Rnordman

This post contains a few things that didn’t make it into Tools of Titans (#1 NYT), pulled from more than 300 cuts.

Please excuse casual grammar. This is how all people sound in-person, even uber-smart ones.  The below quotes weren’t copyedited for the book, as they didn’t make it in (though every person did), so any typos are mine. Bolding is also mine.

Hope you enjoy!

NAVAL RAVIKANT

*What are the things that you look for in founders, or the red flags that disqualify an investment or a founder.

“Number one, intelligence; you’ve got to be smart, which means you have to know what you’re doing, to some level. That’s a fuzzy thing but you talk to people and you kind of get a sense of do they know what they’re doing or not. Do they have insight, do they have specific knowledge? Have they thought about the problem deeply? It’s not about the age. It’s not how many years they’ve spent but just how deep is their understanding of what they’re about to do.”

“So intelligence is key. Energy, because being a founder is brutally difficult. It takes a long time and in the long run, the people who succeed are just the ones who persevere. So if someone runs out of energy or if they’re doing this in some hesitating, preliminary way where they’re looking for constant positive feedback, or if they’re easily thrown off course, then they’re not going to make it to the end, especially in the highly competitive startup context.”

“And finally is integrity. Because if you have someone who is high intelligence and high energy but they’re low integrity, what you’ve got is a hard working, smart crook. Especially in the startup world, things are very dynamic, they’re very fast moving. People are very independent. So if somebody wants to screw you over, they will find a way to do it. Fundamentally, ethics and integrity are what you do despite the money. If being ethical were profitable, everybody would do it. So what you’re looking for is a core sense of values that rises above and beyond the pure financial incentives.”

Here are the full episodes with Naval:

The Person I Call Most for Startup Advice (this episode was voted by ProductHunt as the #2 podcast episode of 2015, beaten out only by my episode with Jamie Foxx)

Naval Ravikant on Happiness Hacks and the 5 Chimps Theory

WHITNEY CUMMINGS

*Who are some of the most underrated comedians?

“Sebastian Maniscalco”

“Jerrod Carmichael is great.”

“Natasha Leggero is very funny. Tig Notaro, I’m sure you guys all know her by now. Chris D’Elia, I’m a fan. You probably already know him.”

“Neil Brennan, co-creator of the Chappelle Show with Dave Chappelle, has now started doing standup and is super incisive and funny.”

Here are the full episodes with Whitney:

Whitney Cummings on Turning Pain Into Creativity

The Return of the Money Shot

AMANDA PALMER

*Edit down & simplify

“And the true beauty of making a good TED talk or a good book is that you edit down, and you distill…”

“And then the goal was: how do we take this story that took a minute and a half to tell, which I thought I had got it as far down as possible, and condense it into 20 seconds?  Literally, what words, what single words could we use to convey that whole sentence?”

“With a single anecdote or a single detail, they emotionally take you right there, and they don’t need to say anymore, and they can get on to the next thing.”

“The best art is about economy. [..] the artist who’s just trying to do everything winds up unable to express whatever it is that’s of importance.”

“It was the ability to pare down to the impactful detail.  And that’s just true in art, as in life, for sure.”

Here is the full episode with Amanda:

Amanda Palmer on How to Fight, Meditate, and Make Good Art

MATT MULLENWEG

*Don’t B.S. — tell the truth

“I find the smartest guys in the world, and when you get to the very top echelon, they have perfect B.S. detectors.  It’s much better to say ‘I don’t know’ than to try to make up an answer to something you don’t actually know. It’s kind of refreshing, actually, that just honesty and transparency are – even when you’re raising north of a billion dollars – the best policy.”

Here are the full episodes with Matt:

Matt Mullenweg on Polyphasic Sleep, Tequila, and Building Billion-Dollar Companies

Matt Mullenweg: Characteristics and Practices of Successful Entrepreneurs

The Random Show Threesome — Tim Ferriss, Kevin Rose, and Matt Mullenweg

JOSH WAITZKIN

*Keystone habits recommended by Josh

“First of all, meditation, when we’re speaking about this theme of cognitive biases or basically observing your mental directions the moment that they set in. Meditation is as deep and as powerful a tool as I could possibly describe. Maybe six or seven years ago, when I was first talking about meditation with guys in the finance world [Editor: he coaches some of the best-performing hedge hedge fund managers of all time], it seemed like some woo-woo strange thing for them to take on. But as more and more people are integrating it into their process, you wouldn’t believe how many of the most powerful players in the world are meditating very deeply.”

Related:

“It’s one thing to learn skills, but the higher artist has to learn themes or meta-themes that will ultimately, spontaneously tap into the internalization of hundreds of what I would call ‘local habits.’ If you’re practicing quality, you’re deepening the muscle of quality and you’re also focusing the unconscious on that complexity, which we then tap first thing in the mornings [by journaling upon waking].”

[Editor’s note — But to make journaling work, you need to let problems go earlier in the day.] From later in that conversation:

“The very core idea is: when you go home, as best you can, unless you’re red-hot inspired, release your mind from the work. It’s very important to give your stress a recovery. [As a] core habit, you want to be turning it on and turning it off.”

“And you can teach people that turning it off is a huge part of teaching them to turn it on much more intensely. [Editor: Josh works with some of the top athletes in the world, like Marcelo Garcia in jiu-jitsu] Stress and recovery workouts, interval training, and meditation together are beautiful habits to develop to cultivate the art of turning it on and turning it off.”

“And then, thematically, this ties back into this internal proactive orientation, building a daily architecture which is around understanding your creative process as opposed to reacting to things, feeling guilty that you’re not working, really teaching people to tap into their internal compass.”

Here are the full episodes with Josh:

Episode #2 — Josh Waitzkin

Josh Waitzkin, The Prodigy Returns

Becoming the Best Version of You

RAMIT SETHI

“Well, one of my general life philosophies is do not try to be 40 before you are 40. It is funny how many of us we want to jump ahead and do all of these really sophisticated things, and I am no exception. Every time I start something new, I want to jump to what all the best people in the world are doing and try to copy them. But, of course, you have to go through the pain and the fire to be able to get there…”

Here are the full episodes with Ramit:

Ramit Sethi on Persuasion and Turning a Blog Into a Multi-Million-Dollar Business

How Creatives Should Negotiate

Becoming the Best Version of You

Should we ask something from users before they gain access to this tool or content?

If so, at what stage should we gate it… when they go to use the tool for the first time or at another point?

Will people continue once they know it’s gated or will we lose a conversion?

These are just some of the questions that cross the minds of marketing professionals today when it comes to creating and protecting substantial content assets.

So if you’ve ever found yourself asking the same questions, know that you’re not alone.

In fact, if you try searching ‘when and how to gate content’, here’s what you’ll find:

That’s a lot of results, and many of them are from the biggest marketing publications on the internet.

Apparently, there are a lot of people with strong views on the subject.

Hang on, what exactly is gated content?

Gated content is online materials, such as ebooks, checklists, articles and webinars, that require users to fill out a form before they can access them. The form will typically ask for the user’s name and email address, or some details about their job and company.

Basically, it’s anything that’s locked away behind a virtual gate that requires the user to supply some personal information in order to see, read or interact with the content.

It makes sense for content marketing because most gated content is made specifically for lead generation. A registration wall can provide vital information for nurturing sales leads.

So in today’s marketing world, ‘to gate or not to gate’ really is the big question.

To find the right answer for your business, you need to approach the question with your sales funnel in mind.

Some marketers say it’s a smart move to gate at the top of the funnel – when prospects are first hearing about you, your value or your offerings. Others claim that gating at the middle or end of the funnel is what actually works best.

In this post, I’ll discuss how to boost conversions on your gated content by proving to customers (or users) that you provide content that’s worth signing up for. Let’s get into it!

Step 1: Align your business goals with your customer’s goals

Generally, getting conversions from gated or un-gated assets is dependent on two main things: your business goals and your customer’s goals.

And that was pretty much exactly what CRO expert Talia Wolf said when I asked for her opinion on gated vs. un-gated content.

“It all comes down to your business goals and your customer’s goals. I’ve seen amazing results with gating content like white papers, comprehensive guides, checklists and cheat sheets,” says Talia.

Your business goal is obviously to convert visitors into customers who actually buy something or invest in what you’re offering. No doubt that’s your primary reason for gating content in the first place.

But your customers (or users) have a different reason (or goal) for responding to your call-to-action: they want to solve a specific problem with the content that you’re requiring their personal details to access.

Before either of you can achieve your desired results, you need to align your two goals together. This means you need to assure your customer that they’ll be achieving the goal they have in mind with your specific piece of gated content.

In other words, you need to show them that the gated content can actually provide the solution they desire. Then they’ll be in the right frame of mind to convert.

Take Hunter, for example.

Customers (or users) expect to use this tool to find email addresses of business leads or long-lost friends. That’s their goal. And that’s why they’re on Hunter’s website.

For Hunter to get conversions here, they need to align their goal (converting visitors) with their customer’s goal (finding email addresses).

So here’s what happens when you enter a domain name into Hunter’s input box to find an email.

Hunter reveals a little bit of the info you are asking for – enough to provide a basic solution and assure you of the value you will get if you sign up for a free account with your email address. They put the better solution behind a gate; offering up to 150 searches per month for free.

So because the solution is right there, tantalizing users, they are highly likely to go ahead and sign up for a free account where they will be allowed to search up to 150 email addresses monthly for free.

In this example, you can see how Hunter achieves their goal (getting conversions) while helping users achieve their goal (finding emails) by aligning the two together so that everyone goes home happy.

The key lesson to take away from it is that gating content works most effectively when, as Talia puts it, “gating content brings the customer a step closer to achieving their goal, and as a result you achieve yours too.”

Step 2: Motivate users first, then gate

Now that I’ve explained why it’s essential to align your business goals with your customer’s, let’s talk about how and when you should gate your content.

The question of when to gate content isn’t really as confusing as some people think it is.

A simple rule to follow is: motivate users first, then gate.

Before gating any content or assets, ask yourself, “If I gate this tool, ebook or resource, will my prospects be motivated enough to become subscribers in exchange for their personal information? What is it that I am doing to inspire or drive them to convert?”

I invited Claire Vignon Keser, Director of Optimization Strategy at WiderFunnel, to share her take on this.

“I believe users’ motivation should be the one and only element that will dictate if the content needs to be gated or not,” Claire said. “Gated content is relevant only when you have created enough motivation that the user won’t mind giving away some of their personal information.”

So how do you ensure users are motivated enough to actually give what you are asking for?

Claire recommends this simple formula.

That is, when the perceived benefits outweigh the perceived costs to the user, you can successfully gate your content. Expert Growth Marketer Sam Hurley of Optim-eyez also has some great insights on this.

“Gated content is an ingenious way to capture relevant data and forge stronger relationships between the visitor and your brand,” he says, “As long as it is deployed tastefully (and the content is exceptional).”

And rightly so – because great motivation is built when content is truly exceptional (in other words, valuable and relevant content that’s not easily found anywhere else).

Now, as much as it’s probably tempting to start gating your value like Hunter does, it’s important to note that if your content is not truly exceptional, it doesn’t need to be gated. You can share some but not all of it instead.

For example, take The Wall Street Journal.

WSJ lets its unregistered users see the first few parts of the articles they publish. Then they gate it.

The concept being that if a user is interested in what they’ve read in one or two paragraphs, they’ll most likely be motivated enough to submit their details to see the rest of the post.

Another relevant example that comes to mind here is Pinterest. They also allow their users to see a few photos before putting up a gate.

The bottom line is, you should gate at the middle or bottom of your funnel. Why? Because at this point, you’ve had the chance to convince them you have exceptional content. Your users have a feeling of who you are and what you do, and are hopefully motivated enough to convert.

As Claire points out,

At the top of the funnel, users have not yet had the chance to evaluate your brand and your offering. I have seen gated content on products specification and pricing pages, and it does not make sense to me. Why would you gate content that is meant to help your users evaluate your offering and your company?

It’s already painful enough to have to make a decision and evaluate all the available options, so don’t make it harder for your customers or you will risk losing them to your competition.

LinkedIn’s Marketing Lead, Mike Weir, echoes Claire’s sentiments, saying, “It’s especially important to keep your top of funnel content open and discoverable. It’s like dating, you want people to find you interesting and say, ‘I like your point of view. Let’s schedule a time to talk.’”

So, to recap: first, ensure you are creating exceptional content (i.e., content that’s not easily found everywhere). Second, let users have a feel for that content. Then, go ahead and gate it.

Step 3: Build a solid follow-up strategy

Most marketing efforts end up nowhere because they lack a solid follow-up strategy to close the leads they generate.

According to HubSpot, 80% of sales require five follow-ups. In other words, 44% of salespeople aren’t putting in 1/5 of the effort needed to close the deal.

That’s how crucial follow-ups are to conversions. And personally, I’ve had some amazing results with them in my business, too. I recently received this message after sending a follow-up email.

“Hi Victor, thank you for your [follow-up] email. I had not seen your previous email until now, so I do apologize…”

If I hadn’t sent that follow-up email, the prospect would have missed my initial message entirely.

So how do you build a solid follow-up strategy for customers (or users) who have signed up for or subscribed to a piece of your gated content?

Here’s a great five-step formula I learnt from HubSpot:

1. Determine your objective. ‘Just checking in to see if you received my last email’ isn’t good enough. You have a goal to achieve – is it to motivate them to check out an additional resource? Let them know about a related case study? Request a face-to-face meeting? Whatever it is, be sure of your objective.
2. Include relevant context. Help your customers (or contacts) remember you by recounting how you got their email and the value proposition you offered. Clearly reiterate how you connected while offering some new information to entice them.
3. State your purpose. You have already determined your objective, now you need to encourage your recipient to take an action that will help you achieve that objective. And more importantly, you need to be straightforward about it – put your call-t0-action out there.
4. Use a good subject line. It should be short, catchy and precise. For example, if they have downloaded gated content relating to email templates, just make the subject line something straightforward like, ‘Some really good email templates’.
5. Act with speed. It’s best to follow up within an hour of receiving a contact’s info. According to Harvard Business Review, marketers that tried to contact potential customers within an hour of receiving a query were nearly seven times as likely to qualify the lead as those who tried to contact the customer even an hour later.

What about un-gated content?

If you want to balance things out by un-gating some of your content as well, you can still reap great results from it.

A smart way to do this is by adding contextual forms or calls-to-action (CTAs) in-between sections of your content (landing pages, newsletters, blog posts, etc) so that you’re not restricting users from seeing the entire content.

The key word here is ‘contextual’ – the CTAs should be directly related to the content your users are already reading.

This technique proves that gated content and un-gated content can play nicely together – it doesn’t have to be one vs. the other.

Wrapping up

When all is said and done, if you have a solid content offering and follow the above steps, you will be able to increase your conversions on gated content.

And on that note, after users submit their forms, you might want to direct them to a special thank you page or ask them to take another action that’ll help move you closer to your goals.

After all, you want to thank them for becoming a part of your business.

As your company grows and more customers are added to your care, you will either need to hire more people, or be smarter with your time. To scale your Customer Success team, you will need to segment your customers and apply the appropriate engagement model. This means defining the appropriate amount of time and resources to mitigate the related level of risk each customer segment entails.

In my line of work, I help clients identify the Customer Success activities and programs relevant to each customer segment. The result of this work is immediate. The Customer Success team becomes more prescriptive, more confident and more proactive. Moreover, the perceived notion that the “reactive” question will be solved only by hiring additional Customer Success Managers is often de-mystified as soon as the proper segmentation is applied. Lastly, your team will finally have the time to focus on high-value activities and become a trusted advisor to your customers.

There are many ways to segment your clients, and it is important that you apply criteria that fit your company’s business model. Segmenting your clients will provide you with a concrete picture of their needs and how to fulfill them. Once you have finished with segmentation, it will be easier to find an engagement model that fits each segment group. In this blog, I am going to share three ways to achieve proper segmentation, which will help you move towards efficiently scaling your customer success team.

#1: Value Segmentation

Value-based segmentation is probably one of the most popular segmentation methods out there. It means grouping your customers based on their total contract value, or annual recurring revenue (ARR). One rule is to assign one Customer Success Manager per every 2 MM in ARR. There are several benefits to this method and the way it relates to Customer Success, but some suggest that this method does not reflect the real needs of the customers.

Source: Altitude Labs

#2: Persona Segmentation

Another way to think about customer segmentation is by looking at an appropriate experience that customers have with your company. The appropriate customer experiences refer to the type of customer journey the client should take to achieve their goals. This approach entails basing your planned activities, programs, and playbooks on the level of care each client truly needs to achieve their desired outcome during the customer journey, instead of the amount they are paying for.

#3: Profitability Segmentation

Regardless of the method you choose, it is important to validate your segmentation process with a well-developed scientific research process. After all, scaling your Customer Success is an important step in growing your business, and should not be left to chance.

Segmenting your customers using customer health-related data can help you identify the appropriate engagement model and level of care needed. I help my clients to visualize the state of their customer base, using a quadrant similar to the one depicted below. The quadrant helps to develop appropriate playbooks and success plans that define a proactive and appropriate action plan for each segment.

Source: Alacer Group

Summary

At some point, you must segment your client if you want to scale your customer success effort. Segmentation based on criteria that fit your business model will make it easier to know your customers’ needs and therefore find the right engagement model for each segment.

