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I’ve written a lot recently about salespeople. (Key in “hiring” into the search box on my blog or look at my recent posts on LinkedIn.)

Over the years I’ve had the opportunity to provide my opinion to CEOs, CFOs, boards of directors, private investors, private equity partners, and venture capitalists about what was really going on within their (portfolio) companies’ dysfunctional sales departments.

Sales managers and VPs, and the people that hire them, are the subject of this discussion.

Just a note. I love salespeople, sales managers, and their bosses, the VPs of sales. It’s a tough job. This post isn’t about those who get the job done. (Read my book if you’d like to see what that looks like.) For this post, I just want to help those executives who seem to keep on hiring those VPs of sales who can’t get the job done. (And please, stop promoting your best sales rep to VP of Sales.)

Considering the average tenure of sales VPs these days, which is

far less than two years,

one can create a timeline for a newly-hired VP who just isn’t going to work out long-term:

(Read the rest of the post here, on LinkedIn.)

Noted organizational psychologist Suzanne C. Thompson has argued that a sense of personal control is critical in helping us maintain a sense of stability and navigate our way through life.

The talent selection process is no different, and multimedia job simulations offer companies a unique opportunity to glean valuable information about the skills, knowledge, and abilities of their applicants while giving candidates an increased sense of autonomy in the job application process.

Enhancing the Candidate Experience with Call Center Simulations

Candidates perform better and experience the hiring process more favorably when they feel in control. The Society of Industrial Organizational Psychologists points out that it benefits employers to think about the selection process from a candidate’s perspective since candidates have the power to communicate a negative or positive perception of your organization to their professional and social networks.

This, the researchers write, means giving the candidate an opportunity to perform and show what they know.

Call center simulations offer the best of both worlds by giving candidates the chance to perform the job while providing employers with valuable information about the candidates’ skills, knowledge and abilities. By mimicking the tasks of a call center job – from training classes to learning a new software program to interacting with different customer personalities – these types of multimedia job simulations allow candidates to feel a sense of control and autonomy.

Counter to multiple choice tests, interactive call center simulations allow candidates to gain a sense of mastery and progress throughout the process while demonstrating proficiency in:

• Multi-tasking
• Data entry accuracy
• Computer ability
• Service/sales orientation

Additionally, they allow candidates to learn job-relevant patterns, apply them, modify them, and use them to navigate the test.

Give Your Candidates the Experience They Want, and Your Recruiters the Info They Need

With the scales in the employment market tipping in favor of the candidate, today’s applicants expect and demand an engaging, relevant candidate experience.

We’ve talked before about the many things today’s applicants are looking for in a candidate experience. One major component missing from many high-volume hiring processes, though, is the opportunity for candidates to showcase their job-relevant skills, knowledge and abilities in a meaningful way.

A recent Talent Board survey demonstrated the gap in what candidates need, and the proportion of employers who are giving it to them. The survey pointed out that while over 80% of candidates answer general screening questions during the application process, only 50% are asked for job-specific skills, and less than a third are asked to take assessments.

Call center simulations, on the other hand, make it easy for hiring managers to give candidates the experience they want while gleaning the information they need to determine not just whether a candidate has the right skillset, but whether or not he or she will be a good fit for the organization’s culture. By observing how candidates perform in an environment that emulates that of the organization – down to the types of customers candidates will be dealing with – hiring managers can select candidates who demonstrate the highest likelihood of success.

Astrophysicists recently discovered that Jupiter's Great Red Spot is extremely hot. This new discovery could help explain a mystery that's plagued scientists for decades. Read more about the discovery in Nature.

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Put sales on the backburner, and focus on increasing your customer lifetime value.

LONDON – A broad-based European Union survey shows economic sentiment has taken a battering in Britain in the wake of the country’s vote to leave the bloc, but has remained resilient elsewhere in Europe.

In its monthly assessment of economic conditions across the EU, the European Commission says its economic sentiment indicator for the 19-country eurozone rose by 0.2 points to 104.6 in July. For the wider-EU, which also includes non-euro countries, the indicator slipped 0.9 points to 104.8 largely because of a dramatic 4.4-point slippage in Britain.

The Commission’s assessment is the latest in a series of indicators to show that Britain’s economic outlook has darkened in the immediate aftermath of the June 23 vote to leave the EU. In contrast, the survey echoes other findings indicating strength in the eurozone.

The post Another survey points to Brexit fallout for Britain appeared first on Canadian Business - Your Source For Business News.

BEIJING, China – China’s Cabinet issued its first rules for ride-hailing and told local officials Thursday to promote the booming industry, confirming the legal status of Uber Technologies Inc. and local competitors following run-ins with regulators.

The Cabinet document sets guidelines for registration, fares, employment of drivers and payments. It said details for each city will be decided by local authorities but told them to “encourage, support and guide” the industry.

China is one of a series of markets where Uber and competitors have grown fast but faced legal challenges to their business model, which lets customers summon a car using a smartphone app.

Uber’s offices in several Chinese cities were raided last year by police who accused it of operating unlicensed taxi services. Taxi drivers have protested over competition from such services.

Regulators last year banned Uber and Chinese competitors led by Didi Chuxing from using drivers without taxi licenses. The services adapted by working through vehicle-rental companies.

On Thursday, Uber and Didi Chuxing said they welcomed the rules and the official endorsement of the industry.

“The rules legalized online car-booking services at the national level for the first time, marking a milestone in China’s endeavour toward steady and healthy development of the rideshare industry,” Didi Chuxing said in a statement. “We believe the rules will usher in a new stage of growth for China’s online ride-booking ecosystem.”

The rules were less restrictive in some ways than a proposed draft that was issued in October.

The document issued Thursday said authorities would consider different types of labour agreements with drivers, while the earlier proposal would have required companies to sign contracts with them as fully-fledged employees. The latest version also dropped a proposal to limit drivers to working for no more than two ride-hailing companies.

Uber, headquartered in San Francisco, operates in more than 60 Chinese cities and plans to increase to more than 100 by the end of 2016.

“We look forward to working with national and local governments to put these regulatory guidelines into practice,” said a company statement.

Didi Chuxing, previously Didi Kuaidi, operates in some 400 Chinese cities. It said the company completed 1.4 billion rides in 2015.

The company said in June it raised $7.3 billion from investors in what it described as one of the world’s largest private equity funding rounds.

That included $1 billion from Apple Inc., which became a strategic investor alongside Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba Group and Tencent Holdings Ltd., an online games and entertainment service. Other investors included China Life Insurance Co.

Last September, the company and Lyft of the United States agreed to link their services to allow travellers to use them in each other’s markets. In December, their alliance added India’s Ola and Southeast Asia’s GrabTaxi.

The post Gig economy arrives in China (officially); ride-sharing a go appeared first on Canadian Business - Your Source For Business News.

Here’s the key line from the U.S. Federal Reserve’s latest policy statement on July 27: “Near-term risks to the economic outlook have diminished.”

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It has been a while since the Fed has dared to look out the window. First it was China that forced the central bank to scrap plans to raise interest rates. Then came Brexit. But global financial markets have held up since the United Kingdom voted to quit the European Union. Before the new statement, only a betting man or woman would have said higher interest rates were likely in 2016. Now, an interest-rate increase before the end of the year is a distinct possibility.

Bond yields shot higher, and the dollar rose. That’s what happens there are hints borrowing costs will rise. Oddly, it didn’t last. Yields reversed course and the dollar weakened. According to Tom Porcelli, chief U.S. economist at RBC Capital Markets, market prices imply the odds that interest rates will be higher at the end of the year are less than 50%. What’s going on? It appears there are a lot of traders out there who doubt the Fed has the guts to raise interest rates.

Brexit Pollyannas trumpeted buoyant stock markets as evidence they were right to dismiss the gloom that followed the referendum result. Their triumphalism ignored the fact that British equities rallied because almost everyone expects the Bank of England to push interest rates lower. Almost everyone expects the Bank of England to do this because the uncertainty caused by the referendum debate and the result likely caused a recession. Stock markets are stronger because traders realize British investors will have no better place to put their money for a long, long time.

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The European Central Bank also is widely expected to amp up its stimulus program, and the Bank of Japan could do the same. The Fed might like to raise interest rates this year, but it will find itself jammed. When it raised its target from zero in December, the dollar surged. That hurt exporters and crimped business investment. Near-term risks have diminished because central banks are set to extend the era of cheap credit. The Fed won’t follow its peers, but nor will it lead them back to a more typical interest-rate setting. At least not yet. That’s the bet. If the markets are wrong, Fed chair Janet Yellen is going to have to convince them.

Aggressive monetary policy probably is necessary to avert catastrophe, but it is altering economies in subtle ways that could hurt in the future. Consider the UK. Equity markets may have recovered from their post-Brexit collapse, but the pound sterling has not. A weaker currency allowed Japan’s Softbank to purchase the darling of Britain’s technology industry at a steep discount. There surely will be others. The hollowing out of British industry could unnerve a population that just voted to leave the EU because it felt it lacked control of its economic destiny.

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Let’s bring this discussion closer to home. The housing bubbles in Vancouver and Toronto—just like the bubbles in Sydney, Hong Kong and others —are the result of ultra-low interest rates for longer and longer and longer. Those bubbles aren’t a reason to raise borrowing costs; you don’t hurt the prospects of the broader economy to contain a mania in a couple of big cities. But something needed to be done. British Columbia’s new tax on foreign purchases of homes in Vancouver is the first serious attempt by local authorities to confront a local problem. Will it work? Stewart Beck, the head of the Vancouver-based Asia Pacific Foundation of Canada, thinks so. Jason Kirby, business editor at Maclean’s, reckons super rich Chinese will simply pay the tax and carry on as before. Both Beck and Kirby agree that someone should have tried to do something about the problem long before now.

I’m inclined to think the tax will take the froth out of the Vancouver market, but not in a positive way. Kirby is right; Asia’s super rich will pay the tax, assuming they are motivated by putting their wealth under the protection of Canada’s respect for property rights. But do you know who won’t pay the tax? Non-Canadians who wanted to move to Vancouver to become rich.

International plutocrats do almost nothing for local economies by buying a house. Economic immigrants do a great deal. They allow startups to scale and they start companies of their own. That begets more hiring and investment. The tax base grows. Forget about the contribution of housing to gross domestic product. Canada has a productivity problem, B.C. included. Real-estate investment does almost nothing to boost productivity. Technology and manufacturing drive innovation. And B.C. has just made it more difficult for those industries to attract talent. It already was expensive to lure young engineers to Vancouver. It is even more so now.

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MORE ABOUT INTEREST RATES AND HOUSING:

• The three faces of Canada’s increasingly strange housing market
• How Brexit is further inflating Canada’s overheated housing market
• What worries the Bank of Canada even more than housing? China
• Canada’s banks sound the housing bubble alarm, finally
• How a “flipping tax” might calm Canada’s bubbly housing market
• Canada is now a testing ground for new ideas about deficits

The post Why we could pay a price for low interest rates appeared first on Canadian Business - Your Source For Business News.

These examples of teamwork skills will provide team mentoring for success!

Have you ever been part of remarkable teams? Once you experience the synergy of collaboration, it imprints on your professional DNA.

My commitment to creating remarkable teams results from my own membership on a remarkable cross-functional team, early in my career. I have the privilege of paying my own experience forward when I coach and mentor new teams.

Examples of Teamwork Skills: The Defining Moment

My own defining team moment arrived when I was assigned to a cross-functional new product development team in the pharmaceutical industry. First of all, I am a scientist by training. My role involved clinical oversight to research necessary to create and justify claims about a new over-the-counter-product.

I took my role very seriously. As the youngest person on the team, I worked with professionals from operations, legal, marketing, sales, finance. During the first “team” meeting, we strutted our vast stores of knowledge around like peacocks with their tails spread.

Then something remarkable happened: we called ourselves out. Each one of us decided we were not going to accomplish anything by living our roles inside the biases of legacy professional mindset. We promised each other that “Us versus Them” would not exist on our team, even if it thrived throughout the culture of our organization.

The rest is history. Sometimes I led, sometimes I followed, depending on required expertise to execute strategy. Everyone mentored each other. When knowledge gaps were identified, we searched for additional expertise. The products we created, nearly 30 years ago, still are knocking the socks off competitors’ products.

That first remarkable team is the basis for my professional mantra: “Depending on where we sit around the table, we see the same things – differently. Collaborate around those differences.”

Examples of Teamwork Skills: Classroom

Fast forward to today.

I sit in a business school classroom. Moreover, I am a mentor for Entrepreneurship (aren’t we all entrepreneurs if we are in business?). This year I have a team of 5 testosterone-charged young men, determined to get an “A” in the course. I have coached these teams before. I know this course is legendary. Teams eventually learn it is not about getting the “A”, it is about the journey along the way. This year’s team doesn’t understand that yet.

Nonetheless, we begin working on a new pharmaceutical entity. Week 1: the team is strutting their academic credentials around, like peacocks with their tails spread. The researcher, a foreign national from an extremely gracious culture, maintains respect in spite of this spectacle. I have seen this professional behavior before, haven’t I?

Furthermore, one self-appointed leader emerges – the one with the most dominant personality. The mission of the team, he declares, is for him to get an “A” in the course. If everyone works hard, perhaps everyone else also will get an “A.”

