear things like: “I’d really like to try a quiz”, or “I want to do a market survey”, or “My boss told me we should try an ROI calculator”.

The problem with these statements is that interactive content isn’t just a single piece content.

It’s part of a larger strategy to make your marketing more engaging to your audience and create a real value exchange that ultimately leads to more qualified leads.

So what does an interactive content strategy look like?

The word strategy means to have “a plan of action designed to achieve a major or overall aim,” so in order to get started with interactive content, you should have a purpose.

For many of our customers, this starts at the core: the ability to create pipeline through marketing.

How can marketers have a seat at the revenue table? By delivering quality leads to sales.

How do you get a lead to be qualified? By capturing important information and evaluating them as in or out. In order to get that information, marketers have long looked for tools to help achieve this strategy.

How do I get started?

Content that creates a dialogue with your audience is a powerful tool in your marketing mix, and can help address the needs above.

Yet, marketers wading into the space are often siloing the content creation process or limiting interactive content to single use case.

While I give kudos to those taking some action, it’s a shame not to reach the full potential of the medium. So I thought it would be good for me to layout a few ways to think about an interactive content strategy and how to get started:

1. By Core and Ongoing Campaigns

Which campaigns or programs do you run no matter what? For many B2B marketers, they are through channels like email, social, paid media, and your website.

These core pillars for any marketing campaign you run probably need a content lift. Why? Because every marketing team is using them and buyers are shrugging them off through repetition.

Imagine having better subject lines and CTAs for your email and paid media that challenged your audience or asked for their opinion on a subject. Or create dynamic content for your website, blog, and social.

Interactive as a strategy allows you to do that. By simply creating content experiences rather than static content, you automatically have a more sticky draw.

Another big core for B2B marketing is nurture streams. As you nurture your database and try and get them to raise their hand, you need more personalized content. Interactive content can amplify your current messaging and assets you already have, but also collect valuable information about the prospect along the way.

So instead of handing someone over to sales because they clicked on an email, send them over because they told you some qualifying information. Strategy means leveraging the work you’re already doing, so layer interactive content with your core and ongoing campaigns.

2. By The Buyer’s Journey

The Buyer’s Journey has evolved over the years as buyers take more control of the process but the motivation behind each stage hasn’t.

The above graph shows some traditional tactics B2B marketers use to drive the buyer forward and how interactive content can enhance those tactics to either attract, engage, or convert buyers.

Interactive content can be used at ANY stage of the buyer’s journey because the content types are flexible and mold to your objectives and initiatives.

An impactful interactive content strategy looks at all the stages, and helps you to plan content for any gaps you may discover, which leads us to our next point.

3. By Campaign Initiatives

Campaign initiatives are usually defined by a problem marketers are trying to solve and set forth a theme with corresponding goals.

Interactive content should be thought of as a tool that helps solve these problems, and, accordingly, layer into any campaign theme.

As you plan your campaign, you should think how carryover themes, designs, and core messages work with interactive assets, and proactively plan for content that engages the audience to help you reach your goals.

By developing a process, you can get more out of your interactive campaigns and enhance your strategy. And that’s what it’s really all about, right? Amplification of your marketing efforts.

Amplify, don’t silo.

At the end of the day, marketers are being asked to do more with less. By treating interactive content as a strategy rather than a one-off content solution, you combine and enhance your efforts to reach your marketing goals.

You have to do it: You have to create opportunities. If you are in sales, you are responsible for creating new opportunities, and that requires prospecting. There is no way around it.

You have to do more of it than you think necessary: If there is a challenge in sales right now, there is none greater than creating enough opportunities. A little prospecting generally doesn’t work. More is better. More than that is what’s required.

Consistency is King: Consistent prospecting produces better results than cramming. Daily is better than weekly. Daily is better than three call blocks throughout the week. Daily is better than any other strategy you might believe serves you.

Cold calling is a Ferrari: If you want speed to results, you use the phone as your primary medium for prospecting. If you are overwhelmed with opportunities and independently wealthy, you might choose another medium.

Email isn’t really prospecting: If no one can hear you ask for a meeting, and if there is no one there for you to whom you make your case for time, then you aren’t really prospecting. Email is for nurturing relationships.

Speaking of nurturing: If you aren’t nurturing your dream clients over time, then you cannot expect to be known for the value you create when you finally have the opportunity to ask for meeting.

The failure to prospect hurts later, not now: You can go days without prospecting. Weeks, even. You might be able to go months without creating a single opportunity. Then, two quarters from now, you have an empty pipeline, and there is no way to build one fast enough.

Your prospecting is not my prospecting: Some people are so effective as to be able to create more than enough opportunities quickly and easily. Others can spend days working targets and produce nothing. What works for you is good if you reach your goals. What is wrong for you might be right for someone else.

Social selling is an above the funnel activity, not prospecting: Nurturing relationships is important. So is establishing yourself as someone with ideas and insights. But if you are not asking for a meeting, it isn’t prospecting.

No one can do your prospecting for you: Not your SDR. Not your marketing department. Not the content creators that work in marketing. Not the event planner that gives you the attendee list of the conference you are attending.

Opening is the new closing: No opportunity is ever closed without first being created. No opportunity is captured before it is created. The top of the funnel is where the action is. The bottom of the funnel is easier.

There is no right time to prospect: Mondays are fine. So are Tuesdays. Thursday aren’t magic. Neither is Friday late, or Saturday morning. The best time to prospect is always now.

If you want to be a rain maker, make it rain. Order takers are going to quickly find themselves disintermediated.

The post Prospecting: What You Need to Know Now appeared first on The Sales Blog.

It’s ridiculously easy for a brand to get started on social media.

But it can also be ridiculously hard for a brand to master the art of the social news feed – not to mention navigate bad feedback and foster relationships with followers.

To help you out, this post will cover 4 quick and easy social media hacks to explode your audience growth.

Let’s get into it!

1. Everybody loves a good story

Marketing provides an amazing opportunity to tell stories. Stories are one of the most powerful and engaging tools around – and they’re free!

The modern consumer has little patience for formal, corporate brands – they want personality and pizzazz. A little bit of personality goes a long way.

To cut through the chatter of other brands on the market and make your product offering stand out, you need to tell your brand’s story. It’s a fantastic way to garner trust, and impassion your users with what you have to offer.

GoPro offer a great example of this. The company posted an open letter from Nicholas Woodman (founder and CEO) in which he addressed his customers. The letter read:

“GoPro helps people capture and share their lives’ most meaningful experiences with others – to celebrate them together. Like how a day on the mountain with friends is more meaningful than one spent alone, the sharing of our collective experiences makes our lives more fun. The world’s most versatile cameras are what we make. Enabling you to share your life through incredible photos and videos is what we do.”

GoPro also embedded the following video on their ‘About us’ page:

This video shows GoPro products in action while also featuring interviews with passionate members of staff who clearly love what they do.

Not only do these pieces of content highlight the brilliance of GoPro’s products, but they also evoke emotions from the reader, taking them back to special moments that they themselves wish they could film.

Consider telling an authentic brand story via video on your company’s own ‘About us’ page.

There’s no need to overcomplicate it – a few shareable facts about the conception of your brand and your employees will suffice.

2. There’s a meme for every occasion

Image Source: Jimmy John’s

If you’re already active on social media, then you will undoubtedly have been exposed to a multitude of memes. The very definition of the word ‘meme’ has taken a new meaning in the digital world, and these pieces of visual content, typically humorous in nature, are copied and spread across the internet like wildfire.

Due to their visual nature, memes work very well on social media. They are extremely shareable and offer value to the viewer, whether it be entertainment or information. Jimmy John’s have well and truly mastered the art of meme production and distribution with their ‘You Vs. The Guy She Tells You Not To Worry About’ sandwich meme. This meme received a great reception and was retweeted 2,703 times – just think of how many people saw this and thought of the Jimmy John’s brand!

So, how can you capitalize on the meme trend yourself? Quite easily, actually. Sites like Meme Generator allow you to caption an image of your choosing, doing the legwork for you.

You can even put your brand’s name in the bottom corner of the meme so that, when reposted, your brand will gain the credit and personality for the meme. Using pre-existing memes is great too, and can allow you to partake in social media conversations and hashtags at the drop of a hat.

Everybody loves a splash of wit.

3. Social selling is the final frontier

Social media has developed in leaps and bounds over the last year or so. It’s now increasingly common for brands to sell directly on social networks.

Here’s why you should be investing your marketing budget in your social selling strategy:

• You can learn more about your target audience by following hashtags, trends, and conversations. This will help with your customer profiling.
• You can reach out to new audiences in a non-creepy way. If you use social media right, you can broaden your reach internationally to people who you would never have been noticed by before.
• Customers find social selling super convenient because they can make a purchase without even leaving the social app. You can now integrate your social media networks with some selected ecommerce solutions such as Shopify.

Image Source: TechCrunch

Don’t fall prey to filling your brand’s social feeds purely with promotional posts. It’s really important to offer value to your followers to prevent them from getting bored. It’s so easy for them to click the dreaded ‘unfollow’ button. Consider getting involved in trending events, conversations and hashtags to stay current and interesting.

Lush Cosmetics have the right idea. They engage with the world through their social feed by regularly posting with relevant hashtags, which openly reveal their political stance and encourage debate. Twubs and Hashtags offer great tools to monitor trending hashtags and align yourself to join in.

If you can master social selling while peppering your feed with relevant, entertaining or informative posts, you’ll be onto a winner.

4. Say it with flowers… I mean, video content

If you’re not posting or sharing video content on social media, then you’re not using it to its full potential. Visual marketing is one of the best ways for you to engage, entertain and surprise your audience.

Did you know that 64% of viewers are more likely to buy online after watching a related video?

Here’s some more food for thought:

• If you’re looking to meet consumers at the ‘awareness’ stage, you can create a video about a particular problem, question, or simply tell your brand’s story
• The ‘consideration’ stage can be further tapped into by presenting a buyer’s guide or a selection of options for the user to choose from
• A video for customers at the ‘decision’ stage could directly promote your product offering as the ideal solution

Pro tip: Video content is fantastic, but be prepared for it to go viral or receive negative press. Pepsi was a recent victim of this with their advert starring Kendall Jenner. This video unfortunately referenced the #BlackLivesMatter movement in a way that was deemed inappropriate and tone-deaf.

The best way to avoid this sort of situation is to play your video in focus groups before releasing it into the wild to ensure that it represents your brand in the best possible light.

In closing

Social media is powerful but it does take a quick-thinking marketer to integrate it properly into a brand’s messaging mix. Surprisingly, it does take a lot of skill just to employ memes in the right way!

It’s worth it though. Go ahead and give your brand a human face – avoid being a drab corporate giant at all costs.

Your social media engagement rates will thank you.

As a millennial going from DHS to DVD and from a tape cassette to CD, were two massive changes the drastically shifted when I was a teenager was spending my money on. Our shift from on premise software installation to on demand in the cloud as well as the shift from Mobile friendly to mobile everything didn’t just change and Industry for the buying habits a high schooler’s it shifted the way we live work and play around the world.

No wonder change is hard, and change is scary for so many as we’ve never been trained or exposed to the digital change that is happened for last five years and will continue for many years to come.
It’s not about shifting our mindset or adjusting our daily workflow rather we must reboot and reformat how we look at change how we embrace change how are you teach change and most importantly how we leverage change to make our lives and the world a better place.

I’ve always believed that people who were scared of change mostly made up of two kinds of people.

Those who looked at change as the result of bad decisions a disaster are uncontrollable circumstances. The second kind of people is those that are afraid of the unknown and believe did rather hold on to what they have today no matter if the results of tomorrow could be worse or better.

In order to reformat our mindset, so we are open to change we must embrace these seven mindset hacks which if you do, I believe you’ll go from hating or fearing change to falling in love with it.

1. Perfection is a fairytale
2. Control is an illusion
3. Perspective drives experience
4. Organized chaos is the new normal
5. Commit to new with Trust then Training then Technology
6. Success & Goals Come From Your Why, not what or how
7. Being opinionated without being informed is just plain stupid.

“Don’t Hate What You Don’t Understand”

Why do we read about “Messy desks equal people who are smart and hard workers” because those trying to make an organized, perfect desk that they can control are too busy doing that to write blog posts?

From the iconic Fuller Brush man lugging a suitcase of merchandise in the 1940s, to a slick young corporate raider trading stocks in a modern brokerage firm, Hollywood has romanticized the art of selling since films were first invented.

There’s something inherently gripping about the psychological chess game between buyer and seller that audiences respond to.So whether you prefer comedy or drama, you’re bound to enjoy a few movies on this list … and that’s a money-back guarantee.

1. Used Cars (1980)

Kurt Russell plays a hotshot used car hustler who dreams of running for state senate in Robert Zemeckis’s outrageous sales satire. Personifying every crooked cliché of the trade, Russell’s quick-talking charm and effortless charisma gives this hilariously raunchy comedy an energy that’s as effective today as it was 35 years ago. With little more than a high-wattage smile and a bucket of auto primer, Russell turns his character’s often-repeated motto “Trust me!” into a mantra that every good salesperson would do well to perfect.

2. Death of a Salesman (1985)

This Emmy-winning adaptation of Arthur Miller’s landmark play premiered on CBS as a made-for-television movie. Brilliantly supported by John Malkovich and Stephen Lang, Dustin Hoffman’s deeply moving portrayal of the doomed Willy Loman brings Miller’s grim parable to tragic life. Using door-to-door sales as a metaphor for the failure of the American Dream, “Death of a Salesman” is a heartbreaking portrait of a man whose inability to change proves his undoing.

3. Seize the Day (1986)

Three years before he taught the phrase carpe diem to the students in “Dead Poets Society,” Robin Williams gave a powerful performance in the ironically titled “Seize the Day.” Playing a middle-aged Jewish salesman struggling with poverty and divorce in the 1950s, Williams captured every nuance of Saul Bellow’s classic novel. Heartbreaking and emotionally raw, this bleak portrait of a man whose natural sales skills fail him at the worst possible moment was originally broadcast on PBS television.

4. Baby Boom (1987)

Diane Keaton stars as J.C. Wiatt, a self-proclaimed “Tiger Lady” who’s so focused on work she barely has time to breathe. When she inherits a toddler from deceased relatives, this high-powered management consultant learns that raising a child requires more tenacity than negotiating a million-dollar contract. After losing her job and buying a ramshackle farm, the overstressed Wiatt discovers her true calling when she starts selling her own brand of organic baby food. A warm-hearted tale of entrepreneurial ingenuity, “Baby Boom” demonstrates that, in business and in life, a setback can be an opportunity in disguise.

5. Tin Men (1987)

Barry Levinson’s nostalgic dramedy about two rival aluminum-siding salesmen beautifully evokes the early ‘60s with flawless art direction and rich characterizations. Depicting the moment when Baltimore’s newly formed Home Improvement Commission cracked down on corrupt sales practices, “Tin Men” captures the end of an era with honesty and humor. In the film’s witty coda, our disgraced heroes drive off into an uncertain future, while a familiar set of golden arches being erected in the distance signals an important new business venture on the rise.

6. Glengarry Glen Ross (1992)

With blistering intensity and savage dialogue, David Mamet’s misanthropic masterpiece about a group of desperate salesmen in a Chicago real-estate office introduced a phrase that strikes fear in the heart of anyone who ever tried to finalize a deal: “Coffee is for closers.” Playing the manager in charge of doling out prospective sales leads, Kevin Spacey’s cold-blooded smarm has rarely been more effective. But it’s Al Pacino’s Oscar nominated portrayal of smooth-talking Ricky Roma that steals the show. Watching him manipulate a naïve client into buying acres of worthless property is both horrific and exhilarating. As Mamet’s cautionary tale makes painfully clear, sometimes you’ve got to sell your soul before making a sale.

7. Tommy Boy (1995)

Chris Farley’s physical humor and David Spade’s scathing sarcasm helped make this raunchy comedy about a lovable moron on a quest to save his family’s factory a surprise box office hit. But beneath the fat jokes and gross-out gags, “Tommy Boy” actually depicts the birth of a successful salesman. Tasked with generating enough new business to keep his company afloat, Farley gradually learns that connecting with customers depends on more than fancy slogans and firm handshakes; it’s about listening to their needs and responding with genuine humanity. Also, it helps if you don’t accidentally set their desks on fire while screaming “Holy Schnikes!”

8. Diamond Men (2000)

Three years after his Oscar nomination for “Jackie Brown,” Robert Forster delivered one of his finest performances as Eddie Miller, a veteran traveling jewelry salesman whose recent heart attack forces an early retirement. Charged by his firm with training a younger replacement, an unlikely friendship develops between the cross-generational partners, culminating in their unexpected visit to a rundown massage parlor, where a second chance at love just might await our widowed hero. Part road movie, part character study, the little-seen “Diamond Men” is a gem waiting for rediscovery.

9. Lord of War (2005)

Loosely inspired by the real-life career of a notorious weapons dealer, “Lord of War” posits that selling AK-47s to African warlords isn’t that much different than selling orthopedic shoes to senior citizens. Ultimately, it’s all a matter of treating your customer with respect. Charting the rise and fall of a small-arms dealer who moves from distributing handguns in his New York City neighborhood to delivering guided-missiles to rogue nations, this darkly comic thriller stars Nicolas Cage in one of his most fascinating roles. Clinging to the idea that he’s merely supplying a demand, Cage’s weary merchant of death eventually confesses that he’s not in it for the money; it’s simply something he’s good at.

10. Pursuit of Happyness (2006)

While “Death of a Salesman” uses the sales occupation as a symbol of futility, this inspirational drama presents it as a positive, life-changing profession. Will Smith earned an Academy Award nomination for his role as Chris Gardner, a fitfully employed salesman who finds himself and his five-year-old son homeless after a series of unlucky financial breaks. Landing an unpaid internship at a brokerage firm, the film tracks Gardner’s unwavering pursuit of a better life, despite constant setbacks and difficulties.

11. Love & Other Drugs (2010)

Based on the nonfiction memoir Hard Sell: The Evolution of a Viagra Salesman, this romantic drama stars Jake Gyllenhaal as an ambitious pharmaceutical rep whose slippery ethics and refusal to take no for an answer help him become Pfizer’s #1 drug pusher. Though marketed as a love story, it’s the film’s unique look at the competitive world of medical sales that makes it worth watching. Whether flirting his way past nurses or bribing doctors, Gyllenhaal’s puppy-dog charm causes us to root for him, despite the morally dubious practices of the industry he’s working for.

12. Cedar Rapids (2011)

Fans of the TV show “Parks and Recreation” will enjoy this low-key laugher about insurance salesmen; but anyone who’s suffered through an interminable business convention will relate to it as well. Funnyman Ed Helms plays Tim Lippe, a naïve insurance man who’s so sheltered and innocent that he’s never spent the night in a hotel before. Sent by his company to an important convention in the “major metropolis” of Cedar Rapids, Iowa, Tim’s innate positivity has a transformative effect on the cynical salespeople he spends the weekend with. A modest yet engaging comedy about workplace camaraderie, “Cedar Rapids” is well worth visiting.

13. Moneyball (2011)

This Oscar-nominated film tells the true story of Billy Beane (Brad Pitt), the general manager of the downtrodden 2002 Oakland Athletics baseball team. With a tight budget and the help of recent Yale economics graduate Peter Brand (Jonah Hill), Beane pioneers the sabermetric approach to baseball recruiting. Throughout the film, Pitt's Beane must sell his scouting staff, management team, and own players on his unorthodox approach to building the team. It's a story of big bets, questioning the status quo, and turning meagre resources into big results -- something all salespeople have encountered at one time or another.

14. Joy (2015)

"Joy" is a film about legendary entrepreneur Joy Mangano. The film picks up with Joy, played by Jennifer Lawrence, as a divorced mother of two working as an airline booking clerk. Mangano gets her big break when QVC offers her self-wringing mops a spot on one of their telethons. Unfortunately, the spot flops due to a salesman's poor execution. Mangano fights for the chance to star in the infomercial herself and success soon follows. "Joy" is further proof that hard work, sacrifice, and an intimate understanding of your target audience are all part of selling your way to the top.

15. The Founder (2016)

Ray Kroc is the 52-year-old milkshake machine salesman who built a fast food empire. "The Founder" tells the story of Kroc's partnership with Dick and Mac McDonald, and his subsequent franchise and takeover of their family burger business. Michael Keaton's Oscar-nominated portrayal of Kroc isn't always likable, but it's a display of the "whatever-it-takes" mindset that has skyrocketed more than one entrepreneur to success. It's also sure to leave you craving a cheeseburger.

16. Boiler Room (2000)

The "boiler room" is where aggressive brokers sell to unsuspecting buyers over the phone and are rewarded with mansions, sports cars, and other luxury goods. The story centers around Giovanni Ribisi, who plays a college dropout who gets a job as a broker at a suburban investment firm. With his new career and lucrative income, he's back in his father's good graces. But when he discovers the firm isn't exactly legitimate, he's faced with the ultimate decision.

