Brands don’t compete against one another, they compete against irrelevance.

One thing in the entrepreneurial and startup world many learn quickly is relevance is becoming more of a key performance indicator than simply revenue alone. This is something many large brands don’t understand and it is what will separate the winners from the losers in the next three years.

It’s interesting that brands don’t think like consumers. They think that Coke’s competitor is Pepsi. That Apple’s competitor is Microsoft or that P&G’s competitor is Unilever.

Such thinking is incorrect on several accounts. One is that consumers don’t weight one against the other anymore but one against many. Secondly, consumers weigh what brands are actually relevant when hedging their bets.

Many people do this with limited attention spans and bombardments of amplified information in the form of TV ads, digital banners, pay-per-click search ads, social ads, content and word-of-mouth from friends and family.

So to think you only have one competitor is antiquated thinking. Everyone is your competitor in the attention economy.

That’s because in this here today, gone tomorrow world of business, consumers could very much weigh how they invest in a brand whether it is relevant now or in the near future. They weight this relevance on a number of factors within context of their lives. So for many brand managers and planners who think they only have to worry about one or two competitors shows those people don’t have what it takes to make it in the 21st Century.

Taking a look at the number of startups that have made it from nothing to something in the past five years, most did not follow similar paths toward success. The new normal isn’t about business case studies because each business is unique in a world moving evermore toward customer control. While many finance articles point toward success from a revenue standpoint, such thinking keeps scrappy brands from paying attention to relevance as a key barometer.

In trying to define the health of a company or brand, so many have simply looked at profitability. But relevance may be a better predictive key performance indicator. What we’re finding out more and more in an always-on world is that simply being profitable doesn’t mean a business is relevant. So how do you measure for this?

There are new signals for brands that go beyond profit/loss. P&L is still an important indicator, but it shouldn’t be the only one.

Three Ways To Measure Brand Relevance

1. Social listening can help a company really see what anyone is saying about their service (or not saying) and get better indicators of what supply and demand is in the market for your product, service or solution. Several brands use this not only for customer service but negative feedback on products in order to shorten the feedback loop between requests for updates and actual updates. Some I’ve spoken with don’t even know what it is. They will be gone by next year as more social data becomes a barometer for feedback beyond the traditional survey.

2. Feedback loops for digital products can really be shortened with these user listening to iteration models where development teams have some sense of how customers use their products. If you have a better understanding in these areas, you may not add a button no one really will need or use on your app. Again, traditional surveys are too slow in an always on world. A brand that was irrelevant six months ago because of a poor product launch could be relevant now because of improving that product based on feedback loops.

3. Net promoter score shows how much one is willing to tell others about your product or service. This is a huge area in terms of relevance in that companies that at one time were highly irrelevant can once again be relevant with the proper maneuvering in the marketplace. This is how most good and services are sold now in our hyper-connected online/offline world and thus a better way for startups to monitor if their growth hacks are actually working in creating share of voice.

Relevance may not be the finite indicator to predict sustainability, but it makes more sense than simply tracking revenue or tracking how you compare to one competitor. Being worth $100 million today means more if you are relevant to customer demand, customer context, competitor supply and cultural moods.

Learn how to keep your brand relevant in the 21^st Century in my new book Disruptive Marketing.

Don’t let the future leave you behind. Join us in Hollywood, California for Brand Leadership in the Age of Disruption, our 5th annual competitive-learning event designed around brand strategy.

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The Guardian reports:

Uber has admitted that there is a “problem” with the way autonomous vehicles cross bike lanes, raising serious questions about the safety of cyclists days after the company announced it would openly defy California regulators over self-driving vehicles.

Maybe it’s the bicycle riders who are the “problem” here. You’d think they’d have sense enough to get out of the way of the future, particularly in San Francisco.

Uber will lose some $3 billion this year, after losing $2.2 billion last year. Even by the exuberant standards of the internet industry, the company is a remarkably effective cash-burning machine.* By comparison, the largest annual loss posted by Amazon.com, no slouch when it comes to losing money, totaled $1.4 billion, back in 2000.

We’re often told that companies like Uber and Amazon are masters of business innovation and industry disruption. But an argument could be made that what they’re really masters of is getting investors, whether in public or private markets, to cover massive losses over long periods of time. The generosity of the capital markets is what allows Uber and its ilk to subsidize purchases by customers, again on a massive scale and over many years. It’s worth asking whether these subsidies are the real engine behind much of the tech industry’s vaunted wave of disruption. After all, the small businesses being disrupted — local taxi companies and book shops, for instance — don’t have sugar daddies underwriting their existence. They actually have to make money, day after day, to pay their employees and their bankers. They have to charge real prices, not make-believe ones.

Some will argue that the capital markets are acting rationally, investing for future returns. But if those future returns are predicated on the killing off of competitors through years of investor-subsidized predatory pricing and other economically dubious behavior, how rational are the capital market’s actions, really? At some point, it starts to smell like a market failure rather than a market success.

Uber will reportedly meet with officials from California’s attorney general and motor vehicles departments later today to discuss its rollout of self-driving taxis in apparent violation of state law. The company likes to present itself as a juggernaut, an inevitability, but really it’s more of a paper tiger. It may have succeeded in exempting itself from the rule of economics, but it shouldn’t be allowed to exempt itself from the rule of law.

______________

*It’s hardly a surprise that president-elect Donald Trump would pick Uber CEO Travis Kalanick as one of his strategic advisers. The league of gentlemen who require ten figures to report their annual losses is quite small.

The Senate's year-long investigation into drug pricing wrapped up in the form of a 131-page report released Wednesday. 

The report details the instances of four drug companies that made headlines in September 2015 — including former pharmaceutical executive Martin Shkreli's 5,000% price hike of the anti-parasitic drug Daraprim.

However, the committee was clear to make a distinction between these four companies and the business plans they followed and drug companies developing new drugs. Republican Senator Susan Collins told The New York Times that she didn't think the solution would be for the government to set drug prices.

But at the same time, "I don’t think we can ignore the market failures that have occurred. The answer is to figure out how we can revitalize the market so that generic drug producers have incentives to compete with companies that are buying up drugs and jacking up prices to make quick, exorbitant profits," she told The Times. 

Here's what you need to know about the report:

It looked at the four companies that made headlines in September 2015 for drug price hikes: Turing Pharmaceuticals, Retrophin, Valeant Pharmaceuticals, and Rodelis Therapeutics. The report came to the conclusion that the four companies essentially all had the same business model. 

That business model centered around a few key factors:

1. Making sure the company was the only drugmaker producing the drug.
2. Setting that drug as the "gold standard" in the industry.
3. Entering just a small market. 
4. Selling the drug through a "closed distribution system" (those are the specialty pharmacies).
5. Setting the price as high as possible.

Citing an email sent to former Turing CEO Martin Shkreli, the report summed up the sentiment before price hikes made headlines: "Funny that these small companies still haven't realized you can raise price aggressively and nobody gets too upset?"

The report also listed out policy solutions to price gouging instances like this, including incentivizing generic competition, allowing for importation of drugs in some cases, prevent patients assistance programs and copay coupons for being misused (these systems often make the US spend more on prescription drugs), and increase transparency on drug prices so that consumers can see how much other groups in the drug supply chain spent on the drug. 

Where are they now

A year later, of the four companies, Rodelis Therapeutics was the only one to return its drug, cycloserine, back to its previous owner where the price returned to $500 per 30 pills, instead of $10,800. 

Retrophin, which owns Thiola, a drug that treats a rare kidney disease, raised the price of the drug by 2000% in 2014. That list price hasn't gone down since. 

Valeant CEO Joseph Papa told the committee that the company had not reduced the prices on Cuprimine and Syprine, two drugs that are used to treat rare diseases that have shot up in price while owned by Valeant. Cuprimine in particular is one of the most expensive drugs in the US, costing $39,800 for a one-month supply. Papa told the committee that the company was focusing on its patient assistance programs for the drugs. 

The price of Daraprim, the drug infamous for its 5,000% price increase in September 2015 has not decreased in list price, though Turing, the company that sells it, did offer discounts to hospitals up to 50% off the list price of $750 per pill.

Drug pricing in 2017

Drug stocks were among the biggest gainers in the wake of Donald Trump's election, with biotechnology stocks rallying 13.3%. Investors had been skittish about what a Hillary Clinton presidency would mean for regulation of drug development and pricing, and she often sent drugmakers' stocks falling with her comments on Twitter.

But there is still uncertainty about what the Trump administration will do for the drug pricing debate, and that could be why biotech stocks have surrendered most of their post-election gains. 

In an interview with Time magazine in December the president-elect offered his thoughts on drug prices. 

"I’m going to bring down drug prices. I don’t like what’s happened with drug prices."

Some analysts think that Republican control in Congress will shield pharma and biotech companies from any drug price legislation, but there's still a lot of uncertainty about what will happen in January. 

 

SEE ALSO: 20 state attorneys general are suing 6 generic drugmakers over collusion and price fixing

DON'T MISS: A new kind of cancer treatment works remarkably well for some patients but not others — and researchers want to know why

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Thanks to laptops and smartphones, human beings are able to stay connected to the Internet more often that ever before.

And yet, there are still some notable dead spots, particularly in cars, buses, and trains. Anyone with a daily commute can speak to lapses in coverage on the subway or when going through a tunnel.

But the Internet of Things is looking to change all that and keep people connected at every moment of every day. Connected cars, buses, trains, and even planes will allow people to have a stable Internet connection at almost all times.

And the transformation won't stop there, as the IoT will make transportation itself more efficient and help us get from place to place more quickly.

Below, we've outlined the ways that the "Internet of Transportation" will create the new era of connected transportation and change how we travel.

What is Connected Transportation?

Quite simply, connected transportation involves outfitting vehicles with Wi-Fi or other sensors to enable Internet connectivity during travel. The connected car is probably the most prevalent example of this, but we'll get into that in a later section.

Many cities have begun smart transportation initiatives to optimize their public transportation routes, create safer roads, reduce infrastructure costs, and alleviate traffic congestion as more people move into cities. Paris, for example, launched an electric-car sharing program called Autolib in 2011 that uses sensors inside the connected vehicles to track them by GPS. And drivers can use the car's dashboard to reserve public parking spaces in the city.

Programs such as this make use of connected vehicles to gather valuable data on how drivers operate their cars and where they travel, and smart cities use this data to better plan their roads.

IoT for Public Transportation

Connected cars are all well and good, but what about the millions of people who commute on buses and trains each day, or fly frequently on airplanes? The IoT has them covered, as well.

Major players in this space such as Delta, JetBlue, Amtrak, and Greyhound have already started to understand the value of IoT connectivity. Sensors inside of planes, for example, help maintenance workers more easily secure the aircraft and make sure that the planes comply with FAA guidelines. And multiple plane, train, and bus companies have started making Wi-Fi available in their vehicles in order to enhance the customer experience.

The top four providers for in-flight connectivity (Gogo, Global Eagle, Thales/LiveTV, and Panasonic) had connected 3,340 out of a possible 5,500 commercial aircraft in North America as of September 2015, at which point they had plans to spread that connectivity to more than 15,000 airplanes around the world.

IoT for Cars

In the last few years, connected cars or smart cars have surged in popularity thanks to the IoT. Today, car companies are connecting their vehicles in two manners: embedded and tethered. Embedded cars employ a built-in antenna and chipset, while tethered connections make use of hardware to let drivers connect to their cars through their smartphones.

On top of this, app integration is becoming more and more standard in the car of today. Google Maps and other navigation systems have started to replace built-in GPS systems in dashboards. Apps such as GasBuddy show the driver where he or she can locate the cheapest fuel in their area. And music apps such as Spotify have started to away the need for traditional and satellite radio.

For more details on the connected car, click here.

The Road Ahead

The Internet of Things will change the way that we travel, whether it's across the country on a plane or from home to work on a bus. But that is just one area of our everyday lives that the IoT will radically change.

That's why BI Intelligence has spent months creating the best and most detailed collection on the IoT: The Internet of Things: Examining How The IoT Will Affect The World.

To get your copy of this invaluable guide to the IoT universe, choose one of these options:

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

The choice is yours. But however you decide to acquire this report, you’ve given yourself a powerful advantage in your understanding of the fast-moving world of the IoT.

Join the conversation about this story »

E-commerce is growing every year and shows no signs of slowing down.

E-commerce sales in the U.S. eclipsed $97 billion during the second quarter of 2016, which marked almost nearly 16% year-over-year (YoY) growth, according to the U.S. Department of Commerce. This was the greatest YoY increase since Q3 2014.

More importantly, U.S. e-commerce growth has regularly outpaced the total retail market over the past six years, and e-commerce made up 8.1% of the total retail market in Q2 2016, up from 6.4% two years earlier.

But even with this growth, there is still plenty of room for aggressive expansion, and the Internet of Things (IoT) can take e-commerce to the next level. Those who are involved in the retail and e-commerce industries must stay on top of this trend in order to stay ahead of the competition.

Below, we'll break down retail trends of the past, take a look at the current state of tech in the retail world, and look ahead to the future of the IoT in retail.

How Retail Sales Were Done

If we want to go all the way back, we could discuss a time when the retail system was based on wampum. But that might be reaching a bit too far back in time.

Instead, let's examine more recent times. The first department stores in the U.S. began popping up in the mid 1800s and sold largely textiles and pre-made clothing before they evolved into larger companies such as Macy's, Lord & Taylor, and the like.

Shopping malls then swept across the country starting in the 1900s and quickly became the go-to destination for shopping, socializing, moviegoing, eating, and more.

And at both of these locations, cash was king. Bring your money, trade it for goods, go home. As we moved deeper into the 20th Century, credit cards and debit cards became more popular.

Then the Internet changed everything.

Starting in the 1990s, the web afforded the public with a previously unknown level of convenience by letting customers shop from the convenience of their own homes. And as we noted at the top, this trend continues to grow to this day, thanks especially to the advent of smartphones and mobile shopping.

Birth of E-Commerce

E-commerce companies truly exploded in the late 1990s thanks to eBay and Amazon. eBay signed its first third-party licensing deal in November 1996, and it went on to host two million online auctions in January 1997 (compared to 250,000 in all of 1996).

Amazon, meanwhile, began primarily as an online bookstore in the mid-1990s and sold approximately $20,000 in inventory per week within its first two months. By the end of 2001, the company had generated revenue of more than $1 billion.

Today, e-commerce is a dominant force in retail. Global e-commerce transactions totaled $1.058 trillion in 2012, according to Statista. The company predicts that this figure will more than double to $2.356 trillion in 2018.

Future of E-Commerce and Retail - Internet of Things

The IoT has already started working its way into retail stores, and technologies will continue to disrupt the traditional retail process in the coming years.

Consider beacons, devices that retailers use to automatically send notifications and discounts directly to shoppers' smartphones when they enter a store. BI Intelligence, Business Insider's premium research service, expects the beacon installed base to swell from 96,000 in 2015 to 3.5 million in 2018.

You may have also noticed digital signage at some of your favorite stores. These signs push ads and price changes to stores in real-time, which creates target sales for consumers. MarketsandMarkets expects the global market value for digital signage to grow to $23.7 billion in 2020 from $15.8 billion in 2015.

Other IoT devices have also made their way into stores. Smart mirrors, for example, let customers virtually try on clothes, which enhances the shopping experience and offers added convenience for the shoppers by not forcing them to travel to and from the fitting room.

Smart shelves, meanwhile, automatically monitor inventory in stores and notifies the manager when an item is running low. This is crucial for inventory management, which can be an expensive and tedious process for managers. Mistakes and human error in this process can lead to an oversupply or, worse, a shortage of key items in stores. But connected devices handle all of this automatically to relieve managers' stress and improve operating efficiency, which in turn saves the retailer money.

And speaking of efficiency, we have the Amazon Dash Button, a Wi-Fi connected device that lets you reorder your favorite products simply by pushing a button. No logging onto the site, finding the item, and buying it every time. Just one push and you're done.

Finally, robots have the potential to transform the retail industry. BI Intelligence expects 2.8 million enterprise robots to ship between 2016 and 2021. The bulk of these will be industrial robots for manufacturing, but in-store robots will also be in the mix.

Target, for example, tested robots in one of its San Francisco locations earlier this year to help stock shelves and take inventory. Restaurants in China have started replacing waiters with robots. Lowe's rolled out some in-store robots earlier this month.

With all of these changes taking place, the sky's the limit for the IoT in retail.

Even More to Know

The IoT can take retail, specifically e-commerce, to new heights, but this is far from the only area that the Internet of Things will disrupt in the coming years.

That's why BI Intelligence has spent months researching and writing the best and most comprehensive resource on the IoT: The Internet of Things: Examining How The IoT Will Affect The World.

To get your copy of this invaluable guide to the IoT universe, choose one of these options:

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

The choice is yours. But however you decide to acquire this report, you’ve given yourself a powerful advantage in your understanding of the fast-moving world of the IoT.

Join the conversation about this story »

On October 12, 2016, President Obama’s Executive Office published two reports that laid out its plans for the future of artificial intelligence (AI). The reports received less media attention than they might have otherwise because the United States was gripped by the final weeks of a presidential campaign race. But depending on one’s view of AI’s potential impact, the work described by these reports may be more influential on the long arc of history than the outcome of that election. Combined, the two reports include eighty-eight pages and twenty-five recommendations. Here are the highlights.

AI policy should be an urgent concern. The two reports – one by a subcommittee of the new National Science and Technology Council, and a second on AI and R&D — were prepared with remarkable speed, especially relative to the traditional pace of government.  In only six months, the U.S. government set a priority, enlisted key individuals, and produced a comprehensive national plan for AI. The Obama administration clearly sees AI as an urgent priority.

The U.S. government is not designing policy for general intelligence or “strong AI.” The reports define artificial general intelligence (AGI) as “a notional future AI system that exhibits apparently intelligent behavior at least as advanced as a person across the full range of cognitive tasks.” But this isn’t the sort of AI that the administration is planning for. The administration takes the position that current policy should not be influenced by aspirations to achieve AGI, for three reasons: 1) many experts believe that AGI is not feasible in the short or medium run; 2) the authors assume the best way to prepare for AGI is to “attack risks” from narrow AI, such as security, privacy, and safety; and 3) the policy recommendations for AGI are unknown and may conflict with those for narrow AI, which is more certain and with immediate economic implications. This approach stands in stark contrast to the views advanced by organizations that focus specifically on AGI such as the Future of Life Institute at MIT, the Future of Humanity Institute at the University of Oxford, and the Machine Intelligence Research Institute at the University of California at Berkeley.

AI isn’t a science project; it’s commercially important. The Obama administration recognizes the tremendous economic potential of AI, which is why the NSCT subcommittee on the topic included representatives not just from defense and intelligence, but also the Departments of Commerce, Treasury, Transportation, Energy, Labor, and more. In a separate report, the Chair of President Obama’s Council of Economic Advisers, Jason Furman, wrote: “The biggest worry I have about AI is that we will not have enough of it, and that we need to do more…” Echoing this point, President Obama subsequently remarked: “The analogy that we still use when it comes to a great technology achievement, even 50 years later, is a moonshot. And somebody reminded me that the space program was half a percent of GDP. That doesn’t sound like a lot, but in today’s dollars that would be $80 billion that we would be spending annually … on AI.”