Examples of Teamwork Skills: Structure

The team looks at me. Mentoring is interesting, especially at the university level where I can make the greatest impact on facilitating professional “defining moments.” I smile. “Look, there’s a couple of things we need to make clear during the first class,” I say serenely. “First of all, I am not your mother. Second, I do not care whether you complete your weekly homework. What I am here to do is create a remarkable team. Our team’s persona and direction will unfold by week 3 of this course.”

Everyone looks at each other, as though I am speaking in riddles.

A SWAT analysis is completed for Week 2. The team is devastated. No one gets an “A” on the assignment, even though everyone completed their assigned part of the analysis. Not even the self-appointed leader of the pack. Heads turn to me for direction. I focus on how everyone can work more collaboratively in revising their SWAT analysis. We discuss the importance of gaining the learning and tools needed during subsequent classes to create a meaningful SWAT analysis.

It’s Week 3. Thus, there are more projects and more disappointments. The team’s frustration explodes. “This isn’t a 3-credit-hour course, this is more like a 7-credit-hour course! It is taking up our lives. We obsess so much about the problems to be solved that it is eating into our other course time,” they exclaim.

“Now you are talking,” I smile back. “Now you are thinking like startup CEOs who are committed to seeing this project through to completion. It’s not about getting an ‘A’ anymore, is it? It is about the heroes’ journeys you are collectively experiencing, leading and following each other. You also are learning that institutional systems do not work flawlessly, let alone dependably. It is up to your team.”

Examples of Teamworking Skills: Support

I tell them the story of my first remarkable team. Additionally, I set my expectations for their team: to target becoming remarkable, inclusive, collaborative, innovative and brave.

During the remainder of the semester, the team suspends their egos. They tackle incredibly difficult regulatory issues surrounding technology commercialization. Moreover, they devote time to making sure each team member is competent, confident and successful as they complete Milestone Assignments.

Like all remarkable teams, they get to the finish line together. Their Pitch to investors is rock-star quality. Yes, they all earn their “A” for the course. Ultimately, they understand that the basis of their grade weighs the value of their collaboration and humanity dealing with real-life issues which often derail startups and mature businesses alike.

Finally, the team graduates and moves on to rewarding careers. Most importantly, their experience imprints on their professional DNA. I am quite certain they will pay it forward many times during their careers.

Babette Ten Haken is the Founder and President of Sales Aerobics for Engineers®, LLC. She has one of the most distinctive voices in today’s future workforce, professional development and customer success communities. She traverses the interface between tech workforce hiring strategy and developing collaborative technical and business teams focused on customer success and customer retention. Babette’s playbook of collaboration hacks, Do YOU Mean Business? is available on Amazon. Visit the Free Resources section of her website for more tools.

Next Steps to learn more on examples of teamwork skills:

1. Subscribe to the CONNECT2Win Blog RSS feed to read more examples of team effectiveness in this guest blog series.
2. Download this free eBook “What Is Team Effectiveness & How Can We Get Some for Our Team? Stat!”
3. Learn more about the options available to help you enable and ennoble your team. Book a free consultation with Deb. No cost, no obligation.

The blog for everyone that works with anyone

Thank you to Babette Ten Haken for this guest blog post on examples of teamwork skills. This blog is a product of People First Productivity Solutions where we build organizational strength by putting people first. Our president, Deb Calvert, is a certified executive coach and leadership development specialist, working with teams to bring out the best in everyone.

The post Examples of Teamwork Skills: Pay It Forward appeared first on People First.

Text of President Barack Obama’s speech Wednesday at the Democratic National Convention, as provided by the White House.

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Hello, America.

Twelve years ago tonight, I addressed this convention for the very first time.

You met my two little girls, Malia and Sasha – now two amazing young women who just fill me with pride. You fell for my brilliant wife and partner Michelle, who’s made me a better father and a better man; who’s gone on to inspire our nation as First Lady; and who somehow hasn’t aged a day.

I know the same can’t be said for me. My girls remind me all the time. Wow, you’ve changed so much, daddy.

And it’s true – I was so young that first time in Boston. Maybe a little nervous addressing such a big crowd. But I was filled with faith; faith in America – the generous, bighearted, hopeful country that made my story – indeed, all of our stories – possible.

A lot’s happened over the years. And while this nation has been tested by war and recession and all manner of challenge – I stand before you again tonight, after almost two terms as your President, to tell you I am even more optimistic about the future of America.

How could I not be – after all we’ve achieved together?

After the worst recession in 80 years, we’ve fought our way back. We’ve seen deficits come down, 401(k)s recover, an auto industry set new records, unemployment reach eight-year lows, and our businesses create 15 million new jobs.

After a century of trying, we declared that health care in America is not a privilege for a few, but a right for everybody. After decades of talk, we finally began to wean ourselves off foreign oil, and doubled our production of clean energy.

We brought more of our troops home to their families, and delivered justice to Osama bin Laden. Through diplomacy, we shut down Iran’s nuclear weapons program, opened up a new chapter with the people of Cuba, and brought nearly 200 nations together around a climate agreement that could save this planet for our kids.

We put policies in place to help students with loans; protect consumers from fraud; and cut veteran homelessness almost in half. And through countless acts of quiet courage, America learned that love has no limits, and marriage equality is now a reality across the land.

By so many measures, our country is stronger and more prosperous than it was when we started.

And through every victory and every setback, I’ve insisted that change is never easy, and never quick; that we wouldn’t meet all of our challenges in one term, or one presidency, or even in one lifetime.

So tonight, I’m here to tell you that yes, we still have more work to do. More work to do for every American still in need of a good job or a raise, paid leave or a decent retirement; for every child who needs a sturdier ladder out of poverty or a world-class education; for everyone who hasn’t yet felt the progress of these past seven and a half years. We need to keep making our streets safer and our criminal justice system fairer; our homeland more secure, and our world more peaceful and sustainable for the next generation. We’re not done perfecting our union, or living up to our founding creed – that all of us are created equal and free in the eyes of God.

That work involves a big choice this November. Fair to say, this is not your typical election. It’s not just a choice between parties or policies; the usual debates between left and right. This is a more fundamental choice – about who we are as a people, and whether we stay true to this great American experiment in self-government.

Look, we Democrats have always had plenty of differences with the Republican Party, and there’s nothing wrong with that; it’s precisely this contest of ideas that pushes our country forward.

But what we heard in Cleveland last week wasn’t particularly Republican – and it sure wasn’t conservative. What we heard was a deeply pessimistic vision of a country where we turn against each other, and turn away from the rest of the world. There were no serious solutions to pressing problems – just the fanning of resentment, and blame, and anger, and hate.

And that is not the America I know.

The America I know is full of courage, and optimism, and ingenuity. The America I know is decent and generous. Sure, we have real anxieties – about paying the bills, protecting our kids, caring for a sick parent. We get frustrated with political gridlock, worry about racial divisions; are shocked and saddened by the madness of Orlando or Nice. There are pockets of America that never recovered from factory closures; men who took pride in hard work and providing for their families who now feel forgotten; parents who wonder whether their kids will have the same opportunities we had.

All that is real. We’re challenged to do better; to be better. But as I’ve travelled this country, through all fifty states; as I’ve rejoiced with you and mourned with you, what I’ve also seen, more than anything, is what is right with America. I see people working hard and starting businesses; people teaching kids and serving our country. I see engineers inventing stuff, and doctors coming up with new cures. I see a younger generation full of energy and new ideas, not constrained by what is, ready to seize what ought to be.

Most of all, I see Americans of every party, every background, every faith who believe that we are stronger together – black, white, Latino, Asian, Native American; young and old; gay, straight, men, women, folks with disabilities, all pledging allegiance, under the same proud flag, to this big, bold country that we love.

That’s the America I know. And there is only one candidate in this race who believes in that future, and has devoted her life to it; a mother and grandmother who’d do anything to help our children thrive; a leader with real plans to break down barriers, blast through glass ceilings, and widen the circle of opportunity to every single American – the next President of the United States, Hillary Clinton.

Now, eight years ago, Hillary and I were rivals for the Democratic nomination. We battled for a year and a half. Let me tell you, it was tough, because Hillary’s tough. Every time I thought I might have that race won, Hillary just came back stronger.

But after it was all over, I asked Hillary to join my team. She was a little surprised, but ultimately said yes – because she knew that what was at stake was bigger than either of us. And for four years, I had a front-row seat to her intelligence, her judgment, and her discipline. I came to realize that her unbelievable work ethic wasn’t for praise or attention – that she was in this for everyone who needs a champion. I understood that after all these years, she has never forgotten just who she’s fighting for.

Hillary’s still got the tenacity she had as a young woman working at the Children’s Defence Fund, going door to door to ultimately make sure kids with disabilities could get a quality education.

She’s still got the heart she showed as our First Lady, working with Congress to help push through a Children’s Health Insurance Program that to this day protects millions of kids.

She’s still seared with the memory of every American she met who lost loved ones on 9-11, which is why, as a Senator from New York, she fought so hard for funding to help first responders; why, as Secretary of State, she sat with me in the Situation Room and forcefully argued in favour of the mission that took out bin Laden.

You know, nothing truly prepares you for the demands of the Oval Office. Until you’ve sat at that desk, you don’t know what it’s like to manage a global crisis, or send young people to war. But Hillary’s been in the room; she’s been part of those decisions. She knows what’s at stake in the decisions our government makes for the working family, the senior citizen, the small business owner, the soldier, and the veteran. Even in the middle of crisis, she listens to people, and keeps her cool, and treats everybody with respect. And no matter how daunting the odds; no matter how much people try to knock her down, she never, ever quits.

That’s the Hillary I know. That’s the Hillary I’ve come to admire. And that’s why I can say with confidence there has never been a man or a woman more qualified than Hillary Clinton to serve as President of the United States of America.

Watch the speech here:

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And, by the way, in case you were wondering about her judgment, look at her choice of running mate. Tim Kaine is as good a man, as humble and committed a public servant, as anyone I know. He will be a great Vice-President, and he’ll make Hillary a better President. Just like my dear friend and brother Joe Biden has made me a better President.

Now, Hillary has real plans to address the concerns she’s heard from you on the campaign trail. She’s got specific ideas to invest in new jobs, to help workers share in their company’s profits, to help put kids in preschool, and put students through college without taking on a ton of debt. That’s what leaders do.

And then there’s Donald Trump. He’s not really a plans guy. Not really a facts guy, either. He calls himself a business guy, which is true, but I have to say, I know plenty of businessmen and women who’ve achieved success without leaving a trail of lawsuits, and unpaid workers, and people feeling like they got cheated.

Does anyone really believe that a guy who’s spent his 70 years on this Earth showing no regard for working people is suddenly going to be your champion? Your voice? If so, you should vote for him. But if you’re someone who’s truly concerned about paying your bills, and seeing the economy grow, and creating more opportunity for everybody, then the choice isn’t even close. If you want someone with a lifelong track record of fighting for higher wages, better benefits, a fairer tax code, a bigger voice for workers, and stronger regulations on Wall Street, then you should vote for Hillary Clinton.

And if you’re concerned about who’s going to keep you and your family safe in a dangerous world – well, the choice is even clearer. Hillary Clinton is respected around the world not just by leaders, but by the people they serve. She’s worked closely with our intelligence teams, our diplomats, our military. And she has the judgment, the experience, and the temperament to meet the threat from terrorism. It’s not new to her. Our troops have pounded ISIL without mercy, taking out leaders, taking back territory. I know Hillary won’t relent until ISIL is destroyed. She’ll finish the job – and she’ll do it without resorting to torture, or banning entire religions from entering our country. She is fit to be the next Commander-in-Chief.

Meanwhile, Donald Trump calls our military a disaster. Apparently, he doesn’t know the men and women who make up the strongest fighting force the world has ever known. He suggests America is weak. He must not hear the billions of men, women, and children, from the Baltics to Burma, who still look to America to be the light of freedom, dignity, and human rights. He cozies up to Putin, praises Saddam Hussein, and tells the NATO allies that stood by our side after 9-11 that they have to pay up if they want our protection. Well, America’s promises do not come with a price tag. We meet our commitments. And that’s one reason why almost every country on Earth sees America as stronger and more respected today than they did eight years ago.

America is already great. America is already strong. And I promise you, our strength, our greatness, does not depend on Donald Trump.

In fact, it doesn’t depend on any one person. And that, in the end, may be the biggest difference in this election – the meaning of our democracy.

Ronald Reagan called America “a shining city on a hill.” Donald Trump calls it “a divided crime scene” that only he can fix. It doesn’t matter to him that illegal immigration and the crime rate are as low as they’ve been in decades, because he’s not offering any real solutions to those issues. He’s just offering slogans, and he’s offering fear. He’s betting that if he scares enough people, he might score just enough votes to win this election.

That is another bet that Donald Trump will lose. Because he’s selling the American people short. We are not a fragile or frightful people. Our power doesn’t come from some self-declared saviour promising that he alone can restore order. We don’t look to be ruled. Our power comes from those immortal declarations first put to paper right here in Philadelphia all those years ago; We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal; that together, We, the People, can form a more perfect union.

That’s who we are. That’s our birthright – the capacity to shape our own destiny. That’s what drove patriots to choose revolution over tyranny and our GIs to liberate a continent. It’s what gave women the courage to reach for the ballot, and marchers to cross a bridge in Selma, and workers to organize and fight for better wages.

America has never been about what one person says he’ll do for us. It’s always been about what can be achieved by us, together, through the hard, slow, sometimes frustrating, but ultimately enduring work of self-government.

