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Boards of directors play two roles. They must protect value by helping companies avoid unnecessary risks, and they must build value by ensuring that companies change quickly enough to address emerging competitive threats, evolving customer preferences, and disruptive technologies.

With technology and business model cycles becoming shorter and companies facing unrelenting pressure to innovate or suffer the consequences, more and more boards need to focus on the second of these roles. To do so, they must be willing to challenge executive teams and stress-test their strategies to ensure they go far enough and fast enough. For boards used to preserving the status quo, this shift can be uncomfortable. Here are four ways boards can become better challengers and champions of change.

Confront Unwelcome News and Trends

Changing strategy is extremely difficult, especially for successful businesses. In the early 1990s Blockbuster commissioned a study on the future of video-on-demand technologies and how they would impact traditional video rentals. The report concluded that expanded cable offerings and broadband internet would begin to impact video rentals around 2000, and would grow rapidly thereafter. The good news was that Blockbuster had a good 10 years to prepare for the new environment. But the shift never happened: Management ignored the study’s findings and continued with the same strategy, supported by the board. In September 2010 Blockbuster filed for bankruptcy protection. In this case, value protection was not enough. The company had clear advance notice that seismic change was coming.

The board’s role was to acknowledge the warning signs and challenge management’s lack of action — even if it meant contention and dispute in the boardroom.

Make Sure You Have Challengers in Your Midst

Boards will be far more effective in their challenger role if they offer seats to individuals with professional experiences and viewpoints that are very different from those of the executive team. Directors can learn to be more direct with management, but it’s hard to fake contrarianism when everyone is of the same mind. When a board resembles the CEO in mindset and outlook, it’s a recipe for a gatekeeper board, not a challenger board. But when boards mix it up by bringing in members with different perspectives, they can effect powerful strategic changes, something I have seen many times in my work with corporate boards.

Often, these “challengers” will be tech-savvy young executives from digitally disruptive companies who can press their fellow directors and senior management about potential blind spots related to digital disruption. But disruption is not always about technology. For example, one highly successful, privately-held producer of canned foods actively sought a board member who could challenge management to think differently but who would still fit with the company’s family-oriented governance culture. The successful candidate was the CEO of a well-known, family-owned California wine business that catered to consumers who would not dream of buying canned food. The board member helped the company “think outside the can” to identify new product forms that would broaden their customer base and appeal to health-conscious consumers.

In another instance, a leading chain of retail pharmacies appointed as vice chair someone with a background in health care manufacturing and pharmacy benefit management. The new board member helped management better understand the efficiency advantages of mail-order pharmacies, which rely on automation. As a result, the company added low-cost automated pharmacy services to its existing retail outlets, giving it a competitive advantage over traditional retail pharmacies.

Stay Fresh with Term Limits and Checks and Balances

Beyond accessing the right expertise, boards can maintain a challenger perspective by ensuring they don’t become complacent and drift toward an approver role. One of the most effective ways to do this is to establish mandatory term limits as a part of the board’s bylaws. Term limits can help boards maintain a level of independence between the outside directors and executive leadership.

Moreover, if the CEO and chair roles are separated, the chair can take more active responsibility for ensuring that alternative views and perspectives are brought before the board. Separating the roles is a common practice in Europe, and it’s becoming more so in the United States. Another option is to appoint an independent lead director, a less drastic change that can have a similar effect. In fact, the New York Stock Exchange essentially requires listed companies with nonindependent chairs to appoint one of their independent directors as lead director. The lead position, among other duties, is responsible for scheduling and helming board meetings that take place without management. Today the majority of S&P companies with combined CEO and chair roles have chosen to counterbalance this arrangement by appointing an independent lead director.

Turn Courage and Candor into Core Competencies

Having directors with valuable insights is worthless if they do not feel comfortable sharing their perspectives and debating issues with management. A recent study by Women Corporate Directors and Bright Enterprises found that more than three-quarters (77%) of director respondents believed that their boards would make better decisions if they were more open to debate, and 94% said that criticism can help bring about change when it is used properly.

Nevertheless, board members are often hesitant to offer criticism, especially to CEOs. The same survey found that only about half (53%) of respondents felt that the CEOs of their companies take criticism well. This is not surprising. As a board member it is much easier to empathize with a CEO under pressure than with an abstract group of shareholders. One way to address this issue is to offer board members training in giving and receiving constructive criticism. Board members need to understand that failing to confront difficult issues will not help the CEO. If a CEO’s first indication that the board is dissatisfied is hearing they are searching for his or her replacement, then the board is not fulfilling its responsibilities.

Challenger boards are those with the strength to put the hard questions to management and to poke holes in suboptimal strategies. They bring a diversity of perspective that can help management understand the company’s vulnerabilities and how to overcome them. For companies struggling to exist in a world where disruption is rapidly becoming a business constant, challenger boards may well be one of their most important survival tools.

Image courtesy of vigdor

Do you know what it takes to stay ahead of the competition? Is that one of your business goals?

I recently did an interview with someone for an article she was writing, and one of the questions was about competition and how to best research the competition. Other questions on the topic revolved around how businesses can stay relevant and how they can set themselves apart in over-saturated industries. (I’ll share the link here once the article is published.)

I’m a huge believer in innovate, don’t imitate. I think it’s important to understand what the competitive landscape looks like, but you cannot stay to focused on the competition. Do your homework. Be aware. Understand what they’re doing. But focus on your customers; research your customers and your customers’ needs, and then go and do your thing.

When there are clear, differentiated choices of products, services, and/or experiences in the marketplace, the decision is made easier for your customers. Bring your own unique value to the table. When customers’ experiences with one company stink, they have the ability to go purchase from someone else. Let them decide.

So, to stand apart, innovate the experience. In a world with so many commodity products and services, the only real differentiator becomes the experience. Deliver a unique and differentiated experience. In most cases, that’s pretty simple. Honestly, just make it easy to do business with
your company.

The day after that interview, I saw this article from strategy+business about What It Takes to Stay Ahead of the Competition. Of course, I was curious to see how the authors addressed this topic. No surprise that we were in alignment; in their research, the authors found that four particular capabilities emerged as integral to sustaining high-quality performance:

Improvement. This capability was defined as a firm’s ability to make incremental product or service upgrades, or to reduce production costs.

Innovation. Defined as how strong a company was at developing new products and entering new markets.

Sensing of weak signals. Defined as how well a company can focus on potential banana peels in order to improve overall performance, including analyzing mistakes, actively searching out production anomalies, and being aware of potential problems in the surrounding business environment.

Responsiveness. Defined as a business’s ability to solve problems that crop up unexpectedly and to use specialized expertise to counter those complications.

I cannot argue with any of those four; as a matter of fact, I’ve written about these topics previously.

Improvements are critical. Without them, your customer experience will be stuck in the same rut it’s always been in. Take your customer feedback, and do something with it. Here are a few examples of what I’ve written about Improvements.

Innovation is probably one of my favorite topics to write about when it comes to differentiation and staying ahead of the competition. A few examples on this topic include:

Those slow-moving or slow-rising competitive threats are called Weak Signals. They are everywhere, and the trick is often knowing which ones to act on.

I’ve not written a post specific to Responsiveness, but it is a critical component in delivering a great customer experience and in standing apart from the competition. One way to counter the complications and implications of unexpected issues is to be proactive, to conduct pre-mortems (what could go wrong?), and more. A few proximate posts include:

Don’t let the competition dictate your business decisions and your customer experience. Don’t make the competition your primary focus or driving force. Do your own work. Understand your customers. Be prepared. And innovate. Continuously innovate… your products, your talent development, and your experience.

Competition is always a good thing. It forces us to do our best. A monopoly renders people complacent and satisfied with mediocrity. -Nancy Pearcey

Over the last ten years, there has been a profound change in the way business people make buying decisions, and social media is at the heart of this.

Where buyers used to rely on conversations with sales people or subject matter experts to help them understand their problems and ways to solve them, they’re postponing one-on-one communications and doing much of the research themselves.

They’re going to the internet, search engines and social media, and this is driving B2B firms in a variety of industries to realize that if they don’t change the way they approach new business efforts, they could be kissing a lot of their best opportunities goodbye.

Here are the most common objectives we run across in our work with B2B firms.

1. Establishing a professional presence. I’ve mentioned it before but it bears repeating. In most B2B industries today buyers will check providers out on social media as part of their decision-making process. This is especially true of LinkedIn, where buyers look at personal profiles and company pages to get a feel for the people and the firm.This most basic reason for investing in social media is defensive. If you’re not visible, not active or not appealing, buyers are likely to move on to your competition.
2. Expanding brand awareness. Familiarity is a key component in making buyers comfortable about doing business with you, and social media is one of the easiest ways today to make more people aware of you, your company and your subject matter experts.While each social network has its own options for generating awareness, every one of them does it. On LinkedIn, for example, you can promote awareness and familiarity through strategic network-building, status updates, group participation, publishing articles and even running ads.
3. Attracting and engaging the right prospective clients. As buyers continue to avoid or ignore telemarketing and cold email attempts, they remain refreshingly open to genuine, personalized outreach on social media. If you take care to avoid spamming and to provide buyer-related value, you’ll find even high-level prospects are willing to engage with you.The key to attracting and engaging these prospects on social media is to avoid “selling.” Instead, use it to educate and to be helpful.
4. Establishing and cultivating visible thought leadership positions. While the concept of a “thought leader” has become little more than a buzz word for many, buyers–especially of professional services–expect their providers to be more than merely experts. They expect them to be among the go-to people in their area of expertise, to offer innovative ideas and visions of the future.Much like conference-speaking engagements and articles published in trade journals, social media provides a platform to showcase expertise and prove the ability to turn ideas into actions. Such thought leadership often allows providers to charge more for their services.
5. Research. Social media is an excellent source for learning about and keeping up with clients, customers, prospects and competitors. Years ago, the opening in-depth conversation between a B2B sales person and a potential buyer was generally dedicated to learning about the buyer(s), their company, their industry and their problems. Try that approach today and you’ll get kicked to the curb.In fact, taking the time to really learn about your potential buyer or new client before contacting them can substantially increase your success in getting to a conversation in the first place. Top B2B sellers know this and 86.7% claim to always research prospects before making contact (Source).Similarly, it pays to know what your competitors are up to and where else can you find such an extensive collection of the latest information on new hires, new clients and new products.

Social media can be frustratingly confusing to professionals who don’t work with it every day. Good social media programs–those that actually contribute to a company’s bottom line–begin with a solid strategy, a lot of research and the polishing of key individual profiles. These programs involve far more than simply posting updates to your company page.

The first step towards a solid social media program is to find an advisor you trust. Someone who speaks your language and can make a few light bulbs go on in your head. Regardless of whether this advisor is internal or external to your firm, he or she should understand complex sales and marketing processes, in addition to understanding social media.

If a social media professional can’t tell you exactly how their work contributes to your bottom line, it’s time to find a different one.

As we enter 2017, there’s no question that digital transformation has forever changed the way companies do business. Both opportunity and disruption in the form of digital innovation can come from anywhere at any time. A result of the ever changing digital business landscape is the massive shift in buyer expectations unfolding before us. Today’s buyer, whether a business or consumer, is more informed, more savvy and more particular about the brands they choose than ever before. Today’s consumer craves brands that share their values and demonstrate that they understand “me” at a personal level.

As a marketer, there are seemingly limitless digital channels to reach out to your customers, but the challenge is finding out how, when, and why they want to be engaged. Now more than ever, the only way to win the heart and mind of your customer is to consistently deliver authentic and personalized experiences.

The Engagement Economy

The idea behind the “Engagement Economy” is simple but profound—we are living in a new era—a digital future where everyone and everything is connected. The engagement economy embodies the fundamental shift in relationships between buyers and sellers, but extends across entire organizations to include customers, prospects, employees, and partners. The bottom line is that the marketer in this new era must engage with all the stakeholders in a business, not just customer, and deliver an experience with promise. The organizations that do this will win—and those that fail to embrace transformation in the Engagement Economy, aren’t long for this new world.

It feels like a tacit notion, companies that don’t transform risk being outpaced by new, digital “native” brands who can deliver the experiences customers crave. You don’t have to look any further than the textbook example of Blockbuster Video. They had a huge brand presence and thousands of physical locations in the U.S. alone, yet when Netflix was born out of frustration over late fees at a Blockbuster video store, Blockbuster simply couldn’t adapt to the new model of renting videotapes, DVDs, and music. It’s almost comical now to think that a digital company that was little more than a website with a warehouse of DVD’s that they shipped to people in the mail could put a behemoth like Blockbuster out of business, yet within 24 months, Blockbuster was rendered irrelevant. Why? It wasn’t actually because it was simply a better business model, it was because Netflix offered the customer an experience they actually wanted! Fast forward ten years from that scenario and we live in a new era where thousands of digital native companies crop up every year. Think of some of today’s most talked-about brands, who all happen to be digital natives: AirBnB, Uber, etc. We love them because of the experience they provide us, yet neither of them own any real estate or cars.

But not every company is a digital native. In fact, most aren’t. If you’re like the majority of companies out there, you are racing to implement a digital infrastructure that enables you to listen to, learn from, and engage with your customers. So how do you do it?

Drive Wantedness

Success in the Engagement Economy hinges on, well, engagement. Imagine that! Digital transformation, is not about processes, technology, or even sales and marketing—it’s about transforming your organization at its core to create experiences that feel real and human and are founded on trust and care.

In the Engagement Economy, it is all about building personalized, authentic relationships with your customers and driving the idea of wantedness. Wantedness is a really compelling concept based on research by Wunderman, and it’s the degree to which a brand proves their commitment to earning a customers’ business across every touchpoint—across the entire customer journey. In a me-centric world, where consumers expect us, the marketer, to understand and communicate to them when they want, how they want, on the right channel, and at exactly the right moment. Being wanted is essentially the result of driving an authentic buyer experience.

Digital Transformation with Impact

So where do you go when you’re faced with the need, or maybe paranoid fear, to digitally transform your organization to drive wantedness and participate fully in the Engagement Economy?

You find a partner to lead you through the intense, vast, and complex tangle of data and point systems. Not only are market pressures great—from customers and your competition, but so is the internal pressure from leadership, like your CEO. The partner to help you drive an impactful transformation in your organization is a platform that is built from the ground up—one that is, at its core, built to orchestrate end-to-end marketing engagement.

The Marketo Engagement Platform enables marketers to listen to, learn from, and engage with their customers at scale. And scale is critical when you look at how a strong infrastructure can support and surround your customer to drive wantedness. With the scale, reliability and openness of the Marketo Engagement Platform, marketers are able to partner with integrated solutions to deliver orchestrated experiences.

Looking for an example of how partners and customers are thinking about the Engagement Economy? Check out this video:

The Engagement Economy is here. Your partner is here. Now is the time to transform your organization and your marketing to drive success and win the hearts and minds of your customers.

Bestselling Author and Sales Strategist Marylou Tyler shares the three biggest sales funnel mistakes she sees – and how to fix them.

On LinkedIn one-on-one, personalized marketing can be quite powerful.

However, the amount of time spent chasing down every possible sales lead does not always yield the optimum ROI.