The U.S. needs to expand its AI workforce. Expanding the AI R&D workforce is a key theme across both reports as well as Chair Furman’s paper. There are two ways to grow the workforce: 1) by training students at home, and 2) by importing talent from abroad.  The reports are silent on how much emphasis the government should place on each approach.  This depends partly on how long it takes to develop talent domestically. With an expanding set of resources for lowering the barrier to entry in the field (e.g., open-source software libraries for machine learning such as TensorFlow, Caffe, Theano, and MOOCS for learning machine learning online) some skills can be developed in short order.  However, developing the Ph.D. level expertise required to conduct research and make fundamental breakthroughs takes time.  This level of talent likely needs to be aggressively recruited to the U.S. in order to achieve the stated objectives with the urgency implied in the reports.

The U.S. government has no clear vision regarding where to focus research funding. The R&D report notes that the private sector is investing heavily in AI and at an increasing pace, and that the government should focus its resources on the types of AI research that the private sector will be less likely to support. However, although the report provides a long list of research topics, it does not delineate which are commercial and which require government support.  Perhaps that is because it is so difficult to predict which areas of research are unlikely to have reasonably immediate commercial value.  At present, the line between basic and applied AI research is so blurred — with many private companies hiring academics — and the future so poorly understood that even the most advanced governments have little insight into what sort of R&D to fund.

Regulation could threaten AI’s progress, or further it. The bottleneck to deploying AI-enabled, society-enhancing products and services is shifting from technology to regulation in domains like autonomous vehicles and unmanned aircraft systems.  The report notes: “where regulatory responses to the addition of AI threaten to increase the cost of compliance, or slow the development or adoption of beneficial innovations, policymakers should consider how those responses could be adjusted…” But regulation can help too, as the administration recognizes. Well-designed regulations will influence the rate and direction of innovation by creating incentives for the private sector to invest in ways that most benefit society.  For example, regulations regarding transparency — “Why is the AI recommending a treatment that is different from what the human doctor recommends? What is its reason?” — would create incentives for the private sector to invest in research to address these issues, which in turn will make AI more governable.

AI can help governments do their jobs better.  The government can use AI itself to serve the public faster, more effectively, and at lower cost. This includes mundane tasks such as faster bureaucratic processes (e.g., issuing driver’s licenses) as well as complex applications such as cybersecurity (lower cost, more agile) and weapon systems (safer, more humane). This will be an important area for competition across jurisdictions. Those who invest early may benefit not only from increased productivity but also from learning about how AI-enabled products and services work that may provide additional advantages in subsequent decision-making. Of course, early adopters also risk exposure to the costs of learning and of less-tested technologies.

China is a leader, not a follower or a copycat. Perhaps the most perplexing part of the report is the stark contrast between a dramatic illustration and the accompanying blasé text. Over the past four years, the U.S. and China grew their research output in AI significantly faster than other countries, with the U.S. initially emerging as the worldwide leader. However, over the last two years, China surpassed the U.S. by these measures of research output.

 

Given the importance of AI reflected in every other aspect of this report, it’s surprising that the rise of China and its implications for competition in research and human capital receives only one sentence in the text: “The trends also reveal the increasingly global nature of research, with the United States no longer leading the world in publication numbers, or even publications receiving at least one citation.”  That’s all the report says.  China is never explicitly mentioned even once in the text of either report.

Perhaps the authors of the report believe the data is not a good measure of meaningful research. Alternatively, perhaps the real policy response — an aggressive international recruiting campaign for top AI research talent — is not meant for public consumption. The founder of Chinese company Baidu, Robin Li, expressed his view on the importance of this technology for China: “when the age of AI arrives, the [internet of things] will become a big market and completely change manufacturing. I think that in the future all manufacturing will be a part of the AI industry… China is a manufacturing giant, and I think we need to really pay attention to AI tech development…” Every country with AI research expertise that wishes to participate as producers on the frontier of this technology should prepare for intensifying labor market competition, especially from the U.S. and China.

Reorganizations can be a useful management tool for finding new value and are often essential as part of a merger or acquisition integration. Getting this type of reorganization right allows business units from the merging companies to be brought together smoothly, corporate activities to be standardized and streamlined, people to be aligned behind desired outcomes, and integration synergies to be delivered quickly.

But, according to McKinsey research, only 16% of merger reorgs fully deliver their objectives in the planned time, 41% take longer than expected, and in 10% of cases, the reorg actually harms the newly-formed organization. Common pitfalls are a lack of cultural understanding between the integrating parties, poor integration leadership, and a focus on the wrong activity set or the wrong targets.

To help maximize the value and minimize the misery of reorgs, we have developed a five-step process for running them. The steps apply to all reorgs generally and our survey data shows that companies using this process are three times likelier than others to achieve their desired results. In this article we will show specifically how they apply to M&A-driven reorgs. In efficient M&A situations, steps 1-3 would be considered in detail before deal closure, with steps 4 and 5 executed post-close.

Step 1: Develop a Profit and Loss Statement

As a part of your M&A plan, you should consider the benefits, costs, and timing of the reorg. Remember that the costs are not just those of the employees, consultants, lawyers and bankers involved: they also include the human cost of change and the disruption it can wreak on the businesses involved. Business performance can suffer and key employees can start to look for opportunities elsewhere. It may seem like common sense to weigh these costs and benefits along with the merger, but according to McKinsey research, only 15% of executives set detailed business targets for their reorgs.

In the case of an international utility company, consideration of reorg practicalities allowed the acquiring company to focus strategically. Early in the deal process, the challenge of reorganizing European businesses (due to regulatory and legal considerations) was recognized and the merger of this part of the business was delayed by 12 months. The company recognized that this would delay the merger’s full impact by a year or two. At the same time, this realization enabled them to focus on the the work of reorganizing head offices and to realize growth.

Step 2: Understand Current Weaknesses and Strengths

In an M&A situation, the true strengths of each organization can be hidden or poorly understood, and even damaged by a reckless drive to achieve immediate cost synergies.

It may be difficult to get a sense of the strengths and weaknesses before the deal is closed. However, you can get some insights from due-diligence inquiries, interviews with former members of the company (including those in your own organization), or the internet— whether through the company’s own publications or sites such as LinkedIn, which enable you to profile individual managers. How you go about this step is also dependent on whether this a takeover (where the default position is that the acquired organization will largely be absorbed) or a true merger, where you may be looking for a “best-of-both” approach from across the companies, in terms of organization and personnel.

In the case of two merging service companies, internal and external views on each business were sought prior to close and a prioritized list of focus areas across people, process and structural dimensions created. Post-closure, managers from both businesses shared their views through interviews and electronic submissions. These observations were compared to the initial hypotheses and the list of focus areas updated. This highlighted strengths in customer responsiveness, but a joint failing in the creation and dispatch of maintenance teams. Resolving this issue within the new organization helped to streamline the resource allocation process, resulting in reduced cost and improved customer service levels.

Step 3: Consider Multiple Options

A common mistake is to focus on what the organization looks like (its reporting structure, for instance) and forget about how it works (management and business processes and systems; the numbers, capabilities, mindsets, and behaviors of its people). In our experience, the latter is usually more important.

In the M&A context, it is possible, even before the deal closes, to develop a strong hypothesis for what the new organization structure will look like (by definition, you will have to choose one structure that integrates the two companies). There is usually a focus on people: both the numbers needed (as some of the synergies will clearly come from staff efficiencies) and the shared culture that needs to be created within the new company. However, as noted above, it is important not to forget processes: companies normally go about their processes (whether they are deciding on strategy, launching a product or process, or running day-to-day operations) and allocation of tasks along each process in very different ways. Confusion around these processes and the allocation of activities post-merger is a frequent problem.

In developing organizational solutions, we believe that explicitly choosing from a number of options is the best approach. No solution will perfectly fit all future possibilities and every solution will have its downsides: only by weighing alternatives will you see what you might gain and what you might lose. In an M&A situation, the two merging companies, will present two different ways of organizing, so these, plus a combination of the best of both, provide three obvious options.

This approach was used during the integration of two mining companies. The acquiring company wished to retain its operating approach and replicate it within the newly acquired business. This helped inform initial design discussions and narrow down the choices open to the new leadership team. To test more detailed options, alternative solutions for the technology organization, investment processes and safety delegations were presented to the newly appointed leadership team. They envisaged themselves in each of the options and provided feedback: “that’s not a role I would want to do,” “how would we agree on decisions given the competing interests of these roles,” and “that’s a bit of a convoluted process.” This flushed out unattractive options and helped them come to consensus on the organizational design.

Step 4: Get the Plumbing and Wiring Right

After step 3, most executives stand back, trusting their teams to handle the details of the new organization and the transition plan. External consultants usually clock off at this point as well. Yet we’ve repeatedly found — and a McKinsey survey in 2014 confirmed — that step 4 is the hardest part of the reorg to get right.

In M&A situations this is further complicated by the fact that detailed information becomes available only relatively late in the process. Some planning and even quite detailed designs are possible before deal close. However, when the deal is done, you must quickly circle back on the hypotheses from previous steps — the assumptions on synergies (step 1), the understanding of the acquired company’s strengths and weaknesses (step 2), and the concept design (step 3) — to confirm that they are sound and, where necessary, refine them.

In a recent oil and gas merger, a large integration team was formed, with members from both organizations and across different business areas, to coordinate integration efforts. Transition leads were appointed to help manage day-to-day integration activities within each business area; some leaders were given early oversight of the areas they would be responsible for post “go-live” of the new organization design. Each part of the integration team was given its synergy target, expectations for process and cultural alignment and clear responsibility for people integration within their defined boundaries. The leaders of these integration teams reported directly to the CEO and Board. This enabled the teams to escalate issues that they found quickly – for example, the need to drive even deeper cost reductions in a tougher external environment. This prompted the company to make some changes to the design and to drive for additional synergy benefits learning from the leaner approach used in the acquired business.

Step 5: Launch, Learn, and Course Correct

No matter how much thought and preparation you put into a reorg, it’s unrealistic to expect that it will work perfectly from the beginning. This is the case with all reorgs, but it applies even more when two organizations, with completely different cultures, are being crashed together. That doesn’t mean you need to do a 180-degree flip-flop in the design as soon as you encounter a problem. But you do need to encourage everyone to point out the new organization’s teething problems, openly debate solutions, and implement the appropriate fixes as soon as possible, in line with the logic of your original plans. Following an M&A integration, a formal assessment is also essential. We find that it is best to do this after one to two cycles of financial reporting, so you can assess where the financials are, and are not, meeting expectations and relate this to the organizational set up. And if you plan to do more M&As, capturing the results of your experience for the next time round is critical.

Returning to our utility example, the organization was required to report progress in implementing the new organization as part of its normal results cycle and was fielding an ever-increasing range of questions from works councils as to how change would be implemented in Europe. The leadership team assessed integration progress, based on this feedback, and considered where additional refinements could be made. Issues in the commercial and trading businesses were identified and new solutions proposed. In addition, some back-office activities (mainly HR), were further consolidated, bringing additional cost savings into the mix.

If you’re contemplating an M&A-driven reorganization, you owe it to your shareholders and employees to follow a rigorous process rather than winging it, as so many leaders do. You’ll make better decisions, keep your employees more involved and engaged, and capture more value.

This post was originally published by Jessie Kwak on the Pipedrive Blog

Are you seeing stagnant sales figures when your sales team looks busier than ever? It could be because your salespeople have fallen into bad sales habits and unproductive activities.

Whether it’s obsessing over knocking out low priority tasks or slipping into a monotonous voice while making phone call after phone call, it’s easy for salespeople to get off track.

“The irony is that the sales profession is all about talking with people, but there’s a willingness to prioritize anything that involves not talking to the prospect,” said Andy Paul, founder at Zero-Time Selling Inc.

He added:

Salespeople need to focus on the tasks that are related to helping customers make a decision.

“That’s their job,” he said. “Anything other than that, they should get rid of.”

Alice Heiman, founder of Alice Heiman, LLC, said that while unproductive behaviors can be a real problem in the sales office, the behaviors aren’t always the fault of salespeople. “In a lot of cases, what they’re doing is what their sales managers told them,” she said.

Wherever they originate, sales managers need to be vigilant in keeping an eye out for these seven bad sales habits that can hinder sales productivity.

1. Dialing for dollars

Calling customers and prospects when you don’t have a valid business reason is a waste of time.

“Everybody’s heard the term ‘dialing for dollars’ before, but towards the end of any kind of quota time, sales managers will yell at their teams to get on the phone,” Heiman said.

It’s a bad sales habit Heiman has seen her clients implement without success. At one company, for example, the owner (who was also the sales team manager) decided that every sales rep should call every customer four times a week to get sales.

“That’s unproductive,” Heiman said. “In fact, it might really irritate people so that they will not take your call when you actually have something to say to them.”

Consider your motives before picking up the phone. Are you adding value? Think about whether your conversation will truly move the deal forward.

2. Sticking to a script

Nothing turns a potential client off faster than a salesperson who simply sticks to a script.

“I can’t stress enough that selling requires deliberate, mindful action,” Paul said. “You’ve got to go off script, you’ve got to be engaged with the customer’s concerns and understand how you can serve them.”

Too often, salespeople have a set list of questions to ask, and they spend so much time thinking about crossing off each question that the customer feels their concerns are being ignored.

By focusing on listening to the customer’s needs rather than focusing on accomplishing your own agenda, you’ll put yourself in a better position to provide them with a proper solution and to win them over.

“Sales is hard mental work,” Paul said. “You have to bring your A-game absolutely every time you reach out and touch a prospect.”

3. Treating all your prospects the same

Believe it or not, sales is a creative profession, one that requires salespeople constantly to be thinking about the best approach for a particular prospect rather than trotting out cookie-cutter tactics.

“Many salespeople want to find a process, something they can repeat that works,” Paul said. “It just doesn’t work that way.”

Salespeople need to be aware that the way prospects gather information, communicate and prefer to be sold to can vary wildly.

“It doesn’t mean that you need to do everything 180 degrees from each other, but you have to be aware that they are different,” Paul said.

Approach prospects with an open mind, so you can be ready to tackle anything they bring to the table.

4. Not selling to the right person

Salespeople can waste time by not connecting with the right decision makers within a prospect’s company — whether that’s selling to someone too far down the decision-making chain who will still need to get buy-in, or bypassing the true decision maker in an attempt to sell to the C-suite. (The latter is a big problem.)

“A lot of times, sales training uniformly tells sales reps that they need to ‘sell to the C- suite’,” Paul said. “It really does a disservice to the salesperson to make them think that they really need to oversell this product when the actual decision makers are much lower.”

Before going in, salespeople need to conduct research, whether on the company’s website or via social media, to ensure they reach the best possible person for the job at hand. Making accurate contacts will avoid the initial message from getting diluted or lost down the line, as it’s passed on from person to person.

5. Letting email rule the day

Many salespeople have been trained to jump at every incoming email, but that can create an unproductive rhythm of reacting throughout the day, rather than prioritizing the work that should take precedence.

Instead of letting email rule the day, Heiman trains her clients to turn off notifications and check email at certain intervals. She recommended that salespeople spend time first thing in the morning, prioritizing which tasks are important and doing those first.

“After that, you can take an hour and you check your email,” she said.

6. Doing work that should be delegated

Spending time and energy on tasks that are outside the salesperson’s job description is another bad habit.

When Heiman noticed a client’s sales team entering their own orders — a task that customer service was supposed to be doing — she learned that the salespeople had gotten into the habit because customer service was taking too long. Once sales and customer service had agreed on a deadline for order entry, the sales team was freed up to spend more time on the phone.

“We also taught customer service to let the salesperson know that the order had been typed in, so the salespersons could stop worrying about that,” Heiman said. “Because worrying takes up time, too.”

Delegating tasks that are specific to a team member’s strengths will eliminate unnecessary burden and create a smoother, more efficient workflow.

7. Poor time management

A survey by Cirrus Insight cited that salespeople spend more than half of their day on tasks that aren’t related to their main job — namely, selling.

Time spent not selling is a huge problem, Heiman added. When she worked with one client to analyze their time, she found they spent less than 20% of it actually having conversations with customers.

“Salespeople are busy every minute, but they’re not always doing the right work,” she said. “They really need to prioritize all the work that they’re doing, schedule the priority work on the calendar, then fit everything else in around it.”

If you are looking to get rid of bad sales habits, develop good sales habits, and boost your sales productivity, a sales management tool like Pipedrive offers a streamline visual pipeline that motivates actions, and helps you and your team complete the activities needed to close more deals faster.

Do your salespeople have bad habits?

Alice can work with your sales leaders to change that. Call her to chat about it at 775-852-5020 or schedule an appointment.

The post Seven Toxic Habits Of Unsuccessful Sales People appeared first on Alice Heiman, LLC.

Despite the fact that remembering to rinse cans and throw out the little sheet of wax paper covered in coagulated cheese at the bottom of every pizza box is a minor annoyance, I’m a big proponent of recycling.

Unless, that is, we’re talking about stitching old snippets of ad copy together in order to create your new Expanded Text Ads.

You see, recycling standard text ads—carving off a sliver of a description line here, stealing a CTA there, and pulling it all together with a bit of punctuation or a nice conjunction-suture—simply doesn’t work.

Unfortunately, many advertisers are having an inordinately difficult time leaving their old, constrained copy and the formulas that once yielded top-performing ads behind in favor of the comparatively greener pastures of ETA’s.

Don’t be a paid search luddite: Why it’s time to switch it up

If you’ve been advertising on the search network for more than a decade, it’s possible you’ve become unreasonably attached to your ads. Even if you’re a diligent split-tester, there’s probably copy active somewhere in your account that’s been producing conversions since before people hated millennials.

This is largely due to the fact that, since Google introduced AdWords way back in Y2K, the format of text ads has remained unchanged: 25-character headline. Two 35-character description lines. Display URL. This continuity has bred a level of comfortability so profoundly couch-locked that advertisers are struggling to leverage the 47% increase in character count that Expanded Text Ads offer.

Instead, as mentioned above, common practice has been to take pieces from an account’s most historically dominant (or at least relatively successful) ad copy to create what I like to call the Frankenstein ETA.

While it can be argued that these Frankenstein ETA’s are born of pragmatism and not a lack of creativity, their detrimental impact far outweighs any perceived benefit of time saved. Simply put, the “efficiency” of using grafted ETA’s instead of generating fresh copy has the potential to adversely impact your account performance.

The hesitance to leave what’s worked for more than a decade behind makes total sense. You’ve been using short phrases like “sale ends soon” and “learn more” forever. Your copy has leveraged keywords in ways that made perfect sense when text ads were capped at 95 characters. But in a world where the SERP is littered with sprawling ETA’s, sticking to these old methods is like insisting on using dial-up.

It’s a square peg / round hole situation, and the only way around it is to begin writing new ad copy: ad copy explicitly created for the higher character count and altered format of Expanded Text Ads.

Kill Your Darlings

As such, your first step towards writing exceptional Expanded Text Ads is to kill off your old copy. Yes, standard text ads will be put to pasture on January 31, but I’m talking scorched earth.

It makes complete sense to learn from your historically top-performing ads, but this knowledge should serve as nothing more than a foundation.

Take this screenshot for example. Notice how the first headline in the ETA is the exact same as the old one (forgivable since this clearly belongs in a branded campaign). After that, though, things go awry. The second headline, “The Destination for Music Gear,” makes no emotional appeal. There’s no CTA. And don’t even get me started on the description line, which basically looks like whoever wrote the copy appended some old ad extensions to the exact same line in order to hit the new character count.

