Giving a speech or presentation in front of others is pretty nerve-wracking. If you remind yourself of the “three audience truths” before you go up in front of people, however, you’ll give yourself an opportunity to calm down and focus on your message.
Sales conferences can be extremely beneficial for sales teams – attendees are introduced to new strategies, hard-earned insights, and new connections from B2B sales world. In fact, SalesForce notes their past events have proven to increase sales productivity of attendees by 30%, increase marketing campaign effectiveness by 59%, and increase customer retention by 31%. While not all conferences can lay claim to results like these, the best provide the tools, resources and insights required for attendees to justify the cost of attendance.
In 2015 we laid out the steps on how to choose a sales conference that would produce a return on investment. Using that process, sales executives can determine which conference(s) from our list they and their teams should attend this year.
| Date and Location | • Boston: May 2, 2016 • San Francisco: July 18-19, 2016 • Philadelphia: November 14, 2016 |
| Cost | $325 |
| Audience | CEOs/CSOs/CMOs, VPs/Directors/Managers of Sales, operations, and marketing |
| Topics | Leadership insight, sales-management challenges, alignment with marketing, sales enablement, sales strategy and executive, customer management, social selling, coaching, and sales effectiveness |
| Description | This is a high profile series of events typically held in four of five different U.S. locations each year. The Sales 2.0 conference focuses on helping sales leaders leverage Sales 2.0 technologies and strategies to optimize operations, enablement, and marketing performance. A sales consultant from Oracle described the conference as “a fantastic experience”, expressing it had a tremendous impact on his network as he was able to meet various sales and marketing professionals. There are already a number of speakers confirmed to present at the Boston conference including executives from ConnectAndSell, Selling Power, and The Bridge Group. |
| Date and Location | • Chicago: April 20-21, 2016 |
| Cost | $1,395 |
| Audience | Inside sales leaders |
| Topics | Sales contests, best practices, outsourcing, social selling, future trends, driving sales performance, sales culture, optimization of performance, CRMs |
| Description | The Annual AA-ISP Leadership Summit, which has earned the reputation as the inside sales conference of the year, returns for its eighth year with all new-presentations from over 70 of today’s most recognized inside sales experts. This conference is tailored to help sales leaders and their teams capitalize on some of the biggest sales trends of 2016 such as the latest tips, technologies, and proven best practices for solving some of this year’s toughest challenges and issues. In 2015, the Leadership Summit featured over 75 presenters with an audience of over 700 attendees, in addition to 50 exhibitors, who all came to learn, share, and network. |
| Date and Location | • Las Vegas: March 20-23, 2016 |
| Cost | $2,799 (All-Access), $899 (Workshop Only) |
| Audience | Sales representatives, sales leaders, senior executives |
| Topics | SAP CRM technology, processes, innovation, and analysis |
| Description | The CRM 2016 conference is the premier event for SAP sales, providing attendees with detailed case studies and strategies proven to boost sales performance and drive pipelines. For sales professionals interested in developing CRM strategies that can be immediately applied, this conference could be ideal. The three-day event will include over 250 expert-led sessions, over 300 hours of education, and 22 dedicated networking opportunities. The CRM 2016 conference will include various speakers including executives from ECENTA AG, Accenture, and SAP Labs. |
| Date and Location | • Las Vegas: February 22-24, 2016 |
| Cost | $1,495 (Two-Day Summit) and $1,990 (Three-Day Summit and Workshop) |
| Audience | Marketers, sales representatives |
| Topics | Email marketing, relationship building, networking using search and social, customer engagement |
| Description | This conference represents a unique opportunity for sales and marketing representatives to learn from leading digital marketing experts on how to develop and maintain digital strategies. Although this event is primarily focused on marketing, salespeople are presented the opportunity to further develop their communication and digital-prospecting techniques with specialized guidance on subject lines, deliverability, and open rates. Morgan Spurlock, Academy Award-Nominated Director for the film, Super-Size Me, Charles Duhigg, NYT Best-Selling Author for book, The Power of Habit, and Dr. Leonard Mlodinow, Theoretical Physicist and Best-Selling Author, are among the lineup of ambitious and forward-thinking speakers. |
| Date and Location | • Las Vegas: March 15-17, 2016 • New York: August 22-24, 2016 |
| Cost | $795 (Conference only) |
| Audience | B2B marketers, sales leaders |
| Topics | B2B customer acquisition, lead nurturing, lead conversion, customer retention, driving revenue through email, converting on social, maximizing B2B trade show success, website optimization for lead generation |
| Description | LeadsCon is the only conference devoted exclusively to B2B lead generation with a specific emphasis on lead acquisition, nurturing campaigns, and conversion optimization. This event presents opportunities for attendees to acquire proven ideas from industry experts that can be applied immediately to an organization’s marketing strategy. LeadsCon features several experts in B2B lead generation including Scott Brinker, Co-founder/CTO of Ion Interactive, and Stacy Durand, CEO of Media Design Group. |
| Date and Location | • San Diego: February 24-25, 2016 |
| Cost | $2,195 |
| Audience | CEOs, senior sales executives |
| Topics | Channel marketing and the pipeline, fueling sales teams, alignment, forecasting, sales effectiveness, enablement-to-revenue |
| Description | The Sirius Decisions Sales Leadership Exchange is an opportunity for B2B sales leaders to learn from industry experts on implementing successful growth strategies and enhancing the productivity and performance of a sales force. This event allows attendees to connect with leading sales executives with insights on emerging sales trends and features various keynote speakers including Heather Cole, the Senior Director of Sales and Enablement Strategies, and Mark Levinson, the Service Director of Sales and Operations Strategies. |
| Date and Location | • San Francisco: April 7-8, 2016 |
| Cost | $895 |
| Audience | Sales executives |
| Topics | Sales leadership, sales development, sales technology, sales effectiveness |
| Description | The Topo Sales Summit presents sales executives with the opportunity to learn best practices, patterns, and strategies for driving revenue growth from over 600 successful sales leaders responsible for more than $50 billion in revenue. Attendees include senior executives from companies such as Google, LinkedIn, Netsuite, Mulesoft, Ringcentral, and much more. |
| Date and Location | • Boston: November 8-11, 2016 |
| Cost | $999 (Early-bird pricing ends April 15, 2016) |
| Audience | Marketing and sales professionals, business owners, agency executives |
| Topics | Inbound methodology, content, social media, email, lead nurturing, account targeting, web design and development |
| Description | Hubspot strives to inspire, teach, and empower sales and marketing leaders to transform their business in its annual INBOUND conference. This event allows for attendees to learn the latest marketing strategies from presenters, enjoy networking events, sign up for training on content strategy, website creation, and inbound marketing basics and sales. In 2015, INBOUND had over 14,000 attendees, 170+ educational sessions, and 5 keynote speakers. Past keynote’s included Arianna Huffington, Seth Godin, Nate Silver, and Scott Harrison. |
| Date and Location | • San Francisco: September 15-18, 2016 |
| Cost | $999 (Early-bird special) |
| Audience | Sales Professionals |
| Topics | Sales cloud introduction, top pipeline management reports, sales secrets of the big guns, sales cloud and platform roadmap, forecast accurately with Salesforce Forecasting |
| Description | Hosted by salesforce.com, Dreamforce boasts a 95% recommendation rate by its past attendees. This conference provides attendees with a week of idea sharing amongst peers, thought leaders, and industry pioneers. The innovation-focused event offers over 1,000 breakout sessions, sales-focused themes, reduced-cost salesforce.com training and certification opportunities, and a gala and benefit concert featuring the Foo Fighters. This year’s speakers include Marc Benioff, CEO of SalesForce, Satya Nadella, CEO of Microsoft, Jessica Alba, Found of The Honest Company, and Susan Wojcicki, CEO of Youtube. |
| Date and Location | • Las Vegas: October 18-20, 2016 |
| Cost | $1,595 (Early-bird rate) |
| Audience | Senior Sales and Marketing Executives from large enterprise organizations |
| Topics | B2B sales trends and changes |
| Description | This conference is designed to boost the participants’ knowledge, understanding and adaptability to the substantial changes B2B commercial teams are currently facing. With over 900 senior sales and marketing executives from large enterprise organizations across a variety of industries in attendance, this event emphasizes the importance of evolving the way sales leaders, reps and executives conduct selling activities. Past speakers, Nick Toman, Barry Schwartz, and Brent Adamson, will be returning as keynotes for the 2016 conference. |
What sales conferences will you attend in 2016? Are there any that we didn’t list that deserve a mention? Let us know in the comments.
The post The Top 10 Sales Conferences to Attend in 2016 appeared first on Peak Sales Recruiting.
OTTAWA • Recent moves in Canadian financial markets suggest that investors see increased odds of a recession this year and the potential for “dramatic action” from the Bank of Canada.
An ominous signal has been cropping up in the past month as corporate bonds and government of Canada bonds have seen their spreads widen, a move that usually precedes a recession. Meanwhile, yields on the five-year Government of Canada bond have begun creeping below the central bank’s overnight lending rate of 0.5 per cent. On Tuesday, they traded at roughly five basis points below that mark.
Canadian stocks are another area of weakness, with the S&P/TSX Composite Index once again slumping into a bear market on Tuesday. The TSX closed down 2.02 per cent, or 252.75 points, to 12,282.65, now down more than 20 per cent since the highs of September 2014.
“Looking at all the signals from the financial world there are a number of recession indicators that are flashing warning signs,” said Mark Chandler, head of Canadian fixed-income strategy at RBC Dominion Securities.
This is real, there is something going on here
The last time short-term bond rates inverted this far out along the curve was in the first half of 2015, which ended up turning into a technical recession — defined as two back-to-back quarters of economic contraction.
In a normal bond market, longer-dated bonds have higher yields as investors demand more compensation to lend money for an extended period of time. When multi-year bonds move below the overnight rate — the interest rate the Bank of Canada charges banks to lend to each other for a day — it means investors are expecting the overnight rate to go lower in response to a weakening economy.
Corporate spreads have also been widening in Canada for much of the last 12 months, but for the most part that was due to an increasing number of distressed energy companies. Chandler says that the widening has now spread to non-energy companies as well.
“This is real. There is something going on here,” he said. “Usually one of the most powerful indicators is widening of credit spreads, and that’s happening not just in the energy sector, but also more broadly.”
Canadian banks, among the most exposed companies to the domestic economy, have become one of the big drags on the TSX Composite Index. On Tuesday, the biggest banks, including the Royal Bank of Canada, Toronto-Dominion Bank and Bank of Nova Scotia, saw their shares dip more than two per cent.
Craig Basinger, chief investment officer at Richardson GMP Limited, notes that some Canadian stocks are now trading at “recession-type” valuations. The banks, for instance, trade in the single digits or close to it, with dividend yields creeping into the four and five per cent range.
Basinger said the pricing suggests investors are seeing more pain on the horizon.
“Yes, we could certainly see a bit of a recession here and yes, oil prices are below $30 a barrel again, but valuations have become compelling,” he added. “If we enter a recession, well, the prices are already there.”
The warning signs in financial markets come as the Bank of Canada left its overnight lending rate unchanged during its policy announcement last month. Governor Stephen Poloz said that he was waiting to see the scale of stimulus from the federal government before making a move. The budget, which will outline stimulus details, is expected to land sometime in March or April.
The Bank of Canada also noted there are early indications that the non-energy segment of the economy is rebounding as low oil prices and a weak loonie make exports more competitive. Non-energy exports helped close the trade deficit down to $585 million in December, a surprise to economists who had expected the trade deficit to grow from $1.6 billion in November to $2.2 billion.
As well, January’s employment report showed that, while oil-dependent provinces such as Alberta, Saskatchewan and Newfoundland and Labrador continue to bleed jobs, non-energy provinces are booming. Ontario has added 100,000 new jobs in the past 12 months, while British Columbia and Quebec have also posted healthy job gains.
