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Business growth is important, especially if you are an ecommerce company.

The industry is growing rapidly and competition is tough, even without counting the new ecommerce companies that are started every week.

To ensure that your growth is sustainable and effective, it is always best to have a carefully considered strategy. This is even more essential if you are looking to expand rapidly and attain growth above 10%.

You wouldn’t be alone in demanding this type of growth, a survey back in 2010 found that just under half of all business leaders planned to grow their businesses by more than 10%, while another 30% were looking to grow their business at any level.

Growth Can Be a Double-Edged Sword

Quick growth in your business may sound like a dream come true, but it can also be the Achilles’ heel for some unprepared businesses. This is usually the case when your business is struggling to meet the increased customer demands that comes with growth.

This leads to disgruntled employees who are left to cope with the excess demands, strained relationships with customers that are unsatisfied with their customer service, and it can often lead to a ‘crash and burn’ scenario.

To avoid this you need to carefully plan your expansion and determine how you are going to cope with the extra demand. This should be done early enough so that you know what to do when the growth happens, not thinking of what you can do while dealing with an excess of growth.

A Well-Thought-Out Strategy For Expansion

Your first objective is to identify the resources that currently exist within your organization that can be used to support each stage of growth.

This includes staff capabilities and capacity, processes, tools and technology. Each of these needs to be assessed to check that they are meeting current demands and what productivity levels they are achieving. During your investigations, you will notice gaps within your business and where solutions are required.

For instance, you might notice that your warehouse capacity isn’t large enough for your expansion. Therefore, you should decide whether a new storage system is needed or new premises.

Alternatively, you might notice that you need more staff to cope with the additional demands there will be on your fulfillment system.

For some businesses, attracting and retaining the relevant, skilled employees is the hardest aspect of growth. Yet your team are a key component to your success.

When you lose a vital member of your team, it can shatter the remaining team members’ confidence and can lead to the collapse of processes.

Therefore, you need to decide why people will want to work for you and what you can offer to keep them there. Often this isn’t money as it is a poor motivator, but rather a real reason why working for you matters.

Once you’ve identified your internal resources and needs, you should assess costs. What can you afford in the immediate and long term? Without the necessary funds you cannot invest and it can be a significant liability to your business’ expansion.

So assess carefully every investment and ask the following questions:

• What is the cost of the investment?
• What value will it provide the company?
• How will it improve the capacity of processes?
• Is there another option to the investment that costs less?
• Is the investment really necessary?

Once you’ve found the options to plug the gaps, you can start looking at targeting.

Targeting

During your strategy for expansion you need to carefully consider your targeting.

Targeting everyone might yield a greater exposure for your brand but is likely to lead to a less than effective campaign for a high cost.

Instead, consider who your target audience is, where are they spending their time (online and offline) and then target those marketing channels. This helps you minimise the costs, particularly customer acquisition costs, in order to generate better profits.

For instance, if you sell toys, you should target parents who have children in your toy’s age range. Targeting couples or adults without children is simply pointless.

Consider what channels your targeted demographic frequent and what content they are reading. If you’re targeting millennials, find out what they’re interested in, what type of content they prefer to consume, which social media platforms they’re active on and so on.

Then create targeted campaigns on those channels aligned to similar messages, but making them unique enough so they stand out.

Conclusion

By considering your internal resources and your future customer base, you can create a sustainable growth for your ecommerce business.

The strategy will prevent you from failing because you’ve grown too big, too fast and can’t cope with the new demands. Instead, you should be able to look forward to a fantastic future.

• What is your strategy for business growth?
• Have you considered the internal workings of your business?

As I was going over a monthly report with a client, I suggested that they take a closer look at the hot new app: Flipboard.

“I only have one question for you?” he said. “How can I use this “Flipboard Magazine” to sell my products and services?”

The short answer is Flipboard is so versatile, you can even use it to fix the kitchen sink!

The long answer… it’s a powerful selling tool.

Surprisingly, many of my clients feel more comfortable with traditional media. Even with all the digital technology available, there is still that pull toward the “print magazine” and the “catalog.” It offers a comfort zone. There is a feeling that because they can touch it, then it must be real.

Flipboard has successfully bridged that traditional vs. digital media “divide” with its stylish magazine look, that easily “flips” as you read it on an electronic device. It is portable, shareable and therefore the perfect sales tool.

The platform is dynamic and versatile. Not a like a traditional magazine. For example, update a company profile or prices on your website, the changes automatically carry over to a Flipboard magazine.

The Flipboard Magazine WOW factor!

A typical sales arsenal includes a presentation deck, a spreadsheet, a brochure, and perhaps a leave behind. Let’s simplify this process, shall we? Let’s put ALL this into a multimedia presentation. We can step it up a few notches and add these components to a Flipboard magazine. Now you can dazzle your clients with videos, music, articles, press, sales specials and anything you want in one vehicle.

Easy sell! You are no longer relying on all your sales gear to close the deal. All relevant information is in one place. The viewer’s attention span is not challenged. It’s easy to focus on the task at hand: simply, flipping, engaging!

In this article, I will show you how you can impress your future and present clients with a Flipboard magazine.

Great, now show me how!

Take the Company Brochure: Show this sales staple on a tablet. The beauty of this Flipboard “brochure” is that you can customize it to your needs. Add content or take out irrelevant information. That new project you have just finished, add it! The new press release you just sent out, add it! Same with those product pictures from that glossy photoshoot.

• The Glossy Cover. — That photo-shoot featuring your products can grace the cover of your presentation. You can add it straight from your iPhotos, a Flicker or a 500px account. A blog will also do the trick, providing the picture’s resolution is high enough. I usually like to flip pictures that are 1040×1040 pixels for best results.
• The Company Introduction. — This can be the “about us” section of your company website. You can flip this into a magazine.
• The Featured Article. — The published article about your products or the interview with the CEO featured in a major publication? Flip it right from the platform that hosts the feature into a Flipboard magazine.
• Uses for Your Products. — The best selling tool! Show potential clients how to use your products. You can flip the recipes from your blog, suggestions, tips and so much more.
• The Social Media Posts. — Show your retailers and vendors you are supporting them with social media. You can flip some of your social media posts from Twitter and Facebook.
• The Influencer Giveaway. — Are you working with influencers? Share the articles and giveaway’s featuring your products and services. Not only will your clients be delighted, so will your influencers. They will love to see their blogs and contests featured on Flipboard. The more views, the better!
• The Featured Products. — Feature your special pricing in a Flipboard magazine. You can create a complete catalog of items. One click will take your visitors straight to the eStore.
• The Offers and Promotions. — Use the “Compose Tool” to offer sales and specials. Get readers excited about purchasing. Or, simply add offers from your social media or website.

The Best Flipboard Take Away

Once your fab presentation is over, you can now send a link to this magazine via a “Thank you” note. If more information is required, you can add it to the magazine. Invite your client and his marketing team to collaborate on the magazine for a brand perspective. The uses are limitless. Take a look at a sample Flipboard presentation brochure.

Are you using Flipboard in your marketing strategy?

An overflowing inbox is a common problem for everyone. It almost seems like those emails come in at a faster rate than we can take action on them. As with most things in life, it’s best to automate a few tasks than put the burden on yourself. That’s what Gmail’s filters are for. We’ve shown you how to set up filters in Gmail and other email services, and the process is still more or less the same. Gmail has made it slightly easier now. You see that big search bar at the top? Click the little drop-down arrow, and you’ll...

Read the full article: 10 Email Problems You Can Solve with Gmail Filters

It seems like only yesterday when Facebook emerged, bringing about the social media revolution. While many (like Myspace) tried to push the idea of social onto the world, Facebook seemed to have the community that enthralled people, and made them want participate in the newest digital hub. In the decade that followed, new channels such as Twitter, Pinterest, Instagram, Linkedin, and others have brought new elements to the table. However, only with the onset of Snapchat, Whatsapp and Facebook Messenger has the space been truly redefined.

What’s new about these channels of course is privacy. Whatsapp and Snapchat were created for direct communication. There is no newsfeed or timeline. Nobody sees what you write unless you are writing directly to them, and shares are virtually untraceable. This trend of personal, direct communication is often referred to as “Dark Social”. These channels can be anything from Whatsapp to Snapchat, to email, Facebook Messenger, secure browsing and even organic search. Studies show that 70% of all social shares are dark. This shows private messaging channels are becoming more relevant to the average social media user, maybe more so than traditional social media avenues.

The rise of Dark Social is a true game-changer for all brands using social media. They are some of the fastest growing social channels, especially for young Millennials and Generation Z. Particularly Generation Z, born between 1996 and 2010, prefer instant messaging platforms over public social media, according to the Center of Generational Kinetics as quoted in a CBS News article from earlier this year. Having grown up in a reality defined by social media, fully aware of the pitfalls and risks, this generation is more aware of privacy concerns and thus utilize and understand Dark Social channels very well. They will bring about the future of social media marketing as well as social media customer service. It’s wise for innovative brands to get on board with these mature channels in order to stay ahead of the game.

Custom Content

While Facebook and others have algorithms that attempt to feed you only the most relevant content, dark social channels are able to take it a step further. Whatsapp allows brands to deliver specific articles, exclusive deals, and customized alerts to specific segments of their customers based on interest and/or location. As a result, they are able to engage directly with consumers using their particular push points and enjoy improved customer retention and loyalty as a result.

Greater Intimacy

Another huge benefit of dark social is the more intimate approach that one-on-one communication offers. Since many consumers feel the most comfortable in social media settings, for both their personal life and customer experiences, brands need to adapt and meet the consumer where they are. A socially mature brand will adopt a personal and authentic tone rather than an automated and cold one with canned responses. Customers want to feel a human connection that means you are there for them at the touch of a button, instantly available to solve their problems. With private communication channels, relationship building is significantly more meaningful.

Ramifications for Customer Service

The new social customer service scene exhibits the perfect balance between a human touch and efficient automation. Bots can easily be programmed to answer queries and handle customer complaints, which can help streamline CTAs, requests and complaints. Live (human) support should always be available yet bots can assist when a customer would like to make a purchase or a reservation, for example.

Forward Thinking Companies

Instead of trying to fit all consumers into a one-size-fits all customer service box, companies should expand their thinking and reward customers who elect to contact you on more mature, dark social channels. Take Adidas for example, known for being an early adopter in the new dark sharing frontier.

Adidas has been praised for its use of dark social channels to connect directly with customers and particularly making customers feel like VIPs. The company has brilliantly used their own sponsorship of huge sporting events to recruit fans turned “squads” then allow the squads to post, monitor and track, within dark social channels such as WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger and Twitter Direct Message. To reward these dedicated squad members, they are the first to be invited to events and gain access to the brand’s ambassadors such as artists and athletes. Adidas isn’t only allowing personalization, they are turning their customers into brand ambassadors because of the special status and access that they’re given.

Sports site “For the Win” (which is owned by USA Today), has got on board with the private messaging sphere by adding a WhatsApp share option on it’s mobile site. According to Social Media Insider, this new feature prompted an 18% rise in the site’s overall sharing activity. They also found that dark social sharing beat out public sharing, 53% versus 47%, respectively. Simply put, the company saw a consumer need, acted on it and was instantly rewarded for it.

How to Move Ahead

The most successful companies adapt to their consumer needs and wants. The best companies (think Apple) convince their customers of what they need. Whether you are playing off of a current reality of the new private sharing world, or creating a new need for it, adapting to the changing climate is what’s important. Dark social channels create a sense of personalization and intimacy while providing an efficient and streamlined approach to customer service. Consumers are opting out of the traditional customer service of the past- listening to elevator music and pressing 0 over and over. They are efficiently using their mobile world to connect to companies, so the least that companies can do, is connect to them, on their level.

There is a specific group of individuals and businesses out there that are actually your best and fastest way to make more sales. You won’t find them by knocking on doors or during your regular prospecting routines and practices. You …
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With about 5 weeks left until the Opening Ceremony, the 2016 Olympics in Rio de Janeiro don't look too promising.

Between the protests put on by police and other civic workers, several high-profile athletes dropping out over Zika fears, and body parts washing up on Copacabana Beach, where the beach volleyball events will be held, there are serious concerns about basic safety when it comes to the summer games.

And now police are reportedly warning tourists that their stay won't be too pleasant.

Another sign (via BBC) said “The police’s priority is the people, the government’s priority is the Olympics."

The news coming out of Rio leading up to the Opening Ceremony on August 5th sounds dire: basic needs can't be met because there isn't enough funding. Francisco Dornelles, the acting governor of Rio de Janeiro, told Brazilian newspaper O Globo that the state is still waiting on the promised $860 million payout from the federal government ahead of the Games.

All of this could lead to more problems and make many people reconsider attending the games. After all, if the police are saying that people who go somewhere won't be safe, there's bound to be serious repercussions.

Join the conversation about this story »

NOW WATCH: LEBRON VS. CURRY: Here’s how the NBA’s biggest superstars match up

Thanks in part to automated mail-sorting systems, postal workers may be out of a job in the not-so-distant future.