In order to segment your customers, you can either apply value-based, persona or big data segmentation. Value-based entails assigning one Customer Success Manager per every 2 MM in ARR. Persona segmentation entails planning your activities based on the level of care the customer needs to achieve their desired outcome during the customer journey, instead of the amount they are paying for. Lastly, you can segment your clients based on their health-related data.

What factors do you use to segment your clients? How has that helped your Customer Success team scale? Please share your experiences with other Customer Success professionals in the comments below.

If you liked this blog but need help with any one of the suggested segments above, I strongly suggest attending my webinar on June 28th “The Definitive How-To For Account Segmentation Models”

Key Takeaways

• Customer segmentations helps you apply the appropriate engagement model and become more proactive
• Value-based segmentation is about assigning one Customer Success Manager per every 2 MM in ARR
• You can also look at the appropriate experience of the client and base your activities on the desired outcome
• Customer related health data can help you to develop appropriate playbooks and success plans that define a proactive and appropriate action plan for each segment.

Discover the simple, 3 part framework behind wildly successful, high-converting webinars.

When it comes to structuring a wildly effective, revenue-generating webinar or online presentation, the biggest mistake you can make is overthinking the process.

Let me repeat: In order to create a webinar that works, you need to avoid making the process complicated.

There’s a major myth out there that webinars are complex, time-consuming and expensive to create.

It simply isn’t true.

In fact, webinars are quite easy to create, make and run if you stick to what I call the “3 P’s” – Presentation, Platform and People.

That’s it!

If you can remember those three words (Platform, Presentation and People), the rest falls into place. The 3 P’s are critical to every single component of how to make and run a webinar that generates sales.

The Magic Sentence

If you get nothing else from this post, remember this sentence: Webinars That Work = The right Presentation on the right Platform for the right People.

If you follow that formula, you’ll create online presentations and webinars that engage your audience, deliver value and result in more revenue for your business.

Everything that your webinar will be, all the success you’ll have – the clients, the revenue, the profits – all of it is going to fall into one of these three categories.

Presentation = Stories, Not Facts

Presentation, for example, is the delivery vehicle for your webinar – the way you deliver your content, the way you tell your story and the way you structure the experience for attendees.

Your presentation must start by focusing on where you once were, what happened, and where you are today.

Even more important, what you share during your presentation must lead your target audience to believe that they can achieve their specific goals or dreams as a result of what you’re sharing with them.

It’s also important to remember that great presentations are not filled with facts and figures. Instead, they unfold like epic stories – with colorful characters, conflict, drama, humor and the promise of a happy ending.

Platform = Webinar Software + Your Online Brand

Platform is all about how and where you run your webinar from, along with the methods you use to get people to attend.

Not all webinar platforms are created equal, and you’ll want to avoid ones that require attendees to download special software or applications in order to attend.

Remember, you want an easy, simple and effective platform to deliver your webinar from. The more complex or cumbersome it is for someone to log on and attend, the less likely he or she will be to make it.

Platform also refers to whatever digital footprint you’ve carved out for yourself online. From email lists to social media channels to blogging to press releases to paid advertising, your platform can be built in a variety of ways.

And, no matter how you build it, your platform is critical when it comes to generating attention and buzz for your online presentation or webinar.

People = The Right Ones vs. The Wrong Ones

People, of course is the biggest variable in creating a webinar that works.

Without the right people on your webinar, all is lost.

Just like with marketing on LinkedIn, the riches are in the niches when it comes to webinars. You must focus on defining your target audience.

Don’t try to be everything to everyone. Instead, focus on the niche audience or group you can best serve and who would most benefit from your product or service.

Next, knowing how to find, engage and invite the right people to your webinar is one of the most important methods you must master.

There are several ways to go about this, including social media channels, email marketing, paid advertising, guest blogging, podcasting and more.

The benefit of building a solid brand that is on topic and related to your webinar or online presentation is that it becomes an easy, even seamless transition for people who enjoy your content in one specific area (such as a podcast or blog) to also sign up and attend a webinar.

The key is stay on task and on target, and using various types of content marketing (blogs, videos, podcasts, eBooks, etc.) to warm up and funnel your target audience over to a webinar registration page.

Paid ads can also work, but I’ve found that the quality of people who come in via your free content (i.e. they read your guest blog post, listened to your podcast, etc.) is far higher than those who come in “cold” after clicking on a random Facebook Ad.

Remember the 3 P’s

The key to creating, running and profiting with webinars is following the simple framework I’ve laid out in this post.

If you concentrate on the right presentation on the right platform for the right people, you’ll be able to create wildly successful, highly-effective webinars!

To land your dream clients, you need to create a preference for you and your solution. It won’t happen without a plan. Here are the questions you need to answer and the things you need to do to create that plan:

Insights and Outcomes

1. What do you know that can help your prospect or client produce better results than they are producing now? How do they know you have ideas to improve their performance?
2. What outcomes can you improve if you are given the opportunity to discuss change? Does your client or prospect know and believe that you have these ideas?
3. What have you shared that would give your client or prospect the belief that you are the person who can help them the most when it comes to their business?
4. Are you considered a peer and a trusted advisor when it comes to the areas where you serve your clients and prospects? Does your knowledge cover a gap in the knowledge they need to  produce better results?
5. Would your client or prospect say that you are the person best equipped to help them compete and win in their market?

Presence

1. Be likable. Have a personality. Have a sense of humor. Be human, and allow other people to be human.
2. Who inside your client or prospect account knows you?
3. What do you know about their individual needs? Would they know that you know what they need, and how they think about it?
4. What do you know about their preferences when it comes to the business? Would they understand that you are aware of what they want done and how it needs to work for them specifically?
5. What do you know about them personally?
6. How many people have you spent time with within your client or prospect’s business?
7. How many times have you called to thank your client or sent them a thank you note apart from email?

Trust

1. Do you follow up and keep the promises and commitments that you made at each stage of the process?
2. Are you honest about the time, effort, and resources that it will take to execute the change that your client or prospect needs and that you are recommending?
3. Are you present and available to help when your client or prospect has problems, or do you wait until they are resolved before you engage them?

Understanding Change

1. Do you proactively bring your clients and prospects new ideas that can help them produce better results?
2. Do you know where each of the stakeholders inside your client or prospective client is in regards to change? Where are they in the buying process and what do they need?
3. How do you help them build the case for the change they need inside their own organization? Do you know how and when to help them navigate their internal processes?
4. Do you know how to help your client or prospect protect the investment they need to make when purchasing is involved? Do you know how to engage their professional buyers in a way that ensures they get the outcomes they need?

Differentiation

1. Do you know how to differentiate your company and your offering in a way that positions you to be preferred?
2. Can you tie the way you create value to the better results your client needs in a way that compels them to choose you, your company, and your solution over your competitor’s?
3. Can you explain how your solution produces greater results than competitive solutions or alternatives?

Process

1. Do you have a process for collaborating with your client to ensure that you can help them with a solution they can support and that they will own—and defend—through the sales process?
2. Do you take the time to resolve your client or prospect’s concerns to help them confidently move forward with the change they need? Do you provide them with the necessary proof?
3. Are you easy to do business with, making the negotiation of terms, conditions, and changes an easy process for your clients and prospects when this is necessary?
4. Do you follow up to ensure your client or prospect is achieving the outcomes, the results that you sold them? Are you accountable?

[smartads]

The post 26 Ways to Create a Preference for You and Your Solution appeared first on The Sales Blog.

Sales Forecasting Methods that Give Accurate Insights

Be honest. You have no idea what your company is going to be making this time next year. Or, you have an idea of next year, but what about 2020? Sales forecasting solves this!

You may be growing, but it’s not something you have much control over.

Most B2B businesses don’t do much to offer in the form of sales forecasting.

Instead, they tally up their sales for the month, and compare it with the month before or the same month last year. If their sales are up, happy days!

If not. “Oh, no. We have to focus on sales, or ads, or [insert another panic move here]”.

Sound familiar?

I’ll be honest with you, it’s easier to take a snapshot of your earnings month over month and decide what to do then and there. That said, it’s no way to monitor your sales—and it is certainly no way to improve them.

Adding up your sales per month may tell you whether you are doing good or bad, but sales forecasting can actually help you to grow your business.

Once you’ve learned how to start a cold email, grab this guide which gives you 10 tips you need to be using to maximize your cold emails!

Making the Case: Sales Forecasting

From better inventory management (if you sell physical products, like Amazon FBA), spotting opportunities for your business, and setting budgets—there is a lot to like about sales forecasting.

The same can apply in SaaS and really any other business.

The main reason why sales forecasting is a must in a B2B environment?

Because you will be able to take advantage of future changes and opportunities. By having a good idea of your future revenues (when and where they will be generated) you will give your business the ability to take advantage of any future changes.

But, with reliable sales forecasting, you have the strong basis needed for future planning. You will be able to react to any situation and you will be able to carefully plan your business’ route to success.

Sounds good, right?

“The most reliable way to forecast the future is to try to understand the present.“—John Naisbitt

How Sales Forecasting Is Done (Hint: It’s Not Easy)

Unfortunately, B2B sales forecasting isn’t a walk in the park. Most companies don’t have the enormous sales volumes needed for statistical forecasting techniques.

Because of this, they choose one of two options: forecast categories and the weighted pipeline.

The forecast categories approach is when you have different categories and you allocate opportunities to each category based on their degree of certainty. The weighted pipeline approach involves the application of a closing probability to live opportunities.

Both of these are easy. But, that’s about as far as the good news goes.

There are many drawbacks associated with both techniques, including closing dates and judgmental amounts.

The main problem, especially with the weighted pipeline approach, is that the all-or-nothing nature of B2B opportunities is ignored.

This is no good. No good at all.

So, what approaches can you add to the mix to improve sales forecasting?

Biggest Piece of the Puzzle: Document the Sales Process

A well-documented sales process IN WRITING is key.

This is because both forecast categories and the weighted pipeline approach need your opportunities to be in a stage that accurately reflects how far along they are in your sales process. Your sales reps also need to know exactly where they are. And they need to know exactly what to do next.

Looking at the buying processes of the prospective client will enable them to work out their next moves.

You should put together a small requirement list at this stage. Some CRM applications enable validation rules to be created so you know what opportunities should be taken to the next stage and what opportunities shouldn’t.

Use these sparingly, as they devalue data quality.

A sales process will make or break your forecasts. Having one makes your revenue more predictable and gives you a base from which to set and achieve targets for the future.

Sales Forecasting Methods

There are several basic methods (like this post from SalesHackers points out) of getting an accurate number, but we’re going to focus in on the basics. If you can figure up the basic math and the few calculations you’ll need, the forecast will end up more accurate than a “ballpark figure”.

Step One: Gather Data

• You’ll need to figure out how many leads you’re getting (for each particular month) as well as the sources of those leads (to help you grow).
• Then, figure out how many of those leads (again, per month) turned into bona fide clients (i.e. conversion rate).
• Finally, you’ll need to figure out the average sale value. How much did the average new client pay to get your products/services?

Step Two: Set the Goal

Once you have numbers that show where you’ve been, you can figure out where you can realistically go. If that sounds like Matthew McConaughey trying to sell you a Lincoln, sorry. But it’s true.

Goals and forecasts are two sides of the same coin.

Your aspirations can’t be met without facts and facts have to be put to use. Using your current sales and methods can help you set realistic goals, and ambitious goals can help you create and improve revenue streams.

Example: Let’s say, a software-as-a-service (SaaS) product is making $70k/mo on average. That number comes from servicing around 200 clients. Not bad, but the company really wants to make it to 7 figures (or about $84k/mo) within the next 6 months.

What’s to say that your goal shouldn’t be a million within 6 months? Now, if you’re trying to quadruple it within the same timeframe—that would be a monumental undertaking that requires infrastructure, staffing, and a lot more leads than you currently get.

See the importance of forecasts?

Is there a way to reach a revenue goal and accurately forecast that it can be done within a foreseeable timeframe? Yep.

You see what you’re doing and set the goal. Now, it’s all about working backwards.

Step Three: Do the Math

Keeping with our example goal, we have to break down the individual elements in order to forecast how much revenue is necessary to meet the goal.

This is also the part where you need to know which number affect your business the most.

At $70,000/mo in revenue and 200 clients that is an average revenue of $350/mo per client. But forecasting isn’t always as simple as adding 25 clients within six months.

Our example was a SaaS product and there is churn, or the percentage of clients that leave on a monthly/annual basis. If our example company is gaining 10 clients a month, but losing 8 one month and 11 the next.

If you simply look at “this time last year”, you see growth, but it’s not really forecast-worthy.

The best plan to accurately forecast would be to discover why people are leaving and reduce their churn. If they can find the metaphorical leak, it will produce consistent growth. Instead of losing most of your incoming clients, revenue will stabilize from month to month and increase in a trackable fashion.

But What If Retention Isn’t an Option?

If you aren’t losing your customers, then it’s not churn, but it is acquisition.

Most businesses will have to gain new clients to increase revenue instead of retaining current clients. If you’re an agency that specializes in SEO, you may lose clients due to success. Or, if you are a B2B, clients may buy once and not need anything else from you.

If you’re product is not on a recurring revenue model—the only way to grow is to forecast and plan out how you’re going to acquire new clients.

Doing this will require you to understand which methods are working for your lead generation. Figuring out where the best quality leads are coming from and increasing those leads in a way that is manageable—while helping you reach your forecasts.

For detailed calculations based on your situation we’ve found these posts super helpful:

• How to Calculate Annual Sales Growth (from The Motley Fool)
• Forecast Calculation Examples (from Oracle)
• How to Forecast Sales (from Lean Business Planning)

Nailing the Accuracy of Your Sales Forecasts

One thing that you do need to get right is the accuracy of the sales forecast. You can’t cut corners.

While there will always be volatility, competition, and even economic factors that make forecasts not 100% accurate—issues should be the exception and not the rule. You want to be somewhere in between the accuracy of Minority Report (creepy level of accuracy) and Bill Murray in Groundhog Day (laughable inaccuracy).

One’s impossible to achieve, while the other is as frustratingly useless as the predictions of a weather-predicting woodchuck.

What’s the point in setting a goal without the data that proves you can actually hit it?

It may be quicker and easier, but the figures won’t add up in the future, and you’ll end up making bad decisions. This ultimately gives you a big headache and lots of problems on your hands. A shortcut that is definitely not worth it.

So here are some tips to help you get the accuracy of your forecast right and hit those sales targets.

Decide Where to Focus

You can’t give everything equal attention. Categorize the deals and lead/growth strategies, using one of the following three:

• Must win NOW: Pick those lead generation tactics that work and increase them. Or, like our example, lower churn and improve onboarding to watch revenue rise.
• Must develop for next quarter: Next, set up the tasks/experiments that you’ll need to hit longer term goals and ensure that you’re hitting your growth potential.
• Qualify out: Keep detailed track of everything and review data to see if things are on target. Forecasts will become more accurate over time if you rely on data as you move forward.

By splitting the deals up into the three categories, you will know what to give your immediate attention to.

Next, avoid surprises! Surprises are a no-no in the business world. This isn’t the equivalent to your partner whisking you away to the Caribbean for a week. You need automated visibility in each deal so you can see what has changed from week-to-week, so you can make informed decisions about your next moves.

Don’t allow for subjective forecasting. Customer verifiable outcomes should form the basis of your sales process.

You also need to know your team’s quota, as well as the projected achievement and current closed achievement, so you can compare against the quota. Sounds easy enough, right? Yet so many businesses don’t do this well! Don’t be one of them.

Work on Your Sales and Marketing Alignment Culture (Smarketing)

You need to establish a culture of collaboration, learning, and accountability if you are to improve the accuracy and quality of your sales forecasts. So, how do you do this?

You need to reward honesty and accuracy, and aid your team by aligning the sales and marketing efforts (or smarketing). We’ve highlighted the importance of accuracy, so create an environment where honest changes are rewarded and encouraged, even if the news isn’t good news.

Conduct regular deal reviews, read market changes and their impact on closing behavior, know your sales cycle length, and use consistent definitions.

Remove as much of the politics as possible.

I mean, who likes politics anyway? Remove amateurs from the process, reward accuracy, and decouple forecasts from quotas.

Make Sure Your Data Collection Process Is on Point

You wouldn’t live in a house that was built on a rocky foundation, would you? Well, let’s hope not!

Data collection is the foundation of your sales forecast, so you need to do it correctly. It needs to be consistent and accurate.

Otherwise, you will be doomed from the start.

If you don’t use a consistent counting method, the impact could be disastrous. This is especially true for a B2B environment, as the customer journey is a long one and they engage with a wide number of channels.

Make sure you have a centralized system in place for tracking conversions from all campaigns and channels – the entire journey.

Reality Checks for Closing Dates

Remember the two techniques mentioned earlier—forecast categories and the weighted pipeline approach? Remember the drawbacks?

Well, one of them was the exposure to bad closing dates—something both techniques suffer from.

There are three reality checks you can use for closing dates, which will boost your sales forecasts considerably.

The first is to back pedal. You know your sales process. You know about each pipeline stage; the requirements and the length of time they take. This means that you should start from the closing date when looking at an opportunity. Back-pedal through the process to see if you arrive at today’s date. If so, your closing date is accurate.

You should also identify stagnating opportunities early on and hunt outdated closing dates down.

Stop Getting Sales Managers to Do Sales Forecasts

Be honest; right now, does your sales manager pull together reports and spreadsheets? They then meet with the reps to check off the boxes, right? This is no good!

Why? Well, executives and managers are far too removed from actual buyer behaviour for this to work.

An individual reps pipeline makes up the basis of your sales forecast. The best reps, therefore, have the most accurate pipelines and forecasts. One of the best things you can do is ask your sales and marketing team how many leads they’d need to reach the new target.

