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In 1985, Coca-Cola held the number one position in the cola industry. But Pepsi was gaining popularity -- and Coca-Cola’s team worried their market share might soon slip away.

They decided to make a bold move. On April 23 of that year, Coca-Cola released a brand-new version of their eponymous drink: “New Coke.” It was the first time the company had altered its formula in 99 years.

Market research and consumer taste tests indicated the public would love New Coke.

However, it went down as one of the biggest disasters in marketing history. Hundreds of people called the consumer help line each day to complain about the new formula. Die-hard fans launched protest campaigns. Consumers stockpiled the “old” Coke.

Less than three months later, Coca-Cola brought back the previous version.

As this example shows, buyers don’t automatically equate “new” with “better.”

According to Harvard Business School professor John Gourville, 40% to 90% of new products fail depending on the product category. Innovative companies don’t typically fare well either: Almost five in 10 “first mover” companies (or, those who defined new product categories) have failed.

Knowing these statistics, you may not want to use “cutting-edge,” “groundbreaking,” “innovative,” or “revolutionary” to describe your products or use novelty to generate excitement in buyers.

Why Consumers Dislike “New”

Switching from an outdated product to an up-to-date alternative might seem like an obvious choice, since the new version typically comes with fewer issues or offers more features.

But here’s where the endowment effect comes into play. This psychological bias leads people to place greater value on the benefits they currently have than ones they don’t, even if their current benefits are objectively worse.

In other words, they irrationally prefer their current product over any new ones.

“Losses have a far greater impact on people than similarly-sized gains,” Gourville says. “Studies show that most people will not accept a bet in which there is a 50% chance of winning $100 and a 50% chance of losing $100. The gains from the wager must outweigh the losses by a factor of between two and three before most people find such a bet attractive.”

Lastly, buyers are put off by the effort required to change products. The more complex the solution, the more time and labor it’ll require to adjust.

How to Identify Your Prospect’s Motivators

This doesn’t mean you should never advertise your product’s innovation. Some prospects are far less resistant to novelty than others. You’ve likely worked with buyers who are motivated by acquiring the latest and greatest product so they can gain an edge on their competition or dramatically increase their ability to serve customers.

How can you tell which type you’re talking to?

A recent series of studies published in the Journal of Consumer Psychology suggests the greater a person’s desire for control, the less attracted they’ll be to “new” products.

In one experiment, the researchers created four pairs of potato chip flavors. Each pair included one classic flavor and one experimental one (for example, “Traditional Wavy Ranch” and “New West Coast Truffle Fries.”)

Participants chose which of the two flavors in each pair they would buy. The new flavors were less popular among participants whose desire for control had been experimentally increased.

“This shows that desire for control can act as a barrier to new product acceptance,” the researchers explain.

Pay attention to how many decisions your prospect makes and how many they let you make. For instance, do they typically propose a meeting time, or do they wait for you to suggest a few options? Do they usually weigh in on the agenda, or are they content to hand the reins to you? Do they largely drive the buying process, or are you coaching them through it?

You can also infer their aversion to newness from the way they describe their own product and company. If they’re excited about a new strategy, product launch, strategic shift, recent executive hire, and so on, there’s a strong chance novelty excites them.

But if they talk about their organization’s rock-solid reputation, longevity, dependability, and best-in-class support, you’re probably speaking with a risk-averse prospect.

The buyer’s recent purchases offer clues as well. Ask, “What’s the last product you bought [in this category, of this size, for this goal]?” Follow up with, “Why did you buy that?”

Their answer will indicate whether they want to be as current as possible or stick to solutions they’re already familiar with.

How to Tweak Your Messaging

Once you’ve identified the buyer’s personality, adapt your messaging as needed.

Let’s say you’re selling a predictive analytics solution. If you’re working with a prospect who finds novelty appealing, you might say, “Our tool will transform your sales and marketing strategy. You’ll be able to predict your audience’s behavior with uncanny accuracy.”

However, if you’re working with a risk-averse prospect, you’d say instead, “Our tool helps you avoid major sales and marketing blunders by giving you near-perfect predictions of what they’ll like and how they’ll respond.”

Here are a few more examples:

Version #1: “Traditional leadership training programs are ineffective. Companies who use our unique approach promote internally three times more often than average.”

Version #2: “It’s notoriously hard to measure the results of leadership training. Our package comes with quarterly surveys and custom analysis, so you’ll always know the ROI of your investment.”

Version #1: “Become a leader in customer satisfaction by reinventing the standard in-store experience.”

Version #2: “Take control of your customer’s in-store experience.”

Don’t let your message fall on deaf ears. To pique your prospect’s interest -- and ultimately, close the deal -- you must identify their personality type and craft your pitch accordingly.

Do you know a top sales rep who is a hard closer and exceeds her number every month? 

I bet you do -- lots of people do. 

I speak 50 times a year around the world about inbound marketing and sales -- the modern way to connect with prospects and give them control. Inbound empowers marketers and salespeople to engage prospects with a high level of knowledge and respect, provide the right resources when buyers have questions, and start business relationships, not focus on closing deals. I feel lucky to be able to help my audiences learn a new way of doing things and see real business results.

In these speaking sessions, I typically ask the audience, "Does anyone know a hard closer?"

First, I see people wince as the image of a hard-closing salesperson pops into their mind. But after a few seconds, I usually see a few cautious head nods. Then the hands start going up -- first just a handful, but eventually many people acknowledge that the old-school, aggressive salesperson still exists.

I always ask the follow up question, "Is that the way you want to buy?"

Without fail, people always answer emphatically -- no.

I also ask if interacting with a pushy salesperson would negatively influence their purchasing decision.

The answer is always the same -- yes. (Depending on what part of the country I'm in, sometimes I'll get a "Hell yes!")

Clearly, none of us want to deal with pushy salespeople and hard closing tactics, but they still exist.

There is a cost associated with a hard closing process, and in this age of open communication it also comes with a huge risk.

Sales has changed. It's about helping, not pushing and closing on the salesperson's timeline.

It's about education, not personality.

It's about providing accurate information and timely responses, not picking up lunch checks.

It's about honesty and truthfulness, not deception or tricks.

It's about building relationships, not closing deals.

Not convinced? We live in a new era of sales. Even if you don't care about doing the right thing by your customers (which you should), I hope you'll care enough about your sales success and your paycheck to update the legacy sales techniques you might still be relying on.

Why Always Be Closing Doesn't Work Anymore

1) Hard closing leads to short-term, unsustainable wins.

You might win the first deal through hard closing (but you'll probably win less and less often). But if you're aggressive and pushy, you probably won't get the second deal, the upgrade, or the add on, and you definitely won't win the long-term business relationship.

Buyers have long memories, both good and bad. As they move from one company to another, they bring their ideas, experiences, opinions, recommendations, and warnings with them. If you burn one relationship, it can have dire future consequences across multiple accounts.

2) Buyers talk to each other.

Customers compare notes all the time in all stages of the sales process.

Salespeople used to give out references at the end of the sales process when clients were in the final stages of decision. Now we give them out at the beginning, middle, end and even after the purchase. Why?

Your customers are your best salespeople. They talk about what is vital to them -- including the sales process and how the salesperson treated them.

A legacy sales person gets crushed in this environment. "Love the product, hated my salesperson" is not a review you want attached to your name. Ever.

When you take a buyer-centric approach to sales, you'll get ultra-positive reviews. And that'll bring you more business.

3) Always Be Closing ruins your personal reputation.

At HubSpot, we get rave reviews all the time. Our prospects actually take time to write our CEO love letters about how the inbound sales process is different than a traditional push. They say our salespeople are helpful, not brash; inquisitive, not condescending; that they listen, rather than tell.

Don't believe me? See for yourself.

These reviews get published on social media, on review sites, in testimonials, and are sent to individual members of the HubSpot team. In the age of flattening technological capability (there are fewer and fewer products out there that are the only ones that can complete a certain task), the appeal of doing business with a company that delivers a great customer experience is a huge competitive advantage.

4) You could be ruining your brand.

A great product with a poorly run sales process could survive, even thrive, in the 1980s because the default mindset then was "buyer beware." Today, buyers have so many options available to them that things are the exact opposite -- it's seller beware. If you or your salespeople slam deals through, you'll live with the consequences on Quora, LinkedIn, review sites like Yelp, Angie's List, and G2Crowd, and in your customer net promoter score.

Good luck to the "hard closers" in 2017: Your days are numbered.

Selling products by wheeling and dealing and pushing features belongs back in 2002. Starting a long-term relationship is the new close. We love new business. We love current business even more. Congratulations to those of you practicing inbound sales -- you have a significant competitive advantage.

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

If anything you do touches retail or e-commerce, you know it isn’t enough to focus on a single sales channel anymore.

The winners will undoubtedly be those who master omnichannel sales. In fact, creating a strong, cohesive, multi-channel operation can make or break your business.

A recent Fluent survey found that 47% of shoppers who engage with retailers across 10 or more channels make purchases from their favorite retailer's website at least once a week, compared to just 21% for those who engage across one to four channels.

And social is becoming increasingly important, as Epsilon found that retailers' social channels led 29% of US shoppers to try a new brand or product. That figure was 28% for brands' social media and 22% for consumers' friends' social media.

Customers expect convenience and a variety of options when making a purchase. Brick and mortars must be able to seamlessly carry the experience online, through social, and on mobile. Even online giants like Amazon are experimenting with physical locations in order to accommodate their customers in a multitude of ways.

With thousands of hours of research condensed into in-depth reports, BI Intelligence, Business Insider's premium research service, is here to help you with your omnichannel strategy and has developed an exclusive bundle of reports entitled The Omnichannel Strategy Bundle.

Below are the extensively researched in-depth guides that are included from our team of industry experts which can help YOU excel in the competitive world of online retail:

1. The Future of Retail Slide Deck

The retail industry is on the cusp of a fundamental transformation driven by digital technologies. And as retailers adapt to the digital age, the line between physical and digital commerce is becoming increasingly blurred.

This slide deck explores the most disruptive trends in e-commerce.

2. The Store of the Future Report

Brick-and-mortar retailers are scrambling to win back consumers who are increasingly turning to the web to make their purchases.

To catch up with changing consumer behavior, physical retailers are adopting digital technologies – from beacons to interactive fitting rooms – to keep customers engaged and coming back for more. These in-store technologies are interactive, productive tools designed to catch the attention of increasingly tech-savvy consumers.

In this report we explore the top five in-store technologies that represent the future of retail. To test out some of these hi-tech upgrades ourselves, we visited several New York City-based retailers that have implemented these technologies in their stores. We take a close look at these technologies, assess their user-friendliness, and project their potential benefits. The report also lays out some potential barriers and drawbacks for these tools as the lines between online and physical retail continue to blur.

3&4. The New E-Commerce Strategies Report & Slide Deck

No period of time offers a clearer window into how consumer and retailer shopping trends are shifting than the holiday season. The fourth quarter is always the busiest time of year for brands and retailers — it's the period when retailers move from red to black.

The 2015 holiday season gave us the clearest indication yet that there's never been a better time to be a consumer. The rise of online and mobile shopping has given consumers more choice, flexibility, and often better service, and retailers are shifting their strategies to keep up.

In this report and slide deck we look at some of the top trends that affected retailers at each stage of the purchase funnel and how they're responding to those shifts.

5. The Payment Gateways Report

The rapid rise of online and mobile retail sales has opened up a new market for payments companies to pursue, and is also creating a new generation of online payment providers called gateways, which act essentially as the online version of an in-store payment terminal. Companies like Braintree, Adyen, and Worldpay help process online transactions, which are growing much more rapidly than in-store sales.

Payment gateways specifically stand to benefit from the rapid growth of the online processing market, worth an estimated $10.7 billion this year, even though their revenue is a very small slice of the total. BI Intelligence estimates that the US online processing market will increase at a five-year CAGR of 13% to $17.5 billion by 2020, driven by the increase in online shopping volume.

Gateways could moreover be disruptive to the old guard of processors. For example, Alipay has become a top-ten global merchant acquirer almost overnight because of its massive processing volume through Alibaba's marketplaces. And the emergence of online-to-offline (O2O) and omnichannel commerce is giving gateways a chance to divert significant in-store volume away from legacy processors.

This report explains what payment gateways do, the benchmarks on which they compete, their growth drivers, the key players, and assesses the potential for gateways to impact legacy processors.

6. Learning From Mobile Payments in China Report

The US payments ecosystem is in the midst of a shift toward mobile, and countless new and old stakeholders are attempting to accelerate this migration, which is moving at a glacial pace relative to other markets globally. But mobile payments can rise to the mainstream. For companies seeking to build out a robust mobile payments product, China's thriving mobile payments ecosystem offers some insight — and some lessons.

Total mobile payments volume in China will reach $6.3 trillion by 2020, according to our estimates based on iResearch data. This marks a healthy 33% five-year compound annual growth rate (CAGR). In comparison, the US will generate $154 billion in mobile payments volume this year by our estimates, which amounts to just 6.5% of China's mobile payments volume.

Even accounting for population discrepancies, China will generate over $1,700 in mobile payments volume per capita in 2016, compared with $475 in the US, based on forecasts from BI Intelligence and eMarketer. China's advantage will eventually diminish, but it will still produce around twice as much volume per capita in 2020.

China has unique factors buoying the industry, like the dominance of mobile phones, a lack of legacy infrastructure, and the surging popularity of digital retail marketplaces. Some of the characteristics behind the country's success can be mimicked, or even replicated to some extent, in other markets like the US. However, one fundamental barrier in the US is that it's being forced to layer mobile payments on top of an existing payments system, and the ecosystem is very fragmented.

This report takes a deep dive into China's mobile payments ecosystem and deciphers which growth drivers can be exported to the US to help spark its relatively lackluster market.

7. The Beacons & CPG Report

Beacons are one of the most important new in-store technologies. These small, inexpensive pieces of hardware, which communicate with smartphone apps via Bluetooth, are helping brick-and-mortar retailers enhance customer loyalty, gather data about their customers, and provide an entry point for in-store shoppers to become more digitally engaged.

As the devices begin to go mainstream, brands and retailers in the consumer packaged goods (CPG) market stand to see the biggest lift from beacon programs. That's because CPG products are typically inexpensive items that are purchased frequently. This allows beacons to gather lots of data on shopping habits and use that data to send personalized, location-based messages.

