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Michael Porter wrote the seminal book on strategy in the early 1980s. Called Competitive Strategy, I think it should be required for anyone starting a company. Strategy is a seemingly murky amorphous intangible concept, but Porter brilliantly prescribes the five questions strategy should answer. What are the answers for your business?

What is your distinctive value proposition? This distinctive value proposition comprises three key parts. Which customers will you serve? Which needs of those customers will you fulfill better than the competition? How will you position and price your proposition (premium/commodity)? This can be best answered by relative pricing. Amazon’s consumer value proposition is simple: the most selection at the best prices delivered fastest to all internet consumers in the US.

How do you tailor the value chain to suit your company? Porter wrote about two different types of value chains: internal value chains and external ones. In this case, he is talking about the internal one. As Joan Magretta writes in Understanding Michael Porter, “The essence of strategy and competitive advantage lies in the activities, and choosing to perform activities differently or to perform different activities from those of rivals.” This is what Porter means by tailoring the value chain to suit your company’s strategy: picking the internal activities that will differentiate it. Amazon has focused on building the single best supply chain, optimizing logistics and operations, to deliver the customer experience they value.

What trade-offs does your business offer to differentiate itself from competitors? Every strategy has a trade-off. A startup trades speed of execution through focus to win in a market. An incumbent trades greater capitalization, reach and assets for speed. In the beginning, Amazon sold only books, only online. This decision limited the total addressable market and created additional friction in the checkout process because of the shipping latency. But, Amazon traded these disadvantages for capital efficiency. Amazon did not need to open retail stores and bear those operating costs. In addition, this decision enabled Amazon to optimize their warehouses for shipping rather than retail distribution.

How strong is the value proposition across the value chain? This is a nuanced question that tries to get at the leverage the strategy creates in the business. In other words, does the new value proposition and the trade offs made within the businesses operations suddenly create new market opportunity and competitive advantage. In Amazon’s case, the answer is a resounding yes. The advantages of an online only store and the shipping focused operation system enabled the company to launch additional categories quickly. In addition, the centralized value chain absorbed fixed costs as more products were shipped through it, increasing operational efficiency, and gross margins.

How does your strategy endure over time? If market conditions change, does your strategy survive? Bezos insulated Amazon’s strategy from the fickleness of the consumer by promising them three things they would always want: more, faster, cheaper. Those three truths aren’t changing anytime soon.

These questions are not easily answered. They require a fair amount of introspection and deep thought. But the exercises well worth it to ensure that all of the time, money, energy and sweat is directed in the right place to create an enduring business.

In order of their publication date, these ten books are going to make our July much more informed and entertaining. 

The Chickenshit Club: Why the Justice Department Fails to Prosecute Executives by Jesse Eisinger, Simon & Schuster,

From Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist Jesse Eisinger, a blistering account of corporate greed and impunity, and the reckless, often anemic response from the Department of Justice.

Why were no bankers put in prison after the financial crisis of 2008? Why do CEOs seem to commit wrongdoing with impunity? The problem goes beyond banks deemed “Too Big to Fail” to almost every large corporation in America—to pharmaceutical companies and auto manufacturers and beyond.

The Chickenshit Club—an inside reference to prosecutors too scared of failure and too daunted by legal impediments to do their jobs—explains why. A character-driven narrative, the book tells the story from inside the Department of Justice. The complex and richly reported story spans the last decade and a half of prosecutorial fiascos, corporate lobbying, trial losses, and culture shifts that have stripped the government of the will and ability to prosecute top corporate executives.

The book begins in the 1970s, when the government pioneered the notion that top corporate executives, not just seedy crooks, could commit heinous crimes and go to prison. The book travels to trading desks on Wall Street, to corporate boardrooms and the offices of prosecutors and F.B.I agents. These revealing looks provide context for the evolution of the Justice Department’s approach to pursuing corporate criminals through the early aughts and into the Justice Department of today.

Exposing one of the most important scandals of our time, The Chickenshit Club provides a clear, detailed explanation as to how our Justice Department has come to avoid, bungle, and mismanage the fight to bring these alleged criminals to justice.

Once Upon a Time in Shaolin: The Untold Story of Wu-Tang Clan's Million-Dollar Secret Album, the Devaluation of Music, and America's New Public Enemy No. 1 by Cyrus Bozorgmehr, Flatiron Books

The wildly entertaining story of how the Wu-Tang Clan recorded a secret album and ended up selling it for millions of dollars to one of the most hated men in America.

Once Upon a Time in Shaolin tells the unbelievable tale of a one-of-a kind hip hop album that was released by the legendary hip-hop group The Wu-Tang Clan. In 2008, Wu-Tang's frontrunner, the RZA, and young Dutch music producer Cilvaringz met in Marrakech and dreamed up a crazy idea to create one single-copy of a high-profile album (encased in custom-made silver case, complete with a golf-leaf certificate of authenticity and leather-bound liner notes) never to be commercially released to the public, and to be sold through the New York auction house, Paddle 8. They began secretly recording the album and plotting how they could possibly create an album without any leaks whatsoever, during a digital age when the perceived value of music is 99-cents a song.

What ends up happening is a rollicking story of how a group of misfits banded together to create an album that would become an unprecedented experiment in music history, and how it ended up in the hands of one of the most hated men in America: Martin Shkreli.

Funny, fast-paced, and wildly entertaining, Once Upon a Time in Shaolin offers a peek behind the scenes into one of the most popular hip-hop groups in music history while also addressing head-on many big ideas about art and the dramatic devaluation of music in the eyes of the modern consumer.

The Darkening Web: The War for Cyberspace by Alexander Klimburg, Penguin Press

From a leading expert on cybersecurity, an eye-opening look at one of the most urgent but least understood conflicts the world will confront in the twenty-first century: the desire of nations to dominate cyberspace.

No single invention of the last half century has changed the way we live now as much as the Internet. Alexander Klimburg was a member of the generation for whom it was a utopian ideal turned reality: a place where ideas, information, and knowledge could be shared and new freedoms found and enjoyed. Two decades later, the future isn’t so bright any more: increasingly, the Internet is used as a weapon and a means of domination by states eager to exploit or curtail global connectivity in order to further their national interests.

Klimburg is a leading voice in the conversation on the implications of this dangerous shift, and in The Darkening Web, he explains why we underestimate the consequences of states’ ambitions to project power in cyberspace at our peril: Not only have hacking and cyber operations fundamentally changed the nature of political conflict—ensnaring states in a struggle to maintain a precarious peace that could rapidly collapse into all-out war—but the rise of covert influencing and information warfare has enabled these same global powers to create and disseminate their own distorted versions of reality in which anything is possible. At stake are not only our personal data or the electrical grid, but the Internet as we know it today—and with it the very existence of open and democratic societies.

Blending anecdote with argument, Klimburg brings us face-to-face with the range of threats the struggle for cyberspace presents, from an apocalyptic scenario of debilitated civilian infrastructure to a 1984-like erosion of privacy and freedom of expression. Focusing on different approaches to cyber-conflict in the US, Russia and China, he reveals the extent to which the battle for control of the Internet is as complex and perilous as the one surrounding nuclear weapons during the Cold War—and quite possibly as dangerous for humanity as a whole.

Authoritative, thought-provoking, and compellingly argued, The Darkening Web makes clear that the debate about the different aspirations for cyberspace is nothing short of a war over our global values.

Designed Leadership by Moura Quayle, Columbia University Press

Corporate leadership can be myopic in its unwillingness to fail. Education and experience can be limiting to executives—except for lessons learned from the world of design, which, when applied to management, can turn leaders into collaborative, creative, deliberate, and accountable visionaries. Design thinking loosens the mind and activates innovation. It creates the conditions for employees to thrive and for all kinds of businesses to succeed.

In Designed Leadership, the strategic-design scholar and urban-systems designer Moura Quayle shares her plan for integrating design and leadership, translating processes, principles, and practices from years of experience into tools of change for professional leaders. Quayle describes the key concepts of designed leadership, such as "make values explicit" and "learn from natural systems," showing how strategic design can spur individual creativity and harness collective energy. For managers at any level, Designed Leadership uses original visuals and examples of frontline leadership to teach the kind of thinking, theorizing, and practicing that results in long-lasting high performance in the workplace and beyond.

Perennial Seller: The Art of Making and Marketing Work that Lasts by Ryan Holiday, Portfolio

Bestselling author and marketing strategist Ryan Holiday reveals to creatives of all stripes—authors, entrepreneurs, musicians, filmmakers, fine artists—how a classic work is made and marketed.

In Hollywood, a movie is given a single weekend to succeed before being written off. In Silicon Valley, a startup is a failure if it doesn’t go viral or rake in venture capital from the start. In publishing, a book that took years to write is given less than three months to sink or swim. These brutally shortsighted attitudes have choked the world with instructions for engineering a flash-in-the-pan and littered the media landscape with fads and flops.

Meanwhile, the greats, the stalwarts, the household names, are those who focus on a singularly different, possibly heretical, idea: that their work can and should last. For instance, Zildjian has been one of the premier makers of cymbals since its founding in 1623—and shows no signs of quitting. Iron Maiden has filled stadiums for forty years, moving some 85 million albums in their career. Robert Greene’s first book, The 48 Laws of Power, didn’t hit the bestseller lists until over a decade after it was first released, and since then has sold more than 1 million copies worldwide.

These works Ryan Holiday calls Perennial Sellers. They exist in every creative industry—timeless, dependable resources and unsung moneymakers, paying like blue chip annuities. Like gold or land, they increase in value over time, outlasting and outreaching any competition. And they’re not flukes or lucky breaks—they were built to last from the outset.

Holiday shows readers how to make and market their own classic work. Featuring interviews with some of the world’s greatest entrepreneurs, and grounded in a deep study of the classics in every genre, this creative book empowers readers with a foundational set of innovative principles. Whether you have a book or a business, a song or the next great screenplay, this book reveals the recipe for perennial success.

A Mind at Play: How Claude Shannon Invented the Information Age by Jimmy Soni & Rob Goodman, Simon & Schuster

The life and times of one of the foremost intellects of the twentieth century: Claude Shannon—the architect of the Information Age, whose insights stand behind every computer built, email sent, video streamed, and webpage loaded.

Claude Shannon was a groundbreaking polymath, a brilliant tinkerer, and a digital pioneer. He constructed a fleet of customized unicycles and a flamethrowing trumpet, outfoxed Vegas casinos, and built juggling robots. He also wrote the seminal text of the digital revolution, which has been called “the Magna Carta of the Information Age.” His discoveries would lead contemporaries to compare him to Albert Einstein and Isaac Newton. His work anticipated by decades the world we’d be living in today—and gave mathematicians and engineers the tools to bring that world to pass.

In this elegantly written, exhaustively researched biography, Jimmy Soni and Rob Goodman reveal Claude Shannon’s full story for the first time. It’s the story of a small-town Michigan boy whose career stretched from the era of room-sized computers powered by gears and string to the age of Apple. It’s the story of the origins of our digital world in the tunnels of MIT and the “idea factory” of Bell Labs, in the “scientists’ war” with Nazi Germany, and in the work of Shannon’s collaborators and rivals, thinkers like Alan Turing, John von Neumann, Vannevar Bush, and Norbert Wiener.

And it’s the story of Shannon’s life as an often reclusive, always playful genius. With access to Shannon’s family and friends, A Mind at Play brings this singular innovator and creative genius to life.

Why?: What Makes Us Curious by Mario Livio, Simon & Schuster

Astrophysicist and author Mario Livio investigates perhaps the most human of all our characteristics—curiosity—as he explores our innate desire to know why.

Experiments demonstrate that people are more distracted when they overhear a phone conversation—where they can know only one side of the dialogue—than when they overhear two people talking and know both sides. Why does half a conversation make us more curious than a whole conversation?

In the ever-fascinating Why? Mario Livio interviewed scientists in several fields to explore the nature of curiosity. He examined the lives of two of history’s most curious geniuses, Leonardo da Vinci and Richard Feynman. He also talked to people with boundless curiosity: a superstar rock guitarist who is also an astrophysicist; an astronaut with degrees in computer science, biology, literature, and medicine. What drives these people to be curious about so many subjects?

Curiosity is at the heart of mystery and suspense novels. It is essential to other forms of art, from painting to sculpture to music. It is the principal driver of basic scientific research. Even so, there is still no definitive scientific consensus about why we humans are so curious, or about the mechanisms in our brain that are responsible for curiosity.

Mario Livio—an astrophysicist who has written about mathematics, biology, and now psychology and neuroscience—explores this irresistible subject in a lucid, entertaining way that will captivate anyone who is curious about curiosity.

Lead Right for Your Company's Type: How to Connect Your Culture with Your Customer Promise by William E Schneider, AMACOM

Because one size does not fit all.

From turf wars to low morale, most companies attempt to cure what ails them with the latest management fad—and fail. They are treating the symptoms while ignoring the true problem.

Success starts with knowing the kind of business you're really in. Lead Right for Your Company's Type argues that every enterprise falls into one of four categories as dictated by their customer promise: customized (e.g. ad agency), predictable and dependable (e.g utility company), benevolent (e.g. educational institution), and best in class (e.g. high-tech company like Apple). When leadership practices fit the customer promise and company type, the organization thrives. But apply the wrong practices and the mismatch pulls the enterprise apart. Example after example exposes the fallout:

• A small arts college destabilized by top-down rules designed for a predictable and dependable company
• A mid-tier retail chain derailed by leadership demands for superior products instead of reliably low prices
• A software giant brought to its knees by prioritizing profits over innovation

Insightful and practical, the book's proven tools and five-step process will help you diagnose your organization's ills—and stop them at their source.