And that’s what Hillary Clinton understands. She knows that this is a big, diverse country, and that most issues are rarely black and white. That even when you’re 100 per cent right, getting things done requires compromise. That democracy doesn’t work if we constantly demonize each other. She knows that for progress to happen, we have to listen to each other, see ourselves in each other, fight for our principles but also fight to find common ground, no matter how elusive that may seem.

Hillary knows we can work through racial divides in this country when we realize the worry black parents feel when their son leaves the house isn’t so different than what a brave cop’s family feels when he puts on the blue and goes to work; that we can honour police and treat every community fairly. She knows that acknowledging problems that have festered for decades isn’t making race relations worse – it’s creating the possibility for people of good will to join and make things better.

Hillary knows we can insist on a lawful and orderly immigration system while still seeing striving students and their toiling parents as loving families, not criminals or rapists; families that came here for the same reasons our forebears came – to work, and study, and make a better life, in a place where we can talk and worship and love as we please. She knows their dream is quintessentially American, and the American Dream is something no wall will ever contain.

It can be frustrating, this business of democracy. Trust me, I know. Hillary knows, too. When the other side refuses to compromise, progress can stall. Supporters can grow impatient, and worry that you’re not trying hard enough; that you’ve maybe sold out.

But I promise you, when we keep at it; when we change enough minds; when we deliver enough votes, then progress does happen. Just ask the twenty million more people who have health care today. Just ask the Marine who proudly serves his country without hiding the husband he loves. Democracy works, but we gotta want it – not just during an election year, but all the days in between.

So if you agree that there’s too much inequality in our economy, and too much money in our politics, we all need to be as vocal and as organized and as persistent as Bernie Sanders’ supporters have been. We all need to get out and vote for Democrats up and down the ticket, and then hold them accountable until they get the job done.

If you want more justice in the justice system, then we’ve all got to vote – not just for a President, but for mayors, and sheriffs, and state’s attorneys, and state legislators. And we’ve got to work with police and protesters until laws and practices are changed.

If you want to fight climate change, we’ve got to engage not only young people on college campuses, but reach out to the coal miner who’s worried about taking care of his family, the single mom worried about gas prices.

If you want to protect our kids and our cops from gun violence, we’ve got to get the vast majority of Americans, including gun owners, who agree on background checks to be just as vocal and determined as the gun lobby that blocks change through every funeral we hold. That’s how change will happen.

Look, Hillary’s got her share of critics. She’s been caricatured by the right and by some folks on the left; accused of everything you can imagine – and some things you can’t. But she knows that’s what happens when you’re under a microscope for 40 years. She knows she’s made mistakes, just like I have; just like we all do. That’s what happens when we try. That’s what happens when you’re the kind of citizen Teddy Roosevelt once described – not the timid souls who criticize from the sidelines, but someone “who is actually in the arena.who strives valiantly; who errs.(but) who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement.”

Hillary Clinton is that woman in the arena. She’s been there for us – even if we haven’t always noticed. And if you’re serious about our democracy, you can’t afford to stay home just because she might not align with you on every issue. You’ve got to get in the arena with her, because democracy isn’t a spectator sport. America isn’t about “yes he will.” It’s about “yes we can.” And we’re going to carry Hillary to victory this fall, because that’s what the moment demands.

You know, there’s been a lot of talk in this campaign about what America’s lost – people who tell us that our way of life is being undermined by pernicious changes and dark forces beyond our control. They tell voters there’s a “real America” out there that must be restored. This isn’t an idea that started with Donald Trump. It’s been peddled by politicians for a long time – probably from the start of our Republic.

And it’s got me thinking about the story I told you twelve years ago tonight, about my Kansas grandparents and the things they taught me when I was growing up. They came from the heartland; their ancestors began settling there about 200 years ago. They were Scotch-Irish mostly, farmers, teachers, ranch hands, pharmacists, oil rig workers. Hardy, small town folks. Some were Democrats, but a lot of them were Republicans. My grandparents explained that they didn’t like show-offs. They didn’t admire braggarts or bullies. They didn’t respect mean-spiritedness, or folks who were always looking for shortcuts in life. Instead, they valued traits like honesty and hard work. Kindness and courtesy. Humility; responsibility; helping each other out.

That’s what they believed in. True things. Things that last. The things we try to teach our kids.

And what my grandparents understood was that these values weren’t limited to Kansas. They weren’t limited to small towns. These values could travel to Hawaii; even the other side of the world, where my mother would end up working to help poor women get a better life. They knew these values weren’t reserved for one race; they could be passed down to a half-Kenyan grandson, or a half-Asian granddaughter; in fact, they were the same values Michelle’s parents, the descendants of slaves, taught their own kids living in a bungalow on the South Side of Chicago. They knew these values were exactly what drew immigrants here, and they believed that the children of those immigrants were just as American as their own, whether they wore a cowboy hat or a yarmulke; a baseball cap or a hijab.

America has changed over the years. But these values my grandparents taught me – they haven’t gone anywhere. They’re as strong as ever; still cherished by people of every party, every race, and every faith. They live on in each of us. What makes us American, what makes us patriots, is what’s in here. That’s what matters. That’s why we can take the food and music and holidays and styles of other countries, and blend it into something uniquely our own. That’s why we can attract strivers and entrepreneurs from around the globe to build new factories and create new industries here. That’s why our military can look the way it does, every shade of humanity, forged into common service. That’s why anyone who threatens our values, whether fascists or communists or jihadists or homegrown demagogues, will always fail in the end.

That’s America. Those bonds of affection; that common creed. We don’t fear the future; we shape it, embrace it, as one people, stronger together than we are on our own. That’s what Hillary Clinton understands – this fighter, this stateswoman, this mother and grandmother, this public servant, this patriot – that’s the America she’s fighting for.

And that’s why I have confidence, as I leave this stage tonight, that the Democratic Party is in good hands. My time in this office hasn’t fixed everything; as much as we’ve done, there’s still so much I want to do. But for all the tough lessons I’ve had to learn; for all the places I’ve fallen short; I’ve told Hillary, and I’ll tell you what’s picked me back up, every single time.

It’s been you. The American people.

It’s the letter I keep on my wall from a survivor in Ohio who twice almost lost everything to cancer, but urged me to keep fighting for health care reform, even when the battle seemed lost. Do not quit.

It’s the painting I keep in my private office, a big-eyed, green owl, made by a seven year-old girl who was taken from us in Newtown, given to me by her parents so I wouldn’t forget – a reminder of all the parents who have turned their grief into action.

It’s the small business owner in Colorado who cut most of his own salary so he wouldn’t have to lay off any of his workers in the recession – because, he said, “that wouldn’t have been in the spirit of America.”

It’s the conservative in Texas who said he disagreed with me on everything, but appreciated that, like him, I try to be a good dad.

It’s the courage of the young soldier from Arizona who nearly died on the battlefield in Afghanistan, but who’s learned to speak and walk again – and earlier this year, stepped through the door of the Oval Office on his own power, to salute and shake my hand.

It’s every American who believed we could change this country for the better, so many of you who’d never been involved in politics, who picked up phones, and hit the streets, and used the internet in amazing new ways to make change happen. You are the best organizers on the planet, and I’m so proud of all the change you’ve made possible.

Time and again, you’ve picked me up. I hope, sometimes, I picked you up, too. Tonight, I ask you to do for Hillary Clinton what you did for me. I ask you to carry her the same way you carried me. Because you’re who I was talking about twelve years ago, when I talked about hope – it’s been you who’ve fueled my dogged faith in our future, even when the odds are great; even when the road is long. Hope in the face of difficulty; hope in the face of uncertainty; the audacity of hope!

America, you have vindicated that hope these past eight years. And now I’m ready to pass the baton and do my part as a private citizen. This year, in this election, I’m asking you to join me – to reject cynicism, reject fear, to summon what’s best in us; to elect Hillary Clinton as the next President of the United States, and show the world we still believe in the promise of this great nation.

Thank you for this incredible journey. Let’s keep it going. God bless the United States of America.

The post Obama to DNC: ‘We still have more work to do’ (transcript) appeared first on Macleans.ca.

It’s hard to know how well or badly this convention is going for the Democrats. It seems like they’re concentrating too much on unifying their base around Hillary Clinton, and not enough on reaching across the aisle to swing voters. For example, in Michael Bloomberg’s speech endorsing Clinton, he came off as almost a parody of what Hollywood thinks of as a moderate: someone who is socially liberal and fiscally conservative. (The fact that Democrats started cheering when he called Clinton a “sane, competent person” was a reminder that much of the Democratic base gets excited at the idea of moderation and compromise.) The tough-on-crime policies Bloomberg continued or instituted as mayor of New York, though they appeal to swing voters, are controversial among Democrats. So the convention so far seems like most Democrats are hoping to ignore issues like crime and terrorism—even though they could make a very plausible case that they can handle these issues better than Donald Trump would.

Clinton’s vice-presidential pick, Tim Kaine, signified how much the Democrats have changed since the 1990s, when they were obsessed with picking up white, working-class swing voters. Kaine was chosen because he’s a moderate Southern Democrat like Bill Clinton, the kind of guy who can theoretically appeal to those voters. But the pitch he made was based mostly on generic statements about his faith and general niceness. (He also seems to think, as American politicians often do, that being able to speak a language other than English is some kind of staggering achievement.) There were few heterodox policy opinions being thrown around here, and few attempts to deal with the concerns that have led to things like Trumpism and Brexit. The Democrats seem to feel they’re doing fine the way they are, and can win by re-assembling the Obama coalition from 2012, plus a few people who would vote for any other Republican but this one.

That sense of continuity was preserved in the most important speech of the night, which, of course, was President Obama’s—followed by a rather long film about what an awesome president he has been on everything that matters to Democrats. Unlike George W. Bush in 2008, who was so unpopular that he was considered a liability to his party, Obama looks set to end his presidency as a reasonably popular president, despite how divided his country is. That means Clinton—with whom he’s had his share of differences—will need his help and support to win. And Obama, for his part, will want to establish some kind of legacy after he leaves office.

Despite Obama’s relative popularity, there are a couple of things working against him when it comes to leaving his imprint on his party and his country, the way Ronald Reagan did (and Obama has talked about wanting to be the Democratic Reagan). One is that the Democratic wipeouts in the midterm elections of 2010 and 2014 means that there aren’t a lot of elected officials—in Washington or in the states—who were elected on his coattails. And the other, more important problem is that persistent pessimistic mood in the country, which the Republican convention ran on. Even if the majority of people like Obama personally, many are receptive to the message that things have gotten worse on his watch.

The speech was a sustained argument that America is now a better place than it was when he took over. He attacked Trumpism for being “pessimistic,” for painting what he (understandably) considers a wrong picture of his America and his presidency. Obama is sometimes mocked for using the phrase “that’s not who we are” too much; he seems sufficiently conscious of this that he tried not to say it exactly (much like Jerry Seinfeld used to try to say anything except “what’s the deal?”). But it does sum up how he—or any president—would view the possibility of being succeeded by someone who contradicts everything he stands for. If Trump wins, it’s a declaration that everything Obama did was a failure, or at least that a majority of Americans want to completely reverse what he did.

So of course he argued that Hillary Clinton would be a good successor. His speech seemed more effective than most of the other speeches at this convention so far—more conscious of the issues that are of interest to swing voters, more clever about reaching out to different demographics and age groups. (An ad-libbed line comparing Clinton to Ginger Rogers was aimed at TCM-watching old people everywhere.) That’s why most people, whether they support or oppose Obama, have to admit he’s more talented than most politicians. The speech foregrounded a lot of things that other speakers have tried to play down: he tried to say that there is no contradiction between protecting cops and protecting suspects’ rights, between diversity and traditional values. It’s important to say things like that, because Trump has built his whole campaign on insisting that everything is zero-sum, that people cannot keep what they have unless they keep other people from getting what they want.

It’s easy enough to reassure people that they can have it all, but Obama is one of the few speakers who has done it effectively. If Clinton can do it too, she will probably win. But then again, a lot of people so far haven’t been able to do it.

The post Barack Obama makes a pitch for his legacy appeared first on Macleans.ca.

Price negotiation is central to virtually every sales process, and understanding how to properly prepare for one can be a big help in reducing stress and improving results — especially if you're new to the process.

You want to create a scenario where you and your prospect arrive at an agreement within a reasonable timeframe with as few surprises as possible — and being able to get there consistently starts with solid preparation.

That‘s why we’ve put together this list of ten prep strategies you can leverage to ensure every price negotiation you take part in is as smooth and productive as possible.

10 Key Steps to Preparing for a Successful Price Negotiation

1. Confirm that there is actually a deal to negotiate.

First and foremost, you need to be mindful of where a deal stands before you engage in a price negotiation. Make sure you‘re not rushing into a closing call or trying to leverage a discount to force a deal’s timing.

Salespeople who do this think that pricing is the distinguishing factor for a purchase — and that‘s an easy mistake to make. Pricing is discussed in nearly every deal, but it’s rarely the key trigger to buy.

Your prospect needs to see the tangible value your product or service can bring before you can prepare for a pricing negotiation. So do your homework, and have a solid pulse on whether a deal is immediately viable before you lock in on price.

2. Understand your contact's decision-making authority.

In many cases, you‘ll be talking directly with a contact with decision-making authority — someone who can make the economic call and sign the deal. That said, in some select situations, you’ll work with an advocate who can get all of the details and relay the information to the actual buyer.

