Rnordman

SACRAMENTO, Calif. — A 12-year-old Sacramento student who already has three community college degrees and has been accepted to two University of California campuses says he plans on studying biomedical engineering and becoming a doctor and medical researcher by the time he turns 18.

Tanishq Abraham has been accepted to UC Davis and received a regents scholarship to UC Santa Cruz, but he has yet to decide which university he’ll attend, reported Sacramento television station CBS 13 Sunday.

“I think I’ll be 18 when I get my M.D.,” he said.

Tanishq started community college at age 7 and last year he received associate’s degrees from American River College, a community college in Sacramento, in general science; math and physical science; and foreign language studies.

Professors at the college didn’t initially want him in their classes because of his age. But finally a professor agreed to let him attend if his mother, a doctor of veterinary medicine, also took the class. “There were times when I had to explain general relativity and special relativity to my mom,” he said.

Biology professor Marlene Martinez said he was never afraid to ask lot of questions. “In lecture he would always pop up with ‘so, does that mean …’ or ‘what about this?’ ” Martinez said.

Tanishq, who joined the IQ society Mensa at only 4 years old, has always picked up knowledge quickly, his father, Bijou Abraham, told NBC News.

“We tested him and discovered that he was pretty smart,” he said. “We were surprised when we started giving him advanced stuff and he was picking it up really fast.”

Tanishq says child geniuses are often seen as odd. “When you think of a genius, you think of a mad scientist kind of thing,” he said.

But he pointed out he’s just an ordinary kid who likes learning and microscopes but also playing video games. “I just think learning is fun,” Tanishq said.

The post 12-year-old California student ready to start university appeared first on Macleans.ca.

Over the past few years, there has been quite a bit of discussion about the principle of sacking or firing customers. A recent article by Adrian Swinscoe that asks whether we should fire, rate or educate customers reminded me of a personal view that I first ‘aired’ at the Satmetrix conference in London in 2014.

In his article, Adrian makes reference to Fred Reichheld, of NPS fame, who initially spoke about firing customers, however then evolved his thinking to that of the idea of ‘rating’ customers. After all, many companies already regularly ask customers to rate their performance, so why not do the same in return? Companies typically have the right to do business with whoever they want to, and in a contemporary and reciprocal world, maybe the idea of rating customers shouldn’t be considered that unusual.

Adrian has further evolved the discussion by introducing the idea of ‘educating’ customers. This is an interesting concept, which is very much worth investigating, especially considering the potential reputational damage that could happen with firing and rating. The example that Adrian gives of Petite Syrah Café is both cute and charming, however also makes an important point about the responsibility of customers to be civil to the employees of the companies providing them with the experience.

It could, however, be argued that ‘educating’ customers should be extended yet further, an idea that will be investigated further down the page…

Firing Customers

The harshness of firing, sacking or divesting customers can’t help but make you wonder whether the issue is being looked at in the right way. For the two parties to be now doing business, it would suggest that one, the other or both parties have maybe made the wrong decision at the outset. Unless the customer’s needs/ wants or the company’s propositions have radically changed since the initial transaction was undertaken, you can’t help but wonder whether the decision for the two parties to do business in the first place was misinformed, especially if the business is now considering ‘divesting’ themselves of the customer relationship.

Customers can always, of course, be tempted away by competing propositions, however for the company to want to get rid of the customer, it makes you question why they did business with them in the first place. From a marketing perspective, this comes across as a mistake in terms of segmentation and targeting. Rather than talking about the idea of ‘firing’, perhaps businesses should be taking a harder look at themselves in terms of their ability to appeal to the right target audience.

This all reminds me of an organisation I did some work with a few years ago, who took the idea of educating customers to a whole other level. They decided to actively inform their customers if they could acquire a better deal from one of their competitors. This was an incredibly brave move.

E.On, the electricity and gas provider, introduced a new approach to customer renewals called Best Deal for You. If their contact centre agents were talking to customers and noticed that they were outside of their contract period, they would ask the customer whether they would like them to check if they could identify a better deal. Utilising the customer’s usage data, they would not only identify the best possible deal that E.On could offer, but also the best possible deals from their main competitors. In many instances, they were informing customers that they could be financially better off by switching provider.

Although at first this seems like a form of commercial suicide, there were a number of considerations supporting the policy.

Firstly, a significant proportion of their customer base were already regular switchers as a result of the impact of price comparison websites. E.On were not significantly worse off by informing these people.

Secondly, many of their other customers didn’t switch regularly because they couldn’t be bothered with the hassle of changing providers for the sake of a £30 – £50 pound saving per year. For many of them it was easier to either stick with their current tariff, or to take the best possible tariff from E.On.

Finally, the impact of being open and honest about their pricing relative to the competition generated loyalty from certain parts of their customer base. By offering ‘The Best Deal for You’, they were hoping to send out the psychological message that they could be trusted at all times, which would give some customers the impression that they would never have to switch providers ever again, subject to them being satisfied with the service provided.

Of course, some customers are always going to switch on the basis of service dissatisfaction (you can’t always get it right!), so informing these people of a lower price elsewhere was almost immaterial.

The question remains as to whether this worked for E.On or not. Since they launched Best Deal for You in September 2012, all the ‘major six’ players in the UK have lost market share to the smaller independent providers.

Considering the figures for electricity alone, the independents have grown their market share from 2% to 12%, whereas E.On have lost 2% of their share (from 17% to 15%) in the same period. Some of the big players have fared marginally better (British Gas, Scottish Power & EDF), whereas the other two (SSE & RWE nPower) have done significantly worse.

The question remains as to whether, having launched this approach, E.On will continue to lose market share to the smaller independents as quickly as the other big companies. In 2012, considering the impending growth of the smaller companies, you would have thought the Best Deal for You scheme to be a clever and pro-active idea, that would potentially help to counterbalance the impact of the growth of the smaller companies over time.

Only time will tell…

If you are like most, you probably find air travel to be a stressful experience.

There’s the commute to the airport, the long lines to check your bag, the security check, and then once you’re finally on the plane, there’s the tight squeeze of sitting for several hours with barely any legroom.

And yet, air travel is really our only option for traveling hundreds of miles quickly. But the Hyperloop could change that.

The Hyperloop is a tubular transport system that carries passengers in capsules at speeds reaching more than 700 miles per hour. Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk first proposed the idea in a white paper published in 2013 and made his research public so others could pursue developing the concept. The LA-based startup Hyperloop One is doing just that.

But Hyperloop One doesn’t just want to build a system that is as fast as a plane. The company wants to create an entirely new travel experience, one that is a lot less stressful and a lot more convenient.

"It's not about getting somewhere, it's about being somewhere. We're not trying to optimize the transportation experience, we are trying to eliminate it," Brogan BamBrogan, Hyperloop One’s co-founder and chief technology officer, said at a company event earlier this month. 

How exactly does it plan on doing this? 

BamBrogan shared with Tech Insider four ways the Hyperloop will revolutionize all aspects of transportation.

SEE ALSO: This $1.5 billion PC gaming company's first US store stole some of the spotlight from the new Apple Store in San Francisco

It will be more accessible and more efficient.

For starters, Hyperloop One wants to put stations in the middle of cities so that there's no annoying commute to an airport-like hub outside metropolitan areas, Brogan BamBrogan, Hyperloop One’s co-founder, told Tech Insider.

“Effectively, the Hyperloop will move people about the speed of an airplane. But we can do it city center to city center as we integrate ourselves into tunneling, so that’s really a value add,” BamBrogan said.

That's right, effectively you'd get to say goodbye to that $30 cab ride to and from the airport outside the city. 

What's more, because the Hyperloop is in a controlled environment and is completely autonomous, you will never be delayed because of weather or because of an operator's error. 

No more ticket lines.

BamBrogan also said the company wants to introduce a streamlined ticketing system so that lines are a thing of the past. 

“Certainly, as we move forward, there’s going to be autonomous ticketing systems and you’re going to have an absolute elevator experience that is going to seamlessly deliver you to your destination.”

BamBrogan didn't elaborate on how exactly this would work, but he did mention that part of the process could be through your smartphone.

In Musk's white paper, he stated that all ticketing and baggage tracking would be handled electronically, effectively doing away with printing boarding passed and luggage labels. 

The seats will actually be comfortable.

As for the seating, BamBrogan said the company is working to design passenger pods that are not only comfortable, but also spacious enough to allow people to keep their luggage with them at all times. 

The company aims to share some renderings of potential pod designs sometime during the next three months, BamBrogan said.

Referral marketing has seen more than its fair share of outsized success stories. Tech companies like Dropbox and PayPal have achieved blow-out growth and reached millions of users without traditional advertising spend, all thanks to customer referrals.

But while a lot of marketers know that they should be digging into referral, many don’t know where to begin. For one, many relegate the success of referral to software products with viral distribution—that simply isn’t true. Less sexy businesses with high customer lifetime values, like banks and telecom have known about the power of referral for years.

In a landmark 2011 study, researchers from Wharton analyzed the referral program of a German bank, measuring the differences between referred customers and the average customer. They found that referred customers were 18% more likely to stick with the bank and generated 16% higher profits for the bank.

Referral doesn’t just get more customers—it also gets better customers. And today, there are more communication channels than ever that referral can penetrate organically, from traditional SMS to chat, and email to the social network. That has marketers itching to grab a piece of the pie, but many don’t know where to begin.

Referral isn’t super complex. It’s about customers sharing stuff they like with family and friends, which is as human an instinct as breathing.

In this guide, we’ll teach you how to lay the groundwork for word-of-mouth with an airtight referral program, and let your customers do the talking for you.

Open the Doors to Referral

A key part of winning with referral is tapping into everyday advocacy. Anyone who comes into contact with your brand, customer or not, can potentially share a referral, but only if you make them aware of the opportunity.

That’s why you need to make your referral marketing program a prominent part of your customers’ experience. They need to know the program exists in order to become advocates. It’s a simple concept, but lots of marketers just bury a link to their referral page in some corner of their website where no one can find it.

Uber is a great example of a company that’s leveraged the power of referral as a low-cost, ultra-effective customer acquisition channel—and it’s done so by giving referral pride of place in its mobile app. When new users log into the app for the first time, a modal window appears with the promise of “Free Rides” through referral. This messaging is repeated throughout a customer’s lifecycle. Every time users tap the navigation bar, the referral offer is right there for them to find.

Don’t just create a microsite for your referral marketing program and call it a day. Consider all the other ways you can make customers aware of your referral program:

• Put a referral call-to-action (CTA) on your site’s home page—you can use a lightbox like Uber, or put a button on your main menu. That makes customers 300% more likely to share a referral than if the CTA is on another page.
• Put a CTA on every user’s account page.
• Put one on the post-purchase page whenever someone buys. Extole’s internal data shows this increases referral shares 16x.
• Spread the news about referral on your social media accounts, blogs, or email newsletter.
• If you ship physical products, you can shout out your referral marketing program on the packaging.

Referral marketing starts with awareness, and these are all opportunities to fill your customers in and get them excited to become advocates.

Hyper-Personalize Referral

According to the familiarity principle, the more we see something, the more we like it. But as our lives grow increasingly saturated with ads, marketers can’t just rely on just getting up in their customers’ faces. They need to make sure that they’re establishing real connections.

Referral marketing can cut through the noise and create those connections because it’s a recommendation from a friend rather than a plug from a faceless company. Your referral program needs to accentuate that as much as possible—something as small as displaying a picture of the advocate’s face on the referral message boosts conversion by more than 3%. Take a look at how TaskRabbit does this.

Outdoor gear provider Backcountry takes personalization up another notch and allows advocates to write their own personal message when they share, rather than sticking them with a predetermined message some copywriter whipped up. That reinforces that the referral is coming from a friend, making them more likely to accept the referral.

Some other personalization strategies include:

• Have the referral message come from the advocate’s personal email address rather than a generic “DoNotReply” address that your customers’ inboxes are already stuffed with. This ensures your referral doesn’t get lost in the shuffle.
• If you run a store that sells a lot of different products—say, like a clothing store—let the advocate suggest a specific product they think their friend would like when they send a referral. Most people understand their friends’ tastes, so this tactic lets you target them with a product they’re more likely to want.
  Use the advocate’s name as a referral code. It’s easier to remember and also reinforces the friend-to-friend aspect of referral.

In marketing, it’s not enough to just get your brand in front of your customers’ eyeballs. You need to deliver a unique, impactful experience. Referral is able to do that in a unique way by tapping into the power of relationships—each of these strategies accentuates that.

Design For Frictionless Sharing

Psychology tells us it’s human nature to seek instant gratification, and this is more true in a world that’s “always on.” Companies like Amazon have made it possible to get virtually anything delivered in two days with the tap of a finger, raising the bar for what consumers expect in terms of ease and accessibility.

Remember that when you ask your advocates to refer their friends, you’re asking them a favor on behalf of your brand. You need to make sure that the referral experience is smooth and beautifully designed, and make referral a pleasurable experience for advocates and friends. As Geico would say, you need to make referral “so easy a caveman could do it.”

The key is to eliminate friction—any extra, unnecessary steps the advocate or new customer has to take. Examples of friction would be a referral CTA that’s difficult to find, a long, complicated referral code, or forcing users to create an account on your site before they can share or accept a referral. Those are all chances for the advocate or their friend to say, “Forget it.”

If you want to hold onto your customers’ attention, you need to minimize the number of steps they have to take. Some proven tactics include:

• When customers click your referral CTA, let them share the referral from that page rather than a dedicated landing page. Saving them the time it takes to load up a new page makes customers’ 4x more likely to refer.
• Give customers simple referral codes that are easy to remember and don’t take long to write.
• Enable advocates and new customers to collect their rewards immediately. That increases the excitement and gets both parties excited to keep on referring.

Apparel provider American Giant offers a great example of a seamless referral process.

American Giant gets 10% of its sales from referral, which has allowed them to carve out a niche in the competitive fashion market without a brick and mortar presence. Their secret weapon is a referral marketing program that’s both beautiful and super easy to use. Advocates click the “Get $15” CTA (who wouldn’t click that?), send emails to friends from the very same page, and they’re done—it’s a cakewalk.