The Path to Personal Power by Napoleon Hill, TarcherPerigee

This true lost manuscript from the “grandfather of self-help,” Napoleon Hill provides timeless wisdom on how to attain a more successful and wealthy life using simple principles.

Napoleon Hill first wrote The Path to Personal Power in 1941, intending it as a handbook for people lifting themselves out of the Great Depression. But upon the bombing of Pearl Harbor and America’s entrance into World War II, these lessons were put aside and largely forgotten—until today.

Discovered in the archives of the Napoleon Hill Foundation, this never-before-published work is made up of three easily digested lessons, each its own chapter: Definteness of Purpose; the Master Mind; and Going the Extra Mile.

This concise book is a powerful roadmap that leads to a single discovery—you already have the power to attain whatever wealth, success, and prosperity you desire in life. All you need to do is walk the path without straying, and the rest will follow.

Using these lessons, you have principles to live by that will help you stay on your own personal path to power, and achieve success that you never thought possible.

The Locomotive of War: Money, Empire, Power, and Guilt by Peter Clarke, Bloomsbury Press

An innovative exploration of the origins, impact, and consequences of the First and Second World Wars, from one of our foremost historians.

“War is the locomotive of history,” claimed Leon Trotsky, acknowledging the powerful opportunity the First World War offered the Bolsheviks in 1917. The sentiment proclaims war as the primary mover—more so than socioeconomic forces or individuals—of history.

Twentieth-century warfare saw new technologies and scales heighten the locomotive power of war to an unprecedented level, tragedy that saw the rise of some of the most influential figures of the day: David Lloyd George would never have become prime minister without wartime straits; Winston Churchill would likely not have been recalled to office were it not for the crisis of 1940; nor would John Maynard Keynes have seen his own economic ideas and authority so suddenly accepted. Other figures who benefited similarly include H. H. Asquith, Woodrow Wilson, and FDR.

By following the trajectories of such men, Peter Clarke illuminates the crucial issues of the period: not only the question of leadership as a projection of authority, but also military strategy, war finance, and the mobilization of the nation’s personnel and economic resources. The Locomotive of War is a fascinating examination of the interplay between key figures in the context of unprecedented all-out wars (both in 1914 and 1939) and the broader dynamics of history during an extraordinary period.

By Craig Torres

Vik Singh’s company has powerful artificial intelligence software that helps firms hunt down the best sales leads. Getting somebody to use it — well, that’s a story that says a lot about the U.S. expansion.

U.S. businesses have every incentive to adopt labour-saving technologies, replacing factory workers with robots and desk jobs with smart software. In some areas, such as finance, machine decision-making is advancing quickly. In others, there are obstacles. Overall, while the penetration of automation in the economy is happening, it is taking place at a slower pace than futurists expected.

Singh tells customers how his system can help trim sales prospecting staff and boost revenue. Managers are intrigued but sometimes reluctant to entrust a high-touch business such as sales to a black box.

“They just don’t understand it,” says the co-founder and chief executive officer of Infer Inc. in Mountain View, Calif. “And they don’t believe it.”

Hundreds of companies are trying to disrupt the way we consume, work or move. The economy’s growth potential could be higher if smart machines could turbocharge how humans go about their tasks. Higher productivity, or output per hour, would boost corporate profits and may help U.S. workers finally get a pay raise.

That economic nirvana just isn’t happening yet.

Productivity in the U.S. rose only 1.1 per cent last year and rather than being replaced by technology, more workers are being hired. Employers have added an average 159,000 new jobs a month so far in this expansion, compared with 99,000 in the previous upswing. Over the same period, investment in intellectual property products, such as software, has barely edged up as a share of GDP versus the last cycle.

“Low labour productivity is the biggest problem with the story that I tell,” said Andrew McAfee, co-director at MIT’s Initiative on the Digital Economy and co-author of The Second Machine Age, a book about the next wave of technology. “Some of these pretty profound innovations are going to take time to diffuse.”

There isn’t a single story that explains why second-wave technologies are trickling rather than flooding into the economy. Bloomberg News spoke with several to find out how the pace of technological adoption is proceeding. Here are some of the themes that emerged:

• Robots can handle highly repetitive tasks in manufacturing, but at BMW’s largest plant in the world, located in Spartanburg, S.C., the talk is about complexity and customization — tasks that need human input.
• Extracting data from highly automated manufacturing operations is harder than it sounds, executives from Cisco Systems Inc. say.
• Finally, when it comes to turning any critical operation over to a computer, there is this one big sticking point: trust.

Here are some of their stories.

Social Tables helps companies with event space sell it to planners who need it, while also providing collaborative tools. The Washington-based company started using Infer about three years ago after launching a mobile app that gave it about 12,000 new sales leads.The event space and planning market is large and varied. Sorting through those leads to find potential subscribers would have been a gigantic human task, said Trevor Lynn, the chief marketing officer. The company also turns up about 3,000 new leads a month.

Social Tables had a couple of choices: Hire an expensive database engineer or many more salespeople to sift the data. Instead, they use Infer, which sorts, queries and offers up live feedback on how the leads are performing. This kind of big-data hunting and vision would be difficult for any human to replicate in real time.

“We don’t need as many lead-qualification folks,” Lynn said. While Social Tables didn’t replace anybody with Infer’s software, “it definitely shapes your hiring map in the future.”

Social Tables is the typical Infer customer — a young, fast-adapting company that is looking for ways to use technology to save money and move quickly. “One less person means more decisions in a rapid manner,” Lynn said.

Getting more-established companies to use the software is challenging, said Singh, who previously worked at Alphabet’s Google. About 25 per cent of Infer’s customers have been around 10 years or more.

“The biggest bottleneck to machine learning is trust,” he said. As a result, finding the “hero CEO” who will tell their shareholders they are trimming a sales team to rely on a black box is difficult. “If we can create these technologies that build trust, I am very confident we will be able to leverage that in a new way,” said Singh.

From baggage carousels to shifting stages at a rock concert, a motor made by SEW-Eurodrive Inc. is probably the workhorse making things move.

Some of the most efficient manufacturing of precision casing and gearing this German company produces happens in a bustling plant on Old Spartanburg Highway in Lyman, S.C. Eighty per cent of the plant’s production is exported.

In 2000, there were no robots on the factory floor. Now there is one robot for every human, most made by Japan’s Fanuc Corp.

The infusion of automation into the plant didn’t push out a single worker. Robots added scale. The plant will produce 500,000 components this year, up from 78,000 in 1999. Total staff is up just six per cent to 148 people.

The plant is so lean that the humans are having a difficult time keeping track of all that the robots need and do. Call it a robot saturation point.

The next big boost in productivity is likely to come from an unexpected place — digital information, managers here said.

SEW Eurodrive is looking for a system to feed data from its production machinery into a computer dashboard that gives operators a real-time look at plant performance rather than scurrying around with clipboards.

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“If we can make that product a little faster without jeopardizing quality or safety, then we win,” said Melvin Story, a supervisor at the plant.

If a robot is having trouble with a line of components, a human can be on the problem faster. If there is a maintenance program coming up, they can do it on time before something fails.

Melding big data with manufacturing is the next step for hundreds of companies, and it is challenging, said Bryan Tantzen, head of manufacturing and industry solutions at Cisco, the networking-technology giant.

“You have to connect these machines to transform them,” he says. There are obstacles. Not all machines are loaded with sensors. Information-technology staff can be different from operational-technology staff. People responsible for robotics can view networks as insecure and unreliable.

“That OT/IT divide is a huge barrier to adoption,” Tantzen said, and the infusion of new technology into manufacturing has slowed in recent years, partly due to cost-cutting.

Eventually, big data will be a reality on the plant floor, he said, because there is a constant need to push up profits and productivity. “I think it is really about to hit an inflection point and accelerate, and therefore drive productivity.”

BMW‘s Spartanburg plant — sprawling over six million square feet — is the highly automated carmaker that technologists talk about.

The hype around robotics suggests a world in which humans have little input in manufacturing. Talk to BMW managers, however, and it’s all about getting the right mix of humans and machines in a world where customization and complexity are big challenges.

Almost every one of the 1,400 X-series SUVs rolling off the line here each day has been custom ordered by somebody. While about 1,600 robots weld, drill and paint auto bodies in steel cages, farther down the line the cars are surrounded by humans adding this audio system or that trim. Humans are paying close attention to look, feel, smell and even the sound of these cars to ensure BMW authenticity.

“You can build cars for months and months, and never build the same car twice,” says Steve Wilson, a spokesman for BMW Spartanburg.

If there is one lesson from the team here, it’s that robots move processes while humans improve them, according to Richard Morris, vice-president of product integration, who has been with BMW in Spartanburg since 1993. Morris says technology is good for “transactional jobs.” He adds: “There is something that we call transformation and that is something only a human can do.”

“When you put automation out there, you are just living in the status quo, but with people you are constantly improving the process,” Morris added. “Sometimes it is better to start with people.”

 

Several weeks ago, we talked on air about the Noble Profession of Selling. Since then, we’ve been perplexed by some of the feedback and comments we’ve received about that topic. Two people wrote in to say that they left sales because they couldn’t live with the way they had to lie to and manipulate people in order to make a sale.

Want to start sharing Facebook video posts, but cannot hire a video creation team? Let us show you just how you can improve your reach at little to no extra cost by learning to create videos via easy-to-use online video editing tools.

The age old saying goes that a picture says a thousand words and this is true. Even disregarding the artistic aspect of the metaphor, by checking out one’s social media feed, you’d be bombarded with photos and pictures that tell a story.

A photo might seem like a great way to boost engagement compared to a simple text-based post on Facebook. However, as the stats from our most recent Facebook report show, video posts still have the biggest reach and engagement.

Running a social marketing agency or simply being in control of the feed of a certain brand, you most likely aren’t happy with these statistics.

Going from sharing a status to sharing photos is relatively easy. All you need to do is hire a designer or take up the designing of the picture posts yourself. Not to mention, most gifs are free and shareable and there are a ton of free stock images that might serve the purpose.

Yet, to go from photos to videos things go astray. A proper video usually consists of a script, professional footage, editing and production. Anything else than that simply isn’t professional.

In fact, there is a huge list of drawbacks with regard to video creation, especially for smaller social media management teams. Just a portion of it consists of the amount of manpower and effort it takes to create a video, not to mention the knowledge of editing, script writing and producing.

At this point, for the purpose of a few short Facebook video posts, you’ve either expanded your operation to a full-fledged Hollywood production studio, or spent thousands hiring freelancers to deliver work that doesn’t even come close to your initial vision.

Even if you were to take up the task on your own, you’d have to own proper software, right? Anything short of Adobe Premier Pro, or using a free video editing tool, would be like ditching Adobe Photoshop for Paint. At least that’s what most people believe in.

Nevertheless, similarly to how Pixlr Editor is a free substitute of Adobe Photoshop, that is freely available online, there are a ton of free online video editing tools, that might just do the job.

Making a Professional Facebook Video at Little to No Cost

The way people interact with their Timeline on Facebook has changed ever since Facebook Video was introduced. From a consumer perspective, scrolling through your timeline, you often get engaged with a variety of videos. Remember watching the whole of that glass blowing video?

Whether shared through their friends or directly posted from pages a person has liked, people tend to engage with autoplay videos in a consistent manner.

To make a professional-looking video for Facebook, you’d have to take note of a few factors, even before going to create, edit and finalize your video.

1. What’s the idea? – Your video has to present a certain idea. Before making it, make sure to go through what you want your video to say or represent.

2. What’s the style? – Facebook videos are often quite different than videos on YouTube for example. In fact, NowThis learned this the hard way. Boasting huge success over on Facebook through an editing style that emphasises the visual representation of information in a short manner, the company didn’t perform that well when transitioning to YouTube.

The two most popular styles of videos include the aforementioned NowThis style and the work-snapshot style of videos that show the process of creating a certain item or the production process of a product.

With that in mind, consider that your video is much like a presentation and think of including as much on-screen information as possible in the smallest amount of words possible in the best visual way.

3. Write the script – Don’t forget to write your script. This process should be similar to writing an article and doesn’t require fancy script writing and editing, as long as you and your team understand how the script should transform into a video.

4. Shoot the video – If you need certain footage, do shoot the video. For Facebook, you won’t need a professional camera and usually using your smartphone should do, as long as you take note of lighting and have a vision for quality. Have access to a DSLR? That’s even better.

5. Gather any additional resources online – Make sure to gather the resources you need online and save them in a folder to keep track of your project. If needed, make sure that your designer creates the imagery needed for your video. If you are on a budget, you can also use free stock images, free stock video and more.

Once you have everything gathered, you can proceed with the editing process. Here are a few online video editing tools that will help you create the best Facebook video possible.

Are there any Free Online Video Editing Tools?

Let’s address the elephant in the room. There are no free online video editing tools. The only ones you will be able to find are somewhat sketchy and others are simply free versions that require you to pay a licence to download your video or remove the watermark. This is primarily due to the complicated nature of video editing. Nevertheless, we’ve included a list of some of the best tools.

Completely Free Online Video Editing Tools

Youtube Editor – For the purpose of cutting and combining a few videos together and putting music on top of them, YouTube editor is your best free choice. Nevertheless, it is extremely limited in features and most of the time it’s only good for adding finalizing touches to your already edited video.

