Rnordman

Much has changed in the past four months of the technology startup world and how outsiders value the business. Of course it’s too early to predict whether this is a trend or an aberration but the smartest people I know in the industry are predicting the former.

The startup industry may be “resetting,” which doesn’t mean a “crash” but rather just a resetting of valuations, timescales, winners/losers, capital sources and the relative emphasis of growth rates vs. burn rates.

As we noted in our  survey of more than 150 VCs we know in the industry, many saw drops in Q4 valuations last year with nearly all of them projecting decreases in 2016.

And when prices are dropping on a VCs existing companies in market, there is a substantial reduction in FOMO (fear of missing out) for new deals, which means that investors take their time in making investment decisions. Deflationary economics are well understood – in a market when prices are dropping one prefers to wait a few months to see if prices stabilizes before committing. We do this in our consumer lives with everything ranging from housing purchases to public stocks.

Why does this matter?

The single best (and most important) article I’ve read on the topic was published today by Joseph Floyd asking whether Black Friday was a DiSaaSter or a Reversion to the Mean. That’s economics (or statistics) for asking whether price ratios of how investors value companies was simply coming back to historical norms. You should read the article but I’ll provide the money shot

So here’s my take away

• If you raised money in the past 2 years and have grown it is possible that your next round valuation might be flat (or lower) even though you have a higher revenue because investors may value your multiple differently
• Investors are rewarding cautious growth more than high-burn-rate growth at all except the most successful of companies (and even there it may eventually change)
• The smartest companies in the market that I know are working aggressively to lower burn rates through pragmatic cost cutting knowing that the next fund-raising cycle may be unpleasant. This prudence is smart and welcomed
• I’ve heard enough companies say “we simply can’t cut costs or it will hurt the long-term potential of the business” to get a wry smile. We entrepreneurs have been spinning that line for decades in every boom cycle. It’s simply not true. Pragmatic cost cuts are always possible and often productive.
• If you can get a round done at the price you expect – well done. I’m not rooting against anybody. But I would point out that raising money is an existential event and I think in the coming 12-18 months you may see loss ratios (companies going out of business or selling in fire sales) go up. So if your fund raising isn’t moving consider lowering price to shore up your balance sheet and reduce risk. Optimize for a W more than % dilution in these circumstances
• Don’t assume that you can “just do a down round” if necessary. Down rounds are corrosive. Insiders hate them and fight them. Outsiders hate them because they are worried about pissing off your existing investors. Employees hate them because it’s hard to reset expectations that their stock is worth less. Founders hate them because they’re dilutive. The terrible consequence is that some great companies struggle to get financed. New investors often prefer to back newer companies that have never been through this drama.

In my mind this simply means

• Start early
• Give yourself enough runway but controlling costs
• Be realistic on valuation
• If you need to clean up your own cap table first – while very hard to do – it will make outside funding easier
• If you haven’t raised lots of money in the past be very thoughtful of the trade-offs between easy money (party rounds, crowd funding, leaderless deals) at higher prices vs. more committed capital that can be lower price and harder to raise but more committed in tough times. I am a VC so this will be seen as self serving. But given that I’m not likely to back 99.999% of the people reading this (I do 2-3 deals maximum per year as a VC) I’m really just trying to offer honest advice.

The days of easy money may be slowing down. And please consider reading Joseph’s article on TechCrunch. It applies to all startups – not just SaaS.

Great companies will continue to be built and many will tell you that building a great company in capital constrained markets in some senses builds a more sustainable company. The best deals will continue to get financed. This isn’t a fire alarm. Just a message to less experienced entrepreneurs that the capital markets may have begun to change and if you’re not aware of how this could affect you then you could be a casualty. The last few funding corrections saw many great companies disappear due to bad capital planning / high burn rates.

 

Universal Studios Hollywood is preparing for an onslaught of visitors when its new attraction, The Wizarding World of Harry Potter arrives this spring

Every business has the same New Year’s resolution year after year. What is it? To increase sales, of course! In business, sales are obviously crucial to a company’s success. So, how should you go about doubling sales in 2016 and mastering your resolution? Here are three ways to do so:

Pricing Strategies

Taking a closer look at your current pricing strategy can do a lot for your bottom line in 2016. Higher priced products are perceived to be of higher quality to the consumer. Sometimes, pricing your product too low makes potential customers’ associate your product with low quality goods. Use in-store marketing to test different pricing strategies and see how your product performs at a higher price. If the market responds to this raised price, move forward with this pricing adjustment to see an immediate increase in sales, not just from the higher price per unit, but also from the rise in interest thanks to its new high quality perception.

In some cases, lowering your product’s price may work as well. Depending on your product, it may make sense to test lowering your price to see whether that draws the interest of more consumers. This works especially well to increase revenue for products with smaller margins where quantity sold is key.

Marketing

When done properly, marketing will always lead to higher sales. In-store marketing should take advantage of point-of-sale displays and product location for the best chance of success. Figure out what works best for your product by testing different displays, using a variety of colors and ad copy to see what draws in the highest number of customers. Do you sell candy bars? Test whether you sell more units when placed in the candy aisle or at the checkout counter and use this information to guide you when you branch out into new stores.

Outside of the store, test different marketing channels, including paid promotion on social media, TV commercials, magazine advertisements and banner ads. After a campaign is complete, be sure to go back and analyze the results to see if it was worth repeating. The best way to figure out which marketing method works for you is to try it and see, so in 2016, take the initiative to do so.

Expand Distribution

Increasing the distribution of your product obviously means more consumers will be exposed to it, thus leading to more sales. However, to do this effectively and efficiently, the expansion should be handled by experienced distributors who will be able to perform market tests. These distributors will be able to test whether your product is in higher demand within certain states or through specific retailers. With this knowledge, you’ll be able to make smarter business decisions on expanding the reach (and the sales) of your products.

How do you plan on doubling revenue in 2016? Tell us your strategy in the comments below!

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GUEST:

We’ve all heard the dismal news that women are underrepresented in the technology sector. While women represent 59 percent of the workforce, they only represent 26 percent of employees in technology. Over time, there has been a downward trend in the number of women with careers in technology. Even if they start out in technology, they often leave the field. The question is not should we be doing something about this disparity, but rather what can we do, and how? It’s clear that tech companies want to hire more women, but there have been few tangible plans of action put forward on how to catalyze change.

To help fix that, here are six tactics that my company has rolled out (so far, successfully) to keep women on our team:

1. Value performance over politics: A major barrier for women is often company culture. The optimal culture to keep females in technology is one where performance and competencies are valued over social ties and relationships. Evaluate your culture and subcultures. Are you intentionally determining your corporate culture, or are you leaving it to entropy? Culture change starts from the top. Executives should even the playing field for women by encouraging a culture deeply rooted in measurable performance. Establish metrics and KPIs to evaluate the success of the company, down to each employee. Communicate goals clearly, track progress, and hold employees accountable. Create a robust recognition program to celebrate employee success. This will foster an environment where performance, productivity, and creativity prevail over after-hour relationships and social ties.

2. Create a social environment where everyone can participate: Socializing with peers provides for greater employee engagement. To further level the playing field, companies can provide opportunities for employees to socialize where everyone can participate without hindrance from outside obligations. For example, at our company, we host a social hour with refreshments every Friday afternoon. This gives employees a chance to bond with peers that they may not interact with on a daily basis. An inclusive employee engagement strategy that allows time for socializing will build comradery, understanding, and rapport and increase positive communication across the organization.

3. Cut out the stereotypes: Most tech leaders consider themselves supportive of women in the workplace, but sometimes stereotypes and value judgments seep in unconsciously. A common example is when a female colleague leaves work early to pick up her children from school. A colleague may roll his eyes, thinking that women with children don’t work long hours. Meanwhile, she may have been at the office hours before he even hit the snooze button on his alarm clock. Another common example is when a manager softens negative feedback given to a female employee for fear of hurting her feelings. While well intentioned, it may set her back. By not receiving honest feedback, she won’t have an accurate picture of her performance and what to improve to get to the next level.

4. Offer creative perks: Since women are underrepresented in tech companies, competition is fierce for top female talent. Aside from competitive pay and basic benefits, creative perks can really give your organization an edge. You don’t need to go the extent of offering on-site childcare or a full year of paid maternity leave. For smaller companies, these types of programs just aren’t feasible. You can get creative by offering perks like having flex work schedules or an unlimited vacation policy. Flex schedules and unlimited vacation work exceptionally well in performance-based cultures, since there isn’t always a correlation between time spent in the office and productivity. You can also work with local businesses to offer “convenience” perks that are of no cost to your company. For example, we have a dry-cleaning service that picks up and drops off directly to our office. Consider crowdsourcing ideas from your workforce to ensure your perks are relevant and will be appreciated.

5. Establish individual development plans: You can bring in outside consultants for leadership coaching or create an internal mentoring program. Make sure that your female employees have equal access to training and development. A well-thought out development plan demonstrates commitment by the organization to an individual’s growth. Companies should provide females equal opportunities for upward mobility, but they need to be careful not to promote an employee before they are ready. You can do great harm to a budding career with a premature promotion. If the individual doesn’t have the right tools to succeed in a new role, performance will suffer. Individual Development Plans will ensure that you are getting the right tools to the future leaders of your organization.

6. Support and encourage community and industry involvement: Encourage employees to get involved in industry events and organizations by serving on boards, sitting on panels, and participating in round tables. Provide opportunities for them to exhibit thought leadership. This approach provides more opportunities for females to shine externally and create relationships with potential mentors that may not yet exist within your organization. Encourage successful females in your company to mentor others. Consider getting involved in enrichment events that support the initiative to increase women in technology. For example, my company is involved in GirlCode LA, where we put on programming for young women interested in technology careers. Our commitment to these types of events makes employees feel they are in a place that truly cares about gender diversity. We are also helping to increase the future talent pool of women by inspiring more girls to pursue careers in technology.

Because the tech industry has become a huge player in our economy, culture, and way of life, it makes little sense for it to be a homogenous environment. Underutilizing women in the workplace will cause companies to miss out on incredibly talented and insightful employees. As an industry, we need to work together and make a commitment to reverse the trend and bring women back to tech.

Sarah Wetzel is Human Resources Director at engage:BDR.

Marketing and Sales Silos Be Gone

I began my career in technology sales….After ten years in sales I transitioned to marketing…After ten years in corporate marketing positions, I launched my agency…During my years in corporate positions (both sales and marketing) I remember the silos being obstacles. The turf wars were downright silly. Sales always wanted more value from marketing, and marketing always expected more results from sales.

In the current age, the availability of marketing technology has enabled sales and marketing to collaborate more than ever before. But, in my agency experience working with clients across many B2B industries, the silos remain.

Today, the marketing department is expected to create brand awareness, generate demand, conduct campaigns and hand over qualified leads to sales. While marketing is busy filling the funnel through content marketing, outbound marketing and inbound marketing, the CRM system configuration necessitates an intelligent approach to scoring leads so that sales only gets the leads that meet the “qualification criteria.”

And, the silos remain…

Here’s how Sarah Goodall frames it up when addressing the silo mindset between sales and marketing.

“I suggest we both need to shift our effort, focus and budget to a united sales and marketing model that attracts audiences to our brand. A model where customers want to engage with us.

Less pushing. More pulling.

So what do you reckon? How about we make 2016 the year where we align around the customer and not just around the numbers?”

Sarah nails it! Read her full article on LinkedIn here. Sarah is making the case for a strategy that centers on attracting the customer to engage with us by providing enough insight and value so that the customer wants to engage with us.

Since aligning sales and marketing has been such a long-standing challenge in business, maybe it’s time we shake up the org chart? Maybe it’s time we have a C-Level person focused on the customer’s entire journey with a brand….Not just customer service.

I’d like to see a C-Level leader responsible for the entire customer’s journey starting with the top of the funnel customer attraction, all the way through purchase and ongoing support. This approach would require sales and marketing to be aligned around the customer under one common boss.

What if the entire customer journey was owned by one C-Level exec? Maybe….Just maybe, we’d finally have alignment between sales and marketing.

Editor's note: This post originally appeared on HubSpot's Marketing Blog. For more content like this, subscribe to Marketing. 

My second job out of college was with an incredible startup political agency called the Glover Park Group. It's now a much larger and more successful agency, but at the time it was just a tiny company with a huge vision.

I got the job because a woman my mother used to babysit for growing up was friends with one of the partners of the firm in New York. I was en route from a work trip at the Denver Airport when I received a call from her that'd end up changing my career path ... and my life.

The job gave me a passion for working alongside scrappy, smart people, taught me how to tell a compelling story, and introduced me to some dear life-long friends. And I have one woman's network to thank for it all -- a network that likely took her a lot of time and energy to build. 

The lesson? Well, this one connection taught me that casting a wider, more open network can unlock opportunities you may not even know exist from your current vantage point. And that networking is an unparalleled skill for people -- both young and old -- to have. 

So to help you hone your own networking abilities, check out the ten tips below. (You can send us a cut of your raise and promotion later.)

10 Ways to Make Meaningful Business Connections

1) Be shockingly helpful.

HubSpot’s co-founder and CTO, Dharmesh Shah, has an expression I come back to every time I think about networking: the notion of being shockingly helpful.

Starting here will fundamentally help you rethink how you network. If you start with the intention of meaningfully helping 10 people in a month, your bar for who you reach out to and the value you offer goes up, as does the quality of the potential interaction.

Start with a list of who you can help in your immediate network, and once you’ve warmed up your shockingly helpful muscles, expand your network each week. Doing so will pay significant dividends over time.

2) Play Eventbrite roulette.

One of the challenges with the very nature of networks is that we are all inclined to self-select based on our interests and existing habits. But doing the same things to network will give you the exact same results.

To combat this, try playing Eventbrite Roulette. Search for events happening in your area in the upcoming week and attend the third event that shows up on the page (or pick your lucky number as you see fit). If you’re the more traditional sort, look at the events board at your local coffee shop or library and attend the event that represents the furthest possible departure from your current comfort zone.

Whatever you do, resolve to go, enjoy the new experience, and say hello to five new people. Sometimes the act of attending an event you wouldn’t typically otherwise gravitate to will start to open your eyes and habits to new connections and creativity you might otherwise miss.

3) Shake up your social networks.

If you look at a scatter plot of your connections on Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, and LinkedIn, chances are your network lines up roughly to past jobs you have had, schools you have attended, and places you have lived.

It's safe to say that our social networks have a significant impact on the content we consume and share on a regular basis. That said, the constraints of your existing network often create a virtuous closed loop.

Resolve to follow ten new people on Twitter and LinkedIn this week. But instead of taking the algorithm-suggested options, identify a few people who are experts in things you know nothing about. Just the act of following them will help open up your perspective and likely lead you to some adjacent people worth learning from as well.

4) Strengthen your weakest connections.