Over the past year, numerous major CPG retailers have rolled out beacons to brick-and-mortar locations, including Rite Aid, Walmart, and Target. The devices are being used in a variety of ways to reach customers at various steps in the path to purchase. While beacons are most commonly associated with pushing coupons and discounts, they are also helpful in the planning stage and for discovering new products through personalized content and advertisements.

In this report we forecast the amount of CPG sales that will be triggered by beacons this year, looks at why CPGs are the best market for implementing beacons, and discusses how CPG retailers are currently using them. We also outline some of the potential barriers to successful beacon engagement for CPG retailers.

8. The Affiliate Marketing Report

Affiliate marketing now drives as many e-commerce orders in the US as email. Both channels currently account for 16% of US e-commerce orders, according to marketing firm Custora. This makes affiliate marketing one of the four largest sources of e-commerce orders, outperforming social commerce and display advertising.

Meanwhile publishers still generate the bulk of their revenue from advertising, but affiliate marketing is growing faster, per our sources. In an effort to balance editorial integrity and revenue needs, publishers are taking a more native approach to affiliate marketing by embedding product links within organic content and it seems to be working. Approximately 15% of the digital media industry's revenue now comes from affiliate marketing.

In this report we examine the changing face of affiliate marketing and take a close look at the key players. We also outline growth opportunities for affiliate marketing and how we see this industry developing.

9. The Shopping Cart Abandonment Report

Lots of consumers click on an item they're interested in online, transfer it to their shopping cart, but in the next moment, get cold feet and close the tab, a common consumer behavior called shopping cart abandonment.

It's a growing problem for e-commerce merchants, who we estimate will lose $4.6 trillion worth of merchandise to abandoned carts in 2016, up from $4.2 trillion in 2013.

Why are merchants losing even more now? Mobile is exacerbating the issue as it rises in prominence as a browsing and purchasing device, because it's easy to search for items on mobile, but entering all of the form fields at the checkout stage is still difficult. Mobile phones represented 46% of global e-commerce traffic in Q2 2016 but just 27% of purchases, according to Criteo, indicating that conversion rates are still low on mobile.

Luckily, a huge chunk of the sales within abandoned shopping carts is recoverable. We estimate $2.75 trillion of abandoned merchandise is recoverable, presenting merchants with a huge opportunity to capture additional sales. To recoup these sales, merchants in part need to examine email retargeting strategies, app development, and the prioritization of establishing repeat customers. Merchants that effectively manage their abandoned shopping carts can bolster sales growth and gain a competitive edge in the e-commerce market.

A new report from BI Intelligence offers updates to our previous report on shopping cart abandonment, including new estimates, trends, and how mobile phones, and even Amazon, are driving up the issue and importance of tackling abandonment.

10. The Customer Service Report

The quality of customer service consumers experience can significantly impact a retailer's bottom line. In fact, 66% of US consumers are willing to spend more money with a company that provides them with excellent customer service, according to Microsoft, while 60% of consumers say they have not completed an intended purchase due to a poor customer service experience.

As consumers increasingly buy products online that they haven't seen in person — leaving room for purchasing errors and buyer's remorse — it's now more important than ever to provide customers with positive customer service experiences.

In this report we look at why customer service matters, which stalwart channels are still top performers, and which new channels have the most potential. We also take a look at why luxury retailers, or even just retailers with high-income consumers, need to be especially attuned to providing solid customer service help.

11. The Click & Collect Report

Click and collect — a fulfillment option that lets shoppers place an online order and pick it up at a store — is thriving in the UK. In fact, over half of UK shoppers report having used this method in the past year, according to a survey from JDA & Centiro conducted in April 2016.

However, the US is far behind on the click and collect trend, with just 27% of consumers using the service. This is largely due to slower growth in mobile commerce, and specifically, the hesitancy shoppers feel about using mobile retail apps.

Retailers in the US can look to the growth drivers in the UK to help drive up their own click and collect sales. Most notably, mobile commerce and adoption by grocery chains are driving shoppers in the UK to use click and collect.

In this report we break down the growth factors behind click and collect in the UK. We discuss the retailers successfully implementing the fulfillment method, examine the of impact consumer behavior, and outline some key steps that US retailers can take to replicate the UK's performance.

12. The Mobile Checkout Report

As millennials and younger consumers become larger parts of the key spending demographic, mobile devices like smartphones and tablets are quickly becoming consumers' primary computing device. But for retailers, that poses a key challenge: Users are spending considerable time shopping on mobile, but making relatively few purchases.

As a result, social networks, payment processors and card networks, and retailers themselves, are all developing solutions that make it easier for users who shop on mobile to begin to buy on mobile, and then channeling funds into products that incentivize users to do so.

By presenting options like on-site buy buttons, single-click checkout, financing services, and unified offline-to-online commerce experiences, various brands are beginning to convert desktop shoppers to mobile. But mobile wallets are beginning to take hold, and if they can successfully combine multiple features that ease barriers to mobile purchasing into one payment platform, they could hold the ticket to retailer success in increasing mobile purchases.

In this report we predict how e-commerce will change and m-commerce will grow, explain why users are shopping, but not buying, on mobile devices, look at how stakeholders are looking to attract these users, and showing how products like mobile wallets could be game-changing in terms of mobile retail.

13. The Mobile Marketing Report

Mobile marketing is getting more spotlight these days. Revenue from mobile advertising accounted for 30% of total ad spend in the first half of 2015, according to the IAB, and it's on track to account for more than one-third in the second half of the year. Despite this growth, mobile ad spend still lags mobile time spent by consumers, indicating that marketers are still toeing the mobile marketing waters.

The technologies and communication mediums inherent in mobile devices offer marketers looking to reach consumers on mobile a wide assortment of options for sending the right message to the right consumer at the right time.

In this report we take a close look at the different mobile marketing tactics being used today, spanning legacy mobile technologies like SMS to emerging capabilities like beacon-aided location-based marketing. We also identify some of the most useful mobile marketing technologies that mobile marketers are putting to good use as parts of larger strategies.

14. The Social Commerce Report

Social media may still only drive a small share of total online retail sales, but its impact is becoming impossible to ignore. Social-driven retail sales and referral traffic are rising at a faster pace than all other online channels.

The top 500 retailers earned $3.3 billion from social shopping in 2014, up 26% from 2013, according to the Internet Retailer's Social Media 500. That is well ahead of the roughly 16% growth rate for the overall e-commerce market in the US.

Now new initiatives from a number of different social networks are making these platforms absolutely essential for retailers that want to drive sales and boost engagement.

In this report from BI Intelligence we analyze social media's role in online retail — whether that's driving direct sales with the use of embedded "Buy" buttons on social media posts, or referring traffic to retailers' websites and apps. We measure the impact social media has on e-commerce by looking at metrics such as conversion rates, average order value, and revenue generated by shares, likes, and tweets. We also outline the latest commerce efforts by leading social networks.

15. The Future of Shipping Report

The parcel delivery industry — a segment of the shipping sector that deals with the transportation of packages to consumers — is booming thanks to e-commerce growth, and players outside the industry want a piece of the pie.

In this report we look at efforts by Amazon, Alibaba, and Walmart to handle more of their own shipping.

16. The Reverse Logistics Report

When products are returned to a merchant, the merchant faces the costly process of either repurposing, reconditioning, or recycling the good.

This multi-billion dollar problem is referred to as reverse logistics and it can cut into retailers profits by 10% to 20% every year.

This problem will be even more exacerbated by the rise of e-commerce, as customers increasingly ship back goods to the retailer, who often might pay for the shipping costs.

In this report we examine reverse logistics and discuss how retailers can take an omnichannel approach to help reduce the costs they bear from returned goods. In particular, the report examines the strategic reasons why retailers should implement a reverse logistics function and discusses the industries that are most at risk.

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NOW WATCH: Ex-Google employees created a vending machine to replace corner stores — and the idea is being mocked all over Twitter

Dashboards seem to be all the rage these days. The pressure to demonstrate value, be more accountable, and improve marketing return on investment is driving marketers to develop dashboards. The VEM marketing performance studies consistently reveal these are two areas where the C-Suite still feels marketing falls short. Aberdeen believes that dashboard in the analytically enlightened organizations enable organizations to make smarter decisions.

Marketing Dashboards Versus Visual Reports

When we start working with a company we ask to see what they are using today to report their performance. What we often see is really just a visual report that is tracking program progress and budget. While this may be useful information at some level it is not a marketing dashboard. A marketing dashboard is typically a multi-layered graphical tool that brings critical information about the performance of the organization in order to facilitate faster and more accurate decision making, alert users to issues or problems, increase visibility into marketing activities, and improve effectiveness and efficiency. Think of your dashboard as consisting of all the necessary dials and gauges that tell you where you are, where you’re going and at what speed, along with indicator lights that illuminate at the first sign of a problem.

A marketing dashboard should help you answer basic questions about the effectiveness and efficiency of your marketing. The questions can be financial, operational or comparative in nature. For example, here are some questions an organization may need its dashboard to help answer.

1. How fast are we growing compared to the market and our major competitors?
2. Are conversion rates along the pipeline improving on a month-to-month or quarter-to-quarter basis?
3. How many qualified sales-ready leads are we producing for the ABC market or segment or region?
4. Is our share of preference growing faster than our competition?
5. Did we reach our annual average order value for XYZ market or segment or region?
6. Did we achieve the rate of product adoption among customer set Z for product A?
7. Is our rate of customer acquisition on track?
8. Is the cost to acquire new customers within acceptable parameters?
9. How are each of the marketing programs performing against their performance target within the cost and time parameters?

Marketing Dashboards Should Communicate and Prove Value

Your dashboard must in some way communicate the impact you are having on the business and your progress against the performance targets. In addition to providing this type of information a dashboard should also serve to alert users that something is amiss. For example, the dashboard should alert you to whether –

• the qualified lead rate or pipeline contribution level is going below an acceptable level.
• the average order value is falling below normal
• discounting is going above the acceptable level
• customer churn is going above the acceptable level
• product/customers is going below normal
• share of preference is declining below the target

Making decisions is dependent on having the right information and alerts. Without these two components it will be difficult to know what to do, for example whether to increase spend on a particular program or kill it or what changes are required in the marketing mix.

We have found that the lack of processes and data and the wrong metrics often hinder a company’s ability to create an effective marketing dashboard. Metrics and key performance indicators (KPIs) are the heart of any dashboard. Knowing which metrics to track depends on your company’s business strategy. So the first step is to define your metrics, KPIs, and performance targets and insure they are linked to the business outcomes. This is essential for measuring performance; otherwise you will not be able to relate your work to your contribution to the business.

To create the dashboard you are going to need to know which systems or databases provide the data, the format of this data, how to extract, clean and analyze the data and where to move it to populate the dashboard. Once you have developed and implemented the dashboard, the challenge is going to be deploying it and using it. Companies that resource their marketing performance measurement and management initiative with the right people and tools and establish a process for collecting the performance data, for tracking and reporting marketing performance tend to be more successful in improving their performance and ROMI.

When we work with companies in the area of marketing performance measurement and management, and they begin to understand the scope of work, some of them ask us? Is a dashboard really important and will the effort be worth it? The Aberdeen study found that companies with a dashboard see significant improvement in marketing information visibility, time to marketing information, and speed to marketing decisions. Their research found a strong correlation between the implementation of a marketing dashboard and return on marketing investment. So the answer to both questions is a resounding Yes.

There are a lot of perks that come from being your own boss—but motivation isn’t always one of them. When you’re a freelancer or a solo entrepreneur, self-discipline is imperative, and in some cases hard to come by. There’s no boss breathing down your neck or holding you accountable; you’re the boss, and it falls to you to stay on track and get things done.

Maybe that’s something you struggle with—but there are steps you can take to keep yourself moving forward. Let me recommend just a few of the strategies I’ve picked up from self-employed leaders over the years—strategies to help you get things accomplished.

Productivity Tips for the Self-Employed

Take care of yourself. First and foremost, being productive does not mean burning the candle from both ends. If you want to stay motivated, you’ve got to keep your energy levels up—and that means getting eight hours of sleep each night, staying hydrated, and getting some physical activity. Build some personal time into each day so that you can take care of you, before you try to take care of everything else.

Make a To-Do list… and a Not-To-Do list. Here’s an ingenious little productivity hack that I think more solopreneurs could benefit from. In the morning, make a list of all the things you need to get done that day—your top goals and priorities. Then, on the other side of the page, make a list of the things that just aren’t as important—the things you’re happy to drop. This prioritization can really help you maintain perspective, and it can bring a sense of structure to the unfolding of your day. Most of all, a Not-to-Do list prevents you from becoming overwhelmed.

Connect with people. You might think it’s easier to be productive when you’re all alone in your office—but sometimes, solitude can be counterproductive. You need to talk with other people, brainstorm together, and bounce ideas off each other. Have a regular appointment with colleagues, mentors, or peers, and make sure you’re recharging those social batteries at least once a week or so. Online chat programs can sometimes be helpful in a pinch.

Schedule some quiet time. By quiet time, what I mean is a few minutes where you don’t have a vibrating phone or a blinking inbox. Plan an hour or two of time every morning where you just get stuff done, and let all your notifications and electronic communications sit for a while. Learning to turn off your devices is a critical step toward self-discipline.

Say no. Working for yourself brings unlimited possibility—but that’s not always a positive thing. If you want to be productive, you’ve got to pick and choose your priorities, rather than stretching yourself too thin and getting nothing done. This takes us right back to the Not-to-Do list, in a way: You’ve got to develop your sense of the things you don’t need to do, you don’t need to take on.

Guard your time. Focus on the things that need to get done. It sounds simple—but as any solo entrepreneur will tell you, it can be tough to master. I hope these tips will help you.

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Overall app usage could be reaching its cap, according to new data from Flurry Analytics.

Although overall usage is still showing signs of growth — it grew 11% year-over-year (YoY) in 2016 — it appears that individual categories are beginning to eat into the share of time users spend in other apps.

Flurry defines app usage as a user opening an app and logging a "session," as well as the amount of time spent in-app, which grew 69% YoY. 

Here are the key takeaways from the report:

• Social and chat apps continue to devour time spent. Time spent in social and messaging apps grew a 394% YoY in 2016. This is likely a result of consumers increasingly using these apps to make video and voice calls. At the same time, slow growth of news and media apps (up 5% YoY) and music, media, and entertainment apps (up 1% YoY), is largely a result of users instead opting for social apps to ingest live-streaming and new content. 
• Capturing daily habits drive app stickiness. Apps that are tied to daily habits and rely on real-time data, such as Business and Finance (up 43% YoY) and Sports (up 25% YoY), are largely immune to growth decay, Flurry notes. Moreover, it's likely that these categories will see even further growth as consumers continue shifting away from TV and PC and toward mobile. 
• Mobile gaming usage is declining, but people are spending more in-app. Time spent in gaming apps declined 4% YoY. Nevertheless, users are becoming increasingly willing to spend money through either in-app purchases or up front; the gaming app industry continues to report strong YoY revenue growth.  