In order to achieve balance between your efforts on LinkedIn to generate more sales leads versus actually closing and ultimately servicing those customers, you have to ensure you’ve set up your sales funnel correctly.

I recently had the opportunity to talk with a sales funnel expert, Marylou Tyler, the Bestselling Author of “Predictable Revenue” and “Predictable Prospecting.”

Tyler, who serves as a sales enablement strategist for clients including Apple, Bose, Mastercard, UPS and many others, shared the three biggest mistakes she sees in many companies’ sales funnels – and how to fix them.

Tip 1: Know Your Value of Each Lead

With Tyler’s background in computer engineering, she views the sales process from a systems perspective. One of the first key indicators of a functioning sales funnel is to understand the value of your leads.

“Know the value of your leads that are coming into your big bucket,” Tyler told me. “Some leads are minors, some leads are whales. I look at the lead types that are coming in, because they have different values.”

This understanding will help you predict revenue, as well as the cost associated with your inputs of time and energy.

When working with clients, Tyler helps companies identify and target the specific accounts that will have high revenue and high close rates.

“The hardest thing for sales reps is to really say, ‘Okay, is this worth my time?’ They’ll chase anything because they’re human,” Tyler says. “We love everybody, we want to talk to everybody, but we have to really pick and choose. The only way you can do that intelligently is to know the value of that lead.”

Back to LinkedIn for a moment.

Because the platform is such a highly visible, trusted social network for professionals, and because you’re able to use it to demonstrate industry-specific expertise with targeted individuals, along with sharing high-value testimonials on your profile, you can land more of what what Tyler calls the “coveted lead.”

“They’re high in value, but they’re low in volume,” she says.

Tip 2: Specialize your Strengths

Once you understand prospecting, you also have to determine how to best close and service your accounts.

Tyler says that while solo entrepreneurs don’t always have this luxury, she suggests larger companies specialize their sales roles – from prospecting, to closing and servicing – to improve the outreach process.

“There are different skill sets that are needed,” she says. “People still make mistakes and they try to get their reps to do all things. The bottom line is we’re all stressed when we have to do that, because some of our skills are not in those areas.”

Tip 3: Consider Reverse-Engineering

Tyler suggests mapping the sales process out and not being afraid to move it around so that it makes sense for your company’s goals, capabilities, and achievable revenue.

“We’re doing it backwards, but we’ve always done it backwards since I’ve been a programmer working in operating system design,” she says. “We get the tool first and then we try to cram our business process into the tool and it doesn’t work. You have to do it the other way around.”

When you’re able to combine those three key elements (Lead Value, Specialization and Reverse-Engineering), your sales funnel will be far more effective, according to Tyler.

Read, Listen and Apply!

There’s much more to the entire process than one can capture in a quick blog post, so I’d suggest you go here to listen to my entire conversation with Tyler to glean everything she shared about the sales funnel process.

She also shared additional tips on another intriguing topic – how to combine the warmth of storytelling and emotion with cold, analytical data to get the best prospecting and sales cycle possible.

Last year’s trend outlook for 2016 suggested that you keep your eye on growing consumer control, the emerging questions about AI and our excitement about the prospects of virtual reality applications. The landscape has changed — a lot. For 2017, consumer trends show a growing emphasis on shifting local and global identity, the impact of intersectionality on business and culture, and the real threats in the realm of cyber security. For marketers and business this means staying culturally relevant is even more important. The trends to watch:

1. Geopolitic Disruption

A few years ago (or maybe just a few months back?) globalism seemed inevitable. It was a fact of life that the world would become more connected, not less. That trade would increase, not stall out. And that individual people would find themselves with more in common with people and cultures across the planet, not less. That outlook, at least as far as 2017 goes, isn’t so clear anymore.

It’s not just Donald Trump’s election that’s signaling a change in the flavor of globalism’s future, either. Across Europe, candidates that embrace isolationism and nationalism have found favor with audiences unsure of or unmoved by globalism’s enticements.

What this means for business

Globalism isn’t going away. People still want the conveniences and entertainments that only come by way of modern economies. But with politics at the forefront, a new conversation about what it means to be American and what it means to be a global citizen has begun.

The value at the heart of the debate is freedom. Does freedom mean that we are exercising rights and protecting borders or does it mean encouraging and protecting freedom for all people?

This consumer shift means brands need to be clear on their values – and be unafraid of the consequences of them. Understand the core drivers of patriotism, justice and populism as you seek to connect with your audience.

2. Intersectional Futurism

Last year we talked about the growing drumbeat for acknowledgement and acceptance of greater diversity. This year, there is no more quickly rising topic. It is impossible to view any issue, injustice or cause as other than interrelated.

As our global awareness builds, our economies become more intertwined, political trends spread, and media keep us all connected. With everything happening in the world, we are now seeing and experiencing the culture — and our identities within it — as a whole rather than as separate parts.

Intersectionality is the idea that different social issues overlap and intersect, and that one issue can only be understood in the context of others producing complex results. The notion has been around for some time, emerging in the 1960s and 1970s, as women of color fought for their rights shining a light on the intersection of civil rights and gender oppression they faced. Looking at issues of today and tomorrow through this lens is what Alexis Madrigal calls Intersectional Futurism.

Women’s health, as one example, is not solely related to gender, but also to class, ability, and race. Environmental degradation affects the poor more that other economic groups. You cannot eradicate poverty without considering how environmentalism impacts their lives.

What this means for business

At a time when the world and many communities can feel divided, there is an opportunity to focus on the very real points of intersection — not just to talk to multiple groups of people, but to consider what impact your product and your business have more broadly in the community and the culture.

To be culturally relevant in an intersectional world is to be aware of the system of connections in which your business or product resides. Nothing and no one operates in a vacuum. Be aware of how you influence and what influences your business and your customer. And be aware of customers looking for justice in you business practices and economic power.

3. On-Demand Work

According to the World Economic Forum, the Fourth Industrial Revolution is underway and it’s changing everything we know about life, business and consumerism. The emphasis, they say, will be on talent not capital.

This shift in global economies is already in motion, and can be seen in the changing relationship Americans have with work, whether by choice or by need. Contingent workers are now a reality. Instead of traditional college degrees, ambitious wannabe employees create CVs of their own design with badges, hands-on learning and nano-degrees.

More and more workers patch together careers of their own making—job sharing, double gigs, freelancing. According to MBO Partners, the number of independent workers in the U.S. has risen 12 percent in the last five years.

Regular folks can now outsource a portion of their lives. Use your creativity to make money on Kickstarter, your house to make money on AirBnB, your car to burn a few hours with Uber, then use your friends to make an audience on YouTube and sell product placement on that.

What this means for business

Acknowledge and embrace the fact that a change is in motion. Give workers the freedom to build their work lives as they see fit. Understand that your potential customer, while probably working often, is no longer locked in a 9-to-5. Understand that there may be someone with just the skill you need looking for a side hustle. Start planning now for the shift in your business, HR and marketing model.

4. The Next Big Thing

We’re a nation that was built on ingenuity, discovery, and progress. Entrepreneurs and innovators are creating the next new things at an accelerated and exciting pace, and it raises our expectations for everyday business, too.

Innovation: Geeks everywhere have a shooting star to follow in Elon Musk. He and others are lending real celebrity to science and entrepreneurship, and with it changing space exploration, energy and transportation innovation.

Cognification is the new Smart: Last year I talked about AI and its potential risks. This year I’m seeing not only business solutions, but also VPAs and Smart Bots that go way beyond Siri, Cortana, Alexa.

Dark Data: The data generated by all our IoT gadgets and services, not to mention all of the other data being captured by companies, has eclipsed our ability to deal with it. It is a gold mine of information and insights if we only knew how to make use of it.

What this means for business

Data will become multi-directional rather than unidirectional as consumers and citizens contribute what’s needed to make businesses and communities run. An evolving digital mesh of smart machines will connect billions of things into a continuous digital experience. Are you ready for it?

All the data you collect is a gold mine of an opportunity to get to know your customers better. Properly evaluated not just for the WHAT but also for the WHY, or the meaning, will give you visibility into what really matters and how to develop happier consumers.

5. The Life Sustainable

Last year, we talked about the landmark Paris Climate Agreement and the corporate leaders staking strategic claim with bold initiatives. The U.S. role in the climate conversation will likely change with the 2016 election, though, and many are watching. Where will the burden fall?

According to the Edelman Trust Barometer, 8 out of 10 people are still expecting business to solve societal problems this year, but the activity is going to be a shared responsibility.

Already we are seeing change among consumers and corporations. According to CNBC, Fast fashion’s rapid growth is starting to slow. Second hand stores are starting to reject fast fashion items and much of it is ending up in landfills rather than being recycled. Food waste is another area getting lots of attention with recycling and reuse startups taking up the cause.

What this means for business

If customers are expecting business to solve societal problems you better understand just what they think you should solve. The issues are complex but it’s worth the investment to align with your customers

• Take the time to understand what matters to your customer
• Invest now in sustainable practices throughout your business. Don’t forget to tell your employees and customers that you listened to them and made changes
• Watch for pop-up, Kickstarter innovations that can jump-start your process or give your company a cause to rally around

6. Privacy And Security

Privacy and security continue to be critical this year and likely well into the future as we debate the ethical, economic and political tensions between the very real need to be safe and our rights to privacy. The web of leaks and hacks is mind-boggling for citizens and marketers alike, and can be plenty creepy. Did the Russians interfere with our election? Edward Snowden claims that David Petraeus leaked more intelligence than he did. Was Hillary reckless with classified documents? What’s more, cyber espionage is being deployed as a 21^st century weapon. Regular citizens don’t have anything close to answers but all feel vulnerable to the downside of a hack and worried about how real nation state attacks can play out.

What this means for business

Privacy policies may be a legal and regulatory necessity, but they’re not at the forefront of the public’s mind. Customers want real evidence that you’ll keep us safe and own up to it and fix it when something happens outside of your control. Customers will reward those companies that demand security and excellence in their cyber security strategies.

Note: An earlier version of this story appeared at Forbes.com

On the first day of the NRF Big Show 2017 one thing was obvious: technology isn’t slowing down, so retail better be ahead of the curve, particularly when it comes to mobile commerce. Multiple sessions analyzed the rise of mobile commerce and its affect on retail. Below are three key takeaways we thought brands and retailers could learn from.

Anticipate, don’t react

At one of the first sessions of the day, “Are retailers meeting the mobile needs of customer? Global study says no”, Jeremy Gilman of DMI, one of the largest mobile-specific consulting agencies posed the question: what killed Blockbuster, one of the largest retailers in the US? Most of us thought the same thing: Netflix, Redbox, and the rise of streaming. But this isn’t the case. Blockbuster had all of the offerings of the competitors: “send-away service”, kiosks, low process, and even the opportunity to buy Netflix. The decline of Blockbuster was largely due to their reaction to a change in the marketplace, rather than their anticipation of it.

Usually the writing is on the wall, and when it comes to mobile, it’s clear as day. If brands want to keep up with the trends they need to anticipate, and develop their mobile platforms. One out of three holiday purchases were completed on mobile in the 2016 season according to Katherine Shappley, the head of small and medium businesses for Facebook. Another bold statement from Shappley: You only have four seconds for your mobile experience to work right for a customer before you have lost them. That includes load time, mobile viewing, and ease of use. Those large, bright, multi-pixel home pages on a 24-inch desktop might not translate to a 5” x 4” mobile screen. At the point it will be too difficult for a consumer to understand and you have lost a purchase.

With the clear direction the market is moving, it will serve business well to take the time and money and invest in their mobile experience, so they are anticipating this change instead of having to play catch up to their competitors.

If they buy your app, you have already won.

Do all brands need apps? Probably not. But for brands that an app makes sense for, build one. Customers who take the time to download the app are already more loyal customers then those who don’t. Jerry Hum, CEO of Touch of Modern, says the app visitor is 145% more valuable than the web visitor because they are so loyal and typically buy more. They are self selected. Smartphone users spend 66.9 hours on their phone per month, according to Hum, and instead of just sending an email when an event has occurred, mobile apps allow brands to “push” a notification to the consumer. This allows for increased timely communication. Users will receive an immediate notification as opposed to an email which they might not check for another 12 hours.

Apps allow users to interact more often and in a more meaningful way than just a website. It also allows the brand to do more for their customers. While an app might not be right for everyone, if it makes sense, then brands needs to take the time to create a meaningful, user friendly app.

Mobile isn’t just for out-of-store use

Often when people think of mobile commerce, they only think about out-of-store experiences. However, there is so much more to mobile than that. Mobile provides the opportunity to interact with the customer in a new way while they are physically in your store. Gilman, shared the fact that if a brand improved mobile while in the store then 88% of customers would be more likely to purchase from them than a competitor.

What are they looking for from an in-store mobile experience? According to Gilman it’s these six things: pricing of products, inventory, product reviews and advice, personalization, store guidance, and checkout and loyalty programs. Some brands are taking note, with an increase of 25% of retailers creating an app over the past year.

Customers are looking for ways to save time and money, and in-store mobile experience will accomplish this. Although we have heard of this concept for quite some time, this trend is only beginning to be put into practice. This provides an opportunity for brands to break in on the ground floor, and the flexibility to develop their offerings as new technology develops.

Customers expect a quality mobile experience from brands. If brands don’t deliver, then they are missing out on sales. A brand needs to take advantage of the many offerings mobile commerce provides it lest it becomes the next Blockbuster. Staying relevant to consumers means anticipating the changes in the marketplace.

Look out for a full recap of the NRF Big Show coming soon!

 

Jennifer Umstead is an Associate for the Global eCommerce Practice at OgilvyOne. She recently graduated from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, where she studied advertising and public relations.

 

 

This article originally appeared on OgilvyDo.com

 

Editor’s Note: This post first appeared on the Drift blog here.

It’s a conversation I’ve had many times with many fellow entrepreneurs over the past 20 years:

How do you know when it’s time to bring on a management team?

In the early days of a startup, hiring seasoned executives usually (and rightfully) takes a back seat to building a product and finding product/market fit.

But when it comes to scaling your business, the general consensus is that you need to bring on a management team or you risk having things devolve into chaos.

HBR recently looked through 75-years worth of organizational research and identified four critical activities for successfully scaling a business.

The first two activities they mention?

1. Hiring functional experts
2. Adding management structures

The tricky part, of course, is figuring out when you should hire these functional experts and add these new structures.

There’s also the challenge of figuring out who you should hire for those management roles: external industry veterans or internal up-and-comers who may have already been doing the job?

While there isn’t a single correct answer to these questions, there are a few best practices that I’ve learned (the hard way) over the course of launching and scaling five companies.

The Dangers of Bringing on Management Too Early

The more common mistake I see companies making isn’t adding management too late, but adding it too early.

When you’re still in that stage of being a lean, mean, product-building machine, too much structure can hinder communication and slow you down.

In those early days, you usually can’t afford to have dedicated managers anyway. You need player/coaches: People who can both do and lead.

Bringing on a veteran executive from some multi-billion dollar company at this point in your startup’s growth might get you headlines, but it likely won’t get you the results you’re looking for.

I’ve heard stories of seasoned executives moving to startups and being shocked to discover that they had to get their own coffee (the horror!). So clearly, culture fit can be an issue.