This, folks, is not an isolated incident. In fact, our account is guilty of the exact same thing (we’re transitioning towards better ETA’s that make use of the very tactics you’ll find below, but for the time being, we’re as guilty as our pals over at Guitar Center).

The lesson here?

Except your standard text ads. Those need to go.

In what follows, I’ve created a list of the 7 deadly ETA sins: things I know you’ve probably already done (or will do in the coming weeks) and, more importantly, how to avoid them entirely and write some seriously kick ass ad copy instead.

ETA Sin #1: Overstuffing your first headline with keywords

The limited space available in standard text ads (95 characters between the headline and pair of description lines) made it advantageous to mention the keywords you were bidding on within the first 25 characters. Doing so afforded you a bolded keyword at the onset of your ad which, in a single 25-character headline, functioned like a much less impressive neon sign.

Now, with Expanded Text Ads, you shouldn’t feel obligated to include the term you’re bidding on within the first 30 characters. Should the keyword make an appearance somewhere within your ad? Of course! But there’s so much real estate available to you that, unless you can find a way to weave a keyword into a coherent phrase, you should leave it out: there’s always the other headline, the description line, and both URL paths.

While your competitors are rehashing the same tired, robotic copy, you’ll win over new prospects with a combination of a compelling offer and discernable personality.

Instead, you should…

Prioritize saying something compelling, not just beating a prospect over the head with their search query.

Check this out…

While this ETA example uses the keyword (“onboarding software”) within the first headline, it does so in a way that feels far more organic than simply appending “best” to the term. The account manager makes excellent use of the additional space by elaborating on what onboarding software does, offering copy that conveys both features and benefits instead of simply padding the requisite keyword with monosyllabic adjectives.

The results are clear: providing compelling information to prospects instead resulted in a 400% improvement in CTR.

TL;DR

Expanded Text Ads give you so many places to leverage keywords. That swollen description line? Boom. Those shiny new URL pathways? Shazzam. Don’t feel obligated to write spammy, incoherent headlines; instead, offer value.

ETA Sin #2: Moving the first description line up to the new second headline

One of the most common mistakes I’ve seen with advertisers’ initial attempts at writing Expanded Text Ads has been the decision to shift old description lines into the new second headline.

Now, formulaically, best practice for writing a standard text ad looked something like this:

Headline: Keyword + whatever else fit (likely a short, non-descriptive adjective)

Desc. Line 1: Value proposition

Desc. Line 2: Value proposition continued + Call to action

Following this scaffold, the second headline in an expanded text ad crafted from salvaged ad copy would be a 30-character value proposition. While having this emboldened might sound valuable, in reality it’s a waste of the biggest advantage ETA’s afford advertisers: the ability to include a typographically eye-catching call to action.

Instead, you should…

Focus on incorporating an irresistible call to action.

Realistically speaking, the majority of people only read headlines. While this sentiment is widely cited in regards to news (and is credited with the rise of clickbaity headlines), it holds true for PPC ads, too.

This makes a second bolded headline inherently more valuable.

If we’re using the first headline to say something compelling, the second headline should focus on convincing a prospect to click the ad and subsequently convert. By making an emotional appeal in the first headline, you set yourself up to present your offer before the prospect’s eyes descend to your description line. You’re effectively ensuring that more people see your call to action, which, when done well, will improve your CTR.

TL;DR

If you’ve created interest by appealing to the searcher’s intent with your first headline, the second headline should be a call to action: after all, most people only read headlines anyway!

ETA Sin #3: Sacrificing quality for the sake of brevity in your description line

For my money, this one’s the most important thing on the entire list, and it’s at the root of everything else I’ve mentioned to this point.

Every standard text ad best-practice or strategy you’ve deployed or read about was predicated on stingy character constraints. Instead of being able to provide prospects with detailed value propositions and precise calls to action, you’ve been forced to make concessions.

For the same reasons, many advertisers have long avoided including features like countdown timers because, well, the character constraints made it too difficult.

Now, thanks to Expanded Text Ads, you’ve got the opportunity to share a more powerful message with your prospects: please don’t waste it by stitching your old ads together instead of coming up with something new.

Instead, you should…

Flex your copywriting muscles.

The increased character count means the days of “buy now,” “best,” and “ends soon” are in the rearview mirror. Instead, you can write ads that relate to your actual offering more organically. You can avoid vagueness, you can differentiate from the competition, by simply working your USP (Unique Selling Proposition) into your paid search ads.

And the best way to get started? Use your landing page and website copy in your PPC campaigns.

If your battle-tested landing pages were written by a professional copywriter, now’s the time to include some of that CRO magic in your paid search ads.

Once you’ve rolled out a set of copy written in this fashion— and left your half-baked Frankenstein ETA in the dumpster— you’re ready to star A/B testing your ad copy against countdown timers, emotional appeals, and anything else you can think of!

TL;DR

You’ve got 47% more space: use it!

ETA Sin #4: Thinking URL paths are only for keywords

With the old standard text ads, you had the ability to include a display URL. This was an excellent feature because it gave you the power to alter spammy-looking subdomains and include keywords.

With ETA’s, there is no more display URL. Your final URL is used to dynamically generate a “path,” which features two brand new fields aptly named URL Paths. These are a pair of 15 character blank spaces at the end of your final URL that you can use as you see fit. For those keeping score at home, that’s an additional 30 characters that you can use to your advantage (or completely ignore: don’t do this).

Remember those new, compelling headlines in which we took the onus off of keyword stuffing in favor of crafting a compelling offer? Well, URL Paths are the perfect place to make up some ground. Here, you can load up on the keywords you’re bidding on in an attempt to maximize Quality Score and show the prospects who read past your headlines that your ad is completely relevant to their search query.

But the utility of URL Paths doesn’t stop there.

Instead, you should…

Use every trick in the book to create hyper-relevant URL paths.

Part of what makes the URL Path fields so potent is that they can include more than just keywords. You can also use dynamic keyword insertion (to match a prospect’s search query perfectly) or—my personal favorite—include a countdown timer.

While it’s unlikely the URL Path is what makes or breaks your ad’s performance, maximizing their value can only help. Think of them as ad extensions that show 100% of the time.

**BONUS**

If you’re feeling subversive, you can use the URL paths to include trademarked terms and the names of competitors. While this could be disallowed as Google begins to release updates to ETA’s, right now this is a creative way for advertisers to convey relevance and gain a competitive advantage without having their ads disapproved.

TL;DR

URL Paths are good for more than just looking pretty. Use them to your advantage by including a customizer (dynamic keyword insertion or countdown timer), too.

ETA Sin #5: Forgetting about mobile specific ads

One feature of ETA’s that’s left some advertisers reeling—particularly those who primarily target mobile users—is the “lack” of mobile specific ads. And I get it. Mobile ads are so useful, and device-specific bid adjustments simply aren’t enough.

“But Allen, why did you put lack in scare-quotes?”

Excellent question, friend. It’s because there is a way to use mobile ETA: it just takes a bit of legwork and navigation.

Instead, you should…

Mosey on over to the “Business Data” section of the Shared library. From there, you can upload a feed (which is a fancy word for spreadsheet).

To create a feed, you’re going to want to make a spreadsheet that references the necessary fields. To keep things simple, let’s assume we want to alter the headline in one campaign so that it changes on mobile SERPS. To do this, you’re going to name one column “Headline1,” then reference the target campaign and ad group, respectively, followed by the device preference.

In the example above, we’re changing the first headline (“Headline1”) for ads served on mobile devices, so that the copy makes reference to the fact that a prospect can call for a free quote.

To push these customized ads live, simply open a bracket—just like you would if you were using DKI—type “=”, then the name of the feed (in this case “MobileETAs”) and the field that will change (“Headline1”), separating the two with a period.

And voila! Your mobile specific ads are ready to rock.

TL;DR

Mobile specific ads are alive and well: you just have to know where to find them.

ETA Sin #6: Keeping your old ad extensions

Ad extensions have long been a crux of many AdWords accounts; they give you the opportunity to share a bunch of context-specific supporting information with prospects without having to dip into your ad’s allotted character count.

Now, with ETA’s, extensions will still prove to be exceedingly useful. You’re just going to have to make sure to avoid overlap.

Google punishes advertisers whose ad copy and ad extensions align too closely by completely ignoring that the latter even exist: that’s right, Google will simply not serve extensions if they parrot the information in your ad copy.

If you’re writing Expanded Text Ads by recycling old ad copy, I’m willing to bet that you find yourself dipping into your ad extensions to fill the hit the target character count. Bad call.

Instead, you should…

**Cough** Write brand new, cohesive ads that aren’t full of 15-character phrases stitched together **Cough**

Seriously, though. If you do find yourself using some of the information that you used to have in your ad extensions, simply rewrite them to convey a different set of complementary information.

Now, there’s a good chance that by straying away from using disjointed phrases in your ad copy you don’t actually overlap with your ad extensions at all. That being said, you should conduct a full audit of your AdWords account to determine what’s worked and what hasn’t. This’ll allow you to hit the ground running and move right into spit testing ad copy.

TL;DR

Review your ad extensions to make sure they’re still unique (otherwise Google will pretend they don’t exist).

ETA Sin #7: Forgetting about Bing

Google isn’t the only platform on the block with Expanded Text Ads, folks. Bing’s got ‘em too, and you’d be a fool to forget about them.

Bing’s ETA’s actually appear to be competing with AdWords quite well; based on our client data, Bing ETA’s average about 7% CTR on search.

Instead, you should…

…follow the rest of the advice I’ve given you on Bing, too!

The platform has its nuances, but for the most part, writing better Expanded Text Ads is a platform-agnostic activity. Just focus on including an emotional appeal or creating urgency in the headlines, positioning your brand as an authority in the description, and watch the leads pour in.

TL;DR

Remember everything you just did over on AdWords? Rinse and repeat, my friend.

***

By avoiding the 7 sins of Expanded Text Ad writing and following the strategies outlined above, you’ll be crafting killer ad copy that converts in no time.

These days, it takes a lot more than just telling your audience how much your products will benefit their lives to actually get them to buy from you. Today’s customer is more savvy than ever, and he simply doesn’t care how fabulous your product is. He’s simultaneously pitting you against your competitors on many factors, from price to social media presence to how your brand makes him feel. Getting him to care about your brand is going to take a little more work these days.

The best way to hook him?

Tell him a story and put him in it. Your company narrative should be a story that either involves him or makes him want to be a part of the ethos you’re creating with your brand.

How Storytelling Can Mean a Win for the Underdog

Potential customers, when considering your products or services, are looking for a reason to buy from you. It’s certainly easier to choose the market leader (which you might not be), but everyone’s tastes are different and many people will want to go with a company that they feel connected to.

That’s where storytelling is so important. Think back to story time in Kindergarten, where you sat rapt, waiting to find out if the prince actually slayed the dragon or if he got eaten. You felt a connection to that story — heck, you wanted to be that prince — and you can use the same principle today to connect with potential customers.

But telling the right stories — the ones that resonate with your audience — rather than ones that are self-serving and not credible, is essential for gaining customers’ trust. Capture that trust, and you capture their hearts, no matter how small your marketing budget or corporate office is.

Examples of Narratives in Action

Fewer companies than you’d expect actually use storytelling effectively. It’s easier to stick with a lengthy mission statement that removes the human factor from the company than it is to really talk about who a brand is behind the products. A mission statement is something slapped up on the About Us page of a website. A narrative, on the other hand, is something that is woven into everything your brand does to get shoppers’ attention.

Water.org does an excellent job at leveraging stories from the people they help in sanitizing water around the world. Rather than focusing on the number of people helped or wells dug, the organization’s website tells the stories of the people they’ve helped, and proudly shows off drawings by children of their new safe water solutions.

You feel a connection to the brand, which clearly isn’t tooting its own horn, but merely demonstrating the power of small changes for the better.

Ancestry.com also uses customer success stories to narrate its brand value. Rather than talking about genealogy and family trees from a high level, the site shares stories of what customers found in their research, such as being related to George Washington. Others read these stories and want in on the fun.

And who doesn’t admire Oprah and her narrative? She’s an enlightened, open woman who turns what she touches to gold. She leverages her story through her magazine, television channel, book club, and other properties, and people eat it up with a spoon.

These brands understand how to pull on those heartstrings and make people want to be a part of the club.

So What Does MY Company Narrative Look Like?

Developing your brand’s narrative will take a little insight, creativity, and effort, but it’s well worth the time investment.

Start with your mission statement and anything you’ve written about your company, but be ready to take it further. While a mission statement lays good general foundation for your story, it lacks heart – and heart is what your narrative should be about.

Think beyond what your company does and get to what it’s about and what it hopes to accomplish. And be human. In fact, consider your company as a person. If you were that person and you were at a party and someone asked what you were all about, you wouldn’t say, “I make pottery.”

Instead, you’d want to give a glimpse of who you are. Your hopes, dreams, and aspirations as that brand. You might say, “Growing up, my parents made me take dance lessons, but what I really loved to do was make little pots out of mud in the backyard. At 16, I saved up enough money for a pottery class, and it changed my world. Now all I want to do is teach children how to be creative through pottery making.”

Suddenly you and your brand are a lot more interesting. People would sign up instantly for your children’s pottery classes. You put the human factor into the brand, and it resonated with people.

Even in a field with a lot of competition, your brand narrative can help you stand out and attract new customers. If people can identify with your brand — and that human factor — you pave the way to build a lifelong relationship with them through that story.

So build on what you already have in your mission statement and add to it. Sketch out your thoughts on:

• What makes your brand different from the competition
• Why you got into business in the first place
• The problem you want to help people solve
• How you’re making the world a better place
• Your goals for the future
• What people think about your brand

Remember: this isn’t a stiff missive designed to put people to sleep. It’s meant to be a story, and stories are usually told in a casual voice. Don’t be afraid to talk directly to your audience in a language they understand. People want to feel like you’re a friend, not a robot. So pretend you’re sitting down with a new buddy, talking about your brand. Write with that as inspiration.

Let Your Customers Dictate the Narrative

While you will definitely have thoughts about your company’s narrative, don’t be so narrow that you miss the opportunity to go where your customers take you.

When Starbucks first opened its coffee shops, CEO Howard Schultz envisioned creating a “third place,” somewhere between work and home where people could socialize. What he probably didn’t foresee was that his stores would also become workplaces for people who worked remotely, or where many a business deal was done.

This is an example of how customers can shape your narrative. Rather than forcing the direction, step back and see how people are responding to your brand. It might not be the way you intended them to, but if it works, go with it.

Rogaine was initially developed to lower blood pressure, can you believe it? But the unintended side effects took it in a whole different direction. Imagine if the inventors had insisted that this was blood pressure medications rather than the products that have generated billions of dollars in revenue? Again, the customers led the way with the narrative, and it was hugely successful.

Keep it Cohesive

The thing about brand stories is that everyone’s got one, from your sales reps to your execs. And while they’re all 100% true and valid, you do want consistency in the marketing message you deliver to the outside world.

That’s why it’s so important to craft that narrative. Gather a team of employees from different departments to tell that story together. Sure, perspectives will be differing, but with a little conversation, you can create a patchwork of a story to present to your audience.

Disseminate Your Story

Once that narrative is ready to go, spread it far and wide across your company. You never know when it’ll be relevant. Perhaps a customer service rep, while waiting to process an order on the phone, might engage with a customer around that story. It might be the one factor that leads to a sale when your sales rep is presenting to a potential customer.

And ensure that your company story is told across all marketing channels. It’s the spice to what you’re already doing on your blog, on social media, via email, et al. Every single piece of marketing you put out there should lead back to that narrative.

Leverage it to expand the stories you tell. For example, if giving to a particular charity at Christmas time is part of your narrative, you could share photos of people donating products at your donation center on Instagram, tell the story of the people you help through the charity on your blog, and encourage people to help you reach your donation goals via email.

And when customers are involved, let them tell your story for you. If you hold a contest on how your product has changed people’s lives, share those stories. Send a videographer to the winners, give them a makeover, and get them on camera contributing to your storyline.

Your narrative is your story. It’s what makes you unique, and it’s what people care about. Make sure you have a clearly-defined narrative so that you can attract more customers who care about your brand.

How do you tell your company narrative? Do you find that you are better able to connect with your audience when you tell your story? Share your tips with me in the comments below:

I love the idea that you shouldn’t want to be better than anyone else, just better than you were yesterday. The problem with that thinking is that you need to be better than your best competitor today.

Selling is, in large part, about creating a preference for you, your company, and your solution. When you are competing for your dream client’s business, being better than you were yesterday may not be enough.

You need to be better at nurturing your dream clients, and better at following up and playing the long game. He who gives up first loses. Somewhere, someone is developing their plan to create opportunities and your dream clients are on their list (as are your existing clients).

You need to create greater value than your competitors as it pertains to helping them solve their problems and capitalize on their opportunities. You need to serve them better when it comes to understanding why they should change now if you want to create opportunities where your competitors struggle. You also need to do better work than the competition when it comes to helping your prospects understand the root cause of their challenges, and to create a vision of their future.

You really, really need greater business acumen and greater situational knowledge than your competitors. Your ideas and insights can give you with a competitive advantage, provided you’ve done the work and developed the requisite chops. Know that there is someone out there who knows more than you and connect the dots more effectively than you can. If you are behind in this race, you are going to need to go faster.

The ability to lead and manage change is a serious differentiator for those who possess the skills. It’s a deficit for those who don’t.

It wouldn’t hurt you to have greater empathy, greater emotional intelligence, and greater trust. You can surely create a greater preference and flank your competition by being the least self-oriented person they are considering. Listening is a seriously underestimated competitive advantage.

And then there is commitment gaining. She who controls the process has the best odds of controlling the outcome. You are either looking over your shoulder because you have competitors who are better skilled, or you are the reason they are looking over theirs.

It’s not enough to want to be better than you were yesterday. You have to be better than your most dangerous competitor today. Platitudes sound nice, and they may make you feel good. But they don’t absolve you of the responsibility to improve your effectiveness in serving your clients or winning new business.

The post Better Than Your Competitor Today appeared first on The Sales Blog.

In a survey by eMarketer, 84% of marketers said they would launch at least one influencer campaign within the next twelve months.

It’s no secret that the world of marketing has been somewhat flipped on its head in the last few years. What with the vast inbound advancements in social media, growing dominance of online content and ever-increasing desire of brands to be seen as approachable personas, marketing professionals have had to change and adapt faster than ever before. However, there is one group that has ridden this wave of change better than any other, and has subsequently found itself at the very top of the inbound marketing pile: influencers.

Using influencers in your marketing strategy can often seem daunting and expensive, with no guarantee of success. What follows is an exploration of this prominent trend, what we can learn from it, and how best it can be implemented for 2017.

What is an influencer?

Firstly, it is apt to clarify exactly what is meant by the term ‘influencer’. Many subtly different definitions are available, but to all intents and purposes, ‘influencer’ usually refers to an online persona with a large, engaged and active following. This persona will most often have found success through social channels and/or blogging, but is essentially any individual who has the undivided attention of their audience, and can influence consumer behaviour. In his book The Tipping Point, Malcolm Gladwell discusses archetypes of people: mavens, connectors and salespeople. Influencers can one or all three. But they do all connect ideas and messages with a lot of people. This makes them attractive to brands to work with.

You may be thinking to yourself – ‘influencer marketing is nothing new’. And you’d be right to think so. The act of using highly regarded and influential individuals to endorse consumer goods and services has been around for centuries, most recognisably when popular celebrities feature in advertising campaigns. But something has changed recently that has sent shockwaves through the marketing world. This is, put simply, that the current influencers brands are able to work with are infinitely more humanised, approachable and accessible than ever before.