The deceleration of app usage growth doesn't mean that usage will decline, but that users will spend more of their mobile time within certain apps. This is primarily driven by the growing trend in apps' sharing functionality. For example, popular Chinese chat app WeChat recently unveiled Mini Programs, which supports mini app experiences from within the chat app interface, without needing to download and launch a separate app. And Apple opened up iMessage to developers, enabling them to add small, stripped-down versions of their apps within conversations with friends.

App developers long considered the "pay once and play" model — in which users pay up front an app and aren't prompted to make in-app purchases — the best way to generate revenue. But as more "free-to-download" apps entered the market, users increasingly opted for these experiences. These apps offer microtransactions for in-app goods and services, and in-app ads.

As the app ecosystem expands further, it will become increasingly challenging for developers to compete in a crowded market. Overall, global gross app revenue will double to reach $102 billion by 2020, according to recent projections by App Annie. As a result, app monetization strategies need to shift at least as quickly as consumer trends and preferences in order for developers to capture a piece of this growing market.

Laurie Beaver, research analyst for BI Intelligence, Business Insider's premium research service, has compiled a detailed report on app monetization that explores the top app monetization strategies under user- and advertising-paid approaches, and the growing combination of both. We will also look at emerging trends that could help developers navigate the fiercely competitive app ecosystem, and address the potential barriers that developers will have to overcome to reap the benefits of the multi-billion dollar market.

Here are some of the key takeaways: 

• The app ecosystem is expanding quickly, and it's becoming increasingly challenging for app developers to compete in a crowded market. 
• To capture a piece of the growing market, app developers must adapt their strategies at least as quickly as consumer trends and preferences change. 
• Developers can choose a user-paid or an advertising-paid approach to monetizing their apps. Different monetization strategies work best with different apps.
• There are a number of widespread challenges that developers must contend with both before and after they enter the app market.  

In full, the report:

• Provides key factors driving the expected growth of global app revenue
• Evaluates the top app monetization strategies
• Looks at emerging trends to help developers navigate the app ecosystem
• Explains the challenges that developers face to compete in the app market
• And much more

Interested in getting the full report? Here are two ways to access it:

1. Subscribe to an All-Access pass to BI Intelligence and gain immediate access to this report and over 100 other expertly researched reports. As an added bonus, you'll also gain access to all future reports and daily newsletters to ensure you stay ahead of the curve and benefit personally and professionally. » START A MEMBERSHIP
2. Purchase & download the full report from our research store. » Purchase & Download Now

Join the conversation about this story »

Learning needs are influenced by the selling environment. The current sales environment is demanding, filled with more informed buyers who expect increasing amounts of responsiveness and attention. Sellers need to upskill to meet the needs of their clients and ensure they are generating revenue for their companies.

In a recent interview with Chief Learning Officer Magazine, Richardson’s new CMO, Andrea Grodnitzky, took a moment to provide her insights into the trends that are likely to influence the learning needs of sales organizations in 2017.

Chief among these insights was a need for solutions that respect the time constraints sales professionals constantly face by finding innovative solutions that are as effective as they are convenient. Click here to learn more about 2017 trends in learning and development for sales organizations.

The post What Trends Are Shaping Sales Organizations’ Learning Needs? appeared first on Richardson Sales Training and Enablement Blog.

In 1985, Coca-Cola held the number one position in the cola industry. But Pepsi was gaining popularity -- and Coca-Cola’s team worried their market share might soon slip away.

They decided to make a bold move. On April 23 of that year, Coca-Cola released a brand-new version of their eponymous drink: “New Coke.” It was the first time the company had altered its formula in 99 years.

Market research and consumer taste tests indicated the public would love New Coke.

However, it went down as one of the biggest disasters in marketing history. Hundreds of people called the consumer help line each day to complain about the new formula. Die-hard fans launched protest campaigns. Consumers stockpiled the “old” Coke.

Less than three months later, Coca-Cola brought back the previous version.

As this example shows, buyers don’t automatically equate “new” with “better.”

According to Harvard Business School professor John Gourville, 40% to 90% of new products fail depending on the product category. Innovative companies don’t typically fare well either: Almost five in 10 “first mover” companies (or, those who defined new product categories) have failed.

Knowing these statistics, you may not want to use “cutting-edge,” “groundbreaking,” “innovative,” or “revolutionary” to describe your products or use novelty to generate excitement in buyers.

Why Consumers Dislike “New”

Switching from an outdated product to an up-to-date alternative might seem like an obvious choice, since the new version typically comes with fewer issues or offers more features.

But here’s where the endowment effect comes into play. This psychological bias leads people to place greater value on the benefits they currently have than ones they don’t, even if their current benefits are objectively worse.

In other words, they irrationally prefer their current product over any new ones.

“Losses have a far greater impact on people than similarly-sized gains,” Gourville says. “Studies show that most people will not accept a bet in which there is a 50% chance of winning $100 and a 50% chance of losing $100. The gains from the wager must outweigh the losses by a factor of between two and three before most people find such a bet attractive.”

Lastly, buyers are put off by the effort required to change products. The more complex the solution, the more time and labor it’ll require to adjust.

How to Identify Your Prospect’s Motivators

This doesn’t mean you should never advertise your product’s innovation. Some prospects are far less resistant to novelty than others. You’ve likely worked with buyers who are motivated by acquiring the latest and greatest product so they can gain an edge on their competition or dramatically increase their ability to serve customers.

How can you tell which type you’re talking to?

A recent series of studies published in the Journal of Consumer Psychology suggests the greater a person’s desire for control, the less attracted they’ll be to “new” products.

In one experiment, the researchers created four pairs of potato chip flavors. Each pair included one classic flavor and one experimental one (for example, “Traditional Wavy Ranch” and “New West Coast Truffle Fries.”)

Participants chose which of the two flavors in each pair they would buy. The new flavors were less popular among participants whose desire for control had been experimentally increased.

“This shows that desire for control can act as a barrier to new product acceptance,” the researchers explain.

Pay attention to how many decisions your prospect makes and how many they let you make. For instance, do they typically propose a meeting time, or do they wait for you to suggest a few options? Do they usually weigh in on the agenda, or are they content to hand the reins to you? Do they largely drive the buying process, or are you coaching them through it?

You can also infer their aversion to newness from the way they describe their own product and company. If they’re excited about a new strategy, product launch, strategic shift, recent executive hire, and so on, there’s a strong chance novelty excites them.

But if they talk about their organization’s rock-solid reputation, longevity, dependability, and best-in-class support, you’re probably speaking with a risk-averse prospect.

The buyer’s recent purchases offer clues as well. Ask, “What’s the last product you bought [in this category, of this size, for this goal]?” Follow up with, “Why did you buy that?”

Their answer will indicate whether they want to be as current as possible or stick to solutions they’re already familiar with.

How to Tweak Your Messaging

Once you’ve identified the buyer’s personality, adapt your messaging as needed.

Let’s say you’re selling a predictive analytics solution. If you’re working with a prospect who finds novelty appealing, you might say, “Our tool will transform your sales and marketing strategy. You’ll be able to predict your audience’s behavior with uncanny accuracy.”

However, if you’re working with a risk-averse prospect, you’d say instead, “Our tool helps you avoid major sales and marketing blunders by giving you near-perfect predictions of what they’ll like and how they’ll respond.”

Here are a few more examples:

Version #1: “Traditional leadership training programs are ineffective. Companies who use our unique approach promote internally three times more often than average.”

Version #2: “It’s notoriously hard to measure the results of leadership training. Our package comes with quarterly surveys and custom analysis, so you’ll always know the ROI of your investment.”

Version #1: “Become a leader in customer satisfaction by reinventing the standard in-store experience.”

Version #2: “Take control of your customer’s in-store experience.”

Don’t let your message fall on deaf ears. To pique your prospect’s interest -- and ultimately, close the deal -- you must identify their personality type and craft your pitch accordingly.

Do you know a top sales rep who is a hard closer and exceeds her number every month? 

I bet you do -- lots of people do. 

I speak 50 times a year around the world about inbound marketing and sales -- the modern way to connect with prospects and give them control. Inbound empowers marketers and salespeople to engage prospects with a high level of knowledge and respect, provide the right resources when buyers have questions, and start business relationships, not focus on closing deals. I feel lucky to be able to help my audiences learn a new way of doing things and see real business results.

In these speaking sessions, I typically ask the audience, "Does anyone know a hard closer?"

First, I see people wince as the image of a hard-closing salesperson pops into their mind. But after a few seconds, I usually see a few cautious head nods. Then the hands start going up -- first just a handful, but eventually many people acknowledge that the old-school, aggressive salesperson still exists.

I always ask the follow up question, "Is that the way you want to buy?"

Without fail, people always answer emphatically -- no.

I also ask if interacting with a pushy salesperson would negatively influence their purchasing decision.

The answer is always the same -- yes. (Depending on what part of the country I'm in, sometimes I'll get a "Hell yes!")

Clearly, none of us want to deal with pushy salespeople and hard closing tactics, but they still exist.

There is a cost associated with a hard closing process, and in this age of open communication it also comes with a huge risk.

Sales has changed. It's about helping, not pushing and closing on the salesperson's timeline.

It's about education, not personality.

It's about providing accurate information and timely responses, not picking up lunch checks.

It's about honesty and truthfulness, not deception or tricks.

It's about building relationships, not closing deals.

Not convinced? We live in a new era of sales. Even if you don't care about doing the right thing by your customers (which you should), I hope you'll care enough about your sales success and your paycheck to update the legacy sales techniques you might still be relying on.

Why Always Be Closing Doesn't Work Anymore

1) Hard closing leads to short-term, unsustainable wins.

You might win the first deal through hard closing (but you'll probably win less and less often). But if you're aggressive and pushy, you probably won't get the second deal, the upgrade, or the add on, and you definitely won't win the long-term business relationship.

Buyers have long memories, both good and bad. As they move from one company to another, they bring their ideas, experiences, opinions, recommendations, and warnings with them. If you burn one relationship, it can have dire future consequences across multiple accounts.

2) Buyers talk to each other.

Customers compare notes all the time in all stages of the sales process.

Salespeople used to give out references at the end of the sales process when clients were in the final stages of decision. Now we give them out at the beginning, middle, end and even after the purchase. Why?

Your customers are your best salespeople. They talk about what is vital to them -- including the sales process and how the salesperson treated them.

A legacy sales person gets crushed in this environment. "Love the product, hated my salesperson" is not a review you want attached to your name. Ever.

When you take a buyer-centric approach to sales, you'll get ultra-positive reviews. And that'll bring you more business.

3) Always Be Closing ruins your personal reputation.

At HubSpot, we get rave reviews all the time. Our prospects actually take time to write our CEO love letters about how the inbound sales process is different than a traditional push. They say our salespeople are helpful, not brash; inquisitive, not condescending; that they listen, rather than tell.

Don't believe me? See for yourself.

These reviews get published on social media, on review sites, in testimonials, and are sent to individual members of the HubSpot team. In the age of flattening technological capability (there are fewer and fewer products out there that are the only ones that can complete a certain task), the appeal of doing business with a company that delivers a great customer experience is a huge competitive advantage.

4) You could be ruining your brand.

A great product with a poorly run sales process could survive, even thrive, in the 1980s because the default mindset then was "buyer beware." Today, buyers have so many options available to them that things are the exact opposite -- it's seller beware. If you or your salespeople slam deals through, you'll live with the consequences on Quora, LinkedIn, review sites like Yelp, Angie's List, and G2Crowd, and in your customer net promoter score.

Good luck to the "hard closers" in 2017: Your days are numbered.

Selling products by wheeling and dealing and pushing features belongs back in 2002. Starting a long-term relationship is the new close. We love new business. We love current business even more. Congratulations to those of you practicing inbound sales -- you have a significant competitive advantage.

In Ottawa this past June, the leaders of Canada, the U.S. and Mexico pledged to work together to reduce methane emissions from the oil and gas industry between 40% and 45% by 2025. It’s doubtful president-elect Donald Trump will honour the commitment; on the campaign trail, he raised the possibility of dismantling America’s Environmental Protection Agency altogether. Regardless, the next 10 years look to be auspicious for companies operating in the methane-mitigation space. Why? From a cost-benefit perspective, methane is the easiest target among the greenhouse gases (GHGs). And even in the absence of a continental regulatory imperative, properly disposing of waste gas is, increasingly, just good business.

In their capacity to trap heat in the atmosphere, not all GHGs are created equal. Methane—a compound made up of one carbon atom bonded to four of hydrogen—is, according to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, 25 times as potent as carbon dioxide. A growing chorus within the climate science community considers this an understatement, because it attempts to measure methane’s relative potency over 100 years. Methane, in fact, tends to break down in the atmosphere over 10 to 20 years, leaving CO2 in its place. Within its short active lifetime, methane is actually 84 times as harmful as CO2.

“That number continues to go up the more scientists learn,” says Audrey Mascarenhas, president and CEO of Calgary-based Questor Technology Inc. Helping industrial clients safely burn methane and other waste gases—the main byproducts being CO2 and water—has been the focus of Questor’s business since 1994. The firm uses a patented process to combust 99.99% of methane from an oil or gas well, landfill or biodigester.

Much of Questor’s business these days comes from Colorado, which has North America’s most stringent air quality rules for oil and gas producers. There, wells and communities are often in close proximity, and pushback from locals has all but banned the practices of flaring (burning atop a standing pipe) and venting waste gas straight into the atmosphere.

“If you look at the money spent engaging the public and landowners, this is an easy tool to create win-wins,” Mascarenhas says of Questor’s incinerators. Having an effective waste-gas disposal system makes it faster and easier for a producer to get approval to drill its next well. “All of a sudden, it’s not just a cost,” she says.

