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WiFi connectivity issues on Android devices aren’t very uncommon. In fact, plenty of people face WiFi connectivity issues almost each day.

In most cases, it’s seen that these connectivity issues arise due to a handful of petty reasons ranging from carelessness to ignorance. Let’s go through a few simple tips to troubleshoot your WiFi connectivity issues on Android devices.

We’ll start from the very basics first.

1. Check the password

This might sound very simple but these simple things create a lot of issues.

Your wireless network, whether at work or home is possibly a secured network (if it’s not, you must secure your network immediately to prevent network misuse and data hacks) requiring some sort of a password to get on to.

Ensure that you triple check your password before getting onto the network. Some people make simple errors while entering these passwords and panic when they fail to get onto the network on two, three or four attempts. Just ensure that you aren’t the one making these simple mistakes again and again.

Note: WiFi passwords are case-sensitive.

2. Check the network name

Another solution that might look very simple from the hindsight but I can guarantee that it’s not. I am quoting from my personal experiences here and you’ll surely get my point in a jiffy.

In my area, the Linksys router was once very popular and was present in almost all houses. The Linksys router used to come up with a default network name called “Linksys” itself.

Several families didn’t even bother to change the network name and hence, that name (“Linksys”) prevailed. They did change their passwords though.

The issues cropped up during network interferences. When families wanted to get onto the network, they failed to get on it because several networks had the same network name. Hence, make sure that your give your network a unique name that stands out from the crowd.

By doing so you will be able to detect your specific network from the crowd and get on it easily and conveniently.

3. Is your WiFi really on?

Funny question; isn’t it? But to be honest, issues do emerge among people from these types of carelessness.

Just make sure you check your WiFi on phone/tab before getting onto the internet. And if your router has a physical on/off button, don’t forget to check whether it’s physically switched off when you experience “no connectivity” on your Android devices.

4. The WiFi option on your Android smartphone/tab doesn’t switch itself on

This problem’s a little tricky. The hardware of your Android phone/tab might be the main culprit behind this issue. The software can also play a major role in causing this trouble.

If you want to take a peek at the available fixes, you can refer to this detailed article.

Also don’t forget to check whether your airplane setting’s turned on or not.

5. The annoying “obtaining IP address” issue

Is your Android phone/tab displaying “obtaining IP address” and is stuck at that point? Using a static IP instead of DHCP can resolve the issue.

Consider doing these on your Android device.

• Open Settings.
• Go to “Wireless and networks.”
• Tap on “Wi-Fi”.
• You’ll see a list of available networks on this interface. Find out your personal network that you want to get on to. Hold your finger on it for quite some time. A box like this one here (Screenshot 1) will crop up in no time. Tap on “modify network”.

Screenshot 1

• After you tap on “modify network”, you’ll see this dialogue box (Screenshot 2) crop up. Tap on “Advanced options.”

Screenshot 2

• This one (Screenshot 3) follows the previous one in no time. You’ll see the IP settings depicted clearly in this box. Change it from “DHCP” to “static” (Screenshot 4).

Screenshot 3

Screenshot 4

Do remember that this process can vary on basis of Android versions. But the basic motto stays the same which is changing your IP settings from “DHCP to static.” If you fail to find out your IP settings from these processes, Google can always be your friend.

6. WiFi network connected but still no internet

This problem’s usually associated with your network router or modem.

Possible solutions are a hard restart. Unplug the power cord of your router, count to 20 and plug it back in. Can you get on the internet now? High chances that you can.

So that’s it I guess. There are many more fixes but these six fixes are the simplest ones of the lot. It’s time to sign off for now. Hope you had a good read.

There are three ways to create negative churn that I have observed in the market. First, usage expansion. Second, feature expansion. Third, product expansion.

Usage expansion is the most common way to create negative churn. Utility based pricing models like buying SMS credits on Twilio, or compute on Amazon or data processing on Mulesoft lend themselves to gradually increasing account sizes, as customers use more and more of the product. Per seat pricing also leads to usage expansion if product lends itself to growing within an customer. Slack and Expensify might win more seats as word of the products get out and the company grows.

Of course, the pricing plan has to be structured in a way to encourage this kind of behavior. All-you-can-eat plans won’t engender dollar expansion of accounts.

In the case of per seat pricing, if the initial sale fully penetrates an organization, then there is no usage expansion to be had. This highlights a strategic question facing many per seat pricing companies: Does the business land and expand in order to engender negative churn or maximize the total revenue by closing a comprehensive deal today?

Product expansion is also called cross-selling. This means offering multiple products to the same customer in order to increase the account value. Salesforce might initially lead with their CRM tool, but soon an account executive will offer marketing automation or the Heroku platform to increase the customer’s spend with Salesforce.

However, most early-stage SaaS companies offer only one product, so product expansion is typically limited to later stage companies who can finance multiple product development. Hence, it’s less common.

Feature expansion also called up-selling, involves migrating customers from a lower paying plan to a higher plan. The canonical three pane pricing page often discriminates pricing by feature. For example, Expensify has three pricing buckets: team, corporate and enterprise. Customers upgrading from team at $5 per active user per month to the corporate plan at $9 per user per month benefit from more complex approval workflows and synchronization with upmarket financial packages like NetSuite.

Feature expansion does have some challenges. First, the SaaS startup must demarcate the buckets well. They must decipher which features are going to entice customers to upgrade. Second, upsell opportunities are less frequent. A customer likely only upgrades from one plan to another one every few years, so there’s a limited opportunity to repeat this behavior.

Many SaaS startups are starting to combine expansion strategies. If you use the 3 part tariff pricing strategy, it’s easy to see how feature expansion maps to the platform fee and usage expansion maps to the marginal cost fee.

Expansion strategies raise the question of whether negative churn is always a good thing. Most of the time, it’s a wonderful thing. But, a huge annual account expansion each year can indicate that the entry price point is too low, and the business is leaving money on the table.

Is a high velocity sales team selling lots of $10k deals with 200% annual expansion better than a sales team selling $20k deals with slightly slower sales velocity, but more cash up-front? That all depends on the strategy of the business.

Expansion ties back to the three pricing strategies of a startup skimming, penetration and maximization. Startups that pursue the penetration strategy will likely have substantially better negative churn figures than the ones who pursue maximization. But they might trade that negative churn for better cash collections.

These three types of dollar account expansion techniques can be powerful if used properly. They highlight the importance of aligning the go-to-market strategy, especially the pricing with the customer success strategy, to maximize upsell.

Social media is a big part of book marketing. I know that I recently said that there may be less emphasis on social media in the future, and that indie authors should refine their social media, only participating where they NEED to be. But the fact is, it will still be important for quite some time. And, with time increasingly a limiting factor for most of us indie authors, it’s important to use social media tools that will make our book promotion efforts much smoother. So here are 10 of the best new social media tools for indie authors! And, the best part, most of them are free, have free options, or are very low cost!

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10 Great New Social Media Tools to Help Indie Authors! via @bookgal
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1. Buffer – If you need to keep track of social media or schedule different content sharing across multiple networks, Buffer is something you may want to consider! The free version is likely all most authors need.
2. Quuu – Want to engage your readers? Quuu gives you curated suggestions for content to share on social media and automatically shares it to your Buffer account. A free version will work for most authors, though you’re limited to 2 content suggestions per day, and from there, the pricing tiers go up to $30/month.
3. One Shot – With OneShot, you can post screenshots of images and text to Twitter, allowing you to escape the 140-character limit and share a larger message in one burst. (iOS devices)
4. Adobe Spark – We’re always on the hunt for great ways to create impactful graphics. Let me introduce you to Adobe Spark, which does just that – social graphics, web stories, and animated videos that pack a punch. And it’s free!
5. Paletton – Trying to build some really cool images or graphics but having trouble with colors? Paletton may be the answer for you. You can use their free live colorizer to come up with a color scheme that works well together. Once you’ve found your match, export the colors and you’ll get a list of RGB and HTML color codes that you can use to call out specific colors in your software.
6. Refind – Do you habitually save links to sites or articles that you are interested in and then can’t find them later? This will help you solve that problem!
7. Legend – This is another tool for animated graphics that allow your text to tell a dynamic story. Available for iOS users.
8. Engage by Twitter – You want to make Twitter more effective? This does that! It was actually developed by Twitter to help you manage your profile(s), and gives you information about tweets and influencers. iOS only right now.
9. Animoto – Want to make great videos? With video livestreaming growing more and more every passing day, Animoto can help you make eye-catching videos. Tiered pricing is available based on your needs.
10. SumoMe – This is a great addition to your website to automate newsletter sign-ups, track social shares, and even creating social share buttons. It has free and paid options and is reasonably user-friendly.

Ultimately there are tons of great apps out there, and it’s up to you to find the ones that work best. With these great options available, we’re sure your 2017 social media will be off to a huge start!

And, predictably, we found more than just these 10 social media tools that we love. So, tune in for another post soon that features more great options.

In a previous post, I mentioned Napoleon, and how just as many battles are won through logistics and planning as by bullets and bombs. Success in battle, as in social media, comes from having an army of supporters before you even take one step onto the field.

But how do you begin to assemble that network in the first place? How do you command attention, convey authority and earn your followers’ respect? You have to look, act, and be the part. You must be confident, capable—ready to address the naysayers and yet leverage those who look to you for leadership. In short, you have to prime your pump!

Keep Your Followers From Getting Cranky

Remember those old hand-cranked water pumps you’d often see on farms or campgrounds? Perhaps you even grew up with one in your own front yard. Think back to a time when you ran to one of these pumps in thirsty anticipation of a cold drink, only to find that when you cranked the handle, nothing came out.

Crank-crank. Nothing.

Crank-crank. Nada.

Along comes your friend who cranks the handle once and—whoosh! Out comes the glorious, crisp, cold water from what seems like the depths of the earth. From that point on, the water flows unabated. You drink with abandon with every new crank of the handle, and you can literally fill barrels with the rewards of your efforts. Getting thirsty yet?

Similarly, when you present yourself to the world on social media, don’t disappoint your followers by not being ready to provide value right away. Prime your pump so that when people come to visit they’ll reap the rewards of interacting with you on the first pull of the handle. Prepare your public profile and persona so that it clearly states your mission and your value to your target audience. Have a great picture that speaks volumes about you without having to say a word. Craft a snappy bio that doesn’t require a dictionary or a degree in fine arts to figure out. Above all, don’t make your audience have to do a bunch of work before you provide them a payoff.

A Primer in Personal Branding

Pop quiz: think of a soft drink. Now think of a running shoe. Chances are you thought of Coke and Nike, respectively. These brands have spent considerable money over the years so that whenever you think of getting a drink or going for a run you immediately think of their brands.

To achieve business or personal opportunities in the world of social media, we need to think of ourselves as our own personal brands. When our target audience thinks of the products or services we sell, or the ideals that we stand for, we want them to immediately think of us.

The good news is that with the power of social media, building a brand no longer takes millions of dollars and dozens of years. You can start building your personal brand and priming your pump by following the simple steps outlined above. Be ready for greatness, because greatness is ready for you!

The post How to Be Successful on Social: Prime Your Pump! appeared first on Social Media Explorer.

Selling is a people-oriented business. Sales are made in the dialogue, person-to-person. The interaction may be face-to-face or over the phone, but the very essence of a successful outcome is based on trust between seller and buyer.

This means salespeople must be at their very best, bringing value to the table and to their customers. If, instead, they just push products, they sacrifice goodwill and trust. Their sales success is likely to be short-lived, not the basis of a long and mutually productive relationship.

Many articles have been written about the parade of scandals in the financial industry: overly aggressive sales goals leading to the unauthorized opening of accounts; funneling billions of wealthy customer accounts offshore; manipulating global interest rates; the whole subprime mortgage crisis. And such bad behavior extends beyond banking into other industries and the political environment, where instability and uncertainty are causing greater distrust among customers, who are increasingly wary of salespeople and selling tactics.

I recently read an article that called for a new business model, and while the writer was referring to the financial industry specifically, the advice applies more broadly. Companies need to focus more on advocating for their customers rather than exploiting customers to move more product. They need to make sure whoever is touching their customer — whether it’s someone in sales, service, or support — provides a uniform and positive customer experience. And while this should be needless to say, I’m going to say it anyway: The customer experience should be one that builds credibility and trust while reinforcing the strength of the relationship.

I’d like to share a few personal examples that illustrate the value of a customer-centric approach. Last summer, I was meeting with a customer’s Learning and Development people to talk about phase two of a training program for their salespeople. I asked one question that resulted in a 150 percent increase in the training budget for the program. That question was this: “After you’ve made the sale, who is interacting most closely with your customer?”

The answer: the service people, to the tune of 10 to one. So, I asked a follow-up question: “How can you risk having service people, who touch the customer 10 times as often as salespeople, not be as upskilled as the salespeople?” It was an aha moment in which the C-level executive realized the necessity of putting all its customer-facing people through the training to create a uniform customer experience.