But the bigger issue with adding management too early isn’t culture fit, it’s stage-of-company fit.

It’s a “horses for courses” issue (i.e. pairing a racehorse with the racecourse it’s best-suited to run on). Only in this case it’s about pairing an executive with the stage of a company’s growth that he or she has the most experience working in.

Think about it: If you’re a 15-person startup with less than a million dollars in revenue, what use would you have for an executive who’s worked most of his or her career at a company with tens of thousands of employees and billions in revenue? The skillsets usually don’t match up.

You need to find the right horse for the right course.

The Evolving Role of the Executive: Four Stages

I recently learned about the “four stages” of an executive’s role via the High-Growth CEO Forum.

While I’ve always held similar views around how the executive team’s responsibilities should evolve as a company grows, this was the first time I really saw these ideas codified (and presented in a classroom type setting).

Here are the four stages:

1. Startup Stage: sole focus is developing product
2. Initial Growth Stage: shift focus to driving sales
3. Rapid Growth Stage: shift focus to leading the market
4. Continuous Growth Stage: shift focus to dominating the industry

As your company moves through these four stages of growth, and your executives shift what they’re focusing on, the skillsets of those executives also need to shift.

In the startup stage, you need those doers/decision-makers that I mentioned earlier. They’re people who can lead and operate on the front-lines.

When you reach the initial growth stage, however, you need executives who are a little more hands-off, and who are masters at delegating tasks and giving direction to their teams.

In the rapid growth stage, executive responsibilities expand beyond coordinating a team’s efforts to include building out the team and planning for long-term growth. Executives at this stage need to be expert communicators and they need to take a more active role in coaching employees.

Finally, in the continuous growth stage, executives move from being team-builders and planners to organization-builders and strategic innovators. They affect changes across hundreds if not thousands of employees and are the chief stewards of a company’s culture.

Rarely is someone able to start their career as an executive at a company and progress as fast as the company is growing.

Imagine two lines: One is the growth rate of the company and the other is the rate at which a manager/executive is able to learn and evolve. Having those two lines follow the same curve through all four stages of a company’s growth is incredibly rare.

That’s why it’s a big deal when you see a founding CEO take their company public: It doesn’t happen very often.

Ultimately, the role management plays in the early days of a company’s growth is very different from the role management play in the later stages.

The secret to knowing whether it’s time to bring on an external hire – or whether it’s time to promote someone internally – is to look at the stage your company is in and see if your current managers have what it takes to get you to the next stage.

Promoting Internally vs. Hiring Externally

Data from the Saratoga Institute shows that, on average, it’s 1.7 times more expensive to hire people externally versus promoting people internally.

Something else to consider: Research out of Wharton shows that external hires get lower performance evaluations during their first two years compared to internal employees who get promoted into similar roles.

Meanwhile, those same external hires get paid around 18% to 20% more than their internally promoted counterparts, and they have higher exit rates.

All this to say: Hiring executives from outside of your company is a big deal. It’s expensive. It’s risky. And it can potentially lead to company in-fighting if existing managers aren’t keen on giving up responsibilities they’re used to owning.

But when you start getting into those third and fourth stages of growth, hiring externally to build out your executive team almost always becomes inevitable.

Let’s look at Slack as an example.

Three years ago, Slack had zero revenue. Today, they have around $100 million or so in ARR. How many sales managers do you know that could’ve evolved their skillset at that same rate?

The first year of sales for a startup is all about being scrappy, and signing up every customer you can. Fast forward three years later and the sales environment is entirely different. It’s super process-driven.

If you were the first sales manager at Slack, being the VP of sales or CRO today would mean that you had the skills necessary to be a great leader at the $0-to-$1 million stage, and that you have the skills needed right now to grow Slack from $100 million in revenue to $250 million.

I don’t know a lot of humans who look like that.

So my litmus test for figuring out if (and when) external hires are necessary is to see if the current leaders are excelling – or just getting by – in the stage they’re currently operating in.

If a manager is spending most of her time fire-fighting and trying to keep everything in order, she probably isn’t a good fit for leading a team into the next stage of growth.

This doesn’t mean the manager is necessarily a poor performer, it just means she’s reached a plateau (possibly a temporary one) in evolving her skillset. And if that’s the case, bringing in an external hire who has experience operating in that next stage makes a lot of sense.

Alternatively, if a manager is doing exceedingly well, and is navigating the current stage with ease, that’s a sign that she’s ready for a challenge. In that case, you should consider promoting internally.

Final Thought: Managing to the Next Stage

I’ve been founding and scaling companies for 20 years, and in all that time I can count on one hand the number of executives who I’ve seen evolve with a company over all four stages.

So if you’re not able to do it, don’t be bummed: It doesn’t mean you’re a bad manager, it just means you’re better-suited to working in a particular stage of a company’s growth.

Evolving your skillset at the same rate that a company is growing is no easy task. But if you have the discipline, and you’re committed to learning, it isn’t impossible.

The post When to Bring on a Management Team at Your Startup appeared first on OpenView Labs.

Our library of 1700 research reports is available only to our subscribers. We occasionally release ones for our larger audience to benefit from. This is one such report. If you would like access to our entire library, please subscribe here. Subscribers will have access to our 2017 editorial calendar, archived reports and video coverage from our 2016 and 2017 events.

A developer’s checklist for deploying the internet of things by Rich Morrow:

The “things” in the “internet of things” (IoT) encompass a wide range of devices: sensors and sensor arrays like the Nest and SmartThings, wearables like the Pebble smart watch and Google Glass, and embedded technologies like Tesla and Ford’s Smart Cars. Even Samsung, the current leader of the mobile space, has its eyes set on the smart-home market, with refrigerators that will text you (or the Amazon Grocery delivery truck) when you’re out of milk.

The possibilities are staggering, but these “things” represent some significant challenges to app developers. Developers, in particular, will have to cope with an unprecedented explosion of supported devices and form factors, extensive network optimizations to make both the front end and back end more responsive, highly capable edge devices to which more processing may (and should) be pushed, and finally, a plan to capture, process, and wrangle business value and from all of the data these devices generate.

While each development project will require different skills, and the IoT is still in its earliest stages, there are certain tools with which budding IoT developers should be familiar.

To read the full report click here.

Experiencing a marketing resources gap is like playing executive chef in a premier, 5-star restaurant … on a Saturday night … without any cookware …

Even Bobby Flay couldn’t sauté his way out of that disaster. No marketer wants to work in a marketing department that feels like Hell’s Kitchen. But marketing resource gaps throw off some serious heat, and getting burned is a likely outcome for CMOs.

Without the necessary resources in place, consistently reaching your marketing goals is impossible. Resource gaps also create a disconnect between campaigns and performance metrics, which prevents leaders from proving marketing value. Poor ROI insight doesn’t sit well with the C-suite and puts your job at risk.

How do you know you’ve got a marketing resources gap?

• Your distribution calendar lacks consistency
• Content quality is subpar
• You don’t know the value of each lead you acquire
• Campaigns aren’t engaging audiences
• It’s common to miss deadlines
• Your team doesn’t collaborate with sales
• You don’t analyze the performance of every campaign
• Analytics rarely influence strategy
• You have little or no social media presence

But the biggest indicator of a marketing resource gap is time. If you find yourself constantly burning the midnight oil and sacrificing quality at times to meet demands—you’ve got a resource problem.

The fix? Consider bringing in a marketing agency. But before we get to that, what causes a marketing resource gap?

1. Budget
2. Lack of Skill
3. Unawareness

Most people answer “A”—but in large organizations, funding is less problematic. If you answered “B”—don’t be so hard on yourself or your team! Resource gaps aren’t a reflection of your talent or drive. In fact, if you’re surviving under the pressure of a resource gap, consider yourself a warrior among marketers. It’s not for the fainthearted.

The correct answer is “C”—unawareness. In most cases concerning large organizations, marketing leaders are too busy trying to keep all the metaphorical balls in the air to realize that they don’t have the necessary resources to do so effectively.

2 Options for Resolving a Marketing Resource Gap

Option No. 1: Hire In-House Talent

Your initial instinct may be to expand your marketing team or hire freelance support. This isn’t a bad idea, but it’s important that you consider the true cost of recruiting, hiring and training a new employee. You’re looking at a base investment of $45,000 to $50,000 a year for full-time talent (depending on the role). Plus benefits, payroll taxes, internal equipment and space—the list goes on. And if you require specialized talent like an SEO marketer or a digital marketing manager, bump that base up to $60,000 to $73,000. Don’t forget about the time it will take to onboard and train this individual.

All that money for the perspective and expertise of just one person …

In some cases, it makes sense to hire in-house. But if maximizing your investment is a priority, and putting all your eggs in one basket makes you leery, this may not be your best option.

Option No. 2: Partner with a Marketing Agency

When you partner with a marketing agency, it’s like hiring an entire team of professional writers, SEO experts, social media specialists and graphic designers. No matter what resources your team lacks, an agency will fit the mold. Here are nine other benefits:

1. Diverse Experience: Marketing agencies have a wide breadth of experience in different industries, which means they require minimal onboarding and possess a unique vantage over the global marketplace. Your team gains the perspectives of many instead of the viewpoints of one.
2. Tools, Technology & Trends: A dedicated agency will have (and provide access to) the latest marketing tools and technology. They know all the top trends and exactly how to use marketing tech to leverage new opportunities.
3. Support System: Partnering with a marketing agency doesn’t mean replacing your current team. It means bringing in a support system that will empower your team to work smarter instead of harder.
4. Analytics: The right marketing agency is performance-based. They scrutinize campaign analytics and feed data back into your marketing strategy to improve performance, and they have the resources to do so consistently.
5. Sales Enablement: A marketing agency also understands the importance of sales’ role in the marketing strategy. They have a system for bringing marketing and sales together to create a powerhouse operation that deeply understands the buyer’s journey from start to finish and beyond. For more information, check out The CMO’s Guide to Sales Enablement & CRM.
6. Maximum ROI: You’ll get more value out of an entire team of experts than you will a single person. Furthermore, the total annual cost of your partnership may be less than the cost to recruit, hire and train an in-house team.
7. Accountability: With internal talent, there’s always a risk of complacency. Agencies don’t have the luxury of “job security” with your organization. Delivering results is their meal card, and they must be able to sustain performance if they want to keep you as their client.
8. Competitive Edge: Ad agencies are highly competitive with one another, and your organization benefits from all that contention. Their driving motivation is to deliver brag-worthy results.
9. Thriving Talent: A corporate environment can stifle creativity, and it takes great effort from upper management to keep teams inspired. The very essence of an agency is conducive to innovative thinking, and will help keep your internal team thinking “outside the box.”

The Takeaway

Marketing agencies are like the Navy Seals of the digital realm. They are quick-witted, tactical and extremely good at executing strategic plans. They have a keen eye for marketing metrics and understand how every ingredient must work together to serve customers with the best possible brand and buyer experience.

They also know the telltale signs of a poor marketing operation. This makes them uniquely qualified to identify and fix issues in your processes. In short, they make a great support system for your marketing department and deliver the greatest ROI.

How should brands decide who to be on social? Ten years ago, this was a valid question, but no longer. Consumers are in the social driver’s seat – they’re calling the shots – and the only decision left for brands is whether to play along or get publicly roasted in absentia. And what do these free-wheeling consumers want? By a show of force, they’re seeking authentic brand personalities who stand for something.

Authenticity is a tricky and moving target however. As the U.S. Travel Department’s off-color tweets about travelers’ looks and IHOP’s vaguely offensive tweet about pancakes show, it’s not an easy balance to strike.

Amidst this, some brands excel and use social media to build durable consumer relationships. Here is what they do differently.

How to be authentic as a brand on social:

1. Build rapport with personality

One upon a time customers used to simply view corporations through the keyhole that was phone and email support. With no other means to interact, companies seemed faceless. But now? Social media allows brands to shed their shell and put on a personality. Brands that take advantage of this can build up goodwill that gets them through the hard times with customers when things go wrong.

Among the best right now is Taco Bell, who has become a magnet for praise and a known destination for oddball humor. Their support Twitter handle is abuzz with fuzzy feelings from adoring fans who loved them long before something went wrong. The tweets shared below betray a sense of humor that it’s tough not to crack a smile at.

Can't wait. https://t.co/YgqevbMhiV

— Taco Bell (@tacobell) December 15, 2016

2. Build empathy by showing interest

Dale Carnegie famously said, “Talk to someone about themselves and they’ll listen for hours.” Surely he wasn’t speaking about social media (the year was 1936) but oh how prescient that advice has become in the digital world. Speaking in terms of what your customers are interested in is the surest way to curry favor with them.

Perhaps history’s greatest example of this is Red Bull, who through selfless customer focus, has become a staple of their consumers’ lifestyles. Rather than touting their energy product’s benefits (what is taurine, anyways?) they invest heavily in sponsoring extreme sports events which are designed “to support a community of athletes and to bring credibility to the sports they compete in,” says Emmy Cortes, director of communications for Red Bull. Their social media presence is a tour de force of extreme entertainment and they’ve earned the loyal following of millions as a result.

3. Be what consumers are interested in

It was Craig Davis, marketing speaker and CMO of Sendle.com, who said “we need to stop interrupting what people are interested in and be what people are interested in.” Smart #SocialFirst brands follow this advice and make their ads into the main attraction by providing so much entertainment value that consumers seek them out.

Wendy’s social team does an outstanding job of this and when they’re not busy creating personalized Spotify playlists for fans, they’re writing social bios for them. @Jeffrolio’s profile now reads “I asked a fast food restaurant to write my bio because it’s 2017 and the world is weird.” A brief look at their Twitter page reveals an audience of millions of people begging for the brand to engage with them, not the other way around.

The 4 for $4 shouldn't have a Spotify playlist. Yet it does. And it’s impossibly good. Dig in: https://t.co/EdeL6YBcx2

— Wendy's (@Wendys) January 19, 2017

4. Diffuse brand distractors

And then of course, there’s the dark side to social media: it also works as a customer complaint amplifier. But great brands leveraging social customer support technology can spin this one into an advantage as well. Consumers increasingly prefer a resolution over making their annoyance known and they’re finding it via direct messaging channels. Those brands that meet them there can diffuse public brand detractors.

Sprint, for example, partnered with Conversocial and began moderating their Facebook page. Within the first month they saw a 31% increase in private messages which corresponded with a 23% decrease in public comments. Sprint reduced the public social impact while getting a chance to turn those negative interactions into positive ones.

Social media is a powerful brand authenticator. #SocialFirst brands who manage to put on an authentic personality, engage their consumers on their terms, and moderate the negative messages will find that it will become their largest area of customer support growth in the coming decades.

Social care is more than just a brand authenticator. It is proven to have an ROI of 272% according to a study we commissioned by Forrester. Want to learn more about how Social can impact your bottom line and increase your positive brand sentiment?

Download our latest report.

Two months ago, I launched a landing page to explore demand for strategic storytelling training among CEOs and their leadership teams. I had been delivering that training (and still do) as part of strategic messaging projects, and was curious about demand on a standalone basis. I gave the landing page the following headline: “Strategic Story Training for CEOs and Senior Executives.”

To my surprise, while several founders and CEOs got in touch and scheduled the training, over 50% of the inquiries I received through the page came from a different audience, and one that I did not intentionally target -- leaders of enterprise sales teams.