“Growth remains positive outside the oil-rich provinces, supported by an upturn in exports and steadier consumer spending and home sales,” said Sal Guatieri, senior economist at BMO Capital Markets in the bank’s latest economic outlook released Feb. 5.
Still, Guatieri expects that the Bank of Canada will at least move to cut its benchmark rate by 25 basis points to its post-recession low of 0.25 per cent sometime in the spring.
Chandler of RBC said that investors should pay close attention to the bond market in the coming weeks. If short rates move off current lows, then it is likely the Bank of Canada will be less dovish. But an extended period of inverted yields could signal more drastic action.
“I think with such short-term rates — where we have five-year yields now below 50 basis points — in order to justify those for a prolonged period of time, the market is definitely pricing in high possibility of some pretty dramatic action by the central bank,” he said. “Whether it’s negative interest rates or potential for QE, it’s hard to justify the current yields without those expectations.”
If nothing else the numbers are staggering — two million data points.
But that’s the outcome when you set out to the build the first of its kind in the U.S., a ranking system based on social and economic factors for all of the 3,141 counties in that country.
In all, the rankings, compiled in Canada, are based on 36 data inputs. There’s information on demographics; environment (including data on climate change and declarations of disaster); home ownership; real estate taxes; social indicators (including education and crime levels) and personal infrastructure (such as levels of police and teaching.) That information came from more than a dozen different government or government-related sources.
Known officially as The American County Review (ACRe), the work represents more than eight months of toil by John McLean, who for the past 23 years had focused his attention on bond analytics, bond pricing and developing bond indexes, initially at Scotia Capital and most recently with the Toronto Stock Exchange.
“There are 36 different measurements used for each county. We roll those up on an equal weight basis, and that’s how you get the top ranking within the state and [then] in the nation,” said McLean who developed the product to assist individuals and institutions make important living and investment decisions.
McLean, who has filed a patent on his work, called the past eight months a “labour of love.” He said he developed an interest a few years back when he became aware of the information gaps that existed in the U.S. municipal bond market. The muni-market is huge – almost US$4 trillion outstanding – with many issues being done on a tax-exempt basis.
“It seemed that ratings on municipal bonds were often assigned but never reviewed or updated,” said McLean, who then set out to develop a unique and non-arbitrary risk assessment of issuers at the county level. (Apart from county government issuers, school boards, redevelopment agencies, school districts, and publicly owned airports and seaports also issue.)
News that the rating agencies “may not be on top of their game, and may not be doing their best,” surprised McLean. “I always thought there was a better way, an easier way and a more frequent way to measure than [that done by the] rating agencies which is very subjective.”
In other words, he would target the U.S. municipal market by developing a better model, by providing better services but do it in a manner that is transparent and open.
“By looking at all the different economic and social factors, that are not interpretative, you get a good picture of what’s going on,” he said. Such information could be used for both individuals and corporations to make decisions.
“It works both ways,” said McLean. “It’s not just a case of attracting attention in investment because you are ranked high. You are trying to get more information into the hands of people who make those decisions.”
So who is going to purchase McLean’s product? The data providers — Thomson Reuters and Bloomberg — are a possibility as are commercial real estate investors; muni-bond issuers, investors and ratings agencies. Another possibility is to use the information to develop so-called Smart Beta bond indexes. Meantime users can obtain a free look at some data on the website www.acredata.com.
So what are the three top ranked counties with above 100,000 populations? Hamilton (Ind.); Sumter (Fla.) and Weld (Col.).
On Thursday, the darling of the big data enterprise software world, Tableau Software, shared some painfully disappointing news that sent its shares tumbling.
It expected a soft 2016 in both revenue and profits and the stock price got murdered. The company's stock lost about half its value in one day.
On Tuesday at the Goldman Sachs Technology conference in San Francisco, Tableau CFO Tom Walker was asked to explain what the company plans to do to stop the share-price plunge, such as a stock buyback. Analysts have also been pressuring Tableau to focus more on profits rather than investing in growth.
His answer, in a word: nothing.
Tableau now has 39,000 customers, 18,000 of them outside the US, and said it's still going to invest in more products for them, as well as building out its international offices and sales forces.
Here's what he said:
A stock buyback is not something that we’re announcing today. It is something that we would consider. This just happened over the last couple of days.
We think the company is well positioned to deliver on a huge market of analytics, even in a rough patch. And we think 2016 will be a rough patch of spending in IT, it is something that we will continue to invest in.
If you go back to 2008, when the company was considerably a lot smaller, we slowed everything down in 2009, including the development efforts. And that was the wrong thing to do because [if we didn't slow down] we could have accelerated our growth coming out of that. So in good times and bad we want to be prudent at how we look at this from a long-term perspective.
To recap: shares went from $81.75 with analysts predicting target prices of $100 and above, to below $40 on Tuesday, with average analyst targets of $74.
For instance, Morgan Stanley analysts who had been bullish on Tableau did a complete about-face. They downgraded the stock from overweight to equal-weight and slashed their target price from $125 to $55.
All this because Tableau lowered its earnings expectations to $830 million to $850 million from its previous guidance of $845 million to $865 million.
Plus, although the company did beat its fourth quarter earnings expectations, the beat was way softer than usual — just 1% over revenue expectations, compared to beating 7% to 17% in each of the last 6 quarters, notes Deutsche Bank's Karl Keirstead.
Walker also reiterated something Tableau said on the earnings call: IT companies just don't seem to planning on spending as much in 2016.
Investors in the space seem to share these concerns. Yesterday there was a big sell-off in other software-as-a-service companies, including Box, Zendesk, Workday, even the cloud granddaddy, Salesforce.
But some analysts are not buying the explanation that the whole software market is growing soft.
They think Tableau's problem is two things: Increased competition, notably from Microsoft. And problems with Tableau's own execution.
"We are not seeing across-the-board macro-related weakness in the software sector, certainly nothing that would explain Tableau’s marked deceleration from 65% growth in 3Q15 to expected 27% growth in 1Q16," Deutsche Bank analyst analyst Keirstead says.
He suggest that Tableau is facing more competition (driving down prices), internal sales issues and, perhaps the fact that some companies are focused more on moving their IT to the cloud than they are in ramping up their big data projects.
Meanwhile, Gartner came out with its annual look at the market. And while it still rated Tableau as a market leader ahead of Microsoft, it also said that Tableau appears to be struggling to support all the customers it rapidly signed and that some big customers may "have encountered some software limitations" with the product as they tried to roll it out to their employees.
Daniel Ives, an analyst at FBR has a more kind view of Tableau's situation, the company is going through "a painful transition from hyper-growth to a more normalized growth path" and investors just have to reset their expectations.
SEE ALSO: The CEO of one of Silicon Valley's hottest startups has suddenly resigned
A marketing video is the best way to reach your audience and share your business. Visual content is much more appealing then print or text and can be easily shared by your target audience.
You don’t need a high-tech production department to make an impactful video, though. Check out these tips for creating a successful video campaign.
The marketing world is constantly bombarding audiences with videos and campaigns. Therefore, it’s crucial to remember to stand out from competitors. Think about what you can do to make your campaign different from the rest. How can you be memorable and relatable?
One way to do this is to show some personality and charisma. Incorporate humor to stand out. Everyone loves a good laugh!
Be comfortable with your public speaking and camera skills. If your on-camera skills aren’t up to par and you aren’t relaxed with the camera, have someone else stand in instead. Audiences will be distracted by your discomfort and your message will be lost.
Be different!
You’re familiar with your product. You know the ins and outs of it and have dedicated a large portion of time to it. Therefore, you may assume that others know the nitty-gritty about your business/product as well. You may forget to educate your audience about the simple factors of your business because they’re obvious to you.
It’s important to tell details of your product from start to finish, including those simple factors. Although they’re obvious to you, they may not be to those unfamiliar with your product.
It’s crucial to explain the who, what, when, where, why, and how of what you’re selling! This will help your audience feel comfortable with your business and aid in forming a deeper relationship.
In today’s digital age, we’re constantly bombarded with advertising, marketing, and media. If you think someone is going to sit through your three-minute video, you’re mistaken. Therefore you have to ask yourself what’s in it for the viewer.
Add some value to your video like a link to a promotion code or free trial. By doing so, you’ll make people want to share the video, thus spreading the word of your product.
So now you’ve made your marketing video campaign. Your video has combined the elements of personality and charisma, you’ve explained the ins and outs, and you’ve included some sort of incentive. Now what?
PROMOTE IT!
Yes, this step is obvious, but it’s also often overlooked.
Make sure that your video has an appealing and catching title and hashtags. There’ an infinite number of videos out there, so do everything in your power to make your video appealing so a viewer will want to hit the play button.
Feature your video on numerous platforms. YouTube is the most obvious, but don’t forget about social media!
Follow these simple steps and the results will end in your successful marketing video.
Ocado isn't just an online delivery company — it is also one of Britain's most exciting tech firms.
The company posted an impressive set of numbers earlier this month, with profits soaring 65% year-on-year and gross revenue rising by 15% to more than £1.1 billion ($1.5 billion.)
Meanwhile, it also creates a whole heap of technology that it can hive off and sell on to other businesses should it wish. Most of Ocado's technology centres around inventions that automate warehouses and logistics processes.
It's also for this reason that Ocado has been at the centre of takeover rumours by Amazon — although Ocado confirmed that this was speculation and there was no truth in it.
Meanwhile, Ocado is continuing to carve out some cutting edge inventions that are set to transform the logistics and communications sectors. Ocado's director of technology Paul Clarke gave us an inside look into the tech side of the business and hinted at what's in store for the future.
Business Insider: Ocado recently launched the wireless technology that fits into the wider Ocado Smart Platform [OSP: Ocado's e-commerce fulfilment and logistics cloud platform.] It seems like a rather simple and efficient idea but how long does it take to bring a concept like this into reality?
Paul Clarke: We've been working on this for some quite some time — around two years. But the way we start on it, like we do with all projects, is to build detailed mathematical simulations of the solution. That's how we design the existing warehouses. We first model the idea so we can prove to ourselves that the idea could work and then obviously set about designing the technology.
BI: Ocado said the radio design within the OSP led to "a number of patents for this new technology" — how many patents usually get filed when creating something like this?
PC: Well, the only ones I can talk about is what [Ocado CEO] Tim Steiner referred to in our results this month, that takes us up to the end of 2015. There are 32 distinct innovations that we filed patents for, which led to 73 different patent applications. We continue to file new patents all the time and we've filed some at the beginning of this year. We will continue to do so — that's around the technologies for new warehouses and other projects.
BI: So what other project patents are we talking about here?
PC: To be honest, I can't talk about the nature of those, but there are certainly a lot of tech patents that go into the warehouses but they are not exclusive to warehouses. We are patenting tech that can be applied to different areas, beyond grocery fulfillment. Coming back to communications solutions [referring to the Cambridge Consultants radio tech,] we believe that the tech can be used far away from grocery fulfilment.
BI: Usually tech companies file a number of patents but not every patent is accepted. So does Ocado hedge or factor in a level of attrition on these?
PC: The nature of the patent process for us is that the examiner looks at the filings and gives their view. You are able to refine your patent claims based on the feedback from the examiner. We remain confident that many, if not most, of all the patents will go through but we can't give an expectation on exact numbers. However, given the costs involved and the time involved, we wouldn't waste our time if we didn't have that good level of confidence in the novelty and innovation of the technology.
BI: Ocado has the ability to sell off the tech if it wants to, or license it out to other retailers, which is a big deal for Ocado's bottom line — who are you speaking to about this?
PC: Well, we're not selling anything off to be clear, the talks we are having with retailers are platform deals. We make the software and uniquely the hardware for automated warehouses and are able to provide both those bits — the software in the cloud and the associated technologies — to customers.
