Rnordman

U.S. smart speaker owners grew 40 percent over 2018 to now reach 66.4 million — or 26.2 percent of the U.S. adult population — according to a new report from Voicebot.ai and Voicify released this week, which detailed adoption patterns and device market share. The report also reconfirmed Amazon Echo’s lead, noting the Alexa-powered smart speaker grew to a 61 percent market share by the end of last year — well above Google Home’s 24 percent share.

These findings fall roughly in line with other analysts’ reports on smart speaker market share in the U.S. However, because of varying methodology, they don’t all come back with the exact same numbers.

For example, in December 2018, eMarketer reported the Echo had accounted for nearly 67 percent of all U.S. smart speaker sales in 2018. Meanwhile, CIRP last month put Echo further ahead, with a 70 percent share of the installed base in the U.S.

Though the percentages differ, the overall trend is that Amazon Echo remains the smart speaker to beat.

While on the face of things this appears to be great news for Amazon, Voicebot’s report did note that Google Home has been closing the gap with Echo in recent months.

Amazon Echo’s share dropped nearly 11 percent over 2018, while Google Home made up for just over half that decline with a 5.5 percent gain, and “other” devices making up the rest. This latter category, which includes devices like Apple’s HomePod and Sonos One, grew last year to now account for 15 percent of the market.

That said, the Sonos One has Alexa built-in, so it may not be as bad for Amazon as the numbers alone seem to indicate. After all, Amazon is selling its Echo devices at cost or even a loss to snag more market share. The real value over time will be in controlling the ecosystem.

The growth in smart speakers is part of a larger trend toward voice computing and smart voice assistants — like Siri, Bixby and Google Assistant — which are often accessed on smartphones.

A related report from Juniper Research last month estimated there will be 8 billion digital voice assistants in use by 2023, up from the 2.5 billion in use at the end of 2018. This is due to the increased use of smartphone assistants as well as the smart speaker trend, the firm said.

Voicebot’s report also saw how being able to access voice assistance on multiple platforms was helping to boost usage numbers.

It found that smart speaker owners used their smartphone’s voice assistant more than those who didn’t have a smart speaker in their home. It seems consumers get used to being able to access their voice assistants across platforms — now that Siri has made the jump to speakers and Alexa to phones, for instance.

The full report is available on Voicebot.ai’s website here.

I wrote The Coming Sales Talent Crisis, focusing on the struggles our customers face in their buying journey. We are all painfully aware of the struggles they face in solving problems and buying. We know that less than 50% result in a buying decision.

We know our customers need help-less in understanding our products and solutions, but in helping them navigate their buying process. This process is complex. Helping our customers requires new sales skills. The traditional solutions and consultative selling skills become table stakes. But new skills, including, curiosity, critical thinking, problem solving, collaboration, facilitation, project management, and resource orchestration become significant in helping our customers navigate their buying journeys.

As I discuss these scenarios with sales leaders, I’m often confronted with the argument, “How can we afford to invest in developing these skills in our people, if they are only going to stay with our company 15-22 months?”

They are referring to the data that we see about the revolving door of sales talent we see in too many organizations.

Since I’ve been writing this blog, we’ve seen a downward trend in sales and sales manager tenure. Several years ago, the average tenure of a sales person was 29 months, now the data shows it in the 15-22 month range. Other research shows that we are turning over our sales organizations every 3-4 years!

Recently, I spoke to a senior executive of a multi-billion enterprise. He cited voluntary/involuntary sales attrition of 42%!

Many people I speak with claim, “This is the current reality, after all we all know that millennials will not stay in any job very long….. Why should we continue to invest if they are just going to leave?”

The data is disturbing, if we accept it as the way things must be, one clearly would begin to despair about the future of our sales organizations and question the investments we must make to engage our customers in helping them solve their problems.

But, clearly, this problem starts with sales management and leadership. It’s a problem we and our companies have created, and it’s one we continue to aggravate—not maliciously, but in our lack of attention to the critical role of people–talent–in executing our strategies with our customers.

Some thoughts:

We fail to recognize each sales person, regardless of level, is a multi-million dollar investment. If we were purchasing a million dollar capital asset or making a million dollar investment in software tools, we would study, analyze, and evaluate the investment, the risk, the ROI, and the alternatives critically. We would involve others in that assessment.

Yet, too often, we treat our sales hiring very cavalierly. We hire based on the basis of chemistry. We interview casually, without deep competency models to assess fit, we don’t assess, test, and understand what we need. We take the best of those we have interviewed rather than matching them to what we need. Too often, I hear managers say, “If this person doesn’t work out, I can just replace him with someone else!”

Yet, these people investments are multimillion investments. It’s not the hiring, onboarding, and sunk compensation costs that kill us; it’s the opportunity cost. It is the lost opportunity that we have through open positions, through inexperienced or hiring the wrong person. It’s the opportunity we lose because we don’t continue to invest in developing the capabilities of our people. It’s our customers choosing to buy from someone else because of the inability of our sales people to engage them in meaningful ways.

High turnover, failure to recruit, develop, and retain the right people results in millions in lost opportunity.

In past decades, too many leaders, not just sales, have a tremendously cavalier attitudes toward people. People have become widgets, much like inventory, or other items. We ramp them up or down, based on projected business needs. Too often, there is little loyalty to our people, yet we expect their loyalty–but are surprised when we fail to get it.

The high churn, voluntary or involuntary, is, largely, a result of what we as managers and leaders have created. We’ve created an unhealthy dynamic where we don’t value people, they don’t value working with us–all costing millions in opportunity costs!

The challenge for leaders is that we have to create work environments where people want to work. We need workplaces that attract and retain the best people, we need to invest in training, developing, coaching them. We need to create work that is meaningful. We need to create work environments that challenge, develop, allow people to grow and contribute, and which make them want to stay.

This problem is not just limited to our people, it extends throughout management, as top leaders, we have to start to recognize the tremendous cost and lost opportunity our organizations face in not recognizing talent—people–as the ultimate differentiators in our success.

I don’t mean to condemn managers and leaders in this, I don’t mean to imply any maliciousness in behaviors. I think this is more a crisis created by inattention, lack of understanding, or lack of experience. It’s created by the focus on the day to day, never taking the opportunity to step back, think and reflect on those things that are critical to growth and sustained performance excellence.

There are many organizations that recognize the importance of talent, that are investing in their people and leaders. They are creating workplaces where people seen their contributions are valued, where they continue to learn, develop, and grow. These organizations will far outpace their competition and differentiated themselves, less because of their products, but more because of their people.

The headstone for email has been kept ready for a long time. No one has come to claim it, yet. In the age of free video chats and instant group messaging, email still stands with its feet dug into the grounds. Gmail is not without its problems too. But pick a simple problem or something more vexing, you can bet there’s an app for your inbox that will solve it.

Here are five more Gmail apps and tools that make a few inbox annoyances vanish.

1. Rename Email (Chrome): Change the Subject Line

It’s not a major problem. But wouldn’t you still love to handle emails like everyday files and folders? For instance, change the name of an email and it a subject line that’s more recognizable. It might make email threads easier to manage and help you retrieve the right email with a glance down the queue. Or search your inbox with keywords.

This simple Chrome extension works with Gmail. You can even use different titles for emails within an email thread. The free version should be enough for most of us, but there’s a premium version which comes with backend support.

Download: Rename Email for Chrome (Free, Premium version for $4.99)

2. Gmail Reverse Conversation (Chrome): The Newest First

Gmail does not give you the flexibility to re-order a thread and bring the newest conversation to the top. This tiny extension does exactly that. It reverses your Gmail conversations and places the most recent reply at the top. It thus goes chronologically downwards. Do note that it does not work like a toggle switch. To bring the oldest thread back to the top, uninstall the extension.

This simple move could save you a few scrolls and help you quickly catch up with updated conversations. Just one of the little ways you can make Gmail behave like Microsoft Outlook.

Download: Gmail reverse conversation for Chrome (Free)

3. Timezone.email (Chrome): Stay Aware of the Time

Timezones and conversations go together in a global world. For instance, if you can send an email at just the right time, it will arrive when your teammate is alert and awake to respond immediately. You can have a to and fro at the right time with your collaborator. There are many timezone converters, but this Chrome extension puts it right inside your inbox.

Timezone.email works with Gmail and Inbox by Gmail. Add your contact emails and set their timezones in the options page of the extension. It will convert your timezones to theirs and you can use it to schedule chats or meetings at agreeable hours.

The free plan allows you to pair timezones with three others. For more, look at the paid plans.

Download: Timezone.email for Chrome (Free, Paid)

4. Explain and Send Screenshots (Chrome): Capture and Send

Gmail does not need a screen annotation tool, but it is an important part of communication. This extension solves that problem without invading your privacy. You just have to capture or record a video or take an image of your screen, write text or point with arrows, and then share it. Full or partial screenshots are supported.

Keep things private, delete the sections you don’t want others to see. You can save the screen to Google Drive or bring it into your email to share. For swifter screen captures, use the right-click menu or the shortcut keys.

Explain and Send Screenshots is a lightweight screenshot and annotation tool in a small package. It is also available for Firefox.

Download: Explain and Send Screenshots for Chrome (Free)

5. What Email Service Should I Use (Web): Pick the Right Email for Your Business

Gmail is the most popular email service and it’s a no brainer if you have simple needs. But Gmail may not be right if you run a business or run a marketing campaign. Free Gmail has its limits. Business choices can get confusing. You can research your way to a solution or use this suggestion tool to find the first clue.

What email service should I use? asks you a few questions, takes your email address, and suggests a client. It is more suited for ecommerce which need features like list management, API integration, split testing etc. Each recommendation leads to a detailed review and that is where the value is when you trying to benchmark what to get.

Looking for simple alternatives to Gmail instead? Take your pick from this list.

Optimizing Your Life in the Inbox

Email is a big part of our lives. Even as Gmail and other alternatives get better, we keep asking for more ways to send a simple email. Keep discovering them and then sift through the pile to find the keepsakes. The world of Gmail extensions is a haystack, and here are a few more to help with your email productivity.

Read the full article: 5 Lightweight Gmail Tools That Solve a Few Pesky Problems

Everybody, at some point, has known (or maybe even been) that kid who just has too many toys. The one who gets showered with new stuff on every special occasion from birthday to Christmas to 100-on-the-spelling-test. And everybody knows the sad, lonely fate of all the older-but-still-fairly-new toys that kid got last year or even last month. Inevitably they've gone the way of Woody when Buzz Lightyear arrived on the scene, neglected in some box or closet. Because no matter how many toys you accrue, there are the same number of hours in the day to play with them.

What happens if that kid stops getting any new playthings at all for a year or two? Usually, they figure out how to get more mileage out of the ones they already have. They play-act new stories with that set of dolls or stuffed animals, invent whole worlds for them. They form stronger emotional attachments to their toys, transforming a mildly diverting plaything into the kind of priceless token of childhood that their 40-year-old self will be delighted to pull out of a box and reminisce with.

Adults, of course, have their own versions of Shiny New Toy syndrome: hunger for the new at the expense of cherishing the familiar. I've heard it suggested that many of us could challenge ourselves to go a year without acquiring anything new. Re-read the books that shaped your world view; find something new in them. Master that instrument you never had enough time to practice. Tend to your garden.

The discipline of not acquiring more until we've wrung true value out of what we already possess can make our lives richer and fuller. And this is a lesson we need to apply to our cities as well.

Our "Shiny New Cities" Habit

The expansion of public infrastructure in Lafayette, LA has far outpaced population growth and income growth.

Since at least around the middle of the 20th century, the leaders of most North American cities have had Shiny New Toy Syndrome. We have expanded outward at an unprecedented rate, building vastly more roads, pipes, pumps, and power lines than ever before—simply because those things are new, and new growth shows as a big win on the budget sheet.

And it is no coincidence that, in tandem with the onset of this era of shiny-and-new suburban expansion, inner-city neighborhoods across the continent fell into blight and disorder. Jobs vanished. Those who could afford to leave left. Places that had been built with the promise that they would deliver their inhabitants to the American Dream instead left a whole class of Americans shut out of the ability to build inter-generational wealth.

Those who bought suburban homes in this era are no more individually to blame for what is a broader societal failing than the 5-year-old with too many toys is personally culpable for his toy habit. After all, the 5-year-old presumably isn't the one buying the toys.

It was easier, for a newly emboldened superpower that had just won a world war, to build the shiny and new than to reckon with wringing value out of the old, to do the hard work of weeding our collective garden. Every incentive was lined up in support of this binge on new stuff: federal financing, bank redlining, the scale economies of mass production, and a surge of demand. 

When you widen highways, you transfer land value from developed areas to undeveloped.

That's a big part of the story of the decline of rust belt cities for the past three generations. https://t.co/E30G83Dfgc

— Angie Schmitt (@schmangee) March 8, 2019

And, of course, a colossal campaign of highway spending. Highway construction literally sucks value out of existing developed neighborhoods and transfers it to new, previously undeveloped areas (h/t Angie Schmitt of Streetsblog for tweeting this astute observation).

To understand why this is, think about a metropolitan region as a whole. What sets the limits on that region's physical growth? You've got a certain number of residents (plus new arrivals, and absentee property owners). They have a certain amount of disposable income, and they are willing to spend a certain share of it on real estate. Each variable in that equation is a bit stretchy, but like a rubber band, only to a point.

If I open a restaurant and I'm hugely successful, it's very unlikely that I'm increasing the total amount that my fellow citizens spend going out to eat by any appreciable amount. It's far more likely that they're going to my restaurant instead of another one.

If I'm a mayor and I throw tax incentives at a new mall, it's unlikely that I'm increasing the total amount spent on clothing and cosmetics and Auntie Anne's Pretzels by an appreciable amount. It's far more likely that the old mall down the road is going to suffer a rash of store closures.

If I'm the transportation commissioner and I build a highway, and that highway shortens the commute from Old MacDonald's farm to downtown Emerald City from 45 minutes to 30 minutes, and that difference makes Old MacDonald's land way more appealing to a developer, and Old MacDonald sells to the developer and retires to Arizona, and the developer names it MacDonald Glen and puts up 500 beige houses.... That chain of events didn't cause 500 brand new people to want to move to Emerald City.

What happened was that chain of events caused a certain number of people—probably less than 500, but certainly much greater than zero—who were already going to buy a house in Emerald City to buy one out in MacDonald Glen instead of elsewhere in town. And "elsewhere in town" missed out on that activity, like last year's toy sitting in a box under the bed.

A Practical Limit... But Not Enough of One to Keep Us Out of Trouble

There's an objection worth answering here. Building more homes and offices and strip malls doesn't work quite like the parent buying cheap toys for their kid. There's far more of a practical limit, because a house is a huge investment for the builder as well as the buyer, and if house prices start to fall and you can't sell new ones at a profit, builders are very quickly going to take the hint. (The toy analogy here, I suppose, would be that the kid literally hasn't even unwrapped the video game you bought her for her birthday in October, so you're definitely not buying her another one for Christmas.)

Map by Cuyahoga County, OH Planning Commission. The county had the same population in 1948 (left) as in 2002 (right).

The problem is the market feedback that tells us, "Enough already!" comes too little too late. Or doesn't hit the people it needs to hit. 

This was true for Northeast Ohio, where Jason Segedy describes devastating levels of vacancy in Cleveland, Akron, Canton, and Youngstown neighborhoods, a direct consequence of the region's building shiny new homes even as its population fell, doubling its physical footprint (and infrastructure obligations) for no net new people over half a century.

When we have that much more stuff than we used to, there's a strong argument our growth has made us poorer, not richer. The kid with a mountain of toys isn't happier than the kid with a few cherished ones.

But we're actually worse off than that kid. Because at least discarded toys don't come with a permanent maintenance obligation. Roads and sewer pipes, on the other hand, do.

But What If You're Growing?

Not wanting your kid to have too many toys doesn't mean you can't buy them something age-appropriate when they're 12 just because they still have the action figure they liked when they were 8.

I live in a fast-growing suburban county in one of the fastest-growing regions in the country. We've added over 7,000 people per year for the last 4 years. So naturally, there's a lot of development. Let me be clear: If you are adding thousands of people, you should be building thousands of new homes. If you don't, in fact, you're going to have huge problems. (Read anything about housing costs in California lately?)

But where are you building them? And who gets to decide?

Historically, all over the world, cities grew incrementally taller and more intense in the center at the same time as they incrementally expanded their footprints outward. Today, we’re all too eager to do only the latter—horizontal expansion—at the expense of letting existing neighborhoods mature. And often it seems driven by the Shiny New Toy Syndrome of a shockingly small number of decision-makers.

“Historically, cities grew incrementally taller and more intense in the center at the same time as they incrementally expanded their footprints outward. Today, we’re all too eager to do only the latter—horizontal expansion—at the expense of letting existing neighborhoods mature. And often it seems driven by the Shiny New Toy Syndrome of a shockingly small number of decision-makers.”

To illustrate that, some numbers from where I live: in the rural eastern two-thirds of my county (Sarasota County, FL) there are four large tracts of land—each the size of a small city, each with a single owner, each slated for a huge master-planned development. Together they account for a planned 27,600 homes, mostly single-family houses. The county government's own population growth projections have us needing 48,621 new housing units between 2020 and 2040. That means a whopping 57% of that growth is accounted for by already-existing plans for currently rural land that's in the hands of only four owners.

Those 27,600 planned houses, and the decisions of those four owners and a handful of local officials, threaten other priorities that the public might well care about. They threaten our financial solvency, because they're going to require a lot of new roads, instead of using infrastructure that already exists.

They threaten the stability of our existing neighborhoods. Our cities are full of neighborhoods with aging homes that need some TLC. They're a bit dated, but still perfectly serviceable and in attractive areas that don't inexorably have to tip into decline. But some of them are going to tip into decline, as long as that giant sucking sound of edge growth continues.

They threaten our ability to house our growing senior citizen population in existing walkable neighborhoods where they can age in place and retain some independence.

They threaten our environment. People where I live drive more annual miles per capita than in 95% of U.S. metro areas, and it'll be hard to reduce that statistic (and associated fossil-fuel emissions) if over half of all new homes are built on the outer fringe of the region.

Shiny New Toy Syndrome threatens our future.

Let's Cherish What We Have, and Build Only What We Need.

We've had decades of unproductive growth. We need productive growth, the kind that makes better use of investments we've already put in the ground.

We need to make existing neighborhoods richer, to thicken them up not just with development, but also with life and creative energy and opportunity.

This is not an argument against the construction of new homes and offices and retail spaces: anywhere the population is growing, we are going to be doing that. If you are going to have 10,000 new people in five years, you should expect to have homes for 10,000 new people in five years. But it matters where those homes go. 

Shiny and new costs us more than we can calculate. Adding value and people and stories and love to places that are already inhabited and loved by someone, on the other hand, is like picking up a favorite old toy and enjoying it anew.

(Cover Image by cattu on Pixabay)

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Sit back and join us for a journey through 50 recent digital marketing statistics that combine to tell a captivating tale of change, innovation, and generational preferences in an industry that changes faster than Jules Verne’s Phileas Fogg could ever have envisioned in “Around The World in 80 Days.” via GIPHY Statistics exploring each of the B2B, influencer, content, and social media flavors of marketing combine to tell a captivating and unique story of how digital marketing has evolved over the past year, and offer us a great opportunity to better understand which trends the numbers are pointing to for the future. We’ve arranged this numerical journey of various insightful digital marketing statistics to build up from those with the smallest percentage to the highest, and we hope you’ll gain a generous helping of new ideas through this lighthearted statistical look at where marketing is, and where it’s heading. Why should digital marketers care about these statistics? We've combed through a vast number of reports, studies, surveys, polls, and other types of data, and these are 50 of the most inspiring statistics that are both from high-caliber sources — including the Pew Research Center, Nielsen, NPR, Edison Research and Umass Dartmouth — and which give insight into where digital marketing is today and where it's heading in the future.

Bring On The 50 Digital Marketing Stats

1.

• 4% of B2B marketers have any kind of influencer marketing program. (Source: Brian Solis, Altimeter Group Influencer 2.0 Report)

Brian Solis is a leader in the world influencer marketing, and our CEO Lee Odden has an extensive and fascinating new video interview about Brian's latest book and marketing in general, which you can watch here to learn more: “Brian Solis on Lifescale – How to Live a More Creative, Productive and Happy Life Plus Improve Your Marketing.” We’ve also explored the value of influencer marketing in the B2B world in recent pieces such as “Why Always-On Is Always Better for Driving B2B Influencer Marketing Success,” “5 Examples of B2B Influencer Marketing to Inspire You in 2019,” and “The Next Level of Influence: 30 Essential Influencer Marketing Statistics,” each a helpful look at how you can join the four percent if you’re not already a member of this elite but growing segment. We also recently had the honor of being named by Forrester as the only B2B marketing agency offering influencer marketing as a top capability on its latest “B2B Marketing Agencies, North America, Q1 2019” report.”

2.

• 5% of B2B content marketers use predictive technology to nurture their audience. (Source: CMI / MarketingProfs 2019 B2B Content Marketing Benchmarks, Budgets & Trends Report)

At the other end of the scale, the following chart from the report shows that email and educational content are the most-used methods content marketers use to nurture audiences.

3.

• 8% of the U.S. digital advertising market will belong to Amazon by the end of 2019. (Source: eMarketer 2019 forecast data)

via GIPHY

4.

• 10% of consumers make purchases using smart speakers or home assistants. (Source: Adobe Branded Content Survey 2019)

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5.

• 11% of marketing budgets are spent on mobile. (Source: The CMO Survey, 2019)

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6.

• 13% of CMOs and CMO equivalents are people of color. (Source: Association of National Advertisers CMO Scorecard Survey 2018)

7.

• 14% of U.S. consumers are confident that the social media industry keeps their data secure. (Source: SAS Data Privacy Survey)

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8.

• 17% of lead-generation marketers use chatbots. (Source: HubSpot State of Email Lead Capture 2019)

With their rising implementation, we even placed chatbots in the number three spot on our list of “6 Top Digital Marketing Trends for 2019,” along with other artificial intelligence and machine learning technologies. Microsoft’s Purna Virji has been involved in improving both chatbots and voice search, and during the last Pubcon Las Vegas conference I covered her fascinating presentation in “How to Optimize Customer Experience with AI – Top Tips from Microsoft’s Purna Virji.”

9.

• 18% of Americans 18+ now own a Smart Speaker, some 43 million people. (Source: NPR / Edison Research Smart Audio Report 2018)

10.