Mark Granovetter’s research on the power of weak ties revealed that a vast majority of people got their jobs through people they occasionally or rarely see -- dating back to as early as 1973. While job hunting has changed significantly since 1973, the importance of passive connections has not: it’s rare that your best friend will refer you to your next job, but much more likely that an old classmate, neighbor, or friend of a friend will. 

Given that, set a reminder in your calendar weekly to reach out to someone you haven’t spoken to in six months. Your outreach could be a simple hello or an invitation to coffee, but I typically find that leads to transactional emails and delayed or often canceled plans. Another -- perhaps more effective -- strategy? Ask folks about the best thing they have read or listened to lately. Doing so is friendly, flattering, and frankly not as boring as typical professional correspondence. 

5) Rethink your event networking strategy.

I’m amazed at how many people spend events they attend entirely with people they know. After all, the whole point of leaving your office should be to meet people or learn things you might not otherwise. To ensure you always make the most of it, approach every event you attend with a plan.

To get started, search the event agenda and hashtag to identify people you’d like to meet who are attending or speaking and challenge yourself to connect with each of them. Instead of joining the packed crowds of people talking to speakers after they conclude, set up time to talk to speakers a few hours before they go on stage. Can't snag time with them? Go the "shockingly helpful" route and create compelling blogs about their talks to help spread their message and insights more broadly.

6) Gather an unconventional group.

As humans, we collectively resist uncertainty and change. If you vaguely suggest a group outing with a bunch of people who don’t know each other well to hang out, chances are you’ll end up making plans for sometime next year.

Instead, choose an activity that is reasonably inexpensive and fun, then pick a date and time to do it. Send a personalized invite to five people to join you, none of whom have met prior to the outing, and make it clear that the purpose of the evening is to have fun and meet new people.

Chances are, you’ll find a group who never would have thought to go oyster shucking, photo walking, or art gallery gazing on their own, but who are super grateful that you put it together. In addition to planning a fun night, send an email thanking everyone after so that your loose connections get the benefit of each other’s networks as well.

7) Be fearless.

In her book, Why Not Me?, Mindy Kaling suggests that you “make a list of the people you think would make the greatest mentors and try to get close enough to steal their Wi-Fi.”

While her approach is tongue in cheek, most of us have people we admire from afar for their smarts, insight, or ambition ... but we never approach them. 

If you’re in this boat, I recommend checking out Jia Jiang for inspiration. Based on his experience facing rejection first hand, Jiang warns that fear or rejection leads people to ultimately say no to themselves. Don’t let the obstacle to building a large open network be your own fear or rejection. Instead, create an ambitious list of people you want to learn from and identify creative ways to make it happen.

8) Take the road less traveled.

Most often, people forget to network until external signals suggest they do so. For example, when a speech ends, we crowd the speaker to make an introduction, and then reach out on LinkedIn shortly thereafter. Or, when someone gets a new high-powered job at a great company, we send a congratulations text message. While all of these things are well and good, they rarely open up new channels or streams of communications simply because they transpire en masse.

My dad took this idea to heart early on: Rather than sending out holiday cards that'll likely get lost in a pile, he sends St. Patrick’s Day cards instead. The lesson? Identify one creative way to take the networking road less traveled and seize the opportunity to meaningfully engage with someone new. You’ll stand out from the pack and increase your likelihood of success in the process.

9) Calendar your networking time.

If you’re like most busy people, your calendar is packed with obligations and transactions. If you have time blocked for networking, chances are it’s for a specific purpose, such as an active job hunt.

Instead of waiting for serendipity to bring new people to you, put an hour on your calendar each week specifically focused on expanding your network. Ask a friend who the most interesting person they know is and go meet them. Email a blog author whose content you love with a specific comment or question about his or her work. Reconnect with an old colleague whose work you always admired. Sometimes these conversations will lead nowhere, but many will generate new ideas, connections, and creativity, so it’s worth the break in the action from your usual busy day.

10) Think like a journalist.

Using people’s passions as an entry point to learn from them is far more likely to stick than a standard request for more information about their company or career. With this in mind, channel your inner journalist and generate questions that unleash what people know or love about a subject you know very little about.

I once connected with a reporter I wanted to chat with by citing a Mighty Ducks quote deep in his Twitter stream (Emilio Estevez helps in any networking conversation, by the way). I also made one of my best friends in Manhattan by talking to her parents about Ohio State football. The lesson? These jumping off points go beyond standard small talk about weather and politics, and help you uncover more interesting stories and takeaways from people. 

Ready to Get Started?

Large, open networks have the power to create countless opportunities for connection, career growth, creativity, and collaboration. Yet most people put off networking because they view it as arduous or a waste of time.

I think it's just the opposite. And after hearing my story, I'd hope you're with me.

In the words of Sonia Sotomayor, "To succeed in this world you have to be known to people." You never know who will change your career or life the most, and it's never too late to get started. So what are you waiting for? 

What's the best networking advice you've ever received? Share you thoughts below.

 

While apps continue to dominate the mobile market, many business owners looking to build one are thrown for a loop by endless trends and terminology. There’s a lot to learn, but if you have to settle on one thing, make it the push notification. More complex and robust than the text message, push represents the modern wave of communication that puts more power in the business owner’s hands, and it’s arguably the best ROI feature of all.

Like texts, push notifications deliver straight to users’ phones when they’ve installed an app. Unlike texts, they have a wide range of customization options that can increase user engagement. So as a business owner, you’re probably asking yourself a few questions:

• What are the main benefits?
• How do they work?
• What best practices should I follow?

We’ve got you.

Why do people use push notifications?

The power of the push depends on your perspective. To users, the push notification represents instant access to information with little to no energy on their part. Want to know if someone scored on your Fantasy Football team? Worried about traffic? Looking for the latest deals? Push notifications deliver key info without costing users time or money.

For businesses, push notifications offer a wealth of benefits:

• Share deals and promotions instantly
• Improve customer communication without impacting your schedule
• Automate internal processes
• Up visibility just by establishing a mobile presence

How do I send them?

Your app developer will typically provide an interface for crafting and sending push notifications. A well-developed interface provides a slew of marketing benefits, including user segmentation and engagement stats. You can target the right person with the right messaging rather than bombard everyone with the same tired, generalized campaigns. Users are more likely to appreciate what you push when they recognize personalization.

How do my customers opt in?

iOS and Android handle push notification opt-ins differently. iOS users are prompted to enable push notifications when they launch an app for the first time, while Android users are opted in automatically (and disabling them takes a little elbow grease). There are benefits to both approaches. The reaction rate—or number of users who actually interact with push notifications—is obviously higher for Android users, who don’t have a choice in the matter. But they’re also more likely to feel spammed without consent, leading some of the industry’s biggest tech journalists to join the app annoyance discussion.

Apple’s approach is a little more calculated; iOS users say yes or no from the start, putting them in control of whatever follows. When an iOS user gets alerts, they’re generally conscious of the fact that they agreed to them at some point. In any case, the most important factor to consider is the value of the message you’re sending.

What makes a push notification valuable?

Regardless of how users opt in, it’s key that they’re rewarded with messages that are worth their time. A push notification is an extremely beneficial tool—a direct line to your customers’ primary communication tool. As the saying goes, “With great power comes great responsibility.” If you get too “pushy,” you may get booted from the list. On the other hand, if you’re underutilizing push notifications, both you and your customers are losing out on value.

So what is “value”? Your push notifications should encourage user action that benefits them and informs you. While they redeem offers or learn something new, you reap the ROI rewards and analyze engagement data to iterate on your marketing strategy. It removes the guesswork, giving you direct insight into what’s working and what’s falling short so you can continue to modify and monetize.

How do push notifications appear?

Both operating systems have banner notifications that pop up at the top of the screen when the device is in use, as well as a notification center that users can access by swiping downward. iOS users enjoy a bit more control—they can customize individual app notifications, from sounds and vibrations to notification type (banner, alert, badge app icon). Some users enable sound alerts while others keep it silent, opting for vibrations or nothing at all. Overall, it makes for a highly personalized experience.

What are location services?

Both Android and iOS prompt users to enable location services. When a user opts in, the device periodically sends location info to the app. This is a fantastic feature for both businesses and users because it facilitates targeted, relevant messaging. Taco Bell has mastered marketing via location services with its “Happier Hour” campaign. The app sends deals and coupons to users when they’re nearby a location. Similarly, Groupon notifies you when you’re close to a business you’ve purchased a coupon from, increasing redemption rates.

Location services ultimately help you give your customers the special treatment they want, popping up on their screens at the moment they’re most likely to engage. It’s a simple way to say, “Hey, I know you’re in the area, and we have a great deal for you.”

How can I effectively use push notifications?

Determining how often and what to push takes some thought. First and foremost, make sure you’re considering the value a message holds to the end user. Don’t overdo it and spam the heck out of their devices, but don’t underdo it and waste your money on an app that’s not meeting its full potential. If you know your customers personally, you already have enough insight to avoid the most common mistakes. Bottom line, analyze the trends, and then use them to your advantage.

I’ve already told you why nobody is responding to your cold email pitch. I’ve also shared what has the potential to pay off.

Get to the point. Get specific. A 500-word, cold email pitch is not the place for a deep dive into every detail about your company and solutions. Those emails rarely work. Creating an email pitch that converts requires thought, preparation, customization and genuine care for the customer.

Even the most effective cold email campaigns net an extremely low conversion. I speak from personal experience. Email is the bane of my existence. My inbox is a disaster and an incredible time suck. A poorly-constructed cold pitch with zero customization immediately moves my feelings about a supplier from neutral to negative.

Want to know what’s even worse?

Cold email campaigns that attempt to shame me into taking action. It never works. The damage to your reputation isn’t worth a couple of deals, anyway.

Here are a few real-life examples. Would any of these cold pitch efforts shame you into a more urgent response back to the sales organization?

Were you able to get around to my email? I want to make sure that my last email didn’t fall between the cracks, or in spam.

I’ve sent a few emails your way and think it still makes sense for us to connect for 10 minutes. I wanted to share this blog post. Are you free for a call today?

I sent you a message on Monday, and I haven’t heard back. Do you have 10 minutes available this week to have a brief discussion? If so, please give me the best day/time for you so I can send over a calendar invitation.

I’ve spent a lot of time trying to connect with you but without a response, I fear that a few things could be happening. Let me know if I’m on the right path:

• Things are way too busy and you’ll respond when you come back up for air
• Experience, growth and lead generation from your content is not a priority right now
• Your inbox is so full that you’d rather me follow up via carrier pigeon

The last one is my personal favorite. The subject line was “Respectfully Disengaging.” True story.

How do you think it made the prospective customer feel? Of course she’s never going to do business with that supplier.

How are you going to be remembered by the customers you worked with today?

It’s worth considering. Shame doesn’t build partnerships. Value does.

Today we have an unprecedented number of content formats, with new ones coming online all the time. Our choices can hinge on shareability, interactivity, tracking capabilities, visual appeal, cost, complexity of messaging — lots of important things. But let’s be honest: We all could do a better job thinking about content formats from the B2B buyer’s point of view.

Making buyer-centric format choices is an easy rule to let slide because (a) we naturally return to formats that have been successful for us in the past, and (b) we love new ways to tell our stories and so easily fall in love with shiny new formats.

Either strategy — whether intentional or not — can cause a content asset to fall below engagement expectations, which can be costly considering that 52% of content marketing professionals will spend more on content in next 12 months, according to the 2016 Content Budgeting and Measurement Survey.

What can you do to better align content format choice with buyers? I recommend two things.

First, pay attention to recent data about your buyers. Content preferences can change quickly. For example, in the most recent Demand Gen Report Content Preferences Survey, the portion of respondents who said they want content to be shorter shrunk by 11% compared with the prior year. This reversed the trend of a growing number of content consumers clamoring for shorter pieces.

Also look for data outside the marketing industry that could affect content preferences, such as mobile device use (heavy, average, below average), time constraints, time spent online, even current challenges buyer roles are facing. Right now if I were creating content for the oilfield services industry, for example, I would consider that the remaining buyers are working in understaffed workplaces due to layoffs and therefore have less time to consume content.

Second, know your buyer’s content consumption pattern. This is different than format. This is the way the buyer most commonly consumes information. The reason why this is important is because mimicking that pattern through tone, design and format choice makes content consumption a familiar, comfortable experience, so deeper content engagement is more likely.

Engineering roles comprise a group where paying attention to consumption is important because the pattern is on the other end of the spectrum compared with marketers. We use data and data analytics, but it’s a puny portion of our lives compared with engineers. These men and women are knee-deep in data points every working minute. Consequently, they don’t like disorder, and favor accuracy and clarity over brevity and emotion. If everything could be defined using a spreadsheet, engineers would be in heaven. Experimental formats probably aren’t going to work well with this group.

Case in point: I have an engineer friend who is a successful business owner. He writes a lot for business but recently wrote his first novel based on his experiences growing up in Canada in the 1970s. It was a beautiful story and well written, but his information consumption pattern showed through in the prose like this: “The Judge was an incredible man, but our opinions were simply based on feeling. . .now we had the data points to go along with our hypothesis.”

The bottom line is, even if we think a content format is super cool, it might be a miss with a buyer who has a different information consumption pattern.

To summarize, keep in mind that there are a lot of great choices for formats, and most offer unique capabilities. The key to making the best choice is to look at the formats through the buyer’s eyes, and that takes up-to-date insight into content preferences and information consumption patterns.

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GUEST:

There are now 24 billion-dollar companies in the sharing or collaborative economy. This is up from 13 in 2014, reflecting a jaw dropping 71% increase and about one new addition every month.

The size of the sharing economy billion-dollar club has almost doubled every year since 2012. New additions in 2015 can be found across the collaborative economy landscape. Fintech has seen four new additions (Prosper, Transferwise, Funding Curcle, and Jimubox), while transportation services saw three new companies (Yidao Yongche, BlablaCar, and Grab Taxi).

The aggregate valuation of all billion-dollar sharing economy companies is now $140 billion. Uber has the biggest market cap, with $51 billion; AirBnB is second with $25 billion in valuation, followed by Chinese company Didi Chuxing.

2015 saw three exits in the club: two acquisitions (Homeaway acquired by Expedia, and Yidao Yongche acquired by Chinese Conglomerate LeTV) and 1 IPO (Etsy). If we remove the six M&A and public companies from the list, the number left — the sharing economy unicorns — is now 18 compared to 10 in 2014. And all of them are very young — less than seven years old.

Funding for existing unicorns was extremely strong

Seven companies on the list were already unicorns in 2014. With the exception of Instacart, all raised significant amounts of funding in 2015, totaling $12.8 billion  (comprising 80% of the funding raised by the billion-dollar club in 2015). The combined market cap of the unicorns increased 2.7x, which is very aggressive for a portfolio of companies that size.

The market cap of these seven existing unicorns now makes up more than 83% of the entire sharing economy billion-dollar club’s market cap.

This is in stark contrast with what happened in the public market in 2015

The sharing economy billion-dollar club is facing a few challenges, the most concerning of which is how public companies are performing in the stock market. In aggregate, sharing economy public companies lost 44% of their market cap in 2015 — down to $9.6 billion. This drop was due to the IPOs of two once high-flying unicorns, Etsy and Lending Club, which lost two-thirds of their values in less than a year.

