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22 Mar 17:03

Digital Sucking Sound: Email, Not Price, Is Costing Retailers Sales

by Bryan Pearson

Companies are failing at one of the most-used forms of customer service, emails, and it is sending their customers away. For retailers, this failure may signal a problem more serious than lost sales.

Dear Acme Whiz-Bang Co.,

I write to inform you that the coffee maker you sent me not only is the wrong model, but it arrived broken. Can you please send me the coffee maker I ordered and provide guidelines on how I can return this broken one without cost?

Sincerely,

Charlie Smith

Bad news, Charlie. You’ve got a one-in-three chance of never hearing back from Whiz-Bang. If you merely want acknowledgment that your email was received, your odds are even worse.

Photo credit: Walmart

Photo credit: Walmart

Companies are failing at one of the most-used forms of service, emails, and it is sending their customers away. One in three organizations do not respond to customer service emails, according the 2016 Customer Service Benchmark report, which assessed 250 companies globally.

For shoppers, who can easily read reviews before hitting the “buy” button on most anything, this failure can be the key factor in deciding whether to make a purchase, and it can cost companies millions. However, for retailers it may signal a problem far more serious than lost sales.

Following are the key findings of the report by SuperOffice, a customer relationship management firm.

• About one-third (32 percent) of companies surveyed do not respond to customer service emails.

• Two-thirds of companies (66 percent) do not acknowledge when an email is received.

• Just 8 percent of companies follow up with customers to learn if they are satisfied with the response.

• Almost four in five companies (78 percent) are unable to answer questions on the first try.

• The average response time to a customer service request is nearly 17.5 hours.

“The research shows a majority are failing to meet customer expectations and costing millions of dollars in lost customers and unnecessary internal follow-up work,” the study states.

You’ve Got A Serious Problem

For retailers, the findings point to a weak link that should be one of their strongest assets: the potentially giant role of relatively inexpensive email as a form of engagement.

Based on the report’s findings, the causes for this communication breakdown signal a more urgent issue than a failure to communicate – they indicate that organizations are not factoring customer experience into the business model. Some companies lack the very tools necessary to effectively and quickly respond to customers.

Sure, these processes require an investment, but not having them can be more costly. Research from Salesforce.com, for example, shows that companies that use customer relationship management services can increase sales by 29 percent.

Sorry, Charlie

To understand why this is happening, let’s pick up with Charlie.

Though it was not his preference, Charlie sent his complaint to Acme Whiz-Bang through an online form because that was the only method of contact offered. When the company did not send an automated response, he sensed his message had disappeared into a cyber black hole.

The next day, having not heard back from the company, Charlie sent another web query.

Charlie’s inability to find an online email address is not uncommon. Many retailers, including Walmart and Zappos.com, direct customers who click the “email us” button to online forms, which can be cumbersome. It took me several clicks on Walmart.com to get to a product-return form. Once submitted, Walmart.com provided a reference number and a promise that a representative would be in touch within 24 hours. That email reply followed within a few hours.

Zappos.com’s form took fewer clicks to locate and was shorter. The company also posted an immediate response and reference number and followed up by email in less than 30 minutes.

Smaller merchants can make several excuses for why they fail to adequately respond to customer email queries, but among the companies reviewed in the Benchmark report, there existed one common denominator: They simply lack the processes to identify and respond to emails.

This is troubling because it points to systemic issues. True, software can perform near miracles, but if a company reaches midsize and still lacks such elemental tools, I have a hunch it is suffering foundational weaknesses that cannot be fixed with software.

Rebuilding Relations

When Acme Whiz-Bang finally followed up with Charlie by email several days later, he was no longer a loyal customer. He asked for a refund of the coffee pot but did not want another. Instead, he wiped Whiz-Bang from his list of bookmarked websites and clicked onto Amazon.

There are tactical steps the company could have taken early on to prevent this customer loss. If Whiz-Bang had at the least invested in automated-response software, the complaint would have been assigned a tracking number, similar to those assigned by Walmart or Zappos, which could be stored for future customer support.

He also might have received an email response, such as those I received from Danika at Zappos and Mary at Walmart, each of whom provided detailed steps on how to make a return (per my query). Walmart sent a second “how we doing?” email the next day requesting I take an online survey.

Those, however, are not the make-or-break elements here. The broader issue to me, as an executive who works with many retailers, is that customer experience is still not being included among the pillars that should support a company.

Three Steps To A Better Experience

Look, I get it. Growing companies regularly move their bags from horse to horse while midstream. Unforeseen events train them to focus on tackling the challenges immediately before them: merchandising, distribution, pricing, promotion, real estate, marketing, etc.

Responding to complaints feels very small compared with these bigger issues, but it is a cornerstone that, if pulled out, can cause deep cracks in the business structure. Here are four simple tips for folding customer experience into the mix early on:

Encourage enrollment: One of the easiest ways to identify a customer and anticipate her needs is to offer a beneficial membership program. It can be a loyalty program or an ambassador club – either way, it will provide the company with an identification code and email through which it can better manage the relationship. These kinds of programs also are pro-active tools that can help when a retailer has to manage product recalls or food-related issues (if a grocery store).

Mingle: I’ve heard the CEO of one of the nation’s largest grocery stores regularly shops locations, unidentified, to gauge the customer experience. The same can be done by email. Secret shoppers are old-school, but they are a reliable way to monitor the customer experience. Established early on, the practice provides a baseline against which to measure.

Commit to your channels of service: If a company cannot turn around an email in a timely manner, then it should consider other ways to engage the customer – online chats, call centers, whatever can be supported to deliver a satisfactory experience. I actually think email can be messy, given that the back-and-forth process can drag on without reaching a joint understanding of the underlying challenge or the needed directions.

These steps are not a panacea, but they can improve a growing company’s chance of survival – possibly above one-in-three.

This article originally appeared on Forbes.com, where Bryan serves as a retail contributor. You can view the original story here.

21 Mar 19:38

5 Reasons Your Company Needs to be Metrics-Driven

by Andrew Cohen
After a certain point, a founder must move past "gut instincts" to understand the company's present and to plan its future.
21 Mar 19:37

The Right Way to Breathe For More Powerful Weightlifting

by Stephanie Lee on Vitals, shared by Andy Orin to Lifehacker

In the weight room, the two most important things to consider are safety and how much you can lift. For some people, it’s one or the other, but with the right breathing techniques, you will be able to lift more weight effectively and do it without hurting yourself. Here’s how.

Read more...

21 Mar 19:35

Google helps offer vastly faster Internet in Cuba

by CB Staff

HAVANA – Google is opening a cutting-edge online technology centre at the studio of one of Cuba’s most famous artists, offering free Internet at speeds nearly 70 times faster than those now available to the Cuban public. President Barack Obama says Google’s efforts in Cuba are part of a wider plan to improve access to the Internet across the island.

The U.S. technology giant has built a studio equipped with dozens of laptops, cellphones and virtual-reality goggles at the complex run by Alexis Leiva Machado, a sculptor known as Kcho. Obama said Sunday that Google was also launching a broader effort to improve Cubans’ Internet access across the island.

The company gave no specifics, and Ben Rhodes, deputy national security adviser, said Monday that no further details would be announced during Obama’s visit.

In an exclusive tour of the site with The Associated Press on Monday, Google’s head of Cuba operations, Brett Perlmutter, said the company was optimistic that the Google+Kcho.Mor studio would be part of a broader co-operative effort to bring Internet access to the Cuban people.

“We want to show the world what happens when you combine Cuban creative energy with technology that’s first in class,” he said.

The studio will be open five days a week, from 7 a.m. to midnight, for about 40 people at a time, Kcho said.

The project has limited reach but enormous symbolic importance in a country that has long maintained strict control of Internet access, which some Cuban officials sees as a potential national security threat. Officials have described said the Internet as a potential tool for the United States to exert influence over the island’s culture and politics.

The connection at the Kcho studio is provided by Cuba’s state-run telecommunications company over a new fiber-optic connection and Obama’s comments indicate the new Google-Cuba relationship was negotiated at the highest levels of the U.S. and Cuban governments.

Perlmutter declined to comment on any broader plans by the company, but said the Kcho centre would feature upload and download speed of 70 megabytes per second. That is blazingly fast in comparison with the public WiFi available to most Cubans for $2, nearly a tenth of the average monthly salary, for an hour of access at roughly 1 megabyte per second.

Kcho said he was paying for the new connection himself but declined to say how much he was being charged.

Google has been trying for more than a year to improve Cuba’s access to the Web with large-scale projects like those it has carried out in other developing countries. Kcho has long maintained close relationship with the Castro government and became the first independent source of free Internet in Cuba last year when he began offering free WiFi at his studio.

Soon after, the Cuban government announced that it was opening $2-an-hour WiFi spots across the country in a move that has dramatically increased Cubans’ access to the Internet, allowing many to video-chat with families abroad and see relatives for the first time.

Cuba still has one of the world’s lowest rates of Internet penetration.

___

Michael Weissenstein on Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/mweissenstein

The post Google helps offer vastly faster Internet in Cuba appeared first on Canadian Business - Your Source For Business News.

21 Mar 19:34

How to go to university without paying a cent

by macleans.ca
Second Year Biology student at York University, Sherry Wong. (Photograph by Kayla Chobotiuk)

Second Year Biology student at York University, Sherry Wong. (Photograph by Kayla Chobotiuk)

MACU_2016_COVER_THUMBNAIL.jpgThis story is featured in our 2016 Canadian Universities Guidebook, available on newsstands now. Pick up a copy of the guidebook for full profiles of 80 universities, insider reports written by current students on where to eat, study, and party, and the latest data including the grades needed to get into the school of your dreams and our definitive university rankings.

 

There are thousands of dollars in scholarships out there for the taking, and almost as many ways to qualify for that money. Whether you are sight impaired, an equestrian or a ringette player—those are just a few of the prerequisites for scholarships featured on our list at Macleans.ca/education—a little research will dig up a lot of options.

But the really big money—we’re talking six and even seven figures—goes to those who stand out from the pack, whether that’s in smarts, entrepreneurship, science, volunteerism, or leadership, to name a few ways you can shine (financial need is also a criterion for some).

The stakes are high, but there are a few tricks to the trade, and that’s why second-year York University science student Sherry Wong started Young Scholar, an online resource dedicated to helping high school students apply for scholarships.

“I know when I was applying for scholarships I had my fair share of mistakes and things I know I could have done better,” says Wong, who wants to go to medical school and specialize in dermatology.

As a high school student in Cambridge, Ont., Wong had a 95 per cent average and had logged more than 1,000 hours of community service. She won a total of $133,000 in scholarship money, including one of the Big Three: The $60,000 Schulich Leader Scholarship for a student going into science, engineering, math or technology, which pays $15,000 a year for the four years of undergrad. That means Wong will graduate debt-free.

“I always suggest students include what I call a magic number—it’s always nice to quantify the work that you’ve done,” she says. “It’s something the judges find important.” That means explaining exactly how many people you helped, how much money you raised or how many hours, months or years you worked on a project.

Here is more advice from four more Canadian students who have won awards valued between $48,000 and  $100,000.

TD Scholarship for Community Leadership

Up to $70,000. Founded in 1995 to recognize students who show outstanding dedication to their communities.

Donovan Taplin, 21, grew up in Newfoundland on Bell Island—a nine-by-15-km island with fewer than 3,000 people. Known as “Bell Island’s Boy Wonder,” he volunteered for community radio and got interested in broadcasting, which led him to communications studies at Memorial University of Newfoundland. Before that, he went on student expeditions to both the Arctic and Antarctic, founded the youth environmental group Green Island Society, and volunteered with Tourism Bell Island and the Tidy Towns committee.

He went on to became the youngest Newfoundlander ever elected to municipal office when he won a seat on Bell Island’s Wabana town council at the age of 19. Now in his fourth year at MUN, double majoring in communications studies and folklore, Taplin remembers coming across information on the TD scholarships and thinking he didn’t have a chance.

After his family and friends encouraged him to apply, he was invited to Halifax for an interview. “When I went in I looked at them and said, ‘Is this the audition for Canadian Idol?’ and they just kind of cracked up. I guess I was able to take this whole thing with a light-hearted approach.”

Taplin won both a Loran and a TD scholarship, but chose the TD because it allowed him to go to school close to home and offers work placements every summer.

One piece of advice: “I think the way young people can be picked out of a stack of 4,000 sheets of paper is when they’re able to tell compelling stories that resonate with readers, where a sense of what you believe in is shining through from the causes and projects you were involved in.”

Loran Scholars

Up to $100,000. Founded in 1988 by a mix of individuals and  corporations to reward scholars with a mix of academic, extracurricular and leadership skills.

Hayden Rodenkirchen found out he had been chosen as a Loran Scholar almost four years ago. He almost didn’t apply. “I was pretty down on myself over the application-writing process and I thought I wouldn’t be able to do it,” says the Kelowna, B.C., native. “The day before the applications were due, my guidance counsellor actually stopped by and asked why she hadn’t received my application yet, which kind of lit a fire under me to finish it.”

He moved east to study international relations at the University of Toronto, where he is now in his fourth year.

Rodenkirchen’s CV is expansive, and includes internships with the Department of Foreign Affairs, Trade and Development in Vietnam and Grand Challenges Canada—a not-for-profit that focuses on global health issues—and a summer job in finance at Toronto’s Burgundy Asset Management.

The 21-year-old says large scholarships are not so much rewards for accomplishments as they are an investment in a student’s potential. Though it covers living expenses, tuition, and summer funding, the Loran is just as important for the community and values it introduces. So what is in his future? This summer he’s off to do graduate studies in public policy on a fully funded scholarship at Schwarzman College at Tsinghua University in Beijing.

One piece of advice: “Don’t always be focused on the end point, but take the time to enjoy the whole part. Treat the whole thing as a learning experience.”

McGill University student studying Microbiology, Aditya Mohan. (Photograph by Roger Lemoyne)

McGill University student studying Microbiology, Aditya Mohan. (Photograph by Roger Lemoyne)

Schulich Leader Scholarship

Up to $80,000. Founded by businessman and philanthropist Seymour Schulich to encourage students in STEM fields.

At a young age, Aditya Mohan was reading science journals. In high school, he sent letters to Ottawa researchers, asking if could work in their labs. That’s how the first-year McGill University student, who wants to be a doctor and a researcher, came to work on HIV at the Ottawa Hospital Research Institute, and begin research into the common cold virus, which he engineered to target cancer cells.

He has won a truckload of science prizes, including a Young Canadian Manning Innovation Award and the Sanofi Biogenius Canada competition, before he graduated from high school.

Now studying microbiology and immunology at McGill, the 19-year-old says filling out the Schulich application was pretty painless. “I had a lot to say about why I work on what I work on. It was an easy essay to write because I had been in the field already and was very passionate about it.”

One piece of advice: “Find opportunities that align with the field you’re interested in. Working in a lab allowed me to go beyond schoolwork and express my ideas in a different fashion. I think whatever you’re interested in, as long as you’re doing more work outside of your school curriculum, it shows there’s more to you than just school. I think that goes a long way.”

Walter Leatherdale Entrance Scholarship

Up to $48,000. Established by Douglas Leatherdale, to help rural Manitobans attend university.

Janelle Gobin, 20, was born and raised in the small farming community of St. Claude, Man., population 600. President of her high school student council, and a long-time volunteer with the local 4-H Club, she had a 94 per cent average when she applied for the scholarship.

“(The scholarship) completely changed my life.It was such an honour to be selected,” says Gobin, a political science student in her second year of a four-year honours degree who maintains a 4.34 grade point average. “It really opened up a lot of possibilities for me. I may have had trouble with rent, or have been strained from a second job, but now I have lots of tools to help me succeed.”

Her plan is to go on to law school or grad studies in political science. This year, Goblin helped review applications for the entrance scholarship, so she’s seen the process from both sides.

One piece of advice: “I would really advise people to double, triple and quadruple check that they’ve filled out the application properly. That’s something I saw a lot through the process—people, through genuine human error, just didn’t submit the right things. So you should get someone to look over it . . . I asked multiple people to do it when I was applying.”

The post How to go to university without paying a cent appeared first on Macleans.ca.

21 Mar 19:32

GOLDMAN: Brexit will smash British companies — here are the ones which will be worst hit

by Will Martin

demolition building collapsing skyscraper

Britain will vote on June 23 whether the UK should leave or stay in the European Union.

The debate is fierce, with those wanting to leave arguing that the EU robs Britain of sovereignty and costs the country too much money. On the other side of the argument, those who want to remain in the 28-nation bloc are telling voters a Brexit will be hugely damaging to the UK economy.

Lots of the biggest banks have weighed in with their views on the potential impacts of Brexit, and Goldman Sachs is the latest to offer its opinion on what might happen if Britain severed ties with the European Union, focusing on the impact Brexit could have on the performance and share prices of the UK's companies.

In a note titled "Brexit: Pricing, stock exposure and impact on Europe " Goldman takes an in-depth look at what Britain leaving the EU could do to the biggest companies in Britain. According to Goldman, if you're a bank, build houses, or sell household goods, things won't be all that pleasant if Britain leaves the EU.

Goldman took a look at the sectors where earnings are most correlated to demand growth in Britain, arguing that the financial hit Britain may take after leaving the EU would be most concentrated, in the corporate arena at least, on banks, property firms, and household retailers.

At the other end of the spectrum, Britain's already stricken mining and metals companies will get off relatively lightly, thanks to their huge exposures to economies outside of the UK. Here's the sector-by-sector breakdown:

goldman brexit companies

Along with sectors, Goldman also has bad news for specific British companies. Here are the ten the bank says could be worst hit by Brexit, and it doesn't make pleasant reading for people involved in property (property firms are in bold):

  1. Travis Perkins
  2. Bovis Homes
  3. Persimmon
  4. Intu Properties
  5. Barratt Developments
  6. Bellway Homes
  7. Berkeley Group
  8. Redrow Homes
  9. Great Portland Estates
  10. Land Securities

Not only could these companies take a big hit if Britain leaves the EU, Goldman Sachs says that the impact is already being felt. Here's what analysts led by Sharon Bell have to say (emphasis ours):

The sectors most correlated to domestic demand tend to be financials, real estate, and homebuilders, with support services (logistics, staffing etc.) and travel & leisure in there too. The least sensitive sectors are generally those with lots of international sales – metals, tobacco, aerospace, media, and mobile telecoms.

We do the same thing at the stock level ... Again, homebuilders, banks, real estate, and travel & leisure stocks feature predominately in this list.

This group of companies is down around 8% versus the market since the beginning of the year, more so than our UK domestic basket and more so than the FTSE 250 – again evidence of the market pricing in a significant Brexit risk, in our view.

The bank doesn't provide any concrete figures on exactly how much Brexit could cost, but in its worst-case scenario, suggests that earnings across Britain's big firms could fall as much as 13% overall, with the housebuilding and banking sectors presumably losing even more. Here's Goldman one last time:

If industrial production were to fall by say 2.5% this would all other things equal push down FTSE 100 earnings by around 13% and FTSE 250 by around 18%. 

