Building strong selling processes is important, but so too is having the right people in the positions to execute. The challenge is every organization in your industry is competing for a the top talent

To attract top sales talent, you need a clear picture of the people that fit best into your organization and a plan for recruiting them.

Here are four ways you can attract top sales talent:

Gather the Right Data

To attract the right salespeople to your company, you need to first know who they “right” salespeople are. The rating and assessment of your employees should be based on statistically valid, proven research rather than arbitrary scales. Predicting on-the-job success should be based on the specific skills and behaviors needed to excel in an identified role.

Measuring broad traits like “extroversion” won’t get you the results you need to drive bottom-line impact. It may be interesting to know a candidate’s energy level or how a manager perceives that candidate’s potential for success for example, but it is much more critical to know that a sales candidate can successfully prospect, resolve objections and close.

Leverage Existing Connections

Current sales reps and existing clients are among the greatest resources for targeting new sales talent. Your top-performing sellers understand what it takes to be successful in your organization. They often know people just like them and are therefore well-positioned to suggest sales peers who would also fit in well.

Additionally, long-term clients are familiar with your company’s values and selling processes. The combination of familiarity with the talent pool and your company’s unique position makes clients a powerful referral source.

Create a Unified Message

When you make recruiting a team effort, it’s important that you have a consistent message around the value you provide your team members and what makes you different from other organizations.

Enable your team to always be recruiting by coaching them on the right people to approach and the right message to deliver. A consistent recruiting message aids your efforts to generate awareness in the employee marketplace about your organization’s benefits as an employer.

Maintain Effective Onboarding and Coaching Processes

One of the most important things new hires need to understand is that you are committed to their growth and development. Because new hires want to ramp up quickly and be successful. An effective and efficient onboarding plan is essential.

We are often so eager to get new hires up to speed that we tend to overload them with information during their first couple of weeks. Think of onboarding as an ongoing process over 6-12 months. Work with new hires to create their own action plans and reassess them often. Give feedback and help new employees strategize. For their first 12 months, build role plays of selling situations and post-mortems into your coaching.

Take a look at the diversity statistics from many tech companies, as we did with our 2015 Diversity Report Card, and you'll notice a consistent issue. The tech industry, for all of its meritocratic grandstanding, has a big inclusion problem -- and ma...

It's no surprise the United States pours more money into its military than any other country in the world.

In 2015, the US had a defense budget of about $597 billion, according to the International Institute for Strategic Studies' most recent World Military Balance report, released earlier this year.

In short, that's more than the next 11 countries combined.

The following graphic from the institute helps put things in perspective:

Even China's reported budget of $146 billion — good for second-highest in the world — looks modest next to that of the US.

It's safe to say the incredible funding the Pentagon receives is the driving force behind America's military strength.

Join the conversation about this story »

NOW WATCH: A Navy SEAL reveals what ‘American Sniper’ got wrong

Bagpipes are immensely complicated instrument. Each pipe serves a different purpose, and is carved in intricate, decorative ways. Some of the components are just for decoration, but others are absolutely essential. Here's how they're made.

This footage comes from "How It's Made," which airs Thursdays at 9 p.m. on Science Channel.

Written by Jacob Shamsian and produced by Ben Nigh

Join the conversation about this story »

If you could pitch your product or service to anyone at any level of a company, who would you choose?

You’d have difficulty finding an enterprise salesperson who wouldn’t include the word “chief” in their response to this question. There is no doubt that C-level executives seem like the end-all-be-all for sales pitches; if a rep can get to this level, it’s a done deal. But pitching to the C-suite isn’t always the most effective route when it comes to selling a product or service. As Rob Reed, founder of MomentFeed, said in a recent Forbes article: the most successful executives set the strategy and vision, supply the resources for their teams to execute, and then get out of the way. The issue with targeting these executives when selling your product or service is that if your product disrupts a process from the top-down, there is little to no incentive for that product or service to succeed. As Reed says:

“When the CMO brings a tactical solution to her team that requires execution, the incentives are completely out of alignment. The CMO could think it’s the best thing since product placements, and it very well could be. But her team has very little incentive to make it succeed. Because if it’s successful, the CMO is the hero both internally and externally. No one’s getting a promotion.”

The idea is to build a case from the inside-out, because if your product succeeds, the C-suite executive will be a hero by default. What you need is a champion:

Cham·pi·on: 1. (n) Someone or something that has beaten all other competitors in a competition; 2. (n) A person who enthusiastically supports, defends or fights for a belief or principle.

When your champion is someone outside of the C-suite, you have the opportunity to make that person a hero internally if your product or service succeeds. This not only makes your champion look good, but it also makes the C-level executive look good—everybody wins. The key is to identify someone who reports directly or indirectly to the C-suite and build them up to becoming your champion.

Identifying your champion is only part of the challenge. Depending on the nature of your product, champions can come from many parts of the organization, and if you’re selling to complex organizations it varies greatly from one to another. Below are four keys to finding a champion and ensuring that you succeed in executing the sale together.

• Understand your champion
  The best champion is someone whose day-to-day is most significantly benefited by your product or service. If your product can make a good portion of their job easier, more streamlined or more efficient, the champion will have more incentive to be supportive and involved in the sales process. Once this champion and their role is identified, it’s important to understand who he or she is as a person. In a recent post on LinkedIn Pulse, Jill Rowley refers to this as knowing your buyer and knowing your buyer’s reality. Some questions Jill suggests that you should be able to answer before contacting the buyer:
  • How does the buyer think and communicate?
  • What does he or she value?
  • Do you have any mutual connections, groups or interests?
  • What is his or her industry like? What are the politics like at the company?
  • How complex is their organization? How many decision makers are typically involved in a purchase process?
• Provide the champion with relevant supporting materials
  Once you’ve identified your best champion, you should knock their socks off with not only your knowledge and preparation, but with highly targeted content that will help him or her spearhead your product’s initiative. This content should clearly explain how your product benefits the champion in his or her role specifically, and should include ROI information and other metrics that make a case for your product.
• Help the champion cater to other stakeholders
  In today’s complex buying cycle, it’s likely that there are multiple decision makers involved in the purchase process. In order for the sale to succeed, reps and their champions must address the needs and goals of every stakeholder on the buying side. Sales reps can again do this with highly targeted sales content that explains their product’s benefits in terms of each stakeholder’s role and responsibilities. The goal is to anticipate the questions decision makers from various roles will ask, and be prepared with specific content to answer those questions. This builds your trust with each stakeholder, makes your champion look good, and increases the chances that your sale will make it through to purchase.

Most of the time, a purchase decision ends in the C-suite. It’s beneficial for your sale to begin and grow through a champion at a lower level, because it provides more incentive for the sale to occur and product or service to be properly implemented. The C-level executive is simply looking to set the strategy sign off on the necessary resources, and then let his or her team execute successfully, while a champion has the motivation and incentive to see the project through to the end. Having a deep knowledge of your champion and other decision makers, and coupling this knowledge with highly targeted, contextually relevant content to support each stakeholder, will help turn your champion into an internal hero.

Increasing booth traffic is no longer about branded pens and t-shirts. In the age of experiential marketing and digital media, expectations run high, while attention spans tend to run low. So how do you increase foot traffic to your booth? That takes wise pre-planning, creative thinking, and a direct approach.

Increasing Trade Show Booth Traffic: Pre-Show Tactics

Roughly 70 percent of trade show attendees pre-plan which booths they intend to visit prior to the event. Having a pre-show strategy in place is imperative to increasing booth traffic and your overall success.

1. Direct Mail

Reaching out to pre-existing customers often gets overlooked. Despite the fact that direct mail may seem old-fashioned, you can still use mailers in a creative way to draw an audience to your online content, and eventually to the show.

If you are going to budget for direct mail, try including a QR code that links to some unique online content. Don’t just spin what the customer already has in the mailer. Video testimonials, followed by a call to action (such as filling out a form), have proven to be great methods for engaging potential customers.

2. E-mail Blasts

This is the most common and cost effective means of marketing your appearance at the event and increasing booth traffic. These types of e-mails should generally be written in the second person (i.e. “you” and “your”) and should be as creative as possible. Embedding videos and infographics is one way to catch a prospect’s eye.

3. Appointments

Setting an appointment is the most interactive way of pre-show marketing there is. Having your sales team meet with prospects is highly effective. A link to make an appointment with a salesperson can be sent out in an e-mail blast as well.

4. Social Media

This type of pre-show marketing is essential, as trade shows tend to advertise heavily on social media platforms like Twitter and Facebook. Most events will have a Twitter hashtag specifically created for the show that you can attach any message to about your booth. Tweet and post about your product, demo schedules, and freebies, or simply use it to do a little pre-event networking.

Increasing Trade Show Booth Traffic: During the Event

Once you are established at the show, there are several ways to increase the traffic to your booth.

1. Presentation

As booths get more and more creative, the standard type of presentation must be tossed aside. The following are a few key concepts to jazz up your booth and increase traffic.

• Attire: Wear bright colors or a funky shirt to stand out. Step outside the box a little, and you’ll be sure to stand out.
• Experiential Marketing: Customers want an experience these days, and creating one in your booth is the best way to get your brand out there. People are more inclined to remember an experience over a dry sales pitch. This can include concepts like a photo booth, virtual reality experience, or interactive kiosk.
• Be positive: Pay attention to everyone, whether it is a prospect, pre-existing customer, or an industry leader. If you look like you are having fun with the crowd, people will be attracted to your energy.
• Planned Demonstration: This goes along with the concept of experiential marketing. Don’t “tell” but rather “show” what your product and business model is all about. Keep it short, and have a posted presentation schedule so people can attend throughout the event.
• Set-up: Don’t box in your booth with a table right out front. The trend at trade shows right now is an open and comfortable floor plan. Some companies will even offer seating areas that encourage people to stay a little longer.

2. Signage

Good booth signage does not have to be fancy, but it has to be descriptive. Prospects should be able to look at your booth and know exactly what you do without having to ask. Use them to qualify attendees as well––ensuring that only interested parties approach your team.

The sign should not only display your company name, but it should also give people a sense of what you do. Although many people think subtlety draws attendees in, it could end up attracting the wrong crowd and wasting your time.

3. Incentives

Incentives are perhaps one of the most important aspects to creating booth traffic. You should be blasting social media with any incentives you plan to offer at your booth. Don’t just tweet, “come visit us at booth 123.” Tell people why they should.

Incentives can range from giveaways to free wi-fi in your booth. Food has always been a big hit as well. Here are some ideas:

• Swag: Consider thinking outside of the box when it comes to company branded freebies. T-shirts are always popular, but they can actually do better when they are made in child and pet sizes. People will often take promotional merchandise with the excuse it is for someone else. Rather than the normal key chain or pen, USB charging adapters or flash drives have been known to be very popular and heavily utilized during trade shows.
• Charging Station: This is one of the most popular concepts at trade shows right now, and is sure to increase booth traffic. Take advantage of people charging their mobile devices by offering seating, videos, and signage they can experience while they wait.
• Complimentary Wi-Fi: This is yet another attractive booth feature that people are considering. A MiFi is a device that can be connected to a mobile phone carrier and provide internet access for up to 10 separate devices. You can also require people to register on a landing page prior to signing in.

Limited-time offers, special show pricing, contests, and giveaways can also be big booth draws.

Overall, increasing your booth traffic not only takes focused pre-planning but thinking outside of the box. Whichever approach you choose, just remember that if you stand out, stay positive, and practice forward-thinking, your booth will be the hit of the show!

First, digital advancements gave us speed of deliverability. Now, they give us interactivity. Combine that with a contentious election year, and we’ve got voting booth selfies on our hands.

Digital disruption of the election news cycle has reached a fever pitch. So when Facebook launched Facebook Reactions — the more nuanced “Love,” “Haha,” “Wow,” “Sad,” and “Angry” interactions, in addition to the traditional “Like” — we couldn’t help but wonder: How does the public react to the 2016 presidential candidates online? Who’s the most “love-able” candidate? The most laughable? The most anger-inducing? I put the TrackMaven marketing analytics platform to work to find out.

Which Presidential Candidates Makes Us Laugh? Cry? Four Key Takeaways from the Beyond Like-Ability Report:

1. Donald Trump generated more reactions to his last 100 Facebook posts than the remaining four candidates COMBINED.

The candidates challenging the status quo are the ones spurring the greatest overall reaction from Facebook audiences. Trump is by far the most engaging candidate. Across his past 100 posts, Trump racked up a whopping 6.8 million reactions (including 6.5 million likes). That’s more than double the number of interactions spurred by Bernie Sanders, who’s in second place with 3.3 million total reactions (including 2.9 million likes) across his past 100 posts.

In fact, Trump has drummed up more reactions to his last 100 Facebook posts than Clinton, Sanders, Cruz, and Kasich combined.

2. Ted Cruz sparks more “HaHa”(18.59%) and “Sad” (5%) reactions than any other candidate.

No election year is without comedic value. Among the remaining candidates, Ted Cruz sparks the most “HaHa” reactions on Facebook (18.59 percent). Whether people are laughing at him or with him remains undetermined.