It is not uncommon to see tech companies lose two-thirds of their value during the first year and rebound later. Facebook is the most well known example, where the company went down from $38 per share to $17 only to rebound two years later to $115. So the jury is still out for Etsy and Lending Club, and we will watch them carefully in 2016.

Fundraising was another problem the public companies faced last year. Compared to the $13 billion raised by the unicorns in the private market in 2015, public companies were only able to raise $274 million during the same period

Discrepancies between private and public companies create a financing risk

A major area of concern for the unicorns in 2016 is that the current public and M&A performance of their peers undermines the fundamentals of a very high priced unicorn round. Usually, investors want to buy significant holdings in a private transaction because they can’t build the same holding at a reasonable price after the IPO. With public companies such as Etsy or Lending Club trading below the level of their last private equity rounds, investors can now buy those companies at an attractive price in the public market, making it less appealing to invest in a private round of financing before the IPO.

Second, the protection mechanisms used by fund managers to get more shares in case of lower scenarios are based on IPO price. Most investors who invested in a company before an IPO are locked up for 12 to 18 months so if companies exit at a significant step up at the time of IPO but then falter, as they’ve been doing (with the exception of Trade Me), the protection isn’t working anymore.

With financing risks having increased that much, most venture capitalists don’t want to have a portfolio company that needs cash and has to go fundraising. So we can expect a strong push from them to reduce spending to last through a possible drought — or better yet, to get to cash flow break-even. M&As could also be an option to consider if there are no other viable medium term alternatives.

In the meantime, we will keep watching existing public companies as well as the newest IPOs to see if the pattern we have seen in 2015 continues or if it was due to a misperception of the quality of sharing economy unicorns in the eyes of the public market.

Note: The billion-dollar club includes all companies public private or acquired through M&A that have been valued at one point more than $1 billion. Companies that are not valued over $1 billion anymore are kept on the list for the purposes of tracking. Members of the sharing economy billion-dollar club include Uber (CA), Didi Chuxing (China), AirBnB (CA), Lyft (CA), Ola (India), Lending Club (CA), and Wework, but also Etsy, Chegg, and Freelancer, whose market cap is less than $1 billion as of today.

Jeremiah Owyang is founder of Crowd Companies, which helps big companies with the collaborative economy. You can track his 290+ company Collaborative Economy Landscape on VBProfiles.com

Philippe Cases is CEO of Spoke Software, where he focuses on building a Market Intelligence Platform dedicated to tracking innovation.

 

Understanding your customers is the most important step in writing great, valuable content. It’s the difference between writing a post that’s just ok and a post that’s fantastic.

The trouble is, it can be tricky to work out exactly who to write for, and how to make your articles attractive to them.

Enter user personas.

User personas are profiles. Think of them as your customers (or potential customers). They help you characterize their needs, wants and loves—they’re personalities on a page.

The best user personas are living, breathing documents. They’re ones that get updated often. You’ll refer to them in every aspect of your content marketing and product development.

How User Personas Improve Content

A good set of user personas can have a massive impact on your content. You’ll need to create more than one. Why? Well, because there’ll be more than one type of customer or reader.

Let’s say you’re writing an ebook about SEO, and using it to generate leads for your SEO product.

From looking at your user personas, you can tell how users might feel when they use your product. Knowing this can help you tap into their emotions through your writing. This, in turn, helps you build trust with them.

A deep understanding of what your persona wants—not just what they say they want—means your ebook can be far more persuasive. You can directly address their concerns and relate to problems they’re experiencing right now.

Good knowledge of personas’ buying triggers is useful too.

Having insight into their buying triggers can help you capture the attention of people visiting your article. You can funnel them right into your ebook’s landing page—and at just the right stage of the buying cycle.

This means you’ll be more likely to convert them into a trial signup because you know exactly what your prospect is looking for, and when.

Still don’t see the value? Try it out for yourself.

Whilst user personas may feel a little silly to start out, they really help you focus in on customer needs. Then, when you’re focused on the needs, you’ll have a better perspective on how to best serve your customers.

You’ll end up writing better content that your prospects will love and get a ton of value from. In turn, they’ll be more likely to convert into customers. It’s a win-win.

Creating a Good User Persona

OK, so you’ve decided user personas are a good idea for your business. Now what? Where do you start?

I’m afraid I’ve got some bad news—building great user personas is tough. Luckily it can be broken down into stages, some of which you should already be doing. Building off your existing data will help you craft your personas in no time.

What You’ll Need

There are a lot of different data points you’ll need to include in your user personas. Here’s some data you’ll want to find, and some questions you can ask to find it:

Demographics

• How old are they? Looking into your Google Analytics data can help with this. Head to Audience > Demographics > Age for some insights.
• Are they college educated? Knowing this can help you adapt your language to suit the reader. You can use more complex language if you’re targeting more educated readers.
• How much do they earn? Do they have a large income? If they do, focus more on the value of your product or service rather than the price. You can move your price points higher if the value is there.

Psychographics

• What are their values and what do they believe in? Ask your audience if they have any hobbies. Learn how they like to spend their spare time.
• Products and Brands. What products and brands do they use? Knowing what they like about each brand can help you adapt your content to suit them.
• Pain Points. What’s painful in their life, related to your product? Finding out their pain points can help you solve that pain. They’re likely trying to solve it already, so find out how they’re trying to do that.

Gathering Data

An easy way to start understanding your customers is to look through all your current data. As a business, you’ll have gathered tons of content and product usage analytics. These can give you a great insight into what your users love.

You can ask yourself questions like:

• Do visitors spend a lot of time reading a certain type of content?
• What product features do they use the most?
• Which article types get the most amount of shares on social media?

These types of questions help you think more qualitatively about your data.

If you’re just getting started and don’t have that much data at hand don’t worry. You can find out a ton about your customers online. How? By using the power of social listening tools.

Use a social listening tool to find out:

• What customers are saying about you and your brand
• What customers think of your product
• How your team responds to customer interactions
• What customers are saying about your competitors

Interviews

Looking through all that data’s great and all, but to truly understand your customers, you’re going to need to dig a little deeper.

The best way to understand your customers is to actually talk to them. Customer feedback is super important, you already know that. You can take it one step further, though. Ask your customers in person. It’s even more valuable.

An easy first step is to talk with your support staff. They speak with your customers all the time. Support staff should be your first port of call when you’re figuring out what people really think of your business. They should give you a good idea what to focus on in the interviews.

Next up you’ll need to reach out to some customers. You don’t even need to leave the office. Try asking some of your best customers for 15 minutes of their time to help you improve the product you offer them.

Video calls or in-person interviews work best so you can pick up on non-verbal cues. If that’s not possible though a quick call will do fine.

Start by asking questions about their demographic, then move onto qualitative questions about them. You’ll want to find out about their goals, and what motivates them. What are they looking to get out of your product? What other products did they try before yours?

Be sure to probe them on the negatives too. What objections do they (or did they) have about your product? Was it difficult to get started? What don’t they like about the product?

Lastly, find out what caused them to buy. Ask if there were any triggers—maybe a piece of content, or an ebook you wrote? Does anyone else influence their buying behavior? Where do they look to find new products? What do they search for?

Write down some quotes to use in your persona. It’ll help anyone else that uses it understand the feelings a real customer has, and give an insight into how they think.

Remember, the more realistic your persona is the more valuable and useful it will be your business.

Bringing Everything Together

Now you’ve got a whole heap of data together it’s time to make your user persona.

Add a name and personality trait (for instance, one of our personas is Marketing Mandy). Then find a picture that represents them. Adding a name and picture helps personify your persona, making it all the more valuable for your business.

Then combine everything into a document. Don’t be afraid to add a touch of design here. The more appealing your personas are to look at the better they’ll be received by your team, and the more likely they are to be used.

Try to distill all the information you’ve gathered into one page, and don’t be too verbose. You should end up with a section of bullets for each data type (demographic, psychographic, etc.).

Ongoing Persona Development

One of the biggest mistakes people make with their user personas is leaving them to collect dust. They go to all the trouble of collecting the data, processing it, and distributing it to their team and then they never update them.

Don’t be one of those people.

If you don’t regularly update your personas the information may no longer be relevant. At best that means you’ll stop using it, at worst it means you’ll be writing content for the wrong people and your business will suffer.

When your business grows and you begin talking to your customers, you’ll likely find that the personas you created at the start were way off point. That’s OK.

You need to treat your persona as a living document and try to update it every few months. Keep showing the personas to your coworkers. Asking often about the types of people that are using your product or reading your articles helps. They may be able to give you some fresh insights.

The information you’ll collect during this process is incredibly valuable.

Conclusion

Using user personas in your content marketing helps you write better, more relevant content. Gather all the data you can through customer interviews, then condense it into a digestible one-pager your team can use.
Every time you write a piece of content, make sure you’re writing it for a specific user persona. The more targeted you can make it, the better a piece you’ll write. The better piece you write, the more likely someone will convert.

Here is a format for presenting and proposing a compelling solution.

Current State

It is helpful to you and your dream client to review their current state at the beginning of your presentation and proposal.

It’s useful to you because it demonstrates to your dream client that you were listening to them and that you understand where they are now. The fact that you paid attention and captured their current state indicates that you care enough to pay attention to what’s important.

It is helpful to your prospective client because it reminds all the stakeholders in your presentation meeting of the challenge they are facing and why you are presenting your solution.

It is important to remind your dream client as to the compelling reason they need to change at the beginning of this process. The current state answers the question, “Why should I change now?”

Future State

The next section of your proposal and presentation is your recounting of your prospective client’s desired future state.

The current state describes the problem. The future state represents your potential client’s world when they no longer have the problem. It is what you’re proposed solution is designed to help them achieve.

This recounting of the future state is your shared vision of where you are going together and how you will get there. This section of your proposal and presentation is a reminder as to why your dream client must change now if they would have this future state.

Once you’ve described the future state, you can begin to describe how you will help your dream client get there.

Your Solution

Your proposal and presentation are now carefully positioned and framed up correctly. You’ve addressed at the current state, and you’ve described the future state, and now you provide the substance of what you will do to help your dream client to change, how you will change the current state, and how that will deliver the future state they are driving towards.

Your proposal and presentation should explain exactly how what you do will eliminate the challenges in the current state and provide the better future state.

If your proposal is a real transformation, you may need to include milestones, implementation plans, and a vision of what needs to occur over a longer period.

The Investment

The investment is what is necessary to deliver the solution that provides the future state and eliminates the current state.

The format described here is especially appropriate when you have a higher price than your competitor. It shows a deeper level of understanding than a proposal that starts with the solution. It also demonstrates an attention to detail that is proof of how you will execute. It differentiates you from competitors who begin with their proposed solution.

Note that there is no part of this where you begin with your company’s history, your locations, or an organizational chart your executive leadership team. The entire format is customer focused, as it should be.

• How do you begin your presentation and proposals?
• How do you demonstrate your deep understanding of your prospective client’s current state and future desired state?
• How do you position your solution in a way that compels your prospective client to take action?

The post A Framework for Compelling Presentations appeared first on The Sales Blog.

When (other) articles and blogs contain sales statistics, they are often made up.  For example, Andy Rudin wrote this article about made up sales statistics and I recently read this article by Stewart Rogers about made up statistics.  Infographics and videos are two more sources of statistics that are often based more on fiction than fact, yet they still have value, even if the numbers aren't correct.  Here's a new infographic which has useful information, even if the purpose is to promote Fatstax.  Recently a reader directed me to a video on the Harvard Business Review site.  They rarely have accurate, relevant sales-specific information there, so I clicked over with great anticipation.

It was an astonishing bit of candour, uttered as it was by the president and CEO of one of the largest transportation companies in the world. The Quebec government had just announced a $1.3-billion investment in the C Series, the new line of commercial jets from Montreal-based rail and aerospace company Bombardier. Plagued by technical delays, cost overruns and nagging existential questions about its very purpose, the C Series has long been a source of unwelcome headlines for the company.

Landing on the same day as the company’s ugly third-quarter report—Bombardier had lost nearly $5 billion, mostly having to do with writedowns on the C Series—the $1.3-billion government investment­, equivalent to about $160 for every man, woman and child in the province, was meant to be a bit of good news in an otherwise gloomy day for the company. Bombardier president and CEO Alain Bellemare spoke to journalists following the announcement, one of whom noted that as recently as July, management had assured investors the company had enough cash to see the C Series into production. Now the Quebec government was investing, and the company was petitioning the federal government to do the same. “I’m having trouble understanding what happened,” the journalist said.

“That’s an excellent question,” Bellemare responded to the non-question, in his raspy French bonhomie. “Actually, I wonder that too.”

Related: Why Quebec’s Bombardier bailout isn’t as crazy as it sounds

Left unsaid in Bellemare’s ensuing explanation was how the company was able to secure the money from a government in the depths of austerity measures mere months after saying it wouldn’t need financial assistance for an airplane project that is 2½ years late, US$2.2 billion over budget and sorely lacking in confirmed orders.

Even more gobsmacking to analysts and observers: that Bombardier was able to secure the funding without relinquishing its corporate governance structure, despite having lost nearly 90 per cent of its value since June 2008. This dual-class share structure ensures that the Bombardier family and that of company scion Laurent Beaudoin remain in control of the board; the company has had a CEO from the Beaudoin or Bombardier families for 66 of its 73 years in business.

The power the Bombardier-Beaudoin clan wields over Bombardier the company is surpassed only by their secrecy. Very little is known about the family dynamics at play behind this crown jewel of Quebec Inc. The shares are controlled by the four children of Joseph-Armand Bombardier, the mechanic and inventor who in 1937 gave the world the snowmobile. Claire Bombardier Beaudoin, J.R. André Bombardier, Janine Bombardier and Huguette Bombardier Fontaine control the majority of Bombardier’s voting rights.

Yet despite being the picture of discretion, the families are reportedly frustrated that the battered share price has drained much of their wealth—since 2008 the value of their Bombardier stake has dropped from $2.2 billion to $260 million. And according to a source close to the family, who spoke to Maclean’s on condition of anonymity, they put the blame squarely on Pierre Beaudoin, 53, the company’s erstwhile CEO and its current executive chairman.

Pierre is the son of Laurent Beaudoin, who turned his father-in-law Joseph-Armand Bombardier’s fledgling snowmobile company into a global transportation brand. Pierre joined the company in 1985 and became its CEO in 2008. Pierre became Bombardier’s executive chairman in 2015, after stepping down as CEO.

“The families are very disappointed in Pierre. They’re wealthy, so it’s more a question of pride. They’ve taken the stock collapse almost as a personal slight,” says the source close to the family.

