Kevin Dorsey is a fantastic sales leader. As Head of Sales for SnackNation, he leads a team of 12 Sales Development Reps and 30 Account Executives. SnackNation offers office delivery of healthy snacks that create happier and more productive teams.

In just one year, Kevin grew the teams from a handful of reps to over 40. Along the way, he decided that the best avenue for reinforcing and scaling critical sales competencies was to build a Sales Playbook.

And over the next 3.5 months, he did just that.

Lesson #1: He immersed himself in his SDRs' process

"I knew that if I wrote the Playbook from behind my desk exclusively, it probably wouldn't be very good."

Kevin got his hands dirty, getting in the seat with the SDRs and really seeing what that day-to-day felt and sounded like. He was looking to combine emergent best practices (identified by his team) with industry and thought leaders learnings.

 The playbook is broken into three sections:

• What do we need to know about our customers to help them succeed?
• What must every single SDR be able to do well?
• What data / technologies do we need to effectively execute?

Lesson #2: He started with the most important piece- The Why

"My favorite part of the playbook is the why section. I really tried to explain to new hires why we do certain things the way we do."

Right up front, the playbook lays out the thinking behind how SnackNation reps execute. Kevin shares what mistakes have already been made and lessons learned along the way. Most companies direct their teams on how to go after deals, but rarely share the why.

Kevin’s team knows the why, they believe in it, and mostly importantly they can teach it to others.

Lesson #3: He got his team involved

"When I finished a chapter, I presented it to the team. I said, 'Tear this apart. Tell me where I'm wrong. Tell me what's off that doesn't work in real life.' Getting the team involved builds ownership."

After the 3.5 month initial writing period, Kevin continues to revise the playbook monthly. He makes updates for each new hire class. His goal is to make the previous SDR class jealous - to the point where they're saying, "Man, I wish I had all this when I started."

Equal to what goes in the playbook is how you communicate it. You have to put everything in a format that reps can absorb. Even the best writing, if presented as a wall of words, won't help your reps learn and grow.

Sales teams need playbooks to make the most of every single sales interaction. You want to capture industry best practices, bubble up emerging techniques, and continuously refine buyer-based messaging so that, as Kevin says, your old timers are jealous of the tool you're handing to your new hires.

An aside, here at The Bridge Group we write Sales Playbooks that rock, if I do say so myself (as do our clients).

Don’t make your new hires do sales tool archeology; hand them a roadmap to success. Any questions for Kevin?

Flying is cheaper than it used to be. Adjusted for inflation, a ticket from LA to Kansas City cost $575 in 1955 , compared to a couple hundred bucks today. Flights are more affordable these days, but pretty much everything costs extra. Here’s how to get around those fees, especially the hidden ones.

Read more...

I know way too much about Curious George. I have a two-year-old daughter.

And, like many parents of toddlers, my frame of reference is heavily influenced by my sweet, energy-filled, cartoon-loving little girl. It’s not uncommon these days for me to compare something happening in my day to a lesson taught on Sesame Street, Daniel Tiger’s Neighborhood or Little Einsteins.

Now, it isn’t very often that my parenting world and my marketing world collide, so as I sat watching Curious George Season 1, Episode 18 with my daughter a few months back, it was like I was seeing the television version of French fries dipped in a milkshake (it’s an odd but delectable combination if you’ve never tried it).

The episode starts with a story called “Candy Counter,” which follows this plot line:

• After buying a box of candy at a candy counter, George is asked by the owner Cayley to man the counter for a short time while she runs a couple of errands.
• Things start slowly, but as George gets more customers than he was prepared for, he becomes overwhelmed and starts giving the candy away for free.
• When Cayley returns, she discovers that George gave away seven times more candy than he sold. Unable to see how she can recover from the loss of that revenue, Cayley plans to close up shop once she’s sold the goodies she has on hand.
• Sulking, George heads back to the candy counter the next day, only to find Cayley ecstatic because the people who received the free samples were returning in droves to buy more of her product.

This cute story harkens back to a practice that we have all seen in our daily lives. Food samples in the grocery store, a free trial of a software application prior to signing up for a long-term commitment, a tiny-sized shampoo bottle that lets you try a little before you buy a lot—the examples are endless.

But, does this marketing method really produce results? If a practice is this widespread, it has to, right?

Not able to satisfy my Curious George-like curiosity any other way, I did some research to find out what companies are reporting from their use of free samples, product demos and the like. Here are some key takeaways:

1). Demos can help set accurate expectations about your product or service.

When your experiences don’t live up to expectations, disappointment sets in. And, disappointing customers is one of the last things companies want to do because it damages trust, can put future sales in doubt and, depending on the level of infraction, can lead to disgruntled customers taking to their networks and sullying your company’s good name.

If you let your customers see what they are actually getting, however, they can be realistic about what your product or service will do for them, keeping expectations in check.

One real-life application for this concept is mobile apps. The other day, I was looking for a workout app, and my search returned hundreds of options. With the vast array of choices in the app marketplace, companies need a way to stand out, and a demo video just may be the solution, since it can show off the app’s functionality and address common questions and objections from your audience, leaving little room for inaccurate expectations.

2). Free trial offers may seriously reduce your cost of customer acquisition.

You have probably all heard the adage, “You must spend money to make money.” In practice, the concept is largely why we marketers all have jobs. But is investing less money while keeping the cash rolling the stuff of companies’ dreams?

Maybe not. MarketingExperiments ran a study with a health services company where they tested an offer for a 30-day free trial. When comparing the test results to the 60-day period prior to their test, they found almost a 40 percent decrease in the average cost per customer acquisition. 40 percent! That kind of positive impact on the bottom line is rarely duplicated when evaluating return on investment (ROI) of every dollar spent.

3). Giving free trials of your product or service may positively impact sales…for a long, long time.

While it’s nice to see a mass of responses to a demo or free trial offer, the hope is that those responders turn into real revenue. Otherwise, the upfront costs to your company would be difficult to recoup. The following shows just a few examples of how companies are seeing this play out:

• Retention: In the same article from MarketingExperiments mentioned above, researchers reported retention numbers for two different tests. In each case, a huge majority of the free-trial participants (69 to 88 percent, actually) turned into real dollars and cents for the company by continuing past the trial period.
• Reciprocity: Brad Tuttle explains this phenomenon perfectly in an article for Time: “Once you’ve had your free sample, it’s up to you to figure out if this is a product you’d choose to buy if it wasn’t part of some exciting giveaway.” He continues, “Sometimes, they [meaning customers] decide to buy simply because they’ve gotten a freebie and, consciously or not, somehow feel obligated to pay the company back.”
• Perceived Value: A lot of focus has been put into pricing strategy over the years, and price is also a factor with freebies. One research study found that when a product or service was given away for free at the time a customer was purchasing an expensive item, the perceived value of the free one was higher. Or, as Martha C. White sums up the concept, “When given something for free, you’ll pay more for it later.”
• Long-Term Impact: Product sampling appears to affect sales longer than many other promotional types. One Irish publication cited that “Up to 52 weeks after the initial sampling period, the positive impact on sales [could] still be measured. However with other promotions such as coupons, the effects on sales only [lasted] up to 12 weeks.” Few other marketing tactics can claim more than a month or two of sales impact, so this stat showing the long-term returns some companies have seen from sampling is both shocking and motivating.

4). Freebies are great fodder for word-of-mouth marketing.

According to Jonah Berger, author of Contagious: Why Things Catch On, “Word of mouth is 10 times more effective than traditional advertising. Particularly for a new product people look to their friends to tell them if it’s good or not.” It’s no wonder there is so much discussion about how to make your marketing go viral with stats like this one circulating!

So, how can freebies help spread the word about your product or service? In an article published in the Journal of Marketing, Berger, along with Eric M. Schwartz, writes that giving away a product resulted in a 20 percent uptick in word of mouth, and sending consumers swag, like a hat, koozie or other tchotchke, showed a 15 percent increase in word of mouth. However, providing samples, rebates and coupons had no significant impact.

The next time you want to create some buzz about your product or service, you might try giving it away and seeing what happens.

Overall, the writings on product demos, freebies, sampling and so on were positive, so in this case conventional wisdom may actually be right. However, it’s not for every company. As with most marketing tactics, you have to look at your own situation, weighing the upfront costs versus the potential rewards. And, if you’re curious enough, start by testing it on a small scale with your product or service.

What’s in a name? Deciding what to name your startup business can be a high pressure task. At best, you want your company name–and logo, for that matter–to be easy to read, descriptive, and, most importantly, memorable. But a lot of companies decide on names that just don’t stick. The last thing you want is for your company to be forgettable.

So what makes for a memorable startup company name? Well, there are a handful of different approaches you could take, illustrated in the infographic below. Typically, your company name should be grounded in your mission statement, but be interesting enough that it isn’t forgettable. To achieve this, you might decide to get creative and make up your own word–or you might decide to go the classic route and pick one really powerful word. What matters is that whatever approach you take to name your company, that you do it well.

Here are 10 popular startup naming approaches:

1. Related Word: The name of the company is related to its product or service. For example, Dropbox is where you “drop” your files to host them.

2. Made Up Word: Typically, these words will be related to the product or service. For example, Giphy is a site for gifs.

3. Vague Word: Some companies like to maintain an air of mystery. Or they just liked the way the word sounds. Take Tilt, for example.

4. Letter Swap: This type of name is very popular. Replace one letter with another same-sounding letter, as in Lyft.

5. Letters Added: Because sometimes a letter makes all the difference. Like SpaceX, which makes “space” sound even more extreme than it already is.