This means that your reps are the key to your forecasts.

Now is a good time to get your sales managers to coach your reps on understanding buyer behavior and how to create their pipelines with this in mind.

Dealing with Complex Human Behaviours

You don’t need us to tell you that humans are complicated creatures.

Unfortunately, you still have to make an effort to understand them. Do this, and you will see your forecasting performance improve.

So, what are your options?

1. First, you need to build an accurate understanding, and this means using evidence, of where the prospect is in their decision-making process. Before they make an order, what steps are required?
2. Then you need to build an accurate assessment, again using evidence, of how well positioned you are compared to other options the buyer is considering.

Sometimes the evidence is clear, other times you will need to go looking for it. Either way, you will miss something important if you don’t know what you are looking for!

Summary

So, hopefully, you now have an understanding about the different sales forecasting methods you can use to improve the quality and accuracy of your forecasts.

While forecast categories and the weighted pipeline approach may be easy, they aren’t good enough on their own. However, you can mitigate their numerous drawbacks with the sales forecasting tips that have been mentioned above.

Make sure your sales process is documented, check closing dates, create the right work culture, and ensure you collect data properly to begin with, and you won’t go too far wrong!

Once you’ve learned how to start a cold email, grab this guide which gives you 10 tips you need to be using to maximize your cold emails!

Ok, so how do you measure your ad spend? Do you use Return on Investment (ROI) or Return on Ad Spend (ROAS)?

Honestly, you might use both. Well, you personally might not, but within your organization there’s a time to measure your ad spend by looking at ROI and a time to use ROAS to measure your return.

Ok, great. So then what’s the difference and when do you use return on investment versus return on ad spend?

In this article, I’m going to go through the use cases of each and explain the mindset behind each measurement.

By the end, you should understand not only how each of these figures is calculated but why they’re being calculated in the first place.

Calculating Return on Ad Spend

When we’re calculating ROAS here’s the equation used:

ROAS = Revenue / Ad Spend

It should be noted that when calculating ROAS you should be using the revenue generated by that ad spend, not total revenue for the whole company. This means it’s super important to have conversion tracking set up for your campaigns that are being tracked in a CRM where a salesperson can mark a deal created from an ad-based conversion as closed-won or closed-lost.

Having proper website tagging is a necessary first step for this. So, if you haven’t already, I recommend making sure your website is tagged properly.

Alright onward, based on the equation above we know that the ROAS figure will never be negative. The least amount of revenue you can have is 0, not a negative figure.

Off the bat, we can figure that this calculation is going to be used by advertisers because a lot of automated systems and bid adjustment scripts will malfunction with negative numbers.

The Thought Process Behind Return on Ad Spend

When calculating ROAS we’re solely focused on the success of specific ad elements relative to each other. Which advertisement, ad group, keyword, etc generate the most return?

In this mindset, you’re saying “Okay, we’re advertising and reporting on those ad elements, so where are the winners and where are the losers?”

We’re going to talk about how that’s different from the mindset behind return on investment next. First, let’s discuss how ROI is calculated.

Calculating Return on Investment

When we’re calculating ROI here’s the equation used:

ROI = ( Revenue – Cost ) / Cost

Similarly to ROAS, when calculating ROI in advertising you should be using the revenue generated by that ad spend, not total revenue for the whole company.

Again, proper website tagging is a necessary first step for this.

Based on the equation above we know that the ROI figure can be negative. Ruh-roh, what does that mean?!

We can say that this equation will mostly be used by an accountant, CFO, other financial department personnel or a Director of Advertising.

The Thought Process Behind Return on Investment

When calculating ROI we’re focused on the effectiveness of advertising as a whole.

In this mindset, you’re saying “Okay, we’re advertising now, but we don’t have to. So, is it working or not?”

When reviewing advertising spend through this lens our objectives are broader and usually company-wide. We’re looking at trimming worthless spending in all departments, not just advertising. So our mission is to find negative returns and take appropriate action.

So Which Should You Use?

The short answer is, you should use ROI if your goal is to prove financial efficacy, and ROAS if your goal is to identify top performing ads.

I like reviewing both. I try to see my work through the lens of my clients, and with retention as my primary goal, it’s important to me that my clients get value out of my work.

If advertising through a certain channel isn’t paying off, I say “catch it early and cut those expenses”. However, it’s just as important to make sure what you’re seeing in your ROI reports are showing the best advertising can possibly be.

Fully optimizing a campaign to identify top performing ad elements can be achieved by measuring ROAS. This approach is both automatable and accurate.

Whatever your measurement purposes, I wish you the most profitable ads in the coming quarter. Happy advertising!

There’s an explosive NEW real estate in town. It doesn’t have any walls, and it’s driven by our voracious appetite for technology and connectivity. But the biggest opportunity is a highly profitable $75.6-billion niche segment few investors know about.

When the wireless revolution first swept across the U.S., most investors were skeptics, thinking cell phones were for the already-rich, or for drug dealers. But those that saw this opportunity for what it was—and what we see now—made billions. And they are still making billions today.  

This is a sponsored article
 
Ronald Reagan dished out public domains to private upstarts like candy in the 1980s—via lotteries– and then they were re-sold to telecoms giants, such as AT&T.   

Mark Warner of Colombia Capital, dubbed ‘The Man with the Golden iPhone’, made $150 million on these lotteries, and he was just getting started. He wasn’t wealthy, and he wasn’t a drug dealer—he simply saw the coming revolution. Then he became a U.S. Senator. 

Likewise, Steve Case—Washington’s new ‘tech whisperer’—made his fortune when he founded AOL.

He’s worth $1.39 billion today.

But that was the beginning of the wireless revolution. Now the quickest and purest way to profit in this industry is in a niche segment that you might have been taking for granted.

Three companies in this most profitable niche have seen crazy 10-year returns for early-in investors.

* Crown Castle International Corp. (NYSE:CCI): CCI rose from about $2.00 to its current price of $101… handing investors a 4,950 percent return.
* American Tower Corp. (NYSE:AMT): AMT rose from about $1.50 to its current price of $131…handing investors an 8,633 percent return.
* SBA Communications (NASDAQ:SBAC): SBAC rose from about 30 cents to its current price of $134… handing investors a 44,566 percent return.

American Tower Corp (AMT) 10-Year Returns

Crown Castle International Corp (CCI )10-Year Returns

Still, today, only 25 percent of the world has access to the vast global communications network. But the

wireless revolution that swept through the U.S. and minted millionaires out of the investors in these

three companies is now sweeping through South America.

And … one little-known company is next in line to take advantage of this explosive opportunity.

They are in the same profitable niche as the three companies above: Cell phone towers.

That company is Tower One Wireless (CNX:TO + OTC: TOWTF).

The three little-known companies that cashed in on the cell phone tower niche by building 450,000 towers and rising to a combined market cap of more than $100 billion were just the beginning. 

Tower One Wireless is next in line to repeat this in South America.

Only 100,000 cell towers have been built so far in South America– a far cry from the 520,000 towers needed by 2020.

That’s 420,000 TOWERS that need to be built in the space of just 3 years!

That’s 5X growth!

South America has been slower than other regions in migrating towards a TowerCo model—but now that wireless is affordable across the globe it’s about to roll out big.

And that represents a huge opportunity for early-in investors.

Independent tower companies are springing up to meet massive demand for cell towers by wireless companies scrambling to compete with each other to provide unlimited wireless internet and mobile phone data.

These most profitable of wireless ‘landlords’ build thousands of cell towers and rent them out to wireless providers scrambling to rapidly increase their capacity and coverage.

This type of business model is usually kept TOP SECRET because it generates so much net profit and continuous cash flow.

There are only 4 publicly-traded cell tower companies on the planet, and Tower One (CNX:TO + OTC: TOWTF) is one of them.

Founded in 2015 and sporting a market cap of just $11.23 million, Tower One is the ONLY small-cap entry point into the industry, period.

The three others are basically in the same business; huge multi-billion- dollar market cap companies. Naturally, the law of large numbers limits how quickly they can grow, and stock prices limit first-in opportunities for investors to make outsized gains.

According to a Mott McDonald study on South America’s Cell Tower Investment Opportunity, rapid wireless subscriber growth and heavy investments in LTE rollout make South America a fertile investment opportunity for tower companies.

NPV=Net Presence Value

Source: TMT Finance

But even more importantly for investors, this is one of the easiest niches to make money in. The simplicity is elegant: You either rent or buy land, you have a fixed cost installation for your tower infrastructure, and then you rent your installation to giant telcos.

A single tower can serve up to 4 telcos, while the tower company sits back and enjoys pure profit for years and years…
 

Very few industries can boast of such a clear-cut path to profitability. In fact, it might be the most profitable real estate investment by square foot on the planet.  

This is the model that is most likely to attract C-level executives from Fortune 500 companies to South America.

Here are 5 reasons to watch Tower One (CNX:TO + OTC:TOWTF) very closely:

#1 Little Competition

TowerOne is the only small-cap Tower company in South America, and provides an excellent opportunity to grow your capital. All the other three incumbents are mature companies worth tens of billions apiece. Small-cap companies with great business models offer some of the best opportunities for capital growth.

The great thing is that the big boys such as American Tower have no advantage over Tower One in South America despite their size. This is mainly because they are all starting operations at the same time.

Everyone is starting from scratch, so the playing field is leveled.

#2 80 percent EBITDA Margins

The margins in this business segment are potentially massive.

We are talking about 80 percent EBITDA margins, much higher than typical margins by other sectors.

Each tower costs from $50k – $100k, and generates $12k-$15k per year per operator. Assuming each tower serves two operators, it takes only two years for the tower to pay for itself. And then the profits start flowing.

#3 Massive Demand in a Growth Industry

The growth runways for TowerOne (CNX:TO + OTC:TOWTF) are fantastic. Basically, the more towers the company builds, the more valuable it becomes. South America needs 420,000 towers built over the next three years. Tower One expects to collect ~$180k in profit from each tower.

So, the South American market is worth $180k * 420,000 = $75.6 billion. 

Tower One Growth projections:

                              Current:11 towers

Market cap only $11m! (25 towers in development/construction)

                              Q1 2018:100 towers

Q1 2018 Fair value would be $60.4m Market Cap($504k value per tower). That's a more than 6x increase from today’s Market cap!

                              Q1 2019: 250-300 towers

Q1 2019 Fair value would be $200-300m Market Cap ($504k value per tower). That’s more than 22x current market cap!

This is a potential multibagger in just two years.

Tower One estimates that it will need to raise $5-$10m (in equity or debt) to finance and build the next 200 towers. After this, the company should be able to self-finance future growth through internal cash-flow.

#4 Power Team + Plenty of Experience in Telco

Tower One is led by a world-class team and industry insiders with high-level experience in the top echelons of the telco industry.

Alex Ochoa (CEO)–Alex recently left his directorship at Mackie Research Capital, one of the top retail and institutional brokerage firms in Canada, to focus solely on building Tower One Wireless. Alex and his management team have previously financed the tower industry for over $150 million and helped create tens of billions of dollars-worth of shareholder value

Rolland Bopp (Advisor)– Roland is a former CEO of Deutche Telekom USA known today as T-Mobile which is part of Deutche Telekom AG of Germany.  And, knowing how profitable the cell phone tower market is, he’s joined the team… and headed toward a billion dollar pay day.

With 60 percent of shares in the hands of its management, you can be sure that supply will remain tight… meaning higher share prices.

Alex Ochoa and team are major stakeholders in Tower One (with 30m shares) and are focused on maintaining sound structure while creating shareholder value. He has voluntarily locked up the entire 30million shares for 3 years.  

Early-in investors can therefore expect very minimal share dilution so with this supply locked up…demand will send the price even higher.

#5. Potential for Immediate Cash Flow

It takes just 30 days to build out cell tower infrastructure, and by day 45, you’re already collecting cash flow. A typical contract runs for 10-20 years, so there is excellent predictable revenue visibility with no down years.

Each tower on average yields $1,000 per tenant, per month. Each tower has the ability to attract up to four operators per month. On a realistic basis, the ability to add a second tenant is 75 percent, a third is about 50/50, a 4th would be a long shot. So, with 1 operator, you’re looking at 25 percent cash on cash, with 2 operators you double that, with a third, you triple that.

But here’s what’s truly unique about the TowerCo model: To get that 2nd and 3rd additional operator, you have zero additional expense.

The bottom line is this: Tower One Wireless (CNX:TO + OTC:TOWTF) is the only small cap entry point into an industry with just four publicly-listed companies. It’s also the only small-cap positioned to take advantage of the massive South American market where the next wireless revolution is already unfolding with demand for over half a million cell towers.

So, for investors looking for a first-in opportunity in an industry that is bursting at the growth seams, the best way is to slip in through the back door of what makes all this connectivity possible in the first place.

 
By. James Burgess

Legal Disclaimer/Disclosure: This piece is an advertorial and has been paid for. This document is not and should not be construed as an offer to sell or the solicitation of an offer to purchase or subscribe for any investment. No information in this Report should be construed as individualized investment advice. A licensed financial advisor should be consulted prior to making any investment decision. We make no guarantee, representation or warranty and accept no responsibility or liability as to its accuracy or completeness. Expressions of opinion are those of Oilprice.com only and are subject to change without notice. Oilprice.com assumes no warranty, liability or guarantee for the current relevance, correctness or completeness of any information provided within this Report and will not be held liable for the consequence of reliance upon any opinion or statement contained herein or any omission. Furthermore, we assume no liability for any direct or indirect loss or damage or, in particular, for lost profit, which you may incur as a result of the use and existence of the information, provided within this Report. All content contained herein is subject to the terms and conditions set forth in the original article posted on Oilprice.com and subject to the terms and conditions therein.

How to Use Content to Generate a Steady Flow of Leads written by John Jantsch read more at Duct Tape Marketing

In this post – 5 Steps to Restart, Recharge and Revive Your Marketing Right Now! – I introduced an aggressive initiative to help any business owner struggling to stay on plan with their marketing for the year. The idea is to take the mid-point of the year and get a fresh restart.

In post #2 of 5, I introduced – 7 Must Have Elements of Every Small Business Website

---

Today we tackle Step #3 – How to Use Content to Generate a Steady Flow of Leads

If you are tired of hearing you must produce content to compete in the world of marketing today, I have good news and bad news.

First the bad news 

As content continues to grow in importance in the marketing mix, it must take on an elevated place in your strategy and planning. The use of high quality, education based content has become an essential ingredient in creating awareness, building trust, converting leads, serving customers and generating referrals.

I’ve said this many times over the last few years, but marketers these days have a lot in common with publishers and it’s time to embrace this reality fully – content is air

Now for the good news – you don’t need as much content as you think.

The days of pumping out thin blog posts day after day are over.

For your ReStart program, here’s all you need to do. Consider writing just six blog posts for the rest of this year, but put a month’s worth of blood, sweat, and tears into each one. Deal?

Below the complete system for turning content into leads.

Here’s the system in 3 steps

1. Create a list of just 6 of the most useful content ideas for your ideal customer
2. Build a lead generating content upgrade for each piece
3. Start promoting each piece in advertising and social media (We’ll cover this tomorrow)

That’s it – execute on this over the next six months, and you’ll start generating leads.

Step 1 – What content should you produce?

For a few years, I’ve been promoting something I call the Total Content System^TM This is simply an approach that allows you to plan, delegate, curate, create, collaborate, repurpose and get far more out of every piece of content you produce. Once your system is in place, it will build momentum with each passing month and begin to multiply in value to your organization.

This is the approach we are going to take to develop your key content.

Through your knowledge and by using keyword tools like Google Keyword Tool or Wordtracker, develop a list of core content topics and assign one to each month for the next six months. (I’ve written a great deal about how to do keyword research, and you can even get an ebook on it below.)

Each theme should be a substantial topic related to your business or industry and represent an important keyword search term. It might be helpful to think about it as a book. Each month might represent a chapter in what will ultimately make up an important body of work by the end of this year.

You can also designate terms that you know you would like to rank higher for, but currently, have little or no content that leads people online or off to you.

Check out my complete guide to keyword research here
 

Step 2: Create Some Content Upgrades

The notion of getting someone to your website, landing page or content of some sort and enticing them to exchange their email address and other contact information to get something they are looking for is pretty much standard marketing fare these days.

The idea of bait for lead capture has certainly evolved, though. There was a time when all you needed was a lead capture form and message that asked people to sign up to capture an email, but then people got very tired of all the email this generated.

Smart marketers realized that they needed to offer something valuable in exchange – an ebook, webinar or free trial of some sort.

Even so, visitors started getting harder to convert as more and more sites featured pop-up, slide in and scrolling calls to sign up and download.

Today, and who knows how long really, marketers have tapped the seemingly insatiable hunger for useful, actionable, educational content and are employing highly targeted “content upgrades” to effectively convert visiting traffic to lead funnels like never before.

The basic idea behind a content upgrade is this – Write a really great, useful blog post and then when people show up to read it offer them an “upgrade” to the content in the form of a checklist, video, or case study relevant to the topic in exchange for  content details.

Less content, more value

Brian Dean of Backlinko told me that when he discovered the power of the content upgrade, he started producing content less frequently while focusing on creating posts so full of great content they couldn’t be ignored. He then married these posts with a content upgrade that ensured a large percentage of the traffic these posts received (sometimes from the thousands of shares and links from other sites) also turned into leads for his various SEO offerings. (Listen to Brian on a recent Duct Tape Marketing Podcast.)