Clipchamp – Clipchamp allows you to edit up to five videos per month for free. Nevertheless, it is not a full video editor. Instead, it offers you to trim, convert and adjust your videos. It doesn’t really allow you to create professional-looking Facebook videos, but nonetheless, it is a good tool to keep in mind in the process when needed. The app also has advanced plans that allow you to edit bigger files and more.

Stupeflix – Stupeflix is an amazing video solution for creating free videos online. The way it works is that it allows you to pick a style, upload your photos and videos, choose a soundtrack and your video is ready. While the styles are limiting and there are no exact editing options, it is a great tool to create snappy professional-looking Facebook videos. What’s more, it doesn’t have a watermark during the video and allows you to create, download and share an unlimited amount of videos. However, it does include a Stupeflix at the end of the created video.

Limited Video Editing Software

PowToon – PowToon is one of the best online video tools around. Letting you create amazing animation videos with ease, the only drawback the app has is its slight learning curve. What’s more, it doesn’t let you edit videos, but is more of a complete video creation tool for animation. It is free in a sense that you can try it out, but you can’t really download or use your finished videos unless you get on a priced plan.

WeVideo – WeVideo is the most popular online video editing software tool for a reason. With it, you are able to create amazing videos, but you’d still have to pay to remove the WeVideo watermark from your video and as a whole, their ‘free’ membership is extremely limited. The upside is that you can test out the product, before deciding if it’s going to help you out in your Facebook video creation process.

Loopster – Loopster is similar to WeVideo in its pricing strategy. It is quite an intuitive video editor that allows you to do pretty much everything you need to create a professional-looking Facebook video without much hassle. The only downside is that you’d have to work extra hard to make the 90s style of fonts and colors work to your liking and design preferences.

Animoto – Animoto is an extremely intuitive and easy to use video editing software. With it, you’d be able to quickly make a professional looking Facebook video by arranging your videos and photos and adding text and music where required. The app also has a free trial, so you can check it out and see whether it works for you. The only downside is that during your free trial your videos will be watermarked.

Moovly – Moovly is probably the most affordable online video option currently on the market. It is quite intuitive and provides you with some great video editing capabilities.

Facebook Video Boosts Engagement

Facebook video is becoming more and more popular on the infamous social networking platform. In fact, as aforementioned, our most recent Facebook Report shows, video still has the biggest reach and engagement.

In fact, this was as true in April of 2017, as it was in the whole of 2016. And the most probable scenarios is that this won’t change anytime soon. If you want more stats like this, make sure to follow our blog or check out the full free trial of Locowise for 7-days right here.

All prospecting methods have their place. But the digital transformation is not going to reverse the order of value that starts with people, then ideas, then technology.

The post People. Ideas. Technology. In This Order. -Episode 156 appeared first on The Sales Blog.

I’ve sat in on many webinars and on-demand demos. They are valuable as background information for the B2B marketing videos we create, because a webinar is an opportunity to hear real people use real words (as opposed to marketing-speak) to describe solutions to customer problems.

But hosts and presenters often unwittingly reduce the value of a webinar by doing things that fail to give value in exchange for my attention. Here are the seven worst “practices” I encounter.

1. “First a few housekeeping details”

Skip the introductory stuff about how you can enlarge the screen, submit questions, download the recording, etc. It’s hard to think of a less upbeat way to start things off. If your meeting platform software doesn’t make these details clear, you can put them somewhere on the title slide or a crawl across the screen.

2. Introducing the presenters

The presenters make or break your webinar—but they should need no introduction. What got me to sign up for the webinar in the first place was an invitation to learn something new from experts. Let them get on with it.

Of course you don’t want latecomers wondering who they’re listening to. Put up a slide with a photo and credentials when the presenter starts talking. Maybe even leave an image in the corner of the screen.

3. Talking about what you’re going to talk about

It’s okay to remind me of the topics you plan to cover. By all means show me a list. Make it an enticing list. Maybe include juicy subtopics.

But don’t read it to me. Don’t tell me why you’re going to talk about it or how interesting it will be. Just get on with it.

4. Talking about the bullet point I’m looking at

Looking at a bullet point while a speaker goes on at length about the subject is just annoying. Looking at it while she’s moved on to a subtopic or digression amps up the annoyance. It’s best to have visual support for your subject or, at least, update the bullet points frequently, so I feel like we’re making progress.

5. Failure to chapterize

My team was recently asked by a customer’s branding group to study and implement new branding best practices. These were described in an hour-long video.

It took well over an hour for one of us to step through the video and note down which topics are covered at which points—so we could check our work and agree on how to interpret the new rules.

Your customers aren’t going to do that. You want people to learn from your webinar? Divide it into chapters so people can skip to what interests them, review it, and share the salient points with others.

6. No test data

This applies to software demos. I’ve seen many demos that have tried to show me how easy it is to use the interface without showing me interesting data or other examples to use it on. Don’t count on my imagination to fill in the blanks—let me see the software accomplish something I can relate to.

7. Failure to test

This so obvious. Don’t have audio problems. Don’t have video problems. Rehearse, have a dry run, do anything to avoid making me feel bad for you. I’ve been there.

Bookmark this list of content creation tools, including lesser-known options and an old favorite or two. From idea generators and headline analyzers to research and SEO resources, infographic creators to meme designs, you'll find tools to help you through the creation process. Continue reading →

One of the biggest issues marketing and sales folks face is just getting on the radar screen of their prospects. Even when you have something of incredible value and you genuinely know the prospect needs what you have to sell – it’s tough to get their attention long enough to ask a question or even be noticed.

That’s even more of a challenge for organizations that don’t have a six-figure marketing budget or exist in a crowded, competitive landscape.

That’s where some psychology can be incredibly helpful.

One thing that is almost universally true about us humans is that we are incredibly flattered when someone thinks we have something of value to offer in the way of experience, knowledge, expertise or hard-earned wisdom.

And that, I believe, is the door we need to open if we want a prospect’s time.  For this technique to work, I think the following needs to be true about your business:

• You/your organization have a niche/specialty in which you have a great depth of expertise
• You have some outlet (website, blog, podcast, newsletter) in which you share that expertise without a sales pitch or being self-serving
• You have a genuine interest in the people you serve and a passion for helping them in your unique way with whatever you do/sell
• You sell something that is more of a considered purchase and less of a commodity

If that’s you, read on.

Make a list of your ideal prospects and their influencers. Who would you most like to serve and are the people/companies that you know you could delight? Or, who has information/insights that could be incredibly valuable to your target audience?

Once you have compiled the list, call/email them and ask them if you can interview them for your blog, website, newsletter, podcast, etc.  I think you’ll be surprised at how many of them say yes and are flattered by the invitation.

Now the hard work begins.  Do your homework.  The prep for the interview is key to the success of this marketing tactic.  You want to ask questions that really get them to go deep and give you some insights into the way they think, work and what they believe about the work they do.

Be smart about the interview itself. I know I don’t have to tell you this but show up on time, look and act professionally, be gracious if things go awry, and don’t sell. If your interviewee asks about your business, give them a quick overview but do not go into selling mode. You’re there to learn and connect. Focus on that.

Send a handwritten thank-you note after the interview, sharing something valuable you learned during your time together. Not an email or a computer generated thank you.  Invest the time to actually write the note.

Next, create the content piece and reach back to your interviewee so they can review it.  Share with them your publication plans and tell them you’ll send them a link/copy once it’s out there so they can share it with their network as well.

When you hit publish (or print the newsletter if you’re old school), re-connect with your interviewee and invite (not demand, require or nag) them to share it.

Let’s recap your prospect touches.  Between the initial invitation and the publishing of the content, you’ve connected five times.  That difficult to reach prospect has probably welcomed your communications five times.  If you’ve been engaging and sincere, I believe they would be willing to at least learn a little more about the work you do.

Not only that but you are creating content that truly helps your entire customer and prospect base.

That’s marketing that will lead to sales time and time again.

The post May I ask you a question? appeared first on Drew's Marketing Minute.

Making the client onboarding process successful is crucial for any service company.

When done well, your onboarding process is the mechanism through which your business development and/or sales team does an elegant handoff to your service delivery people. This instills confidence in your offering, and makes your new customer glad to have signed on with you.

Getting your client onboarding process right—especially when your service is offered remotely from a globally distributed team—is even more important and difficult.

Below, I outline three principles we’ve kept in mind while structuring our onboarding process, a process that we see as foundational to Prialto’s success.

3 Principles of a Successful Client Onboarding Process

1. Make the new customer glad to have signed on with you

Savvy buyers are always hesitant to sign on to a new service. They fear the inevitable productivity dip that takes place before a new service becomes additive.

Our new customers are particularly fearful. They worry that they will need to provide a lot of heavy personal management time to make our service work in light of our virtual assistants residing a world away in Asia and Latin America.

To overcome this, we work to awe the customer with the amount of management support we will provide on their behalf. We put their entire support team of virtual assistants and their manager on the onboarding call so that they hear from each person and understand how each of their roles will help make the service exceptionally “turnkey” such that the productivity dip common in adopting a new service will be minimal.

This addresses one of the greatest fears with which the customer comes to the new relationship. It puts them at ease and encourages them to follow our lead.

Instead of regretting that they’ve signed on, they rightly feel smart for having done so.

2. Create a detailed, personal and professional context around which to collaborate

Contrary to conventional wisdom, studies show that when meetings begin with a bit of personal sharing they are more productive than meetings kept to “just business.” Sharing and honoring the personal context in which work is conducted creates the trust and respect that is foundational to work collaboration.

We begin each onboarding call by introducing each of the several key employees who comprise our new customers’ support team. By this time, we’ve already sent the new customer a detailed biography of his/her primary virtual administrative assistant. On the call, we outline each of the team members’ roles in helping the customer.

We then ask the new customer to introduce him/herself. While making the request, we invite the new customer to tell us about both the professional and personal aspects of his/her life.

When the new customer pauses, the team comments or asks follow-up questions to show that they understand the professional life being described, the personal world in which it takes place, and the connections between the two.

We follow these introductions with a series of preference questions. Many of these preferences might have been collected in advance of the call via a web form or survey. However, asking the questions on the call allow us to follow-up with personal insights and questions that further build trust, primarily my telling the new customer that “we’ve been here before.” We have worked with people like him/her, and we know how to successfully lead a busy professional through the productivity dip to the “sweet spot” in which the service we offer is creating lasting value.

These questions and introductions also help bridge the context gap between our customer operating in a high pressure North American business environment and the world in which our virtual assistants live in Latin America and Southeast Asia.

3. Begin taking steps to ensure continuity

Customers who sign on with a firm for a new service are often attracted by one particular partner, employee or executive. But the firm and the customer hope the service is not dependent on any one or two people.

Building continuity of service starts with the client onboarding call. That’s why the call should never be with just one person. It should always be with the broader support team.

It’s important to note that someone on your team should always document all preferences and key information shared on the call. And whenever possible, the call should be recorded (if that’s okay with the new customer).

The onboarding bridge

Services are difficult to sell because of all the trust building required between provider and buyer. The provider must convince the buyer that the productivity dip will be minimal, and the buyer must convince the provider that s/he will be a customer capable of riding out the productivity dip.

A good client onboarding process will:

• Help the new customer slow down in a time-efficient way in order to get started
• Help overcome the business and social context gap between the service provider and service buyer
• Begin the process of ensuring continuity of service for both the firm and the customer

By proactively addressing each of these bulleted needs, the onboarding process becomes an elegant handoff from sales to service that positivity defines your brand.

No doubt you’d like to see a 200% increase in the number of meetings you book, right? Now, what if it only took one month of experimenting with sales tactics to reach that level?

 That’s exactly what happened for one of our clients, a venture-backed, drop-shipping SaaS company. They had plenty of high-quality leads but couldn’t get those leads booked on the calendar. The business was teetering on that dangerous break-even precipice, which can spell disaster.

We helped the company modify its sales process, taking everything into account, from collateral to prospect sources. Then we crunched the data, using predictive analytics to forecast future behaviors. We came up with systems that nurtured leads without requiring as much time or energy. After a little experimentation, less waste led to higher revenue.

Can taking a scientific approach to growth work for every sales professional? Yes, it can. Salespeople have also awakened to the value of data and are gaining momentum by using scientifically backed premises to turn sales into a discipline based on apps and software rather than gut instincts.

Your strategy will be unique to your company, leads, and goals, but here are three tactics you can use to immediately steer you away from old-fashioned sales methods that don’t produce the desired results.

1) Use lead-enrichment platforms to boost efficiency

Clearbit is a lifesaver for sales reps. It automates research, allowing you to focus on sales. Clearbit’s API can run new lead emails through your database, find relevant information, and arm you with useful data before you ever get on a sales call.

When employees at Mention wanted to improve sign-up conversions and lead qualification, they turned to Clearbit for integrated intelligence -- increasing conversions by 54%.

The company’s sales funnel enhancement was directly linked to these experimental, data-driven measures that automated research and stopped the leakages.

2) Implement instant calendar-booking links

What would happen if your hottest leads could skip wading through all the welcome emails and simply book meetings on your sales workflow calendar right after submitting a request form?

Making it easy for leads to book time with you at the very moment their interest is piqued will rock your world.

Anywhere from 23% (across all channels) to 43% (on our highest-value channels) of our leads now book their own time slots. As a result, we’ve eliminated potential drop-offs and increased conversion rates. Bonus: Our sales representatives no longer waste time setting appointments and handling administrative tasks.

3) See who is (and isn’t) opening your emails

If your automated emails sound about as personal as a stop sign, that’s deadly. You need to know who’s opening your emails so you can conduct more customized sales prospecting campaigns.

