Rnordman

As social media continues to evolve it is important to connect your personal brand to its followers in a way that builds trust. In order to convert leads into sales you need to build an authentic community.

How can your brand convert fans and followers into sales with social media? Through targeted strategies, original content, and daily communication. Posting your articles, images and videos is not enough to build relationships online, but instead it’s being an active participant with your audience.

Social media is all about meeting the needs and desires of your target market, and forging lasting relationships. Here are several ways to build your personal brand and increase your bottom line.

Building Trust and Relationships

Smart social selling for your personal brand begins with a daily and well-planned strategy for your target market. Start these steps today to make better connections:

• Get the word out – Share your content across all of your active social networks, especially Facebook, Twitter, and Google Plus. Make a plan to publish at least three articles a week in order to begin the process of building a reputation and connecting with a wider audience.

• Engage with your Fans and followers – Social media is a communication platform where people search for information, ask questions, and provide feedback. Follow up each day with your audience, which will help promote your content and support word of mouth marketing.

• Find trending hashtags – Research the appropriate keywords that are trending on social media for your niche, and include these with your posts and tweets. This helps build traffic to your website, and increases your shares and re-tweets.

• Know your target market – Pay attention to what your audience looks like with solid research. This is especially important when it comes to their location. Use analytics tools, which are available on the major social networks like Facebook, Twitter, and Pinterest. Make adjustments to your strategy as you test different campaigns and their responses.

As social media becomes the main place for sales and customer service your brand should be focused on building authentic and trusted relationships. By staying in communication with your leads and customers you can attract a larger following for lasting and sustained growth.

As Silicon Valley North, Kitchener-Waterloo get all the attention. And rightfully so—with nearly 2,000 startups founded and almost a billion dollars in investment generated in the past five years alone, the twin Ontario towns are together a veritable innovation locomotive.

But just 40 minutes west down Highway 8, the town of Stratford, Ont. is making its own waves. Known for its annual theatre festival, Stratford—with a population of just 32,000—is also taking strides toward becoming a global-facing, future-thinking technology hub.

There’s the municipally-owned fibre broadband network and free city-wide wi-fi, built in 2011. There’s the digital media centre at the University of Waterloo satellite campus, founded in 2009. There’s the data centre opened by RBC in 2012. There’s the Stratford Accelerator Centre, a startup incubator that began operations in 2014.

Most recently, Stratford this year became the first Canadian city to test self-driving cars—a feat made possible by all that free wi-fi.

Put it all together and it’s no wonder the town routinely makes the Intelligent Community Forum’s list of the world’s smartest cities.

It’s also why I’m shining the spotlight this week on some of the startup companies emanating from Stratford. While the town doesn’t have the volume of tech startups that Kitchener-Waterloo does, it has no shortage of ideas. And its reputation as a smart city is starting to precede it.

Michael Eales is an Australian moving to Stratford this summer. He’s not looking for an acting job—rather, he’s opening the first Canadian chapter of Business Models Inc., a Netherlands-based strategy and design consultancy.

With offices in the U.K., U.S., Australia, Turkey and Taiwan, the company helps small enterprises design business plans and strategies. For Stratford, it’s another piece of the puzzle for launching successful startups.

Eales says the decision to choose the Ontario town was a no-brainer after a recent workshop there. He was impressed by the various projects pulled off by the town’s government, such as the broadband network and self-driving car experiments.

“It puts the city in a unique position globally to control its destiny,” he says. “It’s not as common as it should be in the world.”

Eales, who will split time between his native Brisbane and Stratford, is also looking to build bridges with Springfield, a similar-sized town in Australia.

Springfield is a master-planned town, meaning it was built from the ground up as a future-facing community. Like Stratford, Springfield is specializing in testing self-driving cars and experimenting with the future of entertainment. Eaves believes the two towns can share experiences and best practices as they go forward.

He’s not coming alone, though. Sarah Mak and David Lloyd-Lewis are expanding their Brisbane-based digital production company The Story Boxes to Stratford as well. The duo will be sharing office space with Business Models Inc. as they seek out local clients.

The Story Boxes has produced videos for various non-profit organizations, as well as corporate clients such as Mack Trucks. The company also counts the Canadian Consulate in Australia as a customer, having done a video encouraging working vacation visas for young travellers.

The decision to expand to Stratford was also a no-brainer for Mak, who is originally from Mississauga, Ont., and Lloyd-Lewis, a native Australian.

“It’s not just this place where you go for high-school drama excursions,” Lloyd-Lewis says. “There’s some serious stuff happening in the corridor.”

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MORE ABOUT STARTUPS & INNOVATION:

• How Tony Lacavera is helping Canadian startups cross the “Valley of Death”
• Why Canada’s tech startups need to prepare for a funding slowdown
• Fintech firms are battling banks—and the banks are winning
• After a strong 2015, VCs are getting more selective about startups
• After years in the slow lane, Canada’s e-commerce ecosystem is booming
• Is Canada finally developing a sustainable startup ecosystem?
• Why Canada’s getting a “C” for innovation
• Fintech firms are battling banks—and the banks are winning
• A wave of tech startups are changing how we care for our elders
• Five tricks to keep your startup costs low

The post How Stratford, Ontario, is luring global startups with its smart-city plan appeared first on Canadian Business - Your Source For Business News.

Is a carbon tax a PST in disguise?

It’s a question on the minds of many Albertans, and embraced by certain political leaders and public commentators. To take just two notable examples, Brian Jean, leader of Alberta’s Wildrose Party opposition, called it a “back-door PST” and Michelle Rempel, a prominent Federal politician from Alberta, recently made the same comparison.

This isn’t mere semantics. Words matter. Thoughts matter. How we communicate and debate matters. This question matters.

So are they correct? Is a carbon tax a PST? No. The two taxes have different effects, different objectives, are levied on very different things, and have different legal implications. In short, a carbon tax is no more a sales tax than income taxes are.

Before diving in, let’s put aside the issue of whether a carbon tax is good or bad. That’s a separate conversation. Even if you’re not convinced by the arguments in favor of carbon pricing, a carbon tax is not a PST in disguise. It is entirely possible to oppose a carbon tax on reasonable and rational grounds. Acknowledging that a carbon tax isn’t a PST is in no way support for a carbon tax, but it is support for clear and honest debate. Something I hope most of us favour.

So, let’s get started.

Different Effects

A common argument is that the prices of the goods and services we buy will rise. Thus, a carbon tax is a PST.

That prices will rise is undeniable, but doesn’t itself make a carbon tax a sales tax. The two taxes have very different effects on the cost of things we buy.

A sales tax typically falls on the vast majority of goods and services out there. (Though some goods are exempt.) A carbon tax, on the other hand, is a tax on only carbon. Goods that are more carbon-intensive will experience a larger price increase than goods that are less carbon-intensive. Recent research from the University of Ottawa’s Nic Rivers crunches the numbers for Canada. I plot his results below, and compare them to the stylized effect of a sales tax.

Notice sales taxes increase the price of everything the same way. You pay 5 per cent GST on a new computer. You pay 5 per cent on a haircut. You pay 5 per cent on gasoline when you fill up at the pump. And so on. A carbon tax, however, increases the price of gasoline (a carbon-intensive good) much more than haircuts.

Different Objectives

The purpose of the taxes also differ. One is primarily to raise revenue, while the other is attempting to change behaviour.

The reason economists favour sales taxes is they tend not to distort behaviour as much as other taxes. They apply broadly and evenly. The empirical evidence on this is also quite clear. A broad-based sales tax tends to be less damaging to the economy than corporate or personal income taxes. So, when economists are asked how governments should raise revenue, they typically point to a sales tax.

The objective of carbon pricing, however, is not itself to raise revenue but to correct a market failure. Where is the failure? Pollution causes damages, and those doing the polluting don’t take those damages into account. To correct this failure, one can use either inflexible government regulations or what’s called a Pigouvian Tax. The latter approach relies on decentralized decisions in the market to abate pollution, while the former relies on centralized decisions by governments. As markets are generally more efficient, economists broadly support carbon pricing.

To be sure, carbon taxes do raise revenue. For Alberta, the carbon tax and net revenue from pricing the emissions of large emitters will raise nearly $2.6 billion per year (once fully ramped up).

This is roughly equivalent to the amount of revenue generated by a 3 per cent sales tax in Alberta. But that doesn’t mean a carbon tax is a PST. Not at all. Last year, Alberta raised about $2.5 billion in resource royalties. Is a carbon tax then a resource royalty? No. The government also raises about this much from gambling and liquor licenses, plus net income from ATB. Is a carbon tax then a casino or a bank? No.

But, some might point out, the carbon tax is being used to increase government spending just as some suppose a PST would. They are spending the money on infrastructure, energy efficiency, and the like. That’s true, they are spending a great deal of the money. Here’s the relevant table from the budget:

But it’s important to separate the use of carbon tax revenue from the nature and merits of the tax itself.

It’s true that many economists favour an alternative revenue-neutral approach, where other taxes (in particular corporate and personal income taxes) are lowered by an equal amount as the carbon tax brings in. For strong arguments in favour of this option, see this report by my University of Calgary colleague, Ken McKenzie. But there are also those against (see this, for example). There are many options, and governments must choose wisely. This is an entirely productive and helpful debate to have. But regardless of where you come down on it, a carbon tax is not a PST, whether the government spends the money raised or not.

Different Tax Bases

We’ve seen that a sales tax applies broadly on almost all goods and services, while a carbon tax is specific and applies only to carbon. That is, their tax bases differ.

But, some say, we pay the carbon tax at the point of sale, such as when we buy gasoline for our cars or natural gas for our homes. Thus, they are a sales tax.

This isn’t helpful. By this logic, all taxes are sales taxes. Payroll taxes are on the sale of labour by an employee to an employer. Income taxes are as well. Does that mean they are both sales taxes? No. Let’s stretch this logic even further with property taxes. The value of your home is roughly the value of all future housing services it provides. Even if you don’t explicitly rent your home to someone else (a sale), you implicitly rent from yourself (a “sale” … to yourself). So are property taxes sales taxes? No.

Different Legal Implications

Economics aside, there are interesting legal implications of whether a carbon tax is a PST or not.

For the past 21 years, the Alberta Taxpayer Protection Act requires a referendum to implement a PST in Alberta. So, if a carbon tax is a PST then a referendum is required. (Of course, the Act doesn’t really do this. It’s theatre. Any government could repeal the Act first, and then bring in a PST. The Act simply increases the political costs of implementing a PST.)

For a clue to how the law treats each type of tax, I can think of two easy places to look.

In Canada, laws around federal and provincial financial arrangements classify taxes. Specifically, let’s look at the equalization formula. The entire formula is based on a province’s ability to raise revenue across a wide variety of tax instruments. The regulations governing the system classify general sales taxes and carbon taxes differently. (For those nerdy enough to want to know: a carbon tax is a s4(c)(xv) tax while a PST is a s4(c)(i) tax.) So, a carbon tax is not a sales tax.

Next, the OECD also systematically and authoritatively classifies taxes. (Thanks to Kevin Milligan for pointing this out.) While it doesn’t specifically list “carbon taxes,” sales taxes (item 5112) are differentiated from specific taxes on goods and services. A tax on gasoline is not a sales tax, it’s a specific tax on gasoline (an excise tax, item 5121). A carbon tax is similar. It is a specific tax on carbon. If you don’t want to call a carbon tax a carbon tax, then I suppose you could call it an excise tax. But not a sales tax.

Concluding Thoughts

When we hear “sales tax”, we don’t think of income taxes, payroll taxes, or property taxes. We think of a PST, the GST, or an HST. Given that people hate sales taxes, the political motivation to couple carbon taxes to sales taxes is clear. But it also dangerous.

George Orwell wrote that political language is designed to make lies sound truthful. That is precisely what is going on in the carbon tax debate in Alberta. Luckily, politicians, like all of us, respond to incentives. If we demand clarity in words and respectful policy debates, then our political leaders and public commentators will respond and we will all be better off for it.

The post It’s ridiculous to call a carbon tax a sales tax. Here’s why. appeared first on Macleans.ca.

A year ago this week, I began work on Alberta Environment Minister Shannon Phillips’ Climate Leadership Panel. Our process ended on Sunday, November 22, 2015 when Premier Notley released our report and announced that the province would be following many of our recommendations.

Our process had been quite unique in that, over the course of five months or so preceding the announcement, we’d been in regular contact with government officials, both on the political side and in the public service, so our final report was really more of a report to Albertans than to the government.  Our recommendations had been presented to cabinet and to senior officials over the weeks and months prior to the announcement, as we sought to refine our recommendations based on input and questions from stakeholders and government officials.  We’d run a months-long process to bring together the best analysis we could from both inside and outside government, to analyze it, process it, and to bring forward the best ideas for Alberta. The report was intended to explain it all to Albertans—we hoped it would bring them inside our minds, inside the analysis and into the process we’d been through. While we knew that many would not agree with the recommendations, we hoped that they’d see the answers to their questions in our report. On the Saturday afternoon before the announcement, with all of the documents out of our hands, I headed off for a run and I felt for the first time a feeling I’ve felt almost every day since: a nagging feeling that we’d missed something, that we could have done something differently, could have explained it better, or could have provided more evidence.

Of all the times where I’ve second-guessed the final edits on our report, this past week was one of the worst. Waiting for the shoe to drop on Chris Varcoe’s article in the Calgary Herald on a leaked memo on carbon pricing (I spoke to him Wednesday morning), I’ve run over in my mind all the analysis we did and all the things that I wish we’d included in the report, some of which were never in it, and some which ended up on the proverbial cutting room floor. I feel very confident in the analysis we did and in the evidence supporting our policy recommendations, but over the past seven months since the announcement, I’ve seen a few places where we didn’t include enough to explain to Albertans what many economists take for granted about greenhouse gas policy in general and carbon prices in particular, and a more than a few places where we could have added more to the report, including more discussion with respect to the potential economic impacts and the tradeoffs involved in our proposed policies.

Hopefully I can set a few of those things straight here.

First, I think we need to start with the core of our recommendations—a price on carbon. Why do economists like carbon pricing? Economists from Mankiw to Krugman and from Mintz to Stanford generally like the concept of a price on carbon because it is known (and has been since Pigou in the 1920s) to reduce emissions at the lowest economic cost to society. Governments can do (and have done) a lot with regulations, but they can’t customize regulations to the particular circumstances of individuals and firms without incurring significant costs and inefficiencies, and even if they could, regulations are well-known to generate fewer incentives to innovate than an equivalent price. Simply put, the reason our policy recommendations included a broader and better carbon pricing system for Alberta was to minimize the economic cost of action. If you want to read more on this, start with this report (PDF) from Canada’s EcoFiscal Commission.

However, there are many issues with how carbon pricing is presented as a policy tool. Most importantly, people need to understand that carbon pricing in and of itself is not a magic bullet. Below are some of the reasons why.

First, stringency matters: there’s no reason to expect that a carbon price will do more than a stringent set of regulations—economics simply tells us that in most cases, a carbon price applied broadly could likely accomplish the same outcome at a lower total cost to the economy than would be possible through a suite of regulations.  As Simon Fraser’s Mark Jaccard has pointed out extensively of late, many of our most effective policies have been regulations, but this is because our governments have been willing to impose stringent policies in the form of regulations, not because regulations are inherently more or less effective. Some have argued that the plan we proposed for Alberta doesn’t accomplish enough while arguing in the same breath that it’s too stringent. Economics tells us that, if you want to accomplish more, you can either increase the price or impose more stringent and likely more costly regulations. It also tells us that either option will require individuals and firms to take more costly actions to reduce emissions. After all, while Friedman made the quote famous, economists have known since well before Adam Smith that there is no free lunch.

