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One of the biggest challenges in preparing for a trade show is developing an overall presence that will stand out in a sea of competition. This includes everything from trade show signs to the design and layout of your booth, marketing materials, giveaways, demos and more.

Let’s take a closer look at trade show signs in particular––signage can be one of the most eye-catching assets in your booth. Fortunately, there are some helpful guidelines you can follow to ensure that your signage attracts the kind of attention that will make your trade show investment a win for your company.

Trade Show Signs: Guidelines

1. Consider size and layout. The size and layout of your booth will drive your signage design. If you’re in the center of a crowded trade show floor, you may want to use a hanging sign above your booth to attract attendees. If your booth has a table, your sign content should be above the level of the tabletop. These considerations will ensure that you don’t waste money on signage that visitors can’t see.

2. Keep it simple. Your company may have many great reasons why customers should choose your products, but they don’t all need to be listed on a sign. Think in terms of your value proposition––what makes you different from other, similar companies or products? This is what must be conveyed on your signage. If you have more than one value proposition, try to select the most important element. Signage is similar to an “elevator pitch” in that it should be very concise and convey enough information to leave customers wanting more information. They will get that information by talking to your booth staff, gathering marketing materials, and checking out a product demo.

3. Have a single call to action. You may have several actions you want people to take in your booth, such as participating in a demo, taking collateral, placing a sales order, leaving a business card or talking to your booth staff, but your signage should make it clear that there is one action you want them to take above all others. Typically, this call to action is more likely to be a lead-gathering action that will allow you to contact prospects later to close a sale.

4. Focus on the benefits. When it comes to the products and services they buy, trade show attendees usually have one over-arching question that needs to be answered: What’s in it for me? The answer to this question should be a driving element in your trade show signs. According to B2B marketing expert Ruth Stevens, your signage should use words that give booth attendees a good reason to stop, avoid jargon, and present your products as a solution for a problem the customer has.

5. Be seen from afar. Another important element of your trade show signage is visibility. Venues are thousands of square feet with hundreds and sometimes even thousands of competing brands all vying for attention. This means that getting seen––and more importantly, remembered––is not easy. Show attendees can become disoriented quite easily, so the more you can make your booth visible from a distance, the more visitors you can attract. That is why you need to consider the space around your booth, not just within it. Banners that float above your booth can be a great way to increase your visibility, as are flag stands that may sit just in the aisle. These should be colorful and eye-catching, branded to help attendees find you in the sea of competition.

6. Be consistent. Consistent branding across your marketing elements increases the trust that attendees will have in your brand. Signs, collateral, and your overall booth design should all use consistent colors and design elements to ensure it doesn’t look like you cobbled together your booth at the last minute.

7. Design for the long term. Booths can be very expensive, so it’s important to make sure you get the most mileage out of your more permanent booth materials. Using the same booth for multiple years, across several trade shows, helps keep your per-show cost down. Having your more permanent booth signage talk more generally about what your company provides, without excess emphasis on specific product lines that may change, can help to reduce your annual trade show spending.

8. Aim for Open Space. Try to maintain as much open space in your booth as possible. This will allow traffic through your booth to flow more naturally, and enable visitors to take in your most important messaging without feeling overwhelmed. A simple guideline for the amount of additional signage would be to have one floor stand sign, and one tabletop per table or display. More than that, and your booth may begin to look cluttered.

Attending a trade shows can be a costly endeavor, so it is crucial to make sure you get the most bang for your buck as you prepare your trade show signs. What guidelines do you follow for your signage? We’d like to hear from you in the comments.

It’s not exactly controversial to suggest that referrals influence customer buying decisions.

Most of us have sought input from our network when making a big purchase, or we’ve taken a chance on a new company after hearing a friend or family member rave about its products and services. This is exactly how many of us discovered brands like Uber and Airbnb (two hallmark examples of referral marketing) and it makes sense why we value this form of “marketing” so much. Referrals, after all, tend to come from a very genuine, authentic place. The same isn’t usually true of ads or branded content.

That said, here’s the problem with that perspective: It’s qualitative.

While drawing from our own experience helps us contextually understand why referrals are important, it doesn’t really tell the full story. That’s because it’s anecdotal and experiential, not quantitative. It’s color on a page without any real structure, which makes it difficult to understand how important word-of-mouth really is and what we can do to better leverage it.

Key Findings from a National Harris Poll Survey

Earlier this year, we set out on a mission to fill in that detail.

Thanks to a partnership with Nielsen’s Harris Poll Online, we surveyed 2,000 Americans about a number of questions related to word-of-mouth and referrals. When the results came in, even our team — which lives and breathes referral marketing — was surprised by the data.

Most notably, our research with the Harris Poll showed that:

• Word-of-mouth isn’t limited to specific industries (i.e., it’s not just for eCommerce brands) or demographics, but certain age groups and income levels do rely more on referrals
• The vast majority (more than 80%) of Americans seek recommendations when making a purchase of any kind
• When someone shares or talks about a brand on social media, there’s a significant correlation to purchasing behavior
• Incentive structure plays a big role in increasing and scaling referral activity

That’s just a sampling of our findings, but the general conclusion from the study was clear. Referrals don’t just help us make decisions. Often times, they’re the primary driver of them.

Ready to Dive into the Data?

Check out the infographic we created below to see just how much word-of-mouth and referral marketing play a role in customer decision-making.

How is your company leveraging referrals to drive revenue? If you don’t have a referral marketing program and you’d like to learn more about how to build and manage an effective one, check out our latest eBook, “More Referrals, Less Hassle: The Modern Marketer’s Field Guide to Building a Highly Productive Referral Marketing Program.”

This weekend’s Guardian newspaper (a UK broadsheet) included the annual Superbrands 2016 supplement, which inevitably caught my interest. Billed as ‘independently commissioned research to identify the country’s leading brands’, the report reflects ‘the opinions of thousands of members of the British public and business professionals’.

Hmmm…. fair enough.

And then I got to the results page. It appears the throngs of individuals who took part in the survey, somehow managed to collectively deem British Airways (BA) worthy of the top spot in both the consumer and business Superbrands list.

C’mon people.

Besides the fact that I still can’t fathom what constitutes the make-up of a so-called ‘Superbrand’, statistically it would be untenable to have such homogenous representation among respondents. Somehow, the masses magically voted in favour of the same brand. Twice.

The methodology for conducting the research was undisclosed by the Superbrands team, and it would have made for an interesting read to decipher how they shortlisted over 1,600 companies as diverse as Amazon, Lexus, Bloomberg and Ocean Spray for the top prize. The vast majority have nothing in common with one another, so what selection criteria is applied? In fact, what does it even mean to be a ‘Superbrand’ anyway? The riddle of how you benchmark and measure the worthiness of lets say the British Medical Association, versus a services firm like KPMG, is something I’ll just have to ponder over to the grave.

So BA beats companies like Microsoft, Dropbox and Teradata to nab the top business brand accolade. The latter are companies many professionals will instantly recognize. We use their products every single day of our working lives, because they help make things a little easier, a little more efficient. And while I have nothing against BA, I recall at least three tech companies I’ve worked at where BA was barred from the corporate travel booking system. Rumor has it they’re expensive, ungenerous with their travel perks programs, and not particularly business-friendly.

And where may I ask are the hordes of challenger brands making waves in the media, capturing mindshare, public opinion and disrupting the fabric of countless industry? At least they’re acknowledged – albeit in a small way – in the form of a quote from Stephen Cheliotis’s (the CEO at the Centre for Brand Analysis) introduction from the supplement:

“It’s also not uncommon to reference the difficulty other brands face breaking into the Top 20, especially younger brands who, despite garnering plenty of media attention and even shaking up established sectors, have yet to build enough brand value across the UK to challenge proven, reputable businesses”

Complete garbage. So perhaps Uber and AirB’n’B just failed to ‘qualify’.

My point is this; Marketing’s already an easy target when it comes to critique, and it makes me cross when pseudo-scientific surveys like this are paraded around to further damage the credibility of brand measurement sciences. Let’s just call Superbrands what it is: a glorified sponsored advertising supplement. There’s absolutely nothing wrong with that, but I’m all for calling a spade a spade.

Rant over.

It is a wonderful thing that you keep obtaining more and more clients for your business. You have a large number of clients. The question is whether you can keep those clients. Considering that you are probably using your content as a powerful tool to attract clients, you should also be using it to retain them indefinitely.

Learning to retain your clients

Of course, you must be well aware of the fact that your content is critical to your professional success. There are many different reasons why your content must be written and presented in a certain way in order for it to have the most impact on your clients and prospective clients.

The content gets the other people to start thinking about what you and your business can do for them. It is very important at this point to remember that no matter how wonderful you and your business are, the only thing that really matters is that you are able to solve the other person’s problem(s). With that in mind, it is essential that you write as effectively as you possibly can. After all, it is extremely important for you to keep your eye on the prize. That prize is being able to retain your clients forever (or whatever forever means to you and to your business).

What should your writing approach be?

First of all, it is important to choose quality over quantity. However, it is also very important that you don’t lose sight of each person with whom you are trying to establish a relationship. It is also important to understand that the value of a relationship to one person (or to two people) may not be the same for other people. Each connection that is established is slightly different. Not only is that true but if we don’t maintain the relationship and really keep it alive, even if the relationship was originally established for very good reasons, those reasons may not be enough to sustain the relationship. If you want to become much more successful than you are at this moment, you will need to step up and bring your business to the next level. So, how do you plan on accomplishing that?

There are two aspects of your content approach that you must consider. First of all, you need to make sure that the quality of your content is up to snuff. Second, you have to make sure that you content positively affects the people who are reading it. In other words, you need to understand why you are writing and sharing that particular content.

Before you start to write anything at all, you should have certain concepts in your mind.

• Getting your clients to pay attention: First and foremost, you are going to need to get your readers to stand up and pay attention to what you want to share with them. In order to do that, you need write your content in a certain way. You want to attract the right type of people, not just anyone. Remember, quality over quantity.
• Establish a connection with your clients: There are many different ways that you can establish a connection with your readers; however, one of the way is critical to your relationship with your readers and, therefore, with your success. That is the emotional connection. Without the emotional connection, you will have no common ground with your readers.
• Get your clients to buy into who you are and what you represent: As a business owner, there are some things that are extremely important to you. One of those things is passion for what you are doing. Another thing that is extremely important for you is really believing in what you are doing. The reality is that the more they buy into what you are doing, the more likely they will be to sing your praises to other people.
• Your approach to selling your products and/or services: The reason that you write content, which you will not share until it is perfect in your eyes, is to ultimately sell your products and/or services to other people. Your content is the ultimate tool to selling your offerings. However, it is very important to remember that your selling approach must be soft. Otherwise, you will probably not succeed at selling anything. Always use the soft-sell approach.
• Figuring out how to keep your clients: You need to figure out a way to keep your clients coming back for more through your content. Not only do you want your clients to want to stay with you but you need to write content that makes them want to deepen the relationship that they share with you. That is the only way to ensure that the relationship will progress in a healthy manner.

Conclusion

If you are going to succeed at writing content that allows you to keep your clients, that means that you consider their needs above your own each and every time you write content that you intend to share with them. Of course, before anything else, you need to have a proper strategy in place. Part of that strategy must be to empathize with them and to be sensitive to how they feel and how they think. The truth is that you are going to have to keep working at keeping your clients. It may be challenging at times but it will become easier over time and it is certainly well worth the effort.

Oh, the battle between email marketing and social media.

We want to communicate with our readers through email, because email is boss. We reach readers directly. The timing isn’t as random. And oh, there’s that little fact that email marketing can have up to a 3,800% ROI.

However, readers want to communicate with us on social media. It’s easy, it’s fun, it’s social. But it doesn’t convert nearly as well.

So how do you choose between which one to grow?

Simple: you don’t.

Instead, you make email and social work together.

Build an audience on social media – where your audience wants to hang out – and then use some smart marketing to turn followers into subscribers.

Smart marketers, say heeeey! Welcome to the party.

How to Use Twitter to Grow Your Email List

Twitter has one of the best list building features I’ve seen on a social network.

Twitter cards are a kind of “attachment” for a tweet, the way you would attach a file to an email. Some card types include photos, videos, and the website cards that show a preview for links (head over to Flywheel for my tutorial on website cards).

And then there’s the lead generation card, which is all kind of awesome.

You create them in Twitter Ads, but you can attach them to any tweet and don’t need to actually advertise to be able to use them. I don’t really get why they put the card builder there, but whatevs.

It lets Twitter users opt in to your list in just one click.

Most good email marketing providers will make it pretty easy to set up – I’ve done it in 15 minutes for MailChimp and 30 for ActiveCampaign (I had to create a new form).

Worst case scenario, you’ll have to manually download a .csv from Twitter and upload it into your email marketing software.

The lead gen card adds an email opt-in button to a tweet, so that a Twitter user can sign up for your email list without leaving Twitter.

But instead of having a full form or a two-step opt-in, they automatically submit the name and email associated with that Twitter account. So the user doesn’t need to fill anything out – they can subscribe in one click.

Here’s an example (try it out here):

What to promote in your Twitter card

What do you actually use these for? Pretty much anything you’d use as an opt-in anywhere else:

Promote your email list

Straight and simple, you can create a blanket CTA to promote your email list. You can customize the card’s headline, image, and CTA text, and write whatever you want in the actual tweets that will include the card in them.

This is a good one to pin to the top of your Twitter profile, since it will appeal to more of your followers than something like a content upgrade (not every follower will need every individual post, and that’s fine!).

Tease a product

Want to promote your latest course or ebook? Instead of a regular tweet leading straight to your landing page, “warm up” your leads by using a Twitter card to send them the first chapter or lesson first.

Create standalone opt-ins for content upgrades

While I’m big on content upgrades, I’m not big on the idea of just using them in one blog post. I’m huge on repurposing content, so I like to also create quick landing pages for them as standalone lead magnets. Promote your content upgrade separately from the blog post it was originally for with a lead gen card.

Get webinar signups

Want to make webinar registrations even more seamless than you’ve already made them? Create a lead gen card to collect emails. Your co-host or guest can also use the same card – once the link is made, anyone can use it.

Ways to use lead gen cards

There are a lot of different things you can do with the card once you’ve created it. And there’s no limit on how many you can create, so throw in a few of each if you want to!

Create an ad campaign

You can target your current followers with a promoted tweet to convert them into subscribers. As a subscriber, they’ll be more likely to deepen your relationship, see your messages, and become a customer or client.

You could also reach new people who may not know or follow your blog yet by using other ad targeting features.

Use it as a super simple landing page

If you want a simple, one-click way for readers to subscribe to your blog, you can link to this wherever you would normally use a landing page or sign-up form.

It’s actually pretty smart, it doesn’t make your reader enter as much information as a regular landing page form.

Pin it to the top of your profile

Pin a tweet with your lead gen card to the top of your profile, so it’s the first thing someone sees when they visit it.

I’ve been cycling through a few different Twitter cards pinned to my profile, not only do they receive long-term signups, they also get retweeted by subscribers months later, exposing them to that person’s whole audience as well.

Use in “thank you” tweets

You should already be thanking as many of the people who share your blog posts as you can. It’s okay if you don’t have time to get to everyone, but set aside some time to actually get social with the people following you on social media.

A great way to do that, and convert followers at the same time, is to include your Twitter card in tweets in response to blog post shares. You already know this person is interested in your content, so they’re probably game to opt in.

Drive conversions from word of mouth

Word-of-mouth marketing, where you’re driving other people to talk about you on social media? Perfect for lead gen cards.

Generally, WOM is hard to drive conversions from. But by including a one-click CTA instead of a link to your website or social media page, it’ll be way easier. Your followers’ followers won’t be familiar with your blog, so having zero friction is a big deal.