Email tracking/analytics platforms allow you to streamline activity without losing personalization. HubSpot Sales, for instance, gives you the ability to create email templates that feel more personal than generic blasts. These platforms also let you track whether emails have been opened, set up meetings and calls with the prospects you’re tracking, and schedule automated follow-up email sequences.

Add an experimental mindset to your sales toolbox, and you’ll rapidly discover new ways to use powerful data that’s already available to you.

Making several small changes to your communication style can have a big and immediate impact on your sales results. If you minimize how much you sound like a salesperson trying to push your product, it will be easier to generate leads, start conversations, and build relationships.

After all, most prospects are tired of being pestered with calls and emails from relentless reps. Position yourself the right away, and you’ll avoid setting off their “time-wasting salesperson” alarm. The following eight tips will help you leave a good impression.

1) Present yourself as a business person, consultant, or advisor

I’m not saying you should misrepresent yourself at all or manipulate the situation. But there is a difference between acting as a business professional who represents a company and a set of products and a pushy salesperson who’s trying to sell something.

Think of yourself as a subject-matter expert. You have a bird’s eye view of your prospect’s industry, while they’re on the ground. Use your hard-earned knowledge to make recommendations and provide new insights.

2) Spend less time on your company and products

Nothing screams “stereotypical salesperson” like rambling on about your company and products. Here is an example of a common email structure for a salesperson trying to sell something:

Here’s a modified version of that message that suits a consultative selling approach:

That second email might not get your prospect to say “Yes, I need this” -- but that’s a rare reaction, anyway. More importantly, it piques the buyer’s interest in speaking to. Once you’ve won their trust, you can successfully pitch your product.

3) Focus on the prospect

Shift the focus of your conversations from your company and products to the prospect and their needs. Not sure how to do that? Ask probing questions. Not only will you encourage your prospect to open up, facilitating a balanced dialogue, you’ll also get to learn more about their situation and gather valuable details.

First, think about the challenges your product might help to decrease or resolve. For each challenge or pain point, come up with a question or two to determine whether your prospect is concerned about that particular pain point.

4) Pre-qualify the prospect

Consultative salespeople try to find prospects who need what they sell. Pushy salespeople try to talk prospects into wanting what they sell. Make sure you’re targeting the right buyers by asking pre-qualifying questions. Good ones stem from the pain points you resolve.

You can also use buyer personas. Periodically review your closed/won deals to make sure your actual customers line up with your ideal ones -- are they from the same industries, work at companies of similar size, sell similar products or services, etc.?

Having a crystal-clear understanding of who needs your product lets you sell authentically -- not to mention, more efficiently.

5) Talk about benefits, not features

Include benefits that your product offers in your sales pitch. It is easy to discuss what your product does and the functionality that it provides. But what does that functionality help your prospect do or improve?

Does the product help your prospect work more efficiently, save them time, decrease costs, improve profitability, increase revenue, or decrease stress? Focus on this value.

6) Get your prospect engaged

A salesperson who’s trying to sell something will do most of the talking. Avoid this by getting your prospect talking and engaged in phone calls and meetings. Asking good open-ended questions will help you to achieve this.

7) Use the sales takeaway (when appropriate)

Express doubt in the level of fit or reason for moving forward. For example, you may say something like this at the beginning of a sales pitch:

“We help businesses to increase their revenue from new accounts. But I am not sure if we can help you in that same way.”

You could also use this strategy when the prospect seems indifferent or on-the-fence about moving forward. Say, “Maybe this is not something that you really need right now.”

Anyone who’s looking to close the deal at all costs won’t deliver these lines -- but a consultant or advisor with the prospect’s best interests in mind would. The sales takeaway will decrease guardedness and build trust.

8) Let them decide next steps

If you want to sound less like a salesperson and more like a consultant, give the prospect some autonomy by asking “What would you like to do next?” or “What direction would you like to go from here?”

You can certainly offer some suggestions, but when you let the prospect decide without pressuring or persuading them, you seem like a consultant.

These small changes will enable you to kick off more conversations and relationships with prospects. Good luck.

How to Attract New Leads and Nurture Them Into Customers

When I meet with a potential client, one of the questions I might ask is, “What does your sales funnel look like?”

The blank stares and nervous coughing I get in response would almost be funny. Except that this is such a crucial piece to seeing any sort of regular business success.

This happened to me at one of my last free consults. I was meeting with Jennifer (not her real name). She came to me frustrated about the lack of response she was getting to her website.

I took a quick look and then said, “Okay, tell me about your sales process — how do you get leads and nurture them into customers?”

She told me she added people to her list by hand as she met them at networking events. But that was it.

There was a sign-up box on her site, but it didn’t say what it was for.

I asked her, “Is this for a newsletter? Or, what type of helpful information are you promising to send?”

She said she didn’t really have a newsletter. But she would send out offers for discounts and sales every once in awhile. Nothing was really planned.

Hmm. I was beginning to see the problem.

And Jennifer’s not the only one operating like this. C’mon. This is an issue that can put a serious crimp in your bank account if you don’t think it through.

Let’s fix that shall we?

First off, a quick explanation: A Sales Funnel looks and functions just like you would expect: wide at the top, narrowing to a small opening at the bottom.

At the top are where your lead attractors live. Things that generate awareness of, and interest in, you and your products (or services). Things like your social media efforts (where you can have additional sales funnels), your free reports, newsletters and other giveaways, any speaking you might do, or articles you might write; and of course, your website.

This is the content of your marketing. (Remember, content is king for a reason!)

NOTE: For every marketing message you send out (to announce a sale or offer a discount), you need to put out at least 5 other non-marketing messages (e.g., sharing helpful or interesting information/content only).

Between the lip of your funnel, and its opening at the bottom (where a lead takes action and becomes a full-fledged customer) there should be some smaller, less risky ways to work with you, or taste your wares. Ways that will nurture someone’s desire for what you’ve got.

The number of levels you have in your funnel will depend on the highest price item or service you offer (the opening at the bottom).

For a small business consultant, this is how that might look:

(This is a very simple example.) In reality, you would have several different offerings in a range of price points so that folks can become your client at a level that’s comfortable for them.

The goal (for you) is to develop a process to nurture the relationship along so that the client buys again and makes a larger purchase when the time is right.

Why You Want to Outline Your Sales Funnel

Knowing exactly what you’re doing when (and why) will help make sure that your marketing happens on purpose, consistently and that things don’t fall through the cracks.

It helps you avoid “Pasta Marketing.”

If you haven’t outlined your sales funnel, you aren’t alone. Most small business owners never do this.

Once Jennifer outlined her sales funnel, she began to see where her marketing was weakest and we were able to create a plan for fixing that.

Outline Your Sales Funnel in Five Steps

It’s not difficult. It just takes time and a little thought.

1. Make a list of what you’re doing now. Do a brain dump of every marketing campaign, strategy and tactic that you’re using to promote your business. For each item, make a note next to it of how often you’re doing it, and if you’re spending any money, how much that is.
2. Identify how you keep track of leads — all the different ways. Are people able to sign up on your website to receive your newsletter? Do you collect business cards at networking events? Are you connecting with your Facebook fans outside of your page?
3. Outline how you nurture those leads. Do you send out an eNewsletter? Handwritten notes? Invite folks to coffee? (Hopefully all of the above.) What else? And how often?
4. List all your product and service offerings in order from free to the most expensive.
5. Now organize all of this information into a funnel on your paper (yes, you can draw an actual funnel!).

If you’d rather do this electronically, you can download this template (it’s filled out with sample info; just replace what’s there with your own ideas).

It’s Pretty, But What Do I Do With It?

Take a look at it. Where are the holes? What do you need to do more of? Less of? Are you getting a proper return on your marketing investment? Are you attracting enough new leads? Do you need to work on your sales process (the way you “close?”).

Get a marketing professional to take a look at it with you. They’ll likely have some great ideas to help you answer these questions.

Keep this drawing out in plain sight where you can see it every day. This will give your brain time to “stew” on what you’ve created. And it allows space for inspiration to sneak in.

Important: Your sales funnel should be in a constant state of refinement, but don’t change things up too often. Quarterly to bi-annually is good. Marketing, lead tracking, and nurturing folks along takes TIME. And hard work. And if you don’t give something enough time to work, you won’t really know if it IS working.

Lastly, there’s no magic bullet. Sorry. Not even those pre-recorded video series are guaranteed to create your sales for you.

The Sales Funnel is definitely a must-have tool. But you have to work it in order for it to produce tasty results.

Jennifer committed to making changes in her marketing, and is now seeing results as sweet as a proverbial funnel cake.

Once you’ve taken the steps above, you might still have questions. I’d urge you to post them below — it’s probably something that others are wondering, too. I’ll be happy to answer anything, give you ideas, or point you in the right direction. Also — if you’ve got more ideas about how to use the sales funnel, share!

Benchmarking analysis is an invaluable tool for today’s management consultants. Benchmarking involves comparing a current data set to historical data sets or data from industry peers, and it can help consultants determine where clients are ahead of competition, identify areas for client improvement, boost the quality of the firm’s IP, and increase the firm’s competitive value.

A number of well-known firms have developed successful benchmarking analysis offerings. Gartner, for example, has been providing benchmarking analysis to great acclaim. Gartner offers IT performance benchmarking services, giving IT functions an unbiased perspective on how their performance relates to the competition and what they can do to improve. The Hackett Group is another firm that specializes in business benchmarking, using a database of data from over 13,000 engagements to inform their conclusions. PwC and Bain are also known for providing benchmarking analyses in operations, sales, and a number of other areas.

But benchmarking can be a complex process; in order to dive deep and understand the why behind the data, benchmarking requires more than simply comparing two sets of numbers. Worthwhile benchmarking can thus require a number of different tools and methodologies, depending on the project’s analytical focus. As with any analysis that involves a lot of data, the data must be collected, often from multiple sources, cleaned and reformatted, and loaded into whatever tool is being used, a process that can be costly and time-consuming. Perhaps the complexity of benchmarking contributes to the fact that very few firms are making use of benchmarking analysis today. Complex, manual processes can be dangerous to consultants as they are time-consuming and error-prone, making them susceptible to faulty conclusions.

The answer for today’s consultants is to automate the benchmarking process and map the data to specific models. By automating, consultants can reach conclusions faster and ensure that no errors occur. By using data models, consultants can ensure that data will be collected consistently over time, allowing them to draw more accurate conclusions. The benefits of automating benchmark analysis are numerous – here are just a few that we’ve identified.

1. Add A New Paid Offering

Benchmarking services can give consultants another offering for their portfolio, granting them a competitive edge over firms that don’t offer benchmarking services. Benchmarking is a proven practice and can be highly attractive to clients who want to understand where they stand competitively. It can provide a level of historical certainty that other methods cannot. Some firms are even exploring “benchmarking As-A-Service.”

2. Define Gap Analyses with Data

Benchmarking data can inform consultants as to clients’ overall status in their industries better than any other method. By identifying specific performance indicators and comparing a client’s data to competitor data, consultants can draw accurate conclusions about where their clients can improve. Their guidance is then based on data with clearly measurable opportunities for improvement.

3. Create a Winning Pitch

By storing and automating the access of historical data, consultants will be able to build a much better understanding of what a company needs to be successful. By using this knowledge to lead sales conversations, consultants can create a winning sales pitch by proving that their methods are backed by real data. Moreover, they can begin providing insights right at the start of an engagement.

4. Become a Thought Leader

In addition to informing sales pitches, the insights that benchmark data provide can help consultants become better thought leaders. They can use the knowledge they gain over time to prove their expertise in specific fields via publications, speaking engagements, etc.

5. Improve Intellectual Property

Consultants can also use benchmarking analysis to improve their own internal operations. Firms can benchmark against their own historical data, including the performance of their frameworks or assessments and key metrics of each engagement. By analyzing their own data over time, consultants can test the accuracy of their models and the success of their projects. On a more micro level, as long as consistent interview methods are used, it can even allow them to test the success of their client interview questions. If some questions result in unclear answers, those questions can probably use some editing.

Automating benchmarking enables consultants to provide clients with additional value and improve their own intellectual property. Finding the right software for consistent and deep-diving benchmarking is key for consultants who want to add benchmarking to their portfolio or take their current methods to the next level.

The competition for skilled sales professionals is an ongoing concern in the business environment. Once you have hired a member of your sales team – whether a promising beginner or well-seasoned veteran – you have to provide sales training to keep talents sharp and skills in a constant state of improvement. This benefits you by:

• Ensuring your sales team’s professional abilities are at their highest level.
• Giving your sales staff the opportunity to advance and grow as individuals.
• Improving retention by providing an environment that encourages professional advancement.
• Boosting not only revenues and profits, but increasing your reputation as a company that always employs a top-quality sales staff.

Sales training, applied in the right way to take advantage of what each member of the sales team as to offer, can easily and quickly open the door to these benefits. Use some of the following sales training techniques and best practices and you’ll see distinct and measurable results.