Sometimes we have to laugh to keep from crying — especially in politics. Could that be the case with Cruz’s Facebook content? The senator from Texas also leads the presidential pack with the most “Sad” reactions, accounting for 4.64 percent of his total Facebook reactions. Sanders is second in sadness, with 2.95 percent sad reactions.

3. The data confirms our suspicions: Donald Trump is the most anger and awe-inducing candidate on Facebook.

It should come as no surprise that “The Donald” is both the most anger and awe-inducing candidate. Party lines could play a part. Republican frontrunners Trump (17.90 percent) and Cruz (12.82 percent) are the only candidates for whom anger accounts for a double-digit percentage of their Facebook reactions. How much of that is anti-establishment anger aimed at the Republican Party?

4. Love is the dominant reaction to the presidential candidates on Facebook.

Given the divisive timbre of this election year, it may come as a surprise to find that love is the dominant reaction to the presidential candidates on Facebook. Keep in mind, however, that each campaign communicates directly to core fans through Facebook pages. In other words, the candidates are preaching to a self-selecting choir.

While love is the primary reaction to each candidate on Facebook, there can only be one winner. Bernie Sanders elicits the most love on Facebook; love accounts for 87 percent of reactions to his Facebook content.

See the results in the complete report, Beyond Like-ability: Facebook Reactions and the Presidential Election:

SEO has hit the fan, man. Hmm. What?

I mean, if you think you have foolproof tactics up your sleeve and magic linking techniques in your back pocket for optimizing your content, I’m sorry to inform you that your sleeve and pocket are see-through.

In 2016, you can’t hide your tricks. The search gods see all. And they don’t look kindly on your 2010-era SEO.

---

The search gods see all and they don’t look kindly on your 2010-era #SEO says @FeldmanCreative
Click To Tweet

---

Google and the other search engines you care about are now good at sniffing out evidence that shows readers get value from your pages.

Focus on 3 tactics that work

I learned most of what I know about optimizing web content for search from (1) listening to my mentor and friend Andy Crestodina of Orbit Media, and (2) practicing his lessons.

With Andy’s permission, I’ve revisited his remarkably helpful post, Web Content Checklist: 21 Ways to Publish Better Content, and produced an infographic based on it.

As you’re about to see, Andy delivers 21 tips to cover the three ways you can optimize your content and crank your rank.

1. Indicate the relevance of your article to the search bots.
2. Tap human psychology to increase clicks, reads, and social shares.
3. Feature compelling media to improve the quality of your content.

---

3 ways to optimize #content: Relevance, tap human psychology, & feature compelling media says @Crestodina
Click To Tweet

---

With a huge thank you to Andy, a 2016 Content Marketing World keynote speaker, and my partner in design, Visme, I present the 21 Point SEO Blog Post Checklist: Cranking Your Ranking.

Conclusion

As you can see, the first five tips focus on the more technical (traditional) tactics around SEO. Six years ago, that list would have been longer, referencing keyword frequency and much more. Today, though, search engines are smarter – they look for content that truly fulfills what searchers are looking for. That’s why it is equally, if not more important, to ensure that you focus on the 16 other tips that relate to content quality.

---

Search engines look for #content that truly fulfills what searchers are looking for says @FeldmanCreative #SEO
Click To Tweet

---

Make plans today to hear the originator of the 21-point checklist, Andy Crestodina, and other insightful experts at Content Marketing World 2016 this September. Use code BLOG100 to save $100.

Cover image by Joseph Kalinowski/Content Marketing Institute

The post The Blog Post Checklist for Cranking Your Search Ranking appeared first on Content Marketing Institute.

Your customers want to know what they can do after reading your content, and that’s where a call to action comes into play.

A call to action explains exactly what they can do. It answers the most natural question they might have: “What’s next?” in a tidy and persuasive manner.

Good web copy should be a conversation between you and the reader. They have plenty of ways they can, and do respond. A call to action invites them to do this in the ways you were looking for.

Four Tips for Writing a Call to Action that Works:

Show the need – Before you have a chance at writing an effective call to action, your reader needs to be sold that your product or service really works. You have to focus on the benefits, and how you can help your readers improve their lives. If the groundwork is not there, it will be tough to compel people to take action. This is a main tenant in any B2b or B2c writing.

Perfect the language – This is the time to write decisively. Urgent language shows your readers it’s time to act.

• Call now
• Buy
• Register
• Subscribe
• Download

These are direct words that focus your reader in on a specific action. It’s not enough you tell people about your great product or service. Your web copy is the place to make them take action, and the language you choose plays a key part in that.

Keep your readers focused – Too many calls to action will confuse your reader. It’s akin to going to the grocery store, walking down the cereal aisle, and being overwhelmed by the dozens of choices in front of you. Less choices means less frustration on behalf of the customer.

Sweeten the pot – People value their email. They don’t want to be consistently bombarded with meaningless messages, so they are naturally a little defensive about who they give it out to. And believe me, nearly every business is asking for it. So how do you stand out? Offer them something valuable for free. An eBook, white paper, or a compilation of your best blog posts might all be ways to grab a little attention in your call to action by sweetening the pot.

Lastly…

A call to action doesn’t necessarily have to be about the sale. On your blog for example, there are times when it just shouldn’t be. Instead, you can ask for comments, shares, newsletter registrations, or downloads. These are all viable ways to get your reader to engage, and sometimes that is the main goal. A sales letter by contrast, will probably end with a more aggressive call to action.

Make sure you’re writing a call to action your readers will act on. You can test different calls to action from time to time, and see what works best for you. Do you have questions on perfecting a call to action to make your web copy more efficient?

When Intel wanted to better connect with Millennials, the “smart technology” company took to the slopes, outfitting pro snowboarders at the X-Games with its microprocessor Curie to broadcast height, speed, and other information in real-time for fans and journalists. This was one of several content initiatives by the brand, which included a microsite dedicated to artists, musicians and trendsetters using Intel.

Journalism isn’t what it used to be. Increasingly, brands are producing content that is just as relevant, credible, and newsworthy as traditional sources — and the results have been lucrative.

A recent story by Top Rank Blog reported on the ROI for 11 B2B content marketing campaigns. It revealed that Demand Base, a B2B marketing technology company, gained $1 million in new business from a webinar series; Xerox also generated an astounding $1.3 billion in sales from a magazine project through Forbes. The common thread among all of these projects? The content was relevant, newsworthy, and audience-driven.

So how do you know if your own content is compelling?

The American Press Institute frames it this way: “A good story is about something the audience decides is interesting or important. A great story often does both by using storytelling to make important news interesting. It does more than inform or amplify. It adds value to the topic.”

Adding value when you’re a brand journalist means paying attention to your audience. Your readers should walk away from an article thinking, “Wow, I didn’t know that.” And more importantly — “I can really use that.”

Here are 4 ways to think like a journalist for better brand content.

1. Pick up the Phone

Conducting interviews is a core part of a journalist’s job, and first-hand research goes a long way toward crafting a credible story. The benefits are actually two-fold when you’re a brand. Not only do you gain key insights and original quotes from an industry leader, which can bolster your credibility and the “news” value of your content, but you also incentivize these industry leaders to promote your content once published, introducing you to a whole new audience complete with an endorsement from a trusted source.

So how do you find great interview subjects (and then land an interview)? Well, just like a journalist, the first step is to develop your story idea. Ask yourself what new insights you hope to provide, or what problem you want to solve for your audience. A marketing software company marketing, for example, might interview a respected CMO about her predictions for trends in the next year, or what tools she finds indispensable. An advertising company might interview an expert Web developer on emerging tools or platforms that can benefit every marketer.

General Electric’s GE Reports is a great example of applying a newsroom mentality to brand journalism.

This interview with Eric Ries, entrepreneur and author of The Lean Startup, has little to do with how GE’s customers might actually interact with the company or use its services. But that isn’t GE’s goal. With roughly 55,000 unique monthly visitors, GE is staying top-of-mind among businesses that view it as an industry leader — all through the news it creates.

2. Write By the Numbers (and Fact Check, Fact Check, Fact Check)

Another crucial difference between brand journalism and basic blog posts is the use of statistics and verified research to back up the news you report. Take the time to do your research, and be specific. Starting a sentence with: “According to a Pew Research Center study completed in 2014” is far more effective than “Research shows….”

Here are a few tips for using stats in your own content marketing:

Always cite the original source (linking to it is OK).

Often times, compelling statistics are quoted and re-quoted in several publications. It might be easiest just to cite the blog where you found it (what’s the difference, right?), but there are two problems with this:

1. You’re not giving credit where it’s due.
2. In something of a game of digital telephone, your stat might be misrepresented by the time it reaches you.

Here’s an example:

A number of B2B “listicles,” including this one posted by Writtent.com, have claimed that “81% of U.S. online consumers trust information and advice from blogs,” citing the popular women’s website BlogHer.com as the source.

The original stat, however, more accurately conveyed that 81% of women who read blogs trust them compared to other social media channels.

Not quite the same thing.

This is why it’s best find the source material (even if it takes a little longer) and double-check the validity of your stats.

Make sure you’re using statistics in a way that gives readers the right picture.

Any time you use stats, make sure they tell an accurate story. Mentioning that sales doubled thanks to a particular initiative might be perfectly true — but if you add that this growth was from 2 customers to 4, that tells a completely different story. This is an extreme example, but for every B2B marketer feeling a little red-faced at reading that, remember this: you hope that your readers will eventually become customers. When they do, if they find that your content is misleading, they’ll wonder what else about your business might be.

3. Show, Don’t Tell

Modern journalism is now as much about compelling visuals as it is about the written word. Many news outlets are taking advantage of infographics, microsites, interactive graphics, video, and even virtual reality (notably pioneered by The New York Times) to tell stories.

Infographics like this one created by the Wall Street Journal are especially effective for helping readers process information — and thanks to a number of new tools, marketers no longer necessarily need an in-house designer.

When creating B2B content, think about not only what information you want readers to process, but what will inspire them to act. This will dictate the best medium for your story.

4. Become a Habitual Reader

The adage that “the best writers are avid readers” is as true for brand journalism as it was in your high school English class. To improve the quality of your content — and to better understand what will make it “newsworthy” — one of the easiest things you can do is simply consume industry news. Subscribe to periodicals and relevant publications, follow major news outlets, and keep an eye on what other brands are producing.

Feel crunched for time? Try the “scan” method. You don’t need to “deep read” every article. Set a goal of covering important headlines, and pick one or two articles each day to read through to the end. Your goal is to remain aware of activity in your industry and to find inspiration for your own content. Keep in mind that the more you read now, the less time you’ll have to spend researching your next article!

Final Thoughts

Creating newsworthy content is hard — there’s no getting around that. But as many B2B marketers are proving, it’s worth the effort. You can transform your own content even if you have a small staff by reaching out to experts, doing your research, and incorporating dynamic storytelling elements.

What makes a venture capital investment successful? Some of the most interesting data on this question comes from an analysis published last year by the venture capital firm First Round Capital. The firm’s unique data set comprises information on over 300 companies and nearly 600 founders, including founder characteristics such as age, gender, education, firm location, and prior work and startup experience. The study found several correlates with success — some reassuring, some surprising.

First, it found that high-performing investments tend to have at least one female founder. This isn’t surprising, given other research about the performance of diverse teams; it’s a timely reminder of the importance of increasing female entrepreneurship and of the opportunity that VCs may be missing by continuing to disproportionately fund white men. The data also shows that younger founders and founders with prestigious educational backgrounds or prior experience in large technology companies tend to be more successful. There’s evidence that startup success is somewhat geographically diverse, not limited to Silicon Valley. Good investments are increasingly coming from burgeoning technology centers in Texas and North Carolina.

Of course, some caveats are in order. Correlation isn’t causation: The fact that successful investments have something in common could be a sign of a causal relationship, or it could reflect the importance of some hidden variable. Venture capital is largely an exercise in intuition and pattern matching. This sort of data doesn’t substitute for judgment, but to the extent that it can help investors identify things that track with success, data can inform those judgments. I talked to First Round about its research, combining those insights with my experience as a researcher of technology and entrepreneurship to consider what the findings could mean for entrepreneurship.

Female-founded startups outperformed all-male teams. Gender in entrepreneurship has recently garnered more and well-deserved attention. Globally, twice as many men become entrepreneurs, but the number of women becoming entrepreneurs is increasing rapidly. Although female-founded companies represent a greater percentage of First Round’s investments than the national average — startups with at least one female cofounder account for approximately 18% of new VC-backed new ventures in the U.S. — they were still the minority of investments.

However, in First Round’s data, investments in companies with at least one female founder meaningfully outperformed investments in all-male teams. In fact, companies with a female founder performed 63% better than investments with all-male founding teams. (For this analysis, performance refers to the change in market valuation between the initial First Round investment and the end of 2014.) Three of First Round’s top 10 investments of all time, based on value created for investors, had at least one female founder, far higher than the percentage of female tech founders in the data set. Simply stated, women are great technology entrepreneurs, and more of them need to be funded.