Another story reveals just how important this kind of approach is to companies that want to keep the development of their people as their own competitive advantage. I am occasionally asked by my colleagues at Richardson whether a current customer would be willing to be a reference for us with a prospective customer. What I have been hearing back from current customers is they don’t want to give away the “secret sauce” to their competitors — or even to companies in other industries. They view their partnership with Richardson as a differentiator, raising the game of their sales and support organizations, and they don’t want everyone else to know the reasons for their success.

I consider this a powerful objective measure of the value they place on training and their investment in people — and Richardson. Not only do they see the benefit in sales performance, but also in talent retention. For customers, dealing with the same person over time helps in building trust. If there’s constant turnover in the sales force, trust and confidence suffer.

Salespeople deal with barriers and challenges every day. They can’t get prospects to pick up the phone or agree to a meeting. They have to find new ways to engage with customers. They are brought into the buying cycle late in the process. There are many more decision makers brought into the sales process than ever before. And within their companies, salespeople continually face rising quotas, adding pressure to make more sales in any way possible.

While the challenges are daunting, there are solutions. Progressive companies understand that now is the time to invest in their people, giving them the skills and resources to operate more effectively and gain customer trust. There’s one last story I want to share. A customer recently came back to me to say, “Three years ago, you told us we should be doing this, but we didn’t do anything. Now, we’re three years behind in our growth curve. We need to start moving. Our competitors aren’t doing anything like this, so even though we’re three years behind, we may be years ahead of them.”

The point is it’s always a good time to invest in the people who touch customers. Help them get ahead of the curve when it comes to the next selling opportunity. It takes time to build the trust needed to convince skeptical customers, but starting the process today will put you further down the road than those who don’t do anything. Theirs will be an uphill battle, no matter if they’re in financial services or other industries. Customer expectations have never been higher or trust levels lower, but there’s no time like the present to begin making changes that will lead to different, and better, results.

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Our latest eBook offers practical ideas to build, maintain, and regain trust with your customers. You can download it here, or by clicking on the image below. If you need immediate assistance please contact us at 215-940-9255 or info@richardson.com.

The post Trust In the Selling Environment appeared first on Richardson Sales Training and Enablement Blog.

Anyone leading a well-established business faces the challenge of needing to innovate within a large organization while still getting the day-to-day business done. It’s not easy. Innovation is risky. It involves change. And in the heat of battle, it’s tempting to put innovation on the back burner.

As someone who built my early career at PepsiCo, I always gravitated to the unknown, and―let’s face it―I enjoyed disrupting the status quo. I had to find ways to innovate on big brands and convince the company to back those efforts (my bosses helped a lot with the latter!). At the same time, I thought of it as deliciously subversive behavior, but looking back on it now, I understand that PepsiCo fully supported its employees and innovation. I was fortunate to have worked there.

Today, I wanted to share some best practices that helped me rise above the day-to-day work to innovate more successfully. I’ll call them “Periscopes.”

Three “Periscope” Innovation Best Practices

1. Look for “Eureka Moments”

Eureka moments are insights that cause you to see something new, different, and profound about your consumers. Often they turn conventional wisdom on its head and reveal big untapped opportunities.

• Ask provocative, even naïve questions.

What would it take for our product to be ten times as good as it is today? What would it take to be known as the best service provider in America? CEOs and new employees tend to be good at this. So are outside thought partners.

Questioning can happen as part of a formal process or opportunistically, but there needs to be a process to ensure the best ideas get developed and tested.

• Question your most deeply held assumptions.

Sacred cows are a great place to start.

At Frito Lay, back in the days when mom was the main grocery shopper, we traditionally targeted female heads of household for Fritos, because we believed moms were buying corn chips for their kids’ lunches. Then we asked a different question―who is actually eating Fritos? It turned out that dads were the real heavy users, so we changed our marketing to target them.

Ask questions like: Do we have the right target audience? Is there a new audience that we have not thought about? Has the value proposition changed in some way?\Is there a different benefit we haven’t considered?

• Search outside your industry.

Someone somewhere has solved your problem before.

The King County Library System wanted to make it easier for patrons to find materials on their own, without having to ask a librarian or search a catalog.

We interviewed Disney on how they managed way-finding at their theme parks. We looked at how the British Museum helped visitors from all over the world find the highlights of their collection. We looked at how hospitals channeled people to the emergency room when they needed urgent care in a crisis. Those insights led to innovation best practices that KCLS used in designing their new libraries.

2. Set Your Innovation Thinking Free

People often become too anchored to how their company operates in the present day, which can make it difficult to envision breakthrough possibilities for the future. To free your team from this trap and find innovation, create structured ways for them to break out of their day-to-day mindsets.

Your competitors will take your future from you if you don’t seize it for yourself.

• Imagine your success far into the future.

I worked with the division of a technology company whose leader wanted to get her team thinking in more strategic and longitudinal ways.

To prepare for a strategic planning session, I asked team members to gather and synthesize facts that would be important for the discussion. They came to the session primed to contribute.

We started the session with this question: “It’s 20 years from now. You’re about to give a talk and your company is being recognized for a major achievement. Where are you―being interviewed by Fortune? On stage at TED? Accepting a Nobel Prize? What did your company do and why was it so special?”

At the meeting, we talked about their various visions of success.

That exercise opened up a more robust discussion about what goals would make sense for the division longer term and what strategies would be required to achieve them. They weren’t constrained by what they thought they could or couldn’t do. Their leader was able to use this discussion to set the division’s future direction with the team engaged and fully prepared to act.

• Alternatively, return to the past.

What was the passionate spark, the core purpose that got your company started? Have your employees lost that narrative?

Starbucks at one point considered going into furniture―that business didn’t leverage their core equities. CEO Howard Schultz brought them back to their roots, saying, “We are about the coffeehouse experience―about community, a place for people to get together and exchange ideas.” They changed their mission statement to:

“To inspire and nurture the human spirit – one person, one cup, and one neighborhood at a time.”

This statement is far more inspiring than “Let’s go for five more share points.”

On a practical note, when you engage your team around the bigger purpose your company or brand serves, they can make better strategic decisions and it will help them decide what belongs and what doesn’t belong on their priority lists.

• Ask questions that force you out of your normal point of view.

For example: Imagine you are a startup company in your market. What would you do and what innovation could you create to disrupt your industry?

Or pretend you are your most hated or feared competitor. What could that rival do to take your company down?

Or pretend you are a market leader from another country, entering your market. How might they approach the opportunity?

Then ask what might that imply for you next innovation and what you can do differently.

3. Invite Focused Play into You Office

Offer opportunities for focused play, to create a climate for your employees to attack your most pressing business problems in unstructured, non-traditional ways.

The 2010 Nobel Prize for physics went to Andre Geim and Konstantin Novoselov for their work on graphene, a material which is expected to revolutionize the electronics industry.

Their lab had a Friday afternoon tradition of doing crazy experiments, and that’s where their breakthrough began. The Nobel committee cited the scientists’ playfulness when they awarded the prize.

Neuroscience shows our brains work better when they are relaxed. Companies need ways to encourage creativity and help employees make unexpected connections that lead to big ideas, solutions, and innovation.

• Conduct special work events to tackle an important problem.

Curaspan Health Group organized a weekend hackathon where employees created apps to deliver better health care. The winning project was funded and the winners got the opportunity to lead the project.

Once a year, or even once a quarter, you might consider setting aside a day to form teams and solve a particular problem. Offer a prize to the one with the most usefulness. Or consider an employee choice award. Either way, make sure the solution is acted upon and the right people are rewarded.

• Incorporate play on a small scale during brainstorming sessions.

Try brainstorming sessions for when your team is kicking off a project or when they have hit the wall on a particular problem.

Create exercises that purposefully invite exaggeration to make people comfortable sharing their closer-in ideas, for example. Set the innovation climate for everyone to feel comfortable, particularly introverts who need time to process their ideas on their own before discussing them.

The Beauty of These Practices

They don’t cost much. Just a mind shift.

I’d love to hear what other practices you find helpful.

Targeting subscribers and sending them personalized, hyper-relevant emails is a great way to better connect with the people on your email list. It allows you to deliver the right message to people who want and need it most. And the more you can do that with your emails, the more likely you are to expand your reach and nurture your audience until they become customers and loyal advocates of your brand. But how can you optimize your emails so you’re making the most out of the opportunity to engage subscribers? Let’s take a closer look at best practices for personalizing your emails to the right people on your email list.

1. Identify your goals.

If you haven’t written down what you hope to achieve by personalizing your emails, now’s the time to do so. Whenever you think about ways to optimize your emails, it’s important to understand why you’re optimizing them. You don’t want to throw in a subscriber’s first name simply because someone else did it and you thought it was fun. Make sure it helps you achieve your goal, whether that’s to boost your engagement rates like email opens. After all, there are different ways to personalize your emails. You can send an email with a personalization field, like a subscriber’s first name, or you can email specific, contextual content to a targeted group of subscribers. By identifying your goals, it’ll make it easier for you to determine how to personalize your messages. As you think about how you want to improve your communication with subscribers, some questions you might ask yourself include:

• Do you want to embrace a more conversational tone?
• Do you want to include specific details of subscriber information?
• Do you want to send more relevant content based on your subscribers’ needs and interests?

For each scenario, consider how you might be able to achieve the goal you’re looking for through personalization. If you want to embrace a more conversational tone, for example, addressing a subscriber by her first name can be a subtle way to achieve that. Adding a first name personalization field might also help your email stand out in the inbox and catch your subscriber’s attention. Or, if you want to send the right message to the right group of people who would find it most relevant, you may want to segment subscribers to deliver targeted content. By having an idea of what problem you want to solve, you’ll be able to identify the best way to segment subscribers and deliver more personalized emails.

2. Collect the right data.

Once you have an idea of how you want to send targeted emails, make sure you’re collecting the right information so you can make it happen. If you want to send targeted emails that include a subscriber’s first name, confirm you’re collecting first names in the sign up form. If not, adjust your form to include a first name field, like this sign up form featured on our Ultimate Guide to Email Marketing:

If your goal is to send personalized emails based on a subscriber’s specific interests, you might want to ask for that information on the sign up form. Or, send a survey out to your subscribers so you can see what people are interested in, and follow up with relevant email content. If you want to send a one-off email based on how subscribers engaged with a previous message, you can also create a segment based on actions like opens and clicks. As you consider ways to optimize your sign up form so you can send personalized emails, avoid asking for too much information. Including too many fields can be overwhelming for your potential subscribers, and you don’t want to create a barrier that could prevent them from joining your list. If you do include more than just name and email address, I encourage you to emphasize the value of your emails. You might even want to explain what kind of targeted content you’ll deliver if a subscriber shares more information about themselves.

3. Use personalization naturally.

Once you’re collecting the right data, there’s one rule to keep in mind: With great personalization power comes great responsibility. Personalized content should feel natural and not forced. Do it if it makes sense for the goals you have for your broadcast emails or automated campaigns. Does adding the first name to a subject line bring additional value, or are you just doing it to try it? Do you really need to set multiple campaigns for different sign up forms if the emails aren’t too different from one another? Another helpful way to think about it is by looking back at the goals you originally set. Whether you use personalization fields or contextual content, it should either make it easier for you to create the email or help you establish a personal connection with your email community.

4. Get creative.

While there are a variety of ways in which you can personalize your emails, I like to break it out into two strategies: personalization fields and contextual content. Personalization fields allow you to automatically populate an email with specific subscriber’s information, like their first name or city. Contextual content allows you to send relevant content to targeted segments of subscribers, like a broadcast message to re-engage those who haven’t opened an email in over six months. Since there are so many pieces of information you can collect about your subscribers and ways to send hyper-relevant emails, there are endless opportunities for you to get creative with both strategies. For example, personalization fields aren’t limited to subject lines. You can pepper them into your email content to better hold the attention of your readers. Here’s an example from one of our customers Honoree Corder, a writer, speaker and coach to authors looking to publish books:

For contextual content, consider how you might be able to target automated campaigns to your different subscribers. You can send them campaigns based on what incentive they signed up for, their geographical location or experience level. One way to find out what your subscribers really need is by referencing any common questions they’ve asked. Are there individuals who want information based on their industry or personal situation? Are there others like that person? If you’re low on ideas, this can be a good place to start.

5. Test your emails.

Testing your emails is a must-do for most people who send email, and it’s especially important if you’re doing things like adding personalization fields or triggering multiple types of automated campaigns. After you create your emails that feature personalization fields, send a test to yourself to make sure the right information is being pulled in correctly. If subscribers first names should appear, confirm that’s actually happening. If you’re using AWeber to send your emails, you can add personalization field content so you can view it in your test email. If you’re sending broadcasts to a targeted subscriber segment, carefully set up the process so that the email is only going to that group. If triggering different automated campaigns, test the sign up process to make sure the right follow up sequence is launching with the right actions. Tweak and test as needed until everything looks good to go!