BI: So what other projects, or pieces of software or hardware, is Ocado working on with this in mind?
PC: The OSP is one of a number of big projects we are working on. It's just another one of the plates spinning, so to speak. We have a number of [projects] in research and development at the moment but not all are in the public domain just yet. One that is in the public domain is on the robotics side as part of the European Union’s Horizon 2020 Research and Innovation programme.
We are also working on building two new automated warehouses that is built with the same OSP technology with the one in Andover due to go live in the near future — that's a big undertaking.
BI: A lot of Ocado's technology centres around automation, robotics and artificial intelligence, in order to make logistics and warehouses more efficient. It feeds into the narrative at World Economic Forum this year that we are facing an environment where robots will take over human jobs. What's your response to this from the perspective of a tech chief?
PC: This gets talked a lot. We employ over 10,500 people in the UK and those people would not have a job with Ocado if [the company] didn't have a business model that was related to automation. Ocado is predicated on a business model of the use of automation and it is one of the key differentiators for us doing online grocery retail.
It allows us to grow and hire more people and more effectively. We are a net job creator because the business model we have allows us to even leapfrogged ourselves in terms of technological advancements. This isn't a question of automation taking away jobs, it's about automation creating business like ourselves that create jobs.
BI: Speaking of jobs and expansion, what kind of people Ocado's tech team made up of and what targets have you got in place to expand the number of staff working on technology.
PC: In Ocado technology, we have 750 engineers and IT specialists and we're looking to grow to 1,100 by the end of this year. This will happen in Hatfield in Britain, but we are also going to employ people in two development centres in Poland and at one development centre in Sofia, Bulgaria. We are also opening a centre in Barcelona. It's very much part of the strategy for continual growth.
BI: Ocado is clearly a huge tech company but the focus in hte press centres around the grocery delivery side, especially with those Amazon rumours. Do you think there is a misconception over the nature of Ocado being a grocery delivery company rather than a tech one?
PC: This is often misunderstood. Ocado is a retailer and a tech business and those two elements are fundamental and make us special.
As a retailer, we are driven to innovate for customer requirements and then on the tech side, we build it ourselves. Once we build it we put the technology back into our own retail businesses. It's a circle of technology, we create dogfooding. ["Dogfooding" is a term for when a company uses its own product to test and promote the product.]
If you are a retailer buying tech off the self, you have to hope it works. If you are a tech provider but don't use it yourselves, you throw it over the fence hoping it works.
Doing both bits is really part of something special. We aren't the only company that does this but the scale of which we do it is a key differentiator for us.
BI: As you mentioned, Ocado isn't the only company that does this, as companies like Amazon create tech for their own warehouses too. What makes you guys different and why should customers come to you and not others for logistical tech needs?
PC: There are obviously similarities with some big companies who are building their own technology to use for their business, but I think we are building technology into a service to empower others businesses too. Doing it on the scale we are doing it is not easy. But we've seen how our technology has helped Morrisons develop their online business very rapidly and that kind of shortcut for existing grocery businesses online is generating value and interest from customers.
Join the conversation about this story »
NOW WATCH: Watch Martin Shkreli laugh and refuse to answer questions during his testimony to Congress
During a consulting engagement at a $50 billion conglomerate, I spoke with a young man who was worried about a potential project overrun. I asked if he had hit a stumbling block. “It really isn’t a big deal — I know we have the in-house expertise to solve this,” he said. “I just need to rope in some colleagues from another team.” “So what’s the problem?” I asked. “I’m waiting for my boss to give me the go-ahead,” he replied.
This company operates on a hub-and-spoke management structure, where significant decisions are referred to one’s formal boss rather than to whoever is best suited to make the call, regardless of hierarchical positioning. The management structure gave the company the ability to make decisions quickly in the early days. Now, though, it is slowing the organization down, due to its inherent inability to enable quick, cross-functional, collaborative decisions. (In this company, like so many others, most significant value creation now occurs through the work of cross-functional project teams.)
The management of this company has noticed this lag and asked for help answering a question: Does it need to review its management structure to enable better collaboration between individual teams?
In the hub-and-spoke model, each area is optimized to deliver results to and curry favor with the higher-ups (or, in the metaphor of hub and spokes, the center). In today’s fast-paced marketplace, teams that need to wait for a leader to weigh in have lost the game before they start. Leaders instead need to paint a vivid horizon that inspires self-propelling teams to forge ahead with real-time collaboration — then step out of their way.
That shift implies something really important about the changing nature of leadership. Kevin Martin, chief research officer of i4cp, says “Organizations must look at leaders through a different lens. Business skills and acumen…are now table stakes. It’s the ability to influence and drive collaboration across cultures, boundaries, and borders that has the greater variability on global leadership effectiveness.”
Obviously, the shift in leadership competence requires complementary shifts in organizational structure, decision-making processes, and performance-management systems. Instead of a hub-and-spoke system, picture a racing track where each driverless team can compete successfully on the basis of four fundamentals:
There are some early signs of a movement away from hub-and-spoke management. One of the central tools of that system was the ubiquitous performance review. Today, 6% of Fortune 500 companies are reported to have gotten rid of rankings, according to management research firm CEB. These companies include big names like Microsoft, Adobe, Gap, and Medtronic. Recently, Accenture CEO Pierre Nanterme told The Washington Post that his company, too, is getting rid of the annual performance review as of Fall 2016, terming the move a “massive revolution.”
The million-dollar question that my clients ask me now: Is all this change worth the risk? My response is simple: There is no alternative. You have to make this change if you want to survive.
Do a Google search on buyer’s journey statistics and you’ll find almost 500,000 articles sharing statistics about how the buyer’s journey has changed. Your results probably look something like this:
If you believed all these stats, you would come to the conclusion that sales should just pack it in and call it a day. You’d think that buyers can do all the work on their own and salespeople have become an unwanted distraction that sits between the buyer and their ultimate decision.
Some may say a salesperson is a dinosaur. It’s true, the role of the salesperson has changed, but it’s not dying – it’s evolving.
Citing stats is too easy. It’s too easy for executives to read consulting company reports and convince themselves they must change their approach or die. However, the companies that will truly change your trajectory are not always big consulting firms, and they aren’t likely household names. The technologies that can give you a competitive advantage may not even be on your radar. So, as a buyer, think about these issues related to innovation:
At KiteDesk, we experience this issue each and every day. The companies we work with are market creators. They are building products for the future. They are solving problems their buyers don’t yet realize they have. They are disrupting the status quo; and therefore, causing a glitch in the buyer’s journey matrix.
Leaders need to realize the products
that will give them a competitive advantage are not
something they will ever find in a Google search.
Why?
Because, you get the same results as everyone else.
Bye-bye, competitive advantage.
Hello, level playing field.
It’s 2016 and my message to leaders who want to make an impact is: answer your inbound calls from SDRs from companies you know nothing about. Do your research on TechCrunch to see what companies are getting funded. Check out landscape graphics of emerging industries, like this:
The companies that are working to get your attention are doing so because they know:
If you are an SDR reading this, don’t stop trying. This article may help you open a few doors.
Buyers, if a company is investing resources to reach you, there is a damn good reason why. Usually, the reason is because there is a huge market opportunity they are addressing. Do yourself a favor and answer your email, respond to your voicemails, and reply to LinkedIn Inmails. Your next most important competitive advantage may be waiting on the other side.
Understand the benefits of supplementing your sales process with a Prospect Relationship Management platform. This quick guide provides insight into how a PRM cuts down on time inefficiencies, makes effective use of your sales and marketing budgets, and maximizes sales efforts.
What is account-based marketing? As Demandbase defines ABM: “It’s a set of principles that range from…
It’s a very logical response to the growing number of people involved in making a B2B buying decision. The main common characteristic of different aspects and applications of ABM is the focus on accounts, instead of on individual job titles or job descriptions alone.
Although account-based marketing has been getting a lot of attention in recent years, it’s not actually a new strategy. ABM was developed in the mid-1990s as a way for (mostly enterprise) marketers to distance themselves from mass marketing tactics and begin a more targeted approach.
As the strategy slowly gained traction, it became better-known and more likely to be employed in companies that don’t rank as enterprise. By 2015, SiriusDecisions reported that over 90% of B2B marketers believe that an account-based marketing strategy is a must-have; it also noted that only 20% of companies had actually implemented a strategy for longer than a year. Which begs the question:
Is ABM a fleeting buzzword, or is it here to stay?
Well, the Information Technology Services Marketing Association (ITSMA), a B2B industry expert for all things marketing, reports that ABM delivers the highest return on investment (ROI) of any B2B marketing strategy or tactic. Demand Metric also found that 60% of those who have employed ABM for at least one year attribute a revenue increase of 10% or more to its use.
Megan Heuer, Vice President and Group Director at SiriusDecisions said, “We’re in the early days of an important change in how B2B companies go about delivering on their revenue goals, and ABM is a critical aspect of this shift.” She added:
“What makes ABM so attractive right now is the way it combines insights for strategy and technology for execution. Marketing teams who understand ABM are in a powerful position to better align to what sales needs, and to make smart choices about the right actions to take and the right time to take them to grow high-potential accounts.”
Ready to take a closer look? Here’s a high-level overview of the five steps to plan and implement a successful account-based marketing strategy, and start creating more marketing-sourced leads.
Account-based marketing, in some sense, is the brainchild of sales and marketing alignment. The strategy is most successful when you choose high-value accounts that tie to key business initiatives and company goals.
Typical initiatives might be expanding into a new market, increasing market or wallet share, landing a major brand, etc. When you’re choosing your target accounts you’ll want to analyze factors such as industry, location, revenue, similarity to your best customers, technology stack, early-adopter tendencies, financial habits, and so on. You’ll need to target different buyers within an account, so take the time to build buyer personas, which will help you speak directly to those different buyers accurately.
“ABM is fast becoming the B2B strategy of choice because it truly aligns sales and marketing while focusing their teams on the highest value accounts,” says Peter Isaacson, Chief Marketing Officer at Demandbase. “I expect adoption to grow rapidly as companies that have made this switch have seen tremendous results by focusing their efforts on attracting, engaging, converting and measuring the accounts that are most likely to buy.”
ITSMA defines ABM as simply “treating individual accounts as a market in their own right.” Account-based marketing is highly productive partly because it’s highly focused attention. There is an attendant opportunity cost, which means it’s important to choose your accounts carefully. Don’t rush the process of choosing – and don’t make final decisions without input from sales.
The secret sauce within any successful ABM strategy is highly customized messaging. To make things easier for yourself, start by taking an inventory of all of your existing content and mapping it to buyers’ profiles. By understanding which pieces of content benefit individual audiences, you’ll be able to fill in critical gaps and avoid creating excess content for your new ABM strategy. You can correlate your content directly to buyer personas, firmographics, and customer journey position, and use your content to speak directly to the targeted accounts’ needs, wants, struggles, and goals.
In some cases, the new research and persona creation may lead you to discover a new value proposition. You may find brand new ways that you can help your prospects – good for you!
For most companies, the sales cycle is getting longer. ABM strategies work best when you use a combination of channels to market to your targeted accounts. Treat each touch as an ongoing and continuing conversation with your prospect. The single most important thing: Keep your messaging consistent across all platforms. This buffs your trustworthiness and underscores your value proposition.
The channels to consider vary with your target accounts, but ones you might consider include:
Before deploying your new strategy, make sure you set up measurements of success. This might be an increase in conversions from marketing-sourced leads, improved alignment between sales and marketing, or a higher response rate to campaigns. Remember that account-based marketing is all about quality, not quantity.
Once the pieces are in place, launch your new ABM strategy and take a vacation. (Just kidding, you’re not absolved of all of your marketing responsibilities … yet.)
This may be the most important piece – and next to targeting the correct accounts, it’s the one that will lead you to the most success.