Second, interaction with other policies and constraints matters.  Since Lipsey and Lancaster in the 1950s, economists have also known that the presence of other market imperfections can mean that the textbook optimal solution to a problem (in this case, a pure carbon price) might no longer be optimal if it exacerbates other problems—this is known as theory of the second best. Here, Alberta’s electricity market provides a perfect example—our market places zero value on long-term reliability, even though we know that reliability is a valuable thing to electricity consumers. Advocates of textbook solutions can argue that we should price carbon and let the market sort it out rather than relying on complementary regulations. However, if that carbon price leads too many generating asset owners to implement early shut downs, and the market has no means to send a signal of the value of reliable supply, problems may ensue, the costs of which vastly exceed the gains of pricing versus regulation.

Third, there are distributive impacts of policies which a textbook analysis of the first best can often ignore. On their own, carbon prices can be regressive, although they need not be as Nic Rivers, Randy Wigle, and others have shown. Of course, regulations have regressive redistributive impacts as well—they impose costs on firms which will be passed through supply chains and affect consumers. The potential regressive nature of emissions reduction policies is why first B.C. and now Alberta have opted for rebates to shield lower-income consumers from the reduced purchasing power which would otherwise disproportionately affect them under a carbon price. That consumers will still respond to higher relative prices for carbon-intensive goods (substitution effects) while not being made poorer overall (income effects) is also taken as given by most economists, but evidently not something we did a sufficient job explaining in our report. More on this is a subject for another day.

Fourth, and related to each of the points above, political constraints matter.  Jesse Jenkins has done some great work on this topic, and as economists we ignore these issues at our peril.  Just as we’ve studied coalition formation for international climate change agreements, policy formation at national and subnational levels must be one of consensus building to some degree.  The range of stakeholders who have supported the policy proposed by the government on November 22nd is a product just that type of process—a process which involves some give and take, and will not necessarily lead to the lowest cost theoretical policy, but can deliver the lowest-cost, achievable policy. But, we’ve also seen many examples of policy proposals for which proponents were not able to build a strong, political consensus. Those proposals remain proposals.

Next, at the risk of validating a straw man, we know that pricing carbon in Alberta isn’t going to solve climate change. We know that climate change is a global collective action problem—when we burn fossil fuels, we impose costs (quantified as the social costs of carbon) on others—a burden for which we do not have to pay compensation. This is what economists know as an externality, and it leads to a less efficient overall outcome than you’d have with perfect markets. The Alberta economy, with some of the highest emissions per capita in the world, has benefited significantly from the fact that current and future generations of global citizens can’t easily send us a bill (or sue us costlessly for damages, if you prefer a Coasian view of the world).  Economic activity in Alberta emits, on average, 62 tonnes of greenhouse gas emissions per person per year, which implies a cost imposed on others of $,2800 to $4,500 annually per Albertan using the U.S. government’s central estimates of the social costs of carbon emissions, converted to Canadian dollars.  And, before you point out that action in Alberta won’t matter if China and India don’t act as well, allow me to point out that the social costs of carbon emissions today increase if you assume inaction on the part of other nations. In other words, if you’re going to argue that no one else is going to act on this problem, you’re arguing that the damages we impose on others through our actions are higher than the numbers I’ve listed above.

Finally, and most related to this week’s news, while correcting an externality leads to more globally efficient economic choices, it doesn’t mean that those who benefit from being able to pass these costs on to others will be made better off by having to pay for these costs. If government policy is going to reduce the ability of economic actors to impose costs on others, there will be impacts on those who would otherwise benefit from doing so. Those impacts will be larger in provinces with more emissions-intensive economies—a list on which Alberta sits near the top. So while we as economists know that carbon pricing is, under most circumstances, the policy with the least economic costs of emissions reductions, that doesn’t mean it comes without potential economic costs. However, economic costs must be judged compared to something. If you compare real-world policies against unrealistic alternatives, they are always going to perform poorly.

Which brings me to where we are this week, and to Chris Varcoe’s write-up in the Calgary Herald on the basis of a leaked memo based on preliminary analysis of the climate leadership plan. The economic impact numbers—projections of 1 to 1.5 per cent lower GDP by 2022, a drop in oil exports, and employment 15,000 below what would otherwise occur—and the fact that the numbers weren’t released sooner have ruffled feathers on all sides of the spectrum. With all of the above in mind, I’ve given a lot of thought over the last few days to what we might have included in our report to better address the economic costs of climate change policy in Alberta. Hindsight is, of course, 20:20, but we could have written something like this:

Alberta’s economy runs on resources and the production, processing, and combustion of those resources generates greenhouse gas emissions. Our emissions do not simply come from our large industries—almost everything else we do has greenhouse gas emissions impacts, whether it’s driving our cars and trucks, heating our homes, or purchasing goods delivered here by plane, truck or train. Reducing emissions in Alberta will not be easy—we don’t have a magic wand, and if cost-effective, lower-emissions substitutes were available in all cases today, we wouldn’t be facing this problem. But, not reducing emissions in Alberta is also potentially very costly. We’ve already seen policies and actions aimed at our resource sector whether through the rejection of pipelines, the application of low carbon fuel standards, or challenges to companies investing here from their shareholders or from sustainable investors. If Alberta chooses not to act, those costs won’t go away. And, we’re part of a federation, and our federation has committed to an ambitious target to reduce national greenhouse gas emissions. There will be costs if Alberta is not a constructive partner in those efforts—continued market access challenges or unfavourable policy design. Those costs may be difficult to quantify, but that doesn’t mean they’re not real. Finally, of course, we know that emissions impose costs on others around the world—if we use the most recent estimates, we are each imposing on average $2,800 to $4,500 worth of costs on current and future global citizens every year with our emissions, and many of these impacts affect some of the poorest countries on earth.

The policy package we are proposing to reduce emissions has the potential to impose some costs on the Alberta economy—there will likely be a real and measurable impact on GDP relative to a business as usual outcome, if we assume that Alberta would face no material economic costs from inaction on climate change. Based on internal and external economic modeling results, this impact will likely be on the order of 0.25 to 0.5 per cent cumulatively by 2022. In other words, the impact of the actions we propose could amount to approximately one day’s lost economic output in 2022.  The impacts will depend on the decisions the government makes with respect to the use of revenues beyond those which we’ve suggested be used for renewable energy and energy efficiency programs—the more cost-effectively these revenues are used, the more modest the economic impacts will be.

There are some impacts we were not able to quantify. While we were able access both private-sector and government economic models, we were not able to complete analysis of the impacts of reduced air pollution from our proposed policies on labour productivity and health care expenditures. Based on the latest economic evidence, we expect these impacts to be significant and positive and thus they would offset some of the negative impacts on GDP. We also have, as mentioned earlier in the report, limited quantitative evidence on the effects on emissions-intensive small and medium sized business.  Unlike large emitters, these SMEs do not report their emissions annually, and so our ability to estimate effects is much more limited. We have, through the application of output-based allocations in large industrial sectors, sought to reduce the competitiveness implications for our emissions-intensive and trade-exposed industries far beyond what would be the case with a BC-style revenue neutral carbon tax. However, these measures will not be perfect and some industries and firms—those with high emissions and low value-added per unit emissions in particular—will suffer disproportionate effects, as will some individuals with particularly high emissions lifestyles. Based on modelling presented to us, and given the emissions-intensive nature of Alberta’s economy, there will likely be reductions in output, exports, and potentially some impact on total employment, relative to a classic business-as-usual case.

However, it is our view that the business-as-usual case that a modeller might use to assess the costs of these actions does not exist for Alberta. We see today increasing pressure on firms to mitigate carbon risk, increasing pressure on governments to achieve their Paris commitments, and increasing focus on Alberta as a symbol of inaction on climate change. We do not see how a comparison to a case where Alberta can continue to find viable markets for its products and see investment return to the oil sands in the absence of credible action on greenhouse gases exists. What would likely exist as an alternative is a world where Alberta faces increasingly discriminatory and punitive policies and barriers to trade both from within and from outside Canada, and where firms face mounting shareholder and institutional investor pressure not to invest in Alberta. The costs of these are speculative, and more difficult to quantify, but we are confident that they far and away exceed the cumulative costs of the actions we’ve recommend. Simply put, if you assume there is no value in reducing emissions, you’ll find that there’s no value in reducing emissions. We believe that our policy recommendations will be of net benefit to Alberta, yes in terms of the avoided costs of greenhouse gas emissions and air pollution, but also in terms of the avoided costs of discriminatory and punitive policies imposed upon Alberta,

Our policy package relies on economic evidence tailored to the specific, current circumstances of Alberta’s economy and proposes what we believe is a package which allows Alberta to go from defence to offence with respect to climate change policies, and do this in the economically smartest manner given the nature of the Alberta economy. It is our hope that this will allow Alberta to prevent discriminatory policies applied against our resources, to compete effectively for global market share, and to be a constructive partner as our federation moves to address climate change and to reduce the costs which our actions impose on others. Of course, we also expect that it will reduce Alberta’s emissions in a way consistent with the goals of the government and with the lowest aggregate cost to our economy.

Of course, writing reports is much easier in hindsight.

The post The economic cost of carbon policy appeared first on Macleans.ca.

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What are the personal attributes, attitudes, and actions that influence personal sales productivity? I recently conducted an extensive study of more than 1,000 salespeople and sales management leaders to determine the attributes of top sales professionals–those who achieved more than 125% of their assigned quota last year. This is a very select group as only 15% of the study participants met the criterion.

About one-third were field salespeople, one-third were inside salespeople, and the remainder were mid-level sales managers and top-level vice presidents of sales. They’ve been in sales an average of 16 years and have achieved the annual quota that was assigned to them 88% of the time over the course of their careers. This is 22% higher than the average of study participants who achieved less than 75% of their quota last year. Moreover, the study results help us understand the attributes in six key areas that influence their success.

Focus. It’s not surprising to find that top sales professionals are motivated by money. Sixty-six percent agreed with the statement “Money is extremely important to me and how I measure my personal success,” while only 10% disagreed. But they are also motivated by status and recognition. A staggering 84% of top sales professionals indicated that being respected and recognized as one of the best by peers at their company is very important to them.

When asked to select how they describe their personal focus, 42% believe they are a likable person who makes customers feel comfortable, and 32% consider themselves very dependable and good at prioritizing their time. Twenty-six percent believe that their knowledge is their most powerful attribute, and this group had the highest average quota attainment last year at 170%.

Career orientation. Top sales professionals think about work a lot. In fact, they find themselves thinking about their job over half of their free time on weeknights and weekends. In addition, they’re goal and outcome focused. Fifty percent said they were the type of person who keeps a written or mental list of goals they want to accomplish and 36% indicated they’re frequently thinking about what the future will be like in five, ten, or more years. Only 13% described themselves as the type of person who lives life one day at a time.

Their responses to the fundamental reason as to why they went into sales were fairly evenly split. Twenty-seven percent wanted to control their own destiny, and 27% indicated the harder they worked, the more money they could make. Twenty-six percent said sales suited their personality, and for 19%, a career in sales just happened naturally.

Personal attributes. Do childhood experiences influence sales success? The results indicate they do as 72% of top sales professionals remember their childhood fondly as a generally happy time while only 9% disagreed with that statement. When asked which school subject was their favorite, 29% selected history, 23% selected science, 23% selected math, 13% selected physical education, 9% selected language or composition, and only 3% selected art.

When asked how they make important decisions that impact their lives, 40% said their decisions are based on more logic than instinct, 30% use equal parts logic and instinct, and 30% use more instinct than logic. The average annual quota attainment for those who use more logic than instinct and those who use more instinct than logic was exactly the same, while quota attainment for those who use equal parts logic and instinct was 7% higher.

Seventy-two percent of top sales professionals prefer a wide variety of activities as opposed to daily routines. Only 8% prefer a daily routine, while 20% had no preference.

Customer interaction strategy. The top sales professionals ranked five different sales strategies based on their effectiveness. The top-ranked strategies were “Getting customers to emotionally connect with you” followed by “Tailoring your sales pitch to the customer’s needs” and then “Asking questions that show your expertise.” The two lowest ranked strategies were “Showing the value of your solution” and “Driving the topics of conversation.”

When surveyed about which customer interaction statement they agreed with most, 49% indicated that likability was an important differentiator between themselves and their competitors. Conversely, 45% agreed with the statement “Sometimes you have to point out that what customers are doing is wrong and proverbially tell them their baby is ugly.”  In other words, sometimes you have to be provocative and confront the customer’s belief system. Only 6% concurred with the statement that challenging the customer’s point of view will make the customer feel too uncomfortable.

What type of relationship do they have with customers after the sale?  Thirty-six percent responded they feel personally responsible and dedicate themselves to ensuring the client’s success, while 26% have less-personal but cordial relationships with their clients because they are both very busy. Twenty-two percent keep a general pulse on what’s happening with the customer after the sale. Contrary to what many people think of as a requirement for sales success, only 17% develop very close personal friendships with their clients.

Attitude. The study participants were also asked to complete word associations to allow a better understanding of their workplace attitudes. The written answers were then categorized as having a positive connotation, a negative connotation, or a neutral connotation, which was neither bad nor good. For example, 53% of the associations to the term “sales manager” were positive, and the top three answers were “coach,” “leader,” and “mentor.” Twenty-seven percent of the answers were negative, and the two most frequently mentioned were “pain” and “overhead.” Twenty-eight percent were neutral, and the most frequently cited  words were “management” and “forecast.”

Forty-two percent of the answers for “sales process” were positive associations, with the most frequently mentioned term being “important.” Thirty-seven percent were neutral words, and the top answer was “methodology,” while 21% were negative, with the top-mentioned word being “long.”

Self-perception. When they selected from a list of qualities they thought prospective customers admired most about them, the top responses were trustworthiness, professionalism, follow-through, product knowledge, and enthusiasm.  However, the definition of trustworthiness seems to be individually determined. For example, 7% agreed with the statement “If the customer’s best interest is served by slightly obscuring the facts that’s OK.” Twenty-one percent agreed with “Subtle manipulation is reasonable, so long as the truth is served.” Thirty-four percent agreed with “You don’t have to point out every blemish of your product” and 36% with “Nothing but the whole truth is acceptable.”

Perhaps the most interesting part of the study is the verbal perception of top sales professionals and how they described themselves when compared with those who achieved less than 75% of their quota. When presented with the same list of twenty choices, the most frequently selected answers for those under 75% of their quota were responsible, likable, confident, empathetic, smart, and humble. The answers for top sales professionals over 125% of their quota were confident, X-factor (a combination of all the traits listed), quick-witted, likable, responsible, and productive. Clearly, this shows that top sales professionals have a different level of self-confidence, personal certainty, and pride.

Just as there’s no better feeling than finally landing a big sale, there’s no worse one than letting one slip through your fingers—especially if you don’t know what went wrong.

These five salespeople from the PROFIT 500—Canada’s fastest growing companies—know both feelings all too well. Luckily, they’ve been in the industry long enough to spot possible problems in advance, and steer clear of them whenever possible. Here are their most common sales deal breakers—and how to avoid them:

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Deal Breaker No. 1: No personal touch

“Listen, half the time the sale is based on the relationship, too. People don’t have conversations, they do everything over email. And when you’re using a computer to build a relationship, you don’t have a relationship. And then it really comes down to price, or whatever the negotiating tactics are.”

How to avoid it? Go the extra mile: “It’s harder to negotiate against somebody that you like; you’re more willing to work with them if you like them. So you have to get to know your client. I’ve saved a deal by literally jumping on a plane and flying down to see somebody; picking up the phone and having the necessary conversation.”

David U.K., CEO, Cue Digital Media, Toronto

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Deal Breaker No. 2: Too much jargon

“A lot of times what will happen when it comes to something complex, like billing, is that when you start talking about how it works, it can kind of scare off a client, or give them a reason for hesitation. You’ll get, ‘I need to think about it,’ and as soon as that happens, you’ve lost the opportunity to close the deal that day.”