Mobile is your Referral Program’s Best Friend

The rise of mobile is changing the way people shop. In 2015, mobile e-commerce sales totaled over $104 Billion, up 38.7% from 2014. That’s why more and more advertisers are trying to reach customers on their smartphones. According to its Q1 2016 earnings report, 82% of Facebook’s $5.2 Billion in ad revenue came from mobile.

Referral marketing isn’t spared from this trend. Our internal research shows that 18% of referrals are sent from a mobile device, while 39% are accepted on one. You’ll miss out on those opportunities if your program doesn’t work just as well on the small screen as it does on the big one.

The same design principles from the last section apply tenfold when it comes to your mobile referral program. Your CTA needs to be even easier to find, the codes need to be simpler, and the rewards more obvious and immediate. Other mobile referral strategies include:

• When an advocate clicks the referral CTA on your mobile site, let them send the referral without having to go to a new page.
• Make it easy for advocates to share referrals via email, text, or messaging apps—the same ways they’d reach out to friends any other time.
• When someone accepts a referral on their phone, send them right to your website rather than force them to download your mobile app. This wouldn’t work for a company like Uber that depends on its app, but it’s a great play for, say, an e-commerce store.

Check out how last-minute hotel booking app Hotel Tonight does it to see some of these tactics in action:

Hotel Tonight is going up against billion-dollar hotel-booking companies like Expedia and Priceline by betting big on a mobile-only model. Its app cross-references geolocation and room occupancy data to provide users with the best deals wherever they are. Thanks in large part to its sleekly-designed referral program, it’s been able to increase bookings over 300% over the last two years.

Give your Top Advocates the Superstar Treatment

The Pareto Principle states that in any system, 80% of the results come from 20% of the work or resources. Our internal research shows that it holds true in referral marketing—in most programs, 80% of referrals come from 20% of the advocates.

Those top advocates are the engine behind any great referral program, so you need to go out of your way to show your gratitude and keep them engaged. In a sociological study, researchers found that waiters who leave mints on customers’ bills get 23% higher tips. If you reciprocate with your best advocates and give them extra rewards, they’ll keep the new customers rolling in.

Handbag provider Kipling does this by increasing the reward amounts for its most prolific advocates. That shows appreciation and sustains their desire to share referrals.

Track Referral Metrics to Tighten Your Funnel

You can’t just whip up a referral marketing program, put it on your site, and expect immediate growth. Like any other marketing channel, you need to obsessively measure its success, iterate, and make sure it’s constantly improving. And our referral funnel gives you all the metrics you need to do that:

The funnel highlights one of the best parts about referral: It’s a clearly defined, quantifiable step-by-step process. Each part of the funnel can be measured and optimized, and you can easily tell what needs to change.

That’s a huge advantage referral has over other marketing methods. Take Google Adwords for example. Their cost per click has risen over 40% since 2012, you’re never sure exactly how much you’ll spend, and there’s no clear path to better results. Same with Facebook ads, SEO, and countless other tactics—improving takes guesswork. But any time referral is underperforming, you can dig into the analytics, find the bottleneck, and straighten out your funnel.

For example, if I saw that my referral CTA was getting plenty of advocate clicks, but not many shares, I would know that something about the program isn’t enticing enough—they’re looking into the opportunity, but they’re not biting. I could test a number of ideas to fix that, from a higher reward, to more compelling copy in the referral message based on how customers describe my product on social media. The referral funnel gives you the data to attack these issues with a focus.

Case Study: Airbnb

Airbnb knew from the success of companies like Dropbox and PayPal that referral marketing could be a powerful source of new customers, but the program it established way back in 2011 wasn’t getting results. So in 2014, the company tasked a team of engineers for a complete overhaul.

The team started by breaking down the referral path, from advocate to new customer, into a series of more than 20 different steps. By buckling down and optimizing each step, the new referral program brought a 300% increase in daily signups and bookings.

In order to keep track of their progress and drive continuous improvement, the team chose five key metrics to track, each of which can easily be linked to a stage of the referral funnel:

• Monthly active users sending invites (Advocates stage)
• Invitees per Inviter (Shares)
• Conversion Rate to New User (Friend clicks)
• Conversion Rate to New Guest (Conversions and Revenue)
• Conversion Rate to New Host (Conversions and Revenue)

By tracking those numbers, Airbnb was able to see where in the referral process they were losing customers and update it accordingly. For example, to boost “number of invitees per inviter,” the team offered email address book imports on the referral page, which made it easy for advocates to sift through their contacts and find the perfect matches for Airbnb.

That core set of winning metrics gave the Airbnb team a simple framework to constantly measure and improve the success of their referral program.

Find the Rewards Structure that Works for You

A common myth about referral is that the only reason advocates share is to get the reward. In reality, advocates are only willing to share products they love and know their friends will love too. After all, why would someone refer a friend to a poor product if they only get *more of that product* in return? The reward is simply an extra incentive to grease the wheels and get people referring faster and more often.

That’s why when it comes to rewards, bigger doesn’t always mean more sharing. For example, one online marketplace using Extole found that a gift card reward of $10 prompted more referral-sharing than a gift card of $15 or $20. Customers don’t like to feel like they’re profiting off of their friends or only sharing to get a reward, so there’s no need to break the bank.

Looking beyond the size of the incentives, there are three basic reward structures:

• Dual-sided rewards both the advocate and the new customer.
• Advocate-only rewards just the advocate.
• New customer-only rewards just the new customer.

For most companies, the dual-sided structure drives the most referrals. It gives advocates an incentive to share but doesn’t feel totally transactional because, hey, their friend gets a reward too. But other structures could make sense depending on your brand or product offerings.

Finally, you need to structure your rewards so that you’re acquiring customers efficiently. When you consider the ratio of customer acquisition cost (CAC) to lifetime value (LTV), referral is typically one of the most cost-effective ways to get new customers. Optimize your rewards so that you get the full benefit.

Case Study: Maple

Maple is a relatively new NYC food delivery service that has tapped into referral to augment growth. The program operates under the new customer-only referral model, offering newly-referred diners $15 off (the equivalent of one Maple dinner. Lunch is $12).

Based on Maple’s estimated customer lifespan and the number of orders most people will make per week, Maple is making $7.13 to every $1 it spends acquiring customers through referral. So right off the bat, their referral program turns a healthy profit.

The new customer-only reward also makes perfect sense for a food delivery company. People’s food tastes and standards vary a ton, so new customers are more likely to trust that the advocate genuinely thinks they’ll like Maple since they’re getting nothing in return.

When in Doubt A/B Test

Today’s marketers approach their craft with scientific rigor, and no strategy is more emblematic of that than the A/B test. It’s a simple experiment: You make a tweak to a website or app, unleash both versions to the world, and see which one gets better results.

The difference with referral marketing is that you can be much more focused in your testing. Every CTA, referral message, or visual design you test is more explicitly connected with a specific goal based on where it is in the referral funnel, so your results are more concrete.

Case Study: Blinds.com

Blinds.com offers an easy way to buy beautiful, reasonably priced window blinds online. They set up a simple referral program in which advocates got $20 for referring friends to the site. The whole company was excited, but when they got the program up and running, the initial results were underwhelming.

So they decided to get back to their brand’s roots. A huge part of the Blinds.com experience is that customers get to work with a “design consultant” to find the perfect set of blinds, yet their referral program didn’t incorporate that at all. So Blinds.com revamped it so that advocates could refer their friends to the specific consultant they worked with. In A/B testing, the new program posted a whopping 82% new customer conversion rate, drastically outperforming the old one.

They didn’t stop there. Next, Blinds.com tested a newly designed referral CTA and saw a nearly 40% increase in Referral Index. A future test of a Visa-branded gift card reward versus a generic gift card prompted another 50% rise.

By refusing to accept the status quo and relentlessly testing new ideas, Blinds.com has been able to ensure that its referral program is always getting better and driving more customers through the referral funnel.

Follow the Flywheel

Referral marketing is the only channel that gives you a direct path from word of mouth buzz to more customers and higher revenue. It enables the people who love your company to pull in friends they know will feel the same way. Those highly engaged customers can then reach out to their own networks, creating a dramatic flywheel effect where referred customers refer their friends in a virtuous cycle.

Too many marketers miss out on the opportunity. Many don’t even bother with referral marketing because they think it’s just a one-in-a-million shot to go viral à la PayPal. On the other end of the spectrum, many of them mistake referral marketing for a simple transaction. They think they just need to dangle a reward in front of customers and watch the new business roll in.

Neither is correct. Anyone can succeed with referral, but only if you attack it with the same analytical rigor and customer experience-savvy you’d apply to any other marketing channel.

Chromebooks are about to take over the world.

A few days ago, Google announced that Chromebooks will soon be able to run Android apps from the Google Play app store, finally making them fully capable computers and putting them in a position to put a real dent in Apple and Microsoft's dominance in PCs.

The announcement was perfectly timed too. Chromebooks outsold Macs in the US for the first time last quarter, according to research firm IDC, which tracks PC sales. It's a sign that a growing number of PC users are realizing they don't need to spend a thousand bucks or more on a laptop, especially when they're buying a new smartphone every other year.

Right now, Chromebooks are essentially just the Chrome web browser running on a laptop. While they have some offline capabilities, you're still mostly limited to what's possible on the web, which is fine for a lot of tasks, but not ideal when you want to work offline or use certain programs.

Android apps mean a lot for Chromebooks. It's not just about playing Candy Crush; it opens up a whole new suite of apps to Chromebook users for the first time like Microsoft Office, Photoshop, and better, more capable versions of web apps like Slack or Spotify. Plus, all those apps can run in individual windows like on a traditional PC. Most people probably won't even realize they're using an app originally designed for a phone.

When Chromebooks first launched, it was is easy to scoff at them. (I did.) Who wants a shell of a computer that's just running a web browser? But we quickly learned that cheap computers that are just capable enough can draw in a lot of buyers. The success of Chromebooks, especially in areas like education, was a shock to everyone.

Now they're poised to eat into the PC market even more. Soon, there won't be anything you can't do on a Chromebook that you can do on a Mac or Windows PC. And, in a lot of cases, you'll be able to do it for hundreds less. You can get a decent Chromebook for just $200.

That should worry Apple and Microsoft. Ever since the modern smartphone era, there's been fewer reasons to upgrade to a new PC as often as you used to. And when many people are ready, they go as cheap as possible. Access to Android apps will quell any doubts about what a Chromebook can do, and I bet we're about to go through a fundamental shift in the way a lot of people use PCs because of it.

Join the conversation about this story »

NOW WATCH: Chrome has a ton of hidden features — here’s how to find and enable them

With less opportunities to engage with prospects, and engagement taking place later in the sales cycle, your sales force needs to become a competitive weapon. As their sales leader, you need to do all you can to help them. In a changed B2B sales model, how can you ensure that reps are efficient and effective at all stages of the sales cycle and have what they need to accelerate and optimize processes?

Below are 3 ways to make your team stand out from the rest of the sales pack:

1. Become ‘consultants’ not ‘order takers’

Last year, Forrester made a bold statement, saying that 1 million sales jobs would disappear by 2020. This statement has been misconstrued multiple times. In the right context, Forrester’s report, Death of a (B2B) Salesman, actually projects 10% growth for one particular sales archetype – ‘the consultant,’ while projecting decline of other archetypes, most notably the ‘order taker.’

According to Forrester, consultants are the most adept at “understanding customer needs, explaining products and services, and helping clients bring internal stakeholders and budget together to make purchases.”

Imagine this at a restaurant that you frequent regularly. The ‘order taker’ does simply that – writes down what you say. The consultant, on the other hand, having insight into your preferences, likes and dislikes, offers you an informed recommendation based on your tastes.

To be a consultant requires more insight and thought. Consultants take the extra time to understand more about their prospects – so they can deliver more value. They look at prospects’ LinkedIn In profiles, and they use engagement analytics to learn about their interests and interest level.

Sales leaders must empower their reps to be consultants. This requires coaching, as well as technology. Sales coaching is the top activity that improves rep performance, while technology delivers the buyer insights needed to better serve customers.

2. Use technology that enhances – not replaces

Your team needs technology that helps them enhance their selling capabilities, but technology isn’t a replacement for sales. Sales still remains very much an art – with the addition of a little science. This is one of the reasons why marketing automation doesn’t work for sales teams. With a process controlled by marketing, there is no real selling going on. Sales needs the control to manage its own prospecting process and the ability to personalize its outreach to be most effective.

Further, any technology that you give your team must work seamlessly together. It should integrate seamlessly with Salesforce and your marketing automation system and work where your reps work. As you add new tools to your stack, be sure that tools easily integrate. It costs more to manage and maintain multiple point tools. If you’re adding point tools that only have the capability to focus on one or two problems, you’ll end up drowning in sales tools. Enterprises need an open ecosystem that can support both today’s and tomorrow’s sales tools. For the greatest return on investment, you need extensibility.

Likewise, technologies need to span across multiple stages of your sales cycle. If there are gaps in visibility across different stages, your team can miss or lose sales opportunities.

3. Capture ‘micro-moments’ with buyers

In her research of 2016 sales trends, Telesmart founder Josiane Feigon says capturing ‘micro-moments’ of buyers’ time will strengthen the customer relationship. For your sales force to be a competitive weapon, it needs to use micro-moments to gain mindshare with products – using automation to connect in frequent and meaningful ways.

We’re being bombarded with content. Sales engagement must be kept short and to the point – and deliver value – to capture buyers’ interests. Automated email and call scheduling are great vehicles to deliver these micro-moments.

Think of the emails you save in your inbox. They typically have something you are or might be interested in for the future. When the opportunity arises, these filed emails are the first ones we turn to.

Companies that use their sales force as a competitive weapon use technology to help reps deliver more value. They use automation to build and strengthen customer relationships. They use analytics to better understand the needs of buyers. They don’t work harder – they work smarter.

To see how a sales acceleration platform can help sales teams work smarter and give sales leaders a single, unified view into sales activities, watch this short video.

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I was checking out at the local chain bookstore with several books. The cashier started to process the transaction and asked me the question I had heard him pose to the three people before me.

"Do you have one of our discount cards?"

"No," I replied.

This chain's discount card sells for $25, and gives you 10% off purchases for a year. Being the math wizard that I am, I calculated that to break even on the card, I'd need to buy $250 worth of books from this store annually. But considering that I also buy a ton of books from Amazon or whatever airport bookstore I happen to wander into during a given week, I had already decided I wasn't going to get one.