Start personalizing your emails today

There are a variety of ways in which you can better connect with subscribers and I encourage you to choose one of these new tactics to try in your next email send! Want more ideas to help you write better emails? Sign up for our What to Write in Your Emails Course (and get 20+ free email copy templates)!

What do information overload, brain freeze, and hangovers have in common?

Each one is an example of what happens when you get too much of a good thing. Whether we’ve swamped ourselves with news stories from Twitter, overindulged with a tub of Phish Food, or hit the town a bit too hard, we all know what it’s like to wish we hadn’t gone so far.

Today, we want to look at a common myth surrounding email marketing. Like our examples above, a conservative dose of effective email marketing can be a great thing. Too many emails, on the other hand, will give your list a severe headache.

Forget the bottle of aspirin, though. They’ll just unsubscribe.

Here’s our myth in a neat little package:

Too Many Emails Will Lead to a Spike in Unsubscribe Rates.

On one level that doesn’t sound like much of a myth. Every one of us struggles daily to reach that loftiest of goals: inbox zero. And we all know how frustrating it is when some inconsiderate email marketer distracts us from our seemingly impossible task.

So, when we look at charts like this one that show the #1 reason for email opt-outs is excessive frequency, we yawn and ask, “what else is new?” The principle seems obvious enough: If you talk too much, people will stop listening to you.

But is that principle correct?

TV show hosts like Stephen Colbert and Samantha Bee talk for a living, and yet millions of us tune in every night for more. Back to marketing—if people were genuinely excited to hear from you, do you think excessive email frequency would be their top concern?

So, if we’re going to get to the heart of today’s myth, we need to dig a little deeper and ask what else causes people to drop out… Well, I lied… We don’t have to dig that far at all.

The #2 reason people unsubscribe is that they find the emails to be irrelevant. Call me crazy, but that makes me wonder. Would the person who cited frequency as their top reason have been so quick to unsubscribe if they found real value in the emails they received?

On the flip side, was frequency just not an issue for the #2 respondents? In reality, we can’t isolate either question from the other. It seems our myth needs a little qualification.

What Counts as Too Many?

As a threshold, “too many” is too squishy to be helpful.

First off, different industries interact with email marketing in a variety of ways. According to Constant Contact, the average unsubscribe rate for fitness-related emails is a trim .08%. Landscapers, on the other hand, can expect .34% to opt out per email.

Unsubscribe rates don’t tell us the whole story, but they do tell us how we can expect subscribers to react to specific content categories. In other words, a spike in unsubscribes may have more to do with the nature of your campaign itself than the frequency of your contact.

Even more important than unsubscribe rates, however, are the expectations we set up for subscribers. If people sign up for your daily tip, weekly newsletter, or monthly update, then you’ve set a clear expectation. Go beyond that, and you may get yourself in trouble.

Content, Context, and the Health of Your List

If your campaign isn’t themed around a particular frequency, then the search for that magic threshold of too many is probably misguided. To be blunt, the problem isn’t with sending too many emails. It’s with sending too many irrelevant emails.

The relevance of your emails is a strand of three cords: content, context, and list health:

Content

This one is almost too obvious to be interesting. If you put together crummy emails that either misinform or fail to communicate anything worthwhile or helpful, then you can expect people to unsubscribe the minute you become annoying. When it comes to worthless emails, just one can be enough to turn people off.

Context

Know your list! It’s not enough for your content to be awesome; it needs to be awesomely relevant to your subscribers. If your list spans various demographics or interests, break it up via segment. Tailor your campaign to address their differing needs in specific ways.

List Health

Your list health is the measure of how well you’re doing pairing content and context. If your list is healthy—low bounce rate, high ratio of active users, high click-through percentage—then an uptick in frequency won’t be nearly as harmful as you might think.

Paradoxically, unsubscribes can help you increase the health of your list, but only if your content and context are in line.

Test, Test, Test

Once you’ve got the quality and relevancy of your email marketing in line, you can return to the frequency question. The best way to figure out how much email is too much is to test each campaign out before you run it.

In each of your segments, set aside a small control group—a segment within a segment, so to speak. Without leaving behind the relevancy question, you can then begin to experiment with an uptick in email frequency within those control groups.

Measure everything: click-through, conversion, and, of course, unsubscribe. If you find that people are engaging with your content and sticking with you, then you can be confident that your larger list can successfully bear an increase in frequency.

To be sure, every segment will have its breaking point. You can only push people too far before they begin to tune you out. The beauty of control-group testing is that you can find that breaking point without risking the bulk of your hard-earned list.

Conclusion

So back to our myth as originally stated: Too Many Emails Will Lead to a Spike in Unsubscribes.

As we’ve seen, this myth is false precisely because it asks the wrong question about why people unsubscribe. Instead of starting with questions about quantity, focus on the quality of your email marketing.

Do that, and you won’t have to worry nearly as much about frequency as you might think.

We’d love to hear from you. How’ve you dealt with email frequency in the past? Have you found unsubscribe rates to have more to do with frequency, relevancy, or list health?

A CRM can be a powerful tool in helping you strategize and think about your clients and prospects. JP asks about how I use a CRM. He wants to specifically know how I categorize things.

• Dream Clients: You know how important it is to have a finite list of prospects for whom you create breathtaking, earth shattering, jaw dropping value. This is the critical category. You want to make sure you nurture these, and that you persistent, patiently, professionally, pursue these clients.
• Prospects: These are something less than a dream client, but that doesn’t mean that they aren’t important, or that you are not going to put great effort here. When you take care of dream clients, you move down to prospecting in this category.
• Existing Clients: These are just what you imagine they are: clients you are working with now. You can’t neglect these without paying the price.
• EDV: This is how much the prospective client spends annually. It stands for “estimated dollar volume.” You need this number to know what your wallet share is–or what it might potentially be. I use categories that increase by 250K to 500K. For clients, this gives you an idea about your wallet share.
• Leadership: I categorize leadership contacts within the CRM. These are not necessarily categorized by titles, but more about their role in solving problems.
• Compelling Reasons to Change: A simple list of choices that remind you of what challenges and opportunities are compelling your dream client to change. This is nice list to work against when you plan calls, and when you build a solution.
• Buying Cycle Stage: This one is important. You want to know how best to serve your clients where they are. This category helps you think about what they need from you to move forward.
• Competitor: If you are in a competitive displacement business, this category can help you with a strategy to create and win a new opportunity. A little intel here can inform your plan, especially if you know how you beat each of your frequent competitors.

All of these categories are for naught if they don’t drive consistent behaviors. If you haven’t built searches and lists to make these categories useful, you don’t need to worry about these at all.

What is most important is that you use categories and tags serve you and your process. The best CRM is the one that you will use consistently, and the best categories are the ones that allow you to be more effective.

The post Categories and Tags in Your CRM appeared first on The Sales Blog.

You may already be familiar with the positive role that emotional intelligence (EI) plays in business performance and success. But many marketers have yet to explore the idea of applying EI to their promotional strategies. Loosely defined as an ability to recognize and manage both your own emotions, and the emotional responses of others, studies show that 90% of top business performers possess high levels of emotional intelligence.

While not everyone is innately intelligent in the emotional sense, it is a skill set that can be learned and developed with practice. And that’s important, because those who choose to cultivate their EI abilities tend to interact more successfully with others in terms of:

• harnessing the power of their emotions to solve problems,
• communicating efficiently and empathetically, and
• understanding and responding appropriately to the emotions of others

So, what has EI got to do with your direct mail postcards? Let’s consider the impact of that last point…

The Importance of Relevant Marketing

Research indicates that only about one third of consumers feel they’re truly understood by their favorite brands. More specifically, the promotional emails and other marketing messages these customers receive from the companies they love are relevant to their personal needs and emotional desires no more than 35% of the time.

Numbers like these should have marketers sitting up and taking notice. Emotionally intelligent interactions hinge on listening and responding to what’s important to others. And cultivating EI-driven relationships with customers is particularly important when it comes to marketing relevance.

The customers and prospects you interact with want to feel valued. And the best way to make that happen is with messaging that speaks directly to their needs, wants, and desires. When we take the time to understand the moods and impulses that drive our clients’ purchasing decisions, we’re better able to reply to those emotional triggers with advertising that’s directed toward the right person, at the right time.

Connecting with Customers Emotionally

Emotionally intelligent postcard marketing relies on:

• digging out the emotional factors that influence a client’s desire to purchase from you
• determining what your product or service offers that solves a client’s problem
• honing in on the pleasure a client feels when they take advantage of what you’re selling

Using customer feedback, surveys, interviews, and other dialoguing tools to get to know your clients on a deeper level is crucial to navigating the buying journey they’re on. Armed with the right data, your business will be better prepared to create direct mail postcards that engage and connect with the demands of would-be buyers. And that can drive more traffic to your website, and increase conversions.

Consider your answers to questions like these the next time you sit down to design a direct mail campaign:

1. Is the content personalized and relatable?
2. Do the images and other visual elements inspire the desired emotional response?
3. Does your offer provide value by making your customer’s life better in a way that’s relevant to them?
4. Is the frequency of your mailout appropriate for your audience?

You may have to experiment with both the layout and the scheduling of your direct mail materials before you land on a combination that yields the best ROI. Remember, two of the most common reasons for results that miss the mark are mailing to prospects at the wrong time – and failing to connect with them emotionally.

Whether you’re just getting started with account-based marketing or you’ve been doing it for a while, you may be looking for new ways to maximize your efforts. One effective way to amplify the results of your ABM approach is to make sure it’s incorporated into your SEO strategy.

A strategic approach to SEO as part of an account-based marketing strategy increases personalization, drives engagement, and enables data-based decision-making. For these reasons, SEO and ABM are a perfect pairing:

1. SEO Helps Target and Personalize ABM Content

The first steps of any ABM approach should be defining your list of target accounts and identifying their internal stakeholders. Completing these tasks is critical for success with the next step: defining a personalized, targeted content strategy.

SEO shines here because it provides insight into what types of content key players at target accounts are looking for. In one sense, modern SEO was doing this kind of personalization long before ABM became widely practiced. Keyword and user intent research—core components of modern SEO—are highly effective practices for defining the types of content you need to create.

An SEO campaign starts by building a list of target keywords and analyzing them for user intent. Keywords will include products and services that are core to your brand and your industry, those you are already ranking well for in Google Search Console, terms used in your search function on your site, etc.

Analyzing user intent means typing those keywords into Google and studying the organic search results. Look for insights that answer the following questions:

• Are users looking for information or products? If the results for your keyword searches are mostly definitions of the term or industry “how to” articles, that means the target audience is looking for information. If the results are mostly product pages, users are probably looking to purchase a solution.
• Who is most likely consuming this content? If the language/tone is speaking to executive-level readers and content is more philosophical, those keywords are most likely being used by the C-suite. If the content is mostly detailed instructional articles, those terms are probably being used by lower-level influencers and practitioners.
• Where does this information fall in the buyer’s journey? If it’s early-stage information, like definitions of key terms, the keywords are probably being used by someone at the very beginning of the buyer’s journey. If the content is more late-stage, comparing vendors or offering free trials, those keywords are more likely being used by audiences who are ready to make a decision.

Here is a piece of a user intent research that shows some of the insights that can be gained:

To perform user intent research for your organization, group keywords that produce similar organic search results into composite groups and analyze them for user intent collectively. These insights can direct strategic recommendations for the types and topics of content that should be created or optimized to meet the needs of your target account segments.

As you expand your keyword strategy to include long-tail keywords (keywords that are four or more words), add your industry, physical location, and/or target audience as appropriate. Building out a list of long-tail keywords can start by adding, “for the finance industry,” “in Los Angeles,” or “for CFOs,” for example.

As your account-based marketing team prepares to create targeted, personalized content, user intent insights can help identify the language that your target account leads are using in organic search. It can also help plot content along each persona’s buying journey so each piece of content answers the right questions and presents an appropriate CTA.

2. SEO is Always an Optimal Channel

Once you’ve determined your target accounts and have personalized content to engage them, it’s time to determine the optimal channels for your campaigns. Every organization will prefer different channels, but organic search should always be a priority:

• 71% of B2B decision-makers begin their journey with a general web search.
• Users perform an average of 12 searches before visiting a specific brand’s site.
• Google recently experienced 91% growth, over two years, in B2B researchers using mobile search throughout the entire path (not just the initial stages).

If your campaign content and landing pages aren’t optimized for search, you risk losing your target accounts to competitors who excel in the search engine results page (SERP). Start by making sure your technical SEO is clean and set up properly. Then, focus on engagement: make sure your content is educational, engaging, and popular.

3. SEO Helps Execute Targeted ABM Campaigns

Once you begin executing campaigns, the keyword and user intent research you conducted earlier will be crucial as you start mapping your targeted content to specific buyer journeys.