• 19% of all purchases are caused from word-of-mouth, with 90% influenced from word-of-mouth. (Source: Talk Triggers, Jay Baer / Daniel Lemin, 2018)

Such recommendations from friends were also shown to be the second most effective way that consumers find out about a new brand or product before buying, as shown in the following Animoto chart.

11.

• 24% of overall marketers are running ongoing influencer programs. (Source: Brian Solis, Altimeter Group Influencer 2.0 Report)

B2B brands stand to benefit from collaborating with influencers, and we recently worked with B2B experts Whitney Magnuson of IBM, Rani Mani of Adobe, Luciana Moran of Dun & Bradstreet, Martin Jones of Cox Communications, and Konstanze Alex, PhD of Dell, to share some of their advice on running successful ongoing influencer marketing programs, in “How Can B2B Brands Benefit from Collaborating with Influencers? Let’s Get the Scoop from the Experts.” [bctt tweet="Working with B2B influencers allows our brand to have a constant pulse check with purchase decision-makers. @konstanze @dell" username="toprank"]

12.

• 24% of the U.S. population will listen to at least one podcast monthly by 2022. (Source: eMarketer, August 2018)

This statistic helps make clear that if your brand is looking to reach new audiences, there’s never been a better time to add podcast creation to your content marketing toolkit. The New York Times has just published a piece looking an new survey results showing the biggest increase in podcast listeners yet, with one in three in the U.S. tuning in to at least one podcast every month, as shown below. Our own Joshua Nite digs into why B2B content marketers should care about podcasts, with the details you need to know to get started, in “B2B Podcasting: What, Why and How.” [bctt tweet="“Your target audience is likely spending a significant amount of time listening to podcasts already. And those who already listen to at least one podcast are likely to be on the lookout for more.” — Joshua Nite @NiteWrites" username="toprank"]

13.

• 25% of consumers are annoyed by content that is too personalized. (Source: Adobe Branded Content Survey 2019)

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14.

• 26% of American adults admit to being online “almost constantly.” (Source: Pew Research Center January, 2018 Survey)

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15.

• 28% of words on an average webpage are actually consumed. (Source: Nancy Harhut & Associates, 2018)

Knowing how to best make use of those words that will be read is key to content marketing success, and BuzzSumo and Backlinko recently studied the performance of key elements in blog posts, pulling statistics from 912 million posts, as shown below.

16.

• 32% of marketers are not confident in their knowledge of artificial intelligence. (Source: EverString / Heinz Marketing 2018 Report)

17.

• 37% of B2B organizations expect their marketing spend to increase in 2019. (Source: Spiceworks 2019 State of IT)

18.

• 38% of U.S. adults expect brands to reply within an hour on social media. (Source: Clutch 2018 Survey)

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19.

• 40% of LinkedIn members visit each day. (Source: The Social Media Manager’s Guide to LinkedIn)

20.

• 45% of consumers abandon content not displaying well on their device. (Source: Adobe Branded Content Survey 2019)

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21.

• 46% of marketers segment demand generation activities by personas. (Source: CMI Using Content Marketing Survey 2018)

Audience research trends were recently the subject of a survey from the Content Marketing Institute and MarketingProfs, with some of the results shown below.

22.

• 47% of Instagram users watch Stories at least weekly. (Source: SimilarWeb / Recode, 2018)

The use of the popular “stories” format has grown on Instagram, and stories have made their way to most other major social media platforms. With this move comes an increased need for guidance in making most of the format, especially among B2B marketers. How 200 leading global brands are utilizing the stories format was the subject of a Buffer study, with the format’s growth on various social media platforms shown in the following chart. We’ve explored this in “What You Need to Know About Instagram Stories for B2B Marketing” by our own Nick Nelson, who also looked into how best to use Facebook Stories, with his helpful “The Future of Connection on Facebook: How Stories May Change the Marketing Game.” [bctt tweet="Much like #FacebookStories, #InstagramStories offer a nascent playground for #B2BMarketing. If you’re looking to experiment with new channels as you peer ahead to 2019, these both stand out as great opportunities. - @NickNelsonMN" username="toprank"]

23.

• 47% of dads in the U.S. with a household income of $100K+ use Pinterest. (Source: MarketingDive Pinterest analysis, May 2018)

24.

• 50% of buyers plan to spend more on social media video advertising in the next 12 months. (Source: IAB Video Ad Spend Study, April 2018)

Statistics consistently show video’s increasing effectiveness in social media marketing, whether it’s live video on Twitter, or video’s growth on LinkedIn, as we explored during the last Content Marketing World conference in “Allen Gannett Shares His Secrets to Racking Up Millions of LinkedIn Video Views #CMWorld.” Live video has now also made its way to LinkedIn (client), with the launch of LinkedIn Live to build on the success of its standard video offerings, which were already the fastest-growing format on the platform. Video has the power to deliver compelling messages, as shown in the following image from Digital Vidya.

25.

• 50% of marketers say producing content consistently is a top challenge. (Source: CMI / MarketingProfs 2019 B2B Content Marketing Benchmarks, Budgets & Trends)

26.

• 53% of marketers who haven’t already implemented artificial intelligence in some fashion plan to do so in the next 12 months. (Source: Provoke Insights Study 2018)

via GIPHY

27.

• 57% of B2B organizations focus on paid search to drive lead generation. (Source: Spiceworks 2019 State of IT)

28.

• 65% of teens say that Instagram is the best way for brands to reach them. (Source: Piper Jaffray Taking Stock with Teens Spring 2018 Survey)

This statistic points out the importance of knowing where your particular audience is most likely to spend time, so that you have the best chance of reaching them. It’s worth comparing the social media channels your business uses to make sure they align with where your audience will be. Buffer recently released its 2019 State of Social report, offering an in-depth look at what digital marketers are focusing on and an examination of trends and how the industry is changing, with data such as the chart below.

29.

• 67% of marketers plan to increase their influencer marketing budget in the following year. (Source: Milkwhale, Buying Under the Influence, 2018)

30.

• 68% feel their social life would suffer without Facebook. (Source: The Atlantic survey, June 2018)

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31.

• 68% of bloggers publishing daily report strong results. (Source: Orbit Media 2018 Blogging Trends Survey)

32.

• 69% of agencies always or frequently use storytelling. (Source: CMI Agency Content Marketing 2019)

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33.

• 69% of consumers prefer chatbots for quick communication with brands. (Source: Salesforce 2018 State of Chatbots Report)

Artificial-intelligence-powered chatbots have seen a rise is use, with 85% of customer service interactions expected to use the technology by 2020 (Gartner). MarketingProfs and Headway Capital took a look at implementing chatbots for Facebook Messenger, as partially shown below.

34.

• 70% of millennials on Twitter have commented on companies’ customer service. (Source: Sprinklr / Twitter 2018 U.S. Adults Survey, AdWeek)

35.

• 70% of B2B marketers say their number one digital marketing objective is generating more or higher-quality leads. (Source: DemandWave Survey)

36.

• 71% of digital marketers use employee ambassadors or want to for future campaigns. (Source: Sprout Social Index 2018)

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37.

• 71% of people say they find sponsored videos on their Facebook feed to be relevant or highly-relevant to them. (Source: PROMO Online Video Statistics and Trends 2018)

38.

• 72% of brands had influencer marketing in their budget for 2018. (Source: Brian Solis, Altimeter Group Influencer 2.0 Report)

39.

• 73% of millennials are less likely to buy from brands with negative comments on social media. (Source: Sprinklr / Twitter 2018 U.S. Adults Survey, AdWeek)

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40.

• 75% of millennials and GenZers expect “seamless handoffs between departments and channels, and contextualized engagement based on earlier interactions.” (Source: Salesforce Trends in Customer Trust 2018)

41.

• 79% of marketers say they will run a holiday campaign on social this year. (Source: Animoto 2018 State of Social Video Marketer Trends)

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42.

• 79% of CMOs rate social media as an extremely or very important media channel. (Source: Nielsen CMO Report 2018)

Even among firms on the Inc. 500, social media has remained a major factor over the past several years. A recent study by the Center for Marketing Research at the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth took a close look at how these top firms utilize social media, as shown below. Study data of smaller firms has also shown the importance of social media marketing, such as the infographic from ZipSprout that MarketingProfs examined recently, as partially shown below.

43.

• 80% of people would rather watch live video from a brand than read a blog post. (Source: Uscreen — Where’s Video Going? 2018)

The prominence of both standard and live video has continued to expand, with some five billion videos viewed daily on YouTube alone, and a recent report and infographic from Renderforest digs into some of the numbers behind the growth, as shown below.

44.

• 82% of consumers of online business content have purchased a company’s products or services as a result of content marketing. (Source: Clutch Content Marketing Survey, August 2018)

45.

• 82% of buyers wish B2B had the creativity associated with B2C. (Source: Propeller Insights / WHM 2019, MediaPost)

Now here’s a statistic that hits home for us, as we have recently been working hard to extoll the merits of bringing the creativity and energy often associated with B2C into the world of B2B. In fact, we dedicated an entire guide to just this subject, with our “Break Free of Boring B2B Guide,” featuring more than a dozen top B2B Marketing Exchange speakers from firms including Google, 3M, Demandbase, Fuze, and others. Check out the guide below, or click here to view the full-screen  Break Free from Boring B2B experience.

46.

• 87% of B2B audiences find content online through search engines. (Source: Clutch — How B2B Audiences Engage Study 2018)

47.

• 90% of Pinterest users say the platform helps them decide what to purchase. (Source: Gfk research data 2018, MediaPost)

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48.

• 95% of B2B buyers view content as trustworthy while evaluating a company and its offerings. (Source: iScribblers 2018)

49.

• 375% — The increase since 2013 in millennial travelers’ use of Instagram. (Source: Portrait of American Travelers 2018-2019, MMGY Global, MarketingDive)

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50.

• 636.3 — The number of minutes the average American will spend daily with media in 2018. (Source: Publicis / Zenith 2018 Media Consumption Forecast, MediaPost)

A Sum Greater Than The Parts — Digital Stats Wisdom

via GIPHY I encourage you to use these digital marketing statistics to create meaningful experiences that inspire, and to help guide and shape your campaigns, as industry knowledge backed by quality research can infuse your work in any area of marketing with both new energy and possibilities. You can also keep up with new statistics and research by following the TopRank Marketing blog, which recently celebrated its 15th year of covering digital marketing, or come see us in person at an upcoming conference. Our CEO Leo Odden will be presenting this week at inOrbit 2019 on March 14 - 15 in Slovenia, followed by Clever Content Conference 2019 on April 9 - 10 in Denmark, and at Content Marketing Conference in Boston on April 16 - 19, each a great opportunity to learn how to best put those statistics to use.

The post Around the World in 50 Captivating Digital Marketing Statistics appeared first on Online Marketing Blog - TopRank®.

Not every organization has perfectly optimized software asset management (SAM). In fact, it takes a bit of time to achieve SAM maturity, and there is a lot more to the process than meets the eye. There are multiple phases along the way that shape and mold an organization into a fully predictive, mature program.

Before you can understand how to achieve a fully optimized SAM program, you must know how to measure your organization’s level of maturity. Each level within a SAM maturity model can be progressed to the next, so it is important to have a good perception of your starting point and how to measure it.

SAM maturity refers to running an optimized SAM program. This phase of asset management can only be achieved after time and effort has been put into auditing and maintaining a software estate. Ultimately, mature SAM will offer visibility into entitlements, inventory and consumption across distributed on-premise and cloud environments. A few key steps on the road to SAM maturity are:

• A software procurement process that aligns solutions with core business needs.
• Evaluation / audit of how the deployed solution is used, by who, and if it is effective.
• Optimize licensing based on use and necessity.
• Monitor for and administer software updates.
• Retire outdated solutions.

One of the key indicators of a mature SAM program is one that goes from being reactive to predictive.

When an organization is hit with a vendor audit with an incomplete or poorly maintained SAM program, they are in a reactive phase, working backwards to account for solution usage. However, organizations that have maintained their SAM program over a long period of time will have mature, predictive programs that enable them to predict software needs and handle audits. This not only reduces the risks imposed by audits, but optimizes software spend on a regular basis.

Measuring SAM Maturity

You cannot build a SAM maturity strategy until you understand where your organization stands. For this reason, it is crucial you know how to measure maturity through a SAM maturity assessment. A SAM maturity assessment will enable your organization see exactly where on the scale your SAM program has reached. Essentially, you will be provided with a benchmark to use as a starting point for designing your SAM roadmap. Think of this assessment as an exercise to guide you towards future success in software lifecycle management.

Once a SAM maturity assessment has been completed, you can use a SAM maturity model to better understand your place and where you need to go. Gartner has developed a SAM maturity model of their own many have chosen to use, including us here at SoftwareONE. These are the are five components within this model:

• Chaotic – When an organization has chaotic SAM, they are dealing with audits on an ad hoc basis. They’re often dealing with multiple help desks, undocumented assets, and minimal IT operations.
• Reactive – Once an organization has reached a reactive level, they are working with a step up from the bare minimum. The do not have much control over which of their IT assets are being used and where, and taking care of an audit feels more like putting out a fire. These organizations typically lack or have incomplete policies, procedures, resources, and tools.
• Proactive – At this point, an organization would be tracking assets and able to analyze trends. The organization has moved from reacting to audits to predicting them. Mature problem configuration, change, and asset and performance management is fully in place.
• Service – This is a stage an organization should begin working with IT as a service provider. Tools, procedures, and policies are being utilized daily to manage the software asset lifecycle. An organization will be able to define services, classes, and other pricing.
• Value – An organization is fully optimized at this level of maturity and partnering with IT as a strategic business partner. An organization would now have enough accurate information to manage assets to business targets. Alignment can be done in nearly real time, so a program can adapt to changing business needs.

Understanding which level of maturity your organization is currently at is crucial for strategizing how to progress to the next. Once you have reached dynamic SAM, you can build a plan to maintain ongoing maturity.

How You Benefit from a SAM Maturity Assessment

After discovering your level of maturity, it is time to dissect it in the context of your organization. If you are at a basic stage of SAM, your focus should be on education and gathering data. Or, if you are a bit further along in the process, you should turn your focus towards understanding your SAM tool and how it can be used to progress forward. A SAM tool will help you know where you stand, which is important prioritizing your process and diving into where exactly you would like to begin enhancing.

The biggest thing to remember here is that SAM maturity is about continued development. You must design an actionable roadmap that is easy to carry out and easy to maintain. Otherwise, you will not find your organization crossing the threshold from reactive to predictive. To make sure your plan is doable, set smaller goals that can be done in a shorter amount of time to get ahold of where you can gain control.

SAM maturity can be challenging to navigate on your own, however, so be sure to consider partnering with an expert. A SAM partner will be able to explain to you what the results of your maturity assessment mean in-depth. This way, you will be able to create a roadmap with the confidence of knowing it is something you’ll be able to keep up.

Maintaining Your Plan for Success

SAM maturity is a work in progress. Whether you are at the most basic of levels or completely optimized, you never reach an endpoint. After running a SAM maturity assessment, lean into the experts around you to design the plan that will work best for your organization. Once you have a plan in place, you will be able to predict rather than react in no time.

A recent TOPO Benchmark report found that 59% of companies don’t have a well-defined sales process. A solid sales process is essential because it is a predictable and repeatable way to guide prospects to a purchasing decision. Though it’s called a “sales” process, don’t let the name fool you – it affects all customer-facing teams. And, even if you are among the 41% that do have a well-defined process, there’s no guarantee that it will scale with you as your organization grows.

In today’s vlog, I sat down with Craig Rosenberg, Chief Analyst at TOPO, and ask him, “How do you design and manage a sales process that will scale?” He takes a very simplified approach to help teams build processes around people and action.

Here’s Craig!

(Watch the video on YouTube)

TRANSCRIPT:

– So how do you design and manage a sales process that will scale? Hey everyone, Brandon Redlinger here, Director of Growth at Engagio. And the clown that’s laughing with me today is the one and only Craig Rosenberg, here to explain to us his thoughts on the topic.

– Yeah, let’s just say it’s critical, right? It’s one of the most important things you can do. And so here, I’ll just keep it simple. So we want to figure out, we do want to have some understanding of the buyer’s journey. Not in the corny way, not like what coffee they drink and all that stuff, but you know how they typically evaluate products like yours.

And look, it doesn’t take that long. People make it really hard, but it’s not. It’s just simple things like do they trial? How many people are typically involved? Those things do matter because the next thing you’re gonna do is, I believe sales process should be driven by very specific but sequential plays.

So the first thing you do is discovery, then you do the pitch, then you do the demo, then you do the trial, then you deliver a proposal. I don’t like when they’re given, sort of, conceptual names. Sort of, give it the main pockets.

I think sales people think in terms of action. So you identify the plays you wanna run, okay? Those become the steps, and then you define it. You model it, you don’t just say, “We’re gonna do a demo.” You say, “Here’s how we’re gonna do the demo. Here’s how long it’s gonna take, here’s what’s gonna happen after. Here’s what we have to enable against it.”

And you build the process against the plays. I think, you know, I think we make it a lot harder than it needs to be. I think most people know the plays they should run. And let’s document that, and then let’s figure out how we want to run that.

That will inform a lot of things. For example, if a demo is a 20 minute quick one, it might not have as much of a meaningful impact on advancing the customer as the next step. Where as in some demos, like ERP demos are two hour demos, and they’re customized. You’re gonna come out of that with the ability to get them proposed. You know what I mean.

So it’s like two, so it’s the same play, it’s just how you do it is gonna have a direct impact on where that puts you in the sales process. But look man, I mean I’m telling you, we’re gonna figure out the plays. We’re gonna figure out the most common sequence in those plays, then we’ll model a process after that. One more thing before I go through those. The every buyers are on snowflake thing. Okay, cause they get that every once in a while. It’s always young guys like you too, it’s ridiculous.

– I never said that in my life.

– Yeah, I know, thank you. It’s funny because when someone says that to me I go, great, do they listen to your pitch, yes. Do they watch a demo, yes. Okay, do they do a trial, yes. I’m just thinking, so what’s different? I think people get confused about the ups and downs, in between play steps. And think that that’s some weird, individual. Everyone says “Ah,” and it’s this shoots and ladders. And it’s all over the place, of course it is. But at its core, there’s a reason why most sales process look the same, because most buying processes look the same.

– There you go.

– There you have it.

– I love it.

– How about that?

– Great.

– Alright.

– Sounds good.

– We need a Colonel sword.

– We’ll do it again, here.

– What is that? Oh, it’s just tape, we’re good. It’s not lettuce, yeah that’s good.

– Colonel

– Oh man, alright. Well that actually doesn’t stop getting old. Two things is the intro and the ending. Those things can make me laugh hysterically. If you can make me laugh, you’re one of my best friends for life. So you did that, so you did it buddy.

– Thank you sir.

One weekend, I was in Chicago for a baseball game with some friends. We all had similar mid-morning flight times out of O’Hare the following Tuesday morning. Being a group of six, we needed a large vehicle to get us from downtown to the airport.

No problem. The doorman at the hotel hooked us up with Leo, a private driver. He called Leo and told him what time we needed to be picked up.

Being a skeptical road veteran and having been left waiting too many times for rides that didn’t show up when I needed to catch a flight, I asked the doorman for Leo’s number and called him myself to get reassurance he would show at the scheduled time. Leo said the right things and I was comfortable that he’d indeed be there. And he had the right "sound" -- a positive and upbeat voice, good articulation, solid listening skills. I was actually looking forward to meeting him.

At about 15 minutes before the scheduled time my phone buzzed. It was a text from Leo saying that he was in the black Suburban parked in front of the hotel. He also attached a selfie with him and the SUV in the background, so I knew what and who to look for. Nice.

As we walked outside, he smiled and waved to us. He ran up to my group, shook hands, and grabbed as many bags as he could so we wouldn’t have to load them in ourselves. My friends and I piled into the neat and clean vehicle.

We left early enough to give ourselves a comfortable time cushion, knowing what Chicago traffic is typically like. Things were flowing smoothly for the first five miles ... and then traffic came to a screeching halt.

The highway became a parking lot.

Now we were getting a bit worried about time. Leo remained calm. He checked his phone and informed us there was an accident a couple of miles ahead.

"Not to worry," he assured us.

With the skills of a NASCAR driver, Leo navigated through groups of cars, wiggled over to the shoulder, and got off the interstate. He told us he planned to bypass all of the trouble.

We got an up-close view of the neighborhoods of the North side of Chicago as we cruised west toward the airport. He had an uncanny way of timing the traffic lights perfectly so we rarely came to a stop.

Knowing my way around Chicago reasonably well, I asked if we were going to stay on the street we were on all the way to Rosemont, just by the airport. "No," he replied. "We're going to get back on the interstate just ahead."

Uh ... okay. I was skeptical.

But sure enough, he navigated back onto the interstate -- now moving at full speed.

I jokingly told Leo that it seemed like he knew what he was doing. He looked at me with a smirk and a wink: "That’s what 20 years of experience will do for you."

We pulled into the airport with plenty of time to spare. Leo hopped out instantly to unload the bags, thanked us profusely, and asked us to call any time we were in Chicago. I assured him I would, and tipped him heartily.

What could've gone very wrong went very right. It was a professional job, done by a true professional.

What does this have to do with you and sales?

In my perspective, there are professional salespeople, and there are people who are merely in sales jobs.

We’ve all had what we considered "just a job" -- we showed up, we were present, we did the work with varying degrees of effort and accomplishment, we would have rather been somewhere else, and we got a paycheck for it. It was a means to an end.

On the other hand, there are professional salespeople -- just like Leo.

These are a few of the key activities that professional salespeople do to sell their products or services.

1. Research: The salesperson learns more about the lead or prospect.
2. Prospect and outreach: They reach out to the prospect via email, phone, or social media.
3. Build rapport: Through their conversations, the sales rep builds trust with the prospect and asks questions about their goals and challenges.
4. Find a solution: The salesperson comes up with a custom solution to address the prospect's needs.
5. Close the deal: If the prospect is interested in the solution, they'll purchase the product or service with the help of the salesperson.

So, how can a salesperson become a sales professional?

Here are six characteristics of a true sales professional.

1. Competence

Professionals are obsessed with getting better. They are lifelong students who know they will never graduate because there’s always more to learn.

I’m amazed at how few salespeople invest in their own self-development. They spend more on coffee than on what they do every day -- the work that puts money in their pocket.

Maybe you think it's your company's job to train you. But in my opinion, whatever your company does for you in this area is a bonus. Professionals know their level of competence and subsequent achievement is ultimately up to them.