By 2024, the US Bureau of Labor Statistics projects a 28% decline in postal-service jobs, totaling around 136,000 fewer positions than in 2014.

Mail carriers and processors aren't the only ones whose jobs are disappearing thanks to robots.

Automation technologies that conduct physical, intellectual, or customer service tasks are already affecting a variety of fields, most notably metal and plastic machine workers.

As Business Insider previously reported, information technology research and advisory firm Gartner predicts that one-third of jobs will be replaced by software, robots, and smart machines by 2025. And Ray Kurzweil, director of engineering at Google, takes that prediction a step further with his prediction that by 2029 robots will have reached human levels of intelligence and be capable of taking over purely intellectual tasks.

While what the experts are calling "The Second Machine Age" strikes fear into the hearts of many workers, some argue that this increase in computing prowess will simply eliminate old jobs and introduce new ones, resulting in a net-zero effect — or even an increase in jobs. And these new jobs may be safer and more interesting.

For now, based on the BLS' occupational outlook data, here are 15 American jobs that are already on their way out thanks to robots:

SEE ALSO: 25 jobs that might not be around in the future

DON'T MISS: If you have one of these 3 jobs, robots will never put you out of work

15. Metal and plastic cutting, punching, and press machine setters, operators, and tenders

They set up, operate, or tend machines to saw, cut, shear, slit, punch, crimp, notch, bend, or straighten metal or plastic material.

Median annual pay: $31,280

Number of people who held this job in the US in 2014: 192,200

Predicted number of people who will hold this job in 2024: 152,700

Projected decline: 20.6%

Why it's declining: According to the BLS, one of the most important factors influencing employment of metal and plastic machine workers is the high adoption of labor-saving machinery like computer numerically controlled machine tools and robots to improve quality and lower production costs.

14. Metal and plastic model makers

They set up and operate machines like lathes, milling and engraving machines, and jig borers to make working models of metal or plastic objects.

Median annual pay: $45,980

Number of people who held this job in the US in 2014: 6,200

Predicted number of people who will hold this job in 2024: 4,900

Projected decline: 21.5%

Why it's declining: According to the BLS, one of the most important factors influencing employment of metal and plastic machine workers is the high adoption of labor-saving machinery like computer numerically controlled machine tools and robots to improve quality and lower production costs.

13. Metal and plastic forging machine setters, operators, and tenders

They set up, operate, or tend forging machines to taper, shape, or form metal or plastic parts.

Median annual pay: $35,070

Number of people who held this job in the US in 2014: 21,600

Predicted number of people who will hold this job in 2024: 17,000

Projected decline: 21.5%

Why it's declining: According to the BLS, one of the most important factors influencing employment of metal and plastic machine workers is the high adoption of labor-saving machinery like computer numerically controlled machine tools and robots to improve quality and lower production costs.

See the rest of the story at Business Insider

As smartphones continue to displace desktop for more digital activities, mobile marketing is in the midst of an important transition. More time is increasingly being spent on mobile devices.

BI Intelligence, Business Insider's premium research service, has created a slide deck that presents how marketers who are slow to transition from a legacy marketing mindset to one that's mobile-centric are missing the mark with millennials today.

Today, it can be yours for free. As an added bonus, you will gain immediate access to the team’s exclusive FREE newsletter, BI Intelligence Daily.

To get your copy of this slide deck, simply click here.

Join the conversation about this story »

Looking to grow your email marketing list? It’s no secret that people aren’t giving away their email addresses away as much as they used to. Companies are finding it harder and harder to gather emails, thus making it more of an obstacle to bring leads in. However, there are certain measures you can take to expand your email marketing list. Try taking these routes in order to bring in more customers.

1. Have Sign-Up Forms on Every Page of Your Site

It might sound like a lot, but giving leads the opportunity to sign up on every page helps both you and them. Perhaps they were offered to sign-up when they first arrived on your site, but they politely declined by clicking the X. Now, they’ve been on your website a little while, have explored different pages, and have since decided they’d like to sign-up. But, they can no longer find the sign-up button, and they simply forget about it. A lead has been lost. Don’t let this happen to you, and put sign-up forms on every page.

2. Display Your Privacy Policy

People want to make sure they can trust you, in every way imaginable. One way to do this is by having your privacy policy visible to potential leads. Will they read every word of it? Probably not, but most of the time when readers see this, it makes them feel as though they can trust you. Ultimately, they feel they can provide you with their email without having to worry about being hacked or spammed.

3. Have Sign-Up Capabilities on Social Media Platforms

People learn about new products and websites mainly through social media. Just by signing on Facebook, they can see ads and videos on their news feed, or posts made my people in their network. If you see something you like, surely you should be able to sign up for it without going to the main website. Companies should cater to this by providing sign-up capabilities on all social media platforms.

4. Have a Vibrant Landing Page

A landing page brings visitors to a page on your website you want them to of course, land on. This means it’s not necessarily a home page, but a page that has things catered to this specific user, based on how they got to your website in the first place. Therefore, your landing page should be filled with plenty of things that draw in your leads’ attention, complete with a box to put in their email. Perhaps it’s something they can download, only by putting in their email. Perhaps it’s an intriguing article, and in order for them to read the rest, they need to put in their email. Simple, easy, and reliable when it comes to making conversions.

5. Write Guest Posts on Relevant and Popular Blogs

This is a fantastic way to grow your email marketing list. By guest posting on relevant blogs that already have a large fan base, you can easily gather more leads. Your piece alone will definitely attract attention, but it’s the bio or backlinks at the end or integrated within the article, that will really get people to go to your site. If they clicked on the link, they already like you enough, and getting them to sign up won’t be too difficult (see #4).

6. Get Emails In Person

This one is something many people forget to do. A great way to get emails is simply by networking at events, offline. Introduce yourself to people that you think would be interested, ask for their emails, and send them one when you get home. You’ll be surprised how much you can grow your email marketing list this way.

7. Get Your Current Followers to Share

Another way to grow your email list is by getting your current customers to share. Make it easy for visitors to your site to share content, by putting share links to Twitter, Facebook, Gmail, whatever it is, right on the page. Once they share these kind of things within their network, it’s likely that others will like it and catch on. If you’re not sure if your subscribers are sharing, then try to provide incentives for people to spread the word.

Need some additional help growing your email marketing list? Then request a demo with Mission Suite now to see how we can help.

Proficiency using many different selling techniques is a desired objective. It denotes competence, expertise, know-how, and mastery. An over reliance on certain selling techniques can lead sales professionals into traps that sabotage relationships with clients. In this series of posts, I will share four -proficiency traps and how to avoid them. The first was The Technical Trap; the second, The Execution Trap; the third, “The Networking Trap; and this fourth and final trap involves the problem with incumbency mindsets.

A Good Offense can be the Best Defense in Winning Renewal Business

No matter how entrenched sales professionals become in a client organization, at some point they are likely to face competition for renewals. The trap is in taking an incumbency mindset to defend the business as-is instead of forming a fresh deal strategy that is better positioned to win.

When sellers think like incumbents, they want to defend the relationship and preserve everything the way it currently stands. They justify why they should be retained, based on factors such as their long-standing relationship, past excellent service, or the higher costs of transitioning to a competitor.

The problem with this selling technique is its defensive posture. What the situation requires — and what competitors will do — is take the offensive. As an incumbent, we should ask ourselves: What can we provide that’s new and fresh? What insights about the client and the industry can be leveraged to create a whole new way to partner?

Viewing Client Relationships Through Fresh Eyes is an Effective Selling Technique

One way to shed the incumbent mindset is to view the client relationship through different value lenses:

• Financial: How can we help the client meet their financial goals?
• Technical: To what extent does our solution offer unique capabilities to meet the client’s requirements?
• Strategic: How does our solution help the client achieve their overarching business objectives?
• Partnership: Are we making a solid case for the value we bring to the table beyond the solution itself?

These value lenses help sales professionals to think about how their solutions address different dimensions of value that can be important to the client. The legacy solution may be strongest in only one or two of these lenses because those were most important to the client in the past. The seller has the opportunity to take a holistic look and see whether the solution aligns with what the client is trying to achieve now. What are the client’s current business objectives and future strategy, and what opportunities do these present to propose a fresh approach? Have the stakeholders changed from when the business was originally won, and what are their expectations for outcomes?

The incumbency trap leads sellers to defend their current position, which is likely the result of a decision made years ago by someone who may have left the organization. A better selling technique is to start with a fresh approach, evaluated through different value lenses, that looks ahead to new possibilities rather than trying to force-fit old solutions.

——-

Click on the following link below to learn more about how Richardson’s Consultative Selling Programs can lead to learning new selling techiques.

The post Selling Techniques That Can Help You Win Renewals appeared first on Richardson Sales Training and Enablement Blog.

Learning or practicing new skills is so important, it’s hard to ignore how vital it is to a successful career. To keep your educational momentum going throughout your life, give yourself five hours a week to learn something new or practice a skill.

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Android: Google Maps is finally adding a desperately needed feature. Starting today, you can add multiple destinations to a navigation trip when you get directions on Android.

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In its inaugural budget, the federal Liberal government vowed to develop a bold, new innovation agenda as the centrepiece of its strategy to bolster long-term economic growth. This was the right call, not only because it plays well—who would disagree with Canada becoming “a centre of global innovation?”—but also because innovation-driven productivity growth is unequivocally essential for our future prosperity.

My recent paper on the subject, published by the Institute for Research on Public Policy (IRPP), explains why this is so. Quite simply, Canada can no longer rely heavily on previous sources of growth—like a trade boost after signing onto NAFTA or a commodity-price boom—that have masked its innovation problem.

That leaves us with improving productivity—working smarter. Productivity figures can be disaggregated into three components: workforce quality; capital deepening; and what economists call multi-factor productivity, essentially the know-how in combining labour and capital, i.e. innovation. Compared to the U.S., Canada has done relatively well in recent years on the first two elements, but dismally on the last. In fact, innovation-driven productivity improvement has made virtually no contribution to Canada’s growth since 2000.

MORE: The ‘brain hacks’ that could lead to better productivity

How can Canada turn this around? For many years the mantra has been to increase business research and development (R&D). However, despite generous tax credits and a myriad of direct funding programs, business R&D as a share of GDP has fallen since peaking in 2000. There is no reason to believe that more of the same will get us from here to there.

The answer to a turnaround lies in a better understanding of what motivates business decisions. The Council of Canadian Academies concluded in a 2013 study, that “Canadian firms have been as innovative as they have needed to be,” doing business in “a low-innovation equilibrium.” A lack of competitive pressure in many key sectors of the Canadian economy has provided the basis for this seemingly rational response.

Business profits as a share of GDP have been higher in Canada than the United States over the last three decades—suggesting that many Canadian companies have until now done relatively well without innovating.

Today, the key questions are: Will Canadian businesses respond to the urgent need to focus on innovation-based strategies? And what can public policy do to facilitate the transition?

MORE: Why Canada’s real economic challenge is innovation

Building on the 2011 Jenkins Report on innovation, my paper makes three broad recommendations.

First, systematically review trade, investment and regulatory policies that have served to inhibit competition in Canada and reinforce the low-innovation equilibrium. For example, ownership restrictions in key sectors like telecommunications and airlines inhibit competition in those sectors and increase the cost of doing business in Canada.

Second, emphasize demand-side instruments such as smart regulation and government procurement that can be designed to incentivize innovative responses, while protecting the broader public interest. For example, going beyond the current token effort at stimulating business innovation through creative government procurement contracting, like the U.S. and other countries, would allow Canadian companies to develop new products and processes for global markets.

Third, rebalance supply-side instruments by de-emphasizing business R&D support relative to other key elements, such as enhancing workplace skills, de-risking growth financing, and reinforcing innovation ecosystems involving sectoral and regional clusters. Building on pilot initiatives in each of these areas into full-blown programs would help high-growth firms scale-up more rapidly and increase the probability of remaining based in Canada.

By following this approach we would broaden innovation policy from a longstanding, almost singular, focus on R&D to a more challenging, but more rewarding, multi-faceted micro-economic agenda. It’s more challenging because various interests would resist changes to the status quo, but it will be more rewarding because that will be what it takes to make Canada a centre of global innovation.

Andrei Sulzenko is a former senior assistant deputy minister of policy at Industry Canada. He is the author of Canada’s Innovation Conundrum: Five Years after the Jenkins Report, published by the Institute for Research on Public Policy (irpp.org).

The post How to fix Canada’s innovation conundrum appeared first on Macleans.ca.

Mark Cuban, the "Shark Tank" star and billionaire owner of the NBA's Dallas Mavericks, always has his hands in a wide variety of businesses.

Throughout his career, he's made over 120 investments, from large companies like Landmark Theatres to his Three Commas apparel line.

For all of the businesses he's been a part of, he's developed a set of "rules that have been almost infallible," he wrote in his 2013 book, "How to Win at the Sport of Business."

Below, Business Insider has summarized the three he's used "religiously."