If you were going to map SEO-related keywords to a buyer journey, for example, it might look something like this:

These user intent insights allow you to coordinate targeted ABM campaigns—starting with organic search, but crossing channels to wherever your audience can be found. Good, targeted content can easily be shared on your website, in emails, repurposed for various social channels, etc.

Use SEO best practices to execute campaigns that drive target account stakeholders further into the purchasing path with every engagement—both on your website and through your inbound and outbound campaigns.

4. SEO Provides Valuable Metrics for Optimizing ABM Campaigns

The final step of an ABM implementation is measuring, learning, and optimizing. Measuring the effectiveness of ABM campaigns requires a different approach than measuring broad-reaching marketing campaigns. Valuable ABM metrics focus on engagement and penetration, and these can be more difficult to measure—and report—than reach and lead volume metrics.

By adopting standard SEO metrics strategies, you can easily track the effectiveness of your ABM campaigns and the engagement they are driving:

• Tag URLs for off-site campaigns using a tool like Google Tag Manager. Tags can be used to segment traffic in your analytics program, so you can see exactly how much traffic targeted ABM email and social campaigns are driving to your site. As traffic from these campaigns grows, you can measure and report an increase in awareness of your brand, products, and services among key players at target accounts.
• Review bounce rates and % exit values for ABM campaign landing pages and other targeted/personalized content. High bounce rates signify that the page content is not driving visitors further into the funnel, and % exit values allow you to measure the percentage of visitors who left your site without performing another action. Low bounce rates and % exit values indicate that targeted stakeholders are interested in your content.
• Set goals to measure changes in awareness and engagement over time. Determine the path you want key stakeholders to follow when arriving from a campaign, and set that path as a series of goals to measure and report on your ABM campaign effectiveness. Over time, you should see an increase in goal completions; if not, it’s time to investigate the issue and optimize your content/funnel to sustain engagement.

Measuring ABM campaigns can be simplified with a comprehensive marketing platform, but standard SEO metrics strategies provide an effective means of tracking important metrics in lieu of more advanced tools.

Adopting SEO for Successful Account-Based Marketing

The best practices of modern SEO seek to provide audiences with informative, targeted, quality interactions. In that way, SEO and ABM share many of the same goals and are powerful when paired.

If you’re just getting started with ABM, consider SEO in each step of your implementation. If you’ve been executing ABM for a while without satisfactory results, take a step back and consider how you can adopt SEO into your approach. Conducting basic keyword and user intent research is a great starting point. It allows you to identify where your content is missing the mark and provides detailed information on how to resolve the problem.

Are you practicing ABM? What other strategies are essential to your success?

The world of B2B selling is changing, fast. And if your team doesn’t keep up, you won’t just lose opportunities – you stand to lose your entire business.

Outbound selling relies too heavily on outdated tactics, like telling customers what they need instead of listening to what they tell you. In fact, Forrester predicts that one million US B2B salespeople will lose their job to self-service eCommerce by 2020 if these tactics don’t change.

A big part of the reason why outbound selling is losing its effectiveness is because B2B buyers are turning to websites, social media, their own networks and other research channels before reaching out to a salesperson. They come fully armed with knowledge – especially the knowledge of what their problems are.

This means that your salespeople won’t find any footing by telling prospects how great your product is. Instead, they need to focus their efforts on explaining how your product can solve a prospect’s problems.

Social selling makes this possible, as it enables salespeople to build relationships with buyers via the channels they prefer. It also acts as a fantastic research tool, as salespeople can explore public posts on networks like LinkedIn and Twitter to see what issues their prospect has recently been facing.

For example, let’s say you are targeting CMOs at medium-sized businesses. Outbound tactics would have your sales team cold calling them from a list, and reading a sales-pitch script that praises the many amazing features your product has to offer. They might be able to generalize a problem that CMO might be facing – like low conversion rates, for instance – but they can’t know for sure that that’s even an issue for them. Within a few seconds, the prospect knows that the salesperson they’re talking to doesn’t have a clue about their particular situation, and politely hangs up the phone.

Social selling changes all aspects of the above scenario, from the channel of outreach to the script used to sell. Rather than cold calling, your salesperson develops a relationship with the prospect using social media. She has shared their content on Twitter a few times, and connected via a mutual acquaintance on LinkedIn. When she gets the CMO on the phone, she brings up his social profiles and sees that he has recently been talking about struggling to build solid communication channels between sales and marketing internally. So rather than talk about the product, she talks about his problem: sales-marketing alignment. She asks pointed questions about the struggles he faces, and only when the time is right mentions that her product has helped past customers address this very problem. He is impressed, and asks to see a demo.

By following the golden rule of social selling, solving your customer’s problem, you and your sales team will not only make more sales, you will develop better relationships with customers who will be more loyal, and more likely to recommend you to others in their network.

'Archaeopteryx' is an impressive lightweight hang glider with a wing span of 45 feet. It's designed by a Swiss company called Ruppert Composite.

Named after the dinosaur of the same name, it's capable of long-distance flights even in conditions with poor air currents. Read more...

More about Real People, Real Time Video, Real Time Video, Real Time, and Startups

Ken Norton is a partner at GV (formerly Google Ventures). In the post, he explains how he increased the number of books he read per year from 5 or 6 to 61. One smart thing he did was quickly abandon books that bored him.

I had an almost masochist need to finish any book I started, even if I got bored five pages in, found it repetitive, or decided the author was annoying. That meant a single book could take months to grind through, a page or two at a time. This probably slowed my book reading pace more than anything else. Now if I’m not enjoying a book, I quit and move on to the next one. No big deal. I find that’s another advantage of reading e-books (see below). An abandoned paper book just sits on my nightstand, a sad monument to my failed experiment. When I ditch an e-book, it just scrolls off the list into the void.

He also writes down what he learned from each book:

Remembering that I’ve read a book isn’t sufficient if I don’t also keep track of what I’ve learned. I use Kindle’s highlights and notes features to mark interesting or representative passages as I go. I don’t tend to write lengthy book reviews, so I’ve started a note file to record three things I learned from each book. Within a few days of finishing a book, I review the Kindle highlights and then take five minutes to record my thoughts (I use the Bear app, but anything will do the trick).

Here’s a recent example, from Eric Schlosser’s outstanding book about nuclear safety, Command & Control:

1. There have been way more nuclear accidents than I’d ever imagined

2. Only sheer luck has prevented an accidental nuclear detonation

3. For years during the Cold War the nuclear bombers were in the air at all times, armed and ready to attack

That’s it. (And sleep tight!). It’s just enough to freshen my memory and to remind me that it was time well spent. I do this for non-fiction and fiction, but for the latter it often includes characters or story elements I enjoyed, narrative techniques, writing style and the like. I’ve only been doing this for a few months so we’ll see how useful this over time.

Artificial intelligence (AI) is no longer a technology lab experiment; it has officially invaded homes, workplaces, and schools. And it’s left many fearful of the future. However, authors of the new book, What to Do When Machines Do Everything: How to Get Ahead in a World of AI, Algorithms, Bots, and Big Data—Cognizant executives Malcolm Frank, Benjamin Pring, and Paul Roehrig—present a more hopeful future, and specific plans to act for success in the Fourth Industrial Revolution.

“We’re all fearful of job automation and robots, but this book separates the hype from reality for the front lines of global business,” said co-author Paul Roehrig, head of strategy and marketing for Cognizant Digital Business. “In reality, it’s going to be alright. In fact, better than alright, because AI will usher in a new industrial revolution that, for those who manage it properly, will generate significant economic growth.”

Brought to life by real-world examples of organizations already winning with Systems of Intelligence—including GE, Betterment, McGraw-Hill, Netflix, Toyota, and many others—Machines builds on work with clients and more than three years of research to provide a pragmatic approach for individual workers and business leaders in managing the change, disruption, opportunity, and risk of AI in businesses across every industry.

These actions include:

• Automate everything to achieve “beyond-human” scale.
• Instrument everything into a “data generator,” revealing otherwise invisible facts.
• Enhance human performance to drive business growth.
• Drive the price point of products and services down to open up new “abundance” markets.
• Invent all of the possible outcomes, increasing chances to discover the future of work.

“The companies getting ahead are the ones acting on these ideas. The call to action for business leaders and individual workers is clear: harness the power of new machines or face potential extinction,” said Benjamin Pring, global managing director of Cognizant’s Center for the Future of Work. 

What to Do When Machines Do Everything | Book Trailer from When Machines Do Everything on Vimeo.

ABOUT THE AUTHORS

MALCOLM FRANK is the executive vice president of strategy and marketing at Cognizant, a global technology consultancy of over 250,000 employees.

PAUL ROEHRIG is vice president of strategy and marketing for Cognizant Digital Business and a founder of the Center for the Future of Work.

BEN PRING leads Cognizant's Center for the Future of Work, which helps clients bring the future of work to life—today.

Malcolm, Paul, and Ben are also co-authors of Code Halos: How the Digital Lives of People, Things, and Organizations are Changing the Rules of Business.

We’ve all been on the receiving end of the “just checking in” email. You know what I’m talking about.

“Hi Jon, just wanted to check in on… blah blah blah”

You receive them ad nauseam until someone snaps, or you finally respond “STOP!”

I totally get it. When your first sales email doesn’t get a response, you need some good follow-ups. But these “just checking in” emails are truly useless – they offer very little value to the receiver, if any, and they’re far overused.

Instead, nurture the relationship with a series of relevant, informed touches – not just regular ‘check-ins’ to see if the prospect is ready to meet. This is the time to use all the account insight you’ve generated to prove to the prospect that you understand their challenges and have a unique approach to solving them. Try these tactics:

1. Invite them to an event

   Reach out and make a personal invitation to one of your own events or your part of a broader event.

2. Send them content
   

   It doesn’t even have to be your own content! Consider sending an article or blog post with a note that says “I read this and thought of what we discussed.” A little effort here goes a long way.

3. Help them solve a problem

   Introduce your beleaguered prospect to someone, suggest a tactic or send a case study that addresses an issue you know they have.

4. Comment on their activity

   Let them know you saw their blog post, watched their webinar or read that article.

This kind of thoughtful engagement is much, much better than the rote, zero-content ‘check-in’.

“Targeting outreach campaigns by account enables Cloudera SDRs to research individual accounts and buyers and speak to their exact pain points. As a result, these campaigns produce a 60% open rate, 31% response rate, and massive increases in both net-new opportunities and add-on business from current customers.” – TOPO: Cloudera Case Report, September, 2015

Getting the meeting

Sales Development – or Prospecting – is the heart of every Account Based Everything (ABE) program.

It combines email, phone calls and the personalized end of social media interactions into a coordinated series of engagements that develop and deepen relationships. In many companies, outbound prospecting and Sales Development Reps (SDR) were the sales department’s response to the inability of traditional demand generation tactics to make inroads into major accounts.

But now, ABE brings marketing and outbound sales development into alignment, focusing efforts across the teams in a coordinated way.

In Account Based Everything, the goal of account development is often to get the meeting for the sales rep, not to sell the product. With this mindset, SDR programs shouldn’t try to ‘close the deal’. Instead, they should be all about seizing opportunities to set up a meeting.

“Don’t call me and read a script. Make it personal and change the nature of the relationship from buyer-to-seller to businessperson- to-businessperson.” – Craig Rosenberg, TOPO

Prospecting Tips

• Work your referrals – still the most effective prospecting tactic.
• Get the prospect’s direct number – and skip the switchboard or PA.
• Call before 9 and after 5 –or figure out your prospect’s typical work schedule… and catch them before or after they get busy.
• Don’t block your number – no one answers from blocked numbers.
• Track their response to your emails– use outbound-focused email technology to see if they open your email or click a link.
• Share their social posts – help them spread their messages (without overdoing it!).
• Look at autodialers – it can be an efficient way to optimize call resources, connecting more prospects to live calls – and predicting the best times to call. Many of them include local-number dialing which can increase pick-up rates.

“Wednesdays and Thursdays are by far the best days for making contact with leads. Mondays and Tuesdays are the worst. Fridays are not too bad. While we don’t know why this is, time after time the data shows us that it’s true.” – InsideSales.com

Get more killer prospecting tips and templates for your account-focused strategy in our Clear and Complete Guide to Account Based Marketing.

The INSIDER Summary:

• Jet lag is hard to prevent, but there are some things you can do to decrease the amount you experience when traveling.
• We spoke to sleep specialist, Dr. Michael Breus, for his best tips.
• He recommends getting a good night's sleep before your flight, adjusting your wake up and meal times before leaving, avoiding alcohol, and using a light box.

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When you're traveling across time zones, jet lag is somewhat inevitable.

But there are some things you can do to reduce the amount of jet lag you experience after a long flight.

We spoke to Dr. Michael Breus, sleep specialist and author of the "The Power of When," to find out his best tips.

Get a good night's sleep the night before your flight

According to Breus, sleeping well the night before your trip is the best thing you can do to prevent jet lag. That's because if you board a plane already sleep deprived, you're less likely to fall asleep when you want to, and also less likely to stay asleep for a prolonged period of time.