Younger founding teams outperformed older ones. The research also looked at founder age, education, and experience. The average age of an entrepreneur is approximately 40, and there is reason to think that entrepreneurs improve with age. But what about Facebook, Apple, Google, and Microsoft? The average founder age for those companies was approximately 23. A good argument can be made that technology favors the young. First Round’s investment portfolio gives credence to this argument. Founding teams with an average age of under 25 (when First Round invested) performed nearly 30% above the average investment. And while the average age of all First Round–backed founders is 34.5, the average age for the top 10 investments was 31.9. In the realm of technology, younger entrepreneurs do seem to be a key factor for success.

Founders from top schools performed better. Some prominent entrepreneurs and investors, such as Peter Thiel, question of the value of higher education in the realm of entrepreneurship. Moreover, many notable founders, including Bill Gates and Mark Zuckerberg, dropped out of college. First Round looked at the impact of alma mater on company performance. Teams with at least one founder who went to an elite school (defined by First Round as Ivy League, Stanford, or MIT) tended to perform better.

In First Round’s portfolio, 38% of the companies had one founder that went to one of those schools; the study found that those companies performed about 220% better than other teams. While costly and difficult to enter, a top education can be an ingredient for startup success. The challenge is convincing all those talented individuals seeking finance and consulting positions to take the leap into starting a new venture.

Experience at top tech companies predicts success as a founder. Before jumping into the startup fray, newly minted graduates should consider a stint at a marquee technology company. First Round found that teams with at least one founder coming out of Amazon, Apple, Facebook, Google, Microsoft, or Twitter performed 160% better than other companies. Founding teams with experience at any of those tech companies also landed pre-money valuations nearly 50% larger than their peers. That’s a signal that investors consider these individuals to have already been “pre-screened,” as it’s very difficult to get a job at those companies. (Interestingly, while going to an elite school correlated with higher financial returns, it did not correlate with a higher pre-money valuation, perhaps suggesting that investors do not view education as quite so effective a pre-screening measure.)

The Amazons of the world expect quite a lot of their employees, from technical ability to time spent at the office. Employees there learn hard skills, such as project management, but also softer skills, such as politics and networking. Once honed, these skills can be vital to effectively navigating the chaotic roller-coaster ride of early-stage startups.

Not all top startups come from Silicon Valley. Where do the best new ventures form? Founding location did not seem to make a dramatic difference in performance in our data set. First Round companies started outside New York City and the San Francisco Bay Area performed just as well as those founded in traditional new-venture hubs. Twenty-five percent of the investments in the data set were outside these cities and, on average, performed slightly better than the rest. This is good news for all the younger technology startup hubs propagating across the U.S., from Austin, Texas, to Raleigh, North Carolina.

It also coincides with the fact that finding good investments is becoming easier. Angels and VCs have historically been referred to potential investments through their own networks, but this is changing. First Round has been alerted to high-potential investments from a wide variety of sources, including Twitter and in-person pitch gatherings such as ”Demo Days.” These nontraditional sources yielded companies that outperformed referred companies by 58.4%. And founders that came directly to First Round with their ideas did about 23% better.

Seed investing has come of age, and it’s a leading source of funding for the next generation of disruptive technologies and services. In over 300 investments, we have observed some patterns: The importance of female entrepreneurs in a traditionally male-dominated industry and the benefits of a good education and pre-startup experience are clear. The leveling of the geographic playing field gives credence to the development of startup-friendly areas in cities nationwide. And while fit, gut feel, and due diligence will always be critical, this study points to the value of data in making equity capital decisions. Successful companies and their portfolios would be well served to understand their investments more deeply through longitudinal data collection and analysis. Smart companies will use this to create competitive advantage for themselves and for the startups they invest in.

Acknowledgements: Thank you to First Round Capital for their assistance in developing this article.

Machine-reengineering is a way to automate business processes using machine learning. Although machine-reengineering is new, companies are already seeing striking results with it, particularly in boosts to speed and efficiency. Studying 168 early adopters, we’ve seen speed improvements of two times or more for most business processes — and some organizations are reporting speed improvements of 10 times or more.

How do companies do it? Our study found that organizations are using machine-reengineering to establish new forms of human-machine collaboration that break through the bottlenecks of complex digital processes. In some cases, such as interpreting images or writing reports, machine-reengineering directly helps workers perform digital tasks. In other cases, machine-reengineering helps people uncover insights that are buried in a mountain of data. Here are some examples of how companies are using the speed and smarts enabled by machine-reengineered processes.

Scanning Images, Voice and Text

As companies implement digital strategies, they introduce new labor-intensive tasks to sort through all the data they’re collecting. This data is highly unstructured and produced in a variety of formats at an ever-larger scale, which requires people to arduously scan through it for specific items to complete a single process step. Human-machine collaboration focused on digital-data scanning can accelerate at least three kinds of routine digital tasks.

Previewing video. Clarifai, based in New York City, uses machine learning to find people, objects, or scenes in videos in far less time than a person can. In one demonstration, a 3.5-minute clip was analyzed in just 10 seconds. The technology can pick out kinds of people — mountain climbers, for instance — to help advertisers more efficiently match ads to the videos. It can also be used to help editors and curators find new ways to organize video collections and edit footage. This kind of auto–editing assistant can dramatically change the day-to-day tasks of workers in media, advertising, and film.

Interpreting images. MetaMind, in Silicon Valley, offers a service called HealthMind, which uses computer vision to analyze medical scans of brains, eyes, and lungs to find tumors or lesions. HealthMind relies on deep-learning techniques for natural language processing, computer vision, and database prediction algorithms. The upshot of HealthMind is that doctors spend less time interpreting images and more time consulting with their patients.

Documenting and data entry. Machines can learn to perform time-intensive documentation and data entry tasks, letting knowledge workers spend more time on higher-value problem-solving tasks. The London-based startup Arria, for instance, helps its customers automatically generate reports in industries ranging from health care to finance to oil and gas. The company’s natural language processing technology learns how to write reports by scanning texts and determining relationships between concepts. Then it scours incoming data to build new reports. Arria has found that the process changes can increase knowledge workers’ productivity by 25%. Engineers, for example, have saved up to 40 hours of reporting task time each month.

Uncovering Buried Insights

Increasing the amount of data in a workflow can increase the amount of time needed for insight and action. We’ve seen this in stock trading, marketing, and manufacturing, where more data streams make it harder to find information that is urgent or meaningful. With machines as sidekicks, though, people can more quickly find valuable insights buried in big data. Our research found companies demonstrate this in at least four types of analytical tasks.

Market monitoring. Dataminr, based in New York City, uses a variety of indicators to identify tweets containing relevant information for stock traders. By monitoring the   propagation of information throughout the network, Dataminr evaluates relevance and urgency. An alert sent to a trader that provides even a three-minute advantage can translate into significant profit. News services are using Dataminr to find breaking news, which lets reporters cover stories faster.

Predictive modeling. SailThru, also out of New York City, helps marketers deploy more effective promotional emails by analyzing email and web data to build customer profiles. SailThru’s system learns customers’ interests (biking versus rock climbing, for instance) and purchasing behaviors, and then predicts which individuals will make which purchases and when, delivering the right message when it’s most effective. The Clymb, a SailThru customer that sells outdoor gear, saw a 12% increase in email revenue and an 8% increase in total email purchases within 90 days of turning on SailThru’s personalization. After combining personalization with predictions, The Clymb saw a 175% increase in revenue per thousand emails sent, as well as a 72% reduction in churn.

Root cause analysis. Sight Machine, a manufacturing analytics company based in San Francisco and Livonia, Michigan, helps its customers solve complex quality control issues. One problem that Sight Machine’s customers face is interpreting alerts: A quality problem or incident can trigger hundreds of alert codes from potentially thousands of different kinds of sensors along an assembly line. Sight Machine’s software uses machine learning to interpret the patterns of these alerts, helping engineers to quickly pinpoint the few alerts that represent the root cause of the problem, separating them from the ripple effect alerts.

Predictive maintenance. Machine learning can also aid human decision making by discovering meaningful patterns in factory data that people would otherwise be unable to find. Consider Sight Machine again: By analyzing data for patterns that occur before trouble hits, the company’s systems help manufacturing engineers anticipate and prevent problems. For one client deploying a new robotic manufacturing line, Sight Machine was able to reduce downtime by 50% and increase performance by 25% within one month — far better than the 1%–2% performance increases typical of the client’s industry.

It’s still early days for machine-reengineering, so we expect our research to uncover many more new types of machine sidekicks. But it’s already clear that machine-reengineering has the power to help manage the data deluge — and resulting bottlenecks — that modern organizations face. Workers can become more efficient and effective, which improves workflows as well as the bottom line. If data is the path forward, machine-reengineering is paving the way.

It’s no secret that the benefits of becoming an entrepreneur are attractive to the naked eye. Owning a business can provide you with a life of autonomy and financial abundance.

The inception of the internet has provided small business owners with ample opportunity, bridging the gap between traditional media sources and the consumer. Nowadays, you don’t have to seek the approval of a Hollywood executive to effectively build your brand.

Not too long ago, those who aspired to become “entrepreneurs” were often misunderstood. It simply wasn’t practical to go to school and start your own business. If you chose the entrepreneurial path, you were likely met with massive amounts of resistance.

So what has changed over the years?

Not much. Becoming an entrepreneur will require you to deviate from the conventional path in society. You will be met with many obstacles along the way. Yet the mere vision – whether it’s derived from a primal, emotional, or convoluted state – is usually an indication that you can do it.

But no successful entrepreneur relies solely on “passion.” You have to cultivate a core set of skills to supplement your vision.

What specific skills do you need to be a successful entrepreneur? While every entrepreneur is unique in his or her approach, I’ll break down 5 fundamental skill-sets that every entrepreneur should acquire.

1 – The Ability To Endure Failure and Be Persistent

If you’re an entrepreneur, failure will be an inevitable part of your journey; instead of circumventing it, learn to embrace the downward rolls as part of the process.

The entrepreneurial mindset isn’t common in most societies. Being an entrepreneur will require you to seek abundance rather than security. You won’t be rewarded with a bi-weekly paycheck for simply showing up to work. You’ll need to take calculated risks and constantly expand your comfort zone.

There is no overnight success in the world of business. In fact, some of the most prominent entrepreneurs and innovators are often the ones who have failed the most.

You also need to take risks and be persistent in finding new ways to be successful. For example, when learning how to get better conversion rates from customers online, I had to find clever (some might use the term ‘forceful’) ways to encourage new subscribers to provide information on why they were visiting my website. Not everyone is comfortable with doing the research, but being able to better cater to the majority of my subscribers definitely helped me grow a successful eCommerce business.

Failure will produce stress, and you must be prepared and find ways to deal with the chemical warzone that will go on in your brain. One strategy is choosing a hobby that will provide you with a physical outlet; why not take up boxing, Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu, yoga, or hiking?

Most people perceive failure as the opposite of success. Entrepreneurs understand that failure is a prerequisite for success, and learn how to process short-term failures so that they can better plan for long-term successes.

2 – The Discipline To Be Productive

We all have 24 hours in a day, but the problem that most entrepreneurs face is “self management” not “time management.” Being productive is simple, but not necessarily easy.

The first step is to leverage the faculty of focus. In a faced-paced, media-ridden world, it’s very easy to get distracted. Focusing on one task for an extended period of time will help optimize your creativity and productivity.

Every time you get distracted, it can take up to 20 minutes for you recapture your focus. Make a concerted effort to eliminate all time wasting habits. Turn off your phone and stop checking your email. If that doesn’t work, then download an app such as Freedom that restricts internet access to your computer.

If you focus for just 1 to 2 hours at a time (stretch breaks are okay and encouraged), you’ll often accomplish more than you would in an entire day. Your brain is just like any other muscle in the body; it can be gradually trained to concentrate on a specific task.

Once you cultivate the ability to focus, you need to create a regimen for your business. Your motivation and awareness levels are generally at peak levels in the morning. Therefore, most people will do best working on important projects during that time. Following is a bit of a strategy for how to plan the day’s tasks.

The “Productivity Pyramid”

Identify the tasks that have the highest priority in your business; these are generally the activities that generate the most revenue for your bottom line. Examples might include:

• Product creation
• Marketing sequences
• Joint affiliate promotions

As the day continues to progress, your motivation and self-awareness levels gradually decrease. Afternoons may be an ideal time to focus on important but more automatic tasks in your business. These are typically activities with a lower-attached dollar value, such as:

• Customer service
• Replying to emails
• Sorting your mail

Obviously, it would be optimal to delegate the administrative work in your business. If you’re a “solo-preneur”, that may not be a viable option in the beginning.

Create a regimen that you can follow over the long-term. This will allow you to cultivate rituals that will help pay major dividends to your business. Focus on the highest value tasks in the morning, and remove any potential distractions.

Productivity isn’t about how many hours you work. It’s about maximizing the output of each hour with optimal focus.

3 – Build a Digital Presence

Social media continues to evolve, but though contexts have changed human behavior has stayed the same. A few years back, business owners would gather at cocktail parties to network and exchange ideas. Today, social media is the new source of that networking.