17. Jerry Maguire (2000)

One of Tom Cruise's most famous roles, his turn as Jerry Maguire tells the story of a sports agent who has a moral epiphany -- and loses his job for sharing it. With his former secretary and one very difficult athlete (played by Cuba Gooding Jr., who won an Academy Award for his performance), he works to create a new life and a new management firm, while facing struggles most new business owners can relate to on one level or another.

18. The Wolf of Wall Street (2013)

Arguably a new generation's "Wall Street," this 2013 film staring Leonardo DiCaprio as Jordan Belfort tells the true story of Belfort's meteoric rise from an entry-level Wall Street broker to the fortune-hunting owner of his own firm. Drugs and illicit financial practices eventually lead to his downfall -- and jail time -- but viewers might still walk away from the film feeling Belfort's empire of excess was only his first act. Fair warning, the clip below is NSFW.

19. Cadillac Man (1990)

Joey O'Brien, played by Robin Williams, is in financial trouble and has two days to sell a dozen cars in order to pay back his debts. This task might sound difficult enough to most salespeople, but things get even hairier when the husband of the dealership's secretary takes the dealership hostage in an effort to find out why O'Brien has been having an affair with his wife.

20. The Goods: Live Hard, Sell Hard (2009)

Don Ready has the goods and he knows how to use them. Jeremy Piven plays the lead role, an extraordinary salesperson called to save a car dealership from bankruptcy over Fourth of July weekend. What follows is comedy gold as very little goes right and Ready realizes he'll have to get crafty to turn the weekend into a success.

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Companies in the financial services industry really know their stuff, but when it comes right down to lead generation and appointment setting, some of them need to brush up on the most important marketing strategies to leverage.

In any case, financial services are a hard sell for the reason that potential clients are usually particular in the type of service they want to purchase.

According to Experian.co.uk, financial businesses are facing three marketing challenges and these are:

• Keeping up with the latest Financial Services marketing regulation – keep the customer first
• Encouraging loyalty and retention within Financial Services
• Making inroads into new markets within Financial Services

These, are also the reasons why companies selling financial services are finding more effective strategies to increase their product’s profitability and, more importantly, nurture client relationships that can last a long time.

On this note, let us fill you in on what you can do t improve your lead generation – using the old strategies! We’re not kidding. Apparently, from what we can observe with the marketing campaigns we are handling, old school lead generation still has enough fire to keep the sales pipeline alive and kicking with high quality financial leads.

It’s just a matter of deciding whether or not to apply them in your current campaign and see where the old dog takes you.

Cold calling.

92% Of All Customer Interactions Happen Over The Phone. (Source: www.thebrevetgroup.com)

We know what you’re thinking: We have smart devices at our disposal. So, why should we settle for such a prehistoric strategy as cold calling? Well, be it as it may, cold-calling seems to be an outdated channel for getting the kind of financial leads you want. Still, B2B telemarketing in general is still as efficient as it was before.

And this is because decision-makers in the financial services industry demand quality interactions with a marketing representative. In particular, there are still high-level managers (and there is a lot of them) who prefer receiving calls to reading a long Facebook post or a newsletter. For this to work out well for you, of course you need to partner up with a company that knows telemarketing like it knows the financial services sector.

Trade shows.

Going to events with other financial services enterprises? Sounds like a good plan. But here’s why you should dip your toes on it.

According to marketeer.kapost.com, trade shows generate the highest lead quantity and quality.

• 83% of the attendees have some kind of buying power

• 85% of decision makers say attending trade shows saves their company time and money by bringing vendors together under one roof

• 79% of the attendees say that attending shows helps them decide on what products to buy

• 91% of attendees say that trade shows impact their buying decisions because the competition is in one place allowing for comparison shopping in real time

• 85% of an exhibitor’s success lies in the performance of the staff

• 53% of exhibit managers say its “difficult” or “very difficult” to keep effective booth staffers

• Converting a trade shows lead to a sale costs 38% less than sales calls alone

• Trade show visitors will tell 6+ people about their experience

• 81% of attendees at a recent show agreed that trade shows help attendees become aware of new products and services

• 91% of attendees tell us they get the most useful buying info from trade shows and events

(Source: 10 IMPRESSIVE STATISTICS TO BACK YOUR TRADE SHOW MARKETING PROGRAM)

Trade shows, where companies in the past had secured most of their quality B2B leads, still remain to be effective avenues from which a financial services company can acquire a steady stream of prospects.

All you have to do is to sign-up and prepare the things you need to draw in interested decision-makers. While you’re at it, you can publicize your company’s participation through your official blog. This healthy combination between the new and old schools of marketing create an effective mechanism for generating quality leads.

But before you can put on your Throwback Thursday shirt, you have to realize that you need someone to help you navigate through the traditional side of B2B marketing.

This post originally appeared at The Savvy Marketer.

How can you improve your account based marketing efforts? Good data.

By now, anyone in business knows that data matters just as much as the technology that uses it. In fact, you could argue that — much like the fuel that runs an engine — the two are completely dependent upon each other.

You can create the most efficient engine on the planet, but it’ll be worthless until you fill it with the right fuel to get those pistons moving. That’s the relationship between data and account-based marketing: Data informs and fuels whatever direction an ABM initiative takes.

Still, most companies attempt to understand the technology instead of the data. Those that are fluent in both can better equip themselves to thrive and reap a competitive advantage. Gaining that edge won’t be easy. In fact, Experian’s 2017 Global Data Management Benchmark Report states that poor data quality plagues 94 percent of U.S. companies. Once a misspelled name or incorrect number enters the system unnoticed, long-term forecasts for everything from marketing to sales to customer service are thrown off.

You could be reaching out to the right person with the wrong message or, worse yet, chasing down a lead that never existed. Either way, your ABM strategy is sputtering to a stop by the side of the road. By improving the accuracy of your information, you’re much more likely to gather enough momentum to beat your competition to the finish line.

The Data Ideal

Sharpening the data your ABM engine runs on isn’t as simple as topping the tank off with more gas, though. Getting better data starts by attaching it to an effective unique identifier. While most companies link their information to a company name, that option can yield a messy mishmash of incorrect labels and duplicates.

There are also identifiers like Dun & Bradstreet's DUNS number or Thomson Reuters' PermID, but these present their own challenges and are impossible to memorize at scale. In my experience, your best option is always a business’s primary URL — “primary” being the operative word here.

By using a company’s primary URL, you can then ping it for signs of life and scrub it from your records if the account no longer exists. Why waste the time, money, and resources on a business that went kaput? With your unique identifier in place, you can next give a spit shine to some of those dirty accounts. Those are often the hardest to solve, as they require tedious handwork and discipline to scrub those incorrect and incomplete records from your data.

But the time and effort will be worth the trouble. Good marketing hinges on accurate and abundant information and dirty accounts make it far more difficult to market your wares, and that goes double for any ABM campaigns.

At its core, an ABM approach starts with the account. If an account contains incorrect information, your team is talking to the wrong person and other departments are hindered from communicating and collaborating.

Your CRM needs to talk to your ABM, which needs to talk to your customer success system, and so on. Bad data is like diesel fuel in your car's gas tank. The engine may run at the outset, but it'll break down sooner rather than later.

Making Data Combustible

Starting with accurate data means you'll talk to the types of customers who respond most to your product. So rather than focusing on all the peripheral workings of your next campaign, use the following steps to hone your data quality:

1. Get everything in step.

A comprehensive data strategy will ensure every aspect of your sales and marketing efforts reaches the right people. Any misalignments in either your data or your account mapping will result in your message falling on deaf ears.

To avoid bad data, you’ll obviously want to identify your ideal customer, but also make sure you’re working with current information. After all, people change jobs, companies change locations, and businesses change hands.

With the right information in place, you can then move to mapping your campaign. Start with the “big” aspects of each activity; once these main elements are laid out, break each down into smaller, more actionable parts.

2. Mind the elements.

A proper ABM strategy helps a business stay on track and make the most of the content it creates. Our company's Competitive Relationship Graph maps the degree of competition between any two companies, helping clients reach the maximum number of accounts within a given criterion.

For example, imagine a sale just closed. Plugging your company into Owler's graph would allow you to find lookalike competitors working in the same space; you’ve now got a list of leads most likely to convert.

It’s all about stitching together a fuller picture from the raw data available to you. Sales already use similar tactics to compile a list of prospects, so this just makes the process a little easier and more strategic.

3. Don’t let up.

Knowing what's happening within your accounts is a critical aspect of any effective engagement strategy, and that’s where your map really comes in handy. It’ll guarantee you follow up with accounts at the right times.

Sure, marketing automation will help. You can send out “personalized” follow-ups to all your prospects on the basis of their initial responses or whether they clicked on a given ad, but the timing of your correspondence must be spot-on.

Integrate some level of marketing automation into your customer relationship management. Plot when and what sort of messaging is needed to take interested parties to the next level, then track the impact of what you’re putting out there and adjust accordingly.

Data is just as much about quality as it is quantity. Without a high degree of quality, your business won’t be competitive. Make sure you’re working off the most accurate information available before mapping out your campaign and reaching out to your target audience. Otherwise, all you’ll be left with nothing but exhaust.

This is a continuation of our blog series, Designing Your 2018 Sales Compensation Plan.

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Lawrence Livermore scientists, in collaboration with researchers at Northeastern University, have developed carbon nanotube pores that can exclude salt from seawater. The team also found that water permeability in carbon nanotubes (CNTs) with diameters smaller than a nanometer (0.8 nm) exceeds that of wider carbon nanotubes by an order of magnitude.

By Nicole Mordant

VANCOUVER — Institutional investors hoping to profit from cobalt, this year’s high-flying metal, are buying into companies that are smaller than their usual fare to gain exposure to an industry supplying the burgeoning electric car market.

Prices for cobalt, a key ingredient in lithium-ion batteries for electric vehicles, have spiked 83 per cent this year on forecasts that demand will double in the next decade as consumers switch to less-polluting cars.

Nearly all cobalt, which prolongs battery life, is mined as a by-product of copper and nickel, making it difficult for investors to get direct exposure.

• This obscure metal used to fight Crusaders surged 67% in a month

Much like the recent boom in lithium, another battery ingredient, cobalt’s surge has resulted from heady forecasts for ownership of electric vehicles. UBS in May said it expected them to account for 3.1 per cent of global car sales in 2021 and 13.7 per cent in 2025, up from 1 per cent this year.

In response, small cobalt-focused companies are mushrooming, mostly in Canada, a long-time hub for mining start-ups, but only one, Cobalt 27 Capital Corp, concentrates entirely on the mineral.

“To gain exposure to the cobalt theme in any pure way, you almost have to go down the market capitalization spectrum,” said portfolio manager Ben Cleary of Sydney-based Tribeca Investment Partners.

Institutions are often wary of small-cap stocks, which can be volatile and difficult to sell because of their small number of investors.

Tribeca, which manages A$2.5 billion ($2.48 billion), owns shares of Canada’s Ecobalt Solutions Inc., which is building a cobalt mine in Idaho. It also has stock in small Australian miner Cobalt One, which is being acquired by Canada’s First Cobalt in a three-way tie up to expand its exploration land in the province of Ontario.

Cobalt listings surge

At the end of July, 110 companies mining or exploring for cobalt were on the Toronto Stock Exchange and TSX Venture Exchange, a market for smaller-capitalization stocks, compared with fewer than 30 in 2015, according to SNL Financial.

Some of the optimism is already built into cobalt stocks. Cobalt One has surged 30 per cent this year, First Cobalt has nearly doubled, and Ecobalt has jumped 144 per cent.

Some junior miners point out that their projects are in more politically stable regions than the Democratic Republic of Congo, where more than half the world’s cobalt is produced. Last year Amnesty International said some mines there were using child labor.

Tesla Inc Chief Executive Officer “Elon Musk and others are saying: ‘Where do I get my cobalt if I don’t want to go to the Congo?'” said First Cobalt CEO Trent Mell.

Tesla has said it would like to source raw materials for its “Gigafactory” battery plant in North America.

At least two more cobalt explorers with Ontario projects are planning listings on the Toronto Stock Exchange in coming months, an industry source said, requesting anonymity because the information is not public.

That would follow the June listing of Cobalt 27, which raised $200 million in the market’s biggest mining initial public offering since 2012.

BlackRock Inc, the world’s largest asset manager, bought Cobalt 27 shares, it said in a June 30 securities filing.

Cobalt 27, which owns about 2,200 tonnes of cobalt and is not a miner or explorer, was created specifically to give institutions direct access to investing in the metal without the exploration and development risks facing miners, said CEO Anthony Milewski.

“It is really the only pure play that exists,” Milewski said.

 

To the uninitiated, the field of psychographics may sound a little like a debunked “scientific” principle such as phrenology, but actually, it’s one of the most exciting developments in psychological analysis that marketers can leverage in their campaigns.

But what is psychographics? Why should you care? How can you use it? These are all questions we’ll be answering in this post. We’ll explore what psychographics is, what makes it so valuable to digital marketers, and nine amazing ways you can apply it to your campaigns.

Before we begin in earnest, though, let’s run through a quick primer on psychographics as a scientific discipline.

What is Psychographics?

Psychographics is the study of people’s attitudes and interests, often studied in conjunction with typical demographic data to build more complete profiles of target markets and audiences.

Although psychographics is used in a variety of applications, its primary use is in market research. We can tell a great deal about a person simply by examining the demographic data about their life – their age, income level, education, occupation – but by itself, this data is only of limited use. It tells us nothing about their aspirations, their beliefs, their attitudes, or any other subjective psychological measure.

That’s what makes psychographics so powerful; by combining demographic data with psychographic data, we can build much more complete, sophisticated profiles of consumers based on a much richer picture of who they really are.

Now that we know a little more about what psychographics is, how do you go about gathering this invaluable data?

How Can You Gather Psychographic Data?

Although many of the metrics favored by digital marketers are quantitative, psychographics is more qualitative. Yes, psychographic data can and should be appropriately categorized, but psychographic data can be significantly more subjective and nuanced in comparison to traditional quantitative research methodologies.

Market Research Firms

If you’ve ever conducted market research, you probably already know what a tremendous pain in the ass it can be, particularly if you’re a freelance marketer or working as part of a smaller team with limited resources. That’s why many companies turn to dedicated market research firms to do the legwork for them. This offers several benefits, such as scientifically rigorous data collection methods and proper vetting to ensure integrity of the data.

It also presents a further budgetary consideration, as market research data – even generic white papers and reports – rarely comes cheap.

Focus Groups

Conducting focus groups can be an excellent method of gathering psychographic data. It allows you to create testing audiences that adhere to your specifications (including your business’ ideal customers and established buyer personas).

The major drawback of focus groups is actually assembling them and gathering the data. Putting together a focus group can be a significant time-sink, and that’s before you even ask your first question. Furthermore, there are no guarantees that the information you gather will be actionable or even reliable.

Customer Surveys and Questionnaires

Another method of psychographic data collection at your disposal is customer surveys and questionnaires.

This approach has many benefits, including the fact that surveys and questionnaires are relatively inexpensive to produce, can be distributed electronically for ease of completion by participants, and general consumer familiarity with this method of market research.

Image via Help Scout

Surveys and questionnaires do have their drawbacks, though, including few solid ways to overcome low respondent participation, and the potential unreliability or inaccuracy of the data itself – many people answer questionnaires in an aspirational way, meaning they may not respond completely truthfully to certain questions, especially questions on more contentious topics.

Detailed Analytics Data

Perhaps the most time-efficient means of gathering psychographics data is using detailed analytics data.

Social media platforms such as Facebook and Twitter are arguably better suited to the gathering of psychographic data by virtue of the wealth of personal information these services possess about their users. In particular, an individual’s personal interests can be immensely valuable psychographic data points, as can data that some individuals may not be as truthful about in a real-world setting like a focus group, such as their political beliefs.

9 Ways to Use Psychographics in Your Marketing

As we mentioned above, psychographics is most commonly applied in the field of market research, specifically in the creation and development of detailed buyer personas. However, this is far from the only potential application of this fascinating data.

Let’s take a look at nine applications of psychographics you can use in your next campaign.

1. Create More Refined Social Media Audiences

If you’ve ever run a Facebook Ads campaign, you’ll know how granularly you can target prospective customers. Targeting relevant audiences by interests is a viable strategy, but if you dig a little deeper into what really makes your audience tick, you’ll find a whole new world of possibilities opens up.

Once you’ve identified and refined your core audience, look for the psychographic commonalities that your target market shares. Are their political beliefs relevant? Does their affinity for certain brands or even specific products suggest wider underlying attitudes? (For example, mothers in their thirties who are also into yoga may be interested in broader health-related topics.) How do these consumers see themselves? These are all questions you can ask as the starting point for psychographic targeting research that could yield new opportunities you may not have considered previously.

2. Write More Emotionally Compelling Ads

We know that leveraging emotional triggers can be amazingly effective in online advertising. If we can write emotionally compelling ads using the bare minimum of information, imagine how much more effective your ads could be if you knew more about your target market.

Using emotional triggers in ad campaigns is always a tentative balancing act, as what one person finds fascinating and enticing may be morally repugnant and utterly repellant to someone else.

However, psychographic data can reveal a great deal about your target market, allowing you to write emotionally powerful ads – negative or otherwise – that may improve your conversion rates considerably.

3. Enhance A/B Tests

Hopefully, you’re already A/B testing most of your marketing collateral. However, incorporating psychographic data into A/B tests can result in even more revealing and accurate results.

Image via VWO

It’s important to note that when I say psychographics can be used to enhance A/B tests, I don’t necessarily mean the tests themselves. It’s very difficult to segment an A/B test by psychographic dimensions, simply because there’s no reliable way to determine or define a visitor’s psychographic profile at the moment they visit your site. I am, however, saying that psychographic analysis may yield valuable insights into why your visitors responded to the A/B test in the way they did.

For example, does a specific landing page you tested perform strongly because of something as simple as a design element or the wording of a call to action, or are there more complex underlying reasons that could have shaped visitors’ behavior? The main image on your landing page might resonate differently depending on your audience’s psychographic makeup.

Only you can decide whether this data is actionable, but the more you know about why visitors interacted with your site in the ways they did, the more accurately you can target your ideal prospects in the future.

4. Identify New Content Topic Areas

One of my favorite content marketing concepts is what Larry calls “land and expand,” the process of broadening the breadth of your content topics to include tangentially relevant topics that are beyond your immediate business interest but are still relevant – and interesting – to your primary audience. This is an application of psychographic data that can really shine.

For example, here at WordStream, we know that many of our readers work in digital marketing – gasp! – but we also know that many are interested in broader trends in the technology industry, as we determined by analyzing analytics data from our social media accounts as well as our website.

Affinity categories in Google Analytics let you explore your site visitors’ interests

If we were to dig a little deeper into psychographic research, we could then ask more detailed questions when devising our wider content marketing strategies based on those interests. For example, we could investigate whether our readers’ interest in technology stems from an aspirational view of the world and how technology can solve urgent social problems, or whether this interest in tech is from a purely consumptive or entrepreneurial standpoint.

Twitter Analytics is an excellent source of psychographic data such as
personal interests

Once you start to learn who your audience really is, you can “land and expand” much more effectively – a real boon for established blogs that may be experiencing difficulty in finding new topics to cover.

5. Improve Your Conversion Pathways

If you’ve set up custom conversion pathways in Google Analytics to measure the success of specific goals and objectives, incorporating psychographic data can be remarkably effective at identifying why people fail to convert and explaining more fully why people drop off at the point in the funnel that they do.

Let’s say you have a custom conversion pathway established in Google Analytics, and that this conversion pathway is tied to a specific business objective (which it should be, by the way). You may know that many prospects fail to convert on a specific landing page – but don’t know why.

A visualization of conversion pathways within Google Analytics

By applying the psychographic data you’ve gathered to a specific problem (i.e. why you’re losing people at a specific point in your funnel), you can examine the problem with a great deal more focus. Is the language of your landing pages turning off prospects because they perceive your business differently than you do? Does your brand messaging reinforce beliefs your audience already holds, or does it stand directly at odds with their perceptions of themselves as consumers?

The more you know about your target market, the more confidently you can hypothesize why the most vulnerable points of your sales funnel are failing – then shore them up.

6. Reinforce Your Brand Values

We’ve talked about the importance of cultivating brand advocacy in the past, and for good reason. Brand evangelists are your most hardcore fans, and one of the best ways to encourage people to become loyal brand ambassadors for your company is to put your brand values on full display in everything you do. An easy way to do this is to compare the psychographic profiles of your most fiercely loyal followers and ensure that your wider messaging reflects these brand values.

Illustrated examples taken from Baileys’ brand value daybook. Original art by Serge Seidlitz.

The Lush cosmetics company is an excellent example of this principle in action. Obviously, I don’t have actual psychographic data for Lush’s target market to hand, but the company makes sure that its commitment to ethically produced, environmentally friendly products made without the use of animal testing is front-and-center in its messaging. I’d bet my last dollar that this messaging strongly reinforces the personal values of Lush’s ideal customer.