SEE ALSO: Billionaire designer Tory Burch shares the best advice she ever got

1. Understand the difference between adding value and benefiting from a bull market

In the same way that some stock market investors think that they're geniuses when they keep picking stocks that go up, failing to acknowledge that all stocks are doing the same thing, Cuban says, entrepreneurs can fail to recognize that a good deal of their success is because of a fad or trend.

"There is nothing wrong with going along for the ride and making money at it, but it will catch up with you if you lie to yourself and give yourself credit for the ride," he wrote.

Cuban said that he saw this happen with professional sports leagues in the early 2000s. He explained that many team owners became enamored with rising revenues from television-rights deals, crediting it to their own "brilliance."

He said, however, that he and his Mavericks partners recognized that revenues were actually rising because of competition among cable and satellite providers. Cuban couldn't become complacent.

"It's a bigger challenge to recognize that the bull market may end and our programming needs to be of sufficient value to our customers and viewers for it to maintain or continue to increase in value," he wrote.

2. Win the battles you're in before moving on to new ones

Cuban wrote that he had a chance to take Landmark Theatres international, but that any time spent on developing a global presence was time not spent growing its national presence, and so he decided against it.

He wrote:

"You do not have unlimited time and/or attention. You may work 24 hours a day, but those 24 hours spent winning your core business will pay off far more. It might cost you some longer-term upside, but it will allow you to be the best business you can be."

3. Don't drown in opportunity

"If you are adding new things when your core businesses are struggling rather than facing the challenge, you are either running away or giving up," Cuban wrote. "Rarely is either good for a business."

Melissa Carbone, president of horror-attraction company Ten Thirty One Productions, told Business Insider in 2014 that after the $2 million deal she made with Cuban on "Shark Tank" went public, she was flooded with partnership and investment offers, some of which were quite attractive.

Cuban told her to take a step back and not let emotions make her impulsive. She said that she would continually hear Cuban's voice in her head reminding her, "Don't drown in opportunity."

See the rest of the story at Business Insider

For nearly 10 minutes, it seemed as if U.S. President Barack Obama’s speech to Canada’s Parliament might not amount to much. As he eased into it, he relied on, for instance, the requisite hockey references, earning a big ovation by paying tribute to “Mr. Hockey,” Gordie Howe, who recently died. In a nice gesture to the Prime Minister, he chose a text from Justin Trudeau’s father, quoting Pierre Elliott Trudeau on how countries aren’t made the way a pharaohs erected pyramids, but rather are “built every day out of certain basic shared values.”

But then his tone changed—Obama is a master of that moment of modulation—and his real theme suddenly came into focus. Put briefly: Brexit and Donald Trump. “We meet at a pivotal moment for our nations and for the globe,” Obama said. He then sketched an international order under a sort of strain between success and failure. “The world is more prosperous than ever before,” he said. “But alongside globalization and technological wonders, we also see a rise in inequality and wage stagnation across the advanced economies, leaving too many communities fearful of diminishing prospects, not just for themselves, but, more importantly, for their children.”

MORE: Read the full transcript of Obama’s speech

As if that problem isn’t grave enough in itself, Obama warned of how it’s ripe for exploitation. “If the benefits of globalization accrue only to those at the very top, if our democracies seem incapable of ensuring broad-based growth and opportunity, then people will push back, out of anger or out of fear,” he said. “And politicians—some sincere and some entirely cynical—will tap that anger and fear, harking back to bygone days of order and predictability and national glory, arguing that we must rebuild walls and disengage from a chaotic world, or rid ourselves of supposed ills brought on by immigrants, all in order to regain control of our lives.”

He pleaded for politicians to realize that if too many people see globalization as “inherently rigged” to benefit only the rich, they will turn to demagogues who promise a retreat from open trade and multilateral engagement. Trudeau was nodding, and with good reason. Back in 2014, as a rookie Liberal leader framing his party’s new platform, he gave a key speech in Montreal, warning how the middle class would stop supporting freer trade, and other liberal economic policies, unless they soon started getting their fair share of the wealth.

There was more from Obama, much more, than his plea for spreading prosperity and thus easing the anxiety that fuelled the Brexit vote and, although he didn’t utter his name, Trump’s astonishing rise. He touched on everything from countering climate change to combating terrorists, promoting equality for women to eradicating malaria and the Zika virus. But he kept circling back to the imperative to remain open and resist the temptation of turning inward. He talked up the shared immigrant success stories of the U.S. and Canada, and pointedly highlighted the need to engage with Muslim communities.

It was the performance that the assembled MPs, senators, invited dignitaries, and political insiders expected. After all, few political leaders in any period—certainly not this era, when digital fidgeting has sapped our capacity for listening—have made set-piece speeches matter the way Obama has. It started with his 2004 “Audacity of Hope” pitch to the Democratic National Convention. It deepened with his 2008 “More Perfect Union” speech on race in Philadelphia. He has risen to the occasion often since then.

MORE: What the North American leaders agreed to at the summit

The occasion today in Ottawa was a chance to respond to last week’s unsettling news from Britain, which feels so closely tied to the rise of Trump. And for several solid minutes, and then sporadically afterward, Obama was right on target. But the sheer variety and range of his speech sometimes dissipated its impact. If no passage fell flat, it was also unclear sometimes how one part linked to the last.

Still, this speech has to rank high among those delivered by the nearly 60 foreign heads of state and government who have addressed Canada’s Parliament over the decades. Even an orator of Obama’s calibre though, needn’t bother trying to set the standard: That distinction will always belong to Winston Churchill, for his 1941 call in the House for the democracies to redouble their resolve to fight Hitler.

Leaving Churchill’s unbeatable “some chicken, some neck” masterpiece aside, the competition is still stiff. Arguably the best in recent times were clustered in the 1990s, when the fall of the Berlin Wall, the demise of South African apartheid, and a strong updraft of North American prosperity made everything seem possible. Leaders who personified all of those themes dropped by Parliament Hill.

Nelson Mandela spoke in Ottawa twice, in 1990 and 1998, magisterial both times, but pragmatic, too. “The experience of all peoples has taught,” Mandela said as South Africa’s president in his second Ottawa speech, “that our democracy would remain secure and stable only if we could unite those who were once locked in conflict and if our new freedoms brought material improvement in the lives of our people.”

Vaclav Havel, the playwright who became president of the Czech Republic, sounded a little less grounded, but no less inspiring, in predicting a post-Cold War order in which nations would come to matter less. “The idol of state sovereignty must inevitably dissolve in a world that connects people, regardless of borders, through millions of links of integration ranging from trade, finance and property, up to information,” Havel told Canadian parliamentarians in 1999.

CHARTED: Every world leader who has addressed Canada’s Parliament

In 1995, the year after the North American Free Trade Agreement took effect, U.S. president Bill Clinton delivered disarmingly personal remarks, laced with anecdotes about family trips to Canada, and lightened by joshing around with then-prime minister Jean Chrétien. In hindsight, Clinton’s easy, confident manner mirrored the moment—the early days of what turned out to be a sustained stretch of U.S. prosperity, and Canada’s own shift into strong economic growth.

Obama arrived on the Hill today in a more crimped time. The instinct behind England’s vote to leave the EU mocks Havel’s vision of fading borders as naïve. In the year of Trump’s snarl, anything like Clinton’s 1995-vintage upbeat banter would come off as oddly out of touch. On the other hand, Mandela’s wise reminder about people needing to feel better off for democracy to be secure was pretty much what Obama and Trudeau are telling us.

Obama also arrived near the end of his second term. He could hardly talk with the bravado of a leader who might himself overcome, in his time in office, any challenges he set out. But that also lent his speech poignancy. Here was a President who, despite great gifts, faced endlessly frustrating obstacles and intractable problems. So when he spoke of the need to keep fighting for “pluralism, tolerance and equality,” and for rights like freedom of religion and a free press abroad, it didn’t come off as filler. “Those things are hard, but they are right,” Obama said. “They are not always convenient, but they are true.”

What set Obama’s speech today apart was how his credibility about what’s hard and inconvenient, in this late stage of his presidency, hasn’t robbed him of the ability to sound audacious regarding what’s right and true.

The post Obama speaks to Ottawa, with the inveterate audacity of hope appeared first on Macleans.ca.

Salesmanship has often been defined as the ability to persuade people to do anything. “He could sell ice to Eskimos!” is a common way of describing the ultimate salesperson. Indeed, selling a product by using intense, hard-sell techniques used to be a popular business model.

The ability to sell people things they don’t need may be indicative of great persuasive skill, but it’s not a good way to build a sustainable business.

For one thing, selling that way is really hard work. For another, it suggests rather fluid ethics. Do you want to be the guy or gal who brags about convincing someone to buy something that they could have had for free, or that they won’t ever use?

We need to be sure we are pointed the right way. Think about the customer's own motivation -- their "gravity," or the force that would compel them to make a purchase. Your customer comes to you with their own needs, wants, and desires ... these are all part of gravity.

And, as in the real world, it’s a lot easier to work with gravity than fighting it.
Persuading customers to do something they don’t want to do is like trying to push them the wrong way on a slide.

With enough strength and effort, you can indeed overcome gravity and force them up the slanted surface. But it’s hard work, and far less enjoyable than letting gravity propel them from top to bottom.

Align Your Message

Instead of that uphill battle, we need to align our message with what the customer wants. Our persuasion task will be far easier if we can show how our offer will relieve customer pain points or make the customer happier or more successful.

In your persuasion efforts, you need to work with the customer’s needs and desires.

Present a solution for a problem the customer is wrestling with. Show how your offer gets the customer closer to an important goal. Identify a customer pain point and offer relief. When you do this, it will be a speedy trip down the slide!

That’s not to say you should sell only to customers who have already established a need for your product. A supermarket can put eggs on display, and shoppers who need eggs will buy them. That’s a fine model for food stores, but it won’t work well for the rest of us. We usually have to show the customer how our offering fits their needs or will help them in some way.

For example, you could pitch a set of exercises videos in two different ways -- one way that fights the customer's desire to save money, and one that encourages the customer's desire to get in better shape.

• Fighting Gravity: “Buy all 10 exercise videos for $199!”
• Gravity Helping: “Get fit and feel great in 10 weeks, guaranteed! Just $199!”

When your main pitch is something the customer has no predetermined need for or interest in, you are fighting gravity. 

Expensive exercise videos don’t sound all that appealing in comparison, even if they are a better solution and cheaper in the long run. But focusing on the customer’s needs and desires injects your solution into the mix.

When you express an offer in a way that matches your customer’s conscious goals or unconscious desires, the probability of conversion increases dramatically. If your products or services aren’t meeting a real customer need or moving her toward a desired goal, you’re in the wrong business.

You’ll be trying to push your customer up the slide every time. Even if you can muscle your customer to the top occasionally you’ll end up questioning the value of the effort.

To practice your powers of persuasion, download my free Persuasion Slide workbook here.

Editor's note: This post is excerpted from "The Persuasion Slide: A New Way to Market to Your Customer's Conscious Needs and Unconscious Minds" and is republished here with the author's permission.

Tony was baffled. His direct report, Susan, was enormously productive. Her team clearly loved working with her, and she was considered a high potential in the organization. Yet she always seemed pulled in a dozen directions rather than focused on the areas that Tony had indicated as strategic priorities.

While he admired her attention to detail and ability to multitask, Tony saw the flip side of these strengths as a tendency to get bogged down in the minutia of a project and an inability to delegate. Moreover, Susan seemed less decisive and directive than a senior leader should be. Tony knew her extremely collaborative style made her well-liked by her team and other business units, who were always asking her to be on interdepartmental committees, but to him it seemed needlessly time consuming and conflict averse.

When it was time for Susan’s annual review, Tony ranked her as below average in delegation, decisiveness, and strategy setting. She clearly was a workhorse, but he didn’t know if she’d ever be ready to lead. He knew she was expecting a promotion to the senior leadership team, but she just didn’t seem ready.

Susan was gobsmacked.

What happened to Susan is something I see all too often among talented people (usually women) with clear leadership ability and passion for their professions, and it results in part from a lack of understanding between them and their (usually male) bosses.

For instance, research has found that women tend to gravitate toward collaborative efforts that require a greater time investment, whereas men prefer solo decision making and directive action. Women also tend to invest more time in developing and helping others, which may garner them high marks for collaboration and inclusivity but comes at the expense of their own opportunities for promotion. (There is evidence that although their managers may want them to say no to such “extracurricular” projects, there are greater costs for women who decline to help others at the office than for men who do so.)

I’ve previously discussed what women like Susan can do to offset these differences and support their own development, but managers, too, play an important role in helping to level the scales.

Give goal-oriented feedback. In my work with companies, I’ve found that although women value feedback, they rarely receive it, particularly from men. Research has found that the feedback women do get tends to be about their personalities, not about business outcomes. For men, it’s the reverse.

But if the feedback women get is personal, not results-oriented, they won’t know what you want them to spend their time on. Make sure you give goal-oriented feedback to all your employees.

Map out a clear path to promotion. In order to succeed, employees need clear information from their managers that goes beyond day-to-day execution. Leaders should take the time to map out the bigger picture and share the strategic view of the company for each of their employees.