"Would you like to get one?" the cashier asked.

"No, I'll pass, thanks," I said.

Then he used what I call the "Goofy Objection Rebuttal Technique:"

"Don't you like to save money?"

The voice in my head: "And don't you want me to reach across this counter and smack you?"

Instead, I just smiled and asked him to ring up the books.

But he wasn't done. As he was bagging up the purchase, he added, "You know, it's a good deal if you spend a lot."

At least he was persistent. I politely told him I was capable of doing the math, grabbed my bag, and left the store.

When was the last time you felt endeared to a person who implied that you were flat out wrong, or made you feel stupid? It doesn't happen.

However, even though everyone resents being told they're wrong, most sales training suggest sales reps do exactly that: Counter objections and resistance with slick phrases or questions which inherently tell prospects that they're wrong.

News flash: You'll never change anyone's mind by preaching at them. Think about it. If someone started refuting one of your firmly held beliefs, you would likely strengthen your stance, and think of why the other person was wrong. 

So why do salespeople try to negate objections through condescending and preaching? This only makes prospects dig their heels in deeper.

Instead of refuting a prospect's beliefs, what you can do instead is prompt doubt. Get them to question their position, which is the initial hurdle in opening them up to an alternative idea. Remember: People believe their ideas more than they do yours. You can't tell them they're wrong and expect success, but you can introduce doubt, which causes them to lower their guard and at least be open to what you have to say. 

Here's an example of how this technique works. Let's use the objection "Your minimum order is too high." 

First, in advance of even hearing the objection, brainstorm all the possible reasons why it could come up in conversation. For any single objection, you might have multiple reasons.

Next, ask an isolation question to determine if this objection is the only sticking point. For example: "If it weren't for the minimum, would you buy from us?"

If the objection has been successfully isolated, follow up with a question that prompts the prospect to think critically about their situation, possibly introducing doubt in the process. In our example, this might sound like: "Let's talk about the minimum then. How much would you say all your orders over a month total, even with your other vendors?"

Finally, think of their possible answers, and outline your corresponding responses. Ultimately you'll reach an understanding, or determine there's not a fit. 

How could the bookstore clerk have pulled this off? A better way to handle my objection would've been:

"It can save you money when you buy a lot here. You're spending about $80 right now ... how much do you think you'd buy in year?"

At the very least, this question would force me to think critically about how much I spend -- and perhaps even prompt me to rationalize a purchase of the discount card.

Approach objections in a non-adversarial way. Follow this process, and you'll be better prepared to ask the right questions which will in turn open buyers up to consider your ideas.

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

Hiring the right talent is a critical and challenging task that sales managers and small business owners face. As with most things in sales, there is no clear-cut linear formula for success — it is usually a number of different steps and activities applied consistently, then reviewed and updated based on outcomes that lead to success.

A common problem I see is the lack of time, effort and resources applied by many who are hiring sales reps, and I get it; most managers and small business owners are already squeezed for time. But when you consider the impact of both a good hire, and more so a bad hire, the extra time is well worth the investment. I do align with those who say “hire slow, fire fast”, and here are some areas worth investing in.

Many small business owners approach sales and hiring sales people from a product-centric viewpoint, especially when they built their business based on their understanding and passion for the product or service they sell. They wrongly start by looking for “a product guy/gal.” While the hires may have that product knowledge in common, they often lack other key attributes that help the business owner overcome their lack of formal sales skills. Business owners should be looking and adding to their collective skill set — since they already have good product skills, they should be looking for pure sales talent. They will be able to “teach” the recruit about the product, and a “sales” skilled recruit will add the needed sales depth the whole organization should benefit from.

One great practice both business owners and sales managers should adopt, is some form of simulation, specifically focused on sales skills, not product knowledge. The purpose is straight forward, as one practitioner puts it: “An airline would not hire a pilot without putting them in a simulator first, why would you risk revenue, clients, opportunity and reputation at risk without first putting a sales candidate through a simulation?” Makes sense but how do you go about it? You have some options, both in who and how. There are a number of recruiting firms that have this as part of their offering, as well as a firms specializing in simulations alone, or if you do enough hiring, you can develop or buy your own system.

Most are variations on giving the candidate the target company, usually the hiring company or a sample prospect. Have the candidates develop an acquisition plan, including key stakeholders in the buying decision, potential issues and objectives, and initial value points, from the buyers’ perspective, not the brochure. That satisfactorily completed, they then need to engage and set meetings with stakeholders. Finally, in a meeting setting (live or virtual, based on typical sales), present to stakeholders, in this case the very people making the hire decision.

What’s interesting, is that often candidates who are used to skating in the conventional interview process, self-eliminate, sensing they will actually have to work on this job. At the same time, genuinely talented sellers, thrive on the process, and excel, enjoy the process, and lead to a mutually profitable relationship.

Learn five key ways you can get the most value out of Sales Cloud — making your sales organization much more effective. Download the free e-book today.

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Children are getting their first smartphones, on average, at just over 10 years of age in the U.S., according to a new study from Influence Central.

This young age not only demonstrates just how much mobile technology permeates our lives, but it affects the way American children access the Internet and interact with social media. According ot the study, approximately 65% of children access the Internet via a laptop or mobile device, up from 42% in 2012.

Furthermore, car rides have become a popular location for tablet use, as 55% of kids prefer tablets in a car, up from 26% in 2012. Meanwhile, 45% prefer using smartphones, up from 39% in 2012.

Amazingly, more than one-third of children have a social media account before they reach 12 years old, and 11% have one before age 10.

The study revealed how early in life children become acquainted with mobile devices and how these devices are often their first experience with the Internet. And children are using their mobile devices for numerous purposes, including games and productivity apps, according to Influence Central CEO Stacy DeBroff.

Therefore, brands must figure out ways to leverage this young market to develop loyal customers from their first experience with smartphones, especially because these children are coming of age in an era in which smartphones have always been a central part of their lives. It stands to reason, then, that they will have little to no patience for businesses that either do not focus on mobile or provide a poor mobile experience.

This young market could also be the solution to slowing global smartphone market over the next few years. Despite a record-setting holiday quarter, 2015 was likely the last year of double-digit growth for smartphone shipments.

Mature markets were at the heart of this year’s deceleration. Adoption has reached new highs in key markets in the United States, Europe, and China. The pool of first-time buyers in these countries is shrinking rapidly, and sales are now primarily coming from phone upgrades.

Meanwhile, emerging markets will continue to see robust shipment growth. India and Indonesia, in particular, will help fuel a large share of the shipments growth within the global smartphone market over the next few years.

Will McKitterick, senior research analyst at BI Intelligence, Business Insider's premium research service, has compiled a detailed report on smartphones by country that forecasts the market through 2021 to reflect slower, stabilizing growth in the long term.

Here are some key points from the report:

• The global smartphone market is still growing at a steady pace due to more widespread adoption in emerging markets. We estimate the global market will hit about 2.1 billion units shipped in 2021.
• Shipments growth over the past few years has been driven by the falling price of smartphones, which has made handsets more accessible in emerging markets. The average selling price of a smartphone in India nearly halved between 2010 and 2015.
• With relatively low smartphone penetration, we forecast Indian smartphone shipments to grow rapidly over the next five years. Nevertheless, India has a long way to go before it surpasses China as the world’s leading market for smart handsets. India is estimated to account for roughly 10% of the global smartphone market in 2016, considerably less than China’s 30% share.
• The global platform wars are over, even as smartphone adoption continues to rise across various markets worldwide. Android and iOS are estimated to account for 97.3% of global platform market share in 2015, compared to 96.3% last year.
• Apple closed the year with another strong quarter on the back of its iPhone 6s and iPhone 6s Plus launches. Still, the vendor saw a slight decline in YoY growth of its share of the market in the face of stiff competition from Samsung and Chinese vendors such as Huawei.

In full, the report:

• Forecasts global smartphone shipments through 2021.
• Explores why India is the next high-growth smartphone market.
• Breaks down the global smartphone platform wars.
• Discusses smartphone vendor performance market share.

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1. Subscribe to an ALL-ACCESS Membership with BI Intelligence and gain immediate access to this report AND over 100 other expertly researched deep-dive reports, subscriptions to all of our daily newsletters, and much more. >> START A MEMBERSHIP
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Have you noticed the changing tides while running your small business lately?

Owning a small business has never been easy, but over the last five years things have changed DRASTICALLY AND PERMANENTLY, and if you do not ADAPT, QUICKLY, you may struggle to be in business in the next five.

I will repeat that. If you do not ADAPT, QUICKLY, you may STRUGGLE TO BE IN BUSINESS IN FIVE YEARS.

What do I mean?

Tactics to develop leads for your business that used to work just a few years ago have stopped working. Many people attribute this sea change to the rising popularity of social media marketing on Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter, but a BIGGER REVOLUTION in online marketing has been taking place simultaneously that is changing the face of how companies do business.

Inbound marketing has been trending upward sharply since HubSpot, Inc. CEO Brian Halligan first coined the term in 2005.

What is inbound marketing?

“Instead of the old outbound marketing methods of buying ads, buying email lists, and praying for leads, inbound marketing focuses on creating quality content that pulls people toward your company and product, where they naturally want to be. By aligning the content that you publish with your customer’s interests, you naturally attract inbound traffic that you can then convert, close, and delight over time.” (Source: HubSpot)

The way that people WANT AND EXPECT to make business purchasing decisions has changed. Much of the research for a buying decision is done early in the buying process ONLINE before ever speaking with a company representative.

People don’t respond to cold calls anymore, and direct mail has become so ubiquitous, that many people sort their mail over the recycle bin. I surely do.

If you are still doing business this way, is it still working?

If you don’t believe me, here is a scary statistic for you from research think tank Gartner.

“By 2020, customers will manage 85% of their relationship without talking to a human.” (Source: Gartner Research)

This online shift has already happened and if you haven’t made the transition, you risk being out of business soon, or at the least being in business, but struggling to get by.

So just how does the inbound marketing process work?

First things first, inbound marketing isn’t easy.

For businesses that consider inbound as a strategy, THE FIRST REALIZATION is that it requires mastery of a variety of different marketing tactics including content development, search engine optimization (SEO), social media, lead generation, lead management, and analytics.

Can this be done as a do-it-yourself project by a small business owner, or small in-house marketing team?

With enough time and money, the answer is yes.

For most, however, hiring a marketing agency will be required. Learn Why Here.

The Inbound Marketing Process

For the rest of the post I will go over the inbound marketing process from beginning to end, from getting found online, converting visitors into leads and then customers and then measuring the entire process so that you can get better at it and ultimately increase your marketing return on investment (ROI).

Assess Your Business and Set Realistic Goals

This is the first step before you ever discuss tactics or implementation. The process begins with an honest assessment of your current business model, current marketing tactics and most importantly your future objectives.

Questions to ask yourself in this stage include:

• What type of sales increase am I looking for?
• How much budget can I realistically afford to develop the strategy?
• Which of my current tactics are bearing fruit, if any?
• Can my operations realistically handle an increase in sales?
• Am I and my staff willing to spend the time required to participate in marketing activities?
• What ROI am I looking to achieve for the investment of time and money.

Develop Your Strategic Objectives

The next step in the process is to develop your strategic objectives.

The process begins with developing a picture of your ideal client(s) through the development of a Buyer Persona. A buyer persona is a semi-fictional representation of your ideal customers, based on real data about customer demographics and online behavior, along with speculation about their personal histories, motivations, and concerns.

Once you have a picture of your ideal clients and where they hang out online you can begin to determine which tactics will resonate best with your core audience, whether its SEO, Social Media or content marketing, or a combination of all of the above.

The buyer persona should be the lens through which you evaluate all of your strategic options and select those that give you the best opportunity to reach your target audience.

Your Company Website

Your company website is the hub through which all of your online marketing activities will flow. Needless to say, IT IS EXTREMELY IMPORTANT THAT IT REPRESENT YOU WELL.

How does your website look? Is it time for a redesign? If you don’t know or are unsure, READ THIS .

Ideally your website will accomplish three things.

First it will provide a clear picture about the solutions that you provide. When a new visitor hits your site, you only have about 3 to 6 seconds to make an impression. The copy on your site and supporting visuals must communicate quickly and clearly what you do, and hit home for your ideal prospects. HubSpot has a great article about home page design.

Secondly, your website should be customer centric, not me centric! Too many businesses make the mistake of trying to showcase everything they do and design the website around the premise of, “look how good we are.” I have news for you, no one cares! Especially at this stage when a customer is visiting your website for the first time.

Your website must be designed to address the issues your buyer personas have. Not a nice fancy brochure that offers no real value!

Thirdly, your site should have a corporate blog that continually is filled with new, useful and free content that is updated on a regular basis.

Blogging, when done consistently is a key source of traffic generation for your website. With each new entry on your blog, you provide an opportunity for your prospects to find you, find a solution to a problem and subsequently learn about the solutions that your company provides.

Generate Relevant Traffic

Once you have your website designed and optimized, and your blog being updated with new information on a regular basis, it is important to utilize additional traffic generation tactics.

This is where SEO, social media marketing and pay-per-click marketing have their place. Which tactic should you use?

The answer will depend on factors such as your goals, budget and ultimately on the buyer persona(s) that you developed for your business.

One, or a combination of all of these tactics may make sense for your particular situation.

More traffic to your website or corporate blog means more eyeballs and chances for lead conversion.

Lead Generation with Offers and Landing Pages

While all of the steps are in the process are important, this is the absolutely crucial step in your lead generation process that must be nailed in order to generate high quality prospects for your sales team. You can generate all of the traffic in the world to your site, but if you have no lead magnets in the form of high quality relevant offers for your prospects, your strategy will fall short.

This step requires the development of premium content in the form of case studies, white papers, ebooks and buyers’ guides that require a prospect to provide information in order to access.

Landing pages with contact forms are required to access your high quality content, and ultimately convert a visitor into a lead. Information such as name, company, an email address and/or a phone number are typically required to download offers.

This is how your convert a visitor into a lead.

Lead Nurturing and Sales

The final step in your sales funnel is to nurture your leads and hopefully if all the stars are aligned convert those leads into sales.