How can you reinforce your brand values as part of your wider marketing messaging?

7. Create More Targeted, Relevant Email Marketing Blasts

One of the great things about psychographics is that it gives you so much clearer an idea of not only who your target market is, but also what they want and how they feel. This, in turn, allows you to tap into your audience’s doubts, fears, and questions to create highly relevant and targeted email blasts.

We know that creating highly personalized email blasts is a great way to improve your open rates. Tapping into psychographic data allows you to do precisely this. You can also cross-reference existing analytics data from your email marketing campaigns to gain greater insight into why your most popular email blasts resonated so strongly with your readers – then replicate it.

Email marketing allows for certain concessions that other marketing campaigns may not, such as the use of using hypothetical questions as enticing subject lines, tying your company’s brand values to current events, and other creative techniques, all of which can be deepened by a greater understanding of your audiences’ psychographic profile.

8. Use Aspirational Imagery and Messaging

One of the most revealing things you can learn about your prospects through the application of psychographics is not only who they are, but who they want to be. Aspirational messaging can be extraordinarily effective, and the more you know about your market, the more effectively you can leverage these aspirational desires in your campaigns.

At WordStream, we frequently remind our readers that people don’t buy products for its own sake; they buy things to solve their problems. As such, aspirational messaging can be amazingly powerful. It allows prospective customers to envision how your business can not only improve their lives in an immediate, problem-solving sense, but also how your business can help them become the people they want to be – a powerfully persuasive technique.

9. Revisit and Update Buyer Personas

Our last tip might not be as exciting as the preceding tips, but it’s no less important.

Once you’ve gone through the trouble of gathering psychographic data about your target market, it’s vital that you either update existing buyer personas and message matrices to include this new information, or create new ones entirely.

Many companies use multiple buyer personas for each stage of the conversion funnel, and incorporating psychographic data into your existing personas is crucial to ensure your campaigns hit the mark. This also offers a range of other benefits, including the potential for more personalized messaging, a clearer and more comprehensive profile of your ideal customers for new hires, and ultimately, more effective marketing campaigns overall.

Psychographics, Qu’est-ce Que C’est

Psychographics is an exciting and fascinating field of study that can be immensely beneficial to marketers hoping to gain greater insight into what makes their target markets tick. Combining more subjective psychographic data with traditionally empirical marketing metrics can be tricky, but the potential gains make it well worth exploring.

If you’re using psychographics in your campaigns, I’d love to hear your experiences – get at me in the comments with ideas or suggestions!

The bad news keeps coming for Wells Fargo. A nearly $150 million settlement is pending for the fake-account scandal that roiled the bank last year, and a new scandal has emerged: Recently it has been alleged that thousands of customers were signed up for insurance without their knowledge. A bevy of lawsuits is in the pipeline, and regulatory scrutiny is intensifying. Meanwhile, one of Well Fargo’s chief competitors, Bank of America, has been relatively scandal free, with impressive revenue and profit results for the first half of 2017. What explains the divergence in the fortunes of two of the U.S.’s largest banks?

One possibility is the tone at the top. For the past several years, Wells Fargo has been run by MBAs, while Bank of America’s CEO since 2010, Brian Moynihan, has a law degree from Notre Dame. Might this difference in education influence how CEOs behave when it comes to setting a course and trimming corporate sails? After all, there’s a subtle difference in how these two disciplines train people to understand and manage risks: Legal training focuses on the downside of particular actions, while business training may emphasize the upsides for shareholder value from risk taking.

We were interested in how lawyer CEOs might influence firm decision making more broadly — and whether they differ from CEOs without a law degree. I collaborated with Irena Hutton, Danling Jiang, and Matt Pierson to compare the behavior of CEOs with law degrees with those who earned a bachelor’s degree, MBA, or other degree. We looked at about 3,500 CEOs, about 9% of whom have law degrees. They were associated with nearly 2,400 publicly traded firms in the S&P 1500 from 1992 to 2012.

More Litigation, or Less?

The most obvious impact a lawyer CEO might be expected to have is on the amount of litigation their company is involved in. We looked at over 70,000 lawsuits filed against our sample of firms in federal courts during those 10 years. We focused on nine common types of corporate litigation: antitrust, employment civil rights, contract, environmental, intellectual property, labor, personal injury, product liability, and securities.

The result was clear: Firms run by CEOs with legal expertise were associated with much less corporate litigation. Compared with the average company, lawyer-run firms experienced 16% to 74% less litigation, depending on the litigation type. Employment civil rights, antitrust, and securities lawsuits were reduced the most, while contract saw the smallest (but still significant) reduction with a lawyer CEO. The results were economically meaningful, since the reduction was several fewer suits per year in some cases.

This result could, of course, be explained by many things other than the educational background of the CEO. Perhaps lawyer CEOs are more common at smaller firms for some reason, and smaller firms are less likely to be sued for some other reason. If this is the case, then the correlation we observed is merely a coincidence.

We attempted to account for factors such as this in order to isolate the impact of a CEO with a law degree. Our analyses controlled for a wide range of the firm characteristics typically used in the statistical analysis of companies: industry, firm size, leverage, profitability, market-to-book ratio, returns, volatility, particular time periods, industry effects, and a host of other factors that might influence litigation. Since we were trying to isolate the impact of the CEO’s legal training, we also controlled for CEO characteristics that might lead to less litigation. These included CEO age and tenure at the top, as well as alternative measures of high academic achievement, such as having an MBA., PhD, or MD degree or a degree from an Ivy League institution. We found that none of these factors had as large an impact on litigation as having a law degree did.

A final factor that could explain our result is the presence and influence of other litigation gatekeepers, such as directors with legal training or high-ranking and highly-paid in-house general counsel. Perhaps lawyer CEOs simply hire or elevate other lawyers in the hierarchy, and these lawyers are responsible for the reduction in litigation. Or maybe a board full of lawyers, rather than the CEO, is doing the sail trimming. While we do find that CEOs with legal training are associated with the greater future presence of directors with legal expertise, our results are robust when we account for these other lawyers. In other words, CEOs, not board members or general counsel, are driving most of the litigation reduction.

Do We See Causation?

Once we determined that lawyer CEOs were associated with less litigation, we needed to determine whether having a law degree caused the reduction. After all, there are two explanations for why firms run by lawyer CEOs experienced less litigation: Either (1) these CEOs made strategic choices that resulted in less litigation against their companies, or (2) companies with an already low propensity for litigation simply chose to hire lawyer CEOs. While these explanations need not be mutually exclusive, we found that less litigation was, at least in significant part, consistent with active risk management by the CEO. When it came to risk taking and other behaviors that could generate litigation, lawyer CEOs appeared to act differently from non-lawyer CEOs.

First, we looked at the matching between firm types and CEOs. We did not observe an obvious selection bias in which industries hired lawyer CEOs. Lawyers are at the helms of banks, biotech companies, high-tech firms, internet startups, and retail outfits, as well as utilities and pharmaceuticals. And we saw no evidence that companies in riskier industries choose MBAs and firms in more conservative industries choose lawyers. At a high level, we did not see any obvious sorting of lawyers into risk-avoiding firms.

Second, we examined firm behaviors across CEO types. Companies run by lawyers behaved differently in several dimensions related to risk taking than those run by non-lawyers. CEOs with legal training tended to implement more-cautious earnings management policies, especially in industries with high litigation risk, like pharmaceuticals. One measure we used was current accruals, where managers accelerate recognition of revenues and delay recognition of expenses. Lawyers were much less aggressive in accrual accounting relative to industry levels.

In addition, firms with lawyer CEOs seemed more likely to deploy strategies that are associated with less litigation, and their firms experienced lower volatility. The areas where lawyer CEOs were the most successful at reducing litigation — employment civil rights cases, for example — were ones in which legal training can identify potential legal risk and implement fixes relatively easily.

Finally, we used econometric techniques to isolate the impact CEOs themselves had on litigation. In one test we examined the stock market reaction to firms that had lawyer CEOs versus non-lawyer CEOs around the passage of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act. The Act increased compliance requirements for firms, and therefore increased legal risk. We predicted that the market would reward firms with lawyer CEOs, who would be better able to navigate the new regulatory environment. Consistent with our hypothesis, we found that during the key events of the Act’s passage, firms with lawyer CEOs experienced a positive market reaction, while firms without lawyer CEOs experienced the opposite. This suggests that during periods of high compliance standards and more-stringent legal enforcement, the value of having a CEO with legal expertise increases.

Do Lawyer CEOs Affect Firm Performance?

We found that lawyer CEOs were not only associated with less litigation but, conditional on experiencing litigation, were also associated with better management of litigation. So companies run by lawyers, if sued, spent less on litigation and did better — they settled less often when sued and lost less often when cases went to court. But if companies run by lawyer CEOs get sued less and perform much better when sued, why do CEOs with JD degrees represent less than one-tenth of the CEO pool?

To answer this question, we examined the overall performance of the firms in our data set. We found that CEOs with legal training were associated with higher firm value, but only in a subset of firms, specifically, in high-growth firms and firms with large amounts of litigation. Outside of this setting, however, the effect of CEOs with legal training on firm value was negative. So companies in, say, the pharmaceuticals and airlines industries performed better when run by lawyer CEOs, all else being equal, while companies in, say, printing and publishing performed worse. This is perhaps because in low-litigation industries the benefits of less litigation are offset by lawyer CEOs’ overly cautious firm policies, which can negatively affect cash flows and growth.

Our research produces two conclusions. First, CEOs with legal expertise are effective at managing litigation risk by, in part, setting more risk-averse firm policies. Second, these actions enhance value only when firms operate in an environment with high litigation risk or high compliance requirements. Otherwise, these actions could actually hurt the firm.

Ideally, of course, a CEO would be the best of both worlds: able to reduce litigation through prudent decision making while also knowing when to take risks to enhance value for the firm.

Transcript of How to Get the Right Mindset for Prospecting and Sales written by John Jantsch read more at Duct Tape Marketing

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Transcript

John Jantsch: Everyone is a salesperson. I don’t care what business you’re in, what your role is, what your title is, particularly if you own a business, you have to get good at selling. And in order to get good at selling you have to get good at prospecting. But selling and prospecting are two very different things, and we have to have a different mindset for each of those roles. And that’s why I brought Marylou Tyler, founder of Strategic Pipeline and author of “Predictable Prospecting” onto this episode of The Duct Tape Marketing podcast. This is a book you should read. This is a show you should check out.

This episode of the Duct Tape Marketing podcast is brought to you by SaneBox. Get some sanity back in your inbox. Take control of your inbox. Get all that stuff out of there that is dragging you down. I’m gonna give you a special offer later in the show.

Hello, and welcome to another episode of The Duct Tape Marketing podcast. This is John Jantsch, and my guest today is Marylou Tyler. She’s the founder of Strategic Pipeline, a Fortune 1000 sales process improvement consulting group, but it also has a lot to say about small business. And we’re gonna talk about her latest book, “Predictable Prospecting, How to Radically Increase Your B2B Sales Pipelines.” Some of you may know Marylou because she’s also the co-author of a very, very popular book that I’ve talked about before called “Predictable Revenue.” So, Marylou, thanks for joining us.

Marylou Tyler: Thank you for having me.

John Jantsch: So, in every sales conversation today, and you and I have talked before about the idea that many salespeople, even if they’re in one of these Fortune 1000 companies, but certainly the owner of a small business, is a salesperson, as well. What role does, I mean I know the answer to this. I know what role strategy plays in the sales conversation, but for a salesperson, how do they have to understand marketing strategy or the overall businesses strategy, the ideal client, the message and all those things? How do they have to plug into that to take advantage of it?

Marylou Tyler: Well, it all starts really, with understanding the SWOT, the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats of whatever it is that you’re offering. And we take it even further in the new book and try to get you to slice and dice that thing six different ways so that what starts emerging is truly where you serve, who you serve, why you matter, and why they should buy from you. And that’s really, that whole planning phase is, a lot of people don’t give it the credit it deserves for the success of a business developer or closer or servicer, whatever role you’re playing. The planning pieces are paramount in order to be able to create a predictable stream of revenue for your company.

John Jantsch: I’ll tell you what I see very often in organizations that I’ve worked with, and they might have five or six salespeople, and two of them kill it. And three of them are constantly struggling to keep up, because there isn’t any kind of, attachment to strategy or even sales process. Do you come across that and try to fix that in some cases?

Marylou Tyler: Well, I think the short answer is yes. And it’s ubiquitous, whether you’re in a large company or a small company. The idea of adherence to a process or heaven forbid, actually continually improving a process is just not something that sales folks or sales organizations focus a lot on. Not all, but it’s a very small percentage of people who understand the data is something that we look for and look towards creating a predictable stream of revenue, because it’s giving us the data points, the talking points, the conversation points, where we did well, where we didn’t do so well, and it’s all there embedded in our conversations as we wrap up these phone calls and meetings with our prospects.

So, adherence to process, tweaking continually, failing forward, don’t be afraid of making mistakes, because that’s how we learn. Our brains just love making mistakes so that we get better and better. And that’s what process gives us the opportunity to do.

John Jantsch: So, would you say that this is a reasonable approach, one of the things I see most people attempt to do if they’re gonna create a process is, they’ve got that one or two people that are killing it, and they say, “Go figure out what they’re doing.” I mean, is that a reasonable process?

Marylou Tyler: I like to look at the data. But I am an engineer, so I’m more of a data person than I am a clinical people person. So, I like to look at the data first and have it tell me the story. And of course, I’ll look at the outliers as well as the midstream, the bubble, the people who are the 80% of the people and model them. But I’m not just looking at the outliers or the 20%, because it doesn’t always tell us the full story.

John Jantsch:  Yeah, they might have been connected to a large network or something in their past. I mean, there are a lot of things that can lead to that, right?

Marylou Tyler: There’s a whole plethora of things, yes.

John Jantsch: So, one of the ideas that you introduce, or at least expand upon, in “Predictable Processing” is this idea of organizations having dedicated prospectors, that they’re not the people that close, they’re the people that find and set appointments, perhaps. But, isn’t prospecting a big part of what a salesperson’s supposed to do?

Marylou Tyler: You know, I can talk out both sides my mouth on this one. And I do get a lot of pushback on the multi-role versus singular role. Predictable revenue is all about separation of roles. We felt that having a business developer do business development, because of the mindset of a business developer where it’s continuous habit, it’s hard worker mentality, you’re not finessing in really a lot of things, you’re just getting up, doing the work, working hard, improving, that type of person may be a little bit different than someone whose building relationship that’s longer-term with the prospect, so, you’re gonna go through the nuances of behavior with the prospect and their ups and downs, their trials, their tribulations.

So, I liken it to, the prospectors are really great at dating, and the closers are really good at getting engaged and married and continuing that conversation and that relationship all the way through. That really, it hasn’t been debunked yet, but I do have 48% of my community do all roles. So, they’re trying to figure out a way to add prospecting and bolt it onto their normal selling practice. But that piece of it has to be habitual and has to be done consistently.

John Jantsch: And you can make a case for it being something that’s very practical too, right? I mean, prospecting can take a lot of time if you have somebody who’s dedicated to prospecting, they’ve got the list, they’ve got the outreach, they’ve got the ability to burn through a whole lot of stuff to create some appointments, and that that appointment time could be perhaps, better used by somebody that’s not spending half their day prospecting?

Marylou Tyler: Well, yeah that’s also a way to look at it. And I am, just like everyone else probably, on this call, I’m doing all roles. But I still dedicate certain blocks of time a week for prospecting. The skills that I use for that block of time is very different from the work that I’m doing as we march into the pipeline a little bit further. So if you look at it that way, that you’re wearing these different hats, but you’re wearing them in blocks of time and for prospecting, you’re doing it consistently, it’s almost like you’ve got a really strong grit when you’re doing prospecting, because you’re tenacious, you’re persuasive, you’re passionate, your persistent, and that may not work very well as you march down the pipeline with prospects, and you want to get more into the relationship side of things.

John Jantsch: Well, and you make a great point, because many of my listeners are small business owners, and they might be thinking, “Well, I don’t, you know, I’ve got two salespeople. I can’t afford a prospecting team, necessarily.”

Marylou Tyler:  Right.

John Jantsch: But I think that is really a key. You definitely have a prospecting function in your business. Where does it fit? It’s like the small business that has three people in the business, and I have them build an org chart because all of those functions exist, it’s just a matter of how you compartmentalize the time to do it. So I think that’s a great point. It doesn’t necessarily have to be a person, it’s almost a mindset.

Marylou Tyler:  Yes, it’s a mindset, it’s a block of time, and it’s consistent. That word consistent has got to flow throughout when you’re thinking of prospecting, because everyone has experienced the peaks and valleys. We talk about that. And what prospecting does consistently is level that out so you’re not freaking out towards the end of the quarter or the end of the month that you don’t have enough in the pipeline.

John Jantsch:  Yeah. So, for the last five, maybe 10 years, us marketing types have been talking about producing content and telling stories and people will show up with their wallets. And I know that there’s certainly a lot of sales folks, yourself included, that would say, “No, you gotta get on the phone, you gotta email, and that that’s the only predictable way to create qualified appointments.” So, how do you manage this inbound versus outbound struggle?

Marylou Tyler:  What I like to do is think of accounts or clients as dream clients, and that would be kind of, the whales, the folks that are gonna bring in a lot of revenue, that are probably high likelihood of closing and high revenue potential for my business. And I put them in a special bucket called outreach, because I want to target them, I want to reach out to them. And I want to be able to start conversations with them on a regular basis.

The next tier out, if we look at a bulls-eye, that would be the middle of my bull’s-eye, those high-revenue accounts. There’s not very many of them, but it’s definitely on my radar and I want to go after them because I know they will love me and I love them. The next ring out are people that are maybe, close to being a target, but I can’t necessarily, justify spending the time bringing them into the, into my fold. So I may leverage technology to wake up that chill and get them out of their dormant stage so that they can bubble up to the top.

And then everybody else would be pretty much the inbound channels, any social work that I do, any relationship referral work that I do where, they’re great to have but they’re not predictable for me. They’re great, great income, but I can’t rely on them for a consistent revenue stream.

John Jantsch: So, I’ve for a lot of years been talking about, especially as people were kind of, jumping on this inbound, inbound, inbound is, I think if you do a good job with inbound, your outbound will be far more effective.

Marylou Tyler: And I think if you do a great job with outbound, your inbound will grow. And I’ve proven that over and over again, that the outreach efforts that we’ve done led to people going to our website, curiosity of, “Who are these people, and why are they contacting me? This is pretty great content. Let me find out more about them.” So, we do see a spike in the inbound, as well, because we are reaching out to these people on a consistent basis with what we call value added, which is a term that drives me crazy but it’s really looking at ways that we can teach our prospects why they should change what they’re doing, why now, and why us.

John Jantsch: Let me ask you a question. How many emails do you have in your inbox right now? 100, 1,000, 10,000? But you can’t just delete them all. There has to be a way to take your inbox back over, if it’s running your life. There was a point in my business where I felt like all I did was delete emails. And then I found a tool called SaneBox. It really allows you to take back control of your inbox, of your email. It starts off by taking everything you’ve got in there today and figuring out what’s important and what’s not important and creating folders and places for it to go that in some cases, you’ll never see again, but in other cases you can quickly check.

There’s also tools in there to remind you when you need to follow up on an email. It’s actually, incredibly accurate. And I have worked with the folks at SaneBox to get you a discount, my listeners. So, if you visit SaneBox, that’s S-A-N-E B-O-X.com/DuctTape, you’re gonna find that you can get a $25 discount just because you are a listener of this show. Again, that’s S-A-N-E B-O-X, SaneBox.com/DuctTape.

So, one of the things that I find that really good salespeople do is, they’re actually use a, because they’re so focused on an ideal client, they’re very good at disqualifying. And I think that that is a skill that is very hard and very scary for a lot of business owners. How do you suggest that people get good at that?

Marylou Tyler: Well, you know, the way I like to look at it is, my targeted, those targeted accounts in the middle of the bull’s-eye, I’m gonna work really hard at qualifying them. As we start moving out and they’re in the less desirable layers of my bull’s-eye, then I’m gonna try to get them off my active pipeline as quickly as possible. So, I disqualify, and I look to disqualify, because I really want the pipeline to be a pipeline, not a lake. Things aren’t gonna just fester in there and sit around. I want to get them out, or I want to move them forward. So disqualification is really the only way to do that, to keep that pipeline robust, moving with a high velocity. But I will take certain accounts that I covet and I won’t let go until they physically carry me out of their office kind of let go.

John Jantsch: So, one of the challenges I think, with a lot of small businesses is the chief salesperson also has to live with that client that’s been sold. They actually have to do the work. So, I think a lot of times, you might disqualify somebody on firmographics or on maybe, the challenge that they have, but a lot of times a small business owner needs to be alert to what the relationship’s gonna be like, what kind of person it is. How’s it gonna be like to work with this person. And that sometimes doesn’t happen or is hard to make happen until you’re kind of, in it.