Leo took pride in the fact that he had experience, and it was obvious that he works at learning whatever it takes to get people from point A to B in the best, most efficient way.

2. Communication

Professionals are excellent at connecting, engaging, and carrying on a conversation.

From the first moment we spoke by phone, to the helpful text, to the banter in the car, Leo built a relationship and instilled a feeling of confidence that we picked the right person.

In sales, everything we do relies on our ability to communicate. To me, communicating isn’t blasting out mass emails. That's being a computer jockey. Instead, it’s constantly learning, practicing, and refining your sales messaging.

One thing that hasn’t changed in our hyper-technologically advanced world is that the best way to sell is still by talking to a person. Instead of whining about how hard it is to get to buyers, professionals figure out a way to get through, get in, and have meaningful conversations.

3. Customer-First Attitude

Recently, I was dealing with a person who I would describe as someone who "holds a sales job." It was evident he did not care whether I bought or not. He sounded as if I was keeping him from something more important, and was actually annoyed when I asked questions that required him to -- gasp! -- research some information. (Which, you won't be surprised to hear, he ultimately did not do.)

Professionals know that customers buy for their reasons, not yours. That’s why I always tell salespeople to start by first examining customers and prospects, and what they want.

Leo had this nailed. He thoroughly understood what his customers wanted and delivered on every checkbox.

4. Reliability and Responsibility

It’s sad that standards have generally been lowered so much across the board to the extent that when people actually do what they say they’ll do, it’s somewhat of a surprise.

When Leo showed up 15 minutes early, I knew I was dealing with a professional. Professionals do what they say they’ll do. Period. Whatever it takes, you can count on them -- regardless of how major or minor the commitment.

You know people like this, and you also know the opposite. You can come up with names right now, can’t you?

Which group are you in?

5. Appearance

You know professional when you see and hear it. Everything about Leo’s smile, walk, talk, and vehicle projected a professional image.

Even if all or most of your sales take place primarily over the phone, you most certainly still project your appearance through the way you sound, your voice quality, your delivery, and your equipment.

Appearance also comes through in writing. Are your emails filled with value? Or are they closer to the untargeted canned templates that so many lazy sales-job-holders blast out?

6. Poise

It’s said that you can tell a lot about a person based on how they react in the face of adversity.

Any warm body off the street could take an incoming call order. A real sales professional proactively puts herself in risky positions all the time, because that's where the real selling takes place. She isn’t flustered by a tough screener or deterred by prospect objections. Resistance actually prompts her to ratchet it up another gear, bear down, and gracefully employ the correct words to address the situation in a calm, conversational way.

Do you think this comes naturally to people? Nope. It comes through learning, practice, and falling and getting back up time and again.

Leo didn’t panic, beat on his steering wheel, blare his horn, or curse at other drivers when we got stalled in traffic. He calmly assessed the situation, and thought, "Okay, what do I do next?" and then did it.

I love working with real sales professionals and have had the privilege and honor of dealing with thousands over the years. The best thing about being a professional is that you decide and control if you are one or not.

If you are now, congrats -- I know you'll keep it up.

If you aren’t yet at the level you’d like to be, no worries. Make the commitment, do whatever it takes in all of the above areas, and you'll get there.

Professional sales is, in my opinion, one of the best vocations in the world. We help others and deliver massive value while being rewarded handsomely in so many ways.

It’s an elite club. I’m glad you’re part of it.

To learn more, check out these steps to build a high-performing sales team next.

Editor's note: This post originally appeared on Smart Calling Online and is republished here with permission.

If you could do your job more effectively, would you? Of course! So even if you pick up just a handful of these habits, you will be on your way to becoming a more effective B2B marketer, as well as better prepared for future career success.

First, what is a habit? ‘Habits’ can be defined as behaviors that are repeated on a regular basis to the point where they are almost involuntary. Usually this term is used to refer to things in a negative context: smoking, swearing, comfort eating, maxing your credit cards, biting your nails, road rage, reality TV, etc. But habits can (and should) be positive and constructive. And once these habits are formed (science shows it takes about 66 days!), they are hard to break.

What makes a marketer great?

Below are some must-have qualities.

1) Having clearly defined objectives

How can you execute a marketing strategy without knowing what you are working toward? First, identify what you want to achieve in the next 30 days, the next 6 months, and the next year. Then determine how you will measure success. Is it website traffic? Meetings? Sales lead quality? Social engagement? Revenue? Number of new customers? Conversion rates? SEO ranking? Subscriber growth?

2) Embracing an agile marketing plan

Technology and customer behavior can now change seemingly in the blink of an eye. A plan (and a clear understanding of your objectives) will help you develop short-term goals to hit those long-term objectives. A plan can also be used in forecasting, scheduling blog posts and content, and organizing. Together, the plan and objectives will help you to make informed decisions about which marketing activities to execute and when. Highly effective marketers will have agility to adjust their plan to adapt to constant changes and new trends to deliver the best customer experience.

In agile marketing, the following are core values:

• Ability to respond to changes rather than strictly abiding by plans
• Emphasis on data-driven decisions instead of opinion- and convention-based decisions
• Rapid reactions rather than big-bang campaigns
• Smaller studies instead of a few large experiments
• Collaboration and regular stand-ups between teams colleagues

3) Understanding the target audience

Author Philip Kotler contends, “The aim of marketing is to make selling superfluous; the aim of marketing is to know and understand the customer so well that the product or services fits and sells itself.” On that note, who exactly is your audience? Use information such as demographics, geographics, and psychographics to develop personas. From there, consider the following questions:

• What are your audience’s pain points and challenges?
• What sorts of content and topics do they want? (Keep in mind that just as the selling space is always changing, so are the needs and expectations of your prospects and customers.)
• What marketing channels do they prefer: email, social media, mobile messaging, web, direct mail, events?
• How can you best help your audience? What problem are you solving, and how can you add value?

4) Knowing the competition

Continuously staying informed on your competitors is a crucial part of your business. A competitive analysis is your opportunity to take a deep dive into the market space and assess the competition. Answer these questions:

• Who is your competition? What do they do? Where are they? Who are their customers?
• What are the points of parity and points of differentiation between you and your competitors?
• How do consumers perceive your brand and you competitor’s brand?
• What is your unique value proposition?
• What can you learn from the successes and mistakes of your competitors?

Again, because the market is in constant flux, continuously re-assess your competition. Together with the knowledge about your audience, this information should drive your branding, messaging, and product strategy.

5) Taking the time to do research

What are the hot topics in your industry? Look at Google Trends, social media trending topics, and popular blogs to see what conversations are being had. Explore Buzzsumo to analyze what content performs best for any topic or competitor. What are industry experts talking about? Let this information guide your content creation process, ensuring your collateral is relevant and meaningful.

6) Considering new ideas and embracing creativity

Doing the same thing all the time opens the doors for burnout. Maybe you are in a content creation rut, or you are exhausting yourself as you crank out thousands of words. Consider fresh topics, try different types of content, experiment with new marketing channels! Just because you are a B2B marketer, it doesn’t mean your marketing efforts have to be flat and dry. Be willing to think outside the box. Those ideas that lean more on the side of creativity will help break through the noise of content overload. Creativity lends itself to innovative thinking, effective problem solving, out-of-the-box ideas, and fresh strategies. Never stop learning, listening, and questioning. With the proliferation of digital marketing in today’s B2B marketing space, there’s no room for staying stagnant – ‘the way you’ve always done things’ just won’t cut it anymore.

7) Paying attention to detail

You never get a second chance to make a good first impression. That is as true in life as it is in marketing. Paying attention to detail is important. Have you tested on multiple devices? You don’t want potential buyers or customers e-mailing you about a broken link, images or CTA.

8) Building customer relationships

It costs 5 times more to acquire a new customer than to sell additional services to an existing customer, stressing the importance of building and maintaining customer relationships. Relationship marketing forms a mutually beneficial relationship between the customer and the organization. For the customer, it’s less risky to do business with a familiar organization. For the company, loyal customers have a greater likelihood of future business, and satisfied customers will tell their friends about the positive experience.

9) Collaborating with both Sales and Marketing

Collaboration promotes trust and credibility, so don’t be afraid to ask for help from other teams and get their perspective to make your marketing campaign as successful as possible. Marketing and Sales teams should collaborate as much as possible, from acquiring and nurturing leads to closing them and driving customer success and advocacy. In other words, highly effective marketers will collaborate throughout the entire buyer’s journey.

10) Storytelling

Today’s buyers are aware they are constantly being marketed to, and many prefer to avoid the hard sell. They instead prefer to be educated, entertained and inspired. Highly effective marketers are good at storytelling, which makes their campaigns feel more genuine. It’s important to use emotional connections in storytelling to deliver value and make a lasting impact so buyers and customers won’t forget your brand. Good storytelling is highly effective in all types of marketing, from product marketing, demand generation to content marketing and everything in between.

11) Harnessing data and knowing your metrics and KPIs

Don’t underestimate the power of analytics. A recent CMO study reveals that 94% of CMOs believe “advanced analytics will play a significant role in helping them reach their goals,” yet 82% indicate that their companies are “under-prepared to capitalize on this data explosion.” These stats validate the importance of data for B2B marketers. Your marketing activities should be an ongoing cycle of testing, measuring, and improving. Look at what works and what doesn’t and then adjust your plan accordingly.

12) Using time and technology wisely

The use of technology can be a significant differentiator between effective and ineffective B2B marketers. But with thousands of tools available, how do you ever choose? A sales enablement tool can integrate with marketing automation, allowing marketing teams to bring the value of content marketing to sales. Highly effective markers use their time wisely. By utilizing a sales automation platform, marketers spend less time locating content and creating custom sales materials. Salespeople can discover and use winning marketing content for any given sales situation; and any prospect or customer engaging with that content can automatically be scored accordingly. As a result, marketers know the ROI of their marketing content and marketing campaigns. The analytics in a sales enablement tool offer insight into what content is most effective at progressing the deal and generates the highest ROI, helping sales reps provide the right content at the right time.

The way we buy products has fundamentally changed.

It’s not enough to just see a SaaS product before buying, we now need to actively test and use a product before we decide if it’s worth the price.

We see this in the wild. Companies who are product-led—like Slack, Twilio, and Atlassian—are the ones that are winning.

And in this product-led world, your best salesperson is your product. And because it’s your best salesperson, you should assign the team that owns it what you assign every other salesperson—a sales quota. Maybe even an aggressive one.

How to enable your product to sell

Before you can assign your product team a quantifiable quota, there are a few things to consider to ensure you’re correctly enabling your product to be ready to sell.

The first is to decide on either a freemium or a free trial experience. The second is to transition to PQLs. The third is to know—and improve—your product’s time-to-value. Finally, you’ll want to optimize your product with personalized in-app experiences.

Let’s explore how to do each of these four things.

Freemiums and free trials

In a product-led world, your users need to be able to get their hands on your product before paying and without being blocked by needing to speak to a sales representative.

Our friends at ProfitWell put together incredible research on the benefits of both freemium and free trials.

What they found was folks who converted from a freemium plan have a 10% better net retention on an absolute basis than their free trial counterparts. But, those on a free trial still have about a 10% better retention than those who aren’t using either free play.

ProfitWell also reported that both free trial and freemium models reduce customer acquisition costs (CAC).

Ultimately, either strategy can be hugely beneficial. You just need to figure out what works with your product and your company.

From MQLs and SQLs to PQLs

The second step in enabling your product to sell is to have a better predictor of a sale.

Traditionally, marketing teams have used marketing qualified leads (MQLs) or sales qualified leads (SQLs) to benchmark willingness to buy. Once your product has a free trial or freemium experience, you can use it as the indicator that a user is ready to buy—that’s a product-qualified lead (PQL).

In 2016, Mitch Morlando reported that PQLs convert more than 10 times more revenue than MQLs.

So if a PQL is a user of your product who has triggered some intent criteria, to find those criteria you’ll need to consider what actions in the product might show that a user is ready to either buy in a free trial, or is ready for an upgraded plan in a freemium product.

There are a few ways to do this:

1. Look at cohort analyses of previous purchasers
2. Create gated premium features and tracking clicks or learning more information about those
3. Limit use of features and tracking when their limit is tripped

Time-to-value

The third step to enabling your product to sell is to make sure your product delivers value quickly.

Mixpanel, a product analytics company, published a report in 2017 analyzing 572 products and 50 billion events. In their research, they found that the top 10% of products outperformed the average by nearly 100% when it comes to retention.

That’s a massive difference that trickles right down to revenue.

So what’s the difference?

If we superimpose the two graphs on top of each other, we see it pretty clearly. The slopes are basically identical. What’s different is what happens in week one. There are a lot of industry terms for this—activation, time-to-value, or the aha moment. No matter what you call it, user onboarding is crucial to get it right.

Now conventional wisdom has told us that delivering an incredible user experience is hard, it’s time consuming, and it’s expensive. One of the things we know about onboarding, is that it’s something that most companies struggle with. Whether because they misunderstand it or don’t execute properly, there’s just a lot of confusion.

We also know that if done well, effort put into improving onboarding can have an outsized effect on a business. Even mature, highly optimized companies like AdRoll, Canva, and YotPo have been able to see major gains with even just simple improvements in their time-to-value with improved user onboarding.

Personalized in-product experiences

The final step to enabling your product to sell is to empower it to be as personalized as a salesperson could be.

Why is that important? Even companies like Apple, Snapchat, and Uber struggle with user experience and explaining their products in an intuitive way. And that’s because all products and all businesses have at least two types of customers.

You can break that down into low spenders and high rollers, new users versus existing users, savvy versus non-savvy customers. Any product that is optimized only for one is missing out on a group of another.

Warby Parker, for instance, is a company that makes glasses for both men and women. Now, they could use some fancy technology to try to predict whether a user is looking for men’s frames or women’s frames, but instead, they just ask. That information helps them personalize the next experience after that.

Whether you ask or use imported data from a service like Clearbit, make sure your product is responding to the unique needs of the individual user.

But remember, the important thing about a personalized experience isn’t the product knowing who the person is, but rather what they want to do.

Wait—what does this mean for our sales team?

So, if the product team is now responsible for all of these things—showing a user the product, defining leads, getting a user to value and providing a personalized experience—what are your sales folks going to do?

The good news is that—by definition—PQLs are the warmest of leads. They have used your product, they know its value and they are (hopefully) happy campers. That should be music to a salesperson’s ears.

But again, your product should be selling most of them. So what work does that leave for your sales team?

In short, the high-value, strategic work. Instead of sales selling features (the folks they are talking to already know and use those), they can become a strategic lever. They should be prescriptive about how to use the product strategically and tailor it each specific organization they are talking to.

It also means that who you’re looking for as a salesperson will change. Find sales folks who are passionate about your product or the problem that it solves. Find folks that are so helpful that they blur the lines between customer success and sales and focus on great customer experience above all.

A shift beyond just product and sales

All of this might sound like it’s only a shift for your sales team and your product team, but in fact, it’s a shift for your entire company.

Assigning your product team a sales quota requires significant cross-functional work, one that requires an intense focus on user and customer experience. For example, marketing will need to be responsible for a user’s journey far longer than they would traditionally—from early awareness to all the way to becoming an active PQL.

As with any cross-functional endeavor, it’s important to have a common language and reporting system to enable internal alignment. A big part of this will be selecting the right success metrics. Consider cross-functional metrics like average revenue per user (ARPU), net churn, or customer lifetime value (CLV). These metrics are important, but slow moving.

Transitions are never easy, but being product-led is worth it. Now, all that’s left is figuring out how to get your product to ring your office’s sales gong.

The post Why PMs Should Carry a Sales Quota appeared first on OpenView Labs.

Successful customers are happy customers. Happy customers stick around and recommend your company to their friends. This is what makes customer success such an important part of any SaaS company’s success, and it’s especially critical for companies that employ a product led approach to growth. But how do organizations make customer success work at scale?

Typeform is a unique online form and survey solution that makes the data collecting process more conversational and engaging for respondents. Since I joined in 2014 as the 15th employee, the company has seen phenomenal growth and now boasts a user base of close to four million people. Over this time, our headcount has grown by over 10x, and our revenue has grown by over 60x.

Focusing on Customer Success from the very early days of Typeform has been instrumental in improving both retention and acquisition, and has played an important role in our overall achievements. Because of our high volumes and low ARPA, our approach to Customer Success was focused on scalability from day one.

Why is Customer Success so important to Typeform?

Typeform’s primary growth driver is virality. More than half of our monthly new business is generated by the viral loop created when people click the Powered by Typeform button at the bottom of our forms and surveys. The virality in our product is so strong that acquisition wasn’t our biggest challenge in the early days of Typeform. The challenge was retention.

Focusing on retention kills two birds with one stone. By making our customers more successful, we keep them around longer, and they end up driving more virality, which translates into more new business. It’s effectively a win-win-win for our customers, our retention and our new business.

While we made the early decision to invest in Customer Success, the structure of the team behind these efforts has evolved over time. I was originally hired as Head of Sales, but quickly transitioned to building out our customer success team in order to proactively improve retention. We started almost five years ago with a small support team of four people. Today, the team is about 40 people structured in six sub-teams within the Customer Success department including Support, Education, Customer Experience (CX), Customer Success Managers (CSMs), CS Operations and Sales.

Making Customer Success Scalable

Early on, we invested in building two teams that you don’t always see in an early-stage Customer Success team: our Education team and our Customer Experience team.

Education team

Our Education team is responsible for driving self-service through educational content, mainly in our Help Center. We analyze support tickets, help center visits, and other feedback in order to get insight into which topics and questions are most pressing for customers. We then use that information to make data-driven prioritization decisions on which content to produce.

Through our churn survey we found that a lot of our churn isn’t actually due to customers being unhappy, but rather from people successfully completing a project and not knowing what to do next. As a result, beyond the typical “feature-based” content one would expect in a help center, our education team also creates content that is “job-to-be-done-based” in order to inspire customers to do more with Typeform than they had initially intended.

Customer Experience (CX) team

Our Customer Experience team is a bit of a hybrid that combines research and one-to-many campaigns.

On the research side, our CX team creates a quarterly “Customer Voice” report which aggregates data from support tickets, NPS, churn surveys, sales calls, CSM calls, etc. The Customer Voice serves two purposes:

1. To close the loop with Product and influence the Product Roadmap
2. To generate insights and help us decide which projects to prioritize within CS

A good example of this is the insight that the majority of our churn is due to the lack of another use case (as described above). This insight inspired us to create the “What’s your next Typeform?” campaign which promotes inspirational content to customers who have completed a project. It’s triggered when a Typeform that was previously active (i.e. collecting results) all of the sudden stops collecting results, and it’s tailored to the customer’s profile (i.e. marketers will receive different content than HR professionals).

Operationalizing Customer Success: Segmentation and KPIs

Segmentation

Our Customer Success teams work together to offer Typeform customers a range of experiences tailored to their profile. We segment our user base into three categories:

1. Automated tech-touch. This segment is for customers who don’t pay enough to justify engagement from a CSM (in our case, this is 99% of our user base). This segment receives proactive automated engagement from our Customer Experience (CX) team’s one-to-many campaigns via email and in-app messages.
2. Proactive high-touch. This segment is a small portfolio of high-value customers who work with the Customer Success Managers (CSMs) in a high-touch, one-to-one engagement. They receive personalized onboarding and periodic catch-ups on the progress of their projects.
3. Just-in-time low-touch. This segment sits between the CX and CSM teams to take advantage of any opportunities for expansion or reactivation. For example, we may engage with a customer in a one-to-many (low-cost) campaign, but we offer the customer the ability to reply to us and turn the engagement into a one-to-one conversation if they’re ready to expand, or if they’re at risk of churning.

North Star metric

Early on, we decided that our department’s North Star metric would be net retention. Eventually, I realized that while this was very motivating for my team, it ultimately did more harm than good. The problem was that other departments assumed Customer Success had retention covered, and therefore didn’t include retention as part of their quarterly goals. This led to a lack of collaboration from other teams on projects that required cross-functional collaboration. The typical response was “improving net retention isn’t part of my OKRs, so I can’t prioritize this project.” While I still believe that net retention should remain our North Star metric, we shifted from being the “owner” of net retention to becoming the “champions” of net retention and elevating it to a company-wide metric (rather than solely a Customer Success one). As the “retention champions,” we’re still responsible for analyzing and reporting on retention KPIs and insights, but we’re no longer responsible for driving it alone.

Besides our common North Star metric, each team in Customer Success has its own set of leading metrics that it focuses on improving.

Leading vs. lagging indicators

Retention is a lagging indicator. For this reason, it’s important to identify leading indicators that we can focus on improving, and which will improve retention in the longer-term. At Typeform, we’re lucky to have a great data team who generate insights for us about which behaviors are leading indicators to our customers sticking around. For example, we learned that the leading indicator that correlates most highly to retention is the number of Typeforms a customer creates. This is a leading indicator we try to impact through CX campaigns and inspirational education content.

There are also some features that instantly make customers more “sticky” and are leading indicators of retention. Examples at Typeform are our team feature and integrations. Basically, customers that use our team feature and/or our integrations don’t churn. This insight helps us focus on making sure that we promote the adoption of those features, and that those features are particularly well documented in our Help Center.

Some leading indicators might not be as obvious as others. For example, the leading indicator that’s most important for our CSM team has nothing to do with usage or features. For our CSM team, having a proper kickoff call with the customer’s team is the best leading indicator of whether one of our high-touch customers will stick around in the long term.

Sales as part of the Customer Success journey

At Typeform, Sales is a small team of four people that help inbound leads make the decision of whether or not to purchase a Typeform license. The Sales team fell under Customer Success somewhat by accident as I was the only person at Typeform with a sales background at the time we decided to build the team. That said, if I were to do it all over again today, I would have the same setup.

At Typeform we approach sales in a very different way than what most people associate with a traditional sales function. For example, our sales team isn’t commissioned, which removes the negative incentive to try to close deals that might not be the right fit for the customer. Instead, we take more of a consultative approach and openly tell customers if we don’t think that we are the best tool for them given their circumstances. We want to make sure that we are setting our customers up for success.

Another unusual aspect of our sales team is that we only give ourselves credit for the revenue we bring in if the customer is still paying after two months. As a result, our Sales team and the rest of our Customer Success team are all working to achieve the same outcomes – which removes a lot of the typical friction companies get between their CS and Sales departments.