Use the card’s URL in a viral giveaway or in “click to tweet” links in your blog posts, thank you pages, and email campaigns, like Teachable does with Make Change Weekly‘s welcome email:

That Twitter button? It includes a link to a Twitter card, so all new subscribers can promote the newsletter like this:

How to create Twitter lead gen cards

If you already have your list, content upgrade, and privacy policy set up, these babies should take 15 minutes with most ESPs.

1. Access the card builder by going to Twitter Ads -> Creatives -> Cards.

2. Click “Create Lead Generation card” and make sure “Website” is selected on the resulting page.

3. Customize the description for your Twitter card. This will be the “headline” of the card. Use it to describe the offer and the value to your followers.

4. Add an image. You don’t have a lot of space to work with here, at 800×200. But you can choose to use your logo, a customized image, or for great message match, the header image for your marketing emails if you have one. (Here’s my lesson on message match)

5. Customize your call-to-action. You only have 20 characters, so make it strong and snappy.

6. Link to your privacy policy. Twitter requires you to link to a page where you explain what info you collect from users (i.e. email addresses), how you’ll use them, etc. (If you don’t already have a privacy policy, you can create one here.

7. Enter a fallback URL. In some third-party tools, the card on’t be fully displayed. This enters an opt-in page URL users will be directed to instead.

Optional: Enter destination URL. If you want to send people to a “thank you” page, enter the URL now.

8. Enter data settings. If you want Twitter to automatically add new subscribers to your email list via your ESP’s API, you’ll need to enter some list info and API keys. Here are the directions for MailChimp, ActiveCampaign, and ConvertKit.

9. Name your card. Since you may want to create more than one card, make sure this is something more descriptive than “Lead Gen Card.” I usually put the name of the campaign or list in there.

10. Test your card. Twitter will now test it with the email associated with your account. If you have a double opt-in (which you do, if you use MailChimp), you’ll have to check your email and confirm before the data shows up in your ESP.

11. If it worked, do a happy dance.

Ta-daaaaaaa! You’re done.

Seriously, it’s that easy. Making it is really easy. It makes subscribing really easy. It makes you get more subscribers. It’s a gem and you should set it up. Ka-BOOM.

Learn more email marketing power moves

I thought I was pretty well-versed in MailChimp. But I’ve been going through Paul Jarvis’s Chimp Essentials course and mind. blown. I feel like an idiot.

There’s so much I didn’t realize it could do.

The course is available for $147 until March 31, so get on that sucka and turn your MailChimp account from a basic setup to a powerful marketing channel.

Have you ever used Twitter lead gen cards for your list? How’d they pan out? Share your stories in the comments! :)

OTTAWA – A major independent study of federal government contract pricing and policies has warned that the current system provides “perverse incentives” for industry doing business with Ottawa to hike their costs, particularly in military equipment deals.

The report written by the research firm PricewaterhouseCoopers — a copy of which was leaked to The Canadian Press — also says that both Public Services and Procurement and National Defence don’t have the in-house staff and expertise to understand technical matters that contribute to higher project costs.

The 32-page draft study, dated Nov. 17, 2015, was ordered by the former Conservative government, but delivered to the Trudeau Liberals, who promised in last fall’s election to fix the broken procurement system to ensure the military gets the equipment it needs.

The eye-popping cost of ships, planes, and tanks has been the subject of a political debate, notably over the F-35 stealth fighter, but also more recently with the navy’s planned frigate replacements.

Researchers at the multi-national audit firm were asked to examine how government policies, procedures and legislation contributed to the enormous price tags.

One of the key findings was that the structure of the contracting regime “provides perverse incentives for industry to increase costs” — particularly in sole-source deals — and there is “limited expertise in government” to review industrial processes and validate the increases.

“Neither (procurement services) nor DND has a sufficient knowledge base of subject matter experts that understand the ‘Should-Cost’ of a project, nor does either have the ability to understand the production process or other technical matters which are important drivers of cost and risk,” said the study, which compared Canada’s system with Britain, Australia and the U.S.

Related: Military procurement is Canada’s national disgrace

The report notes that there is a particular shortage of “military industrial specialists” and this “constrains Canada’s ability to validate the reasonableness” of the costs claimed by contractors.

It warns that the country’s global competitiveness in the defence sector is at risk, and that companies actually benefit by jacking up their prices.

“Profit is proportionate to cost under most of the basis of payment options — if the profit percentage is fixed, increased costs result increased profits,” said the report, which added the government “does not have mechanism to counteract these perverse incentives.”

The findings are significant because billions of dollars are about to be spent on the national shipbuilding program. The previous Conservative government set up a special relationship with two of the country’s shipyards — Seaspan in Vancouver and Halifax-based Irving Shipbuilding Inc.

In exchange for directing federal contracts exclusively to both companies, procurement services pledged there would be strict oversight to ensure that taxpayers were not being overcharged.

Public Services and Procurement Canada did not respond to a request for comment.

Dave Perry, an analyst from the Canadian Global Affairs Institute, has studied military procurement woes from the defence department’s perspective and found much the same.

He says the new report further “highlights the human capacity shortfall” of a system that was “gutted during program review in the 1990s and never recovered.”

Perry and fellow defence analyst George Petrolekas, a retired colonel, wrote a groundbreaking report for the Conference of Defence Association Institute and the MacDonald-Laurier Institute in January 2015 that concluded, among other things, that brain drain and red-tape were responsible for the dysfunctional procurement system at National Defence.

Whereas the PricewaterhouseCoopers report looks at projects looks after they’re launched, Perry and Petrolekas focused on the front-end planning at defence that’s required on complex military equipment deals.

They assigned much of the blame to staffing cuts by both Liberal and Conservative governments in the acquisitions branch at National Defence.

In the early 1990s, there were 9,000 staff dedicated to buying military equipment. There were just over 4,300 by 2009 and those people were responsible for pushing through double the number of projects.

“Set against this significantly increased workload, there is simply not enough capacity in the acquisition workforce to manage it,” said assessment by Perry and Petrolekas.

The Liberals, with both reports in hand, have an opportunity to start fresh, said Perry.

“We should move to treat defence procurement as its own specialty within government, and staff it accordingly,” he said.

The post Ottawa’s military contract policies encourage industry gouging: Report appeared first on Macleans.ca.

Every sales rep has experienced the gut-wrenching disappointment of losing a deal. After months of meetings, engagement and effort — the prospect simply says “No.”

It’s easy for the rep to want to hold themselves accountable for making a mistake during the sales process, or the prospect for having an 11th hour change of heart — and those are possibilities. But what if the prospect should never have entered the sales pipeline in the first place, or should have been qualified out much earlier in the process? Sales reps only have so much time in each day to engage with prospects, and that time is incredibly valuable. All too often, reps waste their time chasing unqualified prospects, only to discover the truth when they lose the deal.

As a sales leader, it’s your goal to minimize those unfortunate and often ill-timed losses by helping your team narrow the sales pipeline and focus intently on the deals that are most likely to close. The aim of this post is to outline a simple method to analyze your business’ historical sales performance data, which will enable your sales team to specifically pinpoint the open opportunities in your pipeline that have the highest probability of closing. Using this data, you can help your reps play to their strengths, engage at the right time, and intervene before a deal is lost.

As a sales leader, it’s your goal to minimize losses by helping your team narrow the sales pipeline.

Imagine that instead of chasing 100 lukewarm prospects, reps are able to focus on 10 incredibly high-quality prospects — focusing their engagement and more efficiently using their time each day. By narrowing the pipeline according to the data, your sales team can drive up win rates and hit even the most aggressive revenue goals.

This isn’t just theoretical: We’ve used this exact playbook for the Mid Market team at InsightSquared. With a narrower pipeline, the sales team was able to achieve 104% of our Q4 goal and increased productivity by more than 25%. I specifically used our software to analyze this data, but you can use Excel or another method to achieve the same results. By combining pipeline-driven metrics and strategic sales coaching, it is possible to achieve maximum sales results with efficient efforts.

Find Your ASP Sweet Spot

The very first step in narrowing your sales focus is to narrow your pipeline. Do a retrospective analysis of the deals you’re historically most likely to win. You specifically want to understand your business’ Ideal Customer Profile, according to the data.

For example, you may find that your ICP looks something like this:

• B2B, SaaS, Software
• Employee size of 500-2000
• $35K-$65K Average Sales Price

Each of these bullet points narrows the sales focus significantly, but the ASP is really the key. If a sales team only targeted B2B software companies between 200 and 2,000 employees, the pipeline would still be massive. By narrowing the pipeline by deal size, we can really zero in on the deals that are most likely to close next quarter. In order to calculate that ASP range, one would analyze the win rate by deal size.

This report specifically shows that the sales team should target deals between $35K and $45K, because the win rate is more than 20% — much higher than the average win rate of 12%. Now that you have your ideal range, narrow your pipeline to JUST those deals in the target range. Rather than chasing prospects that are statistically less likely to close, rep’s efforts are focused on the best possible opportunities.

The only risk with this method is that your pipeline may shrink too quickly. If not enough prospects in your current pipeline fall within your ideal ASP range, it may be necessary to source new prospects to fill the pipeline.

This Inflow and Outflow report will alert you if your pipeline is getting dangerously low, or is declining in value over time. Make sure to keep an eye on this report as you begin to narrow your sales focus to the ideal ASP. If your pipeline is decreasing rapidly, sales and marketing team might not be hunting for the right opportunities in the first place. Make an adjustment and target better qualified opportunities to fill the pipeline.

Identify Most-Likely-To-Win Reps

Just as you have deals that are more likely to close, your sales team has reps that are most likely to close those deals. Some reps are specifically best at closing the deals within your ideal ASP range, and they are your greatest asset.

This report shows you which reps on your team have the highest win rate for your ideal ASP, and which need the most assistance. As reps begin to work their opportunities, you should focus your coaching efforts on the reps at the bottom of this report. As a sales leader, your time is also incredibly limited, and therefore, you have to prioritize coaching for those that need it most.

While close rates are vital, time management through the sales process is also incredibly important. Some sales reps will swear up and down that a deal will come in this quarter, only to push it out at the last moment. This can be rough on your sales forecast, and even cause your team to miss goal. Instead of allowing this to happen over and over again, you can use data to identify the reps that are most likely to push target deals out of the pipeline for this quarter.

This report helps you identify which reps most effectively manage a sales engagement timeline, and which are most likely to push deals. Now, you can get ahead of your team, and intervene with the reps that have trouble managing their time.

Intervene on At-Risk Deals

With a narrowed pipeline, you can also give more of your attention to the deals that reps may be at a higher risk of losing. While ASP can show you the deals you’re most likely to win, you’re still going to lose a percentage. However, there are signals within the data that indicate the likelihood a rep is about to lose a deal, such as recent engagement, momentum through sales stages and more.

This report shows the at-risk deals in red, with the on-target deals in green. Some opportunities are easy to spot as being grossly “out-of-lane”, e.g. WNS Holdings. Of the at-risk deals, you can then find out which ones are actively trying to purchase a product like yours. Then, work religiously with reps to map every account on a scale of 1: Active Project, Has Budget to 5: No Project, Does Not Have Budget. It gives you as a sales leader a really easy way to identify the at-risk deals that are also actively trying to buy. If they’re an at-risk deal, but they’re tire kickers, we shouldn’t really be spending time on it.

If it’s worth the effort, then offer coaching, call support, collateral, and more to help win deals at risk of pushing. Get on a call with their C-Suite, bring in your CEO, bring in customer referrals — whatever you have to do to win the deal. With these analytics, you can intervene on these deals before they’re lost to drive up win rate.

Focus on Winnable Deals

Here’s another way to look at it: focus the majority of your time on the deals your team is most likely to close. These are the deals that you should throw the cavalry at, according to the data.

This is a Strike Zone report, and shows you the deals in your current pipeline that you are most likely to win. This report combines a lot of the data in the previous analytics, including deal size, momentum, rep effort, win rate, sales cycle and more. Just like a baseball player, you only want to swing for the deals in your strike zone. By focusing exclusively on deals in the green or yellow zones, your reps will have more time to devote to closing those deals. And with more time, they can be more successful in their efforts.

It’s really a simple equation: a narrow pipeline + intense focus = a higher win rate. Give your team the chance to chase the best possible prospects, and you’ll quickly see higher revenues.

Brainstorming can be an effective technique for creative problem solving when used properly. However it’s not the best approach for all ideation attempts, and can be ineffective without understanding the limitations and challenges associated with brainstorming.

In this post, we’ll help you understand:

• The origin of brainstorming
• Brainstorming process and theory
• Facilitating brainstorming and different approaches to solicit ideas
• Criticisms of brainstorming
• Two best practices to get the most out of your brainstorming

The Origin of Brainstorming

In the 1940’s and 50’s, BBDO was considered the most innovative firm on Madison Avenue. At the time, one of its executives, Alex Osborn, published a book called, Applied Imagination. In it, Osborn introduced “brainstorming” as one of the ways he was able to generate many creative ideas as part of a group.

This context is relevant because it illustrates that brainstorming, the now widely adopted technique, comes from experience and not research. In fact, most research shows that brainstorming (if you measure it by the sheer number of creative ideas) is less effective than a individuals coming up with ideas on their own. However, as we’ll cover later, brainstorming is better viewed as a technique for improving the quality (not quantity) of ideas. Furthermore, brainstorming can help a team bond and solve problems in an effective way that increases commitment to the most important step: implementing the idea so that real innovation can take place.

Brainstorming is better viewed as a technique for improving the quality (not quantity) of ideas.

So perhaps the biggest takeaway is: don’t rely on brainstorming to solicit ideas. An employee suggestion box can do that. Instead, view it as part of an idea management strategy and process within your organization. While an employee suggestion box focuses just on getting the ideas, an idea management program looks at the entire process from getting ideas, to building on and improving ideas, to evaluation and implementation, and measuring the impact of the innovation.

Brainstorming Process and Theory

Brainstorming is a technique for finding the best solution to a known problem or challenge. The core belief of brainstorming is that getting as many solutions as possible increases the chances of finding the best solution.

To begin, ideas are shared in an environment where criticism and debate are suspended. There are two reasons behind this. Firstly, brainstorming advocates believe that seeing or hearing others’ ideas, will prompt new ideas. Secondly, suspending criticism and debate makes it safe to share and prevents self-editing or withholding of ideas. In this stage, encourage wild ideas to add new perspectives to the pool of ideas.

The next stage is a process of combining and improving on ideas. It’s at this stage that criticism or debate should be introduced. For example: is it a feasible idea to implement. It’s likely that the discussion will create new ideas or combine ideas. It’s the introduction of constraints at this stage that may produce additional creativity and facilitate coming up with a better quality idea that everyone has buy-in for. Most of the criticism of brainstorming misses this key stage as an important part of the process. It’s here that the real value of brainstorming is realized.

Finally, don’t forget the last (and crucial step) of making a decision: assigning accountability to fully evaluate the implementation of the idea and the timelines for accomplishing it. The group may need to come together for additional meetings to work through new constraints that are identified. It’s obvious, but worth stating that you don’t have innovation unless your idea actually gets implemented.

Quick Summary of the Basic Brainstorming Process:

1. Come up with as many ideas as possible
2. To accomplish this, withhold criticism and welcome wild ideas
3. Only when this is complete should you start combining and improving ideas
4. Make a decision, assign accountability and an expectation to fully evaluate and report back to the group

Facilitating Brainstorming – Different Ways to Solicit Ideas

Individual Brainstorming

These processes or methods are useful when working on coming up with ideas as an individual. They are also useful in group brainstorming as a facilitator to help brainstorming members find angles to come up with new, novel ideas. We’re highly susceptible to context and prompting – so use more than one method to get a variety of ideas.