You wouldn’t go to a cocktail party and sell a potential prospect after a handshake, would you? Many marketers are using social media as an immediate “pitching platform”, but this skewing for personal gain may be doing more harm than good for a business.

It’s paramount that business owners (or managers) understand the psychology behind social media. Instead of using these platforms to overtly sell your products, you should be listening to your fans.

In all likelihood, your social media followers aren’t ready to take the next step in your marketing sequence. Social media should be used as a medium to instill trust. The content you create should correlate benefits and goals in which your audience is interested in accomplishing.

How do you produce content that converts your fans into prospects and potential customers?

You first listen, and then engage.

Keep in mind that social media is transparent. If you try and automate your content, your fans will see right through it. Your audience is comprised of humans that are interested in your core message, so treat them as such.

Contrary to popular belief, you are the one that needs to learn about them. Inquire about the goals, fears, and frustrations of your fans. Take the time to respond to their messages and comments. You might not be able to measure the tangible ROI of your efforts right away, but the personal attention and engagement will be well worth it in the long-term.

Every social media website presents a different environment and focus. Do your research and figure out which platforms are most conducive to your niche. Create a social media strategy that will hold you accountable to posting and interacting each week. Always lead with value and be personable. Remember, you’re at a cocktail party, not a computer.

4 – Learn Copywriting

Selling is arguably the most important skill-set that you can learn. Whether you’re doing it face to face, over the phone, or on the web, the ability (and fearlessness) to sell is a critical entrepreneurial success factor.

Developing copywriting skills goes hand-in-hand with selling. Copywriting is essentially the language that convinces your prospects to take action. In order to write persuasive copy, you need to understand the emotional points that can trigger a prospect to buy.

Knowing these points will require you to know your audience’s core desires and needs. As you continue to engage on social media, you’ll understand your customers at a much deeper level.

Strong copywriting will increase the conversions of your landing pages, sales pages, and email subject lines.

Below are 5 tips that you can use to write compelling copy that converts:

1. Write big, bold headlines that are benefit driven
2. Use testimonials to showcase social proof
3. Use bullet points that serve as mini-headlines to describe the different features of your products
4. Use explicit calls to action
5. Focus on the audience’s needs, not your accomplishments

A good copywriter is someone who understands his or her audience. As you continue to do market research and encounter both successes and failures, your writing will become stronger and your refined message more appealing to your customers.

5 – The Ability To Communicate

You don’t have to be a keynote speaker to be able to communicate effectively, but communicating with all walks of people is another key skill for any entrepreneur.

Below are 3 tips that you can use to get your voice heard:

1. Confidence. It doesn’t matter if you have an accent or a stuttering problem – if you speak with confidence, your message will resonate with people.
2. Succinct. This ultimately comes down to preparation. Take the time to plan what you are going to say, and then say it. Avoid using excessive conversation that you didn’t plan on saying (unless absolutely necessary).
3. Articulate. Simply put, think before you speak. Slower is okay, if you’re taking the time to choose words that better convey what you really want to say.

Whether you’re writing or speaking, you need to craft your message so people will listen. The art of communication is one of the most integral aspects of building a brand.

Closing Thoughts

If you want to become an entrepreneur, you need to be comfortable with being uncomfortable, which starts with possessing the right mindset.

The above 5 proven skills will help you build your business and better face both the challenges and triumphs that only an entrepreneur can experience.

Social media is an ever growing tool for marketers. Social platforms are creating more and more tools to help us get our brands message out to as many people as possible.

1. Imagery – Using quality visuals will greatly increase the chance of getting higher levels of engagement.
2. Hashtagging – Instagram and Twitter discovery is highly connected to the use of hashtags. Use relevant hashtags to increase the chance of your company being discovered.
3. Many to Many Conversations – Using social media to start the conversation surrounding your brand is one of the most beneficial parts of a social strategy. You need to engage the audience and not just be reactive.
4. Sleazy Sales Tactics – Social media was not built to sell things. However it can if you do it right! You should never try to go for the hard sale.
5. Timing Your Posts – There are certain times of day when your audience is most active. To increase the chance of your posts being seen you should utilize the analytics available and post during peak hours.
6. Analytics – Utilizing all aspects of analytics will help you understand the behaviors of your audience, this in turn will help determine how to strategize.
7. Paid Advertising – Social advertisements are HUGE! They are in my opinion one of the most effective ways of advertising your company. The low cost and high return are the reason I have that opinion.
8. Make Special Offers – You need to create value for someone to follow you so by making special offers to your social following the consumer feels they are gaining by liking your page.
9. Patience – Like any marketing strategy results take time. You need to stay consistent and have patience with the process.
10. Be Real – Social followers love authenticity, they don’t want to follow overly corporate brands who make stuffy uptight posts all the time. Social media can humanize your brand very effectively if done correctly.
11. Contests – People love free stuff. You should create contests to give your fans another form of value.
12. Gamification – These type of contests perform even better. Like a hidden easter egg on your website where the user clicks and enters their information to win a prize. It is lead generation, website conversion and appealing for the chance to win!

There are literally hundreds of tips I could give out to increase the chance of success on social. These are just a few I wrote down to try and help you do better. If social marketing is too hard, time consuming or complicated give Simply Social Group a call. We help brands like yours build their social strategies with your goals in mind.

1. The Cost of Business: Public companies are expensive to run; they must carefully comply with the myriad of board responsibilities and the rules established to protect investors. The Securities & Exchange Commission (SEC) audits conformity and adherence to other strict regulations. Such complex structure requires more goods and support staff to function best. Such a setting makes for greater sales potential for your company’s products and services.
   • While accounting costs may be high, public companies have the advantage over private companies in potential larger amounts of capital through access to selling stock or corporate bonds. Additionally, investors tend to be more trusting in a public company because of perceived reduced risk. Potential cash reserves deserve investigation.

2. Shareholders: Public companies can be slow in decision making due to their need for shareholder approval in operational and growth decisions. Most private companies are not limited in this way, meaning you will likely work out a final decision with a smaller group of decision makers and possibly in a more rapid, straightforward way. Depending on the size of the public company and the impact your product or service will have on a company, there can be more hurdles to jump through if shareholders are involved. Using the information available online, including financials, get comfortable with the company’s essence and momentum and to whom you should be selling.

3. Buy One Share of Stock in Your Target Public Company: As a “Shareholder,” and not just another annoying sales representative, you can increase your odds of getting through to the decision makers–and separate yourself from the “pack.”
   • Coco Channel noted, “You have to be different to be remembered.” After I purchase my share, my first call is to the Office of Investor Relations. I ask for the manager of the department and introduce myself as a “Shareholder” who has a financial interest in the overall profitability and success of the business. I ask this same manager to provide to me the names of the individuals that would be involved in the decision-making process for my product/service. I have over a 93% success rate obtaining the decision-makers information and getting a successful “Warm” phone introduction. Food for thought!

4. Short Term vs. Long Term Goals: Public companies issue quarterly statements to their shareholders and must often disclose more financial information than private companies do. A private company often has the advantage of looking more at long-term goals when making decisions. Public companies live the day to day life of a business in order to please shareholders and continue to attract investors. Selling to a public company? You need to solve sale problems in a different way than you would for a private company. Promote the immediate positive impact your product or service will have when chosen.

5. Savvy Management: Public companies attract a stronger, more experienced breed of senior management, which means in-depth research of the company’s business issues is critical. Quality leads. The sales rep prepared with solid knowledge of how their sales product/service solution is the best value, will be at an advantage. The sales individual is going to have to do their homework to make a sale with a public company.

6. Access to Information: Always research potential prospects in the public company domain, so you are not wasting your time on a poorly run, beleaguered, and financially strapped organization with less growth potential and little access to capital. Peruse the company’s website for financial data, rule out missed earnings targets, or SEC concerns. A sudden drop in company stock price may warn of short-term credit problems; review rating agency reports, stock analysis, and press reports. If there are volumes of bad news, you are wise to find another PROSPECT. Remember, a prospect is defined as a company that has NEED, MONEY, AUTHORITY, & DESIRE. All others are just SUSPECTS and are a WASTE OF TIME!

Customer loyalty programs began in the late 1700s, when American retailers started giving repeat customers copper coins they could exchange for a small bonus product at their next purchase. That’s loyalty in a nutshell. You give customers points toward free stuff when they buy your product, and keep them coming back.

Nowadays, customer loyalty has embraced digital and spread to nearly every industry. As a marketer, your loyalty program represents the perfect partnership with your best customers—they love your product enough to buy frequently, so you hook them up with some extra value.

That’s great engagement, but it’s like a broken record—just the same people buying over and over. The next step is to turn your loyalty members’ excitement outward and get them to recruit new members.

That’s where referral comes in. If you have a robust customer loyalty program, you have enthusiastic, committed customers who you know are motivated by rewards. You also have a tried and true points system that gives customers great value without losing you money. In other words, you have everything you need to build out referral marketing and convert all that loyalty into growth.

Let’s dive into three companies who have done just that, and see why referral and loyalty work so well together.

1. Referral Maximizes Existing Loyalty Infrastructure

If you have a loyalty program with infrastructures like member accounts, points, and excited customers, you have everything you need for a powerful referral program. It’s actually a waste of those resources’ full potential not to have referral.

Take American Express’ Membership Rewards program, for example. Credit card companies like AMEX have to work hard to stand out considering that their average American customer has 3.7 different cards. AMEX incentivizes its loyalty members to swipe their card more often by offering them “points,” which they can then put towards travel, shopping with AMEX partners, and services like Uber.

But AMEX was able to get even more out of that program by incorporating referral. Customers who refer a friend to AMEX receive as many as 5,000 points upon the friend’s approval (for reference, an Apple Watch retailing for $399.00 is 79,900 points).

Thanks to the Membership Rewards Program, AMEX already had the key ingredients for referral marketing: loyal customers and a points system. Adding referral was a quick, easy, and scalable way to get new members using the resources they already had—the very definition of efficiency. Using that existing infrastructure also made sharing referrals feel like a logical next step in the customer experience for those loyalty members.

How to Retrofit your Loyalty Program with Referral

Here are three ways to build referral out of your loyalty program’s existing infrastructure:

• Target potential advocates. Loyalty program members already love AMEX, use it all the time, and are incentivized by rewards—they want those points! It’s not a tough leap for them to start referring friends in order to get them. Target your most active membership program participants with your referral plan, and they’ll become your best advocates.
• Recycle your reward system. AMEX already had a system of points to reward members with, and it knew exactly what dollar amounts those points should correlate with. If you have that, all you need to do is figure out a reward structure that makes sense for your company.
• Encourage self-referral. You can have regular customers to enter the loyalty program by offering to let them refer themselves and their friends in exchange for sign-up bonuses. It’s a great way to get customers in the program who might not know an advocate themselves and acclimates them to the idea of referral right off the bat.

If your customer loyalty program is a success, then you’re 90% on your way to a great referral program too. The other 10% just takes a little loyalty repurposing.

2. Referral Makes Customer Loyalty Addictive

Both customer loyalty and referral lend themselves well to gamification because they both reward users for repeated, specific actions—making purchases and converting new customers. If your members can see themselves making progress toward a new perk, they’ll feel compelled to keep participating until they hit the goal.

The secret lies in a psychological phenomenon known as the Zeigarnik Effect. Uncompleted tasks stick in our memories, and we can’t let go of them until we’ve finished and mentally checked them off. Video games leverage graphics like progress bars that show users how much of the game is left to complete—it’s one of the reasons they’re so addicting.

The Bing Rewards program, which gives members credits for performing Bing searches, taps into the Zeigarnik Effect much in the same way. Members can always view their personal credit tally on their Bing homepage, so they always know how far they are from a prize like an Amazon gift card. The program is further gamified with its 3-tier system—after 200 credits, members reach Silver status, and after 750 they reach Gold. Each milestone comes with more credits and, as Bing points out, bragging rights.

Bing also folds referral into that same gamification system. Advocates get 50 credits if they refer somebody who joins and reaches silver status. So if the customer loyalty program is a game, referral is like a cheat code that pumps up members’ stats and gets them rewards faster—they’ll want to share as many referrals as they can.

How to Gamify Referral

Whether you’re building referral into your existing customer loyalty program or starting from scratch, there are several ways to gamify your program:

• Give top advocates special status. You can either do this with tiers, like Bing does, or through special titles like “superadvocate.” It’s all about reciprocating with the advocates bringing in the most customers so they feel a desire to continue.
• Show advocates their progress. Bing, for instance, always shows members how many points they have and how many they need for the next reward or membership level. Incorporate that into your referral program to create a sense of urgency: “Only two more referrals and I can enter that sweepstakes for a free Surface!”
• Emphasize reward increases. Once someone refers enough to get a reward, congratulate them, but also keep them motivated by showing them what the next, even better reward looks like.

Each of those strategies creates excitement—both around referral and around your customer loyalty program—and gets advocates wanting to share more.

3. Referral Personalizes Loyalty to Individuals

One of the biggest shortcomings of traditional “earn and burn” customer loyalty programs is that they feel entirely transactional to customers—and really, that’s because they are transactional. It’s basically a company saying, “Keep buying from us and we’ll give you free stuff.”