6. Letters Dropped: Like company names with letter added, dropping a letter can also make company names more appealing. You see this probably most often in the removal of the e from “er” sounds, like in Foundr magazine.

7. Domain Added: Another popular trend is the use of a unique domain that is part of the company name, like Last.fm. The risk with this approach is that people may get confused and attempt to search for the company name with a normal domain like .com.

8. Related Word Smash: Word smashes are fun. Two or more words related to a company’s product or service are combined to make a new word that contains both word meanings. For example, “venn diagram” and “engage” make Venngage.

9. Random Word Smash: Like a related word smash company name, except the combined words aren’t really related to the company’s product or service. Like AppSumo–not overtly relevant, but still with a catchy ring to it.

10. The Randoms: These company names could fit into any number of sections. Like Airbnb–it’s part word smash, part letters dropped, part related word. And it’s very memorable.

The clever mind map infographic below organizes startup company names by category, and then rates them on their effectiveness on a scale of “Perfect”, to “Kinda”, to “Nah”. A sample of 77 companies that raised money in the last year were pulled from CrunchBase. Those companies were sorted into categories based on their name type.

The companies were then rated on how effective their names were at communicating their mission statements on CrunchBase, on a very scientific scale of “Perfect” to “Nah.” Basically, if someone who knew nothing about the company is able to infer what the company’s product or service is, the company gets a “Perfect.” But if the name gives nothing away about what the company actually does, they get a “Nah.”

Certain companies will undoubtedly jump right out at you.

What do you think? Which startup company names stick and which ones fall flat?

Everyone hates meetings. We can’t eliminate them, but there are online tools that can help turn ill-timed gabfests into efficient engines of productivity.

One option is Less Meeting, which offers tools to make it easier to schedule, plan and follow-up on a team summit. Co-founder Jeffrey Steinke says he and a few colleagues built Less Meeting as an in-house utility after sitting through too many endless meetings. “After enough of our clients asked what this ‘Less Meeting’ thing was we decided to productize it and that led to what it is now,” he says. “It solves a problem my co-founders and I faced countless times over the years.” Less Meeting allows organizers to set meeting times, dates and agendas through an Outlook plug-in, or a web interface for non-Outlook users. During meetings, participants can take notes and track action items through a shared online interface. Those notes are automatically emailed to everyone at the end, with each person’s particular responsibilities highlighted. LessMeeting has a free 14-day trial, after which it costs $12 (U.S.) per month for one license, $59 for 10 or $225 for 50.

Assistant.to is a downloadable plug-in for Chrome web browsers that displays calendar invites right inside Gmail messages, a more elegant solution than sorting through Gmail’s normally long chains of text. When you hit “compose” with Assistant.to installed, an “A” pops up in the lower right-hand corner of the message. Clicking it brings up a calendar, where meeting details can be determined.  Assistant.to’s plug-in is free and also integrates with a number of web-meeting applications, including Google Hangouts, GoToMeeting and Cirrus Insight. An Outlook version is in the works, the company says.

There’s also Genee, a mobile and email app that functions like an automated assistant for meeting planning. Using your smartphone, you can ask Genee to set up a meeting with specific individuals. It then scans your schedule, picks an available time and automatically sends requests to predetermined participants. It works similarly on desktop email, except Genee is CC’d like any other participant. The software then scans the schedules of everyone else on the email for an opportune time. Genee’s makers say it works well for meetings of fewer than six people. The software—currently in beta—works with Gmail, iCloud and Office 365. It’s free for the moment.

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MORE FROM THE FRICTIONLESS OFFICE:

• Accounting startups aim to end the pain of spreadsheets
• How to bring your customer scheduling into the mobile age
• How to choose the right software tool, in five steps
• Too many distractions? Try these tech solutions
• How to be everywhere at once with virtual phone numbers
• How to run a high-performance office (without the office)

The post How to make meetings less agonizing with a few simple tools appeared first on Canadian Business - Your Source For Business News.

Everyone's path to success is different.

For some, it's mostly linear. Others encounter more twists, turns, and bumps along the way.

While some like Steve Jobs and Richard Branson were already dominating the business world at 25, others like Larry Ellison and Mark Cuban took a little longer to hit their stride and saw their mid-20s as transformative years.

To illustrate how no two paths to success are alike, we've highlighted what 25 highly successful people were doing at age 25.

Vivian Giang and Max Nisen contributed to earlier versions of this post.

SEE ALSO: Mark Cuban, Richard Branson, and 24 other successful people share their best career advice for people in their 20s

DON'T MISS: 15 things successful 20-somethings do in their spare time

Donald Trump took over his father's real-estate-development company.

Trump, a Republican presidential nominee hopeful, billionaire real-estate mogul, and animated TV personality, grew up wealthy. But as he told Forbes, his father wanted him to learn the value of money.

As a kid, his dad would take him to construction sites and have him and his brother pick up empty soda bottles to redeem for cash. He says that he didn't make much, but it taught him to work for his money.

At 25, the young real-estate developer was given control of his father's company, Elizabeth Trump & Son, which he later renamed the Trump Organization, according to Bio. He soon became involved in large, profitable building projects in Manhattan.

Steve Jobs took his company public and became a millionaire.

By the end of its first day of trading in December 1980, Apple Computer had a market value of $1.2 billion, making its cofounders very rich men. Jobs, one of the three cofounders, was 25.

He later told biographer Walter Isaacson that he made a pledge at that time to never let money ruin his life.

Hillary Clinton had just graduated from Yale Law School.

At 23, Clinton, now a Democratic presidential nominee hopeful, began dating fellow Yale Law student Bill Clinton. She ended up staying at school an extra year to be with her boyfriend, and received her law degree in 1973, just before turning 25. Her boyfriend proposed marriage after graduation, but she declined.

That same year, Clinton began working at the Yale Child Study Center. Her first scholarly article, "Children Under the Law," was published in the Harvard Educational Review in late 1973, when she was 25.

After moving to Arkansas in 1975, Clinton agreed to marry Bill. She'd go on to become the first lady of Arkansas, the first lady of the US, a US Senator, and Secretary of State.

See the rest of the story at Business Insider

Providing genuine value to your customers without even a hint of self-promotion. This novel concept could put you and your business on the map.

Why do marketers insist on looking for “best practices” and “conversion rate optimization tips” that simply don’t work?

A few years ago, I wrote a blog post called “31 Conversion Optimization Tips – How to Increase Conversion Rates”. Early in the post, I explained that these so-called “best practices” have limited value unless they’ve been thoroughly tested. They do not take your business context into account and probably don’t work in your specific scenario. Conversion rate optimization (CRO) is context-specific, which is why not adhering to specific conversion rate optimization best practices is a best practice.

Despite that pointed preface, that post remains one of WiderFunnel’s most popular. Marketers are always looking for the next magic conversion tactic that will take their site to the next level, but unfortunately, that magic tactic doesn’t exist. If you want to do CRO for real, you need a structured process that delivers both growth and insights.

In an ideal world, you’d have a fully dedicated team running your conversion optimization program. But, in reality, your resources may be limited. If you want more resources, you need upper-level buy-in. If you want upper-level buy-in, you need to prove the ROI of conversion optimization.

A structured process is your best chance at getting valid results you can use to build your internal team and take your marketing efforts to the next level.

Beware the ‘Hot-Shot Optimizer’

There are conversion optimization “experts” out there who promise quick wins without the hassle of process, but be wary of these ‘Hot-Shot Optimizers’. They love landing page templates and swear by design ‘best practices’. They track micro conversions as goals and call winning variations without statistical significance. They value tools over strategy and love to test button colors.

The ‘Hot-Shot’ might get a few wins in the beginning, but they may not be real wins. And soon, your conversion optimization efforts will hit a brick wall. Without in-depth research, informed hypotheses, proper prioritization and design of experiments, and comprehensive results analysis, you’ll never see the full benefits of CRO on your site.

You need a never-ending testing idea engine.

In this post, I’ll show you the most important components of building a testing idea engine — a structured process for conversion optimization.

We’ve been developing and refining the optimization process at WiderFunnel for the past decade: the latest version is what we’ve called the Infinity Optimization Process. This process is designed to maximize both creative and analytical thinking so that you never run out of test ideas.

The good news is that you can adopt parts or all of it in your optimization program today! Look at the frameworks below as examples of the principles your optimization program needs to succeed.

Optimization isn’t a project, it’s a continuous cycle.

There are two sides to successful conversion optimization: one is expansive, the other reductive. This is just like in any good brainstorming session: the idea generation mindset is separated from the evaluation mindset. It’s the same in conversion optimization. I call these mindsets Explore and Validate. The central point is the nucleus where the energy is released. That is where Growth & Insights are revealed.

The infinity loop shape of the diagram is intentional — this process is continuous and both Explore and Validate feed into each other through Growth and Insights.

The Explore phase is the ideation phase, where you gather information and look for patterns within data. In the center of Explore is the LIFT Model — our framework for understanding customers’ conversion barriers and persuasion opportunities.

The LIFT Model, which has become the industry’s most popular conversion optimization framework, is the central point for understanding and categorizing all the data you’ve gathered within Explore. It shows the 6 conversion factors that are influencing your sales right now: Value Proposition, Clarity, Relevance, Anxiety, Distraction, and Urgency. If the Explore phase is done properly, you’ll come away with a bunch of insights that can then be validated.

There’s a lot of nuance to how this is done, which can only be learned by experience with testing on many different scenarios. You should watch this webinar recording for case study examples to learn more about how Explore reveals insights and growth. In one example on the webinar, I detail how an Explore insight led to a 26% lift in sales for one company. Could you use similar insights?

The Validate phase proves great ideas.