In this post on Dean’s site Google’s 200 Ranking Factors: The Complete List you’ll find a link to download a handy checklist of the top factors. Dean claims that the addition of this checklist increased conversion on this post by 785%. Not too shabby.

Precisely segmented visitors

Another important factor to the content upgrade is that it helps you segment visitor interest.

Very few people are interested in the generic ebook or report you wrote several years ago, but they are terribly interested in how to do that one specific thing they searched for – all the better that you now have the ability to know what they are looking for and tailor your response to that specific need.

Think about the implications for this when it comes to email marketing follow-up. You now have a much more focused idea about what your subscribers care most about and can tailor your follow-up with this knowledge and even use it to create more complete products and courses based on this interest.

Better automation and follow-up

One of the drivers of this form of lead capture is better automation technology. The days of one size fits all pop-up boxes are over. My current favorite toolset Thrive Leads offers WordPress users what amounts to a Swiss Army Knife of various form creation options. (The opt-in box above for keyword research uses this tool)

The Thrive Leads plugin allows you to create up to a dozen variations of inline forms, light boxes, welcome mats, and slide in two-step sign up forms. Every form can be executed on a single page or post, and every type of capture campaign can be tested against variations.

This type of powerful form creation coupled with lead nurturing campaigns using a tool like Infusionsoft makes the content upgrade an almost unfair competitive advantage.

Developing content upgrades

I wrote a post some time ago on something called 8 Alternatives to the Google Keyword Tool. Google smiled on this post and shows it whenever someone goes out there searching for this trending topic.

If I happened to have a course or ebook on SEO, I could easily capture highly targeted leads by adding a content upgrade to that page. (Hint: When you visit this page you’ll see my content upgrade there.)

One of the quickest ways to identify great candidates for immediate content upgrade opportunities is to look through your analytics and find your most popular content today and consider ways to personalize a content upgrade for these posts.

You can find your most popular pages in Google Analytics by going to Behavior –> Site Content –> Landing Pages

Another great ploy is to use a tool like BuzzSumo to identify some of the most shared content online based on the keyword phrases that relate to your business or ideal client.

My guess is you can easily identify a post that is getting tons of shares that you might be able to both up the game on and create a content upgrade for.

My guess is that in the example above for Backlinko Brian found a post for the top 100 factors and created the top 200 post that kicked that already great post in the rear – add a content upgrade and watch your list explode!

Landing page pioneer Lead Pages has long been a promoter of the simple content upgrade for conversion. Here’s a great post with 21 examples of content upgrades to get your mind humming. (Pay close attention to the content upgrade offer you’ll get on this page too.)

What’s a good upgrade?

You don’t have to overthink the package for a content upgrade. In many cases what you’re looking to do is simplify information not make it more complex. People want relevant snacks more than the full manual.

• One of the easiest content upgrades is a checklist based on a how to post. People like checklists and they are easy to create.
• Take a 100 factors kind of post and reveal the top 10 in detail in an upgrade. (Similar to Backlinko post above)
• Create a list of tools related to a particular type of advice – I could easily add the top 10 tools to use in creating content upgrades to this post on content upgrades
• Compile a list of links from around the web telling people how to do something based on the tool they use – set up lead nurturing in Infusionsoft, Act-On, Aweber, etc. – the best part is you don’t have to create all of the tutorials you just have to find them.
• Create or compile a swipe file – if you are telling people how to get influencers to write about their business, share exact scripts and emails they might use as an upgrade.
• Offer a screencast showing readers exactly how to do what you’ve written about in your post.
  Partner with a tool provider – write a post talking about how to do something and contact one or more provider of a tool for actually doing it and let people enter for a chance to get this tool for free.
• People love templates – if you write a post giving advice offer to share a template, completed example or form they can use to do what you’ve suggested.

I think it’s time to make content upgrades a big part of your content marketing and lead capture game plan.

Okay, there you have it – you’re ready to start generating solid leads using your content.

Here’s the system in 3 steps

1. Create a list of just 6 of the most useful content ideas for your ideal customer
2. Build a lead generating content upgrade for each piece
3. Start promoting each piece in advertising and social media (We’ll cover this tomorrow)

The remaining step – promoting each piece using advertising and social media is up next – stay tuned.

If you haven’t built a team of highly qualified and skilled sales professionals, don’t waste your time and money investing in sales processes, training, compensation plans, technology, marketing support, or strong products and services.

Depending on the industry, somewhere between 20 and 33 percent of salespeople aren’t capable of being successful at their jobs. It’s a frightening statistic, but scarier still is understanding that a bad hire—a salesperson who lasts less than a year—can cost your company anywhere from $250K to $800K (or more), including lost business opportunity.

In today’s hyper-competitive buyers’ market, “mis-hiring” has become an epidemic, forcing sales leaders to rethink their approach to hiring. They have learned, all too painfully, that yesterday’s hiring methods no longer apply. These lessons include:

• A salesperson with a past record of stellar performance won’t automatically perform in the future.

• Accuracy in salespeople’s resumes has declined, so rigorous reference checking is required.

• A candidate who interviews well enough to get the job may not be good enough to deliver the numbers after they are hired.

To change the mis-hiring paradigm, many sales leaders are casting aside their informal, gut-instinct approach and building high-performance sales teams by implementing a formal hiring process.

A formal process provides an objective assessment of each candidate, which is one of the most critical success factors in hiring.

Key elements of an effective sales hiring process include:

1. Forming an internal hiring team comprised of multiple stakeholders. For a small company, those stakeholders might include the CEO, VP of sales, and VP of marketing. A larger company might enlist the regional VP of sales, HR representative, and local sales manager.

2. Stakeholder agreement on how the position and company will be described to the candidate. Hiring is a balance between buying (candidates selling themselves) and selling (convincing the candidate to join your team). Highly qualified candidates are more likely to join your team if everyone they meet articulates a consistent story.

3. Establishing a benchmark against which the process will be measured. Data points might include the average salesperson’s performance against quota, their average tenure, the time to first sale, etc.

4. Building a profile for each unique sales position that defines the critical skills and traits required for success. Each skill and trait should be prioritized and scaled to measure the degree of candidate compliance. The profile for a sales “hunter,” for example, is quite different than the profile for a “farmer.” In the example below, stakeholders have determined that a reasonably high level of business knowledge is required for this particular position. A full profile usually contains 12-20 skills and 6-12 traits.

 

5. Writing an accurate job description. Don’t include profile details in the job description because a candidate could potentially identify what the interviewer is looking for and prepare “perfect” answers.

6. Providing recruiters and HR staff with a simple document that filters out “fatally flawed” candidates. For example, if a candidate must have at least five years of sales success in your industry, anyone who does not meet that criterion is eliminated. Screening against specific criteria allows internal hiring team members to dedicate their time to more qualified candidates. Technology solutions that perform much of this screening are readily available.

7. Engineering a set of first-round interview questions. Used as directed, these questions will enable internal team members to probe for required skills and traits based on the profile. Interviewer observations as well as the candidate’s answers are recorded and analyzed later.

8. Training the hiring team on how to perform structured interviews. It is essential that interviewers follow the questions, which have been specifically designed to generate responses that reveal whether the candidate possesses the traits and skills required for job success.

9. Educating interviewers about the importance of objectivity. Structured interviewing reduces the natural tendency to view a candidate subjectively, which could lead to overlooking weaknesses.

10. Devising a set of second round interview questions to facilitate further exploration for critical skills and traits, and to enable the interviewer to identify and quantify weaknesses uncovered in the previous interview.

11. Validating the candidate’s claims and uncovering inconsistencies through a rigorous reference checking procedure. Effective reference checking requires persistence and skill, because many companies are reluctant to provide information about former employees. The best reference checks are conducted with people not provided by the candidate. Sales leaders with a wide network can often find “blind” references who will offer an honest appraisal of a candidate, if they are confident that the discussion remains between them and the person doing the hiring.

12. Requiring sales position candidates to substantiate assertions about their past performance with tax or other formal documentation. If they claim they made $500k a year for the past five years, they should be able to prove it.

13. Requiring final candidates to participate in sales call and presentation simulations. Evaluate the candidates against required skills and personality traits derived from the profile.

14. Implementing psychometric testing and background checking. These tests rarely lead to hiring someone you have no enthusiasm for and often “expose” candidates who have managed to hide deficiencies through the interview process.

15. Engineering individual ramp-up or on-boarding plans to ensure that the gaps between the profile and the candidate’s proven skill set are closed during the first thirty to ninety days of employment.

16. Implementing a continuous improvement component. In order for this process to continue working into the future, there must be a mechanism that provides stakeholders with feedback and includes the flexibility to make adjustments.

You may initially think that this kind of formal process will “take too much time,” but you’ll quickly discover that the number of candidates who make it to the final stages is limited. The process works like a sales funnel; candidates “qualify out” all along the way. As a result, the hiring team has time to focus only on the most qualified candidates. Additionally, candidates get impression that your company is serious and well-managed. Finally, both candidate and company become aware of the gaps between the candidate’s capabilities and what’s required to get the job done, as well as how those gaps will be filled.

Dave Stein is an internationally-recognized expert in B2B sales performance. Read his blog at davestein.biz and follow him on Twitter: @davestei

Image courtesy of Tim Caynes.

The post Hiring Salespeople: A Core Process You Must Perfect appeared first on Peak Sales Recruiting.

In a blog post earlier this year, I introduced the concept of the Engagement Economy, which is the digitally connected world we live in that demands we, as marketers and brands, communicate with buyers in ways that resonate and are meaningful. In the Engagement Economy, our customers are in charge and they are more informed than ever because of the informational convenience and convergence of search, social, blogs, video, and hundreds more easily accessible digital touchpoints. Buyers are forming opinions, reaching conclusions, and influencing others well before we as marketers have a chance to “make our pitch”.

Beyond the buyer, our existing customers today want to feel wanted and understood. They want to build long-term relationships and align with brands that care about them and connect with them on a personal level across every channel and touchpoint. The point is this: Customers want to be engaged! With that said, it’s worth exploring what that really means for us as marketers. More to the point, how we can shift our marketing strategy and effort to more engagement?

Value Over Volume

True customer engagement is the whole idea behind the book that I am writing entitled, Engage to Win, which is my call to arms to all marketers to challenge their views about what it means to really “engage with” and not “market to” their buyers. I believe that many of the digital tools we have at our disposal—email, digital ads, social media, web, mobile, and more—make it easier than ever before to automate how we understand, connect with, and communicate to our customers. Improper use, or coordination, of these digital tools is where we often falter as marketers. We prioritize volume metrics over value metrics and we miss a huge opportunity to forge meaningful relationships with our buyers. To illustrate the types of relationships that I’m referring to, let me share two examples.

• TOMS shoes has become successful in large part because of what it stands for. You buy a pair of shoes and they donate a pair of shoes to children in need. Everyone who wears TOMS shoes knows TOMS has built a movement and invited their customers to be a part of it. Thus, it has created an unpaid army of tens of thousands (maybe hundreds of thousands) of “brand advocates” who spread the word about the company and the passion they have for the brand to their friends and followers across channels including social media.
• Amazon has taken just about all the things people hate about retail—limited selection, slow delivery, a cumbersome checkout process and turned them into competitive advantages. You can order anything you want including clothes, movies, pet food, or automotive supplies and get it in two days or less. They started with books, but with the acquisition of Whole Foods, it’s fairly clear that Amazon wants to become the more engaged version of Walmart before Walmart becomes the more engaged version of Amazon!

These are examples of companies that connect with us as buyers in a profoundly more meaningful way than the repetitive pop-up ads that appear when you visit a website or the relentless emails you get from a retailer for which you have little interest!

The Nine Commandments of Engagement

In the precursor to my book, I offer nine “commandments” as rules of engagement that every marketer can follow to build customer relationships based on shared values and trust. These new rules start with listening to and learning from your customers before acting on what you find. They include tips that will help us as marketers be the best ambassadors we can be for our brands. The truth is that we have to curate the values associated with our brands. With that, here’s an excerpt:

ONE: Listen. Develop the discipline of continually listening to your customers via every channel you possibly can.

TWO: Learn. Take all that data you collect from customers and potential customers and turn it into insights.

THREE: Act on those insights, by dealing with your customers the way they want you to, when they want you to.

FOUR: Never forget you don’t create the engagement journey, your customers do. (You can curate it though!)

FIVE: Don’t let anyone other than you define what your organization stands for.

SIX: Everyone in the company has the opportunity to influence the engagement process—for good or evil. Choose good.

SEVEN: Never let anyone define your personal brand. Your organization must stand for something. You, as a human being, must as well. (And, of course, what you stand for will reflect on your organization).

EIGHT: No outbound content for your customer, whether it is an email, a video, whatever, should ever leave your company without being vetted by some type of focus group or feedback pool. In today’s age of hyper-reactivity, this is a requirement.

NINE: The world is evolving at an unprecedented, accelerated pace in terms of norms, tastes, preferences, beliefs, biases, and on and on and on. You cannot assume that what you believed to be true yesterday, literally yesterday, is true today. You and your organization need to accept that fact at the very DNA level of your being. It’s an absolute.

To help you put these suggestions into practice and sketch out your own engagement plans, we’ve developed a workbook that takes you through a set of provocative questions that will help you to take a critical look at where you are and where you’re going. I encourage you to take some time to work through it —possibly as a team activity—to help you shape your collective path forward in the Engagement Economy.

With that, I’ll leave you with one thought. It is our responsibility to engage our customers, not market to them. We must engage them early, engage them everywhere, and do so in meaningful ways at all times. But it’s your choice. You can choose to engage, choose to demonstrate that you understand the values of your customers, and choose to let them know you want them as a customer, or take the easy way out, and risk becoming irrelevant. I hope the choice is clear.

To land your dream clients, you need to create a preference for you and your solution. It won’t happen without a plan. Here are the questions you need to answer and the things you need to do to create that plan:

Insights and Outcomes

1. What do you know that can help your prospect or client produce better results than they are producing now? How do they know you have ideas to improve their performance?
2. What outcomes can you improve if you are given the opportunity to discuss change? Does your client or prospect know and believe that you have these ideas?
3. What have you shared that would give your client or prospect the belief that you are the person who can help them the most when it comes to their business?
4. Are you considered a peer and a trusted advisor when it comes to the areas where you serve your clients and prospects? Does your knowledge cover a gap in the knowledge they need to  produce better results?
5. Would your client or prospect say that you are the person best equipped to help them compete and win in their market?

Presence

1. Be likable. Have a personality. Have a sense of humor. Be human, and allow other people to be human.
2. Who inside your client or prospect account knows you?
3. What do you know about their individual needs? Would they know that you know what they need, and how they think about it?
4. What do you know about their preferences when it comes to the business? Would they understand that you are aware of what they want done and how it needs to work for them specifically?
5. What do you know about them personally?
6. How many people have you spent time with within your client or prospect’s business?
7. How many times have you called to thank your client or sent them a thank you note apart from email?

Trust

1. Do you follow up and keep the promises and commitments that you made at each stage of the process?
2. Are you honest about the time, effort, and resources that it will take to execute the change that your client or prospect needs and that you are recommending?
3. Are you present and available to help when your client or prospect has problems, or do you wait until they are resolved before you engage them?

Understanding Change

1. Do you proactively bring your clients and prospects new ideas that can help them produce better results?
2. Do you know where each of the stakeholders inside your client or prospective client is in regards to change? Where are they in the buying process and what do they need?
3. How do you help them build the case for the change they need inside their own organization? Do you know how and when to help them navigate their internal processes?
4. Do you know how to help your client or prospect protect the investment they need to make when purchasing is involved? Do you know how to engage their professional buyers in a way that ensures they get the outcomes they need?

Differentiation

1. Do you know how to differentiate your company and your offering in a way that positions you to be preferred?
2. Can you tie the way you create value to the better results your client needs in a way that compels them to choose you, your company, and your solution over your competitor’s?
3. Can you explain how your solution produces greater results than competitive solutions or alternatives?

Process

1. Do you have a process for collaborating with your client to ensure that you can help them with a solution they can support and that they will own—and defend—through the sales process?
2. Do you take the time to resolve your client or prospect’s concerns to help them confidently move forward with the change they need? Do you provide them with the necessary proof?
3. Are you easy to do business with, making the negotiation of terms, conditions, and changes an easy process for your clients and prospects when this is necessary?
4. Do you follow up to ensure your client or prospect is achieving the outcomes, the results that you sold them? Are you accountable?

[smartads]

The post 26 Ways to Create a Preference for You and Your Solution appeared first on The Sales Blog.

What is Account-Based Marketing Orchestration?

Account-based marketing (ABM) orchestration is about delivering the right content, on the right channel, to the right contacts in your target accounts.

Ever since I published Account-Based Marketing for Dummies last spring, there have been so many questions about how B2B marketing teams can actually do ABM. At the end of the day, taking an account-based approach to your marketing activities, campaigns, and tactics requires coordination with your sales team. Think about this concept as account-based marketing orchestration.

At the highest level, we need to explain how account-based marketing is put into practice. This is why I created the #FlipMyFunnel model for ABM:

What are the steps for account-based marketing? I believe ABM works best to:

1. Identify. You’re targeting your best-fit accounts by having marketing and sales aligned around an ideal customer profile (ICP).

2. Expand. Because with B2B purchases, there’s more than one person in the decision-making process. You need to expand your reach within an account by connecting with everyone involved in the purchase decision.