• Show commitment: Make it clear to your employees the need for sales training is real and that everyone from the company owner to their immediate supervisor is committed to providing this training. Gently reinforce the company’s stance on the requirement for training. Couch the need for training in positive terms – explain the benefits training will provide, rather than the penalties that may accrue if training is skipped. Take all possible steps to ensure the training is available and easily accessible.
• Be ready to customize: Certain types of sales training, such as refreshers on fundamentals or instruction on your company’s specific sales needs, will be appropriate for sales staff at all levels. However, you can’t expect every training course to meet the needs of beginning, intermediate, and advanced professionals. Create and customize training for each of these levels and be generous with the amount of skill level-specific training provided. This may require an increase in your training budget, but the results will more than repay the investment.
• Expand available resources: Sales training conducted in classroom or small-group settings is still highly effective, but make training material available in all possible formats. Record live training sessions for those who could not attend, or for later review. Develop electronic training resources that employees can access at their leisure, such as online classes or video collections. Establish an internal library, either physical or electronic, of reference material, training modules, and skill-enhancing information. Explore ways to make training available via smartphone or tablet.
• Encourage cooperation and collaboration: One of the best ways for newer sales team members to learn is by collaborating with a more experienced member of the sales staff. Having someone to consult with freely and openly gives new employees an identified point of contact for their questions and concerns. This also creates an environment in which seasoned sales pros can share their knowledge and pass it on to the next generation, ensuring that it stays within your company. Cooperation among trainees at the same level can also be beneficial since it gives the trainees one or more partners at the peer-to-peer level, where they may be more comfortable.
• Don’t overwhelm: Training should be short, concise, and focused. Overwhelming sales staff with training demands can create resistance and will make training less effective. Training information administered in smaller bites is easier to retain.

The right type of sales training will elevate your sales team’s skills while increasing your business’s revenues and profits.

Today marks the birth of American independence. While it took collaboration, respect and strategic thinking to persuade Continental Congress to formally adopt the Declaration of Independence 241 years ago, the impact and importance will forever be remembered throughout history. This is a lot like influencer marketing (although, Congress will not be involved).

Just like the Declaration of Independence, it has taken a long time and a lot of work (on the part of marketers and journalists) to get influencer marketing where it is today. In a recent report conducted by Traackr, Altimeter Group and TopRank Marketing, data shows that only 15% of B2B brands are running ongoing influencer programs, which opens up huge opportunities for the future of B2B brands and influencer marketing.

With primary objectives like increased brand awareness and reach and driving lead generation, influencer marketing is a highly strategic marketing tactic that is rising in the ranks for B2B many brands.

It’s a known fact that influencer marketing should be implemented, but how can you successfully execute ongoing influencer relationships?

Identify the right influencers and nurture long-term relationships that are mutually beneficial for your brand and your influencers to captivate your audience and bring them value. To help you achieve this, below you’ll find 5 common influencer marketing missteps, tips to get it right and advice from top influencer marketing experts to declare independence and implement successful influencer marketing campaigns to achieve your brand goals:

#1 – Don’t Just Look for Influencers with Large Social Followings

The first misstep is very common and proves to be misleading for many brands because often times, influence is equated with the number of followers, fans, and likes an influencer has. It’s tempting to look to celebrities and other popular figures to increase reach and awareness, but this isn’t always the most effective option.

TIP: Identify influencers whose brand goals and objectives align with yours. Micro-influencers, those who have a smaller following, but are more focused on a specific topic, can be very powerful collaborators who can make strong connections with your audience.

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Reaching out with poor design using a Gmail address doesn't motivate engagement @leeodden
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#2 – Guest Blogging isn’t the Only Option

One way to implement an influencer marketing campaign is to ask for a contribution via a guest blog post. While technically this is seen as influencer marketing, you probably won’t get the results you desire. A guest post alone won’t help educate and inspire your audience, you must do more.

TIP: Use an integrated approach to the content campaign with your influencer. Give them guidelines and ask them questions. Use their answers, in their own words, and employ social media to amplify the co-created content.

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Influencers are likely to add commentary if there's an existing relationship @JoePulizzi
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#3 – Money Shouldn’t Drive Your Influencer Relationships

This touches on a much larger topic that influencer marketing is transactional. I hate to break it to you, but the money driven, pay-to-play approach isn’t a scalable model. Often times, influencers are turned off by this type of interaction.

TIP: Instead of putting a price on the influencer engagement, think of it as a long-term relationship. With each interaction, social mention, personalized email and in-person contact, you are strengthening that relationship and helping it grow. It could be as simple sharing content to your network that the influencer has created previous to your partnership.

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Reach out directly and make it personal. Do NOT delegate this critical step @heidicohen
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#4 – Your Brand Must Give Up Some Control

For many of your marketing efforts, your brand will have complete control. However, having the ultimate cosmic power will likely get you trapped in a little genie bottle where you’ll be stuck on a lonely island with no influencer contributions.

TIP: Let loose the reins a little bit and set guidelines and clear expectations for the influencer, but give them some control over the messaging and design. The influencer has a committed following who is familiar with their brand, don’t confuse the audience by imposing.

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Don't tell me your story, let me tell my story. LESS fabrication, MORE facilitation @TedRubin
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#5 – Don’t Stop Communication After the Campaign is Over

Stopping the communication after the close of a campaign will make more future work. It’s common for B2B brands to end communication with the influencer after the campaign. The time and energy you spent nurturing the influencer will be wasted if this happens. It’s the “one and done” mentality, and no one likes the feeling of being used, and neither does your influencer network.

TIP: Keep the communication channel open and use an ongoing approach to your influencer marketing program. Share the co-created content and send pre-written messages to your influencer so they can share it with their networks on various platforms including social media. Thank your influencer for their contribution and continue to nurture the relationship, even after the campaign is over.

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Influencers are indeed interested in seeing the fruits of their labors @lieblink
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You May Have Won the Battle…

Influencer marketing is an essential component of any successful B2B marketing strategy. To stand out amongst the competition, it’s important to approach influencers with tact and respect. Heeding the advice of these 5 marketing experts and influencers, and focusing on the relationship, rather than the result will help your brand thrive in the B2B marketplace.

Need Help Incorporating Influencer Marketing?

We’re here for you. Contact TopRank Marketing for help declaring your independence from bad influencer marketing.

 

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Have you been hearing the words “agile marketing” in your professional circles yet? If not, you can bet you soon will be – it’s the latest marketing organization trend to hit forward-thinking B2B companies.

What is agile marketing?

Agile marketing gets its inspiration from agile software development. And although the activities within marketing and software development are obviously different, the principles of “agile” are the same: iterate quickly on new ideas, test and use data, focus on the value to the individual as opposed to a one-size-fits-all mentality, and collaborate internally.

In marketing, this means forgoing those massive campaigns that take months to get off the ground and often end up as Frankenstein versions of the original plan. Instead, teams are taught to deliver programs on a shorter timeframe while listening to feedback from the target audience and continually making changes to reflect the needs of their customers.

Agile principles can be difficult to implement

Agile marketing is not necessarily new, but it is gaining in popularity. A 2014 study showed that CMOs highly prioritized agility, but many were not able to actually implement it. And that problem is one organizations still face today.

The ideas behind agile marketing are solid, and many B2B marketing leaders express a desire to adopt them. However, they face many challenges, both internally and externally, including:

• Aligning their organization to reduce silos and encourage collaboration
• Breaking the often sluggish mindset of marketers used to waiting on campaign approvals, feedback and opinions from higher-ups
• Embracing – rather than being afraid of – rapid change
• Developing a data-gathering methodology that gets the right data into the right hands at the right time
• Adopting a customer-centric mentality

Scrum, Kanban and Scrumban: Core agile methodologies

Agile marketing is structured similarly to agile software development in that a team will choose to use a particular methodology to launch and iterate on campaigns. The most common methodologies are known as Scrum, Kanban and Scrumban. Essentially, these methodologies encourage teams to segment their work and assign ownership of various elements to team members. Scrum, the most well-known, is a bit more rigid than Kanban and Scrumban, but they can all work depending on the size of your team and your organization’s goals. If you’re interested in implementing one of these methodologies, Content Marketing Institute provides a good overview.

Benefits of agile marketing

Agile marketing, if done right, can help your team focus on more impactful work and get more done in a shorter period of time – without burn out. Because marketing programs are launched quickly, agile marketing emphasizes a strict focus on the work at hand, eliminating as many outside distractions as possible during a sprint. This leads to faster campaign launches and quicker learning for future campaigns.

Agile is also an important mindset for B2B marketing teams that need to adapt to change rapidly – and this is quickly becoming most marketing teams. Given the fast pace of change in technology and consumer behavior, it is essential that your team is able to recognize market shifts and respond to them without being delayed by red tape or an unwieldy process.

Lastly, your marketing team will become more cohesive and communicate better with one another and with other teams within your organization as they become more comfortable using agile marketing techniques.

Virtual reality has been around for decades, but it is just now becoming a typical thing to see in a household. These days anyone with a smartphone and Google cardboard can use a rudimentary form of virtual reality, and some of the headsets that take cell phones are even quite advanced. It’s no wonder that developers are pouring money into VR technology – it is expected to be a $25 billion industry by 2021. What’s surprising, though, is that developers are pouring even more into augmented reality technology, and that sector is projected to reach $83 billion in the same time frame.

Many VR and AR experts believe that augmented reality has greater real-world applications than virtual reality. With VR, the screen becomes your world, while with AR the world becomes your screen. This leaves developers open to creating everything from real-time turn by turn directions projected onto the street in front of you to conference calls with a more human element of interaction. You could even watch a cooking show hands-free and cook along in real life without any obstruction of your vision!

Both virtual reality and augmented reality have their benefits. Virtual reality is already being used in the real estate market to show homes to prospective buyers when they can’t make it to a showing or to narrow down the field. It is also being used in classrooms, particularly in places where students don’t have access to basic things like a chemistry lab. But augmented reality is gaining ground – in 2016 investors poured $2.3 billion into augmented reality startups, and it’s just a matter of time before people are walking around with AR headsets that tell them the ratings for restaurants before they even go in.

Investors are pouring cash into augmented reality and virtual reality technology, and programming for both is coming along right behind it. How will you be using VR and AR technology in the future? It’s going to be happening sooner than you think, so it’s time to start getting your company on board. Learn more about the future of the virtual reality and augmented reality business from this infographic!

Infographic Courtesy of Lumus

To me, circular economy always sounds like an amazing concept, but I have a hard time coming up with ideas of how to contribute. That is why for this week, I have looked for inspiring circular economy examples and I want to share the ones I have found with you. After all, the World Bank predicts that between now and 2025, solid waste will double to 6.5 million tons of solid waste every day. In addition, the OECD estimates that there will be an extra two billion middle-class consumers before 2030. Circular economy needs to explode to the same extent!

First, I will explain how you can make your own business model more circular, so you know how to participate in circular economy yourself. Then, I will list five examples of companies that have embraced circular economy. However, the concept of circular economy does not need companies alone; it also needs the government facilitating these companies. That is why at the end of this blog, you will find ways of how cities have embraced circular economy as well.

Five ways to make your business model more circular (plus examples)

Lacy, Rosenberg, Drewell, and Rutqvist claim that since the Industrial Revolution, humanity’s use of natural resources has been basically the same: take, make, throw away. Indeed, we have become better at using virgin resources more efficiently while second-hand markets and recycling rates have improved but this has not altered the fundamentals. Many companies’ business models are not set up to do much else than earning money from volume but circular economy thinking — building an economy that does not create waste – can make business-sense.

Product vendors should think of the resources in their products as assets rather than inputs and their customers as users rather than buyers. There are two important challenges:

1. how to maximize value along the chain
2. how to enable the assets to be continually re-introduced to markets.

There are five fundamental considerations for nearly every sector when thinking about how to make your business model more circular:

1. How can we design our products with asset recovery in mind?
2. How can we develop product lines to meet demand without wasting assets?
3. How can we source material in regenerative loops rather than linear flows?
4. How can we develop a revenue model that protects value up and down the chain?
5. How can we get our customers to cooperate with us?

Lacy, Rosenberg, Drewell, and Rutqvist have identified five business models that contribute to the concept of circular economy:

1. Products as services

In products as services, goods vendors embrace the idea of themselves as service providers: leasing access to and not selling ownership of a service. In some cases, this has led not only to an effective hedge against cost volatility but also to a stickier customer relationship and increased upsell.

Example: Vodafone’s Red Hot

You can rent the latest phone for a year and keep on exchanging it for a newer version. Assuming Vodafone is engaged in collecting the old phone, not only does this act as material collection and pooling but, from a business standpoint, it also creates deeper customer relationships.

2. Next life sales

Next life materials and products work when a company can efficiently recover and recondition its products after use and then put the same products into the market to earn a second or third income.

Example: Tata Motors Assured

It is more than a second-hand car dealership. Cars are handpicked and refurbished in Tata workshops and then undergo a certification process. Customers are even offered financing options and warranty.

3. Product transformation

Not all products can be reconditioned in their entirety but most products have certain components that carry a high value. Not just products but often materials have an embedded energy component that makes them even move valuable than their virgin source. With the right design and remanufacturing capabilities, they can be put together to form new products.

Example: BMW’s remanufactured parts

For BMW, product transformation can mean a 50% cost saving for customers buying remanufactured parts as compared to new ones. You get exactly the same quality specifications as a new BMW part subject to the same 24-month warranty.

4. Innovation in recycling

Innovation in recycling technology is rapidly evolving and enabling the production of high-quality products with fantastic sustainability performance.

Example: Starbucks’s recycling of waste coffee grounds

Starbuck aims to turn thousands of tons of its waste coffee grounds and food into everyday products by using bacteria to generate succinic acid, which can then be used in a range of products from detergents to bio-plastics and medicines.

5. Collaborative consumption

Lastly, social media exchange platforms are rapidly transforming industries by collaborative consumption.