Marylou Tyler: Well, but if you’d really work at that SWOT 6, that’s that first step in the process, what will emerge between that, your ideal account profile, and then your ideal prospect persona, those three things combined, will give you a sense of who you want to work with, the culture of the company that they’ve come from or businesses that they represent, the type of person they are. And over time, as you do more of this outreach, your radar will be spot on as to who will continue to start, you’ll continue to have that sales dialogue with, or who you’re gonna politely say, “You know, I don’t think this is a good fit for now.”

John Jantsch: Yeah, and one of the things I can’t stress enough is that not being matched with an ideal client’s the fastest way to cut your profit that I know of, because you’ll spend more time trying to satisfy a not-ideal fit. But, until you’ve done it a few times, it’s a little hard to say no.

Marylou Tyler: And we’ve all been there. We’ve all had the horrific client that we knew in our gut wasn’t gonna work out, but we still thought, “Maybe it’ll be different this time around,” and it’s not.

John Jantsch: Okay, I’m sold. Let’s cut to the chase. How do you build and operate a successful outbound prospecting program?

Marylou Tyler: Well, the first thing I would do is take a real gut check as to who you are, like you were solo, like me, who you are as a person, and whether you can dedicate the time to do prospecting. And it’s something that, the most important concept of prospecting is this concept of block time. It’s putting in every day, or three days a week or two days a week, depending on your ideal number of opportunities you want per month, it’s putting in the time necessary to have those conversations and meaningful conversations, those conversations that move you into the pipeline further like a mile marker on a freeway, or they exit out because you’ve disqualified them.

So, you have to really start thinking about, “Can I do this on a consistent basis?” After that, you really need to focus on who your ideal clients are, where they are, why they would use you, why they should change what they’re doing now, and really dig deep into why you matter and what clients you can truly serve, and what clients will stay with you in the long-term to increase that lifetime value.

Once you’ve done that, then you start crafting, figuring out, “Okay, how many opportunities do I want to per month, per week quarter,” whatever it is. And there are metrics for outreach, thank goodness, that drive those, that we know how many conversations you should have in order to generate the number of opportunities that you’ve delineated as what you need. And then it’s really just, after you’ve assembled, it’s activating, and then optimizing. You’re constantly tweaking, taking one piece of it and fine-tuning it, moving onto the next, fine-tuning that, and then going back to the beginning and starting over again.

John Jantsch:  How do you get people past, and I don’t, you haven’t used these terms, and so I’m not suggesting that you’re advocating this, but a lot of people default to an outbound prospecting program as basically cold calling is, “If I do 1,000 dials, all I need is 10 appointments.” How do you get people past that, what I call very low-value prospecting?

Marylou Tyler: Well, that’s believe it or not, one of my qualifiers when I work with clients. If they’re insisting on looking at vanity metrics, and I consider dials a vanity metric, I consider the number of conversations that you have regardless of movement in the pipeline. So, my clients have to be willing to say, “Okay, let’s define what a meaningful conversation is.” And that’s the metric that we look at in order to get past this concept of cold calling.

In order to have meaningful conversations, that means we need to serve up the conversation somehow, whether we use marketing tools, whether we have basically, allocated time to develop relationships through education, whatever those channels are, we incorporate that into the mix so that our first conversation isn’t cold, it’s warm.

John Jantsch:  Yeah, so you have, in the book, a, everybody has to have these frameworks. You have a seven-point outreach process. And we don’t have to go into all those seven points, but tell people where they can find, obviously, the book’s available everywhere, but where they can find about how they might even go deeper with some of your training and resources.

Marylou Tyler:  Perfect, yes. The book has an accompanying webpage on my website. It’s called Maryloutyler.com/swag. S-W-A-G stands for “Stuff we all get.” And on that page is this seven-step process. I’ve done a number of different webinars. I have video training. You name it, I’ve done it, it’s out there. So, if you really want to start diving in, that’s the place to go.

John Jantsch: That’s Maryloutyler.com?

Marylou Tyler: Correct. /SWAG.

John Jantsch: Yeah, awesome. Well, thanks, Marylou, for joining us. This is something that I think, I mean, you think about that B2B business owner, service professional, that only needs six more clients to really make or break the business. And I think this is the approach that that person should be taking, in my opinion, as opposed to mass outreach on Facebook or something.

Marylou Tyler: I agree. And that’s what I do with my business. I only need two to three a quarter, and I know exactly how much time I need to dedicate and pour into the top in order to do that. And it’s consistent, and I have no stress.

John Jantsch: Yeah, awesome. Thanks, Marylou. Hopefully, next time I’m passing through, I guess you’re currently in Des Moines. Next time I’m passing through Des Moines, I’ll honk at you.

Marylou Tyler:  Thank you.

John Jantsch: Hey, thanks for listening to this episode of The Duct Tape Marketing podcast. Wonder if you could do me a favor? Could you leave an honest review on iTunes? Your ratings and reviews really help, and I promise I read each and every one. Thanks.

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It’s a challenge to work with people — peers, junior colleagues, or even bosses — who just don’t listen. Whether your colleagues interrupt you, ramble on, seem distracted, or are always waiting for their turn to talk, the impact is the same: You don’t feel heard, and the chances for misunderstandings — and mistakes — rise. Are there tactics you can use to encourage your colleagues to listen better? Should you talk to them about their poor listening skills? What’s the best way to deliver the message?

What the Experts Say
“Dealing with colleagues who don’t listen is both hard and frustrating,” says Sabina Nawaz, a global CEO and executive coach. “When someone is not fully present, it erodes the quality of what you say.” The experience might, for instance, “cause you to lose your train of thought” or “suppress what you originally planned to communicate.” It’s also possible that “you could get derailed into the drama of why it’s happening,” she adds. “You might take it personally and think, ‘My colleague is so arrogant.’” Potential problems aren’t limited to “misunderstandings and hard feelings,” according to Christine Riordan, the president of Adelphi University and a leadership coach. A colleague who doesn’t listen can also “have very negative consequences from an operational standpoint — there are often a lot of mistakes because projects don’t get executed correctly.” So it’s imperative to address the issue. Here are some strategies for working with colleagues who never seem to be listening.

Consider work styles
While some of your colleagues may be flaky space cadets who are unable to pay attention, it’s also possible that they may be more visual people who have difficulty processing oral instructions. “Some people are visual and some are verbal,” Riordan says. She advises “asking your colleague how they prefer to receive information. Say: ‘Should we have a conversation, or would you like to see something in writing?’” Try to be a “flexible” and understanding conversation partner, Nawaz adds. “You need to use your colleague’s time efficiently.”

Reflect on your own behavior
Putting up with a colleague who’s a bad listener often causes you to “look in the mirror” and “question whether you’re a good listener yourself,” Riordan says. “Bad role models are as instructive as good ones,” she adds. As part of this soul-searching, it’s wise to reflect on how you approach professional conversations and what you could do to improve, Nawaz says. “Maybe you’re a rambling speaker. Maybe you overwhelm your listener with numbers. Maybe you need to tell more stories,” she says. Take the time to “get some data on your own communication style” so that you can model the behavior you want to see.

Demonstrate empathetic listening
One way to encourage your colleagues to listen better is by practicing “empathetic listening,” Riordan says. Really try to understand the other person’s point of view. Nawaz recommends taking notes while your colleague is speaking — simple “one- or two-word reminders” will suffice. “Then, when there’s a natural pause in the conversation, validate your colleague’s main points while at the same time integrating your thoughts into the conversation.” The goal, Nawaz says, is to “think about your audience” and “what’s in it for them.”

Highlight the magnitude of your message
Emphasizing the importance of your message up front can help as well. Before even starting a conversation, Riordan suggests saying something along the lines of: “I have something really important to talk to you about, and I need your help.” This sends a signal to your colleagues that they ought to relinquish the stage and prick up their ears. “It should strengthen their awareness to listen more carefully,” she says. Riordan also recommends making your point “multiple times and in multiple ways.” Be open and unequivocal about what you’re doing. “Say, ‘I want to repeat this, because I want to make sure it’s understood.’” Then you should follow up with: “Does that make sense?” That way you can “make sure what you said has been captured.”

Create accountability
It’s also important to hold your colleague “accountable” for listening, Nawaz says. When talking to a distracted boss, for example, she suggests letting your manager “know that she’s on the hook for something” and that there is a “deliverable” that’s needed by the conversation’s end. You might, for instance, say: “I have three possible strategies that I want to tell you about. In the end, I’m looking for you to make a decision on one of them.’” Be explicit about your priorities, Riordan says. If you’re dealing with a coworker who has a tendency to forget certain conversations, “you should set timelines to anchor” your expectations “in your colleague’s mind,” she says. “Say: ‘That [task] is critical for this project. Do you have a date when it will be finished?’”

Show concern
Calling out the bad behavior of a colleague is generally fraught. But it can be done if you come at it from a “point of empathy” and compassion, Nawaz says. “You might say something like: ‘You seem to have a lot on your plate that’s requiring your attention. Is there anything I can do to lighten your load, so when we’re talking you can be fully present?’” Your offer has to be genuine, of course, or it may sound like a passive-aggressive jab. And be tolerant of office distractions. If your colleague’s phone keeps buzzing or dinging, and you notice their eyes moving in that direction, stop talking and say: “Do you need to check that?” Maybe the answer will be, “No, I will turn it off.” Or maybe it will be, “Yes, I am expecting an important call. Can we talk later?”

Address the problem directly
If the culprit is a close colleague or a boss with whom you have an otherwise strong rapport, consider addressing the issue directly by telling them that they’re not hearing what people have to say. Be sure to “cite an example where your colleague didn’t listen and it had negative consequences for the team,” Riordan says. But tread carefully. “You really need to have a positive relationship with the person in order for this to be effective,” she adds. Otherwise, the person could just end up getting defensive.

Propose a social contract
Another option if the problem persists is to propose instituting a “social contract” that puts parameters on “how your team members interact with each other,” Riordan adds. By raising it to the team level, you aren’t singling out any one person but making an agreement as a group. The contract — which ought to be “updated regularly” — would stipulate that colleagues “not dominate the conversation” and give “everybody a chance to share an opinion.” These contracts work best in workplaces that have a relatively strong, supportive culture to begin with. If upper management isn’t on board, it’s going to fall apart. “I’ve seen dysfunctional teams where this would not work at all,” Riordan says. If your team falls into this category, avoid this shared option and instead focus on how you can improve your own individual interactions.

Principles to Remember

Do:

• Make sure your colleagues feel heard and understood by validating their points.
• Stress the importance of your message before launching into the conversation: “I have something important to say, and I need your help.”
• Consider broaching the idea of a social contract for your team that would put parameters on how colleagues interact with each other.

Don’t:

• Ignore your colleagues’ preferences in terms of how they like to receive and process information; some people are verbal, others are visual.
• Overlook your own communication style. Reflect on how best to capture the attention of your colleagues.
• Be afraid to call out your colleague — but do so in positive terms. Say something like: “You seem distracted. Is there anything I can help you with?”

Case Study #1: Underscore the importance of your message and follow up in writing
Jim Jacobs, president of Focus Insite, the market research firm based in West Chester, Pennsylvania, once worked with a colleague — we’ll call him Gary — who was not a good listener.

“Gary liked to hear himself talk,” Jim recalls. “He also suffered from selective amnesia — we’d have a good meeting, develop a plan, and then he would ‘forget’ what we talked about.”

A few years ago Focus Insite embarked on a big market-research study where it needed to recruit doctors, patients, and caregivers from all over the country who had knowledge of a specific medical condition. It was an important and lucrative opportunity; Jim could not afford any miscommunication.

“One slip-up in communication can cost our firm tens of thousands of dollars — or even millions if you consider the lifetime value of a client,” he says.

Jim needed to convey to Gary how much was riding on the study. “I said: ‘We have a goal of recruiting a certain number of participants by a certain date. This is really important, and we have to hit this. If we don’t, there are consequences: Not only are we not going get our bonuses, but we could lose the client.”

Jim then followed up with Gary through email to make sure his message got across. He laid out the project’s timeline and deliverables. This is standard practice at Focus Insite. “After every meeting, whoever held it sends out a summary of what we discussed over email. We use Slack because that way, you see the whole thread.”

Finally, to make sure that Gary understood what needed to be done, Jim had a “frank conversation” about the importance of strong communication. His relationship with Gary was generally good, but still, he was wary of making him defensive. “I said, ‘Let me tell you about a former employee, Phil, who wasn’t paying attention and once caused us to miss our deadline. We couldn’t bill, and we lost the client. We learned the hard way. I’m trying to avoid a situation like that, which is why I need your help.’”

Couching it this way helped Gary feel that Jim cared about his success and the success of the company. “I wanted to show him I was looking out for him.”

The project went well, and Gary has “absolutely gotten better” at listening.

Case Study #2: Show compassion and understand what motivates your colleague
Earlier in Ash Norton’s career, she worked with a colleague — whom we’ll call Nancy — who had difficulty paying attention.

It wasn’t clear if Nancy didn’t listen — or didn’t want to hear what people said. “It wasn’t so much that Nancy forgot things; more that they just were not a priority to her or that she didn’t focus on them,” says Ash, who at the time was a laboratory supervisor at a large company. “She just really thought her way was the best, easiest, or quickest.”

After Nancy’s failure to listen caused her to make a crucial error — “She made a mistake while logging a compliance measurement” — Ash knew something needed to be done. “It was a fairly simple error,” she recalls, “but it could have had significant financial and regulatory repercussions for the company.”

Before she sat down with Nancy, Ash spent time preparing what she planned to say. She reflected on what motivated Nancy and how she could encourage her to pay better attention. “I realized that a priority for Nancy was pride and recognition for her work, so by doing her own thing, she felt like she was making an impact,” Ash says.

This revelation helped Ash effectively set up the conversation. “I framed the discussion so that Nancy understood that [we] recognized and appreciated her contributions — but they just couldn’t be done in isolation,” Ash says.

Together Nancy and Ash developed an action plan (including dates and deliverables) to help Nancy follow through on expectations. Over time, Nancy improved.

Today Ash provides leadership development for engineers. She has helped many managers encourage their colleagues learn to listen better. Her first piece of advice to them is: Listen first. “It is easy to assume that the other person isn’t hearing you,” she says. “But maybe they are and are just interpreting [what you said] differently. Or they have a different perspective. So make sure that you really have an open mind and are listening to the other person.”

My resume: I begged the teacher to not give me an F so, out of kindness, he gave me a D-. Only then did I have the minimum GPA to graduate college.

I tried to write several novels but none of them were published. I pitched several TV shows but none of them made it to the air.

After I made some money I spent too much of it, gambled too much of it, bought too much with it, and invested in all of the wrong people with the wrong businesses.

I lost my house, my friends, my business, and the second time this happened (and the third and the fourth), my wife and kids.

I started another company and raised a lot of money but I didn’t even know we did. I got kicked out and the business slid to nothing.

One time I forgot to pay the IRS. For the 17th year in a row. I wanted to kill myself when they knocked on my door. I wanted to date the IRS agent but she knew too much about me.

I’m just saying this to establish some credentials. Failure is a deck of cards. You can shuffle and pick out the card you want.

Here are the cards. And if you can avoid the nine ways to fail, there’s one way to avoid failure.

9 WAYS TO FAIL

ILLNESS
One time I was staying out too late. I was around people who weren’t my friends. I was always stressed.

So I would get sick, or not have enough energy. I was so focused on my stress and anxiety that I could never get enough energy to get out of bed in the morning.

I was just thinking of one time but as I wrote this I started thinking of another time. Anxiety and fear and stress and the wrong people will drain you of energy.

When I let a desire for money rule my choices instead of just desire, my choices would drain me of energy.

You can’t start a successful X if you are sick in bed. Or looking out the window, wondering what cave everyone’s smile crawled out of.

LACK OF CREATIVITY
Steve Jobs made…a phone.

Mark Zuckerberg made…a social network.

JK Rowling wrote…a book about wizards.

Andy Warhol made…a soup can.

None of this was original. The iPhone had to be a phone. Else how would it connect to the phone networks. How would it have a microphone. How could it be used to talk to people.

And then he twisted it. He turned it into something nobody had ever seen before. A sculpture of a phone. And let’s listen to music on it. And watch TV. And play games.

Now a phone is a computer with a rarely used phone app on it. And Apple will be the first company to hit a trillion in value.

I always say, to exercise the idea muscle, write ten ideas a day.

But also see, what’s easy next steps can you make to execute on each idea.

Elon Musk wrote down an idea: build a rocket ship to Mars. Then he hired physicists, read every book on rocket science, and started to build.

Richard Branson needed a plane. So he got a deal to lease a plane, put up a sign in an airport where he was stuck and offered to sell tickets, got enough money to lease the plane, and thought to himself: this is an airline.

Before that he was a magazine publisher. Now he started an airline from scratch. One of the first people to ever do that.

Write down ten ideas. Every day. Write down the next EASY step for each idea.

Then throw away the list.

It’s just practice.

The creatives, the ones who practice, avoid the failure of the non-creatives.

INDECISION

Should I do something for the money. Or should I do something I love?

Should I stay at my job that I hate? Or should I find a way to make money on the side?

Should I stay in the relationship that is easy and comfortable or should I should I should I should’ve.

It’s a cliche to say “we have one life to live”. But cliches are easy truths.

It’s easy to try something. Decide if it makes you a better person or not. And then either continue or go back to “Creativity”.

CARELESSNESS

Every book needs a plot, a story, characters, a cover, a design, distribution, marketing.

Every business needs sales, follow up, execution of product, take care of employees and partners, take care of shareholders, and take care of every need of the customers.

Every TV show needs ten drafts of each script, directors, editors, permissions for locations, set designers.

And one detail off on any of these makes failure. If the customer is not happy, they tell others.

If you don’t have a good cover, your book won’t sell.

If you don’t get permission from the city to shoot at your location, you failed at making a TV show.

If you don’t research a guest, your interview podcast will be a disaster.

If you don’t have a punchline, and a premise people can relate to, your standup act will be met with dead silence or worse (usually worse).

I was bad at follow up in my first business. I never called the day after a good meeting and said, “That was a great meeting, here’s a proposal on next steps”. Careless! I had to hire someone to help me with that.

Delegate the details if you have to. But the person who takes care of every detail will always beat the person who lets details slip.

LAZINESS

I wanted to publish another book. But my prior book hadn’t done so well so publishers weren’t returning my calls.

I wrote the book anyway. Still no publishers. So then I hired a book designer. Then I got advice about marketing so I could do it myself.

I got three different people to edit my book. I wrote 100 drafts of the book.

I did all the marketing. The marketing was crazy. I sold the book on Bitcoin only before I officially released it on Amazon. This got me on a bunch of TV shows.

Then I ran for Congress. Then I quit running for Congress. More TV. More radio. More print news about this.

Then I went on 20–30 podcasts. Gave talks. This was four years ago.

Yesterday I was on a podcast talking about this same book. I market it every single day. 700,000 copies later “Choose Yourself” is my most successful book and the publishers are calling me.

The book before that, I was lazy. I felt like the publisher should market it. Should edit it. Should make a great cover.

They didn’t and I was too lazy to do something about it. And not detailed enough to point out to them where they could be better.

That book failed.

LACK OF FOCUS

One time I had several things going on. I wanted to start a tea company. I wanted to start a record label. I wanted to have a TV show. I wanted to write a novel. And I wanted my business to be success.

Sometimes “lack of focus” is good. But only if you can connect the dots. If the TV show would promote the business then that connects the dots.

If you are a writer but want to learn how to play poker then write a book about learning to play poker.

If you want to make a phone and make a music player, make a phone that plays music.

Focus is not about doing one thing. It’s about doing many things that connect and combine in ways nobody ever thought of before.

Focus is about connecting the dots so that one vision emerges.

It’s not about falling down a rabbit hole where nobody sees you again.

BAD KNOWLEDGE

One time I wanted to learn to be an investor. I saw some people were day trading and making money so I figured I’d try.

It was a disaster. I was just following others and I thought I was smart.

So I reversed that. I said, “I’m stupid” and I said, “Don’t follow other people”.

So I read everything I could about every investment strategy. I worked for some of the best people in the business ever. I tried with small amounts of money (because I was too stupid for big amounts) every strategy to prove to myself I really understood it.

I started to write about it. Because to get knowledge you need PLUS, EQUAL, MINUS: people to learn from, people to bounce ideas off of, people to teach so you can keep beginner’s mind and learn more.

And every day I read. If I didn’t know a strategy, I read more about it. I read about accounting. I read about the law. I read about the products of each company. I read the biographies and writings of the greatest investors.

Every day for fifteen years I increased my knowledge about money. Money is hard! And I guess I’m still increasing it.

BAD RELATIONSHIPS

They made me an offer I couldn’t refuse. Actually I did refuse it. But then they put out a press release saying I was an investor.

I helped them out. The company grew. It was a great company, great clients, good employees.