It’s all about the data.
I can’t stress this enough. Make sure that you are leveraging tools that help you track your marketing efforts; measure the impact of each of your touches; and see which of your marketing activities are responsible for moving a lead down the funnel. The more data you can gather, the more you can adjust your strategy to optimize your success rates. Make sure you share these insights with your sales team!
Your target accounts’ needs and priorities will always be changing, just as yours are. Make sure that you continuously check the pulse on your messaging. This is not a one-size-fits-all kind of marketing strategy – quite the opposite. You’ll need to closely monitor the successes (and failures) of your ABM campaigns. The good news is, you’ll be able to measure real, tangible success.
If your ABM strategy is successful, you’ll see meaningful increases in website traffic from your targeted accounts, with more conversions and opportunities. These things translate directly into increased revenue. And, as marketers, doesn’t it feel good when that revenue increase can be tied directly to your marketing efforts? We think so.
The 12 Dimensions of Trust represent the 12 ways a seller can build or erode trust with buyers. Each associated action creates a connection or causes a disconnection. Knowing about all 12 Dimensions of Trust empowers a seller who wants strong connections founded in trust. Not knowing leads to buyer mistrust and seller confusion.
Availability“Seller makes time for needed conversations and listens without distractions” is a particularly difficult assignment for sellers. In an informal poll of sales trainers and sales managers, the question “why don’t more sellers ask more questions more often?” was answered over and over again with the responses “sellers don’t have time” and “buyers don’t have time.” But by not asking questions, sellers waste considerably more of their own time and the time of buyers as they present off-the-mark solutions and then regroup to make modified proposals and to overcome objections they should have anticipated and avoided.
Asking questions and listening actively to the responses is an investment of time, not a waste of time.
A seller who makes the time to conduct a thorough needs assessment and routinely checks in by asking follow-up questions builds trust and conveys availability and interest in the buyers’ needs. This doesn’t have to be laborious or time consuming. Just a few quality
questions can turn every sales call into a trust-building connection.
This blog post features an excerpt from the best-seller “DISCOVER Questions® Get You Connected.” To learn more about how to connect with buyers and gain their trust, buy the full copy of this award-winning book from Amazon.com as a paperback or e-book.
The post Are You Making Enough Time for Your Buyer? appeared first on People First.
The email newsletter has been around since the dawning of the World Wide Web. Now, there are digital publications, newsletters and aggregation services to speak to a variety of audiences, topics and interests.
But do newsletters have a place in companies’ content arsenals? In my opinion, the digital newsletter has evolved into a new, more exciting medium. When crafted well and used effectively, it can have a powerful impact on prospect and customer engagement.
During my time at Retail TouchPoints (sister brand of Content4Demand), I’ve helped the marketing team build a comprehensive newsletter strategy. In addition to its weekly newsletter, Retail TouchPoints also has what we call a Digital Resource Center, an iteration of a newsletter that aggregates articles, content assets, survey reports and other resources. The combination of content and information varies from week to week, and each iteration has a different theme.
The Digital Resource Center is effective because the team taps into the hottest topics (and articles that have driven the most traffic) to come up with the newsletter’s core theme. We also include a short letter from the Editor-in-Chief and tailor delivery and subject lines based on our two key audiences: current subscribers and new members.
You may think that this newsletter approach is a reach if your organization offers say, IT services, retail software or any other B2B solutions or services, but think again. B2B organizations can create powerful newsletters if they provide a mixture of great content, resources and relevant messaging. Here are a few tips and best practices you should keep in mind if you are trying to refine your newsletter strategy or want to add a newsletter to your nurture toolbox in the near future:
1. Consider the newsletter an entry point: I receive a lot of newsletters on a daily basis. Some of them are full of compelling images, strong calls-to-action and a variety of great stories and resources. Others, for lack of better term, give the milk away for free. Meaning, they try to cram all the information and resources they can in a single newsletter without a call-to-action or link to the full piece. This creates a jumbled mess and headache for your subscribers. Look at your newsletter as an entry point to your branded content and resources. When crafting each newsletter, ask yourself: What do I want my buyer to achieve? What do I think they should learn today? What topics, blogs or resources will pique their interest? Use the newsletter as a way to drive people to your site, blog or another branded channel.
2. Include a powerful menu of articles and content assets: This brings us to our next, very important point. Always include a combination of articles, resources and assets. You don’t want to create a newsletter that just points your subscribers to a bunch of gated resources. We associate newsletters with great (and free) content. If you force folks to fill and re-fill forms to access resources, you’ll definitely annoy them. Instead, try and include just one or two gated resources, and then incorporate blogs and other un-gated resources.
3. Be sparing with company-focused information: Let’s be real…your followers will subscribe to your newsletter because they want to be in tune with relevant industry news and trends. So don’t overwhelm them with press releases, articles and resources focused on your solutions, services and products. Your newsletter should have the same editorial integrity as your social media accounts and your blog. It’s fine to include big news and developments (like a merger or acquisition, for example), but be strategic about which information to include and when.
4. Tailor experiences and content to your buyers: I know what you’re thinking…customizing newsletters for different audiences seems like a lot of work. But it honestly doesn’t have to be. Sometimes, it’s as easy as creating different subject lines and changing the order of the articles based on specific areas of interest. Or, if you’re trying to nurture a new audience/list, take cues from Retail TouchPoints and add a fun “welcome” letter to the top of the newsletter.
5. Have fun and show personality (when it’s appropriate): The most effective way to keep your subscribers engaged is to show some personality. That may mean adding more fun, themed blogs to your newsletter lineup, or it may mean having a special section of the newsletter dedicated to your employees, fun facts about the company or fun events your team held or attended. For example, does your company dedicate a day for the team to perform charity work? Do you reward employees with a one-week sabbatical to travel or learn a new skill? These are the elements that make your business special, and your followers want to get that new, more refreshing view of your team members!
6. Test, test, test: Again, this doesn’t have to be an arduous process. Try to A/B test different subject line styles. Do your followers respond better to personalized subject lines? Do they prefer a more professional tone, or do they like a style that’s more laid back? Do they gravitate to newsletters filled with images, or do they just want a concise, bulleted list of resources and information? These minor changes you can make to your newsletter design and marketing approach can help you learn more about your subscribers and, in turn, create more valuable newsletters!
We’re living in a world filled with news, resources and information. However, if you listen to your buyers, track their behaviors and offer a fun mix of content, you’ll become a go-to source for your customers and prospects.
This post was written by Dan Hanrahan of Sigstr.
About Dan: Dan has spent over a decade starting, leading and growing technology businesses. His experiencespans technology recruiting, eCommerce and marketing technology, and he’s played key roles at companies like Brooksource, iGoDigital and ExactTarget. His latest business, Sigstr, makes it simple for marketers to take control of branding and marketing in the employee email signature.
As a sales manager, you need to empower your team to close more business and generate more meaningful conversations with prospective customers – all while ensuring they remain focused and uninterrupted.
In order to generate more sales opportunities, activity is key. Business opportunities are created by those who work hard to add value, build relationships, and hustle. Your team spends countless hours finding the right prospects. Then it’s about activity… calls, emails, direct mail, but for most, email remains our most frequent touchpoint. While we all want more meetings and face time, the fact is the average employee sends 10,000 emails annually.
28 emails per day, per person. It’s insane, but we email because it works and its efficient. So how can we get more out of every send? As sales managers, we can’t look over the shoulder of every rep before they hit send, but we can ensure an email closes with a branded call-to-action around our most compelling events and marketing content.
Throughout my career in sales and now leading a sales team as Founder and CEO of Sigstr, we’ve tested hundreds of various types of email signature campaigns and calls-to-action. The email signature is an amazingly powerful medium.
Not only can you enable your team with your best content, but you can ensure a branded professional close to every send.
Moreover, when a campaign appears in the email signature, you can bet the sender will take time to read and understand what is in her own signature.
Your sales team can generate more business and branding opportunities through relevant pieces of content that can be automatically added to their personal email signatures (think Gmail or Outlook). These personal, one-to-one email communications result in more opportunities to showcase your solution and, more importantly, be a helpful resource.
1. Sales Enablement: By including campaigns in email signatures that promote a specific piece of marketing content, such as a new customer case study, a relevant eBook, or a new webinar series, your sales team will have to keep up with the new content. They’ll need to understand the content well enough in order to speak adequately about the campaign to prospects and customers.
2. Consistent Brand: An email signature marketing platform, such as Sigstr, allows the administrator to set up a single signature template for employees which can include the signature appearance, social media information, formatting such as font and text size, as well as the marketing campaign such as the case study we mentioned above. Because the brand guidelines can be locked down and the marketing campaigns turned on and off by one administrator, no longer do you need to worry that your sales team members have an out-of-date signature, or one that doesn’t meet your company’s brand standards.
3. Engagement with Marketing: When marketing wins, sales wins. Sales teams that leverage marketing content through the use of their email signatures create alignment with their marketing departments. When marketing tools such as thought leadership pieces, events and webinars, case studies, and videos are shared with engaged prospects and customers via email signature campaigns, marketing content is exposed to a larger audience. Ultimately, the sales team benefits with leads and engaged opportunities.
4. Sales Productivity: When using an email signature marketing platform, there’s no need to interrupt salespeople to make updates to their signatures (at Sigstr, we recommend activating a new campaign every couple weeks, so this could be incredibly distracting if done manually). In fact, your sales team members can use Sigstr even within SalesLoft Cadence or other marketing automation tools. Instead of being distracted, your sales team can stay focused on prospecting and closing business while the administrator automatically updates the campaigns which appear in real-time, which no effort on your sales team.
The goal is to drive awareness and give something of true value to the reader – not just another sales pitch (which you can be sure the recipient will tune out – wouldn’t you?). Email signatures promoting marketing content engage prospects and customers by pointing them towards new, helpful resources. In doing so, your sales team is giving the reader more information that could be helpful to them as they’re searching for the right partner.
We hope you can join us for the rise of the Sales Development Cloud at #Rainmaker16 on March 7-9!
Through these campaigns, you can direct your recipients to a landing page that requires basic information such as name, email address, and company. By having them fill out a bit of information, you will generate more qualified leads.
Want a super easy way to start using employee email signatures to generate more sales opportunities and closed business? Sigstr can help! Click here to learn more about how, and start your complimentary 30-day trial.
The post Generate Sales Opportunities Through the Email Signature appeared first on SalesLoft.
Information and the insights that can be derived from data is changing the world in almost every conceivable way. There are many components to this transformation but the most basic are our new abilities to capture massive amounts of data instantly, using new, more powerful tools to analyze that data. The combination allows us to learn, understand and eventually master a growing field of subjects. There are very few industries that are exempt from this kind of change and the sales industry is no exception. Data and analytics is already changing how sellers sell and we are barely at the beginning of this transformation. We call this this trend the ‘science of sales.’
Great sales execution used to be about grit, determination and focus. Those qualities are still important but there is a new entrant for sales success — utilizing data and the insights it provides to fine-tune every aspect of your customer interactions. This is something that marketing has understood for years now. Marketing went through an analytics transformation 6 or 7 years ago when marketing automation platforms became mainstream. The idea was to track marketing campaigns and the elusive marketing lead with increasing precision. The logic is simple. If you can track and analyze your marketing leads, you can start to predict where you will find more revenue. Wonderful stuff if you are a consumer business or something very transactional where contact from a sales professional is unnecessary. In B2B environments, those leads would eventually get handed to the sales organization, relying on sellers more as artists than data scientists. This is all changing with the ability to analyze leads and results much deeper into the sales process.
The implication is that sales professionals and the sales process itself needs to change. More efficient processes, the ability to capture engagement data, and the reinvention of communication techniques are all the foundation of a new generation of sales professionals and a modern sales process. No more flying blind. One of the key trends leading this change is the type of data that is now available, real-time for the individual seller. It is based on external observations about your prospects — engagement data based on your prospects’ behaviors. This is quite different from the internally-focused data, like demographics and actions that has historically been stored in CRM systems.