How to avoid it? Leave it ’til after: “Anything to do with complex matters, I would always leave for after the deal, once you have everything confirmed with the client. If you hear ‘I have to think about it’ don’t take that at face value—ask the necessary questions to continue the conversation. Your first response should be, ‘Great, no problem, what do you need to think about? Is there something I’ve overlooked, or something you don’t understand?’ 99% of the time, we find out what it is that’s making them hesitate. Ultimately we don’t get into the intricacies until everything is signed, sealed and delivered.”

—Vishal Nanchahal, Vice President, Sales, BreezeMaxWeb, Vaughan

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Deal Breaker No. 3: Not understanding your client’s needs

“If we don’t understand what our client is looking for, it is a deal breaker immediately, because the solution we’re proposing isn’t going to fit their actual needs. If they’re looking for oranges, and all we’re offering is apples, there’s no point in us having that conversation. We had approached a client with what we believed to be the best solution for them, and it just wasn’t in their budget. We’re now backtracking our steps, trying to work with this new information.”

How to avoid it? Overprepare: “We should have clarified what their actual needs were before going ahead and making assumptions. There are always opportunities to research, and consult several sources, when preparing your offering. Now, to keep them engaged while we are back-pedalling, we’ll ask to re-clarify their original needs and ask for the opportunity to go back to the drawing board.”

Ted McRae, Strategic Relationship Sales Manager, People Store Staffing Solutions, Mississauga

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Deal Breaker No. 4: Taking “No”—from someone who doesn’t have the authority to say “Yes”

“Quite often you’ll be talking to one person and they’ll say ‘no we’re not interested.’”

How to avoid it? Always ask another source: “People will sometimes take a ‘no’ at face value, instead of continuing to explore other people they could be speaking with. Once you’ve received a no, you often have to accept that no from that person, but then you can find another person that you could be speaking with, who might give you a different answer.”

Sonya Meloff, Co-founder, Sales Talent Agency, Toronto

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Deal Breaker No. 5: The Brochure Dump

“Salespeople want to go in and talk about their product, and its features and benefits right away, without thinking about the customer’s actual need. They get trained on their product, and that’s all they want to talk about, and it might not be what the customer wants to talk about.”

How to avoid it? Listen first: “The number one thing is to listen to the customer and uncover what their actual need is, and go from there.”

Lou Lacchin, Vice President Sales, Eden Park Inc., Toronto

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MORE ABOUT SALES FROM OUR SPECIAL SALES WEEK SERIES:

• The smartest startups invest in their sales team early and often
• How brick-and-mortar storefronts boost sales for online retailers
• Millennials can make great salespeople—if you forget the phone
• The age of global trade requires training a new kind of salesperson
• Why millennials shun sales careers, and what to do about it
• Clients don’t care where you are. They care if they can reach you
• Tech entrepreneur Gerry Pond on finding the next big thing

The post 5 deal breakers that kill your sales (and how to avoid them) appeared first on Canadian Business - Your Source For Business News.

No matter your industry, customer support is always challenging. Buyers across the board want faster, better, and more tailored experiences. And companies are repositioning customer support into a strategic function, with the term “customer success” becoming quite popular. Today’s customer success reps are often strategic sellers and marketers—which means that the need to prevent customer churn is more pressing than ever. If your customer success function is a leaky bucket, all other aspects of your business are likely to hurt too.

Done manually, customer retention can be a tough function to support. How do you give each customer the individualized attention they need to stay on board? How do you respond to every potential sign of a customer losing interest? The short answer is to deploy a strategic mix of real-time personalization, in-app messaging and automation. I interviewed Evergage’s Julie Hayes, Customer Success Manager and SaaS/Tech expert, to get additional insight into how to implement this. Here is her simple framework to guide you.

Step 1: Track actions that lead to churn

There are many reasons that a customer may want to part ways with your company, but it’s not always a mystery. If you look close enough, you can see hidden signals that can predict churn events. There may be product-related issues, challenges with ramp-up, or challenges related to software integration, among others.

According to Julie, the best place to start to reduce churn is to identify the key actions that make your product “sticky.” Which actions or features do your users get the most value from? What makes them want to keep using your product?

Next, track the usage of those features to uncover potential churn risks. Are the users in each account actively using these features? If not, this is a potential indicator that the customer might not be receiving enough value from your product and may churn.

Don’t forget about an obvious churn indicator — visiting a cancellation page or reviewing your terms of cancellation. Make sure that you track which users visit these pages in your product and that you follow up with users that are thinking about churning.

Also, it’s important to use an analytics system that works on all the devices your clients are using. If you don’t, you are missing valuable user data and potential churn risk indicators.

Step 2: Take a cross-functional approach to responding to needs in real time

Customer success doesn’t exist in a vacuum. Every single team in an organization is responsible for making sure that your product provides a great experience in addressing your customers’ needs. Marketing, sales, engineering, and product teams all need to deliver a holistic, supportive experience to your users.

To accomplish this, your data can’t exist in a silo. Combine information regarding the number of support tickets, product usage (or lack of usage), participation in your marketing activities, etc. to get a complete picture of your users. Making it accessible to your customer success, support, sales and exec team members can help ensure maximum attention to issues and churn prevention efforts.

Step 3: Deliver cohesive and personalized experiences

As you collect data on your users, make sure to invest this information into your in-app messaging and off-site targeting campaigns. Make sure that your messages are relevant to each individual to encourage product use and further engagement with your company. Conduct A/B testing to determine optimal in-app messages (based on clickthrough rates) to encourage the use of key features, “how to” guides, and best practice examples, customized by user and account.

An obvious place for a personalized message, of course, is when someone visits your cancellation page, but in-app messaging should be incorporated throughout the user experience, not just there. Frequency of logins, time spent using the application, functions used/not used, support resources used, etc. are all relevant data points for guiding your in-app messaging strategy.

Be sure to create a truly cross-channel experience by personalizing mobile app messages based on desktop or email activity, or desktop activity based on mobile app activity, etc. And use real-time customer data to inform email marketing campaigns (for example, if a person uses your product for one specific use case, don’t send them webinars or whitepapers on irrevelant use cases).

Final Thoughts

By monitoring churn signals at the user and account level, you’ll be able to respond more proactively. Reduce churn by listening and responding to signals in real time with relevant messaging.

Your buyer’s brain is a lazy beast. Human brains — your buyer’s, yours, and mine — all seek to conserve energy, maximize rewards, and minimize effort and risk.

A human brain weighs only 3 pounds — 2% or less of the total body weight of most adults. Yet the brain consumes 25% of your oxygen and 20% of your energy.

No wonder humans spend so much time making decisions the easy way — by reflex or habit — rather than the hard way, by setting and achieving goals. That’s because our brains naturally try to conserve energy.

Now we know why, in terms of brain science, content marketing is so hard to do. When we cook up new content, we’re up against naturally lazy, stubborn brains.

Thanks to new insights from cognitive neuroscience, now we can better understand what’s going on in buyers’ brains. With that understanding, content marketers can take specific steps to improve the odds of marketing success.

Cognitive neuroscientist Dr. Carmen Simon unlocks secrets of the brain for marketers in her new book, Impossible to Ignore – Creating Memorable Content to Influence Decisions.

“Marketers are choreographers of delayed intentions,” Simon writes. To succeed in marketing, we need to:

• Win prospects’ attention with content now (point A)
• Help prospects create a memory and form an intention
• Get them to act on their intention when decision time comes (at point B)

Great content marketing helps buyers identify their own intentions or clarify new intentions at Point A.

Follow the conclusions reached by neuroscience and make your content marketing messages:

• Repeatable and frequent
• Filled with strong emotions
• Short
• Able to easily roll off the tongue.

Simon notes that the most memorable movie lines like “Round up the usual suspects” from Casablanca and the most effective advertising taglines like “Just do it” from Nike have common characteristics. They are timeless messages that can apply in multiple contexts and are aspirational. They use simple syntax, include unusual words, and evoke memories consistent with a desired self.

It’s hard enough to win buyers’ attention with content at Point A. However, it’s much harder to get buyers to remember your content when they make a decision at Point B.

That’s why it is crucial to understand how memory works and what it takes to make decisions. “Memory fuels our decision-making and it is a lens on the future,” Simon writes. “The same brain areas that reminisce are those that plan for the future.”

Most of the memories people forget do not involve the past, but the future. The majority of memory problems, 60% to 80%, involve prospective memory — when we forget to act on intentions we formed in the past. When buyers don’t follow through on their intentions at Point B, they don’t buy your product. Instead, they buy a competitor’s product or they don’t buy at all.

To gain a better understanding of how prospective memory works, Simon offers this example from her book, Impossible to Ignore:

Why don’t buyers act on the intentions they’ve formed in the past? “We forget to act when the reward is not compelling enough,” Simon writes. Buyers don’t act:

• If the effort or risk is too great
• When there’s a time delay between the action taken and the benefits to be received
• When they worry about what others will think of their decision (the social aspect)

Successful content marketing starts by offering the right content to win attention at Point A. Content that grabs buyers’ attention:

• Balances concrete, sensory input with abstract content
• Avoids clichés that make content easy to ignore
• Is strong enough to break through even to cynical people who are in a state of partial attention … such as experienced buyers on a buying committee

Neuroscience illuminates a clear path to marketing success. We succeed when we help customers remember the content they experienced at Point A when they reach Point B and make a decision.

To succeed, deliver content today at Point A that buyers will see again at Point B — when decision time comes. That makes buyers much likelier to buy.

For example, say you’re trying to win a customer — and you’re at the point where you’re waiting for the contract to be signed. Here’s what Simon writes:

Conclusion

Recognizing that your audiences (like all of us) have “lazy brains” is an important revelation to understand as you create and implement your content marketing strategy. You have to appreciate the trip from prospect to buyer, going from Point A to Point B is not a direct line. And to ensure that you are part of the prospects’ trip through Point B, you must focus on their future intentions.

Want to exercise your brain every day to strengthen your content marketing skills? Subscribe to the free daily or weekly CMI newsletter.

Cover image by Ryan McGuire-Bells Design, Gratisography, via pixabay.com

The post How to Get Through to Lazy Buyer Brains appeared first on Content Marketing Institute.

Successful marketing is all about laser-targeting a niche and then making the most out of it with regard to engagement and profits.

If you’re like me, you’ve learned by now that holding up a mirror to people’s dreams, values, and desires is the one thing that will have people flocking to you a la the Pied Piper. That being said, I see a lot of marketers throw everything and the kitchen sink at the wall in the hopes that something will stick. That approach not only wastes time, but it wastes resources that could be used in more profitable ways.

User segmentation isn’t something that is alien in the marketing world. The big brands have this down to a T, and the little guys are just waking up to the power behind having a laser-focused strategy — laser-focused on user segmentation.

How does this work?

For some motivation, let’s turn to brands that are doing it right.

Mercedes-Benz, the famous German luxury car manufacturer, uses market segmentation to make sure that its content is seen by the people who have the money to purchase a high-end car and are primed to identify quality. Mercedes-Benz realizes how success, the desire for luxury, and the best of the best are prevalent within segments of Generation X and Y who number in the tens of millions in the United States. It locks into this target demographic by offering a vehicle with an affordable price point, creating a customer-brand relationship at a young age. As this demographic gets older, the car company slowly increases the prices of future models, knowing that this group — now customers — will keep buying Mercedes-Benz vehicles given their tendency to want to keep up with the Joneses.

Generation Benz, an online community created by the manufacturer, is a way to bring together similarly minded individuals and create an informal social media place, which also serves as a way to collect insights on current and future Benz fanboys.

On top of that, Mercedes has made sure that it dominated areas such as the Super Bowl as well as prime-time ad slots for maximum visibility in front of the aspirational group of Generation X and Y.

Source

Thanks to its hard work, Mercedes Benz was able to achieve:

• More than a million views online of the new CLA model
• More than 300,000 models of the car built in its online portal
• A younger demographic (The average age of people who showed interest in the campaign was 46, an 11-year drop from the average age of people who showed interest in previous campaigns.)
• Highest number of visits to MBUSA.com compared to any other period in its history
• 82% conquest rate, which essentially means that it was able to convince a new niche of buyers to go for the CLA model

Developing a successful content marketing strategy is no different. You have to hone in in a surgical manner when it comes to your preferred client base in order to hit the jackpot.

While narrowing down your audience, you have to answer basic questions such as:

• Which age range should we target?
• Which cultural era did these people grow up in, when it comes to media and products?
• Which part of the world or country are these people most likely to live in?
• What motivates them to make a certain purchase?
• What price points are they most likely to go for without straining their wallets?
• What problem(s) are they looking to solve with this product or service?
• Can I relate to this market segment?

You must develop a clear strategy from the get-go, or you will fail. In addition, if you really don’t know which user segment to target, you may want to consider testing a few segments before singling one out. This will take some time, but it’s better than throwing money and energy on one niche only to find out months later that it’s a dud.

Do a simple Google search or rely on data-heavy apps such as Quora and Tapatalk to identify major forums where your audience or subjects may be discussed. Use the search functions in these apps and type in a few interests to see what types of questions people are asking, and the kind of help they are looking to get from other senior users.

Now let’s take a look at how to use user segmentation to get to the Promised Land:

1.   Use your brand voice to restate what user segments want and are looking for

From the moment that clients-to-be access your site, they should be able to see themselves. A landing page could highlight a series of questions they may be grappling with or a video that presents a simple solution to their problem (with the solution only partly visible).

If you are targeting two or more user segments, don’t forget to ask visitors to enter information about themselves before moving forward. Ask them a few questions to identify which segment they fall into (e.g., age, problem needing solution, geographic area). That way you can put them on a more effective journey within your site.

2. Regardless of segmentation, maintain a focus on a streamlined and usable user experience

Information fatigue is something that’s common in today’s ADHD world. The last thing people want to see the moment they access your site is an avalanche of information that paralyzes them.

Simplicity is the best way to go with regard to segmentation, if not all of marketing. Keep your website clean, uncluttered and matter-of-fact, without compromising on important aspects such as design and interactive ability.

Should you want to share more information on the site, use “read more” hyperlinks as well as a content vault or hub that provides dozens of articles on their specific needs, safely tucked away at a discreet but prominent side of the website.

3. Regularly find out how user segments are changing

If you build it, they will come, right? But how long will they stay? Identifying and attracting the right segment is just the beginning of your content marketing game; you now have to keep these people happy, sated, and engaged.

Ask them what they would like to see more of from your content, and what other problems they may have and are looking to have solved. You can secure this information via an email list that allows for feedback or blog posts that encourage comments and discussion.

In addition, continue to refine the user segments so you can hone in on an even more profitable sub-market, effectively weeding out poorly performing or non-responsive individuals in the bigger niche. Casting a wide net before you narrow it will help you become an expert in your field and the go-to guy online via recommendations by word-of-mouth or social media.

Conclusion

User segmentation is something akin to an art, mixed in with the ability to collect data, all the while being able to feel out people’s psychological motivations.

It is imperative that you get clear on what you want to achieve, the numbers you are looking to target, what your long-term segmentation goals are, and how to preemptively douse any fires you may encounter along the way.

What are some of the challenges you’ve encountered in user segmentation?

Let CMI help you stay on top of your user segmentation and other key components of your content marketing strategy. Subscribe to our free daily or weekly newsletter.

Cover image by Joseph Kalinowski/Content Marketing Institute

The post How User Segmentation Really Works in Content Marketing appeared first on Content Marketing Institute.

Bottom line: Machine learning is providing the needed algorithms, applications, and frameworks to bring greater predictive accuracy and value to enterprises’ data, leading to diverse company-wide strategies succeeding faster and more profitably than before.

Industries Where Machine Learning Is Making An Impact

The good news for businesses is that all the data they have been saving for years can now be turned into a competitive advantage and lead to strategic goals being accomplished. Revenue teams are using machine learning to optimize promotions, compensation and rebates drive the desired behavior across selling channels. Predicting propensity to buy across all channels, making personalized recommendations to customers, forecasting long-term customer loyalty and anticipating potential credit risks of suppliers and buyers are Figure 1 provides an overview of machine learning applications by industry.