How have influencers come to be?

This is largely due to the unstoppable power of social media, but also to the growing popularity of blogging. It is now possible for literally anyone with half decent tech savvy and steely determination to gain online recognition, and for those at the top of their game, ‘recognition’ is a severe understatement. Most of the world’s top bloggers, vloggers and social stars are preaching to audiences that many magazines, TV channels and celebrities could only dream of. For example, Zoella (currently one of the world’s biggest YouTube stars) at the time of writing has had roughly 20 million views of her vlogger channel in the last 30 days. These new online superstars are essentially the content creators, researchers, publicisers and editors of their own magazines or TV channels. And the fact that they operate largely alone or as a single partnership is the root of their charm. In the oversaturated advertising market, consumers crave a more authentic voice, a more trustworthy voice, one they feel they know on a personal level and can interact with.

There are ‘Nay’ sayers

Unsurprisingly, the meteoric rise and current dominance of influencer marketing has been met with resistance from some. Concerns have been expressed about the industry having to completely morph to fit with the trajectory of a group of individuals who, just five years ago, were pretty much unknown. In one such article published in The Drum a few months ago, the writer asks “How can it be that someone without any formal marketing training or qualifications can now command six-figure sums for taking a few pics and posting them to Instagram?”

Although this is an important point to raise, it does somewhat overlook the main attraction of influencer marketing for brands – the audience. Influencers are so-called for a reason. They poured much time and effort into building an enthusiastic and active audience, not to mention one with key interests and passions. And the fact that this has been achieved without any prior marketing expertise only makes it more valuable. When working with an influencer whose audience aligns with their own key values, a brand can connect not only with potential customers it hadn’t previously reached, but potential customers that will be far more interested in and suited to its product/service than it could access alone.

The benefits of influencer marketing

And, unfortunately for the haters, influencer marketing stats from 2016 do pretty much speak for themselves. eMarketer’s previously referenced survey found that in the past year, over 80% of marketers who had undertaken campaigns collaborating with social media influencers found them effective for driving both engagement and awareness. And when you factor in that the average person spends about one hour and 40 minutes a day on social media, it’s hard to argue against working with online influencers.

So, it seems that influencer marketing is not going anywhere for now. But how is it best implemented for 2017? This is an especially important question, as influencers are becoming more and more savvy about their value, causing the process of working with them to become increasingly commercialised. The key to finding the right influencers for your brand is knowing the audience you want to reach inside-out. This means that although it is tempting to only work with the largest and most prominent influencers, if their audiences do not align with yours, they won’t be an awful lot of real use.

You need a budget – people

It is also important to understand that, especially in 2017, influencer marketing needs a real budget behind it. When surveyed recently, a group of beauty bloggers were asked what they require as payment for working with a brand. 82% said they would require monetary reward, and that free products were simply not sufficient. Gone are the days when a blogger was willing to review a product they were sent for free. Prominent beauty blogger Jane Cunningham added further insight to this: “Some brands come to me and say straight away that they know they need to pay to work with me, and they will get a lot of input in the post I write. Other brands will say something along the lines of ‘we’ve chosen you as a lucky blogger to work with us’, and those emails get instantly deleted.”

It will come as no surprise that lack of budget is cited as one of the most common reasons for brands not investing in influencer marketing. But when implemented and monitored properly, the results from this type of marketing can be invaluable. In a bid to keep costs to a minimum, the vast majority of companies conduct the influencer marketing process in-house. Although this undeniably avoids certain outgoings, and may allow a deeper insight into a brand’s target audience, it can ultimately be costly if mistakes or oversights are made. It can also be extremely time-consuming, particularly as most in-house teams claim to be searching for influencers manually.

Options on conducting your influencer marketing campaigns

Whatever way you look at it; influencer marketing is a force to be reckoned with. And that certainly is not set to change in 2017. Whether you’re a seasoned pro, or just beginning to dip your toe in its waters, there’s never been a better time to discover the true power of influencer marketing done right.Another development is the growth of platforms and marketplaces to ease the burden on agencies and in-house marketers alike. They will have a ready-made audience of active influencers ready to take on a project with other features to streamline the process. This a levelling move really benefits smaller agencies and in-house marketers.

 

I’m sure you’ve heard the old saying a million times: “Underpromise and overdeliver.”

While in theory it sounds great to say to a customer, “I don’t want to overpromise and then underdeliver; I want to overdeliver on what we promise you,” in practice that never inspires me. Yes, I understand the concept, but I don’t believe it is in my best interest to underpromise, underpitch, or under-anything.

Don’t start out a relationship with a customer based on a lie. Underpromising is a form of deception. You’re not going to get the business by doing that, and it causes the quality of your offering and your service to suffer. If you have a great product and a great offering, and your company takes care of those who use your product, service, or idea, then you are obligated to showcase your offering’s quality, take care of customers so that their experience exceeds the promises you made, and continuously repeat so your clients recommend you to others.

When I started my first business, I was working hard but had not figured out how to get people’s attention. I was missing something. I finally figured it out: It was not the price, the offer, the product, or the service that was the problem. The problem was that I wasn’t making my claims big enough.

I used to say to prospects, “I can help your people make more sales.” And my results were lackluster, even though my claim was true. Then one day, on a whim, I told a prospect, “I guarantee you that I will get you one extra sale for every two salespeople by noon today.” He said, “Let’s go.” Though we didn’t hit that threshold, the company did have its single best day in months.

I realized then and there that if I didn’t believe in me, why would anyone else believe in me? I had to make big claims to succeed.

All of a sudden I was getting people’s attention. When I told someone what I could do in a short period of time, it forced me to operate at that level. Because I’m an ethical person, when I overpromise, I am obligated to rise to the occasion and deliver. In the most valuable part of the equation, my offering got better and my delivery got better.

If you never overcommit, neither you nor your people will ever overdeliver. If you don’t push for performance at higher levels, you will never know how great you and your company can be. Overpromising allows me to establish and then exceed exceptional levels of delivery.

Always make sure the buyer gets more value than the money exchanged. Remember that people don’t buy price: They buy the product, the solution, the people, and the company. Price is just a piece of the puzzle used to evaluate a product or service. In the end your value is what makes your pricing better, your warranty better, your financing better, your terms better, your product better, and your service better.

And then there’s the ultimate value-add: you. No other deal will come with you. And if you are truly committed to your customers, that’s critically important.

When I was selling cars, whether I was selling expensive or inexpensive, new or used, the deal was rarely the car -- the deal was me. A customer named Warren once told me, “I can get the same deal down the street for less.” I replied, “The deal down the street doesn’t come with me, Warren.” He bought the truck and then bought another 11 more vehicles from me over the years.

Warren probably paid me more than another dealer would have charged -- and I promise you he still got a better deal buying from me. Because I didn’t just sell Warren cars, I serviced Warren and his family constantly. I became friends with him and his family. I treated them like VIPs. Whenever they came in, I always stopped whatever I was doing to give them attention.

Tell the world you are the best. Sure, it is going to cause people to think you are “too this” and “too that.” But just as you never take advice from people who have quit on themselves, the person who says you shouldn’t brag has nothing to brag about.

Tell the truth about how awesome you are. And then deliver on that truth.

Editor's note: This post is an excerpt from Grant Cardone's new book Be Obsessed or Be Average, and is published here with permission. Buy it on Amazon here.

Last week I discussed two research techniques which can be used when determining the optimum pricing strategy – Gabor-Granger and Brand Price Trade Off (BPTO). These techniques are beautifully simple, but this simplicity has a flip side.

• The choice may be over-simplified and no longer reflect real-life decision scenarios which can be complex and based on a series of conscious and unconscious trade-offs
• With the linear raising or lowering of prices, respondents can easily guess what the researcher is doing and may be tempted to ‘game’ the result
• Prompting respondents with an initial price point will frame their subsequent responses and thus under- or over-estimate the true price they’d be willing to pay
• Only allowing a binary ‘would buy/wouldn’t buy’ response doesn’t capture important shades in between where people start to become more or less comfortable with a particular price point

This week, I’ll look at two pricing research techniques which can overcome these issues – the Van Westendorp Price Sensitivity Meter and Conjoint Analysis.

The Van Westendorp Price Sensitivity Meter

The Van Westendorp Price Sensitivity Meter overcomes some of these issues by allowing respondents to choose their own price points and share more detail on their reactions. To do so, respondents are shown the product and asked to indicate:

• The price at which it would be too cheap to be of credible quality
• The price where it represents a bargain
• The price where it becomes expensive, but not prohibitively so
• The price where it becomes too expensive to consider

At each price point mentioned, the cumulative percentage of respondents placing the product into each of the four categories above is calculated. For example, in a study to identify the optimum pricing strategy for a Business School’s one-day courses for professionals we found the following pattern:

This chart can be interpreted as follows:

• The price for the product should be set somewhere in a range where the greatest proportion of customers are likely to consider buying it. The lower end of this range is set by finding the intersection of ‘too cheap’ and ‘expensive’ (known as the ‘point of marginal cheapness’) and the upper end is set at the intersection of ‘too expensive’ and ‘a bargain’ (‘point of marginal expensiveness’)
• The ‘optimum price point’ is one where the lowest proportion of customers are put off by the price because they consider it too high or too low. This optimum point can be found at the intersection of ‘too expensive’ and ‘too cheap’

So in this example, the Business School was advised to ideally set the price at £700 or failing that, somewhere between £650 and £800.

Van Westendorp is a simple and useful technique but has four drawbacks:

• There is no competitive context
• By focussing solely on price it can make respondents artificially price sensitive
• It requires no price/benefit trade-offs as would be made in real-life scenarios
• It doesn’t allow the creation of tiered offerings where customers can choose the ‘standard’ product or upgrade to an enhanced version for a price premium

These issues can be overcome by using one of the most advanced pricing techniques – Conjoint Analysis.

Conjoint Analysis

Real-life purchase decisions involve a complex series of conscious and unconscious trade-offs between price and product features. Conjoint Analysis seeks to mimic this. To do so, different components of the offering (product features and price) and the different ‘levels’ at which these components might be realistically ‘set’ are identified, e.g. the feature of product delivery could be offered as same day, next day or 48 hours.

Using this information, the conjoint algorithm creates a series of hypothetical products each with slightly different attributes and prices. These hypothetical offerings are then grouped into sets of 3 or 4 and respondents asked which one, if any, they are most likely to buy.

This is repeated several times until a large number of potential combinations have been compared across all of those people surveyed. In making these choices respondents are indicating, without knowing it, the relative value (called a Utility Value) they attach to different product features and their price sensitivity. This means that, following statistical analysis to identify patterns in the data, Conjoint Analysis reveals:

• The relative importance of different product attributes and prices in driving demand
• The optimum product proposition and price to sell this at to maximise revenue
• How to tier products (good, better, best) and price them relative to each other

It also allows ‘what if?’ scenarios to be explored where the impact on demand of different actions can be estimated, e.g. How would demand change if the price was raised by 10%? What impact would removing feature X have on demand? What would happen to demand if feature X was kept but at a lower performance level?

Want to hear a secret? I’m not a marketer by trade and that provides me an outside perspective to the industry. I like to take stock of a few observations that stand out each year. 2016 was an exciting year to watch the growing interest in this tactic that allows brand marketers and consumers to connect in more intimate relationships. Here are a few things that stood out to me this year:

Consumers (all of us) want to relate, and they are way ahead of brand marketers – Every day meeting rooms are filled with debates on what social channel is the next big thing or which tactic will rope in the most millennials. What’s not debatable is that consumers prefer influencer marketing to most traditional advertising content. According to a Google case study, 40% of millennial subscribers on YouTube state that their favorite YouTuber “understands them better than their friends.” and 70% of teenage YouTube subscribers say they relate to YouTubers more than to traditional celebrities. It’s about relatability and storytelling, and influencers have an audience because of their ability to connect with that audience.

Handing over the keys is harder than you think – I don’t have a teenager, but I imagine that passing them the keys to your car for the first time and sending them out the door is pretty daunting. And though it isn’t life threatening, passing creative control over to influencers can cause lots of anxiety to brand marketers who are responsible for a brand’s reputation. We remind ourselves how this type of marketing is still new for many marketers and that the training wheels are just beginning to come off. We do know that when brands do the hard work upfront– discovering the right influencers, providing them with adequate brand education, and communicating expectations– their level of trust and comfort is much higher. It’s easy to forget that influencers are actually brand marketers themselves and there is more common ground than you might expect.

Media buying won’t look the same going forward – The Insertion Order has long been the template for how to buy media, but the next wave of media buying is a tough fit for this simple ‘spots and dots’ model. The blending of content production and delivery by the same parties and channels makes this new breed of media buying a more dynamic effort. The traditional role of a media buyer is changing away from planning and purchase to having a hand in shaping the content and targeting its placement. Similarly, the metrics used to calculate the success of old-model media buying are a tough fit for influencer marketing. Not only will media buyers continue to change what they buy, they will also change how they measure the success of those buys.

Influencer marketing is just the tip of the iceberg – Influencer marketing isn’t new. What is new is the amount of screens, devices, experiences and places where consumers will engage with content. The options are only going to increase and marketers will want to be where the consumers are. It’s exciting to imagine how we can translate the emotional value of a brand through the eyes of incredible content creators. As experience, information and technology collide, we have the opportunity meet our customers in new and exciting ways.

Never underestimate the difficulty that meeting planners face. Their job is to arrange seminars and conferences that are engaging, but also informative; entertaining, but also full of real-world value. What’s more, they need to find speakers who can command attention and provide utility across the board—not just to one person, but to a wide and diverse audience.

That’s easier said than done, and it’s no wonder that meeting planners put a lot of time and work into scouting out speakers. If you’re in that position, let me offer a few recommendations—important qualities to look for in a conference speaker. If you can find someone who checks all these boxes, you’ve got a pretty good shot at having a truly memorable event!

What Great Conference Speakers Have in Common

They expect to be paid. You probably know the old expression, you get what you pay for. Well, if you’re not going to pay anything for your speaker, you can assume it will be someone amateurish and self-serving. Only accept professionals—that is, people who will ask for a paycheck!

They’re social. Your conference speaker should be a thought leader, and in today’s world that means having a robust social media presence—not a gazillion followers per se (as that’s something that’s easy to fake), but a lot of good, timely, relevant content.

They’re tech-savvy. You’re not going to have a good conference event without a strong AV component. You’re just not. Make sure the speaker you choose has a full presentation and asks you questions about your Wi-Fi setup, etc.

They want to know all about the audience. Good presentations are tailored to meet the specific needs of the audience—so if your potential speaker doesn’t ask who he or she will be addressing, that’s a warning sign.

They can prove to you that they’re engaging presenters. References, public speaking certifications, and video from past presentations can all go a long way toward proving their mettle.

They have killer content. The message is always the most important thing, and if your speaker’s suggested topics and talks sound rote or stale, that’s reason enough for you to keep looking elsewhere.

Those are the stipulations I’d make—and of course I’m happy to talk with any event planner about my own qualifications for the job!

This is a post by Brad Smith, a freelance marketing writer who gets sales. 

Kitchens are uncomfortable.

They’re insufferably hot.

Closed quarters. No windows or natural daylight.

15-hour days are common, with several rushes throughout the night. Not to mention, an abundance of short tempers and steel blades.

Sales teams are not that different. Today’s highs are tomorrow’s lows. One day, they need a hug and the next, a wake-up call.

Here’s how kitchens manage to deliver hundreds of meals each night of the week (and how sales managers can apply the same principles to run high-performing sales teams).

How team organization affects efficiency

Le Guide Culinaire is part cookbook, part textbook.

It’s a complete distillation of French cooking that’s like a how-to bible for recipes, techniques, and kitchen management.

It’s used in many culinary schools today, referenced in the prestigious Certified Master Chef program. It also continues to guide the way today’s professional kitchens think, run, and act.

Not bad, considering it was originally published in 1903.

The author, Georges Auguste Escoffier, is considered a godfather of French cuisine.

He was equal parts chef, restaurateur, writer, and philosopher; whose greatest contribution wasn’t a particular recipe or dish, but in dictating how a kitchen should perform.

Specifically, like a well-oiled military unit.

Prior to Escoffier in the 19th century, most restaurants chose what diners would eat each night (similar to pre fixe menus at nice restaurants today).

That meant cooks, similar to old-school sales reps, largely operated as their own islands. It was every man or woman for themselves. They didn’t require as much oversight or need rigorous documentation in place. But there was also no collaboration, and organization was a nightmare.

As time and consumer behavior evolved, Escoffier saw the benefit in adopting an à la carte approach; where diners could choose different dishes from a menu of items.

The power, then, shifted towards buyers who became more knowledgeable and discerning.  (Sound familiar?)

This approach introduces complexity, though. In order to respond to different dishes that required different preparations and different cooking methods, the kitchen had to be choreographed and in sync.

The result was the Brigade System; transforming chaotic kitchens into an assembly line, broken down into specific functions that resembled a military hierarchy.

That means you might have a saucier (the sauté cook), whose only responsibility is flipping stuff in pans and making sauces. Or the patissier (pastry chef) who literally just does deserts.

In 2009, almost a century after Escoffier introduced the Brigade System to kitchens, Aaron Ross introduced Predictable Revenue.

The story of Salesforce’s rapid ascent contained such blasphemous ideas as, “salespeople shouldn’t prospect”, and that sales teams should be broken down into specific roles or functions.

Just like kitchens have been doing for decades.

Turns out, he was onto something. Many of today’s fastest growing companies (including Acquia which Deloitte named the fastest growing private company in America in 2013) have used this approach to great success since.

Acquia, for example, grew new business pipeline by 75% with the introduction of a dedicated prospecting team.

Ross’ model leaned heavily on the "assembly line" approach, which not only reduced sales cycle complexity, but also made lead nurturing a "repeatable" event.

These developments increase efficiency, but the assembly line also made it easier to bring on new hires to scale (along with pinpointing problem areas when they popped up).

A downside, however, is that extreme specialization can remove reps from the overall business objectives (both literally and figuratively). So much focus is placed on individual metrics and performance that it’s easy to lose sight of the bigger picture.

As a result, the "pod" model evolved the concept.

A "pod" is a small team of related disciplines that excel in larger organizations looking to prioritize versatility over efficiency.

(image source)

Pods get team members to focus more on the customer journey (rather than their own numbers). So communication improves dramatically. Pods are also more agile, which makes pursuing new opportunities (like markets or verticals) easier.

However, that reduction in specialization can hurt efficiency, which could be a huge drawback when still competing against other assembly lines that focus exclusively on production.

How processes increase performance

Restaurants sell an experience.

You order, and stuff just shows up at your table a few minutes later.

The chef stands at the ready, calling out new orders as they come in off of each "ticket." Each cook responds quickly, repeating parts of the order each station is responsible for (or simply replying “Yes Chef!”).

Here’s where things get tricky.

Because you have different items, ordered at the same time, which all require completely different times and temperatures to prepare. And yet they all have to magically come out at the same time.

Salads or soups might only take a few minutes to cook, while that duck breast needs much longer. It also needs to sit and rest when it’s done, so that when you cut into it the juice and flavor doesn’t run all over your plate.

The chef stands at "the pass"; organizing and expediting between stations. Different dishes for different diners are prepped, chopped, blanched, braised, sauteed, garnished and plated. The chef might get one last glance before the food is sent out.