So how do you get in front of this trend? There are 3 basic steps every organization needs to take in order to build greater intelligence into their sales process.
You must think of your contact database (probably within your CRM) as the core of your sales intelligence. If it’s a mess of old contacts and out-of-date information you are guaranteeing a slower sales process and a demoralized sales team. Your reps cost you real money in terms of the time they spend trying to work with contacts. It only makes sense that you spend the time and effort to make sure they have the best data possible. Secure a data validation firm to verify phone and email before any outbound calling campaign begins. An external administrative resource will cost far less and be more efficient than your reps. Keep your reps on the phones talking to real prospects and closing deals.
Clean contacts are the foundation for the next step which is implementing engagement scoring on your leads. As your sales reps interact with your leads, they will get some responses in the form of open messages, read content, perhaps even a reply. Those activities are an indication of their interest and need to be tracked and reported. High activity levels correlates with those prospects who are most likely to close. Conversely, low engagement aligns with those least likely to close. As a sales manager, you need to use that information to guide the daily activities of the sales team.
A data-driven sales process is not only about who opened your email and who didn’t, or who clicked and who didn’t. At the core, a data-driven sales process surfaces insights about the best time to reach your customer, or their communication channel preferences, or the issue related to your product that interests them most. And, it allows for flexibility and control of the content and messaging that is delivered to prospects.
The goal is to measure results. To do so, the messaging and content must be consistent so you can understand the impact, what works and what doesn’t, then make incremental improvements. This task can be simple and fun. We have customers that encourage their sales reps to create their own messages. They track results and the sales rep with the best results is rewarded. The organization rolls out the most successful messaging to the team and the process repeats itself, driving more prospects to the content that works best. New sales reps ramp quickly as they have the cadence and content that works from day-one. No more reinventing the wheel.
In larger organizations, this content might also come from your marketing team or a sales enablement team. Both of those scenarios are great as long as you are achieving the objective of standardizing the content. This approach has an additional benefit of allowing marketing to participate and measure their content in the last mile of the sales process. This will allow collaboration in new and productive ways which will benefit the organization and revenue goals.
Once you have a messaging and content strategy, it’s important to determine how you are going to communicate that information with your prospects in a way that engages and converts. This goes beyond the channel used to communicate with your prospects. Whether you use email, phone, or chat to open a conversation, random processes hurt your results the same way random messaging does.
A structured communication process doesn’t need to be complicated or rigid. The hardest part is making sure that whatever sales cadence you use is executed consistently across all sales reps and all contacts. And that there’s enough variation built into the process to allow your reps to flex when needed.
There might be a preset number of emails and associated calls or voicemails specifically created for each prospect profile, with specific timing for each delivery and different versions of content and offers tailored to the prospect’s needs and your systems should be built to support that process. Ideally, you have some type of automation tool to make this easier on your reps and a disciplined approach (automated even) to record all this activity data into your CRM system. This serves as the basis of the engagement index for the prospect.
The key is standardizing on the approach and then perhaps implementing some automation. Here is more on sales communication strategies.
These changes are not difficult and can be done incrementally. Start cleaning your data and contacts a hundred or a thousand at a time. Have a quick team meeting to select a small number of messages that you think are working and have the rest of the team start using them. Create a simple workflow of five emails and three phone calls to every lead and get the team to commit to doing it and perhaps providing some fun incentives (dinner reward, etc.) for those that do. You might already be doing some of this now. The next step however is the most important part. You have to track the effectiveness of all of these actions and then analyze the data as it starts to flow in. Again you will likely need some tools to help you do this effectively but the rewards are substantial and continuous. The business environment does not stand still. It is constantly evolving. What you think is working today may not work tomorrow. A data-driven sales process allows you to deal with reality and adapt into a sales organization that stands the test of time.
Download the free e-book to find out how to use new sales tools to make 2016 great.
We’ve received almost 3,000 contact or consultation requests over the last year.
Up until a few months ago, managing this was a nightmare.
As a small business, I don’t have any sales people – I manage everything myself. What’s even worse, a large majority of these leads were garbage. I was spending all my time chasing down leads that if I got on the phone, were a complete waste of time.
I knew I had to make a change before I lost my f*cking mind. So, I turned to automation.
Long story short we’ve managed to automate lead qualification, follow ups and appointment scheduling to the point where all I have to do is wake up and check my calendar for appointments. It’s amazing.
I want to pass this feeling on to you.
The problem most face with automation is not knowing where to begin. If you have the process built out, you can automate almost anything.
In this post, I’m going to share with you 20 ways you can use email to automate parts of your business.
NOTE: This blog post is to serve as inspiration to understand the options available. I won’t be covering the various hooks, triggers and segmentation aspects needed to execute them.
Key takeaway: Use email automation to increase your customer retention and repurchase rate.
Key takeaway: Don’t let people deep in your funnel slip away. Automate the purchasing process using email reminders.
Key takeaway: Automate this process using email so you can focus on driving more leads.
Key takeaway: If you’re a startup, sales are tough to come by. But then again, so is your time. Use email outreach to help automate the client acquisition process.
Key takeaway: Use email automation to qualify leads, save time and increase sales.
Key takeaway: Use email automation to increase your webinar or event attendance rate.
Key takeaway: Set up your forms to collect name and email up front and use automation to decrease form abandonment rate.
Key takeaway: While basic, these emails are important. Set up a basic automation sequence to increase customer engagement.
Key takeaway: Attach special offers to your sales receipts to drive repeat purchasing.
Key takeaway: Use auto emails to increase your online reputation.
Key takeaway: Use automated sequences to reignite interest and cleanse your list.
Key takeaway: Set up automation sequences that distribute native content to maximize engagement.
Key takeaway: Leverage a simple newsletter with links to various pieces of content on our site, we can understand what people enjoy seeing and send better emails in the future.
Key takeaway: Leverage link clicks to segment your list and improve personalization.
Key takeaway: Use automation to build emotional connections with your customers (oh, and drive sales).
Key takeaway: Use automation to sent out personalized product recommendations.
Key takeaway: Use email to make sure you’re collecting money on time.
Key takeaway: Leverage emails to increase productivity.
Key takeaway: Leverage email automation to remove the suckiness from on boarding new customers.
Key takeaway: Never pay for traffic without an automation sequence to convert leads to customers.
I’m hoping this list is getting the wheels in your head turning for how you can use email to partially automate your business. This is by no means an exhaustive list – if you’ve got anything you’d like to add, please leave it in the comments!
Do You Know the Basics?
Over the past few months, I have gotten a number of calls from individuals who are seeking new sales leads for their company. They range from marketing managers to sales managers, and even presidents of smaller firms. Usually their questions center on how to obtain a list of specific individuals who they feel might buy their product or service. Beyond that, they are not sure what to do with the list, other than just send an email or call them (rarely do they mention mail). We then get into a conversation about the issues of developing a lead generation campaign, and it becomes painfully apparent that few know the basics of how to develop a campaign that has even a small chance to generate leads.
So with that in mind, this blog is focused on the basics. If you’re an experienced B2B direct marketer, this is probably not for you. On the other hand, it’s always worth revisiting the basics, as we do forget them over time.
The 4 Elements of a B2B Lead Generation Campaign:
Much like a golf swing – if you don’t know the basics (stance, backswing, and downswing) you won’t hit the ball, and even if you do, it won’t go straight or far. With that in mind, here is a brief review of the four basic elements, and the relative importance of each as express in percentages:
1. Targeting and List Selection – 50-70% of success
The start of the process is targeting who is likely to want your product or service. First, start with companies by industry (4-digit SIC or 6-digit NAICS code) and number of employees by standard ranges (i.e. 1-10, 11-25, etc.) that you believe should be interested in your product/service. Secondly, determine the job functions and titles of the likely individuals who would be involved and/or responsible for making the purchase decision.
Sounds simple, right? Actually, it isn’t as easy as it may appear, as most companies have not profiled their customer and/or prospect base, and can’t identify the industry codes. If not done, the customer list should be sent out to a data vendor for profiling. In addition to this customer profile (which is a look in the rear view mirror), other market segments should be identified, especially if a new product or service is being marketed.
Once the “who” has been defined, then the task is to find a list that matches the target audience(s). This is where list research comes into play, and it’s a confusing B2B data world out there, as many potential list sources have popped up in the last 10 years.
Tip: Use a list broker or a consultant who already knows the B2B data world, as many mistakes are made by marketers who either think they know the business, or rely upon the pronouncements of the list vendors. B2B contact level data decays at a surprisingly high rate, so insure the source is accurate by testing a sample of 100 if the list vendor will provide it. They usually will if the resultant order is valuable to them.
2. Offer Strategy – 20-30% of success
The offer is simply, “why should I respond?” In general, there are three types of B2B offers, and they align to the buying process. They are:
This is information of value that focuses on the issue/problem that is addressed by your product/service coupled with no commitment asked of the recipient beyond their basic information (keep the form simple and short). Don’t promote the product/service in this soft offer, but rather focus on the problem or issue you can solve. This also positions your firm as a thought leader and increases creditability.
A B2B buying process usually has 4-8 stages, and these offers are structured to keep the individual engaged as they move through it. By offering ongoing valuable information, you keep the lead interested. In addition, they will likely provide more information on themselves and their needs – this is called progressive profiling. At the end of each nurturing communication always offer the opportunity to move to the next step with a “hard” offer.
Most lead generation campaigns are focused on properly qualifying the lead, so that handing off to the sales resource is now appropriate. The hard offers are typically based on experiencing the FAB’s of the product or service either via a demo, one-on-one webinar, phone call with a rep., or even a face-to-face call. This offer is termed “hard” as it commits the lead to an action closer to the sale.
If the lead generation campaign is focused on an actual purchase, then the hard offer is based on some form of deal – usually price or added value. Always have these offers time sensitive – nobody believes “limited quantity.”
Tip: B2B buying process is frequently not linear, so don’t assume potential customers progress in this way. Plus not everyone you initially communicate to is at the beginning of the buying process. Therefore, why not offer a soft, nurturing, and hard offer in the initial communication and allow the suspect to select the one that best matches their buying stage. This is called a self-qualifying offer strategy. The offer selected is likely more in line with where they are in the buying process.
3. Sequence and Frequency of Contact Media – 20-30% of success
In B2B, multiple contacts are affordable, as the price and margins allow for multiple communications to well-targeted suspects. At the beginning of the buying process only three DM media are both targetable and proactive (outbound) – email, mail, and phone. Social media can be included once the individual has responded and provided that information.
So the question is, how many communications, and in what sequence, should we send to suspects to generate an initial response? Depending on how well-targeted the suspect is and the revenue at stake, three communications generates the most cost efficient result. In the old days, mail/phone was the sequence. Today, email/phone has become the norm. Each one of these combinations is consider one communication attempt.
Tip: In several recent lead campaigns, we’ve found that a LinkedIn communication preceding either the mail/phone or email/phone sequence produces a much higher response rate – sometimes by a factor of 2 or 3.
4. Creativity – 10-20% of success.
You may be surprised that creativity is only worth 10-20% of success, and agencies will certainly dispute this. But considering the importance of the preceding three elements, creativity (copy and art) takes a backseat. This is lead generation, not branding.
In B2B, direct marketing copy leads the process, and finding a good direct marketing copywriter is almost as hard as going undefeated in the NFL. It is well worth the effort to not only search for one, but pay the fee, as the benefits more than justify the cost. The best B2B copywriter I know is Bob Bly. Remember when drafting messages and offers, relevancy to the individual tops all.
Tip: No creative should be started before the target audience is clearly defined. The target is at the “head” of the process.