As president of Bombardier Aerospace, Pierre launched the Learjet 85 business airplane in 2007. Less than a year later, as Bombardier CEO, he launched the C Series program. Today, the Learjet has been shelved, with the company incurring a $1.4-billion writedown last year on the shuttered project, while the C Series has only 243 confirmed sales. Meanwhile the company’s new VIP business jets, the newest editions to the Global Express program launched in 1993, were meant to hit the market in 2016. That’s been delayed by at least two years.

With the success of the C Series in doubt and Bombardier’s share price dipping below a dollar in recent weeks, former executives at the company are irked. “The reason the company is where it is today is because of the leadership,” says a former Bombardier senior executive, who spoke to Maclean’s on condition of anonymity. “Pierre would never have been CEO of that company if he didn’t have his name, period.”

Now, after so many stumbles, taxpayers are being asked once again to cough up. Bombardier will likely receive its infusion of federal cash. In 2008, the Conservative government approved a $350-million loan to cover research and development costs of the C Series. This loan, along with the $117 million from the Quebec government and $310 million from the British government­—Bombardier Aerospace employs 6,000 people in Belfast­—has yet to be repaid.

Despite evident governance issues and bleak financial prospects, Bombardier remains “a key anchor firm for Canada’s aerospace industry,” according to a recent government memo prepared for the Liberal government last fall. Translation: for all its warts, allowing Bombardier to fail would have enormous political implications for Justin Trudeau’s government.

Here’s another translation. Rightly or wrongly, Bombardier will continue to exist thanks in large part to the Canadian taxpayer.

Related: Jason Kirby’s idea for Bombardier: What if we let it fail?

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In many ways, the development of the C Series is entirely in line with the company’s high-risk, high-reward history of either conquering market segments or conjuring them out of thin air. The company that became Bombardier was birthed in a garage in Valcourt, Que., a swath of wooded wilderness located about 120 km east of Montreal.

It was in this garage, in the depths of the priest-ridden era that was Quebec in the 1930s, where Joseph-Armand Bombardier invented the snowmobile. He envisioned a vehicle that would allow those priests (along with doctors, teachers and the like) to travel from village to snowbound village. By 1963, the nascent company was selling $10 million worth of the machines a year, mostly to recreational users. A new market was born.

Though separated by nearly 80 years and innumerable levels of engineering complexity, the C Series aircraft shares certain traits with its comparatively humble Ski-Doo cousin. It is a brand-new airplane design, for one, the first such innovation in narrow-body aircraft in nearly 20 years.

The two C Series models, the CS100 and the larger CS300, have a seating range of 100 to 160 seats, a mostly unserved market between the 60-to-100 seat regional jet class and narrow-body behemoths like the Boeing 737. Its design, along with the use of composite production materials, allows for a more technologically advanced and much less thirsty airplane than its competitors.

As C Series president Rob Dewar pointed out during a tour of Bombardier’s manufacturing facilities near Montreal, the C Series has bigger windows, larger storage bins, wider aisles, more headspace, a better cockpit and a quieter ride than anything else on the market.

The C Series is a potential game-changer, says U.S. aerospace consultant Ernie Arvai. “Technically, it’s a superb airplane, and it beats the other guys handily at the same size class. To some degree the C Series caused Airbus to re-enter the A320 class with the Neo. Airbus realized they had to be more competitive.”

The problem is simply everything else. Adjusted for inflation, fuel prices are less than a third what they were when the C Series program was launched in 2007. The aircraft’s 20 per cent savings in fuel consumption has suddenly become far less of a selling point.

And the numerous production delays (the C Series was meant to be on the tarmac by 2013) has meant its competitors have been able to fill the market Bombardier itself created. France-based Airbus Group SE has been particularly damaging to C Series sales, with company COO John Leahy frequently disparaging the C Series in public­—he recently described the program as an “orphan”—and undercutting Bombardier in airline board rooms.

“There were several instances where Bombardier was hours from signing a deal and John came in and made an offer they couldn’t refuse: a larger aircraft at a cheaper price,” says Arvai.

It speaks to another inherent problem for Bombardier. The company is attempting to sell a brand-new aircraft to typically conservative airline industry executives, in a market dominated by established, deep-pocketed players who can discount their wares far more than the Quebec-based company can.

If all those external headwinds weren’t enough to thwart Bombardier’s new aerospace ambitions, tensions and disruptions within the company’s executive ranks only made the turbulence worse. According to the former Bombardier executive, who was involved in the development of the C Series, the problems with the aircraft were exacerbated by Pierre Beaudoin’s management style. “[Pierre] would tell people that he wanted to be challenged, but this would change when people actually challenged him.”

In 2005, Bombardier business aircraft president Peter Edwards abruptly left the company, following a budget review during which, according to the executive, Edwards stood up to Pierre. This former executive and another say Edwards was pushed out.

(Edwards declined to comment for this article. Bombardier spokesperson Isabelle Rondeau also declined to comment.)

Several members of Bombardier’s senior management left the company when Pierre became COO of Bombardier aerospace in 2001, and again when he became CEO in 2008. This in itself isn’t unusual; new executives generally clean house when they are appointed. Yet according to the two former executives, Pierre Beaudoin had curious hiring criteria. Any new hires “had one thing in common, which was they were French Canadian,” the executive, who is still in the airline industry, says. “This was totally different than his dad, who basically wanted the best executives to run the company, irrespective of where you come from.” (The Bombardier spokeswoman also declined to comment on these claims.)

“Pierre is not his father. Let’s just say that. Nice man, nice guy, but is a little bit over his head,” says Arvai, who adds that this was evident in the marketing of the C Series. “Orginally he believed that the airplane had such performance benefits that they could get a large premium for it. That was a lost opportunity. Bombardier should have taken a loss on first 50 airplanes, got the production line going, getting the airplanes up. And I think that was a strategic mistake by Pierre.”

Bombardier’s dual-class shares, which have existed since 1969, are a product of Joseph-Armand Bombardier’s desire to keep the company under the control of the Bombardier and Beaudoin families. But when it came time for Joseph-Armand’s son Laurent to select someone from the third generation to steer the company into the future, problems arose.

According to the source close to the family, Pierre wasn’t his father’s chosen successor. Rather, Laurent Beaudoin wanted his daughter Élaine to eventually lead the company. “She is most like Laurent in terms of common sense and intellect,” the source says. “But he couldn’t get her interested in the business.” (On this question too, Bombardier spokesperson Rondeau declined to comment.) Today, Élaine Beaudoin is a corporate director of Canam Group Inc. and serves on other corporate boards.

According to this source, former Bombardier executive Raymond Royer, Laurent Beaudoin’s right-hand man, advised his boss against grooming Pierre for the role of CEO. (Royer didn’t return a request for comment.) Indeed, in 2009 Pierre himself told the business newspaper Les Affaires that when he was younger he wasn’t interested in even working at Bombardier.

Once in, though, he took to the company with gusto. Among other things, he oversaw the rollout of the Sea-Doo personal watercraft in 1990, and was president and COO of the company’s recreational products group by 1996. He was in charge of the entire company 12 years later.

In 2007, as president and COO of Bombardier Aerospace, Pierre helped launch the Learjet 85 program. As with the C Series aircraft, which launched eight months later, the Learjet was loaded with new features and built from composite materials—“an aircraft that is set to redefine the mid-size jet category,” as Pierre put at the time.

Yet the plane was plagued with delays, and Bombardier paused the program in early 2015 before shelving it indefinitely last fall.

Missteps aside, the Quebec government believes it is crucial to finance Bombardier and the C Series—and strongly suggests the federal government do the same. Through Investissement Québec, its investment arm, the Quebec government has bought a minority stake in the C Series program.

“Bombardier had three choices. It could have abandoned the product. It could have sold it lock, stock and barrel to another company. Or it finds partners who will ensure it stays in Quebec. That is what we decided and it’s up to the federal government to do the same,” says Jacques Daoust, who until a recent cabinet shuffle was Quebec’s minister of the economy.

The federal government has yet to say definitively whether it will make a similar investment in Bombardier. “There has to be a strong business case for making a federal investment and any assistance would have to be in the best interest of all Canadians,” says Industry Canada spokesperson Sabrina Foran.

When it comes to employment, Bombardier certainly has a compelling political argument. There are 41,750 people employed in the aerospace sector in Quebec, according to a 2014 study by the industry group Aéro Montréal. Bombardier is the biggest employer in the industry. Much of the small- and medium-sized aerospace businesses rely on the company to buy their goods and services. Essentially, Bombardier has made itself too big to fail.

In Bombardier’s facility in Mirabel, the C Series production line hums along efficiently. Workers dart between fuselages, which are in various degrees of assembly; most of these planes will go to Swiss International Airlines, which bought a fleet of the planes early on. “There is clear interest from Air Canada,” says Bombardier spokesperson Isabelle Gauthier.

C Series president Rob Dewar is optimistic that the federal government will reverse a recent decision and allow Porter Airlines to fly jets to and from Toronto’s island airport. (In November Ottawa disallowed jets, which was a considerable setback for the C Series.) “It’s not done yet. Porter’s working on it,” Dewar says.

Optimism for the C Series resonates up Bombardier’s chain of command. Transport Canada recently certified the CS100; the test model that did the deed is now a flying sales pitch to prospective customers. And though there are only 243 confirmed orders, the sky is practically the limit. “According to the analysis we’ve done, over the next 20 years there is an opportunity for 7,000 airplanes or so in the 100 to 150 [seat] category,” says Bombardier commercial aircraft president Fred Cromer. The company is also less hidebound to the original pricing of the C Series. “Pricing is an issue, and we understand what the issue is,” Cromer says. “We’re trying to be a little bit more open about what we’re doing here, and that’s important, for better or worse.”

Meanwhile, Pierre Beaudoin seems as entrenched as ever. A rumour circulated in a Reuters report that he was stepping down was quickly swatted aside by the company. After all, the Quebec government invested in the company without mandating a change in the company’s governance structure. Perhaps Ottawa is next.

The post The inside story behind the bungled Bombardier C Series appeared first on Macleans.ca.

While other leading cloud providers like Amazon Inc. re […]

I ran into a former HR colleague at a conference last month. We got to talking and she mentioned she was finding it difficult to hire a cybersecurity expert. I wasn’t surprised. Security talent is scarce in the tech sector right now. “I found someone phenomenal, but she’s in Washington State, and she won’t move to our cybersecurity group in San Francisco,” my friend lamented.

I said the first words that popped into my head: “That’s great.”

Hiring a candidate who is going to work remotely has three levels of benefits.

1. The company benefits. Removing location as a limiting factor offers organizations access to (literally) all the talent in the world.
2. Hiring managers benefit because they have an opportunity to create diverse teams. For instance, it’s widely accepted that people who come together from different backgrounds bring new information and diverse perspectives.
3. Individual employees benefit, because they can live where they want, close to family or perhaps in a place that has the type of climate they prefer.

Most organizations say they are more open-minded than ever about virtual teams, and yet they still have old-school systems in place for hiring people across the country or around the world. From where I sit, the overlapping barriers come down to structure, culture, and mindset.

Structurally, many organizations remain hierarchical. Decisions are still passed down from one to many as opposed to emanating from small, autonomous teams.

Culturally, the face-to-face meeting is still an important symbol of productivity. Want to finish something? Sit around a table together and get it done.

Mindset is the toughest impediment of all. Many traditional leaders fear a loss of control if they give people the latitude to work where they can’t be overseen.

This way of working is no longer sustainable. The talent gap in certain technical specialties, such as security and data science, is one reason. A more universal reason is that removing location as a limiting factor gives organizations a lot more freedom to find and hire the very best global talent — and keep them. How do you make virtual teams the rule rather than the exception? What kind of process do you need in place for hiring that superstar in Washington State? Four things are required:

Do deeper due diligence. No matter how sophisticated the process, companies usually design interview questions to rate a candidate’s experience and fit — in other words, to find out whether they have the skills to succeed and the mindset to thrive in their specific corporate culture. In hiring virtual candidates, however, you need to dig deeper.

This next level of direct questioning should assess whether the person is independent, passionate about their work, and collaborative. They need to be flexible and willing to travel and know that corporate headquarters is still where the action takes place. In addition, the most important experience this individual should have is past success working remotely. Find out how they made it work and double down on the due diligence.

You and Your Team

I live in Boston — 3,000 miles away from Cisco’s San Jose headquarters. I work with executives around the globe; so being on Telepresence and Webex is a natural way we communicate. Still, there are many times when I need to be at corporate headquarters because important conversations need to occur in person and because informal hallway banter can surface new ideas and accelerate solutions.

Look at leadership capabilities. Consider the individual’s leadership style and how he or she projects himself or herself. In order to make an impression from afar, people need to stand out in a crowd and be an advocate for their ideas. In addition, the organization needs to scrutinize not only the candidate but also the manager to whom they will report. Remote employees need someone who will advocate for them regardless of where they live. Does the leader have the experience and dynamism to lead virtual teams? Does she value results over face time? Is her compensation tied to the success of her team?

Invest heavily in relationships. I recently ran across a team of three dynamic leaders who manage a business unit in tandem from three separate cities. Operating out of Germany, New Jersey, and San Jose, California, respectively, the trio is a high-functioning, collaborative team. How do they do it? They respect each other and communicate constantly. Initially, they invested significant, in-person time to forge the relationship. They understand each other extremely well and now they finish each other’s sentences. They tackle tough customer issues in unison and are on the phone or video together constantly. They’ve been together for several years and it works because they attend to their relationship.

Do a logistics and tech check. Setting people up to succeed off-site requires attention to IT support and infrastructure. Can people easily teleconference from their mobile device or PC? Are all team members comfortable using collaboration tools? Is any data flow to and from the virtual team secure, and do all team members understand the company security protocols? At Cisco, we use technology to make communication as dynamic as possible. When language and cultural differences come into play, for instance, seeing each other over a video feed that’s clear and reliable can make a big difference in deepening the interaction.

The last part of hiring people who are going to work remotely is knowing when it won’t work. There are some jobs where location is fixed. In some companies, for instance, the head of sales needs to work in close proximity to the CEO. For other mission-critical positions, it is necessary to be face to face with local accounts or available for the community.

Yet, I would argue that this is quickly becoming the exception, rather than the rule. Knocking down the cultural and psychological barriers that make hiring the best global talent impossible can open everyone’s eyes to the virtues of a more dynamic working environment.

Condominium units have long been viewed as the poor cousins of single-family houses in Vancouver’s real estate market. But 2016 could well be the Year of the Condo. Realtor Patrick Weeks foresees only moderate growth this year in Vancouver’s detached housing sector. But he sees the sale of “certain segments of condos going up substantially, as (single-family house) prices become out of reach for many buyers.

With The Big Short tearing it up at the box office, now is perhaps not the best time to be telling investors they should be buying new products that slice and dice the value of a boring old house.

The star-studded film tells the story of how bankers carved up, mixed up, and sold buckets of mortgages in complex products that ultimately crashed the global financial system in 2007 and 2008.

The products — mortgage-backed securities and collaterised debt obligations — were so complex that investors couldn't tell they were actually buying: "Dog shit covered in cat shit," to quote the film.