Validate is an iterative process that proves which of the ideas generated in Explore actually work.

Validate takes the customer insights and LIFT points from the Explore phase to be tested in this 7-step experimentation cycle, as follows:

1. The PIE Framework

This is also a popular conversion optimization framework we developed, which allows your optimization team to always focus your resources on the most important opportunity. You simply prioritize opportunities based on three factors: Potential, Importance, and Ease. (In practice, we use many data points as sub-factors that feed into the top-level PIE numbers, but this is a good conceptual starting point for you.)

2. Hypothesis creation, which converts the “weaknesses” identified in the LIFT Analysis and turns them into strengths to be tested.
3. Design of Experiments (DOE). Design of Experiments is often overlooked, but this is where we spend most of our effort at WiderFunnel. To clarify, I’m not referring to graphic design, but rather how you’re structuring your experiments. Your DOE will determine the outcomes of your experiments in both insights and growth. If your experiment is designed to isolate insights, for example, losing tests will never be losing tests because you’ll have uncovered insights that you can build upon!
4. UX/UI design, which can cause problems if you’re using a designer without experience in design for conversion. The details count!
5. Development and QA, ensuring your code approach doesn’t cause technical problems for your A/B test results.
6. Live A/B test, where you monitor results and make tactical decisions to prune or accelerate variations based on performance rules.
7. Results analysis. If your hypotheses and Design of Experiments are created effectively, you’ll learn something important about your customers and lift revenue. At WiderFunnel, we call these profitable “A-ha!” Moments.

The Infinity Optimization Process enables you to take your A/B testing to the next level, allowing you to uncover and test the persuasion triggers that move your users to buy.

A mobile e-commerce subscription company discovers its customer motivation.

An e-commerce client has a subscription model: users sign up for a monthly mystery box of “Geek + Gamer gear”. We ran several experiments with the intention of testing the understanding of this client’s customers’ motivations. We wanted to know if users responded to hints of social inclusion or hints of product tangibility and savings.

Control

Social proof variation

After a few rounds of testing, the client saw a 14% lift in sales using a combination of social inclusion and social proof. This customer tendency is one that the client can now test on other areas of their site.

Social proof clearly works…for this audience, in this context. But what works for one organization may not work for yours. You should always test that!

So, how does one come up with important ideas like this? That’s where the PODs, POPs, and POIs can come in.

This final framework I’ll share with you today is meant to help you understand how to create powerful questions about your value proposition and the persuasion triggers that motivate your users to act.

Many marketers are focused on Points of Parity: these are the features you offer that are important to your prospects that you also share with your competitors. Marketers should focus, instead on the Points of Difference: these are the features that are important to your prospects and are not available from your competitors.

Do the work to understand your audience. Look for patterns in user behavior and test the different approaches to your value proposition that are unique to you (refer to those PODs). A quick tip! Landing pages are the best place to test your value proposition because visitors to these pages are exempt from the rest of the messaging on your site.

The Infinity Optimization Process over time

Here’s a visual of our A/B testing engine in action, over time (this diagram is based off actual testing we’ve done for one WiderFunnel client). We start with one test on the homepage that reveals 5 insights.

In the next round of testing, two of these are validated, two are invalidated, one is inconclusive. We also see that an insight from a separate experiment on a content page has been invalidated.

And on and on it goes. The testing ideas never end.

As you can see, conversion optimization takes dedicated time and resources to be successful. It can’t be a side project for a single data analyst. If you want an endless stream of test ideas, you must build your strategy, build your bank of insights and store those insights so that they are accessible.

If you need to raise funding from VCs for your startup, the first step is to create a pitch deck. Well, after step zero, which is to have a great idea.

So what’s a pitch deck? A pitch deck is a brief presentation (usually based on slides) that provides the audience with an overview of your business. It is often created using PowerPoint or Keynote.

For the purpose of funding, it gives potential investors a brief idea of what your business is about, who your target audience is, and other relevant information that will help convince them to write you a check.

A pitch deck is an essential fundraising tool, whether you’re looking to raise $50,000, $500,000 or $50 million.

Creating a pitch deck is not an easy task. If you’ve never done it before and you’re a first-time entrepreneur, it can be incredibly daunting.

Your emotions will be filled with a mix of excitement and nervousness about raising your first round of financing for your startup. What do you include and leave out? This is your baby we’re talking about; surely you need to show everything, right?

To help you with this daunting task, why not take some cues from other startups who’ve raised money from angel investors and VCs? I’ve compiled a list of 30 of the best startup pitch decks to help you to use as reference. These are the pitch decks of some of your favorite tech brands that you use every day. These pitch decks definitely helped them get to the top.

Hopeuflly these deck will help you understand what persuades an investor to write a check for an entrepreneur’s idea. We hope they provide some insight into the ebst way to get inside a potential invertor’s head.

We’ll also touch upon the best takeaways from each deck so you’ll get an idea of what to include in your startup pitch decks.

If you’ve already put together a great pitch deck and you have some advice, we’d love to hear it in the comments!

From behemoths like Facebook and Youtube to up-and-coming superstars like Buffer, together these startups have raised millions of dollars and are now worth billions!

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1. Facebook

I’m sure you’ve heard of them. Here’s a fun fact: Peter Thiel, the billionaire venture capitalist and entrepreneur, was the first outside investor in Facebook back in 2004. That’s when Mark Zuckerberg first set out to turn his dorm room project into a lasting business. Zuckerberg received $500,000 from Peter Thiel.

While they don’t have an investor pitch deck, they do have a media kit containing the company’s value proposition, key metrics, and marketing services that were used to sell ads to potential clients.

Favorite takeaway: The focus of the pitch deck was based on solid numbers such as their user engagement, traffic, users, and growth metrics.

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2. Airbnb

 

Airbnb is a platform that allows people to list, find, and rent lodging.

This company is one of the greatest startup success stories of our time. Airbnb’s pitch deck has become a favorite reference for entrepreneurs around the world.

Favorite takeaway: The biggest takeaway from Airbnb is the intro. It’s all about hooking your audience. You need to describe your business using as few words as possible. Imagine telling a 5-year-old what your business is about. If you can’t do that, it’s time to rethink your intro to your investors.

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3. Buffer

 

Buffer is a social media scheduling platform that helps you schedule content to Facebook, Twitter, Linkedin and Pinterest

The almighty startup pitch deck that Buffer used to raise half a million dollars is a popular deck because of Buffer’s transparency. The founder decided to put it up to help other startups to raise funds.

Favorite takeaway: Similar to Facebook, the deck was based on solid numbers from Buffer’s users (e.g. 800 users, $150,000 annual revenue run rate, etc.)

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4. Square

 

Square is a company that allows merchants to accept mobile credit card payments via a dongle.

Favorite takeaway: Social proof! It doesn’t hurt to promote the management team if they’ve been with Twitter, Google, Linkedin, Paypal, and more. I think it shows that your management team’s experience is an armor to the company. This detailed pitch deck outlines Square’s business model and a simple financial model that portrays their annual revenue and five-year growth rate.

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5. LinkedIn

 

Founded in 2002, LinkedIn is the top business-oriented social networking platform.

The company’s pitch talks a great deal about company vales, the value the network brings, and how it’s different than other social networks.

Favorite takeaway: The deck also provides an extensive analogy to showcase to investors what LinkedIn is. For example, it talks about “Web 1.0” vs. “Web 2.0”: Alta Vista was “Search 1.0”, and Google was “Search 2.0”. The deck talks about how LinkedIn is “Networking for Businesses 2.0”.

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6. Mint

 

Mint is a personal financial services tool that helps people track their spending and find ways to save money.

This deck was used in a competition and was never used for raising money, but it’s still a powerful deck that startups can learn from.

Favorite takeaway: This simple deck provides a clear value proposition to customers and investors. The creators of this deck also understood that one of the key concerns of an investor is the exit mechanism of his or her investments. I love how the deck highlights a number of exit strategy options.

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7. MapMe

 

MapMe allows users to create universally accessible (i.e. on smartphones, tablets, and computers) maps of anywhere they want with no coding required.

This deck was used to raise their $1 million in seed funding.

Social proof almost always work. The deck showed that the startup had over 20,000 unique visitors, 18,000 monthly alerts, 12 minutes average sessions on the site.

Favorite takeaway: The deck has fewer than 13 slides but provides investors with knowledge of traction the site got going viral on social media and their go-to-market strategy.

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8. LaunchRock

 

LaunchRock allows users to create landing pages and quickly get their startups known through social media, even before the launch of their full site.

Favorite takeaway: One the better-designed decks, the deck had only 15 slides but showed how the product works and the different ways it can be used. They also utilize an analogy similar to what Linkedin had in their decks.

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9. Mixpanel

 

Mixpanel is an advanced analytics platform for mobile and the web. They not only measure page views but also analyze the actions people take. This is the series-B deck for Mixpanel that helped them raise over $65 million.

Favorite takeaway: The deck started off with a problem: people guessing their analytics. It followed up by providing their solution to that problem and, ultimately, their competitive advantage.

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10. Moz

 

Moz started out as a SEO company but has pivoted to support marketers across all inbound marketing strategies.

This is the series-B deck for Moz which they used to raise over $18 million. If you’re an established startup, you can follow this guide. The deck is packed with information about the company since it was founded five years prior to this pitch.

Favorite takeaway: Because the company had already been in operation for five years, they were able to present an accurate estimated revenue, revenue run rate, average customer lifetime value, cost of paid acquisition, etc.

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11. Buzzfeed

 

We all have a love and hate relationship with Buzzfeed, don’t we? I’m sure you’ve stumbled on their pages or watched their videos before.