I’ve since run trainings on strategic storytelling for several sales teams, and I thought I’d share a few things I’ve learned about why sales teams want this training, what’s been most valuable, and how I’m changing my approach as a result.

Why You Should Train Salespeople to Tell Stories

1) New scale = new story

When sales leaders contact me to train their teams on storytelling and narrative pitch structure, I always ask why. Nine times out of 10, the answer is some version of “We’re trying to scale beyond the market where we’ve traditionally enjoyed success, and our old story isn’t working.”

For example, one of the sales trainings I did was at a hot Silicon Valley tech company that has experienced phenomenal growth by selling to other Silicon Valley tech companies. But after raising over $20 million from prominent VCs earlier this year, the team is charged with growth targets that require it to close deals with larger, more traditional enterprises outside Silicon Valley. As the company’s VP of sales told me:

These are very different buyers. In Silicon Valley, we walk in trusted. Not only have these new buyers never heard of us -- they are actually scared off by the story we normally tell about our Silicon Valley roots, cred, and track record."

For his team, we crafted a new version of the company story that targets this new buyer. The main character of the new story is not the company’s techie founder, but the first mainstream buyer who signed on as a customer.

2) Strategic stories power qualification

Nascent sales teams naturally chase down anything that remotely smells like a lead. But as they grow, sales teams must mature into active qualifiers, rejecting prospects  --  even those tagged with high lead scores by marketing  --  who fail to meet criteria that mark them as real, imminent buyers worthy of sustained sales effort.

A well-structured sales story has within it an element that I call “why now?” that is invaluable for qualification. Like the heroes of legendary epics, buyers are initially reluctant and skeptical. (In "Star Wars," when Obi Wan first invites Luke to rescue Princess Lea, Luke’s answer sounds like something a typical prospect might say: “Listen, I can’t get involved.”)

The “why now?” in your story explains exactly how your buyer is struggling, and why he/she is motivated to act now. (When the Empire bombs the home of Luke’s family, we know that Luke has to get involved.)

Teasing out the “why now?” has been one of the most fruitful exercises of the storytelling trainings I’ve done with sales teams to date. One team has since made its “why now?” the first slide of its first-call sales deck. A member of the team told me:

When we show that slide, sometimes prospects literally say, 'You took the words right out of my mouth.' Even if they don’t say anything, you can tell from the look in their eyes and their body language that we’ve articulated their struggle. When that happens, we know we have a good shot at a deal."

3) Storytelling skill makes case studies more compelling

As any salesperson knows, your most powerful sales weapons are stories about how you’ve already helped people achieve what your prospect wants.

Someone, somewhere, decided that these stories should go by the boring and serious name “case studies,” which is unfortunate, because nobody wants to read something called a case study. But people do want to hear stories, well told, about whom you’ve helped and how you’ve helped them.

In the training sessions, I encourage salespeople to craft and tell “Whom I Helped and How” stories by filling out a form with answers to the following questions. (Note the subtle yet important differences from the more common “challenge/solution/results” framework that has bored many millions of prospects to tears -- most importantly, this is a story about a change in someone’s life, not just the resolution of some disembodied problem):

• Who is the person who was helped, and how were they struggling?
• Why were they motivated to accept help (why now)?
• What was the new state -- Promised Land -- that the person wanted to reach?
• What obstacles did the person face in reaching that Promised Land, and how did you, your products, and/or your services help overcome them? (Related: Were there failures along the way?)
• What is life like for this person now that he/she has reached the Promised Land?

Interestingly, as team members share their stories in this way, they invariably discover that many of their colleagues have never heard the most impactful ones. Since they’ve written the stories on paper, I now make it a habit to ask them to hand the stories over to their marketing colleagues, who (after jumping up and down with unmitigated joy and eternal gratitude) have packaged them as sales enablement collateral, webinars, and content marketing campaigns.

4) Strategic stories help salespeople build trust, uncover pain

The dominant metaphor in sales culture is doctor and patient. The salesperson asks questions to understand the prospect’s pain, which the salesperson will relieve with a product or service.

Where the metaphor breaks down, of course, is that patients tend to trust a doctor they meet for the first time, whereas most prospects feel the opposite about unfamiliar salespeople. But until a prospect trusts you, he/she will be reluctant to share their most nagging aches. This challenge becomes acute as sales teams “cross the chasm” past early adopters, who trust more readily, and begin targeting risk-averse mainstream buyers.

The way to get reluctant prospects to open up is to model that behavior by telling a story that reveals your own pain and vulnerability. Frequently, the story that works best is what I call your “origin story” -- the story that explains how you (or your company) came to do what you do. These stories often include a failure or embarrassment that you overcame, as in origin stories for companies like Airbnb (which logged a measly two bookings after its official SXSW launch) and Yelp (which started as an email recommendation service that failed to gain traction). Personal origin stories are great too.

In the training sessions, I have participants craft their own origin stories, and then share them with colleagues. Without fail, everyone reports feeling closer to the people with whom they have shared these stories. As a result, I encourage them to invite prospects to tell their origin stories, which can reveal valuable information about them, and warm them up to share more relevant details about their current predicament.

5) Demand for story rigor grows with team size

All sales teams grow the same way. One or two people (often the CEO) fail and fail with early prospects until they hit upon on a version of the story that (more or less) consistently closes deals. When new salespeople come on board, they ask their pioneering colleagues for the most successful version of the story, and they begin telling it.

That works for the first few hires, but eventually the team gets big enough so that ad hoc sharing of the story becomes impossible. The team spreads out geographically, and the pioneers are less accessible. Even if everyone’s in the same office, the story that worked so well early on may need tweaks -- or a major overhaul -- to account for maturing customer expectations, new competition, or changes in strategic direction.

Naturally, it’s been rewarding to hear from new salespeople, confused about the story they should be telling, tell me how valuable it’s been to hear more experienced peers formally dissect their pitch’s story elements for the first time. But just as often I’ve watched those experienced folks pick up tips from newer recruits who, for whatever reason, hit on an even more effective way of telling certain parts of the story.

Splitting the training into two sessions

After each training session with a sales team, I survey participants with two questions:

1. What was the most valuable takeaway?
2. What could have been improved?

The answers about most valuable takeaway were remarkably consistent, focusing on the understanding that participants gained about structural narrative elements and how they inform a successful pitch. It was also gratifying to hear from people who told me that, while they had always told stories (they are salespeople, after all), they find themselves thinking much more, post-session, about how their stories are working strategically.

As for how people wanted the training to improve, by far the most popular request was for more time devoted to personalized coaching and feedback on how each team member is telling the story. To accommodate that, I’ve begun breaking the training into two sessions separated by a week or so, so that salespeople can try out their stories in the wild, and then report back on what’s working and where they need more help.

Editor's note: This post originally appeared on Medium, and is published here with permission.

Andy Raskin helps leaders align around a strategic story -- to power sales, marketing, fundraising, product, and recruiting. His clients include teams backed by Andreessen Horowitz, First Round Capital, GV, and other top venture firms. He's also led strategic storytelling workshops for leaders at Uber, Yelp, General Assembly, HourlyNerd, Neustar, and Stanford. To learn more or get in touch, visit http://andyraskin.com.

If you or anyone on your sales team is on the fence about leveraging social media as part of their tactics, it’s time to knock them off. Social selling is one of the most powerful tools out there for building relationships with customers and making sales.

Here are 7 research-backed reasons why you need to start social selling today:

1. You’re much more likely to hit (or exceed) your sales quota if you use social selling

Salespeople who use social selling effectively are 51 percent more likely to hit their quota. They use social networks to build relationships, nurture those relationships, and develop a deeper connection with prospects than those who neglect social selling.

2. B2B buyers rely on referrals

If you’re not encouraging your satisfied clients to spread the word to their social networks, you’re missing out on a lot of potential business. According to Influitive, 84 percent of B2B buyers start their purchase process with a referral. If you effectively use social selling, you can increase your brand visibility, and drive peer-to-peer referrals more easily.

3. CRM and social selling tools are indispensable to sales professionals

Salespeople have quickly embraced the technology behind social selling. Social selling tools (those used to build relationships using social networks) are the most widely used among professionals, while CRM tools are the ones professionals spend the most hours per week using. Both types of tools are important for deploying a solid social selling strategy.

4. The top salespeople use social selling tools, so you should too

According to LinkedIn, 90 percent of the top salespeople use social selling tools, compared to 71 percent of salespeople overall. That is a big gap, and points to a significant differentiator between great and mediocre when it comes to sales.

5. Buyers who use social media have larger budgets

Going after “the whale”? You’ll want to pay attention to which of your buyers uses social media, since stats show that those that do typically have 84 percent higher budgets than those who do not.

6. The majority of B2B buyers use social media and search to conduct over half their research before making a purchase

74 percent of today’s B2B buyers conduct over half of their research before they decide to make a purchase. If you’re not connecting with them on social media, you’re missing the opportunity to be part of that process, and position your company top-of-mind earlier.

7. Organizations with tight sales and marketing alignment achieve faster revenue and profit growth

Internally, you need to be thinking about how to structure your social selling program to see the most impact. One of the best strategies is to ensure tight sales/marketing alignment from the very beginning. B2B companies that do this typically see 24 percent faster revenue growth and 27 percent faster profit growth over a three-year period compared to those that don’t.

B2B marketers use attribution to understand how their marketing impacts down-funnel sales. It enables them to see which marketing efforts successfully engaged and moved prospects through the funnel. Attribution data — the number of leads, opportunities, revenue, etc. that were generated by each channel, campaign, ad, etc. — then, is the foundation for measuring, analyzing, and mapping the customer journey.

To make sense of attribution data, marketers apply attribution models. Most models are built around a set of rules — in a first touch model, the first touch gets 100% of the credit; in a last touch, the last touch gets 100% of the credit; in a U-shaped model, the first and last touch split the majority of the credit; etc. (See all attribution models here.) This is where critics of attribution tend to jump in. Many believe attribution models built around a set of predetermined rules simplify the customer journey to the point where it is no longer valuable.

Of course, each model attempts to balance two factors: 1) accuracy and 2) ease of implementation and use. On one hand, single touch models are relatively easy to implement and understand, but they clearly don’t represent the full customer journey. On the other hand, it takes a sophisticated marketing organization and attribution solution to accurately track each touchpoint and make sense of a more-complicated, multi-touch attribution model. This brings us to algorithmic attribution – the most advanced and perhaps most complicated method for modeling attribution data of all.

What is algorithmic attribution?

Algorithmic attribution is one of, if not the most advanced ways to model attribution data in order to most accurately represent the customer journey. According to a report (gated) by AdRoll, 96% of respondents said that algorithmic attribution is at least somewhat effective, the highest of any model methodology. Of course, algorithms tend to be proprietary so what factors are considered in the algorithm and what weight each factor gets can vary by attribution provider.

However, the most accurate algorithmic attribution models should use machine learning to intake all of your data — all of the touchpoints, both historical and going forward, that went into closed-won deals, closed-lost deals, deals that fell apart at or before the opportunity stage, etc. — to create a model that is specific to your customer journey.

The algorithm then creates custom weights for each of your stages to represent how your prospects go through the funnel. It’s important to note that it should also use new data as you continue to engage prospects and close deals to refine and improve the model, which is the machine learning aspect.

For example, if your historical data shows that getting prospects to MQL is an important indicator of success, it may get 30% of the eventual revenue credit. If your historical data shows that getting prospects to MQL means very little to the eventual outcome, it may get 5% of the eventual revenue credit. Algorithmic attribution is tailored specific to your funnel and your customer journey.

Here’s an example of what an algorithmic attribution model could look like compared to a W-shaped model:

Why should B2B marketers care about algorithmic attribution?

Increasingly, B2B marketing success is dictated by who knows their customer the best. Again, it boils down to who can provide the right content at the right time to the right people. Accurate attribution data gives marketers a big leg up.

Algorithmic attribution gives marketers the most accurate picture of the customer journey as possible. While advanced models like W-Shaped and Full-Path get close to modeling a typical B2B customer journey, they are not going to be as accurate as an algorithmic model that’s customized using historical customer data.

With algorithmic attribution, marketers can see what stages in the journey are most critical to their prospects, as well as what channels and content are performing well at those stages. If the algorithmic model shows that the ‘demo scheduled’ stage is critical and the attribution data shows that Ebook A is great at driving the demo request, the marketing team knows to invest more resources there.

How do I know if algorithmic attribution will be significantly different from my multi-touch model?

There are two components to this:

1. How different will an algorithmic model be from an advanced multi-touch model, say, a Full Path model?
2. How significant does the difference need to be for the change to be worthwhile?

As to the first component, it depends on your company, of course. If you have a straightforward marketing and sales process, it’s less likely that an algorithmic model will turn up something surprising. If your marketing and sales funnel is long and complicated, the chances are greater that a rule-based model will be insufficient, even a Full Path model that takes into account four key touchpoints along the customer journey. Finally, if you want to see your marketing and sales teams’ performance at more specific stages of the funnel — e.g. lead, MQL, and SQL instead of just lead — an algorithmic model will allow you to do that.

Once you figure out the answer to the first part, you have to determine whether the incremental improvement of going from a rule-based multi-touch model to an algorithmic model is worth making the change. More than just checking a box that says you want to use a different model, you must consider the ramifications of changing how your attribution model represents your marketing performance.

Let’s say that the algorithm determines that your stage percentages should be adjusted by 5% — is it worth making the change? It depends, of course. It depends on how much that 5% adjustment to stages leads to changes in what percentage of credit goes to each channel. It depends on how much you’re spending on each channel. It depends on whether your team has bandwidth to make changes.

For some organizations, a 1% change in how the attribution model gives credit to funnel stages could mean shifting tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars from one channel to another. Then, of course, making the change would be worthwhile. For other organizations, even a 20% change in the attribution model may not be enough cause for action.

Our experience

At Bizible, using an algorithmic attribution model showed us that we need to account for and give credit to four additional stages in the funnel. It also decreased the weight given to two stages by over 10%, and gave over 20% to a stage that we hadn’t previously considered in our W-shaped and Full-Path models.

While these changes seem big, they didn’t have a profound impact on our strategy. The data showed that channels that we previously thought were generating a lot of value continued to generate a lot of value.

The impact that it did have, however, was that it moved credit that was going to Direct and Other to different marketing channels, which gives us more accurate and actionable data. One of the reasons for this change was that the algorithm moved weight from the Opportunity Created stage (successful demo) to the Demo Scheduled stage. Ultimately, switching to an algorithmic model gives us richer and more accurate data about how our prospects (and eventual customers) move through the funnel.

Takeaway

Attribution is intended to help marketers see what efforts are working and which aren’t by representing the customer journey. Through an attribution model, marketing efforts that move prospects through the funnel are given credit. Simple attribution models often fall short because they oversimplify the customer journey to the point that the data is unusable. Algorithmic attribution uses customer data and math to create an accurate model of the customer journey.

If you’re not using attribution because you don’t believe the models are accurate enough, algorithmic attribution may be the antidote.

At the other end, if you’re already using an advanced multi-touch model, algorithmic attribution may be the next logical step in getting even more accurate data.