Source: Tata Consultancy Services, Using Big Data for Machine Learning Analytics in Manufacturing – TCS

Machine Learning Is Revolutionizing Sales and Marketing

Unlike advanced analytics techniques that seek out causality first, machine learning techniques are designed to seek out opportunities to optimize decisions based on the predictive value of large-scale data sets. And increasingly data sets are comprised of structured and unstructured data, with the global proliferation of social networks fueling the growth of the latter type of data. Machine learning is proving to be efficient at handling predictive tasks including defining which behaviors have the highest propensity to drive desired sales and marketing outcomes. Businesses eager to compete and win more customers are applying machine learning to sales and marketing challenges first. In the MIT Sloan Management Review article, Sales Gets a Machine-Learning Makeover the Accenture Institute for High Performance shared the results of a recent survey of enterprises with at least $500M in sales that are targeting higher sales growth with machine learning. Key takeaways from their study results include the following:

• 76% say they are targeting higher sales growth with machine learning. Gaining greater predictive accuracy by creating and optimizing propensity models to guide up-sell and cross-sell is where machine learning is making contributions to omnichannel selling strategies today.

• At least 40% of companies surveyed are already using machine learning to improve sales and marketing performance. Two out of five companies have already implemented machine learning in sales and marketing.

• 38% credited machine learning for improvements in sales performance metrics. Metrics the study tracked include new leads, upsells, and sales cycle times by a factor of 2 or more while another 41% created improvements by a factor of 5 or more.

• Several European banks are increasing new product sales by 10% while reducing churn 20%. A recent McKinsey study found that a dozen European banks are replacing statistical modeling techniques with machine learning. The banks are also increasing customer satisfaction scores and customer lifetime value as well.

Why Machine Learning Adoption Is Accelerating

Machine learning’s ability to scale across the broad spectrum of contract management, customer service, finance, legal, sales, quote-to-cash, quality, pricing and production challenges enterprises face is attributable to its ability to continually learn and improve. Machine learning algorithms are iterative in nature, continually learning and seeking to optimize outcomes. Every time a miscalculation is made, machine learning algorithms correct the error and begin another iteration of the data analysis. These calculations happen in milliseconds which makes machine learning exceptionally efficient at optimizing decisions and predicting outcomes.
The economics of cloud computing, cloud storage, the proliferation of sensors driving Internet of Things (IoT) connected devices growth, pervasive use of mobile devices that consume gigabytes of data in minutes are a few of the several factors accelerating machine learning adoption. Add to these the many challenges of creating context in search engines and the complicated problems companies face in optimizing operations while predicting most likely outcomes, and the perfect conditions exist for machine learning to proliferate.

The following are the key factors enabling machine learning growth today:

• Exponential data growth with unstructured data being over 80% of the data an enterprise relies on to make decisions daily. Demand forecasts, CRM and ERP transaction data, transportation costs, barcode and inventory management data, historical pricing, service and support costs and accounting standard costing are just a few of the many sources of structured data enterprises make decisions with today. The exponential growth of unstructured data that includes social media, e-mail records, call logs, customer service and support records, Internet of Things sensing data, competitor and partner pricing and supply chain tracking data frequently has predictive patterns enterprises are completely missing out on today. Enterprises looking to become competitive leaders are going after the insights in these unstructured data sources and turning them into a competitive advantage with machine learning.

• The Internet of Things (IoT) networks, embedded systems and devices are generating real-time data that is ideal for further optimizing supply chain networks and increasing demand forecast predictive As IoT platforms, systems, applications and sensors permeate value chains of businesses globally, there is an exponential growth of data generated. The availability and intrinsic value of these large-scale datasets are an impetus further driving machine learning adoption.

• Generating massive data sets through synthetic means including extrapolation and projection of existing historical data to create realistic simulated data. From weather forecasting to optimizing a supply chain network using advanced simulation techniques that generate terabytes of data, the ability to fine-tune forecasts and attain greater optimizing is also driving machine learning adoption. Simulated data sets of product launch and selling strategies is a nascent application today and one that shows promise in developing propensity models that predict purchase levels.

• The economics of digital storage and cloud computing are combining to put infrastructure costs into freefall, making machine learning more affordable for all businesses. Online storage and public cloud instances can be purchased literally in minutes online with a credit card. Migrating legacy data off of databases where their accessibility is limited compared to cloud platforms is becoming more commonplace as greatest trust in secure cloud storage increases. For many small businesses who lack IT departments, the Cloud provides a scalable, secure platform for managing their data across diverse geographic locations.

What’s the difference between Instant coffee and filtered or brewed coffee?

Yourcoffeestopblogspot.com says, instant coffee is pre brewed coffee ready to rehydrate with boiling water. It dissolves and is ready to drink with no residue. Filtered coffee is ground roasted beans through which you pour boiling water and the liquid is passed through a filter leaving only the fresh brew. The grounds stay trapped in the filter.

So which tastes better?

Talklocal.com says, brewed coffee has a much stronger, deeper, and fresher taste. Instant coffee still has a coffee taste, but it is a little more muted.

Like coffee, a VOIP lead can either be generated at an instant or filtered depending on the organization’s business need and requirement.

Oracle stated that businesses have varied needs and may post different criteria for a qualified lead. If the need for a database update arises and no specific sales offer is determined yet, a customer profiling campaign can be ran which would qualify verified information of a contact as a lead. While the need to hit sales number goals would require appointment setting campaigns with tighter criteria like BANT (budget, authority, need, timeline).

What some marketers consider as a sales-ready lead may just be a mere inquiry for others. This means that, a qualified lead can be defined in different ways: HOT, WARM or COLD.

VOIP lead generation providers like Insideup.com bank on powerful platforms that streamline complex b2b marketing strategies by educating prospects with industry-specific online walkthroughs while progressively profiling leads as they interact online. This automated verification system eases and expedites the lead generation and qualification processes. (Doesn’t that sound like instant coffee?)

However, VOIP lead generators don’t solely depend on the automated verification system but employ live operators to verify the quality of leads.

Here are some insights on qualifying leads from Inc.com:

#1: When a Sales Lead Bites, Contain Your Enthusiasm

The first thing salespeople – especially new and eager ones – need to realize is that not every sales opportunity is worth jumping at. Many sales staffs get so excited at the prospect of a sale that they lose sight of the bigger picture of how the sale will play out down the road.

This is true. Adrenalin rushes all over you when a prospect answers all your questions and says YES to an appointment. But wait, many sales professionals still use the BANT criteria in qualifying leads. This means that, aside from filling out the BANT questions with answers, you have to feel out if the prospect’s budget levels with your product or service’s cost and vice versa, if the prospect solely decides in the buying process or can just recommend, if the prospect has the need, and when do they purchase.

#2: Ask the Right Questions of Your Sales Prospect

The way to divine the BANT standard is to make sure you’re controlling the sales meeting and asking targeted questions.

Sales experts advise not to be too excited in pitching your sales spiel instead, ask probing questions that would derive information that will ensure a good fit offer for the prospect.

In the book, Questions that Sell, the author cited that prospects are likely to buy if you are able to create an emotional connection with them, and shared the three-tiered approach:

1. First ask about their decision-making process to find out who in the company makes the purchasing calls and its overall goals
2. Then ask about decision-making criteria, which helps weed out less serious prospects.
3. Next, ask about the criteria for the vendor they’re looking for, which helps determine whether it’s a high-value lead.

#3: Work With Your Street Team When Analyzing Sales Leads

Work with your group leaders to get everyone and everything aligned in qualifying the lead at selling point A or at the initial contact before going through the Quality Assurance specialist, will not only ensure efficiency among the sales frontline people or the callers but will definitely streamline the lead qualification process that produces well-filtered, high quality sales-ready voip leads.

Producing high-quality voip sales leads need to go through a filtering process that weeds out bad leads and contain only the best. A cup of Americano please…

Marketing via email is a great way to expand your customer base and increase your sales without spending too much money. Providers of services and goods can easily disseminate announcements, deals, and promotions, and also grow their business by increasing the number of prospects and making the first contact with cold leads. Taking an effective marketing campaign from theory to practice, however, is easier said than done. Unless you employ the proper marketing strategies and techniques with your email marketing campaign, you may even suffer brand damage instead of just suboptimal results.

According to Amit Khanna, Salesgenie’s president of medium and small businesses, a great email campaign comprises multiple elements. Among the most important of them are the offer and wording, which covers everything from devising an engaging subject line to coming up with a powerful call to action to conclude with. “But a winning campaign is so much more than an excellent service or product and compelling copy,” adds Khanna. You can check out a marketing guide to learn more here.

Besides the email itself, other elements such as mode of delivery, email design, the way information is targeted and mailing list data are equally important to email marketing, said Khanna. He also added that, in sales, everything revolves around delivering the right message to the right individual in the proper time frame, and email marketing is no exception to the rule.

According to Khanna, there are five critical mistakes that email marketers commonly make, which small businesses should avoid in order to enjoy higher return rates from their marketing campaigns. Read about them below.

1. Not targeting individual customers.

While all it takes are a few clicks to send out emails to all your customers with email marketing, going with the same email to each and every one of them is far from effective. To ensure that each recipient only receives the most appropriate message, segment your customers based on certain criteria, such as target demographic, context, or offer of your emails. It may require additional work, but it will definitely pay off in terms of results since customer targeting is essential to email marketing success.

2. Using non-responsive design.

More than half of all emails are now being read on mobile devices, which means that your emails should be optimized with responsive design to be easily read on smartphones and tablets. By complying with the principles of responsive design, your content will be seen how it was meant to be seen, regardless of the end user’s device. Otherwise, your customers will be forced to pinch or scroll left or right, just to read your content, which could be enough of a reason to get rid of your email in the first place.

3. Violating the terms of service of the email marketing platforms.

Avoid using communication platforms like ConstantContact or MailChimp for email marketing purposes, since these services prohibit companies from using any mailing lists that aren’t coming from them. However, many marketing professionals violate this policy by purchasing third party mailing lists and loading them on these platforms, thereby risking account closure or, worse, banning of your domain.

4. Buying lists without assessing the source.

If a mailing list is priced too low, avoid buying it. What you get usually corresponds to the price you paid for it, so try to get your mailing lists from cross-checked providers. For example, it is easy to find a whole DVD filled with email addresses for a hundred dollars, but the chances are that most of them are not valid anymore, resulting your email to be listed as spam or, worse, your whole domain being blacklisted. Buying lists is already not a great practice for the majority of companies

5. Using an outdated email address list.

There are two ways to get an email mailing list: either purchase it or compile it yourself, through website or personal sign ups; however, the validity of the email addresses is far from guaranteed in either case. There are anti-spam programs set up by email providers, which block or blacklist obsolete email addresses, so if your mailing lists contain many such addresses, it could trigger a red flag on your email address or domain. The best way to avoid this unfortunate situation is by validating the contents of your mailing list.

Of course, this list is just the beginning. What else would you add? Let us know your thoughts and your story in the comment section below.

When Michael Litt’s company was first starting out, he spent a lot of time on the phone.

In 2011 Vidyard, the Kitchener-based video marketing platform Litt co-founded the previous year, was enrolled in Silicon Valley startup incubator Y-Combinator. “We had this four-month window to build as much traction as we could, and then we’d stand the company in front of investors and try to raise money,” he recalls. To get to a single potential customer who might pay for the product, Litt had to have a lot of unsuccessful conversations. “I set myself a benchmark of doing a hundred calls a day,” he explains. “I would sit there for like eight hours and try to find people.”

Canada’s thriving startup scene is producing plenty of creative ideas and innovative products. But here—as elsewhere in a tech sector that’s being driven by billions in less-than-discriminating venture capital dollars—revenue hasn’t necessarily followed. A lack of know-how, talent, or just simply interest leaves some companies facing a sales shortfall. To continue to grow, they’ll need to fix it.

Startups often focus on product development and engineering to the exclusion of revenue, says Steve McCartney, vice-president of startup services at Communitech. “The techier they are—and some of them are brilliant—the less inclined they are to go seeking clients that will give them money,” he observes. “They’re enchanted by the technology.” Young founders prefer to tinker with their product rather than do the tough work of knocking on doors to hawk their wares.

They often don’t appreciate how hard sales is, says Litt, who, in addition to being CEO of Vidyard, has backed more than 40 companies as an angel investor. “When you are an unknown entity with no product or brand awareness, it’s very difficult for people to find your services,” he says. “You have to do huge volumes of outbound outreach in order to captivate any audience whatsoever.” Hence the hundred calls a day: Litt says the challenge during that initial period was simply figuring out who to contact. Startups don’t just get handed a list of potential customers when they incorporate.

Prospecting is easier when you’re selling to a specific industry or niche. Take Bridgit, a Kitchener-based startup, which makes “punch list” software for construction sites. “We go after large, high-rise residential projects and big commercial buildings,” explains Laura Lake, co-founder and Chief Revenue Officer. “We sell a monthly subscription to use our product on-site, and we’re selling it to that general contractor or developer.” Outbound sales consists of reaching out to a specific project management team to demonstrate what Bridgit’s software does, and how it can replace the paper and spreadsheet systems construction crews traditionally use. The company also gets a lot of referrals—once one of a developer’s sites is using the product, others within the organization and industry often follow. But when Bridgit enters new markets, such as its move into U.S. cities like New York, Seattle, Miami and Chicago, the early prospecting is crucial.

Lake and Litt were both one-person revenue departments for their respective companies at the beginning. Founders need to be dealing directly with customers during the startup stage, because the feedback they get out of those interactions typically leads to major product improvements. It also helps them develop an understanding of and appreciation for the sales process notes McCartney, who runs Communitech Rev, an incubator that helps product-ready startups build their sales and marketing strategies. Once you’ve got teams and managers reporting to you, you’ll need to know how to assess them. “You have to know how to [identify if you’re getting] snowed, because you’ll be out of business by the time you figure out they’re actually not selling very much,” he says.

Canada’s latest crop of tech startups is heavy on business-to-business software-as-a-service (SaaS) companies. These ventures need dedicated staff to sign up new clients and increase revenues. “You can almost tie the growth of your company to each extra salesperson you hire, especially in the early days,” says Litt. “It’s such a linear and proportional function: You hire one rep, and that rep is able to do $200,000 in sales, so ergo you hire 10 more, and you should be able to do $2 million in that year.”

At Bridgit, Lake now has a five-person salesforce working under her, representing almost a quarter of the total headcount. The company can’t afford to hire someone with decades of sales experience, so it recruits recent graduates who are eager, hungry, but need to be schooled in the skills of the discipline. “We have to start right from scratch in terms of training,” says Lake, noting that even most business programs don’t tend to have a strong sales component. “We like the eagerness of a lot of the young talent we’re bringing in, but they’re not coming with any knowledge of how sales works or what’s important to a sales team.”

Simply parachuting an experienced manager from a gigantic company into a newly-created executive slot rarely works says Litt. Salespeople at established organization are often handed warm leads on a daily basis, and their goals are oriented more towards taking orders from existing accounts rather than closing new business. “A Salesforce.com, for example, [is] hiring order-takers and training people that can really just hustle existing customers for more money,” he says. “Those type of people flounder in a business like ours, because we need them to get out there and hunt and be fresh.” In the early days, a company grows by simply repeating the call-and-close cycle. The more phone lines you have active, the bigger your revenues.

Vidyard now has 45 employees who are involved in the sales process in some capacity, out of a workforce of about 140, and counting. Litt says the company started to experience some growing pains once it hit the $5 million in annual recurring revenue mark. “That’s when you need to bring in an experience sales leader,” he says. “Someone who’s seen that stage before and can take this disparate effort of a bunch of salespeople [and turn it] into a repeatable, scaleable process.” Such talent is hard to find in Canada, which doesn’t have a long list of established business-to-business software-as-a-service (SaaS) names for startups to poach from. 