That provides a tangible incentive to keep buying from your company, but it doesn’t create a bona fide connection with your brand. It keeps loyalty totally dependent on the rewards—if someone else starts offering better rewards, your customers could defect. Referrals are a great way to make your customer loyalty program a more personal experience.

Take Starbucks’ Rewards, for instance. When members send referrals to friends, Starbucks has them write in a message to accompany the referral. That lets advocates tell friends in their own words what’s so awesome about Starbucks Rewards, which feels much more authentic than the usual corporate marketing speak. Plus, that message comes from the advocate’s own email address—not some anonymous “donotreply” address most people would just ignore.

Starbucks also widens the program’s reach by allowing advocates to send referrals to their friends on Facebook or followers on Twitter. They position the social sharing buttons right next to the email option, so users can easily do all three at once, and again, require advocates to include their own message.

How to Make it Personal

Here are three simple ways referral can individualize your customer loyalty program:

• Take a page out of Starbucks’ book. Using the advocate’s email address and having them include a personal message reinforces to new customers that this referral is a personal invite from a friend, and not a dry marketing scheme. It also ensures the referral stands out from the marketing emails that flood most of our inboxes.
• Familiar faces. Everyone loves looking at people’s faces, especially when it’s someone they know—that’s why the selfie is so popular on social media. Companies like AirBnb have tapped into that by displaying the advocate’s picture on their referrals. It intensifies the friend-to-friend feel of the interaction.
• Collect the data. Referral doesn’t just make your rewards program more personal for customers. It also gives you a wealth of data about what your customers like most and tells you how to nurture them better. You can analyze the advocate’s LTV and membership age at the time of referral, their time since last purchase, or the most recent marketing effort directed at them before sharing—all of that data can tell you what members value most about your program.

Those strategies make your most loyal customers feel more personally connected with your brand and can also tell you what drives their behavior.

You’re almost there

If you have a successful loyalty program, you have everything you need to build out referral marketing. You just need to repurpose some of your loyalty infrastructures, properly incentivize members to refer, and let them restock the top of your funnel with new customers.

Not only that, but they’ll be better customers with longer life spans and higher LTVs, who are more likely to get all the way to the bottom of the funnel and become customer loyalty participants themselves. Customer loyalty and referral feed off each other to become the ultimate acquisition flywheel.

Most small business owners appreciate the value of a loyalty program. However, the word “loyalty” often blinds them to other benefits they can enjoy from these strategies.

They think that if they can squeeze a few extra sales each year out of a punch card or some similar gimmick, that they’re doing okay.

Frankly, they’ve only started to scratch the surface of what a good loyalty program can do for a small business.

Consider the issue of market research. It’s no secret that small business owners don’t have the funds to do the kind of market research that large corporations are able to afford.

However, if you step up your loyalty program, you can use it to mine some very valuable market research. With this information in hand, you can then make some very smart plans for the future of your business.

Go beyond the paper punch card and get your program into a database.

Central to gathering actionable market research is collecting contact information from your customers. Unlike with a punch card, when you collect contact information from your customers you can reach out to them and entice them to come back to your business.

You can also collect important demographics and feedback through online surveys to really understand the buying habits and preferences of your customers. With that information in your database, you can begin to target future sales, adapt merchandising priorities, and maybe even come up with new business ideas.

For example, if you saw that your younger customers overwhelmingly buy a certain subset of what you offer and there’s an area of your community that matches that demographic, you might consider opening a business in that location that specializes in those items. The flip side of that coin is to discover the things you sell that certain demographics seldom or never buy.

Once you know what’s resonating with different groups of your audience, you can better segment email marketing by only sending information that is of interest to certain groups.

The possibilities are endless, but if your loyalty program is still living in the punch card era, you’ll never enjoy its full potential. Be sure you’re getting all the value you can from your small business loyalty program.

Is automated personalization still able to generate large quantities of quality leads?

Technology is trending, and as Marketers, we’re always keeping an eye out for the next big breakthrough (like referral programs) that will make our job easier. So when automated personalized marketing came onto the scene many thought it was that breakthrough. After all, personalized marketing has made amazing strides in the past few years and automated personalization has become a highly adopted best practice for both B2Bs and B2Cs. This is often employed through an automated software like marketing automation, which crafts individual messages in an attempt to create a customer-centric approach. And for a while, this form of personalized marketing was the ultimate way for Marketers to create a targeted strategy. But as we know, when a channel or tactic becomes highly adopted its effectiveness begins to wane as it becomes increasingly crowded and nosy.

In fact, as of recently, “The majority of marketing leaders report dissatisfaction with results from Marketing Automation. Frost & Sullivan reveals 75% not accomplishing what they expected,” (Root Causes of Marketing Automation Failures).

This is not a surprise. After all, just in one day I receive an average of 30-50 personalized automated emails in my personal email account and 10-15 in my work email.

So what do I do? I click check all and delete. Whether it’s 50 consumer emails or 15 B2B emails, ask yourself, would you really take the time to sort through them all to determine if one offers you value.

The reality of the situation is, that even for the 15 B2Bs that are sending automated personalized emails to my business account, I’m very unlikely to open them. I have deadlines to meet and despite if I know the business, I haven’t developed any personal relationships with them so in my mind they can’t be sending me anything that will fulfill some unfulfilled need because they don’t know me well enough.

The same can be said for prospecting emails. I’m sure you’ve experienced someone who has stalked your LinkedIn or Twitter profile to piece together your work email and send you their solution to all your problems. Or it might be your job to send those emails. And while you or one of your prospect may click on them once in a while, they mostly end up in the same place – the trash. But this doesn’t mean that the sender of those emails are doing anything wrong, it’s just the nature of prospecting today.

And although the success rate of automated personalized emails and prospecting emails has declined, I’m not saying that you should abandon these marketing efforts, just that you can’t rely on them to generate high quantities of quality leads anymore. While you’re headed down the right path with personalization and the attempt to create a customer-centric approach, these approaches are missing a vital component to succeed today – the relationship.

How referral tracking programs succeed in high quality lead generation

Referral tracking programs are that next big breakthrough for Marketers. Referral programs employ a relationship-focused sales approach in a strategic customer-centric way. Referral tracking programs harness the power of your current customers, partners, and employees’ relationships with their network and incentivizes them to provide you with a warm and trusted introduction. These advocates already have an established relationship with the customer demographic that you hope to capture, and because of that, they’re referral of you is more powerful than any unsolicited prospecting email or automated personalized email.

Referral tracking programs offer automation and clear ROI while employing all-inclusive sharing options that attribute advocate referrals and measures each advocates individual success to optimize your nurturing strategy and get the most return on investment.

In fact, referral programs:

• Create a 4X higher conversion rate than typical marketing channels (emarketer)
• Increase LTV by 16% compared to non-referred customers (Harvard Business Review)
• Decrease churn by 18% compared to non-referred customers (Harvard Business Review)
• Increase a leads likeliness to buy by 400% (Nielson)
• Create a 35% conversion rate from referral to purchase (Amplifinity)

But you don’t have to trust the numbers. Discover what your individual ROI and revenue would be with a referral tracking program by using the referral ROI calculator now!

Your products or services solve problems for customers. You wouldn’t be in business if they didn’t. But those products and services don’t sell themselves.

You must present them in a way that is engaging and that demonstrates their value and benefits. Words – printed or oral – just do not do the job anymore. Consumers want visuals – photos, slides, charts, graphs, animation and video. They are looking to be entertained. They want to see those products up close, even if it is only on your website. They may want to see happy customers using your products/services.

A visual presentation does all of these things.

The next challenge is to find the presentation software/tool(s) that you can use to develop those presentations. Fortunately, there are probably as many as 100 such tools, so plenty of options is not the problem. What is the problem is getting an idea of what they offer to meet your needs. Here is a quick tools overview to help you making the right choice!

Prezi

Prezi is a cloud-based tool that is easy to learn and use and that will let you create some pretty amazing presentations. They aren’t straight slides such as you create with PowerPoint, and they aren’t animated videos either. Prezi has a canvas format. As you present a product with a block of text, for example, you zoom in on that “slide” (or video) and then out and over to another “slide” on the same canvas. If you have several products to showcase or if you want to present the benefits separately, this is an ideal tool. And the effect of zooming in and out can be pretty dramatic. You can work on projects in the cloud or offline and can collaborate with others on your team. The learning curve is pretty short too, especially if you watch the demo video on the site.

A basic plan is $10/month or you can buy a team plan for $159/year and includes training. Whether you want a great presentation on your site or need to make one in person, this is a great tool.

PowToon

Used by such giants, as Target, Wal-Mart, and Staples, Powtoon is an animated video creation tools to showcase products and services. And yet, it is super easy to use. It’s a 2D animator, perfect for website presentations and product demos. Even though it is used by some “big boys,” it is perfect for small business websites that need product presentations which do not require complex motion graphics. You can create your own presentations pretty quickly and they are TV quality HD.

Powtoon is completely free if you don’t mind displaying their logo on your presentation. You can remove it for a fee of $14 prior to exporting it to your site. There are professional and agency plans too for a fee.

ShapeChef

If you love PowerPoint but feel a bit limited, ShapeChef is your answer. You can organize all of your charts, graphs, etc., as well as have access to a huge library of graphs, charts, maps, figures, etc. in the ShapeChef library. Once downloaded, the software places a pane on your PowerPoint window. You can save your own creations in the library or select from among the company’s. The biggest benefit is that you have great images and visuals without having to go search for them all over the web. Once you have selected the image you want for a particular slide, you just drag and drop it from the library.

Animoto

Here’s an online software for DIY videos to showcase your products or services. It is often called “lightweight” by video pros, but for a small business that wants to create a pretty engaging video, accompanied by music, it’s a great option. Basically, you pick a style and a song (from their large library), add photos of your products and produce your video. The style templates are usually in grid format but there are plenty to choose from. The music library is extensive too.

You can get a “free” version of Animoto, but you are limited to 30 seconds of video. The Pro plan is $20.75/month

Haiku Deck

The beauty of Haiku Deck may be in its simplicity. You pick a background image for each slide, impose your own products and/or text over that image, and you are done. If you want to showcase your offerings with just a small amount of text, this tool is definitely for you.

In addition to a huge library of background templates, you can find over 40 million free images to use, something that may be really beneficial if you are presenting a service, not product.

Haiku Deck is a free download app for the iPad. However, you can export your slides to PowerPoint and use them on your website. You can also share them on Facebook and Twitter or send them as emails. For a free tool, Haiku Deck is pretty versatile and professional looking.

Kineticast

Kineticast is a solid B2B presentation tool to provide visual (slides, videos) and audio presentations to potential clients.

Depending upon where a potential client/customer may be in the sales funnel, a presentation of your product or service can be customized for that target and then emailed out to him/her.

Kineticast allows uploading of PowerPoints, images and graphics, video, audio messages and more to make a presentation unique and engaging. There is also an analytics tool to track who and when emails have been opened so that follow-up can occur if that target does not contact you.

There are three pricing packages, beginning at $24/month, so even a small startup can take advantage of this tool.

Wink

Another alternative to PowerPoint, but this tool focuses primarily on companies that are in the business of selling software and other products that may need an “explainer” type presentation about how that software or product is used, as the benefits are explained. If you are looking for a “demonstration” tool in which you can utilize screenshots along with text and audio explanation, this is a handy one, especially for small businesses.

Wink is distributed as freeware – it’ worth a look.

Emaze

For business presentations, there are a large number of template designs which will also support 3D and video – great for product presentations. You can also add motion to your objects. For those who want to customize even further, the templates can be edited. As presentations are being produced, everyone involved can collaborate.

Emaze is easy to use. Once you enter your workspace, you are directed by animated arrows that tell you exactly what to do next.

The plan for businesses is $19/month.

Given the competition that every business faces, stunning product and service presentations is just not an option. If you intend to captivate and engage your target customers, your presentations must be slick and professional in appearance. Fortunately, the tools are now available for anyone to do this, and many of them are free or at extremely low cost. The little guys can now play on the same field as the big guys.

Google runs the Internet.

Now that we got that out of the way, we can finally except that we must abide by the Golden Rules that Google has laid out for us. There’s plenty of awesome articles explaining the things that people hate on your website. In fact, Lindsey Kolowich from HubSpot recently published 17 more things people absolutely hate about your website. Her informative post only inspired me to take my own twist on website malfunctions, but from Google’s standpoint.

7 Things Google Absolutely Hates About Your Website

1. Your website isn’t supported by an SEO-friendly CMS.

The most powerful websites are the ones supported by a powerful CMS. And because it’s no secret that Google loves WordPress, it might be a good idea for you to start loving WordPress too. (It’s also powerful enough to run enterprise-grade websites and it’s a top choice by many marketers today, too!)

2. It’s not mobile-friendly, either.

Let’s backtrack to April 2015 when Google announced their newest update, Mobilegeddon. You know, the one that (should) have scared everyone to get on the mobile bandwagon? Yeah, it’s still in effect and if your site isn’t mobile-friendly at the very least, there’s a good chance you’re not on Google’s “nice” list this year. Check your site’s mobile status here.