Tell employees which activities will get them promoted, which will hold them back, and which they need to delegate or minimize in order to make room for new ones. Managers and employees can then map out, together, a career development plan so that the path forward is clear to everyone.

See the value in collaborative leadership. Managers should keep in mind that a collaborative leadership model does have benefits. While collaboration can quickly become a time suck if overused, embracing it is important for both men and women in the right circumstances. It can help create a more inclusive workplace culture that combines the strengths of both genders and a broader spectrum of diverse talent. Dealing with deadlines, putting out fires, and managing the day-to-day processes and systems end up overshadowing the creation of the type of culture where everyone can thrive.

And while building trust and consensus early in a project might seem time-consuming at the start, it has long-term benefits. Embrace and reward a more collaborative leadership style that prioritizes being a good listener and knowing how to engage others — qualities that usually are associated with women but that a good manager of anyone must learn how to master.

Focus on results. Most of us prefer our own working style; that’s why we adopted it. But leaders must understand that “different” doesn’t mean “worse.” I’ve observed this misconception playing out in many organizations where the women are seen as excessively collaborative or as perfectionists. They’re thought to have an excessive attention to detail that ultimately diminishes their personal capacity to take on more responsibility and to be seen as a leader rather than a doer.

While gender-based differences in communications, problem solving, decision making, and thinking styles remain a subject of debate, the latest research on brain science suggests that there are multiple factors, including different social experiences between genders, that may play a role.

The bottom line is that it doesn’t matter why any one person is different; research has shown that differences in work style and approach do not mean that female leaders are less effective than male leaders. Focus more on the results that female leaders create and less on the style behind how they get those results.

Unpack hidden biases. One of the biggest obstacles to creating and leveraging inclusive, results-focused cultures is management biases. It can be uncomfortable to examine our biases, much less admit to them, but everyone does have them. Today’s leaders need to hold teams accountable for ensuring that they represent a balance of thinking and diverse views, and that everyone on the team (themselves included) examine their biases. Without coming face to face with your own biases and those of other leaders, you may end up blocking productivity and limiting the growth and opportunities of talented people.

After Susan got over her shock at being passed up for promotion, she and Tony had a wide-ranging conversation in which she explicitly laid out the benefits of her collaborative style. Tony was able to convince her that she’d been overdelivering on some projects and that it was time to hand that work off to subordinates so that she could focus more on strategy. Together, they created a road map to get her to the next level. After a few months, Tony was able to evaluate Susan’s achievements in a new light. He recognized that without her valuable committee work, consensus building, and emphasis on teamwork, her division would not have reached several specific benchmarks last quarter. As a result, he recommended Susan for promotion at the next review period.

*Names have been changed.

Last week I wrote an article about Tribune Publishing’s reincarnation as Tronc and the poorly thought-out video that the company released, describing its efforts. As best I could tell, the article was well received and many people, even those employed at Tronc, seemed to think I got it right.

My basic point was that the notion that you can transform a failing media company — or any company in any industry, for that matter — by infusing it with data and algorithms is terribly misguided. I stand by that analysis, but I realize that rather than tell publishers what they should do, I merely spelled out what won’t work.

I also think my article gave Tronc’s management short shrift. They are trying to revive a storied icon of American journalism and should be given some credit. As a former publishing CEO who managed a number of digital and print brands, I know how difficult that can be. There are four things I think publishers need to know to compete in the digital age:

The product drives the business. In a sense, publishing is like any other business: Your success is driven by customer demand for your product. Everything else is optimization.

The quality of a publishing product comes down to user experience and reporting. Digital user experience includes traditional areas such as design, layout, structure, and pacing but also incorporates new skills such as navigation, visual communication, and video production. Poor user experience can diminish a product to the point that people will simply walk away.

But it’s really reporting that sets a publication apart, even in seemingly trivial areas like fashion and entertainment. Good reporting takes time and relationships, so it can’t be effectively automated — though it can be empowered by digital technology. This is especially true of investigative journalism, which in my opinion is the only thing that can dependably raise readership.

Insight Center

New data journalism techniques show great promise, although as I’ve noted before, problems can arise when data is divorced from context. The great opportunity in journalism today is combining data analysis, including artificial intelligence techniques, with dedicated reporters who have mastered the nuances of their beat.

None of this is particularly new or exciting, but that’s the point. You achieve excellence not through James Bond–style gadgetry but through relentlessly executing on your fundamental skills. Tronc, with storied brands and no shortage of talent, already has the capabilities it needs, but those skill sets need to be broadened and deepened.

The audience is vastly more than eyeballs. Tronc makes a point of stressing that it is in the content business. Fair enough, but as I’ve noted before, content is crap. Nobody ever says, “Gee, I just consumed some really enlightening content and it really change the way I think about things.” The business of publishing is much more than marrying content and distribution.

Unfortunately, most publishers rose up in their organizations through ad sales and tend to see their business from a marketer’s perspective. The audience comes to be seen merely as eyeballs to be divided, aggregated, and sold as if they were default swaps. That’s how publishers lost their way.

Which is what seems to have happened at Tronc. Rather than spending time thinking about how to widen and deepen relationships with its audience and improve its product, Tronc seems to be giving priority to producing content so it can “feed it into a funnel, and then optimize it so we reach the biggest global audience possible.”

The truth is that content optimization techniques are fairly standardized these days, which makes them unlikely ever to lead to a competitive advantage. You build a strong publishing brand not by getting it in front of more eyeballs but by developing a distinctive voice and serving your readers. It’s the audience, not algorithms, that makes publishing great and fun.

Publishing is a talent-driven business. The one thing I can say with 100% certainty is that talent is the ultimate authority. I could fire editors and threaten to cut their budgets, but neither of those things will build a great product. The only thing that will produce a truly superior product is truly superior talent.

Many people would take this to mean you should hire great people and stay out of their hair, but I’ve found that’s wrong on both counts. In fact, as a CEO I was constantly in people’s hair. I made it a point to be in every department — editorial, design, technology, sales, and marketing — every day.

Our business was much smaller in scale than Tronc, but we still had 800 people across more than a dozen brands. So getting to each and every department took time, but I felt it was time well spent. It helped me build trusting relationships across the organization, which helped me learn about each and every facet of the business across all of our brands.

It also meant I was always at hand when a problem arose. Often these were small issues or requests for advice that could be handled in a few minutes out in the hallway. Other times things were trickier and different people with different skills and experiences needed to be brought in. I was the company’s foremost expert on where to find these skills because, after all, I was in every department, every day.

Another red herring is the idea that you can build a great business by hiring great people. You can’t. You build a great business by developing great teams, giving them the resources to succeed, and, most importantly, encouraging them to work effectively with other teams.

Collaboration is the new competitive advantage. Two of the core principle with which we managed our company were firing nasty people and using the “always help” rule. The first put a premium on nice people, which created a great work environment in which people could produce great products. The second simply said that if anyone came to you and asked for help, you couldn’t say no. It was your job to help. Always.

The reason we put such great value on these two principles is that we believed the key to competing in the digital age is an active collaboration among people with diverse skill sets. When you get top-notch technologists, designers, marketers, and salespeople all working together with editors and journalists to create a superior product, magical things happen.

Creating this type of collaborative environment is the core challenge in publishing today, especially in news publishing, where the tradition of a “Chinese wall” has created a divided house. Marketers and salespeople relentlessly pursue eyeballs, clicks, and conversion rates while editorial people ply their craft in blissful ignorance of how the bills get paid.

As I’ve noted before, failure to collaborate has led to the failure to innovate at The New York Times. Consider David Kirkpatrick’s Benghazi story, which was indeed a masterful — and expensive — piece of investigative journalism. Although no one would be served by slapping banner ads on the article, today’s digital publishers have a variety of opportunities, such as e-books and video partnerships, which can both monetize the work and deepen user experience.

Clearly, these are problems not of technology but of culture, and they can’t be solved through higher conversion rates or glitzy videos. Trusting relationships need to be built across the entire enterprise. It is only through widespread collaboration that a bright future can be built for publishing. As is often said in the open source community, “given enough eyeballs, all bugs are shallow.”

Zero-based budgeting (ZBB) is elegantly logical: Expenses must be justified for each new budget period based on demonstrable needs and costs, as opposed to the more common method of using last year’s budget as your starting point, then adjusting up or down. ZBB is a straightforward, intuitively simple way to aggressively strip out costs that cannot be rationally justified. Who would argue that a business should not eliminate unjustifiable costs?

ZBB has been around for decades, but is currently enjoying a revival driven by powerful investors like 3G Capital Partners, the force behind the 2015 merger of Kraft Foods and H.J. Heinz. Such high-profile exposure has prompted more companies to view ZBB as a fresh “wonder diet” for achieving radical corporate leanness. ZBB’s resurgence is further fueled by the uncertain markets hindering many companies’ efforts to attract fresh capital, as we see venture capital and private equity funds increasingly pushing ZBB on their portfolio companies, in the hope of securing a more rapid and profitable exit on their investments.

Yet for all the promise of ZBB, many companies that try it soon grow disenchanted. They find that the process is a distraction to their people, that it does not deliver all the cost savings they anticipated, and that many of the costs they do eliminate soon creep back in, making the whole effort feel futile. One might conclude from such failures that implementing zero-based budgeting is simply too ambitious. We believe the exact opposite to be true. Most ZBB implementations are not ambitious enough.

Traditional ZBB implementations focus almost exclusively on simple SG&A, in part because SG&A benchmark data is far more readily attainable than are relevant data from the core functions of comparable companies. In comparison to other methods (such as Six Sigma or activity-based costing), ZBB typically does not address operational excellence in core processes (marketing, sales, supply chain, procurement, manufacturing) or fundamental cost drivers such as portfolio complexity, organizational complexity, customer complaints, and quality issues. Also, ZBB does not challenge existing process design, which can now be completely re-thought and often drastically improved through digitization.  Rather, the most visible outcomes of many ZBB efforts are burdensome policies (such as travel cost restrictions) that fail to address the underlying fundamentals (such as who needs to travel, why, and when). The result is a superficial and simplistic focus on “policing” costs versus substantive cost  prevention.

A related issue is that ZBB is often executed exclusively within organizational silos. When cost packages are analyzed in isolation, ZBB completely overlooks the substantial cost reductions attainable at the interfaces between functions.

To realize larger and more lasting value from zero-based budgeting, companies must take a more substantial and ambitious approach. That means blowing up the boundaries that have confined ZBB and taking a true end-to-end view of what drives business value.

This broader approach to ZBB leaves nothing out of scope, pursuing fresh efficiencies in contracting practices, make-versus-buy tradeoffs, demand reduction, requirement simplification, operational efficiency, applied analytics, rules and policies, and much more.

Companies must attack costs not just within organizational silos, but those that reside at the intersection of functions as well, bringing into scope a whole range of costs not addressed in typical ZBB implementations.

Finally, while traditional ZBB typically imposes budget targets based on benchmark data, then leaves the organization largely on its own to determine how it might comply, this more ambitious version of ZBB mobilizes the organization to systematically attack costs using rigorous, time-tested tools and methodologies, with the various initiatives prioritized, coordinated and supported by a business transformation office. The incentive model is also adapted to support aggressive pursuit of the target budget, and a dedicated budget governance structure prevents costs from creeping back in.

This form of ZBB implementation includes many classic features of performance improvement initiatives, but the aggressive ZBB targets can inspire extraordinary effort. For example, when we identified a substantial logistics cost gap in a large consumer goods company, the supply chain director told us: “It’s impossible to solve. We have tried. Nothing worked. We just have to live with it.” He argued that labor cost was the main issue, and the union was strong enough to block any cost reduction initiative. It was apparent that others in the company shared this view. Simply imposing a cost-reduction target and walking away would accomplish little here, so we engaged finance, logistics and the senior leadership team in pursuit of a creative solution. As the dialogue progressed, it became clear that while the intractable labor cost was an important factor, so were truck utilization, margin negotiation, and service-level agreements with freight companies. We then structured a simulator to test various scenarios for negotiation with freight companies. Freed from their longstanding “there’s nothing we can do about it” mindset, the company soon optimized the budget by 14%, exceeding the target we had initially proposed by four percentage points.

In another company, commercial discounts was essentially a black box for the finance chief and CEO. Although it was not a cost budget (the typical focus of ZBB), we applied cost-to-serve and net profitability analyses to better define and more rigorously formalize the company’s discount policies, which in turn fostered transparency and alignment toward a targeted adjustment of more than 15%. This significant cost reduction would have been considered “out of scope” in most ZBB implementations.

Implementing  ZBB on this much larger scale is more demanding, but zero-based budgeting is always a big bet. The first and most important key making that bet pay is to go big. Only a substantial, ambitious approach that can deliver sustainable cost transformation on a scale that makes all the effort required to implement zero-based budgeting worthwhile.

The modern corporation coexists with others in an ever changing and dynamic landscape. In order to remain a viable and sustainable business leadership must co-create a shared vision that identifies & leverages opportunities, skills, and resources. Even when these exist, an unlimited wealth of knowledge and business tools will not change a business’ path for the better unless the prerequisite culture, architecture, values, and competencies are already in place. It is not the purpose of this article to highlight how to build these prerequisites but instead to illuminate that the execution of these assets requires a systemic approach in order to be successful.