Goldman is just the latest in a series of companies and advocacy organisations adding to what looks like a fairly gloomy picture for UK businesses if Britain does vote to leave on June 23. A couple of weeks ago Morgan Stanley warned Brexit could cause "contagion" across Europe, while HSBC said the impact could be "potentially huge."

Earlier on Monday, the Confederation of British Industry, probably the most important lobbying body for British businesses, presented its "doomsday" scenario for Brexit, saying it could cost Britain as much a £100 billion, and nearly a million jobs by the end of 2020.

Join the conversation about this story »

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21 Mar 19:29

Why indoor location tech is facing an uphill battle

by Kyle Fugere, dunnhumby Ventures
An in-store beacon sends out a promotion.

GUEST:

Over the course of the past two years, as an investor at dunnhumby Ventures, I have spoken with dozens of startups, from Boston to Beijing, all innovating in the indoor location space. Given our fund’s focus on disruptive retail technologies, this space was of high interest to me. iBeacons are going to be the next great technology, right? They will enable retailers and brands to interact with you at the exact right moment, when the likelihood of conversion was the highest, right? In theory, yes. The challenge is not the desire to know this information, it’s the ROI of knowing this information and the insights necessary to make that message relevant.

iBeacon technology is the highest profile of the location technologies, but other tech, such as Wi-Fi, phone sensors, light bulbs, sound waves, and even electromagnetism, have emerged with similar goals of tracking a specific user, indoors, with relatively high location proximity. Camera tracking is another technology used to track user movement in-store but is generally focused on store operations and does not engage with the consumer. For this reason, I am leaving it out of this discussion — different budget, different problem.

The math problem

Given that these technologies rely on a mobile application to facilitate the communication to the consumer, startups in this space have set their sights on retailers with a significant app user base, or more broadly, retailers large enough to build a significant app user base in the near future.

This refined focus has considerably shrunk the market opportunity for these companies and forced them to go “elephant hunting.” And they have priced their product accordingly. Smaller market opportunity means they need to price high in order to be financially sustainable. Herein lies the challenge; what is the dollar value of knowing a consumer is standing in front of the beans at a grocery store? Is a push notification that the beans are on sale going to do a better job of converting me than the bright yellow tag in red lettering, stating that the beans are in fact on sale? Maybe. But unless that message can be tailored to each person individually, that’s a fairly challenging ROI to prove, and at the moment, few in the space have the data necessary to make that calculation.

This is the number one reason many in this space have failed to move beyond the “test store.” The ROI of knowing the consumer’s exact location in-store simply isn’t there at the moment.

Asking customers to run before they crawl

Retailers have a tendency to be late adopters when it comes to technology that engages with the consumer and rightly so. The retailer/consumer relationship is a delicate one and is not to be handled lightly. For that reason, many are just now developing an app and, in many cases, are looking for ways to increase user adoption. Asking them to systematically target that user base in-store is a big leap.

Many don’t have the resources or appetite to move on this capability in the short term. Especially given the math problem stated above.

The solution

I still believe in the technology — heck, I’ve invested in it — but many in the space will need to pivot in order to win. First, you need to broaden your market opportunity by focusing on one-beacon deployments or, in many cases, no-beacon deployments. A properly placed iBeacon at the entrance of a store is the perfect starting point. A simple “Welcome back” or reminder about current promotions as the consumer enters the location is more than sufficient. You do not want hardware installation or setup costs to be a reason not to deploy. Given the high switching costs, embedding your SDK into their app should be your sole focus. Removing many of the setup costs on the hardware side is one less obstacle to overcome.

Next, you need to be more creative in regards to use cases. Almost every startup I spoke to had retail as their largest market opportunity. Test verticals and stand out from the noise. There is tons of opportunity in banking, transportation, and live events with a potentially greater need and significantly shorter sales cycle.

At the end of the day, it is about user engagement. If the data needed to make push notifications relevant on a 1:1 basis isn’t available, granular location data isn’t going to move the needle.

2016 is going to see a number of in-store solutions companies succumb to the long sales cycle and challenging ROI. However, those who pivot and listen to what the market is telling them have the opportunity to flourish. The tech isn’t going away, the outcomes just need to be repositioned in the market in order to grow.

Kyle Fugere is an investor at dunnhumby Ventures (dhV), the investment arm of dunnhumby, where he focuses on early stage retail technology investments. He is a 2x founder in the technology space before transitioning to venture capital with stints at Tollman Capital Partners before moving to dhV. He is a frequent writer on the subject of startups and venture capital. You can follow him on Twitter @kfugere.

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21 Mar 19:28

Where NPS Falls Short (and How to Put It to Work)

by Alex Birkett

NPS is a valuable customer experience tool, and companies everywhere are using it to improve their experience and boost revenue.

But there are many misconceptions and misuses of NPS, and this piece will address those, in addition to showing you how you can actually get value from the tool.

See, when people lean on NPS like it’s a magic number, it doesn’t do much good. It doesn’t help that the original HBR article on NPS called it “the one number you need to grow.”

Unfortunately, the real world is a little more nuanced.

What’s So Special About The Net Promoter Score?

Net Promoter Score is a customer loyalty metric developed by (and a trademark of) Fred Reichheld, Bain & Company, and Satmetrix. It relies on only one question:

How likely is it that you would recommend our company/product/service to a friend or colleague?

Then, you break up responses into three chunks:

  • Promoters (9-10). These are your happiest and most loyal customers that are most likely to refer you to others. Use them for testimonials, affiliates, etc.
  • Passives (7-8). These customers are happy, but are unlikely to refer you to friends. They may be swayed to a competitor fairly easily.
  • Detractors (0-6). Detractors are customers that are unhappy and can be dangerous for your brand, by spreading negative messages and reviews. Figure out their problems and fix them.

Image Source

Image Source

You calculate your Net Promoter Score by subtracting the percentage of Detractors from the percentage of Promoters.

Image Source

Image Source

Instead of distributing bulky customer satisfaction surveys, where even your managers don’t know what to do with the results, you have only one question, one metric to deal with.

Beauty in Simplicity

And that’s the big benefit of NPS: it’s simple.

Data is only worthwhile if you can do something with it – if it spurs action on your part. If you have a bunch of customer success metrics but don’t use them for anything, you’re wasting your time. As Fred Reichheld, creator of NPS, put it:

“Most customer satisfaction surveys aren’t very useful. They tend to be long and complicated, yielding low response rates and ambiguous implications that are difficult for operating managers to act on.”

When you have an NPS score, you can benchmark that with competitors, you can attempt to improve it, you can even change your marketing strategy to incorporate your NPS segments.

What’s a Good NPS Score?

The range of NPS is from -100 (all detractors) to +100 (all promoters. Any NPS that is positive is usually perceived as good, and an NPS score of 50+ is considered excellent. But that’s just aggregate information, not totally useful because it’s not your specific industry.

Since NPS is a standardized market research tool, it is possible to compare it to your competitors, and within your industry as a whole.

For a simple number, there’s a bit of disagreement in how you gauge whether or not you have a ‘good’ one. But overall, I like to think of it as a metric to improve internally. As Adam Ramshaw said on a Quora thread, “a good net promoter score to have is one that is higher than you had last quarter.”

Kind of like a good conversion rate in that sense, then.

Well, What’s Wrong With NPS?

Simple and useful it may be, but the NPS doesn’t go without criticism (even on our own blog comments):

Screen Shot 2016-03-15 at 11.32.01 AM

Some people clearly aren’t big fans. Prominent market researchers, usability experts, and academics have all voiced concerns over NPS.

The Downsides of Simplicity

It’s no secret that we like to think the world is simpler and more predictable than it actually is. To do that, we construct narratives and frameworks that allow us to make sense of the world.

When you take a short personality test, you get a result that lumps you with all the other ENFPs. When you’re born in September, you’re a Virgo. If you were good at drawing as a kid, you might have been labeled right-brained.

Problem is, the world is more nuanced than that. Lots of research has refuted Myers-Briggs, right vs left brained, and many of the other lenses you use to view yourself and the world.

The reason I bring this up is that when you attach a business metric to “one simple question,” you’re competing with these other simplifications in order to try to fit a complex network of data into a simple number or lens.

Net Promoter Score has been shown to correlate with customer loyalty, retention and growth – but not always. But it does give you an anchor, a number that you can move up and down, and feel some progress.

Bain & Company research has established correlation between NPS and growth (image source)

Bain & Company research has established correlation between NPS and growth (image source)

You’d think from reading (sometimes sensational) blog posts that NPS is all you need. Throw away analytics and your other customer research tools, because this one simple trick will grow your business in your spare time!

It’s a bummer when you talk to survey design experts, or usability experts, or anyone who’s done a lot of market research, because they’ll tell you that there’s no way one question can tell you everything.

What NPS Can’t Tell You

According to User Testing, “NPS can tell you what your customers think of you, but not necessarily why they feel that way about your brand.”

This is true of any quantitative metric, of course. And that’s why NPS tools often ask a follow up question like, “what can we do to improve?”

The author of the User Testing piece, Jennifer Winter, goes on to give this example:

Jennifer Winter:

“Imagine that a company sent out a NPS survey immediately following a customer’s purchase. The purchase experience was good, so the customer gave the company a high score. But, a few days later, when the customer received the product it wasn’t what they ordered. But the return process was the polar opposite of the checkout process. The customer is now frustrated, upset, and has vowed to never make another purchase. If another NPS survey were sent out at this time, chances are this customer would be a vocal detractor.

NPS captures just one point in time with a customer, and the customer’s response will depend heavily on their most recent experience. Focusing solely on NPS as a measure of overall CX is a dangerous habit that could eventually turn loyal promoters into detractors.”

There are also, specifically in regards to NPS, limitations in terms of branding and user experience measurement. Perhaps the best example I’ve heard is from Jared Spool in talk he gave:

Jared Spool:

“I was so disappointed when the people at Medium sent me this: “How likely are you to recommend writing on Medium to a friend or colleague?” It’s not even a 10-point scale. It’s an 11-point scale, because 10 was not big enough.

This is called a Net Promoter Score, and Net Promoter Scores, if you look at the industry averages that everybody wants to compare themselves to, the low end is typically in the mid-60s and the high end is typically in the mid-80s. You need a 10-point scale because, if you had a 3-point scale, you could never see a difference. Anytime you’re enlarging the scale to see higher-resolution data it’s probably a flag that the data means nothing. Here’s the deal. Would a net promoter score for a company say, like United, catch this problem?

Alton Brown bought a $50 guest pass to the United Club in LA and had to sit on the floor. I wonder what his net promoter score for that purchase would be? It probably wouldn’t tell anybody at United what the problem is.

But that’s a negative. What about the positive side?

What’s actually working well? Customers of Harley-Davidson are fond of Harley-Davidson, so fond that they actually tattoo the company’s logo on their body. This is branding in the most primal of definitions.”

NPS isn’t useless, but it can be dangerous because you have one data point. And you think you know your audience because you have a data point, but don’t realize how nuanced their interactions with your company actually are.

Take, for example, Caroline Jarrett’s (author Forms That Work) example of how certain products just are not as ‘recommendable’ as others:

Caroline Jarrett:

“Just from the point of view of using a Net Promoter Score as a question in a survey, we have to ask whether that question means as much to the people answering it as it might to the business. There are some things where “I’ll recommend this to a friend” is a really important thing that people would actually do. But there are other things where you’d never recommend it to a friend because you don’t do recommending, and you certainly don’t do recommending of those type of things.

So you might actually be very enthusiastic about the product, but you just might not ever feel the urge to recommend hemorrhoid cream to your pals. You know? That’s not then giving a true measure of the value of that product. I have my skepticism about Net Promoter Score.”

Other common criticisms of NPS hinge on its accuracy; does it actually model loyatly? Does it actually predict growth? Some claims people make:

  • NPS performs worse than satisfaction in predicting growth.
  • NPS uses a scale of low predictive validity
  • It fails to Predict Loyalty Behaviors
  • It fails to weight cultural variance

NPS and Predictive Validity

Though the original research that lead to the development of NPS showed strong evidence that NPS correlated with growth, studies since haven’t done much to support it.

In fact, there have been studies that say other indicators predict growth better and actually represent customer loyalty more accurately. Other studies show that NPS has much room for improvement in terms of validity.

For example, one study claimed that, “Recommend intention alone will not suffice as a single predictor of customers’ future loyalty behaviors. Use of multiple indicators instead of a single predictor model performs significantly better in predicting customer recommendations and retention.”

Another similarly stated, “given the present state of evidence, it cannot be recommended to use the NPI as a predictor of growth nor financial performance.”

While it makes intuitive sense that NPS correlates with growth (people are more pleased with the company, they tell their friends, more people buy stuff, etc), sometimes it’s not so simple and clear cut.

In fairness, even Reichheld said that NPS doesn’t always predict growth:

reichheld” width=Fred Reichheld:

“The “would recommend” question wasn’t the best predictor of growth in every case. In a few situations, it was simply irrelevant…

…Not surprisingly, “would recommend” also didn’t predict relative growth in industries dominated by monopolies and near monopolies, where consumers have little choice. For example, in the local telephone and cable TV businesses, population growth and economic expansion in the region determine growth rates, not how well customers are treated by their suppliers…

…And in certain cases, we found small niche companies that were growing faster than their net-promoter percentages would imply. But for most companies in most industries, getting customers enthusiastic enough to recommend a company appears to be crucial to growth.”

But it’s not just in fringe cases and industries. NPS has been shown to have low ‘predictive validity,” meaning the level of value a scale has in predicting future business performance. A study showed that NPS actually had the lowest predictive validity of 4 scales tested.

Usability guru Jared Spool also believes that, “Net Promoter Score is an ineffective instrument for measuring how your customers feel about you.”

Therefore, it’s pertinent to figure out correlative metrics that work specific to your business. Maybe it’s NPS, maybe it’s something else. But simply relying on NPS like you would a crystal ball is no way to forecast future growth.

NPS and Cultural Variance

CustomerGauge wrote about this, dubbing it the “Dutch Effect” (the Dutch won’t give you a nine or ten, I guess). Though they suggest that this has nothing to do with cultural perceptions of score ratings, but rather that the Dutch are used to getting poor service so they rate poorly.

I’m not sure that’s the case. I think it’s highly possible that there are cultural variations in how people perceive ratings.

Even Rob Markey, Bain & Company Partner and Co-author of The Ultimate Question 2.0, said there are cultural factors at play:

rob markey” width=Rob Markey:

“Some cultures, for example, use response scales differently. In some Asian countries, for example, few customers are rarely willing to use the top end of any scale. In some other countries, customers use the extremes of any response scale, but don’t use the middle very often. Comparing absolute scores in this instance is nearly impossible.”

How To Get Actual Value From NPS

“A Net Promoter Score and a pile of comments isn’t worth a dime if you don’t plan to put them to work.” – Jessica Pfeifer, Co-founder of Wootric (source)

Net Promoter Score, for any criticism it receives, is still very useful. As a dormant number or an industry comparison, it doesn’t do much for you. But as part of a fluid and constant operational management process, NPS brings great value.

Jeff Sauro from MeasuringU put it really well:

sachin” width=Jeff Sauro:

“The Net Promoter Scoring system certainly has its problems and my friends at Bain and Satmetrix have probably oversold it. Yet, despite its problems…the NPS works fine as a measure if you understand the shortcomings and make some adjustments.

It’s never a good idea to put all your measurement eggs in one basket. Consider multiple measures of both satisfaction and loyalty. You should also look to understand how well the NPS correlates (or even predicts) revenue and growth in your organization and understand how other measures may do a better job.”

So if you’re looking to implement NPS, here are some best practices for getting the most value from it:

  1. Ask Follow Up Questions
  2. Combine it With User Research
  3. Find and Fix Issues
  4. Market to Promoters

1. Ask a Follow Up Question

Seeing an improvement in your aggregate NPS is nice, but the real value comes in the feedback from follow up questions. At least that’s how Sachin Rekhi put it, writing on Andrew Chen’s blog:

sachin” width=Sachin Rekhi:

“The most actionable part of the NPS survey is the categorization of the open-ended verbatim comments from promoters & detractors. Each survey we would analyze the promoter comments and categorize each comment into primary promoter benefit categories as well as similarly categorize each detractor comment into primary detractor issue categories.”

Wootric also emphasizes having an automated follow up question to get some qualitative feedback along with your quantitative NPS. They suggest the following three follow ups:

  • Promoters: What’s your favorite part about our product/service?
  • Passives: What would make you love us?
  • Detractors: What could we do to improve your experience?

2. Combine it with User Research

As mentioned before, NPS isn’t enough data to base decisions on. Adding a follow up question will open the door to valuable qualitative feedback and voice of customer research. But you also can’t neglect user research, including usability testing and other common conversion research techniques.

This will help you find some specific problems that correlate with low scores on the NPS. As UserTesting said, “You may discover that although your NPS is high, nearly every customer was having the same issue with your navigation, or that the copy on your pricing page doesn’t clearly explain what’s included in the price.”

Some techniques that can help pinpoint these usability issues:

  • User testing
  • Customer surveys
  • Live chat
  • Heat maps

3. Find and Fix Issues

NPS, though commonly used specifically as a customer success tool, can also be used by other teams, including your optimization team. Combining the overall score with the follow up question as well as the rest of your conversion research will help you build and prioritize test ideas.

While NPS, depending on the time you ask the question, doesn’t necessarily correlate with on-site user experience (NPS could and should include more of the whole experience, customer service included, optimization teams can work on specific issues that customers voice on the survey.

There’s a huge opportunity to turn detractors into promoters. As Reichheld said, “Every detractor represents a missed opportunity to add a promoter to the customer population, one more unpaid salesperson to market your product or service and generate growth.”

Marketizator also wrote about NPS and how you should deal with detractors:

“The best way to go with detractors is to investigate why they had an unpleased experience and why they will not recommend you. Knowing the answer, you can solve and improve that certain aspect and, in this way, transforming a detractor into a passive customer or even a promoter. Make them an offer they can’t refuse!”

4. Market to Promoters

Segmenting your audience into detractors, passives and promoters can help with your marketing efforts as well. One of the most popular ways to do that is to turn promoters into advocates. As Wootric put it, “when a customer rates your company at nine or 10, it’s the perfect time to ask them to refer friends.”

Lincoln Murphy, Chief Customer Evangelist at Gainsight, talks about using NPS to evangelize your best customers. Just because they say they’d recommend you doesn’t mean they jump up and do so. You’ve gotta nudge them…

lincoln” width=Lincoln Murphy:
“Whether that’s getting them to write a review for you (or you write it for them based on your knowledge of the success they’ve had with your product and get them to sign-off on it), or to talk to a prospect, get their logo on your site, etc.

Having a very clear workflow for acting on Promoter results is huge. Generally it’s some type of escalated advocacy ask… first it’s a quote, then it’s a case study, then… etc.

Whatever works in your world with your customers.”