3. There’s no sitemap…

Your sitemap gives Google a list of the web pages of your site to allow them and other search engines to crawl and understand the organization of your site. Your sitemap provides the search engine web crawlers with an intelligent understanding of your website and the content placed in it.

4. …or robots.txt file

If you’re not familiar with robots.txt files, they are used to help tell search engines which pages and sections of your site you want them to ignore. If you create it incorrectly and accidentally disallow them from crawling major pages of your site (aka – the ones you want on your sitemap), you can hurt your organic visibility big time!

5. Your web pages are full of broken links, 404 pages, or temporary redirects.

Did you recently redesign your website? Did you omit pages from your old site? Did you make changes to the URL structure of some of your pages? If so, then these URL changes will result in 404 errors when the new site launches if they are not properly redirected. These have both SEO and usability repercussions and should be fixed ASAP! Also, make sure that you implement 301 permanent redirects rather than temporary redirects. Unlike 301 redirects, temporary redirects don’t pass any SEO value from one URL to another.

6. It’s missing Meta Descriptions and Alt-image text

Because Google is unable to “see” the images placed on your site, it relies on alt-image text to provide them with the information they need to understand what the image is and what the relevance of it is. When you use images on your site without including alt-image text, Google can’t crawl or “see” those images. However, when you do properly use them with your targeted keywords or a relevant description, Google cannot understand what the image is and will result in them not placing your content in the image section of the search engine.

Google also uses meta descriptions to understand the content of your web pages. It is also what users see when they look through the various results of their search query. Including a descriptive, keyword-rich, meta description allows both search engines web users to instantly understand what your website is about.

7. It’s filled with duplicate, thin and spammy content.

We know Content is King, so it’s shouldn’t be a surprise if your SEO firm is hounding you for content more and more. If you’ve been using outdated or “spammy” SEO methods in order to drive traffic to your brand new site, like paying for backlinks, you could end up being penalized by Google. Be sure to also steer clear from sneaky hidden pages and text that is colored the same as the background. It’s also worth running a quick audit of your current content to see if your website filled with thin, duplicate, or keyword-stuffed content. If so, it probably won’t perform well in search engines. Invest in continuous, quality content that offers value to your visitors.

What’s most important to take away from this, is the fact that you can no longer trick Google. Follow the rules they’ve provided and keep your rankings in check!

Normally, I think most "business coaches" are 100 percent full of BS. Then one phone call changed my career.

The Art of Opportunity: How to Build Growth and Ventures Through Strategic Innovation and Visual Thinking by Marc Sniukas, Parker Lee, & Matt Morasky, Wiley

This article is part 2 of our series on Ecommerce Personalization. Catch up with part one, How to Implement Basic Site Segmentation.

My previous article delved into the fundamentals of ecommerce personalization; serving customized content and experiences to different traffic segments, as well as the tools to help you get started with providing tailored content to each traffic segment.

Using the CRAWL – WALK – RUN approach to ecommerce personalization, this article aims to cover the WALK aspect of personalization –– i.e. 1:1 personalized marketing and getting to customize both the on-site and email experiences for each of your customers. Your 1:1 personalized marketing strategy should be broken into the following three segments:

1. On-site targeting through modal pop-ups, header/footer banners, sliders, pop-unders and dynamic content blocks (UX)
2. Email driven 1:1 product recommendations, i.e. email automation
3. On-site merchandising personalized product recommendations using transaction oriented UX

Behavioral Targeting

Before we proceed, it is best to ground ourselves in the importance of data in behavioral targeting; the foundation on which the implementation of 1:1 ecommerce personalization is built.

Behavioral targeting is based on context, and when it comes to personalization, context is everything. Context involves understanding each shopper’s session; using data points to track their journey to your store as well as their on-site interactions. Once we have systems in place to understand the behavior of shoppers in more intricate detail, ecommerce personalization can be executed through behavioral targeting.

Behavioral targeting goes beyond traditional demographic targeting data (i.e. segmenting customers based on their age, sex, location, income, etc). Rather, behavioral targeting layers in more specific actions customers take to get to your site and their ‘on-site behavior patterns’ for the purpose of segmentation, such as:

• the number of previous visits a shopper has made to your online store
• their most frequented category pages
• guest v. registered members
• number of visits registered members have made to your website
• their purchase history
• their referral traffic source (to enable cohort targeting)
• their geo-location
• device used and more behavioral data variables

Once you are armed with the above data points as a foundation, advanced ecommerce personalization takes on three forms:

1. On-site targeting through modal pop-ups, header/footer banners, sliders, pop-unders and dynamic content blocks (UX)
2. Email driven 1:1 product recommendations, i.e. email automation
3. On-site personalized product recommendations using transaction oriented UX

1: On-Site Targeting

With on-site targeting, the options you have at your disposal are modal pop-ups, header/footer banners, sliders, pop-unders and dynamic content blocks. I will start off with modal pop-ups.

Modal pop-ups

If you have recently browsed a few ecommerce sites, you will most definitely have come across modal popup windows requesting for your email address in exchange for a one-off coupon or some sort of incentive. Every ecommerce website seems to be doing this nowadays but as they say, the devil is in the detail. This is especially true when it comes to personalization.

Timing and action based triggers are of absolute importance when it comes to modal pop-ups. Take the example above on the Samsung website: when an item is added to a shopping cart and the shopper is about to leave their checkout page, the modal pops up and requests for the shopper’s email so that their basket’s content is ‘saved.’ It does not just pop up willy-nilly to any browser. This pop up targets shoppers with the sole purpose of retrieving their email address for shopping cart recovery and further email marketing.

This is behavioral targeting in action because it is context and action based. Here are some other ways to trigger modal popups based on the personal circumstances of shoppers.

Price matching when a product is just about to be added or has been added to a shopping basket.

Recognizing new shoppers (or unregistered members) and offering them a coupon in exchange for their email and sex (for fashion retailers).

Running giveaways and layering in gamification to only new shoppers.

You could also only display vouchers to repeat logged in customers and registered members with at least one transaction under their belt.

See it in action

Here is how Laterooms added a layer of gamification into their messaging and creative in order to potentially drive up more email addresses.

They are asking browsers to enter a competition in order to win a night at a hotel and event tickets. The objective is to get browsers on their list in order to send more personalized messages and sales.

Where most ecommerce websites fail with modal pop ups is with shopper context. Let the context of the shopper drive your strategy.

Header/footer banners

If your engagement data suggests that browsers on your site have modal pop up fatigue (because most just click the ‘X’ button to close the modal pop ups you serve), you may want to consider driving key messages, incentives and offers using either header or footer banners such as in the example above.

Sliders and pop-unders

Pop under sliders have been typically used by online chat services and widgets such as the Google Trust Sites widget. Pop under modal sliders are a vastly underutilized means of serving on-site targeted content in ecommerce. It is definitely worth putting pop under modals in the mix of your on-site targeting arsenal and to test them side-by-side pop over modals.

The technology is simple: a box slides out on the lower left or right corner of pages displaying a bespoke offer. The swiftness of entry is key and the less intrusive their placement, the better.

Dynamic content blocks

Dynamic content blocks are allocated areas within pages dedicated to replacing and adding content specific to groups or segments of visitors. Here is an example on ThinkGeek:

When browsing in the UK, content related to ‘international express shipping’ and ‘international bestsellers’ is displayed.

If I however browsed the same page in the U.S, the context is ‘Free Standard Shipping.’ Even the order value threshold has been lowered from $150 to $30 for free shipping.

Recommended Tools

Here are my recommended tools for on-site targeting:

• Optimonk
• Marketizator
• BrainSINS
• AddShoppers

2: 1:1 Email Marketing: Personalized Product Recommendations

If optimally executed, email marketing remains the primary powerhouse for driving customer loyalty and retention for most ecommerce businesses. Personalization lies at the heart of the most effective ecommerce strategies. When compared to general broadcast email marketing, personalized emails are 26% more likely to be opened and 760% better at generating revenue.

The key steps to effectively implementing personalized product recommendation with 1:1 email messaging are:

• Gathering as much email subscriber data as possible with on-site targeting and at the point of registration
• Identifying customers through purchases
• Tracking each customer’s interaction with your website
• Tracking each customer’s interactions with your email marketing
• Segmenting and extrapolating your top VIP customers
• Having a single customer view

Gathering as much email subscriber data as possible

The most basic data points for email subscriber data are name and email address. This is typically retrieved through on-site targeting and at the point of the registration of an account.

Fashion e-tailers should collect additional data about their subscribers such as their gender and date of birth.

The age or date of birth of subscribers can be used for birthday messaging and more tailored product recommendations that will be relevant to age group interests attributes you may have set to product-sets in your product catalog.

Aim to send new subscribers a welcome email, encouraging them to ‘edit their preferences.’

Here is an example from Astley Clarke.

And below is a more comprehensive ‘edit preferences’ page by MrPorter.com based on brands their customers like.

Encourage Facebook logins to retrieve date of birth, gender, locale and other social data point

Consider sending drip emails to help build your customer profiles. Amazon sent this email intentionally to help them improve the product recommendations.

Identifying customers through purchases

Sending each customer emails on the basis of their previous purchases in a bid up-sell, cross-sell or recommend similar products (based on purchase trends of other customers) can help to significantly drive up conversions.

One of your selection criteria for an ecommerce email platform should be the platform’s ability to send personalized emails on the basis of the purchase history of each customer. The platform should in other words connect with your ecommerce platform’s customer purchase history database. And, it should be able to dynamically email each customer personalized product recommendations based on their specific purchase history.

Tracking each customer’s interaction with your website

Your one-on-one product recommendations strategy can also be based on each customer’s historical interaction with our store. This will factor in both category and product pages they’ve visited within a specified period of time. If for instance no action was taken by a customer within a specific browsing session, an email could be triggered to send them a few of the items they view as well as related items. Free shipping or a time limited offer could be used a nudge to lure them back in to make a purchase.

Other customer interactions on your site that should trigger personalized 1:1 emails:

• Abandoned cart messages: to encourage customers to return to purchase items left in the shopping cart
• Post-purchase transactional emails: thanking customers for purchasing and then including personalized product recommendations
• New account sign up welcome emails: thanking customers for signing up to your store and giving them incentive such as free shipping or a coupon code.
• Send latest products emails: from the category of most interest to each customer

Tracking each customer’s interactions with your email marketing

Along with website interactions, sending personalized emails based on clicks and interactions with previous emails can be a highly lucrative means of driving more conversions through workflow automation.

If a customer for instance has opened a previous email more than three times and clicked on specific product links several times without actually making a purchase, an email could be triggered to sending them either an offer or similar products at a lower price range.

The best results from triggered emails are often a result of using data points from interactions with previous emails and interactions with on your website.

Segmenting and extrapolating your top VIP customers

In my next article, I’ll go into more detail on RFM analysis and the identification of your highest value customers. The core point to note here is that segmenting your customers into groups based on their purchase power will be a key driver to your 1:1 email marketing strategy. This will enable you to build out a long term customer retention strategy. The general rule of the thumb is that your VIP customers should be treated specially as they will in most situations account for 60-80% of revenue.

Having a single customer view: e-CRM

Image reference: Ometria

A final point to note about email personalization is the need to have a single customer view. This especially pertains to stores handling 5,000 or more transactions a month. You want to be able to log into a dashboard to view each customer’s transaction history, on-site interactions and email interaction (see the screenshot above from Ometria).

This data will of course be consolidated and also segmented to drive more insights that inform your personalized 1:1 email marketing strategy.

Recommended Tools

Here are my recommended tools for personalized 1:1 emails:

• ExactTarget
• Bronto
• Ometria
• dotmailer

3: Dynamic On-Site Personalized Product Recommendations

The third and final way to drive your personalization strategy is with personalized on-site product recommendations, which according to research conducted by Barilliance and data based on 1.5 billion shopping sessions in sites located in 26 countries across North and South America, Europe and Australia, accounts for 11.5% of revenue on ecommerce sites.

The dynamic product recommendations are based on visitor data, behavior and history. The chart below shows Barilliance’s findings and the top 10 product recommendation types that resulted in the highest revenue.

The core objective of on-site personalized recommendations is to drive up the average order value of each shopping session. In other words, you want shoppers to add more items to their shopping cart with hope that they check out with as many if not all items in their basket.

We do this by utilizing up-selling and cross-selling strategies.

The above is a classic cross-sell tactic implemented by e-tailer Net-a-Porter. The first row below the main product in view is a collection of products that cross-sell and up-sell the main product.

The ‘You May Also Like’ items on the second row is a collection of both cheaper alternatives (if the item is out of the budget of the shopper) and up-sells.

Here’s another example:

Every item to the right of the product page for the Star Wars: The Force Awakens Blu-ray Disc product page on Tesco Direct is a cross-sell. The last item at the bottom is actually an up-sell, i.e. buying the complete Saga series.

Here is a pro-tip for the implementation of your cross-sell and up-sell strategy.