Marketing as a discipline has undergone a dramatic transformation over the past 20 years.

Twenty years ago, marketers were tasked with generating brand awareness without much of a way to measure its impact or prove its value. Ten years ago, marketing entered the Lead Gen era: marketing began leveraging content marketing and an assortment of emerging online channels and automation tools to generate leads for sales. It started to become clear that marketers were in fact contributing to sales’ pipeline, but that contribution wasn’t easily captured or measured with any real data. Especially once marketing qualified leads were passed to sales for follow-up.

Today, marketing is expected to have an impact at every stage of the buyer’s journey, from first touch to close. The discipline of marketing has evolved in to investigating buyers and their journey through the purchase process to understand how they seek information, identify their own needs, and make decisions. Without having this intel and providing sales support at every touchpoint, marketing is absolutely letting sales down.

As is the case with lead generation programs, content is the lifeblood of sales success. 60% of business decision makers say that content makes them feel closer to the company that sends it, yet 62% admit that much of that information is rendered useless or irrelevant. That’s on marketing.

For marketing to truly prove its value, it must provide complete and comprehensive support for sales. Most marketing teams don’t have a shortage of content, but lack of accessibility, relevance, context, and customization of that content is still letting sales down in a big way. Below are five major ways that marketing is failing to live up to its promise to sales:

1. Content is irrelevant and outdated: 85% of marketers say that content they produce isn’t effective at delivering business value. That’s right—a vast majority of marketers admit that their own content isn’t useful. It can be difficult for marketers to gain any visibility into whether their content is even being used, never mind if it’s resonating in the field. Marketers need to increase visibility into content usage to find out what content is useful and what needs to be updated or removed altogether.
2. The right content can’t be located: Salespeople spend 30 hours each month searching for the right content. That’s because content is dispersed among a number of disconnected files, repositories and (sadly) remote desktops. This results in the sharing of irrelevant and outdated content, because reps can’t afford to waste more time finding the perfect content. Marketers need to find a way to consolidate all content into a single repository and make it easily searchable so reps can find exactly what they need quickly and effectively.
3. Content isn’t accessible where reps work: Are your company’s sales reps required to leave the programs where they spend the majority of time—email and CRM—to find the right content? If so, this is contributing to the 30 hours of search time cited above. Making marketing collateral available in your company’s CRM reduces the amount of time reps spend searching for the right content, especially if it can be served up contextually based on an opportunity’s CRM details (such as role, stage in sales cycle, industry and more). Bonus points if you can connect your email provider with this CRM information and content as well, which will reduce a sales interaction to a single email view.
4. Content isn’t customer-centric: For a time, only 29% of marketers used customer insights to inform their marketing programs. In today’s customer-led buying landscape, prospects will not care what you have to say if it is not relevant to them. Work with your sales team to learn what prospects are saying in sales interactions: what are their pain points, what do they look for in terms of features and benefits from your product or service, and how do they view your product? Mapping marketing content to the questions customers have at each stage of their purchase journey will provide support to sales and ultimately result in enhanced sales interactions.
5. Content is static and not customizable: By 2018, personalizing content will result in 30% higher close rates, according to Gartner. The value of content personalization is evident, but marketing can only do so much when it comes to personalization; completing one-off customization requests from sales is not a scalable strategy. By employing dynamic content creation—compiling marketing-approved content and integrating with live data sources—sales reps become marketers while marketing can focus on more strategic initiatives. This means that content is always relevant to the buyer, is up-to-date with the most relevant data, and includes all information that the sales rep requires without bogging down marketing.

The marketing and sales relationship doesn’t have to be a broken one anymore. Marketing has the content it needs to get started, but it needs to go the extra mile to execute on the full promise of becoming an end-to-end sales support engine. Take a look at your own content to see if any of the five points above apply to your organization, and work with sales to determine a way to resolve the issues and become one integrated revenue driving team.

Marketing teams rely on their analytics to perform at the highest level and drive results that boost your business’s bottom line. Standard analytics provide the ability to perform basic optimizations and track results, but taking your marketing analytics to the next level makes the data much more powerful.

Here are 5 power moves that will help you get your marketing analytics from average joe to pro.

Power Move 1: Scalable Reports

Average Joe: Every report is done ad-hoc. Creating a new report from scratch for every data request can wind up taking all of your time. Manually entering data might make building the initial report easier, but it becomes a lot less fun when the inevitable “update request” comes in.

Pro: Building every report to be easy to update and scalable. Reports don’t exist in a single moment in time. Marketers want to see how their metrics change over time to measure improvement and the impact of their campaigns. The ability to update and scale reports needs to be considered early on to prevent future difficulty in providing data.

Power Move 2: Segmentation

Average Joe: Taking a holistic view of your lead database. Measuring all leads in your entire database the same way is fine for high-level trends, but it doesn’t get you the insights needed to refine your targeting and drive more business.

Pro: Segmenting your lead database. Defining the key segments for your business allows you to target a specific audience of customers more likely to make a purchase. Marketing analytics that use audience segments can help marketing leaders determine which customers are the most profitable and the specific tactics that work best to draw them in.

Power Move 3: Marketing & Sales Alignment

Average Joe: Different reports for marketing and sales. It’s hard enough to get the marketing and sales teams on the same page, but when everyone is looking at different metrics and reports it makes it near impossible.

Pro: Unified reporting with agreed upon metrics. Marketing and sales teams need to work together to achieve the business’s revenue goals and that starts with metrics. The leadership from both teams need to determine a set of metrics to define success with unified reports to continuously track toward their goals.

Power Move 4: Online and Offline Attribution

Average Joe: Only taking credit for online leads. Digital marketing has shifted heavily toward mobile thanks to constant internet access afforded to us by smartphones. Marketers have robust abilities to attribute and track online conversions captured via lead forms, but when conversions occur offline via phone call it’s another story.

Pro: Attribution for both online and offline leads. If you can’t attribute customer calls to your marketing efforts, you could be missing or misattributing as much as 49% of your conversions. To account for those offline conversions marketers use call attribution software to connect phone calls back to the marketing sources that drove them. When your analytics include the conversions that occur offline as well as online, your lead generation and revenue metrics will represent how your marketing is actually performing.

Power Move 5: Multi-Touch Attribution

Average Joe: Relying solely on a single-touch attribution model. Gone are the days when customers convert after a single interaction with your brand. The customer journey now spans multiple devices and channels, making it much harder to credit conversion and revenue to a single source.

Pro: Employing a multi-touch attribution model. Marketers use multi-touch attribution models to assign credit to the numerous channels that influence customers at different times during their customer journey. There are five predominant attribution models and the ones that attribute multiple touchpoints create more powerful analytics and help marketers determine which channels are the most impactful and where in the customer journey they should be employed.

Improving your marketing analytics can transform how you plan and optimize your marketing campaigns. Getting your marketing analytics to the pro level requires cross-departmental alignment on common metrics and goals as well as improved data capture and analytical modeling.

Marketers who are serious about taking their analytics from average joe to pro use call tracking to account for every conversion and revenue dollar driven by their marketing efforts. To learn more about the role call conversions play in your marketing analytics, download the CMO Solution Guide: The Unexpected Impact of Call Conversions on Marketing ROI.

Like most skills, your ability to negotiate improves with practice. However, getting opportunities to practice isn’t easy.

There’s a lot on the line during a negotiation with the buyer. You need to focus on your objectives, your prospect’s goals, potential landmines, and more.

In addition, this isn’t an optimal time to try a new technique -- if it doesn’t work and things go south, you could lose the deal.

Enter negotiation role play exercises. Working through a hypothetical scenario with a team member or coach gives you a low-stakes opportunity to identify your strengths, weaknesses, and stumbling blocks.

These activities are also a fantastic way to practice responding to difficult events, such as unreasonable discount requests or unexpected demands.

1. Extreme sales negotiation scenario: practice dealing with extreme situations.

Many sports coaches “overtrain” their athletes. "If you can run six miles in high altitudes," they reason, "you’ll be in great shape to run a race that’s three miles at sea level."

The same concept can apply in sales. Once you’ve successfully negotiated in an extreme situation, you’ll be mentally and emotionally prepared for a straightforward one.

Players:

• The salesperson
• The prospect

(This role play is designed for two participants -- one salesperson and one prospect. If you want a challenge, have the salesperson negotiate with two-plus prospects.)

Guidelines:

1. Write down the most extreme negotiating situations you’ve ever experienced (tight deadline, massive deal, legal complications, and so forth) on pieces of paper. Shuffle the papers and randomly pick one.
2. Choose who will play the salesperson and who will play the prospect(s).
3. Run through the scenario. After an agreement is reached — or you reach a standstill — debrief. Which responses worked well? Which were unsuccessful? How will you apply these takeaways to future negotiations?
4. You may choose to redo the negotiation with the same circumstances or pick another scenario from the options. Complete the entire exercise as many times as you’d like.

Sales Role Play Script:

In this scenario, the extreme scenario is that a prospect has just recently lost a supplier and is on a tight deadline to find a solution. You can adapt it to meet your individual needs.

The Prospect: “Hi! My business just recently had a contract end with our supplier for [insert something your business provides] and we’re hoping to begin a new one within the next few days.”

The Salesperson:“It’s good to meet you! I can definitely help you out here. Can I ask what your specific needs are so I can answer any questions?”

The Prospect: “Yes! We have a fairly large list of clients, around 300, so we need enough [insert specific need here] to provide them with what they need on a weekly basis. Our last supplier was great with their [insert info here], but we always wished that we had [insert something your specific business offers]. I know that this is a bit of a tight time frame, but we’re really hoping we can make something work!”

The Salesperson: “I understand the time constraints! While it is a bit of a quick turnaround, I think we can make it happen. We specifically [insert business’ value proposition], which sounds like what you’re looking for. Our rates are [insert business specific costs], and we bill on a monthly basis. As far as getting started, we usually need about a 3-week turnaround, but we may be able to get started sooner with an additional [insert extra cost] for the first month since we’ll be getting the ball rolling faster than normal. How does that sound?”

2. Letting a client go scenario: get comfortable breaking up with a prospect.

Breaking up is hard to do — and even harder when you must tell a customer (and their commission) goodbye.

It’s important to practice these scenarios because they can be nerve-wracking for new reps, and they can get tense. Role playing prospect breakups is a crucial part of sales training — and one that, if handled correctly, can win you more business in the future.

Players:

• The salesperson
• The prospect

Guidelines:

1. Write down a variety of situations in which you would need to break up with a prospect. Perhaps your product/service isn’t the right fit for their business, they don’t have the budget, or they’re just not ready for your offering (but might be in a year or two).
2. On separate slips of paper, write down possible prospect responses, including anger, dismay, and thankfulness.
3. Choose who will play the salesperson and who will play the prospect(s), and cycle through these slips of paper, so your reps can get used to a variety of breakup scenarios and prospect responses.
4. At the end of each exercise (when a resolution has been reached), write down what worked and what didn’t. Then, have the reps discuss what they would do differently next time.

Sales Role Play Script:

The Prospect: “We’ve been having trouble with [insert problem here] and want to use your tool to help us resolve that issue.”

The Salesperson: “I understand that that is a tough scenario to deal with. Unfortunately our service isn’t meant for [insert prospect need here], we tend to focus more on [insert actual usage for tool]. I don’t think our product is the best fit for that specific situation, but maybe you have other pain points that relate more to what we have to offer?”

The Prospect: “No, that’s our only need — you don’t have any other options?”

The Salesperson: “Unfortunately not, I’m sorry that we won’t be able to help you overcome that challenge. Please know that if you ever get to a point where we can help you, I would be happy to have another conversation and discuss a potential partnership.”

3. Stalled deal scenario: challenge prospects on why they’re stuck.

Every salesperson will experience stalled deals. The prospect might repeatedly reschedule the demo, ghost for weeks at a time, or drag their feet in returning a signed contract.

Whatever the situation, it costs reps time and money. It’s important they be able to identify these situations and discover the root cause to successfully discern whether to cut ties or move the deal forward.

Players:

• The salesperson
• The stalled prospect

Guidelines:

1. The person playing the prospect should choose which stalled behavior they’ve been exhibiting. Are they calling to push back the demo again? Are they resurfacing after six weeks of unresponsiveness? Are they asking for more minor tweaks to the contract in the eleventh hour?
2. On several pieces of paper, write down and distribute the real reason a prospect is stalling (i.e., their budget was slashed, their boss wants a different vendor, or they just don’t know how to say “no”). Stalled prospects have many different emotions when a salesperson pushes them to be honest. Anger, frustration, and relief should all be emotional responses each prospect is encouraged to exhibit.
3. Have each salesperson ask their prospect questions to understand why they’re being evasive. Questions like, “Usually, when someone pushes back the demo several times, it’s just not a business priority for them at the moment. Is that the case here?” can help your prospects confront whether they do or do not want to move forward.
4. Once the salesperson understands why the prospect is stalling, and have successfully either moved the deal forward or cut ties with the prospect, have reps discuss what went well, what made the prospects feel uncomfortable, and what they could do better next time.

Sales Role Play Script

The Salesperson: “Hi [customer name], I’m calling because we’ve scheduled a product demo for today. Is this still a good time?”

The Stalled Prospect: “Oh, hi, sorry I was in the middle of something. Can we push this demo until next week? My boss is out of town and I want to make sure they can participate as well.”

The Salesperson: “That makes sense! I hear that you want to push the demo off, but we’ve rescheduled twice before. Can I ask if there are any hesitations on your end that I can help clear up to ensure we’re on the same page?”

The Stalled Prospect: “We don’t have any hesitations, I just want everyone to know what’s going on.”

The Salesperson: “Okay, we’ll I’m here to answer any questions if you have them, even if there are hesitations.”

The Stalled Prospect: “I actually do have a question. [insert question]”

The Salesperson: “I’m glad you asked! [insert solution].”

4. Common objections scenario: get comfortable answering everyday questions.

Every sales team encounters a few of the same objections regularly. It's important to easily overcome those objections to move deals along. This exercise is great for new hires unfamiliar with these objections, and it's helpful for veteran salespeople to keep their responses sharp.

Players

• The Salesperson
• The prospect

Guidelines

1. One person is "it" as the rep.
2. The rest of the group acts as the prospects and take turns hurling common objections at the rep. The rep has a set amount of time — it could be 30 seconds or it could be two minutes — to respond to that common objection in a way that satisfies the group and moves the deal forward.
3. Once one objection has been overcome, immediately throw out another until the rep's five- or 10-minute time in the hot seat is complete.

Sales Role Play Script:

The Salesperson: “Are there any questions you have for me today?”

The Prospect: “Yeah, I’ve read online that sometimes other people who use your tool have found that [insert common pain point].”

The Salesperson: “We’ve heard of people experiencing that. If a customer has that problem, we usually [insert solution].”

The Prospect: “That makes sense. But what if that doesn’t work?”

The Salesperson: “We haven’t had much documentation of that solution not working, but if it occurs we would [insert solution.]”

The Prospect: “Well my specific problem is [insert pain point]. What if I solve that but I still want to keep doing [insert other common objection].”

The Salesperson: “You’re actually not the first to have that question! We go on a case-by-case basis, but in other scenarios we have [insert solution].”