It’ll be a few years before most of this startup cohort faces that sales talent shortfall. And they’ll first need to be convinced of the importance of building a revenue engine by angel investors like Litt and programs like Communitech Rev. With VCs getting choosier and the flow of funding starting to slow, startups would do well to fill up their order books says McCartney. “You come walking in the door and say, ‘I’ve got $10 million in contracted revenue with Class A Fortune 1000 companies,’ you’re gold.”

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MORE ABOUT SALES FROM OUR SPECIAL SALES WEEK SERIES:

• How brick-and-mortar storefronts boost sales for online retailers
• 5 deal breakers that kill your sales (and how to avoid them)
• Millennials can make great salespeople—if you forget the phone
• The age of global trade requires training a new kind of salesperson
• Why millennials shun sales careers, and what to do about it
• Clients don’t care where you are. They care if they can reach you
• Tech entrepreneur Gerry Pond on finding the next big thing

The post The smartest startups invest in their sales team early and often appeared first on Canadian Business - Your Source For Business News.

Account managers and salespeople work together closely, but the two jobs are very different. The distinction between these roles can get blurry, so I'm answering all your questions about account managers, salespeople, how the two teams should work together, and where they differ below.

Sales vs. Account Management: 5 FAQs

1. What is account management?

Account management is a client-facing, post-sale role. Account managers typically work with a dedicated group of clients for the length of the time the client stays with the company to help achieve the client’s goals and represent their company in non-support customer interactions.

Account managers are also tasked with growing these accounts through upsells, keeping quality of work high so clients want to renew/expand contracts, creating case studies, and advising clients on long-term growth strategies.

For example, an account manager at an ad agency would be responsible for understanding the client’s short- and long-term needs.

Project managers, creative teams, strategy teams, and media teams would work on the execution and rollout of specific campaigns, but it’s the account manager’s job to understand how the campaign fits into the client’s long-term strategy and high-level goals.

Account managers are also the client’s day-to-day point of contact. While the client’s questions and plans may touch multiple teams, the account manager is responsible for filtering communication from and to the client.

But account managers don’t just work at services-based businesses like agencies or law firms.

Even if you sell a physical product (or software), any employee who works with a dedicated group of clients to implement new projects and assists in determining strategy or long-term goals to keep your customer base happy is performing account management duties.

2. Where do account executives (salespeople) fit in?

Salespeople are the ones responsible for sourcing leads or following up with inbound ones, then bringing the business in. Once a deal has closed, salespeople will brief account managers on their new customers’ goals and transition out of the relationship.

But the two roles aren’t always separate. At smaller companies, these roles may be combined -- usually, it’s larger businesses and agencies that can afford to split up new business and account management roles.

3. So is account management just customer service?

No. Customer service representatives typically deal with one-off issues, and serve a general customer base rather than being dedicated to a specific group of clients.

4. How should account managers and salespeople work together?

Account management and salespeople need to have open lines of communication.

When you hand off a new client to their account manager, it’s your responsibility to communicate their goals, plans, and challenges -- basically, a debrief on everything you’ve gathered during the sales process so your account manager can hit the ground running to help the client achieve their goals.

After handoff, account managers should let salespeople know when there are upsell opportunities or potential for new business.

Depending on who’s responsible or eligible to make the sale, account managers should broach the conversation and work with sales to bring the new deal in, or close the deal themselves.

5. Why is there a split between account management and sales?

There’s a reason there’s always been a strict Chinese wall between the publishing and editorial sides of newspapers: Journalists are supposed to report the truth, and involving them in ad buys or sponsorships creates the perception of bias, even if nothing unbecoming has happened.

If your account manager has a quota on his head, it’s harder to trust that upsell recommendations or suggestions for new projects are in the client’s interest.

However, the functions also require two different skillsets. It’s difficult for one person to prospect and close well while also successfully maintaining a customer base.

So, splitting these client-facing duties into two separate roles helps salespeople focus on bringing in new business and account managers on nurturing a growing customer base -- which benefits both your new business numbers and retention rates.

In some situations, account managers are also responsible for nurturing customers to the point of an upsell, and will then bring in a salesperson to handle the financial transaction.

Setting an agenda for a call is a table-stakes sales skill -- one salespeople should learn and master early in their career. However, while agenda-setting isn’t usually hard for an initial or closing call, most salespeople really struggle when doing it on an exploratory call.

Many salespeople try to apply the same agenda-setting process they use for other types of calls to the discovery process. But to really excel at turning interested prospects into likely buyers, reps need to master the agenda-setting process for this two-way dialogue where buyers and sellers are trying to simultaneously determine fit.

Avoid these 12 mistakes to ensure an effective call and increase your chances of moving qualified buyers closer to the closing stage.

1) They skip agenda setting. 

Some salespeople skip agenda setting altogether. Don’t do it. Without an agenda, the call will go in unanticipated directions. To the prospect, it'll feel like you're aimlessly rambling or asking ineffective and unrelated questions. They’ll have trouble connecting your stories and questions with their goals and challenges and they’ll begin to tune you out. Worse, you and the prospect may battle for control of the call.

2) They wait until they're on the phone to set the agenda.

The best time to set an agenda for an exploratory sales call is when the call is being booked -- not when the call is in progress. When a prospect agrees to schedule a call, they usually have their reasons: They might be in serious need of your service and ready to buy, they might have just started to evaluate solutions like yours, they might only be curious about what you do, or it could be something else completely.

Regardless, this is your chance to uncover why they are taking the call in the first place. Asking what they want to accomplish on the exploratory call not only ensures you're spending your time with a viable prospect, it also allows you to start shaping and planning the call.

Most sales calls require some preparation for you (and ideally for your prospect as well). Setting an agenda in advance allows you both to complete your homework. The homework you assign them can range from thinking about a few of your standard questions to sending them some information to review. Assigning pre-call tasks tests their commitment and helps make the call much more productive.

3) They forget to recap what they already know.

Don’t forget to recap what you’ve learned from previous conversations and other research you’ve done. 

To get your exploratory call off to a good start, the easiest thing to do is pick up where you left off. For example:

“When we last spoke, you shared a few challenges that you’re frustrated with. You mentioned X was preventing you from achieving some important company goals, like Y and Z. Can you expand a bit more on what you’re dealing with?

Many prospects will repeat what you discussed in your initial exchange and expand on their challenges, giving you more detail. Getting them to open up right away is a great way to get started, enabling you to ensure your agenda will be focused on the challenges they’ve acknowledged. You should ask follow-up questions and repeat back some of these issues, so they know you’re listening effectively.

4) They skip rapport-building.

It’s sometimes hard to agree upon an agenda. Building rapport first makes it easier.

Don't be too eager to get down to business. When a salesperson sets the agenda immediately at the beginning of a call, it usually sounds rehearsed. Do it too soon in a call, and your buyer will think you're a robot setting the exact same agenda on every call.

Breaking the ice helps your prospects realize you're a human being who is trying to help them -- not just another salesperson trying to close them as quickly as possible. This helps make the whole call more of a conversation instead of a pitch or interrogation and sets the stage for mutual accommodation.

The first time you attempt to build rapport, you might have to do some research about the person: Where do they live? Where did they go to school? Do they have kids or pets? Are they sports fans? Are they accomplished in their career or just starting out? Regardless of your choice of topics, never skip rapport-building at the beginning of a call.

Though some buyers might want to get right down to business, a skilled rapport-builder can crack a smile or get a chuckle out of even the most serious of prospects. You can always abort or abbreviate your rapport-building attempt if they really push back. But if a prospect thinks you’re all about the sale and not interested or concerned about them, it’s hard to overcome that perception later.

To learn more about building rapport, read this article on building rapport on sales calls as well as the sales professional's guide to building rapport with leads.

5) They set a vague agenda.

Agendas should be as specific as possible. Almost everything worth doing requires a plan, especially when two or more people are involved. Usually, the more detailed a plan, the better the execution.

Sales calls are no different. Too many salespeople show up to a call with a vague proposal for a call, like, "I figured we'd talk about your business and I'll tell you about my product." This is not an effective agenda. It does not include a goal and there is no clear benefit to either party.

Even if your agreed-upon agenda is just to get to know one another, make it clear that you’re doing so to see how you might be able to help each other -- whether it’s by doing business directly, referring each other to acquaintances, or learning something specific from one another.

6) They assume they know what the prospect wants to talk about.

Another thing salespeople screw up is assuming their agenda is the right one. Too often, salespeople come in to sales calls with their own agenda, share it, and get started.

When this happens, some buyers will stop the rep and say "I'd like to cover X instead," but many just go along with it and tune you out if your standard rant isn't relevant to them. Problem is that you won’t know your message was irrelevant until they start ignoring your future attempts to reconnect.

The single most important part of setting an agenda is to ask and then really listen to what the prospect wants to talk about. “By asking what the prospect would like to get out of the call, the rep shows respect and gains insights into what's on the buyer's mind,” Sandler Training CEO Dave Mattson points out.

Gaining insight into your prospects' objectives allows reps to make conversations relevant regardless of what stage of the buyer’s journey a lead is currently in. They might have no clue they need your service, or they might have shortlisted you and are ready to pull the trigger if you check off all their requirements. Conversations in these two different scenarios should be completely different, of course. But you won't know what conversation to have until you ask your prospect what they already know, what they want to know, and what they think they need.

My personal preference is to ask my prospect what they'd like to cover before I propose an agenda -- not after. Chances are, you'll be able to incorporate their agenda into yours. They’ll feel heard, but you’ll still be in control.

This approach works particularly well when the prospect is an inbound lead or you’ve had a thorough connect call. In these cases, your prospect probably already knows what you do and how you’re different, so what they’re interested in talking about will likely be what you’re interested in talking about.

The main exception to this rule of thumb is when the prospect doesn’t know much about what you do. In this case, follow Mike Weinberg’s advice on setting agendas by positioning how you help people like them, then asking them what they’d like to talk about.

Here’s an example from Weinberg: 

“Ron, thanks for inviting me in. I believe we set this up for 30 minutes. How are you on time? Great. Here’s what I’d like to do: Let me kick us off and take two to three minutes to share just a bit about ABC Ozone Aggregators, the issues we solve for facility managers and why they bring us in, and I’ll touch briefly on why we’re different and keep gaining new clients. Then I’d like to turn the tables and ask you questions to find out more about your situation and what you’re doing in QRS or how you’re approaching XYZ opportunity. Depending on what I hear from you, I’ll share a couple of relevant case studies or show you a few options of how we provide ozone aggregation. After that we can discuss if it looks we might be a fit to help you, or if there is a logical next step. That’s what I was hoping to do today, Ron. Tell me what what you were hoping for and what you’d like to walk away with today.”

Either approach is fine. Just make sure you ask your prospect what they want to talk about.

7) They ignore what their prospect wants to talk about.

Too often, salespeople are a slave to their own process. Either the process has been mandated or they aren’t comfortable deviating from it.

Don't believe me? The next time a salesperson calls you, ask them why they're asking a specific question. Whenever I’ve done this, I’ve found that newer, more junior reps stumble because they don’t know why they’re saying what they’re saying -- they just can't break from their plan.

Do yourself a favor and be prepared to talk about whatever your prospect wants to talk about. For example, HubSpot research shows that more and more prospects want to talk about price and product on the first call, but many reps struggle to address these areas before qualifying budget and authority.

Reps need to know how to have these conversations without disqualifying themselves from the opportunity. Learn how with this guide.

8) They have an inflexible agenda.

You won't find many people that are bigger proponents of having a well-defined, documented sales process than I am. But sales opportunities rarely follow the same linear path.

Sometimes, it makes sense to give an educational presentation to a prospect or guide them through a free trial of your product before qualifying them fully. This way they’ll more willing to tell you which business goals they're hoping your product will help them achieve.

You must understand your prospect's buying process before you can influence it. For many buyers, you must demonstrate your ability to adapt to their buying process before they'll adapt to your sales process. If your short-term agenda is set in stone and you're unwilling to let your prospect influence it, you risk losing the chance of influencing their long-term plan.

9) They forget their own agenda.

While it's critical to ask your prospects what they want to talk about and incorporate those topics into the agenda, it's also important for you to have a goal for every sales call as well. Otherwise, you can waste a lot of time talking to tire-kickers.

If you're truly helpful, buyers will want to talk to you regardless of whether they plan to buy or not. But as a salesperson, you have to spend your time with prospects most likely to buy. In the early days of HubSpot, buyers would book time with us just to learn how to do internet marketing -- and to a certain extent, we'd oblige. After all, it was in our best interest to shape a prospect’s digital marketing plan. Once they began following our advice, it was easy to transition into a conversation about how our product would help them implement our advice more easily and effectively.

If you sell consulting, training, professional services, or a complex product, I’d encourage you to freely give advice to prospects in order to influence their plan. Just don’t take it too far. It’s important to determine who is a likely buyer and who is just trying to learn enough to execute your strategies themselves or with a competitive solution.

As an example of what not to do: We had one salesperson who understood internet marketing very well and was on the phone all the time. You could find his name at the top of the charts for two years straight. But for some reason or another, he stopped shaping agendas for his calls. He'd talk with prospects for hours about whatever internet marketing topic they wanted to learn about. He'd let them guide not just one conversation, but multiple -- sometimes the entire process! He'd practically give them a mini-MBA in internet marketing if they asked for it. Even when faced with being terminated for lack of performance, he didn't change his ways. The fix -- proper agenda-setting -- was so simple, and plenty of people tried to help him, but for some reason, he just didn't do it.

Don't suffer this fate. Make sure you know what you need to get out of calls to ensure you're spending your time with qualified buyers.

10) They wing it.

There’s no one perfect script for setting an agenda. But winging it isn’t effective either.

Split the difference by having a customizable script for setting your agenda. You can use the example below from HubSpot’s free sales training: 

“Typically, a good goal for this call is to really figure out how I can best help you. I’ve worked with X companies like yours who were struggling with the challenge you’ve acknowledged. I can certainly share some advice based on my previous work with them, but I find that everyone is a bit different. So it usually makes sense for me to gather more context around your goals and learn about other challenges you’ve faced or anticipate facing, any relevant plans you have in place to overcome XYZ  challenges, as well as timelines and other constraints you might have. Are you comfortable having that conversation today?

"I suggest we treat this conversation like a two-way dialogue. I have a bunch of questions for you. I’m sure you’ll have some questions that I will answer for you. Then, at the end of the call we can decide whether it makes sense for us to continue discussing how we can more formally help you. Does that sound like a good plan to you?”

In short, have a standard agenda-setting spiel that you can customize based on what you know about the prospect already, what you want to learn on the call, and how you want to position the value of your offering.

11) They don't set their next agenda based on what happened on the call. 

Qualifying a sales opportunity effectively can rarely be accomplished on one call. The key to maintaining control of a sale and gaining insight into whether a prospect will buy or not is to have a full picture of their situation. If you haven’t yet captured that full picture, you need to continue talking to them until you do. Always be prepared to offer more value on a future call in order to grab their interest.

Every salesperson should have a set of predefined agendas for different situations. You should have your standard agendas for exploratory calls, planning calls, proposal review calls, and any other step you might have in your process. However, I'm also a big fan of pre-defining multiple, optional qualification calls in your sales process that you are prepared to conduct in any given sales pursuit.

Here's an example. Back in the day, HubSpot’s primary pitch was “helping companies grow traffic.” When a prospect had bought in to improving their approach to search engine optimization, but they weren't quite ready to complete our payment authorization form, I'd offer to schedule a call with them to do keyword research for their website.

Whether you're setting the next call in your standard sequence or an extra call so you can continue qualifying the opportunity, always be ready to propose next steps that are helpful for the buyer.

12) They fail to discuss the likely outcome of the call up front.

To ensure you’re spending your time wisely, ask your prospect to be prepared to make a decision at the end of your call. Too many sales processes end in “um ... maybe” or prospects going dark. By establishing an "upfront contract," you can ensure that your prospect will be honest with you about their likelihood of purchasing your product or service.