As of today, BuzzFeed has managed to raise over $240 million.

Favorite takeaway: SOCIAL PROOF! It doesn’t hurt to start a pitch with big numbers the company has, like the millions of users visiting the website on a monthly basis and quotations from large organizations such as CNN.

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12. Youtube

 

Youtube was acquired by Google in 2006 for $1.6 billion. Like Facebook, this company doesn’t require any introduction. Unfortunately, this is not the original deck. This is Youtube’s pitch deck to Sequoia Capital (one of the most established VC investors who’s often regarded as one of the industry’s best), which was released through a legal proceeding.

Favorite takeaway: The company wanted to be the primary outlet for video content, and it succeeded doing just that. It goes to show that if you know what your product can do, are able to show its potential, and build on the momentum gained through early investments to create that, then you can achieve its potential.

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13. Manpacks

 

Manpacks is a platform that delivers men’s essentials such as underwear, razors, grooming and other products.

The company raised $500,000 with this deck.

Favorite takeaway: This deck stands out! They clearly understand who they are, and they stayed that way throughout the entire pitch. The deck is filled with a fun tone that helps explain the product well.

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14. Foursquare

 

Foursquare is a mobile platform that helps you find the best places to go in your area.

Favorite takeaway: This deck does a great job using screenshots of social proof that the app already has from its users sharing tweets of them being ‘mayor’ of a particular area.

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15. Flowtab

 

Flowtab was an app that allowed people to order drinks quickly at a crowded bar. Despite shutting down, the founders still made it an effort to help other startups.

Favorite takeaway: Simplicity. This deck does well explaining critical information like the problem, the solution, their business model, and traction. You can’t really go wrong with this.

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16. Dwolla

 

Dwolla is a payment solution that allows users to send, receive, and request funds from other users. This 18-slide pitch deck landed the company $16.5 million.

Favorite takeaway: Most startups are founded because of a problem they faced, but not many people tell their story well through their pitch decks. Dwolla shared a great story of how the founder paid $50,000 a year in credit card fees and then created a solution for never doing it again.

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17. ZenPayRoll (Now Gusto)

 

Gusto (previously ZenPayroll) is a cloud-based solution tool for small businesses to pay employees.

The company raised $6 million with this deck.

Favorite takeaway: This isn’t just a startup deck. It is a template that you can use and replicate easily by filling in the blanks.

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18. Bliss

Bliss provides metrics for coders and allows them to collaborate easily.

The company raised over $400,000 using Angel List.

Favorite takeaway: The deck was well composed with a clear understanding of the product and the investors they were pitching to.

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19. Adpushup

 

Adpushup allows companies to maximize ad revenues through advanced A/B testing. They raised more than $632,000 in investments.

Favorite takeaway: Going back to the basics works. This deck has the basic principles like a great introduction, an outline of problems, potential solutions, market opportunities, products, case studies, milestones, traction, and a future plan.

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20. Wealthsimple

 

Wealthsimple is Canada’s first online investment manager. They raised more than $2 million in seed funding.

Favorite takeaway: The deck is sweet and short but effective. My favorite part is the transformation of industry, which is laid out on a table format.

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21. AppVirality

 

AppVirality allows app developers to grow their platform using growth method techniques proven by other startups.

Favorite takeaway: My favorite takeaway is how the flow of the deck goes through the problem, the proven solution, and how it works within their app.

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22. SteadyBudget

 

SteadyBudget is budget management software that helps PPC analysts manage various budgets across different channels.

Favorite takeaway: When you have the traction to back your startup, use it. SteadyBudget clearly took advantage of it.

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23. Podozi

 

Podozi is an online e-commerce platform based in Nigeria.

Favorite takeaway: Most startup decks work well when they’re short and sweet like Podozi’s. The best takeaway is the working partnership with large brands that this platform already has.

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24. Fittr

 

Fittr is a platform that designs custom workouts tailored to equipment, access, time management, and goals.

Favorite takeaway: As a user of this platform, I love the investment goals and the purpose of what the company is planning to use it for.

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25. Swipes

 

Swipes is a task manager app to help its users increase their productivity.

Favorite takeaway: One of their pages used social proof of quotayions from The Next Web and Lifehacker. You can’t go wrong with that.

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26. Canvas

 

Canvas replaces paper-based processes with affordable and easy-to-use mobile apps and forms. They raised $9 million with these decks.

Favorite takeaway: Instead of saying what they do, the second slide in their deck shows how their startup helps businesses. No words needed.

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27. Ooomf (now Crew)

 

Crew (formerly Ooomf & then PickCrew) is a freelancer marketplace that connects mobile and web developers with projects or work. This deck was used to raised over $2 million dollars.

Favorite takeaway: Well-designed with an easy-to-understand flow.

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28. Cubeit

Cubeit is a mobile application that allows users to aggregate content from anywhere . Cubeit used this 13-slide deck to raise seed funding before they even had a finished product.

Favorite takeaway: A strong introduction will get investors to pay attention. Their deck starts out with a clear message, which was that “owning more devices doesn’t make your life easier”. I can’t help but pay attention to how this company will help.

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29. Castle

 

Castle is a startup that lets rental owners put their properties on autopilot. This was the deck Castle used to raise $270,000 for their startup.

Favorite takeaway: Great design and easy to digest.

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30. Sequoia Capital

 

Sequoia Capital is one of the leading investment firms in Silicon Valley. This deck is a template they recommend following.

Favorite takeaway: It’s like having the keys to the kingdom. You don’t have to guess what this investment giant is looking for. They tell you straight away.

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To sum up, a strong pitch deck not only serves to reinforce your brand to investors. It also demonstrates that you understand what your business is and who your customers are.

Look at the takeaways from these startup pitch decks as a guide to help you in your quest to raise funds for your own startup.

Here are some of the main ideas:

• Decks don’t have to be formal or beautiful.
• Provide an impactful intro or slogan.
• Keep your deck short (less than 20 pages).
• Use analogies to show difference and make connections.

After going through so many decks, I recommend that your deck should also:

• Start with a strong intro / vision
• Show problems
• Offer solutions
• Identify market opportunities
• Showcase product / services clearly
• Digest your business model
• Highlight financials
• Add social proof / case study
• Differentiate from competition
• Show experienced management team

If you’re looking for additional information, DocSend shared lessons they got learning from 200 startups who raised $360 million.

Sales enablement technology can aid sales teams with customer interactions spanning the entire buyer journey and also provide support for internal communication. Allana Hinks, marketing manager for Brauer Natural Medicine, spoke with eMarketer about the value of sales enablement technology for the company.

The UK tech industry is largely terrified by the risk of a "Brexit" — Britain voting to leave the European Union in the upcoming referendum.

Surveys show tech workers are overwhelmingly opposed to the idea, and none of Britain's tech "unicorn" startups worth more than $1 billion openly support it. "It's the first political issue of my lifetime I've felt this strongly about," one London CEO told me last month.

But not everyone has such an apocalyptic outlook on Britain exiting the 28-nation bloc.

Fergal Mullen, general partner at European venture capital firm Highland Europe, says Brexit will have absolutely no impact on how his firm does business.

"I personally think it would be a shame, almost sad," the Irish-born investor told Business Insider. "Because what's the best thing the EU has achieved in the past 40 years? It's peace. And that was one of the founding principles of the EU for the first place ... You guys brought peace to Europe when we needed it most, so I would be sad."

But, he continued, "I think it would have the kind of economic impact that people think. People will still create companies here — that's not going to change. People will come and go here, in the non-tech world people will still want to have second homes or first homes here, that's all going to continue."

Highland Europe focuses on growth-stage investment in internet, software, and mobile companies, typically investing between $10-30 million in a company each time. It launched in 2012, and has €580 million (£444 million, or $652 million) under management across two funds.

"Yeah, you might have to negotiate some bilateral trade deals and so forth," Fergal said. "And yeah Europe will probably give you a hard time for a while. But you know what, I think you've got some pretty clever trade negotiators and bureaucrats. They'll figure it all out."

The financial industry has a gloomy forecast for a post-Brexit Britain.

This is in stark contrast to some other European investors — and most of the financial sector. The IMF, the World Bank, the European Central Bank, JPMorgan, and Blackrock are among the financial organisations that have come out against Brexit, warning of adverse economic consequences.

"In the event of a 'leave' vote, we could find ourselves with a considerably less rich and diverse startup ecosystem, where we no longer attract the best entrepreneurs to start up, and from the investor perspective, with reduced dealflow," wrote early stage venture capital investor Nic Brisbourne in an op-ed for Tech.eu. He asked rhetorically: "And equally, would Brexit also make it harder for UK investors to invest across Europe, thus limiting the flow of UK capital into EU startups?"

And Haakon Overli, founder of VC fund Dawn, wrote for The Telegraph that "it may be a decade or more before venture capitalists considering investing in the UK have any clarity over what environment they will be operating within. That would spell disaster for UK businesses looking for risk capital for two main reasons."

But Mullen disagrees with this assessment, and says it won't change the growth-stage VC firm's investment strategy.

"If you think about it, the only material impact could be on the value of the pound versus the Euro and ... if we're trying to get a return from a foreign exhcange perspective on our entry price versus our exit price on the foreign exchange movement that happened in between, then it's probably not a great investment in the first place."

"You've already Brexited."

Mullen thinks the risks of Brexit are overstated because Britain is already much closer to a post-Brexit state than people realise. "You're already Brexited," he argues. "The UK is already an island nation. You've got your own currency. You've got a central bank that allows you to control your currency. You've cut a better deal with Europe about a year ago in anticipation of this particular referendum.