Sujan Patel, Co-Creator of ContentMarketer.io and Narrow.io, employs a similar strategy with promoters:

Sujan Patel” width=Sujan Patel:

“I use NPS…to turn my promoters into advocates. After all these customers are ready to promote you they just need to be told how or a small nudge. I offer these customers swag (free t-shirts, mugs, etc) and ask for help they can do quickly such as share on Facebook or Twitter, write an app store review, email a friend.”

Even if it’s not explicitly asking for a recommendation or giving away free stuff to promoters, there are ways to analyze your NPS data and find correlative actions that may predict success. As Sachin Rekhi put it:

sachin” width=Sachin Rekhi:

“We correlated specific behavior within the product to NPS results (logins, searches, profile views, and more) and found a strong correlation between certain product actions and a higher NPS. This can help deduce what your product’s “magic moment” is when your users are truly activated and likely to derive delight from your product. Then you can focus on product optimizations to get more of your customer base to this point.

The best way to get to these correlations is simply to look at every major action in your product and see if there are any clear correlations with NPS scores. It’s easy to just graph and see if this is the case.”

Lincoln Murphy also recommends using NPS as a growth hacking tool, basically triggering Consistency Bias to reinforce positive beliefs:

lincoln” width=Lincoln Murphy:
“Survey the customer immediately after they did something that either resulted in them achieving value or in them getting closer to achieving that value from your product.

When you trigger the “how likely are you to refer somebody…” while they’re in a positive frame of mind, not only will you reinforce their positive feelings toward you, but when they identify as a “promoter,” they’ll also be reinforcing that self-identification.”

Conclusion

While there are many blog posts and consulting firms that will tell you NPS is the be-all end-all metric, know this: there is no single survey question that can predict your company’s success.

There are also studies that have suggested NPS isn’t as predictive of growth, retention, or virality that the initial research claimed.

Either way, NPS isn’t all bad. If anything, it triggers an organization-wide attitude towards improving the customer experience. That’s not a bad thing at all.

And used in conjunction with user research, analytics, and A/B testing, NPS can be a solid addition to the conversion research arsenal.

Feature image source

21 Mar 19:27

A new metric for CMOs: The Magic Growth Number

by Paul Albright, Captora
growth

GUEST:

It’s great to grow revenue fast (e.g., 50% or more), but not if that growth comes at too steep of a cost. The most valued tech software and services companies are those growing the fastest AND acquiring new customers with the most efficient go-to-market model.

To gauge the efficiency of a company’s go-to-market model, CMOs are increasingly using a metric called the ‘Magic Number.’ The Magic Number is the product of a simple equation: Start with the difference in new customer revenues between the most recent two quarters. Divide that number by the earlier quarter’s sales and marketing total expenditures (people and program dollars) for acquiring new customers. Multiply by four to annualize, and … voila. No, it’s not magic — but the idea is that the metric gives executives (and investors) a measure of how efficient your marketing efforts are.

Common thinking is that a Magic Number greater than 1, is a compelling business investment, a result below .5 is a company that has not figured out an efficient go-to-market model, and a result in between is a company that needs improvement before scaling (or becoming a public company). A company with a Magic Number above 1.5 is amazing — pour more fuel on the fire!

This formula is useful but shouldn’t be confused with other and more operational barometers of business success. Full funnel metrics are critical so you understand exactly where you are more/less efficient at each step in the customer-acquisition funnel. These metrics help you understand which marketing programs, channels, and offers (content) are most effective with your different buyer personas and at each stage of the buying process.

I’ve thought a lot about how to come up with a more accurate measure of growth efficiency – one that combines the two most critical dimensions for maximizing a company’s shareholder value — Revenue Growth + Magic Number. Here’s what I’ve come up with: the Magic Growth Number (MGN). MGN takes the Magic Number and multiplies it by the annualized growth rate of the company. For example, a company growing at a 33 percent rate would multiply its Magic Number by 33 to come up with its Magic Growth Number. MGN is the most comprehensive single metric for describing a company’s overall go-to-market effectiveness.

As discussed earlier, a Magic Number between 0.5 and 1 is considered ok; anything above 1 is strong. The Magic Growth Number offers more variability transparency by looking into the effectiveness of that growth. An average MGN will be about 20 to 30, but it can vary from 0 to over 100. The higher the MGN, the better.

Why the Magic Growth Number matters

The chart below plots the current MGN for 19 of the largest publicly traded SaaS companies against their Enterprise Value multiple (Enterprise Value divided by annual revenue). You can find the full data at the end of this post.

Magic growth number chart

Analyzing the graph, there is a strong and direct correlation between a company’s MGN and its EV multiple (valuation) with only one real exception (ServiceNow). In other words, the more efficient a company’s marketing and sales are, the more value that company creates for its shareholders.

Why is this? The reality is that marketing has become THE most efficient way to accelerate growth in our digital economy. And because growth marketing is scalable (where sales is a one-to-one function), marketing budgets are able to grow quickly as their ability to scale company value is proven.

Think about it, if a company’s Enterprise Value is 5x its annual revenue, then every new dollar of revenue is worth at least 5x the expense dollar given to marketing and sales to produce that incremental revenue (measured by the Magic Number metric). The imperative is to connect the dots so each marketing expense dollar is aligned and reported against revenue growth.

Consider Veeva in the graph above, which has the luxury of targeting a very specific vertical market, life-sciences. Its marketing team is able to be efficient with its growth marketing program dollars, leading to its favorable placement in the graph. Box, on the other hand, is targeting a competitive horizontal market while trying to move up-market, which taxes growth efficiency. Most other companies fall somewhere in between these two and need to sweat the details across their go-to-market model.

Here are three strategies to help you improve the Magic Growth Number of your company (and create more shareholder value):

  • Sweat your funnel economics: Work back from your future quarters’ revenue targets, based on historical conversion rates as you climb up your new customer acquisition funnel. For example, if you are looking to acquire 50 new customers next quarter and your company has a historical 50 percent opp-to-customer conversion rate, then you need 100 new opps this quarter. Continue working backward until you reach the top of the funnel — and set those numbers as goals for your marketing teams (those responsible for each phase of the new customer’s journey).
  • Ensure efficient hand-offs: Sales and marketing share your funnel. Within those groups there are even more subgroups — lead generation, email marketing, sales development, account executives, etc. Leads get handed off multiple times between these groups and you need to make sure it’s being done efficiently and that everyone understands and agrees on a process that results in maximizing efficiency. The key is to hand a new customer from one stage/team to another with maximum speed and clarity, ensuring a speedy trip through the funnel.
  • Benchmark and prepare for the future: Every month, every quarter, every year. Make sure you are benchmarking your efficiency compared to your past performance and compared to other similar companies. It’s best to invest in new growth initiatives (new product lines, geographies, verticals, segments) as early as possible; once you’re public, access to growth capital is harder to get, and public investors want higher margins and more a more efficient go-to-market model.

The future of growth and value creation among tech companies is largely in the hands of marketing.

There’s never been a better time to be a CMO — more budget and growth responsibility, and (finally) growth marketing is as measurable as sales. Architecting and making your customer acquisition process efficient is hard work, but the results are amazing. Marketing moves the needle on shareholder value in a big way. Tomorrow’s winners are leveraging the latest marketing technologies, sweating their funnel processes/metrics, while hiring the best people. Make it happen, and enjoy the journey.

full magic growth number data

Paul Albright is CEO and cofounder of Captora. He was previously Chief Revenue Officer at Marketo, where he led the overall growth strategy across sales and marketing, delivering global revenue growth over 100% year-over-year, from $14m to $58m. He held a similar position at SuccessFactors, where he grew revenues to more than $200m and over 80% year-over-year growth. He also previously worked at Greylock Partners as a CEO-in-Residence. He currently serves on the board of directors of Aasonn, Captora, and Clarizen and is a frequent speaker and blogger.










21 Mar 19:27

The Foolproof Formula for Finding Product-Market Fit

by Sean Sheppard

Products and markets may be unique, but the path to finding product-market fit is not. Its formulaic, and I’m going to share the formula with you here in the coming months, starting now.

But first, it’s important to understand why now more than ever when it comes to sales, founding teams need to be thinking early about market development, and not just product development.

Welcome to the Age of Applied Technology

In the past, technology was expensive and complex. Product talent was sparse. So, the biggest risk for startups was in the product itself. Nowadays – generally speaking – the costs and complexity of technology are greatly reduced and product talent is plentiful. The risk now lies in capital efficient market development, not product development.

The New Seed Stage

My partner Andrew Goldner likes to say that, “In Silicon Valley, ‘A’ is the fourth letter of the alphabet.” It’s true! Before your Series A, you now raise a Pre-Seed, Seed, and Bridge round, all before Series A. This graph illustrates the point and the distance startups must go before raising an A round:

New Seed Stage Length

You can now bootstrap yourself through the product prototype stage, utilizing a relatively small amount of capital to go to market. But with more players on the field, there’s a tradeoff. The traction milestones required at every stage of the funding lifecycle are getting higher and harder to reach.


Traction milestones at every stage of the funding lifecycle are getting higher and harder to reach.
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Product-Centric Founders Beware

Unfortunately, while the seed stage has changed, the way startups work has not. Most founders are incredibly product-focused, pouring time, energy, and money almost exclusively into product development.

Many founders lack the knowledge and experience to efficiently and effectively bring a product to market. Business accelerators perpetuate this problem when they help founders build their product and raise money, at the expense of helping founders market their product and make money.

Learning is Critical to Success

At GrowthX, our experience has shown that during the early stages of a company, having a data-informed and market-validated awareness of the predictability, profitability and scalability of revenue is far more important than the sheer volume of revenue.


Data-informed awareness of predictability and scalability of revenue is more important than volume
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If you follow a proven method of learning, testing, measuring and validating, you’ll be able to decide whether you should iterate or scale. This process allows you to find the proverbial product-market fit, and begin to generate predictable, profitable and scalable revenue, and hit the traction milestones you need to ultimately secure your Series A funding.

We call this process Market Development and it unfolds in two parts comprised of six distinct phases:

  • Market Foundation
    • Resource Review (Preparation)
    • Market Discovery
    • Market Messaging
  • Market Execution
    • Instrumentation (Preparation)
    • Market Outreach
    • Market Results

I’m going to reveal more of the formula in the coming months but I want to hit on the first two phases in this post.

If you agree that data is essential to finding a product-market fit, you’ll understand why due diligence is so important. We begin with Market Foundation.

Phase One – Resources Review

In preparation for market discovery, you’ll want to take full inventory of all available resources, with the goal of creating a roadmap of the people, processes and technologies necessary to create and support a functional learning organization.

Step One: Resource Review Mapping and Planning

What To Do: Review the current market development team and skill sets.

Outcome: Determine preliminary recommendations to maximize sales throughput and effectiveness.

Step Two: Marketing & Sales Process Analysis

What To Do: Review the current marketing and sales processes.

Outcome: Determine preliminary recommendations to optimize by removing any blockers, friction points or bottlenecks that can be eliminated through simple process change.

Step Three: Current Marketing & Sales Technology Stack

What To Do: Review the systems, tools and rules in place today to effectively manage the market outreach programs.

Outcome: Determine preliminary recommendations as to whether they should be maintained or replaced.

Phase Two – Market Discovery

Your goals here are threefold:

  1. Understand your current customer lifecycle and prioritize, in order to establish the foundation for retention and growth;
  2. Understand the current customer profiles, how they’re acquired, the resulting acquisition costs (CAC) and the projected lifetime value (LTV) of those customers; and
  3. Understand and define customer acquisition channels, pricing strategy, and data acquisition in preparation for Market Outreach later in this process.

Step One: Current Account Mapping and Pipeline Review

Create comprehensive account and pipeline lists by interviewing relevant team members, reviewing existing databases, spreadsheets, and email archives.

Step Two: Discover Ideal Customer Profiles (ICPs)

Define ICPs and determine the first profiles to execute against by conducting a thorough review of all customer account data, identifying patterns, and analyzing revenue potential and the likelihood of winning business.

Step Three: Prioritize Current Pipeline

Review the current opportunity pipeline based on your new ICP hypotheses. Then conduct a strategic account review of high priority opportunities.

Step Four: Review Current Customer Experience

Review the lifecycle of current customer experience, including UX design and onboarding, by customer segments and product type.

Step Five: Business/Pricing Models

Review unit economics to develop rational hypothesis for investable LTV:CAC.

Step Six: Define Customer Acquisition Strategy

Based on ICP above, determine what customer acquisition models will be tested during initial market outreach (e.g. no-touch, light-touch inside, high-touch inside, channel, outside, outside team).

Step Seven: Create a Data Acquisition Strategy

Based on your ICPs, develop recommendations for sourcing prospect data and a budget. Create a process to keep the funnel full.

Stay tuned to this blog, as I’ll be sharing more details on the how-to for every step above, as well as the details of Phase Three of Market Foundation (Market Messaging) and the subsequent phases of Market Execution.

In the meantime, follow me and GrowthX on Twitter.

The post The Foolproof Formula for Finding Product-Market Fit appeared first on Sales Hacker.

21 Mar 19:27

The lessons for Justin Trudeau in his father’s first budget

by Jason Kirby
R: Pierre Trudeau waves to the crowd of supporters after winning the Liberal Leadership, April 6, 1968. (Chuck Mitchell/CP); L: Justin Trudeau is seen on stage at Liberal party headquarters in Montreal after winning the 42nd Canadian general election. (Sean Kilapatrick/CP)

R: Pierre Trudeau waves to the crowd of supporters after winning the Liberal Leadership, April 6, 1968. (Chuck Mitchell/CP); L: Justin Trudeau is seen on stage at Liberal party headquarters in Montreal after winning the 42nd Canadian general election. (Sean Kilapatrick/CP)

On the evening of Oct. 22, 1968, five months after the Liberals rode the wave of Trudeaumania to power, Pierre Trudeau’s first finance minister, Edgar Benson, rose in the House of Commons to deliver the government’s first budget. “We are in a period of widespread prosperity,” he announced in his budget speech, “but it is prosperity with problems.”

Today we have problems with prosperity. Period.

The economy Pierre inherited from his predecessor, Lester Pearson, was in far better shape than what Stephen Harper left Prime Minister Justin Trudeau. Of course, Pearson didn’t face a global recession while in office, let alone a recession in the U.S. or Canada. Instead, Canada’s economy was enjoying supercharged growth in 1968, when Pierre’s first budget was unveiled. Yet that posed its own problems, with the staggeringly high inflation of the 1970s already showing up in rising prices.

To paint a picture of the economy that each Trudeau inherited, we took 10 charts from Benson’s budget documents, then recreated them for the modern era.

 

Economic growth — the hot, and the not

Trudeau vs Trudeau GDP - old

Trudeau vs Trudeau real growth - newnew

In the five years Pearson lead Canada, real GDP—a measure of economic growth that accounts for inflation—expanded by more than 30 per cent, or at an average of close to six per cent per year. The updated chart above, which uses the same scale as the one in 1968, drives home how lacklustre our growth is today. Since 2010 the economy has expanded at less than one-third that earlier pace, held down by fallout from the Great Recession, Harper’s austerity measures and the effects of the oil crash starting in 2014.

It is this sluggishness that Justin has promised to address by unleashing federal spending. But while many hold the view that more spending by Ottawa is the cure for what ails the economy, don’t expect a return to anything like the growth Canada enjoyed in the late 1960s.

Blame demographics. Consider this: in his budget speech, Benson boasted of Canada’s “continuous rapid gains in population.”  Over a five-year period starting in the late 1960s, Canada’s working age population—those aged 15 to 64—grew by 13.1 per cent. By comparison, from 2011 to 2015 that same crucial slice of the population grew just 2.3 per cent. Even with the recently announced plan to boost immigration, Canada still faces a yawning demographic gap that will weigh down growth, regardless of new stimulus measures and bigger deficits.


In the hole — some things never change

Trudeau vs Trudeau budget balance - old

Trudeau vs Trudeau deficits

Speaking of deficits, in his budget speech in 1968 Benson predicted Canada would face a “substantial deficit” of $730 million for that year (which in today’s terms would be $5 billion). Measured against the size of Canada’s economy at the time, Pierre started off with a deficit of 0.9 per cent of GDP. By the time he vacated the prime minister’s office the first time, in 1979, that figure had soared to 5.3 per cent and when he left for good in 1984 Canada’s deficit had exploded to a crushing 7.9 per cent of GDP. (It would ultimately peak at 8.3 per cent during Brian Mulroney’s first year in office.)

By comparison Justin inherited what effectively was a balanced budget. In Harper’s last full fiscal year, 2014-15, Ottawa posted a small surplus, while in November the Office of the Parliamentary Budget Officer said that absent any policy changes, 2015-16 would see another slight surplus, which would revert to an average deficit of 0.2 per cent of GDP over the next few years. But policies have changed, of course, and Finance Minister Bill Morneau now predicts a deficit of $2.3 billion this year and $18.4 billion in 2016-17.

That forecast doesn’t take into account new spending and tax measures that will come out of Tuesday’s budget. It’s expected Morneau will announce at least a $30-billion deficit for 2016-17—three times what Justin campaigned on during the last election—which would equate to 1.5 per cent of GDP. “Substantial,” as Benson might say.


More deficits, more debt

Trudeau vs Trudeau debt - old

Trudeau vs Trudeau debt - newnew

Both Justin and his finance minister have said that while Canada’s debt level will rise under their watch, the debt-to-GDP ratio—a measure of  the country’s ability to manage its debts—will decline. That’s because the additional spending will grow the economy faster than the new debt piles up, or at least that’s the pitch.

TD Economics isn’t buying it. Based on Liberal platform commitments, the bank’s economists forecast five years of $30-billion annual deficits, adding $150 billion to the nation’s debt by 2020-21, and pushing Canada’s debt-to-GDP ratio from 31 per cent to 36.1 per cent.

To put that in perspective, Canada’s debt-to-GDP ratio was around 22 per cent at the time of Pierre’s first budget.


Where the money came from, and went

Trudeau vs Trudeau Revenue Expenditure by source - old

Trudeau vs Trudeau revenue expenditure by source - new

Due to changes over time in the way government departments are structured and how government accounting standards have changed, it’s impossible to exactly reproduce the chart from 1968 on revenues and expenditures. However, the updated version, drawn from the Department of Finance’s fiscal reference tables, does reveal several interesting shifts. For instance:

-Personal income tax has come to play a much larger role in financing government—growing from 31 per cent of revenue to 48 per cent—while corporate income taxes have become less important.

-Defence spending as a share of total expenditures has shrunk considerably since Pierre’s first budget, from 18 per cent to just eight per cent. Canada’s armed forces were much larger back then, with a regular force of more than 100,000 troops (compared to around 68,000 today) and still boasted an aircraft carrier—an aircraft carrier!—though Pierre would go on to impose deep cuts to Canada’s military spending.

-Public debt charges, the interest the Government of Canada pays on the money it’s borrowed, has shrunk as a share of total expenditures. That’s of course due to incredibly low interest rates, which does give Justin more breathing room to borrow and spend—so long as interests rates don’t rise again.