Where industries see separate business models and context dependent tools I see themes, trends, and overlapping inter-dependencies. Similarly, where history is often viewed as a linear and iterative progression of ideas, lessons, and platforms I see leaps and starts, as well as radical departures upon which new (and often radical) paradigms are realized. Learning and growth is less about linear progression then it is about connecting the dots and bringing new ideas into creation.

Although I am passionate about thinking outside the box, challenging sacred cows (business beliefs that remain unchallenged, with histories supporting them that is no longer remembered), and achieving the impossible….I recognize that not everyone is. These traits are often viewed in isolation; distinguishing the achievement of the impossible from trying something new. Although in isolation these competencies may add value in a captured market setting – this becomes less likely in environments that involve perpetual change OR in business environments that focus on linear thinking.

Since even the stability (or routes) of funding changes in captured markets its unclear if a true captured (and thus unchanging) market even exists. This is because customers continue to demand more. Even in captured markets where available products & services is pre-specified and for free (paid by insurance, government funding, etc.) the customer continues to demand improvements.

Even more problematic is the trend where customers take the products or services for granted; effectively becoming passive recipients of its benefits, only to become angry or dissatisfied when the product/service boundaries are encountered.

These scenarios highlight why relationships and customer relationship management (CRM) is so important; but do not explain how to avoid reacting and move the organization towards a more proactive approach. This is because customer relationship management in today’s organization often emphasizes either quantitative or qualitative drivers. Not both. Reactive symptom management thus becomes the norm, and not the exception. But it doesn’t have to be this way.

Business as usual – may need to change.

Business as usual may need to change. This includes:

⦁ Culture: The traditions, beliefs, and behaviours that determine how employees interact with one another.

⦁ Areas of commitment: The role models, documentation, and systems in place to support reinforcement of investment.

⦁ Communication: The sharing of transparent and consistent information across the organization.

⦁ Common sense & assumptions: The alignment of the organization’s experience with what is observed in the surrounding environment.

⦁ Competencies & skills: The development of skills and competencies that are needed to proactively respond to changes in the industry.

⦁ Resources: The tools, resources, and investment of the organization to insure change, and the development of key competencies, is successful.

Change requires proactively observing, learning, and adjusting based on feedback. Understanding where you are going is just as important as understanding how to get there. Note, internal insistence for an outside expert or consultant to facilitate the change management process can often serve as to reinforce existing silos and stall the process. So tread carefully when this request is made in order to better understand the stakeholder’s priorities, questions, and concerns regarding the process. Although external consultants can be helpful for organizations that are facing inertia, the process of external consultation can diminish accountability, negatively impact execution of the plan, and decrease the likelihood of the competencies being successfully integrated into the organizational culture.

Michael Csik (2014) identifies four stages for developing an innovative business model:

• Initiation: Analyze the environment.

• Ideation: Identifying patterns and themes.

• Integration: Sketch the business model that could seize the opportunities identified.

• Implementation: Implement, role model, and reinforce the dedicated resources in order to realize the vision.

Leading and defining industry trends come easiest to those organizations that are comfortable with:

⦁ Innovation: Innovation is a new idea, or more-effective device or process. Innovation can be viewed as the application of better solutions that meet new requirements, unarticulated needs, or existing market needs.

⦁ Agility: The organization’s ability to rapidly respond to change, respond to customer needs, and quickly take advantage of new opportunities.

⦁ Continual customer development tools & processes: A process of continually testing product & service assumptions against the market. Using the information acquired to create iterative improvements that realize additional value(s) for the customer.

For organizations beginning the journey towards industry & innovation leadership the process begins with removing the silos and clarifying (or challenging) the assumptions that have held back the organization’s potential.

Reference:

Csik, M. (2014, December 2). 55 Business Models to Revolutionize your Business by Michaela Csik. Retrieved April 18, 2016, from http://www.slideshare.net/jindrichweiss/55-business-models-to-revolutionize-your-business-by-michaela-csik

Sazama, F. (2016). Canvas4Change. Retrieved April 17, 2016, from http://frank-sazama.de/

At Business Insider, we believe capitalism can and should be a force for good. We recently released our inaugural edition of Business Insider 100: The Creators, with which we are celebrating leaders who embody this spirit.

Many rankings focus only on those who have achieved great financial success. Our CEO Henry Blodget sums up the drawbacks of such a focus:

"The more money you make, the implication is, the better and more successful you are. We believe this cheapens the mission and sense of purpose that many great business leaders bring to their companies and products. And it certainly undersells their inspiring accomplishments."

Over the course of several months, we scoured the business landscape for inventive leaders making bold moves to create value for four constituencies: shareholders, employees, consumers, and society.

We found companies from around the world, both public and private, across many industries. We considered not only what they have created, but how. We consulted a variety of databases, including Glassdoor to gauge employee sentiment and Wealth-X to chart noteworthy philanthropic missions.

Here's a look at the top 10 people and companies that made the list. 

Read the full list of 100 here.

Edited by Alex Morrell. 

Additional editing and reporting by Matthew DeBord, Diane Galligan, Mo Hadi, Ashley Lutz, Lydia Ramsey, Matt Rosoff, Sara Silverstein, Dave Smith, and Matthew Turner. 

SEE ALSO: Meet the top 100 business visionaries creating value for the world

SEE ALSO: 22 successful women-led companies that prove there's much more to business than profits

10. Paul Polman

CEO, Unilever

Since Paul Polman became CEO of Unilever in 2009, the Dutch businessman has been focused on making the more than 1,000 consumer brands owned by the 90-year-old conglomerate, which include hallmarks like Hellmann’s mayonnaise and Dove soap, more friendly to the planet.

Polman implemented the company’s “Sustainable Living Plan” in 2010, aiming to grow both the business and its societal impact for years to come. The company’s goal is to help more than a billion people improve their health and livelihoods by 2020, while also cutting their environmental footprint in half by 2030.

In November, Polman attended a UN climate change conference to discuss his plan to eliminate coal use at Unilever within five years and generate all of its energy from renewable sources by 2030. About 40% of the company’s energy currently comes from green sources like wind or solar power. Unilever has reduced its waste by 85%, and factory emissions are down 37% since 2008, according to The New York Times,

Polman’s green initiatives haven’t stalled Unilever’s sales: Revenues are up more than 30% since Polman started at the company. Polman, though, isn’t overly fixated on short-term numbers. To encourage investors to think about long-term viability, he stopped giving quarterly reports and providing earnings guidance to the market.

9. Paul Tudor Jones

Founder, Tudor Investment Corporation, The Robin Hood Foundation, and Just Capital

When it comes to money, Paul Tudor Jones knows what he’s doing. He gained fame for accurately predicting the 1987 stock market crash and has earned 19% returns annually since starting Tudor Investment Corporation in 1980. The hedge fund is now worth $13 billion.

For decades, Jones has found ways to parlay his financial skills into philanthropic endeavors as well. In 2015, Jones launched Just Capital, a nonprofit that will release an annual list of 1,000 companies that ranks each based on values, as opposed to profits.

The list will consider factors such as sustainability, employee treatment, and community involvement to paint a clearer picture of how good companies are in a social sense, instead of simply evaluating them financially. Jones hopes to spur competition amongst companies, motivating them to vie for a higher spot on the list.

For nearly 30 years, Jones has also run the Robin Hood Foundation, which solicits donations from the wealthy and distributes them to poverty-fighting organizations in New York City. Since its inception, Robin Hood has raised more than $2.5 billion, pulling in $101 million at a single event last year.

8. Salman Khan

Founder and CEO, Khan Academy

Sal Khan never expected to be an educator. He started his career at a hedge fund and tutored his young cousins on the side, particularly in math and science. After he started uploading the lessons to YouTube in 2006, many students other than his cousins tuned in, and Khan realized he was onto something big.

By 2009, he had quit his job to devote his time to Khan Academy, a revolutionary nonprofit offering free online video tutorials to people around the globe. The company officially launched with the support of Silicon Valley elite: Founding partners include Google and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. Today, Khan Academy has 40 million registered users who consume video tutorials across many subjects in multiple languages.

Khan aims to close the gap between wealthy students who are able to pay for tutors and test-prep classes and low-income students without easy access to these training tools. “We have a mission for a free, world-class education for anyone, anywhere,” Khan told Business Insider. Acknowledging critics, including those who find the lecture format to be limiting, he says, “I'd never say [the videos] somehow constitute a complete education. If I'm confused about something, hey, to get a 5-, 10-minute explanation of it, I think that's valuable.”

Last June, Khan Academy launched free SAT-prep courses and materials in partnership with College Board, a big step forward in making higher education universally accessible. Khan also has opened the brick-and-mortar Khan Lab School in Mountain View, California — an experimental program that lets students advance at their own pace.  

See the rest of the story at Business Insider

Your customers are some of your most valuable leads. Marketers often focus on attracting new leads (which matters), but the customers you already have can be far more valuable to your business in the long run than the new leads you bring in.

That’s especially true when you offer a subscription product. You can’t just persuade your customers to buy once and consider your job done. You have to persuade them to buy again and again, every month and year.

That means more work, but it’s worth the effort. Increasing customer retention by 5 percent has been found to increase profits anywhere from 25 percent to 95 percent. In addition to getting the money that comes from those ongoing subscriptions, the customers you have who use and value your product may be inclined to talk it up to their colleagues.

Customers are valuable, but inspiring customer advocates is one of the best things you can do for your brand. People trust other people more than they do brands—nothing you say will be quite as powerful as the word of a current customer providing an honest recommendation based on personal experience. But before a customer can ever get to that point, they have to understand how to use your product to its fullest potential.

You already have a tool in your marketing toolkit that’s great for educating and informing. You just need to make sure the focus of your SaaS content marketing strategy extends beyond top-funnel activities, all the way past the point of sale and through the entirety of the (hopefully) long relationship with your customers.

5 SaaS Content Marketing Tactics for Current Customers

Many of the same techniques and formats that work well for attracting new leads can be just as successfully applied to marketing to your current customers.

1. Onboarding Email Campaign

For a customer to get into the habit of using your software, they must be able to figure out how it works quickly and easily. From early on, you want them to gain a clear understanding of what the product can do for them and all the specific features that can make their life easier. Send a series of emails during their first few weeks as a customer that covers all those bases.

The grocery shopping list app AnyList helps hook new users with a series of emails that provide quick, easy-to-understand instructions on how to use the different features.

Most importantly, they keep the emails short and to the point, with the option to click through to a more detailed page if you so choose. The email therefore works as a reminder that you have the app (they wouldn’t want you to just download it and forget it!) and provides some valuable information on how to use it, all while being careful not to waste the reader’s time.

Ideally, your onboarding emails will do the double duty of being both useful to your customers and helpful to you in encouraging them toward regular use of your software. If they get into the habit of turning to your product on a regular basis in those early weeks, they’re much more likely to stay on as a subscriber in the months and years to come.

2. Training Resources

Like your onboarding emails, training resources can help customers learn the ins and outs of your product in their early days of using it (in fact, you probably want your onboarding emails to push people to these resources).

Training resources often take the form of webinars and product demos, which gives customers the chance to see in real-time how the software works and be proactive in asking questions that come up. But you have a number of other ways to approach providing training resources.

You can provide videos that demonstrate how to use your software. HubSpot has a video tour that takes customers through how to use the main features the platform offers.

You can also use web pages that include ample screenshots to visually demonstrate the processes you want people to learn. Wistia has a whole support hub of pages with instructions on how to use the product, like this one for the account setup process.

And of course, you can use blog posts to show customers how to make better use of the software. Wishpond created a handy blog for customers that provides ideas and examples of ways to convert their templates to a variety of uses based on the customer’s need.

3. Content That Addresses FAQs

When you have a question about software you’re using, what’s your first move to figure it out? If you’re like 90 percent of consumers, you head to the company’s website first to look for the answer there.

Having a good customer service team to deal with more complicated issues is important, but in the vast majority of cases, most customers prefer to figure out how to solve the problem themselves. This creates an obvious opportunity for content marketing.

You probably already have an FAQ page, but many of those questions could benefit from more comprehensive answers. Videos, blog posts and webinars all can provide customers with more thorough answers they need to get past any issues or confusion they have with your software on their own.

CoSchedule has blog posts and webinars that dig into questions their customers have, like how to manage multiple social media accounts at once and how to use their social templates to create a social schedule. Both formats give them the chance to dig deep to answer questions from customers, but the formats also make it easy to skim or jump to a specific section in the webinar so customers in a hurry don’t have to sit through a longer answer than needed.

4. Ongoing Digital Content

You can’t focus on content that helps customers learn to use your product and then think you’re done. You should devote part of your content calendar every month to producing content specifically targeted at customers.

HubSpot has a whole blog devoted to content for their customers. The posts aren’t all dedicated to the product, but they’re all covering topics that HubSpot knows their customers care about. And often they’re topics that can help them use HubSpot to achieve better results.