5. Savvy customer scenario: working with a customer that has done their research.

Sometimes customers do a significant amount of research before they approach a sales rep, so they have knowledge about your business and the products and services you offer.

This exercise is great for learning how to communicate with customers who may have higher-level questions than the average customer, reminding reps of the importance of brushing up on their product knowledge to ensure they can answer questions at all levels of understanding.

Players:

• The Salesperson
• The Prospect

Guidelines:

1. One person is “it” as the rep, and someone else is a prospect.
2. The prospect should do a bit of research and come up with a higher-level question that is not commonly asked.
3. The prospect should approach the rep with the question and begin the conversation. They already have done a lot of research so the salesperson will ask questions that are specific to the specifications of certain products because the prospect already knows what they want.
4. Once the prospect feels satisfied with the response, the group can debrief and discuss how well they think the question was answered based on the prospect's level of knowledge.

Sales Role Play Script

In this example scenario a prospect is searching for a specific type of computer hard drive, while most customers just say that they want a hard drive with no specific expectations. You can fill in the script with examples more closely related to your business.

The Salesperson: “Hi there! How can I help you today?”

The Prospect: “Hi! Thank you. So, I work in video editing and I’m looking for an external harddrive that can handle large multimedia file transfers, sometimes multiple times per day, with little downtime. I edit on a desktop. It needs to have a USB 3 connection and I’m hoping for one that’s portable since I spend a lot of time traveling.”

The Salesperson: “Thank you for giving me your specific needs! I’m happy to help you find what you’re looking for. Just for further information, how much storage are you looking for? Enough for one or two large-sized video files?”

The Prospect: “Oh more than that, I’m looking for about 5TB minimum, hopefully closer to 8. It’s less about the number of files and more how much it can hold at a time, sometimes I need to switch between computers.”

The Salesperson: “That’s helpful! Let me take you to our options. These two that we have here will be your best bet, they have 8TB of storage, USB 3 and thunderbolt ports, 5400 rpm, and will run you around $300. Most people who come in here and buy these do a lot of photo editing and work with large scale multimedia files, which it seems like you need.”

6. Build on your skills scenario: identify and overcome personal negotiation weaknesses.

It’s crucial to be aware of and prepared for your personal negotiation shortcomings. For example, maybe you tend to get nervous and offer discounts prematurely -- or conversely, your unwillingness to compromise leads many potential buyers to walk away.

Players:

• The salesperson
• The prospect

Guidelines:

1. Write down one personal area for improvement related to negotiating.
2. Choose who will play the salesperson and who will play the prospect. (You can play multiple times so each team member has a turn as the salesperson.)
3. Go through a standard negotiation. The person playing the salesperson focuses on overcoming, avoiding, or dealing with their specific weakness.
4. After you come to an agreement or decide your needs are incompatible, debrief. The person playing the salesperson reviews their performance for their specific area of improvement. The person playing the prospect then gives their feedback.
5. Switch roles. The salesperson becomes the prospect, and the prospect becomes the salesperson. Complete the exercise again with the new salesperson focusing on their personal weakness.

Sales Role Play Script

In this situation, the salesperson is working on having trouble compromising, even when the client's value is clear.

The Salesperson: “Our standard pricing for [insert product, service] is [insert pricing]. That includes all of the features you’ll need to address [insert client pain points].”

The Prospect: “Given that we’re such a small company, that is a bit out of our budget range. Our budget is more in line with the pricing model for the lower tier, but we need the specific functions offered by the other. Is there anything we can do to make it work?”

The Salesperson: “Our price points aren’t able to change much; which specific tool do you need?”

The Prospect: “We will make the most use out of [insert commonly used tool]. We’ve found significant success doing this in the past and have doubled our revenue in less than a year. We will definitely make use of your tool, and we are willing to pay yearly instead of a month-to-month basis to show our commitment.”

The Salesperson: “I understand. Thank you for the additional insight into your situation. We don’t often make exceptions like this, so I will need to discuss with my team members to decide the best course of action.”

The Prospect: “Is there any more information I can provide to demonstrate our level of interest? We’d really like to do business with you.”

7. Difficult prospect scenario: practice negotiating with demanding prospects.

Normal negotiations are challenging enough. Negotiations with irrational or demanding buyers may be one of the most challenging situations you’ll face as a salesperson. The more practice you have, the better your chances of crafting a mutually beneficial deal.

This exercise will give you experience staying calm and dealing with difficult personalities.

Players:

• The salesperson
• The “difficult” prospect

Guidelines:

1. The person playing the difficult customer chooses two to four behaviors to use during the role play. Ideas include frequently interrupting, making threats, delivering “all or nothing” ultimatums, abruptly changing your mind, bringing up irrelevant details, using critical language, becoming excessively loud, shutting down topics you don’t like, refusing to commit, and/or letting your attention wander.
2. Run a standard negotiation for 10 minutes.
3. Spend five minutes writing down which responses and techniques worked and which did not.
4. Switch roles and go through the exercise again.
5. Compare your notes. What worked? What didn't? Identify the most productive ways to respond to a hostile prospect.

Sales Role Play Script

This is an example of a scenario in which the prospect is dismissive and unwilling to negotiate different solutions. You can adapt this to meet your needs.

The Prospect: “I ordered this blender in the mail the other day, and it doesn’t work. I need a refund.”

The Salesperson: “Wow, I’m really sorry to hear that. That’s not up to the standard we hold ourselves to, so I’m happy to help you with that. Can I ask why it isn’t wo —”

The Prospect: “I just need a refund.”

The Salesperson: “I understand that this is frustrating; I wouldn’t want something to arrive faulty. I’m hoping to understand what the exact issue is so I can provide you with the best solution, which may end up being a refund.”

The Prospect: “The product is clearly bad if it arrived and didn’t work. I just want you to do your job and give me a refund — do I need to speak to your manager instead?”

The Salesperson: “I’m sorry I’m not providing the solutions you need, let me —”

The Prospect: “Please transfer me to your manager.”

8. Win-lose bargaining scenario: learn the value of mutually beneficial negotiations.

The three basic negotiation practices are win-lose bargaining (one person gains at the cost of the other), win-win bargaining (both people benefit), and mixed-motive bargaining (both people benefit by “expanding the pie.”) This exercise from MIT, known as the Two Dollar Game, illustrates all three -- and shows mixed-motive bargaining usually leads to the most desirable outcomes.

The Two Dollar Game requires a moderator and at least six players, so ask your sales manager or another member of your team to lead it. (And don’t read the guidelines below, or you won’t be able to play.)

Players:

• Three (or more) groups of two

Guidelines:

1. Tell everyone they’ll be negotiating three times with three different partners.
2. Put everyone in random pairs. Each pair is told they have $2. They must divide the $2 between themselves.
3. Players typically first think, "This is easy -- we can each have a dollar." However, every person receives a piece of paper with secret instructions. These instructions discourage a simple 50-50 compromise. (You can find a printable version of each participant's instructions on this page.)
4. Give the pairs 10 minutes to negotiate.
5. Organize them into new pairs and have them run through the exercise again. Give each partner a piece of paper with new secret instructions. (You can find a printable version of each participant's instructions on this page.)
6. The participants will be expecting to switch partners again. To demonstrate the importance of mutually beneficial agreements and preserving healthy business relationships, ask them to run through the exercise for the third time with their current partner.
7. There are no secret instructions for this round: Participants can use any strategies and styles they’d like. Some negotiators will reward their partner’s kindness in the last round with kindness in this round, while others will use this round to take revenge on a hostile or difficult partner.
8. Ask each person to share their secret instructions with the partner they had in the second and third rounds. Ask them to review their individual performance (either in a group or on paper), along with the approaches they found effective versus ineffective.

9. Varied tactics scenario: practice using different negotiation models.

From the considered response to always making the first offer, there are hundreds of negotiation strategies out there. Identify the top negotiation tactics your company uses, and run through each until reps are comfortable.

Players:

• The salesperson
• The prospect(s)

Guidelines:

1. Write the negotiation tactics your company uses on several slips of paper, and hand them to reps playing “salesperson.”
2. Pair each salesperson with a “prospect.” Write your company’s price on one slip of paper and the prospect’s corresponding budget on another. Try to use real numbers your reps have encountered, to give this exercise a realistic feel. Then, give the salesperson and prospect their price/budget.
3. Have each salesperson use their designated tactic to negotiate the price. Encourage some prospects to ask for discounts, and have your reps role play how they would respond in real time.
4. Once negotiations are complete, review what worked and what didn’t. Did the salesperson cave to the prospect’s request for a discount too quickly? Did the prospect feel the salesperson was too pushy? Discuss concrete improvements each rep can make next time, and run through these exercises as many times as you wish.

Sales Role Play Script

This negotiation role play scenario is using the negotiation tactic of letting the prospect initiate the negotiation. You can adapt the script to meet your business needs.

The Salesperson: “So, those are the terms of our deal. Our price point is [insert relevant numbers].”

The Prospect: “Thank you for that rundown! I have a good understanding of how your service will meet my goals. However, my budget is around [insert relevant numbers].”

The Salesperson: “That’s good to know. Is your target number set in stone?”

The Prospect: “Yes, our budget is very strict.”

The Salesperson: “Do you have a range, or is [insert prospects numbers] your set number?”

The Prospect: “It’s our set number. After your presentation, I’m really feeling that you have the best option to meet my needs and I’d prefer not to go elsewhere. Would you be willing to negotiate?”

10. Competitor aware scenario: practice negotiating with customers deciding between you and competitor.

Sometimes customers are close to making a decision, but they get stuck between two options. They may approach a rep at one business looking to get more information to make a final decision. Some of the questions they have may be directly related to how your product measures up to a competitor, so it’s important to be aware of your value proposition.

Players:

• The salesperson
• The prospect

Guidelines:

1. The prospect approaches the salesperson and lets them know they’re in between choosing you or your competitor. Then, they ask questions that are meant to have you convince them you’re the right decision.
2. Salespeople should ensure they’re aware of the business’ value proposition and understand what sets you apart from competitors in the same market.
3. The salesperson should note their tone to ensure they aren’t combative or throw the competitor under the bus as this can drive the customer away.

Sales Role Play Script

Please note that you can adapt the scenario to more closely fit the products and services offered by your business.

The Prospect: “Hi! I’m going to buy a [insert product your business has], and I’m close to a decision, but I’m also considering [insert competitors product]. So I’m hoping you can help me come to a decision?”

The Salesperson: “Sure! What are the specific factors you’re hesitant about?”

The Prospect: “Well, what I really need is a tool that [insert product-related features here], and I know yours has that, but I’m a bit hesitant about the price point compared to [insert competitor name].”

The Salesperson: “Understandable! So, what we offer is [insert product specifications]. The goal of doing that is to be able to [insert product specifications]. I know there are similar products on the market, but what sets ours apart is that [insert value proposition]. Does that help at all?

While all the scenarios listed above are good for practice among your team members, it’s also possible that you’ll be asked to participate in various role play scenarios during an interview.

How To Approach Sales Role Play During an Interview

When interviewing for a sales job, you may be asked to participate in role-playing exercises that involve various scenarios you may be involved in as a sales rep.

It may seem intimidating, but there’s nothing to fear. Employers use this model because they want to see your skills in action, not to back you into a corner. It’s much easier for them to see how you operate as a sales rep if they put you in a sample scenario than it is to hear you tell them what your skills are. Here are some tips for how to approach sales role-play during an interview.

Do your research.

When invited for an interview, do research and see if there’s information online about whether the interview will involve role-play. While it’s good to prepare for everything, this can confirm whether it’s sure to occur or not.

Review the job description

Whether or not you’re able to get confirmation of whether the interview involves role-play, the best way to prepare is to review the job description. You’ll get a sense of the skills required for the role and what the role-play scenario may entail. For example, suppose you’re expected to be a sound negotiator. In that case, you may be asked to participate in a scenario where your negotiation skills are put to the test with a difficult customer.

Review and practice common role-play scenarios.

Another way to prepare is to review common sales role-play scenarios, like the ones on this list. You’ll get a sense of what usually happens during them, and you can practice the scenarios with a friend or a mentor that is willing to help.

Be confident.

You were invited back for an interview because you impressed the hiring manager, and they want to learn more about you. Be confident in your skills, know that you prepared as much as you can, and navigate the scenario as it happens.

Practice makes perfect — or at the least, makes you a stronger negotiator. Use these exercises to prepare yourself for every technique and scenario imaginable.

Editor's note: This post was originally published in August 2019 and has been updated for comprehensiveness.

There are a number of different two-step sales processes executed across a wide swath of companies and industries. There are the B2B companies that generate business leads (step 1) and then follow up to convert those leads into customers (step 2). There are the software products which “sell” free versions of their products and services (step 1) and then try to turn those free users into paying users (step 2). And there are the initial sales calls which are informational in nature (step 1) that are then followed up by more aggressive sales calls later (step 2).

In all of these cases, the two-step sales process is used for a reason: it works. It is a strategy that has been carefully honed over time.

Why does it work? Because consumers do not like to feel like they are being sold. We like to feel like we are the one making the decision, not that the decision is being made for us. When we feel like we’re being sold, we put up “walls” and come up with reasons why we don’t need or like the product in question.

A two-step sales process helps because it does not force the sale onto consumers. It gives them time to breath, time to take in new information, to try things out and do research. It gives them time to convince themselves that the decision is right, so that it feels more like their decision.

By the time the ultimate sale does occur, it doesn’t feel like it’s being forced on us. The consumer is ready to commit, so the sale is much easier for the seller.

While we would all love it if we could sell our products and services in one quick shot, most industries simply don’t work that way. If you can perfect a more nuanced approach, you can build lasting relationships with customers and grow your business over time.

Every year, marketers are tasked with looking into the proverbial crystal ball to identify the best ways to reach their customers in a rapidly changing landscape. In 2017, marketers’ “crystal ball” is data – if they use it to its full potential. Here are five recommendations to help marketers make smarter, more informed decisions this year:

Study Cross-Device Behavior. Behavior tracking is well established on desktops. Capturing the mobile consumer, in cross-device behavior, will emerge as an essential marketing tool; looking at activity on mobile devices and within apps. This will help you and your brand better understand digital behavior and paths to purchase. In evaluating cross-device behavior, you will gain greater insights into the day-in-the-life of consumer activities and spend, helping you speak to the customer, not the device.

Ask “But Why?” to Improve Customer Experience. The act of collecting data is no longer a challenge for marketers with the availability of transactional data, passive data monitoring and more. To optimize the quality of your research be sure to place greater focus on asking “but why” to gain deeper consumer insights that improve customer experience. Answering “why” can help you to pinpoint emotion which “is the core driver of customer loyalty and spending,” according to Forrester Research.

Leverage Automated Concept Testing. Companies are launching new products more easily and quickly than ever. Predictive modeling is often not feasible in product development so quick survey data can be the best option. To back up your marketing plan, leverage automated concept testing to understand the strength of branding, product and advertising concepts. This will allow you and your brand to move from ideation to insight in just hours, something traditional concept testing methods can’t support.