• Map out the process – You know your starting point and what solving the problem looks like. Writing out the various steps involved in getting from point a to point b may open up new, more specific areas for focus ideation on.
• Changing Your Attributes – You can try to imagine yourself as someone else and how they might solve the problem, or give yourself different characteristics that might help you solve the problem. How would I solve this if I was the owner of the company? How would I solve this if I was the customer?
• Mind Mapping – Starting with the main goal or objective in the middle, connect ideas to this main objective and then look to the next level. If you look at those ideas what connections can you draw out from there?
• Medici Effect Storming – The Medici Effect describes how ideas might not be obviously related, but if you can identify parallels, you may find things that are useful. One good example of this is Blue Ocean Strategy, where looking at similar, but not directly related industries, may offer ideas for business strategy that differentiates yourself from the competition.
• Blind Writing – This is an attempt to let your mind wander to come up with ideas. The rule is to start and continue writing or doodling for a defined time (10 min or so). You must continue writing, even if it’s to say you have no ideas.
• Reverse Storming – This approach takes the opposite stance to solving your problem. Instead of trying to come up with ideas to solve the problem, work on identifying ideas that would prevent you from solving the problem. Coming up with and understanding these ideas may help you figure out more original ways to solve your problem.
• Question Brainstorming – This process involves brainstorming questions and not answers. Finding answers to the questions could be the work of future or subsequent sessions.

Group Brainstorming

These techniques are intended to help with pulling out better ideas via a collaborative process. By building on each other’s ideas, reviewing and voting, the end goal is to find a better idea. The other benefit is that group ideation helps build buy-in for later execution that will require participation. If people feel like they played a role in defining the problem and coming up with ideas, they’re more likely to feel invested in the ultimate solution.

• Nominal Group Technique – Brainstorming members write down their ideas anonymously. The facilitator collects the ideas and then everyone votes on the ideas. The top ideas (most voted on) may go back to the group or subgroups for further ideation and a presentation back to the group.
• Group Passing Technique – Here someone contributes an idea and then passes it to the next person in the group who adds their thoughts to the idea and then passes it to the next member of the group. Each person adds their thought to the original idea. Once this is complete the next person submits their individual idea and that is passed around for further thought. Once everyone has submitted an idea and everyone has provided a thought to each of these, you have a thorough list of ideas that have been elaborated on.
• Team Idea Mapping Method – Similar to the nominal technique, brainstorming members write down their ideas. What differs is the process for evaluating ideas. Instead of voting, ideas are grouped into themes. This facilitates the group getting to a better shared understand of the problem and potential approaches. New ideas may also arise through association. Once all the ideas are mapped out, evaluation and voting of ideas can begin.
• Directed Brainstorming – Similar to the group passing technique, this process start with someone writing down a single idea. That idea is passed onto the next individual. Instead of adding a thought to the idea, the request is to improve the idea. This technique is effective when the evaluation criteria for evaluating ideas are known in advance (ie cost, time, impact to resources, desired outcome).

Criticisms of Brainstorming

1. Brainstorming produces fewer ideas

There’s a good deal of research demonstrating that groups do not produce more ideas than individuals. There’s a good article in the New Yorker by Jonah Lehrer titled “Group Think – The Brainstorming Myth”, which is a pretty comprehensive review of the criticisms of brainstorming.

As a quick summary, the first real test of Osborn’s brainstorming technique was done at Yale University. Forty-eight individuals were divided into groups and given a series of creative puzzles. The groups were told to follow Osborn’s guidelines. As a control sample, the same puzzles were given to 48 individuals working on their own. The solo students came up with about twice as many solutions as the brainstorming groups. In addition, a panel of judges said their solutions were more “feasible” and “effective.” Since then, numerous follow-up studies have come to the same conclusion.

The solo students came up with about twice as many solutions as the brainstorming groups.

Why is this? Understanding the following challenges are key to leveraging brainstorming effectively.

• Blocking: Since only one person can contribute at a time, some people may forget their idea while they’re listening to someone else explain their idea or listening to the discussion that follows.
• Collaborative Fixation: It’s a collaborative exercise so the tendency is for ideas to follow a similar pattern. The first idea generates further similar ideas and, therefore, people are influenced by the ideas that preceded theirs.
• Evaluation Apprehension: Some people may not contribute as effectively because they fear judgment, or they may want to think further on their idea before contributing, which is counter to the spirit of brainstorming.
• Free Riding / Accountability: When someone believes their idea will be judged individually, it was demonstrated that they worked harder on coming up with ideas than when they were told it would be pooled into a group of ideas and then evaluated. So if an individual feels like there’s a good amount of ideas coming from the group, they may feel like they’re less accountable for contributing.
• Personality Characteristics: Extroverts outperform introverts in group sessions and this is where group think can become a big part of the issue. The loudest person dominates the conversation and others don’t feel comfortable asserting their own ideas.
• Social Matching: Some people may alter their output to match that of others in the group.

2. Debate does not inhibit creativity, it increases it

Not criticizing or debating ideas is considered one of the most important elements for good brainstorming. However, studies have shown that debate and criticism doesn’t inhibit ideas but actually increases creativity. There’s some wisdom in the cliche that ingenuity is born out of necessity and that constraints are what produces break-out creativity. As an example, cash-strapped and resource poor, startups need to find innovative ways to create value, get work done and take their offerings to market.

There’s some wisdom in the cliche that ingenuity is born out of necessity and that constraints are what produces break-out creativity.

In 2003, Charlan Nemeth from the University of California, Berkeley took 265 students into teams of five. All the teams were asked to solve the same problem: how to reduce traffic congestion in San Francisco. One set of teams got the standard brainstorming framework to come up with ideas. The second team was told to come up with ideas with no further direction. The last group was told that research demonstrated debate and criticism were an important part of coming up with good ideas and were encouraged to debate.

The brainstorming groups slightly outperformed the groups given no instructions, but teams that debated performed best. On average, they generated nearly 25% more ideas. After the initial group ideation session, researchers asked each student individually if they had any more ideas about improving traffic. The brainstormers and the people given no guidelines produced an average of three additional ideas while the debaters produced seven.

3. People aren’t very good at free association

Another criticism of brainstorming is that people aren’t actually very good at free association. Meaning, people do best when they build on ideas vs. having to come up with new novel ideas on their own. We’re all highly susceptible to suggestion and context. Something covered at length in the book Blink by Malcolm Gladwell.

People do best when they build on ideas vs. having to come up with new novel ideas on their own.

In another study conducted by Charlan Nemeth, she found that with no prompting creativity was very predictable, but when subjects were presented with an unusual context first, creativity was much improved. In the 1960s, two psychologists, David Palermo and James Jenkins, created a huge table of word associations based on the first thoughts that come to mind when people are asked to reflect on a particular word. They discovered that the majority of these associations were very predictable. For example, when people are asked to free-associate about the word “blue,” the most common first answer is “green,” followed by “sky” and “ocean.”

Nemeth’s experiment devised a way of getting beyond the first associations to more creative thoughts. In the experiment, pairs of subjects were shown colored slides and asked to identify the colors. In some pairs, one of the subjects was a lab assistant instructed to give the wrong answer. After a few minutes, the pairs were asked to free-associate about the colors they had seen. Those exposed to wrong answers came up with associations that were more creative. Now “blue” prompted “jazz” and “berry pie.”

So brainstorming is likely to produce more original ideas with context and other conflicting viewpoints than open, non-critical free-association, which may yield predictable responses.

4. Brainstorming in the real world (criticism of brainstorming criticisms)

If brainstorming doesn’t produce more ideas or more original ideas, is it worth it? It is. The issue with the studies is that they isolate one variable and focus on that. They don’t capture how creativity actually happens in the work environment. There, we pass seamlessly from individual to group work all the time. Like it or not, the trajectory for several decades is towards more creative work being done in teams vs. individuals. So it’s also a necessity to work on the optimal way to do it.

Rather than viewing research as a condemnation of brainstorming, it provides good insights into some of the pitfalls and suggests possible ways to improve on the process.

Asking the right question(s) gets much better answers.

How do you come up with the right question? One approach comes from an HBR article by Kevin Coyne, Patricia Gorman Clifford and Renée Dye, “Breakthrough Thinking From Inside the Box”. It points to the importance of leveraging the right context and not being too open ended or too defined. One method they suggest for doing this is to reverse engineer similar innovations and ask yourself, “What question would have caused me to see this opportunity first?” and then using that question (or series of questions) for your brainstorming activity.

Another way to think about this is to think about breaking out a question into multiple objectives. There’s a good academic paper written by Ralph L. Keeney titled “Value-Focused Brainstorming.” In it, he uses IDEO as an example of how to break down a brainstorming exercise into key objectives. David Kelley, the founder of IDEO, wanted to design a product that would enable cyclists to transport and drink coffee while they were riding. A couple of ways to describe what they wanted to design: “spill-proof coffee cup lids,” or “bicycle cup holders.” But a much better description is the following objective: “helping bike commuters to drink coffee without spilling it or burning their tongues.” Keeney likes this statement because it clearly lays out IDEO’s objectives, to help bike commuters 1) drink coffee, 2) avoid spills, 3) not burn their tongues. He even contributes a few objectives of his own: avoid distractions while biking, don’t contribute to accidents, keep the coffee hot and minimize costs. Going into that much detail before brainstorming about ways to design the cup holder makes IDEO much more likely to succeed.

A last idea on how to accomplish this is by leveraging the questioning brainstorming technique described above. Where the first exercise isn’t jumping into problem-solving mode, but problem discovery mode.

Einstein was reported to have said, “If I were given an hour in which to do a problem upon which my life depended, I would spend 40 minutes studying it, 15 minutes reviewing it and 5 minutes solving it.”

Make sure you do the same for your brainstorming initiative. The up-front effort will result in far better ideas.

Second, ideate individually before and after brainstorming and do more than one brainstorming session

Research is clear. When it comes to getting a quantity of ideas and a large variety of ideas, ideating on your own is better. So provide an opportunity for this in your brainstorming efforts. Save the group activity for discussion of ideas that will lead to further improvements, combining of ideas, etc. The discussion is important and the reason that brainstorming can be such a powerful technique for ideation. Andrew Hargadon’s “How Breakthroughs Happen” shows that creativity occurs when people find ways to build on existing ideas. The power of group brainstorming comes from creating a safe place where people with different ideas can share, blend, and extend their diverse knowledge. If your goal is to just “collect the creative ideas that are out there,” group brainstorms fall short of their potential.

Another key characteristic of problem solving is that it works best when people have time to think on the problem. In “Where Do Good Ideas Come From,” Steven Johnson researches the common patterns for environments for generating good ideas. One of the key observations is what he calls the slow hunch. Most great ideas never come in a Eureka moment, but can take a long time to evolve and are the result often of combining hunches or ideas.

Spotlight, this year’s Oscar winner for Best Original Screenplay, proved yet again that a good story, well told can pay big dividends. Storytelling can pay big dividends in your sales presentations as well when you follow a few rules. The first rule is critical to the success of your story, and that is being crystal clear why you are telling a story.

Why “the why” is key in your sales story

Stories that are used solely as attention-grabbers and lead nowhere waste time and try the patience of busy prospects. While this may work in everyday conversation, a sales presentation is not an everyday conversation. It is a purposeful, heightened communication and every element, including a story, must be tied to the reason that you are there. Whether that’s to solve a business challenge, explore an opportunity or overcome obstacles to doing business. Should a story also grab attention and entertain? Of course. But you have to start with the why. Many times sellers start with the story and then try to retrofit it to their presentation. You can see why this strategy is doomed to fail.

Consider Spotlight

Do you suppose writers Josh Singer & Tom McCarthy wanted to entertain audiences? Sure. Did they hope to win an Oscar? Of course. But there was a deeper, more compelling reason to tell the story than just grabbing attention and a little gold man. They wanted to explore the rampant scandal in the Catholic Church and subsequent cover-up from the eyes of the reporters tracking the case. This clear focus on purpose made for a compelling story that ended up drawing audiences in by the millions. (For more stories on Oscar winners and losers in presentations, check out this popular post.)

If you start with a clear purpose for telling your story, ideas will flow and it will help you craft a story that moves the sale forward.

Here are 5 great reasons to tell a story in your presentation

1. To challenge a perception or belief:

   Say you find yourself in front of a prospect who has been using your competitor’s product for years and believes — incorrectly – that it’s superior to yours. To approach this type of resistance head on is often a losing strategy. Rarely will you hear, “Thank you for correcting me,” when you tell someone they’re wrong. In fact, prospects are more likely to shut down and draw a bigger line in the sand. The right story, however, can soften a hardened position and open a prospect’s mind to a different perspective.

   For example: A personal story about a firmly held belief that you once had and how you discovered it was inaccurate, allows your prospect to re-evaluate and re-form her opinion without feeling like she is having her arm twisted.

2. To simplify a complex idea:

   Many products and services today have complex features or processes. If your product sounds too complicated prospects may get overwhelmed and tune out. Using a story in this situation — particularly a metaphor or analogy — is an effective way to make what your product or service does quickly understandable to your prospect.

   Here’s an example: Assume that you sell a solution which allows your prospect to operate many of her business processes remotely. Comparing what your product does to the instrument panel on an airplane that allows the plane to safely go from point A to point B without manual input gives your prospect something familiar to associate your solution with. Much like a good infographic, the right analogy can give your prospect a quick mental picture and help her grasp a more complex concept.

3. To address an objection:
   

   Presentations aren’t always a smooth ride and part of your preparation should include a strategy for addressing potential objections. A story is one way to effectively diffuse an objection. Whether it’s a service or feature you don’t provide or a price or value issue, having a well-crafted story specific to that objection is a handy tool to have in your pocket.

4. To reinforce a key point:

   You want to shine a light on some points within your presentation — a competitive advantage, a benefit, a value proposition — so that your prospect doesn’t miss them. Building a story around a key message or capability is an effective way to focus attention on an individual item and reinforce its value to your prospect.

5. To create urgency:

   Your presentation goes well, everyone is in agreement and then…nothing happens. Time passes, other priorities pop up, and the deal gets stalled. Stories can be used to create greater urgency for your prospect to take action — either by highlighting the pain of postponement and/or the benefits of taking quick action.

Arm yourself with a purposeful story in your next presentation by starting with the why. For more tips on storytelling in sales, check this post out.

We all know that referrals are king for many small businesses, professional services, or real estate agents. But what’s the best way to go about getting those referrals? Even though we know they’re necessary, we also know that they can be an awkward thing to go about asking for from your customers and contacts.

Before you panic and avoid the awkwardness altogether by not sending any asks for referrals at all, which isn’t entirely productive… We’re sharing a couple quick templates for emails that will get you those coveted referrals all while continuing to maintain your relationships with your contacts.

Read on to start asking for referrals

84% of customers report that they almost always trust referrals or recommendations from their friends or family when it comes to products and businesses. That’s a vast majority, and makes referrals one of the most trusted sources when it comes to how people find a business or professional service. It begs the question, why aren’t you reaching out to your network for referrals?

We firmly believe in creating a valuable relationship with our customers and contacts in our network, so that when it comes time to ask for something from them (like a referral) they’re more willing to give back to you. Now, this isn’t the situation of doing them a favor so that they’ll ‘owe’ you later down the road. Instead, it’s about creating a genuine and valuable relationship that allows you to turn to each other in times of need… or celebration!

The more effort you put into the relationships with your contacts, the greater impact you have on them. Once you’re making a big impact, your relationships are far stronger and those contacts are far more likely to have your back when you need it…because you’ve shown that you would do the same for them!