And the kitchen gets completely overrun by the next table’s orders.

Somehow, every single element needs to be perfect on every plate, for every table, to be delivered at the same time.

Not to mention, each and every dinner service is different. Just as each sale is too.

Problems are inevitable.

Ingredients run low. New specials take longer than expected to prep. Cooks get cuts and burns. And they’re always overbooked.

Yet most of the time, it all works perfectly.

How?

Extreme consistency.

A kitchen is designed to maximize the output of production. Stations are organized based on function, so that items can be made the same way, in the same spot, each and every night.

A cook’s responsibilities might be limited, but they’re also well-known, documented, and formalized.

An item in their scope is completed one way, and one way only. Each and every time. Even if that number goes into the tens of thousands over the course of a year.

Sales, too, is an organized chaos.

You’ve got reps that need to function on their own, without pulling you into doing the sales for them. They need coaching and mentoring, along with accountability to prevent problems like excessive discounting.

They need to be able to change messaging; from speaking to a CEO or selling the personal assistant on why they should schedule 15 minutes in their boss's calendar to speak with them.

The only way to keep it all straight—responding by instinct without over-thinking and blowing it—is through processes and documentation. (That allows for lots of repetition, which we’ll get to in a second.)

Two stats from a Harvard Business Review study illustrate this:

1. 50% of high-performing sales organizations rely on formalized processes.
2. While 48% of underperforming sales organizations reported not having any sales processes whatsoever.

(image source)

The easiest way to increase individual performance is to have them perform tasks the same way, each time.

Qualifying is a perfect example. While the people, personalities, and discussions might change, the same basic lines of questioning should remain the same. Each and every call. (Here’s 42 questions to get started with.)

Same goes for handling objections.

Consistency breeds pattern recognition, to the point where each rep should see an objection coming from a mile away and parry it accordingly. It also has the added benefit of removing anxiety for reps, because their response should be automatic (reducing the potential for taking things personally or responding out of frustration).

Evaluations and feedback become a breeze for you because there’s no ambiguity.

Documentation and well-oiled processes get everyone on the same page so that expectations are clear to all team members involved.

How personal habits dictate productivity

Perfection is the end result of a restaurant experience.  

And it’s repeated throughout the night, multiple turns (or times a table might have different parties). It’s repeated tomorrow. The next day. And the one after that.

The only way this happens, reliably, is because each person is 100% prepared ahead of time.

That’s not easy. Especially considering that kitchens, unlike some sales staffs today, aren’t full of white-collar professionals fueled by cold brew and Kind bars.

Many times, we’re talking high school dropouts and people with no formal education. Only in the upper echelon, Michelin-starred joints can you expect a room full of culinary experts.  

Restaurants are notorious for high turnover, and many are full of people who literally speak different languages. Yet the best all move at the same speed, cranking out hundreds of dishes a night.

Now compare that to say, your team. The average tenure for most Sales Development Reps?

Two years.

Cooks, like SDR’s, enter with almost no formal education. They barely undergo any training. And yet they’re expected to hit the ground running to produce. Day after day, or night after night.

A cook does it, in large part, because of their mise en place.

One look and you might think it’s a simple organization of spices, ingredients, and tools. But you’d be wrong.

It’s a philosophy. It ensures they’re ready to tackle any dish at any time. It’s a routine, like breaking down a rifle in under a minute, that get’s one in the right mindset.

And it’s an obsession, where touching or messing with another’s is a big no-no.

So you have this ragtag group of individuals from different backgrounds that speak different languages, all functioning as one group ... because they all rely on the same habits.

Sales performance, too, comes down to habits.

It comes down to the little things, like the weekly prep work to make sure everything’s been followed up on and that you’re ready to hit the ground running come Monday morning.

It comes down to good work habits, like organizing your calendar and guarding it with your life. Letting your days spin out of control or getting overrun by unimportant (yet "urgent") requests make it impossible to tackle the big obstacles first.

“One difference between the Top 10% and the Top 1%”, writes Jason Lemkin on a must-read Quora thread, “is the very top are extremely efficient with their time.”

He goes on to say that they “know exactly what they are doing going into every deal, usually even before they do the demo or pick up the phone.”

Awesome. But how?

Self-analysis, for starters.

Fortunately, there’s no shortage of helpful tools or apps that will do the work for you. Time Trade, TopTracker, and RescueTime will run in the background of your machine, monitoring device usage and provide you with reports of exactly how you and team members spend workdays.

These tools can also help you block (or prevent) distraction before they happen. Rescue Time’s "FocusTime" feature blocks all websites and apps that fall under the "distraction" column.

Like, Slack. Which is great for collaboration, but distracting as hell. It keeps you from the important things.

Like, phone calls. Measuring individual performance is a simple way to spot those team members with good habits from those that don’t.

With the right tools, tying end results (like sales targets hit) directly back to the daily activities that produce them (like the number of quality phone calls being made each day), becomes black-and-white.

Conclusion

Kitchens start anew each day.

Every night brings hundreds of new diners, with hundreds of new orders, that require hundreds of new preparations. And yet, the people you never see in the back of the house manage to deliver the same exceptional dishes on-time, made-to-order.

Because they’re set up to succeed.

They’ve set themselves up to prioritize consistency. Which allows them to deliver at a high level every single night, no matter how many people come in, the number of dishes to juggle, or problems that occur.

At the end of the day, that’s the only thing that matters in sales too.

Performing, day in and day out, regardless of the big sales that closed yesterday or not allowing reps to take the easy way out through discounting (again).

Consistency is the path to sales success. But it can’t happen for reps without the right organization, processes, and habits in place.

Recommended reading:

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You're building your sales team but how should you organize your reps? Find out which type of sales team organization is best for your startup!

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We have often discussed the importance of getting your message to the “right buyers” at the right time during B2B lead generation.

However, a logical next question is “What makes someone the right B2B buyer?”

According to the results of Demand Gen’s Report 2016 B2B Buyer’s Survey, B2B buyers are scrutinizing potential vendors more closely than ever.

The following is a look at several of the key factors that make someone the right B2B buyer to target with your lead generation activities.

The Multi-Persona Perspective

Despite the fact that specific buyers take the lead, it is often a team of people that impact buying processes in a company.

Therefore, your “right buyer” is more like a group of people that each has a voice in the process.

Consider these multiple perspectives and roles as you develop content marketing and other strategies aimed at intercepting the buyer journey.

Forrester pointed out that 74 percent of the typical B2B buyer’s journey is completed before first communication with a provider.

Thus, it is extremely important that you not only have a clear view of who the primary buyer is and what he wants but also what roles other team members or influencers play in the process.

Job Title and Decision-Making Authority

Traditional and familiar buyer roles in many businesses have changed.

While “buyers” still play a prominent role in identifying and recommending solutions, purchasing department roadblocks often complicate their ability to agree to deals.

Therefore, your “right buyer” must have some level of decision-making authority or influence in the process.

Consider the specific job title of your targeted buyer. In some companies, an operations or purchasing manager has oversight over all purchases.

In other cases, vice presidents or divisional leaders take on this role.

Therefore, as you attempt to connect with companies, look to identify the buying process and the person with final authority on the acquisition.

Social and Communication Practices

Because of the amount of the buying journey typically finished before provider contact, it is important to assess the social and communication practices of your targeted buyer persona.

In a desire for efficiency, many buyers engage team members or influencers on social channels, or through efficient means like texting or e-mailing.

In many ways, modern B2B buyers go about their process similar to consumers.

As much as possible, define the tools and approaches your typical buyer uses throughout the buyer journey.

A well-defined journey process enhances your ability to connect with your buyer in ways that align with his particular concerns and interests.

You can also give him a consistent experience, alleviating search frustrations and amplifying communication with other influencers.

Journey mapping isn’t new, but the process for creating these maps has come to the fore in the past year, and analysts such as SiriusDecisions predict that will increase in 2017.

This is SiriusDecisions Buyer’s Journey Map Framework which gives a great overview of the different stages on a customer journey.

Wrap Up

The right buyer to target with your B2B lead generation depends on a variety of factors.

First, realise that your buyer isn’t just a single decision-maker, she is more often a team leader who takes input from multiple people.

Weigh the importance of your target’s specific job title and decision-making authority, as well as her interaction strategies with others throughout the process.

If you’re a marketer who aspires to introduce your product or service to C-level executives, you’re not alone. After all, they hold the purse strings. And they have the authority to make sweeping decisions. So it’s no wonder that many B2B marketers aim to reach them through their marketing programs.

Here’s the problem. C-level execs are squeezing more than seems humanly possible out of their days. Also, the competition for their attention is stiff. Your audience is busy, stressed and bombarded with marketing and sales messages. It’s not surprising that unlocking the C-suite can feel as challenging as climbing Mount Everest.

But the keys are lying right in front of you. That’s because the highly visible decisions these executives make could be career changing in both good and bad ways. Despite the intelligence and grit that helped them find homes in corner offices, they’re sometimes unsure of how to tackle the myriad of problems they face.

What do they want from you? Or from anyone, for that matter? HELP. Help comes in the form of new ideas that help them to solve problems and exploit opportunities.

Providing such assistance will lift you part of the way up the mountain. But what good is that? You don’t want to be left clinging to hope by your fingertips. To get to the top, you also need to add in some trust building techniques. So reaching C-level executives takes a winning combination of content and relationship building.

It’s been drummed into our heads that in this fusion of tactics, content is king. I believe, however, that content serves, but relationships rule.

Fresh Content Serves

You need content to help buyers move through the buying cycle. Because of this widely accepted reality, marketers research their customers, find out their needs, and continuously pound out content to answer their audience’s questions.

But many of the blog posts, webinars, white papers, e-books and more are not fresh, and they’re far from fascinating. Bland content does not work. If content is to engage, it has to have personality. It must be distinctive.

You need to check out what other companies in your industry are talking about as it relates to your product or solution, and then change the conversation with a unique twist. Build a logical argument for a slightly (or completely) different approach that challenges conventional wisdom. Or find a creative way to educate people on an issue, so they understand it better. For instance, cloak the concept you’re relaying in a new metaphor or a story that brings it to life like never before. By taking this approach, you not only educate your audience but also build your status as a thought leader.

Showing how you think and what you know is one way to build trust. Showing how you’ve helped customers is another. Demonstrate this by documenting success stories that illustrate how your product has assisted your clients in solving problems and exploiting opportunities.

Also, whenever customers express their satisfaction with your company’s offering or services, request a testimonial. If they’re happy with you, they’ll likely want to help you build your business.

Relationships Rule

Relationships always have been and still are the rulers of B2B marketing and sales success.

According to a study by Insidesales.com, the most effective techniques for generating B2B leads include inside sales, executive events, telemarketing and trade shows and conferences.

There is a common thread running through these methodologies — they all involve person-to-person (P2P) communications. And whether people converse in-person, on the phone or Internet platforms such as Skype, relationships blossom.

Despite all the changes born of the digital age, one thing remains stubbornly unaffected — in B2B, people do business with other people. Because of this, companies need to build a human connection with their audience. Thus, there’s no reason for the age-old cornerstones of marketing and sales to fade into the background. New, shiny techniques can support them, but they will not supplant them.

Rather than communicating human-to-human, why can’t we use marketing automation to track buyer behavior, personalize communications and build relationships online? You can. But nothing beats a live conversation for learning about and helping to solve the problems individual buyers face.

So, schedule events and conferences. When you do, reach out to executives through email and telemarketing to schedule appointments with them while you’re there. Follow up immediately after the event with a phone call to see how you can help further.

To supplement or replace events, research companies that might have an interest in your product or solution and call the appropriate executives. Ask them about their goals and obstacles and help them to formulate and integrate solutions.

When should these phone conversations begin?

In spite of the oft-quoted research that buyers are about 60 percent through the buying cycle before they reach out to a salesperson, there’s no harm (and quite a bit of opportunity) in being proactive. Get ahead of the curve and make the first call, but don’t call to sell. Instead, call to consult. Executives will appreciate your help in untangling their issues even though they may not yet have determined a product category to investigate further. And you’ll have the opportunity to frame the problem in a way that casts your product as a potential solution.

So remember, relationships rule. Always have. Always will. But don’t forget the fresh, fascinating, credibility-building content that serves the ruler’s bidding.

Salesforce recently reached out to more than 7,000 individuals around the globe to gain insight into the expectations and mindset of the modern, tech-savvy customer. They packaged their findings into the 51-page “State of the Connected Customer Report,” which you can download here.

The report takes a thorough look at concepts like customer experience, loyalty, and personalization—all through the lens of today’s ultra-connected customer. We read it in full, and one thing is clear: to be successful in the modern age, companies need to treat customer experience with the same gravitas they do customer acquisition.

The connected customer’s expectations are higher than ever before, and companies that fail to meet these new demands will likely be outpaced by the competition.

Below, we examine some of the report’s most interesting findings on customer expectations and customer experience, and how these can enlighten your customer feedback program.

The Connected Customer & The Future of Feedback

66% of consumers say they’re likely to switch brands if they’re treated like a number instead of an individual.

The connected customer expects more than mass appeals. Messaging that isn’t customized to their individual needs, wants, and preferences will fall short. They expect brands to leverage the customer data they’ve collected over time and turn that into a personalized, tailor-made experience across the board.

So what does that look like? From customer service interactions to email marketing, businesses need to integrate customer data into the customer experience. Customer info should be made available across departments—and leveraged by all to provide a better customer experience throughout the customer journey.

This means combining purchase history, customer feedback, and support interactions (just to name a few) into a cohesive customer history that grows with each interaction. This is commonly known as omnichannel customer experience. When companies provide it, customers come to feel truly known, understood, and appreciated.

50% of consumers say they’re likely to switch brands if a company doesn’t anticipate their needs—and 74% feel the same if the company doesn’t provide an easy checkout process.

A difficult checkout process can derail customer loyalty too. Half of the consumers Salesforce surveyed aren’t willing to buy when the process is time-consuming and frustrating. Ultimately, they’ll take their business elsewhere.

So how can you spot weak points in the checkout process? First, make sure you have a clean attribution method for customer support tickets. Each email case, phone call, and live chat should be categorized by source and topic. Where was the customer when they asked for help? What were they trying to do?

Detailed info benefits many branches of business. Customer support can use the knowledge for case deflection efforts and focus on common case topics during training. Web and product teams can see the real cost of poor user experience and work to better it. The list goes on.

Customer surveys can help you here too. Website surveys capture timely feedback that helps companies streamline the web experience. These pop-up surveys ask for feedback while the visitor is on a page. If they have a question or encounter an issue, the pop-up nudges them to voice it rather than simply abandoning.

71% of consumers say that customer service provided on any day, at any time influences their loyalty.

According to data from a Walker report, customer experience will be the top competitive differentiator for brands by as soon as 2020. Salesforce’s findings echo this sentiment by showing just how important it is for brands to focus on sterling customer service. Not only does the connected customer expect 24/7 customer support, but they want it offered via their preferred medium (phone, live chat, email, etc.) as well.

So how can you better monitor customer service interactions and ensure you’re delivering the best possible support experience to your customers? Conducting customer satisfaction surveys to gather data on the quality of customer service is one way to keep tabs on these interactions. Consistent surveying can catch major issues that lead to repeated support requests and unhappy customers.

With customer satisfaction surveys, you can ask highly specific questions after customer interactions, like the following:

• How satisfied are you with the time it took to resolve your issue?
• Were the support engineer’s responses clear and easy to understand?
• What feedback can you share that would help us improve your support experience?

By giving your customers a voice through these surveys, you can constantly improve this extremely important aspect of your business and, in turn, drive brand loyalty.

52% of consumers wish they could do more with their mobile devices.

More and more, customers are shifting to mobile for their online needs. That means prospects’ first impression of your brand is very likely occurring on a phone. A stellar mobile experience is obviously a must for brands looking to capture this audience.

It goes without saying, websites must be mobile-optimized to cater to the connected customer. The same applies to the rest of your marketing and customer-facing assets, surveys included. Mobile surveys should handle well on all devices, delivering an optimal experience on the go. Otherwise, completion rates will sink and you’ll generate lackluster data.

89% of business buyers expect companies to understand their business needs and expectations.

This is a critical finding for the B2B space. Business buyers—not just individual consumers—expect a personalized experience. That means that each time an account changes hands—from marketing to sales to customer success and onward—companies need to demonstrate exceptional understanding of that customer’s unique needs.

But you can only learn so much from a Salesforce record and customer interactions. To show true expertise, companies need to build out a comprehensive customer profile that includes customer preferences and feedback. This information can then color each future interaction, delivering the personalization these buyers crave.

The simplest way to identify what customers want is to simply ask. From product feedback to brand positioning data, customer input helps companies better anticipate customer needs and expectations. That customer feedback can then be used to drive smarter, customer-centric initiatives, particularly when it’s integrated with Salesforce.

The bottom line here: Let your customers tell you what they need and want from you—then follow through and deliver it.

Wrap-up

With the findings from this report, you can get a better feel for what the modern customer expects from your business, and how you should prioritize your efforts for the year ahead.

We recommend reading Salesforce’s report in full to get to know this modern buyer. They’re likely here to stay.

And if you’re interested in exploring how customer feedback programs drive results with Salesforce, check out our latest ebook.

There are 2.3 million Google searches every second, and just about every one of those searches results in ads on the search engine results page (SERP). This is a great way for companies to get the word out about their products and services and get them on the first page of a Google search.

But there is a method to crafting the perfect ad: You must first know the objectives of the buyers, and make sure your ads are based on the features and benefits of those objectives. Features are what make the product unique; benefits demonstrate how the product will benefit the buyer.

Once you are clear on the features and benefits, it’s time to create your ads. Character limits and keywords set guidelines for how an ad can be written, creating a challenge for those writing the ads to be even more concise.

Before your ads start resembling a caveman’s speech, check out these tips for how to write Google ads that sound more human.

Keywords Are Key

Start by focusing on a strong keyword related to your product or service. Keep in mind that your keyword should be something a person would actually type into a Google search. When choosing your keyword, think about the phrase YOU would enter when searching for your product or service.

Here are the first steps to formulating your ad around your keyword:

• Determine how many characters your keyword has. The character limits for each ad line are: Headline, 30; description line 1, 30; description line 2, 80.
• Ideally, the keyword should be in the headline. Try to work it in if it makes sense.
• If a keyword is long, consider working it into description line 2, which allows for more characters. You also want to include the features and benefits in Line 2 since they tend to contain more words. Description line 1 should generate interest once you’ve grabbed their attention in the headline, so eliminate prepositions like “an” “of” or “in” that will take up unnecessary characters.
• The display URL path is another way to work in relevant keywords. If your relevant keyword, for example, is “heart surgery” your display URL path could be www.hospitalexample.com/heartsurgery.

Using relevant keywords will help you rank higher and achieve a better quality score, while giving you a lower cost per click. Quality score is the estimate of the quality of your ads, as determined by Google.