Prior to a completion of a purchase, try as much as possible to reserve some real estate on your category and product pages to cross-sell items shoppers are actively viewing. After an item has been added to cart or at check out, go for the up-sell.

Here is an example:

On the Paul Smith website, cross-sells prior to a basket add are typically lower value in comparison to the recommended ‘similar products’ post basket add.

Another tip is to put recommendations below the fold on product pages so as not to distract them from the product in view (just like in the Net-a-Porter example).

If you’re layering in behavioral targeting data points such as a customer’s purchase history, their browsing history and items that they have clicked on from previous personalized emails, then you can build a picture of the customer and serve products more relevant to them.

If, for instance, customer A does not typically spend more than $300 per shopping session, you may want to display products from categories that the customer typically buys products from and products that fit the customer’s $300 budget.

This is an advanced use case of behavioral targeting related to up-selling and cross-selling.

Your product recommendations platform should natively use the data points I highlighted above related to on-site interactions and if possible also factor in email interactions. It should allow you define your product recommendation strategy, the most common of which are:

• Personalized offers on the home page
• Personalized offers in reserved sections of category pages
• Similar products and up-sells on product pages
• Cross-selling and up-selling in your shopping cart page

Recommended Tools

Here are my recommended tools for personalized 1:1 emails:

• Strands
• Barilliance
• Monetate
• Fresh Relevance

Wrapping Up

Now that you have a full grasp of the facets of a personalized 1:1 marketing strategy, my next article will aim to explain how you can identify your highest value VIP customers and influencers, whom of which can potentially help drive more sales to your store through word-of-mouth.

Have questions, concerns or feedback for Kunle? Leave them in the comments below.

We all know that we need to differentiate ourselves. To stand out from the crowd. be seen as an expert or authority. Specialise. Do something different.

Otherwise, our potential clients don't have any reason to pick us over our competitors or to pay us premium rates.

That's why so much of marketing focused on proving to potential clients that you're different.

But there's an additional factor you need to show. Something often overlooked, but without which all your differentiation means nothing.

Find out what it is and how to apply it in this week's video…

Find this video helpful? Subscribe to the More Clients TV channel on youtube to get more of them:

Video Transcript

Hi. It's Ian here. In today's five minute marketing tip we're going to look at the flip side of differentiation.

We all know that we have to stand out from the crowd, differentiate ourselves, be a specialist, be seen as an authority, an expert, someone different and standing above from our competitors. Otherwise, there's no reason for potential clients to choose us instead of them or to pay premium prices but without this one thing that I'm going to talk about after the break, all that differentiation comes to nothing. I'll explain what it is after this word from our sponsors.

Hi, welcome back. Okay, they weren't sponsors. It was just a little banner thing.

We all know, as I said, that we need in one way or another to differentiate ourselves from our competitors. That can be because we specialize or we're seen as an authority or an expert. We do something inherently different to those competitors, or better than those competitors that gives our potential clients a good reason to choose us or to pay premium prices to work with us but all that relies on the fact that our potential clients will value our differentiation. They will see that whatever it is we're different and better at will result in better end results, better outcomes for them and that's not always the case. In fact, it's very true that in corporate organizations for example, the whole role of procurement, and purchasing, and buyers in those organizations is to try to commoditize you as a supplier, to try and find ways of looking at all suppliers the same so they can trade one off against the other, get a better deal, swap in a preferred supplier that they're used to working with rather than you who they're not, et cetera, et cetera. Your differentiation is only valuable if clients see that it really helps them get a much better end result.

I'll give you an example. When I was working for a big consulting firm, I was the account manager for a big global pharmaceutical company, and we pitched for a job doing a big lean manufacturing project. Our positioning was that we were specialists in lean manufacturing in the pharmaceutical sector because we did a ton of work in the pharmaceutical sector. We did a lot of lean manufacturing and other supply chain work there so we positioned ourselves as having that expertise which very few other companies did. We lost out to a generalist lean manufacturing firm despite all that positioning, despite all that differentiation because essentially at the end of the day, the client decided that for them, expertise in lean manufacturing was important but being a specialist in lean manufacturing for the pharmaceutical sector wasn't. In fact, they saw value in bringing outside expertise from outside the sector in. If a client doesn't see your differentiation as valuable to them, in this particular circumstance, then you're not going to win. They're not going to want to hire you.

How do you make sure that your client sees your differentiation as valuable? The first step is not to persuade them, it's to find clients in the first place who already believe that your type of differentiation is valuable. Now sometimes you can see that in advance. You can see it on their website, in their annual report, you can see that they value specialists in certain areas. Most of the time it's not possible to see whether they'll value your type of expertise or differentiation from the outside. What you have to do is have a very healthy pipeline.

If you've got enough leads, enough contacts with potential clients coming in, then when you have your initial discussions with them, your initial interactions, then you can whether they'll value your differentiation or not from the way they react when you talk to them. When you talk about what you do that's different, you can see whether they value it and then you just focus your efforts on the ones that do. That's why it's so important to have a really healthy pipeline because if your pipeline of new leads and new potential clients is restricted to just a few then you've just got to go with what's in that pipeline. You'll find yourself working with and pitching for business with people who don't value you, they don't value how you're different, they're not willing to pay extra for it and they just view you as a commodity.

The first step is to have a really healthy pipeline so you can pick and choose and focus on the people who value the way you're different. The second thing is to make sure that the client who kind of understands that differentiation is important, really sees the value of it. Just as … Whenever you're marketing and selling I'm sure you have lots of case studies, stories, examples, reference studies that show how you are different. You've got stories about the things you've done that are different, that prove your differentiation. You also need case studies, examples, stories, research that show that that differentiation is valuable. Stories about how because, and it doesn't have to be about you, how because a client chose a specialist in this particular area they got a better result. Studies that show that clients that choose a specialist, or an expert in a particular area, or whatever way you're different, get better results. You need really strong evidence that going with a specialist, or an expert, or someone who's different in this particular way, like you are, gets better results. Then you can move on to showing that you're the right expert, the right specialist, the right person with that difference to fill that slot.

It's kind of like a two step selling process. Step one, sell them on the idea that the differentiation is valuable. Step two, show that you're the person with that differentiation. In some ways that's a better way of selling than trying to bundle them together and convince them that you're the right person first because they're kind of skeptical because it's in your interest to show them that you're the right person. If first you start talking about whether or not they need a specialist, or an expert, or someone who's different in a particular area, irrespective of whether it's you, it kind of feels more objective and they can agree or disagree with that statement about whether they need an expert, a specialist, or someone who's different first. Then once you've established that there's kind of no going back. Then it's all just about whether you are the right person to fill that slot. Then the discussion becomes easier.

Those are the two things to do. One is have a really healthy pipeline so you can choose people who are inherently more inclined to value the ways that you're different and better. Secondly, make sure you're really communicating with people about the importance and the value of that difference, irrespective of whether that difference comes from you, but talk about the value of the difference before you talk about whether you're the right person to give that difference.

That's it for this week. See you next.

The post The “Secret Sauce” That Makes Differentiation Pay appeared first on Ian Brodie.

I'm willing to bet you don’t often have sales calls where the buyer tells you exactly how to close the deal, especially if they're “impatient, difficult and demanding” like this one says he is.

You’re probably thinking, “Aren’t all prospects impatient, difficult and demanding?”

Sure … if that makes you feel better. But how many of them take the time to tell you how to close them? None, right?

Enter Corey Smith. In addition to being a two-time author, father of five, blogger, and speaker, he runs Tribute Media, a 15-person web design and marketing agency he started in 2007. Like most business owners, he buys things. Like most buyers these days, he's been sold to (unsuccessfully) by many salespeople. His frustration with "idiot" and "jerk" salespeople reached a boiling point recently, inspiring him to write the blog post, "Your Sales Pitch Sucks & 5 Tips to Solve It."

Below are the major takeaways from his very blunt feedback, along with some advice on how to sell to him (and buyers like him). While no single buyer should shape the way you sell to everyone, I think his insights are fairly typical of a small business owner and even most buyers. Even if not, his advice is grounded by experience from someone who knows the challenges of a salesperson firsthand. As the head of a 15-person marketing agency in the metropolis of Meridian, Idaho, I’m guessing Smith sells as much as he buys.

Without further ado, here are the six lessons Smith has for salespeople:

1) Don't be a jerk or an idiot when prospecting.

Most of you probably read that headline and relievedly thought, "I don't need to read this section. I'm not a jerk. I'm certainly not an idiot."

While it's true that you're highly unlikely to be an idiot if you're reading the HubSpot Sales Blog :) , chances are Smith thinks you are a jerk. Smith's team screens the majority of salespeople for him. He relies on his team to filter out "jerks" and "idiots," only passing along "pleasantly persistent" salespeople who customize their outreach.

When calling on a company, treat everyone with respect. A lower-level employee may be a bigger influencer than you think. Just because someone isn't a decision maker, doesn’t mean you should dismiss them or their authority -- unless you want to get disqualified. Whoever you reach out to or whoever responds, make sure you’re doing your homework on the person and personalizing your approach.

2) Show a genuine interest in your prospect's world.

"As the owner of a business you can bet that salespeople call on me all the time," Smith writes. "I get emails, snail mail sales letters, and phone calls on a daily basis. I am surprised how often I still get salespeople that pop in with the old, ‘Well, I happened to be in the neighborhood’ line."

While the pop-in approach is very lazy (not to mention outdated in most industries), it's not as if the vast majority of salespeople try much harder. Many salespeople never get a response from Smith because they are too obvious in their outreach. Their prospecting approach amounts to "I have something to sell and I want to see if you want to buy," he explains.

Questions and statements like the following real examples from Smith's inbox are dead giveaways:

• Are you adding new capabilities to your website design-development, Mobile Application & SEO department at any time soon or in the future?
• I noticed that you are interested in content marketing strategies and thought that my content marketing software might be a good fit.

These lines are examples of “check the box” research, where a salesperson notices a company has an interest in X area and then sends uncustomized template email about it. You could also call it “binary” research: Company is in Y industry, therefore send note that references Y industry.

Instead, Smith recommends finding something unique about each prospect and personalizing messages with that.

"For any salesperson that is good, I'm an open book," he writes. "I blog a lot. I'm very active on social media. If you simply take a little time to actually do your research, you’ll know exactly what I’m interested in."

Of course, not every prospect blogs frequently. But most companies do, providing an easy way to learn about internal initiatives, not to mention an easy way to genuinely connect with at least one employee. Customize your approach. Here’s a perfect example of leveraging a template, but customizing it to the recipient.

3) Bridge the understanding gap between your offering and your prospect's needs.

"If you get the first appointment, you have to ask questions about me that helps me know you are relevant, have done your homework, and are genuinely interested in me," Smith writes.

The value a product or service provides isn't always immediately obvious to a prospect, or relevant to their current priorities. Salespeople need to make those connections by asking their prospect questions about their current plans, challenges, and goals.

Smith warns salespeople not to rush this process.

"It's easy for me to identify when someone is being fake," he writes. "I can tell by the questions they ask and how quickly they get to the pitch."

4) Answer a prospect's questions when they ask.

Smith is tired of salespeople who won't provide pricing ranges when he asks for one.

"I don't want to hear, 'Well, I can't really give you a range because it really depends on X,'" he writes. "I'm smarter than that. You have worked with companies my size before. You have done other deals. You can give me a range. Very few products and services are so custom that you can’t put some sort of range on it.”

Many salespeople try to delay pricing conversations until they fully understand the prospect's needs, agree upon the potential ROI, or even until they get verbal buy-in to move forward. A recent study from HubSpot Research also shows that buyers often want to talk price and product on the first call. Here are some tips on how to handle pricing and product conversations early in a sales process.

5) Don't expect prospects to move the process along.

Even though (and maybe because) Smith knows how to sell he expects salespeople to manage the sales process.

"I don't want you to jump ahead to the 'buy my product' line," he writes. "But I am going to expect you to take me to the next step in the process. I'm going to expect trial closes. I'm going to expect you to ask for the next appointment. I'm going to expect follow-ups."

Here are some additional tips on getting next step buy-in on every sales call and a buyer-friendly approach to closing business. 

6) Don't be afraid to admit you could use some help.

Smith's final lesson is mentioned almost in passing in his conclusion: He likes helping reps who are trying to do a good job.

"When I meet a salesperson that is really trying to be successful and trying to do it right, I want that person to succeed," Smith writes. "If I see that you are genuine but are struggling, I'll help you through it. I'll even give you pointers and advice. The better you take that advice, the more likely we'll have a long-term relationship. A long-term relationship means I will give you more money and I will connect you with people that can give you more money.”

At HubSpot, we say that selling is about helping buyers buy. The flip side of that is sometimes true too. Smith probably isn't the only buyer who likes to help salespeople sell.

As salespeople, none of us are perfect. We all make mistakes. But if you're trying to get better and trying to do the right thing, buyers will recognize that. Don't be afraid to ask buyers for help, or at least find out if they found your conversations helpful. Most will give you feedback when you ask for it. As Smith suggests, this type of vulnerability can lead to closed business and referrals.