Purpose

So, what’re you looking for by sending out this email? We’re going beyond just getting a response from your contact here, and yes we know you probably are looking for a referral, but the type of referral is key here! We’ve broken it down into 5 types of referrals or asks you might be making of your network.

1. The recent customer or client

There is no better time than right after a positive experience with a customer to ask for a referral. Take advantage of that great sale, experience, or impact you made on your client and their business by reaching out within the week and asking for their feedback.

It can come in the form of a referral or even a simple review on social media, but it’s important that you don’t waste time with this one! Move quick while you’re still top of mind in a positive way and you’re almost guaranteed to get a great referral.

2. The VIP in your life

We all know ’em (or wish we knew them) and no matter what field you’re in, it’s likely that the VIP’s or big influencers are busy folks. So what’s key here? Brevity. And while we’ll advocate for keeping it short and sweet for all of these emails, it’s probably most important here where your contact’s time is precious.

Because they’re a VIP, they get these kind of emails all the time and you want yours to stand out from the crowd, so we head back to our handy graph of effort:impact. What can you do for these VIPs? Make it worth their while to reach back to you with that crucial referral.

3. Social Media Request

This is a super easy win for getting more indirect client and customer referrals via social media from past clients or even peers in your network who know you and your business personally. You can make this request from now till the cows come home and not get any responses but as soon as you make it easy and accessible for your contacts to go through with it, you’ll see a huge difference.

So what do you do? Make the ask and be sure to tell your contacts why this is important to you or your business, or any positive results you’ve seen come out of them, and then give them all the tools they need to complete the reviews. Whether that’s a link and description or directions on exactly how they can leave the review, you want to make it crystal clear and really easy for your contacts to leave their review.

4. New Contact

Here’s another great way to take advantage of being top-of-mind with someone in your network, except this time it’s because you’ve just met them. Whether it’s just in passing, you’ve been introduced by a mutual contact, or you met them at a conference, it’s worth it to reach out to them and show how much you already value their relationship.

Keep it short, personal and be sure to mention how you met them, and give them a value add! Share an article you found about the conference you were attending, or let them know that you added them on LinkedIn and offer to connect them with some other people in your network. Prove that you’re a worthwhile new contact to have in their network!

5. Informal or funny request

We all know that asking for a referral is hard…and awkward, and often the best solution to dealing with that awkwardness is by simply acknowledging its existence! As always, know thy audience. Sending a cheeky email off to a VIP or someone in your network who may not appreciate it, could be detrimental.

Pick your contacts wisely before you shoot off this email and if you’re on track, they’ll appreciate your honesty and ability to acknowledge how hard it is to ask a favor from people in your network.

Content

Don’t overthink this part, the simpler the better because you don’t want your request to get lost in a lengthy and meandering email. But you’ll want to make sure you include a few key words, phrases and structure in your email…it’s the art of asking for a favor!

Start by setting the stage of what the purpose of the email is and include something along the lines of ‘I have a favor to ask of you’ or ‘Can I ask you a favor?’ Including a similar phrase sets your contact up to understand what the purpose of the email is, and the word favor implies some sort of reciprocity and a return in favor at some point down the line in your relationship.

Then, give your reason for asking that favor. Show why it’s of value to you or your business that they give you the referral and make it clear that their contribution is worthwhile. People tend to like knowing the ‘why’ behind the reason they’re being asked for something and generally react positively to the word ‘because’ according to Robert Cialdini’s book Influence. Couple your ask with that clear reasoning, use that positive ‘because’ and you’re on track to grab plenty of responses and referrals from your contacts.

Keep these 4 things on your checklist as you write your email:

• Keep it simple and clear what the email is about.
• Get to the point, don’t meander and wait till the last sentence to ask.
• Give your contact a value add and make it a positive exchange.
• Make it easy for them to give the referral and give them everything they need to move forward.

When it comes to your subject line, again it’s key to keep it simple but also important to make your contact feel…special. Don’t make it feel as if you’re ‘begging’ for business or help, instead put the ball in their court and give them the privilege of picking who you’re working with.

You’re allowing your network to help pick who else you work with, and in the process you’re also reminding them of how much you value their relationship that you’ll turn to them for advice. Just please be sure you’re not sending it out in a mass email….that may defeat the purpose.

Timing

There’s three factors here when it comes to timing. The first being the day and time of day when you send the actual email, the second is a matter of relevance and timeliness according to the last time you spoke with them, and the third is at what point in the email you make the ask from your contact.

There’s plenty of theories out there about the best time of day for sending an email and we’ve tried them all out, but the chart below reminds you of what people’s workdays generally look like. It gives you a chance to capitalize on the times that they’re most likely to respond, simply based on what they’re probably doing at the time. Looks kind of like your own day-to-day, right? Common sense should guide your email send timing

Then of course, make sure to remain relevant. Reaching out to that ‘new’ contact you met at a conference a month or two after you actually met them? You’ve certainly lost relevance there. Reach out when the timing is right, but don’t wait too long or you may just be forgotten. Staying top-of-mind is everything here, especially when you’re making an ask of your network…so just send that email already!

Finally, when do you slide your ask into the body of the email? Certainly don’t bury it in the midst of a lot of details or towards the end of the email. What if they don’t make it down that far? It’s best to keep your request towards the beginning of the email, and couple it with your own value add. Integrate that key Equity Theory into the ask and make it clear that your relationship is one of reciprocity.

Ready?

So, now that you’re adding value to your relationships, you’re ready to start asking them for referrals. Find your purpose and then go ahead and download our 5 email templates that will guarantee responses with referrals no matter what situation you find yourself in. Whether you’re asking the VIP’s in your life for a referral, or maybe you’re reaching out to former customers, or just looking for a review online, these templates will guide you in the right direction.

Download your referral templates today!

Although whiteboard videos are well known for their iconic black-and-white aesthetic, many of them these days tend to include some degree of color. It’s usually not much–shades of color here and there–but it’s happening more and more and, given the influx, it inevitably spurs questions like: Should my video include color? If so, how much color should there be? And where, exactly, should that color be added?

The short answer to questions like those is that every whiteboard video is a balancing act; each video a unique attempt to properly tilt the scales. But the longer answer is that there are tips, tricks and trends that can help guide a project towards a successful solution. And that’s exactly what we’ll be focusing on today.

So let’s take a closer look at 5 tips for incorporating color into your whiteboard video…

1. Don’t be Afraid to Keep it Simple: Just because you’ve decided to incorporate color into your whiteboard video, that doesn’t mean you need to include a lot of color. Nor does it mean that every frame in your whiteboard video should include coloring. In fact, it’s often best to oscillate between colored frames and pure black and white ones so that when elements of color are introduced, they feel more impactful and visually intriguing.

Intellectually, the value of that contrast (color/no color) is easy to understand, but when going through the production process–especially when looking at still imagery–it can be difficult to internalize. As a result, there is a often coloring-book-like temptation to “fill in” more than is necessary. Throughout the rest of this piece, we’ll continually touch on that idea of necessity, but it’s important to always be aware of the fact that a little can go a long way.

For example, let’s look at a recent whiteboard video that we did for AutoMD:

With regards to color simplicity, three things immediately jump out:

• Only two colors are used in the entire spot
• Not every frame features color
• Even the frames that feature color, sometimes only use a very minimal amount

Sometimes the coloring is so minimal that you barely even notice it. Like this example in the top right, which uses color to subtly call attention to the text and brand.

Sometimes the use of color can be that simple, and that’s absolutely okay.

2. Color Can Be a Great Way to Bring Your Brand Forward: It’s important to note that the subtle top-right corner example above wasn’t the only time color was used to highlight the AutoMD brand in that whiteboard video. In fact, most of the colored portions in that spot were directly related to depicting the AutoMD logo.

Sometimes that corporate logo appeared larger…

Sometimes it appeared multiple times in the same frame…

And, notably, even in instances when no logo was presented, that same was still used throughout the whiteboard video as the default coloring:

Not only does this use of color demonstrate a consist means to highlight brand, but it also functions together to help build brand identity.

3. Color Can Also Be a Great Way to Bring Text to Life: Typically, the most stagnant parts of any explainer video are those moments that focus primarily on text. That’s why, as animators, we always try our best to enliven that text with tools like action, concept or humor.

Well, perhaps unsurprisingly (given the final image featured in #2), the coloring of text is another one of those tools. In addition to the brand-building ability of that coloration, it can also be a great way to spice up the stagnation. This can be accomplished in two ways:

One by coloring in the text itself…

And the other by using color to surround and highlight that text…

Both techniques can be highly effective.

4. Familiar Icons and Narrative Ambience: Above, with regards to brand, we talked about how coloring can be used in whiteboard videos to help create familiarity. In addition to that, coloring can also be useful in leveraging familiarity.

For example, consider a whiteboard video we did for the Madison Square Garden Company to promote their new Rangers App

Given the global recognition of the New York Rangers, it’s probably not surprising to see this whiteboard video leverage the team’s familiar colors, iconic logo and star player. But perhaps more surprisingly, there are some other familiar-looking assets that–through color–are leveraged by this video:

Depicting those logos (Facebook, Twitter and Instagram) without color would have been fine, they would have slid right in there seamlessly, but doing so would have robbed them of their familiarity. Adding color here not only instilled that sense of familiarity, but it helped cultivate the narrative ambience for the viewer. It serves as a reminder that, like those well-known and often beloved apps, this New York Rangers app should be downloaded and folded into that same social/technological ecosystem.

5. A Conduit for Product Imagery: For our final tip, let’s stick with that whiteboard video for the New York Rangers app. One thing you may notice is that unlike most explainer videos, product imagery (a smart phone displaying the app) is shown during the beginning, middle and end of this animated spot.

One of the reasons why product images are rarely seen during whiteboard videos is because the combination of real-life photography and animated-life illustration can often be jarring. These two worlds, they tend to collide. But one effective way to help bridge that gap is through the use of color like in the examples below:

So if displaying product images in your whiteboard video is a priority, then using color might be a great conduit to accomplishing that with success.

How do you reach the consumer who was born between 1980 and 2000? Interestingly enough, video marketing holds the greatest promise for reaching a customer demographic that we know as Millennials or Generation Y.

Today, millennials consume video for more than just entertainment. They use video to learn about companies and make purchase decisions. According to a recent consumer study by Animoto, eight out of ten millennials find video helpful when researching a product or service. In fact, they’re 85% more likely than baby boomers to purchase a product or service if they can watch a video explaining it beforehand.

Video helps guide millennials through the purchase cycle. You can do so in a number of ways, like including demo videos on product pages or embedding customer testimonials on an “About Us” page. For example, New York Yoga uses video to show potential customers what it’s like to attend their classes. It’s easier than ever for consumers to make purchase decisions and have intimate interactions with brands online.

$200 Billion Purchasing Power (and rising)

The U.S. Chamber of Commerce Foundation reports that this generation has an annual purchasing power of an estimated $200 billion and another $500 billion in indirect spending potential. Mind you, this generation’s highest spending influence potential is still years in the future. Actively wooing Millennials and integrating them into your customer base now may yield profitable sales not just today but also in the future.

Reach the Millennial Customer Demographic with Videos

It is common knowledge that this demographic is what drives social media marketing and television programming as well as the associated ad placement. They set up social media profiles and spend hours interacting on these sites. They love to share content with “friends,” “subscribers” and “followers.”

Not surprisingly, video marketing is an ideal medium to reach out to a generation of customers who unabashedly follow brands across multiple social media platforms. No other marketing tool works as effectively across these platforms as the video. Engaging, colorful, easy to share and quick to generate a buzz, it offers endless possibilities.

Drive Results and Keep Millennials Engaged

Nearly half of millennials consider companies that produce video content as experts on their product or service. As branded video content becomes increasingly popular, companies that capitalize on this opportunity will be seen as early adopters and interesting brands to follow.

Video doesn’t just improve brand perception; it also drives results. In analyzing 2 million tweets posted over the course of a month last year, Twitter found videos boosted retweets by 28%. Liveclicker’s “Video Commerce Report” revealed that companies that include video on product pages see a higher conversion rate and higher average order value.

Aside from the business advantages of video, brands need to understand that millennials simply prefer it to text. In fact, two-thirds of millennials said in an Animoto survey that they would rather watch a video from a company instead of reading text; nearly half said they only watch video on their mobile devices.

Putting Together a Strategy

Since you are dealing with a media-savvy consumer, you cannot afford to take an amateur approach to the message. Instead, consider the formulation of a marketing strategy that incorporates videos and reinforces the message with social media posts, shareable memes, and similar ad tools.

Contact us today to learn how to tell the story of your product or service in such a way that Generation Y and Millennials will recognize the value and buy into the message you are promoting.

Tamara Kleniibrg talks with Deb Calvert about the often-ignored subject of Sales Innovation. In this interview from the CONNECT! Radio archives, she describes Sales Innovation and using Your Innovation Quotient Edge to Gain the Upper Hand. 

In today’s hyper connected, highly informed and competitive world, you have to bring more than information to the table. You have to bring innovative ideas and valuable insights to the conversation. Wouldn’t it be great if you had the knowledge and the tools to be more innovative? To deliver more sales innovation to your prospects and clients?

Join your host and sales coach Deb Calvert for this engaging interview with Tamara Kleinberg, author, speaker and president of The Shuuk. In our time with Tamara, we are going to learn how knowing your Innovation Quotient Edge (IQE) can help you train your brain to be innovative on demand and how to use sales innovation to gain the competitive edge, so you can cut out continuances, put an end to pending, and stop stalling out.

Excerpt from the Interview with Tamara about Sales Innovation

Deb: How do I get over my fear… in order to be able to innovate?

Tamara: The whole fear thing is so tough because it holds us back from pursuing the better opportunities…

Deb: How is sales innovation different from creativity which is a term that has been used a lot more in sales?

Tamara: I see them as part of a virtuous cycle, but they are a little bit different. Creativity is about connecting dots in new and meaningful ways but it’s very internal, it’s kind of the process. Innovation is creativity plus output. It’s the action. It’s putting it to work. Creativity is good. It’s the basis that lives in your head and it’s innovation when you actually get it out in the market place…

We’re Just Getting Started! Tune in to Learn HOW to Use Sales Innovation to Attract and Retain Buyers!

This interview is straight from the archives of CONNECT! Online Radio for Sales Professionals. Tune in to hear this interview with Tamara Kleinberg or to select from dozens of interviews with sales experts from around the world. There’s no better way to maximize your windshield time than by listening to CONNECT! Online Radio for Sales Professionals.

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    When it comes to content and strategy, few people share a clear and common meaning of each word. Put them together, and what you have is downright perplexing. This is a sales content strategy guide for the perplexed. It is for people in marketing and sales who must collaborate to get these strategic assets right. (See Content is a Strategic Imperative for B2B Selling Organizations) The linked articles below are integral to a complete understanding of how to develop, document and execute an effective sales content strategy. First, a few definitions. Content For this article we are talking about sales content. More specifically, we’ll focus on B2B sales that are defined as complex, considered or value sales. “Content” includes sales messages, conversations, and stories which comprise what we refer to as the “contentS” of the media that package and deliver them. So content also includes conversations delivered by sales people, by referral sources, and even buyers. (For a deeper explanation see What is Content?) Strategy Michael Porter from the Harvard Business School is considered the dean of business strategy. His definition is: Strategy is the creation of a unique and valuable position. Strategy involves making trade-offs. The essence of strategy is to choose what not to do. Strategy is (also) about combining activities. Competitive advantage grows out of the entire system of activities. Content Strategy By extension, content strategy involves decisions, trade-offs, and priorities for what to invest in and create, why, and how. It also defines the execution elements […]

The post B2B Sales Content Strategy appeared first on Avitage.