Interest rate highs and lows

Trudeau vs Trudeau interest rates - old

Trudeau vs Trudeau interest rates - new

Interest rates certainly can’t go much lower without the Bank of Canada dipping into negative territory, which is a distinct possibility during Justin’s first term.


Working hard, hardly working

Trudeau vs Trudeau labour force - old

Trudeau vs Trudau - labour force - new

Let’s just pause for a moment and look yearningly at that unemployment rate in the mid-to-late 1960s. No, your eyes aren’t deceiving you. It was around 3.5 per cent. It’s never come close to that level since, and may well never again.

Meanwhile over the last year Canada’s unemployment rate has been creeping back up.


Where the jobs were, weren’t, are and aren’t

Trudeau unemployment rates old

Trudeau unemployment rates new

Here’s another look at employment, this by region. While the unemployment rate in Atlantic Canada remains chronically high, the long-standing Prairie advantage has been erased over the last year by layoffs related to the commodity crash.


Job growth at home and abroad

Trudeau vs Trudeau intl employment - old

Trudeau vs Trudeau intl employment - new

One last jobs chart, this comparing Canada to the world. Harper used to regularly boast that Canada had the best record on job performance of any country in the G7 since the end of the recession, and that was true. However, since 2014, when the commodity bubble burst and sent oil prices crashing back to earth, Canada’s pace of employment growth has fallen behind that of the United States and the United Kingdom.

What’s more, the scale of the job gains is more muted now across the board, which is again a function of demographics. Whereas employment in Canada grew by more than 14 per cent in the five year’s prior to the 1968 budget, even the top performer this time around, the United States, has managed just half that.

As for the rest of the countries shown, what can we say—at least Italy is consistent.


From inflation fears to disinflation fears

Trudeau vs Trudeau inflation old
Trudeau vs Trudeau inflation new

In his budget speech Benson made clear what he saw as his top challenge: “In the broad field of economic policy, the most urgent need now is to check further the continuing increase in prices and living costs.” At the time the Consumer Price Index had been rising at more than 3.5 per cent each year, a precursor of the higher rates to come in the 1970s.

While the Canadian Cauliflower Panic of 2016 reflected modern anger over rising food prices—which are a direct result of the lower loonie driving up import costs—inflation today is far more subdued. Too subdued. Over the last five years inflation has regularly fallen below the Bank of Canada’s target of two per cent, despite record low interest rates, leading to concerns at the bank about disinflation. The question for the economy now is whether the current Trudeau government’s more stimulative fiscal policy can do what monetary policy has so far failed to achieve.

* Note to those wondering how national house prices could be rising at 15 per cent a year, yet housing inflation (the term now used by Statistics Canada is shelter) is so subdued in the chart: that’s because house price appreciation isn’t factored in. Instead, it measures changes in the cost of housing services, like rent, mortgage interest payments, mortgage insurance, property taxes and utilities.


A dollar’s worth 

Trudeau currency old
Trudeau currency new

About that cauliflower crisis, this was a major culprit. The Canadian dollar has shed more than 30 per cent of its value against the Greenback since 2011. But while higher prices for imported goods are hitting consumers, manufacturers and exporters have benefited. However, the volatility of Canada’s currency remains a problem—since January the loonie has soared 13 per cent.

That wasn’t a problem in the lead-up to Pierre’s first budget, when the dollar bounced between 92 and 93 cents U.S. Stability like that would go a long way to helping Canadian businesses today.


The post The lessons for Justin Trudeau in his father’s first budget appeared first on Macleans.ca.

21 Mar 19:26

Changes to the small business tax rate have entrepreneurs on guard

by Joe Castaldo

Tax Week

people working late on financial documents

(Hero Images/Getty)

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s mandate letter to the new Minister of Small Business and Tourism last November contained a somewhat puzzling directive. The ministry was to ensure that the tax code is used to “support small businesses, rather than used to reduce personal income tax obligations for high-income earners.”

It’s a sanitized version of a statement Trudeau made during last year’s election campaign, when he charged that “a large percentage of small businesses are actually just ways for wealthier Canadians to save on their taxes.” With Finance Minister Bill Morneau set to deliver the budget on March 22, small business owners are still in the dark about what exactly the government has in store for them. Experts point to two options it might take—neither of which small business owners are going to like.

The uncertainty around the government’s plans is creating some uneasiness for SMBs. “In every meeting we’ve had, we’ve been asking, ‘What is the policy issue you’re trying to solve?’” says Corinne Pohlmann, senior vice-president of national affairs at the Canadian Federation of Independent Business (CFIB). “There is some confusion around what the government actually means by making that kind of statement.”

What is clear is that the Liberals will follow through on reducing the small business tax rate from 11% to 9% by 2019. Businesses that meet the standards of a Canadian-Controlled Private Corporation (CCPC) pay the lower small business rate on the first $500,000 of active business income, and the general corporate tax rate beyond that. The CCPC structure is also favoured by professionals in medicine, law, accounting and other fields. Profits paid out from the corporation to shareholders as dividends are taxed at a significantly lower rate than personal income and income can be split with family members to further offset taxes.

Michael Wolfson, a professor at the University of Ottawa, has estimated that based on 2011 data, the government loses as much as $500 million in tax revenue because of high-net-worth individuals who use CCPCs to income-split. That’s why tightening income-splitting provisions could be one approach the Liberals take in the budget. For example, corporate dividends payable to minor children are already taxed at the highest marginal rate—essentially removing the incentive to split income. A variation could be applied to dividends paid to spouses and adult children as well. This approach wouldn’t necessarily be straightforward, notes Alaina Spec, a lawyer with Low Murchison Radnoff in Ottawa. The spouses of professionals and SMB owners often work part-time for these businesses, for example, which might entitle them to favourable tax treatment. “It’s not as clear cut as with a minor child, who is not able to contribute in any way to the business,” she says.

Further tweaks could include changes to the country’s associated corporation rules, says Allan Lanthier, a tax consultant and former chair of the Canadian Tax Foundation. Through deft tax planning, it’s possible for a small business owner to form related corporations and essentially circumvent the $500,000 cap on active business income, Lantier says—a tactic known as doubling up. “Associated corporation rules could be tightened to provide fewer tax planning opportunities to double up,” he recommends.

But such changes amount to tinkering around the edges, as far as Lanthier is concerned. A more significant move would be to restrict access to the small business tax deduction based on the number of employees a corporation has. This is exactly what the government of Quebec did in its budget last year. Starting in 2017, only firms with more than three employees will be entitled to the province’s small business tax deduction. (Manufacturers are exempted). Part of the justification is that restricting access serves as a “growth premium.” In other words, it encourages the smallest companies to expand and hire employees—thus making a bigger contribution to the economy—in order to take advantage of the tax break.

That argument doesn’t hold water with the CFIB. “The smallest companies are the ones that have the least amount of extra income to grow,” Pohlman says. “If we’re going to start them at a higher tax rate, that’s sending a signal that we’re not really as supportive of those smaller companies to grow.” CFIB president Dan Kelly wrote in an editorial last year that if the federal government attempts to reduce access, the organization will “take action.” Professional associations are concerned for their members, too. The Canadian Medical Association, argued in its pre-budget submission that the government should maintain access to the small business deduction for physicians, since they enter the workforce later in life and often with significant debt, and unlike small businesses are unable to pass on higher costs to clients.

Lanthier questions the value of maintaining the small business deduction as is, however. “The point of the deduction is to allow businesses more after-tax funds to reinvest and grow employment. But if you don’t have at least four full-time employees, then you’re not much of an employer to start with,” he says. The government’s plan to reduce the small business tax rate to 9% means Ottawa is foregoing $5 billion in annual tax revenue, according to Lanthier, and that other taxpayers will have to bear those costs. He’s argued the small business deduction should be abolished entirely, since there is little evidence showing it “contributes to economic growth or job creation in any significant way.”

Indeed, there is a robust debate about merits of the policy. Tax expert Jack Mintz has argued the deduction discourages growth by offering small businesses an incentive to stay small in order to pay lower taxes. (During last year’s election campaign, Mintz recommended cutting the deduction in half). The CD Howe Institute has argued the deduction carries a cost to the economy by shifting investment from large companies to small ones, which are less productive. The CFIB, for its part, maintains the deduction is justified since small businesses endure comparatively higher tax compliance costs, and can’t engage in the same kind of complicated tax efficient strategies afforded to larger corporations.

Small business owners can breathe a sigh of relief knowing that this larger debate about the merits of small business tax policy is on hold for now. But they might not want to relax too much until budget day.

MORE ABOUT TAXES:

The post Changes to the small business tax rate have entrepreneurs on guard appeared first on Canadian Business - Your Source For Business News.

21 Mar 19:26

15 Smart Strategies to Speed Up Your Sales Cycle

by claire@hellosign.com (Claire Murdough)

Ahh — the never-ending quest to create the perfect, predictable sales cycle. To figure it out would be like discovering the Holy Grail of sales.

But, as you know, the insane number of variables and blockers in each sale makes it nearly impossible to entirely perfect the system.

However, there are ways to make sales cycles more predictable.

One surefire strategy for edging toward a more predictable close is to focus on improving the call cycle process and maintaining deal momentum.

Let's talk about some other smart strategies to speed up your sales cycle.

The Art of Call Cycles

Maximize your sales cycle by implementing a call cycle into your process. Call cycles refer to the number and cadence of sales calls reps make to maintain contact with their key accounts and prospects during a specific time period.

Call cycles allow you to keep in touch with prospects on a regular basis, but how often you touch base with prospects depends on your business model, sales goals, and the unique needs of each prospect. These conversations keep your product or service top of mind as the solution to the prospect’s main problem or objective.

For example, if you work in B2B furniture sales, implementing a quarterly call cycle with prospective customers to share the newest designs or features that come with each season’s pieces could be a helpful exercise.

This keeps your prospects primed for the sale, potentially speeding up the sales process.

As a sales professional, you want to enter each stage of the sales cycle making best use of you and your prospect’s time.

Let’s review a few smart strategies that will help you land the sale even faster.

1. Automate repetitive tasks.

Consider this: The average SDR spends 21% of their time writing emails, and 17% of their time prospecting and researching leads. It is not uncommon for top sales reps to spend more hours in a day organizing or inputting information than actually selling.

Sales automation tools can remove these tasks from your plate or make them easier to complete. Automating repetitive tasks helps reps spend more of their cognitive time working on high-value tasks like building targeted relationships. Start with an audit to determine which tasks you and your teammates are doing again and again.

Then, prioritize which repetitive tasks should (and can) be automated. Company research or data entry are two good places to start. Once you've got the mechanical tasks off your plate, you can start exploring more complex options — like automating your email prospecting.

2. Set an agreed-upon goal for each sales call.

If you can get a prospect on the phone to talk about a deal, that’s great. If you can clearly communicate a goal for the phone call, get mutual agreement from your prospect, and then work together to achieve the goal by the end of the call, that’s 10 times better.

An agreed-upon goal helps you create a guardrail for the conversation. When you veer off track, you know exactly where to circle back. Setting a shared goal also prevents one or both parties from guessing where they’re at in the deal cycle at the end of the call.

For example, you might schedule a call with the goal of answering your prospects questions about the new document-sharing feature of the project management software you sell. Now that you’ve set this goal, you know exactly how to guide the conversation, and the prospect understands their role in the conversation. By setting a goal, you avoid wasting time backtracking or addressing misalignment or confusion.

At the end of a call, schedule the next meeting and set a goal for that call, too.

3. Explore prospect objections before you respond to them.

Not many people like to hear, “I know exactly how you feel!” right before getting hit with a super generic sales pitch. The best sales reps know it’s crucial to not only listen to objections but also to understand their root causes.

For instance, a prospect might say they don’t have time for your solution. You could interpret that as the perfect opportunity to launch into a “It’s quick and easy to set up!” pitch or you could ask, “What tasks are eating up the most time in your day?”.

After a question or two, you may realize your prospect feels resource-strapped due to understaffing on their small team.

When you dig deeper into the objection, you open doors that lead you to the source of a prospect’s pain point or objection. This way, you avoid focusing on un-targeted or irrelevant objections and can cater to a prospect’s unique needs.

4. Be clear about pricing (very) early on.

When’s the last time you were rung up at a cash register and were excited to learn about an extra fee? Probably never. People don’t like finding out about unexpected costs and fees in the eleventh hour.

So, while it can be tempting to soften the blow of cost by veiling the price, it almost always adds time and frustration to a deal.

Instead of strategically doling out added costs or fees — which is difficult and time-consuming to explain later — make it crystal clear what a prospect will get from your service. Pricing transparency gives prospects a reason to trust you and saves you from unexpected objections down the road.

5. Make it ridiculously easy for prospects to sign contracts from any device.

What’s something almost everyone has with them every moment of the day? What’s something you probably have on you right now? A phone. A tablet. Some sort of portable device.

Top-performing sales teams keep up with buyer behavior and adjust their sales techniques to accommodate it. Online contracts that can be signed on the go, and on any device, significantly cut down on back-and-forth with your prospects.

6. Focus on your highest-performing channels.

There’s a reason companies don’t advertise certain products in newspapers anymore. Some channels just aren’t modern-day winners for featuring services or products. Focusing on poorly-performing channels will almost definitely slow your roll.

To figure out where to focus your attention for the highest returns, track which channels perform the best for your team (maybe LinkedIn InMail really does get the highest response rate) and continue to build systems that support additional focus on those areas.

It’s important to check your channels regularly. Just because one channel’s a winner this year doesn’t mean it’ll be the clear winner forever. Always stay curious about channel performance and don’t be afraid to experiment by trying new prospecting techniques.

7. Be a person you’d want to talk to.

The positive effect of building authentic relationships can’t be overstated in sales. But it’s easy to slip into a “sales” personality, especially if you’ve got the skills and the expertise to guide a prospect through the sales cycle.

Make sure you’re not undercutting these skills by removing the personal part of any sale. Be an expert, but don’t push. When in conversation with a prospect, here’s what this could sound like.

Salesperson: “Hi, [Prospect Name]. My name is Alex, and I help IT managers source computing equipment and technical support for their company’s remote employees. Is your company planning to offer more remote working options this year?”

Prospect: “Currently, remote work is handled on a case by case basis, but beginning this quarter my company plans to offer full-time remote employment.”

Salesperson: “What has been your biggest pain point in sourcing computing equipment for remote workers?”

Prospect: “Our team is incredibly busy supporting our on-site employees, and we haven’t been able to ship equipment or provide troubleshooting support to remote workers as quickly as we would like.”

Salesperson: “I hear that quite a bit, and have helped clients through similar challenges. I would love to learn more about the year ahead, and to share how we may be able to help.”

Building trust with a prospect takes a bit of time upfront, but it’s worth it in the end.

8. Use incremental closes.

To speed up your prospect’s buying process and prime them for the purchase, use incremental closes.

Making a series of small commitments deepens the buyer’s investment in the deal, puts them in the habit of saying “yes,” and helps you acquire valuable information.

First, map out the request you’ll make at the end of every interaction. These requests should benefit both you and your prospect. They should also grow in size and significance as you get to know your prospect and earn their confidence.

For example, you might end the connect call by asking for your prospect’s cell phone number, so you can get in touch more conveniently. After the demo, you could request an introduction to the budget authority or a meeting with their procurement team.

9. Create a plan for sales meetings.

You’ve helped dozens, hundreds, or even a thousand customers make this purchase. Your prospect, on the other hand, has probably never bought this exact solution before — or even anything in this product category.

Use your experience to guide them through the buying process. Not only will doing so help you gain the status of a trusted consultant, you’ll also shorten their time-to-purchase by pointing out potential obstacles and identifying the best next steps. They won’t need to spend precious time figuring out these strategies on their own.

If you wait for your prospect to request help, however, you might be waiting forever. Proactively volunteer your expertise by asking during discovery, “Have you ever purchased anything [in this category, of this complexity, to solve this issue] before?”

Follow up with, “Would you like some suggestions?”

Together, craft a detailed timeline along with an installation, implementation, or delivery plan. Include the key stakeholders, at which point they typically get involved, their likely objectives and/or priorities, and how to appeal to each one to get them on board.

With this plan, your prospect has a far easier time navigating the buying process, and your sales cycle will be noticeably shorter.

10. Surface objections early and often.

Hiding from objections doesn’t make them disappear. In fact, the longer you wait to surface the buyer’s reservations, the stronger they usually are. The deal will end up stagnating in the later stages while you try to convince your prospect to buy.

Consider delving into their concerns as early on a possible. I once heard a salesperson begin his demo call by asking, “Are there any reasons you see [product] not working for you?”

Pinpointing potential blockers before the buyer had even seen the solution had three main effects:

  1. The rep projected confidence: If the rep was unsure if the product was a good fit, they probably wouldn’t have asked such a bold question.

  2. The prospect was more engaged: With their anxieties resolved, the prospect could turn all of their attention to the product’s features and benefits.

  3. The demo was more relevant: The extra insight allowed the sales rep to tailor their presentation to the prospect’s top-level priorities.

The takeaway: Ask for objections early and often. The exact points at which to ask varies based on your sales cycle; however, most salespeople should start seriously hunting for objections after the discovery call. Prospects will voluntarily voice objections before that point, but these often turn out to be brush-offs like, “It’s not a good time to buy,” or “We’re happy with our current vendor.”

11. Take the back-and-forth out of scheduling meetings with prospects.

Nothing is less efficient — or more frustrating — than sending a series of back-and-forth emails to schedule a call.

Suppose it takes you and the buyer half a day, on average, to agree on a meeting time. If your sales cycle typically requires six meetings, you’ll waste three full days to simply scheduling your call.

A scheduling tool like Meetings can completely eliminate this time-suck. Meetings integrates with your favorite calendars including Google Calendar, Office 365 Calendar, and Hubspot CRM, so prospects can view your availability and book a time that works for them.

HubSpot meetings tool

Getting an appointment on the calendar will take seconds, not hours — and you won’t have to do any work. As an added benefit, the easier it is to schedule a meeting with you, the more likely your prospect is to do so.

12. Leverage social proof.

Your prospect may not automatically trust you, but their peers’ opinions and/or testimonials will hold a lot of weight. In fact, nine out of 10 buying decisions are made with recommendations from peers. Leverage the power of social proof to win their confidence — and ultimately, the deal — more quickly.

Here are several strategies:

  • Get a warm intro through a mutual contact: Use LinkedIn to find a first or second-degree connection at your prospect’s company. Even if you don’t have a direct line to your prospect, they’ll be far likelier to respond to an introduction via their coworker than a random email.

  • Send your prospect case studies: Evidence of your product’s impact or ROI is extremely convincing. If you have multiple case studies, look for one featuring a company similar to your prospect’s organization.

  • Bring them to an event with current customers: Allowing every prospect to speak to a reference usually isn’t feasible; after all, it’s time-consuming for your client and can delay the purchasing process. A good shortcut? Inviting buyers to an event where they can mingle with your customers. They’ll inevitably end up hearing positive reviews of your product.