The methane opportunity is attracting companies from other sectors, too. Berg Chilling Systems is a Toronto manufacturer of thermal control structures. In 2012, it was introduced to GTUIT, a Montana company developing its own waste gas technology, which strips out heavy hydrocarbons like butane and propane, and leaves a dry residue gas. This gas, composed mostly of methane, can be used as a fuel for power generation (replacing diesel generators), compressed or sold into the natural gas grid. The challenge GTUIT was having, says Berg president and owner Don Berggren, was that the gas flow out of the wells was wildly inconsistent. “We figured out a way to have the refrigeration equipment absorb the ebbs and flows,” Berggren says. The two companies now have a joint marketing agreement and 30 units operating in the Bakken oilfield of North Dakota and Montana. In addition to well sites, Berggren says, “we’re seeing more and more midstream applications”—for example, conditioning the fuel for use in a power plant or local gas distribution networks.

The collapse of oil prices interrupted the growth of this part of Berg’s business, but “it’s coming back,” Berggren says. By replacing diesel for on-site power generation and enabling secondary revenue streams, he says, “we can provide a working solution that will improve operating efficiency.”

Should a three-nation flaring-reduction standard come to pass, it would just make what is already cost-effective a must-have for the entire industry. Mascarenhas estimates that applying her company’s technology to the methane that’s currently vented or flared could reduce Alberta’s GHG emissions by 60 megatonnes—35% of Canada’s 2020 reduction goal—at a cost of less than $1.70 per tonne. Trump may pass on that opportunity, but others will not.

Oil firms aren’t the only methane emitters—just the biggest, composing 33% of all human-caused output. Also guilty? Livestock farmers, landfill operators and biomass incinerators.

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MORE ABOUT NATURAL GAS:

• How Seven Generations Energy keeps growing in an era of low gas prices
• Environmental groups welcome federal methane reduction target for oil and gas
• Why natural gas is key to lowering Canada’s carbon footprint
• Meet Canada’s only major energy stock showing a one-year gain
• US says Colorado has 40 times more natural gas than thought

The post Why methane is the hottest thing in the energy industry right now appeared first on Canadian Business - Your Source For Business News.

“Hard decisions are only hard when you’re in the process of making them.”
– Debbie Millman

For some of you, this may be most important podcast episode you ever listen to. I don’t say that lightly.

It has nothing to do with me and everything to do with my guest, who walks us through gripping stories, tactical details, humor, pain, and emotional redemption. We cover some sensitive and extremely important ground.  Thank you, Debbie.

Graphic Design USA has named Debbie Millman (@debbiemillman) “one of the most influential designers working today.” She is also the founder and host of Design Matters, the world’s first and longest-running podcast about design, where she’s interviewed nearly 300 design luminaries and cultural commentators including Massimo Vignelli and Milton Glaser.

Debbie’s done it all. Her artwork has been exhibited around the world. She’s designed everything from wrapping paper to beach towels, greeting cards to playing cards, notebooks to t-shirts, and Star Wars merchandise to global Burger King rebrands.

Debbie is the President Emeritus of AIGA (one of only five women to hold the position in the organization’s one-hundred-year history), the editorial and creative director of Print magazine, and the author of six books.  In 2009, Debbie co-founded (with Steven Heller) the world’s first masters program in branding at the School of Visual Arts in New York City, which has received international acclaim.

We cover a lot in this discussion: how to recover from rejection, how to overcome personal crises of faith, class exercises from her most impactful mentors, and much more.

Please enjoy (and reflect on) this wide-ranging conversation with Debbie Millman…

• Listen to it on iTunes.
• Stream by clicking here.
• Download as an MP3 by right-clicking here and choosing “save as.”

Want to hear another episode with an influential podcaster? — Listen to my interview with Stephen J. Dubner. In this episode, we discuss how to grow a podcast, the President’s actual influence over the economy, how virtual reality might affect education, and much, much more (stream below or right-click here to download):

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This podcast is brought to you by FreshBooks. FreshBooks is the #1 cloud bookkeeping software, which is used by a ton of the start-ups I advise and many of the contractors I work with. It is the easiest way to send invoices, get paid, track your time, and track your clients.

FreshBooks tells you when your clients have viewed your invoices, helps you customize your invoices, track your hours, automatically organize your receipts, have late payment reminders sent automatically and much more.

Right now you can get a free month of complete and unrestricted use. You do not need a credit card for the trial. To claim your free month and see how the brand new Freshbooks can change your business, go to FreshBooks.com/Tim and enter “Tim” in the “how did you hear about us” section.

This podcast is also brought to you by Wealthfront. Wealthfront is a massively disruptive (in a good way) set-it-and-forget-it investing service, led by technologists from places like Apple and world-famous investors. It has exploded in popularity in the last two years and now has more than $4B under management. In fact, some of my good investor friends in Silicon Valley have millions of their own money in Wealthfront. Why? Because you can get services previously limited to the ultra-wealthy and only pay pennies on the dollar for them, and it’s all through smarter software instead of retail locations and bloated sales teams.

Check out wealthfront.com/tim, take their risk assessment quiz, which only takes 2-5 minutes, and they’ll show you — for free — exactly the portfolio they’d put you in. If you want to just take their advice and do it yourself, you can. Or, as I would, you can set it and forget it. Well worth a few minutes: wealthfront.com/tim.

QUESTION(S) OF THE DAY: What was your favorite quote or lesson from this episode? Please let me know in the comments.

Scroll below for links and show notes…

Selected Links from the Episode

• Connect with Debbie Millman:

Twitter | Website | Facebook | Instagram | Design Matters Podcast

• AIGA (Founded in 1914 as the American Institute of Graphic Arts)
• The Masters in Branding program at the School of Visual Arts
• Print magazine
• Books by Debbie Millman
• See Debbie’s childhood drawing that predicted her future in this interview with The Great Discontent.
• The Complete Gidget Collection
• Working on the UAlbany student newspaper is where Debbie was bitten by the design bug.
• Hanlon’s razor: “Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity.”
• Nantucket Nectars
• Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs
• The 4-Hour Workweek: Escape 9-5, Live Anywhere, and Join the New Rich by Timothy Ferriss
• NO MORE | Joyful Heart Foundation
• HOT 97 | Where Hip Hop Lives
• Sterling Brands
• Eleven Madison Park Restaurant
• 365 | Design Effectiveness Competition
• AIGA: Sold Out — the Speak Up open letter by Felix Sockwell and its follow up, Is the Dark Side Prevailing?
• Landor
• Stop Being Sheep (PDF)
• Stop Stealing Sheep & Find Out How Type Works by Erik Spiekermann and E.M. Ginger
• Debbie in Ironic Chef garb
• How to Think Like a Great Graphic Designer by Debbie Millman
• Wally Olins: The Brand Handbook
• This is Historic Times by M. Kingsley & Debbie Millman, Speak Up
• VoiceAmerica
• Design Observer
• Al Pacino in The Godfather: Part III
• Don’t know a lot about design? Debbie recommends checking out her interviews with Chris Ware, Amanda Palmer, Alain de Botton, Krista Tippett, Nico Muhly, and…Tim Ferriss. (Thanks!)

Show Notes

• As someone who has such a diverse tapestry of backgrounds, how does Debbie describe what she does to someone she meets for the first time? [07:14]
• How a rediscovered childhood drawing predicted Debbie’s future. [09:13]
• Debbie never set out to become a designer. [14:47]
• On being thwarted by (and recovering from) initial rejection. [21:59]
• What would Debbie say to her college self after her first big rejection? [26:38]
• Empathy for those who reject us vs. feeling slighted by them. [30:53]
• How did a lifelong desire to live in Manhattan figure into Debbie’s pursuit of happiness and influence what she does today? [36:54]
• Debbie talks frankly about a history of abuse, and how it guided her desire for self-sufficiency and her work with NO MORE and the Joyful Heart Foundation. [44:34]
• On coping with the aftermath of abuse and feeling profoundly alone because the ordeal seems “so surreal, and unnatural, and punishing.” [51:18]
• Debbie tells us what it was like to be called a “corporate clown” and a “she-devil.” [57:57]
• The lowest point becomes the catalyst: the journey from she-devil to godmother. [1:14:21]
• Brochures can change the world. [1:18:07]
• The origins of Debbie’s Design Matters podcast, and how it’s changed over the course of twelve years. [1:24:08]
• Debbie explains the impact of Milton Glaser on the world of design and her life. [1:28:03]
• Debbie shares “Your Ten-Year Plan for a Remarkable Life” exercise she modified from Milton Glaser and teaches in her classes. [1:33:51]
• “Hard decisions are only hard when you’re in the process of making them.” [1:40:00]
• Design Matters episodes Debbie recommends for people who might not know much about design. [1:49:50]

People Mentioned

• Massimo Vignelli
• Milton Glaser
• Steven Heller
• Chris Sacca
• David Bowie
• Rosalind Russell
• Robert Edelstein
• Scarlett O’Hara
• Mariska Hargitay
• Maile Zambuto
• Joe Biden
• Felix Sockwell
• Dave Weinberger
• Walter Landor
• Armin Vit
• Erik Spiekermann
• Bryony Gomez-Palacio
• Michael Bierut
• Paul Archer
• Joyce Rutter Kaye
• Mark Kingsley
• Bill Drenttel
• Molly
• Simon Williams
• Austin McGhie
• Al Pacino
• Dani Shapiro
• Naval Ravikant
• Chris Ware
• Amanda Palmer
• Alain de Botton
• Krista Tippett
• Nico Muhly

YouTube remains one of the most popular websites in the world, which makes sense. Just about every video clip that becomes viral — whether a music video, comedy sketch, or tutorial — finds its way onto YouTube eventually. Just how popular is the site? As of December 2016, 44 videos had accumulated more than one billion views, and four had surpassed two billion — who doesn’t remember Psy’s “Gangnam Style”? While the site remains a go-to staple for quickly viewing video clips, there are a number of other things you can do with it. Here are 10 YouTube hacks that...

Read the full article: 10 More Cool Things You Can Do With YouTube Videos

An in-depth case study from our work with Conversion Rate Experts, including before and after images of winning A/B tests

It's fair to say we talk a lot about how you can improve your digital marketing results here at SmartInsights. It's kind of our thing. I like to think nobody does it better. But those who talk the talk should also be made to walk the walk, else how else do they know their advice is actually relevant and applicable to real business?

Since we're always talking about the need to optimize across the whole customer journey and constantly test messaging to boost your conversion rate, we worked with Conversion Rate Experts to do exactly this. We wanted to share what we did and the changes we made with you so you can make similar improvements to your own sites which can deliver big boosts to your CRO.

Start out with deep research

Stripped down to its basics, conversion rate optimization (CRO) is simple. You just need to be able to answer these two questions:

1. Why aren’t my visitors converting?
2. What should I do about it?

The mistake most businesses make is to skip straight to question 2. They start guessing what to do to increase their conversion rate, and in our experience this usually ends in failure.

Successful businesses know that taking a visitor-centric approach is key to growing fast. We spent lots of time conducting in-depth analyses to get inside the heads of their visitors. We used the following techniques:

• We became the customer. Not just going through the funnel (though we did that, too—and recorded it), but living the entire customer journey.
• We reviewed data that had already been collected—from existing feedback mechanisms, customer service teams and previous customer surveys.
• We interviewed real visitors to the website, recruited using a popup.
• We recruited qualified prospects, and asked them to go through the funnel as part of a usability testing programme.
• We used tree testing to analyse the navigation and information architecture on the website.
• We studied visitor behaviour, using analytics, heatmaps and session recording tools.
• We designed a series of surveys and polls to gather data on visitors and customers. We also used them to collect testimonials that we could use on the website.

Long pages providing detailed information to the customer beat simple landing pages

We designed a new page that visitors would see before the pricing. It presented the offer and included all the key appeals and objections we had identified during our research.

Here it is, alongside the original page. In an A/B test it generated 157% more paid memberships:

Why did this approach work?

Reasons it won #1: We entered the conversation already happening in the prospects’ heads

Before you can sell something, you need to get your prospect’s attention. You need to interrupt them—make them sit up and take notice.

One of the most effective ways to do this is to enter the conversation already going on in their head. If you can get your visitors nodding along in agreement, not only have you got their attention, you’ve subtly positioned yourself as being on their side. That’s a powerful position to be in.

Reasons it won #2: We used anchoring to address price objections

Good and bad, there’s a lot of free advice available on digital marketing. Smart Insights’ prospects know this, and so had strong objections to paying for the service.

So how do we compete on price with these sites?

Answer: we don’t. Instead, we positioned ourselves as the online equivalent of getting a personal consultation from the world’s best digital marketing experts.

Then, we put a value on this and used it as the price anchor. Compare the price of a Smart Insights subscription to the cost of having Dave and the team visit you in your office, and suddenly it becomes extremely low.

Reasons it won #3: Mention every valuable benefit of membership

If you’re close to a product or service, it’s easy to overlook—or take for granted—the value it provides.

When we talk to customers, they often highlight features or benefits they love that weren’t communicated on the website—and it’s no surprise that sales usually increase when we explicitly mention these features or benefits.

That’s exactly what happened with Smart Insights. Members get a lot of great stuff, and when we asked them what they liked best we received loads of different answers.

This made us excited, so we made a list of all the stuff that you get as a member, and how it can help you. Then we added the list to the new landing page:

A new navigation increased paid memberships by 75%

A good navigation should reflect how your visitors expect to find things, so someone new to your site can easily find the information they need.

Supermarkets are experts at navigation. They organize complex information in a way that means you can walk into a huge building for the first time and find a single product among hundreds of thousands—usually in seconds. (Unless you’re looking for eggs—we can never find those.)

When we conducted usability tests on the Smart Insights website, we identified a group of visitors for whom the information architecture didn’t reflect their mental model.

What those visitors didn’t tell us was how to fix it. So we used tree-testing to analyse the routes prospects were taking through the navigation to solve common problems, and then came up with an optimized version to test against the control.

Never turn a blind eye to what your visitors are telling you. The original navigation was based on the industry standard, so it was a bold decision to test something different. Thanks to this willingness to fly in the face of convention, memberships increased by 75%.

Tools we used

Here are just a few of the tools we used on this project:

• For on-page surveys, we used Hotjar and FluidSurveys.
• For A/B-tests, we used Convert.
• For usability testing, we used UserTesting.
• For customer surveys, we used SurveyGizmo.

For tree-testing, we used Treejack.

Now you know the tricks and tools used to conduct rigorous A/B testing and CRO you can get started on your own CRO projects. We'd like to say a massive thanks to Conversion Rate Experts, who's in-depth research, attention to detail and novel thinking were invaluable throughout the project. They really are industry leaders in what they do.

TORONTO _ The maker of Canada’s most iconic hat wants to reintroduce itself.

No longer content with solely being known as the purveyor of your grandfather’s favourite wide-brimmed beige chapeau, the chief executive of Tilley Endurables says the company is undergoing a much-needed facelift.