The great news about business is that it never stands still. Regardless of the industry, businesses are encouraged to change, to move with the times, and to expand beyond their owner’s wildest dreams. With international investment on the up there has never been a better time for SMEs to seek connections abroad – but just how difficult is it to branch out in such a way?

Getting started: Exploring the international market

There are a number of difficulties that small to medium-sized enterprises, or SMEs, face when attempting to tackle international markets, many involving the variety of ways that business is conducted elsewhere in the world.

Administration difficulties, for example, could stop many smaller companies in their tracks; there are so many regulations to take note of, a great deal of red tape to clear, and paperwork to get to grips with, that breaking a foreign market can be incredibly time-consuming. Communication can also be a huge problem, even if both parties speak the same language. Certain nuances and dialectical subtleties will change swathes of dialogue, while attempting to negotiate via email, which can create confusion under the simplest of circumstances, suddenly becomes a game-changer. Cultural misunderstandings are an unfortunate, yet frequent occurrence, particularly for less-experiences SMEs. When attempting to link to international markets SMEs must be mindful of business culture elsewhere in the world.

Other issues that smaller businesses could face include difficulty in understanding consumer preference, bureaucracy, and the mammoth task of competing against bigger, and better-known, brands that have long conquered the industry across the world. Facing such challenges can be daunting, but also incredibly gratifying; there is a way to make it in international markets, as long as businesses have the time, and resources, to tackle each complication.

So, how can SMEs even begin to tackle the daunting task of heading overseas? Research is an absolute must; SMEs must be prepared to analyse local and international business trends, take the time to study their sector, and look at economic and business forecasts for the foreseeable future. Many businesses choose to outsource their market research, which can provide a host of benefits such as local knowledge, trade specialty, and experience. Others, meanwhile, may attend trade shows and conferences in an attempt to strike influential conversations. Such gatherings can yield a wealth of direct, and indirect, business opportunities.

Moreover, networking is vital. Companies should consider building a social media presence, connecting with their contemporaries from around the world, and using these contacts to build a reputation outside of their own country. Entering international markets may not necessarily involve rebranding, but it’s essential that SMEs understand how they can appeal to clients, and to customers. For this reason selling under a white label is a low-cost, popular choice; this allows foreign buyers to market the product in their own way, which, in turn, introduces the brand to entirely different audiences slowly, but surely. Selling in such a way is about increasing sales and driving opportunities, which are both vital if a business is hoping to make it in a foreign market.

Traveling for business: Heading into the international markets

As well as being able to talk the talk, SMEs must demonstrate an ability to walk the walk when it comes to the international business circuit; it isn’t enough to simply know about how business is done these days. International business travel is one of the only ways for SMEs to really get themselves out there, enabling them to attend face to face meetings, conduct their own research, and make good, reliable contacts while they’re away.

Conferences and trade shows are held in every industry, all around the world, and those that are destined for great things will find the time to visit a good selection throughout the year. More than that, though, business travel enables companies to immerse their leaders in the culture they’re selling into; rather than merely knowing the laws of the land SMEs should be able to communicate clearly, and hold a good understanding of culture and customs. The ability to captivate, and integrate with, international leaders is all about creating, and sustaining relationships. All of that said, heading out on am international trip can be somewhat daunting, particularly for someone who’s never traveled, or done business, abroad before. Research, once again, is vital, as is an understanding of the place a person is heading to; they should attempt to learn basic phrases in the language, and thoroughly plan an itinerary and transport.

One positive aspect is that traveling for business is much simpler these days, particularly when it comes to accommodation. Indeed, with International vacation apartments available in almost every city around the world it has never been easier to unpack, do business, and head back home. Rather than living out of hotels many business owners now enjoy the luxury of their own accommodation, allowing them to conduct their work in a manner that truly suits them. International business travel is a necessity for those hoping to make it big outside of their own territory, but it didn’t be a miserable task.

At a first look the act of linking into international markets is a daunting, almost unobtainable one. It is essential for SMEs to recognize the potential of moving abroad, though, and to be prepared to take chances, push further, and leave their comfort zones. The world is so much smaller these days, or so it seems; why shouldn’t a business, not matter how small or large, take full advantage of that fact?

 

Deadly serious about selling more products, getting more clients, gaining better brand recognition and improving your bottom line? Treat it like a game.

In football, baseball or soccer, the trick is to psyche out the other team. In the game of e-commerce, your goal is to apply methods researched in psychology studies that probed the human brain for what influences, guides and otherwise entices shoppers.

Strive to apply methods researched in psychology studies

You can use this to your advantage when you want to convert visitors to buyers.

Team Neuromarketing

This tested approach to more conversions is called Neuromarketing, and it works. Psyching out your target audience uses a two-pronged approach:

1. tapping into the pleasure centers in their brains
2. finding their pain points, their frustrations and challenges

Using these two principles, you can design websites with a positive user experience using color and other elements that promise pleasure and positive outcomes. You can trigger pain points by mentioning scarcity and offering solutions to problems.

In the game of marketing, you deploy pleasure and pain to get customers to go the distance. When they cross the goal line, you get the sale.

The Pleasure Center

People naturally gravitate toward pleasure, just like the rats studied in a 1950 research project at McGill University. The poor rats in the study keep stimulating their pleasure centers to the detriment of sleep and nutrition, finally dropping dead.

That brings up a natural connection to the maxim “shop til you drop.” Neuromarketers use the results of brain trackers like magnetic resonance imaging, usually called MRIs, to monitor what pleases consumers. Tracking what triggers their pleasure centers can help sellers.

Neuromarketers use the results of brain trackers to monitor what pleases consumers.

Restaurants, for example, might use fancy language, with detailed mouth watering descriptions to sell more food, or more of the most expensive dish on the menu.

Consumers know what they like and dislike, but have difficulty describing what influences their decisions. That’s where advanced brain scanning technology comes in.

Consumers know what they like and dislike, but have difficulty describing what influences their decisions.

One of its practical applications has been figuring out which songs will sell to music buyers. When listeners were asked to rate songs, their responses did not accurately predict sales.

But when two researchers at Emory University tested the teenage participant’s reactions to music by monitoring neural activity, the increased activity in the pleasure centers of their brains corresponded directly to which songs sold in quantity. For example, the song Apologize by OneRepublic struck a chord in their pleasure centers and in the marketplace.

Avoiding Pain

The second big trigger for human beings is avoiding pain, both consciously and unconsciously. Businesses and neuromarketers can use this built-in human need to their advantage when trying to sell.

One place to start is by pushing scarcity in marketing materials, which triggers a pain response in consumers. People want what is forbidden or unavailable. They also don’t want to miss out. What if the grass really is greener over there? By building a sense of urgency into sales material with the use of deadlines or by limiting supplies, you produce a “buy now” mentality, driving up sales.

Provide a valuable freebie. To remove the sense of indebtedness, many will make a purchase.

Another tactic is to make the shopper feel indebted to you. People are programmed to repay debts. Use this by giving your visitors a freebie that is valuable to them. Make it clear you expect nothing in return. At this point, feelings of guilt, indebtedness and reciprocity are activated. To even things out, to remove the sense of indebtedness, many will make a purchase.

The major way to use the pain principle is by offering a solution to a pressing problem. Every successful diet and fitness website uses this principle. It works whether the site is offering a no-fail diet to lose pounds quickly before a wedding or the perfect exercise plan to get rid of belly fat before swimsuit season.

Designing Marketing Materials

This information can be used by marketers when they design whole campaigns and individual ads. Christophe Morin, with the ambivalent title of Chief Pain Officer at SalesBrain, has a cheat sheet he uses in his advertising efforts.

His strategies are based on the fact that the pain center in the human brain, called the reptilian brain, is set off by the choice or “buy or fly”, the consumer version of fight or flight.

That’s why he insists that conveying information visually is essential. The eyes, the first point of contact with almost all sales material, are directly connected to a person’s reptilian brain.

It is also important to keep it simple. Complexity, intricate concepts and metaphors are totally lost on this part of your brain. In fact, the best way to appeal to it is by using lots of facial expressions in ads. Could this be the reason emoji have become so popular?

The best way to appeal to the reptilian brain is by using facial expressions in ads.

Morin says that marketers shouldn’t be afraid to use emotion in ads. It works much better than trying to appeal to a shopper’s reasoning powers. People remember messages with anger, delight, surprise and fear.

Another trick is based on the fact that the brain scans ads, remembering the beginning and the end, but very little of the middle. So be sure to use a strong closing for every ad.

Talk about what is in it for the consumer. Mention benefits, not features. And always keep it short, whether it is a commercial, a video, an ad or any type of content. Remember that you are aiming at a shopper’s lower brain, which has a very short attention span.

In addition, consumers are flooded with noise online in the form of ads, colors, graphics, photos, videos and text. Grab their attention quickly or they will be gone in seconds.

The Psychological Shell Game

You also get more sales when you appeal to subconscious motivators in your target audience. This set of tactics is based on the fact that the human brain defaults to shortcuts to make the hundreds, even thousands, of decisions demanded of it over the course of a day.

A very important shortcut that sellers can use is asymmetric dominance effect, also called the decoy effect. One of the most common ways of incorporating this in the shopping experience is to first offer two choices, one that is fairly high priced for your target audience, plus one that is much lower in price, offering fewer bells and whistles.

The decoy effect

Your goal is to get the shopper to buy the more expensive model, product #1. But you know he is probably thinking of his budget and leaning toward product #2, the lower priced item. So to reduce sticker shock, at this point you introduce the decoy, product #3, which is even higher priced that product #1, though it has very similar features.

The decoy causes your shopper to more carefully mull over the idea of buying product #1. He will compare product #3 to product #1, while product #2, the lower priced option, gets lost in the shuffle.

The decoy drives your shopper to more carefully mull over the idea of buying the more expansive product.

Here is what this looks like in practice:

Offer a triathlete a heart rate monitor and run tracker for $1,000 and one for $500. You really want him to buy the $1,000 model, but it’s a reach for your typical buyers. Immediately introduce the decoy, which sells for $1,500. This has features which are quite similar to the $1,000 model. He will carefully compare and contrast the $1,000 model with the $1,500 model, and pay far less attention to the $500 model.

The result: you sell a more expensive item.

Make Websites Appealing

The look, feel and ease of use of a website influences buying habits a great deal. Websites that appeal enough to consumers to get them to stay on the site for longer periods have a much higher conversion rate. You get them to stick around by using appealing colors, promising fun and warmth and solutions.

One of the biggest ways to do this is by using color appropriately. There is an entire science behind this, called color theory. Big food companies employ it, which is why you see so much junk food successfully sold using a palette of colors dominated by oranges, reds and yellows.

The principle behind the psychology of color is that they evoke emotions and behaviors in people. People have an inherent attraction for certain colors in certain situations.

People have an inherent attraction for certain #colors in certain situations.

When it comes to burger places and taco shops, red is a stimulant that gets the appetite in gear. Yellow triggers a sense of urgency. What could be more perfect for the fast food industry?

Website designers can use the research available on color theory to grab a visitor’s attention, reduce bounce rate and make more sales.

The first way is by using contrasting color combinations that make it easy to read content on the website. When people get confused or you make it difficult for them to understand your content, they will simply leave. Make it easy to read and grasp the message on your site. Contrasting colors not only improve readability, they also make your site come across as fresh and interesting.

The second way to use color theory is by studying the research. What colors will best sell your specific product or service? Don’t just go with personal preference or what you consider aesthetically pleasing choices. Instead, make the theory work for you by studying what the experts have discovered.

Conclusion

Clearly, the more you know about how people’s minds work, the better you can influence them to buy what you’re selling.

These motivators, both conscious and unconscious, are being studied by scientists and psychologists, and what they discover is available for your use as an online marketer.

In the game of e-commerce, the neuromarketers are winning.

Conventional B2B marketing wisdom tells us that our buyers don’t make purchases based on emotion. We believe our buyers are rational and influenced by our value proposition, which is rooted in facts and figures. We assume that irrational purchase decisions — based on ego or emotions — are the domain of the B2C buyer.

Even if this is true, does that mean B2B buyers don’t care about feeling emotionally connected to our brands? Research indicates this might be a dangerous assumption.

A few years ago, Google and CEB’s Marketing Leadership Council surveyed 3,000 B2B buyers and compared those responses to marketing research firm Motista’s baseline data on B2C purchasers. The results indicated that 50% of B2B buyers are more likely to buy from you if they feel an emotional tie to your company’s brand. The study also showed that when B2B buyers see personal value (for example, an opportunity for career advancement or confidence/pride in their decision to purchase from you), they are:

• 50% more likely to make a purchase
• Eight times more likely to pay a premium price

Why Perceived Personal Value Matters

True, your average procurement officer won’t likely think like the typical B2C buyer. They won’t purchase from you to feel younger, skinnier, sexier or healthier. That said, the area of perceived personal value is still a huge potential win for B2B marketers.

The study defines “personal value” as any benefit that sparks a positive emotion for buyers. Think about it this way: Each purchase represents a certain level of professional risk. Yes, your prospects are wondering if and how your solution will help them increase value in traditional ways (aka, saving money/time or increasing revenue). However, it’s also very important to them to look good professionally. That could translate to

• A promotion or other form of career advancement
• Popularity among their team
• Feelings of self-worth and confidence

On the flip side, a poor purchase decision could have consequences that might trigger a number of negative emotions. These might include

• Loss of credibility amongst the team
• Wasted time and money
• Potentially getting fired

The more faith a B2B buyer has in your brand, the more confidence they will have in making a purchase from you.

Tips to Increase Your Emotional Connection with Buyers

With this in mind, it makes sense to become the kind of company that people love to work with. Never underestimate the power of likeability. B2B purchases often take several weeks (if not months) and can involve multiple stakeholders. It’s far easier to make a purchase from people who are likeable and enjoyable to work with.

In this respect, following the golden rule can help you create stronger connections with customers. In all your communication and dealings with prospects, treat them the way you wish others would treat you. Be flexible, honest, curious and always go the extra mile.

In terms of your messaging and marketing materials, keep the following points in mind.

Personalize your marketing messages. This doesn’t just mean getting their name and job title correct. It also means having the right intelligence to know the correct contact to reach out to, at the time that contact is most likely to be receptive to a message from you.

Don’t waste their time with unnecessary emails or questions. The beauty of living in a data-driven era is that you have access to unprecedented amounts information about your potential customer. The more you know about the customer based on the data they’ve generated (on your website and across the B2B web), the less frequently you’ll have to pester them to answer basic questions about who they are and what they’re looking for. In fact, if you’re leveraging data and predictive technologies effectively, you’ll be able to tailor your messages to build on where buyers are in their search process, since you’ll already know who they are and what they’re interested in buying.

Meet them on their turf. Not all channels are equal. Some customers prefer a text message or direct message on Twitter to an email. Other customers want to get an old-fashioned phone call. Make sure you know how your customers want to interact with you, and accommodate their preferences by using their preferred channel of communication.

Create buyer friendly content. There are a few key ways to make your content appealing to buyers, but the number one priority is to make sure your content reflects your buyer’s interests and pain points. Today’s B2B buyer has no patience to consume content that sounds like a product pitch.

Buyers are only human, which means all buyers are influenced by emotion to some extent. In the case of B2B buyers, tapping into the right emotions can influence their decision to purchase from you (not to mention how much they’re willing to spend). If you want to cultivate higher levels of customer loyalty and advocacy, make a concerted effort to strengthen your emotional connection to your buyers.

Technology is one way to do this. Data-driven technologies and strategies can help you better understand your customers and create a closer connection between your brand and your buyers. If you’d like to learn more about using data to connect with buyers, join us on in San Francisco on July 14^th, 2016 at B2B ESP – the premier predictive intelligence summit.