You need to remain mindful of this. Negotiating with someone who can‘t buy is one of the easiest ways to have a price negotiation go sideways. You always have to have a pulse on the level of influence your contact has. Some good questions to gauge a contact’s decision-making authority include:

• What have you talked about during this process?
• Who besides yourself is part of the decision?
• How will you make this decision together?
• Have you done this type of purchase before?
• How do you actually buy products and services (payment method)?
• What do you think your boss will be looking for?
• Will your boss be able to commit to purchasing on the call?

3. Explain what a good outcome looks like in advance of the conversation.

Make sure you establish realistic-but-ideal expectations of what this conversation will cover before you have it. Here's what that might sound like:

“We can set up this call to talk about pricing, but for me to get a discount approved it’s better if we have all the people on the call. This way, everyone who can make the decision is in one place and we’ll be able to finalize the deal on the call or shortly thereafter.”

With that, you can clearly set agreeable expectations. This also gives you the space to do things like establish whether a prospect is positioned to start immediately after closing or clearly define exactly how they'll pay you.

4. Make sure your prospect is aware of your product’s ballpark price.

The inbound sales process suggests that you introduce general pricing during discovery to set the right expectations. It can be awkward when the prospect has a completely different range expectation for your solution than your standard pricing — and it’s not a good use of your time to run through an entire sales process only to find that, despite a need, the most your prospect can pay is far below the deepest discount you can give.

5. Familiarize yourself with your company's standard discount guidelines.

Standard discount guidelines are typically in place for a reason and can give you an idea of whether it will be easy or hard to get through the final process. Remember, you have a responsibility to both your buyer and your company — and slashing prices far below what’s suggested will hurt your business in the long run.

6. Come to the table prepared with multiple discount options.

Don’t think about discounts as just 10% off sticker price. There are other creative options available to you — changing payment terms to quarterly instead of a year upfront if your prospect has cash flow issues, for example.

Other options include flexibility on payment type and the amount of upfront investment you require. And you can design these based on what you know about the account’s bottom line and their business needs. Also, you don’t have to jump to round numbers — something like an 8.5% discount can be effective in some scenarios.

7. Set an agenda and start with a strong opening question.

If you can set the agenda when you set up the calendar appointment, it can help set the right expectations. Here’s an example agenda I would use on a closing call:

• Welcome and Introductions
• Prospect’s Current Status
• Options to Get Started
• Q&A

Asking everyone to state their name, title, and level of understanding of your offering is a great way of knowing if you have the right people on the call. A price negotiation rarely requires a lot of rapport-building. Most clients want to get through this process as efficiently as you do.

After this initial introduction phase, start with a direct opener, like, “Michelle, what’s your team’s current status?”

This gets the prospect talking and gives you an indication of where they are at in the process. Over time you will be able to tell via their voice tone whether a prospect has come prepared to get a deal done.

8. Leverage your team.

Price negotiations are a perfect time to practice team selling. When you are new to the process, bringing another person to the call to lead — especially with a manager or executive, so that you can concentrate on the discussion at hand — can help accelerate your skills.

9. Set up a preparation call the day before.

If you're new to the price negotiation process, setting up a practice call the day before your conversation is essential — kind of like batting practice. Review the details of the deal with your manager, along with other key elements like the prospective discount and potential objections.

You should run through the three reasons why the client will buy and the three reasons they might be hesitant — and understand how you will address those remaining issues if they come up.

10. Have a method of payment ready to go.

If you can close the deal during the conversation, have a payment link or invoice ready to go that the prospect can fill out over the phone or shortly thereafter — so once negotiations are concluded, you don’t waste time getting started.

Price negotiations are often delicate and challenging by nature — but with proper preparation, they don‘t have to be imposing. So if you want to ensure that your price negotiations go as smoothly as possible, make sure you’re covering all of these bases and approaching these conversations with tact and confidence.

There’s a ton of sales advice floating around out there (trust us, we’d know.) But just because you read an article on a psychological technique or fancy method doesn’t mean you should take it at face value. Let’s be honest: Strategies that sound smart often flop. And not only do these unsuccessful techniques waste your time and energy, they also hurt your chances of closing.

Want to avoid the advice that seems clever but really sucks? Read on for the five worst offenders.

1) Close More Quickly by Manufacturing Urgency

When you’re scrambling to meet your quota at the end of the month or quarter, there’s a real sense of urgency. The problem is, you’re the only one experiencing it.

To ensure your prospects don’t drag their feet, it might seem like a good idea to invent a reason they should buy right now. Michel Fortin, CEO of Workaholics4Hire.com, tells a story about a furniture salesperson who would've given him an extended layaway plan if (and only if) Fortin pulled the trigger that day.

Along similar lines, many reps will give short-term discounts or claim their supply is about to run out.

Sometimes this sleazy tactic might work. But if your buyer really isn’t ready, using a discount to try and move them forward is aggressive and undermines your status as a trusted advisor.

What to Do Instead: There’s nothing wrong with creating a sense of urgency; in fact, it’s a fantastic way to reignite stalled deals. However, you must find a legitimate reason the prospect is suffering every day without your solution. Once they realize the sooner they buy, the better off they’ll be, things will move quickly.

(Need a couple pointers? These 26 questions will help you create genuine urgency in your prospect.)

2) Motivate the Prospect by Referencing Their Competition

Imagine you’ve been neck-and-neck with another professional in your industry for years -- battling each other for the same jobs, going to the same events, and competing for the same opportunities. One day, you hear about your rival’s brand-new project.

Are you immediately going to start an identical project? Not a chance: You’re going to think of an even better one, so ultimately you can come out on top.

The same concept applies when you talk to prospects about their competition. Telling them you work with their direct rivals doesn’t work. Sure, you might get their attention, but in the long run they want a vendor who can put them ahead of the competition -- not beside it.

What to Do Instead: Identify your prospect’s unique pain points and goals, and tailor your messaging accordingly. If they can clearly see the value of your product, you won’t need jealousy.

3) Boost Your Success by Sugarcoating the Truth

The fit between the buyer and the product is never 100% perfect. Unfortunately, some salespeople choose to handle these inevitable issues by sweeping them under the rug. The rep might conveniently “forget” to mention the product doesn’t support international payments, even though he knows some of the prospect’s clients live overseas. A rep might quote the baseline price early in a discovery process to hook his prospect, although the actual cost will be much higher with their estimated usage rates.

Sugarcoating the truth will help you move along the deal -- until, of course, the facts come out. And that means you’ll have invested a lot of time into a pointless relationship. After all, no one’s going to buy when they realize you’ve been misrepresenting the facts.

What to Do Instead: Be honest, but also give them context. If your product doesn’t have a feature the prospect wants, tell them so -- and then offer a workaround or equally compelling reason to buy. If switching to your platform will be time-consuming, say that upfront -- and then mention your dedicated onboarding team. Your integrity is your most valuable asset. Maintain it, and your retention rate will be as high as your close ratio.

4) Get to the “Yes” by Beating Down Objections

It’s easy to think of an objection as something you “beat.” After all, if you can overcome a prospect’s reservations and excuses, then you’re well on your way to an inked deal.

With this mind-set, many reps are extremely aggressive objection-handlers.

“These are the folks that have studied books of objections and how to overcome them,” explains sales expert Darren Fleming. “Whenever a potential lead has an objection, the person is there with an answer. They beat the objections down until the lead has no choice but to surrender.”

It’s a classic scenario of winning the battle but losing the war. Your prospect might go silent -- but they won’t have forgotten their objection.

What to Do Instead: If the prospect is brushing you off, you should creatively out-maneuver them. However, if it’s later in the buyer’s process and they’re truly concerned about something, take the time to understand their specific objection. Once you’ve got a good grip on what they’re thinking and why, you can address their objection calmly and logically -- no bullying necessary.

5) Impress the Buyer by Delivering Instant Answers

The more experience you gain, the easier it is to spot certain trends. And once you’ve identified a commonly held challenge, it’s tempting to swoop in and tell the prospect exactly what they’re facing and how to fix it.

The problem with this approach? If you happen to be right, you’ll gain credibility. But making assumptions is incredibly dangerous -- and if you misjudge the prospect’s situation, you’ll come across as presumptuous and not worth listening to.

What to Do Instead: Use questions to validate your hunches. If you suspect the prospect’s business can’t recruit engineers to save their life, ask, “Many companies in your industry are struggling to hire technical talent -- are you experiencing something similar?”

You’ll avoid coming to the wrong conclusions, but you’ll still get to show off your hard-earned expertise.

In the sales world, separating the great advice from the questionable isn’t always easy. You should always use your best judgment -- if you can picture a tactic going wrong, it’s probably not the best idea.

What’s the worst sales advice you’ve ever followed? Let us know in the comments!

While having a list of metrics in hand is nice to have as a sales organization grows — it’s not always enough to guarantee success. They must create a data-driven sales culture that values key metrics and analytics at every point in the sales funnel.

And through this focus on a data-driven sales culture, organizations must be prepared to transform through improved efficiency, effectiveness, and clarity around sales analytics.

Thankfully, as tracking, recording, and data-syncing technology has evolved, the number of metrics available to sales organizations has increased dramatically. The only problem is that, with so many numbers available, it can be difficult to prioritize which metrics should be tracked, and even harder to determine the value of each metric.

That’s why we created the our newest eBook, “The Essential Guide to Sales Analytics,” to help the modern sales organization prioritize what you should be tracking and how each metric contributes to your data-driven sales success.

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Download the eBook today

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To start, there are the beginner analytics, the easiest sales metrics to track, and the ones you absolutely must be monitoring. But as your data-driven sales operation becomes more advanced, there are some deeper metrics that are slightly more complex and add more clarity to your process. We call these Intermediate Analytics:

Data-Driven Sales Prospecting

Average Outbound Call Duration. This is the average length of time that SDRs are connected with a prospect on outbound calls.
The Value? While not foolproof, time spent on calls often indicates how effective your reps are during their calls. A short average call duration for a rep may indicate additional coaching is needed.

Voicemail Return Rate. This is the percentage of callbacks that come from voicemails your sales team has left.
The Value? A voicemail return rate can indicate which reps are leaving the most successful voicemails and which reps need to improve. Tracking this rate overtime for underperformers can also help you determine if coaching initiatives are helping.

Contact Attempts per Account. This is the number of times anyone on a particular account is contacted.
The Value? It can be difficult to see the big picture for reps who are grinding away all day. It’s important to have a macro view of which reps are reaching out to each account and how often. It’s important to ensure that accounts aren’t being pursued by multiple sales reps or contacted too frequently.

Dials-to-Connection Percentage. This is the percentage of dials that result in a conversation.
The Value? Call volume does not always translate to success. There may be reps that are dialing less but are simply more efficient at connecting with customers. Dial-to-connection percentage can clarify performance and what’s influencing it.

Closing Data-Driven Sales Deals

Opportunities vs. Goal. This is the total number of opportunities generated vs. opportunity goal.
The Value? Sales Development Reps are often given an opportunity quota in place of a standard revenue quota. This metric helps access an SDR’s progress toward that goal.

Contact Attempts per Opportunity. This is the total number of times a rep contacts an open opportunity.
The Value? A consistent cadence and touch is important for moving deals through the pipeline. It’s important to ensure that reps are reaching out to open opportunities often enough to move deals forward.

Data-Driven Sales Performance Analysis

MQL to Opportunity Rate. This is the percentage of marketing-qualified leads (MQLs) that result in opportunities.
The Value? MQLs are leads that Marketing signs off on before handing to Sales. The percentage of MQLs that turn into opportunities is a good indication of marketing-sourced lead quality. If only a small number of MQLs are resulting in opportunities, it could be an indication that Marketing may need to change their qualification standards or their lead sourcing techniques.

Age in Current Opportunity Stage. This is the number of days that an opportunity has been in a particular stage of the sales cycle.
The Value? By tracking opportunity age in various stages of the sales cycle, it can enable you to develop strategies that move deals through various opportunity stages faster.

Average Sales Cycle Length. This is the average time required to close a deal. This is calculated from the time a lead is created until it is closed/won.
The Value? Sales teams should constantly strive to reduce their sales cycle length through experimentation and technology, as well as sales coaching. Reduced sales cycle length means an increase in revenue and decrease in time-to-quota.

Lead Velocity Rate (LVR). Leads of Current Month minus Qualified Leads Previous divided by Month Qualified Leads Previous Month.
The Value? LVR is often correlated with revenue. Growing your lead velocity rate tends to have a positive effect on revenue.

Quota Attainment. Amount of revenue closed by a rep divided by quota.
The Value? This is the most direct way to measure the success of a sales rep as it measures their performance directly against their goal. Team quota measurement can also indicate whether the company is setting realistic goals for itself.

Keep in mind that while the number of dials vs. deals closed can fluctuate based on a number of factors, you can still manage this ratio within a relatively predictable band.

Sales Development Reps must perform repeatable and predictable actions and when they pass opportunities to Account Executives to close, and those AEs, too, must behave in a repeatable and predictable manner.

The combined effect of this data-driven sales culture is that performance ratios will be consistent from development to close, from dials all the way to deals.

Download your free copy of the guide today!

The post How to Create a Data-Driven Sales Culture appeared first on SalesLoft.

Since 2000, Alisa Cohn has been coaching CEOs, board members, entrepreneurs, and emerging leaders to help them increase their leadership capacity. Her specific expertise is helping leaders to think and act creatively so that they are able to step more fully into their evolving roles, scale quickly, and make the best possible decisions for their organizations. Prior to launching her coaching consultancy, she held positions at established companies like The Monitor Group and PricewaterhouseCoopers, and tech startups Corporate Alumni and Clairvergent Technology Partners.