This year, Tilley, which still manufactures all its products in Canada except for socks, plans on expanding its new winter toque and baseball cap lines globally.

CEO Andrew Prendergast says the company is proud its signature sailing hat is a top pick among Gulf War soldiers and British royalty but it’s critical for it to get in favour with new, younger customers.

“It is impossible to go out and tell consumers you’re cool or you’re relevant,” he said during a recent interview at Tilley’s headquarters in Toronto. “You can’t do it.”

Prendergast says success will instead come by taking the authenticity and the innovation in the brand and getting it in the hands of more 35-year-old outdoor enthusiasts.

“They’ll be able to see the quality, craftsmanship that goes into the product, the design elements that go into the product. We’ll earn their trust by making the best.”

In addition to baseball caps, Tilley’s new styles include merino wool beanies, faux fur toques with interchangeable pompoms and newsboy caps, which are priced between $50 to $70. They’ve all been exclusively available in Canada in a limited supply since the fall.

Prendergast believes consumers will pay for the Tilley brand if they know they are getting a well-made, high quality hat that carries a lifetime warranty. Per the company’s policy, customers who lose their hats within two years of purchase can have them replaced at a 50 per cent discount.

The company’s launch of their line of baseball caps has been one of its most controversial moves, Prendergast says. Some long-time employees argued it couldn’t be defined as a Tilley hat since it doesn’t have a full brim, a factor the company addressed by offering the option of a cape for those who want the full coverage.

Tilley’s products are currently sold online and in 7,000 stores in Canada, the U.S., the U.K., the European Union, Australia, Japan, Singapore and Taiwan.

Prendergast says the company is looking at entering as many as three more markets this year.

“We want to broaden our approach around the world with a larger distribution model, more digital channels,” he said.

“Most people think of Tilley as one hat. Most people used to think of Chuck Taylor (shoes) as Converse. I’m not suggesting that this (hat) is going to take the rock ‘n’ roll community by storm as Chuck Taylor has, but there is tremendous value in having such an iconic silhouette that exists at the top of the price brand that is universally accepted as the No. 1 hat in the category.”

Prendergast has been in the top job for a little over a year after Tilley was acquired by Re:Capital, a subsidiary of U.K.-based private Hilco Capital, which specializes in investing in distressed companies.

Wendy Evans, a retail consultant at Evans & Company, said Tilley is making the right move in expanding its product line and making items that are more fashion-conscious.

“They can still provide a long-lived product that is not fashion-forward but is updated and somewhat more on trend,” she said. “People are going to buy Tilley products because they last a long time. They don’t want to have anything too fashion-forward because it’ll go out of style.”

Retail analyst Jim Danahy says there is a market for high-end toques and baseball caps. The trick will be if these hats are functional but stylish enough to appeal to all ages.

“The question will be, ‘Have they chosen items relative to a younger generation that can transcend perceptions that they’re a brand for baby boomers?”’ said Danahy, who is the CEO of retail advisory firm Customer Lab.

Company founder Alex Tilley invented the sailing hat that would become their trademark product in the 1980s after he failed to find one that wouldn’t blow off his head and wouldn’t sink if it fell overboard.

Throughout the years, the hat has been loved by the likes of Prince Philip, famed explorer Sir Edmund Hillary and Canadian soldiers during the Gulf War, who sometimes dyed the light coloured hat with coffee to make it more camouflaged.

Legend has it the hat’s material is so tough that it had been eaten by an elephant three times and survived its digestive tract only to be worn once again.

“The next septuagenarian Tilley enthusiast exists out there,” said Prendergast. “The DNA that we have in the business and in our product is sufficient to capture their imagination.”

The post Tilley Endurables wants to woo younger customers with new toques, baseball caps ( appeared first on Canadian Business - Your Source For Business News.

Not long ago, I spoke with a frustrated CEO. His company was doing OK, but somehow not meeting his expectations .

Like many companies, thee customers needs were changing quite profoundly. They were rapidly shifting their solution offerings to match customer needs and to compete. They were investing in new areas, had launched some products to expand the value they could bring to their target customers. But the product sales weren’t taking off as he had expected.

The CEO felt that shifting focus to many of the new products was critical to their future success. He believed, over time, reliance on their traditional product sets would not drive the expected growth, even worse, customer demand for these products would decline.

We talked about sales performance. Sales performance was OK, they were meeting their numbers, but the CEO was still concerned about what was happening.

The VP of Sales and I started analyzing sales performance. We noticed a number of things:

1. Traditional products dominated sales. While the sales people had been well trained and were well supported on the new products, they weren’t selling them. They were selling the things that had made them successful in the past.
2. Sales to the customers that were generating 75% of their revenue (in this case about 15 percent of their customers generated 75% of their revenue) were flattening, in many market segments there was actually a decline.
3. Also new product sales to those major customers was virtually non existent.
4. New customer acquisition, particularly in the segments where some of the new products should have been the strongest, was virtually non existent.
5. While sales people were making their numbers, the qualitative feedback was that it was getting tougher and tougher.

We scratched our heads wondering what was going on. The new products and some of the new market segments represented the future for the company. These would drive the growth engine, particularly as some of the traditional products went into decline. The VP of Sales had put together strong sales enablement, training and support programs to help sales people become successful in selling these new products, but it wasn’t happening. Sales Management constantly talked about new customer acquisition, particularly in a couple of the segments facing the greatest declines, but it just wasn’t happening.

As I talked to sales people, I saw they were struggling. All of them were saying that it was becoming harder and harder to make their numbers. I asked about the new products and new customer acquisition. The reaction was very predictable.

As the sales people faced increasing difficulty in making their numbers, their natural reaction was to double down on the things they had always done in the past. As it became tougher to succeed, they focused on doing more of what had made them successful in the past.

The problem was, it was becoming harder and harder to be successful.

They were scraping by just making their numbers.

The VP of Sales and I looked at their metrics. The key metric was quota–a revenue target.

We needed to radically change the behaviors of the sales people! If they kept doing what they had always done, pretty soon they would fail. As much as the VP had tried to get the sales people to shift their behaviors through training and some sales contests, they weren’t changing as quickly as they needed to.

We decided to change the sales/performance management metrics. (Well duggh, people do what they are measured to do)

Revenue was still a key driver, but sales people had a couple of other metrics. Their performance would be evaluated by the mix of that revenue. That is, a certain percent of the revenue had to come from the new products. Another percent of the revenue had to come from new customer acquisition.

Revenue was no longer the key metric, the “Right” revenue was critical. We could have changed the comp plan a little to support this, in this case we didn’t–the company had a strong performance management culture, so simply changing the metrics was what was needed to shift behaviors.

Many of you probably thought I was describing your company–I see so many companies facing the same thing.

It’s critical that we align our sales performance goals and metrics with the strategies of our company. If we want to drive changes in focus and behaviors, we have to change the metrics. We have to align our metrics with the strategies and goals of the company.

It’s human nature to continue to do what has caused you to be successful in the past. It’s human nature, when things get tough, to double down on those efforts.

If we want to drive rapid behavioral change with our sales teams, we have to have metrics that are aligned with the changes we want to see–along with the training, programs and support to help people be successful.

People do what they are measured to do. We just have to make sure we are measuring the right things!

It’s 2017 and IDC sees a future where CXOs are going to be more central than ever to critical technology buying decisions.

According to IDC FutureScape: Worldwide IT Industry 2017 Predictions:

Over the next three to four years, DX [digital transformation] efforts will no longer be “projects,” “initiatives,” or “special business units”…every (growing) enterprise — no matter its age or industry — will become a “digital native” in the way its executives and employees think and how they operate…Competing and thriving in the DX economy will demand improvements in performance in all aspects of the enterprise, including leadership, revenue growth, customer engagement, operational efficiency, and workforce agility.

IDC adds that as a result of this rapid and dramatic shift:

• 33% of CEOs will have technology leadership experience
• Enterprises with advanced DX maturity will execute 50% reductions in management layers

What does this mean for technology vendors targeting the enterprise?

It means that CXO conversations are necessary, inevitable, and critical. With less middle management and the CEOs becoming de-facto “Chief Transformation Officers” as Salesforce.com CEO Marc Benioff predicted in 2016, technology investments will have a higher profile than ever.

If your sales organization is not prepared to sell into the C-Suite, you might be shaking in your shoes right about now. All that talk about needing to have “business conversations” with customers? It’s no longer a “nice to do” it’s a “must do.”

With this in mind, we offer some fundamental rules of thumb when it comes to planning a business conversation with a CXO or LOB leader. These come straight from a corporate COO, who says that he gives a vendor less than five minutes to establish relevance and credibility. In those five minutes, he looks for three things:

1. They did their homework on him, his company, and his business initiatives.

2. They speak his language and have an idea that can support one of his business initiatives.

3. They have monetized the value of what they are proposing.

If the sales rep effectively communicates these three things in the first few minutes of the meeting, they’ve got his ear. If they don’t, he said, the meeting gets cut short and won’t get a second chance. Time is the most valuable thing he has, he said, so he’s not going to waste it with someone who doesn’t “speak the same language.”

The Winning Formula

What then, is the right formula for mapping out your five-minute business conversation?

1. Start With Insight: Show you understand their business and the environment in which they are operating. For example, if their major pain point is that their business is becoming commoditized, call that out.

2. A Good Idea: Next, present an idea (which includes your offering) and how it could address the business challenge(s) you just described.

3. Defend or Reference the Idea: Prove you have done this before by citing other customers you have helped, or a specific case study that mirrors what you are proposing for them. Credibly demonstrate how the company would monetize the investment by either showing savings or revenue impact.

4. The Ask: Don’t leave next steps to chance. Ask for their business and their ongoing personal sponsorship of your engagement. This is important because so many deals that get pushed down the chain of command die on the vine in absence of strong executive sponsorship.

Critical Success Factors

The challenge is, most sales organizations are not set up to support this approach.

“The way you question executives is dramatically different from what is taught in most sales trainings,” said Conrad Smith, Corporate Visions’ VP of Consulting Services. This fact, he said, leaves reps feeling unprepared and even fearful to sell higher in the organization.

They key to success is feeling confident and well-prepared, which requires research and prep time.

Our COO above said that a rep should spend four times as much time preparing for the meeting as the meeting actually takes. So for example, prepping for a 30-minute meeting should take at least two hours. His recommended process is as follows:

1. Research the company and the executive.

2. Outline the insight and the idea you plan to share, and how you are going to reference and defend it (see points 1-3 above). Don’t forget the monetization piece.

3. Place calls to any contacts or champions you have lower in the company to verify and validate that you are on the right track with what you plan to present.

If you have covered all your bases, says the COO, your chances of getting more than five minutes—and the executive’s commitment to some next steps—are good. “Speaking their language is what creates the hot start,” he concluded.

Goal-setting, for many people, seems tedious and boring. Just say the words, “We are having a goal-setting meeting,” and count the number of eyes that roll and the groans that vibrate through the room. Some might say that goal-setting puts you over a barrel, an idiom with origins arising from the action of being draped over a barrel to empty the lungs of someone drowning or to administer a flogging.

Goal-setting, however, can be a useful tool for keeping an organization relevant in the business world, especially when utilizing the potential of the human capital within your organization in order to complete the plan. As with any tool, goal-setting is only as useful as the people creating and implementing the process. Individuals who are engaged and interested create a better environment or culture to set goals. Creativity and open-thinking occur with motivated people.

To brings a new perspective to your goal-setting activities each member of the team can use this three-part process as a framework to achieve team goals that are focused, yet take into consideration the value of human potential. Remember in this process there is no good or bad, or wrong or right, only a focus on setting and achieving goals with open dialogue and critical thinking. Each part of the process works in cooperation with the other two parts, helping people maintain an intentional and accountable process for achieving goals:

Start with Awareness

Each member of the team should take the time to individually move beyond “the way we’ve always done it” thinking. Take the opportunity to stretch the imagination. With awareness comes possibilities. Encourage each person to gain knowledge by searching online to see how other people have completed the tasks you want to plan, complete a word search for topics related to the program. Write out ideas that come to mind. Stay intentional about documenting a list of all the possible objectives and different possibilities of the plan. The broader the selection of choices, the better chance you have of finding a broader perspective. Without awareness, you may not uncover an available opportunity.

Move Toward Discussion

Discussing the plan helps to verbalize thoughts. Pull together a group of people who are participating in the ultimate plan, or who have knowledge that could be valuable to the project. Encourage brainstorming. Document responses about ways to accomplish the project. Talking with other people, both within and outside of the team, helps people become engaged in the program and offers motivation for creating the plan. Make sure to set goals that your employees support. Nothing stops the process of setting goals more than an employee who does not see the value of the goal or the value of working with the team on a goal. The more engaged your employees are with the plan, the better chance for success. The discussions are an excellent opportunity to engage facilitators or use SWOT, SMART or more recently, ACTS to assess the possible goals and start building a framework for the ultimate plan. With discussions, the combined potential for the project expands as people create a practical framework.

Finish with Action

Solidify a final list of actions or objectives with assignments for people and timelines. A project manager or a project program, such as Microsoft Project and Gantt Charts helps keep the plan moving forward. All too often, with goal-setting, people leave the discussions without a timeline or a way to manage the project. Maintaining schedules may seem rudimentary, however, how many times have you been at a goal-setting event that ends with a nice feeling, but little accomplished a year later? During the implementation of the plan use some positive reinforcement to maintain a higher level of enthusiasm for the project. Reinforcements for successful completion of timelines could include activities such as emails thanking people for their part in completing the task on time, small gift cards for drink shops so individuals can take a quick run to get their favorite beverage. Team reinforcements, when completing a large part of the project, could include such activities as taking lunch orders for a particular meal, or afternoon drink table, whatever matches the personality of your team. The important thing with these reinforcements is to make sure that they are items or activities that have value for the individuals. You may have to invest a little time in learning more about you team, but in the end, you will gain valuable time with the engagement of employees as they invest in the project.

The goal of goal-setting is to bring cohesion to an organization with some intentional direction and active participation. When you combine motivated people with business goals, you have the potential to create a fully completed and deliberate plan for success.

With visual content booming, one word too often still strikes fear into the heart of content marketers – infographic.

Add “series” after “infographic” and it can sound like madness to the uninitiated. How can you gather the stats and communicate a clear message while making them look good in a set?

Don’t panic! Creating an infographic series can be much less painful than it sounds – and even, sometimes, quite good fun.