But one shareholder was a criminal.

And the people who introduced me to this company were also no good. Drugs, prostitutes, bad businesses – I should have stayed away.

But I got involved with them. And then with the company. And then the criminal was caught and the company went to zero.

All that time wasted. A ton of money lost.

I got a story out of it.

INABILITY TO SHIFT

Every year since 2003 I’ve written a book. This year is the first year I have no desirer to write a book (although the year is not over yet).

Instead I saw that more people were listening to my podcast than reading my books. And the number of people listening to my podcast was going up huge each month.

So I doubled down, and about to quadruple down, on doing my podcast.

Is it a different business? Is it lack of focus? No. I’m connecting the dots. I’m writing about each podcast. I’m exploring my interesting in each podcast. Often I’m making new partners and friends and future partners with each podcast guest.

Shifting…reinventing myself…I have to do every day. It’s not one day. It’s not “This day!” It’s every day. Looking around. Reinvention is hidden in the cracks of every day life that most people ignore.

The person who is reinventing walks into a room and says, “what is weird about this?” The people who can’t reinvent tries to control every situation in life and asks, “why are things going wrong?”

The world is mentally ill. The wrong question to ask someone who is mentally ill is “why?”

Instead, shift and reinvent. Every day.

There’s an easy way to avoid the nine ways to fail.

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Take any area of your life. Improve it 1%.

That’s the “secret” of not failing.

If you do this every day, and it compounds, then you improve 3800% a year.

3800%. 38 times.

You’re only competing against the person you were yesterday.

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But the people who don’t do that ultimately fall into one of the nine above. If you don’t try to get healthier, you get sick as you age.

If you don’t improve your relationships, you start serving their time in the prison of this lifetime instead of serving your own time.

If you don’t improve your creativity, you end up arguing politics on Facebook and disappear into the normalcy of that life.

If you don’t improve your ability to reinvent, you get stuck in traffic in the same lane everyone else is in.

There was that one path, the secret path, that you could’ve taken. But you didn’t notice it.

My very first client in business was a diamond dealer. Very successful. I made his website. He was the first person to pay me to build a website.

I took the money he gave me and finally moved to Manhattan. I moved to the Chelsea Hotel where I lived for many years and I met many friends and got many stories.

The diamond dealer explained everything about diamonds to me. The entire industry. The crookedness of it. But also the beauty of it.

He had a secretary. She had a giant scar on her cheek. But I thought she was beautiful.

And she seemed very kind. Maybe the scar had showed her what it was like to be less fortunate than others.

I was always too shy to talk to her. I wanted to make her laugh.

I made his website and started my first business. But would it have been so bad if I just connected the dots and licked the scar right off of her face?

The post The Nine Surefire Ways To Fail At Anything appeared first on Altucher Confidential.

Should our business be on Instagram or Snapchat? Or both?

With Instagram and Snapchat becoming increasingly similar, many social media managers find themselves asking these questions.

To help you figure out which platform — Instagram or Snapchat — is more suitable for your business, we decided to analyze the differences between the two platforms. We compared six key aspects of the two platforms:

1. Users
2. Content types
3. Discoverability
4. Engagement rates
5. Analytics
6. Ad

What we found is this (and you might know it already) is that it greatly depends on your business. Snapchat is great for some business and Instagram for others…and for some, both is the best solution.

But which is the best fit for your business?

6 questions to consider

Here’s a list of criteria you could consider when comparing Instagram and Snapchat:

1. Are your target audience and customers on the platform?
2. Which content type (e.g. stories, images, or videos) suits your business best?
3. Do you prefer having a public profile that is easily discoverable and to interact with your followers in public? Or do you prefer a private profile and build close one-to-one relationships with your followers?
4. Is your target audience more engaged on Instagram or Snapchat?
5. Do you want analytics to measure your performance?
6. Do you want to boost existing posts or run ads on the platform?

At Buffer, we choose Instagram over Snapchat (but that’s not necessarily the best more for you).

Here’s how we came to the decision, according to Brian Peters, our Digital Marketing Strategist:

For a long time we were on posting unique content to both Snapchat and Instagram at Buffer.

What we found over time is that the quality of conversations we were having on Instagram with our target audience (marketers and social media managers) was much higher than on Snapchat.

Since we are a small team with limited resources, we decided to post exclusively to Instagram so that we could continue to focus on developing meaningful relationships and creating quality content. Since the decision, we’ve grown our Instagram account by more than 20,000 followers and increased engagement by nearly 300%.

Furthermore, the ability to get in-depth analytics on how our content is performing across our feed, Stories, and Live is a major value-add.

Not to mention the platform is approaching a billion monthly active users!

If you would like to learn more about our comparison of Instagram and Snapchat for businesses, we’ve unpacked our analysis below.

1. Users

The Instagram user base is larger and slightly older.

Size

Let’s first look at the size of the user base of the two platforms¹.

In terms of active users, more than 400 million people use Instagram daily (and more than 700 million use it monthly). In comparison, 173 million people use Snapchat every day.

In terms of Stories, over 250 million people use Instagram Stories daily. That far exceeds the 173 million people who use Snapchat every day.

This chart by Recode shows the rise of Instagram Stories and the slow growth of Snapchat:

In terms of user growth rate, Instagram has been growing steadily while Snapchat’s growth seems to have slowed down. Here’s how the user growth of the two platforms look like (with the data from Statista):

Note: The graph for Instagram shows monthly active users while the graph for Snapchat shows daily active users. Even though they are different metrics, I believe the number of monthly active users and the number of daily active users correlate with each other.

Demographics

In 2016, Pew Research Center did a study of the demographics of American users on the most popular social media platforms.

Here are some highlights of their study for Instagram:

• A bigger percentage of women (38 percent) than men (26 percent) in the U.S. use Instagram.
• Instagram is most popular among online Americans between the age of 18 and 29.
• A third of online Americans between the age of 30 and 49 use Instagram.

It seems that Instagram is more popular among women than men and among online Americans below the age of 49 than those above.

On the other hand, Snapchat has a much younger user base.

• Almost 60 percent of the users are under the age of 25.
• People between the age of 18 and 24 forms the bulk of Snapchat’s user base (36 percent).
• Only 15 percent of the users are above the age of 35.

Note: For Instagram, the percentages show the percentage of people in each category that uses Instagram. For example, 59 percent of online American between the age of 18 and 29 use Instagram. For Snapchat, the percentages show the percentage of Snapchat users in each category. For example, 22 percent of Snapchat users are between the age of 13 and 17.

Others

Here are some other interesting insights about Instagram’s and Snapchat’s user bases.

Instagram

• The most popular topics among young adults on Instagram are fashion/beauty, food, TV/films, hobbies, and music, according to a Facebook survey.
• Instagram users like to follow celebrities, get DIY inspiration, and look at travel photos, according to a Facebook study.

Snapchat

• The majority of Snapchat users (71 percent) use Snapchat only or mostly for peer-to-peer messaging, according to a survey by Defy Media for Variety.
• Nearly 60 percent of interactions on Snapchat are made between close friends, according to a study commissioned by Snap, as reported by Mashable.
• 46 percent of Snapchat users in the U.S. don’t use Instagram, according to App Annie. The percentage is 37 in the U.K.

When deciding between Instagram and Snapchat, I personally think that the user base is the most important. If your target audience is not on one of the platforms, it may not be worth investing in that platform.

Consideration: Is your target audience on the platform?

If your target audience is on both platforms (yay!), here are a few other things to consider:

2. Content types

Instagram posts are high-res and polished; snaps are often raw and unedited.

Next, let’s take a look at the types of content you can create on the two platforms.

Stories

Stories are available on both Instagram and Snapchat.

Stories can be either videos or images. Because stories are displayed in full-screen, the ideal orientation and dimensions for the stories are horizontal (i.e. portrait) and a 9:16 aspect ratio respectively.

Images and videos

Besides stories, images and videos are the other main types of content on Instagram and Snapchat.

But they are displayed differently on the two platforms.

• Images and videos are published as posts on Instagram and snaps on Snapchat.
• Instagram posts are public (unless your account is private). Snaps are mostly private between two accounts.
• Instagram posts can be horizontal, square, or vertical. Snaps are usually vertical (since they are displayed in full-screen).
• Instagram posts will stay on your feed and profile, whereas Snaps dissappear after 24hrs.

Content quality

In general, people like to post high-resolution, (usually) edited content on Instagram and raw, unfiltered content on Snapchat.

That said, with the introduction of Instagram Stories, people are also posting more unedited content on Instagram through Stories.

Consideration: Which content type (i.e. stories, images, or videos) suits your business better?

3. Discoverability

Your brand will be more discoverable on Instagram.

In terms of discoverability, there are three areas to look at:

Profile

On Instagram, you can have a public profile which shows your follower count and all your Instagram posts. Instagram suggests profiles to follow and curates relevant posts in Discover, which helps people to find your Instagram profile.

On Snapchat, your profile can only be viewed by your friends and people who have added you. There’s little information on your Snapchat profile as the snaps and stories you post on Snapchat disappears after 24 hours.

Engagement

On Instagram, likes and comments on your posts can be seen by everyone while direct messages can only be seen by you.

On Snapchat, only you can see who has replied to your snaps or stories.

User-generated content

On Instagram, people (including yourself) can find posts that mention you. Through hashtags and @-mention tags, people can discover and check out your Instagram profile.

Hence, user-generated content is a common Instagram marketing strategy as it can help you grow your Instagram account and increase your brand reach.

On Snapchat, snaps or stories that mention your brand can only be seen by the friends of the person who posted them.

Your brand will be more discoverable on Instagram than on Snapchat. This is great if you want to raise the awareness of your brand on social media and use social proof to build your brand.

That said, many brands like the privacy with Snapchat as that allows them to build meaningful one-to-one relationships with their followers.

Consideration: Do you prefer having a public profile that is easily discoverable and to interact with your followers in public? Or do you prefer a private profile and build close one-to-one relationships with your followers?

4. Engagement level

Engagement seems to be higher on Instagram than Snapchat.

Comparing engagement levels on the two platforms can be tricky since the forms of engagement on the two are different. On Instagram, people like, comment, and watch a video. On Snapchat, people view a snap and reply privately.

While I can’t compare engagement levels as a whole between the two platforms, I thought it might be worthwhile to look at engagement level of stories since stories are available on both platforms and are very similar.

As reported by TechCrunch, businesses are seeing better engagement with Instagram Stories than Snapchat Stories.

• An analysis of 21,500 Snapchat Stories by Delmondo found that the average unique viewers per Snapchat Stories fell by about 40 percent in 2016 after Instagram Stories was launched.
• On the other hand, the influencer community of TheAmplify was seeing 28 percent higher view rate for Instagram Stories than Snapchat Stories.

For us at Buffer, we were seeing higher-quality conversations with our target audience (marketers and social media managers) on Instagram than on Snapchat before we stop posting on Snapchat.

Consideration: Is your target audience more engaged on Instagram or Snapchat? (You’ll have to try both platforms to get a good sense of this.)

5. Analytics

You can get Instagram data more easily than Snapchat data.

Being able to measure and analyze your social media performance can help you improve your social media marketing.

Natively, Instagram provides business profiles with Instagram Insights, an in-app analytics for posts, stories, ads, and followers.

Snapchat does not provide any analytics (except for ads), and most marketers have been tracking their Snapchat marketing manually.

In terms of third-party tools, there are many free Instagram analytics tools available, such as Websta, Union Metrics’s free Instagram account checkup, and Keyhole.

There seem to be much fewer Snapchat analytics tools and they are not free. For example, Snaplytics, a popular Snapchat analytics tool, costs $19 per Snapchat account per month for very basic metrics — views, screenshots, and completion rate.

Considerations: Do you want analytics to measure your performance? Or are you all right with manually tracking your performance?

6. Ads

Both offer powerful targeting and several ad formats.

Since Instagram launched ads on its platform in late 2015, the number of businesses who advertise on the platform has grown to over a million. With Instagram being part of Facebook, these businesses have been able to easily create Instagram ads using the robust Facebook Ads Manager.

Snapchat advertising used to be quite inaccessible to most businesses. Other than Snapchat geofilters, businesses that want to advertise on Snapchat had to purchase ads from Snapchat’s ad partners (and they often cost a lot). Fortunately, Snapchat launched its self-serve Snapchat Ad Manager this year, making it easier for businesses to run ads on Snapchat themselves.

Let’s take a look at three key aspects of advertising on these two platforms, namely audience targeting, ad formats, and costs.

Targeting

The two ads managers are quite similar in terms of their powerful targeting ability.

Using either of the ads managers, you can create a target audience for your ads with factors such as demographics, interests, and behaviors.

On top of that, you can also reach people using your own data (e.g. people who have interacted with your business) and the platform’s data (e.g. users who look like your customers).

Ad formats

Both Instagram and Snapchat offer a variety of ad formats. Here’s an overview of the ad formats each of them offers:

Instagram ad formats

• Feed ads
• Stories ads
• Boost existing posts

Snapchat ad formats

• Snap ads
• Geofilters
• Lenses

Apart from Instagram Stories ads and Snap ads (which are quite similar), Instagram and Snapchat offers quite different ad options.

I believe Instagram ads are easier to create than Snapchat ads at the moment. While Snap ads can be easily created using the Snapchat Ad Manager, creating Snapchat geofilters requires some design know-how and creating sponsored lenses requires you to work with a Snapchat partner (and it seems to cost hundreds of thousands of dollars now).

Cost

It’s a little tricky to compare the advertising costs of the two platforms as it can be quite dependent on the quality of the ads and the target audience created.

In general, it seems to be cheaper to advertise on Instagram than Snapchat at the moment.

Here are some numbers I’ve found from Digiday and AdAge:

• Buyers say Instagram Stories ads are about $3 to $4 CPMs (and completion rates are between two and three times higher on Instagram than Snapchat).
• Instagram Feed ads cost a little more than Stories ads, between $5 and $7 CPMs.
• Instagram Stories ads can cost half the price of Snapchat ads, at $4 CPMs (price per 1,000 impressions) versus $8.50 for Snapchat.
• Snap Lenses’ minimum price has also dropped since they can now be targeted — but they’re still pricey, costing upward of $300,000 for one day.
• Snap Geofilters can be bought for as little as $5 via self-serve, and CPMs can be as low as 27 cents (for geofilters in crowded areas) to as high as $48.

With the launch of Snapchat Ad Manager, perhaps the cost of Snapchat advertising will gradually be lowered.

If you are interested to learn more about advertising on Instagram and Snapchat, here are two guides you might like:

• The Complete Guide to Instagram Ads: A Step-by-Step Guide to Advertising on Instagram
• The Complete Guide to Creating Effective Snap Ads with Snapchat Ad Manager

Consideration: Do you want to boost existing posts or run ads on the platform?

Which platform are you using?

While Instagram seems to be better than Snapchat in most aspects of the comparison, it’s important to consider which platform your target audience prefers.

For example, if your target audience is students, teenagers, and young adults, you might be able to reach them more effectively on Snapchat than Instagram.

Also, a huge percentage of Snapchat users aren’t on Instagram as App Annie has found. So being on Snapchat might be the only way to reach them.

I hope you have found the analysis of the two platforms useful for your decision-making. Once you have made your decision, I would love to hear from you.

Which platform did you choose? What were your main considerations?

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Image credit:

• The feature image is via Unsplash.
• The graphic on Snapchat user base is via Snapchat.
• The graphic on Snapchat audience exclusivity is via App Annie.
• The chart on the change in average unique viewers per snap is via TechCrunch.

Footnote:

¹ The statistics for user base were taken from Instagram, TechCrunch (Instagram monthly active users, Instagram Stories daily active users), and Statista.

Your industry is different from other industries. What matters to you and your clients may or may not matter to someone else and their clients. The big trends that threaten your industry may benefit another industry. But when it comes to the principles of selling, your industry is no different than any other.

You may feel that your industry is special when it comes to prospecting and creating opportunities, that it is somehow more difficult for you to gain the commitment of your prospective client’s time. Your industry is not to blame. The difficulty in gaining appointments crosses all industries, and the root cause is that you are not trading enough value for people’s time, and prospecting by its very nature requires that you call people who are right now uninterested in what you sell. The principle here is that you need a strong value proposition to command your dream client’s time.

Your clients always tell you that your price is higher than your competitor’s, that it is too high, that you need to sharpen your pencil, or that what you sell is a commodity. If you in any way feel that your industry has been singled out for special treatment here, let me disabuse you of that belief. Most markets are more mature and more crowded than ever, and more options and more competition tends to lead to greater distribution of companies that create value at different levels, some choosing to compete on price, others on differentiated value. Who you are calling on and how you sell determines your experience here, not your industry. The principle here is knowing who your targets are and how to sell to them.

The experience of having buyers take more time and engage more stakeholders in the buying process slow—or derail—your opportunities is not something exclusive to your industry. The fact that people are now looking for internal consensus before they buy is well-documented. The challenge this presents your industry is the same for other industries. The principle here is the need to control the process, and it is something that you know how to do effectively, or it is not.

The experience you are having selling now is not different because of your industry. The challenges you are having are universal, and the ability to sell effectively through those challenges is known, documented, and being deployed by salespeople now.

The post Your Industry Is Not Immune to the Principles of Selling appeared first on The Sales Blog.

Over the past decade, the marketplace has undergone fundamental change. However many firms still haven’t adapted to the new ways buyers find and select their professional services providers. Even firms that have embraced marketing technology and content marketing can struggle to deliver a cohesive, well-coordinated marketing program.

As you consider your marketing priorities for 2018, it’s important to take a close look at what’s really happening in the marketplace, and then invest in the activities that are going to position your firm for future growth.

In this post, I’ll help you identify some of the trends that are shaping the professional services marketplace today — and tomorrow. I’ll also provide you with five marketing planning tips to help you stand apart from your competition.

What to expect in 2018

While I can’t claim to predict what will happen to the economy in 2018, I can offer — based on Hinge’s ongoing research into professional services marketing — a couple of observations about where marketing appears to be headed in the year ahead.

1. Buyers will rely more than ever on online tools. Buyers are increasingly looking online for professional services providers. The tools are simple to use (think Google and LinkedIn), powerful and can generate more options more quickly than traditional techniques, such as asking colleagues for referrals. Of course, today’s younger generation of buyers and influencers have grown up with these online tools, so they reach for them reflexively whenever they need to answer a question or find a resource. As a result, the advantage will go to firms that can be found — and are being talked about — online.
2. Recruiting won’t get any easier. With employment levels at their lowest level in 16 years, the job market is a challenge for employers. In fact, 3 out of the top 5 business challenges identified by participants in our most recent study were related to recruiting and talent retention. We don’t see this trend abating any time soon. Firms that want to hire the best people need to devote serious marketing resources to attract and keep them.

So with those two themes in mind, let’s get to the main event. Here are my 5 top marketing planning tips for professional services firms:

Tip 1. Find out what you don’t know

If we’ve learned one thing at Hinge — through our work with hundreds of professional services clients and while marketing our own business — it’s this: you don’t know as much as you think you do about your buyers. You will never know what’s really going on in the marketplace until you do the research.

Firms that conduct regular research on their target audience are much more likely to have higher than average rates of growth and profitability. In our 2017 High Growth Study of 505 firms, not one of the no-growth firms in the study did research, while over a third of the high-growth firms conducted research at least 4 times a year.

This correlation between research and growth makes sense. When firms are guided by empirical evidence rather than anecdotes, assumptions, and hunches they can detect changes in the marketplace sooner, and more accurately.

How to take action: Plan to interview a representative sample of clients and prospects to learn about their biggest challenges, how they view your firm, who they think your competitors are, and other issues critical to your business. Pro tip: while you can conduct interviews yourself, you will get better, more honest feedback if a skilled, impartial third party does it for you.

Tip 2. Raise your content marketing game

Expertise wins new business. But if nobody knows you have it, they won’t be beating down your door. The trick is to make your expertise broadly visible to your target market. And the way to accomplish that is to share your knowledge freely.

Content marketing is a process that exposes your firm’s expertise to a wide audience — by blogging (on your own site and on others’ sites), writing articles and books, conducting webinars, speaking at events, investing in search engine optimization and more.

It’s the best way to spread your reputation, online and offline.

And if you aren’t doing it in a consistent, systematic way, you aren’t competing in the modern marketplace.

How to take action: If you are already doing some content marketing, ask yourself if it’s creating the exposure and opportunities that you are looking for. What do you need to do to raise the level of your content development and promotion? You also need to decide if outside assistance can help you achieve your goals. It’s okay if you don’t do all of it yourself — many firms get help writing and promoting their content. And if you aren’t doing any content marketing yet, it’s time to start developing a plan to get into the game.

Tip 3. Give your employer brand some love

Let’s face it. It’s a tough market for employers. Finding good, highly qualified professionals can be a real challenge right now. And to make matters worse, head-hunters are always dangling enticing job offers in front of your team members.