Lead nurturing is a critical part of a marketer’s job, especially in the B2B space. Lead nurturing is the process of developing relationships with buyers at every stage of the sales funnel, and through every step of the buyer’s journey. It focuses marketing and communication efforts on listening to the needs of prospects, and providing the information and answers they need. (Source: Marketo)

Different tactics, predominantly email marketing and lead nurturing are used in this step of the process. Marketing automation, social media publishing, paid retargeting and additional marketing tools can also be used in the process.

Hopefully if your sales process is sound, your sales team will have qualified sales leads that will ultimately convert into sales.

Analytics

Analytical tools are required to measure each step of the process to determine the effectiveness of your inbound marketing process. Key performance indicators (KPI) are business metrics that help the small business owner keep track of goals and objectives and allow the business owner and marketing team to determine if their marketing tactics are working.

Utilizing the analytics of a tool like HubSpot can help track your KPI’s and show you what’s working and what needs to be tweaked.

Like it or not, inbound marketing is here to stay. If your lead generation and sales growth are stagnant, it may be time to take a look at inbound marketing to jump start your business.

Despite what some small-fry marketing ninjas claim, most lead generation content doesn’t “kill it” right out of the gate.

In fact, tracing a sale to stand-alone lead gen content for any product more than $100 is about as easy as finding a frog with feathers!

You see, just as selling anything substantial in-person can’t be rushed (good salesmen do a lot of listening), neither can selling online.

And yet that’s exactly what a lot of marketers (especially small business owners) attempt to do.

Lead gen content = baby step

In truth, the job of lead gen content is to set up the second piece of content. The job of the second piece is to set up the third, and so on… until the sale closes.

That’s simplifying it obviously, but it starts with the basics. Lead gen content has to align with your tactics. For example, if you’re doing PPC advertising, your free content should include and speak to the search terms you’re paying for.

Based on a quick internet search, you’d be forgiven if you thought that lead gen was something esoteric… understood only by a few “experts.” It isn’t. Generating a lead is simply pulling a prospect into your sales funnel.

So you can see why pouring all your resources into one content piece alone is a little… sadistic. The customer buys when he’s ready, not when you are (you’re always ready).

Using the same lead gen content for every segment of buyers is another mistake small business marketers tend to make. Why is it a problem? Because it confuses prospects. Prospects online often can’t or won’t overcome marketing disconnects. For example, if you sell a tool that works for both gardeners and plumbers, you need to design separate lead gen pieces (even if 99% of the content overlaps). Otherwise, neither will think the tool is for them

One size NEVER fits all.

Lead gen to lead nurture

One of the reasons I think the myth of stand-alone lead gen content exists is because the alternative — lead nurturing — is painful. Think about it. If your first eBook, video, or demo doesn’t lead to a sale, it means you gotta keep working the prospect.

And there’s the rub; a lot of sales and marketing professionals don’t have the discipline and patience to nurture leads with targeted content.

Certainly automation software makes lead nurturing easier, but it’s not a panacea. The content can’t drop off at any point in the buyer’s journey if you’re playing the long game.

But that’s another issue. You can’t nurture a lead until you have one… and you won’t get one without the right lead gen content.

First, be warned: two common mistakes plague a lot of lead gen content. It’s not just small businesses that make these mistakes. Big corporations with healthy budgets make them too.

Two sneaky mistakes

I call them “sneaky” mistakes because nobody sets out to make them. They kind of just happen, usually because of a deadline crunch. Avoid them both when crafting your content and you’ll make a great first impression (which is all you can ask for):

Stunningly obvious content — is exactly as it sounds. It fails because any prospect who reads/watches/listens to your lead gen piece is investing time for which they expect a return.

For example, a “deep dive” into a basic concept, that doesn’t provide any takeaways, is a wasted opportunity. Your lead gen content has to be, at minimum, deeper than what shows up on Page One of Google.

Now, I’ll be the first to say that obvious content works if it’s packaged right. You can win with refresher or reminder content.

But even this has limitations; you’ll have a harder time promoting it. Why? Because you can’t sell stunningly obvious content as “new,” “breakthrough,” or “revolutionary.” Well actually… you can, but you’ll lose credibility.

Kitchen sink content — this is lead gen content that tries to tackle 2, 3, 7… even 10 problems at once. The problem with this approach is that you can’t go deep when the topic is broad; the content becomes unmanageable.

I ran into this exact problem last week. A marketing manager contacted me to clean up an eBook for prospects.

I understood the problem right away. The topic was too broad. The creator had a good idea, rushed in with enthusiasm, and then pooped out somewhere in the middle. The book dragged from the midpoint until the CTA at the end — grammar mistakes, tangents, and clunky transitions.

Banal content is not OK when you’re trying to make a good first impression with a prospect. Some managers will justify it, if it appears in the middle of the piece (like the eBook I edited), because “nobody reads it anyway.” That’s true in a sense — the middle is LESS important than the beginning and ending.

But that’s a pretty flimsy rationale. Your company’s authority isn’t worth saving a few pennies. Instead, cut the fat. In other words, slice the content thin: address one problem or benefit.

Make it “flawless”

Lead gen content should be short enough to practically… flawless. Flawless = important, exciting, free of errors. Remove anything repetitious or off-topic.

When prospects consume your lead gen content, the nurturing process becomes easier. Nurtured leads make larger purchases than non-nurtured leads. Good lead gen content makes later sales conversations possible.

Many of your competitors won’t go through the trouble of designing worthwhile lead gen content. They’ll produce something obvious or monstrous and let the chips fall where they may.

That’s an expensive way to do business!

Here’s a better solution. Think of lead gen content as an introduction. You don’t have to close the sale… and frankly, you won’t anyway for a big-ticket item.

Once you put lead gen into context, designing the right content becomes less intimidating, more intuitive.

This originally appeared on MikeDevaney.com

Image:scottchan at FreeDigitalPhotos.net

If you’re looking for good examples of m-commerce done right, take a look at the Far East. Especially South Korea is leading the way into a world dominated by m-commerce with over half of all digital commerce now going through mobile devices and still growing. Furthermore, 43% of people bought something on their smartphone in the past month alone. Japan is showing similar numbers, conversion rates on mobile are over 4 times higher than those in the US. China also saw huge gains, on Singles Day in November 2015 Alibaba received 69% of its $14.3 billion worth of orders from a mobile device. The approximately $10 billion figure is more than double the total online sales the United States saw on Black Friday. What Eastern m-commerce wisdom can we import to our businesses in the West?

Favorable preconditions

For any new technological development it is important that the preconditions that are needed to grow are favorable. This is certainly the case in South Korea and Japan. South Korea has the 2nd highest smartphone penetration in the world which is unsurprising given the numbers above. Naturally, the more people that have a smartphone the more people there’ll be to shop from them. A proper internet connection is required as well and again South Korea tops the lists of internet speed and penetration and Japan is a close second. Although hard to quantify, cultural willingness to adopt new technologies also plays a part. For example, research found that virtually all age groups were active online in South Korea.

Naturally, as a single organization there’s not much you can do to influence these factors but it is possible to find sub-markets that share these characteristics within Western markets and target these more extensively.

Identifying mobile-first customers

Just like there are mobile first companies there are also mobile first shoppers. These are the people that have ditched their big laptops and PCs and are mostly shopping on their mobile devices. If you assumed that these are mostly kids that never even used PCs as their primary device to get online, think again. In South Korea, the most active mobile shoppers are mothers of young children in their thirties. And this is not a cultural glitch either, the largest group of mobile first shoppers in the US have a similar makeup in terms of demographics: working mothers in their thirties with young children.

Knowing what type of audiences are likely to convert on mobile is pivotal for online retailers and even more important is to know how to reach them on their new favorite shopping channel. It is therefore key to ensure the right audience segmentation data is obtained about their own customer base and feed this into targeted mobile marketing campaigns. A proper Data Management Platform (DMP) is virtually indispensable to achieve this.

Adapt to mobile buying behavior and preferences

When it comes to mobile shopping, customers are often looking for quick satisfaction. In South Korea this behavior translates into 17% of mobile conversion coming from customers that did no prior research compared to only 6% on desktop. This means that in some cases less is more when it comes to the amount of products that are offered. Researching a product’s features is not convenient on smaller screens so it is more important to quickly let the customer find what they’re looking for than to give them an endless list of options. Having a strong foundation of audience data comes in handy here as well in order to be able to give the right recommendations to the different types of customers visiting the app or mobile website.

A visible trend that is not confined to Asia is how people find the products they are looking for. Where Google used to be the starting point for these searches, on mobile retailer apps are increasingly becoming the first touch point in a purchase journey. This means mobile app user acquisition and retention need to be key priorities for m-commerce marketing campaigns.

Streamlined payment

It goes without saying that the mobile website or app itself needs to be optimized for (different sizes of) mobile devices. The absolute most important part in this is to have the easiest imaginable payment process. Japan is on the forefront of mobile payments (both online and in-store) and this is a major factor in explaining the 300% difference in conversion rates between American and Japanese mobile shoppers. Research from eMarketer confirms this as “easier checkout” was by far the most cited reason that would lead to more mobile purchasing.

***

Although m-commerce is not taking off as spectacularly in the West as in the East, it’s still a huge growing market as the account of e-commerce sales through mobile is predicted to grow to 50% in the coming 4 years, up from about 33% today. Furthermore, m-commerce plays a vital role in omnichannel strategies which increases its importance way beyond the aforementioned sales data makes it seem. A strong mobile commerce strategy is simply something you cannot do without in this day and age.

Modern sales enablement solutions make their predecessor versions unrecognizable. Not because they’re solving different problems, but because they present radically improved approaches to delivering what sales reps need.

Today we’ll illustrate the significant limitations of legacy solutions, as well as the fragile characteristics of platforms claiming to be modern. For sales and marketing teams evaluating technology alternatives, understanding the evolution from legacy to truly modern is essential to making informed decisions. It also provides a view into how Highspot has rewritten the definition of modern sales enablement.

Then and Now

Early attempts at sales enablement technology were defined by on-premise file systems and Windows XP-era user interfaces. These early systems built on previously deployed Sharepoint-web-portal and random shared network drives used to distribute marketing content to the field. Though the goal of these systems was worthwhile, the underlying technology was based on rigid nested-folder structures. Some early sales enablement vendors also attempted to include reporting and integrate with CRM systems, yet delivered little more than simple data downloads. Like most first-generation technologies with rigid architectures and clunky user experiences, reality fell far short of the original vision.

The introduction of cloud technologies and new content management features elevated interest in sales enablement. Legacy vendors retooled and new competitors entered the market. Still the same old architectures and experiences that focused more on content producers than sales reps did little to remedy content sprawl or consolidate already fragmented capabilities. The sales enablement race was on, but no clear winner was emerging.

Fast forward to today. Sales enablement technology is now a strategic investment for companies of all sizes and varieties. It is helping sales teams solve their content problems more efficiently than ever before and achieve sustained improvement in conversions. Once a nice-to-have, sales enablement has become a competitive necessity.

Driving the Industry Forward

At Highspot, the leap from legacy to modern is part of a much larger story. The reason is that we’ve redefined modern sales enablement, through the lens of pain points organizations need to solve and criteria integral to sales rep success.

Content Management. For all the improvements modern sales enablement has introduced, the nested-file-folder structure remains a conspicuous link to the failed products of the past. The uniform hierarchical nature of file structures does not match the content organization needs of dynamic, global, multi-product, multi-go-to-market sales organizations. Much as they’ve been worked around and managed, tagged and made more searchable, file systems burden every platform but one.

Only Highspot has dispensed with folders, in favor of more dynamic and flexible spots. Spots are the type of advance that once implemented, users struggle to rationalize how they lived without. They help reps and sales enablement leaders organize content suited to the unique needs of individual teams, all while providing a single point of management and versioning. In short, they completely reimagine what content management should be.

User Experience (UX). Reps demand time-saving design corresponding with world-class, friction-free experiences. They expect content management systems to be intuitive, easily accessible, and enjoyable to use – and justifiably so. These are often-overlooked but critical considerations that have hamstrung legacy solutions and are among the root causes of user adoption rates falling below 30% on many platforms.

Inspired by the best UX of companies like Amazon, Pinterest, and iTunes and how they make navigating millions of pieces of content easy and intuitive for everyday users, Highspot has remade sales enablement experiences from the ground up. For sales reps, there’s no going back.

Machine learning. The emergence of data-optimized solutions helped reps work smarter than ever before. With machine learning, reps are able to capitalize on better search, content recommendations, and content performance tracking. However, what was once a key differentiator is now core to any modern solution aiming to provide intelligence to their users. With Content Genomics™, Highspot’s proprietary methodology for optimizing and recommending content based upon performance, audience, version, and purpose, the bar has been raised again. As Highspot customers know, not all machine learning is created equal.

Customer engagement. Organizing content is the first pillar in any end-to-end sales enablement solution. To help reps be more efficient and effective, modern solutions must help reps engage customers via the best channel and format for every potential situation. They cannot make customer engagement and sales enablement either/or propositions or revert to opening and closing modules for specialized needs. They must remove friction and keep reps on-platform and on-target.

By seamlessly integrating email (including deep integration with Outlook), Slide Cast™ and screen share presentations, and customer content portals, reps on Highspot have a variety of ways to professionally engage with customers. Combine Highspot’s real-time alerts on content open and view with CRM activity tracking and pitch dashboards and sales reps can instantly upgrade the quality and timeliness of every engagement. This is another category in which Highspot is surpassing expectations for sales reps.

Performance analytics. Modern sales enablement platforms offer businesses comprehensive analytics on content performance and visibility on quality and best practices. They deliver data science and deep-dive analytics far beyond legacy content reporting.

As in other categories, offering a full array of features on a single platform provides marketing and sales leadership with a closed-loop view on content that is and isn’t working. With comprehensive BI analytics on content usage, customer engagement, pitch performance, business impact, and the ability to segment results by Salesforce.com fields, Highspot has again leapfrogged competitive alternatives. Using Highspot’s BI Kit™, sales and marketing teams can join sales enablement data with other company data and leverage in-house BI solutions such as Power BI, Tableau or SiSense. These real analytics allow teams to validate content performance and pivot strategies based on data, not intuition.