To Sum Up:
Books have been written about lead generation, and this very short blog is intended just to lay out the 4 basic elements for success. Seek out B2B agencies or consultants to actually produce and manage the campaign, but if the budget does not exist to hire these experts, start out by doing it yourself. Good luck, as it’s not easy to obtain results in this over communicated and cluttered market place.
You’ve developed your content marketing strategy, planned your publishing schedule and honed your writing skills. You’re cooking up hot content like Gordon Ramsay on Pancake Day, and it’s driving a ton of relevant traffic to your website.
That’s awesome.
For some reason though, conversion rates are low. You’ve been tripped at the last hurdle on your route to content marketing success.
This can be one of the most frustrating challenges content marketers face, and it’s often the last piece of the puzzle to be considered.
There are many reasons why website visitors might not be taking the actions you want them to take. There could be something fundamentally wrong (such as no demand for your product), but usually it takes just a few tweaks to give conversions a shove in the right direction.
Here are six ways you can optimize your conversion rates right now.
Perhaps the most obvious technique, it can have a substantial effect on the number of leads generated from your website.
Instead of using dull CTAs such as “sign up” and “click here,” you should opt for more creative and original choices that speak your customers’ language.
A bold CTA like this one championed by Dollar Shave Club is more stimulating than “Join Now,” while also prompting an immediate response.
It’s also a good idea to focus the CTA on the value the prospects will receive rather than the action they should take. Saying “get your free report” is more effective than asking visitors to “order your free report” because it highlights what the customer will gain, not the effort it will take.
Something as simple as the size or color of your call to action also can have a profound effect on conversions. Using a color that is different from your standard palette could do a brilliant job of drawing attention to the CTA button.
Click triggers are bits of text that reassure visitors about their decision. It’s likely that some prospects will hesitate or doubt our offers, and click triggers could provide the little nudge they need to take the desired action.
Click triggers can generate trust in the vital moments running up to a conversion. They include:
Check out this example on Sprout Social’s home page, which reassures users about the simplicity of the process to follow:
Pop-ups can be annoying. They often interrupt the natural flow of users surfing the web who close them before a single word of the message has registered.
But when used with apt timing, a pop-up can be your last-ditch effort to capture a visitor’s contact information.
Exit-intent pop-ups work by tracking the movements of users on a web page so that a special offer or opt-in form can be displayed when they show signs of leaving.
This is a less interruptive and more effective way of engaging visitors with a pop-up. It can be used for any message you see fit, from discount codes to opportunities for visitors to subscribe to your blog.
Filling out online forms can be a chore and the subsequent commands – fill out these boxes, give us your details, prove you’re not a robot – annoying.
You’ve spent so much effort attracting customers to your website and have successfully guided them to a landing page, it would be a horrific shame if they were to abandon your site at the last minute because of a time-consuming form.
You should make the process of converting as simple as possible for your customers. Using the minimum number of fields possible will increase your conversions – even though that means sacrificing some additional information about your leads.
At Bumbl we reduced our contact form from six fields to three and more than doubled our conversion rate.
With these changes we gather less information about our leads, but it’s totally worth it when you consider how many more leads we are generating.
As Google research reveals, more people search on mobile devices than on laptop or desktop computers.
More people search on #mobile than laptop or desktop computers via @google #research @GregBumbl #SEO
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Generally speaking, you should expect around half of your website visitors to be accessing your site from a mobile device. With that said, it’s crucial that your website and the whole conversion process are optimized for these consumers.
Loading speeds need to be up to scratch. Mobile connections are usually slower than desktop, and the longer people have to wait, the more likely they are to abandon your site.
In fact, Amazon found that if its page took one second longer to load, it would cost $1.6 billion in sales each year.
Don’t shoot yourself in the foot.
Every option your landing page presents to visitors — other than the step you want them to take — eats away at your conversions.
Removing unnecessary links gives your users less opportunity to navigate away from your page. That includes anything from distracting images and sidebars, to unnecessary offers. HubSpot found that removing the navigation bar from landing pages can increase conversion rates by as much as 28%.
Less is more.
When making changes to the design or copy of your website, it’s important to A/B test elements to maximize conversions. That involves performing split tests to find which variation of an element yields the best results. You can use a tool such as Optimizely to run these tests. Simply:
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Cover image by SplitShire via pixabay.com
Please note: All tools included in our blog posts are suggested by authors, not the CMI editorial team. No one post can provide all relevant tools in the space. Feel free to include additional tools in the comments (from your company or ones that you have used).
The post 6 Website Tweaks to Give Conversions a Shove in the Right Direction appeared first on Content Marketing Institute.
Traditional marketing and content marketing have something important in common.
In order to get the business results you want — more leads, sales, and profits — you have to do them consistently over time.
In traditional marketing, you don’t place one ad or send out one brochure and think your work is done.
And in content marketing, you can’t write five blog posts or record three podcast episodes and expect them to transform your profits.
If you want content to grow your business, you have to produce it regularly. I compared it to a hamster wheel here.
It’s a lot of work, and you have to keep it up. That’s why I recommend adopting the lazy person’s approach to content marketing.
Surprised? There’s a lot we can learn from lazy people.
I’m not one of those people who hops out of bed in the morning, ready to take on the day.
I’m more like one of those people who needs to avoid conversation or writing emails until I have at least one cup of coffee in me.
I wake up groggy and not completely with it. And I’ve learned to work around this with a little system.
In my kitchen, right where I can see it when I walk in, I have all my coffee gear set up in one place. The coffee, the fresh coffee filters, the mugs, and the sweetener options are all within a three-foot radius. When I wake up, I only need to press one button to start the process of making my first cup of coffee.
We can do the same thing with our content marketing.
Once we’ve determined what we need, we can set ourselves up with a content marketing system that minimizes friction and helps us fight any resistance we may feel toward creating content.
Mine looks like this (yours will be different):
I’ve used this system for years without change. More on that later.
Sonia Simone has established that most business shortcuts are beneficial for the person who’s trying to sell them to you, but not for you.
“Just add water and serve” shortcuts are all over the web. You’ve seen them. They sound like:
When you see shortcuts like these, we recommend you turn around and begin running in the other direction.
But there’s a different type of shortcut that’s worth talking about. It’s the type of shortcut lazy people create to make their work easier. It includes actions like:
When you find content creation shortcuts that work for you, embrace them and make them part of your process.
I can only imagine how disastrous my mornings would be if I had to deal with a different coffeemaker every time I walked into my kitchen.
Instead of going from groggy to caffeinated within about five minutes, I’d spend 15–20 minutes wandering around my kitchen looking for the user’s manual and trying to figure out where to add the water and coffee grounds.
It’s the same with content creation.
Once you’ve found tools that work for you, resist the urge to try the latest shiny content creation tool.
The magic comes from using them consistently over time.
Let’s put lazy people on a psychoanalyst’s couch just for a moment, shall we?
What’s the true motivation behind their lazy approach to life?
My guess is that they want to expend the minimum amount of effort to get the maximum positive effect.
Lazy people want less work and more results.
A lazy person looks at what’s working and does more of it. And a smart lazy person looks dispassionately at what has not worked, and they stop doing it.
Their attitude is, “If I did my best but this tactic didn’t work, I’m not going to work harder to make it work. I’m ditching it and trying something else!”
Lazy people are starting to sound pretty smart, aren’t they?
Here’s my theory if you haven’t already guessed it:
A lazy approach to content marketing is really smart.
That’s the theme of the book I’m writing right now — the lazy approach to content marketing.
I want to help you discover your own lazy approach to creating effective content so you can get maximum results from minimum effort.
If you’ve thought about writing a book, you might be interested in my new podcast.
Jeff Goins is coaching me through the process of writing my first book.
Since I’ve never written a book before, I asked Jeff if he knew someone who I could work with as a coach.
Jeff volunteered himself (lucky me!) and had the brilliant idea to make the book coaching process available to the public for free in the form of a podcast.
If you want to hear a newbie (that would be me) ask an experienced author (that would be Jeff) all the questions a budding book author might have, tune in to Zero to Book.
I’d love to hear your ideas about this lazy approach to content marketing, too. Visit the comments and let’s talk.
The post Why Lazy People Make the Best Content Marketers appeared first on Copyblogger.
NEW YORK — Oil prices fell 7 per cent on Tuesday as equity markets remained weak, forecasts called for record high U.S. crude stockpiles to grow more, and the latest global energy demand outlooks did not look strong enough to eliminate the swelling glut.
U.S. gasoline futures fell to a 2008 low ahead of weekly inventory data expected to show crude and gasoline stocks growing to record highs.
Continuing weakness in equity markets also pressured oil. Wall Street’s S&P 500 index fell almost 1 per cent.
Sunday’s talks between Saudi Oil Minister Ali al-Naimi and his Venezuelan counterpart produced no tangible signs of progress on coordinated oil production cuts between OPEC and non-OPEC suppliers.
Oil prices were pressured further by weak demand outlooks issued by the U.S. government’s Energy Information Administration (EIA) and the Paris-based International Energy Information (IEA).
“The longs have withdrawn from the market and the sellers are back in full force,” said Gene McGillian, analyst at Tradition Energy in Stamford, Connecticut.
Brent crude was down US$2.34, or 7.1 per cent, at US$30.54 a barrel by 1:15 p.m. ET (1815 GMT).
U.S. crude fell US$1.45, or 5 per cent, to US$28.23.
U.S. gasoline futures fell 5 per cent and heating oil was down nearly 7 per cent.
U.S. crude stockpiles likely rose 3.6 million barrels in the week ended Feb. 5, said the latest Reuters survey ahead of data due at 4:30 p.m. (2130 GMT) from industry group American Petroleum Institute (API). The API data runs before official stockpile numbers on Wednesday from the EIA.
The EIA in a separate report on Tuesday said it has lowered its oil demand growth forecast for 2016 by 110,000 barrels per day and 2017 by 260,000 bpd.
That report came after another the Paris-based IEA said it did not expect global demand for oil to grow quickly enough to erase the overhang of crude any time soon.
The IEA, the West’s energy watchdog, cut its forecast for 2016 oil demand growth, which now stands at 1.17 million barrels per day (bpd) following a five-year high of 1.6 million in 2015, and reduced its estimate of demand for OPEC crude.
“The IEA report was a bearish blow, followed by the EIA report which sings from the same hymn sheet,” said Matt Smith, director of commodity research at energy data provider ClipperData.
The world’s largest oil trader, Vitol, said it expects global oil demand to grow by around 1 million bpd this year, down from last year’s rate 1.6 million bpd.
© Thomson Reuters 2015
Big U.S. companies have lost billions buying their own stock.
Nearly half the companies in a study of the Standard and Poor’s 500 index spent more on these buybacks than the shares are now worth. Combined paper losses from purchases in the past three years for these losers: $126 billion, or 15 per cent of what they paid, according to an Associated Press study based on FactSet data.
The companies with five biggest paper losses:
— IBM: – $9.8 billion
—Qualcomm: -$7.4 billion
— American Express: -$4.1 billion
— Exxon Mobil: -$3.9 billion
— Hess: -$2.9 billion
— Chevron: -$2.8 billion
The post 5 companies that lost the most buying back their own shares appeared first on Canadian Business - Your Source For Business News.
This is Part 2 of a two-part Q&A with Linden Tibbets, CEO and co-founder of IFTTT. For Part 1, click here.
This post also appears on Wearable.ai, which interviews the innovators in wearable computing, IoT and AR. For inquiries, please email publisher Mark Brooks.
IFTTT is an automation service that hopes to bridge the gap between connected devices to create a more seamless experience. IFTTT (which stands for "if this, then that" and rhymes with "gift") allows users of connected devices and digital services to easily integrate them across platforms to better suit their needs.
IFTTT CEO, Linden Tibbets, explains how the newest developments to the platform hope to enhance their experience for both developers and the average Joe.