That’s why over a third (35.8%) of firms in a recent study said that making their firm attractive to potential employees was a top marketing priority. And I expect this percentage to grow as employer branding becomes a more familiar concept to professional services executives, marketers, and HR professionals.

While branding has traditionally been a client-facing activity, it is now being used by many firms to promote their workplace and build loyalty.

When we asked job candidates what they wanted most in their next job, their top three criteria were:

1. Great company culture
2. Good compensation and benefits
3. Good reputation in the marketplace

A strong employer brand can directly influence two of these!

How to take action: Start with your workplace. Have you created a workplace that energizes people and provides opportunities for them to grow? Next look at your website. Do you have a section, or microsite, that creatively promotes your culture and work environment? Do you have a clear value proposition? Do you have other recruiting materials that need to be updated? Finally, consider your firm’s brand. Does it position you as a leader, innovator or up-and-comer? Is it a place that would excite prospective employees (and clients)? Of course, you not only need to answer these questions, you need to be willing to make some changes. Don’t be afraid to start small. Even a few initial changes can make a big difference.

Tip 4. Don’t waste your time and money (spend it on what works, instead)

There is more data than ever about what actually works in marketing. But are you using it?

Many firms today still rely on the old standbys to drive leads — in-person networking and referrals.

While there is nothing wrong with those techniques, they come with built-in limitations.

You can only meet and nurture a finite number of people, and you have a limited number of clients and influencers who know your firm and can refer you to others.

Online marketing busts through those barriers, and high-growth firms know it.

Based on Hinge’s high-growth research, here’s where the best-performing firms are spending their marketing dollars compared to their no-growth peers:

How to take action: Look at the list of marketing activities and compare them to your current marketing program. Use this as a guide as you retool your 2018 marketing plan. Clearly, many of the top techniques are content marketing tactics, so be sure to revisit your content marketing plan, as well (see Tip 2, above).

Tip 5. Measure, adjust, repeat

The future of marketing is all about getting more from your data. There is a plethora of marketing analytics tools out there that you can use to understand how various aspects of your marketing are performing — so many, in fact, that I couldn’t even begin to scratch the surface in this post.

In the future, as machine learning and AI technologies mature, these tools are going to get incredibly powerful.

Many professional services firms are beginning to take marketing metrics and analysis seriously, and it’s giving them unprecedented insights into the marketplace and which tools and techniques move their audiences to action. It also gives them levers they can pull to change course or test new approaches — to improve their marketing effectiveness over time.

Unfortunately, even more firms today are doing nothing. And it’s possible that the success these firms have seen is going to erode away if they don’t make changes soon.

How to take action: Rather than recommend specific tools to use, I’d like to simply ask you to begin thinking analytically about your marketing. To what degree are you measuring your results? Start developing a culture of curiosity — one that wants to understand why different marketing tactics work or don’t work. Test different approaches, and don’t hesitate to abandon the poor performers. However, be judicious when testing. If you test too many approaches or elements at once, you run the risk of changing something that’s working because it’s not clear what the anomaly may be. Finally, experiment with a variety of analytical tools to find out which give you the best insights into the marketing tactics you use.

That’s how you’ll become a high-performing firm.

I hope I’ve given you at least a couple of valuable marketing planning ideas that you can incorporate into your 2018 marketing budget.

The professional services landscape is undergoing a lot of change, and smart marketers will be watching this evolution carefully — and adapting to the new environment.

Happy planning!

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

Smart speakers — Amazon's Echo, for example — are the latest device category poised to take a chunk of our increasingly digital lives. These devices are made primarily for the home and execute a user's voice commands via an integrated digital assistant. These digital assistants can play music, answer questions, and control other devices within a user's home, among other things. 

The central question for this new product category is not when they will take off, but which devices will rise to the top. To answer this question, Business Insider Intelligence surveyed our leading-edge consumer panel, gathering exclusive data on Amazon's recently released Echo Show and Echo Look, as well as Apple's HomePod. 

In a new Smart Speaker report, Business Insider Intelligence analyzes the market potential of the Echo Look, Echo Show, and HomePod. Using exclusive survey data, we evaluate each device's potential for adoption based on four criteria: awareness, excitement, usefulness, and purchase intent. And we draw some inferences from our data about the direction the smart speaker market could take from here.

Here are some of the key takeaways:

• Amazon's new Echo Show is the big winner — it has mass-market appeal and looks like it will take off. The combination of usefulness and excitement will drive consumers to buy the Echo Show. The Echo Look, though, seems like it will struggle to attract that same level of interest.
• Apple’s HomePod looks likely to find a place in the smart speaker market but won’t dominate its space like the iPhone or iPad did.
• The smart speaker market will evolve rapidly in the next few years, with more devices featuring screens, a variety of more focused products emerging, and eventually, the voice assistant moving beyond the smart speaker.

In full, the report:

• Showcases exclusive survey data on initial consumer reactions to the Echo Look, Echo Show, and HomePod.
• Highlights the aims and strategies of major players in the smart speaker market.
• Provides analysis on the direction this nascent market will take and the opportunity for companies considering a move into the space.

Join the conversation about this story »

Whether you’re a first-time sales manager or an experienced pro, figuring out which sales methodology is best for your business can be tricky. Here are some tips for finding the one that will work for you.

SPIN Selling

According to Neil Rackham’s 1989 book on the subject (which we’ve recommended before), SPIN Selling is a sales methodology focused on four key steps: Solution, Problem, Implication and Need-Payoff. This sales method will work best for you if you find any of the following statements to be true.

Your goal is to build trust that leads to future investment.
The aim of this methodology is to instill confidence in your client that you have their best interests at heart. Other sales methodologies, as we’ll soon discuss, focus on closing the sale with any number of strategies.

By taking time to understand the customer’s unique situation, you are investing in the relationship. For companies just starting out or attempting to distinguish themselves from a wide competitor pool, SPIN Selling makes listening to customers a stellar way to build trust.

You believe in relationship selling.
Using the SPIN method allows your sales reps the time to get to know their customer and really listen to their needs. Although this approach may seem time-consuming, its results are often long lasting.

In essence, the customer feels like you and your company are there to help them, regardless of whether or not they actually purchase, and the pressure to buy is lifted. After the SPIN method is implemented, they are clear on what their need is, how they’d like to solve it, and why your product is the best solution.

SNAP Selling

Created by Jill Konrath in 2012, SNAP Selling makes the assumption that your client is stressed out and in a hurry. This method is best used for any of the following goals.

You consider yourself a thought leader in your industry.
One aspect of this approach is to make your company the go-to source of information for buyers’ needs. Busy decision makers don’t always have time to do in-depth research. By taking the guess work out of the equation for them you are establishing a quality service that will inspire loyalty among your clients. Become a thought leader in your category and watch sales flood in.

Your target market works in fast-paced environments.
The “s” in SNAP stands for simple. As in, you need to outline the buying process in clear terms. If your clients are used to making important buying decision under pressure, you are well aware of how important speed and efficiency are to their process.

This methodology is based on creating priorities and by definition is built for this type of client base. With the SNAP Selling method it is your responsibility to keep your client’s eyes on the big picture. You can make sure they don’t get stuck in the myriad of details by solving the problem for them in a way that is simple, informative, and fast.

The Challenger Sale

This methodology asserts that there are five B2B selling personas. The Challenger Sale posits that the most important steps in the sales process include teaching the buyer about the industry as a whole, personalizing their product, and solving the problem in a direct manner. Read on to learn if the Challenger Sale is right for you.

Your product is on the complex side.
The first step in this technique is to consult your client about the industry as a whole. Your sales rep will help the customer critically assess the market and make informed choices. By providing all the necessary information upfront, your client will be more willing to learn and understand your product as a whole.

You have a large sales department.
One of the common pitfalls of large sales departments is the inability to personalize their sales pitch. The second step of this method is to take what you teach your client and mold the following pitch to their specific needs based on the information you’ve provided. You can, essentially, combine the benefit of a structured sales procedure with the fluidity of a tutoring session.

You are not afraid to take charge of the buying process.
The Challenger Sale isn’t for the faint of heart. Your sales rep must dictate the momentum of the transaction without fear of pushing the client. This method allows you to take control of each step of the sale. It can also create a noticeable increase in sales numbers.

The Sandler Selling System

The Sandler Selling System relies on a set of 49 rules that dictate how both parties, seller and customer, can personally invest in the outcome of the sale. Here are some reasons why this methodology might be right for you.

Your company’s success relies on repeat business.
Rather than making a handful of large sales over the course of each quarter, your company’s lifeblood depends on selling a high quantity at a low rate. With the Sandler Selling Method, your clients develop a personal relationship with your sales reps.

This is done through analyzing the client’s goals alongside them and forming a collaborative relationship. Your sales reps, therefore, begin to bond with their client throughout their buying journey. Simply put, the greater attachment he or she has to your company, the better chance they will keep coming back for more.

You aren’t afraid to be really honest with your prospective client.
The Sandler Selling System is unique because it requires a candid analysis of the client’s needs. Regardless of what stage of the sales process the customer is in, if the sales rep feels the client’s goals don’t align with the solutions posed by your product, they should then choose to end the transaction.

This step in the methodology displays your company’s integrity. Once you present multiple solutions for the issue at hand it is important to be mindful of the investment by both parties. This method is also a great way of weeding out clients who aren’t the best fit for your company or your ideal target market.

Regardless of which methodology you choose, having the right sales platform in place to effectively manage your team and gain visibility into performance is key. If you are in the market for a new CRM, check out our CRM Buyer’s Kit, a selection of resources designed to help you gain a deeper understanding of the CRM market, ask the right questions when evaluating vendors and pinpoint focus areas for your team.

There are some things in life that are better when cold. Ice cream, soda, a sandwich (IMHO), and the list could go on. One thing, however, that definitely isn’t better when cold is your contact database. It’s actually a pretty common problem for marketers. A small or large segment of your database is “cold,” meaning they have been unresponsive or disengaged for a long period of time. They may also be cold for other reasons, like maybe you don’t have enough data to declare them a marketing qualified lead (MQL). Whether you have a small or large segment of cold contacts, you can be sure that you’re leaving a lot of potential revenue on the table—this is especially true if you happen to purchase some of those leads. Below are ways to identify cold contacts so that you can turn them into MQLs.

Agree on Definitions – Cold vs. Marketing Qualified Leads

With marketing automation more than likely at play, it is extremely critical that the sales and marketing team are in alignment on what makes a cold lead different from an MQL. Your automation systems should be built to detect MQLs in real time, which is why agreeing on the demographics, behavior, and attributes that constitute an MQL is important. Your company’s MQL criteria will depend on your entire marketing and sales funnel, but it is commonly defined as any lead that is qualified for marketing engagements such as email, social media, and web conversions. The lead is not ready to be passed to sales but could meet SQL criteria one day. After you have an agreement on the definition of an MQL, you’ll need to do a bit of analysis to determine the best way to awaken these leads and turn them into MQLs.

Analyzing Your Cold Leads

Understanding your cold leads will take a bit of marketing or CRM reporting. When you can segment your cold leads in the database, you can discover numerous ways to quickly develop MQLs. Some of the common insights pulled from segmenting these leads are:

• Insufficient data: When your definition of an MQL is missing critical data. For example, if you need to know the contact’s job role but don’t collect that data on forms.

• Activity: The contact has not had activity in a long period of time. This may be due to you neglecting him or her, or he or she might be tuning out your content.

• Automation issues: Similar to insufficient data, you may also have problems with your marketing automation system that doesn’t properly tag all MQLs.

• Non-qualifying engagements: This type of contact regularly engages with your company but not in a way that allows you to qualify him or her. Yet, he or she seems like a good target based on activity.

• Stranded: There are times when contacts in your database may seem like they are stranded on a desert island. Only, in this situation, the island has WiFi, and other priorities take center stage for the lead. You know the lead is still around. He or she has even opened an email or two from you, but you cannot get him or her to pull the trigger to become an MQL.

Once you have an idea of why your leads are cold, you can now do something about it. The course of action, of course, is dependent on what you find out about your cold contacts in your initial analysis.

You love sales. You’re hungry to level up your game — to learn from sales leaders and coaches about how to grow and learn, to be a better salesperson. So you go looking for sales podcasts.

And you’ve come to the right place.

The incredible Robert J. Finn crawled the web to bring you this up-to-the-minute, accurate, definitive list of sales podcasts, including:

• Podcast description
• Episode length & frequency
• How to subscribe

& more.

Get listening to these sales podcasts right away — or, jump to Robert’s selection criteria or FAQ.

Want your sales podcast added to the Index, or interested in having Robert as a guest on your podcast? Comment below, or connect with him on LinkedIn.

Active sales podcasts

1. The Sales Hacker Podcast

Sales podcast host: Sam Jacobs

Subscribe: Apple, Stitcher, Spotify

Episode length: 45 minutes to 1 hour

First episode: April 2018

Episode frequency: Weekly

Description: The Sales Hacker Podcast is designed to give you tangible, practical insights about B2B sales. Every Tuesday, top VPs of Sales, investors, and founders will gather ‘round the sales roundtable to break down sales strategies, make you think, and help you deliver a gut punch to your sales goals!

Where to start:

It’s hard to pick just one, but Liz Young’s interview on how to become a VP of Sales by 25 is unmissable for the young and ambitious.

Not on the leadership track? Check out our other faves:

• PODCAST 20: Managing Sales Negotiation Processes Like a Pro
• PODCAST 11: Your Scientific Guide to Using Empathy in Sales

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2. Predictable Revenue

Sales podcast host: Sarah Hicks & Collin Stewart

Subscribe: Website

Episode length: 45 minutes to 1 hour

First episode: January 2018

Episode frequency: Weekly

Description: We interview outbound sales leaders so that you can learn directly from the people on the front lines. Co-hosted by the best selling author of Predictable Revenue and early Salesforce employee, Aaron Ross and his co-founder/the CEO of Predictable Revenue, Collin Stewart. Our goal is to help our audience learn sales development, coaching, and prospecting best practices from people that are currently building or have built SDR teams.

 

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3. Sales Enablement Podcast with Andy Paul

Sales podcast host: Andy Paul

Subscribe: Website, Apple, Spotify, Stitcher

Episode length: 20 to 60 minutes

First episode: October 2015

Episode frequency: Weekly

Description: With more than three decades of outstanding sales leadership experience, author and speaker Andy Paul interviews other sales luminaries. Past guests include Dan Pink, Tiffani Bova, and Jeffrey Gitomer. Andy often brings in experts who can share insights on marketing, coaching, sales automation, sales forecasting, new research, personal development, and other exciting subjects. This one is a classic, with 750+ episodes of candid, inspiring conversations.

Where to start: Episode 695 w/ Dan Pink, “The Best Time to Sell”

In sales, it’s all about timing — down to time of day. In this illuminating episode, author Dan Pink explains how your biological rhythms affect your brain — meaning, there ARE better times of day to be working. Listen.

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4. B2B Revenue Acceleration

Sales podcast host: Aurelien Mottier

Subscribe: Website, Apple

Episode length: TBD

First episode: June 2018

Episode Frequency: Weekly

Description: B2B Revenue Acceleration is the podcast for technology leaders and is dedicated to helping software executives stay on the cutting edge of sales and marketing in their industry. Each episode features topics like: channel strategies, B2B marketing tactics, account-based selling, C-Suite engagement, lead generation, demand generation, pipeline generation, revenue growth, venture capital, market entry, local markets, capital investment, qualified sales opportunities, and more.

 

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5. The Brutal Truth About Sales & Selling – B2B Social SaaS Cold Calling Advanced Hacker

Sales podcast host: Brian G. Burns

Subscribe: Apple, Spotify

Episode length: 30 to 50 minutes

First episode: September 2022

Episode Frequency: Daily

Description: Some of the topics I cover are cold calling, spin selling, challenger sale, solution selling, advanced selling skills, strategic selling, linkedin, saas, sales leadership, sales management, social media, b2b marketing, maverick selling method and how sales has changed. If you are in sales and like selling this podcast is for you.

 

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6. The Advanced Selling Podcast

Sales podcast host: Bill Caskey & Bryan Neale

Subscribe: Website, Spotify

Episode length: 15 to 25 minutes

First episode: October 2006

Episode Frequency: Weekly

Description: One of the longest continually running sales podcasts! Bill Caskey and Bryan Neale: B2B sales trainers for the past twenty years share their strategies, frameworks, tips and tricks to help you leverage your talent, grow your skills and create your own sales success. You’ll discover how you can shift your mindset, win with prospects and build long-term relationships with your clients so you can thrive and advance in your career.

 

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7. The Intent Data Exchange

Sales podcast host: Mike Burton

Subscribe: Website, Apple, Spotify

Episode length: 15 to 40 minutes

First episode: Oct 2022

Episode Frequency: Weekly

Description: The Intent Data Exchange is a podcast for sales, marketing, publishing, and data professionals seeking the latest insights from the B2B ecosystem. Each episode will feature conversations about solving customer problems, reinventing demand generation, deploying intent data, and getting better outcomes from your B2B sales and marketing.

 

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8. The Revenue Insights Podcast

Sales podcast host: Tom Hunt

Subscribe: Apple, Spotify, Stitcher

Episode length: 35 to 45 minutes

First episode: Feb 2019

Episode Frequency: Weekly

Description: The Revenue Insights Podcast is your one stop shop to unlock a wealth of knowledge shared by the greatest minds in RevOps. Tune in every Thursday for exclusive interviews on strategy, thought-leadership and industry secrets to take your understanding of RevOps to the next level.

 

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9. The B2B Revenue Executive Experience

Sales podcast host: Carlos Nouche & Lisa Schnare

Subscribe: Spotify, Apple, Listen Notes, Podbay

Episode length: 35 to 45 minutes

First episode: May 2017

Episode Frequency: Weekly

Description: The B2B Revenue Executive Experience is a podcast dedicated to helping executives train their sales and marketing teams to optimize growth. Each episode features an interview with a thought leader or practitioner, discussing topics like value selling, B2B sales, sales enablement, sales performance, marketing enablement, increasing revenue, increasing margins, increasing market share, sales strategy, and more.

 

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10. Find My Catalyst by Sales Catalyst

Sales podcast host: Mike Simmons

Subscribe: Website, Apple, Spotify

Episode length: 35 to 45 minutes

First episode:October 2016

Episode Frequency: Weekly

Description: Improve Performance, Provoke Thought, Think Critically. You are constantly striving to improve. You are looking for practical tips you can apply to your daily work that will impact your performance. You are looking for advice from professionals who do the work. You want to engage with professionals who have been in your shoes. Be the Founder that can clearly articulate the problem your company solves. Be the Sales Professional that your customers want to work with. Be the Learning Professional who can deliver your solution in the context of the business.

 

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11. The Voice of Value

Sales podcast host: Chad Quinn

Subscribe: Apple, Spotify, Google Podcasts

Episode length: 20 to 45 minutes

First episode: July 2020

Episode Frequency: TBD

Description: Voice of Value is a podcast to help sales and marketing leaders sell more effectively by making their value clear. We’ll have one-on-one conversations with successful sellers, marketers, and executive leaders in business to hear their stories and learn how to build. We talk to industry leaders about how our perceptions of value affect our lives–from career success all the way to personal fulfillment. Topics include business, leadership, sales, marketing, consulting, management.

 

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12.Changing The Sales Game

Sales podcast host: Connie Whitman

Subscribe: Website, Apple

Episode length: 35 to 40 minutes

First episode: February 2021

Episode Frequency: Weekly

Description: Beyond the bottom line. Creating true success in sales is creating real solutions for your clients. Product knowledge is great but relationships, and understanding your client’s goals will help you stand out from the crowd. You’ll be able to anticipate their future needs and troubleshoot a potential problem. This means listening and focusing on the person you are working with, even if it’s on zoom. Connie Whitman knows sales. Changing The Sales Game will help you tighten the gap between you and your customer. Listen in for tips on how to become a trusted team member with resources, answers and ideas to solve the challenges they face, you’ll be happy you did.

 

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13. Let’s Talk Sales

Sales podcast host: Elizabeth Frederick

Subscribe: Website, Apple, Spotify

Episode length: 40 to 60 minutes

First Episode: July 2018

Episode Frequency: Weekly

Description: Let’s Talk Sales will feature interviews with sales leaders and CEOs sharing their secrets to success. Executives will share how they like to be sold – and what turns them off. Business coaches will offer insights for personal and professional growth, and authors will discuss their sales and business books. We’ll even give you the opportunity to ask us questions!

 

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14. Breaking Sales

Sales podcast host: Dan Lappin

Subscribe: Website, Apple, Spotify, Google Podcasts, Stitcher

Episode length: 5 to 25 minutes

First Episode: March 2020

Episode Frequency: Every Other Week

Description: Behind the scenes with one of America’s leading sales renegades, Dan Lappin, and his fanatic crew of disruptors from Lappin180. Listen as Dan, his sales training team and their guests, destroy everything you thought you knew about selling. Breaking Sales annihilates the tried-and-died sales tactics and techniques that have failed you…and your prospects. Here is your chance to break free of convention and tedious sales rules top earners never follow. In interviews with business leaders and industry insiders, Dan will inspire you to think differently, stop selling, and break the sale. Join Dan on his unorthodox mission to shatter the dull monotony of performance stagnation.