Modification tracking. Every rep modifies content to suit their unique style and the opportunities they pursue. However, without modification tracking, sales reps are unable to assess the upside of their edits. Given approximately 80% of sales presentations are modified before they’re pitched, a shortage of modification tracking quickly leads to content fragmentation and makes closed-loop insights impossible. With Highspot’s Content Genomics™, sales and marketing teams can follow how content is morphing in the field, which subsequently allows content to be improved in real-time, all while preserving brand identity.

Technology integration. The days of siloed solutions and data are ancient history. By fitting seamlessly into existing workflows and business processes, modern platforms create a multiplier effect: the more products that plug into them, the more valuable they become. At Highspot, technology integrations with enterprise solutions ranging from CRM, cloud storage, and productivity tools to collaboration and BI help reps improve visibility, save time, and consolidate resources. No other sales enablement solution comes close to offering Highspot’s range of integration features.

Onboarding. Long and complicated deployments plagued first-generation sales enablement platforms, causing performance delays and lowering ROI. Modern cloud-based solutions have recognized this and made onboarding services a top priority. As a result, the time from platform commitment to usage has been dramatically shortened and in turn accelerated reps’ ability to improve sales velocity. The Highspot team has raised onboarding to an art form. With a catalog of best practices and experience adapting to varying circumstances, Highspot helps sales and marketing teams maximize their time and investment.

Usage rates. If there’s a single piece of evidence distinguishing legacy from modern sales enablement platforms, usage would be it. It is the ultimate reflection of whether or not sales reps are creating value. Usage is also a flywheel: the greater the number of reps aboard and using a sales enablement platform, the more important the platform becomes. With industry-leading average monthly recurring usage of nearly 90%, it’s clear sales reps love Highspot.

Proven ROI. No business has time for investments that don’t pay. With low usage rates, high price tags, and onerous demands for management and upkeep, legacy solutions were more anchors than enablers. (The same applies to many so-called modern alternatives.) This, too, has changed for the better. With clear investment benchmarks, quick time-to-value, and engaged users, modern sales enablement has claimed its place at the top of the sales tech stack. According to Highspot research, more than 50% of companies that have committed to sales enablement are increasing sales conversion rates by at least 10% and a full 23% of companies have increased conversion rates by over 20%.

Stretching the Definition

The sales enablement industry wouldn’t be where it is today without having progressed through years of iterative improvements. Like the Rio player preceding the iPod, the GM EV1 before the Tesla or VHS before Netflix, each generation of an idea contributes to the eventual breakthrough. A similar pattern has emerged in sales enablement.

As the industry continues accelerating into the future, the definition of modern will stretch. And Highspot will continue stretching it.

By now, most of us have accepted the fact that social media is a major factor when it comes to successful marketing, but many don’t know how to get started. More importantly, how can we ensure that our efforts on social media are tactical, and that we’re not just randomly marketing which is a far less effective way to go. To be successful in social media, you need to have a strategy in place that includes high level goals and objectives, in addition to specific and effective action items. Simply put, you need a good social media measurement plan.

What Exactly is a Social Media Measurement Plan?
In a nutshell, a social media measurement plan contains timely information that translates your top business objectives and goals into dimensions and metrics that you can measure. It also plays a vital part of your overall digital marketing strategy. Together they identify how your digital channels ideally work together to achieve your KPIs (key performance indicators).

Creating a Social Media Measurement Plan
An important thing to consider is exactly who should be involved in setting up your measurement framework along with its implementation. The following primary skill sets will be required in order to create an effective plan.

• An individual who is aware of your business objectives and marketing approaches
• Someone who is knowledgeable about web analytics and understands exactly what it can do
• Someone who has the technical expertise required to set up a custom tracking system

Identify Goals
The first step in the social media measurement planning stage is to identify your goals. It’s important to recognize that your goals will more than likely differ on each social platform, like Facebook, Twitter, Google+, LinkedIn, Pinterest, etc. For instance, if you’re endeavoring to reach a female target market and your company translates well into images and pictures, you’ll want to consider using Pinterest. If you’re a B2B brand marketing an upcoming event, consider LinkedIn. That said, LinkedIn has really broadened its range – it’s not just a place to make business acquaintances and find a job anymore. It’s a great social site for offering products and services as well and even showcase real estate these days.

Identify Objective Strategies
Identify strategies that will help you achieve objectives and identify the KPIs for all of your objectives (some will have several KPIs). For example, if your objective is driving revenue, key strategies to increase revenue could be to up the average value of the order, increase sales, reduce returns all that form KPIs in turn. You’ll still need to put a measurable end result in place in addition to a timeframe to follow in order to achieve both your objectives and goals.

Measure Reach and Share of Conversation
Social media makes it easy for you to share information regarding your brand online and also provides the opportunity to measure the effectiveness of related conversations. “Social reach” looks at the potential number of those that could actually see your posts/campaign. One of the most important things to keep in mind is that it’s not the real number, it only tells you how far your post could actually spread.

Listen
Unfortunately, listening is one of the most often overlooked benefits of using of social media – it’s actually one of its most important. If you’re haven’t been listening to your followers/potential and current clients, you’re missing the whole point of social media.

Measure Conversions and Sales
Measuring social media isn’t about the total number of visitors that see your content. It’s about the actions that they take. When it comes to social media it is a lot easier to get them into your system as a lead and then turn them into a sale. Because of the relationship building nature of social media the odds are higher that you’ll sell them once they are already a devoted fan, reading your blog or newsletter than just posting something on social media and expecting them to buy. Measure the actions that your target audience is taking on all channels, from your blog to Facebook, etc., and determine how each channel fares when it comes to visitors taking action via the conversion rates and sales.

To Measure Overall Social Media ROI
When you are aware of where your leads came from and what they decide to buy, you’ll be able to measure your social media ROI. If you discover a significant amount of your leads come from Facebook and that they frequently convert to sales over time it makes sense to invest your resources there. On the other hand, if you get a good number of leads from YouTube, but they usually don’t covert, it’s time to consider changing your tactics there. If you invest any marketing money in social advertising you’ll be able to tell exactly how much business the ads earned you over time – a handy perk. Clearly, measuring your social media ROI is important because it helps ensure that you don’t waste your money.

Frequency
This step isn’t always talked about when it comes to developing a social media measurement plan, but it should be. Why? Because consumers need to see your content repeatedly, depending on your reference. That said, content that your target audience considers valuable is far less annoying than content with little or no value. Another thing you’ll need to know is that the number of posts you post a day is very different from the frequency of a single post. The number of posts, if it’s targeted and well written, will help you build brand awareness, while the frequency of a presented message actually reinforces the message. Both targeted posts and messages are important.

Experience is Key
Last but certainly not least, be sure that whoever you have handling your social media measurement plan has experience. Nothing can replace the value of having a trained analyst delving into the process. No analytics tool or strategies can replace experience and someone who continually keeps up with the latest social trends and best practices.

Ultimately, the best approach may differ from brand to brand or person to person. What’s important is that you measure your success and link your social media success to more substantial business goals.

Original Post

Supercharge Your Lead Generation Efforts w/ 10 Simple Tips!

Tell me if you’ve heard this before: Your marketing team is fist-bumping all day long because they sent 531 new leads to Sales this month—a new record! Meanwhile, your sales team is shaking their fists all day long because Marketing sent them 531 worthless sales leads this month—a new low.

If that sounds familiar, you’re not alone. On average, only 25% of leads are legitimate and should be sent to the sales team.

The problem often lies in the fact that Sales and Marketing are on different pages and have very different ideas of what a qualified lead looks like. We see this problem a lot, and we use a simple and amazingly effective tool that can start improving the quality of your sales leads right away.

Want to see better qualified leads? Create a service level agreement (SLA) for your sales and marketing teams.

Crafting a sales and marketing SLA means the sales and marketing teams need to sit down and work together to arrive at an agreement. This isn’t always easy, but the payoff can be huge. At The Whole Brain Group, we call it a Smarketing Promise.

Here’s what our Smarketing Promise looks like.

The Smarketing Promise: Your Sales & Marketing SLA

The Smarketing Promise is a simple, one- or two-page agreement between your sales and marketing teams that defines your goals for the quarter, establishes exactly what a qualified lead looks like, and explains how to handle qualified leads.

There are six sections to the Smarketing Promise:

Goals

First, you’ll need to identify your sales and marketing goals for the quarter. For example:

• Monthly visits to website
• Number of Marketing Qualified Leads (MQLs)
• Number of Sales Qualified Leads (SQLs)

These are shared goals that are relevant to the Sales & Marketing SLA. You’ll probably have other goals that are specific to your sales and marketing teams that don’t belong here.

MQL and lead scoring criteria

This is the marketing team’s promise to Sales that they’ll provide high-quality leads.

To help Marketing, Sales should communicate the criteria that they’re looking for in a qualified lead. The criteria should be based on your ideal customer and may include considerations such as:

• Industry
• Company size and revenue
• Job title
• Persona information
• Actions taken (downloaded content, attended an event or webinar, subscribed to the newsletter, etc.)

Assign a point value for each criterion that defines an MQL, based on the significance of the action a lead takes. So, filling out a TOFU form might be worth 10 points while requesting a demo might be worth 50 points.

Once a lead reaches a certain point value (which you determine), they’re designated as a qualified lead. At The Whole Brain Group, we use HubSpot’s custom lead scoring features.

With lead scoring, you don’t have to wait for each lead to raise their hand when they’re ready to be contacted. You can see for yourself when they’re ready even if they don’t fill out a contact form.

Quarterly MQL goal

Set an MQL goal each quarter and track your metrics so you have an objective way to tell exactly how well you’re actually doing. Keep the following in mind:

• Sales revenue goals
• Past marketing numbers
• Size of the sales team
• Size of the marketing team

Be sure to review and update your goals together each quarter.

Lead handoff workflow

In this section, you’re capturing exactly how to do the lead handoffs. Define when a lead gets passed from Marketing to Sales, and spell out the roles and responsibilities for each team. For example: When a contact has reached a lead score of 75, an email will be sent to the sales team, and a task is automatically assigned for them to either accept the MQL as an SQL or take the necessary steps to disqualify it.

Sales engagement flow and agreement

Marketing has promised to provide the right kind of lead at the right time in the right way. Now the sales team promises to take specific action on each SQL. You should identify a specific action and a timeframe for taking that action. For example: Sales will contact the MQL within 2 hours by phone or email.

MQL-to-SQL performance

Be sure to track your effectiveness in converting MQLs to SQLs. Each quarter, review these metrics:

• How many MQLs converted to SQLs
• How many MQLs became customers
• Which campaigns or offers drove the most leads to customers

There’s no better way to align your sales and marketing teams and improve the quality of your leads than creating a Smarketing Promise. In fact, nearly half of companies with defined lead management processes have sales teams that follow up on more than 75% of the MQLs.

Lead generation and nurturing takes dedicated effort and time. However, salespeople naturally (and rightly) prioritize working the prospects and opportunities most likely to close now. Sales follow-up is typically restricted to a small segment of people to which reps send personalized and customized messages.

Marketers, on the other hand, create content resources to attract and engage a massive number of leads, and execute lead nurturing processes to move them down the funnel to Sales. But sometimes, sales teams are less than impressed by the lead quality and quantity.

At Mention, we’ve just started aligning our marketing and sales functions to improve lead generation. We developed ideal buyer profiles, defined scoring for SQLs, and set up KPI tracking to review regularly.

If you want to generate more leads and sales, join our webinar with Sam Mallikarjunan, Head of Growth at HubSpot Labs. He’ll be sharing actionable steps for you to implement Sales and Marketing alignment in your organization.

Here’s our tested process that helped Mention triple our MRR in one year. As a salesperson, you can use these tips to help Marketing generate better leads for you.

4 Proven Steps to Generate Better Leads and Close More Sales 

1) Develop your ideal buyer profile(s) with Marketing.

The first step to generating better leads is to define what a good lead is in the first place.

When we started our inbound machine, the sales team worked with the marketing team to decide on our best buyer profiles and verticals to target.

Common information to include:

• Industry
• Revenue
• Company size

The marketing team then developed buyer personas, based on decision makers commonly found within our ideal buyer profile companies. Mention's salespeople invited marketers to listen in on their client calls to uncover granular customer insights that helped to flesh out the personas.

On an ongoing basis, we test out new ideal buyer profiles and personas to see how well they respond to content. If they convert at a high rate, Sales adds them to the official list of IBPs. As a media monitoring tool company, we were targeting mostly social media marketers in digital marketing agencies before embarking on this Sales-Marketing alignment project. But through testing, we discovered other important personas.

2) Define the hand-off point from Marketing to Sales.

Most of the disagreements between salespeople and marketers happen at this point. What constitutes a sales-qualified lead (SQL)?

Marketing might consider attending a webinar a sign that a lead is ready to be passed along to Sales. However, you might not want to receive leads who didn’t explicitly request a demo. 

The definition of what makes an SQL will vary from company to company -- the critical part is having one in the first place. Here are some common lead scoring criteria:

• Country
• Page views
• Pricing page view
• BOFU content download
• Last engagement date

At Mention, our head of Marketing proposed lead scoring factors and discussed their importance with the sales team. As leads are scored, Marketing and Sales come together on an ongoing basis to evaluate whether the scoring system is effective or should be adjusted. Salespeople give feedback on why they reject leads, and marketers improve and fine-tune the scoring criteria accordingly.

3) Set up a clear reporting system.

As a salesperson, your feedback is critical for Marketing to improve its lead generation strategy. How many marketing-generated leads become customers? What kind of content do you need more of? Are salespeople following up with the leads passed over? Why or why not?

A two-way reporting system is crucial for creating accountability on both sides of the fence. With modern sales and marketing systems, both teams can track metrics such as:

• Number of leads passed from Marketing to Sales
• SQL to close ratio
• Follow-up attempts by phone and email

By agreeing upon and tracking KPIs with qualitative and quantitative feedback, the sales team can assure Marketing that the leads aren’t wasted.  

4) Review process and goals regularly. 

Your ideal buyer profiles change as your business and market evolve, which necessitate new marketing assets and metrics. For example, you might need more success stories for a specific vertical, or a more targeted nurturing workflow. You might need a new KPI. These are things salespeople should be communicating to marketers to make sure they continue to generate the best leads.

After we launched Mention for Enterprise, our sales and marketing teams completely recalibrated our ideal buyer profiles and marketing strategy. Now, we sync up once a week to review and report progress.