"The problem with a mortgage-backed security, compared to a product where there's a single asset, is transparency," says Dan Gandesha, the CEO of Property Partner.

His startup, launched to the public just over a year ago, is a crowdfunding platform that lets people buy a small slice of a rental property for as little as £50.

Compared to casino banking products cooked up in the pre-2007 days, what Property Partner is offering is "the extreme opposite," says Gandesha. "We're shining an extreme spotlight on a single asset."

Property Partner finds a house — or more likely an entire development and it often buys in bulk — negotiates a deal with the seller and then posts the property on its website once it has exchanged on the deal. Property Partner pays the deposit from its balance sheet and underwrites the deal but the idea is that investors stump up the whole price.

"If for example we put it on our website, and let's just say that the capital raise is £1 million but only £600,000 comes from the crowd, we're happy to put the other £400,000 in," says Gandesha. "In that sense, it aligns the company with our investors because we're only putting properties on our platform where we're happy to put our own money in."

Investors get a chunk of the rental income proportionate to their shareholding and also benefiting from any increase in property value. Independent assessors periodically revalue the properties, adjusting share prices accordingly.

Property Partner takes care of maintaining the rental property, hiring a third party firm to act as landlord. The majority of the startup's properties have so far been in London and along Crossrail routes but it is beginning to diversify.

Property Partner takes 10.5% plus VAT of rents and sets aside some of the money to cover things like a period of vacancy at a property or expected maintenance — investors never have to put up any new money. Property Partner is also buying in prime locations, often already tenanted, and so finding renters up until now hasn't been an issue. The startup has met or exceeded rental forecasts for every property on the platform over the last 12 months.

In the case of unexpected or uninsured costs, the company may take a loan out against the property and repayments are deducted from rent payments to investors.

Over £20 million has been invested by over 5,500 investors in around 140 properties since launch. The company currently advertises estimated returns of 13% a year after fees.

Welcome to 'PropTech'

London-based Property Partner is one of a growing number of startups that brand themselves as PropTech — property technology companies. The first generation were online estate agents like Zoopla and Rightmove, but now there are crowdfunding property purchase sites — Crowdahouse, The House Crowd, Property Moose — and crowdfunding mortgage sites, like Landbay and LendInvest.

The overarching theme of them all? "The UK is a property obsessed nation and so platforms like ours are giving people the opportunity to access property and their returns in different ways — and we think that this is a good thing," says Christian Faes, the CEO of LendInvest.

Rather than loading up on mortgage debt to take on a buy-to-let property or a fixer-upper to flip, these new crowdfunding sites give savers exposure to the housing market at levels of investment that suit them.

Property Partner is the most ambitious of the PropTech set.

Not only has it built a crowdfunding platform, it also plans to create a property stock market, where people can buy and sell their shares in, say, a flat in Doncaster. Ed Wray, the co-founder of betting exchange BetFair, is an investor.

Ultimately they hope to offer international investors access to housing markets around the world over their platform. 

3.4 million of shares have been traded on Property Partner's secondary market to date, but Gandesha stresses that it is still early days.

"Everyone should assume on the way in that they will have to hold for 5 years, which is when we run our exit protection mechanics," says Gandesha. If, after 5 years, an investor wants to get out of the property but can't find a buyer for their shares, the whole thing is sold and all the money is returned to each investor. (You have to pay Capital Gains Tax if the value has risen.)

Aside from Wray, other investors include Index Ventures, the European venture capital fund that has backed the likes of Skype and Just Eat, and John Moulton, the renowned British venture capitalist.

'We're doing what the government wants'

My gut feeling when hearing about all this is that it's got to be bad for property markets like London that are already overheating. If international investors start piling in even more than they already have, isn't that going to push up prices?

"It's a very boring but technically important discussion but when there is a professional investor in any given market, it controls rather than drives up prices," says Gandesha. "The reason for that is the way that property is valued." He says that the professional investors are looking for value and can are not buyers of necessity and so can afford to wait and negotiate lower prices.

Gandesha says Property Partner is "not only better for investors, it's better for tenants, it's better for the UK economy, [and] it's better for housing supply."

For investors, because they can tie their savings to the housing market without having to leverage themselves up to the eyeballs.

For tenants because the professionalisation of the rental sector leads to more consistency from landlords. Renters can also buy a stake in their own property and can lock in rents.

Good for the economy because Property Partner's geared products have a 60% cap on loan to value mortgages, making them less risk-taking than many private buy-to-let landlords. Many are also ungeared.

And good for housing supply because the company generally buys in bulk from small and medium developers who would otherwise sell each property one-by-one. Buying in bulk frees up capacity and money for these developers to start work on more properties.

"The government itself put together a task force to encourage institutional investment into the residential investment sector," says Gandesha. "It did that because we need more private rental stock. There is a demand that simply isn't being met."

While Stamp Duty for buy-to-let investors was recently hiked by the government, there is a dispensation for bulk buyers, meant to encourage more institutional money into the market.

Gandesha says: "Property Partner combines the fact that we are helping small developers with the fact that we're doing what the government wants by professionalizing the rental sector — it's a two-way benefit."

'We're not saying property won't ever go down in value — it will'

It all sounds too good to be true. Maybe it is. Property Partner's business is based on the assumption that both rents and property values will continue to rise. That's not an idiotic assumption, given that property prices have rocketed by an average of 300% across England and Wales over the last 20 years.

But what if they stop? Or what if there's another 2008 style crash as some are predicting?

"In a downturn, everyone tries to run to the door at the same time, they all try and sell shares — does liquidity dry up? Maybe," says Gandesha. "Every time you invest in Property Partner you've got to be prepared to hold for 5 years."

Even if liquidity does dry up, Property Partner will continue to buy. Gandesha says: "Let's just say we're now in early 2008 and property prices are starting to fall and no one knows how far they're going to fall or what have you. At the point where we're negotiating to buy a property, we're only going to buy at a price that reflects the open market value and that open market value is going to reflect the market conditions.

"In the last downturn, the peak to trough took 14 months and in England and Wales it was about a 14% price drop. We will come back to the seller and have a negotiation that reflects where we think the market is going to end up."

In a downturn, everyone tries to run to the door at the same time, they all try and sell shares — does liquidity dry up? Maybe.

But will investors be so keen to invest if prices are falling? "If we think it's a good deal, we'll be willing to exchange on that," Gandesha says. "And when we put it on our website, if our investors think it's a good deal they can invest in it. If they don't, they won't."

That seems risky — lacking the ability to test demand before they exchange on a property, the company could end up stuck with a lot of equity in properties sitting on its own balance sheet in a downturn.

"We're not saying property won't ever go down in value — it will," says Gandesha. "But it's a defensive asset in that the volatility has been low historically. Even if the asset value goes down, yields look more attractive than they did because rental income doesn't typically go down at the same rate.

"What it comes down to is, in a period of turbulence, if we're still buying, does our investor base trust our judgment and our ability to value? Even if they don't, what that expertise is complimented by is objected, independent third party valuations — a chartered surveyor would also be writing a report."

Gandesha comes from a corporate finance background, working at Sky and KPMG before setting up Property Partner, but Property Partner's Director of Property is Robert Weaver, former Global Director of Residential Property at Royal Bank of Scotland — he knows his onions.

Still, Gandesha adds: "Having said that, do we think we would list fewer properties in a period of rapidly falling prices? Probably. The rate at which we're adding new deals would probably slow down."

"What is important to remember is we will see property cycles. That's why we've built such an experienced property team."

Property Partner is firmly in the bull column then — even if prices dip, it believes the national obsession with property will endure.

Join the conversation about this story »

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There it is, hanging on the wall, staring us down—its massive, white face with a blank, squeaky-clean stare. Sitting in its shadow, we spitball and brainstorm while leaning back into the most ergonomically creative position (sneakers up on the table).

It’s our ritual, our process, and the way we tackle each new piece of content. But we need to ask ourselves: with the amount of content we must produce, is the same old process we’ve done for years the best way to move forward?

The scene above is the same in every company. Content creation is seen as a creative experiment, following a linear process that begins with brainstorming, moves into production, gets released into the wild, and then is measured according to its aggregate engagement at a future date.

In 2012, a group of marketers got together to find a better way. They created a systematic way to get better results faster, and with less effort. This was the birth of the agile marketing manifesto.

Agile is a process of creation that believes in the power of iteration, and in user feedback over singular genius. Agile has proven to be so powerful, it is used by Google, Facebook, Yahoo, Amazon, and just about every other leading technology company today. However, agile is such a simple idea—“Ask, Create, Revise”—that its true value is often misunderstood.

Here is breakdown of the true value of agile content marketing, and why a simple change in the way you create content will systematically increase the value of each piece of content you create, allow you to do it in a third of the time, and reduce the risk of content failure.

Agile Marketing Mitigates Risk

With each piece of content we create, there is an obvious risk. The risk is that the return on the asset will not be worth the investment we put into it. This is the same risk for everything we create, and we try to mitigate this risk with the creative process. However, consider the creative process’ flaws as described by Don Peppers in his quote:

“We must operate in realities, not abstractions of realities.”

— Don Peppers, The One to One Future, 1993

These eloquent words express the point clearly. We as marketers have been trained to think we can outsmart the consumer by being creative. Trying to craft ads, messages, and other content for consumers without involving them in the process leads to disastrous results.

Gallop proves this with their annual “Trusted Profession” poll, which ranks Advertising Professionals as the fifth most distrusted profession, outdone by congressmen and car salesmen. Distrust isn’t a business metric, but these are:

• 30% of the entire marketing budget is used to create content. (CMI)
• One third of marketers say it takes more than seven weeks to create a piece of content. (Techvalidate)
• 70% of the content we create never gets utilized. (Sirius Decisions)
• 71% of B2B consumers said they have been disappointed by the content they engage with. (Pardot)
• 25% of those disappointed will never engage with that brand again. (Pardot)
• 5% of all leads generated by best-in-class marketers will be generated into revenue. (Forrester Research)

 

The risk is not just the cost of production, but rather in the outcome of the experience the consumer has as well. If we are spending this much time and money to drive 25% of our consumers away from our brands, then we really need to rethink the true value of content.

Here is the risk we run: If we follow the same process of getting creative and then producing something, we run the risk of losing time, money, and customers. This is because we are only taking one shot at creating the content, rather than looking at the content creation process as an iterative process of creation. If you follow the agile process, each iteration you have on your piece of content reduces the risk by a significant margin. Here is a chart showing the decreased risk after each iteration in the agile process:

Agile Increases Value

Not only does risk decrease, but value also increases with each iteration. Each iteration involves a review where increased value can be determined and implemented in the next version. “Value” is measured both by consumer experience and increased engagement and will be more valuable to both sides of the engagement. This is the real goal of content: to provide consumers with value.

Agile Increases Speed

Creating content is a very time-consuming process, as illustrated in these stats from Techvalidate on how long it takes the average content marketer to build a piece of content. Notice that when marketers were asked how much time it takes for them to create content, the majority of content marketing projects are rated at 3-8 weeks.

The Standish group found that agile projects succeed three times more often than those following the traditional “waterfall” process, as well as spending much less time and at a significantly lower cost.

Agile not only allows you to create something faster, but create it better as well. (highlight to tweet) This will allow you to keep up with the pace of your marketplace and your consumers—not to mention that, as content marketing increases in popularity, all corners of your business will likely be asking you to produce some form of content for them. Being able to produce content faster and more effectively is the only scalable way to solve this issue.

We’ve all been taught by math that the shortest way to get somewhere is a straight line. But in those math equations, we know where we are going. If you do not know where you are going, a straight line is not the fastest or best way. Consider this proof as an example of the increased speed and accuracy of agile versus linear.

Draw two dots at opposite ends of a sheet of paper:

 

Place your pen on one of the dots, close your eyes, and without picking up your pen, try to draw a straight line to the other dot. Stop when you think you’ve gotten there and open your eyes.  Your line will likely look like this:

If you were able to reach the dot, great job. Now try to do it three more times. The odds are very slim that you can do it once, much less three times in a row. The point here is repeatability. You may put all the resources and energy into a piece of content, but if you only take one shot at it, you will likely fail.

Now try again, but follow the agile process. This time, place your pen on the dot, and feel free to stop whenever you want. You will need to leave your pen on the paper, but you can open your eyes. Recalibrate and try again. You can do this as many times as you would like. You’re second line will look like this:

 

Your agile line will always reach the mark faster and with less energy. This also is 100% repeatable. Agile is the only way to create content reliably, with limited resources, and at a value level high enough for your consumers. It is scalable, sustainable, and highly effective.

The need for content will never decrease, and the bar, which we must rise above, will always continue to be heightened. This puts marketers into a very tough spot. We must find a way to produce more content consistently and at a higher value. The value of agile content marketing is clear: you can produce more faster, with much higher value than ever before. Agile does not require an investment in a tool or a platform, but rather adopting a new way of creating your content.

To learn more about agile content marketing, visit the Agile Marketing Blog, follow @rsmartly on Twitter, or check out “The X Factor: Creating Better Content Though Agile.”

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Last week, my colleague Mike Sweeney gave you some insider planning tips from his work on 13 content marketing plans last year. His last word of advice? Get crackin’.

So, have you done anything since last week? Are you paralyzed by fear? Just don’t know where to start? Think it’s too late? Fear and paralysis are understandable. But it’s not too late. You can still do this. Just like a solid plan will help you refocus when people try to derail your efforts during the year and will keep you headed toward your goals, creating a plan to DO the plan will end the paralysis and help you get moving.

Below is what you have to accomplish in each of the next six weeks (if you start now) in order to complete your content marketing plan. We take longer than six weeks at Right Source to create a content marketing plan, but you know your company pretty well, might be very familiar with business goals and objectives, and maybe you have the whole company history in your head. All of this knowledge saves you time. And quite frankly, you are a little behind already, so I’m going to help you move this along.

Be aware, however, that this post will not tell you how to make your content marketing plan great. It won’t tell you how to convince leadership that content marketing is the right choice. It will not tell you what pitfalls to avoid. I’m just going to tell you how to get moving, how to keep moving, the elements you MUST include, and will offer a few pro tips because who doesn’t need a little help here and there?

Week 1
Assemble your team ­– Team is key here. You don’t want to do this alone. You should recruit some content creators, strategists, data specialists, and some folks who know marketing technology to help you build out all facets of your plan. Your team needs to be on board and be cheerleaders for the plan and the process. Get them fired up and be their leader.

Do some interviews – You know your company, but are you certain you are in alignment with leadership on what this content strategy is supposed to accomplish, how you will measure success, how much you will spend, who is willing to be involved, and what sales feels they need to do their jobs? Talk to some key people.

Create some kind of a project planning or management system ­– We use Trello, but there are lots of good options out there to keep you organized as you work through all the parts of your plan. The idea is not to lose sight of what you have to do, who is doing it, and whether it’s actually done. Do this asap before you get lost in the melee.