Shortcuts for Cutting It Short

So what do you do when you’re over the limit by a few characters after working everything in? Here are a few more ways to get your message across succinctly, without losing that human touch:

• Use a thesaurus to find synonyms for longer words. Just be sure you’re not substituting keywords, as they are important for getting found.
• Adjust lines that put you over the limit by using symbols where appropriate. Use the ampersand (&) or percent (%) signs to get your point across without eating up space, like this Expedia ad:

• Sentences can run onto the next line, as long as it makes sense and looks decent.
• You don’t always have to use punctuation; if you are over by one character, take out the period at the end to keep it within the limit.
• Using the company’s name in the headline is preferred, but if it is too long, using other familiarities like “we” or “our” can help free up space.
• Turn your sentence around and make it more active by putting the verb at the beginning of the sentence.
• Look for ways to substitute multiple words with just one or two.
• Don’t forget to use spellcheck — a misspelling can cost you extra space you could put to better use and looks bad to your potential customers.
• The Hemingway Editor can really help you clean up your writing and provides shorter alternatives for words and phrases. It also tells you if a sentence is too difficult to read.

Call on Your Callout Extensions

Google itself created ad extensions, another option to extend the copy and add even more relevant information. Extensions help you craft copy that connects with viewers on a human level. While there are several different types of ad extensions, callout extensions allow you to display additional information in your ad that does not fit in the main ad copy. They are a great place to include important product details, but are limited to 25 characters. Up to four callouts can be featured in your ad, and in order for them to appear, there must be at least two callouts. You cannot duplicate content that appears elsewhere in your ad copy, so choose your words wisely.

To fit within these tight character limit constraints and make your callouts effective, use verbs like “Buy” or “Cancel” that let users know your unique selling points. Also choose words like “no” or “free” that have few characters, but still get the point across.

The US Postal Service, for example, includes these types of callouts:

Humanizing for Humans

Including emotion is another way to connect with users and incorporate that human element. Tying in an emotion will also help spark the user’s interest in what you are selling. Just as a cute baby or playful puppy are attention-grabbing images in a commercial, words can evoke the same types of emotions. Triggering feelings such as fear, anger, curiosity, amusement and happiness are all great ways to increase click rate.

Some companies work emotion into the limited parameters of PPC ads. A common occurrence of this is found in insurance companies, because safety is such a strong hook to encourage users to buy, like this AARP life insurance ad:

Adding Value to Your Ads

We’ve all been there — writing a great ad, only to find out it’s over the character limit. We hit backspace, looking for ways to make big words fit into small spaces. It can be frustrating, especially when you’ve got catchy copy that gets the right message across.

The most important thing to remember when writing ads is to make sure the offer is clear and the user knows what they’re clicking on. Copy should be easy to understand so users aren’t confused by where they’re going if they click on the ad. Being transparent in your ad will reduce bounce rates, and target the most suitable prospects.

All ads must meet professional and editorial standards, and must use common sense. Put yourself in your buyer’s shoes and write what you would want to read. If you want to empower them to buy, make sure it is smart, concise, action-oriented language.

The only way to be sure they sound human is to test them out on, well, humans reading your ads. Create three or four versions of your ads to find out what’s performing best. Google AdWords will rotate the ads to automatically show the top-performing ads most frequently. From there, you can better tailor your ads to your audience.

It is the unknown learning curve that is found to be the toughest. Every time an attempt is made to undertake something new multiple other challenges arise. The question becomes do you have the grit to get past the many uphill battles?

Your particular answer resides within to distinguish you apart from everyone else. The most motivated continue to push to pursue the answer each and every day.

Cope with the Worst

When bad days arise, take the time to help someone whose day is worse.

Get involved with a community in need either with education or special services. Everyone experiences highs and lows. Those you serve will greatly appreciate your help. In return, your personal brand will be admired and distinguish you as a leader.

You are encouraged to set time aside each week to review the worst and the best of the previous week.

Think about:

• What pushed your buttons and why?
• How may you make improvements?
• Have you plateaued at your comfort zone?

Options are plentiful once a plan of action clarifies itself. You may find you are exactly on track to accomplish what you set out to do. A group of like-minded individuals may well reinforce your approach and endeavors plus provide new ideas and support. And when you are close to feeling as if you are about to jump off a cliff, getting formal help is an excellent route to take.

Those who desire to excel in any endeavor quickly recognize that doing the same old each day does not work for long. Being comfortable in your career is the enemy of advancement. It is the routine of self-discipline and training that leads to building an admired path.

Time for Change

Make the following your mantra:

• Dedication to a long-term vision
• Pledge to see your New Year resolution through to 2018.
• Challenge yourself to try something new and more advanced.

The dedication to pursuing prowess is the surest way to get to goal.

Sales Tips:

1. Make a pledge to remain committed to your New Year resolution.
2. Create a plan of action to see the resolution through.
3. Develop a 15-month stretch goal to ensure a smooth transition between 2017 and 2018.
4. Learn as much as possible to strengthen your weak areas.
5. Build muscle mass for the areas you enjoy most.
6. Continue to revise what is in place to achieve more.
7. Consider options for career or entrepreneurship.
8. Choose the options that will challenge you most to learn even more.
9. Reset your long-term goals to be further reaching.
10. Celebrate success!

By Tibor Shanto – tibor.shanto@sellbetter.ca 

While we are all caught up in the cheer of the season, it is important to remember that sales is not always peace, love and joy. In fact, when you consider closing averages in B2B sales, it is most likely that we are bound to have more disappointments than joys as measured by that figure. Some have put the number of sales qualified leads to close, as low as 16.4%, across all B2B; I am sure if you take out the outliers, it is likely a more presentable number. Let’s go with 4:1 or 25%, now if you’re one of those who say sales is not a numbers game, you don’t have to worry about this or the rest of this piece. But if you are looking to improve in the coming year and beyond, it is clear that the best learning opportunities are in examining the losses, and working to change those outcomes.

I know there are some pundits who will tell you to ignore anything but wins, and work on repeating things that are working. The question is will that change the 4:1 win rate, or just help you maintain things? While no one wants to dwell on the negative, the best way to change it is to avoid repeating things, which what happens when you just look at one side of things. In fact, the best sales people and organizations, look at three side of things, The Wins, The Losses, and The No Decisions.

Given the time of year, I would encourage you to look back and not only examine recent deals, but the deals from the entire year. Look for trends that impact the entire market, and then sub trends that are unique to key segments. This will not only help you understand how things have evolved over the year, why you may have won or lost, how you need to adjust your sales approach to win in the future, and the added bonus of identifying some potential calls for the start of the year to people who chose not to decide last year.

The challenge is to ensure that this is a real drill down as to what happened and what will need to be done differently next time. This usually means going beyond where you were willing to go to get the sale, the fact that we lost is evidence of that. You also need to involve the buyer who did not buy from you, which is not always easy, not only because you’ve been rejected, but they are busy implementing their choice.

In most instances interviewing buyers you lost should be done by someone other than the rep involved, it’s easy to blow them off, just point to price and features, and the rep spends more time repeating that to their company, than changing how they presented the features and price. Use someone from marketing or Customer Success. Whoever ends up conducting the review, make sure they are armed with solid questions that help you understand the buyer’s process and choice, this is not about defending your company or changing the buyer’s mind.

Having a formal approach helps the clients feel more at ease about the process, and gets you actionable insights. Done right, this review of a loss or no decision, could be one of the factors that allows you to be part of the picture next time they go to market. Ignoring why you lost will continue to limit your opportunities, and long term personal and sales growth.

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When ConnectLeader built our first product, we budgeted marketing dollars for lead generation, but our sales team couldn’t reach out to those leads fast enough/multiple times to drive intended results. Lower lead results were realized as our sales team would typically make 1-2 attempts to reach a prospect then give up. What we did not realize, but later confirmed via data analysis, was that it typically takes 20+ calling attempts to speak with a live prospect.

In addition, we found that properly managing lead flow quickly became complex and sales reps only focused on high yield leads, thus avoiding targets that needed nurturing. Their perception: Efforts were better spent on other tasks rather than calling back a non-responsive lead multiple times. Due to this perception, leads from our marketing endeavors became cold due to a lack of frequent outreach.

To avoid the cold lead conundrum, we needed to conduct a high velocity, high volume outreach initiative. Just because you can’t reach a prospect on two calling attempts, does not mean the target organization is not a fit. By performing high-volume calling of 20+ dials per target, converted leads dramatically increased and revenue went up.

Here are a few lessons learned from our early days:

1. Align Sales and Marketing – One of the first steps is to deliver solid content for sales to consume. The lowest hanging fruit is to establish standardized collateral that reflects the same messages across all documents and website content. By doing this, sales teams are able to clearly convey validated product messages and trust that the marketing forecast is achievable.
2. Make Smart Marketing Investments – Many start-up organizations initially dismiss branding in favor of defined revenue contribution per marketing dollar spent. To avoid this, companies can take advantage of free tools to help test and refine content with the best messages that resonate with the market. Don’t be afraid to elicit input from the sales team to help write relevant content and improve search results with more accurate, frequently searched keywords.
3. Continue to Cultivate Close Marketing and Sales Relationships – Your sales teams are experts in gaining credibility with prospects; their knowledge of how customers react to is paramount for developing proper marketing content. In essence, sales teams build credibility with prospects and marketing teams build programs. Each organization is a critical building block in a collaborative environment with the intent to create better leads. By establishing a close collaboration, sales teams will gain a trust that marketing programs are ready to yield the desired results toward achieving sales quotas.
4. Keep the Focus on Revenue – Require the marketing team to attend sales meetings and observe how the results of their programs are being viewed through the lens of lead followups. Together, both teams can share analysis based on conversations and click through rates to quicken the pace of finding qualified leads.

Remember, operating a young organization is stressful enough without having marketing and sales organizations acting like the Hatfields and McCoys. By taking a few thoughtful steps to break down communication barriers and ensure a closed-loop feedback, marketing content is improved and the sales prospecting becomes simplified. All efforts need to be predicated on developing quality leads – in abundance. When the pipeline is full of high-probability closings, marketing and sales teams are intertwined in a love affair.

The hype around AI technology is at all-time high, with the market forecasted to reach $37 billion by 2025. In sales and marketing, the potential for 10x conversion rates and accelerated growth from AI-driven predictive analytics is enticing. But what’s really possible and what’s still in the distant future?

Sales and marketing are ranking in the top three markets most heavily affected by the boom in AI investment, according to sources like CB Insights and O’Reilly Media. Industry giants are announcing more AI plays—Salesforce acquiring Metamind and launching Einstein, or Microsoft rolling out Dynamics 365 with AI technologies Cortana, PowerBI, and Azure Machine Learning.

However, there’s a disconnect between what AI can do and what customers and investors expect. Buyers of AI-powered tools aren’t always familiar with the underlying technology, nor do they know which vendors can deliver on promises of accurate and useful predictions.

Predictive Analytics vs Other AI Technology

In sales and marketing, predictive analytics is a type of AI that has gained impressive momentum in recent years. Companies use this technology to predict which leads will become customers based on traits or behavior that indicates their likelihood to buy, then make decisions on how best to pursue those opportunities.

Predictive analytics isn’t the only type of AI used in sales and marketing applications, but it is where a majority of innovation is happening today. Although it’s easy to be enticed by the idea of fully-automated AI workflows or robot virtual assistants that are powered by deep learning and natural language processing (NLP), those technologies aren’t yet ready for implementation on a large scale. Predictive analytics offers tools that work now, making decision-making easier for startup sales and marketing teams who are increasingly inundated with data.

What Predictive Can Do for Sales and Marketing

Predictive analytics helps companies prioritize the use of their sales and marketing resources. For startups, where staying lean and productive is crucial to success, using predictive technology can keep the business growing without hiring new sales reps or increasing the marketing budget. It also increases agility by giving startups feedback quickly, instead of waiting to analyze results months later.

These are some of the best ways for startups to use predictive analytics for sales and marketing:

• Identifying your ideal customer profiles and segments
• Scoring leads based on behavior and fit to prioritize sales efforts
• Keeping your team lean by automating manual activity like research, setting up rules-based workflows and / or updating CRM data
• Integrating data from existing tools to make more accurate predictions
• Targeting customer segments with personalized content and campaigns
• Bolstering account-based strategies
• Moving upmarket and expanding into new territories with promising leads
• Adopting a common, data-driven framework for decision-making

Predictive analytics helps companies hit their growth goals faster without spending substantially more on sales and marketing. But like any extremely-hyped technology, there are several things to watch out for before you buy.

The Human Element: Key Considerations for Startups

Startups and fast-growing companies can use predictive analytics to be far more competitive in their markets, but only if they understand the limitations of AI-driven technology. Human expertise still plays a huge role in how effective a predictive platform will be for your company.

You should be able to answer these questions before investing in a predictive platform:

• Does the software fit your use case? A good predictive platform isn’t built on algorithms alone. It’s created by industry experts who understand how you will actually use it to make business decisions. If a vendor can’t articulate why it fits your company’s use case, it might not be right for your business.

• Does the platform have many integrations? Predictive analytics is far easier to adopt when you can integrate it into the tools you already use, or ones you’re likely to adopt as you grow. Check for open APIs to the most popular CRM and marketing automation tools before you buy.

• Is the vendor transparent about data sources and signals? To trust in a platform’s predictions, you must know why it includes certain signals and not others. Ask about first- and third-party data sources and why the vendor uses them over others.

Do you have enough data on wins and losses for this tool? In order to build predictive models specifically for you, vendors must be able to train the models with your past sales data. Don’t be pushed into investing too early – waiting a month or even a year to amass more data as you grow might be the right move.

As more companies adopt predictive platforms to help them grow, it’s up to you to decide which technology will keep you competitive. When it comes to AI, there’s a reason for the hype – the potential payoff of embracing it is huge. Stay informed, choose a strong platform and watch your business reap the benefits.

The post Leveraging AI for Sales & Marketing – Beyond the Hype appeared first on OpenView Labs.

Now that you’ve accomplished everything you wanted to for your content marketing plans (of course you have, right?) you can now take it easy, because not much will be changing for a while. I kid, I kid.

The content marketing landscape continues to evolve at such a rapid pace, that you now have a whole new set of challenges (and opportunities!) to take on.

We asked 51 marketing experts what we could expect for content marketing in 2017, and beyond. Learn where your focus should be, what changes are coming and some future trends to keep an eye on. The only constant in our industry is change, so stay current, and you’ll stay ahead of your competition!

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Ted Rubin

SOCIAL MARKETING STRATEGIST, ACTING CMO, BRAND INNOVATORS

What I see being huge heading into 2017 is live streaming, and the ability to share all video in so many ways, via more apps, with story-telling and engagement at the core. You need to try these platforms. You need to jump in. You need to see how you can tell stories, create narratives, build relationships, communicate with consumers, and create learning for your organization.

This is way more than just another content fad, but rather it’s online video crossing a crucial threshold… You want to know really why I think it’s gonna be huge? Not because I’m using it or Millennials and GenZ are using it… it’s because it’s making video social. Because they’re not just streaming what’s happening live. They’re allowing you to engage with those streams… you are now able to be a part of the conversation. #RonR… #NoLetUp!

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Andy Crestodina

CO-FOUNDER, ORBIT MEDIA

Baby robots. Most marketers aren’t yet using tools, scripts and automated systems for content marketing. But by the end of 2017, millions more of us will have take baby steps toward systems driven by machine learning.

In five years our tools will be helping with research, writing, outreach, distribution and optimization.

Imagine a day when your system recommends a topic, writes an outline and reaches out to contributors. After you polish and publish, the system takes over again, testing headlines and calls to action. The content optimizes itself for clickthrough and conversion, social traction and rankings.

This next year, we’ll all move closer to machine-assisted creation and automated distribution. Look for new features in tools you already use.

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Michael Brenner

CEO, MARKETING INSIDER GROUP
CO-AUTHOR, THE CONTENT FORMULA

2017 will see brands move to specialization, visualization, personalization, and humanization in their content marketing programs and approaches.

Specialization will see brands moving beyond trying to be everything to everyone to being something important to a highly targeted audience. Creating a niche they can own. Visual content is so important in 2017 and brands need to figure out how to be engaging, emotional, and authentic at scale.

Personalization is, in my mind, one of the biggest trends for 2017 as brands try to create the right content for the right person at the right time. Finally, Humanization is important because one of the best ways to scale content marketing without massive investment is to tap into the expertise, the authority, and the real passions of the employees, customers, partners that already sit inside the company.

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Joe Pulizzi

FOUNDER, CONTENT MARKETING INSTITUTE
AUTHOR, CONTENT INC

Print custom magazines, as a content marketing tool, have finally hit the bottom, and more brands will launch print magazines in 2017 as a way to cut through the clutter that is proving so difficult on the web.

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Nancy Harhut

CHIEF CREATIVE OFFICER, WILDE AGENCY

The future of content marketing in one word? Accountability. Both content creation and content distribution will grow increasingly strategic, with the primary goal of content being to acquire customers in a measurable, ROI-based fashion.

More and more content will be created with behavioral science principles in mind, resulting in content that does a superior job of getting noticed, consumed, remembered and acted upon.

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Stephan Spencer

FOUNDER, SCIENCE OF SEO
CO-AUTHOR, THE ART OF SEO

I predict that content marketing in 2017 will be more SEO-driven and not solely customer-driven. In other words, content marketing initiatives will be better targeted to the linkerati – those influential bloggers who are authoritative in the eyes of Google (you can estimate this using domain authority or domain mozRank). Content marketers must be effective at reaching the linkerati with their campaigns in order to be successful in Google, and the standout content marketers already recognize this.

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John Paul Aguiar

OWNER & PUBLISHER, MONEY DUMMY BLOG

I believe there will be a big push for 3 main things in 2017, bigger and smarter use of influencer marketing, more focused content and visual ‘video’ content.

1. I think one of the biggest things we will see in 2017 will be more use of influencer marketing to help brands get their message, content and brand pushed further.
   I think the only real difference in use will be, “Less is More”, working with a smaller group of quality influencers instead a large hit or miss list of influencers that I believe softens your results.
2. I also think we will see a jump in better content, more personal content, content with more purpose and focus.
   I don’t believe EVERY piece of content you create has to be planned for a specific outcome, but I do believe you need to create content with an “overall” game plan in mind.
3. For me video doesn’t have to go viral to be helpful, I believe we will see more people using video more frequently, used in the same way you would a blog post, share information, be helpful, get watchers to take action.

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Marcus Sheridan

PRESIDENT, THE SALES LION

1. Businesses will start to glimpse the possibilities of using VR to improve their sales/marketing efforts: In 2017, although we certainly won’t see many business dive into VR, there will be a handful of successful case studies that wake up the marketplace and get everyone saying, “Wow, I now am starting to see what’s possible for my business.” (This will apply just as much to small businesses as brands.
2. Businesses will continue to shift more focus towards video instead of textual content. In fact, more and more companies will make the investment of hiring an in-house videographer in an effort to “show” their story better than they ever have before.

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Stephanie Stahl

GENERAL MANAGER, CONTENT MARKETING INSTITUTE

The sales team will no longer “own” the relationship with customers. 2017 will be the year that marketers step out from behind their persona documents and get to know their customers by spending face-to-face time with them. This will allow their content strategies to be informed (and refined) by real and personal customer insights.

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Andrew Davis

FOUNDER, MONUMENTAL SHIFT

2017 is the show me don’t tell me year.

That’s right, instead of telling us your products and services are different it’s time to show us. In 2017, you and your brand will leverage video like never before. We will spend more and more of our marketing energy creating and consuming video on Snapchat or streaming live on Facebook (or soon LinkedIn). Our videos will be designed specifically to show our audience what we do, how we do it, who we do it for, and how passionate we are about helping our customers and clients be more successful.

2017 is the year we stop shooting videos of talking head and start crafting real video stories.

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Ardath Albee

CEO & B2B MARKETING, MARKETING INTERACTIONS INC.