Examples: Airbnb and ThredUP

Airbnb matches people seeking vacation rentals with hosts who have space and it now has over 200,000 listings in 26,000 cities. If you need new clothes for your kids, you can use ThredUP to browse like-new clothing at significant reductions from families whose children have outgrown their old clothes.

Five companies leading the circular economy transition

The U.S. Chamber of Commerce Foundation Corporate Citizenship Center has released a new case study report featuring examples of how companies are translating circular economy aspiration into action that drives greater resource productivity improvements, eliminates waste and inefficiency, and contributes to a stronger competitive economy. Jennifer Gerholdt has picked five leading examples:

1. Dow Chemical Company

Projections show that between rapid population growth and urbanization, it is expected 70% or about 2.5 billion more people will be living in cities by 2050. Having so many people in highly concentrated environments can cause the temperature of cities to rise, which is known as the “urban heat island effect.” This increases energy demand and cost, greenhouse gas emissions, and pollution.

The Dow Chemical Company is collaborating with governments, associations, and NGOs around a key solution: roof cooling. These are roofs with high solar reflectance. Existing roofs are retrofitted by utilizing a thick, white, monolithic solar reflective elastomeric coating that is applied over flat and slow slope roofs. Dow’s CENTURION™ roof binder helps improve the cool roof’s performance while extending the life of the roof and reducing energy use.

2. DSM-Niaga

In the U.S., more than 4 billion pounds of carpet is landfilled every year, making it one of the most common products in landfills today. DSM-Niaga is a joint venture that is producing the world’s first and only fully recyclable carpet.

The Niaga® Technology for carpet production is based on using a simple set of clean processes, ingredients, and materials that make the product 100% recyclable. This includes not using latex as an adhesive in the manufacturing process.

After the carpet is used, it is sold back to the manufacturer and turned into new carpet. The name “Niaga” means “Again” spelled backward as in true circular fashion, it can be used again and again and again.

3. Enerkem

Cities and communities are already struggling with how to manage their waste. Enerkem uses municipal solid and non-recyclable waste as a feedstock to manufacture biofuels and renewable chemical products.

Enerkem’s facility in Edmonton, Alberta is the world’s first commercial biorefinery of its kind that will process 100,000 dry tons of sorted municipal solid waste annually to produce a synthetic gas and convert into a low-carbon transportation biofuel, enough for 400,000 cars on a 5% ethanol blend.

Enerkem will help the City of Edmonton increase its recycling diversion rate from around 50% to 90%.

4. Veolia North America

Water scarcity is an urgent, global issue. It affects every continent and more than 2.8 billion people at least one month out of the year. Globally, water demand is projected to exceed supply 40% by 2030.

In the United States, hundreds of communities and businesses are at risk of severe and sudden water shortages, due to lack of supply or contamination. The groundwater aquifer that supplies the Ramapo River Watershed in Rockland County New York is an important source of drinking water for more than 1 million regional residents and was becoming particularly dry during certain months of the year.

Veolia Water Technologies partnered with Rockland County to design, build, and operate the Western Ramapo Advanced Wastewater Treatment Facility, a 1.5M gallon-per-day wastewater reclamation plant to help both replenish the aquifer and keep the Ramapo River and surrounding watershed clean.

Equipped with sequencing batch reactors, the plant extends the typical water aeration process and champions a unique type of microfiltration in which the effluent is treated and fed back into the aquifer, ensuring a healthy and sustainable supply.

5. Walmart

Approximately 30-40% of food in the U.S., or 36 million tons worth $161 billion, goes to waste annually, much going to landfills with no beneficial resource recovered. Through Walmart’s food donation program, food banks pick up unsold food from Walmart stores, Sam’s Clubs and distribution centers, and provide that food to people who need it. Since 2005, Walmart, the company everybody loves to hate, has donated 3.3 billion pounds of food, including more than 600 million pounds in FY17.

Regarding inedible food, Walmart has launched an organics program in 2009, which is currently comprised of 78 haulers and 352 outlets to recycle food waste for animal feed, anaerobic digestion, and commercial composting. Since inception, the organics program has recycled the equivalent of more than 25,000 semi-truck loads of inedible food.

Cities promoting a circular economy

According to Eetu Helminen, cities around the world promoting a circular economy have three common goals: reduce waste, control climate change, and use resources more efficiently. Some cities also see circular economy as a way to improve residents’ quality of life and create new business opportunities. Key to cities contributing to circular economy is collaboration.

Vancouver

In Vancouver, recycling has been a part of everyday life since the 1970s. However, Vancouver has focused on circular economy just recently, aiming to be zero-waste by the end of 2040. In addition, the city approved the Greenest City 2020 Action Plan in 2010 with an objective to be the greenest city in the world by 2020. I have visited Vancouver in May and, being from The Netherlands, I saw such a big difference in how aware everybody is of the merits of recycling. I loved it!

“From the Vancouver perspective, the reasons for concentrating on circular economy are to reduce the cost of operations in waste management and to reduce the need to purchase more land and move garbage. There are clear savings to be achieved. Another reason is that we know that seven percent of our greenhouse gases come from solid waste. This is a great opportunity to reduce our emissions. These are also tremendous business opportunities,” says Bryan Buggey, who is responsible for economic and business development at the City of Vancouver’s Economic Commission.

The results are overwhelming. Vancouver, with only 7% of the Canadian population, hosts 30% of Canada’s cleantech sector. Furthermore, green jobs have been growing at a rate of 7.8% over the last 3 years. Today, there are more than 25,000 green & local food jobs within the city and even more at the metropolitan level. Meanwhile, over the past ten years, the local GDP has grown more than 26% while the greenhouse gases have fallen by more than 15%, proving that implementing environmental controls does not damage the local economy.

In addition to different programs, the city can improve residents’ quality of life and enable new business opportunities by regulation. “We started a mandatory organics ban from the landfill recently, which separates food from the garbage. After the mandatory regulation was passed and the program was implemented, 72 percent of the population adopted the practice within four weeks. We are very lucky to have such sustainability-minded citizens. They tell us we cannot be green enough,” Buggey says.

Helsinki

Helsinki sees its current historical urban generation as an excellent opportunity to promote the circular economy in its own operations. For example, due to better planning, the city has been able to save 1.4 million liters of fuel and reduce emissions by more than 3,500 carbon dioxide equivalents in management and utilization of excavated land.

Helsinki also enables, for example, the development of applications to reduce food waste. One of them enables restaurants to sell leftover lunches at reduced prices. Another new application tested in the Kalasatama district enables residents to sell leftover food or ingredients to their neighbors.

“The citizens of Helsinki do much by themselves. A good example of this is the Cleaning Day when the whole city turns to a giant flea market. The residents sell or donate the goods they have no use for any more to other residents. This is a circular economy at its best – and it is fun,” says Marja-Leena Rinkineva, who is the Director for Economic and Business Development in Helsinki.

Experiences in Helsinki prove the change is achieved through multi-party cooperation. Helsinki Metropolitan Smart & Clean Foundation is a five-year change project that was started by the Finnish Innovation Fund Sitra in 2016. It includes cities from the Helsinki metropolitan area, Sitra, twelve leading corporations as well as universities and research institutes. All Smart & Clean partners have committed themselves to making Helsinki Metropolitan the world’s best testbed for smart and clean solutions.

Circular economy

I hope this has inspired you to establish a business model that contributes to circular economy. If you are still struggling with the concept, you can read my blogs ‘The basics of Circular Economy explained for entrepreneurs and CEOs’ and ‘The Difference between Circular Economy and Blue Economy’. Hope that helps!

Are the right people at the account spending time with your company, and is that engagement going up over time?

Engagement describes something fundamental about the customer’s connection to your brand: Higher degrees of engagement mean a deeper commitment. More time. More emotion. More of a relationship. More activity – such as buying and advocating. In short: engagement matters.

What’s the difference between “engagement” and Account Based Everything?

But, like awareness, it’s not easy to measure engagement completely.

It’s about time.

The number of minutes that someone spends with your brand is a reasonable way to track engagement.

These minutes should cover when they respond to your marketing programs, but also when people interact socially, use your product, and talk with the sales team. By combining these interactions at the individual and account level, you get a good proxy for engagement.

Here are four considerations when measuring engagement at your target accounts:

1. Track activities

Track all the meaningful activities for each of the contacts at your target accounts. Typically, the data sources will include:

• Website: Visits by account, using reverse-IP mapping.
• Marketing automation: Email opens; event attendance; content downloads; interesting moments; and so on.
• CRM: Activities and tasks; campaign membership.

More advanced data sources include:

• Product: Minutes spent using various features of your product.
• Social: Who follows you, shares and retweets your content, comments on your posts, and so on.
• Sales interactions: Tracking when sales spends time with target accounts – the hardest but one of the most valuable sources.

Many sales tools track interactions (such as email) as activities in the CRM tool, so those are straightforward to pull in. You can also connect to a sales rep’s calendar and corporate email to track when they are having meetings and other interactions with target accounts.

Count the meetings. A great ABM metric is to count the number of meetings scheduled and held at target accounts. Just make sure you have in place a good mechanism to track these!

Match activities to accounts

Take each lead’s activity and identify which account he or she should be part of. You can do this manually using a simple match on email domain, or automate it with technology like Engagio that uses more sophisticated methods for Lead to Account matching. Getting this right is a critical step in all ABM analytics.

2. Assign minutes to activities

Take each of the various activities and assign a number of minutes to each. You often won’t have the exact number of minutes, so it’s OK to use estimates for each activity type, such as:

• Email open: 1 minute
• Content download: 10minutes
• Webinar attendance: 30 minutes
• Dinner attendance: 2 hours

Visualize all the activities into an account timeline.

It’s often useful to map all the key activities for a given account into a visual timeline. This can be especially valuable to have during a Quarterly Business Review to show exactly how marketing has touched the account. It’s also useful when a deal closes to look back and see which touches helped influence the account.

3. Create an organizational heatmap

Track which parts of the organization are engaging with you. Add up the number of minutes spent in total from each cell of the matrix, and color code for their level of engagement. When done, you’ll have a heatmap for the account. You can also do this for a group of accounts to see broader trends. With this, you can know which personas are most engaged (darker areas on your heatmap) and where you need to deepen engagement (lighter spots).

Use the Heatmap to see which parts of the organization engage with you, and where you may have blind spots.

You can also:

• See where you may need new content to engage different audiences. In the Heatmap shown here, the company engages primarily with the marketing department, and secondarily with sales. Interestingly, they’re connecting mostly with lower-level marketing staff but in sales they connect more with executives.
• Identify potential blind spots. Although it’s always important to focus on your top contacts at an account, it’s also important to have the necessary breadth of relationships. By comparing an account’s Heatmap with your “ideal”Heatmap, you’ll be able to see where you may be missing engagement from a key persona.

4. Aggregate engagement at the account-level, and identify Marketing Qualified Accounts

Combine the minutes for all the contacts at an account to come up with a measure of aggregate account-level engagement. This combination is typically not a simple sum or average. For example, sometimes you’ll want to give more weight to senior or important contacts.

From there, track the aggregate engagement trend over time, similar to an electrocardiogram (EKG) chart for account health.

Imagine being able to go to the head of sales to show that target accounts spent 4,289 minutes engaging with marketing activities this quarter, up 122% from only 1,932 last quarter. And imagine being able to drill into the data to show the specific sales territories, industry segments, and personas with the biggest growth. This is certainly a sign that things in the middle of the funnel are progressing in the right direction!

One of the best ways to demonstrate marketing’s impact in ABM, especially in the middle of the funnel, is to show increased engagement from target accounts.

With this insight, you can identify Marketing Qualified Accounts (MQAs). You want to identify which are the most engaged accounts and alert sales about any accounts whose engagement is spiking up or down versus their recent trend.

We think that account-level engagement is a better indicator of potential buying activity than individual lead scores. That’s why we use a new metric, the Marketing Qualifed Account (MQA) instead of the person-based metric, Marketing Qualified Lead (MQL).

Marketing Qualified Account: An account (or discrete buying center within an account) that has reached enough aggregate engagement in a given time period to merit a sales outreach. Read more.

When you accurately track the minutes from your Account Based Marketing activities, you’ll understand how target accounts are engaging. Over time, you’ll gain valuable information about how engagement minutes correlate with your most pro table accounts – so you can refine your strategies and create even more engagement.

Identify the accounts with the most engagement, and with big spikes up or down from their recent trend.

Engagement is a critical metric within Account Based Everything.

Account-based metrics such as this don’t replace traditional metrics like leads, pipeline, and revenue – those are still important, and you should track them for both new and existing customers.

But, as we’ve seen, traditional metrics are not sufficient for ABM and so marketers need to get adept at additional metrics to show success.

How do you track engagement?

Have you heard the one about email marketing? You know, the school of thought which claimed that it would slowly decline as social and digital communication channels took hold?

This prediction has proved to be wide of the mark, with email marketing continuing to thrive and serve as one of the four most effective drivers of digital traffic.

If you still buy into the idea that email marketing is moribund, you may therefore be missing out on the chance to grow your business. To help convert you, here are four compelling statistics that underline the true value of email marketing in the digital age:

1. Email Marketing Delivers an Estimated ROI of 4400%

While it is easy to be dazzled by the diversity and real-time nature of integrated social media profiles, it is important to remember the core metrics of any successful marketing campaign.

The most obvious of these metrics is profit, as marketing must effectively mobilize your target audience while translating into a positive ROI.

In this respect, there is evidence to suggest that email is the single most effective medium for marketing your business. According to studies, email marketing delivers an average ROI of 4400%, with a $44.25 return for every single $1 spent.