Mark Brooks: In February 2015, IFTTT split into two apps: IF, which focuses on automation, and DO, an app that allows users to easily trigger an action with the press of a button. How's this division helped simplify things? LT: We see this as the first step of many towards a more rich experience around recipes. The idea of recipes has always been that it could be much, much more than "if this, then that." It could be much richer and at the same time, for the user, it could be much easier to think about. They just need to think about if they want to do this thing or not; whether that uses 2 channel or 200 channels should really be up to the developer to decide what that recipe can do.
That split between DO and IF allowed us to experiment with another type of recipe, a recipe that involves just a press of a button, and we have been really blown away by what people have been able to do with the DO button and DO apps.
It has really enforced that these apps themselves aren't necessarily where all the interaction is. In fact, almost 40% of the button presses that happen within the DO apps happen on the Android Widget and the iOS Today Stream Widget. That was a little bit surprising, but also really in line with the way we thought about the world, and that not everything was going to need to have an app. The way of thinking that you need an app for every single connected device and every single service is really going to be extinct here really soon, and we're going to start looking at new modes of interaction and new ways of making things happen in our world outside of just traditional apps.
MB: Are you finding DO is attracting more users that may feel intimidated by programming? Could this be a gateway app to IF?
LT: Yes, DO certainly has been more attractive to folks who may be a bit intimidated by programming. In fact, we are not setting out to build a programming language for consumers. We think that the idea of a recipe, at the same time it gets richer and more complex, can also get simpler for our general audience.
So we think people with a developer mindset that aren't intimidated by programming are going to continue to build increasingly richer experiences that recipes can represent, and most folk can just decide, Do I want to do this thing? Yes or No.
MB: You currently have hundreds of existing channels and recipes, with users publishing more every day, with so many new connected devices being introduced all the time, and no end in sight, how do you expect IFTTT to evolve to accommodate everyone? LT: This a problem that we are uniquely set up to really tackle. We want to keep things really simple and continue to streamline what using IFTTT and using recipes really means. We want to make it incredibly personal. As we have more and more channels and integrations on IFTTT, there is a better and better chance that those channels can represent the type of devices and services you uniquely use, that are different from someone else.
Our platform is well on its way to allowing developers to really understand what people are doing with their service and create recipes that meet some of those needs that people are trying to express today with simple versions of recipes. We are allowing developers to really go above and beyond IFTTT and DO to address those needs.
MB: There has to be a lot of coding and work that goes into keeping the various APIs working so these recipes will continue to work. This is obviously not cheap, but I don't see advertising on your site or even in the free software that you provide. How does IF currently monetize or plan to monetize in the future? LT: It's actually not a lot of work because of the platform that we've built. We have a developer platform that is still in private Beta, and developers are effectively building and maintaining those integrations for us. So we have really taken a corner on an exciting development, that developers have seen enough value out of being part of the IFTTT ecosystem that now they are doing that work and electing to really build and maintain and improve their integration on IFTTT over time.
That points directly to how we want to monetize. That developer platform is still in its infancy. We plan on heavily investing and making that platform the platform of the future. Not just the way that developers plug into and represent their brand on IFTTT, but really a way for developers to build seamless experiences across services, platforms, and devices.
MB: What is your vision for the future and IOT and IFTTT's role in it? Where would you like to see IFTTT in 5 years time? In 10 years time?
LT: It's no longer profound to say that every single thing in the room you are in right now is going to be connected to the Internet in some way. How that's going to work and what that's going to look like is still anyone's guess, but it will happen. The Internet is going to jump out of our browser and into the real world sooner than we think.
What that represents is that each one of these connected devices and the services built around them is going to be built by a different company or some subset of different companies. The old way of thinking about software was to think about these vertical silos, and we've essentially surrounded ourselves with vertical silos. Some of those silos grew to encompass many vertical silos (like Google, Apple, and Microsoft), and what IFTTT is all about and the part we'd like to play is to allow developers to cut across those silos horizontally and integrate with both the data and the capabilities that each one of those vertical silos represents.
So when we talk about this idea of seamless computing and seamless experiences in the platform that IFTTT is working on, this is going to enable developers to build those seamless experiences and that's what we think the future is all about. A way for everyone to experience a future in which the Internet is both pervasive and friendly and works the way that people want it to.
Our team is incredibly excited about bringing the future about, and I think we are working on some really big and bold new ideas for that platform, for recipes, and for how it all fits together so that in 2016 we are going to deliver in a big way.
For interviews with the innovators in Wearable Computing, IoT & AR, subscribe to the Wearable.ai newsletter.
"... the structures ... have the additional complicating property of not being rigid. This means that they do not merely deflect the shock wave, but they also absorb energy from it at each reflection.
"The removal of energy from the blast in this manner decreases the shock pressure at any given distance from the point of detonation to a value somewhat below that which it would have been in the absence of dissipative objects, such as buildings."
“A report of Ministry of Home Security experts on 39 cases of bombing incidents in different parts of Britain covering all those for which full particulars are available in which Morrison shelters were involved shows how well they have stood up to severe tests of heavy bombing.
“All the incidents were serious. Many of the incidents involved direct hits on the houses concerned, a risk against which it was never claimed these shelters would afford protection. In all of them the houses in which shelters were placed were within the radius of damage by bombs; in 24 there was complete demolition of the house on the shelter.
“A hundred and nineteen people were sheltering in these ‘Morrisons’ and only four were killed. So that 115 out of 119 people were saved. Of these only 7 were seriously injured and 14 slightly injured while 94 escaped uninjured. The majority were able to leave their shelters unaided.”
“The walls of most houses give good shelter from blast and splinters from a bomb falling nearby. The bomb, however, may also bring down part of the house, and additional protection from the fall of walls, floors and ceilings is therefore very essential. This is what the indoor shelter has been designed to give. Where to put it up, which floor? Ground floor if you have no basement. Basement, if you have one. ... Protect windows of the shelter room with fabric netting or cellulose film stuck to the glass (as recommended in Your Home as an Air Raid Shelter). The sides of your table shelter will not keep out small glass splinters.”
“The public outcry about conditions in the largest public shelters, often without sanitation or even lighting, and the appalling inadequacy of the over-loaded and ill-equipped rest centres for the bombed-out led to immediate improvements, but cost Sir John Anderson his job. ... His successor as Home Secretary, Herbert Morrison ...
“The growing reluctance of many people to go out of doors led the new Home Secretary to look again at the need for an indoor shelter… The result was the Morrison shelter, which resembled a large steel table … During the day it could be used as a table and at night it could, with a slight squeeze, accommodate two adults and two small children, lying down. The first were delivered in March 1941 and by the end of the war about 1,100,000 were in use, including a few two-tier models for larger families. Morrisons were supplied free to people earning up to £350 a year and were on sale at about £7 to people earning more. … the Morrison proved the most successful shelter of the war, particularly during the ‘hit and run’ and flying-bomb raids when a family had only a few seconds to get under cover. It was also a good deal easier to erect than an Anderson, and while most people remember their nights in the Anderson with horror, memories of the Morrison shelter are usually good-humoured.
“... A government leaflet, Shelter at Home, pointed out that ‘people have often been rescued from demolished houses because they had taken shelter under an ordinary table... strong enough to bear the weight of the falling bedroom floor’. I frequently worked beneath the solid oak tables in the school library during ‘imminent danger periods’ and, particularly before the arrival of the Morrison, families became accomplished at squeezing beneath the dining table during interrupted meals. ... Although the casualties were mercifully far fewer than expected, the damage to property was far greater. From September 1940 to May 1941 in London alone 1,150,000 houses were damaged ...”
Email remains the most effective digital marketing tool for both B2B and B2C marketers. But the majority of email activity now takes place on mobile devices, and not all marketers have effectively adapted to this rapid shift.
Those are just a couple of the findings in the nearly four dozen email and mobile marketing facts and statistics from 15 different sources compiled below. Five more key takeaways from this research:
Image credit: emailmonday
Email marketing works—for both sellers and buyers. Digital marketers rank email as their most effective marketing tactic, and say it has the highest ROI of any digital channel. It’s also the most effective digital tactic in B2B marketing, with nearly a third of B2B marketers saying it has the biggest impact on revenue. And 72% of U.S. adults prefer communication with companies to happen through email.
Personalized email subject lines: effective, but underused. For B2C emails, personalized subject lines increase the open rate by 41%, and lead to higher transaction rates and revenue per email. Yet only 35% of brands personalize their subject lines.
Mobile email marketing lags consumer adoption. Email is increasingly mobile. The number of mobile email users rose 22% last year and is projected to grow another 23% in 2016. In the second quarter of 2015, roughly two-thirds of emails were opened on mobile devices, with more than half opened on smartphones. Yet 51% have either no strategy for mobile email or only the basics for mobile email optimization in place.
Mobile advertising spending up through results are uncertain. U.S. marketers increased their spending on mobile advertising by 50% in 2015 over the previous year, and the share of budget dollars allocated to mobile marketing is projected to triple in the next three years. Yet most senior marketers say today’s mobile marketing effort perform poorly; 8 in 10 have difficulty tracking mobile ROI; and half of all clicks on mobile ads are accidental.
B2B mobile marketing growing but still small. The percentage of B2B marketing dollars devoted to mobile is expected to nearly triple by 2018—but still account for only 14% of total spending. And while mobile use for B2B purchase research has jumped 91% in the past two years, more than three-quarters of global business executives still prefer to browse content on their laptops or desktops.
And now on to the 45 phenomenal email and mobile marketing stats and facts. Enjoy!