Content marketing will become purpose-driven. Rather than churning out more content for content’s sake, B2B marketers will hunker down and focus on personalization and serial storytelling to increase relevance and resonance that motivates meaningful engagement, not just drive-by views.

In making this transition, it’s important to realize that content marketing will become more challenging, not necessarily easier to execute. This is the year when content marketing will be seen as much more than random acts of publishing and embraced as a valuable corporate asset, rather than a series of one-off campaigns. The growth in measurable performance will encourage B2B marketers—and the companies they work for—that they’re on the right track.

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Gini Dietrich

CEO, ARMENT DIETRICH
AUTHOR, SPIN SUCKS

A few years ago, I was introduced to Narrative Science, a company in my hometown of Chicago that ”writes” stories for publications using robots. At the time, I was appalled. After all, I’m a writer, author, blogger. The idea that I could so very easily be replaced is scary. Because it scared me so much, I wanted to dig in and better understand what they do. It turns out, they can write stories for things such as earnings reports and Little League baseball games—stories where the stats are more important than storytelling. That made me feel a bit better. And now I’m obsessed with artificial intelligence and how it might affect the role of the content marketer in the next five to 10 years.

While artificial intelligence won’t change the role of the content marketer in 2017, it is something we all need to be aware of and plan to embrace. It’s coming and we can’t stop it! “Knowledge is knowing a tomato is a fruit. Wisdom is not putting it into a fruit salad.” — Peter Kay

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Pam Didner

GLOBAL CONTENT MARKETING STRATEGIST
AUTHOR OF GLOBAL CONTENT MARKETING

Content marketing next big focus area will be offline usage. Until now, content marketing has been about creating digital content for online usage. Especially with the recent trend of major e-commerce sites opening physical stores (Amazon, Warby Parker, Birchbox etc.), brands need to accelerate the integration of their online digital content experience with that of the offline physical experience. The challenge is to seamlessly integrate the online and offline experience by leveraging and hiding complicated technologies from your customers. Having a holistic view of your online and offline content needs is essential moving forward.
In addition, it’s important to determine the ROI of content marketing. We all know it’s very hard to “measure” the effective of one piece of content. Content can only be measured if it’s part of “outbound channels” such as e-mail outreach, company websites, communities, blogs or even social media marketing. It’s important to understand the metrics of your company’s “outbound channels” and work with your marketing peers to co-own some of these goals.

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Robert Rose

CHIEF STRATEGY OFFICER, CONTENT MARKETING INSTITUTE
SR. CONTRIBUTING CONSULTANT, DIGITAL CLARITY GROUP

I have a few predictions for 2017 as they relate to Content Marketing. The first is that 2017 is when we will see at least two major acquisitions in the content space. The first will be a standard product/service brand purchase a major media or publishing brand for the purpose of developing owned media experiences. The second will be a major agency or consultancy will purchase a media company to begin to expand their offering. On the more practitioner side, I predict 2017 is the first year that brands truly begin building out content-oriented departments that focus on becoming a media operation. The move from one resource – to a sizeable team will be pronounced. Finally, I’m doubling down on my previous prediction that Twitter will be acquired by Google sometime in 2017.

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Rebecca Lieb

ANALYST | AUTHOR | ADVISOR

I’m seeing two trends that will be prevalent in 2017.

First, enterprises are investing heavily in scaling content up, i.e. creating global content strategies. Content in diverse countries and regions must both ladder up to central messaging and goals while at the same time containing enough local relevance to resonate with audiences. People processes and technologies must be coordinated and synced – easier said than done. Moreover, doing so creates efficiencies and cost-savings, as well as better content.

Second, content is moving beyond screens. Beacons, sensors, and IoT-enabled devices mean that content is more contextual, and hyper-relevant messaging can be delivered in the “phygital” world at places, times and under circumstances that are meaningful, valuable and helpful to individuals (I recently published research around this topic). Enterprises are beginning to investigate with contextual campaigns and content. Next year will be an experimental year when trials are floated in this very new and potentially very lucrative arena.

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Allen Gannett

CEO, TRACKMAVEN

Over the next year, we’re going to see companies restructuring their digital teams to better reach omnichannel consumers. Skill-based structures (separate social, SEO, advertising, PR, or email teams) will give way to team structures built around buyer personas or funnel stages. The result? Greater efficiency in delivering the right message to advance buyers down-funnel. On a leadership level, that means CMOs and VPs need a clear understanding of the connection between top-of-funnel activities and bottom-of-funnel conversions. On an individual level, this shift puts the onus on every role in the marketing department to tie actions to business impact.

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Matt Heinz

PRESIDENT, HEINZ MARKETING

In 2017, I hope more B2B content marketers invest in attribution. More specifically, prioritize the tools, processes, and systems required to measure marketing’s impact on sales pipeline contribution and closed deals. This will require investment in attribution-focused tools but also likely a re-mix of campaign spend based on what’s having the biggest impact on pipeline contribution, not just traffic and leads.

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Bernie Borges

CEO, FIND AND CONVERT

Content marketers will accelerate their content strategies based on cognitive capabilities through artificial intelligence platforms. The days of marketers guessing, or limiting their strategy to traditional analytics are over. Now, marketers have access to a level of intelligence through cognitive content management systems that serve up the right content, the right image and the right call to action based on current circumstances, for more precise decision-making in the moment. The result will be smarter decisions in content marketing planning and execution.

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Christoph Trappe

SENIOR DIRECTOR OF CONTENT MARKETING & CONTENT CREATION, MEDTOUCH

In 2017, marketing leaders who want to keep their jobs will finally realize that creating CRAP content is not enough. Leaders will actually come up with a unique story strategy and share that story everywhere where it can add value to audiences.

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Mathew Sweezey

PRINCIPAL OF MARKETING INSIGHTS, SALESFORCE

In 2017 the majority of people will realize their content strategy is failing them if they have not already. The majority of marketers do not have a content problem but rather a content distribution problem. The average person only goes to 1.7 pages on a website, meaning if your content is there the moment they land, it will not be found. Creating more content doesn’t solve this issue, only learning how to leverage better distribution will.

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Doug Kessler

CREATIVE DIRECTOR & CO-FOUNDER, VELOCITY

My content marketing predictions for 2017:

• Facebook comes out with a serious B2B offer.
• The world sees how Microsoft plans to integrate LinkedIn with Office 365.
• Google+ gets a major overhaul in a last-ditch attempt to get people to come back.
• Slideshare announces major new features (please).
• Class action suit against PowerPoint goes to the Supreme Court.
• Our new president announces a tax on infographics.

For real:

• Content teams start to merge with performance marketing teams to create right-brain-meets-left-brain revenue engines.
• New digital formats start to replace eBooks.
• VR moves into solid Early Adopter phase.

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Lindsay Tjepkema

DIRECTOR, CONTENT & PROMOTION, EMARSYS

I predict (and hope) that 2017 will bring greater focus on sophisticated audience engagement strategies. Technology continues to emerge that empowers marketers with greater ability to segment audiences and then reach them with more personalized content. It is up to us as content marketing strategists to leverage these valuable tools to produce and deliver content that is far more valuable to audience members, then also measure it and continuously evolve our strategies over time.

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Chad Pollitt

CO-FOUNDER, RELEVANCE

It’s likely that many more brands will invest in some type of virtual reality campaign. It will still be considered experimental and will likely generate earned media buzz for the brand. Unfortunately, that’s about all it will do. I don’t believe virtual reality will be a well-performing channel for most brands, ever. Instead, I believe augmented reality (from Pokémon Go to Minority Report experiences) is the channel with the most potential. It’s unlikely many brands will invest in augmented reality next year.

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Ahava Leibtag

PRESIDENT, AHA MEDIA GROUP

In 2017, I think we’re going to see 2 major things that will help content marketers get ahead. The first is that they will really start documenting their strategy—not just on the content side—but also on the strategy and business objective side. That documentation will help guide them throughout the year and keep them on track. The second thing I think we will see happen is that there will be more of an emphasis on quality, evergreen content than on just blogging to blog or posting to post. Marketers will start thinking about the topics they publish about as clusters of information that should be grouped together and used to create evergreen content that shows off their products or services in a way that helps customers make better decisions faster.

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Karl Sakas

AGENCY CONSULTANT, SAKAS & COMPANY

2017 will be the ‘Year of Consistency’ in content marketing. As an agency consultant, I have seen firsthand that content marketing works for me and for my clients, but it falls apart when marketers are inconsistent. If your business has a blog that hasn’t been updated in a month, should you really have a blog? If you have a Twitter account but haven’t tweeted in the past week, what went wrong? Content marketing goes beyond choosing the channels that work; you need to commit to them. If you’ve struggled to stay committed, there’s no shame in pivoting or even pulling the plug altogether on that channel. Once you’re creating content that meets your audience’s needs, be consistent.

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Jason Pampell

CEO, HIREINFLUENCE

THE GOOD

In 2017 expect a massive shift in content marketing with an overarching focus on influencers. Video and live streaming will continue its strong upward trend, primarily on the Facebook, Instagram, and Snapchat channels. Newer platforms such as Twitch will thrive, while Twitter’s decline in popularity progresses.

Influencer marketing will evolve into modern methods of SEO strategy, as user-generated content (UGC) becomes a fast and effective way to gain search results.

THE BAD and THE UGLY

Watch for a flood of traditional marketing agencies crossing over into the content-driven space. The overabundance of suppliers lacking adequate knowledge, will cut corners trying to compete, resulting in a tainted reputation for influencer marketing as a whole. Supply and demand of influencer cost-per-post will be driven so high that it will exceed the point of ROI.

FTC will continue raising the bar on restrictions and requirements that help everyday users differentiate between #ads and organic content.

THE RESULT

To balance this surge, people will come to rely on sites such as SocialBlueBook to help set influencer pricing standards. An opportunity will arise for boutique legal-backed firms to manage contest promotions, review content prior to posting live for FTC adherence, issuing influencer agreements, etc.

For large brands to thrive, it will be necessary to seek out and collaborate exclusively with knowledgeable, high-reputation agencies. It is these superior agencies who will be in a position to leverage the “most wanted” talent as we see a demand for quality VS quantity of followers skyrocket.

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Julia McCoy

CEO, EXPRESS WRITERS

Besides the growth of hot channels like podcasting and video marketing, I think all content marketing will significantly continue to grow as a whole in importance among brands of all sizes in 2017. We’ll see more companies expand their budgets for blogging and realize the ROI (and necessity) of having an organic presence in Google through consistent content; and more research, time, and effort will be put into finding the perfect fit content creation resource (from expert writers to designers) by brands. A higher quality standard will rise for the content written on the web, and with this standard will come more volume creation and bigger spends.

To not get left in the dust of 2017, it will be crucial to find (and hold) your sweet spot in creating your best content ever. Be controversial, make a stand: voice who and what you are as a unique brand through your content. Be an early adapter to new or better standards, and strive to be the first one talking about it. And don’t drop off inconsistent creation – create amazing content consistently so your readers come back continually for more.

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Denise Kadilak

INFORMATION ARCHITECT, BLACKBAUD INC.

Context remains paramount and is taken to the next level(s) with improved context sensing. For example, knowing that I just bought a pair of sandals, and I probably don’t need another pair right now, or I usually eat lunch at 11:30, so I may need a daily restaurant recommendation at this time. I also see a continued and expanded need for real content management and content strategizing. The existing trend is if you simplify the strategy process you’re more apt to do it, but I think folks are realizing that in this scenario they are also less apt to use it. Over the next few years, I see content strategies and plans moving out of manager’s desk drawers and onto internal wikis, websites, or some other easy-to-access environment because successful implementation and maintenance of the strategy will be required to produce effective content. I also see the plans growing, out of necessity, to be more complex and far reaching. Content demands/expectations will only increase over the next several years.

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Stoney deGeyter

CEO & PROJECT MANAGER, POLE POSITION MARKETING
AUTHOR, THE BEST DAMN WEB MARKETING CHECKLIST, PERIOD!

Google will decide to no longer devalue content behind tabs and accordions on desktop, not just mobile.

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David MacLaren

FOUNDER & CEO, MEDIAVALET

In 2017, Content Marketers will have to ramp up their A game in order to stand out from the competition. By this, I mean they have to stop what they’re doing and spend the time and effort necessary to develop a strong content strategically, aligning it with the goals of their organizations. Once this is done, they have to establish viable and productive processes and put in place the infrastructure required, for creating high-value content and distributing it.

At MediaValet we use the SMART approach:

S – Strategize and develop a plan for creating, delivering and measuring high-value content that aligns with business targets

M – Make high-value content that includes compelling copy and visuals

A – Atomize content and add metadata and structure in order to increase its utility

R – Reuse (and Re-purpose) content across all channels and throughout entire organization and partner eco-system

T – Track content usage and ROI across organization, creating a feedback loop that helps refine future content strategies, campaigns, and content.

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I see experienced journalists increasingly becoming content marketing leaders at forward-thinking companies, and experienced content marketing leaders increasingly joining forward-thinking media organizations. Coupled with this, I think 2017 will be the year content marketing becomes so ubiquitous that both the old guards hanging on to antiquated ways of marketing and the startups who lack the patience to see content marketing work will think it cool to hate on. Lastly, I think readers will continue their trend of choosing clean, niche-driven reading experiences over interruptive, ad-driven experiences. This shift in content consumption will further develop the blur between journalism and content marketing.

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Zontee Hou

STRATEGIST, CONVINCE AND CONVERT

We’re going to continue to see the convergence between content marketing and customer experience. Customer satisfaction and retention is key to just about every business. In the current digital age, customers expect almost immediate information and/or service. Therefore, we as content marketers have to put customer experience at the heart of our content creation decisions–adding value in new and nuanced ways.

Whether that’s through content that allows customers to help themselves or through email automation designed to guide customers through the questions that they don’t yet know to ask, our content marketing approach in 2017 must be guided by streamlining and adding quality to the customer experience.

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Priscilla McKinney

PRINCIPLE/MOMMA BIRD, LITTLE BIRD MARKETING

2017: The Year of the Sophisticated Workflow

Work smart, not hard. A “workflow” (a fancier way of saying “automation”) may be something you’re not familiar with, but most certainly should be. Automating repetitive tasks is like having a time machine. Sophisticated workflows can be tailored to create a personal experience for a potential buyer while guiding them right down your sales funnel. Workflows will save you time and help with your daily tasks.

Automation doesn’t mean you have to be a robot. Combine a smart workflow with video and you’ve got a compelling way to tell your story. Build an emotional connection with your fans, or show your businesses personality effortlessly with video content. Engage your audiences in a new way. Nurture your leads, measure your metrics, optimize, adjust your approach, convert. Isn’t the future great?

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Dechay Watts

CONTENT MARKETING STRATEGIST, CO-FOUNDER, SPROUT CONTENT INBOUND MARKETING AGENCY

I believe that keyword rankings in organic search will continue to lose value as a performance metric. While the credibility of keyword rankings as an ROI metric has been debatable for a while, search engines have made even more changes to put emphasis on semantically searched topics rather than keyword phrases. Google is also dictating how content should be structured with featured snippets, making it harder and harder for content marketers to play the SEO game with search engines. Instead, content marketers will start thinking about multi-platform optimization and “improving their ranks” beyond Google to optimize listings and the potential to be found in platforms like Facebook, LinkedIn, and Amazon.

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Andrea Fryrear

FOUNDER & CHIEF CONTENT OFFICER, FOX CONTENT LTD.

The table stakes for joining the content game are going up all the time. It’s taking better and better content to break through the noise, and the only way to get that top-tier content is to invest heavily in talent. I think in 2017, organizations who invest in their content team, give them the system they need to excel and then leave them alone while they produce epic content will start to stand out more and more. Because agile marketing aligns with these goals so nicely, I think we’ll see a direct correlation between marketing teams that embrace some form of agile methodology and those who experience an uptick in content marketing success.

And when I say “epic content” I certainly don’t just mean 2,500-word blog posts (although we still need those to be in the mix). Content teams in 2017 need far more than writers, they need video professionals, graphic designers, and content marketing managers who know how to keep creatives creating while hitting their deadlines.

Finally, what I hope this all turns out to mean for those content creators who are out there gutting it out every single day, is that there will be massive competition for content marketing talent in 2017. This prediction may be slightly premature, but I’m putting it out there anyway because it’s an optimistic time of year.

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Douglas Burdett

PRINCIPAL & OWNER, ARTILLERY LLC
HOST,THE MARKETING BOOK PODCAST

Here’s my story and I’m sticking to it:

1. The sales world is going to better understand the value of using content during the sales process and is going to be asking marketing for more of it.
2. Now that more companies have learned how to start belching out content into the rapidly rising ocean of content, the need for a content strategy is going to be better understood and demanded.
3. More companies are going to understand the need for paid content promotion because when it comes to content marketing, a “build it and they will come” approach no longer works.
4. Influencer outreach will become more important and more sophisticated.

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Jonathan Kranz

PRINCIPAL, KRANZ COMMUNICATIONS,
AUTHOR, WRITING COPY FOR DUMMIES

A funny thing happened to me on the way to the Forum—the MarketingProfs B2B Forum in October, that is. As an invited “expert,” I had held open office hours in which Forum attendees could approach me with any marketing question or challenge they wished. Here’s the fascinating thing: at least half of the dozen or so people who talked to me came with the same issue, regardless of industry (ranging from kitchen countertops to software services): how do I sustain multiple content streams, for multiple verticals, with my tiny marketing team?

Rubber, meet road. I think this is the big content story for 2017. It’s not about selling the virtues of content—almost all of us get that now. And it’s not about investing in marketing automation—in fact, that’s one of the levers applying pressure on marketing teams. Our content ambitions are established and the machinery is in place, now the challenge is figuring out HOW to keep these pipelines filled despite our limited budgets and resources. For practitioners on the ground, this is the reality underlying our content marketing ideals. For those of us who wish to be seen as content marketing leaders, we had best be prepared with honest, practical answers—or we’ll find that our colleagues and clients will become deeply discouraged and disappointed.

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Margaret Magnarelli

SENIOR DIRECTOR OF MARKETING & MANAGING EDITOR FOR CONTENT, MONSTER

Unfortunately, my crystal ball is broken, so mine is less of a prediction and more of an “I hope we’ll see…” I’d like to see more brands in-source content. Hiring an editorial staff is the easiest and cheapest way to deliver an always-on content experience that’s always on-brand. Also, I do suspect we’ll see more pressure on brands to deliver R.O.I. from content, but we’ll probably see more vendors coming up with solutions to help prove the value of what we’re doing. It’s in their best interest, too, that this industry continues to thrive.

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Debra Jason

RELATIONSHIP MARKETING, SOCIAL MEDIA MARKETING & COPYWRITING, THE WRITE DIRECTION

Those who have heard me speak know that I talk about the value of building relationships and the art of engaging as they apply to attracting clients, generating leads and networking online and off.

To be successful, you need to recognize that marketing is not about pitching, but about developing and nurturing those relationships. Yes, you have bills to pay and therefore, need to close sales. However, you’ve probably heard that while most people like to buy, they don’t want to be sold to.

As we approach 2017 and you proceed with your content marketing goals, keep this concept in mind. What your prospects and customers seek is engaging content that delivers value without the expectation of anything in return.