Over the years, Cohn has developed a comprehensive process that uses a wide variety of assessment techniques (MBTI, DISC, Hogan, Firo-B, etc.) to help company leaders successfully navigate change. “I work with a lot of startups to help them build their leadership capacity,” she explains. This can be a particularly challenging task in the high-growth environment of an expansion stage company that has gone from 0 to 60 in a short period of time.

Two Key Skills of Successful CEOs

There are two key skills that CEOs need to develop and practice in order to successfully scale a company: recognizing the talent around you, and learning the art of delegation. While these may at first glance seem fairly obvious, they are among the hardest elements for Founder/CEOs to learn as they build a company from scratch. Cohn helps her clients both acknowledge the importance of cultivating these skills, as well as helping them to actually put them in action in a sustainable way.

Recognizing and Assessing Talent

Part of the challenge startup CEOs face when it comes to recognizing and accurately assessing the talent of individuals is their close proximity to the team. “Early-stage startup CEOs are in the trenches with their employees and certainly with their executive teams,” Cohn says. “When you’re building a startup, you’re working side-by-side, eating cold pizza at two in the morning, and giving all your blood, sweat, and tears.” This level of intimacy is necessary in the beginning, but it can give otherwise savvy CEOs a blind spot.

“Because of how closely they work with their teams, new CEOs have an incredible amount of loyalty to their people,” Cohn explains. “This is a wonderful quality, but it may not allow the CEO to accurately assess each person’s talents, strengths, and weaknesses.” It’s a little bit like the old adage about being unable to see the forest for the trees. In addition, startup CEOs also have to factor in that the organization is in a constant state of change and, as a result, the kinds of people needed for different roles is also in a constant state of change.

“Some people are really well-suited to helping early-stage startups get off the ground. But that doesn’t mean that those same people will transition well into leadership roles in a larger organization in which you have to coordinate across different groups of people, product lines, and so forth.”

Cohn advises CEOs to learn how to look at their teams objectively. “CEOs need to be able to consistently look at their team analytically,” she says. “They need to figure out which individual is the right fit for each role in the existing organization, not the organization of a year or six months ago.” Only when the CEO can maintain this perspective will he or she be able to make the right decisions about who to put in key roles as the company grows.

Delegating Power and Responsibility

On a related note, delegating is a critical skill for CEOs whose roles are evolving in a growing company. While it can be difficult to extricate themselves from the day-to-day operations of the business, they must do so if they hope to ever step fully into the leadership role that is their ultimate responsibility.

“At a certain point, the CEO can no longer control everything or even have a say in every decision,” says Cohn. “Instead, they need to have hired or otherwise identified the right people and put them into the right roles. Then, they need to share their big-picture vision with this group and get out of the way.” Cohn often sees CEOs who fall into the trap of believing that they are only adding value if they are doing something.

“Sometimes adding value is choosing to step back and do nothing. Sometimes, and this is true for executives as well as CEOs, the most valuable thing a leader can do is say, ‘I have great faith in you. I have every confidence that you’ll be able to do this.’ and then let them figure it out.”

In this way, delegating is more about empowering people to work independently than it is about getting tasks off your plate.

Cohn also points out that CEOs who are doing a good job of staying out of the day-to-day operations will not have the right line of sight to make the best decisions in those matters. Once they have removed themselves from the trenches, they must realize that the decisions at this level are best left to the people who are immersed in the issues on a daily basis. “When the company gets bigger and starts moving faster, those are the signals that the CEO and other high-level executives might, at times, be in the way,” she says.

Signs that It’s Time to Transition Out of the Trenches

Even CEOs who grasp the concepts of properly assessing their team’s talent and delegating responsibility accordingly can have a tough time knowing when it’s time to, as they say, cut the apron strings. What are the key indicators that it’s time for a startup CEO to transition from doing to leading? The answer to this question is slightly different depending on the business model, industry, and individual company, but there are a couple telltale signs that Cohn has found to be pretty consistent markers: size and speed.

“The first and easiest sign has to do simply with size,” Cohn says. “When the team is getting bigger, the number of direct reports is getting unwieldy (typically seven or more), and the CEO no longer knows exactly what everyone is doing, it’s time to think about making a transition.”

The other milestone that is a clear indicator that it’s time for the CEO’s role to evolve is when the company has established a clear product-market fit and anticipates a period of rapid growth. “When you’ve demonstrated product-market fit and are ready to scale, you have to be really sure that you’re operating in a mode that’s built around processes and systems, not command and control,” Cohn says. “You have to trust the structures and people around you so that you can step away and focus on managing high-speed growth, knowing that your team will step up to a new level of responsibility .”

Cohn is quick to clarify that you shouldn’t wait until the last minute to start assessing talent and delegating responsibilities. “You should already be headed down that path by the time you reach this point in your company’s growth,” she says. “It’s just that, at this stage, change becomes compulsory.”

The Core Concept: Empowerment

When all is said and done, Cohn’s work converges on a single concept: empowerment. In her work, she helps empower CEOs and other leaders; and much of what she teaches them is about empowering others. “It’s so important for CEOs to learn how to hire the right people, delegate power to them, and hold them accountable in a way that helps them grow professionally,” she says. “It’s not about keeping a scorecard with wins and losses. It’s about being a force for good, a force of encouragement, calm, and even-keeled leadership.”

The post Building Leadership with Loyalty, Talent and the Power of Delegation appeared first on OpenView Labs.

A common question from new bloggers is “How big do I have to be before I can start working with brands?”

It’s a question that reveals how often emphasis is put on audience size when it comes to marketing spend in the influencer space.

There are definitely ways you can change this emphasis to work for, rather than against you. It’s important to understand that audience size is a carryover from traditional advertising and media buying – the more eyeballs the better!

Digital marketing makes it easier and cheaper to reach more eyeballs than ever before (hello Facebook ads). It’s no wonder people are fed up with and becoming blind to advertising messages. We now prefer, more than ever, ‘word of mouth’ recommendations from people we know and trust to help us filter and make decisions on how we act and what we purchase.  

I just received an email this morning informing me of the rise in the search term ‘influencer marketing’ – quite the spike in the last 12 months!

This is great news for you if you’re an influencer. Note the search term is for ‘influencer marketing’, not ‘massive website marketing’ or ‘how to market to fake Instagram followers’.

So, when it comes to your strategy for approaching brands when you have low traffic, worry less about the size of your audience and start focusing on the impact of your influence on that audience. It’s your influence you need to emphasise to the brands you want to work with. If you need to figure out if you’ve got influence, check out The 4 Rs that Show a Brand your Blog is Influential.

Here are 4 strategies you can use to approach the brands you want to work with when you have low traffic.

Focus on your influence rather than your reach

Ask yourself, what is the brand buying – eyeballs or actions? Sometimes it’s a mix of the two, but ultimately brands are working with influencers because of their ability to effect change in the opinions or actions of their audience.

Your job is to emphasise, where you can, the impact of your influence – not how many people might see something, but how many people bought or did something because of it. In your case it might not be many people, so another thing to consider is how much did they spend? There’s a big difference in influencing a $5 spend vs a $50,000 spend.

I once did a sponsored car review after borrowing the car for a week. I had less than 10,000 unique visitors to my blog per month. I was paid $150 and given a gift card towards a family excursion in the car. I created a blog post with a video on YouTube which received over 10,000 views, but more importantly had two people contact me and say my review helped them with the decision to buy the car. So approx $80,000 in car sales for $150 blog post on a small blog (not all of whom were the target market). So next time I want to work with a car brand it’s the $80,000 figure that’s the important one – not the 10,000 readers.

Tip: Focus on the metrics that tell the most relevant story and emphasises the impact of your influence

 

Prove You’re a Good Match

If you’re going to approach a brand, make sure you’re a true advocate of the brand. Your credibility is more valuable in word of mouth marketing than the size of your audience. It doesn’t matter if you have 100,000 instagram followers if they call you out for promoting a brand that doesn’t fit.

When brands offer influencers products to review, they’ve usually already done their homework and are happy that it’s a good idea to give you something. Just because brands offer influencers products for review, it doesn’t mean influencers should solicit products for review without also doing their homework and proving why working with them is a good opportunity for the brand.

Here’s a simple approach to proving you’re a good fit for a brand

• Proactively post about them (yes, for free!)
• Share their content with your audience on social media
• Screenshot proof of engagement and influence from the above activities (very important!)

Doing the above helps you build a case for working with you. Backing it up with the metrics that emphasise your influence and target audience fit will be far more convincing than just sending them a media kit focusing on Unique Visitors or followers. They will be more interested in an influencer who shows why they’re a good fit than someone who won’t post about them unless they’re paid to.

Tip: If the reach numbers alone are not telling the story, get proof that you can generate interest and engagement around their brand.

Focus on the relevance, not the size of your audience

Relevance is one of the more important factors of your ability to influence your audience to the benefit of a brand. The blogger with 250,000 readers will not always be the best choice for every opportunity. The total size of your audience is less important than the total number of the brand’s target customers in your audience.

Gather information about your audience demographics, the reasons they follow you, the problems they need solutions for. Also consider how well placed you are to help the brand achieve its objectives.

A smaller, well matched influencer may have more men aged 21-35 living in Sydney who love boating, than a larger sports influencer with a predominantly international audience.

Tip: Get specific and find the brands you love that want to target your specific niche rather than reach a mass market

Don’t ask for more than you are offering

Actually, to begin with, don’t ask for anything at all! The point being that the beginning of a relationship with a brand you’d love to work with shouldn’t be a straight out ask for product or money. Interact with them on social media first or track down a contact and just introduce yourself and let them know you’re just starting out and would love to be on their radar for any opportunities they have.

When you do send them a proposition, be realistic and offer them good value. Your job is to make it easy for them to do the math on their return on investment. A quick check is to divide the amount you’re asking for by the price of the product/service and checking to see if it’s realistic you could influence that many people to buy. Of course there are other factors and it’s not always all about getting a purchase right away, but it’s a good sense check.

If you don’t feel you can offer much in they way or influence or reach on your own channels, offer to create something the brand can share on their own channels. More often than not a brand will have a larger audience than you, but it’s authentic content they need to connect with them. Maybe they need recipes – let them know your fee for developing recipes for them!
When you’re just starting out or have low traffic, a sound approach is to do whatever you can to prove your worth. Having a blog or social media following doesn’t entitle you to anything. No matter the size of your audience you should always be prepared to prove your relevance and benefit to a brand.

Have you had good experiences with brands despite having smaller traffic? What are your tips for those just starting out?

The post How to Pitch Brands When You Have Low Traffic appeared first on ProBlogger.

From alphabet blocks to Power Wheels, Fisher-Price toys are iconic.

The Mattel-owned company has been around since 1930 and is in the midst of a revival, during a time when the toy industry is adapting to a new generation of millennial parents.

When Christopher Sinclair took over as Mattel CEO last year, he was tasked with breathing new life into a struggling company, and he doubled down on the company's recent push to embrace innovation.

Mattel reported its Q2 earnings last week, and Fisher-Price's performance was a highlight, with worldwide gross sales up 3% (up 6% if you don't adjust for currency fluctuation), indicating that Fisher Price is retaining its momentum from last year, after six consecutive quarters of declining sales.

Business Insider spoke with Fisher-Price head Jean Ann McKenzie, design head Mark Zeller, and 20-year Fisher-Price veteran designer David Dubois, who indicated that the reinvigoration of a struggling brand is the result of significant shifts in the company's approach.

A fitting representation of this new way of thinking is Fisher-Price's second annual Mix Faire, an employee expo held at the company's headquarters in East Aurora, New York, in May.

SEE ALSO: Malcolm Gladwell tells us about his beef with billionaires, police violence, and how his new hit podcast lets him explore issues in ways his books can't

Around 100 of Fisher-Price's 750 employees showed off their prototypes of new toy ideas among 36 booths.

The Mix Faire is a day for employees across the company to come together and show off their entrepreneurial talent to colleagues and the Fisher-Price leadership team.

In 2014, the company created four "task forces" to drive change, and the Mix Faire grew out of the one dedicated to lowering risk aversion.

"There's a long history of working externally with inventors, and we still do that, but there was this strong sense that we wanted to mine all of the inventors that were already within our four walls and really give them the same information or insight into where the business was going that we would give these external inventors," design head Zeller told Business Insider.

Fisher-Price works with impressive external talent like acclaimed designer Jonathan Adler, but the Mix Faire allows for employees across the company to come up with prototypes that don't cost thousands of dollars to make.

The 'mix' comes from the freedom employees had to collaborate, with junior employees working with veterans, and designers partnering with engineers. The call center employees even got involved.

"It feels a little bit like a rebirth to me," design veteran Dubois said of Fisher-Price in 2016. The members of the executive team "are really listening to us now."

The Mix Faire is one of several steps taken to break down previously impenetrable walls in the company, he explained. "Even if you were in R&D, if you had an idea for a different group, it was a 'not invented here' type of approach" if the idea you had fell out of your expertise.

The Mix Faire is a way to open up communication in the office.

"We're really encouraging all employees to get in the game and to value their role as being a source of ideas, and using those ideas to collaborate, and there's no fear of failure," Fisher-Price boss McKenzie said.

It's not solely theoretical. The best ideas will be incorporated into future products.

When the inaugural Mix Faire launched in 2015, more than 100 employees participated, and there were a total of 60 booths.