Getting Started with Customer Success–three takeaways

I am regularly asked by early-stage startups what I think are the most important ingredients in building a scalable and impactful Customer Success organization. Below are my top three:

1. Hire the right people. What this really means is “be patient and invest whatever time it takes to interview and hire the right people.” The reason we’ve done well in CS at Typeform is that we have a high-performing team with a great culture.
2. Pay attention to the data. Understanding leading indicators is invaluable when it comes to knowing where your team needs to focus. Using the data will help you go from being reactive to proactive.
3. Collaborate. Retention is a company-wide team effort, and everybody needs to keep that in mind. When you’re setting up a customer success team, you need to make sure that everyone else—from product to marketing—is on board with your goals and the projects you’re prioritizing.

Happy customers are everyone’s responsibility, but a well-organized and empowered Customer Success team can help bring strategic focus and operational efficiency to the larger effort so that the whole thing can scale as your business grows.

The post Insights from Typeform: Leveraging Customer Success to Scale Your Business appeared first on OpenView Labs.

When it comes to product led growth, most of us are quick to think that there’s no need for human involvement—after all, the product leads the sale. This couldn’t be further from the truth. Infusing a human element into your product led go-to-market strategy gives you the best of both worlds.

The SaaS world of today adheres to two main go-to-market strategies. Sales and marketing-led and product-led. But there’s a third strategy that most SaaS companies are moving to. Introducing, product-assisted growth.

The problem with traditional go-to-market strategies

Sales and marketing-led strategies have been the norm for some time. Marketing teams create messaging to attract buyers. Salespeople then help prospective customers evaluate their solution. It’s not until they’re further down the funnel that the prospect is even presented the product and even then, it’s done so in a safe, canned demo environment.

Sales and marketing-led growth is great for finding a product-market fit, as salespeople are highly in tune with customer needs. However, as you scale you are likely to discover a gap between what customers think your product can do and what it’s actually capable of. Then you’re left scrambling to patch the revenue leak with additional customer success.

Product-led strategies live on the other end of the spectrum. Prospects are offered the chance to see the product before they speak to a salesperson. This is usually in the form of a limited functionality freemium offer or a free trial. In some low-touch purchase models, salespeople aren’t involved at all. Slack, Dropbox, and Atlassian are all poster children for the growth outcomes of a product-led go-to-market strategy done well.

Product-led strategies bridge this customer expectation gap by getting customers into your product from very early on during their evaluation. But if your freemium product or trial environment isn’t built to drive a prospect to the buying stage, you lose the fight before it even begins. And, there’s no salesperson to assuage the situation and help them along.

Product-assisted strategy lives between sales-led and product-led strategies. Prospective customers can gain access to a product without speaking to a sales rep, however, they must interact with one if they want to purchase the offering.

The benefits of a product-assisted strategy

According to a 2018 study by TrustRadius, directly experiencing your product increases a buyer’s trust. When it comes to information sources buyers trust most, having prior firsthand experience in the product ranks number one, followed closely by the opportunity to engage in a free trial/account. There is no better way to establish trust with your prospective buyer.

Establishing trust is one of the most difficult things to achieve at scale. Trust between a vendor and customers is key to unlocking a flywheel of growth across new customers, repeat customers and referrals.

Setting your product-assisted strategy up for success

In order for your sales team to highlight the most compelling areas of your offering to prospects, they need information. This information is collected in a variety of ways, the most critical being the “discovery call.” The best sales reps understand the challenges a prospect is looking to address and highlights how their product or service addresses these pain points in the most compelling way possible.

With a product-assisted method, your prospects are exploring ways your product can help them without direct influence from your sales team. This can cause apprehension in your sales team, since it can feel like you’ve taken away something that was fundamental to their job. “What happens if someone signs up for my product and leaves before I have a chance to highlight all the key areas?”

It’s a legitimate concern. While there are many product questions you need to be able to answer before moving to a product-assisted go-to-market motion, the most important one is (and be honest), “How intuitive is my product? Are my in-app engagements good enough for users to realize value without hand-holding?” This doesn’t mean your product isn’t valuable, but it’s unlikely a customer will endure an unintuitive product or a complicated setup process if they aren’t bought in on a value proposition that’s perceived to be worth the effort.

In my article, “Boost Enterprise Sales with Leads From Product Trials,” I listed the three operation components you need: mapping the buyer journey to your sales process, measuring Product Qualified Leads, and creating the Product-to-Sales handoff.

Once you’ve got the operational pieces in place, you’re able to then make your sales team part of the product trial experience.

How Gainsight does product-assisted growth

Let me walk you through an example of our product-assisted model here at Gainsight PX. We offer a free tier of our product. A prospect can sign up and directly access a full-featured version of our product, or if they choose to speak with someone first, they can request a demo as well.

The “Request a Demo” route follows the traditional path—a prospect is introduced to a sales team member to evaluate if our offering is best for them. If the prospect signs up for our free product trial, we initiate a behavior-driven nurture in the app and via email. These engagements are meant to educate and guide them through our product so they can find and solve their personal pain points.

If the person who signs up matches our Ideal Customer Profile, our inside sales team will research the customer and then reach out via email to let the prospect know there is someone available if they have questions. This adds value for the prospect while providing your sales rep with a compelling reason to initiate contact. If the prospect prefers to continue their use of the free offering unassisted by one of our reps, the rep will pause outreaches until the next critical moment occurs.

We’ve seen that email outreaches from our sales team, immediately following a free trial signup, have a 67% open rate and an 18% reply rate. Compare that to the reply rate of other email outreaches following an inbound activity, such as downloading a white paper or attending a webinar, and you’re looking at a 6x increase. Information like what features the prospect uses, or doesn’t use, or who they invite to join them in the trial becomes insights reps can use to personalize their follow-ups.

When the prospect reaches the usage threshold offered within the free tier, they become a PQL, or Product Qualified Lead. The customer experience through this process is outlined in the diagram below.

The prospect’s experience with the product changes at this point. This triggers an automated email to the prospect informing them they have a limited time left to use the offering, as they have exceeded the usage limit. We then offer a path to contact one of our reps to review with the prospect the paid offering that is most aligned with their objectives.

This email is followed with an introduction to the sales rep they will be speaking with. The rep has visibility into what the prospect has done with the product and is in a better position than before to recommend the appropriate offer. With any free offering, there can be an opportunity for misuse. We limit opportunities for misuse by revoking access to the product if there isn’t an open dialog with our sales team. In other words, the prospect reaches the “paywall.”

Product-assisted go-to-market: a powerful, new way to grow

Leveraging two powerful forces within your company—your product and your sales team—can help you successfully cultivate trust with your prospects. This not only results in a quicker sales cycle, but leads to long-term satisfied customers. All product-led and product-assisted approaches are works-in-progress and evolve based on our learnings as a community. The key to improvement is to define and understand your baseline conversion metrics, research and run experiments and measure the impact.

How can you build a better product experience that promotes growth? What’s stopping you from creating this synergy in your company? I’d love to hear your thoughts.

The post Product-Assisted Growth: The Best Kept Secret of Product Led Companies appeared first on OpenView Labs.

I’ve been a part of building freemium strategies at three companies: Pure Chat (seed round), Profitwell (bootstrapped) and Pluralsight (Nasdaq: PS). I only work at companies that start with the letter “P.” Just kidding.

I’ve learned that freemium can accelerate growth after you nail product-market fit. In this article, I’ll share with you my three freemium insights learned through personal experience:

• • • Why customer value is key
    • Why freemium is an acquisition strategy, not a revenue model
    • Why you need a lot of data before testing freemium

Why Customer Value is Key

After leading product management and product marketing at a $100M software company, I thought I’d put my product led growth strategies to the test at Pure Chat. My hypothesis was that if we applied customer-driven product development and value-based messaging, we could accelerate growth. After a ton of qualitative customer interviews, it was clear that our target market was true small businesses under 50 employees. We learned that while most of the live chat space was focused on customer service (logging tickets, etc), small businesses and startups were using live chat on their websites to talk to prospects. In other words, the value metric for our customers was new leads.

At the time, our pricing was built around the number of live chats (real-time conversations). If you got more than 15 live chats in a month, you needed to upgrade. And when you weren’t available to have real-time conversations, our chat window switched over to a simple form.

If you’ve ever met a small business owner or a startup founder, you know this – they don’t have a lot of time. This means they really don’t have a lot of time to wait for the serendipitous moment when a prospect on their website happens to have a question.

Next, we started looking at usage data with this lens. It turned out that we had a decent amount of customers who hit the live chat limit each month and converted. We had even more free customers who got way more than 15 leads each month using our software and the pop-up form!

The product was delivering tangible, measurable value beyond the initial intent, and with this insight, we optimized the business for this metric. Aligning customer value to the product and go-to-market was key. Conversions from free to paid grew immediately when we changed our packaging. For the year that followed, annual recurring revenue grew 230%.

Why Freemium is an Acquisition Strategy, Not a Revenue Model

When I joined ProfitWell, they were much further down the freemium path. The problem Profitwell was solving in the early days was accurate SaaS metrics all in one place. Very few companies had really figured out how to calculate accurate SaaS metrics in real-time based on all the nuances of different billing system APIs, subscription models, etc. Once you had a clear picture of your SaaS metrics, you could see where you needed to improve. And if you happened to need help with churn, ProfitWell had a paid product to help with exactly that. The free product helped identify what the paid product solved.

What happens when you give away a superior product? Happy customers. And what do happy customers do? They tell their friends. Word of mouth is the most effective marketing channel on the planet.

How do we know it works? Research from Profitwell has found that customer acquisition cost (CAC) is up 50% in the last five years across B2B and B2C. Comparatively, CAC for freemium businesses is only up 25%.

Why You Need a Lot of Data Before Testing Freemium

We know freemium done right works as a terrific product led growth strategy. It’s important, however, to get really clear on what I mean by freemium. Traditional freemium is an acquisition strategy. It’s an offering that’s free forever – giving access to limited, yet valuable functionality. It is not a free trial. Free trials are typically time-bound (i.e. Spotify or Netflix) and may or may not give access to limited functionality.

No matter the stage of growth of your business, it’s important to get clear on objectives before testing into a freemium strategy. If done correctly, freemium allows you to create a wider top-of-funnel, creates a more cost-effective path to paid (in-product conversions, automation, word of mouth) and enables usage and data collection to inform further product insights.

There are a lot of examples of freemium gone wrong (sorry Evernote, I use you daily but you’ve given me no reason to give you any money). And there are a lot of examples of killer freemium strategies from giants like Dropbox and Slack.

Before you test this strategy for your own business you’ll want to consider a few key components and analyze a lot of data sets.

• • • Cannibalism: Don’t build your packaging in a way in which your free offering cannibalizes your paid offerings. Don’t give away the whole meal. Give an appetizer. And if you don’t know what your target customers value most about your product, don’t do freemium (yet). Collect survey data or conduct some interviews to understand value.
    • Customer Experience: Intentionally design your free experience so that it maximizes the speed to value and makes it easy to upgrade. Also, if you’re a small startup, make sure you have an infrastructure built to scale. A slow or disruptive experience will work against you. Gather data through prototype testing first!
    • Channels: Make sure you track and understand which acquisition channels (paid ads, paid social, organic social, content syndication, etc.) are most effective. Not all channels are created equal, so some channels will work better for freemium than others.
    • Conversion: The paid product and message should be aligned with the customer value in the free offering. The upsell should be compelling. Be prepared to optimize conversion paths using in-product CTAs (without being annoying), nurture sequences, re-targeting, etc.
    • Funnel metrics: If you don’t have a predictable upsell model in place (segmentation, automation, and even sales reps when applicable), don’t try freemium. Make sure you have clearly defined stages of your marketing funnel and processes built and working to convert prospects through each stage.

Based on all of these lessons I had learned, it became fairly clear how to test freemium at Pluralsight. We had acquired technology that allowed users to measure their tech skills in 5 minutes or less. We knew that this functionality was truly unique and vastly superior to anything else in the market. Conventional thinking might argue that we should have kept it behind the paywall, but we didn’t.

Once we had an idea of how we wanted to implement, we went to work! It took a few months (and a little convincing) for the product teams to separate this feature from the rest of the platform in a way that we could securely permission it for free users. We also needed a few months to test this strategy from a marketing perspective. We had this free offering available (and unbranded) in the market for several months before our official launch. During the testing period, we gathered data around usage, conversion rates and the percentage of net new contacts to our database. We officially announced Skill IQ, the first member of the Pluralsight IQ family, in August 2017 at Pluralsight LIVE.

We made it possible for anyone, anywhere to measure their proficiency in more than 130 technologies for free with Skill IQ (and get access to a few free courses from our experts).

Using Skill IQ, more than 1.6 million technology skills have been benchmarked worldwide (as of Q4 2018).

We have now launched two major freemium products – Role IQ and Skill IQ – that feed the marketing funnel in a substantial way. These products, which include a social-sharing component, have also contributed to brand awareness.

I hope these three real-world experiences highlight why getting customer value right, intentionally building an acquisition strategy and leveraging a ton of data to inform freemium can help your business accelerate growth at any stage.

Build a business first, then make (part of) it free.

The post Freemium Can Work at Any Stage of Growth if Anchored to Value appeared first on OpenView Labs.

Hard stop. I’m not saying that sales teams aren’t important. We know that in order for companies to be successful, every department, including sales, needs to be highly-functional and supported (more importantly) to execute on the goals the company has set out to achieve.

Instead of defending my position, I’m going to lay out some facts about teams in growth stage companies, and how everything has changed. This is bigger than moving from lead scoring to product qualified leads, instead of blog posts viewed and demo requests. This is about one, holistic view where sales and product equally influence revenue. Just like sales and marketing, I’d argue that marketing and product need to be fully integrated, and highly collaborative, in order to achieve true product led growth.

Let’s dive in.

The Origins of Product-Market Fit

Industry leaders have said that some of the best marketing comes from your product. Will people use it? Will they pay for it? Will they tell everyone about it? When you’ve found product-market fit, or that segment of the market that has a problem your product can solve, then you can really scale your business. From lemonade stands to Wendy’s locations, every entrepreneur has gracefully danced with how to find product-market fit fast enough to win the market, and not run out of money.

That’s why, early on, most companies hire product and engineering way before marketing. According to the Atlantic, about 30% of employees are in product and engineering at startups. Forbes also noted that of the first five employees of a startup, about 50% are technical or in product roles.

Early companies lean toward product led companies, and right around a B round of funding into the growth phase, the go-to-market arm ramps up, and sales and marketing consume 50% of the roster.

Why do we distance ourselves from our roots? Why do we pour fire on a new arm of the business, instead of what got us this far?

Generating leads in a growth stage company

Now that you’ve found product-market fit, you want more leads – of course! If you work for a company with a killer free trial, your challenge is conversion to paid accounts. If it’s a higher barrier to entry, you focus on better education and conversion down the funnel. More of the marketing and sales collabs at this stage consist 0f creating MQL activities and sales enablement materials to push the buyer along.

But what if a current customer looks exactly like that passive blog subscriber who downloaded an eBook three months ago? How can you bring them relevant information that you’ve learned further down the funnel, from company ABC?

You need to view generating leads in growth stage companies as a process that comes from both sides: insights and triggers in the product to generate upsells and advocacy, and at the top from sales and market movement.

Here’s how to do it.

How to Integrate Product, Marketing AND Sales

For years we’ve talked about how to get sales and marketing to communicate better; about how to convert better leads, and educate buyers down the funnel. The challenge is that the sale doesn’t stop there. In fact, I’d argue that MQLs, SQLs and PQLs should all be viewed in the same journey. Hand-raising actions on a demo or pricing page is just as impactful as someone in your product trying to add more users when their account doesn’t let them.

Just like there are product marketers, bridging the gap between product and marketing, I’d argue we need customer success to evolve to be a buyer engineer, or a customer architect, where every insight within the buyer journey can influence different parts of the funnel.

We have the luxury of trying to figure all of this out in an age where email opens are low and click-through-rates are even lower. We’re building incredible product experiences and slamming demo requests and BANT (sales acronym for readiness to buy) processes down customers throats. It’s time we all work together so that product can influence sales, and sales can influence better product experiences.

The post Stop Focusing on Sales and Get Back to Product appeared first on OpenView Labs.

Onboarding sales reps is painful — both in terms of the cost and delay in achieving return on training investment. And the cost of talent acquisition, talent management, and talent development isn’t cheap. Companies often spend upwards of $5,000 in training programs, shadowing tenured sales employees’ daily activities, and inefficiencies that are natural to a new sales person. The delay in achieving comparable performance to those tenured sales people will usually exceed one full year.

In the meantime, these new sales reps feel the pinch of management expectations, dips in compensation, and lack of confidence as they work to absorb the skills and knowledge necessary to be a top performer.

Research in Intent Data Can Help

• Intent data reflects buyer behavior today which allows new sales people to react to pending deals immediately. Rather than spend 100% of their time pure cold-calling to build a waterfall forecast, deals naturally seat themselves in the funnel based which leads to earlier success.
• Sales reps can master the skill set of a particular point in the funnel (ex. vendor comparisons) and build other funnel skill sets in logical order.
• Best-in-Class intent data reflects not only the company showing intent but also the location and persona-based contacts which reduces wasted cold-calling time (a particular drag on a new salesperson’s time).
• Intent data is an insightful means of determining quota potential of a territory. Rather than company headquarters or population censuses or other methods that do not reflect analytical rigor, intent-based territory definitions mean quotas are attainable as evidenced by actual behavior or potential buyers.
• Content support is easier to master by a new sales rep when it is indexed through intent. The sales rep simply chooses those content pieces that match the intent scores of the account they are calling on.

Beyond Landing a Deal

Aberdeen research shows that, overall, average employee tenure sits between 3-5 year timeframe for Best-in-Class companies, and 5-7 years for All Others.

But these numbers are changing with the shift in workforce demographics. Millennials are now the largest generation in the U.S. labor force, and according to the 2016 Deloitte Millennial Survey, many millennial already have one foot out the door — 25% intend to leave their current job within a year and 44% within two years. But why?

Forbes lists out the top four reasons why sales reps quit, one of which being “They don’t understand that data and insights are their secret weapons.” Well, intent data is the secret weapon that leads to more wins in the sales pipeline. Prospective buyers emit signals of their purchase intent, and new sales reps utilizing these signals are able to engage buyers at the exact moment of purchase intent. Inevitably, these sales reps are hitting their quotas, exceeding management expectations, and acquiring the confidence and knowledge of a top-performer faster than previously possible.

The correlation is clear: Utilizing intent data derives meaningful insights into key market trends, demystifying buyer intent. And as a result, it eases onboarding of your sales reps, enables them to close more deals, be more engaged, and stick it out for the long-haul.

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Do you know which specific companies are currently in-market to buy your product?

Wouldn’t it be easier to sell to them if you already knew who they were, what they thought of you, and what they thought of your competitors?

Good news – It is now possible to know this, with up to 91% accuracy. Check out Aberdeen’s comprehensive report Demystifying B2B Purchase Intent Data to learn more.

Vancouver, BC, March 8, 2019--PlaceSpeak announced this week its integration with NationBuilder, a community engagement software used by organizations worldwide.

Ethanol is the cleaner alternative fuel that got shoved aside through a series of unfortunate events. It was the fuel the Model T was designed to burn. It was the fuel that all auto manufacturers designed engines to run on. It burned far cleaner than kerosene, cleaner than oil-based fuels, it was in demand and it was abundant.

The U.S. government, however, saw it as a cash cow when it was in need of a tax plan that would help pay for the Civil War — a tax that increased the price of ethanol to more than $2 a gallon in 1864, while kerosene was taxed at 10 cents. Then in 1920, prohibition banned the production of ethanol for any use because it is alcohol.

Despite burning cleaner, despite solving what is known as engine knock and despite cleaner emissions, ethanol has languished as a fuel. It’s a solution that is readily accessible and frequently overlooked.

Marc Rauch, a car lover, vice-president of the Auto Channel and an accidental environmentalist, is leading the charge to invigorate a passion for ethanol, a fuel he says “is the answer we’re looking for. It’s the answer to our energy needs, it’s the answer to self-sufficiency, it’s the environmental solution that already exists.”

We invited Marc Rauch to join us for a Conversation That Matters about a why ethanol gets so little respect as a fuel and why we need to learn to love it.

Simon Fraser University’s Centre for Dialogue presents Conversations That Matter. Join veteran Broadcaster Stuart McNish each week for an important and engaging Conversation about the issues shaping our future.

Please become a Patreon subscriber and support the production of this program, with a $1 pledge here.

Most jobs require at least some degree of creativity, but improving creative thinking isn’t the same as improving your raw productive output. You may be able to master some basic productivity habits, like eliminating distractions and interruptions, but even if you’re focusing exclusively on the problem in front of you, you can’t summon the creativity necessary to solve it by sheer force of will.

Fortunately, there are some strategies that can help you be more creative, both in the moment you need that creative boost and in your overall life. Ultimately, greater, more flexible creativity will help you accomplish your responsibilities faster—and more successfully.

The Need for Improving Creative Thinking

Even if you don’t feel your role requires creativity, creative inspiration can help you in multiple ways:

• Creative applications. There are some obvious applications for improved creativity. If you’re responsible for designing websites, coming up with new product ideas, or any other tasks that require some degree of inherent creativity, it pays to be able to think in novel ways. You’ll come up with new ideas faster, and will end up with higher quality work.
• Solving Any problem that needs to be solved can be solved more efficiently if you’re thinking creatively. For example, if you’re not able to meet a deadline you promised your client, thinking creatively could help you discover an alternative solution—or at least come up with a strategy for how to inform your client. You can also use creative problem solving to better navigate personal disputes, or improve logistics.
• Avoiding burnout. Thinking creatively can help you avoid burnout as well. Doing your job in new, interesting ways, and thinking about your surroundings in unique ways can keep you attentive and engaged in your responsibilities.

Why You Can’t Force Creativity

Unfortunately, creativity isn’t something you can force. In fact, the harder you think about a problem that requires a creative solution, the more frustrated you’ll likely get—and the further you’ll get from a potential solution. Creativity is the result of several interacting elements in your environment and in your own mind, requiring relaxation, novel input sources, and unique thought patterns. Trying to brute-force a new revelation isn’t going to work. Instead, you need to structure your environment and optimize your habits to encourage creativity naturally.

Sources of Creative Inspiration

Rely on these potential sources of inspiration to think more creatively in your daily life:

1. You can also stimulate your auditory sense by putting on the right type of music.

   For the most part, music can help you focus and become more productive, but the genre and nature of the music you choose does matter. For many people, lyric-heavy music is more distracting than soothing, and if you play music that falls outside your personal taste, you’ll end up hating it. Instead, choose music you personally prefer, and ideally, some songs with abstract and creative touches. Keep it playing at a low- to moderate-volume throughout the day.