The secret is in following a clear framework, enabling you to tell a clear and consistent visual story in one of the most powerful ways possible.

Step 1: Choose your theme

Before even thinking about stories or visuals, start with the planning.

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Before thinking about stories or visuals for an infographic series, start w/ the planning, says @Richie_Silver.
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Do plenty of desk research, report reading, and even some original data gathering, such as a survey. All of this activity gives you the insight to decide on the theme of your infographic series with confidence.

When whittling down your theme shortlist, constantly ask yourself two questions: (1) Why would anyone care about this and (2) Does this work with our overall content marketing strategy? Once you can answer yes to both, you’re onto a winner.

It might take a while, but being diligent during this phase will make the next steps much easier.

Example: We were tasked with producing a series of 10 infographics for the Greater London Authority, an administrative body for the city. The series covers themes such as green infrastructure, housing, digital connectivity, and the circular economy. Information comes from research reports, briefings, and surveys. We think about how this data could be used in an overall package.

Step 2: Crunch the data

Now it’s time to get your hands dirty with the data.

Review everything you gathered, analyze, and digest the data to make sure you understand what it means. Then you’re ready to create a data map (or a story map if you’re using facts and messages rather than data) – a visual representation of the key facts, stats, and messages you want to include.

Chop up the data map in a logical way, with each section representing one infographic in your series. Then define the exact pieces of information you want each infographic to include.

A series with three to eight infographics is usually a good rule of thumb.

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A series with 3 to 8 infographics is usually a good rule of thumb, says @Richie_Silver.
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Example: This is one of the data maps for the Greater London Authority series – always the starting point for one of our infographics. It outlines the story we will tell, incorporating all of the key stats. It’s essentially a one-pager that makes it clear to anyone what the story being told is.

Step 3: Think about the creative

With the heavy data lifting complete, the creative juices should start to flow.

Think about how you can blend your brand’s creative identity with a fresh visual approach to make the infographic series original and eye-catching. This could mean anything from emphasizing a different part of your color palette to creating a character that appears in each infographic. Consistency and creative inspiration make sure your series hangs together and flows logically.

Plus, if you’re going to reuse your assets across channels – such as in print – now’s the time to consider how that would work creatively.

Example: We sketch the concept coming from our ideation session. Here we think about the squint test. Can the topic be noticed from a glance or squint? Is the visual striking enough to grab attention?

Step 4: Wireframe your infographics

You’ve got a theme, data, and your creative approach! The next step is to make it all official with some mobile-friendly wireframes.

For the unfamiliar, wireframes are “skeleton” designs that show the elements and structure of each infographic. To create them, consider the intended user journey stage for each infographic and detail the messaging hierarchy that will work best for each stage’s user’s need.

It’s also a good idea to plan atomized content at this stage – smaller cut-downs of the main infographic that present key stats or headlines to be utilized as teasers. For example, you can use the snippet on social channels and link the user to the main infographic on a website. You also can present a snippet of your content in an optimized format for the intended channel. Remember, one size does not fit all!

Example: An architect designs the blueprints of a building. The structural engineer makes that vision become a reality. The wireframe ensures that the concept fits in a responsively designed consistent structure that allows all components to flow and proportion it for the size of the output. In this case, we use a poster-size output for the infographic.

Step 5. Put the infographics into production (finally!)

Now you’re ready to move to the creation stage with a focused direction.

Best-practice content rules still apply to infographics – include clear headers and strong calls to action. Once those are in place, the creative team can have some fun with tone, styling, color, and visual motifs to bring the wireframes to life.

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Best-practice rules apply to infographics – include clear headers & strong CTAs, says @Richie_Silver.
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Again, consistency is key to make sure the creative direction of each infographic works as part of the series, and still always ladders up to the core brand identity.

Example: We develop the wireframe into a high fidelity infographic that has the creative concept of the ideation sketch, presented within the wireframe it is intended for, and aligned with the story in the data map.

Step 6. Get your content seen

Once your series has been published, get ready for the big push. With organic reach on social channels nosediving, partnering with other brands that can deliver an audience for your infographic series is a good tactic. Think about who would be interested in your theme – looking beyond the traditional companies or partners.

Also use paid social or content distribution tools to ensure that your series gets seen. Taking a test-and-learn approach means you can optimize your ads in real time to deliver better value.

And while it’s a good idea always to link between each infographic wherever possible, avoid labelling them as part 1, for example, so that each one works as a standalone piece.

Finally, wherever possible include a call to action to share the infographics to boost that all-important organic distribution.

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Include a CTA to share the infographics to boost all-important organic distribution, says @Richie_Silver.
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Example: As an evergreen piece of content, we wanted to make the Greater London Authority infographic series work harder. We position the print version of the series for guests to see as they wander to their seats at a city hall event. We also send a downloadable PDF to guests the following day, use it in newsletters, and feature it on the website portal through a downloadable link.

Conclusion

The essential infographic series checklist:

• Is there a powerful story and editorial flow that tells a clear story?
• Does each infographic suit to its target stage in the user’s journey?
• Do the graphics still make sense if they’re seen out of sequence?
• Is the brand’s visual identity clear and consistent?

If you can tick all of those boxes, you’ve given yourself the best shot at getting your infographic series viewed, shared, and remembered.

Stay up on the latest trends in content marketing to help you grow your content marketing success. Subscribe to the free daily (or weekly recap) newsletter.

Cover image by StockSnap via pixabay.com

The post How to Create a Best-in-Class Infographic Series in 6 Steps appeared first on Content Marketing Institute.

John Donlon is Research Director for Marketing Operations Strategies at Sirius Decisions. He works with Marketing Ops pros and teams every day. He is one of the six judges for the Marketing Ops Game Changers program which is recognizing the top 33 Marketing Ops leaders in B2B for breakthrough work.

We caught up with John to get his scoop on the past, present and future of Marketing Ops – a profession that has progressed from the “island of misfit toys” and an informal function to today being a trusted counselor to the CMO.

Scott: What’s the most important role that Marketing Op plays in today’s customer-centric, data-driven marketing world?

John: The overarching theme is making it easy for the rest of marketing to do their job. Sometimes that means serving up the information they need in an easy-to-digest format, sometimes it’s smoothing out a process so that it can run more efficiently, and sometimes it’s recognizing connections across teams that others may not see from their individual silo. The beauty of marketing operations is that it spans the entire marketing team, so it needs to seize the opportunity to identify and correct inefficiencies across the whole marketing ecosystem.

Which of the following is most essential for Marketing Ops pros to master: business strategy, data and analytics, or technology?

The essential competency is actually becoming a bridge across all those things. In a large enough marketing operations team, you may have specialists for each of those disciplines, but the real value comes from stitching the concepts together. I grew up [professionally] in the IT space, and the most valuable people there were always those that could speak both technical jargon and the language of the business. The same is true here— the most effective marketing operations professionals that I know are able to wear the strategic hat of a Chief of Staff, but then also understand the very real operational and technical implications behind business-driven initiatives.

What’s the most under-valued skill of a good ops pro? What trait do many hiring managers neglect to look for?

The most under-valued skill I see is the ability to balance a customer-service orientation with leadership. Historically, marketing operations has been in danger of being the Island of Misfit Toys, where oddball projects and tasks tend to get dumped. With that, many marketing operations professionals have been conditioned to see themselves simply as order-takers. While this has bred a strong [internal] customer-service attitude, the highest performing marketing operations leaders also layer in a change agent approach. This means drawing from their experience to not just suggest, but champion, alternative ways of doing things.

So again, it’s a balance of a couple of traits; and from a hiring perspective this is easily overlooked, as recruiters usually focus on one or the other.

It’s a new year. What’s next for Marketing Ops? (and/or) Is Marketing Ops the right title based on your vision of the role?

For many marketing operations leaders what’s next is to evolve into that Chief of Staff role, even if that’s not their formal title. It’s really about a shift in attitude and presence, away from the tactical order-taker and into the consultative, trusted advisor. “Marketing Operations” as a title for the function is certainly still relevant, but it’s up to us as a community to raise its stature on the marketing team and beyond.

What are some of the pitfalls you frequently see marketing ops practitioners falling into?

There are a few. We all love to use the phrase “shiny new object” disparagingly when talking about technology, but how many of us have a tech roadmap for 2017 that calls for pruning the tech tree, rather than adding to it? I spoke with one practitioner recently and that’s his plan for the year ahead– nothing new, only decommissions. Every situation is different, but adding blindly to the tech stack is always a big pitfall. Ignoring data quality and unification is another big one. It’s hard for me to fully express the advantage an organization gains by keeping its data clean and having a plan for pulling it all together. The insight and responsiveness it allows you is off the charts when done right, yet many organizations treat data management simply as a necessary evil.

Finally– and this gets at some of the earlier themes– marketing operations professionals need to better promote the good work they’re doing. Many of us are introverted by nature and just happy with a job well-done, but that does us a huge disservice. Get out of your comfort zone and make a point to publicize the impact you and the team are having on the organization.

What motivated you join the Game Changers judging panel?

Part of my role with SiriusDecisions is that I get to talk to a wide range of marketing operations practitioners and offer them guidance on how to execute industry best practices. Some are struggling with the basics while others are light years ahead, and it’s incredibly satisfying to be able to help all our clients, no matter where they are in the maturity spectrum.

Being on this panel gives me the chance to get exposure to even more great work that’s being done out there, and I’m thrilled to be able to recognize the excellence of these practitioners, since it helps all of us as a marketing operations community.

If you know any Marketing Operations pros who are doing great work in their organizations, nominate them as a Marketing Ops Game Changer today.

Uber Technologies Inc. has asked its Russian drivers to temporarily bear the load of a new tax charge, causing some of them quit to avoid paperwork and tax filings.

President Vladimir Putin signed a law in July to levy an 18 percent value-added tax on electronic goods and services provided by global internet giants starting in 2017. Apple Inc., Alphabet Inc.’s Google, Microsoft Corp. and Netflix Inc. are registered with Russia’s tax service, according to Vedomosti daily.

Uber has passed these duties on its drivers, requiring them to pay the VAT on the company’s service fee. Uber will later reimburse them these payments, it said in an e-mailed response to questions. The company will refrain from raising prices for passengers, it added. Read more...

More about Ride Hailing Apps, Putin, Russia, Uber Drivers, and Uber

You need only look at shopping behaviors this past holiday season to understand the impact of Amazon. Amazon has completely transformed business to consumer (B2C) selling. In doing so, it has become the world’s largest e-retailer, with over $100 billion of revenue in 2015 alone.

However, Amazon’s biggest success is its innovation. By reimagining processes through the use of big data and the cloud, Amazon has created a new paradigm and irreversibly altered traditional business models.

Increasingly, executives understand the necessity to adapt and know that they must use big data as a tool to strengthen customer focus. According to Gartner research, nearly 90 percent of today’s companies expect to compete primarily on customer experience.

By emulating practices introduced by Amazon, companies can improve processes to serve customers more effectively and drive increased performance. To understand the potential of this opportunity better, look at how new sales and employee compensation processes are increasing business value by applying the following lessons from Amazon.

Lesson #1. Use Data for Comparative Value

Amazon and other companies have amassed enormous amounts of data. Where Amazon has outperformed others is in how it’s used this aggregated data in a unique way to bring new value to their customers.

In a brick and mortar environment, a salesperson can show you what accessories complement and enhance your purchase. Or a salesperson might direct you to a different item you might like based on insight into your preferences. Amazon does this for us online using big data – showing us what people, who have made the same purchase – also bought, and showing us the most popular items across product categories. To help users decide on items to buy, Amazon draws from over 150 million customer purchases.

This type of comparative data holds immense promise for businesses.

In the realm of compensation, it gives businesses the ability to quickly see how their compensation plan compares with other companies of a similar size or other companies within their market sector.

Compensation is a huge line item expense and one of a company’s most strategic tools. With comparative data, you can build a competitive plan to attract and retain top talent. You can see the proven impact of incentives to drive top line performance. You can see whether your plan is aligned with market best practices.

Lesson #2. Deliver Instant Insight

A huge part of Amazon’s appeal is its ability to give us instant insight. Buyers can immediately see what goods are available, at what price, and their projected arrival date and time. Consumers love this. By seeing all of our choices, we can make better selections at the desired price point.

Consider how this is being applied to compensation. Companies are learning, for example, that when they give sales reps instant insight into their incentive compensation plans, they improve behaviors. The ability to see and track performance increases motivation and satisfaction. This, in turn, helps organizations drive their own business goals.

Lesson #3. Make Access Mobile-Friendly

Amazon makes it easy for us to buy whenever and wherever. If you’re at Starbucks and remember that you need to buy a birthday present for a party your daughter is attending on the weekend, you can buy one that very moment on your iPhone. Done and crossed off the to-do list in less than the two minutes it takes the barista to make your drink.

We’ve come to demand access to the data that’s most important to us via mobile. Let’s face it. For most of us, compensation ranks at the top. Variable pay – or incentive compensation – can be invaluable in driving performance. By not giving your team ubiquitous access to this data, you’re losing an opportunity to maximize its value.

Put simply, you cannot manage what you cannot measure. Reps need the ability to monitor and track their performance against set goals to improve their and your ability to succeed. Data should be intuitive, visually pleasing, and easily accessed from any mobile device – giving them insight anytime, anywhere.

Lesson #4. Be Accurate

Amazon made a public commitment to fast, reliable and accurate deliveries for its customers. By doing so, Amazon differentiated itself from the get go from its competitors. No one was as fast as Amazon. Amazon capitalized on this even further with the creation of Amazon Prime – giving customers the ability to purchase premier service for expedited delivery. In fact, this has proved so successful that now over half of Amazon customers in the U.S. are also Amazon Prime subscribers.

Amazon’s fulfillment speed and accuracy, through use of automated processes, has been key to its customer success.

Likewise, your employees want timely and accurate payments – whether it’s a commission payment to a sales rep or a quarterly bonus for meeting performance objectives. Making sure that your employees are compensated accurately is critical to their trust. The cost of turnover is high – according to Aberdeen Group – it can be over $30K per rep per year. Keeping employees satisfied is essential to retain the top players – and appropriate compensation is a baseline for employee satisfaction.

A Stronger Foundation for Business Growth

According to Forrester Research, Amazon.com generated about 60% of online sales growth in 2015 – far outpacing overall online retail.

Your business success depends on your ability to grow. These Amazon lessons are rapidly moving from the business to consumer (B2C) sphere to business to business (B2B). To stay ahead in this environment, you need to use data in more innovative ways, make data access and insight readily available to those to whom it matters – and do it all quickly and accurately.