This doesn’t mean you’ll necessarily ask them to buy at the end of an exploratory call. Like setting the agenda, the decision at the end of the call must be something the prospect will agree to make.

As Sandler Sales Training instructs, “Determine at the beginning of the meeting or telephone conversation what you both mutually agree will happen at the conclusion of your time together.”

In most cases, the decision point is simply to determine whether it makes sense to move forward in their buying evaluation or not, and take the next step -- whatever it  may be. According to Sandler, "letting them know up front what is going to happen in the time you're together will save time, eliminate the prospect from giving you a vague response as to what happens next, and [advance] the selling process or conclude there isn't a fit for your product or services.”

Set Sales Call Agendas Effectively to Optimize Your Time With Maximally Qualified Buyers 

If salespeople could make one wish, they’d wish that their funnel would consist only of buyers destined to become large, profitable customers.

Sans magic genie, salespeople need to rely on their skills to sort these perfect customers from the time-wasters. One of the easiest ways to do that effectively is by setting a solid agenda that helps both parties determine whether there is a fit.

As the list of twelve mistakes above show, there’s lots of ways to screw up agenda-setting. To make sure you're doing it right, here’s a simple agenda-setting checklist to follow:

1. Set the agenda in advance of the call.
2. Assign your prospect homework so they are prepared to have the right conversation.
3. Do your own research and homework. Learn about your buyer.
4. Before setting an agenda, recap what you already know through previous conversations and research.
5. Build rapport in order to forge a connection and make your prospect more likely to oblige your proposed agenda.
6. Ask your prospect what they want to talk about and what they hope to accomplish during your call.
7. Incorporate what they want to discuss into the agenda.
8. Come to the call with a predefined, yet customizable way of introducing your agenda. Ensure that this framework communicates what you plan to ask, what you plan to share, and differentiates your offering in a way your prospect will value.
9. Have additional call agendas at the ready when you need to further qualify the opportunity.
10. Get a commitment from your prospect to make some decision at the end of the call.

What does your agenda-setting sound like? How does your agenda setting process help you sort the serious buyers from the tire kickers? Let us know in the comments below.

Turn your eyes skyward anywhere in the Russian city of Yekaterinburg and you will see it.  A tall off-white, disheveled but somehow elegant tower is by far the tallest building in Russia’s fourth most populated city.

Yet this is not a monument to a fallen tsar or departed dictator.  It is a TV tower. What is more, it’s an unfinished TV tower.  Nonetheless it gives the city another claim to fame – as the home to the tallest abandoned structure in the world.

There are three parts to the building:  the trunk of the tower, the lower joint-work with the base and the metallic aerial. The tower has 26 floors in total (not accounting the floors which make up the base). The lifts were never installed.  Instead any visitors must clamber up the concrete stairs of the half-complete tower.  It is quite the local landmark.

From one angle it looks as if the city's main synagogue had sprouted a minaret.

The city leaders would probably prefer it if the city was better known for the Church of the Blood. The church was built on the site where the last Tsar of Russia, Nicholas II, was killed in 1918 (murdered or executed would really depend on your opinion).  When the city was renamed to Sverdlovsk under the Soviets the communist commanders had probably envisioned something grander by which they would be remembered than this.This, however, is what they got.

It is more a symbol of hubris than anything else. Work started in 1981, when soviet ambitions were still high.  The tower was to be an icon of communist achievement and would reach a height of 440 meters.  Like the Babel of the Bible, work would never be finished but not in this case because of an act of God. In 1991, with the tower only half-finished, the USSR collapsed. The project came to a dramatic halt.

The tower has a slight lean due to engineering mistakes made in its construction.  The list does not, however, present any danger and the tower is not due to topple over at any point in the near future.  In fact it is considered to be structurally sound despite its gentle slant.  Some might be relieved if it did collapse, considering it an eyesore on the city’s skyline.

However, many in Yekaterinburg  (or Ekaterinburg , but that’s another story) have become fond of the unfinished television tower in their midst.  Pragmatic as usual, they call it either the Fun Tower or the Suicide Tower, for the two types of visitors it attracted.  The latter name speaks for itself.  The former name is due to the large numbers of base jumpers who used to flock to Yekaterinburg to scale the 220 meter tower. Both type of visitor would jump off but it would not always be only the ones intent on ending it all who would succeed.

As a result the tower was sealed down in 2000.  However, Yekaterinburg’s city officials came up with a plan.  They invited foreign investors to bid for permission to transform the tower in to an entertainment and cultural center.  However, although no empire collapsed this time, the 2008 economic crisis put paid to any such plans.  The European investors left. Not the luckiest tower in the world, then.

However, hope springs eternal.  The idea to renovate has been revived and recently an international creative competition has been announced. The winning plan will, it is hoped, transform the tower in to something about which the city can truly boast.  Till then, however, at least the denizens of Yekaterinburg can brag that their city is home to the tallest abandoned building in the world.


Skellig Michael – Mysterious Monastery in the Atlantic
If you enjoyed this feature about the TV Tower of Yekaterinburg, why not go back a little further in time?

Nine miles off the coast of County Kerry in the west of Ireland there are two small rocky islands peeking out of the Atlantic Ocean. The larger of the two, Skellig Michael, is home to something quite extraordinary – a 1400 year old monastery which only a handful of people get to see each year.

Image Credit Flickr User Chad Husby

When it comes to the inner working of the tech industry, Andreessen Horowitz general partner Martin Casado knows a thing or two. 

In 2007, Casado cofounded networking startup Nicira, which raised $41.82 million in venture funding before VMware gobbled it up in 2012 for $1.26 billion.

At VMware, Nicira's networking virtualization technology became a $600 million business, before Casado left for Andreessen Horowitz just a few months ago.

The market today may be a little different than when Casado was a first-time entrepreneur, as the funding doesn't fly as fast and as free as it used to.

Still, Casado says that there's a tremendous opportunity, especially highly technical business-facing startups, to carve out huge chunks of what he says is the $4 trillion business technology market. It's something that gets him very excited as an investor.

"How many $4 trillion markets are there?" Casado jokes.

That market-carving is only possible, Casado says, so long as these startups play to their core advantage: Not having to go through what he calls the "baroque tribal ritual bloodletting" that is the enterprise software sales cycle.

"I believe this disruption favors small, technical startups," Casado says. 

'A very baroque procurement process'

What's so horrible about selling enterprise software? Well, when a big software company like Microsoft, Cisco, or even VMware wants to sell a product, they have to go through "a very baroque procurement process," Casado says.

They have to romance third-party service resellers and consultants into offering their products, who then in turn wine and dine their customers' CIOs and IT departments, taking them to expensive dinners and out to the golf course.

The whole process can take months, if not years, and it hinges just as much on salesmanship and professional contacts as it does on the products themselves. The big tech titans have gotten very good at it, to the point where it's difficult for any kind of new startup to get a seat at the table in deals of any substantial size.

"I would say all of these large companies, their strength is selling to that sales channel," Casado says. "I've always thought that was the most difficult thing for enterprise startups." 

The cloud changes everything

Now, things are a little different. Thanks to the rise of on-demand cloud computing platforms like Amazon Web Services and Microsoft Azure, a company's developers increasingly hold the purchasing power.

If there's new technology developers want to try out, they can just punch in their credit card number and take it for a spin. There's no dealing with the IT department, no procurement cycle, no nothing. They just find the tool they want, and use it. 

"Developers don't care about that complicated sales process," Casado says. 

For instance, Casado says that tools like Mesosphere, an Andreessen Horowitz-backed startup that helps developers manage and maintain their cloud computing infrastructure, "captivates the developer." 

There's room for startups to captivate developers at every layer of the technology market, Casado says, from security to networking to storage. Any startup that can skip the traditional sales cycle and sell directly to developers stands to win in the long-term, Casado says, without the overhead of having to build those traditional sales channels.

As Casado gets up to speed after only two and a half months at Andreessen Horowitz, he says that helping find startups that stand to take full advantage, and counseling them on their way, is an exciting opportunity.

"It's why I got into venture capital," Casado says. 

 

 

SEE ALSO: Marc Andreessen hasn't seen this many tech acquisitions in the pipeline in years

Join the conversation about this story »

NOW WATCH: This incredibly creepy technology claims it 'knows' if you’re a bad person based on how you look and act

On one of my earliest visits to the Bay Area, where I now live, friends and coworkers urged me to check out the Mission District, a bustling Latino neighborhood famed for its oversized burritos, arts scene, and activism.

The word "hipster" may have originated in Brooklyn, but the Mission has co-opted it and taken it to a new level. The neighborhood is abundant in beards, denim shirts, artisanal cheeses, bicycles, and overpriced lattés.

The Mission hasn't always been such a spectacle. The tech boom of the 1990s brought an influx of tech workers to the Bay Area, which put a squeeze on the lower and middle-class communities already living here. San Francisco also put provisions in place to stunt new housing developments, driving rent prices even higher. The Mission became one of the most expensive neighborhoods in the most expensive rental market in the US.

Take a look to see how the transformation is playing out.

The tech sector created more than 34,900 jobs in the Bay Area between spring 2015 and March. Many IT gurus turned to the Mission in search of cool, central housing.

Source: Mercury News

Their arrival combined with the city's detrimental zoning laws is changing the fabric of the Mission, a vibrant Latino neighborhood. The hipsters have come.

I spent a day gallivanting between S. Van Ness Avenue and Dolores Street, talking to local business owners and witnessing the earthy-crunchy yuppie invasion firsthand.

 

See the rest of the story at Business Insider

Back when I worked for Kinko’s, public video conferencing rooms were all the rage. The benefits of video conferencing — cutting travel costs and bringing together remote teams (among others) — remain the same today. Fortunately, more of us can use this great tool thanks to laptop and cellphone cameras and broadband internet. This has driven the need for costly video conferencing equipment with dedicated lines to the brink of extinction. Question is, have your video conferencing skills gotten stuck in the dinosaur days?

Here are my recommendations for improving your video conferencing mojo:

1. Mind the background. Get rid of visual distractions to keep the focus on you and your brilliant points. A little staging never hurt anyone. (I once started a video meeting with a long-handled feather duster sticking through my head a la Steve Martin’s fakes arrow circa 1977.)
2. Mute is your friend. Removing that velvet Elvis poster off the wall behind you isn’t the only background you should clean up. You can’t always get rid of background noise, but you can and should mute yourself when not speaking. Many solutions like our Video Collaboration use sound to know when to pop your mug on screen. No one needs you interrupting their big moment to see you recover from a sneeze.
3. Share your screen. That old adage “Show, don’t tell” has never been more true than during during virtual meetings. It’s easier for attendees to get away with multitasking or to get distracted when you aren’t in the same room. That makes visual aids a great tool for keeping attendees in engaged. Plus, visual learners will take more away from your meetings. Fortunately, video conferencing solutions typically include screen sharing in addition the bringing attendees face-to-face in glorious HD.
4. Plan in advance. Online meetings, like audio conferencing and in-person meetings, benefit from advanced planning. Have your goals in mind, get that PowerPoint ready to share in Slideshow mode in advance, and log in early so you can greet your attendees with your presentation all ready to go.
5. Make it easy to join. If your video conferencing is integrated as part of a unified communications (UC) solution, you can start meetings with a click or invite colleagues with a chat message. Your finance team will love you, too, since you can cancel your separate video conferencing software subscription.

Tada! You’re on your way to better online meetings.

When Justin Trudeau admitted that his government was screwing up the electoral reform file, my first thought was of Steph Curry, the once underrated player on the Golden State Warriors who has transformed the game of basketball. Like Curry, who deploys the high-risk three-point shot the way other players rely on the conservative layup, Trudeau is changing how the political game is played and putting massive poll numbers up on the board.

“We were perhaps behaving in a way that was resembling more the previous government,” Trudeau told stunned reporters as he explained that he would cede to opposition requests to more fairly distribute seats on his electoral reform committee—a sudden and surprising climbdown. Did Trudeau just compare himself to Stephen Harper? Yes, he did. This was after he’d already reversed course on the assisted-dying bill’s Motion 6, which would have limited opposition debate. And after he’d apologized—numerous times—for the infamous elbow incident. Trudeau was just doing what he has done since the campaign: breaking the five cardinal rules of political communication.

1. The flip-flop rule: Reversing decisions makes you look indecisive. Stick to your promises or people will stop trusting you.

2. The loser rule: Never repeat your negatives because you end up validating them. It goes without saying that you don’t compare yourself to the man you just defeated.

3. The blabber rule: Once you’re explaining, you’re losing. Keep messages simple.

4. The message-control rule: Never let the opposition or caucus take over the agenda. Leaders control; leaders look strong.

5. The wimp rule: Never give in to the opposition’s criticisms. Their job is to oppose. Your job is to lead.

Stephen Harper codified these into a form of political brutalism. “The standard Tory-machine approach to public messaging involved defining a simple storyline, driving that storyline in all places and on all occasions, never wavering from the message and the mass disciplined dissemination of that narrative through numerous channels,” Tim Powers, the vice-chairman of Summa Strategies told me. Sometimes it worked. When Harper first came to power, he had a “promise made, promise kept” mantra. But that didn’t last. “As the credibility of the Conservatives was wearing thin, the automaton sales pitch was also losing its gloss,” Powers says. “Trudeau gambled that a little bit of vulnerability and appearance of humanity was a better potion—he was proven right.”

Related: The legislative fog of Liberal politics

It was more than just a bit of vulnerability. During the campaign, the Liberals released an ad where Trudeau broke the loser rule and repeated the negative about his inexperience: “Stephen Harper says I’m not ready.” The Conservatives were thrilled. But instead of backfiring, it was a hit.

Look at the debate swirling around Canada’s CF-18 jets. Trudeau’s government is openly flouting the flip-flop rule. The Liberals promised to have an open and transparent competition to find a new jet, but now the government is preparing to sole-source the Super Hornet, exactly what Liberals criticized the Conservatives for doing with the F-35. I suspect they will back down in some fashion—after all, that’s the pattern. Will the deficit be $10 billion this year as promised? No. Way bigger. Did the government get 25,000 Syrian refugees in by Christmas? No. Will the Liberals settle the lawsuit with wounded veterans over the government’s alleged obligation to them, as they promised? Nope. This week, the six veterans are back in court. Why isn’t any of this hurting the party?

The answer is the authenticity gap. Trudeau’s great political insight is that people prefer an authentic response over a scripted one, even if it breaks a promise. “Younger voters want a more authentic and real connection to the people they are voting for,” says Ian Capstick, the founder of Mediastyle. “When everybody has the same ability to ‘control the message’ through social media, the ability to lose control of the message becomes the professional’s move.” In other words, less control is more.

Politics is not so different to sports. In 2010, the Golden State Warriors, a loser franchise, was bought by a group of Silicon Valley data junkies. As the Wall Street Journal pointed out in a fascinating article, the new owners saw an underused part of the game: the three-point shooting line. Established in 1979, the line was meant to reward high-risk shots with one extra point. Until recently, only 22 per cent of shots taken in a game were from behind the three-point line. But the Warriors owners found the difference in success rates between shooting a bit inside the line and a bit outside the line was minuscule. The results, however, were game-changing. As Ben Cohen writes: “By moving back just a few inches before shooting, a basketball player could improve his rate of return by 43 per cent.”

That changed everything. This year, Curry sunk 402 three-point shots. The former record was 286—which he also held. His team broke the record for most wins in the regular season in NBA history.

Is the authenticity gap the political equivalent of the three-point shot? Maybe. Every time Trudeau fades back and launches another of his high-risk moon shots—legalizing pot, pricing carbon, buying navy ships, changing the way elections are won—you think he’s going to fail.

There are misses, for sure, lots of them, as Trudeau is the first to admit. But when he scores, he scores big. The age of political incrementalism, the policy layup shot, is over. Trudeau is breaking the rules and hitting all net. See you in the second quarter.

The post How Justin Trudeau is changing the rules of politics appeared first on Macleans.ca.