2. Abstract art.

   Let’s turn our attention to our visual sense. Staring at a computer screen, or looking at the problem you’re trying to solve isn’t going to help you think in new, creative ways. Instead, it’s much better to focus on something that inspires something different. This Hang some abstract art on the walls of your office and gaze at it whenever you need to decompress and think up some new ideas. Try not to think about it too much; just let your mind wander while you focus on it.

3. Essential oils.
   

   One of the best ways to stimulate creativity is to expose your senses to new experiences. You can start by using different business essential oils to stimulate your olfactory sense. Different scents are claimed to have different effects; for example, lavender is associated with relaxation.
   Scientific evidence on these effects vary, but one thing is certain; surrounding yourself with an interesting and/or pleasant scent can transform your surroundings and introduce more novelty into your environment. Choose a handful of essential oils you like and keep them nearby, then choose one or cycle through them when you’re in need of relaxation or something new in your environment.

4. Shower More.

   There’s a reason it’s cliché to think up new, creative ideas in the shower. It’s because there’s nothing to distract us and nothing to occupy our attention; instead of concentrating hard on a problem or getting pulled in different directions, we tend to “zone out” as we’re surrounded by the ambient noise of falling water.
   Accordingly, one of the best ways to think more creatively is to take a break. Walk away from whatever you’re working on, and give yourself space. Your subconscious mind will continue working on the problem even if you’re not focusing on it, and you may end up with your “eureka” moment as soon as you walk away.

5. Physical Exercise.

   Similarly, try getting some physical exercise, and don’t listen to music or podcasts while you’re doing it. Working out is a kind of break; you won’t have to think too hard about what you’re doing, so your mind will feel free to wander. In addition, you’ll stimulate the flow of endorphins and relieve stress, so you can think more clearly and work more productively when you return to the task at hand.
   For even more benefits, try jogging, walking, or biking to somewhere you’ve never been before—which happens to coincide with our next tip.

6. New environments.

   It’s hard to think creatively when you’re stuck in the same cubicle or office. Improving creative thinking is sparked by novel experiences, so it’s important to seek out new environments on a regular basis. Going for a walk around the block could be enough to get those creative juices rolling, but it’s even better to go to a new coworking space, a new café, or somewhere else you’ve never been before. Even changing the office furniture around may be enough to give you some marginal benefits.

7. Idea networks.

   If you don’t know where to start solving the problem, you can brainstorm using an idea network. Take a piece of paper, write down the central idea, theme, or problem you’re trying to brainstorm around, and circle it. Then, draw lines to other terms, concepts, or subtypes that you associate with this core concept. Map those to even more related terms, and so on. In just a few minutes, you’ll have a physical map of the concept, which you can use to direct your thinking and consider pocket concepts you might have overlooked.

8. Appropriate timing.

   Some people are naturally more creative and more productive at certain times of day. If you’re consistently working at a time you feel sluggish or braindead, you’re essentially wasting your time. Morning person? Try to do your creative work in the morning. If you prefer evenings, optimize your schedule for more evening work. You can also use timing to facilitate creative exercises, like setting a timer and writing as many ideas as you can before time runs out.

9. Other voices and perspectives.

   We often struggle to think creatively because of the limitations of our own We see things from only one point of view, and that prevents us from “thinking outside the box.” To resolve this, you need to talk to other people and get their perspectives. If you’re trying to solve a problem, talk to other people dealing with the same problem, or even better, talk to someone totally removed from the problem—they may see it in a different way, and one that illuminates the true root cause of the problem.

10. Sleep.

    You need to be well-rested to accomplish your best thinking, and some evidence suggests that sleep is a valuable opportunity for our minds to forge new connections. If you’re stuck on a tough problem, consider taking a short nap, and if you find yourself needing to think up new, creative solutions on a regular basis, pay close attention to your sleep habits. Aim to get the recommended 7 to 9 hours of sleep every night, and keep a consistent sleep schedule while you’re at it.

Bonus Tips for Improving Creative Thinking

You can also see better results by adopting the following:

• Be okay with bad ideas.
  

  You won’t get anywhere if you’re striving for the “perfect” idea and you refuse to tolerate anything else. Be okay with bad ideas; if you keep generating new material, eventually, you’ll find a diamond in the rough.

• Think like a kid (or an amateur).
  

  Change your perspective by intentionally thinking like a kid, or an amateur who has no idea what to make of this topic; it can illuminate new dimensions of the concept you wouldn’t ordinarily consider.

• You don’t have to do this alone. Consider crowdsourcing the brainstorming process. Ask the people in your immediate vicinity to help you think up new ideas, or by using an online platform. Use a survey on social media to gather unique opinions and perspectives remotely.

• Diversify your strategies.

  Most importantly, remember that creativity is all about novelty. If you use the same strategies and the same approaches over and over, you won’t be able to think up anything new. Mix things up from time to time, and experiment with new angles.

You’ll be amazed how much time you can save and how much stronger your ideas will become once you learn how to think more creatively—without straining yourself in the process. These strategies won’t work equally well for everyone, but if you change your habits and start working new approaches into your rotation, you’ll almost certainly see results.

The post 10 Strategies for Improving Creative Thinking and Having Time To Do It appeared first on Calendar.

By Tibor Shanto

I think it was in Skip Miller’s book that I read that a manager should know how his year will end by the Q1. Not taking anything away from that great insight and practice in terms of creating and driving strategy for your teams, one key factor has changed, which may you be the judge, change time horizons for front line reps, and by extension, their managers, and all the calculations this impacts.

The Change

The big change, is as you would expect, is driven by buyer behaviour, and since the buyer pays the commissions, it is important that we adjust our calculations and actions. Buying cycles have expanded more than measurably. As highlighted in a piece on LinkedIn, based on research by the then CEB, while there is no shortage of information available to buyers, value as a salesperson now is in providing context, insight and confidence in moving forward. Other sources confirm this trend in lengthening buy cycles. So, when buyers tell you that they have earmark four months for a decision based on the last time they made the purchase, say four or five years ago; current buying team members may not have even gone through a buying cycle before, and behave differently than their predecessors. Many buyers report that what they thought would take four months to decide can stretch to six, seven months or more.

Debating the whys and how we should respond can be the subject of a few posts (book, movie), so for the moment, let’s focus on how this impacts your plan and execution.

On the field, that is with a prospect in Discovery, sellers need to be counter-intuitive. Many working on old timeframes and presumed related work-flows, get frustrated as the cycles stretch. They see it as and feel it as, the sale getting away from them, when it is not, it is just unfolding in a different than expected (badly trained/enabled). As sellers look for ways to “create urgency”, it can surface as frustration, which can itself contribute to lengthening the cycle. Sellers should react by exploring and unpacking not only things specific to the buyer’s criteria, and as importantly the buyer’s curiosity. Once you accept that you can’t hurry, but can shorten the cycle, you can take the time to educate the client. The key is not to necessarily educate on your product, product is product, but how they can make a decision. How to deal with obstacles, internal and external. You no doubt have completed numerous successful cycles in the last year or two, share the road map with them, be the subject matter expert; show them it is OK to take a bit of time to make an important decision.

The Other Side

The other adjustment that has to be made, in reality, the easier one, is to become an effective prospector. When you remove all the emotion and look at the numbers, it is not a question of how long your cycle is, but how many cycles you initiate and successfully complete in the course of a fiscal year. Shortening the cycle, but not increasing your number of prospects, just leaves you a lot of idle time in Q4. But since everybody seems to be mighty busy in Q4, I am going to assume it is not working.

On the other hand, if you increase the number of prospects in your pipeline, you will close more business even if your cycle does not shrink.

So the key, going back to the start, is to know the length of your cycle, and most sellers and their managers do not. Once you know how long it takes you to process something, all you need to worry about is your inputs.

The post Don’t Sell Yourself Short appeared first on TiborShanto.com.

Discover how you can find champions for your business/organization

Your customers are your greatest weapons to driving new business. How, you may ask? Because these are the people who will one day become the champions of your business.

A champion is a person who advocates for your organization’s, capabilities and publicly shares their approval. These types of customers can be an asset to your marketing and sales strategy. But, how do you get an ordinary customer to become a champion for your business?

You provide value to their business goals and leave them with an unforgettable experience that is worth talking about. Exceptional experience starts with wooing customers/members with the charm of a customer success portal.

What is a Customer Success Portal?

A Customer Success Portal is a platform that centralizes and delivers personalized and intelligent service to customers, members and employees. Users are enabled to help themselves and each other by engaging with one another through shared knowledge assets. It is a powerful tool for providing customers with an unforgettable experience, worth advocating for. Plus, some portals allow for an API connection that integrates other platforms embedded within your business, like Salesforce.

Benefits of Customer Success Portal

Here’s a breakdown of how a customer success portal can help your business organization:

Remove barriers to customers doing business with you.
No matter what you sell or how you sell it, there will be logical touch points where extending your Salesforce CRM can remove significant barriers. Do your customers need to check status of an order? Provide approvals or sign-offs? A Portal can easily and securely integrate into your existing business process. As Melissa Stark, Marketing Manager at Core Scientific, put it in her case study:

“Once we identified our proposed Portal as a key business differentiator and looked through the available options in market, Magentrix stood out for their integration capabilities with Salesforce, ease of configuration and use along with stellar reviews and customer support. It was one of the easiest decisions I’ve made!”

With Magentrix’s Customer Success Portal they were able to quickly deploy a Portal that allowed their customers to check status of their lots, see where they are in the process, access reimbursement information, view articles, and importantly schedule a pickup and request a new collection container – all synced to Salesforce automatically. This was previously handled manually, mostly through phone calls and email to Core Scientific. The Customer Community takes that time-consuming work away from customers and employees and is a major differentiator for Core Scientific.

Give customers a solid experience with your business/organization by providing them with the tools they need to succeed. Engaging with other like-minded customers gives users the opportunity to compare use cases and learn from each other. This also gives users the power to search for the answers they’re looking for via someone who may have had the same question.

Providing great customer service doesn’t have to be time consuming. A seamless support system not only helps provide support in an orderly fashion, but it also enables transparency to the number of support tickets coming in. A support ticketing system also gives valuable insights into trends. The trends of ticketing can help you dictate what your business can do better to improve its customer experience. For example, if you notice users have a tendency to submit support tickets around a particular question, you can leverage this data to develop knowledge base articles or training modules that will not only help and engage users, but will also reduce the number of support cases submitted.

Let your customers be heard and build relationships that will help gain further insight into how you can improve your products and services with an ideation newsfeed.

Being open to new ideas gives your business the opportunity to be innovative. Allowing customers/members to provide you with suggestions for improvement shows that you care and are providing a service that is dedicated to their success.

Serve a variety of users and appease everyone who interacts with your business.

A customer success portal isn’t just for your customers/members, it can be for your employees too! With different user features, employees can have the ability to access valuable data that will help them excel in their respective role and help provide customer/member experiences that are worth talking about.

Varun, a Systems Integrator Engineer at Accellion has this to say about his customer success portal;

“The ability to have a simplified portal for customers to view their open cases and view security advisories; as well as for the partners to go in and register deals is a great advantage.”

Customer Success Portal + Customer Support = Success

Leaving customers with a good experience is a stepping stone to building a champion for your business/organization. Combining your customer support with a strong customer success portal is a recipe for success.

As humans, we want to feel valued and special. Customer support can project this feeling on customers by tailoring every customer’s experience to their specific needs.

We spoke to real customers and asked them to define good customer support and here’s a short list that satisfies their service needs:

• Speak to someone who is knowledgeable and understands their issues
• Sense that the person they’re speaking to not only wants to help but actually does help
• Work with support representatives who provide tailored solutions that work best for them
• Quick responses and access to information that will resolve any issues

A customer success portal will not only enable customers to get faster answers via support tickets, but it will also give customers access to a customer community. A customer community can spark customer engagement and create an environment where customers can feel comfortable, ask questions and share experiences outside of support.

We have to remember that our customers are not all the same, and their use for our business/service is not the same. Our customer support needs to provide a 24/7, customized experience, with tools that are as innovative as our customers. It’s time to introduce a customer success portal.

• In his life after the presidency, Barack Obama is focused on his foundation these days, where's he's supporting the leaders of tomorrow.
• And he's teaching young entrepreneurs two key ideas.
• One is that companies shouldn't buy into the trope that government is the enemy of business since the government provides a number of services that businesses depend on.
• The other is: if they are not good citizens themselves: to their own employees and communities, they won't survive. 

Barack Obama is focused on his foundation these days, where's he's running several programs that find and support the leaders of tomorrow.

And he's teaching these young entrepreneurs that companies who make a difference in the world have to be good citizens. That means two things: For one, they shouldn't buy into the trope that government is the enemy of business.

"For those who think government is the problem or it gets in the way, it's useful to recall that the interstate highway system or electricity grid or dealing with problems after hurricane, or the weather satellite, these are all government functions that allow business to thrive," he said on Wednesday during an appearance in Salt Lake City, Utah at a tech conference put on by software company Qualtrics.

A for-profit company can't be expected to solve issues where there's no business case. "There's no money to be made in taking care of say, badly abused kids. There's no profit in it. But it is part of what it means to be in a civil society," he said.

Likewise, private companies can't and shouldn't shoulder the burden of some forms of long-term research that our national labs and university partnerships do.

"But that's our seed corn," he described, meaning it will eventually lead to new profit-making ventures. (Bill Gates is another one who routinely argues the benefits of government-supported scientific research.)

But the second thing he teaches is, while companies shouldn't be expected to focus on solving social issues, they are responsible for their own social track records.  

Today's millennials and Gen Zs are watching how companies behave, not just to their customers but to their employees and communities, he said.

"If a company doesn't care about non-discrimination and not having sexual harassment in your company, is unconcerned about climate change, you are going to start losing customers at some point," he said.

And social consciousness has to be built into the company. It can't just be a marketing ploy or an after-the-fact philanthropic effort.

Companies have to be built asking themselves "how are we treating our employees? Are we paying them fair wages? Are we setting up systems internally that assure that if an outstanding female employee gets pregnant, that's she's not suddenly diverted off advancement?"

If they don't, there will be a reckoning.

"This next generation, they will consume in part based on how do I feel about buying from you. If they don't feel good about it, I can just press a button ... and they'll switch in a second."

Obama's take isn't unique. There's a growing number of companies who subscribe to the "stakeholder value" theory taught by the World Economic Forum and its famous conference in Davos, Switzerland each year.

It holds that business can be a force of good in the world through a simple shift in thinking. Instead of prioritizing shareholder value over all else, companies must look at "stakeholder" value, encompassing all of its constituents which includes employees, partners, customers, community and shareholders.

• Read more: 
• Obama warns that if the world isn't careful, democracy could be in danger: 'Democracy is a garden that has to be tended'

• Obama: 'Teachers are so grossly underpaid in this country' that those in San Francisco 'have no place to live'

SEE ALSO: 

Join the conversation about this story »

NOW WATCH: Why Apple's dongle problem isn't getting any better

As a child, you often hear your parents speak about the “golden rule,” treat others the way you want to be treated. However, as an adult in the post-digital world, companies should be focused on treating customers the way they want to be treated. With brands like Netflix, Amazon, and Uber, offering highly personalized experiences, consumers expect the same treatment from all business transactions – even B2B interactions.

Today, businesses have access to data, insights, and technology to ensure every sales interaction is custom designed with the buyer in mind. By creating tailored interactions that meet a buyer’s personal preferences, interests, and behaviors, companies are seeing increases in revenue by up to 60 percent and accelerating deal velocity by up to 43 percent. However, many companies still fail to lead sales engagements that effectively communicate their brands’ value propositions in a way that their buyers will care. Why?

While the sales enablement technology you have plays a role in your sellers’ success, if it doesn’t provide options or opportunities for customization, is it really worth it? Your sales application should present a unique sales experience that is truly special to your brand and can be customized for each buyer.

Honing in on the ultimate sales experience

When looking for sales enablement technology, many companies look for tools that “check the boxes” on features and functions that they think sellers might need. Unfortunately, when buying sales enablement technology in this fashion companies will only see incremental improvement at best or just another failed application that the sales team refuses to use.

If you could create the ultimate sales experience what would it look like? Ask yourself the following questions to help you understand what the ideal sales experience looks like.

• What story do you want your sellers to leverage as the basis of every meeting?
• What interactive sales tools could you deploy to help your sellers showcase the business impact of your solution and pivot in the moment to meet the specific needs of each buyer?
• What does the follow-up experience look like for the buyer?
• What insights do you need to identify what is working (and not working), so that you can adjust?

Create Your Own Application

If you were a tech-enabled, consumer-facing company, creating your own application is simple. Ensure that the application is designed for Google Play and the Apple App Store and delivers your desired experience. Why should this be any different for B2B companies? Building your own custom sales application does require a lot more money and resources than purchasing a solution out-of-the-box. However, you don’t have to build a custom sales application form the ground up. By using a sales enablement platform, companies can easily (and for less money) build a custom sales experience. How?

SaaS sales enablement platforms provide a combination of a configurable, out-of-the-box solution full of features you know exist in the market, but don’t necessarily need and a fully custom sales application that addresses all your business challenges and achieves a greater customer experience. In having a flexible platform, users can create a fully custom experience by adding virtually unlimited advanced functionality and integrations that currently don’t exist.

A perfect example of a SaaS platform that you may already be doing this with is Salesforce CRM. While 90 percent of the platform will work for you out of the box, or through their AppExchange, the platform also offers flexibility and allows users to build custom pieces without breaking the bank.

Finding the right provider

The ultimate value of a sales application lies in its ability to impact the live engagement between a buyer and seller to drive more sales. Out-of-the-box sales enablement solutions will always fall short to a custom sales application platform. However, finding a provider that can give you the best of both worlds will provide your sellers with the tools they need to sell without any constraints and deliver a personalized, unforgettable experience.

Artificial intelligence (AI), one of twenty core technologies I identified back in 1983 as the drivers of exponential economic value creation, has worked its way into our lives. From Amazon’s Alexa and Facebook’s M to Google’s Now and Apple’s Siri, AI is always growing — so keeping a closer eye on future developments, amazing opportunities, and predictable problems is imperative.

IBM’s Watson is a good example of a fast-developing AI system. Watson is a cognitive computer that learns over time. This cognitive AI technology can process information much more like a smart human than a smart computer. IBM Watson first shot to fame back in 2011 by beating two of Jeopardy’s greatest champions on TV. Thanks to its three unique capabilities — natural language processing; hypothesis generation and evaluation; and dynamic learning — cognitive computing is being applied in an ever-growing list of fields.

Today, cognitive computing is used in a wide variety of applications, including health care, travel, and weather forecasting. When IBM acquired The Weather Company, journalists were quick to voice their amusement. However, IBM soon had the last laugh when people learned that the Weather Company’s cloud-based service could handle over 26 million inquiries every day on the organization’s website and mobile app, all while learning from the daily changes in weather and from the questions being asked. The data gleaned from the fourth most-used mobile app would whet the appetite of the permanently ravenous IBM Watson and enable IBM to increase the level of analytics for its business clients.

Weather is responsible for business losses to the tune of $500 billion a year. Pharmaceutical companies rely on accurate forecasts to predict a rise in the need for allergy medication. Farmers’ livelihoods often depend on the weather as well, not only impacting where crops can be successfully grown but also where the harvest should be sold. Consider the news that IBM followed its Weather Company purchase by snapping up Merge Healthcare Inc. for a cool $1 billion in order to integrate its imaging management platform into Watson, and the dynamic future of AI becomes more than evident.

The accounting industry can benefit from this technology, as well. When I was the keynote speaker at KPMG’s annual partner meeting, I suggested that the company consider partnering with IBM to have Watson learn all of the global accounting regulations so that they could transform their practice and gain a huge advantage. After doing their own research on the subject, the KPMG team proceeded to form an alliance with IBM’s Watson unit to develop high-tech tools for auditing, as well as for KPMG’s other lines of business.

Thanks to the cloud and the virtualization of services, no one has to own the tools in order to have access to them, allowing even smaller firms to gain an advantage in this space. Success all comes back to us humans and how creatively we use the new tools.

IBM’s Watson, along with advanced AI and analytics from Google, Facebook, and others, will gain cognitive insights mined from the ever-growing mountains of data generated by the Internet of Things (IoT) to revolutionize every industry.

Advanced AI is promising almost limitless possibilities that will enable businesses in every field to make better decisions in far less time. But at what price? Many believe the technology will lead directly to massive job cuts throughout multiple industries. and suggest that this technology is making much of the human race redundant.

It is crucial to recognize how the technological landscape is evolving before our eyes during this digital transformation. Yes, it is true that hundreds of traditional jobs are disappearing, but it’s also important to realize the wealth of new roles and employment opportunities arriving that are needed to help us progress further.

The rise of the machines started with the elimination of repetitive tasks, such as those in the manufacturing environment, and it is now moving more into white-collar jobs. The key for us is not to react to change, but to get ahead of it by paying attention to what I call the “Hard Trends” — the facts that are shaping the future — so that we can all anticipate the problems and new opportunities ahead of us. We would do well to capitalize on the areas that computers have great difficulty understanding, including collaboration, communication, problem solving, and much more. To stay ahead of the curve, we will all need to learn new things on an ongoing basis, as well as unlearn the old ways that are now holding us back. Remember, we live in a human world where relationships are all-important.

We need to be aware of the new tools available to us, and then creatively apply them to transform the impossible into the possible. By acquiring new knowledge, developing creativity and problem-solving skills, and honing our interpersonal, social, and communication skills, we can all thrive in a world of transformational change.

Are you reacting to change or paying attention to the Hard Trend facts that are shaping the future?

If you want to anticipate the problems and opportunities ahead of you, pick up a copy of my latest book, The Anticipatory Organization.

Originally published here.

As sales professionals we face an intriguing paradox. We know, for complex B2B buying, the buyer’s journey can best be described as chaotic. What we have always believed is a linear process–identify a challenge, commit to change, define the problem/needs, evaluate alternatives, select a solution, turns out to be chaotic, as illustrated by the picture below

At the same time, we have a relatively linear sales process: prospect, qualify, discover, propose, close. A sales process is critical for our success. It enables us to focus on the right opportunities. It provides a framework for the things we must do, with the customer, that are likely to result in an order.

But how do we marry the two? We know we have to align our selling process with the customer buying process. But how do we align a chaotic buying journey with the relatively linear selling process? How do we manage this paradox?