  • Mention similar companies: Simply bringing up companies your prospect can relate to — because their organization is dealing with a similar challenge, has similar characteristics, or serves a similar market — builds trust.

13. Regularly clean your CRM to eliminate cold contacts.

Keeping your CRM contact list up-to-date with contacts who are interested in your content and products will make your sales process more efficient because you’re communicating with people who want to hear your message.

Additionally, when you don’t have disinterested contacts on your list, your email deliverability improves, ensuring your message gets to the right people at the right time.

Take the time to clean and maintain your contact list. Delete contacts who've bounced or unsubscribed. Segment your contact list based off the last email opened, last email clicked, last reply, and/or last delivery date. If it has been several relevant sales cycles since a contact has interacted with anything you’ve sent and you think they have turned into a cold lead, create a “cold” list and delete or archive their record to exclude them from future communications.

14. Keep alignment with your marketing team around sales goals.

In many companies, marketing and sales operate independently, working on opposite ends of the funnel. When sales organizations were asked about the quality of leads generated by their marketing teams, they reported only 7% of leads they received from their marketing organizations as high quality. When sales and marketing teams are not in alignment with the type of leads that should be coming in, the entire company can suffer.

Thankfully, there are a number of ways sales and marketing organizations can work together to achieve their common goals. If you want to start working more closely with your marketing team, have marketing and sales work together to map out the buyer’s journey and create buyer personas. This is a great way to create alignment that can support the rest of the sales process.

15. Create a personalized experience for each prospect.

When was the last time you felt moved to make a purchase based on a generic pitch that didn’t speak to who you are or the problem you’re trying to solve? Chances are, you don’t do this very often.

Especially at the beginning of the sales process, personalization is critical to helping your prospects feel heard and understood. When your prospects receive a message or have a conversation with you that makes them feel like you truly understand their problem, they’re more likely to feel like what you’re offering is the right solution.

With this level of trust, the sales cycle becomes more efficient because there is less back and forth. Here are some best practices to help you create a more personalized experience for your prospects:

  • Always include their first name in emails and messages, so they don’t feel like a mass pitch.

  • Use information from your previous conversations to help guide future conversations.

  • Share content or solutions that are relevant to the prospect’s specific challenge or problem.

How effectively you sell makes a difference to the bottom line. How quickly you can effectively sell can make an even bigger difference.

(If you’re interested in seeing how you can automate sales contracts to close deals faster, check out the HelloSign integration in HubSpot’s free CRM.)

Editor's note: This post was originally published in March 2016 and has been updated for comprehensiveness.

21 Mar 19:25

Roger Agnelli, who turned Vale into a global mining giant, dies in plane crash with wife and two children

by David Biller and Denyse Godoy, Bloomberg News

Roger Agnelli, who presided over an unprecedented decade of growth during the commodities boom that entrenached Brazilian mining company Vale SA as the world’s largest iron-ore producer, has died. He was 56.

Vale confirmed Agnelli’s death on Sunday, a day after he and six others — including his wife, son and daughter — were killed in a Sao Paulo plane crash. His single-engine turboprop came down in a residential neighborhood about three minutes after leaving Campo de Marte airport en route to Rio de Janeiro, according to Brazil’s civil aviation agency.

Agnelli, an economist, was president and chief executive officer at Vale — and the same company under its prior name Cia. Vale do Rio Doce — for a decade through 2011 during a period when iron ore prices spiked. He led the company to an investment-grade rating, oversaw more than US$84 billion in investments and acquisitions, and distributed US$17 billion in dividends.

Brazil lost a citizen with “extraordinary entrepreneurial vision,” who was always “committed to the development of the country,” Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff said in a statement.

The Harvard Business Review named Agnelli the world’s fourth-best CEO for 2012, trailing Apple Inc.’s Steve Jobs, Amazon.com Inc.’s Jeff Bezos, and Samsung Electronics Co.’s Yun Jong-Yong. The magazine cited an industry-adjusted shareholder return of 1,773 per cent during his tenure at Vale and a US$157 billion increase in the company’s market capitalization.

During Agnelli’s tenure, Vale became “the world’s top iron- ore producer,” the company’s press office said in an e-mail Sunday. He helped the miner “intensify its global expansion strategy, which led Vale to a new level in the global market.”

Agnelli also clashed with the government over demands he spend more on steelmaking and over how many local workers were fired when Latin America’s largest economy entered recession in 2009. He left Vale in 2011 to found AGN Participacoes, which markets iron, copper and other ores to South American manufacturers.

Before joining Vale, Agnelli worked for 20 years for Banco Bradesco SA, Brazil’s second-biggest lender by market value, having reached the position of executive director. He was a board member of companies including state-controlled oil producer Petroleo Brasileiro SA and power utility CPFL Energia SA.

Agnelli was a “synonym of energy,” Luiz Carlos Trabuco Cappi, CEO of Bradesco, said in a statement. “His style, friendly in relationships and resolute in business, marked a time of deep global changes.”
Bloomberg.com

21 Mar 19:24

Companies Can’t Be Great Unless They’ve Almost Failed

by Bill Taylor
mar16-21-10153766

The Wall Street Journal recently published a fascinating column on the best-performing stocks of the last 30 years. One intriguing feature of these enormous success stories is that so many of them are little-known companies in ordinary, sometimes downright boring industries: railroads, health insurance, back-office automation. The runaway winner, with a staggering stock price growth of 107,099% since 1985, was a truly obscure outfit called Balchem Corp., which makes flavorings and nutritional additives for animal feed — not exactly Google or Disney.

But the more important part of the story, the lesson that applies to all kinds of companies in all sorts of fields, is that every one of these star performers faced at least one “near-death experience” during the course of its long-term success. I don’t mean a few quarters of sluggish growth or a one-time product flop, but a radical shift in its market, a major technology disruption, or a disastrous strategic bet that threatened the company’s very existence. In the case of Balchem, a huge investment in a new coating technology was so slow to pay off that the company lost 53% of its market value in less than 13 months. Ultimately, it took “patience, grit, and good luck” to transform Balchem from a basket case to a “superstock.”

As I reflected on the 30-year performance of these superstocks, I thought back to an event I helped organize 20 years ago, when I was editing Fast Company. In an effort to understand the new logic of change and the emerging rules of success, we convened a conference around the theme “How Do You Overthrow a Successful Company?” It was not a gathering of internet geeks and startup founders who were eager to take on the corporate establishment. It was a gathering of executives, strategists, and change agents from illustrious big companies (Xerox, Levi Strauss, Roche, Citigroup) who sensed that there were massive shifts on the horizon and who were determined to reckon with those shifts and embrace a new generation of business models, a new era of technology and communications, a new level of customer expectations and sophistication.

In other words, they were leaders who wanted their companies to win big in fast-moving times without a near-death experience. It was a great idea for a conference, yet it amounted to a hill of beans. Xerox has tried its best, but its long-term struggles have led to a recently announced breakup and restructuring. As a company and a brand, Levi Strauss went from being an American icon to fighting to stay relevant. Citigroup got caught up in the financial crisis and has never been the same.

Why is it so hard for companies and leaders to embrace change and break with the past without a near-death experience? The answer, I believe, has to do with what innovation strategist Cynthia Barton Rabe dubbed the “paradox of expertise.” Too many companies and leaders, and often the best companies and the most successful leaders, struggle with the frustrating reality that the more deeply immersed you are in a market, a product category, or a technology, the harder it becomes to open your mind to new business models that may reshape that market or exciting ways to leapfrog that technology. Past results may not be the enemy of subsequent breakthroughs, but they can constrain your capacity to grasp the future.

“When it comes to innovation,” she argued, “the same hard-won experience, best practices, and processes that are the cornerstones of an organization’s success may be more like millstones that threaten to sink it. Said another way, the weight of what we know, especially what we collectively ‘know,’ kills innovation….Why can knowledge and experience be so lethal to innovation? Because when we become expert, we often trade our ‘what if’ flights of fancy for the grounded reality of ‘what is.’”

I wish I had a five-point program to help leaders overcome the paradox of expertise, or a set of foolproof strategies that would inspire transformational results independent of a dire strategic crisis. Alas, the wildly successful performance of The Wall Street Journal’s superstocks, and the painful struggles of those well-intentioned leaders from that Fast Company conference, suggests that simple answers may be an exercise in wishful thinking. The more things change, it seems, the more the challenges of leading change remain the same. It’s still worth trying to “overthrow” your successful company, but don’t be surprised if long-term prosperity requires confronting its mortality.

21 Mar 19:24

3 Lessons Small Business Can Learn From “The Profit”

by Jonathan Herrick

Running a small business is no easy feat – it’s a truth that Marcus Lemonis knows all too well.

If you don’t know who Marcus Lemonis is or haven’t watched the show “The Profit” on CNBC, you are missing out. Marcus, the CEO of Camping World and Good Sam Enterprises is a successful entrepreneur who has invested over $35 million of his own money and expertise back into struggling small businesses to help them grow.

Along with catching some great TV, small businesses can learn a lot from the way Marcus helps fellow owners and entrepreneurs get unstuck and clear the daily hurdles of running a business.

Here are 3 lessons your small business can learn from The Profit:

Stick to the Formula

A tried and true formula for success that Marcus subscribes to is investing in people, process and product to accelerate small business growth. Focusing on these three areas of your business sheds light on what you can improve to create a repeatable, sustainable business model that attracts, wows and delights customers.

People

There isn’t a single episode of The Profit that Marcus doesn’t drive home the importance of people in small business. After all people are your most important asset.

Think strategically about what key team members you need to drive the business forward. As a small business, it is easy to look at the bottom line and make decisions based on expenses or salaries.

On episode 17 Vision Quest Lighting– a manufacturer of custom lighting- was struggling financially so they let go of one of their most experienced welders due to high salary/wage costs. But as Marcus points out cheaper isn’t always better:

profit - vision quest lighting

The More Experience Employee Delivers a 16% Savings

In this example, the more experienced employee made $30 per hour and his replacement only made $18 per hour. On the surface you would think that is a huge savings to the business.

However, when the more experienced employee is more productive. delivering the same or better results in ½ the time, the math drastically changes. They key here is to measure the right value metric when it comes to hiring and retaining your employees. While cost is a factor, it shouldn’t be the only factor. If you want to build a great business, surround yourself with great people.

Another important aspect when it comes to your people is creating a culture of engagement. Your people are more likely to love their work, perform at a high level and deliver an amazing customer experience when you support their needs first. Just take a look at the episode with the boutique business, 240 Sweet. They are a gourmet marshmallow company and their toxic approach to running their business and lack of leadership forced Marcus to walk out on the deal and their best employee to quit.

profit - 240 sweet

Sam-Co-Owner of 240 Sweet

By supporting your people and proving them with the tools, training and resources to grow personally and professionally, you’ll keep them long term and they will be in a better position to help your business succeed. Marcus couldn’t be more accurate when he says: “The customer is not number one – they’re number two – right behind the employee.”

Product

You can’t run a healthy small business without great product strategy and execution. It isn’t just about creating cool, innovative products. It’s all about narrowing the focus and delivering the right product to your ideal buyer, at the right price point, in the right place.

A great example of this is Inkkas shoes. Dan, the founder of this hip footwear business was inspired by his travels to brings unusual fabrics and designs from other countries into his own shoe line.

profit - innkkas shoes

Dan-Founder of INKKAS Shoes

Dan and his team were facing slowing sales and brought Marcus in to turn around their small business. The majority of their sales came from online sales, followed by retailers and a retail shop they were running locally. While customers and retailers loved some of their core products, Dan was investing a lot of his time in designing new models from his own insights to try and fuel sales – with limited success.

So, with Marcus’s help, Innkkas went into research mode to get feedback from their customers and retailers on which shoes were actually driving the most sales. The response was overwhelming. There were 5 core models that made up the majority of their sales. The 80/20 rule. So they created 5 basic products to meet the needs of their customers:

profit---innkkas-shoes-3

5 Core Products of INKKAS Shoes

Also, the decision was made to shut down the retail store which had sluggish sales, inconsistent inventory, and an overall poor customer experience. Without the distraction of the retail store, Dan and his team could focus their entire efforts on online and wholesale business where their business was making the most impact.

The next thing they focused on was the quality of the product. While their customers liked the look of the shoes, there were opportunities to improve comfort and quality. They switched vendors to deliver a more quality shoe. Although the new vendors where more expensive, addressing the quality issue would enable Inkkas to create repeat buyers and drive a higher price point.

Dan and his team took the new, more focused product strategy to retailers and landed new accounts and revamped their website. The end result was a boost in sales, higher profit margins and a reduction in expenses from unused inventory.

As a small business owner, you often end up making product or marketing decisions from your gut instead of finding out what customers really think. The greatest lessons to be learned from Inkkas shoes is to stay close to your customers and potential customers, understand their needs and interests and get as much real-time feedback as you can.

Work tirelessly for a great product customer fit and narrow your focus so you can deliver “One Thing” exceptionally well, versus trying to serve “Everything” to everyone unsuccessfully.

Process

Having a consistent, repeatable process is the foundation of scaling any small business or franchise. Just ask Mike and Kathleen of “My Big Fat Greek Gyro.” They are the owners and operators of a franchise with multiple locations that struggled mightily with consistency and a lack of process. Because each location looked and operated differently and delivered an inconsistent customer experience, Mike and Kathleen faced profit losses month after month.

profit - gyro

“My Big Fat Greek Gyro” owners, Kathleen and Mike

Marcus met with the franchise owners to streamline the customer ordering process, simplify the menu options to include fresh, easy to prepare ingredients, and branded the franchises consistently across every location. Marcus even changed the name to “Simple Greek: to better align with their new simpler process.

profit - simple greek

“My Big Fat Greek Gyro” rebranded to “The Simple Greek”

When the franchise lacked a process, the business struggled to communicate with employees and locations, resulting in misalignments – like serving off-message and off-brand foods, like frozen cheese sticks. By putting the proper process in place throughout all aspects of the business, Mike and Kathleen now have the foundation to scale up their small business.

So what about your small business? How do you consistently attract new customers to your business? How do you ensure quality at each touch-point of the customer journey? Do you have a repeatable, scalable and measurable process that your employees can follow and deliver on?

By instilling smart processes into your small business, your people will be more efficient, productive and your bottom line will see a big benefit too.

Know Your Numbers

If you have watched The Profit long enough you have undoubtedly heard Marcus say: At the end of the day, the numbers don’t lie. He consistently highlights the importance knowing your numbers and profit and loss statements to his small business owners and partners.

I am amazed on how few owners on the show actually know their metrics. Like the old saying goes, You can’t manage what you can’t measure. Before Marcus is willing to invest, he does a deep dive into the financials to understand the health of the business and also the valuation.

In the episode 10: Bentley’s Corner Barkery, Marcus sits down with Giovani, one of the owners and goes through the balance sheet and financials. Then he asks him: “Do you know that you are losing money?”

profit - barkery

Giovani, Co-Owner of Bentley’s Corner Barkery

Giovani was surprised and mentioned that he doesn’t run the business off of the balance sheet but by the checking account.

The sad thing is, Giovani and his wife had an unbelievable passion for the business and truly put everything they had into making it successful. But they were running blind, the business expanded too fast to 7 stores, and they were underperforming. Their small business didn’t know their numbers and thus didn’t understand when to scale up or when to pull back.

If you find yourself needing help on the financial side of the business don’t fret, as owners we all have strengths and weaknesses. Make the investment to bring in the right help whether it’s a financially focused team member or even a financial consultant. No one can do everything well, which brings us to our next lesson…

Don’t Go at it Alone

So why do businesses flourish after Marcus Lemonis walks through their doors? Is it his vision to see what the business could be? Is it his methodical process he implements? Is it his capital invested strategically in the right areas of the business? The answer is yes, all of the above.

There is a big difference between starting a business and growing a business. In every case, when Marcus walks into a small business he brings more than just capital to the table. He brings a fresh perspective and a complimentary skill-set that is provided when someone outside the business enters as a trusted business partner.

profit - lano

Marcus partnering with Mirranda, Owner of Lano Company

But none of it would be possible if the businesses didn’t acknowledge they needed help and decided to look for a partner.

In your own business, it’s healthy to step back from the day-to-day tactical elements of the business to think strategically. Inventory your strengths and weaknesses, and consider the possibility of looking for a partner to help you take your business to the next level. It can definitely be tough to let go of control, but the key is finding the right partner who holds integrity, the right skills, and shared values.

By bringing in a trusted partner, you can focus on what you do best and let your partner excel at their core strengths, giving your small business a greater ability to grow and succeed.

Running a small business is a roller coaster – that’s why it makes for such great TV. But, if you want to cut out the drama and build a sustainable, scalable business, take a page from The Profit. Stick to a formula, know your numbers, and don’t try to go at it alone.

21 Mar 19:23

What Marketers Can Learn from Thomas Friedman’s Advice for The Rest of Us

by Nathan Isaacs

Thomas Friedman, a renowned author and New York Times columnist, was recently interviewing the good folks over at Intel, trying to get a sense of the impact Moore’s Law has had on the world.

As a comparison, they told him, if a 1971 VW Beetle were to improve similarly to an Intel processor over the same 45-year period, today the car would cost 4 cents, drive 6 million miles per gallon and go 300,000 miles per hour.

VW Beetle

Friedman believes Moore’s Law, which states that the speed and performance of microchips will double every 18 months, and its impact on technology is one of three great accelerations underway and dramatically changing the world. The other two are happening in the marketplace and with Mother Nature.

microchips

“We’re in the middle of something really big,” Friedman told the crowd at the World Affairs Council of Oregon’s International Speaker Series. Friedman has won three Pulitzer Prizes, and is the author of six best-selling books, including the World is Flat.

He said these three accelerations are happening nonlinearly, and compares it to the origin story of how chess was invented. The ruler of the kingdom was so impressed by the game, he offered its inventor any prize. The inventor said he would accept a grain of rice (or wheat, depending on the story) on one square of the chess board and then double that for each subsequent square. The end result of grain awarded may surprise you.

A similar acceleration happened following the invention of the printing press, Freidman said, but the difference is that it unfolded over 300 years and what is happening now is unfolding in real time over seven continents.

“We are just entering the second half of the chess board,” Friedman said.

He said we will continue to see technology and globalization change, redefine, or blow up economies, education, countries and more, including in the workplace. “This hurricane is reshaping every job, every industry, every country,” he said.

So what does that mean for marketers?

“Average is officially over,” Friedman said.

If you’ve listened to Friedman speak, or regularly read his columns, you know Friedman has five pieces of advice he offers his daughters. That advice can also be applied to marketers:

1. Always think like a new immigrant

Friedman said new immigrants arrive to their new country, new home, with the understanding there’s no legacy spot waiting for them. They take opportunities and pursue them with more energy and more vigor than anybody else.

As marketers, we should look at everything with a new set of eyes. When I was a newspaper journalist, one of the tips I received as a greenhorn was to take a different route to work each day. This way I wouldn’t get caught in the rut of routine and miss the stories that may be happening around me.