Sales and Marketing alignment is not fancy, empty talk. Yes, it requires effort and commitment from both sides, a lot of patience, and good faith. But with aligned goals, constant communication, and clear tracking, high quality leads will start flooding in.

For more tips like this, don’t miss our webinar with Sam Mallikarjunan, Head of Growth at HubSpot Labs, where he’ll share HubSpot’s tricks to unifying Sales and Marketing for effective lead and revenue generation, and show how you can apply them to your organization.

Increase Sales and Website Traffic with 4 Email Marketing Tools

Today I have some email marketing resources to help you improve your website leads and sales. Here’s four links with tips and tricks to kick start your Monday.

Reaching your subscribers and converting leads can be a challenge, but with the right strategy you can have better results and more open rates. These key tools will help you save time and target the right subscribers. Would you like to increase your conversion rates? Take advantage of these resources, and let me know how these work for you!

1) Email statistics made easy – IsValid

Get a detailed analysis of your existing email testing without having to figure out the math. IsValid, a free tool that packs a lot of statistical data quickly, and provides insights such as which emails are getting the most opens as well as more results on your conversion metrics. Just enter your numbers and results will appear immediately.

2) Get creative inspiration – The Best of Email

View the best and top quality emails from other marketers. The Best of Email eliminates the need for guesswork and long hours of design and research in order to create an effective, stand-out email message. Gather ideas for campaigns such as major holidays, newsletters, promotions, and more.

3) Create a better subject line – Touchstone

Find out whether your readers will respond to your email subject line right away. Touchstone is an easy to use tool that provides statistics and probable results based on your entry. Upload your own email data and find out how your current subscribers are responding to your messages.

4) High quality HTML email designs – HTML Email Gallery

Would you like to fully customize your emails? Here is a great tool to help you find the best in coded, professional quality emails. HTML Email Gallery showcases a large variety of heavily coded designs with eye-catching graphics. Browse by color scheme or topic such as announcements, conferences, ect. A tips and tricks section is included to help you create a professional email that will garner more opens and response rates.

Hopefully you will find these email marketing tools helpful for increasing your conversion rates. Are there any that you would like to add as well?

MONTREAL – For Dominic Barton, the invitation to apply his decades worth of experience as an international economic fixer at home was a “duty” he didn’t want to pass up.

The global managing director of consulting firm McKinsey & Co. has taken the role as chair of Finance Minister Bill Morneau’s council of economic advisers. The group will help Ottawa find ways to inject some life into the country’s sagging growth.

Barton, a Canadian based in London, is a sought-after expert who travels the world helping presidents, governments and big corporations with economic strategy.

In the past, he said he has been invited to offer advice to Ottawa over the years, but never to this degree.

“It’s a duty, in my view, to do it,” Barton, who was born in Uganda and raised in British Columbia, told The Canadian Press in an interview.

“The only thing I feel is pressure. We’d better come up with something.”

Each of the 14 council members, including Barton, will earn $1 per year plus travel expenses for their efforts. The group, which held its first meeting Monday near Ottawa, is tasked with helping the country shape a long-term economic plan.

It’s the kind of expertise Barton has honed at his day job.

The Rhodes scholar has spent 30 years at McKinsey, which advises some of the world’s most-powerful corporations and political leaders. He has been at the helm of the firm since 2009.

Much of his career has focused on Asia, where he was McKinsey’s regional chair from 2004-09. Before that, he headed the company’s office in Korea for four years.

In his travels, including a meeting last week with Kenyan President Uhuru Kenyatta, he said some clients have no idea he’s a Canadian.

His track record, however, is no secret in the business world.

For example, Barton has worked closely with the leaders, including those from South Korea, Singapore and Colombia, to develop domestic growth plans.

Barton has also written and spoken frequently about the need for CEOs to abandon their fixation on the short-term and focus on the long-term as well.

This view appears to mesh with what the Liberals have been promoting for Canada since before last fall’s election.

Ottawa chose Barton not only for his credentials, but for his up-close experience all over the world, said one senior government official who was not authorized to speak on the record.

“As the global manager of this firm, he’s been exposed to what many countries have tried in terms of growth,” said the official.

“Sometimes unsuccessfully, sometimes successfully — and that brings a very important perspective to the table.”

He is expected to share his policy perspectives on trade, innovation and what could make the country competitive economically beyond two or three years.

Barton has maintained ties to Canada and has a cottage north of Toronto.

He’s also been working with Smart Prosperity, a group of experts who want to speed up the country’s transition to a low-carbon economy, and is a board member of the Asia Pacific Foundation of Canada. He also sits on the advisory board for the non-partisan Ecofiscal Commission.

Barton has also advised Ottawa in the past.

McGill University economist Christopher Ragan, also chief spokesman for the Ecofiscal Commission, said he first met Barton about six or seven years ago when he invited him to attend a retreat hosted by then-finance minister Jim Flaherty.

Barton was among around 25 people around a table talking big-picture policy for about a day and a half, said Ragan, who is also a member of Morneau’s growth council.

“He’s kind of got this kind of a kid-like enthusiasm for stuff, it’s actually quite endearing,” said Ragan, who hosted a speaking event at McGill alongside Barton on Thursday night in Montreal.

“You’d think whoever is running McKinsey is likely to be kind of the cream of the cream — and it’s just an added cherry on top that he’s a Canadian… My guess is his Rolodex is one of the more coveted Rolodexes around.”

Barton was born in 1962 in Kampala, where his father was a missionary and his mother a nurse.

His family moved to Chilliwack, B.C., when he was seven years old. He believes his early childhood experience in Africa had a significant impact — one that led him to have more of an international perspective.

Barton studied economics at the University of British Columbia. After winning his Rhodes scholarship to study at Oxford University, he told a UBC newspaper in 1983 that he was interested in economic development.

“I’d eventually like to work in the area of Third World development,” he was quoted as saying.

Today, the tall, lean Barton is an avid distance runner who credits the sport for helping him overcome the jet lag that comes with his globe-circling job. On Sunday, he’s planning to run a half-marathon with his daughter in Sweden.

The growth council has offered him a chance to get even more involved in Canada, he said.

“That’s what’s also nice about this — to spend more time in Canada, be more linked.”

Follow @AndyBlatchford on Twitter

The post Meet the man who will help draw the blueprint for Canada’s economic future appeared first on Canadian Business - Your Source For Business News.

MONTREAL – Dominic Barton, global managing director of consulting company McKinsey & Co., was appointed chair of the federal government’s team of advisers who will help build a plan to boost the country’s long-term growth.

Here are five things Barton says Canada could do to increase growth:

1. Peer across the Pacific. Barton believes Canada could be doing much more to broaden its economic relationships with Asia, from the massive Trans-Pacific Partnership to free trade with China. He said Japan, Indonesia and India also represent huge opportunities. Barton also believes more should be done to attract Asian students to Canadian universities. “We should be going deep,” Barton told an audience Thursday at McGill University in Montreal. “We are missing in action in Asia.”

2. Health-care innovation. He sees opportunity in health care, which he says is generally recognized as merely a cost. “It’s actually one of the biggest consumer markets in the world,” Barton said. He said there are possibilities linked to the innovations around health delivery, product design, therapies and medicine.

3. Find out exactly why small companies struggle to scale up. “Where is it in the innovation chain that we have a bottleneck?” Barton said. Is it because patents are failing to turn into commercial activities? Is it because people sell off their firms once commercial activities reach a certain scale? Or is it that companies just can’t find the financing? Barton said his council will try to figure it out.

4. Entice foreign investors to spend on Canadian infrastructure. Barton said Canada should work hard to help create conditions for bankable, reliable projects with steady returns. He said there are huge piles of capital beyond Canada’s shores looking for opportunities. “In my view, who cares if it’s Japanese, Chinese, Singaporean? We’re the ones going to use the road. They can’t come in and take it away. There’s no vulnerability, I don’t think.”

5. Prepare Canada’s agri-food industry for what he considers a bright future. “We’re going to have 2.2 billion middle-class consumers in the next 15 years… They’re going to eat and live like we do,” he said. Barton believes Canada should already be one of the biggest food players on the planet, but it’s nowhere near it. He said the industries need to be assessed.

Follow @AndyBlatchford on Twitter

The post Five things Canada could do to increase long-term economic growth appeared first on Canadian Business - Your Source For Business News.

Branding Strategy Insider helps marketing oriented leaders and professionals like you build strong brands. BSI readers know, we regularly answer questions from marketers everywhere. Today we hear from Thomas, a CMO from Toronto, Canada who has these questions about pricing strategy.

“I am a long time reader and subscriber of Branding Strategy Insider. I’ve searched your site, but haven’t found any detail about what in the retail industry is called a high-low pricing strategy. I think my questions and your answers may be interesting to your many readers.

The group of companies I work for deals with luxury items such as wristwatches that traditionally have passed through a retail distribution model. The standard practice of luxury watch brands, those of the brick and mortar variety, was to make a watch for cost 1x. Because of sales, marketing and concomitant expenses, these watches are marked up to be sold to the distribution system at 3x (a 67% margin). The country agent (outside of Switzerland where it is manufactured), say Romania, buys the watch at 3x and sells it to distributors/retailers at 6x. These retailers sell it to the end customer for 12x. Thus a timepiece costing $100 to manufacture will end up at retail for $1,200.

Now suppose a company can avoid the entire distribution system and directly sell their product to the end customer on an ecommerce platform. The “retail” price is still the same, but the price that the watch can be sold for is the standard distribution selling price, i.e. 3x. So while a competitor’s watch will cost $1,200, this company can sell for $300. The amount of marketing will be less, since country agent/distributor/retailer marketing expenditure will no longer factor into the equation. Price alone will act as marketing “incentive” to purchase the product.

My company has experimented with this model to great success (and I should mention with zero marketing). However, several problems have arisen:

1) Some customers perceive that the quality is lower, because the price is lower, and continued “discount” over retail of 75% makes the EDLP the defacto selling price. Thus, the MSRP is perceived as misleading and not the true market price.

2) Any attempts to sell into the standard distribution system have failed. Because we would be competing directly with our own customers, they cannot possibly sell a watch for $1,200 in store, when it is being sold elsewhere (online) for $300. The 21^st century consumer is incredibly price-aware.

If you have made it this far, I commend you. My questions, after a long preamble, is:

1) What is your opinion of this method of high-low selling?

2) If your opinion is unfavorable, which based on my knowledge of branding and your insightful resource will be the case, what does a brand do when it finds itself in this situation? Reset pricing to 3x without mention of the MSRP at 12x? If so, the perceived advantages of “bargain” items (MSRP: $1,200, Your Price: $300) disappears and sales may crater.

3) If the brand wants to charge 12x, will customers pay this? They are used to the brand selling at 3x.”

Thanks for your questions Thomas. First, once an item is sold at a lower price, it is very difficult to sell it later at a significantly higher price. And if the same item is sold in two different selling channels at radically different prices, the place where it is sold at a much higher price will not receive many sales, especially if the lower price is offered online where anyone can find the item at the lower price after a simple search.

A better approach, if you want to begin to sell the brand at the higher price, is to create a new brand that can be sold at the higher price while continuing to sell the original brand at the lower price. This will eliminate channel conflict issues and price conflict issues.

One of the more difficult marketing problems is to take a premium brand down to lower price points. Once that happens, the premium brand loses some of its cache, hopefully traded off with much higher sales volume due to the lower price. It is somewhat easier to eventually move a more mainstream brand up into premium categories but only based on noticeably superior quality and many noticeable upgrades and improvements from the original version of the brand sold at a lower price. In no case is it advisable to sell the same brand at two radically different price points in two different channels. It is much too easy to compare price points across different channels and sources these days.

If you want to maintain the same level of sales as before with the product sold online for the lower price with the much higher MSRP, continue to sell the product at the lower price with the much higher MSRP listed. Don’t eliminate the MSRP or the bargain perception will cease to exist. The new reference price would then become the $300, not the higher $1,200 (or some amount in between).

We hope this help you build your brands Thomas.

Do you have a question related to branding? Just Ask The Blake Project

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Branding Strategy Insider is a service of The Blake Project: A strategic brand consultancy specializing in Brand Research, Brand Strategy, Brand Licensing and Brand Education

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This morning I get a call, it’s the CEO and VP of Sales on a conference phone. Apparently, they had read my recent article: We’ll Fix Performance Problems In The Commission Plan.

They had a problem. Their people weren’t hitting the numbers and goals that had been established. They thought the commission plan was the problem and were thinking about making adjustments to the commission plan to solve the performance problem.

I probed, asking some questions about the compensation plan. It turns out, their people were on a 100% commission plan. As if the implications of this aren’t obvious, I’ll restate it. If they sell nothing, they don’t get paid!

As we talked, it was clear the sales people had sufficient high quality opportunities. But somehow, they just weren’t closing enough deals to make the goals. Win rates were actually lower than they should have been.

The CEO and VP of sales thought the solution to that was to increase the commission plan.

As you can guess, I started asking a painful but obvious question:

“If they don’t get paid until the sell something, how is paying them more going to get them to sell more of something they can’t sell?”

Well Duuggghh….

But in fairness to them, they aren’t alone. This is the kind of thinking I see with a lot of people who think the way to fix any sales performance problem is through the compensation system.

I went on to ask them, “What’s causing them not to win the deals they are competing for? Where are the roadblocks? What are you doing to fix those roadblocks?”

We had a long discussion about things like, what’s their target market/sweet spot, what’s the selling process, do the people have the right skills and capabilities to talk to the customers about their business and problems, do they know why they win, do they replicate the things that cause them to win with every deal? We talked about value propositions, competitiveness, and all sorts of things involved in selling and winning deals.

The questions went on and on. They had some ideas about those issues, but they hadn’t really looked at them. But pretty quickly, they realized the problem wasn’t the compensation system, but that the people weren’t consistently executing on the things that drove success. There were skills issues, training issues, coaching, and other things. But the management team hadn’t spent a lot of time understanding these and addressing them.

Had they not paused to really understand the issues, they would have implemented a new commission plan, increasing commissions they pay sales people. Yes, the sales people would have earned a lot more money—but on the deals they were already closing. It wouldn’t have done a thing to cause them to win more deals.