Some would advocate, “we have to meet the customer where they are at” In that sense, we must be able to understand where the customer is at a certain point in their buying journey, responding in a way that is helpful to them–wherever they are at.

But then, what we do becomes unpredictable. We have little idea of what to do next, how to be most helpful to the customer, and how do know that we are on target to achieving our goals?

Some, too many, ignore the customer buying process, focusing only on our selling process: qualify, demo, propose, close….

We know neither alternative is very workable, what are we do do?

Further, we have to consider the customer doesn’t have a chaotic buying process by design, it’s just what happens to any complex project in any organization (regardless of whether buying is part of that project). As Mort Hansen indicates in Collaboration, a high percentage of internal projects end in failure.

We are not being the most helpful by just responding to the customer buying journey, we must help the customer simplify and navigate that buying journey. Ideally, helping them reach a linear buying journey, to which we align our sales process.

The paradox of the chaotic buying process and the linear sales process becomes very helpful. Since our selling process is oriented around our best experience of helping customers navigate their buying process in the simplest, most disciplined way, we can help the customer more effectively manage the process and achieve success.

We will never succeed in making the process completely linear, at least in complex B2B buying, but we create great value by helping the customer simplify it, making it much less complex/chaotic, and helping them successfully navigate it to achieve their goals.

Why is a piece of urban land worth something?

The answer is mostly, "Because of what is nearby." The value of land is collectively, publicly created. But private landowners can appropriate this publicly-created value regardless of whether or not they put it to productive use.  In other words, they don’t have to contribute to the good party going on around them.

Speculation inflates land prices near existing infrastructure, thereby pushing development to cheaper (but more remote and less productive) sites. This destroys farmland, and it requires the wasteful duplication of expensive infrastructure, increasing tax burdens.

Image: Steven Vance via Flickr

In the late 1800s, there was a growing movement to tax land values, led by the economist Henry George, because these gains were “unearned” income. Land speculators endowed economics departments at key universities. Over time, “neo-classical” economics developed, under which “land” and “natural resources” disappeared as separate factors of production. Instead, they are lumped together with “capital.” This too often conceals and obscures discussion of the role that unearned income from rising land and resource values plays in the economy.

This is a major reason the land tax hasn’t caught on politically: land is unlike all other things you can own, buy, and/or sell, but that fact is often poorly understood.

Land speculation, for example, is often referred to as “real estate investment.”  But “investment” is the creation of something new that enhances future production.  Buying and selling land creates nothing; it’s what you do on the land that creates value. Land speculation in itself is just gambling. It is betting that the work of the community will enhance land values, without contributing to that enhancement.

Reining in Speculation

Strong Towns advocates that local communities be given the option of taxing land value separately from building ("improvement") value. A land value tax (LVT) returns the value of land to the communities that created it—and recycles that value to fund public needs like infrastructure creation, operation and maintenance. The benefits are several:

• LVT makes land speculation less profitable and reduces the incentive for fringe suburban development.

• Shifting the property tax off of building values and onto land values can make both buildings and land less expensive, thereby making housing more affordable while fostering business growth and employment.

• Communities that have implemented this reform have outperformed comparable communities using the traditional property tax.

Most things that we’re familiar with are produced.  If we tax them, production falls and prices rise.  Therefore, many assume that if we tax land, its price will rise.  But land taxes don’t reduce the amount of land.  Taxing land values reduces the benefits of land ownership. This reduces land prices.

LVT enjoys broad support among economists. Yet few places are implementing it, which raises the question: Why hasn't land value taxation been implemented more widely?

Land Taxes Are Widespread... Sort Of

In one sense, land value taxation is widely practiced. Almost every community has a property tax that is levied against the combined value of buildings and land.

The problem is that the land tax component of a traditional property tax is too small to deter land speculation. Although property taxes vary from place to place, they are typically between 1% and 2% of the property's total value paid annually. If inflation is low, then for longtime property owners, this amounts to roughly the same cost as if they paid a one-time sales tax on the property of between 10% and 20%. Thus, the property tax applied to building values inflates their price by between 10% and 20%. And the property tax applied to land value allows 80% to 90% of publicly-created land value to accrue as a windfall to landowners.

Thus, typical land taxes are too weak to discourage land speculation.  And this problem is compounded by the negative impacts of the property tax applied to buildings, which especially in weaker real-estate markets can make it unprofitable to do renovations or even basic maintenance on a building. Fortunately, as Joshua Vincent wrote earlier in this series, some communities (especially in Pennsylvania) have shifted property taxes off of buildings and onto land, improving their economic performance.

How About a Universal Tax Abatement on Buildings? 

If you go to a public hearing and declare , “There’s a good tax that could help our community,” nobody will hear a word you say after that. In most people’s minds, all taxes are bad.

Instead, we/you should emphasize how harmful it is to tax building values: 

“We need more housing and more jobs. So why do we penalize owners with higher taxes when they construct, improve or maintain buildings?” 

Restoring a historic house (via Flickr)

Under the traditional property tax, the responsible owner of a well-maintained home pays more tax than the owner of an adjacent vacant lot or boarded-up building. Yet, the cost of maintaining streets, sidewalks and utility pipes adjacent to these properties is the same. The snowplow doesn't lift its blade as it passes the vacant lot. All these properties are receiving the same infrastructure benefits. Why punish the responsible homeowners while rewarding speculators?

An article by Daniel Herriges discussed how developers, especially in weak real-estate markets, often receive a property tax “abatement” as an inducement to develop. Instead of such abatements being the norm for a favored few, why not abatements for everybody? A “universal property tax abatement” would reduce the tax rate applied to all privately-created building values.  This should be well-received by almost everybody. This would benefit existing homeowners and businesses as well as newcomers.  The message fits with widespread anti-tax sentiment.

Becoming a Champion for Change 

Changing the tax system is hard.  As much as people hate it, they are familiar with it.  And people are nervous about change.  As with most things, the devils (and the angels) are in the details.  Therefore, if you want to push for this reform in your community, before going public with it, it would be wise to: 

• Find a public official to be its champion.  The Champion can arrange for you to work with the local tax department to chart out the details: how assessments and appeals would work, and how existing benefits like widespread "homestead" exemptions would be applied.

• Look into what classes of property and/or which neighborhoods are paying the most under the status quo. What about owners of surface parking lots, vacant lots and boarded-up buildings?  Are there strategically-located parking lots, vacant lots and/or boarded-up buildings that are thwarting economic development? A universal property tax abatement would encourage development of such properties in prime locations.

• How can rates be shifted off of buildings and onto land gradually over a 5-year period?  This avoids creating windfalls and wipeouts.  After all, speculators are simply playing by the rules.  A gradual shift allows those who would be disadvantaged to change their approach to land management to take advantage of the new incentives without significant hardship.

• Be aware that tax departments may oppose this change because it draws attention to assessments (which might not be up to par). They won’t admit this. Instead they will claim (falsely) that total property assessments can’t be separated into separate components for land and buildings. You and your Champion need to be aware of this in advance.

• Identify state laws that permit or prohibit different rates of taxation applied to buildings and land.  In some cases, state laws will need to be changed before this reform can be implemented by a city, town or county.  A single jurisdiction could lobby the state legislature for permissive legislation, but a coalition of communities would be better.

• Identify key stakeholders, both groups and individuals.  Who are the key public officials whose votes will be needed? Who contributes to their campaigns? What constituencies do they listen to?

• Identify potentially supportive organizations and unions that care about homelessness, poverty, and affordable housing. Could they become allies for making housing more affordable and jobs more plentiful?

• Understand your opponents. The owners of “prime sites” in our downtowns are relatively few.  Often, they don’t even live in the communities where they own land. But they tend to make large campaign contributions. Once a tax reform idea becomes public, you can count on them to spread rumors and make false claims. Make sure that key constituencies are prepared and inoculated against them.

• Identify members of the media who report on tax issues.  Have informal conversations with them about this “interesting idea for prosperity, sustainability and equity.” When speculators start trashing your proposal, educated reporters might place false claims in their proper context.  Develop graphics to illustrate your points. (See my article “Financing Infrastructure With Value Capture: The Good, The Bad, & The Ugly” for some examples.)

• Some constituencies could be allies or opponents.  To get them on your side, it might be helpful to have a consultant who knows how to communicate these ideas to different groups and how to use assessment data to model possible results.

Strong Towns members have an opportunity to advocate incremental change that will make fundamental improvements in housing affordability, employment, sustainability and equity.

(Cover Image by naobim on Pixabay)

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This week, Strong Towns is taking an in-depth look at the land tax and how it can incentivize a healthier, more resilient pattern of growth and reinvestment in cities.

You Get What You Tax For | What’s With That Empty Lot? | The Pennsylvania Experiment | Rewarding Neglect

This series is sponsored by the generous support of the Robert Schalkenbach Foundation (RSF).

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About the Author

Rick Rybeck is the Director of Just Economics, a firm that helps communities harmonize economic incentives with public policy objectives to build better places. Rybeck is an attorney with a master's degree in real estate and urban development. He has worked on issues related to state and local government for over 35 years.

In 2009, Rybeck established Just Economics, LLC to assist communities in promoting job creation, affordable housing, transportation efficiency and sustainable economic development.

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Salesforce is celebrating its 20th anniversary today. The company that was once a tiny irritant going after giants in the 1990s Customer Relationship Management (CRM) market, such as Oracle and Siebel Systems, has grown into full-fledged SaaS powerhouse. With an annual run rate exceeding $14 billion, it is by far the most successful pure cloud application ever created.

Twenty years ago, it was just another startup with an idea, hoping to get a product out the door. By now, a legend has built up around the company’s origin story, not unlike Zuckerberg’s dorm room or Jobs’ garage, but it really did all begin in 1999 in an apartment in San Francisco, where a former Oracle executive named Marc Benioff teamed with a developer named Parker Harris to create a piece of business software that ran on the internet. They called it Salesforce .com.

None of the handful of employees who gathered in that apartment on the company’s first day in business in 1999 could possibly have imagined what it would become 20 years later, especially when you consider the start of the dot-com crash was just a year away..

Party like it’s 1999

It all began on March 8, 1999 in the apartment at 1449 Montgomery Street in San Francisco, the site of the first Salesforce office. The original gang of four employees consisted of Benioff and Harris and Harris’s two programming colleagues Dave Moellenhoff and Frank Dominguez. They picked the location because Benioff lived close by.

It would be inaccurate to say Salesforce was the first to market with Software as a Service, a term, by the way, that would not actually emerge for years. In fact, there were a bunch of other fledgling enterprise software startups trying to do business online at the time including NetLedger, which later changed its name NetSuite, and was eventually sold to Oracle for $9.3 billion in 2016.

Other online CRM competitors included Salesnet, RightNow Technologies and Upshot. All would be sold over the next several years. Only Salesforce survived as a stand-alone company. It would go public in 2004 and eventually grow to be one of the top 10 software companies in the world.

Co-founder and CTO Harris said recently that he had no way of knowing that any of that would happen, although having met Benioff, he thought there was potential for something great to happen. “Little did I know at that time, that in 20 years we would be such a successful company and have such an impact on the world,” Harris told TechCrunch.

Nothing’s gonna stop us now

It wasn’t entirely a coincidence that Benioff and Harris had connected. Benioff had taken a sabbatical from his job at Oracle and was taking a shot at building a sales automation tool that ran on the internet. Harris, Moellenhoff and Dominguez had been building salesforce automation software solutions, and the two visions meshed. But building a client-server solution and building one online were very different.

You have to remember that in 1999, there was no concept of Infrastructure as a Service. It would be years before Amazon launched Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud in 2006, so Harris and his intrepid programming team were on their own when it came to building the software and providing the servers for it to scale and grow.

“I think in a way, that’s part of what made us successful because we knew that we had to, first of all, imagine scale for the world,” Harris said. It wasn’t a matter of building one CRM tool for a large company and scaling it to meet that individual organization’s demand, then another, it was really about figuring out how to let people just sign up and start using the service, he said.

That may seem trivial now, but it wasn’t a common way of doing business in 1999. The internet in those years was dominated by a ton of consumer-facing dot-coms, many of which would go bust in the next year or two. Salesforce wanted to build an enterprise software company online, and although it wasn’t alone in doing that, it did face unique challenges being one of the early adherents.

“We created a software that was what I would call massively multi-tenant where we couldn’t optimize it at the hardware layer because there was no Infrastructure as a Service. So we did all the optimization above that — and we actually had very little infrastructure early on,” he explained.

Running down a dream

From the beginning, Benioff had the vision and Harris was charged with building it. Tien Tzuo, who would go on to be co-founder at Zuora in 2007, was employee number 11 at Salesforce, starting in August of 1999, about five months after the apartment opened for business. At that point, there still wasn’t an official product, but they were getting closer when Benioff hired Tzuo.

As Tzuo tells it, he had fancied a job as a product manager, but when Benioff saw his Oracle background in sales, he wanted him in account development. “My instinct was, don’t argue with this guy. Just roll with it,” Tzuo relates.

As Tzuo pointed out, in a startup with a handful of people, titles mattered little anyway. “Who cares what your role was. All of us had that attitude. You were a coder or a non-coder,” he said. The coders were stashed upstairs with a view of San Francisco Bay and strict orders from Benioff to be left alone. The remaining employees were downstairs working the phones to get customers.

The first Wayback Machine snapshot of Salesforce.com is from November 15, 1999, It wasn’t fancy, but it showed all of the functionality you would expect to find in a CRM tool: Accounts, Contacts, Opportunities, Forecasts and Reports with each category represented by a tab.

The site officially launched on February 7, 2000 with 200 customers, and they were off and running.

Prove it all night

Every successful startup needs visionary behind it, pushing it, and for Salesforce that person was Marc Benioff. When he came up with the concept for the company, the dot-com boom was in high gear. In a year or two, much of it would come crashing down, but in 1999 anything was possible and Benioff was bold and brash and brimming with ideas.

But even good ideas don’t always pan out for so many reasons, as many a failed startup founder knows only too well. For a startup to succeed it needs a long-term vision of what it will become, and Benioff was the visionary, the front man, the champion, the chief marketer. He was all of that — and he wouldn’t take no for an answer.

Paul Greenberg, managing principal at The 56 Group and author of multiple books about the CRM industry including CRM at the Speed of Light (the first edition of which was published in 2001), was an early user of Salesforce, and says that he was not impressed with the product at first, complaining about the early export functionality in an article.

A Salesforce competitor at the time, Salesnet, got wind of Greenberg’s post, and put his complaint on the company website. Benioff saw it, and fired off an email to Greenberg: “I see you’re a skeptic. I love convincing skeptics. Can I convince you?” Greenberg said that being a New Yorker, he wrote back with a one-line response. “Take your best shot.” Twenty years later, Greenberg says that Benioff did take his best shot and he did end up convincing him.

Laurie McCabe, who is co-founder and partner at SMB Group, was working for a consulting firm in Boston in 1999 when Benioff came by to pitch Salesforce to her team. She says she was immediately impressed with him, but also with the notion of putting enterprise software online, effectively putting it within reach of many more companies.

“He was the ringmaster I believe for SaaS or cloud or whatever we want to call it today. And that doesn’t mean some of these other guys didn’t also have a great vision, but he was the guy beating the drum louder. And I just really felt that in addition to the fact that he was an exceptional storyteller, marketeer and everything else, he really had the right idea that software on prem was not in reach of most businesses,” she said.

Take it to the limit

One of the ways that Benioff put the company in the public eye in the days before social media was guerrilla marketing techniques. He came up with the idea of “no software” as a way to describe software on the internet. He sent some of his early employees to “protest” at the Siebel Conference, taking place at the Moscone Center in February, 2000. He was disrupting one of his major competitors, and it created enough of a stir to attract a television news crew and garner a mention in the Wall Street Journal. All of this was valuable publicity for a company that was still in its early stages.

Brent Leary, who had left his job as an industry consultant in 2003 to open his current firm, CRM Essentials, said this ability to push the product was a real differentiator for the company and certainly got his attention. “I had heard about Salesnet and these other ones, but these folks not only had a really good product, they were already promoting it. They seemed to be ahead of the game in terms of evangelizing the whole “no software” thing. And that was part of the draw too,” Leary said of his first experiences working with Salesforce.

Leary added, “My first Dreamforce was in 2004, and I remember it particularly because it was actually held on Election Day 2004 and they had a George W. Bush look-alike come and help open the conference, and some people actually thought it was him.”

Greenberg said that the “no software” campaign was brilliant because it brought this idea of delivering software online to a human level. “When Marc said, ‘no software’ he knew there was software, but the thing with him is, that he’s so good at communicating a vision to people.” Software in the 90s and early 2000s was delivered mostly in boxes on CDs (or 3.5 inch floppies), so saying no software was creating a picture that you didn’t have to touch the software. You just signed up and used it. Greenberg said that campaign helped people understand online software at a time when it wasn’t a common delivery method.

Culture club

One of the big differentiators for Salesforce as a company was the culture it built from Day One. Benioff had a vision of responsible capitalism and included their charitable 1-1-1 model in its earliest planning documents. The idea was to give one percent of Salesforce’s equity, one percent of its product and one percent of its employees’ time to the community. As Benioff once joked, they didn’t have a product and weren’t making any money when they made the pledge, but they have stuck to it and many other companies have used the model Salesforce built.

Bruce Cleveland, a partner at Wildcat Ventures, who has written a book with Geoffrey Moore of Crossing the Chasm fame called Traversing the Traction Gap, says that it is essential for a startup to establish a culture early on, just as Benioff did. “A CEO has to say, these are the standards by which we’re going to run this company. These are the things that we value. This is how we’re going to operate and hold ourselves accountable to each other,” Cleveland said. Benioff did that.

Another element of this was building trust with customers, a theme that Benioff continues to harp on to this day. As Harris pointed out, people still didn’t trust the internet completely in 1999, so the company had to overcome objections to entering a credit card online. Even more than that though, they had to get companies to agree to share their precious customer data with them on the internet.

“We had to not only think about scale, we had to think about how do we get the trust of our customers, to say that we will protect your information as well or better than you can,” Harris explained.

Growing up

The company was able to overcome those objections, of course, and more. Todd McKinnon, who is currently co-founder and CEO at Okta, joined Salesforce as VP of Engineering in 2006 as the company began to ramp up becoming a $100 million company, and he says that there were some growing pains in that time period.

When he arrived, they were running on three mid-tier Sun servers in a hosted co-location facility. McKinnon said that it was not high-end by today’s standards. “There was probably less RAM than what’s in your MacBook Pro today,” he joked.

When he came on board, the company still had only 13 engineers and the actual infrastructure requirements were still very low. While that would change during his six year tenure, it was working fine when he got there. Within five years, he said, that changed dramatically as they were operating their own data centers and running clusters of Dell X86 servers — but that was down the road.

Before they did that, they went back to Sun one more time and bought four of the biggest boxes they sold at the time and proceeded to transfer all of the data. The problem was that the Oracle database wasn’t working well, so as McKinnon tells it, they got on the phone with Larry Ellison from Oracle, who upon hearing about the setup, asked them straight out why they were doing that? The way they had it set up simply didn’t work.

They were able to resolve it all and move on, but it’s the kind of crisis that today’s startups probably wouldn’t have to deal with because they would be running their company on a cloud infrastructure service, not their own hardware.

Window shopping

About this same time, Salesforce began a strategy to grow through acquisitions. In 2006, it acquired the first of 55 companies when it bought a small wireless technology company called Sendia for $15 million. As early as 2006, the year before the first iPhone, the company was already thinking about mobile.

Last year it made its 52nd acquisition, and the most costly so far, when it purchased Mulesoft for $6.5 billion, giving it a piece of software that could help Salesforce customers bridge the on-prem and cloud worlds. As Greenberg pointed out, this brought a massive change in messaging for the company.

“With the Salesforce acquisition of MuleSoft, it allows them pretty much to complete the cycle between back and front office and between on-prem and the cloud. And you notice, all of a sudden, they’re not saying ‘no software.’ They’re not attacking on-premise. You know, all of this stuff has gone by the wayside,” Greenberg said.

No company is going to be completely consistent as it grows and priorities shift,  but if you are a startup looking for a blueprint on how to grow a successful company, Salesforce would be a pretty good company to model yourself after. Twenty years into this, they are still growing and still going strong and they remain a powerful voice for responsible capitalism, making lots of money, while also giving back to the communities where they operate.

One other lesson that you could learn is that you’re never done. Twenty years is a big milestone, but it’s just one more step in the long arc of a successful organization.

Your ticket to standing out in a crowded market is having a business name that is unique, memorable, and attention-grabbing. To help you get started, I’ve put together a comprehensive list of business name ideas that can set you up for success as you launch a business.

These unique business names will help you build a memorable brand — one that your customers will recognize online, in advertisements, or at stores — and one that will ensure your products and services stand out from the competition.

As the former head of marketing for two different startups, I’ve learned that choosing the right business name is critical. Below, I’ll share some of my top business name ideas to inspire you as you brainstorm your own. Then, I’ll dive into what makes a business name great, how to name your business, and some of my favorite examples of creative business names.

• Business Name Ideas
• How I Developed the Best Company Name Ideas for This List
• 7 Attributes of a Great Company Name
• How to Name a Business
• Company Name Examples
• Creative Business Name Generators

Business Name Ideas

To kickstart your company naming journey, here are some unused company name ideas. These business name ideas aren’t just for inspiration — they’re available to use, so feel free to use any that suits your business.

Once you choose a business name, use HubSpot’s free Brand Kit Generator to create a logo for your new business.