And naturally, you should always use content to help promote product updates.

When you a sell a subscription product, you’re always working to make it more useful to your customers.The updates themselves are the job of the product design team, but making sure that customers are alerted to product updates and understand how the changes benefit them falls to the content team.

Blog posts, webinars and emails should all be used to help make sure that your customers know about the update, understand how to take advantage of it, and will hopefully appreciate the ways your company’s work is helping make their lives easier.

When Moz recently released its new Keyword Explorer tool, Rand Fishkin published a lengthy post that explained the benefits, described in detail all the features, and made it clear to customers that their feedback was encouraged and would help inspire future updates.

The post makes it easy for customers to know where to start exploring the new tool and answers most of the questions they’re likely to have right off the bat.

5. Print Magazines

In a content marketing landscape dominated by digital, providing your customers with something in print is a good way to stand out. The Content Marketing Institute started putting out the Chief Content Officer magazine in 2011, and Joe Pulizzi has talked about regularly encountering marketers at conferences who tell him how much they appreciate the magazine.

Print magazines give customers something tangible they can hold in their hands. For many people who are inundated with digital content all day long, that feels like a more meaningful connection than getting another email or reading another blog post.

Producing a print magazine for your customers would be a big investment, but if you’re looking for a way to do something different that’s more likely to make your customers feel more special than one more email, the cost can pay off.

Your customers are the most important component to keeping your business alive and successful. Treat them that way. Figure out what information they need and work to provide it to them in formats they’ll find useful. The best way to lose a subscription is for your customers to forget about you and your product until billing day, so make sure you’re working to keep them throughout the year.

Bounce Rate. Calls to Action. Lead magnet. Inbound Marketing. What do these terms have in common? They’re all marketing terms you will likely come across as you begin to promote your small business or freelancing gig. And, they’re also discussed in today’s blog post (along with a few others), so be sure to bookmark this post.

10 Marketing Terms You Should Know

Chances are you’ll come across the ten marketing terms listed below in your Internet travels. Chances are they may sound vaguely familiar or maybe you have no idea what they mean or why they matter.

Well, I’ve got you covered. Clearly, this isn’t an exhaustive list, but it will cover some basic terms you should know (not in any particular order).

1. Lead Magnet

A lead magnet is a juicy, irresistible, and attractive offer or download that you give to prospects in exchange for their contact information. Basically, the lead magnet gives the user a tremendous amount of value — so much so that they are willing to hand over one of their prized possessions: their e-mail address.

Though a lead magnet offers great value, it doesn’t have to be complex or take a lot of time to create. It should, however, solve a problem that the user has.

Lead Magnets You Can Share:

• Website Assessment
• Social Media Assessment (this is one of my lead magnets)
• Swipe File
• eBook
• Blog Post Template (this is one of mine, too!)
• Reports
• User Guides
• Checklist
• Resource or Tools List
• eCourse
• Webinar or Teleclass
• Free Consultation
• Special Pricing
• Free Shipping

 

2. Landing page

A landing page is a lead generation tool with a specific focus of getting the contact details of prospects. You will notice that landing pages typically have sign up forms to capture that information.

The landing page — even if it resides on your main website — typically doesn’t have any navigation. This is to discourage the viewer from clicking away from the page so that they can connect with the offer or lead magnet on the landing page.

So, you’re probably wondering if your lead magnet could be the marketing offer listed on the landing page. And, the answer is yes. Again, the goal is to capture the user’s contact information in exchange for something they find very desirable.

Create Great Landing Pages

• Unique selling point (USP) with clear expectations
• Compelling and clear headline
• Concise explanation of benefits (“What’s in it for me?”)
• Good grammar
• Strong call to action
• Call to action buttons that stand out
• Image or video
• Social proof

3. Analytics

The data you get from your analytics software tells you how your website, social media accounts, and marketing initiatives are performing.

Why does this matter? Knowing what’s working well means that you can keep focusing on activities that are successful. And, knowing what’s not working tells you that it’s time to make an adjustment.

You can use an Excel spreadsheet to track your metrics, but you can also utilize analytics tools to keep tabs on how well your website and social media sites are working for you.

Analytics Tools You Can Use:

• Google Analytics
• Quill Engage
• Crazy Egg
• Clicky
• SumAll
• Twitter Analytics
• Facebook Insights
• FollowerWonk
• Socialbakers

4. Bounce Rate

Bounce rate refers to the number site visitors who bounce or leave your website after only seeing one page. As online entrepreneurs, we want to keep anyone who visits our site as long as possible.

Having a high bounce rate is typically not considered a good thing and can indicate that site visitors didn’t find what they were looking for. That means that the wrong people landed on your site, quickly realized it, and bounced.

A high bounce rate could also mean that they actually did find what they wanted. Huh?

Well, if you shared a link to a fabulous blog post you just wrote and several people clicked on it, read the post, and then left your site, they got what they came for, right? They might even bookmark your site so they can come back again for more helpful information.

That said, if a low bounce rate is essential for specific pages on your website to be successful, there are actionable steps you can take to reduce your bounce rate and encourage site visitors to linger and perhaps purchase a product or service.

Decrease Bounce Rate

• Speed: Your site must load quickly
• Responsive: Your site must be easy to read and navigate on mobile devices
• Navigation: Make it easy for visitors to find what they’re looking for
• Search: This goes hand-in-hand with navigation — make sure the search box can be found easily
• Ads: Don’t bombard visitors with ads and lots of pop ups
• Readability: Make sure text (and format) on your page is easy to read and understand
• Links: Fix broken links and make sure external links open in a new tab
• Keywords: Pick the right ones that match your content and that will attract the right visitors
• Content: Always provide valuable information — write for people, not robots

5. Call to Action (CTA)

A Call to Action or CTA, especially an effective one, will compel you to take a specific action. We’ve all responded to CTAs at some point. For example, if you’ve ever signed up for a webinar or downloaded an eBook, you’ve likely responded to a call to action like “Register Now” or “Download Your Free Marketing Guide.”

Sometimes, a CTA is dressed up as you (i.e., written in the first person) so you can hear your own voice in your head pushing you to click that CTA button. For example, you might click on a button that says “Yes, Give Me My Free Report” or “Send It To Me Now!”

You may have to play around with specific CTAs, button colors, and graphics to see which ones people tend to respond to the most. Once you find “the one,” stick with it.

Create Strong CTAs

• Clear
• Specific
• Compelling (evokes strong emotions, solves the user’s problem)
• Easy to do
• Aesthetically appealing (graphic)

6. Inbound Marketing

Inbound marketing entices your prospects and brings them to your brand versus you going after them (e.g., buying ads). You might encourage users to visit your website by consistently producing and sharing quality, kick-ass content.

Your inbound marketing efforts will likely involve various types of valuable content that keeps site visitors coming back for more and hopefully converts them into buyers.

7. Hashtag

When the hashtag (a.k.a., the pound sign #) precedes a word (e.g., #blogging), it becomes a live link. When you click on that link, you will find other related information about that topic (in this case, blogging).

Simply put, a hashtag is like a bucket or container for specific types of information. You can also think of them as keywords or keyword phrases that lead a trail to similar pieces of content.

Hashtags do not have spaces, so if you use a hashtag with more than one word, it would look something like this: #BloggingTips. Though they were first popularized by Twitter, you can use hashtags on just about any social media platform.

Create Successful Hashtags

• Research the hashtag before you use it to represent your brand or event (yep, someone else may have snagged it)
• Relevant to your brand or topic
• Don’t overuse hashtags — the number of hashtags you use will depend on the platform you’re using (e.g., the fewer the better except on Instagram)
• Concise is best

8. Responsive Design

A responsive website can be easily viewed on any device, no matter the size of the screen. This will make the user experience a positive one even if they are viewing your website on their mobile phone. Basically, a responsive design adapts the layout of the website to the viewing device and keeps navigation simple and easy.

Sounds good, doesn’t it? It should! When your website is responsive, visitors tend to hang around longer instead of moving on to another site (like your competitor’s website).

And, since lots of people now use mobile devices, like smartphones, having a responsive design is extremely important.

Btw, Google (yes, that Google) lets searchers know when a website is mobile friendly. That’s a pretty good reason to make sure you have a responsive site, yes? Click here to check if your website is mobile-friendly or search for your site on your mobile phone or tablet.

9. Social Proof

Have you ever seen an As Seen On … section on some websites? In that area, the site owner usually lists media mentions or high-trafficked sites they have been featured on. That’s social proof. Essentially, it’s an indicator or influence (or popularity).

That said, when a new site visitor comes along, they see this social validation from others and accept it as true. They go along with others who hold a specific belief about that brand and their offerings and may feel compelled to work with that company.

Another form of social proof is testimonials. The kind words clients say about you might stroke your ego, but they also indicate how awesome your small business is to those who are new to your services and products. Think about Amazon reviews. They are very powerful and can persuade buyers to purchase any number of products.

When an influencer writes a testimonial for another marketer, the social proof can skyrocket in a positive direction. Of course, the flipside to this is negative social proof — when someone says something horrible about your service. Think about Yelp reviews. Enough said.

10. Evergreen Content

Sometimes, the content you share has an expiration date. Perhaps you wrote a blog post that included apps that are now defunct. Or, maybe your post was related to an outdated trend.

Evergreen content is the exact opposite. It never expires. It will always be fresh and relevant even after substantial time has passed since it was first published.

You might have an evergreen blog post that you keep adding to over time. Though new content has been added, the post will still remain relevant and useful while keeping the same permalink.

What does this mean for you as a marketer? Simply put, you want to have several pieces of evergreen content that you can share over and over again. New readers will love you for providing big value and you won’t have to spend gobs of time writing. Instead, you can focus on promoting that content.

Create Excellent Evergreen Content

• Extremely useful
• Clear
• Evokes strong emotion in the reader
• Always fresh (not dated or seemingly old)
• Easy to read, no jargon
• Covers the basics

There you have it. Ten marketing terms you should know and understand. Look out for an upcoming post with a few more terms you should be familiar with.

Have a marketing tool or concept you’d like me to include? Do you use any of the tools shared in today’s post? Tell me about it! Share in the comments below.

I once spent a year as a freelance LinkedIn consultant, which taught me one important thing: Most people have no idea how to leverage their profiles. To this day, the majority of profiles I see contain a few (sometimes many) major mistakes.

If you’re a rep using LinkedIn to generate new leads and engage current customers, having an error-filled profile is especially deadly. In fact, if you’re not getting the results you hope from social selling, your profile may just be the reason why.

So open up a new tab for your LinkedIn -- and check your profile for these nine deadly blunders.

9 Deadly LinkedIn Profile Mistakes

1) Writing Your Profile For Recruiters, Not Prospects

One of the biggest mistakes reps make on LinkedIn is writing for the wrong audience -- recruiters and hiring managers -- rather than prospects and customers.

Most sales professionals use their profile to show off what fantastic sellers they are.

For example:

• Strategically up-sold largest account by 355% (circa $20k/month to $100k/month) in 8 months
• Generated over $650k in total revenue annually, more than 600% growth
• Awarded Varsity Letter for generating over $150k in revenue in one month

But prospects don’t care about the prizes you won and or the profits you drove. They care about one thing: Can you help them?

If your profile doesn’t say “yes,” they’ll find one that does.

(Not sure how to fix yours? Here’s a guide to optimizing your LinkedIn for sales.)

2) Leaving Your Summary Blank

If a prospect asked why they should purchase your product, there’s no way you’d stay silent. But leaving your LinkedIn summary blank is, in effect, refusing to answer that exact question.

It’s the perfect place to describe your product’s value prop, establish your credibility with a short customer story, and include a call-to-action with your contact details. Plus, it’s one of the first things every visitor to your profile sees.

In other words, neglecting this section is like setting cash on fire.

3) Overemphasizing Your Previous Positions

When you’re using LinkedIn to network or find a job, adding roughly the same number of bullets to each position you’ve listed makes sense.

But when you’re using LinkedIn to prospect, you want to emphasize your present position -- after all, if you’re, say, currently selling cloud-based IT solutions to startups, your prospects won’t care about your past job selling HR software to corporations.

With that in mind, limit your previous positions to a short description of the position and one or two bullets for your most noteworthy accomplishments.

Here’s an example:

Sales Representative, New York; Yoohoo

I helped small businesses adopt local marketing and advertising strategies, letting them attract and retain new customers as cost-effectively as possible.

• On average, my clients saw 74% higher sales in 12 months.

4) Having Your Coworkers Recommend You

Although they might not realize it, prospects often make the decision to buy simply because other people or companies they trust have done so. That’s why every sales rep should leverage social proof -- preferably in the form of client success stories or testimonials.

The “Recommendations” section of your LinkedIn profile happens to be an optimal place to showcase your happy customers. Unfortunately, many reps fill this section with recommendations from their coworkers, who typically make comments like, “Joe can meet a hundred objections but still get the job done,” or “He always finds unique ways to get the prospect’s attention.”

These recommendations remind prospects that you’ve got a vested interest in selling to them.

Recommendations from clients, on the other hand, tell them your product really works -- and contacting you is in their company’s best interest.