Week 2
Research your competition ­– You’re saying, “You think I do marketing here and I don’t know who my competitors are?” Well, of course I believe you know who they are, but do you really know how they are marketing themselves? Do you know exactly what kinds of content they are creating, and how well they do that? This tells you where your audiences may be underserved and where your opportunities are. Some super sleuth on your team can actually start doing this while you are still interviewing those other people in your company, which actually takes longer than you think. Because … schedules.

Research the market – I know. You know the market. But what does your industry do in the content marketing space? Do you know that? Get the super sleuth on this, too. They can be doing it along with the competitive research.

Do a content audit – What do you have (this is really an inventory), is it any good (this is the audit part), and just as important, if it is good, what else can you use it for this year? This can take some time if you have a lot of content and might take more than one person.

Week 3
Create goals and objectives – This is super important. It shouldn’t be “get more leads.” Think this through. Create some depth. How? In what way that is different from what was done before? To assist with what? Your content creator/strategist needs this for the rest of the plan. Don’t procrastinate here.

Define audience – Be specific. If you don’t know who are targeting this year, you will not succeed. Equally important to the content creator/strategist for his or her portion of the plan, so this one can’t be delayed either.

Development measurement criteria – How will you and the team measure success? Determine this with leadership and/or as a group, but be sure to document it in the plan.

Week 4
Develop messages, themes, and topics – Do not delay on this. It takes time. Do messages first – at the beginning of the week. Agree on whether they represent you as a company before you move forward with themes and topics.

Choose content types and frequency – You need to decide here, based on your budget and resources, what you will produce and how frequently. The topics you create need to align with types, so make sure you have appropriate choices for anchor content, webinars, enough fodder for drip campaigns, etc.

Identify distribution channels – You’re going to market all this stuff after you make it, right? Where? You actually need a plan for this as well. And the plan can’t just be to distribute on your owned social media properties. Pro tip: that will not lead to victory.

Week 5
Identify your execution team – This team may be, in large part, the same team you have working on your plan. But are there others who can contribute to the content effort? Will you bring in an outside firm to help you? Freelancers? It’s decision time.

Choose your tools – Do you have a marketing automation platform? Planning to actually start using it or are you thinking about buying one? What about CRM? Editorial calendar software? Now is the time to think about what you have, what you actually use, what you need.

Build your editorial calendar – You have all those topics and content types ready to go. Now you need to put them into a calendar. Do not move forward without doing this. It takes longer than you think, so start this in week 5. It could take until the end of week 6 to be finished the way you want it.

Week 6
Create top 10 priorities ­– What’s going to happen first? Maybe the newsletter needs a redesign, some eBook gets repurposed, marketing automation platform gets set up, but you need your first 10 steps with deadlines. Don’t confuse this with the editorial calendar, because some of these action items might not be editorial in nature.

Go.

You can be rolling in a mere month and a half. Start now. Follow the schedule. It’s not to late to be successful this year and execute with a plan. Need more help with your planning? Download our eBook, “Build Your Content Marketing Plan: A 10-Step Guide.”

According to LinkedIn, 84% of B2B decision makers start the buying process off with a referral. So it’s no wonder many brands have developed a customer referral program.

But your happy customers aren’t the only people who can source referrals for your company. Your business partners, employees and client prospects can help you win new business and generate more sales.

Here’s a handy guide on how to identify, approach and reward these individuals so you can expand your customer referral program and make it more effective.

The benefits of expanding your customer referral program

First, I want to tell you why each of these channels can contribute to the success of your referral program.

• Partners understand your product and your customer base. Just like your best customer advocates, partners have networks full of people who can submit quality referrals. In my experience, partner referrals typically close at higher rates than customer referrals. That’s because partners are aware of what our sales reps need to qualify a lead and understand our customer profile. hey also vet the opportunity for us through an initial conversation with the prospective customer before a rep reaches out.
• Your employees may have worked for ideal customers in the past. Certain industries like HR or B2B software are well suited to employee referral programs because people tend to move around between similar companies. New employees may also have a network full of old colleagues who would make ideal customers.
• Prospects have a strong relationship with your sales reps. Just like customers, your prospects likely know peers that fit your criteria. Certain circumstances beyond your prospect’s control—like budget constraints or a lack of an executive sponsor—can kill a sale. Rather than walking away after working so hard to establish a relationship, reps should ask prospects for the names of other people you could be having conversations with.

1. How to identify, approach and reward partners

Identifying the right partners: If you already have a partner marketing program, then it’s easy to ask for referrals. Otherwise, you need to find potential partners and determine if you have common business goals. If they sound like a good fit, then you can start building a relationship.

Approaching partners for help: It’s important to establish reciprocal goals with partners early on. For example, you might say to your new partner organization, “For Q4, let’s get two accounts together.” Then, make a short list of your target accounts. Look at their client base and LinkedIn connections to identify people you’d like to be introduced to.

Once you have your partnership ground rules established, you can begin with some soft asks and relationship-building activities, such as co-writing marketing pieces (like ebooks or blog posts).

Next, start introducing sales reps or business development leads at both companies—so they can teach each other how to integrate your product story into their pitches.

It may take some time to get your partners consistently deliver higher quality leads. I’ve have found that the more we educate our partners, the higher the close rate on the leads they refer.

Rewarding partners: When it comes to partnership referral programs, you have to give to get. In other words, if you’re receiving lots of referrals from a partner, you’ll have to return the favor. The more you help your partners grow, the better off you’ll both be.

2. Engaging and incentivizing employee referrals

Identifying the right employees: Ideally, you want to identify the employees who are most likely to have a network similar to your ideal customer profile. So if you’re selling to people in finance, your finance team is going to be your best source for referrals.

Approaching employees for referrals: Your employees are already invested in the success of your company, so your approach doesn’t have to be as formal as it would be with customers. However, you should still establish executive buy-in and kick things off with an education program to encourage participation.

Referrals don’t always have to come from a lead form. For example, you can provide UTM tracking parameters for individual social media posts to see which employees generate the most opportunities on a monthly basis. You can start by asking employees to amplify messages that you publish about your company (e.g. blogs, case studies) via social media. This concept is often referred to as “social selling” and helps attract new prospects via LinkedIn, Twitter, etc.

You should be asking for referrals throughout their tenure with your organization. In order to keep your referral program top of mind, make it fun by creating regular contests or challenges.

Rewarding employee referrals: Often, businesses offer financial rewards to employees (such as gift cards) to encourage participation. However, professional development opportunities and special perks (like taking the CEO’s parking spot for a day) will also get them referring.

3. Perfecting your prospect referral program

Identifying the right prospects: Sales reps can ask prospects for referrals whenever they expresses gratitude for the rep’s time and effort (whether they intend to buy or not).

Approaching prospects for referrals: It’s best to take a less formal approach to recruiting prospects. Most of the time, you will need to leave this to your reps’ discretion.

Reps can make the referral process easier by searching the prospect’s social media networks and asking for an introduction to a specific contact the prospect knows.

Your reps can also provide a customized link in their email signatures requesting referrals so prospects can easily submit them at any point in the relationship via a submission page.

The bonus of having a prospect send referrals is that it validates whether they are really interested in buying your product or not.

Rewarding prospects: Rewarding a prospect can be awkward since they haven’t made a purchase (yet), but your sales rep can help you determine a personalized reward that they will appreciate.

Although small monetary rewards are fine, consider giving prospects access to things that will help them professionally—like training, conferences or people in your professional network.

A sincere, hand-written ‘thank you’ card can also work wonders.

How To Build The Ultimate Customer Referral Program

This how-to guide has everything you need to know to about taking your referral process from desperate and awkward to downright irresistible. In this eBook, you’ll learn:

• The real reasons your customers just aren’t that into giving you referrals
• How to nurture your customers using advocate marketing—before you ask for a referral
• Creative ideas for inspiring your advocates to send you new referrals on the regular
• How other B2B marketers use advocate marketing to get high-quality referrals

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You know what cracks me up? Memes. Especially those ones with the caption “you’re doing it wrong.” To the laymen, the “you’re doing it wrong” catchphrase is commonly associated with “fail” images or videos. The phrase suggests there is significant room for improvement…to say the least.

A picture of a hand mirror duct taped to a broken side view mirror of a car…”you’re doing it wrong.”

Cauliflower pizza crust?? “You’re doing it wrong.”

A tech company without an effective sales development process? “You’re doing it wrong.”

OK, so I made that last one up…but it’s true!

It still surprises me when I learn that some organizations DON’T have a firm process or function in place around sales development. You’re not just missing out on potential opportunities, but also valuable market intel that can be gained from those “boots on the ground” prospecting sales development reps.

As a Manager of Customer Success, my job typically revolves around not only being the day-to-day point of contact for our clients but also educating them on what components make up a successful sales development function. I’ve found that creating a successful sales development process comes down to a few key ingredients:

Ingredient #1: Clear and concise messaging.

I often hear about sales organizations who put their lead gen teams through weeks and weeks of training. Or sometimes no training. Do you know how long it takes us to get a rep up and running on an account? Five business days. In general, we have found that sales development reps are most successful when they are kept on a “need to know” basis in regard to product/service material. Instead of overloading SDRs with product knowledge, we focus more on tailored, specific probing questions designed to discover pains and needs and establish qualification criteria to determine if an organization would be a fit for a particular offering. Now, not only have you gathered market intel on an account, but you’ve also identified the pains within an organization that creates the need for the prospect to move forward to the next stage in the sales process.

Ingredient #2: A highly targeted database of prospects to call.

Ideally, 500 accounts that meet the criteria of an ideal customer and a total of 1,500 contacts is a good starting point for the size of an SDR’s database. Out of those 1,500 contacts there should be at least 3-5 contacts per company of varying job level and title. An SDR should be canvassing an organization and navigating to the right point of contact rather than calling down a list of CIO’s and saying “OK, get me leads!”

Ingredient #3: An action plan to get prospects on the phone.

Providing an SDR with a list and no subsequent attack plan is like giving a driver an unfamiliar destination with no map. Call plan is key. When we compare organizations who leave their reps to prospect on their own versus those who HAVE a call plan, the results are staggeringly in favor of a call plan. They have more quality conversations, speak to more people within each target organization, and pass over more qualified opportunities. Period. End of story. Fourteen years in this business has taught us that.

Whether you are a start-up just trying to figure out what you want the sales function of your organization to look like, or a company that’s been in the game for years, reexamine your current processes. Does it contain each of these ingredients?

Show of digital hands: How many of you have endured a verbal sales pitch?

We’ve all experienced a formal sales presentation where the rep clicks through every nook and cranny of their product, spending 95% of the time on information we don’t care about.

But sales pitches can rear their heads in other ways. For example, what happens when you ask a new acquaintance, “What does your company do?” If they recite every activity their business has been involved in over the past 14 years, they’ve just delivered a verbal sales pitch.

Verbal sales pitches are, to put it bluntly, the pits. And yet all salespeople have given them.

Why do we give these unnecessary pitches? When a prospect inquires, “What does your product do?” it’s easy to fall into the trap of long-winded explanations because we want to be thorough. We don’t take time to ask them what they may need from our product. Instead, we just dive right into a sea of facts, figures, statistical data, and technical jargon. And while we lovingly dote on our company as we talk about it, our prospects are completely checked out.

We should limit ourselves to giving pitches only when we're asked for it, and to make them highly relevant. It’s important to explain your company and make sure what you have to offer will fit your prospects’ needs. So how can we make them a better for reps and buyers?

1) Start with open and honest communication.

A pitch should never be your first conversation with a prospect. Make sure you understand their specific needs pre-pitch so you’re not wasting their time. Then, tailor your explanation to only discuss how your product specifically benefits them. They don’t need to hear any excess.

2) Stay calm.

Nerves can get the best of us, but you have to be cool as a cucumber during a pitch. If you’re anxious or shaky, you’re only going to make your potential client uncomfortable. What should you do? Well, whatever you do, do NOT picture them in their underwear. Instead, make sure you’re well-practiced in what you’re going to say and know your product backwards and forwards. Which leads us to this point …

3) Know what you’re going to say.

This isn’t improv at The Second City. Don’t wing it. Review key points of your presentation leading up to your meeting. Knowing exactly what you’re going to say and having the key points of your pitch memorized will make you more confident, so your words will flow out organically. Be careful though! You don’t want to sound recite a script or sound too rehearsed. You’ll come off sounding fake.

4) Make it a conversation, not a lecture.

It goes without saying that your prospect will be more responsive if you encourage a back-and-forth conversation. To keep them interested, you only need to do two simple things:

1. Ask them questions throughout.
2. Be genuinely interested in the answers they give.

This will keep them engaged and you will learn a lot about their needs, while deepening your understanding of how your product will work for their company. Whatever you do, don’t give your prospects a rehearsed monologue. It will come off as phony and they’ll see right through it. 

5) Be honest.

During a sales pitch, you should tell your prospect exactly how your product will help solve their business pain, but you don’t need to review every bell and whistle. It’s okay to say, “There’s more to the product than what we’ve just discussed, but it sounds like you don’t need it!” Remember, you don’t want to be phony -- it’s better to stick to your product’s true value and leave it at that than to try and shoehorn every feature into an explanation of how it could tangentially help your prospect. You’ll stand out against your competition and come off as genuine.

6) Keep it brief.

Seriously, folks.

Get in and get out. Tell your prospects what they need to know and ask questions, but don’t take up more of their time than you need. Like you, they’re busy people. Your brevity will be appreciated.

7) End on a high note.

It’s always a good idea to circle back and summarize the key points you made in your presentation. But in the spirit of brevity, wrap it up quickly. Leave your prospects with your product’s strongest value proposition for their particular need. Then, end with a one-liner that reminds them why they should choose you and what you’re selling.

8) Keep in touch.

I’m not saying you should obsess over your prospect. Don’t be that eager beaver after the first date. At the end of your meeting, make sure they’re aware of your availability. Be genuine and explain that you’re free to answer any question they may have in the days following.

How do you pitch without coming off as too salesy? Let us know in the comments below.

 

In a post titled Content Marketing – It’s About to Get Weird, my friend Joe Pulizzi revealed disappointing findings from an annual research survey. Here’s how he broke the news:

In our 2016 Content Marketing Benchmarks, Budgets, and Trends research (conducted in partnership with MarketingProfs), the effectiveness rate for B2B organizations actually went down (from 38 percent in 2015 to 30 percent in 2016). This is not good. And the worst may be yet to come.

Joe goes on to paint a hopeful picture of content marketing’s future by plugging this problem into the Gartner’s “hype cycle” model.

The Gartner model suggests that with any new technology adoption, there is exuberant adoption followed by disillusionment, which can be redeemed by a period of “enlightenment” when core problems are resolved and expectations soar again.

While I’m not sure content marketing is a “technology” appropriate for this model, I agree with Joe that the problems faced by content marketing may get worse before it gets better, but maybe not for the same reasons.

Fixing the content marketing problem

Do you remember when the first MP3 players were introduced? I bought into the hype and purchased an early version. It sucked. The thing held about 12 songs and the battery died after two hours.