As such, Britain's existence outside of the EU won't be as unfamiliar as many fear: "I think you've already established many of the conditions that people think will exist post-Brexit. I think they already exist. You guys have negotiated this over the last few years."

In short: Life will go on.

Britain's tech scene is fiercely international, and there are fears that leaving the European Union will make it harder for British startups to hire and retain European talent because of the end of free movement. But Mullen doesn't buy this argument either. "If you need to get talent, you're going to get talent," he argues.

Who to let in, post-Brexit, won't be an EU decision: "That's a UK decision, and will remain the UK decision. There's no way even if you Brexited ... I don't see the UK ever changing its policies on allowing quality people into this country. They won't! And that's who they're recruiting. It's high-quality graduates."

He added: "I think the UK is no dumb country. And I think if collectively you decide to leave, is it a disaster? No! I think it's sad. It's not a disaster though, and I think you'll adapt."

Join the conversation about this story »

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Britain's property market will be turned upside down if voters opt to leave the European Union on June 23, say two prominent housing experts.

Basically, it will lead to a faltering economy and therefore hit prices, hinder ability to construct more homes and also allow rich overseas investors to come in and snap up property at a lower value.

Galliard Homes, London's largest private house builder, sent Business Insider a statement this morning saying that if a Brexit — Britain leaving the EU — happens "the London economy will falter" and "the uncertainty it would cause will generate a value drop in the property market in a very short time."

It added that if Britain leaves the EU then construction costs "will rise by up to 15%" and that its 7,500 planned constructions in the capital could be in jeopardy as "many site/construction staff working in London are people who originate from countries across the EU."

"Currently some 39% of London’s population of 8.66 million people were not born in the UK," according to Galliard, suggesting the EU plays a huge part in the city's property market, and a sudden downturn in movement would cause a crash — a shockwave which could impact the whole of the UK.

Meanwhile Peter Wetherell, a London estate agent specialising in luxury homes, said in a separate statement sent to BI that a Leave vote would "generate shock and turmoil" in London and result in a Brexit bubble as rich overseas buyers would take advantage of the plummeting Pound by making short-term, high-end investments.

A Brexit would also create a "two-speed" marketplace, it said, and property areas more reliant on EU buyers would go into stagnation while places like West London would continue to flourish thanks to rich non-EU buyers. But a vote to Remain, it added, would see the market get over the referendum uncertainty by the last quarter of 2016.

Galliard Homes Managing Director Don O Sullivan said voters had to think carefully:

"This is clearly a big decision for all, with many competing factors and issues but we at Galliard Homes strongly believe that it is better for the short and long term growth of the London economy and the wider UK for the country to remain within the EU."

A number of analysts have already made grave predictions on the effect a Brexit would have on the UK property market. Research house Bernstein said leaving the EU would kill Britain's property prices and drag the banking sector down with it.

The average house price in Britain is currently at £292,000 ($422,099), according to the latest data from the Office for National Statistics for March. Meanwhile, the average price to buy a home in London is now more than £550,000. Properties in London are now almost 60% more costly than they were prior to the 2008 financial crisis.

The EU referendum is currently too close to call. A recent Survation poll showed the Remain and Leave sides virtually neck and neck with just two days to go until the vote.

Join the conversation about this story »

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If Britain chooses to leave the EU on Thursday, it will make economic waves both in the short and medium terms.

One of the most immediate effects would be a sudden drop in the value of the pound, and a severe capital flight, according to analysts at Credit Suisse.

It could be as bad or worse as Black Wednesday – the day the pound collapsed in 1992 after the British government pulled the currency from the European Exchange Rate Mechanism after failing to defend its high valuation against the Deutsche mark.

The research echos George Soros, who famously made £1 billion betting against the pound that day, writing in The Guardian on Monday, "that after a Brexit vote the pound would fall by at least 15% and possibly more than 20%." 

Here's the chart from Credit Suisse putting Black Wednesday in context:

 

On Black Wednesday itself – September 16, 1992 – the pound fell 4%. It had lost around 15% of its value by the end of the month.

If the markets threaten a drop of a similar magnitude, the Bank of England might be tempted to step in to support the currency because the fallout from a collapse could be much worse than in 1992.

Here's Credit Suisse:

• Wider current account deficit: "At the time of Black Wednesday the UK’s current account deficit was near 2% of GDP, but since then it has ballooned to nearly 7% of GDP (now the widest deficit in G10), and gross international assets and liabilities have increased to north of 500% of GDP. These factors might suggest that GBP has likely become more vulnerable to external shocks."
• Asset prices are more vulnerable. "In 1992 the UK property market had suffered a period of stagnation, and the FTSE100 had fallen by over 15% between May and September 1992. By contrast, the FTSE100 has broadly been stable since March 2016 and is still near post-crisis highs. UK property price growth has stalled in recent months, but both London and UK prices are still near their highest in years."

With so much at stake, the Bank of England might want to try to prop up the currency, using its currency reserves in what might prove to be a costly fight.

Join the conversation about this story »

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The annual Canadian Business Investor 500 Stock Ranking sorts stocks based on their annual rate of return over the past year, but sometimes you want an even longer horizon.

These are the stocks that have shown the most cumulative growth in the value of their stock over the past five years:

Rank	Company	Ticker	Total 5-year return (%)*
1	ProMetic Life Sciences Inc.	PLI	1,761
2	Intertape Polymer Group Inc.	ITP	1,542
3	Nobilis Health Corp.	NHC	1,077
4	People Corp.	PEO**	956
5	Cipher Pharmaceuticals Inc.	CPH	793
6	Clearwater Seafoods Inc.	CLR	756
7	DHX Media Ltd.	DHX	721
8	Boyd Group Income Fund	BYD.UN	719
9	Constellation Software Inc.	CSU	699
10	CCL Industries Inc.	CCL.B	682
11	Alimentation Couche-Tard Inc.	ATD.B	551
12	Savaria Corp.	SIS	546
13	Dollarama Inc.	DOL	524
14	Concordia Healthcare Corp.	CXR	512
15	Sylogist Ltd.	SYZ**	511

* As of May 6 2016. ** Trades on the TSX Venture exchange

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More from the Investor 500 Market Guide:

The post Canada’s Top 15 Companies by Total 5-year Return: Investor 500 2016 appeared first on Canadian Business - Your Source For Business News.

CALGARY – The Alberta Energy Regulator is making it tougher to transfer oil and gas well licences in view of a recent court ruling that allowed the buyer of a bankrupt company’s assets to avoid acquiring wells with high environmental liabilities.

In an announcement, the AER said licence transfer applications will now be considered “non-routine” under its temporary new measures.

It added that it will refuse to approve the transfer of AER licences, approvals and permits if the transaction results in the buyer’s asset value falling below two times the cost of its environmental liabilities. Currently, companies are only required to maintain an equal amount of assets and liabilities.

AER spokesman Ryan Bartlett said 219 or 28 per cent of the 788 companies registered as licensees with the AER have a liability management ratio or LMR above the newly required 2.0. He said companies can improve their LMR by cleaning up old wellsites, posting security or revamping their proposed well transactions.

The regulator acknowledged its regulations may “inconvenience some stakeholders” but pointed out it wants to work with industry and the province to develop broader permanent regulatory measures.

“They are attempting to put a higher hurdle rate for acquirers of assets. That will have an impact and this is of deep concern to us,” said Gary Leach, president of the Explorers and Producers Association of Canada.

He said the new rules will reduce the number of potential buyers for assets his members are trying to sell.

But he added the rules may be necessary to avoid increasing liabilities for the Alberta orphan well fund, an industry financed pool of money that is used to clean up well sites for owners who can’t or won’t do it themselves.

“This case has shaken up what was the old order and until there’s a new order in place, whether it’s through legislative fixes or what, what we’re seeing is the regulator trying to stabilize the situation,” said Leach.

He called on the regulator to use flexibility in interpreting new regulations.

The Alberta Court of Queen’s Bench ruled in May in the case of bankrupt producer Redwater Energy that the rights of lenders to be paid back ranks above the right of the provincial regulator to require the reclamation of oil and gas wells.

The regulator has launched an appeal of the decision because it could encourage more companies to enter receivership and bankruptcy to avoid obligations to clean up around oil and gas wells.

The lawsuit has been closely watched as a precedent-setting case as more bankruptcies loom in the oil and gas industry in the face of chronically low prices.

Follow @HealingSlowly on Twitter.

The post Alberta toughens regulations to cope with court ruling on orphan wells appeared first on Canadian Business - Your Source For Business News.

Content marketers have been warned for years to get ready for mobile marketing. Mary Meeker’s 2008 pronouncement that mobile would “overtake fixed Internet access by 2014” came true; we crossed that threshold at full steam to navigate our way through “Mobilegeddon” and beyond.

Google’s 2015 changes to its mobile search algorithm caused collective palpitations over the potential damage it could (and did) do to small businesses. As the changes continue—and best practices regarding new tech adoption and media channel preferences evolve more and more rapidly—it’s high time to re-examine your content marketing strategies.

Are you still giving your target audiences what they want, served up just the way they like it?

Our company’s recent survey of more than 1,000 U.S. mobile phone users—representing a bell curve of ages ranging from 14 to 54 and a male/female split of 38 percent to 62 percent—not only gave us valuable new insights, but they also reaffirmed common knowledge.

Survey Says, ‘Mobile!’

We asked respondents about their preferences for internet use. In other words, how, what, where, when, and why do they access it? While the results didn’t come as an enormous surprise, they certainly provided for some intriguing breakdowns across the different demographics.

We’ve culled and analyzed the data, and here are four key ways you can advance your content marketing initiatives using the findings from this survey.