Much will depend on your execution, of course, with the use of personalisation and informative, dynamic content central to optimising the ROI of your email campaigns. Mobile optimisation is also a key consideration, especially with more than 55% of all emails now accessed through a handheld device.

2. There Will Be 4.9 Billion Active Email Accounts by the End of 2017

Of course, the delivery of an inflated ROI means little if you are unable to reach a large or motivated audience through your chosen marketing channel. This is why social media marketing has proven so popular during the last seven years, with Facebook alone now boasting 1.71 billion active users each month.

Email can more than match this, however, with a total of 4.9 billion email accounts expected to be active across the globe by the end of this year. This will represent an increase of more than one billion since 2013, and it highlights the growing popularity of email as a core communication channel.

So while you will still be required to target specific demographics through email marketing, the sheer volume of individuals who use email on a daily basis enables you to maximise the amount of consumers that you reach within each segment. With the use of personalised content and in-depth consumer data, you can also optimise the number of leads that are successfully converted across your audience as a whole.

3. U.S. Consumers Interact With an Average of 11 Brands Through Email Each Day

By itself, the revelation that U.S. consumers interact with an average of 11 brands through email each day means relatively little (even though this is a trend that is repeated across the globe).

When placed into the correct context, however, it offers yet another compelling reason to prioritise email marketing in the year ahead. Consumers only interact with an estimated nine brands through Facebook on a daily basis, and eight through the popular Twitter platform. This underlines the fact that customers have become increasingly receptive to branded communications through email, particularly as the security measures and filters utilised by major platforms such as Gmail and MSN have improved over time.

Not only this, but email has also benefitted from the emphasis that brands have placed on content marketing during recent times. After all, companies have looked to refine all aspects of their content in the quest to get higher on Google, with the need to create in-depth, personalised and topically relevant copy more pressing than ever. These principles have also been applied to email, which in turn has allowed brands to engage customers and convert them more effectively.

To capitalise on this further, strive to customise your email content to include the name of each recipient. Beyond this, ensure that your calls-to-action are placed above the fold and not overly promotional, as they should offer a natural hook and relate seamlessly to the nature of the content.

4. Email Marketing Was the Single Biggest Driver of Black Friday Transactions

We have already touched on the potential of email as a profitable marketing tool, and this was nevermore evident than during Black Friday in November 2015. In fact, email marketing accounted for a staggering 25.1% of all sales that were completed on Black Friday, while the rate of e-commerce transactions also increased by 16.1% during the same period.

This is a statistic that supports the impactful nature of email marketing, and more specifically its unique ability to generate and convert a relatively high number of leads. With a growing number of consumers now receptive to branded emails, carefully crafted and well-timed communications can have a significant influence on real-time customer behaviour (the below example underlines this, as it was a real-time promotion targeted at customers during a typically quiet Thanksgiving evening).

This not only means tailoring personalised email content that is relevant to specific events and consumer holidays, but it also demands a precise approach to the timing and the presentation of your correspondence. Specific consumer demographics are more likely to access their emails at different times, for example, while 43% of respondents under the age of 30 cite design and layout as the most important conversion factor.

Email Marketing Lives On

So there you have it; four statistics which make compelling (and not to mention interesting) arguments for the use of email marketing to reach your audience!

With the data on your side, is there really anything stopping you from building your email list with confidence and improving your ROI?

By Mark Schaefer

I love coaching people through their marketing strategy problems. This is where I thrive. In fact, there’s nothing I like better than a good business problem to tackle.

But more often than not, when people think they have a social media marketing problem, it’s not a marketing problem at all. I would say about 90 percent of the time I discover some other underlying issue.

Here are three problems that people may THINK are social media marketing problems … but they’re not.

1) Leadership

Once I start probing for the root causes of a problem, often the issue has nothing to do with the strategy, the budget, or the talent working on the project. It’s a lack of support from management.

Moving traditional marketing to building a social media presence and community takes more than money and people. It takes a new mindset. This is extraordinarily hard to do! Companies are under enormous pressure to increase quarterly profits. There is no guarantee, at least in the short-term, that this will come with social.

The company culture has to adjust to the expectations of this always-on world and that has to come from the top. There is no such thing as a grassroots movement to change a company culture.

Many times when a social media effort stalls, it’s due to a leadership issue, not a strategy issue. Marketing leaders don’t need to tweet and blog, but they need to understand the realities of the digital world and what is, and isn’t possible. They need to know enough to ask the right questions and lead the team.

2) Content Shock

I did some consulting for a company recently that seemed to be doing everything right:

• They were creating excellent content consistently
• They had resources available to promote the content and engage with a community
• The content they were creating was well-aligned with both their goals and their customer needs.

Yet, they were getting no engagement, no traffic, no results. What was going on here?

The simple answer in this case is “Content Shock.”

Content Shock is a term I coined in 2014 which has sort of been adopted by the industry as a way to describe what happens when a market niche has been flooded with quality content. If you’re the business that caused the flood of content, you’re in good shape. But if you’re late to the game, it may be almost impossible to compete without enormous effort and cost.

That was the case with my client. They ignored the fact that their market segment was over-saturated with competitor content and more “me-too” content was only adding to the noise. Going head-to-head probably isn’t a great option. This company needs to find a new way to maneuver by looking at different platforms, content types, or audiences to pursue.

3) Unrealistic goals

If you’re going into a social media marketing effort with aim at an immediate increase in sales, you’re setting yourself up for failure.

In a previous post on social media measurement, I outlined the reasons why this is the case. Research shows that early on in a social media marketing effort, companies are likely to see an increase in awareness (85 percent) but unlikely to see an increase in direct financial benefits (about 30 percent realize that goal in the first year).

So if your sales team is in charge of the social media campaign, they’re probably going to be disappointed.

Another unrealistic goal is driving huge engagement. I am skeptical of engagement as a metric of true, long-term business value. In fact, you can easily engage yourself into the unemployment line if the engagement isn’t tied directly to some business value.

The lesson here in all three of these examples is that corporate culture plays an incredibly important role in any marketing success. Agree?

Mark Schaefer is the chief blogger for this site, executive director of Schaefer Marketing Solutions, and the author of several best-selling digital marketing books. He is an acclaimed keynote speaker, college educator, and business consultant.  The Marketing Companion podcast is among the top business podcasts in the world.  Contact Mark to have him speak to your company event or conference soon.

The post The three biggest social media problems are NOT social media problems appeared first on Schaefer Marketing Solutions: We Help Businesses {grow}.

Most sales methodologies stress the importance of identifying whether a budget exists, and a naïve interpretation of the BANT qualification framework {Budget, Authority, Need, Timeframe] might imply that unless a current and adequate budget exists, it’s not worth trying to sell the prospect anything.

This is, of course, a silly and narrow-minded perspective if you aspire to do anything more than take orders against already well-defined and formally funded needs. Many complex B2B sales come to a successful conclusion even though there was no formal budget at the initial point of contact.

If the problem is critical enough or the opportunity attractive enough, if the issue is urgent enough and if the problem owner is powerful and influential enough, budget will be found. But there are relatively few people with the power to conjure money out of thin air.

That’s why it’s so important that we assess whether our current prime contact is a budget maker, a budget shaper or a budget taker…

BUDGET MAKERS

True budget makers – at least when significant sums of money are involved – are relatively rare beasts in most organisations. They tend to be CEOs or senior executives, often at C-Level or not far below, with responsibilities for significant revenue streams or cost flows.

If a budget maker truly believes in a project, they will find the funds they need by one means or another. Now, of course, such projects are few and far between, but if we can position what we do as supporting a critical priority for one of these budget makers, the budget stands a good chance of being made available.

That’s why associating our project – even if relatively insignificant on the grand scheme of things – as being key to the success of a critical high-level initiative that is being energetically promoted by the CEO or a similarly senior executive, the odds are that the funding will be found even if it wasn’t called out as a line item in the budget at the start of the year.

BUDGET SHAPERS

The next level down are the budget shapers. These are people that are responsible for significant expenditure and even if they cannot usually create funds where none exist, they have the power and flexibility to re-allocate existing budgets to support the initiatives they want to champion.

This may, of course, result in the already-allocated budget being pulled away from another project that is now seen to be a less pressing priority. These reallocations happen all the time, and it’s a very good reason not to sit complacently on our laurels if we’re told that our project is budgeted for.

That money could easily be ripped away if the project is no longer seen to be a higher priority than other competing investment opportunities. Budget shapers can be powerful champions, but they can also endanger the success of our project if their attention turns to something they regard as more pressing.

BUDGET TAKERS

The vast majority of people in organisations (even some in what appear to be relatively senior roles) are neither budget makers nor budget shapers. They are mere budget takers, dependent on others with more financial authority to allocate funds to them.

They have very little freedom to reallocate budgets – they are basically told to make do with what they have been given, and their pet projects (and, for that matter, pet vendor relationships) can be very vulnerable to shifts in priority at a higher level.

This is why it is so important that we don’t just ask the “is there a budget?” question, but that we carefully assess whether our current prime contact is a budget taker, shaper or maker, and how credible and influential they appear to be in defending their position.

If – as will often be the case – our prime contact is someone who is merely a budget taker, we need to attempt a number of things:

• We need to make a persuasive case why it is in our contact’s interest that they help us to engage with the budget shaper or maker
• We need to assess where our project sits within the budget maker/shaper’s current priorities, and do what we can to elevate its importance
• We need to equip our champion to make a truly persuasive case not just for choosing us, but for going ahead with the project

Visualising the value gap can be very powerful here: we can use it to contrast the customer’s current trajectory with a better future state. We can use it to contrast the threats associated with sticking with the status quo with the opportunities created by taking action. And we can contrast the obstacles that might be holding them back with the enablers that we can bring to bear.

Clearly having a budget is important, but the initial lack of a formal budget should never be a reason to disqualify an opportunity if the economic case for change is sound and the need for urgent action is clear.

But it’s really important that we understand how budgets are allocated and by whom, and what criteria are applied when working out how and where to actually spend the money. And we certainly need to recognise whether our current prime contact is a budget maker, shaper or taker.

I suggest you take a close look at your sales team’s current opportunities, probe for how close they are to the real sources of budget power, and insist that they develop and implement a credible strategy for every budget-taker-dependent deal.

So far in our series, we’ve covered why both brands and agents love social care, and why social care saves money. Our final topic is its impact on revenue.

“More sales” usually isn’t on the list of features you might expect from a customer care tool but it’s become a cornerstone of the conversation. Selling to and supporting your existing customer base is far cheaper than trying to acquire new customers, and by focusing your efforts there, you’ll find that your brand actually nets more new sales. That’s because today’s customers are looking to peer-to-peer referrals and reviews more than they are to brands.

#SocialFirst brands recognize this, and are using social support to drive revenue.

Why positive sentiment leads to sales

Sales are predicated on trust. Customers want to know that brands value and recognize them as individuals, and social media is a convenient medium for this relationship as it feels more personal than legacy channels like phone or email. Your agents are, in effect, visiting your customers, not the other way around.

Each engagement on social also feels more personal: brands using a social care platform can allow support to come from individual agents and, with a well-defined social care playbook, those agents will converse like real people, not robots. The effect is that consumers get help through chatting on platforms they actually enjoy with people who look and sound like their friends.

Plus, social engagements can be proactive. No phone support agent can read a customer’s mind, sense a problem, and dial them before an issue arises, but that’s precisely what social media does. With the power of automation, social care platforms allow teams to proactively canvass the vast universe of social media, spot developing issues (such as a peer-to-peer complaint about poor cell phone coverage), and resolve it before it grows worse.

Forrester: Conversocial customers increased sales by $1M over 3 years.

The trust that this level of care engenders leads to sales. Entrepreneur reports that customers who feel heard and have their issues taken care of in a proactive manner spend 20-40% more on purchases. In a study, Forrester Consulting found that the cumulative effects of social care led companies using Conversocial to increase their sales by $1m, an ROI of 272% over 3 years.

And, if the service continues to delight, customers return again and again.

Social care encourages repeat purchases

Positive first impressions often stick, but consistent care is the key to real revenue growth. In the same Forrester study, 58% of customers who experienced positive social care said they would buy from that company again. Companies who implemented a social care solution to achieve this saw a 7.5% increase in retention year over year.

58% of customers who experienced positive social care said they would buy again

The benefits of higher retention compound over time. A now famous Bain & Company study, documented in the Harvard Business Review, found that a 5% increase in retention rates can lead to a 25-95% increase in profits. And the benefits don’t stop there because once highly vocal social consumers get to sharing their experience on social media, they begin attracting net-new sales as well.

Using social care for net-new sales

Having a social care solution in place puts your customer service organization on the offensive in two notable ways. First, the advocacy created by customers fuels increasingly positive online sentiment and creates an environment where new customers are exposed to your online praises. It’s a bonanza for marketers who would otherwise spend hundreds of thousands of dollars on similar exposure.

In a study, Forrester found that one Conversocial customer encouraged its agents to personalize responses and be more “human.” One such lighthearted, humorous response became viral and attracted 125,000 additional contacts for the brand. The company estimated this would have cost $80,000 in publicity fees to achieve the same reach, but the company was able to achieve this with 1 hour of the agent’s time.

One Conversocial study highlighted how KLM responded to consumers’ public social media posts about desired travel plans or exciting happenings around that world with friendly ideas and suggestions. In doing so, it connected with travelers who were engaged in planning and attracted short-lead bookings which drove $25m in additional sales.