Compensation is always an element of performance management. However, it’s not the only thing, and it’s probably something you address only after you’ve addressed all the other performance management issues.

We’ve all been on the tail-end of an email marketing mistake. Perhaps you opened up an email to find it addressed to “First Name.” Or you read a cool offer, just to click on the link and it sends you somewhere completely unrelated.

These mistakes can cost the company or person sending them some serious credibility points. To prevent this from happening to you, we’ve put together 5 costly email marketing mistakes to avoid at all costs:

1. No personalization

Personalization is important for successful email marketing campaigns. People like things to be customized for them. It makes an email stand out in the mass amounts of emails they receive on a daily basis.

Personalization can come in many forms. The most simple (but still important!) one being addressing the email using the person’s name. Some other examples are sending a birthday e-card, or sending a list of products you think they’d love based on what they’ve viewed.

2. Email is not from a real person

There is no good reason to be using a no-reply email address. It puts you at a higher risk for spam complaints and it makes the recipient feel like they aren’t important enough for you to hear what they have to say. Make sure when you send out that next email it is from an address that those who receive it can respond to if they’d like.

3. Deceitful subject line

“Claim your free iPhone!” as a subject line of an email may seem like a sure-fire way to get a lot of opens, but unless you plan on doling out a bunch of iPhones, this is not the route to go. Having a clear, accurate and short subject line where the reader can clearly understand what the email is about is the best way to engage with your audience.

A good way to see if your subject line passes the test: After you finish writing your email put yourself in the email recipient’s shoes. Is there any way that he/she may feel deceived after opening the email based on what was read on the subject? If so, rewrite to align more with them email content, and repeat!

No value provided

All emails you send to your database should offer something of value. It’s all about sending the appropriate email based on where they are in the customer lifecycle. If they are just starting to download some offers in the awareness stage, they most likely won’t respond to a “Request a Demo” email. Be smart about what you’re sending and with every email have the goal in mind to provide value for the recipient. Don’t get lost in a sea of emails that everyone receives, if you can send emails that help your database the opens and clicks will follow.

Also it is very important to double/triple check your emails to see that they are linking to the correct offer/page. Interest can quickly be lost from a potential customer if they think they’ll be directed somewhere they aren’t.

Sending too many emails (or not enough)

There is a fine line between sending not enough emails or sending too many and overwhelming your database. You can figure out your sweet spot by looking at what you’ve previously done and working from there. Open rates will help you figure out if your emails are being enjoyed, unsubscribes mean the opposite. Set up different frequencies and measure the results to see what works best for your audience.

Have any additional email marketing mistakes you’d like to share? Comment below!

Google is known for its moonshot projects. Self driving cars are a prominent example. So are internet balloons.

The company announced the name for another one on Friday: Project Jacquard.

Google calls it a plan to manufacture "connected" fabrics at scale. These fabrics would be able to sense touch and deliver haptic feedback. Their first partner in this effort? Levi's, which let the world know on Friday it is working on a Levi's-Google "smart" jacket for Spring 2017.

Here's the thing though: I've read all of the press releases and many of the articles already released about this project, and I have no idea what it does — or what problem it's intended to solve.

A long Wired article in April made clear that manufacturing smart fabrics at a consumer scale is an interesting challenge. But when it comes to applications, it turns hazy:

Google is working on an ecosystem of apps and services that will let you interact with your phone and other gadgets just by grabbing, tapping, swiping, and touching your clothes...

“In the future—or maybe not in the future—wearables should not be thought of as another consumer device,” [Google designer Ivan] Poupyrev says. “We already have clothes, we already have garments.” Why do you need a wristband to measure your steps or heartbeat, when your shoes or shirt could do it more accurately? Why do you need a watch to deliver haptic feedback, when a slight buzz on your shirt cuff would be even more discreet? “Everything other wearables do,” Poupyrev says, “we’ll do it. It’s not difficult. But it’s going to be much more than that.”

This raises a number of questions, like "Why?" "How?" "What? and "For whom?"

To be more specific: Why is swiping your shirt collar better than swiping a phone? Will we be expected to fill our closets with Jacquard fabrics, or just wear one article of clothing (say, that Levi's jacket) all the time to interface with our devices? How much is this all going to cost?

Google's and Levi's press releases about the project are even more obtuse. From Google:

Connected clothes offer new possibilities for interacting with services, devices, and environments. These interactions can be reconfigured at any time.

Jacquard is a blank canvas for the fashion industry. Designers can use it as they would any fabric, adding new layers of functionality to their designs, without having to learn about electronics.

Developers will be able to connect existing apps and services to Jacquard-enabled clothes and create new features specifically for the platform.

From Levi's:

In the 1980s, we revolutionized men’s wardrobes with the introduction of Dockers khakis — giving birth to Casual Fridays and an option between suits and jeans.

“Levi’s has always stayed true to our iconic products, while continuing to introduce innovations that address the current challenges of modern life,” said Paul Dillinger, our head of global product innovation, who took the stage at Google I/O this morning.

“In our hyper-digital world, people constantly struggle to be physically present in their environment while maintaining a digital connection. The work that Google and Levi’s are embarking upon with Project Jacquard delivers an entirely new value to consumers with apparel that is emotional, aspirational and functional.”

Maybe I simply lack vision, but I have no idea what that means.

One can imagine a few niche applications — say, pressure-sensing seats in luxury cars that adjust for your body — where Jacquard might offer some interesting new use cases. But it's genuinely unclear what advantages it will confer on everyday consumers. I haven't seen a single problem Jacquard solves that isn't similarly solved by smart watches — and we all know how popular those are.

Not that I have any objection to the idea of a buzzing t-shirt or armpit-based touchpad. I just have no idea why anyone would spend money on that.

Are we all going to have to add "plug it all into the wall" to our laundry day to-do lists?

Google did not immediately return a request for comment.

It's entirely possible that I'm wrong here, but this looks a great deal like one of those projects tech bloggers will cover breathlessly for a few months, and enthusiasts will line up for, but that most consumers will never buy into in a big way. But who knows.

Join the conversation about this story »

NOW WATCH: Doctors now say this type of cancer isn’t actually cancer — and the new classification is changing thousands of lives

Why do the work when it’s already been done for? That’s the question business owners and marketers are asking before they hit “Purchase” on a $30 website template.

Thousands, if not millions, of people turn to website templates to make the design process more efficient. But there’s something almost no one is talking about…

Website templates are not optimized for conversions. That’s your job. [Tweet It!]

Just How Popular Are Website Templates?

Unfortunately, there isn’t much research around exactly how often templates are used. But we can get a good idea by looking at the popularity of some of the top template sites.

• Themeforest alone has over 25,000 website templates.
• The entire Envato Market has over 6.8M community members and over 10.1M design items for sale.
• HubSpot has over 1,400 website and email templates.
• TemplateMonster has over 50,000 website templates.

There is also an entire site dedicated to mocking the average bootstrap startup website template:

Also, a semi-recent Moz article cited the fact that “templates and themes are awesome now” as one of the ten reasons custom web design is “dying”.

Before that, a Tuts+ article encouraged custom web designers to adopt a “if you can’t beat ’em, join ’em” mentality about templates and themes. Essentially, sell clients on the customization of a template or theme.

So, we don’t know what percent of sites, emails and landing pages are based on a template, but we know that it’s enough to start asking some key questions…

• Are website templates a good idea from a conversion rate optimization standpoint?
  • If not, what should CRO professionals be doing instead?
  • If so, is there anything CRO professionals need to be aware of?

Does Originality Matter?

But first, we have to ask a more basic question: Doesn’t originality matter anymore?

It seems that with so many people using website templates, we’ll get a lot of sites looking exactly the same. Justin Rondeau of Digital Marketer doesn’t see it as an issue…

Justin Rondeau, Digital Marketer:

“Optimizers, for the most part, aren’t trained designers – for this reason I am VERY ok with them using site design templates for initial launches. In general, templates are meant to serve the purpose of making 1) site design and launch possible and 2) using a design schema that users expect.

The second point is crucial! We know that there are no TRUE best practices, but I hold that what is common to your user is generally best. So use templates as a starting point, then iterate to find out what works best for your business. Don’t just set and forget! Launch, get data, iterate, then improve.

I think some marketers/optimizers think there is something disingenuous about site templates. They think ‘Someone else might use the same theme or template as me!’ Honestly, who cares? You are so closer to your design, your content, really everything about your business than any customer or prospect.

Don’t sweat this stuff… use what works then tweak it to make it yours. I mean, seriously, nearly every blog uses that two-column layout where the content takes up 2/3 of the page and the right has promotions on the other 1/3.”

First, take a step back from the vacuum that is your brand and ask yourself: Does it really matter if some other site looks like mine?

Then, consider how powerful prototypes and the science of familiarity can be. Typically, if it’s common and expected, the visitor’s brain will appreciate it.

Josh Dunsterville, who leads design at KlientBoost, shares the same mentality…

Josh Dunsterville, KlientBoost:

“As humans we pay attention to patterns, in fact we seek them out. We expect when we visit a site to find the logo in the top left corner, followed by the navigation in the top right. When we come to a site that breaks these patterns it does one of two things. It either intrigues us, or frustrates us.”

Do you want to go around copying your competition or using a template you’ve seen 400 times this week? No. Is originality a reason to shoot down the idea of using a template? No.

They’re a Good Starting Point

There’s no denying that website templates are an excellent starting point. They’ve made it possible for average people to affordably throw up a site or landing page, to launch their businesses.

You’re familiar with the expression “done is better than perfect”, right? Templates thrive on that concept.

If you have the time and resources for perfect, indulge. But if you’re like most people, Skylar Richard, a UX designer at Qimple, suggests that website templates are a “good enough” alternative…

Skylar Richard, Qimple:

“Generally speaking design templates serve as a ‘good enough’ option. In a perfect world we would all have the time (and money) to spend on research, design and development. Sadly, though, that is rarely the case.

My experiences with design templates are seldom outside of using them for landing pages. Running campaigns in high volume in order to get conversion rates requires quick turnaround, which templates are great for. Get the framework in place via template and then make your style changes to suit your brand and the campaign’s purpose.

Conversely, putting all your eggs into one template while the clock is ticking down might lead you into some trouble if you aren’t sure what to look for in a template.

If people have the resources to design and develop a template from scratch I do suggest they do that. But again, that’s a fairly ideal situation!”

Note Skylar’s cautionary words about relying on a template while the clock is ticking down. You have to know what to look for in a website template, you can’t simply select “Most Popular” from a dropdown list because you’re tight on time.

So, what should you be looking for in a website template? Josh suggests focusing on the fundamentals, looking for something simple and skeletal…

Josh Dunsterville, KlientBoost:

“Templates aren’t necessarily bad for UX, however they should just be used as a starting point. I like to compare templates to houses. When building a house, it’s okay to start with a general template. You know you’re going to want a living room, a kitchen, a bathroom, etc.

But that’s just the starting point. From there you’ll want to customize things like paint color, fixtures, size of specific rooms, etc. Each house and its qualities will appeal to different people and families. A one bedroom house most likely isn’t going to work for a family of five, just like a template designed for a dental office most likely won’t work for a SASS company.

Overall, I would say start with a template that works for your industry and has a specific conversion focus. In other words start with something simple. Steer clear of the fancy animations, sliders, and parallax. From there transform the template into something that works specifically for your visitors.”

You should also be looking for a website template with…

• Clarity: Does the template make it easy for you to clearly articulate your value proposition?
• Distraction: Is there too much going on, is the design too busy?
• Navigation: Are the icons (if applicable) clear? Is it straightforward enough?
• Mobile Compatibility: How will it look on mobile?
• Performance: Will any of the features or components of the template slow down your site?
• UX: Are there any obvious UX mistakes?
• Customization: Is it easy to customize the site later on?

Once you have that initial website template up, your job is certainly not done. As with any other site, the process of conversion research and testing should begin.

But That’s About It…

Aside from website templates being convenient and easy to set up, there aren’t any major benefits to using them. There are, however, some risks and drawbacks that you need to address if you plan to use a website template.

They Don’t Consider Conversion Optimization Principles

Website templates are designed by, well, designers. They’re not designed with conversion rate optimization principles in mind. Oli Gardner of Unbounce explains why this is a big problem…

Oli Gardner, Unbounce:

“Buyer beware when it comes to website and landing page templates.

Anyone who’s started a business and needed a website cheaply and quickly – perhaps to get an MVP site live to gather leads for a beta launch, or perhaps you need to rush out a last minute marketing campaign – has probably, at one time or another, purchased or used a template.

You probably bought a WordPress theme from Themeforest, or used a landing page template inside the Unbounce landing page builder.

Templates can be a wonderful way to accelerate delivery, working with the lean practice of done is better than perfect. But, and it’s a big but (not that kind), you need to be very careful when choosing, and implementing a template.

A big problem is that graphic and web designers have never been taught how to design for conversion. They have been taught grid systems, typography, colour theory, and so on. But they haven’t been taught how to focus a visitor’s attention on the goal of the page.

This is why I wrote the Attention-Driven Design ebook, to establish a set of 23 design principles that can be used to craft a competitive business advantage by ensuring proper attention is applied to your pages in order to create a focused and simplified experience, design specifically to encourage a conversion.”

I’m willing to bet the few designers who really understand how to design for conversions are not designing site templates for $30.

By choosing a website template that’s easy to customize, you can simply read Oli’s eBook (and other conversion-focused design / UX resources) and optimize the site yourself. If you have enough traffic to test, create hypotheses based on the principles and test them. If not, principles can help guide you heuristically.

But be aware that worked on one site will not necessarily work on another. As Sarah Doody, founder of The UX Notebook, explains, conversions are not transferable…

Sarah Doody, The UX Notebook:

“One of the principles I always have in mind when designing is to ‘make it familiar’. A trend that has come up in design is the idea of templates. Although I see the value in using templates, I fear that designers are relying on templates as a crutch.

When designers use templates, many of them do not think about whether or not why that template is appropriate for their audience and their content.

Another concern I have with templates (or let’s face it, copying other designers) is that you have no idea how that template performed — what worked for one product may not work for yours. Design is about context, and when you use a template, you don’t know the context in which it was intended to be used.”

Before using a website template, ask yourself…

• Does this fit the prototypes that exist within my industry?
• Does this fit my industry – period?
• Will my content flow correctly if I use this?