As a marketer, think of ways you can see your job or how you market your company with a fresh set of eyes; challenge the “we did that before” sentiment to see if you can come up with different results and new approaches.

2. Think like an artisan

Friedman said the artisan was the person, before mass manufacturing, who made every item individually and then signed it or put their stamp on it. This would have been for a mix of items such as cabinetry, china, and even fine art (watch one episode of Antique Roadshow and you’ll get the idea).

“Do your job every day in a way that you want to carve your initials into it at the end of the day,” Friedman said. “If you can do that, you can be sure that’s a job that will never be outsourced, automated, or digitized.”

think like an artisan

How does a marketer do that? Deep dive into becoming an expert in your craft, whether that is on the brand side, demand side, or the expand (post-sale) side. The woodworker who placed his stamp on the desk he just completed didn’t wake up one morning with those skills. He apprenticed the craft for years. By knowing your business inside and out, you also learn where to find opportunities to be great.

3. Always be in Beta

Friedman borrows this idea from Reid Hoffman, founder of LinkedIn. In Silicon Valley, Hoffman maintains, there is only one four-letter word that shouldn’t be said, and it’s not even four letters long. Finish.

“Always be in beta, always be in the state of learning, re-learning, re-engineering and re-tooling yourself,” Friedman said.

You can begin to understand the importance of always being in beta when you think about how Friedman’s three forces – Moore’s Law, Mother Nature, and the marketplace – interact with each other. Improved technology is opening up new markets. Mother Nature and changing environments are opening up new markets. Improved access to improving technologies is changing our customers, making them smarter and more selective.

4. Live by the formula PQ [passion quotient] plus CQ [curiosity quotient] is always greater than IQ [intelligence quotient]

Friedman introduced us to this idea in The World is Flat, “I have concluded that in a flat world, IQ – Intelligence Quotient – still matters, but CQ and PQ – Curiosity Quotient and Passion Quotient – matter even more. I live by the equation CQ+PQ>IQ. Give me a kid with a passion to learn and a curiosity to discover and I will take him or her over a less passionate kid with a higher IQ every day of the week.”

be curious

As marketers, what are you passionate about? What are curious about? And how can you bring that curiosity, passion and persistence to your marketing department?

The folks at Gallup regularly poll for employee engagement in the workplace. Their findings would depress you. About 70 percent of the workforce is not engaged. Could stoking your employees’ PQ and CQ fires help raise that engagement level? Couldn’t hurt.

5. Always think like a waitress at Perkins Pancake House in Minneapolis

Friedman told the story of having breakfast with a friend at his hometown, Perkins, in Minneapolis. He ordered pancakes with eggs. His friend ordered pancakes with fruit. The waitress came back, put the two plates down, and then told his friend, ‘I gave you extra fruit.’

Freidman gave her a 50% tip.

waitress

“That waitress didn’t control much, but she controlled the fruit ladle and that was the source of her extra unique value added. She was thinking entrepreneurially,” he said.

For marketers, think of ways you can change what you have control over to find that new entrepreneurial opportunity. Or think about what you control right now; could you take a fresh point of view and make some small or large change that would reinvigorate something you’re taking for granted now?

act-on demo

Take a video tour of Act-On to learn how you can leverage marketing technology to reinvigorate your marketing. Marketing automation can help you engage your audience across the entire buyer’s journey with automated email drips, simple social publishing, powerful reporting, and so much more.

21 Mar 19:23

“No Decision Made,” Are You The Problem?

by Dave Brock

Depending on the research, No Decision Made (NDM) represents a huge percent of the deals we “lose.” CSO Insights puts it at over 40% of forecast deals. CEB put it at over 60% of pipeline deals. Whatever way you look at it, it represents huge lost opportunity and wasted efforts on our part.

Too often, we shrug our shoulders, “It’s the customers, they just can’t get themselves organized to buy.” “They just couldn’t sell management on the business case.”

We tend to look at this, thinking it’s out of our control.

Reflect on your own deals in the past 12 months. What percent were NDM? What was the value of those deals? What would your performance have been of you had been able to close your fair share of the deals? (Multiply your win rate by the total value)

How much time, how much sales volume did you lose because of NDM? How much time did you waste because of NDM?

As you reflect, these are well qualified deals. Customers recognized a problem or opportunity, understood the consequences of doing nothing, and had committed to address it, but something went wrong. It seems we aren’t serving the customer as well as we can, or creating the value we should by “allowing” NDM to happen.

Now most of you are thinking, “That’s hugely arrogant imagining that we shouldn’t ‘allow’ the customer to have a NDM outcome.” It probably is, but consider this:

  1. The customer committed to starting the buying process because of compelling business reasons. Presumably, they said, “We can’t continue doing things as we have,” yet that’s just what NDM forces to happen. Don’t we owe it to the customer to help them regroup, maybe to start over? As my friend, Martin Schmalenbach, continues to remind me–we can’t do this to the customer, but we have to work with the customer in helping them find a path to addressing and solving the problem or opportunity.
  2. As we know our customers struggle to buy. But, with the exception of procurement, that’s not their job. They don’t know how to buy. But we are engaged in working with buyers every day. We know how people organize themselves to successfully buy and to solve problems. We can help our customers with this–either by having them talk to others who’ve bought before, so they can learn from their experiences; or by helping in facilitating the buying process. Are the right people involved? Do they have a project plan? Have they aligned their priorities, agendas, interest–can they find common ground in solving the problem?
  3. Are we helping them recognize they have to sell their management to get what they want? Are we helping them connect the dots between what they want to do and how it impacts their manager’s and their manager’s manager’s goals? Can we help them show their management how the project is aligned with overall corporate objectives? Are we preparing them to do something they may be very uncomfortable in doing—selling their solution up the food chain?

If we aren’t doing these things, then NDM becomes a failure, in part, of our own deal strategy and execution.

Reflect on it from another couple of perspectives.

We’ve spent some time helping the customer realize they are in “pain,” but in the end they do nothing about it. Except they still know they are in “pain,” and probably want to do something about it, but just can’t. Don’t we create great value by helping them address this and eliminate it.

Think, selfishly, for the moment of the loss of opportunity from your part. If 40-60% of your qualified deals end up in NDM, that means to make your number you have to find deals to replace those! Isn’t it easier to figure out a way, with the customer, to get them back on track?

We can’t think of NDM as a “fact of life.” It isn’t in the customer’s best interests, and it makes things much more difficult for us. We shouldn’t accept NDM, but do everything we can, with the customer, to avoid it in the first place. When it does happen, we should revisit it with the customer, revalidate their interest in solving the problem or addressing the opportunity, and help them establish a new project — guiding them to a successful outcome.

As a crazy idea (particularly if you are opportunity starved), look at your deals that have ended in NDM in the past 12 months. Consider going back to the customer asking, “Is this still an issue? Are you interested in figuring out a way to address it–successfully this time? Can we help you–we know how to do that?”

Thanks to Hank Barnes, “The ‘No Decision’ Decision–Does Everybody Lose? for inspiring this!

21 Mar 19:23

Here's how the housing crisis has been brutal on Millennials

by Matthew Nitch Smith

The CuatroTorres residential building complex is demolished during a controlled implosion, in the city of Medellin September 23, 2014. Colombian authorities imploded the Medellin apartment building that partially collapsed almost a year ago, killing 11 people.

If it feels like you're trapped in an expensive houseshare with little hope of getting on the "property ladder," you're not alone.

A new survey conducted by Ipsos MORI has revealed that far fewer young people own a home than the generation before them at the same point — and there's little sign of things improving.

The research shows that 15-36 year olds, also known as Generation Y or Millennials, are getting stuck in the renters market when compared with members of Generation X (37-50 year olds) at the same age.

This chart shows that 23% fewer of today's 27 year olds own a home compared to their Generation X counterparts when they were the same age in 1998. Almost 80% of people born between 1946-1964 owned homes at the same point in their lives.

Here's the chart:

Gen Y

 

Homeless charity shelter called the findings "alarming," according to the Daily Mail, and said the housing crisis had resulted in a "lifetime of instability" for millions of Britons.

Despite worries of the "property bubble" bursting, house prices in the UK show no signs of slowing. Average house value in the UK passed £300,000 for the first time ever in February, according to search engine Rightmove. This is £100,000 more than the average price was in 2006.

The situation is no better for people who are happy to rent long-term. The Guardian reports that average rent across the UK rose 4.8% in 2015, much higher than wage inflation which remained stagnant.

Campbell Robb, CEO of Shelter, said the situation had to be addressed:

"While we have made progress over the last 50 years, our current housing shortage means millions are facing a lifetime of instability and, understandably, people are giving up hope. But if our history tells us anything, it's that together we can make things change. For the sake of future generations we cannot make this crisis someone else's problem."

He added that it was also tough on parents knowing their children would be worse off than them:

“We are seeing a generation of people now in their 50s or 60s who are looking at their children, and their children will be worse off than they are. That is the first generation since the Second World War that we are seeing that happen to, and that is primarily because of the housing market.”

In another Ipsos MORI survey we can see that Generation Y  shares this opinion, with only 33% thinking they'll be better off than their parents, the lowest of the last four generations:

housing optimism

Business Insider reported last week how one of Britain's biggest property developers said an increase in property taxes designed to curtail the buy-to-let market would only harm social mobility and make it even harder for the first-time buyers to purchase a home.

Join the conversation about this story »

NOW WATCH: James Altucher makes an argument for not paying back your credit card debt

21 Mar 19:22

True Life: I’m Addicted to Amazon (A Customer Retention Story)

by Kristen Kaighn

True Life - I'm Addicted to Amazon (A Customer Retention Story)

I have a confession. I have placed 118 Amazon Prime orders in the last 6 months.

Now, judging by the amount of cardboard in my garage alone, I should have known I might have a “problem.” Everything I’ve purchased were things that I could easily buy across the street, from protein shakes to batteries, cheddar bunnies to hangers, and, of course, all the things I’ll need for my new baby that’s coming in a few weeks. But my “problem” is really the product of Amazon’s secret sauce and why they’ve been able to retain me (an admittedly extremely fickle shopper) as a loyal customer.

Amazon Prime

What goes into this “secret sauce” of customer retention? Is there a recipe for taking a business model and product from good, to one that customers can’t live without? As marketers, we know that we have to keep delivering value in the form of content, entertainment, education, and services well after the initial transaction in order to keep customers engaged and our brand top-of-mind. But customer retention goes past simply staying top-of-mind. It’s about understanding your customers deeply and ensuring that no matter where they are in their purchase cycle, you’ve got their back. This is what great companies have in common: a customer culture where everyone feels ownership of the customer experience—essentially living by the quote “customer service is not a department, it’s everyone’s job.”

Today’s buyers are more likely to switch (brands, vendors, providers) than ever before, regardless of whether they’re a millennial or boomer. However, taking these steps towards building a customer culture in your company can make a big impact on your customer retention and grow your loyalty base:

Step 1: Develop a Process

Do you have a process for dealing with the positive and negative responses you receive from customers? Step one to building a customer-centric culture is to get your house in order because if it’s messy, everyone on the Twitterverse will hear about it. Okay, so maybe it’s not necessarily Twitter, but today’s customers are not shy about sharing both their positive and negative experiences with a brand. Your plan will be unique to your business, your product or service, and your support structure, but it’s critical that everyone in your organization fundamentally understands your policy and process for handling customer feedback.

Tweet

As you develop your customer response plan, keep these things in mind:

  • Take the time to listen to your audience.
  • Address their issue with respect and timeliness, but appropriate humor also goes a long way (you are talking to a person after all).
  • Don’t shy away from responding where they are, especially in the social arena.

Sainsbury

Step 2: Frame Every Interaction as an Opportunity

Seize every interaction with your customers as an opportunity to make them happy. The top three reasons why customers switch brands are cheaper pricing, rude staff, and too many mistakes. This means that every touchpoint with your customer is important, especially when you consider the impact that retaining that customer can have on your business. The Pareto Principle states that 80% of revenue comes from 20% of your customers.

With this in mind, here are three things to remember as you work to create excellent customer interactions:

  • Offer promotions and discounts for your most loyal customers to keep happy customers, well, happy.
  • Build your customer culture and teams with people who share the same values. Fanatical care for the customer can be built into your culture, so think about the different ways you can build it into yours. In some cases, this means that everyone spends time working customer support as part of their training, while in others, customers are the heart of every story the brand tells.
  • Understanding your customers before they tell you something went wrong is critical. Having a centralized view of customers and coordinating their experiences allows you to avoid spamming them and lets you speak to them personally, with relevant messages.

Step 3: Nail Your Customer Service

As the face of your company, your customer-facing teams are the front line in sometimes tense situations. Their response can make or break you in the eyes of your customer.

Arming your service team with the right tools to resolve issues can make a huge impact on your customer retention:

  • Create a channel for service teams to relay customer feedback. Obviously, poor product design or experience will create some unhappy customers, but having a feedback loop from your customer teams to the appropriate contact internally will allow you to actively address and log these issues.
  • Develop an arsenal of resolution tactics. A representative that can’t solve a problem can just make a bad situation worse, so make sure that your service teams have a robust arsenal of resolution tactics.
  • Be prompt. No one likes hold music, so don’t torture your customers with lengthy wait times. Your customers are people and most people don’t love wasting their time on hold, so make their service experience as seamless as possible.

Flute Solo

Want to learn more about how to bottle your own secret customer retention sauce? Check out our slide deck, Customers Are Your Prospects, Too to discover how retention, loyalty, and advocacy drive revenue and should be every marketer’s biggest focus.

21 Mar 19:22

Alchemist Accelerator: Why there’s still lots of room for disruptive martech (webinar)

by VB Staff
brain_gears_2_heads

VB WEBINAR:

Q1 research from VentureBeat Insight shows that the venture capital landscape for martech shows no sign of slowing down. Join Ravi Belani, partner at Alchemist Accelerator, Adam J. Plotkin, partner at ff Venture Capital, and VB analyst Jon Cifuentes to learn about the current martech landscape and what’s getting analysts excited.

Register here for free.


Alchemist Accelerator, a platinum-rated accelerator by the MIT Seed Accelerator Rankings, has seen over 60 percent of the companies they work with go on to close an institutional round within 12 months of graduating. So Ravi Belani, managing partner of Alchemist Accelerator, dismisses concerns about the martech startup market being saturated.

“The beautiful thing about tech is that you’re creating value,” says Belani. “It’s not a zero sum game.”

The reality is that the best companies actually create the market, especially as marketing shifts from a cost function to a revenue function, absorbing functionalities that used to be covered by sales. CMOs are seeing ROI on their marketing dollars and actually driving demand and driving real revenue for companies. It’s why CMO budgets are now larger than CTO budgets.

More importantly, Belani emphasizes, is how martech is evolving to meet new demands.

“I think some of the most exciting marketing tech startups are actually transforming how these companies are making money,” he says. “I wouldn’t worry about the discourse about whether we have too many marketing companies. The bigger question is whether you’re working on something that is driving fundamental, disruptive value.”

Companies that are pursuing aggressive, ambitious ways of transforming industries, Belani says, is what gets them really excited at Alchemist. “I’m looking for companies that aren’t constrained by traditional silos of marketing and are trying to take over whole industries,” he adds.

In other words, businesses that are expanding their view beyond an individual company’s tech to start thinking about making a play toward dominating an industry category as a whole.

“The beautiful thing about the marketing function is that you own a lot of the critical data,” Belani says. “And if you can own that data layer across the entire value chain, then there are new businesses and industries that can be created in a standalone way that weren’t created before.”

In the end, Belani says, “I would not worry too much about the competition. I would just focus really heavily on what you’re uniquely suited to do and if you’re doing something that’s disruptive and driving significant value.”

The beautiful thing about fundraising, Belani says, is that it doesn’t matter what the average investor thinks of you. All that matters is finding those one or two investors that believe in what you’re doing. Your job is not to convince somebody why your idea is great. Your job is to find the investor that’s looking for you, and doesn’t know you exist.

The most successful founders are not successful because of some brilliant insight or raw intelligence, he maintains. Rather, persistence is the key.

“Literally just knocking on everybody’s door until you find the one that’s looking for you,” Belani says. “That’s your job. Your job is to just drive a process and not get knocked down.”

For more insight into industry disruption, owning your category, finding your VC match and more, make sure you make room for this 30-minute webinar.


Don’t miss out!

Register here for free.


During this webinar, you’ll learn:

  • How to get noticed by top VCs, straight from investors
  • Which types of companies are gaining funding
  • Where we’re seeing the biggest areas of consolidation
  • Who the most involved and most active VCs are
  • The implications for investors, vendors, and most importantly marketing technology buyers and users

Speakers:

  • Jon Cifuentes, analyst, VentureBeat
  • Ravi Belani, managing partner, Alchemist Accelerator
  • Adam J. Plotkin, partner, ff Venture Capital

Moderator:

  • Wendy Schuchart, analyst, VentureBeat

 

 


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21 Mar 19:22

Sales Learning is the New Path to Increased Sales Productivity

by David Fitzgerald

agile sales learning on tablet on desk

In today’s market, winning is often measured by how quickly you can meet customer demands – and that means demonstrating more agility than your competitors. By making your sales reps smarter and faster – so after each meeting or call with a buyer, they’re deemed more credible, more knowledgeable and more trustworthy – you can win more deals.

Sales Agility is the Key to Sustainable Advantage

A major competitive weapon is a sales rep’s ability to be conversant and often times proficient in the things that are important to their customer. That means giving sales easy, on-demand access to relevant content that will satisfy buyer needs, while at the same time helping decision makers move forward in their buying journey.

According to Aberdeen Group’s 2015 study, business agility is the number two pressure driving companies learning and development strategies – and linking learning to the business is the number one action they are taking.

Learning is a Process

Remember the old days of in-classroom sales training? Product Managers standing up for a full week of death by PowerPoint. Sales people drinking from a firehose. And teams surviving the ceremonial “fire walk” with the scars to prove it.

The reality is that we forget 80% of what we learn in the first thirty days after these training events. What’s more, our customers are demanding information that we didn’t get from the PowerPoint presentations.

The good news is that most organizations have moved away from 100% in-person sales training to a blend of classroom, digital and social learning. They understand that learning is a lifelong, continuous transfer process and not an event.

The most successful sales organizations say that long-term sales learning is more important than on-boarding training (Aberdeen Group, Sales Performance Research, 2015). It should come as no surprise that these same companies outperform their peers in all kinds of sales KPIs, from team attainment of annual sales quota to first-year reps achieving sales quota.

The 2015 Sales Enablement Optimization Study by CSO Insights found that “sales training is the most important enablement service.” And while “sales training” continues to be the industry standard term, we know the purpose of training is really learning.

Millennials are the New Sellers

Millennials have now surpassed Generation X to become the largest generation in the American workforce, according to a Pew Research Center analysis of U.S. Census Bureau data. Adults between the ages of 18-34 now make up one in three American workers, Pew reports. In 2015, they outnumbered working adults in Generation X (who were 18-33 in the year 1998) after overtaking Baby Boomers.