3. Engage. Since you know exactly who your buyers are based on the research you’ve done, you can connect with them on the channels where they are most active: email, social media, advertising, video, events, direct mail — the sky is truly the limit!

4. Advocate. When you create an amazing experience for your target accounts throughout the customer journey, they’ll become advocates for your solution and help drive more best-fit customers into your flipped funnel.

5. Measure. How do you measure success with your ABM programs? It’s about looking at account engagement, and the stage-based progression of accounts.

Account-based marketing orchestration happens across every stage of the buyer’s journey thanks to the coordinated efforts between marketing and sales (or “smarketing“).

With ABM, the buyer’s journey extends into the overall customer experience because it’s about the lifecycle of the account. At Terminus, we divide the account’s journey into three distinct stages: Demand Generation, Pipeline Velocity, and Customer Marketing.

Since the advent of digital marketing, B2B marketers have thought of demand generation as their #1 goal. The reality is, the most important goal is to drive revenue. That’s what account based marketing does: it exposes the opportunity for B2B marketers to shine at every stage by supporting sales and customer success through every stage of account engagement. This is crucial for successful demand generation in ABM.

Internally, my team has a weekly smarketing meeting to talk about the accounts we’re going after, who the contacts in those accounts are, and how we’re going to engage them.

At its core, account-based marketing is laser-focused B2B smarketing to generate new revenue. Using marketing technology enables ABM to be done at scale and orchestrate comprehensive, multichannel ABM campaigns that deliver powerful results. Engagement must be done across multiple channels based on the type of impact you want to have.

The point of ABM engagement is to focus on the types of activities depending on what type of impact you want to have on the account. For account-based marketing orchestration, you’re engaging the account across multiple channels.

Here’s an example of how we orchestrate an ABM demand generation campaign at Terminus. We’re using our own advertising platform to launch display ads at contacts in our target accounts. Meanwhile, the sales team is sending personalized videos via email using Vidyard, and we’re sending contacts direct mail through PFL.

The purpose of this multitouch demand generation campaign is to engage accounts, pique their interest, and then move them to the next stage of the buyer’s journey closer to becoming a customer.

Remember the key takeaways for successful account-based marketing orchestration:

• Align your marketing + sales teams = “smarketing”
• Coordinate your messaging across all channels, including sales conversations and emails
• Select the right channels – consider account coverage and depth of engagement
• Scale and automate using marketing tech & tools

For more information about how to orchestrate your own ABM campaigns, check out our Blueprint to Account-Based Marketing.

Whatever You’re Thinking, Think Bigger.

–Tony Hsieh, entrepreneur

You’ve probably heard the expression that “Life is a self-fulfilling prophesy.” Nowhere is that more immediately apparent than in the world of commission sales. As you look around the company or industry you work in, I’ll bet it’s true that some reps, the top producers, are making two, three or even four times more than other reps selling the exact same product or service? Have you ever asked yourself why that is?

I sure did. My moment of clarity came one day when I grew sick and tired of being sick and tired. I had just lost a big sale, and suddenly I didn’t have spending money for the weekend. As I looked around at the top three producers, I saw their expensive suites, and I saw their nice cars in the parking lot. They were selling the same thing I was, but my results were totally different. I wondered what I was doing wrong.

At that moment, I made a commitment that day to do whatever I had to do to succeed. Within 90 days I went from one of the bottom producers to the top out of 25 reps. As soon as I was handed the biggest paycheck I had ever earned, I went back to my desk and wondered just what the limit on my income could be at that job. Looking at what others had been earning for over a year, I set a new goal of income for myself – a big one.

By the end of that year, I had reached that goal. As I lay on a lounge chair in Maui, Hi (a bonus from the company!), I set an even bigger goal for income in that next year. By the end of that year, I hit it again! The following year, I had bigger income goals, but I knew I needed more opportunity, so I left that company and became a vice president of sales with a new firm. I hit my goal again. Suddenly life became very open to me.

I have learned to be a big believer in visualization and affirmations, and over the years I have proved to myself that whatever I think is possible becomes possible. But I have also learned that it can become a limit. Rarely do I exceed my goals, rather, I achieve them. And that’s why I love today’s quote. I read something similar once that has become my new mantra:

“Imagine better than the best you know.”

What I love about this quote is that whenever I finish goal setting for the year or the quarter, or the month, I ask myself: what would happen if I imagined even better? What would be even more exciting and fulfilling? What would my life be like if I accomplished something more?

And once I go beyond what I think is possible, I look for evidence of someone else achieving it. I always find examples of people or organizations who have higher goals than I do, and this always inspires me to dream bigger.

I do believe life is a self-fulfilling prophesy, and this leads me to another quote I think often about: “Most people don’t set goals to high and miss, they set them too low and hit.”

So today, I constantly challenge myself to ask “what if?” This helps me raise the limits of what I think are possible, and this allows me to keep hitting bigger and better goals.

Now granted, there are other variables at play. One of the most important is, of course, skill and technique level. Top producers consistently practice better selling habits and better sales techniques. But you can learn and practice these, too. They tend to work harder, but, again, you can do that.

They put in the time, energy and money required to perfect their craft. But the good news for everyone else, is that these techniques and habits can be learned by anyone willing to put in the same time and effort.

Years ago, I heard a sales trainer say that the great thing about sales, especially commission sales, is that you are the boss. Think about it: the company you work for pays all the bills – they pay the phone, office space, pay the support staff, get the leads, etc. All you have to do is determine the amount of money you want to make. The great thing about sales is if you want to get a raise, then you can give yourself one – close more sales.

After I applied myself and mastered the craft of sales, in other words, put in the time to learn how to make a connection, build rapport, qualify leads, handle objections and stalls, etc., I realized that there was another component to sales: the mental part. What I realized is that what separated me from big dollar producers wasn’t my skill set any longer, but rather, what I expected of myself.

Someone once said that the world (and sales) is like a vast ocean: some people go to it with a teaspoon, others a cup, and others a dump truck. How much you take out of the ocean is determined by the container you take to it. It’s the same in sales. What’s the difference between someone making a million dollar a year in commissions and someone making $5,000 a year? Their expectation level.

Think about it: If you were to take a million dollar producer from one company and put him or her in another, how do you think they would do? First, they would make sure a million dollars in commissions was possible in that job or industry, and then they would generate it. But the same is true with the $5,000 producer. Put that person in the same job or industry, and they’ll average about $5,000 in commissions. I’m sure you’ve seen this happen…

What I’ve found to be true in sales – and in life – is that you get what you expect. And the true way to get more – sales, commissions, income – is to believe it’s possible, and then truly expect it.

If you’re not following form design best practices, you might be leaving a significant amount of money on the table.

While forms aren’t the sexiest part of conversion optimization, they tend to be the closest to the money, the macro-conversions. Spending a little time optimizing forms can be some of the most important optimization work you can do.

Of course, best practices don’t work the same on all sites. It’s contextual. But generally, implementing form design tactics that work more often than not is a good way to get started.

Luckily there’s no shortage of data, case studies, research, and examples on form design best practices. It comes from all over the place: business case studies, blog posts, A/B test examples, usability research, eye tracking studies, and more.

This post will outline some of the most common form design best practices. If you’re just starting with optimization, use them as a baseline.

If you’re working on your forms, these guidelines will hopefully help you get some quick wins early on.

Form Design Best Practices

1. Less Is More (Remove Form Fields)

Every field you ask users to fill out increases friction. The best thing you can do to improve form completions is to get rid of as many fields as possible.

In one case study, an 11-field contact form was replaced with a 4-field version, and form completions increased by 160% with the quality of the submissions staying the same.

In another test, a 5-field form outperformed a 9-field form by 34%. In this one, too, they didn’t notice any drop in data quality or lead quality.

Most forms are too long. It’s “greedy marketer syndrome” where we think we need all the data.

Baymard Institute found that the average checkout contains 14.88 form fields. But their checkout usability testing also showed that most sites can achieve a 20-60% reduction in the number of form fields displayed by default.

Essentially, the average checkout display twice as many form fields as needed.

Image Source

So form field reduction is ground zero for bottom of the funnel conversion optimization. It’s where you can get some of your quickest wins. The effort and resources required are super low, and the potential gains are tremendous, especially at scale (how many forms do you have? How many people experience them? What does a 10% increase on each form mean to you?)

Now, there are definitely data concerns. Especially if you’re a B2B company doing lead generation and passing leads over to a sales team, you want to make sure they’re qualified leads – otherwise more leads ends up being an externality, incurring its own cost in wasted productivity.

An example of this is adding a tiered system of allotted budgets. Basically, how much is the lead willing to pay? Set the lowest bar at the lowest you think a valuable lead would be worth, and you’ll weed out a lot of tire kickers. An example from our agency page:

When you’re optimizing form fields, ask about the data: Do you really need it?

Do you really need people’s phone, fax, or address? Do you need someone’s company name if you’re selling candles? Only ask what’s relevant. Expedia removed the “Company” field from their booking form and saw an increase of $12 million a year in profit.

Know also that, especially for B2B, data enrichment companies like Clearbit exist. If you collect an email and maybe a first name, they can generally enrich the rest of the data (company name, size, Twitter handle, etc.) and it tends to be quite accurate.

Think about it this way: every additional fields makes you lose a number of prospects. Is the additional information you gain from the field WORTH losing those people? Do you lose anything if you don’t get all the data right away?

Most forms are far too long (Image Source)

The best signup form is short:

Image Source

As always, I need to mention the exceptions – of course, reducing form fields doesn’t always increase conversions.

There are data concerns as well. The more information you collect on a user, the more effective marketing and targeting you can use (usually).

In general, though, it’s safe to follow the following heuristic: remove useless or superfluous form fields.

2. Single-Column Beats Multi-Column Forms

This has been well researched in eye-tracking studies (including our own), and business case studies and A/B tests. When you’re deciding between a single column form and a multi-column, default towards the single column.

In a study conducted through CXL Institute, we found the single-column form was faster to complete.

Survey participants completed the linear, single-column form (n = 356) an average of 15.4 seconds faster than the multi-column form (n = 346). This was significantly faster at a 95% confidence level.

This guideline isn’t new. In fact, it’s been around for years, but until our study there wasn’t much quantitative evidence for it. Still, those in conversion optimization will have undoubtedly seen dozens of compelling user tests, as well as A/B tests, that show single columns to be more usable.

I’m sure there are exceptions to this rule (as with any), but I haven’t found anything empirical that has been published. If you know of any conflicting resources, feel free to send them over.

3. Communicate Errors Clearly

Users will make mistakes. It’s inevitable. Even if you used every form design best practice, you’d still get users ringing up error messages.

How you handle error messages can greatly affect user experience.

Image Source

Designing error messages is all about limited the amount of frustration users feel with your form.

When users feel frustrated, they get stressed and cortisol starts to build up. If it hits a certain threshold, users will give up and go to your competitor’s site. Life is too short to go crazy trying to deal with crappy form design as well as unhelpful error handling.

So, yes, do usability research yourself, but start with these error message best practices:

• Don’t blame the user.
• Write like a human, not a robot.
• Make sure errors are clear, and the messages are positioned in a place that is intuitive.
• Make sure users know how to fix said errors.
• Don’t list all errors at the top of the page. Inline validation is a good solution.

4. Use Inline Form Field Validation

Also related to error messages is how you communicate to a user whether their submission is okay or whether they need to change something. Form validation is a whole topic of its own, but we can cover some quick aspects here.

Inline validation is a beautiful way to find, alert, and correct errors in real time. Instead of waiting until pressing ‘submit’ to learn of your errors, you are told right away what went wrong.

Here’s a great example of inline validation:

Image Source

There’s a lot of empirical support for inline validation. In 2009, Luke Wroblewski tested inline validation against a control (after-submit validation), and even though the sample was small, they found the following results with the inline version:

• a 22% increase in success rates,
• a 22% decrease in errors made,
• a 31% increase in satisfaction rating,
• a 42% decrease in completion times, and
• a 47% decrease in the number of eye fixations.
• 22% more people making it through your forms is well worth the effort – and so is creating a more satisfying experience for anyone filling out the form.

I’ll take those results. I’ve seen similar results from A/B tests run on many ecommerce sites.

If we step back and create a heuristic based on this, it makes sense: it’s all about transparent and clear expectations and communication. A user shouldn’t have to guess what will work and what won’t. The easier you can make it to understand what the expectations on a form are, the less errors people will make, and the more form completions you’ll achieve.

It’s a win-win. Look into inline validation for your forms.

5. Fields should be ordered from easiest to hardest to fill out

Dr. Robert Cialdini’s principle of commitment and consistency tells that when someone takes a small action or step towards something, they feel more compelled to finish. For this reason, it’s a form design best practice to put the easiest stuff first.

Wait until later to introduce friction inducing form fields like billing information or anything too personal. Basically, you can put this to action by allowing people to complete shipping information before billing (they’re often the same anyway, so they won’t need to type it again).

Start with the easy stuff (like name) first, and end with credit card number.

Don’t do this:

6. Make typing easy: autoformat, support copy/paste, make suggestions (not always!), etc.

The general guiding principle for form design best practices keep popping up: make things easy for the user.

Especially on mobile, this means limiting the amount of physical typing they need to do to complete the form. One particularly effective way of easing the amount of typing necessary is to automate as much as possible.

Use Autofill:

Image Source

When designing forms and deciding on autofills, here are some good questions to reflect on:

• Do you have any good defaults for this field?
• What’s the history available?
• Do we have any commonly used values?
• Can you use the browser of mobile features or settings to populate the field?
• Can you calculate the field? (e.g. autofill the state based on the zip code)

Autoformatting is also incredibly important (and frustratingly underutilized). Allow users to enter data (particularly fields such as zip code, phone numbers, and credit cards) any way they want. It takes a few lines of code to fix the formatting after they input it. Don’t allow your laziness to ruin the user experience.

So don’t do this:

7. Indicate whether each field is required or optional, unless they’re all required

First, ask yourself whether you actually need to include those optional fields. If you truly dig deep, you’ll realize that most of the time they’re completely unnecessary. For example, L.L. Bean doesn’t really need my title or my middle name. What took them four fields could be accomplished in one:

Initially, focus on what information is necessary to get the visitors started. The number isn’t so important. What’s important is that your visitors aren’t sitting at home thinking, “Why do they need this?!”

Indicate whether each field is required or optional, unless it’s all required.

8. Name and phone number fields should be one field, not multiple

Instead of a first name and a last name field, you can just have a field that says “full name.” Instead of a 3 or 4 field entry for a phone number, you can just have one field.

Image Source

The main problem with multiple fields is interaction issues. Generally, a form design best practice is “the fewer fields, the better.”

Imagine on your mobile device having to go through having to go through five fields for name and number (two for name, three for number) instead of just two? Needless friction.

9. Forms should offer radio buttons over dropdown box selection

UXmovements.com published an article that sparked our curiosity towards the use of multi-select form fields when another form field type would work. In their piece, “Why Users Abandon Forms with Select Menus,” they argue that forms with select menus often get abandoned because they “take more time and effort to complete.”

More specifically they say they slowed users down by interrupting user flow, being hard to read, and requiring dexterous mouse maneuvering.

But, they provide no data to support this.

Well, it’s easy enough to test. So we did. We were just launching a large survey on online trust perception, so we had a good opportunity to simply manipulate a survey form and ask different groups of people the same questions in different formats (multi-select vs. radio buttons) to see how form completion time compared.

The results? The form with radio button was faster to complete.

Survey participants completed the radio button form (n = 354) an average of 2.5 seconds faster than the form with multi-select buttons (n = 354). This was significantly faster at a 95% level.

10. Don’t make coupon code fields prominent

When people see an “Enter coupon code here” field, they feel less special. “Why don’t I have one?” they think. They get FOMO.

Many go to Google to search for a coupon. Some find coupons on third party sites like RetailMeNot, which cuts into your profit. Many never return.

Leaving the site to search for coupons is a common reason for shopping cart abandonment.

So this is not a good idea:

Instead, have a text link saying, “Got a coupon?” or something similar, and clicking on the link makes an input field – like the one above – appear. Text links are not very visually prominent, so less people will pay attention for them.

Customers who already have a coupon code will be looking for a way to enter it – so unless you hide it really well, they’ll find it and will be able to apply their coupon code. And if a customer has received a coupon (via email) automatically apply it to total and display the discount.

11. Avoid clear fields button

Nobody who fills in your form wants to clear the fields. If they don’t want to fill it in, they can just leave.

If they fill the form and accidentally clear the fields, there’s a good chance they won’t start over.

Mobile Specific Form Design Best Practices

While most of the above can be applied to mobile as well, there are some specific issues to keep in mind with smaller screens. Generally, you want to conserve effort where you can. Mobile users are less patient, and using a smartphone is more difficult than using a desktop.

So follow these guidelines for mobile-specific form design best practices.

1. Offer field focus

If you have a form with multiple fields, you don’t want users to get lost in the form. Especially on mobile this is important, as the smaller screen allows for less visual control over the entire form.

Therefore, make the input field that is being currently edited prominent and focused.

Image Source

2. Don’t Mask Passwords

While it may seem to be a security concern to show the password as the user is typing it, it is much better for user experience.

As NN/g summarized, “Usability suffers when users type in passwords and the only feedback they get is a row of bullets. Typically, masking passwords doesn’t even increase security, but it does cost you business due to login failures.”

Image Source

Caveat: Run Your Own Experiments

Just because something is a “best practice” doesn’t mean it is always the optimal solution. Sometimes best practices fail.

Websites are contextual. What works on one site may not work on another.