Small Business Name Ideas

• BlissSlim (Weight loss products)
• Jellysmith (Jelly company)
• SalesPushy (Sales training and consulting)
• Formonee (Fintech platform)
• GoAhead Co. (Design agency)
• Jump & Pass (Health and wellness)
• Wire2me (Financial services)
• Savvy Scholars (Elearning platform)
• S3 (Smart, Safe, and Secure) (Web security services)
• Blaze Cloud (Cloud storage)
• Your Security First (Security company)
• Sudden Supply (Supply chain management)
• Strategene (Asset management)
• DareDeserve (Tutoring and/or support services)
• Conveniently Timely (Delivery tools and services)
• HerdDream (Farming operations)
• Whole Life Synergy (Financial or long-term care planning)
• PeopleFirstPro (HR training)
• MissionMentor (Life coaching)
• Golden Years Guidance (Retirement planning)
• CapitalCurrent (Accounting and other financial services)
• TeachTech (IT training services)
• Tacteach (Life skills training)
• AccomplishNet (Networking services)
• Expedite Access (Product and fulfillment sourcing)
• GoalGenius (Goal-setting products)
• FearlessPeak (Adventure tour services)
• TimeQuest (Ancestry research)
• DreamTide (Health and wellness products)
• SynergyCycle (Corporate event services)
• EduGuru (Tutoring services)
• Tactink (Project management)
• Flyquest (Aviation training services)
• BoldSwap (Stock portfolio management services)
• Hobyz (Product hub with hard-to-find products for hobbyists)
• IdeaBoost (Creative services)
• JoinVisions (Networking services)
• StellarServe (Customer service)
• Aspirecraft (Creative services)
• Ambition Forge (Startup services)
• Quantumful (Data analysts)
• Ultimate Climb (Mountaineering classes)

Unique Business Name Ideas

• Quirky Observations (Boutique consulting firm)
• Dr. ChuckleMeds (Pharmacy)
• Sell-O-Rama (Ecommerce marketplace)
• Farm With Crowdee (Agriculture crowdfunding)
• ExploreAbundance (Life coaching)
• BuildCatalyst (Construction services)
• FunTastic Ventures (Local tour services)
• GlowGrid (Nightlight products)
• Social Bridge (Social media services)
• Odysseyshare (Gaming center)
• TogetherPath (Dating adventure services)
• CelsiusSpark (Personal trainer services)
• BagBurst (Accessories for new parents)
• Mitchell Crow (Vintage fashion brand)
• WhizWhip (Healthy snacks)
• StandoutStanley (Alternative athletic gear)
• EclectiChairs (Quirky furniture)
• ActioNexus (Motivational organization)
• Ignition Leap (Recruiting agency)
• Impacter (Influencer member org)
• Primerise (Startup services)
• Excelship (Financial services)
• Turbotonic (Beverage products)
• Progress Path (Project management)
• Idea Craftery (Creative services)
• PropelPal (Freelance agency)
• Cadence Core (Talent agency)
• Innovexpress (Creative agency)
• Connectverse (Networking services)

Catchy Business Name Ideas

• Shimmer Shake (Dance company)
• Odd Coupling (Dating services)
• RiseShineSustain (Environmental organization)
• YesAchievers (Tutoring services)
• Timeframe Genius (Project management)
• Goalcraft (Life coaching)
• ProfitPioneer (Financial advisory)
• VacayVentures (Group vacation services)
• NexusCore (Workout equipment)
• WindRush Trading (Financial services)
• Elevolution (Hiring services)
• Innoviary (Ad agency)
• Trekwise (Travel services)
• Braventure (Risk-taking services)
• Bubblit (Beverage products)
• PulseCharge (Fitness products)
• GlamGo (Fashion products)
• Culinatine (Restaurant)
• Eternivault (Online archiving services)
• Clicknect (Online services)
• ZenZest (Health and wellness)
• RideRev (Transportation services)
• SnapSavor (Photo services)
• MotionFit Studio (Fitness services)
• StellarSoul (Lifestyle services)
• Dream Mashup (Design services)
• Quantum Quota (Data analysts)
• Zenitharian (Future planning)
• Disco's Edge (Nostalgia products)
• StyleQuest (Secondhand store)

Marketing Company Business Name Ideas

• Expandfluence
• MovementNow
• Welcome/Story
• Positioning Awareness
• Marketsters
• Presence Rebrand
• LeadGen Pro
• Market Jam
• OptiSuccess
• Uplead
• WordBlaze
• BrandReclaim
• ContentCrafters
• Tech Triggers
• Persuade360
• InfluenceRise
• Emailiope

Real Estate Company Name Ideas

• HavenHunt
• ImagineLands
• HouseManage Pro
• EpicHaven
• Urbanspace Agency
• Rustic Manor Realty
• Inner Harmony Realty
• Cosmos Dwellings
• Noble Houses
• SnugHomes
• WisdomWise Homes
• RadiantHomes Realty
• PropSol Management
• EliteHome Ventures
• TopTerra Estates
• InfinityHouse Agency
• CrownKey
• LuxeDomain Realty

Tech Company Name Ideas

• TrustTech Innovations
• SyncShare
• DazzloTech
• Byte Logic
• RuleFlex
• Enigma Tech
• TechOptima
• Funkytech
• OpenOps
• ByteSage
• Secure Frontiers
• Awarewave
• ShareHub Technologies
• SparkTech

Consulting Business Name Ideas

• Focused Minds
• Proficitas
• Triumphtician
• Imperial Insights
• ProSpectra Solutions
• SurgeShift
• CatalystX Strategies
• SocialBuzz Advisors
• AlphaStrategists
• TransformNet Consulting

Software Company Name Ideas

• EffortlessCoding
• SafetyShield Solutions
• Illuminate Coding
• TechCuriosity Labs
• Engineerenigma
• Code Conundrum
• VelocityByte

How I Developed the Best Company Name Ideas for This List

To create and curate the list of business name ideas above, I used the following process, combining research, AI, and a dash of creativity.

First, I wrote out a list of words to describe the emotions that small businesses strive to elicit, like loyalty, productivity, and satisfaction. Then, I added words for business goals for all types of businesses, like quality, cash flow, and awareness. Finally, I added motivational words to the list, like commit, imagine, and uplift. This led to a list of about 200 words.

I used an AI tool to generate some business name ideas. I started with the prompt, “Create 20 original business names inspired by the following ideas.” Then, I edited each prompt with different sections of the list.

The steps above created 816 potential business names. I figured this was a great collection of business names, and it would be easy to pull out 100+ names with potential. But a quick review gave me just 74 business names I liked and most of those needed a lot of editing.

So, I tried again. To develop more useful business names for inspiration, I created a list of popular brand names from different industries. Then, I asked the AI tool to create more business names for each category that aligned with the tone and feel of each industry.

I also edited the prompts and results by asking for business name alternatives with a specific tone or “vibe.” This last step helped to yield business name ideas that matched what I liked best about existing companies’ brand names. I added to these names by grabbing some options from a business name generator.

Once I had a list of about 200 business name ideas, it was time to start editing. Some of the AI business names were great. But others needed more personality, so I sat down with a notebook and my list of names to experiment.

The Make My Persona tool was useful for this process. I used this tool to build an ideal persona for each business type. These personas helped me keep the customer in mind as I edited each business name.

Sometimes, just changing a few letters, capitalization, or spacing was enough. Other times, the act of writing inspired completely new business name ideas. Through this process, I came up with 155 new business names. The list of names felt pretty unique, so I didn’t think that I would find much during a domain check.

But I was wrong: The domain check cleared out 73 of the 155 names I’d come up with. Overall, I lost 47% of my list of business names.

At first, I was frustrated — but this was actually a positive outcome. It meant that the names I’d come up with were workable for a successful business. But it was also a reminder of how important it is to come up with more than a couple of business name ideas when you’re naming your new business.

For business names where the .com domain was unavailable but other domains were open, I did an online search for the business name. This step reminded me that any new business isn’t just competing with other companies in a given industry. It's also competing with bands, Twitch streamers, YouTube influencers, and more.

For example, “Propellant” sounds like an exciting and easy-to-remember business name for a startup. But it’s also a word in the dictionary and a component of rocket fuel. So even if this domain was available, it probably wouldn’t be a great business name, because it would be hard to find online.

In total, this process took many hours and several rounds of edits to bring you a list of over 160 business names. Your naming process may not take quite as long, but chances are it will feel even more complex and urgent.

I know that the steps above might sound like a lot of work for just a word or two. But your business name is the center of your new brand. Over time, the name will take on more meaning as you grow your business and establish your value proposition.

7 Attributes of a Great Company Name

There are a few characteristics that set apart good business names from bad ones. So, what are some of the elements that make it easy to spot a great company name? I’ve shared some of the most important factors below.

1. It’s descriptive.

Your business name is prime real estate. It's your chance to give a mini elevator pitch, before you even speak to a prospect.

To brainstorm a descriptive company name, consider stating what you do and how you do it in a few words. Then, pare it down to the essential words or phrases. See how they look on a screen, and say them out loud to see how they sound.

Example: Measured Results Marketing

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If you don’t measure your marketing and sales efforts, do they really matter? Measured Results Marketing makes its value clear with a descriptive company name.

The company helps sales and marketing teams establish effective metrics and reporting systems, leveraging operational infrastructure to drive revenue and help teams meet their goals. The name reflects what the company does, giving prospects confidence that there will be no gray or unmeasured areas if they work with the company.

2. It reflects your mission or values.

Your brand is so much more than a logo. Your company name can broadcast not only what you do but also why it matters.

Example: IMPACT

What’s one thing every sales and marketing professional wants? To have an impact on their business and their customers.

IMPACT is an award-winning agency that helps marketers and salespeople achieve their goals “and look like a rockstar in the process.” This business name reflects that mission and clearly states that it exists to make you look good at work.

3. It takes into account what your prospects are searching for.

Your name can make your business relevant for non-branded search queries, giving you an edge when attempting to rank on search engines for your highest-value keyword.

Example: Flawless Inbound

If you’re Googling agencies to help you implement an inbound sales and marketing strategy, you’ll likely search for phrases like “top inbound agencies” or “great inbound.”

When a company called “Flawless Inbound” pops up on your search results page, it’ll likely grab your attention. Working keywords your user might be searching for into your title is a smart way to stand out.

4. It’s simple.

You want prospects to remember and recognize your brand. To help in this effort, your business name should be simple and easy to spell, pronounce, and recall. This will ensure that no one gets frustrated typing out your name or saying it aloud to devices like Alexa.

Example: Drip

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You may have heard email automation being referred to as “drip sequences” or “drip campaigns.” These automated emails are dripped out one at a time.

The company Drip took this word that’s associated with their product — a word that’s only one syllable and only four letters — and made it their identity.

5. It’s fun or clever.

One way to make sure people remember your business is by being witty. Jokes, puns, and wordplay are all ways to make your prospects chuckle at your business name and get it stuck in their heads.

Example: Spinfluence

Influence always requires a bit of spin, right? This clever play on words sets this inbound marketing agency apart. It’s catchy, witty, and memorable — all important elements of a strong business name.

6. It demonstrates the value you provide customers.

One marketing tip is to position your business as a problem solver rather than a product seller. You can start that positioning with your business name.

Example: Search & Be Found

Every company in the digital age wants one thing: to be found when a customer or prospect searches for them. Search & Be Found states the benefit of using their agency in its business name.

7. It’s unique.

The last thing you want to do is decide on a business name, only to run into trouble securing its domain and other branding assets. What if those assets are already taken, or worse, what if you run into legal trouble for trademark infringement?

Plus, you don’t want to cause confusion when prospects land on your website but are looking for the other company (or vice versa). That’s why finding a unique business name is so important.

Example: Zoom LiveTrak vs. Zoom.us

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I was once in a podcasting group where someone was asking questions about “recording on Zoom.” I thought he was referring to Zoom.us, the video conferencing platform, but he was actually talking about Zoom LiveTrak, the audio mixer.

It was a simple mix-up, and it didn’t result in any harm to either company. But more severe issues are possible due to this kind of naming confusion. To avoid this, make sure that your business name isn’t trademarked or already taken by someone else.

Now, let me explain the steps you’ll need to take to name your business.

How to Name a Business

1. Understand your business.

Before deciding on a name, you should have a clear idea of your business’s mission, goals, target audience, and value proposition. If you’ve already created a business plan, this would be a great time to review it.

As a baseline, you should be able to answer the following questions:

• What does your business stand for?
• What product/service are you selling?
• Who is your target audience?

What I like: Developing a clear understanding of your business helps you come up with the best name for your unique organization.

2. Think of descriptive keywords.

Once you know the core focus of your business, take some time to brainstorm keywords that describe your business. With a few descriptors of your business and brand, you’ll be able to find the words that reflect the image you’d like to create.

Pro tip: Think outside the box! Don’t just limit yourself to your specific product or industry, but do some brainstorming to come up with creative keywords.

For example, if you’re starting a photography business, words like “camera,” “snap,” “shoot,” “capture,” and “lens” are all good starting points for your business name.

3. Consider SEO in the naming process.

Part of a good name is its ability to get found by potential prospects. As such, it’s important to consider how well your name can position you on search engines.

Consider the following as you make this evaluation:

Search Volume

One strategy is to name a business based on a highly searched keyword, making the business relevant for that keyword. For example, 24 Hour Fitness may appear when someone searches for their brand specifically, but it’ll also show up when someone searches for any gym that’s open around the clock.

Authority

While it’s helpful to choose a name that people are already searching for, it’s also vital to balance that with ensuring that you have enough authority related to that keyword that your business will beat out the competition.

For example, let’s say you chose “Five Star Restaurant” as a name for your new establishment. You might notice that the search engine results pages (SERPs) for this keyword are dominated by review sites like Yelp and local newspaper columns. As a result, with a name like this, you might not be found even by prospects who are actively searching for you.

Intent

Finally, when thinking through your business name, make sure it matches search intent. For example, naming a tax business “Maximize Your Refund, Inc.” may not be a good idea, because searchers looking for “maximize my refund” might be looking for strategies, not a business.

To evaluate your names based on these three considerations, I’d suggest using a combination of manual Google searching and SEO tools such as Ahrefs and SEMrush.

Best for: SEO is particularly important for businesses that plan to do a lot of marketing via online channels.

4. Choose a name style.

Once you’ve homed in on the right keywords, it’s time to start thinking about creative ways to craft a unique name. Here are a few of my favorite styles to consider:

• Include the names of the company founders.
• Use a single word.
• Change, add, or remove letters from keywords.
• Combine two or more words.
• Use a metaphor.
• Create an acronym.

What I like: Personally, I think alliterative names are often particularly fun and memorable. But it’s important to find the style that’s best for you and your business.

5. Tell a story.

Before you settle on a name, think about the thoughts and emotions you want it to evoke. If the name you’re considering doesn’t reflect the story you want to tell, or if it doesn't align with the mission and value proposition of your business, you’ll need to return to the drawing board.

Pro tip: To make sure your name tells a story, think about your company’s narrative and mission.

6. Ensure the business name is not trademarked

Let me tell you: There is nothing as frustrating as coming up with the perfect name, only to discover that someone else got there first.

Unfortunately, if another organization has trademarked a name, you risk legal action being taken against your business if you violate that trademark. If you’re in the U.S., you can search the United States Patent and Trademark Office database for your potential business name to make sure that there isn’t an existing trademark for it.

Best for: It’s vital for any company to make sure they’re not risking legal action by using a name that’s already been trademarked.

7. Ensure the business name is not otherwise taken.

If there’s no trademark, a business name is fair game from a legal standpoint. However, that doesn’t mean there aren’t other businesses already operating under the name you want.

To avoid confusion and ensure your business name is truly unique, I’d recommend checking your state’s Secretary of State entity filings and DBAs for other businesses operating under the name.

Pro tip: It’s also good practice to run a Google search for your desired name to see what’s out there. This can alert you to existing organizations that have similar names and keep you from accidentally choosing a name that another business is already using.

8. Verify that the .com domain name and social media handles are available.

You can verify domain name availability by searching on a domain registrar such as GoDaddy or Namecheap.

If a .com domain name isn’t available (or if it’s really expensive), weigh your options between choosing a different name or going with a less desirable top-level domain (TLD). While other TLDs are fine, .com remains the most widely used and is the easiest to remember.

What We Like: In my experience, it’s best to make sure the .com domain is available before settling on a name. This is important to ensure you’ll be able to have the website you need.

In addition, it would be a pain to settle on a name, only to find out that its social media handles are taken. Having variation between your brand’s social media handles could confuse prospects, so it’s best to avoid this where possible.

One easy way to verify the availability of social media handles is with a tool such as Namechk, which checks multiple platforms with a single search.

9. Register your business name.

Finally, once you’ve researched and decided on your name, you’re ready to register your business name. Congratulations!

Depending on the type of company you're registering for, the registration process will vary. You may also need a DBA if you’re a sole proprietor. This resource from the U.S. Small Business Association can help you determine which registration process is right for you and your business.

Company Name Examples

Looking for inspiration? Check out some of my favorite examples of real company names below.

1. Swipe Wire

Everything great and interesting in the digital world begins with a swipe, and SwipeWire is no different. Their brand and narrative is reflected by their fun name; plus, including the word “swipe” lets their customers know they have plenty of options to choose from with this team of technology experts.

2. Secure Smart Solutions

In 2024, hackers can access all your company documents in one click. That means securing programs, devices, and technologies requires smart and creative solutions. Secure Smart Solutions offers the answer. Their creative name tells customers that they’re not getting any average cyber security: They’re getting the best.

3. Exela Movers

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When you’re looking for movers, you want a company that is big enough to handle all your needs but small enough to care for you. From their name, you can expect that your experience working with Exela Movers will be excellent.

4. Kaboom Fireworks

Kaboom Fireworks is a large company that deals with fireworks. While the company’s name is pretty straightforward, the kaboom part conveys the experience you’ll get with their products.

5. Formonix

Formonix specializes in distributing pressure, level, calibration, and temperature instruments. They pride themselves on their customer service, assuring flexibility, speed, and personal connection.

This is exactly what their name stands for: Monix means someone who loves to mingle and socialize with others. It also stands for someone who can meet all situations with ease.

6. The Knot

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When someone gets married, many people use the phrase “tying the knot.” Wedding marketplace The Knot makes use of this common idiom in its name, reflecting that it’s a one-stop shop for all things weddings.

7. Kiddily

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Kiddily is a learning platform that sells products to make early childhood education fun. The name is adorable — just like its target customers — and it’s also relevant to what the company does.

8. Bandcamp

Band camps give kids and teens a chance to hone their musical abilities, create new art, and share their songs. Music-sharing site Bandcamp references this nostalgic summer staple, reinforcing that their platform gathers musicians and gives them a way to share their songs.

9. The Manifest

Manifesting refers to the idea of making your dreams come true by being intentional with your thoughts and actions. The Manifest does the same thing by helping its customers manifest more sales from their business, and its name speaks to that compelling mission and narrative.

10. VisionSwipe

Vision Swipe helps its customers develop new software technologies. Referencing the idea that in the digital age, you can get whatever you want with a swipe, this name reflects their mission of helping customers swipe their way to something visionary.

11. Brandless

This health- and environmentally-conscious ecommerce company created a funny and unique name by branding its business as brandless. This name communicates the company’s core belief that “better doesn't have to cost more,” aligning with its narrative that you don’t need to pay a hefty price for a brand-name item to get a high-quality product.

12. Ollie

Ollie offers fresh meals for dogs that can be delivered straight to your door. Using a human name personalizes this pet food business and makes the brand approachable.

13. Screaming Frog

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Now, this is a name that grabs your attention! While this SEO company doesn’t do anything frog-related, its website does describe how it “grew from its roots by leaping to the treetops,” tying its creative name to a narrative of growth and reaching new heights.

14. Big Ass Fans

Does this one need an explanation? This company sells huge industrial fans to businesses. It’s rare to see a B2B company have such a consumer-focused presence with a name like this, but it works. After all, profanity can make anyone giggle — and in this case, it’s both funny and descriptive.

15. Slack

Originally, Slack CEO Stewart Butterfield coined the company’s name as an acronym for “Searchable Log of All Conversation and Knowledge.” But with its single syllable and clever double meaning, the name Slack quickly caught on.

16. Squatty Potty

As the name suggests, the squatty potty is a device used to help people go a little easier. It’s descriptive and playful — which is perfect for the task at hand. While the product is backed by research and science, at the end of the day, it’s still a product to help you #2. And that’s always going to be a little funny.

17. Flagship Funding

This organization specializes in fast funding for people who are short on cash. The word “flagship” refers to the most important thing owned or produced by an organization, indicating to customers this company is a leader within its industry and has the resources to serve its customers.

18. Recycle Bookstore

Avid readers may be looking to downsize their collections by selling books they no longer need. Others may be looking for a bargain by buying used books. Recycle Bookstore, a used bookseller, offers both services — and from the name alone, you can tell the store specializes in used, pre-loved books.

19. Platinum Home

The word platinum is evocative of a premium, top-shelf service. This company, which offers a range of services related to mortgages, brands itself as one of America’s premium lenders, and its name aligns perfectly with that narrative.

20. Asian American Girl Club

This apparel brand puts its target audience right in the company name. The company sells shirts, hats, hoodies, and other products that proudly read “Asian American Girl Club,” and you know exactly who you’re supporting from the name alone.

21. Hydration Station

With its clever name that even rhymes, this company is clearly focused on one thing: Hydration. It’s perfect for a store that sells coffee, specialty drinks, and smoothies.

22. Petite Galleria

Rather than attempting to compete with larger stores, this little shop prides itself on being tiny. As such, the “petite” in its name is no accident. At this small boutique, you can shop from a curated collection of jewelry, home products, and art pieces.

23. Monkeypaw Productions

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Jordan Peele made a name for himself making horror movies, and his production company’s name strengthens his association with the spooky and supernatural, referencing a story by W.W. Jacobs in which a shrunken monkey’s paw grants wishes that go awry. This superstitious story mirrors the projects the company develops, while also being a fun and memorable name in its own right.

24. RC Creative

RC stands for RaeLynn Conner, the head photographer/videographer at this creative firm. In this way, the name clearly indicates the brand’s ownership to potential customers. At the same time, the use of the word “creative” emphasizes the firm’s versatility, rather than pigeonholeing it to one kind of creative service.

25. Kala’s Kutz

Kala Kutz is a hair salon, but the name replaces the “C” in “cuts” with a “K.” This creates alliteration that makes it easier for customers to remember the business’s name, resulting in a brand name that’s both strategic and cool.

26. Patty’s Locs

Patty’s Locs specializes in the maintenance and styling of dreadlocks, and the business is run by someone named Patricia (or Patty, for short). While traditionally spelled “locks,” this brand name went for a cooler alternative and spelled it without the letter “K.”

27. Uniquely Mahogany

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While this jewelry store doesn’t have much to do with mahogany, you can’t deny that the name is unique, catchy, and definitely memorable while also emphasizing the unique nature of its products.

28. The BlaqHour

In addition to featuring music from underground artists, The BlaqHour releases podcasts that aim to enlighten and inspire its listeners. Its brand name is a reminder of the light that it offers listeners, while also calling to the length of its episodes.

29. The Ivy Vine

I just love how this name rolls off the tongue. While this florist doesn’t only sell ivy (or vines), its name clarifies the type of business while also being somewhat alliterative.

Catchy Company Names

If you’re in need of catchy business name inspiration, look no further. Here are some of my favorite names from real companies. These are business names that grab the attention of potential customers and clients alike.