1. Cater to a Mobile-First Audience

Mary Meeker called it. Of 1,000 respondents, 658 reported that their primary method of accessing the Internet was via their mobile phones. That’s almost 70%!

Why? It comes down to convenience. The content they seek is literally in their back pockets. The top three reasons those surveyed would read an article or blog on mobile instead of a desktop were:

• 25.67% — Location or time of day
• 21.29% — The type of content
• 17.86% — Access to Wi-Fi

What does that mean for content marketers? It means mobile marketing is about more than just responsive design. Here’s what else smart mobile marketing entails:

• Localization: If you haven’t already, catch up on mobile-search intent, so you can put a program in place to optimize for local searchability and findability.
• Scannable content: Produce and share content with reader-friendly elements like headlines, subheads, and bullets.
• Simplified conversion points: Examine your sales funnel to see which calls-to-action make sense for on-the-go users. How can you make that conversion easiest for them? Think about shorter forms, fewer data points to capture, and mobile screen gestures like tapping versus typing and swiping versus scrolling.

Naturally, we can look to the consumer packaged goods sector for standout examples of mobile-first strategies. For instance, take Unilever, 2015’s Mobile Marketer of the Year. Already known for its emotional—and viral—“Real Beauty” campaigns for its Dove skin care line, the company took it to the next level last year by introducing emojis for women of all shapes and colors to use in their text messaging.

Unilever also used mobile ads to direct users to its YouTube tutorials on hair care for Tresemmé, another of its brands. And for its brand Magnum, Unilever launched a campaign in Ecuador that combined geo-targeting with consumers’ inherent urge to create and interact. Using mobile banners to alert nearby consumers of the unique opportunity to design their own ice cream bars, Unilever drove foot traffic to a local shop.

2. Create Short, Strong Headlines

What would you guess is most important to your readers: headline, image, or video? These days, it seems like all of the social platforms are adding or improving their video-sharing and live-broadcasting capabilities. So if you guessed video, you wouldn’t be alone.

But you would be wrong, according to our survey.

Overwhelmingly, the headline is still most important to capturing clicks. Sixty-one percent of adults surveyed said it’s what makes them click. Images came second at 23.6 percent, and video came in last as a reason to click, with only 15.4 percent of adult respondents selecting it.

It is worth noting that the younger demographic, ages 14 to 17, is more egalitarian in their click preferences. Among this group, headline and video were almost evenly split at nearly 38 percent and nearly 36 percent, respectively, with image coming in around 28 percent.

No matter the medium, people want to get to the right content to find the information they need and consume it quickly. With this in mind, content marketers must craft compelling, concise information. Use a headline analyzer like the one at CoSchedule to determine if your headline is click-worthy. If not, the tool’s feedback can help you refine until it is.

3. Don’t Worry About the Time of Day

Forget stats you might have heard concerning morning, evening, or commuting time as the most popular times for when people want to view content. Almost half of all respondents like to consume their favorite content whenever and wherever they can.

Mobile marketing is an on-the-go, 24/7 business, so you have to make your content accessible to customers and potential customers on social feeds and mobile apps at all times. The survey results state that the majority or respondents prefer content from social media feeds, which is inherently comprised of shorter content.

But mobile doesn’t mean light, so don’t short-shrift readers. It’s not about their attention spans so much as the screen size. Long-form content does work on smartphones, as long as it follows the principles of great user experience design and great content. Don’t shorten your content; write tighter, more captivating copy.

For example, Quartz, the news outlet for digital natives, has an app for that—an iPhone app to illustrate this concept, to be exact—that is “perfect for the train, elevator, grocery store line, or wherever you have a spare moment to catch up on the news.”

4. Remember Why People Share Content in the First Place

The top three reasons people share content are because it’s humorous (19.92 percent), informational (17.77 percent), or valuable to someone they know (15.85 percent). These survey results remind us that great content must be personalized, meaningful, and relevant to the user.1 (highlight to tweet)

To be remarkable enough to share, your content has to fulfill people’s needs at an emotional level or provide value for someone they care about. To keep it real, make sure you:

• Keep your focus clear. Don’t try to cover too much ground at a single stretch. Break it into a series, if necessary, to keep your points from getting lost or muddled.
• Keep it actionable. Again, break it up so that takeaways are easy to follow (and doable).
• Keep it timely (even urgent). Tie your content to local or breaking news, upcoming events, holidays, or seasonal changes.

When it comes to content marketing, nothing happens until you get a click—no new leads, no conversions, nor anything approaching demonstrable ROI. Clicks fill the funnel and get those gears going, the levers in motion.

Our survey results offer an up-to-date look at how users across your target audiences are finding, choosing, consuming, reacting to, and sharing content—and, ultimately, how they are converting. Use the perspectives they’ve shared to boost your mobile game with the kind of smart content your audience craves.

What other insights can you draw from these survey findings to inform your content marketing strategy and make your offerings more mobile-responsive?

This originally-authored article first appeared on Convince and Convert.

As sales organizations grow beyond the O.G. founding team, and begin to expand to cover additional industries, territories or markets, nailing down a sales operations process that works is as crucial as snagging those front row Rihanna tickets this summer.

And the sales operations leader is center stage when it comes to modern sales teams. (Don’t act like you forgot…)

They’re responsible for creating and socializing the sales process that drives revenue for the business. They’re responsible for the rhythm and cadence of the entire team’s process. And ultimately, a team with a solid sales operations process crushes numbers, while teams that just wing it barely hit quota.

That’s a lot of weight on just one role, but sales operations leaders are the masters of the process, ensuring team-wide success and growth. They’re responsible for these three main process territories:

1. Development
2. Adoption
3. Training & Compliance

Process Development

Even with the world’s best sales development team, and the world’s best closers, a sales team without a productive and efficient sales operations process will eventually fail. Management won’t believe pipeline projections, Marketing won’t want to invest any time tossing leads over the wall to a disorganized team, and the organization will ultimately fall flat.

But fortunately, sales operations leaders are ready to tackle the task with these 3 core pillars of the sales development process:

1. Predictability: Without predictability (and consistency) within sales activities, it’s nearly impossible to measure both the individual and team-wide contributions to the organization’s overall success.

How do you establish predictability? Simple: with data and consistency.

Sales operations leaders create systems for collecting prospect data and establishing consistent activities and everyday processes to measure sales efficiency.

2. Classification: Once sales operations collects data, trends across that data begin to appear. The stages of the sales operations process are then classified to increase quality of data and remove subjectivity and emotion from the results.

Which sales process components benefit from classification? Both internal factors (like buyer stages in the funnel) and typical factors (like industry, role and seniority).

3. Optimization: The most successful sales operations leaders are continuously testing and optimizing processes, which is made much easier by a predictable and easily classifiable sales process. But optimization constantly challenges previously assumed notions with data.

How do we really know that the buyer is ready to buy after their first consultation? How often do “Verbal Commitments” actually close? With a well-tested and optimized sales operations process, these questions become easier to answer.

Process Adoption

Just like any product, process, or tool, no matter how much effort is put into development, if a sales operations process goes unused — it’s simply waste of time.

But one way that effective sales operations leaders foster process adoption within their teams is by involving sales team members more closely throughout the process creation and execution. Since they’re responsible for bringing every team member, from SDR to AE to VP, into the fold when implementing and evaluating a sales process, it’s the perfect platform for them to encourage adoption from the beginning.

For example, when selecting a sales development tool, they’ll immediately implement SDR feedback, instilling ownership in the reps from the very start. That way, no one will say they had a tool pushed onto them if they’re part of the intial selection and adoption process.

Process Training & Compliance

Sales operations process training more than showing people how to login and use their sales development tools — it’s about preparing them to speak confidently about the product, while expertly identifying and articulating customer pain.

To create these product experts, Sales Operations crafts training sessions to educate reps about every aspect of the products and customers. They educate sales teams about the market as a whole to give them a better understanding of the buyer and the context of their pains. Nothing is more sincere than a rep who truly understands the value of what they’re selling — and can actually back it up with knowledge about the market and how much value it adds.

But training isn’t the only aspect — staying on top of compliance is a serious responsibility here, too. And while it’s arguably the least fun part of the job, it’s a necessary one nonetheless. If reps are using tools incorrectly, don’t understand the market well enough, or are mis-classifying buyer and deal stages within the funnel — it doesn’t matter how optimized your process is — it just won’t work.

So you see, the sales operations process is the glue that holds the sales team together.

From prospecting, to sales development, closing, leadership and finance, it’s safe to say that sales operations leaders are the true masters of the sales universe in the modern age. And more importantly, masters of the sales operations process.

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Want a more comprehensive look at our Sales Operations Process? Start today!

Download our free eBook and optimize your sales operations efforts to start crushing your sales development goals today.

The post A Sales Operations Process that Work-Work-Work-Work-Works appeared first on SalesLoft.

Digital marketing is both an art and a science. Marketing is an art, but the science behind its strategies determines conversions and closes. This is especially true in the B2B sector, where the target is high-level professionals who have their company’s bottom line on the line. While the rise of digital has opened many opportunities to connect with the B2B market, the number of digital options can make it hard to determine which tactics are the most promising. But digital can’t afford to be ignored—not with 98% of B2B companies increasing their digital marketing budgets last year, with that number expected to be matched in 2016. To guide B2B sales and marketing professionals toward the most important digital tactics, MDG Advertising created a new infographic, B2B Marketing 2016: 5 Digital Must-Dos.

The infographic was compiled from dozens of industry research reports and expert insights, which were condensed into five key digital B2B marketing tips. So which five digital tactics are worthy of attention in 2016?