Though there were fewer booths this year, Zeller noted, the resulting products were generally of a higher quality.

"We walked out and said, 'OK, a third of this needs to go into line right now,'" Zeller said, referring to ideas that should go into production.

See the rest of the story at Business Insider

In December 1997, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, the current Turkish president but at the time the mayor of Istanbul, recited a famous poem by Turkish nationalist poet Ziya Gökalp during a speech in the eastern Turkish city of Siirt. One line read:

“The minarets are our bayonets, the domes our helmets, the mosques our barracks, and the faithful our soldiers.”

At a time when Turkey’s strictly secular military still held sway over Turkish politics, the militarized reference to Islam was interpreted as a threat to the secular order established by modern Turkey’s founder, Mustafa Kemal Atatürk. Erdogan was arrested, sentenced to four months in jail and handed a lifetime ban from politics (which was later lifted).

Less than two years later, another Islamist leader in Turkey, Fethullah Gülen, found himself in a similar predicament. In June 1999, he was caught on tape giving a sermon to his followers which appeared to outline a secret long-term plan to take over the levers of power in the country. “You must move in the arteries of the system, without anyone noticing your existence, until you reach all the power centres,” he is reported to have said.

Gülen, who was in the U.S. at the time, was charged in absentia for “attempting to establish an Islamist state.” He remains in self-imposed exile in Pennsylvania.

On July 15, these two Islamist leaders found themselves on opposite sides of a bloody coup attempt. A relationship that had begun on such a similar footing lay shattered alongside Turkey’s democratic order. When it was over, Erdogan had triumphed. The populist leader harnessed the power of faith and an undercurrent of radicalism in a way Gülen could not, nor would have wanted. And in the process, he has pushed Turkey down a dangerous and potentially destructive path.

Erdogan’s poetic call to action finally came to life during the night of the failed coup attempt. Mosques roused the faithful, instructing them to take to the streets. They answered like obedient soldiers, laying down in front of tanks and confronting armed putschists with their bare hands. More than 240 lost their lives. Tens of thousands of Erdogan loyalists occupied Turkey’s squares in the days that followed, chanting religious slogans and vowing to lay down their lives for Islam and their leader. Erdogan meanwhile, laid blame for the coup on Gülen.

At one time, both Erdogan and Gülen shared a dream of a slow and steady Islamist transformation in Turkey. When, in 2002, Erdogan’s AKP stunned Turkey’s political establishment and won the general elections, the Gülenists and Erdoganists merged into a formidable force, working together to purge Turkish institutions of their militantly secular elements. By 2013, the Gülenists had a firm grip on Turkey’s judiciary, police forces and the education system, and they had allegedly infiltrated the mid to lower ranks of the military.

All of that changed when, in December of that year, a corruption scandal erupted based on wiretap recordings of senior AKP officials, including Erdogan, apparently discussing kickbacks in Turkey’s construction industry. One recording allegedly caught Erdogan instructing his son to get rid of millions of dollars in cash stored at the family home.

AKP officials accused Gülenists of orchestrating a massive illegal wiretapping operation targeting Erdogan, who then turned the full force of his government and security apparatus against them. The war between Turkey’s Islamists began.

Gülenists, even those with a marginal connection to the group, are now on the run. The Gülen project is all but finished and in its place Erdogan’s own transformational vision has gained momentum.

But what exactly is that vision? By most accounts, Erdogan is no radical Islamist. Many experts have cautioned against painting him and his inner circle with an ultra-orthodox brush. A more accurate description, they argue, would be to place his party in the same ideological category as the Tea Party in the U.S.: socially conservative nationalists and free-market capitalists who believe they are on a God-given mission to make Turkey great again.

Key to that mission is positioning Turkey as the leader of the Muslim world, and Erdogan as its champion. During the early weeks and months of the Arab Spring, for instance, Erdogan planted the seeds of his aspirations for regional dominance by supporting anti-regime protesters in Egypt, Libya and Syria. His strong support for the Palestinian cause earned him a kind of cult status in the occupied territories.

In the days since the coup attempt, those seeds have borne fruit. “We are proud of what Erdogan has done,” Naseer Kafagi, a 52-year-old Egyptian national and supporter of the Muslim Brotherhood who now lives in the U.K., said. “Erdogan being in this situation is a blessing. He is protected by God. He has given Muslims around the world hope that Muslim countries can do something for themselves.”

The feeling of Muslim empowerment has rippled through Istanbul’s cobblestone streets in the wake of the failed coup. Pakistanis, Syrians and Saudis have marched alongside Turks, chanting slogans and waving their own nations’ flags. Muslim leaders, including Abu Muhammad al-Maqdisi, considered the world’s leading jihadi ideologue, have tweeted their support for Erdogan.

Ominously, the mood in Turkey has created an opening for Salafists like Maqdisi who follow the ultra-orthodox version of Islam most closely linked to violent jihadists. In Istanbul’s conservative Fatih district, followers of Salafism have taken Erdogan’s victory over the Gülenists as a sign to redouble their conversion efforts. For them, Gülen, despite his Islamic credentials, is too close to the U.S. to offer a viable Islamic vanguard. “The Gülenists are like freemasons,” says Muhammed Ender, the manager of Guraba Press, a publishing house owned by Abdullah Yolcu, Turkey’s leading Salafist preacher. “They are dangerous because they look after their own interests and not the interests of Muslims.”

Academics and journalists who have followed Turkey’s religious permutations for decades worry that Salafists, historically a marginal group in Turkey’s theological universe, have now gained a permanent foothold in their country. They point to the exponential rise in religious texts from Saudi Arabia translated into Turkish, many of them at Guraba Press.

“This is a very dangerous situation,” says Niyazi Dalyancı, a member of the board at Turkey’s journalists association. “The ground in Turkey is fertile for these kinds of extremists, and now that ISIS is losing ground in Syria and Iraq, its fighters are coming here. They shave their beards and find safe haven among these Salafis.”

It’s difficult to pin down the numbers of Islamic State and al-Qaeda supporters inside Turkey but they are by no means insignificant. According to the Soufan Group, a strategic security and intelligence company based in the U.S., an estimated 2,100 Turks have joined violent extremist groups in Syria. Their sympathizers inside Turkey are believed to number around six million, based on a November 2015 Pew Research poll. Ultra-conservative Turks have openly demonstrated in support of Jabhat al-Nusra, Syria’s al-Qaeda branch, after U.S.-led coalition airstrikes began targeting it in 2013.

According to those at Guraba Press, al-Qaeda occupies a different space than the Islamic State. Like many ultra-orthodox Muslims, Ender despises ISIS tactics, particularly its penchant for murdering fellow Muslims. He believes the establishment of the so-called “caliphate” is illegitimate because it does not have the endorsement of the global Muslim community. But al-Qaeda, and Osama bin Laden, he says, were correct in their approach. “They realized Muslims are not ready for a caliphate. So instead of establishing one, they focused on freeing Muslims from oppressive regimes,” he says. “Turkey is at an early stage of its Islamic transformation. It’s not ready for sharia. Before there can be sharia, you need to prepare people for it. That is Erdogan’s job.”

Under Erdogan’s rule, Turkey has become a petri dish for Islamist politics. For a time, it seemed his vision for society was not so much Islamist as it was mildly conservative. Over the first few years of its rule, the AKP implemented socially conservative reforms, including placing limits on when alcohol could be sold in corner stores and defunding abortions at state-run hospitals. It tested the public’s appetite for laws based on Islamic values without impinging on the secular foundations of Turkey.

Other, more subtle reforms, however, have alarmed Turkey’s secularists. Under the AKP, religious high schools have flourished while the curricula at secular schools have been increasingly Islamized. Islamic studies programs at universities have shifted emphasis from philosophy to the hard Islamic sciences, including sharia.

Since the onset of the Syrian civil war, Turkey has also made changes to laws that vastly expand the powers of the intelligence service, known by its Turkish acronym, MIT. A series of laws passed in 2014, for instance, have given intelligence operatives the legal cover to carry out operations beyond Turkey’s borders with little oversight, punishing those, including journalists, who attempt to expose the agency’s activities.

Erdogan has argued that the law was needed to shield Turkey’s spies from potential legal action after they engaged in backdoor talks with the PKK, a designated terrorist organization, in 2010. But legal experts warn the law also encourages the MIT to make inroads with other terrorist organizations, like those fighting the Syrian regime.

While no conclusive evidence exists establishing a direct link between Turkish authorities and Islamic State, some experts are baffled by the lack of a strong response to tackle the group’s presence in Turkey. Raids over the past year have netted dozens of alleged Islamic State operatives but they are rarely convicted and more often than not released. “I speculate that the AKP’s soft approach to ISIS is based on an aversion to engaging in a full-scale war against them,” says one academic, who has researched the institutional relationship between Turkey’s government and Islamic State, requesting anonymity. “Certainly ISIS does not represent an institutional structure in Turkey. It is classified as a terrorist organization. But what is written and what is done in practice are not the same things.”

Indeed, Turkey’s host of security challenges has left its security services stretched thin. The renewed war against PKK separatists in the country’s southeast and increasing tensions with Russia pose serious challenges to its military. A spate of bombings claimed by Islamic State, the academic adds, appear to be a message to the Turkish authorities: leave us alone or we will cause havoc on your streets.

Now, as the purges of Turkey’s security institutions continue after the failed coup, institutional chaos is sure to follow. Military experts have warned that Turkey lacks the experienced officers needed to replenish the ranks after such wide, sweeping cull. A detente with Russia, after Erdogan apologized for the downing of a Russian bomber in November 2015, has eased some of the pressure (the fighter pilot who reportedly shot the bomber down was arrested as part of the Gülenist purge) but will do little to help remove the threat posed by Islamic State.

Instead, it appears Turkey is heading toward a Pakistan-style uneasy truce with the growing army of radicals in its midst. Erdogan may have been speaking metaphorically when he recited that poem in 1997, but his words may come back to haunt him.

Read more Maclean’s, news and politics on Texture. Anytime. Anywhere. All in one app.

The post How Turkey became a petri dish for Islamist politics appeared first on Macleans.ca.

Sellers should understand why and how to ask questions.

There’s more to it than inserting an occasional question in a sales conversation.

Instead, sellers should be strategic and deliberate with their questions in order to realize all the potential benefits of asking questions and to eliminate the perceived risks associated with asking questions.

Beliefs that Interfere with Learning How to Ask Questions

Part of the challenge for sellers is in overcoming two mutually exclusive perceptions about questions. Believing that asking questions is so simple and natural that there’s no need to learn how to ask questions is one barrier. On the opposite extreme is the belief that asking questions buyers will respond positively to is so difficult it’s not worth the time and effort.

Neither belief is accurate. While it is true we can all form and ask questions with relative ease, there is also room for improvement in the way we structure and sequence our questions.

Why It’s Beneficial to Learn How to Ask Questions in Selling

By being more thoughtful and strategic in crafting questions, sellers can create value for buyers and advance the sale.

Questioning with strategic intent demonstrates that the seller has a plan. The questions asked are all purposefully linked to the seller’s plan. This automatically eliminates a whole host of random questions that seem, to the buyer, like a fishing expedition.

Knowing where you want to go with your questions keeps you from meandering and enables you to recognize which answers move you closer to your objective. Knowing the purpose of your questions gives you clarity about when to drill down for more information and when to change direction.

When a seller knows it is time to close the sale, for example, her plan should be to tie up any loose ends and go for the close. With this goal in sight, the seller would ask very narrow questions. The intent is to keep the sale advancing forward, not to open up entirely new discussion topics.

If you’d like to learn more about how to ask questions that are truly effective in advancing the sale, be sure to read DISCOVER Questions® Get You Connected. It’s based on 20+ years of field research with both buyers and sellers.

Next Steps:

• To learn more about DISCOVER Questions® and how to get connected in meaningful ways with your buyers, order your copy of this bestseller from Amazon.com
• When you need sales or management coaching, customized sales training, or a dynamic speaker call us at 408-779-PFPS or book an appointment with Deb.
• Check out these resources for sales managers and front line sellers. New webinars, infographics, research, podcasts and more added every month!

The award-winning CONNECT2Sell Blog is for professional sellers who believe, as we do, that Every Sale Starts with a Connection.

Deb Calvert, “DISCOVER Questions® Get You Connected” author and Top 50 Sales Influencer, is President of People First Productivity Solutions, a UC Berkeley instructor, and a former Sales/Training Director of a Fortune 500 media company. She speaks and writes about the Stop Selling & Start Leading movement and offers sales training, coaching and consulting as well as leadership development programs. She is certified as an executive and sales coach by the ICF and is a Certified Master of The Leadership Challenge®. Deb has worked in every sector and in 14 countries to build leadership capacity, team effectiveness and sales productivity with a “people first” approach.

The post Why and How to Ask Questions When Selling appeared first on People First.

One of the most profound statements I’ve ever heard about winning business came from a speaker at a public sector procurement conference. A senior procurement executive told the audience of over 500 would-be suppliers that she and her fellow procurement professionals knew all the sales tactics that suppliers use on them. “These days,” she said, […]

In marketing, we’ve been experiencing a shift in generational buyers over the last few years. This is challenging us to massively change our strategies. As of April 2016, Millennials (ages 18-34) have become the nation’s largest living generation at 75.4 million individuals in the United States, compared to Baby Boomers (ages 51-69) who now number 74.9 million or Gen X (ages 35-50) at 52 million.