Learn to Navigate the Internet of Things. The Internet of Things brings about its own host of marketing challenges. While the Internet of Things is increasing the amount of information marketers can use to analyze consumers, it greatly complicates the path to purchase and will necessitate a more developed approach to data analytics and consumer research. To build a successful marketing strategy, you must embrace this change, instead of fighting it. Once the avalanche of Internet of Things data is mined for patterns, buying variances (as in lapsed buyers) and brand preferences, you will have a better understanding of consumer behavior.

Address Your Business’ Need for Speed. Time is a scarce commodity for marketers so speed is king. Viral trends emerge and then disappear quickly. News cycles are short. There is constant pressure to make quick decisions. That being said, these compressed timelines are no excuse to fly blind – or make decisions with outdated consumer data. Instead, look to leverage online surveys – with do-it-yourself tools – for data and insights that keep pace with fast-moving business.

We live in a data-rich world. So the challenge – and opportunity – is not about gathering as much data as possible but rather gathering the right data. It is critical to have an accurate, up-to-the-minute view on how consumers are making decisions and scoring your business. Leveraging these five action steps can provide marketers with the reliable, actionable and high-quality customer data they need to discern the consumer quest to purchase and make better decisions in an uncertain, fluid world.

Once again, tech jobs dominate Glassdoor's list of the 50 best jobs in America.

But, it turns out, you don't have to work in the tech industry to have one of the best tech jobs this year.

As Dr. Andrew Chamberlain, Glassdoor's chief economist, tells Business Insider, companies across all industries, including healthcare, finance, and retail, are hiring workers for these needed positions. "Any organization today with a mobile app, web presence, or digitized data are struggling to fill jobs like data scientists, software engineers, and mobile developers," Chamberlain says.

Glassdoor's 50 Best Jobs in America report identifies careers with the highest overall "job score," which is determined by weighing three factors equally: earning potential (median annual base salary), job satisfaction rating, and number of job openings. 

For a job title to be considered, it had to receive at least 100 salary reports and 100 job satisfaction ratings shared by US-based employees over the past year. The number of job openings per job title represents active job listings on Glassdoor as of January 1, 2017. 

"This report reinforces that the best jobs are highly skilled and are staying ahead of the growing trend toward workplace automation," Chamberlain says.

He explains that the skills helping workers stay ahead of automation are creativity, judgment, and flexibility.

"Many of the jobs on this list require proficiency in these 'soft' skills," he explains. "In tech, that includes data science and engineering, which requires the ability to creatively solve problems to deliver business value."

Below are the 14 tech roles among Glassdoor's 50 best jobs, as well as the six next best tech roles according to Glassdoor:

DON'T MISS: The 25 best jobs in America right now

SEE ALSO: The 50 best places to work in 2017, according to employees

20. Scrum master

Overall job score (out of 5.0): 3.9

Job satisfaction rating (out of 5.0): 3.5

Number of job openings: 1,323

Median base pay: $95,000

19. Network administrator

Overall job score (out of 5.0): 3.9

Job satisfaction rating (out of 5.0): 3.7

Number of job openings: 2,030

Median base pay: $62,000

18. User interface (UI) developer

Overall job score (out of 5.0): 4.0

Job satisfaction rating (out of 5.0): 3.6

Number of job openings: 1,122

Median base pay: $91,000

See the rest of the story at Business Insider

Customer churn, or churn rate, refers to the pace at which customers leave your company in a given period. The ideal churn rate would obviously be 0% (i.e. 100% customer retention), as a high churn rate indicates not only a loss of customers but an underutilization of your existing customer base. Any company that is losing customers is also losing out on valuable cross-sell and upsell opportunities—it is essentially hemorrhaging revenue.

As frustrating as a high churn rate can be, there are ways that you can you improve customer retention, all the while identifying post-sale opportunities. More than salvaging customers who might be on the brink of leaving, customer marketing maximizes the opportunities you already have. Here are three steps to getting your customer marketing campaigns up and running:

Step 1: Align Marketing and Sales Objectives

Finding misalignment throughout an organization is easier than picking up fish from a barrel (trying to be politically correct). It doesn’t take much for different functional groups to become opposed due to distinct departmental goals and measurements of success. However, they are all working toward the same objective: make the organization successful. A key to this is improving the customer experience to reduce churn.

A prerequisite for better marketing and sales alignment includes three necessary tasks:

• Define goals: Whether you’re in marketing, sales, customer success, support, or product management, you’ve got a common goal–increase revenue. You may know that growing revenue is the common goal, but everyone else doesn’t always know that since revenue growth comes in many shapes and sizes. Goals that lead to revenue growth for marketing do not look the same as those goals for sales, for example.
• Map out the customer revenue model: New business and install base focus on different areas of the customer lifecycle. The first phase in the customer cycle is enablement. The next phase is adoption, during which a customer starts using your product and its many features and capabilities. During this stage, marketing should start educating the customer on how to successfully adopt and use the product. As the customer’s usage of the product broadens and matures (this can vary depending on your product), you can start introducing complementary products to them for cross-sell or an upgrade to their current product or service.
• Outline processes: It’s important to determine not just where your customer lifecycle begins and ends, but highlight the stages that connect marketing and sales efforts. Leverage lead scoring across demographics, firmographics, and behavioral data to prioritize your best customers who are in the market for additional products or an upgrade. Then, determine the scoring threshold for which customers should be handed off to the sales team for qualification as marketing qualified leads (MQLs) and eventually as sales qualified leads (SQLs) once their interests are validated. Just as important is determining how customers should be recycled back to marketing if they’re not sales-ready.

Creating harmony between marketing and sales does more than make everyone feel all warm and fuzzy inside—it affects your bottom line in clear and demonstrable ways. In fact, our research has shown that alignment extracts as much as 208% more from marketing, all while causing 108% less friction.

Step 2: Run Automated Campaigns Throughout the Customer Lifecycle

Providing the right content at the right time is the key to drawing customers to a level deeper than just an initial transaction. By creating automated campaigns to deliver content to customers based on their behaviors, actions, and stage in the customer lifecycle, you can not only retain them but grow their lifetime value.

Here are a few different types of customer marketing campaigns you may want to implement:

• Cross-sell and upsell campaigns: Create post-sale opportunities by offering logical additions or improvements based on your customers’ previous purchases. At Marketo, we map specific product offerings based on particular demographics and/or stage in the customer lifecycle. For instance account-based marketing for B2B customers or advanced analytics for someone who has been using Marketo for at least six months.
• Customer satisfaction campaigns: Gauge just how satisfied your customers really are. Tracking information from customer satisfaction campaigns will provide insights about why you might be losing customers. You can set up a recurring survey campaign to start collecting this data, and it’s easy with a survey tool integration.
• Product and service improvement reminders: Make sure that all of your existing customers are aware of new features and optimizations. Current customers too often don’t return because they don’t know you have anything new to offer. Our product releases are on a quarterly cadence, so we keep a fairly consistent cycle of product communications. We’ll send out an email outlining the new features about a week prior to release, then have a live webinar a month later with our product management team who demos the new features.
• Post-sale engagement: The simple act of following a sale with an email requesting feedback or offering support creates a hugely favorable customer experience and helps to generate future opportunities. Don’t try to sell more, but offer your support. Use the opportunity to create that relationship with your customer so they know that you’re a problem solver and can continue to assist throughout the relationship.

There are plenty of other potential campaigns you can run, but the important thing is to communicate with current customers in ways that speak directly to their situations. This humanizes your company and turns customers into loyal brand ambassadors and advocates.

Step 3: Measure and Optimize

Bringing your churn rate as close to 0% as possible requires constant measuring, analyzing, and restructuring. It requires being as fluid and adaptable as the people that use your product.

It’s important to have a framework and a timeline for measuring the results of your campaigns, and there are two sets of metrics you may want to consider:

• Engagement metrics are tied to your campaigns and help you understand their early impact so you can optimize as needed. Some of these metrics include:
  • Campaign successes: The number of people who take the desired action of your campaign (e.g. downloads or attendance)
  • Click-through rate (CTR), click-to-open rate (CTO), unsubscribe rates
  • Act Nows: An action demonstrating high buying intent and requiring immediate sales follow-up
  • Call Nows: An action demonstrating engagement in a mid- to late-stage campaign, which may indicate buying intent so follow-up is recommended)
• Revenue metrics, otherwise known as late-stage metrics, are critical for understanding how your campaigns contribute to revenue, which demonstrates marketing’s contribution, gives you credibility, and drives budget decisions. These can’t be measured immediately since it takes time to mature and include:
  • Pipeline
  • Opportunities
  • Revenue won

It’s not difficult to convince anyone that customer retention and post-sale engagement are high priorities, but how you retain customers and grow their lifetime value yields a long list of potential solutions.

The annual Sales Kickoff (SKO) meeting is a perfect opportunity for marketing to interact with the entire sales organization in real-time.

The marketing functions invited to sales kickoff should include demand creation, demand management, field marketing, content marketing, sales enablement, product, solution and industry marketing. All of these functions have one thing in common – their customer is the sales team. Ideally, all of the marketing attendees should devise a divide and conquer plan before arriving at SKO to maximize the opportunity.

What’s so hard about building an integrated sales and marketing plan?

Everyone is Busy

During the normal course of business sales people are running hard with few cycles to spare. It’s hard to get quality one-on-one time from a salesperson as the quarter, customer and prospect meetings take precedence and usually arise with little notice. If there is not a pre-existing relationship based on value then the challenge for marketing is even greater.

Bring Something to the Table

When a salesperson makes time for marketing, the last thing a sales rep wants to do is spend time teaching a marketer what sales is all about. Granted, a marketer is never going to build a knowledge of sales that rivals a sales person, but a marketer could show that they have a general understanding of sales. And, a marketer should be able to bring to a sales person some valuable insights of their own. Marketing needs to have some skin in the game (variable compensation) and the ability to execute quickly to put some wins on the board with the sales team.

Plethora of Content

Sales Kickoff is one of the few times, if not the only, when all salespeople are gathered together in the same spot. Over the course of several days there are numerous opportunities to engage with salespeople at breakfast, lunch, breaks, dinner and drinks. Marketers should not leave things to chance and should develop a list of 10 or 20 sales people with whom they must have conversations — and “stalk” these individuals. The backdrop for conversations is ideal as the theme is conducive to go deep and defenses are down.

Condensed Timeline & Real Time Feedback

The number of conversations with salespeople that can happen over a few days is mind boggling when their geographical location, title, availability and access are computed. Information can be raised, surfaced, vetted and agreed to in hours or days as opposed to the conversation never happening. Be prepared when the opportunities arise to have relevant and meaningful questions to stimulate conversations.

Questions Marketers Need to Ask Salespeople at SKO

• What is your territory composition – geography, industry, size of company, technology adoption?

• What are your priorities for the quarter, year – what are you goaled on for the quarter and year?

• How do you make your number – is quota credit geared towards a specific offering?

• How much of your quota will be made from new versus existing accounts?

• Is new business expected to come from greenfield opportunities or replacements?

• Does LOB drive or initiate the purchase process?

• Does IT have the authority to make, stall or kill a technology purchase?

• What is the compelling value of the solution to IT?

• What is the compelling value of the solution to LOB?

• What is the compelling value of the solution at a strategic level to the organization?

• What is the compelling value of the solution at an operational level to the organization?

• How have you been most at successful in breaking into new accounts?

• How do you gain access to the individuals involved in the buying process?

• Typically, who are the individuals/functions involved in the buying process?

• What content do individuals you target subscribe to?

• Who are their trusted analysts and influencers?

• What conferences do these individuals attend?

• What has been the source of your best leads?

• What types of marketing campaigns have worked well for you?

• What marketing campaigns have you seen our competitors run that you believe were effective?

• What percent of your QSOs came from Marketing?

• How often do you connect with your Sales Development representative?

• How many meetings a month does your SDR set for you?

• What are the sales tools you use most?

• What sales tools do you avoid?

• What’s the best thing Marketing does for you?

• What’s the worst thing Marketing does for you?

• If you could have Marketing do one thing for you, what would it be?

• What do you expect Marketing to do for you this quarter?

• How many contacts do you include for each opportunity in the sales automation system?

Sales Kickoff is typically a once a year event and the entire sales organization is herded into a central location for a number of days. Marketer’s should take a page from sales and build a plan to gather, synthesize and internalize information from salespeople to help them help their customer – the sales team. Be prepared and capitalize on this opportunity.

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The advancements and developments of the web are unceasing. Just after a few tweaks in algorithm, a new feature is suddenly formed; the cycle continues, the loop seems to have no ending.

This is why websites are good investments, especially when marketing a business. They always have something new to offer and there are always opportunities for improvements or innovations.

Unlike other platforms, websites cater to almost all file formats and welcomes different forms of media such as videos and infographics. Whatever new digital media you want, a virtual tour or a gifographic for instance, you can get for your website. Or at least that has always been the objective. Versatility is one of the major values that make websites great marketing collaterals. It’s like art in paper. What you make of it is only limited to your imagination. As long as web developers continue to imagine and innovate, websites will continue to develop and be able to do more for your business.

However, how you use this advantage will depend on your understanding about market competition.

The Science Between Websites and Business

If your sales increase or your market expands, it’s not because you applied the latest web designs. It’s because you reached a great number of customers who positively reacted to your website’s marketing technique. You may do this by sharing your domain across various social media platforms or by simply creating a site design that will catch the attention of customers and potential customers alike.

Because really, what good is a business website if it doesn’t have any effect on customers? When choosing online marketing strategies for your website, customer awareness should be considered, especially when deciding which steps to take.

Several effective marketing strategies are applied in websites today, and they are improving businesses. Read the infographic below to know some of the best strategies and make sure to follow our tips to increase your business potential.

Sebastian C. Adams's Synchronological Chart from the late 19th century presents 5,885 years of history (4004 BCE - 1881 AD) on a magnificent 27 inch x 23 foot illustrated and annotated timeline. What a stunner. You can zoom and pan through the whole thing at the David Rumsey Map Collection or order a scaled-down print.

According to the book Cartographies of Time: History of the Timeline, the Synchronological Chart "was ninetheenth-century America's surpassing achievement in complexity and synthetic power."

(via Clifford Pickover)

Transit ridership in Metro Vancouver reached an all-time high last year, increasing 4.5 per cent from 2015.

According to information released by TransLink on Thursday, there were 384.83 million boardings on buses, SkyTrain, SeaBus and West Coast Express in 2016, compared to 362.92 million boardings the year before.

It’s the largest year-over-year increase in ridership since the opening of the Canada Line.

Related

• Read all our latest TransLink coverage

“I think that’s encouraging,” said TransLink CEO Kevin Desmond. “That’s very important to us, very important to the region and further underscores the very strong demand for transit service and further underscores why we’re putting out additional service.”

Ridership is one of the 30 performance measures that is included on TransLink’s new online Accountability Centre, which was launched on Thursday. 

When Desmond arrived at TransLink last year, one of the first things he was interested in was performance metrics. Desmond said it’s a common practice for North American transit agencies to have a performance or accountability dashboard — he put one in place when he was with King County Metro Transit — and he thought TransLink needed one as well.

TransLink’s site gathers information that is already reported by TransLink on a regular basis and puts it in one place under headings such as: ridership, customer satisfaction, safety and security, service quality, efficiency and environment. There are also a tabs that gives readers a regional snapshot of the transportation network and where reports, agendas and minutes are posted.