Plus, you'll be starting the trip at a disadvantage, since not getting a good night's sleep decreases your productivity during the next day.

Adjust your wake up and meal times before you leave for your trip

A trip to a different time zone means both your sleep and eating schedule will be different. In order to prepare your body for this, Breus recommends adjusting your wake up time and meal times slightly about a week before you leave for your trip.

For example, let's say you're traveling to a city that's a few hours ahead of your home city for business, and you'll need to wake up at 7am every morning you're there. But seven in the morning in your destination city is actually four in the morning in your home city, which is the time that your body clock is used to.

Breus says to start moving your wake up time 15 minutes earlier every few days until you leave for you trip, and to try to eat your meals as close to when you'll be eating them in your destination. This will help your body clock change, which will make the actual transition easier.

Reset your watch immediately

Breus says the first thing he does when he boards a plane is to reset his watch to the time at his destination. This helps get your brain and body in the right mindset.

Avoid alcohol

According to Breus, alcohol slows down your circadian rhythm (your body's internal clock). This is incredibly counterproductive considering the goal of moving your wake up time and meal times is to speed up your circadian rhythm.

He also says that one drink in the air is worth about two drinks on the ground. Flying is already uncomfortable; dealing with a hangover will only make it worse.

And, while you might fall asleep quicker with a little alcohol, it's good to keep in mind that you're not actually falling into a deep sleep when you've been drinking.

Take an overnight flight and arrive in the morning

If you can, try to fly through the night so that you can get some sleep and arrive at your destination in the morning.

Breus also recommends not giving in to the temptation of heading back to your hotel for a nap upon arrival. Instead, get outside and get some sunlight, if possible, as sunlight turns off the natural melatonin faucet in your brain, a hormone that controls sleep and wakefulness.

Invest in a light box

Sunlight isn't the only method for turning off your brain's natural melatonin faucet. Breus says he and his clients swear by a product called a light box. You can find these small, portable lights on sites like Amazon from $40, depending on the quality you're looking for.

According to Breus, light boxes emit a very particular wavelength of light that stops melatonin production in your body if you shine it on yourself. In other words, it's light therapy that works to reset your circadian rhythm, kind of like drinking a cup of coffee in the morning does.

Join the conversation about this story »

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Retails stores have seen a big shift in how consumers shop. In addition to consumers now using their mobile devices as research tools while shopping, many businesses are now seeing a balance between the sales coming from their brick-and-mortar stores and orders coming from their website and mobile app.

While consumers love to shop and do research online, they will often conclude the process in-store, which makes sense, as many people want to see and touch a product before making their purchase. Because of these dynamics, it is important that your business understands how the various channels work together and how consumers will now move from channel to channel on their purchase journey. It is also essential that you have a plan for having the various channels all work together.

Members of your team should work in partnership regardless of where they work within your organization. Members of your digital team should be just as excited to send consumers to retail locations as they are to generate sales from your digital properties. Similarly, retail sales associates should be happy to recommend products available from your website or mobile app. A customer-first approach like this can help your business drive sales in the modern digital age.

Keep in mind that your customers do not think about your various channels and don’t stop to think about how the different parts work together, they just want a unified experience, regardless of which touchpoint they chose to use to engage with you. Whether they are in your store or shopping via your mobile app or website, they want a seamless experience where the various components all work together efficiently and effectively.

This is important because it is now normal for customers to start researching at one touchpoint (on their mobile phone) and then to start a transaction at a different touchpoint (order via your website while sitting at their desktop computer) and then finish it elsewhere (pick the item up at one of your retail stores). They expect every touchpoint working together to deliver a satisfying experience.

Here are some tips on how your business can enhance its cross-channel marketing experience:

Create a seamless experience

Beyond needing to provide a great customer experience in each channel, you need to make sure you are creating a seamless experience for your customers as they move between the channels. If you mobile app developer goes in one direction, while your web development team heads in another, and meanwhile, your sales associates have never been trained on your digital properties, your customers will be confused and frustrated as they try to move from touchpoint to touchpoint.

You want to offer a consistent and uniform message and service across all platforms. Users moving from your mobile app to your website and then stopping in your brick-and-mortar store expect to move freely between these touchpoints. For instance, customers expect to be able to use offers received in your mobile app while in your retail locations or order via your website and pick the item up in one of your retail stores. The channels all need to work together to facilitate the customer moving to the final purchase and should be adaptable to each customer’s shopping style.

Utilize cross-channel campaigns

Once you have created a seamless experience, you want to leverage what you have created. You do this by implementing cross-channel campaigns. You don’t want to merely replicate content across the various channels. Perform a thoughtful analysis and get to know your customers, learn the various stages of the customer journey, understand how they utilize the various touchpoints on that journey and develop a plan to deliver the right message at the right time.

For example, utilize mobile campaigns that understand that customers may not end up completing their purchase via your mobile app. Use your mobile campaign to give customers an incentive and move them further along the buying journey, but be prepared for that journey to be concluded in one of your brick-and-mortar stores or via a desktop computer and your website.

Share credit

Make sure you have incentives in place for your employees that reward the behavior you want. Something as simple as giving credit to employees working in the brick-and-mortar stores for website sales that are shipped to their local ZIP codes can go a long way towards encouraging them to refer consumers to your website.

This works in the other direction, as well. You want your digital team incentivized to send customers into your retail stores rather than being solely focused on creating sales via your website or mobile app. Buying products online but picking them up at brick-and-mortar locations is becoming more popular and is a great way to get customers who normally shop online into your retail locations.

When you are able to get online shoppers into your retail location to pick up their items, they will often browse and make additional purchases. Make sure your retails stores are fully prepared for this process as well as your digital systems. Properly trained and incentivized employees can add a great deal to the customer experience.

Promote your mobile app and website at retail locations

Mobile apps are the perfect way to run loyalty programs and augment your customers’ in-store experiences. In fact, mobile influenced more than $1 trillion of physical sales in 2015. (Forrester) Researching products on mobile devices is how customers now shop.

Customers will read reviews, research products, check prices and check availability on your mobile app if you make these features available to them. Your mobile app can drive in-store sales if it compliments your customers’ purchase journey.

Suggest customers make returns in-store

One of the reasons that people like to make purchases in brick-and-mortar stores is because it is easy to return purchases there. If something ends up not fitting right or is the wrong color, etc. it is easy to take it right back to where you bought it.

On the other hand, if you make a purchase online and it doesn’t fit, the return process can be more complicated. Printing shipping labels, boxing items back up, and dropping them off at shipping company offices makes for a more complicated process. Many people consider it a hassle to go through the process of shipping back an item.

Take the burden of shipping items back off your customers and suggest they return items at your brick-and-mortar locations. Prepare your retail locations to receive returns from online sales and train them to use this opportunity to create new sales. A returned item can easily turn into new sales if you plan and prepare.

Image: Mario Mancuso (Flikr) http://bit.ly/2lyq1Xq

Scientists are finding more evidence that you should probably cut down on your sugar intake. 

A group of U.K. researchers say they've spotted the molecular "tipping point" that could explain sugar's ties to Alzheimer's disease.

Their findings provide further evidence that there might be a link between high blood sugar levels and the memory-robbing disease, though they don't prove that sugar causes Alzheimer's outright. 

"Excess sugar is well known to be bad for us when it comes to diabetes and obesity," said Omar Kassaar, a biologist at the University of Bath, in a press release.  Read more...

More about Diet, Cells, Biology, Glucose, and Obesity

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Digital cross-border transfer firm Remitly announced it processed $2 billion in transfers in 2016, effectively doubling its annualized volume over the previous year.

That’s slightly slower growth than the 400% rate that the firm posted in the previous year, but still notable, particularly in an industry where growth has been relatively mild overall. 

Remitly’s volume is still tiny, but its growth is important.

• In 2015, total global remittances totaled just over $580 billion. Western Union, the largest company in the remittances industry, accounted for roughly 43% of that, based on estimates provided in its 2015 annual report. That means that Remitly, like other digital-first peers, remains small.  
• But its growth exceeds those players. Western Union’s consumer-to-consumer (C2C) segment grew by 3% in Q4 2016. And the firm’s digital C2C growth, which is its fastest-growing segment and more comparable to Remitly, posted jut 30% growth — a strong total, but much slower than Remitly. It’s only natural that a smaller company will grow faster than a legacy provider, but the difference points to Remitly’s long runway and potential to grab a wider share of the market.

Remitly’s unique strategy also seems to be paying off. Rather than a broad-based launch, Remitly offers sends from the US and Canada to just 10 locations, including Mexico, India, the Philippines, and Guatemala. But these corridors have massive volume — three are in the top five destinations for US-originated remittances, and the smallest, Nicaragua, is still the 31st-largest receive destination from the US. A focus on owning the market in narrow segments, as opposed to gaining broad volume, seems to be working for Remitly, while leaving it with significant room for expansion, both into major destinations like China or Nigeria, as well as smaller markets.

Uncertainty in the remittance industry makes that long growth avenue important. As the remittance industry shifts to digital, Remitly is well positioned to continue gaining market share as it builds out. That’s important, especially as digital firms are overtaking legacy players — Chinese giant Ant Financial recently bought MoneyGram, for example. And in addition, uncertainty abounds, particularly in the US, where the Trump administration poses a unique threat to remittances following notions of a border tax or veiled campaign threats to cut off US-Mexico remittances in order to fund a proposed wall. Staying positioned for growth, especially in an uncertain climate and amidst industry changes, will benefit Remitly moving forward.

Every year, migrants send hundreds of billions of dollars worth of remittances back to friends and family in their home country. And there's a massive industry that facilitates these payments — and has for more than a century.

The legacy remittance industry has been long dominated by cash, which requires physical locations where customers can hand over or pick up money. Building out those retail networks is a huge investment. It's left just a few players, called Money Transfer Operators (MTOs), controlling a bulk of the industry.

But these companies' comfortable hold on the industry is now being challenged by digital remittance startups. Digital-first remittance companies are competing on fees and usability, and capitalizing on the way people's expectations have changed with the advent of digital and mobile channels.

BI Intelligence, Business Insider's premium research service, has compiled a detailed report on digital remittance that sizes the total remittance market, company-specific market share, digital's market share, and digital's growth at major remittance firms. It also assesses how disruptive digital startups have been by comparing their fees with market leaders, and by juxtaposing their business models with those of legacy companies.

Here are some of the key takeaways:

• Digital's share of the global remittance industry is still fairly small at 6% — but growth is extremely fast at digital-first startups and legacy companies.
• Fourteen year-old Xoom makes more revenue from electronic channels than 75 year-old MoneyGram, the second-largest remittance company in the world.
• Startups are undercutting incumbents' fees in certain corridors; however, legacy firms have matched prices in many major corridors.
• Legacy firms' businesses are already responding to the threats posed by digital by lowering fees and adjusting business strategies. However, they face lower margins if they continue to compete with startups on pricing.

In full, the report:

• Sizes the remittance market and calculates major remittance companies' market share.
• Estimates digital's share of the market vs. cash.
• Quantifies digital's impact at remittance startups and legacy firms.
• Breaks down the business models employed by each type of remittance company, and determines which ones are in a better position for growth.
• Compares transfer fees in various corridors to assess the competitiveness of each firm.
• Explores other platforms that could completely upend the industry from the outside.
• Determines how legacy remittance companies will fare in the digital age – the answer may surprise you.

To get your copy of this invaluable guide, choose one of these options:

1. Subscribe to an ALL-ACCESS Membership with BI Intelligence and gain immediate access to this report AND over 100 other expertly researched deep-dive reports, subscriptions to all of our daily newsletters, and much more. >> START A MEMBERSHIP
2. Purchase the report and download it immediately from our research store. >> BUY THE REPORT

The choice is yours. But however you decide to acquire this report, you’ve given yourself a powerful advantage in your understanding of digital remittance.

Join the conversation about this story »

This blog was originally posted on Partners in EXCELLENCE–Making a Difference on March 21, 2011.   Over the past week, I’ve been writing a lot about Value.  We build our organizations around creating and delivering value.  Yet, only the customer can define value.  What we don’t recognize is the value we can create and deliver […]

A Demandbase survey found that “71% of B2B organizations are either using [Account Based Marketing], interested in adopting the strategy or are testing it.” Account Based Marketing (ABM) is clearly a strategy many organizations are implementing to improve their selling.

But, what is Account Based Marketing? ABM as it currently stands has many different definitions. Marketo defines ABM as a “strategy that concentrates sales and marketing resources on a clearly defined set of target accounts and employs personalized campaigns.” Engagio says ABM “creates hyper-personalized interactions . . . that enable sales and marketing teams to land more accounts.”

While these definitions are certainly true of ABM, the discipline encompasses many more concepts, practices, and processes than meets the eye.