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

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

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

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

We scoured the business landscape for inventive leaders making bold moves.

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

Not every company is a standout in each criteria. Companies with a questionable record with their employees, for example, weren't necessarily eliminated, but they rank lower than similar companies that make employee welfare a priority. Size wasn't a deciding factor. Small companies adding great value to the world, like Toms, outranked many multinational conglomerates, such as IKEA. Other entrants, such as Uber and Snapchat, make the list primarily because they have created dramatic economic or cultural impact, attracting millions of customers daily.

To celebrate many of these inspiring people and success stories, we're pleased to present Business Insider 100: The Creators.

The Creators: Ranked 1 to 100

The Creators: Sorted A to Z by company

More stories about these 100 business visionaries

Edited by Alex Morrell. 

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

100. Andras Forgacs

Cofounder and CEO, Modern Meadow

 Modern Meadow’s cofounder and CEO, Andras Forgacs, believes that as our population grows to 10 billion people in the next few decades we will need 100 billion animals to sustain our meat, dairy, and leather needs. Modern Meadow has found a way to grow meat and leather in its lab using biofabrication — a process that initially involved taking small biopsies from animals, leaving them unharmed. The company now claims that in its leather process it uses no animals whatsoever.

Modern Meadow says its solution will mean 99% less land required for animals, 96% less water to create the meat, 96% fewer greenhouse gases emitted, and 45% less energy needed to produce the biofabricated animal materials.

Forgacs, who also cofounded the 3-D organ printing company Organovo, says the leather takes less than two weeks to produce, and the meat takes less than a week. Compared to the years it takes to raise animals, that’s almost like no time at all, Modern Meadow just needs to figure out how to commercialize it first. Forgacs told Crain’s he sees the products hitting the market in 2018.

99. Jessica Alba

Cofounder, The Honest Company

In 2011, Jessica Alba pivoted from entertainment to entrepreneurship, launching The Honest Company — a startup dedicated to producing eco-friendly household and beauty products. The idea came to her years before, when she was starting a family and tested a baby detergent that caused her to break out in a rash. Alba was frustrated to find dubious ingredients and safety records for many other household products, so she took matters into her own hands, starting The Honest Company with entrepreneur Brian Lee.

Though it began as an online shopping site, The Honest Company’s products eventually hit the shelves in stores like Costco, Nordstrom, and Whole Foods. As it has expanded, its dedication to creating sustainable products and making a social difference hasn’t wavered, earning it B Corporation certification in 2012. Alba also takes care of her more than 500 employees, announcing this year a benefit of up to 16 weeks paid parental leave for new parents, up from 10 weeks.

But the brand has hit a few bumps in the road. It has faced a spate of lawsuits alleging its products — including baby formula, shampoo, detergent, and sunscreen — contain the same nonorganic, unsafe ingredients the company was created to avoid. The Honest Company has denied the accusations and is fighting the lawsuits.

Alba hasn’t let the flap slow it down. The budding retail operation, which has raised over $200 million in funding and is estimated to be worth $1.7 billion, has been flirting with an IPO this year.

98. David Reis

CEO, Stratasys

The world’s largest 3-D printing company, Stratasys develops and manufactures professional printers and materials capable of building everything from factory parts to dental equipment to personal projects. The company also encompasses smaller ventures such as MakerBot, known for leading the charge in desktop 3-D printing.

In 2012, Stratasys merged with Objet, another leader in the 3-D printing space, to become a dominant firm worth an approximate $3 billion at the time. Objet CEO David Reis also came over with the acquisition, taking over as chief executive of the new, larger company.

Under the leadership of Reis, who will step down as CEO this summer, the two companies’ histories abound with milestones for the industry, including introducing the first 3-D printer available for under $30,000 in 2002, launching the world’s first multimaterial 3-D printer in 2007, and building the first printer to combine more than 100 materials in 2012.

In April, Stratasys added one more milestone to that list. It debuted a new printer than can seamlessly switch between 360,0000 colors and up to six materials. To put the technology into perspective, an OtterBox phone case would previously take three full days to prototype, but using the new printer, it can be made in a mere 30 minutes. The technology will help cut down production time — and cost — on everything from stop-motion animation to airplane parts.

Despite year-over-year revenue losses and a slowdown in the 3-D printing industry at large, Stratasys beat Wall Street expectations for its fourth-quarter earnings, and its stock surged nearly 30% in March.

See the rest of the story at Business Insider

No doubt we’ve all been the recipients of bad advice, and occasionally and unwittingly may have offered bad advice to others. But there’s one piece of advice that I still see offered by so-called sales experts (the latest only yesterday) who frankly ought to know better.

Whenever I hear the dreaded phrase it raises my hackles and if I’m any judge of the readership base for these articles it ought to have the same effect on you.

If it doesn’t, you probably want to unsubscribe now, because I imagine you’ll end up disagreeing with many of the other positions I’m going to take in the future.

Today’s focus is on what I have come to believe is the dumbest opening question a sales person could possibly ask (and trust me, there are a lot of questions that could qualify for that award, so the competition is pretty tough)…

My award for the dumbest question (drum roll) goes to:

“What’s keeping you up at night?”

This question is just so wrong in so many ways, not least of which because it opens the possibility to all manner of tone-lowering literal responses that could include “my wife’s snoring”, “a bad attack of the piles” or “an overspiced Bangalore Phal”. And frankly, if we open the door to these or similar responses, we fully and richly deserve what we get.

What that does for the potential quality of the subsequent conversation I leave to your imagination. Of course, most prospects are either too polite to respond in that way. That doesn’t stop them positioning the offending salesperson as a trite and uncreative numbskull.

But that’s a trivial reason in comparison to the real problem with this question: it shows a total lack of respect for the prospect and a complete inability to anticipate the common interests, priorities and concerns of similar people in similar organisations. And it denies us the ability to showcase our potential to add value to both the conversation and their business.

Let’s be clear: we can’t be expected to know the details of our prospect’s business better than they do, and sooner or later we’re going to have to work out whether they have a critical problem that we have a uniquely capable solution for. But asking them what keeps them up at night isn’t going to get us there. If nothing else, it cedes control of the conversation to the prospect in a completely unpredictable and unmanageable way.

If we’re to be worthy of any serious consideration by our prospect, it’s because there are some things we know more about than them. It’s because we have had the benefit of talking to tens, hundreds or thousands of similar people in similar organisations to theirs. It’s because we have the ability to recognise patterns and to bring insights about what seems to really matter to many of their peers.

Do we really want to throw that advantage away by asking them what keeps them up at night? Wouldn’t it be better – far better – to share some of the insights that we’ve uncovered and highlight some of the common concerns that we’ve identified? Couldn’t we then reinforce those insights by introducing some unconsidered needs or consequences that our prospect hadn’t thought about?

Wouldn’t that make for a far more valuable conversation? Of course it would. Wouldn’t that allow our salesperson to maintain better control over the future direction of the customer conversation? Of course it would. Wouldn’t it be more likely to make the customer want to learn more? Of course it would.

None of this precludes us from asking the prospect what their perceived problems or priorities are. But the approach I’m recommending allows us to do a far better job of “setting the scene”, and of establishing a reputation as a trusted, credible advisor. It puts us in a far stronger position to actually educate our prospects and to uncover previously unconsidered needs.

So with all of these benefits, why would we want to encourage or allow our sales people to do something so dumb as to ask their prospect what’s keeping them up at night, when there’s so much more they could do to bring genuine value to the sales conversation. In fact, it’s so dumb that we should probably regard it as grounds for dismissal by virtue of gross incompetence.

Then let’s see how often this inept, out of date phrase continues to be used…

Twenty-five years after founding New Belgium Brewing Company, Kim Jordan still has pinch-me moments.

From 1991 to 2015, Jordan (No. 12 on the BI 100: The Creators) was CEO of New Belgium, which she built into one of the US's largest craft breweries, with $225 million in annual revenue.

The company's success isn't uniquely Jordan's. Since 2013, New Belgium has been 100% employee-owned, which helped solidify Jordan's intent to engage her coworkers in each facet of the business.

In an interview with Business Insider, Jordan, who's now executive chair, discussed the road to employee ownership and how sustainability has been a crucial building block of New Belgium's success.

From basement to brewery

As the story goes, the creation of New Belgium stemmed from a trip Jordan's then husband, Jeff Lebesch, took to Belgium in 1988. As he cruised through the streets on a fat-tire bike and stopped to taste local beers, Lebesch yearned to bring the flavors of Belgian beer back to the US.

Three years later, Jordan, a social worker, and Lebesch, an electrical engineer, installed brewing equipment in the basement of their home in Fort Collins, Colorado. By the summer of 1991, they were selling their two flagship Belgian-style brews, Abbey and Fat Tire, at local beer festivals on the weekends.

At the outset, consumer interest in New Belgium was driven by a void in the market, Jordan said.

"When we started, there was no one in Fort Collins making packaged beer," Jordan said. You couldn't go to a store and buy craft beer to take home. They decided to specialize in 22-ounce bottles of beer, and the cash flow followed.

In their first year of home brewing, New Belgium earned $150,000 in revenue.

Despite the early signs of success, neither Jordan nor Lebesch had quit their day jobs yet. In October 1992, after more than a year of home brewing, the pair finally moved New Belgium from their basement into its first official location in Old Town Fort Collins and took the company on full time.

Introducing employee ownership

In February 1992, months before relocating to the first brewery location, New Belgium hired Brian Callahan — now the company's longest-serving employee aside from Jordan — and gave him a "10% pot of sweat equity" in the company.

By the end of the year, New Belgium was growing fast and hiring bottlers, brewers, and engineers.

With a growing team and a booming new business, Jordan said she wanted to create a plan for the succession of the company.

After reading "The Great Game of Business," a book by management expert Jack Stack, Jordan felt inspired by Stack's urge to apply open-book management, the practice of full financial and business transparency within the company.

"It spoke to my desire to have broadly shared awareness of the business and of running the business," Jordan said. "The inclination to have as flat a hierarchy as we could manage and a really trusting, transparent, engaged group of coworkers was really important to me."

In 1995, Jordan began teaching employees about financial statements and enlisting their input for annual planning and long-term strategy. "It was a very collaborative process with a lot of consensus," she said. But she quickly realized that if employees had a say in the company, they should also have a stake in it, and the first iteration of New Belgium employee ownership was born.

Going forward, every employee was formally awarded stock in New Belgium upon their first anniversary at the company.

Becoming 100% employee-owned

In 2000, with a workforce of 90 employees, New Belgium officially transitioned to an employee stock ownership plan (ESOP), a type of retirement plan that awards employees stock in the company to be distributed upon their exit. The new ESOP purchased Callahan's 10% slice, as well as a portion of Jordan's and Lebesch's shares, bringing employee-ownership to 32%.

A year later, Lebesch left New Belgium to pursue other interests, but it wasn't until 2009 when the couple divorced that New Belgium's board of directors urged Jordan to keep control of the company in the hands of those directly involved with it. New Belgium purchased Lebesch's remaining shares and retired them, bringing the ESOP total to 41%.

The employee-ownership saga culminated in late 2012, when Jordan and the board of directors decided the best next step for the company would be to place it fully in the hands of employees.

Jordan sold the remaining 59% of the company — her shares, her two sons' shares, and the management's shares — to the ESOP, making New Belgium officially 100% employee-owned.

She announced the sale to more than 450 "thrilled" employees at New Belgium's annual company retreat in January 2013.

Though the sale signified a huge shift on paper, Jordan said, "nothing changed, because we had this culture that we call 'high-involvement culture' deeply embedded within the organization for a very, very long time."

That sets New Belgium apart from other iconic craft breweries, such as Dogfish Head and Lagunitas, which have sold stakes to outside investors. Jordan's sale to the ESOP represents a conscious effort to fight the wealth gap, avoid cuts and layoffs a buyer might have demanded, and keep her employees involved in the future of the company.

"We still expect our coworkers to give us input, rather than feedback, on where the company should be going, both annually and in a longer term," Jordan said. "I think we display a lot of trust by being very open about what we're up to strategically."

B Corporation status

It's typical to associate mass production with unsustainable practices, but the opposite is true at New Belgium. The craft brewery is one of the largest in America and is widely considered the leader in sustainability.

While hiking in Rocky Mountain National Park shortly after founding the brewery, Jordan and Lebesch determined New Belgium's four core values and beliefs (the company now has 10). One value that persists today, Jordan said, is environmental stewardship.

"I love beer, I love drinking beer, I love the beer industry and the people in it, but I wanted our business to be about more than just that," she said.

In 2013, New Belgium codified its commitment to act sustainably when it became a certified B Corporation, a legal status that pushes the company to meet rigorous environmental and social standards. Whether it's the equipment Lebesch engineered to recover reusable heat from the brewing process, a recent investment of $12 million in a water-treatment plant, or installing solar panels at the brewery, every decision New Belgium makes takes into account its mission to conserve resources.

But as hard as Jordan and her coworkers work to make environmental sustainability an integral part of the business, there's another aspect of sustainability that's incredibly important, Jordan said, and that's earning profits.

"We can all be as groovy as we want to be, but the ultimate form of sustainability is being able to keep the doors open," Jordan said. "Having that vision that has a deeply embedded purpose to it helps to ground you, and having that commitment to making sure that the literal sustainability of the company goes forward — you need that combination."

Change is vital to success

In the past 25 years, Jordan has learned a number of important lessons — some of them difficult — about sustaining a business. Chief among them is the willingness to evolve.

"One of the things that vibrant organizations have to do is change," she said.

In October 2015, Jordan stepped down as CEO and New Belgium president and COO Christine Perich, who's been at the company since 2000, took over.

Jordan is now executive chair and is focusing on New Belgium's brand and portfolio, as well as strategy.

"The pace of change in the world — more specifically, in craft brewing — has been at a pretty steady clip," she said. "You have to figure out where the right places to make change are, and what are the big bets to put your energy behind. And that's an art form."

National expansion

In May, New Belgium opened its highly anticipated second production location and "Liquid Center" tasting room in Asheville, North Carolina, the heart of the craft-beer movement in the South. The new location significantly increases distribution opportunity on the East Coast, and last week New Belgium rolled out in New York.

"We definitely have our eye on becoming a national brewery — a national craft brewery — and building out our whole US footprint and then building a long-term strategy for international growth," Jordan said. "I'm excited for New Belgium. I can't wait to see what happens next."

Read more stories about the 100 business visionaries who are creating value for the world.

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

DON'T MISS: Activist Marc Benioff on Salesforce's radical 1-1-1 pledge

Join the conversation about this story »

NOW WATCH: Sal Khan: Educating the world — for free

The question of whether or not to gate content has been settled within the digital marketing world with some widely-accepted general guidelines:

Making the trade: It’s common to gate high value content.

Encountering a request for some basic contact information before gaining access to someone’s high value content like eBooks or webinars is something people have generally come to expect.

The rule of thumb when determining whether something is good enough to be gated is to ask yourself: Is this a worthwhile trade? The contact information of a qualified lead is extremely valuable to you, so ensuring that you are providing something of value in return is critical. Does the content you’re offering help them improve their business? Make their lives easier? Save time or money? Learn a valuable skill or approach?

In most cases, self-promotional content should be left ungated.

Typically, self-promotional, sales-y or informational content about your products and services should be readily accessible to your audience for a couple reasons. When someone is interested in your stuff, you shouldn’t make them work for more details. Also, if you ask yourself the questions from the section above, the answers are likely “no”.

However if there’s complexity, a larger price tag, longer sales cycle, or a custom solution involved, it’s generally acceptable to gate this information (Think, a modular enterprise software solution with a gated price sheet. It’s important for the sales team to be able to reach out to help a prospect navigate the document and make sure their needs are understood).

So is there ever a case where you should leave high value content ungated?

Absolutely. What some would fear is a free giveaway of your team’s hard work can actually be an excellent strategy for building qualified leads, stronger SEO, and raising your company’s profile in the eyes of your audience.