Do you make any of these mistakes? What are your strategies for improvement? Let us know in the comments below.

If a prospect was good enough for you to have competed for their business in the past, then they’re good enough to pursue now. If you wanted the account bad enough to compete for it, losing the opportunity is not a good enough reason to give up your pursuit.

Qualified

You know that the prospect is qualified.

If you competed for and lost an opportunity, you know that prospect is qualified. You want qualified leads? Have at it; it’s qualified. You know your past prospect is spending money in your space, and you know that you are someone who can help them generate better results. None of this changes just because you lost on your first attempt to win their business.

This is especially true if the prospect is a dream client, the type of prospect for whom you can create breathtaking, jaw-dropping, earth-shattering value, and who is willing to pay for that value.

The best sales people play the long game.

Knowledge

You know how you lost.

If you lost a contest, and if you are introspective enough to know how you lost that contest, you will do better your second time around.

It is very difficult for a great football team to beat another great football team they beat early in the season the second time they play. Having had the experience of playing once, you’ve gained the knowledge of what adjustments you need to make to win in a rematch. You’re smarter for having gone through the exercise.

You want to be waiting in the wings having never gone away when your prospective client experiences their first hint of dissatisfaction. That won’t happen if you give up and go away.

Contacts

You have contacts within that company.

It is easier to pursue a lost prospect the second time around. If you made it deep enough into the process to have met the decision-makers and stakeholders involved in the process of deciding who their partner would be, you have contacts. You have names, phone numbers, and email addresses of people you can nurture over time.

Qualified. You have knowledge that can help you win. You have contacts. Lost opportunities are rich sources of leads, provided you nurture them and play the long game.

The post A Rich Source of Overlooked Leads appeared first on The Sales Blog.

Salespeople are the engine of a great company. They identify new opportunities for growth and are tasked with driving profitable revenue streams that propels organizations to achieve success. To help assess the effectiveness of their sales force, sales executives need to dive into their human capital metrics.   

When viewed as pieces of a larger puzzle, core human capital metrics illuminate the complex workings of a sales organization and a team’s ability to achieve aggressive growth targets.

We focused on eight metrics that offer sales executives a bird’s eye view of the human aspect of sales. Analyzing this data helps provide sales leaders with the knowledge they need to build a better sales team that consistently drives higher rates of growth and organizational success.

Here are the human capital metrics every VP Sales needs to track:

1. Turnover Rates

Turnover rates reveal an organization’s ability to retain employees. If a company can’t keep their salespeople happy, they incur high costs associated with additional recruitment, poor performance and low morale. A recent Sales Effectiveness Survey from DePaul University revealed that the annual turnover rate for inside sales roles is 26.9 percent and 27.7 percent for outside sales roles, with a reported average cost per turnover at $97,690.

High voluntary turnover rates indicate larger issues at play such as below-average or poorly constructed compensation plans, or even a toxic sales culture. Leaders who experience consistently high voluntary turnover need to analyze feedback from employees in exit interviews. Candid conversations with departing sales reps are the quickest ways to discern the primary reasons for their departures.

High involuntary turnover rates, or a high percentage of reps being fired, indicate a poor sales hiring process. In 2015, The Bridge Group conducted a study surveying nearly 350 B2B SaaS companies and determined that the average sales rep involuntary turnover rate was 20% – making up nearly two-thirds of all annual attrition. This alarming statistic reveals a lack of structure in the B2B SaaS industry’s sales hiring process. World-class companies understand the substantial cost of a bad sales hire, and implement effective sales hiring processes to lower involuntary turnover rates.

Sales executives also benefit from examining turnover rates to find out what level of salesperson is leaving the company. Andris A. Zoltners, PK Sinha, and Sally E. Lorimer break down sales turnover into three categories: top performers, poor performers with high potential, or low performers with low potential. High performance sales organizations retain top performers and poor performers with potential. Below is a detailed diagnosis for transforming the turnover rate for three pools of employees:

Low Performers with Low Potential

A high turnover percentage among low performers with no potential to improve their sales performance points to problematic recruitment. While it’s important for sales leaders to quickly rid their teams of consistent under performers, effective sales leaders determine the root causes of their poor hiring practices.

Reassessing the characteristics of the ideal candidate profile and adopting a structured and rigorous recruiting processes is proven to reduce the risk of hiring bad salespeople. For more information on how to construct a structured and rigorous sales hiring process, download our eBook – Sales Recruiting 2.0

Low Performers with High Potential

Front-line sales managers are vital pieces that should be relied upon to help executives discern if a low-performing rep offers significant future potential based on performance reviews and the exemplified traits of the rep. The best method to increase retention among this category of salespeople is to bolster coaching and manager support during and after the onboarding process.

A structured schedule for the first three months of employment paired with a system of accountability for sales managers helps ensure sales team members are set up to reach their potential. HBR also recommends giving these salespeople “warm leads so that they can taste sales success, which is the ultimate motivator.” For more information on how to develop a structured onboarding process for new sales hires, download our eBook – The First 90 Days.

High Performers

High performers are a sales organization’s greatest asset — and biggest asset that can be lost. To reduce voluntary turnover among top performers, sales executives need to offer the rewards that high performers look for in competing companies: extra recognition, more freedom, better pay, long-term incentives, and a pro-sales culture.

2. Average Revenue Generated Per Rep

The average revenue generated per sales rep sheds light on two important aspects of a sales team — overall performance and the fairness of sales quotas. Ryan Tognazzini at Sales Benchmark Index suggests that if the average revenue is low, managers need to assess the strength of the sales pipeline. As he told Inc. Magazine, “It’s literally getting down into the weeds and understanding if the pipeline is real, and if there’s hope.”

If, however, the average revenue generated by each rep rises significantly above the sales quota, sales executives need to increase their benchmarks. Research from academic Steven W. Martin reveals that over 80 percent of high-performing sales organizations increase their quotas every year. Successful companies strike a balance by aiming for higher quotas that are still attainable to reps.

3. Actual Revenue Generated Per Rep

The revenue generated by individual reps gives managers a clear metric to assess the contributions of each salesperson and the achievement of the team as a whole. Research from The Tas Group indicates that two-thirds of all sales people miss their quotas, and 23 percent of surveyed companies don’t know if their teams are hitting quotas or not.

By contrast, the top 10 percent of firms surveyed by CSO Insights report that 75.1 percent of their reps either met or exceeded quota, achieving 116.7 percent of their company’s benchmark. The best sales leaders conduct an analysis to ensure that revenue generated aligns with specific revenue goals, such as new account acquisition or renewals.

The actual revenue generated per rep also indicates rep performance, giving managers important information about their contributions to a company. However, Fred Shilmover, CEO InsightSquared suggests that managers take a deeper approach to assessing the impact of this metric in From Impossible to Inevitable:

“Don’t be too quick to jump to conclusions and criticize or compliment anyone on the team right away. First look at their data to find out why and learn from it. A sales rep with highest consistent win rate may be talented at sales –– or talented at sandbagging/cherry picking. Don’t assume –– investigate.”

Sales executives can increase this metric by supporting individual performance with personalized talent development plans. Combined with heavy coaching, managers bridge skill gaps and radically impact the individual performance metrics of employees. This approach doesn’t mean that companies should keep bad hires, as research shows that top sales organizations cut chronic underperformers sooner rather than later.

4. Average Time to Hire

The average time it takes to hire a new employee from the original date of the job posting reflects both the competitiveness of the hiring market and the efficiency of a company’s recruitment process.

As baby boomers retire, the competition for top sales talent is steadily increasing. Bob Coughlin, a chief executive at Paycor, told The Wall Street Journal that a smaller sales talent pool meant his company missed out on $2 million more in 2015. Coughlin is not alone — the Harvard Business Review assessed that employers spent 41 days filling technical sales roles compared to 33 days for non-sales roles.

Glassdoor also supports that estimate; their researchers calculated 40 days as the average time it takes to hire a salesperson. Our own data suggests that across 3 industries (technology, professional services and industrial and manufacturing), the average time to hire a passive sales person — those who are actively and gainfully employed — and in the top 10% of their team, is 95 days.

The nature of a company’s recruitment processes also affects the average time to hire. By standardizing the procedure and focusing on qualified candidates who have achieved their sales targets year-over-year in the same or similar selling environments, sales leaders can decrease this metric over time.

An effective sales hiring process includes the following key elements:

1. Establish an agreement on how the position and company will be communicated to candidates
2. Establish a hiring benchmark and build an ideal candidate profile that defines critical sales skills and traits required for success in the position
3. Hunt for only qualified, top performing salespeople
4. Implement a rigorous and structured interviewing and assessment process
   1. 1st interview – high level qualification
   2. 2nd interview – skills and experience screening
   3. 3rd interview – behavioral interview, role playing, & psychometric assessment
5. Submit an offer to the candidate that is most likely to drive consistent, profitable revenue
6. Implement a structured onboarding program that sets new hires up for success

For more details on a standardized hiring procedure, read Hiring Salespeople: A Core Process You Must Perfect.

5. Average Ramp-Up Time

Companies measure ramp-up time in a range of different ways. However, a universal approach is to assess the time it takes for a rep to start significantly adding to a company’s revenue stream. (Based on the organization, executives can choose the most relevant supporting metrics, such as meeting monthly or quarterly quotas.)

The Revenue Conductor found a simple way to shorten the duration of this period. Their research concluded that employers who were most satisfied with their onboarding process experienced 34 percent faster ramp-up time for new sales reps. With the average ramp-up time of 10 months for B2B salespeople, a well-planned onboarding process can make a huge impact.

Increase early productivity by creating a structured training program that immerses new hires in company protocol and best practices. These onboarding programs should include both ‘classroom’ and in the field training, as well as concrete 30, 60 and 90-day goals that give new salespeople stepping stones toward yearly targets.

For a comprehensive look at how to implement an effective onboarding process, download our eBook: The First 90 Days – Your Guide to Making New Sales Hires Produce Fast.

6. Average Time to First Sale

The average time before a rep’s first sale serves as a benchmark for new hires. To coach new reps toward this goal, start tracking early and mid-stage indicators such as appointment setting and proposal generation to help build their confidence.

The most efficient leaders decrease the average time to first sale by hiring top performers. With 22 to 30 percent of salespeople lacking the skills to succeed at their jobs, recruitment is essential to ensure a strong average time to first sale.

If business development reps (BDRs) or inside sale reps struggle to make their first sale, sales managers need to change their tactics. Effective sales leaders direct new reps toward low-hanging fruit, giving them the opportunity to practice and get comfortable on the job. The positive momentum acquired by closing smaller transactional sales builds toward more lucrative deals.

7. Average Time to Revenue

The time to revenue is the average number of days between the date HR posted a job and when the new salesperson is profitable for their company.

Average Time to Hire + Average Ramp-Up Time = Average Time to Revenue

According to Imparta, a top performing salesperson will generate their first revenue in less than 6 months, while an average salesperson will generate their first revenue in 9 months, and a below average salesperson will generate first revenue in 12 months or later, or will never generate profitable revenue.

If the time to revenue surpasses nine months, it could be due to a slow recruitment process or a long ramp-up time. Leaders should investigate which challenge their organization faces — an instinct-based & non-objective hiring process, disorganized or poorly implemented onboarding processes, and poor front-line managers all contribute to a prolonged average time to revenue.

Tackle the issue by collaborating with HR and recruiters to examine each aspect of the recruitment and onboarding protocol to find the weak link. Since hiring and onboarding practices influence sales productivity, executives need to align those efforts with their goals.

8. Percentage of New Hires Meeting Sales Quotas

The percentage of new hires meeting their sales quotas points to the early successes (or failures) of new reps. If reps are failing to meet or exceed their quotas, an organization is hiring the wrong people or failing to train them correctly.

Mark Roberge, Hubspot’s Chief Revenue Officer, focuses on the coachability of job candidates during interviews. This approach ensures that new or ‘junior’ reps bring growth potential to their jobs. With the right coaching, great hires can steadily improve their performance. By pairing this method with a repeatable, formal sales process, Hubspot magnifies the early successes of their team.

Tom Hopkins, Sales Trainer and Chairman at Tom Hopkins International Inc., says that the answer to get more new hires to meet and exceed sales quota is through collaborative training and proper goal setting. “Before the training even begins, it’s important to set goals with the news hires – not for them. Salespeople will work much harder at achieving goals they’ve been involved in setting, than if goals or quotas are set by the company or a manager.”

Human Capital Metrics Matter

Human capital metrics are an integral aspect of assessing the rigor of a sales organization’s recruitment process, the effectiveness of its onboarding programs and the ability of managers to bring out the best in new hires. By tracking these statistics every quarter, sales executives gain a thorough understanding of what talent acquisition and retention methods are working — and what’s not working — within their organization.

The post The 8 Human Capital Metrics Every Sales Manager Needs to Track appeared first on Peak Sales Recruiting.

The prospecting mindset is an attitude that leads top sales professionals to always look for their next opportunity. You might expect them to do this naturally. But, in reality, many don’t prospect in a way that builds a healthy pipeline. To do that, you have to ask each member of your team these five questions.