ABM is an approach that incorporates a wide variety of marketing and sales ideas to focus efforts on a carefully selected list of target accounts. Account Based Marketing isn’t a single component of Sales or Marketing, but rather a strategy that integrates with every effort in both areas.

What Account Based Marketing Means for Sellers

The concept of focusing intently on one target in the hopes of closing a deal isn’t foreign to the vast majority of sellers. Research, outreach, and utilizing Marketing content are all part of the standard Sales playbook. But those tactics are generally being deployed on leads and prospects that are the result of Marketing generated leads or Inside Sales work. Account Based Marketing finds Sales – much like Marketing – deploying tactic and techniques that are familiar to them, but configured in a different way.

In-Depth Prospecting

Prospecting is clearly a necessity in the Sales world. It’s impossible to sell without having someone to sell to. However, in a traditional Sales environment prospecting can very quickly become a time sink – without the guarantee of anything in return. The B2B Lead found “as much as 50% of [Sales’] time is spent on unproductive prospecting.”

Account Based Marketing eases the burden on Sales by utilizing Marketing to provide in-depth account research that includes a detailed map of key stakeholders and decision-makers. Instead of wasting time scouring the internet for clues and insights about an organization, a full picture of the targeted account is available based on Marketing’s research. Armed with this information up-front at the beginning of the process Sales is able to hit the ground running.

Getting off on the right foot is the key to any Sales encounter, but even more so when it comes to ABM. When embarking on a prolonged and intense pursuit of a specific account it’s imperative to enter conversations with proper knowledge about the hierarchy and makeup of the organization. With a clear understanding of the organization within the account Sales can begin planning the best strategies to engage with decision-makers.

Tailored Account Penetration with Custom Content

Sales needs to be tactical when it comes to touchpoints in an ABM approach. Determining who will be contacted, when they’ll be engaged, and through what channel requires close collaboration – not only among the Sales team but also with Marketing. Leads are no longer handed off like a baton in a relay race, ABM is a team effort from beginning to end.

When Sales is attempting to engage the identified key players at an account Marketing provides support that maximizes time and interactions. By providing hyper-personalized content that speaks directly to the needs of prospects, Marketing gives Sales a leg-up in creating genuine connections.

Content like emails, case studies, presentations, and eBooks that have been personalized are much more likely to resonate with a prospect – and signal that you take their wants and needs seriously. Marketo reports that “67% of prospects value content created for their specific job functions.”

As both teams work an account there will be a free-flow of information that goes both ways. Insights gleaned from interactions and engagements will provide opportunities to further refine and improve strategies.

Statistics about content is one area where Sales has generally not paid much attention. What pieces of content someone reads, how long they read, or what sections they paid attention to, are not traditionally taken advantage of in a lead gen setting. (They can be tough to get a hold of, even if Sales wanted to – Aberdeen reports that only 27% of B2B marketers track content utilization statistics.) Perhaps besides a cursory mention about a piece of content a prospect read in an outreach email, these insights generally go unutilized.

By tracking which pieces of content, and what sections within that content, prospects engage with, Sales is able to gain a clearer understanding of who they’re targeting and what specifically piques their interest. Tracking these insights allows for tailored follow-up that specifically addresses the concepts and ideas the prospect most engaged with. Content usage statistics also provide an opportunity to prioritize efforts based on prospect engagement; no more blindly choosing who to engage. With all of this information available, it’s about how the insights are utilized to find heightened success.

Account Expansion Opportunities

Successfully executing an ABM strategy provides Sales with the intelligence necessary for embarking on account expansion and upsell opportunities. The early stages of the ABM process – account identification, account mapping, outreach with custom content – provide the opportunity to form deep connections that can be used to expand within the account. In fact, according to the Alterra Group, “84% of marketers said that ABM had significant benefits to retaining and expanding existing client relationships.”

When Sales is successful at winning a targeted account it is because they have done the hard work of knowing the organization inside and out. So, instead of treating an account expansion target like a completely new opportunity as may be the case in non-ABM situations, Sales can leverage their existing relationships to push for meetings and deeper account penetration.

Because of the intimate knowledge of the account Sales can identify champions – people who are likely to praise the product or solution within their own organization. These champions will be instrumental in providing word-of-mouth support and introducing key decision-makers in different divisions or departments. Marketing again supports Sales by providing intelligence on departmental layout and identifying who will be important to engage.

In addition, Sales will be aided with more custom content that will contain even more relevant data. Marketing can use statistics about that very account to create content that clearly states benefits.

Account expansion and Account Based Marketing go hand-in-hand. The first closed deal within a targeted account is only the tip of the iceberg. After that, Sales is able to leverage relationships to create new opportunities and find new avenues for expansion.

ABM positions sellers for increased win rates and hyper-targeted efforts maximizing their time and effectiveness within large target accounts. Account Based Marketing is an incredibly powerful strategy that gives Sales the chance to utilize their skills and assets in new and engaging ways.

SC Moatti who beautifully captures what it takes to make a mobile product successful in her book Mobilized shared this with me as we recently exchanged thoughts on mobile growth:

“Customer expectations on mobile are high. If a company fails to nail the first experience, there won’t be a second one and growth will suffer. The Net Promoter Score (NPS) has become a standard metric on mobile because it establishes a clear link between the quality of a customer’s experience with the rate of a company’s growth”.

Product experience and growth are intimately related as per SC’s inspiring insight. In these 17 actionable mobile growth hacks, we’ll seek to understand why and how. I’ll include actionable resources you can act on today in chronological order so you can start growing mobile in new ways.

Tip #1 : Product-Market fit first and foremost

Sean Ellis is most likely the most eloquent growth marketer when it comes to explaining the underestimated value of product-market fit aka PMF. This directly applies to your mobile growth.

At this point in this video, Sean drives it home.

You must iterate your mobile app product until the first-time use experience you deliver creates an aha moment. It’s that pivotal moment, also known as “activation” in growth marketing, when your clearly defined core customer realizes in the first 4 to 5 seconds of use that there is something amazing in it for them.

To achieve this, you must align two dots: core customer assumption and core benefit.

The core benefit is the one thing you decide to focus on to deliver aha. The core benefit is ideally so strong that your mobile app experience becomes a “must have”. Your core customer would be very disappointed should she no longer be able to use your app again.

Deliver aha in the first 5 seconds. Don’t miss this one chance.

Tip #2 : Get to aha without wasting the resources you don’t have

There are several ways to discover product-market fit in the early stage of your mobile app.

You actually don’t need to have a full-fledged app developed. I saw startups achieve product-market fit on fake products. You can, for example, hard code the data that will then be coming from api calls on cloud services or social platforms.

Who cares?

Here is a concrete example on a mobile app I designed and coded a while ago.

Although it’s a fake experience with fake data, you hear the aha moment(s) in the tone of voice, the emotional excitement of the target must-have user when she understands what’s in it for her.

Do that first. Fake it fast. Get to aha.

Tip #3 : Be agile when you explore Product-Market fit

Today, you can use mobile cloud testing platforms to recruit mobile app test users in a way that allows you to validate your core targeting assumptions quickly.

In less than one hour, using usertesting.com you can get a detailed video of your assumed must-have user persona using your app. Hopefully, you can hear in it that the core benefit delivers the aha you are looking for.

If your mobile app sends your must-have users to experience your core benefit in the physical world, imagine for example you are working on a next generation mobile meal service where people will need to get to a restaurant to fully experience your mobile journey, then you may want to consider a service like respondent.io to explore PMF.

Both platforms allow you to leverage very precise persona targeting dimensions, including demographic and behavioral ones, so you can hone in on and vet your must-have target customer assumption.

You can have them answer core qualitative questions (see how in next tip) that are going to be of precious value for you to understand if you’d better iterate or pivot your mobile app experience on the same core target persona assumption, or instead, if you are better off keeping the same experience and targeting it towards a different user persona.

Be agile. Do it fast. Focus.

Tip #4 : Extract the why from must-have post experiences

Get the customers who are going to perceive your mobile app experience as a must to tell you why they feel that way. Bottle the why. Sell it.

To do that, after you know your core user has experienced your mobile app flow in its entirety, you can simply use an online surveying tool such as SurveyMonkey.

Ask the must-have users, those who perceive your mobile value as a must-have in their life, why they feel that way. Simply ask them “What is the primary reason why you’d feel very disappointed should you no longer be able to use our mobile app?”.

As you understand the why, you can clearly focus your messaging on the core benefit that leads to the amazing feeling your mobile experience provides to your first-time users. You get actionable insight to laser focus on the core value of this benefit and capture it in simple and crisp language. Imagine 2 or 3 words like “Love made easy” or “Rides on tap”.

This should be your content anchor, or bait. Your hero messaging on your homepage if you still have a website. You can articulate your content strategy from this core value and look to achieve topical depth.

That way, you can reel in like-minded mobile app must-have users at the lowest possible cost per acquisition after what you get via word-of-mouth and in-app referral.

Why don’t you ask why?

Tip #5 : Seed your Product-Market fit for organic Mobile Growth

You may start from qualitative data to iterate your mobile app experience flow all the way up to quantitative data. Think 40% of statistically significant must-have user sample who say they’d be very disappointed for not being able to use your mobile app any longer.

At that statistical point and beyond, you are likely to have achieved a decent PMF signal. PMF is a journey, not a destination, as we’ll see later, growth teams and products team continuously need to collaborate to define and refine PMF.

When you achieve some sort of PMF, seed it. That is, assess how likely and how quickly your mobile product is to grow on its own from user referrals.

Seek to understand how the aha moment that you validated in the first-time mobile app use can lead you to assessing your referral root.

When you create a great first-time experience, you are going to see repeat usage patterns from your must-have users. As you keep over delivering on their expectations, there is a point where you can use them to refer other users.

Do it at the right time.

I like to target users who are using the app for the third time over a relatively small amount of time. That small amount of time depends on the nature of your product cycle. For an everyday meal service, a week works. For a hotel booking experience, this can take longer.

You can use “Give Get” offers via in-app messages or push notifications to do that or even build it into your product as Hotel Tonight does it – see gift icon in their bottom navigation:

That’s your referral root.

It’s tiny in the beginning. But it’s the most promising and most cost effective way to grow. You grow in-app out. You grow organically. Initially, Uber’s mobile growth engine was largely fueled by word-of-mouth referrals, this is even better.

Tip #6 : Jump-start organic Mobile Growth with inorganic fertilizer

One way to jump-start the organic growth germination process is actually to put some inorganic fertilizer. You can leverage the big data graph of the main social players to reach your must- have mobile app users in a highly targeted fashion.

You can tap into thousands of possible ad targeting parameters!

To stay nimble and iterate quickly on inorganic Facebook mobile install campaigns, I use their Ads Manager App which has been around for some time:

At that point, scale and being able to achieve statistical significance is straightly related to your budget. What I am looking to achieve here is decent scale, thousands of users, at phenomenal speed.

To give you an order of magnitude, when you do it right, you can acquire them in the range of $0.50 – $2 a pop.

Therefore, in each grand of your budget you could deliver an actionable number of potential referrers over a short amount of time. You can do that in less than a week sometimes.

Then you start seeing your referral root grow. You understand out of a solid user sample of thousands what is your referral percentage and how quickly you get to that number.

You jump-start your referral engine.

Tip #7 : Use Mobile Engagement analytics early to spread the love

There are low-tech ways to start getting a feel for the speed of your referral growth engine.

For example, you can set up old-fashioned personalized promo codes for each of your early must-have users and share these with them via email.

You can now do much better. Much faster.

In my opinion, Pyze has a strong mobile engagement and mobile marketing automation solution that will knock your socks off.

When you integrate with Pyze, which will take you less than half an hour on both your iOS and Android apps, you can act on engagement and retention cohorts in an incredibly nimble way.

They have really thought out their interface design and made it actionable in very few clicks:

Auto-segmentation makes you understand at a glance who your high-value users or attrition risk users are in your app.

You can easily decipher behaviors based on loyalty metrics, usage metrics, and app specific business logic. Pyze Intelligence Explorer allows real-time explorations across different user segments that are created on autopilot.

You don’t need to do a thing!

Mobile engagement leads to retention, repeat use, the lifeblood of your mobile app growth. With an innovative mobile engagement and mobile marketing automation platform such as Pyze, you can send in-app messages and push notifications by targeting dozens of in-app behaviors in a matter of seconds. It’s simple an easy.

Engagement metrics such as number of times users are engaging with key app features or total time spent are much more important than vanity mobile app metrics that hold barely any business value – such as downloads or even daily active users or mostly active users.

When you understand mobile engagement, you can determine how, when, and where you have the highest chance of getting your engaged mobile users to refer your experience to others.

You can run nimble tests very quickly to zero in on your best growth opportunity.

You understand why they love you and how you can spread that coveted mobile fan love.

You also gain growth discovery speed by dissociating growth from product in a way.

You don’t need to wait for a new mobile build to launch to test an in-app growth hack. This can have a significant learning impact in organizations where the product iteration process is not streamlined yet.