Your sales organization already includes these tech-savvy twenty and thirty-something employees. They are the “new” sellers. They pride themselves on being continuous learners and their educational experiences have always included technology.

We live in an anytime, anywhere, any device world. Just in time knowledge transfer is expected. Sales executives are now creating learning that is video and mobile-based, the key to coaching this new group of sales people.

Aberdeen reports that of the best-in-class sales organizations, “42% indicate strong or extremely strong proficiency in providing mobile access to mission-critical sales data and content.” These same organizations “are twice as likely as under-performers to have adopted video solutions to support sales.”

The Millennial Compass Report shows that Millennials “are focused on achieving through personal networks and technology; having good work-life balance; and getting high levels of support from their managers.” They think of their boss as a mentor, peer or coach and respect those with experience or knowledge. By understanding what this generation values, you can develop an effective learning strategy for your entire sales team.

Learn at the Point of Need

Traditional e-learning approaches focus on static content managed from a centralized repository, typically delivered through online courses. But we need new learning approaches to support true knowledge sharing. We know that knowledge turns into competency when sales applies it at the time they need it.

Here’s what’s key to learning at the point of need:

  • Connecting employees with peers via social learning. Social means embracing collaboration, sharing and not being afraid to make mistakes – it is a community of learners.
  • Capturing and sharing tribal knowledge through user-created content. Uncovering this hidden knowledge within your organization can set you apart from the competition.
  • Instilling behavioral change with new techniques and experiential learning. We live in a culture of hyper attention – so you will need to incorporate gamification, micro-learning and simulation role-playing into your content strategy.

Aberdeen Group suggests that “best-in-class organizations recognize the importance of providing learning through … just in time, social and informal learning. …Learning opportunities need to be accessible, targeted and continuous.”

In short, sales-people must have access to the experts and content required to do their job when they need it.

Build an Effective Sales Content Strategy

At The Value Shift, we will work with you to develop an effective sales content strategy – one that takes advantage of your experts, achieves buy-in from stakeholders and demonstrates an early win for management. We have the technology and the expertise to help you win more business with content that’s findable, interactive and responsive to target buyer needs.

Three keys to increasing sales productivity through just in time, social and informal learning:

  1. See your sales organization as a source of competitive advantage – value agility.
  2. Transform your thinking from event-based training to continuous learning.
  3. Know how your millennial sellers learn and your buyers make decisions.

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21 Mar 19:21

The Downsides of Selling in a B2B Marketplace

by Samantha Carr

As more B2B buyers move online to make their purchases, B2B eCommerce is becoming a top priority for manufacturers and distributors across a wide variety of industries. Companies are taking different approaches to their online selling strategies.

Some, for instance, are choosing to sell via online B2B marketplaces, where suppliers can put their products up for sale alongside other manufacturers and brands in order to make their product lines more “discoverable” to a wider audience. There are definitely downsides to this B2B marketplace approach, however.

Let’s take a closer look at what it means to sell via a B2B marketplace, and whether it’s a good option for your business.

B2B Marketplace Downsides

A Competitive Environment

As mentioned earlier in this post, many manufacturers and distributors are attracted to the idea of a B2B marketplace because of the visibility it might offer their brand. By selling on an established marketplace, where buyers are already going to look for other products, brands hope to capture new customers.

However, this can be a difficult environment, especially for smaller brands. With your products stacked up right next to your competitors’ offerings, it ends up being a game of either brand recognition (who has the more recognizable logo and name?) and price (which product can I buy cheapest?).

In sum, while B2B marketplaces may initially appear to offer opportunities for new customer acquisition, they also create an environment of sometimes seemingly endless choice for the buyer, who will be constantly sizing up your products against those offered by your competitors.

Less Control Over Branding & Messaging

In a B2B marketplace, individual sellers have little control over branding (i.e. the look and feel of their page on the site, as well as the overall customer experience) and messaging. Sellers are building their eCommerce offering on the marketplace provider’s platform, with their template, user experience, and maybe even customer service team.

For larger brands, this can create an erosion of brand equity. For smaller brands, it can be difficult to engender any lasting brand-recognition among buyers.

Weaker Customer Relationships

Without direct communication between your brand and the people buying your products via the marketplace, it will be difficult to build the long-term relationships that remain the bedrock of B2B business.

Customer relationships will ultimately be more low-value, and it will be hard to retain those customers for repeat purchases over time.

So what’s the alternative?

The main alternative to a B2B marketplace is a Direct B2B eCommerce model, in which retailers can interact solely with your brand and products. By setting up a B2B eCommerce portal dedicated solely to your brand, you can not only avoid direct competition from other brands and have more control over your branding, you can also tailor the purchasing experience for each of your customers, implementing customer-specific pricing, discounts, catalogs, and order history.

While you may choose to sell in a B2B marketplace at some point down the line, a Direct B2B eCommerce portal is a necessary part of your overall eCommerce strategy.

Questions about B2B marketplaces and direct portals? Let us know in the comments

21 Mar 19:21

How the Sharing Economy Is Affecting B2B Marketing

by Daphne Stanford
Back Camera

Back Camera

B2B Marketing & the Sharing Economy

The new sharing economy is affecting B2B marketing strategies in a significant way. We should strive to exchange customer and marketing data with other companies, as this sharing can only help increase business and profit margins. How can businesses analyze data about other businesses and determine the best marketing angles and approaches to take in marketing to them? For example, Amazon Web Services has done an amazing job of identifying the need for affordable server space with variable demand: the amount of space needed fluctuates, and cloud space is needed on a regular basis.

It would be beneficial to analyze the data on current opportunities for growth and gaps in suppliers of business-specific needs—but how can you access that data and from whom should you access it? In this new collaborative environment, there’s a greater degree of personalization and customization, and goal-directed behaviors on the part of B2B buyers are more pronounced. Lastly, data sharing and purchasing decisions between marketing departments are made in collaborative circles, as opposed to via rigid processes.

Sharing should include the targeting of businesses as potential clients and B2B customers—and future partners, in some cases—rather than mere competition, as with B2C marketing. At the marketing level, this means mimicking trends in the increasingly popular sharing B2C economy models, such as Uber and AirBnB. New platforms of customer data sharing are emerging, such as data co-ops. These cooperatives allow marketing departments to have access to other companies’ customer data, such as static or demographic data.

One interesting niche that is being tapped into is the innovation angle—which is huge for businesses in terms of research and development of their marketing strategy. An example of this type of innovation-related collaboration is the recent partnership of Fisher-Price and Quirky, an online inventor community. Quirky encouraged Fisher-Price to consider the consumer preferences of millennials in the packaging and design of new products. There’s also the strategy of sharing assets such as employees (as with UpWork) or workspace (as with LiquidSpace) in order to maximize ROI and productivity while minimizing excess expenses. The bottom line to all this sharing is that it is affecting both the nature of new businesses and the nature of data sharing between businesses.

Data Sharing & Acquisition in B2B Marketing

Generally speaking, there are four sources of B2B data: internal data, public data, self-provided data, and developed data. Internal data is very valuable because it is “highly relevant to the business of the company and there will be no better source of data to describe prospects and customers.” The second best source of data is developed data, since it is likely to be verified and accurate. However, it is also expensive, so internal data that is freely and willingly exchanged is ideal, if possible.

In general, according to Barry Levine of Marketing Land, there are three commonly-known types of data: first-party data is brand-owned information about their own clients or site/app visitors; second-party data is first-party data sold or traded with someone else; and third-party data is aggregated data like demographics, which anyone can buy. Of particular interest in determining much of these corporate and B2B-specific needs is second-party data—first-party data about a particular business that is shared directly with another business, usually in exchange for some of that other businesses’ data, in turn. This is another way the sharing economy is influencing the marketing world: through the practice of marketers sharing their company’s first-party data with other marketers. Thus, it’s not only the industries that are becoming more collaborative; it’s also the nature of marketers and their method of obtaining marketing data that is integrating a sharing approach, more often than not.

In a recent article by Steve Ustaris on Chief Marketer, a distinction is made between traditional second-party data and second-party data 2.0: “The 2.0 version of the second-party data marketplace is what I would label as transparent data sharing between brands with no existing relationship, and no existing practice of sharing marketing assets.” This kind of data-sharing between companies with no prior relationship would necessitate a sharing platform such as a data co-op that shares information about potential B2B target market information, as well as information about the marketing departments of competing brands so as to be better able to analyze the behavior of other marketers in your industry.

One exciting development in data-sharing, 2.0 style—according to Levine’s recent article on Marketing Land, one company that has recently made more democratically-provided data available is Adobe, whose Marketplace via Marketing Cloud helps publishers find partners for their first-party customer data—turning that first-party data into third-party data. Of course, all of the data made available to marketers is sold and made available on a voluntary basis. The Marketplace “takes care of legal and billing arrangements, is vetting the quality of the data for things like adherence to data privacy and security standards, and makes the data available on a self-serve basis.” As Matt Ackley points out, however, second-party data is more likely to be more accurate than third-party data because it’s directly provided to you by the company, rather than via public records or data brokers. Therefore, a direct relationship with a company is ideal; however, a reliable data source such as Adobe Marketplace is a close runner-up.

All this talk of direct relationships reminds me that it’s always best to obtain your information about other businesses directly, rather than indirectly. Not only will the information be more secure and reliable, but you’re also more likely to develop a new professional relationship with people in another marketing department. Therefore, you’ll have further developed your people and networking skills, along with your knowledge about another company’s client base. Not surprisingly, one major source of client acquisition, especially for B2B clients, is LinkedIn—allowing you to leverage your existing relationships along with building new ones. This type of online networking platform is comparable to mingling at an industry conference or an inter-company party.

After all, as Helen Yang stresses in a recent Connectors article, “Being truly “customer-centric” isn’t converting a lead or closing a deal; it’s forming friendships.” That kind of B2B relationship-building isn’t merely good for forming individual business relationships; it can also help foster additional business connections, since it helps solidify your individual character in others’ eyes, increasing the likelihood that you’ll be introduced to other business contacts, in the future. Who knows: maybe there’s a business opportunity in your industry related to helping to introduce business people to each other. The more businesses think of other businesses as human, as opposed to being composed of a set of numbers and statistics, the more likely we are to be successful in appealing to new potential clients—after all, they’re people, too.

It’s in companies’ best interests to share data about customer behavior, preferences, and other statistics, because it will ultimately help increase your company’s bottom line. The more that data sharing is done ethically and with transparency, the higher the bar is likely to be set. The more we as marketers can encourage effective platforms for data sharing and analysis, the most demand there will be for efficient and user-friendly sharing. In fact, it’s very likely that data sharing platforms such as AdRoll and Adobe Marketplace inspire the creation of other diverse and effective data sharing models and platforms. It’s up to us to get the proverbial ball rolling.

21 Mar 19:19

Lead Nurturing Email Tips for Every Stage of the Buyer’s Journey

by Andrea Willson

Businesses that nurture their leads experience a 45% increase in lead generation ROI when compared to businesses that don’t. Lead nurturing is the process of building a relationship with your leads and moving them down your sales funnel until they are ready to become a customer. Email is the most common lead nurturing tool that’s scalable and inexpensive. In fact, emails that use lead nurturing strategies get up to 10 times more responses compared to single email blasts. While email is a convenient way to build relationships with leads, there is no “one size fits all” of lead nurturing emails. Each campaign or series of emails look different for every company, every industry, and every stage of the buyer’s journey , or the active research process a potential buyer goes through leading up to a purchase. Comprised of three stages–awareness, consideration, and decision– the buyer’s journey presents a unique opportunity for marketers to tailor their lead nurturing emails, depending on where the contact stands in the buyer’s journey.

First, let’s take a look at lead nurturing tips for all stages of the buyer’s journey.

Email Tips for All Stages of the Buyer’s Journey

1. Set up workflows.

The best way to automate your lead nurturing emails is to use a marketing automation tool with a function to create workflows. This allows you to draft the content based on what you’ll learn in this article, and schedule when the emails should be sent, based on specific trigger actions in a workflow.

2. Set one goal for each email.

Avoid linking to multiple offers or pages in your emails. Stick with one so that the goal is clear to both you and the reader.

3. Provide value in each email.

Building a relationship with your buyer can’t be a one-way street. In order to gain their trust (and eventually a sale) you need to provide something in return. Before scheduling any email in your workflow, put yourself in your persona’s shoes and ask yourself “how will this help me?”

4. Keep it short.

If you have to ask yourself if your email is too long– it probably is. Stick to 1-2 paragraphs so you don’t lose your reader’s focus.

Email Tips for Buyers in the Awareness Stage

The fact that you have a contact’s email address, doesn’t necessarily mean they have moved out of the awareness stage. At this point the buyer is just on the brink of recognizing their problem and the need for a product or service to solve it. If you’ve segmented your list appropriately and know that the contacts fit the goal of your lead nurture campaign, emails at this stage should be neutral. The content should be focused on your buyer’s pain points– not your product or brand. Share content that’s relevant to their problem in the form of a free eBook, a roundup of recent blog posts, an external industry report, or any unbranded content that will nudge your buyer into a more thorough research process, the consideration stage.

Email Tips for Buyers in the Consideration Stage

Now your buyer has clearly defined their problem and have begun looking for available options. However, this transition does not mean your buyer is ready to purchase (yet). During this crucial stage, it’s important that your emails lay heavy off the sales pitch. Instead, establish your company as a reputable source of information by sharing how to videos that solve their pain point or a more thorough piece of content like a comparison guide.

Email Tips for Buyers in the Decision Stage

By now, your leads are well aware of your company and they are ready to buy a product or service to solve their pain point. The buyer is now thinking about the full spectrum of the purchase: implementation, start up costs, and customer support, so it’ important to incorporate those elements into your emails. Share an installation guide or offer your support to chat through any questions your buyer might have. Help them see the value in your product by speaking their language. If your persona is looking for specific results, use terms like “return on investment” rather than an overused proposition like “cutting-edge product”. Share testimonials in your emails to buyers in the decision stage and now, it’s okay to inject more personalization into your emails. Ask questions that require them to reply so they don’t feel as if they’re receiving an anonymous blast email.

Email Tips for Buyers Post-Purchase

Psych! The journey doesn’t end when a buyer makes a purchase. Lead nurturing should continue afterwards as this is your opportunity to build a long-term relationship with your buyer. Sending relevant emails after a purchase builds trust and helps buyers understand that you’re interested in a relationship with them, not just a sale. Post-purchase nurturing can also help encourage the buyer to make referrals. Share links to complimenting products/services, make a polite request for a testimonial, or provide an incentive to join the community on social media and be sure to periodically ask for feedback on the product/service and level of support.

Once you understand the types of content to include in your lead nurturing emails, you’ll be well on your way to increasing the number of leads that convert into customers.

How do you customize email content based on where your personas are in the buyer’s journey?

The Anatomy of a Marketing Email Guide

21 Mar 19:19

How to Qualify Contacts in Your Network in 5 Minutes

by Katharina Cavano

We all know the importance of turning to your network for referrals, and we especially know that the best businesses are built on relationships (after all, it’s what we built our business on!) But, how often do you consider your network of contacts as prospective leads? You may want to give them a shot because statistics have shown that only about 25% of leads convert to actual sales.

While we don’t recommend or suggest that all of your contacts could be considered as qualified sales leads, there’s a good chance that a few of them may be, but you’ll need to weed them out first. So before you sign your mom up as your latest customer, take a second…or at least 5 minutes to truly qualify your contacts and discover that a few new customers have been hiding in your contact list this whole time.

Start qualifying your contacts…

Sales Dating

Qualifying leads is like the dating part of the sales process… before you get married to your client. While the final result is generally the same, whether a lead is considered qualified or not, the way people get there (that crucial dating process) can be very different across industries. Qualifying a lead shows sales that this person fits the profile of your ideal customer and will have a higher chance of closing.

But before you go out and start analyzing your contacts, you need to understand what the differences are between qualified and cold leads…

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For example, Realtors are looking for leads that want to buy a home, but don’t we all know someone who’s ‘looking to buy’ all the time? Realtors need to weed those folks out quickly before they waste their precious time on people who may not be terribly serious about making the home purchase anytime soon.

Real estate agents may find themselves asking contacts or leads about how long they’ve been looking, if they’ve been pre-approved for a loan, or if they’re working with another agent or broker. The answers to these simple questions can be more revealing than you may think, and more importantly could give a real estate agent whether the contacts are qualified and really ready to buy a home from them.

Cold Leads

You’ve probably been at the receiving end of a cold call before and it probably felt very random and annoying. Cold leads are people you reach out to who haven’t shown any interest in you or your business. They’re a shot in the dark and it would be very lucky if you reached out to one and they ended up being qualified.

Hot Leads

This is quite the opposite of cold (obviously) and these are folks at the beginning of your pipeline or sales cycle and have shown interest in your business or have been referred to you by a client or friend. They’ve given you their information and they want to learn more about what you do, there’s a good chance they’ll become a valuable qualified lead.

Qualified Leads

This is what you want! These leads are the perfect fit, your sales soulmate. To be technical, a qualified lead fits your qualifications for a customer; they’ve shown interest in what you do and you provide what they need. They’ve likely come to you through a direct search and they’re ready to make a purchase from you or utilize your service in the very near future.

5 Minutes to Qualify your Contacts

Taking the time to go through the process of qualifying your leads or contacts will determine whether it’s worth your time and energy to reach out to these contacts and give them your best sales pitch. Nearly half of all LinkedIn users have over 500 connections. That’s a good amount of contacts you may not have considered as qualified leads and who may be worth a second look!

Test out these steps as you scroll through your contact list and see if you discover any qualified contacts. Plus as you go through, you may just discover a couple contacts who could also be helpful for giving you referrals or future business.

1. Who are they?

If you take a look at your list of contacts, it probably ranges from your grandma to your college roommate and everyone in between. It’s safe to say that most of these contacts wouldn’t be a qualified sales lead, but are you sure about that? Take a second look and assess who they are. Ask yourself a few key questions as you perform your quick assessment, what do they do for a living? Are they in a position to make a decision? Do they have a business problem that needs solving? These should start to narrow down your contact list substantially.

2. Are they relevant?

This is key. Your contact may be in the position to make a decision and they may align with you on the time frame, but are you the solution to their problem? Here’s where you need to be really honest with yourself. You may want their need to fit with what you can provide them but it may not work out. At the end of the day, it’s not worth it to put in that work, time, and energy for a sale that will most likely fall through. Be critical in your assessment and understand that it’s not a failure if it’s not a fit!

3. Have they expressed interest?

If they fall into the relevant category then it may be good to recall if they’ve ever expressed interest in the service you provide. Yes, that goes well beyond the classic catch-up ‘what do you do, again?’ polite question. If your contact has a general understanding of what you do and hasn’t expressed interest in working with you or finding out more about it, they may have considered working with you and ruled it out. Don’t be discouraged! They may be worth a gentle prod or reminder with more details of what you do, or perhaps they just hadn’t thought about it at all. Be proactive and give your contacts a reminder of why they’re relevant and what you could offer them.

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4. Reach out!