Prognosticating the impact of soon-to-be President Trump has become a cottage industry. As a valuation specialist, one area that is vastly under-opined is a look at what impact a Trump Presidency might have on valuations. Our view? Likely positive, with caveats. A few factors that might impact value come to mind:

1. Taxes: Less cash offshoring could mean more M+A activity; higher valuations.

Trump long campaigned on a series of pledges to reduce overall taxes. One interesting area is a “tax holiday” meant to stem so-called corporate inversions and other mechanisms to keep cash offshore and tax sheltered. Apple famously has over $180 billion overseas. In total, U.S. companies are estimated to hold $1.4 trillion offshore. If companies are convinced to repatriate that capital back to the U.S, what might they do with it? One option would be to return it to shareholders – something that companies are often loathe to do. Another option: go shopping. A large repatriation of capital could spur significant M&A activity as companies seek to deploy capital swiftly. The effect? A lift in valuations.

2. ACA: Reducing health insurance costs could correlate to a bigger bottom line.

Love it or hate it, the Affordable Care Act (aka “Obamacare”) has been a big deal. Trump campaigned on the premise of repealing the Act. To the extent that he does – and that healthcare costs decrease for small and medium businesses – the result could be an increase to the bottom line. Of course there are a lot of assumptions baked in: Will it get repealed? Will insurance rates change? Will companies be stuck paying relatively the same rates in order to attract talent? It’s hard to predict. If business owners can reduce costs as a result, those reductions directly correlate to higher value.

3. Minimum Wage: Guarding an increase prevents a decrease in valuations.

It’s a pretty safe bet that the Trump administration won’t be supporting a $15 minimum wage anytime soon. I’m of the opinion that over the longer term such an increase will be inflationary. To support increased costs, companies will increase prices to bear those costs. But in the short term a dramatic increase at the low end of the wage spectrum is sure to hurt profits. At the very least, guarding against an increase prevents a decrease in valuations.

4. Protectionists Trade Policies: A trade war probably won’t help your value.

This is a tricky area. Protectionists policies might help some industries, but reciprocal actions from other countries are bound to have negative effects on others. If the source all of your product is in China, it’s probably best for your value if we don’t antagonize them into a trade war.

On the whole it seems likely that a business-friendly President will have a positive impact on business values. Of course, critical will be keeping the economy humming along. Ultimately, though, value is going to continue to be tied to performance. Faced with a sea of options, buyers reward market participants that outperform peers. Always have. Always will…regardless of who’s in the Oval Office.

Low conversions?

It’s tempting to start with your landing page.

Maybe that blue button should be a green one. Or perhaps the hero image ain’t hero-y enough.

But in reality, those things don’t really move the needle.

Instead, you should start with the ads that are sending people there in the first place. Because they set the tone and influence everything else – including what’s on those pages.

Here’s why, and how to get them to work together to deliver better results.

How to ‘Prime’ Customers to Increase Landing Page Conversions

Consumers today are overwhelmed by ‘stuff’.

You’ve heard it all before. All the stories and stats and figures.

The problem, though, is that too much ‘stuff’ can kill your conversions.

Columbia business school professor Sheena Lyengar proved this one day in a Menlo, California food market.

First, she set out a group of 24 jam varieties and noted the number of people who (1) visited the booth and (2) purchased. Then, she set out only six varieties and compared the same metrics.

Which group successfully attracted the most people to the booth? Turns out it was the larger sample size of 24 bottles.

Awesome. If consumer attention is today’s big struggle, and more products leads to more attention, let’s keep adding more products! Right?

Except…

Those people only purchased one-tenth of what the six-bottle group did. Choosing, it turns out, is cognitively stressful and can erode results.

How do you make it easier? (Without resorting to cutting down an unrealistically high percentage of your inventory?)

You ‘prime’ customers, which is a psychology concept that “refers to activating particular representations or associations in memory just before carrying out an action or task.”

How about in English?

Say “fire engine” to someone and they’re most likely to choose the color red. They’ve been ‘primed’ and that’s the first, natural choice that stands out.

Online, this comes into play when you successfully use ads to ‘prime’ people for what they’re about to see on a landing page. Or, in other words, ‘message match’.

How ‘Message Match’ Dictates Advertising Cost (And Results)

‘Message match’ is a fundamental conversion concept that refers to when the value proposition from an advertisement…

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… aligns perfectly with the landing page that people see.

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It makes perfect sense that proper message match can lead to a better experience and higher conversions. As we just saw, you’re ‘priming’ visitors for what they’re about to see to make sure their expectations match reality.

But message match can also lead to more cost-effective results, too.

For example, a single point increase in your AdWords Quality Score can drop your cost per click and conversion by 16% (according to Larry Kim’s analysis of $100 million in annual AdWords spend).

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And one of the driving forces behind your Quality Score? Alignment of what someone’s searching for with the ad they see and the page they land on. Or, message match.

This same scenario plays out on Facebook ads, too, where there’s a definite correlation between a higher Relevance Score and lower Cost Per Click.

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Continuity then, between your ads and your on-site offers, is critical. It ‘primes’ customers through message match so they’re more receptive to what you’re offering. With the added bonus of lowering out-of-pocket ad costs too.

The trick though, is to understand the intent behind what people are looking for. Create and test ads to match those things, and then simply adjusting your pages accordingly.

How to Start Segmenting Your Audience and Ads to Increase Landing Page Performance

The highest converting funnels segment people based on intent.

Example:

1. Break-Even Funnel: Sells a low-priced product in order to build a large audience of verified buyers and ‘break-even’ on ad costs.
2. Primary Offer Funnel: Your big ticket items that are sold to people who’ve already purchased the break-even funnel.
3. Webinar Funnel: Nurtures people who’ve purchased the Break-Even Funnel product but not the Primary Offer one.

In practice, that means understanding the difference between someone searching for “TV reviews” in Google from another searching for “Samsung TV discounts”.

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The “review” person is looking for one thing, while the “Samsung” one is obviously looking for something else. The same is true for Facebook interests. Or even people with different job titles (as we’ll see in just a second).

Digital Marketer’s excellent Ad Grid gives you an actionable framework for identifying these specific ‘hooks’ and creating more captivating ads for each specific customer type.

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For example, the first (“10 Minute”) ‘hook’ focuses on speed and convenience while the second one (“Grade”) is concerned with quality.

Which is right? You don’t know until you test.

Here’s another example.

The Yes Girls help men plan the perfect wedding proposal. Their standard ad is direct and to-the-point:

But let’s say you want to test with a different hook to see if it will improve results.

You could try a zen one:

Or you could go negative and help people avoid common mistakes:

All sound good and are worthy of testing to increase conversions. But the point is, based on the power of ‘priming’ and influence of ‘message match’, you should focus on the value prop FIRST, and align your landing pages to them.

Your landing pages then can be more ‘templated’, allowing you to make fast changes based on the ‘variables’ you’re switching in-and-out above. For example, that could be different verticals like “attorneys”…

… from “physicians and dentists”.

Even though both people might be looking for the same thing (in this case, disability insurance), they have vastly different preferences, attitudes, and worldviews. And only after creating new ads can we then create, and align, those elements for each grouping.

A ‘templated’ landing page approach also means you can use a simple DIY option like LeadPages, which lets you choose from a variety of pre-made templates to edit (without touching a line of code).

Unbounce, another popular landing page optimization software, has a feature called dynamic text replacement that will automatically replace content based on the keyphrase someone just searched for. (This way you can avoid having to manually clone and update each individual landing page.)

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When done correctly, this process is almost foolproof because you just react and adjust in real-time. For example, my company performed these same simple tweaks and changes during a client’s site redesign; lifting conversion rates from 4.08% to 12.76% and dropping Cost per Lead by 69.39%.

Conclusion

Making changes to specific landing pages can help. But barely. Or rarely.

Try focusing your attention to what people are searching for instead. Create different advertising hooks to better align your solution to their intent.

Then all you need to do is leverage ‘priming’ and ‘message match’ to take care of the rest. Use landing page software to ‘template’ and spin-off landing page variations that match your ads.

When you match the value proposition correctly, the results will take care of themselves.

If you, like me, have spent the majority of your working life in the technology sector, you’ve probably sat through more than your fair share of awful, formulaic, and downright boring sales presentations.

You’re likely to have been exposed to more slides packed with the same customer logos, more maps jammed with pins showing office locations and more self-serving corporate positioning statements than any human being should have to endure in a lifetime.

You've probably been subjected to more irrelevant technical detail than any human being should have to endure. And you’ve almost certainly seen and heard the same trite phrases trotted out in pitch after pitch, to the point where they all blur together and you can’t tell them apart: “best in class”, “state of the art”, “industry-leading”… and the list goes on.

But it doesn’t have to be this way…

THE GREATEST SALES DECK I’VE EVER SEEN

Andy Raskin recently wrote about “The Greatest Sales Deck I've Ever Seen” on LinkedIn - referring to a brilliantly simple structure from Zuora, the leader in SaaS subscription billing.

And yes, Zuora do have the obvious attention-grabbing advantage of being a leader in a hot market. But the basic principles (which I’ve adapted slightly below) can be applied to any organisation wishing to stand out in any market.

This narrative structure isn’t unique. The “Challenger Sale” promoted something very similar a few years back. One of the core concepts is that your presentation must always lead towards and never lead with your solution.

Here’s the basic flow:

• Set the scene: describe an important trend or transition that is happening in the audience’s world
• Implications: How are or how will organisations be affected by this change?
• Winners and Losers: Show how the trend will create winners and losers, depending on how companies choose to react
• The Twist: Surprise the audience: Introduce an unexpected need or implication that leads towards your strengths
• Capabilities: Selectively introduce a few of your capabilities that help customers deal with the identified “twist”
• Credentials: Why should they trust you? Back this up with your credentials as an organisation
• Next Steps: What should the audience (if qualified) do next?

 You’ll notice that:

• The sequence deliberately inverts the usual flow in which a vendor spends the first few slides talking about themselves
• It attaches itself to an inevitable trend or transition in the market that the audience is going to have to deal with
• It “goes beyond the obvious” to introduce ideas that the audience hadn’t been aware of (and probably won’t hear from any other vendor)
• It presents your credentials at the end, rather than the beginning (which is where they really matter)
• It closes with a clear next step (or a few optional next steps)
• And, yes, it leads towards your solution rather than with it

Unless you’re presenting from a stage to a large audience, your presentation should be designed to facilitate a conversation. Every slide should be accompanied by talking points that stimulate feedback and get the audience engaged. If effective, the audience will be talking as much as you (or even better, more than you).

When you follow these guidelines, every participant - presenter and audience - is likely to emerge from the presentation having learned something valuable. There's a far better chance that everyone will emerge from the session agreeing that it was time well spent - which, let’s face it, is rarely the case with classic corporate sales pitches.

START FROM THE CENTRE

The key with designing these presentations is NOT to start the drafting exercise at the beginning of your presentation. Once you have clearly defined your target audience, you should start instead by defining the handful of essential capabilities that most powerfully distinguish your solution from all the other options that your audience is likely to be considering.

Resist the temptation to make this an apparently impressive long list. Your audience will stop relating to your differentiators (and certainly won't be able to recall them) after the first handful. 1-3 core capabilities seem to be the optimal number. Short, compelling themes are far more powerful than long detailed lists.

And don’t restrict your thinking just to your high-level product capabilities, either. The approach you take to guaranteeing your customers success - if obviously different from other vendors - can also be a powerful differentiator.

WORK BACKWARDS TO THE BEGINNING

Now you know where you want your presentation to lead to, you can reverse-engineer the initial part of the presentation to set the scene appropriately:

• How can you introduce the trend or transition in a way that encourages the audience to conclude that your approach is the best way of dealing with it?
• How can you identify the implications of the transition in a way that has a clear connection to your strengths?
• How can you describe the winners and losers in a way whereby the winners look a lot like your ideal customers?
• How can you introduce a surprising and memorable twist in a way that sets you up to reveal your core capabilities?

WRAPPING THINGS UP

The best place for your credentials is not at the start, but towards the end - because they will seem much more relevant to the journey you’ve just taken your audience through. And you can then segue seamlessly (after reconfirming the audience’s interest) into clearly defined next steps.

Have a go at applying this structure to your sales presentation. And let me know how you get along. Drop me a line if you need any help.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Bob Apollo is a Fellow of the Association of Professional Sales and the Founder of UK-based Inflexion-Point Strategy Partners, creators of the Value Selling System. Following a successful career in sales leadership spanning start-ups to established corporates, Bob now works with a growing client base of B2B-focused companies, empowering their sales teams to establish uniquely relevant value in every customer interaction.

 

A highly qualified lead is everything in the world of sales. All hopes and fears of the sales team are tied to the leads and their volume and viability. Anyone who has worked in or with a sales team knows that without good leads, there isn’t much a sales team can do. A sales team’s job is to convince people in the market to choose their product. Sales people aren’t magicians; they cannot magically make a sale out of a person who isn’t serious about making a purchase.

Many companies make the mistake of giving the task of lead generation to the sales team as well. Asking your sales team to generate the leads is a surefire way to lower your sales. Generating leads is the job of your marketing department – not your sales department. If you truly want your sales figures to grow exponentially you need to give your sales team highly qualified leads-here are some ways to do exactly that!

Manage Your Existing Leads Better With a Database

A proper sales database does wonders for your sales team, and no, an excel file with all the data does not count as a proper database. Having sales figures, trends, and contacts easily viewable makes a world of difference when it comes to business intelligence and making sales. This is especially true for B2B sales where recurring sales are the norm. It is much easier to ensure that the people who have bought from you previously continue buying from you when you can easily check a database to see customer history.

Provide Your Team With Tools That Nurture Leads

Here’s a basic truth of the sales business: if your team is busy trying to make more sales, they may lose out on a lot of future sales. We all know how it happens; the team wants to meet its targets and focuses on qualified leads while discarding leads that are not qualified. The only problem is that unqualified leads tend to become qualified leads in the future. With the right lead nurturing solution, your team will have continuous access to qualified leads that have been cultivated for months through communication.

Outsource Lead Generation

Imagine this: A sales team that only works on selling to qualified leads. It sounds like an unrealistic ideal situation but in reality it is very possible. If you outsource your lead generation the pressure on your team for generating leads will be off. They will be able to purely focus on selling to people who actually want to buy your products and services. This is the easiest way to exponentially grow your sales. It also provides a very good motivation boost to the sales team. Once they start succeeding and see how well their sales are going, they will keep improving their performance.