With the shift in generations affecting buyer demographics across the United States, it’s critical for brands to understand that each generation desires something different, and with that want to engage differently with products and services, both pre- and post-purchase.

Technology has primarily shaped and driven these engagement preferences and those companies who do not adapt quickly and stay nimble in their marketing responses are sure to be left behind. In fact, one message delivered across even one or two mediums is no longer an effective approach to encourage buying or develop brand loyalty. Now, marketing strategies once dominated by traditional means have to make room for technologies that change on a daily basis with marketing unique to each outlet.

If you’re reviewing the effectiveness of your current marketing plan in 2016 and developing strategies to better it in 2017, consider these four non-negotiable elements:

1. Each generation consumes content differently.

Millennials spend nearly 30 hours per month on social media apps, checking into social networks like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and Snapchat on an hourly basis. This means they are attached much more personally to brands and companies through these tools than they are traditional marketing efforts such as TV or radio advertising. If millennials are the target market, marketers must include an in-depth social media plan that encompasses their social networks. Be prepared – this will probably involve multiple outlets.

Gen Xers spend 5-10 hours per week consuming content online, typically in the morning and on the weekend. They also consume their content on laptops and desktop computers, and avoid utilizing tablets to read the news. They, too, are on social networking sites, but at a much lower rate than millennials. They prefer email marketing over other tactics.

Baby Boomers also spend time online consuming content. In fact, over 25% of Baby Boomers who responded to a 2015 Fractl/BuzzStream survey stated they consume over 20 hours of online content per week! They also prefer content to be shorter, reading it throughout the week. Short blogs are a fantastic way to reach this group, especially when kept to 300-400 words.

2. Each generation requires different messaging.

Millennials feel close to companies, experiencing a more personal connection through social media, so they desire companies to be authentic and real in their marketing. They are much more aware of how companies respond to social issues, and are quick to develop love or hate for a brand based on the brand’s response to things important to them.

Gen Xers have families to take care of, and therefore respond to messaging geared at providing for families, themselves, or their futures. Because of their busy work and family lives, making things easy and quick for this generation is important. They have a tendency to be overlooked because they are smaller than the exciting Millennial group or retiring Baby Boomer groups, but they are also the most influential, so missing this generation is leaving money on the table.

Baby Boomers, however, are also known as the ‘me’ generation and respond better to messaging and imagery that targets them specifically and is extremely personalized. It’s interesting to note that marketers should avoid pointing out Baby Boomers are seniors, elderly, or old. Baby Boomers desire to feel included. Consider CoverGirl make-up, they do an excellent job of ensuring their spokespeople come from a variety of ages and backgrounds to reach a broad spectrum of buyers. Ellen Degeneres became a CoverGirl at age 50, reaching not only the Baby Boomer generation but the LGBTA community as well. Queen Latifah also made an impact on the CoverGirl brand, reaching out to the both African-American and the plus-size community.

3. Each generation has a different buying process.

For Millennials, purchase decisions are made after reviewing choices with friends. Trust is a huge factor for Millennials, and they will trust their friends first over the savvy and slick marketing gimmicks from brands. That friendship factor can transfer to a brand. Knowing this, a company can craft a long term marketing plan to nurture lasting brand loyalty.

One way to foster a friendship between your brand and the Millennial consumer is to engage with them on social media. They love to use a variety of channels to share their experiences with brands, so make it easy for them to do so with photos, reviews, how-to videos, and feedback. Reward them for doing so, offer discounts and bonus items – make them the star of your brand’s show. This cultivates and deepens the give and take relationship and can substantially influence their social circles both on and off line. This is considered the marketing ripple effect. Do any of your products or services have one? How substantial is it?

Gen Xers are also online researching purchases, but they’re more apt to purchase in person versus online. This generation is also not scared off by price, nor are as budget-sensitive as Millennials. This is the generation that has already seen trends come and go, so they’re much more aware of what’s a current/passing trend versus something that is going to stick. With that said, Gen Xers are focused on quality, and are prepared to spend a little more if the product will last that much longer.

Lastly, don’t make the mistake in assuming Baby Boomers aren’t online. There is more arriving to this digital destination daily. They are researching purchase options, comparison shopping, doing their product recon before buying through short blogs, reviews, and detailed product descriptions. Because of the wealth of information available to their fingertips, the options to switch brands through educated decision-making is suddenly available. Old school blind brand loyalty is giving way to new school brand awareness and in depth product knowledge.

4. Each generation values money differently.

Not only that, but each generation carries debt differently. Millennials may have the largest spending power out of the three generations at $170 billion per year, but they also carry the largest amount of debt. Student loan debt alone totals at over $1.3 trillion in 2015, not including credit card debts, car loans, house loans, or other types of debt.

Millennials also value experience over things, as we’ve seen with the rise in the ‘sharing economy’ (such as Airbnb and Uber). When it comes to marketing, every purchase must be a positive experience, whether it’s how fun the experience of buying is to what the packaging looks and feels like.

Although Gen Xers are often overlooked, marketers need to ensure their marketing strategies also target this generation. Despite being the third-largest generation, they have more spending power than any other generation. According to Open Forum, 10% of all Gen Xers are considered “upscale”, and either have a household income of over $250,000 annually or a personal net worth of over $1 million. Just because the size of Gen Xers is smaller compared to Millennials and Baby Boomers does not mean their spending is small, too. And because they aren’t as heavily marketed to, brands have a unique opportunity to target Gen Xers, foster new relationships, and grow!

While most think Baby Boomers have money to spare, the truth is that just isn’t true. Research shows that Baby Boomers are short on their retirement funds, leading many to continue working long past when they thought they’d retire. They’re concerned with higher health costs, retirement funds, helping their children or grandchildren pay for rising tuition costs, and more. However, this generation is set to donate $20.6 trillion to charity between 2007-2016, so they aren’t necessarily as focused on the ‘me’ in ‘me generation’ as previously thought.

In preparing marketing plans for the balance of 2016 and beyond, the key is to know who your audience is through and through. Micro-targeting and customer segmenting is no longer optional in your strategy. You’ll need to understand what messages resonate, what strategies work and don’t, and how to build long lasting relationships, not sales, across all generations.

You’ve spent months creating and compiling your product. It’s jam-packed full of all your juicy knowledge and advice, and you’re ready to put it out there into the world. You’re ready to let it loose on the public to cure all their woes.

But launch day comes and goes to the harmonious sound of crickets.

No one bought your product. Sure, a couple of your most devoted fans clicked through to the sales page, but not one single person clicked the buy button.

Ouch. Not what you were expecting, right? Maybe you were expecting the queues to be out the metaphorical door, people lining up to get their hands on your debut product. Or maybe you had a glimmer of an idea in your head about how many you’d sell, but you didn’t dare voice it to anyone in case they laughed at you.

But just because no one bought your product, it doesn’t mean you don’t have a great piece of collateral you can work at until people are queuing up around the online block to buy it.

Let’s take a look at some of the reasons why you might have struggled to make a sale.

1. You’ve got your audience all wrong

The very first thing every infoproduct creator should find out is whether there is a real-life need for their product. If your audience isn’t interested in what you’re selling they’re definitely not going to buy.

And, let’s face it, it’s so easy to think a product is great from the inside, but often this means we’re making assumptions.

And assumptions aren’t facts.

How to fix it

This is a tricky one to fix because if your product isn’t in demand or there isn’t a need for it, you’ve kind of got to start from scratch, or at least add elements that your audience does need.

Start by:

• Asking your audience

This is such a simple task, but it gets overlooked so often. If you have an email list or a following on social media, you already have people to ask. Send out a survey using a platform like SurveyMonkey to discover what the pain points of your audience really are – not what you think they are.

Nothing is more valuable than hearing first-hand from the horse’s mouth.

• Forums are good, too

If you have a small audience or are starting from scratch before you create your infoproduct, you still need to conduct some market research (probably more so than anyone starting with some semblance of readership).

Forums like Quora and Reddit are great for digging deep into the questions your audience might have, and therefore gleaning a better understanding of the problems they face and how you – and your infoproduct – can solve them.

For example, if you were creating a cookbook, you could head over to the Cooking for Beginners subreddit to learn more about what novice cooks are thinking about and the questions they’re asking.

Even from these four results, there is some valuable inspiration, like how to make pizza dough, how to make chicken curry, and the best way to make loco moco.

Finding out what your audience wants and, more importantly, needs is the number one key to making an infoproduct that sells.

2. You used limited marketing

When you put your product out there for all to see, did you have a strategy in place? Or did you simply post a few Tweets, send an email to your list, and hope for the best?

Marketing an infoproduct has to be a consistent and relentless process, but it also has to be strategic and well thought-out (lest you want to become a sleazy salesperson in the blink of an eye).

If your infoproduct is something that solves your audience’s needs (refer back to point one), then it’s highly likely it’s your marketing that’s holding you back.

How to fix it

First and foremost, you need to put together a plan that covers 2-4 weeks before the launch of your product (yes, you absolutely need to start marketing before you’ve launched it – or even finished creating it). This helps create a buzz around it and will have your audience chomping at the bit to buy.

Within this plan, you want to include emails to your list, blog posts that are relevant to the subject of your infoproduct, social media shoutouts, any ads you want to run, and any webinars you plan on holding.

Here’s what your plan might look like for the month (note that something is happening every single day).

It might feel like overkill, but remember you want to build excitement amongst your audience and it’s unlikely they’ll all be on all the platforms you’re marketing on.

• After the launch

Even when the launch of your infoproduct is over, you need to continue marketing if you want to carry on making sales.

You can do this by:

• Adding an autoresponder sequence for when new people sign up to your email list. These people might have missed your launch, so let them know about your product in a different way.
• Schedule regular social media content that points towards your sales page or blog posts that promote your infoproduct.
• Write guest posts to reach new audiences and keep the momentum of selling on the incline.
• Create blog posts and other forms of content that relate to your product and weave in a link to your sales page.

Consider buying psychology

Getting people to purchase something from an unknown source online is difficult. Let’s take a look at the four types of buyers and how you can ease their fears with your marketing.

The Worried Buyer: this buyer questions whether they’ll lose their money and whether it’s a good investment.

The Hesitant Buyer: this buyer waits until right at the last minute until they buy – often writing pros and cons lists until they miss the sale or the launch entirely.

The Pessimistic Buyer: this buyer takes the most convincing. They are slow to trust and quick to question why you are the person to be selling them this infoproduct.

The Carefree Buyer: this buyer doesn’t really care about what you’re offering them as they’re not sure it would even make a difference.

Your marketing strategy should be able to relieve the worries and fears of these four different personas, both during and after the launch.

3. You’re not putting your customers first

Without customers, you don’t have a business. These people are the ones who rally around you, who promote your product via word-of-mouth, and who keep the money rolling in.

Therefore, they are your number one priority.

Everything you do around your infoproduct, from the creation stages to the marketing, needs to focus on how it will help your customers – how they will benefit from buying it. Basically, you want to focus on how it will change their lives, not how good a product it is and what bells and whistles it has.

How to fix it

Before you do anything else, put your customers at the top of your list. Write it on a post-it and stick it to your wall if you have to, and ask yourself whether you’re serving your customers every time you do something surrounding your infoproduct.

• Have a clear message

People buy things they have a connection with; things that resonate with them. To create a connection between your audience and your infoproduct, your audience needs to know that it was created especially for them.

And to do this, you have to send out a clear message.

It can be tempting to tell your audience that your product will help them “be more organized, run 5km in 10 days, start cooking healthier meals, and boost their confidence”, but this convoluted message promises too much. It’s much more effective to focus on one thing that your infoproduct will tackle: “This product will show you how to create healthy meals every day on a budget.”

By focusing on one thing, you’re actually connecting with more people who matter. It’s like the old spreading your net too wide analogy.

• Create systems of support

But caring about your customers shouldn’t stop as soon as they click the buy button, it should continue and continue.

Check in with them regularly to find out how they’re getting on with the infoproduct, and offer them any support they might need to reach their goals and solve their pain points.

This ties in with customer service, too. Be there for your customers if they have questions and answer them openly and honestly.

Building trust and a loyal following is the key to building a successful infoproduct business, so take your time nurturing the people who matter and making sure everything you do and create is done so with their best interests in mind.

It’s one thing to create an infoproduct and another entirely to create an infoproduct that sells. There’s an art to it. We’ve covered why your infoproduct might not be selling here, but to avoid that in the first place, you want to start off on the right foot.

Three years ago my stepson received his MBA along with a terrific job offer and moved to Washington, DC. It wasn’t long after the move that he recognized a huge void in his life – there was no place for him to grab healthy, prepared meals. Working extremely long hours, he had no time to grocery shop and cook for himself. And being a long-time fitness and nutrition fanatic, the idea of eating fast food wasn’t attractive to him. Out of this void came the idea for a new company delivering chef-prepared, dietician-approved, ready-to-eat meals.

From the start, he knew he’d need advice on marketing and I was happy to jump in. Although, honestly I didn’t know how much value I could add given that my focus is nearly 100% on B2B marketing and certainly 100% on enterprise-level organizations. What I did know was the importance of eating right and the impact it can have on your life. I shared his passion and agreed that there was a place in the DC market for his offering. But what did I know about the food delivery business? And what did I know about marketing to millennials, his primary target audience? I’m not even on Instagram.

As he gets ready to launch the new business next month and I reflect over the past two years of his work I realize that there really aren’t huge differences between enterprise, B2B marketing efforts and startup B2C efforts.