In his yearly set of predictions published in January, Moz co-founder Rand Fishkin predicted that “The big trends for 2016: Wearables, VR, smart home, and Internet of Things will have almost no impact on the world of web marketing…yet.”

In making that statement, he touched on an overarching truth about the world of digital marketing: though change is fast, it’s not as fast as we think. In more cases than not, the rule-book doesn’t need to be thrown into the fire. What’s required instead is level-headed and objective innovation.

With that in mind, here are twenty-five marketing techniques and leadership trends that can help you structure your own marketing strategy and the implementation framework around it going into 2016.

The Spaghetti Blogging Framework

This framework, promoted by Buffer, is called Spaghetti because of it’s seemingly random design: under this framework, all you have to do is start producing content on whatever topic you deem relevant (basically throwing stuff at the wall) and see what sticks. Using the Spaghetti Blogging Framework, there’s no need to go deep into planning before you write. Just keep at it and see what works and what doesn’t. You’ll collect a wealth of data that you can analyze for traffic, lead generation, and social media engagement. These types of marketing techniques are for beginner marketing organizations that know that they should be blogging, but honestly don’t know how to start. I recommend making a quick list of buying personas that you want to hit, topics that you want to cover and let these loosely guide your writing.

The Skyscraper Technique

This technique was developed by Brian Dean at Backlinko. It’s very simple, effective, and low-risk. Step 1: Find content within your niche that is doing very well (generating lots of traffic and social media buzz). Step 2: Create your own piece of content that improves on the content you found (giving full credit to the original author) by adding new information, graphical elements, or offering an alternate point of view. Step 3: Reach out to everyone that shared the original piece of content and ask them to do the same for you. Step 4: Watch as your new amazing piece of content drives traffic to your website. This is a powerful technique because it takes pretty much all of the guesswork out of generating ideas for your blog. You can be fairly certain that the content you’re producing will be well received because it’s modeled off of content that is already leading the way within your niche.

The Hedgehog Concept

This concept, adapted from Jim Collins’ Hedgehog Framework for business in Good to Great, can be summarized in one sentence: Cover what you do best. Link to the rest.

You need to figure out:

1. a) What you’re really really good at,
2. b) What you’re passionate about, and
3. c) What you can make money doing.

Then simply focus your content on ideas/topics that fit into all three of these categories.

Tofu-Mofu-Bofu

This framework has nothing to do with meat alternatives. It stands for top of the funnel, middle of the funnel, and bottom of the funnel.

At the tofu stage (top of the funnel), your prospective customers are either looking for a solution to their problem or looking to fulfill a need (like filling an empty stomach). A blog is great for attracting tofu customers with content that solves common problems. Part of this strategy is doing some research on the commonly searched keywords related to the problems that you can solve. Your main goal here is to generate relevant traffic. At the mofu stage you’re trying to convert visitors into sales leads. For these prospective customers, you’ll want to craft content that shows why your solution is better than everybody else’s. You’ll know if someone is in the middle of your funnel if they’ve filled out a form to download gated content. At the bofu stage, your prospective customers are ready to buy. You have to not only convince them that you are the best choice, but also convince them that now is the time to buy. You can facilitate commitment by doing things like offering free trials or special deals to mofu-stage prospects.

Forrester’s Results-Driven Thought Leadership Marketing Framework

Last year, Laura Ramos from Forrester — the market research company known for its in-depth reports on the latest tech trends — published her ideas on how to generate results with thought leadership content. She compels us to focus on positioning our companies as thought leaders on the problems that our buyers face, rather than focusing on branding and specific products/services. She proposed a four-step framework for getting the job done:

I like this framework because it allows you to market your company as a problem-solving engine. Using this framework you can handily use each piece of content to promote multiple products or services that aim to solve similar problems, rather than developing specific content for each of your products and services.

The Hard Thing About Hard Things: Building a Business When There Are No Easy Answers

Ben Horowitz’s new book – The Hard Thing About Hard Things – is all about tackling the problems that business school doesn’t help you with.

It’s full of invaluable and genuine advice from someone who’s been through the ups and downs of running, growing, and ultimately exiting a startup. And he’s not shy about sprinkling in a few bits of lyrical wisdom from his favorite rappers, as well as some of his own tidbits, including lines like this one: “It’s like the fight club of management: the first rule of the CEO psychological meltdown is don’t talk about the psychological meltdown. At risk of violating the sacred rule, I will attempt to describe the condition and prescribe some techniques that helped me.” It’s the kind of book that is bound to become a Bible for startups.

Building Recurring Revenue with the Membership Economy

Inc. Magazine recently published its must-read marketing books of 2015. It’s a great list, but for me one book stands out among the rest. That book is The Membership Economy by Robbie Kellman Baxter. It’s all about identifying your diehard super-users, engaging them, and building recurring revenue with their help.

The key, according to Baxter, is to foster customer loyalty by creating a limited-access club for members who share your company’s values or goals. This creates intangible value for your customers, who are often willing to pay premium prices for a service if they also get a sense of a community with their purchase. The book drives the following point home: you want to build a ‘neighborhood’ for your customers, so that in addition to a product or service that solves their business problems, they also get to be part of a lasting community. The book is full of great ideas about how exactly to do this. It’s well worth checking out.

Samuel Scott’s Organizational Structure for the Marketing Department of the Future

The basic premise of this structure is to avoid separating traditional and online marketing: basically, to integrate public relations and digital marketing teams.

He talks about his experience working at a marketing department where the PR and social media teams didn’t work together at all, resulting in missed opportunities: for instance, failing to simply display the CEO’s Twitter handle during a Fox News TV segment. Taking this approach might force your marketing team members to broaden their skillsets. Content writers might need to learn how to write PR pieces; marketing campaign auditors might need to learn how to determine ROI for both online and offline campaigns; publicists might need to put down the phone and get on social media to connect with consumers and potential partners. He forecasts the end of social media marketing, content marketing, and link building as discrete initiatives. I think this is already happening. Many of these digital marketing techniques are now mainstream and marketing teams are looking for more holistic approaches to digital marketing.

Focus on quality traffic and leads not just volume

In a May 2015 post, CMO.com published a list of their top 10 marketing thought leaders. The list includes some usual suspects – Mark Zuckerberg, Jim Stengel (of P&G fame), Guy Kawasaki, and Seth Godin, as well as some you may not have heard of. One of them is Neil Patel, the digital marketing guru and co-founder of CrazyEgg, KISSmetrics and Quicksprout. His website is a great resource if you’re looking to build a marketing plan focused primarily on revenue growth (i.e. quality traffic and leads, not just volume). Another standout for me is Robert Rose, the Chief Strategy Officer at the Content Marketing Institute. He just released a new book called The Seventh Era of Marketing that summarizes 5 years of research, revealing the best practices in content creation management.

Advanced data insights

The access marketers now have to information about their current and potential customers is unprecedented. This applies just as much to third-party stats as it does to your own, but there’s a catch – in the same way that you’re able to get your hands on all this data, so are your competitors. Because of this, the question isn’t how much information you can acquire, but how intelligently you can use the information you have. Such as integrating it into your marketing processes to create customer-centric experiences.

Kimberly Whitler of Forbes writes, “There is a greater need for analytically-grounded, customer-centric CMOs. This new breed of marketer is able to find novel ways to generate consumer insight that is more than a 360-degree view of the customer.” Expertise with advanced analytics tools, and an ability to convert the insights into enhanced customer experiences at every stage of the customer journey should constitute a core part of your overall marketing strategy. It’s one of the most powerful weapons you have in your arsenal and it’s vital that you optimize it to gain an edge on your competitors. One place that many SaaS companies fall down, for instance, is their interface usability, as KissMetrics founder Neil Patel points out…

In a similar vein, consider these words of wisdom from SaaS wizard Jason M. Lemkin: “The very best entrepreneurs can take the first 10, 15, 20, 100 customers … the handful they have today … and explain the entire future of the industry & their start-up, their solution, and how it all fits together. And how this creates a Unicorn.” Quite so. It’s not the tools, it’s how you use them.

The rise of customer communities

Following on from the first point, many service-based products now have associated communities, often in the shape of forums. This is particularly relevant for SaaS marketers because they both deepen product engagement and are also hugely valuable sources of customer data. WordPress frameworks, POS systems, accounting software – it’s happening right across the board and even SMBs can take advantage of the trend without the hassle of having to run a forum (think Facebook groups and small-scale messaging boards).

Social and search integration

The specific noticeable trend here is the indexation of Twitter – feeds and individual tweets are now featuring more heavily in SERPs than previously. But there’s a broader lesson – cross-channel marketing needs to be built into your strategy at a fundamental level. If, for instance, you’re expecting searches for your company in Google to show potential customers tweets from your feed, then they need to be optimized for that channel. As another example, social factors – whether they be Facebook likes, pins or retweets – are becoming increasingly important as ranking factors. It’s something that marketers should bear in mind when crafting their content strategy, especially in the context of SEO processes.

Evolving content marketing

Content marketing remains one of the most financially sustainable options for marketing leaders and needs to be kept at the centre of strategy. Yet it remains under-utilised. For instance, Forbes writer Jason DeMers writes that, “88% of B2B marketers currently use content marketing as part of their marketing strategy, yet only 32% have a documented content marketing strategy.” The issue, in part, is with the huge swathes of digital content being produced every second of every minute. Much of it gets lost in a bottomless black cyber-hole. Simply put: superb content isn’t enough.

Time and again the need to couple consumable media like blog posts and videos that genuinely satisfy a market thirst (made all the easier with analytics services like BuzzSumo) with dependable and innovative outreach campaigns is reaffirmed. Brian Dean, of the blog Backlinko, sums it up perfectly: “If you’re serious about generating high quality links, you need to be very systematic with how you create and promote your content. Otherwise you’re taking the “cooked spaghetti approach”: throwing a bunch of stuff against a wall and hoping something sticks.”

Asset-based media outreach

This is a trend that ties in neatly with the one above. As the need for effective outreach becomes more pressing and greater numbers of marketers develop their strategies accordingly, influencers will become more and more overwhelmed with requests. One way that companies are attempting to stand out is by offering high-value incentives. The whole infographic craze was based on this idea – rather than reaching out and begging for referrals, something that would appeal to the target site’s readership was offered. This excellent post from HubSpot illustrates some of the ingenious ways marketers went about fulfilling that brief.

Evaluation processes for new channels

This applies as much to established platforms, like Google, Facebook and Twitter, as it does to new ones. The testing and evaluation of up-and-coming marketing channels, and of features on current platforms as they develop new ways to grow, needs to be built into your overall strategy. It’s amazing, for instance, the number of marketers that aren’t effectively using sites like Pinterest.

Not only will testing provide you with an obvious increase in your market-reach if you hit on the right strategy or platform, but you’ll also have a unique opportunity to take advantage of communities that your competitors likely haven’t even heard of. There’s potentially hundreds of second-tier social networks you could be investigating. There is of course a legitimate fear of spreading the nets too widely, but an effective testing plan should easily offer an ROI that far outweighs the expended resources.

Overcoming the rise of ad-blocking

Depending on how you look at it, the rise of ad-blocking presents either an opportunity or a cause for concern. On the one hand, it reaffirms the value of content marketing and in doing so offers the chance for marketing leaders to make the case for a shift in focus. On the downside, for those companies that rely on paid client-acquisition in crowded industries, the increase in competition for ad-space could present a real danger. Contingency plans may be required.

Availability of content marketing services for SMBs

This is a smaller point, but one trend that’s definitely noticeable is the increasing presence of services and software, centered around improving content marketing, for small and medium-sized businesses. BuzzSumo, Kapost, Hubspot – they’re all offering entry-level packages and more companies are following suit. What this means is that marketers responsible for running the campaigns of smaller enterprises will now have access to the kinds of advanced tools previously only available to a select elite.

Amplifying the core value proposition

There are few phrases more well-known than Seth Godin’s purple cow. The basic notion, that a company’s success relies in large part on its remarkability, will probably stand true for as long as human beings exchange their money for goods and services. But there’s a flipside. It’s entirely possible to focus so much on the bells and whistles, on diversifying in unique and remarkable ways, that you forget who you are. Very often the way to stand out in a sea of purple cows is to wash off the paint and be black-and-white again. The result? Companies are amplifying their core value proposition in a world of clutter.

There’s a definite trend to take the “less is more” approach – reasserting the key offering alongside, or even instead of, all the additional features. You can see it in advertising materials from Spotify to McDonalds.

Workplace Culture and Charitable Business

As consumers become more concerned about the ethical standing of the companies from which they buy, it’s in the interest of marketers to heighten awareness of any value-based initiatives. Or, if there aren’t any, to create some. Take Intel’s diversity fund, for instance, or Flipkart’s adoption allowance. It’s also important to mention that blatantly unprincipled behaviour is more unlikely to go unnoticed, given this broad demand for a healthier, more compassionate consumerism and the media’s willingness to demonize those who transgress.

If you need more proof that top CMOs are picking up on this trend for integrity and principle-based marketing, then listen to what Andy Lark, CMO of Xero, had to say: “…no stretching the truth, presenting warped metrics, or lying. It’s likely this isn’t the first pitch your audience has heard, and if you start off sounding a little iffy, alarm bells will sound. Tell the truth and spotlight the opportunity with integrity.”

Privacy as a key consumer consideration

DuckDuckGo has emerged as one of the fastest growing search engines in 2016. Don’t get me wrong, their market share is still tiny and I don’t want to fall completely in line with all the hype, but it’s useful as an illustrative point. They’ve grown for one reason above all: demand for privacy.

Like it or not, consumers want to control their data. At first, this might seem like bad news for marketers, who rely on it to a great degree. But the issue is really one of trust. As long as customers know that their information will not be used if they don’t want it to be, and are fully informed of what it will be used for if they do, they’re much more likely to form a positive connection with the service that’s asking for it.

LiveChat’s Potential Benefits and Downfalls

Specifically, the rise of live chat. Reportedly, there’s a 73% satisfaction rate with live chat – greater than any other form of customer support service. But there is a broader message lurking behind this trend. WPEngine’s public apology, though it’s now old news (it was published in 2014), is still relevant today as a cautionary tale. As one of the most promising young companies, there was serious talk of irreparable damage after a damaging expose of its poor customer service was published.

Online service companies are responding to the rising demand for high-quality in-person service in numerous ways. Like I’ve just mentioned, one of the most obvious is with the inclusion of live chat options on their landing pages and within the user interface of the product itself. This excellent post from Kissmetrics outlines some of the many benefits.

Changing organizational structures

The nature of company structure continues to change. Hierarchies are “flattening out”, rapidly changing online markets demand ever-increasing flexibility and, most vitally, employees are becoming ever more aware of their own autonomy in relation to their employers. Fast Company reports: “As of May 2015, 15.5 million people in the U.S. were self-employed, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics—an increase of roughly 1 million since May 2014. That number is expected to keep growing at a steady clip.” Yep, the key word here is freelancer. As a marketer, you have access to a worldwide pool of talent, and it’s in your interest to fish in it. By designing your internal marketing processes to manage and ultimately take advantage of remote workers (accounting for both the upsides and downsides involved) you’ll be setting yourself up for success.

The rise of elite freelancer communities

Again, you might be forgiven for thinking that this is nothing new – it’s more the continuation of the trend above rather than a new one entirely. Because employers, especially those in online industries, are seeking talent from a worldwide audience, elite freelancer marketplaces have arisen to meet the corresponding demand for quality. Toptal, Scripted and London-based company YunoJuno are all good examples. As a marketer, it may well be in your interest to utilize these .