In addition, your business context may be different. Who knows, maybe you really need that middle name as a piece of data. Who am I to judge?

So take everything with a grain of salt. Know it’s all been tested and studied, but at the end of the day, all that matters is how it works on your site, and in your business context.

Let this be a guideline, not a mandate.

Conclusion

Form design best practices may work more often than not, but they’re not universal. They’re definitely not silver bullet solutions: you have to test this stuff for yourself.

But in the case that you’re starting from scratch or just beginning to optimize your website, these form design best practices will get you to a good baseline. They’re a good starting point, not where you’ll eventually end up.

All of the guidelines in this article have empirical backing and have stood the test of usability research and many A/B tests. They’re not opinion-based. So starting with this is a safe point to begin.

How good are you at following up after you’ve made that initial sales contact? Follow-up isn’t easy – it can be nerve-wracking to think that you’re “bugging” someone, and you don’t want to ruin that great feeling that comes after you’ve sent out the first touch contact.

But sales follow-up is essential for any growing business that wants to succeed. According to a comprehensive, multi-year study, the chance of making contact with your prospect jumps up to 90 percent if you make 6 attempts at outreach – compared to under 40 percent on the first try.

Here are some common issues that businesses face with sales follow-up, and how to solve them:

1. You give up too early

Are you actually reaching the contacts in your database? The goal is to close sales, not to dial numbers, so if you are reaching voicemail too often, you’re missing out on some big opportunities.

Always, always make at least 6 attempts to call a contact. Despite the statistic from the study above, about 40 percent of sales reps give up after just one call.

2. You don’t respond quick enough

Sometimes, follow-up is all about speed. According to Harvard Business Review, nearly half of companies took more than 24 hours to respond to an online lead… or didn’t even respond at all.

If you have had contact with a lead, or if a lead comes in via an inbound channel, be sure to follow up as quickly as possible. The ideal time? Within one hour. If you can’t manage that, within 24 hours is acceptable (but might cost you down the line).

3. You use a generic template

Non-personalized outreach is a big problem for sales teams, especially as they scale. It is difficult to personalize when you’re contacting dozens or hundreds of prospects each day.

Try to incorporate social selling into your sales follow-up by leveraging information about your contacts’ social media presence. This can be made part of an automation process so you’re not stuck manually clicking through tweets, and it can go a long way in adding that personal touch.

4. You’re disorganized

Not sure when you last followed-up with that lukewarm lead? Lost count of the number of times you reached out to a hot new account? Disorganization is the bane of any sales department, because it means missed opportunities, not to mention internal stress and confusion.

Create a calendar of reminders for when to follow up with each lead. And go one step further, by inviting your entire sales team to see everyone else’s calendar. This way, there will be no missed follow-ups and no duplication of efforts.

Following up with a lead is difficult, but by being persistent and offering value, you’re bound to see higher response rates than if you just drop a lead after that first touch.

Editor’s Note: This article first appeared on Inc. here.

Most consumers don’t know the difference between sales and marketing and don’t care, but it’s a huge deal within some companies. Too huge.

Blame human nature, but once you create teams within an organization, some friction between the teams is inevitable. While a bit of constructive tension is good, sales and marketing teams often take things too far. It’s common, for instance, for marketing to blame sales for not following up with sales prospects and for sales to complain that marketing isn’t getting them enough quality sales prospects in the first place.

Excessive conflict can be counterproductive. Research shows that B2B companies that fail to align their sales and marketing departments lose 10% or more of their revenues per year. Companies with strong sales and marketing alignment post a 20% annual growth rate while those with poor alignment have a 4% revenue decline.

The fix isn’t easy, but it is simple: Orient sales and marketing around the customer’s needs instead of the other way around.

The Trick: Start with first principles

One of Stephen Covey’s “7 Habits” is to “begin with the end in mind.” This applies to businesses as well as individuals. Companies that don’t design products by considering how consumers will use them will soon be out of business. Similarly, sales and marketing should be oriented around helping the customer understand and address their specific needs.

Sounds like common sense, right? Unfortunately, many companies organize sales and marketing around what they think each department is supposed to do rather than what a prospect or customer needs. It is more “marketing should do this” or “sales should do that” instead of “the customer needs this, let’s figure out how to do it.”

The first principle view of the situation is trying to offer the right content with the right contact point to help the customer move down their journey to purchase. The sales contact points include a phone call, visit or perhaps an email while marketing contact points encompass everything from an online article to a Twitter ad to paid content to costumed actors or even skywriting. The trick is to figure out what type of contact to make in what situations to help the prospect advance their thinking and move down the funnel – all in the name of delivering the right content at the right point of contact.

The best companies have choreographed sophisticated systems for both contact and content. They might have a salesperson identify a prospect, hand the information to marketing, have marketing send out a specific piece of content followed by a series of online touch points. This may warm up the prospect enough that they are interested in attending a webinar or, perhaps, even starting to use a free product or a free trial. Marketing may then alert a salesperson who has a call and, if the prospect is not yet ready, pass the prospect back to marketing for additional touch points. This process could continue for quite a long time until the prospect is ready to purchase.

Marketers used to think of customers as a generic group, but now they are using technology and data to cater to their individual needs and desires. They used to just chum the waters, and now they’re learning to take a targeted approach.

This more personalized, account-based approach to sales and marketing means the overall mission is different. Rather than getting hung up on the respective functions of sales and marketing, a better approach is to work backwards from customer touch points and decide who is responsible for each. Then sales and marketing should work together on a choreographed approach that they can A/B test. Working backwards from the customer’s needs leads to what sales and marketing should do rather than what their department titles suggest they do.

The realistic way forward

Learning how to narrow your focus isn’t easy, but one way to start is by winnowing down your target customer segment as much as possible so that the group of companies remaining has common needs. The reason companies don’t do this is because it’s difficult and many worry that their market will be smaller than they’d like, which could lead them to believe that they’re missing out on business elsewhere. As a result, they wind up implementing something generic rather than taking a targeted approach.

My argument is this: If you’re a $5 million company, you probably only need to target a $15 million segment to double the size of your business. But it’s still tempting to pursue a billion-dollar market. My approach then has been to suggest that companies carve off some of what they are doing to take a more targeted approach with one segment while they continue to conduct broader activities elsewhere. Next, compare the results and see which approach works better. Most companies will generally find that a blend of broad and narrow works well.

At the heart of it, the mission I’ve laid out here isn’t complicated. The idea is to help a customer move towards a sale. Sometimes sales can move the customer in that direction, sometimes marketing can and sometimes it’s a mix of both. But the starting point should always be the same: the customer.

The post The Secret to Sales & Marketing Alignment? Customer Focus. appeared first on OpenView Labs.

According to the Sales Operations Center of Excellence, 54% of sales operations departments are less than 3 years old. Sales operations is one of the youngest roles in any sales organization, but with the on-going growth of data and technology, it’s evolving at lightning speed.

Since Xerox pioneered the role in the 1970s, sales operations has become responsible for a growing scope of tasks including supporting sales processes, maximizing the quantity and quality of sales data, generating forecasts and defining and measuring KPIs.

And now a perfect storm of sales drivers is giving way to the next evolution of sales and a new role needed to support and drive this function.

The Science of Sales

As Base CEO Uzi Shmilovici put it in his keynote at the 2016 Forecast Conference, the Science of Sales can be defined as using scientific methods to collect and analyze sales data in order to scale sales in a rapid and predictable fashion.

While similar methods have already gained widespread popularity in organizations like marketing and support, Shmilovici explains that there are three key drivers currently spurring sales to turn to this scientific approach:

Ability to collect data: consumer-grade, mobile sales applications have made it possible for reps to enter and access data anytime, anywhere.
New data technologies: new technologies make it possible to perform large-scale data analysis in a real-time and cost-effective manner.
Market dynamics: not only are buyers becoming more educated, but the growing number of sales tools on the market makes competition more intense than ever before.

These trends require and enable sales teams to take their performance to the next level by scientifically prioritizing initiatives that drive growth in actionable and quantifiable ways. For example, consider the following question: if you want to increase sales by 25% next quarter, what do you need to do?

To answer this question in a meaningful and strategic way, you must start with a mathematical relationship. Fortunately, the sales funnel, by definition, can be described mathematically using fairly simple formulas. Usually, sales operations plays a key role in defining the sales funnel, optimizing the conversion rates, etc.

But this is where it gets tricky: when you start thinking of all of the dimensions or factors that can impact your sales. Simply looking at your sales funnel by the dimension of industry can generate a dozen or so different scenarios and levers that can be pulled to alter your sales outcomes. Enter the Sales Scientist, a new role dedicated to maximizing revenue through scientific analysis of sales data and the generation of actionable and prescriptive insights.

It’s easy to see that sales science is a natural extension of sales operations. And that, in many ways, sales ops is actually responsible for laying the organizational groundwork for sales scientists to successfully analyze and improve performance.

Whether you’re looking to transition from sales operations into sales science or simply want to step up your ops game, here are three areas where sales ops leaders can set their companies up for sales science success.

CRM Adoption

Having a high volume and quality of data is critical to the science of sales, and this starts with CRM adoption. Unfortunately, 74% of sales teams using CRMs report poor adoption rates. So how can you as a sales operations leader determine whether CRM adoption is an issue in your organization and begin taking the necessary steps to fix it?

– Pull a quick log from your CRM to see what percent of the team is actively and consistently signing into the platform.
– Spend some time shadowing different members of the sales org, from BDRs to AEs to management. How much time to they actually spend in the CRM? When managers do their forecasts or have one-on-ones with reps, are they using the CRM, or are they using spreadsheets?
– Try creating a few quick lists and reports. How much data is returned to you? This will be indicative of how much information is being entered into the platform.
– Look at your data export. Do you notice that the first list items are being selected the majority of the time, or that reps are consistently picking “other?” Are close dates being added retroactively? If so, your team might be using your CRM, but they are not doing so effectively.

If you notice any of these red flags in your organization, don’t panic – there are plenty of things you can do to turn things around.

Sales Process

If you’re in sales operations, you already know that a good sales process is the backbone of any successful sales organization. As such, much of the science of sales is dedicated to helping companies measure, scale and optimize their sales processes. And the more refined the process, the more granular and impactful your scientific sales insights will be.

Here are a few critical areas where sales processes are typically in need of some fine-tuning.

– Keep your process buyer-focused. Too often, companies create sales processes that lay things out the way that they wish they would happen. In reality, a sales process should be reflective of your customer’s needs – not your needs.
– Qualify the right buyers. Not all leads are created equal, and knowing which to focus on and which to walk away from based on past successes and failures is key. Make sure your sales process features the questions that you need to ask to identify and build profiles for these buyers.
– Ensure every scenario has a follow-up action. Just because someone doesn’t answer your call or respond to your email doesn’t mean that that opportunity is dead. Don’t leave things open-ended or up for interpretation; give reps a set list of steps to follow regardless of outcome.
– Know when handoffs should occur. Sometimes certain information and steps can be overlooked if not everyone on the team is 100% sure who owns which parts of the process. Be sure to document this information and that your team knows exactly where handoffs should happen.
– Focus on the most impactful part of the sales funnel. As tempting as it may be, avoid zeroing in on the bottom of the sales funnel. Instead, dig into your process in the early and middle funnel stages to identify and define the activities that will ultimately generate revenue.

Data Strategy

To have the right quantity and quality of data available to extract any meaningful insights, you must have a plan in place. And this doesn’t mean capturing every tidbit of information in your CRM. It means being smart and strategic about the data points you collect by making sure that each one has a purpose.

Any successful sales data strategy must be rooted in the discipline of the Scientific Method. Every sales leader has certain observations and assumptions about what’s going on with his or her sales performance, but the key difference between the art and the science of sales is taking a step back and testing and analyzing these hypotheses.

This can be accomplished in 3 steps:
1. What are your key goals and challenges? Ask yourself why these challenges are occurring and what can be done to achieve these particular goals. For example, why are deals from one territory closing less frequently than others?
2. Create a list of hypotheses about how these things might happen. After doing some research, we came to the conclusion that poorly trained reps, tough competition, seasonality and lack of rep activity could all be reasons why deals from one particular territory are closing at a lower rate than those in other territories.
3. Determine and collect the data points you need to prove or disprove your hypotheses. If I want to determine whether or not reps in this territory are not actively chasing these leads, what are some of the data points I should be collecting? I should definitely be monitoring the number of calls and emails sent each day, both for this team and all others so that I can compare. I should also look into number of meetings booked, time to first action, and number of outreach attempts before unqualifying a lead for unresponsiveness.

High-strength, lightweight steels can finally be processed on an industrial scale, thanks to a breakthrough in controlling undesired brittle stages from production, by WMG, University of Warwick.

A model shows that cow herds may be extremely dynamic, secretly contentious gatherings of warring interests.

• Lauren Lyons Cole has been a financial planner for about 10 years.
• Over that time, she's found that despite some mistakes here and there, most people are doing far better with money than they think they are.
• That's because money is dynamic, and everyone is playing the long game.
• Visit BusinessInsider.com for more stories.

For most of us, financial mistakes are a rite of passage.

Even the most successful people have a money-related regret or two (or more). As a financial planner in New York City, I've come to expect new client meetings to include conversations about financial anxiety, confusion, and frustration.

The reality is, when it comes to money, most people are doing far better than they think they are. Sure, you may not have reached your goals yet, but that doesn't mean you won't or that you've failed already. Even if things are particularly tough right now, it won't stay that way forever.

Are you on track for your future retirement? Find out with this calculator from our partners:

That is why the best piece of advice I can give you about money is this:

Money is dynamic. Plan for the long run, and don't get too caught up on today.

To see this in action, all you have to do is take a look at any of your account balances over the past year, or five years, or longer. If you're like most people, you've had highs and lows. The stock market is the same way. Money is constantly on the move.

Keeping track of your net worth is a good way to follow the ups and downs of your financial situation and to remind yourself that you aren't stuck. Making one mistake doesn't doom you to a lifetime of financial struggle, and getting lucky once — even winning the lottery — doesn't necessarily mean you're set for life.

If things are great right now, enjoy it. But make sure to save as much as you can for a time in the future when you'll need it. Retirement is one universal example, but a job loss, medical expense, or other big life event could happen as well. It will be easier to weather the tough times if you prepare during the good times.

And, if you're living through one of those tough times, try to remember that it's temporary. Don't stress about the progress you're not making. Just try to get through today. If you lost your job, focus on finding a new one. If you're in over your head with debt, cut back as much as you can to pay it off. You'll get through it.

It's worth mentioning — and this is where the long-term planning really comes into play — since money is dynamic, your financial goals can be, too. Don't underestimate your potential. If your current goal feels far away, be patient and keep working toward it. If you've recently reached a financial goal, set a new one. The important thing is to keep moving.

How much could your money grow in the long term? Find out with this calculator from our partners:

Lauren Lyons Cole is director of personal finance at Business Insider. She is also a certified financial planner.

SEE ALSO: After nearly 10 years as a financial planner, the first 2 questions I ask every client have nothing to do with money

DON'T MISS: How much the average American could be saving at every age

Join the conversation about this story »

NOW WATCH: Top financial adviser: Just working hard will not make you wealthy

You can find studies and reports that tell you audiences today crave longer content. Or shorter content. Or snack-sized content.

One thing is for sure, though. Audiences today are harder to engage. They need more from you than a plain ol’ blog post. If you can create an experience out of your content, you’re much more likely to capture your target audience’s attention – and keep it.

That’s the beauty of a microsite. Long or short, complex or simple, a microsite is an experience for your audience. Take those readers along for an interesting ride, and they’re also much more likely to take action at the end.

That’s not to say that other types of content aren’t effective anymore – because they are. Microsites, however, are rising in popularity for a reason. They spur the reader to explore. This medium is a playground for your creativity, too, because they demand a more unique layout and more flexibility than any other content type.

The goal of a microsite is to communicate a single, compelling message. A message that, once understood, incites the reader to take action. This demands focus on the part of the copywriter and innovation on the part of the designer. You can’t translate any content into the visual, exploratory medium of a microsite without a big helping of creativity.

In essence, a microsite is a single webpage (or rarely, a very small collection of webpages) that stands apart from an organization’s main website.

Though many have their own domains, many live on subdomains – there’s no hard-and-fast rule, there. One thing they all have in common, though, is that they are content worlds unto their own. The reader doesn’t have to go any further to get the message.

In this “more is better” world of marketing, zeroing in on a single, compelling message and moving the reader to take a single action is an art form. Following are 17 examples of microsites from companies and organizations that have mastered the art.

17 Examples of Masterful Microsites

1. Chipotle: A Love Story

Around here at SnapApp, this microsite from Chipotle is one of our favorites. The site itself is a combo of two different content mediums: an interactive game where users can earn free food and a cute little CGI film. This fun mix of mediums makes this microsite a cool experience. The message of “love can overcome our differences” is wrapped up in a sweet little story of young love, neighborly competition, and the humanity-restoring power of fresh ingredients.

2. Ferrari Infoseason 2015

This microsite from sporty carmaker Ferrari tells the story of the 2015 Formula1 season. All you need to do to interact with the site is scroll. Interactive technology does the rest to tell the story. It’s an experience you won’t forget from a company that makes pretty remarkable cars, too.

3. Wired and Netflix: TV Got Better

What happens when Wired and Netflix pool their creative resources? You get one epic microsite. This one actually won awards, and spending a few minutes on the site makes it pretty clear why. It’s got everything – powerful visuals, a compelling narrative, motion graphics, powerful statistics, poignant videos, interactive audio, and even an interactive timeline.