A catchy business name may include alliteration or some sort of rhyme scheme —but most importantly, a catchy company name creates a connection in the brain to that particular company and/or product.

• La Visual
• Cloudrevel
• Seeking
• Medicine
• SilverSingles
• BetterHelp
• QuickSpace
• MetConnect
• Google
• Apple
• Amazon
• Microsoft
• Facebook
• Netflix
• Tesla
• eBay
• LeapFrog
• BRWNGRLZ
• Vimeo
• ColourPop
• Catalyst
• Samsung
• Intel
• Adobe
• Hewlett-Packard
• PepsiCo
• Unilever
• Caterpillar
• IBM
• Boldly
• Upward
• Empower
• Triumph Motorcycles
• FWRD
• Vitality
• Coca-Cola
• Toyota
• Chevrolet
• Rolls-Royce
• Bentley
• Aston Martin
• Brightway
• Finesse
• Apache Spark
• Flourish
• IPSY
• Bold
• Insight
• Apartment Therapy
• Four Cousins
• Brookline Booksmith

Creative Company Names

I’ve learned that it can be challenging to think of a creative and unique business name. Here are a few examples of real, creative business names to inspire you.

• Bon Appetit
• Our Place
• Shopify
• Copper Cow Coffee
• HelloFresh
• Bonfire Adventures
• Intrepid
• Aceable
• Defendify
• Semicolon Books
• NerdWallet
• Verywell Mind
• Squadhelp
• Rocket Lawyer

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• The Penny Hoarder
• Shippliers
• When Pigs Fly
• More Than Words
• Planet Fitness
• Girl Boss
• LOOKFANTASTIC
• BrightPath
• Flourish
• Spark Solutions
• InnovateX
• Bold Ventures
• Insight Works
• Skyward Enterprises
• WeAccomplish Co.
• Thrive Technologies
• Powerhouse
• GrowthCorp
• Elevate Inc.
• Prosperity Group
• Aspire Solutions
• Xcel Energy
• Excel Entertainment
• Trailblaze Partners Inc.
• Breakthrough Technologies
• CREATE+CO
• Co:Create Ink
• Achieve Solutions
• Elite Enterprise
• Premier Inc.
• Premier Cool
• Excellence Inc.
• Advance Enterprises
• Catalyst Solutions
• BoldMove Nation
• 1BoldStep Inc.
• BoldThought Partners
• Save The Children
• BoldIdea Co.
• TikTok
• Criterion
• Kool-Aid
• Mars
• LEGO
• Monster Beverage
• Pandora Media

Cool Company Names

Need some more inspiration? Here are some real businesses with cool names to spark your creativity.

A cool company name can get customers interested in your products and/or services, demonstrating your company identity to your targeted audience.

• Groupon
• WKND
• Jonah’s Fish & Grits
• Narobia’s Grits & Gravy
• Mortgage Mavens
• Arrow Auto Glass
• Influitive
• Spinfluence
• Intellifluence
• Intellivision
• Perficient
• Enlightio
• Paddle
• Omnilert
• The Omni Group
• OMNI
• Technologent
• Uncorkd

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• Securiteam
• Innometriks
• 7-Eleven
• 21st Century Fox
• 7UP
• Forever 21
• 3M
• A1 Steak Sauce
• Five Guys
• 23andMe
• Four Seasons
• O2
• Cloud9
• Big 5 Sporting Goods
• Control 4
• 2Wire
• Formula One
• Timbuk2
• Four Loko
• Sub-Zero
• Bizarre Coffee
• Tencent
• Adobe Systems
• Aflac
• Akamai
• Alcoa
• Alibaba Group
• Bic
• Caterpillar
• Cheesecake Factory
• Crayola

Funny Company Names

Creating the perfect brand name is serious business. But if you’ve hit a creative roadblock, you can try to come up with some funny business names, just for fun — and who knows, you might stumble on a keeper.

I like to think that humor makes everything better. Of course, funny company names work better for some businesses than for others, so it’s important to make sure you are appealing to the right audience. Here are some examples from which you can draw inspiration:

• Tote&Carry
• CredoFly
• Straight Lane Transport
• Lawless Entertainment
• Herb’N Eden
• Spa Maven
• SugarBare
• Smallcakes Cupcakery

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• Locsanity
• Baked & Wired
• Planet of the Grapes
• Lord of the Fries
• Hurry Curry
• Eggcellent P’Eats
• Thai Tanic
• Wok This Way
• Pho Sure
• Mustard’s Last Stand
• Life of Pie
• Basic Kneads Pizza
• A Cut Above
• Cha Cha Matcha
• Jack the Clipper
• Sushirrito
• The Directors Cut
• Avocado Toast Budget
• Hairway to Heaven
• Live and Let Dye
• Time to Dye
• Knock Knock Who’s Hair?
• Tastea
• The Trusty Wrench Handyman Services
• Pane in the Glass Window Repair
• Screw It Handyman Services
• Ditcher, Quick, and Hyde Divorce Lawyers
• Amy Winehouse
• Root Dental Office
• Back to the Fuschia Florists
• Indiana Jeans
• Thorassic Park Chiropractors
• Big Legrowlski
• Tech it Easy Electronics
• Sam & Ella’s Chicken Palace
• Frying Nemo
• Holy Cannoli
• The Holy Donut
• Pie in the Sky
• Good Enough
• Jitters
• Passmore Gas & Propane
• Amigone Funeral home
• Tequila Mockingbird
• Stubbs Prosthetics
• Make Me Holey
• Bees Knees Honey Co.

Creative Business Name Generators

Looking for a simple process for naming your business? This Business Name Brainstorming Workbook offers a smart, streamlined process. It can help you get creative while keeping all the little things that can impact your business’s success in mind.

In addition, if you’re having trouble thinking outside the box, the business name generators below can be a great way to help you get the naming process started. A name generator helps with word pairing and gets the creative juices flowing to start coming up with a company name.

• Namelix. Enter your keywords, and Namelix will generate related business names and logos.
• Brandroot. Search by keyword and business category. Brandroot will provide a name, logo, and tell you if the corresponding domain name is available.
• Novanym. After searching for your initial keywords, narrow the results down by name, style, and sector.
• Shopify Business Name Generator. Once you enter the key term you’d like to include in your name, the Shopify Business Name Generator will create a list of business name ideas that have an available website domain.
• BrandBucket. With BrandBucket, you can search for business names or browse by industry.
• Business Name Generator. Type in a few words that describe your business. The Business Name Generator will produce a list of potential business names for you to choose from.
• Oberlo. If you’re looking for a condensed list of 100 business names, Oberlo is the tool for you. Simply type in related keywords to get your free list.

What I like: The generators above are usually free, and some may even help with searching for available web domains too.

What’s in a name? Just about everything.

Branding is a critical part of a company’s personality, and a unique business name will help you stand out from your competitors and build a strong brand. Once you have a name, you’ll want to identify your target market, define your positioning, and create a business plan to get your business off the ground.

In my experience, using a business name generator or AI tool is a great way to get the brainstorming started. From there, double- and triple-check that your business name isn’t already in use. Free and clear of trademarks? Register your business name and start planning your marketing strategy to have a successful business launch. Get started today with HubSpot’s free business startup kit.

Editor's note: This post was originally published in September 2019 and has been updated for comprehensiveness. This article was written by a human, but our team uses AI in our editorial process. Check out our full disclosure to learn more about how we use AI.

Editor’s Note: This article was first published on LinkedIn here. 

Imagine a time when the world’s largest companies were run by boards comprised primarily of white men. These gentlemen met on the same dates, sat in the same room, in exactly the same seats, with the same agendas and often alongside many of the same faces they’ve seen for years.

You’d be forgiven for thinking this description is perhaps a scene from Mad Men or governance practices of a bygone era. Unfortunately, it’s hardly an exaggeration of what continues to happen today. At a time when the world outside the oak-paneled boardroom is undergoing monumental change at unprecedented speeds, the incongruity is striking.

What does this mean for the companies they govern? The short answer: Nothing good.

In today’s competitive landscape, no industry is immune, nor is any company spared, from the prophetic forces of disruption. When board composition and practices remain largely static and fail to reflect the fast-moving digital era in which we live, the company is set up for failure.

Change is supposed to start at the top, and therein lies the irony. As directors, we’re charged with evaluating management on their ability to innovate and leverage emerging technology for competitive advantage, yet we rarely apply any of these standards to ourselves.

Ask yourself: When was the last time your board innovated around its processes and procedures? Or thought about how to leverage digital technology and new capabilities to better serve the shareholders we represent?

Isn’t it time you did?

Netflix’s Boardroom Innovation

Last year, Netflix made headlines for another one of its “disruptions.” Two academics at Stanford University published a paper describing the redesign of Netflix’s board meetings and the incorporation of two new practices, the first of which encourages board members to attend and observe senior management meetings.

While hardly an earth-shattering innovation, it nevertheless is a healthy alternative to the CEO acting as a de facto gatekeeper, filtering the information and messages that make it to the board. However, no matter how nice the idea, the notion of board directors observing meetings isn’t pragmatic or scalable for organizations with hundreds of thousands of employees located in countries all over the world.

The second and more novel idea involves restructuring communications to the board by providing a 30-page narrative memo with links to supporting analysis. In what some would consider a bold move, Netflix allows open access to all the data and information on the company’s internal shared systems, and the board can go directly to the authors with their questions.

While any innovation in the board world should be welcomed, the Netflix practices are unlikely to revolutionize corporate governance. Not all CEOs welcome their boards to have such close proximity to the business, and some might argue that it actually diminishes the objectivity of the board and its role in governance.

Nevertheless, Netflix’s board believes this direct exposure to employees and data gives them substantially deeper knowledge of the company. As a result, they have the confidence to back management when pursuing disruptive business moves that might leave other boards feeling uncomfortable.

More Transparency, More Trust

Of course, Netflix isn’t alone in its quest for disruption. CEOs in every industry are grappling with the urgent need to embrace innovation and undertake more radical transformations.

Navigating the choppy waters that transformation entails is particularly daunting for public companies under the spotlight of analysts and shareholders who care just as much about their quarterly expectations being met. For management teams, this oversight only cements the need for their board to be fully informed, aligned, and confident about the underlying causes of short-term turbulence when pursuing a longer-term (transformational) strategy.

The other advantage of Netflix’s “real-time” access to data is having a board that’s up-to-speed on what’s happening with the business. Contrast that to the traditional model of boards showing up four times a year to review last quarters results (the very definition of lagging information), and the advantage is obvious.

When you think about how much changes in the business environment in the course of a week, let alone a quarter, teams that provide their boards with current data and analysis will have a competitive edge through faster decision-cycles and more informed perspectives.

As we look ahead, improving board processes by removing decision-making latency will become an even greater advantage as businesses become truly digital and companies contend with the speed and heightened expectations it brings.

Game of Drones?

Another area ripe for disruption is the tsunami of data and information that overwhelmed directors are forced to digest. Enterprise data is doubling every two years, so it doesn’t take Einstein to figure out that your average director simply won’t be able to keep up.

Thankfully, the emergence of digital capabilities offers directors a meaningful opportunity to become more efficient and effective at our job. Advances in technology such as artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) have the potential to provide us with richer insights and better predictions, identify patterns and correlations not possible in the past, and allow us to prepare for meetings in a fraction of the time.

Think about board materials with its hundreds of pages of content and imagine how effective a machine could be at identifying any mismatches in wording or catching inconsistencies in numbers. Textual analysis is now reaching par with human comprehension, which then raises the question as to where such technology might be applied to supplement and enhance the efforts of directors.

Instead of a bleary-eyed director working into the small hours of the morning, wading through red-lined versions of documents, what if ML technology was applied in advance? Better yet, how about letting the system cross-reference a company’s current regulatory filings, earnings call transcripts, and press releases against prior ones? Or against competitors? The incremental value is immediately evident.

Automating some of the more mundane tasks might not only result in a higher standard of governance but could also free up precious time for directors to spend on strategy, competitive analysis, and other timely issues facing the company. No doubt, this outcome would be welcomed by directors everywhere.

Worried about New Risks? #MeToo

Speaking of timely issues, the media has been littered with stories of companies blindsided by reputational issues that arise from unpredictable events. The emergence of social media is both an aspirin and a headache for boards when it comes to managing risk in the digital age. Knowing that you might be only one tweet or one viral video away from a significant erosion in stock price value should prompt every board to figure out how they might match their governance practices to the “needs, feeds, and speeds” of business today.

Aside from requiring more timely reactions, these trends put pressure on boards to do more with the information we have and be proactive in thinking through and in mitigating various scenarios for reputational risk.

One way to stay ahead of looming reputational risks is for directors to know how their company is genuinely perceived. Leveraging platforms like Glassdoor and Twitter and combining their data—along with other public data sources such as industry blogs or online user groups—would give boards a more holistic sense of what key stakeholders are saying about their organization and provide an interesting checkpoint relative to what they are hearing (or not) from management.

Had the boards of Uber, CBS, or Nike been proactive in obtaining sentiment analysis of the company’s culture from multiple sources, they might have prevented some of the subsequent fall out.

Conclusion

There’s no denying that the world around directors has moved on from the days of oak-paneled boardrooms and sleepy quarterly reviews. Yet board processes and practices have lagged behind, and the result is increasing levels of frustration on the part of shareholders, management teams and directors themselves.

Rather than ask the mundane questions of an under-informed board racing to catch up each quarter, we as directors need to step up and be active participants in continuous and forward-thinking discussions with management. One obvious way to increase our efficiency and effectiveness is to leverage the power of new technologies to do our jobs. We do it in our personal lives, so our board lives should be no different.

As George B. Shaw once said, “Those who can’t change their minds, can’t change anything.” Surely, we as directors cannot only change our minds but also demonstrate how much we too can embrace change and continuously improve.

And what better time than now? Boards are rife for disruption. Starting with ourselves, those that can embrace a mindset that adaptability to change is the killer app will set the right tone for governance in the digital age.

The post Why a Rapidly Changing World Requires Boards to Innovate and Bring Corporate Governance into the Digital Age appeared first on OpenView Labs.

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• Swell is an impact investing platform that helps users invest in high-growth companies that produce — and derive revenue from — products or services that address the environmental and social challenges as outlined by the UN Sustainable Development goals.
• Swell portfolios center around renewable energy, healthy living, zero waste, green tech, clean water, and disease eradication. The Impact 400 portfolio is 400 of the most impactful, do-good public companies across many sectors, firms, and themes. 
• The company doesn't use algorithms to build its portfolios, and the rigorous human process looks at how a company conducts its business as well as what that business is. Swell's management team also includes screenings of the news for controversy like recent lawsuits. 
• Similar: Find a comparison of robo-advisors Betterment and Wealthfront here, and Stash — a micro investing app — here.

Swell is an impact investing platform that helps people invest in high-growth companies working to solve global challenges.

It's based on the belief that today's biggest challenges will result in tomorrow's leading industries. Each company in its portfolios is selected because it produces — and derives revenue from — products or services that address the environmental and social challenges as outlined by the UN Sustainable Development Goals.

For users, portfolios are arranged into easily discernible values: renewable energy, healthy living, zero waste, green tech, clean water, and disease eradication — in which they can invest their money in varying percentages, depending on their preferences. Swell's Impact 400 portfolio features 400 of the most impactful public companies that consistently derive revenue from the UN SDGs. 

Swell was incubated within Pacific Life, a 150-year-old financial firm, and portfolios are weighted for risk and return as well as taking into account fundamentals like valuation, momentum, and liquidity. Swell rebalances all portfolios twice a year and reconstitutes them annually to ensure they stay true to the company's standards of both impact and performance.

Swell isn't a robo-advisor, and unlike robo-advisors, it doesn't invest on a user's behalf in mutual funds or ETFs. Swell is an investment advisor that chooses the portfolios, then works with registered broker-deal Folio Institutional to buy shares in each of the portfolio's companies. Because the investor owns shares in individual companies, they're considered a shareholder and can vote as a shareholder — which is an opportunity to use impact investing to really shift corporate behavior. When a company wants to make a big change to the way it conducts business, and they issue a shareholder resolution, Swell investors can vote and impact everything from its management to its treatment of the environment. 

Is impact investing actually profitable?

Ethics aside, building a sustainable future is a pragmatic priority. On an individual level, though, some investors wonder if "doing good" with their investments means losing out on money. 

But Swell was created because "doing good" was observed to be profitable. Its CEO Dave Fanger was traveling around the country evaluating businesses as a member of the M&A (mergers and acquisitions) department at Swell's parent company, Pacific Life, when he noticed the companies that treated their employees well tended to deliver better returns to investors. He and a colleague discussed why there wasn’t an easy and accessible way to invest in that trend.

Separately, Fanger also dealt with Type 1 Diabetes and relied upon tech company Dexcom to manage the disease. The desire to combine an opportunity to invest in the above trend — and in life-saving companies — was the incentive behind Swell. 

Sustainable investments are on the rise — and for good reason. The latest research from USSIF shows that one in four dollars under professional management is invested in socially responsible strategies. For many pragmatists, impact is simply a market opportunity: Resources are diminishing, our population is growing, and the issue of supply and demand means there's a need, and an incentive, for innovation. The companies that are innovating now stand to grow as our needs increase. Investing in those best groomed for success is just good business.

Swell doesn't rely on an algorithm. That's because, according to the Swell team, algorithms haven't yet become sophisticated enough to capture the nuance of impact investing, and they've missed catching some of its risks before. A dedicated management and impact team builds portfolios out with companies that have excellent impact and performance, and Swell makes each company included in said portfolios transparent to users: what it is, and what it does to make the world a better place.

 

In vetting companies for impact, Swell first identifies which ones produce or provide — and derive revenue from — products or services that address the environmental or social challenges as outlined by the UN Sustainable Development Goals. (The UN SDGS is a worldwide to-do list for achieving a sustainable future for humankind, set by 193 world leaders). 

Then, Swell’s portfolio management team screens each company for any “controversial events" that could make them a less socially responsible option for investors. Big data providers scan thousands of news stories to find any related red flags, like recent lawsuits. 

In reader-friendly "company cards," Swell shows every single company to its investors, and all the ways that each company is making a positive impact on the world.

Cost of using Swell 

Swell charges a management fee of .75%. So, if you invest $500 in a year, Swell will cost you $3.75 per year. There are no trading fees, price tiers, or expense ratios. A calculator on Swell's site shows your total fees for the year depending on a given investment.  

To use it, you just:

1. Set up an account. Pick either a traditional brokerage account or a retirement account (IRA). Swell requires an initial minimum investment of $50.
2. Pick your portfolios. Choose from six value-based portfolios and create your personal Swell investment mix. You can edit this in the future if you wish to.
3. Link your bank account to start investing. 

Learn more about Swell or start investing now »

Join the conversation about this story »

By Lauren Dichter, Marketing Coordinator for Heinz Marketing

“Smiling and dialing” will always have a place in sales, but it only does so much. That’s why Microsoft Dynamics 365 and Heinz Marketing have teamed up to uncover what kind of sales strategies and technologies contribute to achieving desired revenue goals. To ensure we could report on an accurate view of the B2B sales scene, we surveyed a wide range of sales leaders from mid-market companies to large, global enterprises.

The Portrait of a Successful Sales Team

From our research results, we’ve developed a profile of the most successful sales organizations. Applying these detailed insights to your sales process could make all the difference in closing on crucial business.

1. Top sales organizations prioritize building strong relationships with the right people on the buying committee. In fact, more than 80% of respondents who report being effective at building these relationships also report being effective at achieving desired sales goals! To do this successfully, they invest substantial time in laying the groundwork. These companies:
   • Have effective contact, lead, and account data management systems in place
   • Regularly collaborate with other sales team members

2. They also learn how to leverage data and consumer insights in order to move deals forward. Nearly 80% of successful organizations reported their current set of sales tool capabilities are key in enabling their sales team to achieve revenue targets! The most consistently successful companies:
   • Rely on sales tools that can put the data to work for them
   • Synchronize leads across various platforms
   • Leverage a system of predictive lead scoring
   • Integrate social network data (i.e. LinkedIn Sales Navigator)
   • Increase the visibility of social engagement on multiple platforms
   • Automate sales playbooks

3. These organizations have also established a way to scale sales efforts across multiple prospect relationships. Over 70% of respondents said effectively implementing this scaling process translates into consistently meeting revenue goals! Powerhouse sales teams can maximize their reach with efficiency, while remaining personable in their communications with prospects. Their leadership helps them understand how prospects engage with sales content and use interaction data to aid in determining the next best step to take.
4. The internal relationship between sales and marketing plays a critical role in a company’s ability to successfully engage in any of the 3 sets of activities listed above. In fact, more than 75% of those who achieve their revenue goals also say their organization has a strong alignment between sales and marketing. The most cohesive sales and marketing teams:

• Have a mechanism for providing constructive criticism and feedback to each other
• Share reports and insights
• Operate a coordinated sales process

5. Finally, these companies measure—they evaluate progress against predetermined KPIs. Sales and marketing have reached a new level of maturity where measuring everything from setbacks to progress is just as important as executing a campaign. 62.5% of sales leaders say they’re confident in the metrics and KPIs that guide their sales performance, and 72.3% of organizations that meet their numbers feel their current KPIs are an effective way of measuring progress. Using benchmark data allows elite companies to plan for sales success day-in and day-out, instead of just hoping for it. The metrics that carry more weight when it comes to achieving revenue goals are:
   • Overall growth of the lead database
   • Prospects’ engagement
   • Number of contacts within each target account
   • Quality of the past conversation history
   • Total number of warm network referrals

The blueprint for consistently meeting revenue goals is a set of interdependent components. The most effective selling can only occur when technology and systems are connected, automatically syncing prospect and customer data to allow sellers to focus on relationships. Actually closing a deal is impossible without establishing strong relationships with the right mix of decision-makers and influencers in a buying committee. Moreover, maximizing revenue generation depends on a company’s ability to sell at scale.

Has your sales team mastered these elements? Is there room for improvement? How many members of the buying committee does your sales team engage within each target account, and does that communication occur on a regular basis?

As sales and marketing executives, these are the type of questions to ask yourself. You must look under the hood before going full speed ahead, and the same is true with a sales organization.

You Know What to Do

Meet those lofty revenue goals… and then take it even further. For more insights, download the full report here and tune in to Sales Pipeline Radio on Thursday, March 28^th at 11:30am PST.

The post How Leading Companies Enable Powerful Relationship-Selling appeared first on Heinz Marketing.