Custom website designs are based on your unique context. Website templates are designed based on common contexts. Don’t try to fit your square peg in a round hole.

As Josh explains, the fact that website templates are designed to fit many different contexts often results in a lack of focus…

Josh Dunsterville, KlientBoost:

“In my opinion the biggest mistake that I find in templates is that they try to focus on too much. A lot of the ones you’ll find on template marketplaces like themeforest will have examples for all sorts of types of content.

For example you’ll see pages that have team sections, feature sections, map sections, contact sections, videos, sliders, etc. None of these sections have inherently bad UX, however when you throw them all in one page, you’re drastically increasing the amount of things that a user has to focus on.”

They Want to Be “Trendy” and Pretty

Often, designers want to be trendy, they want to add the newest, “coolest” thing to their designs. The result? As Oli explains, they end up aiming for a pretty site vs. an effective site…

Oli Gardner, Unbounce:

“An even bigger problem, that plagues many theme designs is feature overstuffing, and design trend masturbation. It seems every theme these days includes a promo slider (carousel), parallax scrolling, ghost buttons, flat design, video backgrounds, and worst of all, scroll jacking.

Design trends emerge every year, and they are blindly implemented within these templates without considering the potential consequences of their inclusion. Many (such as the aforementioned carousel) have been shown in many A/B tests to hurt your conversion rates.

Ghost buttons might look cool, but they are of such low affordance (how clickable they look) that they can literally and figuratively scare your visitors’ mouse away from them. There are circumstances where they are appropriate – such as for a secondary navigation option, where the primary CTA is a more dominant visual entity – but there are many cases where they damage the simple visual perception of what is required to take the next step on a page.

Parallax is a beautiful design device when done correctly, but a horrible and dizzying experience when poorly implemented. Video backgrounds can slow page load speed and present a distraction that removes focus from your headlines, and scroll jacking, wow, what a terrible concept!

Scroll jacking is when the theme designer includes some jQuery code that takes control of the scrolling experience (breaking 20 years of established interaction design convention). It essentially attempts to smooth the entrance and exit parameters of a user executed scroll.

If you scroll up or down a page, after you release the mouse button, the scrolling continues for a subsequent second, essentially rendering it impossible to end your scroll at the place you intended. The practice of scroll jacking should be killed with fire, along with the ‘designers’ who consider it a helpful or enjoyable experience.”

If you don’t want your visitors to be secretly hoping you get killed with fire, think twice before choosing a website template that appears “trendy”. What’s latest is rarely what’s greatest.

In case you’re unfamiliar with the terms above, here’s what parallax and ghost button mean…

• Parallax: “Involves the background moving at a slower rate to the foreground, creating a 3D effect as you scroll down the page.”
• Ghost Button: “Transparent and empty buttons that have a basic shape form, such as a rectangular or perhaps squared.”

Justin echoes Oli’s thoughts on ghost buttons, adding another common website template faux pas…

Justin Rondeau, Digital Marketer:

“Ghost buttons and large image sliders are probably some of the most common element mistakes I see on popular site templates.”

Maarja Käsk, a web designer at ConversionXL, adds that while website templates may look nice, they are typically far from realistic…

Maarja Käsk, ConversionXL:

“You have to start with something. I think that using a template in the beginning is an acceptable starting base, especially when there may be high opportunity cost of getting visible online. Then start iterating with using ResearchXL model.

Many clients that we have worked with have started with a template and have used our help after they have got their business up and running.

If you have more time and resources for design, start by creating copy first. Create a design based on that copy using best practices. Then start iterating using ResearchXL model.”

Conclusion

You can have the exact same website template as someone else and see significantly fewer conversions. Why? Because every site is different. Every site needs to conduct their own conversion research, come up with their own hypotheses and run their own tests.

Website templates may be a design shortcut, but they are never an optimization shortcut.

If you don’t have the design resources to make it custom, choose your website template wisely. Stay simple, focus on clarity and choose the template that best communicates your message.

And remember, your job has only just begun.

The first thing I do in the morning is check my email. I’m looking for urgent work alerts, general family news, but mostly I’m deleting the insane amount of promotion mailings that flood my inbox overnight. By the time I arrive at work, I have another batch to clear out. I don’t want to hear about new lawnmowers (I’m not sure why I signed up for that list in the first place) and I don’t care about buying a bridesmaid dress for a wedding I don’t have. Worst of all, I haven’t opened an email from these retailers in months! Take a hint, guys!

Email marketing is about curating a relationship with your customer. That means your emails need to be relevant and timely for each customer, and not all your customers are the same. According to MarketingSherpa’s Email Marketing Benchmark report, 52% of marketers say they have a “great need to improve email database segmentation” and 32% of email programs have cited segmentation as a top priority in the growth of their programs. There is no “one size fits all” in marketing: personalization is expected.

Before joining WordStream, I worked in email marketing. I have learned so much about segmenting lists and targeting audiences that it’s coming out of my ears! Here are my best tips for utilizing segmentation to target your subscribers without pissing them off.

A nice way for Amazon to ask customers what they actually want to see.

Targeted Email Marketing: The Basics

Don’t be desperate: segmentation helps with your reputation! By avoiding “Batch and Blast,” your customers are more likely to open your emails and less likely to ignore mailings or mark them as SPAM. Very basic segmentation can go a long way.

Here are some basic segmentations to consider:

• Customers vs. Prospects: Once you have ushered a prospect through the marketing funnel and they complete their first purchase, you have reached a new level of your relationship. They like you! Show your appreciation of your customers with a nice Thank You email, and remember not to harass them out of your life. If they have purchased before, they are more likely to purchase again. Similarly, prospects haven’t committed to you yet—don’t get ahead of yourself and start planning the wedding. By separating these two groups, you can learn more about your audience and who is worth your time and effort to put a ring on it.

• Recency: When do you consider a customer to be active or inactive? This varies greatly by brand; I’ve seen retailers sticking to six months of opens and clicks, some up to two years. Many B2C “fast fashion” retailers seem to have customers with shorter life spans, whereas B2B trends toward the longer end. Dependent on how often a customer receives a mailing and engages determines when you can send them a sweet “We miss you!” message to avoid losing them all together.

Sent from Not on the High Street

• Frequency: Do you have customers who purchase every month, like clockwork? Or maybe there is a holiday segment of your audience – people who only purchase gifts in December? If you mail both audiences the same way, you risk running off the customer you want to engage. According to research by Chadwick Martin Bailey, 69% of consumers unsubscribed from emails because they were sent too frequently. By sending too often, you risk losing your leads and any revenue they may have brought with them.

• Monetary: How much did the customer spend the last time they converted? One high-value purchase or many low-value purchases? Do you want to mail them with sale or luxury items? Directing targeted emails featuring full-price products to the customers most likely to buy without a promotion could help prevent unsubscribes.

Targeted Email Marketing: Getting Fancy

Already doing most or all of the above? Here are some more advanced email targeting strategies to try!

• Geo-targeting: If you run a local boutique with healthy ecommerce sales, you want to be sure you’re targeting local and online customers differently. The easiest way to do this is asking for a zip code during sign-up! If you have a larger presence, including a Store Locator at the bottom of your mailings is a great way to drive customers in store—like the sale email from Steve Madden below.

• Demographics: Women and men shop differently! Actually, I’m pretty sure men only shop on Amazon or in stores, whereas many women (me) have a fledgling online shopping problem. Different age groups also have varying shopping habits; a student is more likely to look for sample sales and clearance than a working professional in their 40s who can afford that full-priced handbag. If you are catering to a variety of shoppers, segment to target these customers creatively—and learn more about your most loyal shoppers to develop your brand.

OFFICE asking their customers for more information

• Time of Day/Time of Week: I may check my email first thing in the morning but I have never completed a purchase before coffee! To target customers who do convert first thing in the morning, check conversion rates a few hours after the send; and send a nice reminder about big sales to lazy bones like me who need more encouragement. At Wordstream, we tested our own send and open data and found that our highest open rates – over 25% clicks – occurred for messages sent on Thursdays between 8-9am while the lowest open rates – less than 5% opens – occurred when messages were sent on Tuesdays and Wednesdays between 8-10am. The best way to find that sweet spot is to test, test, test. It is different for everyone!

• Let’s be Friends: Have I purchased something that may need to be replaced, i.e. ink cartridges, mascara, prescription medicine? Maybe it is a service that will need repeating, like an annual check-up or vehicle inspection. Best of all, it could be a birthday card or anniversary celebration! Let your customer know you are paying attention and you care.

Sephora, you shouldn’t have! (But I’m glad you did)

• Google’s Customer Match: After you have gathered data for segmentation, you can utilize Customer Match from AdWords! Customer Match allows you to target a custom audience by uploading a list of email addresses. You can then serve specific ads and bids to users in different points of the marketing funnel—from prospects to loyal customers. Customer Match allows you to reach your subscribers on Search, Gmail, or YouTube; just not display. If you also use Social Advertising with Facebook and Twitter, both companies can also help you use an email marketing database to remarket to your audience.

Just in Case – Email Targeting Mistakes to Avoid

With any segmentation, the above can be combined to narrow any audience down even further, i.e. monetary ($500+ spend on full-price products) + recency (purchased before October 2015).

But be careful! When you are doing multi-level segmentation and sending multiple different mailings, there is risk of overlap. Make sure to suppress audiences from each other in order of priority to ensure the most important emails are being received by the most people BUT not everyone is getting every email you send. Developing a coherent marketing calendar absolutely helps this—even if you don’t stick to it religiously.

During my travels meeting with customer success leaders from around the globe, I’m frequently asked two common questions.

Who should own the renewal, sales or customer success?
How should I compensate my Customer Success Manager (CSMs)?

I’ll cover the answers to these questions in a two-part blog series. Let me start by answering the first question in this blog—Who should own the renewal?

I typically see three renewal ownership models in SaaS. These models will help you clearly define ownership between sales and customer success.

Download the PDF of the customer success ownership renewal model above

Model 1: Sales owns new logos, expansion and renewals

In model one, the core sales team maintains ownership of all sales (or “commercial”) aspects of the relationship. The Account Executive (AE) that closed the initial – new logo – sale continues to collaborate with the CSM throughout the relationship and owns any expansion opportunities and the renewal. The CSM manages the day-to-day relationship and is primarily responsible for driving value for the customer and broad adoption of your product. If the right collaboration is fostered, the CSM should be the best expansion lead gen source for the AE, surfacing many opportunities from her assigned customer base.

Model 2: Customer Success owns expansion and renewals

In model two, the customer success team is not only responsible for driving value and adoption, but they also own all expansion opportunities and renewals. The sales team is focused primarily on new logo sales and may get credit for any expansion within a period of time (first quarter, 6 months, year), but they transition out after that period of time and the customer success team takes over from there and only draws on the sales team as needed for complex expansion deals or renewals.

Model 3: A separate customer-focused sales team owns expansion and renewals

In model three, the core sales team handles all *new* logo sales, the customer success team drives value and adoption, and a separate customer sales team owns expansion and renewals for the *existing* customer base. I’ve seen several titles associated with this role – Account Manager (AM), Renewals Specialist, Customer Account Executive, Client Executive, etc.

So, which renewal ownership model is best for your company?

It depends on the complexity of your sale and the experience-level of your CSM team.

Benefits of Renewal Ownership Model 1

For enterprise SaaS with complex solutions, gnarly negotiations and large price tags, you’ll want to go with model one, keeping your core sales team involved and owning all sales transactions (new logos, expansion and renewals). Enterprise-level Account Executives have mastered the art of sales negotiations, tactics and strategies. These AEs can successfully navigate procurement processes, RFPs, CxO negotiations , and extremely competitive situations. CSMs certainly play a collaborative role in identifying new expansion opportunities and ensuring the customer will renew, but the AE leads all sales/expansion/renewals discussions and negotiations, and closes the deals.

At Omniture and Adobe, we leveraged this model and it worked very well. Our CSMs partnered closely with the AEs to surface expansion opportunities and tee up the renewals, and our AEs negotiated and closed those opportunities successfully. Our clients clearly understood the respective roles and responsibilities and appreciated having two advocates representing them within our company.

Benefits of Renewal Ownership Model 2

If your product, pricing and sales processes are fairly straightforward and simple, you may consider just having the CSMs own expansion and renewals. This model will allow your AEs to focus on net new logos and CSMs can easily handle expansion and renewals. We’re currently using this model at ClientSuccess and have found it very successful so far. Our product and pricing is very simple (a strategically deliberate decision) and so are our expansion and renewal discussions, so this model works great for us.

Many customer success leaders shy away from having their CSMs handle sales discussions, fearing it will taint their “trusted advisor” status. I tend to disagree. If a CSM has developed the trusted relationship, focused deeply on understanding and driving value against the customer’s key business objectives (KBOs), and is clearly seen as the customer’s advocate, the customer will feel completely comfortable with the CSM handling the expansion and renewal process. I’m in agreement with Tomasz Tunguz that “At some point in the not too distant future, new bookings from customer success will exceed new bookings from the sales team.”

Benefits of Renewal Ownership Model 3

If you are an Enterprise SaaS company and you feel your sales team spends too much time focused on expansion and renewals and not enough time closing net new logos, you may want to split the team into a new logo sales team and client sales (or Account Management) team. This will ensure the focus on driving net new logos while also focusing additional experienced sales reps on managing expansion opportunities and renewals.

I generally don’t like the third model. The old saying “two is company, but three’s a crowd” seems to ring true for most customers. From my experience, customers prefer to only deal with one or two primary contacts. In this case, a primary sales contact (AE) and a primary post-sales contact (CSM). Adding a third person (AM) to handle expansion and renewals can cause additional confusion on roles and responsibilities and requires the customer to develop a new relationship of trust beyond the original AE and the CSM. I prefer to keep things simple for customers and reduce the primary contacts to one or two.

So, as you explore these scenarios within your company, adopt the model that best fits your product set, sales complexity and team experience. Regardless of the model you choose, remember to simplify the experience and clearly define roles and responsibilities for the customer. Doing so will align to your customer’s needs and drive high expansion revenue and successful renewals.

Check out our resources below for more customer success best practices and insights for how your organization can approach customer success with the customer at the center:

5 Ways to Surprise & Delight Your Customers