What do your customers share on social media and how can you be a part of their conversation? Companies everywhere are discovering that social care can mean social sales. A heavy focus on the customer experience on social media creates retention and advocacy which can boost the bottom line.

Want to learn more? Download our report on Social Effort Report: Unlocking Value with Effortless Social Customer Service.

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

A revolution in payments and banking is beginning as virtual assistants like Siri and Alexa gain the abilities of cashiers, personal shoppers, and bank tellers.

Already, Siri can help users make peer-to-peer (P2P) transfers with Venmo, Alexa can pay off Capital One credit card bills, and Google Assistant can let users shop with their voice from nearby stores. 

This is just the beginning. Today, 18 million US consumers have made a voice payment, and Business Insider Intelligence projects that figure will quadruple over the next five years. 

In a new report, Business Insider Intelligence explores how and why financial services providers such as PayPal and Bank of America are positioning for voice interfaces to take off. The report includes actionable recommendations that draw on interviews with executives spearheading voice initiatives, as well as exclusive survey data from our proprietary research panel. 

Here are some of the key takeaways from the report:

• Voice payments are catching on — 8% of US respondents to a 2017 Business Insider Intelligence survey said they used voice commands to buy something, send money to a friend, or pay a bill.
• Adoption is set to grow from 8% to 31% of US adults by 2022. Three factors will fuel this growth: an explosion of voice-enabled devices, generational gains in AI, and a strong consumer value proposition for voice payments.
• Payments providers are moving in: Amazon, Apple, Google, and PayPal are part of the growing list of companies making these next-generation payments possible.
• Banks are betting on AI, too. Bank of America, Capital One, USAA, and more are rolling out conversational interfaces to their customers.
• Next-generation voice assistants will blow the current generation away. Voice payments will evolve from clunky and poorly scripted sessions to interactions as natural as one might have with a personal shopper or bank employee.
• Getting to the next generation will not be easy, but the payoff will be large. Grounded in realistic expectations of adoption in the years ahead, providers of voice payments and banking experiences stand to accumulate early advantages by moving in early.

 In full, the report:

• Shares current and projected adoption of voice payments.
• Outlines voice payments and banking integrations on the market.
• Examines growth drivers and barriers to consumers' voice payments adoption.
• Provides strategies for successfully deploying voice interfaces.

Join the conversation about this story »

Watching a salesperson take control of a sales call is a beautiful thing. By the time it ends, they’ve gotten the answers they need, delivered the information they wanted to, and locked in the next steps.

The prospect, meanwhile, gets to relax knowing they’re dealing with a competent, knowledgeable salesperson. Their level of trust in the process and by association, the product, skyrockets.

Everyone wins.

To run an airtight meeting, here are my five suggestions.

1) Start and end on time

One of the subtlest yet impactful ways to demonstrate your own authority: Start and end the meeting according to the schedule. This shows you have a plan and you stick with it -- and that your time is valuable.

If your prospect is running late, wait five minutes. Then say, “I have another call at [time]. Since we’ll probably take the entire [time period], let’s reschedule for [later today, X time tomorrow].”

If one of the attendees is late, but everyone else is there, say, “Let’s start the meeting. I’m recording, so [name] can catch up after.”

Of course, this requires that you’re always on time. Make sure you’re leaving yourself enough space in between calls so an overly long one doesn’t interfere with the next one.

Speaking of overly long calls: Don’t let them happen. When you’re coming close to the scheduled end, say, “We’ve got [X minutes] left on the clock. Do you have any questions I can answer before [time]?”

2) Don’t let your agenda get derailed

You prepare a great agenda. You lay it out at the top of the call. You start the first part, your prospect hits you with an off-topic question, you spend a ton of time answering it, and before you know it, you’re in the weeds with product questions and your whole agenda’s been shot.

Sound familiar?

While I wholeheartedly advocate being as helpful as possible and answering your prospect’s questions, you can’t sacrifice the call in the process. You know better than they do how this meeting should be structured and when it makes sense to discuss specific points.

If they ask a question that’ll be covered later, don’t feel obligated to answer it right then. Say, “Glad you asked. We’ll get to that in roughly [X minutes], when we talk about [topic].”

Then, answer their question at the appropriate time. Not only will the meeting stay on track, but you’ll look confident and prepared.

3) Don’t be ingratiating

I hear some reps thank their prospects three times on a single call: Once at the beginning, and twice at the end. The problem with repeating “Thanks for your time,” “Appreciate you meeting with me,” and other lines? They skew the power balance toward the buyer.

You’re giving up your time too. Yes, you may be financially rewarded down the line -- but that’s not guaranteed. In return for potentially making a purchase, your prospect receives help and guidance.

Say “Thank you for your time” once. And experiment with variations like, “I enjoyed talking to you -- let’s touch base on Wednesday morning,” and “Glad we could connect, let me know if you have any questions before our next call.”

4) Don’t ramble

There’s a fine line between enough information and too much -- and as soon as you cross it, your prospect will tune out. You lose control when that happens.

To keep their attention (and their respect), make sure you’re speaking 30-50% of the time and no more.

This percentage will be a little smaller for demos, since you’re explaining how your product can help them, but you should still be asking questions periodically so you’re not the only one talking.

When your prospect asks a question, resist the urge to give them every detail that might possibly be relevant. Instead, be succinct and straightforward. Finish with, “Does that answer your question, or can I give you additional context?” They’ll usually say they’re satisfied or follow up on a specific point.

5) Be confident

At the end of the day, all these tips and tricks pale in importance next to true confidence. If you start a call feeling sure of yourself, your prospect will quickly pick up on that -- and will naturally follow your lead. If you start the call feeling insecure or anxious, they’ll doubt your authority and might take over or tune out.

But how do you build that confidence in the first place?

Knowing the value of your product is critical. If you believe in the value prop and have witnessed its impact on your customers’ lives, you can easily explain its benefits to buyers.

However, it’s equally important to do your homework, qualify your prospects, and stick with the sales process. The proper selling techniques boost your aura of professionalism -- and you’ll feel good knowing you’ve checked the necessary boxes.

Today’s post is by Danny Wong, who is a marketing consultant, sales strategist, and writer. He leads marketing at Tenfold, a seamless click-to-dial solution for high-performance sales teams. Connect with him on Twitter @dannywong1190. The vast majority of B2B leaders understand pipeline management is an important part of building a successful sales process, yet 44 percent of executives surveyed reported their organization did not engage in effective sales pipeline management. Filling your pipeline with the right buyers – and nurturing them through the sales cycle at an appropriate pace – will help ensure you are consistently engaging with enough leads...

When I was about 25 I remember telling my step-grandfather that it seemed like the years kept getting shorter and Christmas came around sooner every year. He replied, “Mitch, at my age, it feels like Christmas comes every other week!” Well, not sure how quickly the first-half of 2017 went by for you, but to me, it felt like the blink of an eye. So I thought I’d use this mid-year post to share some reflections and random thoughts on what I’m seeing work (and not work) in the world of sales, and also to challenge your thinking heading into the back-half of the year.

The job of a professional seller is to justify the difference between the premium price your company charges and what others are charging. The past two weeks I was consulting in two very different companies – although both were suffering from the same malady – salespeople who were convinced that their price was too high. Let me say this, once again, as emphatically as possible: Be very careful about complaining that your price is too high. That’s what pays us! Companies with low prices don’t need highly compensated salespeople to sell their offerings. They can just hang the price out on the internet and say, “Come and get it. We’ve got the lowest price anywhere.”

I repeat: our job is to justify the delta between what we charge and the lower price of alternatives. That’s how we bring and create value – for the customer, for our company, and for ourselves! Please stop whining about your company’s pricing. Instead, be thankful for the opportunity to deploy your sales skills and earn a great living.

Salespeople who lead with price and are quick to quote (or send proposals) are getting commoditized and losing deals faster than ever. On a related note, I am constantly amused (and perturbed) by the number of sellers who think they’re being judged by the number of proposals delivered and the speed by which they deliver them. Don’t confuse what I’m saying here. We absolutely want to get into (or even create) opportunities early, and we want to be quick to respond to inquiries and leads. But that’s a very different thing than rushing through, or skipping stages of, the sales process. Just because a customer or prospect requests pricing info or a proposal, that doesn’t mean it’s the right time to do it. The moment you provide pricing, a proposal, or even do a “presentation” too soon for that matter, prior to performing adequate discovery and truly understanding the prospect’s situation, you are committing sales malpractice – and are guaranteed to come across as nothing more than a vendor or commodity seller. One of the companies I was with recently had an abysmally low win-rate because they were quoting projects prematurely. Had their salespeople done their homework, better understood the customer’s environment, buying process, and the competitive landscape, they never would’ve quoted many of the projects that they did – and, they would be winning a higher percentage of the proposals they decided to submit due to executing better discovery and sales process. Lesson learned.

While on the topic of the stages of the sales cycle and how important it is to progress through the stages in the proper order, last week my friend, Keenan, wrote a great piece in Forbes. I won’t steal his thunder; go read it yourself. What I love about the article is that he uses different words and a powerful example to describe something that I preach regularly: DISCOVERY MUST PRECEDE PRESENTATION (and DEMO)! I make the argument that if you cannot adequately articulate the prospect’s situation (needs, pains, initiatives, desired outcomes) then you have no right to be demoing or presenting anything. Read Keenan’s piece about the one word you should never use in a demo to see if you agree with both of us.

The Social Selling-Only Bubble has finally burst – for good. This movement has been losing air for a while, but the first six months of 2017 made it official. Just recently, one of the biggest names/companies in the social selling training business posted openings for a sales position. In the very first bullet of the description it states that it is expected that the salesperson will generate sales opportunities using outbound sales tactics. Read that again. You see, just like I shared in this post a couple months back, even the biggest and most respected social platform companies and inbound marketers are deploying outbound sales teams. So be very wary of the morons and charlatans posting too good to be true nonsense that traditional prospecting doesn’t work and that you’re an idiot or luddite if you think the telephone is still an effective sales tool. Anyone who is still saying that has an agenda and is trying to sell some snake oil or an easy button to lazy salespeople who want to be told not to pick up the phone! When social selling training companies and inbound marketing companies are requiring their own reps to make outbound calls to fill the funnel, that tells you all you need to know. Case closed. Stop looking for justification that you don’t want to prospect and pick up the freakin phone!

Sales managers who are executing the basics are being rewarded and those trying to do their people’s jobs or who are mired in corporate crap are as frustrated and exhausted as ever. I’ve been privileged between January and June to lead Sales Management. Simplified. workshops in places ranging from Amelia Island to Appleton, Cancun to Chicago, the desert of Arizona to the District of Columbia, from San Diego to St. Louis and even several more. It’s been an absolute blast and also been both affirming and revealing. I could write another book (and might) on what I’m observing amongst sales leaders across a variety of companies and industries. But for the purposes of this mid-year post, let me summarize for you with this:

• Sales managers who run from corporate meeting to meeting and conference call to conference call are not only not leading their teams well, they are not producing the sales results they should be.
• Sales managers who live constantly in “hero-mode” – who instead of coaching, mentoring, and empowering their salespeople, try to attend every big customer meeting, touch every presentation and proposal, and close every big deal – are dying of exhaustion and on the edge of burnout. Rather than multiplying themselves into their people and making “heroes;” they are trying to be the hero and failing miserably as this un-scalable and unsustainable model takes it toll on them and their frustrated sellers. I’ll expand more on this critical topic in a future post.
• Sales managers who tell me that they are afraid of increasing accountability and addressing underperforming reps because they don’t want to deal with recruiting and/or potentially having an empty territory continue to limp along with low-performance cultures and suboptimal sales results. Just ponder the implications of that odd perspective.

On the other hand, I am thrilled to report that sales leaders who’ve adopted the simple framework from Part Two of the book and who have regained control of their calendars to focus on the highest-value sales leadership activities are experiencing:

• Radically changed healthy sales cultures filled with engaged salespeople who are focused on results, pipeline health, and new opportunity creation.
• Increased visibility and accountability stemming from effective 1:1 manager-salesperson meetings that rapidly identify and address underperformance, and reveal opportunities to “coach-up” salespeople.
• Improved selling skills resulting from revamping sales team meetings so they are actually sales meetings that align, equip, and energize the salespeople.
• Laser-focused salespeople who are proactively attacking strategic target account lists comprised of both growable existing customers and ideal profile prospects (instead of living in reactive mode waiting for leads or doing the “milk run”).

__________________________

The updated/re-recorded Audio/Audible version of New Sales. Simplified., narrated by yours truly, was just released last week.

Thank you for forcing me into the studio to re-record New Sales. Simplified. to replace the version from the original narrator. We are thrilled with the result and are working on some fun upcoming promotions. There will also be a free download of a sample chapter available soon. But if you simply can’t wait and must have this new release, head over to Amazon or Audible to download the just released version of the book that HubSpot declared the #3 most highly-rated sales book of all time, and that 300 sales experts named as a top-five response when asked which one book they’d recommend every salesperson read.

I hope our friends to the north had a truly wonderful Canada Day and wish everyone in the States an enjoyable and fun Fourth of July. Here’s to great sales leadership and tons of New Sales in the back-half of 2017!

Video is taking over marketing and sales communication. Growth in the use of video has exploded at a rate never seen before. Video drives sales results in clear and direct ways. Here are some *data points to explain why smart sales and marketing pro’s are going with video: Video in an email leads to 200% […]

The post Are You Leveraging the Power of Video in Sales? appeared first on Fill the Funnel.