The big and obvious differences in his B2C space are:

1. Social media is a game changer
2. Blogging is critically important
3. Purchases are highly transactional. You have mere seconds to capture someone’s attention (vs. a six-month sales cycle for a large enterprise purchase).

What’s more fascinating to me than the differences, however, are the similarities.

1. The importance of research

I’m sure many startups occur without much research, which is why the vast percentage of them fail. I’ve also worked with many enterprise companies who want to bypass conducting proper research. Thankfully, my stepson believes in the value of it. And since there was no piggybank to fund his effort, he knew he had to build a convincing business plan to raise the startup money. Months were spent running numbers, evaluating competitors in other geographic markets, counting customer purchases, identifying the proper target audience segments, and conducting menu tastings. One of the research areas I most often see my enterprise clients ignore is buyer research. If you don’t understand your buyers – what drives their need and purchase – then how can you market to them? The importance of understanding your buyers is something that doesn’t change between small B2C and large B2B companies.

2. The importance of branding

Let’s face it, establishing a strong brand can take an inordinate amount of time and money. But the difference in effort between a small and large company is becoming smaller and smaller given Web 2.0. In today’s digital world, a small company can “look” much larger than it is. Thus, the importance of brand becomes more similar as well. In doing competitive research for the startup, we found that most brands weren’t highly professional and/or weren’t carried through entirely across the user experience. We knew that since our offering was going to be an entirely digital experience, at least in the beginning, having a unique and consistent visual brand was vital. And that meant having crisp guidelines, that ALL resources follow, across everything from logos to tone and photography. Consumers of both B2C and B2B solutions are bombarded every day more and more with marketing messages. Brands must stand out, cut through the clutter, and engage. It really doesn’t matter the size of the company or the price of the product.

3. The importance of user experience

For most enterprise level companies, the thing that comes to mind when you talk about user experience is obviously the web, but what clients often do not think about is that the user experience has to carry through to any human contact as well – from a lead follow-up outbound phone call to a field sales rep meeting. Additionally, the larger the enterprise and the more complex the organization’s solutions are, the more complex the experience tends to be both on the web and in person. Internal and organizational complexities are often reflected externally as evidenced by websites that a visitor is unable to navigate (and thus abandons) or by a follow-up phone call from someone whose attitude, tone or even language doesn’t make for a pleasant user experience.

For smaller consumer-oriented companies, especially 100% web-focused companies like my stepson’s, the web user experience requires special attention. Actual purchases and subscriptions will happen on the web so everything from sign-up, to scheduling deliveries, to pausing deliveries must be on-brand and user-friendly. Carry that over to alerts when the food is on the way or the tangible experience with packaging and heating instructions once the food is delivered.

In today’s society of immediate gratification, if an unpleasant user experience occurs consumers know that there are plenty of other options literally just a click away. Because of this the importance of the user experience cannot be stressed enough, whether it’s a startup food delivery service or an enterprise organization.

For everything that my stepson thought he needed to learn from me, I’ve learned an equal amount if not more from him. It’s given me a new perspective while at the same time solidified in my mind how important research, brand, and user experience are.

A skilled and adaptable workforce is a key business priority for the majority of CEOs. In any company, nowhere is the need for a strong workforce more critical than in the sales organization.

What can executive level management do to impact the development of their sales organization? How can CEOs ensure that their sales organization has the firepower, inspiration, and motivation that it needs to drive the business forward?

In my years as a CEO and experience of working with CEOs, I’ve found that the following four criteria are critical to building a better sales force, faster, for any business.

1. Customer-centric culture

Everyone in the company needs to place customers front and center. In PwC’s 2016 Annual CEO Survey, 90% of CEOs said customers have the biggest impact on their strategy. That being the case, leadership must ensure that every employee understands the strategy and their own personal mission to serve those customers in the best way possible. Every single role should deliver value to your customers.

You must lead by example. Define and frequently communicate your company’s core values as they pertain to customers. Share sales successes and explain what they mean to the business. Demonstrate your own customer commitment and have structures in place to support customers, including internal SLAs for response times and appropriate staffing levels.

By prioritizing a customer centric culture within the organization, all workers increase their insight and knowledge about sales and are more vested and supportive in the sales success of the company. This vastly benefits your sales force.

2. Strong sales leadership

If you don’t have the right sales leadership, the cost to your business is devastating. You need to know the most important attributes of a sales leader and – as their leader – give them the space that they need to lead.

In his book “Sales Management. Simplified. The Straight Truth About Getting Exceptional Results from Your Sales Team,” author Mike Weinberg discusses what’s needed for effective sales leadership. Foremost, management needs to take responsibility for sales success. As a senior executive, you need to find sales leadership that can inspire, not micromanage, the team. They should provide clarity on sales roles, make the time to lead, and foster a collaborative environment. Leaders must also work alongside their team and ensure the appropriate 1:1 time.

Make sure that your sales leaders know how to coach effectively. Sales coaching can increase top line revenue up to 20%, making it an essential skill for your sales leaders.

3. The right technology

Many CEOs don’t feel their organization’s sales processes are well defined. Using sales technologies, such as sales automation like email and call scheduling, your business can implement more structured sales processes. Accenture research shows that high-performing sales organizations that use a structured approach to sales:

• Increase flexibility and speed to market by up to 40%
• Improve sales force productivity by up to 30%

By making innovative sales technology available to your team, you increase your sales organization’s ability to succeed – and get them to success faster. Just improving sales force performance can give your sales/revenues a 5-10 percent boost.

As a leader, you must invest in technologies that strengthen your business model. By investing emerging sales automation and analytics, you can maximize the productivity of your sales workforce without additional headcount.

The PwC survey found that leaders viewed technology as the “best way to assess and deliver on changing customer expectations” and 68% of CEOs say data and analytics technologies deliver the greatest return for customer engagement. Technology helps you maintain that customer-centric focus.

4. Agility

To build a stronger sales workforce, faster, you need to be agile. This includes faster onboarding, based on repeatable processes, so new reps start selling sooner. This includes offloading or taking away grunt work that eats up the sales organization’s selling time. This includes the ability to understand when something isn’t working, so you can course correct and still make company revenue goals before it’s too late.

Executives need to consider how they can support sales agility. In addition to providing the right technology, do you provide the right selling environment? Are company processes efficient, or do they need to be modernized?

To build the most effective and fast-moving sales force requires the attention of executive management, as well as sales leaders. Everything starts at the top, and CEOs hold ultimate accountability for a successful sales environment.

Every sales team needs leads — but the best sales teams know how to make every lead count. Our e-book, Get More From Your Leads, shows you how to jumpstart your lead management strategy.

I had a conversation with a prospect today about their demand generation challenges. As is often the case in these discussions, the topic of the sales team came up. My prospective customer, who is an executive on the marketing side of the organization, wanted to know how he could get sales to appropriately respond to the leads that would be generated from a perpetual demand generation program. “Sales has a particular way of selling” he told me, “but I want to make sure they are enabled the right way so that they will respond to the qualified leads we will be sending their way.”

                                                       *Image via curvedline.co

This comment is not all too uncommon from what I hear from many marketing department heads who are wanting to transform their approach to demand generation. They see the tactical approaches they are taking, but often times one of the biggest obstacles they foresee in moving forward is also having sales come along for the ride.

While this is a common issue, and one that marketers are wise to address, it is exactly this reason that organizations need to understand that demand generation is NOT just a marketing activity. Demand generation, when done right, is a discipline that both marketing AND sales must be a part of developing if it is going to be successful. And it is in this area where so many well-meaning marketing departments fall down.

How does a marketing team get the necessary engagement and collaboration from their sales team so they can be assured of success? Here are a few suggestions.

1. Ask Them-
It seems absurd and overly simple, but the number of marketing departments that do not include their sales departments in the development of a demand generation strategy is quite large. I hear a number of organizations state that once the program has been developed they “educate” sales on what is about to launch. What usually occurs afterward is that sales does not participate because they had no input into what’s being sent to their buyers.

In the 2015 B2B Enterprise Demand Generation Study conducted by ANNUITAS, less than half of marketing organizations said they included their sales departments in the development of buyer personas. With the buyer being the central focal point of demand generation, it seems quite unreasonable to not gather sales input given they are the ones speaking to their customers and prospects continually. They have a unique perspective.

Marketers should begin by asking sales for their input into gaining customer insights. Understanding who they sell to, what a typical buying process looks like, who is on the buying committee and what their buyers are typically looking for when proceeding through a purchase. As this insight is gleaned (along with customer interviews and secondary research into the market), sales should also be involved with the creation of the personas and journey mapping. By their involvement, the probability of them partaking in the program will increase exponentially.

2. Speak Their Language-
Few things will contribute to helping sales make quota then a fine tuned, perpetual demand generation program. PR Newswire took this approach and saw more than a 7% increase in conversions from marketing generated leads.

When speaking to sales, you have to speak this kind of language.

I once had a marketer who worked for me at a software company who would roll his eyes and say, “Sales is so coin operated.” They certainly are, as every sales person should be. But here is the catch, so should marketing! In order to gain the buy-in and needed collaboration with sales, marketing needs to be coin operated and convey to sales what their goals are in terms of driving pipeline and revenue. Once sales sees that marketing “gets it” they will be more apt to lend their time and efforts to a successful demand generation program.

3. Get Them There From the Beginning-
The foundation to any perpetual demand generation program is the ability to Engage, Nurture and Convert your buyers along their purchase path. Clearly the conversion (and even some of the nurture stage) will involve sales. To simply involve them “as needed” will not enable organizations to develop high value programs.

It is key to have sales there at the beginning of the ideation stage so they are a part of the core team. Anything less than this will only stymie the progress that one hopes to make in developing this kind of program.

When we  kick off an ANNUITAS program with a client, we make it a requirement that sales be present. Granted, it is no small ask to pull sales out of the field, but at the same time there is no better reason for it, as a strategic, buyer-centric demand generation program can and will yield great benefit.

As marketing organizations continually seek to drive better results and enable sales, the best way to enable them is to have them join in and be a part of a collaborative team that is planning and executing a strategic demand generation program.

Author: Carlos Hidalgo @cahidalgo CEO/ Principal, ANNUITAS

The post Why Demand Generation Requires More Than Marketing appeared first on ANNUITAS.

How many times have you heard of a start-up having a VP of marketing and sales? For those on the inside, having someone who can do both roles is essential to cutting costs for a company that’s new or in the process of a change. However, outsiders that are business-savvy know that this kind of position is a “suicide” for a company that wants to be successful.

What’s the Issue?

The first thing to understand is that sales and marketing are two different things. Sure, they both have the same goal; to make money for the company. But, the ultimate path to get there and the results or consequences at the end of that path, can be drastically different.

The object of a marketing team is to bring in leads by promoting the product to the best of their ability. Of course, there are other things that come into play, but generally, that’s the idea. Sales, on the other hand, needs to snag in those leads, and convert them into becoming buying customers.

Having these roles shared by one individual is actually quite counterproductive. The reason? Well, there are a lot of conflicts that come into play. Not that one should anticipate these kind of conflicts, but being aware of them and how they can negatively impact your company is really important. It’ll motivate you to make the right decision when it comes time to hire.

The Potential for Conflict

Conflicts are often inevitable between sales and marketing, which is one of the reasons a VP of both doesn’t really make sense. Think of it as a presidential candidate wanting to be both a Democrat and a Republican.

Doesn’t really work.

One conflict comes with CRM. If sales can’t update CRM information, then marketing can’t go forward with any of the leads. However, sales doesn’t always feel as though they have the time to make these updates. Instead, they believe that marketing should be able to do what it has to do regardless of sales not updating the CRM.

The second potential conflict comes when marketing and sales can’t see eye to eye about what leads to a sale. The sales department believes that they are more familiar with what kind of person is going to buy, no matter what that customer’s history is. Marketing, on the other hand, feels that they have the specific data that tells them everything they need to know to predict what a customer’s action will be. When sales isn’t trying to work with a customer’s behavior, fingers start pointing where they shouldn’t be.

Lastly, there’s the conflict of vision vs. realism. Marketing tends to be the team that’s comprised of the “dreamers.” The ones that see that with hard work, creativity, and great ideas, anything can be accomplished. Meanwhile, over in the sales department, team members are being a lot more realistic. They know that ultimately if someone wants to buy, they’ll buy. If they don’t, they don’t, and marketing needs to do a better job of honing in on exactly what will make someone do just that. Sales will do the rest.

The Conclusion

These are just a few of the problems that arise with marketing and sales. I know what you’re thinking:

“Having someone responsible for both roles will mean that there’s no conflict, because they’ll be aware of the needs of both sides.”

While that argument certainly makes sense, the fact of the matter is that it’s just too much for one person to handle. The jobs are not the same. Despite the fact that there might be conflicts regardless of who is in charge, you simply can’t expect one person to do the work of the apples and the oranges.

In order to get the most out of marketing AND sales, there needs to be two separate roles that can take each job to its highest potential. (Unless, there’s an off chance that the VP of marketing and sales has experience in both fields, without any biases.)

If the sales and marketing teams in your company are butting heads, here’s your “therapist” letting you know that, “It’s completely normal for two people who care so much about each other to have fights once in a while.”

That being said, having a VP of both marketing and sales, isn’t the answer. Instead, other teams, like communications and HR needs to be just as strong to keep everything together. Remember, at the end of the day, it’s all about everyone having the company’s best interest in mind.

Does yours?