Cross-department collaboration

It’s not a case anymore of marketers taking care of the leads, salespeople closing them, the IT team managing the backend and so on. The need for CMOs to be in constant communication with CIOs (in the context of the first trend of this post), CFOs, COOs (or whatever three-letter acronym equivalent exists in your own organization)…for the support team to be feeding back to the design team, for recruitment to be in sync with the demands of R&D…the list goes on. The ultimate goal, of course, is to create a strong customer focus across the entire organization. As an interesting side-note, you could also argue that, especially for digital marketers operating in the often shady realm of internet law, this same principle applies to the legal side of things. The European Union’s antitrust accusations against Google, though it’s difficult to predict what the eventual outcome will be, are an example of how political and legal changes could affect the way companies approach big players that are ultimately huge sources of traffic. It might be just as important that you collaborate with your lawyers as your IT manager.

Internationalization and global expansion

Neil Patel – I know, he’s already had a mention but he is very good- has talked about how, as part of his overall strategy, he’s now targeting foreign markets and it’s resulted in a 47% increase in traffic, almost overnight. App developers, too, are increasingly turning abroad. On a very basic level, it makes sense – both with your content and your product. For SaaS providers it’s often a simple case of internationalization and translation – the source code remains the same. But think about it in terms of content too. If you’re able to rank for a keyword in a US Google SERP, imagine what you could do in the underserved Asian and South American search engines.

Decreasing organic reach (across platforms).

This is a trend that has been reported on a great deal in relationship to Facebook, with a reported drop from 16% to 6.51% between 2012 and 2014 and no signs of abating. But there are signs that this decline is also affecting search engines, in particular Google. As they become more and more aggressive with paid ads, organic click-through rates – that is, the proportion of search traffic visiting organically-listed results not paid ads – are going down. What does this mean for marketers? Well the growth of Google might well make this a non-issue, and there’s still huge opportunities within the space. But it does mean that marketers can no longer take their organic reach for granted. As spaces at the top become scarcer, the need for quality increases.

Automated sales tools

Blind automation is a thing of the past and intrinsically counter to the meaningful interactions that consumers desire. But, in unison with broader strategies, this type of software can have a huge, time-freeing effect. Tools for scheduling emails, automatically updating social media, posting content at optimal times – all of these things allow CMOs to focus their teams on what’s actually important.

The obvious one: the continued rise of mobile

As I mentioned, I don’t think it’s time to be getting excited about virtual just yet. There’s also indications that wearable technology isn’t taking off anywhere near as fast as expected. But mobile continues to rise..

Keeping the focus on the customer-journey, it’s vital to remember that the rules are (often unusually) different when speaking to people through smartphones and tablets. Conversion rates are much lower on mobile, for instance, whilst engagement tends to be higher. There are also unique opportunities, such as location-based targeting (POS SaaS provider Bindo is a good example of effectively using this strategy) that should be taken advantage of.

What’s Your Opinion?

There are plenty of fantastic marketing frameworks, org structures, books, and thought leaders out there offering a wealth of marketing knowledge. This list is only a short sample, but should hopefully get you started with some inspiration for 2016. The key is to make a plan and execute it. It doesn’t have to be flawless: you can always improve your strategy along the way.

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When cloud storage company Box revealed its financials in 2014, the tech community was aghast.

Although it was growing fast, Box was spending about $2.50 to generate each dollar of revenue. Its sales and marketing cost alone outstripped the amount of revenue it was generating.

Many questioned Box's business model. Some called it a "house of horrors";  early investor Mark Cuban saying he'd "combust" if he was running Box. Investors wondered whether 30-year old CEO Aaron Levie was experienced enough to lead a public company, and the company had to delay its IPO for almost a year.

Fast forward two years and Levie is proving the skeptics wrong. Box's business is growing at a healthy clip, passing $300 million in annual revenue for the first time last year. Box's stock popped 12% in after-hours trading last Wednesday on a beat-and-raise quarter that wrapped up its first full year as a public company. And it's scaling back all that spending.

"It’s something that we told the market that we were going to be doing, and now you’re finally starting to see it show up in the numbers," Levie told Business Insider. "We think that’s really proving our core business model and the strength of our product and offering."

Proving skeptics wrong

Investors found a lot to like about Box's most recent results. Besides passing the $300 million annual revenue threshold, Box was also operating cash flow positive for the first time, meaning its core business is now generating cash — an important part of the business tracked closely by Wall Street.

"We are done fundraising. We have a pretty strong cash flow story," Levie said, reiterating Box's plan to be free cash flow positive (operating cash flow, minus capital expenditures) by early next year.

Sales and marketing costs are now down to about 68% of total revenue, which is still relatively high, but closer to the 40% to 50% range most high-growth cloud software businesses spend. It signed thousands of new businesses, including big names like AIG and Home Depot, while losing only 3% of its customers last quarter, a record-low churn rate that's significantly better than the industry average of 7% to 10%. 

All that is leading to robust growth, including a 40% year-over-year jump in revenue, and 59% increase in billings, an important proxy to measure future sales of cloud software companies.

"Growing at this scale is hard but it makes sense Box should be able to continue to scale handsomely to $1 billion in recurring revenues and beyond," Jason Lemkin, a venture capitalist who runs the annual software event SaaStr, told us. "Levie has found a way to win in a hyper-competitive space."

Not a commodity

Perhaps the biggest knock on Box's business has been that its cloud storage product is becoming a commodity service. Cloud storage has long-been considered to be in what's called a "race to zero," in which companies keep cutting its prices even while offering more storage space.

But Box has launched a number of new solutions that can be sold on top of its storage platform, which is adding a lot more value than just dumb storage to its service. The new solutions add more security and flexibility to Box's core storage product, and diversifies its revenue channels. In fact, its existing customers spent 20% more on Box's services last quarter, according to its earnings.

"With new enhancements and products like security and healthcare, Aaron Levie is blowing up the 'storage is commodity' line of thinking," Anshu Sharma, an investor from Storm Ventures, told us. "Levie keeps delivering an app that users love and a platform that CIOs seem to love - the numbers are now proving him right."

"First mile marker of a marathon"

Box is on a clear growth trajectory that's starting to resemble some of the largest cloud software players. Both Salsforce and Workday, two of the biggest enterprise software makers, also crossed the $300 million revenue mark only a year after going public.

But Box still has a lot of work to do to convince the market of its long-term sustainability. It's still burning a lot of money and its losses are growing. Its stock is still priced below its $14 IPO price, or the $23 price it hit on the first day of trading. It's why some analysts think Box still needs to prove its long-term profitability.

"While the company remains on track to reach free cash flow breakeven in F4Q17 (which should be a key positive for investors)...we’re not convinced that we’ll see material multiple expansion until the profitability profile has a more near-term line of sight to breakeven," Raymond James analyst Terry Tillman wrote in a note.

Levie is aware of it and admits this is a long term battle. "We believe our strategy is the right one for the long run. In many ways we’re at the first mile marker of a marathon."

And that means his fight to prove skeptics wrong is far from over.

"There were certainly a lot of rocky moments on the way here," he said. "You have to have conviction about your long term strategy even if there are skeptics, or even if there are doubts in the market about that."

SEE ALSO: Slack, a 2-year-old messaging platform, is raising $200 million at nearly a $4 billion valuation led by Thrive Capital

Join the conversation about this story »

NOW WATCH: We did a blind taste test of popular french fries — the winner was clear

Most of your leads are not ready to buy when you first contact them. That’s why it’s very important to have an ongoing communication process with your potential buyer throughout the sales cycle. This, of course, is known as lead nurturing.

Sales cycles are longer and nurturing your leads properly can significantly shorten them. All you have to do is send your prospects relevant content on a periodic basis. Unfortunately many B2B marketers treat lead nurturing just like another marketing campaign.

What do I mean?

First let’s discuss what lead nurturing is not.

In Marketo’s Definitive Guide on Lead Nurturing, Brian Carroll, executive director of MECLABS says lead nurturing is not:

1. Sending a monthly e-newsletter
2. Emailing your entire list the same content
3. Calling your list every few weeks to see if they’re ready to buy.
4. Calling early stage leads every month just to touch base
5. Promoting your product and services without considering your prospects interests or stage in the buying cycle

In contrast, Carroll says lead nurturing is:

1. Sharing content that’s relevant and valuable, even if prospects never buy from you.
2. Sending a targeted email that includes content based on:

• Recipients and/or role in the company
• Their stage in the buying process or interest
• Previous conversations or content they’ve engaged with

3. Answering a question or offering more information

4. Sending information that is relevant to a problem

How Often Should You Send Prospects Relevant Content?

Say you’re a software company that sells HR software to small and mid-sized firms. You sent direct mail letters to 500 prospects asking them to go to your website and try a free demo of your software. You also started a PPC campaign to drive traffic to your site.

Let’s say 10 people responded to your letter, logged on to your website and downloaded your free demo—and your PPC efforts persuaded 5 prospects. In today’s oversaturated marketing world, that’s really not bad.

Now, say that after seeing the free demo three of the fifteen prospects decide to purchase the software. You can put them on a list to send periodic emails about new products and other company announcements. But what do you do about the other 12 that didn’t buy? You nurture those leads for the next several months.

Starting one month after not getting a response to any of your emails or phone calls from the 12 that didn’t buy is when you should start your lead nurturing efforts.

For example, one month after your last follow up you might want to send a best practices white paper on say, the 12 things you should look for in HR Software. If you get no response to that have a sales rep follow up with a phone call in a few days. .

If the prospect hasn’t responded in about 15 days offer him a case study which demonstrates how a similar company benefited from using your HR software. Then have a sales rep call in a few days if there is no response.

You can add other offers to your lead nurturing efforts like webinars, articles, blog posts, etc. Make sure that each piece of content that you send is relevant to each particular prospect. You don’t want to send the same piece to all of your potential buyers. For example, if you have a client that is a small accounting firm, send them a case study on how your HR software helped another small accounting firm. Or you can send a case study that is similar to the industry that you’re targeting if you don’t have an exact match. Of course you can send different white papers, articles, and other content that is relevant to each specific target industry that responds to your initial offer.

If you don’t get a response from some of your prospects after several weeks you’ll have to access whether or not you want to continue contacting those prospects. You may want to stop contacting them or you may approach them with a new offer in the future.

Conclusion

Lead nurturing is an important part of building relationships with your prospects no matter when they decide to buy from you or not at all. The old days of just blasting the same email to everyone on your list does not work anymore.

Smart B2B marketers are providing their prospects with personal relevant communications throughout the buying cycle.

Capital One has produced several years’ worth of TV ads about its credit cards. These always end with “Capital One – what’s in your wallet?” This same question should be asked of every business owner in regards to what apps s/he is using to make that business operate smoothly. There are many distinct functions with the realm of operations:

• Basic management functions –HR, accounting, time management
• Project/task management
• Communication within the organization
• Customer relations
• Marketing/Sales

And fortunately, because your business exists in this age, there are apps and tools for almost every business function – apps and tools that will streamline your operations, help with marketing, manage customer relations, keep your team communicating, and manage both time and projects. Here are 15 apps that every business owner should have.

Web Presence

1. WordPress

This app is by far the easiest and most function website design tool. No one in your business needs to know code to design a sleek and engaging website and an accompanying blog. The blog is an important part of your marketing strategy, and using WordPress allows plugins for almost everything from reader sharing, to conversations between readers and you, and to SEO enhancement. WordPress blogs are simple to setup and use, so that individuals within a company can post educational, entertaining, and inspirational articles on a regular basis. When you can bring readers to your blog, you can use many of the features to get conversions. It is open-sourced and lots of community support and sharing.

2. Hootsuite – Manage Your Social Media Marketing

A presence on social media is no longer options for a business. It’s where customers flock to get news and information, research products and services and make decisions about organization with whom they will do business. Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and Instagram are widely used platforms and are used to develop relationships with target customers and to drive traffic to your website. It’s already a daunting task to produce content for all of these platforms, but at least the publishing and distribution can be managed automatically through Hootsuite. You can create posts well in advance, pre-determine a publishing schedule, upload them on your account with instructions, and Hootsuite will do the rest. The other very cool thing about the app is this: it will monitor activity on all of your platforms and report the amount and type of activity that is occurring. You can use that information to evaluate and improve your presence.

Customer Relations Management

There is no lack of customer relations apps that will allow you to track customer activity, communication, resolution of issues, returns. You want to stay on top of customer service/relations at all times. This is no longer a paper/pencil, hardcover or Excel function. It can now be comprehensively managed with cloud-based apps that any member of your team can access as the need arises.

1. Desk

In the past, sales forces were responsible for managing relations with their customers. Then came the customer service department, but it had to rely and get information from the sales force to do its job. Now, with a comprehensive system, all customer relations can be handled by any team member. This app lets you request and receive customer feedback, track all communication between any team member and an individual customer, and to ensure that customer experiences before, during and after the sale are good. Unhappy customers will trash you all over social media, and this app makes sure that no customer gets ignored and that issues get resolved quickly.

2. Salesforce

Salesforce is a more comprehensive CRM system because it includes all of the functions of Desk but also has tools for lead generation. It is a popular app because it is scalable as your business grows. It is extremely popular for businesses of all sizes.

Accounting

One of the best things to happen to small and mid-sized business owners is the ease with which accounting functions can now be handled. Plenty of new apps require little more than entering figures, and all accounting functions are then handled by the app and held in the cloud so nothing gets lost.

1. Wave

One of the best features of this app is that it is free. It will take care of accounts, invoices, payments, spreadsheets, and even organize information for tax purposes. You can also tie the app into your bank accounts and PayPal if you use it. There are lots of fee-based options too, such as adding employee payroll, and this is an app that can grow with you. It is one of the most highly recommended accounting apps.

2. Expensify

If you have telecommuters and employees who are out in the field, this is the perfect app for tracking all expenses and producing expense reports based on your specific requirements. It works on all devices. Take a picture of a receipt with your phone, drop it into you Expensify account with a category name that you have previously set up, and the app will do the rest.

Project Management/Internal Communication

There are a huge number of apps that fall into this category that help business owners manage projects, assign tasks, track task completion, and allow all team members, no matter where they may physically be, to have access to the same information regarding progress and to share in problem-solving activities.

1. Dropbox

This app is probably the most popular platform to store files in the cloud that everyone can access. Sharing information this way is especially helpful for businesses that have telecommuters. Dropbox is not free but you can get a quote for your business, and it operates on all systems and devices.

2. KanbanFlow

Here is a tool for project and task management that allows managers to assign tasks to team members, schedule due dates, and upload all documents. Those who have access can modify documents as tasks need to be added or modified, and the app will keep a full history of all version of any documents and changes made. The basic version is free; premium version is $5/month – a bargain for all that you get.

3. Trello

If you want a visual representation of project management and all tasks, this app is perfect. There are cards for each project you set up, and they can be moved from one list or one individual to another, as the status of a project moves along or needs to be modified. Team members can chat with one another, in order to share ideas and collaborate. $3.75/month per user

4. Wunderlist

This app is often compared to a big to-do list, and that is a good description. Tasks lists can be created, posted in the cloud, and everyone can see all items on every list. As tasks re-completed they are removed. Delegation of tasks, breaking tasks down into sub-tasks, adding notes and establishing deadlines are all additional features. Cost is $4.99/month per user. It’s a pretty powerful tool if you have a good-sized team that must collaborate a lot on projects.

5. Fuze

If you need video conferencing among team members or with customers, this is the tool for you. It works on all devices and systems. Really high-def visual and great audio. There is a free 30-day trial before you purchase. Check it out.