1. Increase the quality of content, rather than the quantity.

Content is considered the most exciting digital opportunity in B2B marketing today. As a result, 51% of B2B marketers plan to increase their content marketing budgets for 2016. But value trumps volume, according to 72% who plan to focus on developing higher-quality and more engaging content in the coming year. Emphasizing quality over quantity in content creation makes it easier to turn digital traffic into higher revenue.

2. Land quality leads by following the customer journey.

Securing quality leads is the most important metric to B2B marketers, but also one of the greatest challenges. Still, 87% of B2B marketers believe the best way to improve the quality of leads is to understand the customer’s purchasing methods, which can be determined by charting the customer journey. Expect savvy B2B marketers to invest more in developing psychological maps of the customer’s path to purchase in 2016. Understanding the customer’s thought process and preferences is key to digital success.

3. Forecast the future.

Marketing analytics have yielded enormous benefits for years, which is why 55% of B2B organizations plan to increase their predictive analytics resources in 2016. B2B companies can use predictive analytics to understand how high-value customers engage and optimize their marketing, for maximum reach and locating new leads.

4. Make marketing happen automatically.

It’s difficult enough to capture quality leads, but then you need to nurture them throughout the customer journey. Marketing automation allows businesses to streamline the development and management of their digital campaigns. The ease and effectiveness of marketing automation has led 66% of B2B organizations to plan for larger investment in marketing automation in 2016.

5. Work with what’s working well.

Two B2B digital marketing tactics to consider in 2016 are SEM and webinars. Today, marketers rank SEM as the most effective paid digital marketing tactic, followed by webinars. These two tactics will become even more important as digitally-minded Millennials make up more of the B2B workplace since they’re more inclined to research online before interacting with sales reps. SEM fulfills Millennials’ search needs, while webinars respond to their quest for information, making these digital marketing tactics even more valuable in the coming years.

Infographic by MDG Advertising

Not only do podcasts offer numerous benefits over text- and video-based content—they are easy to create, convenient to consume, and they can expose new audiences to your brand— but by using an interview-based show format, your podcasts can also be fantastic social selling, networking and sales prospecting tools.

Why Do Interview Podcasts Work?

Think about it. People just love talking about themselves! Everyone knows that the best conversationalists are the people who say the least and ask the most. In the format of an interview podcast, that’s exactly what you’re doing. You’re saying very little and asking a lot of questions, which makes your guest the focus of the conversation.

By interviewing guests on your podcast, you have a built in opportunity to invite sales prospects, vendors, partners, and satisfied customers onto the show to have discussions about whatever your podcast covers. This allows you to shine a light on great vendors, strategic partners, and satisfied customers, creating a greater sense of attachment between those parties and your company.

How Can Podcasts Help You Prospect For Leads?

Interview-based podcasts are also great for new client sales prospecting. Nobody wants to try to call a prospect and say, “Hi, I’m Tom Martin, and I’d like to sell you something today.” But who among us would shy away from making this call?

“Hi, it’s Tom Martin. I have this great little podcast that I think you would be perfect for. Would you mind being a part of my show?”

That’s not a tough call to make. If the person doesn’t accept, you at least open a door that you can walk through at a later date with a more direct sales prospecting call. If the person does accept, you have the opportunity to build a relationship in a completely non threatening way. That’s the key to successful social selling — it’s not about making a sale today, it’s about starting a relationship that leads to a sale tomorrow or many tomorrows from now.

Even better, you can use your podcast as a platform to invite people you’d like to meet. In addition to sales prospects, this can include people with whom you want to network but who might never be a prospect for what you sell. These folks might be in companies that you don’t work with or organizations for which your product or service isn’t relevant, but they know people you would like to know and are excellent Social Agent candidates. And as any regular reader knows, I think Social Agents are the secret sauce of a successful social selling effort. By inviting these people into your podcast, you create an opportunity to have a really great first experience with them and create the opportunity for them to become social agents for your organization.

The Difference Between a Podcast Interview & a Sales Prospecting Call

Now instead of having to cold-call people to meet them, you get to spend 20–30 minutes with someone having a discussion that makes that person the hero. The key here is to make the prospect the highlight of the show. You want to entertain and inform your audience, but if you structure your questions correctly, you’ll actually be educating yourself in a way that could help you more effectively sell to the prospect.

Once a person has participated in your show, you have a perfect opportunity to do a follow-up call to say thank you for participating. You get to gush about how great the person was and tell say that you received awesome audience feedback. And now you have the beginnings of a relationship. You have contact information. You have the prospect’s email address. Most important, you have permission to use all of that as you nurture the relationship through email, phone, or social media.

The Single Biggest Reason to Podcast for Sales Prospecting

The networking and sales prospecting opportunities that podcasting afford you are the single most important reason everyone should consider adding audio and podcasting to their marketing toolkit. But remember—you can’t approach this strictly in the selfish networking mindset, or your effort will fail. You won’t develop an audience, which will make it difficult to convince prospects to come on the show—and that makes it hard to use podcasting as a prospecting tool. So keep in mind that core commitment, and produce a show that you’re proud to claim. If you do that, the prospecting and networking will take care of themselves.

Register For Our Free Social Selling Webinar

For more information on using podcasting as a sales prospecting tool and other social selling tips just like these, register for our FREE WEBINAR: The 7 Keys To Social Selling Success. We’re only holding 100 seats, so register now to start learning the secrets of social selling success in today’s self-educating buyer world.

Kevin Dorsey is a fantastic sales leader. As Head of Sales for SnackNation, he leads a team of 12 Sales Development Reps and 30 Account Executives. SnackNation offers office delivery of healthy snacks that create happier and more productive teams.

In just one year, Kevin grew the teams from a handful of reps to over 40. Along the way, he decided that the best avenue for reinforcing and scaling critical sales competencies was to build a Sales Playbook.

And over the next 3.5 months, he did just that.

Lesson #1: He immersed himself in his SDRs' process

"I knew that if I wrote the Playbook from behind my desk exclusively, it probably wouldn't be very good."

Kevin got his hands dirty, getting in the seat with the SDRs and really seeing what that day-to-day felt and sounded like. He was looking to combine emergent best practices (identified by his team) with industry and thought leaders learnings.

 The playbook is broken into three sections:

• What do we need to know about our customers to help them succeed?
• What must every single SDR be able to do well?
• What data / technologies do we need to effectively execute?

Lesson #2: He started with the most important piece- The Why

"My favorite part of the playbook is the why section. I really tried to explain to new hires why we do certain things the way we do."

Right up front, the playbook lays out the thinking behind how SnackNation reps execute. Kevin shares what mistakes have already been made and lessons learned along the way. Most companies direct their teams on how to go after deals, but rarely share the why.

Kevin’s team knows the why, they believe in it, and mostly importantly they can teach it to others.

Lesson #3: He got his team involved

"When I finished a chapter, I presented it to the team. I said, 'Tear this apart. Tell me where I'm wrong. Tell me what's off that doesn't work in real life.' Getting the team involved builds ownership."

After the 3.5 month initial writing period, Kevin continues to revise the playbook monthly. He makes updates for each new hire class. His goal is to make the previous SDR class jealous - to the point where they're saying, "Man, I wish I had all this when I started."

Equal to what goes in the playbook is how you communicate it. You have to put everything in a format that reps can absorb. Even the best writing, if presented as a wall of words, won't help your reps learn and grow.

Sales teams need playbooks to make the most of every single sales interaction. You want to capture industry best practices, bubble up emerging techniques, and continuously refine buyer-based messaging so that, as Kevin says, your old timers are jealous of the tool you're handing to your new hires.

An aside, here at The Bridge Group we write Sales Playbooks that rock, if I do say so myself (as do our clients).

Don’t make your new hires do sales tool archeology; hand them a roadmap to success. Any questions for Kevin?

I answered a question on Quora: What are the small things you can do to have a good life? You can view the thread here. 

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The post The Seven Habits Of Highly Effective Minimalists appeared first on Altucher Confidential.

Power consumption is one of the biggest reasons why you haven't seen a brain-like computer beyond the lab: the artificial synapses you'd need tend to draw much more power than the real thing. Thankfully, realistic energy use is no longer an unattain...

Which of the following two emails would you respond to?

Here's the first:

And here's the second:

The second is clearly the better email. Why? It makes use of several of the tenets of good business writing, as listed in the following infographic from Henneke at Enchanting Marketing. Use these rules of thumb the next time you're crafting a personalized prospecting email or typing up a template to take your powers of persuasion to a whole new level.

Increased parental leave policies have taken the US by storm of late, and this is great news for new parents or parents-to-be throughout the country.

Companies like Netflix, The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, and Etsy that offer generous paid parental leave policies are putting to shame the country's lack of mandatory paid parental leave, and they're setting a new standard for the care of some of the country's most valuable employees.

And radical paid parental leave policies aren't the only way companies are helping new moms and dads through their transition to parenthood. 

Here's how employers are showing they value families and making life for new parents that much better with generous and unique perks: 

SEE ALSO: 19 companies that offer some of the best parental leave policies in America

SEE ALSO: The science behind why paid parental leave is good for everyone

On-site childcare

A Google spokesperson tells Business Insider the company has four childcare centers near its Mountain View, California, headquarters, while Cisco boasts two childcare centers on its San Jose, California, campus.

Only about 7% of companies offer on-site childcare, Fortune reported.

Subsidized childcare

A Yahoo spokesperson tells Business Insider the company offers priority access to open slots at Children's Creative Learning Center in Sunnyvale, California, and a free premium Care.com membership to help employees find babysitters and nannies.