1. The number of email users worldwide is currently 2.6 billion and is expected to grow to over 2.9 billion by 2019. (MediaPost)
2. A large majority of U.S. adults — 72% — prefer communication with companies to happen through email. (MarketingSherpa)
3. Email is the only digital channel that outperforms old media standbys in terms of how consumers prefer communcations with companies — postal mail (preferred by 48%), television ads (preferred by 34%) and print media, such as magazines and newspapers, (preferred by 31%). Only 11% of people prefer mobile apps and just 7% prefer online video ads. (MarketingSherpa)
4. Email is the most effective digital marketing tactic for B2B marketers, with 31% saying it has the biggest impact on revenue. (MarketingProfs)
5. Across all age groups, email is the preferred method of commuicating with companies (with about three-quarters of consumers/buyers choosing this). However, while more than 60% of those aged 55 and older like to communicate with companies by postal mail, just 29% of millennials say the same. (MarketingSherpa)
6. Personalized email subject lines increase open rates–but the effect varies considerably across industries. Personalizing the subject line increases open rates for consumer products and services by 41%, versus 13% for B2B emails. (MarketingSherpa)
7. For consumer products and services, personalizing email subject lines also increases transaction rates by 49%, and revenue per email by 73%. (MarketingSherpa)
8. And yet–only 35% of brands personalize their email subect lines. (MarketingSherpa)
9. 46% of startups use email marketing. (TNW News)
10. Digital marketers rank email as their top marketing tactic, with 54% saying it’s their most effective channel and just 11% calling it the most difficult. Mobile marketing and SMS, however, ranked near the bottom in the same survey, with just 9% citing it as their most effective tactic while 34% viewed it as the most difficult. (TNW News)
11. Email is viewed as the most effective digital marketing tactic for customer retention purposes. But while 56% of marketers viewed email as an effective retention tactic, just 8% said the same for mobile advertising. (TNW News)
12. Direct marketers say email has the highest ROI of any marketing tactics. Mobile falls near the bottom of the list, however, below direct mail and just ahead of paid search advertising. (TNW News)
13. Asked about all the different devices they use to open and read emails, 93% of consumers use a laptop or desktop computer; 67% use a smartphone; and 42% use tablets. (Email Monday)
14. Asked why they unsubscribe from brand emails, 33% of consumers said they do so because mailings are too frequent. 24% unsubscribe because the content is repetitive and boring. (SocialTimes)
15. 57% of consumers will not recommend a business with a poorly designed mobile site. (Payfirma)
16. 61% of people have a better opinion of brands when they offer a good mobile experience. (Payfirma)
17. 73% of all the people on earth (5.2 billion) are mobile phone users. 40% of those (just over two billion) own smartphones. (Mary Meeker’s Internet Trends)
18. 44% of millennials use their smartphones’ camera or video functions at least daily; an astounding 87% use those features at least once per week. 76% share photos and video on social media. (Mary Meeker’s Internet Trends)
19. Mobile accounted 45% share of US organic search traffic in the first part of 2015 (based primarily on retail / B2C client data). The iPhone (18%) and iPad (12%) alone contributed a combined 30% of organic search traffic. (e-Strategy Trends)
20. Two-thirds of all U.S. emails were opened via mobile in the first quarter of last year. Half were accessed on smartphones, and 17% occurred on a tablet, with the remaining 33% being opened on your traditional desktop. (V3 Broadsuite Blog)
21. The number of mobile e-mail users is predicted to grow 22% in 2015 and 23% in 2016. (Email Monday)
22. 17% of marketers admit they have no strategy for mobile email, while 34% have the basics for mobile email optimization in place. Just 21% say they have an advanced mobile email strategy. (Email Monday)
23. A study of B2C (primarily retail) email campaigns found that in the first quarter of 2015, mobile opens (50.12%) have surpassed desktop opens (32.97%). What’s more, 36.6% of people make purchases on a desktop, while 49.3% of people make purchases on smartphones. (MarketingSherpa)
24. In the second quarter of 2015, nearly 68% of emails were opened on a mobile device, with 52% of those being opened on smartphones. The desktop saw just over 32 percent of email opens. (MarketingLand)
25. However–almost 53% of all conversions in 2Q15 were on the PC. Smartphones drove 29% of conversions and tablets 18%. (MarketingLand)
26. The iPhone is the single dominant mobile email reading device, but its users spend the least amount of time looking at individual emails. Mobile devices drive more opens but far fewer conversions (example: iPhone: 42% of opens, 18% of conversions). (MarketingLand)
27. The share of budget dollars spent on mobile marketing by B2B marketers is expected to nearly triple in the next three years, from 5% today to about 14%. B2C marketers plan to increase the portion of budgets spent on mobile from 8% today to about 20%–even though most senior marketers say today’s mobile marketing efforts perform poorly. (The CMO Survey)
28. Total online ad spending in the U.S. is $50 billion, of which $13 billion is spent on mobile ads. (Mary Meeker’s Internet Trends)
29. 8% of total U.S. ad spending is on mobile, though it accounts for 24% of all media consumption. Meanwhile, 18% of all ad spending is on print–which accounts for just 4% of media use. (Mary Meeker’s Internet Trends)
30. The media and entertainment industries have been aggressive with mobile marketing. Advertising on mobile devices accounted for nearly 54% percent of digital ad spending in the entertainment industry in 2015. Media brands devoted 51% of their digital advertising spending to mobile, with 51 percent. (V3 Broadsuite Blog)
31. And yet–when conducting research to help make significant business decisions, 78% of global business executives prefer to browse content on their laptop or desktop computers (vs. 7% for smartphones). (MarketingSherpa)
32. U.S. marketers increased their spending on mobile advertising by 50% over 2014 to $28.72 billion in 2015. (MediaPost)
33. Despite its projected growth, however, much of the impact of mobile marketing is still difficult to measure. Nearly eight in 10 U.S. marketers said they would increase spending on mobile if they could track return on investment (ROI) better. (MediaPost)
34. About 50% of clicks on mobile ads are accidental. (GoldSpot Media)
35. One in four mobile online shoppers in the US is over the age of 55. (Payfirma)
36. Mobile is projects to account for 25% of all U.S. online sales by 2017, and mobile devices will account for 30% of global retail e-commerce spending by 2018. (Payfirma)
37. 90% of those aged 18-35 have used their mobile device in store. (Payfirma)
38. Email marketing typically represents about 20% of retail traffic, and often a higher share of orders (25-30% for some retailers). While phones represent about 18% of orders, over 50% of emails are opened on phones. (MarketingSherpa)
39. Facebook and Twitter reported that mobile revenue in 2Q15 made up 76% and 88% of their total revenue, respectively. (MediaPost)
40. Marketers who use email in combination with social sharing can drive six times more revenue. Social sharing buttons have been shown to push click-through rates 158% higher. (MediaPost)
41. 189 million Facebook users are “mobile only.” (Cloudswave)
42. 27% of brand mentions on Twitter come from an iPhone and 18% come from an Android device. 21% come from a web browser. (Infini Datum)
43. 42% of B2B buying researchers use a mobile device during the B2B purchasing process. Mobile use for B2B purchase research has grown 91% in the past two years. (MediaPost)
44. 49% of B2B researchers who use their mobile devices for product research do so while at work. They’re comparing prices, reading about products, comparing feature sets and contacting retailers. They’re purchasing, too; purchase rates on mobile are up 22% in the past two years. (MediaPost)
45. 89% of B2B technology marketers say they use email to market their products. However, just 15% run mobile campaigns. (MarketingProfs)
LinkedIn has proven itself as one of the most effective platforms for generating leads and sales, and it’s easy to see why.
Combining all of the social connectivity features of other media platforms with a focus on users’ professional lives means being able to identify and directly connect with potential customers in positions or at companies who can use the service you offer. SaaS startups, in particular, can use LinkedIn to boost initial activity and interest, and it is a great platform for nurturing existing relationships, which is essential for SaaS companies.
Below, we share four SaaS marketing tips that startups can use to boost brand awareness and user engagement on LinkedIn and drive results:
With LinkedIn, you can join groups related to your industry, which can be an effective way of both connecting with people who can use your service and determining areas for optimization. Keep in mind that LinkedIn groups aren’t the place for hard sells. We recommend making sure the content you distribute is related to industry happenings, and position yourself as someone who is a valid resource and engaged within the industry.
LinkedIn is a great place to publish blog content since it makes sure that you are attracting eyes that can easily turn into conversions for your business. While it’s always a good idea to publicize your content across multiple platforms, maintaining a consistent presence on LinkedIn can help position you as thought leader within your industry. This is a great way for SaaS startups to show potential customers that you are an authority in your respected field, and that paying for your service will be well worth it.
There’s a canal I like to run beside in the city of Ottawa that’s cleaned out twice a year. Before the winter season, the water’s drained and the litter removed so it’s smooth for ice skating. Once the spring thaw hits, the canal is flooded and more debris floats to the surface to be taken out ahead of boating weather. This cleaning process is what allows the canal to be fully enjoyed by residents and tourists alike. It’s also similar to how we run our businesses.
We all need to regularly spring clean our sales approach in order to function at our best. This means completing an inventory of how we interact with prospects and customers and getting rid of the strategies and selling tools that just aren’t working. After all, a key element of sales success is about accurately meeting the needs of our audience, which is hard to do if you’re surrounded by the clutter of outdated methods.
Here’s a Top 10 list of the most common sales issues I see when coaching and consulting clients. By spring cleaning your approach, you can avoid making mistakes that stand in the way of closing new deals and retaining great clients.
1. Continually selling to no-potential buyers
Many salespeople fall into this trap. They hold onto a long list of poor-quality leads in their pipeline simply because they believe there’s safety to be gained with padded numbers. But bad leads will always be bad leads and will only suck time and resources out of your day. Either you qualify them in your pipeline, or you spring clean and send that list of bad leads to the garbage bin.
2. Sounding like a skipping record with old testimonials and references
Your testimonials must be current, compelling and credible! Prospects want to know if your products and services work in today’s marketplace — not the one from five or 10 years ago. This point applies similarly to references. You can’t reinforce your “social proof” in the eyes of prospects if your references can’t be reached, are retired, or simply shouldn’t be references at all. Case in point for that last item? Years ago I was with a company that sold software to Enron (very legally.) They were a great customer to work with at that time. Obviously, however, I couldn’t use them as a reference today!
So, the moral of the story? Find new references from your current clients. And do it regularly.
3. Appearing too ‘scripted” on calls
Be objective. Are you using “salesy” sounding language in your script? Do you resemble a radio ad or a telemarketer? Are you talking more than listening on your first call to a prospect? If you answered “yes” to any one of these three questions, you need to spring clean your approach and start over. By all means practice and know what to say to potential buyers, but make sure it becomes internalized so you can then focus on personalizing the dialogue for each prospect.
4. Not creating a buying vision
Effective sales conversations need to emphasize the results your buyer is looking for. Make sure these discussions utilize real-life success stories, case studies and business-use situations that create a vision for your customer of how your solution will be implemented successfully in their company. And, as mentioned in Number 2, spring clean the older materials and replace them with current examples.
5. Choosing only one marketing channel to reach customers
To get attention and be memorable in the eyes of prospects and clients, you need to implement an omni-media approach. As I discussed in Nonstop Sales Boom, you should spring clean your old methods and aim to be ubiquitous. From websites to social media, from paper-based marketing to face-to-face meetings, invest time in ensuring your message is loud and clear across a number of platforms. Each marketing channel is capable of contributing something unique to the buying experience of your customers.
6. Using cold calls as your primary lead source
You should shake your head about this one! Last year, only 3 percent of all sales were closed from cold calls. The other 97 percent? Those came from a range of sources, including client referrals, web inquiries, whitepaper/trial downloads, and live chat conversations. Spring clean your cold-call approach as your top lead generator. There are field-tested alternatives out there (including the ones I’ve mentioned) that will yield much better returns in less time.
7. Caving when your client wants a lower price
Trash this approach! Instead, emphasize the value of what you offer to your customer and provide options rather than discounts. Also, position yourself uniquely in the market so you have less direct competition.
8. Depending on your client for referrals
Asking clients, “Who do you know?” in order to score referrals should be scrapped immediately. That question almost always yields disappointing results because it’s not specific enough and puts the onus on the customer to do all the work. That’s why the most common answer you’ll hear is: “No one comes to mind right now, but let me think about it and get back to you.” Guess what? You’ll almost never hear from them again. Instead, try this approach:
“I would like to meet Randy Smith at the XYZ Company. Can you help me with an introduction?”
Or:
“I’d love to meet your VP of Sales. Can you help me with an introduction?”
And here’s one more winning approach:
“I’m going to be calling Randy Smith at the XYZ Company this week. Can I tell him we’re doing great business together?”
9. Ignoring your leads
In my experience, I’ve found the vast majority of sales leads aren’t ready to close until there have been as many as seven follow-ups. If you regularly make fewer attempts to touch base with potential buyers, spring clean this approach. Instead, increase follow-ups by investing in the ubiquitous, omni-media approach mentioned in Number 5. Keep track of every attempt with CRM software or at least a spreadsheet. Skip relying on just sticky notes or Outlook!
10. Being unfocused
A few years ago, some salespeople could manage to eek out a living while being lazy — just sitting by the phone and waiting to take orders. In today’s economy, however, the only way to succeed is by being disciplined in how you work. It’s time to toss out those days without any scheduling and replace them with structured business hours in which prospect development and client contact are top priorities. Fill those empty blocks on your calendar with activities to build up your prospecting pipeline.
If you’ve been using any of the Top 10 poor selling strategies above, the chances are good your results are suffering. In today’s economy, what was five years ago no longer works. Sure, this message is a dose of tough love, but it’s necessary.
Make a decision right now to spring clean the methods that aren’t working for you. You can’t afford to be trapped any longer by a pile of business habits that prevent prospects from becoming customers — and new customers from becoming repeat ones! Look objectively at how you work and choose three things you can change right now. Down the road, when you measure your results, you’ll find you’ve generated a rather tidy new profit!