 

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15. The Exceptional Sales Leader Podcast

Sales podcast host: Darren Mitchell

Subscribe: Spotify, Apple, Stitcher

Episode length: 15 to 25 minutes

First Episode: June 2020

Episode Frequency: Multiple Times Per Week

Description: You are a Sales Leader who wants to become an Exceptional Sales Leader. You are committed to developing a highly functioning & highly engaged team. You are committed to driving consistent, sustainable and replicable results. This podcast is designed to help you do just that, through 1) Attracting high quality sales professionals who will fit ‘hand in glove’ with a high performing sales culture, and develop a market leading level of influence, 2) Developing the team and sales professionals through laser focused coaching and mentoring, implementation of strategy and increased productivity, & 3) Delivering sustainable and replicable results through world class sales pitching and performance management strategies. The end result? An Exceptional Sales Leader who gets to enjoy more money, more meaning, and better sales results

 

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16. The Sales Development Podcast

Sales podcast host:: David Dulany

Subscribe: Spotify, Apple

Episode length: 25 to 50 minutes

First Episode: September 2016

Episode Frequency:

Description: The podcast provides insights and strategies for sales development professionals to increase revenue and close more deals. It covers topics such as lead generation, account-based marketing, sales enablement, and customer acquisition.

 

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17. The Sales Evangelist Podcast

Sales podcast host: Donald Kelly

Subscribe: Website, Apple, Spotify

Episode length:15 to 40 minutes

First Episode: December 2013

Episode Frequency: Twice Weekly

Description: Today I interviewed the world’s best sales experts, successful sellers, sales leaders and entrepreneurs who share their strategies to succeed in sales right now: folks like Jeffrey Gitomer, Jill Konrath, Bob Burg, and Guy Kawasaki to name a few. They share actionable insights and stories that will encourage, challenge, and motivate you to hustle your way to top income status. If you’re someone looking to take off in your sales career and earn the income you deserve, hit subscribe and let’s start doing BIG THINGS!

Where to start: Episode 1632 w/ Wesleyne Whittaker-Greer

Two of our faves in one place: Wesleyne is a sales leader who’s a master of empathy (see her recent Sales Hacker article on surviving rejection in sales) and regular Sales Hacker webinar host Donald Kelly share tips for building the confidence you need to weather the storm.

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18. Selling SaaS

Sales podcast host: Duane Dufault

Subscribe: Spotify, Apple

Episode length: Under 10 minutes

First Episode: May 2022

Episode Frequency: At least once a week

Description: In the SellingSaas Podcast (Formerly the Sales Leader Network) we break down the topics of Go To Market strategies, Revenue Acquisition, and my favorite topic of Sales Leadership. We have a few versions of the show where we have the traditional guest episode when I bring on someone who is an expert in one of the topics just mentioned, then there will episodes where I’ve been a guest on another show that I share on this show for you, and then there will be solo episodes from yours truly where I get extremely tactical with Sales and GTM.

 

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19. The Sales Syndicate Podcast

Sales podcast host: Nic Beffen, Ellis Campbell & Jamie Pagan

Subscribe: Apple

Episode length: 25 to 45 minutes

First Episode: October 2022

Episode Frequency: Weekly

Description: Welcome to The Sales Syndicate Podcast, brought to you by Selligence. Hosted by Max Mitcham, VP of Sales, on this podcast we interview leaders, experts, and entrepreneurs in the B2B industry. From tips and tricks, to hacks and methodology, you will understand what it takes to create a predictable pipeline of target smashing revenue.

 

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20. The Sales Game Changers Podcast

Sales podcast host: Fred Diamond

Subscribe: Spotify, Apple

Episode length: 25 to 30 minutes

First Episode: October 2017

Episode Frequency: More than once per week

Description: Institute for Excellence in Sales co-founder Fred Diamond interviews top business-to-business sales leaders from companies such as Salesforce, Amazon Web Services, Oracle, Microsoft, Hilton and others about what sales professionals must be doing right now to ensure they provide the best solutions to their customers during challenging times. Many shows focus on how women in sales can grow their careers. It’s an interview-style, tips-galore podcast that has become even more popular as sales professionals look for solutions emerging from the COVID-19 pandemic.

Recommend Episode – EPISODE 560: Being an Ally to Women in Sales with Rob Stein (Salesforce) and Darrell Gehrt (Cvent)

Contact Info – Fred Diamond, fdiamond@i4esbd.org

Note from the Hosts – We are always looking for smart, successful sales leaders at companies to interview on the show.

 

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21. The Elite Selling Podcast

Sales podcast host: Griffin Reilly & Frankie Vignone

Subscribe: Website, Apple

Episode length: 20 to 30 minutes

First Episode: October 2022

Episode Frequency: Weekly

Description: The podcast focuses on the mindset and strategies of top sales performers. It covers topics such as sales psychology, closing techniques, and overcoming objections.

 

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22. Sales Pipeline Radio

Sales podcast host: Matt Heinz

Subscribe: Spotify, Apple

Episode length: 25 to 35 minutes

First Episode: October 2016

Episode Frequency: Monthly

Description: Sales Pipeline Radio features the brightest minds in B2B sales & marketing, sharing secrets to driving greater volume, velocity and conversion of sales pipelines in any industry. Matt covers the entire pipeline – demand generation, lead management, sales effectiveness, technology and more – all focused on helping you find, manage and win more business. Thank you for joining host Matt Heinz, president of Heinz Marketing, in this fast-paced, power-packed program.

 

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23. Same Side Selling

Sales podcast host: Ian Altman

Subscribe: Spotify, Apple, SoundCloud

Episode length: 5 to 35 minutes

First Episode: October 2017

Episode Frequency: Weekly

Description: The Same Side Selling podcast features sales and business topics, as well as insight from industry leaders with proven success. Ian interviews some of the brightest minds who share proven methods to help YOU achieve success and grow revenue with integrity.

 

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24. The Global Sales Leader

Sales podcast host: Jason Cooper

Subscribe: Website, Apple

Episode length: 25 to 45 minutes

First Episode: July 2020

Episode Frequency: Weekly

Description: Listen to fascinating sales leadership conversation with some of today’s most dynamic leaders to discover what they do and how they operate in today’s fast-changing world. Our discussion will cover Sales, Leadership, Business, Coaching, tech and the Mind.

 

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25. The GOATS of Growth

Sales podcast host: Jay Webb

Subscribe: Apple

Episode length: 55 to 65 minutes

First Episode: February 2020

Episode Frequency: Weekly

Description: ‘The Goats Of Growth’ features exclusive interviews with GTM Leaders who discuss topics such vision, leadership, strategy, execution, and other insights into how start-up can build a successful go-to-market function.

 

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26. Make It Happen Mondays

Sales podcast host: John Barrows

Subscribe: Website, Apple,Spotify

Episode length: 30 minutes, 60 minutes

First Episode: February 2018

Episode Frequency: Weekly

Description: John Barrows is a leading B2B sales trainer and founder of JBarrows Consulting. His clients include Salesforce, LinkedIn, and Okta. Each Week he gives you actionable sales tips to close more business and brings on industry leaders.

 

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27. Sales Gravy

Sales podcast host: Jeb Blount

Subscribe: Spotify,Apple,Stitcher

Episode length: 5 minutes to 40 minutes

First Episode: November 2019

Episode Frequency: Weekly

Description: Bestselling author, speaker, and consultant Jeb Blount talks about high-performance selling, customer experience, strategic account management, team building and skills training. Get actionable advice on how to close bigger deals more frequently and on a consistent basis. Whether an episode stretches for just a minute or extends beyond an hour, this podcast offers tidbits of actionable wisdom that will elevate your sales performance.

 

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28. Sell or Die

Sales podcast host: Jeffrey Gitomer & Jen Gitomer

Subscribe: Spotify, Apple

Episode length: 15 to 45 minutes

First Episode: July 2020

Episode Frequency: Weekly

Description: Best-selling author Jeffrey Gitomer and sales expert Jennifer Gitomer discuss the art and science of selling with the top leaders in sales, business, marketing and personal development.

 

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29. Winning The Challenger Sale

Sales podcast host: Jen Allen

Subscribe: Apple,Spotify

Episode length: 15 to 45 minutes

First Episode: March 2021

Episode Frequency: Monthly

Description: Win the sales moments that matter, every day. Take a deep dive into the day-to-day skills and behaviors proven to win in complex selling and buying environments. Hosted by the team that brought you the best-selling books, “The Challenger Sale” and “The Challenger Customer.”

 

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30. Hey Salespeople!

Sales podcast host: Jenna Sacks

Subscribe: Spotify, Apple

Episode length: 20 to 30 minutes

First Episode: May 2019

Episode Frequency: Bi-weekly

Description: Sales is an art and a science. Join Jenna Sacks as she interviews the brightest minds in modern sales to bring you immediately actionable advice. If you have a passion for sales, are looking to further your career, or just want to hear some great, practical tips, this is the podcast for you.

 

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31. Closers Are Losers

Sales podcast host: Jeremy Miner &Matt Ryder

Subscribe: Website, Apple, Spotify

Episode length: 5 to 35 minutes

First Episode: April 2022

Episode Frequency: Twice Weekly

Description: Closers are going to lose sales if they are still using “old-school,” out-dated closing techniques. We help closers level up and achieve extraordinary results by learning from elite Sales Influencers who are featured Guests on my show.

 

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32. Love Selling, Hate Sales

Sales podcast host: Joshua Wagner

Subscribe: Spotify, Apple

Episode length: 25 to 45 minutes

First Episode: May 2020

Episode Frequency: Weekly

Description: This show is about the opposing forces of selling and sales. One part art, one part science. I interview the best and brightest quota carrying reps and sales leaders to break down what it really takes to be great at sales… I mean a great seller!

 

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33. K2 Sales Podcast

Sales podcast host: Karen Kelly

Subscribe: Spotify

Episode length: 15 to 45 minutes

First Episode: January 2021

Episode Frequency: Weekly

Description: Join Karen Kelly on the K2 sales podcast where she speaks with sales/marketing leaders, business owners and top performing sales professionals to break down what mindset, behaviours and actions are contributing to game changing results. This podcast will invite you to look at your own business, analyze what you could be doing differently with yourself, your team and your overall organization to drive game changing results. We provide tactical steps that can be applied immediately to your specific role, team and company that will put you on the path to elite performance.

 

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34. Sales Code Leadership Podcast

Sales podcast host: Kevin Thiele

Subscribe: Apple, Spotify

Episode length: 25 to 50 minutes

First Episode: March 2021

Episode Frequency: Monthly

Description: Welcome to engaging technology sales leadersWe invite sales leaders and leadership experts to discuss what talent, attitude, skills, knowledge and style is required to get to the top and stay there – with a particular focus on the specific demands of the ever-changing technology sector.

 

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35. Conversations with Women in Sales

Sales podcast host: Lori Richardson

Subscribe: Website, Spotify

Episode length: 25 to 40 minutes

First Episode: January 2018

Episode Frequency: 3x month

Description: Conversations with Women in Sales is a top podcast hosted by Lori Richardson. Most every episode features a woman in sales or leadership who is doing incredible work, or an interview with a male ally, or conversation on a related topic. For the past 145+ episodes, guests share practical advice for advancing one’s sales career. The podcast is dedicated to the memory of Barbara Giamanco, who founded CWWIS in 2018. If you like it, please share it!

Recommended Episode – 141: Love Your Team: A Survival Guide for Sales Managers in a Hybrid World, Helen Fanucci

 

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36. School of Sales

Sales podcast host: Loy Day, Macy McNeely & Kathryn Shubert

Subscribe: Spotify, Apple

Episode length: 10 to 25 minutes

First Episode: May 2019

Episode Frequency: Multiple times per week

Description: The School of Sales by GUIDE Culture® podcast drops new juice every week, providing tangible takeaways to level up your sales, communication and leadership skills. Founder, Loy Day, and Co-CEO’s, Macy McNeely and Kathryn Shubert, answer your questions centered around personal growth, entrepreneurship and all things sales. They deliver quick wins every week with a mixture of inspiration and motivation. At School of Sales by GUIDE Culture®, we are passionate about making sales cool again and helping you reach your full potential in all parts of life. Sit back and enjoy the juice

 

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37. Sales Logic

Sales podcast host: Mark Hunter & Meredith Elliot Powell

Subscribe: Spotify

Episode length: 10 to 25 minutes

First Episode: May 2020

Episode Frequency: Weekly

Description: Hosted by sales experts Mark Hunter and Meridith Elliott Powell, Sales Logic answers today’s toughest selling questions with logical answers that will help you win more deals and make more money. When you sell with confidence and integrity, uncertainty suddenly becomes your competitive advantage and the sale… becomes logical.

 

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38. Sales Culture Redefined

Sales podcast host: Lance Cooper

Subscribe: Spotify, Apple

Episode length: Under 15 minutes

First Episode: April 2021

Episode Frequency: Twice Monthly

Description: Lance Cooper, CEO and founder of SalesManage Solutions, gives you tips for redefining sales cultures for today’s young reps and leaders – ones that win when facing sales performance challenges. You’ll hear remarkable sales leaders tell you about their philosophies and sales increasing strategies. You’ll also learn practical skills that will build an outstanding sales culture through the best recruiting, on-boarding and coaching systems: processes, tools and skills. Over a thirty year span, he has coached salespeople and sales leaders in over 300 companies and in multiple markets to redefine their cultures from good to great. Listen and hear proven methods that will work to increase sales, income and to transform the lives of people in three different generations: Z, Y and X!

 

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39. Surviving Outside Sales

Sales podcast host: Mike O’Kelly

Subscribe: Apple, Spotify

Episode length: 10 to 40 minutes

First Episode: August 2021

Episode Frequency: Daily

Description: Surviving Outside Sales is a podcast for outside sales reps that want to learn how to Get In, Dominate, and Get Out. Join host Mike O’Kelly as he interviews top professionals from inside and outside sales, business owners who built something for themselves, as well as many other experts in their field. From building business systems, landing the perfect sales job and hearing stories from entrepreneurs who fired their jobs, it’s all here!

 

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40. The Sales Management, Simplified Podcast

Sales podcast host: Mike Weinberg

Subscribe: Website, Spotify, Apple

Episode length: 40 to 50 minutes

First Episode: November 2020

Episode Frequency: Twice Monthly

Description: Execs, sales leaders, and aspiring sales managers: Ready to create a healthy, high-performance sales culture and drive significant long-term sales growth? Had it with the noise and nonsense that passes for sales advice today and the nonstop pitches promising you a new hack, trick, or tool to solve all that ails your sales? Join practitioner, speaker, coach, and globally trusted sales expert Mike Weinberg, author of the bestselling and most reviewed sales management book, for straight talk, blunt truth, and powerful, practical techniques that will maximize sales management effectiveness and help your team WIN MORE NEW SALES!

 

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41. SaaS Talks: From Lead to Close

Sales podcast host: Mor Assouline

Subscribe: Website, Spotify, Apple

Episode length: 5 to 10 minutes

First Episode: November 2020

Episode Frequency: Daily

Description: SaaS Talks: From Lead to Close is the top B2B SaaS sales podcast in short-form audio. You’ll learn how to schedule more demos, build a bigger pipeline, and close at least 50% of your demos. Every episode will be short and to the point so you don’t have to waste time listening to sales fluff.

 

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42. B2B Power Hour

Sales podcast host: Nick Thickett & Morgan Smith

Subscribe: Website, Apple, Spotify

Episode length: 40 to 60 minutes

First Episode: November 2021

Episode Frequency: At least twice weekly

Description: Nick’s a seller. Morgan’s a marketer. We align go-to-market teams together to win the RIGHT business with better experiments. Tune in for live shows and interviews that will help you learn what to test and try so you can sell (and market!) better to your customers and prospects.

 

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43. Conversational Selling

Sales podcast host: Nancy Calabrese

Subscribe: Apple, Spotify, Google Podcast, Stitcher

Episode length: 20 to 30 minutes

First Episode: July 2020

Episode Frequency: Weekly (typically)

Description: The Conversational Selling Audience loves learning about the art of communication between human beings which leads to more meaningful connections. These connections drive new business at the right time and keep you top of mind when the prospect is ready to buy. Selling is not just a business skill, it’s a life skill. At the end of the day, sales is just about the human connection.

 

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44. 30 Minutes to President’s Club

Sales podcast host: Nick Cegelski & Armand Farrokh

Subscribe: Website, Apple, Spotify

Episode length: 30 minutes

First episode: April 2020

Episode frequency: Weekly

Description: 30 minutes. No sales academia. Only actionable sales tactics. Nick sells enterprise deals solo. Armand runs a team of 40 SMB AE’s and SDR’s. Together they break down sales strategies you can use to start winning more deals today.

Where to start: Episode 7 w/Keenan

 

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45. Tech Sales Insights

Sales podcast host: Randy Seidl

Subscribe: Website, Spotify, Apple

Episode length: 30 to 40 minutes

First Episode: October 2020

Episode Frequency: Twice Weekly

Description: Technology Sales, Sales Management, and Sales Leadership insights and best practices, by a community of global best practitioners.

 

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46. Repeatable Revenue

Sales podcast host: Ray J. Green

Subscribe: Apple, Listen Notes, Podchaser

Episode length: 15 minutes to 60 minutes

First Episode: January 2021

Episode Frequency: Weekly

Description: A podcast for online business builders and growth-minded entrepreneurs. Repeatable Revenue is hosted by Ray J. Green, an entrepreneurial executive that rose from sales rep to CEO of a private equity backed company, oversaw national small business for the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, and then left the rat race and successfully drove $70k/mo.+ consulting remotely from Cabo.

 

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47. The Adapter’s Advantage

Sales podcast host: Allego

Subscribe: Website, Apple

Episode length: 30 to 40 minutes

First Episode: July 2020

Episode Frequency: Monthly

Description: The Adapter’s Advantage launched in July 2020 to help you adapt to a rapidly changing world. Our guests are leaders in sales, training, enterprise learning, and academia, who share compelling stories of how they’ve adapted—either during the pandemic or at some other point in their careers—to challenging situations. Our podcast brings you insider stories of the moments that mattered—turning points on the sometimes rocky road to success. Interviews are informative, inspirational, and based on real-world experiences to help listeners learn how they and their organizations can adapt to change.

 

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48. Sales Leadership Podcast

Sales podcast host: Rob Jeppsen

Subscribe: Apple, Spotify, Stitcher

Episode length: 1 hour

First Episode: June 2018

Episode Frequency: Weekly

Description: Each episode finds Rob Jeppsen and guest diving into the biggest question in business: How do you create predictable, repeatable, and scalable success? They discuss tactics and practices that the best sales leaders use to drive head-turning success. Rob lets you know what you can expect from each episode and gives you his promise: you’ll leave each episode with new ideas to help you drive high growth with your team.

 

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49. Winning at Selling Podcast

Sales podcast host: Scott Plum & Bill Hellkamp

Subscribe: Website, Apple, Stitcher

Episode length: 30 to 35 minutes

First Episode: October 2021

Episode Frequency: Weekly

Description: Selling is an interactive activity and successful results will be determined by being prepared for all opportunities. The market is constantly changing and how people buy evolves as more options are available. Learn how to generate greater revenue, memorable experiences, and create client advocates by subscribing and applying relevant selling skills.

 

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50. Sales Success Stories

Sales podcast host: Scott Ingram

Subscribe: Apple, Spotify, SoundCloud

Episode length: 25 to 40 minutes

First Episode: October 2016

Episode Frequency: Weekly

Description: In the Sales Success Stories podcast, Scott Ingram interviews and deconstructs world class sales performers to uncover their favorite sales books, habits, routines, strategies and tips. These salespeople are the A+ players among A players. If you’re in B2B Sales, Enterprise Sales, SAAS Sales, selling professional services, serving as an account manager or otherwise interested in revenue growth there’s something for you in these conversations

 

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51. Daily Sales Tips

Sales podcast host: Scott Ingram

Subscribe: Website, Spotify, Apple

Episode length: 5 minutes

First Episode: January 2019

Episode Frequency: Daily

Description: A podcast for B2B sales professionals featuring a new tip everyday, 7 days a week. All tips will be 5-10 minutes or less so that you can binge through a week’s worth of tips in less than an hour.

 

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52. Mental Selling

Sales podcast host: Integrity Solutions

Subscribe: Website, Spotify, Apple, Stitcher

Episode length: 30 to 60 minutes

First Episode: October 2016

Episode Frequency: Twice Monthly

Description: Mental Selling: The Sales Performance Podcast is a show for motivated problem solvers in sales, leadership and customer service. Each episode features a conversation with sales leaders and industry experts who understand the importance of the mindset and skill set needed to be exceptional at building trusted customer relationships. In this podcast, we get below the surface, tapping into the emotional and psychological drivers of lasting sales and service success. You’ll hear stories and insights about overcoming the self-limiting beliefs that hold salespeople back, how to unlock the full potential in every salesperson, the complexities of today’s B2B buying cycles, and the rise of today’s virtual selling environment. We help you understand the mental and emotional aspects of sales performance that will empower you to deliver amazing customer experiences and get the results you want.