Steve Jobs iterated, and in 2011 Apple launched the IPod. The period of enlightenment for the MP3 player began.

But it doesn’t always work that way. 8-track players didn’t re-enter a period of enlightenment. MySpace didn’t enter a period of enlightenment. Lots of good ideas die.

What’s the difference? To enter that period of enlightenment, you need to correct the problems that created the disillusionment in the first place.

What is creating disillusionment in content marketing? I think the answer is also embedded in the new CMI findings: 65 percent of the marketers say “measurement” is their top priority, specifically figuring out “what content works and what doesn’t.” Year after year leaders lament an inability to measure their marketing efforts.

And here’s the fact that makes me concerned about whether content marketing will rebound as a tactic or spiral down in an 8 track kind of way: The measurement problem is getting worse, not better. Let’s unpack the idea and see why that is so.

Content measurement is getting more difficult

I have a confession to make. I have no idea how many people will read this blog post. I can’t even make an educated guess.

Doesn’t that seem like it would be a simple thing to know? Wouldn’t that simple metric form the basis of knowing what content is working and what isn’t in my marketing world?

While content is the fuel for social media success, we simply can’t even trace its path today.

Five years ago, I had a decent idea of how many people actually viewed an individual post. People subscribed and I had an idea of open rate. Perhaps they found the article organically and I had a record of page views in Google Analytics.

With Facebook’s preoccupation with dwell time, more and more often we will be posting content, not just links, on our updates. And that’s when an individual blog post takes on a life of its own.

The happy life of a successful blog post

WHERE you are reading this post right now is anybody’s guess because the focus on content distribution has made the measurement issue profoundly worse …

• Since Facebook is rewarding “dwell time” instead of links that take people away from its site, I have been posting some entire articles into a Facebook Note. How many people read that note? No idea.
• A recent Facebook Note I created was shared by 10 other Facebook friends. How many people in those audiences viewed my post? I don’t have a clue.
• I also posted this on LinkedIn. LinkedIn does give you some idea of how many people viewed it, so there is a number!
• I cut and pasted this post into Medium. Why? I want to increase the distribution of my content. I can see likes, recommendations, comments and “reads.” The Medium “read ratio” is unique among publishing platforms and is an interesting indicator of success.
• Some of my posts are good enough to be turned into a feature on Harvard Business Review, where I am a contributor. This would get a ton of views. How many? I don’t have access to that information.
• High profile sites like Ragan’s PR Daily often syndicate my posts. So, with my permission, they suck up my article and post in a newsletter that goes to hundreds of thousands of people. An entirely new audience, an entirely new unknown number of readers.

Now, here’s one last big one. Studies consistently show that about 70 percent of the social sharing on the web is “dark,” meaning that they share it in a way we cannot see like email, direct messages, or a text from a phone. I have one reader in Canada who prints out many of my articles and posts them on a company bulletin board!

What does this all mean?

If a company is doing a decent job publishing and distributing its content, they can never really know how many people see it. So when the boss comes in and says “Great job producing all this content! How many people are viewing our work?” … and you shrug your shoulders … well that’s not a good sign.

And that is why many companies are freaking out about content marketing. It is really, really hard to track even simple things … like a page view. And like it or not, we live in a world that expects measurement. I think that is what’s showing up in the CMI research.

Christopher S. Penn, author of the brilliant new book Marketing Red Belt: Connecting With Your Creative Mind, is one of the most intelligent and resourceful analytical minds on our planet. Here’s what he had to say about measuring something as basic as content “views:”

Total views across platforms is almost impossible to measure unless you have access to the hosting sites’ analytics … views are the undiscovered holy grail of top-of-funnel attribution. If anyone else has a working solution that’s sound, let me know too!

I’m a data-oriented guy. I want to see results. I want to measure. I NEED to measure. But this whole gig is getting uncomfortably close to the place where the answer to your manager’s question about the value of content marketing is “trust me.”

As bad as advertising measurement may be, the irony is, the technology-enabled new kid on the block, content marketing, may becoming even worse. We can’t even estimate “impressions.”

The crucial bridge between content and conversions, the trusty link, is deteriorating. Analytical capabilities are not keeping up with the changes in the industry.

What’s the answer?

Do we ignore it?

My friend Mitch Jackson, a lawyer and entrepreneur in California, has a radical approach for his business:

Things are changing and they’re changing exponentially fast. Not doing something because it can’t be quantified or measured just may be a recipe for becoming obsolete. Believe me Mark, I “get it” but I’ve also always been able to see the benefits of change when others don’t, or are afraid to embrace it. That’s what’s allowed me to stay ahead of the curve.

Is Mitch’s approach of racing head-long into content marketing without a measure a sign of the future?

Maybe. I can see what he is saying. As a small business, I don’t dwell on the minutia of measuring. I can see the macro-benefits over time and I’m comfortable with that.

But for most businesses, especially large businesses, we simply must measure. How do you know whether to spend more or less on content marketing? How do you know if your trends are heading in the right direction?

Not only must we measure, we must measure in the language of business: Leads, sales, cost savings, customer satisfaction. Don’t count on changing company culture. That may take decades. But that is a story for another time.

Well folks this post has already run long enough (and I thank you for making it this far!). But there are a lot more ideas to explore in future posts:

• The importance of qualitative measures.
• The dance between measurement and company culture.
• Why measurement technology is not keeping up with marketing needs.
• New ways to think about measurement to satisfy the CMO and the language of business.
• Creating realistic expectations with management.
• ROI versus relevance.
• Why social sharing may be the only measure that matters.

The key to moving out of the trough of disillusionment is not more content, better content, or expecting CMO’s to “understand.”

The problem that needs to be “fixed” is measurement, pure and simple. And because the tech is not keeping up with the changes in Facebook and other platforms, that solution is rapidly moving away from us, not getting closer.

Your thoughts?

Illustration courtesy Flickr CC and Sam

Book reference is an affiliate link.

The post The uncomfortable state of content marketing metrics appeared first on Schaefer Marketing Solutions: We Help Businesses {grow}.

Social media is an addiction.

Well, it is for many of us. Most people can’t walk straight these days as they have their head in the mobile phone and one eye on the pavement. If someone from 100 years ago was transported to 2016, they would think we were mad as we talk to ourselves with white wires hanging from our ears!

So why are we so captivated?

It’s about human connection at scale that networks us to billions of people. We are curious about the impact of our creations. Will they like it? Are they sharing my thoughts, photos and videos?

It also gives us a voice.

Social media makes us feel empowered

This intersection of humanity and technology is human super consciousness enabled by hardware, apps and wireless connectivity. It’s a global mind meld that allows us to share thoughts, feelings and images with our family and friends no matter where we or they are. Virtual reality is becoming the reality. Social media is now a big part of that reality.

We can also join in global engagement of our individual interests.

A niche interest in playing a certain online game, sharing train watching ideas and cave diving tips can now be indulged with other like minded humans that become our global interest tribes. You no longer have to drive or fly to join or create a conversation. Skype, Periscope or Blab can help you connect from home.

It’s hyper connectivity at scale. It’s changing the world as we know it. And we don’t know where it is going.

Keep innovating

The social web and the digital world is forcing business to think different about its marketing, what content it creates and to focus on innovation.

What worked just 5 years ago doesn’t work today.

Relying on organic traffic from Facebook shares was the main social sharing tactic 5 years ago now. We now know we need to pay for that traffic in 2016!

So you need to try the other options. These include:

Flipboard: Over 70 million users

WhatsApp: Just cracked the 1 billion user mark

Snapchat: Reported to have 100 million users

Social media is splintering. It’s no longer just about Facebook.

So the social sharing buttons need to be updated. I have now added Flipboard and WhatsApp. To help me do that I use one of the best Apps for bloggers and website owners.. (an awesome app called SumoMe).

It allows me to easily connect and update my sharing buttons (plus 11+ other cool options) which can be a floating sidebar, at the top or sitting at the bottom of the page.

Not only that but it provides you with great metrics and stats. Here is some of the data that you can get from the dashboard.

Above is my first day of metrics capture. The data that shows on a mouseover is also very insightful.

Here are the share splits.

• Twitter was top at 63
• LinkedIn was next at 17
• Pinterest – 16
• Email – 15
• Facebook -12
• Google+ -10
• WhatsApp – 9
• Buffer – 6
• Flipboard – 2

What surprised me was how many people shared via email, WhatsApp and also FlipBoard. So we have the old and the new! Shows you not assume how and what people share. You need to know the data so you can optimize and maximize your sharing.

If you want to know some more about SumoMe check out this post on “How to Double Your Traffic Without Paying Google or Facebook a Cent“. Where I take a closer look at the key 12+ tools you can use to double your traffic.

The social web will amplify brand awareness, grow your traffic and increase leads and sales if it is done well.

Flipboard goes viral

Three weeks ago something happened that surprised me.

I published a post “7 Inspiring Books You Must Read” and then I flipped that post into one of my personal Flipboard magazines where I put all my blog posts.

A couple of hours later my traffic blew up.

I found the major source for the traffic of 200 readers a minute was coming from Flipboard.

Flipboard is a social-network aggregation magazine format mobile app that was founded in 2010 and I joined up a few years ago and have been playing at its edges . But the traffic it is driving in 2016 to my site is now very surprising but welcome.

So here are the lessons on viral.

Keep innovating and trying new tactics. You will be surprised often by what works and what doesn’t.

If you want to see how the jeffbullas.com posts look like on FlipBoard come and check it out here. For more information on Flipboard, check out this article. “6 Ways Brands Can Amplify Their Marketing With FlipBoard Magazines”

So after that small digression let’s have a closer look at the social media facts that behind how the social web is changing how we communicate, market and create content.

Facebook facts

Facebook owns some companies that you maybe aren’t aware of. Instagram(bought for $1billion), Occulus Rift (for $2 billion) and WhatsApp (purchase price of $19 billion). These are some of the Facebook facts from their investor relations division

1. Monthly active users (MAUs) – MAUs were 1.59 billion as of December 31, 2015, an increase of 14% year-over-year.
2. Revenue – Revenue for the full year 2015 was $17.93 billion, an increase of 44% year-over-year.
3. Income from operations – Income from operations for the full year 2015 was $6.23 billion.
4. Net income – Net income for the full year 2015 was $3.69 billion.
5. Free cash flow – Free cash flow for the full year 2015 was $6.08 billion.
6. Daily active users (DAUs) – DAUs were 1.04 billion on average for December 2015, an increase of 17% year-over-year.
7. Mobile DAUs – Mobile DAUs were 934 million on average for December 2015, an increase of 25% year-over-year.
8. Mobile MAUs – Mobile MAUs were 1.44 billion as of December 31, 2015, an increase of 21% year-over-year.
9. Mobile advertising revenue – Mobile advertising revenue represented approximately 80% of advertising revenue for the fourth quarter of 2015, up from 69% of advertising revenue in the fourth quarter of 2014.

The role of mobile is a staggering 80% of all advertising revenue. The money machine rolls on.

Twitter facts

Twitter in the last 12 months has taken a battering in the press, lost it’s CEO and is still struggling to monetise its platform. But it has a truckload of cash in reserves (at $3.5 billion) and at the current burn rate will be around for another 412 years according to USA Today.

1. 320 Million users
2. Twitter will be offering live embedded feeds from Periscope directly in the Twitter feed via the Twitter app on the Apple iOS.
3. 120 million monthly users
4. 500 million tweets are sent per day

Below are some more stats.

Image source Twitter:

Snapchat

Snapchat launched in 2011 and was initially almost dismissed as a joke. A fad that would pass. It was reported that Facebook offered $3 billion to buy the company and everyone thought they were mad to reject it.

But the facts in 2016 show a different story.

1. 100 million active daily users
2. 18% of all social media users in the USA use Snapchat
3. 30% of all US. millennials use the network
4. 8,796 photos a second are shared on Snapchat
5. Snapchat is reputed to have 5% of the overall selfie market

Statistics source: Expanded Ramblings

Infographic source: Growingsocialmedia

WhatsApp facts

This story behind the brand name was a play on words of “What’s Up”. Facebook bought it for $19 billion on Valentine’s Day, 2014 after beating Google’s offer of $10 billion.

It’s core philosophy is simplicity.

This is a little different to how Google approached the concept with Google+. Which was more about the big bang and big bucks theory of beating Facebook. We know how that strategy played out.

So here are some of the facts behind WhatsApp.

1. Founded in 2009 by Jan Koum and Brian Acton
2. Just hit 1 billion users
3. 7oo million pictures get shared on the platform daily
4. 100 million new users are added daily
5. More than 100 million videos are shared daily
6. The average user send more than 1000 messages per month on WhatsApp
7. Average user checks the app 23 times per day

Infographic source: Shoponless.com

Google+ facts

Google+ seems to have become more about one of its key features. Google+ Hangouts. Google+ has even admitted that Google+ maybe split up into its functional parts.

Maybe the problem was that it tried to do too much rather than start simple and evolve. Cases to prove that simple works include Twitter, Snapchat and WhatsApp.

It’s big bang theory that imploded after investing over half a billion in it’s design and development. Deep pockets don’t always win.

Google won at search but not social.

Despite that here are some figures I managed to dig up.

1. There are 2.2 billion G+ profiles
2. Only 9% have any publicly posted content. Do the math. That’s 198 million that published!
3. 37% mentioned that those activities were comments on YouTube videos

Statas source: Socialscoremedia

Instagram facts

Instagram has now passed Twitter in the user count and it looks like it is Facebook’s best investment. After buying it for $1 billion on April 9, 2012… Citibank valued it at $35 billion just before the start of 2015 when it had 300 million users.

At the beginning of 2016 it has even more. Here are some facts about Instagram to ponder.

1. Instagram has 420 million users
2. Users share 70 million photos a day
3. Instagram is considered the most important social network by American teens than any other network at 32% vs 24% for Twitter and Facebook at 14%.

Infographic source: Instagramchief.com

Pinterest facts

Pinterest feels like it has been around forever. But it hasn’t. On the social media scene it is almost middle aged. It started in 2009.

Here are a few facts that you may use when planning your social media marketing.

1. 100 million users
2. 80% are female
3. 30% of US social media users are on Pinterest

Infographic source: Brandingandbuzzing.com

Blab facts

Blab burst on the scene in 2015 and is a live streaming video app that allows up to 4 people to be the hosts while the rest of the world looks on and comments. Sort of like the love child of Periscope and Google+ Hangouts.

1. Number of users – No idea! But it has got a lot of attention over the last 6 months. I couldn’t find any numbers. If you have the inside scoop please let me know!!
2. Users can sign in to the Blab through Twitter account only.
3. Blabs can be recordable both as audio and video files
4. The recorded Blabs can be share and upload onto the social media platforms like Twitter, Facebook, and Youtube etc.
5. Blab is available for both Android and iOS platform devices
6. The 20 characters that are additional in Twitter profile bio will be lost if you have edit the information for Blab.
7. Viewing Blab without participating in was called as Lurk mode on Blab
8. Blab allows maximum six hour lengthy content

The Blab rules

Graphic source: Marc-levy.com

Periscope facts

Periscope was launched in March, 2015 and is an app that allows live video streaming from the app on your mobile phone. Live streaming video from the mobile took off in 2015 with the launch of Meerkat, Periscope and Blab.