“It’s a lot, but it gives the public a chance to see what’s going on at TransLink,” said Desmond.

Desmond said he considers the dashboard that is now online to be “Version 1.0” — something that will be improved and added to as TransLink receives feedback from users.

“Not a lot of people look at this stuff, I mean, they don’t,” Desmond said. “But it needs to be there. People need to be able to see this.

“I do hope people look at this. It’ll get people, I think, more involved in understanding the complexity and the number of types of measures that we look at.”

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When you think of sales, honesty probably isn’t the first trait that comes to your mind.

You’re not alone; most of us imagine a slimy salesperson that will try to persuade someone in Alaska to buy ice from them. We’re taught to be guarded against salespeople’s questions, or else we’ll get taken advantage of.

I used to think this way too. My dad has always distrusted salespeople. Growing up, he taught me to always hang up on every telemarketer that called, and to tell them to “Take me off their list.” If a salesperson came to our house, or approached me in a store, my default response was always, “No thanks, I’m fine.”

But then something changed. I did something I never expected I would do: I started doing sales, and I loved it.

After learning about what being a salesperson is really like first-hand, I’ve learned that it’s actually one of the most honest and respectable professions there is.

Let me explain why:

1. Salespeople are judged by their W-2’s

Unlike many roles in a company, sales is nearly impossible to fake. While some marketers may be able to hide behind vague fuzzy metrics, and engineers can try to hide behind over-complicating things or blaming their tech stack’s limitations, sales is much less forgiving. You’re evaluated and paid based on how much revenue you help bring the company.

It’s very much survival of the fittest: If you don’t add dollars to the bottom line, you’re gone.

2. You can’t succeed in sales without really hard work

While some things are much easier to sell than others, a salesperson’s earnings are very closely tied to how hard they work. You won’t make money if you’re lazy; you have to hustle to chase deals. Sometimes you have to follow up at least a dozen times with a prospect before they’ll finally be ready to be your customer, which requires persistence and determination.

And the bigger your commission is, the more you’ll have to work to close those deals and keep your job.

3. The best salespeople really love helping people

One of the easiest ways to be successful in sales is just trying to help people solve their problems. Likewise, companies with the most successful sales programs make a point to add value to their prospective customers throughout their entire sales process. Even if someone isn’t ready to become your customer, they will develop a sense of trust and reciprocity towards you so that when they are ready to buy they’ll always come back to you.

4. Liars and jerks lose deals

You might think that selling is all about tricking people into buying things they don’t need or want, but the best salespeople know that this doesn’t do anyone any good. Not only is it much harder to sell to someone who isn’t ready to make a buying decision, many of those deals will fall apart or become a mess, even if you do somehow manage to close them. And companies that encourage their salespeople to lie and “close any way they can” quickly develop a reputation for being shady and untrustworthy. Even if they can close deals, many of their customers won’t stay, and they will only be able to sell to the lowest common denominator.

Multichannel marketing and integration are becoming increasingly popular among top marketers in the world today. In fact, 95% of marketers know what multichannel marketing is. That is because developing integrated marketing strategy has been proven a critical element in effective marketing strategy.

Infographic Source

But exactly does multichannel marketing entail?

According to Saas, Multichannel marketing is the art of using a combination of direct and indirect communication channels to interact with customers. In other words, multichannel marketing involves email marketing, websites, direct mail, mobile, mail order catalogue, retail stores, events, video etc. to enable the customer to take action in response. It is all about giving your customers as many choices as possible.

Therefore, wise marketers wanting to make their mark in this highly competitive industry would find it profitable to take multichannel marketing road. Businesses seeking to make more profit and reach more customers will find it useful to adopt multiple marketing strategies. When you have employed all of those channels and they are working in a seamless manner, your potential customers will hear one clear message.

However, implementing a multichannel marketing strategy isn’t always a walk in the park. There are many challenges associated with implementing a multichannel marketing strategy. They include the following.

• Targeted messaging

Your customers and potential customers are faced with a plethora of channels, and this is where the challenge lies. It is difficult to deliver one concise, uniform message. So you need to be very keen when drafting your messages to avoid confusing your customers.

• Lack of time and resources

According to Holmesreport, 23% of marketers say they have neither the time nor the resources to implement a fully functional multichannel marketing strategy. You need to spend a lot of time and resources to create a multichannel marketing plan that is coherent and effective. Unfortunately, many marketers don’t have the tools, time, resources and expertise to implement this.

· Marketing response attribution

The problem with having multichannel approach is that it is difficult to know which specific channel resulted in higher conversions compared to the rest. This way, it becomes difficult for marketers to improve the overall plan.

· Highly designed campaigns

It is becoming increasing difficult to net potential customers. Unlike in the past, customers are now in control of what they choose to consumer. Hence, marketers must work round the clock to develop and coordinate choreographed touch points that connect multichannel seamlessly.

What will it take to have your multichannel marketing right?

First, you need to a single view of the customer. The same customer may interact with your brand through various touch points. It is important that you not only understand the customer’s value, but also how they behave at various touch points.

Secondly, you need to ensure that there is a consistent customer experience across channels. Remember, your customers experience your brand as one whole. They should not experience one thing on social media and another thing on your website. Failing to deliver consistency can cause confusion and turn the customer against you.

It’s coming up to the new fiscal year in the United Kingdom (and many other parts of the world). It’s the time of the year when most companies start thinking about next year’s strategy. Typically, medium to large sized companies will book away-days for the executive team to free up their time to ‘think’. Question: does this mean they don’t think during the rest of the year? Answer: It was not a flippant question; the truth is they do not think about strategy during the rest of the year. And this is a problem.

One of the reasons small companies grow quickly is because everyone is constantly thinking about strategy. They are focussed on business growth and improvement above everything else. Yes, they are small enough to make changes quickly and try new things easily, but it is the strategic mind-set that makes the difference.

Larger companies get bogged down in day-to-day operational business and make the mistake of handing over the ‘job’ of strategy to an elite few. These people try their best to come up with great ideas. In the end, they spend more time trying to convince the board, and then the company, to implement the great ideas they have come up with.

Strategy needs to be embedded into the company culture. Everyone need to be involved and thinking about how things can be improved. Improvements may not be about making money. In not-for-profit or government organisations improvement, can be about reaching stakeholders or helping citizens.

Here are five things you can do to help embed strategy into your culture:

1. Include subject matter experts in strategy formulation – strategy is not only the domain of the executive team or top management. Include people from the shop-floor who understand the business. A comforting by-product of this action will be greater buy-in from all areas of the organisation.
2. Solicit strategy ideas from staff through social media – like it or not, social media is part of our lives. Use your internal social media mechanisms to ask for ideas from everyone. They might not come up with anything new, but they will feel part of the process if their idea is adopted.
3. Communicate your strategy through a simple diagram – strategy does not have to be complicated, in fact it should not be. Aim to publish your strategy on one diagram on a single page.
4. Include your strategic measures in monthly reports – nearly all companies and organisations report monthly to management. These reports tend to be about sales and operations. Start adding strategic measures to the reports and label them as strategic. A strategy is a living thing; it should be seen constantly and monitored regularly.
5. Publish your strategic wins frequently – people like to hear good news. Publish all your good news with a strategic twist. Get people used to the idea that your success has come about because of good strategic thinking.

Taking time out to develop a strategy is not a bad thing. It only becomes a bad thing when it is not inclusive. Clearly larger companies or organisations cannot include everyone in the discussions, but that does not mean they are excluded entirely. A few simple changes can make a huge difference to the way a company is perceived by its employees.

What have you done so far to build your thought leadership? Regardless of your industry and despite your experience or position, you can be a thought leader. It’s all about how you participate in industry activity and contribute to its knowledge base.

Some of the best ways to grow your influence is to produce content that people seek out and to be on social media for relationship building. Creating content of value will show that you’re knowledgeable of industry trends. Using social media for relationship building will help you grow your following.

A lesser known tactic for developing thought leadership is through Twitter chats. This article gives you a thorough look inside the benefits, tactics, and best practices of Twitter chats. It gives you everything you need to get started and making the most out of it for the best results.

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First, what are Twitter Chats?

So, you’re interested in building your thought leadership through Twitter chats, but do you know exactly what they are? Let’s dive into a proper description so that you know what to expect.

A Twitter chat is a group conversation hosted in real-time on Twitter about a pre-determined topic. Participants follow along using a set hashtag (#hashtag), and there is usually a regular host account that moderates with questions related to the assigned topic. Some chats are held weekly while others are monthly, but they always fall on the same day of the week or month for consistency. Chats are usually one hour long.

Now that you know what Twitter chats are and what’s involved, it’s time to discover just how it can benefit your quest for thought leadership.

How Do Twitter Chats Help Build Thought Leadership?

When you actively participate in Twitter chats, you show everyone that there’s a human being with interests and experience behind your handle. You’re not an automated robot.

As a result of your engagement, you increase your Twitter following count. These followers are more likely to interact with you and your content because of your presence during the chats. You’ll be trusted, and people will look to you for advice.

When people trust you, they’re more likely to click on your tweet links and visit your website. If you send them to your blog, you’ll show them your own expertise on a given subject. People will want to subscribe to your blog if you’ve optimized your site for that. It’s a clear indicator that people consider you a thought leader.

When we break this down by participant versus host, these are some clear ways you can develop thought leadership through Twitter chats:

Participants

Participants can use these chats as a networking opportunity. You can communicate directly with other participants via replies and retweets. Giving people that 1-to-1 engagement will help you reach people on a more personal level. They’ll be more likely to pay attention to you because they’ll see your interactions in their notifications. When you reach more people this way, you have a higher, better chance of getting your voice heard amidst the crowd of participants. People will want to hear more from you if your contributions to the discussion are personal and of high value.

Hosts

When you want to host a Twitter chat, remember that it takes time to build an audience. Your chat is an opportunity to build a community of people and brands. You show you have the expertise and authority to control the discussion. As the moderator, you start by bringing in guests with expertise on a given subject. The more you do this, the larger the audience you’ll have. It’s all about relationship building, and it’s key that you interact and participate in the chat as much as possible. The more expertise you share during the chats, the more people will consider you a thought leader to rely on.

Where Do I Find Twitter Chats to Join?

It can be hard to find the right Twitter chats for your needs because there are so many out there. The other issue is finding ones that are as active as they used to be.

You can dig through thorough lists, such as this one from Tweet Reports, to find one that fits with your industry. However, lists like that are often outdated, so you’ll find chats there that no longer exist. There will also be newer chats that aren’t included on the list. The point is to take these lists as a starting point but not rely completely on them.

Sometimes, you can find more targeted lists of Twitter chats per industry, such as this marketing-based one by TrackMaven. These are often up-to-date for a time, but they are not always updated as chats change. Use resources that say they’ll be updated or stick with ones that were created recently.

Another way to find Twitter chats is simply to ask. Word of mouth is a great way to find Twitter chats that are both active and popular. On Twitter, for example, send out a tweet to an industry influencer to get your tweet seen by both them and their audience. This will broaden the scope of your tweet responses, giving you more to work with. This approach is suitable for individuals seeking to build thought leadership through Twitter chats, but a business might not want their audience to see a tweet like that coming from their account.

With these approaches, you’ll have the chance to find Twitter chats that work for your brand. When you’re looking at your options, keep these in mind:

• Shadow the Twitter chats first to see if they’re active enough to provide benefits
• Don’t assume you have to participate in just one or more than that. It just depends on what your options are and how much time you have to dedicate to them.

How Do I Participate In a Twitter Chat? The Tools

You’re ready to start participating in Twitter chats? That’s great, and the next step is simple enough:

You need to find a tool that’ll allow you to easily follow and participate in each chat.

The two best options you have are:

Tweetchat

Tchat.io

These two tools allow you to follow the conversation based on the assigned hashtag. It eliminates the rest of Twitter and just shows the Twitter chat feed. The tools let you participate by automatically adding the chat’s hashtag to your tweets. Use these tools to better follow and contribute to the conversation.

How Do I Participate In a Twitter Chat? Best Practices

Twitter chats move fast. It can be daunting to a new participant as you see all the tweets flooding the feed. One of the biggest mistakes newbies make is trying to read every tweet. This is impractical.

The focus should be on the host and special guest first, reading their contributions and responding accordingly. Then, take time to scan other users’ tweets to see how you can engage with them. Research which participants will benefit you the most by checking their profile. Could they benefit from your thought leadership? Could they help you build your audience and influence?

When you’re active in a Twitter chat, you have to follow these best practices in order to see better results. These tips will help you participate effectively and also achieve the thought leadership you seek:

• To get more engagement with your contributions, make sure the answers you tweet have the question number included: Q1 will be A1, Q2 will be A2, and so on.
• Don’t use Twitter chats to heavily promote yourself. Only include your content links if they provide value to the conversation.
• Take time to reply to and retweet other participants’ tweets when you can. Secondary engagement in Twitter chats can sometimes be even more beneficial than your answer tweets.
• Include visuals and GIFs with your tweets to see more engagement. The more engagement you get, the higher your impressions will be.
• Ask your own questions when engaging one-on-one with other participants, and offer to continue the conversation after the chat.
• Find participants you can engage with in-between chats to build a connection for mutual benefit.
• Never forget the chat’s hashtag! You must include it for your tweet to be seen by other participants.
• If the chat host offers the questions in advance, take time to create your answers beforehand. This will give you more time to engage one-on-one with others.
• Warn your followers that you’ll be participating in a Twitter chat so that they’re prepared for your tweet burst. This will minimize the loss of followers.

Use these best practices to make your participation more effective. If you go against any of them, you risk missing out on opportunities.

How Do I Host a Twitter Chat?

Say you’ve participated in Twitter chats and now want to host your own. How do you get started, and what can you do to make the most of it?

Content Marketing Institute has a handy article that offers resources for new Twitter chat hosts, which I highly recommend for you. In the article, they explain how they use templates to organize their chats, and the author provides these templates for you to download.

To start this process of hosting a Twitter chat, you need to do thorough research on the following:

• What hashtag to use
• The time and frequency
• The overall theme
• How you’ll promote it
• Who you can bring in as influencers / special guests

Once you’re ready to take this to a per-chat level, you should keep these tips in mind:

• Research specific topics you can create questions for that will attract the right people.
• Create at least 5-8 questions per chat so that you can fill the entire hour with participation.
• Don’t just send out the questions and ignore everyone – engage by retweeting good answers and replying to participants. Best practice is to engage with as many users as possible, not just your influencer guest.
• Have a good icebreaker to tweet out at the beginning of the chat to get people talking.
• Create image versions of your questions, and possibly create a recap image, such as what SEMrush does in #semrushchat. People will appreciate it when you include their answers in your recap tweets.
• Create a recap of your chats afterwards for your blog or to share separately on Twitter. Tag the users you included in the recap to let them know. People will appreciate seeing their tweets included. One way to create a recap is in Twitter itself – create a Twitter Moment.
• Don’t forget to measure the engagement metrics from your chats to see what worked and what needs improvement.

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That concludes this guide for using Twitter chats for thought leadership development. Are you ready to participate and / or host a chat? You now have what you need, so get moving.

Whether you have a question or your own advice, I welcome you to leave a comment here with your input. Or, you can contact me privately to discuss Twitter chats for your brand.