This is just the beginning of the many methods that could be employed to help deliver qualified leads to your sales team. You can automate your marketing or create better sales funnel. Just remember that leads are the fuel for the sales team. Unless you put the right type of fuel in you will not be able to progress as a company.

Author: Cassidy Milder

Every growing organization has important thresholds to cross. For startups, the thresholds could include the day you incorporate, the day you get your first investment, or the day you start making a profit. But growing companies can hold themselves back when they grow beyond the tools that they use. That’s when it’s time to evaluate a new platform.

Flash back to 2015: We had just achieved 100% year-over-year growth. While our demand generation team celebrated this victory, we knew that with a lead database swelling to 70,000 entries and counting, we needed to embrace a more sophisticated, enterprise-grade marketing automation platform. Markets are exploding, so why go one-to-one when you can go one-to-many? That was the question that led Modernize to adopt Marketo.

Here are three ways that Marketo has allowed us to tackle the challenge of scaling our marketing processes for growth:

1. Reach Everyone at the Right Time at Scale 

With our previous platform, we could reach a lot of people at once, but only by manually building lists in Excel and then uploading it to our system. Making the move to a more sophisticated marketing automation system allowed us to easily scale up from lead numbers in the hundreds to the tens of thousands.

Now, with our new instance, we can reach our entire database with one email blast if needed, while also maintaining the ability to segment and personalize. We can create smart lists that pull audiences based on data already housed in the system, and as we bring in new leads, we can build and update all kinds of information—from geographic location to company name and industry. We can also keep track of behavior, such as when a recipient opens an email, clicks links on landing pages, and more. The ability to connect with thousands of leads without all the grunt work? Now that’s truly priceless.

Example of a Marketo Smart List

Relying on outdated or manual marketing processes can make your engagement approaches seem slow and out-of-touch in this age of highly-focused data. The words “personal” and “automate” rarely go hand-in-hand, but with an engagement platform, we’re able to stay relevant, positioning us to strike at the right time, such as when they become sales-qualified. In other words, we can cut right to the heart of our prospects and customers’ needs, and reach out to them in the ways that are most appropriate based on their actions and behaviors.

2. Communicate Through Every Stage of the Lifecycle

With a growing audience comes unique buyer’s journeys—with people at all stages of the customer lifecycle. Our previous platform limited us to the bottom-of-the-funnel. We only reached out to highly qualified leads who knew about our brand and had shown direct interest in what we had to offer. But as our business grew, so did the rest of our funnel, leaving our team scrambling to provide resources and content to prospects in the early-stage who were not yet qualified, but had engaged with us in some way.

Marketo not only helps us track each buyer’s unique journey, but it also helps us track their activity across channels—on our websites and landing pages, social and display ads, and email opens and click-throughs—which was almost impossible to tie together with our previous platform. All this information is housed in our new system, so our marketing team can keep track of lead scores and get a better understanding of where they fall in the sales cycle. Instead of just classifying leads as “qualified” or “not qualified,” we can define what actions differentiate a marketing engaged lead (opened an email) from a marketing qualified lead (filled out a form and matches our target criteria) from a sales qualified lead (received a demo from a salesperson). We can send top-of-the-funnel content to engaged leads and later-stage content to marketing qualified leads, all while following which assets move them down the funnel.

3. Analytics, or It Didn’t Happen

Every marketing team knows: an A/B test is only as good as your end data. But measuring data reliably across marketing and sales teams is difficult—if not impossible—without a unified system.

Activity tracking from a sophisticated automation platform goes way beyond content segmentation—it’s also how we optimize our messaging and measure ROI on campaigns. For example, let’s say we have a subject line that’s worked well for a long time, but most of our database has already seen it. To avoid exhaustion, we’d like to find another strong option. To minimize risk, we can pull only a small, random sample of our target audience and use this as a test group—let’s say 10%. We use the other 90% as a control. With advanced analytics, we can see the open rate for each; if the new subject line meets or exceeds the opens of the old, we’ve been successful.

The same idea holds if we’re A/B testing a CTA inside the email—we can track important email KPIs to gauge its impact. We can even look at how the time an email was sent effects opens and click-throughs, as we did in the example below.

 

Additionally, marketing can see how many top-of-the-funnel emails leads received, how many pieces of content they engaged with, and more to understand how they were nurtured and whether the nurture stream they were part of was successful. Most importantly, we can truly track a lead from creation to customer, and there’s nothing more valuable than that. With our new marketing automation platform, we can track how the marketing team’s efforts have impacted ROI for the company by identifying which marketing asset pushed a lead from “marketing engaged” all the way to “sales qualified” and then a closed-won deal.

At Modernize, we sell our homeowners on innovation and efficiency—so using the most sophisticated tools to run our business just makes sense. Here’s to a brighter—and highly automated—future!

Have you recently made the move to a more comprehensive marketing automation platform? Share your own experiences below!

Editor’s note: If you’re running into limitations with your current marketing automation solution, check out our ebook How to Adopt Marketo After Using a Different Marketing Automation Platform.

 

 

 

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3 Reasons to Adopt a Scalable Marketing Automation Platform was posted at Marketo Marketing Blog - Best Practices and Thought Leadership. | http://blog.marketo.com

The post 3 Reasons to Adopt a Scalable Marketing Automation Platform appeared first on Marketo Marketing Blog - Best Practices and Thought Leadership.

One of the most influential and powerful voices in the sales community today is Hector LaMarque. He’s been a salesperson and sales leader for over 30 years and has applied the hard work and hustle it takes to continually be that leader in the field. In this conversation, Anthony chats with Hector about what it takes to build real leadership skills, why many salespeople act like they are working but really aren’t, how adversity and competition are the only roads that lead toward growth, and much more. You’re going to hear from a master in the areas of sales, motivation, and leadership so don’t miss this one. Hector LaMarque On Building The Leadership Skills That Bring Success - Episode #79Click To Tweet Leadership skills are seldom something you are born with. They have to be learned. Of course, there are people who are born leaders. But the skills that have to be applied in order to functionally BE a good leader are not always something that comes naturally. Hector LaMarque says that leadership skills have to be honed, refined over time, and the truly successful leaders are the ones who understand that and are constantly working on the craft of leadership. Hector highlights what it takes to apply yourself to that kind of consistent work on this episode of In The Arena, so be sure you listen. Most people's skill set is poor to mediocre. Successful sales leaders can’t be those people. When Hector LaMarque was asked why many people in the sales world are not achieving the numbers or accomplishments they say they want to achieve, he said it’s because the average person has a poor to mediocre skill set and doesn’t know it. If they do know it, they don’t know what it takes to build the leadership skills that will propel them to new levels of accomplishment. Hector’s philosophy is simple: It takes a lot of hustle, hard work, and a constant commitment to personal and professional growth to build the skills set that leads to success. Most people simply aren’t willing to put in that kind of work. Most people’s skill set is poor to mediocre. Successful sales leaders can’t be those people.Click To Tweet Success is more like MMA than it is like boxing. In this wide-ranging conversation Anthony and his guest, Hector LaMarque primarily chat about leadership and leadership skills, but not without a foray into the world of sports. Both of them use the sports analogy as a perfect way to illustrate the discipline and competitiveness needed to become successful. Anthony says that the path to success is more like MMA fighting than it is boxing, simply because you have to lose many hard-fought battles in order to get there. It’s those losses, those hardships that craft you into the person who can not only accomplish success but who can also bear up under the weight of it. You’ll get a lot of clearly thought-out advice about personal growth and leadership on this episode, so don’t miss it. Competition is a good thing. It’s what pushes us to improve our products, services, and skills. There are times, and certain circles, where competitiveness is cast in a negative light. But Hector LaMarque believes that competition is a good thing. It’s the desire to win, the desire to overcome that pushes all of us to the next level. It’s what produces better products year after year. It’s what fuels innovation and advancement in the culture. It’s what drives high achievers toward continued growth in their personal and leadership skills. Competition is indeed a good thing. It’s what makes us champions when everyone else is content to simply be a competitor. Competition is a good thing. It’s what pushes us to improve Click To Tweet Outline of this great episode [3:01] What makes for success in the people Hector has worked with? [4:29] What is the prospecting work that successful salespeople and leaders do? [7:16] How Hector developed the idea that it’s HIS responsibility to grow and learn.

In an age of impersonal communications, real and virtual “face time” stands out as an effective way to reach people and connect with them. Helping to build and cement relationships, human contact in the form of in-person or online events is a critical part of any B2B marketing plan.

According to a 2013 survey from the CMO Council and Exhibit & Event Marketers Association (E2MA):

• 31% of respondents believe that trade shows, conventions, conferences, and channel events are essential to doing business in their target customer markets, and another 42% believe them to be very valuable;
• 51% say these interactions can help achieve business goals and create a significant competitive advantage;
• 54% report that positioning the brand among industry leaders was a key benefit; and
• 47% say these events provide valuable opportunities to engage with multiple customers and prospects.

What’s more, according to the Content Marketing Institute, 81% of trade show attendees have buying authority. Clearly, events provide B2B marketers with great opportunities to connect and sell.

Whether you’re planning a conference, trade show, webinar, or group chat, an event can be an excellent way to reach your customers and prospects in meaningful ways. And, no matter what kind of gathering you envision, the right approach to data management and marketing automation can eliminate potential issues while maximizing your event ROI.

Before taking an automated, data-driven approach to your event, consider these eight tips:

1 ‒ Establish your event marketing goals.

Whether you’re planning a webinar for 500 attendees or an executive dinner for a dozen, you need to start with a clear picture of what you’d like to accomplish by the end of the process. Examples of event marketing goals include:

• Generate qualified leads: This is a common objective for webinars and trade shows, where registration data can provide important indicators about buying intent.

• Identify key decision-makers: Small-scale, in-person panel discussions, dinners, and other events can build rapport with C-level executives who are often hard to reach by other means.

• Build brand awareness or thought leadership: These “soft” event marketing goals are often very useful – although it can be challenging to measure ROI from events.

2 ‒ Decide how, where, and when to distribute invitations.

The nature of your event, its time frame, and your target audience will all play a role in the invitation process. If your objective is to generate new leads, then you’ll want to take advantage of email marketing, social media, online advertising, and perhaps even direct mail to distribute invitations automatically against your prospect database.

It’s important to use a system that allows your organization to track precisely when and how it distributes event invitations ‒ otherwise, you risk spamming potential attendees with multiple invitations and conflicting messages. A “save the date” social media campaign, for example, should be timed to occur before you launch an email marketing campaign with specific registration or speaker information.

3 ‒ Manage the registration process.

Most event registrations take place online – and those that don’t probably should. When you set up landing pages for your event registrations, be sure to have a system in place for tracking the source of each registration. You should know, for example, whether an attendee is responding to a social media post, email, ad, direct mail, or some other event marketing channel. Custom landing pages and tracking codes are ideal for this sort of task.

Be sure to use a system that allows you to close the registration process automatically. This lets you enforce registration deadlines and prevent misunderstandings with attendees. For those who fail to register in time, consider offering an asset they’re likely to be interested in, such as a recording of the session.

Also, establish a plan for sending event confirmations and reminders. These are useful for any live event because they allow you to keep your brand front-and-center. They also give you a chance to engage in personalized communications with each attendee and to extend other content or product offers. Here, too, it’s important to use tools that automate this process, so that your team isn’t overwhelmed by the task of tracking and sending reminders.

4 ‒ Establish your lead capture process.

Event registrations and on-site activity (such as scanning business cards or badges) can be a source of robust and accurate lead data. It can also be a colossal waste of time and effort unless you focus on two important tasks:

• Move quickly: Whether you’re gathering data from an online registration form or scanning business cards, your lead data should enter a marketing automation or CRM system in a matter of hours or even minutes – rather than days or weeks.

• Put the pieces together: It’s vital that your system can keep prospect data accurate and up-to-date. This includes, for example, the ability to append incoming lead-capture data to existing prospect records in a CRM system.

5 ‒ Be prepared to score and prioritize the registrants from each event.

Every B2B marketer knows that the leads generated at live events can run the spectrum from red hot to ice cold. That’s why it’s important to implement a system that can evaluate leads based on key business criteria ‒ including job title, company name, industry, and indicated interests ‒ and then prioritize them for follow up. Better still, a robust lead-scoring system can compare incoming leads against an existing database and, if you already have their name, identify other relevant behavior (such as content downloads or website activity). Such a system can then decide whether to route a lead directly to sales, place it into a nurturing campaign, or discard it as irrelevant.

6 ‒ Plan a nurturing strategy for the contacts you connect with during events.

Lead scoring, of course, also yields data that feeds lead-nurturing campaigns. Specifically, leads generated from online or in-person live events should be tended with appropriate content and well-timed touches. A webinar attendee, for example, could be offered additional webinars or white papers in a follow-up email, while a CEO attending a trade show could receive an invitation to an exclusive executive dinner or panel discussion.

Keep in mind that it’s important to identify and honor a lead’s communication preferences for a nurturing campaign. If a registration form allows an attendee to request information by email rather than by phone, for example, that preference data should be applied to all of your applicable campaigns.

7 ‒ Select your metrics and analyze your results.

Establishing your event marketing goals in the first step makes it easier to choose useful metrics. If the objective of an event is to generate leads, for example, then the number of marketing qualified leads (MQLs) compared to the total number of attendees is an important metric to track.

Using metrics effectively, however, requires establishing a system to analyze them. Simply identifying MQLs isn’t enough. You also need to know how many of these leads convert in the sales pipeline, how long they take to convert, and how much revenue they generate – all key metrics for establishing ROI for your live events. The more you do to integrate all of your marketing activities, and to employ closed-loop reporting with your sales team, the more insight you’ll have into your ROI.

8 ‒ Gather feedback from your attendees.

Finally, always look for ways to gather feedback from attendees at your live events. This is easier in some cases than others. Many webinar platforms, for example, automatically generate attendee feedback forms at the end of each event. For smaller events, capturing feedback by email, phone, or even in person may be useful – especially if you identify ways to improve your event content and, ultimately, ROI.

Don’t forget to monitor social media both during and after all of your live events, and to supply Twitter hashtags for each event. This will give you an important real- time source of feedback on your live events, and in many cases you might even be able to respond during the event to address complaints or requests from your attendees. This isn’t just good marketing, it’s good customer service – and your attendees will take notice.

Following these eight tips should help you smoothly plan events that bring people together in a positive way and yield a wealth of useful information, solid leads, and bright prospects for the future.