Marketing

An obvious critical function – this is how you get, nurture, and retain customers and clients. And so much of this occurs online because that is where consumers now go for their information and recommendations. Fortunately, there are some great apps for all functions of your marketing program.

1. Optimizely

If you are looking for one an all-in-one tool to analyze and perform marketing functions, this is it. Among its many features is analytics that will tell you who is accessing your online platforms and when that is happening. You will know which platforms are working well. You will be able to personalize marketing by re-targeting with specific ads to target customer bed upon what they viewed on your site, which will help you to generate more leads. There is also a testing feature that allows you to know, for example which type of CTA button works the best.

2. LeadGen

This tool complements Optimizely well. You will know not only who visited your site but how long s/he stayed and which products engaged him/her for what amounts of time. You’ll be able to reach out to a target customer by personal contact.

3. MailChimp

This email generation app is the most highly recommended of all such tools because of its amazing set of features and functions. You can create emails for your entire list, set up groups for targeted email distribution and get reports on who opened and shared them. No matter what size you email list, it will probably be covered by the free version. Once you grow over 2000 subscribers, you will get into the fee-based range.

A Bonus App Recommendation

As a business owner, you are obviously a busy person. You read lots of news and content related to your niche. You even try to train your brain to somehow remember it all. No longer do you need to worry about losing or forgetting something important. Download Pocket. Anytime you come across an article or a post, drop it into this app and it will be saved for later reading or use. Perfect solution.

Conclusion

As a startup, you have two challenges: Get everything done as efficiently as possible with as little staff cost as possible, and streamline those tasks that you just don’t have time for. These 9 tools will do that for you. Incorporate their use and you have what you need to move forward.

 Fifty years ago, when someone heard the word ‘vice,’ they may have thought about the seven deadly sins: envy, wrath, lust, pride, sloth, pride and gluttony. Twenty years ago, they may have thought of the genre-defining television show Miami Vice. Today, you might think about the $4 billion millennial media outlet, Vice Media. Read More

… health. Big data processing requires cloud computing. The Inspur Group, headquartered in … nuclear power, Inspur's cloud computing is going global," said …

Should I put [fill in the blank] on my LinkedIn profile?

I'm asked this question several times each week. I always answer I don't know, which usually comes as a surprise to them and probably to you as well. After all, I'm the expert!

What I really mean is I can't answer that confidently until I understand what someone plans to accomplish on LinkedIn.

If you're unsure about whether you should put something on your profile, I suggest you start by asking yourself three questions:

Would putting this on my profile:
.

• help people find me?
• improve their perception of me and my brand?
• help them understand what I do and how I can help them?

If your answer to any of these questions is "Yes," then I suggest you put it on your profile.

Let's look at the three questions more closely.
.

Help people find me

Trust me on this one. Connections are the gas in the tank on LinkedIn, especially if the connections are strategic (for example, customers, potential customers, influencers of your customers, people at organizations where you want to work, etc.). You want people to find and connect with you.

For example, on my profile I list my first job out of college, Arthur Andersen & Co. This entry helps people from the "good old days" find me--and they just might need some LinkedIn training or consulting at their company.
.

Improve their perception of me and my brand

People are using LinkedIn to size you up. Entries that display your expertise, emphasize your integrity, and show your creativity will cause people to like and trust you. Hopefully this leads to more connections and more business.

The Arthur Andersen entry also applies here, because most experienced business people around my part of the country recognize that if AA&Co. hired you right out of college, you are probably a really smart person.

So, even though I didn't have a 3.9+ GPA, like most students they hired, people assume I'm in that group, and it gives me positive branding kudos. (FYI, I had a 3.4, but I could interview with the best of them!)
.

Help them understand what I do and how I can help them

After all, if your profile doesn't get this done, why are you on LinkedIn anyway?

Professionally, I do speaking and consulting. Here's one of the ways I promote my speaking business:

I am consistently asked to speak at Executive Agenda (EA), YPO and TEC meetings as well as CEO Roundtables and Renaissance Forums (REF), where my thirty years of experience as a business owner and manager enables me to help my peers understand how social media can benefit their companies.



Personally, I am involved with some awesome nonprofit groups. Including them in my LinkedIn profile helps me spread the word about the great things they're doing. By including links to their websites, I am encouraging others to get involved, too.

You can look at my profile to see several examples of this, both in the Experience section and the Volunteer Experience & Causes section.

I hope you're now equipped and motivated to beef up your LinkedIn profile.

The post Stuck on What to Include on Your LinkedIn Profile? appeared first on Wayne Breitbarth.

Costco is a goldmine for bargains.

But, the opportunity to save can be overwhelming, as you face seemingly endless free samples and bulk deals.

There are great bargains at Costco — even Morgan Stanley analysts say the retailer offers some of the best deals in the industry. However, to cash in on the deals, you need to know a few secrets.

Here’s how to make shopping at Costco worth the price of membership.

SEE ALSO: Costco is beating Walmart and Amazon with the 'best business model' in retail

Make a beeline to the center of the store.

Many membership stores stick the best bargains in “center court,” the pallets in the middle of the store, Paco Underhill, author of "Why We Buy: The Science of Shopping,” told Bankrate. Flashy displays at the front of the store, on the other hand, are going to be more expensive.

Keep an eye out for the "star."

If there’s an asterisk on a Costco price tag, that means the item can't restocked and what you see is the last in the store, reports Costco Insider. So, if your favorite seasonal product is marked with a star, it’s time to buy enough to last you till next year.

Split bulk items.

You might not have space to store 30 rolls of toilet paper, but your friends would probably be more than happy to split the cost of the $19.50 mega-pack, says Time. Buying in bulk means major savings, so go big — and split the products up before going home.

See the rest of the story at Business Insider

Personal branding is a hot topic in today’s marketing landscape, but few business owners truly understand what it means or how it can promote better conversions. With personal branding, you position yourself as a brand alongside your company. Your employees also have a personal brand of their own.

Your personal brand is how you present yourself in the office, online, and even in your personal life. An improved understanding of this concept and how it applies to your own professional trajectory could spell the difference between new opportunities and a stale career.

Stand Out From The Crowd

Whether your goal is to score new opportunities or grow as a thought leader, personal branding can set you apart from your competitors. Find unique ways to produce value. Your personal brand is about taking ownership and sharing your views. Think about your online presence as a picture you are painting. Do you post with purpose? If you are thoughtful with your personal posting strategy, your point of view and expertise will come across strongly in the long term.

In today’s competitive market, mere competency is no longer good enough; employees and clients desire to work with those who possess a few specific strengths, as well as a thorough understanding of the industry. If you have multiple passions or areas of interest, Shama Hyder insists finding a unified theme in your narrative to stand out positively.

Know Yourself

Everyone has unique traits, and ideally, every business or project will include a mist of these traits. Instead of stifling your natural working style or characteristics, it is better to highlight them in a positive manner. If you are unsure as to which personality traits make you shine, don’t hesitate to ask a friend or get a mentor for feedback. Take both critiques and compliments into account, and feel free to use this feedback to highlight your strengths as you meet with new clients or apply for new positions. Self esteem and confidence in yourself is a major part in being an authentic leader. By knowing and loving yourself, you can consistently build those relationships that get you ahead.

Find Consistency

A good personal brand offers some semblance of consistency. Thus, a thorough understanding of your personality and the unique skills you can offer is essential; if you do not deliver these qualities on a consistent basis, you will not inspire trust in your clients and fellow employees—and without trust, a personal brand is meaningless. You can display consistency by branding yourself in an honest manner, but for an extra boost, pay attention to how you portray yourself online. A few consistent social media updates can greatly enhance your personal branding efforts.

Consistency should also be evident in all offline activity, including one-on-one consultations with clients, attendance at networking events, and even brief chats when you bump into coworkers in the hallway. Your grooming and wardrobe can also say a lot about your personal brand, so be sure to choose a look that is consistent with your overarching message. Your cohorts should never question your commitment to your personal brand.

A good personal brand can quickly take you to new heights. Take some time to determine what sets you apart and how these traits can help you make a positive impression. The ultimate goal is to prove that you excel at what you do, and more importantly, that you are different in the best possible way.

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GUEST:

There’s been a healthy amount of chatter lately from analysts and tech writers that we are approaching a meltdown in startup financing. Unicorns, those startups valued at $1 billion or higher, are being downgraded at a rapid clip. The most recent victim is Flipkart, an Indian e-commerce firm devalued last month from $15.2 billion to $11 billion. Another unicorn, UK-based Powa Technologies, was once valued at $2.7 billion but went bankrupt in February. Several other well-known unicorns that have experienced valuation cuts in recent months include Palantir, Dropbox, Snapchat, Jawbone, and Zenefits. This is disastrous not only for the companies but also for the limited partners of the VC firms who are seeing their investments devalued by 30% or more overnight.

But what’s going on in the market right now is not a bubble about to burst as many have suggested; it’s a logical multiples compression. Major tech companies, including Workday, LinkedIn, and Twitter have all lost considerable market share in the past year, igniting investor fears. While the stock market is subject to global and national events — predominantly the oil crisis, Syria, and China’s recession — VCs are taking note. The smart ones are looking at everything they hold more closely and lowering the multiples they use for valuation to lower the risk.

This is not cause for fear and gloom. To the contrary, this correction is a healthy turn of events for the SaaS marketplace. When SaaS began to pick up steam about 10 years ago, there was heady excitement around building great companies that would change the software industry for the better. SaaS was a revolution: It was going to deliver customers much faster ROI and measurable business benefits. Lately, it seems startups have lost sight of those lofty goals. Many founders are focused too much on chasing money and getting to the next funding round; VCs have been going along with this game wholeheartedly. Currently, there are 153 unicorns at a combined valuation of $535 billion, according to CB Insights.

In a recent meeting I had with a VC firm on Sand Hill Road, one of the partners shared with me an all-too-common story about a meeting he had with a startup. The company had modest revenues (in the mid-six-figures) yet was clearly seeking to be the next unicorn with a billion-dollar valuation. The VC turned them down, offering a $600 million valuation instead. The startup founders walked. Really?

In this market, startups should be expecting more realistic multiples, not the 40X (and higher) that some companies have previously been awarded. Just as IPOs are on a downward trend, it’s reasonable to predict that there will be many more unicorn failings and far fewer new unicorns born in the coming months. Something’s got to give.

First and foremost, startups should focus more of their efforts on building value and less on fundraising. Over the last few years, valuations have become disconnected from the business. It’s almost as if founders are running two different organizations: the business that is developing products and services and (hopefully) serving customers, and the business that is focused on constantly raising money. That strategy backfires when a company doesn’t grow revenues and customers as fast as predicted by those huge multiples, causing the devaluations and down rounds. The ultimate disaster is when the company’s churn and burn fundraising cycle stops short once investors finally see the light and go away. Before long, the company’s just another page in startup history.

There’s an answer to all this. Get back to the basics, beginning with sensible metrics. Value unit economics (with the customer as the unit) and funnel metrics. Know your conversion rates, average sale prices, churn rates, cost to acquire, and other core customer economics. These numbers will help you accurately predict revenues and a customer’s lifetime value. Eyeballs on a website are a shallow measure of startup financials. Too many young companies are asking for money based on irrelevant metrics. The founders who are good at fundraising but bad at building a healthy business are in an unpopular spotlight right now.

It’s not over for SaaS

The good news is, the VC funding well hasn’t dried up for financially sound, well-run companies. Further, well-funded and sound companies will gain an advantage. They have fewer competitors and face less of a threat that a fresh unicorn will make a big wave in their market.

As fundraising gets tougher and as companies begin focusing more on their unit economics and building a healthy business, the SaaS sector will benefit. I’d prefer to not think of SaaS as a bursting bubble but as an overgrown rose bush that needs some pruning in order to stage it for the next phase of growth. Through more sound business practices, the SaaS industry can shore up what has been accomplished already. There will be some failing startups because of it, but revenue will migrate to the healthier companies.

A fresh start

Now’s the time for startups to delve into their financial analyses with fact-based measures and establish a valuation that holds water. When you raise money, don’t burn through the cash expecting another round to occur.  Instead, be smart with your money, spending it acquiring customers at a rate that makes sense with your customers’ lifetime value (LTV). This entails knowing your Cost to Acquire a Customer (CAC), because if you spend too much on acquisition costs as a percentage of LTV, you’re bound to run into trouble sooner rather than later.

Keep a close eye on your burn rate as you consider expanding staff or benefits. Finally, reconsider those dreams of the IPO. Going public is viable if your primary goal is to achieve an exit and move on or if you need to raise a large round for R&D. Otherwise, consider the many (and there are many) benefits of staying private.

There’s far less pressure on startup execs when the valuation is modest and fundraising is not core to survival. You can spend your time doing what entrepreneurs love: finding a market niche, generating new ideas, improving products, and building a culture where people love coming to work every day because it’s meaningful and fun. By turning away from the monopoly money and back toward helping customers succeed, life in a startup can be more stable and vastly more rewarding.

Tim Goetz is CEO and cofounder of Aplos and cofounder of San Joaquin Capital, a venture capital firm based in California’s Central Valley.

Like a lot of 21^st century professionals, you might have turned to LinkedIn when hunting for a job. But what about when you were hunting for customers?

Social media can play a key role when it comes to sharing information and engaging with your ideal customers. Nowhere is this truer than with LinkedIn. The platform lets you connect with groups, start your own groups, and share content that people will pass along and comment on. You can build relationships without needing to break out an aggressive sales pitch.

Writing on the LinkedIn Sales Solutions blog in 2014, Lilly Chen talked about the way the world has changed for B2B buyers:

1. Most Of The Buyers You Want Are On Social Media.

Social media is helping drive purchasing decisions for most buyers and executives. A 2014 study by the International Data Corporation found that 75 percent of B2B buyers and 84 percent of executive buyers use social media to make purchasing decisions. And buyers who use social media have more influence, buy more frequently, and with bigger budgets.

“Since these are the buyers you want to engage with, it makes sense to meet them where they are,” Chen writes.

2. The Buying Process Has Gotten More Complex.

According to research by the best practice insight and technology company CEB, there are typically 5.4 decision makers at work in the average B2B opportunity. There is a lot of discussion involved in today’s purchasing decisions, which means buyers are more cautious about who they let into the process. A sales rep who establishes more than one relationship within the account is more likely to find success.

3. Wasted Time Means Wasted Opportunity

Cold calls and emails are becoming more and more of a turnoff. Only 4 percent of buyers have a positive impression of a representative who cold calls them. That number jumps to 87 percent, however, when talking about a rep who makes contact through a mutual connection.

Here are some other findings Chen shared:

• 92 percent of B2B buyers engaged with sales professionals who have made a name for themselves as thought leaders in their fields.
• 83 percent of buyers in North America have used social media to help their company make a purchasing decision.
• 76 percent of B2B buyers say they prefer to work with vendors who were recommended by someone they know.
• 73 percent of B2B buyers prefer to work with sales people recommended by someone they know.
• 65 percent of B2B buyers say their network is crucial for authenticating references.

Beyond all this, LinkedIn has a number of other advantages for your business:

• It allows buyers to research you, but it also lets you read up on them. By getting background on them before you meet, it gives you some idea of what they’re looking for, and how you can help solve their problems.
• You can ask questions, and provide answers. By being part of a large, well-informed network, you can get the answers you need. But you can also use that same network to provide answers, thereby establishing yourself as an authority in your field.
• You can build your network. It’s like being at a corporate networking event, only you don’t have to leave your office, and you can be a little more selective about who you talk to. Look for people and businesses who align with your company’s strategy.
• Like other social media platforms, LinkedIn lets you showcase your work. If you have a new blog post, a new white paper, or you’ve just produced a new company video, LinkedIn gives you another way to share it, and to bring people back to your website.