Here it’s solved. Done.

Tip #8: Mobile Marketing Automation as a rolling snowball

The beauty of such Mobile Marketing Automation (MMA) platforms is that they allow you to modify your mobile app flow without having to push new builds to the app stores.

You can become very strategic as to when, how, how often and to whom you want to reach out within the flow of your mobile experience to spur further mobile app engagement, new aha moments and thereby increase your referral factor. More people will be referred by your existing power users, faster.

You create rolling snowballs. You focus on traction. You grow faster.

Here is an example of the kind of MMA flow you can design to grow your mobile app on autopilot:

Can you snowball now?

Tip #9: Use snowballs to make snowmen!

When you get to snowball mobile app growth, your experience is clearly having an impact on your target audience. As you automate some of your growth, you not only gain actionable insight for future growth but you also understand what the next generation of your product experience for a given persona should be.

For example, let’s assume that you got into the product-market fit zone with a mobile meal ordering app. Let’s also assume that your must-have persona was the busy professional in a main business district of a major city.

You focused on making lunch easy for that persona, you discovered that they are convenience-focused. Your target recognizes your convenient value proposition and uses your lunch service on a regular basis.

From this repeat pattern, you have started to explore how you could expand your lifetime value by sending in-app messages for breakfast or dinner offers.

You see what bites.

You can now re-engineer your mobile experience by integrating this new revenue growth knowledge into the future iterations of your product.

You did it fast. You mitigated the risk of building without biting.

Achieving product-market fit can be so powerful, and if you did it right you kept large market sizes as a core component of your thinking, that you can grow on one persona for years. But there can come a time when you need to go after new target customers.

That’s when you make new snowmen. It starts with a snowball first.

Tip #10: Iterate your onboarding if you need oil in your gear

When you nail your mobile app user experience, I am a firm believer you don’t need any onboarding. Your mobile experience, through its simplicity and atomic design, intuitively draws your must-have user into understanding and experiencing its core value in an instant.

It’s a mindless process. A split second.

Nonetheless, most apps don’t achieve that. And many need to oil the first-time use experience with an onboarding flow to explain what the app and its value-add facets are before the user actually gets in-app.

Along the lines of what I started to explain before, this shouldn’t be a static game. You can use Apptimize to iterate quickly on your onboarding flow and make sure the leading arm of your persona snowman is also a relevant and helpful hand to that persona.

Iterate your onboarding. Do it fast. Personalize.

Tip #11: Start App Store Optimization before you hit the stores

For many mobile startups, I have noticed that App Store Optimization (ASO) is an after thought.

It makes sense sometimes for agile reasons to hit the stores sooner rather than later. To grow your mobile app organically once you hit the stores, that’s another story. You cannot really do that without ASO unless your product-market fit leads to such a strong referral factor that you might as well just sit back and watch your mobile shuttle lift off on its own.

You should think strategically about ASO.

First, it’s important to understand that the app store primary category you pick directly influences your odds of growing organically. ASO is a complex game but when you want to be featured among the top players, the number of downloads you get per day becomes a core ranking parameter.

In some categories, you never gain organic visibility unless you score several tens of thousands of downloads per day. This generally doesn’t happen on day one. If your core category requires a large number of daily downloads for a chance to get to the top of the store, you should research adjacent categories with lower competitive volumes so you can make inroads faster in that category. As you build your app brand, you can then switch to your core category.

To get started with ASO, I recommend looking into Mobile Action. They make ASO actionable.

You can check out their ASO academy as well.

They have very good content and they offer several forms of certification.

The rankings on the Apple App Store and the Google Play Store are influenced by a multitude of factors. Even though some factors overlap, some key influencing factors are totally different from one store to the other.

One example, on the Apple App Store, the keywords you put in the title field and in the keywords field via the iTunes Connect Developer Console do have an impact on your ranking for these keywords. This is not the case on the Google Play Store, the title field is known to have no influence on rankings.

And there is no keyword field to update in the Google Play Developer Console. When you use the Google Play Developer Console to update your mobile app marketing content for the Google Play Store, you should instead consider the short description and the full description fields to take care of your keyword metadata.

Think density of core keywords you optimize for about 2%.

Bear in mind that ASO is an iterative game.

There are many other factors that directly influence your mobile app store rankings. Keywords may not be sufficient to rank in the Top 10 based on keywords search, number of searches and number of downloads have a strong impact, too, in my experience.

This may be the object of another post since I have learned and keep learning every day on this fast moving topic.

Accountability though is easier to implement in my experience than on other, still fairly nebulous, channels such as SEO. Great change is coming in SEO apparently. I spoke to DistilledODN recently and I am excited about their new scientific approach to SEO.

For accountable ASO, you can check out TestNest.

They have an interesting way to empower you to do self-serve A/B testing for the app stores. You can relate your ASO actions to actual growth metrics such as app store page conversions. You get to test several elements such as app icon, screenshots, app video, description, name, price and see what moves the needle and by how much.

Tip #12: Boost Channel-Market fit with Mobile Attribution

There generally is a stage in your mobile app growth, post product-market fit and beyond the early referral engine signal where you have gathered factual evidence of your good net promoter score aka NPS, where you look to focus on the marketing channel that gives you the most growth steam for the lowest amount of operational effort.

I like to call that growth stage the channel-market fit stage.

This can, for example, happen on Instagram or Snapchat as you look to target younger demographics. The attributes of your persona should directly translate into the type of channel you want to explore first.

Mobile attribution can help you explore much faster. You connect source to steam.

There are a number of solid mobile attribution platforms out there.

Mobile growth is in full swing and a leading player called AppsFlyer has recently raised a massive round of funding. We are certainly on our way to lighting up the entirety of the mobile conversion funnel. Multi-touch attribution included.

Here is how you can attribute your mobile ad spend back to their media sources. You should look at in-app engagement and revenue, not just installs. Installs can just be soufflé when you haven’t achieved product-market fit – as most mobile apps don’t…

Make sure when you select a mobile attribution partner that it will give you real-time data, specifically revenue that ties back to the ad spend that drove that revenue. This is important to get to real-time Return On Ad Spend (aka ROAS, the ratio of Revenue over Ad Spend).

It’s a good starting point.

Then, over time, you can start looking at longer play ad optimization – think LTV/CAC (Lifetime Value over Customer Acquisition Cost, one of VCs’ favorite value metrics in the Silicon Valley).

This takes longer spans of time since you sometimes need months, even years in some cases, to understand the full value of your customer relationship lifecycle with your product. You can look at annual LTV to keep it simpler but you won’t get the full value of your experience that way.

Once you identify the media source that produces the highest ROAS, seek to increase spending to iteratively reach the tipping point.

Driving growth depends on your unit analysis.

That is, the relationship between your revenue, your gross margin (Revenue minus cost of good sold or cost of service sold if you don’t sell goods) and your contribution margin (gross margin minus Ad Spend).

Some companies optimize for revenue growth, they are looking to grab market shares to keep the closest alternatives at bay even if they may be at an ad spend point beyond diminishing returns on margin – see point a1 on the following graph.

Others look to maximize contribution margin without maximizing total revenue.

It comes down to exploration to get to the tipping point or margin sweet spot. See this directional graph based on personal experience scaling paid media channels for an idea on this:

Growth needs to collaborate with the leadership team to align on the growth optimization goal.

Mobile attribution is very useful at this point. It can allow you to identify quickly the channel where you achieve channel-market fit best and understand where your sweet spot is located.

Then, you can expand your marketing spend into other channels. Your CAC is very likely to keep on going up as you do so since the lowest amount of friction, by definition, happens on your channel-market fit channel.

Since it’s well known that a lot of steam comes from Facebook on mobile, and this is confirmed by hands-on experience, I recommend starting your mobile attribution partner research with Facebook MMPs (Mobile Measurement Partners).

Explore fast. Identify channel-market fit. Find your sweet spot.

Tip #13: Connect attribution and engagement

Acquisition and engagement are two different animals. You can explore and discover via mobile attribution a source of mobile acquisition that is very prolific to expand the top of your mobile app growth funnel. You notice that your cost per install is much lower than through other channels.

This doesn’t really matter.

What matters is to discover mobile growth sources that drive engagement and repeat use. That’s the money maker. That’s the mobile app growth that counts.

To do that, although you will notice that not all integrations between mobile attribution and mobile engagement platforms have been completed yet, you need to connect your mobile attribution partner to your mobile engagement vendor.

Before purchasing a solution, attribution or engagement, be sure to ask which integrations they are able to complete.

Some mobile analytics platform do cover both attribution and engagement at once. Nonetheless, at least in my experience, I have noticed that the best-in-class focus on one aspect of the mobile growth funnel and do it extremely well. Much better than their closest competitors.

Product-market fit anyone?

Keep that in mind. Connect mobile growth attribution and engagement. Ask early.

Tip #14: Think in-person over digital

As we do mobile growth marketing, we tend to get vacuumed into the digital nature of the mobile channel. We can forget the human.

Mobile connects humans, or at least, humans to relevant service or product information. So you must think human.

In-person targeting has been a key to success to many mobile matchmaker players. One of my favorite example of that is the Tinder mobile growth study at GrowthHackers.com.

How smart is that?

They tapped into the clearly defined supply-side of their two-sided mobile app marketplace, the female “Greek Letter” student belonging to a sorority, to attract the demand-side in an instant. They achieved a lot of that via in-person marketing events directly on campus.

Think human. Meet in-person. Grow mobile stronger.

Tip #15: Build an A-Team

Team. Team. Team!

Mobile growth is a team game. You cannot do it alone.

You need to surface an A-team from your organization that will have leaders in product, engineering, design, growth and customer success at least. They must work as one.

You need to define a solid team process so that you can leverage each core competency to be baked into your mobile app experience nimbly. This reminds me of my soccer days in Europe. Think “tournois de sixte” – a type of soccer tournament where six players play against six others.

You play fast. You score many goals. It’s so much fun!

As SC Moatti puts it: “PMF is very shifty, you reach it, then grow a little, then it escapes you and so on. Growth teams need to work closely with product teams to constantly define and refine PMF.”

Does that call for cross-functional A-Team work?

Recruit for mobile growth. Do it well. It’s foundational teamwork.

Tip #16: Look beyond apps

What is true in mobile growth today is most likely no longer true tomorrow. You should look and think outside the mobile app box.

We are seeing interesting signs of promising mobile experiences in new spaces such as mobile chatbot, AI and more.

Will we still be downloading apps in 10 years from now?

Many of the core mobile growth hacks I have shared so far apply to new forms of mobile experiences. You should start exploring them as they are likely to accelerate in the future. And when you ride the wave earlier, you grow faster.

Tip #17: Remember Antoine

When you iterate your way to sustainable mobile growth, you grow into realizing that some of the key principles of innovation and creativity that have been highlighted by brilliant minds centuries ago, work.

Keeping that in mind, I’d like to leave you with one last mobile growth hack in mind from the father of the well-know “Le Petit Prince” book – Antoine de Saint-Exupery:

“Perfection is achieved, not when there is nothing more to add, but when there is nothing left to take away.”

So…

What can you remove from your current mobile app to become laser focused?

To do one thing extremely well and grow much faster as a result?

Keep growing!

How many of our emails should we know about the moment someone decides to email us?

205 billion.  That’s the number of emails we sent and received in 2015, and that number is expected to grow to 246 billion by 2019.[1]  What does this mean for most of us?  A steady stream of new messages coming into our inboxes throughout the day.  And for most of us, it seems to be a norm to keep our inboxes open throughout the work day.  We focus on the tasks we have at hand, and each “ping” from our inbox draws our attention, even if briefly, before we return back to our work.

The problem here is the high cost of interruption.  This cost includes three categories: 1) time cost 2) performance cost 3) stress/ emotional well-being.

Time Cost  In terms of time cost, researches have shown that any switching between tasks results in a loss of time.  In other words, “multi-tasking” is a misnomer – we aren’t actually doing two tasks at once.  We are doing one task, switching to the other, and then switching to the original task. One study showed that after switching tasks, it took an average of 23 minutes and 15 seconds for people to get back to their original task.[2]

Performance Cost It should be no surprise to us that distraction can cause reductions in cognitive performance.  In psychological terms, “task-irrelevant thoughts,” that is – thoughts that are unrelated to the task at hand, have indeed been shown to have deleterious effects on performance.[3]

A recent study published in The Journal of Experimental Psychology illustrates how this plays out for cell phones in particular, focusing on the distraction that cell phone notifications can create.  In this study, participants were tasked with completing a task involving seeing items and pressing a button every time the item was a digit from 1-9, unless it was the number 3.  Some were interrupted with notifications and others were not.  The study found that the notification groups were more likely to make errors than the no-interruption group.