The final step to truly qualifying your contacts is reaching out and asking them. Across all industries, the qualifying process requires you to ask your leads a series of questions to determine how serious their interest level is. There’s no reason why you shouldn’t do the same for your contacts as you qualify them. Shoot them a quick email or give them a call and let them know that you thought of them as a possible client. Be sure to acknowledge that you’re aware of how working with friends could potentially cause awkwardness but refer them to other customers or friends you’ve worked with in the past to assuage any fears they may have.

Get Qualifying!

You know the steps, you know the questions, and you now have the power to assess your contacts. Whether you’re scrolling through the contacts on your phone, or taking a second look at your LinkedIn connections, chances are you’ll discover that your college roommate may be a qualified lead after all! Be critical with these assessments and don’t fall into the trap of over-qualifying your contacts that eventually won’t follow-through when it comes to the sale.

21 Mar 19:19

From Capturing to Converting Leads: What Your Strategy is Missing

by Mary Long

It doesn’t matter how good your product or service is, if your competitors are better at generating positive word of mouth (WOM) around the web, and converting leads, you’ll be out of business in no time. Luckily, converting quality leads into loyal customers isn’t rocket science – but it is an art.

Stop scribbling outside the lines

In the early days of Google AdWords, the main goal was to capture as many clicks as possible – but now the focus for many marketers has shifted to fighting for quality leads. Businesses attempt to “capture” leads via free trials, product demo requests, email opt-ins and more. But even if you accomplish the capture, turning that demo request or newsletter subscription into an actual sale is where things get stuck.

A recent Formstack report found that many marketers are at a loss when it comes to converting leads:

  • 64 percent of marketers don’t know where to start or how to consolidate various marketing channels
  • 21 percent said they don’t have good lead source data

Basically lead conversion is something many marketers find overwhelming. So let’s boil it down to the simplest of terms: To convert leads, all you need to do is drive positive WOM around the Internet.

Oh, is that all?

Add some colors to your crayon box

Well, it’s a big part of it. Your business needs to be everywhere. Remember the rule of seven, which states “a prospect needs to hear the advertiser’s message at least 7 times before they’ll take action to buy that product or service?” Go even bigger. In the digital world, consumers probably need to come into positive contact with your business twice as much to remember you.

Because in addition to whatever you’re doing to catch their attention, they’re being effectively cyber-stalked by retargeting ads from your competitors as well – to say nothing of the general noise they come up against in their social feeds and inboxes. It doesn’t matter if you’re the best in the business if your competitors are making more noise than you are. So you’ve got to be sure your “voice” is the loudest.

That strategy has to include mastering search, which is still the first step in getting potential leads to remember you. “An optimal internal link structure gives users – and Google – a roadmap,” says Jordan Koene of Searchmetrics, “leading them logically around your site to their desired destination.” If your links are haphazard, Google gets confused, and your site gets lost in the shuffle. So link optimization is a crucial part of the equation.

It’s one thing to work to be memorable when people stumble upon you. If people can’t find you when they’re actually looking, you’ve got a big problem.

Have a little fun

But creating brand awareness also involves creative social media strategies and content marketing. This is where you have a chance to build authentic relationships with your customers and show off your personality. Social strategy isn’t just about gaining followers and linking to your website – it’s more about engaging your followers so they like you.

Yes, converting leads into sales is the end goal, but a little subtlety in that regard is usually better than a hard sales pitch. Use your social presence to get to know your customers and prospects – and let them get to know you. Sometimes just being active on social – especially during major events like the Super Bowl or the Grammys (depending on your business) – is the best way to generate WOM.

There’s no single way to get the job done, so combine whatever tactics bring results. And don’t be afraid to use any applicable psychological triggers – like the desire to gain pleasure – in your approach. Just don’t be obvious about it.

If you do a killer job getting the word out, conversions will happen. Work on your artistry and people will stop to appreciate it.

21 Mar 19:19

Sales conversations: How to make tight-lipped prospects talk

by steli@close.io (Steli Efti)

Warning: Advanced sales tactics ahead; intended for experienced salespeople only. If you aren’t confident in your abilities, complete our free sales training course first.

The average prospecting cycle has three steps:

  1. Your prospect communicates their situation.
  2. You communicate your solution.
  3. Together you decide whether or not to move forward.

But what happens when your prospect won’t participate in step one? You can’t pitch your solution if they refuse to share information about their situation. How are you supposed to sell to someone you can’t qualify?

Why prospects keep secrets

Tight-lipped prospects aren’t trying to be difficult, they’re trying to be safe. Their silence is a defense mechanism, not an offense strategy.

difficult-sales-prospects

They’ve probably been the victim of buyer’s remorse in the past and fear you’ll manipulate them into a bad deal if they give up too much information.

It comes down to a lack of trust. Before you can sell your product, you need to sell your intentions.

How to handle prospects who won’t open up

When you encounter prospects who won’t be open with you, confront the issue head-on. Say something like this:

“I bet you’ve had a bad experience with a salesperson before. You might think I’m here to take advantage of you, but I’m not.

At Close.io, we aim to create long-term, value-focused partnerships with our customers. That requires openness and honesty from both sides, and I don’t feel like I’m getting that from you.

I’d like to understand your situation so we can decide together whether or not our inside sales CRM is a good solution for your needs. If I’m not 100% certain we’re a perfect match, I’ll tell you. In fact, I’ll even refuse to sell to you.

I want you to be successful, but I need you to be open with me. Help me help you and I promise we’ll find you a great solution, whether that’s with Close.io or someone else.

Sound fair?”

Communicate this message with friendly strength, not frustration or anger. In most cases, your prospects won’t realize how difficult they were being until you call them out. Many will open up once they realize that you have their best interests at heart.

But that isn’t always the case.

What to do if your prospects still won’t open up

Sometimes you’ll encounter outrage instead of engagement. There will always be a couple of prospects who say, “This is the way we buy. If that doesn’t work for you, we’re through here.”

Every business needs to decide for themselves whether or not they’re willing to sell to aggressive prospects. The Close.io policy is to walk away from prospects who are disrespectful or overly-demanding.

When our salespeople run into this situation, they say, “I respect your position, but I don’t think we’re going to be a good match. I can’t, in good conscience, sell you a solution to a situation I don’t understand. Is there any other way I can be valuable to you?”

Your prospect will say one of two things in response.

“I’m sorry, you’re right. What do you need to know?”

You called their bluff by taking your product off the table. You also demonstrated your commitment to their success—to the point that you were willing to lose a sale—and earned their trust. Now you can qualify your prospect properly.

“Forget it, we’ll find a different solution.”

A prospect this difficult isn’t worth the trouble. A demanding prospect is only going to become an even more demanding customer. It’s better to lose a deal than sell to the wrong customer, so be willing to walk away.

There's no sales without trust

Just because someone has a certain way of buying doesn’t mean that’s how you have to sell to them. Sales should be about mutual honesty and openness. If your prospect isn’t willing to meet you there, move on to more promising leads.

Recommended reading:

How to deal with hostile and aggressive prospects
It’s one thing to deal with a silent prospect. It’s something else to deal with a prospect who is outright rude and aggressive. Learn what most salespeople do wrong, and what you can do right.

How to qualify prospects and leads
Once you’ve got your prospect talking, keep them talking! The right questions keep the conversation flowing in a productive direction and help you qualify (or disqualify) your prospect.

How to close the deal by taking it away
Don’t get desperate. Desperation breeds bad deals, and bad deals sink startups. Learn how to close deals with demanding customers by refusing to sell to them.

21 Mar 19:19

Connecting Beyond the Click: How a Referral Program Seals Deals

by Joanne Black

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"It takes seven to 12 touches for sales reps to reach prospects."

Really? If you believe that misguided sales myth, I have a bridge to sell you. Dialing for dollars and pestering strangers with cold emails, hoping to finally get a few prospects on the phone? That's not how savvy sales managers ask their reps to spend time.

The two major challenges sales teams face are ensuring a consistent stream of qualified leads and getting meetings with actual decision makers.

Seven to 12 touches doesn't cut it. That might be the reality when reps use cold sales tactics. But when sales managers adopt a referral program, their teams don’t need to jump through hoops to get meetings. Salespeople receive referral introductions from their prospects’ trusted colleagues, so they always get a call back. 

Introducing the one-call referral meeting!

The Business Case for Referrals

When sales reps receive introductions from people their prospects know and trust:

  • They’re pre-sold: Prospects know who they are and want to talk to them.
  • They have trust and credibility, tough attributes for salespeople to earn.
  • Their sales process shortens: They spend more time with customers and less time prospecting.
  • They ace out the competition: They score meetings, while the competition is still trying to identify decision makers.
  • They save the company money: Asking for referrals doesn’t cost a dime.
  • They convert prospects into clients more than 50% of the time (more likely between 70% and 90% of the time).

Referral selling is the biggest competitive advantage any sales organization can have. Decision makers will always take meetings that are suggested by sources they know and trust. Yet, while every sales professional agrees that generating referral leads is the most productive outbound prospecting strategy, 95% of companies haven't implemented a systematic, disciplined referral program with metrics, skills, and accountability for results.

The Problem with Your Referral Program

Referral selling is simple, but it's not easy. It shouldn’t be an afterthought. Achieving referral success means adopting referral selling as a strategic initiative for your company. It is driven by sales leadership and includes three essential components:

1) Referral Strategy Development

Referral selling becomes your #1 outbound prospecting strategy and integrates into your sales process. You commit to measuring both referral activities and results, and hold reps accountable for both.

2) Skills Building

Referral selling is a behavior change. Reps learn how to define the business reason for a referral and how to ask for referral introductions to their ideal clients. Then they practice building these skills. 

3) Implementation

Salespeople forget 87% of what they learn during training if there’s no reinforcement after implementation, no assessment of skills learned, and no measurement of success. Sales managers must coach and reinforce referral skills to ensure it becomes a habit with sales reps. 

Where to Start?

Current clients are your best source of new business. They know first-hand the value of your products and services, and the expertise your sales reps can provide. Well-served clients will introduce your team to qualified prospects who agree to meetings with just one call. Those clients will sing your team’s praises and “sell” your company to exactly the type of prospects salespeople want to meet.

But most clients won’t think to do it unless they’re asked.

Here’s how a referral introduction works: 

  • The sales rep asks a client or colleague (the referral source) for an introduction to her ideal prospect.
  • The referral source talks to the sales prospect and gets agreement to meet with the rep.
  • The referral source introduces the rep and prospect via email or phone, or in person.
  • The rep thanks the referral source and schedules time to talk to the sales prospect.
  • When the rep reaches out to the prospect, he answers the phone because he expects the call and knows the business reason for the conversation.

Referrals don’t just happen, at least not at scale. Occasionally a well-served client will mention your company to another buyer, and you’ll get a sale without any real effort. But how often does that really happen? Unless you have a systematic, disciplined program in place to ensure reps ask for referrals from every single client, your team is leaving money on the table.

It Takes Personal Connections to Get Referral Leads

Adopting a referral program requires a new way of thinking about sales leads. Or more accurately, it requires reverting back to the old ways.

New sales technology lets us do many things better and faster. But while you can automate your sales process, you can’t automate relationships. When connecting with prospects, clients, and referral sources, the old-school ways still work best.

Salespeople should always speak with referral sources in person or on the phone. Never ask for a referral by email or through LinkedIn. Why?

1) A conversation is more personal.

Referral selling is the most personal kind of selling. We only refer others when we're confident they'll take care of our connections just as we would. So if sales reps don’t know referral sources well enough to call them, they don’t know these people well enough to ask for referrals.

2) A conversation is a learning opportunity.

Speaking with referral sources gives reps the opportunity to explain why they’d appreciate an introduction and how they could provide value to the prospect. They find out how well referral sources actually know the prospects (just because they’re connected on social media doesn’t mean they have real relationships). Sales reps also learn as much as they can about the prospects, their business issues, and what they’re like.

3) A conversation is a chance to reconnect.

Asking for referrals is a great excuse for salespeople to reach out and nurture relationships with referral sources. While requesting introductions, reps should also ask how they can help the referral sources.

Unfortunately, many sales reps have become overly reliant on technology. With screens separating them from prospects and referral sources, they miss out on building relationships and making the real human connections that actually power sales.

Technology won't get sales reps a one-call meeting, but a strong connection and a referral introduction will. 

What Are You Waiting For?

Are you “all in” with referral selling, or just trying it on? Are you telling your team to ask for referrals? Or do you unequivocally believe you have a process in place to bring in a steady stream of referral leads that will drive revenue, save your job, and position your company for sales success? 

Referral selling is simple, but it’s not easy. However, when you implement a disciplined referral program, build referral skills, and establish referral metrics, accountability, and rewards, you’ll secure immediate results. Your team will quickly get meetings with their prime prospects and boost their conversion rates to more than 50 percent! Then those new clients will refer them to other ideal clients, who accept their calls and call them back. That’s how referrals scale and open the door to sales success. That’s how sales reps connect beyond the click.

Ready to put a referral program in place? Click here to take the 14 “Yes/No” Question Referral I.Q. Quiz. It's your checklist for referral selling success.

HubSpot CRM

21 Mar 19:18

4 Hacks to Create an Awesome Company Culture

by Ben Slater

Can we blame people for judging companies on their culture?

We all spend such a high proportion of our lives at the office nowadays — it’s unsurprising that we care about our working environment.

Most conversations on culture inevitably end up on perks.

Which companies provide free lunch? Which offer gym memberships? Which give you the best ‘stuff’?

Perks are great, (my table tennis has gone from strength to strength since joining Beamery), but they’re not the best way to attract talent.

Inevitably, they’ll always be a different company that can offer better ‘stuff’ — it’s not worth trying to compete.

The trick is creating an awesome working environment that makes your team excited to come to work day in, day out.

This is what candidates really care about.


Why does it matter?

Salary isn’t the only tool that recruiters and hiring managers can use to encourage top candidates to accept offers.

Company culture is playing an ever increasing role in the decision-making process, particularly with millennials:

Source: https://www.glassdoor.co.uk/employers/popular-topics/hr-stats.htm

If you want to tap into this market, you need to start thinking seriously about culture!

Here are the 4 things you need to consider when carving out your own company culture:


1. Culture starts with hiring

Culture isn’t just for your employees. It starts the moment a candidate first comes across your brand.

Employer branding is the way that you show candidates what’s special about your company culture. It’s your own unique scent.

It’s essential that your hiring process is heavily infused with this scent!

Candidates might browse your site and read your ‘About Us’ page, but the formative impression that they’ll have of your company will be based off their interactions with your recruiting team.

If you’re not careful, you can do some real damage to your employer brand at this stage:

Source: Does Candidate Experience Matter?

The companies that sustain high application numbers tend to be the ones that are the best at transmitting their culture to candidates.

Google is the market leader here. They are fantastic at broadcasting their culture of innovation, and have 3 million applications each year to show for it!

How do you get your company culture across to prospective applicants and give them a great hiring experience? As you can see from the image below it’s definitely worth it

i) Encourage your team to share

Share insights into what it’s really like to work at your company on social media. This could be anything from pictures of team events, to blog posts written by members of your team

ii) Engage potential applicants

Recruiting is a team sport. Encourage your whole company to engage with interested candidates online

iii) Provide an excellent candidate experience

Treat your candidates like customers! Keep them updated at every stage of their application and try and provide as a personalized an experience as possible.

Source: http://www.aspirecambridge.co.uk/blog/2014/11/getting-the-candidate-experience-right/


2. Create a motivational work environment

Is it the responsibility of management to motivate the troops?

High performance is often attributed to leadership. Most companies look for top managers who can squeeze extra effort from their team, and inspire them to new heights.

I’m going to go against the grain here and be a little controversial:

I don’t think we can depend on management for stimulus. Your team has to want to work, motivation is highly personal.

The best way to encourage personal motivation that I’ve come across is working culture. Fostering a supportive environment where employees feel valued and happy can pay huge dividends.

Here are few considerations that should help you build this kind of culture:

i) Being approachable

If an employee has a problem make it easy for them to come and speak to you.

ii) Being flexible

If someone needs to work from home every Wednesday to pick up their children from school, don’t stand in their way. They will be grateful and may work harder as a result.

iii) Being a team

This can be as simple as having lunch together every day. Work on fostering bonds between your employees and you should see an increase in happiness and productivity.


3. You need a unique company mission

People like to work towards something.

I’m sure you’ll agree that it’s always much easier to encourage people to work late when they’re engaged in an interesting project.

In the same way, if your company has a purpose, it’s far easier to keep your employees invested, and potential applicants interested.

Case Study: Salesforce

Salesforce has managed to retain this sense of purpose despite their size.

A great example of this is their 1:1:1 model, since adopted by the likes of Google, Dropbox and GoPro.

Since the company’s conception, founder Marc Benioff has advocated the use to Salesforce people, technology and resources for charitable means. It’s something he refers to as ‘integrated philanthropy’, and it’s built directly into the Salesforce business model.

Everyone at the company knows that they’re not only producing and selling a product that makes it easier for sales teams to manage their workflow and close leads, but that they’re employed by an organisation that genuinely cares about doing good.

This helps Salesforce attract and retain a talented workforce, (now numbering 13,000), and has led to them being named one of Fortune’s ‘Best Companies to Work For’ six years running.

This model isn’t designed for everyone — you need to sit down with your team today and pinpoint exactly what your own company mission is.

It’s the recruiting team’s responsibility to ‘sell’ this purpose to candidates interested in applying — it’s what makes your company unique and should be what gets someone to choose you over a competitor!


4. Communicating culture is essential

Poor communication could be really costing you.

Source: SIS International Research

Ultimately, the company vision has to come from on high.

It’s important that your management team has a clear idea of what he wants your company culture to look like, but it’s even more important that they communicate that idea to the rest of the organisation.

This is the only way a company can unite around a singular purpose — Benioff was instrumental in driving the Salesforce vision forward, your leaders need to do the same for your company.

If communicated effectively, culture should form an important part of everyone’s workday.

Here’s a quick example:

To form a collaborative culture, organisations need to make working together a key part of every employee’s workflow.

There are a few ways to do this:

i) Use collaboration software like Asana or Trello to make sure everyone is on the same page

ii) Hold frequent brainstorming meetings to make sure everyone feels like their ideas are heard

iii) Try an open plan format to your office instead of hiding everyone away in separate offices

Some companies are prepared to take an unconventional approach to achieve an awesome level of collaboration.

Software developer Valve actually gives each employee a desk with wheels and encourages them to ‘roll around the office’ and get involved in projects that they can add value to. This whole process is documented in their employee handbook — well worth a read!

You may want to keep your desks firmly anchored in place, but ensuring effective communication flow from the C-Suite down will make your culture far more likely to stick.

Summary

At the end of the day it all depends on priorities. Creating an awesome company culture does require a certain investment, some companies go as far as appointing a ‘Chief Cultural Officer‘ to manage the process.

Providing your team with a great working environment is the best way I know of to get them to go consistently above and beyond the line of duty — it’s also the one of the best ways to attract top talent.