Using these platfroms to build brand awareness and market your business are still in embryonic stages. So watch this space

1. Periscope was acquired by Twitter for $86 million
2. People are watching 40 years worth of live video every day
3. 350,000 hours of video is streamed daily
4. Since Periscope launched last year, people have created over 100 million live broadcasts according to the Twitter blog.
5. Estimated number of users has passed 10 million
6. Daily active users has passed 1.85 million

Source of data: Omnicoreagency.com

Infographic source: JenLehner.com

Flipboard facts

So I am maybe pushing the boundaries of what is a social network but Flipboard does allow sharing, content publishing and comments.

It “is” still social media.

Flipboard was launched in 2010 by former Apple iPhone engineer, Evan Doll, and former Tellme CEO, Mike McCue. The duo set out to create an app that merged the simplicity and feel of a magazine with the accessibility and collaboration that technology provides. The app integrates news from media outlets from around the world and presents it in a magazine format.

1. 72 million monthly users
2. 36 million use it every week
3. It is in more than 20 languages
4. Users flip through 8.2 billion stories a month
5. They have raised over $200 million in funding

Infographic: Aboutflipboard.com

Over to you

How is social media, the apps and the social web changing your world?

Are you innovating or stagnating? What’s working for you? Look forward to your insights and feedback in the comments below.

Qualifying leads is tricky business. For the most part, we’re not failing miserably, but we’re not doing it well either. The typical lead gen model typically mirrors your standard marketing funnel: you fulfill some need, capture the names, qualify them, nurture them, and close them. Other processes fulfill the need, qualify them, but drop the ball on the rest of the process. Or fulfill the need, capture the name, and forget to nurture them.

The problem with most lead gen models is that we do a lot of one-night stands. We think that if we’ve captured a name, that contact is automatically a qualified lead, and we can rush them to the sales staff for the close. Instead of rushing for that quick win, we need to think about the lead capture and nurture process as a long-term relationship. We can improve our close rates if we simply build a framework to get to know our leads a little better. That way, if we attract the right leads from the start, we can spend less time qualifying them through a sales team.

Rather than spinning up a bunch of pages around different keywords and topics and hoping for the best, we need to find out exactly what that person wants. We need to understand who this user is behind the visit, and then figure out how to create something that speaks directly to that person.

So how do we do this?

First, export your email list and run it through a tool like FullContact, which appends and enriches user data based on the email addresses you submit. It also identifies a lead’s full name, age, gender, Twitter account, location, interests and so forth. Put all of this information into a spreadsheet.

Next, take the list of Twitter accounts generated through FullContact and run it through Demographics Pro, a service that provides information on demographics, psychographics and interests based on a person’s Twitter account. Put this data into the same spreadsheet.

I also recommend running your list through one of my favorite Facebook tools — Facebook Audience Insights — which will give you more psychographics and demographics based on a lead’s Facebook activities. Then, you guessed it, dump this info into the spreadsheet. You’ve now generated a ton of rich data to help you get started.

Now, let’s talk about the specifics.

Let’s say we see a trend among a certain group in our spreadsheet — for instance, women between 25 and 34. We can break out that demographic, and look at the data points in the psychographics and interests to build out further data-driven segments. Roughly, you’ve just identified your first persona.

Building Out Your Persona

Start by building out user stories, user needs and specific features for measuring people within this segment.

From there Google Analytics allows you to set up advanced segments based on your visitors’ demographics and interests, as well as the sequences of their activities or behaviors. You can use this information to measure your personas’ performance, and whether you’re truly engaging with them in a manner that is going to be most effective.

Ultimately, your personas will dictate your acquisition base. You’re going to learn how they came to you in the first place. You’ll learn where they’re the most active, what they need, how they think about things. Are they finding you with organic search, or are they more active on Facebook and Twitter? Did they come to you through an ad, or through a referral?

This data will ultimately help you understand and prepare for targeting potential leads where they operate, which will inform your hook. What do these people need that you can provide? How do you make this align with your business objectives?

If you can understand your potential buyers and what drives your different audience segments, you can hook them and pull the most qualified, most interested people into your sales funnel, and form a long-term relationship, instead of a lucky one-night stand.

The post Guide to Easy Quantitative Persona Building appeared first on OpenView Labs.

Imagine going to Starbucks. You order a latte, and as you reach for your wallet, the barista says, “That’s $3.00, and just $2.00 more to add a bagel. Would you like the bagel?” You say, “Yes,” take your food, and leave.

It’s a completely automatic, transactional sale. The barista didn’t have to sell you on the benefits of the latte or the bagel. He didn’t have to overcome any objections. All he did was present the information, give you the product, and take your money. Anyone can do that.

SaaS sales is different. There’s big money on the table, multiple stakeholders to accommodate, and value propositions which are more complex than choosing what to eat for breakfast. There’s friction in SaaS sales. It’s what makes the job tough—but it’s also why salespeople exist. It’s why they’re better compensated and harder to replace than a barista.

One of the myths of SaaS is that the products are so good, so easy to use, so quick to deploy ... that the product sells itself. [...] But as many startups discover to their horror [...] this is far from the truth. Even with early viral growth, SaaS products don’t sell themselves.— Mark Cranney, Operating Partner at Andreessen Horowitz

And yet, so many SaaS salespeople expect their job to be just as easy. That’s why they get tripped up when customers hit them with these objections:

1. “Your product is too expensive.”
2. “Your product doesn’t have the right features.”

Pricing and features are obviously important, but unlike baristas, SaaS salespeople can’t just recite that information and see who bites—their job is to show buyers what value their product can bring to a company. Let’s get into how you can move past these objections and keep the focus on value.

Objection #1: The price is too high

When mediocre salespeople hear “your product is too expensive”, they take it at face value and give up on the deal. Good salespeople are able to take it in stride.

What the pricing objection really means is that you haven’t properly communicated your product’s value. You need to work together with the prospect to understand who will be using your product and what benefits they’ll get: increased productivity, better margins, more customers—whatever that value is, make it clear to the prospect that it outweighs the price.

Plus, a lower price doesn’t actually make a product more attractive—in fact, it does the opposite. Yes, everyone would like to pay less. But, as sales expert Lawrence Steinmetz points out in his book, most customers understand that buying from a cheap competitor will lead to “intolerable” problems.

Look at it this way: what if you were looking at the menu for a nice-looking steakhouse and saw they charged the same as McDonald's? Sure, you might be happy to save some cash, but you’d also worry the food might make you sick. Your product is a ribeye, not a Happy Meal.

Back to value

Here are a few ways to navigate the pricing objection.

• Don’t even discuss price until both you and the customer understand the value your product can deliver. Remember: this isn’t a Starbucks transaction—price isn’t relevant at the beginning of the conversation. If they ask too early, say something like, “Well, what’s your budget for this project? That’ll impact how we can structure the deal.”
• Refuse to lower the price. When you doggedly stand by your price, it tells the customer that you believe in your product’s value. If they demand a lower price, say, “This is the best deal we can offer you,” and steer the conversation back toward all the issues your product can solve at the available price. In the words of Evan Carmichael, the founder of EvanCarmichael.com: "You don’t want to compete on price. Price is the worst way to stand out. It’s not a long term sustainable advantage."
• Reframe the issue. Shift the conversation from what they’ll pay upfront to what they’ll save in the long run. A recent Gartner survey reveals that the majority of companies who buy SaaS do so because they believe it will ultimately save money—in other words, they know that the value over time outweighs the price. Remind them of that by asking something like, “But what will it cost to keep doing what you’re doing?”

You might think you’re building a strong relationship by giving the customer the discount they want, but really, you devalue your product by telling them, “You’re right, it really isn’t worth what I originally said it was.” That customer will ditch you the second a cheaper option comes along. But, if you focus your sales conversations on what your product provides, customers will start to see the price as an investment in their future, rather than just another expense.

At Close.io, we encounter the pricing objection all the time. Prospects say they just want a simple CRM for calls, they love the product, but it's just too expensive.

We then learn more about their sales process through a simple series of questions:

• How many sales reps do you have?
• How many calls does each rep make a day?
• How long does it take them to log a call in their CRM?
• How much time do their reps spend on average with data entry in their CRM?
• How much are they paying their reps per hour on average?
• What's their average reach rate, qualification rate and close rate?

Many times, when prospects do the math, they're able to see that even though our inside sales software costs more than other CRM tools, they're still getting the better deal because Close.io can improve their sales productivity more than other vendors. It's simple math, once they do the numbers, the value becomes apparent.

Think of ways to do this for your own product. If your product costs $30 more per user than an alternative vendor, but it'll help the prospect to make an additional $600, it would be penny wise and pound foolish to get hung up on price.

Objection #2: I need a new feature

“If I had asked people what they wanted, they would have said faster horses.”—Henry Ford

Common scenario: a SaaS salesperson thinks they’ve found the ideal prospect. Product solves a problem? Check. Right industry? Check. Interested? Check.

But then, the customer hits them with the dreaded, “I like your product, but I wish it had this feature.”

A mediocre salesperson will panic and ask himself, “What do I have to say to make this sale?” A good salesperson will instead ask, “What does this really mean? What pain does the customer wish my product could relieve?”

Put yourself in the customer’s shoes. They’re trying to envision exactly how your product will make them more successful on a day-to-day basis. When they ask about a missing feature, it means that in their mind, there’s a gap between what your product can do and what they need it to do—some burning issue they don’t think it can solve.

Ask the right questions

"By asking great questions, salespeople create great value in the eyes of their prospects."—Marc Wayshak, best-selling author and sales strategist

The feature request only gives you a superficial idea of what the customer wants your product to do. You need to dig beneath the surface by asking questions that uncover the real, pressing need behind this feature. That’s the best way to refocus the conversation on your product’s value.

No customer hears about a great product and thinks “Oh man, let me think of some random features I could tack onto this thing!” They think “Wow, sounds useful … but I don’t see how it could solve X for me. What if it did Y?” Asking questions is the only way to learn what they’re looking for.

You’re an expert on your product and your industry. Act like one. Ask how that feature would enhance the customer’s experience. Learn from your engineers, and consider questions like:

• Can you tell me exactly what problem that feature would solve for you?
• Who on your team would that help most?
• In the big picture, how would solving that problem help your company?
• Can any of our current workarounds do that for you?
• Is this a make or break issue? Why?

Asking these questions enables you to collaborate with the customer to uncover the issues your product can solve for them.

Not only that, but these questions establish trust. A sleazy salesperson would say anything to close a deal: “Oh, you know, that feature is actually coming out in a week, so why don’t you buy now?”

You, on the other hand, made an effort to learn about the customer's business and showed genuine interest in their success.

If you were sick, would you trust a doctor who pitched a medication before he asked about your symptoms? Nope. Customers won’t trust you if you do the same thing.

As with the pricing objection, adding on whatever feature they ask for sends the wrong message about your product. You think you’re being helpful, but really the customer is thinking, “Wow, do they change the product every time someone asks them to? Will this thing even look the same in two months?”

The way to really help the customer is by exploring creative new ways to solve their biggest issues. Listen closely to what they tell you, but then see how their feedback fits into the bigger picture to avoid feature creep.

It's unavoidable that people will request features you don't offer. At Close.io, we hear feature requests all the time. People want emoji support in our WYSIWYG email editor. They want icons for different kinds of tasks. They want automatic announcements for incoming and outgoing calls that calls are being recorded. And they've got good reasons for wanting these features.

But indiscriminately fulfilling their requests would lead to the monstrous kind of bloated sales software we always wanted to avoid. Product strategy means saying no.

Like Rob Hanna said about our app for salespeople:

"[Close.io] intuitively leads you to get the fuck out of the way of yourself so you can make more goddam calls effortlessly and efficiently – which means closing more sales in less time."

Rob knows what he's talking about. He's been selling and managing sales people since the 1970s. The first real CRM he used to manage his team was ACT!, as a global wholesaler for CHASE in NYC on their first billion dollar bond fund. He's used many other CRMs since then. Go ahead and read what else Rob has to say about our software.

Adding more features is easy. A lot of software vendors follow the "more features = better" philosophy and proudly display feature comparison charts on their homepage. But to create a product that really helps your users succeed, you need to think more deeply and uncover what the few things that truly matter are, and focus intensely on getting them right.

SaaS isn’t transactional

SaaS sales would be a lot easier if pricing and product features were all that mattered. But guess what? Then no one would need SaaS salespeople. If you get held up on these objections, you make yourself replaceable.

SaaS salespeople don’t get business by just listing off some features and naming a price—they do it by working together with customers to figure out how their product can help them succeed. When you become a source of value for customers, new business will come flowing in.

Recommended reading

How Do You Manage The Pricing Objection In Sales?
Here's what is usually behind the pricing objection in sales and how to manage it successfully to close more deals and make more sales.

Sales Objection: "It's Not a Priority Right Now"
You've had a great sales conversation, asked for the close ... and now your prospective buyer tells you: "Sounds good, but it's not a priority right now." How to respond?

Manage any sales objection successfully!
How to manage any sales objection successfully. A simple process to help you move the sale forward and close more deals.

In 2015, there was an average of 29 loyalty program memberships per U.S. household. 71% of those making more than $100K USD are enrolled in a loyalty program.

How can you use loyalty programs to tap into this buying power?

Our friends from Selfstartr created this infographic and guide on loyalty programs to show the usage, types and effectiveness of customer loyalty programs.

Courtesy of: Selfstartr

7 Quick Tips For Creating Value From Your Loyalty Program

Choosing the right loyalty program software is the first step. But how can you deliver value, while increasing participation in your program? These steps can help you encourage loyalty:

1. Reward for signing-up: Creating an account can be a hassle for customers. Give them a reason to create an account by offering points that are instantly earned.

2. Reward for spending: 97% of customer loyalty programs reward points when customers spend money. It is easily understood and managed. But you can’t rely on this, solely. 77% of transaction-based programs fail in 2 years.

3. Reward for reviews: User-generated content like product reviews are critical for ecommerce websites. Product reviews add social proof that aid in the buying process for other customers. Reviews can also help with SEO. Reward customers with points for providing product reviews.

4. Exchange points for physical goods: Once a customer racks up points give them something of value. Allow them to easily redeem their points for products from your store.

5. Virtual badges go a long way: Allowing customers to turn points into status based rewards like virtual badges can create additional excitement to your rewards program.

6. Go social: Adding a social component like sweepstakes or contests is a fantastic way to build engagement and attract new visitors to your website.

7. Write effective emails: Make sure your emails speak directly to your customers. Avoid generic cookie cutter copy or meaningless jargon. Antavo allows you to create custom emails for your rewards program.