Stress/Emotional Well-Being   A third factor to consider with interruptions is the effect they have on people’s well being.  Task switching is fatiguing for us; it depletes us.  One study showed that interruptions resulted in higher feelings of stress, pressure and effort.[4]

At this point, it should be painfully clear to us that we need to be worried about the interruptions-economy.  What value interruptions provide, under what conditions, and what are their costs?  A little ping may seem innocuous, but there is cumulating evidence that the cost of an interruption is higher than we realize, and of course given the sheer number of interruptions, their combined effect can very quickly become substantial.

If email interruptions can have all these negative effects, what can we do to reduce them?  The first thing we should question is this idea that all emails are created equal.  Should each email be able to interrupt people?  Is the email from someone’s boss as important as the weekly industry newsletter he’s signed up for?  What if we designed a different system in which emails were not treated equally?

In a previous study, we looked at how many emails truly are worthy of interruption.  We asked people to look at the last 40 emails they received and asked them how soon they really needed to have seen each email.  Immediately?  At some point today?  At some point this week?  At some point this month?  No need to see it at all?

As it turns out, very few – only 12%! – of emails need to be seen within 5 minutes of being sent.

7% of emails need to be seen within 1 hour, 4% within 4 hours, 17% by the end of the day, 10% by the end of the week, 15% at some point, and a whopping 34% fell into the “no need to see it” category.

With that initial starting point – the idea that very few emails need to be seen right away – we set out to build a tool to allow people create rules for receiving emails.   We used a very simple sorting technique: sorting emails based on the sender.  In other words, depending on the sender, emails could be set to be received at different intervals.  No complex AI or learning mechanisms.

Example of instructions users were given

 

Example of prompt to set rule by each sender

What did we find?  People proceeded to create rules based on senders.  Similar to our initial findings, only 23% of emails were set up to be in the “immediate” category.  10% were relegated to the every-4-hours category, 19% to the end of the day, 16% to the end of the week, 5% to some day and a whopping 27% to the “never” category.

We also looked at whether people who received high vs, low quantities of emails behaved differently.  While on the whole they had similar behavior, one interesting point of note is that people with 50+ emails/day put highest number of emails into “immediately bucket” (30%) vs. 10-49 emails/day (20%) and <10 emails/day (26%).

Overall, the key point and opportunity we should take away from all of this is that a very simple mechanism can have an impact, creating a significant amount of benefit for people.  If you’d like to try this app for improving your email process for yourself, you can download it here.

[1] http://www.radicati.com/wp/wp-content/uploads/2015/02/Email-Statistics-Report-2015-2019-Executive-Summary.pdf

[2] Mark, G., Gudith, D., & Klocke, U. (2008). The cost of interrupted work: More speed and stress. Paper presented at the 107-110. doi:10.1145/1357054.1357072

[3] Smallwood, J., & Schooler, J. W. (2006). The restless mind. Psychological Bulletin, 132, 946–958. http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/0033-2909.132.6.946

[4] Mark, G., Gudith, D., & Klocke, U. (2008). The cost of interrupted work: More speed and stress. Paper presented at the 107-110. doi:10.1145/1357054.1357072

Jonathan Marks and Alex Wirth were in their junior year of college when they first had the idea for Quorum. “I was working in a computational biochemistry lab and taking computer science classes,” Marks remembers. “Alex was working on the Hill, running into a lot of roadblocks while promoting the passage of a couple of resolutions related to a youth advocacy project he was working on.”

As the two friends discussed the challenges Wirth was facing, they realized there was a real need for a tool that would help organizations grasp what was happening around a piece of legislation. “Organizations needed help understanding what was going on, both legislatively and also just related to what various people were talking about on Twitter, Facebook, or YouTube, in press releases, and on the floor. In addition, people and organizations needed a way to identify actionable insights about legislators based on who they know and which issues they care about.”

From those initial conversations, Quorum developed to be a critically valuable tool for people whose job it is to influence the legislative process. From companies and nonprofits to advocates, startups, and members of congress, people from a variety of sectors use this comprehensive software to track legislation and dialogue, target particular individuals as key players, and identify potential allies.

How the co-founding team got from initial concept to flourishing SaaS company is an interesting story about how to create, instead of a minimum viable product (MVP), a minimum sellable product (MSP).

Breaking the Lean Startup Model

“We broke the lean startup model almost by accident,” says Marks. “Originally, we were trying to follow the rules by delivering a very targeted product that did one thing: identify the relationships between legislators and provide information about which legislators know each other, how well they know each other, who is central within a network, and how you can move from one group of people to another in an intelligent way.” This early version of the product was a targeted, analysis-focused computational product; but it was soon going to evolve into something completely different and much more complex.

“Alex took that early alpha to DC and put it in front of thirty people who represented our target audience,” Marks says. “And, he heard different things from every single person.” Over the course of that initial alpha review period, people provided feedback about other functions and features that they’d like to see, including things like the ability to see who is talking about whom, the ability to see the input related to bills and votes so it would be easier to understand how the product delivered certain conclusions, and the ability to generate reports that would help a user demonstrate to superiors the logic behind a particular decision.

“Over the course of just those first thirty meetings, we collected enough feedback and ideas that it ended up taking us two years to build it all,” says Marks. “And the reason we decided to take that time was that right from the start with the initial product, there was so much demand for other things. That’s what got us thinking about the idea of a MSP, or minimum sellable product, instead of a minimum viable product.”

The basic idea was to figure out what people would be willing to pay for and then build that right out of the gate instead of launching with a less robust, freemium or low-cost product. “In the end, we have to generate revenue to survive,” Marks says matter of factly. “So, from the very beginning, we pursued revenue wherever we could find it, and it just happened that the path led us to build out a very comprehensive set of tools. That breadth of functionalities then became part of our value proposition.”

Identifying the “Real” Problem

The first step in developing the Quorum MSP was for Marks and Wirth to drill down into the “real” problem faced by their target audience. They started this process focused on one piece of the larger problem, but eventually found their way to the more fundamental need.

“The differentiator between our approach and a more typical approach, is that the typical approach is to focus on just one problem,” explains Marks. “For example, one of the problems we were aware of was how hard it was to send bulk emails to staffers on the Hill and keep track of their responses in a personalized way that doesn’t require repeating the same steps over and over again.”

“The typical MVP approach would be to build a product that solved just that problem and solved it, to the best of your ability, perfectly,” says Marks. And, in fact, there were several companies in the market who were launching those kinds of specialized products.

Instead of starting and stopping with that problem, Marks and Wirth took a closer look at the problem in order to get at the root of the issue. “Thinking the problem through, we realized that for our clients to be able to email the Hill, they needed a database about staffers that was not only up to date, but also enabled functionality like building reports and tracking relationships and interactions,” says Marks. “Our clients needed to do more than just email staffers, they needed to be able to build institutional knowledge about their history and relationship with each particular staffer, and then be able to store additional information so that everyone in the organization can see it.”

In the end, by thinking laterally, the Quorum team realized that they didn’t need an email tool – they needed a flexible, accessible, and fully functional tool to analyze data and relationships. That was the real — much broader and more complex — need that people would be willing to pay for.

Building on a Broader Foundation

“The minute we started building all the other things people had requested, we got into a position where our product’s functionality was crossing over with some of the other products in the space,” Marks says. “There were some things we did that other products didn’t do, but there were also things other products provided that we didn’t.”

This created an additional challenge for Quorum because buyers were already having to use multiple products to meet their needs, and their budget constraints weren’t likely to accommodate an additional purchase. “In this market, people traditionally buy separate products for federal and state,” explains Marks. “They also might have one product to communicate with Congress, another to track relationships, another to message supporters, and so on. It’s very fragmented.” In the beginning, Quorum wasn’t good enough to replace any of these existing solutions, but Marks and Wirth were quickly learning what they would need to build to set their product apart so that buyers could justify the purchase.

“Yes, they needed more access to data and a better interface that would allow them to search, slice and dice, and analyze that data,” Marks says. “But we came to realize that, more than that, what they really needed was a product that would do all of these things in one tool. Having to push information between multiple systems and learn different interfaces for each task presented a cognitive load and a barrier that kept people from doing their job really well.”

To deliver this all-in-one, broad product, Marks and Wirth needed to take a customized approach to the build. “We built our own search engine inside of our database that was powerful and fast enough to efficiently search for bills, documents, and giant data sets,” says Marks. “Because we were able to invest in that kind of central infrastructure and centralize our technology, we’ve been able to enhance the quality and usability and speed of the entire system and all the products. It has also enabled us to iterate more rapidly.”

Another key philosophy that the team embraced was moving away from building in silos. “The reason customers were having to use so many different tools to address their needs is that companies were building in silos,” explains Marks. “A company would build one tool in one silo so that it did everything that one tool needed. Then they would build a second tool in a second silo that would perform a tangentially related task.”

Instead of isolating feature sets within distinct silos, the Quorum team tackled a wide range of features all at once. “Even after just three months of development, we were trying to do legislative tracking, dialogue tracking, and analysis features along with building out productivity tools,” says Marks. “At a very early stage, the list of features that we had built to support was very large and very broad, and then we continued to expand laterally within each product.”

Knowing When Broad and Shallow Beats Narrow and Deep

Launching with a broad and shallow product isn’t for everyone, but in the right circumstance, it’s a powerful strategy. It’s the best fit when your customers need a solution that offers broad functionality that’s capable of addressing a multitude use cases. “Our target buyers had many things in common,” says Marks, “But one of the most important was that lots of them had multiple products with overlapping functionality. There was significant customer confusion over which products were the right choice to solve various problems.”

“In our case, we still launched early because we needed the revenue and feedback, just like everybody else,” says Marks. “But instead of launching a narrow but deep product, we launched a broad but shallow product and over time have built it out so that the depth is now greater than or equal to everything else on the market.”

The post When & Why it Makes Sense to Deliver a Minimum Sellable Product, Not a Minimum Viable Product appeared first on OpenView Labs.

Today a sales team must not only be able to sell a competitive advantage; they must be a competitive advantage. In most companies, it is increasingly difficult to sustain a competitive advantage by traditional means. Traditional factors, like superior products and innovative manufacturing technologies, may provide short term advantages but unfortunately they can be replicated in relatively short order by an increasing number of agile and aggressive domestic and international competitors.

Although a great sales team is difficult to develop, it has the potential to provide a significant competitive advantage and, perhaps more importantly, one that is difficult for the competition to quickly copy. So optimizing sales performance matters more today than it did yesterday and it will matter more tomorrow than it does today.

Onboarding. The process of training and acclimating salespeople from a skill, knowledge, and expectation perspective is one of the most significant factors for a salesperson’s success. Unfortunately it is also historically one of the most understudied and underemphasized aspects of performance development. Great sales onboarding programs are still the exception.

This lack of emphasis is part of the larger problem that companies are having with Talent Management. “Companies like to
 promote the idea that employees are their biggest source 
of competitive advantage. Yet the astonishing reality is that most of them are no better prepared for the challenges of finding, motivating and training capable workers than they were a decade ago” (McKinsey Quarterly).

With the increased awareness of the importance of
 developing a sales team that can be a competitive advantage, this talent management neglect has not gone unnoticed by everyone. It is suggested that the companies who are seriously addressing this issue today will be celebrating tomorrow.

What’s Different? If you are a company that put in place the components of your sales onboarding curriculum more than five years ago, it is likely that a second look is worthwhile. There are a number of changes and shifts that have significantly impacted what an optimal system looks like. Some of those factors are:

• Success matters more. As previously noted the number of sustainable competitive advantages has decreased and the importance of a world-class sales force has grown with that decline.

• Job demands are greater. In sales there is a “book of knowledge.” In many companies that book has expanded from a fairly common, well defined set of chapters to a tome that is encyclopedic in scope. Today in order to be a top performer, a salesperson simply
 has to know a lot more and do a 
lot more than in times past.

• Specialization of the sales function has increased. Today if the sales positions in most Fortune 1000 companies were examined under a microscope, they would be greater in number and greater in diversity than in times past. So as a sales person moves up the hierarchy of positions, they are faced with different buyers, different buying processes, and differing points of view on what constitutes value.

Hence, there is a need to learn new knowledge and new skills for each position. So onboarding is not just something that is needed when hiring new salespeople – it is also needed when promoting sales reps to a new sales position such as the transition from a territory rep to a national account rep.

• Generational differences are significant. New people coming into entry-level sales positions are from a generation with a different set of expectations, learning preferences, and experience sets. This shift provides a significant need and huge opportunity to put in place learning methodologies that would not have been considered several years ago. It also presents a strategic omission if the talent management and learning strategies are different than the expectations.

Summary. So … having a world-class sales team is more important than ever … but building one is more difficult than ever because of the increased complexity of the
 sales environment. An effective onboarding process is part of the answer but historically and presently the onboarding process has not been a priority at the leadership level and, adding to the mix, the folks being hired and promoted are bringing a new and very different set of expectations and preferences.

The good news is this set of conditions represent a significant opportunity for the companies that commit the time and effort to get onboarding right.