The whole engaging experience is a marketing masterpiece.

4. Washington Post: A History of Denial

This microsite from the Washington Post includes interactive timelines and a star-studded featurette. What really makes it compelling, however, is the question it asks … and attempts to answer. Is denial on the rise in America?

In today’s politically heated climate, a hard-hitting microsite like this is sure to stir emotions. It’s a risky move for any business, but the Washington Post handled it with class. It starts out with an exploration of where denial comes from, and ends with a call-to-action to learn more about the Denial movie.

The smart part is that anyone who nods along to the narrative is sure to be interested in the movie at the end. The learn-more-about-the-movie CTA is a clean tie-in to the microsite, and the microsite itself is a journey leading straight to the movie.

5. HBO: We Are the GOT Party

Another SnapApp team favorite, this microsite from HBO takes the 2016 U.S. presidential election and places it in the world of Game of Thrones.

Some might call this a playful take – but anyone who paid attention to the election and/or watches the hit Game of Thrones series knows just how serious this subject matter can actually be. HBO did a great job of making it engaging and entertaining with user-focused CTAs and strong visuals.

Interestingly, the purpose behind this microsite wasn’t to take a political stand, but rather to promote the sale of season 6 of Game of Thrones. With 1,666, 642 ballots cast on the site, my guess is that the microsite probably did its job pretty well.

6. Collaborative Fund: Future of Car Sharing

This microsite came out of a collaboration between Collaborative Fund and Hyperakt. It’s not only unusual in that you scroll to the right instead of up-and-down, but it demonstrates a clever use of animation, too.

The site may look simple, but there are many elements to explore and lots of information for the user to reveal as they move through the illustrations. For example, hover over the national flags when they appear, and you’ll discover even more interesting data. Hands-on microsites like this one can make the message even more memorable for users.

The lesson here is that your microsite doesn’t need to be a big, complex beast. Just make sure it’s a fun and engaging experience.

7. ProPublica: How Much Is a Limb Worth?

How’s that for a gripping headline? This microsite from non-profit newsroom ProPublica grabs you right from the get-go with the idea that your limbs are commodities.

Though this was intended as an educational piece about workers’ comp and the resulting lost wages, it’s also a powerful object lesson. Every state paid out a different amount for various lost limbs. See for yourself by selecting the limb and then selecting a state.

ProPublica illustrates the seriousness of on-the-job injuries quite well in this piece. It’s a message users won’t soon forget.

8. Highrise: Universe Within

I’ve used this microsite example from Highrise in other articles I’ve written, because it’s such an outstanding visual experience. It’s like an IMAX movie on your computer screen.

The Universe Within microsite is a digital documentary that explores the digital lives of highrise residents around the world. It’s a heartfelt story, but it’s also a thoughtful look at how technology has changed and shaped our brains and our relationships.

The elements used here are remarkable. BIG images, 360-degree views, haunting music, and a personalized experience based on how you click around.

Don’t view this from your mobile device, please. Put your headphones on and sit at a computer with a strong internet connection to experience this masterpiece.

9. Google Glass Experiment

What do you get when you add mobile technology to extreme sports? Google wanted to find out, and this microsite takes you on a tour of their findings.

This cross-platform experience combined mobile devices, Google Glass, and an interactive web platform to create a game for sports lovers and players alike. The corresponding mobile app showed game progress and let you chat with competitors. From Google Glass, you could start your race, invite friends, and track your success. And the web platform is where you managed your account, watched the streaming videos, and followed friends’ activity.

Like everything Google does, they took this microsite to the extreme. If you wondered what the point of Google Glass was when the company launched the technology a few years back, this microsite was all it took to get it.

WARNING: If you’re prone to motion sickness, sit this one out.

10. Pharrell Williams: 24 Hours of Happy

Remember Pharrell Williams’s hit single Happy? That’s a silly question. Of course, you do. That song was everywhere. It was catchy and upbeat – a wonderful change of pace from so much of today’s music.

The thing is, while the song was great, one of the other reasons the song did so well on the market was because of the outstanding marketing behind it. It had a fun music video. It had its own dance moves. It had the world’s first 24-hour-long video microsite.

I challenge you to click that link and not dance in your seat.

11. Dumpark: Seas of Plastic

After that last microsite example, this one from data visualization company Dumpark will bring you right back down to earth. It’s a simple but compelling visualization of the world’s plastic particle concentration.

Rotate the globe with your mouse to see where all the plastic is floating around in our Earth’s oceans, and where it’s collecting en masse. It’s a sad message about the state of our planet’s environment, the human compulsion to create (and then ignore) waste … but it’s also a convincing look at Dumpark’s data visualization capabilities.

12. The New York Times: The Russia Left Behind

We hear a lot about Russia these days. Mostly negative and political stuff, unfortunately. This microsite from NYT gives us a different perspective on the country.

The microsite is an interactive journey through the heartland of Russia. It’s a story of the country that you don’t see in the news today. A country where people live in the past.

What works for this site is that while it has a ton of content, all of that content is focused around a single message, and it all tells one powerful story.

13. Krylon: The World’s Longest Yard Sale

By now hopefully you trust that after I give you a hard-hitting example or two, I’ll give you a fun, uplifting example to balance it out. That’s what you’ll get with this microsite from Krylon: fun and uplifting.

The Krylon team traveled 690 miles across six states to host the first-ever Pinterest yard sale, posting real-time updates along the way. They collected their experiences in this microsite.

The paint company was the first brand to use Pinterest’s new “buyable pins” feature. They sold all 127 items in their virtual yard sale and donated a total of $1,899 to Charity Wings Art and Craft Center.

Here’s where marketers need to sit up and pay attention, though: Krylon’s Pinterest follower number rose by 400% during this campaign.

14. Big Album of Beers: Beer Stats

Alex Skorulis isn’t a big brand … but you wouldn’t know it by looking at his Big Album of Beers microsite. Here he has recorded – and continues to record – his beer-drinking history. This site breaks down his journey by country, beer type, and brewery. As of this writing, he has consumed 1045 different beers from 487 breweries located in 63 countries over a period of 4 years and 4 months.

That’s an interesting enough story on its own. But it’s absolutely masterful how he has visualized it with this microsite, and how he makes his story more engaging with interactive elements on the page.

15. The New York Times Magazine: Walking New York

New York City is known for being walker-friendly – but this microsite from The New York Times Magazine shows you. As you scroll, you’re taken on a tour of some of the city’s most memorable walking areas. You’re virtually transported right into those locations with powerful images and absorbing stories.

16. Lucidworks: The Data That Lies Beneath

This spooky microsite from the digital search experts at Lucidworks reveals the scale and real cost of lost data. As you scroll, you’re treated to a visualization of how data is generated, how it travels, how it’s analyzed … and where unused data goes.

This unused data is called “dark data,” and 7.5 sextillion gigabytes of it are created every day. The problem? That dark data isn’t always secure. It’s a scary thought for any person or business today.

This microsite was created by Column Five Media for Lucidworks, and it tells a powerful story. It also makes a compelling statement at the end about what the company is doing to stop dark data from getting into the wrong hands.

17. Vision Critical: Evolution of Insight

Market research can be kind of a dry subject … even to those of us who readily use it in our jobs. Vision Critical made this boring topic much more entertaining with this microsite.

Unlike a typical microsite that asks you to scroll vertically, you’ll navigate this microsite using the timeline at the bottom. Click on the timeline points to take a tour of the history of market research, and see how far we’ve come since the turn of the century.

BONUS MICROSITE!

Since you’ve made it this far, I wanted to make sure you were rewarded with the BEST MICROSITE OF ALL …

Elf Yourself, from OfficeMax.

Though only active a short time each year, this microsite lives on in infamy as one of the most entertaining and viral sites around. If you haven’t created your own Elf Yourself video during Christmastime to send to your friends and family, you’ve probably at least received one (or a dozen). When the microsite launches each winter, people flock to it, follow the prompts, upload their faces, and create hilariously adorable videos of themselves as dancing elves.

Though OfficeMax really did a good job of focusing on the user, here, and not pushing the brand, they didn’t forget their sales goals in the process. At the end of Elf Yourself videos, you’ll find coupons and promos.

For decades, Bill Gates made billions in technology. Now he's spending that money on fighting disease and climate change.

It's no wonder the man loves science.

Over the years, Gates has recommended a number of science-related books to the public. Some deal with the environment, others with the cosmos, and others with stopping tiny biological invaders.

Here are some of his favorite titles.

SEE ALSO: 28 books Bill Gates thinks everyone should read

"Enlightenment Now" by Steven Pinker

Gates recently declared this book his new favorite book of all-time.

A follow-up from cognitive scientist Steven Pinker's book "The Better Angels of Our Nature," which looked at the widespread decline of violence through history, "Enlightenment Now" broadens the scope to examine humanity's progress across 15 domains.

People have unprecedented access to knowledge, technology, and other people, according to the book, all of which has made life easier, healthier, faster, and safer.

"I read the book slowly since I loved it so much," Gates wrote on his blog, "but I think most people will find it a quick and accessible read. He manages to share a ton of information in a way that's compelling, memorable, and easy to digest."

'Thing Explainer: Complicated Stuff in Simple Words' by Randall Munroe

Munroe, the mastermind behind the xkcd web comic, published a book in 2015 that explained pieces of modern technology using only the 1,000 most common words in the English language.

Gates said that it's a "brilliant concept" because if "you can't explain something simply, you don't really understand it." One of Gates' favorite explanations is why microwaves ("radio boxes") cook frozen foods unevenly:

When you put iced food in a radio box, after a while, parts of it start to turn to water. But since radio boxes are really good at heating water, those parts start to get hot really fast. They can even get so hot they start turning to air—before all the ice is even gone!

'The Gene: An Intimate History' by Siddhartha Mukherjee

Genome science can hardly be considered a topic of mainstream interest, but Gates says Mukherjee manages to capture its relevance to people's daily lives. He seeks to answer big questions concerning our personalities and what makes us, us.

"Mukherjee wrote this book for a lay audience, because he knows that the new genome technologies are at the cusp of affecting us all in profound ways," Gates wrote.

Mukherjee is what Gates calls a "quadruple threat." He's a practicing physician, teacher, researcher, and author. 

See the rest of the story at Business Insider

A hook is the initial sentence (or single word) that grabs the attention of readers and entices them to keep reading. Here are six ways you can approach writing a tantalizing hook. Read the full article at MarketingProfs

Who says Silicon Valley doesn’t fund real technology any more?

Data is now the critical tool for managing many corporate functions, including marketing, pricing, supply chain, operations, and more. This movement is being further fueled by the promise of artificial intelligence and machine learning, and by the ease of collecting and storing data about every facet of our daily lives.

But is the pendulum starting to swing too far? As a practitioner and teacher of predictive analytics, my greatest concern is what I call the “big data, little brain” phenomenon: managers who rely excessively on data to guide their decisions, abdicating their knowledge and experience.

In a typical big data project, a manager engages an internal or external team to collect and process data, hoping to extract insights related to a particular business problem. The big data team has the expertise needed to wrangle raw data into usable form and to select algorithms that can identify statistically significant patterns. The results are then presented to the manager through charts, visualizations, and other types of reports. This scenario is problematic because most managers are not experts in data science, and most data scientists are not business experts. Addressing this dichotomy requires individuals who can “serve as liaisons” between the two, as Todd Clark and Dan Wiesenfeld suggested in a recent HBR article.

Insight Center

This, however, is simply a palliative that does not resolve the underlying problem. As Tom Davenport wrote in HBR in 2006, the year before publishing his seminal book, Competing on Analytics, “For analytics-minded leaders, then, the challenge boils down to knowing when to run with the numbers and when to run with their guts.” Rather than reducing reliance on intuition, the advanced methodologies of big data require managers to use even more intuition to make sense of the growing number of outputs and recommendations being generated by data models.

Furthermore, the predictive models created by big data methodologies do not incorporate the manager’s unique knowledge of the business. This is tantamount to someone collecting a lot of data and then deciding to throw away half of it — except in this case you are arguably throwing away the more valuable half, because the manager has specific knowledge of the business, while the data science approaches are generic.

How can we effectively combine data science and business expertise? In a 2002 HBR article titled “Predicting the Unpredictable,” my business partner Eric Bonabeau introduced the concept of agent-based simulation (ABS), which at that time was a relatively novel approach to solving complex business problems through computer simulations. Fifteen years later, Icosystem (Bonabeau’s company, which I am still a core member of) and a number of others have demonstrated the power of ABS as a business management tool.

For example, Bonabeau’s article described a project with Eli Lilly to develop a new way of managing drug development pipelines. In 2008 Bonabeau and two members of the Eli Lilly R&D leadership published an HBR article in which they reported that the new approach had been able to deliver molecules to Phase II trials “at almost twice the speed and less than a third of the cost of the standard process.”

Although ABS was first created as a tool for social science research about four decades ago, it is only now starting to gain widespread adoption because of the dramatic increase in available computing power. For instance, Icosystem developed a simulation of the daily behavior of more than 300,000 sailors in the U.S. Navy from recruitment to retirement. This type of 20-year simulation can run on a laptop in less than one minute, and it’s enabled the Navy to test in one day more scenarios than they would normally be able to test in one year.

But what about the “big data, little brain” problem? One of the most appealing aspects of ABS is that it combines domain expertise and data. The domain expertise is used to define the structure of the simulation, which captures the day-to-day behaviors and interactions unique to each business problem. The data is used partly to refine the details of the simulation and partly to ensure that, as the simulation runs, the resulting outcomes match real-world results. With this approach, the manager’s expertise regains the primary role, and the results of the simulation can be analyzed by the manager and data scientist together, as they both understand the workings of the simulation.

Besides increasing transparency, combining domain expertise and data also increases predictive accuracy. Back in 2014 a leading automaker worked with an ABS marketing analytics platform to plan the launch of a new model. The ABS recommended launching the new model six months earlier than the client had planned. In 2016 the automaker launched the new model as recommended; a year later it found that ABS had predicted monthly sales for the first year with 93% accuracy.

By combining data and the manager’s expertise into a predictive model, ABS solves complex problems in a transparent way with a high degree of predictive accuracy. The increased availability of commercial ABS tools and didactic materials suggest that this new approach is poised to revolutionize business management.

Chatbots, a popular subject of discussion back in 2016, are still growing in popularity with 2017 showing further developments that secure their longevity and proven benefits offered to businesses. Many reports talk about the importance of an improved customer experience, with the chatbot apps contributing to direct benefits for users. In fact, 86% of respondents of the “Customer Experience Impact” Report by Oracle said that they would be prepared to pay a higher price for a high-quality customer service. Consumers are already accustomed to having interactions via chat. The purpose of this new technology is to improve this experience in aspects such as the quality and speed of responses, 24/7 support and lower costs incurred by the company. The fact is that businesses are nowhere near towards reaching the full potential of chatbots, particularly the multiple applications of them, across many contexts. The main focus of this article is the growing adoption of chatbot app development in a business context. It serves as an introduction to chatbots: to understand what they are and what benefits they offer, how they can help CXOs with their challenging goals of improving the customer experience and how chatbots can help them to improve KPIs such as the acquisition and retention of customers. It also mentions some key considerations when deciding to develop one.

THE TECHNOLOGY BEHIND CHATBOTS

A chatbot is a computer program that is engineered to carry out real conversations with users. Trends talk about the growing popularity of chatbots with 60% of consumers stating that they are a ‘technology of the future’. On top of that, almost 50% of consumers state that if implemented correctly, they would prefer to deal with all their customer service communications through content exchange such as online chat or texts. The technology behind the development of these programs is primarily based on Artificial Intelligence (AI). The most basic version of chatbots is built using Natural Language Processing, where keywords from the user input are being mapped to replies provided by the chatbot. The drawback of this approach is that it cannot understand the human intention behind the customer input. On the other hand, bots with AI capabilities added on top can increase the accuracy of correct responses and interpretation of the requests up to 90%. These bots can also understand things like emotions and user behaviours, and can constantly improve their responses through machine learning over time. Furthermore, AI capabilities provide bots with an optimal path in order to produce the best-fit results; taking into consideration the short and long-term goals of the business.

THE BENEFITS OF INTRODUCING A CHATBOT IN YOUR BUSINESS

Although it’s a relatively new trend, many businesses’ have taken advantage of chatbot benefits to create unique and improved customer experiences. Chatbots can bring value by both cutting down on the costs of traditional customer service departments and driving up sales. Taking the retail industry as a tangible example, a benefit would be to summarise similar responses received by customers and create a chatbot as an improved version of an FAQ solution. Furthermore, customers love getting advice and a more personalised experience to their queries than they might have had previously while shopping online. This improves the purchase rate and helps the customer with their shopping decisions. Taking advantage of impulsive purchases can also be a benefit of chatbots, driving sales given their ability to provide prompt responses before missing a potential sale due to a delayed response from a human customer service representative. It is always a work in progress, but given that we are in the early days of this technology, it is to be expected that not everyone is happy with their experience when interacting with chatbots. These challenges do not seem to affect the overall opinion of consumers, however, with only 11% of respondents in a LivePerson survey from a sample size of 5,000 from 6 countries stating that they have a negative opinion about chatbots.