According to a Microsoft spokesperson, the company offers two programs to help employees pay for child care: one that offers employee discounts at many daycares across the country and another that subsidizes child care with several national child care providers.

Microsoft also offers subsidized back-up care for children, adults, and elders when there is an unexpected disruption in regular care and employees need to work.

With so many new children joining the Google family each year, a spokesperson says the company offers other caregiving benefits including one-on-one consultations to help parents in their child care search, discounts for nanny placement agencies, five free back-up child care days, priority access at Bright Horizons child care centers, and free premium membership to Care.com.

Other companies like Facebook and Intel also subsidize daycare costs.

Kid-friendly workplaces

PicMonkey, a Seattle-based photo editing startup, has a company policy that welcomes kids to its office any time during business hours.

Whether the daycare is closed, school is out early, or there's extra time after an appointment, a spokesperson tells Business Insider the company encourages parents to bring their kids to the office, which features a family room for keeping kids occupied.

See the rest of the story at Business Insider

It’s no surprise that to grow digitally in any industry, content marketing is an essential component to doing so. Recently the growth of thought leadership as a critical element of a strong content marketing strategy and omni-channel marketing plan has become quite widespread. More and more successful entrepreneurs and business leaders are experiencing firsthand how vital the ability to connect with an audience through expertise is in terms of building success. With such easy access to the internet, and the ability to consume digital content instantaneously, exposing yourself and your brand to your customers in a way that builds credibility should be used to your advantage.

Whether in the B2B or B2C space, thought leadership offers an expert perspective on a given topic, and gives you increased visibility with your users, as well as the capability to promote your brand in a very natural way. This sort of exposure with a targeted audience is important. At its core, thought leadership is not overly brand-promotional and can be incredibly successful at helping your messages to resonate with users in a way that feels more genuine than some of the more traditional marketing channels may.

Thought leadership is about building trust and credibility amongst consumers. Offering guidelines, tips, best practices, and “how-to’s” all related to your experience can serve as an incredibly powerful tool for gaining new customers. In theory, if your target audience finds the minds of your organization to be incredibly talented as far as ability and skills after reading something they have written or produced, they’ll be very likely to select your brand for their needs.

With seemingly endless benefits, building thought leadership into your campaign should be a no brainer. As you figure out where to get started, think about who from your company could serve as an excellent representative of your brand, what your consumers care about, what sets your brand apart from your competition, and how you can best convey your value to your audience. Once you’ve identified those points, consider these 3 simple yet effective ways to integrate thought leadership into your content marketing strategy in a way that builds trust with your audience:

PR & Media Relations

Public Relations is all about building relationships and communicating your message. Through a blend of both traditional and digital PR tactics, you can easily promote the experts at your organization in a way that will builds brand recognition and shapes employees as thought leaders in your respective industry. Whether it’s promoting one of your experts to speak at a relevant event, or finding opportunities for your thought leaders to contribute content to top-tier media outlets, it’s critical that you do your fair share of research before securing any opportunities. As with any PR initiative, identifying the right audience is essential to the success of your campaign. Closely examine potential opportunities to make sure that any and all media placements are relevant to your potential customers and what they care about.

Blogging

On your company blog (and if you don’t have one, you should make one) encourage your employees to share their insights and skills in helpful articles for your readers. This is another opportunity to show potential customers or existing customers that you have a talented team of leaders at your organization that are well-versed in the industry and up on industry trends. If you’re a fashion company, encourage your top employees to share pieces that show the latest style trends or their predictions for the next“big” color scheme to hit the runway. If you’re a website design agency, share best practices or guidelines for new standards within the world of web development. Whatever your area of expertise is, you should be showcasing it through your blog content. Additionally, offering high-quality content that serves a true value to the user can be an excellent incentive to encourage return and regular visits to your websites, as well as increase your organic traffic.

Social Media

It should come as no shock that social media is an essential component to thought leadership and content marketing. You could have the best insights in the world, but if they aren’t getting shared with the right users, and reaching the right audience, they don’t hold much value. Social media platforms connect brands and leaders with their target audience in a way that is more personal than most other channels. Networks like Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, and Instagram are commonly used by the average user as an online community where they could be scrolling through their timeline to see what old friends are up to. However, with social media playing such an integral role in our everyday lives, these platforms have become essential for brands and tastemakers from respective industries to connect with their users.

Use social media to really show yourself and organization as much more than company, but a team of experts that can help potential customers in a way that exceeds expectations with their needs. Your blog content should be highlighted on social platforms—allowing users easy access to the valuable information and insightful thoughts you might want to share. Answer questions that users might post on these channels, stay active in community groups on LinkedIn or Facebook—do what you can to become more than just another face in the field. If you are speaking at an event or hosting an event, promote it on social. Host Twitter chats and have relevant experts answer questions that followers may have.

Thought Leadership Across The Board

Ultimately, thought leadership can be a huge differentiator between your brand and your competition. Customers want to invest their time and money with companies that they can trust and find credible. By encouraging the leaders of your company to become active with the industry and share their own knowledge with users, potential customers will be far more likely to consider your company when it’s time to make a purchase—whether that be a service or product. Sure, effectively implementing a content plan that includes thought leadership can be time consuming, but at the end of the day if it’s instilling a true sense of credibility, it’s well worth it.

The autonomous car industry is quickly becoming one of the most valuable emerging technology markets, but it will be hard, if not impossible, for manufacturers of hardware and software to reach a global audience without extensive partnerships.

That’s according to research firm Vision Systems Intelligence, which says that manufacturers will have to build relations with chip, sensor, mapping, and development tool firms to make its autonomous car functional on all fronts.

See Also: Rolls-Royce unveils an autonomous car for the 1%

“No one company owns all the expertise necessary to build an autonomous vehicle. From low-level component suppliers to modules or systems, each domain is a highly complex field in itself,” say Phil Magney, founder and principal of Vision Systems Intelligence.

In the infographic above, Vision Systems Intelligence shows the various sectors of the autonomous car market. What it doesn’t show is the partnerships already established, like Google and Uber’s mapping partnership on Android, or General Motors acquisition of Cruise Automation for $1 billion and $500 million partnership with Lyft.

Other partnerships between ‘autonomous solution’ firms and suppliers are most likely active, though we doubt many are disclosed.

It is interesting to see what blocks companies are active in. Intel is apparently active in processing, connectivity, and security/safety, while Nvidia works on autonomous solutions, processing, and algorithms. Google is only active in autonomous solutions and mapping according to the infographic, though we suspect the search giant is working on its own development tools and sensors for the autonomous car prototype.

Partnerships are always important for emerging technologies to gain traction, but the autonomous car market will require a vast amount of interoperability between software, hardware, and services, similar to the smartphone or computer but on a larger scale.

Some manufacturers are showing a willingness to work together, Fiat Chrysler was reportedly in talks with Uber and Amazon, on top of its Google deal and General Motors has once again hinted at a possible partnership with Google.

The post For autonomous vehicles, no tech is an island appeared first on ReadWrite.

Let’s face it. Your sales collateral kind of sucks. It’s not your fault you’re not a content writer or a designer, and Marketing can’t get you the stuff you need fast enough.

So you create your own content that addresses your prospects’ specific questions and pain points because your marketing materials don’t do that.

And you go through this several times, because as your prospects get closer to buying, they have new questions and objections that you need to speak to. So you have to cobble together more content and dash it off.

It’s incredibly personalized, but it’s also a hot mess.

Wouldn’t it be great to have your own designer who could create customized content right when you need it, for each prospect throughout the buying process?

High-Performing Sales Collateral

Actually, with a bit of planning, you can deliver high-performing collateral that’s tailored to your prospect’s questions and pain points, at every point along the buying process. You just need to think ahead and anticipate their needs.

Not only that, but you can use that collateral in ways you’ve never dreamed of to win more sales with less effort. I’ll walk you through it.

Let’s create content you can actually use.

How to Create Better Sales Collateral

The key to great sales content is understanding your buyer’s journey and mapping all of your content to it. Work with the Marketing team to generate the right sales materials that speak to the actual pain points your prospects are experiencing along each stage of the journey.

By mapping all of your collateral to the buyer’s journey ahead of time, you’ll leverage the Marketing team’s skills for exceptional design and polish, without relying on them for just-in-time delivery.

And chances are, you’ll need to create a lot of content. Each of your personas will have different needs and concerns as they go through the buyer’s journey. So you’ll have to consider every question and every pain point that each of your personas will have at every step of the journey.

Now the content offers become invaluable because they address the exact needs of your prospects. You’re providing tailored content that speaks specifically to them, without sounding like generic marketing materials. It’ll make your prospect feel like your company gets them and that you as their sales rep understand them. You’ve become a trusted source of reliable, helpful information.

Get the Most Out of Your Materials

Okay, so you’ve got amazing collateral that your prospects are excited about. But what if you could know exactly when someone reads your collateral—and how much of it they read? Imagine how that knowledge could fuel your next conversation with that prospect.

HubSpot’s Documents tool lets you build a library of collateral that you can send to your prospects. The tool tracks the shares, total visits, time viewed, and scrolling—to give you a wealth of information about what collateral has been viewed.

The Documents tool can notify you as soon as something is opened, so you can follow up with a prospect at just the right moment. No more worries about waiting too long and losing them to the competition! And because you’ll know how much they’ve read, you don’t have to worry about repeating information they’ve already learned. Your conversation can be as customized for your prospect as the collateral you’ve sent them.

Your sales collateral doesn’t have to suck anymore. Armed with HubSpot tools and your buyer’s journey, you can hit your prospects with exactly the right content at exactly the right moment—and close more deals than ever!