 

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53. Selling Made Simple

Sales podcast host: Salesman.org

Subscribe: Website, Spotify, Apple, Stitcher

Episode length: 5 to 15 minutes

First Episode: August 2021

Episode Frequency: Weekly

Description: Selling Made Simple – Sometimes B2B sales professionals just don’t have the time to listen to an hour of content. This is where Selling Made Simple comes in with its 10-minute, practical episodes.

 

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54. The Audible Ready Sales Podcast

Sales podcast host: Force Management

Subscribe: Website, Apple, Spotify, Stitcher

Episode length: 10 to 20 minutes

First Episode: March 2020

Episode Frequency: Weekly (at least)

Description: The Audible-Ready Sales Podcast is a weekly show featuring B2B sales leaders and revenue-driving executives, who share their best insights on how a focus on sales effectiveness can help companies increase revenue, improve sales margins and gain market share. It’s presented by Force Management, a leader in building company alignment and equipping sales teams with the ability to execute growth strategies at the point of sale.We’ll cover topics like: Sales Leadership, Sales Transformation, Sales Initiative Results, Sales performance, Adoption and Reinforcement, making quota, high-tech sales, enterprise sales, and so much more.

 

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55. The Sales Podcast

Sales podcast host: Wes Schaeffer

Subscribe: Apple, Spotify

Episode length: 10 to 60 minutes

First Episode: May 2013

Episode Frequency: Weekly

Description: Unscripted, real, transparent information and interviews from Wes Schaeffer, The Sales Whisperer®, to help you master inbound marketing and generate more inbound sales that close faster, easier, at higher margin, with less stress and more fun.

 

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56. The B2B Sales Podcast

Sales podcast host: Thibaut Souyris & Skip Miller

Subscribe: Spotify, Apple

Episode length: 20 to 40 minutes

First Episode: January 2020

Episode Frequency: Weekly (at least)

Description: The B2B Sales Podcast addresses topics at the core of B2B sales, such as sales development, sales training, and sales coaching.

 

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57. Millennial Sales

Sales podcast host: Tom Alaimo

Subscribe: Website, Spotify, Apple

Episode length: 35 to 45 minutes

First Episode: March 2018

Episode Frequency: Monthly (at least)

Description: The Millennial Sales Podcast will help you sell more and have a more lucrative and fulfilling career. The best and brightest minds in B2B and Tech Sales will inspire, educate and entertain you with a behind the scenes look at what’s made them successful. Host Tom Alaimo has been featured in Huffington Post, Salesforce, Hubspot and Sales Hacker and is known for bringing energy, positivity and a growth mindset to his sales career.

 

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58. Sales Prestige Podcast

Sales podcast host: Trent Dressell

Subscribe: Website, Spotify, Apple

Episode length: Under 10 minutes

First Episode: March 2022

Episode Frequency: Multiple times per week

Description: Land a high paying tech sales role & accelerate your sales career today!

 

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59. The Sales Feed Show

Sales podcast host: Tyler Lessard & Rajiv Nathan

Subscribe: Website, Spotify, Apple

Episode length: 45 to 60 minutes

First Episode: October 2022

Episode Frequency: Twice monthly

Description: A bi-weekly podcast full of actionable sales tips and laughable sales humor. Tyler Lessard and Rajiv ‘RajNATION’ Nathan, dive into a variety of B2B sales topics with the help of special guests and memorable segments.

 

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60. Outbound Sales Lift

Sales podcast host: Tyler Lindley

Subscribe: Website, Spotify, Apple

Episode length:20 to 30 minutes

First Episode: May 2020

Episode Frequency: Weekly

Description –Outbound Sales Lift will help you elevate your SDR team and transform your sales development efforts.

Host Tyler Lindley talks with thought leaders in sales dev to provide actionable sales development insights and leadership strategies to improve your sales engagement and close more deals. Whether you’re an experienced sales team leader or entry-level sales rep, we share tips so you can book more meetings, empower your sales team, and optimize your top-of-funnel outreach.

 

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61. The Modern Selling Podcast

Sales podcast host: Mario Martinez Jr.

Subscribe: Website, Spotify, Apple

Episode length: 30 to 50 minutes

First Episode: September 2019

Episode Frequency: Twice Monthly

Description: The Modern Selling podcast, hosted by Mario Martinez, Jr., is the go-to podcast for sales leaders, sales professionals, business owners, sales enablement leaders, and anyone responsible for generating revenue. Mario’s guests are practitioners in the trenches, experts in their profession and influencers who are leveraging modern selling techniques to inspire you to create more sales conversations with your target buyer!

 

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62. Sales Influence Podcast

Sales podcast host: Victor Antonio

Subscribe: Website, Apple, Spotify

Episode length: Under 10 minutes or over 50 minutes

First Episode: August 2016

Episode Frequency: Twice Monthly

Description: Today’s buyer is more informed and more skeptical when it comes to buying. In this podcast, we’ll discuss “Finding the Why in How Clients Buy” by using the latest studies in consumer behavior and neuromarketing to sell more effectively!

 

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63. No Nonsense Sales

Sales podcast host: Tom Boston

Subscribe: Spotify, Apple

Episode length: 15 minutes

First Episode: November 2022

Episode Frequency: Weekly

Description: Join Tom Boston and his sales friends on a whirlwind tour around the topics that matter to modern sellers. In season 1, Tom and his guest debunk another boring, old sales cliche each week. This is the fun and irreverent side of the often stuffy world of buyers and sellers. From “Always Be Closing” to “Zero to Hero,” No Nonsense Sales is your 15 minutes of sales fun and inspiration every week. read less

 

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64. Sales Maven

Sales podcast host: Nikki Rausch

Subscribe: Website,Apple,, Spotify

Episode length: 30 to 60 minutes

First Episode: March 2020

Episode Frequency: Weekly

Description: Do sales conversations make you feel awkward or pushy? It’s time to ditch the outdated salesy strategies. Your guide, Nikki Rausch, will show you how to combine kindness with selling skills to meet your prospects where they are. And in the process, how to uplevel your influence and income. Learn how to earn business easily and effortlessly.

 

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65. Transform Sales

Sales podcast host: Unknown

Subscribe: Website, Apple, Spotify

Episode length: 30 to 40 minutes

First Episode: May 2019

Episode Frequency: Multiple times monthly

Description: Hear from CEOs, founders and leaders from across the globe on what it takes to win in business!

 

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66. Students of Sales

Sales podcast host: Michael Mason, Phil Mann, Tyler Witt

Subscribe: Website, Apple, Spotify

Episode length: 50 minutes

First Episode: January 2023

Episode Frequency: TBD

Description: Welcome to Students of Sales, the ultimate resource for aspiring sales professionals! If you’re looking to boost your sales skills and take your career to the next level, you’re in the right place.

Each week, Michael Mason, Phil Mann, and Tyler Witt bring you professional insights, practical tips, and real-world strategies to help you close more deals and build long-lasting relationships with your clients.

 

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67. The Sales Edge Podcast

Sales podcast host: Joe Pici

Subscribe: Website, Apple, Spotify

Episode length: 15 to 30 minutes

First Episode: April 2019

Episode Frequency: Multiple times per month

Description: Get ready for an unfair advantage over your competition! This is The Sales Edge Podcast where globally recognized sales expert and trainer Joe Pici helps you sharpen your sales skills for booking more appointments and closing more deals.

 

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68. Tech Sales is for Hustlers

Sales podcast host: Chris Corcoran & Marc Gonyea

Subscribe: Website, Apple, Spotify

Episode length: 45 to 55 minutes

First Episode: March 2020

Episode Frequency: 60 minutes

Description: memoryBlue Cofounders Chris Corcoran and Marc Gonyea sit down with former employees – appropriately termed alumni – to unearth the untold stories, secrets of success and winding pathways that have led to big-time tech sales careers. These compelling tales offer unique insight into what it takes to make it in professional sales. Along the way, you’ll pick up tips, tactics, and advice that’s worth its weight in gold.

 

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69. Salesology: Conversation with Sales Leaders

Sales podcast host: Wendy Weiss

Subscribe: Website, Apple, Spotify

Episode length: 35 to 45 minutes

First Episode: July 2022

Episode Frequency: Multiple times per month

Description: When you are ready to transform your sales for today’s transforming market, this is the show for you.

In the Salesology®️ podcast, you’re going to be getting the real scoop, the inside story from sales leaders who will deliver the goods on how to grow sales faster, more easily and more profitably.

With your host, The Queen of Cold Calling®️ and Founder of Salesology®️, award winning author, speaker, sales trainer and coach, Wendy Weiss.

 

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70. Sales Yak

Sales podcast host: Christopher Goodwillie

Subscribe: Apple, Spotify, Google Podcast

Episode length: 10 minutes

First Episode: January 2023

Episode Frequency: TBD

Description: Are you in sales or interested in sales, but struggling to know if it’s the right career path for you? Listen in as we explore the different environments, roles, and career paths within the broad world of sales. The goal of this show…? To discover whether sales is right for you long term.

 

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71. The Evolved Sales Leader

Sales podcast host: Jonathan Fischer

Subscribe: Apple,

If you’ve heard the term “influencer marketing” before but haven’t tried it out, you’re missing the boat. Studies have demonstrated that word of mouth advertising is more powerful than paid solutions. When genuine people give honest reviews, shout outs, or feedback; brands win.

If the price of influencer marketing has held you back, you’re about to be out of excuses! We know you don’t want to break the bank, that’s why we’ve scoured the web to find 10 low-cost tools to help you get started with influencer marketing.

These tools range from discovery tools that help you find real influencers, to campaign management tools that handle everything from start to finish. If you’re a small or medium-sized business and you’re looking to jump in, these 10 tools are a great way to get started.

Tools for Finding Influencers

Just as the journey of 1,000 miles begins with a single step; the journey of 1,000 influencers begins with finding one to suit your needs. The tools listed below may offer additional features, but their true value begins by helping you discover and connect with the right influencer for your business needs.

BuzzSumo

Find influencers in any location or category with BuzzSumo. Sort by reach, authority, and engagement to find people that align with your target audience. Then, build outreach plans, add influencers to Twitter lists, and export data for detailed analysis. BuzzSumo Pro starts at $79 per month and is a good starter plan for small teams.

How It Works

Brands search for influencers that fit their niche. From there, they can view content, follower size, domain authority, and more. Search by keywords to source content and influencers.

Brands can also search by a particular piece of content and view the engagement metrics (such as shares, retweets, etc) and identify the influencers who share that content most frequently.

Once influencers are identified, they can be followed directly from Buzzsumo, or added to Twitter lists. Contact information can be exported into an Excel sheet for later addition into your e-mail program.

Pricing

Buzzsumo Pro starts at $79 / month (with yearly membership) and includes most of the basic tools to get you started. The Agency plan ($239/month) includes deeper analytic tools and filters you may want to consider as you scale.

Ninja Outreach

Ninja Outreach houses over 25 million websites in its database of influencers. Use your target keywords to search for social media influencers and bloggers with matching descriptions.

How It Works

You can easily search for influencers using keywords. Once you’ve found prospects, you can manage contacts inside the tool along with message history, notes, and relationship tracking.

This tool allows you to source the best influencer for your needs while eliminating others. Brands can filter results by platform, minimum follower count, domain authority, and more. Additional analytics takes a deeper dive into the influencers you select and reveals information about their other social profiles, website, as well as contact information.

Influencers can be grouped into lists for later contact. The tool also allows you to add notes, tags, and other identifying information that can be stored or shared with your team. Email templates may also be set up to allow you to contact your lists directly through the platform.

Additionally, your contact lists can be exported into an Excel sheet or CSV for later use with a different outreach program.

Pricing

Ninja Outreach starts at a reasonable $99/month for the small agency plan, though there is a solo plan for $69/month. The small agency plan is preferable for small and medium-sized businesses who are looking to get started with influencer marketing and have access to more enhanced features. This plan allows two users access to unlimited searches and emailing as well as automated follow-ups. Paying annually will save you 25% on any of Ninja Outreach’s four plans.

Klear

Klear is a discovery platform built for bigger brands. It boasts 500 million social profiles and influencers in over 60,000 categories. Use it to find, engage, and track relevant insights, manage influencer outreach, and monitor ongoing campaigns.

How It Works

Brands select the target network (Instagram, Twitter, etc) and use keywords to search for influencers in their preferred category. Klear also allows you to search by geographical location, which may be beneficial to some users.

You can further narrow down your search by viewing robust analytics of each influencer. Engagement data will show the influencers activity level, likes, retweets, follows, and more.

Once you’ve identified the influencers you want to contact, you can follow their activity through the platform, or export their contact information for later use. Klear does not offer a specific outreach program, though you are able to add your preferred influencers into lists or groups.

Pricing

Klear is a costlier option than the previous two, but still offers a $250 per month starter plan. They also offer a free demo of the service if you’re unsure.

Scrunch

Scrunch is an all-inclusive, end-to-end platform that enables you to search and bookmark influencers from a comprehensive database that includes dozens of niche markets.

How It Works

Scrunch allows brands to search by geographical location, engagement rates, follower range, or by the specific social network you’re interested in. Influencers can be sorted and grouped based on your specifications.

Scrunch allows you to create a manage an influencer campaign from discover to outreach. Once you’ve searched through your influencer results, Scrunch will show you detailed information on engagement rates, activity, and an estimated cost per post for your campaign.

Search by keywords, and filter by follower size, platform, or geographic location in order to discover the influencer that is best suited for your needs.

Pricing

Prices on Scrunch vary, but for the small business interested in getting their feet wet, the starter package is free of charge and allows you to manage a single campaign. However, in order to contact influencers directly through Scrunch you will need to upgrade. For unlimited campaigns and expanded features, the pro model package starts at a reasonable $99 per month.

Influencer Contact & Communication Tools

Contact and communication is the foundation of a successful influencer marketing program. The tools below are standouts in the area of managing your influencer relationships and communication. From compiling a directory of contacts to tracking messages, these tools are ideal for the business that values efficient communication.

Buzzstream

Buzzstream helps businesses build relationships with influencers. This outreach platform maintains contact information, profiles, and conversation history between brands and the influencers they work with.

How It Works

Buzzstream allows brands to search prospect lists and add contact details. Additionally, the Buzzstream Chrome Extension enables you to source contact info directly from a domain. So if there’s a website you’d like to reach, Buzzstream can help.

As you browse the web, Buzzstream is always active. Easily add and group your contacts for later outreach.

You can also contact influencers directly through the platform using email templates. A new bulk contact feature was also released earlier this year and allows you to use those templates to contact multiple influencers at once.

Pricing

Buzzstream starts at a reasonable $24/month. The tiered pricing plans run up to $299/month for larger agencies. Customized plans are also available. For small businesses, the $99/month group plan offers a good mix of features to get you started.

Pitchbox

Send customizable messages to influencers and track the process every step of the way with Pitchbox. The outreach automation is a time saver, allowing businesses to push messages and schedule follow-ups through templated emails. The basic Pitchbox service starts at $195 per month.

How It Works

Like many, Pitchbox utilizes keyword searches to target influencers. Determine your keywords (or let Pitchbox suggest them) and view the results.

Once you have your results, you can inspect each prospect to determine their social reach, engagement, and SEO metrics to help whittle down your list. Clicking on any of the prospects will open the website directly in Pitchbox for further inspection.

Once you’ve identified the influencers you want to contact; email templates (including follow-up emails) are easily sent and automated. Pitchbox monitors your communications and stops sending emails to a prospect once they’ve responded.

Unlike some platform, Pitchbox is not designed for influencers to sell their influence directly. The platform offers valuable insights for discovery, outreach, and communication.

Pricing

Pitchbox starts at $195/month and allows you to send up to 2,000 outreach e-mails per month. The tiered plans run up to $1500/month for total Enterprise training and management as well. For small businesses just starting out, the basic plan ($195) is sufficient to get your feet wet.

Influencer Marketplaces

If you’re interested in casting a wider net, influencer marketplaces are the ideal solution. On these platforms, you’ll be able to select from a wide range of influencers. Some platforms allow influencers to compete for your business, while others allow you to set goals and view proposals. If you like having options at your fingertips; influencer marketplaces offer just that.

FameBit

FameBit is an influencer marketplace targeting YouTube users specifically. Influencers submit proposals for campaigns and create video content that can reach audiences of over 1 million people.

How It Works

FameBit allows brands to create a campaign and let influencers bid on it. Campaign creation is easy and allows you to select a category, enter details, as well as designate a price range.

Influencers submit proposals and brands have the ability to look over the proposals to determine the best fit for their campaign. You can also view the individual influencer’s details and see their social reach and engagement metrics.

Once you’ve identified that the influencers are ones you want to work with, you can respond to the influencer, accept their proposal, and discuss any details that need to be determined. After that, the influencer creates their video demonstration or review of your product and posts it online to their following.

Pricing

As with most marketplaces, FameBit does not charge an up-front price. Instead, they charge a flat rate of 10% on all campaigns. So, if you receive a proposal for $100, you will wind up paying $110 to accommodate the service fee.

Octoly

Octoly targets YouTube and Instagram users. In this marketplace, brands give influencers free products in exchange for video reviews. Octoly prides itself on authentic reviews, which help boost brand loyalty. The platform primarily focuses on the health, beauty, and lifestyle verticals, although not exclusively.

How It Works

Octoly works by brands offering free products in exchange for honest reviews. Brands start by creating their “store” where they designate what their products are, how many they have to give away, and other details.

Brands can offer some guidance on the content if there are rules, disclaimers, or other legal guidelines surrounding their product. However, the actual content of the video cannot be directed. The point of Octoly is on receiving honest reviews and feedback so brands have to allow the creator to speak genuinely.

For brands that might be concerned that this will lead to negative reviews, the risk is relatively low. Influencers have built a following on being genuine, but they also know that if they continuously bash a product, they won’t be selected for future videos. Thus, even critical reviews are typically done in a manner which may provide valuable feedback.

While the idea behind the marketplace is to sit back and allow proposals to come in, Octoly does include a search feature that allows you to look through influencers to determine if there are any you’d like to work with.

Pricing

Octoly keeps a lot of information about their operations a secret. Even signing up requires you to wait for approval before being granted access to the platform. The “cost” associated with the influencer/brand relationship is limited to the free exchange of products with no additional fees from the influencer.

Access to Octoly is granted on a subscription-based model, but details on the exact cost per month is difficult to find online. You’ll need to speak to one of their sales representatives.

Shoutcart

Shoutcart is the number one marketplace for Instagram influencers. It’s simple to use: brands search influencers, add chosen influencers to their cart and pay the advertised fee. Brands then pass along content for the influencer to share.

How It Works

Brands are buying “shout outs” on social media which are quick mentions from influencers meant to drive traffic to your website, store, or platform. Search by keywords and filter results based on the influencers reach, price, or industry.

Think of Shoutcart as an e-commerce platform for purchasing exposure online to an audience within your industry. Once you determine an influencer fits in with your needs, you check out like any other online store. Under the order details during checkout, you include the text of the shout out as well as any additional media such as pictures or video.

Pricing

Shoutcart is free for brands to access. The influencer cost per shout out will depend heavily on the influencer’s social reach and the size of their following. As with many things, you get what you pay for. Costs start from as little as $1 per shout out, but range up to several thousand depending on the influencer.

Full Service Influencer Platforms

For the brand that wants it all, a full-service platform is the perfect solution to all of your influencer marketing needs. From discovery to relationship management, tracking and campaign analytics; a full-service influencer marketing platform handles everything you need.

Tomoson

Full-service platforms like Tomoson offers a complete influencer solution. From searching influencers, to managing contracts, shipping products, and reporting; Tomoson does a little of everything.

How It Works

Brands create a campaign and fill in the details such as their budget, the channels they want to reach, product details, and other information. Your results can be filtered by keywords, categories, social metrics, etc. Clicking on an influencer leads to expanded information regarding their views, average engagement, visitation, domain authority, and more.

Once you decide on an influencer you would like to contact, they can be messaged directly through the Tomoson platform. Send your chosen influencer a customized message, or an offer, then run your campaign and track the performance all from within the channel.

Price

Tomoson’s basic package starts at an affordable $49 per month and ranges upward for Enterprise solutions. If you’re just starting out, the basic package offers many of the features you’ll want without adding in those you don’t. There is a free trial available for first-time users as well.

A Solution For All

The influencer marketing industry is only going to continue to grow. Finding a platform that fits the needs of your business is essential to the development of your influencer marketing strategy.

These 10 tools help you enter the space with low costs and minimal commitment. But, don’t wait too long to get started: Influencers are growing increasingly valuable to brands and the price to play in this space can evolve rapidly.