It can be a great SEO play.

Search engines want to see that your website has rich and relevant content. By making a comprehensive eBook readily accessible rather than housed in a gated PDF download, you’re inviting Google to index a wealth of relevant search terms. And, as a user interacts with the piece (perhaps reading each chapter on a different page), they’ll spend more time on site and visit more pages per session than a user that quickly visits a landing page to sign up for a downloadable piece.

It makes you look good.

The fewer obstacles that stand between your audience and your content, the more eyeballs you’ll have on it. Sharing your expertise without requiring anything in return is a great way to get in front of a larger audience while building some goodwill. With easier access, you’ll get to show an even larger group of people how well you know your stuff and how helpful you are.

What about my leads, Chloe?

The rumours aren’t true–you can still build qualified leads with open access content. The gating process only ensures that you are capturing their contact information. It doesn’t guarantee a reply to your email or an answered call. If your content is good (helpful, insightful), people will want to talk to you anyway. Plus, bonus points because you weren’t all pushy by demanding their email address.

But what if they still don’t bite?

Now it’s time to get creative. Think of other ways you can potentially capture that email address after you have delivered value. If your eBook is a comprehensive living document that you plan to update, you could prompt readers to sign up to be notified as you add to it. Or, now that you have started to build a “know, like, and trust” relationship, perhaps the audience is better primed for a webinar signup where they can learn more about your products. Put yourself in the mind of one of your prospects, and think about a logical next step they’d be interested in taking.

So how do you decide whether or not to gate? Think through your goals: your short term goals for this specific piece, as well as your long term goals for everything from SEO to perception of your organization. Maybe trying out an ungated content campaign is for you!

If you’re a marketing leader in, say, a retail business, you might think that a customer loyalty program is the best way to build up a pool of repeat buyers.

It’s a smart move. Loyalty lets you build a fence around your top customers and keep them coming back with incentives. But if you’re looking to grow your business and turn your customers’ passion into revenue, then you should build a referral marketing program before you worry about loyalty.

While referral and loyalty work great in tandem, customers won’t start buying from you just because of a loyalty program. They overwhelmingly make buying decisions based on recommendations from friends. That’s exactly what a referral is, which is why referral marketing doesn’t just pull in more customers, but also more loyal customers as well.

So in the absence of either referral or loyalty, the formula is simple: Introduce referral early on, use it to build up a base of highly-engaged customers, and then bring in a loyalty program to further incentivize those customers to stick with you. You don’t need a points system to build a referral program that scales. Knowing that, let’s dive into the top three reasons to build referral first and loyalty second.

1. Referral Rewards Customers Immediately

Customer loyalty programs are powerful because they reward customers who stick around in a cost-effective way. The points systems motivate members to keep buying as they see themselves accumulating points and getting closer towards, and marketers can design these systems to ensure they’re never losing money on the prizes they give away.

But therein lies the problem as well. Loyalty programs don’t get immediate engagement with customers because it takes so long for customers to build up enough points for great rewards. Take Nordstrom’s loyalty program for instance. Lower-tier members have to spend $2000 just to get a $20 gift card.

Referral marketing increases engagement from the word “go”. When customers are excited about a brand, they want to share it with their friends. For instance, our internal research shows that 84% of customers recommend products to friends at least once a month and nearly 30% do so once a week or more.

Referral taps into that instinct. Customers can get rewards as soon as their friends convert instead of steadily working to accumulate points, which creates a positive feedback cycle and encourages them to keep referring. Plus, by gamifying your referral system and recognizing the most prolific advocates, you can tap into a similar dynamic as the loyalty points system and amplify the desire to refer again and again.

Here’s how your referral program can start rewarding customers ASAP:

• Everyday advocacy. From the get-go, promote the referral opportunity to everyone who interacts with your brand, and not just people who have bought from you.
• Double-sided rewards. Our research has shown that rewarding both advocates and new customers leads to more referrals, revenue, and new customers.
• Reward quickly. Give advocates and new customers their rewards as soon as the referral converts. The faster participants get rewards, the faster they refer again.

Each of those tactics leverages referral’s speed advantage and motivates your advocates to recruit more customers.

2. Referral Supercharges Customer Acquisition

Customer loyalty is great for nurturing your highly-engaged, repeat customers and giving them an incentive to keep buying from you. But it’s totally useless if you don’t have a big pool of potential loyalty members. You need to create a steady stream of new customers.

That’s where referral marketing comes to the rescue. It lets you tap into the customers you already have to supercharge acquisition and grow like crazy. Referred prospects convert at a 3-5x higher rate than average and are then 4x more likely to share a referral themselves.

The best way to maximize those increased conversion rates is to design referral to be totally seamless. Let people share, accept, and collect their rewards in as few clicks as possible to maximize the number of new customers. Consider:

• No accounts, please. Don’t force customers to create an account on your site to share or accept a referral. It’s an unnecessary extra step no one wants to complete.
• Simplify your codes. Give customers short, easy-to-remember referral codes. If customers have to fumble around with a long, awkward jumble of numbers and letters, many of them will just give up before converting.
• Referral on any device. Make it easy for customers to share and accept referrals on mobile via email, text, messaging apps—whatever platform is easiest for them.

Each of those small tactics makes referral easier, which means more customers through the funnel.

3. Referral Targets Customers Who Love Your Brand

Worldwide, airlines have 356 million members in their frequent flyer programs, and it makes perfect sense. Most airlines provide the same experience, so extra rewards like, say, hotel discounts can be enough to break the tie for customers. The problem is that the customer’s loyalty is totally dependent on that incentive, meaning they’ll bolt for a better offer.

But Virgin America breaks that mold. It’s the highest-rated airline in the U.S. because of its unique perks and commitment to customer experience. That brand is an essential part of its referral program. Customers who accept a Virgin referral do so because they’re excited about the superior service. If the company delivers, that customer will fly Virgin for life.

While loyalty brings in customers by offering rewards apart from the actual product, referral hooks customers by amplifying brand messaging. That creates a deeper connection between the company and the customer.

The data bears that out. Referred customers are 16% more likely to stick with your business and have a 20% higher lifetime value than the average customer. Better yet, when you eventually *do* create a customer loyalty program, those highly-engaged referred customers will want to join.

The key to tapping into this is to make it easy for advocates to invite the specific people they know will love your brand enough to become highly-satisfied customers. Consider these strategies:

• All contacts on deck. Let customers import and look through all of their email contacts for that perfect new customer.
• Messaging mediums. Make it easy for advocates to send referrals through any channel they want on mobile: texting, email, social media—anything.
• Make social sharing easier. If customers are sharing a referral via Facebook or Twitter, encourage them to tag the friends they think would be the most excited about your company.

Simple, convenient features like those can work wonders.

Referral Lays the Groundwork

Today’s consumers have nearly infinite choices, which means that acquiring and retaining them is harder than ever. A potent combination of referral marketing and customer loyalty both captures new customers and gives them a reason to stick around.

But customer loyalty will fall flat if there isn’t a base of engaged customers to draw from. Companies with neither should start with referral to create an immediate source of new customers, and then introduce loyalty later to keep them around. That’s the best way for the two programs to maximize one another’s results.

If your small business’s website isn’t gaining traffic, actively engaging customers, or targeting the right personas, it might be time for a redesign. This is particularly true if your site’s been online for more than a year and isn’t updated frequently. It’s important to stay relevant—nothing screams “behind the times” like an outdated front-end website—but redesigns can be time-intensive and costly, even if you know exactly what you’re doing.

Here are 8 questions to ask yourself before you launch into a website redesign.

1. When was the last time I updated my website?

This is a huge indicator of the time you’ll need to devote to a redesign. If your website hasn’t been updated in over a year, chances are you’ll be spending some serious time on content alone. The more outdated your website, the less you’ll show up in search results; that means reduced traffic, reduced exposure, reduced revenue. On the other hand, if you’re pretty diligent about content updates, you’re looking at a shorter timeline devoted to design and optimization.

2. What’s wrong with my current website?

Old layouts, images, content, resources—any outdated elements—immediately age your website in the eyes of the visitor. A bad hyperlink or a broken image can turn a hot lead sour in seconds, and outdated business info means confusion for customers and trouble for you. Make a list of all the problems with your site, then start drafting up solutions.

3. How much do I hope to accomplish?

Are you looking to revamp or rebrand? State what you’d like to achieve and be liberal with your estimates. If you have a clear strategy in mind from the get-go, you’ll gain far more from the work you put in. A simple content revamp may take hours or days, while a full rebrand could take weeks or months.

4. What do I like about other websites?

Compare your site to those of your competitors. Do they have a more modern design? A wider array of features? Simpler contact forms? You can even visit the most popular websites of different industries and see what they’re doing well. What can you take and adapt from these sites to suit your brand and vision?

5. What is my overall business goal?

Are you looking to convert leads faster? Increase traffic or purchases? Draw visitors to your physical store? It’s unlikely you’ll be able to achieve all of those without seeking out some extra help, so identify your biggest priority and do everything you can to execute on that. There are plenty of free online resources that can help you improve your site’s SEO, which is where any entrepreneur should start.

6. Have my offerings changed?

We’ve covered this a little, but it warrants repeating. If your product or service has changed at all, you must address that on your website. This is an obvious consideration for e-commerce sites, but brick & mortars often underestimate their customers’ expectations. Web visitors want their online experience to translate into their in-store experience—and if products or services are misrepresented online, you’re setting yourself up to lose business.

7. Can I analyze my website’s success?

Most web builders offer built-in analytics or integrations. This data isn’t just important to online retailers—it can help small businesses pinpoint what content is drawing traffic and where visitors are falling off most. Those insights are pivotal to not just your redesign, but your business as a whole. Visitor demographics paint a real picture of the online community that you can’t see clearly offline. Examine your data and make sure it lends to every decision you make.

8. Is my site mobile-friendly?

People expect websites to perform just as well on their smartphones as they do on their desktops. Sites that aren’t mobile-optimized are asking for extinction these days—they handle poorly, load slowly, and look awful on most screens. Developing a clean, user-forward, mobile-friendly site should be your chief priority if you’re setting out to redesign anyway.

By now, we’ve all heard the stat that buyers are roughly 60% along in their journey before ever speaking with a sales rep. Due to many factors — like the democratization of information, influence of social media, and increased access to technology — buyers are at a major advantage. It’s no longer caveat emptor; it’s now caveat venditor: seller beware.

So what does this mean for your sales team?

In short, this requires a greater demand of knowledge, skills and technical capabilities from a sales rep. But more than anything, this demands more empathy for the customer.

What is Sales Enablement?

Sales Enablement is an evolution of sales ops and marketing but elevated to a more strategic, proactive and hands-on level. With more tools, more resources, and a more complex sales process, you need a person or department who owns this and can deliver it to sales reps.

Google trends shows the growing demand for this crucial business function.

Before we go any further, let’s first define “sales enablement.”

There’s no single agreed upon definition of sales enablement, as it’s still maturing and evolving in function and scope, but I like the definitions from David Brock in his new groundbreaking book The Sales Manager’s Survival Guide: “It’s all about providing tools, systems, processes, training, coaching and development that ‘enables’ sales to be more effective and efficient.”

Reps benefit from a good sales enablement program by getting the right skills training, having access to the right content for the right prospects, and becoming armed with the right technology. Managers benefit from a good sales enablement program by ensuring new hires get onboarded correctly and seasoned reps are up to date with training, gaining more visibility into their team’s activities, enforcing consistent messaging and content utilization, and confirming alignment across the entire organization.

This all leads to an accelerated sales cycle, higher quota attainment, and more bottom line revenue. Who’s going to argue with that?

It’s apparent that many companies are bought into the vision of sales enablement. However, according to research by Highspot and Heinz Marketing, there’s a huge disconnect. When you ask about the importance of activities that are under the sales enablement umbrella, there’s a Grand Canyon sized gap between how important companies rate those activities and how they rate their current efforts.

Why You Need Sales Enablement Now

Recent industry benchmarks reveal that 63% of sales reps don’t hit their quota. There are many reasons, but here are the main ones that have been identified:

• Dated selling methods: As we mentioned, it’s obvious that the buyer has changed, yet sales continues to operate as it did years, and even decades ago.
• Insufficient training: Reps need to be trained on more than just selling skills. Training must be implemented on your product, sales technology, industry knowledge and product management.
• Insufficient training reinforcement: It’s not enough to train your reps once. According to the Qvidian Sales IQ Series, 75% of what reps learn in training is forgotten within 30 days. Reinforcement is essential.
• Inability to find and utilize resources: According to Forrester Research, over 40% of a sales rep’s time is wasted searching for resources, from tools and technology to content and collateral.

Most sales leaders and practitioners agree you need a full-time sales enablement function once your team hits a certain size. The size varies depending on complexity of the sale and maturity of the market, but the consensus is that you need to pull the trigger and form a department when you reach somewhere between 50 and 75 sales reps.

If you’re a smaller organization, you may not need a dedicated team full time, but it’s highly recommended that you get someone who’s responsible for this function. Sometimes responsibility falls under sales ops or sales management, yet other time I’ve seen the responsibility placed on marketing ops or product marketing.

The job of a salesperson is to show up on a call (or meeting) knowledgeable, skillful and with the right assets to help prospects buy. If there’s any indication that any of these elements are not there, you need to invest in sales enablement now. These gaps in efficiency and effectiveness are robbing your company of money.

Here’s the bottom line: You’re never too small to have a sales enablement program.

5 Steps to Setting Up Your Sales Enablement Program

Whether you’re a large team of 500+ sales reps or a small team of five, having a sales enablement program is critical for success. You can use these five steps to build a program or tighten up your existing program.

Step 1: Know your objectives. You must be very clear on the outcomes that you want. “Increasing revenue” or “generating more pipeline” isn’t good enough. When it comes to objectives and goal setting, I always advocate for SMART goals; goals that are Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic and Timely. You must be scientific and methodical as possible so you can determine if your program is actually getting results.

Step 2: Talk to the people closest to the problem. This starts with understanding the problem that you’re trying to solve, and what better way to accomplish that than talking with the people in the trenches day in and day out? Don’t forget to get an opinion from marketing, sales ops, account management, customer success and anyone who will be affected.

Step 3: Know your buyer. Since we’ve already established that the ultimate goal is to deliver the best experience to a prospect or buyer, you must first know them inside and out. Beyond knowing their pain points and challenges, you must be able to recognize buying signals and trigger events that are related to that prospect’s problems. I’ve addressed ideal client profiles and buyer personas many times before, which serves to reinforce its importance. It’s the cornerstone of other critical programs like outbound sales campaign management and account-based sales development strategy.

Step 4: Align the sales process to your buyer’s journey. Now that we know our buyers like the back of our own hands, we can build a process around them. Too many organizations start with what’s best for their company, then try to fit their buyer in the process. This is completely backwards. Once you realize that, you can begin to understand how to empower your team and deliver a better experience to prospects at every step in the buyer’s journey.

Step 5: Analyze and improve. This is all about holding your sales enablement program accountable. A big reason why the sales space has taken off like a rocket in the last few years is that you’re able to measure performance and adjust. No more fly-by-the-seat-of-your-pants selling. In the same vein, no random acts of sales enablement allowed. It would be humorous yet tragic if the sales enablement function (who is tasked with making sales more effective and efficient) wasn’t effective and efficient itself.

Conclusion

Adopting a sales enablement program will dramatically impact your sales team and how effective they are at closing deals.

Though the function and scope of sales enablement is still evolving and being defined, there is one thing that we can all agree on – sales enablement should be a mindset. Once everyone truly understand this, you can begin to impact the bottom line in a major way.

This is just an introductory overview of sales enablement that only scratches the surface. If you’re really serious about taking your sales game to the next level by making your team more effective and efficient, you’re in luck. We’ve teamed up with the experts at PandaDoc for a webinar that dives into “How to Use Sales Enablement to Increase Pipeline and Drive Revenue.”