5) Using Language Your Prospects Won’t Understand

You’re so well-versed in sales speak it probably doesn’t even sound like jargon anymore. However, most prospects will have no idea what a “President’s Club” is and why qualifying for it is noteworthy, let alone what AM, ARPA, LTV, or SDR stand for.

When someone is mystified by your profile, they don’t pick up the phone to call you -- they move on. That’s why every single section of your LinkedIn should be written in language your prospects will understand.

I recommend asking a couple friends who are unfamiliar with sales to look over your profile for words or terms they don’t know. If they find something you simply can’t cut, add a brief explanation in parentheses, like so:

• Provided infrastructure to ASPs (Application Service Providers)

6) Not Adding Your Company’s Website

Which websites are displayed in the “Contact Info” section of your profile? If you haven’t linked to your company’s homepage, you’re missing a valuable opportunity. These days, buyers do an unprecedented amount of research before contacting a sales rep -- meaning many of the people who browse your profile are probably looking for product information, not your contact details. Make that information hard to find, and they might end up on your competitor’s page instead.

LinkedIn lets you add up to three websites. I recommend using all three slots, like so:

1. Company website
2. Link to Features or Benefits page
3. Link to Testimonials or Use Cases page

Here’s how that would look for a HubSpot Sales rep:

7) Neglecting the Media Feature

LinkedIn lets you add pictures, videos, links, and presentations to your profile. Yet despite this fantastic chance to showcase their company’s marketing materials, I almost never see reps using this feature.

Luckily, it’s easy to fix this mistake. Choose one or two compelling pieces of content (like a third-party article mentioning your product and/or a post from your company blog) then upload them to your summary.

You can also add content to individual positions.

Since you don’t want prospects to spend more than a couple seconds on your old roles, I’d only use this option for the job you have right now.

(Need a refresher on how content can help your sales goals? Check out content sharing 101 for salespeople.)

8) Including Your Personal Beliefs

A few personal details can make you seem more approachable and help create rapport with prospects. However, it’s definitely possible to take this technique too far. After all, if you mention that you hold a certain belief, and a potential buyer happens to hold the exact opposite belief, that’ll inevitably hurt their opinion of you.

And even if your summary is completely free of personal beliefs, you still could be making this mistake. Many reps include their volunteer work for religious or political organizations. While volunteering is always an admirable use of time, this type of affiliation can be risky.

The same holds true for your LinkedIn Groups. Do you belong to any that could be considered controversial? Since your groups shows up at the bottom of your profile, you should consider keeping your membership strictly professional.

Finally, make sure your Interests section is non-objectionable as well.

Not sure whether an interest is safe to include? Ask yourself whether you’d bring it up during small talk with a client. If you’d steer clear, you should definitely leave it off your profile.

9) Using Symbols

Using symbols will definitely make your profile memorable -- but not in a good way. After all, symbols usually show up in text messages and social media posts, so they don’t exactly scream professionalism.

Plus, all those arrows, check marks, and stars make your profile look cluttered and busy. You want people to engage with your profile, not click away as fast as possible.

Once you’ve cleaned up your LinkedIn, your next step is getting people to look at it. Check out our 11 tips for skyrocketing your profile’s visibility -- and say hello to a full pipeline of qualified leads.

Which mistakes do you see reps making on their LinkedIn profiles? Let us know in the comments!

Content Attribution and Positive ROI

Proving ROI for content marketing is difficult for even the most seasoned of marketers. The numbers bear this out as 79% of content marketers confess to being unsuccessful at proving ROI. Unfortunately, unless you can connect your efforts to dollars earned or saved, you have no proof of your marketing plan’s effectiveness. Compounding the issue is the vast amount of content that lives on a wide range of platforms.

It seems impossible to know how somebody gets from Point A to Point B when they have 50 paths to choose from.

So, how do you measure the unmeasurable?

You start with Dave. He is one of the 21% that have figured out how to measure and then apply learnings from content ROI. At Bizible, they are all about making every marketing dollar profitable and their success can be seen in the four full-time content writers that are funded through their content marketing efforts.

His ahead-of-the-curve approach to content ROI will help you measure your marketing plan’s effectiveness and grow your B2B brand organically through content.

In This Episode

• Why making every marketing dollar count means measuring content
• How educational content leads customers down the funnel
• Why proving ROI means content attribution
• How mapping your content leads to a profitable content team
• Why compounding returns on your marketing means owning your community

 

Quotes From This Episode

“Attribution is all about the measurement and reporting of the effectiveness of your marketing.” —@drigotti (highlight to tweet)

“We create a lot of educational content with the purpose of ranking organically in Google.” —@drigotti

“You can blend the targeting in your channels and account-based marketing with what content is resonating, and at what stages of the funnel.” —@drigotti

“The intention of all of our content isn’t to get somebody to buy our product. Its intention is to just create that initial awareness and interest for that category.” —@drigotti

“More leads doesn’t always equal more revenue.” —@drigotti (highlight to tweet)

“We see tons and tons of value in owning the community.” —@drigotti

“Our content team does not have production goals. We have revenue goals for the team as a whole because we’re really about chasing pipeline, not page views.” —@drigotti

Resources

• Stat of the Week: There’s No ROI If You Can’t Count the Money
• Dave Rigotti on Twitter: @drigotti
• Bizible
• Why Your Sales Funnel Is Probably Upside Down

 

What did you want to be when you grew up?

An entrepreneur from the very beginning, Dave spent his childhood mowing his neighbor’s lawns in small-town Ohio and dreaming of one day running his own landscaping business. He didn’t end up becoming that small business owner, but that’s alright because he loves the turn his career took to working in technology.

Content marketing is a wonderful tool for bringing customers to your business.

• The problem, though, is that it’s not always easy to figure out the best way to maximize your profits.

There are plenty of tips and techniques out there for getting the biggest possible ROI from each piece of content you produce. But how do you know what to trust?

Here are some of my recommended steps for increasing ROI, as well as how you can go about building up a more financially successful content marketing campaign:

1. Create and Stick to Meaningful Goals

Accurately tracking your ROI is crucial to being able to increase it.

• In order to build a profitable content marketing campaign, you actually need to know what’s successful.
• This will help you to prioritize resources that are making you money, and phase out elements of your campaign that are less financially viable.

Your focus should be on attracting and retaining customers – this is the stat that helps drive your ROI.

That said, it’s important to use other metrics to help measure how well you’re doing.

• Set small goals that can be measured for each piece of content, such as web traffic, which can be used to get a better idea of how your campaign is performing as a whole.

When setting goals for your campaign, you need to pick concrete, quantifiable number-based metrics that you can track.

• While many companies look to use content marketing to improve their reputation, this is a difficult goal to track.
• It’s harder to measure your ROI when you compare your spending against your results.
• Instead, try numerical goals, such as how many leads your company is generating or how many followers you’ve gained on social media.

These kinds of goals help you to more clearly put a price on your content marketing efforts, as you’re able to see how much money you have to spend to grow your reach.

Once you’ve got a better idea of this, it’s easier to build on successful content and increase your ROI.

2. Perform Regular Testing to Find What Works and What Doesn’t

At different times in your content marketing efforts – especially when you first start out – you’ll feel like you’re stabbing in the dark to try and figure out what people actually want from your content.

• To make the most from your investments, you’ve got to find out what works and what doesn’t – and you’ve got to do it as quickly as possible.
• To do this, I recommend constant testing of every aspect of your campaign you can.

Testing and trialing different ways of presenting your content is key to figuring out what exactly will draw in new and existing customers.

• I don’t recommend blindly trying out all sorts of ideas with no structure, though – you need to have a carefully-designed system in place to help find the ideas that’ll most help your ROI.

A/B testing is a tool that’s gained a lot of popularity over the past few years of content marketing, and with good reason.

• By simultaneously testing two different versions of your content, you can spot which approach works best when everything else about the content is exactly the same.

While A/B testing can help every aspect of your conversion funnel, it’s particularly useful for finding what style of approach helps to initially draw in audiences.

• You can A/B test a series of headlines and images for your content to see what stands out most for potential website visitors.
• Doing this for every piece of content you create helps to maximize the number of visitors you draw to your site with every piece of content you release.

Going beyond this, I also recommend trialing different topics and styles for your content to see if your approach can be improved to maximize your ROI.

Again, though, be careful to keep the overall approach of your content the same, and only try out a different style for occasional pieces – that way you won’t lose momentum on everything that’s already working well for your campaign.

3. Focus on Middle-of-the-Funnel Content

As important as it is to draw visitors to your site, all of your effort is wasted if you can’t convince them to make a purchase while they’re on your pages.

• Plenty of companies spend all of their efforts working on getting people to their site, and then drop the ball once potential customers are actually there.
• Very, very few site visitors will be instantly inspired to make a purchase upon seeing your site – they’ll need extra encouragement, and that means guiding them through the conversion process.

It’s important not just to focus on bringing in new traffic, but also on creating content that helps visitors to convert.

• This can include guidance for using your products, or explanations on why your products are the best thing for their needs.
• This kind of content won’t be a massive draw for new site traffic, but it’s exceptionally helpful for return visitors and anyone who’s wavering about making a purchase with you.

If you’re only tailoring your content to bring people to your site, you might get a large number of visitors, but only a small percentage will actually buy something.

• By working to help more people make purchases through smart content, you potentially reduce the number of people your content draws to your site.
• That said, you can dramatically increase the number of visitors who go on to make a sale.
• This is far better for your ROI in the long run.

This ties back into your goals and testing – if your goals are all oriented towards getting people onto your site or increasing your brand’s persona with lay people, you’re not necessarily reaching out to the right audience.

By creating content that supports the entire conversion funnel, you’re helping to improve your ROI even if your site visitor numbers drop temporarily.

4. Produce More Multimedia Content

Over the past few years, content marketers have discovered just how important multimedia content is to building an audience.

• Not only do visuals and video content draw more people to your site, they’ll stay longer and be more willing to engage with your content as a result.
• Multimedia content also helps you to reach an entire subsection of your target demographic that don’t have any interest in text-based content, but are thrilled by more visual materials.

It’s important to note that YouTube is the second most popular search engine on the internet – if you’re not making content for this tool, you’re missing out on a large proportion of potential customers.

• Creating high quality, visually impressive multimedia content such as infographics and videos is likely going to increase your spending.
• This might make some companies hesitant as they worry it’ll affect their ROI in the short term.

In reality, though, producing a lot of high quality multimedia content will work wonders for your market reach, and will greatly increase your customer base.

This will help to reimburse you for your additional spending as your ROI increases.

5. Develop Content for Mobile Users

Catering to the needs of mobile users is crucial to the success of your content marketing campaign.

• Mobile traffic now makes up over 50% of all internet traffic.
• The average person spends significantly more time looking at the internet on a mobile device than they do on a desktop.

This makes a big difference in how content marketers should approach producing content, and the role that mobile should play in online campaigns.

• For several years now, Google has been weeding out any traffic that doesn’t cater to mobile, as a website without a solid mobile version isn’t going to be a good fit for users browsing the web on their devices.
• This will be reflected in your traffic and in your ROI – if mobile users can’t get a decent experience on your site, they won’t stick around.

The ways that mobile will affect your ROI goes beyond website architecture, though – even your content will need to change its approach.

Mobile screens are vertical, whereas desktops are horizontal.

• This means that content that fits perfectly on a desktop won’t be as comfortable on a mobile screen.
• Your content should therefore be thinner and longer, rather than wider and shorter.

When you make sure your content is inviting to mobile users, you avoid parts of your audience getting bored of your content and leaving because of its presentation.

This will lead more customers to make sales, which increases your ROI.

6. Increase Your Content Output

Sometimes the best thing you can do to increase your ROI is simply to produce more content.

• The more often your site is updating, the more frequently customers will return to see your latest pieces of content.
• When your site is updating regularly enough, you’ll find that many visitors will form a habitual pattern of checking your site multiple times throughout the week.
• The more they visit your site, the more likely they’ll be to make a purchase as they get to know your brand.

Producing more content is important, but you should be careful not to let your quality suffer as you ramp up production.

• Your content needs to shine; otherwise, you’ll lose visitors rather than gaining them.

Sometimes this can mean spending more money to produce higher-quality work:

• Outsourcing parts of content creation that can be done by others can free up enough time to produce more quality work in a shorter time.
• This investment usually pays for itself as it will lead to an exponential growth in traffic, sales, and a higher ROI.

It’s also worth considering relatively cheap methods of producing more content.

• Content aggregation or curation can help bring in resources from other websites to give your audience a reason to visit regularly.
• Reworking or republishing older content from your archives can be a good way to draw more attention to it and to increase your revenue for each piece you’ve previously produced.

Building a bigger archive of content is useful to your site’s image, search ranking, and audience size.

While it might cost more money initially, it’ll dramatically increase your ROI when done right, and you’ll be fully reimbursed for your larger spend.

7. Build Your Network of Influencers

At the end of the day, your content can only bring in a return that’s equal to the distance it travels.