KEY CONSIDERATIONS WHEN BUILDING A CHATBOT

We have seen the benefits of bots and the growing trends around them, and now the next question is what are the high-level key considerations when building a chatbot? As mentioned above, a benefit of bots is to cut down costs. A thorough business analysis exercise is an essential step, to trace the areas for improvement in a company, to define the role of the bot, and set targets. A key area will likely be the customer service department where customers interact and exchange information. A second consideration would be to review the strategy of the company and the current types of customers to determine the best channel of communication that a bot implementation would add the most value in (e.g. Facebook chat, SMS, online chat in the company’s website). Thirdly, key technical design considerations must be made, such as whether the bot will be NLP vs AI-based and explore any potential integrations with existing applications currently used in the company.

CXO: THE LEADER OF THE CHATBOT REVOLUTION

One of the key stakeholders in a company that should push for their implementation are CXOs. Chatbots are the answer to a majority of the main reasons of what keeps CXOs awake at night: things like not providing the best customer experience due to bottlenecks (often inadvertently) introduced into their business e.g. increased wait times, errors and inefficiency in telephone customer service, and not keeping up with the latest trends to help them improve the overall experience. Taking full advantage of the ability for a cost-effective 24/7 customer service offered by chatbots can introduce tremendous efficiencies in terms of overheads, an increased shopping experience and a resulting rise in sales.

Companies such as the ones in the retail industry have already started to introduce chatbots in their businesses and are already realising their benefits. According to Gartner surveys, Customer Experience (CX) is considered as a major competitive advantage that can differentiate companies and acts as a main determinant on how loyal a consumer is with a brand. Although the focus of this blog is on improving the customer experience, chatbot apps have many advantages in order to automate other areas of the business; such as a simple yet time-consuming process of setting appointments. If leveraged correctly chatbots can introduce competitive advantages and should be moved on the top of every forward-looking CXO’s agenda.

According to the National Academy of Medicine (formerly the Institute of Medicine), the U.S. health care system spends almost a third of its resources — $750 billion annually — on unnecessary services and inefficient care. New predictive analytics tools promise to reduce waste and improve care by forecasting the likelihood of an event — for example, a patient being readmitted to a hospital or developing a life-threatening infection — and allowing providers to tailor treatments and services accordingly. These tools are now being used across the continuum of care, from disease surveillance to chronic disease prevention to identifying patients who are at risk of deterioration.

But despite the tools’ power to improve care, most health care institutions are not yet using them. Among the impediments to adoption are the bewildering array of options providers face, from mobile applications to web-based tools to programs that integrate with electronic health records. To better understand what stands in the way of adoption, and what facilitates successful implementation, we interviewed 34 key figures from leading U.S. health systems, policy makers, and predictive analytics vendors. Among our most important findings: Success depends less on the tool itself than on getting buy-in at all levels from the start.

Here are three lessons:

Engage the Right People from the Outset

Regardless of whether a provider is developing predictive analytics in-house, as many large academic medical centers have done, or purchasing tools off the shelf, managers should make sure they are involving the right people throughout the entire process. Homegrown tools require special development expertise, and both these and commercial tools require validation, implementation, evaluation, and ongoing improvement. It’s necessary to have a multidisciplinary team, with clinical, analytics, data science, information technology, and behavior change skill sets available from start to finish.

Insight Center

A common reasons these tools are underutilized is that frontline employees don’t fully understand their value. Thus, successful programs start with a problem where predictive analytics can make a clear difference. For example, 50% of newborns with untreated sepsis (blood infection) will die. Therefore, healthy babies are often given antibiotics presumptively — “just in case” — which can lead to complications and increased antibiotic resistance. Clearly, it would be desirable to identify newborns at low risk for infection and spare them the presumptive antibiotics. Kaiser Permanente in Northern California has done just this, using a predictive tool to reduce the use of antibiotics by half without an increase in sepsis-related complications.

Demonstrating the clinical impact of a predictive tool can go a long way toward engaging those who will use them. This is particularly important for clinical staff who may otherwise be skeptical of “black box algorithms,” whose inner workings remain hidden from them. Bringing clinical staff on board early allows team members to influence which predictive tools are implemented and how, and to see early results. While this can be time-consuming, the benefits cannot be overstated. This applies to both commercial tools and those developed in-house. Commercial vendors, in fact, may have to work even harder with staff to develop trust in their products.

Change Agents and Clinical Champions Are Essential

Without a clear implementation plan and staff skilled in supporting behavior change, implementation of a predictive tool can stall. We’ve found that health care organizations that regularly used implementation experts to support change and improve quality across a range of IT and other types of projects had a head start when implementing predictive analytics. These individuals work alongside clinicians to map workflows and identify what might need to change when introducing a new process or tool. They may have a clinical background or one in service redesign or quality improvement.

Clinical champions have often proved to be essential in successful predictive analytics implementation — and health IT implementation generally. Any group of change agents should include a subset of well-respected clinicians or other thought leaders in the organization. These individuals should actively reach out to promote the tool, demonstrating its use and educating people about its expected benefits. At one leading public hospital in the Southern U.S., a small number of physicians helped promote the use of predictive models throughout the hospital. Their work gave rise to a center for predictive analytics, and today the institution uses these tools in numerous ways, including to reduce readmissions and to identify patients at risk of sepsis or returning to the intensive care unit.

The C-Suite Must Commit

Just as important as frontline buy-in is engagement from the top, especially from the CEO. Organizational leaders are often unfamiliar with advanced analytics technology and applications. Educating leadership about a tool’s expected benefits is critical in generating support. One large U.S. academic medical center did this by including tool performance measures in the executive dashboard, making its benefits clear to top management. A tool’s value may be quantified in terms of quality improvement, improved patient or clinician satisfaction, or efficiency gains.

One measure that is likely to resonate for management is reduced readmissions among Medicare patients, as hospitals may be financially penalized for readmissions. Models aimed at reducing readmissions among high-risk patients are understandably popular; one model, for example, was shown to reduce the likelihood of readmission for heart failure patients by 26%.

Ongoing attention from senior management is vital for the long-term sustainability of predictive tools; the models decalibrate over time and require regular maintenance. Successful organizations take a lifecycle approach to managing and maintaining these tools, which requires budgeting for long-term resource requirements, including investments in improving data quality and infrastructure, recalibration, and in-house data science and technology capability. Where commercial tools are purchased, costs such as software licenses, consulting, or other vendor-related fees also need to be factored into long-term budgets.

Implementing predictive analytic tools in health care is a means to an end — where the end should represent an improvement in health or health care outcomes, including lower costs. Fully realizing the benefits from a specific tool requires a structured and thoughtful approach, involving the right people, with the right skills sets, at the right time. As we’ve shown, the key to successful implementation has little to do with the model itself. Success depends on the time, effort, and resources set aside for communication, change management, and making the tool a seamless part of user workflow. Clear, committed leadership and a culture strongly supportive of change and learning are also critical factors. Done well, the result can be an increase in high-value care — that is, targeting appropriate health care to those who need it.

If you are leading a B2B SaaS business today, and you are successful, then your business is on its way to commoditization. The forces of commoditization are far more powerful today than they were five years ago and they are only going to get stronger.

This is a good thing in general, but a tough challenge for management and investors. Only successful services get commoditized. A commodity is something where there are near identical alternatives and widespread demand for a common set of functionality. Once a service is well understood by its developers, buyers and consumers, and provides sufficient value, it will be commoditized. The commoditized service will be cheaper and more reliable. Innovation will have moved on.

Commoditization may be a general good, but it is intensely painful for companies offering the service being commoditized. Competition shifts from innovation and differentiation to price and reliability. Costs get squeezed out. Business arrangements get simplified. Brand is often used as a proxy for quality. Most of the companies that created the sector, including the early movers, get forced out.

We all want our services to be successful, which means we should all be planning for the time we are commoditized. And this is likely to happen faster and faster over the next decade. Why?

Artificial Intelligence

Yes, AI is going to drive commoditization over wide swaths of software by eliminating and automating processes. AI itself is being commoditized far faster than anyone (or at least anyone I know) expected. Two years ago we thought it would drive all sorts of differentiated new solutions. Now AI is so easy to apply, and the tools are so powerful, that it is about as differentiating as using a SQL database. AI has been incredibly successful and is moving to commoditization and dragging many other applications along with it.

Cloud Computing

This was expected. Cloud computing makes it easy to scale. Commoditization depends on scaling. Cloud computing accelerates commodification.

Open APIs

Well-architected software has clean, easy to understand and easy to adapt APIs. Open APIs breakdown silos and let data and functionality flow across systems. Systems become composed rather than architected.

AI, cloud computing and open APIs are all feeding on each other. This opens up many opportunities for innovation, but it also accelerates the commoditization cycle.

How can you tell if your offer is, or will be commoditized? One way is to look at the value map for your sector. The traditional value map, as introduced by McKinsey graphs Price to Value. Offers naturally distribute along this line (or within a zone of indifference). Discount offers are at the bottom left, premium offers at the top right. You should have a pretty good idea of what this map looks like for your sector and where your company is positioned.

What we have come to realize is that in the real world this value equivalency line can be curved. In commoditizing markets the value equivalency line becomes concave. This means that additional value is not rewarded by increased price until you get to the top end of the market.

Buyers are increasingly unwilling to pay for additional functionality. It is more and more difficult to assert meaningful differentiation. The market is commoditizing.

Where can we see this happening today? There is evidence of this in the following sectors:

• HRIS and Payroll (Human Resources Information Systems)
• CRM (Customer Relationship Management)
• LMS (Learning Management Systems)
• CMS (Content Management Systems)
• SCM (Supply Chain Management)

There is a common pattern to commoditization.

1. The industry consolidates around a few large platforms
2. Lower priced alternatives flood into the low end of the market (standard functionality is well established)
3. Open source alternatives begin to gain traction
4. There is downward pressure on prices
5. New business models, leveraging commodified solutions and the data they make available, emerge

If you see this happening in your own business, and you will at some point, act quickly. You may decide you are going to fight it out in the bottom left quadrant as a commodity provider. This means cutting costs, getting to operational excellence and being able to scale. Brands win in commoditized spaces (think about the bottled water industry). In the commoditized part of the market, companies will either need to become very large and develop powerful brands (advertising on television is one signal that a sector is commoditizing) or retreat into narrow niches. The other safe positioning, at least for a time, is in the upper right, as a highly differentiated best of breed provider. There will not be very many of these and most of them will probably end up in the orbit of one of the dominant platform companies – SAP, Oracle, Salesforce.com, Microsoft, or in some spaces, like AI, Amazon, Google and Facebook.

There is a third strategy. That is to become a solution for a specific, high-value business problem, usually for a targeted set of customers. This is moving onto a new board, so to speak, and competing using business and customer knowledge. This is often the best choice. The new opportunity will usually be found within a subset of your existing clients. It means getting very close to these clients, understanding their business problems, and proposing a solution. The solution will likely be based on your current offer, with some additional functionality, and quite possibly with additional data.

In any case, the companies that recognize commoditization early and act to avoid getting trapped in the middle will be the ones that thrive in the new market conditions.

The post Is Your SaaS Business Being Commoditized? Here are Your Options. appeared first on OpenView Labs.

Last week, I discovered I’d been writing “TDLR;” instead of “TL;DR.” Considering I’ve been using this expression at least once per day for the last five years, I was mortified.

Mistakes like these aren’t a huge deal on their own. But there’s a “death by a thousand cuts” effect: The more words and phrases you misuse, the less credibility you have.

Don’t make prospects doubt your hard-earned expertise. Read on to discover which words and expressions you may be using incorrectly. 

1) “Skim” and “scan”

“Skimming” and “scanning” are two different reading techniques. If you’re trying to get the gist of something, you “skim” it by quickly looking over the main sections and keywords.

If you’re trying to find a specific detail, on the other hand, you “scan” the document.

In a Sentence:

“I skimmed your company’s SEC filings to get a better sense of your financial history.”

“I scanned the meeting notes to find where we discussed payment.”

2) “Proceed” and “precede”

To “proceed” is “to continue,” whereas “precede” means “to go before.”

In a Sentence:

“Thanks for pausing -- we can proceed.”

“Can we go back to the preceding point?”

3) “Due diligence”

“Due diligence” is a legal term for the investigation into a company or person before signing a contract or entering a business agreement.

The expression can also mean “doing research.” Just make sure you say “do due diligence,” not “do diligence” (which doesn't mean anything).

In a Sentence:

“I did some due diligence to make sure her company checks out.”

“After doing some due diligence, I don’t think they’re a good fit.”

4) “Rein” and “reign”

“Rein” refers to the straps you use to guide a horse -- which explains its second meaning, "to keep under control or restrict."

To “reign,” on the other hand, is "to rule or command a kingdom."

In a Sentence:

“Let’s pull in the reins on the spending -- we’ve already blown through half our monthly budget, and it’s only June 5.”

“She reigns over the HR department.”

5) “Supposably”

“Supposably” isn’t a real word: It’s a cross between “presumably” and “supposedly.” Letting this one slip can make you sound silly.

In a Sentence:

“Supposedly, they’re acquiring Pied Piper next month.”

“Richard will presumably continue as CEO.”

6) “Ensure” and “insure”

They might sound similar, but “ensure” means "to make certain," while “insure” refers to buying insurance.

In a Sentence:

“We ensure all of our suppliers meet OSHA regulations.”

“My company insures its most expensive equipment.”

7) “Deep-seeded”

According to typo-proofing tool Correctica, even the Washington Post and White House have gotten this one wrong. The correct version is “deep-seated,” as in “firmly established” or “ingrained.”

In a Sentence:

“Your deep-seated presence in the local community is impressive.”

8) “Piece of mind” and “peace of mind”

When you give someone a “piece of your mind,” you’re letting them know why you’re angry.

“Peace of mind” is very different: It’s a calm, relaxed state you enter when you know nothing’s wrong.

In a Sentence:

“If Jane still can’t get a sales engineer for the call, she’s going to give Sarah a piece of her mind.”

“Mind if I look over the deck for typos one last time? It’ll give me peace of mind.”

9) “Sneak peak”

“Peak” and “peek” might only be one letter off, but the former refers to the top of a mountain, while the latter means “to look quickly.”

Unless you have a mountain range stashed away, you can’t give people a “sneak peak” -- you can only give them a “sneak peek.”

In a Sentence:

“We just rolled out a new feature. Want a sneak peek?”

10) “For all intensive purposes”

People use this phrase all the time to say “virtually” or “for all practical purposes.” It’s actually “for all intents and purposes” -- you can blame faulty hearing for the confusion.

In a Sentence:

“I’ll follow up today, but for all intents and purposes, the deal is dead.”

11) “Tongue-and-cheek”

No, the joke your prospect just told wasn’t “tongue-and-cheek” -- it was “tongue-in-cheek.” The difference is subtle, but it's an important one to get right.

In a Sentence:

“They were pretty serious when we started the call, but being tongue-in-cheek helped them loosen up.”

12) “Slight” versus “sleight”

You “slight” someone when you insult or snub them. However, “sleight” means “deceitful craftiness.”

In a Sentence:

“Jan slighted Michael by not inviting him to the corporate dinner.”

“The pickpocket managed to grab my wallet by sleight of hand.”

13) “By in large”

When you want to say “on the whole,” or “everything considered,” make sure you don’t accidentally say “by in large.” The correct phrase is “by and large.”

In a Sentence:

“By and large, the discovery call went well.”

14) “Principle” and “principal”

A “principle” is a belief, philosophy, or fundamental truth. Hopefully, you’re a person of principle.

“Principal” can mean many things. First, it can mean “main,” or “major.” It can also refer to capital before interest. Finally, “principal” is the title of the primary (sometimes the only) investor in a business.

In a Sentence:

“The offer was tempting, but I had to reject it based on principle.”

“The principal returned my email, but I think her agency might be too small to use our services.”

15) "Adverse" and "averse"

An "adverse" effect prevents your success or progress toward a goal, while "averse" means something you're strongly opposed to.

In a Sentence:

"I just got adverse news from my customer champion."

"I'm not averse to offering her a free trial."

16) "Appraise" and "apprise"

To determine the value of an item, you "appraise" it. To inform someone, you "apprise" them.

In a Sentence:

"According to the firm who appraised the property, it will be worth more once the community playground is finished."

"I'll apprise you as soon as I hear back from my finance director."

17) "Begs the question"

People commonly use "begs the question" to mean "clearly makes you wonder" or "obviously leads to this next question." However, it actually means "assumes what it should be proving. Use it to refer to circular reasoning.

In a Sentence:

"The website says their product boosts productivity by making you more efficient, but that begs the question."

18) "Dichotomy," "discrepancy," and "disparity"

There is a "dichotomy" between two different or entirely opposite things. There is a "discrepancy" between two things that should be identical -- but are not. A "disparity" means a significant difference for something you can measure, like salary, age, or access to a resource.

In a Sentence:

"There's a dichotomy between your recruiting and retention goals."

"I noticed a discrepancy between the numbers you forwarded me versus the ones you told me on the phone."

"The pricing disparity for your North American customers compared to your European customers is troubling."

19) "New age"

Beware of calling your solution "New Age" -- in general, this term means "mystical" or "spiritual" and stems from the New Age movement that spread through niche communities in the 1970s and '80s. It doesn't mean "modern," "cutting-edge," or "futuristic."

In a Sentence:

"Some scholars say the New Age movement hit its apex in the '80s."

20) "Opportunistic"

Are you opportunistic? Perhaps, but you might not want to brag about that. An opportunistic person will exploit any opportunity that arises even if it's immoral, unfair, or unplanned.

In a Sentence:

"Keenan opportunistically took Hooli's acquisition offer, even though he'd already committed to a merger with a Dutch VR startup."

What are your biggest language pet peeves?

Editor's note: This post was originally published in August 2016 and has been updated for comprehensiveness.