Therefore, when moving forward with your content marketing goals as you approach the new year, here are 3 tips to keep in mind:

1. Live streaming video. The explosion of live video has brought with it impromptu streams of content. Anything from “here I am at a concert” to lengthier broadcasts sharing a lesson. If you have built an enthusiastic audience, you may find they’ll stick with you throughout a longer broadcast, but before you get started, be sure to have a goal in mind. What is the point of your live stream? Do you have tips to share that deliver value? It doesn’t have to be scripted, but stay on point.
2. Tell a story. However, it’s not all about you so be sure your story ties into something your audience can relate to. Is there an obstacle you faced that your readers/viewers resonate with? Share it along with how you overcame the challenge – and they can too.
3. Be relevant. Understand your audience and the challenges/issues they face on a daily basis. Then, share a message that resonates with them – one that has them thinking, “Yes, this person understands me and what I’m dealing with in my life.” When you do this, you’ll start to build a following of loyal fans who’ll come back for more.

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Carla Johnson

MARKETING AND CUSTOMER EXPERIENCE CONSULTANT, TYPE A COMMUNICATIONS

In 2017, I predict that content marketers will realize that they need to get more creative about how they capture and keep people’s attention. Unlike in the past, this isn’t going to be something they pass off to the creative department, but rather it’s a skill they’ll need to develop. By learning how to be habitually creative, content marketers will lessen their struggle with creating content that’s more engaging, and finally, break through to the promised land of becoming what people are actually interested in.

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Mark Masters

AUTHOR, THE CONTENT REVOLUTION

I know we all look for the golden egg that will say, “go all in on podcasting/email/events’ but I truly believe that we need to put the brakes on and concentrate on the skill sets we have now and nurture the spark that sets the framework.

If you have just started blogging and have a reason for doing it, while everyone is saying video, at least find a rhythm. Whatever we do has to tie back to the objectives and strategy for what we do.

When you dilute something you lose the essence of what it is in the first place. Adding too much water to something that originally had a lot of flavor, eventually becomes water.

I say, embrace tomorrow with the skillsets you have today. As you build confidence and audience, then the natural progression are the uncharted spaces that you become inquisitive about.

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Pamela Muldoon

REVENUE MARKETING COACH, THE PEDOWITZ GROUP

I believe 2017 will be about focus. The past few years we have gone from explaining the definition of content marketing to understanding that this is now a vital element of marketing and needs to be given attention. Now it’s time to get more focused on our content marketing efforts. The most recent B2B Content Marketing Research indicates that on average, thirteen different content tactics are used by marketers. Spreading your content out too wide may not be the best way to go and with limited resources for content creation, just isn’t feasible. Marketers will get better results by going deeper with fewer tactics and getting focused on the ones that are most effective for with their audience.

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John von Brachel

SVP & CONTENT MARKETING EXECUTIVE, BANK OF AMERICA

As we look ahead during one of the most transitional times in the marketing world–across all industries and around the world–I think we’ll see more and more CMOs demand that their teams and agencies follow well-designed and deliberate content strategies. Content volume, with little purpose, is not only unsustainable—it’s not responsible. The new content marketing strategy designs content with a purpose, fosters demand and consideration by building relationships and, ultimately, paves the way for more nimble delivery in the channels our audiences choose to use. The stronger the strategy the easier it is to follow. That’s because it’s more elastic and applicable to multiple marketing disciplines. It also makes your teams more agile because they share a north star—rather than working in silos and chasing dim trends, they’re working together on meaningful innovation.

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Jeff Julian

CHIEF EXECUTIVE OFFICER & CO-FOUNDER, ENTERPRISEMARKETER.COM

In the next year, marketing teams will have to become more agile to keep up the pace of creating high-quality content. This adoption of Agile Marketing will require marketers to embrace new creative skills, manage their time as a team, develop and prioritize work based on the audience need and not the calendar date, and estimate their efforts. Thankfully, we have several resources to help us get there.

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Rebecca Geier

CEO & CO-FOUNDER, TREW MARKETING

In an increasingly saturated marketplace, one thing is certain when it comes to differentiating yourself from others: the ability to create great, measurably effective content. Content really is king, and in 2017, marketers will need to branch out in the types of content they create, up their SEO game, and change the way they approach marketing through the different stages of the buyers’ journey. While our focus at TREW is on marketing specifically to engineering audiences in B2B markets, our predictions below apply to all marketers.

1. More resources devoted to video and interactive content. At Inbound 2016 just a few weeks ago, the increasing rate of video consumption was a cornerstone topic. This has been a trend for quite some time in consumer markets, and is becoming a more and more of a key focus in B2B now too. Looking to 2017, I predict companies will greatly increase the amount of video – and interactive – as a percent of total content they produce. In today’s fast-paced world, your audience may not have time to read through an in-depth white paper, but would be willing to watch a video (or download a recorded webinar, which is similar to video in terms of the user experience) discussing the same topics. Here are a few examples to get your creative juices flowing:
   Interactive Graphic: Aerospace Test – Created for our client Wineman Technology, this graphic highlights different parts of an airplane and links to relevant pages on their site where readers can go for more info.
   Whiteboard Video: Next-Generation Optical Seismometer – As part of a product launch promotion plan, we worked with Silicon Audio to create an engaging, 6-minute “whiteboard animated” product overview video for use on their website and at trade shows. The team utilized a creative hand-drawn approach that would not only easily explain the featured technology but keep the audience engaged with the fast-paced drawings and resonate with the way many engineers are used to communicating: visually on a whiteboard.
   Recorded Webinar: Marketing Planning 101: A Tactical Guide to Building Your Inbound B2B Marketing Plan – We held this live webinar in September, then gated the recording (with a lead form) and posted it online to continue to generate leads.
   Infographic: Internet of Things – We created this infographic for our client Panduit, who was looking to differentiate their position in the IoT space amidst a market saturated with messaging on the same topic.
2. More sophisticated SEO. In one of our recent blog posts, we discussed the growing efficiency and effectiveness of search engines and the concept introduced at Inbound 2016 of HEO (human enjoyment optimization). This is similar in theory to the concept Moz calls “SEO for People” that I cover in my book, Smart Marketing for Engineers: An Inbound Guide to Reaching Technical Audiences. To this end, Google is building an engagement graph as part of its algorithm to serve up the content people are most interacting with online. They’ve also added latent semantic index (LSI) keywords to the algorithm – this basically means that Google considers similar words/phrases when ranking content, not just a single word/phrase. This is a good thing! It allows for more natural phrasing when writing content, and should help content creators move away from feeling they need to robotically repeat the same phrases in hopes of bringing up their content on the SERP.
   In general, while Google’s algorithm has gotten more sophisticated, it’s also gotten harder to follow the changes and keep up with best practices for content optimization. Expect to spend more time on keyword analysis, and to more frequently utilize sites like Mozcast and Algoroo to keep up with changes as they happen. To add another layer to your SEO efforts, get familiar with tools such as SEMRush to keep an eye on how your competitors are faring in search.
3. Changes in how we market as the buyer’s journey moves online. With our focus at TREW on marketing to engineers very specifically, last month, we released our latest study (which you can download here) focusing on engineers’ behavior and preferences through the buying process. Among the key takeaways were:
   Over 80% of engineers prefer to research vendor websites – and have an average of 3-7 interactions with the company – before taking to sales
   60% of engineers said a company’s website has considerable impact – the highest rating possible – on their perceptions as a credible, technically competent vendor
   Companies seeking to sell to highly technical audiences must take a unique, thoughtful approach to marketing and selling that places a high bar on accuracy and diversity of content and a level of patience that allows the prospect to give the buying signals before sales engages.
   The old days of interrupting the prospect are over. The customer is in control, and it behooves vendors to change their marketing and sales tactics to create a win-win for them and their prospect. To do this, you’ll need to invest in a strong online presence, commit to high-quality content along the funnel, develop a pipeline management model that defines shared accountability between marketing and sales, and implement marketing and sales automation to increase speed, intelligence, and scale.

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James Reynolds

FOUNDER, VERAVO

My 2017 prediction is personalized website experiences.

The idea of content personalisation isn’t new. Any content marketer with experience will know that personalisation techniques (like using merge fields in email broadcasts) can significantly boost response rates. However, in 2017, I predict that more content marketers will be tapping into more advanced website personalisation.

With tools like Optimizely, we can now customize our website experience to the unique circumstances of our individual visitor. For instance, we can show different content to users based on their location, whether they are a customer or prospect, their search or purchase history and a whole lot more.

The e-commerce giants like Amazon have been profiting from the power of personalisation for a long time. Now, with the same technology becoming affordable to the average business, we too can tap into its effects.

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Brody Dorland

CO-FOUNDER, DIVVYHQ

Here’s something to “snack” on for 2017. Some context first…

This time last year, I was busy researching to purchase a gaming laptop for my son (and maybe a little for me) due to his growing interest in PC games (ex: Minecraft), programming and game design. Once Santa delivered said laptop, I downloaded and tinkered with a few games myself and actually got (admittedly) addicted to a particular game called Warframe (think space ninjas). It’s great for decompressing my brain after a crazy week on the startup rollercoaster, but it’s also been fascinating to experience how the game’s global community is turning gamers into high-quality content producers.

It all started when I wanted to get some tips on playing the game and I jumped on YouTube. Wholly monkey! The number of “YouTubers” creating noobie tutorials and daily, “snackable” videos covering game updates and new feature releases was very eye opening. I always knew, based on my son constantly watching Minecraft videos, that popular gamers were gaining celeb status for the younger generation, but I was blown away by the quality and professionalism of some of these producers. These “kids” are taking this seriously. For many, it’s their job as they are able to support themselves on YouTube ad revenue. They are consistently producing videos every day. They have recurring content themes. They are getting tons of engagement from the community (comments, likes, subscribers). And they understand their metrics.

Anyway, I guess my prediction is that we’re going to start seeing more brands try to emulate this. What do I mean by that? I mean that brands, especially those who are marketing to younger audiences, will think of their video channel(s) like a TV station that needs daily or at least weekly, programming. Obviously, the content strategy and execution will vary greatly, but this vehicle has such huge potential to build an audience quickly. We all know that YouTube is A) Google and B) the second largest search engine, so a more frequent, snackable video strategy will grow legs quickly.

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Patricia Travaline

CHIEF MARKETING OFFICER, SKYWORD

While already very important for marketers, creating a personalized experience for their audiences will become a must in 2017. Seventy-four percent of online consumers get frustrated when websites have content that has nothing to do with their interests. Marketers now have the technology to deliver the right content to the right people at the right time. This is something consumers have come to expect. Marketers who can’t deliver it will be left in the dust.

Account-based marketing will be the hot topic in 2017. But the greatest challenge to executing on it is the ability to create enough content to address not only market segments, but individual companies. This will be the new growth area for content marketing, and marketing and sales teams will a content engine to fuel it.

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Jennifer Goforth (Gregory)

FREELANCE CONTENT MARKETING WRITER AND STRATEGIST

Over the past 12 months, I have seen a dramatic increase for brands using freelance writers to create content and I predict that this trend will continue. Since freelancers bring expertise in specific audiences and topics that a brand or agency may not have, this allows brands to create a much wide variety of content that really helps solve their customer’s problems. This also helps brands and agencies deal with the ebb and flow of content projects without hiring additional full-time employees. Since consumers continue to get smarter about content and the bar for quality will raise, hiring the best creator at the specific type of content available instead of simply relying on the best available in house will help brands really stand out in their content.

I also predict we will begin to see more B2B brands take risks with content and move away from boring formal whitepapers and blogs. There has definitely been some movement in this direction in 2016, but there is still a way to go. I predict that the B2B brands that really stand out in 2017 are those that are able to really make even B2B customers feel – either laugh, be slightly emotional, have a lightbulb moment or think of something different.

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Tim Hayden

PRESIDENT & CO-MANAGING PARTNER, BRAIN+TRUST PARTNERS

2017 will be the year that we see brands shifting to actionable content. It will be less about entertainment and driving passive engagement behavior such as “likes”, and more about converting an impression into a purchase or physical store visit. With improved targeting and retargeting opportunities, increased accuracy with location data and the peer-to-peer power of mobile media, marketers are sure to worry less about content going viral or being broadly shared. This will mean that content performance and attribution will be more directly measured by sales performance, and that’s a good thing as sales should be the one metric every marketer is ultimately held accountable to drive.

We will also see messaging become more personalized and contextually relevant to the individual being targeted, and so much of the content that we experience will pull us into chat and messaging app exchanges. With this, the rise of chatbots is sure to help increase conversions by hosting quick “conversations” that qualify prospective interest in products and services, and what we ultimately sell through those exchanges.

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MY PREDICTION FOR 2017

My prediction for content marketing in 2017 is 3-fold. Marketers will start to put a much more intense focus on finding ways to serve up the right content at the right time, not only through email but socially as well. In addition, I see a greater movement towards documenting strategy and all the elements tied around it and predict that upwards of 60-75% of companies will have this accomplished. And finally, I think we will see an uptick in the quality of content (written & video content) as companies start to realize that putting out thin content is not doing the trick any longer.

David Reimherr

FOUNDER/CEO, MAGNIFICENT MARKETING

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Payments technology vendor NCR's unified commerce platform is continuing to gain acceptance, which indicates the firm’s strategy is “resonating” in the market, according to a company press release. As a result, NCR will continue to expand its focus on software platforms and pushing them into new industries with room for growth.

That shows that the firm’s early focus on omnichannel and software-focused offerings as the payments and retail industries become increasingly digitized is bearing fruit.

It’s clear that the company’s omnichannel strategy is filling a hole in the marketplace.

• NCR has been working to build a strong omnichannel presence. In its Q3 2016 earnings call, the firm noted that it sees itself as leader in three key areas in the shift to omnichannel: software, transformation, and digital enablement. By giving firms the platforms and services they desire, and then helping with the front- and back-end implementation to use them, it’s clear that NCR had been planning for rapid growth in that segment, and so far, is seeing that focus pay off.
• The firm’s recent announcement indicates that strategy is paying off in the marketplace. NCR noted particular success with Retail ONE, its omnichannel offering that launched in June 2015. Retail ONE falls under the “software” category, and shows that the firm has a particular advantage in that area. That’s unsurprising, as more and more merchants are offering additional channels and requiring omnichannel services that will support them.

In addition to competitive advantages, it’s likely the firm will realize ongoing monetary gains as it continues to push this strategy forward. In Q2 2016, NCR’s software segment increased by 3% year-over-year (YoY) on a constant currency basis. In Q3, that annual growth rate ticked up to 7% YoY, driven by major gains in software licensing and cloud services, according to NCR executive William Nuti. And software growth is particularly beneficial for the company because of maintenance contracts that leave a long runway for growth, which means that the impact of this strategy, if it continues to succeed, could end up magnifying over time.

E-commerce has been on the rise in the last several years, thanks in large part to titans in the industry such as Amazon and Alibaba. E-commerce will truly become the future of retail, as nearly all of the growth in the retail sector now takes place in the digital space.

BI Intelligence, Business Insider's premium research service, forecasts that U.S. consumers will spend $385 billion online in 2016. Moreover, BI Intelligence predicts that number will grow to $632 billion in 2020.

This is hardly surprising considering e-commerce's healthy growth. Though the U.S. retail average growth rate in the first half of 2016 was just 2% for total retail, it was 16% for e-commerce.

The number of online shoppers has grown by nearly 20 million from 2015 to 2016. And these 224 million shoppers are spending more, as the total amount spent online grew from $61 billion in the first quarter of 2015 to $68 billion in Q1 2016. Finally, these customers are transacting more frequently, as the number of online transactions has risen by 115 million from 2015 to 2016.

But all of this shopping online creates its own set of challenges, both for consumers and the companies that are trying to get their products onto shoppers' screens and into their shopping carts. In short, you need a plan.

And to create your ultimate e-commerce battle plan, you need the right intel.

BI Intelligence is here to help.

Our team of industry experts has you covered on topics such as:

• Shopping cart abandonment
• Marketing effectiveness
• Merchandise returns
• Customer satisfaction
• Social media monetization
• Mobile payments
• Accommodating shoppers at the 11th hour
• And much more

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By Brooke B. Sellas, {grow} Contributing Columnist

For marketers, our mental game is likely one of our most valued (and valuable) assets.

Mental challenges for marketers include creativity, focus, and juggling the five Ps:

1. Your product(s)
2. Your pricing
3. Placement
4. Promotion
5. And of course, your people

Here are four ways to up your mental game in 2017.

What’s a Mental Game?

First, let’s talk about your mental game. What exactly are people referring to when they use this term?

For me, my “mental game” is achieving 100% (or as close to it as possible) mental clarity. It’s seeing the small details and the big picture.

Golf, for example, is such a mental game. I have all of these little mantras I have to say to myself to drive the ball off the tee. If I don’t, I’m likely to whiff (miss the ball completely) or shank it (hit the ball to the far left or right, rather than straight).

Essentially, having a good mental game is all about focus and building a process, routine, or mantra for staying present in the moment.

Here’s how I achieve that as a marketer …

Up Your Focus With These 4 Tips

1) Trust in your (and your team’s) capabilities. At our company, we call this “trust and verify.” I trust that my team is capable of getting things done, but I verify that by checking in, spot checking items, and reviewing the quality of work (QA or quality assurance).

If it’s my own work, I have someone else on the team verify what I’ve put together.

It’s not that I don’t have confidence in myself or our team. We’re human, mistakes will (and do!) happen.

The trust and verify process is a great checks-and-balances system to ensure quality work goes out each and every time. Knowing that a second set of eyes has approved your work helps you feel mentally strong and more confident about deliverables.

2) Focus on the process rather than the outcome. One of our biggest projects for 2016 was less about winning and more about the process or workflow to get the “win.” By documenting and refining our processes, we were able to grow over 230%.

As marketers, we’re often trained to focus on the bottom line or return on investment. But when you think about it, you can’t truly control whether you win or lose. The only thing you can control is the process, workflow, or tangible tactics you perform to get to the outcome.

I love the way Claire Dorotik-Nana, phrases this in her article on stepping up your mental game:

“Before you can win anything, you have to learn how to play.”

Bye-Bye, Need To Control

3) There is no loser in losing. Similarly, to emphasizing processes, I’ve been learning not to be a slave to losses.

Choosing to let go of losses quickly and focus on current processes for other clients or potential leads helps me redirect my focus in a positive way.

It’s not that I’m clinical; I don’t want to waste time worrying about things that are unlikely to change.

The same goes for constantly winning. I don’t get cocky.

Going too far in either direction with winning or losing causes you to lose mental clarity and concentrate on external factors. Stay present in the moment — especially while selling.

4) Know that advantage is overstated. Clients often focus on competitors. “They’re budget is bigger.” “We’re a little guy and they’re not.” “They have X.”

Who cares? If we all went around with that mentality we’d never go into business, or join a team, or get a date! Why waste your time and energy on those things?

Instead, learn to control how you deal with adversity, deal with loss, and bounce back/learn from your mistakes.

One of the biggest keys to having a strong mental game is focusing on the things you can control.

Use the tips outlined above to better refine your routine, processes & workflows for a better mental game.

What are some ways you’ve upped your marketing (or other) mental game? Let me know in the comments section below!

Brooke B. Sellas is an in-the-trenches digital marketer & owner at B Squared Media, blossoming blogger, and  a purveyor of psychographics. Her mantra is “Think Conversation, Not Campaign” so be sure to give her a shout on Twitter.

The post 4 Ways Marketers Can Up Their Mental Game appeared first on Schaefer Marketing Solutions: We Help Businesses {grow}.