• If your content is only seen by a few people, its ROI is going to be pretty small.
• If you can get lots of people to engage with your content in a meaningful way, it’ll bring in more revenue as a result.

Therefore, to increase your ROI, it’s worth working to expand your network of contacts within your industry.

• Befriending influencers means being able to use their support to reach more potential customers, as they share your content with their own audiences.
• These connections will also lend your content respectability, meaning that more buyers will look to you when they’re deciding to make purchases.

Seek out the people, companies, and media channels that have a big impact on the way your core customer base thinks and acts.

• These are the people that you want to build relationships with.
• Do more than ask their help to promote your content – work to build meaningful relationships with them.
• This will help get them on board for everything you do, rather than just promoting a single piece of content.

Beyond this, it’s also worthwhile to build relationships with individual customers where possible.

• Place a particular focus on repeat customers. If you can get people to make multiple purchases, it means you make more return on each customer you’ve developed a relationship with.
• The key to this, as I spoke about earlier, is producing plenty of content that helps people, no matter where they are in your conversion funnel.

As you build relationships with these key members of your industry, you’ll see greater returns on each piece of content you develop.

Each piece of content you produce has the potential to bring in a lot of revenue.

• It all comes down to how it’s structured, presented, and distributed, as to whether or not it lives up to its potential.

Use the steps I’ve talked about here to increase the amount you get from your content.

As your ROI grows, you’ll gain a better understanding of how to make content marketing work best for your business and your industry.

What tips do you recommend for building up your ROI? How do you increase your revenue from each piece of content? Share your thoughts in the comments section below.

Images: Pixabay, Google Analytics, Wikimedia, Flickr, YouTube, Smart Insights, Louder Online, Tech Crunch, Twitter, Pixabay.

There’s no denying that video marketing is on the rise. It attracts mobile users, improves your SEO efforts, and can even increase your conversion rates by 65 percent, according to HubSpot.

Using video is all well and good, but how do you choose the right content for your marketing strategy — the kind that engages, educates, and excites your audience, but ultimately leads to a sale and brand loyalty?

Here’s the trick: you have to create videos for each stage of your buyer’s journey. Videos that are fun, engaging, and have a story to tell. Videos that speak to your audience in a personal voice. but draw them down the sales funnel at the same time.

Leveraging video throughout the buyer’s journey can do just that. If you’re ready to create binge-worthy videos your audience will love, check out this post below.

Awareness Stage

In the awareness stage of the buyer’s journey, a prospect experiences a problem which they haven’t clearly defined. To give their problem a name, they turn to search engines, online reports, and social media to get their questions answered.

This is a great opportunity to leverage fun, helpful videos that answer questions your prospects are searching for online. “How-to” videos and similar educational content draw visitors to your website, and establish your brand as a reliable source of information.

Need some inspiration? Here’s a great example of how Wistia uses video to engage prospects in the awareness stage.

Stream’s Kick-Start Step

Once you’ve uploaded a video to your website, promote it through your social media channels. Posting videos to Facebook, YouTube, and Twitter can draw in new prospects and keep your current audience engaged.

Consideration Stage

Once their problem is clearly defined, a prospect is in the consideration stage of the buyer’s journey.

During this step, consumers conduct research to understand their problem, identify potential solutions, and discover products or services that can help them. That’s where content like webinars, presentations, or how-to videos can help educate your audience and establish your brand as a thought leader.

Videos that are helpful and easy to digest not only demonstrate your expertise. They also help your content standout from your competitors. To cut through the noise online, start leveraging video during the consideration stage.

Decision Stage

At this point, a prospect has decided on their solution, compiled a list of products that can solve their problem, and are researching each to decide which one to purchase.

Connecting with a prospect on a personal level is critical at this stage, and videos can show them why your brand is different.

Testimonials, case studies, and “about the product” videos can add the personal touch your audience is looking for, increasing their confidence in your business. By giving your brand a human voice with video throughout the consideration stage, you can keep buyer’s engaged and ultimately increase your bottom line.

Watch some of our FREE WEBINARS to see how we use video at Stream Companies. Each provide tips to improve your digital marketing strategy, and are great examples of how your business can start leveraging video right now.

A marketing funnel is the process that leads a prospective customer through several stages on their way toward purchasing your product. It goes something like this: A lead becomes a prospect, who becomes a customer, who becomes (if you’re lucky) a repeat customer. The whole thing probably sounds daunting, and it kind of is: Sales funnels have been around for a long time, but they can still cause modern, technologically savvy businesses trouble.

We’re going to discuss seven basic suggestions for dealing with sales and marketing funnel issues and recommend some tools to help you streamline and improve your own conversion process. With a bit of patience and some attention to the finer details, you’ll have your conversion process humming along like a well-oiled machine in no time.

Strategy 1: Target the Right Leads

Any concerted effort toward building a better sales funnel needs to begin with building better leads. You need to pursue the people most likely to respond to your product or service.

If you haven’t already, it’s probably time to get serious about learning (and possibly earning your certification for) Google Analytics. This free service will help you drill down into the nitty gritty of how people are finding you in the first place—whether it’s social channels like Facebook and Pinterest, or whether they’re more likely to find you through organic search results.

If your leads come from Facebook, you’ll want to double down on your Facebook strategies or borrow from your Facebook success and provide similar content on other channels to capitalize on your success.

Strategy 2: Make Your Funnel as Simple as Possible

Almost everyone has abandoned a shopping cart or turned tail halfway through a signup process. If you’re hoping to iron out the kinks in your own marketing and sales funnels, you’ll need to eliminate as many bottlenecks and sources of customer consternation as possible.

One of the best examples of a simple sales funnel is the company formerly known as 37signals, which is now known as Basecamp—the name of their most successful product. This venerable company’s sales funnel is only three steps long:

1. Prospects arrive at the Basecamp homepage from a variety of media channels, such as blogs and social websites.
2. Prospects sign up, which requires no credit card and only basic personal information.
3. Prospects are offered a generous 60-day trial for signing up, no strings attached.

That’s it! Basecamp has been around for a while, and it has the benefit of name recognition and countless testimonials, but it’s still a shining example of what’s possible when companies get serious about eliminating bottlenecks from their signup process.

Strategy 3: Collect Real-World Data About Your Sales Process

In order to find and fix issues with your sales and marketing funnel, and ultimately come up with a way to improve your bottom line, you’ll need a baseline against which to draw comparisons. And that means collecting data—lots of it.

Start with the basics. Harrisburg, Pennsylvania-based company WebpageFX created a highly useful marketing funnel tool to help fledgling or struggling businesses set the tone for their future initiatives. The tool asks for basic information, such as monthly visitors and your current conversion rate, to help you get a look at the bigger picture.

You couldn’t diagnose an illness without knowing what “healthy” looks like, and you won’t be able to grow your revenue stream before you have strong, historical data from which to draw a comparison.

Strategy 4: Adjust Your Sales and Promotions Schedule

We’ve already touched briefly on the importance of collecting data about your existing sales process in order to diagnose potential problems. Now, let’s get a bit more specific. It’s time to dive into your traffic by the day of week.

We can defer once again to Google Analytics, but you can just as easily see actual usage data from your own website’s backend—particularly if you use something like WordPress or Medium to publish online. Does much of the traffic on your site come your way on Sundays? How about on national holidays? If you’re beginning to see patterns emerging, it’s time to capitalize on them.

Apple, Inc. has made an art of targeting customers during peak shopping times. In particular, their Back to School promotions bring the house down each year, thanks to bundles and other promotions for people shopping for personal computers during this important time in their lives.

You may not have the audience or the reach that Apple does, but you can still react to periods of higher traffic by offering discounts or special offers of your own when traffic is booming.

Strategy 5: Create an Editorial Calendar

Impressions from social channels like Instagram and Twitter have become all-important. Almost one third of the world’s population uses social media, so make sure you’re not leaving these valuable prospects on the table by leaving your publishing schedule to happenstance.

Social media schedulers like HootSuite, Buffer, and others have built their business models around helping online retailers schedule their social media contributions in advance. It’s a perfect way to ensure you never fall behind, never fail to take advantage of peak traffic hours, and never have to scramble to publish a time-sensitive piece of marketing.

You should build an online presence that requires as little micromanagement as possible, so you can develop a steady stream of incoming prospects. By scheduling these dispatches in advance, you can focus on the content itself rather than on nailing the timing.

Strategy 6: Offer More Substantial Content

Clever and witty Twitter dispatches are all well and good, but if you really want to engage with your most likely prospects, it might be time to take your content offerings to the next level.

A successful, up-and-coming provider of customer support called Help Scout is grabbing market share from their better-known competitors by following this precise formula. They know their ideal customers are both technologically savvy and extremely particular about the services they engage with. As a result, they’ve built a high-quality library of eBooks, white papers, and other in-depth resources that their customers can access for free. These aren’t throwaway freebies—they’re substantial, informative and legitimate sources of valuable information.

In other words, they’ve positioned themselves as a thought leader in their industry. Have you?

Strategy 7: Set Concrete Growth Goals

We’ve already mentioned the importance of gathering benchmarks in order to appraise your success (or lack thereof), but it’s equally as important to set concrete growth goals, so you can see how well you’re measuring up in the future.

Successful resolutions (of the New Years’ variety and otherwise) depend upon clear goals. A Harvard University study tells us why: Human beings need a heady mixture of motivation and achievement in order to succeed. (highlight to tweet) Online businesses are no different.

Sometimes, the basic approach is the best. There are other methods out there for keeping tabs on your performance and goals, but an Excel spreadsheet might be the simplest and most effective tool at your disposal. A spreadsheet lets you set goals on a daily, weekly, and monthly basis and lets you effortlessly track how well you’re doing. You can record the number of emails you’ve sent, the number of phone calls you’ve had, and how many successful follow-ups you’ve secured. At an interval of your choosing, you can compare this “real” data with the goals you’ve set.

Achieving steady growth requires something to measure it against—and in this case, your goals can point the way. It’s healthy to let your hopes and ambitions take the wheel, but it’s still important to keep your expectations realistic.

Sometimes success is about little more than smoothing out speed bumps. You don’t need to completely reinvent the wheel when it comes to improving your marketing funnel.

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Identifying your best-fit target buyer, is a crucial part of Inbound marketing campaign development. Without persona development, campaigns will be poorly targeted and struggle to generate quality leads. But with a strong data-informed profile of buyers and their key challenges, marketing activity can become more focused and relevant.

Relevance is key. If marketing activity resonates with key buyers (from site design, through content, to communications etc), it will be more effective in attracting and nurturing quality leads through the conversion funnel, and will shorten the sales cycle.

3 Ways Buyer Personas Reduce the Sales Cycle

So how do data-based buyer personas shorten the sales cycle?

For buyer persona development to be effective, it must be based on actual client and industry data. This ensures campaigns are correctly targeted to yield results. With the correct data and targeting in place, buyer personas help to reduce the sales cycle by:

1. Attracting Higher Quality Leads

Lead quality directly impacts the success and length of your sales cycle. Poor quality leads will only have a negative impact , and be a waste of the sales team’s time and resources.

However, Inbound campaigns work to improve lead quality by ensuring all marketing activity and content resonates with buyer personas. This helps to increase the relevancy of traffic and lead quality, and provides sales with opportunities who are more likely to understand the value of the solution, and close faster.

Typical target personas will be those who are able to make a purchasing decision or influencers to the decision maker. Think about which leads and customers generate best success for you – and use them to define your personas.

2. Increasing Content Effectiveness

What challenges do your personas have that you can address? Where do your personas go to find content that solves their problems?

With the correct data backing your persona development, you need to personalize your content in such a way that it addresses buyer needs, and so attract more relevant leads.

To be effective, content should be mapped to address specific buyer challenges at each stage of the Buyer’s Journey, from Awareness, to Consideration, to Decision. By creating content assets that can resolve buyer pain at each purchasing stage, you can then nurture leads more effectively through the sales cycle.

3. Aligning Marketing and Sales for Effective Lead Nurture

To really reduce the sales cycle, effective lead nurture is key. As HubSpot have noted in their list of marketing statistics, 61% of B2B organisations send all leads to the sales team without first qualifying them. Typically, only 27% of those leads will match up to the business definition of a qualified lead. That creates a substantial drain on sales time and resource, stretching the sales cycle. As we mentioned in point 1, quality leads are key to effective sales.

Both marketing and sales should be aligned on what constitutes a quality, persona-focussed lead from the outset of a campaign. This will result in more effective lead scoring, saved time and higher quality sales conversations.

Sales and marketing teams are always aligned in Inbound campaigns for this reason. With a closed-loop approach, sales teams immediately gain a clear idea of a lead’s historical marketing data, allowing them the best possible chance to hold effective conversations, nurture, and close efficiently.

Ensure Buyer Personas Are Data-Backed For Best Results

To keep campaigns on track, and to have the best possible impact on reducing the sales cycle, buyer personas must be correctly informed by relevant data, be regularly reviewed, and always stay front-of-mind.

By creating defined, data-backed buyer personas and using them to inform all campaign action, marketing and sales teams are able to create more relevant strategies, attract higher quality leads and close leads faster.